The Dickens Boy

by Tom Keneally

  I turned to the recipes and began to read my mother’s true prose. ‘The best part of the mutton from which to make good broth is the chump end of the loin, but it may be made excellently from the scrag end of the neck only, which should be stewed gently for a long time (full three hours or longer, if it be large) until it becomes tender . . .’ The idea of her knowing that, of possibly talking about it to the cook as I slept in the nursery, was for some reason awfully sad and glorious at the same time, and made me weep again for a good ten minutes. Then I closed the book, returned it to Mrs Geraghty, and set out to see Alfred.

  I reached the store where Alfred was now sitting with Chard in veranda shade. ‘Here he comes, Mr Chard,’ he called. ‘Pour my brother rum.’

  Chard regarded me with kind, dark eyes and asked gently, ‘Would you prefer ginger beer, son?’

  After admitting I was still dry from my drive, Chard told me to go into the store and introduce myself to Mrs Chard and ask her for ginger beer. I went into the dim store as ordered and called hello. A large, fleshy pale woman emerged from the residence behind the storeroom, which was a fair imitation of Willy Suttor’s store in quantity of materials but, I thought at first glance, a little less rationally organised, and said, ‘Yairz?’ like someone who’d arrived at that pronunciation of the affirmative by much practice and self-torture. I asked unnecessarily if she was Mrs Chard and she said, ‘I em thet lady. Who warnts to noe?’

  ‘My respects,’ I said quickly, knowing she might expect them for all the trouble she had taken with elocution. I told her I was Alfred Dickens’ brother and her husband had said I could get a glass of ginger beer from her.

  ‘Aw, thet’s awlrite then. I’ll git you thet, no wauries et awl,’ she said in her tortured-sounding dialogue, then came back with an earthen jug and a pannikin, into which she poured the splashing, soda-y ginger beer.

  ‘Does yuse thenk the gennelmen well desist frum the rurm and brundy suon?’ she asked.

  ‘I beg your pardon . . . Oh, I understand, the rum,’ I said before lowering my voice and asking, ‘Why don’t you just tell them to stop?’

  She said, ‘Ai kin tell Chard to storp. But nort Mr Durckens. He’s muniger on behalft of the Knew Sour Wails end Imperiol Pestoral Cumpny!’

  ‘He’s just my brother and too much is not good for him.’

  ‘Then you shud till im.’

  ‘Well, I’ll do my best. He’s older than me.’

  ‘Cingretulations on yure birth,’ she told me, giving me the pannikin. ‘I mean, yure being sun of Challs Deckens.’

  Who was I to argue with her? ‘Thank you,’ I replied, ‘though I had no hand in it myself, Mrs Chard.’ But as always people thought it had taken a certain cleverness on my part.

  She told me confidentially, ‘Due whot you kin with the gennelmen. Poo-err Chard wull git very seck.’

  My brother was in fact so far gone in liquor that we had no further sensible conversation that night. While we were having a brief chat with Cultay, Mrs Geraghty sent a message telling us that dinner was ready. Alfred let me help him to the table where we sat in shirtsleeves while Mrs Geraghty served us soup with pearl barley and glazed mutton with excellent vegetables, both of which dishes were inspired, if she could be believed, by our mother’s recipes. I would have liked to discuss our mother being such a phenomenon in Mrs Geraghty’s life and craft with Alfred, but I felt he was beyond that conversation. I also suspected that in his state the mention of our mother might lead us to discuss the guvnor’s behaviour towards her, a subject likely to make us melancholy at Christmas, especially in view that I was melancholy enough. With any luck Alfred might not drink so much tomorrow.

  After Mrs Geraghty had delivered us that main meal, Alfred asked me what I thought of her. I said I thought she was a kindly woman and it was apparent she was an excellent cook, adding, ‘And she does marvellously with those quandongs.’

  Alfred got the giggles and repeated what I’d said. ‘She does marvellously with quandongs.’

  ‘She is an excellent cook,’ I replied, both because it was true and I hoped it would end his mockery.

  Alfred lowered his voice. ‘If she’d only stop wearing her bloody boots like that.’ He then looked at his meal as if he was having trouble applying his knife and fork to it.

  I was silent, not knowing what to say to him.

