Swords and Crowns and Rings (46 page)

Jerry rose. He had become thinner in later years, but he was still immense. He towered over Mrs Bead.

‘I don't take words like that about young Jack here. You just trot back to your own camp and take your disaster with you.' He shoved the brownie into the woman's arms. Uttering huffing cries, she almost ran back to the old car that was her family's mobile home.

Jack explained to Jerry his brief meeting with Milly and her Dad in Glen Ida. Jerry was shocked by the whole thing. But Jackie said, ‘Don't knock the situation until you see her, Dad.'

Jerry shook his head. ‘I can't fathom you sometimes, and that's a fact.'

But later he went with Jackie to the green van, standing back and looking furtively at Milly while Jack told the father of Mrs Bead's intention. Jerry saw that Milly's bare arms were plump, her hair was clean, and the bits of her face that were not purple were soft and relaxed, almost motherly. She sat with her arm around the serpentine neck of the coursing bitch.

The father, peevish and disappointed at the idea of moving on again, agreed that it was the best thing, and said he'd hop it straight after breakfast. Meanwhile Milly had gone up to Jerry, smiled and said, ‘You got anything nice in your pocket for a little girl?'

Jerry gave her some chewing-gum.

‘Ghost, it's awful,' he said later. ‘That poor kid. Only a child really, ain't she?'

Before they blew out the lamp that night, Jerry said, ‘Well, maybe you see things clearer than me, me old Jack.'

He awakened late that night with the feeling that someone was in the back of the lorry with them. Jerry lay motionless, listening, his hand closing noiselessly over his heavy torch. He heard a stealthy sound beside him, and switched on the torch, simultaneously saying, ‘Stand where you are!'

He saw the greyhound bitch almost on top of him. She was picking up his false teeth from the saucer where he had deposited them. At the same moment Jackie sat up with eyes squinched against the light, saying, ‘What's up, who's that, what's the matter?'

Jerry threatened the animal with the torch, shouting, ‘The bludger's got me teeth!'

The dog laid back her ears and showed him eyes like pips of smoked glass. Jerry was in agony.

‘Holy hell! Drop them, you cow!'

The dog backed warily away, holding the denture between her own teeth as though she were a freak with three sets. Jackie fell on the floor and rolled around, shouting with mirth.

‘Do something, you little bastard!' yelled Jerry; but his stepson was incapable. Jerry seized a fry-pan and crashed it down on the dog's head. There was a crunch, and the denture, now in pieces, vanished into the dog's mouth. She chewed hurriedly, seemingly unharmed by the blow, jumped lightly from the tailboard, and disappeared into the dark.

Jerry sat down, his head in his hands.

‘You wouldn't believe it,' he said. ‘Me choppers eaten by a dog. You—' he snarled at Jack. ‘Fat lot of use you were!'

Jackie sat there weeping with laughter. Jerry lifted the lamp and looked at himself in the shaving-mirror.

‘Hell, I look ninety. Who's going to give me a job? They'll think I'm on the old-age pension anyway. A man's a bloody guy. And how am I going to gnaw me way through me tucker? Eh? Stop cackling, damn you!'

‘We'll just have to find a dentist and get some more made,' said Jackie, controlling himself. But Jerry would not be comforted. They couldn't afford it; new teeth hurt like blazes. They'd have to hang around while the dentist made them; he'd bloody well starve to death; twenty quid they might cost.

Jack said they'd have a go at Milly's dad tomorrow. They might get a few quid out of him towards the price of the new denture.

‘You bet I will,' said Jerry, raging. ‘He must be rolling in dough, all the money that poor silly bint makes for him.'

At daybreak he was still simmering. He got up, dragged on his pants, combed his hair with his fingers, and went over to the van. Milly's dad was lighting a fire for breakfast, Milly, with crusts at the corners of her vague eyes, was sitting on a box near by, taking pipe-cleaner curlers out of her hair. She gave Jerry a benign smile.

Milly's dad listened to Jerry's complaint, clucking sympathetically.

‘Sure they ain't around somewhere? I mean, she wouldn'a swallered 'em—not good for her. Milly, you go and look in her nest.'

‘Think I want 'em now,' shouted Jerry, ‘after they been in a bloody dog's gob?'

