The Ballad of Desmond Kale (23 page)

Leah glanced away and called to her youngest brother to come on out from under their waggon. This was Solly, aged nine, a splinter of Arthur in the appearance of agile energy waiting to unspring, but more like his sister, being the other one who was darker skinned. Indeed both were bronzed olive, and shone duskily in the firelight, like strangers from another place, and not of this family. Or may be it was they belonged here more, on the dry earth, and the others were the visitors in passing. Anyway it was like when Warren watched the family of choughs, with their mud nests like pudding bowls and their low looping habit of flying through the lower branches of trees, when he longed for this one or that one in their flock, the birds mingled and called to each other until they unlocked his heart. Then he remembered the kookaburras he drew for his father: there were five of them, and his heart was full.

 

The Southern Cross turned over in the sky when Warren and Arthur made their farewells from the camp. The Milky Way shone bright, making shadows. Arthur breathed hard as Warren led him fast along and the violin case thumped against his back, sounding stringy twangs against its inner green-baize lining. Nightbirds
called in the raggedy trees, scrapping magpies played notes, flew up, attacked each other, settled back on their favourite branches and tucked their beaks into their wings and dozed. In a thorny scrub a rufous fantail bird sang loud and long, and the two boys stopped and listened. It was such a strong, cheery, noisy babble in the night, it hurt the ears.

IF TWO STICKS FELL ON the ground in the shape of a cross, Joe Josephs shuddered. The smell of roasting pig on a spit pan turned his stomach. When he saw the Irish of Laban Vale crossing themselves he spat sideways, muttering a phrase of protection. Even at Rankine's wedding there were moments when he'd wished he were somewhere else.

Joe was raised by costermongers and goldsmiths among London gangs who never deprived themselves of philosophic debate even when hungry. There were so many through history nailed to one sort of cross or other, he learned, that were built on the shapes of X, Y and Z, or else they were stoned, defiled, murdered, raped or burned in their houses. It would never come up in Joe's conversation unless there was severe aggravation. As when it was said Jews nailed God to the cross. As Joe worshipped God he was offended, and Lehane might have got away with their coinage free, except for his expression in that regard, against persons.

Joe looked in through the bars and confirmed to Stanton that although the man who sneered from the corner of the cell was less than a man, he was the same one who bailed them up. Stanton said
he would hold court after the shearing. When Joe asked why they needed to wait, before getting rid of that shame, Stanton was evasive.

‘Shall we go somewhere and talk?' he said, leading Joe to his garden. Stanton was excitable and busy minded.

‘Do not judge the fruit by its skin, but break it open and enjoy the juices.'

He handed Joe a withered, wrinkled orange.

‘What now?' said Joe.

Stanton said it was an opportunity for them to take their ease while the sheep were being herded by Warren and his parlous and devoted dog. It was the day of sheepwashing. It was all going well. Warren and Titus had the help of Arthur and Solly, and of the cupshotten Irish, who, if they were not drunk at breakfast, gave a good impression of being so, and certainly were by dinner. There was no need to ask where the liquor came from, but because Stanton was out to please Joe he made no objection to Joe drawing rum from the barrels he carried at the side of his waggon and selling it off at a tidy sum. A certain level of drunkenness made a useful worker of a man who stood all day in water up to his chest pushing sheep. And the other point was, that the man who spent his wages one day presented for work the next.

Neither man was good at pretending he knew what it was to be idle, it was not their style. Both were hard-working mortals in their own striving fashion, leaving it to wives and daughters to lend an unhurried quality to time, if they so wished. Joe stared at his orange and cracked into it with his thumb, tearing down one side and pulling it open, before trying a portion in his mouth. He found the fruit oily and sour but persisted in eating from courtesy. Meat, potatoes, and a plump hen were his preferred fare, as the parson
very well knew, and if he couldn't get a young hen, the nearest old rooster would do very well, specially if boiled in a broth with onion, nettles, salt and dumplings.

