By the time the train draws parallel with the lime kiln, Rosalind has decided what she will say to Oliver Goodmore.
The cutting is the perfect spot from which to mount a surprise attack, and will be cited as proof of Gül’s military experience. Because of the lime kiln, none of the passengers have a full view of the line. The Ottoman flag comes into sight separately to each wagon only as the train sweeps around the curve.
Lawrence Freer, the fireman, is standing out on the footplate when he notices a red cloth fluttering above a white cart. His first thought: someone’s exploding defective ammunition. But he dismisses it. No one would be venturing out with a powder magazine on New Year’s Day.
The cart is parked near to the tracks, on the other side of the trench with the water-pipe. The train steams closer. Freer reads the words italicised on the side, and relaxes.
‘A bit late for the ice-creams to be going out to Silverton,’ he observes to the driver.
Jim Nankivell smiles. ‘I suppose some poor old beggar’s hoping to make a bit for himself.’
They chug past, and Nankivell sees what looks like an insignia on the red cloth. A breeze has sprung up, ruffling it.
At that moment, a pair of white shapes bob up from the trench – dark faces, the tips of rifles – and he hears two gunshots. One bullet hits the sand, spraying dust against the engine. The second bullet strikes the brake-van, embedding itself in the woodwork.
Ralph Axtell is sitting in the brake-van with the Mayor and the secretary of the Manchester Order of Oddfellows.
‘What’s that?’ enquires the Mayor.
‘It’s probably the Germans,’ shouts Axtell, who has postponed his return to Melbourne until after the picnic.
The Germans! In Broken Hill! Everyone laughs. They think it’s a stone pinging against the side.
The two turbaned men continue to fire at the train, ducking down into the trench to reload, or to take cover in case anyone shoots back. But no one is shooting back. No one has any idea what is happening.
‘Hurrah!’ contributes someone, responding to another shot.
Jabez Herring, Clarence Dowter’s deputy in the Sanitary Department, scans the horizon through his gold-rimmed spectacles, and sees nothing: ‘They’re only firing blanks,’ he reassures his wife.
Then: two puffs of red dust.
Miss Pollock in her orange dress feels impelled to lean over the side and call out at the empty landscape in her teacher’s voice: ‘Stop fooling around, or someone will get hurt!’
A pair of girls in Mary Brodribb’s truck yell ‘Happy New Year!’ at the spectacle of two dark men in such candid white turbans and red jackets.
Mary smiles, but her eyes are unhappy, seized by the thought that this may be a surprise which Oliver has organised for Rosalind, and the shots are being fired in celebration of their engagement.
Next to Rosalind, Oliver jerks up his head.
‘What the hell?’ rising to his feet. He sees a cow on the right-hand side and wonders if some idiot is trying to shoot it. Just then, he spots Tom Blows ripping along beside the pipe-track, his round face protected by a leather visor. He thinks, It’s Tom’s motorbike back-firing! and takes off his hat, waving it in the air, at the same time delighted to notice, strapped between the handlebars like a crib tin, the small case containing Tom’s camera equipment. Even if I haven’t managed to fix the problem, he should be able to make it out to Silverton. Tom is photographing the running races at the picnic ground. In return for Oliver repairing his motorbike, he has offered to take a joint portrait of Oliver with Rosalind afterwards.
Clarence Dowter leaps up next. He registers two men lying on the embankment above the trench which contains what the Sanitary Inspector has come increasingly to regard as his life’s work: the reticulation pipe that he laid ten years ago to carry 80,000 gallons of water per hour from the creek at Umberumberka to Broken Hill. He assumes something must be wrong with the water-pipe – a leak perhaps – and these men are attending to it.
Lizzie is clinging to the side and waving the peach that she has started to eat. She is pointing it out – her beloved ice-cream cart. She wants the train to stop.
Rosalind, emerging from indifference, now stands up and squeezes in between Oliver and his uncle. Confusing matters, the ka-bang ka-bang of the motorbike. But she is puzzled by the white cart. It hasn’t travelled far since she saw it last, five hours ago, outside her window in Rakow Street, and is turned about as though coming back to town. Has a wheel broken? Gül should be in Silverton by now. She feels a stab that he will miss out on so many customers.
