The Denniston Rose (8 page)

‘Sam?' asks Josiah, but Frank can only let the tears fall.

‘Well,' says Josiah, his voice cracking, ‘we'll have you out in no time, with the good Lord's help. You have here three champions with the banjo. Take heart, brother.'

The three men work at the pile with their shovels. Josiah would like to tear at the rock like a demon but he keeps his head. If the rock pile shifts again it could engulf what is left of Frank. Others have arrived now, and John Davies helps with the shovelling, but four is all there is room for, working at the pile. The others ram timber props to either side of the cleared gap to keep the rubble from rolling back in, but the sandstone is loose and it rolls back anyway. Big Andy Fellows takes over from Peter and makes good progress. Josiah's middle sons, Mathew and David, are further back, holding hands like the children they are, and crying. No one thinks to send them above ground.

All the time Frank's breathing is weakening. His mouth is a black hole, his eyes terrified as he hauls at the air.

‘Hold on, Frank, my bonny, we are closing on you,' grunts Josiah. But all can see there is much yet ahead of them.

‘Is there a lad here?' shouts Josiah. His own Mathew and David, tear-streaked and shaking, come forward.

‘Are you willing?' says Josiah to Mathew, the youngest, who is small and thin as a stick.

‘Aye, Dad.' But he's frightened enough.

‘We will hoist you onto the pile. Lie flat, not to disturb, and see if you can clear a little space around his neck and shoulders to breathe.'

‘I'll try.'

‘Good lad. Gentle as a lamb now.'

David wails like a baby to see his brother hoisted into the dark. Someone puts a grimy arm around his shoulder but David shrugs it off. He curls up on the wet ground, arms over his head until it is all over.

Mathew lies spread-eagled on the pile of loose stone. His own head is close to his Uncle Frank's. Gently he pulls away stone after stone. Uncle Frank doesn't seem to notice.

‘Oo … oo … oo …' His uncle's breaths moan like a far-distant owl in the night.

‘The shovels are nearly here,' whispers Mathew, his little boy's fingers working away in the dark.

‘Oo … oo … o …'

‘Uncle! Keep breathing. Please, don't stop now!' Mathew touches his uncle's dusty head as gently as he would a baby's. The head jerks suddenly but takes no breath.

‘Dad! Daddy!'

Josiah hears his son scream and knows they are too late. Leaving all caution he tears at the rubble with his bare hands, scrabbling up to Frank's silent head. He passes his screaming son down to waiting
hands below. He kisses Frank on each cheek, closes the staring eyes and prays.

‘The Lord be with thee. Go in peace into eternal life, both thee and our dearly beloved Samuel …' On he prays, his voice echoing in the dark, while the miners touch their smoking caps in reverence for a lost brother.

Josiah will not pray for the one-armed man.

Prayers turn to curses later that night when it is reported that Jimmy Cork has been found, alive and (unforgivably) cheerful, drinking at Red Minifie's, unaware of any accident, so he says. It is also reported that no mine manager gave him permission to check for clean air. His job was to supervise the new clippies, see they came to no harm. Jimmy's story is that he was taking extra caution over the air on his own initiative. No one believes him. Prospecting for gold in Company time is more likely, they mutter. Somehow Jimmy had wandered into an air shaft and come out above ground safely, while the two Scobies were trapped, looking for him.

‘Well, yes,' said Jimmy to the crowd of silent miners who came down from Burnett's Face next day to confront him, ‘I felt something — the ground shift, and a rumble. But I was out then — in the sun. An earthquake, I thought.'

And as the miners came closer, menacing: ‘Look, my friends …' (Josiah spat on the ground before him) ‘… you can't blame a fellow for worrying about the air you breathe. I am sorry about the accident, but how was I to know …'

Josiah stabbed a finger at him. ‘Accident! Murder, more like. Don't you insult us with your wild excuses!'

Jimmy took a step back and his bad knee gave way. He fell awkwardly but not a man, not even the manager, put out a hand to help him up.

Josiah, his face set like stone, eyes boring holes, pronounced the
curse. ‘God's wrath be called down on you! You and all your kind. We have no wish ever to set eyes upon you, in this world or the next.' He turned to Eddie Carmichael. ‘If this man comes within a chain of Banbury or of any other mine on this whole hill every miner here will walk off the job.' The men rumbled assent. ‘Moreover,' said Josiah, ‘if he comes down to Burnett's Face at all we will find it hard to muster any Christian charity, and will more likely do the man in.'

