Do You Dare? Eureka Boys

by Penny Matthews

  ‘Oh, him,’ said Henry. ‘Do you know him? He’s mad, isn’t he?’

  ‘Jack?’ Frank looked shocked. ‘He’s not mad, not a bit. He’s the smartest person I know, and a good artist. Jack and me, we’re covies.’

  ‘Happy Jack can’t be his real name. What’s his real name?’

  Frank shrugged. ‘Nobody knows.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He’s a mystery, that’s why not. He talks like a judge and looks like a navvy. He can act as old as your grandfather, but he’s only a few years older than me. My mother gives him a feed most days, and because he don’t have any money he pays her with drawings.’

  Suddenly Henry remembered why he’d come in to the town: to earn the money his father needed so badly. And what had he done? He’d given it all away for a joey with a damaged leg.

  He sighed, and stroked the joey’s long, soft ears. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and see Happy Jack.’

  Henry followed Frank away from the main road, weaving through the rows of canvas tents, ducking beneath lines of washing, avoiding piles of smelly rubbish and barking watchdogs and toddling babies. The joey had stopped shivering now, and felt warm against his chest.

  Just beyond the Eureka Lead they came to a grassy area where scrub and scrawny trees still grew. Half hidden behind them was a small timber hut. Smoke drifted from its chimney.

  Frank stopped. He cocked his head, listening, and then whistled softly.

  The front door opened, and out came Happy Jack.

  It was the first time Henry had seen him up close, and he couldn’t help staring. Happy Jack had bright blue eyes in a cheerful sunburned face. His hair was braided into a pigtail like a sailor’s and he had a tattoo of a star on one cheek. Around his shoulders he wore his fur dallong and some kind of scarf.

  ‘Frank Shanahan, my old covie,’ he said. ‘Greetings!’

  He talks like a toff, Henry thought. He’s got the sort of voice that sounds as if it’s come from somewhere up behind your nose and got strangled on the way out. But he sure as blazes doesn’t look like a toff. I’m not sure what he looks like. A pirate, maybe.

  Suddenly the scarf around Happy Jack’s neck began to move.

  A snake! Henry started to shiver worse than the joey. Everyone knew how dangerous snakes were, and this one was licking the man’s face!

  ‘Jack,’ said Frank, ‘this is my friend Henry Bird. Henry, meet Jack. And Lola.’

  ‘How do you do, Mr, um, Jack,’ Henry said. He was quite sure now that Jack was as mad as a hatter. He couldn’t take his eyes off the snake. What if it slithered off Jack and slithered on to him? He felt his eyes starting to cross. Sweat broke out on his palms.

  ‘I am delighted to meet you, Henry,’ said Jack. ‘What brings you two to visit?’

  ‘We’ve got a baby kangaroo,’ Frank told him. ‘Five shillings we paid for him, and I’ve got sixpence-worth. His leg is hurt, and we hoped you’d look at it.’

  Jack held the door open. ‘Of course I will. Do come inside. You mustn’t mind Lola, Henry.’

  Henry put his hand in his pocket, found his pocket-knife, and grasped it firmly, just in case he needed to use it in a hurry. He squeezed past Jack, keeping as far away as possible from Lola.

  The inside of the hut smelt of smoke and was almost completely filled by a table and a stretcher bed. The table was piled with pictures of animals and birds. Now that there was a fair distance between him and Lola, Henry put away his pocket-knife and picked up a sketch of a magpie. It was beautiful, each detail finely drawn.

  ‘I told you he was good, didn’t I?’ said Frank.

  ‘It gives me great pleasure to draw what I see in the natural world,’ Jack said. He unwound Lola from his neck and put her in a big round straw basket with a lid. ‘Let me see the patient.’

  Very carefully Henry pulled the joey out of his coat and put him down on the table. The joey lay still, wide-eyed, while Jack gently felt his injured leg.

  ‘Aha!’ Jack pointed to a patch of dried blood in the soft grey fur. ‘There’s the problem.’

  ‘It might be from a gunshot,’ Henry said, looking at it. ‘Sergeant Nockles said they shot his mother.’

  Jack nodded. ‘I expect the poor little fellow was in her pouch at the time. Fortunately the leg isn’t broken.’ He picked up a jar and scooped some brownish paste onto the wound. ‘It’s made from the leaves of the tea-tree,’ he explained. ‘The Wathaurong people use it. They know a thing or two when it comes to healing.’

