Читать книгу Landtakers: The Story of an Epoch - Brian Penton - Страница 18

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Twelve convicts lived in the lags' hut. They slept on heaps of straw and ragged blankets spread over the floor, which was foul with spit. The stench of the place suggested not merely filth but that utter abandonment of every physical decency that is the last sign of despair.

Three men were sitting at the table--Joe Gursey, the blacksmith; Red, the butcher and general rouseabout; and one of the shepherds named Jimmy Coyle. Coyle and Gursey were arguing. As their movements fluttered the flame of the slush lamp, features flicked out of the darkness--a wart-crusted ear, a yawning mouth, a naked chest, arms, legs.

Coyle pointed through the door. "There's a cart with a month's tucker. We've all got the bands on. And you don't want to rob it. Getting soft, eh, Joe?"

"No softer than I was when I first met you."

"You weren't a crawler in those days, Joe."

"I'm not one now."

"Get along with you! You're that meek the boys'll be calling ye Holy Joe next."

"So we will, too," spoke up Feeny from the darkness. "Holy Joe the Whiddler." There was a laugh from half a dozen of the men.

"Call me what you like," Joe said, repudiating them with a wave of his hand. "But you won't make me touch a grain of that corn."

"And for why?" asked Coyle slyly.

"Because I don't want to get done again for a crack."

Coyle laughed sarcastically. "Did ye hear that boys? He doesn't want to get done for a crack. But what about us?" He tapped Gursey's shoulder. "Answer me this, Joe. Did you or did ye not guts up a dollop of that jumbuck I drove off Flanagan's last week?"

"That's not the point at all."

Coyle smiled. "I'll tell you how it is, boys. Joe's all there when it's somebody else's neck in the squeezer. But when it's likely to be his own, he tells ye the crack's a bad ha'penny."

"Ay, that's how it seems," they agreed.

Gursey faced them. "Think, can't you! He starts starving you all of a sudden. He won't give you tucker this morning. And in the night he leaves the cart out under your nose. Why, d'you think?"

There was a sound of heads being scratched in the darkness and much uneasy rustling among the straw.

Mark Scuggan spoke out for the convicts who had been silent so far. "Maybe 'tis as Joe reckons, Jimmy--a trap. If so be it is, I haven't got the bands on that bad I can't wait a bit longer."

"Another whiddler," Coyle sneered.

Mark Scuggan thrust his face into the light, a very small grey face in a wide fringe of white beard, and went on in a quavering Quakerish voice, "Nay, nay, Jimmy Coyle. You be a terrible scamp these days, callin' all honest men by suchlike names. And what's more, you be downright criminal to use such words to Joe. He's no whiddler, and well do you know it."

"Aw, stow your whid, you old loon," Coyle muttered.

"As for who's the loon," said the old man calmly, "'tisn't far to look. You haven't been in your right mind since the day began to come for Joe to get his Ticket. If some would make bold to call him Joe the Whiddler to his face, many more might think the same of ye behind your back. For 'tis plain as the fingers on your hand that ye'd destroy yourself to drag him down with ye." He nodded reproachfully and slid back into his straw.

Coyle smiled bitterly. He was a man about the same age as Gursey, with sardonic lines about his thin mouth, fine hands, a good Roman nose, and something of the same passionate energy that distinguished Gursey from the stolid and indifferent convicts around. He exchanged a look with Gursey--a nasty look on both sides.

But the lags had had time by now to think about what Gursey had said. Even those who did not like him were inclined to listen to him: they trusted him, which was more than they did each other; probably for the same reason they disliked him--because he was different from them, his hatred a kind of ecstasy, his hopes for the future when he should be free a fanaticism and a faith. "Ay, ay," they grumbled. "Maybe. . . ." They were pretty hardened to hunger by worse places than Murrumburra.

It was nearly midnight. Through the cracks in the walls light glowed from the dingo fires. In the farthest corner Mickey snored and Pete groaned fitfully.

Coyle gave Gursey a malicious smile and went to the door.

Nervously Gursey watched him.

