‘How do you feel about Prindy’s being caught by them?’
‘He is not caught.’
‘But he seems to like it.’
‘It is ceremony to him. He like zat. It mek music for him. He is Snake Man. He is little bit Jew. He is Christian. Better like zat, because I can keep him wit’ me. I haf ask Monsignor. He say he vill tell me tomorrow. Ze old man vont ze boy for himself, I zink. He loff him. But I zink he vill let him stay. He say if I do not interfere vit’ him beingk Christian. I say, “How can I, a Jewess, mek a Jew . . . except in kitchen?” He is goot old man. Zey are all goot. Truly are zey zinkingk of zese poor people as nobody else I know. It is not to mek zem Catholic, but to save zem from vot zey call Barbarous Practice. Somezing ze blacks do are ver’ cruel . . .’
‘That’s Aboriginal Ethos. I thought we were pledged to preserve it?’
‘I do not know now. Mooch I haf to learn. Prindy vill help teach me. He haf become very vise little boy.’
‘Did he tell you what happened after you left?’
‘Only Old Tchamala kill policemen. Vot is true story?’
‘I know no more than that. Perhaps that is the true story. So much is strangely wonderful in life.’ He sighed. She looked at him, cloosely this time, into his eyes, clung a moment, then withdrew, to remain stiff for the rest of the walk.
He returned her to her place of residence, a converted storeroom, the so-called Synagogue. Prindy was there, piping in the doorway, perhaps for the secret entertainment of the girls in the convent dormitory across the way. Rifkah kissed Jeremy’s cheek lightly in parting with him. He kissed her hand, then turned away abruptly. He was heading back to the presbytery, but nearing it, hearing voices raised in ecclesiastical argument, swung away, to go back to the beach. He walked the beach, following their dual track of earlier but without sullying it with his own steps as if wishing to preserve it, till the Moon was gone. Then he sat on the beach below the presbytery and watched the sinking of the stars. When at last he got back, there was but one sitter at the table on the verandah, and he with dark head lying amongst the glasses, palely lit by the dying pressure lamp — and snoring hard.
Early next morning Prindy assisted at Mass, with a little more to do, directed by Brother David. He moved with special dignity, perhaps not merely by reason of added experience but through having on him the eyes of two unbelievers. Jeremy and Rifkah were seated in that pew formerly occupied by the Japanese. Otherwise there were only the nuns present. Both priests officiated, Monsignor as Celebrant. When it was over and Rifkah going to officiate in the kitchen, she had Prindy with her, an arm about him, and her expression showing nothing but pleasure in what she had just seen. Jeremy watched from the porch, Monsignor Maryzic from the sacristy.
Soon after breakfast at the presbytery, Monsignor declared he wanted the Naturalisation Business got over and himself away home. Rifkah came with Prindy and Mother Mathias. To begin with, it looked at if it would not come off, because Rifkah refused to swear allegiance to the King of England, no doubt inspired by having heard Jeremy talk of his shame as a modern man, son of a so-called democracy, in having, according to the law, to bend the knee to the anachronism of monarchy. She looked to him now, as if for support, when the old man, perhaps suffering somewhat from last night’s ecclesiastics, became irritable, grumbling in much the same way that Pat Hannaford had, about all the trouble they had been to on her account. Jeremy was silent. Monsignor Maryzic growled, ‘You are not ask to svear by book or candle. All you haf to do is mek affirmation you vill vell and truly serve His Majesty ze King. Ist not matter of conscience, but discretion. You vont to stay in zis country. For zat you must be British Subject, because it is rule by British Crown. You can aftervard argue der politic of it . . . if any zere is. Now please not to vaste time. Ve vont to catch tide. You vill mek der affirmation, yes?’ With a sigh Rifkah gave in.
They had a nip of whisky to seal it. Monsignor sighed over his as if he needed it as badly as his bleary-eyed confrere. Then he told Prindy to get his things and come to board the boat. Prindy stared at him. ‘Vot’s matter?’ asked the old man.
Prindy said simply, ‘I stop here.’
The squarish old face darkened, quivered. The voice rumbled, ‘I ask you come back mitt me.’
The grey eyes sought Rifkah’s. The slaty old eyes did the same. Her brow rumpled.
After a moment the old priest swallowed, asked huskily, ‘You vont him stay?’
