Swords and Crowns and Rings (62 page)

The car reversed erratically, bumping packed bodies, people fighting to get out of its way. It shot up onto the footpath, turned round a lamp-post and was gone.

The sergeant in charge shouted, ‘Mr Murray, the landlord has offered to provide you with alternative accommodation if you let us remove your furniture with no further trouble.'

There were whoops and yells from the tenant's wife, who seemingly had made a break for the front door. These were cut off abruptly, as though by a hand, and Murray himself replied in a gruff quaver, ‘He can go to hell!'

The mob cheered warmly, and Jack hoped that their acclaim reassured Mr Murray, so plainly coerced into this affair.

Towser, however, shrugged away Jack's misgivings. ‘Just a lot of fireworks,' he said. ‘The landlord always gives in before things get too bad. Besides, they know now that if they do get the tenant out someone will set a match to the property.'

The man keeping cockatoo on the street corner bellowed up to the windows: ‘You in there! Three more cop cars just turned in by the shops.'

The two urgers conferred briefly with Towser, and the older one turned to the uneasy defenders: ‘Well, what about it?'

Jack felt spontaneous admiration for the men, grinning at each other, pulling comic faces of alarm or belligerence, even the old gentlemanly tradesmen, but unanimously deciding to go on with it.

Towser gave a few calm orders, this man to defend that window, the others to hand up bluemetal, this pair to go down and see that all was ready to withstand a rush at the front and back doors. He said to Jack, ‘Go out on the balcony, Jack, and tell 'em that we intend to stay here until they winkle us out.'

In involuntary co-operation Jack turned towards the little birdcage of iron that opened off the bedroom window. Jock's hand came down on his shoulder.

‘No,' he said, ‘not Jack. You keep well back, lad.' He turned to Towser. ‘The rest of us have a chance of not being identified,' he said. He bit out the words with such choler that Jack heard every one of them. Even so, it wasn't as much the words as the voice that riveted Jack; there was some unidentifiable iron in it. Towser said authoritatively, ‘Do it, Jack.'

‘I'll do it myself, George,' snapped out Jock.

Before Towser or Jack could speak, pandemonium broke loose outside. Hitherto the noise of the crowd had been loud enough, as they harassed and abused the police, getting in a trip or a king-hit whenever there was an opportunity. This was different, a strange snoring howl, as though those who emitted it were out of breath. Jack ran to the window. He saw many more police; they seemed to be everywhere. Four or five of the younger men were levering sheets of corrugated iron from a nearby fence. He saw at once that the police would use the iron as shelter while they hacked through the barbed-wire defences.

The moment they made a concerted rush at the house the crowd turned berserk, rocking the police cars, clouting the windows with lengths of iron railing. They got one over on its side and a high-ranking officer spilled out of it like a blue shellfish. The crowd had now swarmed into the next street; trams were held up, bells clanged, whistles blew. A newspaper photographer standing on top of his car was shaken off and vanished under running feet.

Meanwhile the battle of Murray's house continued, with the police making repeated sallies under their primitive shields whilst barrow-loads of bluemetal descended upon them. One young constable with a head of curly dark hair became caught in the barbed wire like a cast sheep.

‘Look at Janet Gaynor!' yelled the whooping, triumphant defenders.

Jack could see Janet Gaynor, scarlet with mortification and rage, struggling there like a fly in treacle and yelling to his mates to get him unhooked. Someone took deliberate aim at him, clipped him along the jaw with a stone that took off the skin like a razor. Bright blood dribbled all down the boy's neck and shirt. Two of his comrades jerked him free from the wire and dragged him away. He fought them wildly, mad to get back for revenge.

After that there was a short lull. The defenders were panting. They wore excited, dazzled expressions, like young boys at a football match.

Jack said, ‘Look, mates, we can't win! There'll be real bloodshed. We can't get any more men inside to help, but they can bring reinforcements from all over the city. The game's over, why not face it?'

They looked at him with soured contempt.

‘What the hell are you, you sawn-off squib?' A surly red-faced man spoke.

‘I'm someone who can see a dim outlook when it's in front of my nose,' barked back Jack. ‘Come to that, I don't want to do three months chokey just because of someone else's comic-strip ideas. There must be a better way to fight evictions than this.'

