The Battlers

by Kylie Tennant

  The dark people were by no means disinterested in their invitation. They had gathered in the shadows at a distance to hear the singing last night, and among themselves agreed that Duke would be an asset to any party. They were hoping to have Black Olly, who played a piano accordion on the street corners for a living, but it was always a gamble whether Olly would be sober enough to play. He might just settle down in a corner of a hut and go to sleep, and then where would the party be? Black Olly had some vague relationship with the Littles and Murrays, which gave him proprietorial rights over any humpy in which he found himself. The dark people always welcomed him, for even if he did not play his piano accordion very well, music was, to them, music, even when it was only a cheerful noise, something that served to shut out the feeling that they belonged to the garbage tip, that they were not human beings, but ‘blacks.’

  The busker’s vanity had been flattered by the invitation, but he had no liking for the position of understudy to Black Olly, whom he regarded as a business rival. To all queries whether he would be present at the dance he returned evasive answers. He would see about it. His friends were all eager that he should go. Fun was not so plentiful that they could miss the excuse to accompany him.

  ‘G’wan, Dukesy,’ the Stray pleaded. ‘Don’t be a nark.’

  ‘These boangs are all too matey,’ Thirty-Bob grumbled. ‘If a bit of trouble starts, it’s a case of one in, all in.’ But he said it with a sparkle in his sharp, little, grey eyes.

  ‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t have a bit of fun,’ Dick Tyrell declared. The aim of his big, blundering existence was to come on ‘some fun’; any sort from a fight to a frolic, and preferably both.

  ‘You ain’t going down to any Nigger’s Heaven,’ Mrs Tyrell told her son sternly in response to an invitation to join them. ‘And as for me, I’ve got more respect for meself. A drunken, quarrelling, fighting lot. I’m telling you, Dick, I’m telling you, Thirty-Bob, no good comes of mixing with niggers.’

  She stared stonily at Jean Wilks’s brown baby, which that young woman was rocking placidly.

  Jean gave Mrs Tyrell an impudent, half-angry grin, that said plainly: ‘I know what you mean, and to hell with your opinion.’

  ‘Dad and us is going,’ she announced. ‘So’s the Joneses. You come too, Adelaide. Bring your missus along and have a good time.’

  Adelaide, who had been severely snubbed all day, was only too glad of something which would raise his drooping spirits. ‘I dunno about taking the missus,’ he said virtuously. ‘Not if it’s a rough turn-out. But I might just look in meself to see what’s going on.’

  This was the attitude even of those who had not been invited. Several of the bagmen under the bridge were deciding that they might as well just look in on the revels despite the sour attitude of Burning Angus and the Dogger. It could not do any harm just ‘to look in.’

  ‘None of them lares under the bridge,’ Mrs Little had stipulated, when her husband wanted to invite the busker. ‘And no drink,’ she added, as though this were as much a crime as inviting the bagmen. And it was in her eyes. Inviting strangers led to fights, and drink led to fights. Both together would be fatal.

  Mrs Little was as fond of music as anyone; she agreed that this young chap with the guitar might be the makings of the party, but the fewer his mates the better. She was a big, warlike woman, as well she might be after nine years with Sam Little, former middle-weight champion of the district. Mrs Little’s style was not as orthodox as Sam’s, being more of a catch as catch can. She could even lay about her with a club if necessary; and whenever the Littles and the Murrays gave a party, she found her prowess with a tent-peg of more use than any other social grace.

  Soon after darkness fell, two motor-trucks of assorted dark people, and some white and brindle people, came bumping down the road to the garbage-tip amid much talk and laughter and general uproar. Black Olly, his accordion slung across his chest like an outsize in decorations, descended into the midst of his admirers.

  He was an enormous, fat man, black as a burnt log, his face shining with smiles, his eyes glazed, his white hair as saintly as his felt hat was disreputable. Behind him came a tall, melancholy, black young man, answering all greetings in monosyllables. He was as sad and sober as his father was happy and drunk.

  ‘Hiyah, hiyah,’ Olly called. ‘Old Olly with the music, trust ’im, trust ’im. I said ’e’d come. He got ’ere, didn’t ’e? Didn’t ’e get ’ere? Tired? Dah, dah. Tirty times I tell Alec, ‘No, Alec, I’m too tired. I can’t play, Alec.’ But ’e brings me. Alec bring me. Music, Alec. They want the music.’

