He Called Me Son (The Blountmere Street Series Book 1) (16 page)

As usual, the following Sunday, a larger cauldron which took all day to heat gurgled on top of the stove ready for our baths.
 

It was the week Murray washed his hair and his work clothes in the bath water.
 
He did it monthly, using a small piece of Ma Downston’s soap.
 
It gave little lather and smelt like the fat on top of the boil up.
 
All four of us shared a few inches of water, and we bathed in order of seniority, Murray first.

‘I swear this water puts more dirt on to you than it takes off.
 
Can’t you wash your clothes in the tub outside like the rest of us?’
 
Fergus grumbled to Murray.

‘There’s no hot water outside.
 
Anyways, there’s nothing wrong with this bath water.
 
It’s full of good, clean dirt,’ Murray replied.

‘And what sort of answer is that?’
 
Bath-times were the only occasions when Murray and Fergus argued.

When Murray had wrung out his clothes, he finished washing himself.
 
Then Fergus stripped himself of his trousers and shirt, shuddered and lowered himself into the water, while I turned my gaze away from his shriveled willie, and Murray hacked at the hair growing in his armpits.
 
He let tufts of it drop to the floor to join months of dirt.
 
On the weeks he didn’t wash his clothes he mended them, grasping the needle with work-thickened fingers.

‘After I’ve done this, I’ll have a go at your hair, Ginger.
 
It looks as if it could do with a hack,’ Murray observed.

‘D’you ‘ave to?
 
Those scissors are as blunt as a butcher’s chopping board.
 
I end up looking a right sight.
 
It’s more a scalping than a hack.’

‘Better that than the Boss plaster your hair with sheep shit, like he did the last time you let it grow too long.’

‘I s’ppose so.’

‘Good as gold.
 
I’ll do it after Fergus has finished his toe nails.

Because I was older than Joe, I was the next one in the bath.
 
Even so, the water was lukewarm and smelt of sheep dung.
 
I thought of Paula and her flowery smell, even Mum and her coal tar soap.
 

‘Be sure, not to forget yer lugholes,’ Fergus said as he snipped at his toenails.
 
I took no notice.
 
I didn’t need anyone to tell me how to keep myself clean, which was more than you could say for Joe.

‘I hate the scum on top when I’m the blinkin’ last in the bath,’ Joe moaned when it was his turn.
 
‘I’m not that dirty.
 
I don’t need it.’
 
He continued to make an assortment of excuses not to get into the water.

‘Right, Ginger, that’s it.’
 
Murray laid down the scissors and walked towards Joe.
 
He began dragging him towards the bath.
 
‘If you won’t get in yourself, you’ll have to be helped.’

‘Pack it in,’ Joe shouted, but he was laughing as he yelled.
 
It was the same every week.
 
I had my suspicions that Joe’s reluctance to bathe had little to do with the scummy water.
 
It had more to do with the attention of being chased and caught by Murray, and the camaraderie they shared.
 

As I rubbed myself dry with another piece of rag and hurried to get my clothes on I wondered how Joe could have settled into this place in the far reaches of the earth so quickly.

When we all finished bathing, Joe and I carried the bath outside.
 
We emptied the water over the piece of scrub surrounding our quarters.
 

‘This bit of land’s wasted, you know,’ Joe said, bending to pick a piece of coarse grass.
 
‘I could make it into a vegie patch if they’d let me.’

‘If they let you do what?’
 
Murray asked walking to the rope clothes line strung between two stunted trees and pegging his recently washed clothes on to it.

‘Let me have this bit of land for a garden.’

‘Beggar me, boy, but it’d be hard work digging this lot over.’

‘I could do it and make things grow, I know I could.
 
And we could put the vegies into the boil-up.’

‘I don’t know what the Boss would say.’

‘We wouldn’t have to say anything, would we?’

Murray squeezed the last of the bath water from a trouser leg.
 
‘Well, Ginger, if you want to have a go, where’s the harm in it?
 
