The Ballad of Desmond Kale (31 page)

AT THE HORNING PIT THE moment was arrived. It was hardly a joyous atmosphere generated but rather a feeling that if anyone put a foot wrong there would be another lesson of opinion.

‘Get the boards up,' Clumpsy M'Carty was told. ‘Do what Lorenze tells you, man.'

Clumpsy had the shadow of death rising in him and was waiting for nightfall to get away. They said that when you were the chosen one, and your number of days was up, there was a limit to the dodges you could make, the Deil would be there before you: call him fiend, adversary, old scratch, old gooseberry, old horny, his satanic majesty, or the harrowing minister's sheep shearer in person, the Deil's deil, Lorenze.

The Spaniard lifted his hand as if to deliver a blow but was only shading the sun.

In the upper ditch the plank was fixed to support the head of the ram being marched over. Warren and Titus struggled him across, one on each side of the horns. The Spaniard waited with his mallet ready to strike.

The ram was worked in, stood, inspected, lifted, rolled, and collapsed on his back, the plank supporting his head. Then the Spaniard lay in the ditch forming the trunk of the cross. The side arms of suffering were the horns themselves. Stanton gave the signal, at your own pace proceed. Clumpsy M'Carty knelt, stretching his body over the whole body of the sheep. Pass me into your hide, he prayed, as I believe you are to be saved and I am not. As if he was having a woman for the last wild improbable time Clumpsy held the noble head forcibly to the board with one hand by grasping the jaw, while in the other hand he held a large bolt chisel, weighing four or five pounds and darkly thick. The smile on Lorenze's lips was satirically reversed from the way it might have been, had he been the one in Mudowey forest. He brought the mallet slowly up. The girls decided they had seen enough and went to the wool hall to help their mothers.

‘Take your last look at their glory,' said Stanton of the horns. They reached either side of a grand old head that was white-whiskered and strangle-eyed with fear. This ram would never have looked at the sky before unless cast on its back in unfortunate circumstances — say by being tossed and spun through the air by a rival sire. Now he was held and the horns were exposed to the sky in their full unwinding and addressed the sky in their helplessness. Hard-ridged, dirty-yellow as poor men's teeth, showing a mess of nicks and cuts, the horns made a scraping bumping noise on the board. Horns were the cage in which a ram's days were passed but lucky the ram as he carried his cage with him and trawled it over the grass.

The Spaniard's dirty boot was wedged against the butting plate of the ram's forehead, where Slumberous had fought his lifetime's mating battles and now faced compacted sheep shit on a hobnailed sole of leather.

‘Would that our brains were as protected as his,' said Stanton to his dwindled audience. ‘You see, a very small portion only of that which actually covers the brain can receive the concussion in a ram fight. This is an evident proof of design.'

Clumpsy's fingers on the chisel were slippery with sweat as the hammer was raised. Men watched from above.

‘What do you see?' said Stanton conspiratorially.

Not wanting to indict anyone, Joe said, ‘I see they are ready.'

‘Do you see who trembles most?' said Stanton. ‘The one lying prone is my man. A most egregious Irish convict dissembler, M'Carty by name. As soon as he gets up from finishing the rams I shall have him confined and a constable sent from Parramatta to lay out the charges. He is ready to blab already. By jolly, I have long wanted to flog him deep in his rotten flesh and now is my chance.'

The candour of the minister around his decided actions was as excellent to Joe as it was categorically offensive.

Lorenze brought down the hammer and the horns fell off clean.

The Irish flashed their eyes at him, and their mouths said oh.

The first ram done, the boys rolled Slumberous to his feet, freed him into the yards and brought over the second one. Stanton picked up the broken horns and presented them to the trader. Joe carried them over to his waggon, one on each shoulder with his thumbs stuck in the hollows of their broken ends. He set them down on a sack, admired them for a minute thinking how long they would be when elastically straightened in the heat of a fire built over sand — dirty yellow horn made nobler and stretched into gleaming trumpets and blown in the direction of God. They would make a rough plaintive scratch of sound, far-travelling music, harsh with pain and longing, and true to the experience of living man. Joe would not like
the parson to hear it, for what horn told was not life always being made better or complained against or imagined into a kingdom come. There was no sort of pledge in twisted horn: just an appeal.

