Rush Oh!

by Shirley Barrett

  ‘Oh! I’m sorry!’ I said, pulling back.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said John Beck, somewhat dazedly.

  ‘I hope you don’t think I was taking advantage of your – of your susceptibility.’

  ‘Oh. Well, I suppose you were a little.’

  ‘Only in that I thought you were deeply unconscious. I do apologise.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right.’

  ‘Are you feeling better?’

  ‘Yes. Considerably.’

  ‘Does your head hurt?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘I will fetch you some supper then.’

  Only then did I realise that I was still clutching on to his hand, so I released it and hurried towards the door, astonished at my own actions. Had I been taking advantage of him? Perhaps I had. Certainly, I had resolved to buffet him with temptation, but was it appropriate to buffet a person when he had recently been stupefied by a whale? The truth is, the compulsion to kiss him had simply overwhelmed me; I had not considered it, I had simply done it, as if driven by forces I was powerless to fight.

  Reaching the doorway, I stopped and turned to him. ‘I hope you do not think I am like those ladies who pressed themselves up against you in the sacristy,’ I said.

  He stared at me for a moment as if confused, then waved his hand wanly. ‘This talk of the ladies in the sacristy, that was Uncle Aleck’s invention – I would not put too much store in it,’ he replied.

  I had no sooner stepped out of the room, closing the door behind me, when my father materialised.

  ‘How is he, Mary?’ he enquired.

  ‘He is feeling better and about to take some nourishment,’ I responded, thankful that it was dark and my father could not see the colour in my cheeks.

  ‘You go and see to it then, girl,’ said my father. ‘I am going in to talk to him.’ And knocking lightly on the door, he entered.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ he said to John Beck. ‘Is it all right if I have a quiet word?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said John Beck.

  My father sat and gazed down at his battle-scarred hands. Nervously, he rubbed the stump of his right index finger which Tom had famously crushed between his teeth – a habit of his when worried. (That is to say, it was my father’s habit when worried – not Tom’s habit. That is, it was not Tom’s habit to crush someone’s finger when worried. I think he had merely been irritable.)

  ‘You’re feeling better, I hope?’ he said, after a moment.

  ‘Much better, thank you, sir.’

  ‘Mary has been looking after you?’

  ‘She is a tonic for any invalid, sir.’

  (To be honest, I am not entirely sure if these were their exact words – I am reconstructing this conversation from an account given to me later by John Beck, and he supplied only the basic details.)

  My father nodded absently. It was clear that he was preoccupied with weightier matters.

  ‘Father, the men have just about had enough, and I don’t blame them. I’ve asked them if they’ll at least see the season through to the end of November. I don’t know how you feel about this, given you’ve just copped the flukes in the old noggin.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll see the season out, sir. No question at all.’

  ‘Well, Father, I appreciate it. I can’t promise anything, of course, but we’ll . . . we’ll do our best.’

  John Beck nodded. A short pause ensued.

  ‘Father, just on another note altogether, some of the men have asked if you would kindly stop with the hymns and the saying of grace and what-have-you. It doesn’t sit right with them somehow.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘As I say, it’s the men, Father, not me. If I had my way, you’d be singing hymns till the cows came home.’

  ‘Think no more of it,’ said John Beck. ‘I understand completely.’ A silence. ‘Do you mean a suspension to the Sunday services?’

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind, Father.’

  ‘Of course not. Whatever you think best.’

  My father stared down at his hands again. It seemed he might be working up to ask something else.

  ‘Father,’ he said finally, ‘I wonder if we might pray for a whale, just the two of us?’

  ‘Why, of course.’

  ‘For a good-sized whale, Father, preferably a southern right. I’m fairly desperate, Father, or I would not be bothering you, on your sickbed and all.’

  ‘It is no trouble,’ said John Beck, and my father immediately lowered himself to his knees. Yet for some reason, John Beck seemed to hesitate. ‘I am happy to do what I can, of course, but there is something I feel you should know,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that, Father?’

  ‘Well, I must be honest with you. I was never really a proper Methodist minister.’

  ‘Ah,’ said my father, and he was silent for a moment. ‘Not ordained as such?’

  ‘Not ordained, that’s right,’ said John Beck. ‘In fact, the truth is that I borrowed the papers of an actual Methodist minister who had the misfortune to expire on the passage over, so you see . . .' Here he trailed off.

  ‘Did you say you borrowed them?’

  ‘Yes. Well . . . I suppose it could be argued that I stole them.’

  ‘The gentleman had expired, you say?’

  ‘Yes. The truth is, he fell overboard in mysterious circumstances.’

  ‘I see,’ said my father. ‘That does cast a different light on things.’

  ‘Yes, it does, sir. I’m sorry.’

  My father said nothing. He simply gave a deep sigh, as if this just about capped things off. He had pinned all his hopes on John Beck’s celestial connections, and now he found these hopes extinguished. His shoulders slumped; his whole physical demeanour seemed to speak of unendurable weariness and despondency.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ said John Beck, who had been studying my father with some concern, ‘it is said that God hears us all in our hour of need. You and I are as much entitled to pray for a whale as the Archbishop of Canterbury himself.’

