A Few Right Thinking Men

by Sulari Gentill

  The strains of the grand pipe organ eventually overshadowed the applause as the meeting opened with “O God Our Help in Ages Past.” The sound of close to five thousand male voices, raised in fervent song, was slightly more tuneful but no quieter than the reception that had greeted Campbell. After the chaplain dedicated the colours, Campbell rose again to thunderous applause.

  Rowland took out his notebook and made a few sketches of Campbell at the lectern, more because De Groot was watching than anything else. He didn’t so much listen to the words as to the tone, and it sounded like it was the standard mix of fiery rhetoric, patriotic zealotry, and ruling class paranoia he was hearing far too often for his liking. The men around him, however, hung onto every word as if Campbell was some kind of holy prophet. When his message was delivered, the audience stood and roared with unrestrained adulation.

  Campbell called for silence and with him, five thousand men raised their right arms in the Fascist salute and took the affirmation of the New Guard:

  “I solemnly and sincerely affirm that I will by every means in my power and without regard for consequence, do my utmost to establish in the state of New South Wales the high principles for which the New Guard stands. I will not consider my oath fulfilled until Communism has been completely crushed and until an honourable government has been established. I make this affirmation in the name of God and the King and in memory of my countrymen who lost their lives in defence of the same principles. So help me God.”

  Rowland avoided the salute and the affirmation by drawing furiously and obviously.

  The affirmation was followed by a bombastic rendering of the “Song of the New Guard,” a painstakingly rhymed ballad which declared the Guardsmen to be both ready and steady, and which finished with the cry “God save our King.”

  Then the hall rang with “Advance Australia Fair,”

  “Land of Hope and Glory,” and the national anthem. Just when Rowland was beginning to feel he was caught in a never-ending patriotic sing-along, the congregation finished with “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” and the rally concluded.

  The Guardsmen began to file out of the hall. Campbell remained at the lectern, shaking hands and accepting congratulations. Once again, there was a flurry of backslapping. Poynton stood and after stretching, ushered Rowland up the stage steps.

  De Groot met them first. “Jones,” he said, ignoring Poynton, “I trust we managed to impress the nature of our organisation upon you.” His eyes fell meaningfully on the notebook Rowland was still holding.

  Rowland smiled. “I did make a few sketches,” he said, “though I hope you didn’t do all this just for my benefit.”

  De Groot looked at him sharply, and then laughed. “Very good, very good.”

  “De Groot!” John Dynon was making his way toward them. Rowland closed his eyes for a moment, sure now his game was up.

  Dynon was bringing with him the man Rowland had recognised earlier. If he was going to be exposed, this was probably the worst possible time for it to happen. Dynon shook hands with De Groot. Rowland met the eyes of Constable Delaney, who had told him his uncle was dead, and who had watched him identify the body. Delaney’s face was startled and Rowland knew he had been recognised. His own precarious situation meant that he did not pause to wonder what a serving member of the New South Wales police force was doing in the New Guard.

  “You’ve met Poynton and Jones,” De Groot said to Dynon. “Jones has found tonight’s meeting useful as a background for his painting of the Commander.”

  Rowland didn’t take his eyes off Delaney as he waited for disaster to descend.

  Dynon returned the formality. “Allow me to introduce Jack Harris,” he said. “Harris has recently joined the Guard, my own unit. He’ll be joining us for cards in the near future.” Dynon winked and De Groot cleared his throat.

  “What line of business are you in, Mr. Harris?” De Groot asked.

  “I’m a printer, sir.”

  They stood in stilted conversation for a while.

  Finally Poynton edged Rowland aside. “Jonesy, I’d love to offer you a lift home, but the Colonel needs me tonight.”

  “I’ll give you a lift,” Delaney volunteered, before Rowland could respond. “I have my car parked down the street a short way.”

  “I wouldn’t want to trouble you,” Rowland replied, bewildered by both the man’s presence and his failure to expose Clyde Watson Jones as a fraud.

