The Denniston Rose (14 page)

‘It is the warmth,’ says her father.

‘It is your imagination,’ says her mother, and he says, ‘Ah, go to hell.’

Rose can feel the giggles coming up. ‘We could set a trap for the mouse,’ she says.

‘A mouse is no laughing matter,’ says her mother, but she is smiling too. ‘Eat your tea. There is food on the table for once and no thanks to your father.’

AT school next morning Mrs Rasmussen puts on her spectacles and marks the register, and then before she gives them their tasks she says, ‘Children, I have something serious to tell you. The money that we all worked so hard to earn, which has been given by the people of Denniston for the new school, even though they had little to spare; that money which may not have been large in amount, yet was a sign of goodwill between the communities of Denniston — our money has been stolen!’

Mrs Rasmussen pauses for effect and everyone goes ‘Oooh’ in a long sigh, although they have all heard the news already.

‘Now, children,’ says Mrs Rasmussen, and she looks at them with a very sad face, ‘stealing is a bad thing, and here on Denniston we do not like stealing. Indeed, in all the world no one likes a thief. I want you all to think very hard about that money box. And about that money, which belongs to the people of Denniston. I am going to ask each and every one of you whether you know something about the stealing of the money. And I want each one of you to look into my eyes as you reply and I will know if you are not telling the truth. If anyone knows about this theft, it will be far better to ease your conscience and speak out now. You will feel much better inside yourself that you have told. Now. Rosser Scobie?’

Rose hears Rosser answer, ‘No, Mrs Rasmussen,’ in his croaky voice. She wants to turn and see if he is looking into her eyes but no one else is turning so she sits still, facing Mrs Rasmussen.

‘Andrew Scobie?’

‘No, Mrs Rasmussen.’

‘Tonto Jowett?’

Rose hears scruffy Tonto shift in his desk and giggle and Mrs Rasmussen rises and takes a step forward until she is standing nearly on top of Rose and Michael and Brennan. She is very frightening.

‘Tonto Jowett, this is no laughing matter. Stand up.’

Rose hears his bench tip back and his boots move on the floor, and everyone else is still, waiting for Tonto to speak.

‘Did you take the money, Tonto?’

‘No, Mrs Rasmussen.’

‘Do you know who did?’

‘No, Mrs Rasmussen. But my father said he saw Con the Brake leave the hall, and when he came back …’

‘We are not concerned with what your father saw. Sit down. Donnie O’Shea?’

‘No, Mrs Rasmussen.’

‘Jackie O’Shea?’

‘No, Mrs Rasmussen.’

Now Mrs Rasmussen is up to the front row. Rose can feel Brennan shaking. She looks sideways quickly and sees that Brennan’s face is red and there are tears in his eyes. She looks down at her hands and sees mortar dust in her fingernails. She hides her hands in her apron pocket.

‘Michael Hanratty?’ says Mrs Rasmussen.

Rose keeps her head down and looks just with her eyes, not moving her head, to see Michael raise his head and stare straight at the teacher.

Michael speaks in a very loud, proud voice. ‘No, Mrs Rasmussen.’

‘Rose of Tralee?’

Rose takes a breath as if she is going to sing. Everyone waits in silence. Rose lifts her head just like Michael and looks straight at Mrs Rasmussen’s eyes.

‘No, Mrs Rasmussen,’ she says.

Mrs Rasmussen looks deep into her eyes, right down inside her, and Rose smiles a little and keeps looking. Mrs Rasmussen smiles back, a very small private smile, and nods.

‘Brennan Scobie?’ she says.

Rose feels something warm go right through her like a mouthful of hot sweet tea, and she sits quietly thinking about what has just happened, and how grown-ups don’t know everything, and how she feels better, not worse, now that her treasure is still safe in its little hole in the chimney.

Then she hears the silence. Brennan hasn’t answered yet. His head is still down and his face is very red. He tries to say something but all he makes is a croak. Mrs Rasmussen is frowning and all the children look at Brennan.

‘Brennan?’ she says again. Then suddenly he coughs and is nearly sick and out of his mouth pops his cat’s-eye marble. It lands on the floor and rolls under Mrs Rasmussen’s skirts. Brennan is coughing and coughing and Mrs Rasmussen comes and pats his back.

‘I don’t know about the money,’ he gasps between coughs. ‘I just swallowed my marble.’ And all the class laughs.

‘Look at me, Brennan Scobie! Did you take the money?’

