Читать книгу The Mystical Swagman - Gary Blinco - Страница 12

Chapter

2

When lunchtime came, Brennan took his cheese sandwiches and his orange and went looking for a warm place in the sun where he could sit and eat his food.

“Come over here, new boy,” a girl with red hair and and a splash of freckles across her nose called out to him. He recognised her as the first girl to read during the morning class. She beckoned him over to where she sat on a log against the fence. “I want to talk to you.”

Brennan walked over to her slowly. He had not met too many girls before, and he did not like being bossed about by one on his first day at school. She saw his resentment and smiled warmly; the smile cooled his anger at once as he sat on the log beside her. She had a small, pretty face. Apart from his own, her eyes were the bluest Brennan had ever seen.

“My name is Laura,” she said. “I did not mean to sound so bossy, but most of the kids pick on me because I have such red hair; it makes me a bit pushy at times. I wanted to get off on the right foot with you.” She smiled again. “I suppose I wanted us to be friends. I sit a few seats in front of you and I saw how well you read. Some of the students also pick on me because I am good at schoolwork, but I bet you’ll also be good.”

“I’m Brennan,” he said as he rummaged in his school bag for his food, not commenting on her observations.

“What is your other name then?”

“I don’t have another name. Just Brennan.”

“I see,” she said, accepting his answer at once. “Did you like the first part of school?”

“I don’t like school much at all so far; the teacher takes too long to get to the point,” he said as he bit into his first sandwich hungrily. “Why don’t you sit with the other girls? Surely they won’t tease you about having red hair or being too smart? Girls aren’t as cruel as boys are.”

She wrinkled her freckled nose. “Don’t you be so sure about that. Anyhow, I don’t much like girls. They talk about silly things mostly, dolls and boys, or their mothers and babies. I want to talk about schoolwork and books and the big wide world; my parents talk about such things all the time in the evenings. What do your parents talk about?”

“I don’t have any parents,” Brennan said. “I never knew them; I don’t even know what became of them. My aunt Ede looks after me; she always has.”

Only one name and no parents, Laura thought sympathetically. Then she shrugged her shoulders; after all, the boy did not look too unhappy. “Well, what do you and your aunty talk about then?”

“We don’t talk much at all,” Brennan said thoughtfully, pausing to stare at the groups of children who had finished their lunches and were now playing noisily about the schoolyard. “Ede is pretty old and her mind wanders a lot. But she reads to me; that’s how I learned to read myself, by watching and listening to her. I don’t really need her to read to me anymore, but I like it because she makes the stories sound better, and I like being close to her.”

The girl nodded, admiring his openness. Most boys would not admit they liked being close to their parents; and she could relate to his words because her father read to her as well.

The two of them continued to sit and chat, lingering on the log in the warm sunshine, enjoying one another’s company. Magpies and colorful parrots jostled for space in the branches of the tall gums casting mottled patterns over the schoolyard, while a lazy white cloud drifted through the orb of deep blue sky and dragged a little shadow across the grounds. Brennan was beginning to doze off when the bell rang to signal the start of afternoon school. After school, he and Laura walked together to the front gate of the schoolhouse to wait for his aunt to call for him. Ede had promised to meet him there, but she had probably forgotten about it; she was very absent-minded.

“Where do you live?” Laura asked when she saw him looking up and down the road.

“Mariner’s Lane,” Brennan said absently. “I think I’ll make my own way home; Aunty has most likely forgotten all about picking me up.”

“Why, I live just down the road from you, in Anchor Street,” Laura said happily, grabbing his hand. “We can go home together. But we don’t have to walk; quickly, come with me.”

She led him at a trot out into the road towards the rear of a bullock wagon loaded high with bales of wool. The harness chains jingled as it moved slowly along the dusty street, mingling with the snorts and lowing protests of the bullocks which strained under the heavy load of the wagon. The tailboard of the wagon was about two feet above the ground, forming a kind of bench seat. Quickly they scrambled up, their heads bowed so they would stay hidden from the teamster who drove the outfit, and sat watching the receding wheel tracks and the turmoil of traffic in the road.

