A Few Right Thinking Men (2 page)

“Just Milt and Clyde. Morris will be very grateful,” she added earnestly.

“He needn't be.” Rowland picked up his pencil once again.

Chapter Two

Sydney Day-By-Day

(By A Special Correspondent)

SYDNEY, Sunday

The new Masonic Club building is in accord with the recent progress of the city. It rises to 150ft yet seems even taller. A view of North Head and the Pacific beyond may be obtained from the roof.

The building was made possible by activity in the real estate market. The former premises were disposed of at a surprising profit. The club purchased a block of land running from Castlereagh Street to Pitt Street between Market and Park Streets, and it soon sold the Pitt Street half at a price which gave it a site free with a large sum of money to go toward the cost of the building. The present value of the property is about £180,000.

The Argus
, December 7, 1931

The grand dining room of the Masonic Club, an establishment of reputation and elegance, was thoroughly removed from the bleak hardship of those walking the streets in search of work outside its thick cedar doors. The murmur of polite voices was deep, for the patrons were exclusively male. The club was a dominion of impeccably dressed and well-connected men. They dined with each other under elaborate chandeliers that hung from high ornate ceilings, trimmed with intricate cornices and plaster roses. Rowland had become a member at his brother's insistence, but he generally used the club only on his uncle's invitation.

The elder Rowland Sinclair was already seated at the table. He was a large man whose body and features spoke of years of indulgence. His hair was thick, swept back from his face. It had once been as dark as his nephew's—now it was white. His eyes had, with age, become a little weak, but they were still the distinct blue that marked all the Sinclair men.

“Rowly, my boy!” he said as he stood in welcome, moving his substantial girth with some difficulty and catching the table.

“Hello, Uncle. Have you been waiting long?” Rowland lunged to save the nearly empty bottle of wine which wobbled precariously on the table's edge.

“Not that long—there may still be a drop left for you.” He resumed his seat and, taking the bottle from Rowland, drained its remnants into a glass. Rowland sat down.

“So how are you, my boy? I haven't heard much of you for a while. I had hoped I could rely on you for at least the odd minor scandal…but there has been nothing! When I was your age I would not have allowed myself to become so respectable! It's tremendously uninteresting.”

Rowland smiled in the face of the old man's barrage. “I'm well.”

“And how is your painting going? I can't tell you how many people have commented on that lovely piece you gave me last summer….your brother, particularly.”

“Wilfred was here?” Rowland was surprised. He had not seen his brother in months.

“Just a few weeks ago. Some sort of business…Now tell me about your work. I expect you will be submitting something to the Archibald Prize?”

“Not this year, Uncle. Maybe next.”

They paused their conversation as the waiter took their orders.

“I don't blame you,” the elder Sinclair went on, as he knifed a thick layer of pale butter onto his dinner roll. He lowered his voice. “The competition is rigged—the trustees seem think one has to reside in bloody Victoria to be able to paint!”

Rowland laughed. Much to the ire of the Sydney art community, Victorians had dominated the prize since its inception, but he was reasonably sure it was not a conspiracy of any sort.

The meal continued in effortless company. Rowland's uncle carried the conversation, but that was not unusual. Intermittently, his acquaintances would stop by to speak with him. Rowland observed that a certain indulgence was extended to age under the auspices of eccentricity. It was obvious, however, that he would not be afforded the same tolerance. Most responded warily to any introduction. Although Wilfred Sinclair was a gentleman of reputation, his youngest brother was known for avoiding the company of men of standing. The esteemed members of the Masonic Club declined any extended conversation with the younger Rowland. It seemed that Woodlands House and its current residents had not escaped the notice of Sydney society, and, regardless of what his uncle thought, Rowland was not quite respectable.

After a dignified passage of time, lunch was complete. Rowland glanced at his watch as his host smoked and recounted some tales of his most recent visit to London. It was nearly three o'clock. He could walk to the Domain from the club in about ten minutes. He finished the last of his wine in a single gulp.

“I must be off,” he said, standing before his uncle could order yet another round of port.

“I'm glad to hear it, son. A young man like you should have better things to do than dine with old relatives. Go now. Do something interesting!”

“We shall do this again, soon.” Rowland shook his uncle's hand.

