by Kim Kelly
‘Good evening, travellers!’ He smiles from ear to ear at me and Cos. ‘What can I do for you, gentlemen?’ he asks with a hearty bark that’s barely left the Cornish coast, and I do believe this might well be a tart shop.
Before I can answer and Cos can stop coughing with misfired laughter, the man peers up the verandah, at Buckley hopping out of the buggy, and his grin widens with recognition. ‘Roo? Is that you? Roo! Well, if it isn’t Roo Buckley!’ he bellows. ‘And what can I do for you, my fine friend, my cobber, my old boot?’ He’s wiping his hands on a short apron and extending one to him.
‘Did I hear you say Roo Buckley?’ A woman appears at the double doors to the saloon with a broomstick, round like the man, she could be his sister but that she has a thick European accent of some kind.
‘Olga!’ Buckley calls her, grinning too. ‘Mick,’ he calls the man, and he clasps him round the shoulder as he shakes his hand. ‘Still here!’
‘Yup,’ the man replies with a wink. ‘Still here. Wouldn’t get rid of us with a packet of Pitt’s.’ Rat poison, I presume.
The proprietress gives Cos and I a big smile and a nod each, before peering at the buggy and seeing the ladies there. ‘Oh! Look! Who is this?’ She grabs Buckley by the arm. ‘Is this the Jones girls? No!’
‘Aye,’ Buckley says. ‘We come up for a little drive. Yous got room for us for the night? Two’d be good – one for the fellers here as well. I’ll sleep out back of the kitchen, if that’s all right.’
An uncertain glance is exchanged between the Mr and Mrs, before the man says: ‘Yup – well, sure! Make yourselves at home!’
A flash of what appears to be dismay in the woman’s eyes, before she lunges at the sisters now alighting onto the verandah too, at the same time screeching instructions through a window: ‘Katie, get the water on!’ and over the roof, ‘Come, Tommy, for the horses!’ and back to the sisters, ‘Come in, come in, oh, if it isn’t the Misses Joneses, goodness to me, well haven’t you two grown – ooooh so very beautiful, beautiful! So long it has been but I would know you anywhere, your poor beautiful girls.’ She presses her hands around their faces as though they are small children arrived for her maternal pleasure – which is now pouring forth in an unstoppable stream: ‘Beautiful! Come in, come in! What a beautiful surprise!’
Berylda laughs as she’s swept along, but the frown is bemused, surprised herself by the reception perhaps, and I wonder if she doesn’t quite recognise this woman making a fuss of her. Arm in arm with her sister, or more probably holding each other up at the end of this long day, Greta sighs: ‘Oh Ryl, but I don’t know that it’s possible to be as worn out as I am. So suddenly – whoosh – I’ve had it now we’re here.’
‘Your horses? Misters?’ A boy has appeared for Jack and Rebel, a sleepy-looking kid with his shirt hanging out, and when my feet hit the dirt they don’t feel altogether there: whoa, that was a long ride indeed. When Cos steps up to the verandah ahead of me, I’m not sure that it’s the boards that creak or his knees.
‘Who?’ I am being introduced by Buckley to Mrs Wheeler, and Mrs Wheeler is hard of hearing: ‘Oh? Mr Wilbarrow and Mr What? Come in, come in.’
We all stamp in through the saloon doors, down a hall, and inside the place is empty; seeming emptier as the lamps are lit. A typical country inn, this is, more accommodation house than pub: one big dining room in the centre, with couches ranged around, and a bar, four or five rooms all leading off it, and a fireplace either end to make sure it’s an oven no matter the season. It is sad that it should be so deserted; my sympathies as contradictory, for those who live here and the forest that waits for them to leave, as the bright checked tablecloths in this empty room. Still, for all this emptiness, it does feel like we’ve interrupted something.
‘Here, here, gentlemen, you can be in this room here.’ Mrs Wheeler is just about shoving us through a door just round from the entrance hall, at the front of the place. ‘It is good, yes? To your liking, sirs?’
