The Fringe Dwellers

by Nene Gare

  Mr Comeaway, his mouth still under control, though not his eyes, threw down his two aces with a modest flourish. And the quiet was shattered. Laughter, jeers for the big angry man, shrill squealing from Mattie, back-slapping and more roars of laughter, and over the top of it all the big man’s voice as he lurched to his feet and leaned over to accuse: ‘Wunmulla jinagubby Mt Magnet bastard.’

  ‘Ya right,’ Mr Comeaway grinned, and the laughter in his eyes leapt out to pile coals on the heat of the other’s anger. While the babble went on and on the stranger tore more money from his pocket and threw it down on the old grey blanket. One hundred and eighty pounds in all. One hundred and eighty pounds!

  It was months since there had been such a downright victory. The sight of the money stirred the whole crowd.

  Mr Comeaway gathered it up and stuffed it deep into the pockets of his trousers. And he laughed and roared with the rest of them, feeling light-headed and almost sick.

  A woman plunked herself down on his lap and held his head to her redolent bosom, and Mr Comeaway felt the good warmth of her soft thighs with outspread hand. She was plucked from his lap as suddenly as she had arrived, and an anguished squawk from the rear followed her disappearance. Mr Comeaway watched indulgently as she was cuffed into order.

  He could have gone home right away. Nobody would have stopped him. But he stayed. He needed a few minutes more to gain control of the trembling in his legs. He played again, and again after that. And the last time he played he won more money with a full hand king high.

  It was as he was gathering up his further winnings that the mopoke in the tree ten feet away gave voice to its lugubrious and mournful ‘Morepawk’.

  He concluded, afterwards, that it was Mattie who had started the commotion, but if this were so then she had but a split-second start on the rest. However it began, the tearing screams that followed the initial rending of the quiet night almost lifted the scalp from his head. People leapt to their feet and vanished. Almost between one breath and the next Mr Comeaway saw someone snatch the bird from the tree, chop it into small pieces with a knife, and stuff it into a hole clawed deep by frantic fingers.

  ‘Bastard’s after someone,’ the man gasped, and then he was away himself, following the shrieks into the black of the bush.

  The stamping crowd had gained a start on him, but Mr Comeaway pushed doggedly on, his eyes popping with exertion, his powerful legs flailing and, with all the excitement, both hands holding tight to the notes that bulked in his back pockets. Past wailing Mattie, whose legs had forgotten the need for crutches, past the big angry man and the little dealer of cards, past others who crowed for breath and those who still had sufficient for screaming. And at last he was running ahead of everyone, with Horace on one side and Charlie on the other, and the three of them caught up with the exhilaration of it all, wanting most to stop in their tracks and roar out their mirth now that that first panic had left them.

  And at last they did. ‘My Gawd!’ Charlie wheezed and panted and chuckled. ‘They got me in, with at damn yellin an carryin on.’

  ‘Bicrickey,’ Mr Comeaway agreed.

  But it was left to Horace to nod his head in wisdom and thought and point out: ‘Jus the same. Ya never know bout them things. Just as well we came away fum there.’

  ‘Ya mean ya believe in all that?’ Charlie scorned, still panting.

  ‘All I’m saying,’ Horace warned. ‘Ya never know.’

  And so they walked on.

  After a while the thought of the money took precedence.

  ‘Wouldn’t mind spreadin that money out all over the table an havin a good look at it,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Yeah! No wakin up the ole lady but, spose she’s asleep,’ Mr Comeaway warned. ‘We gotta think this thing out careful first.’

  ‘Can’t never trust womans,’ Horace agreed, his thoughts playing lovingly with possibilities.

  Near the outskirts of the town a taxi cruised past. Mr Comeaway hailed it with a peremptory gesture and all three climbed in.

  ‘An if we call up the camp,’ Horace said graciously, sinking into his soft leather seat, ‘I might just find I had a bottle or two hid away.’

  ‘If ya got the money ta pay for it,’ the taxi-driver offered, ‘I can get as much as youse three’ll want.’

  ‘Could do with a drink,’ Charlie said wistfully.

  ‘Yeah boy,’ Mr Comeaway enthused. ‘We might do that.’

