Читать книгу As Hammers Fall - Mark Svendsen - Страница 5

That’s the wrong way to tickle Mary,

That’s the wrong way to kiss.

Don’t you know that over here, lad

They like it best like this.

Hooray pour Les Français

Farewell Angleterre.

We didn’t know how to tickle Mary,

But we learnt how over here.

Anon. To the tune of ‘It’s A Long Way To Tipperary’.

A few slow buggies sagged up George Street after their turns around the Botanical Gardens, the occupants and their sweat-bathed horses all as limp as eucalypt leaves in the afternoon’s heat. Too hot to show any sign they heard the sounds of agitation echoing up from the Domain, or they were so used to the Socialists’ meetings they simply paid no mind. It was a slow Sunday afternoon in need of a storm. Verandah beds with mosquito nets would give only small comfort in the city’s houses that stood high on their spindly wooden crab’s legs, craning to catch the cool.

Running footsteps and relieved whoops echoed along the dull city street.

‘They were going to kill us for sure!’ Mick yelled as he ran.

‘No, it’s only our Joe they’ll be wanting dead! They’ll just be wanting to hurt you a lot!’ Molly laughed.

‘Heeeya!’ Mick yelled. ‘Let’s go back again! There’s a stoush on!’ He was serious but the others laughed at him as he headed back down the street towards the Domain. Relief and excitement flooded them, hearts booming like cannon on the front line.

Tomfool whooped in excitement, for no other reason than to hear his own voice louder than the sound of four pairs of Sunday best boots clattering on the roadway.

‘I’ve been robbed!’ Tomfool called. They laughed louder, sillier, at him. ‘I’ve been robbed!’ he sang out again and again as he dashed along the footpath behind Molly.

‘Tomas! No!’ Joe puffed as sternly as he could. Tomfool stopped cavorting to turn with a devastated look.

‘Maybe later,’ Joe recanted. Tomfool beamed, pushing his tomato and blood-smeared, turned-out pockets back into his trouser legs.

Molly stopped dead.

‘Come back here, Micky Doyle!’ she called, without looking.

Tomfool ran on.

As Molly turned to look for Mick, Tomfool crashed into her, knocking her sideways. Molly ended-up sitting on her rear end in the middle of the footpath in a very unladylike fashion – laughing loudly. Tomas and Joe stopped beside her, bent over and panting. Mick paused, torn, drawn towards the donnybrook but wanting to be with his friends, before he ran, decided, to rejoin them. No pursuers could be seen or heard, only snatches of song wafting up the street. God Save the King and The Red Flag mixed with other lively tunes in a musical duel.

They laughed again.

‘That’ll be your mother for sure,’ Molly said. They all pictured Kathleen O’Donghue, hands on hips, singing it at them like every note was a Mills bomb.

‘It’s like she says,’ Molly panted. ‘The right wing are such blockheads because they don’t have any decent songs. When she starts the Internationale the Loyalists won’t have a hope!’

They laughed even more.

Joe Hill smiled wider than a cracked watermelon, with elation and with … just being alive.

‘There hasn’t been a reaction like that since after the last Referendum vote,’ he puffed. ‘Dad should be pleased. Segeyev was, and Mum too.’

‘Shame we couldn’t have a crack at ‘em, though,’ Mick added, almost ruefully. ‘You wind ‘em up Joe and I’ll knock ‘em over!’

Molly still sat akimbo on the footpath.

‘No, they’ll only be wanting Joe Hill dead!’ Tomas grinned at her.

‘Tomas, you’re a fool,’ Molly said. Her green eyes glinted up at him. ‘A lovely fool but a fool for sure!’ She laughed, her red hair bouncing as she shook her head like a mop with a straight-cut.

Joe couldn’t help but laugh with her, especially now he could see there were only a few red scratches on her cheeks and no deeper gravel wounds.

‘Thought you’d have a bit of a sit-down on the way home, Moll?’ Mick panted.

Molly smiled that smile at him.

‘By the sweet loving Jesus,’ Joe groaned, covering his unbidden utterance with a catch of breath.

‘I was looking at that fellow at the pub,’ she said, nodding towards a blonde-haired soldier at the window. ‘He’s Babushka’s new lodger.’

Mick and Joe gave the bloke a furtive once over. Mick didn’t like what he saw.

‘He’ll fit right in,’ he said, ‘he’s got a head like a boarding house pudding.’

‘I’ve been robbed?’ a voice whined. Tomfool pulled at Joe’s sleeve and pointed across the street to the crowd of men milling around the doors of the pub for the six o’clock swill.

