The Unforgiving City

by Maggie Joel

  News of the incident had proceeded them.

  ‘You poor dear things!’ exclaimed the mayoress, who was a mature lady with a great many children and so understood about mishaps and unforeseen circumstances, even if they did not usually involve wrecked trains and stranded ministers. Cups of warm punch of an alarming red colour were produced and the special guests and the two councillors from neighbouring districts—who had made themselves indispensable during the bumpy thirty-minute carriage ride to Penrith pointing out various local landmarks—were made welcome.

  ‘Well, well, no harm done,’ said the mayor a number of times, clapping one or two people on the back as though it were a big sporting occasion at which a cup had been played for and lost. He was a large, bluff, red-faced sheep farmer who wore a suit that had seen many seasons and looked like it might originally have been borrowed from a passing swagman. He proudly wore a stockman’s hat on his head and spoke as fondly to the three blue cattle dogs that ran at his heels as he did to his wife and many children, who ran about at his heels every bit as much as the cattle dogs did.

  Had no harm been done? Everyone was very keen to laugh loudly and make light of it, but had they not almost died? Eleanor smiled and touched her gloved fingers to a great many people’s hands and said a great many polite things to a great many people but it all seemed a little unreal. Had they almost died? She did not know. She wished someone would tell her. She could see that her shoes were ruined and this was irrefutable proof of something—but what? And she was shivering, could not stop in fact, but that was likely due to the cold.

  It soon became clear that the official reception—a sit-down luncheon followed by official speeches—was to be held outside, and certainly the sky blinded with its brilliance and the sun shone and this was Sydney, after all—or close to it—and so they must sit and endure outside and never mind that it was very chilly indeed and there was clear evidence of a frost from earlier in the day.

  It was not Sydney; it was thirty miles from Sydney. A flock of noisy cockatoos swooped and circled overhead, sheep wandered in and out of the reception, and in a neighbouring paddock a mob of ten or twenty kangaroos had gathered at a dam to drink. The local landowners and the drovers and the squatters and their wives and children milled about eating ice cream and drinking great quantities of lemonade and smiling at one another and tipping their hats as though they had never before ventured outside in their best clothes except to go to church. They gazed at the minister from parliament but mostly they gazed at his wife, who had about her an ethereal and otherworldly quality they could not put their fingers on much less put into words—a grace, was it? an elegance, an aloofness?—and who wore a hat the like of which they had never seen in Penrith before. But for the most part they strolled about giving scant attention to the dignitaries seated at the table, their loosely swinging limbs, their louche expressions, clearly said, Do not come here from the city and offer us the World when you will surely hand us a stone. The talk was of the price of wool and very little else, and when they did venture to talk of the upcoming Federation referendum it was in terms of how it might affect the price of wool and some of the men thought it might affect it and some thought it might not and some thought this a good thing and others a bad. And when Mr Greensmith finally joined them, out of breath, red-faced and missing the handkerchief that had started the day in his top pocket, he did so just in time to be handed a small bunch of wilting grevilleas presented to Eleanor by a small, shy child in a grass-smeared white smock.

  The lunch, great slabs of steaming grey meat cut from the carcasses of several sheep that had been roasting on spits all day, was served to the official guests seated at a row of cloth-covered tables, and those who were not official guests ate their meat with their fingers as they wandered about or stood in little groups and the juices ran down their chins and along their arms and onto the ground where the dogs lapped it up and whined for more. Eleanor ate very little. The sight of so many slabs of meat, so much juice running down the chins of so many people, shrunk her throat. The meat turned sour on her tongue. Her stomach shrivelled.

  ‘We make our own relish, Mrs Dunlevy,’ announced the lady mayoress. ‘It has junipers in it, of all things!’

  ‘How charming,’ said Eleanor, not taking any. On her left the mayor was explaining to her husband some new method of irrigation and she watched Alasdair give the man his full attention, offer up some appropriate comment, give the scheme his full consideration, when she could see he was no more present than she herself was, could see some metronome beating time behind his eyes. He exchanged glances, often, with Greensmith, who looked more wretched by the hour.

  ‘But why, Mr Dunlevy, should the capital of our nation not be right here, in Penrith?’ demanded an alderman seated on Eleanor’s right and leaning over her so that he almost dislodged her hat in his eagerness to gain an audience with her husband, the minister.

  ‘Here?’ said Alasdair. He smiled. ‘Why, sir, because it is not the required hundred miles from Sydney, that is why. The bill is quite clear on that point, and Penrith cannot be more than thirty miles at most.’

  But the man would not be put off.

  ‘I have heard the people of Goulburn were not the required distance either, that they were only some ninety-six miles from Sydney, but they got the under-secretary to resurvey the map and found that their city was a hundred miles distance after all, that it was in fact a hundred and four miles!’

  ‘Yes, I had heard that,’ Alasdair admitted. ‘And in the process they found that Bathurst, their most bitter rival, was suddenly a mere ninety-eight miles distant and so no more in the running.’ He allowed himself a smile at the petty jealousies of the regions. ‘But I doubt the most obliging surveyor in the colony could find you another seventy miles, sir.’