Gursey was a small man, below medium height, with that frail, fleshless kind of body that is often the most enduring. Two years in the mines on the Coal River, where the men came up only on Sundays--flogging-day--had left him with a peculiar, rickety pallor, and as a legacy of the punishment he got for escaping from Moreton Bay he had a tic in the right side of his face and a leg that dragged as he walked. His hair was white and he had a white, snowy beard, which he chewed nervously. His body was horribly cut about from the nape of his neck to his waist. His fiery little eyes, set close together, flickered in their deep sockets like beetles burrowing into his skull, giving the impression of shrewd and incessant watchfulness. His voice was high and thin, like the yap-yapping of a terrier, which his sharp features made him curiously resemble, and as he talked he kept jumping up and thumping the table or walking up and down waving his hands in jerky gestures, as though beset by wasps. Impatience, exasperation, even frenzy, were his normal emotions. Transported for seven years for agitating for higher wages in the new mills in Manchester, his constant fierce rebellion against "The System" had kept him in servitude for fifteen years. At this time he must have been about thirty-five years old.

His attention was distracted from Coyle for a moment by the mutterings of Red, who was counting the devils that were always trying to get round behind and strangle him. One of the lost souls. Nobody knew where Red came from, how long ago, or why. When anyone asked "Tell us how you was boned, Red," he just stared, and had long ceased to know that he was in prison at all. He had a bullet head and a nose smashed flat on his face. The only person he ever talked to was Gursey, who had been with him in one prison-yard or another for nearly ten years. The lags kept a sharp eye open when he was about, for he was likely to see one of his devils escaping into their pockets. Then he would fling them down and strip them naked and pummel them unconscious in a flash. A hulking and dangerous brute of whom an unscrupulous man could easily make deadly use.

Coyle returned from the door and sat down beside him. "Red," he whispered, with one eye on Gursey. "There's five gallons of Bengal in the dray, Red."

Red glanced at him with an absent look and glanced away immediately to swipe at the empty air.

Coyle nudged him and began to sing softly:

"Cut your name across me backbone, Stretch me skin across yer drum, Iron me up on Pinchgut From now to Kingdom Come; I'll eat yer Norfolk Dumpling Like a juicy, Spanish plum, Even dance the Newgate Hornpipe If ye'll only gimme rum!"

The old song seemed to convey more to Red than Coyle's words. He grinned and wiped the back of his hand thoughtfully across his mouth, chuckled, then punched Coyle in the chest. "Ye Kilmainham rat, where is it?" he demanded.

"In the dray," Coyle told him. "Waitin' for ye."

"His dray?"

"Yes; the Cove's dray."

Red brought his two fists down on the table again, making the lamp jump and splutter so that the faces of the men on the floor were completely lighted for a moment. "I'll scuttle his nob with me fist!" he roared. "I'll choke the lamps out of him. I'll--"

Gursey shook him violently. "Stow your whid." Turning on Coyle, he demanded: "What did you tell him that for, damn you?"

Coyle cocked an eyebrow. "And why not?"

"Because you knew the whisper of it'd put him off the hooks so there'd be no holding him back! Wasn't that it?"

Coyle shrugged. "There's no pleasing you, Joe. What do ye want?"

"I don't want that."

"No?" Coyle looked incredulous. "And here's me thinkin' all this time you must've made it up with the limejuicer to do just that and nothing else."

"Well, you're wrong."

Coyle made a long face. "Can you tell me why you've been feeding this one up like a fighting cock, then, and living on the husks and bones yeself? Can ye? Maybe you haven't been putting it into his head the Cove's got a couple of red devils ready to drop on him, eh?"

Gursey glowered, opened his mouth to speak, but stuffed the end of his beard into it instead.

Coyle laughed in his face, then turned to the convicts, who had raised themselves on their elbows again, roused like Red by the mention of rum.

"You, Feeny," he demanded, pointing at Gursey, "are ye going to let this lily-livered damned whiddler come the white rhino over you when there's Bengal asking ye to lift it?"

Feeny scratched his head and looked doubtfully at the rest, who looked doubtfully back, each waiting for the other to make up his mind. "No, I won't, neither," Feeny grumbled. "Only . . . well, I'm wid ye if the rest is."

