Tamarisk Row

by Gerald Murnane

  Clement wonders what the Bassett creek conceals

  Long before the first hot days of summer, the water dries up in the creek that comes from somewhere among the stony hills where the Killeatons sometimes go out on Sundays to look for the rare Bassett waxflower and appears suddenly at the ends of streets that might otherwise have wandered for miles or runs for short distances beside the single railway track that leads northwards before it becomes a kind of drain and disappears beneath the main streets in the centre of Bassett after which Clement does not know what happens to it although his father has told him that a certain deep gully that he has seen on the other side of the city is probably the same old creek. But Clement still walks home from school on some afternoons in December beside the creek and even goes a few hundred yards out of his usual route in order to pass through a place where clumps of bulrushes hide from sight every sign of houses and streets towards Leslie Street and from which he can look in a different direction across a weedy paddock and see clearly the shapes of backyards up a few steep streets in a suburb named Diggers Hill that the people of Leslie Street think of as the opposite end of the city from their own. Clement returns home thinking again that a traveller who left the streets of Bassett and followed the creek for a whole afternoon could watch unnoticed from secure vantage places the simultaneous passing of people in parts of Bassett that no one else had ever watched at the same moment. The traveller along the creek might see suddenly thrust into view a network of streets that he had never realised could be disclosed so soon to someone who had just left behind him a view of quite a different place. One afternoon when Clement has even begun to believe that a person who followed the creek instead of his usual streets might be led unawares to a place from which he could see into a girl’s backyard from the one quarter from which she never expected to be spied on and learn what she did when she thought she was completely hidden by hedges and shrubs, and is about to clamber up through tall bulrushes to leave the creek and reach home by the last of the streets that connect with Leslie Street, he meets a boy named Gerald Dillon from the Brothers’ College. Dillon’s house is just across the street from the creek. Clement explains to the boy that he has been trying to find a short cut home. When the older boy still looks at him suspiciously Clement asks – what do you look for when you go down the creek? Dillon says – I’m not that stupid that I go down where you’ve just been – that’s where the Shepherd’s Reef girls from my street have their hide-out where they go on Saturdays and sit for hours and do whatever girls do – the place where I go is somewhere else that I’m not telling you – some of the boys from the Brothers’ have our own hide-out there – they’ve got a secret club and I’m a member. Clement asks – don’t you ever try to visit the girls’ place to see what they do there? Dillon says – not when the girls are there of course but the other Saturday after the tarts had gone we sneaked down and smashed their place to bits – now if they go down there they can only sit and stare at things or tell girls’ secrets to each other or cry all the afternoon because they’ve lost the place they thought no one knew about.

  Clement thinks of the fiercest animals in Australia

  As Clement stretches his body on the mat in the lounge-room and offers his chest and belly studded with bold pink titties to his pups for sucking, he decides that people like the girl who had to look for other hills than Palestine’s deserve as a reward for never giving up searching the excitement of being the first to discover in the depths of an unexplored valley in the mysterious heartlands of Australia the cave where for centuries a dingo parent has lain with her young ones. As he arranges the lengths of smooth cream-coloured pine kindling wood at right angles to his old woollen jumper and remembers the day when his mother’s friend Mrs Postlethwaite came suddenly into the room and his mother, who by then took no notice of the game although she sometimes said it was a stupid thing to play, explained that the pieces of wood were fox cubs or some sort of animal babies that her son was feeding and Mrs Postlethwaite kept peeping round the doorway and giggling and whispering that she’d never seen anything like it, Clement gently moves the piece of wood farthest from his face towards the shadowy hollow between his thighs but keeps a hand ready to snatch the wood back towards his belly at the first sound of his mother approaching. He knows that after all those years while the dingoes were groping and sucking at all kinds of hidden things in the dark and the full-grown dingo was always being surprised by the strange new games that the pups were learning and yet was still sure that there were still stranger places that they might tug at with their tough little gums because there was no one in all the blue-black creases of mountains that fell away on all sides from their valley who could teach them which places would never give milk no matter how hard they squeezed them, someone more powerful than the fiercest dingo may still burst through the opening of the cave and discover what has been going on there for thousands of years and go back to the coast and tell the people there that they can travel safely inland and clear the land for farms because there are no wild animals in Australia except a few dingoes who only want to keep out of sight in their lonely caves. But if, far inside the hills where the girl who nearly died at confession went at last to have a baby, there are still a few caves like those that were once at the heart of every system of hills, then the shadow that falls across the opening of the cave might only be that of a woman looking for an even quieter place to take her own child, and the dingo family will be safe for at least a few more years.