They found a tooth or two, a fragment of bright pink. Milly's dad was penitent, but unhelpful. He said he was stony.

‘Tell you what—when the bitch pups, you can have a young 'un.'

‘I don't want a flaming coursing dog,' yelled Jerry.

‘Serious mistake, mate. It might make your fortune. Tell you what then, mate, you can have a free go at Milly.'

The girl nodded amiably, putting a chocolate in her mouth, the corners of which quickly became brown.

‘Spare me days,' muttered Jerry. He became aware that he was shirtless, still in his grey-flannel undershirt. He backed away, mumbling, ‘Beg pardon, miss.' Automatically his hand lifted to raise his hat but he realised that he had forgotten to put that on, too.

‘Going bloody senile,' he muttered, as he returned to the lorry. ‘Forget my fly buttons next.'

The incident affected Jerry profoundly. He did not think it a joke, and managed only a false grin when other members of the camp chiacked him about the loss of his pearlies.

Money would be short until they got to Pyramid, where their next registered letter waited. They had to line up several times in dole queues at country police stations and get their issue. Jerry dreaded and loathed this—answering questions, how long since you last drew rations, where did you work last, how much did you earn, right-oh, no hanging about, only one day allowed here, move on for the next issue. It hurt Jerry so much that he felt a little scornful of Jackie, who didn't seem to care, but bowled up to beery, crusty sergeants playing his mouth-organ or whistling, cracking jokes with the other doley-ohs and generally behaving as though he didn't know what it was to be ashamed.

‘You bet I'm not ashamed,' Jack said. ‘These big fat john hops big-noting themselves because they're in the position to hand out ration tickets to people with more brains and less luck than themselves! I'm not without a job because of my own fault. I've worked when I could get a job and I'm willing to work now. And as for you, you fought for this damned country once, and if it hadn't been for your crook leg you would have been in the last War too, I bet. You fought for it, so let it keep you now. Five and bloody sixpence worth of tucker a week! How lousy can you get?'

But not all the country police were rough and ready. Those who were were often afraid of huge idle crowds of unemployed settling around threadbare towns. To move on the stranger, and move him on quickly, was not only the law; it also seemed the easiest way to prevent crime and annoyance.

The winter set in before the Nun and Jackie reached Pyramid. They had gone two weeks without a day's work. The Nun's stomach was out of sorts, his leg ached with the cold, and Jackie had subsided once more into gloom. He was so morose that when the Nun saw a couple of bike swagmen boring head-down through the rain ahead of them, he said abruptly to Jack, ‘I'm going to give them poor wet cows a lift.'

Jack said grimly, ‘They're not getting in the back.'

The Nun exploded. ‘Blast you, boy, do you think everyone's a bloody bushranger? One of them can sit up front with me and you can get back with the other one and the bikes. Maybe that will shut you up.'

Jackie sulkily pulled up his coat collar and went around to the back. He helped lift the bikes up onto the deck, and said to the younger man, ‘You can ride with me. Your mate in the cab.'

He saw the man give him a curious glance, and then a half smile, and knew that the cyclist had understood why. Jackie felt ashamed, and tried to ease his conscience by being especially friendly to the man.

These swagmen were very much alike, brothers perhaps. Both were pink, soapy men, their small bones cushioned, their eyes friendly and blue. Jackie thought immediately of the Gumnut Babies, diminutive naked beings that populated a children's comic strip in one of the newspapers. His companion mentioned his and his mate's names—Mutt and Jeff, Bluey and Curley, or something—but to Jackie they remained Bib and Bub.

The elder one, now in the cab with Jerry, wore gold-rimmed spectacles. The younger, Bub, spoke well in a mild, modest tone. Jack was not surprised to hear that he had been a schoolmaster.

‘When the Department cut salaries,' he said with a rueful grin, ‘I got up on my high horse and resigned. A mug—half a loaf being better than no bread.'

Jack enjoyed his company. They discoursed over a wide range of topics. Bub was not long away from Sydney; he spoke of the new militancy amongst the workless, the formation of the Single Men's Association, which battled to prevent evictions, barricading houses and fighting off police and specials with stones and cudgels.

The lorry pulled up. Jerry climbed painfully out and walked round kicking tyres, cursing. There was a slow puncture in a back tyre.

The rain had receded into a ruddy western nimbus, the air had taken on the chill of evening.

