Thinking of his debts at home, his clothes and the children, his face now took on this pallor of excitement, which Baruch remarked:
“Baguenault, you remind me of someone come of an’ old family: you have the colour of a race worn thin.”
“I have.”
“You mean, the human family is old?”
“No, my cousin Michael Baguenault told me some long tale, that my father and his had French ancestors. In France they were Huguenots and were persecuted there. Some fled to England, some to Ireland; those in Ireland became Catholics because they remained in the south and were very poor. My father says the story is not true, the tables of genealogy show that the last of the French family in Ireland died in 1808, and since then there is a complete blank. It doesn’t make any difference, not to me; but Uncle Ben, Michael’s father, spends a good part of his time trying to work it out because he says there must be still estates in France belonging to the old family. Uncle Ben found out that his wife is descended from an illegitimate daughter of Charles II, and he has the tree hanging on the door of his clothes-closet. My aunt pretends to hate it, but she shows it to you in secret. That beats me; don’t you think it’s childish.”
“Charles II has been an unconscionably long time dying, that’s a fact,” answered Baruch, but he looked at Joseph eagerly. “Wonderful,” he thought, “antiquity is in the blood of the Jews and in his, that is why I am drawn to him. He is the concentration of the troubles the family has known: his mother’s ageing womb and the long-memoried germ made this masterpiece in her late-born.”
4
The bucolic pill An unfortunate polygamist.
Personal appearance of Mr Silkbreeched Montagu.
A family discussion. The seventh poor man.
Reflections of Joseph in shop-windows.
MR WILLIAMS trailed in after Joseph, with his red lunch-tin, and began washing out his billycan.
“Good morning, Mr Williams,” said Joseph, “this is good weather for rheumatism. Don’t you wish you were back at Goosebridge in your orchard?”
Williams sat down on a pile of paper near the back-door and wiped his wet moustache. He smiled slily, and fixing Joseph with his faded blue eyes, began:
“That reminds me, a stoker went downstairs, to Hell, you know. So the devil starts ’im stoking, and after about a thousand years, ’e says, ‘Bob, you’re a devil of a good stoker, yes, a devil of a stoker—there, I’m not so black as I’m painted, I’ll give you a ’oliday, you can have a rest, but I can’t give you any pocketmoney, so you must work, and since you’re so black you must work where the men are black.’ So ’e wafts the stoker to a cotton plantation, and after working an hour, although ’e’s next to a pretty nigger girl, ’e says, ‘Gee wiz, this is ’otter than ’ell,’ and the girl says,‘ ’Ow do y’ know,’ and ’e says, ‘I come from ’ell just lately.’ And the niggers take ’im for a revivalist and they begin to gather round ’im in the evening. The planter comes along and says, ‘Out y’ go, nigger, I don’t want no ’oly joes,’ and the nigger says, ‘I’m doing the devil’s work, not the other’s.’ The planter says. ‘Thanks, I don’t need no ’elp,’ and out ’e goes. Then ’e goes to Central Hafrica w’ere there are a lot of darkies doing voodoo dances and ’e knows the lingo since ’e’s dead. ’E tells them a lot about ’ell and they all gather roun’ ’im and begin to trem’le, but out comes the chief and ’is medicine man. ‘What’r you doin’ ’ere?’ ‘I’m tellin’ them about ’ell and the devil, the chap who invented voodoo,’ says the stoker; ‘I know all about it, I come from there.’ ‘Go on,’ says the chief sarcastically; ‘well, you’re going right back there. Listen, I’m the only one that knows about voodoo. I invented it. You ain’t comin’ poachin’ on my preserves, not with no fancy tales about ’ell and a devil. I am the devil.’ ’E gets his warriors to seize the stoker to burn him, but there’s nothin’ the stoker don’t know about fires and ’e escapes. Then ’e turns up in a coal mine. ’E don’t see nobody and nobody sees ’im. They all pick and chop and lift out the coal with their lamps on their ’eads and their wet batteries under their arms, and presently the stoker gets so dam’ tired, ’e says, ‘By jingo, I been done. I don’t see no sun, no grass; I’m not on earth at all. That blankety devil is foolin’ me, I’m in one of ’is fancy ’ells.’ The miners next to ’im says, ‘Shut y’ mouth, don’t be yellin’. What y’ raisin’ ’ell for; where y’ come from? You’re a provocateur.’ ‘No fear,’ says ’e, ‘I’m a poor devil minin’ a bit to get m’ livin’ ’cause I been through ’ell and the old devil’s givin’ me a rest.’ ‘You bet ’e is. You’ll be restin’ on y’ back one of these days, with the roof saggin’ in the way it is,’ says the miner, and goes back to choppin’ on ’is knees. But when they come up to the top, one of the miners, a sneak, tells the boss, ‘There’s a troublemaker, throw ’im out,’ and two bullies come along and throw ’im out. ‘You better be careful with me,’ says the stoker, ‘I’m from ’ell, and I’ll get my frien’ the devil after you.’ ‘Go on,’ cries a woman, ‘you c’n do a lot! ’Ell would be a ’oliday compared with this boss’s place.’ ‘A fat lot you know,’ ’e says, and she starts to bawl ’im out, so orf ’e scoots. So after a few more experiences like this, ’e gets a job as stoker, and ’e stokes so remarkably well, through ’is long expert hexperience, that the chief engineer talks o’ throwing orf all the other men and only keepin’ ’im. Then the other stokers just take ’im and throw ’im through a port-’ole into the sea. ‘Come on, devil,’ shouts the stoker, ‘take me back!’When the devil gets ’im back, ’e says, ‘Why ’r you so anxious to come back so quick?’ ‘By jingo,’ says the stoker,’ ’ell is the only place left where a smart man like me can keep a job. Yes, ’ell is the only place left where a smart man like me can keep a job. Yes,’ ’e says to the devil, ‘the reason I called out to you to take me back is I found that ’ell is the only place I can keep a job.’ Eh?”
“Yes,” said Joseph.
“Well, it’s like that with me and my orchard. I tried a lot o things, I was my own master, and it’s like ’ell to me to work in menial jobs like this, but ’ell is the only damn place I can keep a job: I’m too smart. They want stoopids, yes-sir and yes-sir, certainly-sir: but now look ’ere, sir, there’s somethin’ wrong. You know what they do in the fruit business? A honest man can’t make ’is way be ’imself. If’e ain’t a member of the Fruitgrowers’ Association ’e gets all kicks and no ’apence. It’s always ’is fruit that’s thrown out for specked, always ’is boxes that go astray. ’E ’as to pay freight ninepence, and gets a return sixpence; ’e’s out of pocket threepence a consignment, not countin’ market dues. But I don’t like to be under nobody’s control: I always wanted to be a free man.”
“Where was it, you said?” asked Joseph.
“Goosebridge, you know, ’alfway to Newcastle.”
“It was a pity,” remarked Joseph slowly. “I’d like to have a bit of land: you can’t die, you can grow things on it.”
“You can’t grow the rent or the interest on the mortgage on it,” said Williams. “Thank goodness, I owe nothin’. I sold it clear and paid all my debts to the townspeople. They get taken in enough without me. Nobody lorst anythin but poor Halice, my poor little girl. I’ll tell you all about it one of these days, Jo. Even ’er mother blames poor Halice, but the girl ’ad ’er bad luck.”
“Her husband was killed, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, that’s w’y we ’ave to look after the family now; it’s ’ard when you’re old like Mother and me, but she’s our daughter. If we made a mistake spoilin’ ’er, and ruined ’er life, we should ’elp ’er now, although Mother and I are along in years and should be thinkin’ about livin’ quietly.”
The orchard had not paid in any season; they lost money on the sale. Montagu kindly referred to old Williams as “the bucolic pill”. It was a fact that Williams knew nothing about fruits except what he had seen of dried apricots and Christmas raisins. Williams found no work;
at his age, they briefly told him, he was out of the question. He came to his relative, Chamberlain, cap in hand. Chamberlain said:
“Bad luck, you’ve had your ups and downs. I’d bet on you if you were a bit younger even now, but hard times are here. Look, take five shillings, all I’ve got on me. I’m broke, as usual, and I’ve got three concerns to think of, the home, the workmen, and an outside business, art dealers I’m interested in. Have you got anything to eat at home? Come up on Saturday night. Don’t mind telling me if you’re in need of something: I’m your relative in a sense, blood is thicker than water after all.”
Williams said:
“You’re a good sort, Gregory, but I want a job. Naturally we still ’ave almost ’alf the proceeds of the orchard, but I must get a steady job of some kind. How about a’ packing-room? something in your art dealers’ place, wrappin’, cartin’, anything.”