  “I insist.” Delaney’s tone made it clear to Rowland that he was in fact insisting.

  They spoke relatively little until they reached Delaney’s black Ford Tudor. Rowland climbed into the front passenger side seat, and Delaney started the car. “Right, Mr. Sinclair,” he said, “what the hell are you up to?”

  “And who exactly would I be telling? Jack Harris or Constable Delaney?”

  Delaney put the Ford into gear. “Actually it’s Detective Constable now. We’re going to make a small detour before I drop you home.”

  “Why?”

  “I think we may need to better understand each other, Mr. Sinclair.” Rowland didn’t see he had any other option.

  When they arrived at police headquarters, Delaney took him into the building through a back way, and left Rowland in a small office, alone.

  A few minutes later, Delaney returned to wait with him but was unwilling to say anything more. Half an hour passed and Rowland began to pace impatiently.

  There was no knock at the door. It was simply opened and a large man strode in. He was dressed in white tie and tails; apparently, he had been dining when he’d received word from Delaney. Consequently, he was not in the best of moods.

  “Mr. Sinclair,” he said in a thick Glaswegian accent as he offered Rowland his hand. “I believe we have a situation.”

  The newcomer’s belligerent jaw and barrel chest exuded a kind of pugnacious strength but his face was otherwise round and unexpectedly boyish.

  “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.” Rowland took his hand.

  “Superintendent MacKay, Criminal Investigation Bureau.” Rowland had read of MacKay in the papers.

  “Detective Constable Delaney tells me that you have found yourself involved with the New Guard, but that you do so under the name of Jones.”

  “In that respect, Superintendent, Detective Constable Delaney is telling the truth,” Rowland said carefully.

  MacKay’s face flushed a little. “Just suppose, Mr. Sinclair, that you tell us why Mr. Campbell and his colleagues know you as Jones?”

  Rowland looked slowly from MacKay to Delaney, and then back to MacKay. He wasn’t sure if his actions to date were illegal, but he doubted it. He told them what he was doing and why, though he omitted mentioning the forged references.

  Delaney raised his eyebrows, and the line of MacKay’s mouth tightened considerably.

  “Mr. Sinclair,” said the Superintendent tersely, “while I commiserate with your loss, you are interfering in matters best left to the police. You are not only putting yourself in danger but jeopardising a police operation.”

  “About that…” Rowland tried to be pleasant. “Am I to understand that Detective Constable Delaney here has insinuated himself into the New Guard as a spy, under the false name of Jack Harris?”

  “That is not your concern.”

  Rowland carried on regardless. “If that is the case, it seems you require my discretion as much as I do yours.”

  Delaney winced in the brief moment of silence before MacKay exploded—he was not going to be blackmailed by some well-heeled upstart. Rowland stood his ground. Indeed, despite his accent, MacKay’s remonstrations took a tone similar to that of Wilfred’s, and Rowland became instinctively stubborn.

  “I am afraid, Superintendent,” Rowland said firmly, “I have every intention of finding out who killed my uncle. I don’t see why that should be a problem for
you.”

  In the end, MacKay slammed his fist on the desk in disgust. “I would like nothing better, Mr. Sinclair, than to march you up to Mr. Campbell’s door and tell him he’s been played for a fool….” He glanced at Delaney. “However, the operation the Detective Constable is involved in is crucial to the security of this state, so I will have to tolerate you despite my better judgement.”

  “Very good of you.” Rowland held back a smile.

  “Get him out of here!” MacKay barked at Delaney as he stormed out the doorway back to whatever was left of his dinner party.

  Delaney took Rowland back to the car. When they were safely away, he grinned.

  “I’m afraid the Superintendent’s not very happy with you, Mr. Sinclair. I’ll venture you’ve spoilt his evening.”

  “I’m sure he won’t starve.” Rowland gathered that the Superintendent was a formidable man to work for. “Look Delaney, there’s no reason we should be enemies—we may even be able to help one another.”

  “I was thinking that too, sir.”

