The Fringe Dwellers

by Nene Gare

  His teacher, Miss Simmins, had found some of his attempts inside the cover of an exercise book.

  ‘But what do they represent?’ she had inquired.

  ‘You see that?’ Bartie had pointed out, shyly. For once, he knew he had come near to success; had almost captured the glowing gold that burned on the edges of the clouds for one long and lovely minute after the sun sank into the sea.

  ‘Yes!’ Miss Simmins had said thoughtfully, after he had explained. ‘Yes!’

  It had been strange, Bartie remembered, to see this lively little woman so lost in thought.

  She had not let the matter rest there. After school she had beckoned him and questioned him further. Her bright brown eyes had held his steadily, and her questioning had cut through to his innermost desires and thoughts. She had tried to explain form to him—and to tell him that this way of life would be hard, especially for him. Already Bartie had forgotten most of what she had told him. The words had been too big and strange for him to hold in his memory. But he wanted passionately to please her. Miss Simmins was not young, nor even very pretty. She did her soft greying black hair in a funny old-fashioned way, loose about her head and confined in a tiny bun near the top of it. But her voice fell pleasantly on his ears, and her words were strong words which lifted him from his dreams and set him face to face with facts.

  There had been other men like himself, who had succeeded. Among them one called Albert Namatjira, who had painted the Australian bush and the rocky outcrops and the trembling blue of the skies, and people had paid him much money. But he had had to work hard at his painting.

  Bartie smiled. Work? How could anyone call this work when it was the reason he woke each morning.

  THIRTEEN

  Trilby and Noonah sat, each on her own bed, and looked at the heap of clothes on the end of Trilby’s bed. They were part of a great heap with which Trilby had staggered back from Mrs Henwood’s house, after her visit to return the ‘hanky’.

  Trilby was annoyed. ‘You should have seen her,’ she told Noonah. ‘The more I kept saying “No”, the more things she kept pulling out of her wardrobe and throwing over my arm. She said she’d had them hanging there for years and she never wore them because some were too tight and some she didn’t like any more. I don’t know why I took them. If I’d had any sense I’d have chucked them straight back at her.’

  ‘Some of them will look nice on you, Trilby, if you pull them in a bit at the waist.’ Noonah got up to examine a blueflowered summer frock with a gathered skirt.

  ‘They stink,’ Trilby scorned, giving the dress in question the merest glance. ‘And talk about pleased with herself. The more she threw at me the more pleased she got. Grinning all over her face.’

  ‘You could wash them,’ Noonah said. ‘They’d be as good as new, some of them.’

  ‘Wear her frocks?’ Trilby frowned. ‘Catch me! D’you know what I’m going to do with them? I’m going to give em away to anyone who wants them. That Carter woman, the dirty old one who looks as if she sleeps under a bush. She can have some, and Blanchie and Audrena can have the rest.’ She propped herself up on her bed. ‘And I wish,’ she said viciously, ‘I could see that old dame’s face when she sees someone else wearing her dirty smelly old dresses.’

  ‘I don’t see why you want to do that.’ Noonah stopped her inspection to gaze in perplexity at her younger sister.

  ‘Because she’s got a nerve, that’s why,’ Trilby burst out. ‘You think she’d wear someone else’s clothing? Course she wouldn’t. New ones for her. So why give the things to me? I’ll tell you why. Because she thinks someone like me should be grateful. See?’

  ‘Gee, your mind works a funny way,’ Noonah said wonderingly. ‘I thought it was real nice of her.’

  Trilby flounced into a sitting position. ‘I’ve had enough of other people’s clothes,’ she said angrily. ‘Up at the mission. And I’m never, never going to wear anything that isn’t new from now on. Even if I have only one dress it’s going to be new, bought for me, and nobody else worn it before.’ She cast a look of loathing at the frocks on the end of her bed. ‘Look there under the arms. Making them stink just like she does. D’you think I’m going to have her sweaty armholes touching me?’ She kicked the clothes on to the floor. ‘And the ones I don’t give away,’ she said violently, ‘I’m going to tear up and use washing the floor.’

  ‘Trilby,’ Noonah said disapprovingly.

