Authors: Jenny Pattrick
THREE DAYS AFTER their wedding Brennan and Rose took a picnic up into the bush above Ironbridge mine. Janet Scobie waved from her veranda as they passed, and they waved back, shouting up that they planned to climb above Ironbridge and eat their picnic in the shade of the great trees. It pleased Janet to see the energy rising off the couple like heatwaves off a summer roof. Brennan strode out in his shirtsleeves, grinning from ear to ear, a knapsack slung over one shoulder. Rose, a little ahead, turned suddenly to skip backwards in front of her new husband, arms dancing as she explained some point. Brennan laughed out loud, and Rose tossed her hands upwards, as if to bring her argument to a triumphant close, then turned back to walk on. What do they talk about? Janet wondered; how will these two, so charged with fire, survive in our down-to-earth valley? She watched, holding her breath, as they balanced their
way over the grim iron bridge that gave the mine its name. More than one miner, drunk or in despair, had fallen to his death from that rusty structure. But Rose and Brennan marched across the sleepers, steady and confident, then struck up the slope above the mine entrance. Later Janet took her mug of tea to the front door and spotted them higher: a flash of white from Brennan’s shirt, Rose’s blue jacket, as they skirted the hillside, moving among the stumps and litter of felled trees.
Janet saw them enter the tree-line, so was able to pinpoint the spot later, and run for help.
AS they reach the shade of the trees Rose turns to Brennan. Her face is bright pink and perspiration has dampened her hair, curling it even tighter.
‘Oh, Bren, let’s stop a bit, I’m dying of heat!’ She tosses her jacket to the ground, unbuttons her blouse and flaps it to bring cool air to her skin.
Brennan watches her. She has no idea how provocative she is being, flapping her blouse and her skirt, the rosy, damp skin showing in several places. He would like to pull her to the ground this instant, but already has learned what a disaster this approach would be. Bella was right. A slow, gentle patience is the only way. He bites his lip, lowers the knapsack, sits beside her but at a small distance.
‘We’ll eat our buttie here in the shade, shall we?’ he says. ‘Where we can watch out to sea?’
Rose flings herself down on a patch of moss.
‘Look down there, Bren! Isn’t that Janet on her porch? And look! The whole rope-road — the junction with Ironbridge. It’s like a map! Oh, Bren, there’s the log house! Hellooooo, Bella!’ Rose jumps up, windmills her arms and flings down again, laughing at her own fantasy.
Brennan laughs with her but his eyes reach further, past the grimy plateau to the distant view: the Waimangaroa a meandering silver line in the dark green of the coastal strip; the clean straight line of surf and the endless stretch of hazy sea. We are so different, thinks Brennan, and for a moment he quails.
‘Rose …’ He watches the horizon still, not wanting her to see the uncertainty in his eyes.
‘Mmm?’ Rose is tearing open the pack of bread and bacon. She takes a huge mouthful. ‘Oh, heaven! Taste this, Bren!’
‘Rose, is this all right?’ He turns to look at her now. ‘I mean, us together?’
Rose hears the weight in his voice and stops her chewing. She cocks her head to one side and looks at him with a small curious smile. ‘What — now this moment? Or are you talking about …’ Her arms fling wide again, ‘about life? About marriage?’
Her tone is not mocking; she simply wants to know. Brennan leans back on one elbow, helpless with love. ‘Yes. Marriage. Are you happy, Rose? Is it all right?’
Rose looks down at the picnic food. Brennan feels she is hiding her face from him. Then she takes up a wedge of bread and bacon and hands it to him. ‘Brennan,’ she says, and her smile is as warm and open as the blue sky above them, ‘it
is
all right. It is more. It is wonderful! You were right to bring me to Burnett’s Face. I will love it here, you’ll see. Oh, Bren, I have such plans … I love the little school. Janet says we can enlarge it now that I have come —’
Brennan interrupts the bright flow. ‘That’s good, that’s good, Rose. But me? Am I all right? I don’t feel so … so … ’
Rose swallows her laughter. In a flash her mood changes. Now all her attention is on him, her bright eyes driving at him. ‘Brennan Scobie.’ A tinge of anxiety overlays the lightness of the words. ‘You are right, yes! You are perfect. For me, you have made everything …
oh, I don’t know …
settle
. Don’t you see it? Everyone says so. I feel it. You are making me happy, Bren, in a way …’ There is simple astonishment in the way she spreads her hands and looks down at them. ‘In an utterly new, wonderful … yes, my dear, serious Bren, you are right right right! Now eat your bread and no more doubts!’
