She can see right across the Camp. She sees Mrs Rasmussen’s shadow in the window of the log house. Mrs Rasmussen is lighting a lamp; Rose sees her turn to pull the curtains and her black lumpy stomach is all edged with orange. Rose sees, in the distance, past the charred ruins of the men’s quarters and the tents of the new people, a single black chimney standing on its own.
She remembers about tea and gets down from the window, but leaves the chest where it is.
In the night Billy Genesis comes into her room and does things to her. He says she is a lovely girl and a pretty girl but he hurts her.
Rose shuts her eyes and thinks about her treasure.
Next morning she gets up quickly before Billy Genesis or her mother are awake. She thinks about school and she thinks about her ugly face. She wants to go and get her treasure but she is afraid. The chimney is waiting, like a birthday present, but also like a dark man. The dark man picture is stronger so she decides to get her treasure another day.
She walks into Hanrattys’ yard and looks up at the window of the room where she used to be. No one is at the window. She knocks on the door. Mrs Hanratty has floury hands and a pink face.
‘Hello, my chicken,’ she says. ‘Have you forgotten about the new school-house?’
‘No,’ says Rose. ‘Can Michael walk with me?’
‘He can indeed,’ says Mrs Hanratty, ‘and show you the way. Now, where is that boy?’
She gives Rose a piece of warm bread to eat while she shouts upstairs for Michael to get a move on. Michael comes and fidgets around while his mother buttons him into his coat and puts on his gloves. Michael is looking at her.
‘Stop staring,’ says Rose. ‘It’s rude.’
‘It’s not,’ says Michael.
‘Yes it is.’
‘Boys are allowed to stare at girls,’ says Michael.
‘Who says?’
‘I just know.’
Michael stares at her.
‘The scar’s still there,’ he says.
‘I know,’ she says.
Michael comes up close. Rose stands still while he reaches out one finger and touches her face.
‘Does it hurt?’ he says.
‘No.’
‘Does it hurt there?’
‘No.’
He taps harder. ‘Does it hurt now?’
‘Don’t,’ she says.
Mrs Hanratty takes Michael’s shoulder and shakes him. ‘Michael Hanratty, you cruel little boy!’ she says. ‘Look what you’ve done now! Poor Rose.’
Mrs Hanratty smiles at Rose and wipes away her tears. ‘Boys!’ she says.
Michael is still staring at her. ‘I was just testing,’ he says. ‘I won’t let anyone else hurt you.’
Rose says nothing.
‘I’ll bash up anyone who hurts you,’ he says.
Rose looks out the window.
‘Or stares at you,’ says Michael.
‘All right,’ she says.
‘Go on, off to school the pair of you,’ says Mrs Hanratty, and she whispers to Rose, ‘Don’t take any notice of that boy. He’s a natural ghoul. Your scar hardly shows at all.’
‘What’s a ghoul?’ says Rose, but Mrs Hanratty has run upstairs because someone is screaming.
The new school-house has two rooms: one for the big children and one for them. There is a new teacher, Mr Stringer. He has to run from room to room looking after them all because Mrs Rasmussen is away until her new baby is born.
Mr Stringer is tall and thin, with no moustache or beard. His hair sticks out this way and that like an old broom. He keeps patting and smoothing it but it stays stormy. He moves his legs back and forth when he talks, as if he wants to go to the dunny. One of his boots squeaks.
‘Hello, Rose,’ he says, ‘I am Mr Stringer.’ He puts his hand on her shoulder and turns her to the class. She wants to run away.
‘We must welcome Rose back,’ says Mr Stringer. ‘Some of you are new and have not heard about Rose. Her house was burned down and she herself was burned trying to rescue her father. Rose is a hero.’
Rose smiles at the class but not all of them smile back.
‘Come and sit with me,’ says Brennan.
‘She’s sitting with me,’ says Michael.
‘Not only a hero,’ says Mr Stringer, ‘but a popular companion, I see. At the moment, however, we have more than enough desks in the junior room, so each pupil will occupy a double desk. Spread out, children! Work, not talk, is the rule.’
