That Boy, Jack

by Janeen Brian

  I folded my hands across my stomach. I’d just have to get over it.

  But can people get over something like that?

  Da was nine when he was sent to work in the tin mines in Cornwall. His family was poor and needed the money, so Da never saw the inside of a schoolroom again. Instead, he dragged and pushed heavy trolleys full of ore in dark tunnels, day in and day out. His friend Charlie got the terrors underground, but he had to work as well. One day he had a fit and cracked his head on the edge of a trolley.

  Da wasn’t allowed time off to go to his friend’s funeral. That’s why, after he and Mam got married, they came to South Australia – so Da could work in the copper mines in Yorke Peninsula. They wanted us kids to have a better life than they had in Cornwall.

  Sometimes when I got rainwater from the metal tank outside, I thought about my parents setting off on a huge sailing ship, leaving their friends and family behind forever. The tank had once been a container that held some of the goods they brought with them across the world: their wedding china and a handmade quilt, ornaments and blankets.

  I turned this way and that, grimacing at Dorrie’s snoring in the bed across the other side of the room. My little sister and I had shared a room for years – but not, I hoped, for much longer. Da kept saying he’d build on another room. I’d like it if Gilbert came and lived with us and we could share a room.

  When Gilbert and I were six, we’d made the most important decision of our lives. We were going to be miners, like our fathers.

  “But first, we’ll be picky boys at the top of the mines,” Gilbert had said. “We’ll do that as soon we’ve finished school.”

  I’d nodded seriously. “We should spit.”

  So we’d each spat our promise on a stone, rubbed them together and took our separate stones home. Mine was in a tin box under my bed.

  The only dream I remembered that night was the one I had just before I woke.

  I was dressed like a miner, like Da. My trousers were hitched up with bowyangs, or cords, so they wouldn’t get wet in the water that seeped out of the rocks; my boots had brass nails and I was even wearing a papier-mâché helmet, with the candle stuck on the front with a blob of clay.

  But something was wrong. Something told me I shouldn’t be there, in the mines, dressed like that.

  “It’s all right,” I was saying to someone, a miner I didn’t even know. “I’m a miner. It’s all right.”

  Then I woke. I was panting.

  I heard Mam bustling about in the kitchen so I rubbed my eyes, dragged on my clothes and trudged out of the room. I felt as if I hadn’t slept a wink.

  “Morning, Jack. Gertie’s making such a rattle-cum-skit out there; you better milk her quick as you can. And I need more wood before you go to school.”

  “When can I go to school, Mam?” Dorrie appeared at the doorway, twisting her locks of hair that’d been tied up in rag-curls.

  “After the Christmas holidays.”

  Dorrie clapped and said, “I already know my alphabet. But I’m going to write with my proper hand, not like you, Jack.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My friend, Ruthie, told me that her mam says you have to write with your right hand. You don’t.”

  “As if that matters!” I let the door slam. I knew Arthur was awake, so I wouldn’t get told off. I’d heard him crying on and off during the night in Mam and Da’s room.

  I slipped my lunchtime pasty into a cloth bag and set off to the Tree. As I left, I heard Dorrie chanting the letters written on the rest of the pasties. They were our family’s initials. Mam always carved them on the pastry before she baked them. Mine would have JP at one end. “In case it gets lost,” Gilbert had once said with a laugh.

  Where was Gilbert?

  I waited until I couldn’t wait any longer, then I raced to school, just as everyone was taking their seats.

  Gilbert never turned up. Sitting alone felt odd. There was no one to grin at. Or bump elbows with. Or play games with at recess and lunchtime. Samuel and Henry played marbles for a time, while I watched. Then we played a game of chasey around the cottage.

  After lunch, Miss Goldsworthy set Minnie Luxton the job of making a card for Gilbert’s da and we all wrote our names inside.

  “Will you take it to him, please, Jack?” said Miss Goldsworthy.

  I nodded, although I wasn’t sure I wanted to go inside the house again.

  Back home, Mam noticed the card in my hand, even though she was busy rocking a wriggling, squealing Arthur.

