This Is the Grass

by Alan Marshall

  He was a suspicious man and at first he felt my conversation about such things was a line. He studied me while I talked, valuing my words as a key to myself, not as an offering of information and ideas I hoped would interest him. He was not interested in what I said but in why I said it.

  But I kept on. I needed an audience to keep alive in me things I valued and there was no escape for him. I was missing the company of children, the audience that always gave me an expansion of spirit and a desire to picture the world as they saw it. I knew I could never get their response from Flogger but he listened. For what reason I did not care. It was enough that I was able to express what I wanted to express.

  There came an incident that changed him, and after that he became interested in what I had to say about the bush and about life.

  Two sailors came swaggering up the street. They were young and they were drunk and to hell with everyone. They hailed the girls who passed, taunted the young men who accompanied them. They held on to each other, not only for support—of which they each had need—but because they were drawn together by the strongest of ties, the bond of mutual weakness.

  They were on their way back to the ship where their inflating freedom from responsibility would vanish under the pressure of rules and regulations. The day’s excesses and forebodings were now being dismissed from their minds by a final trumpeting.

  ‘How much are your pies?’ one of them asked Flogger.

  ‘Fourpence,’ said Flogger.

  ‘You know what you can do with them,’ pronounced the sailor with a deliberation he had wrested for display from the wavering, inconclusive shadows of his mind. ‘You can shove ’em.’

  Having thus delivered himself, he released his will to the dictates of the beer he had consumed and he laughed loudly, staggered, then dragged his admiring mate across the street while exclaiming boastfully: ‘I’ll show ’em! I’ll show the world! By hell, I will! Didja hear me? That’s me! Up the lot of ’em! Bloody robbers. . . . Fourpence for a pie! What’s he think he is—the admiral of the bloody fleet or what!’

  Flogger had received the insult apparently unmoved. His face was expressionless, his body still. Then, as comprehension came to him, he turned and looked at me with astonishment in his eyes. He jerked his head round to look at the sailors again and as he watched them weaving their way across the road his jaw tightened and his fists clenched.

  ‘What . . .!’ he began, then he drew a long breath and his body relaxed but he still watched them.

  Opposite the station, on the other side of the street, was another pie-cart owned by a man with whom Flogger was friendly though he regarded him as a ‘sissy sort of bastard’. I gathered that Flogger based this estimate on the fact that he polished his pony’s harness and the brass bands round the pie-cart oven. He also wiped the trickling lines of sauce from the bottle each time it was used. According to Flogger this kind of behaviour revealed a man who couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag.

  The sailors were now questioning him about the price of his pies. Their reaction to his reply made him step back hurriedly, proof of Flogger’s analysis of his character. It angered Flogger but encouraged the sailors, who began thrusting their faces close to the pie-man’s while they told him at length what he could do with his pies.

  He looked across the street towards Flogger, his face pale and disembodied against a background of darkness. It was an appeal for guidance. Flogger snatched off his apron, flung it on to the pie-cart and strode across the road. I followed close behind him.

  Though the sailors must have had some misgivings at the resolute manner of his approach they did not show it but greeted him with jeers and laughter.

  ‘Go back to your horse-meat, Dad,’ cried one of them, a tall, thin youth who always turned to his companion whenever he demonstrated his wit, seeking the look of admiration upon which he fed and which rendered his mate so necessary to him.

  Flogger, as he came close to him, adopted the fighting stance made familiar to thousands of stadium patrons over the years. He stood erect, his head back, his raised arms close to his body, his fists poised—like a bare-knuckle fighter in an old-fashioned print.

  At this evidence of imminent violence the tall sailor became enraged. He danced back in a crouch, both arms curved out each side of him like reapers. He swayed from side to side as if, even then, he was dodging blows. His feet skipped to and fro. He was demonstrating his image of a great boxer about to win a championship, correcting and altering the position of his arms and legs and head as the image became clearer in his mind.