‘Yes. Marvellous,’ I reply before looking at it, and when I see it, it is rather marvellous: a small room but quite lavishly furnished, two iron bedsteads with a night stand in between, all grandmotherly frills and flounces and flocked and heavily florid wallpaper – impeccably kept Continental tart shop? With a bed length I’m accustomed to: at least eighteen inches short of comfort.
‘Yeah bonzer.’ Cos collapses on the nearest bed, but Mrs Wheeler doesn’t notice; she has gone back to her hurried cooing and clucking: ‘Oooh, Misses Joneses – come, come with me, over here, here …’ Closing the door behind us.
I hear one of the girls outside, crossing the dining room: ‘Oh Ryl, oh dear.’ Greta. ‘I think I’m going to need to lie down for a little while and wait for my head to stop travelling …’
That’s a good way of putting it. Cos has his own: he writhes and groans on the bed, stretching and moaning. ‘I think my back is broken. Drink, Wilb, get me a drink. Don’t care what it is, just plenty of it. Or I’ll never speak to you again.’
I don’t ask him to promise. I’m sure he is actually in a good deal of pain. My own arse isn’t altogether pleased with me either, and I leave to find us both a bit of something soothing. Across the dining room, Mrs Wheeler is bustling along, opening and slamming doors, and issuing a muffled squawk into one marked PRIVATE, on the far side of the hearth, diagonally opposite, and slamming that, too. I stare at that door blankly for a moment, before I remember why I am standing in this dining room: that’s right – drink.
The little countertop of the bar is just to my left, practically in front of me, and Buckley is already there, in discussion with the publican, over the taps.
‘Couple of them McEgan boys, it were, and one of the Schwartzes,’ Wheeler is saying, filling a glass. ‘They’ve been causing trouble with union talk for a while now. If the unions get a hold in here, this place is gone – the companies’ll just up sticks.’
Buckley shrugs. ‘Man’s got to eat, hasn’t he? Couldn’t feed himself on them wages let alone a family. Someone’s got to stand up.’
‘Rock and hard one, ain’t it, Roo. What do you do? Government fellers come up every so often, have a look, promise things’ll get better, then buzz off again. It’s a crying shame. And it’s tearing the place apart. Fellers flogging the snot out of each other fighting for shifts, and young’uns leaving faster than them McEgans did this arvo.’
That makes my feet move towards the bar, and I can’t help interrupting: ‘You discussing what happened on the Track this afternoon? That chase?’
The publican looks to Buckley, who gives a nod of assent before I’m told: ‘Yup. Some lads here had a bit much fun last night, had a go at blowing up the shed at Carney’s battery – one of the company crushers, up on Bald Hill. Just a bit of a laugh gone wrong, it were.’
‘Oh, right.’ Don’t let on about the dispute behind it then, and fair enough. These chaps don’t know who I am, and wouldn’t care a fig if they did know, but they know I’m not one of them. It’s the same dispute everywhere anyway, in every mine, stock run and crop field: How exactly can you make money without indentured slavery these days? I ask: ‘Did they do any damage?’
‘Nah, not much,’ says Wheeler. ‘Blew the roof clear off the dunny by it, though – blew it to billy-o!’
‘Did they?’ Buckley snorts and raises his glass. ‘Good on ’em.’
‘Did you used to live here too?’ I ask him, and immediately regret doing so as the stonewall stare comes at me for overstepping my place in the scheme. But I am curious – curious about him – have been since he came looking for me along the riverbank this afternoon: he seemed to know the Turon so well.
It’s a long stare before Buckley decides it’s all right to tell me: ‘I’ve lived in a lot of places.’
There’s another look passed between the men, another nod, and Wheeler says: ‘Small towns breed small minds – last one in gets the blame f
or whatever happened Tuesdee a fortnight gone at three o’clock and it’s time to move on. But, let me tell you, fine traveller, as I’d tell anyone, you’ll never meet a better feller than our Buckley here.’
I nod. He left on bad terms and the details are none of anyone’s business. And I don’t have to wonder if it is all that much harder for an ex-convict to shake off the sentence of the past. It must be. It must follow you like a bloodhound, follow you right across this continent, across half the globe from the Old Bailey. It is very much none of my business, but I can’t stop my questions before they come. ‘Were you a miner?’ I ask him.
