Swords and Crowns and Rings (47 page)

‘Christ,' he thought. ‘I'd like to know more about all this.'

The Nun grizzled. ‘Gaw'sake, put the light out.'

Jackie said, ‘Oh, go to sleep, you old coot. I'm just cottoning on to something.'

He blew out the candle and lay down. He meant to think about it. A few snickers escaped him. But he was too sleepy to think.

They awakened in the morning to the noise of the pelicans going off fishing, a dazzle of black and white, the sun shining fuzzy pink through their throat-pouches. It was a beautiful day, winter standing on tiptoe somewhere but not here, earth like a big warm placid beast stretching itself in the sun. It was a countryside of lombardies, ash, and chestnut, and its colours were bronze, sepia, and malachite. Far away on greenish slopes of downland stood the town of Pyramid, red-roofed, all in a huddle like a village in an Italian picture.

Jackie cooked breakfast and the Nun and Bib and Bub got to work at once on the lorry. They ate, killed the fire, and prepared to leave. Jerry cranked interminably, Bib had a go, so did Jackie. But they couldn't as much as get a wheeze out of the engine. Scarlet with exertion and wrath, they stood around the truck, cursing.

Bib said in his diffident way, ‘Used to know a bit about engines. D'you mind if I have a go? You have tools with you?'

He looked carefully over the engine, nodded: ‘Think I can get her fit enough to limp into Pyramid to a garage, anyway. But it might take me all day.'

It was agreed that Jack should take one of the bikes and cycle into town, pick up his ration issue, and bring back some food. The Nun gave him the last of the change in his pocket. He winked.

‘Get a couple bottles of beer, too. We'll have another sing-oh tonight, eh? Cheered me up real good.'

It was only four miles to Pyramid. Jack bowled along, touching the pedals with the toe of his shoe every time they came around, wishing he had longer legs but managing satisfactorily.

He whistled as he went, looking around him at the lovely flatland, which seemed to have been settled long before. Everywhere were falling fences lost under wild roses and blackberry canes, ruined stone houses picked bare as bones, a derelict coaching inn with a slate roof slipped down over its eyes like a decrepit hat.

He jolted over railway lines, past a criss-cross signal, and straight into the main street of Pyramid, a paintless, barbarously run-down town. He got his rations, and wandered around looking in the shop windows, enjoying his independent solitude.

The pub was not open for him to buy the Nun's beer, so he looked around for a park, and found one already dotted with loafers. It was sunny and green, around a pocket-sized stone church with an immensely tall thin tower that stared through the brightness with a Cyclopean eye.

‘How you goin', mate?' said a voice.

Jack rolled lazily over to see the speaker. He was an obvious hobo, his swag beside him. He was the merest scaffold of a man. The skull poked through the facial skin; his hands were like bundles of sticks.

‘Ah, giving me the once-over, I see, mate.' Lifting his lids he gave Jack a brief glimpse of a knowing goanna eye. ‘It's a blessing, I tell you, looking so crook. The women can't bring themselves to tell me to frig off. I tell you, dig, there was one sheila, housemaid in a temperance hotel, that kept me for a whole week in an airing cupboard. Warm! I coulda lived there for ever. It's looking crook that does it. I can cough like a consummo, too.'

He coughed like a consummo for Jackie. Jackie drowsed, while the professional gabbled on. He always wore sandshoes, he said. He looked at them complacently, large, stiffened with mud.

‘I'll give them a nice white up with Bon Ami when I get to Rungil Ponds,' he said. ‘Clean shoes help a man's self-respect. They go down with the sheilas, too. Got a sister at Rungil Ponds; jumping the rattler there this evening. Might winter at the Ponds, now I come to think of it.'

‘I've never jumped a train yet,' said Jackie. ‘Bit tricky, is it?'

‘Naw!' The thin man spied a little woman trotting up to the church, coughed like a consummo at her. She broke into a canter, clutching her handbag.

‘Well, mate, you might say I'm a regular compendium on the old King of Spain. I've travelled on the free all over Australia. Riding on the buffers, now, that's dangerous; cold and dirty and bloody hard on the legs. Wouldn't do you, mate, you ain't got enough leg, anyway. And these mugs that lay flat on top of a van. Gawd, you wouldn't credit such nongs, would you? First low tunnel, and they're ten pounds of raspberry jam. No, I'll give you the drum.'

