by Mark O'Flynn
I called out to him, ‘She walks in beauty, like the night. Of cloudless climes and starry skies.’
He glanced up, as if the words had come from the very air, before he saw me. ‘Quite so.’ He paused in his pruning, and my feet, of their own volition, seemed to want to pause also. ‘Tell me, how is that Dusty?’
‘Long dead, sir.’
‘Yes,’ he said sadly. ‘Quite so.’
All these streets I knew so well. In the grounds of the Presbyterian Church I saw James Cowley Morgan Fisher in his ragged kilt, a grey-bearded man, immune to the cold, preaching to the outer walls of the empty building. His voice was high-pitched. There was froth in his words and at the bushy edges of his mouth. He looked wilder and more lunatic each time I saw him, like the way he would come to me in dreams. The Hairy Man.
When he saw me he turned from the church door and cawed, ‘A coin for Jesus, a coin for Jesus.’
I had no coin. The knees protruding from his kilt were blue.
‘I have seen the devil,’ he was saying, coming towards me. ‘The devil is among us. He is here. And he waves his terrible hammer.’
I kept going. According to town talk Fisher was another misfortunate man who had lost his wives. All at once, in his case, on a train to Sydney with their belongings in cases, and Joshua Morgan trailing along behind lugging a basket of dodger for the journey.
Even though it had only been three days I was rejoicing, still tremulously, in my freedom. I found my way to Ann’s house in Ada Street. I don’t know how but something in the air’s thinness, the paucity of the light, told me that I would not find Clancy here. Entering the kitchen through the open back door I came face to face with Wei Sing. The Chinaman gazed at me through the deep, unfathomable smoke of his eyes.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, bemused.
‘I teach Ann cook.’
The room, I noticed, smelled wonderful. Preceded by her voice, Ann entered the kitchen dressed very sparingly, which is to say in a red silk gown with the print of a dragon on the back. Her hair was wet. Wei Sing made no move to leave. I wondered about the propriety of her being in a house with a Chinaman while having wet hair. Then I decided that it was no concern of mine. If they want, people should be allowed to walk through walls.
‘Byron,’ she said.
‘Where is Clancy?’
She didn’t know. She hadn’t seen him in several days. I looked about the room. There were knives for lopping turnips on the table, ropes of garlic hanging from the ceiling, jars of oily herbs lined up along one newly erected shelf. We stood awkwardly. I looked from Ann to Wei Sing.
‘Whatever you’re cooking,’ I said, ‘it smells pretty fine.’
They sat me down and fed me. After my brief time in the watch house my mouth seemed full of heaven. For a while I couldn’t speak.
‘What is this stuff?’ I asked.
‘Rice.’
Ann had heard about the maids, but knew not much more. I told her what I knew, the upshot of which was – Clancy was gone. Ann nodded her head sadly.
‘He came to tell me he was leaving,’ she said with dull resignation.
‘Ann,’ I asked when I had finished eating, ‘who was Clancy’s father?’
She started. ‘Clancy asked the same thing.’
‘When they were trapped, Douglas told Clancy that he was not his father.’
‘Why would he say such a thing?’
‘I guess he was terrified of going to his grave with the truth untold.’
‘Douglas was good to him. Douglas accepted him.’
‘Even though Clancy wasn’t his son. I know. Yet it seemed to be important to Clancy.’
Ann considered this. ‘You must understand, Byron, Douglas and I were married in name only. I was a young girl. I had just lost my parents. And Fisher was very charismatic.’
‘Fisher!’
‘He was powerful. Persuasive. I was gullible. He tried to lure me back to his flock, but I wouldn’t go.’
‘But then why did you go with Douglas?’
‘Because we would have been better off. We were better off. Whatever his failings, Douglas is an honest man. Douglas accepted him.’
‘Does Clancy know Fisher is his father?’
‘He does now. I don’t know how long he has suspected.’
She took a deep breath, and Wei Sing moved to her side.
‘Poor, lost Clancy,’ said Ann in the saddest voice I have ever heard.
Before I left, Wei Sing took his knife and cut three bulbs of garlic which he gave to me.