I’ll buy you some seeds and get you a couple of books on gardening from the library when we go to the township.’

‘Will you really?
 
You’re a real … a real pal.’
  
At that moment I knew Joe felt the same way about Murray as I had about Fred.

Murray revved the engine of the truck, while Fergus jumped in beside him on their way to the township.
 
Exhaust smoke plumed into the crisp winter air.
 
‘Watch over things while we’re away. Anyroad, the Boss doesn’t want you leaving this place.
 
Says you’ll be safer here.’

‘Don’t want us to squeal on him’s more the truth,’ Joe scowled.

‘We’ll see you both when we get back.’

When Murray and Fergus returned, they were too drunk to see anything.
 
Joe and I lifted each of them from the truck, carried them into the hut, and dumped them on their bunks.

‘How did Murray manage to drive in the state he’s in?
 
The truck must have made its own way back.
 
It’s a wonder the two of them didn’t kill themselves,’ Joe exclaimed.

I shrugged.
 
We’d be lucky if we got the books and the shirts they were going to bring us back.
 
We’d be saddled with tight shirts and no books until the next time they went to the township.
 
Another promise broken.
 
Fergus had given me his word he would bring some poetry books back.
 
I loved reading poetry with Fergus.
 
The Gang would never have spoken to me again if I’d ever shown an inkling for the stuff.
 
I had sniggered with the rest of them, when Mrs Colby made us take
The Red Book of Verse
from our desks.
 
I couldn’t remember much of it, just odd lines like
Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink
.
 
I hadn’t known where it came from or who had written it.

Reading poetry with Fergus was different.
 
He didn’t recite poetry like Daphne Johns used to in a smug, singsong voice.
 
Fergus spoke the words on a soft breath, tasting them, causing me to tingle and shiver, even when I didn’t understand them.
 

I often recited verses while I was working, keeping rhythm with what I was doing.
 
By the shores of Gitche Gume.
 
Swish!
 
By the shining Big Sea Water.
 
Thwack!
 
Some of the poetry was so tender, I hid it inside me to treasure silently.

Even though Fergus often let me down, the next time he and Murray went to the township, I pressed an envelope into his hand.
 
I asked him to post it for me.
 
‘It’s to England.
 
I’ll pay you for the stamp as soon as I can,’ I said.
 
It was a rash promise, when Downston never paid us a cent.

‘To be sure, there’s no need to worry about the money, lad.
 
To someone special is it?’

‘Paula, the girl who lived downstairs to us in London,’ I replied, not wanting to divulge any more.

‘Right you are, young Tony.’
 
He struggled to lift himself from the seat and stuff the envelope into his back pocket.
 
‘Consider it done.’

Another summer had come without there seeming to be much of a gap between this and the last one.
 
The heat that had hovered over the paddocks all day was beginning to dissipate.
 
Outside our quarters, Joe’s garden was flourishing, helped no doubt by the frequent handfuls of fertilizer he pilfered from Downston which he scooped into his hat and smuggled back.
 
As he usually did on hot summer evenings, he cajoled us into helping him water his garden, threatening, ‘If you want to eat the stuff, you’ve all got to do your bit.’

When we finished, we forsook the stove for the ridge outside, while the sun hid itself behind the mountains and the mantle of night draped itself across the sky.

Murray, mellowed by the softness of a dwindling day, recalled his childhood on the West Coast, saying, ‘Beggar me, if they weren’t golden days’, and Fergus sang,
When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,
as if the “eyes” belonged to someone he once knew.
 
It reminded me of Mrs Dibble singing the same song when she was peeling potatoes at her sink.
 
It made me want to cry, and I tightened the muscles in my face so that no one could tell.

With the speed that days in the southern hemisphere lose their colour, darkness overcame the macrocarpa trees in what seemed no more than a dozen blinks.
 
It turned the homestead to a ghostly outline, and transformed the road leading to and from the farm into a thin moon-illuminated ribbon.
 
