The Dickens Boy

by Tom Keneally

  ‘Well,’ said Maurice, sighing as if he was reconciling himself to the rejection. ‘I am quite disappointed.’

  ‘You have no need to be. For you write so well. It is merely the subject . . .’

  He gave up then, settled himself, and thought not of defeat but of glory delayed and changed the subject. ‘And so . . . Are you playing tomorrow, Dickens?’

  I was pleased that the conversation had descended back to the universal standard of cricket, replying, ‘I believe I am both bowling and batting second or third wicket down. Of course, it all depends upon my captain, Fred Bonney.’

  ‘I am playing too, but at the moment I feel I’ve been ruled out of the most important team on earth. However, Plorn, I shall do my best to clean-bowl you.’

  ‘I trust I shall be equal to your assault, but if you are successful, I shall applaud you on my way off the field.’

  With the literary part of the interview ended, I felt positively light-headed. At some stage I knew Willy Suttor would have the conversation with him about life and survival, and that would be the one he really needed to listen to.

  When I returned to my room I was briefly detained by the memory of Constance Desailly boasting of sharing the gift of shorthand with David Copperfield. How charming, I thought, then was nearly instantly unconscious, around my shoulders the roseate possibility of plain cricketing glory on the morrow.

  13

  When I appeared at breakfast the older men were speaking of how their indulgences of the night before would be likely to inhibit their success on the field. I hoped so. I particularly hoped that Mr Fremmel would be bowled out for a duck by a boundary rider like Tom Larkin or Staples, who would never be in need of credit and thus had nothing to lose. But cricket, I already knew, was a very inexact instrument of punishment, and was just as likely to make fools of good men as of bad.

  Constance looked up at me in my whites, her brown eyes sparkling as she said, ‘Good luck, Mr Dickens, but not too much so.’

  I thought how delicious it might be to caress her by dark on the veranda. She was, after all, just a girl, fifteen or sixteen, still young enough to be unaware of her power over young males like me, and to carry it all casually.

  In the midst of our brief conversation, I saw Mrs Fremmel inspecting us with sharp eyes, as if admiring something between us, perhaps the artlessness of Constance. You could read doubt and goodwill in her expression. With any luck, it meant she had put an end to behaviour that would only encourage her besotted nephew.

  Fred Bonney came up to me wearing a red sash around his waist and a red cap. He was carrying a number of similar caps and sash belts, which he handed to me, saying, ‘Ah, my valiant lieutenant. Could you distribute these to our team, some of whom are gathered beyond the homestead gate? Mr Desailly and I will toss a coin in about ten minutes. I believe his chaps are already marking out the field. Who would you say should open the bowling for us?’

  I was conscious that Constance was taking a harmless account of our conversation and did my best to imitate the air of an aide advising his general. ‘I’m aware, Mr Bonney, that you have a splendid record and that it would be suitable if you began from one end, with the blacksmith, Larkin, from the other. Then maybe Staples and Mr Suttor.’

  Smiling at Constance, Fred commented, ‘He is a scholar of such things, this Mr Dickens.’

  I felt delighted at this first use of the word ‘scholar’ and my name in the same sentence by this antipodean guardian of mine.

  ‘You must have a turn with the ball though, Plorn. And I have you batting third wicket down. I hope that suits you.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Some of our openers may be brittle, so if they are bowled out cheaply I’d like you to be there to steady the ship.’

  I had batted first wicket down for the Higham team, but was familiar with the etiquette by which a gentleman coming to a new team should always be willing to bat further down the order than he was accustomed to.

  Out in the full light of morning the limits of the cricket ground had been marked off with flags, and there was an atmosphere of a crowd, like a village fair. I suspect all the crafts and trades in the crowd would spend the day watching and drinking while engaging in the central drama itself. The Paakantji from both stations were milling around as if they had been accustomed to the English passion for cricket since the beginning of time. I distributed our red livery to Yandi, Tom Larkin, Staples, Willy Suttor, and the rest. Soon Fred Bonney and Mr Desailly came out in glittering white shirts and their different sashes – blue for the Netallie team – and threw a florin coin into the air. Mr Desailly won the toss to a roar from his team of station hands and gentlemen, and said, for the benefit of his side, ‘We’ll bat first and then you chaps can drink too much beer at lunch and score abominably this afternoon. That way Netallie can have the victory!’