  A very drunk, very lean white man had begun tap-dancing on a board, flinging his arms about like an animated marionette, and even at that distance the busker picked him out as Mr Wilks. The noise of shouting voices, the roar of the truck starting, the howls of encouragement to the tap-dancer, all blended with the unmerciful shrilling of Alec’s gum-leaf, and the blare of Olly’s piano accordion.

  ‘“Wilt thou have music?” ’ Old Uncle quoted gently. ‘“Hark, Apollo plays”.’

  ‘They’ll be fighting drunk before the night’s out,’ Angus prophesied. He was going up to the Apostle’s camp to talk over the union.

  The Stray fidgeted impatiently about, eager to be off. The busker also was suddenly burning to be over there in the centre of it all. From the camps all up and down the river, figures, groups, mothers with children by the hand, could be seen heading casually down past the garbage-tip, where they could pause and look on, and gradually join the circle round the dancers. Only Mrs Tyrell stayed resolutely in her own camp; and, of course, the Flahertys would never dream of associating with black people.

  ‘We might as well drop over.’ The busker seized his guitar. ‘No sense just sitting about here.’

  ‘I won’t go,’ Miss Phipps said stubbornly.

  ‘Well, Dancy and I are going.’ By this time the busker had learned how to handle Miss Phipps. ‘You wouldn’t like to be left here alone with all these rough men about.’

  Miss Phipps stood undecided. ‘Perhaps I had better accompany you deah people.’

  ‘That’s the ticket. They asked for you specially.’ The busker glanced up at the sullen clouds and decided that the worst of the rain would hold off. Impatiently he found himself hurrying ahead, overtaking Mrs Wilks and her daughters, Jean with her baby in her arms, and little Betty as usual with the rosella nestling on her shoulder.

  Mr Wilks had started tap-dancing again, and seemed determined to go on until he wore out the board. His feet made a monotonous pattering sound like castanets. Every now and then he would let out a whoop to encourage himself, or, if he showed signs of flagging, would be urged on by the derisive cheering of his backers, who had apparently bet him drinks that he could not dance a stipulated time.

  The visitors made their way in single file along the bank to the road-bridge and then down the other side to the garbage-tip. As they came up the little rise on which the blacks’ camp stood, the noise gradually rose to a deafening height. An epic dog-fight had just broken out on the stretch of beaten earth intended for a dance-floor. It was plain that Mrs Little’s edict about drink had been disregarded. Added to the uproar were the howls of two small children who had just been smacked for disorderly behaviour, and a baby disturbed in its slumber.

  In the firelight the barbaric reds and blues of the women’s dresses, the dark faces, the flash of white teeth, the tall trees behind leaping taller with the uncertain firelight, all mingled in a whirl of shadows and colours, confused, eddying, uncertain. But for the unholy din they might have been figures in a dream. The tap-dancer fortunately collapsed and was half-assisted, half-dragged, to a truck, where he leant, wiping his streaming brow, absorbing refreshment, and arguing as to whether he had won his wager. He was dissuaded with difficulty from starting again. The rest of the crowd wanted to dance themselves.

  ‘Come on, Olly,’ they demanded impatiently. ‘Play us a waltz.’

  ‘Yes
,’ there was a general chorus. ‘Music, Olly.’

  ‘Dah, dah, I’m tired,’ Olly protested. ‘Olly’s tired.’ He fastened his glazed eye on Miss Phipps, approaching unconscious of her peril. ‘Oh, lady,’ he called. ‘It’s the lady who sings, ain’t it? Like an angel she sings.’ He beamed at her and began to coax. ‘Sing for Black Olly. They all tell Olly about you singing along the river. I tell I won’t play.’ He looked around triumphantly. ‘Let the lady sing. Then I’ll play. Yes, yes, please.’

