The Denniston Rose (10 page)

IN THOSE DAYS —'82, '83 —there were three separate communities on the plateau: the settlement at the top of the Incline around the Brake Head; the Camp, just below it, perched on a natural rock shelf; and Burnett's Face, the miners' village, a couple of miles over the plateau closer to the mines.

The Brake Head was the natural centre, with its growing collection of businesses and its great ugly sprawling corrugated iron collection of sheds, offices and machinery known as the Bins. By now there were four boarding houses at Denniston (two of them owned by the Hanrattys), a saddler, a forge, two fiercely competitive stores (the Company one and the miners' co-op), a barber, an ironmonger and, just opened, J. Dimcock's drapery. Tom Hanratty employed two carpenters in those days, and would knock up anything from cradles to coffins. Billy Genesis, when he was sober,
one day in three on average, operated the forge, though his three missing fingers and livid, knotted scar from ear to sweaty breastbone were hardly reassuring testimony to his skill. Once a month or thereabouts Doctor Ulysses from Waimangaroa rode up the Incline and sat in a Company office at the Bins. Mostly he cut hair and trimmed beards, though; people at Denniston tended to be healthy or dead, nothing much in between.

Denniston town, at the Brake Head, was raw and rough but you could sense, gathering among the haphazard, muddy streets and tracks; among the dogged, entrepreneurial individuals who decided of their own volition to live there, a sense of order —a solid core, a kernel that would in time put down roots and bear the branches and fruit, however stunted in this barren soil, of a decent, if unique community.

The Camp was another matter. No order here at all. Shacks and huts, some of them still half canvas, sprouted like mushrooms. The only businesses were Red Minifie's Billiard Saloon and another makeshift bar, even more questionable. There were no roads at the Camp, just a track down to it and then winding paths between dwellings, which faced in all directions according to the whim of the wanderers who built them. People came and went at the Camp. Took a job shovelling at the Bins or maintaining the Incline, or carting timber, whatever was on offer, then drifted away in search of a warmer climate, an easier job, a new experience. Camp people were drifters and explorers: ex-gold-diggers, some of them; others escaping a debt grown too large or a crime too noticeable. Men arrived at the Camp with brand-new names or no names at all, until their mates allocated something suitable. Billy Genesis, for example, who could recite the whole of Genesis word for word, and his friend Lord Percy, who spoke with a plum in his mouth and could tell you the name of the second cousin of the Prince of Wales's uncle. They
say Billy and Lord P met in prison in Australia, but that could only be an educated guess. No one ever mentioned the past at the Camp: its one unshakeable rule.

Con the Brake and Mrs C. Rasmussen were undisputed leaders at the Camp. Their solid house, built by Con from raw logs and plastered inside with Denniston mud, stood out like a beacon in the shifting huddle of shacks and canvas. Wanderers at the Camp gravitated to Con's fireside like driftwood moving inshore on the tide. They sang there and told stories; they ate Mrs Rasmussen's raisin scones, and looked into the coals, dreaming of other times that might never be told.

No one ever drifted towards Jimmy Cork's hut. It squatted under the cliff on the far corner of the Camp, surrounded by ramshackle fences to keep in the chooks. When Rose returned from school her only welcome was a rush of chickens with muddy undercarriages and red eyes, looking for scraps.

Burnett's Face, the third community on the plateau, was roadless too then, unless you counted the rope-road, which carried the miners' boxes of coal all the way from the mine entrances at Burnett's Face out to the Bins. The Company built the first batch of houses in two straight lines either side of the rope-road so they could bring the timber and the corrugated iron in on the empty boxes. Immigrant miners from the Midlands and Wales built their own houses the same way, placing their tiny dwellings side by side, like bricks on a wall along the narrow valley floor. Only a few, such as the Scobies, spread out sideways, taking advantage of a rise or a distant view, so there was little sense, then, of a township. One would come, though. These people were from generations of colliers back Home, who expected their children and grandchildren to go underground. Oh yes, a township would develop here, decent and God-fearing. No billiard saloon or liquor-licensed pub for Burnett's
Face if the Chapel miners could help it. Already a tiny chapel stood, still unpainted, on one side of the skipway, and a larger Catholic church on the other, though only its front was wooden; the sides and rear were common old corrugated iron. Churches first. Soon Burnett's Face miners would want their own school and their own post office. Burnett's Face people considered themselves a different breed from the motley lot at the Bins and the Camp. More civilised; certainly more trustworthy. Burnett's Face people were professional miners, bred from professionals.

