Even the local residents were alarmed by the weather. They were used to a climate that was a mixture of red dust and just plain dust, a dust-storm a day and no rain with it; but the heat was beyond human powers of endurance. There was something frightening about the vindictive pressure of the sunlight, bearing down like a heavy, hot weight. The Sydney papers quoted with respect the Boswell temperatures of 108 and 110 degrees day after day.
‘It’s got to break,’ people said desperately. ‘If this is what it’s like now, ‘what will it be when it warms up?’ For the hottest season of the year was always January and February. The locusts had come out, and their shrilling added to the torture. The noise they made suggested they were cutting the air into zig-zags with a fretsaw. It was like a million tiny drills boring the eardrums.
The Stray and Betty ceased to congratulate themselves that they were camping and not paying board. At least the girls who occupied the dormitories or had boarding-houses to go to could get out of the heat part of the time. They did not return to a patch of sun-baked dirt on a corner of a lane, a tent where red dust sifted into everything. Betty and the Stray began to develop an expensive vice: inviting each other and poor Ma Tyrell up town to eat ice-cream in the Greek café. Thirty-Bob pointed out that for the money they spent, they could get properly drunk, but they preferred ice-cream. ‘It’s only just while the heat lasts,’ they excused themselves and their extravagance; but the heat seemed to get worse and worse.
One relief was that Miss Phipps had left them. She had gone to stay at a cheap boarding-house until her money should be spent. ‘She’ll be back,’ Mrs Tyrell prophesied. And she was right. Miss Phipps found that the boarding-house keeper was ‘an insolent woman’; and was back again, making life so hard for Mrs Tyrell that that much-tried woman finally threw a tin plate at her and cursed her roundly. But even Mrs Tyrell could not get rid of Miss Phipps. She always got over her rage and excused Miss Phipps on the ground that ‘the poor thing didn’t know no better.’
The Apostle was working too. He had gone out with Angus, the Dogger and Uncle ‘snatching apricots’, and was camped at the orchard where they all picked.
The number of women who fainted, who cut themselves, who answered back the forewoman, increased with the temperature. Finally the canning department became the storm-centre for one of the best rows of the season. There was always hostility between the girls who lived in Boswell and the others who came there in the canning season ‘to make a cheque.’ Some of the visitors were more expert than the locals, and on this occasion one city girl in particular was working with a turn of speed that was amazing. The girls about her were incensed that she would not talk; they said she thought herself too good for them.
They took to playing malicious tricks; and two of them, when her back was turned, deliberately slipped cans of apricots from her tray to their own. This was the last straw. Flaming with anger, the victim turned on her tormentors, and flung a whole tray of apricot cans at them. ‘Take my cans, would you? Here, cop the lot!’
Friends joined in, and the two rival factions of ‘City versus Boswell’ fought until the cannery was a swimming mess of apricots; with tins flying and rolling everywhere, and a crowd of interested onlookers encouraging, and the forewoman trying to drag them apart. Eighteen women were sacked and went uptown to the hotel, later taking up the fight again in the main street.
Through it all the Stray and Betty worked on. The Stray, who took all a larrikin’s joy in a good brawl, actually worked while the best fight of the year took place around her, and tins of apricots sailed past her to land with a splash and a clang in every corner of the canning floor.
‘We don’t dare to get sacked, Bet,’ she murmured to Betty. ‘It’s all right for the girls that ain’t got no one dependent on them. It’s different for us.’
After that things tightened up in the canning department. The inspectors were more severe, small breaches of discipline were snapped at, there were more women dismissed. Poor old Mrs Dexter collapsed and was taken to hospital.
‘You want to look out,’ Mrs Tyrell told the busker. ‘That little Betty’s working herself to death, and Dancy ain’t much better.’
But off they would go to the cannery each morning. ‘It can’t last much longer,’ the Stray kept saying. ‘There’ll be the three weeks’ break over Christmas, Bet.’ And they looked with as much longing for that time of rest and peace as they had formerly looked to the opening of the cannery.