He wags his head like a jack-in-the-box, but a smiling one, and runs back next door in his squeaky boot. The children all giggle.
Brennan leans over. ‘He’s funny, but he’s nice,’ he says. ‘He teaches us good things.’
Then Brennan starts copying his sentence without saying anything about her face.
One day, after Rose has been back at school for a while, Brennan and Michael come down to the Camp after school to see her new room. They lie under her bed and pretend they are British soldiers at the Crimea and the Russians are waiting outside to kill them. Then Michael stands on the wooden chest and jumps right across her room onto the bed, and Brennan does too, and Rose nearly gets there, so the boys move the chest closer because she is a girl.
‘You’re lucky to have a room of your own,’ says Michael. ‘I have to share with Elizabeth.’ He screws up his face.
‘I have to share with Rosser and Andrew and David,’ says Brennan.
‘Why doesn’t your mother stop us making a noise?’ says Michael.
‘I don’t know where she is.’
‘Well, you’re twice lucky then. My mother’s always there.’
Then the boys start fighting because Michael says Rose got well from his mother’s nursing and Brennan says Rose got well from Granny Binney’s medicine and no one down at Denniston knows much, and Michael says the miners at Burnett’s Face are stuck up.
‘And your father drinks,’ says Brennan.
‘So does yours,’ says Michael.
‘I mean the demon drink,’ says Brennan.
‘Who cares about Chapel wowsers?’ says Michael.
‘Who cares about Catholic drunkards?’ says Brennan.
‘Anyhow, my father’s not a drunkard, he just sells drink.’
‘That’s worse.’
‘Is not.’
‘It’s tempting the weak.’
Then they both stop and look at her because her father was a real drunkard and weak, and he’s dead, and now her mother is living with another drunkard.
‘Your mother is living in sin,’ whispers Michael.
Rose says nothing.
‘Your mother will go to hell,’ he says, ‘and burn in eternal damnation.’ He screams and dances around the room as if flames are burning him.
‘But Rose will be all right,’ says Brennan.
Michael goes on dancing and Brennan laughs at him.
Rose screams very loudly and the boys stop still to look at her. Another scream comes out of her mouth before she can stop it. She tries to dance like Michael, whirling and screaming.
‘Billy Genesis!’ she screams. ‘Billy Genesis! Billy Genesis!’
The boys watch her. Then they join in, laughing and screaming: ‘Billy Genesis!’
Rose whacks the bed with both fists and the boys join in too. ‘Billy Genesis! Billy Genesis!’ Laughing and whacking.
‘Billy Genesis is uglier than a toad,’ says Michael and makes a horrible face. Rose screams with laughter.
‘Billy Genesis does hot farts,’ says Brennan. ‘Billy lights his furnace with his farts!’
The three of them roll around on the floor.
‘Billy Genesis still wets the bed!’ shrieks Rose, and the boys laugh and shout and do rude things with their willies.
Then they all lie still on the bed.
‘Let’s find something to eat,’ says Rose, and they all go over to Mrs Rasmussen’s.
Clouds Thicken
THAT YEAR, 1884, was short on celebrations, long as a h
ungry child’s reach on misery. Far as anyone can remember the only two good things in 1884 were the opening of the Track and the birth of Bella’s baby, and both those events carried their cloud.
After the fire the Company built a new men’s quarters twice as big, and began filling it with any labour that might be recruited in Westport. There was the occasional fit young adventurer among them, who fancied that a spartan life at Denniston would somehow stiffen the sinews for the Game of Life ahead, but on the whole these men were dregs: past their prime physically, unable for one deplorable reason or another to hold down good work elsewhere, and now desperate enough to come to the cold and windswept coalfields of the plateau.
Josiah Scobie, with a deputation from Burnett’s Face, was down knocking on the mine manager’s door more than once. In one week there were three accidents, one of them nearly fatal, and all, according to Josiah, the fault of sloppy work habits and untrained men.
