It was then that the storm broke. Through his open cell door, over the curly black head of Tracker Treacle, who was squatting out on the verandah probably officially only to keep him company, Prindy saw the Mullaka dash away into the driving rain. A few minutes later the train arrived, unheard even by the keenest ears in the terrific din going on away up top there — Crash! Bang! Wallop! — and the drum of the rain on the iron roof. The train looked like a procession of shades marching, into nothingness, because the station was lost in rain. It lasted only fifteen minutes, but long enough to set the dry yellow earth flowing with mud and hopping with frogs. But there was no devastation. Old Tchamala didn’t by any means always win his wars with the Waianga. Probably the only untoward thing resulting from it was the suffering of the passengers off the train who’d had to wait that much longer in the stifling heat of shut up coaches or the station offices for the drink they’d surely been doing a perish for since heaving out the window the last bottle bought at the Caroline.
It was a sweet cool evening. Prindy had a great meal of beef and things and steamed pudding, brought to him from the hotel, no less, by his Daddy-o. It was a bright cool evening, with the stars shining like eyes washed by happy tears. Months of Lord Vaisey’s dust had been washed from the air in those fifteen minutes. The frogs sang about it in vast happy chorus, Prindy tootled about it on his flute. When his Daddy-o looked in on him at bedtime reluctantly to turn the key on him, and asked him what it was he was playing, he said, ‘Dat-one ’bout reen.’
‘What about rain?’
‘I don’ know . . . I on’y hear him sumpin . . . I play him.’
‘You’re a strange little boy, you know. You’re my little boy too, you know that, eh?’ It sounded as if Dinny were near to tears as he said it. But he had been drinking up at the pub. To the evident astonishment of Jinbul, who was guard for the night over the little non-prisoner in a prison cell, he went and kissed the wide little forehead pale in the semi-darkness.
Next day was bright but stinging hot. Prindy and his Daddy-o went riding together, over the river, first to try the mangoes of the trees growing about the Racecourse. Prindy rode his pony as yesterday and wore his neck-chain, which Dinny had handcuffed to his own wrist. Unable to get Prindy to talk about his adventures since leaving the Old Compound that evening in the middle of the year — for the simple reason that the boy said: ‘I been lose m’ ’ead’ — Dinny himself offered a fairly accurate reconstruction of the main details. Prindy simply ate mangoes and fed them to his horse. As they came back in the afternoon they were seen by Jeremy Delacy and Tom Toohey, the latter just in with his trolley from Running the Road. Dinny steered close to the pair in crossing the railway tracks, evidently with deliberate intent to show how the boy was shackled to him and by the wide split in his beard, wishing to provoke angry comment. Jeremy certainly stared, but did no more than raise a hand in greeting to Prindy and call, ‘Goodday, young feller . . . how’s the pony goin’?’
Prindy answered cheerily enough, ‘He all right, Mullaka.’
Poor Tom Toohey, scared of most things, and especially of Coon-Coon, looked away down-line from whence the returning train would soon be arriving.
That night, while Dinny taught Prindy some more Irish songs to play to his singing — The Minstrel Boy, Erin Go Bragh, The Last Rose of Summer — Jeremy sought out Pat Hannaford, who had been driving the train, in his quarters in the railway yards, bringing beer, which although accepted, was not enough to make Pat unbend much in his usual unfriendliness towards him. Nevertheless, Pat was very interested in what Jeremy had to tell him, and not only agreed to assist in what Jeremy proposed, but offered special service. When he heard about the neck-chaining of Prindy and Jeremy’s prediction that as Cahoon had made so bold with it so far he would be sure to use the chain tomorrow on the journey to Town, Pat declared that he would not take the train till the Copper Bastard was put in his place. But Jeremy showed him that it would be all to their advantage if the Bastard got away with it to where they could make a big issue of it. His own trouble was to arrange the thing he had in mind for the Showdown. He had telephoned his lawyer about his own case and Barbu’s, which latter he would see got the best of defence. That meant telling the world about it, of course, or at least that bit of it connected by phone from Port Palmeston to as far Inland as the gossips’ interest went, five hundred miles, at least. There must be no gossip over this other matter. Pat grasped it, and said, Leave it to him. He and his Comrades had a method of communicating that had outwitted the Mocks and Master Bastards many and many a time. If things were as Jeremy predicted they would be, then the method would be put into operation tomorrow and there would be that Showdown without fail. Although no wit more friendly with Jeremy as they parted, Pat chuckled in seeing him out of his barracks hut: ‘Yeah . . . looks like we got that Copper Bastard on toast!’