Just thinking about it made Joe gather his loved ones into his thoughts — Martha with her shrewd brain used for protection of their family and getting on; Leah and her lovely long face uplifted to the light, her eyes always swimming a bit in tears, her tears diamonds squeezed from the pain she carried, that was never getting any better, and broke their hearts thinking about it; Arthur with his music rousing joy in the dust of New South Wales as he began the craft of wool sorter, only avoiding the dodgy part of Joe's career in making his pa the model of persistence. Finally there was Solly, young but drawn to his eventual destination, stuck to their ways like a barnacle at the same time as he was their authentic wild colonial boy in the making.

Stanton told Joe he would try Lehane in the morning and sentence him. Joe said very well, then he would tell Mick Tornley to have the team ready to roll out when it was done to their satisfaction.

But it was all Joe could do to refrain from telling Mick to harness his bullocks straightaway, so they could steal off without delay, from depth of shame in witnessing how it went at Laban Vale. It was all Joe could do to refrain from hissing the wronged to himself, that they might ride with them on their bullocks' backs as far as they wanted.

 

After his arrest for the too fanciful crime of saving Desmond Kale in the Mundowey forest, Clumpsy M'Carty was put in the police cells with Lehane at the far end of the barracks' room sheds. The
door was bolted and padlocked — top, bottom, and centre — with a loud and important slam. Sergeant Maurice Galvin attached the keys to his belt waist and marched away to report to the minister that M'Carty was tight held. ‘I have written myself inter the ballad of Desmond Kale,' said Clumpsy with glum satisfaction. ‘I have purchased me fame.'

Galvin returned in less than half an hour to raise a lantern to the sombre grille and ask the new prisoner if was he was all right.

Clumpsy lay on the bricks with his hands behind his head keeping busy count of the few stars he could see. ‘I have tobacco, soup, a bone with meat on it, and you have already promised me that when the boys come back from being spoiled by my accuser they'll bring me a little rum.'

‘Here is a blanket,' said Galvin, pushing one through the bars. ‘Are you all right in yourself? Do you need any more comfort?'

‘You mean as one who might get himself hung and wants to confess his innocence?' said Clumpsy. ‘Nay, I'm done.'

‘I'm a great lover of the Church and clergy,' said Lehane from his corner, ‘willya send me a praist? I've been unjustly accused by a Perrotestant one, but don't let that out too loud. I would not like to spend another night behind lock and key, thank you.'

He made it sound like the prideful sulk of an heroic man, but was terrified of his new cellmate and soiled his pants.

‘Who would pray with you I'm not sure,' said Galvin. ‘There ain't a blessed father for close on fifty miles, Lehane, even if one was allowed to travel to you, or could be bothered. Paugh, use the bucket.'

‘No one'll stick up for me more than one that gets the mass preached,' said Lehane in a soft whimper. ‘There's one named Kevin Cahill.'

‘Listen to the eye of reason,' said Clumpsy, ‘Robespierre's vindicator, the republican's voice box they call him.'

‘The sufferin sick are helped and consoled by a praisthood generally doin what it is their special business to do — to lighten the cares and troubles of the poor and encourage em in their daily struggle.'

‘I hear something lively,' said Clumpsy. ‘It sounds like the magic scream of a fiddle.'

The two men inside the cell and the one standing outside fell silent.

‘That is a great piece of fiddling,' said Galvin.

‘Oh, I'm mighty pissed off and fecking jealous I'm not there,' said Clumpsy. ‘I'd be singin with fire in me veins to that uncanny music, as the one thing you can say of himself, is that when he wants to roll himself out drunker than the rest of us, he makes sure we are pissed to the gills so that he looks good. They say there's somewhere he has the name of a reformer and a marvel with making some poor souls happy. I don't know where that place might be where he has that good repute, but I believe it is somewhere else, a long way from here, in the missionary fields of the Maori islands, where they think he's a benefactor and pray for him.'

If Clumpsy had a prayer it would be to Kale and ugly Tom:

‘It is your old mate M'Carty calumnified and a raid must be mounted to unshackle him fast, as he's runnin out o'breath.'

