Hammers Over the Anvil

by Alan Marshall

  ‘We’ll have to shut up about this’, he said after a while. ‘We don’t want our throats cut.’

  ‘Jack the Ripper only killed women’, I reminded him.

  ‘Yes, yes, I know’, said Joe impatiently. ‘But he’s got to start on men some time. If Miss Wilson turns up alive at school tomorrow – well, that’s all right; she’s got away from him. But if she turns up with her throat cut, well then we’ll have to go to the coppers. If we have to go to the coppers, you’ll have to do the talking.’

  ‘All right’, I said doubtfully.

  ‘We won’t tell any kids about it, will we?’

  ‘No’, I said, ‘they’d reckon we were liars.’

  Tom Dixon did not look like Jack the Ripper to me. Tom was a good-looking bloke who walked like a stallion being led out to a mare. He was a proud and haughty bloke and swung the heavy hammer with ease, lifting it from its blow on the shoe and rising erect with it before bringing it down again. Mr Thomas was very proud of him. He was good to look at and I didn’t blame Miss Wilson, but Joe took some convincing.

  ‘We’ll keep an eye on him’, he said. ‘There’s madness in that bloke somewhere.’

  Miss Wilson came to school in the morning. She seemed very happy for a girl who had just escaped having her throat cut the night before.

  It puzzled Joe. ‘There’s no doubt about it, women are funny’, he reflected. ‘She was on her last gasp last night, and now look at her.’

  In a few weeks we began to get tired of watching Tom Dixon.

  ‘Listen’, I said. ‘What are we supposed to be looking for?’

  ‘Watch how he looks at girls’, warned Joe. ‘Look for the murder in his eyes.’

  It seemed bloody stupid to me. ‘Watching him looking at girls is a full-time job’, I said.

  ‘Wait’, said Joe.

  One day he gave us a cigarette card and after that Joe thought he was a good bloke.

  ‘You’d never catch Jack the Ripper giving you Number 74 of the “Birds of Australia” series’, said Joe with conviction.

  It convinced me. ‘By hell, you wouldn’t’, I agreed.

  Miss Trengrove didn’t mind Miss Wilson stopping out late each Tuesday and Friday night. ‘I don’t agree with girls keeping late hours’, she told Elsie, ‘but Miss Wilson does enjoy the two evenings a week she spends with Mrs Turner. She is very fond of Gladys – though Gladys did get into serious trouble. But taking it all round it was a good idea of yours that I take a boarder.’

  ‘Women that walk in the dark frighten shit out of me’, Joe said. ‘They don’t fit into it like a man. When you meet a man in the dark you know he’s going to the pub or somewhere. But women are always coming home from some place – they’re always in a hurry.’

  Miss Flinders was in a hurry. She had her head down and didn’t see Joe and me. We were behind a stone wall skinning the rabbits we had caught. We kept still and she didn’t hear us. Miss Flinders was a Sunday School teacher and chock-a-block full of religion. To gut a rabbit would be sinful to her and I agreed with Joe that it was just as well to be on the safe side when she was about. She was about sixty – some age like that – and she played the organ at the church.

  She liked playing for God, but she also liked walking about at night. She was always looking for something, I don’t know what.

  She’d pass houses in the dark and the light from the windows would fall on her face for a moment. It was always looking at the windows and the windows were looking at it. They saw a sad face, I think.

  Miss Trengrove received a letter one day and she showed it to Elsie when Elsie visited her. It said,

  Don’t you realise you are harbouring a dirty, sinful girl in your house. Miss Wilson meets Tom Dixon every Tuesday and Friday night and commits a sin with him behind McLeod’s stone wall. You should be ashamed of yourself for encouraging such filthy behaviour.

  ‘Do you recognise that handwriting?’ Miss Trengrove asked and she handed Elsie the envelope.

  Elsie looked at it and said, ‘It is Miss Flinders’s writing.’

  ‘That’s what I thought’, said Miss Trengrove, then added, ‘I hate anonymous letters. I never believe a word of them. I wonder what would be the best thing to do.’

  ‘If I were you, I’d put it in another envelope and post it back to her’, said Elsie.

  So Miss Trengrove posted it back to her and after that Miss Flinders didn’t walk at night any more.

