A Prayer for Blue Delaney

by Kirsty Murray

  ‘Didn’t fancy sleeping on the ground, eh? You frightened of snakes or something? A real Irishman.’

  ‘Irishmen aren’t afraid of snakes,’ said Colm.

  ‘There’s no snakes in Ireland to be afraid of,’ said Bill, shaking his head and pouring tea from the billy into a tin cup. ‘Saint Patrick drove them out, you should know that, if you’re Irish, that is.’

  Colm folded his arms across his chest. He wanted to say of course he was Irish, but he didn’t really know if he had been born in Ireland or England.

  ‘You don’t know about being Irish, either,’ said Colm.

  Bill laughed. ‘I know a bit. I was born there.’

  Then he stood up, tin cup in hand, and recited.

  ‘I write it out in a verse -

  MacDonagh and MacBride

  And Connolly and Pearse

  Now and in time to be,

  Wherever green is worn,

  Are changed, changed utterly:

  A terrible beauty is born.’

  ‘Are those all Irish men? What did they do?’

  ‘They died for the sake of a terrible beauty.’

  ‘Something can’t be terrible and beautiful at the same time,’ said Colm.

  ‘Ireland can,’ replied Bill. He handed Colm a tin plate with a big slice of damper and a can of golden syrup. ‘Here you go, wrap your chops around that lot.’

  Colm wanted to refuse, but he was hungry and it smelt too delicious. He took the plate, puzzling over the words of the poem, the tangle of names and ideas.

  ‘And speaking of "can’t" - you can’t go on being afraid of everything,’ said Bill, as Colm licked syrup from his fingers.

  ‘I’m not afraid. I just don’t want to sleep outside and I don’t like guns,’ said Colm.

  He fed the rest of his damper to Rusty and stared out into the scrub, waiting for Bill to argue with him. But the old man was in no hurry to say anything. He began rolling his supply of cigarettes for the day. As he finished each one, he carefully folded down the end of the cigarette and put it into his tobacco tin.

  ‘I was a couple of years older than you when my mam died. I thought the ground was going to swallow me up, but it didn’t. That was nigh on sixty years ago.’

  ‘Is that why you feel sorry for me? Because you were an orphan too? You don’t have to help me. I’m not like you,’ said Colm.

  ‘No, I don’t doubt that,’ said Bill wryly. He lit up one of his cigarettes and coughed as he inhaled.

  ‘I want to tell you a little story, Sonny Jim. About the Great War. Maybe your grandads fought in that war. We called it "the war to end all wars".’ He took another puff of his cigarette and shook his head. ‘I was in France, fighting in the trenches. Bloody terrible place, it was. We’d have these skirmishes, fighting for a little piece of ground, and when enough of us had been slaughtered they raised the white flag and the stretcher-bearers would go scurrying out to collect their own. So there I was, holding up the other end of a stretcher and piling bodies onto it, and I stumbled over this corpse. The other digger, he wanted to pick the corpse up, and I said, “What’s the point? The poor bugger’s past saving.” But the other bloke insisted. Reckoned he could see a spark of life in the fella. The white flag was down and we had to clear off. So I hauled this muddy, bleeding soldier onto my back, ‘cause the stretcher was full, and we dragged our load back into the trenches.’

  ‘Was he dead?’ asked Colm.

  ‘Well, that’s the thing. The other fella had been right. The corpse wasn’t a corpse at all, for all the blood and guts smeared on him. Turned out the entrails was mostly from the bloke beside him who’d been blown up. But it wasn’t just the miracle that this fella was alive. When I washed the blood and the mud off him, I found it was my old best mate, Clancy Lytton. I’d been going to walk away from him and leave him for dead. And then he sat up on the stretcher like bloody Lazarus, rising from the grave, and he said, “Billy Dare, you saved my life!”’

  Colm frowned.

  ‘The thing is, when you help someone out, you don’t know if something good is going to come of it, or if it’s just your duty. But you have to do what you think is right. You have to help that stranger. Might be you’re helping an angel, like happens in the Bible stories. Or that stranger might turn out to be your best mate.’

  ‘I’m not an angel,’ said Colm.

