But in that settlement Chapel was over, and so was the Catholic service. Rose’s timing was out, as usual. Families on their way home to the Sunday meal picked their way through the mud, the mist condensing in a silver sheen on the black of their Sunday best.
Rose, not in any kind of Sunday best, her smock and hands muddy, her curls in a tangle, stands alone on a sleeper, smiling her bright, paper-thin smile. She looks for a familiar face, sees Brennan and walks up to him, bob bob bob in that way of hers, stiff-legged, making all of her — clothes, arms, hair — bounce.
‘Is the singing over, Brennan? I came to hear the singing.’ Her high voice carries.
Brennan looks at her, desperate for this not to happen. Desperate to hide Rose. But he is with his family, in his Sunday suit. His dad would wallop him if he ran off. He lowers his bullety head, says nothing as he tramps past her. Rose hesitates, but only for a minute. Where someone so tiny has learned this spirit, this tenacity is a mystery. She runs to catch up. Bob bob bob.
‘Shall I come and play with you, Brennan? Can we ask your mother for something to eat?’
Mathew and David Scobie, Brennan’s big brothers turn back at the unfamiliar sound of chatter. Walking back from Chapel is usually a sober procession. They nudge the twins.
‘Is that killer Jimmy’s girl?’
The twins nod. The big boys jerk their heads at the twins, motioning them to turn back. All four turn to confront the little girl in her flour-bag smock. Silently they surround her. The twins stand a little to the side, half wanting to join in, half respecting Rose from their school bond. Brennan looks at the ground but stands by her.
The boys don’t move. Their stillness is more terrifying than anything else they could do, for Rose is used to shouted taunts. She looks wide-eyed from boy to boy, waiting for something to happen. They are as daunting as a coalface in their shiny black suits. For minutes, it seems, they stand. Josiah and Mary Scobie have turned to see what their family are up to. At a distance they, too, stand now, waiting. Everyone stands still, as if for a photograph, but there is menace at the heart of this scene.
Rose’s cheeks are bright red. Great tears stand in her eyes. She will not look down — or is unable to. Like a cornered rabbit she faces the Scobies until Brennan, shaking and tearful himself, takes her arm.
‘She is Rose of Tralee,’ he says.
Silence.
‘Of Tralee, not Cork!’
David clears his throat and spits like a man.
Brennan swallows. Hardly moving, he takes a pinch of Rose’s cardigan in his fingers and turns her. With a small push that is worse than anything else to Rose, he starts her walking back along the skipway. He doesn’t come with her but watches for a while, and when she turns, once, he moves his hand — a tiny wave. Rose returns it wildly.
In this way Rose learned it was better not to go near the miners’ settlement of Burnett’s Face.
Evangeline Strauss/Eva Storm
WELL, NOW, MY friends in the firelight, try to picture how it was for me. Shacked up with a man who is cursed. Who has gone to pieces even more, if you can believe this is possible, since the accident in the mine. Me, being innocent, they connect with the accident. True, I was up near the mine that day, but did a harmless picnic cause any accident? Could a little playing in the grass with your man hurt anyone? Of course not, but those bloody miners have so little humanity as a lump of their own dirty coal. Suddenly I am invisible. Even Billy Genesis for a while prefers not to see me. In case he lose his Company job, no?
Jimmy is superstitious, you see. As if he were truly an Irishman. That wrath of God called down burns in his mind. When he drinks it is worse; he can feel the hellfire licking at his feet, and he shouts at me to quench the flames, poor sod. He can hear the dead boy screaming in the mine, he says, which spooks me too because the mine is just above us, in the cliffs above, and I too can feel the dead spirit trapped and thirsting for revenge. This makes me shout and scream at Jimmy, who has brought all this upon us. This was not a happy time, you understand.
One night Jimmy is worse than usual. He is crying and moaning, I am probably screaming, and suddenly he hits me hard with a balled fist to knock me down, which surprises us both. Poor Jimmy had his many faults but he was not a violent man. Weak, rather, built for a soft life in a city, if the gold fever had not trapped his soul. So the blow sobered him a minute, me large with child and breathless for once, lying on the floor.
