by Rohan Wilson
No.
We’ll soon fetch it back.
It’s the last thing of hers you have, Caislin said. It’s all you have to remember her.
Remember? My treasure. I look at you and I can never forget your mother. I don’t need a ring.
Yet he moved off to retrieve his knapsack, his stick, and for a time he could not look at her. For in truth he was not sure who she was, this girl in outsized pants rolled at the ankles, outsized coat and shirt, cowled in a stained cotton flour sack. He had made of her something she was not. He shouldered up his bag and stepped outside. Forgive me, Ellen, he said to the sky.
• • •
They convened beneath the lessening sun. A road led away up the sloping hills into sparsely placed blue gum and sassafras saplings, above a carpet of infant bracken, and they were wary, Flynn and his daughter, as they stepped over the low stone wall slouched under loads of bedding to put forth upon the road. They looked for a moment towards the distant town spires hooped in smoke and the river traders at anchor before turning away and making for the open woods. A half mile of distance had them among thin trees. Flynn tapped his staff as his daughter followed behind like some mythic animal made tame.
Launceston’s the other way, she said.
I know.
They walked on further.
Where are we going? she said.
Just up the way.
Caislin looked around. The track was a pair of cart troughs lined with stands of black wattle and gum left for shade by squatters.
Why? she said.
Flynn kept walking.
She lowered her eyes and followed on.
Later a mounted cattleman cleared them off the path as he came through at a gallop and he whooped and cracked his riding crop on the animal, crouching in the saddle as the horse thundered beneath him. They stood by and watched him pass. Through their legs they felt the ground tremble. The horseman made a wind that stirred the bark rags and raised the birds. He left a track through the scrub where he’d ridden, and the seekers stepped back onto the road, themselves silent, treading among his divots. Further on Flynn paused near a pair of huge fallen trees. He turned to survey the thin woodland and he put aside his staff and climbed the trunk. It was a long time dead and collapsing in rot. He jumped off the far edge. Caislin in the wayside, waiting, saw him stick his head above the trunk.
This will do us, he said.
For what?
For the night.
She dumped her bedroll and sat on it.
They soon had an arrangement out of sight of the road with a ring of fire rocks that held the billytin. Not that they carried any tea to brew, nor anything by way of food. It was only the habit of weeks on the road that did it.
I’ll be for walking into Launceston, he said and he began gathering his coat around himself and neatening his sagging hat.
What about me?
He stood up. No, he said.
Am I to stay?
Aye.
Alone?
Flynn stood looking down at her. He put his hands on his hips. Remove that thing and I’ll take you, he said.
She lowered her head. The mottling shade cast through the canopy crept over the cotton.
Taint prudent to be having a hangman in the town, he said. Folk will talk. If Toosey is around he’ll soon hear.
Caislin sat in quiet.
You don’t need it. Throw it away.
He adjusted his listing hat. When he looked at her again his eyes were soft, his lower lip heavy. Throw it away, he said.
I can’t.
The girl I remember, Flynn said, my daughter, she was a brave one. This girl before me, well. Who would say as much about her? Tucked away in her costume, hiding away.
He started tearing then, without sound, his lower lip aquiver and the lines around his eyes deepening. You are the pulse of my heart, he said after a time.
I know.
But I want my daughter back.
I know.
Where’s my daughter?
In the trees the breeze made an ocean sound. Flynn dragged a hand across his cheeks to dry them and he reached to the small of his back and lifted the pistol from his belt. Take this, he said.
She looked away.
Don’t be talking to anyone now, he said.
I won’t.
And keep hidden.
Just leave the gun and go.
He passed her the stubby gun gingerly. She dropped it on the dirt and sat studying it over her knees, hunched, the ears of the cotton sack wilting in the damp and the heat.
If some bastard comes near you—
He’ll get shot, she said.
Aye, well, and will you do that?
I’d rather not have to.
No.
Course, she said and looked up, you know what happened last time you left me alone.
Flynn nodded. I know.
But you’ll do it again anyway.
He turned his eyes along the road. My beautiful girl—
Don’t say that.
Take it off. Come with me.
No. I told you. Not yet.
He exhaled. He stepped onto the road. Then I’ll be here by dark, he said.
He tramped out along the track that led to town, leaning on his staff. When he looked back at the campsite his daughter was staring at him. She’d removed the hood and her naked face floated sadly in the scrub. The sight of it stopped him. She did not wave or do otherwise than stare with the gravity that had lately become her chiefest part. He touched his hat to her and walked on. A cold stone hanging in his chest.
TRENT STEWART’S PREMISES
INVERMAY. HERE LIVED THE DREGS DRAINED from the town, funnelled into one hole. For no one of any influence would inhabit a quarter as cursed with mosquitoes and as openly pitted with rat nests as was this part of town. A flat swamp edged by a marshland of tall reeds and deep mud. Toosey, his billycock lowslung upon his head, made his way in the early afternoon through the shabby and ramshackle homes in the back alleys where garlands of washing as if for some festival festooned the verandahs. The mud in the street had dried to hard shale that cracked as he walked it and the silt beneath rose through his bootprints. He went, his eyes shifting warily about, with his fists stuffed inside his pockets.