  The alderman sat back, deflated and defeated by geography.

  ‘That is my youngest,’ said the lady mayoress, indicating a barefoot child of indeterminate sex some little distance away. Eleanor looked and saw the child in grubby whites, licking its fingers, and she did not know if she was meant to congratulate or commiserate or merely to observe. She smiled and said nothing.

  The mayor stood up, and those who had voted for him in the recent mayoral election clapped and cheered, and those who had not jeered and turned their backs, and those from outlying stations or who had travelled down from the mountains that morning to attend the event looked on indifferently or helped themselves to more meat, for there was plenty left over.

  ‘Friends,’ said the mayor, holding up his hands for silence. ‘We are fortunate to be joined today by the Honourable Mr Alasdair Dunlevy, member of the Legislative Assembly, minister and prominent supporter of the Federation—’

  At which a great shout went up.

  ‘—and should the men of this great colony of New South Wales decide to vote in favour of the Federation, which I am certain we shall—’

  Another shout, louder this time.

  ‘—then he is sure to take up a seat at the new federal parliament—wherever that may be!’

  There was laughter now, but also a rumbling of discontent.

  Alasdair stood up and the mayor sat down.

  ‘My fellow New South Welshmen,’ he began. ‘My fellow Australians!’

  And as the men surged closer and the cheers followed, the minister settled into his speech and Eleanor watched her husband’s shoulders go back and his chin come up and his chest puff out and she remembered the early days. She remembered campaigning for his first seat in places just like this, or worse, where the men came just so they could have an excuse to stand around and drink a bottle of beer, and if a fight did not break out it was only because not enough men had come. Town after town, speech after speech, and she had stood at his side and afterwards cleaned the blood and the spittle from his clothes and from his face. There had been an untamed, frontier feel to the colony in those days. On election days they had witnessed voters being beaten, they had seen drays filled with peopl
e paid to go from one polling station to another to vote, changing their clothes and voting sometimes more than once in the same place. There was nothing to stop them. Alasdair had lost. Time after time Alasdair had lost.

  And she had stood at his side.

  ‘This is our time!’ said Alasdair. ‘History is ours for the taking!’ ‘It is a sellout!’ came a loud voice from the front of the crowd and a man lunged forward, a settler, a huge man but hollowed out and weather-worn and crushed by years of drought and taxes and hard work. The crowd surged and swelled around him. ‘You think you can come here from the city and tell us what is good for us? What is good for our families? You know nothing of us!’

  The man swayed drunkenly and the fury swelled in his veins so that the beer bottle he grasped shattered in his hands. The crowd opened up around him.

  ‘I know enough to know when a fellow is drunk and needs his wife to take him home,’ retorted Alasdair and the crowd laughed, though some did not. Some muttered angrily and went to the assistance of the man who may not be their friend but who was their neighbour, nonetheless, and whose drought they had shared and whose funerals they had attended.

  ‘And why was the Premiers’ Conference held in Melbourne?’ called out another man. ‘Why behind closed doors in secret? What were they hiding?’

  ‘The bill is the same as it was last year and we rejected it last year!’

  ‘What about our rivers? There is no protection for us New South Welshmen to control our own rivers!’

  But these were lone voices and the crowd moved around them, jostling and enjoying the fun. An ibis that had wandered into the crowd in search of food got itself trodden on and flapped noisily into the air, squawking indignantly, and the people around it laughed.

  It was an afternoon’s entertainment. History was in their hands, these people who laughed at a silly bird and who wandered about foolishly like children at a party.

  But Alasdair smiled at them good-naturedly. Until one man called out, ‘Your fancy wife looks like she ain’t never done a hard day’s work in her life but because she shares her bed with a politician that gives her the right to sit up there all high and mighty, does it? Let her spend the night with a real man and I will teach her a thing or two about wifely duties!’

  For a moment no one spoke. The crowd seemed frozen as in a montage, the cockatoos fell silent and the kangaroos in the next paddock lifted their heads, their noses twitching.

  Eleanor, too, lifted her head though it felt strangely heavy and the air around her had a viscous, glue-like quality, and she looked to her husband. But he, like herself, was frozen. No words came from his lips. No anger sprung to his eyes. No muscle moved on his face. He remained silent.

  Beside her the mayor scrambled to his feet.

  ‘You are a disgrace, sir. Leave at once or you will find yourself in a cell overnight. This lady is our most honoured guest and our treatment of her will be no less than it would be were the wife of the Governor himself here, or Her Majesty the Queen,’ and he bowed low before the minister’s wife as if she were indeed the Queen, sweeping off his hat and resuming his seat. The crowd, released from its horror by the mayor’s gallant rebuttal, cheered and went about its business and forgot what had been said a moment earlier by someone in their midst.

  But Eleanor sat quite still.

