The Battlers

by Kylie Tennant

  ‘Will you get into trouble for coming away?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t take much notice.’

  ‘Wait.’ The busker turned back with her. ‘I’m going back with you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well’ — he was at a loss — ‘I don’t want you to get hurt by that rotten swine because of me.’

  ‘Don’t you be silly.’

  But the busker followed doggedly. ‘I’ve only just found you again, and you want to run away from me.’

  The girl laughed, and Duke was shocked to hear the mocking ring of that laugh.

  ‘Wouldn’t Dad love to hear you?’ she said grimly. ‘He’s got his mind set on getting you to travel with us. He thinks you’d be worth a mint of money. And I’m the bait.’

  ‘He might be right.’

  ‘If I was you, I’d go away quick.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Well, you know Dad.’

  ‘I’m not scared of him. As for this idea of his …’ He stopped.

  ‘I’m not that low down.’ She was half crying, half angry.

  ‘I didn’t say you were. But if you’d let me walk back a bit of the way … I know the track now. You said you liked me.’

  ‘I don’t know you.’

  ‘Oh yes, you do. I feel as if I’d known you for years.’

  ‘It won’t do no good,’ she said. ‘It’s no use trying to put any soft stuff over me.’

  ‘I’m not trying to put any soft stuff over you. I’m on the level. I look at it like this.’

  The busker was surprised to hear himself saying wild words. One part of him stood back shocked, repeating, ‘Keep clear, no ties.’

  ‘I look at it like this,’ he went on stubbornly. ‘A chap like me, a bit careless, just drifting along, he needs responsibilities, see? ties, someone to pull him up when he’s blueing his money, someone he can talk to, who’ll see things his way. Now, a man’s mates are all very well. But you know how they say: ‘Come and have a drink,’ and you go and have a drink. But when a bloke’s got a girl or a wife, see? it keeps him straight.’

  ‘Some men it doesn’t. Look at Dad and Greg’ry Hourigan.’

  ‘I’m talking about men,’ the busker said impatiently, ‘not lice. There’s one kind of chap straightens up if he has someone who cares about him, someone who’d stand by him. But it ’ud have to be tight and square and fixed up properly. I’d want to be married, for good and all, see? I haven’t got any money …’

  ‘That doesn’t matter.’ She had said it impulsively, and he felt her shrink away ashamed the moment she had spoken.

  They had reached the paddock fence. ‘Walk a bit of the way back with me?’ he asked, all the old arrogance gone from his voice.

  As they wandered up and down the track, he began to know every hole in it.

  ‘Like Dad and Greg’ry seeing each other home,’ she suggested, laughing.

  He told her all about his mother, and how he learnt to play the guitar — about his whole life.

  ‘If you got to know me better,’ he was saying, when the bush began to be lighter.

  ‘The moon must be coming up.’

  ‘No,’ she told him. ‘It’s daylight, that’s all.’

  ‘Well’ — the busker looked down at her — ‘you’ll have to let me come home with you now.’ She did her best to persuade him to go back to town, but he shook his head. ‘I’m tired.’ She was tired, too, and she gave in.

  The shack looked different in the dim light. ‘Let’s not go inside,’ he suggested. ‘I don’t want to wake them up. Let’s just sit here and talk a bit more.’

  They were still talking when Mrs Hourigan came out to milk the cow, the only cow that had, so far, escaped Gregory’s predilection for drinking things away. Mrs Hourigan stood regarding them a moment, as indifferently as if they were two fence-posts.

  ‘How I look at it is this way,’ the busker was still explaining. ‘I never realised that a man needs ties. Not that I mean to go getting tied up to your family — the sooner we give them the slip, the better — but I mean me and you, travelling together, we’d get a break sooner or later. With my talent and brains …’

  25

  I

  The Stray was trudging back to camp from her last visit to Snow before he was removed to Goulburn Gaol.

  ‘You get out of Orion quick,’ Snow had insisted on parting. ‘Get on the move and stay on the move. I don’t want none of them snoopers askin’ where you got Jimmy. You look after young Jimmy, see?’ He scrutinised her anxiously. ‘That suit you?’

  The Stray nodded mournfully. ‘I’ll look after him, Snow …’

  ‘Well, what?’

  He was impatient, she knew, of any long-winded lamentations or farewells.