‘Any work at Rungil Ponds?' asked Jackie.

‘Only the tunnel, far as I know,' said the professional. ‘Stinking, cold, wet work—wouldn't have it on meself. They're always losing men that can't stick it like. Might be worth trying, if you're stiff for a few bob.'

Jackie picked up the beer and a couple of ounces of ready-rubbed tobacco for Jerry, and pedalled out of town again. It was dinner-time, and he hoped that Bib and Bob would have rustled up some kind of a meal from the bits and pieces in the tuckerbag.

As he rode around the reedy shores of the lake he was surprised not to see the truck. For a moment he thought he must have mistaken the location of their camp, then he noticed the Nun down by the water. Jackie shouted, ‘Hey, what's going on? Where's the lorry?'

The Nun jumped up. He had a wet rag held to the side of his head. It had dribbled pink all down his shirt.

‘Ghost, boy, I'm glad you're back.'

Jack jumped off the bike. He saw the Nun was alone. There were tears in his eyes as he stammered something, and turned away. Jack said, ‘Here, sit down on this log. Let me look at your head.'

There was a long contusion, and a lot of blood in Jerry's thick hair. Down his left cheek there was another welt, already blue and purple. He winced as Jack fingered the head wound.

The Nun groaned with rage and mortification. ‘Them pair of dingoes! Who'da thought it, Jack, who'da thought it, so nice and friendly and all? Singing “Thora”! Christ, what a mug I was, walked up with my mouth open. Well, you always said some people weren't to be trusted, and if I'd listened this wouldn't have happened. Gawd, a man's a bloody nit. Ought to be put away.'

Jackie threw some wood on the fire, refilled the billy, and put it on to boil. He looked around to see what Bib and Bub had left them. Not much. When the water was warm he bathed all the blood out of Jerry's wound and had a good look at it.

‘Not too bad,' he remarked. ‘Might need a stitch or two though. Now, shut up and have a smoke while I throw a bit of food together, then you can tell me about it.'

It became obvious now that one of the two bike swaggies had interfered with the lorry's engine during the night.

‘I thought we might as well have a swig of tea while they were working on it, pretending to work, I ought to say,' he said bitterly. ‘So I started the fire and I was down at the lake getting water when I heard the motor start up. You coulda knocked me down with a feather. Here was the older one, that four-eyed goanna, in the cab, backing her up, and the other one chucking everything, the bike, everything, in the back.'

It had taken Jerry a moment or two to realise that Bib and Bub were going to drive off without him. He ran towards them. The truck stalled momentarily, and he grabbed the handle of the cab door.

‘Then that other snake came round from the back with a branch or something, and gave me such a whang over the head—Strewth, did I see stars! I fell on the ground, and he gave me another one. I didn't as much as get a punch in, not one lousy little punch. And all the time four-eyes was screeching, ‘Put the toe in, Vinny!' But he didn't wait, just jumped in the cab, and the lorry druv off that way, the way we come yesterday. God, Jack, I feel such a mug. Need me head read.'

Jack put into the pan the mutton chops he had just bought, sliced up some onions and tomatoes and added them. The catastrophe of the truck's loss had numbed him. They had nothing, not even blankets.

He thought of the many times his stepfather's calm good sense had brought him out of confusion. What had he said that time when the old piper had shouted something hurtful at him during the War? That there were patterns in life and living, and just as you thought you were to be swept out to sea a current would bring you back to shore again, and someone waiting.

Well, he thought, turning over the chops with a green twig, now it's my turn. I've got to keep Dad going, see things don't get too hard for him. And if ever I meet that pink pansy with the tenor voice again, I'll kill him.

Aloud he said, ‘Quit blaming yourself, Dad. That pair were smoothies. Come on now, sit up and have a bite.'

‘Bite!' said the Nun dolefully.

‘Gum, then. Just get something inside you and you'll feel better. You're going on as if the truck is gone for good. Later on, when you feel yourself, we'll walk into Pyramid and report the theft to the police.'

Jerry brightened. ‘I didn't think. Course, there's the number plate and everything. Stolen vehicle. We might get it back quite soon. Thank God I had my wallet on me, with me dole card and your mum's picture and me glasses. And we've got that bastard's bike, too.'