  Taking the field I saw Blanche’s beau, Mr Brougham, whose face looked as transparent and empty of desire as an angel’s beneath his tan. He also looked like a competent cricketer.

  Both teams now met and shook hands, witnessed by a crowd of men and women of perhaps unprecedented size on this ground.

  ‘Will we allow round-arm bowling?’ Fred Bonney asked Mr Desailly loudly, to clear up the matter.

  ‘My God, Fred. We are not Americans,’ Mr Desailly replied.

  ‘Yes, I must say I have a very handy round-arm bowler in Yandi. Could you not indulge us, Alfred?’

  ‘Very well, we’ll pretend it’s Georgian times,’ agreed Mr Desailly to general laughter.

  ‘No quarter!’ called Fred Bonney for our team’s sake and all of us red caps cheered. The Netallie storekeeper and Edward Bonney took up their umpiring positions, and Fred Bonney then set our fielding positions around the ground, consigning me along with a native named Momba Alfie to the slips positions near our padded and gloved wicketkeeper, Brian Cleary. We applauded the opposition’s two opening batsmen, the young law clerk Malleson and Brougham, as they came to their creases. They both looked like knowledgeable and stylish batsmen

  Fred Bonney opened the bowling with a polite and unthreatening set of deliveries. Brougham hooked one of them and it ran all the way to the boundary. Malleson did nearly as well, running three. Larkin then started his over from the other end. His first two balls were wild and wide, the third whistled past within a hair of the bat and then Larkin’s last ball clipped the outside of Malleson’s bat, and I managed to catch it in that wonderful way, without even knowing I had.

  Ecstasy followed for me and the Momba team.

  Yandi bowled a sullen round-arm and kept hitting batsmen very accurately on their bodies causing the white batsmen’s tempers to flare. When not intimidating the batsmen Yandi smashed the wicket twice, the second time dispatching Maurice. As he walked back to the boundary a member of his team called out, ‘You should shoot that darkie, Maurice. But Fred Bonney won’t let you.’

  There was a gust of laughter from the crowd, though it was pretty good-natured.

  At last, Fred called, ‘I’m taking you off, Yandi, because you’re just too good with that round-arm stuff.’

  Mr Fremmel was a great success for the Netallie team, reaching his half-century and stylishly raising his bat to the people watching from the margins, including of course to his wife. Happily it was the fast bowling of Tom Larkin that got him two runs later, because there was little conceivable damage Fremmel could do to the amiable man.

  Fred Bonney called that it was my turn to bowl from the northern end, and Staples from the southern. I had a quick success, spinning the ball that got the overseer of Mount Murchison Station out. When the Soldier came in to bowl, it was quickly apparent he was gifted in the art of that delivery they called the wrong’un, so named for going the wrong way if one studied the bowler’s arm. He bowled it once and took a wicket, and bowled it a second time to the new batsman, clean-bowling him too!

  Brotherton, the teacher from the Wilcannia national school, approached the stumps next to try to deal with Staples. He took his
stance, patted the ground with his bat, and we watched as Staples made a short run-up to the wicket and then stopped abruptly, wrapping his arms across his chest as if he was stricken with the pain and calling out, ‘Almighty Jehovah,’ to the cloudless sky. ‘I have been one with your Son and carrying an eternal wound on my side. I call on you, O Lord, to guard your servant in the end for no one else will . . .’

  The manager of the National Scottish Bank in Wilcannia, who was the batter near him, said, ‘Come on, old chap, you can’t talk to God here. This is a cricket match.’

  ‘Very well. I’d better bloody well bowl, I suppose.’

  And with that he ran and without interruption, delivered an absolutely unplayable ball which looked as if it would bounce towards the batsmen’s leg but veered to the offside instead, clipping the bat and going straight to point.

