The Denniston Rose

by Jenny Pattrick

  Then the salt sea won the battle for his love and I lost him.

  A Bloody Victory

  EVEN EDDIE CARMICHAEL didn’t know the strike was over until Tommy Jowett and the Rees family and a whole bunch of old Burnett’s Face miners came back up the Track with their ponies and belongings, cheering and carrying on as if it were Christmas. Eddie stood on the steps outside his office, stamping and grinning as Tommy shouted the news up to him. The miners had won! The Company had given way on all points and hired them back on full hewing rates!

  ‘You got your holidays, then?’ shouted Eddie, surprised at the capitulation.

  ‘Aye. We got the lot!’

  ‘No more unskilled miners, then?’

  ‘You’ve said it, friend. Proper pay for proper miners. Here we are, come to claim our homes back.’

  ‘Well, wouldn’t you know I’d be the last to hear.’ But Eddie was pleased, you could tell. All he wanted was to run a good clean mine, and fill the orders, which was far from the case at present.

  ‘Josiah will fill you in,’ said Tommy. ‘He’s on his way up with the missus.’ The men all laughed, but with some pride, vying with each other to tell the story.

  ‘Mrs Scobie could go on the stage, the story she told …’

  ‘Aye, she had them howling into their handkerchiefs, eh, Tommy?’

  ‘Children starving, women scraping moss off stones …’

  ‘Then Josiah would weigh in about us never giving in while there was breath in our bodies …’

  ‘Which wouldn’t be long, according to Mrs Scobie.’

  ‘And the rest of us knowing secretly we’d go back tomorrow …’

  ‘We never would!’

  ‘I heard you say just yesterday!’

  ‘Aye, well, that was yesterday. Today we’ve won.’

  ‘Thanks to the Scobies.’

  ‘God bless them both.’

  Josiah and Mary Scobie, toiling up the Track, stopping every ten minutes for Mary to catch her breath, were the toast of Burnett’s Face, and of Denniston town, though those at the Camp, knowing their jobs were under threat now, were less welcoming.

  ‘Well done, Josiah!’ says Eddie when the beaming man finally comes up onto the plateau. ‘You know I was on your side in my heart.’

  Josiah laughs. ‘Oho! Our side, is it? This is only the beginning, Eddie. We’ll be face to face over the bargaining table soon enough.’

  Eddie groans in mock horror, then sobers up to add a warning.

  ‘I don’t want trouble, now, Josiah. Will you watch your men with the new recruits? It’s not their fault they weren’t born with coal dust in their veins. Give them decent time to pack up and leave.’

  Josiah nods. Mary, beside him, her face blotched scarlet from the climb, also glows with a gentler warmth.

  ‘Go on up,’ she says to her husband. ‘You deal with the men. I must talk with Totty.’

  ‘There is a prayer meeting called.’

  ‘Say one for me, then. I can go not one step further.’

  But she plants her feet steadily enough in the direction of Hanrattys’. Josiah nods to see her go. He knows what the talk will be about.

  Totty pours tea in the front parlour. At first the chat is general.

  ‘Well, and how is the outside world, then?’ asks Totty. She has still not managed the trip.

  ‘Overrated,’ says Mary, kneading her aching knees. ‘That gaggle of geese that call themselves society in Westport are soft as pillows. We could eat them for breakfast. And did.’

  ‘Watch your words!’ laughs Totty. ‘That is my family you’re talking about!’

  ‘Well, you are worth a trainful of them, my dear.’ Mary closes her eyes and groans. She will not be making that journey again in a hurry. And when she does it will be for a larger pond than Westport. Politics has entered her blood.

  Totty waits until a more normal colour returns to the older woman’s cheeks before she opens the topic both of them are waiting for.

  ‘Tell me about the churchyard,’ she says.

  Meanwhile Josiah tramps on up to Burnett’s Face. It is time for the thanksgiving.

  THAT prayer meeting was where common sense and the law of the land finally gave up the ghost. After all those months of control and discipline, of sticking doggedly to peaceful negotiation, it all blew up over a prayer.

  Josiah was standing there, at the front of the little chapel, head bowed, and all the miners with him.

