The Denniston Rose (22 page)

‘Tom,’ says Totty, ‘is opposed to the strike.’

‘Surely not. He’s a man of good sense …’

‘And I agree with him.’

There is a silence in the kitchen as the two spirited women square up. Mary Scobie has the dark energy of a crusader, solid and implacable as a sledge-hammer, ready to drive all opposition into the ground. Totty Hanratty, large with a fourth child in six years of marriage, red-gold curls straggling from an untidy bun, is more of a blast furnace, fiery in her indignation. Totty starts in first.

‘You think you’re a law unto yourselves, you miners up there at Burnett’s Face. Suddenly, out of the blue, there’s a strike. No discussion with the rest of the community. No warning. Overnight the mines are closed. It’s our livelihood too, you know!’

‘All the more reason for you to back us.’

‘Back what? You never even discussed the issues.’

‘I am here to do just that. We have a just cause, Totty.’

‘Oh, I know all about it
now
! Michael brought it back from school. That’s how we glean information here. From the schoolchildren! You huddle together up in Burnett’s Face and forget we are all dependent on each other. And now you expect our charity!’

Mary drives into Totty’s torrent, her voice booming. ‘My dear, we must not let selfish anxieties cloud the real issue. We are fighting unfair oppression. We are fighting for recognition of the working man’s rights! You would surely understand.’

‘Selfish anxieties!’ Totty slaps her hand down on the table and a cloud of flour leaps in the air. ‘My anxieties are for my children, and for this fragile community. If there are no wages paid, who will buy supplies from G.G. Ball’s? Who will buy Mr Dimcock’s cloth or pay poor Mr Holyrood, who has just arrived, to cut their hair? Now that we finally have a plumber, who will employ him?’

‘Listen …’ says Mary, gathering strength like a storm.

‘No,
you
listen to
me
! They will all leave, that will be the result of all this. Walk off the plateau. The miners too. And why not? Life is easier down below, at any rate. Your precious strike will be for nothing but to destroy Denniston. This town that Tom and I have shed blood and sweat to build up these last six years.’

Mary stands. Her stick rings on the wooden floor, underlining each word.

‘Totty, Totty, my girl, you have it all wrong! The town will die if we do
not
strike. The miners will leave if we do
not
stand up for a decent wage and safe conditions. It is the
bosses
you should be arguing with, not the miners. The bosses have cut the hewing rate.
They
have employed unskilled men who don’t know one end of a pick from the other. Your quarrel is with the bosses, Totty!’

Totty rises too, stirs the flour on the range furiously, shakes the ladle at the miner’s wife who stands like a dark force in her kitchen.

‘Mr McConnochie is almost bankrupt, that’s what Tom says. He can’t afford to pay more.’

‘He can’t afford
not to
, my dear. It is false economy to skimp on skilled workers and yet they make the same mistake over and over. Your precious Mr McConnochie is scuttling his own boat, the stupid man.’

‘And the miners are speeding up the sinking.’

‘Ah, good God, Totty!’ Mary beats her own corseted side with a fist, then sits abruptly. Totty stirs flour. Somewhere upstairs a child is singing.

‘You’ll not win,’ says Totty. ‘Eddie Carmichael has gone down to Waimang and to Westport to recruit new miners.’

‘He may recruit
workers
, my dear, but
miners
he will not find.’

‘Are you so sure?’

‘Of course I am! Working underground is a skilled job. You can’t drag men off the street and expect them to hew coal. Eddie’s
recruits will last a week, then run away home again as soon as they are paid.’

Both women are now attacking the sour lumpy flour on the table as if it were the issue to be solved. Mary rakes lines through it with her fingers.

‘This Denniston climate,’ she says. ‘Why do any of us want to stay?’

Totty snorts. ‘I for one would not shift if you paid me. Even when the flour grows mould.’

‘Ah well, Totty my dear, we may not agree …’

‘We do not!’

‘But will you stand by and see the children suffer? Could your principles not take a back seat while you give them a square meal?’

‘They are without food because
your
principles won’t take a back seat!’ But Totty’s voice is softening. ‘There would be ten of them at school? Ten Burnett’s Face children?’

‘Aye, counting Brennan, who often has a midday meal with you anyway, as I well know, despite my sending a good buttie in his satchel!’

‘Well, perhaps,’ says Totty, ‘as long as the men are not out too long. Mrs Dimcock might help. And Bella Rasmussen, poor soul. Feeling is high in the Camp, though. The English miners are not loved.’

‘The feeling is mutual,’ says Mary. Her face breaks into a creaky smile. ‘I had best take my leave before we are fighting over this lumpy flour again. Thank you, my dear. You will not regret helping us.’