She breathed, ‘Pliss . . . yes.’
He blinked rapidly. Then with sudden harshness he declared, ‘Der boy vill liff as Christian . . . ist understood?’
She reddened, but nodded. Then with softness as swift as the harshness had come, he said, ‘Danke, Mädchen . . . I leave him mitt you.’
He was turning away. But she grabbed him, flung her arms about him, kissed his cheek. He put an arm about her, squeezed her, rumbling, ‘Eat more of your goot food, Mädchen,’ Then he shoved her away. He looked at Prindy. ‘You stay. But first you come mitt me to der church and pray.’ He reached for the boy’s hand. Prindy went readily.
Maryzic kept the boy’s hand, telling him as they went that he expected him to be ready for Confirmation when the Bishop came, which would be about Race Time: ‘Father Glascock vill instruct you. I vood like meinself to do zat. Please Gott I haf der privilege of instructingk you furzer.’
In the church Monsignor saw to it that Prindy crossed himself properly at the holy water stoop, that he genuflected to perfection. Then he sat him in the front pew, while he went himself to the altar-rail, knelt, dropped grey head to hands supported by elbows. He prayed for some ten minutes, while the grey eyes behind him gravely studied the equipment of this cult of his new initiation — the gilded brass of the altar, the mock eye of God, the Poor Bugger on the Cross, the petty idols that so demeaned the Great One with their lousy humanness. All this could bring so big and powerful a man as Monsignor Maryzic to his knees!
The old man turned and beckoned. Prindy slid across the little space to join him, was pulled to knees, manipulated into the attitude of prayer, golden fingers to golden chin, eyes closed to exclude reality. The old man had him follow him in the Pater Noster in English: Our Father, who art in heaven . . . our daily bread . . . our transgressions . . . temptation . . . deliver us from evil . . . Amen. Always Amen to anything you say. What for? Evidently it was too rudimentary for the more sophisticated to bother to explain. David’s explanation had been: I don’ know dat one properly. Might-be like whiteman say, time he finish sumpin, Daddle-doo.
Monsignor said, ‘I vont you, my dear boy, promise me, effery morning ven you vake you say zat prayer. You promise? Prindy did so. ‘Now Sign of der Cross. Zat is moost important . . . to keep der shadow of der sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ (thump) alvays on you. You understand me?’ Nod. They rose, genuflected beautifully, went out.
Everybody was at the beach to see the visitors off. The nuns knelt the children for a special Blessing by Monsignor. Rifkah brought Prindy for an extra-special one, and a kiss on the forehead. The old man also kissed her forehead. She kissed his hand. Then she kissed Jeremy, not on the cheek that he presented, but on the mouth, clinging to him for a moment in such a way as to cause eyes to pop, then letting go, dropped face to hands. All over in a moment. She looked up with a wobbly smile, with jewels of eyes just a little too shiny. Jeremy, lobster-faced, nodded even curtly to the smile, then turned suddenly away to the waiting boat.
The grey hairs of the two passengers sitting amidships blew in the rising sou’easter as they waved their hats, the squatter’s wide-awake, the cleric’s black, to the waving crowd ashore. Not a word between them as the blackboys rowed them and David steered them to the schooner. No word even aboard ship, while they stood in the stern and waved till those they’d left had merged with their background. Still they stood staring back, till with the curving of the channel the dream-thing behind vanished like a dream. Then they looked at each other, grey eyes and slate, as if in challenge,
as if in former association they had ignored the reality of each other, disguising it with formality, but with reality now thrust upon them and each having to justify his part in it or die of heart and soul. Jeremy broke the long silence: ‘I’ve some brandy.’
The old priest sighed. ‘Zank you, Jeremy . . . I vill be glad.’
It followed that, while they sat and sipped and watched the passing scene of seascape, landscape, bird and fish and acquatic beast, they, being men with minds rather more than with bellies and cocks, should escape into polemics and that these largely should concern religion.