  During the next few months Miss Wilson put on a lot of weight which led Pat Corrigan to remark as we passed her on our way to the factory one morning, ‘That girl is carrying a penalty.’

  ‘Now what the hell does he mean by that?’ reflected Joe when I told him.

  ‘I’m buggered if I know’, I said, ‘but Pat told me it’s an extra weight they put on a horse. I think they get this extra weight after they have had a victory.’

  ‘Now I come to think of it’, said Joe, ‘Miss Wilson has put on weight. She won’t do much more climbing over stone walls, I’m tellin’ ya.’

  Miss Trengrove was sorry when Miss Wilson told her she was leaving to return to Melbourne.

  ‘I understand’, she said gently. ‘Look after yourself, my dear.’

  Miss Wilson left on a Friday. Joe and I caught a rabbit on Wednesday. We skinned and gutted it and brought it down to Miss Trengrove’s. I knocked at the door and when Miss Trengrove opened it I said, ‘We brought you down a rabbit to cook for Miss Wilson. She told us she likes rabbit.’

  Miss Trengrove didn’t know what to say. She just said, ‘Thank you’, but she called it out again when we were going through the gate.

  Joe felt impelled to make some contribution to the conversation before we left. He turned and called to Miss Trengrove, ‘Hey Miss Trengrove, don’t worry over that rabbit. It’s been skinned and gutted; all the dirty work’s been done!’

  FEAR

  I’ve always said, and Joe agrees with me; there’s nothing on earth can frighten you more than a man. If a bull charges you, you make for a fence or stand still; if a dog comes at you, you can let him have it in the guts with your boot; but a man – Ah! that’s when you get really scared. He grabs you. You can’t fight him. There’s no fence to run to, you can’t kick him; you’re too small and one hit from him would knock you across the paddock.

  When you’re a kid and a man stands over you, every bit of your skin shrinks in and screams. Men and women are our bosses. They hold us in the dark while their heads are out in the light, then down come their hands and tear at you like crabs.

  It’s sad being a kid in a place of men. Joe and I used to hide when we saw some men coming. I don’t know why. We were just frightened of them, that’s all.

  Joe reckons that half the time they never see a kid. They’d walk over you and not know it. There were others who saw you all right. We used to scrape a stick along picket fences and make a rat-tat-tat sound. It was something to do, no harm in it. But there was a hedge behind one of these fences and an old bloke with a beard used to poke his head over the top and yell at us like as if he was mad.

  ‘Get to hell out of here’, he’d yell. We used to go for our life. It made us feel crook for a while afterwards. We’d breathe deep like horses – you know, you can hear your heart beating sort of.

  Joe reckons it was always the good people who were crook. ‘Psalm-singers’, Joe called them. They seemed to be always frowning or bending down to someone’s ear to say, ‘I’d never have believed she’d do such a thing.’

  Mr Thomas was like that. He had two sons about our age and we’d play with them sometimes, but we didn’t like them enough to keep it up. We began to dodge them and this made them wild and they’d yell out at us, ‘Youse two larrikins are mad.’

  I would yell out, ‘Go to hell’, and we’d walk off.

  Joe and I were walking past the blacksmith’s shop one night, just before it closed. Mr Thomas came to the open doorway and called – ‘You two boys, come in here for a minute will you.’


  He stepped back into the shop then, so Joe and I followed him in. We couldn’t make out what he wanted to say to us. He was one of these blokes we’d hide from if we saw him coming, but he was smiling with his teeth when he asked us to come in so we walked in without suspecting anything, though I’ve never liked blokes that smile like that.

  He shut the sliding doors behind us and put up the bar. Blacksmith’s shops have dirt floors and no windows so when the doors slid together it seemed to be pretty dark in there. Joe and I sort of crowded together like two colts in a branding yard. We looked around us but it wasn’t fences that closed us in but walls. I didn’t like the look of Mr Thomas. The trouble with Joe and me is that we are both frightened of being punched on the nose. We don’t like the idea of our noses being flattened. Mr Thomas was the sort of bloke that would punch a kid if there was no grown-up looking.

