The Chant Of Jimmie Blacksmith

by Thomas Keneally

  It was astonishing but the truth that whites looked on black feet in boots as a guarantee against the nomadic drive that had spoiled the working record of all black people.

  Living up to the guarantee, Jimmie worked out the entire season with the one shearing contractor.

  When the season ended, Jimmie swept up the floor on a station about forty miles from the Hayeses’. Only a fortnight before, Mrs Hayes and her wayward girl, Gilda, had come visiting the station-owner’s wife. Once again, Jimmie had found the girl and the cook speaking deeply in the shearers’ kitchen; but soon she had sought out Jimmie himself and explained herself. They had come then to an arrangement.

  The arrangement grew from an accidental meeting with each other some months earlier, on the riverbank at Hayeses’. They had been together for a few hours then, had made love so dismal that Jimmie, at the summer’s end when the arrangement was made, could scarcely remember a single tone of its emotion or even a physical feature of it.

  But the arrangement had been made and now he had to collect his pay and act upon it.

  So the floor was swept for the last time. A card-table was brought in from the homestead and the contractor sat at it and paid the men in banknotes.

  Family men planned to take most of their pay home for winter in Cowra or Forbes or Orange. There were still the spree-happy, who put part of the bonus in their boots, so that they might arrive at the far-end of a week of dedicated excess with the price of a train fare home.

  Money was counted and counted again with luxurious lack of haste and then folded intimately into pockets.

  Two of the younger men were going to womanize and drink until they had nothing, and then go off to Sydney to join the Mounted Rifles. For the Bulletin and the cook had both kept them informed on the war in South Africa.

  It was the beginning of southern autumn, 1900.

  Jimmie was paid last. Amidst small conclaves plotting happiness, he and the contractor were ignored. In the joy and yelping, the contractor thought for a second and held out £3 to Jimmie. Jimmie would not take it, but backed away.

  “Fair go, boss,” he said. “I’m gettin’ married.”

  The man blew tobacco smoke with his bottom lip, up through his tarnished ginger moustache. He picked up three more notes.

  “Ten bob a week, boss. Say yer will!”

  “Yer fuckin’ relatives only drink it.”

  “No, boss. I’m marryin’. White girl.”

  “What white girl?”

  “Missus Hayes’ girl, boss.”

  “Did yer git her in the family way?”

  “What, boss?”

  “Yer sow a piccaninny in her?”

  “Yair. She’s nice girl. Out of a home.”

  “I wouldn’t boast about the white girl if I was you.”

  He snatched up two more notes, in token of the hopelessness of Jimmie’s marriage with the nice girl out of a home, and as if he felt he must choose between paying some debt now rather than later.

  “Bugger orf, Jimmie,” he said. “While yore lucky.”

  The Hayeses’ maid said she respected him. Helped to it, of course, because she carried his child. She was very young and her legs were freckled.

  Yet Jimmie had seen in her a chance of white marriage very soon after their first meeting, or at least very soon after that Sabbath incident on the riverbank. Even then he had observed her. She was very stupid.

  For example, Mrs Hayes had shown her – out of Mrs Beeton’s illustrated book – how table should be set and how dinner should be served. Yet Gilda was all the time in a panic of forgetting it all. If you spied on the Hayeses’ dining-room of an evening you would see Mrs Hayes’s vigilance, Mr Hayes’s resentment of not serving himself, and you could hear Gilda’s hisses and snufflings as she scuttered about the room with tureens and salvers and the potatoes went cold. It was then that you understood her sniff conveyed no shred of superior pride. She had bad sinuses, and a terror of being sent back to the home for the wayward. Nor was she Mrs Healy. But a start had to be made somewhere with white women. And Jimmie could not help thinking that under the pressure of his coming successes she might be converted into some sort of Mrs Healy.

  Jimmie Blacksmith was to find them a domicile and then she was to leave the Hayeses’ service and join him.

  One month later he was settled with a fencing contract for a man called Newby who owned 7,000 acres near Wallah. He could cut wood from the Newbys’ property and make a split-timber one-room home for his bride. He dug a cesspit.

