The True Story of Spit MacPhee (15 page)

‘It isn’t a trick,’ Grace said.

But Frank Arbuckle resisted. ‘He’s fooling you, Grace. He’ll duck off again the moment your back is turned. You don’t know him.’ Frank was hurt by Grace’s remarks about his wife, and he also had to face Betty empty-handed.

‘You might not trust him, Frank,’ she said, ‘but I’m willing to, and you’re not going to take him away simply because you don’t believe him. He’s staying with me, and I’ll take full responsibility for him until something sensible is decided about him. Come on, Spit,’ she said firmly and, walking ahead, she didn’t bother to turn around to make sure that Spit was following her.

But he followed, and as they went up the slope Spit heard Ron Jackson calling out to Sergeant Collins, ‘Did you bring my pants and shoes, Joe?’ And Joe Collins reply, ‘No, we clean forgot.’

Ron swore and said, ‘What a pack of bloody fools …’

Spit thought that pretty good, and though he liked Ron Jackson, he was glad in view of that first grip around his neck that Ron had to go back for his trousers, although he was also grateful to him for having reached him in midstream, because Spit knew that he was almost done for when he felt that sudden, tight forearm around his neck for the second time.

Whatever Spit learned later about the next few days and weeks in his life, he knew little about them at the time. He was aware that something was being fought out over him, so that eventually the whole town seemed to be taking sides. He was aware too that he had caused serious trouble between Mr and Mrs Tree, so much so that Sadie was unhappy about the continuing though often hidden dispute going on between her mother and father.

‘I wish they wouldn’t quarrel,’ Sadie had confided in him after a week of it and when Spit was doing what Jack Tree had told him to do – cut kindling wood for the fire.

‘What are they arguing about anyway?’ Spit asked her.

‘I don’t know. They’ve never argued like this before.’

But Sadie knew, and Spit guessed that he was the cause of it. He didn’t know what he could do about it himself except to run away again, but he had promised Mrs Tree so he could not do that. And there was no need to do it yet anyway. What made both Sadie and Spit particularly aware of the trouble was Grace Tree’s stubborn resistance to her husband’s usual habit of making decisions and then assuming that they would be automatically obeyed.

It had now become a simple issue of what to do with Spit. Grace Tree had first of all consulted Sergeant Collins and asked him what he intended to do about the boy, now that he had no home.

‘He’ll have to go off to that Boys Home in Bendigo, Grace,’ Sergeant Collins told her. ‘I don’t see any other way. But in fact it isn’t my decision. You’ll have to go up to the Shire Office and ask them what they are going to do with him. It’s more their responsibility than mine. And you’ll also have to cope with Betty Arbuckle, if you’re thinking of anything else. She already wants me to go and get the boy and bring him back to her place.’

‘Don’t you dare,’ Grace Tree said in her quiet way. ‘He’s not leaving my house.’

‘All right. All right,’ Sergeant Collins said. ‘I’m fed up with the whole business; always have been. You settle it with the Shire Office and I’ll do whatever they tell me.’

Grace Tree went to the Shire Office and spoke to the only man she knew there, Pat Stillman – the dark and affable Pat Stillman who told her that there was no way locally that Spit could be looked after. There was no place and no organisation that could take care of him. So the logical place, no matter which way you looked at it, was the Boys Home in Bendigo.

‘That’s awful, Pat. There ought to be something else.’

‘Unless you want to take him over yourself,’ Pat said and laughed. ‘In that case you’ll have to look into the legal side of it before we could agree to anything. But that I’d love to see,’ Pat said and he laughed again, because he was a determined laugher at everything, including himself. ‘I’m a round peg in a square hole,’ he loved to say to anyone admiring his untidy and crowded office, walled-in with square pigeon holes stuffed with files and documents.

It was when she was walking home from the Shire Office that Grace Tree made up her mind. She could not, physically, have any more children of her own, but even if she were able to have them it would not have altered her resolve. It was a startling decision, almost frightening, but she knew what she must do. She would adopt Spit. That was the simplest and cleanest solution and she knew it was right. That is, if they (whoever ‘they’ were) would let her adopt him.

Grace’s first obstacle was her husband, and when Spit and Sadie had gone to bed that night she said to Jack, ‘I’m going to try and adopt him, Jack. He’s a good boy and Sadie likes him, and I trust him because he has always been very honest. So I’m going up to the Shire Office tomorrow to see how to go about it.’

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Jack Tree said incredulously. ‘You must be out of your mind to think of it. I forbid it.’

