The Dickens Boy

by Tom Keneally

  ‘Well, that would be a reasonable price, all up,’ I agreed.

  ‘All I would need is for you to find that letter from my nephew.’

  ‘But I couldn’t do that, even if it existed.’

  ‘When the time comes, and it seems to be coming faster than slower given Fred Bonney’s trust in you, you will find I can be very helpful in getting you started. For one thing, fencing is expensive and yet the government will demand it of you, and so will the circumstances.’

  I wondered if I pretended to be willing to collaborate with him, which on one level seemed a wise idea, I could cross the room and by some ploy disrupt the conversation between Hayward and Constance. I even betrayed myself into contemplating a collaboration with this malign being. ‘You are trying to make me your client?’ I asked.

  ‘It would not hurt you if you were.’

  ‘Amongst all the correspondence Mr Edward Bonney receives, why would he keep a letter from your nephew?’ I asked.

  ‘Because he was in love with the boy, that’s why. He seems to have made his overtures to Maurice, which I think were largely rebuffed. The letter would probably be in his keeping somewhere close to him and can’t be hard to find. Please listen to me and don’t look around like that. I would like to know where Maurice is.’

  ‘You don’t know?’ I asked with false innocence.

  ‘I don’t. Nor do I have the time to devote . . . I would pay you for that letter, though. If it came with an address, however vague, I would pay two hundred pounds on top of the special price for the Suffolks.’

  I gave him my full attention now. A sum like that would be very useful in my venture with Hayward. But having Fremmel for an associate would also be terrifying in its way. ‘No, I cannot do it,’ I told him. ‘Momba is my home. I won’t go creeping about.’

  Fremmel grinned and shook his head in a measuring kind of gesture, saying, ‘Oh, I think you will go creeping about, and I think you will search for that letter now, just out of boyish curiosity. I bet you do. And when you have found it, I’m here. But I believe my nephew is fairly nomadic at the moment and so the information would only be good for a week or so. Don’t tell the Bonneys or anyone else I approached you. No one will believe you, in any case. But remember that I’m here. I’m going home now. I hope the prices don’t go too high on the Suffolks for you and Fred Bonney.’

  Love had been on one side of the parlour and malice on the other, and now I saw Hayward, Constance and Blanche all leaning over the piano, trying out a few bars of this or that melody. Suddenly Blanche sat at the keyboard and Constance and Hayward began singing ‘Widecombe Fair’ together, and I could have cried for the plainness with which Hayward wilfully debased the pure crystal of Connie Desailly’s voice. I said unsatisfactory and wooden goodnights to everyone, including the Desailly sisters, who seemed barely to notice as they listened to the sotto voce lyrics of some of the music hall songs Hayward was rehearsing for their amusement. Hayward had grabbed Euterpe from the divine spring and dragged her down to the factory canal. It was his way. I could never think of entering a business with him, I decided as I returned to the spot Clough and I were camped.

  The next day at the saleyards a popular, jaunty fellow named Duncan was auctioning livestock for Fremmel. When it was time for the lot of Suffolk to attract bids, a fellow in the crowd wearing a heavy military-style cape began by bidding £1 ten shillings. My bid drove it to £2 ten, and though the man in the big cape seemed dubious he raised the bid to £3. He kept on my tail until he had raised it to £3 fifteen, and when I raised the bid to £4 I both feared and half-hoped he would outbid me, since bringing the rams home to Momba at that price was a fairly ordinary fulfilment of my mission. But the man in the cavalry cape seemed to have vanished.

  There was no time to lose if I wanted to deliver them to Momba by next day, so Clough, the dogs and I drove the rams off a little way to graze near the pepper trees that favoured the river and shaded the town.

  ‘That bugger in a cloak was a plant,’ complained Clough. ‘We would’ve had ’em cheaper without him there.’

  Dismayed, my disquiet only increased as I saw Fremmel approach us from beyond the melee of the yards. He was wearing a suit of brown checks and a little tout-ish hat and looked a man on top of the world, all the more so because I wasn’t on top of mine.

