The Battlers

by Kylie Tennant

  ‘Twenty years,’ Mrs Tyrell ruminated, ‘I been travellin’ the track. I brought my children up to be decent. Leastways, I tried. We’ve had our troubles, but I’ve kept them together, and married off the two eldest girls decent to decent men in towns who could keep a roof over their heads. I wouldn’t mind Dick takin’ up with a girl who wasn’t travellin’. But to take up with a girl whose folk travel, and not only that … dark into the bargain! It’s just the limit!’

  She pushed the streaks of greying hair wearily away from her weatherbeaten face. ‘What’s the use of life, anyway? You work and work, you slave to bring up children, and they shame you. It ain’t no use at all, I tell you … livin’.’ She pressed Dancy’s hand. ‘You get off the track, woman. Snow’s a good man, and I guess you wouldn’t have come on the track again except for him, would you?’ Her voice was gentle; she was holding one of the Stray’s small, hot paws in her own big, work-hardened hand. ‘And you’re a good girl. I’ve watched you with young Jimmy. You make Snow localise somewhere and give you a home. You’re worth it.’

  ‘Oh, Ma’ — the Stray turned her head wearily — ‘what’s the use of talking?’

  She gazed out of the tent door listlessly, as though she saw her life unrolling before her until she was old and grey like Ma Tyrell. She knew Snow better now. Under his look of a quiet yokel something smouldered — something bitter and compelling and dangerous. In his own groping way he was out on a search to which this Union of his was but the clue. He was looking for something bigger than a comfortable life or work to do; he was driven on by that burning discontent, on and on; sometimes he did not know why; sometimes he thought it was to leave old wrongs behind or find a new justice and freedom; but the Stray knew that the discontent in his blood would never let him rest now, would never be purged into peace until death once and for all laid Snow’s long bones in some dusty town for ever.

  ‘There’s times,’ she said simply, ‘when I wish I was dead.’ That would be one way out of everything. Snow wouldn’t really mind. He might miss her a little, but he was solitary by nature, and he had Jimmy. Jimmy would miss her more. She could not bear the thought of what lay ahead of her.

  ‘Oh, woman!’ Mrs Tyrell was deeply shocked. ‘You mustn’t say that. It’s my fault for talking like a fool.’ At once she reverted to her practical, busy self. ‘You wait a bit and I’ll bring you a cup of tea. You’re sick, that’s what it is.’

  The Stray lay thinking, her eyes shut to shield them from the bright light. She smote wearily at the tormenting flies. Some day, she thought, oh, some day, if they could only come over the brow of a hill, she and Snow, and know that the town below was their own town, and their camp that night a house of their own. Towards dusk it would be, and the smoke drifting up into the cool air from cottage chimneys, and the green fields going down into the folded hills like a green blanket wrapping the town from the twilight. Red roofs and little gardens and orchards shining under the last fading of the clear sky, and a hut waiting for them, if it was only broken weatherboard with the wind living in the cracks, and a patch of ground to grow feed for a cow and a few chickens, and a door to the house to shut out the darkness and the cold regard of the stars. Two tears of misery forced themselves under her hot eyelids. Never, never — Snow would never settle down. Oh, if she could only make him!

  ‘I will, I will,’ she muttered. ‘I’ll make him settle down, right here in Orion, damned if I don’t.’ She lay there concentrating on Snow, willing him to stay in Orion, not to go on.

  Mrs Tyrell was pressing her bulk into the tiny tent. ‘And here’s some tea for you, woman.’ Her voice was kind. ‘You sit up and drink it. I’m sorry I spoke like I did. After all, where would I be but for Tom? Where would any woman be but for her man? What sort of wife would stay behind and see her husband go off on the track alone?’ The Stray made no answer. ‘For better or worse it said. I had a church wedding, and I know. For better or worse, and it can’t be much worse,’ Mrs Tyrell consoled. ‘How the hell could it, with Dick going off like this?’

  III

  Dancy was still sick when the men came back from their pea-picking. No one knew what was wrong with her; but Snow was certain it was a touch of the sun; Mrs Tyrell, that it was due to the dam water they had all been drinking; while Thirty-Bob, with a singular lack of reticence, plumped for dysentery straight out. A mild form of it was raging at all the camps. ‘It’s all this fruit,’ he pointed out. ‘It can’t be good for you.’

