Hear the Train Blow

by Patsy Adam-Smith

  Children have great loyalty to a teacher; perhaps it is more to the dedicated profession they represent than the individual. We did not tell our parents about Louey Marsh, but we spoke about her calmly among ourselves without any of the rancour most teachers receive at some time in their career from thoughtless children. We knew this woman was sick. Mostly we supported one another against her, sometimes she made sure this would not be possible. She provided sweets for the whole school once to ensure their alienation from Kevin and me.

  We two were the only Catholics at the school. This day a minister of religion came out from Numurkah to give instruction to the children. Because our parents had ordered us not to attend this class Louey Marsh sent Kevin to empty the two lavatory pans, and me to scrub the seats of the boys’ and girls’ lavatories. Before the other kids could rally to our defence she announced, ‘A lolly scramble for the Bible class!’ She knew that many of those children had sweets only at Christmas and would not be able to resist her bribe.

  SUCH IS LIFE

  It was still the 1930s, a time when men were on top of the world today and in the bankruptcy court tomorrow.

  At Waaia when the effects of the Depression hit people we were surprised. At Monomeith we saw the effects regularly as men from the country jumped the rattler heading down to the Big Smoke to look for work and men from the city headed for the country, equally sure there must be work there for willing hands. Waaia being on the track to nowhere, no one came through looking for work. Men merely left the place. But the Depression took its toll here as everywhere, and this affected us all as every man was part of the whole life in this small, isolated community.

  Dalton Beswick, ‘Mrs B’s’ son from the hotel, had taken on wheat-buying in a small way. Coming home from school in the afternoon Kevin and I saw two strange men approach him as he lumped wheat on his stack.

  ‘They’re policemen,’ Joe Sartori, a little Italian kid, told us. ‘They’ve come for him. He’s gonna get hung.’

  Half expecting to see this very punishment carried out before our eyes, we hurried over. What we heard and saw was exciting to us because we so rarely saw a policeman.

  ‘Come down from up there,’ they called to Dalton high on the stack. ‘We want to talk to you.’

  ‘What do you want to talk about?’ Dalton said, climbing higher.

  ‘Wheat-stealing.’

  Well!

  ‘I don’t know anything about it.’ Dalton was higher still.

  ‘It seems pretty suspicious if you skulk up there. If you don’t know anything about it why don’t you come down and talk to us instead of having to shout from up there? Half the town can hear you.’ (Half the town had by now gathered near the stack, if the detectives only knew it.)

  Dalton scrambled down. Kevin and I mistimed our appearance at the other side of the stack, for by the time we got round there Dalton was handcuffed to one of the detectives and was being bundled into the car.

  ‘They’re taking him to Numurkah to hang him,’ said Joe Sartori. Gee!

  Dalton’s dilemma was this: in between the time of sending a ‘parcel’ of wheat down on the train one afternoon and its arrival at the market in the city the following day the price had dropped. It was now worth less than what he had paid the grower, the money being on the books only as yet. Dalton had no money behind him; he had bought a lot more wheat that he had not yet paid out for; mice had ruined much of his stack.

  He tried the extreme method of extricating himself by stealing wheat to sell as his own. The first that Waaia knew of it was the appearance of the detectives at the railway station to ask Mum for her carbon copies of way-bills and books showing to whom she had issued trucks on certain days. Their fingers quickly traced down the names on both and on both stopped opposite Dalton’s name. The wheat, they told Mum, had been stolen from a paddock between midnight and 1 a.m. three nights ago.

  Two days after his arrest Dalton arrived home on bail, his face blackened and bruised on one side, his lips cut.

  ‘It certainly is an experience,’ he told Dad. Dad brought him down to the house for a cup of tea.

  ‘You don’t want to let it get you down,’ Dad said.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Dalton. ‘It’s an experience, something different.’

  He had brought a new piece of music out from Numurkah, ‘Angeline’.

  ‘Play it for me,’ he asked. I played and he sang. ‘Oh she was sweet sixteen, little Angeline.’ Dalton was seventeen.

