The Dickens Boy

by Tom Keneally

  I noticed that men liked to talk of calamities peculiar to this country, taking a perverse and sullen joy in the fact they could be desolated by mere bad luck. Wagon teams did not die of communal thirst in the English counties. Still, if bad fortune were not so malign, success such as that of the Bonneys would not be so delicious. But even success came in a form many men would not envy. There was no way you could tell your friends about it at the club for there was no club within a thousand miles. And you still lived in a womanless vastness, if the native women were discounted.

  When we arrived back at the homestead, Fred asked me if I would ride out with him and Yandi to visit the boundary riders at Ullollie paddock, eighty miles out, in the morning. ‘There’s something about the two chaps out there that bears watching!’ he told me mysteriously.

  Whatever it was that bore watching, the prospect of the journey filled me with exhilaration. There was no journey on the surface of the earth I would sooner make.

  7

  After saddling Coutts in the half-light the next morning, I led her to the trough and then went to the drovers’ kitchen with Yandi and Fred to have black tea and damper doused with ‘cocky’s joy’, a golden cane syrup ordinary farmers, or cockies, used liberally in their meals. Magpies, the large Australian kind, were gargling from the branches of desert oaks around the homestead as we got ready. Fred told me a party of drovers would follow us in two days to muster the flock concentrated at Ullollie and drive them into Momba itself for a process called ‘drafting’.

  We walked our horses to the gate of the homestead compound, accompanied by three brown sheepdogs, and then rode through the Mount McPherson paddock. It would prove to be nearly thirty miles of saltbush and mulga and leopard tree across. I felt positively heroic and applied in that red soil country, fascinated by the unique vegetation that marked the landscape, sunken little pockets of trees whose crowns emerged stirrup-high from natural pits. Only now and then did we see sheep as a dull grey rumour off to one side or another.

  We rode in silence through that trackless terrain for long periods, and I noticed Fred had little yellow native finches that fluttered about him and ate grain from his hand. It would prove the darks called him ‘Yellow Birds’ for his interest in attracting and taming those small birds.

  We paused on the gravelly rim of a lake with water, and drank tea and ate damper at lunch. There, in the company of Fred and Yandi I felt like a gallant figure on a quest. ‘Application’ or lack thereof was no longer a problem for me here. One had no choice but to apply oneself in this country. For, as Fred had remarked in passing, Momba was the size of two Derbyshires plus two Staffordshires.

  We pushed our mounts on and came to Ullollie gate late in the afternoon. The first we saw of the area occupied by the boundary riders was a whim, a scaffold and bucket, above a well. The hut was a haphazard one of hardwood logs, and only as we drew nearer did it look at all skilfully built. It had a skirt of rural debris or devices around it, a saddling rail, a knife sharpener, buckets sound and perforated, a wood heap. It also had a horse yard, with two horses in it, signalling the boundary riders were still at home.

  Fred said, ‘The gentlemen you’ll meet are Staples and Darnell. Darnell is young and quite a gent. Staples is an old soldier. You might hear the definitive history of the Battle of Inkerman from him.’

  The outstation dogs sighted us and chased each other to confront us, rounding us in towards the hut as if we were sheep. A man with a full beard emerged smoking a pipe, behind him a slighter man who looked a bit less hairy. They watched as we approached. I imagined traffic was rare in their world. There was a yammering of pink and grey galahs, instigated by the dogs, and parrots screaming like escapees. But the two figures were still in place as we reined in by their rail, eased ourselves down and tethered the horses. They seemed to be judging the way we did things.

  ‘Yandi, you black mongrel,’ the man with the full beard smoking the pipe called. ‘How do you stand with your God?’

  ‘Pretty good, Mr Staples,’ Yandi chirruped in return. ‘How the bloody hell you?’

  ‘I am splendid, you impertinent child of Adam.’

  ‘I think we all child of that Adam, Mr Staples.’

  ‘Ah, you have a good soul, Yandi, you sable devil.’

  ‘Thanks, Mr Staples.’

  ‘But tell me, where is my bloody poor soul, Yandi?’

  ‘It sit in trees there,’ Yandi told him, pointing. ‘It arguing with God.’

  ‘Ah, it does. What does God say?’