It’s then that Rosalind sees the yellow crescent like a banana, and a star.
She looks around. At the horse on its own under a tree. Less than thirty yards from the train, the Ghantown butcher lying on his belly. And crouching on the embankment another ten yards away – Gül.
Their turbans are frost-white, like ice-cream almost.
The train is carrying her towards them.
Suddenly, Oliver tenses. ‘Get down, Rosalind!’ and grabs her. But his hand on her arm does not comfort.
‘I am not going to get down.’
Uncoercible, she raises her right palm to attract Gül’s attention.
Behind her, Mrs Lakovsky is thrusting her children to the floor. ‘Ivan!’ she is shouting. ‘Ivan!’
Earlier that morning, shortly after 9 am, Gül spreads out two horse blankets over the pipe in the trench. He sits there with Molla Abdullah, waiting more than an hour. When they hear the rails tremble, they jump to their feet. Gül shoots at the driver and misses. Molla Abdullah shoots at the fireman and misses.
Stooping to reload, Gül again asks Allah to accept his sacrifice. Then he levels his barrel at the line of passengers who have stood up.
In white shirts and hats, peering over the side, in the roasting sun – all those unbelievers, waiting to be picked off.
Gül fires, reloads, fires once more, startling a wood swallow from the mulga. He springs out of the trench to join Molla Abdullah on the embankment.
Legs apart, Molla Abdullah wriggles forward. He has only ever used a gun to shoot sick animals and is not accustomed to the kick. Still, what easy targets – these goggling women wearing ridiculous clothing. Like a row of rabbits in their soft cotton dresses, or a goat he has to kill for fresh meat when on a month-long hawking trip to Corona.
‘Rabbana inna aamanna, fa ighfir lanaa thunubanaa wa qina athaab el naar …’
Molla Abdullah completes the istighfar dua prayer asking for forgiveness, and fires.
In the second truck, Jabez Herring drops like a coat from a hanger. His spectacles fly off, clattering to the floor. Above him, one of his wife’s brothers grabs Mrs Herring by the floppy sunhat which she has fastened under her chin, and tugs her down.
Molla Abdullah reloads. Another truck rattles slowly by.
He raises the rifle to his shoulder, and looks down the barrel at a man with an arm in a white sling – all at once recognising the rider of the milk buggy which had crashed into his camels. It wasn’t Molla Abdullah’s fault that the dairyman never reined in his horse. And this was the man whose house he had dug out of the sand!
The butcher is about to pull the trigger on Albert Filwell when his attention is diverted by Clarence Dowter squinting in his direction, as though he is beginning to interrogate him again. Molla Abdullah’s eyes are black opals above his newly naked chin. If he could pick off the Sanitary Inspector, who has now removed his hat …
Abruptly, he shifts the barleycorn foresight from Rosalind’s father until it hovers on Dowter’s face.
At that instant, Gül notices Oliver Goodmore. He tries to quell his rage, asking Allah to give him patience, and takes aim.
Two loud reports, one after the other.
Pinioned between Oliver and his uncle, Rosalind feels a blow, followed by heat.
Lizzie lets go of her peach. It rolls under a bench, picking up grit and droppings. She jumps down to retrieve it, i
nspecting the moist flesh embedded with flecks of quartz and earth, and starts to shake.
Oliver, though, realises they are being fired at. He turns to Rosalind, but she has slumped forward.
He puts his arm out to support her, and as he does so blood streams down his wrist. He catches Rosalind by the shoulder and lowers her to the floor of the truck. Limp in his arms, she has never seemed so relaxed, so intimate.
She looks up at him in a perplexed way.
He stares back at her, his mouth wide open. Part of her forehead is missing.
‘Rosalind …’
‘But I …’ Her voice sounds as if it doesn’t come from within her, but from another place.
The train pulls up a few yards further on while driver and fireman debate what to do. Jim Nankivell can see people in the cutting ahead. Are there more attackers waiting along the line?
Molla Abdullah kneels and fires. He appears to be aiming at Jack Crossing, an assistant guard in the last wagon, who jumps down and runs off.
