Jack's Island (5 page)

Senior Constable Campbell came for Dafty early in the morning, just after sunrise. We'd all been expecting it. None of us went to school that morning. And later on Palmer didn't say anything at all about us arriving late. He knew where we all were because I found out afterwards he'd been down there at the bay as well, just out of sight behind the pilot's house.

We gathered at the jetty to see the ferry leave. We had to see Dafty go. Everyone knew he'd never be back. And as simple as he was—and he sure was simple—he was still a friend to each one of us. Just about everyone on the island thought of him as their mascot.

He wore his new pullover and shoes. He walked slowly beside Constable Campbell, dragging his feet. In his hand he carried a small shabby suitcase tied up with twine. He saw Banjo and the rest of us waiting on the jetty for him and as he shuffled past we saw he'd been crying. Tears ran down his cheeks but he didn't wipe them away until he saw Banjo at the end of the jetty. He stopped beside Banjo and sniffed.

‘I've got for you a Christmas present, Banjo.' He reached into his pocket and pulled out the smallest and most delicate blue starfish I'd ever seen. ‘I been saving it, special.'

Banjo took it and I knew he wouldn't be able to say anything without bawling.

Dafty then said just one word, ‘Lassie?'

Banjo nodded. ‘I'll look after your chook.' And I knew Banjo would.

‘Goodbye,' Banjo said. Nothing else, just goodbye.

Banjo turned his head away. I did as well. It was awful. So unfair.

Dafty stepped over to Bess. Like at the NCO's ball, he couldn't take his eyes from her. ‘Bess...' He didn't seem to know what else to say.

Bess smiled, kindly. She leaned forward and said, ‘Safe journey, my little Fred Astaire. Never, ever change. Keep that breathless charm.' I recognised the words from the song they'd danced to.

‘I will feel a glow just thinking of you,' she continued. ‘We'll miss you, Dafty.
I'll
miss you.' She smiled and kissed him on the cheek.

Constable Campbell put his hand on Dafty's shoulder but it was obvious he didn't want to be doing this. ‘It's time, son. Sorry. We have to go.'

Little Eric and Christian threw in the mooring lines and clambered aboard. The ferry reversed its engine and pulled away from the jetty, chugging like an old tractor.

Dafty stood in the stern of the boat against the rail with the constable sitting further inside. I'd never seen anyone look so awkward or uncomfortable as Constable Campbell did at that moment, as if he hated every second of what he was doing. He looked guilty and incredibly sad. Then above the noise of the motor I was surprised to hear Banjo humming. As the boat pulled away his humming became louder and clearer. It was the tune to ‘Waltzing Matilda'.

Next to him, Bess started singing the words. ‘You'll come a waltzing Matilda with me.'

Dafty heard it too. He lifted his head up. He didn't wave. He just stood there with his hands tightly clutching the rail, not taking his eyes from us.

The ferry gathered speed and little Dafty Small grew smaller and smaller.

The song grew louder as the other kids all joined in, sort of self-consciously at first, but then at the top of their voices. ‘Up rode the squatter mounted on his thoroughbred...'

Constable Campbell stood up and walked away to the front of the boat, his shoulders slumped like he carried the worries of the world.

‘Down came the troopers, one, two, three...'

We stood there singing the song over and over until our voices became hoarse and the ferry grew so small we couldn't make out the figures any more. It was wrong, what was happening to Dafty. He wasn't bad. He was just a bit dim and didn't know any better.

Eventually the other kids drifted away but I stayed with Banjo, who was staring out across the grey water. We were never going to see Dafty again.

‘Banjo, we'd better go,' I said. ‘Palmer'll be waiting.

He turned and stared at me but didn't move. His eyes were cold and distant. ‘Let him wait,' he said.

The next morning Palmer didn't call the roll first thing as he always did. Instead he stood quietly until we all sat down.

