Pearl in a Cage

by Joy Dettman

  Vern, George and Charlie didn’t mix socially; they rarely agreed on any given subject, were hard pushed to raise a nod when they passed in the street, but standing shoulder to shoulder, fighting for the same cause, they made a formidable trio. They’d agreed to give the new copper a day to get settled in, then they went together to welcome him to town. They didn’t stay long.

  Denham was in his early thirties, a big, red-faced, heavy-featured man with a red-eyed wife dressed like a Quaker. The trio was not invited inside.

  ‘He’s too bloody young,’ George said.

  ‘His wife looked as if she had a burr in her bloomers,’ Charlie said.

  ‘He won’t last a year,’ Vern said.

  ‘Curtains pulled at this time of day. He didn’t want us looking in,’ Charlie said.

  ‘City,’ Vern said.

  ‘Where were his kids?’ George said.

  ‘He’s got three. They came over to the shop this morning looking for headache medicine. There’ll be more headaches than hers in this town before long,’ Charlie said.

  School went back in late January. Denham’s son, who looked much like his father, was dressed like a parson’s son; his sisters walked off clad in starched white pinafores. Those kids made their presence felt at school before their father started making his own felt around town. They expected toilet paper in the lavs. Woody Creek kids were lucky to find a bit of newspaper. Woody Creek kids came home from school dusty, always had, always would. The new copper’s kids came home dustier than most and usually howling. Denham’s first complaint was to the school.

  The trio heard about it.

  ‘If he’s going to live here, his kids will have to learn to fit in,’ George said.

  Charlie nodded, but Vern looked off into the distance. His boy still wasn’t fitting in. There were days when he came home dusty and tear-stained — and he carried his own toilet paper.

  Horrie Bull, the publican, was the first man in town to call Denham an officious city bastard — to his face. He and his wife had bought that pub before the war, and they’d run it well, run it the way country folk liked their pub run, and Ernie Ogden hadn’t interfered with how they’d run it either.

  ‘You’ve been warned, Mr Bull,’ Denham said.

  ‘If you hang around here long enough, lad, you’ll learn that up here a man’s thirst isn’t dictated by a clock,’ Horrie told him, friendly like. Horrie was a fat and happy, friendly man. You couldn’t rile him if you tried, and a few had tried. He was a slow-moving, slow-talking, reasoning man. ‘A chap who’s working twelve hours straight sawing up wood needs to wash the sawdust from his throat,’ he explained.

  ‘Six o’clock is closing time, Mr Bull.’

  ‘You’re making a big mistake, lad. You start out on the wrong foot up here and you’ll be limping in no time flat.’

  ‘Is that a threat, Mr Bull?’

  ‘Bullshit to your threats. I’m just doing my best to explain to you how things work up here —’

  ‘Six o’clock, and if you don’t comply, I’ll have your licence.’

  ‘Get off my premises, you officious city bastard —’

  Denham charged him with abusive language, which would mean his licence. Mrs Bull marched him, hat in hand, to Denham’s door. They weren’t invited in. Horrie apologised on the verandah and the pub started closing its doors at six, which had a few more calling the new copper an officious city bastard — or worse.

  Vern and George were not drinkers and never had been. Charlie wasn’t a big drinker, but that pub closing its doors at six upset his daily routine. For years he’d been accustomed to closing his shop door sometime before six, walking around to the hotel, having two slow beers and catching up with the town news while Jean went home to cook his dinner. A leisurely walk the few blocks home gained him his daily exercise and put him in a relaxed frame of mind to enjoy his dinner at seven on the dot. Now he had to miss out on his two beers, or close early and drink fast. A beer drunk fast didn’t taste the same, and what was he supposed to do while waiting for his dinner to cook — other than argue with his bludging son-in-law?

  Charlie was neither fat nor thin, neither tall nor short, he had no outstanding feature other than a head of silver white hair and bike rider’s legs, all sinew and overdeveloped calf, which he didn’t mind showing off in long shorts when he rode around town making the deliveries. He’d wed the best-looking girl in town thirty years ago and still considered her the best-looking girl in town, and she told him regularly that he was still the best-looking feller in town. They had a good thing going, Charlie and Jean White — or they’d had a good thing going until Denham moved in.

