The Ballad of Desmond Kale (32 page)

THE WOOL-HALL CELEBRATION THAT dark, still, New South Wales night, in that isolated encampment of lamplight far from the only town, was as distant from the green fields of England as it was possible to be — as far as a separate planet made of coarse dry leaves and rough clay ground spinning through the nothingness of black.

The celebration had a theme of English pastoral glee in which came musical and spoken poem recitals, and a choice of old-time games: skittles and shove halfpenny, leapfrog, blind man's buff, hunt the slipper, hot cockles and snapdragon so that children could learn how things were in the youth of their parents and those past youth could do some remembering on their feet.

Now there was a violent and abrupt Punch and Judy show performed by the Misses Stanton and Josephs, Ivy and Leah — much beating with a stick upon a soft rag head, followed by a song from Titus Stanton, native boy tenor, about the care of Jesus for a sparrow's fall.

Stanton stood before them lacking only his whip to pass for circus master supreme; dressed in frock coat, starched Geneva
collar, and wearing a broad-brimmed black shovel hat, curved up at the sides with a projection back and front. He was so tight and lumpy in his breeches, that when he flipped his coat aside a stallion would be envious of his purse.

‘There are no sparrows in Titus's country,' he said, after Titus's applause. ‘Our Titus has no idea what sparrows are, except he is told they are like the emu wren or “wawguljelly”.' Stanton at once turned wistful. ‘We ourselves sorely miss the sight of sparrows eating crumbs from a doorstep, or a flock of starlings darkening the sky and bursting into curious shapes.'

Next singer was the Reverend Stanton himself with Ivy chorusing the ‘Majesty of Love' (God's love), and then Mrs Stanton standing near the door where she could be heard by the bond men outside, reciting a tribute to the shearers in the poem by Dyer.

‘What is going on in this strange house?' Meg whispered to Warren, but was sorry she said it, because half Warren's pride was fixed in the wool hall where the production of his sweat was on display, and the other half was in the paddocks and sheep tracks leading up to it, where he spent his days.

Rankine peered through the wall slats. There before him was a man he knew, green-faced, looking up at him from among the bond men sitting grouped awaiting their next ration of spirits.

Stanton, on a duty of missing as little as he could, saw where Rankine peered. He bared his gums in a red smile.

‘Ah, that one there, Lorenze,' he said, ‘he does get around. I sometimes think shearers run all night to be ready for the morning, bidding on someone else's flock before break of day.'

Rankine thought: Why is he here, then? Was the Spaniard taken and Stanton his master? Could a man be arrested, assigned, worked and owned in such a short space of time? Was that why Stanton was
so jolly hospitable, because he had near all of them pegged down, one way or the other?

‘“Lorenze”, is he one of your prisoners?' said Rankine.

‘That man is no prisoner, he is my best shearer, and the only prisoner I would like to make of him is to take him hostage to my needs, as I am thinking of putting him on as my steward, ha ha, if you don't nab him, sir. Which I won't allow.'

‘“
Lorenze
,”' repeated Rankine.

‘A Spaniard,' nodded Stanton.

When Rankine looked back the Spaniard smiled ferociously.

‘I am encouraging him to stay on with me,' said Stanton. ‘All I need's his free consent.'

‘You are kinder to your convicts,' said Rankine, with disciplined ease of manner, ‘than other landholders. Their men will be rioting when they hear how generous you are with your rum.'

‘On this night nothing is too good for them. It is how I say thanks in a way they understand, for their struggle in coming round to me.'

‘How so?'

‘Their willingness to try harder cutting out swearing and malingering. There is one I have just arrested, though — God knows he is stupid — a false martyr to a cause. I wonder if you know him?'

‘How might I?' said Rankine.

‘As an officer. Sworn against causes. By your loyal oaths.'

‘Then of course,' said Rankine uneasily.

‘I winkled out of him that he was involved in the springing of Desmond Kale.'

Rankine managed to ask, as his throat closed tight: ‘A confession?'