  He bound the joey’s leg with a piece of rag. ‘Leave him here with me. I’ll make a nice warm pouch for him out of an old gunny-sack.’

  Henry pointed at the round straw basket. ‘What about . . .?’

  ‘Don’t worry about Lola,’ Jack said. ‘She’s not nearly full-grown yet, and she likes smaller food – lizards, mice, frogs and so on. There’s a patch of bush behind my home that I call her larder. But I’ll keep our joey well away from her, just to be safe.’

  ‘How will you feed him, Jack?’ Frank asked. ‘What do kangaroos eat?’

  ‘His last meal was probably his mother’s milk,’ Jack said. ‘But there’s no more of that, sadly. Grown-up kangaroos eat grass. I’ve seen them grazing near here, at dawn and dusk. They are probably this little fellow’s family, and when he’s well enough he can go back to them. Now, would you boys do me the honour of allowing me to make you a cup of tea?’

  ‘He has real good manners,’ Henry whispered to Frank.

  ‘Not always,’ Frank whispered back. ‘I heard him let loose once when a trap came to the door and tried to arrest him for not having a mining licence. The language he used! He hates the traps like poison.’

  Henry remembered how Jack had yelled at the traps on the diggings. I hate the traps like poison, too, he thought. Maybe Jack isn’t so crazy after all.

  A kettle was already boiling over the fire in the mud-brick chimney-piece that formed the back wall of the hut. Jack made tea and brought the teapot over to the table, together with three tin mugs.

  Henry couldn’t believe it. The teapot must be solid silver!

  ‘You really are a toff, aren’t you?’ he blurted out.

  Jack shook his head. ‘We are all born equal, Henry. True equality is something we must fight for, and where better than here on the diggings, where everyone has a common aim?’ He glanced down at the basket on the floor. ‘Ah, I see Lola is on the loose.’

  Henry almost jumped out of his chair. Lola was lying along one of the roof rafters, right above where he was sitting. She slithered down until she was dangling over the table, her narrow head pointing straight at him.

  Jack reached up and brought her down. She wound herself strongly around his arm, her tongue flickering.

  ‘There’s no need to be scared of her,’ Frank said. ‘I’m not. She’s a carpet python, so she’s not venomous.’

  ‘You may touch her if you like,’ Jack told Henry. ‘She won’t hurt you, I promise.’

  Trying not to think too much about what he was going to do – touch a snake! – Henry brushed his hand lightly over Lola’s silvery-dark diamond-patterned body. To his surprise her skin wasn’t clammy or slimy, but soft and dry.

  ‘Good man,’ said Jack, putting Lola back in her basket. ‘That was brave of you. It wasn’t so bad, was it?’

  Henry shook his head.

  ‘It’s like most things,’ Jack went on. ‘When you dare to do something, it is hardly ever as frightening as you expect it to be. I was afraid of coming to Australia. I was just fifteen, and I was sure that if I left England I’d never see it again. That was two years ago. Now I’m here, I wouldn’t wish to live anywhere else.’

  Henry couldn’t imagine coming to Australia alone. He’d emigrated with Father and Mam and Eliza, and it had been like a huge adventure.

  ‘Why did you leave your home, Jack?’ he asked.

  ‘It doesn’t much matter now,’ Jack replied, pouring tea. ‘Let’s just say that my father and I didn’t . .
. see eye to eye.’

  That’s like me and Father, Henry thought, but he couldn’t say it aloud.

  ‘I still miss my father,’ Frank said. ‘When he died of typhus, it was the worst day of my life. He was the best man in the world.’

  ‘You are lucky to have had such a father,’ replied Jack. ‘I can’t say I miss mine. He believes that things like wealth, class and power make you a superior human being. Because I couldn’t share that belief, I was a great embarrassment to him. He packed me off to the colonies, and my mother did nothing to stop him.’ Jack gazed into his tea for a while before adding, ‘My father did me a favour, though, because here I have everything I want. In this I’ve learned a lesson from the Wathaurong. They have no money and few possessions, and all are equal, and all are happy.’

  ‘But they’re savages, aren’t they?’ Henry said.