It was on a Sunday afternoon that the spell of abnormal weather broke. All the Tyrell camp had driven off with a lorry-load of campers who were going down the river ten miles away. Dancy was left to mind the camp because she was tired and wanted a rest.
She took the opportunity to wash, press and starch her uniform. The girls from the camps — and there were about forty of them — took a queer pride in being the cleanest and best dressed of any of the cannery workers. They would come home staggering with weariness and set to work at once to wash their only uniform, so that it would be clean and fresh for the morning. What it cost them, they only knew; but Dancy, who had never cared before how bedraggled she looked, was infected by this passion for a clean, starched overall. Having laid the garment away from the dust in Mrs Tyrell’s tin trunk, she set off uptown to indulge her passion for ice-cream. She felt a little guilty about it, for sixpence was sixpence; but the others were all away enjoying themselves, and she knew the camp would be safe enough. There were other camps about, and anyway no one would steal from a traveller. It wasn’t done.
‘There’s going to be a dust-storm,’ one of the neighbouring campers called to her, and Dancy nodded cheerfully. What was one dust-storm more or less? They had had any number of them. But when she reached the main street, she noticed a queer excitement in the few people about. They shouted and pointed and ran as though the devil was pursuing them. In the direction of their shouting and pointing, a great dun-coloured cloud was rolling up obscuring the sky. It came at a speed that was ominous, and as it came, everything was blotted out. Dancy, her need for ice-cream forgotten, stood rooted for a minute watching it. Then she plucked at a man’s sleeve.
‘Is it going to be a bad storm, mister?’ she asked.
‘Bad?’ The man stopped for a moment. ‘Well, last year a storm like this come up, and blew the roof off the hotel and twenty houses. Better get home, sister.’
But he had no need to tell her. Dancy was already speeding back to the camp. Her clean uniform! She could think of nothing but that uniform lying unprotected in the path of a dust-storm. How could she get to work tomorrow if her uniform was dirty. As she ran, the great cloud closed down over the sky, seeming to blot out the light of the sky. In the town the street lights were turned on, as though night had fallen. A dreadful roaring, that Dancy had not noticed before, grew louder and louder behind her; then the wind caught her and blew her along, the dust enveloped and choked her. Now, too, she heard the crash of corrugated iron; as the roofs began to go, and she flattened herself against a fence that trembled under the onslaught of the hurricane. Something zipped past; it clanged and danced head over heels; and she realised that it was a sheet of tin blowing like tissue paper. The force of the wind was so terrible that she could not stand upright. Twice it flattened her to earth. Presently she rose on her hands and knees and began to crawl. She had only a little way to go, she told herself dully. The big tent could not be far ahead. But the big tent was gone, the little tent was gone. Thirty-Bob’s tarpaulin was flattened against the fence like a sail. With a sob of relief Dancy threw her body across the big tin trunk and lay there spread-eagled; her uniform, her precious uniform, and Betty’s, lying beneath. She had saved them.
A new note was added to the howl of the wind, a maniacal howl that had seemed the highest note it could compass. It was the rain coming. It came pelting down on her; and with it, the hail, a stinging, lashing hail that revived Dancy from the daze into which she had fallen. Slowly she began to tug the trunk under the van. And there she
lay on top of it, while the hail bounced round her in a white, roaring curtain. Now and then she would make a little rush out into the downpour and salvage anything she could snatch.
As the swift fury of the storm abated, she made more and more of these little, trembling runs, clutching up clothes that lay in pools of mud and water, sodden bread, a tin of jam half full of hail, a dirty paper of butter. A bag of flour, transformed into dough, lay in a puddle, where it had been flung when a tucker box overturned. Presently, Bluey came crawling up, trembling and licking her face. From the direction of the Millions Club, where most of the campers were sheltering, encouraging cries were heard, and figures began to run to her help with coats over their heads.
The Stray crouched there under the van; and suddenly all the strain of the past few weeks, the heat, the hard work, the terrible fatigue welled up in her, and she began to cry. She buried her face in Bluey’s neck, that smelt of wet dog, and she cried silently and terribly, as a woman cries when she is at the last of her strength.