  Charlie and Jean had the one offspring. Hilda had turned up nine months after the wedding and ruined their love life for more than a year, so Charlie made certain it didn’t happen again — for which he was now truly grateful. Hilda had picked up with a returned man who’d lost his right hand during the war and had an aversion to getting the other one dirty. Instead of the bride moving out after the wedding, Alfred Timms, the bludging groom, moved in — and he wouldn’t put on an apron and get in behind the shop counter.

  ‘Stop your arguing, Charlie, and come out here and set the table,’ Jean called.

  ‘Tell him to set the table,’ Charlie said. ‘It only takes one hand to pick up a plate.’

  ‘Stop picking on that boy.’

  ‘Boy? He’s thirty bloody years old!’

  ‘And stop using that language in my house!’

  ‘I’ll use what I like in my own bloody house.’

  Charlie worked all day with Jean. He slept beside her every night and there was never a harsh word between them. Every night now she took his son-in-law’s part between six and seven. And whose fault was that?

  Bloody Denham’s fault, that’s whose fault.

  Things got worse for the Denham kids.

  ‘Nancy boy Denham, your mother sucks lemons.

  Your father’s got his thumb shoved halfway up his . . .’

  Three days out of five, one of Denham’s kids ran home howling; three weeks out of four, Denham was down at the school, which didn’t improve life for his kids, so he went a step further. He knocked on George and Maisy’s door and had the audacity to suggest they get their boys under control.

  The twins could do no wrong in George’s eyes, and he wasn’t known for pulling his punches. A lot of words were said, a lot of threats spoken, on both sides, and George’s boys listening in to every word.

  They didn’t sleep well on nights of the full moon, though it no longer troubled them. Their bedroom window opened onto the western verandah and they’d developed the habit of climbing out, climbing over the fence to the memorial park, then wandering the town getting up to what mischief they could.

  There was a full moon two nights after Denham knocked on their father’s door. Around midnight, broken bricks started raining down on the roof of the police station-cum-residence. Denham’s wife, pregnant again, panicked, his kids screamed, but before he could get his trousers on, the noise stopped.

  The next night, same time, same scenario. His wife and kids might have been screaming, but Denham had his trousers on and his boots. He was hiding in the shadows on the far side of the road, crouched beneath a tree overhanging the post office fence. And he sighted the little buggers, recognised them and gave chase. It was no contest. He was a young and fit man. He grabbed one and hauled him kicking back to his lockup where he locked him in.

  The twins had a separation complex. Since birth they’d slept side by side. They had twin beds now, but a bare two foot of floor separated them. Bernie climbed back into his bedroom, but he couldn’t lie down, couldn’t sit still. He jiggled for half an hour then returned the way he’d come.

  When Denham came at daybreak to unlock the cell door, he found a twin asleep against it, as close as he could get to his brother. He let out the one who was in, then followed the little buggers home, watched them climb the park fence and climb in through their wind
ow. Their parents would be none the wiser if they weren’t told, so he knocked on their door and told them where their sons had spent the night and why.

  ‘You’ve got no right locking up nine-year-old kids,’ George said. ‘Those boys aren’t old enough to know right from wrong.’

  ‘Then you’d better teach them fast, Mr Macdonald, because if you don’t, I’ll do it for you,’ Denham warned.

  He didn’t know who he was dictating to. George was a nuggety little Neanderthal with more hair in his jutting eyebrows than he had on his head. He had a comical look about him until you saw his eyes. Fifty years of living in the shade of verandah brows had washed out their little colour. They were not the sort of eyes a man could look into without feeling cold knives running up and down his spine.

  Denham felt the knives. He turned to a front window where he saw a dozen or more of George’s pale purple eyes peering at him from beneath a lifted lace curtain.

  ‘You’ve been warned, Mr Macdonald. You get control of those boys.’

  ‘I’ll get control of you, you city bastard. There’s a law against locking up under-age boys,’ George said. ‘I’ll get you kicked out of the force for this.’