‘Children.' He stood at the front of the class and gripped his walking stick. His leg must've been hurting like hell as it shook slightly. The scratches on his face didn't look too good either. He cleared his throat.

‘Children, I have some bad news for you all.' He cleared his throat again and blinked several times. Something was seriously wrong. ‘Timothy Small, the boy you all know as Dafty, jumped into the sea from the ferry yesterday. We think he tried to swim back to the island. Unfortunately the ferry was too far offshore. There is no way he could have made it back.'

No-one said a word. We couldn't believe it. Dafty drowned? It couldn't be. He must be mistaken. Not poor little harmless Dafty. I sat in my chair, stunned. My heart pounded in my ears. Nothing made sense. Time had suddenly stopped. Everything seemed blank. I heard someone behind me sniff and begin crying quietly and the buzz of a single blowfly against the window. My eyes filled with tears. Floods of tears. I tried wiping them away with my sleeve but there were too many. The tears kept coming and coming, streaming down my cheeks.

‘No, he wasn't trying to swim back.' Banjo was the first to speak. He didn't stand up like we were supposed to when talking in class. ‘It's the song. My song. “You'll never take me alive, said he”, as he jumped into the billabong.'

Mr Palmer didn't seem to know what to say. ‘Perhaps you are right, Paterson. The army is still out looking for his ... him. If any of you want to go out and help with the search then you are...' Mr Palmer left the sentence unfinished and turned his back to us. A minute later I saw him take out a hanky and wipe his nose. That surprised me. I thought Palmer was as hard as nails.

He dismissed us soon after. I ran outside without looking at anyone and kept running and running until I reached home. Mum had already heard the news and was waiting for me. I fell into her arms and she held me tight against her apron as I cried and shook and blubbed until I had no more tears left. Exhausted, I went into my room and lay face down on my bed.

Late in the afternoon Mum woke me with a mug of hot milk mixed with some cooking chocolate she'd been saving, and then about an hour later she sent me down to the jetty.

People had been there all day, watching the search boats come and go, each one unsuccessful. But now it was almost dark and everyone had left, except for the two figures standing at the end of the jetty, silhouetted against the sea. One was Banjo, and the other looked like Mr Palmer. It had to be Mr Palmer, the way he leaned heavily on his walking stick. What was he doing there with Banjo? Were they hoping for a miracle, peering out over the water at the white horses whipping through the darkening channel?

‘Mr Palmer?' I called as I got closer. ‘Banjo? Mum said would you stop in for a cup of tea? She said you both must be frozen.'

‘Thank you, Jack, that is very kind,' said Mr Palmer. ‘Come along, Andrew. We'll come back in the morning.' He took Banjo gently by the arm. But I saw Mr Palmer wince in pain as he took a step. He looked like he might have been crying but I sort of knew it wasn't because of the pain in his leg.

Nothing seemed fun any more. Nothing at all. Days passed in a slow blur of schoolwork, though Mr Palmer spent more and more time away from school as his leg failed to heal. He'd come in one day and then have to have the next one off resting.

The war news on the radio improved as the Allied armies advanced for the first time in ages, but none of us could get used to the tragic news of Dafty. It was as if it had been a terrible dream and we would all wake up and Dafty would be back waiting for us at the edge of the playground under the Moreton Bay Fig trees. But gradually we accepted the truth and, almost without noticing it, life returned to normal.

On the last Friday before the school holidays I stopped at Banjo's place to collect him on the way to school. I swung open the gate. On the low wall beside the gate, six small seashells had been placed in a circle round a shiny new .303 cartridge. For a moment I wondered where Banjo had souvenired the bullet from but then didn't think any more about it.

The front door stood open.

‘Crikey, what happened to you?' I asked in surprise.

Banjo looked up from where he sat at the kitchen table and peered at me with one eye. His other was swollen over, red and purple and painful looking.

‘Mr Palmer came round last night to discuss me going to Perth Mod,' he said.

‘What, and he did that?'