  The Stray gulped. She had been going to ask if he — well, perhaps not loved her, but just if he really considered her as his mate. Now, even now, she was afraid to ask. Suppose he told her bluntly, as he well might, that she could go to hell for all he cared, and that Jimmy could go with Mrs Tyrell. She dared not put her fortunes to the test, but, woman-like, she so desperately wanted the assurance of Snow’s regard for her. That would make all the difference between insecurity, fear and despondency, and a warm, comforting hope. If only Snow would say: ‘Listen, Dance. When I come out, we’ll try to start all over again, just the two of us and Jimmy.’ But he just looked at her and said ‘Well?’ in a hard, toneless voice.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked again, his face as bleak as the cell wall.

  ‘Oh, nothing.’ The Stray gulped. ‘So long, Snow.’ He did not like tears, and she forced them back for fear he might turn away disgusted. That she could not bear.

  ‘So long, Stray.’ Snow had reached out his hand to her in a hard, friendly grip, and that comforted her not a little. ‘So long.’

  That was all she had to remember; all there was to cheer her in the weary, desperate months that lay between his going and his release. She felt almost as though Snow had died. Her heart ached for him, laid away in a captivity that was as cruel to him as to a wild beast. She could not bear to think of Snow with the walls he detested closed in around him, crushing him down oppressive stone on stone. It was like burying him alive.

  She had not liked to burden Snow with her worries, so small in comparison with his imprisonment. She had agreed to get on the move and stay on the move from loyalty to his wish, but she could not help wondering if he was right. As she tramped gloomily along the road, she was thinking uneasily of the kindness — the really terrifying kindness — of those nuns. Father Farrell had passed her on to the convent, and the nuns had done their utmost to find her a good home. So far the Stray’s stubborn refusal to part from Jimmy, her insistence that her ‘husbing’ wanted her to stay with ‘friends’ — namely, the Tyrells — had thwarted their efforts. Until Snow came out of gaol, she told them stoutly, she would hawk jug-covers, and travel south to the cannery where he would meet her. But she was nervous and suspicious that their efforts to ‘place’ her would be successful. The Mother Superior had even suggested that she might work in the laundry at the hospital. All in all, the Stray considered, the sooner she and Jimmy got away from this interest in their welfare the better. The thought of being constantly under supervision, with kindness and respectability all about her, made her feel, as she told Jimmy, like ‘a cat on a windy night.’

  ‘It’s good of them, Jimmy. I ain’t saying that; but mi-Gord what kind of a life would we have with them rustling about every minute of the day?’

  She had wanted to settle down, she admitted that, and here was her chance to do it. But to settle down and be improved was a different matter.

  They had got a lift into town, but there was no one going their way to the camp, so they cut occasionally across fields where the road took a curve, for they wanted their tea, and it was getting dark. Jimmy knew all the short cuts. He was the kind of a boy who would find a short cut across a roof-top, if it seemed to halve the distance. Now and then the Stray compl
ained that it would have been quicker to go by road as he helped her up steep banks and through fences.

  ‘Where are we?’ she demanded, coming to rest panting on the sheer edge of a cutting.

  ‘We go across that paddock and then out the back of that orchard, and that brings us on the road again. Come on, Dancy.’ Jimmy was already off again impatiently. He treated Dancy with a combination of casual derision and protective liking. ‘I’ll look after her,’ he had promised his father proudly. ‘We’ll be all right.’ He was secretly thrilled by his parent’s mishap. There were not many boys, he reflected, who had their dad in gaol for stealing sheep.

  They came to a high bank overhanging a small, grassy patch by the road where those disinclined to camp at the Three-Mile often pitched a tent. Jimmy stopped and peered over a briar at the sound of voices, and the Stray, overtaking him, peered over his shoulder. When she saw who was below, she jerked back with an involuntary exclamation of dismay. Miss Phipps was wrathfully laying down the law to two drunken, red-faced gentlemen who surveyed her with a swaying gravity.

  ‘I was here first,’ she said firmly, ‘and I like privacy. I would request you to leave.’

  ‘Lady,’ one of the two hiccupped. ‘Always camp here. Don’ we, Joe?’

  ‘Thasso,’ his mate agreed. ‘Have a drink, missus?’

