Next day Alfie phoned Dr Cobbity and told him what she’d learnt and asked him what was he going to do about it. He asked, ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Fight,’ she said, ‘fight!’
‘Fight who?’
‘That Shell Oil Company, for a start.’
‘Now, come off it, Alfie, dear!’ he said it so nicely.
‘But you’ve fought everybody else . . . the squatters, the boong-bashers . . . “He is thrice armed whose cause is just”.’
‘But the Shell Oil Company! That’s a job for an army . . . two or three armies . . . why, they own the blooming armies!’
‘All the more reason to fight them!’
He sighed, then said suddenly, ‘Speaking of the Delacys . . . I hear you had the king of ’em at a boozy party the other night.’
‘So what?’
‘Well . . . he’s not exactly on our side, you know.’
‘It’s all right . . . I don’t like him. He’s pompous. And after hearing this Jumbo thing, I like him less.’
‘Ah . . . that’s my girl!’
She asked a little stiffly, ‘What’s that mean?’
He chuckled: ‘Leave it for the moment. And how about leaving this Jumbo business for the time being, too? I’ve got this Court case on my mind. It’s on today. All your mates’ll be in on it . . . the Ape Men, Jeremy Delacy, Fay McFee, Tasker . . .’
‘They’re no friends of mine!’
He chuckled again, and said again, ‘That’s my girl, Alfie!’
She wasn’t stiff this time. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Good luck with the case. Be seeing you!’
Later that same morning an aged halfcaste woman who looked to have some Chinese blood came to Alfie while she was down on the Compound beach with the children. The woman said she lived with black relatives in one of the Compound hovels. She came almost cringing, saying, ‘Pleeje, Mitchis, pleeje, Mitchis!’ till Alfie, in evident embarrassment, asked her not to talk like that. The woman didn’t appear to understand. Still cringing, she said she’d come to her because she’d heard she was a Good Kind Mitchis, and hoped she might help her to join her husband, who was in the Leper lazaret. What she babbled out in the patois, that Alfie had some difficulty in gathering for a while, was to the effect that she loved her husband, Albert Snowball, also a halfcaste, dearly, and would like to spend her last days with him. Their children were gone. Their black relations didn’t want her. If there was a chance of his coming out of the lazaret she would wait patiently. But if not, she would like to go there to be with him to the end. She had already approached Dr Cobbity but he had refused to let her go to the Island, saying that it was only for lepers. She had tried sneaking over in a canoe with blacks, but only to be turned away when found by the Superintendent there. Could Mitchis speak to Dr Cobbity for her? Alfie said she certainly would, that she had heard that leprosy was now curable, and there shouldn’t be any difficulty. But she asked Lucy, as the woman said she was called, to be patient for just a little longer, because at the moment Dr Cobbity was very busy with a court case. ‘Trust me,’ she said. And to seal it, she kissed Lucy’s dirty smelly cheek, to the astonishment of Lucy and of all who were watching, whose comment on it was that which always followed on the amazing or fearsome, the in-breathed: ‘Eh, look out!’
VI
The Court of Oyer and Terminer and General Jail Delivery (the setting for the Case of The King Against Cock-Eye Bob) was called. It was so announced in that same little old courtroom by the same massive Clerk of Courts, the wheezy Mr Doscas. Old World stuff, with all the Old World trappings, of wigs and gowns and tipstaff, as well as the Lion and Unicorn, looking insanely outlandish when taken with that wide view through door and window of Terra Australis, the Southern Land of the Holy Spirit, venue for Australia Felix, the dreamt-of Nation where the insanity and inanity of the old world might be forgot and men true brothers be.
Judge Bickering sat on his throne beneath the symbol of the Power and the Glory, the Peace and Dignity, invested in him by Him of Westminster, London, announced by Mr Doscas, puffing like a stranded dugong, as Our Sovereign Lord the King. The Judge was a bulky ruddy man, in full-bottom wig descending to the scarlet hood of his Doctor’s gown, and a compulsive wink of a watery left eye which his associates knew meant he was in a merry mood for commencing his Sessions: so woe to anyone who didn’t laugh readily at his witticisms, including those in the Dock.