They turned away from him. One or two looked at Towser in dismay. One said, ‘If you were a foot higher, I'd belt your ears off.'

But he was too small for them to clout. He had offended against the first law, that of solidarity. There was nothing to do but ignore him. This they did with dignity. But they were rattled.

He said with rage, ‘Don't you see? The Murrays will be chucked out just the same, and we'll be jugged, and not just for disturbing the peace, either. What's the point of that?'

At that moment Jock emitted a growling roar, and barged out onto the balcony. His body was so large, the space so minute, the men inside the room could not see what was happening. A terrible sound, as of worrying hounds, came up from the crowd. Jack saw that the youthful constable, Janet Gaynor, determined to regain face before his comrades, had been legged up to the balcony. He seized Jock around the neck. The old man was as thick as a log, strong as an ox for all his age. It seemed that he grabbed the young man by the hair, and back-handed him across the temple with a closed fist. Jack could not really see. All he saw was Janet Gaynor flying backwards over the balcony. He landed in the nested wire, and hung there as limply as if he'd been crucified. Blood poured from his head.

‘Jesus, you've killed the bastard!'

There was a concerted rush for the stairs. Jack heard the defenders jamming, cursing, fighting on that narrow descent. Almost simultaneously he heard something heavy, an axe or crowbar, bashing down the back door. It struck him: ‘We're done. They've got us.'

Someone was shoving him, gabbling. It was Jock.

He gobbled something about, ‘Your father. Bathroom. Will ye hurry!'

Jack was shoved into the small cubby-hole smelling of gas. Jock was savage, half wild, face convulsed into knots of muscle. He pointed to a tiny manhole in the high ceiling.

‘No need for you to get took. You've had nothing to do with us. Quick, boy, up on my shoulders.'

Almost dazed, Jack leapt up on the man's heavy shoulders. He could not do more than push aside the manhole cover with his fingertips.

‘Jump, sod ye! Are you paralysed? They'll be upon us in a moment!'

As Jack leapt for the manhole, Jock gave him a toss like a wrestler. The young man seized the edge of the hole, dragged himself up, was in a mousy darkness.

‘Pull the cover across, blast ye!'

As Jack did this, careful not to disturb the dust that furred the edges, he saw the old man lurch away from the bathroom. There was a noise outside on the stairs as of fighting dogs, yells, the crack of batons, then a diminishing commotion. Heavy footsteps sounded through the bedrooms, into the bathroom. Someone said, ‘Got a full bag, Kev. Right. Now we'd better clear the tenants out.'

The other man said, ‘Fair go! It's starting to rain.'

A retreating voice rumbled, ‘That's their look-out. Ought to have accepted the landlord's offer before it was out of his mouth. Lot of nongs.'

The rain made gloved tappings on the slate roof. After a while Jack crawled cautiously along a beam pocked with dry rot and blanketed with dust. There was a ventilator under the gable. He scraped away a little of the dirt and peered out. He could see very little, but people were walking and running away from the scene. The autumnal rain came down in a violent intermittent swish. He heard thunder. There were angry noises in the street. No doubt the members of the Movement were being thrust into paddy-wagons. He heard vehicles starting up, but could see nothing.

After that followed rough thumps as the Murrays' furniture was moved out. Mrs Murray's voice was raised in a long ululation. Car and perhaps truck doors slammed; horns blew continuously.

Jack lay in a daze until the street at last fell into a city silence: motor horns, the constant low hum of traffic, the brattle of the trams beyond the corner. He lay flat on the beam, his toes hooked over neighbouring beams. ‘God,' he said to himself. ‘God!'

It could scarcely be more than nine or half past now, but he was trembling with fatigue. He lay in the twilight of dust and unfamiliarity; he heard something whisper across the rafters, mouse or cockroach. He thought that perhaps he was reacting from shock. The blood from the young cop's head, redder than poppies. The look on Jock's face. He cautiously shifted his legs onto the beam, relaxed along it like a hibernating snake. Now there was no sound except that of rain mumbling on the roof, glugging down the pipes.

