by Mark O'Flynn
‘Byron is a chicken,’ he would say, shaking the tree, making it sway. ‘Even Joshua climbed higher than you.’
When Ann went inside he would lose interest in his acrimony and we would climb down to spend the afternoon discussing all the important things of the town, none of which I can remember now. All I can recall is the feeling that, for the moment, he was returned to me, he had come back from the edge, and the world was whole.
A word about Barnaby Clout. Sergeant Brownrig’s deputy was a frightening figure. Feared from Lawson to Mount Victoria, he was a tall man with a square, protruding jaw, an aquiline nose, giant’s hands and alarming hair. It was whispered on the street that he’d once had a wife who died tragically young and he had been taking out his grief on the town ever since. Some people said she died just to get away from him. However, this didn’t make the heartless larrikins of the town feel sorry for him. It hadn’t taken long for his name to transform, in the argot of the schoolyard, from Barnaby Clout to Buggery Clout. We took terrified delight in poking mullock at him from a distance then running as fast as bare feet could run. If ever he caught a wild boy during his rounds of the street, he would crack the boy’s head with his knuckles, like a landlord knocking on a door for overdue rent. If he started after us we would flee in fearful exhilaration, ducking down the alleyways between wooden storefronts. He would only have to glare at us.
Constable Clout was like an Irish wolfhound. He ruled the streets of Katoomba, and it wasn’t just the larrikins, like Clancy and me, who were afraid of him. Just down the eastern hill from the Carrington was Hudson’s Gully. Its sides were so steep it was more like a crater. People said it was a terrible place to be after dark because, according to rumour, Clout had a lair there. The town’s shopkeepers frequently gave him little gifts, perhaps to ensure his protection, or else to get him to leave them alone. Clancy believed that Clout kept these gifts down in his lair, but wasn’t foolhardy enough to find out. If the streets were peaceful then Sergeant Brownrig was happy to let Clout do things his way. Clout would move people on whom he felt were loitering without purpose. He made Wei Sing move his vegetable cart on from the front of Pym’s dispensary. Wei Sing moved it down the hill a way and Clout made him move it on again.
Once when he was returning Clancy to her after some misdemeanour he questioned, in a loud voice, why the spinster Ann Gorman (she had dropped the Wilson) was working for the Chinaman.
‘Because it is work,’ she answered, ‘and work is what puts food in our bellies.’ Ann was happy with the hours for which Wei Sing employed her. Each morning she would walk to McRae’s paddock at the bottom of Neale Street and help the Chinaman pick the vegetables and load them into his barrow. The largest market garden was at Blackheath, and she would ride there with Wei Sing on his cart. She washed the spuds, carrots, turnips and whatever else was in season, then arranged them in the barrow, just so, with their ends pointing down and the colours contrasting like a lorikeet’s plumage. It was rigorous but enjoyable labour, she told us. No one bothered her. She didn’t feel she had to justify herself to the likes of Buggery Clout.
Clout rapped Clancy’s skull with his knuckles and stared at me as if to say, You will be next. ‘But not the proper work for a white woman,’ said Clout. ‘A spinster woman with a wild boy for a son.’ Clancy squirmed in his grip.
‘What work,’ said Ann uneasily, ‘can a woman without a husband get? I must take what comes. My spinsterhood or otherwise is no concern of yours.’
‘That may be so,’ said Buggery Clout, looking her over, ‘but it needs to be remembered that this reflects on all of us. A white woman working for a Chinky Chonk does not look well. Perhaps I shall have words with that fellow.’
‘He does no harm.’
‘We shall see.’ He released Clancy as if he were a moth. I followed Clancy inside.
All Buggery Clout had to do was appear. His presence restored order and instilled fear, which were one and the same. Wei Sing the Chinaman and Clancy, even though they didn’t approve of each other, had at least one thing in common: they both knew better than to argue the toss with Buggery Clout. For me it was enough to picture him looking in my direction: You’re next.
One day towards the end of our schooling, when we were just getting custards on our nose and cheeks, much to our humiliation, a heavy-footed woman whom we had once known as Mary Jansen marched into the schoolhouse, interrupting Miss Husband’s indoctrination of us. She was furious. Her chins shook and wobbled. It was disturbing to think she had possibly changed the rags about my blurter.