  ‘Ain’t that the truth. But when Rusty found you on the docks and started making a fuss of you, well, I reckon she was trying to show me something. She’s a wise old hound, that one. Perhaps we should pay attention to what she was trying to tell us.’

  Bill got to his feet and kicked apart the campfire until the coals were scattered.

  ‘You don’t have to sleep outside, you don’t have to learn to shoot and you don’t have to agree with me. But if we’re going to be travelling companions for a while, you’re gonna have to pull your weight and you’re gonna have to leave me to my own way of seeing things. That’s what mates do. What do you reckon?’

  No one had ever asked Colm what he thought before. He’d always been told what he should think and how he should behave. For a moment he didn’t know how to answer, but then Rusty licked his hands again, in search of the last traces of golden syrup.

  ‘I think Rusty’s wise too. So I suppose that means you and I should be mates.’

  The next night, when they camped off the road, Colm made no pretence of being willing to sleep under an open sky. He put his blanket and battered pillow straight into the cab of the ute.

  Colm woke early in the grey light before dawn. Bill and Rusty were still asleep and breakfast would be a while yet.

  He opened the glovebox. Inside were Bill’s tobacco supplies and a book of maps. Colm pulled out the map book and flicked through it. When he found the map of Western Australia, he tried to locate where they were. Just as he was about to jam it back into the glovebox, a small square of card slipped out from between the pages. It was a black-and-white photograph of a woman, the same size as his holy card of the Blessed Virgin. The woman wore a pale coat and a small, stylish hat. She stood alone, smiling, hesitant. His mother had worn a coat almost exactly like the one this woman was wearing. He turned the picture over. On the back there were two words written in scrawling longhand: ‘Blue Delaney - 1949’. Colm said it softly to himself. It sounded like a flower.

  Colm didn’t know what his mother’s name had been, but he liked the idea that it might have been ‘Blue’. The colour of the sky. And Delaney was a good Irish name, the sort of name she might have had before she married his father. Even though he knew this couldn’t be a picture of her, it didn’t hurt anyone if he pretended.

  Colm knew he should put the picture back in the book of maps, but instead, he slipped it into his Bible and said a prayer.

  13

  Bush Christmas

  As the weeks turned into months, Colm started to see what Bill had meant when he’d said the road was his home. They never spent more than two nights camped at the same stop, never more than three days on the same job. Bill could turn his hand to anything, from carpentry to horse-shoeing, lock-smithing, knife-sharpening or boot repairs.

  They zig-zagged through the countryside, stopping at small towns for supplies and driving out to isolated properties to see if there was any work. Colm would lie low, waiting in the front seat of Tin Annie with Rusty while Bill negotiated work or shopped for supplies. Neither of them wanted anyone asking too many questions about why Colm wasn’t in school. But when they were out in the open countryside, Colm would help Bill with whatever task was at hand, sorting through his tools and carrying materials. He especially liked it when they would go door-knocking to see who needed their knives or garden tools sharpened. Bill had a grinding wheel with a makeshift foot pedal and Colm loved to set the wheel spinning while Bill oiled and honed the knives, their sharp blades shining brightly as sparks flew from the grindstone. If there was nothing else for him to do, he’d sit under a tree with Rusty and re-read the ba
ttered copy of the Bible that he’d taken from the Asylum.

  One day when Colm tried to read the Bible while they were driving, Bill pulled it from his hands and laid it on the seat between them. Then he reached into the glovebox and drew out a tiny leather-bound book. It had a smooth green cover, but the title, which had once been embossed in gold, had mostly flaked off.

  ‘If you’re going to read while we’re driving, you can read that,’ he said.

  The book was a small collection of poems by a man called Henry Lawson. Colm liked them for their rhythm and the stories that they told about the bush, but it was a much skinnier book than the Bible, and after a few weeks of driving he’d memorised most of them. Bill knew how to set all of them to tunes and so sometimes they sang as they drove, though Bill always wanted to sing the poems that Colm liked least, like ‘The English Queen’, whose every verse ended with an insult. Colm sat with his lips sealed while Bill belted out the verse

  ‘Whom the English call “the Queen”

  Whom the English call “the Queen”

  That selfish, callous woman whom the English call “the Queen”.’