  Yandi made a gesture as if the air itself revealed all. ‘I can do sketching for you. Sketch you.’

  ‘You’re a bugger,’ said Staples. ‘This is what happens when you let buggers come visiting. Ah, Mr Bonney? I do not include you in my general unease, sir.’

  ‘Glad to hear that,’ Fred declared.

  ‘Mr B-Bonney,’ said the younger man in greeting.

  ‘Hello there, Darnell. Were you expecting letters from Home?’

  I’d noticed the colonists called Britain ‘Home’, with all the emphasis of a capital letter.

  Darnell’s stammer persisted as he said, ‘G-G-God forbid, Mr Bonney. N-no one in Britain has cause to write. No one in the c-colonies knows of me. If a m-man w-wants to avoid the cost of p-p-postage, it’s the best arrangement.’

  ‘I simply thought you might be expecting –’

  ‘I t-think not, sir.’

  ‘And how is the flock?’

  Staples said, ‘The thousands abound, sir, and their name is multitude. The well holds adequate water and the dams somewhat, the fences are in good order and the lambs are ready for their migration. Sir, put us out of our suspense like a kind fellow. Did you bring any Adelaide papers?’

  ‘I have brought the Adelaide, the Melbourne and the Sydney papers,’ Fred replied.

  ‘Oh revelation,’ cried the old soldier. ‘It is all very well to converse with God, but there must be a topic, you understand.’

  ‘I’ll give you a topic, Corporal Staples. Something other than the hubris of the Tsar’s forces before Inkerman . . .’

  ‘Oh dear Jesus, I never encountered men more convinced of success!’

  ‘Yes, but for now, instead of them, may I present the youngest child of the immortal Charles Dickens who has come to learn the wool business amongst us,’ said Fred, pointing to me. ‘This is Edward Dickens.’

  Both of the boundary riders gawped at me. It was all right for them to do so where no one could see them.

  ‘Charles Dickens of David Copperfield?’ asked Staples.

  ‘H-He of Little D-Dorrit?’ asked Darnell, showing himself to be a more up-to-date reader.

  ‘The great wizard himself,’ said Frederic, as he had forborne doing on the night of my arrival, ‘the archpriest of humanity, the supreme master of story and the beloved friend of all English speakers! That Dickens! And here beside me is his son, Edward Dickens!’

  ‘This . . . this is too m-much,’ cried Darnell, putting his hands over his ears as if he had come to Ullollie paddock precisely to do away with the chance of absorbing this kind of news.

  ‘Please,’ I called out. ‘I’m just me.’

  No one seemed to take notice of this.

  ‘Well,’ said Fred, ‘there’s no escaping the weight of a name. Imagine if you had ambition now and your name was Shakespeare. How everyone would congratulate you on your name, and for nothing else! A fortiori, the genius of our own age! But Mr Dickens here is not on some sort of regal progress through the colonies. He chooses to work with us here at Momba and is our very own Mr Dickens!’

  ‘This is a revelation in the desert,’ said Staples.

  I shrank before this unwarranted exuberance.

  Sensing my unease, Fred replied, ‘He’s just working with us as a Momba gentleman drover.’

  ‘B-But,’ said Darnell, ‘my p-place in the hut is yours, Mr Dickens.’

  ‘So we were not to be overwhelmed?’ asked Staples of Fred.

  ‘Edwar
d would be appalled if you were. Put yourselves in his place.’

  ‘I can’t,’ protested Staples.

  ‘Then imagine yourself accidentally born into glory. Imagine yourselves the children of William Makepeace Thackeray!’

  Darnell said, ‘There has not been, nor w-will there be, an equivalent to Charles D-Dickens in the annals of our t-t-tongue. Thus you must leave us some t-time for awe.’

  ‘Speak for yourself, Dandy. I’m bloody awed straight off,’ said Staples, giving me a military salute.

  ‘It is his seventeenth birthday tomorrow,’ Fred told them. ‘And I could not think of better men he should share it with, nor a more apt experience.’

  ‘Felicitations,’ said Staples to me. ‘Oh, to be still sixteen and unmarred!’

