Читать книгу As Hammers Fall - Mark Svendsen - Страница 4

Go To The War, Toiler War is in Europe toiler, blasting the land; Workers facing workers, rifles in hand; Masters have quarrelled, toiler: hear their cannons roar, Slaying slaves in millions, toiler; go to the war! Chorus: Go to the war toiler, go to the war; Heed not the Socialists, but wallow in gore. Save not your helpless children, care for them no more; Leave your wife and family and go to the war! Heed not the sixth commandment, ‘Thou shall not kill’, Flout Christ like jingo parsons do, say, ‘Yes I will!’ Kill starving children’s fathers; fill them with lead. Cheer up, lad; don’t be downhearted, you’ll soon be dead! William Robert Winspear. To tune of ‘Click Go The Shears’.

A walloping big red flag and the flags of Australia and the Irish Republic hung from opposite sides of the rotunda, limp as warm lettuce leaves in the stifling air. Artem Segeyev glanced down at the upturned faces gathered around the Domain rotunda.

‘In conclusion, Comrades,’ he shouted across the assembled hundreds.’Governments serve one class and one class only – Capitalists.’

‘We need to stop Conscription!’ an interjector called. The crowd murmured agreement but Segeyev was not to be deterred.

‘As soon as any politician, Tory or Socialist, comes into power they become an honorary member of the Capitalist class and an enemy of the people. The working class must take the reins of power. Only then will we have a true dictatorship of the proletariat.’

Ted Hill had had enough of Segeyev too.

‘Put the kid on!’ he called from the centre of the crowd. ‘We’ve heard you on Socialism a thousand times. Today’s about the next Conscription vote.’

Sitting in the rotunda behind the Russian, Joe Hill studied the faces in the crowd. They looked ready to crucify him! Joe worked his tongue in his mouth trying to keep it moist. The palms of his hands were sweating. He rubbed them on his pant legs.

But Segeyev returned to his theme.

‘As Socialists we have won some concessions here at home. The eight hour day, meal breaks, a basic living wage, an industrial commission to hear our disputes, one week’s holiday a year. We win the battles, Comrades, but we do not win this war!’ he bellowed. Passion filled his voice until the air vibrated with it. Segeyev’s revolution-black hair fell across his eyes.

‘We will not beg like whining dogs for crumbs from the table of our masters. We must rise up and take power – by force if necessary! Only then will we stop this war!’ he bellowed, his voice like a pile-driver ramming the point home. At last the crowd cheered.

‘Soldiers of the world unite!’ Segeyev thundered. ‘You have nothing to lose but your chains!’

The crowd went wild. Scuffles broke out. The Peace Army Children huddled close to Molly and Mick and Miss Thorpe at the back of the rotunda.

Mrs Griffiths walked forward to stand beside Segeyev and raised her hand for silence. The fraças died down, though several angry voices could still be heard.

‘Ladies and Gentleman,’ she said loudly. ‘Please join me in thanking Mr Segeyev of the Union of Russian Workers for his stirring speech.’

‘Go home, Bolshevik!’ was the loudest response amongst more general applause. Segeyev waved a clenched fist to the crowd, before retreating to sit beside Joe.

‘Ready, Comrade?’ he asked. His dark eyes still smouldered with righteous zeal. Joe nodded and again tried to swallow as he rearranged his notes. At least the crowd had turned a bit more positive.

Joe jumped at the unexpected touch of Molly’s hand on his forearm. It was cool, her hand, cool and soft and calming. He turned, she smiled and …

Oh Gawd and little fishes!

Over her shoulder Joe caught sight of Mick, who nodded coldly at him. Joe jumped to his feet. Whatever composure he had mustered dissolved at her smile and Mick’s jealous look. He had to steady himself. This was no soapbox on some street corner. This was the proper business.

Mrs Griffiths was already introducing him. Joe could sense them both behind him. He couldn’t speak with them there. She’d hit him for six and he knew Mick was angry with him because of it. What could he do with the two of them? Joe gnawed his bottom lip so hard the blood almost came. Sweat dribbled down the back of his neck. Some of the Comrades, including his father, were already talking about him as a future leader. Joe Hill, Light-horseman to the Socialist cause, sweeping all before him to claim the Republic of the Australian Proletariat! He winced at the pressure the thought produced. If only they knew, Joe Hill only wanted peace: politics, Socialism, everyday fairness, were merely means to that end. Peace … and that’d do for now.