‘No, John Steinbeck did it.'

‘What?' I asked again. ‘Who's he?'

‘When Palmer came round my dad did his block. He started chucking stuff round the house. Practically threw Palmer out the front door. Then he started calling me names. He called me a traitor to my class. He said I was disgrace. A traitor and ... and a lackey to the bosses and I'd be exploiting my own people next. I've never seen him go so wild.'

That was saying something. Banjo's dad had a famous temper.

‘He hit me in the face with this book,
The Grapes of Wrath,
by John Steinbeck. Palmer lent it to me, to help with my English. He thought I'd like it. He says Steinbeck's a great new writer. I didn't duck quickly enough but. Caught me right in the gob.'

I sort of laughed, not meaning to. ‘
Grapes of Wrath?
Wrath? What, like angry? How do grapes get angry?'

‘I'm surprised you didn't hear the racket from your house,' he said, ignoring my pathetic joke.

‘Oh, we did hear something. Thought it was just the Johnsons again,' I replied.

And then a single tear ran down Banjo's cheek and, slowly, he started to cry, quietly at first but then with great sobs he couldn't hold back. And that was the only time I ever saw Banjo cry, ever. Not when Dafty died, not from the pain of the black eye, not for having an awful life after his mother left him, but because he suddenly saw his future, a rotten future without any choices, lugging cement bags. He'd glimpsed a wonderful chance of not ending up like our dads and it had been snatched away from him.

Not that there was anything wrong with our dads. Most of them were honest blokes and strong and as hard as barbed wire, but so scarred by the Depression they were terrified of not having a job, any job, even if it slowly killed them. A job was more important than anything. If it wasn't hauling cement, then it'd be carting hay bales or cutting timber or shearing in the outback, hard physical work until the day you died—too young, sick, tired and worn out.

I didn't know what to do. I couldn't hug Banjo. Blokes didn't do that. Instead I put my hand on his shoulder awkwardly and handed him my hanky. It was clean. Mum gave me a clean one every day.

‘You going to school then?' I asked after a while.

‘I suppose,' he sniffed, wiping his face. ‘You'd better not tell anyone about me bawling. If you do I'll beat you to smithereens.'

I laughed. ‘I'd like to see you try.'

‘Mum?'

She looked up from the kitchen chair. In her hand was a small grey postcard. My uncle Alf, Mum's brother, had been captured on Crete and was now in a prisoner of war camp, Stalag Luft VIIIB, in Germany somewhere. Sometimes the post would bring a message written months before in blunt pencil on the back of a German air force postcard. They always said the same sort of thing.

Whenever one of these cards arrived Mum would sit at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, preoccupied, reading the few precious words over and over and obviously remembering other times when she and Uncle Alf were younger.

I cleared a chair and sat down at the table.

She smiled at me, sadly. ‘I got a card from your uncle Alf. He says he's all right and they're looking after him. The Red Cross has sent him a parcel and a balaclava. He says he needs it because it's been snowing. Can you imagine that, Jack? Snowing?'

I could easily imagine it. In
Lost Horizon
Ronald Colman had to trudge through the snow in blizzards and avalanches to get back to Shangri-la. It looked incredibly cold and no fun at all. Though they did all get to live for hundreds of years.

‘I do hope he'll be all right,' Mum said. ‘It must be terrible for him, locked up like that so far from home.'

I didn't know about that. When Uncle Alf was at home he spent most of his life wheeling and dealing, barely one step ahead of the law. Dad said Uncle Alf had got his just desserts, being locked up in Germany. It saved the local police from having to do it here. Though he didn't say that in front of Mum. I think Uncle Alf might've gone off to the war owing Dad some money as well. Dad reckoned there wasn't a person in the entire world Uncle Alf didn't owe money to. Now he was in Germany, Dad said, he'd probably have the hide to borrow some from Adolf Hitler himself. And that is not that funny.

