by Louis Stone
The room, which served for a laundry, was dimly lit with a candle. The pile of white linen brought into relief the dirt and poverty of the interior. The walls were stained with grease and patches of dirt, added slowly through the years as a face gathers wrinkles. But Jonah saw nothing of this. He was used to dirt.
He sat down, and, with a sudden attack of politeness, decided to take off his hat, but, uncertain of his footing, pushed it on the back of his head as a compromise. He lit a cigarette, and felt more at ease.
A faint odour of scorching reached his nostrils as Mrs Yabsley passed the hot iron over the white fronts. The small black iron ran swiftly over the clean surface, leaving a smooth, shining track behind it. And he watched, with an idler’s pleasure, the swift, mechanical movements.
When the beer came, Jonah gallantly offered it to Mrs Yabsley, whose face was hot and red.
“Just leave a drop in the jug, an’ I’ll be thankful for it when I’m done,” she replied, wiping her forehead on her sleeve. Jonah had risen in her esteem.
After some awkward attempts at conversation, Jonah relapsed into silence. He was glad that he had brought his mouth-organ, won in a shilling raffle. He would give them a tune later on.
When she had finished the last shirt, Mrs Yabsley looked at the clock with an exclamation. It was nearly ten. She had to deliver the shirts, and then buy the week’s supplies. For she did her shopping at the last minute, in a panic. It had been her mother’s way—to dash into the butcher’s as he swept the last bones together, to hammer at the grocer’s door as he turned out the lights. And she always forgot something, which she got on Sunday morning from the little shop at the corner.
As she was tying the shirts into bundles, she heard the tinkle of a bell in the street, and a hoarse voice that cried: “Peas an’ pies, all ’ot, all ’ot!”
“’Ow’d yer like some peas, Joe?” she cried, dropping the shirts and seizing a basin.
“I wouldn’t mind,” said Jonah.
“’Ere, Ada, run an’ git threepenn’orth,” she cried.
In a minute Ada returned with the basin full of green peas, boiled into a squashy mass.
Mrs Yabsley went out with the shirts, and Jonah and Ada sat down to the peas, which they ate with keen relish, after sprinkling them with pepper and vinegar.
After the green peas, Ada noticed that Jonah was looking furtively about the room and listening, as if he expected to hear something. She guessed the cause, and decided to change his thoughts.
“Give us a tune, Joe,” she cried.
Jonah took the mouth-organ from his pocket, and rubbed it carefully on his sleeve. He was a famous performer on this instrument, and on holiday nights the Push marched through the streets, with Jonah in the lead, playing tunes that he learned at the Tiv. He breathed slowly into the tubes, running up and down the scale, as a pianist runs his fingers over the keyboard before playing, and then struck into a sentimental ballad.
In five minutes he had warmed up to his work, changing from one tune to another with barely a pause, revelling in the simple rhythm and facile phrases of the popular songs. Ada listened spellbound, amazed by this talent for music, carried back to the gallery of the music-hall where she had heard these very tunes. At last he struck into a waltz, marking the time with his foot, drawing his breath in rapid jerks to accentuate the bass.
“Must ’ave a turn, if I die fer it,” cried Ada, springing to her feet, and, with her arms extended to embrace an imaginary partner, she began to spin round on her toes. Ada’s only talent lay in her feet, and, conscious of her skill, she danced before the hunchback with the lightness of a feather, revolving smoothly on one spot, reversing, advancing and retreating in a straight line, displaying every intricacy of the waltz. The sight was too much for Jonah, and, dropping the mouth-organ, he seized her in his arms.
“Wot did yer stop for?” cried Ada. “We carn’t darnce without a tune.”
“Carn’t we?” said Jonah, in derision, and began to hum the words of the waltz that he had been playing:
“White Wings, they never grow weary,
They carry me cheerily over the sea;
Night comes, I long for my dearie—
I’ll spread out my White Wings and sail home to thee.”
The pair had no equals in the true larrikin style, called “cass dancing”, and they revolved slowly on a space the size of a dinner-plate, Ada’s head on Jonah’s breast, their bodies pressed together, rigid as the pasteboard figures in a peepshow. They were interrupted by a cry from Mrs Yabsley’s bedroom. Jonah stopped instantly, with a look of dismay on his face. Ada looked at him with a curious smile, and burst out laughing.
