The Battlers

by Kylie Tennant

  ‘I never seen anything like it,’ Thirty-Bob declared. ‘That little kid pullin’ you out of the middle of the gang like one of them little black ants with a big lump of bread.’

  In the morning, the busker thought, he would do something about it — in the morning. He hated being grateful. Still, he must say ‘Thank you’ to the kid. That was the least he could do. He closed his eyes.

  ‘We’ll sleep in the van,’ he heard the Stray tell Miss Phipps.

  It was noon when he woke fully. He had tossed and turned and drowsed off again, but now he was awake. Thirty-Bob thrust his head through the tent-flap and said in Black Olly’s guttural voice: ‘Get up, Alec me boy. Yer father loves yer.’ And the whole of last night came back to the busker bit by bit.

  ‘I must go along and tell that kid I appreciate it,’ he said rather condescendingly, yawning and rubbing a chin that felt like barbed wire. ‘Have a shave first. Couldn’t go like this. Frighten the little wretch.’

  ‘They’re gone,’ Thirty-Bob said blandly. ‘Sharkey was frightened blue. He put the horses in first thing and went for his life. Scared Sam Little ’ud come down and finish the job.’ He eyed the busker curious as a magpie on a fence-post. ‘She’s a nice little sheila, that Betty.’

  There was no answer.

  ‘Ah, well,’ Thirty-Bob said, ‘she might have tried to fasten on to you. Can’t tell with women. Go around getting a hold on a bloke, dragging him out of a row. Why, you never know but what she did it on purpose.’ He winked one eye. ‘Nobody tried to stop me getting me ribs bashed in.’

  The busker reached for his boot, and Thirty-Bob ducked quickly out of the tent.

  So she was gone! Oh, well! it didn’t matter much; but he would have liked to say thank you, and ask her what it was she said last night when they were labouring home. There was something she said that escaped his memory. Something about work. Perhaps he might recollect it later, but he had a dim feeling that it was something unpleasant, not really good to recall.

  The busker (perhaps it was the drink of the night before and the blow on the head) felt very depressed. It was as though he had been just on the point of grasping something and it had slipped through his clutch, as though his ticket had been one remove from the winning number in the lottery. Not that it had anything to do with a girl who carried on her shoulder a tiny red and blue parrot. Nothing at all! He just felt fed up — fed up with travelling, fed up with the river camp, fed up with everything. He would go off on his own, go and find the show-people, his own people. To hell with this kind of a life!

  II

  The whole unpleasantness might have blown over, if it had not been for the children. Children, particularly the shrewd, wiry children of travellers, know everything their elders think as well as say. By mid-day, some of the Tyrell young banded with the Joneses, and even the respectable Flahertys, were playing at being ‘blacks and whites.’ Then, finding this uninteresting, they sallied down the river-bank armed with chunks of cow manure and ambushed an innocent group of infant Murrays and Littles who were driving home a cow.

  They found this great sport, and whenever a small boy sallied from the dark people’s camp, they fell upon him and drove him home howling.

  ‘I won’t have it,’ Mrs Little declared, her eyes flashing. ‘First that Wilks fellow comes up here and busts up our dance and brings the p’lice in, and now they’re attacking the kids. I’ll speak to that Tyrell woman. I’ll teach her to let her brats tear into my Billy.’

  So it was that Mrs Little bore down on the Tyrell encampment, dragging her small son along almost at a run, so that he hung back like a dinghy in the wake of a yacht. With Mrs Little had come several sisters-in-law and cousins, determined to see fair play. They appeared over the rise like an ominous cloud.

  The opening of the preliminary encounter had all the icy politeness of those ‘conversations’ which precede the bellow of the big guns.

  ‘This’ll be the third time, missus’ — the attacking party halted at a hostile distance — ‘this’ll be the third time my little boy’s been hit by that cowardly little rat of a Johnnie. You ought to be ashamed.’ With a baleful glare at Johnnie cowering behind Mrs Tyrell, ‘You ought to be ashamed to pick on a little boy not as big as you are. And this time’ — her voice rose — ‘he’s not on’y hit him, but he’s took his roller-skates that his father brought him home not two nights ago. I won’t’ — her voice reached a scream — ‘I won’t have my kid bullied and knocked about and thieved from and called a nigger by any little bastards what take after their elders.’