II
By the time the half-drowned pleasure party had hurried back from the river, Dancy, with the help of friends and neighbours in the nearby camps, had succeeded in recovering most of the scattered property, with the exception of a tin dish and a blanket that had seemingly blown away. Some of the bagmen from the Millions Club put up the big tent for her and the little tent in which she slept with Miss Phipps. The sun was shining, just as if nothing had happened, and torn telephone wires and roofless sheds were the only evidence left of the storm’s passing.
The fowls of which Mrs Tyrell was so proud came pecking back, all except one which had been killed by hail. The rosella, Betty’s main anxiety, had been safe in the van. Everyone shouted at once, asking questions, giving their experience of the storm. Travellers from all the camps went to and fro estimating damage and enjoying the excitement. Thirty-Bob went off early in the evening to swap a horse with a Greek farmer, and after long haggling, finally agreed to accept two kerosene tins of home-made wine as a make-weight with a young mare.
He came back with his wine, very pleased, and insisted that everyone have a little to help them over the shock. He was particularly solicitous about Dancy, who every now and then had a fit of shivering. ‘It’ll do your nerves good,’ he advised.
Dancy sipped the brew doubtfully. ‘It’s full of brown paper,’ she cried.
Investigation proved that the brown paper was the skins of the grapes. It was very new wine, and despite the number of people who helped consume the two kerosene tins full, the potency of the brew had its effect. They were all hopelessly drunk — not just the Tyrell camp, but the other camps as well.
Dancy woke next morning with a racking headache; and was nearly late for work for the first time. It wouldn’t do to be put off now. After all, the work before Christmas didn’t count. It was the peaches, three weeks later, so everyone told her, that gave the piece-workers a chance for big money. She and Betty were now much faster and more skilful. As soon as the three weeks’ break was over, they would return to the cannery with a greater confidence.
It was a hot three weeks. They all shifted camp to the river, about four miles from the town. Much to everyone’s disgust, they could not get any dole. The police knew very well who were working and who were not. To support themselves for three weeks, even in their customary meagre fashion, took money, and chopped a frightening hole in their hard-earned wages.
‘Arr, what’s the use?’ Thirty-Bob growled. ‘It’s Christmas, ain’t it? We might as well have a good time.’
That was the view of most of the travellers who hovered in the vicinity of Boswell over that three weeks’ break. They got drunk and they stayed drunk.
It was so hot, and there was nothing to do. Of course, you could go in swimming; in the river, if you camped there, or in the irrigation channel, if you didn’t get caught. The townspeople had an unworthy prejudice against bathing in the channel which provided their drinking-water. Not so the travellers. They believed that the townspeople were not clean, because they bathed in the town baths, where you had to pay to get in and where the chlorine disinfecting the water stung your nose and eyes. Every now and then someone was drowned in the irrigation channels, but the travellers still stubbornly refused to pay admittance money to the baths.
The Apostle, when his job petered out, reverted to his old habits, and on Saturday and Sunday nights he would drive to some nearby township, or merely go up to the street corner of Boswell and harangue the loungers from his soap-box until an officious policeman would send him away. Betty and the busker turned an honest penny by going off with the Apostle and doing a ‘quickie’ singing round the little townships. The polyglot population, Greeks, Italians, Central Europeans, would come out and dance to the music. Betty could tap-dance well, and they liked that too. They were a good-natured, happy lot of farmers around Boswell, kind to the travellers, generous and likeable.
‘I’d sooner work for a Dago or a Chinese any day than an Australian,’ Deafy Tyrell always declared.
Christmas passed in an extravagant burst of gifts for the children. The camp was littered with Christmas stockings and cheap toys, and the adults were nearly driven mad by the noise of whistles and drums and trumpets.
‘Well, we might as well make the kids happy,’ they told each other. ‘It’s only once a year; and it’s not much we can give them.’
They lavished money on the children that they would have grudged spending for themselves. It was a matter of pride that, even if the townspeople had cool houses, the travellers would give their kids as good a Christmas, just as good a Christmas dinner. They had tinned plum pudding and a turkey that Thirty-Bob found one dark night. They had beer and crackers and cakes. But the money drained away in an alarming manner.