‘I’ve been robbed?’ Tomfool asked again.

‘Why not play it? For divilment!’ Molly suggested, her eyes aglitter.

‘Tweak a few noses,’ Mick agreed. They both still simmered like a kettle just off the boil. Only Joe was reluctant.

‘Come on, cobber,’ Mick remonstrated. ‘You’ve had your say today, but we haven’t. I’ll do it if you don’t want to!’

Joe glanced around their eager faces.

‘All right, then,’ he agreed, though he knew it would detract from his triumph.

But that look in her eyes. Her hair. Her dress. Her smile.

‘As long as you three play it. I’m tired.’

All of them nodded.

‘Right-oh,’ Mick ordered. Get on with you, Tomas!’

Tomfool jumped like a scalded cat, flying across the road, he ran helter-skelter, pulling his trouser pockets out as he fled.

‘Help!’ he yelled. ‘Help, I’ve been robbed!’ he wailed. His voice was truly desperate, close to tears. Pedestrians stopped to gawk. A woman, out for an afternoon stroll with her bloke, crossed the street. The crowd from near the pub followed. Tomfool ran on until he stood on the footpath in front of the building beyond the pub. He pulled at his turned out pockets like they were rabbits’ ears, all the while wailing at the top of his lungs,

‘I’ve been robbed!’ Tears of real distress stained his cheeks.

‘Righto!’ Mick nodded. They all ran across the street to join the crowd, tut-tutting and fretting over Tomas. Mick jumped up onto the stairs of the building.

‘That’s right ladies and gentlemen, he’s been robbed,’ Mick yelled. Tomfool smiled slyly. With all the crowd’s attention drawn to the new speaker he slowly withdrew to stand at the back with Molly and Joe.

‘But so have I!’ Mick turned out his own pockets. ‘And so have you. We’ve all been robbed, my friends. We’ve been robbed by the Capitalist system that turns us into slaves.’ The faces in the crowd turned from concern, to puzzlement, to laughter or, in a couple of cases, anger, as they twigged to what was going on. Mick hustled them along.

‘The Capitalists take our toil and turn it into huge profit and what do we get in return? A pittance. Ladies and Gentleman as the fat pigs …’

A burly bloke in a navvie’s singlet, the sort who at first glance you would expect to be a member of the Movement, stood unsteadily.

‘What would you know, you white-anting whelp? You’re still wet behind the ears. Join the Army and fight for your bloody King. That’ll make a man out of you!’

But Mick was not to be undone.

‘That’s just what the bosses want you to think,’ he began, but again the burly bloke interjected.

‘You know buggar-all about nothing! My brother…’ he yelled at Mick, his words slurred, spittle flying like shrapnel. But he was too much for Molly.

‘Well, you know buggar-all about anything so that makes you even,’ she retorted.

The bear of a man turned, focussing all his attention on her. Joe reached for Molly’s hand and they quick-stepped together back down the street. Mick jumped down the stairs to place himself between the bear and Molly. But Mick was backpedalling too.

The crowd had seen it all before and mostly started thinking of dinner, all except one fellow who walked up to the big bloke and clapped a hand on his shoulder. The bear whirled around, unsteady, stopping as he recognised the uniform and the voice.

‘Sarge?’ he said.

‘Show’s over, eh, Jack. Time to go home.’ The big bloke cast an uncertain glance at his tormentors.

‘They don’t know, Sarge. They got no bloody idea how Caleb copped it.’

‘No.’ The sergeant spoke softly. ‘But these jokers are going home right now, aren’t you?’ he asked.

Joe, Molly and Mick nodded in unison. Surreptitiously Joe let go of Molly’s hand.

‘I reckon you should too.’

The sergeant waved them away, steering the big bloke up the street.

‘Maureen’ll have a nice stew for tea, I’ll bet,’ he encouraged.

The singletted bear cast them one final glare before, sheep-like, he followed. They all breathed easier. Not quite what they’d hoped. Took the edge off the fun, though secretly, Joe was glad.

‘I’d have gone a round with him!’ Mick skited.

‘Wouldn’t have lasted a half,’ Joe answered. ‘One belt from that bloke would knock you to the other side of Christmas.’

‘Well,’ Molly breathed. She turned, tripped on her heel and, for the second time in a quarter of an hour, landed with a surprised yelp, flat on her bottom.

