The Dickens Boy

by Tom Keneally

  ‘Whatever possessed you?’ demanded Rusden.

  I said I knew Mr Rusden had gone to a lot of trouble to find me a place at Eli Elwah. All I could tell him was that McGaw was not a gentleman as I felt unable to reprise McGaw’s performance because it contained things – Aunt Georgie and Mama and the Irish girl – I could not mention to the austere Mr Rusden. It was not so much that I wouldn’t. I couldn’t repeat those foul insinuations. I would go too deeply, it seemed to me, into my own depths of shame.

  Shame over what? I could not tell Rusden in what sense McGaw was ‘no gentleman’ and later I could not define it for Alfred either. When I wrote to him that night I could only use the formula ‘not a gentleman’.

  I now had to report to Rusden daily but could see he’d already concluded I was ill-suited to Australian life. I had hoped he would spread the news that McGaw was a cad. Instead if he spread any news it would be that I was green. And I was not. I had shown the bush what I was made of by racing poor Coutts in darkness down the red soil road amongst great stands of bush. So though I might have been green in colonial terms, I was not in a way that disqualified me for colonial life.

  To my club in Melbourne, the Savage, where I stayed with all the irrelevant comfort appropriate to a London club, with some of the guvnor’s friends peering at me from framed photographs or portraits on the walls – Macready as Shylock, mad old Walter Savage Landor. Papa and Mr Forster used to visit him in Bath to drink a toast to the beheading of Charles I, and to recite the doggerel Mr Landor had written and Papa taught us as a joke.

  George the First was always reckoned

  Vile, but viler George the Second;

  And what mortal ever heard

  Any good of George the Third?

  But when the Fourth from earth descended

  (God be praised!), the Georges ended.

  And, here in this club, even the full-bosomed Lady Blessington, the free spirit who rushed around town with her comrade (at least that’s one way to put it) Count d’Orsay, one of Alfred’s godfathers. And most sinister of all, my own godfather, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who had married for love and then endured his wife writing a novel satirising him and calling him a hypocrite. However, he was a statesman and a grand writer and I was honoured to bear his name.

  None of them helped me here. None of them knew or could silence McGaw. None of them was advised to give up chemistry and Latin and spend a half year at an agriculture school for farmers’ sons in Cirencester. The faces of our godparents, seen in full flesh at Devonshire Terrace and Tavistock House or Gad’s Hill, were, in their bleared pictures in Melbourne, a reproach.

  3

  I felt liberated when, one evening a few days after I’d last seen him, Rusden came to the Savage Club and told me I was to be given one last tilt at settling in the bush. He sounded weary, as if he had little faith in me, and I knew I must depart into the interior and stay there. He said he’d found me a place at a station named Momba, a good way north of Eli Elwah. He told me I would need to catch a steamboat up a river named the Darling, which fortunately still had enough water in it after last winter’s rain, until I reached a town named Wilcannia. I would then have to report to a certain stock and station agency which sent a monthly wagon of provisions to Momba. ‘The best thing is,’ said Rusden, ‘you’ll have a good man, Mr Bonney, there as a mentor. And the storekeeper, young Suttor, is an educated colonial – do pass on my respects to him.’

  Though he had also said McGaw was a good man, I had a new ambition. The guvnor had said application was all I lacked, so I would show application now such as would astonish him. I would apply myself like McCready and Landor and Lytton and Lady Blessington. I would relieve my father’s anxieties with a heroic scale of application. And one day I would return to him, Daniel from the furnace, as an applied man, and one familiar with Hard Times, Martin Chuzzlewit and all the rest.

  I went north again by rail and stage to a town named Yarrawonga, then caught a ferry which would take me all the way along the Murray and up the Darling. I had a small cabin in the Eliza Jane, which was narrow in the beam to make it less likely to hit submerged snags that might damage its redgum hull. The captain of the ferry, Burgess, was a proud man with a wizened face and a basso voice. He boasted of what the Eliza Jane carried inland, reciting its inventory like a parson who never gets tired of reciting the Credo or the Paternoster. ‘We have on the stern and in our shallow hold every requirement for civilisation,’ he claimed. ‘Woolpacks, soap, kerosene, galvanised iron, drapery, some on order, some on speculation, curtains ditto, sherry, stationery, sawn timber, wire, sugar, candles, potatoes, earthenware, books, glassware and claret.’