  ‘Don’t you call my kid that!’ Mrs Tyrell was roused.

  ‘Well, you tell him to give Billy back his skates. I want them skates, or I’ll have the p’lice on you. You give the kid his skates, or I’ll get the p’lice.’

  Mrs Tyrell turned on Johnnie.

  ‘ ’Ave you got Billy’s skates?’

  Johnnie shook his head violently. ‘Never seen ’is bloody skates.’

  ‘There you are. He ain’t even seen ’em.’

  ‘Well, he’s a liar. Don’t you think you can put that over me!’

  ‘Don’t you call my Johnnie names, woman.’

  ‘Who’re you calling a woman, you big …’

  Mrs Tyrell seemed to swell with wrath. ‘You get out of my camp, you p’lice pimp.’

  ‘Pimp, am I? I know enough about your mob to see yous all behind bars. That horse thief of a Thirty-Bob an’ your old man with a van that he never paid for.’ At this point Mrs Little noticed a menacing murmur going round the group about the Tyrell tent. She retreated hurriedly, shouting as she went: ‘Pimp, am I? Why, you dirty lot of rotten thieves …’

  Mrs Tyrell turned virtuously to the audience. ‘Did y’ ever hear anything like it? Well, I didn’t answer her back. I’m glad of that. It’s always better to say nothing.’

  A ripple of uneasiness had spread visibly.

  ‘Those boangs are all too matey with the police,’ Thirty-Bob grumbled. ‘Not that I care a damn,’ he added hastily. ‘But we don’t want any trouble.’

  ‘No, we don’t none of us want any trouble,’ Deafy Tyrell said with a double emphasis.

  There was a general murmur of agreement.

  Nothing more was heard until Sam Little, father of the injured Billy, came home drunk and bad-tempered, and heard that his wife had been called a police pimp. He tore off his shirt and staggered towards the Tyrell camp, yelling that he would eat them alive, beating his breast as he came and reciting his past victories. He was accompanied by a group of mates confusedly dissuading, arguing and encouraging.

  Dick Tyrell met him half-way with a band of Tyrell supporters and hit him violently on the chin. He had the advantage, since he was sober and Sam was not. The infection spread, and a general melee, in which there was more shouting than actual bloodshed, took place. It was terminated by Mrs Tyrell swooping down with a tent-peg and hewing her way through the press, doing much more damage en route than all the other combatants combined.

  ‘It’s disgraceful,’ she kept repeating, ‘for a woman who don’t want any trouble and waiting for a baby.’ Tears stood in her eyes. ‘You get back there, Dick Tyrell, and you, Thirty-Bob. I won’t have it.’ She drove her own before her, and left Mrs Little’s contingent to retire to their huts.

  A lull descended, broken only by shouted insults and deliberately loud conversations when any of the partisans happened to be passing each other’s camps. In the lull the distressed Apostle journeyed to and fro without avail, urging peace and getting himself a bad name alternately for being ‘hand in glove with them dirty blacks,’ and ‘one of the Tyrell gang.’

  Duke and the Stray found themselves perforce Tyrell sympathisers, but they kept as far as possible to their own camp. The lull continued until it became obvious that the Tyrell dogs were sickening of some strange disease, and a search revealed a bait carefully hid in the grass. By this time it was too late to save the lives of three of the Tyrell dogs; but what most enraged th
e white campers was the fact that the baits were so close to the camp that, as Mrs Tyrell heatedly pointed out, ‘the babies could have picked them up.’

  ‘Murd’rers, that’s what they are,’ Dick Tyrell raged, bending over the body of a greyhound bitch that had been his one hope of future affluence. ‘Murd’rers, every one of them.’

  A council settled down to consult on ways of getting even. The only suggestion put forward that met with universal approval was that of throwing a lighted torch into the Littles’ hut by night and burning it to the ground. Dick was all for going down and ‘cleaning up’ Sam Little; but as Sam could give him a stone and a half, he allowed himself to be dissuaded.

  At this point in the hostilities the Littles lost their nerve. At least, the Tyrells always claimed the Littles were responsible, although it was possibly some other interested party, perhaps the Flahertys, who privately dropped a word to the police that the feud was going too far.

  The day after the Tyrell dogs expired, the police-car came rapidly out from the town with the constable at the wheel and the sergeant sitting beside him. They did not hesitate, but made straight for the Tyrell camp, which was a picture of industry and peace: Mrs Tyrell whirring away at her sewing-machine, Deafy mending harness, Thirty-Bob and Dick sitting in the sun.