  “What’s this then, me handsome?” she said and the way her tired eyes lit up, I wished I had a card for her.

  “It’s for Mr Oates. We made it at school. Our names are in it. I’ll take it over there later.”

  “Oh.” She opened the card with one free hand. “Look, I see your name straightaway, Jack. You have such beautiful, fine writing.”

  “Mmm,” I mumbled. I’d spied a batch of currant buns cooling on the bench by the kitchen window. “Can I have one, Mam?”

  “Yes,” she said, still rocking my little brother. “Just one. And take the plate of pasties to the Oates as well. I hear from others that poor Mr Oates’s legs are not bettering.”

  I wasn’t surprised. Not after what I’d seen.

  The bun was delicious, sweet and filling. After I’d washed it down with a drink from the water jug, I grabbed the plate and the card and headed out.

  I hadn’t gone too far when I heard my name called. It was old Mr Phillips, leaning on his fence, waiting for someone passing by to chat to.

  “Hello,” I shouted. Mr Phillips had lost most of his hearing from working with explosives in the mines. But he loved to read and he gave us all his old newspapers.

  “What you got there, young fella?”

  “Pasties,” I yelled. “For the Oates, ’cos Mr Oates is … his legs …”

  “I know, I know.” The old miner’s eyes rested on the plate. “It be a bad thing, all right. But mining be good, honest work. You’ll find that out soon enough.”

  How did Mr Phillips know I was going to be a miner? Or was he just guessing?

  “I’d better go now, Mr Phillips.”

  “Right. I’ll have some more papers for you soon.”

  I swear there was a spot of dribble on his lower lip.

  “Would you like one of the pasties, Mr Phillips?”

  “Oh, that be kind of you, Jack. Thank’ee.”

  He’d practically wolfed it down before I’d waved goodbye.

  The incident made me smile, but it had faded by the time I reached the Oates’s place.

  At the door, I handed the pasties and card to Lucy.

  “How’s your da?” I said.

  “Worse,” she said. “He’s in terrible pain.” Then she told me that Gilbert wasn’t home.

  “And,” she added, her eyes clouding a little, “he’s been gone for hours. No one knows where he is.”

  Chapter 5

  The next school day passed with no sign of Gilbert.

  Minnie reckoned it was because Gilbert had no boots. Sometimes kids didn’t turn up to school if they’d outgrown theirs. But Gilbert did have boots. They were an old pair of his da’s, stuffed with newspapers to stop blisters.

  I figured he was just needed at home. When I decided I had to see him, it poured. It bucketed down. I couldn’t remember the last time it’d rained like that.

  I was drenched within minutes of leaving school, and arrived home like a bedraggled rat. Mam had already put every available jar, tin and bucket outside to catch whatever water she could. Rain scooted down the shingle roof. Some of it slid down a pipe, into the tank by the wall or seeped into our underground tank.

  The kitchen was warm and the fire in the narrow box grate above the oven glowed orange. Arthur was set down in the empty washing tub, between the door and the kitchen dresser. He had cushions packed around him and a few wooden pegs to play with.

  “Look at you!” exclaimed Mam. “Wet as
a mackerel. But it be good rain, me handsome, and I hope the water lasts us over summer.”

  “I wanted to go to Gilbert’s.”

  “Well, you’ll have to wait till this clears up. Otherwise, you’ll be giving the Oates a plateful of soggy pasties.” She smiled to cheer me up. “Come on then, while Arthur’s giving me a minute’s peace, show me your schoolbooks.”

  That was the last thing I wanted to do. Luckily, Dorrie barged in at that moment, saying her doll, Marianne, was sick and had to have some of Mrs Ellery’s herbal mixture. With a flicker of amusement, Mam rolled her eyes at me, and poured Dorrie a mug of water. Then Arthur began to cry. Which quickly turned into a scream.

  “He can yell, all right,” I said and stuck my fingers in my ears.

  “Straighten the cushions around him, Jack. I still have more pasties to make.”

  I fixed the cushions, but Arthur kept on howling. I sat down beside the kitchen window and stared out miserably.