‘Miss Husband, I really must protest. One of these despicable children has injured my Joshua.’ She scratched her elbow furiously; the other end of her arm, that is her fist, she kept tightly clenched. We looked at Joshua, who was partly hidden behind her. His face was as red as a blushing moon and it was clear he was distressed by these proceedings.
‘What has happened, Mrs Morgan?’ asked Miss Husband.
‘Someone here has bitten my Joshua on the arm. And I know who it is.’ Her eyes roved around the classroom and came to rest on Clancy. Her heaving bosom was like a vat of boiling oil about to be poured on him.
‘Class.’ Miss Husband turned her white eyes upon us. Her spectacles reflected the icy light from the windows. ‘Which one of you children has bitten Joshua?’
No one raised their hand. Bunty Garbutt began to cry. No one had anything against Joshua, apart from the fact that he was a snivelling fizgig who preferred to befriend people like Angus Lovel.
Mary Morgan said, ‘If any of you try to bite my Joshua again I shall have the constable down on you as quick as a flash.’ Joshua squirmed. Our mouths gaped at her ferocity. She went on. ‘I have given my Joshua a rock to keep in his pocket and if any of you tries to bite him again I have instructed him to hit you on the bonce with it.’ Once more she glared at Clancy.
‘Jolly good,’ said Miss Husband, wondering, I suspect, if she should thrash someone for good measure.
Mary Morgan spun on her heel and left the schoolhouse. Miss Husband followed, putting out the embers, so to speak. Joshua took his seat and everyone clustered around him.
‘What did you tell her I did it for?’ Clancy hissed.
Joshua shrugged a single shoulder. It was all he could do in the face of this attention.
‘Give us a look, Joshua, give us a look,’ said Angus Lovel.
Joshua shook his head.
‘Go on, Josh, give us a look,’ said Violet Kefford.
‘Give us a look,’ said Clancy, ‘or I’ll take your rock and bang you on the bonce with it.’
Joshua gingerly rolled up the sleeve of his shirt. He winced as he did so, and when we saw his forearm everyone was silenced. It was more than a bruise, it was a gouge. Black and purple and yellow about the edges, in the middle was a distinct set of teeth marks, freshly scabbed, like the first, incomplete bite of an apple.
‘I did not do that,’ said Clancy. I believed him. It looked infected and painful.
‘No,’ replied Joshua.
‘Was it a dog?’ asked Bunty Garbutt.
‘No.’
‘It must of bin a dog.’
‘No.’
We ran back to our seats when we heard Miss Husband returning. Everyone was aware of the presence of her strap on top of the blackboard. We also knew that she was suffering from her well-publicised Scarlatti fever, which made her moods extreme and unpredictable. Everyone paid heed to her lesson and there was a studious quiet in the room that Miss Husband didn’t seem to understand but found surprisingly gratifying. Perhaps these children weren’t as dim as she had believed.
After school we took Joshua aside and quizzed him some more. By we, I mean Clancy and me. Violet Kefford was also there, out of grisly curiosity. We went behind the shed with the stinky bucket.
‘Why did you tell her that I give you that bite?’ demanded Clancy.
‘Well, you give me a Chinese burn.’
‘So?’
‘Anyway
, how do you know I did?’ asked Joshua.
‘The way she looked at me. She didn’t look at nobody else that way.’
‘Yes, Joshua, why?’ I asked.
‘Because I ain’t afraid of Clancy.’
‘Was it Angus Lovel?’
‘No.’
‘Give us another look.’
The bruise was a bottler. Which one of us was it? Joshua wouldn’t say. Instead he said, ‘My father thinks it’s a sign.’
Clancy took the rock from Joshua’s pocket and threw it away. ‘That is a sign, Joshua.’
Still he wouldn’t say. Clancy threatened Joshua with another Chinese burn, taught to him by a real Chinaman. When Joshua spoke again, his voice trembled. ‘If I tell you, you have to promise never to tell no one I did.’
Clancy promised.
‘You have to promise to keep the others from asking me, for I shan’t tell them. You will be the only ones.’
Violet promised. I glanced at her and thought I saw something there I have never seen so clearly in another person. She was listening with all her ears. Something I have since learned is called empathy. She caught my eye without the hint of a smile.