At the door she turns to Totty. Totty waits, one hand on the knob, unwilling to let in the elements until the very moment of exit.

‘Do you know someone called Billy Genesis?’ says Mary.

‘Do not get me started on him,’ says Totty, kicking at coal dust that has drifted under the door. ‘It will be worse than the strike!’

‘Brennan brings home stories. About Billy and the mother. And Rose.’

‘Michael too.’

‘Can something be done?’

‘What could we do?’

Both women are silent for a moment. But Rose’s small personal tragedy is too uncomfortable. Mary shakes her head briskly and sighs. ‘We have more than enough to do, without interfering in private matters.’

‘True,’ says Totty, though she will not meet Mary’s eye. ‘True. We must all survive this strike.’

ROSE HOLDS THE doorpost, ready to run. Inside the big workshop Billy Genesis is hitting a metal rod with a heavy hammer. His face is red and his vest sweaty. The scar down his neck bunches and jumps when he moves, like a nasty little animal clinging to his shoulder. Behind him on a high stone fireplace a coke fire is roaring, and Willie Connelly’s older brother is pumping it with bellows to make it roar harder.

Billy looks up and sees her. He says something but she can’t hear because of the banging. Her eyes look up and down, everywhere, but she can’t see the treasure box. She’s been looking for it every day. She thinks Billy Genesis might have hidden her treasure here at the Bins somewhere, maybe in his blacksmith’s shed.

The Connelly boy makes a funny face at her and fools with the bellows. Billy snarls at him and hits him. Then he waves a
hairy arm at Rose and shouts.

‘Out! Go out! Beware of the fire of damnation!’

Rose hates the noise and the fire but she waits until he is banging hard and not watching her. She hops quickly, just two steps inside and looks around all the shelves. For a moment her heart leaps into her throat and she forgets about the noise and fire. She sees it! There it is, a corner of her box, poking out behind a pile of metal things. The wood is winking and golden in the firelight. It’s waiting to be rescued. She skips outside again before Black Billy sees her looking.

Rose hops and dances around the corner. She runs up the steps to Mr Carmichael’s office and knocks on the door.

‘Come in, then!’ he shouts in a rough voice, but when he sees it’s Rose he grins and opens his arms wide. ‘Why Rose, I haven’t seen you smile in a month. Are you feeling better, then?’

‘Yes,’ says Rose.

‘Well then, my little miss, how about tackling this row of dismal figures?’

Mr Carmichael gives her some numbers to add up — a long, long line in his book — and she adds them as fast as she can.

Mr Carmichael whistles. ‘Hey, sweetheart, that’s what I got too.’

‘Is that good, then?’ says Rose in her best business voice.

‘The adding is excellent but the news is bad. Not enough people want coal from Denniston, and not enough miners will hew it.’ But he gives her a piece of date square anyway, that Mrs Carmichael has made. Rose would have liked an apple better; Mrs Carmichael’s cakes are hard.

She looks out the dirty window, down at the tangle of railway tracks. Often these days the Incline is closed but today the coal wagons are coming and going, full ones to the Incline, empty ones
back. She sees John Gantry Junior running the wagons. He looks tiny from up here. While she is watching, Mr Carmichael tests her mental arithmetic.

‘Fourteen take away six?’ he says. ‘Three days’ work at six shillings a day?’ And then a hard one: ‘What is a hundred and sixty-nine doubled?’ Then he says, ‘You’re a walking marvel, Rose: you are only seven years old and already better with figures than most of my men. I would employ you any day of the week.’

‘I’m going to work at the mine when I’m older,’ says Rose.

‘If they don’t close it down first and put us all out of work,’ says Mr Carmichael with a heavy sigh.

Rose looks at the rows of keys hanging on hooks by the door. They all have numbers under them.

‘Test me on the keys,’ she says. ‘What key is this office?’

‘One, of course,’ he laughs, and she keeps asking questions until she knows all the keys and knows that the name of Billy’s shed is the forge and the key is number seventeen.

Mr Carmichael stands up and stretches. ‘Well, Rose, you must run along and let me grapple with these dismal figures.’

He puts a hand out to touch her but she jumps back so he can’t, and he watches all the time while she is going out the door. She can’t take the key.

After tea her mother is sitting at the table, close to the lamp, studying a scrap of paper. Rose is playing with the bolt on the door. There are three metal straps, two on the door and one on the wall. A bar of black metal slides across, and the straps make sort of tunnels for the bar and hold it in place.