Coyle raised the lamp. "Who isn't?"

The light fell on the faces of those nearest the table, toothless, bony, scarred and sunbaked faces with tangled beards and wrinkles that might have been cut out with haphazard blows of the chisel. There was Jake Henn, a London footpad, with a red hole where his left eye had been knocked out. There was Nigger Jack. There was Mark Scuggan, the old man, perpetually cringing as though expecting a blow. There was Hoppy Charlie, one side of his face shrunk to the bone, the other swollen out with toothache. There was Flash Harry, who had worn Cossack trousers and jewelled brooches in his time, his ribs sticking out through the rags of a dirty jacket now. They rubbed their chins thoughtfully, peered at each other, grinned doubtfully. Rum!

Scuggan looked uneasily at Gursey, licked his lips, then turned his eyes away. "Well . . . hmn . . . if 'tis rum you said . . . well--"

The others stirred.

"Yes," said Jake Henn. "Rum might be worth crackin' a load for. How much'd you say? Five gallons." He glanced round, trying to work out what his share would be. "Well, sayin' that everybody was in, too. . . ."

"Ay, ay," the rest agreed.

Coyle glanced questioningly at Gursey.

He turned his back on them and beat away his invisible horde of wasps. "Hang yourselves, then," he snarled. "But there won't be a whiff of the stuff on me in the morning for McGovern to sniff out."

"Did ye hear that?" Coyle asked.

There was an argument on the floor. It was settled by Feeny calling "No dirty scabbing tricks now, Joe. Flog one, flog all. That's our motter."

"Ay, ay."

Gursey turned on them. "Of course," he snapped. "You're in here for years yet. I won't do it."

"He won't do it, he says," Coyle told them aside.

"Damn and blast his Ticket, I say," Feeny growled.

"You hear what the boys say?" Coyle conveyed it to him.

Gursey spat at his feet. "Swine. You don't give a damn for the rum, either."

"Oh, ho! And don't I? Just you see, Joe, me boy." He strode to the door and looked out.

Red followed him anxiously, smacking his lips and muttering.

"Shake a leg now, lads!" Coyle called to the men after surveying the yard and the sky. "Oliver's just getting up in the trees."

The convicts rustled out of the straw, stood hesitating round the table, looking at Gursey.

Gursey jumped off the bench and confronted them. "Think what you're doing. Didn't I tell you it was a trap?"

"That was only tucker," Feeny said. "This is rum. If it's scared ye are, we ain't."

"Yes, I'm scared," Gursey said. "And you--you're scared, too. You've got nothing to look forward to. You've always been trying to get shot or hanged. That's why you've escaped and beaten up soldiers and tried to strangle each other. It's despair. That's all it is." He beat frantically on the table and a wild light came into his eyes. "But can't you see, you fools? You have got something. You have. You have!" He waved his hand towards the door, beyond which was the scrub where dingoes were howling to each other. "It's yours. Yours. Can't you understand? In two, three five years you'll be out of this muck and misery. Outside you'll find a country. Yes, it's ours. These tit-sucking limejuicers, they'll go back home; but we'll stay. It's all poverty and jails for us in England. We'll begin again here. No more empty guts, no more--"

"Aw, stow it!" Feeny cut in. "Ye're never through wid the talkin'."

"Only wait," Gursey went on, brushing him aside. "The day will come if you wait. It will. It will. But if you don't wait you'll just rot here till you die." He backed against the door.

"You and your day!" Coyle said.

Mark Scuggan piped up in a quavery voice. "A b'lieve 'ee, Joe. That I do. But come three years I'll be on the offal dump, so 'tisn't much use me thinkin' what will be. Whereas a pannikin of rum in me hand now. He, he!" He laughed nervously.

Feeny thrust Gursey aside. "Ye'll drink the stuff when we bring it to ye or by Christ we'll make a hole in ye to pour it in! Stand away!"

Gursey recovered himself against the table and sat down while the lags crowded through the doorway.