  When Bill got tired of the sound of his own voice and fell silent, Colm would shut his eyes to the passing golden fields and use his hands to make music only he could hear. If he made his fingers go through the motions of a piece, he could almost hear it, even though the only sound was the tapping of his fingers on the dashboard.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ asked Bill, the first time Colm began to play.

  ‘I’m practising,’ said Colm.

  ‘Practising what? You planning on learning how to master the dashboard?’

  ‘I’m pretending it’s a piano,’ said Colm. He finished the piece with three loud crashing imaginary chords and then folded his hands in his lap.

  ‘Sorry, Sonny Jim,’ said Bill, smiling. ‘Didn’t mean to put you off your form. But if you could just play a little less loudly - not so much tappity, tappity. Old Tin Annie has a noisy enough rhythm of her own without you adding to it.’

  ‘I’ll try, if you could try to not sing that song about the Queen.’

  Bill laughed. ‘You’ve got a deal, maestro.’

  Colm celebrated his first Christmas away from Bindoon in an open field, camped beneath a giant white gum tree with a narrow creek running close by. Bill didn’t seem very interested in Christmas, and when Colm asked if they could maybe go to mass on Christmas Day he said that he’d rather worship in an open field.

  On Christmas Eve they set up camp just like any other night of the year, and just like any other night, when the campfire grew low, Bill settled down in his swag and Colm climbed into the front seat of Tin Annie to sleep. But sleep wouldn’t come to him, no matter how hard he tried. He sat up and looked out at the grass shining silvery white in the moonlight.

  The door of Tin Annie creaked loudly when Colm opened it. He stood on the running board of the car and swung the door again so it creaked even more loudly. Bill sat up with a start.

  ‘What’s wrong, mate?’ he asked.

  ‘I can’t sleep,’ said Colm.

  Bill ran his hand through his hair and sighed. ‘C’mon over here. Let’s stir up the fire then,’ he said.

  Colm knelt by the campfire and pushed at the coals with a stick.

  ‘Is it this business about tomorrow being Christmas Day?’

  ‘It should be special.’

  ‘It is special. It’s the day before the races out at Tangmalangaloo.’

  ‘Don’t make jokes, please,’ said Colm.

  Bill tossed another log on the fire and sparks danced in the air above the flames. ‘Was Christmas special at the orphanage? Are you missing your little friends?’

  ‘No,’ said Colm. He couldn’t even begin to tell Bill how bleak and awful Christmas had been in the past. T always wanted my mum to come but she never did.’

  ‘My first Christmas away from my mam, that was a bad ’un. But that’s not a story for Christmas Eve. You want to think about something cheerful, that’ll put you to sleep. When I was a boy at school in Ireland, our Christmas play was Good King Wenceslas and his good deeds - though of course, I wasn’t the King in the play, I was the fool. Sure if that wasn’t a piece of Christmas cheer. What we need is our own Christmas pantomime.’

  Bill got to his feet and paced around the fire, acting out the parts and telling the story of the king and his fool. Colm wrapped his arms around his knees and watched with rapt attention. The flames from the fire made Bill’s shadow stretch long across the creek, but by the time the play was at an end the fire had burnt low again. Rusty had fallen asleep curled up beside Colm, and he was sorry to have to leave her for the comfort of the car.

  ‘That was the best pantomime I’ve ever seen,’ said Colm.

  Bill laughed. ‘You seen many shows, then?’

  ‘Not yet.’ He didn’t want to admit he’d never seen a play of any kind.

  ‘Maybe next Christmas, you can play the fool and I can just be the king,’ said Bill, as he settled down beside Rusty.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Colm.

  Colm woke on Christmas morning to the sound of kookaburras laughing in the gum trees along the creek. He took out the picture of Blue Delaney and whispered, ‘Merry Christmas, Blue Delaney.’

  It was only when he sat up that he saw the present. Wrapped in brown paper, it sat on top of the dashboard with a gumnut blossom tucked into the knot of string that bound it tight.

  ‘Go on then,’ said Bill, leaning in through the car window. ‘Open it. Father Christmas didn’t detour all the way down this bit of the bush for nothing.’