At the pub on Friday nights after payday, we kids were allowed in the beer garden for a lemon squash if we behaved ourselves. Banjo and I were sitting at a table near Dad and his friends when Mr Palmer limped through the pub and out onto the verandah where we sat, his walking stick tap-tap-tapping on the paving. He had on his best pin-striped suit and a starched collar. Under his arm he held a large manila envelope. He walked up to the men's table.

‘Mr Paterson,' he began quietly.

Banjo's dad looked at him in surprise and nearly knocked over his schooner. The conversation and laughter stopped instantly and the place fell completely silent. Everyone turned to watch and listen. They sensed something was up.

Every single person on the island had heard of Mr Palmer's argument with Mr Paterson and John Steinbeck's part in it, though none of them knew who John Steinbeck was. They thought he must've been a German with a name like that. And hitting a defenceless boy in the face with a book was exactly the sort of thing a vicious German would do.

‘Mr Paterson,' Mr Palmer repeated. ‘I am a patient man, as you well know, and I am a gentle man, but you, Mr Paterson, have behaved badly and you have stretched the limits of my patience.'

Mr Paterson looked dumbfounded. This was the last thing he expected on a Friday night at the pub.

Mr Palmer continued. ‘In my hand I have the application papers for a scholarship for your boy to attend Perth Modern School, one of the most respected institutions in the entire country. And, Mr Paterson, your son has the brains and the character to win one of these scholarships, with a little hard work. And I'll be damned—damned, I tell you—before I will let you stand in the way of such a fine mind. A criminal waste of a God-given talent cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. Mr Paterson, you will sit down here and you will sign these papers.'

He leaned forward and looked directly into Mr Paterson's eyes. He lowered his voice very quietly. ‘Or I will quite literally beat you to within an inch of your life. Do you hear me?' He paused for a moment. ‘I am not a man of violence, but...'

Not a man of violence? Tell that to the back of my legs.

‘I saw far too much brutality at Gallipoli and at the Somme to be a violent man. But Mr Paterson, you are giving me no choice. You will sign these papers here and now or I will not be responsible for my actions.' He suddenly slammed his walking stick down on the table. ‘Do I make myself clear? I will not allow one man's pig-headed stubborn pride to stand in the way of—'

‘I hear you, Mr Palmer,' answered Mr Paterson. ‘I hear you.' He looked about for support but every person in the garden avoided his eyes. It seemed to me that in spite of Mr Paterson being their workmate, this time everyone in the pub was on Mr Palmer's side. A boy being able to attend Perth Modern School was an achievement almost beyond their understanding.

Mr Paterson sensed he was beaten and looked for a way to save face. ‘Do you want to sit down and we'll discuss it like civilised men? Over a beer,' he added nervously.

‘Yes, Mr Paterson, that is an excellent idea.' Mr Palmer was clearly relieved. I don't think he really wanted to tear Mr Paterson apart, though in the state he was in it looked like he might've done it easily, limb by limb.

‘We can discuss it at length and then you will sign the papers and I will buy everyone a beer just as soon as you have done so,' said Mr Palmer.

Mr Paterson might not have liked teachers and books and learning but he admired courage. And he'd just been taught a lesson in real courage. Some of the men nodded and gave each other knowing looks. They too recognised real courage when they saw it. Mr Paterson was twice Mr Palmer's size, but our teacher had stood up to him like Gentleman Jim Corbett against John L Sullivan for the Heavyweight Championship. He had done a brave and fine thing that evening.

Mr Palmer unscrewed his fountain pen. Mr Paterson signed the form and some of the men then started clapping, slowly at first and then everyone joined in enthusiastically. The applause soon turned to cheering and it wasn't just the thought of a free beer, it was the knowledge that one of their own might escape from the sheer physical drudgery of their lives.

‘That's enough flaming discussion then, Pat. My flaming glass is just about flaming empty,' laughed Mr Carter at the end of the table.