Rush Oh!

by Shirley Barrett

  ‘I see,’ said John Beck. ‘Cure for what, in particular?’

  ‘Cure for rheumatism. You will find him remarkably sprightly when he emerges.’

  John Beck stood there a moment, absorbing this information, while I cast furtive glances at him. He had his shirt unbuttoned and his sleeves rolled up, and his forearms were glistening with whale oil.

  ‘How is it supposed to work exactly, this cure?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘Oh, well, I think it is something to do with the fermenting gases. Or maybe the heat and the oil. Anyway, it is very beneficial, if you have the lumbago. Although sometimes it can require several immersions.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Unfortunately, it can be rather difficult to remove the smell of putrefying whale meat afterwards.’

  ‘From his clothes, do you mean?’

  ‘Oh no, he is not wearing any clothes. If he was, he would have to burn them, for the smell can never be removed.’

  ‘Yet I note he is still wearing his hat?’

  We both turned now to gaze at Uncle Aleck. It did seem an odd choice, superfluous somehow, to wear a hat while immersed bodily in a dead whale, but there you have it, that was Uncle Aleck, standing on his dignity at all times. It seemed he may now have had enough, for he was bellowing to be pulled out. Several of the men hoisted him out (not easily, for the whale’s grisly innards seemed to have a suction-like grip on him) and mercifully covered his scrawny nakedness with a blanket. He waded limply through the shallows, dripping bodily fluids and entrails, with Dan hovering close by lest he collapse. Various whale men stood about at a distance, offering derisive comments and laughing uproariously. Even the normally amiable Bonnie skulked away as he approached, her tail between her legs.

  ‘Would you give me a dance at the ball, Mary?’ asked John Beck, all of a sudden.

  ‘Are you going to the ball?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. Aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ The capture of the black whale had meant that this was now possible; however, our father had not been persuaded to relent on the subject of new dresses. Our fortunes had improved, but not to the extent of moss-green georgette and pink crinkle marocain.

  ‘It’s only that I thought Methodists didn’t approve of dancing,’ I said.

  ‘Ah well,’ he said, making a kind of grimace. ‘Maybe I’m not really a Methodist.’

  I stared at him. What an odd and surprising man he was proving to be. What had been the excuse that he had once proffered for his changeability? That’s right: he was troubled by a kind of restlessness. He was in search of the ‘ungraspable phantom of life’.

  ‘In fact, I can’t be a Methodist,’ he continued. ‘I dance too well to be a Methodist.’

  ‘Are you a Presbyterian or something?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t think so. Do they dance?’

  ‘No. At least, not terribly well.’

  ‘I see. Well. Perhaps I’m just an oarsman in the Number Two boat.’ He looked at me now with a smile. ‘Does that sound all right to you?’

  I nodded, for my mouth had become suddenly tremendously dry so that I was forced to swallow.

  ‘I will be having a bath, so I don’t smell of whale oil,’ he added.

  Again, I nodded, having apparently lost all ability to form words.

  ‘And Mary,’ he said, earnestly, ‘if I was to pretend I’m unconscious, do you think you might feel inclined to kiss me again?’

  To which I responded readily: ‘You will not need to pretend you are unconscious.’

  ‘There, you bantered!’ he said. ‘You see, you are very good at it.’

  He smiled at me then, and a strange, miraculous feeling seemed to overcome me. I watched him ambling back towards the try-works; along the way, he passed Uncle Aleck, who was staggering up towards the house, muttering to himself and clutching his blanket around him. There was a brief exchange between the pair of them, and I remember John Beck threw back his head and laughed, even slapping Uncle Aleck on the back in a good-natured fashion. And remembering how I sat there, potatoes on my lap, my heart bursting with happiness and hope, I realise that all I have achieved in writing this memoir is to reopen a great wound that has taken a very long time to heal over.

  Louisa

  As mentioned in the previous chapter, Louisa had been greatly distressed by the killing of the whale, and vowed to have nothing further to do with any of the whalers, whom she referred to as ‘a pack of murderers’. By all indications, this included Darcy. Certainly they appeared to have no contact with each other – I know, for I made it my business to keep a close eye upon the pair. Louisa kept herself up in the house and only grudgingly assisted in the preparation of the whalers’ meals (which in itself was not unusual), insisting that Dan help me carry down the pots lest one of the ‘murderers’ should affront her by wandering into her field of sight.

