Then the Apostle looked away. ‘The sooner the better,’ he said, and then almost humbly, as though he asked a favour, ‘I may come and see you sometimes?’
‘Oh, Harry! if you only would come now! For good.’
Again the Apostle shook his head. ‘When I feel I can come to you, I will.’ He tried to be practical. ‘I must look up trains.’ He straightened his shoulders as though to brace himself against the pain of her going.
‘Harry, I’ll be worrying about you and wondering where you are.’
‘I’ll write.’
‘And I know you won’t take care of yourself, and you’ll starve. Oh, why did I ever think of leaving you?’ She was turning now to the opposite of her mind, as women do. ‘I won’t go. The boys will be looked after. I know they will. They’re good boys. The Lord is with us here as everywhere, as you say, Harry.’
If she were willing to fling over all her resolutions just for that look in his eyes, the Apostle was made of sterner stuff.
‘I must look up the trains,’ he repeated.
24
The Busker had come to Orion a little saddened by the experience of turning twenty-two. He had been down to Sydney and had hung about starving, because he had no fixed place of abode, and so could get no dole. In the roar of the traffic, even his yodelling was drowned, as he stood night after night on the street corners, thankful for a stray penny. Now he was on the road again, with his old jaunty assurance, his old battered guitar, and only the clothes he stood up in.
Twenty-two seemed to him a great age to be just ‘knocking about,’ still insecure, still with a blank scroll of fame to carve. To tell the truth, he was a little afraid. He sometimes, particularly after a hard spell of drinking, saw before him a horrible future, in which he would grow older and more disreputable, as he tried to drown the bitterness of lost opportunities. Where was the tent-show he had been so sure he would one day own? Receding like a mirage, illusive, unattainable. Perhaps if he could make some money, cherry-picking (you couldn’t do anything in the city without money), he might storm the fortress of vaudeville and radio.
‘Anyway,’ the busker comforted himself, ‘I’ve kept free. Never have any ties. That’s the main thing.’
He was thinking particularly of a succession of enchanting damsels who had talked to him with tenderness in their voices and the clank of matrimonial fetters in the background.
It was late one Saturday night, when he was waiting for some mates of his in the Orion Hotel, that the busker renewed his acquaintance with Mr Wilks. For a minute he could not recall that he had ever met this inebriated stranger, who hung upon him with maudlin affection and insisted he have a drink.
‘Got plenty money,’ Mr Wilks confided, pulling out a handful of silver to prove it. ‘C’mon, it’s on me.’
Then the busker remembered the night that the little girl with the rosella had bound up his head with a strip torn from her red dress.
Sharkey Wilks was drinking with a thin, watery-eyed man, to whom he referred alternately as ‘ole pal’ and ‘Greg’ry’. They were deep in fond memories of other days, memories that made them shake each other’s hand affectionately every now and then, or even slap each other on the shoulder and mournfully shake their heads like two crows on a bough.
‘Remember the time, Greg’ry, when we drank away that team and waggon?’ Mr Wilks breathed tenderly.
‘An’ remember the time when we drank a buggy and two sets of harness?’ Gregory countered.
They shook their heads again, and gazed deep into each other’s eyes. It was rather dreary for the busker, who drained his pot and, after he had ‘shouted’ in his turn, rose to go.
‘No, you don’t.’ Mr Wilks shoved him back with some violence. ‘Me an’ you and ole Greg’ry goin’ to have a night out. Ain’t that so, ole pal?’
Gregory nodded with tears in his eyes. ‘We was drunk for three weeks,’ his voice trembled with emotion, ‘that time in Molong.’
They shook hands solemnly once more. Then they both wanted to shake hands with the busker.
‘Y’ comin’ home with me.’ Sharkey Wilks put his face so close that the busker shut his eyes and shuddered. ‘You’re comin’ home with me, me boy. I know a little girl that ain’t thought of nothin’ else but you ever since Logan.’ He twisted his face in what was meant to be a knowing look. ‘I tried to thrash ’er out of it. But that didn’t do no good.’ Sharkey began to show signs of truculence. ‘Comin’ home with me. Hear that?’ He shook his fist under the busker’s nose. ‘See that? Well, let’s hear no more about it.’