Mrs Griffiths finished her introduction. The crowd clapped. Joseph Hill stood alone.

‘Tell them what we stand for!’ Molly whispered at his back.

Joe gazed out, transfixed for a moment by the expectant faces that gazed back.

‘Tell them like you tell us! Make them understand,’ Molly urged.

Joe swallowed. He clenched his notes hard. Saying anything would be a start! He swayed like a flagpole in a stiff breeze. Joe opened his mouth, but no words came. A hand pushed him in the back causing his mouth to snap shut.

‘Tell them, Joey, or by the devil, I will!’ Molly hissed. The crowd’s sympathy waned.

‘Can he talk at all, Missus Chairman? Or is he mute on the subject of Conscription?’ a heckler called. The Comrades in the crowd growled him down. But even the most supportive of them was growing restless. Joe could see his father and mother frowning up from the front ranks.

‘Come on, son!’ Ted Hill said. ‘Give ‘em curry!’

Molly took a step forward, twisting free of Mick, who gave up trying to hold her back.

‘He’s got something to say for sure you stupid man,’ she shouted, ‘about Kaiser Wilhelm and all his kind! Those shameful parasites in the royal families of Europe and their family squabbles! Millions dead because of them!’

A few weak cries,

‘Disloyal!’ and

‘Saboteur!’ greeted her remark amid ‘Hurrah’s’ from the Socialists. But Molly wasn’t finished,

‘Disloyal am I? So you support the English murdering the Irish Martyrs for declaring a free Republic in their own land? That’s loyalty to your own is it? That’s …’ But Mick would have no more. He stepped up and dragged her back. She glared, shaking her open hands, first at the hecklers, then at Joe. He shot her a despairing look.

Then, high above the crowd’s head, a hat was hoisted on a walking stick. Everyone knew it was Monty Miller’s, around it the red pugaree he’d first worn on the Eureka Stockade. His voice followed it on high,

‘I’m with you, lad! Give us Peace and be blowed with politicians!’

The crowd gave him a loud,

‘Hooray!’ Calls of, ‘That’s the spirit!’ echoed around the Domain.

Kathleen O’Donahue saw the uncertainty on the face of her son. So, while the crowd were still at sixes and sevens, she burst into the song they’d sung so often to beat the last Conscription Referendum. She gave them Go to The War, Toiler – full bore. The crowd joined her, ringing closer around the podium. The rowdies and detractors were drowned out when they tried to start up their own Rule Britannia and God Save the King.

‘Decide now, Joseph Hill, if we have something worth saying!’ Segeyev urged from behind him.

Oh to be Segeyev – to have his passionate eyes, his revolutionary hair and his mesmerizing, stentorian voice.

Before the last note died in the throats of the singers Joseph Hill turned to them, his face afire with savage indignation. Clenching his fist around his notes, he punched the sky,

‘Comrades!’ he bellowed, his voice cracking with the strain. The crowd cheered once more. ‘Comrades!’ he cried again, egging them on. ‘We want Peace! We demand Peace, now! And an end to any more talk of Conscription!’

At last his voice had come.

‘Comrades! We, the Executive of the Children’s Peace Army want two things,’ Joe continued, half-turning to acknowledge Mick and Molly and the children behind. ‘We add our voices to the tumult of dissent from around the world – Socialists, churchmen, Pacifists, people of good conscience all – to demand an end to this bloody Capitalist war! And we, the Children’s Peace Army, demand the Commonwealth Government repeal its legislation to hold this second Referendum on Conscription. It is immoral. It is unnecessary. And-it-is-wrong!’

From the corner of his eye Joe saw the black devils scribbling away in their notebooks to send off to their Commonwealth masters in Melbourne. He had just the thing for them.

