by John Harris
Everyone looked at me as though I was mad.
SEVEN
Jack and his wife looked concerned when I got to the top field, and were standing by the first row of trees, empty satchels at their feet. They were deep in conversation but broke off when they saw me walk out into the open, both looking in my direction. Jack immediately said something to Joan, kick-started his motorbike, straddled it and rode towards me.
‘Shit,’ I said through gritted teeth, but not wanting to appear afraid I kept on walking towards him. Out of the corner of my eye I could see movement around the tents, so I knew that some people hadn’t gone to work. The two Scots were definitely there, but then that was to be expected, they had always supported the stand-off. I stopped near the edge of the field as Jack pulled up.
‘So what’s this all about then, John?’ he said, pushing up the top of his sun hat, then putting his hand back onto the throttle and revving it impatiently.
‘Nothing really. We, er... ’ I hesitated slightly, wondering if ‘we’ was the correct word. ‘That is, some of us think that this new fruit we’re picking is pretty small. It’s very hard to fill the bins.’
‘Yeah?’ he replied flatly.
I waited for him to continue but he didn’t. ‘So, um, we can’t fill the bins,’ I repeated. ‘It’s taking ages: three or four hours just to fill one.’
He looked around the field at the tents, which gave me a chance to do the same. Everyone who’d said they would stop work had, along with some who said they weren’t sure, and were sitting in front of their tents watching us. It was only seven o’clock so they could have been getting ready to go to work, but the illusion of a show of support was a tonic, and I straightened up. ‘Yep, that’s it.’
Jack rolled his head as though massaging a tense muscle, and said, ‘Yeahh. So, what do you want me to do about it? This is an orchard and those apples have got to be picked by someone, haven’t they?’
His voice was a semi-tone lower, and, though not markedly different, I sensed less aggression in his manner. Renewed by this, and the apparent show of support, I hit him with our demands. ‘We think the price per bin is too low, Jack. Those apples are so small.’
‘Yeahh, well I’m a reasonable man.’ He nudged the bike into gear. ‘You lot get back to work and we’ll discuss the possibility of raising the price. I’m only one of the owners here, yeahh. Got to talk to the other co-owners tonight and I’ll let you know.’ He turned the bike around and zoomed off towards his house.
One of the Scottish girls immediately came out of her tent to meet me. ‘What did he say?’
‘Reckons he’s got to talk to the other owners before he raises the price. He’ll let us know, probably tomorrow.’
She smiled and put a thumb up to her friend who was trying to light their gas stove. ‘Well at least he’s thinking about it, John, that’s one thing.’
I nodded, unsure whether to be pleased or not. ‘You making tea?’
‘Uh-huh. Want a cup?’
‘OK,’ I said, moving towards the tent. ‘We’ll have one before we get to work.’ I raised a fist. ‘The pickers are united!’
When I reached the top field the following morning, one of the Scottish girls was waiting there for me. She came running over and kissed me on the cheek. ‘We’ve done it, John. You’ve done it! Twenty dollars a bin instead of seventeen!’
‘Yes!’ I immediately broke into the Sham 69 song in which, after each verse, I either clapped twice or stomped my foot like the original:
‘If the pickers (boom boom)
are united, (boom boom)
they will never (boom boom)
be divided. (boom boom)
If the pickers... (boom boom)’
I went around the whole orchard holding up one fist and shouting the words at the top of my lungs. Each person congratulated me from the branches of the tree they were perched in, and even Albert and the Swede said it was a job well done. Albert cautioned me against pushing Jack too far, saying that I’d better keep the noise level down, but I was too caught up in the victory to heed any warnings.
I should, however, have realised that something was wrong when, after leaving Rick at the tractor shed upon arriving at the top field, I had yet to see him doing his rounds. Normally he would be out and about delivering bins within ten minutes of the rest of us starting work. I’d been marching around the orchard for nearly an hour proclaiming victory and he still hadn’t appeared. Joan, however, had.
‘John!’
