“Come here, young feller, and give an account of yourself.”
A lace cap instead of a wig. A black dress instead of an ermined gown. But the same penetrating eyes of the judge, the same pseudo-placidity hiding the iron will to extract facts. Bony sensed the tense atmosphere. He felt rather than witnessed the others ranged beside and behind him. It was time for cunning, and for this he was not unprepared.
“Well, go on, Nat. What happened?”
He could have earned millions of dollars on the films instead of his miserable salary as a homicide investigator. In the assumed character of the State-educated but not fully assimilated half-aborigine, he shuffled his feet, looked everywhere save into the expectant faces about him, and into those probing dark eyes. Then, as though forcing himself to speak, he said:
“How did you know about the Kellys? None of you was there.”
“I was there. Through my spyglass I was there,” sternly countered the old woman.
“Oh!” Again the nervous shuffling of feet. The faint hunching of the shoulders betrayed instinctive shrinking. “Well, it happened like this.” Now there was defiance in his voice. “I had to defend myself, see! A young chap who said he was Brian Kelly came along where I was working. He was pleasant enough. Said it looked like the potato crop was heavy, and all that. Then his father came galloping across the paddocks, and told him to get back to work. When he wouldn’t go, his father hit him with his riding crop. Hit him across the mouth and knocked the pipe out. So the young chap jumped off his horse and heaved his father off his, and they got stuck into it.”
“Yes, yes! I saw all that,” shrilled the now ecstatic old woman. “I could see their heads above the wall, and you standing on the wall and dancing with excitement. Then you jumped off the wall and joined in. I saw that, too.”
“Well, I thought they were just having a bit of a blue. Old Kelly fell down, and young Kelly stood on his chest with both feet and tried hard to pull the beard off him. Mr Kelly got rid of his son and they charged together and wrestled a bit, and Brian kneed his father, and then took up a rock and tried to brain him. Then they had another wrestle, and this time Mr Kelly got down hard to the job of strangling his son. I had to stop him with a drop kick.”
“I didn’t see that,” complained old Mrs Conway. “Go on.”
“Well, I thought that finished the blue,” continued Nat Bonnay. “It took some time for Brian to get over the strangling, and his old man to get over my drop kick. Mr Kelly stood up first, and Brian called me a black bastard, which I resent. Anyway, Mr Kelly came for me. He had five yards to travel, and he sort of got up speed. When he got to me he had one foot high in a try to kick me. I got both hands under his foot, and at the same time he began to straighten his leg and so sort of levered himself up on my hands.”
“Ha!” The ejaculation was whispered between the old woman’s parted lips. “I saw Red Kelly go up twice as high as the wall. I’ll swear to it, ’deed I will. And it was you that sent him, Nat?”
Nat Bonnay was now distinctly nervous. He looked up from the floor. He glanced into those burning dark eyes and hastily looked at Mike Conway standing beside him, and then at the flaming logs.
“Did you send Red Kelly up twice as high as the wall? That great red bull of an Irishman? Did you?” persisted Mrs Conway.
“Well, I had to do something to stop ’em,” replied Nat, now a clear whine in his voice. “Mr Kelly was strangling his son, all right. Brian’s face was purple and his tongue was poking out. I didn’t want any killing, and the police coming down here and dragging me into it. I got troubles enough. It’s all right for you squatters. You got the police on your side. You always have had ’em on your side.”
Nat paused for breath, and was conscious of the silence in the room. He went on, half fearful, half rebellious.
“There was Mr Kelly rushing me, and Brian was coming out of the fit and trying to join in. As I said, Mr Kelly stepped into my hands and sprang off them. I had to fix him because he was getting vicious, and so as he heaved up, I twisted my hands so he’d come down with his stomach landing fair and square on a handy half buried rock. It made him terrible sick, but I’m not pulling my forelock and sayin’ I’m sorry.”
