Читать книгу Landtakers: The Story of an Epoch - Brian Penton - Страница 10

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Although Murrumburra was only forty miles from Moreton Bay, the journey took a good four days by bullock-waggon at that time. For the first two days after they left the settlement Cabell gave Mickey and the bullocks no peace, he was so anxious to be back with his sheep; but on the third day he became silent and morose and let them idle along at their own pace. He even began making excuses to stop on the road, so that when they camped on the fourth evening they still had twelve miles to do. The fact was that he wished to put off the moment when he would see McGovern again. Matters had come to a head between them.

Cabell's outburst at Moreton Bay was only one of many symptoms of a crisis. He felt the spur of two impulses--the one urging him to throw up everything and return to England and the security of Owerbury, the other driving him to face the problems of his life, which was desperately confused. The first impulse worked upon him with all the fascination of the gracious memories from which it sprang--memories of peace and happiness in the lovely vale of Owerbury. The second was charged with only the bitterness of his anger and pride; it showed him that the one way to escape an ignominious return to the charity of his aunt and the hatred of his brothers was to force himself upon this alien and ugly land. At this moment he stood hesitating on the mystic line that separates youth from manhood, looking back rather wistfully, looking forward fearfully, for though the ordeal awaiting him would make him a cunning and sinewy man, it had to be faced and endured by the frightened boy.

All that was most forbidding in the life round him centred upon the character of McGovern, the superintendent of Murrumburra. The personality of this greedy, swaggering, bloody-minded Currency Lad (as native-born whites were called) had travelled along with them, for they could think and talk of nothing else.

The boy Pete was in a high fever and his groans awakened Cabell at night.

"What's the matter wid ye at all?" Mickey demanded, sitting up and kicking him.

"It's me back," the boy moaned.

"Yer back, is it? Well, if ye still know it's yer back and it doesn't feel like yer back's yer insides there's nothin' the matter at all wid yer, darlin'," Mickey told him. "Tell me, will ye? Can ye feel the bare bones stickin' up under yer shirt, can ye, like an old skeleton?"

"No, Mickey."

"So ye can't. Well, they didn't flog ye at all then, and if I tell that to the Cove he'll up with his tape, he will, and put a flamin' big rut in yer lights with one wallop'd make the Devil shiver his teeth to bits and him sittin' in the middle of the furnace of Hell."

The boy shuddered.

"There's a man!" Mickey said. "Mind ye, he's lazy, and that's all'd save him makin' ye into a mash for the pigs."

With the suffering one's morbid interest in suffering, the boy asked, "Did he ever flog you, Mickey?"

"Now ye're askin' somethin', and the answer's he did," Mickey said proudly, rising out of his blanket. "It was that time at the Limeburners' when he was a lobster." He shook his head. "That was a place. Ye had to fight the rats and maggots for yer tucker, and after that the dirty floggers'd give you fifty every time they just thought of ye, for the things ye'd be after doin' if ye had a chance. Then they'd send ye into the sea with a sackful of lime on yer bloody shoulders. Ye'd hear the gazebos singin' out that time, and it was somethin' to sing out about, I'm tellin' ye."

He took out his pipe, lit it with an ember from the fire, and chuckled. "But I had them fine boys beat. They flogged and flogged till the sweat runnin' off their faces near sizzled when it hit me back, but not a one of the big galoots could break my hide. In them three years I got that many strokes ye'd be near three years addin' them together."

"You must've had a terrible thick back," Pete said.

"Why, didn't the biggest doctors come up from Sydney to set eyes on it?" Mickey boasted. "They said it ought to be put behind a glass case."

"Was it McGovern that broke it?"

"That's what he did, the big brute. For one Sunday the boys had the bands on that bad they was they didn't care at all if the Old Cove was the Old Toaster or what. So they up and smashed in the sentry's mug with one swipe of the shovel, grabbed ahold his musket and run into the store, barred the door and shouted to the Old Cove to go hang himself and worse, the way you'd wonder they had the nerve and every mother's son bound to be lashed bare for each word he spoke that day. Well, in a few minutes the Old Cove rushes up, firing off his pistol like he was in the thick of a battle at Waterloo, and shouts that if we come out hell hang us and if we don't he'll shoot us through the door, the which he does, killin' Tommy the Rat dead as a doornail and blowin' off Tim Sheeny's nose clean into the tin of molasses I'm busy gettin' on the outside of."

