The Denniston Rose (23 page)

Rose is tired. Her fingers are slow and cold. She pulls out the stone and wiggles another until it’s loose too. She’s afraid the whole pile will start to fall. Conrad the Sixth’s dead little body might be in the hole. But she thinks Uncle Con the Brake would have put it in a box. She jams her treasure box in the hole she has made and stuffs little stones over it. The pile is not so smooth now but you can’t see the box. Rose thinks she will come tomorrow and every day to make sure it’s there and make it look smoother.

Rose stands and points all her fingers at the place where the box is hidden. She whispers a fierce curse: ‘The ghost of Conrad the Sixth get you and cut you to pieces if you touch my treasure!’

She puts the pieces of latch and bolt under some other rocks in case Billy Genesis is awake when she gets home.

Rose yawns.

There’s no light in Billy Genesis’s house. Rose thinks he’ll be asleep by now.

But when she opens the door of her room Billy is there on her bed. He wakes up when the door creaks. He smells of sick.

EVEN CON THE Brake was tired of arguing about the strike, it had dragged on so long. Con was against the strikers. He agreed they had a point — nobody liked to see a good working man undervalued, you know? But the way the miners conducted the strike — the dogged, bitter, disciplined way they clung to their principles — drove Con crazy. It was like the army, he said. No freedom, no fun. If they didn’t like the life or the pay there were other, softer jobs down below. What bloody right, said Con, did the miners have to dictate what happened to the whole of the Hill, where his son was buried? He, Con, had chosen Denniston as his home soil, and he expected to find a bloody job here until his hands or his eyes or his heart, or all three, gave out. You know?

The coal stored at the Bins ran out in three weeks. Con lowered the last wagonful down the Incline, parked his brake-handle, and
listened to the slowing beat of the Powerhouse engine as the whole plant shut down. Con hated that dying sound. The rattle and rhythm of ascending and descending wagons was in his blood now. God knows when the place would come to life again. If ever.

Walking back down to the Camp under a sky as black as his thoughts, the pungent smell of coal heavy in the air, Con sees, a little further down, a shadow separate from the dark of the high rock wall and step out as if waiting for him. Eva Storm.

Henry Stringer, the school teacher, also on the rocky path but out of sight around the bend, hears Con’s angry words and her wheedling answers.

‘For the love of God, woman, leave me alone. I done what I can and that’s the end of it.’

‘Conrad, Conrad, you are my man. We both know it.’

‘You dream. Step aside.’

‘Hey now, big man, feel this. I know what you like.’

Henry shrinks back against the wall as the two shadows mix and twist. Con grunts as if in pain and tears away.

‘No! Jesus Maria, stay away! You are worse than a limpet.’

‘Don’t give me that. Come! Come here!’ Eva’s words vibrate in a way that has poor Henry in a sweat, let alone Con for whom they’re intended. Con moans again and Henry sees Eva’s long arms grapple Con into the darkness. Henry, who knows Eva’s reputation, wills Con to resist, but all above him is silent now, apart from a shout or two up at the Bins. He turns to go back down when Rose’s name is mentioned. Rose is his pupil. Henry listens.

‘So. If not me, then your daughter. Rose needs her father.’

‘You have a great skill, Angel, in finding fathers for her.’

‘You are he! Take us away!’

‘I will not. Bella needs me.’

‘Bella!’ Henry hears her spit. ‘Rose needs you more. Far more.’

‘Then see to her. You are the mother.’

‘Billy Genesis — you know what he’s like. He … hurts her. Worse …’

The noise Con makes is half cry, half snarl. A wounded wild animal could make such a noise.

‘Ah Jesus, woman, you are pure bloody evil. You would use that toad Billy to bait the trap?’

‘Who baits what? Come, my sweetheart. Leave this hell-hole with me and Rose and start again. It’s the right way.’ Her words carry more than a tinge of menace. Again Con groans in the dark. This time there is more anguish than anger, and less certainty. Henry Stringer is astonished. Con the Brake and Bella are a famous couple. He’s never heard a single rumour concerning Con and Eva Storm.

Just then they all hear footsteps crossing the Camp from the top of the Track.

‘Out!’ growls Con as if ordering a dog. ‘One word and I’ll break your neck, I swear.’

Henry imagines she goes because the next thing he sees is Con himself, stamping and cursing down the path to the log house, where Bella still grieves for her baby. He turns, now, to face the little party winding uphill. The leader is that cold fish Arnold Scobie just coming over the lip of the Track. On his shoulder is a sack of flour, in his hands the reins of a pony laden with fresh vegetables. Arnold’s head is down. The man is tired and puffing from the Track, but he hurries. No Burnett’s Face miner wants to linger crossing the Camp or he might collect a lump of coal or an earful of abuse. There is no other way up to Burnett’s Face except across the Camp and through Denniston. A gauntlet of ill-feeling.