  Robert Heffernan came knocking at the back door to ask Louisa if she might give him a dance at the ball, to which she responded bluntly that she would never dance with a whale slaughterer, now or ever. At this, Robert remonstrated that he had only rowed the boat, and not very well at that; she had only to ask Salty, who had called him a ‘bl---y incompetent’. Louisa, however, could not be cajoled. She kept to herself, and spoke little to anyone. Our father she referred to as ‘George Davidson, master murderer’. When he entered a room, she got up and walked out of it.

  For his part, Darcy, normally so full of quips and merriment, now seemed subdued and withdrawn. After several days of having had no sighting of Louisa, he finally asked me if she was sick. ‘No, just bad-tempered,’ I replied, for her mood was becoming tiresome. Also, I thought it unfair that she was so hard on my father, who after all was only trying to provide for his family. I explained to Darcy that she was upset about the whale, and if she kept to her usual form, would likely get over it in a week or so. He seemed to accept this response but, as I say, he seemed subdued. Like Louisa, he kept to himself.

  On about the fifth night after the whale capture, around the same time as John Beck had asked me if I would dance with him, I awoke and realised that the bed beside me was empty. At once, I felt a sickening lurch of my belly; She has done it, I thought, she has run off with Darcy. And as I lay there imagining various awful scenarios, yet too paralysed with dread to get up and go and look for her, I suddenly heard from the front garden the shrill, infuriated cries of Mr Maudry. Only a few short moments later, the door of our room opened softly and Louisa slipped back into bed alongside me. Feigning sleep, I affected to fling an arm out; sure enough, her skin was cool to the touch, which indicated that she had been outside for possibly some time. I realise now, of course, that she was undoubtedly returning from a clandestine rendezvous with Darcy, in which a great many things had been discussed, arrangements put in place and so forth. But so convinced had I been by her act, by her avowal that she would have nothing to do with any whalers, and so preoccupied was I with my own thoughts of John Beck and the upcoming ball, that I chose not to dwell on the possibilities but simply elected to put the whole business out of my mind. It is highly unlikely, I told myself, if not impossible, that she would ever do such a thing. Had she not told me herself that she had simply been joking?

  The next day her mood was greatly improved. She was civil to my father at breakfast; she even braided the younger ones’ hair in the popular fishbone style, and willingly helped me with the usual chores. One incident, however, stands out to me now as significant. We had pulled our cretonne dresses out of the trunk to see what we could do by way of enlivening their appearance for the ball. After some experimentation, we decided that my green floral cretonne could be improved if we trimmed the neckline with a small quantity of lace removed from an old blouse of my mother’s. I also suggested that Louisa’s pink floral cretonne could be brought up to date if we removed the spangled netting from my mother’s good hat and arranged it
in a fashion at the bodice. At first, Louisa had seemed very tempted by the idea, but as she passed the veil netting between her fingertips, she seemed to change her mind. ‘No, it doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Let’s leave it. I don’t mind it as it is.’

  This was most unlike my sister, and in itself ought to have been enough to alarm me.

  ‘Well, then,’ I suggested, ‘you could have the lace trimming, and I could use the spangled netting.’

  ‘No,’ said Louisa promptly. ‘You use the lace as it suits the green cretonne.’

  ‘It will suit your pink cretonne just as well.’

  ‘No, I have made up my mind. You use the lace, and I will wear my pink cretonne just as it is.’

  As I say, this degree of unselfishness was unusual for Louisa. But perhaps, as I reasoned at the time, this was a long-awaited sign of her growing maturity.

  The next night, I feigned sleep in the hope that I might catch her sneaking out on another of her midnight assignations. But instead she fell asleep promptly (I could tell by the rhythm of her breathing) and so I fell asleep also, and the pair of us slept through till morning undisturbed. The night after that, however, I awoke from a deep sleep to find her climbing back into bed. When I questioned her, she responded: ‘What are you blathering on about? I was just using the potty. Go back to sleep.’