  Barry Launder and his feathered friends

  During all his years at St Boniface’s school, Clement Killeaton goes in fear of Barry Launder and his gang. No other grade but Clement’s has a tyrant like Launder. Clement sometimes watches the boys in other grades. Fights break out between pairs of boys or sometimes between two mobs. Certain boys, roughly dressed and with uncombed hair, are acknowledged to be better fighters than the rest. But no one boy claims to be the ruler of a whole grade. When a fight breaks out in Clement’s grade it is usually between two weak or insignificant boys, and the winner never boasts of his victory or looks for someone else to challenge. Apart from these few private disputes, all fights are between Launder’s gang and some outsider. And these are not really fights, because Launder’s gang always wins. Barry Launder and his six closest friends (he calls them his fine-feathered friends after once hearing some teacher use those words) regularly punish other boys. It is a common sight to see two or three feathered friends dragging a whimpering pleading offender towards the quiet corner under the cypresses behind the boys’ lavatory where Launder waits, blowing gently on his knuckles to cool them if the day is hot or holding them inside his pants against his balls if the weather is cold. The guilty one is brought before Launder. The feathered friends hold his arms until the last moment. Launder punches with all his strength once or twice into the victim’s guts until he makes the hoarse gasping noise that means he is winded. Sometimes the noise of the victim as he rolls on the ground draws a small solemn crowd of watchers. If a teacher appears, one of the feathered friends steps forward and owns up. Usually the beaten boy and the feathered friend get one cut each from the strap. (The feathered friends are famous for never flinching under the strap and never having to nurse or wring or shake or blow on their hands afterwards.) Only rarely does a genuine fight break out between a feathered friend and a boy from outside Launder’s gang. Perhaps twice a year some boy who has been goaded and tormented until he does not care what happens to him will throw himself howling and punching and even kicking at a feathered friend. Shocked watchers gather to see the end of this madness. They do not have to wait for long. Three or four feathered friends deal out the punishment. The most painful of the Chinese burns and rabbit killers and full Nelsons that they inflict are to teach the victim, so they explain, that he must always obey the rules of clean fighting. The feathered friends are hated and feared probably more than Launder himself. Barry Launder usually asks politely for what he wants – the cakes and fruit from a b
oy’s lunch, or half of his lunch money – but the feathered friends will even bash a boy before asking him to run some simple errand for them. They devise ingenious schemes to collect funds for their gang. One day they give each boy in the grade a book of grubby numbered tickets. They instruct the boys to sell these tickets at a penny each to State-school boys on the pretext that a football is being raffled. Enterprising boys are expected to grab the Protestants’ pennies and run away without even handing over the tickets. In this way a book of tickets may yield two or three shillings. Clement Killeaton throws his book of tickets over a fence in Cordwainer Street then steals sixpence from his mother’s purse and tells the feathered friend who comes to collect his money that a Shepherd’s Reef kid grabbed the last four of the ten tickets and pissed off with them. The feathered friend, named Michael Hannan, orders Clement to turn up on the next day with another fourpence or be bashed. But the gang is so pleased with the amount of money collected that Hannan forgets to ask Clement for the fourpence. The feathered friends’ memories are not always so short. They remember and forget in unpredictable ways. A boy may be warned as he leaves the schoolground one afternoon that the gang will half-kill him next day. Yet if he arrives just before the bell next morning and plays inconspicuously he may well be ignored. Yet again he may be playing quietly with his own friends days later when he looks up to see two or three feathered friends sidling up to him. Their first words are a terrifying formula – remember that day son – that is meant to set the victim wondering what past crime he is about to pay for. Clement Killeaton hates and fears the feathered friends but cannot decide what to think of Launder himself. Launder sometimes shows more than a slight interest in Clement, and some of Launder’s tricks for getting boys into trouble suggest to Clement that he and Launder could probably laugh at the same kinds of jokes if only the feathered friends would let him near their chief. By the time he is in grade three Clement has succeeded a little in winning Launder’s favour. Launder lets him hold one of his enormous swollen bags of marbles as he swaggers from ring to ring, plundering dozens more in games whose rules he interprets to suit himself. When Launder mentions that he collects birds’ eggs, Clement makes some little cards with coloured drawings of birds copied from Leach’s Australian Bird Book and offers them to the chief. When Launder decides to collect milk-stones Clement searches for them all over the yard and hands some of his most lustrous pearly pebbles to the boy. He is disappointed when Launder chooses only one or two and