  Trilby turned her scorn on her sister. ‘You’re just a fool, Noonah. And you always will be. Didn’t I say how pleased she was to be giving them to me?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘You can’t see?’ Trilby was yelling with rage. ‘It made her feel big, that’s what. She wasn’t giving something to me. She was giving something to herself. Oh!’ Full of unbearable irritation, Trilby sprang off the bed, kicked once more at the clothes, and flung herself out of the room, slamming the door shut with a crack like thunder.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Mrs Comeaway said mildly. She had squeezed herself into one of the garments that had been given to Trilby—a shabby faded blue cotton cardigan with most of the buttons missing. The sleeves moulded her massive arms into sausages and her bosom sprang, unchecked, from the gaping front.

  ‘You’re going to wear that cardigan,’ Trilby half-questioned, half-stated, breathing hard through dilated nostrils. ‘I might have known it.’ She stood with her hands on her hips. ‘Encouraging them.’

  ‘Now what?’ asked the harassed Mrs Comeaway. ‘Encourage who?’

  ‘People like that, to give us their old cast-offs,’ Trilby spat out.

  ‘Ya want er ta give us er new ones?’ Mrs Comeaway commented reasonably. ‘I like this coat. Got nice big pockets. An you know I like a big pocket ta hold me money in when I ave a gamble.’ She chuckled. ‘When I got any money.’

  ‘Ah, you make me sick,’ Trilby said disgustedly.

  ‘Ere, you shut ya guts,’ Mrs Comeaway said, injured. ‘Wasn’t even me took em. Ya brought em back ya own self.’

  ‘I didn’t intend to wear them.’

  ‘What, well! Eat em?’

  ‘I was going to…Oh, what’s the use of explaining to anyone. You never understand anything. I don’t know how you can be like you are. If someone came up and asked you to lie down in the mud so they could walk over you, would you do that too?’

  Mrs Comeaway, brow ridged, clutched for understanding. ‘I ain’t never laid down in no mud yet, an just you stop that shriekin at me, my girl, or I’ll stop it for ya.’ She advanced threateningly.

  Noonah appeared in the doorway. ‘Trilby, stop it!’

  ‘You won’t wear them, I’ll see to that,’ Trilby cried wildly. She snatched at the clothes on the table and ran into the other bedroom, where she scrabbled at the clothes on the floor and heaped them over her arm.

  Noonah and her mother followed, to be thrust aside as Trilby passed them on her way out again. Mrs Comeaway received a sharp elbow in the softest and most pliable part of her anatomy which caused her to clutch and gasp.

  ‘What’s she gunna do now?’ she muttered as she moved in her daughter’s furious wake.

  Trilby fled down the back steps and across to the rubbish bin. She thrust all the clothes deep down into the mess that was already there, then she raced back into the house again. Mrs Comeaway, having been shoved once, made haste to flatten herself against the railing, and in a flash, Trilby was back carrying a bottle of kerosene and a box of matches.

  She threw kerosene on to the clothes and started striking matches. But she was clumsy in her hurry, and at least half a dozen matches broke off in her hand before she succeeded in lighting one. In that time, Mrs Comeaway had come alive to her daughter’s purpose, had crossed the yard in a couple of bounds, and had reached one hand into the rubbish bin to rescue some of the clothes. The match ignited the kerosene at the exact moment that Mrs Comeaway’s hand disappeared into the soft materials. There was a roar of flame and Mrs Comeaw
ay leapt back from the conflagration with a shriek of pain that could have been heard half-way up the street. Her yowl continued even after Noonah, who had come to the rescue, had assured her that the cotton sleeve had saved her arm and that her hand was only slightly scorched.

  Trilby watched her mother, narrow-eyed and tight-lipped, not even moving to examine the burn. With Noonah’s arm round her waist as far as it would go, the upset woman moaned her way across to the steps.

  Just as they reached the bottom step, while the fire in the bin was burning fiercely, a head appeared over the dividing fence. ‘What’s the matter over here?’ Mrs Henwood called urgently.

  ‘Burnt all the clothes ya give er,’ Mrs Comeaway said dramatically. ‘An tried ta burn me up as well, er own mummy. Me hand woulda went easy.’

  ‘Mummy,’ Noonah whispered distressfully. ‘Come inside, quick.’

  Mrs Comeaway turned one more shocked look on Trilby, began moaning afresh and, with Noonah supporting her, ascended the steps.

  ‘An that’ll show you what I think of your rotten old frocks,’ Trilby said harshly to the face at the fence.