‘I did never! I was scared you would think it was me. That’s why I swallowed my marble …’

The class laughs again and so does Mrs Rasmussen. Everyone forgets about the stolen money and they get on with their tasks.

PERHAPS if Bella Rasmussen had discovered the truth, or Rose had admitted it, the child’s life may have taken a different turn. On more than one front. That is a matter of conjecture and for gossip, much later in her life.

ONE WET AND windy January morning, scruffy Tonto Jowett fell between the rails on the rope-road, became entangled in the ropes and was run over before his horrified friends could drag him clear. He died while his helpless mother beat her hands against her apron and moaned as loud as Tonto, for a doctor.

They held a service for him at the chapel in Burnett’s Face. Then began the heartbreak of taking his little coffin off the plateau. Mrs Jowett became hysterical at the thought of Tonto’s body travelling to the Brake Head on the same rope-road as killed him, so Tommy Jowett hoisted his son’s coffin on his shoulder and set off on foot, with the funeral procession in single file behind him. Every so often Josiah Scobie moved up to take the weight until Tommy gave the nod that he was ready to carry his dead son again.

They had to walk the rope-road though: no other way out from
Burnett’s Face. The miners and their wives, faces stony, plodded on as the skips rumbled past, inches from the good cloth of their Sunday suits. Feeling was running pretty high against the Company by the time they reached the top of the Incline.

The Incline was the last straw. Mrs Jowett, like Mary Scobie, could never face riding the wagons down. Tonto was her only son, her only child. Mary Scobie, deep in her own grief, held the howling woman as the men loaded the coffin on the funeral wagon, clean and empty for this purpose, and climbed aboard with it. Strong in her desperation, Mrs Jowett broke free as the wagon started on down. Con the Brake found his arm gripped by the shrieking woman.

‘Don’t let him go! Stop! Stop it!’

For a moment Con lost his grip and the funeral party in the wagon gathered speed. Goodness knows how many more were heading for the graveyard if Con hadn’t fought the wagon back under control and Mary dragged the wild woman away.

Now four women on the plateau, all miners’ wives, had dead in the ground down at Waimangaroa, and none had ever visited the graves.

Back up from the burial, Josiah Scobie leads a grim-faced group of miners up the clanging iron steps, open to wind and rain, to Eddie Carmichael’s office, high in the sprawling hulk of the Bins. Five women from Burnett’s Face, equally silent, wait, out of the rain, in the schoolroom at the back of Hanrattys’. Totty brings them tea and cake but there is no small talk. Iron determination hangs in the air, solid enough to choke any thought of conversation.

‘The men are taking up a matter or two with Mr Carmichael,’ says Mary Scobie, and that’s all Totty can get out of any of them.

In Eddie’s office Josiah’s words are reasonable but his eyes bore holes. Here is the first sign of what is to come. This man is a
preacher, an orator, one who can persuade others to follow him. Josiah Scobie will be famous; he has a future in the organising of labour, like his compatriot Richard Seddon. They are West Coasters now, but bred from generations of hard conditions in English mines. This is the first time, though, here in Eddie’s office, two thousand feet up at Denniston, that Josiah Scobie has used his formidable power outside the pulpit. Saviour or Satan, take your pick: you could say this is where the man acquires a taste for power and politics.

‘We can take no more of it, Eddie,’ he says, ‘and will not. You can see how it is.’

‘Josiah,’ says Eddie, all reason himself, ‘I sympathise with your problems, of course I do, they’re mine too. But what can we do? I can’t change the landscape.’

‘We say you can. Or the Company can. We need a road up here, through your devilish landscape. We cannot live a proper life cut off like this. Young Tonto Jowett might have survived if we could have fetched the doctor up.’

‘The Incline …’

The miners growl and Josiah raises his voice a notch. ‘Oh, we know the Incline is the jewel in the Company’s crown, and the Eighth Wonder of the Engineering World, but it runs only half the time these days, as you well know. Nor our women won’t ride it, most of them. We must have a road.’

Eddie Carmichael spreads his hands. ‘A road, Josiah: think of the cost of it!’

‘Think of the cost of lives lost for the lack of a doctor.’

‘You might as well know, men, that the Company is not in good shape. Orders are sparse. We lost a ship on the bar down at Westport last week. Australia is sending coal cheaper than we can mine it.’