I once imagined Fred and Lori coming down that road to collect me.
 
I had kindled such dreams of life in New Zealand.
 
The pain of leaving England, and of Mum dying, had been blunted by my anticipation that I would live with Fred and Lori.
 
But I had never heard from them.

I hugged my knees, and looked up at the stars.
 
The more I concentrated on them, the closer they became, until I imagined they were near enough to throw a rope over.

‘Blinkin’ marvellous those stars.
 
D’you know, I ‘ardly knew there
were
stars when I lived in London.’
 
Joe made circles with the thumb and forefinger of both hands.
 
He peered through them as if they were a pair of binoculars.

I continued daydreaming.
 
If I could connect the stars with the rope I could swing on it, from one to the other, on and on and on across the land and the sea until -

‘When the baby Jesus was born, it must have been really hard for those shepherds knowing what star was the brightest if they all looked like this lot.’

- until I got to Blountmere Street.
 
Then I could perch on a star and look down on them all, and watch - watch and listen.
 
It would be better than visiting them in the pigsty every morning, far better.
 
I might find out what had happened to Mum and Angela, because now I knew with a certainty I wasn’t going to receive a reply to the letter I had written to Paula.
 
Fergus said it took as long for a letter to get to England and one to come back, as it did to ride a bicycle to Baliclarny.
 
But I could tell by the look on his face he was lying.
 
I doubted my letter ever got any further than the
The Travellers.
 
It had probably been swept up with the sawdust on the floor and burnt.

Chapter Fourteen

Joe pushed his hat from his forehead to reveal patches of freckles, shiny with sweat.
 
Although Joe and I both hated the job of grubbing thistles, at least we could do it together and suffer the after-pain of a thousand stings jointly.

Joe laid down his grubber.
 
He clasped his hands around his bony knees.
  
‘Something’s up with the Boss and the Missus.’
 
He blew his breath upwards to cool his face.
 
‘Don’t it sound odd, the Missus is going to start giving us lessons in her front parlour after all this time?
 
Murray says they’re sending their own kids to the Boss’s brother’s place on the West Coast to finish off their stuck up boarding school holidays, so we can do our lessons at the homestead.
 
He says the Boss is sending him and Fergus to the township to get exercise books and things for us.
 
Murray says …’

‘Perhaps they think it’s about time we had a bit of education.’

Joe gave me a scathing look.
 
‘You’ve been listening to too much of that poetry Fergus reads.
 
You’re talking about Downston and the Missus as if they had hearts.
 
She ain’t said one word to us since we arrived here, neither would he if he didn’t have to.
 
All they want from us is free elbow grease, so don’t go getting soft in the head.’

‘I’m not going soft, and I’ll soon shut the mouth of anyone who says I am.’
 
I glared at Joe.
 
There were times when he had too much to say.

When Fergus and Murray returned from their latest visit to the township, Murray began unpacking a box.
 
After taking from it some seed packets and a couple of library books, he held up two pairs of short grey trousers, followed by two white shirts still in shiny packets and two black jerseys with a yellow stripe across the chest.

‘They’re for their snotty nose son, I suppose.
 
I thought he’d consider himself too old for short trousers.’
 
I pictured Paul Downston sitting astride Flinders, his horse, in his check shirt and stetson, riding round the farm like a stuck-up cowboy.
 

‘The Boss said they were for you two to wear while you’re doing your school work in the homestead.’

‘Blimey!
 
They’re new ain’t they?’

‘Too right they’re new, the whole rig out: shoes, socks, the lot.
 
Got ‘em from Old Witchery’s place on sale or return.
 
Old Witchery wasn’t too happy about it.’

‘Shoes and socks!
 
The Boss must have had a brainstorm.’

‘Any underpants?’
 
I asked expectantly.

‘What d’you want underpants for?
 
They’d only be something else to wash.
 
Anyways, as far as I can recall, they get up the crease in your bum.
 
