The Denniston Rose (13 page)

An agonised shout from someone in the audience. ‘Wait, Con! Wait, man, while I get my pipe!’ Everyone laughs as old Slim
Bulliboy makes a dash for the door, but Con the Brake is away now and the music will not wait for forgotten instruments or miners’ lungs or Chapel scruples. Feet cannot stand still against this.

The children heel and toe, showing the grown-ups how it goes. Bella Rasmussen, her propriety flown out the window at the first note, lifts her skirts and capers like a girl. Totty Hanratty joins her, matching as best she can the complicated prancing steps.

‘Oh, Bella!’ she gasps. ‘Oh, Bella, it is like a dream!’

Bella is away. This is a side of Mrs C. Rasmussen few have seen. She roars out the tune, beckoning with one plump hand to those still standing around the edges, inviting the men to join in. When the band changes to a polka she draws a laughing Eddie Carmichael into the centre and the two of them gallop with a will to the shouts and claps of the whole room.

Josiah and Mary Scobie are still standing in the doorway, but both are smiling now to see their boys stamping and hopping with the best. Josiah turns to his wife; offers her his arm. It is a tentative gesture, prepared for rejection. Mary lowers her head slowly, a much younger woman’s movement; a shy acceptance of a first advance. She takes her grave husband’s hand and they dance privately, with no great style but with an intimacy that is noticed and approved by many in this room. The Scobies are respected in all Denniston, and their wound has left a public scab.

Young Michael Hanratty is dancing with Rose. Their two golden heads bounce and toss together. There’s no sign of Jimmy Cork or Rose’s mother. A good thing for the peace of the evening, but more than one voice has muttered in outrage that such a girl should be out alone, relying on the goodwill of the community to walk her to the so-called safety of home. What kind of mother can leave a six-year-old to fend for herself? In this hard place?

Totty, tired herself now, sighs and tries again to collar her
whirling, screaming son. He slips away.

The youngest Scobie is on his own. The adults have all congratulated him and now he has no one to dance with. Looking like a little man in his waistcoat, he pulls on his mother’s sleeve.

‘It’s my turn,’ he whines. ‘Tell Michael it’s my turn.’ Every line in his dark, sleepy face droops.

‘Your turn for what?’ asks his mother.

‘My turn for Rose.’

‘Your turn for bed,’ says his father.

‘But I haven’t danced with Rose!’

Mary smiles at her dear, dark son. ‘Time enough for that later, my boy. We have a long walk home.’ She slips on young Brennan’s coat, gives Josiah the word to collect up the rest of the boys, and steps into the night. Brennan, desperate to stay and compete for Rose’s attention, protests every step of the way.

Totty hooks a finger into her over-excited son’s collar and looks around for Rose. She’s gone already. Perhaps someone else from the Camp has walked her down. With a nod and a wave to her Tom, who’s just getting up a head of steam on drums, she marches Michael back home.

An hour later a good number of Burnett’s Face men and most of the Denniston and Camp folk are still enjoying the music. A bottle or two is passed around. The men pull up chairs in a circle around the accordions and call for songs. In a pause, Bella, flushed and plump as a partridge, calls for the donation box.

‘Come on, lads! A last round of the box. Squeeze out your pennies. This is the future of Denniston we’re looking at tonight!’

IN a way she was right, though it wasn’t the future she hoped for. The box, which should have been tucked under Tom Hanratty’s drum, had disappeared. Money and box: both gone.

Tempers, frayed by drink and too much good behaviour, now erupted. Totty, wiping a feverish child’s brow two streets away, heard the ruckus. Burnett’s Face blamed Brake Head, everyone blamed Camp. Before Bella could appeal for reason, fists were up and Tom’s drum trampled. Con hooked up his accordion fast, then joined the fray with a roar, defending the murky honour of the Camp.

Billy Genesis and his friend Lord Percy dashed a raging Arnold Scobie against the wall until the raw iron rang; the O’Sheas slogged it out with Old Huff and the men from the quarters —even Tom Hanratty, angered at the destruction of his new drum —whacked Red Minifie, who’d come up late for the dancing, over the head with it. In their hearts everyone knew it had to be some drifter from the Camp; the bad reputation of the Camp was sealed that night. But even Camp people possessed a pride of sorts; no way would they accept blame until guilt was proven. It was a great roaring fight, one of the best, with nothing to break it up but exhaustion. The nearest police were way down at sea level, in Waimangaroa.