In that large and homely room there was silence, prolonged, imprisoned. The grandfather clock for which Inspector Bonaparte would have paid five hundred pounds, had he had five hundred pounds, ticked its majestic tread through the Hall of Silence until insulted by an unleashed storm of laughter. Old Mrs Conway gasped and shrieked. She beat the arms of her chair with her fragile blue-veined hands. Mike Conway stooped and flailed his hands against his thighs. His wife clung helplessly to another woman as helpless as herself. Joe Flanagan rocked on his bandy legs to one of which clung a toddler undecided whether to be frightened or happy. Only the girl, Rosalie Conway was coldly disapproving. She stood stiffly, hands at her sides, her face solemn, her eyes closed.
Mike Conway managed to straighten himself and point at Nat, and yell:
“He just twisted his hands under Red’s foot so that he came down with his guts across a rock. Him ... our Nat ... who weighs eleven stone heaves high old Red and drops his seventeen stone square on a rock. Boy oh boy! If only I could have seen it.”
“I did, I tell you,” gasped the old woman. “I saw it all through me spyglass. I saw him going up and I watched him coming down. The dratted wall stopped me seeing him spread his stomach on the rock, though.” She broke into a gale of laughter, gurgled and gasped and shrieked, and managed to utter words making the sense of: “Made Red terrible sick! My! My! Stop me someone ... stop me.”
The alarmed women gathered about old Mrs Conway and the men were shushed. With difficulty they quieted the matriarch, and eventually dinner was placed on the table.
Nat Bonnay was promoted to a seat beside the old lady whose oaken heart was pacified by a nip of ‘wine’. Dinner proceeded with the usual decorum, which hinted of aristocratic ancestors back in Old Ireland. The incident of the gumleaf playing which appeared to have cracked the social ice was now supported by the encounter with the Kellys which melted the ice entirely.
They baffled him, these Conways. Bony had met every kind of Irishman in the outback, men of every degree. Those Irishmen, however, he had known individually. He had seen them against a background of other nationalities. Now he was seeing a family, a clan, against its own background of an isolated valley, haunted by five or six past generations, and he wondered how much the people about this massive table were influenced by their isolation, and how much by their forbears who came from Ireland to fight and claw a foothold in this new, mysterious and hostile land.
He recalled his assignment to mind; to investigate the suspected murder of an excise officer.
Dinner ended and the women and children withdrew, save old Mrs Conway. Mike served the usual cup of liquor, and when they were smoking, he said to Nat:
“No doubt you’re thinkin’ we’re a funny crowd, Nat. We are. We keep to ourselves. All for one and one for all, as the saying goes. Pity you interfered between the Kellys. Mind you, I’d have given a fiver to have seen you in action, but if I had been there I would have joined them against you.”
“Damn it, Mike,” exploded Nat Bonnay. “I had to separate ’em, as I told you.”
“No, you didn’t have to, Nat. It was a family fight. It’ll work out peaceful in the end. We’ve had these brawls for years, a hundred and fifty years, from what we’ve been told. You just go along quietly and keep to your spud digging.”
“I’ll do that,” Nat Bonnay promised. “In fact, I’ll pack up and leave the valley if you like.”
“No good,” argued Conway. “Too late, anyway. Because you are working for the Conways, up to a point you’re a Conway. You barge into a fight between the Kellys and a Conway barges in. You took part in a private Kelly fight, and you had no business to. That might start a feud that could go on for years. It’s what we don’t want, a feud.”
“I get it, Mike,�
� Nat said, earnestly.
“Wise man, Nat,” old Mrs Conway approved. “In course of time us Cork Valley Irish got a bit of sense and learned that if we don’t live peaceful together we’ll be scattered peaceful all over Australia.” She looked at him long and steadily, and an iron will maintained captive the humorous quirk in her eyes and about her mouth. “You made yourself a Conway man, Nat. You’re a Conway, and what’s done to you is done to the Conways.”
Chapter Seven
The Dinkum Irish
THREE DAYS passed without sight of the Kellys, and when the sun popped up above the mountain rim on the morning of the fourth day, the potato digger was removing his coat preparatory to beginning work.
Working at contract rates is ever a spur. Bony filled four bags with potatoes on his first day. That was overworking unused muscles and the day after, the tally wasn’t quite four. The next day he filled five, and thence progressed to average ten.
