His Worship looked up and demanded of the Sergeant, ‘It says here that she was at the Barracks for an immoral purpose. If that’s so, why wasn’t she charged under Section 28, instead of under this Defence Act thing?’
‘There was no actual evidence of immorality, Your Worship.’
‘You can’t have it both ways. You charge her under the Defence Act . . . and Colonel Chivvy asks me to make an example of her in order to stamp out what he calls an immoral traffic. How expect me to make an example of her for an offence she’s not charged with?’
The Sergeant bowed his head slightly, sighed, said, ‘Mentioned lack of evidence, Your Worship.’
Old Bundy turned his meaty eyes on Alfie: ‘You, Madam . . . are you aware of any immoral traffic between the Compound and the Garrison?’
Alfie, risen, hesitated, perhaps remembering a hint she’d heard yesterday of just such a thing, and wondering about the propriety of lying in a Court of Law as Counsel for Defence. She swallowed: ‘No, Your Worship.’
‘Are you aware of what Colonel Chivvy’s written here?’
‘No, Your Worship.’
‘Then you ought to be. Read it!’
She took the letter from him, read slowly, to his evident impatience, then looked up, at a loss.
Bundy demanded of her: ‘Why were you sent here, having no experience of this sort of thing?’
‘Mr Turkney was busy . . .’
‘In other words he fobbed something off on you that he might be held responsible for . . .’
‘No, Sir . . . he was . . . was otherwise very seriously engaged . . . one of the inmates . . .’
The meaty eyes swung away from her to Nell, whom he addressed sharply; ‘Tell me how you got into the Garrison.’ When she drooped her head and twined her ringers, he raised his voice, ‘Answer up . . . do you hear me?’ He repeated the question.
Nell gasped, ‘T’rough fence.’
‘Tell me about it . . . I want to know all about it . . . come on, now!’
He dragged the sorry story out of Nell — while she writhed in terror, with dark eyes leaping again and again to the wilderness . . . while the Court Reporter’s typewriter clacked and clattered, spelling it into the Criminal Records, and Fay McFee and her male opposite-number turned it into twiggles and dots — while Sergeant Nullity leaned back with arms folded, stifling yawns — while tears swam in Alfie’s eyes and she bit her lip to hold them.
When he had done, His Worship turned to Counsel, grunting, ‘Clearly she was there for an immoral purpose. Whether carried out or not is of no concern in law. Any convictions?’
The Sergeant answered, ‘None, Your Worship.’
The meaty eyes fell on Alfie again; ‘Have you anything to say for Defendant?’
Alfie positively leapt up, sniffed, said eagerly, ‘I’m sure she’s a good girl. She has a little boy I teach. She’s the Compound cook . . .’
He cut in dryly; ‘But not above sneaking out at night to prey on decent young men whose association with her might easily lead to their ruin.’ He swung back to Nell: ‘Prisoner . . . I’ve been asked to make an example of you . . . and I’m inclined to do so. We can’t have the kind of thing you’ve been doing . . . not now this town’s become a garrison town. I find you guilty of soliciting for an immoral purpose . . .’
Alfie leapt up again, rosy now, eyes all shiny bright from those tears and from something else: ‘But . . . Your Worship . . .’
He swung on her. ‘Yes?’
She was panting: ‘The charge is Unwarranted Trespass, or something . . . not Immorality . . .’
The ruddy face went purple. It took a moment for him to get it out: ‘But for your unwarranted interruption, Madam, I would have added to the verdict: “While trespassing on a military reserve.” Are you satisfied?’ The last was said with heavy sarcasm.
Still Alfie stood. She swallowed, panted, ‘No . . . I’m not!’
The purpling paled with the rage behind it now and the sharp voice came throatily: ‘Indeed! And in what way, may I ask, are you not satisfied with the verdict of the Court?’
‘Because . . . because . . . you said yourself, at first . . . that they couldn’t have it both ways.’
The purple came back with a rush. The meaty eyes blazed. But she stuck to it. ‘You said you . . . you couldn’t make an example of her for an offence she’s not charged with . . .’
He shouted, ‘Sit down.’
She flamed, and shouted back, ‘I won’t . . . I’m here to defend that poor girl . . .’