  He caught me by the shoulder. He seemed hellishun tall and big. I was down with his legs. ‘I’ve been waiting for this opportunity to get you alone’, he said softly. He turned me round so that I faced him. ‘You’ve been teaching my two sons to swear, you filthy little brat’, he suddenly snarled. I couldn’t believe my ears. Fear grabbed me. I couldn’t move. He clutched my shoulder with his fingers digging into me. ‘If ever you say another foul word in their presence I’ll thrash you both’, and he looked at Joe. ‘You are both a bad influence in the school and I’m going to stop it once and for all.’

  I wanted to yell at him. I wanted to punch him and kick him and curse him with swears a yard long, but I couldn’t find my voice. Joe had lost his voice too. We were so bloody frightened we just couldn’t do a thing.

  The terrible thing about it was that his two kids were the biggest swearers in the school.

  ‘We’ll soon change that’, Joe said to me later. ‘Wait till they hear what I have to say to them.’

  But there was none of this fight in us as we stood quaking before Mr Thomas.

  The trouble was that under our fear was a feeling of shame. We were letting ourselves down. When a kid faces a man who threatens him, he just doesn’t know whether other grown-ups will be on his side or not. He should be certain his father will. I was. But his father might believe what the big bloke says. There’s nothing you can do. But we should have told him off; that’s what we should have done. No kid is supposed to tell a grown-up he’s wrong. You’ve just got to take it standing there with your head down. That was what hurt us.

  ‘When a kid has a row with a man, everybody reckons the bloke is right’, Joe reckons. ‘Don’t look for help from other grown-ups. You’re on your own.’

  I could see Joe was thinking of making a dash for it. What stopped him was that there was nowhere to go. All the doors were closed.

  Mr Thomas was trying to hurt me. His fingers dug deeper into my shoulder. They were like iron prongs clamping tighter and tighter. But I wasn’t going to yell out, not if I could help it.

  He suddenly grabbed Joe with his other hand and this brought us together somehow – I mean it made us one bloke being hurt by a bastard.

  We were howling a bit – you can’t help it when a man’s face is hanging over you all twisted with rage and his fingers hold you like claws. But, as Joe said, ‘When I’m howling I’m at my best.’

  When Mr Thomas grabbed Joe he lifted him off his feet with one hand – he’s a strong bastard – but it put Joe in a perfect position to deliver two quick kicks to his shins, at the same time I swung a crutch and let him have the thick armpit support on the side of his jaw.

  This attack made Mr Thomas forget us for the moment, but while he was changing his plans we were kicking, punching and butting him with such speed he let go of us and staggered to the water barrel when he curled like a question mark, spitting and coughing.

  We made for the door then and Joe got the bar off somehow and we slid the doors back. We went like hell till we got amongst the trees and could pull up and have a blow.

  It was good to see the sun outside, to feel it warm on your shoulders. It was good even to breathe. There were no walls around us, no fear of having our noses punched flat, no threatening voice. We were both shaking, but we were outside in the daylight.

  ‘It’s what I always say’, said Joe, wiping his eyes with a dirty handkerchief. ‘Nothing scares you like a man. And another thing. We can’t do nothing about this. People know we swear. They’d believe Mr Thomas. So shut up about it. Hey, how ya feelin’?’

  JUDY FLIESHER

  Judy Fliesher used to chew chewing gum and stack it behind her ear when she was having a rest from chewing. But this didn’t stop her becoming pregnant. All of a sudden she came out in front like as if she was too fat.

  By this time I knew what pregnancy was; so did Joe. We knew it meant having a baby in you, but I never thought they were very interesting – pregnant girls, that is, I mean. As Joe said, ‘Once you’ve seen one pregnant girl you’ve seen the lot.’

  Joe reckoned it spoilt their shape, but I don’t know; girls were always changing their shape one way or another. One day you would be fighting with a girl and she didn’t care where you hit her; the next day you hit her on the chest and everybody would look at you as if you’d done something terrible. In no time they’d start tying a strip of calico round their chests, girthing themselves up to flatten themselves out.

  Joe once pushed Judy Fliesher away from him and he told me I’d be surprised at how soft she was. I’d like to have felt her on the chest just to see, but I never got the chance.

