The Battlers

by Kylie Tennant

  ‘Could you take my hair down, deah?’ Miss Phipps addressed the owner of the ‘Madame La Mode.’ ‘I think it will do. These men’ — she gave her affected laugh — ‘breaking in on the most sacred rites. Just one moment, officer, and I’ll be with you.’

  The constable turned dumbfounded to Harley Duke. ‘What ’ud anyone want to find her for?’ he asked. ‘If she was mine, I’d lose her like a shot.’

  Miss Phipps emerged. On her head was a plum-coloured hat and she had high-heeled, plum-coloured shoes. A brilliant green blouse protruded nightmare ruffles from the open front of her shabby black coat. How she managed to do it all on the money Duke could not imagine.

  She insisted on coming back with them to Bylong, though the constable assured her that it was not at all necessary.

  ‘I wouldn’t like those deah people to get into any trouble because of little me,’ Miss Phipps insisted; and the constable had ungraciously to give in.

  The busker, having presented the lady to the sergeant, hinted that now the sergeant would be able to return her to her bereaved father.

  ‘There wasn’t anything said about returning her,’ the sergeant objected morosely. ‘She’s free, white and over twenty-one. You’re over twenty-one, aren’t you, Miss Phipps?’

  ‘Oh, yes, indeed,’ Miss Phipps bridled.

  ‘I just wanted to cross her off the missing list, that’s all, and put in a report that I’d located her. I should give O’Hara,’ he admitted liberally, ‘a chance to charge you both, but since you brought back that suitcase …’ He broke off abruptly. ‘G’wan out of here, and take your girl friend with you.’

  ‘But she doesn’t belong to me,’ Duke cried frantically. ‘Listen, sergeant, I’ll tell you how it is …’

  ‘I’m busy. That’s enough. Get out, or I’ll change me mind.’

  ‘A very rude man,’ Miss Phipps observed, as she trotted over to the sulky and disposed her bulk comfortably in it.

  The busker said nothing. He was wondering how he would break the news to the others. But they picked out Miss Phipps’s figure afar off and were sitting in a dejected silence too deep to be broken by any account of Duke’s doings in Currawong.

  Snow made only one remark as he unharnessed the horse.

  ‘You were the man,’ he said bitterly, ‘who said leave it to you, you’d manage it.’

  The busker pretended to be having trouble with Horehound, so that he might be saved the embarrassment of reply.

  5

  As it grew colder and colder, so did Snow’s keenness to get home increase. His three followers watched furtively how he brightened and grew more cheerful, recognising one insignificant landmark after another that told him his journey was nearly over. The more they felt they were not wanted, the closer did his three comrades cling to him. Snow had said that when he reached his home in the tiny township of Blimdagery, the three could stay a few days deciding where they would go next; and the thought of being under a roof again was like the hope of heaven.

  The busker might talk loftily of ‘heading up to Qneensland’ and about the cane-barges and the blue smoke blowing over the slow, beautiful waters of the Tweed, of the mangoes and pineapples, and the open-handed ways of farmers in that northern State where the sun was burning and wilful, not a cold stone in an ice-blue sky; but all the same he preferred the bickering of the Stray and Miss Phipps and the friendly silence of Snow to loneliness and the chances of the road. They were all roadsick, and that was the truth; overcome with that craving for shelter that sooner or later grips all tramps. Miss Phipps could forge her way back to Sydney or Melbourne, where, among the city’s unemployed domestic servants, she would occupy the lowest rung of incapacity and laziness. The Stray could return to those alleys whence she came. But they shrank from the suggestion. They could look no farther ahead than reaching Blimdagery.

  Night after night they discussed it, huddled shivering round the fire. All they asked was shelter from the screaming wind, and warmth in which they might relax their stiff joints. They could not get warm even at night when the two women climbed into the van, and Snow and the busker betook themselves to the tent and the folds of the canvas tarpaulin. There was not enough bedding for four people, and the aching cold kept them awake. In the morning the billy of tea left overnight on the frosty grass would tilt out its contents in a solid block of ice; the blades of grass were sheathed in ice; there was a thin, crackling sheet of ice over the creek when the busker went with blue fingers to dip water. Even the birds seemed disinclined to stir, and when the sun rose, it would hardly push its rim over the horizon before it was enveloped in a drift of dirty clouds that held to it like steel filings to a magnet and dragged with it across the sky. The cold, pale sky and the dull, pale earth were like two frozen hands reaching towards the sun that, cuddled down in its grey muffler, could only smile helplessly and, it seemed, cynically at their numb entreaty.