Their religious argument was no mean scrap between scoffer and bigot. In fact the priest revealed himself as more the unbeliever, if still faithful to what formerly he had unquestioningly believed. As he put it: the mass of humanity was stupid, dishonest, cowardly, and needs must have something to support it that belied these negative forces in it. Otherwise the negation would destroy the species, which even the bitterest cynic must admit was the supreme achievement of Creation. He himself having known the solace of religion, felt it his duty to give it to these weaker ones. On the other hand, Jeremy, the avowed atheist, talked with reverence of the Spirit of the Land and the Aborigines’ kindred with it, spoke eagerly of the closeness of Jews to God without what he called the complications of Christus and Paraclete that only drove the needy man further from the god whose hand he sought to cling to. Maryzic pinned Jeremy’s argument down here as spurious, declaring it simply refusal to accept the ultimate exaltation of Man, expressed in the Christ as in no other revelation.
An intelligent man, argued the old priest, need not accept Jesus literally as the Messiah; but not even to accept the fiction that the Messiah had been among Man was tantamount to insisting that the Rainbow was only a revelation of the consistency of the Sun’s rays, more easily produced with a lens in the laboratory. Even to believe, he said, in what was negative and mean in Man as a spiritual force outside himself, personified as Satan, gave Man the impetus to resist it. As for Judaism’s closeness to God, the Jews made God actually Boss of the Jews, with no interest in anyone else. The Christ Idea forced the God of Abraham to take cognisance of his other children. Again, rejection of Christus by Jews, while yet they clung to the hope of the Messianic Coming, denied them the miraculous in life, left them isolated and unsatisfied. A Christian could say, even if with tongue in cheek, that the Messiah was here. A Jew had to keep on hoping: ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow,’ which never comes. Take a parallel with the Aborigines’ Dream Time. The Aborigines knew that the Totem Heroes had been here. There must be happiness for them so long as they followed in their footsteps. That brought Jeremy in to damn all those who would destroy the Dream Time fiction and leave the blackman a husk of non-believing. Maryzic countered: ‘Der Dream Time fiction must go of necessity . . . Ve, der Christian Missionary, try to direct der lost footstep in der vay of Jesus Christ.’
So it went on, by the hour, while they sipped their brandy for the only real solace they got for all their vociferating, staring astern, as ever since they themselves had become husks of men — one in loss of the son he had always yearned for, the other in loss of his never-found bride. They saved the last of their daily ration of brandy for a stiff nightcap to sleep and dream on.
Then, at last, there was something to look ahead to, although rather like the blank prospect of their remaining years. To begin with it was a wide space of silvery nothingness, into which vague things grew like mushrooms of promise, only to become commonplace, revealed as the edifices of that commonest of places hereabout — Port Palmeston. They entered the harbour in mid-morning glare.
As they were chugging in, running smoothly with the in-running tide, passing the white jail on its red cliff, as if casually Monsignor Maryzic remarked on Prindy’s visit there last Saturday. Jeremy was taken aback. The old man said, ‘I know you haf nuzzing to do mitt it.’ Asked how he had learnt of it, Maryzic smiled. ‘Missus O’Dowdy is confessary of mine . . . and not only to confess her sin. After I hear, I telephone der Judge.’ He sighed: ‘Ven der boy not tell me himself, I know he ist not for me.’
The engine seemed to take that up and sing it like repetition of the thoughts of two old men for whom each a dream had faded: Not for me, not for me, not for me!
They rounded the beacon, came into view of the town proper. At the big jetty lay the West Coast steamer, Koolpinyah, with Blue Peter flying, a feather of steam at her blow-off pipe, evidently about to sail. They were staring at her as they rounded the point to go to moorings, when Jeremy said suddenly, ‘I think I’ll take a trip down to Hartog. Mind taking me to the jetty?’ Monsignor Maryzic looked at him quickly, perhaps cognisant of the Delacy Bender, the flight from disillusion.
All was bustle aboard the steamer. On the jetty beside her the little locomotive that did the haulage there, the Sandfly, so called, was bringing up the passengers’ luggage. Pat Hannaford was the driver. He stared at the schooner as she came up to the small-boat landing, got down from the engine to see her berth and put Jeremy ashore. He cupped his hands and bawled down at them, ‘Where is she?’ Jeremy, handling suitcase and swag, only shrugged. Pat bawled at the Monsignor, ‘What you done with our girl, you bloody black crow?’ Maryzic turned his back on him. The schooner was slipping away again.
Pat met Jeremy at the top of the steps from the landing, demanding, ‘Why’n’t bring her back?’
‘She didn’t want to come.’
