From the uninvited circle of listeners, shyly standing outside the firelight or just within it, the applause was spontaneous and prolonged; and the dog Rex, who had raised his muzzle on a high note and joined in, could be heard fleeing back to Thirty-Bob’s camp yelping from a hearty kick in the ribs.
The Stray cordially made everyone welcome, drawing them in to the fire. She was in the seventh heaven of delight. Her absurd little airs of a hostess giving a grand reception had something touching about them. To have the whole of the river-bank society focused upon her camp made her feel important and happy. Even the single men from the railway bridge, lurking at a distance, she urged to come closer, to join in.
The busker broke into ‘The Dole-Snatchers’ Anthem,’ an anonymous ballad, congenial in its sentiments and memorable for its simplicity:
‘As I was walking down the street, the copper said to me:
“Do you belong to the doley-oh mob? Well, just come with me.”
Grabbed me by the collar, tried to run me in;
I upped with my fist and knocked him stiff, and we all began to sing:’
‘Come on, now join in the chorus, everyone …
‘Yes, we belong to the doley-oley mob, the doley-oh mob are we;
We never fight nor quarrel, we never disagree.
The password of the doley-oh mob is ‘Come’n have a drink with me.’
But we all dropped dead, when Stevens said: “Come and have a drink with me.”’
By this time the busker was hung about with a festoon of assorted Jones and Tyrell children quarrelling for the honour of being closest to him. Deafy sat with his hand to his ear, and his ear nearly to the guitar. Mr Wilks, presuming on previous acquaintance, had seated himself unasked on the companion log to the one which had provided his first introduction to his entertainer.
‘“Annie Laurie”,’ demanded Burning Angus, forging forward to the fire.
‘“My Wild Irish Rose”,’ shouted the Dogger.
‘“The Road to Gundagai”,’ howled Dick Tyrell and Thirty-Bob in chorus. And ‘The Road to Gundagai’ it was.
‘A real Australian song, that is,’ Mrs Jones was heard to declare approvingly.
Those who did not know all the words sang the line they knew. Old Jim, who had hobbled down from his hut to sit with the Tyrells, where he had been indulging in a lugubrious burst of weather prophecy, then announced that he would sing. He had been very quiet, and this sudden offer from one who had been merely a long white beard under a hat-brim took them all by surprise.
‘Call that “Road to Gundagai” thing a song!’ he mumbled, spitting liberally into the fire. ‘Now I’ll sing you a song that’s a real bush song. Sung when I was a boy. You wouldn’t know it.’ He blinked contemptuously at the busker. ‘It’s the “Song of the Overlanders”.’
‘Well, let’s have it,’ the busker agreed generously. ‘I’ll vamp it for you.’
‘No, no.’ The old man waved the busker and his guitar away with a sweep of his pipe. ‘I don’t want none of your damned strumming. When I sing, I sing.’
He fixed his eye on Miss Phipps, who, he had been heard to declare, was ‘a fine, big lump of a woman,’ and broke into a quavering strain:
‘When I first went exploring, I took up a fine, new run.
I then went down to Sydney to have some jolly fun;
I wanted stock for Queenslan’, to Mackenzie I did wan-der;
I bought a thousand head o’ cattle, and then turned Overlander.’
He began with spirit and vigour, waving his pipe to the time; but soon his voice faltered and sank. It was hard, seeing him then, to realise that this was ‘Lachlan Jim,’ a man famous in his youth as the most reckless rider in the West, with scarcely a bone in his body that had not been broken by some horse or other; the hardest drinker; the quickest for a fight; and the readiest to laugh, of those who had been young with him. And now, for all his fighting and laughing and hard, careless ways, he was come to be like an old dog, so lonely that he must creep to a stranger’s fire.
‘Then pass the billy round, boys, don’t let the pint pot stand — er,
For tonight we’ll drink the health of every Overlander.’