  Mum was summonsed to appear at the court proceedings. She was to produce the station records concerning the truck that had transported the stolen wheat to Melbourne. All she had to do was to answer to her name and agree that these were the documents requested by the court, but Mum was so nervous that she was unable to work for days before and was just as ill for days after. She had never been inside a court before. She was so paralysed with nerves that she hardly noticed what was going on and could tell us little. This was disappointing because we had no conception of a court of law. The only thing of interest she could remember was that there were ten bags of wheat in the courtroom, some of it the stolen wheat, the rest brought from various farms. The farm-hand who had sewn the stolen bags was brought as witness and was to recognise the stolen bags by his sewing. When asked in the witness box if he could do this he replied, ‘Among the sewing of a hundred men I would know mine. Any good bagger would.’

  He did, and sewed two bags to demonstrate to the judge how he ‘finished off with a double hitch sort of round the ear with a sort of loop if you see what I mean.’ All the judge said as he watched the amazing speed of the man was, ‘Goodness gracious!’

  Dalton came home a free man. Though the tracks of his old truck were traced to the paddock it was held as the opinion of the court that the truck could have been used without Dalton’s knowledge. Also it was the court’s opinion that Dalton could not have moved the one hundred bags of wheat from the ground to the truck in the short period of time during which the theft had taken place. This became the joke of Waaia for some time: that a man could never brag about such a feat! (It was not considered at all impossible by many; Bill Martin could have lifted twice as many in that time and Dalton, well, nobody was willing to speak of what they knew of Dalton’s strength and speed.)

  Dalton didn’t get into trouble again, and he didn’t let this unpleasantness affect his life. He had courage, nerve, guts, faith – whatever you like to call it. Many had not.

  One Saturday going into Numurkah on the Casey, Dad saw the car of a friend of ours near a bridge and slowed down, thinking to have a talk with the man. Then he saw our friend . . . and revved the motor up fast, hoping Mum had not seen what he had seen, and went on into the town to report to the police that Reg Dillon was lying dead beneath the bridge with a rifle barrel in what was left of his mouth.

  That night at home, Dad said, ‘If a man could only have a mate to talk to at these times. It’s a mate you need for just those few moments when there seems to be no other way out. But such is life.’

  The next blow fell very close. Kevin Young’s family went bankrupt. ‘Just like that,’ the grown-ups repeated over and over again. We children couldn’t understand. We stared in disbelief at their colonial-style home and solid British-made furniture that Mum had told us was now seized and would be sold. We wandered through their garden with its trellises weighed down by vines under which we would lie and eat grapes in the cool of the night while our parents sat in canvas chairs relaxing after the heat of the day. There were the chicken hatcheries and the poultry pens that housed thousands of laying hens – sidelines to wheat-buying – where we’d watched chickens hatch and gathered eggs with the workmen, and the gristing mill where each morning Kevin’s father would process the newly garnered wheat into meal for the morning’s porridge.

  All this was to go under the hammer. Kevin and I walked disconsolately round the places we loved. The front of the house had been a shop before the wheat-buying became big business, and the size and wealth
of that new business were evident in the stock still left in the store which there had been no need to realise on when the golden grain brought such a fortune. Kevin and I played shop there and sold to one another rolls and reels of ribbons and laces and broderie anglaise, cottons, needles and tins of goods. There were scales for weighing things, counters with rulers let into them to measure materials, a till that ‘pinged’ when we put our cardboard money in it. Now this would all go.

  We went over to the workman’s cottage, empty beside the bamboo plantation; we had used this as a make-believe home whenever it was unoccupied, and we wished now to take away and keep a picture we had used to decorate the wall. Kevin held the picture in his hands and as we walked out the cottage door big ‘Bull’ Marvel grabbed him by the arm.

  ‘Don’t try that,’ he snarled. ‘Trying to sneak things.’ He swore at Kevin and called him a dirty name and said his father was no longer the ‘big boss cocky’. It was the only time I ever heard anyone speak poorly to that boy. I cried and went home. Dad told me we must forgive ‘Bull’ his hate because he had never had love, family, a proper home or money to spend.

