by Ron Elliott
‘I don’t know.’
‘But we had a train crash and there was fire and hurt cattle?’
David waited. His uncle wasn’t smiling. He still had his eyes closed. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, that must mean I scared off Mrs Miller then eh.’
David didn’t answer, but he did smile just a little.
‘But not you.’
‘You said things about Ernie—my dad.’
‘Naw, couldn’t have. Wasn’t there.’
‘Where?’
‘Where he was. Forget it. That’s the best bet. Forget everything. The only way.’
His uncle lay there eyes still closed. David waited with him, intending to go out and watch the fire again, but he fell asleep.
In the morning, his uncle begged for brandy, and pushed some money at David.
David was hungry. Always hungry. He hoped there’d be a breakfast sitting. The train was still. No rocking. No click click click. There seemed less voices too. David hoped that Jack Tanner would be out looking over the wreck or still sleeping, from a long hard night of fire fighting and rescuing, but there he was in his spot at the first table of the buffet car, sitting in the seat, with his jacket off, his derby gone, and his face smudged in soot. He looked up to see David looking at him through the glass.
David opened the buffet door, and said, ‘I have to get brandy for my uncle.’ David hoped his voice sounded fearless.
‘No one’s stopping you, lad,’ said Tanner. He looked down at his breakfast and speared some bacon.
David found a man in the bar car and explained about his uncle and was given a bottle of brandy in a paper bag. He took it back without looking at Tanner. Then he returned to the buffet car, going past Jack Tanner again without even looking at him. He went to a table at the other end of the car and asked a man in white who wasn’t the Italian man for breakfast. When David asked for another breakfast, the man said, ‘Certainly, sir.’ David ate that too.
After that, David came and went whenever he wanted, and he and Jack Tanner began to nod to each other. Sometimes Tanner would say, ‘Morning.’ And David would reply the same. And it went like that: ‘Afternoon. Evening. Night.’ There was no more glaring.
Apart from going for food, David stayed back with his Uncle Mike, who nursed the brandy, and ate a little himself. He eventually changed out of the stiff bloody clothes when the flies came. He was like a man who had the flu and was waiting to feel better.
David asked him questions, and sometimes he answered them.
‘How did you hurt your foot?’
‘In the war.’
‘Why do people see it and call you names?’
‘Because, when some men couldn’t take it any more, they took their .303s and aimed it at their toe and shot it off. Then they were injured, so they were allowed to go home. So, after a while the officers caught on and they thought a foot wound was a bit suspect. Some men called it a coward’s ticket.’
After thinking about his uncle’s answer for quite some time, David asked, ‘How did yours happen?’
‘What do you reckon?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Then I won’t tell you.’
‘I reckon you didn’t do it that way.’
‘You’re just saying that, to see what I’ll say.’
David lost track of time, one day often blending into another, and some seeming to disappear altogether. A bridge had been washed out hundreds of miles ahead so they couldn’t be transferred on. Other trains from Perth were being held at Kalgoorlie until things were sorted here. They were stuck in between. They would be spending Christmas in the middle of the desert in the middle of Australia.
The track was being cleared, and repairs were being made where the dynamite had blown a hole in the tracks. Everyone explained that they were lucky only one box had blown and they’d got the rest out, or who knew what would have been left of any of them. They ate a lot of beef in those first days, but had to bury the rest because of the stink. It was always hot and people tried to stay in the carriages. Mostly they got drunk.
David’s finger turned blue and green, then black, but he still couldn’t wriggle it.
Then it was Christmas Day, and they had roast for lunch and pudding which was brought in by a fixing crew on a little hand-pedalled rail car. There was a tree and people sang carols around a camp fire made of broken carriages. The days were searing and the nights freezing.
David’s grandad didn’t make much of a fuss about Christmas back on the farm. He said he’d lost the habit of it once David’s mum was no longer organising. Besides, the farm jobs weren’t going to take the time off.