Jeremy returned to Toohey’s where he was staying as usual. He would be required to report at the Police Station next morning for submission to custody.
What Jeremy had predicted about the lengths to which Cahoon would go in the sureness he had in his position exceeded expectations. Arriving at the train next morning, by no means of stealth but just before it departed so that all the world might bear witness, not only did he have one small boy on a neck-chain but a little blackish girl as well, while behind him, with the bearded Jinbul as indifferent escort, came his true prisoners, snivelling Barbu and erect but stony and ruddy-faced Jeremy Delacy.
The little journey from the Police Station, usually made with prisoners by truck, was made today on foot for better effect. The Coon-Coon beard split wide in silent greeting to the gaping crowd. The children looked happy enough, and were nicely dressed, in clothes that everybody knew Cahoon had bought from McDodds at his own expense, and carried bags of lollies. He had the last compartment of the last passenger coach reserved. He was entering it when Pat Hannaford came striding down from the engine looking very grim, causing the crowd to mutter and Dinny to grin wider and say, ‘Hello, hello . . . looks like the Comrade Commissar isn’t goin’ to let us go!’ As Pat came up he addressed him amiably, ‘If you’re not goin’ to deign to drive us, Comrade, we can make the journey by truck, you know . . . only it’s a bit rough on kids, all that long way and the state the roads’re in at present . . . and looks like rain, too. How would they transport children in Russia?’ A titter from most, and guffaws from several.
Pat answered, ‘I wouldn’ know that . . . but I know what they’d do with you.’
‘Put me in the salt mines with the other poor buggers who don’t believe Joe Stalin’s God?’
‘They wouldn’t put you in a salt mine, mate . . . you’d turn the salt sour, and they’d transport you by night-cart.’
A weaker titter and guffaws only from those drunk enough to be reckless.
But the beard kept split in the grin. ‘Funny man, ain’t you, Driver!’
Pat snapped, ‘At least I am a man!’
The beard shut tight; and the narrow eyes widened in a blue blaze of anger; for the remark surely meant that worst of Australian insults to a policeman, handed down all the way from convict days: Once a policeman never a man. It was an offence to utter it. But had it been uttered? Cahoon turned to usher his charges and prisoners aboard. Pat called to Jeremy, ‘If you see any Fascist basher tactics, Delacy, just send the word up . . . and this coach comes off the train . . . right?’ Jeremy nodded.
Col Collings raised his voice: ‘Driver Hannaford, are you going to take this train away?’
Pat shot his hand up in the Fascist salute, crying, ‘Ja, mein Führer . . . at vonce, toot sveet . . . but I vish you vhip me mit you little vhip, make me go quicker!’
That got a good laugh from pretty well everyone but Col. Even Coon-Coon leaned out of a window to grin and perhaps show his last man-hunting beard of the season.
A minute or two of crowding aboard to the urging of Col and Oz Burrows. Then the bell — Clang, clang! — then the engine — Bo
o-hoot! — and they were rolling. Over the bridge with its leaping clangorous girders, but the water only a streamlet far below and scarcely muddied. Past the Racecourse, where the grass was already springing and the brolgas dancing again. Sweet pickin’ everywhere; and plenty of things leaping and hopping and flying and strolling about to pick it. On and on, click-clack-clicking over the flats, howling and hammering through the cuttings panting up the grades and screaming down them: Boo-hoot, boo-hoot! Prindy tried for the notes. His Daddy-o asked him what he was playing. He answered, ‘Treen.’ Dinny remarked to Jeremy that it was a funny way to play trains, then asked for Danny Boy. Water at Granite Creek. Then on to Alice River.