  But after all, the caution that made them stop the taxi a hundred yards away from the house in the Wild-Oat Patch was wasted. The night was younger than they had thought, and the women were still out of bed. There was nothing for it but the grand gesture, and Mr Comeaway made it not unwillingly. The pound notes, the fivers, the ten shillings, the silver, all fluttered and chinked and rolled and were caught and clutched and stared at by the dazed and delighted Hannie and Mrs Comeaway.

  ‘An it don’t mean trouble,’ Mr Comeaway answered the look Mrs Comeaway shot at him. ‘All come by honest. Ain’t that right, Horace?’ Horace nodded gravely.

  ‘I dunno what ta do first,’ Mrs Comeaway said, sinking down on a chair.

  ‘Pork chops,’ Hannie said tentatively. ‘Wouldn’t mind a pork chop meself.’

  ‘Gotta nother letter fum that man bout the rent today. Least, I think it’ll be bout rent. Didn’t open it yet.’

  ‘We can pay that,’ Mr Comeaway said grandly. ‘The whole damn lot.’

  ‘An that sour-face butcher,’ Mrs Comeaway added. ‘An the grocer man an a coupla others. An what about we take a big heap a stuff up Mrs Green’s an cook it up there an let’s have a good feed, eh?’

  ‘Where would a heap a money like that come fum?’ Hannie said reverently.

  Horace opened one of his bottles and poured the contents into cups. ‘Seein it’s early,’ he said pleasantly, ‘we might jus as well sit in to another little game while we drink this stuff.’

  ‘Only first,’ Mrs Comeaway said firmly, ‘we put all this money away somewhere where it ain’t gunna blow away.’ She picked up Stella’s little school case off the floor by the table and stacked all the money inside it, leaving out only a little of the silver. Poker-faced, Horace watched her.

  Mr Comeaway took a good long swallow of his conto. ‘Count me out,’ he said lazily. ‘I rather just sit ere an think.’ He smiled a beatific smile round the circle of faces and closed his eyes.

  Horace said nothing.

  The news of the win spread quickly. Auntie Milly arrived down from Mullewa for a little visit with her relations and two months later, when her husband got picked up for supplying, she decided she might as well fill in the time he would be away where she was. Neither Mr nor Mrs Comeaway was entirely happy about this arrangement because Auntie Milly was bossy and interfering and wanted to run the roost. Mrs Comeaway managed to put up with the old lady by living one day at a time which was all right with old Milly since that way her welcome lost nothing of its freshness. Mr Comeaway ignored her and slipped free of entanglement by pretending not to hear her when she spoke to him.

  She was good with the kids, though, and could always be relied on to keep them quiet by some means or another, even if she had to frighten six months’ growth out of them.

  ‘You kids jus better be quiet,’ she would warn, blazing eyes turned on the darkness outside the window. ‘Wijari round here tonight. You see em dancin over that window—quick—up down, up down.’ Her shoulders would rise towards her ears, and the children’s fascinated eyes would follow her gaze to watch moonlight flickering among the shadows.

  Having quietened them until their hearts beat fast with fear, she would lie down alongside them and comfort them with her presence. She believed what she said, too.

  ‘Wijari after me,’ she told Mrs Comeaway indignantly, one afternoon.

  ‘Yeah!’ Mrs Comeaway scoffed, whilst Hannie watched wide-eyed and nervous from her chair by the stove.

  ‘They after me true. Sitting round in them wattles. I did see em, dancin backw
ards. Wijara them was. My word! An after ole woman like me.’

  Mrs Comeaway straightened, half-believing. ‘H’nnn!’

  There were other visitors, too, to whom news of the win came like an unexpected dividend. Nobody could be accused of cadging who had visited only in the spirit of friendliness like Dora Dicker, because she was convinced she was dying.

  Dora Dicker was a pest and a menace. Even Hannie was gently sceptical.

  Only Mrs Comeaway’s generous heart was touched. ‘Ah, winyarn,’ she murmured, when Trilby told her scornfully that Dora was just putting on an act.

  ‘All that screaming and going stiff and putting her hand to her heart,’ Trilby scowled. ‘There’s nothing wrong with her.’

  ‘Anyone can get sick,’ Mrs Comeaway said firmly. ‘Might happen ta me one day.’

  So Dora was humoured and pampered, and while there was a bit of money about she had special food and Blanchie’s bed while Mr Comeaway fought valiantly all night against the threshing limbs of his two youngest.

