He Called Me Son (The Blountmere Street Series Book 1) (19 page)

‘Don’t try and be clever with me.’
 
Paul Downston snatched the cloth.
 
Flinders snorted in pain.

‘When I say something to you, you’re to answer, “Yes, sir”.’

The only weapon I had against Paul Downston was silence.
 
I wouldn’t apologise or say “sir”.

‘Say, “Yes, sir”!’
 
Paul Downston commanded.
 
His lips, which were narrow like his old man’s, straightened and merged into one.
 
‘Now say, “Yes, sir”!’

Still I refused to answer, and Flinders whinnied as if she was on my side.

‘Are you going to say it, or am I going to have to knock it out of you?’

Silence.

‘Say it!’
 
He had hold of my jersey.

Silence.

The punch, when it came, caught me on the side of my mouth, causing blood to spurt from my lip and two teeth to become loosened.
 

‘Say, “Yes, sir”!’
 
Paul Downston shook with rage, while he flexed and unflexed his fists.

At once my mouth swelled.
 
I wouldn’t be able to pronounce the words, even if I’d decided to.

I turned and began to walk towards the men’s quarters.
 
I readied myself for the next blow.
 
This time, I wouldn’t take it.
 
This time, I’d turn and hit him so hard, he wouldn’t get up.
 
This time, I’d kill him.
 

‘Call me, “sir”!’
 
His voice was shaking.
 
‘Call me, “sir”!’

But the blow I was expecting never came.
 
Instead, I heard him mount Flinders and gallop away.

Back in the hut, Murray examined his pliers and wiped them on a piece of newspaper.
 
‘Those two teeth are going to have to come out.’
 
He practised at positioning the pliers.
 
‘Open your mouth wide, boy, so I can get these inside it,’ he instructed.

‘He can’t.
 
His mouth’s too swollen,’ Joe answered for me.
 

‘Open it as far as it’ll go.
 
Nothing to worry about.
 
A couple of good yanks and they’ll both be out.’

‘Good job they’re at the back, Tone.
 
Nobody’ll be able to see they’re missing.’
 
Joe tried to assure me, but every inch of me was quivering.

It took more than a couple of “good yanks” to extract the two incisors and Murray had built up a sweat before he dropped them both with a tinkle into a bowl.

‘Holy Mother of God,’ Fergus said, as he wiped perspiration from his own upper lip.

‘I’ll give him “
yes sir”
.
 
I’ll get him back for this, Tone.
 
I promise you that.
 
Paul Downston’ll wish he’d never set eyes on us when I’ve finished with him.
 
I’ll bide my time, but I’ll get him.’
 
Joe held a blood-soaked cloth to my mouth.
 
My whole head throbbed, and I barely heard him.

That night, I hardly slept, even when the shaking had subsided.
 
It wasn’t only because of the pain in my mouth, but because of my concern for Flinders.
 
What if Paul Downston had killed her?
 
She didn’t deserve to die.
 
She was a soft and trusting creature.
 
She needed to be caressed and loved.
 
I didn’t know much about horses, but I knew she would have willingly done whatever Downston had wanted, without having to be whipped.
 
The thought of being loved and caressed caused fresh longings to flare inside me.

The next morning with my face swollen the size of a full moon I visited Flinders in the stables before the first light appeared over the mountains.
 
I knew Paul Downston wouldn’t be about at that hour.
 
Nevertheless, my actions were stealthy as I tiptoed into the stables, calling softly.
 
To my relief, the mare made a snuffling sound, and scraped a hoof on the ground.
 
‘It’s all right, girl.
 
It’s only me,’ I told her.
 
With the orphanage torch, the one Joe had given me, I shone it along Flinders’ back.
 
Then, from my other pocket, I took the tin of ointment Candlewax had left.
 
I scooped a liberal amount of the pungent grease into my hand.
 
I rubbed it along the whip wounds, praying that it would heal as Candlewax said it would.
 
Flinders whinnied and I said, ‘Shush, girl, shush.
 
We don’t want anyone to hear, do we?’
 
The horse nuzzled me.
 
‘I’ll be back,’
 
I promised.
 
When he’s not around I’ll come and put some more ointment on you, to make you better.
 
You can rely on me.’
 
Flinders rubbed her face against mine.
 
Perhaps, like me, she felt a little less powerless.

‘For the love of the Blessed Virgin, can’t a man get any peace round here!’
 
Fergus licked his pencil stub and frowned at the piece of writing paper in front of him.

‘I was only saying I’ve got to cover my lemon tree, in case a late frost gets hold of it,’ Joe said.

‘Then, for all the saints’ sakes, say it quieter.’

Joe poked out his tongue at Fergus’ back and mumbled something about people getting the hump.