I looked down the avenue of apple trees to see Joan standing at the other end, waving.
‘Can you come up to the house?’ she called, ‘Jack wants a word.’
The Aussie picker I’d been talking to slapped me on the back. ‘Sounds ominous.’ When I looked back Joan had gone, reappearing further up the hill. She was driving the tractor. Without another word, I picked up my satchel and walked after her.
Jack was sitting side-saddle on his bike outside his house when I arrived. He put the stand on, dismounted and came towards me, a cheque in one hand, cloth sun-hat in the other. ‘There’s the money for the work you’ve done up until yesterday,’ he said, ‘minus electricity and those fuckin’ bins that were full of nothing but leaves, yeahh,’ and handed over the cheque. ‘Now get off of my land. You’re nothing but fuckin’ trouble.’ He turned to walk away.
I looked at the amount written on the cheque. ‘Seven dollars!’
‘Yeahh,’ he said, getting back onto his bike. ‘Any problems, speak to the wife, she’s the accountant. You’ve got till tomorrow to pack your gear and go. You and your fuckin’ mate.’
‘Rick?’ I exclaimed. ‘What’s he got to do with it?’
Jack didn’t reply, started his bike and rode off, leaving me to stare blankly at the cheque. ‘Seven dollars,’ I mumbled, shaking my head. Seven lousy dollars for what I remembered as being three bins picked the previous day. Even at the old rate of pay that should amount to fifty-one dollars.
I stormed off towards the shed, pulling down every branch and each and every apple within arm’s reach along the way, continually muttering the words, ‘Seven dollars.’
Rick was collecting firewood when I got back to the shed; unusual considering that it was still only nine o’clock in the morning. He dropped the logs by the front door when he saw me and started rolling a cigarette.
‘Did you get the sack?’ I asked, approaching him. He nodded without looking up from his task. ‘Then why the fuck are you collecting wood?’
‘Did you get paid?’ he said, apparently ignoring my question.
‘Yeah.’
‘How much?’
‘Seven shitty dollars. That twisting bastard! What about you?’
‘Eight. Swizzled!’ He did an ‘up yours!’ sign towards Jack’s house, then sat down on the grass. ‘So that’s it now: eight dollars, plus the rest I’ve saved, that makes, well, enough to get going again.’
I sat down next to him, patting the ground first to see if the dew had dried. ‘Yeah, but go where? Not another orchard?’
‘No chance. I want to leave this country. I’ve got enough for a ticket out, but that’s about all.’
‘We’ve both got enough for a ticket but that’s all. Great!’
‘The alternative is to stay in Australia and get more of the four letter word, but neither of us want to do that.’ He handed the completed cigarette to me and said, ‘What about Hong Kong? Ted reckoned it’s a great place.’
‘That was during the Vietnam War. Things have changed a bit since he was last there.’
‘Still a colony... just. We don’t need a visa to work; it’s the only place we can get a job without hassle. Otherwise we stay here, or go back to England, and I’m not keen on that.’ He paused to light his cigarette. ‘Get your pocket atlas and let’s have a look. I’m not even sure where Hong Kong is.’
I ran inside and came back out with the little book. ‘It’s the only way we’re going to get enough money to travel again,’
I said, handing the atlas to him, ‘go there and work for six months, save our money, then leave. Do you think we’ll have enough for the flight?’
Rick opened the atlas and ran his finger down the index page. ‘Hong Kong,’ He flicked to a small scale map and said, ‘Yeah, it’s not that far, look.’
I laughed at Rick’s unwavering sense of humour in the face of adversity. ‘How long did Jack say you can stay here for? Told me to be out by tomorrow.’
‘Same here.’ He closed the atlas and drew on the cigarette. ‘We’ll cash our cheques tomorrow morning in town and try to hitch a ride up to Sydney to buy our tickets, they’ll be cheaper there. I don’t think we should waste money going up by train. We’ll leave here tonight.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Yep,’ he flicked the cigarette onto the grass and stood up, bundling the logs under each arm, ‘just after we burn this shed down.’