  ‘I’m gunna die,’ Dora moaned one day. ‘I can feel it. Here!’ She rolled big agonized eyes. The skin on her face was wet.

  ‘You gunna be all right. Ain’t she?’ Mrs Comeaway appealed to Auntie Milly, to the dumb and uncomprehending Auntie Hannie.

  She tried to roll Dora down on the settee. ‘No good,’ Dora yelled. ‘You gotta get the littlies down so I can see em before I die.’

  Now this was a thing Dora mentioned often, and Mrs Comeaway would have complied long ago if it had not been for Mr Comeaway and Trilby and old Auntie Milly and even Noonah, who all believed that the limit of accommodation had been reached with thirteen people already under the roof more or less permanently. But there was only old Auntie Milly to defy today, so Mrs Comeaway took the bull by the horns and promised to get Dora’s children down.

  ‘The doctors say there ain’t nothing wrong with er, don’t they?’ Mr Comeaway said irascibly, when told. ‘Then that settles it, don’t it? She can stay ere a while longer, turning the whole place into a madhouse, then she can get back where she belongs, an a damn good riddance.’

  ‘I said she could have em down,’ Mrs Comeaway said firmly, though wearily. ‘Fa Gawd’s sake let’s get em jus so’s she’ll shut up bout em.’

  ‘You go an send one a them tellygrams ta their gramma,’ she ordered a reluctant Trilby.

  ‘Don’t know as I like so much womans bout a house,’ Auntie Milly sniffed and tossed her head at the look she saw in her niece’s eye.

  The children arrived with their gramma on the following day, the children tired and cranky from their long trip down by train and the walk that had proved so long and wearisome, from the station to the house in the Wild-Oat Patch.

  Dora was languidly pleased to see them, and the children were hysterically pleased to see their mother. Mrs Comeaway’s heart was touched. Even Hannie and Auntie Milly nodded approvingly, though the problem of sleeping everyone was still to be solved. It was a piece of good luck that Mrs Comeaway and the newly-arrived gramma liked each other and were pals of old. It helped lighten the atmosphere.

  At night it was Hannie and Auntie Milly who complained least. Hannie wandered round until she found a spot that would take her bulk, and Auntie Milly was happiest sleeping in front of the dying fire anyway. Bartie and Stella slept in Noonah’s bed, monitored by a vigilant-eyed and sharp-spoken Trilby, while Mrs Comeaway harboured the girls in hers. Mr Comeaway and Charlie made their own arrangements, sometimes not bothering to come home at all for their nightly rest, though there was one night when Mr Comeaway’s loud-voiced complaints might have been taken to indicate that he had come to the end of his endurance.

  Having got themselves into a game that had lasted most of the night both he and Charlie had decided that the long walk home to the Wild-Oat Patch was not worth the effort. They had bedded themselves down on the floor under a couple of old blankets that had been thrown to them.

  ‘An I dunno what was in them blankets,’ Mr Comeaway complained, ‘but whatever it was, they had a bite on em like a alligator.’ He scratched vigorously. ‘Got bit all over.’

  ‘E did,’ Charlie said. ‘I couldn’t feel much.’

  ‘No,’ Mr Comeaway glared at his brother. ‘They was all on my side, seemingly. An there’s Charlie tellin me ta keep quiet an lie still an when I did, that’s when the buggers really started bitin. Gawd, no more a that fa me.’

  Dora’s children were sufficient only for a week or so. After that she felt she was getting worse and should have her husband with her to comfort her in her dying hours. Dora’s husband had a good job with the Railways Department, a good permanent job at which he collected regular weekly wages, and it might have been this fact which helped Mrs Comeaway make up her mind to send for him. No win, however big, could long stand the strain of keeping a dozen or so stomachs comfortably filled every day.

  She made a good decision. Dora’s husband, already gloomy on the subject of his wife’s health, immediately handed in his notice, collected back pay and holiday pay and arrived down by taxi to pick up Dora and take her down to Perth for further examinations. They left in the same taxi, with all the Comeaways except Trilby waving fond farewell from the front fence.

  Mr Comeaway looked over the inmates of his house with a certain brooding dissatisfaction when he trailed them back again. There seemed a good big crowd of them and it sort of unsettled a man when he couldn’t even count on a bed at night. Two or three pals, that was one thing. This great heap of womans, that was another thing altogether, specially when there were the kids as well.