‘Aye, you have your problems, Eddie, and what does that mean?
The man at the bottom cops it. You don’t need to tell us it’s hard times. Which of us has worked more than three days in six these last weeks? But we will have that road. We must have it. Or you’ll find the lot of us walking off the job.’

Eddie Carmichael places his hands on the desk; stands up slowly. He’s shorter than Josiah, but thick-set, an experienced miner too, and respected, not like the Company bosses down in Westport. He eyes Josiah squarely.

‘You lot gave your word, Josiah. Your friend Lomas promised in front of the Company manager. No unions. Are you going back on it, then?’

‘I am not. Who said union? I’m stating a fact, man. If conditions don’t improve the men will leave.’ Josiah smiles briefly. ‘You should hear our women on the subject.’

The solid knot of men, black in their Sunday suits, growl agreement. Eddie sighs.

‘It’s a lost cause, boys. The cost of a road … No, don’t even dream of that. Perhaps I can persuade the workshop to modify a wagon. Put in seats for the women.’

Josiah interrupts. ‘Can’t you see, man? It’s our independence is the issue. Not one of us can get off the Hill without the Company says so. Nor anyone up. Company has enough control over our lives without this too. We need our own way up and down.’

‘Tell him about my plan,’ says Colin Cargill, the youngest in the group but a bright lad, bound for promotion and knows it.

‘Aye, aye, all in good time.’ Josiah dislikes any challenge to his control of the meeting. But it’s clear to all of them that their fallback position is needed.

Josiah takes a step forward. His thighs, inside their good worsted, press against Eddie’s desk. He leans forward and stubs a forefinger once, twice on the wood. ‘Well then, Eddie,’ he says,
‘what about a compromise? Young Colin here reckons we could cut a track up from the railhead, up the gully and zigzagging back to come out just below the Camp.’

‘You must be joking,’ says Eddie.

‘Colin’s scrambled up it. So has Tommy Jowett. They reckon it can be done.’

‘Mr Jowett?’ Eddie addresses him formally out of respect for his bereavement.

‘Aye, sir, it’s possible. There’s a bit of a shelf some of the way; you’d have to pick at the rest. And use a shot or two at the bends.’

‘That cliff’s hard as granite.’

‘It
is
granite, sir, but we’ve dug through worse. Being on the face there’s cracks to get the point of a pick in.’

Eddie still frowns. Can’t imagine a track up that sheer cliff. But he’s already been surprised at what these English miners can achieve.

‘You’d do it yourselves?’ he asks, shrewd now, knowing bargaining is on the way.

Josiah squares up to him. ‘This is only a compromise, mind — we couldn’t cut a path more than three or four feet wide. A narrow bridle track for a sure-footed pony or a fit man. It won’t please our women. Not much better than the Incline for them.’

‘Get on with it, man,’ says Eddie.

‘We’ll do it,’ says Josiah, ‘on our lay-off days, and Company will pay us hewing rate.’

‘Now, now, Josiah. The Company lays you off because it can’t afford to pay you. No orders coming in.’

‘Then we’re wasting your time, Eddie, and you’ll lose your English miners. Come on, men.’

Eight pairs of muddy boots turn and make for the door. Eddie calls them back.

‘Wait, man, wait. I can never get you hewing rate, you know
that. What if I could persuade the Company to pay you four shillings a day?’

‘We’re grown men!’ says Josiah. ‘Not thirteen-year-old boys. It’ll take more than a boy’s shoulders to cut a track up here!’

‘I’m on your side,’ says Eddie, ‘but I can’t see Mr McConnochie going past four. Can you? Not in these hard times. He’s threatening to sell out as it is. I’ll try him on five, though. How’s that?’

‘In writing,’ growls Josiah. The men clear their throats to show assent. They’d all settle for four on their off days and Eddie knows it.

Eddie and Josiah shake on the agreement.

IN the end the best Eddie could get them was three and sixpence, paid out of a government grant, and even that was limited to four workers a day.

Sometimes, though, there were at least a dozen men picking away at the sheer rock. To be able to come and go without the Company say-so was a prize they’d work without any wages for. They were pleased enough with Josiah’s bargaining, though, and put the money they earned towards the Miners’ Relief Fund so they could all share in it.