She smartly taps the buttie he holds, like a schoolmistress. He laughs with her, then dares to ask his question: ‘Why, then, do you shrink from my touch? Why, if you are happy, do you lie each night so wooden, until the … we …’ He can’t say the word. ‘Until it’s over?’
Rose frowns. ‘Do I?’
‘It feels so to me. As if you hate it.’
‘No … No.’
Rose does not seem embarrassed by his question. This amazing wife would talk about anything! Brennan is deeply relieved to see that she is thinking carefully. ‘Well,’ she says at last, ‘if you come at me suddenly, yes, I don’t like it. But Bren, that is just me! Some dogs, you know, shy away if you pat them, others lap it up. Does it matter? If you are too sudden, I don’t have time to translate …’ Her voice falters.
‘To translate? But what?’
Rose laughs, puzzled herself. ‘Translate, yes. What a funny word to use! What do I mean?’ She shrugs, and again her smile is overlaid by anxiety. ‘Don’t ask me to explain myself, Bren. It never works.’
She breaks off suddenly. ‘Do you hear that?’
Brennan nods. From deep within the ground, below and to the left of them, comes a low growl, like the slow roll of drums at a funeral. The land beneath them shifts slightly, and settles. Rose takes Brennan’s hand in fright.
‘What is it? An earthquake?’
Brennan smiles, proud to own the knowledge. ‘No, my love. It’s
a “close”. The Ironbridge miners said they expected one yesterday that never fell. Here it is, doing the deed, while they are at home safe and sound.’ Brennan uses his free hand to show the expected collapse of the mine ceiling, after the coal has been excavated. ‘Listen — there it is again! The ceiling has come down on a section near us. He holds her hand lightly, giving her time. ‘This is the first time I’ve felt a close from above. The land is sighing and settling.’ He takes her other hand. ‘Like us.’ He looks down at her long fingers resting inside his broad hands and smiles. ‘Are you translating my hands?’
But there is no settling for Rose and Brennan this day. They both jump to hear a much louder, much closer crack. The slope beneath them heaves and rises. The great beech tree above them groans, its splayed branches twitching and tossing in the still air as if a rogue wind has struck. Majestically, in slow motion, it tilts downhill.
‘Rose! This way!’ Brennan hurls her sideways, away from the toppling tree. Rocks are rolling past them and hurtling down the slope.
‘Rose! No!’ He sees she is running towards danger, and jumps to pull her back, but is too late.
‘Rose!’ he screams.
A section of cleared hillside, no longer anchored by tree roots, and now shocked by the underground cave-in, separates from its parent rock with a crack that echoes back and forth off the valley walls. Miners, eating Sunday dinner inside their homes at Burnett’s Face, set down knives and forks and walk to their doors, puzzled. Janet and Arnold Scobie, standing together on their veranda, are in time to see a whole jutting landmark, the rock they call Adam’s Knob, sheer away and slide, slowly at first, and then with increasing noise and velocity, down past the dark entrance to Ironbridge, down
over the barren spill from that mine, down towards the gorge below, where the Waimangaroa runs fast through the narrow gut. Janet cries out to see the rocks split again and again as they bound down, arcing out into the air, then plunging, arcing and plunging, like a giant, deadly game of leapfrog. As the dust settles and silence returns to Burnett’s Face, Janet can hear her own heart banging.
‘Will you look at that!’ says Arnold, shaking his grey head. ‘I told them they were cutting too close to Adam’s Knob.’
‘Brennan!’ Janet’s voice is a whisper.
‘Look, Dad!’ says Doldo in wonder. ‘The seam’s exposed! Can you see it black there on the face?’
‘Brennan …’ croaks Janet. ‘And Rose.’ She can hardly get the words out.