  Snow was so worried over Dancy that the news of Dick’s treachery, while it came as a bad shock, did not affect him as much as it affected Thirty-Bob.

  Thirty-Bob was furious. ‘The dirty little black bitch,’ he spat. ‘If brains was dynamite, Dick wouldn’t have enough to blow his hat off. I’ll give ’im something.’

  But Snow shook his head. ‘Let him be a bit,’ he counselled. ‘He’s only a kid. We shouldn’t have left him here at a loose end.’

  The single men on the reserve soon made it plain what they thought of the ‘Tyrell mob.’ ‘You ask a man not to work, and then one of your own mates goes out and gets a job scabbing. Call that a fair go?’ They were very savage about it, and Snow felt a slow, helpless despair take him. If only there was something he could do.

  No one was speaking to Dick except Thirty-Bob, whose mouth had swelled up outrageously after the fight with the Littles. His lips were still puffed out, and he made obscene jokes about joining a tribe of blacks with Dick. ‘Plenty nice young ’possum, Dick. Plenty nice young gin.’ He tormented Dick until the boy threatened to make his face look even worse than it was. These days, Dick was keeping away from camp as much as possible. He had thought of going to live at the pickers’ huts in the orchard, but the fear of what his mother would say made him quail. He was still a little afraid of his mother, and she was all the more formidable at times like these, when she did not shout at him.

  What with Dancy sick and Dick in disgrace and no more peas to be picked, the camps at the Three-Mile reserve were far from cheerful. The chief trouble was that no one was getting enough to eat. The few shillings for the pea-picking had all gone on small necessities. It was no use expecting anything from the Union. The men at the show-ground were only getting bread and tea. Thirty-Bob was right in saying that everyone was eating too much stolen fruit. Cherry-bootlegging had always been one of Orion’s chief entertainments, and fully half as many stolen cases of cherries were shipped away as there were legitimate cases picked.

  ‘I could do with a feed of real meat,’ Thirty-Bob exclaimed, mournfully regarding the leathery substance impaled on the point of his knife. The moment he had said it, he looked across at Snow, who had started up, his face alert. Now there was something Snow could do! Then he sank back again.

  ‘It ’ud be mad so close to the town,’ he said aloud. But the idea had taken root. If he didn’t do something, Snow felt, he would go grey; and certainly a good feed of meat would restore the morale of his mates. Looking after the Three-Mile was his job, and buying meat was something that had always offended his principles, even if they had money to buy it.

  ‘The night of this here ox-roasting,’ he remarked to no one in particular, ‘anyone that can get a leg in ’ull be up at Waldo’s place grabbing a bit of beef.’

  Thirty-Bob nodded. ‘Just you and I,’ he suggested, ‘could go out and get the meat for a little roast of our own.’

  ‘You keep out of this,’ Snow said, with pretended contempt. ‘Think I’m going to have you stumbling all over the paddock? One’s all that’s needed, and I’m the one that’s going.’

  Thirty-Bob protested, but Snow was determined. Now that it was settled they cornered Dick Tyrell and faced him with a definite choice.

  ‘See here, Dick. You don’t want to be up with Waldo’s mob of dingoes. We’re going to have a bit of a beano of our own tomorrow night. You’re not going to quit us to go up there, are you?’

  Dick tried to bluff, but he knew this was an ultimatum. ‘Aw, there’s no harm
in just going up to have a look, is there?’

  ‘Take it or leave it.’ Thirty-Bob’s voice was stern. ‘One thing or the other. You’re no mate of mine if you go.’

  ‘Then get to hell. Leave me alone.’ Dick turned savagely away.

  ‘I don’t travel with no nigger-lover,’ Thirty-Bob flung after him. It was the first time he had ever quarrelled with Dick. He had backed him in his fights, had gone out with him working or drinking or raising Cain or racing dogs, but that had all been finished by those two words. ‘There,’ he said bitterly, ‘goes a kid that was as decent as any on the road.’

