Four Fires

by Bryce Courtenay

  It was like Tommy had this thing in him that would build and build. Nancy called it ‘his demons’. He’d yell at us for nothing, his mouth spit-flecked and his blue eyes bulging. Sometimes, not even drunk, he’d smash his fist into the wall and once he rammed his head right through the screen door of the kitchen. Afterwards we laughed about it because it looked very funny.

  ‘Good thing it was only the screen door and not a bucket of shit his head was stuck in,’ Bozo said, reminding us of poor Fred Bellows.

  ‘His head’s already drowning in shit,’ Mike quipped back.

  But mostly it was no laughing matter. This would go on for a few days and little Colleen would cry a lot. Then Tommy would have to get away, disappear, go bush, sometimes for a month at a time, thank goodness.

  Tommy would come back from the bush scratched about and looking a bit of a wreck, even more so than usual. But the funny thing was, some of the trouble would be gone out of his eyes, they’d be clear and his skin brown as a gumnut. In the wintertime he must have done it tough. Though his clothes were usually torn, he was never dirty and they would always have been washed before he fronted home again. He’d have grown a beard, ginger speckled with grey, which he shaved off first thing and he wouldn’t touch the grog sometimes for a fortnight.

  To be completely fair, there was a definite up-side as well as a down-side to having Tommy home. The big advantage was that we boys could go on a roster. With him doing garbage duty, Monday to Friday, each of us got to have a sleep-in three out of every nine working days. We called it working a three-in-nine and, I tell you what, it made a heap of difference. We happily copped a fair amount of crap from him just for that luxury alone. Hail or shine, hungover or still half-pissed, Tommy never shirked garbage duty and he did more than his fair share on the job too. Nancy said, ‘Deep down his character is still there.’

  ‘How deep have you got to dig?’ Mike mumbled under his breath. Nancy could say anything about Tommy, but we had to be careful in front of her.

  So there it was again, Tommy’s war with no answers. It had obviously screwed him up real bad but there was no getting at the details. There was one other bloke in town who’d been a prisoner under the Japs building the Burma Railway. Allan Gee, who had a soldier’s settlement farm about three miles out of town at Wooragee where our grandpa used to live. Mr Gee was on Legacy. Legacy was for kids whose dads had died in the war or later on from war wounds. I can’t say whether he had ‘the demons’ like Tommy. He was a pretty popular sort of bloke and seldom drank and was half-blind from starving as a prisoner. Usually if a bloke didn’t drink, he’d earn the scorn of just about everyone and be called a ‘bloody wowser’ or a ‘sheila’, but it didn’t happen in his case. Most of the battlers knew he was a good bloke and respected him for what he’d been through.

  His son, Bruce, who was in Bozo’s class at school, knew a whole heap about what had happened to him. There was even a movie made later, I think it was in 1957, The Bridge Over The River Kwai starring Alec Guinness, which we all went to see at the pictures, expecting to see someone playing the part of Allan Gee. Which was a bit stupid, I suppose.

  We thought maybe what had happened to Allan Gee was the same as what had happened to Tommy and if, like him, it could all be discussed in the open, our father might come good and be different in future.

  But when we talked this theory over with Nancy, she said maybe we were right but ‘Your father wasn’t with Allan Gee, who was a sailor and on the HMAS Perth when it sank in 1942. Tommy was infantry defending Singapore and then when the Japs took it he was put in Changi and from there he was,’ she paused a fraction of a second, ‘taken somewhere else.’ The way she said that ‘taken somewhere else’ and then clammed up again, somehow made things worse. Like there was something more to be ashamed of in the Maloney family, which she didn’t want us kids to know about.

  The only thing we could take pride in with Tommy was bushfires. Like our grandfather and his father before him, he could read a bushfire better than most people could read a book. My great-grandfather was the first to be known as ‘The Maloney Factor’, meaning that his presence on the scene of a bushfire could make a big difference to its outcome. By the next generation this expression had simply become a way to describe a bushfire fighter who was the best in the fire brigade and had been modified to ‘the real maloney’. He’s the real maloney, people would say, not even using it as a surname any more and even forgetting where the expression originally came from. Tommy was the real maloney for the Owens Valley Bushfire Brigade.

