The Dickens Boy

by Tom Keneally

  I got the printed matter together, including newspapers from Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide from Fred’s office – he liked newsprint – as well as Australasian Sketch and a recent copy of the guvnor’s mag, All the Year Round. I left them all in the hallway for Rutherford, the literate desperado I had not yet met.

  Since Dr Pearson had left the homestead, I took the opportunity to go out onto the veranda and watch the scene, if scene it were, from there. I noticed that a husky man in a kangaroo-skin jacket and cavalry pants like Dr Pearson’s carrying an elegant carbine was on casual guard at the homestead’s pasture gate. Perhaps a hundred paces from where I stood, a man I presumed to be Rutherford was supervising a number of his armed confederates, who were escorting members of Momba village – including Willy Sutton, the Larkins, the drover Clough and others – into a knot of hostages. No one looked scared. In fact the chief visible emotion was amusement. Two of the gang emerged from one of the drovers’ huts with a sack, presumably containing hard-won valuables. They had also heaped what they desired from Willy’s stock – a pile of tobacco, cocky’s joy, a brandy flagon, a few notebooks and ink, and three saddles with their accompanying tack – on the veranda of the store.

  I felt a certain anger. It was not as if drovers like Clough had limitless possessions, and the cost of wagon transport from Cobar meant they could certainly not be cheaply replaced. Fred Bonney appeared from the direction of the darks’ camp, reassuring his people and speaking to Dr Pearson and the man I supposed to be Rutherford. Dr Pearson was standing to one side with a tall Aboriginal member of his group, who laughed frankly whenever anyone in the crowd showed any sign of discomfort. Perhaps he was pleased to see white people incommoded, given some of the things his people had suffered at white hands. His occasional amusement seemed to annoy Dr Pearson, who sent him off, probably to keep an eye on the darks’ camp.

  Rutherford, Dr Pearson and two of their lieutenants, young and bushy-bearded, started shepherding the white population of Momba towards the homestead. I stood by and watched them pass me on the veranda. As they did, Fred called me loudly, saying, ‘You had better join us too, Mr Simpson.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I replied promptly, and it was apparent to me that Fred had signalled my change of name to the group. Clough said to Rutherford, ‘It wouldn’t be happening like this, mate, if I’d got to my rifle under the bed.’

  Rutherford, carbine in the angle of his left arm and a gun at his waist, said in a robust and amused native-born accent, ‘It’s not your rifle anymore, son, but you can acquire another, eh? And next time we’re in the area, I’ll drop you a line so you’ll be ready for me.’

  We were all taken into the sitting room where, under the watchful gaze of Dr Pearson and Rutherford, we disposed ourselves around the room. The station hands were reluctant to sit on the good furniture and many slid to the floor or to their haunches, then the younger of the gang brought in some extra chairs from the dining room for the two ladies.

  When everyone was settled, Dr Pearson addressed us.

  ‘My name is Dr Pearson and I am the son of a Mexican woman and a Yankee Irishman,’ he announced in a voice entirely from the environs of Plymouth. ‘I was trained to doctor horses in the Twenty-Seventh Imperial Guards of Russian hussars. My associate is Mr Charlie Rutherford, and my two lieutenants Mr Blacker and Mr Thompson. We will all remain in this room together till first light tomorrow, while my associates assess our needs against your possessions.’

  ‘Then you will depart with all we own,’ cried Tom Larkin, ‘and consider yourselves just men.’

  Dr Pearson sighed. ‘My friend, I would advise against such outbursts. We all know what is happening, and we don’t need it defined. But I hope that when you measure what we leave, as against what we take, you may think more kindly of us than the Angles did of the Danes. Isn’t that so, Mr Rutherford?’

  ‘Our needs are modest, ladies and gentlemen,’ confirmed Mr Rutherford from the other end of the room. ‘And besides, in most towns shopkeepers are only too anxious to help us out. I spent the early hours of the day with your shopkeeper, Mr Suttor, and found him a trump and an utterly amiable chap.’

  ‘Speaking of amiability,’ said Dr Pearson, ‘we have a literal day to occupy ourselves. Thank God for the piano here. The two ladies in this room will be treated with every courtesy and this evening will be allowed to retire to one of the bedrooms under guard. Until then, I must depend upon you to entertain us and yourselves. Who has a favourite song? A comic recitation perhaps? Even a solemn one, if you must, as long as it doesn’t take too long.’

