‘Only one dole here, you know. Move on for the next issue.’
By the time he had worked down through the single bagmen the word had gone forth that the sergeant was on the war-path. Snow, who had past experience of many sergeants, had made his arrangements.
‘You ain’t goin’ to get anything out of the sergeant if his liver’s gone bad on him,’ he advised the Stray. ‘So you’re my old woman for the time bein’ if anyone asks, see? If he finds you’re on your own, he’ll probably vag you.’
The Stray nodded vigorously. She had been declared a vagrant once in the city, and she had no intention of going through that painful process again.
It was with a feeling that Providence had him in its care that Snow, as the constable shouted ‘Grimshaw,’ stepped forward.
‘B scale, eh?’ the sergeant growled. ‘Where’s your wife?’
‘She’s just outside, holding the horse, sergeant,’ Snow drawled.
‘Go out and see,’ the sergeant ordered his constable, who, wondering why his chief did not call the woman in, reluctantly strode on to the station verandah.
‘That’s ’er,’ Snow pointed.
The Stray was vigorously addressing a small, wizened man who had just alighted from a battered sulky; and the unemployed, still waiting to be interviewed, were lounging within earshot, trying to disguise their delighted grins.
‘Why, you dirty, rotten, bludging, little mongrel!’ The Stray’s shrill voice was sufficiently raised to carry farther than the police-station verandah. ‘You low-down offal! Why, for two pins I’d knock you so cold, you’d fink you was the North Pole.’
Mrs Smith had discovered her errant spouse. He was bitterly trying to explain that he had, after his flare of temper subsided, gone back to look for her and that she was nowhere to be found; but his voice was drowned in the flow of her reproaches.
The constable hastened down the path, and at his coming the Stray’s voice died away. She waited, raging silently, her fists clenched.
‘Are you Mrs Grimshaw?’ The constable wasted no time.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘You this man’s wife?’ The constable indicated Snow to make quite sure.
‘Yes, I am.’
Here the wizened Mr Smith interposed. ‘Wait on, sergeant,’ he pleaded, deliberately elevating the constable’s rank. ‘She ain’t no such thing. She’s my missus, not his.’
‘Hey, what’s all this?’ the constable demanded, aggrieved. ‘Who do you think I am? Solomon?’
‘I tell you she’s my wife.’
‘I ain’t so.’
This was even better than the audience had hoped. It drew into a ring.
‘Cut ’er in ’alves,’ someone advised.
‘Well, you better come and settle it inside.’ Dividing one wife between two travellers was out of the constable’s line. He herded the three into the charge-room and briefly explained to the sergeant. Mr Smith stated his case concisely and well. He had left Sydney with this, his lawful wife, and lost her down the track.
‘Ask ’im if ’e was ever married to me,’ the Stray urged. ‘G’wan, sergeant.’
‘Were you ever married to her?’ The sergeant passed his hand wearily across his brow.
Mr Smith hesitated.
‘There, see! ’E knows damn well he wasn’t. I’m wiv me own bloke again, and ’e knows it. ’E’s just scared you’ll take his card off ’im, that’s all.’
It did not matter to the sergeant whose head was offered up, but he was determined that someone was going to expiate that letter from his superiors.
‘I’m going to charge him.’ He reached for his pen. ‘I’m going to make an example of this man. Give me that card of his, Jim.’
As Snow and Stray went hastily away from the station, the pleadings of the betrayed husband were falling on deaf ears.
Outside Snow drew a long breath. ‘This’ll be a good town to get out of,’ he suggested.
‘You ain’t goin’ to leave me?’ the Stray asked desperately. ‘’E’ll just about murder me.’
Snow scratched his head in perplexity as he glanced down at her. She looked even plainer than when she had first walked into his camp. Her wispy fair hair hung lank over his ragged old coat. Her toothless mouth hung open in suspense and, with her almost white eyebrows and red-rimmed eyes, Snow thought he had never seen a plainer girl. If she had been pretty, his problem might have been simpler.