‘You all right, Miss?’ called a soldier from an open window at the front of the Land’s Office Hotel. It was the lodger. His enquiring face pale, yet friendly. He seemed older than his looks belied, in his early twenties, but his dark hair was beginning to grey, as was his well-groomed moustache. Molly guessed he had honest eyes, though she hadn’t fully decided yet.

‘I’ll be for takin’ a quick sit down’s all, thanking you,’ she replied curtly. Molly took Mick’s hands as he helped her up. She patted down her dress while Joe scooped up her fallen floppy cotton hat.

‘Can’t help a maiden in distress? Pity!’ the soldier winked and raised a half-empty beer glass in salute. Mick scowled as the fellow drained it and picked up another from the three on the table in front of him.

‘Sounds like we’re in for a bit of fun tonight, Miss?’ the soldier continued amiably, nodding down the street towards the sounds still issuing from the Domain.

‘Bloody red-raggers! Ought to be ashamed.’

‘Ashamed of what?’ Mick demanded as he strode between Molly and the Digger at the window.

‘Ignore it, Mick,’ Joe whispered. But his mate was stoked-up hotter than the boiler on the Ipswich Express.

‘Ashamed for their disloyalty to King and Country, that’s what,’ the soldier continued. ‘There’s thousands of us Loyalists fighting in Europe while at home these damned Socialists white-ant the war effort.’ He stopped a moment to drink.

‘And what would you know about Socialism?’

Joe tried to divert the fire away from Mick. The soldier finally noticed the rosettes fluttering on each of the three chests stuck out before him.

‘Pah!’ He spat dismissively, not wanting to ruin his last drinks arguing with hardheads. He took a long swig of beer and ventured nothing further.

But Mick was primed to go on with it whether Joe, or this bloke, wanted to or not.

‘You’re such a slave you think getting killed for the bloody bosses is striking a blow for freedom! What’s freedom if you’re dead? You’d be better taking a leaf out of the Irish book. The bosses won’t give you freedom any more than the English’ll give freedom to the Irish – we have to take it!’

‘The Irish!’ The soldier spluttered beer froth over the table.

‘They deserve the same we give all traitors! The firing squad’s too good for ‘em!’

Mick puffed out his chest like a rooster about to crow.

‘I’ll be Patrick Doyle,’ he enunciated every word clearly. ‘That is an Irish name. And this,’ he said pointing over his shoulder at Molly. ‘Is my sweetheart, Molly Pearce. That’ll be another Irish name. And these colours,’ he continued pointing at the rosette on his chest, ‘are the colours of the Irish. And you,’ he yelled in the Loyalist’s face, ‘can bloody well take that back right now or by the sweet lovin’ Jesus … !’

Mick raised his fists.

It was for Molly’s sake the Digger backed down. He’d faced death enough times to know if a threat was worth the effort. This half-smart guttersnipe didn’t worry him one iota. But there was a lady present, one he recognized from the boarding house, and he didn’t need any trouble there. He composed himself.

‘Now look, son, I didn’t …’ he began.

‘Don’t you “son” me, mate.’

Mick advanced, fists still raised before him. Warily the soldier watched him. Joe knew the look on Mick’s face all too well: this wasn’t about his mother, or the Irish Martyrs, it was about Molly – he was sick of extricating Mick from jealousies of Mick’s own imagining – the fellow had only enquired, innocently enough, about Molly’s welfare and now look where they were headed.

‘If you had the choice between pulling your head in right now or finding out if we know how to fight, what would it be?’ Joe asked the soldier. Mick relaxed knowing Joe was still there. The soldier gazed at Joe, trying to figure out what his game was.

But Joe focussed on Mick. He knew his face would be tightened into that ready scowl, three furrows deep above his pugilist’s nose. His cleft chin thrust forward, eyes glittering with that unnatural blue that seemed poached from another body and fixed in the face of someone old before his time. Joe had seen it in a hundred bloody blues they’d been in together. He placed a hand on Mick’s shoulder.

‘Pick a fight you know you’ll win,’ he murmured.

‘So we just leave this Loyalist dog off his chain?’ Mick sneered. ‘He doesn’t scare me!’

‘He’ll have ten mates if he’s got one, all full of last drinks and primed to go,’ Joe soothed. ‘We’ll see him soon enough up some dark alley. Besides,’ he added, ‘you told Babushka you’d bring Molly home before dark, didn’t you.’ Mick softened at that.

‘When we meet him again, we’ll make sure we’re ready,’ Joe whispered.

‘Just watch your mouth, son!’ Mick growled at the soldier, spitting out the word “son”. He lowered his fists as Joe pushed him towards Molly on the opposite footpath.

