‘Amen!’ called Mr Tasker at the end of it. Then he dashed off to help his fellows in good-doing to serve the humbler ones, but not before he had taken a good big swig of ginger beer like any common toss-pot and smacked his lips over it the same. But the organist stayed where she was, and kept on playing, all hymns, probably favourites of the children, because many of them beefed out bits between bites, in accompaniment with the Mission people, all of whom sang as they went about serving — the sandwiches with What Can We Do For Jesus’ Sake — the little cakes with Jesus Loves Me — the tarts with What a Friend We have In Jesus — the big chunks of iced plum cake with Gentle Jesus — and toper’s swigs of ginger beer with the lot of it.
Prindy ate and drank everything given him, but more or less mechanically, keeping his eyes on the organist, with such persistent interest that before long, smiling and nodding still, she was playing for him of all of them. When the eating was over, and Mr Tasker had offered up a prayer of thanks for it and said, ‘Now, we’ll all sit down and have a good old sing-song till it’s time to go home,’ the organist beckoned Prindy to her. He went at once.
‘Hello, little boy,’ she said, with that nice smile. ‘What’s your name?’
A difficult question when you have several names for various uses, until you have been given one by people who don’t matter in your scheme of things. He hung his head. She took one of the golden brown hands: ‘Don’t be shy. My name’s Kitty Wyndeyer.’ She giggled slightly, adding, ‘Silly name for an organist, isn’t it?’ When the grey eyes rose questioningly she said, ‘But you wouldn’t understand the joke, would you. You do understand when I ask your name, though, don’t you?’
He nodded. She waited. But he was staring at the keyboard. She asked, ‘You like music?’
He looked at her questioningly again. She asked, ‘Do you know what music is?’
He shook his head.
‘I can see you have lots to learn. You’ve just come from the bush, haven’t you? Now, you know what a song is, I suppose?’
He nodded, his eyes looking eager.
‘Well, music means singing songs, and the playing of songs on an instrument . . . like this . . .’ She gave a couple of pumps with her feet, opened a stop, and played a few melodious notes.
The grey eyes shone with interest. She asked, ‘Like to try? Come on. Give me your hand again. Middle C.’ She pressed the little index finger down. The note peeled forth. She laughed with delight into the delighted face. ‘I can see we’re going to make a musician out of you. Now let’s run up the scale from C. I’ll show you.’ She sang the notes as she played them with her own bony white forefinger. ‘C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C!’ Again she smiled at his delight. ‘Now you.’ He did it almost perfectly.
‘What’s this?’ asked a deep voice.
They looked up to see the square red face under its shock of bristly grey hair and above its dog-collar of Mr Tasker. He added, ‘A music lesson?’
Miss Wyndeyer beamed, ‘I do believe we’ve found a budding musical genius, Mr Tasker.’
‘Well, well!’ rumbled the Reverend Gentleman, and rumpled the golden hair. ‘Isn’t that something! Er . . . but Miss Wyndeyer, let’s leave the music lesson for another time, shall we?’
She blushed, murmuring, ‘Of course, Mr Tasker . . . I was only . . .’
‘Yes, yes . . . if only we can make an organist out of him. But now . . . what about some of our new favourites, God is Love, and such . . . of our Plagiarisms, I believe you called them, eh? . . . Ha, ha, ha!’
Miss Wyndeyer went very red, muttering, ‘Oh, I didn’t call them that, Reverend!
Mr Tasker chuckled. ‘A little bird told me, Miss Wyndeyer . . . a very reliable little bird at that.’
She panted in her embarrassment. ‘The word I used, Mr Tasker, was Purloined.’
He laughed heartily. ‘Yes, I believe it was, now. I dare say there’s a difference. But when it comes to purloining something beautiful for the greater glory of God, it’s hardly a sin, is it?’
‘Oh, I didn’t mean it as a sin. It’s only that I’ve known them as Classics not connected with religion . . .’
‘And now all the better that they are, eh? I’m sure that’s how you feel about it. You play them with such . . . shall I say gusto? Let’s have God is Love, then, shall we?’
‘Of course, Reverend, of course!’ Her thin prettyish face was quivering as she turned it, smiling again on Prindy, to whom she said, ‘I’m going to play real music now. See how you like it.’