  ‘You see,’ he told me frankly, ‘you could have had them for cheaper and been Fred Bonney’s hero when you got them into Momba. And what harm would that have done anyone?’

  I was too defeated to reply before he continued, telling me, ‘You must know I am the broker for a number of pastoral investment companies. There are benefits I can send your way in future if you accommodate me with that letter . . . Reasonably enough, I want my wife back, Mr Dickens. That is a greater and holier imperative than a letter from Maurice to that sodomite.’

  Again, he relished the solidity and age of that word, and the load of contempt it could carry.

  ‘I trust you’ll find your wife,’ I replied, though I didn’t trust it at all. ‘But I won’t get you that letter, Mr Fremmel.’

  Fremmel looked away and muttered, ‘Your brother’s done well at Corona, I hear.’

  ‘I’m proud to say he has.’

  ‘And he has an ambition to buy into a stock and station agency in Hamilton, I believe.’

  ‘I’m . . . I’m a little surprised you know that.’

  ‘Well, I told you I’m a broker and I keep on top of things. There has been an application from one Alfred Dickens for a loan of four hundred and fifty pounds to enable purchase of a partnership and goodwill in Robert Stapylton Bree and Company, Stock and Station Agency, as well as an interest in Wangagong Station near the town of Forbes. I do not have universal powers to grant that favour, especially given the interests involved are not located in the Western Division. But I certainly have power to influence the rejection of the application, given that Corona is in my bailiwick.’

  ‘So you can keep my brother in place!’ I challenged him.

  ‘Or let him be favoured, Dickens. Get me the sodomite’s letter, and I shall also foster your career.’

  I was getting a head of contempt for him and asked, ‘Why not simply ask Mr Bonney yourself?’

  ‘He despises me,’ Fremmel admitted frankly. He had nothing to hide from me since, in weightier places and with weightier folk, he could deny everything he had told me. ‘I am sending a man out to Momba next Tuesday with a wagon of wire. Kindly give him the letter, sealed in a new envelope and addressed to me, when you see him.’

  Our sheepdogs were running around, yelping at Clough and me, willing to start the rams moving to Momba.

  Fremmel turned and was leaving without the pretence of normal good wishes.

  ‘I won’t have anything for your man,’ I called after him.

  ‘I think you might,’ he said, not turning.

  Indeed I was myself full of curiosity to read the letter, and perhaps I could by secretly tracking it down in Edward Bonney’s office or bedroom. But it would be terrible to give it then to Fremmel because he would use it to set private detectives on Maurice’s track, and I wanted to save poor, tender Maurice that peril.

  We drove the rams to graze on the large common, where a number of men were buying and selling horses. A trooper was patrolling the area, looking at bills of sale and other instruments and making sure the horses being offered were of legal provenance. I was too young to be wary, and my eyes lit on an Arab-looking grey mare. I felt a man with a horse like that could never be regarded as despicable. Not a butt of Hayward’s merry nature nor of Fremmel’s plans. I had joined the Wilcannia jockey club and needed only a thoroughbred (or a horse tolerably related to a thoroughbred, as this obviously was) to participate. Now that I was being paid by the Bonneys I finally had some reserves to purchase one.

  The mare was tethered to a central spike in the ground and being ridden in circles by a red-haired little girl wearing a red-spotted white dress and boots so big they seemed to
constitute half her mass. The child’s wiry father was wearing a dusty red-striped suit and the sort of hat Australians called a ‘wide-awake.’ He simply contemplated his circulating daughter and horse.

  It is possible for foolish men, even ones older than me, to become infatuated with a horse on an instantaneous basis and to read fantastic properties into it. I thought, of course this man has trouble selling his superior horse, since people did not necessarily want a horse as biddable as this – so biddable the man’s infant daughter could ride it.

  I told Clough to take the ever-enthusiastic dogs and rams out along Woore Street, past the desert gardens of the houses and in the direction of Wanaaring, and said I would catch him up. He was a man of few words, though he had introduced me to some in his time, most notably, in my memory, to the idea that rams were possessed by continuous libido. He could probably tell that I was going to talk to the horse dealer but had nothing to say to me on that perilous matter.