  He showed displeasure first by roaring at the startled children, who were quite unused to anything but kindliness and indulgence from the head of this house. When he had thoroughly disconcerted the children he turned his attention on old Auntie Milly, who had merely been sitting about meditating and minding her own business. Auntie Milly was so incensed she took Mrs Comeaway to task for marrying such a man.

  ‘Ah, I dunno! He’s all right,’ Mrs Comeaway said wearily.

  ‘You good woman, Molly,’ old Milly said emphatically. ‘That Joe there,’ she darted a vindictive look in the direction of the bedroom where Mr Comeaway lay at rest, ‘he a wijari hisself which I know.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  Mr Comeaway left the house quite early the following day. Soon after Charlie followed him. With both men and the ailing Dora out of the way, Mrs Comeaway felt easier. She made a swift decision to get out of the house herself, even if it meant taking everyone with her. Bartie and Stella went off to school. The visiting children went with them. And Mrs Comeaway made a pot of tea.

  It was a comfortable fit round the table now, and everyone felt happier. ‘I still got a bad feelin but,’ old Gramma Dicker said, over her first cup of tea.

  ‘Ya mean what?’ Mrs Comeaway said, her mind set comfortably on the thought of staying round here until the children got out of school, then getting out and walking up the hill to Mrs Green’s and maybe staying on there for a meal. If they did that they would only need to put all the kids to bed when they came home and there wouldn’t be any need to bother with food. ‘What was ya sayin?’ she asked Gramma Dicker, absent-mindedly.

  ‘That time I wanted someone else,’ said Gramma surprisingly. ‘Didn’t even get im neither. I was sposed to meet im at the corner, but all e give me were a bash in the face an I hadda go back ta me ole man after all.’

  Old Milly sat up straight and cupped a hand round her ear.

  ‘Worried me a bit till I’d got it off me chest ta the ole priest.’

  ‘What’d ya say?’ Mrs Comeaway settled herself to hear another of Gramma Dicker’s tales.

  ‘Just told im all bout it, Molly. How after thirty years or more I gotta have that other man. An after all them children too. Jack’s children. So after that I gotta say fifty Hail Marys—I forgot em a course—an something else. I hadda give em some money.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Ah,’ Gramma winked. ‘I tole tha
t ole man I gotta pay some accounts. E lets me off at two bob a week fa five weeks.’

  Mrs Comeaway laughed, as Gramma sighed, ‘I still feel bad but.’

  Auntie Milly lifted her cup and took a long drink, her dry old lips spread flat. ‘Ya got outa that all right, didn’t ya?’

  Gramma sipped too, narrowing her eyes against the steaming tea. Then she looked across her cup at the attentive faces. ‘It’s me conscience,’ she told them sadly.

  ‘Go on,’ Mrs Comeaway rallied. ‘A change is as good as a holiday, ain’t it?’

  The wrinkled eyelids lifted in surprise as Gramma considered. She set her cup down suddenly. ‘I think I ruther have that holiday.’

  Even Auntie Milly’s face was blank for a minute. Then everyone laughed. Mrs Comeaway’s stomach rolled and bounced and hurt her until she held it. ‘She rather have a holiday,’ she gasped at the others. ‘An ya know what? So’d I.’

  Trilby came out of her room to see what was going on. ‘We all goin up the hill when the kids come home,’ Mrs Comeaway told her daughter. ‘Ya wanta come with us?’

  ‘I’ll stay home and get a bit of peace,’ Trilby said sourly. ‘You don’t get much around here.’

  ‘Suit yaself,’ Mrs Comeaway said easily. ‘There’s some bread in the cupboard an a new tin of jam. We gunna have tea out, with a bit a luck.’

  They started the minute the children came home from school, all but Audrena, who had already left the house on a mission of her own. Blanchie carried fat little Tommy on her hip and when she got tired Mrs Comeaway gave her a hand. But before they got to Mrs Green’s there were some others to look in on. Mrs Comeaway hadn’t left the house for a fortnight and she wanted to see all her friends.

  They came across Addie and Johnny Bean, just down from Carnarvon and busy building themselves a shelter alongside the Dowies’. They had found some good pieces of iron down on the dump, enough to make another little shelter after they finished the first one.