All the Green Year

by Don Charlwood

  Probably because my mother was tired after weeks of watching over Grandfather, she more or less welcomed Aunt Ruby. It was the first time I had seen her readily accepted. She stood at the back door with a bulging dress-basket in one hand and an umbrella in the other. Gyp had her bailed up there and was barking ferociously, while she poked at him with the point of the umbrella. She poked at him with that “all-right-we’ll-see-who’s-boss-around-here” expression of hers. We all came out and called Gyp away. He slunk off around the veranda cursing and growling to himself, trying to tell us that Aunt Ruby was an old rogue.

  “It’s you, Ruby,” exclaimed my mother. “This is a surprise!”

  I heard my father mutter, “It’s a damn’ shock.”

  But the two women were kissing each other and Aunt Ruby was saying, “As soon as I knew poor dear Pops was low I thought, ‘Dear Ellen will need help.’ What a trying time it is for all of us—”

  “How did you hear?” asked my father, taking no part in the enthusiasm.

  “I have means,” said Aunt Ruby, raising her eyes to heaven. “When my loved ones are in danger, it is communicated—”

  “You still go in for that stuff?”

  “George,” said my mother quickly, “would you take Ruby’s dress-basket to Ian’s room? You might put a piece of wood on the fire when you go in; in fact, I’m almost out of wood—”

  My father waited for no more. He took the dress-basket and went off disgustedly, as if he were about to throw it into the sea. For her part Aunt Ruby went straight to Grandfather’s room and in a moment we could hear her sobbing loudly.

  “Get that disgusting woman out of there,” growled my father.

  In a moment she came out herself, a handkerchief to her eyes.

  “Poor dear Pops, he’s not to be long among us.” She gave this as a fact that had been revealed to her. “Ellen, would you like me to watch during the night?”

  My mother said that this was very kind of her—if she could watch until two it would be a great help.

  Aunt Ruby installed herself in Ian’s room as if the house were already hers. For his part Ian spent the evening whimpering and complaining that it wasn’t fair. He was the smallest; he shouldn’t have to share his room. He didn’t like the way Aunt Ruby snored.

  Aunt Ruby tousled his hair and said how sad it was that Providence hadn’t blessed her with little ones.

  I heard my father growl that Providence knew what it was about.

  That night my father sat with Grandfather while we ate our tea. It spared him from having to share the table with Aunt Ruby. As far as she was concerned, she said a long grace, then had two helpings of ­everything, her pudgy, ring-weighted hands working at astonishing speed.

  It was very cold that night with showers from the south. I was sleeping on the veranda still, directly under Grandfather’s window. Around midnight I woke up, aware all at once that something was different, but unable to recognize what it was. After a moment I saw that Grandfather’s light was on and that Aunt Ruby’s shadow was on the blind. I fell asleep after this, the vague idea in my mind that Aunt Ruby and Grandfather were talking. In the morning I decided this could hardly have been so, as Grandfather was bad again and I had to get the doctor before we left for school.

  A night or two after this my father had to go to a council meeting and for two or three hours my mother had to go out. Ian by this was in bed. Aunt Ruby said to me, “Don’t sit up late, dear boy; you have had so much watching to do.”

  She looked at me with a mournful, heartfelt air. I didn’t need much persuading to leave her. On the veranda there was not a sound from the sea. I lay awake for some time listening to the fishermen netting off the beach below the house.

  I fancied as I went to sleep that Aunt Ruby came out and looked at me. My last thought was that perhaps she wasn’t really a bad old girl after all.

  Some time later Grandfather’s voice woke me. I didn’t hear what it was he said, but his voice was sharp and loud. His light was on again and Aunt Ruby’s shadow was on the blind, huge and unmoving. I could hear her voice murmuring, but couldn’t catch a word. Then I heard Grandfather speak sharply again, in an annoyed voice. I sat up in bed and looked at the window. It was shut top and bottom. While Aunt Ruby murmured again, I put my nails under and lifted it and quickly lay down. I saw her raise the curtain and peer into the darkness, wrinkling up her eyes. After a moment her voice came to me again, this time more clearly. She was standing close to Grandfather, trying to make him hear.