‘Not quite a full confession, sir, I must admit. Not as you might say to the letter of one. A circumstantial fit of the terrors, more like.
Hanging shall be too good for him. You see, I arranged a dumb show over a supine sheep, held down for horn taking, and it all fell out as it must have done at Mundowey, that dark day with Kale — the shattering of chains, the partnership of malefactors between hammer and spike showing the scene all clear. The Spaniard assisted me. There was the smell of flinted horn, the whiffy smoke of the strike. You should have seen the Irishman quake. Understand, I already had the tools used, or what remained of them without handles. They were consumed of their fittings when recovered from the ashes. Solly Josephs is a bowerbird for putting his claws on objects. The only element missing was a mob of sheep and the owner of those sheep bringing them up to sweep Kale along into their disappearing dust. But I saw the figure ghostly enough, as it were through the trees.'

‘Saw?'

‘An officer of rangers.'

‘That has all been settled,' said Rankine. ‘The governor has reviewed the events of the day from every slant. Rangers were the escort detail that day.'

‘So they were. Isn't it interesting. And so shall I tell you something, my dear captain?'

Rankine could only raise an eyebrow. The rest of him was frozen.

‘It is you — I have you under suspicion as the officer involved.'

Rankine with wild inspiration held his wrists up to Stanton.

‘Very good,' said Stanton, smiling wanly. ‘You invite the shackles. You do not even quake.'

‘
But if I don't get out of here with Clumpsy, I'm done
,' thought Rankine, experiencing the intolerable sensation of exploding inwardly, in his mind. The thought he now had was to leave Meg in
the care of the Josephs as soon as he could, turn back and admit his involvements to the governor. That way neutralise Stanton by baring himself without shadows. And get his marriage papers signed.

‘I would rather have Kale than you,' confided Stanton in a whispering rush. ‘I would be kinder to Kale than I ever was before, if I had him in irons. I do heartily regret any distress I have caused his daughter, except that what I do, in my courts, the malefactor gives me best reason to do.'

Then Stanton threw his head back, and said, in a vomit of opposite feeling: ‘You must like old coats, sir.'

‘I do beg your pardon?' said Rankine.

‘In your dalliance with women. Wasn't she spoiled enough by Marsh and having a child out of wedlock, and whatever officers found her willing, right up to the governor, for you to ever dream of turning her petticoat hems honest?'

Rankine decided that one day, when he could, he would strike the minister in the chest, break his jaw and kick him to the ground, and feed him to the dogs in pieces. Smaller and smaller, hoping every one hurt.

There was a long trembling interval before Rankine answered.

‘Well, let me say, I think you are better on the subject of sheep, sir, than on the honour of the woman I love.'

‘Ha, I think I might be. Though you tried to get my ram, Warren tells me — nothing is hidden between us, by the bye.'

Rankine saw how the minister worked. Stanton didn't need whips at all. His manipulations were various.

‘You were seen at the croppies' parliament arguing the toss,' Stanton said.

Rankine answered at once.

‘We hopeful breeders have our eyes open, it's true. I badly wanted a superior sire to start me off. Not that I can hold a candle to the master of Laban Vale, but I do fancy myself in the manner of livestock, you follow — as a beginner in sheep, so to speak, where I am making a late start.'

Rankine dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief. They were both hot with jousting. But heat radiated from Stanton as from a buried fire.

‘Well, I like you better, Captain Rankine. I might even let you have a few of my ewe culls to take where you will. They are progeny of a line leading back to Kale, my rival in sheep matters. Kale means to damage me but I have my hostage to fortune in place, Warren Inchcape. It is the best I can say of Warren's natural father — I have been told it was Marsh, you see — that the late George Marsh was an impactful sire, leaving Warren enough of his intelligence, none of Kale's acid, and mostly his mother's goodness of spirit to go on with.'

AT A SIGN FROM THE minister, Artie Josephs lifted his violin from its battered case, snapped it under his chin, and stood before them playing the notes of a peddler's jig that Stanton hummed to him.

After a few notes Stanton joined in with words, and everyone picked up the rollicking sense of it: ‘Come buy of me, come; come buy, come buy; Buy, lads, or else your lasses cry, Come buy!'