‘No, I ain’t goin’ to leave you,’ he said slowly. ‘Hop in the van.’
He left her giving a lurid embroidery of the facts to the busker, who had been holding the horse. He himself strolled back to the gate of the police-station to await the discomfited Mr Smith; and when the wizened little man emerged, Snow suggested that they go down to the hotel and have a beer. Mr Smith, with a wistful glance towards the Stray, whom it had been his intention to strangle with his bare hands, agreed to the suggestion, adding that the sergeant could not cut him off the dole for being in the pub, as he had cut him off the dole already, thanks to that little … In the midst of his delineation of the Stray’s character Snow led him away.
The disastrous loss of his track-card did not seem to be affecting Mr Smith as bitterly as he made out. He was only thankful that he had been able to melt the sergeant’s determination to charge him with fraudulent practice. The sergeant had himself been inclined to believe the story of Mr Smith, and that was what Snow had been wanting to find out. His decision to leave Currawong just as soon as he got his rations that afternoon seemed more and more the right one.
‘On’y this mornin’,’ the injured Mr Smith confided, ‘I got a letter from a pal in Sydney givin’ me the chance to train his greyhounds. I was goin’ back to the city anyway.’ A gleam of hope came into his eye. ‘If I cud get rid of the sulky. But there ain’t no sales for sulkies in a dead town like this. Cost me ten pounds that turnout did.’ He looked sideways at Snow.
‘Come off it,’ Snow said. From the Stray, Snow knew the sulky and horse had cost Ricky Smith nothing, that the horse was a jib, and the sulky falling to pieces. ‘Come off it.’
‘If I had me fare to Sydney,’ Mr Smith confided, ‘I’d let the turnout go at a loss.’
Snow considered. If he bought the turnout, horse, sulky and harness, from Ricky Smith, he might be able to sell it at a profit. He was a handy man and he could mend the sulky. He might even give it a coat of paint. As for the horse, if he couldn’t pass off a jib horse on some farmer’s son, his name wasn’t Theodore Grimshaw.
‘I’ll give you ten bob,’ he declared, draining his mug, ‘for the lot.’
Mr Smith looked pained. ‘Gosh! You’re hard. Why, I paid —’
‘I know what you paid. Nothin’.’
Mr Smith was silent for a moment, then he began again. ‘That little …’
Snow stopped him. ‘You gotta take ’er back with you.’
Mr Smith swore a mighty oath. ‘Not if I was dyin’,’ he declared. ‘Not after what she done to me. And that ain’t the only thing she done …’ He was ready to launch into a further tale of his woes.
‘If it was worth a quid, I’d take it,’ Snow asserted. ‘But it ain’t worth it.’
‘Make it thirty bob, mate. And that’s Dancy thrown in,’ Mr Smith said magnanimously. ‘I ought to charge more for ’er. A fine girl like that.’
‘No, you don’t,’ Snow said hastily. ‘She don’t mean nothin’ in my life. I’m married, and my wife’s the sort that knows everythin’, if it happened in Timbuctoo.’
‘Well, what of it?’ Ricky Smith argued. ‘I’ve got a wife in Sydney meself.’
‘Thirty bob if you take the Stray off me hands.’
‘I’ll take a quid and you can keep ’er. It’s worth ten bob just to get rid of ’er.’
‘Who said I was going to give you a quid anyway?’
‘You did.’
‘My oath I didn’t.’
They argued further, and it was finally agreed that for fifteen shillings Snow became the o
wner of the horse, harness and sulky and also any camping gear packed in it.
‘You’re getting a bargain,’ were Mr Smith’s final words as he went off to enquire when the goods train departed. ‘And I only hope,’ he added, ‘that you treat Dancy the way she deserves. With a buckle on the strap.’
II
The tradesmen of a dole-town always take turns to supply rations to the travellers, and they do it with great caution and politeness. The way the travellers come in and thump on the counter and demand service, you would think they were all rich station-owners. They crowd out the regular customers, they sit about chatting to each other, they leave parcels to be minded, and, should the opportunity offer, they help themselves.