‘Feisty little Fenian aren’t we?’ the soldier dismissed the bit of unpleasantness and turned back into the bar to laugh with his mates.

‘Come on, Moll,’ Mick said, holding out his hand. ‘I hate the smell of spit and bad company!’

Joe nodded in agreement. He hated pubs too. He’d spent too many days waiting with Mick outside some bar for his father or, after Mick’s mother first died, playing on the bar room floor in the sawdust, full of spit and beer spills, with him. Everyone up and down the whole length of the South Brisbane wharves knew them both by name. Every tapster, shyster, sailor, lady of loose virtue, Unionist, copper, criminal, as well as all the Russians, tried to keep Micky Doyle on the straight and narrow. Which was just as well as Joe Hill had nearly had enough.

Molly led Mick off hand in hand. Joe followed close behind, but Tomfool had crept along the footpath under the bar windows until he was close to where the soldier sat.

Tomas jumped up suddenly, thrusting his head and shoulders in through the window. Eyes bulging like an angry monkey he screamed in the unsuspecting serviceman’s face,

‘They’ll be wanting to hurt you a lot!’

The Digger jumped back, knocking the table over. His two remaining beers smashed on the tiled floor. Tom grinned like a madman.

‘What the blazes!’ the soldier swore. He tried to save the beer in his hand and whack Tomfool at the same time.

‘You bloody galoot!’

Tomas backed out as quick as he’d entered, banging the back of his head hard on the bottom of the hopper window as he scarpered.

‘Hoy, you!’ the Digger bellowed, wiping froth from his uniform. ‘You owe me two beers!’

But Tomas ran down the street, dodging the hansom cabs and buggies that had begun to appear just on closing time, he babbled loudly,

‘They’ll be wanting to hurt you a lot!’ as he rubbed hard at the back of his head.

But the soldier hadn’t finished with Tomfool. Downing his remaining beer he hobbled up the street. Joe turned at the kerfuffle.

‘Damn it, Tom!’ he swore loudly. ‘Why can’t we just walk home for once without you annoying someone!’ Molly and Mick turned too.

‘What’s he done now?’ Mick asked. He wasn’t in the mood for any tomfoolery.

‘Stop that idiot!’ the soldier yelled. His voice rang clear above the sudden six o’clock busyness.

‘Quick, Tomas,’ Molly called. ‘Quick! Time for tea!’ Not that Tomfool needed any encouragement, either to escape the trouble he was in or to get to his spot at the table. They were nearly at the tram. But the soldier was a stayer.

‘Stop that miserable … Socialist!’ He yelled his best insult as he hobbled across the uneven road. Only now could they see he carried a cane and dragged his left leg. Joe felt bad. Mick’s shame at his earlier outburst was written across his face. But being in the wrong never stopped Mick and as for feeling guilty about it? Hah!

‘Hop-a-long!’ he laughed at the Digger. The three of them were ready to jump the tram the moment Tomas caught up. Mick grabbed Tomfool’s arm and turned face to face with …

‘A copper!’ Mick moaned. ‘Of all the miserable!’

‘So, what do we have here?’ asked the policeman, his gaze roving over them, noting with interest the red rosette, the white, and the green.

‘Sergeant O’Hagen, what a happy surprise,’ Molly said, smiling her best smile, her eyes all aglitter, eyelashes aflutter. ‘How is Mrs Kerensky?’ Not waiting for a reply regarding the Sergeant’s landlady, she was interrupted by the arrival of Hop-a-long.

‘That runt there owes me two beers!’ he said, perforating the air with his cane. ‘I demand … remedy!’ he panted. Tomas moved behind Molly, a grin still flickering around his lips. Mick and Joe prepared for battle, fists clenched.

‘If it isn’t enough that these red-flaggers be allowed harangue decent people in the street but they drag along their tame monkey to attack them too,’ Hop-a-long began, but was interrupted by O’Hagen.

‘Attack people you say?’

‘Yes, attack!’ Hop-a-long repeated. ‘I was sitting in the public bar minding my own affairs when this, this … idiot,’ he said jabbing his stick at the hapless Tomfool, ‘jumped through the window and startled me.’

‘I thought you said he attacked you, sir!’ O’Hagen interrupted as Hop-a-long tried to stare Tomfool down. Tomas shadowed Molly’s every move. His ruse was more or less successful and Hop-a-long found himself glaring balefully at Molly instead of his hidden adversary. His ire could not outlast her smile.

