The Denniston Rose (26 page)

She tells the boys to get dressed quickly because they are needed to stop a war.

‘But I haven’t had breakfast yet,’ says Brennan.

Michael is grinning and quickly pulls on his vest.

‘It’s a secret,’ says Rose. She’s still puffing from the running. ‘I need your help or else Violence will spread like fire over Denniston!’

Brennan says, ‘Can we still have breakfast after?’

‘After we’ve fixed the Violence,’ says Rose.

Mrs Hanratty calls to them as they run out but Rose says they will be back in a minute for breakfast.

Even Michael is quiet when Rose pulls the blanket away from Billy’s snoring head.

Brennan moans. He edges back from the doorway. ‘Have you killed him, Rose?’ he whispers.

‘Not quite.’

‘Well, you are the violent one, Rose,’ says Brennan.

Rose shouts at him. ‘
I am not!
Billy was violent first!’

Michael stares at Billy’s head. Slowly he bends down and pokes at one half-open eye and then the other. Billy goes on snoring.

Brennan puts out his hand slowly and shakes the man’s shoulder, gently, as if he is asking for attention. Billy’s head rolls a little. Brennan screams and holds his hand as if it is burnt. Michael shakes Billy’s other shoulder, much more roughly. The head rolls back and forth. Rose laughs — little hiccuppy yelps. Michael grins and kicks the head as it rolls, just tipping it with his toe.

Billy snorts — a long rattling sound. The children all jump back. Then the snoring stops altogether.

They watch him.

‘He’s dead,’ says Brennan. He is trying not to cry.

Michael pushes him again with his boot, but Billy doesn’t snore.

‘You killed him, Rose,’ says Michael.

‘I did not it! It was you!’ cries Rose, ‘You kicked him!’

Brennan is crying hard now. ‘We’ll all go to hell now,’ he sobs, ‘and burn in the eternal fires.’

‘No we won’t,’ says Michael. ‘Not for one tip with my toe like that.’ His eyes are bright and hard. ‘But Rose will be punished,’ he says. ‘She’ll probably go to prison.’

Rose wants to hit Michael but she needs him for her plan. ‘We need to hide Billy,’ she says, ‘so war won’t break out.’

They all think about this.

‘No one would go to war over Billy Genesis,’ says Michael, but none of them is sure.

They look at Billy. He’s very big. His face is blue.

Rose keeps watch outside and the boys pull Billy by his legs. He bumps over the crashed door. No one’s coming. They pull him around the side of the house, over the snowy ground, to the edge of the Camp. Then they roll him over the ledge. He rolls twice and stops against a tree. Michael says, ‘Damn!’ like a man and climbs down. Rose and Brennan watch while he holds onto a branch and kicks at Billy, but the body is stuck.

‘Break off a branch to hide him,’ says Brennan quietly.

Michael does that, and puts the branch over Billy. Now you can hardly see him.

The hardest part is propping the door up so it looks shut. Rose has spread her rug over the bloodstain on the floor.

Then they all go back to Hanrattys’ for breakfast.

‘I don’t know what’s got into you three,’ says Mrs Hanratty, ladling porridge. ‘You’re like skittery rabbits!’

That only makes them giggle more.

DURING the morning break that day the pupils of Denniston School were throwing snowballs in the playground when Rose’s mother came to the fence and called Rose. Rose shook her head and dodged behind the dunny.

‘Come! Come quick!’ shouted Eva as if she were calling a dog. She dropped her bag in the snow and charged into the playground. The pupils gathered together and stared as Eva dragged a screaming Rose out onto the road. Michael and Brennan wanted to call Mr Stringer but they were too frightened. Was Rose going off to prison already?

‘No! I don’t want to!’ screamed Rose, wriggling and kicking, but her mother’s grip was iron hard and the child was dragged, leaving long raking ruts in the snow, down the street and out of sight, heading towards the Track.

NO ONE KNEW. Ha! Not one soul up there on the Hill had a single idea what went on under their so-pinched noses. Con the Brake was some kind of mascot to them — popular, larger than life. They loved to hear this wise man talk; he coloured their own dull lives. Which Con enjoyed — don’t we all? — and played up to. Do you see? So they make a small saint out of the man and are blind to any other side.