Gül has stopped shooting. He stands on the railway track, staring at the ever smaller train.
He knows that the bullets intended for Oliver Goodmore and Clarence Dowter have missed their target. The way he cried out when he saw who was hit made Molla Abdullah think it was Gül who had been shot.
Gül had noticed Rosalind too late. He can still see her waving at him.
In the fierce light, the confusion of the ore-truck is laid bare. Children blink alarmed eyes at the panic taking place above them. Legs bumpy with varicose veins kick out from under skirts. The floor is a mess, suddenly, of dropped hats and parasols. Everyone is shouting.
Mrs Rasp has subsided on the bench in a cloud of white, from which red is oozing, spreading through the white picnic dress to her waist. Under her cream bonnet, she appears to have on a balaclava. The lower part of her face is knitted with blood from her masculine jaw, where a flying fragment of bone from Rosalind’s skull has hit it. Blood drips from her mouth onto Rosalind’s wicker hamper, and splashes to the floor.
Her moans mingle with those of Mrs Lakovsky, who has a big jagged hole in her left shoulder.
Amid the kicking and screaming and the scrummage to get the hell down, only Clarence Dowter stands unscathed above the commotion. He remains at the side of the truck, staring out, with the serious, strained eyes of someone having their hair cut. Upright and remote, as if perceiving in a mirror for the first time the contours of his own skull, he seems afraid to unlock his gaze from the trench carrying his water-pipe, and from which he appears to be under attack.
Behind the Sanitary Inspector’s rigid back, Mrs Kneeshaw summons every ounce to put into practice her recent Red Cross training. She bends down beside Mrs Rasp, assessing her injury, and gently wipes her jaw with a handkerchief. Passing swiftly on, she twists her veil into a sling to support Mrs Lakovsky’s shoulder.
But it’s Rosalind Filwell who most needs help.
Her father is uselessly trying to shade her face. Her mother holds both of Rosalind’s hands, stroking and squeezing them.
When the train rocks to a halt at Tramway Dam, Clarence Dowter turns around.
Some force has dragged Lizzie’s eyes inwards. She is juddering and choking and rubbing her head vigorously, as if in the grip of a fit.
Clarence Dowter looks down at a semi-naked Mrs Kneeshaw. And a sight that remains with him until his death in Kogarah seven years later, of his nephew Oliver cradling Rosalind’s unrepairable head.
Mrs Kneeshaw has finished tearing up her petticoat into bandages. She ignores Lizzie’s shrieks and convulsions, and, nudging Oliver aside, starts to bind Rosalind’s wound. The back and top of Rosalind’s head is practically blown away, and her brain exposed.
Rosalind imagines that it’s the Afghan who tenderly wraps the strip of white cotton around her temple.
She is conscious of a glaring light. The sun is a miner’s torch bearing down on her.
‘Goo …’
‘I’m right here. I’m with you.’ Oliver’s shadow falls like lead across her blouse.
‘I don’t know why … I …’
She is bleeding from the mouth, but she wants to say something.
While Mrs Kneeshaw bandages Rosalind’s forehead as best she can, Jack Crossing, the assistant guard, has hared down the track to the reservoir at Tramway Dam, where he finds a hand-cranked telephone in the pump shed. He turns the handle and waits for an answer.
Two more shots ring out from opposite the cemetery.
The receiver is picked up by the station master in Broken Hill.
Crossing gasps that the Manchester Unity picnic train is under attack from soldiers flying the Turkish flag and that several passengers are killed or injured, and armed assistance is needed.
The message is relayed to Sergeant Sleath at the police station.
At 10.45 am, the Reverend Cornelius Hayball is driving Mrs Stack down Argent Street in his Ford runabout, having picked her up outside her store. They are on their way to Silverton when the policeman flags down the car.
‘I need you to take these four men to the Freiberg Arms Hotel.’
The men climb in. Sergeant Sleath dives into a second car. The two vehicles, loaded with a total of ten armed policemen, accelerate off in convoy towards West Broken Hill, leaving Mrs Stack on the pavement.
With fresh rumours reaching shocked ears every minute, a spontaneous posse of about fifty men is raised from a crowd that has gathered in front of the police station. It comprises members of the Barrier Boys’ Brigade Rifle Club, but soon embraces any able-bodied volunteer who owns a gun and would like to have a lash.