“I’ll ’ave ter put ’im to sleep now. Cum an’ ave a look at ’im, Joe—’e won’t eat yer.”
“No fear,” cried Jonah, recoiling with anger. “Wot did yer promise before I agreed to come down?”
Chook’s words flashed across his mind. This was a trap, and he had been a fool to come.
“I’ll cum tomorrow, an’ fix up the fowls,” he cried, and, grabbing his mouth-organ, turned to go—to find his way blocked by Mrs Yabsley, carrying a shoulder of mutton and a bag of groceries.
3
CARDIGAN STREET AT HOME
Mrs Yabsley came to the door for a breath of fresh air, and surveyed Cardigan Street with a loving eye. She had lived there since her marriage twenty years ago, and to her it was the pick of Sydney, the centre of the habitable globe. She gave her opinion to every newcomer in her tremendous voice, that broke on their unaccustomed ears like thunder:
“I’ve lived ’ere ever since I was a young married woman, an’ I know wot I’m talkin’ about. My ’usband used ter take me to the play before we was married, but I never see any play equal ter wot ’appens in this street, if yer only keeps yer eyes open. I see people as wears spectacles readin’ books. I don’t wonder. If their eyesight was good, they’d be able ter see fer themselves instead of readin’ about it in a book. I can’t read myself, bein’ no scholar, but I can see that books an’ plays is fer them as ain’t got no eyes in their ’eads.”
The street, which Mrs Yabsley loved, was a street of poor folk—people to whom poverty clung like their shirt. It tumbled over the ridge opposite the church, fell rapidly for a hundred yards, and then, recovering its balance, sauntered easily down the slope till it met Botany Road on level ground. It was a street of small houses and large families, and struck the eye as mean and dingy, for most of the houses were standing on their last legs, and paint was scarce. The children used to kick and scrape it off the fences, and their parents rub it off the walls by leaning against them in a tired way for hours at a stretch. On hot summer nights the houses emptied their inhabitants on to the verandas and footpaths. The children, swarming like rabbits, played in the middle of the road. With clasped hands they formed a ring, and circled joyously to a song of childland, the immemorial rhymes handed down from one generation to another as savages preserve tribal rites. The fresh, shrill voices broke on the air, mingled with silvery peals of laughter.
“What will you give to know her name,
Know her name, know her name?
What will you give to know her name,
On a cold and frosty morning?”
Across the street would come a burst of coarse laughter, and a string of foul, obscene words on the heels of a jest. And again the childish trebles would ring on the tainted air:
“Green gravel, green gravel,
Your true love is dead;
I send you a message
To turn round your head.”
They were ragged and dirty, true children of the gutter, but Romance, with the cloudy hair and starry eyes, held them captive for a few merciful years. Their parents lolled against the walls, or squatted on the kerbstone, devouring with infinite relish petty scandals about their neighbours, or shaking with laughter at some spicy yarn.
About ten o’clock the children would be driven indoors with threats and blows, and put to bed. By
eleven the street was quiet, and only gave a last flicker of life when a drunken man came swearing down the street, full of beer, and offering to fight anyone for the pleasure of the thing. By twelve the street was dead, and the tread of the policeman echoed with a forlorn sound as if he were walking through a cemetery.
As Mrs Yabsley leaned over the gate, Mrs Swadling caught sight of her, and, throwing her apron over her head, crossed the street, bent on gossip. Then Mrs Jones, who had been watching her through the window, dropped her mending and hurried out.
The three women stood and talked of the weather, talking for talking’s sake as men smoke a pipe in the intervals of work. Presently Mrs Yabsley looked hard at Mrs Swadling, who was shading her head from the sun with her apron.
“Wot’s the matter with yer eye?” she said, abruptly.
“Nuthin’,” said Mrs Swadling, and coloured.
The eye she was shading was black from a recent blow, a present from her husband, Sam the carter, who came home for his tea, fighting drunk, as regular as clockwork.
“I thought I ’eard Sam snorin’ after tea,” said Mrs Jones.
“Yes, ’e was; but ’e woke up about twelve, an’ give me beans ’cause I’d let ’im sleep till the pubs was shut.”
“An’ yer laid ’im out wi’ the broom-handle, I s’pose?”
“No fear,” said Mrs Swadling. “I ran down the yard, an’ ’ollered blue murder.”
