Читать книгу As Hammers Fall - Mark Svendsen - Страница 8

Nursery Rhyme One year, two year, three year, four, Comes a khaki gentleman knocking at the door. ‘Any little boys at home, send them out to me To train them and brain them in battles yet to be.’ When a little boy is born feed him, train him so. Put him in a cattle pen and wait for him to grow. When he’s nice and plump and dear, and sensible and sweet, Throw him in the trenches for the great grey rats to eat. Toss him in the cannon’s mouth, cannon’s fancy best Tender little boys’ flesh that’s easy to digest. Frank Wilmot

Tomfool was the first to see it.

‘Kaiser Bill! Kaiser Bill! Kaiser Bill, come down the hill!’ he rhymed as he ran towards the sulky parked in the street.

Joe caught sight of the vehicle.

‘Yes, he must be waiting for Mum and Dad to get home.’

‘We’ve not been seeing Uncle Bill around lately,’ Molly said, her face alight with new excitement.

‘What would you be thinking he’ll be wanting?’

‘To see me of course,’ Joe laughed. He didn’t know why Uncle Bill was there either, but Uncle Bill, who wasn’t his, or anyone else’s uncle, was always great fun. He and Molly began to walk faster.

‘Ha, no, he’s come to take me on as his indispensable probationary nurse!’ Molly proposed in a voice that more than half-sounded as though she would very much like that to happen.

Tomfool scampered ahead of them like a happy pup. They both laughed at him as the dull feeling of the evening dropped away. Besides it was cooler now.

Joe mused that perhaps there was something in what Tomfool said about Bill. He could be a bit of a Kaiser with the nursing staff by all accounts. According to Kathleen O’Donahue he was misunderstood and he was only a stickler for cleanliness and getting everything … just so.

‘The sort of bloke who’d wrestle a crocodile in his evening suit, then come up looking like he’d just taken his coat out of the laundry press. A dapper little dandy,’ was what Ted Hill said.

But they didn’t work for him so they always wanted to see Uncle Bill. He was that sort of bloke. Hail-fellow, well-met. Had an outstanding bedside manner … according to all the society ladies of Brisbane.

Molly walked on ahead, quicker now.

Tomfool ran back to them trying to catch Joe’s eye.

‘I’ve been robbed?’ he asked plaintively.

‘Race you, rather!’ Molly cried as she scampered up the street, her face flushed to match the red of her hair. She had Joe’s full attention.

Tomfool made a strange, strangled sound in his throat, pleading with Joe, his face alive with anticipation.

‘Go on then. Quick!’ Joe encouraged him.

Tomfool ran towards Molly, pulling the insides of his trouser pockets out until they hung like white handkerchiefs from his hips. When he was close to her, he stopped dead. His face fell. His lips quivered.

‘Help!’ he wailed, pulling hopelessly at his pockets. ‘I’ve been robbed!’ he cried, his voice a telegraph of shock.

Molly stopped to play her part. She could never resist once the game had started. Her accent changed into that of an actress from a music hall melodrama.

‘What? What is it, my child?’ she cried, knuckles pressed to her mouth. ‘Oh you poor boy! Who could have done such a thing to an innocent young man.’

Molly turned, pulling Joe by the shirt until she’d forced him to stand very close to her. A broad smile flooded his face.

‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘What are you going to do about this outrage?’ Joe looked suitably upset.

‘I’ve been robbed,’ Tomfool wailed. Joe raised Tomfool’s, by now tear-soaked face, and placed a firm hand on his shoulder.

‘I can see exactly what has happened here, Ladies and Gentlemen!’ Joe said, addressing Molly alone.

‘Yes, I can see very clearly! My friend has been robbed. But so have I!’ Joe yelled angrily. ‘Robbed by the Capitalist bosses, their pet bankers and all their idling class!’ Joe performed for an audience of one.

‘But most importantly, I’ve been robbed,’ he continued, playing his part to a ‘t’. Molly waited, enthralled, as Joe turned to her, his face suddenly miserable.

‘I’ve been robbed of a kiss from the most beautiful girl in Brisbane!’ Joe finished in a rush, taking his opportunity to kiss Molly full on her unsuspecting lips.

