Tiger Men

by Judy Nunn

  ‘Hello, Rupert Stanford.’ Caitie smiled warmly at the childlike boy, who she’d recognised as simple.

  Rupert, realising all was forgiven, gave a quick happy guffaw and his eyes once again fixated upon the hair. Everything else was forgotten. All he could see was the hair.

  Then Caitie O’Callaghan did a wonderful thing. At least Hugh thought it was wonderful. Her friend Mary Reilly was clearly appalled.

  Caitie O’Callaghan reached behind her head and undid the ribbon at the nape of her neck. She shook her head and tilted it to one side so that her hair hung free like a thick red blanket. ‘There you are, Rupert,’ she said. ‘Go for your life.’

  Rupert’s eyes widened and his mouth opened into a great silent O. He was utterly speechless. He shuffled over beside her and with his open hand he carefully lifted up the mane of hair, letting it rest there on his palm, examining it closely, admiring its colour. Then very gently with the fingers of his other hand he started to stroke it. Lost in the richness and the texture he could quite happily have gone on stroking it for an hour, as his brother well knew.

  ‘All right, Rupert, that’s enough now,’ Hugh said.

  Rupert immediately obeyed as he always did. ‘That’s enough now, Rupert,’ he told himself, and letting the hair fall gently back into place, he moved a respectful distance away.

  ‘He likes to feel the texture of things,’ Hugh explained unnecessarily, aware that Mary Reilly had found the episode embarrassing and was staring out at the match even though the whistle had sounded for quarter time and the players were walking off the field.

  ‘That’s fairly obvious.’ Caitie laughed as she tied her hair back in place.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘it was very nice of you.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ she replied and they shared a smile.

  ‘What’s happened to the game?’ Rupert asked looking out at the oval. His curiosity satisfied, the hair was now forgotten. ‘Oh hello, Harry.’ He beamed as Harry Balfour joined them.

  ‘I kept a place for you,’ Harry said, squatting beside them, ‘why didn’t you come and –’ Then he noticed the pretty russet-haired girl who’d been chatting to Hugh. ‘Oh.’

  ‘The game was just about to start. I didn’t want to disrupt things.’ Hugh hastily made the introductions. ‘We’ve only just met,’ he added, self-consciously, aware that Harry thought he had a secret girlfriend.

  They chatted politely for a moment or so before Harry rose to his feet, impatient to leave.

  ‘Come on, let’s get back to the others before the second quarter starts,’ he urged.

  Hugh stood and they farewelled the girls, Rupert waving madly to Caitie.

  ‘It’s a darn good match,’ Harry said as they turned to go. ‘Who the heck is that centre man for St Joseph’s?’

  ‘He’s my brother,’ Caitie called over her shoulder with an unmistakeable ring of pride, ‘my brother, Oscar O’Callaghan.’

  Oscar O’Callaghan’s name was on everyone’s lips at the end of the game, as was Wes Balfour’s. The two had been the undisputed stars of the match.

  The older, seasoned members of the Hutchins School team knew Oscar O’Callaghan. He’d played for St Joseph’s the previous year. Just like Wes, he’d been the youngest player on the field at the time.

  ‘You’ve got to admit, he’s not bad for a Mick,’ big Gordie Powell said with a grin as, having shaken hands with their opponents, the victorious Hutchins School players left the field to join their supporters on the sidelines.

  Wes Balfour and David Powell exchanged a wry smile. Gordie’s comment was something of an understatement. Their team may have won the match, and so it should, they’d been the decidedly stronger side, but they’d won by just seven points. It could have been anybody’s game, and purely because of Oscar O’Callaghan.

  The players, especially Wes, were greeted enthusiastically by their schoolmates, Harry joining in with the others thumping his brother on the back. They all knew that without Wes they would have lost the match.

  ‘Good on you, Wes.’ Hugh shook his cousin’s hand enthusiastically while Rupert jumped up and down on the spot, braying and waving his scarf at each and every member of the team. The whole school had by now come to know Rupert, particularly at football matches where he was accepted as their most avid supporter.

  In typically perverse fashion, clouds had gathered and the day had turned chill, and it wasn’t long before people started to disperse. Families packed up picnic rugs and hampers, and the Hutchins School students headed for home or, in the case of the boarders, back to school.