  The travellers had come out from what little shelter might be found in the hills and were journeying across the stretch of flat country beyond Condobolin; and the wind met them like a wall of ice. The hostility of the inhabitants met them also. No one had anything to give, and even when the Stray tried to sell toasting-forks and grills that Snow twisted out of wire, there were no buyers. The district was ‘faked out.’ In this country Snow was not eager to ‘knock over sheep.’ The farmers were tough. They would sit up all night with a lantern, if they thought anyone was casting a calculating eye on their flocks.

  The four grew leaner and hungrier-looking; and they watched Snow with a helpless dependence. He set traps; but even the rabbits seemed to have died of starvation. The busker, with a husky voice wailing outside any little store or siding they passed, could scrape together only a few reluctant pence. The little crew became too apathetic to quarrel. Life was only a struggle against the wind and driving grit, a camp, and aching bones, misery, cold, and struggling on again.

  Snow was already rehearsing what he would say to his wife, Molly. He had planned to reach Blimdagery just on dusk, and he would go ahead with the sulky as though he were alone, leaving his little following down in the dry creek in a rather bleak camp just on the edge of the township. He would walk in in his old way and say: ‘Well, old woman, how’s things?’ and Molly would say: ‘Back again, eh? I got the ten pounds.’ And she would set some bread on the table, and make him some tea, and he would spread out his boots in front of the kitchen stove; and, as usual, Molly would snap: ‘Good Heavens, get them great boots out of the way. You want me to spill this all over you?’

  Then, presently, he would mention that he had picked up ‘three poor devils on the road’; and they were camped just half a mile out by Badgery’s fence; then, little by little, he would tell her the whole story, and she would snap at him for being a fool, and say, if he thought he could bring a lot of tramps to live on her, he was mistaken. He would explain that they were a man and his wife and sister; and Molly would give him a sharp glance and a nasty quarter of an hour. When she was finished telling him about his beastly way of life and that she didn’t doubt he had been carrying on with both the women, Molly, who was so softhearted, would snap: ‘What did you leave ’em out in the cold for? Sure isn’t there the shed at the back, and the poor creatures freezing there while you sit warming yourself? Think shame, Theodore Grimshaw!’

  She would insist on his going out to bring his little party into the warmth of her kitchen. She would settle everything for him, and send his three mates flying with a few well-chosen words, if they showed any disposition to linger longer than she thought adequate. It was all very satisfactory to Snow, and he looked ahead with a warmth that had seldom accompanied his thoughts of reunion with his family. These three who had no families of their own made him realise just how lucky he was.

  Blimdagery might be only a miserable place with one weather-board store, not even a railway siding; but it was the place where his wife’s family, the Hourigans, had dwelt since the first Hourigan had opened that store. The whole di
strict was settled with Hourigans and Kellys, and his wife Molly was related to every one of them. That was why she had refused to leave Blimdagery. It might be only a dust-spot along the road between two larger towns; but it was her ancestral seat; and the three-roomed, weather-board hut, with its patch of hen-harassed dirt in front was hers, and its weedy paddock, full of Bathurst burrs and cow-manure, behind. If Snow was not away droving, or looking for shearing, or off kangaroo-hunting, he had gone fencing or clearing. He was a good man. He sent home money for herself and the children when he got it; but not for such a life as he led would she give up the company of her own people, her aunts and cousins, and the shelter of her bare, weatherboard house, hot as an oven in summer, and bleak enough in winter, covered with a film of red grit that kept her constantly scouring at any time of the year. She had the boys, Freddie, Brian and Jimmy, to keep her busy. How could she drag them, she demanded, round the country with their father? She had been one trip with him, and that was quite enough, thank you.

  Although Snow had planned to arrive at dusk, his impatience unconsciously got the better of him, so that it was mid-day when the scattered corrugated roofs of Blimdagery appeared. Snow reined Don in and pointed with his whip: ‘There she is!’ he said, with a seeming casualness.

