by JH Fletcher
He had to shout for Will to hear him. A double-take and the brothers were in each other’s arms.
It was the first time they had spoken for months. Occasionally they passed each other on the river, but somehow were never in port at the same time.
‘How ya goin’?’ Charlie had to shout to be heard above the racket.
‘Good.’
But there was something in his brother’s eyes that made Charlie wonder if that was true.
‘Lemme shout you a beer,’ Will offered.
Charlie had been about to push off, but in the circumstances …
‘Why not?’
The beers came. They toasted each other and tipped them down, then found a corner where they could talk more easily.
‘Least we still got beer,’ Will said. ‘God knows for how long, though.’
‘Things that serious?’ They would have to be serious indeed for the Outback to run out of beer.
‘You better believe it.’ Will had been smiling; now the truculent look was back.
‘What’s goin’ on?’ Charlie gestured at the men milling around them. ‘Looks like they’re planning the next Eureka Stockade.’
It was forty years since the pitched battle between gold miners and troops at Eureka, outside Ballarat, had left forty men dead, but the memories of that day, and the injustices that had led to it, were as fresh as ever.
‘Wouldn’t blame ’em if they were,’ Will replied. ‘You got any idea how bad conditions are up here?’
Charlie did not, nor did he want to be dragged into a discussion that by the look of it had already made the room as hot as fire. ‘None o’ my business.’
‘It’s everyone’s business.’ Will looked at his brother. ‘You still havin’ trouble with that Grenville mob?’
Something else Charlie didn’t want to talk about. ‘Some,’ he admitted. ‘A few selectors are scared to deal with anyone else. A couple of blokes have been bashed. Not that anyone’s willing to talk about it much.’
‘It’s the same up ’ere,’ Will said. People are fair sick of it. That’s what all the trouble’s about.’ He gestured at the crowded room. ‘Most of these blokes are shearers. The labour contractors spun ’em a yarn about the work that was goin’ in the Outback. When they got here, what did they find? Ten blokes for every job. Same in mining. Too many men, not enough work. The owners knew, mind. People like Grenville and his mates set the whole thing up.’
‘Why should they do that?’
‘To drive wages down. There’s grown men, some with families, workin’ for less than boys used to get. No choice. Take it, and let’s have a smile, or you’re out.’ Will flung back the last of his beer as though it were poison.
‘What are they doing about it?’
‘What can they do?’ Will said. ‘It’s a long walk to the city, especially with a family and no food in your belly.’
‘Shearers and miners got my sympathy,’ Charlie said, ‘but it’s not my fight. The landowners are the blokes I gotta deal with.’
‘Sympathy never put food in a man’s mouth yet. Decide for yourself where you stand, but don’t gimme that crap about it not bein’ your fight. How many times have I heard you sayin’ how George bloody Grenville cheated you after you broke your back settin’ up that estate of his? Every time you sail past his place, don’t you think how he’s grown rich on the back of what you and all the other fools did for him? Eagle on the Hill …’ He spat.
Charlie closed his big hand about Will’s arm. ‘You callin’ me a fool?’
‘In this, yes. I’ve looked up to you all my life, but how can you say it’s not your fight?’
Charlie downed the rest of his beer thoughtfully. He’d come into the pub looking for cargo; now it seemed he’d found more than he’d bargained for.
‘What’s Rod Hollinger got to say about it?’ Charlie couldn’t imagine Will’s partner having much time for strikers, never mind how deserving.
‘I’m not with him no more.’
That was news.
‘Why not?
‘Tried the same trick on me, didn’ ’e? Tried to cut my wages.’ The truculent mouth would have torn out Hollinger’s throat, given half a chance. ‘Told me times were hard and he couldn’t afford to pay what we’d agreed.’
‘I thought you and him was partners.’
‘So did I. That’s what we’d said. But it’s his boat.’
‘What about the barge? You put that up as your share in the business, didn’t you?’
‘She sank.’
‘Sank? How?’
Will looked around to make sure no-one was listening. ‘I opened the cocks on her.’