BRENNAN is spread-eagled, face down, among the sprung roots of the giant beech. Earth and stones have caught in his clothing, his mouth is clogged, blood drips into his eyes from a cut somewhere, but as he moves arms and legs gingerly he feels no pain. He claws at his face, desperate to see. Then closes his eyes again at the horror. The tree in whose roots he is caught has fallen at the edge of the slip. It tilts over an abyss, held only by the few remaining grounded roots. In front of Brennan’s staring eyes is a sheer and dizzy drop. The rock face, raw and veined in bleeding colours, is slashed at a crazy angle by a shining seam of coal. The ferny patch where he and Rose sat a moment ago has gone, and so has the rocky outcrop beside it. This newly shaped land makes no sense to Brennan.
The tree groans. Brennan feels tension twang like violin strings along the roots under his chest. Carefully he eases out from the tangle onto firm ground, then crouches on all fours, squinting against the sun to search the slope beyond the cut and the trees above. Please God that Rose managed to jump clear! Finally he dares
to look below, to the shattered rock and twisted tree stumps piled at the bottom of the slip. His eyes follow the tracks cut into the bush below by the great rocks and see the water in the gorge already gathering behind the half-blocked river. There is no sign of Rose.
‘Rose!’ he calls. His bellow echoes off the sheer wall below and comes back to him faintly …
And then he sees her. She has not fallen, but might well go at any moment. Oh God, the vibration of his very call could have dislodged the place where she clings! On the far side of the rock face a small protuberance has caught a soft tangle of roots and ferns. It perches above a sheer chasm. As he watches, a clod breaks away and falls. Rose stands on that tiny patch. She faces the wall. Her arms reach up, almost to the lip of the rock face, and seem to be holding something. Or is she caught there, and already dead? Her white blouse, bright against the dark rock, is motionless, her arms stiff. She makes no sound.
Brennan dares not call again. Keeping above and away from the edge, he scrambles around the landslide, then, judging the place right, crawls forward, hardly breathing for fear of what he might dislodge. The ground here seems solid but how can he know? Any movement could surely destroy her, and probably him too. For an anchor, Brennan hooks his knapsack over a small stump, twists one ankle into the strap. He eases forward on his stomach to look over the lip.
There she is, directly below him, both hands gripping a small piece of root that protrudes from the rock face. All Brennan can see are those rigid hands and the bright mop of her hair. There is blood in it. Either she is unconscious or she has not yet noticed him. Gently he inches forward again, reaches down with both arms. When his hands close over hers, Rose jerks as if shot. He grips tighter.
‘Rose, I have you.’
Rose looks up at him.
Brennan cries out in fear at that look. Her expression is stripped bare of any warmth; there is no sign in her face of recognition, of hope or indeed of fear. He cannot read her. The stretched muscles, the splintered eyes bear no humanity.
‘Let go,’ she says.
‘Rose!’
‘Let go!’ It comes out as a snarl. ‘Let go!’
Suddenly Rose releases her grip on the root. Brennan grunts as his arms take the full shock of her body’s weight. Has her toe-hold given way? There is no sound of falling debris. It seems, incredibly, that she has chosen to step away, to dangle there. Surely,
surely
she cannot have chosen this?
He cannot budge this dead weight. ‘Rose! Help me!’ Brennan, in despair, strains upwards. Then his boots find the stump and he locks onto it, inching backward with the inert weight of his wife. He is cutting her arms dreadfully as they are hauled over the lip. She will neither help him nor struggle to be free. She simply hangs there.
At last he has her safe. Brennan pulls her away from the edge. He sits among the stumps and bare rocks above Ironbridge mine and gathers her tight in his arms. She lies unresisting. He cradles her like a child. The deep hum that comes from him has neither tune nor rhythm; to Rose it is like the sound of the world turning.
Slowly, slowly she comes back.
Rose reaches one bleeding arm to hold him. She lets her head lie, warm, on his shoulder.
‘I was about to jump,’ she murmurs.
Brennan rocks her.
‘I was ready to go.’
Brennan can think of nothing to say.
‘It seemed,’ says Rose, ‘the right thing. A good thing. Oh, I wanted it, Bren!’
Brennan rocks her.
She sighs. ‘I can’t explain it.’
Brennan licks the blood on her cheek. She licks him back. There are tears, at last, in her eyes. ‘Look at your poor head,’ she says.
And a little later, ‘Thank you, Brennan.’
Arnold and Doldo, armed with ropes and grappling irons, find them there and bring them down.
