He caught me by the shoulder. He seemed hellishun tall and big. I was down with his legs. ‘I’ve been waiting for this opportunity to get you alone’, he said softly. He turned me round so that I faced him. ‘You’ve been teaching my two sons to swear, you filthy little brat’, he suddenly snarled. I couldn’t believe my ears. Fear grabbed me. I couldn’t move. He clutched my shoulder with his fingers digging into me. ‘If ever you say another foul word in their presence I’ll thrash you both’, and he looked at Joe. ‘You are both a bad influence in the school and I’m going to stop it once and for all.’
I wanted to yell at him. I wanted to punch him and kick him and curse him with swears a yard long, but I couldn’t find my voice. Joe had lost his voice too. We were so bloody frightened we just couldn’t do a thing.
The terrible thing about it was that his two kids were the biggest swearers in the school.
‘We’ll soon change that’, Joe said to me later. ‘Wait till they hear what I have to say to them.’
But there was none of this fight in us as we stood quaking before Mr Thomas.
The trouble was that under our fear was a feeling of shame. We were letting ourselves down. When a kid faces a man who threatens him, he just doesn’t know whether other grown-ups will be on his side or not. He should be certain his father will. I was. But his father might believe what the big bloke says. There’s nothing you can do. But we should have told him off; that’s what we should have done. No kid is supposed to tell a grown-up he’s wrong. You’ve just got to take it standing there with your head down. That was what hurt us.
‘When a kid has a row with a man, everybody reckons the bloke is right’, Joe reckons. ‘Don’t look for help from other grown-ups. You’re on your own.’
I could see Joe was thinking of making a dash for it. What stopped him was that there was nowhere to go. All the doors were closed.
Mr Thomas was trying to hurt me. His fingers dug deeper into my shoulder. They were like iron prongs clamping tighter and tighter. But I wasn’t going to yell out, not if I could help it.
He suddenly grabbed Joe with his other hand and this brought us together somehow—I mean it made us one bloke being hurt by a bastard.
We were howling a bit—you can’t help it when a man’s face is hanging over you all twisted with rage and his fingers hold you like claws. But, as Joe said, ‘When I’m howling I’m at my best.’
When Mr Thomas grabbed Joe he lifted him off his feet with one hand—he’s a strong bastard—but it put Joe in a perfect position to deliver two quick kicks to his shins, at the same time I swung a crutch and let him have the thick armpit support on the side of his jaw.
This attack made Mr Thomas forget us for the moment, but while he was changing his plans we were kicking, punching and butting him with such speed he let go of us and staggered to the water barrel when he curled like a question mark, spitting and coughing.
We made for the door then and Joe got the bar off somehow and we slid the doors back. We went like hell till we got amongst the trees and could pull up and have a blow.
It was good to see the sun outside, to feel it warm on your shoulders. It was good even to breathe. There were no walls around us, no fear of having our noses punched flat, no threatening voice. We were both shaking, but we were outside in the daylight.
‘It’s what I always say’, said Joe, wiping his eyes with a dirty handkerchief. ‘Nothing scares you like a man. And another thing. We can’t do nothing about this. People know we swear. They’d believe Mr Thomas. So shut up about it. Hey, how ya feelin’?’
Judy Fliesher
Judy Fliesher used to chew chewing gum and stack it behind her ear when she was having a rest from chewing. But this didn’t stop her becoming pregnant. All of a sudden she came out in front like as if she was too fat.
By this time I knew what pregnancy was; so did Joe. We knew it meant having a baby in you, but I never thought they were very interesting—pregnant girls, that is, I mean. As Joe said, ‘Once you’ve seen one pregnant girl you’ve seen the lot.’
Joe reckoned it spoilt their shape, but I don’t know; girls were always changing their shape one way or another. One day you would be fighting with a girl and she didn’t care where you hit her; the next day you hit her on the chest and everybody would look at you as if you’d done something terrible. In no time they’d start tying a strip of calico round their chests, girthing themselves up to flatten themselves out.
Joe once pushed Judy Fliesher away from him and he told me I’d be surprised at how soft she was. I’d like to have felt her on the chest just to see, but I never got the chance.