She swung back to her keyboard and pedal-boards, ran a little flourish, then played the opening bars of Shubert’s Serenade, then at Mr Tasker’s third beat began the lovely melody, to which the gathering sang.
Do you hear the whisper on the breeze,
God is Love, God is Love . . .
Do you hear the murmur in the trees,
God is Lo-ove, God is Love . . .
She glanced a few times at Prindy, to see his lips moving. When it was over she swung to him. It was unnecessary to ask him if he liked it. The expression on his face was beatific. For a moment she stared into the wide staring grey eyes, then swiftly bent to him, kissed him on the mouth. He seemed to start awake. He smiled. Redder than ever, she swung back to the little gasper of an instrument out of which she had forced such sweetness.
Next it was Mendelssohn’s Spring Song. Next Verdi’s Back to Our Mountains. Then, of all things, La Donna è Mobile, giving rollicking praise to the Lord . . . ‘Praise, praise, prai-ise ye the Lord . . .’
It went on while the great cloud crimsoned to the setting Sun and the sea became a lake of blood now flowing slowly, because the neap was past, and Rainbow Head went through colour changes to purple, and golden lights like stars on the horizon began to twinkle where the rich Delacys and their high-class friends were still celebrating the New Year. Prindy held hands with Miss Wyndeyer while the Mission darkies loaded the precious music maker onto the truck with all the other gear. She seemed as if she would have kept hold of him, only that his mother came and took him away, and Mrs Tasker took possession of her for the procession back up through the Compound. One last glance back at the pewter sea, the purpling skyline, the ghost-white beach, then plunge into the scrub.
There was Queeny Peg-leg waiting with a newspaper parcel of fish she said she’d just now cooked, to press into Nell’s hands, calling her Chister and saying she’d see her tomorro’ by’n’by. A little further up, on the opposite side King George was waiting with a similar parcel for him he addressed as Kokanjinni and a like injunction for the future.
In the ghostly hovels there were hurricane lamps or fires that revealed ghostly figures. Mr Turkney was waiting outside his office. While everybody else said goodnight and God bless you to the adult girls and their one small male companion, he escorted them to their prison, jollying them for a lot of no-goods who’d been playing the goody-goody for what they could get out of it, predicted that they’d be most of them spending the night on the commodes with bellyache, then locked them up and departed in haste to do the goody-goody act himself with the departing guest-hosts.
The adult girls, worn out with it all, settled down yawning, talked a little. Prindy was soon asleep. So were the rest. But then suddenly the rest were startled awake by the sound of singing, a sweet strangled version of The Spring Song.
There was that breathed-in comment of the night before: Eh, look out! since it was a wondrous thing that disturbed them, but with nothing like the sharpness of fear to it as last night, when those terrible words had been uttered: Kill-him dat whiteman die!
II
When Mr Eddy McCusky told Prindy and his mother that he would be seeing them tomorrow, as he did when greeting them on New Year’s Day, he was not being merely boozily patronising to people who, because he was officially responsible for them, might, by such as he, be thought to feel in need of his patronage, as soon revealed. Most likely what he had told them had made no impression on them whatsoever. The need to see them was all
his. Evidently he had arranged with Mr Turkney to have them on hand for his dealings with them first thing that promised day.
As things turned out, Mr Turkney had them, as he put it himself when driven at last to complain about his superior’s inordinate failure to comply with what he had committed himself to, not merely in hand but on his hands for three full days of waiting, on each of which McCusky had declared by telephone that he would be along as soon as he got things sorted out. Probably it wouldn’t have mattered so much to Turkney, surely used to having people on his hands, since the population of the Compound ran into hundreds, had it not been raining hard during those three days, and the man, being told to have the pair on hand and not being completely heartless and having no other handy shelter for them, had been compelled to have them close enough to be irritated by their presence — by their windging, as he called it, because they naturally grew irritable hanging about. He did not have them actually in his office, but in a passage that led through to storerooms and the medical clinic, still with them in constant view. His first complaints were to his wife over the house telephone. Being ironic about McCusky over the house-phone seemed to be a sport of theirs, or perhaps rather a form of release from pressures he put upon them as their boss.