Mickey wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and licked his lips.

"Be the Holy, that was a feed-up, with all them lobsters bangin' on the doors the way ye'd wonder the grub didn't stick in them lags' gissards from fear. But they'd made them doors so thick to keep us out they couldn't get in themselves now and we just had to sit there snug as turkey-cocks, ready to bust in fifty little pieces with the vittles beginnin' to swell inside, if anybody so much as stuck an elbow into us."

Mickey took a deep breath.

"Then just as old Shake Brown was sayin' if there was a bit of a burick on his knee he wouldn't change with the Queen herself, there's a rorty great explosion gives me the scare of me young life, so's before I know what's happenin' at all I'm as empty as the priest's saucepan in Lent, and there's old Shake Brown, arse-up in the flour barrel, kickin' like a two-year-old, with the top of his head lyin' on the floor among the syrup and the sultanas. One of them sneakin' lobster rats had come crawlin' over the roof to get a pot at us through the skylight, but the very same instant Gilegan--the same was hanged next week--ups with the musket and brings that lobster down head first on top of us. It's as safe as the Pope's poodle we thought we was then, but. . . ."

He glanced round at the darkness. "What d'ye think I hear?" He bent forward and whispered behind his hand, "Himself."

"McGovern?"

"Sure. He was up on the roof and the Old Cove was shouting to him 'Get them hangman's carcasses out and I'll make ye a sergeant on the spot.'

"'Ay, ay, sir!' he says. 'I'll have 'em out in two ups,' says he.

"'Don't ye want no weapons, me man?' says the Old Cove.

"'I got me Tabby,' says he. 'Me dear Tabby. It'll scamper them rats.' And he laughs. But I don't know him then, so I take no notice and goes on havin' a shinnanikin with Punch the Nigger over a ham-bone he's got ahold the one end of, when suddenly I looks up and sees his face, with its beard the like of gold on fire in the sun, grinnin' straight down as if he was Nick himself havin' a squint at the bottom of the burnin' lake to see who he could stick the fork into. And that grin gives me such a shock I lets go the bone and just looks.

"'Aha, me hearty,' says he, 'ye're the one I'm after.'

"'Me?' I says. 'What for'd ye be after me? I ain't done nothin'.'

"He just chuckles. You know that way he chuckles?"

"Yes!"

"Well, at that Phil Finey and Ginger Dubbs--the same was topped the next week along with Gilegan--they lets fly with the muskets, and when I looks up again there he is still, lookin' down and grinnin' at me.

"'Hey!' I says, puttin' a handful of flour into me gob by accident, 'go away, darlin'. 'Tis no use ye sittin' up there, or these blissid murderers'll bring ye tumblin' down on me in a minute.'

"'Tumblin' down I'll be,' he says, 'and tumblin' up again to skin ye like a new potato.'

"At that the boys laugh hearty and go back to their tucker, except Dubbs and Finey, that've started loadin' up again. Then all of a sudden he roars 'Look out, I'm comin',' and with that gives a mighty great lep on to me, near brainin' me on the spot, takes me under his arm, jumps on a barrel, and heaves me through the skylight, all as quick as a snake's wink. He's half through after me when Ginger lets fly and blows his right sole off. Then three of the others get a hold on his legs, but one gets his faced bashed to smithereens, the next's knocked senseless, and the third gets off easy with a broken shoulder. By this he's out on top of me, tears off me shirt, straps me up to the flagpole, pulls the cat out of his belt, and spits on his hands."

Mickey sighed.