The busker was now definitely alarmed. There was something more than mere drunkenness behind the attachment which Mr Wilks seemed to have taken to his person. But Duke had enough dealings with drunks to know that, if he sat quiet and returned soothing answers, Mr Wilks would presently forget whatever muddled idea he had in his head and fall asleep, or fight Gregory, or seek some other diversion.
‘Greg’ry Hourigan,’ Mr Wilks said sentimentally, ‘you remember the time we broke that ruddy stallion that broke Jeff Wilde’s back.’ He began to laugh hilariously. ‘Three days we had the flank-rope on him, and a bag of wet sand on his back. Then we got him down and saddled him, and drove him through the scrub, and cut him to pieces with the stock-whips. That taught the bastard. That broke his spirits.’
‘He wasn’t no good after,’ Gregory amended mournfully. ‘Remember we gelded him so it ’ud bring back some of his spirit.’ He shook his head. ‘But it never did.’
If he could keep the talk to horses, the busker thought, he could presently slip away. They became immersed in reminiscences about one ‘Hoppy Brown,’ and his exploits in bringing a mob of draughts from Victoria to Queensland.
‘Excuse me, sports,’ the busker said graciously. ‘There’s a chap over there I’ve got to see. I won’t be a minute.’ And he vanished quickly through the bar door and out across the yard.
Mr Wilks and his friend might be drunk, but they were far from incapable. As the busker trotted out of the back gate, there they were waiting for him, howling with laughter at their own cleverness, and linking their arms through his.
‘Thought you’d give us the slip, eh? Not on your life. Comin’ home with us, ain’t he, Greg’ry?’
And despite the busker’s protests, they hauled him into a rickety buggy, whipped up the horse, and started off on a wild gallop in the opposite direction to the busker’s camp, through a darkness that made their demise almost a matter of minutes.
As he drove, Gregory howled a song, in which Mr Wilks joined him very heartily. The buggy leapt and bounded, and threatened at every moment to send them hurtling in the road. Gregory held the reins and Mr Wilks plied the whip. The busker had never been kidnapped before — no one had ever thought he was worth it — and now he resigned himself to whatever might come: a broken neck, a couple of broken ribs. If he was lucky, when they overturned, he might come off with just a smashed rib or collar-bone.
At last, with profound relief, he realised the buggy had drawn up before a cottage, the gate of which Mr Wilks was drunkenly endeavouring to open. The horse spanked through and round the back of the dim bulk of the house. Shaken but still whole, the busker descended. He did not know where he was, he did not know what would happen next, but nothing could be worse than that ride over breakneck roads with two drunks urging the horse.
Mr Wilks was again draped round his neck, breathing stale fumes over him.
‘We’re home, Maria,’ he called unnecessarily to the thin wife of Gregory. ‘But if it hadn’t been for me ole pal Harley — Harley’s the name, ain’t it? — we’d never have got here. Meet me friend Harley Duke, Mrs Hourigan, Maria … Ah, I used to know ’er before she ever married Greg — the Lily of Blimdagery, she was.’
He flung a chaste kiss in the direction of the haggard woman, who, with one child in her lap and another whining about her knees, did not smile. She looked at Sharkey with a timid hate, and for her husband, who now staggered in lad
en with bottles of cheap wine, her glance was one of reproach and grief.
There was no furniture in the room but an old school bench, a table, and a rickety chair; but the busker thought he had never seen any place so bewilderingly crowded with children. Taking a count of heads there were ten in all, and their eyes were fastened on Gregory Hourigan with the same grief and reproach that was in the eyes of their mother.
‘Greg,’ the woman whispered, ‘you promised me you wouldn’t touch it.’
‘Meeten ole pal,’ Gregory dribbled. ‘Meeten ole frien’ like Sharkey. Gotta have a drink. Ain’t it so, Sharkey?’
‘ ’Corse you gotta, Greg. Where’s the missus, Maria?’
