They set out from the shore, the first slow chugs in the shore-water setting their hearts throbbing. The week was over, the weekend began auspiciously. Aft, they sang “Ramona”. Baruch laughed with Nell Waters, the friend of Kol Blount, a tall, plump, energetic blonde of twenty-four, an ardent Socialist, a school-teacher, with a clear, sallow complexion, tinged with her night fatigues over exercises, and large brown eyes, ringed with black, due to her weeping, as some said, over the improbability that Kol Blount would ever be more than a stone. Catherine was there, ill and dull, her nose reddened by the wind, her yellow skin shining. She had not washed because she had slept the night before on a shakedown in the Salvation Army shelter. She looked down unmoved at holes in the back of her stockings, at her dusty shoes, her faded flannel dress, too hot for such a day, the stains on her skirt. Only her nails, which were almond-shaped, were polished, but had a little line of dirt since yesterday. She had brought some great thick sandwiches, cut for her by a laundress she knew and had lived with sometimes. This extreme untidiness and roughness came over Catherine once every two or three months. Although she had only to go home to have all the comforts possible, to eat, sleep in a soft bed, bathe, and dress well, to be petted and rest in the garden, she preferred her vagrant life and raffish experience. Some acrid ambition stung her. She was in a fever at these times. It was not safe to speak to her much, she withdrew from argument: she paled perpetually with suffering, her eyes swam in a brilliant liquid, she cried aloud in a tempestuous voice, instead of speaking, or else turned her back on the company, her lips purple.
The tune died in the hiss of spray: sailing-vessels scudded past. From a ferry-boat came the sounds of a band. Conversations were going on all around.
Heinrich Winterbaum raised his voice:
“The great are only great because they glorify vulgar themes.”
“Shunt that,” responded Withers from the other end of the boat. “You chaps with your low highbrow talk will drive me frantic. I’m going to tell a dirty story to get you into the right frame of mind.”
Milt Dean, the paid secretary of philanthropic works, looked severely at Withers and kept on speaking to his girl:
“. . . a kind of sentimental involution. He prefers classicism to revolution, due to a crystallised system of inhibitions beginning with timidity as to self-expression in early adolescence . . .”
Winter rested his high-boot along the seat and proclaimed in his harsh, small voice:
“Who told you the English are slaves? Chartism isn’t dead. But the movement’s too full of prospective Fergus O’Connors. Lenin said the revolutionary movement was unpredictable in England; the English dock-workers were the first to strike to prevent arms being carried to the White Russians. The English are free, they are a free people. We are the sons of free men, a very great race: and their economic understanding is not matched by any other people. Adam Smith himself said, ‘The real price of all wealth is labour.’”
Baruch began shouting joyously, “He also said in the same chapter, the real price of wealth is corn, gold and a healthy day’s work. That that poor bastard ever became famous shows that few people could read or write in his day . . .”
Milt Dean kept on severely droning, “. . . in juvenescence man only perceives one vital principle in himself . . .”
They laughed, clattered and shouted each other down like a lot of cormorants quacking as they plane over the water for fish, talking on a rock while they dry their wings.
They disembarked in some pleasure-grounds up the Lane Cove River. Heinrich took their photographs as they hung round an uprooted tree. The sun set later on in a pomegranate sky; the smooth narrow river was like cloth of gold. They made tea and ate fish just caught in the river by some peaceful members of the party. When dark came rapidly, as it does in those latitudes, the owner of the boat lighted lanterns along the roof and they sat in the dark, feeling the breezes, listening to the creaking of wood and the lapping of the shore-water. The breeze went down, the heat increased and the insects of the night flew. Country Night, with her uttering owls and pale surf of meteors, eased their troubles.