  Feigning nonchalance, I rode over to the dealer and cried, ‘Your little girl looks comfortable enough there.’

  ‘That is the categorical truth, mister. It was her favourite from a foal. She gives me tiger, I assure you, at the idea of me selling it. But there you are. It is a categorical necessity, sir. After all, it is not a work horse. Too much aristocracy in this little mare for that!’

  ‘Have you raced her, sir?’

  ‘I’ve only raced her once when she was second in Cobar in a race for yearlings. But she is nearing two years and I think she is categorical ready for it now.’

  ‘If I could put her through her paces I might be interested,’ I called back to him.

  The slight man held up his hand to the child, who reined in the tethered horse and bounced off it.

  ‘Oh mister,’ said her father, ‘you look like an honest enough bloke, but I’ve been stung before. The faster the horse, the harder to get it back should you run with it.’

  It was no use being offended or saying, ‘Sir, I am a gentleman.’

  ‘But I will leave you my horse as guarantee.’

  ‘All respects, mister, your mare is not up to the price of mine. Yours is a stockhorse, mine a categorical thoroughbred.’

  ‘Dada,’ asked the child, strolling up wide-eyed and a-tremble to her father. ‘Do you think this gentleman is a thief?’

  ‘I would say not, Susannah. It is simply I don’t know him from a bar of soap.’

  ‘You want me to buy a horse I can’t take for a run?’

  ‘Mister, you can ride her as my daughter does. Her name’s du Barry. As for the rest, I’d argue her lines and demeanour are visible to the world from where she is.’

  Mr . . .?’

  ‘Delahunty. My serenity is one with that of my Maker. If I don’t sell her here, I’ll just ride her down to the sales at Louth. Some people buy yearlings and docile two-year-olds without even taking the trouble to ride them.’

  ‘Oh,’ I replied. ‘Well, I’m not one of them. Please let me try her, Mr Delahunty.’

  He agreed, and the little girl, whose name was Susannah, told me, ‘Be well mannered with her, sir. She’s so well mannered herself.’

  I tethered my own mare to a tree and mounted du Barry in the prescribed, well-mannered way. When I prodded her she made a number of circuits, and, at the canter, I believed I could feel the speed coiled within her. After a while, given the limits involved in making circles, I got down and, feeling worldly, made a few negative, price-reducing remarks.

  ‘A little fine-boned, isn’t she?’ I suggested. ‘And the chest . . .’

  ‘Mister,’ Susannah told me, ‘she’s tall, fifteen and a half hands. That makes her bones look small.’

  There was some truth to that.

  ‘Out of the mouths of bloody babes, mister,’ said Delahunty, his eyes gleaming.

  The upshot was that the mare was mine for £40, and I gave Mr Delahunty an order on the Bank of New South Wales. Whispering endearments to her, I took du Barry and she walked behind my mare, attached to my pommel by a rope tether unworthy of her heritage and a very plain accoutrement to my dreams of jockey club renown.

  The rest became something of a story, at least for a few weeks. Soon after I caught up with Clough and the dogs with the flock of rams, du Barry began rearing and plummeting and threatening to drag me and Coutts back towards her previous owner.

  ‘She’s full of magnesium, I’d say,’ declared Clough professorially, riding near, ‘or at least was. You can tell a stallion that’s been overdosed to make it look calm. Its donger doesn’t look right. But mares . . .’

  I reinforced the rope tie I had on du Barry. Coutts had bravely tolerated du Barry’s occasional rebellious drag as well as her attempts to charge and bite Coutts’s rump, but we had miles of this to tolerate together yet.

  ‘Did you suspect it would be troublesome back there, when we first saw it?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t’ve bought the beast myself, Mr Dickens.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say so?’

  ‘Wasn’t my business. We all learn the horse trade by buying bad ’uns.’

  I said nothing further, but sure that if I’d had Cultay with me, he would have warned me.

  I discussed the question of riding back to search for Delahunty, but Clough said, ‘That fellow’s on his way somewhere now, you can be sure. Get some of the dark boys at Momba to work on her, Mr Dickens. That might go well enough.’