distributes the rest among the feathered friends, but he goes on trying to discover some common interest that he and Launder might share. In his last year at St Boniface’s Launder plays some of his best tricks. One day Michael Hannan, the feathered friend, brings to school a ten-shilling note that he has stolen from his father’s desk. Launder first announces that he and his gang will spend the money on malted milks at lunchtime. Then one of the feathered friends suggests that they might be late back from the shops and it would be better if they took a few of the teachers’ pets and the good kids with them so they could all get into trouble together. Clement tries to hide himself in the crowd but he and half a dozen other frightened boys are rounded up and marched down the street. They walk almost to the centre of Bassett before Hannan looks at his watch and says – it’s almost bell time now – we’ll stop and have a cool refreshing drink. They walk into a milk bar, all ten or twelve of them, and Hannan and Launder order six chocolate malteds. The old lady behind the counter takes a long while to set out the six glasses brimming with milk and froth and the six cold metal pannikins each with at least another glassful inside. Launder and his gang drink slowly, pausing after each sip to breathe out slowly or belch loudly or lick the creamy coating from their top lips, knowing quite well how frightened their captives are of being late. When they have almost finished their pannikins they offer the other boys a guzzle each. Clement asks for a straw because his mother has taught him to be afraid of other children’s germs, but he is not allowed to have one. The old lady says – hadn’t you boys better run along to school now? Clement starts to tell her that they have a half-holiday, but Launder interrupts and says – we know we’ll get the cuts when we get back but we don’t care. The old lady looks shocked and stern and Clement tries to hide his face so that she will never recognise him afterwards. They stroll back to school. The yard is empty and silent. Launder orders them to stop at the gates to the tennis courts behind the Y.C.W. hall. The tennis courts are strictly out of bounds, and boys have been strapped merely for running onto them to retrieve their playthings. Launder lowers a tennis net until it sags in the middle. Then he orders the captive boys to run around in a circle and jump the net and to keep running and jumping until he comes back to get them. Then he and his feathered friends walk towards their classroom. After a few minutes the old nun who teaches the fifth grade sends a girl to see what is going on in the tennis courts. The girl stares amazed at the line of boys who are still trotting up to the net and jumping it. Then she hurries back to her room. She comes running back to say that Sister Hilary orders them all to march to Sister Tarsisius the head nun at once and tell her what they think they’re doing. The boys walk slowly to the head nun’s room. Clement tells her that Barry Launder and some other boys took them prisoner and made them late and then made them run round and round the tennis courts. The nun says she doesn’t want to hear any of that nonsense about boys making other boys do certain things because no boy can make another boy do anything. She gives them each two stinging cuts and sends them back to their class with instructions to stay in for the whole of every lunchtime for the next week. At afternoon playtime they are the centre of a crowd of boys who can scarcely believe what they have done. One hot afternoon when even Miss Callaghan, the third-grade teacher, stares out at the green fringes of the pepper trees, the children are told to write a composition on At the Picnic. No child shows any enthusiasm. Clement has not been on any picnic for a long time, but he finds it easy to write about a few families who travel all morning across clinking pebbles and between trees as hard as stone to a green embankment overhanging a pool where kingfishers skim the water. He writes while the grown-ups rested on the soft grass my cousins and my friends and I went up the creek to explore. While he wonders how much of what they discover at the head of the long valley that narrows into the sort of gully where foxes and dingoes and rare species of birds may have lived untroubled for years he might put down on his page, where already the sweat from his hands makes his pencil skid, one of the feathered friends comes up the aisle pretending to look for a pencil sharpener and whispers to Clement that Barry Launder has ordered every boy to write in his composition at the picnic I let a breezer in my pants, or else be bashed to smithereens after school. The feathered friend stands waiting for Clement to pass the message on. Miss Callaghan’s head is bent over her desk. Clement whispers the message. Launder’s boy says – now write it yourself. Clement’s hand shakes with fear. He writes the first words slowly and awkwardly. He looks at the other boys in his seat. They too are writing, with solemn frightened faces. Launder’s messenger says I’ll be back to see you later and make sure you’ve written it properly. He moves to the next row with his message. A hush falls over the boys’ half of the room. Boys crook their arms around their books to hide them from their neighbours. Here and there a boy dares to ask his neighbour in a whisper whether he has written the words. A few who cannot decide what to do stop writing and bury their heads in their folded arms. Miss Callaghan says – you’ve all been busy workers this afternoon especially the boys – finish off your work now and leave your books open on the desk for two of my girls to take up when you’ve gone to play. Two of Launder’s boys leave their seats to make a hurried inspection of books. Because Clement sits on the end of a seat he has to show his page. The words are written on the page. The feathered friend pats him kindly on the back. Then, because he would rather be bashed to death by Launder’s gang than write impure words to a nun or a lady teacher, Clement uses a rubber and his pencil to chan