They admired the banana trees that were pride of the Laban Vale orchards which Stanton boasted were getting as well known as his sheep. The minister took a pointed stick and jabbed the trunk of one, causing a plume of water to spurt out. No bananas had yet appeared on the tree, and he thought depriving it of nourishment might force it on. ‘The principle works with my Saxons, by alarming the diet and driving the animal to cover itself.'

‘Difficulty encourages attainment is a very wise saw,' said Joe, whose actual experience of life put the matter the other way around most emphatically.

‘I expect every day to see the purple bud.'

‘I have never seen one, nor eaten a banana.'

Suddenly it was annoyance that made Stanton stab the sterile trunk so much — a wish to advance his aims without any more frustration and convey a message to Joe without compromising words. There was never a more amorally understanding man on the face of the planet. Stanton believed Joe understood what was wanted of him through a process of inhalation, made possible by ancient wisdom leavened through present-day cunning. He only lacked eyes for wool. In pursuing the matter of Kale it was best not to name names but have it deep fathomed through wool. They had agreed on that from the start. The idea had come ripe,
now
, in Stanton's brain, of Kale raising his sheep in the outlands and being left to multiply breeders while Stanton awaited his time. In London (pray for a ship) Stanton would seek George Marsh's maps; he would return with better information than he had here; and if Lehane could be frightened quite out of his wits he might still be
useful. Then there was the matter of the quantity of trade goods Joe carried, enough to establish a veritable sheep station. How excellent to have it transported without paying, to exactly where he wanted it, without having to bother himself in deciding where that choice location might be!

The minister and the trader walked farther in under the apple trees, the olives, the pomegranates and the cherimoya fruits from Peru, and every time a bond servant came past pushing a wooden barrow filled with stones, or struggled with wooden buckets to dampen the ground, or weeded on all fours around the tomato vines and beans, Stanton placed his hand on Joe's shoulder and made a boast about how well his produce was doing despite the bugs, rat bandicoots, and afflictions of hot, drying winds. Then as the bond servants moved away, with ever mistrustful glances lingering behind them, he resumed his purpose. He said he had a gift for Joe.

‘It is my favour to you. It is the guide in wools you asked. I have prepared samples of the pretty good to the rather good. You can use them as your beau ideal.

‘Do not let them out of your hands, keep them clean, rolled up, protected in a soft lambskin. Whenever you think you are shown better you should quibble and subtract. Mostly, the woolgrowers of the colony are men of ignorance. They follow fashions in livestock, today sheep, tomorrow turkeys. Their sworn labels on bundles of wool tell no more than they need when it comes to truth — so and so Smith's by the One Tree Hill, or the O'Keefe's by the Kangaroo Flat. The rest is long wool when it's short wool, fine when it's not, best wool for dead wool and so on. Only a woolstapler knows the difference. I can't think what the combers and carders of my home village make of claims from The Wombat Badger Hole and Past Half Mile Hollow Rock By Burnt Tree. The colonial-experience
style is a galloping consumption of mock humility. It doffs its hat to no man, putting on airs via the republic of the bark hut. It is Irishry boiled down to a pitch of botheration. Everyone is scarred by chains — no personal offence, sir. I know you have served your sentence and made your peace with wrongdoing. You enhance, you don't degrade the progress of the place. Then of course you are English born.'

‘Within sound of Bow Bells,' said Joe.

‘We are getting complaints from our agents in the home country that Botany Bay wools are arrogant. The definition of quality seems to be, if it is from New South Wales, it is good enough. You and I differ, Joe, we stand apart.'

‘I have always tried to fit in.'

‘That is only your destiny as a Jew.'

‘I'm seen as good as the next one, till I names me price. Then I'm back to being a Jew, with gold in the bedroll.'

‘Nail a supply of exceptional wool and you will tie your fortune to a superior star. You'll come close to grace, and understand what I mean when I talk about being saved. The purest wools under heaven are a sign of God's bounty. Jesus was called the Lamb of God.'

‘Was he?'