One Chinese storekeeper always set a boy specially to watch the travellers, but even this precautionary measure was of little use. He kept a big glass bowl full of coloured soap-cakes on one end of his counter, and late in the afternoon of one dole-day he noticed there was just one soap-cake remaining in the bottom of the bowl.
‘I thought I told you to watch those travellers,’ he demanded angrily of the boy. ‘Why didn’t you see them?’
‘I can see them all right,’ the boy responded thoughtfully. ‘But I can’t see through them.’
The crowd in the shop had manoeuvred between him and the soap-takers in such a way that they screened all depredations. Another storekeeper had once foolishly left on display such desirable articles as shoeing-pincers and horse-collars. A traveller would back against the display table with his sack held open behind him, and casually sweep what he wanted into it. When the storekeeper realised what was happening, he closed the shop doors. But he had to let people in, and then those inside would get out. It was a proverb in Currawong: ‘Hold an eel in one hand and a bagman in the other.’
The storekeepers tried everything. When the food-order system first began, one astute merchant had little slips made out reading: ‘Give bearer goods to the value of (say) 5 shillings.’ This was to be presented at the counter. But a brainy young lare called ‘the mob’ together on the pavement outside the shop. ‘This can be worked, can’t it?’ he asked, displaying his slip. When the counter assistants began to get too many vouchers for fifteen shillings instead of five shillings, one went to the boss. By that time most of the travellers had ‘got away with it.’
Such things do not happen to storekeepers who are ‘good for a bite.’ A grocer who treats the bagman decently is usually respected; and if the men want a handful of potatoes, they take them from someone else. It is the storekeeper who is hard and ‘tough’, the man who adds a halfpenny or a penny to the price of every article the bagmen need, who has to watch his customers. The storekeepers know the bagmen dare not complain to the police about the price of goods supplied to them. If one did, he would get no tobacco. The storekeeper could refuse to put in tobacco as part of the food order, and a bagman would sooner do without food than a smoke. A grocer was not legally supposed to supply tobacco on a relief order.
This the manager of Selby & Heems was trying to explain to a woman who had demanded a two-ounce tin of the cheap, strong weed that, from the taste, might be anything from horse-dung to dried rope. ‘I ain’t had a smoke in two weeks,’ she was saying piteously. ‘Gee, can’t you stretch a point?’
‘Sorry,’ the manager said firmly. ‘We can’t supply tobacco.’ He was a preacher of the local Methodist church, and he disapproved of women smoking. Had her husband brought the food order, it might have been different. ‘The sergeant won’t allow it.’
‘Well, if I was to go and see the sergeant …’ The woman was beginning again, when the manager with a brisk ‘That’s a good idea,’ moved away to serve other customers. The woman watched him quite openly take down two tins of tobacco and give them to men who had food orders, and her face flushed with rage.
‘I’ll teach the …’ Unfair and illegitimate son of a low-class female dog, she was understood to remark by those around; and with a lightning movement swept two packets of tea off the counter, and departed to sell them to the keeper of the Greek café across the street. With the two-and-fourpence so obtained she bought tobacco. It is to be regretted that the travellers in the shop sympathetically covered her retreat.
‘Why shouldn’t a woman have tobacco?’ one man remarked to his mate. ‘I guess if she wants it, she’s got a right to it.’
He was gazing through the wire gauze that walled off the delicatessen section into a big, fly-proof room. In front of him was a square sliding panel through which purchases could be handed to the customer; and just inside the panel was a cheese of monstrous proportions.
‘Look at that cheese,’ he said wistfully. ‘Big as a buggy wheel it is.’
‘Ar,’ his mate said bitterly, ‘we wouldn’t have nothin’ left on our order if we started getting cheese and such.’
But his mate continued to gaze through the gauze. ‘Got a knife, Jim?’ he asked presently.
‘Yes. But it’s pretty blunt.’
‘Give it here.’
There were people passing to and fro; attendants busily dashing from one end of the shop to the other.
‘What are you goin’ to do with it?’
