Читать книгу The Mystical Swagman - Gary Blinco - Страница 13

Chapter

3

Sometimes Brennan liked to get out of the city and visit fringe of bush land covering the high ridges over looking the harbour. Today he followed a narrow animal track that snaked up the hill until eventually the path disappeared altogether and he was forced to push his way through the bush. At the top of the ridge he found a private little clearing that looked out over the sprawling city and the glassy, picture-book image of the harbour. Squatting on the rocks, he looked down on the sailing ships that were moored against the key. The water was still and crystal-clear, and the ships looked like tiny ornaments sitting on a glass tabletop. He watched the fishing boats coming through the heads, their keels low in the water with the weight of the catch.

It was quiet on the ridge in the mid-morning. The sounds of the bush were unobtrusive and only the faintest sounds of civilisation rose up from the settlement below. The native animals were his only companions. People never strayed too far from the city or the well-established roads – they were too afraid of the Aborigines or the bushrangers, and any other real or imagined evils that may lurk in the bush. Brennan feared none of these things, though. The few natives he had met were friendly and he doubted that any bushrangers would venture this close to the city; and even if they did, they would have no interest in someone like him.

Kangaroos and wallabies regarded him curiously from a safe distance, and birds hopped about in the lower branches of the gums to study the strange boy who had suddenly appeared among them. A large family of laughing kookaburras howled with mirth when they saw him, as if he’d triggered some private joke in their minds. Some of them settled on the rocks nearby and stared at him, heads aslant, their eyes two bright beads of resentment directed at this pale intruder into their world. Brennan grinned at the birds and looked around the clearing at all the timid creatures that peered at him quietly from the gloom of the undergrowth. He liked the solitude and the serenity of the setting. After a time he decided to follow the ridgeline a little further, moving further away from the city and the harbour below. It took him to a well-worn animal pad leading down the spur, which he began to follow eagerly.

At first the track followed the ridgeline as it descended steeply; then the landscape flattened out and soon he was walking across a broad level plateau. When he came upon a larger track that crossed his path at right angles, bearing the impressions of wagon or sulky wheels, he decided to follow that for a while to see where it would lead him. The scrub had thinned out here on the plateau, and long grass grew along the verges of the narrow road. When Brennan looked back, he could see the ridge that overlooked the city and the harbour rising up behind him, its tall trees and craggy rocks stark against the deep blue sky.

After about an hour of strolling along the little road, his mind lost in the landscape’s beauty, Brennan was beginning to think that he had better retrace his steps. For himself he was not afraid to be out after dark, but Ede would become frantic if he were not home in time for supper. Just when he had decided to turn back, he came upon a little creek that curled around the base of a small hill like an apron, making the little knoll look almost like an island as it nestled in the folds of the watercourse. The road forded the creek, then climbed the rise to where Brennan could see a slab cottage set among a grove of wattle trees, with a large garden sprawling down the far side of the slope to the creek. A man wearing a huge conical hat like that of an oriental coolie was chipping away with a long-handled hoe between tall rows of tomato plants. Brennan decided to approach him boldly; he was hungry and thirsty after his walk, and he was curious to know how this pretty little farm had appeared here in the bush.

The man looked up and rested his chin on the handle of his hoe as Brennan approached. He was tall and sinewy, and burnt dark by the sun. “Hello there, m’lad,” he said in a rich cockney accent. “I thought yer was the traps coming to check up on me an’ all.”

“Not the traps,” Brennan laughed. “Just a tramper out in the bush for a stroll. I saw your wagon tracks, and decided to follow and see where they led me. I came from the city via the high ridge; I did not expect to find a farm out here. My name is Brennan.”