  ‘These are strange times to be living through,’ he said. ‘All we can hope to do is lend a hand when someone needs it.’ Dad wasn’t to know how soon he would need a hand himself and how readily help would be forthcoming because of the many times his own tough, callused hand had stretched out towards others. But this was later.

  Kevin at times would be grave with concern for his parents – he could see that they were distressed – but at other times he would be a young boy and forget. One such time was when his mother scolded him.

  ‘I shan’t stop with you,’ he said. ‘I’ll go where my friends are.’ He packed a bag with pyjamas, a packet of biscuits and his old teddy-bear which he hadn’t taken to bed for many a year, and came to us. Mum sent Mickie across to tell Mrs Young he was safe and would bed down at our house. But when it grew dark he began to fidget and then he said, ‘I think I’d better have a look and see if Mum and Dad are all right.’ And off he went with his bag on his back.

  The family were allowed to keep only those things necessary to continue to exist – a bed each and little more. All else must be sold.

  ‘How are things going?’ Mrs Young asked Kevin and me when we came inside during the sale, which was held in the grounds.

  With the thoughtlessness of children we said, ‘Wonderful. They’re selling things for almost nothing.’ We had seen a cedar cabinet go for five shillings, a chest of drawers the family had brought out from England via India for ten shillings.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Nothing matters.’

  They went to Melbourne to look for work. The father, used to employing many men, now took a job as a carpenter’s mate and shortly after fell from high scaffolding and broke his neck. Mrs Young, a skilled dressmaker who had done her apprenticeship to the trade in Europe, opened a high-class salon in the city and soon was dressing many of Melbourne’s socialites. One night, visiting a friend in hospital, she was knocked over by a car driven by an unlicensed youth and was partly crippled. At that time an outbreak of ‘infantile paralysis’ was ravaging Australian cities, so Kevin was left to live with us at Waaia until that should ease.

  GETTING OUR IRISH UP

  I was twelve when I won my first race. Mick had, of course, left school. Jack, who had come from the orphanage to live with us, was working as a bricklayer’s labourer; he carried a hod of bricks up a ladder all day and was so enthusiastic that he brought the hod home to demonstrate to us at night. I was doing the Merit Certificate at school.

  I still sat between Ted Jorgenson and Alan Thornton, but we had a new teacher. He was a type unknown to us and we distrusted him at first; he didn’t hit girls! And he encouraged us to read – even to read newspapers – and to enter sports contests with other schools. He bought us a radio with Mothers’ Club money so that we could listen to the Schools Broadcasts, which were then only beginning.

  Soon I idolised him. He opened up for me a new world of learning – and under his guidance I won my first race. I was at Numurkah at the district school sports. Waaia girls went into ‘uniform’ for the day, white cotton dresses the mothers had cut out in the hall on the long trestle supper tables, and gold head-bands. We were a fine-looking lot by the time we were eventually bumped into the big town on the tray of Dalton Beswick’s wheat truck. I was proud even to be competing, but to win! Mum saw my triumph, but I had to wait till we returned home to tell Dad.

  ‘Which race?’ he asked, almost as excited as I was.

  ‘The egg and spoon.’

  Oh, the pride of me to see him begin to smile and then to laugh!

  ‘You little bobby-dazzler,’ he said. ‘You’re a little humdinger.’ He pinned the blue ribbon on my dress. For night on night he had tried to train me along the side of the railway track with no success. Now he asked me to come out and demonstrate my winning style. Mum and Dad and Mick and Kevin and Jack all came to watch. Mick, who could fly like a silver streak, competed against me, and so did Kevin, but I beat them easily. They walked, or ran slowly, crouched over, afraid the egg would drop if they wobbled the spoon. Holding the spoon in the way Mr Schmidt the teacher had shown me, I ran at the same speed I always did and won. Dad came over.

  ‘Give me a look in your mouth,’ he said. I carefully levered the handle of the spoon out and he looked in. I had had two teeth out and the gaps held the spoon so firmly it couldn’t budge.

