Swords and Crowns and Rings (43 page)

A deafening crash of glass from the shop made all three jump to their feet. The teapot tipped over and drenched Mrs Early down her front. She jumped up and down, holding her dress away from her body, screeching, ‘I'm scalded, I'm scalded.'

Jackie raced into the shop, the Nun limping after him. Almost the entire front window was gone. As they gaped, a huge glittering sliver detached itself from a corner and speared into the floor.

‘Oh, God, oh, God!' groaned Jerry. ‘Them bastards!'

He pointed to a dozen large stones on the floor.

‘They musta thrown them from a car. But bloody why, Jack? How can I ever pay for another window? Forty, fifty quid it might be, and I can't even meet my gas bill.'

Jackie had clambered over the window frame and looked up and down the street. No truck or car was to be seen, not a person except an elderly man and woman staring from across the street. Jackie called, ‘Did you see who it was? What happened?'

But as one person they put down their heads and hastened away.

To his stepfather Jackie said, ‘It's because I'm here. I'm sorry, Dad.'

The Nun raved: ‘What have you done? Nothing, except lost your wife and son. That coroner never cast no suspicion on you. Nobody did except that crazy boy. God, I would never have thought it of Kingsland, my own town, thirty years nearly I been here, and your mother born here...'

They could hear Mrs Early snivelling in the other room.

‘Lord, she got burned, didn't she?'

But Mrs Early, soaked and stained, was weeping about something else.

‘Just look out the window, Jackie. Oh, it's too bad. So mean and paltry. The pigs. That's what they are, pigs.'

Jackie looked at the wet manure that had been pelted at the Nun's washing.

‘Mine, too,' said Mrs Early. ‘Oh, I'm that ashamed, Jackie. So soon after your mum going and all. All her lovely sheets, ruined. And look at my white marcella quilt! Oh, I feel quite sick.'

That night the Nun was still shaken, red patches on his cheeks, eyes restless, voice sometimes trembling in a way Jackie had never heard before. He could not eat his supper, throwing down his fork, swearing.

‘It musta been kids! Musta!'

‘Maybe the cowshit,' said Jackie. ‘But don't kid yourself about the shop window. There's an element here that wants me out of the town, and they won't be satisfied until I go. That's why Mrs Early copped it too. Any friend of mine is marked.'

‘But why? Why should they want to go on believing something that ain't true?'

‘Chance for a bit of fun, bit of devilry, maybe,' replied Jackie. ‘And my being different from them, that alters things more than you think.'

‘You mean you sometimes got picked on for this when you was out west?'

The Nun saw Jackie's hand steal up unconsciously and finger the scar on his cheek.

‘Now and then,' said Jackie.

‘They must be bloody mental,' said the Nun.

Jackie shrugged. What was the use of trying to explain the meagreness of some minds.

‘Dad,' he said, ‘we'll leave things for a bit to see if there's any more funny stuff. Maybe they've got the dirt off their livers with breaking the window, who knows? But if it keeps on, I'd better be on my way. I can't have you copping it rough because of me.'

The Nun's face twitched. He turned away, stumped out of the room. Jackie heard him pacing up and down in the darkened shop, swearing at the boarded-up windows, getting lamer and lamer. At last when Jerry's limp had become a drag, Jackie went down to him.

‘You're as bad as a restless bullock,' he said. ‘What about a bit of shut-eye?'

The Nun groaned. ‘Honest, Jack, I'm flummoxed. I just don't know what to do.' He gestured around him. ‘Everything's falling to pieces.'

‘I've got some money saved,' said Jackie. ‘I'll buy a new window. But you know I'll have to get out of Kingsland before it's put in, or they'll smash that as well.'

The Nun was aghast. ‘Ah, Ghost, I thought you'd be home awhile. God, boy, I dunno what I'll do when...'

Jackie heard him heavily ascending the stairs.

They did not speak of Jackie's departure again. It was understood that he would stay. Intermittently stones were thrown on the roof, obscene words regarding Jackie were chalked on the boarded-up window. The small remaining flow of custom to the shop dwindled to a trickle. Debtors began to press Jerry and he returned from an interview with the bank manager looking like a man who had been dealt a mortal blow.