  Jack shook his head. ‘Indeed not,’ he said. ‘They are a fine people. In fact, I believe that we are the savages.’ He spread his hands. ‘Is life on the diggings kind and fair and equal? Is it the way you want to live?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ Henry said, thinking of Sergeant Nockles. ‘Or not always.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Jack smiled at him. ‘If we can find true equality here in this great country, I’ll die content.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Henry said as he and Frank walked back towards the Gravel Pits.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For helping me with the joey, of course.’

  Frank laughed. ‘I’m happy to do anything that gets up a trap’s nose. They’re a pox on the earth, they are.’

  ‘Me, too,’ said Henry. ‘I hate them more than anything.’

  They walked on in silence for a little while, and then Frank said, ‘Well then, since you’re a rebel like me, I think you should visit our dining establishment tomorrow. It’s Molly Shanahan’s Pie Shop, down a little way from the Eureka Hotel. My ma would be happy to meet you.’ He looked sideways at Henry. ‘And you look like you could do with a good feed.’

  ‘I expected you back here at the claim well before this, boy,’ Father said, but to Henry’s surprise he didn’t seem angry. Even more surprising, he wasn’t working. He’d put down his shovel and he was standing with Alex McGregor, the big Scotsman who mined the claim next to theirs. They were talking quietly. Something must have happened – everywhere else people were standing around and talking, too. ‘Well?’ Father went on. ‘Did you make some money for us?’

  Money? The four shillings and sixpence seemed to belong to another life.

  ‘Not really,’ Henry mumbled. ‘Father, why have people stopped working?’

  Father looked across at Eliza, who was sitting on the fallen log that marked the boundary of their claim, playing cat’s cradle with a piece of string. ‘We’ve just heard that a man was murdered last night,’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘Do we know him?’

  ‘No, we don’t. I’ve seen him about, though. He’s a miner, name of James Scobie.’

  ‘What’s so special about James Scobie?’ Henry was puzzled. People died all the time on the diggings. They fell into mine-shafts, and they got drunk and killed each other, and no one really cared.

  ‘It’s an unusual case,’ Father said. ‘It appears certain that Scobie was murdered by James Bentley, who owns the Eureka Hotel.’

  ‘Oh.’ Henry thought of the Eureka Hotel, all new and bright and shining. He thought of the Bentleys, who drove around in a carriage like toffs. Why would a toff like Mr Bentley want to murder a miner?

  ‘To tell the truth, we canna be sure what happened, lad,’ said Alex McGregor. ‘Scobie was a good fellow, by and large, but he’d had a wee drink or two, d’you see, and it was past midnight. When Mr Bentley would’nae serve him, he smashed the front window of that fine new hotel. After that there was a bit of a punch-up.’

  ‘People are saying that Bentley and his wife and a couple of others chased Scobie down the road and beat him to death with a shovel,’ Father said. ‘There were witnesses. But the Bentleys are hand and glove with the traps, so there won’t be a fair trial. And that could be the last straw for a lot of the miners.’

  ‘Aye, we won’t take kindly to seeing the Bentleys get away with murder,’ said Alex McGregor. ‘Scobie is one of us, d’you see, and the Bentleys are on the other side. Our lot won’t be happy.’

  ‘Oh,’ Henry said again. He wasn’t very interested in James Scobie. ‘I made a friend today,’ he said to Father.

  ‘And who might that be?’

  ‘His name’s Frank Shanahan.’ He hoped Father wouldn’t stop him seeing Frank because he was Irish. ‘He works for Mr Hunter, you know, the chemist. He’s asked me to visit him tomorrow at his mother’s refreshment tent. She sells pies.’

  Father didn’t say anything. He bent his head to light his long clay pipe. He puffed. Puffed again.

  Henry waited.

  ‘That’s fine, boy,’ Father said at last. ‘Just be sure to put in a full morning’s work on the claim before you go.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Henry darlin’. Frank has told me about you.’ Mrs Shanahan shook his hand. ‘Mr Jack is here, too. Go and sit yourself down.’ She patted him on the shoulder. ‘Our Frank’s up the back of the tent.’

  Frank’s mother reminded Henry a little of his own mam, and he liked her straightaway. She was small and dark-eyed, and as a widow she was dressed all in black. Her Irish accent was even stronger than Frank’s.