  My father looked up at him hopefully.

  ‘A large southern right, if you would then, Father,’ he said. ‘And long in the whalebone preferably.’

  Later that night, my father, Uncle Aleck and Dan sat outside on the verandah together. Nobody spoke; the men simply sat in sombre reflection, smoking their pipes. Dan briefly wondered if the events of the day were such that he might pull out his own pipe without provoking an incident, but better sense prevailed and his pipe remained concealed in his pocket. After ten minutes or so, however, Dan began to grow fidgety. He started breaking a stick into smaller and smaller pieces; snap, snap, snap! This got on my father’s nerves, and eventually he asked Dan to desist. That was when Dan finally decided he must speak.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Yes, son?’

  ‘Now that you are a man short, can I go out, do you think?’

  ‘Go out?’

  ‘In the whaleboat, I mean.’

  My father turned to survey him then, his face set grim as granite.

  ‘How old are you now?’ asked my father.

  ‘Thirteen. Or at least, I will be thirteen in December.’

  ‘Can you row hard?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I can,’ said young Dan. ‘And I was only thinking, since you’re a man short . . .' My father gazed at him a long moment and sucked on his pipe.

  ‘Well, Uncle, what do you think about it?’ he said finally, turning to Uncle Aleck.

  Uncle Aleck shook his head. ‘It’s a dangerous business.’

  ‘That it is,’ said my father. ‘His mother would never forgive me. A boy of twelve in a whaleboat.’

  ‘I was eleven when I started,’ said Uncle Aleck. ‘And I rowed as har
d as three men.’

  My father nodded. The age at which Uncle Aleck started whaling was a variable thing, but it was consistent in the fact that it was always younger than anybody else’s.

  ‘I will row as hard as six men,’ averred Dan.

  ‘D’you know what it is to stare down a whale?’ asked Uncle Aleck. ‘For you must stare down a whale, or they will try to get the better of you.’

  ‘I’m a good starer,’ said Dan. ‘I can stare down any whale.’

  ‘And how do you calm a whale when he’s angry? D’you know that?’

  ‘Sing to him,’ said Dan, for he knew all Uncle Aleck’s stories as he’d heard them a thousand times.

  ‘Sing to him? What would you sing to him? Just any old song that comes into your head?’

  ‘I would sing to him, “The Trees They Do Grow High”.’

  ‘Yes, and why?’

  ‘It will make the whale cry, and he’ll stop his thrashing.’

  ‘He’ll do,’ said Uncle Aleck, turning to my father.

  And the saddest part of this whole story is that Dan himself died young, just like the bonny boy in the song, not in a whaleboat but at Pozières, France, sometime around the 26th August, 1916.

  Having Gone to be Wasted in Battle

  Suffice to say, in writing what was supposed to be a straightforward account of the whaling season of 1908, I did not intend to be sidetracked by the vagaries of fortune that affected our family as they affect all families. Thus I had not supposed I would dwell upon what happened to Dan any more than I had dwelled upon the loss of our mother. So I was taken aback at the way in which my recounting of that conversation on the verandah in the previous chapter affected me, for it brought my progress with this memoir to a standstill; I found myself tearful and downhearted and had no inclination to return to these or any memories for a period of some weeks. Only now do I feel myself sufficiently strong enough to sit at the typewriter again.

  Of course, there is something deeply poignant in a small boy asking the older men if he can join them in doing battle, particularly as for me it brought to mind so many of Dan’s qualities: his pluck, his earnest enthusiasm, his eagerness to grow up. But in fact, more than this, I found I was affected by the reference to the song itself. ‘The Trees They Do Grow High’ was an old song that Uncle Aleck used to sing to us, always with a show of great reluctance and only after the most prolonged pleadings on our part. ‘Don’t make me sing it for it will only set you to bawling,’ he would say, and we would promise that this time we would somehow manage to retain our composure. But of course the power of the song was such that it would inevitably send us flung across our beds and weeping.

  ‘The trees they grow high,

  The leaves they do grow green

  Many is the time my true love I have seen

  Many an hour I have watched him all alone

  He’s young,

  but he’s daily growing.’

  Uncle Aleck had a thin reedy voice which warbled in a wayward fashion on the high notes, and yet it was capable of making one’s heart lurch with sorrow.

  ‘At the age of fifteen, he was a married man

  At the age of sixteen, the father of a son

  At the age of eighteen, the grass grew over him,

  Having gone to be wasted in battle.’

  I suppose it is a song about life’s hopes dashed, and perhaps that is why it affected us so; as a whaling family, we were familiar with disappointment. And yet I still cannot fully account for the seemingly prescient grief that afflicted us all upon hearing it. For Dan was amongst us then, and as affected by the song as any of us.