For the moment Rankine was free of his attentions. Stanton was carried away in blind man's buff more than the other games. When he was blindfolded he caught Meg almost at once, and exercised his privilege of getting his ‘buffet', his three buffs or pats for the blind man having caught a player.

But when he wanted them to join in with hot cockles, strictly a children's game, in which, he said, one player kneels down with his eyes covered and lays his head in another's lap and on being struck has to guess who gave the blow — then he was dragged away by his wife. Snapdragon, he said, was a game drunkards liked to play, when they were so far gone they risked their eyebrows being burnt. He had a shallow dish of raisins (that had been dried by Stanton
from his own grapes) poured over with rum and set alight. Then he challenged the players to eat them while alight. And the winner, although certainly no drunk, was Rankine, because when it came to risking his face, he was the one to chance it even unto eating into the minister's fire.

‘They are all games brought from England,' said Stanton, when they were winded from running around and slipping over on the greasy floor and he was set to speechifying. ‘There is an unbroken line of innocence in the shearing-shed frolics of which I am very fond. Please drink from the clay cups provided. I am not one of those pastors who thinks a little unsteadiness on the feet is a crime against God, otherwise — I ask you! — it would be a crime to be a toddling baby and a sin to grow old and unsure on your toes. In happy exile, I am a vicar of the country sort, a livestock breeder who goes out every weekday and governs his sheep and on Sundays takes his theme from the word of God. Our Bible is not just worded in the gathering of flocks, but is refreshed throughout by drink! It is called “the wine that cheereth”, and says “the king was merry with wine”; elsewhere finds Esther “at the banquet of wine”, and calls it “the wine that maketh glad”, “the wine that maketh merry”, concluding with the eternal soberation that “only His Love is stronger than wine”. Charge your cups every one of you from that tub in the corner. Our homely concoction is a punch of orange juice laced with sugar, cinnamon, and a generosity of rum. Not so much as to inebriate too badly but enough to make you merry. God bless you all, and Sergeant Galvin, pass among the bond men giving them a last good strong blend of grog apiece and let them toast the king.'

Stanton seemed to be inventing a style of Botany Bay gentleman as he went along: religious, roasting, rough and ready. There were
partygoers numbering around twenty, the numbers swelled by a dozen of his former smallholders (those he called strugglers) who had gone to the bad until he bought them out. They had withdrawn to the biggest river, where they lived envious much-reduced lives. The strugglers turned their heads and saw through the slats of the end wall the eyes of the convict stockmen peering in. They had convicts themselves but were not so likely to include any of their own in any such celebration. ‘Give them an inch they will take a file,' was the ditty justifying close control. Hadn't the minister himself fallen foul of such a rule, with Desmond Kale, and had his metal rake taken? But then the strugglers, unlike Stanton, did not hold the whip hand so close: if they wanted punishments, they called on Stanton as their nearest magistrate to do it. But this next part of what Stanton said was not so popular.

‘I would like you to meet Warren's mother,' said Stanton in the following interval between items, as he steered Meg and Rankine around the floor to introduce his pious guests. Stanton was the strugglers' leader in all styles of excellence but this was going too far, to hang onto the arm of such a free mover. He was mad, bad, or even wonderfully released from himself, and they lacked the wit to get their heads around all three in a man sworn to eternity. They wondered about the warmth of friendship he showed a captain of rangers and a wild convict's daughter. A glance at Dolly Stanton's narrow face under her pale blue bonnet showed that her husband might be a little outside her control this night.

Ivy and Leah could not take their eyes from Meg as a model of hauteur and grace they would like to follow, if they ever got the chance to grow wonderfully like her. It made them smile at Warren more, to think such a natural woman was his ma.