David borrowed a knife from the train kitchen and made his uncle a letter opener out of some of the wood planking from the blown up dynamite wagon. He sharpened it on a huge flat rock back near the guard van. It had taken some time as he’d only had the use of one hand. His finger was being slow to get better. He’d keep forgetting to protect it and go and grab the rail to get back onto the train or catch it in his jacket and start it hurting all over.
Uncle Mike took the present out of the paper bag and looked at it suspiciously.
‘It’s a letter opener,’ David explained.
‘Christmas, eh? Well, blow me down. I’ll have to owe you the gold, frankincense and myrrh, King David. Just have to settle for the merde.’
Michael lay back down on the bed.
‘Tell me about my dad.’
There was a long silence. Finally, Michael said, ‘He was a bloody hero. True believer. Not a bad cricketer. A prince and a golden boy who everyone loved. Even more so when he died.’
‘Why don’t you like him?’
‘Maybe I’m jealous.’
‘You didn’t like him?’
‘Maybe I loved him. Maybe I didn’t think about it.’
‘Tell me something about him.’
‘I have.’
‘Something I don’t know.’
‘When he was young, he was so smart, he got a scholarship to a private school with ivy growing up the walls, and he was a house captain.’
David thought about that for a long time, imagining his father in that kind of school, like the ones in books about England.
On the day after Christmas, the train people came and took their luggage and moved everyone to a new train on the other side of the accident. It was like the train they’d been on, but had clean water and fresh salad and breezes that blew the flies and stink of other people away. They were on their way to Adelaide again.
‘Did you know my mother?’
Michael lay most of the day in his new bed in the new train, as if they were still trapped in the desert. Sometimes, he’d answer David’s questions. ‘Most beautiful woman I ever saw in my life. From another world, Aphrodite, come to visit. For such a short time.’
‘Who’s Aphrodite?’
‘A goddess from Ancient Greek myth.’
‘Why don’t you like her?’
‘Who says that?’
‘You’re making jokes.’
‘She liked jokes. She liked laughing. She had long fingers. Not as long as yours. But long, and they helped her play the piano. She played all the happy songs. She would have loved this jazz music they got now. She must have been dropped from the gods, or how else could your grandfather have ended up with her?’
‘Don’t say anything about Grandad.’
His uncle didn’t. Just lay there like he was never going to move.
‘Did you like my mother?’
‘No more questions. I’m sick of it. Truth is tawdry.’
He wasn’t sleeping, David knew. He was drunk and it made him like an old dog, lying in the sun, not asleep but not awake either. He just lay there, like he was never going to move.
CHAPTER NINE
Hours before the train was due to arrive in Adelaide, Michael sat up in his bunk, put his feet on the floor and stretched his neck, rolling his head around one way, then the other. Finally he looked
up at David. His eyes were clear. ‘I gather from the smell around here that it’s time one of us had a bath, and judging that part of that smell would seem to be brandy sweat, I have to conclude it’s me. Unless you picked up a habit along this trip that has, until now, escaped me.’
‘Um, yes, sir. I mean no, sir. Do you mean drinking brandy?’
‘Joke, my friend. Joking.’ He stood and patted David on the cheek, then gathered up his bag and went to the bathroom.
David stayed sitting on his top bunk, feeling the touch of the man’s hand on his cheek.
He studied his injured finger. The blue had turned to green and yellow. It was still swollen and it still hurt. He’d been hoping that it would get better. He’d had plenty of spills and scrapes on the farm. His grandfather had observed that his natural dreaminess seemed to leave him standing in the path of just about everything that was moving somewhere else. This had included his grandad when David was really small. If there was a horse it would kick him, a hole he’d fall in it, a plough he’d trip over it or a post he’d bang into it. The thing was he didn’t usually hurt himself much. He was like a cricket ball, said Grandad. He always bounced.
