The Best Australian Bush Stories

by Jim Haynes

  I don’t know if Ashtray Everett’s first assertion is true or not, but she was quite right in her second assertion. I was getting naughtier and was badly behaved at Sunday school around that time.

  Eventually, of course, I went too far.

  I must have been around eleven when it happened and I’m not sure that I even understood the sexual connotation of what I said, but when the class was asked why the disciples went to Mount Olive I simply replied that I didn’t know, but Popeye would be very cranky about it.

  Whether I was simply guilty of silliness or something far worse is really immaterial. The effect on Miss Everett was immediate, astonishing and spectacular. She had had enough, and she exploded.

  ‘Get out! Get out!’ she screamed. ‘Go straight to Reverend Bennett at once, you wicked boy!’

  Her undershot jaw was quivering and her eyes were wide and wild-looking. It is a sight I will never forget. The shock of her anger hit me like a thunderbolt. As my cousin Gerald later put it, ‘Old Ashtray just went crackers!’

  There are moments in life, especially in childhood, when the realisation that things have changed forever is instantaneous. Miss Everett going crackers was one such moment.

  A total and deafening silence filled every square inch of the church hall as I made my way to the parish office where Rev. Bennett was conducting senior Sunday school. Even the little kids colouring in pictures of Jesus on a donkey were frozen into a motionless and silent tableau as I made my way past them on my long pilgrimage across the bare wooden floor of St Matthew’s church hall.

  Reverend Bennett seemed more stunned by Ashtray Everett’s outburst than by my wickedness. He ‘ummed and arrghed’ a bit and asked what I’d done.

  I said I’d been cheeky to Miss Everett, and he sent me home. Later that week, no doubt after conferring with the poor girl, he came around home and talked to Mum.

  Mum was furious. What would people think?!

  Didn’t I remember that Uncle Cyril was on the Parish Council? Didn’t I know that Auntie Val, Auntie Maude and Mum herself were on the Ladies’ Auxiliary and did the flowers once a month at St Matthew’s? How could I do such a thing?

  It was one of the rare occasions when Dad really hit me. Not just a ‘clip round the earhole’, but a couple of real whacks with a leather belt across the bum as I stood behind a chair in the kitchen. The pain was minimal but our mutual male embarrassment was excruciating.

  There was some compensation to the whole affair. It hastened my departure from the bosom of the Church. I didn’t have to put up with Miss Everett anymore and she, poor girl, no longer had to put up with me. Perhaps it was better, Mum decided, if I finished with Sunday school for a while after Easter prize-giving. It was still a few months until I could progress to the senior class, so maybe I should have a break and come back later when I’d ‘grown up a bit’.

  Needless to say, I never completed Sunday school, and thus became the first in my family to miss confirmation and the full embrace of the Church of England.

  I’ve thought about it a lot since then and I understand perfectly why Miss Everett, and the Rev. Bennett too, wanted to see the back of me. I’m sure they were happy for me to find my own spiritual path in life because there were a lot of souls to look after and they could do the most good for the most people if I wasn’t around to hinder the process. They could achieve a lot more each Sunday if they remained relatively sane and calm.

  On the other hand, it does seem strange to me that the lost sheep was encouraged to find a pasture of his own and stop annoying the shepherd. If I was as wicked as everyone said at the time, didn’t I need special attention and religious direction?

  I wonder what Jesus would have done to remedy the situation. From what I’d heard about him from Miss Everett, I don’t think he’d have given me away quite so easily.

  Mandrake, of course, would simply have ‘gestured hypnotically’ and kept me completely under control.

  I returned briefly in order to apologise to Miss Everett and sit silently through the one or two lessons leading up to Easter.

  At the Sunday school presentation service I received a small book for ‘attendance’, while the rest of the class received large books for all sorts of achievements like ‘excellent manners’ and ‘Bible knowledge’. And that was it; the church and I parted company by mutual agreement.

  I don’t know where I’ll end up; it might be Heaven, or Purgatory, or Hell, or Limbo—or just a plot in the cemetery. Brian Stafford assured me that I couldn’t go to Purgatory because only Catholics believed in it, and I couldn’t go to Heaven because only Catholics went there for believing in the Pope.

  It’s rather odd to think that wherever I end up, it will all be due to the fact that I used to read the comics first.