  The face, scarlet and bulging-eyed, disappeared. After a while, when the flames had died down, Trilby went too.

  ‘I spose ya wouldn’t ave a bit a money in ya bag would ya, Noonah?’ Mrs Comeaway said delicately. ‘Ya father doesn’t seem ta be getting much work down that wharf lately.’

  She was sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea which Noonah had made for her. Her scorched hand was bandaged neatly and it lay in prominence before her on the table.

  ‘You can have all I’ve got,’ Noonah said cheerfully. ‘But I don’t think it’s much. I had to buy some more stuff for Bartie, and then there was a kid in the children’s Ward—he’s pretty sick—and I saw these little koala bears in a window so I bought two. You go an look in Trilby’s room, Stella, and see what’s there.’

  With the exception of Trilby, who was reading comics in a corner, the whole family followed Stella as she ran, shrieking with excitement, into the girls’ bedroom.

  ‘Ain’t that nice now?’ Mrs Comeaway smiled.

  ‘Gee, it’s soft, isn’t it?’ Bartie admired.

  ‘It’s mine,’ Stella said importantly. ‘Noonah bought it for me, didn’t you, Noonah?’

  ‘See how much ya got, will ya, Noonah?’ Mrs Comeaway said casually.

  Noonah took some money from her bag and handed it to her mother. ‘That enough, Mummy?’

  ‘Hafta be, won’t it?’

  ‘I mean I can give you ten shillings more if you really want it.’

  ‘This’ll do,’ Mrs Comeaway said comfortably. ‘Now you come ere Bartie an find me one a them pencils an I’ll just write down a couple things I want.’

  ‘Can I have a Coke?’ Stella whined. ‘An a packet of chewy, Mummy?’

  ‘I spose.’

  Slowly and laboriously, in a heavy childish hand, Mrs Comeaway wrote out a list. Trilby came over to read it. She laughed. ‘Gee, just look at the spelling, will you? I’ll get it, if you let me get those white beads I want.’

  ‘Ya don’t deserve nothing,’ Mrs Comeaway said strongly. ‘Burning me hand like that.’

  ‘I’m sorry I burnt your hand. I told you. But I’m not a bit sorry I burnt those clothes,’ Trilby said impetuously. ‘I couldn’t keep them, Mummy. Don’t you understand that?’

  Mrs Comeaway gave up. ‘Jus the same ya did a foolish thing there. If ya didn’t want em yaself, I coulda got a pound or two for em. Why didn’t ya think a that?’

  Trilby looked helplessly at Noonah, then shook her head and laughed. ‘Let me get the beads and we’ll be even,’ she teased.

  ‘Get em. Get em,’ Mrs Comeaway said with an ineffectual flap of her hands. ‘Won’t get no peace till ya do, I spose.’

  ‘We’re coming too,’ Stella told Trilby threateningly. ‘Me an Bartie’s getting Cokes.’

  Noonah laughed and sat down at the table. ‘Wait till they go and we’ll have another cup of tea, Mummy.’

  ‘Does Trilby like school?’ she asked her mother, when the trio had gone.

  ‘It’s a nice big school, ain’t it?’ her mother said. ‘Never said she didn’t like it. She’s a hard one ta understand though, Noonah. Don’t tell me!’ She rolled up her eyes.

  ‘Praps she hasn’t settled down yet,’ Noonah pacified. ‘She seems a bit jumpy.’

  ‘A bit jumpy,’ Mrs Comeaway said, heavily ironical. ‘More’n a bit, ask me.’

  Mr Comeaway came through the back door smelling strongly of shaving soap. His thick black hair was slicked wetly back and his shirt was clean. When Noonah was home, he always shaved.

  ‘One thing, ya got a good excuse fa not doin ya work,’ he chuckled, eyeing the white-bandaged hand. ‘Ya think it’ll be all right, Noonah? Won’t need ta get it cut off?’

  Noonah smiled affectionately at him. Mrs Comeaway tucked a ten-shilling note into an old tobacco-tin and placed it on a shelf behind some plates. ‘An don’t you think ya gunna get that,’ she warned her husband.

  ‘What I want with ya ole money?’ Mr Comeaway said offendedly. ‘Keep it, all I care.’

  ‘Tea!’ Noonah said firmly.

  ‘What’s been happening?’ she said, when the three of them were drinking their tea.

  ‘Them Berrings in trouble again, that’s one thing,’ Mr Comeaway said.