  The refreshment tent was filling quickly as more and more diggers turned up for a mutton pie served with potatoes and gravy. Afterwards, Henry knew, most of them would slip around to an annexe at the back of the tent for an illegal glass of beer or cider, or something stronger, at sixpence a pannikin.

  Henry looked around for Frank, and saw him waving from the far end of the tent. He was sitting across a table from Jack, who wore his feathered straw hat and his dallong.

  ‘Henry!’ Jack called. ‘Come and join us!’

  Henry’s heart lifted. He’d never had a brother. Little George didn’t count, as he was just a tiny baby when he died. This feeling of belonging he had when he saw Frank and Jack must be how you felt about real brothers. He pushed his way through the crowd and sat down next to Jack. ‘How’s our joey, Jack?’

  ‘I’m pleased to say that the little fellow is thriving. It’s too soon to know if his wound is healed, but he is warm and safe in his new pouch, and he is eating grass. Which is what I would be eating, too, if the sainted Mrs Shanahan didn’t feed me.’

  ‘Get along with you, Mr Jack,’ said Mrs Shanahan, who had just come up to their table. ‘Frank, darlin’, fetch Henry a drink and a bite to eat while I make some more pastry.’

  Frank followed his mother into the galvanised-iron lean-to kitchen and returned with a glass of lemonade and a plate of fried potatoes. As he did so, a loud voice outside said, ‘Everybody stay where you are!’

  The cheerful hum of conversation in the tent stopped. Some customers slipped quietly away; others craned forward to see what was going on.

  Frank sat down with a bump. ‘It’s the traps,’ he said to Henry. ‘They come here all the time, and Ma has to pay them to go away.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She has to sell grog to make any sort of a living, but she hasn’t got a licence,’ Frank explained. ‘If she doesn’t give the traps bribe money, they say they’ll fine her fifty pounds, or rip our tent up with their swords, or burn it down, or maybe all three things at once. Or else she could end up in prison.’ He made a face. ‘If you’re rich and you have a proper hotel, like Bentley’s Eureka down the road, you can get your licence as easy as kiss-me-quick. Not that Mr Bentley is serving much grog now, the murdering beggar.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ Henry said. ‘Why should things be easier for you just because you’re rich?’

  But Frank wasn’t listening. ‘By all the saints, would you look at who it is?’

  The trap swaggering into the tent was Sergeant Nockles, and behind him was Constabl
e Thomas. Quickly Henry turned his head away, hoping they wouldn’t see him, but he was too late.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ drawled Nockles. ‘Look who we have here, Constable Thomas. By my life, it’s that famous animal lover, Henry Hood, and his Paddy mate.’

  ‘The name’s Frank,’ said Frank politely.

  Nockles smirked. ‘You insulted the uniform last time we met, Frank, and I haven’t forgotten it. Where’s your mother?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ replied Frank, still sounding very polite. ‘I think she might have gone out. If you’re after a pie, my sister Bridget will serve you.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Nockles. ‘Your mother wouldn’t be going anywhere when there’s customers waiting, now, would she?’ He sat down next to Jack. ‘And speaking of customers, Constable Thomas and I would like some refreshment. So, Frank, go and get your mother. Do it now. Or else I might have to see about closing this place down. Immediately.’

  Frank’s expression didn’t change. He got up and returned to the kitchen. A few minutes later he came back with his mother. Mrs Shanahan was carrying a tray with two glasses on it.

  ‘My apologies, sir,’ she said to Nockles. ‘Won’t you please accept some of our fine cordial? Nothing but the best for you gentlemen.’

  Nockles picked up a glass and flung the contents onto the earth floor of the tent. ‘We don’t want this rubbish,’ he said. ‘We’ll have a couple of nobblers of rum to start with, and then we’ll take a bottle of your best brandy.’ He fingered the hilt of his sword. ‘And unless you want your filthy tent cut to pieces, I’d advise you to get moving.’

  Jack had been watching without saying a word. Now he spoke up. ‘My dear chap,’ he said in a mild voice, ‘that’s no way to speak to a lady, is it?’

  Nockles leaned back and put his feet up on the table. ‘A lady? I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Bog-dwelling Irish is what she is. And as for you – you’re nothing but a damned trouble-maker, stirring up the miners for no good reason. So you can keep your nose right out of this, if you please.’