Half-risen in his throne, old Bundy yelled, ‘If you don’t sit down, I’ll have you committed for contempt!’
She gasped, ‘It’s a travesty of justice . . .’
‘How dare you, Madam . . . Usher . . . remove that woman from the Court . . . and send for someone from the Aborigines Department.’
‘Yessir!’
The tears had burst. The Usher took Alfie gently by the elbow. She tried to look round and say something, but instead broke into sobs.
‘In all my experience on the Bench!’ bellowed Bundy. ‘If there was a place for whitewomen in the jail I’d . . . I’d send her along with this one. In all my experience . . .’
Eddy McCusky came running in, took a wild look round, noted the faces, the weeping woman out at the verandah rail. ‘Yes, Your Worship?’
‘Mr McCusky . . . kindly assume the Protector’s office while I commit the Prisoner. I had to dismiss your colleague for unseemly behaviour. Please see to it that that hysterical young woman makes no more appearances in my Court.’
‘As Your Worship pleases.’
‘Nelly Ah Loy, I find you guilty as charged, and sentence you to imprisonment in Blue Bay Jail for three months.’
Even Sergeant Nullity whistled under his breath at the severity of the sentence: ‘Phew!’
Having heard it, Alfie staggered down the steps of the Court verandah, groped for her bike, made her wobbly way back to the Compound.
The children were in the playground. They came rushing to the fence as she came up, calling, ‘Prindy mumma go long o’ jeel, eh?’
She asked tonelessly; ‘How do you know?’
Someone said, ‘Spone she no go jeel, p’lice car bring her back.’
Alfie looked at Prindy, who appeared to be merely interested, like the others. She said, ‘Well . . . I suppose we’d better do a bit of school before lunch, eh?’
As she unpadlocked the gate to let them out, they babbled of Lucy Snowball, half-gobbled by sharks or by the Rainbow Snake — but without direct mention of her name, since to do so could mean to call her wandering Shade to worry them till it went its way to Jesus — ‘Dat mitjish belong to Albert long o’ leper ’teetion.’
It was pretty evident from Tubby Turkney’s behaviour when Alfie passed his office on the way to see about the midday meal that he had heard about the affair in court and was embarrassed thereby. She hailed him as usual; but instead of coming out as usual, he only waved and grinned. Further evidence that the news had spread widely without much credit to herself was forthcoming when she went to see about the tea, and Dolly, now in charge of the kitchen, who earlier on had ramped about the heavy sentence Old Bundy Bastard had handed out to her mate, this time remarked frankly, ‘She get dat t’ree month for you givin’ dat Old Bundy Bastard cheek, eh?’ Useless to try to explain to Dolly and the others helping her. Their faces remained blank.
When Alfie reached home she found Frank waiting at the gate for her. He was smiling. When she asked had he heard, he answered, ‘The town’s talking of nothing else. I’d’ve liked to come out to you, but thought it best to make it look as if it didn’t matter much . . . to us.’
She kissed him. ‘Thank you, darling. That was wise. But I would have liked to see you . . . to cry on. I cried in the court, did you hear?’
‘That’s not what I heard . . . but what I knew.’
‘What’d you hear?’
‘That you took hysterics.’
She drooped
, with his arm about her. ‘What a fool I am for crying always!’
He kissed her cheek. ‘Proves you’re a girl, and not the boy you sometimes say you’re afraid you are mostly. Let’s have a drink and tell me all about it.’
When she’d told him, she asked what Dr Cobbity had said about it. He shrugged, saying, ‘He laughed . . . called you that little fire-eater of yours.’
‘But he didn’t like it?’
He shrugged again.
She said, ‘I guessed he wouldn’t . . . or he’d’ve come out. Nobody came. Nobody official said a word about it. Turkney practically ignored me.’
‘The official mind, darling. You bucked authority. It isn’t done in Public Service.’
‘I bucked an absolute travesty of justice!’
‘To them you bucked absolute power. Those who have it in their own little department, don’t like to see it kicked around. Those who haven’t got it, hope to get it later.’
‘But what a state of things! How are we going to get progress, proper human dignity, when an old dog like that magistrate, who isn’t qualified to deal with . . . with cats, even . . . can do what he did, just because he got a letter from some pompous popinjay of a military colonel?’
