The Fringe Dwellers

by Nene Gare

Diane’s answer was always a shrug, with perhaps a beguiling little smile to soften it.

  ‘You know you must be punished when you are late?’

  ‘Yes!’ The big brown eyes opened wide in innocence.

  A quick lift of the heavy chin and the broad face with its high cheek-bones would come full-face, pale blue eyes glowing beneath down-drooping lids on which grew scant white eye-lashes. ‘You fetch me my stick, please?’

  This was the period the waiting children enjoyed most. Only Diane could pretend such concern and distress over the whereabouts of the stick. The diligent eyes searched in every corner where she knew it was not.

  And there was the rising impatience of Mr Jenzen as he stood next to his table drumming a soft tattoo with the tips of his fingers. And finally, most exciting moment of all, the leap of anger to his face; the long stride to the cupboard inside which, suspended by its strap, hung his stick.

  And there was the extra force with which he lashed at the small pale palm held out obediently in answer to his curt instruction.

  To Diane it was all worth while, even the pain in her hand, because afterwards, during the lunch-hour, she could take aside a crew of selected friends and ape Mr Jenzen so perfectly that even her lively little face took on for the time being the dour cast of her teacher’s.

  Diane’s mother was big and tall and calm, almost as slow-spoken as Diane’s teacher, but whereas Mr Jenzen’s voice was scratchy and ragged, words dropping from his mouth with a sound as of shell grit, Mrs Mongo’s voice had the far-off sound of poured treacle, and it lingered on each word caressingly, as though reluctant to pass on to the next. Diane was the eldest of a brood of six, and Mrs Mongo had lately begun to think that the size of her family had got beyond a joke.

  But it was well known that she would suffer no infringement of the rights of either herself or her children. She came often to talk with Diane’s teacher, her soft brown heavily-lidded eyes gazing gravely into his. She begged the teacher to remember that he, too, had once been young. She spoke without emotion of the day when it had taken four grown teachers to hold her down because they had considered she needed punishment. Mr Jenzen, if he had troubled to inspect her tall strength, must have been under no illusions about what she could do to four grown teachers at her present stage of development. And finally, she reminded Mr Jenzen that her daughter attended the school in order to be educated and that she, and not Mr Jenzen, was the one who must deal out punishment to her own.

  The wicked Diane always contrived to be within earshot at these interviews, with the result that her select band was treated to yet another comic representation of what had transpired.

  Noonah had heard much of Diane. Now she and Bartie were on their way down the hillside so that Noonah could actually see the girl.

  They walked through the wattle-studded valley until they came to the Mongo camp. It was a fair-sized camp, this, to cope not only with the Mongo small fry, but with Mrs Mongo’s old mother, her sister who had three children of her own, and Denzyl, who was currently acting father to her sister’s children.

  Mrs Mongo’s mother sat on a chair in the doorway of the main erection, exchanging gossip with her daughter who had just finished washing and was now spiking clothes on the barbed-wire clothes-line. Diane rose from the midst of a squirming mass of children and came dancing to meet them.

  Mrs Mongo stopped hanging up clothes long enough to shake her head at Noonah.

  ‘If e took my tip,’ she said in her lazy melodious drawl, ‘e’d keep well away from that one. Mischief she’s in all the time—an no one knowing what she’s gunna be upta next. They tole you bout last week-end?’ She raised black scimitars of eyebrows over her calm brown eyes.

  ‘Nekked—no cloes,’ cried the old lady in the doorway, rocking energetically and darting quick little looks at her daughter, at Noonah, at the children playing in the dust, and at Bartie and Diane.

  ‘They hadda come back through the bush,’ Mrs Mongo said, ‘an wait till after it was dark, too. Couldn’t think where she’d got to.’

  ‘What happened?’ Noonah said, curious.

  ‘Ah, clothes is silly,’ Diane said scornfully. ‘You ever been swimmin without clothes? That water feels like little hands strokin.’

  ‘These two’s always goin fa walks,’ Mrs Mongo said. ‘Long that beach at the back where all them nasty men live. Talkin doesn’t stop that Diane. Beltin don’t neither. An Gawd knows where she left er good school frock.’

  ‘I told you,’ Diane said breezily. ‘I put it under a bush in the sand-hills, but we forgot to mark the place, so we couldn’t find it again. Let’s go down now, Bartie, an have another look. Bartie, did your mother go mad at you too?’