“Well,” said Mrs Yabsley, reflectively, “an ’usband is like the weather, or a wart on yer nose. It’s no use quarrelling with it. If yer don’t like it, yer’ve got ter lump it. An’ if yer believe all yer ’ear, everybody else ’as got a worse.”
She looked down the street, and saw Jonah and Chook, with a few others of the Push, sunning themselves in the morning air. Her face darkened.
“I see the Push ’ave got Jimmy Sinclair at last. Only six months ago ’e went ter Sunday school reg’lar, an’ butter wouldn’t melt in ’is mouth. Well, if smokin’ cigarettes, an’ spittin’, and swearin’ was ’ard work, they’d all die rich men. There’s Waxy Collins. Last week ’e told ’is father ’e’d ’ave ter keep ’im till ’e was twenty-one ’cause of the law, an’ the old fool believed ’im. An’ little Joe Crutch, as used ter come ’ere beggin’ a spoonful of drippin’ fer ’is mother, come ’ome drunk the other night so natural, that ’is mother mistook ’im fer ’is father, an’ landed ’im on the ear with ’er fist. An ’im the apple of ’er eye, as the sayin’ is. It’s ’ard ter be a mother in Cardigan Street. Yer girls are mothers before their bones are set, an’ yer sons are dodgin’ the p’liceman round the corner before they’re in long trousers.”
It was rare for Mrs Yabsley to touch on her private sorrows, and there was an embarrassing silence. But suddenly, from the corner of Pitt Street, appeared a strange figure of a man, roaring out a song in the voice of one selling fish. Every head turned.
“’Ello,” said Mrs Jones, “Froggy’s on the job today.”
The singer was a Frenchman with a wooden leg, dressed as a sailor. As he hopped slowly down the street with the aid of a crutch, his grizzled beard and scowling face turned mechanically to right and left, sweeping the street with threatening eyes that gave him the look of a retired pirate, begging the tribute that he had taken by force in better days. The song ended abruptly, and he wiped the sweat from his face with an enormous handkerchief. Then he began another.
The women were silent, greedily drinking in the strange, foreign sounds, touched for a moment with the sense of things forlorn and far away. The singer still roared, though the tune was caressing, languishing, a love song. But his eyes rolled fiercely, and his moustache seemed to bristle with anger.
“Le pinson et la fauvette
Chantaient nos chastes amours,
Que les oiseaux chantent toujours,
Pauvre Colinette, pauvre Colinette.”
When he reached the women he hopped to the pavement, holding out his hat like a collection plate, with a beseeching air. The women were embarrassed, grudging the pennies, but afraid of being thought mean. Mrs Yabsley broke the silence.
“I don’t know wot ye’re singin’ about, an’ I shouldn’t like ter meet yer on a dark night, but I’m always willin’ ter patronize the opera, as they say.”
She fumbled in her pocket till she found tuppence. The sailor took the money, rolled his eyes, gave her a magnificent bow, and continued on his way with a fresh stanza:
“Lorsque nous allions tous deux
Dans la verdoyante allée,
Comme elle était essoufflée,
Et comme j’étais radieux.”
“The more fool you,” said Mrs Jones, who was ashamed of having nothing to give. “I’ve ’eard ’e’s got a terrace of ’ouses, an’ thousands in the bank. My cousin told me ’e sees ’im bankin’ ’is money reg’lar in George Street every week.”
And then a conversation followed, with instances of immense fortunes made by organ-grinders, German bands, and street-singers—men who cadged in rags for a living, and could drive their carriage if they chose. The women lent a greedy ear to these romances, like a page out of their favourite novelettes.
They were interrupted by an extraordinary noise from the French singer, who seemed suddenly to have gone mad. The Push had watched in ominous silence the approach of the Frenchman. But, as he passed them and finished a verse, a blood-curdling cry rose from the group. It was a perfect imitation of a dog baying the moon in agony. The singer stopped and scowled at the group, but the Push seemed to be unaware of his existence. He moved on, and began another verse. As he stopped to take breath the cry went up again, the agonized wail of a cur whose feelings are harrowed by music. The singer stopped, choking with rage, bewildered by the novelty of the attack. The Push seemed lost in thought. Again he turned to go, when a stone, jerked as if from a catapult, struck him on the shoulder. As he turned, roaring like a bull, a piece of blue metal struck him above the eye, cutting the flesh to the bone. The blood began to trickle slowly down his cheek.