There’s two exercise books and a couple of new fangled pens;’ Murray continued.

I fanned the crisp, lined pages of one of the books.
 
I would have preferred underpants.

‘The pair of you are to report to the homestead at one every afternoon for the Missus to give you some lessons.
 
Make sure you’re not bloody late, ‘cos if you are, I promise you there’ll be hell to pay.
 
And give yourselves a wash before you come.
 
The Missus don’t want you stinking out the place.’
 
Downston concentrated on picking his nose, his finger well up his nostril.
 

Joe whispered, ‘Blimey he pongs as if he never wipes his bum.’

‘You’re lucky to be given an education, so don’t let it go to your heads.’

‘I thought that was where it was meant to go,’ I mumbled, and Downston said, ‘Don’t start getting mouthy with me, boy, or you and me’ll fall out, and it won’t be me getting the worst of it.’

Lori used to say that red was a warm and welcoming colour, but the Downstons’ front parlour with its red flock wall paper, red sofa and chairs with red cushions, was neither warm nor welcoming.

‘It doesn’t feel as if anyone’s ever been in here.’
 
I shivered, and rubbed my arms.
 
All at once I missed our flat in Blountmere Street.

‘It’s just like my Gran’s place.
 
She had this front room nobody was allowed in.
 
‘eaven knows why she had chairs in there ‘cos you weren’t allowed to sit on ‘em.
 
Her place smelt of fly strip and polish, just like it does in here.
 
It was all for show.
 
When she wasn’t around, up the pub or shopping, me and my brothers used to sneak in and bang away on her piano.
 
Then we’d jump like chimps on her armchairs, pretending we were in a circus.’
 
The thought prompted Joe to bound across the room and begin jumping on the sofa.

‘Get off.
 
If the Missus comes in she’ll kill you.’

‘Blinkin’ thing’s as hard as she is.’

‘Get off quick.’
 
I grabbed his arm, and yanked him to the floor.
 
‘You know how quiet she is.
 
We’d never hear her coming.’

Sure enough, Maggie Downston appeared to come from nowhere; warily, as if she could feel the disturbed sanctity of her parlour.
 
She looked around for something to confirm her suspicions.
 
Finally, her gaze rested on the two desks pushed against the wall.
 
She indicated that we should sit on the chairs in front of them, and slid an exercise book in front of each of us.
 
She produced a book entitled
English for Everyone
.
 
It smelt musty and its pages were loose and brownish yellow.
 
She turned to a chapter headed, ‘Nouns and Pronouns’.
 
‘Copy, swap,’ she told me.
 
Taking a piece of paper covered with grease patterns and a list of sums from her apron pocket, she gave it to Joe, saying, ‘Add!
 
Take away!
 
Swap!’
 
She pointed to the paper, to Joe and then to me.
  

I hadn’t noticed how crooked her face was.
 
Her skin was coarse, too.
  
It wasn’t smooth and unblemished like Mum’s and Angela’s.
 
Lori said they had “English skin”.
 
“It’s because we eat our greens.
 
Not like those Australians.
 
It’s their pores,” she told Angela and me.

For the next week, the Missus simply appeared in the front parlour.
 
Without reading what we’d written, she planted a tick at the bottom of each page, saying, ‘More!
 
Quick!
 
Quiet!’

Fortunately, the next day we were studying instead of playing noughts and crosses or drawing, as we often did when the Missus wasn’t around.
 

When Downston barged through the parlour door, he created dust the Missus had endeavoured so mightily to keep from the place.
 
He began by examining our exercise books before pulling back our ear lobes and peering inside our ears.
 
‘Grow a bloody field of corn in ‘em.’
 
The flat of his hand made a dull thud as it connected with the side of Joe’s face.
 

‘As from today you’ll be living at the homestead,’ he announced.
 
‘So have a bloody bath, keep your mouths shut, and only speak when you’re spoken to.
 
Understood?’