‘I’m not out of my mind at all, and I’m going to do it.’

Jack Tree was seated at his roll-top desk making out his complicated reports on herd testing, a task that his wife would not normally have dared interrupt. But Grace stood at the side of his desk looking so close-mouthed and determined that Jack Tree was nonplussed.

‘I’ll tell you this,’ he said, taking off his spectacles with a snap. ‘Even if you want to adopt him, you haven’t a ghost of a chance because Spit is a Protestant and you’re a Catholic. They’ll never let you do it.’

Grace had already considered this most obvious of problems in a country as divided and as passionate as Australia was by sect and prejudice, but she had not come to that problem yet so she had pushed it out of her mind.

‘I’ll face that when I come to it,’ she said, ‘but I wish you would think about it,’ she told him, appealing to him now as if she would be quite willing to return to her docility if he would only agree. ‘He’s still so young, and whatever you think is wrong with him now, you can do something with him. I like him, Jack, and I don’t want him to end up in an orphanage. It would be so wrong, and you know it yourself. Think of Sadie, if something happened to us.’

‘If you start thinking that way you’ll end up with all the lame ducks in the town at your doorstep. I’m not going to turn this place into a charity.’

‘I’m not asking you to. I’m simply asking you to let me adopt him and bring him up properly.’

‘It wouldn’t work.’

‘I’ll make it work.’

‘You would spoil him. He’s already twisting you around his little finger, though how on earth he does it I don’t know. Or even why.’

‘That’s not true, and you know it. I’m thinking of the boy.’

‘All right, then. I have a suggestion.’ Jack pointed his spectacles at her which was usually intended to intimidate her. ‘Will you do what I tell you?’

Grace hesitated and said for the first time in their married life, ‘I’m not sure, Jack. But what are you saying?’

‘Will you go and talk to Betty Arbuckle and see if you can persuade her to adopt Spit instead of sending him off to that home in Bendigo?’

‘I’ll do no such thing,’ Grace said angrily. ‘Betty Arbuckle is a very kind woman. She means well. But Spit is not for her. He would simply turn against her and become a criminal or run away or do something terrible.’

‘And what makes you think you could do any better with him?’

‘Because if I were a child I would sooner be our Sadie than Ben or Joannie Arbuckle.’

‘Well I can tell you this, Grace. Betty Arbuckle is not going to stand aside and let you adopt a Protestant boy like Spit MacPhee. She’ll fight you tooth and nail.’

‘Then I’ll fight her tooth and nail. I’ve made up my mind, Jack, and I only wish you would too.’

‘I have. And I say No.’

‘I think you are wrong, and if I can adopt him I know that you’ll change your mind.’

‘Have you considered for a moment what his influence would be on Sadie?’

‘Sadie is a very quiet girl. She doesn’t make friends easily because she is too quiet. But she likes Spit and I know he would always look after her, so I’m not worried about that. I didn’t tell you before but he taught her to swim, which I thought was a good thing, living so near the river.’

‘He what?’

‘He taught her to swim.’

‘Why, for God’s sake, didn’t you tell me?’ Jack said angrily and yet helplessly.

‘Because you would have stopped her.’

‘I give up,’ Jack Tree said in exasperation. ‘Do what you like, but don’t expect any help from me.’

Grace Tree stood quietly for a moment, troubled that she should be so determined about something which affected her husband as profoundly as it was affecting her, perhaps more so. If he wanted a son, which he couldn’t have from her, he obviously didn’t want Spit as a substitute. Yet she was sure he would change his mind if she succeeded in adopting Spit. And, falling back on her old habit of silence, she left him to his work, although this time her silence was not an admission but rather a denial of his authority, which surprised and troubled her as much as it did her husband.

Grace was not sure how to go about it, but she put on a print frock and a straw hat and went back to Pat Stillman at the Shire Office. She had no way of going about it except the simplest and the most direct.

‘Pat,’ she said. ‘I want to adopt Spit MacPhee, so how do I go about it?’

Pat tried not to interfere in anybody’s life, even his wife’s, but because of his round-peg-in-a-square-hole joke about himself he had the reputation of being a soft and helpless man. In fact he knew and liked his job and did it well.

‘Hang on a bit, Grace,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t serious yesterday when I said you might take him on yourself.’

‘That’s all right,’ Grace Tree said. ‘But I’m serious now so how is it done?’

Pat became thoughtful; and here in his small dark office behind the Shire Hall he was less inclined to laugh at everything because he was safe here.