  He beamed on Miss Phipps again, who now found herself the centre of a mob all bellowing at her in various tones of good-humour or drunkenness. To tell the truth, Miss Phipps was too scared to refuse, and the grinning busker shouting ‘I’ll get you on the streets yet, Phippsy,’ raised his voice with hers. It was Miss Phipps’s intention to retreat swiftly as soon as the song was done — she was afraid of ‘aboriginals’ — but there was no opportunity to retreat. She had to stay with a good grace as a kind of popular hostage. Black Olly, as soon as he missed her, refused to play again for the dancing until she was found. For the rest of the evening she sat perforce at Black Olly’s elbow, very popular with everyone, detesting these ‘awful people’ and too terrified to do anything but smile coldly. She refused to dance, and Black Olly supported this decision warmly. He was not going to have his ‘lady’ removed from his side, and they had to humour him.

  Men outnumbered the women three to one, and the women were mostly heavy-built matrons who preferred to watch and nurse the children rather than stumble about in the ruts and be trodden on by heavy boots. So the Stray found herself besieged by would-be partners. She was giddy with being whirled round and round. In her eyes was an alternate flashing of firelight and blurring of shadow, spinning like day and night in a chaos. Over the road to the town a car sped now and then, boring tunnels of light before it.

  ‘Look at the way they slows down to watch us,’ Thirty-Bob yelled in her ear as he revolved. ‘You’d think they’d have something better to do than watch a lot of common unemployed. After all, they’ve got halls to dance in. They don’t have to dance on dirt.’

  It was all very free and happy and hilarious. As the night wore on, the moon, like a lost sixpence in the crack of a floor, gleamed through a fuzz of black cloud. Hospitality in the form of cheap wine was pressed upon the busker and his friends; and at first they refused politely because it was not etiquette to drink other people’s wine. The hosts might not have enough to go round. But when it became apparent that the camp was running with the stuff, and the invitations became more pressing, it seemed a pity to waste the rare opportunity.

  ‘Keep off the plonk,’ Thirty-Bob said in an undertone to the Stray. ‘They just spilt some on my boot and it burnt a hole.’

  But the Stray, recklessly happy, forgetting her responsibilities for poor Miss Phipps, who was watching her desperately and longing to escape from this evil, fat, black man, forgetting even poor Snow in hospital, forgetting everything, was already at the stage when she resented Thirty-Bob’s solicitude.

  ‘Can look after m’self,’ she said with dignity, lurching a little. ‘’S no use tellin’ me.’

  Thirty-Bob, who could drink even raw wine and stay sober, decided that it was about time to get her back to camp. The busker, with a silly smile on his face, was playing and singing in the centre of a group of admirers who demanded one song and still one more song. Sharkey Wilks had gone to sleep. Dick Tyrell was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Jean Wilks. Many of the elder women and children had already retired.

  Thirty-Bob, earning her eternal gratitude, firmly detached Miss Phipps from Black Olly, who was offering her his hand, his heart, his accordion, and a share of the tin hut he occupied. Miss Phipps was only too glad to go home. Thirty-Bob saw Dancy and Miss Phipps on their way, then turned back to the dancers, sorting out the river-men, trying to get them back to camp. He knew when a dance was working up to a dangerous pitch, and already a group had gathered round Olly, who was calling his son every name he could remember. Presently, from the noise, it would appear that Olly had knocked Alec down and was entreating him to rise.

  ‘Get up, Alec me boy. I didn’t mean to do it. Your father loves you, Alec. Get up, me boy.’ Then, his voice rising to a yell, as Alec decided to get up, ‘You would, you devil; take that!’

  The tone of the party was becoming more dangerous every minute, and to add a final touch, Sharkey Wilks had awakened, refreshed and ready for battle.

  ‘Who topped off Chigger Adams to the cops?’ he shouted angrily, endeavouring to free his arms from his coat-sleeves. ‘I’ll eat the bastards. Lot of stinking, dirty niggers. Who topped off Chigger?’

  ‘My bloody oath!’ Sam Little, with glaring eyes and bared teeth, thrust his face within an inch of Mr Wilks’s face. Even this did not help that gentleman to focus any too clearly.

  ‘Let me get at him,’ he insisted, still struggling with the flapping coat-sleeves. ‘Hold me back, someone, before I hurt him.’

  Mr Wilks, sober, was well known for a lack of common courage. Drunk, he would challenge tigers, or even, as now, the more dangerous Sam Little, who could have eaten him alive.

  The busker, full of benevolence, staggered in between the two in the role of peacemaker. The more drunk he was, the more the busker was at peace with the whole world.

  ‘Now then, sports,’ he said reprovingly. ‘All frien’s. Jus’ a little friendly gathering.’