He had expected his finger to be right by now. He had thought to tell his uncle, but Michael’s strange sickness after the train crash had not invited that kind of bad news. Besides, David had not wished to break the spell of having his uncle lying quiet on the bunk and sometimes ready to answer questions about his mother and father.
When Michael came back, he was showered and shaved and had changed into his city clothes. ‘Come on, Davey boy. Look lively. Adelaide, the city of churches. Let’s pray we can get you into this team.’
As they got off the train, Jack Tanner was talking to a newspaperman, who was taking notes on a small pad, while a photographer set up his camera. David moved slowly, so he could hear.
‘Tell me about the accident, Jack. By all accounts you were a hero.’
‘Don’t you want to talk about the cricket?’
‘But surely, with the delay of your train, you don’t have time to try out or train for the team? The Test is tomorrow!’
‘I’m always ready, Mr O’Toole. Ready for a bat and ready for a middy.’ Jack winked at the people who had gathered round to listen to his comments. ‘Or do they call ’em schooners in Adelaide?’
‘Who’s this other fellow from Western Australia, Jack?’ asked O’Toole. ‘I can’t find any record of him. David Donald?’
David felt a hand tighten on his elbow. It was his uncle, who winked and started to lead him away, but not before David saw Tanner fix a look at him for a moment, before he said, ‘Simple game, cricket, for a batsman anyway. My job is to hit the ball some fellow tosses up. I like hitting the ball.’
David couldn’t hear him anymore, and his uncle said, ‘Don’t want to become a news story too early.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, my thought is this: if you become a paper story now, before you get in the team, lots of people with lots of opinions about cricket and maybe outside of cricket, might want to stop you. Mostly because of your age. All because of your age. Whereas once you’re in, then they can write and comment and say what they want, because you’ll already be in. Just like cricket, you’ll be in and they’ll have to get you out. Get it?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well,’ laughed his uncle, ‘that’s okay, because I could be wrong.’
‘I’ve hurt my hand.’
His uncle stopped walking. ‘When?’
‘When I was letting the cattle out. To get them away from the fire. It swoll up later.’
Michael put down their bags, and grabbed up the hand.
‘It’s gone down a lot.’
‘Wiggle it.’
David did, but the hurt finger was slower than the others and still ached at the knuckle joint.
‘Bugger,’ his uncle said mildly.
David watched him thinking.
Michael suddenly raised his arm, and yelled, ‘Taxi.’ As a taxi pulled in, Michael added, ‘Seeing as we’ve got a little seed money from the ACB, we might as well use it, eh?’
David climbed in the cab after his uncle and waited for him to reveal a plan of action. He didn’t, but merely started talking to the driver about some pubs he seemed to know. ‘How about the Richmond? Is that still a good place for a bet? What about the Victoria Park? Good crowd for cricket or just the nags?’ David stopped listening, and started to look for churches. There didn’t seem to be as many as he’d thought, but the ones he could see had high spires and looked old.
Michael hustled David to the nets next to the University of Adelaide ground. The sun was well up and the grass here also had a brown tinge. It crackled when you walked on it.
Out in the middle of the oval a solitary sprinkler watered the wicket. The sunlight was caught in the water spray, shining bright silver. The buildings across the way looked important. There was ivy growing and lots of windows. They looked like the kind of buildings David imagined his father going to and being house captain of.
David turned to see Michael putting stumps in at the batters end of the nets.
‘Is this where I was supposed to bowl?’
‘Where you will bowl, yes.’
‘I don’t think I can.’
‘Here,’ said Uncle Mike, rolling a cricket ball along the pitch to David. ‘Bowl a couple of balls, and we’ll take a look.’
‘I can’t grip it.’
‘Course you can. Use the first two fingers spread for off spin.’
‘But I’m a leg spinner. And Grandad and I have been working on my grip looking the same for most of my deliveries. With all three fingers.’