EIGHT
There was nothing of value in the shed, nothing worth taking anyway, but with nothing else to do I made another inspection, going from room to room just to make doubly sure that we were leaving nothing behind. I stopped in the sheep-shearing area and stood beneath a hole in the roof, a perfectly full moon shining down a beam of light onto my upturned face. It was so bright after the darkness of the other rooms that it hurt my eyes and made me look away.
We’d already packed our bags with what little gear we had, and Rick had gone off to the top field to give some of our household things to the Scots, promising to be back by midnight, the time we had set to leave. In addition to delivering the gifts, Rick was to hint at us leaving tonight, so that they wouldn’t think that we had burned to death in the forthcoming fire. The two girls had said earlier that they were prepared to walk out in protest over our sacking but we told them to forget it, we were sick of Australia anyway. We’d already hinted at revenge so they shouldn’t be too surprised to wake up the next morning and find a pile of ashes where our home used to be.
There was a noise outside and I looked back down through a gap in the wall. Rick was jogging down from the gate, huge puffs of white air floating up from his mouth like a steam train. I put an eye close to the crack in the corrugated iron to get a better view but a centipede moved out of its home, obscuring my sliver of vision. I shivered and moved back into the warmth of our living room just as Rick came in.
‘Shit,’ he said excitedly, ‘it’s fooking cold out tonight.’ He slammed the door behind him and went to the fire, rubbing his hands together briskly.
‘We still going?’
‘Definitely. Brrrrr. Just give me five minutes.’
I sat down on the wooden planks that used to be my bed and looked around the room, remembering how unlived in it had looked when we’d first arrived. Now, with the fire blazing and our two bags waiting by the door, I almost felt anxious, as though I was leaving home.
‘Roll us both a cigarette,’ Rick said, breaking my train of thought, ‘my hands are too cold.’
Pulling the tobacco pouch from my pocket, I said, ‘What about the two girls, did you tell them what we’re going to do?’
‘Didn’t need to.’ He looked up. ‘D’you know, as soon as I got there they knew we were going to do something to get our own back. As I gave them the stuff, she said, "Oh-ho, leaving tonight huh? Interesting," and looked at me with one of those looks.’ Rick squinted and turned back to the fire. ‘They know all right.’
‘You don’t think they’ll say anything?’
‘No, not those two, they’re OK. Albert would, but then he doesn’t know anything about tonight, and by tomorrow morning it’ll be too late.’ I passed him the cigarette and he said, ‘Wouldn’t mind a cuppa before we go.’
‘No stove.’
He swore, lit his cigarette from off the end of a length of burning wood and then pushed the flaming timber under my bed.
‘Hold on!’ I said, jumping up. ‘What are you doing?’
‘What?’
‘Well... I’m not ready.’
And suddenly it all seemed to happen at once. I put my bag over one shoulder, took two pieces of blazing wood from the fire and ran around the room setting light to clumps of sheep’s wool. Rick started laughing maniacally and, using a plank from the bed, put the windows through before using it to rake the whole fire out onto the wooden floor of the shed.
‘OK,’ he said, ‘let’s go through the other rooms and then leave by the back door.’ We both shovelled up a plankful of glowing embers and walked through the shed from one end to the other, sprinkling the glowing coals onto the floor as we went, as though sowing seeds. Apart from making me sweat a lot, nothing seemed to be happening. The embers just sat there and glowed like huge rubies.
‘They’re not catching,’ I remarked, looking back at the red trail.
‘They will, just leave them. Ready?’
I looked around, said, ‘OK,’ and we both slid down the sheep chute at the back, landing on the wet grass. The sweat instantly froze on my skin as the cold night air engulfed me. ‘Shit,’ I gasped, partly at the chill and partly at how bright it was outside. It was like daylight. The trees, the grass, cows, everything was lit up with a silvery moonlight.