‘I was,’ he says, shaking his head as his old grim face cracks into a smile, one of forbearance, around teeth as grey and rough hewn as fence posts. He says, ‘Road building, mining. Beast of burden for all trades. Too old nowadays for any of that.’
‘We had some good old days, though, didn’t we, Roo?’ Wheeler says, placing a beer on the counter for me: I’ve played some card right here to get a drink without asking. He says: ‘Boom time!’ and starts laughing, a great big wheeze of a belly laugh for his old friend, sharing some old laugh with him.
‘Aye – boom time, it was, all right.’ Buckley rolls his eyes.
‘Boom time?’ I ask them.
‘Back in ’93, it was,’ Buckley explains: two old men reminiscing. ‘Hill End was taking off again, so we thought. I was doing some ale carting up from Lithgow at the time, that’s how me and Mick got to be cobbers, and I thought I’d go back in mining when the word went round that all these new companies were setting up. Wages can get good when the price gets high. Didn’t happen but and work didn’t last long either – what, couple of years, Mick?’
‘Yup, no more’n that. And me and the wife had waited twenty years for it too! You should have seen this place when we first got here in ’73.’ Wheeler is still there in his great wide grin, gold tooth winking at those better days. ‘It were town then, all right – the things that went on in this place. I couldn’t tell you.’
‘Sit here long enough, he will,’ says Buckley, dry again. ‘Wild Wheeler’s we used to say. Fun times. Game of Heading ’Em every night, music going, dancing all round the coin toss.’
‘Ten thousand we had here in this town – not including Tambaroora neither.’
‘Ten thousand? No! Twelve.’ Buckley ups the stakes, playing along with some old game between them. ‘We had half a million and seventeen at Tambaroora, don’t tell me about a town.’
‘We had the whole world here, and you know it!’ And then Wheeler sighs, to no one in particular: ‘Till they rolled up their tents and went home. Now there’s about eight hundred stayers – maybe a thousand when the work on is good.’ He tells Buckley, not hiding the strain of it: ‘I tell you, Carney’s has turned out not more than ten or twenty ounces a hundred ton for months, nearly a year now. It is hard.’
I can’t imagine how hard. To exist ever at the mercy of –
A door creaks open and I know it is her by the beat of that swift and heavy footfall. Berylda, there she is, emerging from the other side of the room: ‘Gentlemen.’
She has removed her hat. I haven’t seen her whole face unshaded by her hat since last night. I can’t move my eyes from her face as she steps towards us, but she doesn’t look at me. She hasn’t met my eyes since my carry-on over the new Helichrysum by the river; I’ll change that, eventually, when I get a chance to talk to her alone again.
She seems preoccupied at the moment, though, looking about the room, frowning into every corner, something fretful about her, the tight clasp of her hands, and now she is asking: ‘Mr Wheeler?’ turning about on her heel. ‘Mr Wheeler, is my memory playing tricks, or did you once have a calliope here?’
Berylda
‘You mean the old Victory, Miss Jones?’ Mr Wheeler’s eyes light up.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘The steam organ – where is it?’
‘By gee …’ His eyes dull again, with regret. ‘We haven’t cranked her up for a while.’
‘Where is she?’ She? ‘It.’ Please don’t say she is gone. I want the calliope to be here; Greta wants to listen to a tune, to enliven her from the fatigue that’s overrun her. She is sore again now, too, and not only from all our rough travel today, I don’t think; she is sore within, as sore as she was last night – from him – curling around the tenderness, and her discomfort enlivens me. ‘Please. She’s not in this room?’
‘She’s out the back, where she always were,’ Mr Wheeler says cautiously, as one might respond to a question from one who is demented. ‘She were never in here, Miss Jones.’
‘Is that true?’ Memory has played a trick then – I was sure the calliope was here, in this room, like a window in a wall, the mermaids either side of the pipes sitting atop a treasure chest.
‘True.’ He smiles, a kind smile around a gruff pirate voice. ‘She’d blow us out the chimneys if she were ever in here. Never get her in the doors anyway. Come on out back, I’ll show you to her.’