At the Alice, Mr Grayball came aboard with a couple of others, he himself keeping to himself and looking only half the man he was. His acquaintances whispered to others that he had a Bad Dose got from a young gin who came tchinekin into his bed about the middle of the year, and had sold out his Renchouse and was going South for treatment. Coon-Coon heard nothing of that, but remarked to his Sonny Boy that he knew this place, eh? Prindy, staring out, was silent.
So on again, to see the waters divide, to turn from West to East, what little there was of them now, and the rubbitch the Whiteman and the Narishman and the Germanman and the Chineeman had left behind in their quest of that unsolved mystery Goold. To Caroline and sandwiches and lolly-water, and a lot of peeping from the populace. There Driver Hannaford was to be seen in earnest conference with Comrade Wally Walsh, who was the Water Pumper for that centre. Then on again, to halt for this and that: water for the engine or food or beer or both for passengers and crew, at the several sidings named to perpetuate the performance in bed of Good Queen Victoria with Albert the Also Good. On into red evening, into purple night; to bore into that grey-walled tunnel of trees now seemingly filled with flying ants through which the swinging gilded knife of the engine cut a track.
Then the hanging lights and the bumpy switches of the Loco Depot. There was the grey engine shed again, housing its sleeping iron elephants, the dripping water-tank; but no nightmen; only the usual tiny crowd, to receive the few passengers who alighted there.
Soon on again to the beckoning glow of the Metropolis, with the windows of whitemen’s houses winking along the way, the wobbly lights on the sea, the blaze of Captain Shane’s affluence — and at last the glare of the terminal station, with its usual crowd in white linen and khaki and floral cottons and silks. However, the crowd was twice as big as usual, surely for the remarkable sight of seeing one called the Scrub Bull yarded, and twice as many policemen, amongst them Superintendent Bullco, the latter surely with his darbies in his back pocket for instant use should the glorious opportunity present itself — and, of course, the Press, in its two orders, but each no less on tiptoe and with notebooks at the ready than the other.
The black beard, wide-split, was hanging out to give its location. The train stopped in just the right position, slap bang of brakes right before the Press. The owner of the beard said, ‘Well, here we are!’ Then he proceeded to detrain as usual from one of his successful man-hunts to get the best dramatic effect for benefit of his superiors and the general public, as a true hunter does, standing, preferably with a gun, with the game stacked around him. He never just strolled off and shook hands with his waiting colleagues, leaving the hunted ones to be dragged out by trackers. He was always in the lead with the prisoners at his heels, and the trackers shoving from behind. Thus did he now step off the platform of the coach with the two chained children shackled to his wrist and the two elderly men, one a little old blackman weeping into his white handkerchief, a step behind — Pop! Pop! — like little gunshots, but with the blaze of lightning — and again — Pop! Pop! Flash! Flash! — everybody for the moment blinded, and too astounded to speak.
Superintendent Bullco spoke first, roaring, ‘Here . . . what’s this?’
They weren’t used to flashlight photography in Port Palmeston, except at weddings.
Then Bullco woke up with return of his vision, seeing the cameras in the hands of Fay McFee and Rollo Ramstones, her editor, and yelled, ‘Stop them men . . . confiscate those cameras!’
But that meant overcoming a squad of what the Superintendent would have called Bolsheviks, led by Billy Bellairs and Snowy Mack, leaders of what they themselves were pleased to call Progressive Society in Port Palmeston (although having little to do with The Palmeston Progressive, the name of which stood for an older form of progress) which suddenly formed up and covered the hasty retreat of the photographers to their car. Snowy Mack yelled, ‘What’s this . . . Nazi Germany?’
Bullco saw he was beaten, snapped at his poising khaki boys, ‘Leave it men . . . leave it!’ Then he turned his attention to the bearded bravo, and let him have it, sotto voce, but with such intensity of feeling that it was heard by most: ‘For chrissake, Dinny, what’d you have to do that for?’
Dinny, realising the significance, was at a loss for words.
Bullco went on: ‘To bring kids on the chain . . . and at this juncture!’