‘There’s the peaches coming on in a week or so, and we’ll make a big killing,’ they all assured each other cheerfully.
But the Stray’s little roll of notes dwindled, a roll that she fastened to the front of her dress by a safety-pin — the same safety-pin to which hung a frayed bit of paper scrawled with the words: ‘Pay Mrs Grimshaw a thousand pounds.’
The week before the cannery was to open, they moved back from the river to the old, dirty camp behind the stock-yard. In one way they were glad to see it, because it meant the end of the enforced idleness. Angus and the Dogger and Uncle were back in the Millions Club. Snake had enlisted with the object of undermining the morale of the army; and hot disputes arose between the Dogger and Angus over the ethics of his conduct. George the Bower-bird had appeared from nowhere and was up to his old tricks, prowling around deserted camps, swooping on rubbish.
‘Well, George,’ the Stray called to him cheerfully. ‘Going to get a possie in the cannery?’
She was always a little afraid of the dirty, hairy maniac; and no amount of reassurance could convince her that ‘Old George was perfectly harmless.’
‘By rights,’ he chattered, nodding his head excitedly. ‘By rights I own that place. I do, by hokey! I own it. But they done me out of me rights.’ He came so close to her that she shrank back. ‘Put a light under the lot of them. That’s what I say.’ He waved his hands violently. ‘See them all go up in smoke. You see. You can laugh. But up! Up in smoke! That’s the way.’
‘I don’t want him bower-birding round this camp,’ Mrs Tyrell complained. ‘He gives me the creeps, with his whiskers and his hands with them long, dirty nails.’ But she could not be actively unkind to George, and she left a large parcel of bread crusts where he could find them.
The cannery began to take on workers again; and there were more and more coming to the town every day. It seemed as though the far-off cities had poured out half their women to can peaches. The Stray was restless and unhappy. Every goods train that pulled in to the sheds she half-expected would bring Snow, for she knew he was not the man to spend money on train-fares. In a way, she was relieved that he had not come. If she could only make ‘a good cheque’ before he arrived, it would b
e something to lay proudly before him, a concrete evidence of her value as a partner. Counting over her small store, she discovered with a shock that she would not have enough even to get her set of false teeth. Oh, well! it just meant she would have to work harder.
She was put on again on the first Wednesday after the cannery opened, and she worked hard enough to be glad when the week-end came. All Boswell spent Saturday in its usual fashion getting beautifully drunk, and Sunday sobering up. But on Sunday morning, as they lay about idly talking, a strange phenomenon arrested their attention — a column of black smoke, so thick and strong that it might have been the column of smoke that went with the presence of God in the desert.
For a moment they looked at it unbelievingly; then the full import of that awful omen burst on them. Thirty-Bob bounded to his feet, and rushed off towards the railway crossing.
‘The cannery!’ he shouted, as he went. ‘The cannery’s on fire!’
From all directions now people were running and shouting, their eyes upturned, amazed. It couldn’t happen! It wasn’t possible! How had it started? They blundered into each other in their haste and excitement. Where was the fire-engine?
The great black column of smoke was shot now with flame, a flame that burned with an unholy thunder. It rose from the sacks of sugar and sulphur in the packing-sheds, and it had an unearthly green streaked with rose, that made it like no fire anyone had ever seen before. It was as though a volcano had suddenly burst below the packing-sheds, and minor craters began to shoot up from a dozen places over the great sprawling bulk of the cannery.
In front of the building a crowd had gathered: a crowd that only stared open-mouthed and stood, not knowing what to do, that surged about and demanded the fire-engine. The caretaker and the few men who always stayed by the furnaces had gathered in an excited group, waving fire-extinguishers; and presently they disappeared into the smoke again with the intention of trying to save the books and safe in the locked office. The police had arrived, and began to busy themselves keeping back the crowd. Only a small group of employees were allowed to try what they could do in the way of salvage; and these were under the command of the manager, who had dashed up in a little red car and was issuing orders with the rapidity of a Bren gun.
The Battlers Page 40