‘Because he said he’d come back and finish the job if I told anyone.’ Joshua’s eyes would not meet ours.
‘Finish the job?’ Clancy asked.
‘Who was it, Joshua?’
‘Do you swear?’
I promised.
He began to cry. ‘I thought he was going to chaw my arm off.’
‘Who was it?’
‘Buggery Clout.’ Joshua’s voice cracked.
‘Why did he do it, Joshua?’ I asked. ‘What did you do?’
‘I did nothing.’
‘You must of done something.’
‘I did nothing.’
‘Did you throw a stone at his horse?’
‘No!’
‘Did you go down to Hudson’s Gully?’
‘No. I think I might of said a bad word. A dirty word.’
‘What word?’ Clancy wanted to know.
‘It’s all right, Joshua,’ Violet said. ‘We won’t tell.’
‘What word?’
Shuddering, Joshua said, ‘Wife.’
Violet didn’t put out her finger to touch the bite. It looked too raw. While Joshua wiped his eyes with his sleeve, the very sun seemed to ice over with the sudden chill that fell on us.
Far too regularly for her liking, Fisher came to try to lure Ann back to his flock. Sometimes he would arrive with his wives, whom he would leave out in the road, but over that year of 1888 he came increasingly on his own. If anyone was going to save her soul it was him, and he evidently thought hers a soul worth saving. More often than not, Ann sent him packing, usually with the unchristian strop of her tongue, but sometimes with her broom and – if he made her really cranky – her broom handle. Although once when we came home (it was like my second home), they were perched over the teapot having a regular chinwag about the good old days. When we came in, Ann jumped to her feet, flustered. She shook herself like a dog just waking up and, stammering, told Fisher he had to go. She’d been caught off-guard. Looking thwarted, Fisher gave us a sour glare, let it linger on Clancy, then shuffled out into the sunlight.
‘Thank you, boys,’ she said.
‘For what?’
‘For coming home when you did. Fisher was on his fourth cup of tea, the dirty wheedler.’
I always liked my Aunt Ann. I picture her house in sunshine, and I think she must have liked me – although she didn’t always show it – because of the calming influence she thought I had on Clancy. He seemed to roam less distantly when I was there, though if I was a stabilising influence then Clancy was beginning to regard me as a dull one.
Buggery Clout continued to call on Ann with disturbing regularity. As with Fisher, Ann sent him off, but with decreasing diplomacy; looking back now, I think she was trying to dilute any retaliatory attention he might be tempted to lay on us. I could see these were awkward moments for her – how to be polite when she was disinclined to. If Ann saw a spade she called it a bloody spade, and did not care two hoots how anyone else saw it.
When Buggery came, Clancy and I opened our schoolbooks and sat quietly, hoping he would soon go away.
‘They give the impression of being good little students,’ he said one day as he stood in Ann’s kitchen, his head almost touching the ceiling. The remains of our dodger still sat on the table.
Ann confirmed our lemon-faced studiousness, her arms folded into a fence.
‘Little would we know, though,’ Clout added, ‘what goes on in the minds of urchins.’ He moved about the room, picking up little objects that took his fancy: a cracked eggcup, a thimble strayed from the sewing basket. Ann didn’t have a lot. He studied them absent-mindedly, talking about the recent vagaries of the weather, before replacing them with an attitude of precision. I don’t know if it was Ann’s feeling too, but it was certainly mine, to want to wash the things he’d touched as soon as he was gone.
‘He looks as though butter wouldn’t melt on his scone,’ Clout said of Clancy, ruffling his hair. Flies buzzed in the room. ‘And what are you learning there, young Brutus?’ he asked me.
‘Conjunctions,’ I said quickly, my heart beating faster.
‘Hmph,’ grunted Clout, ‘not the good Lord Byron then?’
At one point he pulled his fob watch from the pocket of his uniform, shook it, wound it, held it to his great ear. Then, astonishingly, he leaned over my shoulder to show me the watch cupped in his fingers. ‘What time would you make that?’
I saw that the watch had no hour or minute hand, only the second hand marching steadily around the dial. For some reason this sent a shudder down my spine.
‘Time you were elsewhere, eh Brutus?’
‘Byron’s not going anywhere,’ said Ann.