  The fifty-two-year-old farmer, leaning back in the privacy of his shovel-shaped beard and irony of his cold prominent eyes, seemed to spend a considerable time watching him. All the time he sucked a pebble to keep his mouth moist.

  As if they had all conspired, Mr Newby – like Healy and Lewis – seemed to have made a sport out of waiting for Jimmie Blacksmith to behave in what he would have considered character.

  To indicate that he might not, Jimmie Blacksmith would open up responsible subjects of conversation.

  “Lookin’ f’ward to federation, boss?”

  “I’m not lookin’ f’ward or back, Jimmie. Free trade won’t hurt us farmers. The politicians can do what they want. They do anyhow. When’s yer wife comin’, Jimmie?”

  “Soon. Don’t yer think it’ll make the country strong?”

  Newby would laugh. “What do you care if the country’s strong?”

  “I’m a patriot, boss.” Saying such things, Jimmie scarcely knew whom he was mocking: himself, Newby, Australia.

  “Yer ought go into politics.”

  “D’yer reckon, Mr Newby?”

  “I seen worse politicians than you, Jimmie. Old Taylor from Mudgee who got sent out of the House for pissing behind a pillar on the very floor of the parliament in Sydney. And the things they done to make sure the railways passed their door. Yer get a town like Walcha – thousands of people – does the train go there? No, it goes to a place where there’s no town, fifteen miles away. Just so some bloody squatter in parliament don’t have to haul his wool and distance to a railhead. They’re scandalous, those blokes. Yer wouldn’t be the biggest rascal among ’em, Jimmie. Yer reckon yer wife’s white?”

  “White’s white, boss. No blackie in her.”

  “What about the little blackie yer started in her? Eh, Jimmie, yer filthy bastard?”

  “It happens more’n yer think, boss.”

  “Don’ tell me what happens. I know what bloody happens.”

  Healy, Lewis, now Newby had each staked his soul on Jimmie’s failure. If they were so supreme on their land that they didn’t need to be political, why should they yearn so for Jimmie’s mistakes; and, when mistakes were not made, dream them up? He had even begun remotely to wonder if a man’s only means of treating with them was to “declare war”. It was a phrase he had picked up on the shearing floor the previous year. It connoted for him a sweet wide freedom – to hate, discredit, debase as an equal.

  But Newby was more immediately kindly than anyone else had been. He had three daughters, a wife, a female lodger. Perhaps all that had taught him concern for women.

  “How’s that fiancée of yours getting here, Jimmie?”

  “Train to Lithgow, boss, then train to Gilgandra.”

  “But yer ain’t goin’ t’ walk a potted lady all the way from Gilgandra to here?”

  “I don’ know what to do, Mr Newby.”

  “Better take my second girl’s hack. Jest walk him. Yer kin come and git him when it’s time. What way did yer say she was coming?”

  Jimmie repeated the route, which tickled Newby – that a black should be able to remember itineraries.

  “Bloody nice girl, boss,” Jimmie found himself admitting one day. “Kin cook, kin serve at table. Very nice. Knows where a person’s soup spoon ought t’ be. Trained by a sheepman’s wife. Mrs Hayes. From Cowra.”

  Mr Newby nodded. But there was always mockery in the corners of his eyes, on the remoter side of his face.

&n
bsp; Wallah on the river was a straggle of fifteen houses wide apart. It had a telegraph relay-station, a police station, a pub, and two churches. The Methodist church and residence was on a hillock of its own, with its black and gold board announcing times of services. A name had recently been painted out on the board and The Rev. T.S. Treloar B.A. substituted there.

  Before Jimmie had reached the residence gate, the parson appeared at the door in his shirtsleeves and stock, a hammer in his hand. The hammer reminded Jimmie of the Rev. Mr Neville’s assiduity in the face of jerry-built manses.

  With him was a large woman, hatted, who produced an echo of passion in him which he couldn’t identify. Her face rose above arms full of lilies, roses and anenomes. The blue coat was evocative too.

  Mrs Healy. Plenteous Mrs Healy. The evocation declined to become a sadness for himself and the neutral figure of Gilda Howie, the thin frightened girl-child he would marry.