  “Don’t you dare be wishing it to stop, Jack Pollock,” Mam warned, fixing me a pretend glare. “Remember the time it rained after that long drought? You had to collect water in tins from the wheel ruts in the road. So you let it rain and be thankful.”

  Mam was right, but still …

  “I’m making pasties with two sides,” she said. “Meat one end, quandong jam the other, with a bit of pastry in between.”

  “Hmm,” I murmured, peering through the window at King Mountain. In the rain, it looked blurred like everything else. It wasn’t a real mountain, only the tailings or waste from the mine. However, it was the tallest thing around here, and if I stood on top, I’d be able to see Gilbert’s place. But climbing it was too dangerous, so we’d been warned. “You’d sink out of sight,” Mam had said.

  I turned around and stretched my legs.

  I reckon Mam could make pasties blindfolded. I’d watched her since I’d been able to see over the tabletop. First, she sprinkled flour onto the kitchen table. More was shaken into a bowl and mixed with water. Then she plopped the mixture onto the table. Next, she pulled and pushed the pastry, kneading it this way and that until it was time to use the rolling pin. After rolling the pastry thin, she traced around one of our blue-and-white willow pattern plates to make pastry circles. She filled those circles with vegetables like potatoes, onions and turnips. Sometimes meat as well. Whatever we had. Finally, she crimped the edges together and carved our initials.

  “There,” she said as usual, with an air of satisfaction. “Now what were we going to do next, Jack? Ah, yes. Your schoo–”

  “It’s stopped raining,” I cried with delight. “Now can I go?”

  “Wait. I need a cloth to cover the pasties with.”

  A few more minutes passed by, with Dorrie wandering in and out the back door and Mam looking for a clean cloth.

  “Hurry up,” I muttered furtively under my breath. I hadn’t see Gilbert for days. I had to find out what was going on.

  “There we are,” said Mam at last. “Now I want you to tell Mrs Oates that if she has too much to do, I’ll take in some of her washing as well. You remember that, Jack.”

  “Now can I go?”

  The back door opened. Dorrie stepped in and her moist eyes rose to meet mine.

  “What?” I said slowly.

  “It’s Gertie.”

  “What about Gertie?” I asked.

  “Dorrie?” said Mam, over Arthur’s cries. “What is it?”

  “She’s … run away.”

  “Gertie? You mean Gertie’s run away? Hurry, Jack,” demanded Mam. “You have to find her.”

  “How does Dorrie know she’s gone?” I shouted as the three of us rushed outside.

  I picked up the rope that lay on the ground. “Gertie didn’t take that off by herself, Dorrie!”

  Dorrie quickly glanced away. “She might’ve.”

  “You let her loose! Look there, Mam. See where she’s pushed through the wobbly part of the fence?” I slammed the palm of my hand against my forehead. “She could be anywhere now.”

  “You have to find her, Jack,” said Mam.

  “Dorrie has to find her! I was going to Gilbert’s.” But I knew that, even as I spoke, I had no chance. My skin prickled with anger. “Come on, Dorrie. You look that way and I’ll look over here.”

  Mam strode back to Arthur whose screams could be heard from out the front of the cottage.

  For the next hour, I searched along tracks, behind bushes, in people’s backyards, asking anyone I came across if they’d seen her. No one had.

  She was gone then. I lowered my head into my hands. Now what? I stood in an open plain, King Mountain to my east and the ocean to the west. If she wasn’t anywhere around the cottages, she could’ve dashed towards Moonta. Or headed off into farmland. She’d become just one more feral goat. But she was my pet.

  “Hey!” came a shout. “Is this yours?”

  I looked up. Someone was running from the direction of King Mountain. He had grip of a mud-spattered goat that trotted along as if it was off to a Sunday School picnic.

  I blinked.

  “Gilbert!” I cried in astonishment. “Where did you find her?”

  “Up by the mines.” He grinned broadly.

  I grabbed his arm. “Come back home and tell me everything.”

  Chapter 6

  When I hurried Gertie back to her pen, Dorrie was already home, playing with her doll.