ge the sentence to at the picnic I felt a breeze. But there is still an odd-looking gap in the text. Miss Callaghan tells the boys to march out quietly. In the playground they form silent groups. Launder and his men stroll proudly around asking each boy did he write it. Not one boy answers no. The gang has never seemed so powerful. As they march inside for their last hour of school the boys stare at the pile of books on Miss Callaghan’s desk. As soon as the prayer is over, one boy hurries to the front and says in a strained voice – Miss Callaghan can I have my composition back please because I made a mistake in it? The teacher looks oddly at him and says – you can trust me to find all your mistakes. The boy bursts out crying, and Miss Callaghan sends him outside to have a drink and calm down. Boys all round the room glance at Barry Launder. The chief nods his head slowly, and the watchers understand that that boy is done for. Miss Callaghan tells girls to give out pastels and pastel books. The grade has to draw a day at the beach. Then Miss Callaghan begins to correct the compositions. The boys watch her face. They do not have long to wait. She looks at the name on the cover of a book that she is marking and says – Henry Phelan come here at once please. The boy turns white and creeps out to her desk. Even the girls sense that something serious is happening. Miss Callaghan says – did you write this Mr Phelan? and points to a line in the boy’s exercise book. The boy nods. She says – put away your pastels and prepare for a trip to Sister Tarsisius and heaven help you when you get there. The boy whispers – please Miss Callaghan Geoffrey Lunn wrote it too. She says – we don’t need tell-tales in this grade thank you. But she looks eagerly through the stack for Lunn’s book. Half-way through she pauses and stares at a page of writing. She looks at the cover of the book and says – Patrick Gilligan come here at once please – no stay in your place and you too Mr Phelan. She snaps at the grade – go on with what you’ve been told. It takes her about ten minutes to make a list of the boys who have written the words. Twelve boys out of the twenty-three in the grade are lined up at the front. Clement Killeaton is one of them. Miss Callaghan follows the line of boys out of the door. Behind her the class breaks into uproar. She leaves the boys standing outside Sister Tarsisius’ room while she shows their compositions to the head nun. Sister Tarsisius comes rushing out to confront them. Her wooden rosary beads click furiously together. She says – what have you villains got to say for yourselves before I strap the devil out of you? Clement speaks up. He feels the wind seeping out of his bottom and the first hot oily trickles of poop following. His knee-caps begin to twitch. He says – Sister I didn’t really write it. The teachers find his book and look at his composition. The nun says – what you’re trying to tell us is that you wrote it and then tried to hide it which is just as bad if not worse. He cries like a baby and says – Sister Barry Launder and his gang made me do it. The nun avoids looking at Clement’s face as she tells the others – I’m not going to listen to any excuse that some other boy made you do this wicked thing – no boy can make another boy do a thing as serious as this – in fact I’ll give two extra straps to any boy who tries to tell me that story again. She makes the boys tear the offending pages neatly out of their books and carry them in line to the burner. When they return to her she gives them each four fierce cuts. Clement and a couple of other boys howl openly. Sister Tarsisius looks at Miss Callaghan as the nun tells the boys to buy new exercise books that night and report with them to her room every lunchtime for the next three weeks to copy out the whole Catechism in their best writing. When they get back to their own room Miss Callaghan makes them write a new composition while the others are drawing with their pastels. Clement cannot stop himself from sniffling. The whole grade soon realises that he howled when he was strapped. Long before home-time the news reaches Launder that Killeaton pimped on him to Tarsisius, and each time that Clement looks up he sees the clenched fist of a feathered friend being shaken at him. He starts to run as soon as he is out of the door. He gets almost to the school gate before they catch him. Perhaps because they are impatient to boast to each other about their greatest success in all their years at St Boniface’s, the gang does not prolong Clement’s punishment. Launder punches all the wind out of his guts, each of the feathered friends drives a fist as hard as he can into Clement’s face, and Fat Cormack takes his shoes and socks and jumper and his school-bag and all his books and pencils and throws them one into each front yard along Fairbairn Street but does not stop him from trying to search for them.