  Snow wanted to get the business over before the moon rose. With a quiet word to Thirty-Bob he vanished as soon as darkness fell. Thirty-Bob gathered the children and started them singing. He teased Mrs Tyrell until she smiled in spite of herself; he exchanged shouted jests with Deafy; he dragged the Stray from her tent, and propped her against a box.

  ‘We’re going to have a beano of our own,’ he announced. ‘Snow’s bringing back the ox, and then what-ho.’

  ‘Gee! he shouldn’t be doing that,’ Mrs Tyrell cried. ‘So close to the town and all!’

  But the fact of his daring made her feel better. She got out her biggest camp-oven and filled it with dripping.

  Snow, as he walked up the road towards Hacker’s farm, failed to take cover as a car swung past him. It had come so fast that its headlights were on him before he realised it. Anyway, he thought, there was nothing in that. There would be any number of cars on the road tonight. He would cut back across the fields after he had taken his sheep. He went quickly with his queer, long stride, and presently turned off the road and across a stretch of bush to the field he had marked down. He put the dog among the sheep, for he wanted the job done quickly, and Bluey knew as well as a human being what his work was. Bluey never pinned a sheep; he killed it. While the flock fled bleating in alarm, Snow was down on Bluey’s sheep; had it across his shoulders, and had started off almost at a run. This was a dangerous, a reckless thing he was doing, and he knew it, to snatch a sheep in such a closely settled place. He had covered a mile and was coming across the last paddock before he slipped through the reserve fence, when a dark figure loomed up before him and a revolver was thrust into his ribs.

  ‘Stop,’ a voice said; and a flashlight blinded his eyes. ‘Come on, boys. We’ve got him.’

  It had been Hacker’s car that had passed Snow in the road, and he had phoned the police. Hacker had always been a very astute man.

  22

  To Dick it seemed that the whole world combined against him in misery and injustice, just because he had a pretty girl, a girl who wouldn’t have looked twice at Thirty-Bob or Snow. They were a couple of jealous narks, and anyway it would all blow over. Thirty Bob and Snow would get over their grouch and everything would be all right again. The way Thirty-Bob talked, you would think he had a halo, pulling such a long face over a chap taking a girl out.

  Steadily Dick refused to face the issue of his strike-breaking. He nursed a smouldering, grumbling resentment that just managed to cover a deep unhappiness. He had always been proud of the friendship of Thirty-Bob, proud that Thirty-Bob travelled with his family; and that final cut about a ‘nigger-lover’ had bitten deep.

  There was something about Mary that fired his thick, slow blood. If Dick wanted a thing, he just put his head down like a bull and charged through every obstacle. He did not pretend to be clever or quick. Why, damn it all, what a stupid fuss they were all making about nothing! His fleshy forehead creased in three deep, horizontal furrows. He had only wanted a good time. He had only wanted Mary, with her lustrous dark hair and her light, pretty giggle and her thin, maddening girl’s body. He’d like to smash the lot of them, looking at him as though he was dirt. ‘Nigger-lover! By God!’

  The worst of it was that he knew there was something about Mary that repelled while it enchanted him, something that made him despise her, while he was madly in love with her, and the something was the streak of a different breed from his own. Mary fascinated him all the more because she was something forbidden by all his mother’s standards, by all the years that he had been taught that the dark people were to be avoided and suspected. Anyway, he had paid a high price for this confounded night out, and he was not going to have it spoiled. If he could not give Mary’s elder brother the slip and snatch Mary away into the darkness for himself, his name wasn’t Dick Tyrell.

  And it looked as though this night was going to be worth everything. Waldo, characteristically, had invited all his neighbours and enemies. He had invited half the district. No one refused, if it was only for the sake of laughing at Waldo afterwards. Cars and trucks full of would-be beef-eaters bounced across the grass to the hollow at the back of the homestead where the bullock was being roasted, and their headlights lit up the dead, ring-barked trees, the excited crowds, already milling about aimlessly. Great preparations had been made. Stacks of logs carted. The great pit of glowing coals over which the carcases hung was so scorching as to be almost unapproachable; and when, finally, the beef was pronounced ready, it was singed on one side and raw on the other; but no one minded. Everyone crowded and struggled to snatch a piece of half-cooked flesh and bear it off triumphant. Families and groups sat round on logs, in cars, on the grass, picnicking. They yelled around the fire. They danced and sang. Someone was playing a concertina, and a good deal of Waldo’s worst wine was consumed.