"And that's the end of me power and glory, for the hulkin' great galoot near cut me liver out with the first whack, he did and all. And after twenty he looked like Red the Butcher. And after a hundred you could hear them old rogues spewin' up their hearts all over the store. And after that I don't know except what I was told. They reckoned that me two boots was squelchin' like I'd had me feet in the water when they led me off. And what's more, there was enough bits off of me scattered round the store to feed a hungry dingo."

"It must've been a terrible sight," Pete said weakly.

"It was a sight ye'd never see before nor since," Mickey said, stroking his beard. "Why, it broke up that revolt in three minutes when the Old Cove yells out 'Them what don't come out by the time I count fifty'll be flogged three hundred by McGovern, and them that come out'll be flogged three hundred, not by McGovern (that's them that don't get hanged).' But he didn't say that last bit loud enough to hear, so they all come out, lookin' like they'd been shot out of a cannon, instead of enjoyin' the only bust-up they'd ever had in their lives, God bless 'em. There now!"

They were silent for a while, then Pete asked, "Did he get made a sergeant all right then?"

"Sure, he did, too."

"I nearly have a fit just to look at him," Pete said.

"You!" Mickey spat. "His Honour'd hardly take any notice of a bit of a louse the likes of you. He might just let fly a kick at ye, and that'd be all." He knocked out his pipe and threw a piece of wood on the fire. "'Tis a fight he's always after stirrin' ye up to, the way he'll be able to smash yer face in with one hit'd knock a bullock down. It's like I was meself before he broke up me back for me. It's a change. Och! it's hanged ye'd be for a change, and cheerfully."

Cabell lay stiff as a poker, listening to Mickey's whining Irish voice. When the old man was snoring again he rose and went to the cart for a nip of rum from the cask they were taking up to McGovern. He poured out a second drink and took it to Pete, who looked at him doubtfully for a moment before he grabbed the pannikin and drained it.

Cabell sat down beside him and poked the fire into a blaze. Big-winged nightbirds flew across the stars and settled in the trees with forlorn cries. The bullocks splashed about in the mud of the drying river and rattled their horns together. Possums and bandicoots squabbled in the depths of the scrub. But these noises were the merest scratches on the thick silence of the night, the velvet night of the Australian bush, impenetrable, lonely and sad.

Pete was shivering. He lay with all his weight on his elbow, straining to keep the shivers out of his back.

"How old are you?" Cabell asked.

"Twenty-three years, master."

"How long have you been here?"

"Five years, master."

Cabell looked at him closely. His features hung down, his weak chin, his swollen lips, the bags under his eyes, his ears that looked like pieces of wet cardboard. At the same time his eyes--one had a slight squint--stared up at Cabell watchfully, glancing away on either side every few seconds.

A picture of a man thrashing a dog with a stick flashed into Cabell's mind. Frowning at the fire, he failed to account for this sudden return of an old memory. It came of an incident that had made a deep impression on him when he was quite young. He was out driving with his mother one day when they came upon a man beating a dog in a ditch. The dog was making no sound, but it was shivering and gazing up at the man, glancing away quickly on each side every now and then. When his mother leant out of the carriage and protested, the man took off his cap and explained that the dog was a mongrel from the village that had been chasing the deer in Lord Winburn's park. As soon as the carriage drove on, Cabell's mother promising to see Lord Winburn about it at once, the man had replaced his hat and picked up his stick and had begun beating the dog again, heavily, methodically. Then suddenly a strange thing happened. The dog let out a fearful wail and leapt at the man's throat. They had to stop the carriage and run back. He was frightfully torn about and nearly died.

Cabell looked uneasily at the crazy lad.

"Didn't you kill somebody?" he asked.

"I did me old man in, master--in a fit."

"Do they come often, these fits?" Cabell asked, and at once wondered angrily why he had asked such a question, but insisted, "Do they?"

"When I'm started, all on a sudden, that's when they come."

"Are you very sick now?"

A spasm of shivers rattled the boy's teeth. "I'm afeared, master," he whispered. "I'm afeared."

"Be quiet, you fool," Cabell said angrily, glancing round at the darkness. "Go to sleep, why don't you?"

But they sat close together watching the fire and waiting for the grey dawn to filter through the trees.