It had been the fourth night running that Fergus had laboured over what appeared to be a letter, before screwing it into a ball and tossing it into the fire.

‘To be sure, you’d do well to be writing a letter yourself instead of watching me like a tawny owl.’
 
He scowled at me.

‘Fergus is finding it really difficult to write to whoever it is,’ I observed to Joe as we draped a piece of sacking over his lemon tree.

‘It doesn’t mean he has to take it out on us.
 
Anyway, I don’t know why people find writing letters so difficult.’

‘That’s because you never write any.’

‘I would if I wanted to.’

I tucked a corner of the sacking under a branch.
 
There were people I wanted to write to; people like the Gang and the Dibbles.
 
People who had left a chasm in my life
 
much, much wider than the gap in my teeth that my tongue was forever probing.
 
It was their reply, or lack of one, that worried me.

The next night, Fergus barely touched his dinner as he sat hunched on his bed, staring at a blank sheet of paper.
 
He scrawled on it before he crossed out what he had written, cursed and began again.

Joe looked across at Fergus and raised his eyebrows, before saying, ‘I think I’ll have a couple of bob each way on
Den’s Dance
.’
 
He folded
The Betting News.

Studying form
had become Joe’s preferred evening reading.

‘What about you, Tone?’

‘If you think it’s going to win, why don’t you put more money on it?’
 
I asked.

‘I told you, I’m never going to be without a bit of cash again.
 
A couple of bob will do.’

‘I suppose you want me to put it on for you?’
 
Murray scraped Fergus’s half-eaten dinner into a tin for the dogs.

‘Yeah … please.’
 
Joe gave Murray his most persuasive grin.

‘And for me, too.’

‘Beggar me, if the pair of you aren’t worse than me and my brothers when we were your age,’ Murray replied.

‘Are you not going to be writing a letter, then?’
 
Fergus asked me, as if from a long way off.

‘Another time,’ I replied.

Murray said Paul Downston had gone to the Boss’s brother on the Coast.
 
I didn’t care where he’d gone, as long as he was away from the farm and I could visit the stables more freely.
 
Downston himself had no interest in horses.
 
I took the sugar lumps Murray and Fergus had pinched from
The Travellers
.
 
The mare licked my hand clean, then she nuzzled my neck.
 
I examined Flinders’ back, where the whip had cut into her.
 
Thanks to Candlewax’s ointment, it was pretty well healed.
 
I wished I could say the same about my mouth.
 
From time to time my gum still ached, especially at night when the pain woke me.

I took a brush and began grooming her in long, loving strokes along her back until her coat was glossy.
 
All the time, I crooned, ‘Lovely girl.
 
Good girl, Flinders.’
 
When I finished, I fondled the animal’s head and Flinders brought it up and nuzzled her nose against me, from my chin up to my forehead and back down.
 
In the process, she spread the sudden tears of longing for Mum and Angela that had begun to flow.

‘Keep touching me, Flinders,’ I sobbed.
 
‘Keep touching me’

‘Well, come on.
 
Tell us how we did.’
 
Joe was at Murray’s heels as the dogs usually were on Murray’s return from the township.

‘How we did with what, Ginger?’

‘You know what?’

‘My word, I don’t.’

‘The gee gees!’

‘The gee gees?’

‘
Den’s Dance
!’

‘Now let me see.’
 
Murray turned away and put his hand into the inside of his jacket.
 
‘He won, too right he did.
 
Twenty to one.’
 
He held up a handful of pound notes.

‘I told you he would, didn’t I?
 
I told you studying form was what you had to do.
 
We’re going to be millionaires, Tone.
 
Blinkin’ millionaires.’

‘What good will that do you, to be sure?’
 
Fergus entered the hut, disheveled and stinking of booze.
 
He reeled across the floor, and took the lid off the stove.
 
Then he poked the letter he had finally written the night before into the flames.
 
‘You had the right idea, Tony.
 
By all the saints and the Virgin herself, letters are best kept in the head.’

He slumped on his bed with his hat pushed over his face, leaving only his mouth clear, and muttered, ‘Not in the phone book those folks of yours, Fred and whoever … not there.’
 
His mouth slackened and he let out a sob before entering oblivion.

Chapter Sixteen

The air resounded with bleats, whistles and barks, as the dogs herded sheep into the woolshed.

Behind the shed, gorse flowers turned the hills gold while the mountains, almost free of snow, retreated to a hazy far off place.
 
Summer was upon us, and the sun had leached moisture from the ground, leaving the grass struggling and a yellowish brown.

I licked perspiration from my lips, as I dragged another fleece to the wool table.
 
My skin was slippery with lanolin, and my mission shirt had split under the arms.
 
Yet no matter how fast I worked, I couldn’t keep up with the two shearers.