  ‘Oh Lord,’ he cried, his voice ringing like bells, ‘we thank Thee, that Thou hast blest our endeavours, and brought us safely back to our homes and our families. We thank Thee that Thou hast seen fit to grant us all that we have sought, that we may now work with dignity and safety in our chosen workplace, knowing that our fellow workers are skilled to do Thy work, the hewing of coal, to bring warmth and light and power to all mankind. We thank Thee also …’

  When a voice from the back of the chapel, no one knows who, interrupted. Two or three of Eddie’s recruits must have been standing at the door listening.

  ‘Stuck-up English bloody black-faces!’ this fellow shouted.

  Sixty heads snapped up out of their prayers.

  ‘Chapel-creepers! Chatting to God like He was in your pocket! We can hew as good as you any day of the week!’

  The fellow must have been drunk.

  That is the end of prayers. With one mighty shout Josiah and his men roar out of the Chapel, caring not at all who they might be trampling as they go. It is like floodgates opening. House by house they sweep through Burnett’s Face, herding the usurping recruits before them. No one is given time to pack, women and children are bundled away from their washing or cooking or playing and deposited outside in the needle-sharp air to fend for themselves.

  They rage through Coalbrookdale mine, wrenching men from the coalface, loading them onto skips and running them off the job. The pit ponies, ears pinned back and eyes rolling at the din, refuse to pull their human loads so the miners shunt the skips themselves, a fierce relief lending weight to their shoulders. Out in the open the recruits are tipped to the ground, then driven down the skipway by the storming miners as if they were sheep.

  Denniston people run to doors to see what is up. When they see the approaching boil of miners they run back inside and bolt themselves in until it is over. Michael and Brennan, wide-eyed, hang out of the upstairs window at Hanrattys’. This is war all right, just like Rose said. Downstairs Mary Scobie’s outraged orders, shouted from the doorway, never reach her husband’s ears. He is as lost to it as all the rest.

  At the Camp, tables are turned briefly as the second shift of recruits emerge from the men’s quarters to support their friends. The rout becomes a battle involving rocks and railway iron, anything that comes to hand. Bella Rasmussen tries a bucket of water but quickly realises there are far too many hot tempers for one woman to cool. She watches anxiously from the window to see if Con will join in.

  Con is fighting a battle of his own at the Brake Head. Two frantic recruits, boys hardly out of childhood and desperate to escape the madness, are trying to leap aboard the loaded wagon that is about to descend.

  ‘Stand back! Stand back, man!’ roars Con, feeling the pressure of the pistons building and ready to slip the brake. The hook-man grabs both boys by their coat-tails and hauls them bodily off the wagon. He gives Con the nod and the wagon starts on down.

  ‘Jesus Maria!’ shouts Con as the boys run after it. One, then the other jumps at the moving wagon. For a moment, incredibly, both seem safe; then there is a boom like a cannon exploding. The steel cable, four inches thick, flies into the air as if it is thistledown. The boys, God rest their souls, must have dislodged the hook or broken the connecting flange. There is nothing now to stop seven tons of coal hurtling down, free of all control, until it derails or smashes over the edge at Middle Brake.

  ‘Jump! In God’s name, jump!’ yells Con, but the boys, well past hearing anything, are clinging desperately to the instrument of their de
ath. The wheels scream as they gather speed. All Con or the hook-man can do is to signal below and wait for the smash.

  At the Camp the battle is dying. When Con charges down with his dreadful news he finds another death, again a young one, whose head has caved in under someone’s wild swipe. Five or six others are on the ground bleeding or nursing broken bones.

  Con’s rage is worse than a southerly storm. ‘You call yourself a Christian!’ he shouts, grabbing a fistful of Josiah’s coat. ‘Look, man, look! You are fighting babies!’ His mighty shove knocks Josiah clear off his feet. Both sides back away, wary of this dangerous giant.

  ‘Ah Jesus, look at him.’ Con kneels, moaning himself, beside a gangly lad whose arm is at a frightful angle and who is howling for his mother.