‘Fellow-workers, the ruling classes must be held to account. War is when governments coerce us into believing that murder is right and to commit it is to do good. To compel more young men to die, beyond those brave souls who have already volunteered to do so, is a tax on our Nation conjured by the very Devil himself. Conscription is a blood tax. A blood tax, nothing more!’

Joe looked down to the field of faces shining like ploughed soil waiting to receive the grain. The reporters scribbled on.

‘Billy Hughes, the Prime Minister of this great nation of ours, already has blood on his hands! The blood of our brother-workers! Not content with that, he now wants to be able to conscript young men to send to Europe to fight for the Empire.’ He stared defiantly down at the nearest government agent.

‘But he has been directed! He has been told! No! He has been commanded by the first referendum of the people on this matter – we said NO then, we say NO now to conscripting the youth of our nation to his war!’

The crowd cascaded his vitriol.

‘Hughes the rat!’

‘Turncoat!’

‘Down with Hughes!’

‘Even after he lost the referendum, or should I say,’ Joe corrected himself, ‘even after we won it.’ He saw his father smile broadly up at that, smiled and tapped his finger down hard on the notebook of the reporter standing beside him, dislodging his pencil into the mud.

‘This misbegotten politician still bathes in the blood of your children, your sons, fathers, uncles and brothers.’ Joe lowered his voice to a stage whisper and pointed at the youngest Peace Army children for the effect.

‘This government must be stopped! Let’s conscript all politicians to go to the war!’

The audience broke into factions at this final remark, some baying for Hughes’ blood and some for Joseph Hill’s.

‘How much more of this slaughter? Will we all simply fall silent? We will never be so timid a people! Never! Speak, Comrades! We must speak or we acquiesce! Damn the talk of another Conscription Referendum! Damn William Morris Hughes! We will redouble our voices and – Vote No!’

The crowd cheered anew. Joe shuffled his notes.

A tomato, rotten by the stench of it, careened past Joe’s nose. Tomfool stretched out a huge hand to catch it in a spray of splattered juice. Joe glanced around quickly, reading the surprise on Molly’s face and the grin from Tomfool, he turned back to his crowd. Zuzenko and Madorsky, began to shoulder their way through the mob to the point from which the projectile seemed to come. Tomfool took aim and hurled the remaining mush in the Peace Army children’s direction. They giggled, skittering out of the way. Mrs Griffiths stood to move forward and take control of the meeting.

‘It’s bleeding!’ Tomfool laughed with joy. ‘Billy Hughes has blood on his hands!’

Segeyev’s hand clapped down on Joe’s shoulder,

‘You have alarmed the Capitalist lapdogs. You must be saying something right, Comrade!’ Joe thought quick.

‘Tomatoes remind us all of the life-blood that is spilled daily!’ he ad libbed weakly, raising his voice and arms above his head. A bit of movement often worked.

‘We will agitate until this madness is done!’ Joe continued. ‘We will educate, agitate and organise!’ he thundered, enunciating his words, ‘And-we-will-win!’

But the crowd’s attention was gone.

Joe turned to Mrs Griffiths.

‘A song maybe?’ he asked, lost.

‘Go on, Joe!’ Molly urged. His father looked at his feet.

Segeyev pulled out a pea-whistle and blew – hard and long. At its ghoulish shriek, the crowd cast about to see if the coppers were coming.

‘Comrades!’ Joe leapt to the moment. ‘Young men, some no older than myself, are daily being sent home from the front maimed in body and mind. They should be here beside us, living in peace and prospering by their honest toil. Bring the living home. Bring them home … right now!’

‘This is sedition!’ screamed one of the agitators. ‘Treason!’

‘Mrs Chairwoman, does this rabble hold a permit for this assembly?’ a voice demanded.

Before she could answer, a hail of heavy road gravel peppered the stage and the roof of the rotunda. Joe and the official party all winced away. Some of the children behind the rotunda screamed. The gravel was jagged and hit hard. Molly threw up her hands to cover her face. In one movement Mrs Griffiths turned her back, lowered her hat for cover and grabbed Molly.

It was too late for talking, but this was Joe Hill’s crowd.

‘Peace!’ he yelled, his elbow thrown up before his face. ‘Comrades! Only peace will endure!’ Then he turned, running after Molly and Mick as another shower of rocks stung their backs and legs.