They passed a man and a pretty lady who smiled at them from a grand, stylish sulky drawn by two brilliant black horses. When Laura crouched low on the tailboard and held her fingers to her lips, the woman smiled again, repeating the gesture in a confidential way. The afternoon traffic was as bad as the morning’s, and the stench of the city had increased with the effects of a hot day; in addition, millions of sticky flies now added to the discomfort of the heat.

When the wagon passed Brennan’s street, the girl grabbed his hand again; and they slipped from the tailboard and dodged swiftly through the traffic of carts and horses to the footpath. It was quieter and much more pleasant in the narrow lanes the farther they travelled away from the main road, and the noise of protesting animals and mixed human voices slowly receded as they neared Brennan’s house. As they walked, they noticed people sitting about on their verandahs, sipping tall cool drinks and smiling at the children as they passed. “I’ll walk with you to your door,” Laura said gaily. “Then I better get on home; my parents worry if I am even a little late.”

They walked together to Ede’s small whitewashed house and found the old lady waiting anxiously at the front gate. “Where have you been all day, Brennan, you bad boy?” she said sharply, her gnarled old hands shaking and her hawk-like eyes peering at him accusingly. “I have been looking all over the place for you.” The boy turned and smiled at Laura, who laughed. “I see what you mean. I’ll see you in school tomorrow.” She ran skipping along the street towards her own house, leaving Brennan to explain matters to his aunt.

They became firm friends after that, and he started to look forward to school just for the opportunity to spend time with her. However, although she was a gifted student, it soon became apparent that Brennan was in a different league altogether. Taking to the lessons with ease, he was soon ahead of every other student in his age group. By the end of the first month he knew and understood the contents of all the books he had been given and had started on the books designated for the upper grades, which he obtained simply by checking them out from the school library. It was then that his education accelerated dramatically, and he soon left the rest of the students, at all levels, in his wake. After a few weeks, he was ahead of the teacher as well.

It was at this point that the school suddenly became boring for Brennan, the work that was supposed to have lasted for years having been assimilated by him in a couple of months. Desperately wanting to advance to the next level of study, he often deserted his own class to sit with the seniors; but the system required him to spend a year in each grade. Trapped, he felt he had no choice but to amuse himself until the lessons again challenged his knowledge.

Gradually Laura and Brennan began to spend more time together outside of school hours. He would visit her house, or she would come to the small cottage in Mariner’s Lane where they would sit on the splintery front verandah and read or talk for hours. Ede had an old rocking chair on the verandah, Laura would sit in it and rock gently while Brennan sprawled on the floor. Sometimes during the long summer evenings they would sit in silence in the growing darkness, savouring the warm night air and looking up at the stars.

One particularly fine Saturday afternoon found Brennan resting on his back on the bare boards, watching the hundreds of butterflies that hovered around the roses in Ede’s flower garden, while Laura sat quietly in the rocking chair, the loose red hair cascading down her shoulders. They had just finished a reading assignment for their school homework, testing one another until each knew he or she could discuss the work with confidence in school on Monday. Now they were just lounging about in the cool of the afternoon, idling their time until supper, and grateful that the daytime flies had departed at last. “You know what I want to do when I grow up and finish school, Bren’?” Laura asked.

“You mean today?” he teased, because Laura changed her career ambitions regularly. “Well, it may be that you want to be a nurse, or a doctor, perhaps even a famous author, actor or ballerina.” He grinned up at her. “Or do you now want to be a barrister like your father?”

“Certainly not,” she said, tossing her flaming red curls and blushing, a bit put out by his teasing. “I honestly don’t know how daddy can be a barrister, standing up in court the way he does and defending people he knows in his heart are as guilty as sin; it just doesn’t seem right.”

“But if only people who were known to be innocent had lawyers, we would not need the courts at all,” he laughed.

“That’s not what I said, and you know it, Brennan,” she scolded. “I’m talking about daddy’s morals here. Sometimes he knows the person he is defending is guilty, but he still fights to get them off. I simply could not do that. Besides, girls can’t become barristers or doctors, can they?”