  ‘And the s-son of a g-great man,’ declared Darnell. ‘Not a g-great man in the sense some of my uncles see themselves. But a g-great man who v-v-vibrates with the fables and t-truths of all peoples. That would be something, Soldier.’

  ‘By bloody jingo, it would be, Dandy,’ said Staples, grinning. ‘We rejoice for you, young Mr Dickens.’

  ‘What do we have to eat?’ asked Fred, for from the separate little cooking shed a warm redolence of meat cooking was seeping out.

  ‘It will be r-r-rabbit this evening,’ said Darnell. ‘A change from m-m-mutton.’

  ‘I’ve brought you some good-quality rum to celebrate his demise,’ Fred told them.

  ‘Oh, you are a fine master, sir,’ said Staples. ‘There will never be a trade union and revolt with men like you in the saddle.’

  ‘I am flattered, Soldier, by your renunciation of organised strikes. May it last even longer than the rum.’

  While the dinner cooked we all, Yandi and I included, sat on section-of-log stools drinking pannikins of tea and rum and water, according to choice. The sheepdogs rested around us in a protective formation as the day’s heat contracted into the earth.

  ‘You must sketch our goodly company, Yandi,’ said Mr Bonney.

  Yandi did not do so and indeed looked sullen.

  ‘How are you at exams, young Mr D-Dickens?’ asked Darnell, who rose now and then to feed mulga branches into the outdoor fire. ‘First c-class, I’d guess. T-top notch.’

  I had drunk enough of the rum to be frank. ‘Not top notch. Mr Darnell.’

  ‘D-Dandy,’ he said.

  ‘Dandy,’ I said uncertainly. ‘Feel free to call me Plorn. My father does.’

  ‘P-Plorn.’

  I could not very well tell Dandy to call me that and Staples to continue calling me Mr Dickens. Was this the familiarity of which Mr Rusden had warned and which would bring me down? ‘Don’t drink nobblers,’ he had also said, and here I was putting one down my throat, though with Fred’s blessing. I suppose that was why men went astray in the colonies. The guidelines were obscured. Dandy and Mr Staples exemplified that.

  ‘I am not a gifted student,’ I admitted. ‘My brother Henry is. He’s going to attend Cambridge.’

  ‘Ahhh,’ said Darnell. And then a little mockingly, ‘One of my uncles is a C-Cambridge man. But you . . . I cannot believe you had the pr-pr-oblems I did.’

  I was delighted to find another academic failure who could be frank about it here, in Ullollie paddock, where the sting of failure was mild, muted by light, distance and, it had to be admitted, nobblers.

  ‘I failed Latin and Chemistry at school in Rochester, near our house, where standards are not as high as Eton,’ I confessed. ‘Charley, my oldest brother, went to Eton, but Father surmised it would over-challenge me.’

  ‘Oh n-no, Plorn. I was sent to H-Harrow. It was never its b-being too hard. It was . . . it was too b-b-barbarous.’

  ‘What does your Charley do these days, Mr Plorn?’ asked Staples.

  I refrained from mentioning Charley’s China adventure, in which he’d attempted to start a tea-exporting business from Hong Kong to England and very quickly went broke, along with his failed printing business, and just said he had five young children and helped my father with running All the Year Round.

  ‘The famous magazine,’ murmured Fred, reflectively.

  ‘You will see we have two copies of All the Year Round in our hut, Mr Plorn,’ said Staples.

  How far did the reverberations of my father reach? Colonies of birds in the desert oaks were engaging in the last clamorous parliament of their day, but Dickens was in the hut at the heart of Ullollie!

  At some stage in my second toddy of rum and water, Dandy took dinner into the hut and summoned us inside. As I passed under the lintel, I saw a hand-written note nailed to it.

  Give me again my hollow tree, my crust of bread and liberty, Sufficient is this place to me . . .

  A light was cast on our small, tin-topped table by a hurricane lamp hanging from a hook. There were tin plates, an uneven number of knives and forks, a fresh damper whose heat was like a scent, pannikins of black tea and the steaming pot of rabbit in the middle. Fred performed an economical grace from the Book of Common Prayer and Dandy filled the dishes and passed them around.

  As we savoured the meat from the delicate rabbit bones, Dandy returned to the business of exams.