Scuggan lingered a while. "'Tis that big sweep McGovern troublin' you, I see," he said sympathetically.

"No, no. I don't care a damn for him."

"Who could trouble you more than these wild beasts, then? Not Cabell, surely."

Gursey took the end of his beard between his teeth. "Yes," he said. "Cabell!"

The old man nodded. "Ay. A b'lieve. He's an artful one. God made 'em both and Devil brought 'em together. . . ."

Inside the dark homestead humpy McGovern slept as he always did, sucking up great gulps of air.

Cabell awoke soaked in sweat. He had been dreaming. He was locked up in the humpy, beating a dog with McGovern's stockwhip. It was pitch dark and all he could see was the dog's eyes, which glanced from side to side, but all the time came nearer. Suddenly there was a burst of mad laughter and the dog sprang. . . . He was back in the cemetery at Three Barrow Down, where his mother was buried, watching a funeral. Only it was his own funeral. His father was there in a black coat, and all his brothers. They had red beards. They were bending over and spitting into the coffin. He looked down. It was himself, but he had the legs of a dog. The coffin began to fall, fall, fall. . . . He was running along labyrinthine gullies in the ranges behind the homestead, looking for his mother, who was lost. He had heavy irons on his legs. The dog was following. He was afraid to move lest the rattling of the irons attracted the dog. But he must move. He must. He must. . . .

One of the dogs at the homestead end of the pens barked. The watchman cursed it quiet, and again the only sound was the drone of mosquitoes.

Through the window Cabell saw the first tender radiance of the rising moon. A black bunya pine was fossilized in the ultramarine sky. He felt miserable and heavy with a foreboding of evil--overtones of his nightmare. Burying his face in his arms to protect it from the mosquitoes, he tried to sleep. But the dog began yapping again. He climbed from the bunk, picked up a piece of wood, and crept out to drive it away. The dog was yapping, not at the moon, but at the dray, a grey blur in the middle of the yard. It sensed Cabell and trotted back to the pens and lay down.

He was just turning away when his quick ear caught the sound of movement in the darkness. Immediately the sound was repeated, and clearly came an angry whisper. When his heart quietened down a little he had first an impulse to wake McGovern, which he checked at once, then an impulse to get his pistols from under the bunk and see for himself. He climbed through the window and got into the scrub. In a minute or two he was standing in the shadows a few yards from the lags' hut, near the fence. Figures crouched whispering behind this. Four men were working at the cart, pulling the bags about hurriedly in search, he understood, of the rum, handicapped by having to keep on the side farthest from the homestead for fear of being seen.

His hands were clammy. He was afraid to move, and the mosquitoes bored into his ears, his eyelids, crawled up his wide nostrils. His gloom persisting, the dream melting into this present experience in a way that baffled his efforts to separate them and assure himself that he was awake, he realized at the same time, as a curious fact, that he could easily burst out laughing if he let himself go. But at this point action became imperative. He twitched all over, nerves tugging like tight wires in his flesh. But prudence restrained him from stepping out to present his pistols at their heads. He backed towards the humpy to awaken McGovern. But he had not reached the edge of the scrub when a new idea came to him, making his heart leap up in his throat again. Minutes passed while he stood thinking about it. The idea vanished after a while. He came to and found himself pondering a heavy scent of clematis, white vines of which trailed from the trees around him. It suggested a childish prayer. He wiped his hands dry on his trousers, said the prayer over to himself, and began to feel his way back through the scrub again.

The men were gone from the cart. He saw them climbing over the fence in a hurry, then silhouetted against the light as they entered the hut. His courage returned in the rush of disappointment. He was cursing to himself for a great opportunity lost when voices broke the silence. They began in mutters and grew to shouts.

Mickey's voice rose above the rest. "Damned if I will! Ain't it like St Gabriel himself I am to ye, the way I'm watchin' over ye by hidin' the pisin."

"Choke him, Red." This from Feeny.

There was a scuffle.

"Say it or I'll draw yer like a fowl." This unmistakably from Red--a crazy voice.

"Not if ye sit there till ye rot on me."