  It was Deafy who looked up with a slightly surprised air and said: ‘Afternoon, sergeant.’

  ‘Afternoon.’ The sergeant wasted no words. He was a big, heavily-built man with an overbearing manner. ‘Ever since you’ve been here, Tyrell, there’s been complaints. It was the same when you were in the town before. You’re always in trouble.’

  Mrs Tyrell burst in dramatically: ‘Trouble, is it? When we’ve been having our dogs poisoned, and our children half-murdered, and insults shouted, and abuse and quarrelsomeness, and that’s not half of it with a mob of …’

  The sergeant addressed himself to the men and she fell silent. ‘I’ve had enough of this, I tell you. You’re not allowed to camp on the river-bank, anyway. I’m telling you to get out of town as quick as you can, or I’ll put you where you won’t get out.’ He turned to the little group of listeners, to the busker and Dancy. ‘That goes for all of you. You won’t get any more rations in this town.’ He turned towards the car.

  ‘But we’re waiting for my mate to come out of hospital,’ the busker protested.

  The sergeant was unmoved. ‘Your hanging about here won’t help him. You can come back and pick him up.’

  ‘And we can’t go either,’ Dick said sullenly. ‘Mum come here to Logan ’cos she likes the hospital. She come here to buy a baby.’

  ‘A baby!’ the sergeant exploded. He gave his constable a glance that said louder than words: ‘What! again!’

  ‘She’s got a right to stay,’ Mrs Tyrell’s eldest son protested angrily. ‘She’s going to have a baby.’

  ‘So are the Littles. I’ve heard that tale. And Mrs Little was here before you came.’ He shrugged impatiently. ‘I can’t have you here at each other’s throats, fighting all over the maternity ward. No, you Tyrells have got to move on.’

  The outraged Mrs Tyrell had risen from her stool to front him. ‘D’you mean to say,’ she demanded, ‘you’d hunt a white woman for the sake of a nigger? Let them go to the mission. That’s their place.’

  ‘That’s a fact.’ The constable, who had been silent all this time, spoke now sympathetically. ‘Let the black go to the mission, sergeant. The woman’s right. It isn’t fair to drive her away when she’s in that condition.’

  Mrs Tyrell, encouraged by this unexpected support, took on a pleading tone. ‘Don’t hunt me, sergeant,’ she said anxiously. ‘I tell you I ain’t fit to travel. As true as I’m standing here. D’you want me to die on the track? Here I’ve made me arrangements with the hospital, and they’re expectin’ me any time. The birds’ve got some kind of a hole in a tree, and the rabbits have burrows, but we ain’t got but a camping-place, and you’d hunt me from that. There ain’t no hospital for fifty miles round that …’

  The sergeant turned towards the car. He ignored her. ‘Drive down to that camp,’ he ordered, indicating the Postlewaites’ modest truck. ‘I might as well make a clean sweep while I’m about it. And don’t let me hear of any more trouble,’ he flung at the group. ‘I’m warning you.’

  He turned away from his constable, and it was obvious to that rash man that the sergeant was so angry that he could not speak. The young constable wished that he had never interfered. He knew it was almost impossible to move the numerous tribe of Littles.

  The sergeant found a test of his mettle in the Apostle, who very quietly and politely declined to shift camp. He pointed out to the sergeant that he did not receive track-rations, and this was a jarring note to the sergeant. You could nearly always finish a man by threatening to cut off his track-rations.

  ‘If you think you can come here stirring up trouble with your Red ideas,’ he threatened, ‘you’re mistaken. I’ve half a mind to put you in for having no visible means of support.’

  ‘They may not be visible,’ the Apostle said, still smiling, ‘but they’re there. Of course, sergeant, if you prefer to send me to gaol, I’m quite prepared to go. But, at the moment, although I have no definite plans, I don’t think I will be moving on for a week or so.’

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ the sergeant said righteously. ‘Camping is prohibited here. And I’m warning you.’ He turned to his car with a victorious air. ‘Get off by tomorrow.’

  The Apostle smiled to himself. As soon as the police-car had disappeared, he strolled over to the Tyrells and heard their version of the incident.

  ‘And what are we to do?’ they chorused.