Going back in the launch they sang sentimental songs. They chugged between the dark fleets of ships tied up in the strike. A few lights hung among the decks and fell dully on the still dock waters. On one ship, bound for the islands, some savage sailors danced round a brazier placed over the hold, clapping their hands. At the sight of the girls and youths on the launch they cried out, laughing like parrakeets, making obscene signs with their dark thin hands, their vertebrae and ribs standing out in their starved bodies as they rolled and gesticulated. Lascars in dirty rags hung over the high pontoon decks, silent, dark in the dark, only their yellow eyeballs rolling. A thicket of short masts stood up on the starry universe, the hawsers wheezed, the incoming tide clucked on the weed-grown rusting bottoms. A tug puffed beside a small vessel, chains clanked and ironmongery rattled, a man shouted and was seen standing high, in the red light of a lantern, against the deep sky. The vessel was an island trader putting out with scab labour picked up round the wharves. They all looked at it with aversion as if at an unclean thing. Even Withers said slowly:
“By Jingo, when you see that little sneak crawling out, you wonder what they’ve got inside their hides, the scabs.”
Baruch and Catherine laughed in the dark, but Catherine’s laugh was impertinent, exasperated.
“A queer lot of men, castaways in a swarming harbour; a ship of the damned.”
“I’d like to join them,” said a dull voice, “to see what it is like to join a lost ship, to be with the lowest of the low. It would be strange company. Can you imagine them eating together, sleeping together? The berths below teeming with lice, the food stinking in this weather, rations of rum served out to keep ’em happy till they clear the Heads, and in the back of their heads the idea that when they get paid they’re going to clear out at the next port; no responsibilities and absolutely not wanted here: exiles. I wouldn’t mind it at that. You know, I’m not too sensitive to moral issues, when I’ve seen what I’ve seen. And then it must be a relief to be with a lot of perverse dummies, whose backs aren’t always bristling with righteousness.”
Michael was speaking. They turned cold faces to Michael, but he was sitting in the shadow aft and they could only make out his form. Catherine cried sharply:
“Suicide would be better. I can understand a person wanting to live alone, but not as a class, or social traitor.”
“I have no class,” answered Michael. “I am a man alone. I don’t know what you are all raving about: it doesn’t touch me. You can’t shame me.”
“Leave him alone,” said Withers. “When a man postures there’s naught to be done. Listen, blokes and girls: do we take something along with us to Blount’s house? We can’t expect Mrs Blount to provide for this caravan.”
They went out to Annandale, the poor suburb in which the Blounts lived, carrying more packets. Kol Blount sat in the lemon circle of a lamp. His mother had finished clearing away and was washing the dishes in the kitchen. Glasses were set out on the tables with several dozen lemons for lemon-drinks. Mrs Blount came gaily in, complimented each one, called them “Boys!” “Girls!” and tripped happily back to the kitchen, where she had put her darning-bag. By housekeeping and cleaning she had supported Kol since his babyhood, when he had fallen off a table and injured his spine. She had had hopes once or twice that the bachelors she worked for would like her style. She was musical, sang about her work, dressed brightly, with high heels, and cared for them like a mother as she often told them; but the veins in her hands and legs were now badly swollen, and her heart was bad with running up and down stairs. She hoped to open a cheap boarding-house for students and poor teachers, presently.
“I’ll let you young folks talk your hearts out,” she cried gaily, and they heard her humming tunes from Floradora and The Geisha to herself in the kitchen. She was not unhappy. She had preserved her son for herself alone, and she always sai
d, with the airs of a young girl, “My son has his mother for a sweetheart.” Never wife or mistress would come to disturb her maternal possession. She had been unhappy with her husband, who had left her two years after their marriage; she wished he had been like his son in temperament. “Kol was never interested in women,” she told them all happily, and sometimes added, “Nell Waters is like a sister to him: I often wish they had been brother and sister.”
Catherine misanthropically went into the kitchen to help Mrs Blount. They heard, in the living-room, the talk rising in spirals, culminating in a clap of argument or laughter; falling. They heard whispering in the stone passage—lovers in the dark, or plotters ready to spring a surprise on the band. Someone appeared at the door. It was Michael, who stood looking reflectively at them, as if he had come there to be alone and not to talk.