While he sang of the roaring days of the Overlanders who had cared for no one, who had thrust into the new land like spears, where now their descendants wandered landless between the barbed-wire fences, this camp might have been one of the Overlanders’ camps, with the cattle lowing and the men singing in the night, had it not been for a line of baby’s washing which Mrs Postlewaite had tied from the rear of the truck to a tree.
‘I scorn to steal a shirt, which all my mates can say,
Unless I pass a township upon a washing day;
But all them little brats of kids, they sure do get my dander,
Crying, “Mamma dear, bring in the clothes, here comes an Overlander”.’
The spirit of the Overlanders was still the spirit of the travellers, the Apostle thought. It was only opportunity they lacked. The Overlanders’ song stirred their blood. They roared again:
‘Then pass the billy round, boys, don’t let the pint pot stand — er,
For tonight we’ll drink the health of every Overlander.’
Old Jim was so elated by the applause that greeted his effort that he boisterously flung an arm round Miss Phipps’s waist; and Miss Phipps berated him soundly for an evil old gentleman. He ought, at his age, she asserted, to behave decently. He was far too old to go on like that.
‘Too old, am I?’ the old gentleman exclaimed wrathfully. ‘How about Henry Parkes? Didn’t he have a baby when he was seventy and something? Too old, am I?’
A roar of laughter went up at this retort. ‘That’s the spirit, Jim.’ Thirty-Bob slapped the old man on the back. ‘Give him a chance, Missus, and he’ll father triplets.’
This was too much for Miss Phipps’s sense of propriety. She flounced away, declaring that they were all ‘most improper and degraded.’
‘You shouldn’t tease the woman,’ Mrs Tyrell reproved.
‘Why, you can’t say anything to her,’ Thirty-Bob complained.
Old Jim, though a little dashed by Miss Phipps’s reception of his overtures, now announced that he had decided to sing ‘The Wild Colonial Boy’ as an encore. Before he could begin, Deafy got in first, and sang it through very lugubriously and off key:
‘He was a wild colonial boy, Jack Doolan was his name.
He had poor but honest parents, brought up in Castlemaine;
He was his father’s favourite son, his mother’s pride and joy;
Dearly beloved by everyone was the Wild Colonial Boy.’
Old Jim, feeling that he had been slighted twice in the evening, grasped his stick, rose in righteous wrath, and said ‘Good night’ in a tone that left no doubt that he was wiping the dust of the camp forever from his feet. Deafy wanted to know what was wrong with Jim, and his wife and son, shouting in each ear, explained that he, Deafy, had sung Jim’s song. Deafy growled that there was nothing to stop ‘the silly old bastard singing, too.’ It was too much trouble to explain to Deafy that no one could keep in tune with him; and the busker, realising that the bagmen were getting bored and beginning to drift back to their own camp, broke into some of the Tex Morton ballads ‘Fanny Bay Gaol’ and ‘Rocky Ned,’ which the company knew well.
‘This is the best camp,’ the Stray said fervently, ‘that we’ve ever been in.’
They had all been dangerously near breaking point, and to feel that they were once more part of society, that they had a niche of their own, and were appreciated was just what they needed. Snow had broken down, the Stray realised, not because of the influenza, but because there was something in him deeply hurt. They would never have got him to hospital only for that gash on his face; but he needed shelter and rest so badly. They all needed shelter and rest.
Mr Wilks, as he listened to the busker’s yodelling, felt rather as though he had kicked a prize greyhound. Hadn’t this chap come to h
is camp with Betty, wanting to be friendly (and he must be struck on a girl to carry wood for her), and he, Sharkey Wilks, had been, well … sharp was the word.
‘I guess your brother must make a lot of money,’ Mr Wilks suggested, showing his yellow teeth at the Stray in what was meant to be an ingratiating manner.
‘He ain’t me bruvver. He’s just travelling with us for a bit,’ the Stray responded. ‘But he makes pounds and pounds, hundreds of pounds.’