Bella Rasmussen, who had met with all sorts in her colourful past, recognised the seeds of division in these three communities. She glowed with a mission to unite them, a mission that included, though she hardly admitted this even to herself, an aching desire to have Rose accepted by the miners, welcomed everywhere, as were the two boys, Michael and Brennan. She was planning an event.

PLENTY OF PEOPLE claimed to have understood Rose. Con the Brake and Mrs C. Rasmussen in particular, naturally, but they were by no means the only ones. Theories about her were worked up over a beer at Red Minifie’s, the men arguing about her background and potential as if she were prize bloodstock, not a small girl. Stories about Rose were swapped around firesides or over a cup of tea and a scone. Just about every step Rose took was observed, retold, commented on and embroidered, until it was hard sometimes to distinguish the reality of the child from the folklore.

At Denniston, of course, everyone was known, more or less. But with Rose it was different. She was on the loose so much, knocking on the back doors of houses, with a smile as if she’d been invited. She became regarded as common property — an intriguing, unclaimed extra. You could welcome Rose in if you felt like it, listen
to her chatter, pump her for dreadful new stories from home, then send her off to that same home or to somewhere else, with a clear conscience. All care and no responsibility.

No one denied her charm and good looks. Even at six years old. Rose had those tight blonde curls that made you want to bounce the palm of your hand on them. Totty Hanratty wasn’t the only woman who had popped Rose into a hot bath and scrubbed at the knotty, coal-streaked hair just for the pleasure of seeing those curls come out full of light and springy again.

And her skin. Grown men dreamed about it. Pale cream and flawless, not the scruffy, scabby, nondescript stuff proper children flaunted in front of their elders. Rose, freshly washed, had a pink and white delicacy, a dimpled sweetness that melted hearts and encouraged rumours of a mysterious parentage totally unconnected to Jimmy Cork or Rose’s mother.

Wise or discerning people noticed and discussed a fragility, brittle as glass, behind that wide, winning smile, that perky chatter. She might come into your house or office with a cheerful announcement: ‘Hello Mr Carmichael, here I am!’ or ‘It’s me, Rose of Tralee! Can Michael play?’ But if the response was less than welcoming the facade crumpled. Rose would stand, transfixed by even a slight rejection, the famous smile first setting like rock, then bleeding to death in front of your eyes. She would simply wait, looking down, not crying or throwing a tantrum, just waiting there until someone rescued her with a kind word or a biscuit. As if the light went out on her world for a while, and she had not found a way of turning it on again herself.

This response unnerved Denniston people. They learned to welcome Rose properly, to avoid crossing her, even when things disappeared. Little bright things — a glass marble, a blue medicine bottle, a teaspoon, things you would rather have but could do
without — those were the things that disappeared sometimes, after Rose had paid a visit. No one could prove she took money. Sometimes the bright thing reappeared after a few days, sometimes not. People didn’t mention the losses, though — not to Rose or to each other — not until much later. Later, much later, Rose’s thieving became a favourite topic of conversation, but at this time there was a kind of collective will to protect Rose, or maybe to avoid facing her stone-wall act.

Everyone had a favourite story to tell about her. Old Huff McGregor came in to the men’s quarters once after late shift. He felt his way in the dark past the row of sleeping, snoring workers. His hands, reaching for his own bunk, came down on something soft and squirming. Huff thinks it’s some animal come in for the warmth and lets out a great scream that wakes the whole bunkroom.

‘By Christ, you could hear the uproar clear up to the Bins!’ says Huff. ‘Men shouting and flailing around in the black dark. We had a full-scale war in there for a minute, till Straw Nugget gets a candle lit and we see who it is. Little Rose of Tralee! Kneeling up on my bunk ready to run if she could tell where to. Jesus, you’d think the child would choose a safer harbour on a stormy night. She was a tempting sight for starving men, all right, golden curls standing on end in fright, eyes like an owl’s in the candlelight.

‘But the men wouldn’t touch her. Not even Straw or Brando. Not Rose. She’s like a mascot down at the Camp, you know.’

‘So what did you do, then?’ asks Red Minifie, leaning over to fill Huff’s glass. Red knows the story, but it’s a good one and some newcomers in the saloon should learn about Rose.