This morning Bony set to work with a will, determined to raise his tally to eleven before the sun popped down. It was another beautiful day and the light clouds scudded across the sky to find the sea. The kookaburras came, and it did seem that, like the platypus, each could consume its own weight in worms every hour. By lunch time, Bony had added six filled bags to the stack.
The wind dictated the making of the fire hard against the stone wall, and the lunch tea having been made, Bony sat with his back to the wall and ate thick slices of ham with thick slices of bread covered generously with butter. He could see his bag stack, could count again the six filled this day, and feel satisfaction from his effort, and still further cause for satisfaction when multiplying six bags by seven shillings per bag, and making two pounds and two shilling for the morning.
Life was good. Inspector Bonaparte was feeling fine. His body was fit, and his mind was clear. He could taste the ham. He could smell the scent of the gum trees. His lungs appreciated the clean air. His daily cigarette consumption was down fifty per cent. There was old Mrs Conway watching him through her spyglass, for the sun was reflected by its lens behind the window, and she had said: “Now you’re a Conway. What’s done to you, Nat, is done to the Conways.” It was good to be a Conway. To the devil with Superintendent Casement and his bodies.
The cows were lying down and chewing their cud. The blue wren was almost asleep on the bags and the kookaburras were so heavy in the crop they could do nought but stare. Only old Mrs Conway was fidgeting this late April day. Even the bees, working late and sluggishly, told of peace in Cork Valley. Even the voice above Bony was sweetly solicitous.
“Where will you be havin’ it, Nat?”
The wind took the words and carried them past the indifferent kookaburras. Bony, looking upward, saw the boulder suspended over his head, the arms supporting it, the flaming red hair and beard of Red Kelly. How fast does a hundredweight of granite fall eight feet? Eight feet because it was held high by Red Kelly who was standing on the wall. Too fast to permit a side roll to escape it, too fast to make any other move. It was a time for instinct to rule, not reason. Red Kelly’s eyes were tawny with lust, and a devilish grin spread his whiskers. In his eyes was the knowledge that he couldn’t continue to poise the boulder for longer than another two seconds. Bony said:
“Come on down. I want to talk.”
The boulder was tilted to the right. It thudded upon the earth. Red Kelly breathed deeply and flexed his arms. Bony wiped his forehead with his shirt sleeve, and the wind came coldly to complete the drying of perspiration. One thing only was less certain than that death had been in Kelly’s eyes was that old Mrs Conway had seen him on the wall and had tried to warn Nat Bonnay. There was now no movement of her glass. The giant sprang from the wall, planted his feet either side of his boulder, sat on it, placed his huge fists on his knees and shouted:
“That’s what could happen to you any time. Squashed like a fly. If you had tried to move you’d have got it. You want to talk, do you? Well, talk.”
“I shall,” assented Bony, emphasising the pronoun, and again stressed the pronoun when adding: “You will listen. You Irish are loaded with imagination. It’s why the Irish have produced so many great poets and writers. It’s why most of you Irish think you can’t be wrong, ever. You have a one-sided mind. Nice looking bird you’d have been with the beard pulled off your face, a rope around your neck and a trap under your feet for strangling your own son. You owe me something.”
“’Tis a lie,” yelled Red Kelly.
“Shuppergob! You’ve said it: I talk.”
The exploded words opened Kelly’s mouth to yell again, and words exploded again to close it.
“I said: shut up.”
The light blue eyes blazed with hot fury, and Bony was relieved, for had they blazed with cold fury the situation would have been distinctly dangerous. His own blue eyes were glacial and as the trainer holds the mind of a lion, so now did he hold Red Kelly.
“If I hadn’t climbed up behind you and rasped your nose with my arm, you’d have had your son buried and you would have been holing up in your house waiting the police to take you.” Bony went on, each word like the crackle of small arms heard at distance. “You may like arguing with the police over a murder. I don’t like arguing with ’em over a horse or two. I don’t want ’em on any condition. I’m not a big capitalist squatter like you. I’m only a working man. I don’t own miles of land. I own only my liberty. And if ever I see you choking anyone else I’ll drop kick you so hard you’ll sleep for a week. You’d have murdered your son, but you won’t admit it to yourself even now. You’re not big enough to thank a feller for keeping your neck unstretched. It’s the way you dinkum Irish have of kidding yourselves you’re the salt of the earth.”