For reply the cheese-lover cautiously slid open the little window in the gauze and began to saw the cheese. His mate moved up to shelter his movements from the observation of those in the shop.
‘It’s as big as your head,’ he whispered. ‘They’ll notice it sure.’
But the cheese-fiend sawed away until he had cut the cheese in halves, and deftly extricated them one at a time.
‘Put ’em in the sack, Bill,’ he whispered back.
‘I tell you we’ll never get it out of the shop.’ Protesting, Bill dropped the cheese into the sack, then, as the attendant bore down on them, he neatly kicked the sack under a set of shelves to be retrieved later. The attendant glared at the two suspiciously, but they were empty-handed and innocent-looking.
‘Your order been taken?’ he asked civilly enough. And they gave their order.
Snow was waiting impatiently at the other end of the shop. If there was one thing Snow disliked, it was camping near a town with what he called ‘a big mob.’ He had little camps of his own farther out, and he wanted to get away before the short winter dusk closed down.
There was one old swagman holding up the crowd of ration-seekers, all of them as impatient as Snow. The old man had twopence left on his grocery order, and he was determined to get its full worth.
‘Have I got down tea?’ he asked the girl serving him.
‘Yes, you’ve got tea.’
‘Have I got sugar?’ There were signs of restlessness in the waiting throng.
‘Yes, you’ve got that, too.’
‘Well, I don’t know, missus.’ He scratched his grey head apologetically. ‘I’m sure to think of something in a minute.’
Someone in the crowd shouted: ‘Put down a couple of packets of salts, miss. That’ll shift him.’
Appreciative laughter greeted this brilliant flash of wit, but the old man was not at all disturbed.
‘That’s it,’ he said, beaming. ‘Salt, a pound of salt. I knew there was something.’
Snow sighed wearily. At his elbow another old man with his few miserable parcels in the usual gunny-sack was advising one of the wealthiest graziers in the district what tea to buy.
‘You want to buy Marvel’s tea,’ the old man insisted. ‘That other stuff is no good to you. Twenty years ago I used to travel for Marvel’s.’ He straightened a little as he said it.
The grazier smiled. ‘If they’re such a good firm, why aren’t you travelling for them now?’
The old man returned his smile a little bitterly. ‘I’ve got a better job. I’m an inspector of roads.’
‘Well,’ the grazier said, ‘you’d better come out and inspect the road to my place. It could do with it.’ He was turning away when he flung back: ‘What tea do you use, brother?’
‘Oh,’ the old man said, ‘I use knoc
ker tea. I get everything else on the dole and knock on the doors for my tea.’ He nodded good-bye in a friendly way, then turned in search of further conversation to Snow. Not until Snow indicated the packet did he realise that the grazier, as he went out, had ordered some Marvel tea for the old man as well as for himself.
‘Weren’t you camped just the other side of Mallee Scrubs last year with a big brown horse?’ the old chap asked, as he gathered up the tea.
Snow nodded briefly and turned to give in his order. He should have asked which way the old man had come and which way he was heading, but he was impatient to get away, and did not wish to engage in the courtesies of enquiring how the feed was through the way the traveller had come or what the police were like at such-and-such a town.
Outside he found the busker absorbed in a newspaper. ‘They’re going to make the bagmen localise at last,’ he greeted Snow.
‘Eh?’
‘Going to put them all in labour camps and flog them till they work. It says so here.’
‘Aw. Just a lot of guff.’ Snow looked at the busker questioningly. ‘I thought you’d of got a lift by now, or be waiting for a train or something.’
‘Well, so I might,’ the busker said defensively. ‘But it struck me you’d probably want someone to drive that sulky.’ He affected a lofty unconcern. ‘Take it or leave it. I haven’t done so badly. Made five bob and got warned off twice.’
Snow thought. ‘The girl could drive the sulky,’ he said. ‘It’s hers by right, I guess.’
‘She doesn’t want to. Told me she was “scared to deaf of the bleedin’ ’orse”.’ The busker by now knew the full story of the Stray.
The Battlers Page 4