The other side is the wanderer, the adventurer, as I have said already. In the end change and excitement and things forbidden will rule a man like Con, over love or contentment and those settled dull virtues. On the Hill they saw a man loving his Bella and his work and his friends. True; he did. But they never noticed the man who was drawn to the stirring of unwed flesh on a dark night — my flesh; who needed, like a drug, to taste all the flavours of this
world, and to smell darker scents along with the light.

So. My story is ending. This story at least, for my life is full of chapters.

‘Con,’ I say to him one dark night under bright stars, ‘now is the time for moving. We two and your daughter.’

‘I love my Bella,’ says Con, all the time panting and roaring at me in the cold air. Oh, there’s nothing better than a hot man on a frosty night! ‘And why should I move when you are here also?’

‘Rose …’

‘Rose is better off here, Angel.’

‘Not with that sinner Billy Genesis prowling.’

‘But I have fixed the door, woman.’

‘If I leave, with Rose, you will follow, no?’

Then that lovely man would laugh and shake his head and go at me again to make me forget all. But the great ship of Con’s life was unfurling sails, the signs were there. The horizon glinted in his eye again. He would come; he would come.

The matter of Billy Genesis. Who knows the full story? Roaring drunk that night he was. Me, I was perhaps also under the drink, and more than ready to provoke a fight. Bring matters to a head, no? I hoped for Con to kill him in a rage, and so make a reason to leave the Hill. Ah well, not so smart a plan. I tell you, that night was all muddy water and no good sense to it.

I know this: we fought. Some taunt he made provoked me. Before I know it I am telling Billy that Con the Brake is my true lover. That we plan to leave. Not wise, yes? But who can make a sensible speech when a bad man is raging? So. Billy shouted half the Bible and destroyed half the kitchen, but directed his anger at me rather than Con. Well, the stupid man was too drunk to know hand from foot, let alone man from woman. At one stage the iron poker was in my hand and I swung it. I fancy it connected with
some part of Billy. My memory is not so clear.

In any case I woke with a black eye and a sore head in the bed of a new recruit over at the men’s quarters. Bruises dark as prune juice all down one arm. My mood just as black, to think what further damage Billy Genesis may have done. To house and to my plans both. Out I stamp over fresh snow to inspect. Oh, my friends, imagine the shock to see Rose’s door smashed off its hinge and inside Billy Genesis heaped on the floor, near death in a pool of blood. No sign of Rose.

So. I remember the poker and the smash of it into some part of Billy. The sound of the fight must have been heard all over the Camp. They will come for my blood, I know it. Here is their excuse to get rid of me into some distant prison unless some new story can be arranged. I leave Billy lying there, snorting like a sick horse, pack some few things in my bag and go looking for Con.

After such a night, not to mention the shock of Billy lying there, a certain exhaustion would be understandable, no? A lowering of morale? I tell you, for me that day it was the opposite. My blood sang: I could feel the spirit rising up like a lark, and a smile shine through all the bruises. Who can understand these things? That day fortune was on my side, every minute. Not one step faltered from the line my fortune drew.

My luck began at once. The Incline was running and Con the Brake was on first shift. Eva, I said to myself, a good sign yes, but this must be done quiet as a cat. The morning was bright with snow and my coat black, so care was needed. For some time I hid behind a rusty wagon, waiting till the hook-man turned away. Then like a dark shadow I slipped into Con’s little shed and pressed close to the wall. Above me drums and cables moaning and grinding.

Con starts and looks around to see who might be watching. No one has noticed. He frowns and goes to speak but I lay a finger on
his lips. To build his excitement I drive the tip of my tongue into his ear, in out, in out. Then, quickly to the point, I whisper into the same juicy ear.

‘Billy Genesis is murdered.’

Con grunts but keeps his eye on the cables and hands on the wheels.

‘Rose has killed the man. Billy lies in a bloody mess inside her room.’

‘What?’ For a moment Con lets go his handles and turns a raging face towards me. The cables whine as they pick up speed.

‘Con!’ I shout, for all will be lost if we are discovered. He calls down all manner of curses as he fights to bring his wagons back under control. Our luck holds: the hook-man is too busy to notice the rushing wagon. When he turns back it is well behaved again and out of sight over the edge.

‘Listen,’ say I, ‘I will take Rose away now, this day, and we will wait for you in Westport.’ I give him the name of a place I know. ‘If you haven’t joined us in four days I will lose hope and take her to the police.’

‘You wouldn’t,’ growls Con. ‘Your own daughter.’