  Now, from amongst the crowd, Dandy was running onto the field, stammering apologies to the two umpires. He reached Staples and called, ‘Is it p-playing up on you, old ch-chap?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Staples told him, ‘it happens for no bloody reason.’

  It was then we saw that the Momba red sash was saturated by Staples’ blood and Dandy Darnell cried, ‘His w-wound! It’s opened.’

  A sulky was quickly prepared and one of Netallie’s non-playing gentlemen raced Dandy and Staples off to be seen by the surgeon in Wilcannia, by good fortune a mere fifteen miles east.

  Tom Larkin then took the last Netallie wicket with a sizzling delivery leaving them all out by lunch for 137 runs.

  During sandwiches and a cold beer, a passing Constance Desailly paid a small, wondrous compliment to my bowling and fielding, saying, ‘You look like a man who knows what he’s doing, Mr Dickens.’

  Fred Bonney leaned close to me and said, ‘Astonishing. The Soldier is a boundary rider, mounting, dismounting, repairing fences, and on some occasions doesn’t even see Dandy for days. Yet it happens that today, when he is playing a game and with dozens of people, his wound opens. It seems to me that Staples has something of a grievance against the Deity. But he should be grateful for today.’

  14

  The afternoon was as successful as Fred or I could have wanted. To the enthusiasm of the Paakantji people of both stations, Momba easily beat the Netallie total, having lost only four wickets. The native George, who believed in hitting only fours and sixes, was batting with me when it ended, to the shrilling of the native women.

  There was a less formal dinner that night, very pleasant, and I learned that we would attend church in Wilcannia in the morning and say our goodbyes at the Commercial Hotel before we returned to Momba. We intended to visit Staples at the doctor’s cottage hospital before leaving, with hopes even of collecting him, Fred Bonney telling me, ‘No more isolation for the Soldier. He must live near the station from now on.’

  I enjoyed a few plain and unsatisfactory exchanges with pretty, brown-eyed Constance, distracted a little by the question of whether Willy Suttor had spoken to Maurice.

  There was a golden languor in my limbs from the day’s exertions before I fell asleep recollecting the conversation with Mrs Fremmel, which for some reason provoked memory of my mother. She wrote the fondest letters, without any of the tinge of worry that marked the guvnor’s. She always called me ‘my darling boy’. I doubted I could fail enough examinations to stop her doing it. She had said in her last letter that she was in part consoled for my loss because my brother Sydney was coming home on leave from the navy. She said it so plainly, as if no shadow lay over Sydney’s name for his wild purchases in foreign ports, and his madness at cards. I fell asleep in the certainty of Mama’s innocent love, a few instants’ memory of what Aunt Georgie had told me, gushing, one day after combing my hair. She said, ‘You are the babe your mother had to console herself for the loss of her little Dora.’

  From where I sat in the little fortress of Wilcannia’s St James Anglican Church, I saw Maurice and the Fremmels enter their dedicated pew, before standing for the entry of the Reverend David Rutledge, who had the sculpted face of an ascetic. Fred had told me Rutledge had brought a healthy wife to Wilcannia but she had died of a fever she’d contracted during a stay in the tropical north of Queensland.

  During the recital of the introductory rites I wondered if Mrs Fremmel was a Papist, like the French servants at Boulogne, and if Mr Fremmel had persuaded her of the superiority of the Anglican rite. The three of them were attentive, as if they had all repented of the sins detailed by Maurice.

  After the readings Rutledge rose to the pulpit and assessed us with a piercing gaze before intoning, ‘Dearest Brethren in Christ. On this bright morning, all over the Christian world, all over the Empire ordained for the care and governance of our race, the faithful like you look to the altar, to the symbols of Christ’s presence, as if to see whether they are still the beloved of God and as if to assert the universal Communion of Saints meeting in sanctuaries from the North Sea to the Antarctic Ocean, from the rim of the Arctic to the southernmost remnant of Tasmania. God has given us this endless country fresh from the hands of the ungrasping Aborigine, and it happens that we receive it with gratitude and hope for the best from it. The British labourers who work to make textiles and clothing of what we send them are in their pews in Britain today. They are with you here in spirit. We are not a mere hundred or two hundred faithful here today. We are legion!