There were more jigs and country dances, accompanied by a
sheepskin drum played by a struggler of whom it was slyly said, poor sheepskin, how it brawls with him that beateth it! With their rapid exchange of partners, there was hardly any touching allowed, except for a quick brushing of hands. Leah Josephs sat against the wall with an indistinct smile and looked as if she had a lot better things on her mind than getting up and spinning around a creaking floor. But she was grateful when Warren sat beside her. He said nothing and sat with his hands on his knees. Then her mother came and found her, and asked for a turn, being careful to support Leah so she didn't trip. When they came near the sheepskin drum a subtle frenzy seized them, which the drummer saw, and obeyed despite his little skill. They tipped back their heads, closed their eyes, gyrated their trunks without moving their feet except to swivel on the balls of them, and snapped their fingers high. Leah fitted her balance to the mode, seeming to overmaster her lameness, and so resembled a ribbon of smoke from the lamps, in her grey smock with orange ribbons trailing from the sleeves of her upraised hands, that Warren wanted to grab the ribbons and unravel them down to the naked flame.

At the head of the hall, against a rampart of piled wool, Artie Josephs unpacked his harmonium and blew straw from its parts and wiped its glass bowls with a clean rag. His father brought over a basin of water and helped rig the uncanny instrument for playing. As a wheel turned, glasses entered the water basin and came out shining wet, which Artie translated into wavering hums of sound.

It was at this moment that Warren leaned over, cheeks full, eyes shining, to whisper to his mother that he was sailing on the
Edinburgh Castle
as the chosen one of the Stantons, as their apparent son in a cabin of his own with Titus — this last exclusiveness a boast, a prediction born of pity wondering if Titus would finally be allowed to come at all.

All night Warren had teased Meg not letting it out, asking her to guess the news between him and the Stantons.

‘It is all acoming to me now,' said Warren, and Meg was not so sure she liked the smugness of his expression. ‘My father's belongings and my old bird Car'away, my inheritance that I'm the only one's allowed to see what it is, and take it away.'

 

When the moment was right, Tom Rankine took Joe Josephs's elbow and steered him outside.

‘What is it?' said Joe.

‘What is it you know about me?'

‘You're the governor's man,' said Joe. ‘I carry your load of goods, you are close to me as my family, you and your wife; there's no more to you can be said.'

The discretion of them both was to be tested over what next was needed to be said, however. For Rankine, at least, it was a risky trust.

‘Someone was taken for that Mundowey caper.'

‘One of the Irish,' nodded Joe.

‘It's my old campaign servant, Clumpsy M'Carty. I have reason to know he's innocent.'

Then it was Joe's turn. He took Rankine's elbow, and guided him farther into the dark on the pretext of the two men getting some fresh air, emptying their bladders, and filling their pipes. They would not have very long on their own as the Stantons were a most insinuating pair, ‘Except they are so needy of advantages,' said Joe, ‘and so honest in their cravings, that a bloke is half inclined to love them.'

‘Here, we can sit on this log,' said Rankine.

‘Watch out for the ditch,' said Joe. ‘It is where the ram was chopped. I got his great horns. Here your man M'Carty was picked
out by our very good friend as he lay along the sheep's belly and bunched the chisel in his fist. They say he's a capon, is it true?'

‘He is cut,' said Rankine, chopping a fist into the palm of his hand. ‘Some Spaniards made him one, with two flat stones. Since then he's mistrusted the race.'

‘I wish you had not told me in that fashion. It shrinks me up in my vitals.'

They drew on their pipes. Long light shining from the gaps in the wool-hall walls flickered over them. Small flying ants tickled their noses and climbed into their hair; moths butted their foreheads.

Rankine said:

‘Under the far end of Mick Tornley's waggon — I saw this when you loaded my goods — there are nets, slings, and tarpaulins suspended by ropes.'

‘Are there, now? You would be the one to know, captain of rangers. I have never looked under there as far, past where we spreads our rugs, nor shall Mick either until I shift my goods and Mick gets his return load of wools and hides up, and unties the coverings to rope them tight in the weather. So I ask you, what is that end of the waggon to do with me?'

‘By asking that question you have answered the one I was going to ask you, Joe.'

‘Always ready to oblige,' said Joe, warily satisfied that nothing was compromised either way in his dealings with one man or another, and that a friend was enabled to do what was needed. What that might be he would not start guessing, even to himself, except to warrant it aided the unprotected, and he would go a bit further with that idea, than he would with its opposite.