  Nancy said it was our only real family tradition, except, of course, for Maloneys always trotting off to every war on offer, but lots of families did that. I must say, if you were looking around for something to be proud about, bushfires wasn’t exactly a big deal. Though, I suppose it was something to be a little bit proud of.

  There must have been a time when the first Maloney came out as a convict from a lush-green, rain-sodden Ireland and knew nothing about the Australian bush or the highly combustible nature of eucalyptus trees. But for at least four generations our family has had the gift of calling a fire to a halt.

  The first week of December 1955 when Sarah sat for most of her examinations was also the month of my twelfth birthday. Then in the same week Sarah did her matriculation, Tommy was released from gaol.

  Sarah worked every moment she could and we had high hopes for her. She was going to apply for a place in Medicine at Melbourne University and had also put in for a Commonwealth Scholarship. The Education Department said that if she got the same marks as she got in her matriculation trials she’d definitely get one.

  Tommy said Sarah wanting to be a doctor was bloody ridiculous. He pointed out that most of his mates’ children had left school when they’d turned fourteen. ‘Kids have to go out and earn money and help the family,’ he said. ‘No bloody use feeding them to go to university!’

  Nancy got really cranky with him, ‘You’ve been saying that since she was a nipper! She’s always wanted to be a doctor. It’s bloody high time things changed in the bush and, besides, maybe she’ll practise in Sydney or Melbourne, where being a woman doctor isn’t thought of as a crime against humanity!’

  ‘She won’t bloody get in, they’ll naturally give all the places to blokes.’ Tommy didn’t usually get involved but he seemed pretty het up about Sarah wanting to go to university, let alone be a doctor.

  ‘Then I’ll become a journalist,’ Sarah shouted from where she was studying at the kitchen table. ‘The Age has cadetships and I’m applying for that as well!’

  Tommy even had something to say about that. ‘Yeah, writing up tea parties about the Toorak matrons. Journalist, huh? That’s just about as bad as a woman doctor, only less pay.’

  ‘That’s enough, Tommy!’ Nancy warned, ‘You’ve had your say, now leave the girl alone.’

  ‘That girl’s getting much too big for her boots, I hear she’s going out with Phil Templeton’s boy, who does she think she is?’

  It was true, after the social, Murray Templeton started walking Sarah home from school every day and they’d hang around the gate for an hour talking. ‘That boy’s beginning to hang around like a bad smell,’ Nancy said after a while. ‘You’ve got things to do and then there’s your study. I don’t want him walking you home, you hear? He seems a nice boy, that I’ll admit, but the Templetons are not for the likes of us and it won’t work.’

  Sarah got pretty upset and she and Nancy didn’t talk for three days and the both of them were in a real shitty mood. With all of us walking on eggshells, Mike tried to work out a deal with Nancy.

  ‘Mum, you were only seventeen when you had Sarah and you were going out with a soldier,’ Mike reminded her.

  ‘Times were different then, most girls were married by the time they were sixteen.’

  But Mike kept at her. He could talk Nancy into just about anything. When we’d ask Nancy
if we could do something and she’d refuse, I’d complain, ‘But you always let Mike do what he wants!’

  ‘That’s because he has a good head on his shoulders,’ Nancy would reply.

  ‘So what’s so wrong with my head?’ I’d ask.

  ‘It lacks maturity, still soft.’

  ‘And Bozo?’ She’d laugh, ‘Him, too.’

  So Mike’s good head negotiated Sarah’s plight. In return for Murray Templeton not walking Sarah back from school, they could go out to the pictures, which finished Saturday night at half-past ten. Sarah had to be home by a quarter to eleven so there could be no driving out to the lake after. It was Saturday night out with her boyfriend, or if he was playing in a footy game, she could go to it with him. One or the other, not both on the same day. It was this either–or scheme that finally won Nancy over. Mike said later that it allowed her to back down gracefully and still seem to have some control, because deep down she knew Sarah was tougher and more stubborn than her.