The local military commander is contacted. Major Sholto Sinclair-Stanbrook of the newly formed 82nd Infantry Battalion is leaving for the Jockey Club to watch the horse races, when his adjutant runs out to say that he is required on the telephone.
Appointed to his command because he ‘looked the part’, Major Sinclair-Stanbrook consents to Sergeant Sleath’s request to deploy his men. Since it is New Year’s Day and most of the battalion are off duty, the order is issued for any soldier who hears about it to muster in ten minutes at the Barrier Boys’ Brigade Hall in Oxide Street.
All thoughts of the hurdle race suspended, Major Sinclair-Stanbrook voices the confusion that many feel: Are they dealing with lunatics, or with highly trained troops? If the latter, where have the enemy sprung from – the mining town is 300 miles at least from the coast. And if the Germans or their Turkish allies have in fact reached as far inland as Broken Hill, in what numbers are they here?
Oliver never sees the shot that kills Tom Blows as he roars, exhaust pipe popping, towards the ice-cream cart. His motorbike slithers along the ground, spewing photographic equipment, and comes to a halt beside the trench.
The train has disappeared through the cutting when the two men stand up and walk over to where Blows lies jack-knifed in the sand. Molla Abdullah has shot him between the shoulders.
Molla Abdullah kicks for signs of life. Gül stoops to pick up a lens that has spilled from the burst camera case. He peers through it – he looks like a camel who has strayed, with his inflamed rims – and tosses it aside. Molla Abdullah says that armed men will soon be chasing them, they had better leave this place. Gül nods in an absent way. This is wrong. He keeps seeing the white palm of her hand, waving.
Gül goes over to the ice-cream cart and tugs down the flag; and then they abandon their position above the water-pipe, their horse and cart, and trudge back on foot towards Broken Hill.
They thread their way across a flat expanse of stony, treeless desert dotted with wind-twisted, blackened vegetation and the skulls of gourds and paddy melon, resembling two shepherds from the Holy Land in their khaki coats and turbans. Molla Abdullah has his rifle slung across his back, Gül carries his in his hand, and the red flag. It trails on the ground behind him, blurring into the red earth.
Quite soon they come to the isolated houses on the western fringe of town.
Old Phil Deebles, a retired fettler, is first to see them. Unaware of what has occurred, he calls out in a jocular voice over the wicket fence that he has all but finished painting. ‘You won’t get much shooting round here,’ waving his brush.
Gül looks at him and walks on.
Terence Riley, a seventy-year-old tinsmith with a spade-sized black beard, is standing in his doorway when they pass. ‘You’d better not do any shooting here,’ he growls, ‘there are children around.’
Without warning, both men raise their rifles. The tinsmith slams the door, but they fire through it, shooting him in the abdomen. Clutching his stomach, he staggers out of the back of his house and clambers down the granite slope to the Freiberg Arms Hotel.
They trudge on, skirting the West Camel Camp north of Kaolin Street, where several Indian and Afghan camel drivers live. Badsha Khan is milking a goat in front of his shack. Gül fires at him and shouts, ‘Don’t follow me, or I’ll shoot you,’ and fires again.
Near the Freiberg Arms Hotel, Sergeant Sleath notices two figures ambling along the ridge, and drives up, intending to ask if they have seen the enemy. The car is bouncing towards them when the men kneel and shoot. Constable Torpy steps out to return fire and is hit in the groin, twice. He lies sprawled in the shade of the Ford’s swung-open door, cursing.
Gül and Molla Abdullah climb to the top of the hill, and look for shelter behind an outcrop of white quartz boulders. Moments later, something pokes up from between the rocks. It’s their flag, knotted to the end of a dead branch, a bright red diagonal against the blue sky.
By the time the relief train arrives at the reservoir with fifteen armed men on board, Rosalind is dying.
Mrs Kneeshaw has had to take tremendous care in bandaging her head, as there’s nothing left of the exterior of the skull to hold the brains in position. She uses Rosalind’s hat to swat away the flies that keep congregating.
Oddfellows Page 7