‘Balls! What’s she want to stay with that mob for?’
‘Said she likes it.’
‘Don’ gi’ me that! You’ve worked it between you to keep her away from us.’
Jeremy looked surprised, then sour, grunting, ‘Don’t be silly!’
The steamer’s whistle roared. Jeremy set off towards it. Pat followed him, asking, ‘Where you off?’
‘Just taking a bit of a trip.’
‘What for?’
‘What the hell’s it got to do with you?’
‘A lot. She was supposed to be goin’ down on this ship.’
‘So what?’
‘You’ll have to do a lot of explainin’ to the crew . . . and the boys in Hartog . . .’
The whistle blew again. Jeremy climbed the gangway, made for the purser’s office to book his berth.
VI
Within half an hour Jeremy was back at sea, but heading in a different direction now and with only one glance towards what he’d lost. He then took up with a couple of meat buyers, urbane men, one English, the other American, and good drinkers, with whom he settled down in the smoking saloon. Thus he spent the rest of the day.
It was evening, dinner over, and Jeremy taking a stroll alone on the boat-deck, when out of shadow into the moonlight stepped a man in the rough clothes of a member of the crew. As Jeremy eyed him, the man asked, in a thin nasal tone, ‘You Delacy?’
Jeremy took a moment to answer, staring into the slit eyes, ‘Suppose I am?’
‘Where’s that girl?’
‘What’re you talking about?’
‘You know bloody well. Where’s she?’
‘As I presume you’re one of Pat Hannaford’s mob, you’d know all about it.’
‘I wan’ ’o hear it from you.’
‘Who are you, anyway?’
‘Bo’s’n.’
‘Okay, Mister Bo’s’n . . . I’ll say Goodnight.’ Jeremy turned away.
The man grabbed his arm. ‘’Ere!’
Jeremy flung off the hand, swung on the man menacingly. The man stepped back swiftly. After a moment the man asked, ‘What you doin’ on this ship?’
‘Isn’t the Bo’s’n informed of such things?’
‘Why you goin’ ’o Port Hartog?’
‘You ask so many questions that you seem already to know the answers to.’
‘If you’re goin’ there with some trick up your sleeve, don’t try it. They’re a militant mob in the meatworks. They’ll tear you apart.’
‘Seeing you’ve got all the answers . . . what tri
ck should I have up my sleeve?’
‘Whatever it is you’ve cooked up with that British General and the Jesuits.’
‘You’re talking through your hat, man.’
‘Am I? Then why didn’t that girl get clear with the Jewish doctor when everything was organised for her?’
‘Simply because she didn’t want any more truck with your mob.’
‘You mean because you wouldn’t let her go. You was keepin’ her to ride her . . .’
‘Eh?’ Jeremy took a menacing step. ‘What’re you saying, rat?’
‘What everybody’s sayin’. You had the girl in your power. She was scared to leave, ’cause you’d put the Security Bulls onto her . . . like you did at last.’
Jeremy’s flame of anger was extinguished by obvious astonishment. ‘For chrissake . . . when I’ve been fighting like hell to keep her free!’
The man sneered. ‘How come your Fascist cobbers of the Free Australia Movement blow the gaff on her?’
‘Where’d you get all this bullshit?’
‘You turned her in ’cause she was tryin’ to get away from you. You let ’em put her in the lock-up, reckonin’ you’d help her through the courts. Balls! It was Pat Hannaford got her away. So then you call in Catholic Action . . .’
‘Did Hannaford tell you that?’
‘We know everything’s goin’ on.’
‘Then why waste time asking me?’
‘I ain’t askin’ you . . . I’m tellin’ you. Keep on the ship, mate. The mob at Hartog’s expectin’ the girl. When they hear you dobbed her ’cause she wouldn’t let you root her . . .’ Again Jeremy advanced and the man stepped back. Jeremy’s fist was raised this time. The man added from safe distance, ‘Don’t try any that stuff on me. I run this ship. My mates run Port Hartog, too.’
Jeremy exhaled heavily: ‘I don’t doubt it, from what I’ve heard. But listen, bilge-rat . . . if I ever get you alone you’ll never be able to crawl up past a rat-guard on any ship again.’
The man almost squeaked, ‘You been warned.’ Then like a rat he vanished.
Poor Fellow My Country Page 174