‘She’s in your camp in the shed, Sharkey.’
‘Tell ’er to come up.’ Sharkey gave a grandiloquent sweep of his arm. ‘Gonna make a night of it.’
‘I’d better put the children to bed,’ Mrs Hourigan said. ‘They’ve got to get off to early Mass in the morning.’ And with another reproachful glance, she shepherded half the children, the boys, before her, to bed them in a section of the huge stone barn which, the busker was to discover, eked out the inadequate living space of the two-room shack.
The busker sprang to open the door for her. He followed her out. He found it painfully necessary to his self-respect to explain that he had nothing to do with this situation, that he was a helpless victim of circumstance and Sharkey Wilks.
The woman only nodded her head listlessly. She led the way into the big barn, and took down a hurricane lamp and lit it, to show an interior of dusty junk-heaps, old motor-tyres and tools, with several heaps of bedding on the floor.
‘I don’t suppose you know Blimdagery?’ she said in a conversational tone.
Would he ever forget it. That flight across the plains, with Snow half delirious in the van, and the wind slicing them all to mincemeat.
‘I’ve been through Blimdagery,’ he admitted, wincing at the memory.
‘We come from there.’ Mrs Hourigan had the colourless lack of interest in other people that often afflicts women whose life has been one personal disappointment after another. ‘I often tell Gregory I’d like to go back. My folk all live there, so do Greg’s.’ She raised her voice to a sudden yell: ‘Jean!’
‘What?’ came a sullen voice from the other side of the stone partition.
‘Your father says to come over to the house.’
‘Tell him to go to hell. We’re all in bed.’
The busker could not restrain himself. ‘Is Betty there?’ he asked eagerly. He had scarcely once thought of Betty in the months that lay between tonight and their last meeting, but now he was unreasonably curious to see her again.
There was a silence from beyond the partition wall. Then Mrs Wilks’s high screaming voice was heard. ‘What is it, Jean? Who’s the cove out there? I can hear him. Don’t think I can’t.’
Jean shouted at her: ‘It’s a man wants Betty.’
Mrs Wilks’s answer contained the inference that she objected to being awakened by casual men who had (censored) designs upon her younger daughter. The busker’s blood chilled. Muttering a hasty apology through the wall, he beat a retreat into the open, leaving Mrs Hourigan to shout to Mrs Wilks a description of her husband’s homecoming.
‘And I suppose the money he got from the girls’ hard work is all gone,’ Mrs Wilks wailed.
The busker hesitated in the doorway. At any minute Mr Wilks and his pal Gregory might come seeking him, and he felt that a continuance of their society was more than he could stomach. However, he was entirely mystified as to his whereabouts, and he could not have found his way back to the town unaided for a bet. Mrs Hourigan was now hearing the boys say their prayers, from which he deduced that she would be emerging soon, and then he could ask her which way he went to Orion.
He heard the squeak of a gate, and a white form blurred the blackness that was the back paddock. The busker stepped out in the dim light from the doorway of the barn and heard a little cry of amazement.
‘Is that you, Betty?’ he called.
‘Yes.’ She came towards him. ‘I went down to stop the dogs barking.’ He had noticed that the din of the dogs had stopped a minute or so before. Her voice was timid, but eager. ‘How’d you get here?’
Rapidly he told her how her father had insisted on dragging him from town. ‘And now how do I get back?’
‘It’s five miles.’
‘Five miles!’ the busker exclaimed. The old goat! His mortification at being kidnapped was increasing as he realised the difficulties of escape. Listening to Betty’s directions, he decided that he was practically lost in a neck of the woods.
‘It’s no use,’ he said at last. ‘I didn’t see any big tree when we turned to the left. And I couldn’t see my hand in front of me now.’
The girl hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision. ‘I’ll come with you.’ The busker protested. ‘Just as far as the main road,’ she explained. ‘That’s about three miles. And it’s just a track to there.’ She vanished inside the barn. ‘Wait a minute,’ she called over her shoulder.