  ‘Stay,’ said the Apostle.

  ‘But suppose he puts us in? Or cuts out our rations?’

  ‘Stay,’ the Apostle nodded. ‘Don’t worry. It will be all right.’

  ‘I guess I’ll be going on,’ the busker said thoughtfully. He calculated that the show he had planned to join could not be more than fifty miles ahead.

  Deafy and his sons were inclined to agree with the Apostle; but Mrs Tyrell was nervous and frightened. ‘I don’t want any trouble,’ she kept repeating.

  ‘Well, the sergeant’s got to feed us,’ Thirty-Bob commented. ‘In or out, it makes no difference to me, and if he tries to put us all in, he’ll have to stretch the walls of his gaol.’

  ‘I did fink,’ the Stray said wearily, ‘that wiv Snow in ’ospital we could get a bit of a spell. It ain’t fair.’

  10

  I

  Dancy, in her perplexity, turned to the Apostle. She felt that she had no one now that Snow was in hospital. The busker would be going to join the show-people, and Miss Phipps was no use at all.

  The Stray was full of a loyal anxiety. Someone must stay to look after the turnout and sulky. Someone must feed and water the Horehound and Don. She was determined to wait in Logan until Snow came out of hospital. She and Bluey would be there on the doorstep the day he emerged; and he must not be told of this exodus, or he would want to come out of hospital earlier. While Snow thought Duke was looking after the horses he was content; and he would worry if he knew Dancy was single-handed.

  Thirty-Bob was offering to sell the Horehound and the sulky. He would get the best price possible and not retain a penny for himself. But the Stray hesitated even to ask Snow. She could go with the Tyrells, of course; but no, she would wait for Snow. But how? If she couldn’t get any dole, how was she to live? It was all so muddled and uncertain.

  She dawdled over to the Postlewaites’ encampment, hoping that Mrs Postlewaite would not be at home. The Stray stood in great awe of that quiet, strange woman, who never swore or yelled or smoked or cracked a joke. Mrs Postlewaite smiled sometimes, but that was all. The embodiment of the Apostle’s cast-off respectability, she followed him like a worn-out but persistent shadow. The other camps were just camps; but Mrs Postlewaite always made her temporary residence into a home. Even the dead leaves seemed to be tidied away
from her vicinity, and the language of the travellers spruced itself as she came by.

  The Apostle, noticing Dancy hovering about, hailed her for news of Snow. As he did so, Mrs Postlewaite, to the Stray’s disappointment, emerged from the tent.

  ‘Nice day, missus,’ the Stray saluted her. As soon as the lady had turned back into the tent, the Stray took a seat and rolled herself a cigarette. Mrs Postlewaite’s presence always gave her an impediment in her speech.

  ‘Wot d’yer think of these ’ere bloody p’lice tellin’ us to move on?’ she asked; and without waiting for a reply, poured out all her difficulties. ‘Strufe, Harry,’ she concluded, ‘I dunno, what wiv one fing an’ anover …’ She broke off dejectedly. ‘It’s bloody awful.’

  Mrs Postlewaite suddenly projected her head from the tent-flap like a bogey, and enquired: ‘Why don’t you get a job?’

  The Stray regarded her amazedly. Mrs Postlewaite must have been listening, and listening with interest.

  ‘Well, I dunno, missus,’ Dancy said nervously. ‘It never struck me.’ She turned for reassurance to the Apostle. ‘ ’Sides, there ain’t no jobs. What cud I do, anyway?’

  ‘It’s not a bad idea,’ the Apostle observed cheerfully. ‘Just until Snow gets out of hospital.’ He had never favoured his wife’s approval of work for its own sake. ‘You could look round.’

  ‘But where’d I look?’ the Stray asked dubiously.

  Again it was Mrs Postlewaite’s head, projected from the tent like the head of some weird oracle, that supplied the answer.

  ‘Mrs Marks at the dairy wants someone to come in while she’s sick. She’d let you put the horses in the paddock. Why don’t you ask her?’

  Only that morning Mrs Postlewaite, going to the dairy to buy milk, had been offered work. People were always offering Mrs Postlewaite work because she was so ladylike and respectable.

  ‘Well, I dunno.’ The Stray rose to her feet. This was help with a vengeance.

  ‘Why don’t you go and see this Mrs Marks?’ the Apostle advised. ‘It can’t do any harm to see her.’