‘Jesus, Angel,’ he says, ‘look at us both. This mess cannot be mended here. We’ll give up. Leave the damned Hill.’
This does not suit my plans at all. But the man is in the depths, and such men, I tell you, will often let out secrets. So I hold my peace.
‘What?’ say I, pretending scorn. ‘Leave your precious gold mine begging for a new owner?’
‘Ah, leave it, Angel, leave it. I am a broken man.’
‘The gold was a myth, so?’
Jimmy sighs. Head down, hands hanging, sighing, sighing.
I cannot stand a man who is down; they are so vexing and weak. Suddenly I am more mad than I can remember. This man who was one time so good fun and laughter, and so clever with his answers and his politics, is sitting silent in the cold hut, me with him. It is true I should feel sorry but I am not made that way. I need a strong man with a spark in his eye. A Big Snow or a Tom Hanratty. I am built for happy times, I admit it, and a glad man to share the happiness. Not this silly Jimmy Cork. Maybe I reach for the poker and clip him a little about the ear. And shout more than a bit. Rose, I remember, jumped at me. She had a soft spot for this Jimmy Cork. That man would sometimes put on the charm for her, tell her stories, when he never would bother for me.
So. He lies there. On the bed, quiet. A bit of blood, maybe, around his head. Soon, then, he starts to talk. Quiet, so I must lean in to hear.
It is the story of his discovery. In a slow voice he tells me how he explored, years ago, when he had two good arms and two strong legs, up the Waimang to where it branches, and then took the true left branch, where it bends back and descends from the plateau. Here and there he found a little colour, but no great find.
About halfway up, he says, was a ledge with some growth, scarcely wide enough even for one footfall. Some of the broken rock was different —a lighter colour than the sandstone —so he followed the ledge, tapping rocks with his little hammer to break them open. A little way along he looked up and saw far above him a small waterfall, not more than a trickle, coming off the plateau. The slide of water came down the sheer cliff and ended in a rocky bowl, which had formed in Jimmy’s little ledge at a place where there was room for a man to sit and admire the view. Jimmy did just that. He was watching the stain of water as it spilled again from the bowl and ran far down into the gully, lost in the scrub and bush. His eyes caught a gleam he knew so well, just balanced near the edge of the lip. Sure enough, it was the colour, and a nice piece. He tells me —but I doubt it is the truth —that the piece he gave to Rose is that first nugget.
Well, my friends, so far what is new? A little colour on a high ledge makes no fortune, as you would all bear personal witness to. But listen, now!
Jimmy speaks on, in this tired voice, like he has no reason to draw the next breath. I am very hard pressed to stay still and listen.
Naturally Jimmy looked in the little rock bowl for more. Small stones covered the floor of the bowl and when he pushed them aside, that was when his heart began to beat in his throat. For there, trapped in the bowl for the taking, was a true carpet of the colour! Many tiny grains and also many larger pieces: good colour. Each handful he scooped was more gold than stone. In less than half an hour he had his leather pouch full and weighing heavy with hope on a thong around his neck. The rocky bowl was cleaned out but where, thought Jimmy —and me too by now of course —where was the source? Jimmy looked up to mark the spot where the waterfall spilled over. Surely there must be a seam up there to produce such a rich find?
‘Where, where?’ I cry to Jimm
y. ‘Oh, you wretched man to keep it secret so long! I can surely climb where you cannot go!’
Jimmy groans. ‘It is all Company land. We may not stake a claim.’ He looks at me then with his dead eyes. ‘It’s too late, Angel. If the motherlode truly exists it cannot be reached now. A while ago I thought … There were signs … but now it is cursed and there is no hope.’
That weak sick man speaks not one word more. Concerning the source, the gold, the direction even —not one. Oh, I try! That night I wash his blood with warm water, feed him a good soup, try a little fancy play, you know? As a woman can? Nothing. Next day and all days after that he is like a walking dead. Everywhere I search for his stash, even though he said it was all spent, but I don’t trust him. Would you? A man who keeps such a secret from his own woman and the child he considers to be his?