Joe wiggled a finger in his waxy ear until Stanton continued with his advice, and Joe started listening again:

‘There is such high confidence about wool because it is based on the sheep's liking of New South Wales for its dust, herbs, and wide open spaces. For its dry going they are believed to pay out in gold, just for the asking. But small minds on small holdings make large claims, which are not provable in the fleece unless it is given some care. They must be understood to be shepherded to perfection.'

Stanton moved closer to expressing his need to Joe, when he said:

‘It is far beyond the smaller establishments you must go, where there are no borders to runs, where there are no runs, where there is “nobody” — and yet the requirement for supplies is unbounded. Are you heading south?'

‘I don't like to say,' said Joe, with the air of shrewdness that Stanton liked in him so very much.

‘Before you get too far, sniff the wind. Go where it comes up coldest. You'll need your boys to fell trees: I've learned as much from the cur, Lehane — once you're down at the foot of the ranges, and begin your ascent, keep going. If it wasn't for my call elsewhere I would join you. Imagine us arguing the scriptures on top of a load, with tree branches parting the blessed hairs of our heads.'

Joe Josephs imagined it, with may be a shudder, and said as enigmatically as he could:

‘We shall go as far as maffematically calculated recipes for increased profit allow, rated by the number of turns in a dray wheel.'

‘When you find the best wool I shall need to know fairly exactly where it was raised. Make maps and see they are kept private. Write them in Hebrew hieroglyphics in case they fall into wrong hands and I shall use my old Cambridge syllabi to puzzle them out.'

‘Speaking of eyeroglippiks,' said Joe, warming to a mood of close conspiracy, ‘I have a gift to make in return for the one you promise me.'

‘Not so fast!' laughed Stanton, hardly knowing what to expect as Joe guided him to a nook in the garden wall, where earlier the trader had rested a canvas roll holding heavy, lumpy objects. Presumably something to sell.

‘As a trader, I have many irons in the fire,' said Joe. ‘I am like the busy blacksmith, who runs the danger of some metal burning and some getting cold.'

‘Ah hah, blacksmiths,' said Stanton, aware that Joe had recently moved through the Mundowey forest where there was a fifty-pound reward posted for hammers and tongs — those precious tools of the blacksmith's trade long missing from government stores and used to make a runaway's irons crack wide. In Joe's way of thinking the closer he supported discovery the farther from suspicion anyone's part in the business would be.

Joe flicked back the canvas and there they were, ashy and charred from a forest fire. Just the knobs and the irons, not the wooden parts, of course, they were all burned up.

‘Clever man.'

Stanton scratched the items with his fingernails and rubbed the scales of scorch, bringing up the broad-arrow insignia. These finds would not be returned to the governor's care just yet.

‘Did you stumble on them by chance, or persistently rake the forest refuse, with the energy of a tinker?'

‘We was only just moving on, hardly believing what was done in broad daylight by Lehane, when our little Solly slips down a pit, up to his chin in a hole of ash near a burned-out tree. This is what he fished up. What now?'

‘I shall advance you the government reward,' said Stanton, ‘and save you a ride back into Parramatta to claim the posted amount.'

‘Some recompense for Solly falling in a frightful pit would be welcome. He is like his older brother, always in debt to his pa for material goods. There is a knife I am holding, that folds its blade down into itself and sits in a leather pouch no fatter than your thumb. Good for picking stones from a hoof or for throwing some
distance into the trunk of a tree, as boys like to do when they's idle.'

‘These tools,' said Stanton, ‘are instruments perfectly suited to a job I need doing on my horned rams. There is a foreigner among our shearers, a sheepworking Spaniard, named Lorenze. He is a type they breed in that country to wrestle bulls, a fine glowering fellow, I like him very much — there he is over by the creek side with Warren's dog who loves him, a great sign in a man — and I shall ask him to do the job for me when the rams are brought in. It will be a theatre of amazement for whichever of my men is in league with the man who escaped through use of these tools. Pray look into their faces when we bring the irons out. Look for the one who shakes when we lop the twisted horn.'