They had a long and droll conversation of the kind after McCusky’s admission at last on the fourth day that the sorting-out process had him temporarily beaten, and to Turkney’s asking what he should do with the pair, replied, ‘Do what you bloody well like.’ Then he corrected that: ‘No . . . let him run around in the truck a bit with Barney Bynoe. He knows Barney. Have a word with Barney, and tell him to get him to talk about the Catfish affair. I’ll have a word with Barney, too . . . and with Jumbo Delacy. The trouble is the kid’s said nothing . . . absolutely bloody nothing. Dinny Cahoon tried to kid me he got it all out of him. But I’ve proved that’s a lie. I’ve seen the Police Statement. The point is: Is the kid a witness for the Defence or the Prosecution? I want him for the Defence, naturally. His testimony’s vital. He’s actually the only reliable witness to what happened. It isn’t that I want to get Old Bob off scot-free. He’ll have to go to jail. He’s a damn nuisance to ’em out there . . . but he’d be a bigger one out free, even out with you. But we’ve got to make a showing of defence, now the people down South are watching these cases. Already there’s a complication. Bill Billings’ll be briefed as Defence Council, as usual, of course . . . but he tells me Jeremy Delacy’s been in touch with him, offering himself as Prisoner’s Friend . . . ever heard of it? I hadn’t. But it seems it’s right in law for these parts. As Prisoner’s Friend he’s offering to testify in the prisoner’s favour, to say he was to some extent responsible for letting the boy pass into Old Bob’s care, and also to get a qualified Anthropologist up from South to give expert evidence. We don’t want it, of course. And now, bugger me, Dinny Cahoon’s come up with the idea of adopting the kid to outwit Delacy. He did ask me before. Course it’s impossible. Silly cow likes to think he’s the boy’s father . . . when he’s full. His sisters’re against it, naturally . . . and the Superintendent and the Administrator . . . and Cobbity. We want to send the boy away, of course. Dinny’s got some old-fashioned idea of draggin’ him round on police expeditions and makin’ a copper out of him. Cobbity’s doing nothing as usual, except poke borak. So you see what I’m up against. Like I said . . . give the boy to Barney to run around. We might get him yet.’
Mrs Turkney had been trying to get through to the office while the long explanation went on. When she demanded to know who it was, Turkney said with a groan, ‘Our learnt friend McCusky. He’s become the big bush-lawyer. Christ . . . I’ve got a cauliflower ear from the bashin’ he gave it. All about the Ah Loy kid.’
‘Well, I want fish. It’s Friday, remember . . . and I’ve promised half a dozen people. Has the truck gone down yet?’
‘No. Tide a bit late, I think. But I’ll send Barney now.’
Turkney went out yelling for Barney Bynoe and the truck, and as it came up, went to Prindy and Nell and said, ‘Look, Mr McCusky can’t come. Nell . . . you go into the laundry and give ’em a hand there. You sonny . . . you can go for a ride with Barney.’
Nell tried to argue that she wanted Prindy to be with her. Turkney raised his voice: ‘Do as I tell you, get off to the laundry. The boy’ll be all right. What’re you frightened of? Ain’t I here to look out for him? Go on . . . off you go. You got one good arm. You can help ’em sort the dirty linen.’
The rain had ceased. It was in bright sunshine that Prindy saw that other wondrous sight to eyes not used to the sea — low water, an exaggerated business hereabout, because mean rise and fall of spring tides was something like thirty feet and the seabed such, at least off the beaches, as to be exposed for up to a mile from the normal shore-line when the tide was right out. As the spring tides were then only beginning to make, the conditions were not so extreme as they could be, but enough to cause Barney Bynoe, not a very perceptive person one would gather from his general conduct, to see the wonder in the wide grey eyes and halt the truck in running it out to the fish-trap so as to give full scope to the viewing. Before that Barney had been saying what good mates they were, how they would be going about everywhere together in the truck, and how his little mate would be telling him all about the Muddrin’ bijnitch, eh, now, wouldn’t he? Almost as soon as Barney had installed Prindy in the cabin of the truck, putting his usual mate Hoppy up behind probably as part of the subtlety he had in mind, he began the questioning. Prindy’s response was to give him that wide calm grey glance which anybody knowing him and having any awareness would immediately take as meaning: No-more savvy nutching.