  THE REIGN OF

  EUGENE HAM

  ‘BRIAN JAMES’

  (JOHN TIERNEY)

  WHEN, BY HAPPY CHANCE, Mr Foster the schoolteacher at the Grey Box fell down a shaft and broke both his legs, there was a little hypocritical sympathy and much sincere rejoicing among the small fry along the Cookabundy. The Department of Education stayed its hand for one glorious but far too brief fortnight, then sent along a relieving teacher.

  His name was Ham—Eugene Ham. He was young, enthusiastic, unmarried, and wore a straw hat with an extraordinarily narrow brim. He had an enormous head—very bumpy at the back; hair of no describable shade of cream clipped short all over; white eyebrows; a mouth that wouldn’t shut properly anywhere, and a pair of blue eyes that were eternally lit up in surprise. He had no shoulders worth noticing—he just tapered off like a pilsener bottle till he came to that enormous head. He was about six foot high, though the tapering effect made him look seven at least. In addition to all these things he had a lisp.

  The children found him good to look upon, and forgot their grievance over the curtailment of their holiday. And not in appearance only did he find favour; in methods he was refreshing, and in simplicity a pure delight.

  He introduced himself: ‘Good morning, boyth and girlth. I’m Ham, Eugene Ham, Eugene Thethil Ham, Mithter Ham.’

  The children were gladdened to hear it and wondered somewhat where the department had stored such a treasure, and why they hadn’t known of him before. As a result of an early spelling lesson in which he had some trouble with the word ‘thistle’ he was nicknamed ‘Thithle’.

  There was such an enthusiasm, such a vim in all he did, such a desire to make interesting and visual all he told them—and the additional treasure of his lisp—that his treatment of scripture made that often dry subject a new world indeed, and something to be entirely disassociated from the boring dissertations so many of them knew and dreaded in sermons and Sunday school.

  His presentation of the story of Adam and Eve was a masterpiece.

  ‘God thed to Adam, “Look Adam at that ortyard.” And Adam looked at rowth and rowth of fruit-treeth, peacheth, plumth, cher-rieth, pineappleth, pumpkinth and Ithabella grapeth. And Adam cried “My word!” and Gawd thed, “They are all yourth, Adam, the whole blinking lot.” And Adam thed, “Thank you Gawd.”

  ‘You thee, Adam wath very polite. And then he thed, “I thay, Gawd, what’th that tree over there by itself?” and Gawd thed, “Adam, you can’t eat any of the fruit from that tree.” And Adam thed, “Oh Gawd, why can’t I?” And Gawd thed, “You jutht can’t, Adam.”

  ‘But Adam was very perthithtent and kept nagging Gawd about that tree; tho Gawd thed at latht, to shut Adam up, “I tell you, Adam, I want the fruit from that tree for jam.”’

  That story was an undoubted success, the more so no doubt because Mr Ham dramatised it as he told it with much gesticulation, the Deity speaking in a low rumbling voice and Adam in a rather squeaky one. And the colloquial tone and homely touches were certainly appreciated. Those children thoroughly understood the story.

  But when the children got home and repeated the story there was not such marked appreciation shown by their elders. In other ways, too, Mr H
am appeared altogether too modern, though at first the other ways weren’t so obtrusive. The first two Sundays of his sojourn at the Grey Box he attended Father Moran’s church; then for three weeks he became a sturdy Methodist; and then he appeared in the Church of England.

  Then Mr Ham transferred for a Sunday or two to the Presbyterian Kirk, and the Reverend Dobbie told two old ladies that he found it hard to stifle the impulse to throw him out. Mr Dobbie had played third-grade rugby somewhere or other in his youth, and from that circumstance retained—and added to—a reputation for muscular Christianity.

  After that assortment of worship, Mr Ham didn’t go to any church at all, and spent Sundays fishing or shooting. But each religious body felt that it had been unpardonably slighted and mocked.

  Clearly such a fellow was not fit to train the young. People talked of keeping their children at home, or sending them to the school at Two Rocks, or driving into Summerlea every day with them, and ‘putting them to the convent’ or ‘the public’, as the case might be. But the children found Mr Ham too entertaining to desert him without a protest.

  Since Mrs Foster was away there were no sewing lessons for the girls, but Mr Ham had very practical ideas on sewing. He set some of the big girls to washing his socks and linen; others to ironing or darning or sewing on buttons. Good, practical training, but it wasn’t understood.