‘And money waiting for us at the Pyramid post office. So things aren't so bad.'

Gradually Jerry regained his calm. ‘Sorry, Jack. Nearly did me block for a bit there. Makes a man feel useless not even to get a punch in. Wouldn't have been like that once, you know.'

‘Won't be again, either.' Jack grinned. ‘What about a beer? One less to carry.'

On the long hot tramp back into Pyramid, Jackie went over the situation in his mind. He did not discount the gravity of their position. Alone, he could have managed as other single swagmen did. It flashed across his mind that having his father along was as burdensome as having a woman with him. He pushed the thought away, then admitted to himself, ‘No, I have to be honest: that's just how it is. Willing, good company, but not physically up to it. Poor old joker, cracking hardy!' Aloud he said, ‘How you going, Dad?'

‘Good-oh,' said Jerry. ‘Howsabout a squeal on the face organ? Not “Thora” though.'

So, with Jerry wheeling the bike with their few possessions in the carrier, Jackie playing ‘The Drover's Dream' and ‘Wallaby Stew', they entered Pyramid, going first to the post office to collect their money, and then to the surgery, where Jackie left Jerry to get his scalp stitched, while he went on to the police station. The sergeant gave him little hope of getting the truck back. Once the vehicle got over the border they had Buckley's.

‘Worth our hanging around in Pyramid for a few days?' asked Jack. ‘I've got the Dad with me, and he's got a crook leg as well as the crack on the head from that lousy bastard.'

‘Makes you sick, don't it, people acting like that to each other in times like these?' He was a decent man. ‘If you're absolutely stony I could vag the both of you for forty-eight hours. The wife's a good cook. Chance to have a lay-up and some regular washing and feeding.'

Jackie laughed. ‘The Dad would never come at it. He's old-fashioned.' He added, ‘What'll I do with the bike?'

‘Take the bloody thing away and sell it,' said the sergeant. ‘I never seen it, never heard of it.'

Jackie checked with him about the railway tunnel at Rungil Ponds.

‘Yeah, you might land a bit of navvying there. There's a swine of a foreman—men coming and going all the time. Bit on the short side for a shovel though, ain't you, mate?'

Jackie shrugged. ‘I'm strong as a horse. Always something I can do.'

The sergeant said awkwardly, reddening, ‘Hope you don't mind my asking, being small like—born that way, were you?'

‘Yep,' said Jack.

‘The wife's having a kid, you see,' said the sergeant. ‘Just curious like.'

‘Don't worry, sarge; not much chance of its being like me. I'm one in a million. Well, tooraloo!' and he swanked out of the police station.

Outside he found his hands tightly clenched. He thought, ‘Right-oh, right-oh. You'd feel the same way.'

During a meal at the Greek's, Jack put it to his stepfather that he should return to Kingsland.

‘I've been thinking. Maybe you could board with Mrs Early. If I went outback again I reckon I could get a cook's job at a shearing-shed or with a road gang. I'm a good cook. Better than Socrates here.' He gestured at the greasy eggs. ‘I could send money home.'

The Nun looked as if Jackie had hit him. The young man hastened to say, ‘Look how long you stood by me when I couldn't get a job. Give me a chance to get my own back, Dad.'

The Nun was deeply affronted. ‘Tell me straight, Jack, am I holding back?'

‘Not a bit of it,' said Jack. ‘It's just that if we don't get the truck back—and there's not much hope of that—it's going to be a hard winter.'

‘I've known hard times,' said the Nun angrily. ‘Wasn't no picnic in Africa.'

The young man longed to yell, ‘You witless old goat! You were seventeen then, with two whole legs!'

But he was not able to do it. Love for his stepfather enfeebled him. He said appeasingly, ‘We'll leave it for now, then. See how we manage.'

Secretly Jerry was alarmed, almost panicky. He felt he couldn't face returning to Kingsland. ‘Ghost, I got no one but Jack, really. I gotta hang on to him until I feel more meself.'

Yet at the same time he was sorrowful, humiliated, that this should be so. He had spent twenty years being a father to young Jack, being around to tell him things, chiack him out of bawling when he fell over or things went wrong, carry him home from the football when it was late and the kid was tired. Ghost! Looking back, Jerry realised that he'd not known how happy he was in them days. Little Jack, his little tiger, never giving in to anything.