  ‘We’re not going back to school,’ Wes Balfour explained to the Powell boys as a group of them prepared to set off for the tram. ‘Harry and I are going back to Hugh’s place, we’re staying there the weekend.’

  ‘Why don’t you come home and have some pasties?’ Hugh suggested to Gordie and David. ‘Our cook makes the best pasties in the world, I can guarantee it.’ The Powell boys being older, Hugh didn’t know them particularly well, but he was eager to entertain two members of the footie team and they were obviously good mates with Wes.

  At the mention of ‘our cook’ Gordie and David shared a glance. Young Hugh Stanford seemed nice enough, and Wes certainly liked him, but everyone knew his father was as rich as Croesus. Indeed their own fathers considered Reginald Stanford a man who abused his position of wealth and power. The boys didn’t know why and they didn’t particularly care, but Hugh Stanford was bound to be a spoilt brat.

  ‘Can Max come too?’ David asked, indicating their friend Max Müller. Thirteen-year-old Max had arrived from the Huon just the previous year to be enrolled as a boarder at the Hutchins School, and of course the Powell cousins had taken him under their wing. The Powells and the Müllers remained family at all times.

  ‘Of course,’ Hugh agreed, ‘the more the merrier.’

  ‘Will you give us a look at your father’s Rolls Royce?’ It was a cheeky request, once again from David. David, like his father Thomas, tended to push boundaries. He’d seen the Rolls Royce in the streets on occasions, they all had, and Wes Balfour had told him that he and Harry had ridden in it. God, how he’d envied them.

  ‘Yep,’ Hugh said expansively. ‘I’ll even let you sit in the driver’s seat if you like.’ The invitation was a bold one. Much as he was encouraged to bring his school friends home, Hugh wasn’t sure whether such an offer would meet with his father’s approval, but he very much wanted to impress the older boys. And besides, his father wouldn’t be home, his father was off at a business meeting.

  ‘Right you are,’ David said and, after reporting their movements to the teachers in charge, they set off, all seven of them, the Stanfords, the Balfours, the Powells and young Max Müller, for the tram that would take them to the city.

  Reginald Stanford was deriving a great deal of pleasure from Henry Jones’s ongoing predicament. For several years now he’d been enjoying the fact that there was one major element missing from Henry’s ‘house that Jack built’. The man had the fruit, the processing factories, the tin mines, the timber mills – indeed all that was necessary for the production and packaging of products that sold to a world-wide market – with the exception of one vital ingredient: sugar.

  ‘I’m at a loss, Reginald,’ Henry said as he paced his office floor, ‘it’s been going on for far too long. I’ve been thwarted in every direction. What in God’s name am I to do?’

  Apart from fruit, the major constituent of jam and preserves was sugar, which made it an essential commodity to Henry Jones. The Australian production of refined sugar, however, was controlled by the Bundaberg-based Colonial Sugar Refinery Ltd, which, with the apparent approval of the Commonwealth Government, had a monopoly on the industry. The factories of Henry Jones Co-operative Ltd, the public company which had succeeded H. Jones & Co., had long been given discount prices and preferred shipping dates by CSR, but this had not satisfied Henry, who had been continuously frustrated by the fact that he did not h
ave total control. Just two years previously, in an effort to break the monopoly, he’d imported refined sugar from Jamaica, incurring the wrath of CSR, who had made it abundantly clear that should he try such a ruse again, Australian sugar would be withheld from his factories. Furthermore, he’d been told, pressure would be brought to bear on the federal government to reassess the import duty on Jamaican sugar. It had seemed Henry’s hands were well and truly tied.

  ‘You could try pushing the government again on the sugar beet issue,’ Reginald suggested. He sipped at the cup of tea the secretary had brought him and watched the portly little figure pacing about the office. It amused him that Henry Jones had finally come up against a monopolistic industry that he could not bend to his wishes.

  ‘Yes, sugar beet would certainly solve the issue, you’re right,’ Henry said. ‘If only the wretched government would agree.’

  The Tasmanian climate was ideal for the growth of sugar beet crops, which would have provided an alternative source of sugar to that derived from the Queensland-grown cane. Henry had tried several times to establish a sugar beet industry, but he’d been thwarted by the Commonwealth Government’s consistent refusal to extend the bounties to sugar beet that it extended to sugar cane. Without the government bounties in place, the planting of sugar beet was an uneconomic proposition. Henry’s hands were still tied.