  ‘And Christ’s blood redeemed this country, so far from the customary places where Britons are found, as it redeemed the fields and copses and villages of Britain; as it redeemed Calcutta and the country beyond. In the geography of God, Wilcannia is as central as Jerusalem, and we must strive mightily and be righteous.’

  So he went on, and after a while there was a pause, as if he intended to add something further. But he seemed to decide he had said enough and descended to the altar for the Offertory prayers. We were strangely consoled by his vision of the English church binding us all.

  As if sparked by the Reverend Rutledge and his invocation of distance, my mind turned to the little Dora business. I knew it had been terrible. Aunt Georgie and Mother had gone off to the Malvern spa because Mama was ill and pale, and needed rest and the waters, and she had left Dora with the rest of them. Dora was six months old. With my sisters Mamie and Kate doting and walking around the garden with her and pointing out flowers and birds, she was beginning an infant education. And my guvnor, ‘The Enchanter enchanted,’ said Aunt Georgie. He went out to give a speech in town and little Dora got convulsions during the evening and . . . It was unspeakable and so quick – a shudder and then life ceased. Father and two friends – big Mark Lemon of Punch was one – sat up with the dead baby girl all night, and the worst thing was still ahead, which was to fetch Mother home and tell her. He couldn’t do it himself, he said. It could kill her or pitch her into madness, he was sure. He sent his Geordie friend Mr Forster to collect her and Aunt Georgie, but to tell them only that the baby was sick. Only when the two sisters, Mama and Aunt Georgie, got home did they understand Dora was dead upstairs.

  And I was the child of grief and consolation. ‘They loved you for consoling them,’ I was told often enough for the idea to stick. And apparently I managed it without trying. The enchanter himself, the guvnor, was enchanted again, and nicknamed me Mr Plornishmaroontigoonter, and other variations, the best nickname any child ever had. He took me on holidays to Boulogne and showed me off, and I smiled and uttered a few words and charmed English émigrés. And all without trying. It was when trying came into it – trying to do sums, trying to understand why A plus B equalled X under any circumstances – that trouble came.

  In Wilcannia now, however, as I reminded myself, I was not subject to the accusations arising from algebra. I was in a country where batting well could liberate a youth from a great deal of aggravation.

  In the churchyard, Willy Suttor approached me. ‘I have offered him fifty pounds to aid in his migration. It’s about all I can afford, Plorn. Can you find it in you to top it up in any
way?’

  ‘I can certainly spare twenty-five,’ I confessed, feeling an instant desire to rescue Maurice.

  ‘Hopefully between us we might save the poor boy’s life,’ said Willy Suttor. ‘The trouble is that he thinks he’s breaking ground for all of us. I said to him, “Do you realise that this is Wilcannia?” and “This is a country of sheep, not miracles.” But he has the delusion that he may break the mould of humanity here.’

  ‘The Reverend Rutledge seems a good fellow,’ I remarked to Willy. ‘Should we ask him to speak to Maurice?’

  ‘Oh my God, Plorn, you are a brave one. How would we manage that?’

  I could give no suggestion. Perhaps we could ask Maurice to give his written confessions to the good man. Without saying anything more we reserved the Reverend Rutledge for the most extreme necessity.

  Our last call after the service and stocking up on various supplies was to the doctor’s small village hospital, to visit Staples. Dandy was already there when we arrived, and the two of them were smoking together reflectively, as if they were at the door of their hut in the evening. The earnest young doctor, a Scot, appeared. The Scot explained that prior to Staples’ old wound opening he’d felt a shifting or moving sensation in his side, which was due to a parting of the deeper wound layers, which then produced a series of further openings until a lesion emerged at the surface of the old wound. The wound was now resewn inside and outside and would, with any good fortune, heal. He added that he had told Mr Staples his days as a boundary rider were over and asked the attentive Bonney brothers if there was work Staples could do at the main station.

  Edward Bonney said there was ample work and that Staples could keep the stock books perhaps, and better organise the office.

  Staples cleared his throat and said, ‘I can’t leave the Dandy on his own. He wouldn‘t cope.’