  “Bert did a great deal for you. He said to me, ‘Go to Pops when you need help. Pops will never see you wanting’.”

  There was no reply from the bed, but faintly I could hear Grandfather’s harsh breathing.

  “It’s so little for you to do now, so little—” She broke off and I could hear her weeping. “I’m alone; unloved. For years I have turned the other cheek—” Her voice was broken by sobs, but gradually she calmed herself and said in a careful voice, “Pops, dear, it would only need your signature. If I helped you, you could write it, I’m sure. Think what it would mean!”

  “No!” came Grandfather’s voice. It was loud and indignant but produced with enormous effort.

  “Dear Pops . . . . do you remember when you used to discuss the great biblical truths with me—the Garden, the coming of the Serpent—”

  On it went without any reply. “There’s the pen now,” she said suddenly. “I’m sure the silent witnesses about us will smile—”

  “No!” cried the voice again, so loudly this time that I was on my feet and in at the front door before I had thought what I was about. Aunt Ruby heard me coming and met me with an expression that frightened me.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  “What are you doing to Grandfather?”

  She smiled sweetly all at once and whispered, “The poor dear has been restless. Did he wake you?”

  “He was angry.”

  “Dear boy, you don’t understand—his poor mind is wandering—”

  “But you kept speaking to him.”

  “I?” she said sharply. “What did I say?”

  Her eyes seemed to protrude more than ever.

  “I don’t know,” I lied. “I just heard your voice.”

  Her expression eased. She said, “I comforted him once or twice, poor dear.” She glanced gravely towards the bed. “He’s asleep again. You go back to bed. It has all been a great strain for you, I know.”

  “I’m not going,” I heard myself say.

  “Not going?” she repeated, surprised.

  “No,” I said.

  “You need your rest before you watch over Pops in the morning.” Her expression was still pleasant and her voice full of consideration. “If he speaks again, don’t let it trouble you.”

  I said stubbornly, “I want to stay with him.”

  “Oh?” she said. “Oh? I think you should do as I tell you.”

  Her face was flushing now, the flush spreading upward from her neck. She moved closer to me and for a moment I felt like giving in. Then Grandfather said something and she turned quickly back to him saying, “I’m here, dear Pops.”

  Without opening his eyes he muttered, “Get oot, woman.”

  Aunt Ruby turned and looked at me. “He’s wandering, poor dear.”

  “I’m going to stay,” I repeated.

  She came quickly over to me. “Go out,” she suddenly ordered. “Go back to bed.”

  Her voice was nothing like her ordinary voice and her expression had changed so much that I backed a few steps and came up against the wall.

  “No,” I said.

  I was looking at her, half frightened, half fascinated, held by her eyes, which were bulging and furious. “Go out,” she ordered hoarsely.

  But even as I watched her, her expression suddenly changed and I thought she had had one
of her visions. I swung round and saw my father at the door.

  “All right, Ruby,” he said in a level voice, “pack your bag and get out.” His face was like rock. Before him she seemed to shrivel up, and all at once she began weeping, not quietly, but with loud sobs.

  “Charlie,” said my father, “go back to bed. I’ll call you at six.”

  So I went out, relieved to be out of the way. In a few minutes I heard raised voices, then Aunt Ruby screaming abuse and my father replying in the same level tones, his voice cold and furious. At the same time Gyp began barking under the veranda, and at last the door slammed and there was silence. My father came out and said, “You did very well.” He paused a moment, then added, “Good night, old son.”

  “Good night,” I said.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  After the camel affair I had avoided Squid. For his part he sometimes glanced at me with an expression of hurt guilt, but we hardly exchanged a word.

  Then, on the Saturday afternoon following the Aunt Ruby upset, his mother came to our back door and asked if I could go to the pictures with him. Poor dear Birdie was upset; apparently Charlie had misunderstood him in some way. It would be a happy reconciliation if Charlie cared to use the extra ticket Mr Glossop had sent and come home afterwards, too, with Birdie for tea.