  ‘It might well be worth another try, old chap,’ Reginald said encouragingly. ‘You really shouldn’t give up.’ Sugar beet wouldn’t be worth another try at all, he thought. No political party would risk antagonising the powerful Queensland growers and refiners. Henry’s idea of sugar beet as a viable option, brilliant though it was, had been unrealistic from the outset. The sugar barons of Queensland had their own state government and the Commonwealth government safely in their collective pocket. ‘Of course,’ he added thoughtfully as if the idea had just occurred, ‘there is one other possibility.’

  Henry stopped pacing. ‘What, Reginald? What?’

  ‘The Jones Co-Operative could become the local agent for CSR.’ Reginald could see that Henry was unimpressed. ‘I know, I know,’ he added with a wave of his hand, ‘it’s not the ideal solution, but do give it some thought. You could carry massive stocks right here in the Old Wharf warehouses. Imagine what you’d save on delivery costs. And you’d not only have a ready supply for your own factory use, you’d have a healthy business on-selling to retailers.’ He noted that Henry was starting to look interested. ‘Just a thought, old man. I’ll leave it with you.’ He downed the last of his tea and placed the cup on the desk. ‘Now I really must be off.’

  Reginald felt smug as he stepped out of the IXL building into the chaos of Old Wharf. Henry was bound to adopt the agency idea when his sugar beet proposal was again knocked back and, although he might not consider it the ideal solution, to Reginald it represented a small personal triumph. As one of Henry’s investors, some benefit would probably evolve from the agency proposition, but far more rewarding for Reginald was the sense of one-upmanship gained in the knowledge that Stanford Colonial had substantial investment in CSR, a fact of which Henry Jones was quite unaware.

  He set off along Davey Street. It was late afternoon; dusk would soon be descending and, having left work, people were queued up at tram stops eager to get home to the suburbs. He would walk to Stanford House instead of catching the tram, he decided; it was not far and he would enjoy the constitutional. He had not driven to the meeting: he never did. The Rolls Royce was driven around Hobart purely for show, either by himself or by his chauffeur, after which the vehicle was always returned to the safety of its garage.

  He wondered, while he walked, why he felt the need to best Henry Jones as he did. He had championed the man at one stage, congratulating himself on having discovered a winner. But Henry’s rapid rise to power now grated. It was probably because he was common, Reginald decided. Success like Henry Jones’s was the preserve of loftier men, in his opinion. Having to accept Henry as an equal was irksome. Surely when recognising an ally or competitor of any worth, one would wish him to be a man of some rank, and cut from a cloth finer than that of Henry Jones.

  The moment Reginald set foot inside the front door of Stanford House, he heard the sound of boys’ voices echoing raucously from the breakfast room.

  ‘Hugh brought some friends home from the football match, I take it,’ he said to Clive Gillespie, who met him in the hall.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Clive said, taking his hat and coat. ‘Boarders, sir, friends of young Master Wesley’s. Several members of the team, and they’re celebrating a win I’m glad to say.’

  ‘Excellent, excellent.’ Reginald sailed off to the breakfast room.

  Clive was thankful the master hadn’t arrived home a half an hour earlier when he’d discovered the boys inspecting the Rolls Royce and even climbing in and out of the driver’s seat. They’d done no damage, admittedly – indeed, they’d treated the vehicle with great respect – but they would most certainly have been in trouble had the master caught them at it.

  Clive had actually stood guard for the boys. ‘Five minutes, Master Hugh,’ he’d warned. ‘Five minutes and no more, then you are to lock the garage doors and return the key.’

  ‘Yes, Clive. Thank you.’

  Hugh had known that he could trust Clive. Clive had been his ally in the past when he’d committed the odd misdemeanour. The only one to worry about, he’d thought, was Rupert.

  ‘Not a word to Father, Rupert,’ he’d made his brother promise. ‘Not one word.’

  ‘Not one word,’ Rupert had agreed and he’d clapped his hands over his mouth to show he understood.