  Now that the subject had been broached, the two exchanged information freely. Delaney, posing as Jack Harris the printer, had joined the New Guard to gather intelligence for the police force. He was looking for any signs that Campbell was inciting revolution. While he did not say so explicitly, he intimated he was not the only police agent who had infiltrated the movement.

  “Why is Dynon so obsessed with playing cards?” Rowland asked, remembering the Guardsman’s cryptic allusions and the winks that went with them.

  “It’s a code but I’m not sure what for.” Delaney frowned. “Dynon’s paranoid about spies, so he keeps you in the dark until you’re standing in it. Seems he gets a fair bit of churn in his unit. He regularly chucks people out for disloyalty.”

  “All things considered, his paranoia’s probably not unwarranted.” In turn, Rowland told Delaney everything he had already passed on, but unlike Inspector Bicuit, Delaney did not dismiss it.

  “You may be onto something, sir,” he said. “I’ll keep a lookout…let you know if I find anything.”

  “Thank you, Delaney…I mean Harris,” Rowland corrected himself. “You don’t think Campbell’s really planning a coup, do you?”

  “That’s what we want to find out.” Delaney shrugged. “They seem ready to fight, but it’s hard to know what they’ll do when they’re faced with it. It’s easy to march around and shoot when there’s no one shooting back…They may just be in it for the parades. I certainly hope so.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Sydney by Day

  SYDNEY

  A feature of the ball in the great hall at the showground will be ultra-modern and old-time dancing by Lady Anderson Stuart with a professional partner. Lady Anderson Stuart won praise in English society competitions for her foxtrot and waltzing.

  The Argus, February 19, 1932

  The gramophone was playing a swing recording when Rowland walked into the drawing room. The furniture had been moved to the walls and Milton was collapsed on the couch, clutching his ribs and laughing. Clyde and Edna stood in the middle of the floor, the latter scolding Milton, and the former looking mortified. Lenin sat watching them, his head tilted at an angle that accentuated the fact that he was missing an ear.

  “What’s going on?” Rowland shouted over the racket.

  Edna led Clyde in a stumbling swirl over to the gramophone and lifted the needle. “I’m teaching Clyde to foxtrot,” she said. “Can’t you tell?”

  Milton started to laugh again and Clyde strode across and cuffed him.

  “Why?” Rowland asked. Milton and Edna had always kept up with the latest dances, but Clyde?

  All eyes turned expectantly to Clyde. Clyde stuttered for a moment and then, with the sigh of a man defeated, admitted, “I met a girl.”

  Milton started laughing again.

  “So why do you need to foxtrot?” Rowland was still a little perplexed.

  Clyde glowered at Milton. “I’m told it’s necessary.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “My point, exactly,” Clyde grumbled.

  “Because,” Milton intervened, “if one is to court a girl, one must be able to take her to a dance—it’s how things are done…unless she’s a Methodist.”

  “Oh.” Rowland removed his jacket. “How’s it going then?”

  “Clyde should consider becoming a Methodist.”

  “Be quiet, Milt. You’re not helping,” Edna said crossly.

  “If he must dance, Ed, why don’t you teach him to waltz?” Rowland suggested. “It’s easier and, trust me, the foxtrot will never catch on.”

  “How long has it been since you went out dancing, Rowly? All the bands are playing foxtrots now. And Clyde needs to make a good impression.”

  “You’d better get back to it then.” Rowland turned. “I’m going to find something to eat.”

  “Wasn’t there a supper after the meeting?”

  Rowland laughed at the image of five thousand Guardsmen arriving with plates of sandwiches dutifully prepared by their wives and mothers. “No. No supper.”

  “What happened?” Clyde was clearly desperate for any reason to postpone his dancing lesson.

  “See for yourself.” Rowland tossed his notebook over to him. “I won’t be long.”

  He returned shortly, with a tin of Mary Brown’s highland fruitcake. He shoved Milton, and the poet made room for him on the couch.

  “What’s going on here?” Clyde pointed to the drawing of men with their right arms raised in the Fascist salute. “Who are they waving at?”