‘Shift yourself, boy.
 
No slacking,’ Downston yelled across the yard.

By the side of the holding pen, Paul Downston observed the activity, sitting astride Flinders, while Joe goaded the shorn sheep back into a paddock.
 
His face had become one orange freckle, and his hair stuck to it in dagger shapes.

It was midday - feed time - when the shearers stretched and retreated to the rear of the shed, where they ducked their heads under the tap and drank deeply.
 
It was uncanny how they knew the time.
 
Fergus and Murray were the same, even Joe was getting the knack.
 
The only reason I was interested in knowing the time was so that I could compare it to the time in England.
 
As if by so doing, I could halt its relentless onwards march.

Recently, however, I’d had difficulty remembering details of my life in Blountmere Street, and some of my mind pictures had become fuzzy.
 
It was like looking through windows that needed cleaning.
 
I worried that some of my memories may have slipped into a place beyond recall without my realizing it.

Having quenched their thirst, the shearers sat propped against the woolshed.
 
Their muscular bodies glistened.
  
For the most part, they were uncommunicative.
 
They were content to do their job, eat their fill and at the end of a day’s work, drink well beyond their fill.

Usually, the Missus or Elsie brought bread, cold mutton and tomatoes, together with jugs of homemade lemonade for the shearers’ lunchtime feed.
 
Today, though, I recognised the Downston girl coming towards us, carrying the tucker basket.

‘Looks as if the Missus has sent the girl with the kai.
 
We’re the lucky ones,’ one of the shearers, with more hair on his body than his head, drawled.
 
He barely raised his eyes, yet appeared to see everything.
 
With the same lack of effort, his mate studied the girl as she progressed towards us, a gold and orange figure.

Feigning disinterest, the shearers watched through half-closed eyes as she set out the food.
 
Her hair curled around her face and when she pushed it away from her eyes, it revealed Lori’s
English
skin.
 
It wasn’t blotchy and lumpy like her mother’s.
 
But, then, nothing about her was like her mother.
 
They might as well have belonged to two different species.

‘G’day.
 
Wanna hand?’ slurred one of the shearers, who was negligently propped on one elbow.

‘I need to bring some more things from the house.
 
I couldn’t carry it all at once, but Tony will help me.’

I reddened.
 
I wasn’t aware she knew my name.

‘I’m Gaylene,’ the girl smiled easily as we began crossing the paddock back to the homestead.
 
A tingling sensation reached the roots of my hair and made me want to itch my scalp.
 

‘You didn’t mind me asking you to help, did you?’
 
she enquired.

‘No … course not.’
 
I tried to keep my voice low for fear it would squeak, as it sometimes did lately.

‘Mum said the shearers aren’t to be trusted and to ask you.’

I couldn’t imagine the Missus trusting me.
 
Trust wasn’t a word Downston would have used when it came to me or Joe.
 
He’d threatened us to keep well away from his kids.
 
I looked around to check Downston’s whereabouts.
 
I didn’t see him and guessed that he was in the homestead kitchen wolfing back his tucker.
 
I hoped so.
 

‘You’re from England, aren’t you?’
 
Gaylene half skipped beside me.
 
Although I gazed straight ahead, I was conscious of the orange and yellow skirt swishing beside me and, by comparison, the state of my shirt.
 
How out of place this butterfly girl must be in the Downstons’ front parlour, and not just because the colours clashed.

‘You must miss your home and family.’

‘A bit.’
 
I quickened the pace so that she couldn’t see the absurd tears that had sprung from nowhere.

‘Have you got any brothers and sisters?’
 
Gaylene skipped a little faster to keep up with me.

‘A sister.’
 
I hoped she wouldn’t ask about Mum, although perhaps she already knew she was dead.
 
I didn’t know what I’d say if she mentioned The Old Man.
 
‘My sister’s name’s Angela,’ I said.

‘Does she live in England?’

‘She lives in London.’

‘Do you hear from her?’

‘Sometimes,’ I lied.
 
‘Look, we ought to hurry.
 
The blokes’ll go crook if they have to wait too long.’

At the homestead, I kept out of view behind the washing hanging on the line in the Missus’ vege garden while Gaylene collected the rest of the stuff.
 
The Missus’ vegetables were yellow and stunted.
 
I doubted the homestead garden would yield much that was edible, not like Joe’s thriving plants in the garden at the back of our quarters.
 

On the way back to the woolshed, Gaylene seemed to understand my reluctance to talk about myself.
 
She chatted about boarding school, her teachers, and friends.

I wanted to catch every word she spoke in my hands and let them out a little at a time so that they would last.

‘Mum says you’re to come to the homestead at lunchtime for the next few days to help me carry everything over to the woolshed.
 