  Reginald was delighted that Hugh had invited some friends home, and members of the school team no less. Extending weekend hospitality to the Balfour boys had proved an excellent idea; young Wesley was setting a fine example in sportsmanship.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said jovially as he entered the breakfast room, where the boys were sitting around the main table scoffing their pasties and chocolate cake. ‘A win, I hear – my heartiest congratulations.’

  The boys rose respectfully to their feet.

  ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘sit, sit.’ They did, and Reginald pulled a chair up to the end of the table. ‘Now who do we have here,’ he said beaming around, avoiding Rupert, who’d been into the chocolate cake, although for some strange reason Rupert had suddenly clamped both hands over his mouth.

  Hugh made the introductions in descending order of age. ‘This is Gordie Powell, father,’ he said, ‘and David Powell, and this is Max Müller.’

  Reginald leant across the table and shook hands with each one. ‘How do you do, lads?’ he said, the boys chorusing ‘How do you do, sir?’ back. Reginald’s smile was just a little fixed now. The boys are Powells, he thought, and they’re boarders. They would surely be members of the Huon Powells, but from which family, he wondered. ‘You’re brothers, I presume,’ he said, looking from Gordie to David.

  ‘No, sir,’ Gordie answered, ‘we’re cousins.’

  ‘I see. And I take it you’re from the Huon . . .’ he hesitated briefly, ‘. . . Gordon, was it?’ He was damned if he was going to call the oafish giant of a lad ‘Gordie’.

  ‘Yes, that’s right, sir, we’re from the Huon.’

  ‘I’m well acquainted with your family, Gordon,’ he said pleasantly, ‘and which particular branch do you happen to be from?’

  ‘My father is Franklin Powell, sir, of Powell Shipbuilding.’

  ‘Ah yes, of course, we’ve met on several occasions. I know your grandfather George well. He designed my favourite ship, the SS Lady Evelyn. And you, David?’ he said, turning to the younger lad. He knew the answer, of course – the boy was the spitting image of his lout of a father.

  ‘My father’s Thomas Powell of Charlotte Estate, sir, we grow apples.’

  ‘Yes, yes, so I’ve heard, and most successfully.’ Reginald didn’t bother addressing the nuggetty boy they’d called Max, who had the look of a peasant about
him; there wasn’t any point. ‘Welcome to Stanford House, lads,’ he said as he rose, ‘I trust Hugh has looked after you well.’

  ‘Oh yes, sir,’ David said with a meaningful grin to the others, ‘Hugh’s been an excellent host.’

  Reginald glanced around the table; was there insolence intended in the remark? ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he said a little icily.

  Gordie cast a warning glance at David. David’s cheekiness was always getting them into trouble. ‘Thank you for your hospitality, sir,’ he said, ‘the food was excellent.’

  ‘Yes, we’re very fortunate with our cook. It’s been pleasant meeting you lads. Feel free to stay as long as you like.’ Reginald gave a brisk nod to the group and took his leave.

  Gordie, David and Max left only ten minutes later. They’d be in trouble, they said, if they weren’t back before curfew.

  When they’d gone Hugh was summoned to his father’s study, where he stood to attention wondering why he’d been called.

  ‘I would prefer you did not invite those boys home again,’ Reginald said, pen in hand and without looking up from his papers.

  ‘Why ever not, Father?’ Hugh was bewildered. He’d always been encouraged to ask his friends back to the house. Perhaps he’s found out about the Rolls Royce, he thought, but if so surely I am the only one to blame. ‘They didn’t do anything wrong,’ he protested, ‘it was my idea –’

  ‘I’m fully aware they did nothing wrong, Hugh.’ Reginald put the pen down and looked up from his papers. ‘But you have no need to associate with boys like that.’

  ‘Boys like what?’

  ‘They’re a little uncouth, don’t you think?,’ he said pleasantly. He had no wish to alienate his son. ‘I certainly found them to be so. It is not surprising of course as they’re from the country, but –’

  ‘Wes and Harry are from the country.’

  ‘That’s true.’ Reginald maintained his patience, although he felt a flash of irritation: he was not accustomed to his son talking back to him in such a manner. ‘But Wesley and Harold are related, Hugh; they have Stanford blood in them. Which, I must say,’ he added with a smile intended to be humorous, ‘does not stop them from being a little rough about the edges. You must surely have noticed that.’