Bella Rasmussen, head down, protective arms around the baby inside her, rammed her way to the door and trudged home to bed. No point searching for the money until the fight died a natural death. She had plenty of grim ideas about who might be low enough to pinch school donations and would knock on a few doors in the morning.

No one suspected Rose might have anything to do with it. Not for a minute. In fact after that night Rose was accepted by all at Denniston, above and below ground, as a true citizen of the Hill. She continued to live with her parents, but the miners managed to divorce Rose from them.

Jimmy Cork and Rose’s mother could never be forgiven.

I WAS THERE. They will all point the finger: say I am a mother without care. But I was there and Rose knew it. All day she was on, nag nag: other mothers would be there, what pretty thing could she wear, as if we were lords and ladies. The child thought I could just walk into that hall and the sun would come out. She was sharp enough, my Rose, but what does she know? Nothing. What child understands the scorn and contempt a small town can heap upon one person if they choose?

Listen. Let them screw up their sour little faces and sharpen their eyes like pencils to stab at me, but in the singing I was with Rose. I myself was a singer, who could bring a lump to tough old throats and a tickle to tired feet. I know the benefits a lively song and a throbbing voice can bring to a woman. Rose had her good voice from me, no doubt about it, and I wished to encourage it.
(And here I might laugh and wink at my friends around the fire, and admit — well, all right, motherhood is not my strongest suit, but understand that I am not a complete ogre. Rose wished me to go to that concert; it shows something, no?)

Also another plan in my mind — a possibility to meet Con, for I was desperate.

To see my face in the scrap of mirror nearly finished the evening right there. Oh, how I had come down! Thin face, lines appearing nose to chin, hair that was once so alive now hanging like some dead animal. Now, Eva, I tell myself, you are a woman of spirit, please remember! No tears.

I wash my face, tie back the dead hair and pinch the poor white cheeks to bring a little blood there. My best black coat brushed down and good black hat hide many bad points. Ha! I say to myself to build the courage, Ha! Big Snow or Con the Brake, whoever, watch out, for here comes Angel to claim you.

And this is no lie: sick and hungry though I was, spat on by all, and at my lowest, my power over that man rose, fire in the blood, to swell my lips and soften my eyes, to turn an unwilling man powerless. Oh, that night I was good, my friends, believe me!

Yes, I heard Rose sing her song — a true voice like her mother, with the power to pull the tears. A smile she gave me, just for her mother. She could be a good girl if she tried. But then I was out of the door quicker than a shadow when the audience began to stir. Who knows what scene would explode if those miners saw me, and public scenes were not my plan that night.

Outside was cold. Even in my coat the chill bit. I waited under the shelter of a piece of iron from where I could see the back door to the hall. My breath, coming out of my so-cold body, hardly made steam in the air, but I waited still.

In the end he came out. I knew my Big Snow. He would need to
take a nip or two of liquor while he played accordion, and would have a bottle outside, count on it. And so it was. I heard the music ringing loud through the iron sides of the hall. Then a pause, and out comes the man himself, and alone. My lucky night: the bottle was hid almost at my feet! That man jumped one mile high to feel my touch.

The surprise is in my favour. Before he has time to think of good behaviour I am warming my hands in some private places and his body is leaping to meet me. The cold, the secrecy, the liquor glinting in the bottle at our feet, all powerful persuaders.

‘Angel, Angel,’ groans he, ‘leave me, I beg you; I am a married man.’ But all the time he leans in and pants aloud — great clouds of steam from this hot man. Oh, how my heart sang to feel him. Ten years younger I felt, and in my prime again.

At last he pulls away. Swigs at his bottle to put some space into events.

‘Angel, I cannot do this,’ he says.

I laugh. ‘It would appear you already have, my sweetheart.’

‘No no, you have caught me unawares.’

‘Unawares shows up your true heart,’ say I, ‘which tells you we are twin spirits. These cold people on the Hill are not like you and me.’

In the dark his blues eyes are as black as mine, and shadowy. I cannot read them. ‘Angel,’ says he, ‘the past is one thing. Now I am with Bella. Do not dare to come between us.’

‘Bella is the one who comes between! I have the prior claim. And your daughter to care for!’