  Colm grinned and unknotted the string. Inside the layers of brown paper, sparkling in the Christmas morning sunshine, lay a harmonica. Colm stroked the metal and then pushed the shiny surface against his cheek.

  ‘It’s a harmonica, not a razor,’ said Bill impatiently. ‘Play us a note or two.’

  Colm put it to his lips and blew a single blast of sound.

  ‘Well, that’s a start, any old how. I reckon you’ll be playing “My Wild Irish Rose” on that one in no time. Which should be a big improvement on the old tappity-tap tunes we’ve been listening to, eh?’

  That day, apart from an occasional paddle in the creek to cool off, Colm sat in the shade of the gums, blowing on the harmonica until his throat was sore and his lips tingled. In the evening, Bill boiled up a tinned Christmas pudding in the billy and then cut it into three serves. Rusty gobbled her piece even faster than Colm and then curled up beside Bill, ready for the night.

  ‘Do you think Rusty would like to sleep in Tin Annie, with me, just for a change?’ asked Colm.

  Bill shook his head. ‘Sorry, Sonny Jim. Maybe when you get around to sleeping outside, she’ll change her habit and sleep next to you. But she and me, we both have to stick with the stars. You’ve got your prayers, and we’ve got them to see us through the dark night.’

  ‘Maybe next Christmas,’ said Colm.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Bill.

  14

  Nugget on the gold fields

  Pingelly, Katanning, Kojonup, Gnowangerup; so many of the towns they visited had a strange ring to their names and some of them Colm couldn’t even pronounce. It didn’t seem to matter where they were, the rhythm of their days was the same. Until they came to Kalgoorlie.

  ‘You remember that statue I found you sitting under down at Fremantle?’ asked Bill. ‘Well, this is the place that Charlie O‘Connor dreamt of bringing water to. Kalgoorlie - the place where he made the water flow to, all the way from Perth, more than 350 miles. Shame he never got to see it happen.’

  Kalgoorlie was quiet when Tin Annie chugged into town, backfiring loudly. Everything felt too bright and wide and the sun beat down on them as hot as ever. Colm knelt on the seat and hung out the window, staring at the deep verandahs that overshadowed the shops. It was so long since they’d been in a town that everything looked exciting even though there weren’t many people around.

&nb
sp; Bill pointed at a signpost that read ‘Hannan Street’. ‘You know, it was an Irishman that made this town too. First discovered gold here. They named this street after him. Should have named the whole bloody place for him. Paddy Hannan, that was his name. Speaking of mad Irishmen, there’s an old mate of mine here in Kalgoorlie that we should look up.’

  ‘Is that Clancy? The one from the war?’ asked Colm.

  Bill’s expression grew dark. ‘Not Clancy Lytton. No, he wasn’t Irish and I could only save him once. Lone sniper got him day after the war ended.’

  ‘When God wants someone, you can’t save them,’ said Colm, thinking of Tommy.

  Bill looked annoyed. ‘Nothing to do with God. No one told the stupid Kraut that the war was over and he picked off Clance.’

  They drove on in silence until they came to a turning in the road.

  ‘Here we go, out past Boulder, that’s where Nugget Malloy was last time I came through this way. His wife Doreen, she loves kids, her own kids, grandkids, all sorts of little tackers. Always has a heap of them around the place. Be good for you to muck in with a bunch of young ‘uns again.’

  Colm didn’t know that he wanted to have to ’muck in’ with a bunch of kids. He’d got used to being with just Bill and Rusty. He hugged Rusty closer to him and watched the red dust billowing around them as they turned onto a dirt track. It didn’t look as though there were any houses out along this lonely road.

  A scraggly bunch of kids ran out in front of the car as Bill brought it to a stop outside a battered tin shack. They had skin the colour of milky coffee and dark brown eyes. As soon as Bill and Colm climbed out of the ute, the kids swarmed over it, jumping in behind the wheel and laughing, tooting the old horn and clambering into the back. At the sound of the horn, a man stepped out of the shack and into the glare of the midday sun.

  ‘Well, strike me lucky! You keep turning up like a bad penny, don’t you, Billy Dare? And to what do we owe the honour of this visit?’