Eddie said the Company had promised a new recruitment drive in England next year.
‘Next year will be several lives too late!’ stormed Josiah, squaring his shoulders and setting his feet apart in the boxer’s stance that became his trademark later, on the hustings. ‘Eddie, you must not send this riff-raff down the mine! It is not in anyone’s interests.’
Eddie Carmichael was a great man for reason and compromise; the only one who could take on Josiah and once in a while come out a point or two ahead.
‘Look, Josiah,’ he said on this occasion, ‘what say the Company puts you on to train the new men? We’ll pay you the deputy’s rate, and you take them for a week before they go down on their own. Eh?’
‘I couldn’t train these men if you gave me a year. Two years. They are not miners and never will be. The Company should be ashamed putting good workers at risk.’
The miners standing behind Josiah nodded and rubbed their hands and stamped their feet in Eddie’s cold office, like corralled horses waiting to be let out into a more familiar landscape.
‘They are not exactly queuing up to come to Denniston,’ said Eddie. ‘There are other mines now, less isolated, less harsh …’
‘Don’t give me that whitewash, Eddie.’ Josiah was getting going now. ‘The Company is sitting on the best seams in the country up here. Let them pay men a bonus to work the Denniston mines and they’ll get their men. And keep them.’
And so it would go on. Arguments and threats, reason and counter-reason, with no progress made. Eddie’s point was that the Company couldn’t afford to recruit miners from England; that competition from Australian coal was too fierce; the Company was running at a loss. Mr McConnochie would have to sell out, and then they might all be out of a job. Josiah and his men reckoned the Company could be more competitive if they employed qualified men at proper rates and got a decent day’s work from them. They had a point. Almost every day, somewhere on the plateau, part of the operation would shut down with damaged equipment or damaged men. And mostly the shutdown was attended by a knot of angry miners accusing a group of indignant Camp people, with more often than not a scuffle and a few punches thrown.
The cold and the mist did nothing to lighten moods. Anyone with two eyes could see confrontation was on the way.
Conrad VI
THOSE WHO TAKE notice of omens would scarcely be optimistic over the birth of Bella’s long-awaited baby. It was only March, yet the air hung dank and chilling as midwinter and the mist so thick you could not see house to house at the Camp. Breathing was like dragging something solid into your lungs: a spongy mass spiced with coal smoke and stale ash from the January fire. Not cheerful flavours.
Yet Bella Rasmussen was cheerful and everyone on the Camp knew it. Lamplight reflecting softly onto the fog from the windows of the log house sent a message to anyone passing close enough to see that warmth and life and hope were not strangers to the Camp. Every lonely passer-by trudging off to work or coming back exhausted from late shift would smile, thinking of Mrs C. Rasmussen humming and polishing away inside that glowing house.
The expected baby was a symbol of respectability for everyone at the Camp. As if a baby could bring that motley collection, scorned and reviled for their incompetence, acceptance in the wider Denniston community. Not a hope to lay on anyone, let alone a tiny child.
And there he was, newborn and perfect, coming with no great difficulty before Con the Brake, coughing and cursing up at the Brake Head, could find someone to spell him. Finally John Gantry Senior came to the rescue and Con charged down through the blanketing fog to welcome his son.
Bella, mountainous as a queen bee and as regal, is lying on the day-bed in the central room of the log house. A fire is roaring up the chimney and Totty Hanratty, heavily pregnant herself, is in attendance. She has removed her bloodied apron, bundled it into a basket, and is now tucking back odd strands of coppery hair, smoothing down the creases in her blue smock. This is the first time Totty has acted as midwife. She cannot disguise her delight. Indeed, the triumph radiating from both women is like a blare of trumpets.
Con’s woven Swedish rug, an heirloom, glows on the polished wood of the floor. Although it is early afternoon, every lamp in the house is lit against the gloom outside and in celebration. The news is out and several well-wishers are waiting outside, fuzzy shadows in the mist, but Bella will let no one in until Con has come.