Still roaring, he hopped on his crutch with incredible speed towards the Push, who stood their ground for a minute and then, with the instinct of the cur, bolted. The sailor stopped, and shook his fist at their retreating forms, showering strange, foreign maledictions on the fleeing enemy. It was evident that he could swear better than he could sing.
“Them wretches is givin’ Froggy beans,” said Mrs Swadling.
‘Lucky fer ’im it’s daylight, or they’d tickle ’is ribs with their boots,” said Mrs Jones.
“Jonah and Chooks at the bottom o’ that,” said Mrs Swadling, looking hard at Mrs Yabsley.
“Ah, the devil an’ is ’oof!” said Mrs Yabsley grimly, and was silent.
The sailor disappeared round the corner, and five minutes later the Push had slipped back, one by one, to their places under the veranda. Mrs Jones was in the middle of a story:
“’Er breath was that strong, it nearly knocked me down, an’ so I sez to ’er, ‘Mark my words, I’ll pocket yer insults no longer, an’ you in a temperance lodge. I’ll make it my bizness to go to the sekertary this very day, an’ tell ’im of yer goin’s on.’ An’ she sez…w’y, there she is again,” cried Mrs Jones, as she caught the sound of a shrill voice, high-pitched and quarrelsome. The women craned their necks to look.
A woman of about forty, drunken, bedraggled, dressed in dingy black, was pacing up and down the pavement in front of the barber’s. She blinked like a drunken owl, and stepped high on the level footpath as if it were mountainous. And without looking at anything, she threw a string of insults at the barber, hiding behind the partition in his shop. For seven years she had passed as his wife, and then, one day, sick of her drunken bouts, he had turned her out, and married Flash Kate, the ragpicker’s daughter. Sloppy Mary had accepted her lot with resignation, and went out charring for a living; but whenever she had a drop too much she made for the barber’s, forgetting by a curious lapse of memory that it was no longer her home. And as
usual the barber’s new wife had pushed her into the street, staggering, and now stood on guard at the door, her coarse, handsome features alive with contempt.
“Wotcher doin’ in my ’ouse?” suddenly inquired Sloppy, blinking with suspicion at Flash Kate. “Yous go ’ome, me fine lady, afore yer git yerself talked about.”
The woman at the door laughed loudly, and pretended to examine with keen interest a new wedding ring on her finger.
“Cum ’ere, an’ I’ll tear yer blasted eyes out,” cried the drunkard, turning on her furiously.
The ragpicker’s daughter leaned forward, and inquired, “’Ow d’ye like yer eggs done?”
At this simple inquiry the drunkard stamped her foot with rage, calling on her enemy to prepare for instant death. And the two women bombarded one another with insults, raking the gutter for adjectives, spitting like angry cats across the width of the pavement.
The Push gathered round, grinning from ear to ear, sooling the women on as if they were dogs. But just as a shove from behind threw Sloppy nearly into the arms of her enemy, the Push caught sight of a policeman, and walked away with an air of extreme nonchalance. At the same moment the drunkard saw the dreaded uniform, and, obeying the laws of Cardigan Street, pulled herself together and walked away, mumbling to herself.
The three women watched the performance without a word, critical as spectators at a play. When they saw there would be no scratching, they resumed their conversation.
“W’en a woman takes to drink, she’s found a short cut to ’ell, an’ lets everybody know it,” said Mrs Yabsley, briefly. “But this won’t git my work done,” and she tucked up her sleeves and went in.
The Push, bent on killing time, and despairing of any fresh diversion in the street, dispersed slowly, one by one, to meet again at night.
The Cardigan Street Push, composed of twenty or thirty young men of the neighbourhood, was a social wart of a kind familiar to the streets of Sydney. Originally banded together to amuse themselves at other people’s expenses, the Push found new cares and duties thrust upon them, the chief of which was chastising anyone who interfered with their pleasures. Their feats ranged from kicking an enemy senseless, and leaving him for dead, to wrecking hotel windows with blue metal, if the landlord had contrived to offend them. Another of their duties was to check ungodly pride in the rival Pushes by battering them out of shape with fists and blue metal at regular intervals.