More nods. Without another word the men left, leaving a white-faced Jimmy struggling upright, and an angry mine manager watching him.

They say Eddie pleaded with Jimmy to leave that night; offered him and his family assistance on the Incline to get them down safely. When he refused, Eddie fired him. There would be no further work, said Eddie, not now or in the future. Jimmy must have been mad or worse, they said, to stay. But stay he did, in his hut at the corner of the Camp, with few friends and many enemies. With Eva, and with Rose.

MARY SCOBIE BROUGHT up the idea of the school, which was not surprising. The Scobies were organisers, every one of them.

‘Born stirrers more like,’ Mr McConnochie had grumbled on more than one occasion, but held his peace now, because they were born miners too.

Totty was pleased to stop work for a moment, and intrigued. She knew there were women up at Burnett’s Face; Tom, building houses for the immigrants, had brought the news. But this was the first time in six months one had paid a formal visit.

‘Come in, come in,’ she says, wondering whether to put the visitor in the boarders’ parlour or the kitchen where it is warm.

The stout woman, leaning heavily on her stick, makes the decision for her. ‘I won’t come past the kitchen, Mrs Hanratty, my
skirt is a good six inches in mud. Do you mind if my Brennan comes in too?’

And there at the gate stands a sturdy little fellow in trousers a few sizes too big, mud on his knees, his hands, in his hair even. He looks down — perhaps he’s crying.

‘He would not take notice of where his feet were carrying him and fell twice, in the thickest mud, wouldn’t you know it?’ The woman sighs bleakly as she looks at the muddy boy. ‘I have told him to stay at the gate till I ask permission to bring in such a rascal. But there. I am not much cleaner and have stayed upright all the way. It is more than time the Company put in a road or two.’ Her flat voice rises a peg or two, then fades into silence. She is exhausted. And some other darkness lies behind the black eyes, the tightly corseted exterior.

‘Please come in, both of you,’ says Totty. ‘We will wash off the worst of your boy’s mud in a moment.’

In the warm kitchen the two women make the formal introductions.

‘I am Mrs Josiah Scobie from Burnett’s Face. Please call me Mary.’

Burnett’s Face is the settlement further in on the plateau, close to the new mines being opened up. Fifty or so miners live there now. It is a two-mile walk and one not often made for purely social reasons.

Totty nods. She understands now, the darkness that has entered with the woman. ‘My husband, Mr Tom Hanratty, has spoken of you. Of your tragedy.’

‘Aye.’

‘I am sorry.’

‘Thank you. It is the will of the Lord.’ The bleakness in Mary Scobie’s voice belies her words.

‘I should have paid a visit.’

‘Well, it is not easy. We have our lives to lead.’

‘Yes.’ Totty looks down, not knowing what to say to this flinty woman. The loss of a brother-in-law and a son soon after arriving at so alien a place as Denniston would surely have broken most women. ‘Perhaps,’ she says after a pause, ‘my husband built your home?’

‘No, my dear. Scobies build their own homes, but I have seen your husband and know him to be a good tradesman.’

There is something a little patronising about this. Tom, after all, owns the only six-roomed building at Denniston, and will soon build a second boarding house. But Totty is too tired today to take umbrage. She puts tea on the table, groans with pleasure at taking the weight off her feet.

Mary Scobie looks at her with a practised eye. ‘About two more months?’

‘Yes. Two exactly.’

‘Will you have it up here?’

‘I will. Mrs C will help, as she did with Michael and Elizabeth.’

There is a silence as the two sip their tea. Michael and Brennan circle each other like puppies. Then Michael bolts into the hallway and Brennan follows. Soon they are banging up and down the corridor with whoops and Totty has to call them not to wake the baby.

‘I heard you had six boys and all in the mine,’ says Totty, back in the kitchen. ‘Tom didn’t speak about the little one.’

Mary takes a scone. It’s yesterday’s, warmed in the oven. ‘Well, and that is the reason for this visit. I would like Brennan to have schooling. There are two more children arrived last week, up near us, nine and ten years old. With your Michael that makes four. Also,’ Mary Scobie takes a breath as if preparing for some battle, ‘I intend to take the twins out of the mine for a year’s school-work.
To take their Certificate. Six pupils is enough for a school, they say.’

Totty flushes, not sure how to put it. ‘There is another little one. Rose. She could do with the schooling.’

Mary looks her dead in the eye. ‘The child at the Camp?’

‘Yes.’

‘Jimmy Cork’s?’

‘Well, she lives there, but who can say …’

‘No.’

‘Mrs Scobie …’ This time Totty is the one preparing for battle.