  Yet even as I write these words, I am struck by how plainly obvious it all was, and I wonder at myself that I did nothing except vaguely hope that the dark storm clouds that seemed to be gathering might blow away of their own accord. Knowing Louisa as I did, I should have recognised the unlikelihood of this, for she had always been an obstinate, pig-headed girl, determined to have her own way. And perhaps that is the real reason why I did nothing: I knew in my heart that there would be no stopping her.

  The Plain and Fancy Dress Ball

  If you could have seen how pretty our School of Arts looked, its walls festooned with white clematis blossoms and gardenias, so different from its usual sombre municipal self! Immediately I wished that, in matters of costume, Louisa and I had not settled so readily for ‘plain’, for certainly the townsfolk of Eden had embraced the more imaginative option. Everywhere you looked there seemed to be a picturesque tableau. In one corner, Pierrot chatted with a bearded Viking; in another, a Japanese Maid smiled coquettishly behind her fan in the company of a dusky Rajah. Eunice Martin came garbed as a Christmas Lily, draped head to toe in Louisa’s coveted ivory crepe de chine, for which she won the prize for ‘Best-Sustained Character – Lady’. I realise I may seem churlish whenever Eunice Martin wins an unwarranted prize, but many of us considered privately that a more deserving recipient was Elspeth Gilbert, who put together a very humorous interpretation of ‘What Percy Picked Up in the Park’, or indeed Miss Watkins as ‘Bermagui Meat Supplies’, with a chain of lifelike sausages draped about her neck. (Apparently, she was excluded from consideration because it was decided she was more of an Advertisement than a Character – her father is the actual proprietor of Bermagui Meat Supplies – and this was felt to be spoiling the tone of the evening. The Watkins left the ball shortly after the prize-giving, Miss W. in tears.) Mr Strickland Senior practically brought the house down as the Old Witch, chasing after the children with his broomstick and screaming curses (which was not greatly different from his usual behaviour, admittedly), and for this he won ‘Best-Sustained Character – Gentleman’, before passing out quietly in the bushes out the back.

  At least the children had entered into the spirit of things – Violet came as a Housemaid in apron and lace cap and carrying a feather duster, and Annie as ‘Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary’, for which a basket of flowers, a watering can and her customary scowl was all that was required. Harry and Robert Heffernan came as Cricketers, which was not so very clever as they simply wore their cricket whites and leaned about nonchalantly on their bats, as if in the unlikely scenario of waiting for a six to be retrieved from the back of the grandstand. Dan, however, came dressed as the Major of the Artillery, sporting his Salvation Army cap, a painted-on moustache, a riding crop and my father’s spyglass; this combined with the authentic manner in which he sucked on his clay pipe ensured that he won ‘Best Sustained Character – Boy’, much to the Davidson family’s delight.

  After the Grand March and the prize-giving, the dancing began in earnest. Music for the evening was provided by the Powers family on piano, violin, cornet and tambourine, and with Mr Oslington as MC they galloped through a selection of popular dance numbers. Borax powder had been sprinkled liberally on the dance floor, rendering it dangerously slippery in patches, but this did not deter the scores of dancers, of which none were sprightlier than our own Uncle Aleck. Thanks to the whale cure, he was reeling Louisa about the room with the vigour of a man many years his junior.

  ‘I wonder if I should rescue your sister,’ said John Beck, glancing over at them. Louisa certainly looked quite flushed in the face, and had I known what I now know of her condition at the time, perhaps I would have shown a little more sympathy.

  ‘Oh no, she adores it,’ I replied. ‘The faster the waltz the better. She wouldn’t dream of changing partners, not for anything.’

  I was fast to John Beck and not going to cut loose if I could help it. It was true, he danced far too well to be a Methodist; certainly he danced far better than the rest of us. Most of us had been forced to acquire what dancing skills we possessed from intensive study of Mrs Chas. Read’s Australian Ballroom Guide, available for loan from the School of Arts. Louisa and I had struggled at length over the years with her bewildering directions and schematic diagrams, but they simply made no sense no matter which way up you held the book. And yet, in spite of the squabbling she caused at the time, Mrs Chas. Read became one of our greatest sources of family merriment. If ever we read in the newspaper of some wretched soul’s misfortune, we would say, ‘I see how Mrs Chas. Read has got drunk again and gone at her landlady with a carving knife,’ or, ‘I see how Mrs Chas. Read has mixed too much laudanum in her hop beer and been taken to hospital with the nerve trouble’. In our minds, the only possible explanation for her bewildering instructions was that she was either drunk or imbibing opium at the time of writing.