  The miners stand, sheepish now, as an old fellow, grizzled hair and beard obscuring his expression, gathers up the dead lad, slings him over his shoulder like a saddle and walks away without a word. Another, a weather-beaten bushman by the look of him, stained old hat jammed on his head, blue eyes blazing, faces Josiah and the miners.

  ‘You are welcome to your lousy jobs in your stinking mines. We are not so desperate for money that we will sell our souls to coal one more blighted day.’

  The battered recruits growl in agreement.

  The bushman raises a bleeding hand as if it were a badge. ‘But you might perhaps do us the courtesy, sirs, to allow us to patch up our young lads here and gather our swags. If that’s not too much to ask?’

  Con and the bushman lead the howling boy away without waiting for an answer.

  All that day the recruits and their families, their ponies and belongings straggled across the Camp, heading downhill. Con walked down the Track with the first batch and stationed himself at the bottom, a human gate, to hold back returning miners.

  ‘Well then, pray a little while you wait,’ he growled at the impatient miners. ‘For the souls of three innocent departed lads, you know? And for the sins of your mates up top. You walk up the Track now — maybe you feel tempted to throw some pregnant woman down the gully, eh? Or a child and her doll in her arms, maybe? Over the edge so she make room for real miners, you know? You start one foot up, I knock that foot off its leg. By God, this is a sorry day for the Hill, and I, Con the Brake, will damn well see it gets no sorrier!’ Oh, Con was a dark and stormy man that day, not a flicker of smile or lightness, a fact that drew some comment in the days to follow.

  The miners, expecting joyous welcome, the brass band maybe, fretted and stamped at the foot of the Track, but none would pass Con the Brake in this mood. Towards evening, when they finally headed into Denniston, a couple of lads — Jock Galloway’s boys — reported seeing a dead body caught against a branch just below the Camp.

  Billy Genesis.

  At first it was assumed that Billy Genesis was another victim of the rout. It was certainly in character for Billy to join in any fight. Then two nights later Lord Percy strode into the smoky fug of Minifie’s bar shouting murder and foul deeds. He had been clearing out his friend’s house and found the smashed door and the bloodstained floorboards. Anyone could see, he screamed, that Billy Genesis was not the unlucky victim of a random hot-tempered clout, but of a vile, pre-meditated murder in his own home. He omitted to declare that the bloodstain was in Rose’s room.

  A piece of gossip like this was just the antidote for Denniston’s collective guilt over the rout. The deaths of the three boys had been officially recorded in Eddie’s register as Death by riding a runaway wagon and Accidental Death following a fall. The fall was fudging it, Eddie knew, but surely everyone wanted to put the strike and the driving away of the recruits behind them now and get on with earning a living and making a profit?

  The murder of Billy Genesis, though, could be investigated with relish. Cold-blooded murder: that was serious. If there was a murderer on the Hill he must be unmasked. Rose’s disappearance and that of her mother were noted. Con swore they never came past at the bottom of the Track. Perhaps two other bodies were concealed in the bush below the Camp? A search of the bush revealed nothing but old rubbish, drifts of coal, rusting railway iron.

  Michael Hanratty and Brennan Scobie had nothing to report about Rose’s absence.

  Henry Stringer the teacher was suspected. Remember the fight in the bar? He wouldn’t stand a chance in a fair fight with Billy, true, but what if Billy were drunk? Or perhaps Con the Brake had lost his temper again. Con could easily have done it. That man didn’t know his own strength. Theories ran wild in pubs and parlours. Con’s unusual behaviour was noted — surly and bad-tempered. Opinion hardened in favour of Con as murderer. These last two days his arguments carried a razor-sharp edge that quickly deterred any opponent. Several people reported hearing bitter argument coming from the log house: not at all the usual genial word battles that all the Camp relished and repeated. The police were not called in. Denniston dealt with its own crime.

  Four days after Billy’s body was discovered, Camp people heard a final brawl at the log house. Bella wailed and screamed. Con, uncharacteristically muted, grumbled and swore. Next morning Con the Brake, Big Snow, Conrad Rasmussen, his head hanging low and a swag on his shoulder, disappeared down the Track. Not one word of goodbye to another soul.

  Bella smoothed her apron with shaking hands, held her head high. The show of dignity could not hide her distraction. ‘My husband has gone to find Rose of Tralee,’ she announced. But to many, his disappearance was a clear sign of guilt.