  ‘Yeah!’ Mrs Comeaway chuckled. ‘I think they musta been pinchin people’s chooks an ducks, fum what I hear. Now them white people’s worryin the guvmint ta make em go back further yet. They been moved back once already, few years ago, so’s them white ones can build their houses out there, but now they’re up to em, an they wanta build more houses. That’s what they say. Ask me, I think the chooks an things done it. An them carryin on night-times, yellin and kicking up rows.’

  ‘Wasn’t one thing it’d be another,’ Mr Comeaway said philosophically. ‘Them Berrings is in bad everywhere. Always was. Always will be.’

  ‘Got their rights, too. Think they a cut above us peoples,’ Mrs Comeaway added. ‘Funny, ain’t it?’

  ‘Don’t see much of em, them livin out the opposite way,’ Mr Comeaway said thoughtfully, ‘but the things ya hear ya gotta laugh. Cheeky devils. Hardly a time one of em ain’t in jail. An got enough kids between em ta fill a mission on their own. One thing but. They stick together. An they reckon they ain’t gunna shift back no more’n what they have. I reckon them white people’d been better off buildin their houses way from there.’

  ‘What’s been happening up that hospital,’ Mrs Comeaway asked Noonah.

  The Comeaways liked to know about the hospital. Especially Mr Comeaway, who liked, in turn, to talk about it with Horace. Yet none of the tales Noonah told them ever quite convinced him that she was not speaking about quite different people from those that were familiar to him: gangling Dr Graham, who had trouble fitting his long legs into his tiny black car; frowning impatient Dr Bentley, who had once stabbed him with a needle before he properly knew what it was all about; stately pigeon-toed Mr Meagher, who looked at people over the tops of his spectacles, more as if they were a lot of ants rather than people. They bore the same names, yes, but this lot that Noonah talked about acted like ordinary human beings, and ordinary human beings was one thing Mr Comeaway knew they were not.

  He followed attentively when Noonah chattered hospital lore, and rolled T.P.R.’s and four hourly backs round on his tongue for the sheer pleasure of knowing what these things meant.

  He had been in hospital once himself, afraid to move for fear of creasing his bedcover, asking for bed-pans only when discomfort became greater than the embarrassment he felt at using them.

  ‘The old ones, they like a lot of fuss made of them,’ Noonah smiled. ‘One old chap first chucks his pillows out of bed, then he falls on them, just so we’ll all come running. Makes sure he doesn’t hurt himself but.

  ‘And some like to help. They get sick of staying in bed and they’re glad to be doing something. L
ast week I gave a man a tray of dirty crockery to put in the service hatch, and instead of waiting for it to come up he just dropped them—crash! I was near enough, so I heard a voice come up the chute, “Jeesus, who the hell did that?”’

  The Comeaways roared with laughter.

  A sudden thought struck Noonah. ‘Mummy, the sister-in-charge told me some coloured mothers won’t call for their children when they’re well again. The hospital sends them a letter to tell them to pick their children up and they just don’t come, some of them. Why?’

  Mrs Comeaway sat stolidly on her chair, not answering for a moment. At length she moved restlessly. ‘Look, Noonah. S’pose ya got no place ta bring that kid back and ya know it needs somewhere decent. Better for it ta stay in the hospital, ain’t it? No good bringin it back somewhere it’s gunna get sick again, isn’t it?’

  ‘Someone should do something,’ Noonah said pitifully, not quite knowing what. ‘Why do they let their children get things like enteritis and burns and malnutrition even?’

  Mrs Comeaway pricked up her ears. ‘That thing! That nutrition! I know bout that. Had some woman on me back one time when young Stella was a baby. You give em plenty a good tucker, I tole er, an never mind bout all this nutrition.’ She sniffed. ‘An I was right, seems. The damn thing’s puttin kids in hospital now.’

  Noonah spluttered. ‘Malnutrition, Mummy.’

  ‘That’s somethin quite different see?’ added Mr Comeaway, taking the cue from his daughter.

  ‘Nobody’s gunna tell me that little Tommy’s got what you said,’ Mrs Comeaway said doggedly. ‘I seen im with me own eyes put away enough tucker ta stuff a elephant. Coupla packets a biscuits, jam slapped a inch thick on is bread—yet that’s what they say e got all right. An been in an out that hospital three or four times now.’