I am almost mad with the worry. You can imagine. Jimmy is no more interested in life on the Hill. Says he will take Eddie’s offer of help down the Incline, but I must come too, and Rose. I shout that I will kill myself if he makes me leave the Hill, and kill Rose too. Then in all this worry the baby is born, which is lucky. For a while at least I cannot go anywhere. It is another girl, small and ugly. Looking much like Tom Hanratty.
So. Do you listen still? Not sleeping over my tale?
Now comes a time of difficulty. Nothing can be done, no search attempted or plans laid, if there is no food. We all know this. Without a roof and a bite, dreams have no life. Time and again, my friends, I have dreamed grand futures, set out proudly on them, to see them wither while I spend my poor energy searching out food and shelter. Oh, what I would have been if riches came my way! Even now. My blood carries, I know it, the print of greatness. Always I have fought tooth and claw to give that greatness its life. One chance only, I needed. A bag of gold, as Jimmy had, I would not have trickled out in drink.
But food was needed. First, naturally, I tried Tom Hanratty. The father.
Behind their guest house I found him, sawing on a plank, mercifully on his own. No time for play and sweet talk. That fiery Totty might come around the corner.
‘See for yourself that this is your child, Tom,’ I say, ‘and all the world will know it if I am not paid a weekly amount to feed it, with a little left over for its mother.’
A reasonable request. But Tom growls. His eyes go red and his big hands clamp on my shoulders like the jaws of dogs. I notice, though, that he takes a glance at the baby, so tiny and clearly weak.
‘You have caused me enough trouble,’ says he, his bushy beard bristling at me, ‘and I will have nothing more to do with you. The child is Jimmy’s.’
‘It is yours,’ say I.
‘Who will take your word over mine? Eh? Leave this town, woman. You are not welcome. You and Jimmy both.’
He turned back to his sawing. If I had not been low from the birthing there might have been more said, but a weakness overtook me. I admit to you that tears flowed, a rare thing for me. Tears may achieve results for some, who are gentle-natured and sweet-faced, but I have noticed that in a woman of spirit such as myself, tears breed only embarrassment or even contempt. So I turned away.
Next morning the child was dead. Coughing in the night, blue in the morning, dead between one breath and the next. Jimmy wrapped her in a scrap of canvas and carried her, weeping, to Billy Genesis, who rode with her, down the Incline and out to the unmarked children’s grave at Waimangaroa.
Ah well, it was for the best, perhaps, with the father so stonyhearted. Big Snow, called Con the Brake up here, was in any case a more likely bet.
But it was hard, I tell you, to start again. The birth and the unfriendly atmosphere, not to mention hunger, had brought me lower than I can remember. Almost I gave in. Almost left the Hill as Jimmy now wished, for another life —more soft, more warm, down below, in which case this story would maybe end now and we would all get some sleep.
But I ran into Con that very day, as the little baby’s body travelled down the Incline, and the kindness that big man showed me, his warm hand on my sleeve, gave me the strength to go on. That man remembered the good times when our two souls fitted together like hand and glove; I could see it in his eyes. Maybe he missed the free life. My tired blood stirred again and I longed to slide a cold hand inside his shirt to feel the hot skin. Instead I smiled a sad smile, but with some teasing in it, and thanked him nicely for his kind thoughts. Soon, very soon, would be the time to claim this man —back from that woman who was not really his wife, and who gave him no child.
Bella’s Mission
IN THOSE DAYS —’82, ’83 —there were three separate communities on the plateau: the settlement at the top of the Incline around the Brake Head; the Camp, just below it, perched on a natural rock shelf; and Burnett’s Face, the miners’ village, a couple of miles over the plateau closer to the mines.
The Brake Head was the natural centre, with its growing collection of businesses and its great ugly sprawling corrugated iron collection of sheds, offices and machinery known as the Bins. By now there were four boarding houses at Denniston (two of them owned by the Hanrattys), a saddler, a forge, two fiercely competitive stores (the Company one and the miners’ co-op), a barber, an ironmonger and, just opened, J. Dimcock’s drapery. Tom Hanratty employed two carpenters in those days, and would knock up anything from cradles to coffins. Billy Genesis, when he was sober, one day in three on average, operated the forge, though his three missing fingers and livid, knotted scar from ear to sweaty breastbone were hardly reassuring testimony to his skill. Once a month or thereabouts Doctor Ulysses from Waimangaroa rode up the Incline and sat in a Company office at the Bins. Mostly he cut hair and trimmed beards, though; people at Denniston tended to be healthy or dead, nothing much in between.