  The hospitable Waldo moved from group to group, slapping backs, exchanging jokes, waddling over to superintend the sweating stokers in charge of the roast, encouraging the concertina, making speeches to which few listened, telling all his neighbours about his marvellous crop, about his pickers, jeering at the other growers until they were stung to boastings of their own.

  The tone of the festival was that of a triumph, a celebration of victory; and it had its effect on the morale of the pickers, just as it was intended to have. So many loud-voiced, confident farmers, all talking together about how little trouble they were having and what a good year it would be, could not fail to make an impression on the gate-crashers who had found no attempt to oppose their entry. The strike had been brushed aside as an amazing trifle. It didn’t count. Fully half the strikers from the show-ground were there, come to look on, and, mingling with the crowd, feeling very daring to have thus braved the camp of the enemy. Here was plenty; songs, laughter, wine, beef, big cans of tea boiling over fires and free for all, bread for toasting, sausages — all free. It was a great contrast to the hungry camp by the show-ground.

  ‘It must be costing him something,’ one of the gate-crashers muttered to another.

  ‘Arr, he’s putting on all this show just for a stunt.’ But the tone in which it was said was defiant. After all, Waldo had the reputation of never wasting money. Perhaps he had got enough pickers. If so, what was the use of staying out any longer? If Waldo could get enough pickers, then the resistance was broken. A man might just as well leave the fight for the award over until next year and make the best of the present situation.

  The Sydney newspapers, which had crushingly ignored the Union’s bulletins and circulars, its laboriously detailed account of the exact position at Orion, were only too willing to print long articles describing ‘Idyllic Scenes in Cherry Orchard’ or ‘Interview with Notable Cherry-Growers. Best Season for Many Years’. This feast of Waldo’s, his roasting of a bullock, was something they welcomed for the magazine page. A lady journalist who had come down to Orion for copy made a very good thing out of Waldo’s party. Her article was full of descriptions of the ‘splendid spirit’, ‘the bronzed, happy faces with carefree smiles,’ ‘this harvest festival of the old world in this new sunny land’. It was salt in the wounds of the hungry little crew down at the show-ground when they read it.

  Actually there was a constraint over the crowd that never once left it, not even under the influence of Waldo’s ‘plonk.’ The pickers showed a tendency to draw away from the ‘bosses,’ so that one end of the pad
dock was an exclusive cluster of cars and farmers, and at the other the pickers made merry on their own. There was a feeling of unseen barriers between the men who had sold their award for a bit of beef and a good time, and the men who owned the beef.

  Dick Tyrell, in particular, felt abominably lonely. Like the others, he tried to down the feeling by shouting as loud and long as might be, by horseplay and flirtation and drink. Outside the circle of cars and firelight, the moon had risen over the silver boughs, looking down on this bubble of noise breaking against the dignity of the silent hill. The firelight clawed at the faces of the throng, stripping them of sanity and identity, shifting and whirling and eddying in gusts of smoke that left even friends inhuman, savage, clutching a chunk of flesh.

  The worst of it all, to Dick, was that tonight Mary, who had appeared so desirable, who had made him hot and desperate, seemed now only a giggling child, no older, no more alluring than his young sister. His piece of beef was coated in charcoal and ash, and, from the toughness of it, there was no doubt that the bullock would have died shortly from old age, had it not been sacrificed on the altar of festival. The whole thing was stale and washed-out and false. He would sooner have been back by his own camp-fire with his own people, rather than with this crowd that more and more, as the night wore on, thinned and dwindled as though the moon had withered up first one group and then another. Car after car drove away without explanation, leaving the pickers in possession, a drunken and rather dangerous gathering that would need a firm hand when the time came to get them back to their huts.

  Mary was beginning to be bored by Dick. He had been in a strange mood all the evening. They had given up attempting to dance over the broken, sloping ground, and Mary sat on a fallen log, Dick’s head resting against her knee. At the sound of two powerful voices announcing that their ‘Luv was Like a Red, Red Rose’ Dick started up and displayed a sudden interest.