Joe’s shenanigans were too much for Tomfool. He began to laugh like a waterfall, great tumbling belly laughs poured down, the tears on his cheeks of pure joy. Molly broke from the kiss and smiled too.

It took all Joe’s willpower to drag his attention back to Tomas’s game, hoping that somehow he hadn’t seen what just happened or, at least, that he wouldn’t tell Mick.

‘You get them in every time, Big Fellow,’ Joe laughed, slapping Tomfool on the back.

Molly smiled her most mysterious smile. Joe thought he knew just what a smile like that meant. They turned together to continue up the street, eyes fixed on the Ted Hill’s front door, not so much as mentioning the thing that now lay between them, leaving Tomas to calm himself.

‘Come in and we’ll all say a quick hello to Bill,’ Joe urged as they arrived at the front gate. ‘He’ll only be reading the paper and spoiling for an argument.’

‘As usual,’ Molly said quietly, as though preoccupied, but added. ‘Not that I don’t like to listen, but we really need to get home now, Babushka will be waiting.’

It was Joe’s turn to turn on his best winning smile. Even though he knew what he’d done was utterly wrong, he didn’t want her to leave. Not yet. There was such deliciousness in this kiss, stolen in front of a witness as part of a charade and, he told himself, she kissed him back.

Molly nodded. Tomfool had stopped giggling like a ninny long enough to pat Bill’s horse and line up behind Molly at the gate.

‘Girls first,’ Joe said, swinging open the unlocked door and bowing for Molly, before jumping in front of Tomfool when he tried to push in second.

‘Don’t you mean ladies?’ Molly asked.

‘Maybe,’ Joe answered, wondering if that made him a coquette.

He began rehearsing what he’d tell Uncle Bill about the afternoon’s exploits. It’d be good with Molly to listen. Maybe he’d even mention what happened with Mick and the smart Alec soldier at the Lands Office. That’d make it sound fair, like Mick was a bit of a hero too.

They traipsed through, boots echoing hollowly on the bare wooden floor of the hall. Entering the house with visitors always made Joe self-conscious, as though he was seeing things for the first time. It made him want to rearrange his life.

He could smell the faintest whiff of her soap, it smelled of lavender. He followed close. From now on the scent of lavender might always make him want to change his life too.

The doors to the bedrooms at the front of the house were closed. A sitting room opened out behind the hall. The room was full of half-finished garments spread across four single tattered lounge chairs in various stages of decrepitude. A treadle sewing machine sat under the only window and piles of books and papers were stacked about the floor in unsteady towers. A brick fireplace on the side wall was topped by a mantelpiece with a framed print of Karl Marx on one end and a clock on the other. Kathleen always had a vase of fresh flowers obscuring the portrait. Ted’s reading-of-the-moment was on the mantel too, including the newspapers, so they didn’t get lost in the detritus.

Joe felt even more self-conscious. No one else’s house looked so … well used. He pushed onward, close behind Molly.

‘I always feel at home in your sitting room,’ she mused aloud. Joe felt foolish once more, for not guessing that she would think that.

‘You never said so before,’ Joe murmured. How much more he wanted to hear that he’d never heard before. Through the back of the house was the kitchen. His father’s voice greeted them,

‘Is that you, Kathleen?’

‘No, it’s us,’ Joe said, stepping from behind Molly as they filed in. Sitting around the bare pine table, with enamel mugs of tea in their hands and a copy of The Worker spread out before them, were Ted Hill, Bill Carroll and Artem Segeyev.

‘How did you get here so soon?’ Joe asked.

Truth to tell, he felt a little dismayed as Ted had probably already entertained Uncle Bill with tales of Joe’s speech and the fraças.

‘Say hello to our guests and I might tell you,’ Ted Hill said. They all chorused their g’days as Bill and Artem stood, Bill almost formally and Artem a little uneasy as he stepped behind his chair, empty mug in hand.

‘Cripes, you don’t have to come to attention, Bill. You’re not in the Army,’ his father said. ‘Yet!’ he added.

‘Sit down, man!’

Molly and Joe shared a glance.

‘What do you mean, “yet”?’ Joe asked for both of them.

‘Haven’t even got to the first question and he’s already onto the second,’ Ted laughed. ‘He’ll make a politician “yet”!’

‘You make a good show tonight. A good show,’ Artem smiled, nodding.

‘How did it feel, Comrade?’