HORSES WERE SIGHTED IN THE haze of late afternoon and Stanton declared it was evidently the start of an expedition seeking out land.

The animals appeared down a line of track a mile away. ‘It has to be someone,' was the informed opinion of a shingle splitter razing a tree near the front gate.

Rare gentleman adventurers travelled in a quick exalted style, threading through the bush like accelerated shadows. The leading pack animal's head swingled low, where the likely alternatives in this country were bullock dray and foot — or was it the carrier of fleeces, J.J. Tharpe? ‘See who it is, anyway,' said Stanton, sending the shingle splitter out to ask, on a day when all were welcome: ‘Would the strangers like to come in for a glass?'

The man wasted no time when he saw who it was:

‘Your old servant Clumpsy's in the cells down yonder,' he told Ugly Tom, ‘and he don't like his chances, seeing he's been thurrily dunned.'

The two riders needed no more urging than that, to turn in towards the gates of Laban Vale.

Stanton was mightily confused, and a little amazed, to see that one of the riders was Meg Inchcape (not very skilled on a horse, sitting awkwardly astride wearing a man's serge trousers raked up in the leg and showing red-chafed shinbone from the stirrup leathers). The other was undoubtedly Tom Rankine, of confusing reputation. It was their first meeting.

Stanton could only dissemble in the face of him with thoughts running wild. He stumbled as he walked out. Recovered. It would take him a few moments to steady himself, while the two dismounted.

‘Good day,' he said, then half turned his back. ‘Dolly,' he called to his wife. ‘We have people.'

At the garden gate he made introductions:

‘Dolly, darling, it is Warren's dear mother, and her, what shall I say now, “protector”?'

‘Officer protector,' admitted Rankine, rather sardonically in the face of Stanton's red-faced bluster. His spinning mind was controlled by ironical detachment. ‘Husband' was a word they were saving to say first to Warren.

‘That is what I mean,' said Stanton. ‘Officer protector.' But regretted the underlying slur in his tone, an affront to Meg Inchcape, though he'd not meant it intentionally towards her.

Then the two men smiled (smiles being the fog of diplomacy) and looked each other over. Their previous haunted sightings gave only a shape. Stanton could hardly remember what his imagination had detailed Rankine into. Look at him here: a man of average height (Meg taller), slim, grey, well proportioned, disfigured to a handsome extent by the pox scars peppering his cheeks and neck. He wore a coarse felt shirt open at the collar, old blue riding trousers, red-piped, high dusty boots and a sombrero hat.

Stanton forgot how his daughter had disgraced her sex by dressing as a boy. Mistress Inchcape could never be taken as male despite the men's clothes and felt hat she wore, with dents pushed out making a dome pulled down almost to the level of her eyebrows and with a pretty style of swagger. Her shirt was open three buttons down her flushed throat.

Rankine looked at the bulging-eyed Stanton in his frock coat and stockings and saw a dusty frog of a man, moon faced, pot bellied, springy legged, almost as wide as he was tall, with a vital energy so extreme it almost squeaked his gristle every time he twitched.

Stanton directed the party on with their horses. ‘Over this way past the house yards, follow me.'

They fell to walking in opposite pairs.

Dolly irked Stanton by chatting rather too freely with Rankine as they walked along. Though gone quite silvery grey this Tom Rankine was still quite a young man, and she liked young men — flirting with them incessantly (admiring Rankine's mare, she ‘loved a spirited mare') and Ugly Tom Rankine answering to her mood of excitable reference (‘Arabian bloodstock and the latest arrived standing stallion are my two consuming passions').

You would never know from Dolly's chirps that when she and Stanton were alone since Titus was flogged she sent him to Coventry. You would never know from Rankine's murmurs about horseflesh that his consuming passion was sheep.

A groom reached the horses and followed behind.

Stanton lowered his head, chewed his knuckles, and looked around from under surly lids while taking breath and licking his dry lips in order to speak. ‘Come along now, come along,' he croaked.

‘Is Warren all right?' said Meg, as he escorted her across the dirt way. ‘I never dreamed I'd see him today, not thinking I would, but oh how I wished to — here we are! Thanks to you, thanks to you for your kindness at Laban Vale. You are very kind.'