  Maisy placed the phone call to a Willama solicitor who George spent fifteen minutes yelling at.

  ‘I want that bastard charged with the illegal locking up of a minor,’ George roared. ‘I want that officious bastard and his sour-mouthed wife and prissy-mouthed kids out of my town.’

  George wasn’t into prissy-mouthed kids. He’d started breeding late, but had ended up with ten and barely a clean mouth amongst the lot of them.

  At fourteen, he’d inherited his grandparents’ land and his retarded mother. For a time he’d considered leaving home, but someone had to see to his mother, so he’d stayed on and worked, and in time he turned a hundred acres of weed and disrepair into a productive farm. He’d borrowed on his farm to set up his first bush mill, and a few years later he’d had more money than he’d known what to do with, which should have made him a bit more attractive to the opposite sex, but hadn’t. He’d craved family, had dreamed grand dreams of starting his own dynasty, but any prospective mate not scared off by his looks took one look at his mother and ran. He’d been waiting for a haircut when he read an article about the male bowerbird, which built a fancy bower, decorated it with anything blue, then sat back and waited for the females to come.

  George bought land in the centre of town and paid a builder to make him a fancy bower — six bedrooms, a man-sized kitchen and a fancy sitting room with blue curtains — if the females had come calling, his mother scattered them with the broom he’d bought so she might sweep his floors. She’d been no trouble out at the farm. In town she was big trouble.

  He’d employed young Maisy Roberts to keep an eye on her. Maisy was a girl of sixteen raised by a mean-hearted aunt who had taught her how to cook and clean and dodge broomsticks. She had no trouble dodging his mother’s. Six months down the track, his house clean enough, a hearty meal on the table each night, his mother under control, George asked Maisy if she’d be interested in making things a bit more permanent. She told him she wasn’t planning on leaving the job, and what did he mean by more permanent?

  She was barely seventeen when they’d wed. George was pushing forty. She was still seventeen when their first daughter was born. She gave him seven more, at twelve-month intervals, before his persistence paid off with twin sons. Give a man a son after eight daughters and he thinks that boy is Jesus Christ. Give him two and he’s got Jesus Christ and God Almighty beneath the same roof. George believed the sun rose and set in his boys’ pale purple eyes.

  Few in town agreed with him. Those little swine had been running wild since they’d learnt to crawl, and Denham’s roof wasn’t the only one in town stoned on nights of the full moon. They didn’t stop at roof-stoning either. Shop windows were whitewashed, Miss Blunt’s underwear stolen from her clothes line and pegged on the railway yard fence. They’d mutilated Vern’s rose bushes, renamed his son Rosie, called his daughters Wattle and Ironbark — though all bar the mutilation of his roses, Vern considered to be character-strengthening. His kids were all a little light-on in the character department.

  Joey had been in school for three days before the twins renamed him ‘Darkie’. Gertrude wasn’t too concerned about it, nor was Joey. He liked going to school with Jenny. He knew Jimmy too. In late February, Gertrude was standing at the school gate, seeing Joey safely indoors, when the headmaster approached her.

  ‘I suggest you keep the boy home for a month or two,’ he said.

  ‘Miss Rose says he’s doing well.’

  ‘We’ll reassess the situation in a month or two,’ he said and he walked back to his classroom.

  She entered the school ground, and was stepping up to the verandah when Miss Rose walked Joey from her room.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Gertrude said.

  ‘I’m so sorry, but we’ve had a complaint, Mrs Foote.’

  ‘You said he was doing well?’

  ‘It’s not . . .’ She patted Joey’s cheek. ‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say more.’

  There were a few in town who looked at that little boy sideways. Gertrude sifted names as she took Joey’s hand and walked him back to the cart, lifted him to the seat and continued into town. She’d sort it out, but not in front of him.

  She’d brought in two baskets of eggs, one for Charlie White, one for Mrs Crone. She was lifting the heavier of the two down when she met Ernie Ogden’s replacement.

  ‘Lovely morning,’ she said.

