Suddenly there was the wire fence, although no sign of life within, but plenty of distant sounds of it: Ol’ solyers neffer doy . . . They followed the fence until they came to a piece of newspaper hanging on it with ostensible innocence. There they stopped, while Dolly unhooked several strands of the cruel wire from a steel post. They entered, crossed through scrub to the gravel road that ran between the barracks, back towards town, and the big guns installed above the Ol’Goomun’s hide-out. Now they followed the road, soon to glimpse lights, soon indeed to be confronted with a veritable little city of blazing buildings.
There was a view across the wide parade ground to the entrance with its guard-house and flaring spotlights. The girls went nowhere near the lights, but coming amongst stacks of building material and unlighted sheds, veered leftward. A girl named Nancy was leading. She took them to an unlighted building that had evidently been some sort of mess-hut or recreational hall in the early stages of establishment. There they sat on a porch, and watched by Igulgul, the wrong side love-match maker, giggling over stories Doll and Nancy were telling about former parties here.
Half an hour or so, with Igulgul winking through the trees, when heavy hasty lurching steps. The girls rose. The dark bulk of men. Flashlights blazing in the girls’ dark faces, revealing also the khaki linen of the men. Guffaws and greetings: ‘’Lo girls . . .’lo . . . who’s here . . . Where’s Dolly?’
‘Me here.’
‘Aw . . . my girl, Nancy . . . Come on Nancy . . .’ad a ’orn all day thinkin’ ’bout you . . . Come on.’ One big fellow grabbed Nancy, rushed her into the hut.
Loud guffaws; ‘Dinsey don’ waste no time!’
‘Dinsey’s the bloke they reckon when he goes on leave the second thing he does’s take his pack off.’
‘Ho, ho, ho!’ The girls were giggling, except Nell, who was shrinking back behind the others, looking scared.
‘Dinsey don’ even wait t’ unbutton ’is fly . . . the buttons fly off ’emselves.’
‘Ha, ha, ho!’
‘Come on, Doll. Got some whisky for yous. Where’s the grog, blokes?’
‘Here she is. Come on in. Christ look at Dinsey . . . ha, ha, ha, ho, ho!’
‘Where you got to, Nancy? I want my girl Nancy.’
‘They’re all the same in the dark, mate.’
‘Not my Nancy . . . ah, there y’ are, love!’
They all went barging into the hall leaving Nell outside. Squeals and guffaws within and thumping and bumping. Nell, leaning against the wall, had her head turned towards the doorway, almost indescernible in her flowered frock in the fading light. Then more steps coming. She stiffened. The man nearly passed her on the porch, glimpsed her out of the tail of his eye, stopped, stared, flashed his torch on her, said, ‘’Lo, love.’
She drooped and blinked in the light.
He came up to her. ‘Ain’t seed you before.’
She shrank away from him. He reeked of drink.
‘Wha’s matter . . . you shy, eh?’ He tried to put his arm about her. She slipped free.
He went after her. ‘Come on . . . don’ be frighten’ . . . gi’s a kiss.’
He tried to grab her again. She jumped off the porch. He went after. She ran. He ran after her, calling, ‘Don’ run away, love . . . I got bottle o’ whisky . . . I give you a quid . . . I give you two . . .’ere . . . eh . . . don’ be diff’cult!’
She got out of sight behind another building. Evidently she’d lost him, because his footsteps could be heard blundering at a distance. There was a scuffling and thumping and then a stream of dirty words. He must have fallen over. The laughter and squealing in the hall was faint from here. The noise from the barracks was louder. She waited a while, then began to move, towards the glow of the Moon, away from which she had been forced to go before. She came round the building, went round a stack of timber, ran bang into him. He yelped, ‘Gotcher!’
She slipped out of his grip, turned, ran the other way, now towards the light. There was no one to be seen, only that open gate, beckoning as a way of escape. He called to her ‘Hey . . . hey . . . don’t go that way, you silly bastard!”
She went all the harder — and he too, catching up with her, panting, ‘Eo’ crissake come back . . . you’ll get us all in the bloody brig!’
As she ran onto the parade ground he stopped with a slither of gravel, nearly fell. Natty khaki figures were emerging from the Officers’ Mess. Nell, in full view, slackened pace, looked back at the halted pursuer, then turned towards the gate again, flying.
A babble of voices from the officers, one barking, ‘What goes on here?’
Then a shout, ‘Guard!’
Nell was almost at the gate, already in the glare.
‘Guard . . . guard . . . Goddammit!’
A khaki figure with a rifle, the bayonet flickering in the light like silver moths’ wings, came blundering in big red boots, saw the charging enemy, struck the appropriate pose, cried, ‘Halt!’
She tried to get around him; but the glinting steel designed for murder burnt before her frightened eyes, forcing her to the guard-house wall. There was another one coming with a bayonet — and the officers running, to stop as they came up, all goggling drunkenly, some chuckling comicalities, one whooping, ‘Bring on the dancing girls!’