TWO DAYS AFTER the landslide Janet is with Rose, tending her cuts. The little room in Brennan’s cottage is so dark Janet must light a candle to see what she is doing. She winces to see the stained bandages — the way they pull at the flesh as she removes them, but Rose holds steady as if the pain is felt by someone else.
Janet drops the bloody bandages into a pail. She will boil these later. Now she bathes the wounds in a solution of carbolic and hot water — one teaspoon of the acid to a tumblerful of water. Rose takes note of the measure. She is knowledgeable herself but the English miners often have different remedies from those Bella uses, and Rose rarely loses a chance to learn.
‘What’s that, then?’ asks Rose as Janet dips clean linen in a steaming bowl and lays the hot cloth over the deepest cut.
‘Rose Scobie, would you ask questions on your way to hell?
Most women would be feckin’ screaming their heads off! It is a fomentation of boroglyceride. To bring out the dirt lurking down there.’ Janet takes clean strips of linen and binds them tightly over the cuts.
‘There!’ she says. ‘You are a good healer. Now, I’ll put on the kettle. I want a word with you, young madam.’
Rose lifts her arms gingerly and grins up at the bustling woman. Already she has taken to Janet, who is as energetic as Rose and as careless of convention. ‘This sounds serious. Am I in trouble with Burnett’s Face already?’
‘You are not. You are a great celebrity since the accident. But you may be in trouble with me!’ Janet spoons tea and brings cups to the table. Rose lets her preside in the new little room with its proper sink and its coal range and its raw, unvarnished wood. Her arms are more painful than she will say.
Janet has never been one to circumvent an issue, or lead up to it with irrelevant platitudes. ‘Now then,’ she says the minute they are settled and warming cold fingers around hot mugs, ‘is there any truth in what Brennan says?’
‘About what?’
Janet eyes her sternly. ‘You have worried him badly and in my book our Bren does not deserve suchlike.’
Rose looks down at her arms and then back at Janet. For once there is uncertainty in her movement. ‘He told you how I let go?’
‘He did. And more.’
‘That I asked him to let me fall?’
Janet’s words are fierce. ‘That you
ordered
him to let you go. That he had to drag those poor arms of yours over rocks while you made no attempt to save yourself. True?’
For a moment it looks as if Rose will counter with a fury of her own. She glares at Janet, draws back those wide shoulders, lifts one
wounded arm, palm up, as if offering some cogent argument. But the moment passes. Rose holds Janet’s gaze but speaks in a quieter voice. ‘True.’
‘Would you like to tell me why, then? Why in heaven, when you are newly wed to a good man who has crawled over broken glass to win you, and left a wealthy woman pining for him back in Christchurch —’
‘I never heard that!’
‘Well, now you have, Rose Scobie. And to be honest I am fair jumping with joy that he has chosen you. Or was until I get this nonsense about some driving will you have to destroy yourself plunging head first down some feckin’ landslide!’
‘Feet first,’ says Rose with a tentative grin.
Janet will have none of it. ‘This is no laughing matter, Rose. Not I nor any a one of us here at the Face wants our Bren hurt.’
Rose is stricken now. Tears start in her eyes. ‘Do they all know I wanted to let go?’
‘They do not. As far as I know, I am the only one. Brennan would not be proud to spread such a tale.’
‘Please …’ It is a word not often heard on Rose’s lips.
Janet drives on. There is nothing sentimental about her hard words. ‘Do you want to kill yourself, then? Has Michael’s death sown a dark seed in yourself? A few hours of marriage and you are down a black hole?’ And when Rose remains silent, ‘Talk to me, then, my sweetheart, it is better out.’
Rose beats a hand on the table and winces with the pain. She pushes back the chair to walk the room in her characteristic caged way. Over to the window where ferns drip not an inch from the pane then back to the table; two paces in the other direction where the piano, Brennan’s wedding present to her, crowds against the back wall. Standing there with her back to Janet, she fiddles with
the keys, producing an urgent jumble of notes that could well be the sound of her thoughts. Again she turns to pace the room.
‘Well, it is not something rational,’ she says, ‘or I would tell you straight. I try to explain it as a single mad moment with no meaning. An animal moment. The fear, the danger, the roaring rocks … all that cut something loose in me too.’ Rose comes to a halt beside the older woman. ‘No, that is not quite right. I remember an excitement. I felt … It would be so
easy
! For that flash of time I knew — I
knew
— everything would be solved if I let go.’