  ‘Let me tell you, P-Plorn. As well as exams at Harrow too n-n-numerous to mention, I had the distinction to fail the India C-Civil Service E-Exam, the Army Entrance E-E-Exam, the Greenwich N-Naval Exam, the F-f-foreign and Colonial and a d-dozen more. It m-made my uncles v-very happy to tell my m-mother how wrong she had been to . . . to m-m-m-marry my fa-fa-father.’

  He withdrew from that core grievance and drank some tea.

  ‘Well then, Dandy,’ said Fred, ‘you are safe from all that here. There are no exams for boundary riders.’

  Dandy laughed gratefully and perhaps too much. ‘Only if you lose too m-many of the mob,’ he agreed.

  ‘Oh,’ said Staples, ‘he is a beggar for that. If he hears a dingo at night he’ll ride off hunting it.’

  ‘They will k-kill thirty head at a time. Rip their th-throats out. It’s not appetite. It’s d-d-devilry.’

  ‘And have you caught any?’

  ‘I’ve shot two in mid d-devilry,’ boasted Dandy. ‘Just by f-following their calls.’

  Yandi rose at this and, beginning to sing something of Paakantji persuasion, left us.

  After he was out of earshot, Fred explained, ‘You must be an initiated man amongst the Paakantji to kill a dingo. Hence Yandi steps aside.’

  Soldier Staples said, ‘In Highland clans they would kill a man for taking the wrong animal.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Fred, ‘the Paakantji are so much more sophisticated than that. They exercise dissent.’

  The two boundary riders insisted that Fred and I should have their beds, which in each case was a down-and-newspaper mattress spread on a tin surface supported by lengths of log. Dandy and Staples said they’d sleep on the floor in the space between us. Performing my ablutions, I saw that Yandi had laid out blankets some yards away from the house outside.

  I fell asleep listening to Staples reading the newspaper while he lay on the floor. The last thing I heard him read was, ‘Mr M. H. Chodder of Wangaratta claims to have extruded a tape worm over six feet long after taking Dr Dutton’s Pills. Makes you wonder.’

  I woke to the sounds of dogs barking, horses whinnying, and boots. I looked up to see Dandy at my elbow with a pannikin of black tea. ‘D-damper and cocky’s joy are on the t-t-table.’

  Through the open doorway I saw that Fred’s roan mare was already saddled and he was conferring with Staples. I thought, I must apply myself to waking and to my work here as I drank the blistering tea. Then I put on my boots and went out to relieve myself behind the hessian curtains of their pit lavatory. The curtains provided privacy except to the west, from which direction Staples and Darnell were willing to risk exposure.

  Fred had a map of the paddock and declared that he, Dandy and I would reconnoitre north-west along a channel called Myers Creek. Meanwhile, Staples and Yandi would ride south-west along a cha
in of waterholes named Miriappa, looking for the strays and allowing for some further assessment of the country, and of how pasture and fencing were.

  ‘When we get back,’ Fred told me, ‘the other drovers will have already begun their ride from Momba, and tomorrow we will begin the mustering!’

  With damper still settling in my stomach, we rode off ourselves – Yandi having unhobbled and saddled Coutts for me. Dandy, more familiar with this great space, rode ahead easily on his wiry gelding. In the eye of this landscape, he had failed no exam, I thought. And nor had I. I rode beside and a little to the rump of Fred’s neat little roan, Jenny, and three eager Australian kelpies followed us. The creek we picked up and followed was a channel of waterholes marked out with red gum trees and the grey-green trees called coolabah. In the few Australian songs I had heard in Melbourne and on the ferry, bushmen preferred to die under the shade of a coolabah.

  As two yellow birds gambolled and swerved around his figure, Fred imparted his knowledge of this country to me, telling me something of wool, or of sheep – the two being synonymous out here. He explained that merino lambs reached ‘puberty’ (a term I’d never previously heard) later than the meat varieties of sheep like the Dorset or Suffolk. And we would need to emasculate the spring lambs in this great paddock (the term emasculate another temporary puzzle for a young Englishman on the last day of his seventeenth year. Later, I found out its precise meaning from A New English Dictionary in the Momba homestead, and not without a prickling of embarrassment.).