Dinny said in a strangled voice, ‘It was only for their protection, Sir . . . I didn’t want ’em jumpin’ out of the train.’
‘And now you’ve got ’em jumpin’ right into the front page of bloody Truth . . . “Police Brutality to Innocent Aboriginal Children” . . . you goddam, bloody, stupid, bastard! You must’ve realised that Delacy’d get you for it.’
‘I didn’t see how he could, Sir.’
‘Well, it’s your bloody baby. Let those kids go. You’re not taking ’em to my headquarters to make a fool of me. Go on . . . do as I say . . . take those chains off ’em, quick!’
‘They might do a bunk, Sir.’
‘Let ’em. I’ll call Cobbity. They’re his responsibility . . . not ours . . .’
‘I’m sorry, Sir.’
‘What’s the good o’ being bloody sorry . . . except for yourself! Best bit of police work you’ve ever done . . . anybody ever done . . . and you had to cruel it all by putting kids in chains . . . Bah!’ Superintendent Bullco strode away into the station office to use the phone.
A little later the children were placed in the station office, with their lolly bags, and a policeman only standing well outside. Meantime the real prisoners were conveyed to Police Headquarters in the police car, there to be formally received as the miscreants that allegedly they were, then released on bail put up by Jeremy.
Dr Cobbity could not refuse responsibility for the children, but could easily delegate it, and promptly did, to Eddy McCusky, who was glad enough to accept — at least till he heard the sharp injunction that followed his saying that he would take the kids straight out to the Sweet Creek Settlement and lock ’em up in the jail-house there. Cobbity snarled at him, ‘If those kids are going to be locked up anywhere, man, it’s in your house. Haven’t you got the brains to see that the Bitch McFee and the Bastard Delacy’ll flog the thing to the limit? I know I’m on the skids . . . but I’m not going out with the reputation of a Boong Basher. Take those kids home with you, and treat ’em like your own . . . or I’ll get someone else out of the office to do it . . . and you can give me your resignation from the Service to hand to the Old Man on Monday. Got it?’
Eddy answered weakly, ‘Yessir.’
Thus it was that Prindy, who last time he saw the lights of Silvertail Point, as unofficially it was called, had done so as a fugitive from the exalted who lived thereon, rode the road to it that he had crossed furtively with his mother, now in a cosy motor car with one of those exalted ones telling him, he was taking him home to make him his own little boy, with Savitra as his own little girl: ‘So don’t be fright’.’ He and his dusky little bride were put up in the guest room of the McCusky residence, in luxury such as they’d never dreamt of. They hadn’t heard the argument between Eddy and his sour-visaged wife that had preceded their ensconcement. She, who didn’t like Aborigines of any breed, although their existence was her bread and butter, had wanted them put in the garage. When the Di
rty Nigger line failed, she had tried the moral one, declaring that it wasn’t decent that two people of opposite sex should share the same bedroom, young as these were, because everybody knew their kind were no more moral than animals. Eddy countered that by saying that it so happened that the couple were married, and explained. ‘Call a Hindu ceremony marriage?’ his missus screeched. ‘This’s a decent Catholic house!’ Then Eddy had to confess the terrible fact that if they didn’t put them up in a manner that could not be faulted by the Bitch McFee and her ilk, then they were out of a job, at least out of this wonderful job that paid so handsomely in money and prestige and would pay more and more so when Cobbity got the boot and his successor would need his services to work his own racket on, and the racket would become more and more lucrative and prestigeful as the Aboriginal Problem became more and more complex with the Nation’s becoming more and more aware of it — why, he might even end up as a Director of Aboriginal Affairs, even The Director of Directors — he who had started as a simple little Public Service office boy! He didn’t put it quite like that. For instance, he didn’t use the word Racket. It only sounded that way. Anyway, it convinced Mrs McCusky that she had no alternative but tight-lipped acceptance of the degradation of having a pair of Dirty Little Niggers fornicating under her Decent Catholic roof. The only thing she could add was that it wouldn’t have happened in the first place but for Eddy’s opening his Big Trap too wide to that Alfie Candlemas Creature.
Poor Fellow My Country Page 97