Janet frowns. ‘What in heaven’s name would be solved?’
‘Exactly! It makes no sense, Janet. I am not proud to remember it. This is what I’m saying! Listen.’ Rose flings down in the chair again and cradles her tea. Her bright smile begs for Janet’s acceptance. ‘I am truly happy to be here with Bren. Already I love this grimy clanking town —’
‘Watch your words, Miss!’
‘ … and I promise to make him the best wife I can. I do not —
not
— want to die or any such nonsense. I want to teach here and get Bella a grandchild and play my beautiful new piano … and write new songs … Oh!’ She spreads her arms. ‘Let us forget that silly moment. Bury it down in the gorge with the fallen rocks. That was not me.’
Janet smiles back, drawn to the great charm Brennan’s new wife exerts, but also wary. She is fascinated by this woman. Everything about her is so open, so raw. You can watch the thoughts racing. ‘It
was
you, my sweet, and you should take care with what lies inside you. And talk to Bren. He is wild with fear. But yes! Let us forget for now.’ She bundles the bloody linen into a clean flour bag and carries it to the door. ‘When those arms are better, I want to see if you can accompany my new song. It is a beauty just arrived from England.’
Rose jumps up. ‘They are fine for playing now! Bring it over this minute and let us try it out.’
But Janet has food to prepare for her hungry tribe and the copper to boil, and hopes that Rose has some of the same tasks in mind.
ROSE, warned perhaps by Janet’s words, more likely acting out of her own need to be loved, entered community life at Burnett’s Face with a gusto that earned her immediate popularity. The near escape from death helped, of course. But most of the mining families had to admit the strange lass herself brightened things up a bit. That dank and grimy settlement was proud, it seemed, to have its own peacock. Notorious Rose Rasmussen was, after all, a living institution on the Hill, who arrived, it was said, at four years old, riding the Incline in a storm as if it were some picnic; who killed a man when not much older — though that story was more legend than truth, if Bella was to be believed. There were few left at Burnett’s Face who remembered the curse laid on her family, and those who did argued that if the son of the Scobie who laid the curse was now married to her, surely those old beefs were good and buried. Also look at how Janet Scobie welcomed her! The two were thick as thieves, both teachers at the school. The way the mining children progressed in leaps and bounds under these two had given the whole community a boost. This year, in a competition organised by Rose, the Burnett’s Face pupils wiped the floor with their rivals at Denniston, in spelling, in arithmetic and even rivers of New Zealand. History and football were another matter, but Janet and Rose were working on that for next year.
Rose loved every grimy inch of the place: its clank and rattle, the crowded houses, the dark mine entrances that swallowed the men in the morning and spewed them out, black-faced and joking,
at night. In the evenings she joined in the games of cards in crowded kitchens, the political arguments, the songs. Brennan’s two-room cottage, crammed into a ferny bank behind the other Scobies, got no sun all year round, but it had the piano, Brennan’s wedding present to her, carted precariously by Nolly Hanratty all the way up the new road, with Brennan cursing and sweating on the tray as the ropes strained at every bend. Now proudly ensconced in the kitchen cum living room of the little house, the piano — and the player — brought in the crowds on a Saturday evening. Rose knew all the songs you ever thought of, and many you hadn’t, learned from her mother, Bella. Some of the stricter chapel folk thought the old ditties and shanties went a mile too far from what was proper, but most stamped and called for more. Brennan, proud as punch of his clever wife, and no slouch at the music himself, followed along on cornet, adding a hymn or two from time to time to keep the God-fearing on side.
Rose must have conceived in the first month of marriage. Now, eight months pregnant, she carries the child like a flag. No corsets or sombre colours for her, nor loose flowing smocks. She wears green and russet, deep midnight blue (creams and pinks are out of the question in this town where coal crackles underfoot wherever you go), letting the material stretch taut over her belly for all to see what is growing there. Rose is magnificent: there is no other word for it. Her curls have darkened a little to the colour of rich butterscotch; her strong face glows with health; she is interested in all the aspects of mining, and involved in every community activity. There has been not one instance of stealing laid at her door.