Three or four days a week you could hear picks ringing in the gully as the two gangs — one from the railhead, one from the Camp — worked their way towards each other. At first the work progressed quickly, the lower gang following the natural shelf and the upper lot finding the rock shattered and easy to break. The men joked and hallooed to hear their voices echo off the sheer cliffs above the river. They sat on their narrow shelf to eat their bread and corned beef, and watched birds fly into trees that somehow managed to find foothold where men could not. A new feeling, this, and a good one, to be using the hewing skills to tame their wild
landscape; to make it serve them for a change. A bridle track down off this great plateau — now that was something!

Mary Scobie was pleased at the thought, too, until she came down one day and saw for herself. It was a Saturday in late summer, everyone remembered that date — February 9th 1884. All hands laid off for lack of orders, not even the Incline running. A sweltering day, the sun relentless in a white-hot sky. Burnett’s Face people came down to the Brake Head for the day, made a picnic of it, with the men taking shifts working on the track and the rest spreading blankets on the rocky outcrop at the top of the Incline. Just to look at the distant blue of the sea cooled you off.

Mary left the twins and Brennan playing around the rails of the Incline and walked down to the Camp and the start of the track. This time next year, maybe, she’d be walking down it, and riding the train out to the sea. Her hands tugged at the hot black cloth of her dress. Strands of wet hair lay plastered down her cheeks. Just picking her way down the stony path between Incline and Camp left her breathless. Up here at Denniston it was either a tight shroud of mist or a sun too close for comfort. Please God the men finished the track soon. She knew several miners’ wives down in Waimangaroa but had not seen them in eighteen months. Mary imagined a gentle sea breeze, saw herself visiting, staying a night maybe, putting flowers on Frank’s grave and walking ankle deep in that wide blue sea.

That was the dream. Mary Scobie set her feet on the raw unfinished slash in the rock that marked the start of the track, and knew the reality. This way out would be for fit men and young women. She, who had borne seven children, whose insides sagged in painful ways and whose legs were gnarled with varicose veins, was never going to make the journey down, let alone up. This whole much-vaunted exercise would not change her life one whit. For a terrible
moment her head spun. The sheer cliffs with their clinging scrubby trees pulled like a magnet. Blinded by the darkness of it all, Mary turned and fought her way step by step back over the Camp. Her body felt pulled towards the ground as if the force of gravity had suddenly trebled. Bella Rasmussen, sunning her proud belly on her own porch, saw the toiling woman and called out.

‘Come in! Come in, Mary. What is it, my dear?’

But Mary Scobie walked on past, one foot in front of the other. She walked up through Denniston, leaving children and picnic without a thought, walked on over the silent rope-road, her swollen legs aching, the dark cloth of her good dress drawing the sun’s heat into her baking skin. She turned from the rope-road and climbed through scented, stunted bog-pine and manuka up towards the Scobie house, which faced away from mine, away from sea, up towards the grim inland mountains. Mary saw nothing — nothing but her own future. She opened the door, closed it behind her, sank down on a small embroidered chair — her mother’s, which they had brought with them from England. Hour after hour she sat, still as a stone, facing the wall of her dark front room.

BACK at the Incline the twins and Brennan have not missed their mother. All the schoolchildren are there, shrieking and laughing, competing to dream up new, daring ways of riding the Incline. No wagons rumble down today; the children are free to invent their own transport. Rosser Scobie has carried an old worn shovel all the way from home. He sits on the shovel and leans forward to grab the handle sticking up between his legs. His brother Andrew gives him a push and down he flies, rattling and bumping between the rails, the metal of the shovel screaming and striking sparks on the gravel. Rosser screams too and rolls off, clutching his behind. The metal is too hot. Hoots of laughter as Rosser climbs back up, grinning and
slapping the seat of his pants as if dousing flames. Andrew has an idea. A wet sack on the shovel blade will do the trick. This time Rosser shoots down a good distance before overbalancing and rolling sideways. Everyone wants a turn.

Michael Hanratty arrives with a new contraption. His dad has helped him build a wooden bogie — like a trolley but with two parallel pieces of timber nailed underneath instead of wheels. These slot over the metal rails of the Incline.

‘Watch me!’ Michael always demands attention, and usually gets it.

He sits, important, on the flat top of the bogie, feet on the cross-piece, hands on a guide rope, though how he can guide the thing is not clear — the bogie will follow the rails willy-nilly.

The children stand in a circle around Michael. Rosser and Andrew are memorising the construction. This looks much better than a shovel. Dylan Rees is doubtful.

‘It’s too steep, Michael. You’ll never make it. You’ll break your arm.’ Dylan has broken his arm more than once and has learned caution.