Further on he passed children conferring on a vacant plot of land. It was serving duty as a tip, overrun with castoff bedding, bits of blown paper, coiled wire. One of them was screaming. He halted in the street and called to them and the children scattered. The screaming continued, the cold and horrendous sound of murder, and he saw the small fire they had burning and saw the cat they had somehow made fast to a fence slat. He crossed through the debris to the fire and stood looking down. The cat had its hind quarters burning in the coals and was shrieking and thrashing. It was bound about with wire so that its eyes and bloated stomach bulged. He turned a circle, looked around for the children. They were nowhere he could see. He spat. In the end he brought his foot down upon the cat’s head, and again until the woeful noise stopped. He wiped his boot on a grass tuft. He moved on.
By and by he came to the premises of Trent Stewart. It was a grim house of unpainted boards and he stood without the cast-iron gate gazing up at the second-floor windows. The eyeholes of a skull. He lifted back the gate and mounted the verandah. Without removing his hat he raised the knocker on the door and let it fall.
It was opened by an old hollow-cheeked matron. She peeked around the jamb, studying the grim-looking man on the step, the holed jacket he wore, blood on the shirt beneath. She must have been seventy at least and had a look about her like she’d been licking vinegar.
Only children in here, she said. We don’t take men.
I aint come about a feed.
She squinted at him.
You have a boy sometimes, he said. Goin by the name of Toosey. Master William Toosey.
I told you no men allowed.
I’m only askin to see him.
Who are you?
I’m his f
ather.
The matron turned and called over her shoulder. Mr Stewart! There’s a fellow out here.
The whump of boots tolled somewhere inside the house and soon a big round-bellied gent rolled up behind her in the hallway. He peered over his half-spectacles.
Yes? What is it, Mrs Crowthers? he said.
This chap wants to come in.
I should like to see my son, Toosey said.
Sorry, we don’t allow men on the premises.
Told him as much, the matron said.
We allow girls and boys and girls and boys only, Stewart said.
Listen, I don’t care what you allow and I don’t want to come in. Just let me boy out here on the step and there won’t be no trouble.
Stewart pushed back his glasses. This really is improper, he said.
Improper can go and fuck itself.
Mrs Crowthers made a small strangled gasp.
Well, Stewart said. Well now. There is no call for profanity.
Let him out front here like I told you then.
The children are eating. You will have to make arrangements to meet your son elsewhere. Outside of lunch hours, of course. I am sorry.
You could get real sorry yet, sunshine.
With hardly a movement Toosey had drawn his twine-handled camp knife and was holding it by his side. The blade was lean and tapered and the corrosion on its steel stood darkly in the light. Stewart saw it and seemed suddenly to understand the quality of the fellow on his doorstep. His cheek gave a twitch.
Look here, he said, but Toosey placed his free hand on his chest and shoved him backwards. He pushed through the doorway into the narrow hall. A rack hung with coats toppled as he crashed past and he paused upon the patterned hallway runner surveying the rooms that ran off the corridor, his mouth hardened into a line.
Stewart took his chance to flee. He ran onto the verandah and descended into the street in a series of awkward falters. The matron tailed him, stumbling. From the gloom Toosey watched them go. He shook his head and spat. He opened the first door in the hall. A sitting room occupied by leather armchairs, a commode stacked with rows of books. Next came a kitchen, in the shadows an iron stove, the pots on top steaming poisonously and making a rattle. There was a window across the kitchen and he could see in the rear yard a wooden outbuilding beyond a mire of stagnant water and refuse and strings of washed clothes. He passed through and pushed the loose latchless door at the back. Voices of children were coming from within the paling building that looked like a chicken house. He stepped into the yard towards it.
When he entered they looked up as one from their plates. A dozen or more of them, arranged along a narrow table. In the centre of the table a pot of soup, a board with a loaf of soda bread. Some of the children put down their spoons, some stood and backed away. A boy near to him spoke.
There’s no men allowed in here.
Where is William? he said.
Here.
A boy at the rear of the place, younger than the rest, stood and pushed the crate he was sitting on. He was in a tweed coat patched with hessian and his hair hung dull and dusty. Toosey studied him across the room.
I’m William.
Toosey clicked his tongue. You aint him, he said.
That’s the only William here, mister.
Well it aint him.
He looked around the table. If Stewart had chosen these children with some rule in mind it was of a range Toosey could not discern, for they were a mix of the young and the half grown, orphans off the street or runaways or thieves, dressed in adult’s clothes so that they seemed to have been magically shrunken, one boy wearing a woman’s bonnet, another girl exhibiting a scar like war paint lengthwise down her forehead and over an eye that was consequently white and unfixing. Toosey had seen a scar such as that before, on a man hit with a red-hot stoker. It was at this girl that Toosey found himself staring. She addressed him.
You got a cheek comin in here, she said.
There’s not much time, Toosey said. He has gone for the constable I reckon.
Then best you leave, mate, the girl said.
William Toosey is his name, the boy I’m after. He lived out by the park. Cimitiere Street. His ma has died of late. He’s on his own.