‘I don’t do nothing. Just tuck her down at the end of my bunk and climb in the top end, keeping well away from the girlie. I’m none too clean after eight hours at the Bins. There’s a bit of a mumble goes around the hut. You know? A good sound, I mean.
The men sort of like the idea that Rose chose their rough draughty old place to hide out in. So Straw Nugget blows out the candle and we go back to our snoring.’

‘And in the morning?’ prompts Red Minifie.

‘Well then, in the morning Rose is still there, curled up under the blanket like a puppy. Sweet and warm. I’m pretending to be asleep still. Late shift, you know? But I’m watching the early shift leave, just in case. Every single one of those buggers comes past my bunk, and most of them reach out towards my Rose. They never touch her, mind you, but you can tell the cracked, grimy old fingers are itching to wrap around those golden curls, or stroke the downy skin …’

‘Get on with it, Huff,’ Red growls, giving him the eye.

‘Keep your hair on, man. You know this is a clean story. So. It gets a bit lighter then, and Rose, who’s slept through all the men’s boots clumping on wood boards, opens her eyes. I’m watching through half-closed eyes. Don’t want to startle her. To tell the truth I’m hoping she’ll settle down again. But she sits straight up, not even noticing I’m there. Out comes the grin. No one can turn it on like Rose of Tralee.

‘What I hadn’t noticed in the dark, see, was the gifts. Rose’s end of the bunk looks like Christmas morning. There’s a carved ship and some other wooden thing, a piece of coal shaped into a face, a square of chocolate. A little book, even — could have been a Bible. Someone put down a crust of bread, only thing he could find. Rose is surrounded by little offerings. Far as I know no one discussed this. Probably every damn man thought his was the only gift sneaked there. I have to shut my eyes for a bit to keep the tears in.

‘When I open them Rose and her treasure have gone, light as a cat, and the hut is just a cold old men’s quarters again.’

Lord Percy’s story was darker. One Sunday he worked his way
down to Jimmy Cork’s end of the Camp looking for small rocks. Borrowed Con the Brake’s barrow for the purpose. Lord Percy believed you could grow vegetables on the Camp if you put up a windbreak, though it seemed the rock wall was Lord Percy’s passion, rather than the few scruffy silver-beet plants that survived. Well, he was down near the Corks’ chicken yard and heard a bit of a to-do. Rose’s mother was chasing a mad chook around the yard.

‘Hard to say which was madder, fowl or fiend, haw, haw!’ Lord P would say.

Rose stood pressed against the fence, looking rather white around the gills. Her mother grabbed the frantic flapping thing by the legs and brought it over to Rose. She would have been only five at the time, not much bigger than the chook and clearly frightened by the squawking and pecking.

While Lord Percy watched, the mother held the chicken towards Rose, shouting at her to grab the silly thing and give her mother a hand for once. Rose shook her head and drew back further. The mother, in a wild fury, swung the bird, clipping Rose on the head with it. Rose, crying, but more quietly than the bird, took the feathery lump as her mother instructed, pinning the wings, and trying as best she could to hold the darting head over the chopping block.

‘The weapon descended,’ Lord Percy would say, his long arms demonstrating the act with lurid embellishment, ‘in a decapitation worthy of the most skilled of executioners, and resulting in a spectacular sanguinary display.’

The head flew into the yard, blood spurted from the neck, and Rose, screaming, dropped her headless friend into the mud.

You’d think that would be the end of it. Bad enough to force a little tot to help in such a gory activity. But no, Rose’s mother had to teach her daughter better. Without a word, she retrieved the
running, headless thing, blood still gouting, and forced Rose to hold it properly, wings pinned again, until the blood stopped and the twitching was over. Rose stood there in the mud, white and trembling, blood all down her smock, until the mother, with a curt little nod that could have meant approval, took the chicken and clumped over to Jimmy’s hut, leaving Rose crying in the yard, and Lord Percy’s patrician heart melting.

‘Naturally, I wished to comfort the little damsel in distress, but the mother, in one of her moods, is not to be crossed, as I have experienced to my discomfort on more than one occasion. It is not a matter for self-congratulation that I turned my half-filled barrow and headed for home sweet home. What could one do?’

Billy Genesis will never tell his story. He was drunk at the time. The mixture of excitement and shame — what he remembers of it — he relives only in his mind.

The miners up at Burnett’s Face have only the one story about Rose. The day she and her mother brought a picnic to Banbury mine, and were surely an influence on Jimmy Cork’s actions that day.