He supposed that Jock, Towser, everyone in the house would be arrested, Jock certainly on a serious charge. How they must be feeling, those men with families! In his strange state, suspended between real awareness of his predicament and a kind of dream, Jack experienced an emotional empathy with those basically defenceless, easily manipulated men. He knew their inborn longing for a master. There was always something to take advantage of this vulnerability—Marxism, Fascism. Soon the nations would blow the bugles and involve them all in war for some trumped-up ideal, kill off the surplus, whip up the money-making industries, fill the coffers. He felt a glum wonder at humanity. Did anyone at all ever do anything for anyone else for disinterested reasons?

Yes, Jerry MacNunn did. The Nun had been an ideal of fatherliness always before Jackie. It had been his part in life, though he had been unselfconscious about it. Thinking of him, Jack smiled appreciatively and almost immediately fell asleep. Some time in the afternoon he awoke, heart thumping, to hear prowling footsteps in the silent house, a voice calling cautiously, ‘You there, Shorty? Shorty, it ain't the johns, it's me from next door.'

Jack remained silent. He heard the man come into the bathroom. There must have been flaked Kalsomine from the ceiling fallen in the bath; dust perhaps from the manhole. The voice said, ‘You up there, Shorty? It's Snowy Jackson from next door. I seen you go in this morning but I didn't see you come out. Knew you must be still here holed up. Come on down, mate, I can get you out the back and into my place.'

There was nothing to do but to trust the man. Jack moved aside the manhole a crack, saw an oldish face, a drab spike of hair. The man wasn't a copper, anyway. He said, ‘Thought you might be up there. Come on, mate. Shake a leg. I got this feeling that someone will set a torch to this house.'

He led Jackie through the rain, the disorder of spiralled wire, torn-down fences, trampled vegetables, into his own house next door. A woman lent Jack a dry shirt that came down to his ankles, and fed him, gabbling all the while. ‘You can't stay here, no matter what Dad says. You gotta get out soon as yer can. We got enough trouble, up to our ears in it. God, things are terrible. But the Murrays will be all right now. Never wanted any of this hullabaloo, Mrs Murray told me. They gone to Redfern, I heard, sharing with another family. But that poor young policeman, I mean, a dirty copper and all that, but young. Poor boy.'

‘Is he dead then?' asked Jack, as she paused for breath.

She pulled an ominous face. ‘Fractured skull, I heard. I mean, sounds bad, don't it? Not good at all, fractured skull.'

When his clothes were cleaned and ready to put on, Jack thanked the neighbours and slipped over the back fence into the alley and made his way by other streets to a tram-stop in Parramatta Road. He scarcely knew what to do.

He was sure that the police would have searched the house in Dawes Point for subversive printed material, weapons, names of Movement members. They were already convinced that it was a Bolshevik group, and old Jock's long record of violent disaffection would not disillusion them. Where then did he, Jack Hanna, stand? He was not a member; his name would be nowhere on the Movement's lists. Still, any of the other tenants, the cowed old-age pensioners, one of the half-dotty metho drinkers in the basement, had only to say they had seen him going off on the truck with Towser and Jock and his goose would be cooked.

He got off the tram some distance from his own street, and swung himself up on the stone wall where he had sat so often in imagination with the soft, listening ghost of Cushie Moy. The rain had gone. Little vessels came out of Darling Harbour, passing under the arch of the Bridge as though through a demi-lune gate. In the rich sky sunlit turrets of cloud stood in a row. The men in the house were still in his mind. He saw clearly that their major strength, their solidarity and their terror of betraying it, was also their weakness. Mindless attachment to solidarity had trapped them into staying in that house when their own common sense told them the battle was fruitless. He thought, ‘The only solidarity they believed in was what Towser decided. But there was never any proof that his decision would be the right one.'

Then he thought, ‘I won't go back to the house. I'll break off connections with Towser right here.'

The moment this thought entered his head he had a powerful sensation of inevitability, as though destiny had pushed him into a corner where he must sever his association with the house. At the same time he was afraid. He knew then that the decaying old dump had indeed been a bolt-hole. He was crestfallen to think that he, Jack Hanna, should be so abject as to be daunted by the thought of losing a roof—and such a roof.