‘Well, I’m not too sure, but I’ll look it up for you and find out all I can. But are you really sure about it?’

‘Yes.’

‘What does Jack say?’

‘He said I could do what I liked, although he wouldn’t help me.’ She knew that was not quite the whole truth but she was not going to open up any little doors to her private life for Pat Stillman or anyone else.

‘Hmmmm … Hmmm … But did you stop to think that you are a Catholic and Spit’s a Protestant, and you know what it’s like in this town. The Protestants won’t like it.’ Pat was a Catholic himself so he was talking within the family.

‘They may not like it but all they want to do is send him off to a home in Bendigo and that’s wrong. Anyway I don’t think they all want to get rid of Spit like that. I know Dorothy Evans wouldn’t think like that, and plenty of other Protestants. But I’ll face that when I have to. What happens first?’

Pat laughed. ‘Good on you, Grace,’ he said. ‘I’ll do what I can. But I’ll bet that first of all there’ll be a lot of forms. You can bet your life on that. But I’ll look into it and let you know.’

‘Thanks, Pat,’ Grace said and stood up because she knew there was nothing else she could do here.

‘One thing,’ Pat said as she waited for a moment. ‘If I were you I wouldn’t tell anyone what you are doing. Not until you have to, because the further along you are before they start getting worried, the better.’

‘I have no intention of telling anyone at all,’ Grace said.

‘Not even Spit himself,’ Pat told her.

‘I wasn’t going to do that either. I’m not going to build up his hopes.’

‘You’re full of surprises,’ Pat said slyly as she left. ‘But watch out for the dingoes, Grace,’ he called after her. ‘They’re always looking for lost strays like young Spit MacPhee.’

She wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but she guessed that he was warning her to trust nobody but her fellow Roman Catholics. But what she first had to contend with, as she waited out the weeks for her intentions to reach some sort of shape, was Spit himself. She discovered that Spit was not a girl, and though it was an obvious realisation, nonetheless it was the one she had to deal with first. She and Sadie had always been very close, and without having to think about it she could pull things on and off Sadie, walk in and out of her room at any time, put her in a bath, push her into bed, plait her hair, touch her and tell her or discuss with her what she ought to do, or ought not to do.

But she discovered that she was shy with Spit, which surprised her. Why should an eleven-year-old boy make her self-conscious? She did her best not to let it show. But trying to fit a ready-made Spit into a ready-made household that was quite unprepared for him was more difficult than she had thought, particularly when there was nothing sure about his future. If it had been certain that she was going to be allowed to adopt him she could have started from scratch. But because there was still a shadow on him, still a likelihood that it wouldn’t be possible and that he might be taken away from her, she felt unsure and limited in what she ought to start, or even what she could do for him at all.

All this too in the face of Jack’s resistance and some from the town. When her idea of adopting Spit became known in the town she felt rather than heard the opposition of those who thought it wrong for a Protestant boy to be adopted by a Catholic family when there was a perfectly good Protestant home waiting for him elsewhere, even if it was an orphanage. And, to add conviction to this sort of opposition, she knew, as every Australian knew, that there had always been certain rules to the sometimes savage game which both sides played with their religion.

But she refused to think of Spit’s adoption as a religious battle. A Catholic orphanage to Grace was no better than a Protestant one; it could even be worse. This was true also of her opposition to Betty Arbuckle. It was not because Betty was a Protestant, but rather her ideas on restraint and abnegation, and her passionate method of conciliating her God by de-naturing herself and all those around her. To Grace it was simply wrong, particularly for Spit.

So whichever way she looked at it, Catholic or Protestant, Grace knew that none of it would benefit Spit if it became an issue of religion. What surprised her, as her intention became known in the town, was not the obvious degree of hostility to it but the support she got from women whom she hardly knew, including Protestants among them. When she met women in the street like Mrs Finch, the Stock and Station Agent’s wife, who was a good Methodist but who had never spoken to Grace before and Mrs Finch said, ‘I hope you can save young Spit MacPhee from that awful Bendigo home. It would be terrible if he had to end up there,’ Grace felt that her isolation was not as serious as she thought it was. When other women, and even men like Mr Williams the draper said the same thing to her, she had a quiet woman’s satisfaction in listening to them. But she had to be worried and unhappy about Jack because he refused to understand, and she knew he was even less likely to understand when he saw the long form that Pat Stillman had unearthed for her to fill in – the form that outlined the statutory and legal requirements which were going to make Spit’s adoption far more complicated than she had imagined.