‘For goodness sake,’ says her mother, ‘stop all that racket.’

‘My door hasn’t got a bolt,’ says Rose.

‘Just as well or we’d all be driven crazy with the noise.’

‘Why can’t I have a bolt too?’

Her mother looks up. Her eyes are frightening. ‘Be grateful for what you have and shut up.’ Her voice cracks as if she is going to cry.

Rose sits at the table and watches her mother for a while. Eva takes a stub of pencil and draws a line. The paper is covered in short lines crossing and criss-crossing. She looks hard at the paper and draws another mark. Suddenly she slams the pencil down.

‘Ahhh!’ she shouts. ‘We are wasting our time!’

‘Shall I draw it?’ says Rose.

Her mother snatches the paper up and screws it into a ball. ‘You will not, you little thief! Hiding things from your own mother! Ah!’ She looks at what she’s done and smoothes the paper out again. Rose has never seen her mother look frightened before.

‘Rose, Rose,’ she says, ‘I am sick of the bloody gold. Sick of it. Who knows what curse will come down on us? That Scobie curse! To hell with it all.’ She sits with her head hanging above the table like a ropey old floor-mop. Then she sighs. ‘So. You and I, Rose, must move in a different direction. If we have the strength.’

Rose goes to stand by her mother. She waits, but nothing more is said. After a while, when her mother is looking safer, Rose says, ‘Robbers might get in, or murderers.’

‘Whatever are you on about?’ says her mother.

‘If I haven’t got a bolt,’ she says.

Her mother bangs her hand on the table and stands up. ‘Ask your blasted Uncle Billy then — he makes hundreds of the things. What do I know about it?’

She goes into Billy Genesis’s bedroom and puts on a pretty dress. When she sees Rose watching she says, ‘For goodness sake go to bed. Can’t a body dress in peace?’

Rose wants to know who her mother visits in the night. She wants to go with her but she knows her mother will only shout
again if she asks questions. So she goes to her room and puts on her coat and her boots and waits until she hears her mother bang the other door. She listens as her mother’s footsteps go slap slap, softer and softer on the muddy path.

She stands on her clothes-chest to look out the window. Lights are shining in other windows. It’s a clear night. Rose is not afraid of the dark — she likes it, but she is afraid of Billy. She can see no one anywhere all along the Camp, only the dark shapes of the houses and the new hook-man’s pony, Flora, tied to a post by the men’s quarters.

She opens her door quietly, shuts it and runs around behind the great log house in case anyone is looking out. She walks up the path to the Bins, being careful not to kick stones, and trying to keep inside the shadows. Rose is good at not being seen.

The Incline is not running. The railway yards are quiet. A big empty wagon waits all alone on the rails. Rose stands in its black shadow and looks up at the Bins. The light on the wall of the Powerhouse is on. It makes a pool of yellow light on the ground, outside Red Minifie’s saloon. Singing and shouts come out of Minifie’s. Rose thinks Billy will be inside getting drunk. Mr Carmichael’s light is on too. He often works late and sometimes Rose calls in to see him. She walks along a railway track, counting the sleepers, fifteen, and then she runs across the yard in a big circle past Minifie’s. She tiptoes on the iron steps up to the office so no one at Minifie’s might hear.

There is another man in Mr Carmichael’s office with him. The other man is sitting in Mr Carmichael’s chair and they both look angry. The other man is dressed in his good suit and he says, ‘What’s this? Is this one of yours, Eddie?’ when he sees Rose. Mr Carmichael says he is busy tonight and she should go home.

Rose stands right by the key-board. She smiles at Mr Carmichael
and says she thinks she left her shoe-bag under his desk. Mr Carmichael bends down to see and the other man looks too and she unhooks number seventeen and holds it tightly in her hand.

Mr Carmichael frowns and says the bag is not there and anyway surely a shoe-bag could wait until the morning. Rose says her mother is angry that she’s lost it and Mr Carmichael nods and gives her piece of chocolate because he’s sorry she has an angry mother.

The door to Billy’s forge is around the other side of the Bins from Minifie’s. There are no lights here at all, and no houses either. She looks at the door. It is two doors together and they are very big. The two handles are threaded by a chain and a heavy padlock hangs from the chain. Rose reaches up. She can just reach the padlock but the key won’t go in. She rests her arms for a while and tries again. She feels the key slide in and then she hears the click of the padlock opening. She smiles in the dark and thinks of her treasure inside.

But the padlock is stuck in the chain. She pushes up and the padlock bumps against the chain but it won’t slide out. She is too small — her hands won’t reach high enough. She tries again. It’s too hard. The padlock is making a noise and she can hear herself starting to make a noise too. She sits down on the cold stones to rest her arms and to make her crying stop.