Sounds of heavy blows, grunts.

"Leave him, Red. Ye can't hurt him. There's no time. Try the lad."

Another outburst of shouting, then the boy's voice saying wildly, "I don't Red. S'elp me God. I was boned when they loaded. Mickey hided it, he did."

"Well, off comes yer shirt for a start," Red muttered with a frantic kind of glee.

A horrible scream tore layers of imaginary flesh off Cabell's shoulders. He guessed that they had ripped the boy's shirt off the blood-caked back.

The scream died in a long moan. All the dogs howled horribly, too, and the dingoes answered them and the curlews began piping in melancholy agitation by the river. The watchman came out of his box, whistled his dogs in, and prudently retreated to the farthest end of the pens.

"Take it easy, Red," somebody said. "He'll have a fit on yer."

"Oh, stop him, stop him!" Scuggan's trembling voice protested. "Are you all loony?"

Another scream, longer and wilder than the first.

"Don't ye like the taste of salt, then?" Red said. "Ah, but ye've got a fine bloody back to rub it in."

Another silence while the boy controlled his sobbing. Then, "I'll show yer," he whimpered.

An audible gasp of relief came through the door, and an exclamation rather like disappointment from Red: "I hadn't hardly started."

Cabell relaxed against the tree and wiped sweat out of his eyes.

The four figures came through the door again, supporting Pete between them. He was breathing hard.

They had just got him over the fence when the moonlight broke through the trees and struck across the door of the humpy. Whether Pete thought he saw McGovern standing there or whether it brought back memories of the scene of the previous evening, he dug his heels in the ground suddenly, gave a third scream, and began struggling.

Echoes threw back a scream more bleak and bloodcurdling.

The men hesitated a second, then turned and fled for the hut, leaving Pete in Red's hands.

Gursey rushed out into the yard, leapt the fence, and flung himself upon them, clawing the madman's fingers from Pete's throat, kicking him, punching. "You'll wake them, you fool," he panted. "Get back to the hut. Quick!"

Cabell, too, was frozen by the scream and held his breath, expecting McGovern to appear. But he came to quickly and, burying his teeth in his lip, stepped out before them, his pistols glinting in the moonlight.

Gursey gave one look and was over the fence and out of sight in an instant. Red automatically lumbered after him. But the boy was petrified. He backed slowly away for ten yards before he could make his legs turn and run. Then Cabell was on him. They came down heavily on the ground together.

Pete's strength returned in a cat-like frenzy.

"Shut up, curse you!" Cabell hissed. "You'll wake McGovern." But in the end he had to crack the lad on the head with the butt of his pistol.

The light went out in the lags' hut and the tense silence of listening was over the place.

Cabell fought down a wave of weakness, dragged the boy under the trees, then crept back to McGovern's window. Heavy breathing reassured him. He brought a bucket of water, and in a few minutes the boy was sitting up.

Cabell shook him. "After another trip to Moreton Bay, are you?" he asked in a sardonic idiom learnt of McGovern.

Pete rubbed his head. "It warn't me, master. I didn't. S'elp me God I didn't."

"It doesn't matter now," Cabell said. "I'll leave you to McGovern in the morning."

Pete looked as though he might faint, so Cabell threw the rest of the water into his face. "Listen," he said. "I'll give you this one chance."

Pete cringed away.

"Tell me where my sheep go to."

"I don't know nothin' about your sheep," Pete grumbled. "I told you before."

"I couldn't get the ribs thrashed out of you before."

Pete was silent. Then he began to weep. "I can't, master. I can't. They'll do me in."

"Who?"

"Them that's on the racket."

"Do you in, how?"

"Baptise me in the river."

Cabell dragged him to his feet. "I'll ask you again at counting out. Think about it."

Pete staggered off dizzily. The moon was well up now, dappling the yard with deep shadows.

Cabell walked back to the cart, tidied the load, put a fallen sack in place and some spilt cobs into the sack, tied the tarpaulin down, and returned to the humpy.

Back in his bunk, he emerged from a prolonged fit of shivers to a triumphant feeling of an enterprise miraculously launched.