Con the Brake is there. The silence of the pump engine roars in his ears; Eva’s words claw at his heart; his wife’s dumb misery lies, a
sour knot, in his belly. This is the moment when Con’s famous anger finally breaks loose. Great fists akimbo, he plants himself square in Arnold’s slow pathway. Arnold glances up, changes direction to plod around Con. The giant shifts to block him again.

Arnold grunts. ‘Will you stop us feeding our families, then?’

‘I will,’ shouts Con, all control lost, and lets fly. Arnold drops like a stone. Blood from his pulped nose drips onto the sack of flour. The pony stands, placid as a cow. Henry Stringer rushes forward to shift the sack — a foolhardy move with Con berserk, but good-hearted Henry is thinking of hungry children and spoiled flour. Con roars and turns to swat him back — when a screaming banshee leaps onto the brake-man’s broad back, beating and biting, clinging like a limpet. Con shakes like a dog but she sticks there still.

‘Jesus Maria!’ shouts Con, reaching around behind. The screaming stops for a moment while teeth sink into his wrist. Con lets out a bellow.

By now a crowd has gathered to gawk at the scene. There’s no way Con can escape. Even Con in his present state can’t dash a woman to the ground, if this wild creature can be called a woman.

‘That’s my husband you have struck to the ground!’ yells Janet Scobie, riding Con the Brake as if he were a bucking horse. ‘Bringing food to hungry families! You feckin’ bully! Look at the size of you! Shame! Shame!’ She strikes again and again, her fists drumming a furious tattoo on Con’s broad back.

Con is beaten. He stands now, taking the blows until the woman slides off. A young thing, sturdy and long-legged, hair tumbling out of her bun, down between wide shoulderblades. Slab of a nose. The crowd has become ugly, egging Con on, but he won’t move. Bella has come out of the house to watch. Her eyes, too, are scornful.

One of the new Camp people bends to pick up the sack of
flour. Quick as a whiplash, Janet turns on him. He shrinks back.

‘Carry your own food up the Track, you feckin’ sod! Yer bunch of idle layabouts! We’ve worked for this lot, and we’re taking it to Burnett’s Face. Willy-nilly!’ She faces them, teeth bared like a cornered dog. Arnold is on his feet now, shaking his head. He says nothing. Picks up the reins, shoulders the sack, takes his wife’s arm and leads her away. The Camp people growl as they pass but let them go, because Con, who started it, stands aside.

For a moment there is silence. Everyone watches then as Mrs C. Rasmussen, bleaker than winter, turns without a word and goes back into the house. Con the Brake walks after her, as if pulled on a string. His attempts at a nod and a wink to the crowd are pitiful. The door of the log house swings open and closes behind them.

THAT night a quiet sort of depression, rank and raw as the smell of wet coal, settled on the people at the Camp as they returned to their huts and their tents and their men’s quarters. Con was a great man for a fight, but who had ever seen him in an unprovoked attack? It was as if his action had removed a rule that Denniston needed, especially at a time like this.

And up at Burnett’s Face, word was spreading among the miners that Con the Brake, undisputed leader of the Camp, had struck Arnold Scobie to the ground for no reason at all. From now on, any miner crossing the Camp should carry a weapon.

INSIDE the log house Bella is waiting for her husband. He removes his boots slowly, avoiding her eye; sits heavily, hands hanging between his knees. Bella has not lit the lamps yet.

‘So,’ says Bella, ‘you have become the man who hits a peaceful fellow bringing food to his family? What next? Would you like to take a fist to me?’ She spreads her soft arms as if inviting it.

Con the Brake looks at Bella. His seamed face is older, less spirited.

‘Ah, Bella,’ he says, and his voice has a defeated ring. ‘You will not set foot outside the house to visit your friends or to teach the children but you come running to see your husband shamed.’

There is silence in the darkening room. Bella sighs.

‘You are right. We must stop this.’ Then she cries out. ‘Ah! Ah! If only I had never borne the baby! I was happy enough before.’

‘And I,’ says Con, his great head hanging, ‘I was happy, more than, with you, my Bella.’

‘Was? Was, is it?’ whispers Bella, too soft for him to hear.