  As we captives looked at each other questioningly, Rutherford continued the instructions. ‘We are not hostile to a recitation of Psalms, if you must, for some of them are quite beautiful, as I learned from my mama. But please do not think that by reciting the Psalms you will improve the doctor or myself because the two of us are all square with the deity, who likes our spirit and is willing as a father to forgive us our childlike crimes which hold no parity with the crimes of our betters. So, entertainers, come forward.’

  When there was no response, Dr Pearson smiled at Rutherford. ‘Isn’t this always the way with people?’ he said. ‘It’s as if they don’t believe in our sincerity. A man who was trusted by tsars and tsarinas, in my case, and a consummate gentleman of the bush in yours, Mr Rutherford. As always I must call on you to start things off.’ He now changed himself to a recitative music hall mode. ‘And so, ladies and gentlemen, I present my friend, the incomparable intellect from the inkiest interstices of the bush, the brave and battling, bold and unboastful behemoth of boisterous and bosky beatitudes, Mr Charlie Rutherford. And what is it to be today, Charlie – a Mayhew monologue, or a verse by Robert Burns? But please, please, not that saucy devil Lord Rochester! Perhaps that immortal verse “The Pig”? Or “Whisky in the Jar” – recited or sung?’

  ‘No, Doctor,’ said Rutherford, ‘today I intend to recite from The Pickwick Papers.’

  Everyone in the room tried not to look at me, but did, as if now I was definitely given away.

  ‘I begin, Dr Pearson, with the oft-quoted and universally cherished speech of the prosecuting Sergeant Buzfuz against Mr Pickwick in the case of Mrs Bardell versus Pickwick, she having sued that gentleman for breach of promise.’

  He composed himself and began in his idea of a fustian British accent.

  The plaintiff, gentlemen, the plaintiff is a widow; yes, gentlemen, a widow. The late Mr Bardell, after enjoying, for many years, the esteem and confidence of his sovereign, as one of the guardians of his royal revenues, glided almost imperceptibly from the world, to seek elsewhere for that repose and peace which a custom-house can never afford.

  Some time before his death, he had stamped his likeness upon a little boy.

  There were a few tentative laughs around the room.

  With this little boy, the only pledge of her departed excise man, Mrs Bardell shrank from the world, and courted the retirement and tranquillity of Goswell Street; and here she placed in her front parlour window a written placard, bearing this inscription – ‘Apartments furnished for a single gentleman. Inquire within.’

  ‘Apartments furnished for a single gentleman!’ Mrs Bardell’s opinions of the opposite sex, gentlemen, were derived from a long contemplation of the inestimable qualities of her lost husband . . . ‘Mr Bardell,’ said the widow. ‘Mr Bardell was a man of honour, Mr Bardell was a man of his word, Mr Bardell was no deceiver, Mr Bardell was once a single gentleman himself; to single gentleman I looked for protection, for assistance, for comfort, and for consolation; in single gentlemen I shall perpetually see something to remind me of what Mr Bardell was when he first won my young and untried affections; to a single gentleman, then, shall my lodgings be let.’

  I could see that some of the drovers had become quite engrossed in Rutherford’s flawless and practised recitation.

  Before the bill had been in the parlour window three days – three days, gentlemen – a being, erect upon two
legs, and bearing all the outward resemblance of a man, and not of a monster, knocked on the door of Mrs Bardell’s house. He enquired within – he took the lodgings; and on the very next day he entered into possession of them. This man was Pickwick – Pickwick, the defendant.

  Rutherford’s gifts were such that no one was paying me any attention now. They were engrossed in the drama of Sergeant Buzfuz’s oratory. But the most enthusiastic supporters of Rutherford were his own bushranger crew and, above all, the doctor himself. Rutherford continued into Buzfuz’s examination of Pickwick’s letters to Mrs Bardell.