  When Sergeant Piesley came to Eden to encourage the local lads to enlist, Dan volunteered immediately along with his best mate, Charlie Oslington, and several other lads from the cricket club. It was hardly surprising. As a very small boy, when the Salvation Army missionaries had visited to minister to our Aboriginal whale crew, Dan had been fiercely attracted to the military appearance of their uniforms and had readily joined up, that he might bang his kettle and pipe in his boyish voice:

  ‘Thousands of children Jesus has saved

  Making them pure and holy

  Teaching them how to fight and be brave

  In the Salvation Army!’

  I remember Dan came galloping home on Trinket (Two Socks had passed away by then) with the news that he would be embarking within two weeks. This came as a terrible blow for my father. I suppose he had hoped that Dan’s poor eyesight would prevent him from being accepted; it was right at the beginning of the whale season of 1915, and our father could not easily spare him from the whaleboats. A farewell social for the boys was hastily organised at the School of Arts, decked out with flags for the occasion, and the fathers of each young man took turns in speaking. Mr Oslington said he knew nothing but good of all the boys, and he felt certain there was not a one that would shirk when hostilities got thick. Mr Walsh said he had played cricket with each of them and found them to be true sports. Mr Strickland drew comparisons between whaling and warfare, both starting with the letter W, and went on to liken the humpback with the Hun, my father to Lord Kitchener and Tom the Killer whale to General Douglas Haig. Then Mr English got up and said he felt like the man sitting down to dinner after the turkey had all been served, for there was very little left for him to say. He then went on to expound at length on the theme that the single man had no more duty to go and fight than the married one, and if this war continued, then he would certainly offer his services if he could only pass the medical test. (This produced laughter, for Mr English had only one leg, the other having been crushed by a tree while timber-felling.) It was my father’s turn to speak then and he walked in a determined fashion to the stage, but when he turned to gaze upon the five boys all standing there beneath the Union Jack, his lower jaw began to tremble violently.

  ‘I wish you all a speedy and safe return –' was all he could manage to get out, for helpless tears began to slide down his face. The gathered families and townsfolk stared in dismay; there stood Fearless Davidson, leviathan-killer, weeping into his handkerchief whilst the other fathers patted his back and nodded grimly. Dan himself simply seemed embarrassed. He shifted on his feet and joked about with the fellows next to him while all this was going on.

  Sergeant Piesley leapt up then, obviously anxious that the paternal anguish not spread to the room at large, and told the lads in a loud cheerful voice that there was nothing in the world to worry about if they would just heed this one piece of advice from an old soldier, and that was never to become separated from their greatcoat and rifle. The band launched into ‘God Save the King’, light refreshments were served and a whip-around conducted, with the proceeds of ten pounds three shillings being divided up between the five boys.

  Less than a week later, they embarked from Tathra wharf for Sydney. It was a dismal, drizzling day with a bitter wind; we huddled under those umbrellas that had not yet been ripped inside out. Dan was tense and distracted and did not want to linger much in saying goodbye. Also, he had a sweetheart at the wharf, a freckled lass from Lochiel, of whom we had hitherto known nothing. He took her aside, and there was much fervent whispering between them while the family was left to stand about awkwardly. When the ship moved away from the wharf, the girl cried more than anyone.

  ‘God, she is certainly bunging it on,’ said Annie.

  And yet if we had realised that the offhand wave he had given us from the gangplank was the last we were ever to see of him, we would have howled like babies.

  After we learned that Dan was missing in action, the girl came to visit us. (I realise I have completely forgotten her name, but I think it was something like Maud or Maeve.) She said little and refused any refreshments, implying by her manner that she was surprised we could think of such things given the circumstances. Only after much encouragement did she tell us that she and Dan had met
at the Convent School Ball only three weeks before he embarked, at which occasion they had shared a piece of jam sponge ‘as light as air’. She asked us if Dan had ever mentioned her in his letters, and we had to answer truthfully that he had not. She blushed angrily then, and told us Dan had always said we would try to keep them apart, for she was a Roman Catholic. We told her this was not the case; we had simply been unaware of her existence until her sudden appearance at Tathra wharf. She became upset and left abruptly. I felt bad about it. I imagine she had been fondly nursing the hope that Dan had spoken of her incessantly, a hope we had casually quashed. Looking back, I wish that we had not been so truthful, and simply invented something. All she had to remember her sweetheart by was a shared piece of jam sponge, ‘as light as air’. That was not much to keep you going.

  The last missive we had from Dan was this postcard:

  ‘Hello All, well, I hope the whales will soon be visiting, say hello to Tom and all the gang for me. London is a fine city but not a patch on good old Eden. There is nothing of interest to tell you so I will ring off, yr affectionite Dan.’

  It is undated, but the very fact that he is even talking about whales makes me think it might have been written in early June. In August we heard that he had been wounded. Then we heard nothing whatsoever till the following January, when Reverend Forbes came to visit us, bearing the following cable:

  ‘Officially reported that No. 2460 Pte. D. Davidson, 21st Batt, previously reported wounded and missing, is now reported killed in action between 24 August and 26 August, 1916. Please inform Mr. G. Davidson, Eden, and convey deep regret of their Majesties, the King and Queen, and the Commonwealth Govt., in the loss that he and the army have sustained by the death of this soldier.’