I follow him outside, to the back verandah, where the dusk has gone quickly black, but the shapes of the hilltops all around are visible yet, as velvet on crepe; the tower of a mine poppet head blacker still above the stables.
‘Here y’are, Miss Jones.’ Mr Wheeler lights the way around the side of the hotel, hefting his battered old hurricane lamp up onto a hook for me to see. There, through the swinging shadows, it is, under a lean-to – on carriage wheels. Of course. Not a window but an ornately carved cabinet, all royal blue lacquer and marzipan scrolls, set up on a cart. It’s just like any other calliope one would see at a fair.
‘But it was only five years ago – can my memory be such a muddle?’ I wonder out loud. I am incredulous that I could have misremembered such an obvious thing. ‘I was so sure we were inside, Mother popping the cork on another bottle of ginger beer, and this hurdy-gurdy going …’
‘The way we want to remember happy things is probably the right way to remember them.’ Mr Wilberry’s deep and gentle baritone rolls out of the dark behind me. Go away, I want to shrug him off: I do not want your warmth any more than your platitude. You do not know me, and you are not going to know me. You won’t want to once this excursion is ended, believe me.
I ask Mr Wheeler: ‘Open the doors, please, could you?’
‘Sure, Miss Jones.’ He’s jangling about his keys on their chain, telling me, ‘We did have the music going – most nights, we did, once. Not surprising you remember the music – she does blast it out, so you can hear her all the way to Bathurst, no exaggeration. But she’s always been out here – run off the boiler, you see.’ He points to the rusted hulk of a boiler at the back of the chimney breast beyond the lean-to here, then scratches his head, thinking, before he says: ‘Now, that’s right, when yous were here that time, we had a Christmas fete on out in the yard and she was playing the whole time – egg and spoon races, ice-cream stand, talent competition and all that. I remember your father were very proud of you for something – you’d won a prize? At school? He shouted the bar. I remember that!’
‘He did?’ That catches me round the heart. Oh Papa, did you really?
The cabinet doors fall open and I am caught again. Here are our mermaids: chipped and lustreless. The one on the right is missing her thumb. Their tresses lank, their scales dead. The treasure chest I imagined overflowing with coins and pearls is shut. Like this whole town; I suppose Gulgong would be going the same way. Dying, dulling. Oh, it’s sad.
‘You want me to get the steam up to her for you?’ Mr Wheeler is already stepping behind the cart to do so.
‘No. No, thank you.’ I almost shout it. No. I don’t want Greta to hear this now, nor see it. This ruin. Not tonight. Not ever at all.
‘Don’t you dare start that thing up. No!’ Mrs Wheeler bursts from the kitchen door onto the verandah to put an end to the question, shaking her finger at her husband and shrieking at hi
m: ‘Don’t you touch that thing, Michael!’ She slams the doors of the calliope closed again.
Mr Wheeler opens his mouth: ‘We were only look –’
‘No,’ she cuts him off, chopping the air with her hand and taking me by the arm. ‘That thing, it has bad spirits in it. I hate it. Waaa waaaa waaaaa, it moans. It has nearly caused many divorces between us. Ever since he brought her up the Track. You know how many times I wish she had gone over the edge? Waaaa waaaaa waaaaa for every song. What’s wrong with a piano and a normal person singing a normal song?’ Mrs Wheeler is not normal: she can talk underwater, and hold seventeen conversations at once, turning back to her husband again now before she pulls me along, warning him: ‘Michael, you start that thing, I go back to Vilna.’
I go back to Vilna . . . The words send me my mother’s laughter, hurdy-gurdy heady under this very verandah, her arm in mine. Where is Vilna? I had asked her, on that summer night five years ago. Lithuania, darling, I think – Harry, Harry? Where’s Vilna? she called to Papa. Lithuania or is it Russia? she asked him. Lithuania, it is, but my memory stops there at Papa’s smile as he turned to us: What did you ask me, my dear chickadee? The jolly sound of Mother’s wedding rings clanking on a door handle with his sweet silly name for her: chickadee. Her name was Rosemary. Harry and Rosemary Jones, my perfect parents, stepping through some other, perfect dream. Too perfect.