His boots crash on the porch, one two. The door is almost unhinged as Con roars into the room, bringing fog and a trail of black footprints with him. In four strides he is over to his wife, then midway to reaching for her his hand stops. He stops altogether. Looks from his out-reached hand to his boots, back to Bella again, waiting for the tirade. Con the Brake, straight off duty, is black with soot: damp, clinging soot that streaks his hair, his face, every part of his body. He has forgotten to wash up, forgotten his home clothes, forgotten to remove his boots at the back door.
Bella and Totty roar with laughter to see his rigid dismay. All Con the Brake’s desire is to hold his wife, to touch his newborn son, but here he is, caught in the spotless room, hardly daring to move. He inches his head around and moans with frustration to see his son’s rosy face, eyes wide open in surprise at this colourful world he has just entered. The linen tucked around the baby is purest white; the carved wooden cradle, carved with designs from Con’s own childhood, is of white kahikitea felled from the gorge below the Camp and dried three years in slabs behind the log house before Con would work it.
Still he has not moved. A black giant, marooned.
‘Bella!’ he moans. He has no idea what to do.
‘Mr Rasmussen,’ says Bella, her eyes alive with love, ‘you would be wise to turn around and walk in your exact footsteps back out the door, locate, if you can, the back of the house, and wash up in the laundry, where you will find hot water in plenty.’
‘My home clothes,’ murmurs Con. ‘My clothes are up at the Bins.’
‘I have a new child to look after,’ says Bella. ‘A second I do not need.’
The fog-shrouded people on the porch see the door open again, a shaft of milky light, and silhouetted against it Con the Brake tiptoeing out like a ballerina. He shuts the door softly behind him and glares at the gathering crowd.
‘I will clobber any man of you that sets foot in my house before I am washed up and dressed and ready to receive. Understood?’
They nod, and wait, coughing and wheezing, as Con roars around the back and flings water in the laundry.
When Totty finally opens the door, and the people of the Camp are allowed to file in with gifts and smiles, they see Conrad Rasmussen sitting on a chair beside his wife. He is straight-backed and dignified like a prince. He wears the dark trousers of his best suit and a scarlet jacket, gold braided and gold buttoned, its high collar embroidered and embossed in whirls of silver and gold. The bundled baby rests on Conrad’s knee, surrounded by all this scarlet splendour.
When everyone has arrived, even Michael Hanratty and Rose of Tralee, both agape at the fairytale jacket, C
onrad unpins a silver and blue star from the pocket of his coat and lays it upon the linen wraps of his son. Then he stands slowly, holding his son out towards the ill-assorted people of the Camp.
‘This is our son, Conrad the Sixth,’ he says, and kisses him. He hands him down, silver decoration and all, to Bella, who is lying there in her earrings and best nightgown as if she were simply resting, not recovering from giving birth for the first time in her life, at forty-one years of age.
Then, while the people stand around, naturally a bit dazed by all this drama, Conrad asks Totty to bring all their glasses from the kitchen and he goes to another room and brings back a dusty green bottle, which he says has been awaiting this occasion for fifteen years. He pours the clear, fiery liquid into the ten glasses, which is eight more than most people possess. Toast after toast is pledged as the glasses are passed around with great sipping and laughing and choking.
Tom Hanratty, who has just arrived, smacks his lips over the fiery liquor, then smoothes his curly beard and moustache with one hand, clears his throat, and solemnly welcomes the newest citizen of Denniston, and they all cheer.
They would have stayed all night in that glowing haven but Con the Brake, back to normal in his shirtsleeves, thanks them for coming, sweeps them with outstretched arms towards the door and chases them out into the cold and the dirty, clinging damp.
Cold Feet, Hot Head
ROSE’S MOTHER IS visiting the men’s quarters and Rose wants to come too.
‘It’s no place for children,’ says her mother.
‘I know some of the men,’ says Rose. ‘I could visit too.’
‘Out, out!’ shouts her mother. ‘Here is sun and no washing hung yet. This is your task, madam.’
The Denniston Rose Page 19