“Come out and have a nip. I’ll ask Montagu, a friend of mine. Would you take a janitor’s job?”
Williams came back the next day.
“Did you ’ear of anything, Gregory?”
“Bust it! I clean forgot it.”
“I can’t get work ’ere. I went for a caretaker at a factory in Surry Hills; there were three hundred applicants, and a lot of them young fellers and young married men. One of the chaps told me I ought to try a packin’-room but I’ve been all round: they don’t want an old man. They call me old, although I feel as young as I ever did. I met an English newchum ’oo said ’e ’eard down Sussex Street in a seed shop they want an older man because they don’t pay them so much. I said I’d just come from the country, I’d go. But it was filled. There are plenty of commercial travelers wanted too, and they say twenty-five to fifty: I can take off five years easy, but I don’t think I could run round all day any more.”
Chamberlain grimaced over the white head and slight stoop:
“Come and have a bite. I’ll make a memorandum and let you know to-morrow, if you’re in town.”
“I’ll be in town.”
Chamberlain clean forgot him after lunch, and was dismayed to see old Williams the next day at eleven.
“Did you ’ear of anything, Gregory?”
“Look here, old chap, I can’t afford it, but I’ll take you on: you can clean up, run messages, anything and everything, while you’re looking for something better: it’s all I can do. I’m so terrible busy now that I can’t go looking for something for you even if I would.”
“I’ll be glad to, Gregory.”
“I’ll give you a pound a week; it’s not much, but it’s more than I can afford. If you ever tell you’re employed here and say what you get, you might get me into trouble, so mum’s the word, eh? You’re my relative helping me, for nothing, because you’ve got nothing to do with your time. Is that O.K. ? I suppose you’ll be worth it to me.”
“I ’ope so, Gregory. I’m not dead yet; there’s life in the old dog yet. I sailed before the mast for ten years and rounded the ’orn three times. I’ve still got an A.B.’s muscles. And I don’t s’pose I’ll be with you long.”
Now old Williams had been there for six months. Nobody knew what he did all day long, except that he sometimes had to run trembling up and downstairs three or four times very quickly when Chamberlain’s car was waiting:
“Hurry up there, Williams. God bless me, he’s a useless baggage. He’s really not worth a pound to me. But there you are, keeping a family. Got to be kind to the poor old beggar, awful when you’re no good to anybody any more. If not for me he’d be on the State and Alice’s kids too. Got to do your duty: blood’s thicker than water.”
“I’m comin’, Gregory. There, there, everything’s there. Don’t get so nervous, you’ve got all day before you.”
“I’m in business.”
But old Williams got his pound note regularly, while the others waited. He did not know that, and now, reflecting on the unemployment problem and Gregory’s pound, he ventured out from the corner where the inks and oils stood and said mildly to Joseph:
“’E’s a good heart, whatever ’e says. ’E flusters and blusters, but ’is bark is worse than his bite. Like a lawyer who visited an old lady. No law ’ere, she says, get out o’ this, and the bulldog runs after ’im. Outside the fence the lawyer says. You can be sued for this—settin’ a savage dog on me. Savage, she says, laughin’, go on, ’is bark is worse than ’is bite. No, ma’am, says the lawyer, I am going to prove that my bark is worse for ’is bite. Hi, hi, hi: my bark is worse for ’is bite. Well, I don’t mean that for Gregory. I’m not an ungrateful man. And I’ve begun to realise I’m gettin’ older: a man does. If only Halice finds a nice man, I’ll be contented. I’d even keep ’er three little kids with me to ’elp ’er out.”
Joseph fitted three long galleys into their old galley press and Williams began to make the copies.
Presently there was a breeze on the stairs. A dark, robust, aquiline gentleman strode into the room, said, “Chamberlain out?”, sat down at Chamberlain’s desk and began looking through his drawers. He had a roll of drawing-paper in his overcoat pocket. When he had inspected all Chamberlain’s papers and read the latest pages of his diary, he began fingering a book on tapestries which Joseph had got out from the Municipal Library and had been forced to lend him. Montagu felt himself a misplaced grand seigneur, but he made up for it as well as he could by riding roughshod over his friends and swiping any money or any virtuosity manifested in his sphere. Thus, he conned the book on Gobelin tapestries before Joseph had been able to look at it. He would presently sniff loudly through the aquiline, make a smart aesthetic remark to Baruch in a superior tone, as if they had an intellectual lien between them which united them above Joseph’s head and would hand the book back, with a “Good, but cursory, of course: a popular edition.”