  Bartie grinned and the grin slid over to include Noonah. ‘She didn’t know,’ he said simply. ‘I just crept in to where I sleep and got into bed.’

  ‘We ran along the beach,’ Diane told Noonah. ‘As hard as we could, and I beat Bartie, didn’t I? And sometimes we went in the water. And we went nearly to the end of the sand-hills.’

  ‘An them ole pensioners livin just the other side,’ Mrs Mongo said, her eyes meeting Noonah’s. ‘All sorts goes on down there.’ She shrugged. ‘I tole er. Serves er right if they get er, some time.’

  ‘Wouldn’t get me,’ Diane said, with decision. ‘We climbed up the top of one sand-hill and we seen em. They got little places just like ours. We seen em, didn’t we, Bartie?’

  ‘An a good job nobody see you,’ the old lady grumbled. ‘Kids thout cloes.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve gotta,’ Diane said suddenly, pulling at Bartie’s hand. ‘Come on!’

  Bartie looked at Noonah, who nodded. The two were off and away like rabbits, out of sight in an instant.

  ‘They didn’t mean the beach but, did they?’ Noonah remembered, in a little alarm. ‘That’s not where they’ve gone, is it?’

  ‘She found something. Forgot what it is, but she been talkin bout showing it to young Bartie. Guess they’ve gone where she found it,’ Mrs Mongo said, draping more clothes over her homemade line.

  Bartie went out of Noonah’s head when she looked round to see Phyllix and old Skippy. As usual, Phyllix did not waste time on words when there was someone with him to do the talking. Noonah could see that Skippy was upset. His old voice shook with rage and the tone was so high it occasionally slid over the edge into a raspy croak.

  ‘A full-blood, that’s what I am,’ he yelled, eyeing the group belligerently. ‘And im down there in the town want me ta live up ere with all them arf-carse no-goods. Me live with fellers like that—carryin on—fightin all over the place. I tell im I’m a full-blood an wanta go back long my place. Nother thing,’ his jaw shot out and back, ‘who’s gunna do me cookin up there, eh?’

  Noonah gestured to the old man to sit on the kerosene-tin where she had been sitting herself. Skippy gave the tin a contemptuous kick with his heavy loose boot and stood breathing fire on everyone present.

  ‘Praps they think you’re too old to live too far away from everyone,’ Noonah shrieked into his ear. ‘What about up there. Anyone to do your cooking up there?’ With her hand she waved vaguely towards the north.

  ‘Yeah, an e said I couldn’t ave me bike,’ Skippy snarled, his thoughts turning to fresh injury. ‘I got the money, ain’t I?’

  Noonah turned a look of enquiry on Phyllix. But Mrs Mongo answered for Phyllix. ‘E went into a shop in town when he found e just gotta take this ouse up the camp or go without,’ she said, amusement making her voice even richer, ‘and blow me down if e didn’t order isself a bike, so’s e could ride back up north. With them legs a his.’

  ‘Shopman rings up this partment bloke,’ the old lady continued, ‘an this ole man don’t get is bike.’

  Skippy glared round, half comprehending. ‘Up outa this,’ he ordered Phyllix. ‘I want me tea. Fellers like this,’ he glared at Mrs Mongo and then at her mother, ‘no good ta be roun. Like them others up there in the camp.’

  ‘Keep ya wool on,�
� Mrs Mongo said good-naturedly. ‘Ya can live where ya like, as far’s I’m concerned an,’ she eyed her fighting brood, ‘take some a these with ya ta keep ya company.’

  Skippy stamped off, ploughing an uncertain path up the hill to Mrs Green’s house, but Phyllix stayed behind.

  ‘Been lookin at them new ouses?’ Mrs Mongo inquired.

  Phyllix nodded. ‘Seen them?’ he asked Noonah. ‘If you haven’t, come on back and have a look.’

  Noonah smiled a good-bye to the Mongos, and Mrs Mongo looked with kindly interest from her to Phyllix. ‘Don’t see ya sister round no more. Someone tole me she’s wild bout gettin a baby. Won’t do no good now, I spose, but I could tell er a few things after she’s ad it, if she wants ta know. I found out a few things.’

  ‘I’ll tell her,’ Noonah said, feeling hot.

  ‘Tell er I got all the dope in some book someone give me,’ Mrs Mongo called after her as Phyllix led her back along the path he had taken.

  Noonah peeped at Phyllix, but he was looking woodenly ahead of him.