Gowned and wigged were those two secondary players in the Sixteenth Century Charade, Counsel for Prosecution and Defence. Gowned also was Dr Fabian Cootes, there to assist Defending Counsel in his capacity as Anthropologist, and kidded into wearing his regalia by that joker, his own assistant, Fergus Ferris, who’d told him he’d heard that Old Bickers wouldn’t listen to him unless he wore it. Now that he’d learnt from Defence Counsel that he’d had his leg pulled, he could do nothing but sit in the front bench with face as crimson as his Doctor’s hood. It was off that poor fellow, The Coot, as cheeky Fergus called him, that Judge Bickering scored his first laugh. Spotting the flash of crimson, the watery winking eye concentrated on it, and His Honour asked dryly, ‘Do you also wear it to the bathroom, Dr Cootes?’
Loud laughter — till the winking froze into a glare, when the Usher took the cue and cried, ‘Silence in Court!’
His Honour began to wink again and asked that the first case be called.
Mr Doscas called it: ‘The King against Cock-Eye Bob.’
The Judicial eye winked rapidly again and the dry voice proclaimed: ‘With all due humility to Our Sovereign Lord, and respect to yourself, Mr Clerk, you do make it sound rather like Canute against the Tide.’
It must have been one of his best yet, because he let the laughter go on for quite a while before he gave the cue to the Usher.
Prosecution muttered to his learnt friend, Defence, ‘The old boy’s fairly dripping with it today. If you can make your Defendant laugh you might even get an acquittal.’
That most valuable of all the laughter was indeed forthcoming, but not through connivance of the Defence. When Bobwirridirridi was duly escorted into the dock and Judge Bickering looked at him amiably, he grinned broadly, saying, ‘Gootay, Boss!’
Judge Bickering was well known at the Jail, not simply as Chiefest of Turnkeys, Master of Screws, but as an amiable visitor, who often went out to see how those who had lost the game with him were getting along, to consider releases, even to take small gifts. He called it Tempering Justice with Mercy, and often declared in his Court that while he enjoyed his power as a judge he preferred the exercise of it rather in ordering release of a prisoner than in committing one. Now he winked rapidly at old Bob, but addressed him in a tone of true judicial gravity: ‘Prisoner at the Bar, know you that you are in flagrant contempt in so addressing me? Nevertheless, Goottay to you, too!’
Bobwirridirridi flung his grey head back and opened the crack of a mouth wide in joining the wholesale laughter.
‘Silence in Court!’
‘Arraign the Prisoner.’
Fatty Doscas went through the rigmarole of the Indictment, while Wirridirridi, having glanced over the Court for familiar faces and not seeing the one he was probably looking for, because the Witnesses would be admitted only as required, looked over the now-packed Jury Box, out of the window, at what could be seen in a neap tide of the local Shade of his own particular sovereign lord, until his name was spoken again: ‘Cock-Eye Bob . . . how plead you, Guilty or Not Guilty?’
The question in the case of an Aboriginal prisoner was only a formality. Mr McCusky, in his best white suit and wearing a bright yellow tie, leapt to his feet to give the answer, strode to the foot of the dock and turned dramatically, to answer in a loud clear voice: ‘Guilty!’
A gasp from the Court. His Honour, whose eye had started winking as if making ready to say something about the theatricality, looked as astonished almost as the rest. McCusky held it for the perfect moment, then added: ‘Guilty but Insane!’
Sighs of pe
nt breaths. Sensing something untoward, Bobwirridirridi’s red eyes burnt over the crowded room. Counsel were staring at each other. The unofficial Defence Group were gaping. The Jury had sagged, done out of several days’ entertainment with pay. There were smirks only on the faces of Police Superintendent Bullco and Sergeant Cahoon.
Mr McCusky then strode towards the Bench, and handing up a document in a wax-sealed envelope, said, ‘If it please Your Honour, the Certification.’
His Honour took it, broke the seal, glanced at the document. Then the eye began to wink again. The dry voice spoke into the utter silence: ‘Well, well . . . a shrewd plea, and not to be gainsaid.’ The eye fell on Dr Cootes. The voice went on: ‘But I must admit a slight disappointment on my own behalf. With the array of talent that we have here today, not merely judicial, but sociological . . . and may I even say zoological?’ The eye fell on Jeremy who reddened. ‘. . . I had expected some fireworks.’
The laugh came from everywhere, but rather weakly.
‘Hmm . . . do I detect the anticlimactic effect of a damp squib generally?’
The laugh was much louder. When the Usher had called silence, His Honour asked the Crown Prosecutor if he were satisfied. That gentleman replied yes. The Judge didn’t ask Defending Counsel Billings, nor address him, although he winked at him as if he would have liked to say something like: Pity about your fee, mate! Certainly that’s the way he looked at Mr Billings. Evidently his clients, the Aborigines Department, had not taken him into their confidence.