  All his movements were caricatures of grace and skill. He made no attempt to close with Flogger. These moments were too precious, the demonstration too great a stimulation to courage to extinguish them in a bloody clash of fists.

  He circled Flogger like a sheep-dog working wide. His mate walked round with him shouting words of encouragement. Flogger pivoted to face him but he suddenly became impatient and moved swiftly to within the circle of the sailor’s flailing arms. His powerful arms moved like pistons in short, savage blows to the sailor’s ribs and belly.

  The sailor curved into a question-mark of homage. His mouth dropped open and his face took on the expression of one seized by violent pains in the stomach.

  His mate, appalled by the sight, flung himself at Flogger, who had lowered his hands, and hit him such a mighty blow on the chest that Flogger staggered back towards the pie-cart pony. His heel caught against a projection on the road and he fell backwards. His head struck the animal’s side and he slipped down between its legs.

  The pony reared, then pranced in fear. One of its iron-shod hooves glanced off Flogger’s head, lifting a triangle of skin and hair from the top of his forehead. As he rolled clear, blood was beginning to run down his face.

  The pie-cart man, afraid of the turn things had taken and wishing to get rid of the people beginning to collect round the cart, shouted: ‘Coppers!’

  The crowd scattered. The two sailors ran up Flinders Street and in a minute only three of us were left.

  Flogger sat on the kerb, his head on his hands. I bent over him and pushed the puckered skin back into place. I then took my handkerchief, folded it into a triangle and bound his head.

  I sat beside him and said: ‘What do you think we should do? Do you reckon you ought to see a doctor?’ The blood had soaked through the handkerchief and he looked worse than he was.

  ‘No,’ he said scornfully. ‘It’s not cut deep, is it?

  ‘The pony’s shoe scraped the skin back,’ I said. ‘It’s not a cut, it’s a graze. I think you should have something on it though.’

  ‘I’ll fix it when I get home,’ he said, rising to his feet.

  For a few minutes he discussed the fight with the pie-man he had helped, then we went back to the cart. He went home early that night.

  He greeted me warmly when I arrived at the pie-cart the following evening.

  ‘I brought you back your handkerchief,’ he said, going to the side of his cart where, washed, ironed and neatly folded, the handkerchief, wrapped in a piece of newspaper, lay amongst the bread rolls.

  He handed it to me, then went round to the front of the cart and brought back a cardboard shoe-box.

  ‘I know you are fond of animals,’ he said, ‘so I bought you a tortoise.’

  I opened the lid and, inside, a Murray River tortoise quickly withdrew its head beneath its shell.

  A week later he gave me a fowl. ‘I know you are fond of birds,’ he said.

  4

  In the pie-cart days, as I came to call them, I worked in a number of temporary jobs. I had an accountant’s qualifications and in the mounting prosperity of the mid-twenties work became easier to get.

  I could not get a permanent job. I was taken on in various offices to tide firms over a rush or to do special book-keeping work that the permanent staff had allowed to accumulate.

  My first city job at Smog & Burns had hardened me. It conditioned me to expect work only f
rom those who sensed I would work harder to hold the job than healthy men who had no experience of unemployment. The employers who reasoned in this way were quite ruthless. There might be some advantages in employing a cripple on a temporary job. They would give me a trial.

  These jobs had no future but I was receiving full wages and I managed to save enough to buy myself some clothes. I could go to the pictures once a week. I could ride on trams whenever I liked.

  During the year I worked at Smog & Burns I found great difficulty in keeping myself. Every penny I earned was important. Before taking a tram I had to consider whether I could afford it; a stick of shaving-soap was a luxury; toothpaste, quite beyond my means.

  All the money I possessed was in my pocket. I counted it frequently. I worked out on paper the expenses of the days ahead before I would get some more. If I had threepence in my pocket at the end of the week the problem of the next week did not seem so bad.