‘And yours. You will come. You will, Con. I feel it.’

Yes, my friends, I knew it. Knew the moment was right. These days not much work on the Hill. Incline closed six days in seven. Slow times are no good for the adventuring spirit. That big man needed only the excuse. Before he could raise questions or threats I had slipped out again and around the back. Oh, my feet wanted to dance! But first to find Rose.

He came. Oh, he came all right. Would I tell a story with a sad ending? I tell you this: gladly would I live again every minute of the worst times of all my life just to lie one more month in that man’s arms. The dark house of my life — too many bad times to
remember or count — now contains one beautiful window that looks out on a glory. Over and over I can remember that glory. What a gift, my friends! One month we had together, before he moved on. A month as sweet and full of good living as any woman could wish. Those four weeks passed as if inside the red throat of a fiery volcano: fierce, wild, every minute beautiful and dangerous as fire.

Then the salt sea won the battle for his love and I lost him.

EVEN EDDIE CARMICHAEL didn’t know the strike was over until Tommy Jowett and the Rees family and a whole bunch of old Burnett’s Face miners came back up the Track with their ponies and belongings, cheering and carrying on as if it were Christmas. Eddie stood on the steps outside his office, stamping and grinning as Tommy shouted the news up to him. The miners had won! The Company had given way on all points and hired them back on full hewing rates!

‘You got your holidays, then?’ shouted Eddie, surprised at the capitulation.

‘Aye. We got the lot!’

‘No more unskilled miners, then?’

‘You’ve said it, friend. Proper pay for proper miners. Here we are, come to claim our homes back.’

‘Well, wouldn’t you know I’d be the last to hear.’ But Eddie was pleased, you could tell. All he wanted was to run a good clean mine, and fill the orders, which was far from the case at present.

‘Josiah will fill you in,’ said Tommy. ‘He’s on his way up with the missus.’ The men all laughed, but with some pride, vying with each other to tell the story.

‘Mrs Scobie could go on the stage, the story she told …’

‘Aye, she had them howling into their handkerchiefs, eh, Tommy?’

‘Children starving, women scraping moss off stones …’

‘Then Josiah would weigh in about us never giving in while there was breath in our bodies …’

‘Which wouldn’t be long, according to Mrs Scobie.’

‘And the rest of us knowing secretly we’d go back tomorrow …’

‘We never would!’

‘I heard you say just yesterday!’

‘Aye, well, that was yesterday. Today we’ve won.’

‘Thanks to the Scobies.’

‘God bless them both.’

Josiah and Mary Scobie, toiling up the Track, stopping every ten minutes for Mary to catch her breath, were the toast of Burnett’s Face, and of Denniston town, though those at the Camp, knowing their jobs were under threat now, were less welcoming.

‘Well done, Josiah!’ says Eddie when the beaming man finally comes up onto the plateau. ‘You know I was on your side in my heart.’

Josiah laughs. ‘Oho! Our side, is it? This is only the beginning, Eddie. We’ll be face to face over the bargaining table soon enough.’

Eddie groans in mock horror, then sobers up to add a warning.

‘I don’t want trouble, now, Josiah. Will you watch your men with the new recruits? It’s not their fault they weren’t born with coal
dust in their veins. Give them decent time to pack up and leave.’

Josiah nods. Mary, beside him, her face blotched scarlet from the climb, also glows with a gentler warmth.

‘Go on up,’ she says to her husband. ‘You deal with the men. I must talk with Totty.’

‘There is a prayer meeting called.’

‘Say one for me, then. I can go not one step further.’

But she plants her feet steadily enough in the direction of Hanrattys’. Josiah nods to see her go. He knows what the talk will be about.

Totty pours tea in the front parlour. At first the chat is general.

‘Well, and how is the outside world, then?’ asks Totty. She has still not managed the trip.

‘Overrated,’ says Mary, kneading her aching knees. ‘That gaggle of geese that call themselves society in Westport are soft as pillows. We could eat them for breakfast. And did.’

‘Watch your words!’ laughs Totty. ‘That is my family you’re talking about!’

‘Well, you are worth a trainful of them, my dear.’ Mary closes her eyes and groans. She will not be making that journey again in a hurry. And when she does it will be for a larger pond than Westport. Politics has entered her blood.

Totty waits until a more normal colour returns to the older woman’s cheeks before she opens the topic both of them are waiting for.