  Of course, I knew Murray Templeton was a Proddy but I’d gained a fair bit of kudos at school because he was taking Sarah out. Kids would say they saw him and Sarah at the flicks Saturday night or in the Holden, or they’d seen them together at the footy. Philip Templeton, his dad, would use a car off his used-car lot if he was going out of a Saturday night and give his son Nancy’s pumpkin carriage.

  That’s how much he trusted him.

  The summer was the hottest it had been for several years and the bushfire danger was way up past the highalert stage. When the north winds blew, gusting up through the valley, people would say, ‘Very bad for fires’, looking up at the burning sky.

  The eucalyptus underbrush was bone-dry and heaped high after three years of good rains and then a drought the following year. People in the pub, looking over the frothy top of a schooner, would say darkly, ‘Bloody shire council’s not done near enough clearing or burning off. Firebreaks up near the gorge have all but disappeared, gorn, mate, grown over. It’s a bloody disgrace.’ But you could bet London to a brick not one of those lazy bastards would volunteer to get off his arse, borrow a tractor and make up a work gang to clear firebreaks or maybe do a bit of backburning to help the CFA. ‘Too bloody hot, mate, whose shout?’ The conditions in mid-December 1955, taken along with the town’s in-born lassitude, had all the ingredients for a major disaster.

  Anyway, with Tommy just back, Nancy as usual tried to keep him off the grog, hoping he’d stay on the straight and narrow at least until Christmas. To her delight, he was still sober when my birthday arrived.

  We didn’t go in much for birthday presents in our family, except for Nancy and Colleen, when we all put in for a combined gift. Usually a box of Cadbury’s Roses chocolates and a nice card for Mum and a bright ribbon and socks for little Colleen. Ah, yes, and once a pair of tiny, shiny red shoes with silver buckles. You should have seen the little kid, she went half-crazy with excitement.

  I remember my birthday fell on a Saturday, a sleep-in day. Hooray! A grand sleep-in on top of the fact that, what with Tommy home, we were working a three-in-nine. That was birthday present enough for Mole Maloney, thank you very much, put down your glasses.

  It was still dark when I was rudely shaken awake in my bunk. ‘Hey, Mole, wake up!’ It was Tommy’s voice.

  I sat up fast, but then realised I couldn’t smell any drink on his breath, so relaxed again, falling back into the bare mattress.

  ‘Wha . . . what’s the time?’ I mumbled, rubbing my eyes.

  ‘Never mind, mate, it’s not that early, get your gear on, you and me is goin’ bush.’ ‘Bush?’ I sat up again, fast.

  ‘It’s your twelfth birthday, Mole. I promised your grandfather. It’s time you learned the gift.’

  ‘Learned? Gift? What?’

  ‘Fire! Lessons start today.’

  I wanted to cry out, object. Tell him it wasn’t fair. But I knew I couldn’t humiliate myself in front of the little bastard. So I put on my clothes and followed him, going through the kitchen, because with him returned, we were sleeping back on the verandah. There was a block of light the colour of ice coming through the kitchen window. Then I saw Sarah. She was bent over the kitchen sink, throwing up. The light from the window glowing like the light from embers on her hair.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked her, ‘You all right?’ She sort of spat into the sink and then turned on the tap and looked toward me, half-hunched over. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, ‘I just feel a bit sick, that’s all. It must have been the fish last night,’ she smiled weakly.

  ‘C’mon, Mole,’ Tommy called impatiently, ‘we’ve got to scram.’

  ‘Sarah’s sick,’ I said, ‘I should wake Mum.’

  ‘No, don’t wake her, Mole. I’m all right, really,’ Sarah called.

  ‘You heard her, ferchrissakes, it was something she ate. She’ll be right! C’mon, let’s kick the dust, mate.’

  ‘You go, Mole, I’ll be okay,’ Sarah said, bringing her free hand up to her tummy.

  We were going through the front door when she called out, ‘Happy birthday, Mole!’