  But sustaining me during this period was Mrs Smalpeck’s promise that, after a year’s work, she would pay me the wages to which I was entitled. The day upon which this promise would be fulfilled moved towards me like a light, a light that grew gradually brighter as the distance between us lessened.

  But more important than the extra money available to me by a rise in wages would be the lifting of a sense of inferiority. My weekly pay, representing half the wages of a healthy man, was a constant reminder of my difference, of my low position in the scale used by employers to value the services of a man. To reach wage-equality with other clerks would mark a tremendous advance to me. It would take from me a sense of failure that could be removed in no other way.

  When I completed my year I waited for Mrs Smalpeck to announce my increase in pay. I had no doubt she would do so. I still regarded the business world as governed by the same rules prevailing in the relationship between friends. A promise was binding.

  Mr Slade, the manager, had often complimented me upon my work. I knew he had informed Mrs Smalpeck I was doing a good job and I saw myself shaking hands with her as she announced the rise and congratulated me on my year’s work.

  The weeks passed by but she showed no sign of keeping her promise. To remind her of the arrangement between us would be most humiliating to me. I felt it degraded a man to be forced to ask for what he was entitled to. I kept putting it off, hoping she would suddenly remember.

  At last an opportunity came to mention it to her. She had paused behind my stool, looking over my shoulder at the ledger in which I was making entries. She asked me some questions about a customer who was behind in his payments and I explained to her that I had written to him.

  She was about to leave but I turned and said: ‘Do you know I have been working here for over a year, Mrs Smalpeck? You remember when you first put me on you promised me full wages after I had worked for you for a year. I know you must have forgotten so I thought I would remind you.’

  As she listened to me, a slow implacable change was taking place within her. The tranquillity that had been hers when first she spoke to me fled almost at my first words. An expanding emotion flushed her face and quickened her breath and my voice began to trail away as I felt its presence. When I finished she did not speak for a moment but stood looking down at me, seeking words to express the turbulent clamour within her.

  ‘I took you on because I pitied you,’ she said with suppressed rage, ‘and this is the thanks I get. You are very lucky to be working at all. It is ridiculous for you to imagine you are worth as much as a strong, healthy man.’ She straightened herself, thrusting her temper back, and continued with an even, contemptuous voice: ‘Naturally, in another year or so I will give you more, but certainly not now when so many able-bodied clerks are looking for work.’

  I had no reply to her outburst. Its unexpectedness found me quite unprepared. I sat there looking at the floor and she went away.

  In a few minutes I felt a great anger. Scathing remarks I should have made to her paraded before my mind one after another. They gave a lift to my pride but not a victory. To remain defeated in this first test would prepare the way for a succession of defeats. I was determined not to take it.

  I rang up the Department of Labour and asked them to send one of their officers down to Smog & Burns to inspect the wages book. He was down within an hour. I watched him speaking to Mr Slade on the floor of the warehouse. He was a thin man with glasses and he listened to what Mr Slade had to say to him with attention but without interest. His work involved facing conversation designed to divert him from the purpose of his visit and he had acquired an attitude that rendered it futile.

  Mr Slade, looking worried, brought him into the office. He introduced us, then informed me: ‘Mr Scoreswell is an inspector from the Department of Labour. He wishes to look at the wages book.’ With that Mr Slade hurried down to Mrs Smalpeck’s office to tell her of the inspector’s visit. In a few minutes she was standing near me, filling the office with her presence, introducing a tense expectancy that suggested the imminence of an angry outburst.

  But I was not afraid of her now. The knowledge that in a few minutes I would be free had taken from her the power to humble me.

  Mr Scoreswell turned from the wages book and addressed me: ‘You are not being paid the correct wages, Mr Marshall?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  Mrs Smalpeck began an explanation but he raised his hand to silence her.

  ‘Just a minute.’

  He made some calculations on a piece of paper, then turned to her. ‘Do you know this man is being underpaid?’ he asked. ‘He has been underpaid for more than a year.’