‘Little bit. In stew.’
Thanking him, and kissing Ann goodbye, I stowed the bulbs in my mutton sack. I turned into Lurline Street then proceeded to Violet’s house. I knew the way well. I felt small and weak inside the shirt Brownrig had given me, although now happily full. When I got to the house in Darley Street I knocked at the door and it opened a crack. A child peered out and eventually consented to fetch Mrs Kefford. There were a number of courtesies to be exchanged before I was able to deliver the news that Violet, and all the maids, were to be given their old jobs back. Mrs Kefford squealed in delight, waving her wooden spoon like a flag.
I was speaking very formally. My time in the cold, dark cell had given me a certain aroma. (The bucket.) ‘Mrs Kefford, please accept my apologies. I do not normally smell like this. It is the unfortunate circumstance of my recent situation.’
‘He talks funny,’ said one of Violet’s siblings, past his mother’s skirts.
Mrs Kefford laughed. Then, behind her, Violet laughed, the sweetest sound I ever heard. I also had to thank Violet, again very formally on account of her mother being there, for her intercession with Parkes on my behalf.
‘What’s this? What’s all this?’ asked her father, finally arriving at the doorway. ‘You’re free.’
‘Yes, thanks to Violet. And Parkes.’
‘You mean I now don’t have to burn his house down? I don’t have to pin him to the door with a pitchfork?’
‘No.’
He eyed me suspiciously, probably for my association with Clancy. However, the good news I’d brought about Violet’s position bought me the right to remain a little longer in the house. Mrs Kefford gave thanks again, and in her profound relief Violet hugged me. For a fleeting moment she laid her cheek against mine. Mr Kefford bristled, but a glare from his wife kept his manners in check.
‘This calls for a cup of tea,’ he said reluctantly, smacking his palms together.
I was ushered through to the kitchen. Violet’s brothers and sisters continued to stare at me. ‘Do you have a blue feather?’ one asked.
‘The blue feathers I leave for the bowerbirds, who have a greater need.’
After our sweet tea I asked permission to walk outside with Violet. Mr Kefford gave me a look that said: I will be watching you. I nodded my understanding.
We walked along a track at the top of the escarpment until we came to a small creek dribbling over the precipice. I believe it was called Banksia Streamlet.
‘Clancy came,’ said Violet at last.
‘Where has he gone?’
‘I don’t know. He wanted me to go with him. But my answer was no.’
‘And why would you not?’ I asked tentatively.
She paused before replying. ‘Because with Clancy we were always children. We were still in the schoolroom together, and I was the cleverer. I don’t always want to be the cleverer.’ Her eyes looked clearly at me, and I could see she was intending more than her words declared.
‘I’m not always so clever,’ I said.
‘You are, Byron Wilson, more than you know. And brave.’
‘No, I’m not brave. In the watch house I was very scared.’
‘Really?’
‘I prayed for Clancy to save me. Like he did from Angus Lovel.’
Violet then described how Clancy had taken her refusal. Blankly. Apparently unmoved. She didn’t know what fervour boiled inside him. I did. Another betrayal. The
sweetheart he loved didn’t love him in return. He had been betrayed by everyone. What did he have? No job; his father had disowned him; his brother had betrayed him. He had nothing.
No, not completely true. He did have his last wages from the mine, plus two sapphire and diamond brooches of filigree silver each in the shape of a swan, which must have been worth a bundle. More importantly, I would have thought, he had the realisation in him, the clear light of being alive, of having survived, of walking new upon the earth. He might be in Sydney already. I’m sure that’s where he would have headed. I was partly envious of what excitement he would find there. There would be rich pickings in Sydney for a man of Clancy’s ingenuity. Somewhere to disappear and somewhere to find himself. But this did not lessen my guilt. I knew it would stay with me all my days. It would never lift. But right now I had other things on my mind.
I had been a working man for three years. I knew now the coal wouldn’t last forever. I was not yet seventeen. I had many things to do. One of which I did now. I removed my boots and socks and plunged my legs into the creek.