I’ve got to hand it to Joe. He was the first to realise she was pregnant. We were sitting with our backs to the fence making little walls out of the gravel on the path and Judy passed. Joe watched her then said, ‘Do you know what I think! Judy’s got a scone in the oven,’ which was Duke McLeod’s way of saying a girl was pregnant.
As I say, we knew all about pregnancy and that sort of thing, but not enough about it to stop me getting a fright when Joe said that.
‘Hell!’ I said, then added, ‘that’s a bad thing.’
‘Yes, it is, isn’t it’, said Joe. ‘It’s a hellishun bad thing.’
‘Do you reckon anybody in Turalla knows except us?’ I asked Joe.
‘Not a soul’, said Joe. ‘I just had her in the right light when she passed. No one else would ever catch her in that light. She’s pregnant all right.’
‘I wonder what she’ll do now’, I said.
‘What she’s got to do now is to find out who’s the father’, said Joe. ‘I tell you, I feel terribly sorry for Judy. We won’t tell anyone about this. If they find out for themselves—well, that’s their business. But we’ve had nothing to do with it.’
We shut up about it, but news gets around and we thought we’d ask Duke if he knew anything about it.
‘How’s Judy going?’ Joe asked, then looked away. We pretended nothing was wrong with her and we just asked Duke about her as if we’d just noticed that something was wrong.
‘Didn’t ya know’, he said. ‘She’s up the duff.’
Duke paused and looked at the ground with his lips pursed up, then turned his head and looked at Judy’s home standing behind a rickety fence, half way up the rise. ‘Yes’, he reflected. ‘She’s up to her neck in it now.’
Joe was sorry for Judy. ‘It must be crook to be like that.’
‘I wonder who the father is?’ I asked.
‘That’s what Judy would like to know’, said Duke. ‘She has to nail someone. A lot will depend on how a bloke’s holding. Things are tough with me, so I’m all right.’
Afterwards Joe said to me, ‘That was a very funny thing to say if ever I’ve heard one. “That’s what Judy would like to know”, he says, the stupid bugger. As if she doesn’t know the father. What would the world be like if no one knew their father. I know my father; so do you. And then he says, “Things are tough with me, so I’m all right.” Did you ever hear the like? What in the hell’s that got to do with it!’
‘Duke’s got a lot to learn about life’, I said. ‘After he’s knocked around a bit he’ll grow up. You don’t want to be too hard on him.’
We walked down to Miss Trengrove’s and moved quickly along the netting fence while her dog hurtled at the wire trying to get at us. We often did this just to show we weren’t frightened of dogs.
‘She’s a savage bitch behind a fence, isn’t she!’ said Joe. And for some reason I thought of Judy.
There was no lawyer in Turalla, but there was one at Balunga, and his name was Mr Scott. He looked severe. They reckoned he was severe. Joe reckoned someone told him that he was tough on blokes who got girls into trouble. ‘It was Duke McLeod who told me that; yes, he told me’, Joe added.
Duke said to Joe, ‘He puts all the blame on the bloke.’
‘Well, wouldn’t you!’ I said to Joe when I was alone with him. ‘Who else could you blame! A girl gets into t
rouble—well, all right. Who got her into trouble? A bloke did. No one else did, that’s a certainty. What else did he say?’
‘Well’, said Joe, ‘Duke reckoned Scott sent a letter to Vin Wallace, the fruit shop bloke, and asked him would he front Judy across the table, and he did. There they were, the both of them, Vin was on one side of the table and Judy on the other side and Scott he sat at the end, and then Scott said, “Now, Judy. Let him have it.” ’
‘My word, this sounds interesting’, I said to Joe and I moved closer to him.
‘Yes, it does, doesn’t it!’ said Joe.
‘What did Judy say?’ I asked.
‘According to Duke, she said, “Listen, Vin Wallace, you put me in the family way. What are you going to do about it?” And then Scott said, “That’s right, what are you going to do about it, Mr Wallace?” ’
‘What happened then?’ I asked.