“Are you staying to-night?” asked Mrs Blount.
“No, thank you.”
“He was here all yesterday and stayed last night,” said Mrs Blount to Catherine. “Your brother is wonderful company for Kol. That’s a sort of joke. They’re not really very gay; just lugubrious company for each other.”
“I know,” said Catherine.
“What long faces! Go and join the other children,” cried Mrs Blount. “You don’t want to stay here and hear an old woman’s gossip, and I know you don’t like darning stockings, Cath.”
Catherine went pale; her eyes flashed, she put down the basket she was holding and rose. Mrs Blount did not see her expression, and Michael manoeuvred himself between Mrs Blount and his sister. He followed her out, and said in a low voice;
“What are you flaring up about? You’re touchy, I don’t know why: it’s true, isn’t it? You’ve got holes in both your stockings. If you must be a rebel, you’d do better to go bare-legged.”
They were in the stone passage. Catherine wheeled on Michael and struck him furiously on the temple with her fist. She seized his throat with both hands and said in a strangled voice:
“I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, you, you . . .” She was demoniacally strong and forced him into the dark corner under the stairs. He collapsed and stayed there cramped, on his haunches, while she ground his head against the wall: her eyes started out of their orbits.
“Don’t be a fool, don’t be a fool,” he kept whispering through his compressed throat.
She let go suddenly and stood back, grinding her teeth, with her hands clenched.
“If you ever dare say such a thing again, I’ll kill you.”
“You’re afraid, or you would have done it then,” said Michael coolly. “I don’t worry; I’ve always known you were a bit cracked.”
“You dare say that, Michael. Oh, Michael!” She began to cry: she rested her forehead against the staircase and sobbed.
“I always knew it; that’s why I loved you,” affirmed Michael. “You are not like the rest of the world, you’re mad. With you one can be free, one can say anything, nothing is absurd or horrid. I didn’t have to expect a trite reproof or cheap witticism as with the others.”
She looked at him, trembling.
“Michael, I am terribly unhappy: my heart is bursting, that is why I have to go mad. Anything I do is to avoid the abyss in me; I want to fill it by leaping to death, like the Roman centurion.”
“But now, that’s changed,” answered Michael. “I’m too old, Cath. My youth has gone and I’ve nothing to keep myself going in maturity. I can’t be bothered getting married, having a home, a social circle. I would retire to a monastery or a cave in the desert, which is what I always wanted to do, if it weren’t so bloody out of date. If I could I’d join a desperate expedition, one to the North Pole, if I didn’t hate the cold (but I don’t want to die of congestion), or one to Central Africa, if I weren’t afraid of being eaten by a lion. Would you come and get eaten with me?”
“I wasn’t joking.”
“I’m not.”
“You sound pretty silly to me.”
“Of course. We’ve got older and madder, Kate, but along different lines. A long time ago you were really my sister.”
“If I could dash my head against the wall, I’d do it; I can’t stand all this.”
“Why don’t you marry some chap, Kate? You like plenty of men. You don’t have to stay married; after five years you can hop it.”
“No one wants me for a wife, and it’s serious with me: I want to be loved and leave of my own accord.”
“Well, you see, with me it’s different. I wouldn’t mind if I never saw another soul in my life, starting from this hour.”
“You’d better go in and see Kol Blount. You’re easier in your mind when you’re with him. I’m going for a walk. I’ll see you in a day or two.”
Michael started for the kitchen.
“My throat’s hurting, I’ll get Mrs Blount to give me some liniment and put a rag round it so that they won’t see. A nice scandal!” He laughed.
“And I’m going for a walk. You don’t expect me to be sorry,” she said furiously. The door banged. Someone put his head out of the door.
“Who went?”
“Catherine,” called Michael. “She’s got the jim-jams: leave her alone.”