  ‘Mrs Geraghty is older than me,’ he added. ‘But of a fine figure, you’d admit. Juno would not sneer at her.’

  ‘Do you think you –?’

  He stopped me, raising a hand that wavered in the air. ‘I speak as a detached observer,’ he claimed, then nearly fell asleep before reviving himself. ‘I do not have her stay in the house. That is the trick to avoid matrimony. We may think this is a huge country we’re in, and what we do is not reported. But gossip makes a mockery of even the largest spaces, Plorn. If you have a woman stay in the homestead it’s taken by the gossips of the entire region that the relationship is either one of concubinage or marriage. Besides, she spends much of her time looking after the ailing station wagoneer named Clohessy, who’s an old convict she knows from her days in Van Diemen’s Land.’ He inhaled and breathed a while, again seeming about to fall asleep. But he revived himself. ‘And under the mass of public opinion, a chap has to choose between being known as a husband or else a sensualist. That’s what happened with my poor friend Chard. Have you heard his wife and her torturous speech? When he was managing a station, he made the mistake of having her reside in the homestead. And now she’s his forever. A caution, my boy. A caution.’

  After this he did fall properly to sleep and, calling for Mrs Geraghty to guide us, I helped him to his room, removed his boots, and put him on his bed.

  Mrs Geraghty whispered to me, ‘Your brother has great tolerance of the demon liquor. He’ll come up bright for Christmas.’

  I felt my loneliness that night, and thought of Cultay’s lovely gum but did not take it. I wished I was back home in Momba.

  22

  As Mrs Geraghty had promised, Alfred was up the next morning and shook my hand solemnly as he wished me the blessings of the season. His gift to me was Mr Wilkie Collins’ novel The Moonstone.

  I was relieved he wasn’t giving me the book in any expectation that I would read it instantly. ‘Just the same,’ he said, with a smile, ‘I thought it was lively enough to make a literary gent of you.’ He smiled. ‘One other thing. Chard went to a lot of trouble to track a copy down, so I’d be obliged if you thanked him for his trouble if the chance arises.’

  I assured him I would. The book made me think back to how old joking Mr Collins was always asking Aunt Georgie to run away with him, and she always replied no because he would leave her alone at home to go jaunting with Mr Dickens.

  Mrs Geraghty brought in fresh bread she’d baked, with boiled eggs and bacon and the eternal black tea. She then wished us the joy of the feast day, and we wished the same back, Alfred asking, ‘Will you take your Christmas dinner with fortunate Mr Clohessy today?’

  ‘With him and young Mr Levine,’ she confirmed.

  When she’d gone Alfred told me Mrs Geraghty went to Mr Clohessy’s hut to recite the Papist rite called the Rosary and they prayed together on the veranda in full sight of others.

  ‘It’s quite something to see a bullocky pray,’ he said, ‘for a bullock team on a muddy trail would make a profaner out of any saint, as you no doubt know by now. Clohessy did his time and got a conditional pardon. Just like that Abel Magwitch in the guvnor’s book. The condition in the pardon being they can’t ever go back to the British Isles.’

  We both laughed at the concept of our transportation.

  ‘You think we’ll get a conditional pardon one day, old chap?’ he added. He laughed again, but with no rancour.

  ‘We had a boundary rider hang himself rather than go back to England,’ I told him.

  ‘Yes. I heard. Very strange, wouldn’t you say? Something profound there. I mean to say, families are strange entities, but
not to be able ever to face your own again . . .’

  ‘And they were going to make him the new baronet.’

  ‘Well, even so . . .’ And again he laughed. He seemed to have no pain from the night before, though he did drink a great deal of tea.

  After breakfast I gave him a new briar pipe and a kangaroo-skin tobacco pouch, and we thought we’d done each other and the festival very well. Then, from nowhere, we heard someone with a fine voice begin singing outside, who Alfred said was a young Englishman who’d helped with the bonfire the night before. We went to the veranda with our cups of tea and there, in the home paddock of Corona Station, the young gentleman drover stood, his large hat in his hands, by the remnants of last night’s fire. In purest tenor, he pierced the morning with the piteous nostalgia of the song.

  The holly and the ivy,

  When they are both full grown,

  Of all the trees that are in the wood,

  The holly bears the crown,

  Oh, the rising of the sun,

  And the running of the deer.