‘A bloody lot happened then’, said Joe. ‘First of all, Vin Wallace said, “Bugger all! That’s what I’m going to do about it.” And Judy said, ‘Well, I’ll go to buggery!” And Scott said, “Stop that bloody swearing.” ’
‘That shut the lot up, did it?’ I said.
‘No fear, it didn’t’, said Joe. ‘Judy said to Vin, “Don’t tell me you’re going to deny it?”
‘“I am”, said Vin, and he punched the table. “I deny it.”
‘“Then it must have been Jack Roberts, the butcher”, said Judy, and then Scott said, “Well, I’ll go to buggery!” and started packing up the papers on the table.’
‘Is that all he told you?’ I asked.
‘Yes’, said Joe.
‘What does Duke reckon is going to happen now then?’
‘Well, according to Duke, Judy has nailed the bloke with the least weight and has backed a winner. Duke reckons Jack Roberts will marry her because he’s been finding it very hard to get a girl over the last six months owing to him coughing a lot.’
‘I feel sorry in a way’, I said. ‘All the blokes that used to take Judy out at different times—they’ll miss her I reckon.’
Snarly Burns
Snarly Burns was not a big man, but when you were lying in the long grass and looked up at him he reached the sky. His boots crushed the grass beside your face so that the bruised and broken stems emerged from beneath them, no longer upright and flexible in the sun, but wounded into pity like soldiers.
Through the side of my eyes I could see these boots, the hard toe-pieces curved into mud-stained domes, peering at me through a barricade of disordered stems. They watched, but they had no eyes; they listened, but they had no ears. If they moved and stood upon me I would crush like the grass.
Fear writhed in me. It gripped me in coils that arrested the beating in me and for a moment I lay without movement.
It vanished and I grabbed my crutches and was on my feet before he had finished shouting. I leant against the fence, my heart sounding like that of a horse after a gallop.
I shouldn’t have been in his paddock. He didn’t like it.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he shouted at me, though my hearing had become acute and I could have heard a whisper.
‘I was just lying down, Mr Burns. I wanted to look at the sky.’
He looked at me, then up at the sky. He walked away and left me, solitary as a heron.
Freckles Jack
‘Listen’, I said to Joe. ‘Do you ever wonder if you’re soft?’
‘No’, said Joe. ‘Never.’
‘Well, tell me this. Why is it that Plugger Ryan, Dickie Forbes and Freckles Jack are all soft? They are all nice blokes. You couldn’t get better blokes. Why do people keep saying they’re soft?’
‘Yes, it’s funny isn’t it’, said Joe. ‘There’s no way of stopping people saying it.’
‘Once they give you the name of being “soft”, that’s the end of it’, then I added, ‘You know Mr Smith?’
‘The crippled Mr Smith?’
‘Yes, him. Well, when he was telling me a story once, I said to him—I was talking about the bloke in the story—I said to him, “If I’d been that bloke I’d never have done that. I would have been different”, and then he said to me, “Ah! my boy! You must remember that in country towns once you are different you are soft.” That’s what he said. I’ve never forgotten it.’
‘How long ago did he say that?’
‘About a fortnight ago.’
‘I wonder what he meant. Take Plugger. He’s a nice bloke. What’s wrong with him?’
‘He’s always picking flowers’, I said.
‘Well, what’s wrong with that?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with it, but I’m just saying a bloke that goes looking in the bush for flowers and lets blokes see him doing it, he’s soft—or that’s what they reckon.’
‘What about Dickie Forbes?’
‘I don’t know about him. He won’t join in games much, but he watches. I’m damned if I know why they call him soft. He likes horses. Then there’s Freckles Jack . . .’
‘Well, he’s soft because he undoes his pants and pulls out his thing.’
‘Look, everybody has to do that, haven’t they? Black fellows have it out all the while and no one says they are soft.’
‘Yes, but Freckles lets girls see it.’
‘Well, so does a black fellow’, I argued.
‘It’s like this’, explained Joe. ‘It’s all right if anyone sees it by mistake, but once you show it to someone you’re in bad trouble. It’s something grown-ups keep telling you. The only grown-up I’ve ever known who had brains was old Mrs Bilson and she’s dead, poor bugger! But she was never interested in whether anyone looked for flowers or pricks or anything.’