“I knew she had them all day,” said one of the girls.
“Poor Kate! If she would only settle down! She’s very artistic, if she’d only settle down, as you say! . . . She’s had a lot of experience! . . . Politics is a hard life for a woman! . . . Well, if she liked it, but it’s a pis aller for creation!”
The chorus arose from her friends now sitting on cushions around Kol Blount in his long chair. A very young girl, a kitten, innocent and foolish, related that she liked philanthropic work and had been collecting for some hospital fund.
“There was an old man there with a beard, nice enough. He said, Wait till I go upstairs and get some money. It was beginning to rain and he said, Aren’t you getting wet? Eventually, he seduced me inside the door . . .”
A shout of laughter. Some of the young men rolled on the floor clasping their cushions and thumping the floor with them from time to time. The girl looked surprised, thought it a tribute to the humour of the story, and went on:
“Coming back, at the top of the stairs he got ‘a bone in his knee’. He fell to the ground, like this, on one knee, and, with his eyes rolling, held his hand out to me, with the money in it. I started to rush upstairs; he struggled up, but slipped near the bottom and upset me on the mat. He had to help me up, but he was furious. He stuck the money in my hand and pushed me out of the door quickly.”
The gentle virgin told this without a blush on her Sèvres china face. The boys could not contain their guffaws, some got quite red in the face, others gave a deep guttural note of enjoyment and then fell silent.
“Win, you are a fool,” said Kol Blount. “Seduced is something quite different; you mean induced you inside the door.”
“Psychological mistake of the first order,” cried Milt Dean delightedly.
“Everyone’s absolutely full of mistakes like that, but it’s a blessing: you have to let yourself go, otherwise you’d go crazy,” opined Fayre Brant, the young university student with whom Milt Dean was in love.
“I think it should be admitted freely in society. I know chaps and girls who play all sorts of love-games quite freely, and they’re all artistic; it’s good for the free expression of emotion. Some friends of mine belong to a repertory theatre, and in between Ibsen, Barrie, Galsworthy, they amuse themselves in the dressing-room: they have what they call libido games. They get frightfully pepped up for their dramatic scenes.”
“It’s fascinating,” said the young girl, “simply fascinating. Do you mean to say it really develops the artistic instinct?”
“Aw, haw haw,” began one of the young men, “some of the chaps were turned out of their lodgings in the middle of the night, in the Glebe, you know, old Ma Brown’s place. She’s a bit off her nut, because her husband died when she was thirty, a year after they were married. She likes to t
ake in young bachelors, but she goes mad if they have any girls in, and she writes letters every week to the Dean. Last week, in the middle of the night she thought she heard cries, thumpings, dancings backwards and forwards over the floor in all the rooms. She got up furious, and found the chaps all asleep as it happened. Only a window was open, as one of the chaps was out on the spree and hadn’t come back. She turned them all out into the street in the middle of the night. The chaps all went to the Dean and told him she has hallucinations, so they’re having her sent to an asylum.”
“Next door to my place,” began one of the older girls, in a low, thrilling voice, “is a satyr . . .”
“The devil take you all,” cried Kol Blount. “Somebody make the lemon-drinks. Bring the lemons here, and if anybody starts out on the subject again he’ll get lemon in his eye.”
“Don’t be a nark,” said a young boy, a law student, with rosy cheeks and chestnut hair, the same Joseph had seen in Phillip Street, and whose name he did not know. “Don’t be a grandmother! Listen, I had an adventure. A girl. She has a lover; he’s a shipping magnate and he keeps her, but now he’s in Melbourne for a month. I found her crying in the park because her father’s gone bankrupt. She wants to marry the shipping magnate but she’s too poor. She told me I’m the only one she’s ever lived with except the shipping magnate. And her mother, father, two sisters and brother know all about it: would you believe that? I tell you the world’s not the same any more, parents are getting more liberal.”
Seven Poor Men of Sydney Page 24