His Honour went on to say that, had the indictment been contested, whatever the verdict, he himself would have ruled that the Defendant be subject to psychiatric examination with Anthropologists in attendance with medical men: ‘I say this, not only from what I have read in the Indictment, in its lines and between them, but from what I know of the Defendant . . . or Prisoner as we must call him now . . . whom I have known and been interested in for a long while. I say this not by reason of the offence for which he was committed, but that of his obsession with the Cult of the Rainbow Snake, for which I can find no grounds in my own anthropological reading. It may be remembered . . . it will be by the police, I’m sure . . .’ The eye that had winked before glared for a moment at Police Officers Bullco and Cahoon until they dropped their own, ‘. . . that it was I who recommended his release under the Amnesty granted at the Accession of His Ex-Majesty, Edward the Eighth. Just before his release I asked him if he intended to pursue the Cult and he ignored me, which I took to mean that he did. I presumed it a harmless personal lunacy, since he seems to be alone in it. Jesus Christ was considered harmless until he got a following. I dare say that if the Pope of Rome were to stand as an unknown before a Rabbinical or Mohammedan Court and state his beliefs they would think him crazy, too. I am not passing judgment on the beliefs of Bobwirridirridi, as I prefer to call him, but only on their likely danger to the community. For it has been demonstrated that, even though greatly feared and avoided, he had been able to command a following and hence to feel power and to want to exercise it. That is why I like the plea. I want to see him put away. However, I am making a ruling. I shall in a moment formally sentence him to detention during His Majesty’s Pleasure, but in doing so I shall rule that he be not removed from this Jurisdiction, not for judicial reasons, but because sending him to a southern madhouse would kill him. I’ve heard him crying before, Poor Fellow My Country, have had him ask me to let him have a Walkabout so that he might not, as he said, lose his Dreaming. I gave it him when the opportunity offered . . . at the cost of a man’s life . . . although I am of the opinion from what I have read of the evidence, that the fatality might easily have been avoided.’ The eye fixed on Clancy, who flamed, swallowed, and looked down. ‘It can’t happen again, except in some incredible contingency. The fault is to some degree mine, owing to the weakness I have, if you wish to call it so, often expressed in this court, that I would much rather use my judicial powers to liberate a man than to imprison him. For that reason I wish to make amends to the Prisoner with that ruling, and with another, which I want inserted in the document of committal as seriously as the first, namely that with the bread and milk that the medical authorities prescribed as his daily diet, he be given a tot of rum, as on occasions when he was in a low state and put in hospital . . . a tot by my ruling being one fluid ounce, apothecaries’ measure, since this is a medicinal matter . . . Yes, Mr Delacy?’
For Jeremy had risen from his seat. His Honour winked. ‘Do you wish to give me the pleasure of committing you for Contempt of Court?’
Jeremy, very red, answered, ‘No, Your Honour. I thought I might be able to be of assistance in the matter of the Prisoner’s tot. I also feel that I need to make amends to him . . .’
The Judge interrupted: ‘When I used the word Pleasure in the matter of committing you, Mr Delacy, I did not mean that it would actually please me to do so. On the contrary . . . I respect you for some of your views and your courageous outspokenness in support of them. What I meant . . .’ The eye was winking hard, ‘. . . was that the case has been so much without incident that a little wouldn’t hurt and that you were going to do me the favour of providing it. Yes, Sir . . . what is it you would like to say about the tot?’
‘As you know, I am a registered Pharmacist. In that capacity, while I was associated with the Prisoner before the affair that caused him to be removed from my district, I gave him brandy with the bread and milk, and found that he greatly appreciated it. It would do him far more good medicinally than rum, also. I am willing to meet the cost of the brandy.’
‘Very good of you, Mr Delacy . . . and I must say, very shrewd of you legally to use your pharmaceutical qualifications to get round a charge of supplying liquor to an Aboriginal. But let us ask the Prisoner.’ The Pookarakka was drinking it in. The red coals met the wet winking blue eye: ‘Prisoner at the Bar . . . which one you like more better, that-one rum, or that-one brandy?’
The coals glowed, the lips smacked, the voice cackled: ‘Plendy, Boss . . . proper goot one dat plendy!’
Judge Bickering looked at the new Court Reporter, a stony faced young woman with red hair: ‘Alter the transcript to brandy, will you please, Miss Williams.’ He then looked at Jeremy: ‘The cost will be met by the Government, Mr Delacy.’