Denniston town, at the Brake Head, was raw and rough but you could sense, gathering among the haphazard, muddy streets and tracks; among the dogged, entrepreneurial individuals who decided of their own volition to live there, a sense of order —a solid core, a kernel that would in time put down roots and bear the branches and fruit, however stunted in this barren soil, of a decent, if unique community.
The Camp was another matter. No order here at all. Shacks and huts, some of them still half canvas, sprouted like mushrooms. The only businesses were Red Minifie’s Billiard Saloon and another makeshift bar, even more questionable. There were no roads at the Camp, just a track down to it and then winding paths between dwellings, which faced in all directions according to the whim of the wanderers who built them. People came and went at the Camp. Took a job shovelling at the Bins or maintaining the Incline, or carting timber, whatever was on offer, then drifted away in search of a warmer climate, an easier job, a new experience. Camp people were drifters and explorers: ex-gold-diggers, some of them; others escaping a debt grown too large or a crime too noticeable. Men arrived at the Camp with brand-new names or no names at all, until their mates allocated something suitable. Billy Genesis, for example, who could recite the whole of Genesis word for word, and his friend Lord Percy, who spoke with a plum in his mouth and could tell you the name of the second cousin of the Prince of Wales’s uncle. They say Billy and Lord P met in prison in Australia, but that could only be an educated guess. No one ever mentioned the past at the Camp: its one unshakeable rule.
Con the Brake and Mrs C. Rasmussen were undisputed leaders at the Camp. Their solid house, built by Con from raw logs and plastered inside with Denniston mud, stood out like a beacon in the shifting huddle of shacks and canvas. Wanderers at the Camp gravitated to Con’s fireside like driftwood moving inshore on the tide. They sang there and told stories; they ate Mrs Rasmussen’s raisin scones, and looked into the coals, dreaming of other times that might never be told.
No one ever drifted towards Jimmy Cork’s hut. It squatted under the cliff on the far corner of the Camp, surrounded by ramshackle fences to keep in the chooks. When Rose returned from school her only welcome was a rush of chickens with muddy undercarriages and red eyes, looking for scraps.
Burnett’s Face, the third community on the plateau, was roadless too then, unless you counted the rope-road, which carried the miners’ boxes of coal all the way from the mine entrances at Burnett’s Face out to the Bins. The Company built the first batch of houses in two straight lines either side of the rope-road so they could bring the timber and the corrugated iron in on the empty boxes. Immigrant miners from the Midlands and Wales built their own houses the same way, placing their tiny dwellings side by side, like bricks on a wall along the narrow valley floor. Only a few, such as the Scobies, spread out sideways, taking advantage of a rise or a distant view, so there was little sense, then, of a township. One would come, though. These people were from generations of colliers back Home, who expected their children and grandchildren to go underground. Oh yes, a township would develop here, decent and God-fearing. No billiard saloon or liquor-licensed pub for Burnett’s Face if the Chapel miners could help it. Already a tiny chapel stood, still unpainted, on one side of the skipway, and a larger Catholic church on the other, though only its front was wooden; the sides and rear were common old corrugated iron. Churches first. Soon Burnett’s Face miners would want their own school and their own post office. Burnett’s Face people considered themselves a different breed from the motley lot at the Bins and the Camp. More civilised; certainly more trustworthy. Burnett’s Face people were professional miners, bred from professionals.
Bella Rasmussen, who had met with all sorts in her colourful past, recognised the seeds of division in these three communities. She glowed with a mission to unite them, a mission that included, though she hardly admitted this even to herself, an aching desire to have Rose accepted by the miners, welcomed everywhere, as were the two boys, Michael and Brennan. She was planning an event.
The Denniston Rose Page 10