“They will one day, I hope. But I think you better cross law off your list for now.” Brennan stared past the eves of the verandah’s iron roof into the afternoon sky. “So what do you want to do, then?”

“I think I want to be a teacher of some kind,” Laura said slowly. “Perhaps not a normal school teaching job, but one where I can help people open their minds and learn new things.”

He nodded. “That way you could be any of the things you have considered. First learn the trade yourself, then teach it to other people.”

“Why of course!” she exclaimed. “I never thought of it like that. You really are clever.” A few quiet minutes passed as they watched the weekend traffic. “What do you want to do, Bren’?” she asked at last. “You are so smart, you could be anything you want.”

He didn’t deny it. After giving it some thought, he rolled on to his elbow and stared up at her. “I don’t know, exactly,” he said earnestly, “but whatever it is, I know I will be helping people. Ede has told me that I am to have some special gifts that will come to me in time. I won’t even have to go to the university to learn them, she says they are inside me, a gift from my parents; but I won’t get them until I am older. She says that then she will tell me all about my parents and where I came from, but she can’t tell me when that will be. In the meantime, I just have to wait.” He scrambled up into a sitting position, drawing close to her on the rocking chair. “But I do know that I am going to travel,” he added. “All over this land – but just Australia, I don’t want to go anywhere else. I am going to see all of the places that are in the books, and more. However, if I am going to be doing something to help people, then I will need to be on the move so I can meet them.”

“That sounds so wonderful,” Laura said, her eyes taking on a faraway look as she began to rock gently in the old chair. “I would love to do that. To wake up in a different place every morning, meeting and helping new people everyday.”

A thought struck him. Taking her hand and staring up into her eyes, he said eagerly, “You could come with me. We could travel around together; you said you want to help people as I do. We could be a team.”

Closing her eyes as she tried to imagine what it would be like to travel the countryside with him, Laura absently ran the fingers of her free hand through his untidy hair. “I think that would be wonderful,” she said softly. “Thank you, Bren’. But we must finish school first, before we decide what it is we are going to be that will allow us to travel about and help people.”

He stood up and stretched. “It will come to us when the time is right,” he said simply, matter-of-factly. “What say, in the meantime, we go down to the waterfront and look at the ships? While we’re there, we can get a beef pie and some sarsaparilla from the wagon café on the pier. I’ll leave a note for Ede so she knows not to make supper and won’t worry.”

“Let’s do that!” Laura said. “We can stop at my house on the way and tell Mummy where we are going.” With a smile she added, “Thank you for offering to take me along on your travels, Bren’.”

He smiled in turn, squeezing her hand. “But I would not be taking you,” he said. “We will be going together.”

After he quickly left a short note on the table, they strolled hand in hand down the street towards Laura’s house, where they informed her mother of their plans. Then they stole a ride on a passing dray that took them down the rise to the waterfront, slipping off again when it turned away from the road that led down to the docks. The streets were quiet as they began to walk toward the pier along the dusty lane that snaked its way down the hill towards the water; it was Saturday and most people were resting. Rows of terrace houses stood like sentinels on one side of the lane, and small, pretty cottages adorned the other. People sitting on their verandahs smiled in a friendly way as the two of them passed. At one point a group of drunken sailors staggered by, talking and swearing and completely oblivious to the two children.

“Let’s go down this way,” Laura said suddenly, grabbing Brennan’s hand as she pointed to a narrow path that passed between two cottages. “It looks like it could be a shortcut; I can see the pier down at the end of it.”

They were most of the way down the lane when they heard a loud snarl, and then a huge brown dog suddenly hurled itself to the limits of the steel chain holding it, just short of the low garden fence. A woman screamed and hurried down the steps of her cottage. “Get away from here, quickly,” she shouted to the children as she tried unsuccessfully to subdue the dog. “This is my husband’s hunting dog. It is a trained killer; run quickly before it breaks the chain.”