He could hear Mrs Wilks’s shouted threats and prohibitions as the situation was laid before her. Presently Betty stepped out again, this time clad in some kind of a dress in place of the white petticoat she had been wearing, and with shoes on her feet.
‘Mum and Mrs Hourigan say you’d better stay and sleep with the boys, but I said you’d sooner get back.’
At that moment the back door was flung open, and Sharkey Wilks called: ‘Where’s me pal Harley? C’mon, Harley. Give us a bit of a tune.’
The busker was pleased he had left his guitar in safe keeping in Orion.
‘Quick!’ the girl urged. ‘Or they’ll want you to stop and have a drink.’
She stooped under the wire of the paddock fence, and held it for him to follow. They followed a little track that led through acacia scrub and ant-heaps, through dry water-courses where the busker stumbled and floundered, and over a stony rise.
‘Take my hand,’ the girl offered.
Presently his eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness, but he retained the girl’s hand as he walked by her side. The busker had a romantic nature.
‘The moon will come up soon,’ he suggested.
‘There isn’t a moon tonight.’
‘Well, there ought to be.’ The busker’s disgust at being dragged to this hovel against his will by a couple of drunks was giving place to a sense of the strangeness of the situation.
‘Every time I meet you,’ he said, ‘you’re getting me out of something. I haven’t thanked you for Logan.’
They were on the track now, and he began to tell her of his hopes and disappointments in Sydney, revealing even the mean things he had done, the tricks he had thought clever at the time, the way he had lived in a back room in a squalid street, the time he had gone hungry. It was a relief to get it all off his chest to this shadowy figure who was not a stranger, not a friend, nothing but a voice and a blur of shadows. He could talk to this girl.
‘Here, let’s have a look at you,’ he concluded abruptly; and before she could stop him, he had halted and struck a match.
The light almost dazzled them for a moment. Then he studied the brown face, the thin mouth with lips that had a fine curve above a determined chin. He had not noticed in Logan what a firm chin little Betty possessed. She had always seemed so shrinking.
‘You’ve grown a bit,’ he said.
The match went out and the darkness seemed all the deeper for that tiny flare of light.
‘Yes, I’ve grown.’
Their voices had waked some bird, which called questioningly with a high, melancholy note.
He moved closer to her in the gloom of the path.
‘Sit down here for a minute with me,’ he suggested, his hand on her arm. ‘Here, by this tree.’
The busker knew all the moves, and he felt that since he had been dragged so far out of his way, the Wilks family owed him some recompense.
>
‘If I was you, I’d go away quick.’
‘Why should I?’
He was holding her close, and even as he kissed her, he felt a qualm of uneasiness. She was so little and frail and thin. It was a damn shame to think what a life she must lead. But he was the busker, and he stifled the thought. Life was all too short to worry about other people’s troubles.
‘Why should I go away?’ he asked again.
She made a queer little noise that was half contemptuous, half a sob. ‘Because you’re a mug.’ She pushed him away, and this time he was surprised at her strength. ‘Here,’ she said. She was holding out something towards him in the dark. ‘Now will you go away?’ A piece of money rang in the road as she thrust her handful on the busker.
‘You haven’t got much,’ she said. ‘It was all in your left pocket.’
The busker lit another match. ‘So you’re a dip.’ He ruefully placed his possessions in his pocket. He caught her sensitive long fingers and gripped them hard. ‘Where’d you learn that?’ It was humiliating to have his pocket picked.
‘A dark girl taught me. And Dad.’
The busker felt a new interest in her. ‘It was a nice piece of work,’ he commented. ‘Why’d you give me back the stuff?’ He drew her towards him. ‘Like me, huh?’
‘I want you to clear out.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Dad’s got ideas in his head. He’s trying to make you travel with us.’
‘He seemed to have the idea that you liked me,’ the busker mused.
‘I do. That’s why,’ she said in a whisper, ‘I want you to go, see?’
‘I can look after myself.’
‘You don’t want to get mixed up with my crowd. They won’t do you no good.’
‘Protecting me again.’ He tried to draw her down beside him. ‘A little kid like you.’
‘I’m telling you to get going.’
The Battlers Page 35