  The big camping area was soft with fresh green grass threaded through with bright wild flowers. Six or seven newly-built small houses sat in a prim circle in the middle of it.

  ‘Not bad, eh?’ Phyllix asked.

  This was Noonah’s first visit to the government reserve. She stared about her curiously, noting a bigger building at the back obviously intended as a laundry, with two smaller rooms each end.

  ‘That’s the showers, and so on,’ Phyllix told her. ‘That’s for everyone.’

  ‘It’s nice,’ Noonah said, more for something to say.

  ‘Not a bad lot of people up here now either. Not much drinking and fighting goes on. A lot of young people, too.’

  ‘Yes,’ Noonah said, wondering.

  ‘This was gunna be Skippy’s joint,’ Phyllix said, stopping at one of the little empty houses. ‘One room, with a stove in it, and a bit of a veranda. All new, too.’

  Noonah peeped through the glass louvres, admired the new wood stove inside the tiny room.

  ‘You think Trilby’d like to live here?’ Phyllix said abruptly. ‘When it’s all over?’

  Noonah’s face was pitiful. Mrs Green had mentioned something about Phyllix not knowing the right way to go about things with Trilby. How far out he was, she thought, if he meant to ask Trilby to live on the reserve with him.

  ‘She wouldn’t do it,’ she told him. ‘Trilby hates reserves. She thinks they’re terrible places to live. You wouldn’t get her on one if you built a castle for her.’

  Phyllix looked away from her. ‘It’s all right. Just something I thought up when I heard old Skippy going hot and strong about not wanting the place. It’d be a start, is all I thought.’ He kicked a stone at his feet. ‘But I spose I knew she’d never come to a place like this.’

  They turned away from the little house and moved down the track that led to it. ‘Pity it isn’t bigger,’ Phyllix said. ‘Mighta done for ya Mum and Dad and the kids.’

  Noonah smiled, not really considering the idea. ‘We’ve lived in places smaller than that.’

  ‘Trouble here is they won’t let ya,’ Phyllix said. ‘Skippy’s place is for a couple at the most. No more. If ya Mum and Dad came here they’d have ta send the kids back to the mission.’

  ‘No,’ Noonah said in horror. ‘They wouldn’t do that.’

  Phyllix shrugged. ‘Just thought if they got kicked out down there. Because of the rent.’ He went on in silence for a while, then added: ‘Course they wouldn’t have to worry bout Trilby. I could look out for her, if…,’ he frowned, ‘if she’d damn well let me.’

  Noonah’s mounting fear for the welfare of Bartie and Stella was drowned in a gush of sympathy for Phyllix. She touched his hand. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she told him. ‘You just wait. It’ll be all right later on, between you and Trilby.’

  ‘I got a feeling,’ Phyllix said tensely, ‘things aren’t ever going right for Trilby an me.’ He stopped to break two fly switches from a wattle, one of which he handed to Noonah. She took it gratefully and used it to beat off the horde of tiny bush flies that had come with the greening grass. ‘I’ve tried. Done everything I could think of. She won’t have a bar of me.’

  ‘Phyllix,’ Noonah said impulsively, after they had walked a while in silence. ‘Why do you—you know?’

  ‘Hang around,’ Phyllix said hardly, giving her a brief look. ‘Ever since I was a kid I wanted not to be kicked around when I grew up. You know how it is. Some a these white people don’t seem ta think ya got any feelings at all. Just because ya dark. Talk right in front of ya face as if ya couldn’t hear, or as if it didn’t matter if ya did hear. Even the pleece. Ya gotta keep on the right side of em. Get in any sort of a mix-up an ya sure to be the one that collects. I wasn’t sixteen when I had my first barney with the pleece. I was up for takin a drink a conto. Didn’t even like the damn stuff. Did it for a joke sort of. But Trilby,’ his head came up, ‘nobody’s gunna tell her what ta do. Not even the pleece. She makes all the others look like a lot of dead-heads.’ His mouth curled in a grin. ‘Even snappin an snippy the way she is, I still rather have her than any other one. Trouble is, she don’t seem ta feel the same way bout me.’

  Noonah’s mouth smiled back at him, but her eyes were wistful. She wanted some feller to feel that way about her. Why should Trilby be the only lucky one?