I know him, said one of the boys and he was sitting holding a spoon of soup before him. Will Toosey, he said. I know him.
You know where he is?
The boy put down his spoon. He stared up at Toosey with a pair of frank green eyes. He was red haired and his face was all over freckled, even to his lips. In the town, he said.
No he’s not, the boy beside him said. I saw him near Thrower’s.
When? Toosey said.
This mornin.
He won’t be there now, the redhead said. They will have given out the bread already.
What do you want him for anyhow? the scarred girl said.
I’m his father.
You look like a bummer.
Toosey looked down at himself. I’ve had a time of it gettin here.
Why aint he with you? If he’s your son.
He will be, by and by.
The girl narrowed her good eye. My pa come huntin about for me, she said. Come in here like you are. Where’s that Molly? Where’s that Molly? I’ll bloody murder her.
A little round of laughter went up among the children.
Well, he’s never found me yet, the girl said.
The children nodded.
Toosey pulled the letter from his pocket and unfolded the paper and held it up. He’s asked me to help, he said. See. I want to help.
He’ll be out by the Coach and Horses, the redhead said.
Or buggerin around at Rabbit’s.
Toosey studied the row of grubby faces at the table. You should be with your families. All of youse. Not here with this Stewart. He’s a fiend.
Stewart feeds us, the scarred girl said. My pa don’t feed me. Stewart’s a decent sort and you’re an old tramp.
Some of the children nodded. Toosey’s face grew dark.
Go on, mate, the scarred girl said. Get out of it.
He reached into his jacket. Which of you can find William? The children watched him.
Bluey, he said and he pointed at the redhead. You can find him.
The kid sat with his mouth open, breathing through his nose.
There’s a gold vickie here if you can show me where he is, Toosey said and he produced the coin from his pocket.
The redhead boy jumped off his crate and rushed forward, but now all the children jumped and rushed at Toosey. He gripped the redhead under the arms as the children bunched around him. He carried the boy out into the sun.
I can find him, the children were each one saying, I can find him. Give me the coin. Give me the coin.
Toosey walked through the mud in the yard hauling the kid. He did not look back at the rest. They called to him and tugged at his jacket, following in a pack, but he did not look. For he would move fast or face arrest. He reached the low stairs to the house and pushed the redheaded boy forward and the boy started to climb and then stopped. At the head of the steps, standing in the kitchen, was Trent Stewart. He had a cricket bat and when he lifted it the round damp stains of his armpits showed.
Children, he said, children, do not follow this man.
Toosey thumbed back his hat brim and stared up at the fellow wavering in the doorway. They met eyes across a few measured breaths. Toosey was first to speak.
So help me I will knock out your teeth.
He began to climb the steps, dragging the boy behind him. Stewart backed away and raised the bat above his head. On the blade was a series of red troughs from the ball. He clenched his fingers around the leather grip like he meant to swing it but when Toosey reached the top of the steps Stewart started reversing among the racks of hanging spoons and cookpans, tracking prints in the scattered baking flour. Toosey never removed his eyes from him. He worked Stewart backward with that baleful glare. He walked through the kitch
en into the hallway dragging the redhead along with him.
Stewart called to him. You won’t get far. The police are near.
Hearing this, Toosey paused. He stood in the hallway scratching at his whiskers and staring out the open front door to where the startled matron was waiting in the street. Others had congregated with her, men and women and children. He scratched his whiskers and then he turned and stood framed in the kitchen entrance. Stewart raised the bat again.
That boy of mine comes back, I want you to tell him I’m in Launceston.
Stewart swung tentatively to keep him away.
Tell him I’m at the Star of the North.
The police is who I’ll tell, Stewart said and waved the bat.
Toosey stared. You’re seein me as genial as I get. If I have to come back you’ll find me different.
With that said he walked off down the hallway holding the boy by the hand. A few folk had congregated outside. He came down through the front gate, adjusting his hat, his eyes straight ahead. As he walked out among the gathering, walked out leading the boy along, they parted around him and formed up again as he passed. No one spoke. From windows white faces watched him come along the laneway. He led the red-haired boy out of that place in silence.
WILLIAM TOOSEY
IN THE EARLY AFTERNOON TWO SLIM boys, lank as saplings, came up through the buckled hovels of Invermay. They were animated, talking incessantly as they walked, and only looked up now and then to see where they were before bending together once more in chat. One of these boys was William Toosey. With the sun and dirt he was almost dark and his mass of hay-coloured hair was grubby enough to stand on end. At Holbrook Street they left the footpath, crossed the street and went on. The boy beside William was barefoot and he walked with his lean arms hanging straight down and his feet slapping the hard earth.
What did it look like? William Toosey said.
Like anyone’s looks, the boy who was called Oran Brown said.
Just pulled it out, did he?
Right out.
Didn’t he say nothin?
Oran moved stiffly. His feet were bruised and it slowed him. He said what do you think about this, but I didn’t think anything about it and I told him so.
William Toosey bent down and picked up a stone and threw it. What would anyone think of a fat fool who shows himself? he said. They’d think him mad.