‘Bloody ’ell! Why do a mad thing like that?’ It was a world of violence and hatred and Charlie could make no sense of it. He began to wish he’d never been born.
‘He was gunna take it off me. Sent me a lawyer’s letter. Said I owed him because I’d walked out on him. He wasn’t gettin’ it if I could help it.’
‘Bloody ’ell!’ Charlie said again. ‘I don’ blame you, mate. I’d do the same thing meself. ’ow’s Petal takin’ it?’
The truculent mouth twisted. ‘Took the two kids and went back to her Dad.’ Old man Snibbs, in his oil-scented chandler’s shop, was another who’d never believed in the rights of man. ‘Only for now, mind. Until I’m on my feet again.’
Charlie remembered them at their wedding reception, the way Petal had kept touching Will as though she couldn’t get enough of him; later, too, how he and Sarah had lain in their double bunk and listened to the sounds from the next cabin. His heart had felt so warm for them that day.
Now this.
‘What you doin’ to earn a crust?’
‘Workin’ the wharves. Luggin’ cargo. Anythin’ that’s goin’.’
‘Come back an’ work with me,’ Charlie offered. ‘Be like old times.’
‘You mean it?’
‘What else is family for?’
‘What will Sarah say?’
‘She’ll be all for it, mate.’ And probably soon scheming to get Will and Petal together again.
‘I’d like that,’ said Will. ‘But there’s somethin’ I gotta do first.’
‘What’s that?’
‘There’s a meeting tonight — if you wanna come.’
Charlie hesitated. ‘A meeting? What about?’
‘This business I bin tellin’ you about. The shearers are on strike and the squatters are bringin’ in scabs to do the work. We gotta stop ’em, it’s the only way.’
‘Who’s we?’
‘All of us. Shearers, miners, wharfies. The lot.’
‘You won’t stop scabs by talkin’. How are they bringin’ ’em in?’
‘Up the river. And I’ll tell you somethin’ else.’ He leant forward, his murmur in Charlie’s ear no louder than a dove’s. ‘Your mate Rufus Grenville’s involved. Up to his neck.’
Sarah was proud that Charlie intended to take her to the meeting instead of leaving her to twiddle her thumbs at home, as so many men did. As though women had no place in the world’s affairs! But she was nervous, too, that there might be violence. She wanted to leave Alex behind, but Charlie thought she should come too.
‘It’ll do her good to listen to such things.’
‘She’s too young,’ Sarah objected.
‘That’s the time to learn. When her brain’s fresh enough to take in new ideas.’
‘What if there’s fighting?’
‘Will said there won’t be. He’ll be up at the front, with the other organisers, but we can stay at the back of the crowd. Then, if there’s any trouble, we can slip away.’
‘A crowd?’ Sarah repeated. ‘They’re expectin’ so many?’
‘Over a hundred, Will said.’
It was dark when they went ashore, leaving Elsie to look after the boat. The meeting was held in an open paddock. There were a hundred men at least, with a sound coming from them like the voice of the distant sea as speaker after speaker addressed them. There was a
contingent of police keeping an eye on things, too, and Charlie, Sarah and Alex stayed at the back of the crowd just in case.
There was a lot of fierce talk and soon a police officer with silver badges on his shoulders was pushing his way to the front.
Charlie took a deep breath. ‘The fool! Doesn’t he know he’s asking for trouble?’
Perhaps that was the idea. Looking about him, Charlie saw that the police had spread out. A line of uniformed men now surrounded the shearers, all with batons in their hands.
‘Let’s get outta here,’ Charlie whispered to Sarah. Never mind what Will had said; he smelt trouble and wanted no part of it. In particular, he wanted neither his wife nor his child to be caught up in it.
They edged away, but at the edge of the crowd a policeman confronted them, all menacing eyes and red face, his baton tapping the palm of his free hand.
‘Where d’you think you’re goin’?’
‘Home.’ Charlie gestured at Alex, who had also picked up the taste of trouble brewing and was no longer feeling as brave as she had been. ‘I got a child here.’