  This race gave Dad ideas for further contests that I might be successful in. For instance, Mick could ride a bike faster than me – most kids with two legs could.

  ‘Why not a slow bicycle race?’ Dad suggested. He made up the rules; no turning back, no putting the feet to the ground, etc. Kevin and I practised every morning and every night until in the end when we challenged the whole school we two beat them easily. We could hold our bikes almost at a standstill indefinitely by moving the handle-bars a fraction, so twisting the front wheels as a balance. We were still near the starting line when the others had crossed the finish.

  Ted and Alan still gave me larry-dooley. I was twelve and they were fourteen years old and we were all going to sit for the Merit exam. Their size and weight made me defer to them, my size and weight led them to bully me, but when the day came for us to go to another little bush school to do the exam we were all equal in our nervousness. Alan Thornton drove the three of us in the shay-cart his family came to school in, and we put our lunch bags under the flap, jogged off and hardly said a word the whole way.

  Three weeks later the results came back. We had all passed. Ted and Alan would leave school and go to work. I wanted to learn much more.

  ‘What is there to learn now?’ said the boys. ‘We’ve got our Merit.’

  I had sat for three scholarships and was awarded all three. ‘Until my dying day,’ Mum said as I stamped out, laughing hard, shouting, ‘I don’t care! I didn’t want them anyway!’ because I never let anyone know when I was hurt beyond speech, ‘Till my dying day I will never forgive them. The advertisements were lies, all of them. "Free scholarships!" Now she’s won them they tell us they aren’t free! She can’t go, and they lied.’

  It was no use Mr Schmidt telling her that no, the colleges had not lied, but they were totally unaware of the financial straits of a family living on the ‘emergency reduction of wages’ that had been dropped on wage earners like a threatening hand on 12 February that year.

  ‘Free?’ she said. ‘And here on the letters they list the costs of uniforms and all the other things.’

  ‘The scholarships are for tuition only,’ Mr Schmidt explained.

  ‘But how can a country girl whose father earns £2 19s 4d a week, whose mother gets nothing except the house rent-free for running the station for twelve hours a day six days a week, how can she get uniforms and travel and "the extras" they mention . . . and there’s only one of them offers her a bed!’ Mum had been loud, but now she became still and silent
, staring at the papers spread on the kitchen table; then she spoke so quietly I could hardly hear her. ‘She won’t be able to go and she’s tried and tried. How can they . . . the thing is, they don’t know how people are hanging on out here in the bush. They don’t know about us.’

  Out at the stunted-for-water nectarine tree I heard the terrible noise begin, the deep sobbing that would humiliate her to have been caught in front of anyone at all. The teacher came out. ‘You should go to your mother.’ He put his arm around my shoulder and it felt like a log. ‘Her hurt is as bad as yours.’

  Mum stopped crying when I came in and turned on me in frustration. All the hard years, the pride in never letting on that they were hard years, boiled over. ‘You and your Little Miss-Muck scholarships!’

  I took the papers from the kitchen table, tore them up and threw the pieces in the wood-fire stove. ‘I didn’t want to go to their flash schools anyhow!’

  This new teacher had made my mind sit up and look around for the first time. Perhaps I might even . . . I whispered and the teacher had to bend to hear . . . perhaps even the university . . . then I became embarrassed and pretended that I hadn’t meant it and was fooling; I hadn’t heard those words spoken in any school I had attended; I hadn’t known what one could do in a university until this teacher told me of the open, unfenced plain of learning one could embark on there. But to blurt out that I of all people wanted to go – they’d all laugh at me for sure . . .

  ‘University!’ said Mr Schmidt. ‘University?’ He looked unseeing at me, thinking.

  Then, ‘Yes, why not! Why not? You can do it. You do it and take all of us along with you, because you’ll do correspondence lessons here at the school.’

  When the first lessons arrived everyone in the school crowded round to have a look. The first papers to be taken out of the package were the French lessons. That fixed it. I was a scholar.