Violet looked at me. ‘Isn’t that cold?’
‘Yes. Freezing.’ I scrubbed my feet until they were pink and glistening.
The mist had lifted for the moment, revealing the desperate, terrible, magical view beyond the cliff top, a few loose clouds drifting eastwards. It was the kind of sight that made you think of flying.
‘Now I must go and tell my father about the mine.’ I got up and wiped my icy feet with my socks.
‘He’ll find something else,’ said Violet. ‘There might be years left.’
‘It’s all right for me. But he doesn’t know anything else.’
The clouds were dispersing, their shadows fleeing across the valley floor. How easy would it be, if it came to it, to step out and become an angel? Violet reached out her fingers and gently entwined them with mine. I was lost.
‘You still have all your fingers,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
She looked at my feet. ‘And toes.’
‘Yes.’
‘Put your boots on.’
The echoing bells of lyrebirds and whipbirds came to us on the air. The trees below, soft and inviting. I didn’t feel quite so anxious when I approached the edge, rooted, as I was, beside her, to the earth.
So long did I delay my departure from Violet that it was dark by the time I returned to the village. Despite knowing the tracks as well as I did, I tripped over everything, even with the assistance of a little diluted moonlight. The ponies in their hobbles startled me and I, in turn, startled them, like stationary ghosts in the mist.
Finally the fires and candles in the huts and humpies divided the trees and I began to smell cooking. Coal smoke also. Everyone was indoors. I stood in the shadows outside my hut peering in through the cracks at Douglas and Emma. Their voices hummed softly as they stood together at the wash bucket, Douglas with a dishrag in his hands. Three or four candles flickered within as well as the oil lamp with the wick turned up high. Such extravagance. I began to realise, perhaps for the first time, the degree of happiness they took only in each other. A world complete unto itself. I had returned with my news, but I could not deliver it now. Soon enough I would go in, the cold would see to that. I would cough and make my presence known. They would sit me down and feed me and ask about my ordeal, short as it was, and rejoice in my freedom. Perhaps they would wake the whole village. But I could not go in just yet. There was time enough to tell them. All those lights in the surrounding darkness. The murmuring voices. The Garbutt children yawning their prayers. The candle flames burning in the night as if they would burn forever.
TWENTY-ONE
Later we heard that Sergeant Brownrig had blundered about on top of Narrow Neck Plateau looking down from Castle Head. He lay on the cushion of his stomach peering over the edge. In one place, he reported, some tufts of grass had been torn out by the cliff edge, near enough, as far as he could judge, to where Dundas must have fallen from. This would indicate signs of desperation, he thought. Not of suicide. Or if so, then a change of heart, and a change of heart could not be ruled as suicide either. His conclusion, through lack of evidence, such as a note, was misadventure.
Douglas, when he heard of the report, and in the light of my news, sought the private views of the miners. How did they feel about the threat of the closure of the mine, and could anything be done about it? He determined in his own quiet way to call a meeting. He would pick up where Dundas had left off.
One thing I have learned after all these years is not to be alarmed by life’s preposterous timing. Today is my birthday, or so they tell me, but whether it’s my seventy-ninth or eighty-first I sometimes cannot remember. I don’t want to work it out. Strange and terrible things have happened in that time. Things that define who we are and where we belong, as Clancy had to define for himself when he left the mountains. And my sense of belonging? Where is that? Perhaps it has been lost in the lives of other people, distracted from itself. For when he left that spring day, perhaps Clancy took something of mine also?
It is an old man’s prerogative to recall things the way he wishes. To recollect the past in a rosier light than perhaps it was. For example, I don’t think I have given a proper account of how bloody cold it always was.
About a year after the mine eventually closed a very mysterious event took place. You will hardly believe it. One autumn dawn (there would have been frost, there may have been snow), one of the gardeners at the Carrington Hotel made a weird discovery.