Perhaps I am shouting a little. Con pushes me hard to the wall, stops my mouth with his big warm hand. ‘Listen well,’ he whispers. ‘I will do what I can for the child, not because I am the father — you would choose what father suits you best — but out of a care for the poor soul.’

I would have shouted that he should only look at her to see his own face reflected, but his hand forced me still. And his whole body. His desire was great, I tell you, even in his anger. We were made for each other, two sides of one penny.

‘And hear this,’ whispers Con, fierce as a furnace, me smiling beneath his hand. ‘If Bella hears one word, one single drifting rumour — I mean this, Angel — of you or of Rose, you know, with me, there will likely be a broken body found down in the gully, which will not be mine.’

So. This is good news. A man who talks threats and secrets is a man who wishes the secrets to continue. I give Con a nod and a wink, take a good swig from his bottle and let him return to his music.

ROSE STEPS ONTO the platform and looks over the heads of all the people, as Mrs Rasmussen has taught her. All the white faces are turned to her. She sees Brennan’s big brothers who scared her up at Burnett’s Face. She sees the man who spat on the floor of the Company store when her mother was buying flour and told her she had a nerve showing her face. On his side of the hall all the faces are hard and stony, like a wall with no way through and no way over.

Rose makes a little cough to see if her voice is still there. She can see right to the back of the hall but her mother isn’t there. Then the door opens and Rose thinks this will be her mother coming in late so no one spits at her, but it is Brennan’s mother with his waistcoat. Rose wants the door to open and her mother come in with a waistcoat for her but it doesn’t.

Then Mrs Rasmussen smiles and raises her hands and Brennan’s
dad plays the introduction and she has to sing. Not much of her voice is there and Rose wants to stop and cough but she can’t because she will get left behind. Mrs Rasmussen is nodding and nodding to her and lifting her hands to mean sing louder and Rose thinks she might be going to cry.

Then the door at the back opens again and her mother comes in so quietly she is like a shadow. She is wearing her good black coat and her good black hat and she turns her back to shut the door gently, then turns back again and looks over all the heads to see Rose. Her mother signals shhh, with a finger to her mouth, and nods once at her. Rose smiles to show she’s noticed, then takes a big breath like Mrs Rasmussen has said, and her voice comes back.

When Brennan’s dad comes in again with his cornet and she and Brennan are singing different tunes together all the people shift a bit in their seats and their faces are not stony any more and Rose sings louder because Brennan is loud and they hold hands like Mrs Rasmussen said and Rose thinks this is better even than her birthday.

At the end of the song Rose looks again at her mother and her mother wags her head and grins to show she has heard it all, and then she slips out quietly while everyone is clapping and cheering.

Brennan looks at her with his black eyes. His hair is smoothed flat on his head in a funny way and his face is wide open.

‘We were good,’ he says, and she says yes they were.

‘My mother came to hear after all,’ he says, grinning, and Rose says her mother came too.

‘No she didn’t,’ says Brennan.

‘Yes she did,’ says Rose.

‘Well, where is she then?’

‘Gone home.’

‘I never saw her,’ says Brennan.

‘Well she was here,’ says Rose.

‘If my uncle and my brothers saw her they might bash her up.’

‘That’s why she went home.’

‘I never even saw her.’

‘Well, she was here anyway,’ says Rose, and runs away to find some supper.

After supper she has a turn at handing around the money box. It is smooth wood with a shiny catch and a slot in the top for people to put money in, and Rose thinks it is beautiful. She walks around the room shaking it and holding it in front of people. Some of them say, ‘I’ve already given, dear,’ and Mr Carmichael says, ‘Well, one more for you, eh, Rose of Tralee?’

She takes the box over to her uncle Con the Brake, who is sitting with his accordion shining and winking on his knee. She shakes the box in front of him and the accordion groans as he closes it and hooks it up. Then with his free hand he fishes in his waistcoat pocket just like her father did when he gave her the gold. He takes out a tiny case and flips open the lid and takes out a round gold coin, holds it up for her to see.

‘Do you know what that is, Rose?’

‘A half guinea,’ she says.

‘Well, someone is teaching you well at school.’

‘No, we only do pounds shillings and pence at school.’

‘Not guineas?’