The glare in the big man’s eyes made lamps of them. The great thighs tightened in the thick gaberdine trousers as the legs tensed to spring. The wide mouth was like a split gibber half buried in red sand. Then fury passed from Red Kelly, and he said, normally:
“Did you say dinkum ... dinkum Irish?”
“I did.”
“Meaning?”
“That you’re all guts and no guile.”
“Come again.”
“That you’re so anxious to knock a man that you never pause to think he might have done you a good turn. Which I did.”
“And a good turn for yourself at the same time, eh?” queried the still undeflated Kelly.
“In this particular instance it so happens that I don’t want the police on my back. Besides...”
“Besides what?”
“Besides, I must have a cup or two of Irish blood in me. I can get worked up. The trouble is I can’t separate a private fight from a public one. If my mother had been real Irish, I’d know it every time.”
Red Kelly was still breathing heavily, but he was tending to deflate and when he produced a clasp knife big enough to slaughter a bullock, Bony was no longer perturbed. A pipe and tobacco appeared, and chips were flaked from the plug while the pipe dangled amid the red whiskers.
“If you was Irish,” Kelly managed to say, “you could battle with all the Conways at the same time. Where did you learn that drop kick?”
“A professional wrestler showed me.”
“Show me, Nat?”
“No. Every time you used it you would commit murder without intention. You’d kick a man’s head clean off his shoulders. No, I wouldn’t show you.”
“I might be askin’ you nice and kindly like.”
Menace was again in the voice. The pipe still dangled. The knife stuck up in one fist like a bayonet. Bony explained easily.
“You and I might get into another brawl, when I’d want something to play with. I lifted a policeman off his feet one time. He was very sick. I could have hanged for it.”
“A policeman!” shouted Kelly. “Pity you never murdered the bastid.”
“You won’t say that when I tell you he’s Irish.”
“Irish was he! A bastid Irishman, that’s what he was. The police force�
��s full of ’em. So’s the dirty government. They’s deserted the Irish, true and sweet.” The pipe fell unheeded to the ground, and Red Kelly crammed into his mouth the chips he had sliced from the plug. “They’re all bastid Irish, Nat. Mr Rory O’Connell, the premier. Mr Patrick Felix, the Chief Commissioner of Police. Mr Bastid Irish and Mr Bastid that. All in top jobs a-taxin’ decent folk. Makin’ us pay tax to run a truck, to own a wireless or a television. Piling taxes on a man’s tobacco and his whisky. For why? You tell me, Nat. Then I’ll tell you. So’s they can get free trips round the world, and take their wives and lackey’s with ’em. And real Irishmen, real dinkum Irishmen a-slavin’ on the land and down in the mines. The dirty Irish rats a-cringin’ and a-crawling to the English. A-bobbin’ here and a-bobbin’ there, and hopin’ like hell to be made lords and dukes.”
The granite boulder, on which Kelly was sitting like a cat on a hot cannonball, could perhaps have had less impact on Bony than did this tirade, so unexpected was it and so revealing. In odd corners of Australia he had encountered this bitter attitude towards Irishmen in authority, but always in the poorer classes, never in the squatter class to which Red Kelly obviously belonged. He prodded, knowing it to be unwise yet needing to see more clearly.
“All right, the policeman was a bastard. What about Ned Kelly?”1
Red Kelly was shocked. His small eyes became smaller still. A scowl bunched the whiskers about his large mouth. He was disarmed by the earnest expression on the face of Nat Bonnay, the eager student. With forced calm, he said:
“Ned Kelly, sir, was a gintleman. He was what you just said: a dinkum Irishman, the descendant of a line of dinkum Irish men and women. Why, it was the bastid Irish what hanged him. If it hadn’t been for those renegades, Ned Kelly and his men would have taken all Victoria from the English. Yes, then all of New South Wales. Ned Kelly was true dinkum Irish. God rest his soul. Didn’t you go to school?”
Bony and the Kelly Gang Page 5