  On the whole my father disapproved of the pictures. He claimed that they had put an end to things like the local brass band and family songs around the piano, besides which he could never understand what manner of people could, every week, sit staring at shadows on a screen.

  But this picture was The Gold Rush, so he gave his permission. For my part a reconciliation seemed almost worthwhile.

  Mr Glossop, the manager of the Palais, used to send one of Jonas’s cabs for Mrs Peters, usually a horse cab, but sometimes one of the new Overlands or Whippets. It rather spoilt things for Squid on the day of The Gold Rush when only a horse cab turned up with Dan Weekly driving.

  While the cab waited, the horse tossed its nosebag and Dan sat up in front looking gloomily into steady rain.

  Mrs Peters came out at last under an umbrella. If it was possible for a woman of forty to make herself look like an actress of twenty-two, then that woman was Mrs Peters. She was a mass of beads and eye-shadow and permanent waves; there was even a change in her manner.

  Stepping up at the back she said, “Very well, Dan, you may go.”

  Dan untied the nosebag without speaking and tossed it on the floor beside him.

  “Let down the flap, boys,” said Mrs Peters.

  We undid the straps and let it down, shutting ourselves in half darkness with the smell of leather seats and kerosene from the lamp. The cab began swaying and the wheels made their running sound over the road; occasionally there was a scraping from the brake. Through the little window by Dan’s head I saw the park go by in the rain, and the Mechanics’ Hall and the Church of England. We swung round Wheeler’s corner, Dan holding out his whip to signal the turn, then we drew up outside the Palais where the stalls queue was waiting at the ticket box, the boys leaning against the window of Fry’s sweets shop and against the hoardings showing Charlie Chaplin with his cane and baggy trousers.

  “Birdie,” said Mrs Peters, “pay the driver, please—and tip him.”

  We stepped stylishly over the flowing gutter, causing a few jeers from the loungers. Mrs Peters swept on grandly, bestowing a smile on Mr Glossop, a man with a skewed nose, and a few strands of brownish hair pasted over his skull.

  “You boys go to the dress circle,” she said loudly. “I must study the music.”

  Only the most important people sat in the dress circle: the doctor’s family and the bank manager’s and the solicitor’s, people who bought whole boxes of chocolates before the lights went out and who nodded their heads gravely to one another. Most of them had permanent bookings and sometimes didn’t bother to use their seats even though they had paid for them.

  In the foyer, very perplexed-looking, was Johnno. He was reading the advertisements for The Gold Rush.

  “G’ day,” said Squid. “We’re going t’ the flicks, me an’ Charlie.”

  “Listen,” said Johnno anxiously, “I’ve got ninepence.”

  “You better come in, then,” said Squid generously.

  “My money’s for a haircut. I was just going to the barber’s when I saw this—” He waved his hand at the advertisements.

  “I’ve only got threepence,” I said. “You can have that if you like.”

  “No,” said Squid, hesitating at the foot of the stairs. “No; I got a better idea. I can cut hair. What we do is you come t’ our place after the flicks and I cut your hair down in the Den for nothink.”

  Johnno rubbed his hand over his head concernedly. “No,” he said. “No. My old man might notice—”

  “All right, then,” said Squid indifferently. He started up the stairs. “It doesn’t matter t’ me. Come on, Charlie.” He added over his shoulder, “We got clippers, too.”

  Johnno said all at once, “All right, then, all right; I’ll do it.”

  I passed him my threepence and he bought an upstairs ticket. I doubt that this had been Squid’s intention; I think he had expected Johnno to sit in the stalls.

  We had scarcely sat down when the lights went out and the advertisements started: Rogers the ironmonger; Willox the saddler; Hayes the blacksmith—

  The rain was loud on the iron roof, but after a time Mrs Peters came in and the noise was defeated by a charge up and down the keyboard. She settled to “The Entrance of the Gladiators”, then “Colonel Bogey” and “Under the Double Eagle”. Squid chewed in time to the music and stared at the screen as if all this were old stuff. The last slide was shown and then the spotlight shone on Mrs Peters as she bowed this way and that. We clapped loudly.