  I’ve got to hand it to Joe. He was the first to realise she was pregnant. We were sitting with our backs to the fence making little walls out of the gravel on the path and Judy passed. Joe watched her then said, ‘Do you know what I think! Judy’s got a scone in the oven,’ which was Duke McLeod’s way of saying a girl was pregnant.

  As I say, we knew all about pregnancy and that sort of thing, but not enough about it to stop me getting a fright when Joe said that.

  ‘Hell!’ I said, then added, ‘that’s a bad thing.’

  ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it’, said Joe. ‘It’s a hellishun bad thing.’

  ‘Do you reckon anybody in Turalla knows except us?’ I asked Joe.

  ‘Not a soul’, said Joe. ‘I just had her in the right light when she passed. No one else would ever catch her in that light. She’s pregnant all right.’

  ‘I wonder what she’ll do now’, I said.

  ‘What she’s got to do now is to find out who’s the father’, said Joe. ‘I tell you, I feel terribly sorry for Judy. We won’t tell anyone about this. If they find out for themselves – well, that’s their business. But we’ve had nothing to do with it.’

  We shut up about it, but news gets around and we thought we’d ask Duke if he knew anything about it.

  ‘How’s Judy going?’ Joe asked, then looked away. We pretended nothing was wrong with her and we just asked Duke about her as if we’d just noticed that something was wrong.

  ‘Didn’t ya know’, he said. ‘She’s up the duff.’

  Duke paused and looked at the ground with his lips pursed up, then turned his head and looked at Judy’s home standing behind a rickety fence, half way up the rise. ‘Yes’, he reflected. ‘She’s up to her neck in it now.’

  Joe was sorry for Judy. ‘It must be crook to be like that.’

  ‘I wonder who the father is?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s what Judy would like to know’, said Duke. ‘She has to nail someone. A lot will depend on how a bloke’s holding. Things are tough with me, so I’m all right.’

  Afterwards Joe said to me, ‘That was a very funny thing to say if ever I’ve heard one. “That’s what Judy would like to know”, he says, the stupid bugger. As if she doesn’t know the father. What would the world be like if no one knew their father. I know my father; so do you. And then he says, “Things are tough with me, so I’m all right.” Did you ever hear the like? What in the hell’s that got to do with it!’

  ‘Duke’s got a lot to learn about life�
�, I said. ‘After he’s knocked around a bit he’ll grow up. You don’t want to be too hard on him.’

  We walked down to Miss Trengrove’s and moved quickly along the netting fence while her dog hurtled at the wire trying to get at us. We often did this just to show we weren’t frightened of dogs.

  ‘She’s a savage bitch behind a fence, isn’t she!’ said Joe. And for some reason I thought of Judy.

  There was no lawyer in Turalla, but there was one at Balunga, and his name was Mr Scott. He looked severe. They reckoned he was severe. Joe reckoned someone told him that he was tough on blokes who got girls into trouble. ‘It was Duke McLeod who told me that; yes, he told me’, Joe added.

  Duke said to Joe, ‘He puts all the blame on the bloke.’

  ‘Well, wouldn’t you!’ I said to Joe when I was alone with him. ‘Who else could you blame! A girl gets into trouble – well, all right. Who got her into trouble? A bloke did. No one else did, that’s a certainty. What else did he say?’

  ‘Well’, said Joe, ‘Duke reckoned Scott sent a letter to Vin Wallace, the fruit shop bloke, and asked him would he front Judy across the table, and he did. There they were, the both of them, Vin was on one side of the table and Judy on the other side and Scott he sat at the end, and then Scott said, “Now, Judy. Let him have it.”’

  ‘My word, this sounds interesting’, I said to Joe and I moved closer to him.

  ‘Yes, it does, doesn’t it!’ said Joe.

  ‘What did Judy say?’ I asked.

  ‘According to Duke, she said, “Listen, Vin Wallace, you put me in the family way. What are you going to do about it?” And then Scott said, “That’s right, what are you going to do about it, Mr Wallace?”’

  ‘What happened then?’ I asked.

  ‘A bloody lot happened then’, said Joe. ‘First of all, Vin Wallace said, “Bugger all! That’s what I’m going to do about it.” And Judy said, “Well, I’ll go to buggery!” And Scott said, “Stop that bloody swearing.”’

  ‘That shut the lot up, did it?’ I said.