He sighed: ‘By being patient . . . and doing our own jobs properly, I suppose.’
‘But I was doing my job . . . I was sent into the court to defend that poor thing!’
‘You had something fobbed off on you. Turkney has it fobbed off on him too. Either Cobbity or McCusky should be doing it . . . or, the correct thing would be to employ a lawyer. You’re a teacher, my little love . . .’
‘I haven’t any proper facilities to do even that. I’ve had to start by feeding the children.’
‘Well, there you are. You’ve done a wonderful thing . . .’
‘For which people say, “If you want to live on the fat of the land and lie on the flat of your back all day, go to the Compound!”’
‘No matter what they say . . . you’ve achieved that. The children are being properly fed at last. They’ve got a proper teacher at last. Soon you’ll have proper housing for them, a proper school . . .’
‘I wonder!’
‘“It’s all there in the Estimates.”’ He had mimicked the tone of McCusky. She laughed and took his hand and pressed it to her breast. He caressed it, came close and kissed her, then with cheek against hers, and still playing with her breast, said, ‘Just play it safe for a while. Don’t give ’em an excuse to leave you out of things later.’
She withdrew to look at him: ‘Would they want an excuse . . . when they’ve said I’ve done a good job already?’
‘If they thought you were dangerous to ’em.’
‘You’re talking about Cobbity?’
‘In a way . . . but Cobbity’s got a boss, too, don’t forget.’
‘You said he made a joke of it.’
‘I said he laughed over it, and called you a little fire-eater. I think he was dropping me a hint to keep you under control . . .’
‘Why, the arrogant . . .’
‘He’s the boss, my love. He likes you . . . even a bit too much, maybe . . . but he likes himself best. I laughed over it too . . . as if I took it as a bit of fun . . . as if you’d fallen foul of that old bugger just by accident . . . because you didn’t know your way about, like. That’s why I didn’t come out, as I said . . . as if it wasn’t important . . . although, Jesus, my little one, I could have gone and kicked that old cow in the balls . . . if he’s got any . . . because I knew how you’d be feeling if you cried. Will you pretend to treat it as a joke, too . . . for the time being?’
She dropped her head to his shoulder, nodding it, but sighing: ‘A joke . . . while that poor girl’s in jail . . . and all through my stupid handling of it, they say . . . even the halfcastes . . . oh, Frank, oh, oh, oh!’ She sobbed while he held her close.
At about that time, Nelyerri was being conducted to the sleeping quarters she would be occupying for the next ninety days, according to the law, her escort a burly white guard in khaki uniform and a little old black woman in the striped cotton uniform of female prisoners, not much different from that used at the Compound, except in the matter of braiding and a couple of Broad Arrows. The black woman was one known as Jenny Lifer, well known as much outside of Blue Bay Jail as in it, because while she wore the prison garb and ate the poor food the place provided and slept within its tar- and phenyle-reeking confines and behind its many locks, she did so from choice rather than necessity. She might be said to be there in an honourary capacity. She had entered the place to serve a ten-year sentence for the murder of her husband over a tribal matter, so long ago that only the prison records could say when. Her sentence served, she had stayed on inside out of fear of what awaited her outside in the matter of tribal law. As she had explained to Nell, while she had cropped her hair and seen her bathed and rigged out for her stay, ‘I been lose him my Dreamin’ lo-long time now. Wha’ for I wan’ ’o go back long o’ bush?’ Occasionally she went to town with the Jailer, Major O’Dowdy, in the prison utility. Often she went fishing and crabbing on the beach. But she was always there to receive new female inmates and gentle them into the strangeness of it all.
They came along several corridors of stone, tarred halfway up, whitewashed for the rest. There were four sections to the jail, one for whitemen, another for blackmen, a third for Asiatic males, the fourth, a small corner, for, as they put it, Gins. White or Asiatic women who offended sufficiently to be regarded as a menace to the community were deported.
After passing several grilled doors leading elsewhere, they came to a small group of barred-doored cells. The guard opened one of them, saw them in, shut and locked it after them, departed. It was a small place, tarred and whitewashed and reeking of phenyle. At the rear were two high-placed small barred windows through which the ruddy evening sky could be seen. Most light came through the grill of the door from a lamp in the roof of the corridor. The furniture consisted of two tiered bunks on either side, a commode, a can of water.