He whistled various airs, balancing his plump fingertips before him, with his eyes lost somewhere in space, to show that he had been to the Italian opera then playing in town, and called out to Baruch to know if he had seen the “Frank Brangwyn exhibition” up the street. He told Withers that he had just had the luck to pick up at Potts Point what he believed to be an unlisted Meryon, that he was getting an Elioth Gruner for Jonah Ragfair, the soft-goods millionaire with a private gallery, and that he was having a commercial attaché smuggle in some old Chinese white jade snuffboxes. He had just had the good fortune to pick up some marvellous stuff, marvellous.” He walked to the front window, looked down into the park, and came hastily back to the office, saying:
“Sacred shades of the virgin, mine eyes fell below and beheld—Grahamovitch, that sucker. Look at him, will you. Withers, a puff-ball, a sunfish, a fleshy geaster, meditating on his phony lacquer and his sorrows like a pale fat Keats. Missed him by a minute! How many times has he been here after me, Baguenault?”
“Three or four days, sir!”
“How can he sit there so long with Mort staring him in the face? ‘Born, arrived, died,’ the history of a successful monument.”
Chamberlain walked in, looked sour, said:
“Wait on, Montagu, I happen to have some business to attend to.”
Montagu whistled, pulled out a brochure entitled “The False Van Goghs”, read a few lines, with hub-huh and ha! and walked round the shop. He told Baruch a tale of Whistler when broke, astonished Joseph by a story of an authentic Gainsborough double which he had detected, in fact made a special journey to England for, ignored Withers and patted Williams on the shoulder saying, “How goes it, old boy; still on deck?”
Meantime, Chamberlain was fidgeting, turning out his pockets, piling his desk with bits of paper, string, spare nuts, looking for a pencil, tossing his files upside-down (they were already a mass of undated lists, notices of sales, domestic bills, auction-room debits, instalment payments receipted, tickets and orders scribbled on the edges of newspaper and of all those).
“Can’t find it!”
Nobody took any notice. The usual thing happened. He questioned them all, sent Williams
out to search the car, got Montagu to look through the mess of papers again, which he did daintily with invisible finger to nose, got red, plumped into his chair, and said:
“What’s the use? I’ve got no system; it’s no good, I might as well give up the game: a man like me is bound to lose.”
He suddenly brightened, put his finger in his vest-pocket and dragged out the missing paper, which had the details for a large order of letter-heads and envelopes of several sizes.
“Bon, not so bad,” he affirmed; “here we are again. A fine order! I do better in one afternoon than those Jugginses in a week. Everything is not up the pole. Mercurial, eh?”
Montagu elevated the aquiline, strolled to the window and hastily came back.
“Damn him, I’m positively being hounded. Here’s Graham coming in. Tell the boys to keep him outside. Tell them to say I’m not here. I don’t want to see him.”
Montagu retired through the back-door. Graham entered the workshop. He carried two Chinese vases, one of red lacquer, the other of cloisonne ware, half-wrapped in paper. He placed them carefully on the floor and said dismally:
“Is Montagu about, Mr Chamberlain?”
“No; why?”
“These are ’is junk. He told me to—at any rate, ’e sent me with them to an address where they weren’t wanted. I ’ad to deliver them at three yesterday afternoon and get cash on delivery.”
“Who told you to run his errands?”
“’E met me in the street, said ’e’d stepped out without a cent, and ’ad to have lunch with Ragfair. ’E borrowed ninety per cent. of the invoice from me and told me to reimburse myself, for my courtesy with the ’ole. I knew ’e was a good friend of yours, Mr Chamberlain. When I get there—no savee, not for them, Montagu’s a name that’s new to them. What it is all about I don’t know. I know Mr Montagu wouldn’t let me down, but I’m a poor man, and when I bring them back to the auction-rooms the chap there said, We don’t want ’em, you’re the owner, aren’t you ? No; but I look on the invoice and I see it’s receipted, received from A. Graham, and so on. But I need the cash. Then last week—but no matter. I’ll wait till I see him if I wait till Doomsday.”
Seven Poor Men of Sydney Page 13