  I felt dismal and remembered Fremmel sickly, as well as that other usurper, Hayward.

  29

  My wild horse became the joke of Momba Station for the better part of that year. Yandi and a string of other young black stockmen attempted to take the devil from her. Their confidence in their horsemanship was supreme, they rode her bareback with just a rope halter, though they had to blindfold her to get on, and when they were thrown they got up howling with laughter, except for one who suffered concussion. White stockmen tried to tame her, and any travelling horsemen who came through, including two lean prospectors with the hollow eyes of Old Testament prophets.

  ‘Having a go at du Barry’ became station talk for testing valour. ‘Mate, he’s game enough to have a go at du Barry.’

  At last Willy Suttor took me aside and told me to try to sell her after giving any prospective buyers warnings about her nature. ‘You should get fifteen or twenty shillings, I think – twenty shillings for some reason doesn’t sound as extortionate as a pound even though they are the same amount. Not that du Barry,’ he continued with a smile, ‘does not hold a high place in all our affections . . .’

  But I delayed, partly out of pride at getting a fiftieth of what I’d paid. I came close to offloading her to a surveyor who was short of a team. I tried to forget her. There were more important lessons to be learned that year.

  It struck me early that I should approach Edward Bonney, without acquainting him with the insults Fremmel had directed his way. But Fremmel had ill will to us all, and Edward did not.

  Two days after I got back, I went to Edward Bonney’s office, which was, as befitted the elder brother, more spacious than Fred’s, its bookshelf stocked with nearly as many blue leather-bound, gold-leaf entitled stud and stock books as a solicitor’s office might be with red-leathered books of case reports.

  ‘How is that disastrous horse of yours?’ he asked.

  ‘Still disastrous, Mr Bonney,’ I admitted.

  ‘You acknowledge it like a true man, Dickens,’ he assured me. ‘We’ve all been fooled by horses in our day. That’s why we take such delight when it happens to others. Have a seat.’

  I was cheered by his consolation, which was amiable and brotherly.

  I told him I must speak to him because I had been approached by Mr Fremmel.

  ‘Oh,’ he replied. ‘Yes? And what is that priest of Mammon up to?’

  ‘He is convinced you have a letter from Maurice, his nephew. He offered me inducements to get hold of it, together with its postmark. I told him, and it is the truth, that I did n
ot know one way or another if Maurice had written to you or if you are friends. Then he went on to –’

  ‘He told you he could help you in so many ways and he may have even extended the offer to your brother,’ said Edward, finishing my sentence.

  ‘He said he could even thwart my brother Alfred’s plans.’

  ‘The man thinks he’s the Holy Roman Emperor.’

  ‘To have him and du Barry in the one day made it a bleak journey home,’ I admitted.

  ‘But he does have the power to help you,’ Edward declared. ‘And to harm you. This is Lilliput on the Darling, where giant dreams can be impeded by minute men. Where dreams that are vaporous and big can be brought down to earth by little creatures like him, carping on interest payments.’

  I nodded, surprised by the depth of his abomination for Fremmel. ‘I can pay him no heed, but I fear what he might do to my brother,’ I admitted.

  ‘Yes, I understand that,’ he said, thinking. Then he looked me in the eye. ‘I realise I am lucky that you came to me instead of searching for the thing and perhaps finding it and passing it to that slimy being. You don’t boast of loyalty, Plorn, but you possess it.’

  I was flattered. Such a speech directed my way was unaccustomed.

  ‘I am a friend of Maurice, and he is the best of young men, if over-enthusiastic,’ Edward continued. ‘I have confessed my tendencies to you. My friendship with Maurice was above all that. He is now embarked on a journey of honour and compassion – over everything else, it’s that. I wouldn’t like at all for his uncle to know where he is.’

  All very well, I thought, but . . .

  ‘And I know that’s all very well,’ he said as if in echo. ‘Look here, Dickens, I think we may be able to satisfy everyone’s hopes and at the same time protect everyone we would choose to. Have you met Heatherley out in the Cobrilla paddock near Peery Lake?’