  I half-expected him to say at the end, ‘For these and other gifts may the Lord be praised!’

  There were three men who travelled on the foredeck, sleeping under the stars in comfortable-looking bush swags they called bedrolls. I was walking up and down the foredeck after breakfast on the long, casual haul down the Murray – we had not yet reached the Darling – when one of these men approached me and said in a native-born Australian accent, ‘Excuse me, Mr Dickens.’ He had a half-amused face and a black beard which would soon reach the dimensions of the blade of a shovel.

  Wary of all Rusden’s warnings about the trap of over-familiarity, I frowned and said, ‘Yes?’

  ‘Just,’ said the man, ‘I’m on my way to Momba too.’

  I was surprised, but pleased. He looked like a reliable escort. However, I was still trying to be as severe as Mr Rusden wanted me to be. ‘Is that so?’ I replied.

  The look of amusement did not leave his eyes. He did not take a step back as an English working man would have by now.

  ‘I’m Tom Larkin,’ he said. ‘I’m to be blacksmith for Mr Bonney. He wrote to me and told me to look out for a Mr Dickens, to say hello and that I was riding to Momba Station from Wilcannia too. So, there you go.’

  ‘I am pleased for your company, Mr Larkin,’ I said, as much like a threat as I could manage.

  ‘The Bonneys seem decent fellows,’ he said cheerily. ‘You see, I grew up on Moolbong with Mr Brodribb. My father and mother worked for him donkey’s years, ever since they left Ireland. I went up to Wagga then to get married myself last month. And said to the wife, “Time to see the world beyond the Darling, my dear.” She’s game for it. A Welsh girl, sea-captain’s daughter. She’s to come up to Momba in the autumn.’

  ‘My felicitations,’ I risked saying. But I could not let him know I liked him at first sight. I felt I liked far too many people at first sight.

  The ferry stopped frequently along the way. Sometimes we would put into timber camps, where tree-fellers with smoky complexions had stacked their timber by the riverbank. Sometimes Captain Burgess needed wood for the boilers, but other times he would buy roughly milled timber. Sometimes there was an ageless woman in sackcloth with her bush brats in these camps. You could see these flimsily clad offspring running like rabbits to avoid being seen by passengers as we put in. I noticed Larkin was amused by them, as if they reminded him of his own childhood.

  When we stopped at bigger towns, Captain Burgess would often spend time with merchants, while the three fellows from the foredeck went ashore and started a fire, drank tea and rum and yarned with each other. The cook and the steward fished for river cod. If it were day time, one of the saloon passengers, a Mrs Desailly who lived at some place west of Wilcannia, whom Burgess treated as a sort of bush duchess, disembarked with her face totally veiled in netting to defeat the sun and insects, and sometimes to make social calls. Mrs Desailly had reacted kindly enough when Captain Burgess pronounced me the youngest son of the great narrator, but I think she wanted to see if I would last in her country before she took the trouble of warming to me. She asked me a few questions with a fluting voice, and my answers were so plain that she lost interest and said, ‘I think Captain Burgess must be playing jokes on me.’

  The narrow dimensions of the Eliza Jane made more sense once we reached the town
of Wentworth and entered the Darling. The banks were high and red-soiled, hosting great thickets of river gums, and when we stopped and ascended the banks while goods were offloaded I went walking in the rich grassy plains beyond and saw great outcrops of red rocky tor.

  When we stopped at a station named Mount Murchison, the overseer came aboard to visit Mrs Desailly. After he was introduced to me, he declared, ‘My God, the country’s thick all at once with Dickenses. There’s one at Corona! Met him at the races at Poolamacca Station three weeks back. He brought along a few likely horses, I must say.’

  He took me for a stroll beyond the screen of river gums and, just like a reader, said, ‘Your dear old dad hasn’t written a book for some time. Is that so? Last one was Our Mutual Friend, I believe. Must be three years back.’

  ‘Four,’ I corrected him. ‘He does reading tours, you see, and the performances . . . they tire him out.’