  Straight away the news starts: Mr Bruce strutting about a paddock in Canberra; the two sides of the Sydney Harbour Bridge stretched towards each other; “Boy” Charlton breathing hard after a race—

  “That’s what I want to be,” says Johnno, raising his voice above the music.

  Then the serial. A man and a girl are struggling on the edge of a cliff. Who they are and how they got there, Johnno and I have no idea. Squid whispers hoarsely, “He’s one of Fu Manchu’s blokes an’ she knows he’s got the opium. The other bloke’s crashed over the cliffs on t’ the rocks—”

  “Help! Help! Will no one help me?” begs the caption.

  Mrs Peters’s arms are going like Jack Dempsey’s.

  “Robert! Robert! Where are you?”

  Robert gallops from somewhere on a white horse and leaps out of the saddle, gun in hand.

  “He’s the goody,” says Squid. “Watch him lay inter the crook.”

  Mrs Peters whacks a few electrifying chords and Robert throws himself forward. At this the film breaks. Downstairs whistling and stamping start and shouts of “Put a penny in.” The only light is the little one over the piano. We listen to “The Doll Dance” and “Nola” before the screen lights up again. Something is still wrong. Robert runs backwards from the cliffs, rises in the air and lands in the saddle. The horse disappears backwards off the screen—

  At half-time Johnno said he didn’t know if coming to the pictures had been a good idea after all. He wasn’t expected in till six, but the haircut was a terrible risk.

  Squid said carelessly, “My mother’s learned me how to cut hair. There’s nothink to it.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “’Course I’m sure.”

  The electric bell went to go inside, and the ice-cream and lolly boys took the wire trays from round their necks and carried them back to Fry’s shop.

  We watched the Coming Attractions, Johnno and I knowing very well we wouldn’t see them, Squid sure of them. Then came the main feature. I doubt whether Johnno enjoyed The Gold Rush much. Even at the part
where Charlie cooks his boots, he leant over and said to me, “You really think he can cut hair?”

  I answered yes to keep him quiet, but I could feel him fidgeting beside me unhappily, getting more and more restless as the picture neared its end.

  The Gold Rush suffered only one interruption—not a break in the film, but the noise of a struggle on the fire-escape steps.

  “It’s Sergeant Gouvane an’ Big Simmons’s mob,” whispered Squid. Sure enough the door burst open and there in unreal daylight was Gouvane manhandling three of the town’s larrikins. “They try to look in at the flicks,” added Squid dispassionately.

  For a few seconds their voices and the sounds of the struggle prevailed against Mrs Peters’ music; but then the door slammed and we were back in Alaska.

  This was near the end of the programme. When we went outside, Gouvane had the three men near Fry’s shop and was taking notes. All wore old Oxford bags and sweaters. Big Simmons himself had a silk scarf, once white, knotted round his neck. His nose had been bleeding, but he had his hands on his hips and every so often he spat beside Gouvane’s feet. There was something about him that always frightened me—his animal expression perhaps and the glance he turned on passers-by. He was called “Big” to distinguish him from “Little”, his brother, who was no better than he was.

  We had passed the group when I heard him shout, “Stop that one, copper!”

  The punch must have missed. By the time we turned, Gouvane had his arm up his back and Big was yelling, “You bloody copper bastard!” almost in a scream.

  “I reckon we better get home,” said Squid anxiously. When we had turned the corner he added to Johnno, “Charlie’s coming to our place for tea, but we’ll have tons of time f’ the haircut before mum comes in. She gets played out after the flicks—Mr Glossop’ll give her a cuppa tea somewhere.”

  The rain had stopped and the clouds had gone. The air was very still and cold. We walked slowly up the main street, then up the Esplanade, rising higher above the sea. The water was calm and grey; the air nipped our ears.

  Johnno said, “You reckon you really know how to do it?”