‘Shoulda thought of that before,’ the walloper said. ‘You stay where you are.’
Charlie, ox-strong and one-time boxing champion, saw the threat in the tap tap of the baton against the gloved palm, the eyes as hard as manacles, and might have obeyed, not because he was frightened but because he knew how dangerous his own strength and capacity for violence could be.
But Sarah didn’t care about things like that. She gripped Alex’s hand tightly in her own and pushed her forward, as though offering her to the bully confronting them.
‘This child,’ she said, ‘is she a rioter? Am I a rioter?’
The policeman didn’t care. ‘I’m tellin’ you, stay where you are.’
‘I’m goin’ home,’ said Sarah, walking at the man step by step. ‘If you wanna stop me you’ll have to hit me with that big stick …’ She took one step. ‘Or arrest me …’ Another step. ‘Arrest us both.’
She walked straight at him, so quiet and confident that it was obvious she’d walk straight through him if he didn’t move out of her way.
Another step. They were face to face now, she with the top of her dark head barely touching the man’s shoulder, but she did not stop. It was the man who stepped aside, intimidated, while Sarah and Alex walked on as though unaware of his existence.
With Charlie the policeman was more confident, at home with muscles and bulk where he would never be at home with a woman’s determination.
‘Get on with it, then! If you’re goin’!’
And Charlie went, while behind him the crowd growled like an uncaged beast. They were not halfway to the town when they heard a surge of shouting and whistles blowing and knew that trouble had come after all.
At least they were out of it.
They sculled out to Brenda and went aboard, Alex full of questions now she was safe. But Sarah and Charlie were subdued, talking in soft, sad voices to each other and to Elsie, who had come out of her cabin when she heard them, her eyes wide with alarm.
‘Oh, mum …’
‘Don’t worry, Elsie. We’ll be fine.’
Police and strikers would not trouble them here. They would be able to go to their bunks as normal.
Yet the sound of the distant shouting, raw and angry, came to them intermittently throughout the evening. Once Sarah thought she heard horses’ hooves, but by the time she and Charlie went to bed nothing had happened. They lay side by side, Sarah with Charlie’s arm about her, her head on his shoulder, and stared up at the cabin ceiling.
‘Will they burn the town?’
‘If they’d been gunna do that, they’d have done it by now.’
‘What’ll happen?’
Neither the strike leaders nor the police knew that. Only tomorrow would any of them find out.
CHAPTER 45
Morning dawned hot and still, with a distant growl of thunder and black clouds pursuing each other like cavalry across the sky. The town was as quiet as a stone, with no movement in the shuttered streets but a puff of dust that rose and fled between the houses on a skirt of wind, and died again.
Charlie, with Sarah and Alex beside him, stared at the empty wharf and at the river, where Brenda was the only vessel. The silence was ominous, as though all life had been scraped from the surface of the land.
‘We’ll get steam up.’ Charlie turned away from the rail. He went into the saloon, the others following him. ‘Sooner we’re outta here the better. But first a good cuppa coffee, to set the morning right.’
Alex asked. ‘Are we going to run away and leave Uncle Will behind?’
Charlie gave her a look that would have blistered paint. ‘Who asked your opinion, miss? This business is nothing to do with us.’
‘Then why did we go to the meeting? That policeman … I didn’t like him. Does it mean we’re on his side?’
‘We’re on no-one’s side.’ Charlie spoke without anger, but with a weight dragging at his words.
‘Not even Uncle Will’s?’
‘Not in this.’
Alex opened her mouth to speak again, but Sarah rested her hand on her daughter’s shoulder to warn her, and she said nothing.
They stood in awkward silence until Elsie brought them all coffee from the galley.
Charlie took his cup to the bow and stood there, looking at the water and thinking his own thoughts. Sarah joined him, her own cup in her hand, but Charlie did not acknowledge her presence.
A gull appeared. Far from the sea, it strutted on the deck, watching the two humans with predatory yellow eyes.