On a top bunk, propped on an elbow, watching the newcomers with narrow Mongoloid eyes in Aboriginal sockets, was a thin aged woman, dark as old leather. Jenny Lifer said, ‘Dat-one Lucy Leong . . . dis one Nelly Ah Loy . . . two Chinee . . . eeeeee!’
‘No-more Chinee!’ shrilled the other one. Then she asked Jenny, ‘Bring him tucker?’
‘Venus bring him by’n’by. I come hearly, bring him dis one.’
The one on top whispered inwardly, ‘Wha’ nam’ dat-one belong o’ Albert leper-’teeshun?’ So the grapevine had got the news through to the Jail. Jenny explained, while instructing Nell to strip to blue cotton drawers and take the other top bunk.
While the grim story was being told, there was sound of steps in the passage, and voices, the guard’s guffawing, a female’s squealing: ‘Gertch . . . you bloody bastard . . . tek you ’and ’way!’
The door opened again, to admit a biggish handsome young woman, quarter-caste by her blotchy pallid duskiness, who at once took out of the bosom of her dress a newspaper package and handed it up to old Lucy. It was meat and bread and apple-pie. The old woman began to munch greedily.
Jenny introduced the young woman as Venus. ‘Seen you come in,’ said Venus. ‘Bloody bastard give you three months, eh? Too much. Dat whitewoman mek trouble for you, eh? But dat not long time. I get seven year.’
Nell looked as if she didn’t understand the significance of the time. Perhaps Jenny thought she should help educate her. She said, with a cackle of ancient laughter, ‘Venus been kill him one whiteman . . . shoot him daid.’
Nell’s eye opened wide. Venus said, ‘Bloody old bastard.’ Later on, after she’d questioned Nell about herself, showing in the process that she knew quite a lot already, Venus told the story of her crime. She came from somewhere down the Centre. Her mother, evidently a drunken knockabout, had sold her to an elderly whiteman with a small cattle run away on the Eastern Downs. She was then about thirteen. She had lived
with the squatter as his wife for six years, had one baby that had died. There were no other whites on the place but the Boss. ‘But I like whitewoman den,’ she said. ‘Goot clo’hes . . . any’ting I want . . . only, go to town, we got ’o camp on creek. Da’s all right. Den dis young feller come along. Da’s Harry . . . whiteman. He borin’ contractor. He’s big feller . . . blue eye, yeller hair . . . pretty man. We start makin’ love, tchinekin. Da’s all right. But Harry got ’o go away when finish contract. He want me come too. We clear out together. But dat old feller o’ mine . . . he foller him up. Dey have big row. He shoot Harry. I want dat Harry too much now. So I shoot him Boss. I get seven year.’ She ended with a little laugh, probably through seeing tears in Nell’s eyes, because she added: ‘More better you laugh dis place, tchister . . . no goot cry. Dat right, ain’t it, Jenny?
Jenny cackled, ‘Plen’y fun long o’ kitchen. You work dere. You t’ree-feller Millie. Dat-one old Dotty, all-day growl-growl-growl. Don’ you tek notice. Him jitty, dat one. Spone he get too rough, her old man shut him up quick . . . dat Major O’Dowdy, Boss. Him all right . . . ain’t it, Venus . . . eeeeee!’
All three had a good giggle over something private. They told Nell funny stories about Old Dotty, as they called their mistress, and her airs, till, apparently exhausted, she fell asleep.
The guard had them out at dawn. Nell, Venus, and Millie, a slight little smiling thing, sharp-faced and almost toothless, were escorted from the big front gate by Jenny, through the trim line of gardens separating the officers’ quarters from the jail wall, to the biggest of the high-built houses. Jenny stopped below to play with a cat, while the others went up the back stairs and into the kitchen. There was the fire to light and tea and toast to be made for themselves. Conversation was carried on in whispers. It was revealed that Millie had committed double murder, a whiteman and a black woman, and got five years for it: ‘Wha’ you mek o’ dat?’ asked Venus. ‘I kill one, I get seven year . . . Millie kill two, she get five.’ They giggled over it as if it were a longstanding joke.
Poor Fellow My Country Page 55