We ran across the open field in exactly the opposite direction to which we’d come five months earlier, and clambered up the slope towards the road, laughing and sweating the whole time. ‘Don’t look back until we get to the road,’ Rick panted. ‘It’ll either be Guy Fawkes night in Batlow or as dead as a doornail.’
‘I can’t,’ I gasped, sliding on the damp grass, ‘I’m too excited. I’ve got to look.’
But I didn’t, at least not until half an hour later, when I could see the fenced-off road up ahead. When we got to the top and did look around, I saw one of the most beautiful sights I think I’ve ever seen.
In the bottom of the valley a herd of cows were standing in a ring around the flaming shed, each one picked out in the orange glow as they stood warming their faces by the inferno. Some of them moved closer, but then retreated when they found that the fire was too hot, doing a sort of shimmy as they reversed. Occasionally they would turn to present their flanks or rear to the warmth.
The shed was still discernible as a building, but only just. The wooden floor and frame of the shed, tinder-dry no doubt from the recent lack of rain, was in full swing. The windows had already disappeared among the flames that were lapping up from the floor, and part of the corrugated wall on one side, having buckled under the heat, had fallen in. A mile-high column of smoke rose into the clear sky like a solid column of white wool, lit by the moon. As we watched, part of the roof silently fell in, sending a shower of sparks into the air that rose up the column like a swarm of fireflies. Even the trees, at least half a mile away, were blushing warmly under the orange light, as if embarrassed.
Another shower of sparks went up, and what remained of the roof and one whole length of wall fell in on itself, producing a black rectangle in a ring of fire like a square eclipse. Soon that too was on fire. A shriek in the trees heralded a flock of cockatoos that flew out, did a circle of the whole field before coming back to where they had started, content with their ringside seat.
It seemed that the whole place had come alive to watch the show, all except the humans. Neither Jack nor his neighbours, whose houses were only five minutes away, nor any of the pickers, who must have been able to smell the burning wood through their canvas walls, came out.
Two hours later, when the show had finished, without a word Rick and I started our long walk into town, never speaking. Both of us were happy in the knowledge that we had enough money to get us back to where we wanted to be, and that was all that mattered. The money we had would only get us there, after that we would be back at square one; we knew that, but it didn’t matter. Hong Kong, like everywhere else we had been to, was completely unknown to us, and that was all we desired.
CHAPTER 11
MAGNETIC NORTH
ONE
After we set fire to the sheep shed
and walked back into Batlow, there wasn’t much to do but wait until the next day and try to get a lift up to Sydney. It turned out to be much more difficult than we’d ever imagined, so rather than hang around, running the risk of being spotted by Jack or one of his cronies, we decided to buy a bus ticket to get us to the city. It cost more than either of us had wanted to pay, but Rick came up with a solution.
The cheques that Jack’s wife had issued as our final payment, for seven and eight dollars, had been hurriedly filled out (no doubt she was eager to see the back of us), leaving room between the words, ‘seven’ and ‘dollars’ for us to put in a ‘ty’. The amount in words would therefore read ‘Seventy’ dollars on mine and ‘Eighty’ on Rick’s, and we easily put an extra zero in the box to make it all add up. The bank in Batlow knew our faces well, since we’d been cashing cheques for that amount every week for months, so there shouldn’t be any problems. I didn’t really like the idea of cheating anyone, but felt that it was more than justified considering that we’d been diddled out of what was rightfully ours. We sat in the pub and accurately forged Joan’s handwriting, then went into the bank and cashed the cheques without a hitch.
Rick wanted to try to hitch a ride but I was so nervous, almost running out of the bank, that I went straight into the ticket office and booked us onto the next bus out. Before nightfall we were in Sydney.
We were the first customers in the travel agent when the woman opened the shutter at nine o’clock the next morning, and, according to her, the only people she’d ever seen waiting, cash in hand, for a seat on the next available flight out.
‘What, tonight?’ she exclaimed, rolling up the front shutter of her shop and looking back wide-eyed.