‘All I wanted was to keep this family out of harm’s way,’ Charlie muttered eventually. ‘I told Will it wasn’t our fight.’
But it was, and they both knew it. The shearers were battlers like themselves, exploited by families like the Grenvilles …
As Will had said, how could it not be their fight?
And now Rufus Grenville was shipping strikebreakers up the river. They didn’t need to look for trouble; it was coming to them. They couldn’t hope to avoid it; they had to take sides, simply by being here. There was only one question: which side would it be?
Shoulders touching, Charlie and Sarah stared out at the water, which contained no answers. The air was heavy, with rain coming and thunder to the east, but the river ran with a freshness they could feel on their faces. They could smell the scent of wet earth, of trees and reeds, the fish and birds that lived there. The wind gusted and died. A spatter of rain drew circles as big as pennies on the surface of the stream.
They stood and waited for rain or clearing skies, for the day to bring them what it would.
‘The squatters are too greedy,’ Charlie said at last. He didn’t look at Sarah; he might have been talking to the river. ‘They got ninety per cent of everythin’, now they want the rest. We’d starve, if they had their way.’ There was pain in his voice. ‘They got so much. Why aren’t people ever satisfied?’
‘It’s the way they are.’
‘Not only them. Most of us would be as bad, if we had the chance. Which one of us is truly satisfied?’
She said nothing, because what he said was true.
‘There’ll be killin’ before this is over,’ Charlie said. ‘I can feel it. It scares me. Part of me says I should walk away, but I can’t. What Alex said was right. How can we not be on Will’s side?’
‘Because he’s your brother?’
‘Because he’s right.’
‘Then that’s the answer, isn’t it?’ Sarah said.
The rain came more heavily. The rings upon the water spread until all the river seethed in the downpour. The wind was fresher, the trees swayed in the gusts. A lightning flash burnt its brilliant path across the sky, the thunder made the air quake, but Sarah and Charlie clung laughing to each other. They were soaked to the skin, Sarah with her hair in rat-tails about her face, but still they laughed because they had found the truth and would do what must be done.
As for what would happen afterwards … that was for the future.
‘I was goin’ for a swim,’ Charlie said. ‘But it seems I’ve had it already.’
‘Me too,’ Sarah said, ‘an’ both of us with all our clothes on.’
‘Let’s get the boiler goin’,’ Charlie said, and went to start the day.
Two hours later, with the boiler singing and the gauges pointing ever higher, they heard the sound of boots on deck. Charlie came out to find Will standing there.
‘Come in, mate,’ Charlie said. ‘Have a cup of coffee and tell us what happened last night.’
Will had lived on the boat almost as long as they had, yet now was all knees and elbows, as though he had no business to be there.
‘Did you go to the meeting?’ Will asked.
‘Yeah. But we didn’t stay long.’
‘There was an inspector.’
‘We saw ’im.’
‘Were you there when he started to read the Riot Act?’
‘He never did!’
‘Damn right he did. Told us to go home, as if we was a bunch of kids. Whistles blowin’ and him with his men standin’ there lookin’ like turnips … I thought there’d be murder before we was through.’
‘How did you stop it?’
‘I had somethin’ to say, and so did one of two other blokes, and eventually the men calmed down. But it was a close thing, I can tell you, and it’s not over yet by a long stretch.’
‘So what happens now?’
‘There’s this boat comin’ up the river. Pandora. Grenville’s boat. Crammed with scabs, or so they say. Supposed to be arrivin’ in Wentworth tonight. I thought some of us might go and talk to the agents, warn ’em there’ll be trouble if they try to go up the Darling.’
‘Do any good, you reckon?’
‘I doubt it. The squatters are howlin’ for shearers. They got contracts to fill and no way to do it without men to do the work. But at least we’ll ’ave tried.’ He looked at his brother. ‘I know you said it’s not your fight but I wondered whether you’d come with us. The rest of us are ordinary blokes; none of us means a thing to them. We’ll be lucky to get to see them, even. But you’re a boat owner. They might listen to you.’
‘And if they don’t? Or if Pandora goes on up the river?’