  ‘Well, if you won’t go, I will.’ Miss Phipps nervously gathered her scattered odds and ends into what seemed to Dancy the same small, burst cardboard suitcase and the same old sugar-bag. ‘Things have come to a pretty pass when a lady cannot choose a place of retirement without …’

  ‘Don’t go.’ One of the gentlemen clamped a large detaining paw on her shoulder. ‘Siddown and have a little drink.’

  ‘Thasso,’ his mate nodded.

  ‘We know how to treat a lady. Even me wife says that. Nobody can say we don’t know how to treat a lady.’

  ‘If I met your wife,’ Miss Phipps said haughtily, ‘I would tell her you drank methylated spirits when you were away from home.’

  ‘Don’ make no difference.’ Her captor still retained his grip on her shoulder. ‘Drinks jus’ as much at home. Haven’ seen her for five years. Siddown.’

  ‘I won’t sit down.’

  ‘Siddown,’ he roared suddenly. As Miss Phipps tried to wrench herself free, he thumped her roughly on to a stone. ‘An’ take a drink,’ he added in a threatening voice. ‘Or I’ll belt your head off. Sayin’ I dunno how to treat a lady.’

  At this point Miss Phipps gave a yell. ‘Dancy,’ she screamed. ‘Oh, thank goodness!’

  Dancy realised that Miss Phipps, casting her eyes upward for help, had seen the interested Jimmy and Stray peering down at her. There was nothing for it but to slide down the bank and land almost at the feet of Miss Phipps’s tormentors.

  ‘Come on, Phippsy.’ The Stray put a good face on it. ‘Better come along with me an’ Jimmy.’

  Miss Phipps sprang up, snatched her baggage, and headed down the road. The two drunks, taken by surprise, blinked for a moment at this interruption.

  ‘Th’ lady,’ the one who was flourishing the bottle observed, ‘going have drink.’ He turned suddenly ferocious. ‘Gerrout!’ He advanced on the Stray threateningly. ‘I’ll teach yer. Taking a lady away. Know how to treat a lady.’

  ‘Keep off.’ The Stray ran nimbly backward.

  But the man still came on. ‘I’ll give you something for yerself,’ he shouted.

  ‘Is that so?’ the Stray said grimly. ‘You come a step nearer and I’ll give you somefing too, you …’ She was thoroughly frightened now, and spat names at him that made Miss Phipps shiver.

  The man halted and half-turned. ‘No lady,’ he said with an attempt at dignity.

  But his mate was annoyed. ‘Nobody ain’t going to call me that,’ he announced.

  The two of them turned purposefully upon the Stray, who backed slowly, bristling like a kitten. Then, as the men closed on her, she bent swiftly and snatched up the empty bottle which had caught her eye and towards which she had been retreating. With a guttersnipe ferocity she brought it crashing down upon the head of the one who had said she was no lady just as a stone from Jimmy caught his mate on the ear.

  The next moment Jimmy, the Stray and Miss Phipps were speeding down the road. They ran strung out in a row, Jimmy first, then the Stray, then Miss Phipps gasping for breath and trembling. They did not realise there was no pursuit, not in fact until they were forced to stop for lack of breath.

  ‘Well, Phippsy,’ the Stray panted, ‘you’ve got some marvellous pals.’

  But Phippsy, for once, was too scared to be haughty. ‘Oh, Dancy dear’ — she fell on the Stray’s neck and hugged her — ‘if it hadn’t been for you, I don’t know what would have happened. Those terrible creatures!’

  ‘Well, if you will go telling blokes off …’

  ‘I didn’t. I wasn’t. Oh! don’t be so horrid to me just as I’ve found you again. If you only knew’ — poor Miss Phipps was as redolent of trouble as an Irish stew of onion — ‘oh, if you only knew all I’ve been through. Where are you camped?’

  The Stray looked cautiously at Jimmy. The last thing she wanted was Miss Phipps on her hands again. She had enough to worry her without that. ‘We ain’t camped there no more,’ she explained. ‘We’re moving.’

  ‘Well, I’m coming with you,’ Miss Phipps declared. ‘I never realised before, Dancy, how really valuable your … your methods are. I have wronged you in the past.’ Miss Phipps’s tone had an unusual warmth. ‘I thought you rough and coarse. But I realise now that roughness may be a very present help. I would feel much better travelling with you.’

  ‘Now, see here.’ The Stray turned aggressively on her erstwhile camp mate. ‘If you think I want you loafing on me, eating twice your weight, and sneering and jeering, and causing rows, you’ve got annuver fink coming. I wouldn’t travel with you, Phippsy, no, not for quids. So you clear, see? Hoppit. Get away wherever you came from and do your own battling. We got enough trouble.’