The press gave way to a stiff striding figure, ruddy, grey-haired, Colonel Chivvy, OC Troops, ‘What’s this woman doing here . . . black woman?’
A chorus; ‘Don’ know, Sir . . . trying to get out, Sir.’
‘What the hell’s she doing in?’
Another officer was coming up with the late pursuer.
Colonel Chivvy turned. ‘What’s this?’
The officer said, ‘Corporal Blanco here, Sir . . . says he caught the woman snooping round.’
The Colonel looked at the goggling dishevelled soldier, demanding, ‘Snooping round? How’d she get in here?’
The Corporal had snapped to swaying attention: ‘Don’ know, Sir. Seen ’er . . . challenged ’er . . . she done a bunk.’
Colonel Chivvy concentrated on the gasping, crouching prisoner. ‘Where’d you come from? . . . Come on . . . answer up.’
Nell panted, ‘Compound.’
‘How’d you get in here?’
‘T’rough fence.’
‘On your own?’
‘Other girl dere.’
‘Where?’
She looked back whence she’d come. ‘I don’ know properly . . . behin’.’
‘What’d you come here for?’
‘Party long o’ tcholdier . . . dey reckon.’
The Colonel roared, ‘Party long o’ soldier . . . for Christ’s sake, what’s going on in my barracks? Orderly Officer . . . Sar’-Major!’
‘Sah!’
‘Sah!’
‘What party’s going on here with black women in it?’
‘Don’t know, Sir.’
‘No party, Sah!’
‘Well, there’s a black woman from the Compound says she was in a party.’ He snapped at her, ‘You . . . what are you, a prostitute?’
No answer — only a lower dropping of the dark curly head.
‘You’ve been with soldiers in here tonight?’
She muttered, ‘I been runned away.’
‘From what?’
‘Tcholdier.’
‘After coming to a party here?’
‘I come for money.’
‘You are a whore? Sar’-Major!’
The tall thin Sergeant-Major became a ramrod. ‘Sah!’
‘Have my barracks been turned into a whore-house?’
‘Not to my knowledge, Sah.’
‘Your knowledge is supposed to embrace every phase of the life and duty of every other rank in this Garrison, is it not?’
‘Yessah!’
‘Yet you don’t know what a black whore is doing here who says she came for a party and money from soldiers?’
‘I’ll very promptly have the facts and submit them to you, Sah!’ The
Sergeant-Major was struggling with his words alcoholically.
‘I’ll bloody well see you do!’
‘Yessah!’
‘Sar’-Major.’
‘Sah!’
‘We have two men down with the clap, have we not?’
‘That ish c’rect, Sah!’
‘You declared that you couldn’t for the life of you see how they had got it, when the three known whores in town were cleared by the MO and you were convinced . . . convinced, Sar’-Major . . . that no man was breaking the rule against consorting with coloured women.’ The Colonel’s tone was that of a man who had drunk much and been asleep and wakened with a sore head.
‘Yessah!’
‘Are you convinced now?’
‘Nosah.’
‘You’re not convinced of what, Sar’-Major?’
‘Er . . . er, of whatever it wash I wasn’t convinshed of before, Sah.’
‘You’re drunk, Sar’-Major?’
‘It’s Anzac Day, Sah.’
‘An excuse in your case, but not in the case of the great majority of my men, who not only have seen no action, but aren’t even soldiers, but bloody tradesmen dressed up in the King’s uniform. You will investigate this matter at once, and parade every man suspected of being concerned before the Orderly Officer, and arrange for a short-arm inspection of all OR’s tomorrow morning . . . get going!’
‘Yessah!’
‘Orderly Officer!’
‘Sah!’
‘Have his woman confined to the guard-house and held till the the civil police call for her . . . also any others that are picked up.’
‘Police, Sir?’
‘I said it. I’ll inform them on my way to Captain Shane’s and lay the charges . . . Where’s my staff-car . . . Dammit, where’s my car?’
Captain Vic Shane’s mansion was rather like what was still called the Delacy Town House, Chinese built, and although on the other side of the promontory on which the town stood, similarly situated, which is to say on a hillside above a tidal inlet, and most likely with the same smart intention, namely acquisition of a huge tract of land that, because occasionally, at most once a year and then depending on unusual circumstances, it was inundated by the so-called King Tide, was subject to no deed of entitlement since said to be below High-water. That was Jumbo Delacy’s trouble now in that matter of dispossession by the Shell Oil Co. Captain Shane had been a good deal cleverer than Jumbo. He’d reclaimed the land somewhat, applied to the Lands Department for entitlement, and had got it for a song. Old Vic was ever ready to tell new acquaintances how clever he was, or rather how lucky, since that’s how he described the successfulness of his shrewdness, Shane’s Luck, probably much less to appear modest than anointed. He lost no time in telling Alfie Candlemas about Shane’s Luck, as, taking possession of her upon arrival at his party, he showed her over the place.