  The playing of the merry organ,

  Sweet singing in the choir . . .

  Suddenly he paused, mid-verse, wavered and then walked into the shade of a river gum tree and was savagely sick.

  ‘Oh, poor chap,’ said Alfred, before calling out to the singing drover. ‘Hayward, when you’re well, come up and meet my brother and have some black tea.’

  Though probably a year or so older than me, Hayward seemed very boyish in his discomfort as he looked up and replied, ‘Black tea seems to be the ticket for me, Mr Dickens.’

  Alfred and I went back to the dining room and Hayward soon came in, saying, ‘My appetite returns.’

  After making sure Hayward had washed his hands, Alfred said, ‘I have the pleasure to introduce my brother, Plorn Dickens, true name Edward, though he has rarely been called that. Plorn, I present to you Ernest Hayward.’

  ‘A Merry Christmas,’ I said. ‘You must’ve been the absolute joy of your choirmaster.’

  ‘My choirmaster could never afford the indulgence of praising me,’ he replied. ‘He was my father.’

  ‘Ernie is a child of the cloth and the parsonage, Plorn.’

  ‘I was praised by pretty girls though,’ said Ernie. ‘And in the public houses around Derby I have a repute for my version of the old song “You Ain’t Ashamed of Me, Are You, Bill?”’

  ‘Will you give us that at the Christmas meal perhaps?’ asked Alfred.

  ‘If still living, yes. If not, I demand the full honours of the Anglican rite of burial.’

  ‘Are you an admirer of the music hall?’ I asked.

  He sang, as if by way of an answer, ‘“Tho’ some o’ your rich relations are as ’orty as can be, Don’t turn away, but kiss me, and say you ain’t ashamed o’ me.”’

  Then he consumed an entire cupful of tea in one mouthful and poured himself another. When he was half finished that, he turned again to me and said, ‘Yes, I belong to that corps of music hall wastrels, Mr Dickens.’ This was followed by more singing:

  I suppose she don’t remember all the cash I said I’d spend,

  When I walked ’er off to ’Ampstead all the way,

  I suppose she don’t remember ’ow I used to pawn ’er watch

  And promise I would take ’er to the play.

  ‘Well,’ said Alfred, laughing, ‘I think you’re a total disgrace to the diocese of Durham and the Durham School itself.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Ernie Hayward. ‘To be a disgrace to one’s school is an honour reserved for a few privileged souls, but to be a disgrace to an entire British diocese – that demands the special endeavour of a person.’

  Alfred told him to go and rest and be back at noon, which was when the Chards were coming.

  As Hayward left, Alfred summoned the young Paakantji boy and asked him to draw a hessian blind on the veranda and drench it with water to temper any hot air coming through its pores.

  After that we sat in easy cane furniture in the veranda shade, Alfred smoking cigarettes and talking about the breaking in of his new briar pipe.

  He said, ‘I hope Kate and Mamie visit Mama today.’

  I assured him they would or may have already been yesterday.

  ‘Good old Katie would have seen to it, of course,’ he agreed with a laugh. ‘Lucifer Box,’ he chortled, using our father’s name for fiery Kate. ‘And just as well she is a Lucifer Box, standing up to the guvnor.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind dropping in to Gad’s Hill for an hour or two,’ I said, liking this version of my brother.

  ‘We’d be so sun-tanned they wouldn’t know who we were. And Pa would be outraged by our boots.’

  I liked him calling the guvnor ‘Pa’ as well.

  ‘She was Lucifer Box, and Mamie was Mild Glo’ster. Tells you something, eh? Ma told me once that when Katie was five years old and they were on a tour of Italy, she got an abscess on the neck and ordered father to look after her, insisting he change all her dressings for six months. Just as well, because Mama was carrying the noble moi at the time. Katie was the one always saw through the guvnor, but they really loved each other . . . Changed all her dressings. Can you imagine? And she gave him hot mustard in return.’

  I let him go on elaborating on beautiful Kate, our mediator with the august guvnor.

  ‘D’you remember her falling in love with Ed Yates? I think you were a baby then.’

  Indeed I was, if born at all. This was exactly the sort of inside knowledge I could receive from my seven-years-older brother – what all my brothers and sisters did, indeed what other people did, before they had a Plorn in their lives.