  She set off at a rapid pace along the road, but to her dismay Miss Phipps kept pace; and not only that, but she now burst into tears.

  ‘Oh, Dancy!’ she moaned. ‘Oh, dear …’

  The Stray’s pace slackened. She met Jimmy’s questioning look ruefully. It was no good, the Stray told herself; it was just like the Apostle said: You couldn’t walk round what was coming to you. She stopped, and allowed Miss Phipps to rest her head on her shoulder. She drew her down on the side of the road and patted her and made soothing sounds and let her cry.

  ‘You go on, Jimmy,’ she directed, ‘and get tea.’

  ‘There, there, love,’ she said presently. ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Oh, Dancy, I’m so frightened. I’m so lonely. I’ll do anything you want. Please let me come.’

  ‘There, now,’ the Stray soothed. ‘Don’t talk about it. I guess I didn’t mean it. You can come.’ She sighed a little. ‘Though where I don’t know.’

  ‘Oh, Dancy, that is good of you.’ Miss Phipps humbly planted a wet kiss on the side of the Stray’s chin.

  Poor Miss Phipps, the Stray noticed, had lost weight, had lost much of her old insolence.

  ‘Don’t you know where you are going, dear girl?’

  ‘Just on and on.’ Dancy straightened up and removed Miss Phipps from her shoulder. She had to put her arm round the older woman’s waist, for Miss Phipps was, as she said, ‘much shaken by her terrible encounter.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Dancy promised, ‘wherever it is, you can come too.’ Surprisingly, the presence of Miss Phipps had given her a renewed strength. Perhaps Miss Phipps’s woebegone aspect, her dependence, was a comfort. No one else depended on the Stray, neither Snow nor Jimmy nor any of the travellers.

  ‘Come on, Phippsy,’ she said in her old rough way. ‘Get a move on. Jimmy will have tea ready.’

  They moved down the road, Miss Phipps leaning her weight on Dancy’s thin arm.

  II

  Jimmy had prep
ared the tea by scraping a layer of black ants off the top of a tin of raspberry jam, toasting some stale bread, and getting the billy to boil. They ate in silence; the Stray and Jimmy because they were thinking hard; but Miss Phipps because she was ravenous. There never was such a woman for eating, the Stray considered.

  After tea, as though their reunion had called up his wandering spirit, the busker materialised on the other side of the fire. He had slipped on to a vacant box, and was at home drinking tea, almost before the Stray had recovered her breath.

  ‘Cheerio all,’ he said, appropriating a mug. ‘Here’s luck. How’s the girl, Dancy? So this is young Jimmy, is it?’ And without further preamble he turned to Miss Phipps. ‘I’ve just come from your camp. Dropped in to see you.’

  ‘I don’t want to see you,’ Miss Phipps replied coldly. ‘I told you that.’

  ‘I like to keep an eye on you, Dora. Who got you the job you chucked away, I’d like to know? Just as well I do keep an eye on you. You ought to know not to camp with metho fiends by now.’ He turned austerely to Dancy. ‘And as for you, Stray.’

  ‘Don’t you dare call me that!’ the Stray flared.

  ‘Well, as for you, Dancy, I’ve always known you’d get yourself into trouble. Going round smashing blokes with bottles. Bottles indeed! A fine kind of life this’d be if everyone went round getting in a temper and smashing people with bottles. You could be had up for assault. Anyway, those chaps back there are very hot about it. Their last words were something about setting the camp alight.’

  ‘Yeah?’ the Stray retorted. ‘Talk!’

  ‘Maybe.’ The busker nodded. ‘Still, I thought I’d better bring my nap with me and stay the night. You need,’ he said grandly, ‘a man about.’

  The Stray narrowed her eyes. She knew there was always something underlying the busker’s glib flow of talk when he took this tone.

  ‘You need a cove like me around the camp,’ he went on, ‘for protection. Bottles indeed!’

  ‘A fat lot of good you’d be in a row,’ the Stray remarked scornfully. ‘Anyway, what’s the game? You can’t tell me you came all this way just to tip us off about them chaps back there. As for firing a camp, you’d have to hold their hand. Why, they’re blind blotto by this. What are you up to?’