Down below, dim in the last light of the Moon, but pricked at many points by their own bright illumination, were his boat-sheds and pearl-shell packing-sheds, quarters of his men, all still standing on stilts since it was not so long since he’d effected that reclamation. He’d employed as many as a thousand men at a time he said, sailed upwards of fifty ships. He didn’t go into details about those men of his, to tell her that they were, according to the covenants of this land, semi-slaves, imported under what was called the Indenture System from Asiatic countries: Japan, the Dutch East Indies, Malaya. This Indenture System was a way by which the prohibition of Asiatic immigration under the White Australia Policy could be overcome so as not to interfere with the profits and powers of such people as Captain Shane, who had enjoyed them since before the Policy was initiated. It was claimed that exploitation of the great pearl-shell banks off the North Australian coast, all well beyond legal territorial limits, would be lost to the Nation unless Japanese divers, incomparable in their aptitude for the work and willing to do it for little better than coolie wages, with other cheap labour to assist, were employed. The Pearling Masters, so called, were allowed to recruit such persons and sign them on at their own terms for limited periods, usually three years at a time. There was no such Bolshevistic humbug as award rates and workers’ compensation.
If a man died in the course of his job, as many hundreds of Lucky Shane’s had over the years (one had only to pay a visit to the Asiatic Section of the Cemetery to see), it was just that he wasn’t as lucky as his Master. All the Master had to do was send his recruiting man into the poverty-stricken seafaring communities of what in their unchangeable Europo-centricity they called The East, and take the ablest young men into bondage for a down payment of half their wages for the period of indenture, the other half forfeit if a man hadn’t the luck to make the full time. Not that it was quite like that nowadays. The Japanese had got smarter. They still might work only under Indenture, but had it so arranged that secretly the smartest of them were virtually masters in their own right, simply hiring the ships and gear they used from the Big Man and giving him a royalty on their catch. Some had even gone beyond that, had bought their own vessels and now operated out of near-Asiatic ports on exactly the same banks, coming into Port Palmeston only to look up old friends and booze and gamble. Old Vic didn’t mind that. As he so often said, and told Alfie now, he had made his pile. He also told her now that she was a witch, and tried to kiss her. She got away from him through the fortuitous intrusion of his latest mistress, a red-haired Russian from Shanghai, who in terrible English reminded him of his duty to his other guests, and something in Cantonese or some such language that made him scowl at her. Alfie fled back to Frank — and Dr Cobbity.
It was round about midnight, when the party was getting quite silly, that Dr Cobbity said to Alfie, ‘What about that spin in the car?’
As they sped away in his smart sports car with the hood down he said, ‘Pity it’s not moonlight?’
‘Why?’
‘Moonlight becomes you, Madam.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I was watching for you when you arrived and the Moon was up.’
‘Moonlight becomes any woman.’
‘You’re a creature of the moonlight.’
‘Like a cat?’
He laughed, threw an arm along the back of the seat behind her shoulders. They were speeding out along the long gravel road leading to the Compound, but swung away by that other leading down to the flat and the coconut grove behind which Jumbo’s place still stood, to be seen only as a pinpoint of light. She remarked, ‘Poor Jumbo!’
He grunted, ‘Poor Jumbo, be blowed! He’s just a semi-savage, drinking himself into insanity, starving his wife and family.’
‘It’s the way he’s been treated that’s made him like that.’
‘How do you know?’
‘He told me his history.’
Cobb laughed. ‘Jumbo Delacy’s about the biggest liar in the community. He even claims to have killed his father. Did he tell you that?’ He withdrew his arm, which she was obviously keeping clear of.
‘Something . . . but it was a bit complicated . . . about training a horse to do it.’
‘That’s the yarn. He really believes it by now.’
‘Maybe he did. He hates white people.’
‘He doesn’t. He only wants to be thought he’s white himself.’
She was silent for a while, as they sped up from the flat to another part of the heights that gave them a view of the dark starry sea, along a cliff above which they were now travelling, northward. She said, ‘You know, you’re a hard man in many ways.’
‘You have to be, in a position like mine.’
‘I don’t see it. It seems to me that the main thing that’s wrong with these people is that no one’s ever been kind to them.’
He put his arm back again as they sped by the ghostly bulk of the whitewashed Jail. He said, ‘Wait’ll you’ve had a bit more to do with ’em!
‘You talk as bitterly about them as other people . . . the people who hate you for what you’ve done for them . . . a
nd are doing.’
‘You get a bit bitter with the disappointments they give you.’
‘Just because you can’t change them in a day.’
‘I’ve been at it for ten years and more . . . and the Anthropologists and the Missionaries, as well as the rest of ’em, would have me booted out tomorrow if they had a chance.’
‘Isn’t that rather your own fault?’
‘How come?’
‘Well . . . that hardness I mentioned . . . even a bit of arrogance, at times.’
‘Sounds like you don’t care much for me.’
‘But I do.’
‘Yes?’ He slipped his arm about her shoulder, drew her to him . . . but had to let go quickly, because they were running through a bit of maritime jungle, and there were wallabies on the road. They came out on an expanse of cliff-top that gave them a seemingly limitless view of the dark sea. ‘Want to get out?’ he asked.
Poor Fellow My Country Page 53