  ‘Ed Yates was one of Father’s young friends. Stuck with the guvnor through a lot of thick and a deal of thin. Our beautiful Katie, she would stand there twisting a hand around a balustrade or a column or anything that presented, looking enchanted with Yates. He pretended not to notice, but Katie nearly wore the varnish off furniture, longing for him. And he was already married then, to Miss Wilkinson – but Katie saw only him, Adonis, and to hell with the wife.’

  I did remember seeing the guvnor weeping and exclaiming over Katie’s wedding dress when she eventually married Charlie Collins. A nice man, who everyone said had a strange penitential streak, Charlie was nothing like his brother Wilkie. And nothing like Katie for that matter.

  ‘Did you know Charlie Collins has been ill the last year or so?’ I asked.

  ‘He always was ill,’ said Alfred, as if that was somehow an endearing trait.

  ‘Well, Katie got very thin and worn-down from nursing him, and then she got sick and demanded the guvnor’s presence just like you say she did when she was little, and the guvnor sat with her through the whole fever.’

  ‘Poor Katie,’ Alfred murmured. ‘I doubt Charlie Collins ever fulfilled the role of husband for her – you understand what I mean, Plorn?’

  I didn’t know whether to nod knowingly or blush. It was easy to believe Katie hadn’t seen the features of gratified desire in the case of Charlie Collins. On top of everything else, they were poor, because he took so long to make paintings, so these days he’d taken to writing pieces in All the Year Round.

  ‘Did you see much of Katie’s painting before you left?’ Alfred asked.

  ‘I did. She does children a lot. The guvnor says if only she were a man she might be raised to the Academy one day. He says she has to be bolder, and that her husband isn’t a good example to her, leaving most of his paintings unfinished and despising the ones he does finish.’

  ‘But what do you think of her paintings yourself, Plorn? Not Father. Yourself.’

  ‘They look splendid to me,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how she does it. Drawing is beyond me, let alone oils.’

  ‘And of course no sign of a child? A little Dickens-Collins prodigy?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t think so.’

  Alfred nodded grimly but not as if it was anyone’s fault.

  The rest of the morning passed
pleasantly with discussion of family members, and gossip that did not wound, to the extent that I totally forgot it was Christmas, here or anywhere else. Alfred drank nothing hard – all we had was tea as the hessian dried out and the conversation parched us.

  At around noon Alfred announced we should go and shave and put suits on. As I shaved I considered whether it was a good idea not to have told Alfred about overhearing Aunt Georgie talking to our sister Mamie about something to do with Katie, I suspected, and another painter called Prinsep. They were speaking in that voice women adopt when they’re certain they’re saying something no child can overhear. They’d agreed Prinsep was ‘very manly’ and a doer of things, who finished paintings, no fuss, no excuses.

  Mamie had said, ‘How can you blame her? A virgin for ten years of marriage.’ To which Aunt Georgie had replied, ‘Well, Mr Prinsep may have seen to that problem.’

  Later that day, I entered the dining room, where Alfred was serving sherry and whisky. Hayward was there wearing a riding suit of splendid cut of a similar style to my own suit of brown checks brought from London. When Mrs and Mr Peter Chard arrived, Hayward was attentive to them in a very gentlemanly way, and made no sport of Mrs Chard’s astounding accent.

  Chard looked fresher than he had yesterday and shook my hand with new enthusiasm, saying he was sure I was more of a gentleman than my brother, for no gentleman liked to see another man reduced to insensibility and raving. ‘And my poor wife had to put up with me and find some surface on which I could sleep off my beastliness.’

  ‘I believe I owe you thanks for the work you did on tracking down The Moonstone,’ I said. ‘The author is a jolly friend of our father.’

  ‘I’ve heard that,’ said Chard almost as if he didn’t believe it. ‘I must keep reminding myself that you passed your infancy by the light of planets and potentates and grandeurs beyond our ordinary imagining.’

  Inspiration struck me and I said, ‘But my dear Chard, they did not speak to me as planets and potentates and grandeurs. They spoke to me as men speak to a child asking me what my favourite toy was, and whether I knew the alphabet. You must not overstate our experience when we were younger.’