The Ballad of Desmond Kale (29 page)

AT FIRST DAYLIGHT STANTON WENT down on his knees sincerely praying for guidance while from the corner of his eye peered hoping his wife was stirred from sleep enough to see his humility being proved.

They seemed to have signed a treaty without formalities. They would take Titus with them and be done with it.

To save his wife's feelings Stanton resolved that when Titus next howled under his punishments, it would be done in small parcels out of earshot of all. A mind set on action savoured its resources in advance. Even on a crowded sailing ship there would be spaces for instruction, what with waves crashing, timbers groaning, and winds screaming in the sky to cover any yelping out. Stanton as whip handler was come more alive in himself than he had at any time since his conversion when he was eighteen. That was when he lived amazed at the dimness of those without the light, and got such great lessons in contempt of unbelievers, twisters, waverers, complacents, dalliers and the like that he started seeing them everywhere and still knew where to find them.

That morning early Stanton went down to the convict sheds to be sure his stock hands made a decent muster at the start of the day. His habit of close inspection set them grumbling but made their barracks the cleanest in Botany Bay. That notion of course was nothing to the bond stockmen unless it gave them more peace, less pain, which they found it sometimes did. So they scrubbed, scoured and broomed a little harder than they might have done. Even at shearing time they did their chores.

Their hammocks and bedding were rolled out on the stones for airing and sunning by the time Stanton surveyed them in the half hour after daylight. He was already warm from walking down there, in a white sweat with flushed undertones. In the early slanting sun the men sat on their benches elbow to elbow, spooned their bowls of grain to their lips and drowsily chewed their rations of salt meat and bread, sparing the minister his need to say grace over them because they were started ahead of him. The only times the inspection routine was broken was on Sundays, when he preached to them hard, or in wet weather, when they crowded damply indoors, or if there was illness — because when the stomach gripes struck in the close-packed brick sheds they affected them all.

Stanton noted that morning how the regulation jobs were done, the men had earlier washed at their water troughs using the sufficient soap issued them for ordinary purposes. Their bruised and sallow old faces were sere but bright with shine. For them too, thought Stanton, there was something of the bracing, clarifying mood of getting ahead the morning after a night of tears and recriminations. Such had been the mood of his house these past twelve hours that he was glad enough so early to get away from troublesome looks and goading silences into the fresh open air.

‘Is you pleased all right with the shearing, reverend?' the bond men asked, while behind their bony foreheads he knew the unspoken question was really, ‘Have you skinned him alive yet — that rapscallion boy?'

Stanton ordered new soap for issuing later, and told the convict overseer, Galvin, that if the men bathed fully after the shearing, and wore their clean coats, they would be rewarded an issue of rum and be called to the dedication of the wool hall at four o'clock.

‘March them up at the sound of the bell,' he instructed, ‘listen for four clear rings, repeated at half-minute intervals three times.'

The morning's response to the minister's round of inspection was satisfying but when Stanton went about the benches greeting the men and tolerating their muted rough silences he detected malevolence creeping up their lines. At first he blamed himself over Titus and glowered; then he stopped being so certain of his own position and observed what was going on. Something was certainly in the air between two groups of men, and where there was conflict that was not up his own nose, there was so often advantage for him that he saw room for himself playing two sides off, in the midst of his wool-taking fever.

The one he admired, Paul Lorenze, sat at one end of a bench; the other, Clumpsy M'Carty, sat at the far end looking as discomfited as Stanton had ever seen a prankster look. It occurred to Stanton that Lorenze had taken M'Carty's seat and stolidly refused to give it up. There had to be more to it, though. It was for the sake of convenient economy that Stanton had the shearers eating with the convicts. But while they saved on salvage, the shearers as free or relatively freer men disliked the idea of being marked by association with filth. There was that kind of feeling between Lorenze and M'Carty — only going well back.

Stanton drew the overseer away into his room. Galvin as sergeant of convicts was a former convict and straddled both worlds with worthy anxiety.

‘M'Carty is dancing on hot coals,' said Stanton.

‘Well, someone is sitting in his place, and he does not like it.'

‘Is that all?'

‘There's talk,' admitted Galvin.

‘There always is talk,' pushed Stanton.

Galvin was a man in whom Stanton had fairly good trust as long as the question was on the letter of the law. Galvin liked pleasing Stanton and also airily pleasing his charges, and convincing them in their kind of language as to where their rights, such as they were, ended, and their obligations, endless in number, began, and how they would be eased of their worst troubles if they only paid him attention. If Galvin did not walk that narrow path he might wake up one morning to find his brains stoved in.

‘They don't like Lehane,' Galvin further said.

Stanton felt for the something deeper down he was after all this time since Lehane was locked away.

‘And?'

‘Last night I found a knife,' said Galvin, ‘being passed round the barracks' room when I went through on the midnight watch, long after they was all settled in. One of our light-fingered gentry, with more skill as a cutpurse than brains, had lifted the instrument from Lorenze's kit. A narrow steel filleting knife falls to the floor and I gets me foot there on it.'

‘I thank you for telling me. Lorenze is a good man. He does not deserve bothering. Have you any names?'

‘It was Clumpsy M'Carty, that showy man, who flashed the blade around a bit, and boasted catching starlight on its Toledo
steel. He held that knife longer than he should have done, when he was heard to say he intended to knife him, Lehane.'

Stanton said nothing. In earlier circumstances, well known, the theft of metal with or without statements attached called for floggings.