‘Tell me about the churchyard,’ she says.

Meanwhile Josiah tramps on up to Burnett’s Face. It is time for the thanksgiving.

THAT prayer meeting was where common sense and the law of the land finally gave up the ghost. After all those months of control and
discipline, of sticking doggedly to peaceful negotiation, it all blew up over a prayer.

Josiah was standing there, at the front of the little chapel, head bowed, and all the miners with him.

‘Oh Lord,’ he cried, his voice ringing like bells, ‘we thank Thee, that Thou hast blest our endeavours, and brought us safely back to our homes and our families. We thank Thee that Thou hast seen fit to grant us all that we have sought, that we may now work with dignity and safety in our chosen workplace, knowing that our fellow workers are skilled to do Thy work, the hewing of coal, to bring warmth and light and power to all mankind. We thank Thee also …’

When a voice from the back of the chapel, no one knows who, interrupted. Two or three of Eddie’s recruits must have been standing at the door listening.

‘Stuck-up English bloody black-faces!’ this fellow shouted.

Sixty heads snapped up out of their prayers.

‘Chapel-creepers! Chatting to God like He was in your pocket! We can hew as good as you any day of the week!’

The fellow must have been drunk.

That is the end of prayers. With one mighty shout Josiah and his men roar out of the Chapel, caring not at all who they might be trampling as they go. It is like floodgates opening. House by house they sweep through Burnett’s Face, herding the usurping recruits before them. No one is given time to pack, women and children are bundled away from their washing or cooking or playing and deposited outside in the needle-sharp air to fend for themselves.

They rage through Coalbrookdale mine, wrenching men from the coalface, loading them onto skips and running them off the job. The pit ponies, ears pinned back and eyes rolling at the din, refuse to pull their human loads so the miners shunt the skips themselves,
a fierce relief lending weight to their shoulders. Out in the open the recruits are tipped to the ground, then driven down the skipway by the storming miners as if they were sheep.

Denniston people run to doors to see what is up. When they see the approaching boil of miners they run back inside and bolt themselves in until it is over. Michael and Brennan, wide-eyed, hang out of the upstairs window at Hanrattys’. This is war all right, just like Rose said. Downstairs Mary Scobie’s outraged orders, shouted from the doorway, never reach her husband’s ears. He is as lost to it as all the rest.

At the Camp, tables are turned briefly as the second shift of recruits emerge from the men’s quarters to support their friends. The rout becomes a battle involving rocks and railway iron, anything that comes to hand. Bella Rasmussen tries a bucket of water but quickly realises there are far too many hot tempers for one woman to cool. She watches anxiously from the window to see if Con will join in.

Con is fighting a battle of his own at the Brake Head. Two frantic recruits, boys hardly out of childhood and desperate to escape the madness, are trying to leap aboard the loaded wagon that is about to descend.

‘Stand back! Stand back, man!’ roars Con, feeling the pressure of the pistons building and ready to slip the brake. The hook-man grabs both boys by their coat-tails and hauls them bodily off the wagon. He gives Con the nod and the wagon starts on down.

‘Jesus Maria!’ shouts Con as the boys run after it. One, then the other jumps at the moving wagon. For a moment, incredibly, both seem safe; then there is a boom like a cannon exploding. The steel cable, four inches thick, flies into the air as if it is thistledown. The boys, God rest their souls, must have dislodged the hook or broken the connecting flange. There is nothing now to stop seven tons of
coal hurtling down, free of all control, until it derails or smashes over the edge at Middle Brake.

‘Jump! In God’s name, jump!’ yells Con, but the boys, well past hearing anything, are clinging desperately to the instrument of their death. The wheels scream as they gather speed. All Con or the hook-man can do is to signal below and wait for the smash.

At the Camp the battle is dying. When Con charges down with his dreadful news he finds another death, again a young one, whose head has caved in under someone’s wild swipe. Five or six others are on the ground bleeding or nursing broken bones.

Con’s rage is worse than a southerly storm. ‘You call yourself a Christian!’ he shouts, grabbing a fistful of Josiah’s coat. ‘Look, man, look! You are fighting babies!’ His mighty shove knocks Josiah clear off his feet. Both sides back away, wary of this dangerous giant.

‘Ah Jesus, look at him.’ Con kneels, moaning himself, beside a gangly lad whose arm is at a frightful angle and who is howling for his mother.