‘But…’

‘I said,
understood
?’

Joe nodded, but I wouldn’t give Downston the satisfaction of my obedience.
 
Instead I lifted an eyebrow in as slight a way as I could.

‘On Wednesday there’s someone coming from the Department of something or the other, so you’ll be able to tell him you’re having lessons.
 
You’re to say you’re well fed, and lucky to be living here with the Missus and me.’

‘But we’ve only … ’

‘Remember what I said?
 
Only speak when you’re spoken to!
 
When you’re asked questions, you’re to say,
yes
or
no
, nothing else.
 
Leave me to do the talking.’
 
Downston’s eyebrow and lip lines threatened to merge.
 
‘And if either of you pisses the bed I’ll cut your dicks off.’
 
He strode from the room, causing the cut glass bowl on the piano to wobble and a company of dust motes to gloat in the sunlight.

That evening, we ate our meal in the homestead dining room in silence, apart from the clink of metal and china and the smacking and gulping sounds Downston made swallowing his food without chewing.
 
The dirt under his finger-nails made them look like beetles.
 
As he forked his food into his mouth, some of it fell back down his chin and onto his shirt.
 

‘When the Man comes, you’re to tell him about this bit of silverside and the mustard sauce the Missus made to go with it.’
 
He loaded more food on to his fork and crammed it into his mouth.

‘Silverside!
 
Sauce!’ the Missus echoed, while Elsie the kitchen girl sidled through the door carrying two more dishes.
 
Her lank hair fell across her face as she placed the dishes on the table.
 
It was not before I saw the wheals on her forehead and cheeks and her half-closed eye.
 
Downston watched her as she stepped away from the table.
 
His eyes were glassy, and she half-curtsied to him before she backed and finally scampered away.
 

‘And don’t forget to mention the apple pie and custard,’ Downston ordered.

‘I thought we weren’t supposed to talk unless we were talked to,’ I mumbled.

‘Watch your lip, boy.’

‘If we can talk to this bloke, then we might as well tell him about the boil up we get every night and the …’

Downston rose, food falling from his shirt to the floor.
 
‘I said, watch your lip.’
 
He advanced a few steps towards me, but as he did so, the Missus got up from the table.
 
Shuffling between us, she collected our plates, pointed to the kitchen and said to Joe and me, ‘Wash!
 
Dry!
 
Now!

In the kitchen, the girl was standing on tiptoe scrubbing a saucepan.
 
She looked as if she was about to disappear into it.
 
Her sleeves were rolled up past her elbows revealing scrawny, bruised arms.

‘There’s a bowl on the shelf and some hot water on the stove,’ she said without looking up.
 
Her voice was high pitched, and she lisped.
 
I reckoned she was no more than ten.

‘You’re going to be at the homestead for a while, aren’t you?
 
The Missus asked me to get Mr Paul’s bedroom ready for you.
 
It’s a bit different from the men’s quarters,’ Elsie said.

‘Have you been here long?’ Joe asked

‘Since I was seven.
 
Gran died and I didn’t have anyone else, so the Boss took me on to help the Missus.’

‘Do you like it here?’

The girl swivelled back to the sink and recommenced her scrubbing
 
‘I can’t remember much else.’
 
She paused and her voice softened.
 
‘I like it when Miss Gaylene’s back from her school holidays.
 
It’s not so lonely then.
 
She helps me.
 
She knows how to cook silverside just the way the Boss likes it.
 
Very fussy about his silverside, he is.
 
I’m in for a good thrashing if I don’t get it right.’

‘Why don’t you come up to the men’s quarters sometimes.
 
It would give you some company and a bit of a rest.’
 
I wondered how she managed to stand all day on legs that appeared no sturdier than a couple of pipe cleaners.

‘The Boss wouldn’t like it.’

‘Why not?’

‘He wouldn’t.
 
That’s all.’
 
She took a cloth and began drying the pot.
 
‘You have to be careful of the Boss,’ she said.