Bib said, ‘If you could run her onto the grass, we could camp here and change the tyre in the morning. There's a decent bit of shelter by the lake. Unless you're in a hurry to get in to Pyramid.'

Jerry looked at his son, who nodded. The she-oaks were already gathering dusk into their gauzy recesses. Pelicans came down out of sombre pink light into shadow, skating in to land on water slick as a polished floor.

Bib and Bub were well-equipped. They had a hurricane-lamp and a square of waterproofed canvas they cast over a pegged-down sapling for shelter.

‘You bog in with us though,' called Jerry jovially. They demurred, saying they had little to contribute to a meal except bread and tea. Jackie cooked eggs and fried up some tinned meat, opened a can of condensed milk for their tea.

After the meal Bub took the dishes down to the lake to wash them, and Bib, lying back smoking, noticed the mouth-organ in Jack's pocket.

‘Play, do you?' He remarked diffidently, ‘I used to sing a bit, smoke-ohs and so on.'

‘Give us a few choruses then!' demanded Jerry eagerly. ‘“Reedy Lagoon”'s a good one. And “Red River Valley”.'

The moon rose, the lake became steel, the islands of debris were clots of black wool that stirred now and then with an uplifted wing or bill. Jerry was entranced; he had never had enough music in his life. He lay back and smoked, fell into half a dream. Bib had a sweet tenor. He knew the words of many songs, ‘The Hawaiian Farewell', ‘My Old Kentucky Home', ‘Thora'. The last made Jerry blow his nose surreptitiously. It had been Peggy's favourite, always made her blub. ‘It's that sad, it gets me fair in the gizzard,' she used to say.

‘Give you a hand with the tyre in the morning,' said Bib, kicking out the fire. He said to Jack, ‘I've a few newspapers in my swag, if you'd like to have a read before you go to sleep.'

Jack was delighted. He and the Nun never thought to buy a paper; their itinerant life isolated them from the stationary world. All they wanted to know—news of jobs starting, seasonal agricultural work—they picked up from other wanderers.

Jerry turned in at once. He said drowsily, ‘Real good wasn't it! The singing. Glad we ran into them two. Decent fellas.'

Jackie sat on his mattress reading the newspaper by candlelight. It was a Sydney paper, old James Jackaman's newspaper. Cushie came momentarily into Jack's head: queer it was, holding the paper started by her grandfather, a kind of remote link. He put her out of his mind hastily.

He saw that there were enormous tram losses, because of ‘the new habit of walking', that five thousand women had applied for relief; a dole inspector had been attacked with a pickle bottle; and in his sermon on the previous Sunday a clergyman had said that the Depression had come upon the people of Australia for their sins.

‘My God!' murmured Jack, shaking his head.

The Nun raised a face fractious with sleep and said, ‘Here, what about putting the light out and getting some shut-eye?'

‘In a minute, in a minute,' said Jack. ‘I'm just finding out why you have no teeth and neither of us has a job.'

A new soup kitchen had been opened, and there was a frightening photograph of downcast, shabby men in a queue half a mile long. In an attempted eviction at Bankstown the house had been barricaded with sandbags and barbed-wire. Amidst showers of bluemetal, the police had made repeated charges with wire-cutters. One constable had sustained critical skull fractures. Sixteen men arrested.

He turned to the leading article. The new Premier, Lang, had evidently announced that his Government would default on the payment of interest on London loans.

‘Hey, look at this, Dad!' said Jack. ‘This Lang, what a pepperpot, eh? What a nerve! Dad?'

Jerry snored on. Jackie returned to the leader, which was written in an awesome tone of outraged majesty. The Premier had committed the sin against the Holy Ghost,
he had repudiated.
The leader writer himself, it was evident, had suffered some gross offence to his finest principles. His moral sense had been violated. Jackie burst into chuckles. He read on, grunting and rocking around with delight. The tender concern for money that was shown here! Wrap it in a blanket, careful of its little head! Yes, yes, over the page is a picture of a thousand starving men looking for a pannikin full of watered-down sheep's-head soup; but never mind that. Here is our darling, our precious guarded one, the all-holy quid. No sacrifice of yours is too great to keep it safe.

The young man put the paper aside. He pondered over this whole world of power and ownership he'd scarcely ever thought about.