‘Only the big boys. Mr Dimcock showed me a half guinea,’ says Rose, and tells him about Mrs Hanratty buying four yards of watered silk at 1/3d. a yard and paying for it with a half guinea, and how Mr Dimcock had to go into his house behind the shop to get the change from his supply in the wardrobe because his shop till did not have enough in it.

Her uncle Con the Brake laughs and drops the half guinea into
the box and says, ‘You are a fount of information on all subjects, Rose, but you had best be spare with that piece.’

‘Why?’

But Uncle Con laughs again. ‘Explanations will have to wait, my sweetheart, because it is time to kick some life into this party, you know?’

He unhooks the accordion and throws back his head and the accordion sings a long, moaning note. He stamps his foot and moves his fingers. The music jumps out into the room and everyone starts dancing.

After the Scobies have taken Brennan home and Michael has gone with Mrs Hanratty, Rose looks to see if any of the Camp people are leaving so she can walk with them. But they are all singing and dancing still. Then her Uncle Con starts a new tune she has never heard and Mrs Rasmussen starts dancing their secret way, and Rose yawns and thinks she might lie down until Mrs Rasmussen is going home. She crawls under the legs of her Uncle Con the Brake’s chair and finds a safe place behind the band. She looks out between the legs of the chair listening to the music humming down through the chair, and watching the legs and feet of people stamping on the floor.

Then she sees the money box, snuggled between Con’s feet.

She strokes its silky sides and runs her finger round and round the tiny catch. Her eyes close as she lies there, stroking the box and listening to the laughing and the music. Then she thinks about her piece of gold in its soft bag and her other pieces of treasure that she has found, and how they could fit into this box and be buried like proper treasure.

When Con goes outside for a bit, she slides the box towards her until it is tucked against her body, then she kneels on all fours. She just fits under the chair. With one hand she lifts the box, but slowly
so the money doesn’t make any noise. The box tucks nicely under her white smock and Rose holds it there with one arm. With the other arm and two knees she crawls backwards under the whole row of chairs. It is hard. Some chairs are empty and some have people on them and they are all different shapes, but Rose pretends she is a silent cat and crawls on until she has reached the door. She backs out from under the last chair and turns quickly to open the door.

She slips outside, as quietly as her mother, shutting the music and the light and the laughing back into the hall.

Her heart is beating hard as she trots down the dark path. The box sings a soft jingling song to her.

NEXT day is a holiday from school because of the late night and because the Inspector has gone. Rose’s mother goes out to dig in their garden and Rose asks her father if he is going to visit Billy Genesis.

‘I am not,’ he says.

‘You might feel better if you went out,’ says Rose.

‘Ah, go to hell,’ he says. ‘You sound just like your mother.’

Rose plays on her bunk for a while and then she tells her father about her song the night before.

‘And I suppose they all loved you,’ says her father.

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘they clapped a lot.’

He says nothing, just looks out the window up the gully to the east.

‘Would you like to lie down and I could sing you to sleep?’ she says and he asks what the hell has got into her and why doesn’t she leave him alone and go out making friends with the whole world as per usual, so she goes back to her bunk and plays some more.

Then when her father has looked out the window without moving for a long time she goes over to the table and reaches under
it. She pulls out the egg basket and picks up the cloth from beside the fire and tiptoes to her bunk. Quiet as a mouse, she takes the money box from under the rug, puts it in the basket and covers it with the cloth. Then she goes to the door and puts the basket on the floor behind her while she ties up her boots, and opens the door, and in all this time her father never moves one inch. She thinks he might have died.

‘I’m going to get the eggs,’ she says, and still he doesn’t move, but his eyes blink so she knows he is not dead.

Outside her mother sees her going to the hen house.

‘I’ve collected the eggs,’ she says.

‘I’ll just look again,’ says Rose. She unhooks the wire of the henhouse door and goes in quickly before her mother can say any more. Inside it is dark and secret and Rose thinks this is not as good as under the floor boards but it is quite good. She shoos out Clementine and the new rooster, Aladdin, and shuts herself in. The ground looks a bit soft in one corner and she starts digging with her hands. Then she finds a stick in the straw and digs hard with that until she is angry, and when she puts the box into her hole it still sticks right up.

Rose sees that burying her treasure is not going to work anywhere up here, just like burying dead bodies. She wipes away her tears because her mother might see and she puts the box back in the basket and covers it again. She goes out into the yard and runs around the side of the house while her mother is bending down looking at something else.