  ‘I tell ya what,’ Phyllix said restlessly, ‘I’m goin away again. For a while.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  The man who was keeping nit leaned easily against a tree, his heavy-lidded incurious gaze fixed steadily on the two men who approached him. Mr Comeaway stopped in order to hand over the pound note he had in readiness, and before the nit-keeper stuffed it carelessly into his pocket he jerked his head towards the gloom of the bush. Mr Comeaway nodded, and he and Charlie marched off in the direction indicated.

  A quarter of a mile into the bush and past a clump of wattles, a bright yellow glare chased the night away. A burning pyramid of old motor-car tyres bellied flames and smoke both upward and over a sprawling group of people who sat close enough to breathe in the pungent odour and to peer through watering eyes at the cards in their hands and at the five that lay face up on a piece of old grey blanket thrown down in their midst.

  ‘Manila,’ thought Mr Comeaway pleasurably. He nudged Charlie’s hip, and the two exchanged grins. Nothing like a game of Manila for excitement. Two cards dealt to each player and you made what you could of the cards in your hand and any three of those five in the centre.

  Plenty of players tonight, Mr Comeaway noted approvingly. Old Mattie, her wide, flattish features and craggy brow outlined against the glow of the fire, her crutches placed carefully at her side so that she could get at them to aid her in rising or to lay about her if trouble threatened. Horace, sitting there quiet and dignified; Billy Gumnut and his shyly giggling bush black, quiet and subdued now as she listened to the betting; and more than a dozen others, all quiet and tense.

  Mr Comeaway and Charlie sank to their haunches and waited patiently. When the dealing started again Mr Comeaway moved forward to the circle.

  In his pocket, resting gently against his hip, were the ten pound notes Marty had lent him. The surprise and warm pleasure of watching Marty count out that money had not yet left Mr Comeaway. His lucky day all right, bumping into the young chap just, it must have been, after he had cashed his cheque at the bank and before anyone else had had a chance to get at him. Nice young bloke, that. Probably could have asked for twice what he did and got it. For a second Mr Comeaway’s thoughts were tinged with regret. But no, a fair thing was a fair thing. You wouldn’t want to clean a feller out on his first day, and what Marty had would go soon enough once he started flashing his money about.

  ‘Hope the feller has a bit of fun before they all get on to im,’ Mr Comeaway thought with expanding generosity. ‘Damn well deserves it after doin that string a sheds.’

  The next hand was dealt, and Mr Comeawa
y’s palms were suddenly wet. The sweat sprang out across his upper lip and under his arms too. Yet his body pricked with coldness. Two aces in his hand. Two aces! And in the centre, a couple of kings, an eight of clubs—and two more aces.

  The betting started, rapping from person to person as quick as the crackles of a bush fire. The hand in the middle was a dandy to bring up the betting. The peace that settled over Mr Comeaway told him that all would be well. He clamped down on himself. No flicker of excitement must show on his face—no smallest quaver of it in his voice. And it was him to bet. ‘Ten pounds,’ he said, allowing exactly the right amount of time for deliberation.

  There were a few sharply-indrawn breaths. No one else bet now until it was the turn of the man opposite him. A stranger, this one. Big mean-looking chap with bunchy shoulders. He might need watching. The man’s voice was a squeaky whisper. He had to clear his throat and start again, and this time he grunted deep. ‘Ten pound—and thirty pound better.’

  People sat still like statues now and the only sound came from the subdued roar of the flaming tyres. Nobody bet until it was Mr Comeaway’s turn again. He hesitated just a bit longer this time. ‘Thirty pound back twenty-five pound.’

  The brightness of dark brown eyes was fixed in unwavering attention, weighing up, giving value to the slightest flicker to pass over the faces of the two men.

  The big man cleared his throat again. ‘Twenty-five pound back to another fifty.’ Fifty? A sigh went round the table. Old Mattie clutched her wooden crutches tighter and eased her skinny haunches into a more comfortable position.

  ‘Fifty pound,’ Mr Comeaway said indomitably, ‘back fifty pound.’

  ‘Give us a look at ya cards,’ said the dealer.

  Mr Comeaway had been waiting for just that. An examination of his cards by the dealer meant that no examination would be made of his pockets. He handed them over, and the dealer scrutinized them through narrowed eyes and returned them. Now the dealer’s face looked smooth and secret.

  The big man shot the dealer a look of anger. His mouth formed a line of disgust. He threw fifty pounds in notes on the table, and whilst the dealer counted them he snarled: ‘See ya.’ But the flicker at the back of his eyes and the bad-tempered look of his mouth meant defeat, and everyone around the circle knew it.