  They are covert, sly, underhanded communications – letters which must be viewed with a cautious or suspicious eye – letters that were evidently intended at the time, by Mr Pickwick, to mislead and delude any third parties into whose hands they might fall. Let me read the first: ‘Garraways, twelve o’clock. Dear Mrs B – Chops and tomato sauce. Yours, PICKWICK.’ Gentlemen, what does this mean? Chops and tomato sauce. Yours, Pickwick! Chops! Gracious heavens! And tomato sauce! Gentlemen, is the happiness of a sensitive and confiding female to be trifled away, by such shallow artifices as these?

  I saw Mrs Larkin look at her husband and laugh despite herself, shaking her head. I didn’t hear the end of the speech as recited by Rutherford, daydreaming instead of the fact that my father’s hand gave even Australian outlaws the chance to shine before their fellow beings.

  The concluding applause startled me back to the present as Dr Pearson stood up and said, ‘I thank my brother in arms, Rutherford, for breaking the ice amongst us, ladies and gentlemen, and for demonstrating the good intentions of those who presume to keep you captive for a mere day. What brave soul will follow with song or utterance? Please don’t be shy . . .’

  Already a young stockman called Tallis was rising, cheered on by his mates. The doctor asked for his name and when that was given asked him if he had something suitable for the ladies for – so the doctor said – he was aware of the rough humour of men of the bush. On that proviso, Tallis sang a complaint song called ‘Angelina Was Always Fond of Soldiers’ with a snarl on his face. It was one of those songs for which frowning and disgruntlement and a harsh voice were better than being a smiling tenor. ‘Oh! Angelina was always fond of soldiers,/When I think on’t, I can’t restrain my tears./She was once so very kind, but I’ve lost my peace of mind,/Since the visit of the Belgium Volunteers, tum, tum.’

  Once the applause died, Dr Pearson reminded the company that there was a piano in the room and how celestial it would be to hear the gallant Tallis accompanied. I saw Tom Larkin urge his wife forward, willing her to shine even if he disapproved of the company. She did so, sitting at the piano and performing a very creditable version of ‘Für Elise’. Through all this I kept my obscure position on the floor, my back against the wall, knees up level with my cheeks. Then one of the drovers said he was a poor hand at the piano but he had a squeezebox in his hut ‘if it hain’t been stole’ and if one of the doctor’s friends would accompany him he would bring it back and perform.

  In the meantime, comic and not so comic recitations abounded. Mathews’ ‘Patter versus Clatter’ and ‘Alone I Did It’, and then the beautiful Mrs Larkin sang and played ‘Who Is Sylvia?’ The squeezebox man returned and a prospective singer came forward and conferred with the piano and the concertina over a song that perhaps they all knew, and Mrs Larkin frowned but committed herself to the task, and soon we heard a fine rendition of ‘When the Corn Is Waving, Annie Dear’. The young lieutenants left the sitting room as Willy Suttor performed ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’, and returned with a great kettle of black tea and a canister of sugar, and all we captives took grateful part before returning to the midst of the floor-sitting men. Later, as noon rolled around, they took the cook out to the kitchen to make a mass of mutton sandwiches. In between items of entertainment, the captives chattered about remembering the first time they’d heard that song, or when their auntie had taken them to the fabled Eagle in City Road, London, to see Charlie Mathews. Dr Pearson went so far as to admit that his mother had been a dancer in the music halls of Texas, and we could see people nodding and reflecting on his non-Texas accent.

  There were special rounds of applause for the gifted Mrs Larkin. Tom, sensibly enough, seemed gratified that within the population of the station she had become a musical legend and sat at an apex of refinement.

  After lunch the women were escorted to the homestead outhouses, and the male captives were permitted to urinate amongst the gums and pepper trees in the direction of the creek behind the homestead. All seemed quiet except for a normal sudden outcry or incantatory-sounding speech of a woman in the Paakantji tongue, calling out to a child or recalcitrant man. As we buttoned ourselves and returned inside, a number of the station men took a hushed glee in calling me Mr Simpson.

  32

  After returning to the sitting room after lunch, we were required to stand up and defeat drowsiness by playing a game proposed by Dr Pearson. ‘To play this game,’ he told us without irony, ‘you must first stand honestly, then give up and sit down when you can no longer think of a town. Remember, you are on your honour. We will play one game devoted to the cities and towns of the old country, and one game devoted to those of the Antipodes. The last one standing is the winner of the game.’