Janet Scobie is proud of her new cousin. ‘Isn’t she just the feckin’ bees knees?’ she says. ‘Rose was too strong for the Denniston folk: they couldn’t cope with such quality goods. This is where she belongs, in the real nitty gritty of life. Isn’t it just so?’
The others nod and grin. Janet’s opinion is widely shared around Burnett’s Face.
THERE goes Rose, the school day over, striding out, belly all a-bounce, to see how Brennan is doing with the new rope-road.
‘Brennan!’ she calls as soon as she is within earshot. ‘Listen to this idea!’ Her arms are circling wildly, illustrating some theory he can’t possibly follow at such a distance.
Brennan straightens from his levelling tool. He is supervising the actual laying of the railway lines now, up to his ankles in mud. Between him and his wife is a minefield of wooden sleepers, iron pins and shingle heaps.
‘Rose, wait!’ he calls. ‘I’ll come over.’
In his haste to protect Rose he stumbles himself and comes a painful cropper. Rose laughs and picks her way towards him, a good foot of her skirt muddied and sodden. She offers a hand to her cursing husband and brushes him down.
‘Listen, listen, Bren, think about this!’
Bren smiles at her. Where does all her energy come from? Any other mother-to-be would be sitting quietly at home with her feet up, sewing small things or sleeping. ‘And good afternoon to you too, Rose,’ he laughs. ‘Has your day progressed well?’
Rose taps him on the cheek. ‘Don’t make fun of me — this is important. There was an accident at the yards that gave me an idea.’ Rose pulls at his shoulders to draw his attention. ‘No, listen, Bren! At school I was watching out the window while the children were copying their letters. I could see young Ned Farmer and Johnny Mitchell — you know them?’
‘The two clippies? I know them. Cheeky lads.’
‘Well, Ned got his hand caught. I saw it happen! He was pulled along a good chain, screeching blue murder, till Johnny got him free
by yanking the rope up out of its socket. That put a cut deep in
his
hand. Janet and I went running out to help. Janet stitched up Johnny’s hand but Ned’s lost a finger, if not two. We had to load him onto an empty and send him down to the Bins.’
‘You didn’t ride with him, did you?’ Brennan is aghast at the thought.
‘No, Joseph Hayman went. But Bren, it’s so dangerous!’
‘Riding the boxes?’
‘That too, with the rope jumping out of the socket as soon as you look at it, but no, I mean the clipping. That’s the third time I’ve seen a clippie get hurt in just one year.’
A sharp skitter of wind whips their faces. Rose shivers. She has come without a coat. Brennan puts an arm around her. ‘Come on, my sweetheart, let’s get you home.’
Rose shrugs away. ‘But listen to my idea!’
Brennan laughs out loud. ‘Rose, you are like an avalanche, carrying all before you. Hold your horses, then, while I just see to the men.’ Brennan shouts orders to his gang, hooks an arm through hers and heads for Burnett’s Face. ‘Tell me while we walk. You are chilled to the bone.’
As they pick their way back through the debris, Rose’s free arm draws shapes in the air. She outlines a new way of securing the boxes of coal to the moving rope. A hook on the box, she suggests, like the ones on the Incline wagons, only smaller. A chain with a ring that will hook onto the box and then wrap around the moving rope.
‘I saw a lad playing on the rope-road last week, with a homemade bogey. He hooked onto the rope by wrapping a chain. Then unwrapped when he wanted to stop. He was clever and quick.’
Bren nods as he walks. Despite his concern for Rose, he’s interested. The idea could work. ‘A box held like that might not jump
off at the turns so much.’
‘Exactly! And think of this: you could load the boxes higher. If the rope doesn’t have to sit into the notch on the
top
of the box, you could mound up the coal! Speed up production. Think of it, Brennan — your new rope-road could carry twice the tonnage of the old one!’
‘But would it be safer for the clippies?’
‘Probably.’
Brennan wonders whether safety is as important to Rose as increased production. She should be a mine manager or an engineer. She could be anything, he realises. Sometimes he is a little frightened by her capability, but mostly he is insanely proud. And so he should be. Everyone says that Brennan has been exactly the right medicine for Rose. Getting her away from the Camp, from the suffocating Bella, from the hurt eyes of the Hanrattys, has been a master-stroke, and all down to Brennan.