It is almost dark. Con the Brake rises slowly, kneels before the great fire that never goes out, and blows it to life with long, steady breaths. Bella rises also, lights a screw of paper from the fire and touches it to the three oil lamps. Polished wood glows. The beautiful simple room warms, throbs with a steady life of its own. The Scandinavian of noble blood and the retired whore move slowly in the room, as if through water. They come together and stand, heart to heart, taking each other’s weight.

‘My Bella,’ whispers Con. Bella is surprised to hear fear in his voice. ‘Bella, what am I to do?’

She holds him.

‘It will be a hard time, this strike,’ says Con at last. ‘We will be needed, we two.’

Bella nods against his shoulder.

‘The children at school need you, Bella.’

She nods again.

Outside, not far away, they hear curses and shouts, a door banging, a woman’s scream — or is it a child? Con and Bella look at each other and away again. Bella is uncomfortable, Con in anguish.

‘We will start with Rose,’ says Bella.

Con searches her face. All he sees is deep concern. He lets out a great sigh. ‘By God, I am glad to hear you say that, woman. The child has been every day this week, at the porch door …’

‘I know.’

‘And when you send her away she sits behind the baby’s tomb, singing to him.’

‘You have made your point, man. I will take care of it now.’

Con takes heart to hear the bite in his wife’s words.

‘Hitting that man …’ he says. ‘I am not really a violent man …’

‘Mr Rasmussen,’ says Bella, ‘you
are
a violent man, as we both well know, but you are half a world and half a life away from the last time you struck down a weak man …’

‘Ah now, you cannot bring that against me. The issue was entirely different. I was severely provoked.’

‘Well, so you say. This time you were not.’

Con looks down humbly. Actually he is trying to hide a great grin. He and Bella are quarrelling again. The salt has returned to life on the Hill.

‘Arnold Scobie,’ he says, still looking away from the fierce woman, ‘is a man without joy who deserves to be shaken up once in a while …’

Bella takes a handful of the flesh of his cheek and twists.

‘Hey, woman! But I admit I was wrong. There! It will not happen again. I swear.’

Con the Brake was a man who could ignore his problems until they presented directly in front of his nose. He and Bella went to bed that night thinking the nightmare might be fading, that life might take on a lighter shade from now on. They did not know that in the shelter of their back porch a shivering Rose of Tralee huddled, waiting until her mother returned from wherever she spent half of most nights, or Billy Genesis went back to his own bed.

PLENTY OF PEOPLE guessed what Con the Brake was up to, the day he strode over to Billy Genesis's house when Billy was out, up at the forge. Guessed, but not openly — not admitting out loud what was happening. You'd have to ask why Billy was tolerated, why things had to drag on to that terrible end. Afterwards people would shake their heads sagely and say the community was in turmoil with the strike, men off work, new workers arriving, old ones leaving. Or they'd say blacksmiths were rare beasts and Billy's skills were necessary to the community. Said with a shift of the eyes, a quick clear of the throat and a subsequent change of subject. No one liked to admit that a child's voice is always harder to hear than an adult's. That a child who speaks without her parents' backing is practically inaudible.

Even Bella and Con the Brake fudged the issue.

‘She wants a bolt on her door,' says Bella, holding the iron pieces in her hand. ‘She says Billy gave her the hardware.'

Con's eyes turn to ice. ‘Let the man screw it on, then.'

‘She says he is too busy to screw it on.'

Rose, thin and pale, dark circles under her eyes, watches them.

‘I can't interfere with another man's house,' says Con. ‘You know I can't.' But already his hands are hefting the iron pieces as if they are dangerous weapons.

‘It's my door,' says Rose. ‘Only my door, not the rest of the house.'

‘She's afraid, with all the new people at the Camp,' says Bella. A sideways shift of the eyes. ‘And her mother out — entertaining.'

‘Billy Genesis doesn't mind if you do it,' says Rose, her eyes honest and steady.

Con tries to turn his strangled cry into a cough. ‘Well then,' he says, reaching for the door, ‘I'll fetch my tools.'

Rose stayed inside the log house. Watching from a window, she saw Con the Brake enter her little add-on room with its own door; saw him close the door to work on the inside of it, and watched, smiling, as he walked back.

No one could see Con the Brake, grunting with effort, drive the screws in with all his force. No one watched while he took his file and carefully filed back the slot of each screw-head so that removing the bolt would become a difficulty. No one asked, later, why, if he knew to do all that, he didn't know how to confront Billy directly.

‘Thank you,' said Rose, all smiles, but she wouldn't give him a hug or sit on his knee for a story. These days Rose skipped like quicksilver when a man reached out.

‘She's just growing up,' said Bella.