  He had always presumed that to marry a white raised a person in the community. Now it came to him that if one reject married another, the facts of their individual rejections might be added or even multiplied.

  He suppressed this suspicion for fear of having to unmake his mind to marry, for fear too of Newby’s mockery. To have a white wife and a good reputation for work – these must combine for a man’s good.

  The woman was flushed with sitting near the parson’s fire, whose sweet white smoke scudded up the chimney.

  “Very well, Mr Treloar. I won’t hold you up. I’ll go over to the vestry and arrange these.”

  “I don’t think you quite understood what I said, Mrs Herne. I’d rather you didn’t deck the church out with flowers.”

  “But I always … I mean, when we lived in Gunning …”

  “There is more room for the Divine in an unadorned church. That’s what I feel. However, if you wanted to give them to Mrs Treloar they’d be very welcome about the house.”

  “I picked them for … I mean, Mister Grant in Gunning used to …”

  “But you see, this is my responsibility. It would be very much against my conscience if I were to introduce changes that weren’t in the spirit of Methodism. I don’t want to deny your kindness but …”

  The woman’s full cheeks had gone a very lusty pink.

  “And I don’t want to leave less room for the Divine in your house or in your church. I wished I’d remained Anglican. They are, at least, polite.”

  “Now I’ve offended you.”

  “Would you say so? Good afternoon, Mr Treloar.”

  Away she went towards the pub where, no doubt, her husband and dray were waiting. Jimmie sidled in through the garden gate she had left wide open.

  At close range, the parson was very young with soft wet lips. A square-jawed young woman came out of the house and found him abstracted, mouth bunched in pain.

  “Is she gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you just speak up to these rotten sows? You soon speak up to me. You’re bloody-well not backwards in that.”

  “Ssh!” said the parson, still gazing at the garden path, the pruned stubs of rose-bushes. “Please, dearest, you mustn’t say those things. Not in that way.”

  “Bloody mealy-mouth, that’s you.”

  “Please, Enid, it’s little use calling me names.”

  Already Mrs Treloar had spotted taut Jimmie Blacksmith waiting on the pathway.

  “We don’t want any wood cut, thank you,” she called.

  “It isn’t wood, missus. I want t’ git married.”

  “Today?”

  “Saturdee week, missus.”

  “I suppose you know the normal stipend is a guinea.”

  “Enid!”

  “Well, he can’t expect to get married for nothing.”

  “Kin I pay yer today?”

  “By all means.” The parson shrugged his sadness off. “Of course.”

  After seeing the guinea into her husband’s hand and pocket, Mrs Treloar moved back into her house. Her shoulders were held broad in an over-masculine way. She was tense with hatred, as others had been. It baffled Jimmie, with his simple hopes, that they should all be such dedicated haters.

  “You had just better give me the details,” said the parson. “Who is your intended? I mean, what is her name? If she comes from a reserve we have to seek the permission of the superintendent.”

  Jimmie told him she was not from a station. She was white.

  “No tarbrush,” he said, for private vengeance; for the whites had something of a tribal mentality too, in that they hated to hear that one of their girls was going to a darkie. Even nice whites, like Mr Treloar, might betray regret.

  “Mr Blacksmith,” said the minister, “Mr Blacksmith, have you considered the problems that might result? We must be practical about them. It is very possible that you could be much insulted.”

  The minister’s politeness angered Jimmie. Quite brutally he said, “She got child, boss. From me she got a child. She wants t’ git married in church, proper Methodist marriage.”

  The fact of her pregnancy routed Mr Treloar, and he asked Jimmie indoors. He put some wood on the fire and gave himself a splinter. There were some dead embers over the varnished floor and black velvet cushions on the settee. More remarkably still, there was a copy of the Methodist Church Times with vacant livings ringed in pencil. It could have been the Nevilles’ front parlour.

  “Can your future wife or yourself produce witnesses? Perhaps I should myself. They must be sober and so must you. No drink, you understand? My wife could be one of the witnesses,” the man suggested with a grunt of pain. “And perhaps one of the wardens.”