‘Thank you, Sir.’ Jeremy sat down.
The eye fixed on Dr Cootes: ‘Have you anything to say, Doctor?’
The Coot rose looking sheepish in his gown, gasped, ‘No, Your Honour.’
‘Not on the subject of the cult of the Rainbow Snake?’
‘No, Your Honour. I consider it quite unauthentic anthropologically.’
‘Would you expound that?’
Conscious of all the eyes on him the way his own popping black eyes rolled, Cootes stammered, ‘Well . . . there’s nothing in anthropological literature to . . . to . . . well, it seems to me to be . . . a sort of racket worked on occasions by types who want to gain their ends by intimidation.’
‘A racket, Doctor? Does that word fit into an anthropological dissertation?’
Cootes was at a loss. Old Bickers’s eye was winking hard again: ‘You don’t have anything more to say on the subject, Doctor?’
The Coot quavered, ‘N-no, Sir.’
‘A pity . . . attired like that you look the perfect part for a learnt discussion.’
As Cootes sat down there was a titter. A guffaw. A howl of laughter, in which Bobwirridirridi joined. Then ‘Silence in Court!’
His Honour then duly sentenced Bobwirridirridi, who waved to him as he was led away, and to Jeremy also.
The eye began winking as His Honour set it on both Prosecutor and Defence: ‘In view of the verdict, you learnt gentlemen have quite a problem to face in the matter of the trial of the Prisoner’s accomplices. I understand they are charged with being Accessories Before and After the Fact of the Wilful Murder. In view of the finding of Insanity, what are you going to do? Is one who is accessory to the act of a madman also a madman? I leave it to you f
or the time being. Meantime, we adjourn. Thank you, gentlemen!’
‘The Court will rise!’
Judge Bickering rose, bowed, was swallowed by the King’s Beasts.
VII
It was Frank Candlemas who first approached Dr Cobbity with the request of Lucy Snowball concerning her husband confined in the Leper lazaret. Cobbity’s reply, reported back to Alfie by Frank, was a definite No. Frank said he had tried arguing on the grounds of what he had read about the modern attitude to leprosy, but without a chance, because not only did Cobbity stand on his dignity as a medical man, but could claim to have specialised in the study of the disease while doing his DPH abroad. The doctor had said that until he had it on what he called Proper Authority that leprosy was curable, those people he sent to the lazaret were to be regarded as there for life, while as for permitting exposure to infection by the disease such as this woman — this crazy woman, he had called her — wanted, not only would it be creating an exceedingly dangerous precedent, but was against all Medical Ethics, and Frank ought to know better than to ask.
‘Sounds a bit arrogant, doesn’t he,’ commented Alfie.
‘He can be, too,’ Frank conceded. ‘But who are we to buck the verdict of a medical man . . . and a specialist?’
Alfie said, ‘I’ll have a go at him.’
Alfie had that go at Cobbity one day when he came to the Compound Children’s Home with another medical specialist, this one in diseases of the Ear, Nose, and Throat, who happened to be passing through on the steamer for the co-called East, to examine Prindy. Cobbity had already taken another look at Prindy on the report of Dr McQuegg and the insistence of Alfie that his alleged mental defectiveness was due to abnormality of hearing. Cobbity had spent an hour, with face rather close to watching Alfie’s twanging a tuning-fork in the boy’s ear, so much to Prindy’s delight that his reaction was recorded as further evidence of his being non compos mentis. The instant Prindy heard the sound his eyes glowed and he whispered, inward: ‘Cee!’ The significance of the remark was evidently lost on the two non-musical observers. Having got prompt normal physical reaction, the doctor remarked that there certainly wasn’t anything much the matter with his hearing, and would have put the fork away, only that Prindy asked for more of it, and assumed a rapt expression, with lips moving silently, surely indicating that his mind was running up and down the scale. But it looked so silly, that the kids, crowded at a little distance, began to giggle. Then when Cobbity tried to put the fork away again, Prindy took hold of it, took possession of it, even forcibly, and tried, by manipulation, to do what should have been obvious, that is make the ringing metal play a tune. Alfie did suggest that that was what he might be attempting; but Dr Cobbity said, no, it was the classic monkey-trick of a Cretin, get your paws on a pretty thing, and refuse to let it go. He snatched the fork back and shoved it in his pocket, receiving such a look from the grey eyes that he remarked, ‘Look . . . you just have to look at him!’
Poor Fellow My Country Page 51