  ‘Who sold the fight to Billy Miles?’ Mr Wilks demanded with spirit, referring doubtlessly to some regrettable incident in the past of Sam Little. ‘Dirty lot of nigger bastards,’ he added as an afterthought.

  Sam Little was a big man, and Sharkey was a weed; but Sam explained later that he wasn’t going to fight Wilks, he was going to kill him. He leapt on the swaying Mr Wilks, got him down, and jumped on him.

  The campers from the river-bank, however much they might dislike Sharkey, could not see him thus manhandled without protest. They moved in on Sam Little with the idea of removing him from Wilks’s body. The dark people, convinced that their champion was being mobbed by the scum from the river-bank, flung themselves with howls of fury upon the travellers.

  No one ever knew who threw the bottle. It caught the busker on the side of the head, and it was lucky for him he had a thick skull. As it was, he went down unconscious beneath the trampling feet of the scrum as it swayed backwards and forwards. He knew nothing of a small, thin body in a dull red dress pressed tight over his, taking the kicks. He never knew how Mrs Little thrust her way like a great warship into the fray and cleft the combatants and helped Betty draw him out. Driving her own men one way and the travellers another, Mrs Little had the mess cleaned up and the blood hidden and the signs of battle removed just the split second before the police car came racing out along the road to the garbage-tip.

  The busker came to with a frightful pain in his head. He could not remember at first where he was, and strove to rise, only to collapse with a moan.

  ‘Shish!’ someone said beside him. ‘Keep quiet, till they’re gone.’

  ‘Who’re gone?’ the busker asked presently. It took him a long time to think.

  ‘The p’lice. Lie down behind the log again.’ Betty peered out round the butt of a big, dead tree. ‘They’re going now.’

  There was a whirr of wings, and from the darkness something like a rocket shot past the busker and alighted with a soft chattering in her hair.

  ‘Oh, Bitsey! I thought you was dead.’ There was almost a sob in her voice. ‘Poor little Bitsey!’ She stood up listening. ‘They’re going.’

  The busker moaned. Someone had bandaged his head, and he felt it must be Betty, because the bandage was the coarse stuff of her dress.

  ‘You ought to get a proper bandage,’ she said, seeing his hand go up to his brow.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘One of them caught you a crack with a bottle. Come on. We’d better be getting back.’

  ‘I can’t,’ the busker said feebly.r />
  ‘Here, lean on me. I’m strong, I am.’

  She hitched one of his arms over her thin shoulders, and the busker presently found himself staggering along under a dim moonlight that made everything fantastic and shapeless. He was dizzy and sick, and but for the girl would have fallen.

  ‘You’re very decent to me,’ he said faintly.

  ‘Well, you was good to me. So that squares it.’ Her voice was practical, hard. She said presently: ‘Why don’t you chuck it in?’

  ‘Eh, what d’you mean?’

  ‘Living on the track. You could do well for yourself. You don’t have to travel.’

  It was true, he thought — he had just drifted along, not caring much.

  ‘You had a better start than most chaps. You ought to do better than just knocking about.’

  Why was it, the busker wondered, that a woman — a girl, if you like, for she was too little to be called a woman — always had to be moving a man on, just as though she was a cop on a street corner?

  ‘That’s right,’ he said sullenly. ‘Pitch into me. Pick on someone your own size, can’t you?’ They had come to the bridge where only yesterday evening he had carried the log for her. ‘I can walk now,’ he said, still sick and faint. ‘I won’t forget this, Betty.’

  ‘Good-bye.’ There was almost a sob in her voice. ‘You ought to give up travelling and go back to the city, see?’

  A light showed where Thirty-Bob was coming along the river-bank. ‘Cripes!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’d got me nearly out of me bloody wits. I thought you was in boob by now. Here, give us a hold.’ And hitching the busker over one shoulder like a sack of coal, he bore him unceremoniously to the tent and dumped him on top of Miss Phipps, who shrieked in horror, thinking it was Olly returned.

  ‘Snap out of it,’ Thirty-Bob commanded. ‘Here, Dance, come and give me a hand to fix his head.’

  They were soon busy by the light of the hurricane lamp. Perhaps being so drunk had made the busker less capable of feeling pain. He had got a nasty bruise and gash where another man might have got concussion.