Segeyev was usually frugal with his praise and his question surprised Joe. He glanced at Molly.

‘I …’ Joe couldn’t get another word out. Ted and Artem waited for the second time that evening.

‘I felt,’ Joe finally managed in a rush of breath. ‘Once I got going I felt … exalted!’ he ended, happy with a word that sounded as high and as joyous as the moment had been.

‘Blimey son, I hope you don’t hesitate so much come the Revolution,’ his father laughed. ‘Or you’ll dance for the hangman before we get started.’

He winked at Tomfool and pulled a strangled face as he tugged on an imaginary noose. Joe felt the red creep up his neck. Blushing in front of them all. In front of Molly.

‘Mind you, not everyone was happy with him,’ Molly offered. ‘Look at what the Loyalists did,’ she said, lifting Joe’s hair so they could all see the wound. Its blood was coagulated now. Her hand was warm, and soft and careful. He blushed a deeper, more thankful red.

‘And hello to you too, Miss Molly … Tomas,’ Uncle Bill said, nodding to them each in turn.

‘You’d make a rose blush for beauty these days, Molly,’ he continued, looking with feigned interest to where she showed Joe’s injury. Now it was Molly’s turn to colour.

Segeyev took his usual blunt action.

‘I leave to prepare for lecture,’ he said. Molly stepped away from Joe, to make way for him to pass, fumbling to recover her composure.

‘Tonight, Montague Miller. He may be old man but he is valiant,’ Segeyev continued. ‘Though I sometimes think his Socialism is merely a fierce hatred of injustice in disguise. And Mrs Griffiths – a rousing speaker and good to hear a woman-worker. I must ready the rooms,’ Segeyev said more to himself than the others.

‘You come up after your meal and help me with chairs?’

Joe nodded as Segeyev continued, addressing both Uncle Bill and Ted.

‘You are both wrong in the matter we discuss,’ he said, staring hard at Uncle Bill. ‘I say no more. My regards, fellow-workers.’

Artem walked down the hall to see himself out.

‘What’s he mean, “wrong”?’ Joe burst out. ‘Who’s wrong?’

‘And about what?’ added Molly.

‘And you still haven’t told me what you meant by, “yet”?’

‘The doctor’s going home,’ Tomfool chimed in. Joe turned to Tomfool’s voice. He grinned, pleased with the attention.

‘Well, is it true?’ Joe demanded. ‘Is someone going somewhere?’

Uncle Bill glanced down at Ted Hill.

‘I suppose I have to tell them sooner or later, Ted,’ he half-asked.

‘Don’t look to me for help,’ Ted Hill answered. ‘Spit it out!’

Bill gazed at a point out the kitchen window on the other side of Tomfool’s head.

‘I’ve decided,’ he said, as all their eyes followed the every move of his lips. ‘I’ve decided to go to France.’

‘No!’ a voice sobbed behind them. It was the sort of voice they’d heard many times before, when the Postmaster delivered those black-bordered telegrams that swirled around the suburbs like leaves from the war’s far-off, dying tree.

‘Kathleen!’ Ted and Uncle Bill said together. They all turned.

Her hat was only half-off, her face pale. She trembled, then swayed. Joe jumped to her side, grabbing her arm.

‘Mother?’ he asked. He’d never seen her like this before. Was it the shock of Uncle Bill’s news, or worse? Joe had his own trouble dealing with what he’d just heard.

‘Ouhah!’ she answered. Her voice sounded as though she had been struck a blow to the stomach. Her eyes, as she gazed at Uncle Bill in dull surprise, seemed vacant for a moment then, they rolled back in her head.

‘Sit her down. Quick!’ Molly ordered. She took Kathleen’s hat as Joe directed her collapsing body to a chair at the table. Ted stared at her strangely as her head fell to the tabletop. Uncle Bill strode to her side.

‘My bag, Joe!’ he ordered. ‘Under the seat of the buggy!’ Joe ran.

Tomfool put his hands to his ears. His mouth moved soundlessly. Uncle Bill lifted the kitchen chair and moved it back from the table. He lifted Kathleen’s head, to lower it down, between her knees. She hung, limp as a rag doll. Molly held her on one side, Bill on the other. Joe ran back, thrusting Bill’s doctor’s bag into his hands.