In a little while she gets up and walks back around to the other side of the Bins. She tiptoes past the steps to Mr Carmichael’s office and right up to the door of Minifie’s. Someone is singing; it might be Uncle Con the Brake. She can’t hear Billy’s voice. Beside the door is a pile of wooden crates. She lifts one. If she holds it high against her stomach she can keep it off the ground. She starts running but the steps are in the way and she doesn’t see them. Her leg bangs right into the iron step. It hurts and she can’t stop herself crying out, but no one comes. She keeps going.

She puts the crate down under the padlock and climbs up, and this time her hands can do it easily. The padlock slides out of one side and the chain clatters through the handles and falls to the ground. Rose is glad no one is near because the sound is loud. One big door swings open a little until it hits the crate. She steps down, moves the crate back and squeezes through the door.

Inside it is thick black. She can’t see anything at all. Rose waits. Then she can see a faint glow where the fire is. She walks across with her hands out in front, in case there is something in the way. Her hands touch the cold anvil and she feels her way around it. Then her hands touch a sharp-edged metal rod and she picks it up. She pokes at the glow with the rod, raking back the dull coke, and the glow is brighter. She can see a little way. The big bellows are beside the furnace. She heaves the metal tip of the bellows onto the stone ledge, and pumps with the handles like Willie Connelly’s brother did. The fire glows brightly. Rose smiles and pumps again. It’s fun.

She turns now and sees her treasure box. She starts to hum a little song, ‘Mountains of Home’, which Mrs Rasmussen taught her. She goes back to the big door, brings the crate from outside, puts it under the shelf and climbs up. She can reach her treasure! The polished wood feels silky and happy. But when she pulls at her box something falls off the shelf and crashes to the floor. Rose’s heart starts pounding and she stands perched there with her hands quiet on the shelf for a minute. Her hands feel the things that are falling. Her mouth opens in a big O. The things are pieces of latch — the tunnel-shaped straps and the bars just like the one on Billy’s door. She counts four straps and two bars — more than she needs, but some might break — and puts them in the pockets of her coat. They’re heavy. Then she slides her treasure box off the shelf and rattles it gently. Something is inside. Her own treasure. She undoes the top button of her coat and pushes the box down inside. Her
heart pumps fast against the cold, smooth wood. Now she has a sticking-out front just like Mrs Rasmussen. Rose giggles. She can’t stop smiling.

Outside she shuts the doors again. The chain and the padlock are too heavy to lift together. She unhooks the padlock and heaves at the chain. It’s still heavy. Climbing onto the crate is hard with all the things in her pockets and down her front. And the chain won’t go through the handles. She thinks she might leave the chain on the ground but then she thinks about Billy finding out, and she tries again. Link by link the chain slides through. It doesn’t want to go. Rose hates the stupid chain; she wants to scream at it.

Then she hears someone coming. The footsteps are stumbly and once the man falls against the iron side of the Bins and he curses. It’s Billy Genesis. She presses against the door and holds one hand over her mouth to stop any sounds coming out. She’s afraid even to climb down off the crate. She shuts her eyes, facing the doors, and waits in the dark.

Billy crashes against the wall again and this time she can hear him falling right down. He is talking to himself.

Someone else further away shouts, ‘Billy, you addle-pate, that’s not the way home!’

Rose hears the other man — it might be Lord Percy — bumping around and banging against the wall himself. She hears one of them being sick. She keeps her eyes shut. Her treasure box is slipping down inside and she hopes the belt of her coat will hold it.

The two men are going away. Their grumbling voices grow faint. Rose slides down the door and sits on the crate for a while. Her hands are shaking from holding the chain still. She blows on them until they are quiet. Then she climbs up again and now her hands will do everything right. It’s magic. Her treasure is helping her. The padlock slides through as if it’s buttered, and she can snap
it shut. She rolls the crate along in front of her until it’s around the corner. She runs across the yard and when she passes the great rubbish heap she throws the key into it.

Rose runs like a crab, holding on to all her things with her elbows and hands. The pieces of latch rattle in her pockets, and her treasure sings little tunes, clink clink, inside the box.

Behind Conrad the Sixth’s tomb she stops and crouches. The stones are sharp and cold when she runs her hands over them. She knows there is a loose stone — she felt it last time she was sitting here. Mrs Rasmussen won’t let her into the log house now, but sometimes Rose sits and talks to the dead baby, Conrad the Sixth. Mrs Rasmussen can’t see her if she’s behind the tomb.