The miners stand, sheepish now, as an old fellow, grizzled hair and beard obscuring his expression, gathers up the dead lad, slings him over his shoulder like a saddle and walks away without a word. Another, a weather-beaten bushman by the look of him, stained old hat jammed on his head, blue eyes blazing, faces Josiah and the miners.

‘You are welcome to your lousy jobs in your stinking mines. We are not so desperate for money that we will sell our souls to coal one more blighted day.’

The battered recruits growl in agreement.

The bushman raises a bleeding hand as if it were a badge. ‘But you might perhaps do us the courtesy,
sirs
, to allow us to patch up our young lads here and gather our swags. If that’s not too much to ask?’

Con and the bushman lead the howling boy away without waiting for an answer.

All that day the recruits and their families, their ponies and belongings straggled across the Camp, heading downhill. Con walked down the Track with the first batch and stationed himself at the bottom, a human gate, to hold back returning miners.

‘Well then, pray a little while you wait,’ he growled at the impatient miners. ‘For the souls of three innocent departed lads, you know? And for the sins of your mates up top. You walk up the Track now — maybe you feel tempted to throw some pregnant woman down the gully, eh? Or a child and her doll in her arms, maybe? Over the edge so she make room for real miners, you know? You start one foot up, I knock that foot off its leg. By God, this is a sorry day for the Hill, and I, Con the Brake, will damn well see it gets no sorrier!’ Oh, Con was a dark and stormy man that day, not a flicker of smile or lightness, a fact that drew some comment in the days to follow.

The miners, expecting joyous welcome, the brass band maybe, fretted and stamped at the foot of the Track, but none would pass Con the Brake in this mood. Towards evening, when they finally headed into Denniston, a couple of lads — Jock Galloway’s boys — reported seeing a dead body caught against a branch just below the Camp.

Billy Genesis.

At first it was assumed that Billy Genesis was another victim of the rout. It was certainly in character for Billy to join in any fight. Then two nights later Lord Percy strode into the smoky fug of Minifie’s bar shouting murder and foul deeds. He had been clearing out his friend’s house and found the smashed door and the bloodstained floorboards. Anyone could see, he screamed, that Billy Genesis was not the unlucky victim of a random hot-tempered
clout, but of a vile, pre-meditated murder in his own home. He omitted to declare that the bloodstain was in Rose’s room.

A piece of gossip like this was just the antidote for Denniston’s collective guilt over the rout. The deaths of the three boys had been officially recorded in Eddie’s register as
Death by riding a runaway
wagon
and
Accidental Death following a fall
. The fall was fudging it, Eddie knew, but surely everyone wanted to put the strike and the driving away of the recruits behind them now and get on with earning a living and making a profit?

The murder of Billy Genesis, though, could be investigated with relish. Cold-blooded murder: that was serious. If there was a murderer on the Hill he must be unmasked. Rose’s disappearance and that of her mother were noted. Con swore they never came past at the bottom of the Track. Perhaps two other bodies were concealed in the bush below the Camp? A search of the bush revealed nothing but old rubbish, drifts of coal, rusting railway iron.

Michael Hanratty and Brennan Scobie had nothing to report about Rose’s absence.

Henry Stringer the teacher was suspected. Remember the fight in the bar? He wouldn’t stand a chance in a fair fight with Billy, true, but what if Billy were drunk? Or perhaps Con the Brake had lost his temper again. Con could easily have done it. That man didn’t know his own strength. Theories ran wild in pubs and parlours. Con’s unusual behaviour was noted — surly and bad-tempered. Opinion hardened in favour of Con as murderer. These last two days his arguments carried a razor-sharp edge that quickly deterred any opponent. Several people reported hearing bitter argument coming from the log house: not at all the usual genial word battles that all the Camp relished and repeated. The police were not called in. Denniston dealt with its own crime.

Four days after Billy’s body was discovered, Camp people heard
a final brawl at the log house. Bella wailed and screamed. Con, uncharacteristically muted, grumbled and swore. Next morning Con the Brake, Big Snow, Conrad Rasmussen, his head hanging low and a swag on his shoulder, disappeared down the Track. Not one word of goodbye to another soul.

Bella smoothed her apron with shaking hands, held her head high. The show of dignity could not hide her distraction. ‘My husband has gone to find Rose of Tralee,’ she announced. But to many, his disappearance was a clear sign of guilt.