  ‘I liked the character Lizzy Hexam of course, the daughter of the river, but I couldn’t help admiring the fortune-hunting girl. What’s her name?’

  ‘Ah yes,’ I foolishly said, pretending to hunt through the vast cast of my father’s creations, with which I was no more familiar than the rivers of Russia. But suddenly I was about to pluck the accurate name. Little Em’ly Peggotty, I thought gratefully, and then said it.

  ‘I think you are mistaken, young Dickens,’ he told me. ‘That’s the ruined woman who comes to Australia in Copperfield. Hang on there – I think I might have it. Wilfer. Bella Wilfer.’

  ‘I do believe you’re correct,’ I said tentatively.

  I’d had to play this game before with even more exacting Britons; endure such questioning as if every line of my father’s works were grafted into my veins as an inheritance from the grand storyteller.

  We were out in the open well beyond the riverbank now, the sun high and every feature of the land sharp. A great plain stretched in front of us, its plenteous grass metallic-sounding in the breeze and running away to the west without any limit I could see. Distant hills looked blue, but many quartz outcrops also rose in the midst of the plain.

  ‘How d’you like the look of that, young Mr Dickens?’

  ‘I do like it,’ I told him.

  ‘It’s the Mount Murchison run, where we do our grazing.’

  ‘Where are your sheep, though?’

  ‘They are there, believe me, and their fleeces growing, and their lambs ditto. The country is so vast and the capacity to carry sheep per acre so small here that the sheep are lost somewhere in this place and we will find them in time for mustering. But you, Dickens, with your patrimony, you could be the first great poet of this Darling country. You might make Wilcannia shine with lustre in the world’s eye,’ he said with a grin. ‘I suggested the very same to your brother at the races at Poolamacca. But he thought I was joking.’

  I thought, No, Alfred didn’t think you were joking. Alfred was rebuffing the idea, just as I now did. ‘I’m a very unmusical fellow,’ I told him. ‘I’m a better cricketer than a poet.’

  ‘Oh well now,’ he said, thankfully pleased with the topic of cricket. The colonials seemed to love it with a passion equal only to horse racing.

  I simply looked west under a high sun. A country with big pockets. Big enough to hide flocks and people in.

  When our boat reached Wilcannia it seemed a busy town, reputedly one with around three or four hundred people. This busyness might have been because of the flutter our arrival caused. A number of people were drawn down to the high pier on the riverbank, and there was a flurry at the gangplank as the grave, veiled figure of Mrs Desailly landed. Two troopers in white helmets, blue jacket, white pants and high boots waiting by the gangway saluted as she passed, and a Catholic priest and an Anglican pastor took their hats off.

  ‘Do you know where Mrs Desailly’s going?’ I asked Larkin. ‘I mean, where her home is?’

  ‘Netallie Station. The Desaillys are legends along the Darling. She has her husband and, a rare thing, daughters. Squatters’ daughters are pretty scarce on the ground in this part of New South Wales. If they exist, Mr Dickens, they often prefer to stay in the cities, and spend their old man’s wool cheque.’

  ‘“Old man” meaning “father”?’

  ‘Dead right,’ said Larkin.

  As I watched Mrs Desailly board the surrey I reflected with my new worldliness that women were a mystery. If you put two chaps in the same saloon, unless one of them was blighted with shyness or strangeness, they would be firm friends by the end of such a journey as we had been through. Whereas Mrs Desailly and I had remained utter strangers, and her only advantage as a fellow traveller was, as far as I could see, that she was not a devout reader of my father’s work and so set me no literary tasks.

  Several tall young natives waited to one side of the pier to help with unloading Eliza Jane. Two of them wore vests with their loincloths, but most of them were bare-chested and looked muscular. Over in the shade of trees were two turbaned Afghans with a string of camels which would be carrying much of Burgess’s cargo into the remoter country.

  Tom Larkin suggested, ‘If you wanted, Mr Dickens, we could set out this morning and travel forty miles before we camp tonight. What do you say to that?’

  They surprised you, these people. This man was in a sense a servant, and what servant asks his master, ‘What do you say to that?’ But I had heard it was the custom of the country and I was sensible enough not to try to eradicate it single-handed.

  ‘I am supposed to report to the stock and station agent first. Fremmel’s. They have a wagon going out to Momba.’