But I dearly wanted to go.
‘But he lives in the valley, doesn’t he? It’ll soon be getting dark.’
‘He can stay the night here if he wants. And his name is Byron, not Brutus.’
‘Your point is well made,’ said Clout.
‘What point?’
‘The point about his name.’
There was a sudden rap at the door and Clancy jumped up, knocking the table. We heard his words from the doorway at the other end of the hall. ‘She says you can go bark up a gum tree.’
‘Don’t be insolent,’ came Fisher’s voice.
‘Clancy,’ Ann called, groaning under her breath.
‘What?’
‘Invite Reverend Fisher in. Come in, James. Come in.’ Her voice lilted gaily up the wooden corridor. Ever the pragmatist, she wanted Fisher to ease the pressure of Clout’s presence. She wanted witnesses.
Fisher came into the room looking slightly startled, whiskers awry, as if he had just seen a slightly distasteful miracle, or the wind had roughed him up a little. He looked at Clout. Clout looked at him. I buried my head in my book, which I suddenly noticed was upside down.
They greeted each other coolly.
‘Reverend Fisher.’
‘Constable.’
They both stared at Ann. Clancy kept glancing from one to the other, like a dog knowing someone had a biscuit.
‘And your business here, Reverend?’ prompted Clout.
‘I am here on church business.’
‘Surely no one is bothering the good Father on such a beautiful day?’
‘That remains to be seen. And yours?’
‘I am here to uphold the law. To keep, as they say, the peace.’
‘There is no peace here needs to be kept,’ snapped Ann. ‘And Barnaby, it’s nobody’s business but mine if there is. You gentlemen are like —’ But what she thought they were like she didn’t elaborate upon, as there was another knock, this time at the open back door. Who should be standing there but the taciturn figure of Wei Sing.
‘And what are you doing here?’ growled the constable.
For answer, Wei Sing held up
by their scalps a bunch of eight or nine onions like a posy of shrunken heads from Africa. We all stared at them. Clout looked from Wei Sing to Fisher. Wei Sing looked from Fisher to Clout. Fisher looked from Clout to the Chinaman. Clancy and I looked at each other. We all looked at Ann. Suddenly Clancy made a fart noise and said, ‘Oh Byron, did you have to do that?’ but no one laughed. I could suddenly see that being in a room with these three men who despised him, Clancy was in his element, fully alert and alive, whereas I felt like a moth behind glass. Clout looked like a creature that, at any instant, was about to kill all the chickens in the chicken coop. Fisher crossed himself with an exaggerated gesture.
‘As you can see, gentlemen,’ Ann said, ‘the law does not need upholding. My soul does not need rescuing. It has been kind of you to call, but I would suggest you now take your business elsewhere. These boys need to wash.’ Then, turning to the Chinaman and taking his onions, she added, ‘Thank you, Wei Sing, these will be just right for my soup.’
Wei Sing said, ‘Good-o, missy,’ and backpedalled down the steps.
Neither Clout nor Fisher knew what to say. Neither wanted to be the first to leave. Eventually they edged each other towards the door, from where they took their exit. Fisher didn’t have a hat to tip. Instead he tipped his whiskers. We watched them march, shoulder to shoulder, down the path to the road. The path wasn’t wide enough for the two of them. Buggery Clout strode off in one direction, while Fisher glanced about like a bird with too many choices, before scuttling off in the other. Perhaps he had forgotten where he had left his wives.
Indoors, Clancy turned to me with a look of scathing disappointment and spat, ‘Conjunctions.’
Finally Ann laughed and kissed us both. Clancy wiped his cheek.
EIGHT
While Miss Husband continued to beat her lessons into us, the mine grew larger and more profitable. To expand his business enterprise, Mr John Britty North merged the interests he had in two mines to form the Australian Kerosene Oil and Mineral Company. He planned to link the cuts on either side of Narrow Neck with a further series of tunnels. The Australian Kerosene Oil and Mineral Company was an ambitious undertaking. He was able to claw out eighty tons of coal a day, with the labour of the miners and some ingenious engineering, namely the perpetual cable which hauled the coal up the Incline. The aerial tramway across the valley had also been a good idea, but unfortunately it had collapsed. So, not so good. However, he had prevailed.