The gardener, a young man called Angus Lovel, found in the shadows on the tennis court what looked like an injured animal. As the dawn light began to ignite the sky, Angus saw it wasn’t an animal at all but a trussed carcass in human form. The carcass gave a little twitch. A groan. There was a hessian bag over its head. When Angus pulled off the hessian bag he was astonished to find Buggery Clout tied up like a Christmas turkey. It seems an apocryphal sort of story, but someone told someone who told someone else who swears it was true. Thus it came to me. Angus claimed there was so much rope around him he looked like a giant blowfly spun into a spider’s cocoon. His wrists were tied behind him to his ankles. His mouth was stuffed with a wad of rag.
Instead of untrussing the constable, Angus went to fetch the man who paid his wages, Mr Goyder, and also Sergeant Brownrig. Local legend has it that when they returned and unplugged the gag from his mouth Buggery Clout let forth a shivering stream of invective so vitriolic it startled the birds into the air.
Inside the hessian sack they made another strange discovery. Angus later swore he thought it was a severed human head that had been in there keeping Clout company, but when they upended the bag out tumbled an exquisite jewellery box glittering with garnets, silver trim and gold hinges. I am guessing it might have been a little chipped. It didn’t take Goyder long to deduce that it was the property of Lady Carrington, benefactor of his mayoral victory. Sergeant Brownrig – I can picture it – shook his head. This was the last straw for Constable Clout’s tenure in the mountains. They turned to the cursing insect on the ground and wondered where to begin.
You can see it is not difficult to imagine: Angus told someone who told someone who eventually told me. In this unreliable way facts get lost, or misremembered, or built upon. This is part of the engine of human memory, and human forgetfulness. Some of my past I have no wish to remember, like the war years, which are too terrible to dwell on, even now half a world and half a lifetime away. But nothing is so vivid in my mind as my youth in the valley and the people I loved there.
In 1897, I went to North and suggested that the funicular railway might well be turned to taking sightseers up and down the Incline. Let the forest grow back, carve out a few lookouts. He thanked me, revealing that he and his people had already discussed the plan. Baldy Baldock had been engaged as guide: he knew the history of the mine and had the gift of the gab. Thank you again for your interest and for your years of service. North had thought it all through.
The mine was closed, the infrastructure dismantled and hauled to the top. Much of it was too heavy, however, and remained rusting on the valley floor. Douglas and Emma found a cottage in Lett Street, not far from Ann and Wei Sing. The neighbours didn’t like Wei Sing too much, initially suspicious of a Chinaman living with a white woman, but they certainly liked the cooking smells that came from their cottage, and in time grew to accept the arrangement. Douglas found work on the road gangs, where there seemed to be a never-ending job chiselling and blasting cuttings through the rock.
Initially I lived with Douglas and Emma and found work on the railways. Later, with my own family, my beautiful wife Violet and our children, I moved to Sydney; after the war I worked on the docks. For a number of years I was even the union delegate on our wharf, although the Depression put an end to that. I have found that just to be happy in your work is something of an achievement in itself. Douglas and I were both surprised how transferable the skills we had learned on the mine were to other situations.
Often when I walked the streets of Surry Hills and Woolloomooloo I looked at men’s faces to see if I might recognise Clancy. But the war changed men’s looks. I wondered if we might once have even been on the same train, the same battlefield, in the same hospital. The world isn’t so small, is it?
Thirty years after the events I’ve described in this arse-about story of my past, in the last month of his life, my father-in-law summoned me to his bedside. He waved the others away. It was me he wished to confide in, for his was not a confession of any guilt, it was one of cheeky glee. My father-in-law told me how, one April night, while taking a leak behind a wood pile in the shadows of the Biles Hotel he noticed the tall figure of Buggery Clout manhandling with his meaty paws a friend of Violet’s named Matilda Sherman. Unseen, he stood and watched. Finally the girl broke free and ran off. Clout’s barking laughter followed her up the path. As the constable took his own turn at the jakes wall, he didn’t notice Tom Kefford emerge from the shadows with his shillelagh or some other such blunt instrument (it was a wood pile) to give him an almighty whack over the bony structure of his noggin. Whacking people with shillelaghs was something Tom had had plenty of practice in back in the old country. The constable fell like a sack of manure off the back of a farmer’s cart.