  ‘Is that black with you?’ Denham said.

  ‘Run into Charlie, love,’ Gertrude said, knowing now who had been complaining at the school. ‘I’ll only be a minute.’

  Joey tried to run into Charlie, but Denham blocked his pathway.

  ‘Back in the cart,’ he said. ‘I can’t dictate how you choose to live your life, lady, but decent folk don’t have to dodge around blacks when they come in to do their shopping.’

  ‘You’ve got your head shoved so far up your own backside, you can’t see which way you’re headed,’ Gertrude said, taking Joey’s hand, determined to walk him around that sod. Denham caught the handle of her basket and six dozen eggs rained down, smashed, splattered down. She stood looking at the waste of eggs meant to pay for a bottle of hair dye, for a packet of tea, baking powder.

  Joey didn’t know what was going on. He was supposed to be at school. He was supposed to go into Charlie’s but that man didn’t want him to. He scampered back up to the cart and sat cowering there.

  ‘Bullying women and babies won’t make you stand taller in this town, you thoughtless mongrel.’

  ‘Any more of that and I’ll slap a charge of abusive language on you, lady.’

  She nodded, looked at that little boy who didn’t have an ounce of fear in him, and his big eyes were afraid. She looked at those eggs leaking their goodness into hard-packed clay, then she stooped, picked up an unbroken egg, reached for another. Maybe his self-satisfied smirk brought it on, or Joey’s eyes; she wasn’t sure, but something raised in her a desire to hit back. She did it fast, slapped both hands down on his shoulders, wasted two perfectly good eggs on that mongrel of a man and considered them well spent.

  ‘Add common assault to that charge, you overgrown cur.’

  Rich yolk dribbling, eggshell clinging to his shoulders, his smirk wiped away by surprise, she returned to her cart.

  The confrontation took place in front of Charlie and Jean White. They were standing in their doorway. Denham turned to them.

  ‘You’re witnesses,’ he said.

  ‘He’s deaf and I’m short-sighted,’ Jean said.

  Old Betty Duffy, on her way into town to buy a bit of flour and tobacco, claimed the less-broken eggs. Her pack of half-starved dogs picnicked on the rest, then watered Charlie’s verandah posts in appreciation.

  Denham was just marking out his territory. A man, like a new dog on the block, needs
to erase the scent of the last dog with his own stink, but something had to be done about him before he stank up the whole town.

  MAKING IT THROUGH

  In March of 1930, there were three big sawmills and one bush mill working at full production in Woody Creek, each of them employing eight to fifteen labourers; then there were the bullockies who hauled the logs in from the bush, and the chaps with horse teams, and the chaps who felled the trees. The big steam engines that kept the saws spinning needed servicing by men who knew what they were doing. Horses needed to be shod. Harnesses needed repairs. Cut timber had to be loaded onto railway trucks. What happened to it thereafter was of little concern to the mill men as long as the money kept rolling back into Woody Creek.

  But the timber industry was a chain, one link relying on the other.

  Snap!

  And the chain started falling apart.

  A city man had no use for timber unless he wanted to build something: a house, a bridge, a fence. In 1929, houses had been springing up like mushrooms — on borrowed money. In 1930, the building industry dropped dead. The government had been spending up big on public works, spending borrowed money. Australia, reliant on her wool and wheat exports, now at rock-bottom prices, couldn’t maintain her balance of payments. Government spending had to stop so public works stopped, throwing more out of work. The country was in debt for millions, which few had known until the crash. Unemployment had been a problem for years, but a problem denied. No more denial. ‘FIFTY PER CENT OF CHILDREN ATTENDING SCHOOLS IN THE COLLINGWOOD AREA HAVE UNEMPLOYED FATHERS’ the newspapers howled.

  Woody Creek, isolated, insulated from the greater world’s woes, sat back and watched for a time — until Mick Boyle gave his fifteen workers two days’ notice that he was closing his mill, getting out before he lost the shirt off his back. He’d chosen the wrong time to update his mill machinery, updated with the bank’s money. He got out of it with his house, a couple of horses and a dray.