  The Bite of Conscience

  HENRY STRINGER CALLED the meeting. He sent notes to the Hanrattys and Scobies:

  An urgent matter has come to my attention which should be discussed in private. Could we meet at Hanrattys’, Saturday afternoon next at four p.m.? Michael and Brennan should attend, but no other children, please. I have also asked Mrs C. Rasmussen to be present.

  It concerns Rose of Tralee.

  Yrs faithfully

  Henry Stringer, Schoolmaster

  ‘What’s all this then?’ says Mary Scobie, brisk and ready to take charge. ‘My Brennan has been drooping around the house like wet flannel all week but I can’t get a word out of him. Are the boys in trouble again?’

  Bella Rasmussen eyes the others. Since news of Con’s disappearance has spread, people avoid her. The empty space left by Con is never mentioned. She smoothes her purple tussore, aware that she has overdressed for the occasion. Tom Hanratty clears his throat, frowns at Michael, fiddles with his pocket watch.

  The two boys are wound like springs and not speaking to each other. Michael fidgets on his chair in Hanrattys’ dark front parlour. He glowers at Brennan. Brennan looks away, trying not to cry.

  ‘Henry,’ says Totty, ‘you had better spit it out quickly. With all this secrecy you can see what a state we are in.’

  Henry Stringer unfolds his insect legs and stands up, running bony fingers through hair freshly cut this morning by the new barber in Dickson Street. He is nervous in the company of these five, who, in one way or another, form the backbone of Denniston. He can’t stand still in their presence. His chaotic feet crash into the polished brass fender; his attempt to steady the swinging fire-irons only makes matters worse.

  ‘Now, now, lad,’ says Josiah, ‘we know the rumours buzzing round. About you and about …’ He looks quickly at the silent Bella, ‘… about Con. But no one here holds truck with that nonsense. We won’t bite you.’ He strides to the fireplace, takes the teacher by his shoulders and holds him still as if he were straightening a picture on the wall.

  ‘Now, sir,’ says Josiah, ‘you are the head teacher at Denniston, and we respect you for the care and attention you give our lads, so if something is amiss, spit it out and we will sort out the matter. This is our half-day and spare time is precious.’

  Henry’s shoulders receive a final encouraging slap to keep them in place, and Josiah returns to stand behind his wife.

  Henry nods several times. ‘Yes, yes, yes, quite, sir, quite. Well. Now.’

&nb
sp; Michael giggles.

  ‘The boys have some-something to tell you,’ says Henry, stuttering and spitting in his eagerness to get things right, ‘which they need to get off their chests, and which Brennan told me in confidence and from a troubled conscience. But look here, sirs … and ladies,’ Henry blushes scarlet and begins to pace again, ‘before we judge the boys too harshly, I suggest we examine our own part in the tragedy …’

  ‘For pity’s sake, Henry!’ cries Mary Scobie. ‘We have no idea what the tragedy is, let alone our part in it. Brennan!’ This is an order. ‘Stand up and speak!’

  ‘We killed Billy Genesis,’ says Brennan in a low voice. He sits still on the big chair, feet dangling, tears running silently down.

  ‘We did not!’ Michael is on his feet, fists balled, ready to fight the whole roomful. ‘He was dead already!’

  ‘He was alive!’ howls Brennan.

  ‘Dead!’ shouts Michael at the silent adults, ‘Almost. And it wasn’t Rose’s fault either. We were trying to stop the war!’

  Henry Stringer goes to Brennan, leads him to the fire, stands behind the weeping boy, hands on his shoulders. ‘Just tell the story, Brennan. It’s all right. Tell the story.’

  And Brennan tells it, his voice so low they have to lean forward to hear. Michael stays on his feet, twice interrupting, still defiant. The boys’ story is one of simple aggression — a bullying man, a helpless girl repeatedly attacked in her own room. A lucky blow with a candlestick. Only too well can the adults fill in details that the boys’ inexperience and Rose’s reticence have not revealed. When the story is finished, the room is silent. There is much to think about.

  ‘Will we go to prison?’ asks Brennan at last.