‘Ah.’ Mr Wilks relapsed into thought. So the busker was just going round loose, was he, for any enterprising father to snap up? Mr Wilks, who had a romantic mind, could see no reason why a young man, capable of earning large sums of money, should not make fitting gifts to the parents of any girl he was interested in. By all means! Visions of annexing the busker and his yodelling, of keeping him permanently attached to the Wilks family by the bond of affection rose in Mr Wilks’s mind. What were daughters for? Anyway, it wouldn’t do any harm to try.
‘Run back to camp, Jean, and tell Betty she can come,’ he hissed at his elder daughter, a slatternly girl with a baby in her arms, a baby that had a curious dusky tinge.
Jean, with a scowl, went off on her errand. She, too, was good-looking, but with a heavy, animal body and heavy features.
‘I tell you you’re a rat-bag,’ Dick Tyrell was declaring offensively to Adelaide. His voice rose above the busker’s, and it became plain that more of the audience were listening to Adelaide and Dick than to the singer.
‘I tell you they’re demons,’ Adelaide insisted.
‘And I tell you you’re a rat-bag.’
Adelaide had been going about all the afternoon excitedly voicing his suspicion of two shearers who had camped near him. He was certain they were detectives, and he had worked out a most elaborate scheme, in collusion with the owner of the starting-price betting shop, to test his theory. When five men had been arrested that same afternoon, Adelaide had been triumphantly certain that the shearers were ‘demons,’ or plainclothes detectives.
‘I reckernised them immediately,’ he asserted. ‘The big feller used to be in the police at Holbrook. They go about pretending to be on the track and picking up information. Besides, that’s a p’lice car they got.’
‘I tell you them chaps are dinkum shearers.’
‘I tell you …’
What further information would have been divulged was uncertain, for at that moment a voice from out the darkness said ‘G’night,’ and the two shearers or ‘demons,’ whichever they might be, loomed up.
Adelaide glowered and muttered; all the company felt awkward. To cover the embarrassment the busker burst into another song. They were spared the decision whether to invite the strangers to a seat. There were no seats. But the strangers, overlooking the chill in the atmosphere, stood on the edge of the circle unperturbed.
‘I’ve got no time for crawlers and bloodsuckers,’ Adelaide said loudly and with meaning. ‘What I say is that it may only be a camp, but it’s your home, isn’t it? A man’s got a right to his own camp.’
Adelaide was all the more angry as there were some uncaught opossums across the river. He regarded them as his ’possums, and the thought of two plain-clothes demons camped cheek by jowl with him made him almost mad with rage.
The mention of detectives, the presence of two who might be detectives, caused all those present to draw into their shells. From Burning Angus and the Dogger, who had some little experience of the police force and thought that all the powers of capitalism were vastly interested in them, to the busker, who knew he had no licence, an uneasiness spread over the whole party. References to ‘crawlers’ and ‘informers’ uttered in a loud voice left these latest visitors impervious, either because they really were shearers, or because it was not to their interest to let their real occupation be known.
One by one the circle of listeners began to wilt away. Burning Angus and the Dogger were the first to go; then Adelaide, with a final thrust at his suspects. Mrs Tyrell went off to put the children to bed, and Mr Wilks melted into the darkness, driving his two daughters before him.
‘I’d be a bit fussy if I was you,’ he called back to the busker. ‘A man’s judged by his pals, y’know.’
‘What’s up with them all?’ one of the shearers asked in seeming surprise. He sat down on the box vacated by Mrs Tyrell.
By now only the busker, the Stray, and the family of the Apostle remained. The busker decided to treat the two unwelcome guests as though they were shearers. After all, Adelaide had apparently a reputation for crazy ideas.
‘Make yourselves at home,’ he said none too graciously.
It was an awkward problem in etiquette, but one cannot order two men out of a camp without a reason. The busker searched his mind for some way of concluding this unhappy visit. All his friends had taken flight, and now he would be left to the cross-questioning of these men.
‘We were just about to have some hymns,’ the Apostle suddenly announced.
It was difficult to say whether the busker or the two shearers were the more startled. The busker put a brave face on it, seeing that the Apostle had produced a little pile of hymn-books. But the two shearers shuffled uneasily, then rose as one man.