‘They're going to have to sell me up to pay the mortgage.'

‘Here,' said Jack, ‘they can't do that. What about the Moratorium Act that was brought in last December? That means you can postpone payments for a couple of years, if the slump doesn't end before that.'

The Nun shook his head drearily. ‘The bank manager explained that this isn't a real mortgage: more like a loan made to your father, your real father. And it don't come under the Moratorium. He called it a lien, not a loan. Imagine! Your mum's shop, supposed to come to you. Ghost, she'd clobber me if she knew.'

‘I'll go along and see the Bank,' said Jackie.

The Nun's face filled with hope. ‘Yeah, you got education, you know about figures. Tell them I'll work like stink, anything, long as I can keep the shop for you like your mum wanted.'

The town seemed full of men standing in knots on corners, in the shadow of doorways, around the bandstand in the park. Disgruntled, shabby men they were, mazed by what had happened to them, bewildered by the mysterious forces that had robbed them of their livelihood, separated them from wife and children, abraded their self-respect as breadwinners and independent people.

Most of these men were of an age to have been to the War. They had fought for their country, but their country, at least as represented by the Government, would not fight for them: gutlessly it had kowtowed to overseas financiers, promised faithfully to be good, to keep up interest payments, and prune wages, pensions, and public works regardless of human suffering.

‘
Them!
' thought Jackie.

Looking at the burned-black raggle-taggle of itinerants, Jackie was filled with bitter rage. He thought of the Nun, a man who had worked like a dog all his life and now was about to have the fruit of his labours taken away. The Nun hadn't even taken out the lien on the shop and dwelling; Walter Hanna had done that before Jack's birth, when the council forced him to demolish the old wooden veranda that had projected over the footpath from goldrush days, and build a proper frontage with a display window. All these years payments had been made on the loan, covering two or three times the original sum; but now the Bank wanted its capital, and so that was that.

It struck Jackie that this faceless Them really looked like a pound note. What was going on at this disastrous period in history was a contest between men and money, and money was winning hands down.

A sparkling anger filled all his veins with energy.

‘Up you!' he said. ‘You won't get him, not while I'm around.'

All the vitality and formidable protective instinct of his nature that had once been diffused around his mother, Cushie Moy, Maida and the little son, suddenly focused upon his stepfather. That decent man wasn't going to do it hard if Jack Hanna could help it.

Three or four weeks later Jerry MacNunn went up to the convent where, so many years before, he had found work and good friends.

A mountainous young postulant showed him into the parlour. It smelled of lavender floor polish and a faint indefinable mustiness that Jerry attributed vaguely to holy water.

Sister Bonaventure of twenty-five years before had been tail and handsome. Mother Bonaventure was small and stout, with a knobbly white face like a cauliflower.

‘Ah, Mr MacNunn.'

She seated herself with composure, indicated a chair, upon which the Nun gingerly got half of his behind.

‘Sister Mary Justin tells me you have been good enough to bring us the gift of some useful items from the shop.'

‘Yeah,' said Jerry huskily. ‘Nothing much. Chook food, and seeds and things, and some tinned stuff. Thought you could do with it here.'

‘It's terrible, Mr MacNunn,' said the old woman. ‘So much hardship everywhere. So many businesses closing. And this to happen to you, above all people, after all your sorrows and heartbreaks. It must be hard for you not to give way to despair.'

‘Mighta done that,' admitted Jerry; ‘but young Jack said he'd stick to me. Him and me are going on the track together.'

The old woman shook her head dolefully. ‘That clever young man! So much promise! But is there no way to live except to become a vagrant?'

‘Guess not,' replied Jerry. ‘We got to keep on the move now we're unemployed otherwise we won't get sustenance, you see, Sister, Mother. But it ain't as bad as it sounds. Young Jack talked the Bank into letting us keep the little lorry I used for deliveries when Mrs MacNunn was still with us, and we've covered it in and made a little turn-out of it, where we can live while we're looking for work. Snug as two bugs we'll be. Jack's that cheerful, he's a godsend.' He broke off, grinned. ‘There. I didn't come here to jaw, just to give you these few things and say hooroo for the present.'