There is not much room between the side of the house and the bank. Ferns lean down to tickle her. She looks for hiding places. The house is all straight boards down to the ground with no windows, just the chimney on it, thin at the top and smoking, but lower down stepping out in brick-sized steps until it is fat enough
for the fireplace inside, then straight down to the ground. She looks at the bricks, then takes the box out from under the cloth and measures it against the bricks this way and that way until she is sure. She hides the box behind some ferns against the bank.

‘I will make you a proper buried-treasure place soon,’ she whispers. Then she takes the basket and the cloth back.

‘No eggs,’ she calls to her mother and her mother says nothing, just goes on digging.

Inside she takes down her coat — a proper coat that Michael Hanratty grew out of — and tells her father she’s going up to the Bins. Her father says nothing too.

She walks past her mother.

‘Where are you off to now?’ She says.

‘The Bins,’ says Rose.

‘Don’t make a nuisance of yourself, then. And make sure you are back for your tea.’

At the Bins Rose skips over the rails and past the huge shed where coal is rattling down into the wagons, but today she doesn’t visit anyone. She runs to the great pile of old railway iron and coal-slack, broken timber and just plain rubbish, all falling away down into the gully.

‘Watch your step there, young Rose of Tralee,’ says a man she doesn’t know. ‘That’s no place for a little singer to be playing.’

‘I’m looking for something,’ she says.

‘What would you find there that a girl would want?’

‘A piece of wire.’

‘For a handle is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well now, I think I can help you.’ The man goes into the workshop and comes out with a piece of wire, which he is curving into a handle shape.

‘I don’t need it curved,’ says Rose.

‘Suit yourself, sweetheart,’ he says, and bends it straight again.

She says thank you and skips back over the rails and down the track to the Camp. Mrs Rasmussen is on the porch of the tree-trunk house and calls to her that there is fresh gingerbread just out of the oven, so Rose stops to eat some.

‘There was a fight at the hall after you left,’ says Mrs Rasmussen, and tells Rose about the stolen money and how the Burnett’s Face people thought the Camp people had stolen it, and how Mr Hanratty’s drum got broken and her uncle Con the Brake had a black eye.

‘And a sore head, though not from punching,’ she says. ‘And I myself am not the best, but it was a grand night for all that.’

‘Will they still build the new school?’ asks Rose.

‘They will have to because there are five new children wanting to start.’

Rose asks if she can have another piece of gingerbread, and then she says she has to take the wire to her mother for a handle.

‘Off you go then, little nightingale,’ says Mrs Rasmussen. ‘And keep your eye out for that money box in all your travels.’

‘I will,’ says Rose, and skips down to the Cork end, but wide, through the scrub to the back of the house so her mother and father don’t see her.

The mortar between the bricks is soft — nearly as soft as sand; much softer than the ground. Rose smiles and works away with her wire and thinks about the song last night and her mother and all her friends listening to her.

Soon the brick will move out easily. Rose looks into the hollow. Her eyes widen. She looks again. Softly she reaches to grasp the next brick. It comes out without any working. There in this new hollow is a small leather bag tied tightly with a thong. Rose takes it out and
opens the bag. She breathes out in excitement. ‘Treasure!’

In the palm of her hand lie ten small flakes of gold like her own one that her father gave her, and some golden grainy dust. Rose wets the end of one finger and touches it to the dust. She puts the finger in her mouth and tastes the cold grains. They have no taste at all. Carefully she spits them back into the bag.

For a while she looks at the flakes. They are her father’s. This is what her mother screams about. Rose had imagined a big sack full of golden lumps, but still, this is gold and she has found it as her father told her she must.

‘You must find your own treasure,’ he had said.

Rose knows this doesn’t quite count, but still … She picks out five flakes, two big and three small, and leaves five small ones in the bag. She ties the bag up and puts it back behind the two bricks. Then she makes another hollow in a different place, down low and around the corner where a big person couldn’t fit easily, and hides her little box with all its new treasure there, behind the brick.

That night, when they are eating their tea, her father says, ‘We have a mouse.’

‘We have not,’ says her mother.

‘There has been a mouse gnawing all day down by the chimney.’

‘There is not enough food in the house to tempt a mouse,’ says her mother.