  ‘Really!’ Miss Phipps, who was riding beside him because he never hit Don, produced her pair of horn-rimmed spectacles with one lens missing and deliberately adjusted them on her nose. She screwed up her eyes to two pin-points and squinted at the corrugated iron as though it was some remarkable, heavenly portent that had appeared.

  ‘Molly’ll be surprised to see the van,’ Snow remarked. ‘When I left I had on’y a sulky. I swapped the sulky in for the van. Thought it ud be ’andy if I wanted to go drovin’.’

  Miss Phipps said nothing about his incidental bad language. Ever since the Horehound had stood on her foot and she had called it everything Snow had ever said and more, she had been in no position to reprove anyone for his language. Not that that alone would prevent her from doing so. She had just worn herself out and grown tired of talking on the subject.

  They pulled in on a grassy stretch by the roadside, and Snow pointed out where they could get water from his wife’s uncle’s tank at the homestead nearby and have their mid-day meal, while he went ahead to reconnoitre. He had decided to leave the van there with them. ‘I’ll keep it as a surprise, see?’ he suggested. He took Don from the van and harnessed him to the sulky.

  As he drove slowly up to the clutter of houses, taking in the look of this so-familiar parched place, it struck him that his wife’s usual scheme to get him a job ‘cockying’ for one of her uncles or cousins would come to nothing again. The country was all dried up. No one would be wanting any fencing or clearing done or any work round these parts for which they would be forced to pay. He might get some shearing, or he might plough up that back paddock. It was a job that needed doing when he went away. Then, as he rehearsed his opening speech, a slight qualm overcame him. Suppose Molly took up an unreasonable attitude on his Stray and the Busker and Phippsy, sitting faithfully munching their dry bread and marmalade and drinking tea? He couldn’t help it. He hadn’t asked them to come.

  The gate of his shack was hanging by one hinge, and Snow resolved to mend that gate the very next day. He liked things about the place to be ship-shape. The front door was shut, and he strolled round to the back, where he was greeted with a vociferous barking of dogs. Three of them came out, wagging their tails and jumping on him. His youngest boy, Freddie — a small, freckled, tow-headed youngster — was sitting on the back doorstep eating a piece of tart.

  ‘Lo, Dad,’ Freddie greeted, munching undemonstratively.

  ‘Where’s your mother, son?’

  ‘Gone down to Auntie Edna’s place. She’ll be back soon.’

  In the kitchen everything was just as it had been: the faded, torn, old linoleum, the carefully blackened stove set in its white-washed chimney; the wooden dresser with a cheap alarm clock on the top shelf, the chipped cups and plates, the runner made of fluffs of coloured silk, the coats hanging behind the door. A boot belonging to one of the boys flung down in the bedroom beyond. From the ceiling dangled a familiar fly-paper. There was no sound save the rusty ticking of the alarm clock and Freddie shuffling his feet on the back doorstep. Snow, feeling a little lonely, went out and sat beside him, and watched the hens scratching among the thistles of the yard.

  ‘Anything happened while I been gorn?’

  ‘Nuh.’ Freddie licked the crust to make it last as long as possible. ‘Jimmy cut his foot.’ Then he added as an afterthought: ‘Derek come to live here.’

  Snow considered this. Derek was his wife’s second cousin. He must be home again. He had been away in the city last time Snow was home.

  ‘Been here long?’

  Freddie nodded. Computation of time was beyond him; but Dad had been gone a long time, so that Freddie was sure it was a long time since Derek Hourigan came to board with them.

  ‘Derek’s working at Uncle Peter’s store,’ Freddie volunteered.

  So that explained it. Snow had no objection to his wife making some regular money from Derek’s board. He could hear Molly opening the front door, and he rose as she bustled into the kitchen.

  ‘Are you there, Theodore?’ she called. ‘Aunt Hourigan said she thought she saw you going by.’

  Snow had always detested the name Theodore. ‘A great big name, too heavy for a kid — the kind of name me father would pick out. Always gave me too much to carry, whether it was names or kerosene tins.’ Now, as he heard the familiar ‘Theodore,’ it roused the same irritation that it had always done. Instead of saying: ‘Well, old woman, how’s things?’ he said: ‘Hey, what’s all this about Derek boarding here?’