‘Quick!’ Segeyev commanded. ‘Out the fence!’ They ran down the wooden rotunda stairs, gravel rattling around them, biting where it hit.

Only Tomfool stood still, amazed, howling like a dog.

‘I’ve been robbed!’ he yelled.

‘Joe! Mick!’ Molly screamed as she ran back into the hail of stones to bring him with them. Tomfool stood bewildered, shoulders hunched, hands protecting his head. Joe dashed to Molly’s side.

‘Not now, Tom!’ he yelled urgently dragging at his friend’s arms. But Tomfool stood firm. He took his hand down, gazing at it. His fingers were stained from both the tomato and a gash to his head.

‘Billy Hughes has blood on his hands,’ he said staring first at his hand then at Molly and Joe, pleading for meaning. Real blood began to drip down his face. Molly produced a handkerchief from somewhere and held it to his wound.

Over his shoulder Joe could see Madorsky leading a mob of unionists, all bellowing like enraged bulls, as they surged through the crowd towards the offenders. Although he couldn’t see his father, Joe could hear him screaming,

‘Don’t hit ‘em! Wait till it matters! Pick a fight we need to win!’

‘I’ve been robbed,’ Tomfool repeated over and again. They dragged on his shirt sleeves.

‘Come on, you idiot,’ Joe yelled. Molly darted a fierce glance at Joe, but spoke urgently to Tomfool.

‘We’ll play later, Tomas,’ she whispered. ‘Come on,’ she cajoled. ‘Let’s be getting home now. Cake for afternoon tea.’

Tomfool followed her then, the idea of cake convincing him. He scowled at Joe for his trouble.

Segeyev urged them from behind, herding them forward like a cattle dog at their heels,

‘Go! Quick!’

‘Molly!’ Joe called as they reached the bottom. ‘I didn’t mean … about Tom.’

‘I know,’ she said, forgiving him in a breath.

‘Are you all right?’ Joe asked her. But there was no response as Kathleen and Mrs Griffiths and Miss Thorpe and a whole gaggle of women swarmed around her and the children.

‘The stupidity of violent men!’ his mother raged as she wiped at Joe’s face, her hands efficient with the handkerchief she’d whipped from his pocket.

‘As if there isn’t enough violence in the world.’ He took the cloth from his mother with a press to her hand. She nodded at him, so intense a look of fierce pride as he’d never seen shining from her eyes.

‘You’re all right. Nothing serious. Now you go straight home and stay there. Your father and I’ll be back for tea before tonight’s meeting. You get Molly and Tommy home safe.’ Joe nodded.

He caught sight of Molly held between Mrs Griffiths and Miss Thorpe. Mick was there too. Joe pushed his way over to her.

‘Are you hurt?’ he asked, expecting maybe blood or, imagining the worst, a cut on her perfect face. Before he could look Segeyev’s voice brought him back to the present.

‘You must go!’ he commanded. They could hear the Loyalists thumping up the front stairs of the wooden rotunda. The Socialist crowd surged behind them, forcing them to follow the Peace Army kids.

Segeyev stood beside him. His finger traced the faint blood track down Joe’s cheek,

‘“Their heart’s blood dyed its every fold!”‘ he said nodding his head almost imperceptibly. Then he turned towards the Loyalists who were heading down the back stairs.

‘Halt!’ he bellowed. The sound of his voice stopped them for a moment, but even Segeyev couldn’t hold them for long. At last Joe could hear real police whistles in the street.

‘We’d best leg it or they’ll arrest us!’ Joe grasped Molly’s arm dragging her with him. Her touch was electric. ‘Hurry or we’ll have to swim the river!’

‘Between the devil’s and the deep blue sea,’ Molly laughed, unrestrained and loud.

‘Go home!’ Kathleen’s voice counselled good sense above the tumult. ‘The little ones will be safe with us once you’ve made yourselves scarce.’ Joe nodded.

‘Mick, Tomas! Run!’ he screamed.

They ran like billy-oh. Not looking back. Out of the Domain and down into George Street. Shriek of whistles and din of voices in their ears. Bedlam in their wake.