  “So there you are, Gertie,” she yelped happily.

  “You should’ve been looking,” I growled.

  “I did. ’Cept I couldn’t find her and I got tired.”

  I turned to Gilbert and clenched my fingers in a meaningful strangle gesture.

  He tilted his head and nodded.

  After I’d tied Gertie up securely, I said to Gilbert, “Come inside. Mam’s got some figgyhobbin. She’ll give you some.”

  “All right. But I can’t stay long.”

  For a moment, Gilbert’s remark spoiled the excitement of seeing him again.

  Mam’s blue eyes shone. I guessed she was relieved that Gertie had been found and delighted that Gilbert was the hero.

  “Have some figgyhobbin,” she said, offering him a piece of sweet pastry filled with raisins.

  Gilbert and I exchanged knowing glances and then strode off to my room. We both sat on the bed, eating. I waited for Gilbert to start.

  “I dunno,” he said, as if it was all too much. I guessed that he didn’t know where to begin.

  “How’s your da?” I offered.

  He shook his head grimly. “Really bad, Jack. The doctor doesn’t reckon he’ll be back to work for months. Months,” he repeated.

  My mind flew to the tobacco tin on our mantelpiece.

  “What’ll you do? What’ll your mam do?”

  “I dunno.”

  We both sat there, not speaking. I wondered if there was something that Gilbert wasn’t telling me. “So where were you?” I said after a few more minutes of silence. “I came around yesterday and Lucy didn’t know where you were.”

  A shadow flashed across his face. “Oh, that,” he said. “It was awful at home … so I went out for a while.”

  “Where’d you go?” Was it my imagination or was Gilbert stalling? Maybe he went to the old mine shaft.

  “I went to the mines.”

  That made sense. It’d be something to do with his father.

  “I talked to Captain Trelawney,” he continued.

  “Who’s he?”

  A small smile appeared at the corners of Gilbert’s mouth. “He’s the captain of the picky boys, Jack. He’s in charge.”

  “Oh yeah. So?”

  “So. He said I could. Because of Da’s accident. He’s taking me on.”

  What did Gilbert mean?

  “Take you on?” I cried, my voice rising. “What? Are you starting work or something?”

  He nodded as if that was the obvious conclusion.

  I leaped to my feet.

  “But you can’t! You
can’t, Gilbert. We’re going to start together. Both of us.”

  Gilbert’s brows creased.

  “I know. I know we said that. But it’s different now. I’m starting this Monday. But it’s still all right.”

  “No, it’s not. What makes it all right? We made a promise, remember?”

  “Just listen, will you?”

  I blinked rapidly, breathing hard. “Go on then.”

  “Captain Trelawney knows your da–”

  “So do lots of people!”

  “But your da saved the captain’s brother’s life.”

  I reeled. That was news to me. “How?”

  “His brother was in the mine and somehow got too close to a spider, you know, one of the big torches stuck in the rocks to give more light. Anyway, he’d taken off his helmet and his hair caught on fire.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath.

  “Your da was there and saved him from burning to death.”

  I could hear the steady thump of my heart in my chest. My da did that? “I never knew,” I said.

  “Well, now you do.” Gilbert stood. “So, because of that, Captain Trelawney will take you on as well. We can both start work on the picky-table. And we can both earn money.”

  I stood frozen, eyes wide.

  “I knew you’d be pleased,” said Gilbert. “I have to go now. See you later.”

  He didn’t say when and I didn’t ask.

  Chapter 7

  It was hopeless trying to read. Miss Goldsworthy had loaned me a book called Gulliver’s Travels, which I’d been enjoying. It was better than reading newspapers, although newspapers were better than nothing.

  However, that night I kept reading the same sentence over and over.

  Dorrie was talking to her doll and interrupting me. But more disturbing were the thoughts about leaving school and joining Gilbert at the picky-table.

  “Can you be quiet?” I snapped at my sister, wishing once more I had a room to myself. Then I had a pang of guilt. At least I had a bed to myself, unlike Gilbert.