  And later, when definite complaint was made—in writing, to the inspector of schools—the sewing came in for very unfavourable notice: ‘He persuaded the girls to sew buttons on the most intimate parts of his garments.’

  As much as anything, perhaps, Mr Ham’s delightful rendering of the story of Abraham and Isaac led to his undoing. These estimable ancients appeared refreshingly and familiarly as Abe and Ikey.

  ‘”Bleth it all, Ikey, don’t arthk tho many questionth—Gawd’ll thee uth through . . .”

  ‘And when poor little Ikey wathn’t looking, old Abe grabbed him jutht like thith.’ And Mr Ham seized on Georgie Ryan suddenly and expertly, by way of illustration. Georgie yelled in surprise and the rest in sheer delight.

  ‘Then he thruthed up Ikey and put him on a heap of wood. Ikey kept rolling hith eyeth, when Abe got the butcher’th knife, and felt the edge of it with hith thumb. Then Abe raithed hith eyeth to Heaven and thed, “Gawd, it’th awful!” But Gawd thed nothing. Then Abe took little Ikey’th throat in one hand and the knife came nearer and nearer to Ikey’th throat. Little Ikey wriggled and wriggled to keep his throat out of the way, and the look in hith eyeth brought a big lump to Abe’th throat.

  ‘And jutht ath the knife touched Ikey’th throat, Gawd shouted out, “Thtop it, Abe! That will be enough thith time!”’

  The children cheered, as much out of relief as anything else at this moving climax.

  Mr Ham went on. ‘Abe wiped the thweat from hith forehead with hith thleeve, and swallowed the lump in hith throat. Then he cut the rope around Ikey. And he kithed Ikey, and thed, “My word, Ikey, that wath a clothe shave!”

  ‘Jutht then they heard a big row, and looking round they thaw an enormouth ram tangled up in thome vineth. The ram wath bellowing, jutht like a bull, and Abe thed, “That ith a miracle, Ikey.”

  ‘And Gawd thed to Abe, in a nithe mild voithe, “Uthe that, Abe.”

  ‘Tho Abe and Ikey laid hold of that ram, and wathn’t Abe pleathed when he thaw by the ear markth that it wathn’t one of hith ramth either, but belonged to a neighbour he didn’t like very much.’

  Just as remarkable, in its way, was the finding of Moses in the bulrushes. In Mr Ham’s rendering the daughter of Pharaoh didn’t appear in a good light, if one judged her by modern moral standards. And, further, she shamefully deceived her trusting father, who was made to appear as a man of extraordinary innocence and simplicity.

  There was much resentful talk among the parents, assisted by the activity of Mr Joshua Bisley of Tipperary and Mr Benjamin Hopper of Summerlea. These two famous lay preachers and stout upholders of religion and morality took Mr Ham’s treatment of the scriptures as an insult to the Deity and a reflection upon themselves. And though Grey Box was, strictly speaking, outside the territory of their ministrations, they were ready to ally themselves with the forces of right-thinking. These gentlemen were in their way just as interesting and picturesque as Mr Ham, but they had Heaven’s licence to be so, and Mr Ham hadn’t.

  So Mr Bisley drove in his buggy to Summerlea, and went to the home of Mr Hopper.

  It was near the end of the day and Mr Hopper, who was a carpenter and builder, was sharpening and setting a handsaw in his workshed. Mr Bisley was just in time to hear the exclamation, ‘Blast the saw—that’s another bloody tooth broken!’

  Mr Hopper looked up to see Mr Bisley framed in the doorway.

  ‘Benjamin! Brother! You have said that which is an abomination—an appalling abomination—an annoyance in the sight of the Lord!’

  Mr Hopper was all contrition, some of it due to being heard by Mr Bisley.

  ‘Brother, let us pray that our lips be pure,’ and Mr Bisley’s fingers came together before him, and his venerable head was bowed. His white beard vibrated slightly in whispered communing with his Maker. And the prayer was not for himself, but for a brother who had erred—that made Mr Bisley a grand figure, indeed.

  Mr Hopper also bowed his head and felt keenly enough the disgrace of being prayed for; but absent-mindedly held the saw-set in his hand and, even as he prayed he squinted in sidelong fashion at the saw on the bench.