David put the ball in his hand, arranging his thumb and index and middle finger spread. He had to gently push his hurt third finger to try to bend it back behind the ball. ‘Much more variety and with the same grip, but it’s using all the fingers and thumb that give it so much spin when I need to give it extra.’
Michael was at the bowling end of the nets with his hand on David’s shoulder, and looked steadily at him. ‘I know, mate. I know what you can do and you will do once the finger’s right. But today, you haven’t got three fingers, and off spin uses the two fingers you have got working, so let’s use that to come up with something that will get you in the team. Until your bad finger’s better.’
‘But I thought we were just here to help them practise.’
‘Why don’t you want to get into the Australian cricket team?’
‘I do. But not yet.’
‘Why not yet?’
‘I’m too little. I’m not ready.’
‘How do you know you’re not ready?’
David didn’t know the answer to this.
‘We can find out the answer. This morning. It’s wonderfully simple. You bowl as well as you can and get these men out, and that will be your answer.’
‘But my hand is hurt.’
‘Well let’s see if you’re still not better than anybody else going around with a sore hand an’ all.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said David without any conviction.
‘Look,’ said Michael gently, ‘you can still flight it and drift it, so find a grip that doesn’t hurt and send a few down to me.’
David looked doubtfully at the ball in his hand while his uncle went down to the stumps again. His uncle was right. The off spin grip mainly used his two healthy fingers. He had used the grip before and knew it worked well for some types of balls, but certainly not the variety he had been working on lately. Nor would he get as much bounce. Michael stood behind the stumps without a bat.
David bowled. The ball went low and straight, but spun in towards the wicket, where his uncle caught it. ‘Good offie. Some more of those, but get a bit more height or they won’t be tempted. You can still flight it and land it on a penny, you know.’
David bowled more. His finger hurt a little, because he’d still put his natural flick into the movement to work the ball, but it wa
sn’t impossible.
David bowled some more off breaks, and found he could land them quite well.
‘Good,’ said his uncle, ‘now try your shooter with that grip.’
David bowled, and the ball landed in his uncle’s hands like a full toss. ‘Sorry,’ yelled David.
‘Nice six there. Very well. We’ll come back to that one. We better work on your arm ball. See if you can control how much side spin you get.’
David bowled. He bowled for an hour in his street clothes and shoes. He was sweating, and the webbing between his two longest fingers was starting to hurt, as he was spreading them more than he ever had before to try to get extra purchase for the spin. Finally, David threw the ball down in disgust. ‘It’s useless.’
‘It’s not useless,’ said Michael coming to the bowler’s end.
‘But I’m only using a couple of fingers. Even for offies, I could do heaps better, if I used all my fingers.’
‘Can we do that?’
David looked at his hurt finger. It was starting to swell again. ‘No, sir.’
‘Line and length, David. You’re flighting it. You’re landing it mostly in the area. You know you don’t always have to spin the ball a foot sideways. You just have to make the batsman think—’
‘That the ball will spin.’ David finished the mantra. ‘And by how much,’ he added, feeling a little better.
Voices were approaching. Michael looked that way, then patted David on the shoulder. ‘Okay, you take a break. Go and find a tap and put your hand under the cold water.’
David found a small fountain dribbling under a weeping willow in the shade by the nets. It was cool there and had a comforting smell of dead plants turning to compost. He put his hand in the water of the fountain and kept it there while he watched, hidden, as his idols began to arrive.
The Australian cricket team.
He already knew all their names and how they played their cricket. He knew some by the photographs he’d seen, in the newspaper and an almanac that his teacher Mr Wallace kept in a bookcase behind his desk. Yet they didn’t arrive like the confident warriors David had expected. They trudged in, dragging their feet and tossing down their cricket bags.
Terry Johnson was a redhead who still had freckles even though he was older. He said nothing, but bent over his bag, messing with the buckles and looking hurriedly over his shoulder every now and then as if he thought he was being pursued by something.