Stanton inwardly cursed Rankine for embroiling Meg in his plots. The lovely dear woman was babbling almost from fright, he supposed, over being put in a situation that Stanton was fairly sure (though not entirely sure) he understood. All except Dolly and including himself were in a condition of fright, and that was the case! Stanton felt shame for his own part in remembering how flushed and anxious to please Meg was, when he'd visited her hut — how her agreeableness must have meant fear, even then.

‘Stop it. Please,' he heard himself chuckling to Meg. ‘Warren is in the wool hall waiting. He is better than all right!' Stanton angled his shoulder to exclude Rankine and Dolly, and his own worse self: ‘Let me hurry you along, ma'am, and say, Warren is better than he ever was, and up to his belly in wool. As to some news, I am full of it, but cannot speak of it.'

‘News?' The word evidently startled her.

‘There's been a rider from the governor with it.'

The look of questioning pain in her eyes — he would not stand for it.

He consoled her: ‘Great news, that I shall leave Warren to the pleasure of telling you, madam, and then it shall be my turn to ask you a question, whether you will agree or not. All shall depend on your answer.'

They heard the bell pealing across the paddock. It was a brassy irritable dinging made for convict ears. Stanton told the groom where to hobble their horses. It was satisfying there was no feed for pack animals in the paddock selected but Rankine did not seem to
notice the quality of the slight. Anyone else of his class would have complained and set Stanton to finding them hay. Rankine's mind was on some other impression. The fellow was palpably watchful. ‘With good reason,' thought Stanton. ‘The governor will have told him what I said. Is
Tumbankin
feeling a few hot turns on the roasting griddle? I'll give him a few hot turns more before I am finished, the slippery eel. Why did he accept my call to refreshment, instead of streaking off in the other direction, when he knows I'm on to him? That is the question.'

They came by the house. Meg held still and gazed at the whitewashed homestead with its wisteria-roped verandahs, quarried flagstones and rows of fruit trees in dusty leaf. It was the sort of house she wanted for herself one day, she confessed: ‘An oasis.'

‘You are quite the ambitious mistress,' thought Stanton, ‘you are set on material goods,' and he swelled with liking of her.

‘There is hardly a better house in the colony,' he admitted.

It was an evening of outstanding emotions. Stanton found that the moment Meg expressed her opinion about anything much he felt kindlier towards her disgraced father. The connection forced itself on him. He'd never felt any such softness towards Kale. But he began having a sentiment at least, if only to soften her regard, if she detected it.

‘You have a clock,' she said. Warren had told her of it. ‘You wind it up. Upon the hour, half hour and every quarter hour a bird flies up.'

‘We have such a clock. It barely loses five minutes in a week.'

She herself had never seen a cuckoo clock: not even the governor had one. Stanton promised her the chiming of it later, if she would be so kind as to call on them at their house! (Rankine had declared they would be camping the night with the Josephs.)
She kept turning her head back and murmuring, ‘Ooh, it is so shaded in there.'

‘We could sit in,' said Stanton, ‘under the grapevines.' Though it would be well after dark.

He thought with heartfelt poison that if Meg had not arrived on Rankine's mare she might have come to Laban Vale one day as a domestic. He could not help also thinking, stealing a glance at her as they entered the wool hall, that in their games and dances he would like to touch her waist. But that was only in another living of his life: where if he'd committed to being a bad man instead of being a good one, for example.

Throughout all this he never once took his eyes from Rankine.

 

It was a strange captivation took place in the hour of failing light on the sandy track leading in from Mundowey and passing his homestead and yards. The two strapping and nervously honoured guests — handsome as love allowed them to be, which was pretty high handsome indeed, and Meg a woman most strikingly beautiful in every respect — were seated on a bundle of fleeces in the Stantons' wool hall with a scrubbed, laundered Warren beside them and holding to his news to keep them guessing. Meg had scraps of wool caught in her raven hair from what was floating in the heated atmosphere of movement and naked flame of lights. There was the reflection of flame in her eyes and the light of loving fire. The wool and the light were hooked on her when she gazed at Rankine.

Stanton played with hooks in his mind like a miser with precious metal.