  The game involved Pearson calling out ‘A’, at which if we knew an Australian town or city that began with that letter, we clapped our hands vigorously above our heads to increase circulation and signify our cleverness. Each clapper was asked what town he had in mind, and remained standing if the answer was right. But when Pearson called a letter for which we could not think of an answer, we had to sit down defeated. ‘On your honour as Britons,’ he warned us again. And so we began, and the whole room obviously got ‘Adelaide’, and then ‘Brisbane’, clap, and the guesses became diffuse at ‘C’ – Cabramatta, Caloundra, Cumbalong, Clovelly, Coburg, Cootamundra, Cobar, of course, Coopernook. It was easy to cheat if you were not the first asked, but we were on our honour as Britons, after all. Dungog, Dunedoo. It was quite a pleasant if temporary release from tension to clap our hands above our heads. At ‘E’, some of the players began to sit, while the mind raced ahead to speculate whether there was any town or city in the colonies beginning with ‘Z’. In any case, I speculated that if I was still in the game by ‘W’, I knew of a Wallerawang, an inevitable Wellington, a Warrabri, and a Wollongong.

  A considerable number of us were still standing by ‘O’, but a lot were defeated by that letter and sat. Two of the station hands near me got into an argument when the town nominated by one of them was ‘Ongerwrong.’

  ‘Where in the name of God is Ongerwrong?’

  ‘It’s in Western Australia, mate,’ came the reply.

  ‘That’s bloody bulldust and you know it.’

  ‘So, have you ever been to Western Australia?’

  ‘I haven’t, but neither have you. And if there weren’t ladies present I’d call you a bloody liar.’

  ‘And if there weren’t ladies present, you mongrel, I would be grossly offended to the limit of uttering bloody curses at you, and calling you a blackguard, and an insulting wretch, as you are – and one who has cheated at euchre as all your mates bloody well know!’

  Charlie Rutherford whistled and called for peace before Dr Pearson said, ‘This is not an arena for hostility.’

  But a bandit whose chief tools of detention were fun and games lacked the authority to cut into the dispute as the accusing stockman took the other one by the shirt. The champion of Ongerwrong tore himself loose and shot out an arm at the other man, who staggered back. Having myself bowed out at ‘O’ I felt shamed by this petty behaviour – in the end, it was no matter whether Ongerwrong was a functioning township or a fiction. But these men were unduly exposing themselves and possibly their fear to the bushrangers and disgracing the company of their fellow captives. And there were ladies present – Mrs Larkin and Mrs Gavan.

  Since I was so much closer to th
e two men than Fred or Edward, I rose to make peace and suggest they both disqualify themselves from the game.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ I said, placing a hand on the shoulder of the one who had nominated Ongerwrong. ‘Let’s not betray ourselves in front of our guests.’

  Sadly, the man accused of being a euchre thief, a large accusation amongst bush folk with whom euchre was the supreme game, again attacked the other man’s shoulder, who was sent stumbling into me, and cried, ‘My Christ, sorry, Mr Dickens.’

  A silence followed in which a solitary magpie could be heard singing a long song that seemed to say, ‘We’re for it now.’

  ‘Did you say “Dickens”?’ asked Dr Pearson.

  ‘My mistake, Doctor,’ said the man who’d barrelled into me.

  ‘Isn’t his name “Simpson”?’ asked Rutherford.

  I could see Fred Bonney half-rising to intervene, but unsure about exactly how to do so.

  ‘Why do you call him “Dickens”? We’re very interested in that name,’ asked Rutherford.

  ‘I’m sure you are,’ declared Fred Bonney. ‘But may I warn you, at the moment the authorities in New South Wales seek your arrest. If you do any wrong to Mr Dickens, or even offer him insult, you will bring the entire world down upon your neck.’

  None of the gang seemed to quaver at this warning. Rutherford said to me calmly, ‘Are you Dickens, then? Are you the son we have heard rumours of?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ I confirmed, suddenly feeling no fear. ‘It was entirely my idea to conceal who I was.’

  ‘Mr Rutherford and I must speak to you,’ Pearson told me sternly, and gave instructions to the two junior bushrangers to hold the crowd securely while I left with them.