“Glad to know you then, Brennan,” the man said. “They call me Sly Joe, the Cockney farmer; though some call me the wise man. I was a bloomin’ convict to begin with; but now I’m what they call a ‘ticket of leave man’. I think I may be the last of my kind because the Governor cancelled the idea, but he made a special case for me. I don’t think there will be any more convicts coming to the colony at all from now on. If I’m a good lad and grow vegetables for the military garrison for the next three years this little farm is me own, and in the meantime I’ve also met a fine and pretty lady convict who has agreed to be me bride an’ all as well. So there you have it straight, and that’s why I thought yer was the traps come to check up on me.”

Brennan looked around and saw lines of bean bushes with long, plump beans hanging from them, and melon and pumpkin vines twisting their way down the slope amid huge patches of fruit. Fat cobs of corn hugged tall stems that reached skyward with shiny brown tassels on the tops. “The garden looks so healthy,” he said in awe, his mouth watering.

“Aye,” Sly Joe said proudly, perhaps even a little smugly. “The land is new and rich, and the water from the creek is sweet and plentiful. Few men have a better life than old Sly Joe these days – though I’ve braved some tough times to get here.” He shouldered his hoe and shook Brennan’s hand. “Come up to the cottage and share a pannikin of tea with a man. I don’t get much company except the troopers and a few mates, and a pint twice a month when I take the crop down the road to the garrison.”

He led the way through the lush garden towards the cottage. In the outside fireplace Sly Joe prodded the dark coals until they glowed red, then set a large pot of water over it to boil for tea. Brennan followed him inside when Sly Joe went for the tea leaves; he was curious to see the interior. By now he had learned that Joe had built the cottage himself, with a little help from some fellow convicts. The walls were made of iron bark slabs that had been shaped and trimmed to fit perfectly. The roof had been constructed using long strips of stringy-bark and wattle cladding welded together with clay. Push-out windows of light pine shingles let light and air into the dwelling when they were open, and kept out the rain and the cold when they were closed. A rough table had been built on two stout stumps in the middle of the bare earthen floor, with a long bench-seat running down one side of the little building. A cabinet with a bag for a door and a tin trunk sat against one wall, while a kangaroo-hide hammock hung across a corner.

All things considered, Brennan reckoned Joe to be pretty comfortable. They went back outside, where the boy watched the man make the tea. “Why do they call you Sly Joe instead of just Joe?” he asked finally, sipping the sweet tea as they moved over to sit on a rough bench seat under the shade of a large tree.

“Because I am a sly dog,” Joe laughed, “and I did a few sly deeds that led me to this land in the first place. Still, I have managed to keep out of harm’s way with the troopers over the years, and that’s no mean feat, let me tell ye, lad. That’s how I got this wicket here in the bush.”

They drank the tea, and munched the sweet pink flesh of a big watermelon Sly Joe had broken open. To his surprise, Brennan saw that the tree under which they sat had not one type of fruit but several, all growing together on the same tree. “How can you get so many different types of fruit from one tree?” he asked. “And surely this tree is much older than the whole colony, you could not possibly have planted it in your lifetime.”

“The tree is old an’ all,” Sly Joe replied. “I have grafted all sorts of fruit stock onto it as a host tree. The tree provides the nourishment, and then I can have all the fruit I need from the one strong trunk.” He laughed. “That’s another reason why they call me Sly and wise; I have all manner of little tricks up my sleeve.” He stood up as he finished speaking, rubbed his back, and stretched, removing his large Chinese-looking hat as he did so. His features were sharp like those of a ferret; his eyes were small and bright, but warm and alive. Brennan liked him immediately.

“I have to start the afternoon watering now,” said Sly Joe, picking up the empty tea mugs.

“Let me help you. I can spare another hour and still get home before dark.”

“I’d appreciate that. Not that there is too much work involved, now that I have set up my watering system. If you follow the wagon track on yer way ‘ome, it will take you to the city in good time. You came the long way over the mountain, but the road follows the valley along.”

Brennan followed Joe to a large earthen dam that had been dug into the ground on the slope near the head of the garden. A series of small hollow logs and long troughs made of tree bark disappeared down the rise among the various rows of vegetables and fruit. The man took up a large wooden bucket and began to bail water from the dam and pour it into the troughs. Brennan shook his head in wonder, watching the water glisten in the sunlight as it gurgled down the network of troughs and hollows to feed the thirsty crop below.