‘No, my dear, not in a school with my boys.’ The older woman’s face is granite. ‘It would not work.’

‘The child did not choose her father.’

‘The father should leave this place, not settle his blood here for schooling.’

‘Well,’ Totty smiles in spite of herself, ‘Rose will likely send herself to school, and no one will have the heart to turn her away. Wait till you see her, Mary.’

‘Not I nor any other Scobie will wish to set eyes on her. There will be trouble.’

For a moment the only sound is the boys’ boots on the floorboards. Then Mary Scobie, straight-backed at the table but unseeing, starts speaking. It is as if a small crack has opened, just enough for the words to edge out. The words are bitter, the voice bleak as winter.

‘What kind of a godforsaken place is this where you cannot bury your dead? My eldest son, Samuel, and his uncle, Frank, both of them dead in a day and I can visit the graveside of neither. What kind of a settlement can we build here without our dead? Without a churchyard? This is devil’s country. Iron-hard rock, black sky, and no shred of honest soil to bury the dead. My son is lying where he fell, who can say exactly where. His body not laid out; crumpled
under a mountain of rock like some animal. Who can pray — who can commune with the dead — at the mouth of a clattering mine?’

‘I’m sorry,’ says Totty. She pats the older woman’s hand but the gesture goes unnoticed.

‘And what if our babies die? Which they will, of course.’ Mary Scobie is deep inside herself, oblivious now, surely, of her hostess’s condition. ‘Will we have to put them on a coal wagon and watch them descend away and away for ever? Could you live through that and remain in your right mind? Could you?’

‘Please …’ murmurs Totty.

‘The Incline,’ Mary Scobie spits the words, ‘is not fit transport for a human being. Nor a coffin. I will never travel it.’

Totty has heard of the funeral. Two days after the deaths Mary Scobie had stood in the rain at the Burnett’s Face entrance to Banbury Mine while her husband, the boys and the other miners had sombrely placed Frank’s coffin onto a coal box, guided it through the same mine that killed him, then loaded the body onto a coal wagon and ridden down the Incline with it, roaring down the rails, the dead out of reach forever: out by rail, past Conn’s Creek, past Koranui Mine, all the way to Waimangaroa, where there was consecrated soil deep enough for a grave. Mary, with Granny Binney beside her for company, had stood like stone, they said. Had not moved while the coffin descended both sections of the Incline. She had stood on after the faint shriek of the train whistle far below signalled the next stage of the funeral cortege. At last, with Granny Binney guiding her, she had returned in silence to the tiny empty house. All the men were praying at a distant churchyard and would not return until next day. Mary had ignored her silent younger children, refused to organise or attend any funeral supper; had sat through the night in front of a cold cup of tea while Granny Binney put the lads to bed.

In Totty’s kitchen Mary Scobie takes a breath. Totty can almost see the crack in this woman’s flinty exterior closing. But there it is — a weakness, a hairline fracture, which will open again, Totty suspects, and worse next time. A worry. You need to be rock solid to survive on the Hill.

But for now Mary Scobie is back in control.

‘I am determined, my dear, that the boys — the younger ones — will have the tools to escape this dreadful place.’

Totty frowns. ‘Dreadful is a strong word. This is my home.’

‘Not mine.’ The words are spat out. ‘Never.’

Mary Scobie rolls on, inexorable as an approaching storm. Space for a schoolroom must be considered. Hanrattys’ is the only place with a spare room big enough. And the teacher. Totty is the only person, according to Mary’s inquiries, who has the Standard Six Certificate.

‘The coming baby is a hurdle, my dear, but the need is great. Will you take it on?’

Totty will not be bullied. ‘I simply cannot do it, Mrs Scobie. Tom is out all day building houses. I have the boarders to cook and wash for, and, God willing, three children.’ She sighs. ‘You have noticed the scones are yesterday’s.’

‘I have. And have done the same.’ Mary nods with the solid understanding of another overworked mother. She pats Totty’s hand and the younger woman finds herself in tears, seduced by exhaustion and the rare soft pleasure of a woman’s company.

‘I’m sorry … I’m sorry … but you are welcome to the room.’

‘And we will find the teacher to fill it. We must. There is no other way on the Hill. I will come up with a plan, never fear.’

In the end it was Totty who thought of asking Mrs C. Rasmussen. That ample lady shook with pleasure at being asked, not at all deterred by her total lack of formal education.

‘A teacher! Well, I suppose I could manage. I would have to confer with Mr Rasmussen, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Totty soberly, though she could imagine the scene if Con the Brake was anything less than wildly encouraging.