  Jimmie was ready to go when Mrs Treloar came in in her militant manner. He could see Mr Treloar’s eyes flinch.

  “I do have some work for you to do,” she said to Jimmie. “Please follow me.”

  “I’ll cut any logs, Enid,” offered the parson.

  “You must keep out of it, please Theo.”

  Mr Treloar remaining with his plaintive eyes indoors; his spouse led Jimmie to a terrible heap of redwood, all tumbled blue and brown across Jimmie’s track in the late light.

  “You set to work please. I want it all cut and stacked.”

  “But missus, it’s a ton an’ a half.”

  “It’s two tons. It will do your soul good. If you stop I’m fetching the police.”

  Seated on the wooden steps, her grey frock drooping between her boyishly held knees, she saw him to work. Four hours it took.

  In half that time his hands were itching with sweat. He would stop to blow on them. It was madness, but still Mr Treloar was not to be seen. He must have been indoors with his purple pencil and his Church Times. Jimmie stacked the wood against the shed wall. Some badly knotted wood she permitted him not to cut.

  Then he was allowed to drink water from the tank; there was a pannikin which he rinsed with care, just to show what a well-mannered boy he was.

  He was more frightened than angry, not knowing what the lady was about. Dismissing him, she said, without a tremor of irony in the mouth or eyes, “Now you go home and pray every night.”

  He said he would.

  So after thirteen nights of prayer, Jimmie was up before dawn and led one of the Newby hacks off towards Gilgandra.

  Newby had flung an arm around the horse’s neck, detaining it. “It’s just for carrying yer missus, Jimmie. Yer kin lead him into Gilgandra, not ride him. Yer not the expectant mother. And Jimmie, they git sick, women I mean, all that weight on their tummy. So take it easy coming back.”

  Such terse kindnesses, even though kept within the limits of account-keeping, rose without warning from within Mr Newby. Had there been time for it Jimmie Blacksmith might have become his friend. As well, Jimmie could sense – but was too young to envy – a ferocious family love in the man, an impermeable knot of family love twelve miles east of Gilgandra.

  So, faithfully, as if the beast were fitted with tachometer, Jimmie led and did not ride the hack into G
ilgandra. At first he felt elated – intense winter sun and the dry cold flickering at his face.

  About ten he could see through the heart of the town to the railhead and began to resent the insipid girl he had come to meet. He couldn’t imagine how he would speak to her, what words he could use. Yet he faced a life-time of speaking to her.

  The Express, belling like a church, rousing everyone’s chickens and maddening the hack, thrust its punitive cow-catcher at Jimmie in Gilgandra and stood still. The girl stepped down from the second-class observation deck. An old farmer from somewhat further west handed her luggage down and called, “Good luck, Mrs Blacksmith.”

  Unexpectedly, she clung to Jimmie so openly that he could see the old man’s eyebrows at work behind the window. Did she perhaps love him, or did she need to convince herself she loved him, or did she believe that if she did all the things girls do in romances that she would be endowed with love?

  The cruel thing was, as the farmer might have told her, that girls in romances don’t allow themselves to be rolled by half-castes on a riverbank in the world’s south.

  “Darling,” she said.

  A pregnant woman could, as Newby predicted, be very uncomfortable on a horse, whether front-on or side-saddle; but after a mile or so, Gilda opted for side-saddle, and the bag, which Jimmie had up to now carried out of respect for Mr Newby’s horseflesh, was then lashed to the pommel on the right side.

  She seemed so young, so hopelessly twelve or thirteen, that he didn’t look at her for fear of finding this afternoon’s wedding, this evening’s ritual of bedding, too blatantly crazy. So she sat, one leg cocked up high and sideways in a stirrup, clinging to pommel and cantle and snorting whenever she thought she was falling, snorting like an old man.

  They made conversation.

  “What was the train like?”

  “Orright, Jimmie. It was cold in Lithgow. I thought I’d freeze.”

  “They reckon Lithgow’s a bloody cold place.”

  “How’s the new job goin’, Jimmie?”

  “It’s orright. Boss is better than some others I know. It’s a big job, should keep me goin’ rest of the year.