There was much more to the scene than a wide stretch of terra firma where an infinitude of silver water had been before. The sand was silver, too, but chased with a myriad ripple lines that gave it a pattern that seemed of itself to flow, the effect perhaps enhanced by the teeming tiny crustacean life upon it and the fact that at its extremity there was a suggestion of violence, due to the play of mirage with the receding water, which gave to it all a quality of calm in storm, a lovely safety granted as a gift as if in temporary concession by an element in otherwise permanent enmity with solid earth. Prindy’s lips were moving as he stared, as if being deeply moved by it to song.
King George and his helpers were to be seen simply as black figures inside the apex of the angle of high wire netting that constituted the trap, the contraption being set up to fence what probably would be the final streaming of the outgoing tide, a slightly depressed region lying off a little bay into which debouched the gully between the heights on which the Compound stood and those of Point Lookout. The rippled micaceous wet sand was so hard as scarcely to show the track of the big truck. Barney drove on towards the fishermen, while Prindy now gaped out at the tiny crabs, some with houses on their backs of all shapes and sizes trying to make a brave show but finally having to go indoors, roll over, and dig smartly out of sight, others to run backwards maintaining defiance to the last, still others forming into serried ranks to turn and flee like defeated armies on the run, then suddenly to vanish as literally the earth opened up and swallowed them. A stream of water was soon seen to be flowing from the gully, through banks that kept collapsing in miniature earthquakes. Barney pulled up short of this, at a point about fifty yards from where the blackmen were robbing the trap of its still living silver trove and dumping it into baskets. He said they’d wait there for the fishermen to bring the baskets to them, and went to explain that the trap was King George’s own and that he sold his catches through the Compound for his own profit. ‘Don’t belong to properly King George, all-same nother-one Guvmin t’ing,’ Barney said with a laugh. Then, since it was evident that Prindy hadn’t seen the joke, he asked, ‘You savvy dat King George business?’
Prindy protruded his lips towards the fishermen. ‘I savvy dat dat one King George.’
‘No-more him,’ said Barney; and he went on to give a somewhat confused account of what had
been happening of late with regard to the Throne of England, saying that there’d been a King George before and then a King Edward who’d got the sack, and now another King George, who wasn’t properly king yet, till he got his crown on, which would be in a couple of months’ time, where there’d be a big holiday and sports and a picnic in town. Evidently he wasn’t the only one confused over the issue. Chuckling, he said, ‘Silly bugger blackfeller been t’ink old George here dat King. Time dat nother-one George been die las’ year, Guvmin been let him go prisoner from jail, mek him good-binji, like, long o’ new-feller King. Dat-lot been tink it old George been do it . . . ha, ha, ha! . . . dat silly old bugger been tink he do it, too . . . he get pretty big in head dat time, I can tell you.’ He added, chuckling, ‘Look out you don’ go gettin’ dem two mix-up time you go Court and you ’ear ’em say . . . King George agin Cock-Eye Bob!’
Looking interested, but also at a loss, Prindy asked, with another projection of the lips forward, ‘Dat old-man King George go long o’ Court?’
Barney sighed and grimaced, as one used to trying in vain to talk of civilised things to uncivilised people, saying, ‘No . . . no . . . you got it all wrong. Dis one no-more properly King George. Dat on’y nickname dey give him. Properly his name Njorjinga . . . dey used to call him Jingo George . . . den King George . . . like o’ dat, see? He been mix up in dat Snake bijnitch trouble long o’ old Cock-Eye Bob . . . lo-ong time, now. He been go jail. He been come ’ere for what dey call Holdin. Den by’n’by he King George, King de Compound. I bet you dat day dey put crown long o’ that big feller King, old George here goin’ ’o reckon it belong ’o him . . . aaaah!’ Seeing that Prindy still couldn’t see the joke, he stopped laughing, saying, ‘I tell you all about King bijnitch by’n’by. I show you picture, too. I tek’m you long o’ my house. Plenty book dere. My kid go o’ State School. Den you tell me all about dat Muddrin bijnitch, eh?’
Poor Fellow My Country Page 42