Will that be all right?’

It was more than all right.

After a day’s shearing, the shearers settled for the evening in their quarters.
 
One played a mouth organ, while the other sang.
 
The sound drifted into our hut and Fergus said, ‘To be sure, grog oils the vocal cords.
 
You don’t want to be joining them?’
 
Fergus himself looked as if he would like to join them, for the beer, if not the singing.

‘Not me.
 
It stinks of sweat and farting in there,’ Joe replied.

I recalled Mrs Dibble saying “fart” was a terrible word.
 
She had only just managed to bring it to her lips, and then she had whispered it and blushed.
 
She said you should say “windy” instead, and that it was all right for men to do “windies”.
 
Women shouldn’t do them at all.
 
It was funny I should remember that.
 
At least it proved that I could bring some things I thought I’d forgotten to the front of my brain, even if others had evaporated.

‘Anyway, it ain’t right they’re allowed booze,’ Joe continued.

‘They’re shearers, and good shearers are worth the whole of the Emerald Isle.
 
To be sure, it wouldn’t do to go upsetting them.
 
For the time being, though, it’s safer not to go too near them when they’re like this.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘He means they’ve a liking for young boys, my word they have.’
 
Murray joined the conversation

‘The dirty … ’

‘Settle down, Ginger.
 
You’re safe enough here.’

Fergus arched his back.
 
‘By the saints, a day hauling sheep around plays havoc with the nether regions.’
 
He massaged his back and down to his legs.
 
‘Tell me, Tony, was that young Miss Downston with you walking across the paddock to the homestead?’

‘Blimey I must be going blind.
 
I never saw you and that Gay Whatsername together.’
 
Joe’s interest seemed to make his freckles protrude.

‘She couldn’t get all the stuff to the woolshed in one go, so she asked me to help her.’

‘What’s she like?’

‘All right.’

‘What’s she say?’

‘Nothing much.’

‘Honestly, Tone, why d’you play your cards so close to your chest?’

‘We didn’t say much, that’s all.
 
Anyway, what about you and Paul Downston?
 
Why have you been toadying up to him lately?’

‘No reason.’

‘See, you’re doing the same.
 
There must be a reason.’

‘The Paul Downstons of this world have their uses, that’s all.’

The day was another of burnished sunshine as Gaylene and I walked through the paddock on our way to the woolshed with the lunchtime tucker.
 
Suddenly, Gaylene stopped.
 
‘I made some scones for Mum this morning,’ she said.
 
‘I’ve brought one each for us.
 
We’ll have to eat them before we get there, or the men will want to know where theirs are.’
 
We crept behind a flax bush and Gaylene delved into her basket and brought out a tin.
 
It reminded me of Candlewax’s ointment tin, but when she took the lid off, it smelt of homemade baking.
 
Gaylene offered me a scone.
 
I took one and bit into it.
 
Jam and cream squelched from the middle in a red and white frill.

‘Cream!’
 
I had only tasted cream once before – at Fred and Lori’s wedding.
 
It was special for trifles and knickerbocker glories.
 
Mrs Dibble made scones, but only ever with jam in them.

‘Your mother would go mad if she knew you’d brought me one of these.’
 
I pulled the scone apart and licked the jam and cream from each side.
 
I let it settle on my tongue, trying to keep it from melting.
 
When the jam and cream were gone, I began nibbling round the edges of the scone.

‘Actually, she suggested it.’

‘You mean she told you to bring me a scone with cream?’

‘She’s not that bad.
 
She just seems fierce because she can’t smile or talk much.
 
She had a stroke, you see, just after I was born.
 
It affected her speech, but she likes you, honestly.’
 
Gaylene ran her tongue along her lower lip to lick off the jam.
 
I found her lip-licking almost irresistible.
 
When she had finished, she brushed crumbs from her skirt.

‘Mum finds looking after the house and all the cooking too much, especially at shearing time.
 
When I’m on my school holidays I help her, even though she usually has a girl from the township.
 
They don’t always stay, but there’s always more that need work, or … ’ she stopped abruptly.
 
I was pretty sure she was going to say that there were always orphans from England, like me.

A few weeks ago, Elsie suddenly disappeared.
 
Murray said she’d probably been packed off because she was in the family way.
 
It wouldn’t be the first time it had happened to one of the scullery maids, he said.

‘Mum said you were very bright, and she wanted to keep on teaching you.
 
But Dad wouldn’t let her.
 
You know what he’s like.
 
It’s not easy for her, although he spoils me.’

I hoped that didn’t mean he did the same things to her that he’d done to Elsie.

If Downston were to catch us together he’d kill me, but when Gaylene ran her tongue over her top lip again, what Downston thought didn’t seem to matter.