  And when it was time to go it was James Greensmith, her husband’s secretary, who held her arm and escorted her to the carriage, and with such a look on his face one might believe he would gladly have hunted down and killed with his bare hands the man who had insulted her.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  DO NOT TAKE OUR WORD FOR IT

  I shall be glad to take the infant, Mrs Flowers had replied in a hand that was cramped and consequently a little difficult to read, for she had, it seemed, much to convey and the square of the notepaper she used was small and rather cheap. A sum was mentioned and a meeting place proposed two days hence at Sydney Terminal Station at a very late hour appropriate to a transaction such as this. Alice must come alone with the child and bring any clothing the child might have. And the money, of course. The foster parents, she was assured, were a good Christian couple who lived on a parcel of land outside of the city. The child would thrive, the child would be happy and healthy, and Alice would be provided with regular accounts of how it fared. She need have no concerns.

  Alice sat at the rear of a tram, the letter in her pocket. She had brought it with her as proof that the woman, Mrs Flowers, existed. She was going to show it to Milli, though how good Milli’s letter reading was or if she would be allowed to read a letter at all Alice did not know, but she had brought it anyway, for luck. As proof.

  For Milli did not even know her baby was rescued! She did not know her baby lived. She would be frantic, and Alice imagined herself saying those words, I have saved the baby, Milli!, and she imagined Milli’s face, her tears. Alice’s heart swelled with the joy she was bringing.

  She gazed out of the window at the squat workers’ cottages of Darlinghurst. She clutched her ticket and leaned her head against the glass. The day shone brightly but the inside of the tram was musty and dirt-encrusted, and tobacco and spittle had turned the floor to a sticky brown glue. The tram had trundled its way around Potts Point and into Woolloomooloo and was now rattling down Riley Street as though it had all the time in the world and Alice regretted already her decision not to go on foot. The tram was an extravagance but the letter in her pocket, the news she brought, had made her reckless, had made her extravagant. She had never been a bringer of joy before; it was not a role she had ever imagined for herself.

  The tram rattled on its way, stopping every hundred yards or so as the people shuffled off and other people shuffled on. The gaol was just a mile or so from the streets she and Milli had grown up in, but everything about this journey was strange and unfamiliar. She may as well have been visiting Milli on the moon, or in Melbourne.

  It would become familiar though. Three years’ hard labour. She had said the words over and over in her head until they became an invocation, until they had ceased to have any meaning at all. She made herself think about it now, about the three years’ hard labour.

  But she could not do so! She saw the people seated all about her. She saw the mean little dwellings of Riley Street. It would become real only once she had visited Milli there, seen that dreadful place with her own eyes, was witness to Milli’s ruin. Afterwards, she would always picture Milli there, no matter where she was or what she was doing. It would be her punishment. For escaping that life.

  The tram lurched forward and the people stood in the aisles as there were no more seats. It stopped outside a Jewish candle maker with a tailor’s premises upstairs. Alice knew this shop, this corner. They had walked these streets as children, hurrying home in the dark from somewhere, carrying something, a loaf of bread, perhaps, still warm from the baker’s oven, on one occasion squabbling about a coin found on the ground or left over from the purchase. And Milli, who was taller and stronger, had easily held the coin out of her reach and Alice had jumped up and down and cried with frustration. When they had got home Mr Purley had taken the penny and struck Milli so that blood poured from her mouth and Alice had run and hidden under the stairs. It was the first time she had hidden there, but Milli had found her. It was the first time Milli had said, I will not let him hurt you, Alice, I will not!

  The tram rattled on its way. ‘He is not our real dad,’ Milli had said, often, as though she worried Alice might think Mr Purley was their father, though Alice never had, not for a moment. Milli remembered their real dad, or said she did. Was he a good man? Alice had wondered, but she had never asked, afraid of the answer. No man, in her experience, was good. Father McCreadie, perhaps, but that was different—and she had heard things about him, though he had always been kind to her. And Mr Dunlevy, she supposed, was good, though the rules of good and bad seemed to apply differently to he and Mrs Dunlevy, and she only dimly perceived them. But their real dad, had
he been a good man? It had troubled her as a child.

  The tram shuddered to a halt. She had taken the tram because it would take her far out of her way and delay the moment of arriving, she saw that now, but the moment was upon her. Here she was already walking up Forbes Street and there was nothing could stop her. Except perhaps herself.

  The gaol filled the sky. A place so large in her mind and now in reality that Alice could not fix her gaze upon it. Instead she turned her gaze downwards to the pavement, to the swishing skirts and lace-up boots of two young women walking ahead of her who had got off at the same stop. They came to the entrance of the gaol and the two women walked past and onwards and Alice followed, walked all the way to the corner of Burton Street. Here the two women turned and were soon gone, their lives going in a different direction. Alice kept on walking. She walked the circumference of the prison and found herself lost because it had not four sides but five. A pentagon, of sorts. As though the normal rules of construction had been abandoned here. Or perhaps it was merely an awkwardly shaped piece of land and an unskilled workforce. A watchtower nestled in the curiously angled corner where two sides of the five-sided building merged. Alice felt the gaze of the prison guard perched high up on the platform of the watchtower.