  Yeah, yeah, I thought, ‘It’s okay for you, all you’ve got is a sore tummy. How about me? It’s my twelfth birthday and my whole life’s been ruined forever.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  In Yankalillee the locals used to refer to my grandfather William D’Arcy Maloney as ‘Mr Baloney’. This was not because he talked nonsense or was a fool, though admittedly, in the Maloney tradition, he was undistinguished in most things. Baloney was simply a conjunction of his name, Bill, combined with his surname, which, in the parlance of Australians, inevitably became Baloney.

  The ‘Mister’ was added for four reasons. The traditional gesture of respect for an old-timer, the second reason was because he fought in the Boer War, Australia’s first real away-from-home war, the third because of his reputation as the best fighter of fires in the Snowy Mountains district and the last, but by no means least, because he drank like a fish but could hold his grog and be relied on to be good company in the pub. All of this served to give him a respectability independent of his reprobate son.

  Mr Baloney lived on a run-down small farm at Wooragee, a dot on the map which served as postbox number for the locals, many of whom had come to farming via the Soldier Settlement Scheme. During the gold rushes, Wooragee had been a Cobb & Co. stop when it had boasted a stone store, a tin pub and half a dozen wattle and daub shacks. In the twenties a primary school was built to dish out a fundamental education to the farm children thereabouts. It boasted a solitary teacher, responsible for all six classes. Today only the school remains, the rest has long since gone, eroded by the wind or plundered for building material. The school served as the postal address and letters were marked R.M.B. Wooragee, VIC. The teacher sorted out the mail into family names and had the kids bring it home or drop it in for their neighbours.

  Mr Baloney was seventy-four when I was seven years old, the year he passed away. At the age of twenty-five and already married with two sons, he’d fought in the Boer War with the Colonial Detachment and received a bullet in the knee from a Boer Mauser at Potchefstroom in the Western Transvaal and ever after walked with a slight limp.

  The second son, James, died at Gallipoli in 1915 and Francis, the oldest, at Pozières in France in 1918. Their mother Caroline was one of the twelve thousand Australians who died in the great flu epidemic in 1919 thought to have been brought back from Europe by the troops returning in 1918. My grandpa would say he’d lost two sons and a wife in the Great War and that, after five generations in Australia, the Maloneys still hadn’t escaped the scourge of the bloody English.

  Tommy was born in 1920, the youngest of his three sons and the only child to Mr Baloney’s second marriage to Charlotte McKinley, a spinster who was over forty herself. She was said to possess a small inheritance, which proved to be correct. For once a Maloney had lucked in.
But, as usual, there was a price to pay. His wife would spend the remainder of her years bemoaning her marriage to him and telling anyone who would listen that it was her money that kept them alive during the Great Depression. She’d add that, while other men searched desperately for ways to put food on the table for their suffering families, her husband’s entire Boer War veteran’s pension was poured down his useless Maloney throat and, what’s more, if she hadn’t kept a good grip on her dowry that’s where it would have gone as well.

  ‘Nursing me sorrows for marrying you, m’dear,’ my grandpa would say if he happened to be present at one of these perpetual whinges.

  As a seven-year-old I was often enough farmed out to my grandparents. Tommy was probably on the hill at the time and Nancy, who was expecting Colleen, was too busy making ends meet to take care of me. Sarah would have had her hands full with Mike and Bozo and was too young to assume the responsibility for me while still going to school each day.

  My grandma was always referred to in our family in the over-formal English manner as ‘Grandmother Charlotte’. This was because, although Australian-born, she came from ‘decent British stock’, a distinction she felt compelled to make if, in a conversation, she was connected in any way with a Maloney.

  She was an English Catholic, which seemed to mean that she was at the less bitter end of the bitter divide, English Catholics being mysteriously superior to all other Catholics, in particular those originally from Ireland.

  Unlike us, who were collapsed Catholics, Grandmother Charlotte was devout. She’d walk the three miles into town and back twice a week, Thursday nights to do the Stations of the Cross, then waking up at dawn, winter and summer, to get to Sunday Mass at seven o’clock. She could easily have slept in because there was a Mass at half-past nine. She’d snort with derision at this suggestion, the first Mass of the day was what an English Catholic attended, the later one was for the bone-idle Irish.