‘We were just on our way back to camp,’ the bigger one said hurriedly.
‘So long,’ the other shouted over his shoulder, as they departed.
‘That was a darn good idea of yours to get rid of those coves,’ the busker chuckled.
‘Indeed it was,’ the Apostle replied gently. ‘And now we will have a few hymns. That is, if you don’t mind, just before we turn in?’
‘I thought you were frightening them away,’ the busker said, lugubriously, wondering whether the Apostle was not as socially undesirable as the two supposed demons.
‘I succeeded. Now we will have the hymns. Do you know ‘Shall We Gather at the River?’?’
They had the hymns.
9
I
Just before dawn the shearers drove off in their car. Adelaide, who had been roused by the noise they made getting away, turned out to watch their departure and exult. So he had frightened them away! He woke his wife to boast that those hints and sneers of his at the busker’s camp had driven the demons from the river. They knew he had found them out! His wife grunted sleepily and told him not to wake the baby.
The dawn broke cold and drizzling wet; but worse than the weather was the discovery that every horse along the river-bank had lost its mane and tail. Under cover of darkness the shearers had appropriated the whole standing crop of horsehair; and horsehair was selling at three shillings a pound! The language of the horses’ owners was enough to singe their eyebrows. It was not only the monetary loss, but every man was proud of his horse and believed it ‘the best on the track bar none.’ The clipping had been done, if appearances were any indication, with a blunt pen-knife, and the horses had a most woe-begone look.
‘That’ll teach anyone to take any notice of Adelaide,’ remarked Mrs Flaherty. (The Flahertys had a motor truck, so they could take an objective view of the tragedy.) ‘A man that got three shillings from the Reverend Mother and spent it on wine!’
The travellers were furious with Adelaide. ‘Him and his detectives!’
‘It just shows you’ve got to be careful who you mix with.’ Mrs Tyrell echoed Mrs Flaherty’s sentiments.
The river-bank was in a savage mood. Even the Dogger, who had no horse, gazed out at the rain and growled to Burning Angus that the Apostle was probably a social fascist or worse.
Uncle sat about and quoted Shakespeare until they could have murdered him. Miss Phipps, who was usually at her worst in wet weather, relieved them of her society, and sat in the van all day, smoking the tobacco Snow had left behind him. Now she had time to rest, instead of being whirled madly on across the plains by the impetuosity of the Stray and the busker, by the necessity of covering the distance to the next dole-station. Miss Phipps was determined that, after the brutal treatment she had recei
ved, she would no longer camp with Dancy and the busker. She would go on her own way. Going her own way involved choosing another party to whom she might attach herself as parasite; and at the moment she was hesitating between the Postlewaites and the Tyrells. True, Mrs Tyrell had with her a group of rough, beastly men and a crowd of squalling brats; but Miss Phipps felt she could overlook these inconveniences more easily than she could the ‘cant and hypocrisy’ of the Postlewaites. ‘Cant and hypocrisy’ were Miss Phipps’s terms for any form of religion.
It was not only their ‘cant and hypocrisy’ that Miss Phipps disliked. There was also Mrs Postlewaite’s eye always regarding her as though she were some strange ghost. No, she could not bear Mrs Postlewaite, to whom everyone referred as ‘the lady.’ Why should people defer to Mrs Postlewaite and hush their voices and stop swearing when she came by? They never bothered to do any such thing for Miss Phipps. No, the Tyrells would be more suitable as hosts. It was lucky for the Tyrells they did not know what was in store for them.
About dusk Sam Little, from the dark people’s camp, lounged up with a few of his friends, and after the usual conversation about horses in general and the Horehound in particular, invited the busker to ‘a bit of a beano’ which the dark people were holding that night. Adelaide, Jones, Wilks and Dick Tyrell were all within hearing, so they had to be invited too. ‘Anyone who likes to come,’ Sam Little shouted back as he moved away. ‘It’s an open go.’
‘Thanks,’ the busker called. ‘I don’t know yet.’
The Battlers Page 13