  ‘He’s a cripple,’ she snapped at him in a tone that made the word an insult.

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with it,’ said the inspector angrily. ‘He’s entitled to the same wages as any other man. You owe him eighty-seven pounds back pay. If you give him the cheque now I will O.K. the wages book; if not we’ll have to proceed against you.’

  Mrs Smalpeck was having difficulty in controlling a desire to shout at him. To be forced to pay me such a large amount under such conditions was almost more than she could bear. But the business-woman in her was stronger than the woman of emotion. It was this woman whose name often featured in the social notes of the newspapers and her reputation as a charitable person must not be endangered. Capitulation was sometimes necessary.

  She wrote me out a cheque with quick, incisive strokes of the pen, then handed it to me with a peremptory flick that made my taking it an act of obedience.

  With the gesture she announced the verdict. ‘You’re sacked,’ she said harshly and in the words she saved her pride and gained her victory.

  I made no comment. I took my hat from the hook behind the door and left with Mr Scoreswell who said, when we were going down in the lift: ‘You’re lucky to be rid of her.’

  We shook hands with each other when we parted on the street.

  I stayed in the city that afternoon. Boarding-houses during working hours were objectionable to me. Empty of the people who justified their existence, they exuded an atmosphere of complete negation. The deserted dining-room, the silent piano, the empty table—these would greet me if I returned home.

  And in my own room in which I would be sitting . . . The bed that late at night suggested comfort and rest was, in the light of day, a bunk in a prison cell. The room was only bearable when lit by electric light.

  I decided to spend the rest of the day in the city. I had tea at a café. The bill was five shillings, a most extravagant meal. Before giving my order I studied the menu, then ordered the most expensive dishes. I bought a packet of tobacco and some papers and rolled thick cigarettes while looking benignly round at the people occupying the tables.

  I stubbed my cigarette when it was three-quarters smoked, but when I left the café I took the butt from the ash-tray and put it in my pocket. I would allow myself a temporary madness, but I must still retain some sense of reality. This moment of complete security would not last.

>   While working on the temporary jobs I obtained over the next few months I made use of my pie-cart notes to write a short story about Flogger which I called ‘Retribution’. I thought it a good story but at this stage I tended to write naturalistically and it was not convincing. I had not yet learned to see the truth behind the sordid scenes I depicted.

  I sent the story to the Bulletin and in a few weeks I got their reaction in the ‘Answers to Correspondents’ column: ‘Crude, but strong. Keep at it.’

  That week-end at Warpoon was a triumphant one. The family hailed the wording of this rejection as if the story had appeared in print. It was an official encouragement, proof that I was on the way. I carried the cutting round in my pocket and often looked at it.

  I took the story down to the pie-cart to read it to Flogger but to my astonishment I found Gunner Harris wearing the white apron and standing in front of the fire. He watched my approach with a grin on his face. He had teeth now. They were large and white and guarded his mouth like a fence.

  ‘God speed the crows if it’s not Strangler Lewis himself!’ he cried as I mounted the kerb. ‘Put it there.’ He held out his hand and I took it. ‘Chokin’ anybody lately?’ he asked, then doubled forward laughing.

  He disconcerted me. I could not reply to his facetiousness.

  ‘What’s happened to Flogger?’ I asked him.

  ‘He’s got the flu bad. I’ve taken over for a few days. How ya goin’, anyway? Flogger tells me you hang round here a lot.’

  ‘I come down here most nights but I never seem to strike you. You haven’t altered much.’

  ‘Why should I? I’m on top.’

  ‘Did you stop at the pub long after I left?’

  Gunner gave an exclamation of contempt: ‘That bloody dump. No, I snatched it. I been selling pies at shows an’ that. She was a great life at the pub while she lasted though, wasn’t she? They kicked old Shep out. What a bloody old crawler he was! He’d look up into your face like a hungry dog when he wanted a drink. I always remember that about him.’