  Rowland told him about the pledge.

  “I didn’t realise we went to war to crush Communism,” Milton muttered. “Thought it was the Huns.”

  “It was like a Masonic meeting gone mad—I was expecting someone to come up with a secret handshake.” Rowland broke off a hunk of fruitcake and told them about Jack Harris who turned out to be Constable Delaney.

  “They have someone investigating your uncle’s murder from within the New Guard.”

  “No,” Rowland replied. “Delaney is working directly for Bill MacKay, not Bicuit. He’s more interested in whether Campbell’s really going to lead a coup any time soon.”

  “What do you think, Rowly?” Clyde decided to help his friend finish the cake. “Are these people serious about revolution, or is it all talk?”

  “I don’t know…maybe.” Rowland frowned. “You’d feel a bit of a fool with all the drilling and saluting and singing, if you weren’t serious, don’t you think? If they don’t do something soon, they run the risk that history will remember them as clowns, and I’m pretty sure Campbell would declare war just to avoid that.”

  “What about MacKay?” Milton asked.

  “Looks good in tails…a jolly, determined sort of chap.” Rowland fed the remains of the cake to a grateful Lenin. “According to Delaney, MacKay’s got spies and informants everywhere, and not just with Campbell’s men.”

  “Well, that’s comforting,” said Edna. “But you don’t think this is getting too dangerous, do you, Rowly? You were nearly found out today.”

  Clyde snorted triumphantly, but said nothing.

  Rowland smiled. Compared to the 50–50 Club, the New Guard seemed very tame indeed. “No, I think it’ll be all right,” he said. “Although, I’m probably bloody lucky not to have run into someone else who knows me.”

  Milton chuckled. “We could always call your brother to ransom you if things go really wrong.”

  “I’m not sure his lot is all that different than Campbell’s, you know…they’re just quieter.” He wrinkled his nose. “All this fanfare is very bourgeois.”

  “Marvellous,” said Milton. “All we have to do is manoeuvre between the ruling class and the really ruling class.”

  “Rowly…” Edna took down a f
rame from the mantelpiece. She studied the picture of the young man who looked so much like Rowland Sinclair. “Was Aubrey like Wilfred?”

  The question was unexpected, but Rowly wasn’t surprised that Edna would ask it. The sculptress had a very direct way of dealing with anything that caught her attention. “I was barely ten when I last saw him, Ed—even Wilfred wasn’t like Wilfred back then.”

  “Would Aubrey have joined the Old Guard?”

  “I don’t know that Aubrey ever took things as seriously…I vaguely remember him calling Wil, ‘Lord Wilfred Properly of the Colonies.’ I had a couple of his letters from the front, before he died…he probably would have come back changed. Wil did. Most people did.”

  “Why the sudden interest in Rowly’s brothers?” Milton asked.

  “I was always interested.” Edna returned Aubrey’s picture to its place. “Just haven’t asked before.”

  “We just missed it.” Clyde spoke wistfully. “…the war…if we were a year or two older, we would have gone, too.”

  “Of course Rowly would have got a commission,” added Milton. “You and I would have joined the rest of the proletariat in the general infantry.”

  “But we would have seen service, all the same.” Clyde’s eyes were distant.

  Rowland was unsure whether it was regret or relief, but he thought he understood how Clyde felt. They were all of a generation who could not possibly have seen war service, but who were marked by the lack of it, all the same. Certainly, he was aware it lessened him in Wilfred’s eyes. Perhaps Clyde felt it even more keenly. A couple of years his elder, Clyde had finally managed to make himself look old enough to enlist, but he was too late…the war was won by then. Milton, too, would probably have volunteered as soon as he could, although Rowland suspected the poet would have been shot for insubordination before long.

  “We’ve dodged that bullet.” Milton was unusually reflective. “I don’t know if the Great War was the war to end all wars—it probably wasn’t—but there won’t be another one in our lifetimes.”

  Clyde snorted. “What about Campbell’s revolution?”