  Like most Edenites, we were reasonably competent in the Spot Waltz, the Jolly Miller and the Progressive Barn Dance, but any attempts to conduct an orderly Quadrille descended into confusion and arguments. People were forever adding new parts half remembered from other dances or leaving out entire sections altogether. John Beck was clearly used to higher standards, for he became somewhat terse on several occasions with those other dancers who stood in his path saying, ‘What’s this bit? Oh! I see! Too late! Should we be –? Oh – sorry! Beg your pardon!’ For the most part, I simply clung to him, and when separated in the Quadrille, I made small skipping steps as best I could in time with the music.

  The Quadrille having finished, John Beck led me over to the refreshment stalls, past Salty and Bastable, all spruced up with their beards combed and their wisps of hair plastered over their scalps, sitting on the bench eyeing us wistfully. They had placed orange blossoms in their buttonholes in an attempt to mask any remnant of whale smell, but the delicate flowers appeared to have wilted.

  Dan had won five shillings as Best-Sustained Character and, filled with largesse, had decided to treat his little sisters to some lollies. Now they held up the queue at the confectionery stall as they contemplated the vast display, seeming to find the choice overwhelming. Violet loved coconut ice, but she equally loved jujubes. Annie could not choose between Turkish delight and chocolate caramels. Dan was becoming irritated and could be heard threatening to withdraw his offer if they did not bl---y hurry up about it. How often one’s attempts to behave generously are thwarted, and so often because of the ungrateful attitude of the intended recipient(s). At the refreshments stall, I found myself faced with a similar, bewildering array of choice. The Persian Princess behind the counter eyed John Beck with i
nterest from behind her spangled veil and why shouldn’t she? John Beck was plainly the handsomest man in the room. Not wishing to dally longer than was necessary, I selected a blackberry cordial; a hasty choice and perhaps not the wisest, as it was found to stain one’s lips and not necessarily in a becoming manner. I was not aware of this until Louisa joined us, having at last broken free from Uncle Aleck.

  ‘What’s the matter with your mouth?’ she asked. ‘Did somebody punch you?’

  Nonetheless, taking the cordial from my hands, she helped herself to it freely, for dancing with Uncle Aleck was thirsty work. Meanwhile, I rubbed at my mouth with a bit of spit on a hankie, until John Beck assured me that the blackberry stain was ‘barely noticeable’.

  ‘We have to do something about Uncle Aleck,’ said Louisa, having sufficiently quenched her thirst (oddly, the blackberry cordial left her lips with merely a delicate blush). ‘He smells abominable. Everyone is starting to notice.’

  ‘Surely he’s harmless enough,’ I said magnanimously. ‘Besides, the whole room smells a little ripe.’

  ‘He smells of fermenting whale gizzards,’ said Louisa. ‘You try it and see how you like it.’

  My time had come, for even as she spoke Uncle Aleck was upon us, tapping at my shoulder. Off I went to face my fate. Robert Heffernan seized the opportunity to approach Louisa once more to ask if she would do him the great honour of accompanying him in the Waltz.

  ‘All right,’ she said grimly.

  ‘Gosh, this floor’s slippery!’ cried Robert as they danced past us. ‘It’s hard to keep on your feet, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ observed Louisa coolly. ‘You’re deliberately trying to step on my feet, are you? I thought it was merely accidental.’

  She made a point of dancing with anyone who asked that night, no doubt in a bid to throw us off the scent. And what else could she do, for she could not dance with Darcy. He sat out the front of the School of Arts with my father and the rest of the whale crew, enjoying the balmy evening and the water views. In fact, a great many of the menfolk of Eden ended up sprawled outside on the grassy slopes. It seems they had secreted their bottles of liquor here and there amongst the bushes.