Laura froze. Brennan pulled at her, trying to draw her away from the danger as the dog became more and more enraged. All at once it broke free and cleared the fence in a single bound, the remains of its chain trailing from its collar. The woman screamed with a new energy, calling frantically for her husband. Laura remained locked to the earth, her eyes wide with terror.

With no other choice, Brennan turned to face the attack. Staring at the charging dog, his mind suddenly focused on what he had to do; and his mental and emotional energy reached out to make contact with the enraged beast. In a cloud of dust the animal’s charge came to an abrupt, slithering halt, only a few yards from Brennan’s feet. There it crouched, growling deep in its throat as Brennan continued to watch it without speaking. Then, slowly, the growls subsided, until finally it was silent. Only now did he speak gently to the animal, soothing the massive creature with his words; while the dog began to whimper softly, edging forward toward Brennan’s feet with its shaggy belly dragging along the dusty path. When it finally reached him, he gently stroked the great, battle-scarred head. “Good boy. There was no need to be so upset, was there? You go on back to your master now; I see he is waiting for you.” And Brennan smiled at the big, rough-looking man staring at him from the garden gate; while the trained killer dog padded back to the man like a timid poodle.

The boy turned back to Laura, taking her hand and leading her down the path to the pier. “You are a strange one, aren’t you?” she whispered at last, and his smile grew even wider.

* * *

Brennan began to wag school soon after that, preferring to wander about the city. On these occasions he would usually visit the library, where he soon discovered that it took him very little time to read a book or manual and internalise its contents completely. Building on his growing knowledge, he began to question everyone and everything around him, often making him an embarrassment and even a threat to Ede’s brother-in-law Arthur, his wife, and the few friends they would sometimes bring along when visiting Ede. To Brennan it sometimes felt as if they thought they could not rely on Ede for stimulating conversation; so they brought their own.

Arthur had become a pompous sort of fellow who spoke often about his money, and the large property on the outskirts of the city that he owned, and his other many business interests. Brennan, however, knew that it was his Uncle John who had originally built up the money and the businesses before he died, and he wondered why Arthur should be so smug about something he had clearly only inherited. He also felt sorry for Ede, who had been given a bad deal because for some reason, her husband’s will had favoured his brother; but who had never shown any ill will against Arthur because of it.

One day, while Ede fussed about making tea and Arthur and some of his friends were sitting around the small table in the kitchen after dinner, sipping port and smoking smelly pipes or cigars, Arthur announced passionately that what the country needed was a new form of democracy. His wife, a thin sour-looking woman, and the assembled friends all nodded knowingly. “But we need to restrict the vote only to those people who have demonstrated an ability to be contributing members of society,” he continued smugly. “Allowing the riffraff and layabouts to vote is the reason we have so many scoundrels in government nowadays.”

Brennan finished his glass of buttermilk and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He had been reading about politics during one of his library visits. “What you propose then, Uncle,” he said clearly, drawing a surprised look from Ede, “is not really democracy at all. Rather, it sounds like a form of selected representation by a particular class, your own to be specific, rather upper class.” He suddenly felt very grown up. “But that would not work. Democracy depends on representation of a wide range of interest groups so that a balanced government can be formed. What you suggest would inevitably lead to an approach that would ultimately act against the interests of everyone, including your own class. Whether you accept it or not, the interests and efforts of all people need to interlock; we all need each other.”

He smiled as his uncle’s whiskers started to twitch. His wife simpered nervously. One of the men laughed out loud, slapping his thigh. “By Jove, Arthur, the boy has you covered there.”

“That child is a smarty pants if ever there was one,” Arthur growled. “He should learn that children are to be seen but not heard.”

Ede moved quickly to offer the tea around, at the same time quietly urging Brennan to return to his books. As he left, the boy thought being seen but not heard a strange idea; but he had observed the reaction of the other adults to his speaking up. He resolved henceforth to keep quiet in the presence of his elders, deciding that one did not necessarily need to show off what one knew. Until he found a use for it, he would keep his growing knowledge to himself.