 

Without much help Warren mended smashed hurdles and held aside a dozen ewes that Stanton wanted to look at. Their wool was broken and sparse, some came away in the hands with only a tug, and Stanton told Warren the matter was what the sheep ate. ‘Or did not care to eat, for a reason you can help me to find.'

To get his diagnosis Stanton went around grabbing sheep's heads, tipping them back and forcing mouths open to look at their teeth.

‘These are the oldest animals I have, they are all my favourite old breeding ewes. I call them the champion ladies of Laban Vale, but they are almost no good any more.'

‘They are no good at all,' said Warren. ‘We were saving them for last in the shearing in case they died and got in the way.'

‘What would you do, that I have not done with them, apprentice sheepmaster?' taunted Stanton as they raised dust around them. Sometimes to keep up conversation they shouted over the sheep's backs.

‘They are all broken in the mouth.'

‘I can see that, you know.'

‘I would not have held on to them for as long as you have.'

‘Six years is a good time,' said Stanton, ‘in working sheep, in our years around sixty. They have another year in them, according to able practice, taking them up to seven. If they were pets they might live until ten or thirteen. In Yorkshire a sheep lived to twenty.'

‘I don't believe you,' said Warren.

They retreated into the shade of the one tree that spread its high crown in the direction of the yards. Twigs fell on the sheep's backs from white cockatoos biting branches and letting them fall.

‘Wait till we go “over thar”,' said Stanton. ‘I shall take you up in the hills. The ones mountain shepherds call
guide
sheep are old wethers kept on purpose to guide and direct the bleating flocks. They live a long time because they are hardy and allowed to live out their span without being put to the knife. We shall live to one hundred if we eat only green food and drink stream water like them and stretch by climbing rocks all day and pray that we're not taken early for our sins. We might see that sort of age of sheep in New South Wales, I reckon, as they walk so far for water. In my hometown hills I once saw a yearling wether that became quite fat with only one tooth. It worked a cavity in the upper jaw where the corresponding central tooth was missing. Sheep are like that, they juice every last fibre and honestly extract victuals from sandy wastes. I knew a young man, when he was true to sheep, unspoiled with ideas of another role — who had a ewe that yeaned a pair of lambs when she was a shearling.'

‘Oh?' said Warren, grabbing the next animal so that they could both stand by her, and guessing who Stanton meant from his tone of voice.

‘She had two pairs a year for fifteen years, and in her last two years produced single lambs. A brilliant shepherd, but a lesson of care was misplaced on him. These ewes are some of the last of his progeny's line.'

They were sheep that were going to be killed.

‘Neglectful of sheep,' echoed Warren, ‘was he, but how?' — more to see where Stanton's thoughts were leading than to
aggravate him, and not at all to cast doubts on Kale's high place with flocks, which was an opinion buried fast in his blood.

‘Say there is someone superb in his work but always drunk on the job. That is like saying, build the timbers of the cathedral, carpenter, then burn the place down.'

Warren turned aside. ‘Seven, look,
she
is seven if you go by the mouth,' he said, dipping his head and opening an animal's jaw.

‘Seven or eight may be. It gets hard to say. This tooth and that are loose ones. Less than half your age, Warren, is considered old age in a useful sheep. Seven — it is a sacred number in life because ten times seven makes our own blessed allowance of three score years and ten. There was never an animal so finely calculated to serve man in its adaptations.'

Stanton took hold of a ewe that was aberrant, with horns, where the eleven others were polled, and he seemed to want to make the trembling creature stand for all sheepkind before it died its coming death.

‘This animal, the God-given sheep, is one of those specially destined to support man with his flesh. Unlike those bullocks of Mick Tornley's over there, it can pull grass up by the roots, when it feels the need. The gassy fermentation of its four stomachs needs mould to neutralise the acids of the gut, and the Lord has made the roots of grasses mouldy, although in this climate, in a form our eyes can't see. It is all one creation. I would fly at Mick Tornley for treading over my home range with his draught bullocks, except the sheep bites closer than the ox — don't you, old Bessie — she was designed in many places to follow the other, and eat where the bullock don't take a single blade. Seven sheep for the seven ages of man seems like a gift we must make best use of.'

‘Yes, but the teeth,' said Warren.

‘If any of the teeth are loose they should be pulled, and a chance
given for the animal to go on. I have seen ewes with broken teeth and some with all their incisors gone keep pace in condition with the best of the flock.'

‘It might have been true with your ladies last year,' said Warren. ‘But now they are past having them pulled.'

‘You are the expert,' said Stanton, fondly rather than tightly, as he liked Warren's bigness of purpose as good as any wit or accuracy. He even liked his rebukes. They had so much trust in them.

‘They will live but they won't fatten,' said Warren, ‘so they are useless to the butcher, and their wool is broken.'

‘You have learned well.'

‘I seen it all with my own eyes. You have made a mistake. I wasn't here last year, when they were five or was it six, but that was the time to fatten them and supply their places with the most likely shearing ewes.'

This was all well known to Stanton but he said:

‘I consider myself better educated now than when I started out before daylight, Warren. Have you seen your brother Titus this morning?'

‘I spoke to him through the crack in the door,' admitted Warren.

‘Didn't I say not to go to the hut?'

‘Last night you did. So I didn't go then, as you asked me.'

‘How did you find him, awake?'

‘He said he was tired and going back to sleep.'

‘Did you offer to let him out?'

‘No.'

‘Good, and that is our Titus all over,' said Stanton. ‘Why, remember one day he slept until ten, though something told me he was awake half the night, and then there was the time —'