  ‘Oh! Freddie told you?’

  ‘How much’s he payin’?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with you?’ Molly had meant to be kind and welcoming, but, as usual, Snow had to put his big feet just where they were not wanted. She pushed him out of the way and began setting the table. ‘I got the ten pounds all right.’ She was a small, brisk woman, with quick eyes, a sharp nose and chin, and snapping movements. Over her forehead she wore a little frizzy fringe which she curled every night. She hadn’t even kissed him, Snow noticed. He must have said something to upset her. So he changed the subject from Derek and asked her about the boys.

  ‘They’ve gone yabbying. But they’ll be in to lunch. Jimmy cut his foot with the axe, but he would go. Sure he’s a devil of a boy. And Brian’s been throwing stones at the cow.’ She had glanced out of the back door in one of her trips to and from the dresser. ‘The sulky looks different.’

  ‘I dealt the old one in,’ Snow responded, expecting that Molly would immediately demand to know about the deal, whether he got any money to boot, whether he got the best of the bargain. But she only nodded in a disinterested way.

  He rolled a cigarette, watching her curiously. There was something wrong. Snow had an animal keenness to detect differences of atmosphere. He wondered if his favourite, young Jimmy, had cut a toe off or was in hospital. That might account for it.

  Big, heavy, crunching boots were tramping round the side of the house, and a man’s voice said: ‘Hello, Fred. Lunch ready?’ Freddie mumbled something as Derek stepped past him into the kitchen. ‘Hello, Snow,’ Derek greeted the master of the house. ‘Have a good trip?’

  ‘Yeah. But the rabbits was pretty near all cleaned out. Got some good fox-skins.’

  Molly silently laid out plates of stew and some bread, while her second cousin talked to Snow about the lack of rain and the debts at the store. Uncle Joe Kelly was hand-feeding already, and Mick Hourigan was having trouble with the bank. Mick thought he would have to leave the place. It had been a bad year, and things would be worse before they were better.

  Derek Hourigan was nearly as big a man as Snow, but dark. He had a long scar down the side of his face, and he talked all the time, running his hands through his hair,
tapping them on his knees, clasping and unclasping them. His hands were never still, and his voice went on and on, putting together obvious trivial scraps of talk, just as his hands went through small, unconscious movements.

  ‘Why don’t he sit still?’ Snow thought. He sat immobile himself, saying now and then ‘Yeah’, or ‘Thasso’, as occasion demanded. Jimmy and Brian did not appear, and it would have been a silent meal had it not been for the conversation that Derek was making.

  When he got up and pushed back his chair, saying that he had to be back at the store, it seemed that he was in a hurry to be off. He was half-way across the yard when Molly called to him: ‘Derek!’

  ‘What?’ He turned sharply round.

  ‘Wait a minute.’ She ran after him and spoke in a hurried murmur. They seemed to be arguing about something.

  Snow slowly rolled another cigarette and, as his wife came in, he said: ‘Well, he’s a great sort of a cove, he is!’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ His wife began to scrape the dishes. ‘He’s got a steady job at the store.’

  Snow grunted. ‘Steady job? Why, he couldn’t keep a mouse. Just Uncle Peter taking ’im in for charity. That store ain’t done enough business in ten years to feed a galah.’

  ‘He’s got a promise to get on at Hessels’ in a month or so.’ Hessels’ was the big store in the town five miles away.

  Snow regarded her steadily and, under that keen glance from his small, light eyes, she flared up. ‘Oh, you can sneer at a man who don’t leave his wife and family and go off God knows where and never heard of for months, traipsing about the country. It’s all very well for you! He’s a steady chap and …’

  ‘How long you been going with him?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Molly’s mouth closed in an obstinate line. In the tense silence, Snow could hear the rusty tick of the clock and a truck bumping past in the street.

  ‘You heard me. I ain’t blind. Think I don’t know? It’s no good, Molly. I seen it when ’e first came through the door that you’d taken up with him.’ Snow leant across the table and took her small, work-reddened hand in his great, horny paw. ‘Don’t try to pull the wool over me, Molly.’