On our way home from school one night, Freckles Jack was standing behind a stump pissing away with a mob of kids round him looking at his prick. Joe and I had seen it lots of times, but we pulled up to show we weren’t stuck-up or anything.
There were some girls there and the way they were going on you’d think someone was handing out Christmas presents.
‘He’s filthy’, June Brick kept saying. ‘He’s a filthy brute.’
June Brick had lice in her hair. When you were sitting behind her in school you could see them crawling in and out of the hair close to her head.
All the girls kept saying that Freckles was a dirty bugger, but none of them went away. There was a little kid called Sally Hogan who pushed her way to the front, had a look, then came out and said, ‘I’m going to tell Mum.’
I tell you, we broke up pretty smart after that. That certainly put the kibosh on it. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a telltale-tit and you can bet your life it’s always a girl. She hangs round snooping, then darts in to tell the teacher. She’s usually a teacher’s pet. No one’s safe when they are around. No matter what excuse they make for putting your weights up, they can never be trusted.
Joe and I made for home. I was a bit frightened; I don’t know why. Joe said he felt the same. ‘I don’t know’, Joe said. ‘What in the hell are we walking quick for? Like as if we want to get away from Freckles Jack. If you wanted someone to talk to, someone who knew a bit about everything, you wouldn’t go past Freckles Jack, would you?’
‘No’, I said. ‘He’s a laughing, happy sort of bloke. He can act the clown real good and he can sing funny songs and play the mouth organ. No, I wouldn’t go past Freckles Jack. I’ll never know why they reckon he’s soft.’
The next day there was hell to play. Every kid that saw Freckles Jack was lined up at school. Mothers and fathers were all over the place. Freckles Jack was kept at home. First the teacher questioned us, then Mrs Hogan, then Mr Thomas, then Mrs Brick, then the parsons and priests came into it. It frightened hell out of Joe and me. We just couldn’t understand why grown-up people suddenly looked at Freckles Jack as if he was a savage dog.
Joe was moving about like a nervous horse and I could hear my heart beating. I was frightened. Mr Thomas, an Elder of the church, came to
the school to question a lot of Protestant kids. The teacher called out my name and pushed me into a room with him.
‘Sit down’, he said and he made me sit on a chair. I tell you I felt like as if that room was full of danger.
‘I want to question you about the conduct of Freckles Jack’, he said, then went on, ‘Did he try and persuade you to touch it?’ His mouth seemed to keep opening and shutting like a trap when he said this. I could see his teeth. Everything seemed strange to me. I wanted to get outside and crawl under bushes or something. I wanted to get away. But I answered him.
‘No, he didn’t’, I said. My voice was trembling. ‘He was just showing us; he’s a nice bloke.’
‘He’s filthy’, snarled Mr Thomas. ‘Did he make any girl hold it?’
I thought he must be mad. ‘Freckles Jack was just skiting about himself. It was more interesting to the girls than to Joe and me, but then again if one of the girls did it Joe and me would be more interested.’
‘Don’t talk like that. Do you hear me. Never talk like that. You avoid that boy. Do you hear me. Never play with that boy. Keep away from him.’
It showed me how really bad you become when you grow up, grown up like Mr Thomas. We’d have to talk to Freckles Jack when we met him. He had a mongrel dog called Stunner. He loved that dog. We couldn’t just walk past him if he was with the dog. You’d have to talk to them.
Mr Thomas asked me a lot more things, but I was getting more and more frightened. I was shaking, and he told me to go.
Father Finnigan was a bit better with Joe.
‘Now tell me, boy. Was he putting his hand on the girls now? Did he pull up their clothes with his eyes full of desire?’
Joe told me he didn’t know what he meant. But he said no, because he was sure he had committed no sin. But, by hell, Joe reckoned Freckles Jack had sinned in some way. All Father Finnigan said was, ‘Avoid him, me boy.’
The Complete Stories of Alan Marshall Page 40