  ‘Good-oh, we can string along with it,’ he said with a smile betraying full, shovel-bearded amusement.

  ‘What are you laughing at, Larkin?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, I’m amused people go to such lengths to meet you because of your old man. Not that you lack merit on your own. They would have got the wagon ready specially to ensure you’d call in and see them. By tonight they’ll be skiting about their good mate young Dickens and predicting great things for you. Not without reason either. I too think you’ll do well.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, feeling oddly grateful.

  ‘Just as a bit of a warning, they’ll want you to wait in town a day or two so they can show you off,’ said Larkin. ‘Whereas . . . you might prefer us to be on our way.’

  When I reiterated my intention to go to Fremmel’s, Larkin nodded and said, ‘While you’re at the stock and station agents, I might get my sins heard, since the priest is here. After that I can be found at the pub right there, the Commercial.’

  I had never heard a Papist so frankly and casually mention the requirements of his barbarous religion. ‘Get my sins heard.’ And then, a drink at the Commercial. I felt a shadow fall between Larkin and me. The guvnor was a great abominator of Papism, believing it to be an enemy of all progress.

  The town’s buildings looked to have thick sandstone walls, these being a sovereign repellent of the heat. There were two sandstone churches representing the two abiding faiths, mine and Larkin’s. The Commercial, also made of sandstone, offered accommodation. Three warehouses were aligned amongst the shade provided by high white-flowering eucalyptus. And not far away was what I was told were the beginnings of a post office.

  As I saw my modest pile of goods assembled on the pier of heavy timbers, I walked ashore myself and said goodbye to Captain Burgess, who was accepting plaudits from a number of people for getting his ship here yet again. The men talking to him turned the slits of their eyes to me as I passed by. Their clothes were fashionable enough, and they had the well-heeled look which I would learn squatters always brought with them, no matter how much they might be in debt, when visiting town from the ‘real Australia’, out there somewhere beyond. They were assessing me in my brand-new wide-awake hat and riding jacket and moleskin trousers. They did not say anything, and it may even have been from a form of shyness, and also a Mrs Desailly reticence to get to know me until I had ‘applied mysel
f’ to their country and become a permanent figure in it.

  Walking on, I found a police trooper at my side, saluting. ‘Mr Dickens,’ he said in one of the softer and less combative Irish brogues. ‘Then could I assist ye now?’

  I told him I wished to visit the stock and station agent and he pointed down past the warehouses into a shimmer of heat. ‘Fremmel’s,’ he assured me. ‘You have some business there? I’ll escort ye, Mr Dickens, and my friend will watch your goods against pilferage.’

  It was not long before we came to Fremmel’s Stock and Station Agency, whose door was festooned with crepe decorations. In the window a sign said, ‘Fremmel’s Welcomes Mr Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, son of the Immortal Charles Dickens, to Wilcannia, Future Metropolis of the Darling River.’

  My Irish constable saluted and left me, saying he would be needed once the transfer of goods from ship to warehouse began, because ‘the darks’, the Aboriginals I’d seen at the wharf, needed eagle’s eyes on them since they were pilferers by nature.

  I walked into the store, by way of the normal deep-shaded veranda, past a notice board on which horses and tack and properties of sundry sizes were advertised along with information about coming auctions of ewes and lambs. One in particular caught my eye: ‘290 Merino and Border Leicester Rams Available Through Early Sale of Station and Worth a Further Run!’ Even then I thought the notice meant someone had ‘gone bust’. I stood by the agency’s long counter, alarmed by the festive crepe hung around the office.

  A man in a good suit and a paisley cravat, wearing spectacles, came up to me then. He had about him the feel of someone at the height of his powers and aware he had them. A block of a fellow with slicked brown hair. Apart from his watchful eyes, the chief feature of his face was his out-of-proportion lips. There was too much of them. A person was simply sure that at whatever school he’d gone to, colonial or British, he would have been called Froggy. An astonishing-looking woman I assumed was his wife appeared beside him, her appearance appealing to the burgeoning man in me. She was a bit taller than her husband and her white dress was just a little disarrayed, as was her black hair, yet you could not tell whether it was artifice or lack of interest that created the effect.