‘The Sisters and I shall pray for you and Jack,' she said. ‘And you must not lose faith. You must believe that there is good fortune just around the corner.'

‘Betcha,' agreed Jerry.

She smiled. ‘Remember when I caught you at the steamed pudding?'

‘Did I bog in! I can taste that pudden still.'

They talked a little about old times.

‘You've never thought about joining the Church, Mr MacNunn?'

‘Never,' admitted Jerry.

‘Fair enough,' she said. As they shook hands, Jerry saw a tear in the corner of her hazy old eye. He gave her a hug. the stiffening of her veil sounding like gunfire in his ears.

‘You little beauty,' he said.

The mountainous young postulant who waited at the parlour door nearly fainted with shock and horror. But Mother Bonaventure merely straightened her veil and returned to her chair. When the postulant came back to see if Mother required anything, the old lady said, ‘There goes the finest Christian I have ever known.'

‘But he's not even a Catholic,' gasped the girl.

‘And what makes you think that God is a bigot?' inquired the old woman haughtily. She made a slight pooping sound and glared accusingly at Sister Mary Justin, who turned crimson, muttered, ‘I beg your pardon, I'm sure, Mother,' and hurriedly retired.

The Nun had many qualms about leaving Kingsland and setting out on the track with Jack. Often before they left he woke up in a cold sweat, thinking, ‘Leaving everything me and Peggy worked for!' Then he would recall that in effect all these things had left him already; the very bed he tossed in belonged to the Bank.

He had no one but young Jack. Everyone belonging to him was dead except that set of ratbags at the orchard in High Valley, and he wouldn't touch them with a tarry stick. His old friends were either all dead or driven away from the town to live on sufferance with married sons or daughters. The Nun himself was only forty-eight, though when his leg was bad he felt more like sixty-eight. He wouldn't be due for a pension for many years, even if he could live on such a pittance when it came his way.

Sometimes he sat up in bed and groaned with despair. There seemed no way to turn at all. No wonder old Piper Nicolson had drunk himself to death; it must have looked like the only way out for the piper.

Yet he wanted to keep on living with young Jack, to have a mate to rely on and do things for, and crack a joke with.

‘And Jack can't stay in Kingsland, that's for sure. The sods. Ghost, I been ashamed!'

Sometimes in the early morning hours he felt like dropping his bundle, except that he could think of no place to drop it. His leg, as though in malice, went through one of its painful spells; he felt as if he had a blunt peg forcing its way through his flesh. He was agitated by the possibility of his becoming seriously disabled while he was away west with Jack, being a burden on the young fella. Jack maybe beginning to resent his presence.

He put all this to Jack, in a stumbling manner, and Jack laughed.

‘I'm not broke. You've got a few quid. And we have the truck. We're rich compared with most.'

So, when it was time for them to leave Kingsland, Jerry put a good face on it, did a bit of boasting in the pub, saying it was high time he had a coast around the countryside, and that there were probably whips of casual work for two jokers with their own transport who could turn their hands to anything. He was greatly encouraged by the looks of envy on the faces of other customers who would have given anything to get away from anxious, whinging wives and half-fed kids.

‘If the worst comes to the worst,' bragged Jerry, ‘we're going on to the Big Smoke to get a start on the Bridge. I've always wanted to see that Bridge. You know they got the big arch finished now, but there's plenty to do yet, maybe three years' work in that old Bridge.'

Only Mrs Early came out to wave them off, wiping her eyes with her apron, looking old.

‘Don't look back,' she said. ‘Start a new life.'

But Jack did sneak a look back.

There was a big tree in Moys' old garden, its leaves Oriental yellow. Beautiful, it was, standing there richly clad and confident of many more autumns in which to live and turn gold. But Jackie knew that Mrs Driscoll, who now owned the house, was going to knock it down this winter for firewood. She had had all the other trees cut, and the wooden gingerbread pulled off the veranda, for the same reason. The tree was a bit like Maida, standing there, not knowing what was in store for it.

He pulled his thoughts away from Maida quickly, and from his back pocket took his mouth-organ.