‘Well, I was startled by this … this … fellow!’ Hop-a-long continued, but his heart was no longer in it. They all relaxed a little.

‘This … monkey, as you so kindly put it, is a little simple, Mister … Mister …?’ Molly asked for a name but continued without. ‘And as such he’s under the guardianship of my family. At the moment that means me.’

She smiled as she finished.

‘No,’ O’Hagen continued. ‘ I don’t think I caught your name either, sir?’ he finished, all very proper, taking the final wind from Hop-a-long’s sails.

‘Name, sir?’ he asked again.

Hop-a-long glanced to Tomfool but saw only Molly.

Polite and belligerent in the one look, Joe thought. Isn’t she better than breathing.

‘Winterson,’ Hop-a-long replied. ‘Harold Charles Winterson,’ he continued. ‘Everyone calls me Harry. But look,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to make a formal complaint, just a good telling off from you, or a swift kick in the seat of his pants.’ Harry Winterson’s voice trailed off.

‘Then you’ll not be making a complaint regarding the alleged attack?’ O’Hagen pressed. Winterson was beaten.

‘No,’ he said. ‘But I would like you to caution this buffoon. If I catch him spilling people’s beer like that again I’ll …’

‘Now, let me caution you, sir, against making threats,’ O’Hagen interjected. ‘You leave the policing to the police and we’ll all be sweet.’ Sergeant O’Hagen was finished with Winterson, but turned his gaze firmly to Tomfool.

‘As for you, Tomas Madorsky, it’s my very strong advice that you refrain from such reckless acts. If not I’ll be forced to talk to Mrs Kerensky about your wayward behaviour. You know she’ll not be liking that. No pudding for a week!’ he scowled at Tomfool, who winced obligingly at the thought. Molly took Tom’s hand. Winterson looked askance at the mention of Babushka’s name.

‘Be warned, Tommy. If I catch you doing the like of this again,’ O’Hagen lowered his voice, then yelled for effect,

‘I’ll boot your backside from here to blithering breakfast!’

Tomfool jumped like a shot rabbit.

‘We’ll take care of him,’ Joe said to O’Hagen. ‘We always do.’

‘Just make sure of it this time,’ O’Hagen answered, before adding brusquely for effect, ‘or else!’ Then he waved them away with a dismissive hand.

‘Time to be getting home with the lot of you, before that mob from the Domain get among the drinkers and we have a real to do. And to you, sir,’ he added, doffing his cap to Harold Winterson. ‘Enjoy the cool of the evening.’

‘You too, Sergeant,’ Winterson replied, meek as a lamb. Tomfool lurched off quicker than a West End tram, with Molly and Mick in tow.

‘Give my best to Mrs Kerensky – if you just happen to see her before I do.’ O’Hagen winked at Winterson, as he strode off down George Street.

Turning to chase them to the tram, Joe almost collided with a small contingent of police.

It never rains but it bloody pours!

He tried to get Mick’s attention but Molly had linked hands with him and they were all lovey-dovey and oblivious.

Tomfool ran back to circle the coppers, cutting a caper about their flanks like a hungry horse fly. Joe was curious. He wondered if they were going to the Domain, but surely it was all done there now … unless something serious had happened? Joe called Tomas and they ran to catch up with the others.

‘What was all that about with Hopalong?’ Mick asked. ‘What does Babushka have to do with him?’

‘I’m sure he’s a bloody nark,’ Joe answered. Molly smiled an easy smile.

‘He’s Babushka’s other new lodger,’ she said. ‘I saw him moving his things on Friday afternoon.’

‘It’s my lucky day!’ Mick shook his head in mock despair. ‘First I get stoned on my best mate’s behalf then, to add insult to me burden of iniquitous injuries, a copper and the bloke I just had a blue with both move into me sweetheart’s grandmother’s boarding house! And me not the jealous sort,’ he finished with the slightest menace.

Molly laughed. Everyone did except Tomfool who was too far ahead, muttering to himself as he skittered along.

‘What’s the story with all the coppers?’ Joe asked. Molly looked blank, as though she hadn’t seen them. Mick shrugged. The afternoon’s high emotion had worn away and they were tired. A tram lumbered up Queen Street.

‘Quick!’ Mick said, grabbing Tomas’ shirt. ‘That’s Uncle Vanya driving. He’ll give us a lift home for free!’

They ran to catch the tram, Molly holding hands with Mick and laughing. Joe watched. He remembered then that he’d been bleeding and his face hurt. He held the handkerchief his mother had used to his cheek and, on his day of triumph, the world grew small once more.