Mrs C’s confident smile slipped for a moment. ‘The Chapel parents — they would accept me?’

‘Mrs C, everyone loves you.’

‘Love, yes; but respect?’

‘If they don’t now, they will learn to.’

Mary Scobie, practical woman, had immediately seen the good sense of the suggestion, and was prepared to put aside religious scruples for the time being. She herself, though unschooled, was literate enough, and respected Mrs C. Rasmussen’s knowledge, even if she had her suspicions about where the knowledge was acquired. In fact it was she who suggested, with a surprising snort of laughter, that they hoodwink the officials.

‘We will apply for the licence in Totty’s name. She has the Certificate. Who is to know? Can you imagine that School Board in Nelson sending someone up here to inspect? Never!’

Mrs C. Rasmussen sat up straighter. ‘My qualifications may not be formal, Mrs Scobie, but they will stand in their own right. I do not need to hide behind Totty.’

Totty laughed. ‘Oh, Mrs C, you could run me into the ground on any subject in the curriculum, but we need our allocation of slates and chalk and blackboards. If the silly twits in Nelson want a Certificate, let’s give them one!’

In the four years since Con had brought her to the Hill, Mrs C had done everything a good pillar of the community should, except, sadly, produce children. The offer of a post as schoolmistress was to her a final proof of respectability and more precious than a six-ounce gold nugget.

‘Thank you, Totty, I will accept,’ she said, sitting straight and formal on her chair. She smoothed back a strand of her heavy brown hair with a finger in whose plump folds gleamed the wedding ring placed there by Con the Brake and no preacher. At last she felt secure enough to add, ‘Please call me Bella.’

So Mrs C. Rasmussen, alias Mrs Dorothy Hanratty, became the first teacher of the tiny school in Hanrattys’ spare guest-room. Indeed she was an inspired choice, for she read and wrote fluently, knew more songs and stories than anyone in the world, and had travelled to Australia more than once, according to Con the Brake. What’s more, Mrs C could add up a column of figures, especially if it was money, faster than the mine manager.

On the first day of school the Scobie twins hitched a ride on a couple of boxes coming out of the mine, rode down to Denniston, jumped off near Hanrattys’ and arrived with their identical faces black as thunder — and not only with soot. Schooling was well below the dignity of this pair of experienced miners, who were Scobies to boot. Brennan, too scared to ride the skips, or unwilling to ignore his mother’s absolute veto on the practice, walked through the mud beside the skipway — dangerous enough in itself, as everyone in Burnett’s Face grumbled. He walked with Jackie and Donnie O’Shea, — ‘Catholic, but never mind, Brennan,’ his dad said. ‘The O’Sheas are good miners.’ Brennan smiled at the thought of spending this day and all the next days with Michael Hanratty, the gold-coloured boy with six rooms inside his house.

In Hanrattys’ back room Mrs Rasmussen wrote their names firmly in her new register. She sat them at desks hammered together the previous night by Tom Hanratty and still smelling of sawdust and oil. In twos they sat: the twins at the back, then the O’Sheas, with the young ones at the front.

There is an empty desk on the other side of Michael.

‘Who is this for?’ whispers Brennan, awed by the newness of it all.

‘Rose,’ says Michael, smiling in excitement and not one whit awed. ‘She’s my friend too.’

There is a knock on the door.

‘Come in!’ calls Mrs Rasmussen, glowing, in her own schoolroom.

Rose, small and tightly contained, steps into the room. For a moment she stands by the door, her mass of fair curls boiling in all directions. Hardly breathing, she turns to face the door, closes it slowly and stands there, her thin little back shielding her from the six pairs of male eyes. She seems unable to turn around.

‘Good morning, Rose,’ says Mrs Rasmussen quietly, and Rose comes away from the door, her too-bright smile firmly in place. The boys wait in silence as Rose stands in front of the teacher. She smoothes her pinafore, good clean flour-bag, sewn by Mrs C herself, and waits too.

Mrs Rasmussen clears her throat. This must be done right. She is aware the child has had to face open enmity many times since the accident. Goodness only knew why the mother had not left the Camp. Surely any existence would be preferable to living under Jimmy Cork’s reputation.

Rosser Scobie, jumping to his feet, is the first to find words.

‘Is this his girl? Killer Jimmy’s daughter?’

The other twin stands too. His voice tries to imitate a man’s but comes out in a boy’s squeak, which would be funny if the face were less rigid. ‘From County Cork?’ It is an accusation.