  When Mr Bisley deemed that Mr Hopper might reasonably be considered forgiven, he raised his head. In a solemn voice he began, ‘Brother Benjamin, Sin is stalking among our people, there is corruption and mockery of God’s word in our midst.’

  Mr Hopper took his glance from the guilty saw and trembled.

  ‘I mean,’ said Mr Bisley, ‘a young man who distorts and twists the sacred scriptures.’

  ‘Ah!’ Mr Hopper was relieved greatly. ‘Brother Bisley, you wouldn’t be thinking of that there young Mr Ram at the Grey Box? I tell you what, Brother, he’s a bit of a goer, I do believe.’

  Mr Bisley held up his right hand. ‘Brother Hopper, we must put our shoulders to God’s wheel and hurl this unclean mocker into the darkness!’

  ‘Amen!’ groaned Mr Hopper.

  Mr Bisley wrinkled his nose; half closed his eyes, and concentrated on a scarce audible sniff. In a tone half of tender sorrow and half of honest anger, he said, ‘Brother Benjamin!’ Then he sniffed quite audibly.

  Mr Hopper understood. ‘It was for the cold. Nothing else cures a cold for me.’

  ‘Nothing else? Not even your faith in the Lord!’

  ‘Of course, of course, but the two together just fixes them real bad colds.’

  ‘Jerusalem must be searched!’

  It was a voice of judgment and doom, and Mr Bisley advanced further into the shed. In a back corner was a large box with a curved top. It was closed. Ostensibly it was for holding tools as several similar boxes, with lids open, were thus employed.

  Mr Bisley found that the box was locked. He held out the long fingers of his right hand. ‘The key, Brother.’

  Mr Hopper took a key from the dusty top of the low wall plate and passed it over.

  No more was said. Golden shafts from the level sun lit up the interior of the shed and showed Mr Hopper looking somewhat rebelliously at the bent form of the righteous Bisley opening the box. The sounds were awful, the grating of the key, the unsnapping of the lock, the squeak of the hasp and the creak of the lid.

  Each sound was magnified tenfold and said as clearly as could be, ‘Guilty’.

  In the box was a jumbled collection of bottles—dozens and dozens of them. Some of the labels were right side round and allowed W. Rosen, F. Rosen, O. Reimer, Summerlea Brewing Company, modestly to rub their shoulders with the more famous distillers of joy from Scotland and Holland.

  Mr Bisley rubbed the dust from his fingers and stood erect. He faced Mr Hopper.

  ‘Brother Benjami
n Hopper, you stand revealed. May God in His goodness and His sweet mercy send His light into the places that are dark within you!’

  He looked as if he was going to pray again.

  Mr Hopper hardened into a kind of defiance. He was damned if he was going to be prayed for again.

  ‘I takes it for the cold.’

  ‘Brother Benjamin, it is said by the sinful and the unworthy who rejoice in their sins, that you collected enough money at Kilmarnock to buy ten Bibles for our dear dark brothers in Fiji, and you bought nine bottles of wine with it at Otto Reimer’s.’

  There was enough truth in this to hurt—as a matter of fact it was only six bottles—and Mr Hopper was so stung as to forget his saintly character and calling.

  ‘Look here, Bisley, you bloody tight-lipped, white-bearded old humbug, I’ll be telling you a few things what is said, if it comes to that!’

  Mr Bisley held up a calming hand. ‘Brother Benjamin!’

  But Mr Hopper was properly aroused. ‘You’ve stolen cattle, you’ve stolen sheep, you’ve stolen turkeys. You’ve stolen grass and lucerne from your neighbours. You carried on fine with that girl of Sinclair’s before she became Mrs Whittle. And you’re going to preach at me because you find a few bottles in a box.’

  Mr Bisley wasn’t angered for himself, though he was for Mr Hopper’s sake. But Mr Bisley’s anger was the low-temperature kind, a placid anger that was calculated to drive others mad. It would have driven Mr Hopper mad perhaps if his attractive daughter hadn’t intervened.

  ‘That’s enough, now, you two! I’ve heard the lot of it, and very interesting, too. But tea’s ready. So come along.’

  Mr Hopper kicked shut the damnable box, but didn’t lock it. He still muttered things under his breath, and in all seemed likely to undo all the good of his conversion of nearly twenty years ago.

  But under the soothing influence of food the men of wrath relented towards each other and the conversation came back to the proper subject for condemnation—Mr Ham.