“Sly Joe is a cunning old villain, yer thinkin’ I’ll bet,” Joe said easily, watching the boy’s reaction. “A wind pump down near the creek brings the water up to the dam during the day. Then I let gravity feed the water down to the garden as I need it. Most days we get a breeze or two, but even if I get a few days without a wind, there is always enough water in the dam to tide me over. One day I’ll have proper metal pipes for the irrigation, but for now the Governor only allows me the short span of pipes to carry the water up to the dam from the wind pump. I made the windmill meself; I’m a deft hand with metal or wood alike.”

“You have it all well thought out,” Brennan said quietly. “And I’ll vow the bushrangers won’t bother you either, not with the troopers here regularly.”

“Just so; and now you know another reason why they call me Sly Joe.”

“What about the bush animals, and the birds? They must play havoc with the crops.”

“Not at all,” Joe said firmly. “Let’s just say we have an arrangement, me, the creatures and the Aborigines; we all get along very well.”

* * *

After a while Brennan took a turn with the bucket, while Joe squatted on the dam wall to catch his breath and smoke a pipe. While he worked, he risked another question; he did not think Joe was the type to be offended. “So what sly deeds did you commit to get you sent here as a convict?”

“Nothing too evil,” Joe said reflectively. “I kept the books for a man who had a large iron foundry; he was a mean piece of work an’ all that went with it.” He sat quietly for a moment, taking deep draws from the pipe, and Brennan began to regret asking the question. “A lot of people were poor and starving in the village where I lived, including me own family,” Joe continued after a while. “So I began to ‘borrow’ a few bob and share it around.

“The boss would never have known; he was not an educated man and did not understand the books. But alas, he took a new wife who was educated; she only wanted his money to begin with, and she did not like it when she discovered that I had been purloining a little of it. Me mum and dad died with the typhoid the year after I was shipped over here, and me the only child. So there is nothing back in grubby old England for me now.”

“You seem to be a learned man,” Brennan observed, “but you talk like an ordinary sailor, not like my Uncle Arthur, for instance. He says he’s from the upper-class.”

“Oh yes indeed, I am well-educated,” Joe agreed. “I was apprenticed to a farmer at one time to study all manner of things. He was a nobleman and he took a liken’ to me, sent me off on all kinds of study courses – that’s where I got me green thumb, as they say. But he went off to the wars and was killed. That’s when I went to work at the iron foundry and put a foot wrong.” He sighed, and then he smiled wistfully. “So I suppose you could say I got most of the learning and none of the class. It’s an ill wind that blows no good, lad. I’ve taken a few lashes and lived rough, but the world is not so bad if you meet it on its own terms. Now I look set for a good life for what’s left, and I’m not much past thirty. I’ll not fester and die with my heart in another land like so many of ‘em do.”

Brennan smiled, and then he looked up at the sky and saw that the sun was sinking low towards the horizon. “I had better head back to the city,” he said. “I’ll follow the wagon track as you suggested, but I want to leave a little extra time this first trip; after that I’ll know how long it takes me to get here.”

Joe laughed happily. “That means you plan to visit old Joe again! Good on ye, lad! The traps have some strict rules about who I can see and what I can do; but a bright boy who helps out now and then will not cause them any concern.”

The walk home turned out to take less than two hours. Brennan was surprised at how such an isolated, secret place could be so readily accessible when one knew where and how to go. It matched the man well, Sly Joe was indeed an educated and intelligent man who had travelled the world to enhance his knowledge; but somehow he had managed to retain the common touch. Brennan always felt comfortable in his company. He became a regular visitor to Joe’s farm, and they soon grew to be firm friends. He especially liked to work beside Joe in the big garden and listen to him talk on a multitude of subjects, his hungry young mind devouring the plethora of new knowledge and ideas.