“Of course, of course…”

Rowland retrieved his coat and hat. The Masonic Club was in the heart of the city, only a short walk from the parklands of the Domain. The day was dull and although it was December, the breeze was brisk.

There were many men walking in the same direction. Some, like Rowland, walked with a sense of destination. Others seemed bent with unseen burdens, tired men who were walking that way because they had nowhere else to go. Honest men, criminals, and those who resorted to theft and menace because they saw no other option. Later, once darkness had emptied the Domain, they would find refuge in the rock shelters of Mrs. Macquarie's Point.

Occasionally, he was stopped by beggars and men bearing pamphlets decrying some ill or promoting some cause. He always carried coins for the former and politely declined the latter.

Rowland placed a hand on his hat as he ducked through the congestion of motorcars and horse vans near the grand iron gates at the Domain's entrance. He made his way toward Speakers' Corner, where the Communists met on Sunday afternoons to exercise their right to free speech in the open air, and to rally support for their cause. When he reached the outer Domain, a large crowd was gathering, and he could already hear the rabble of fiery speeches. Eventually, he spotted Edna talking earnestly with a man whose arm was bandaged in a sling about his neck. Milton and Clyde stood beside them.

“Ed!” Rowland hailed them all with her name. Edna waved.

“What on earth are you wearing?” Milton asked as soon as Rowland was in earshot.

“He's been lunching with the ruling classes,” Edna explained.

Rowland laughed. There was really no point denying it. The dress regulations of the Masonic Club, and the expectations of its members, were strict and particular. Still, it was not as if he was wearing tails. In fact, he was dressed pretty much as he always was, though he had taken special care to find a jacket and a shirt that were not streaked with paint.

“Just trying to keep pace with Milt,” he replied.

Milton's attire was not expensive, but it was distinctive, much like Milton himself. He had a preference for unusual colours and extravagant cravats. He wore his hair well below his ears in the style of the old aesthetes. On a lesser individual it may have been peculiar, but on Milton it rarely raised mention. A childhood friend of Edna's, he had moved into Woodlands House the previous year, and he and Rowland had formed a close and unexpected friendship. Though his formal education was minimal, Milton was a product of various Literary and Mechanics' Institutes, organisations which promoted personal improvement and often provided the only libraries to which working men had access. Essentially self-educated, he called himself a poet; but though Milton was extremely well-read, Rowland was yet to see an original verse, sonnet, or even a couplet penned by his friend.

“What happened to you, Morris?” Rowland asked the man with the injured arm. Now he was closer he could see the ex-serviceman also sported a black eye.

“Bit of trouble in Redfern, mate,” Morris replied as he rolled a cigarette with his uninjured hand. “Fell foul of a couple of bailiffs.”

“Repossession,” Edna added.

Rowland understood. The Australian Unemployed Workers' Union often organised resistance to help those about to lose their homes. Returned soldiers like Morris used what they had learned in the battlefields of Europe to barricade homes against the bailiffs. It was trench warfare in the suburbs, not quite as bloody, but often just as desperate.

“Are you all right?”

“I'll live.”

“Are you ready?”

Morris sighed. “I'm up next,” he said balefully as he glanced at the makeshift podium, a stepladder, from where a squat man addressed the masses in a faintly Irish accent.

The Irishman roused the crowd with volume and passion. Rowland sketched him mentally—hawkish nose, jutting chin, eyes almost hidden beneath a craggy brow, and a cigarette balanced precariously on his lower lip like an exclamation mark to his words. He danced as he spoke, like a boxer.

“Who's that?” Rowland hadn't seen this man before.

“Patrick Ryan,” replied Morris.

“Struth, he's getting them worked up,” Clyde pulled at his braces as he looked out at the crowd. He was only a little older than Rowland and Milton, but the years had settled early on his face. Like Rowland, he saw pictures in the scene. They were painters; it was what they did.

Ryan was railing about the inequities of the Depression. The capitalist classes, he claimed, had created the disaster but it was the working man who'd lost his job, who'd lost his home. It was the working man who suffered.

Rowland listened. Despite coming from the class that Ryan was casting in villainy, he was not affronted. He was who he was; but he was not unsympathetic. Somehow in the years since he had returned to Sydney, since he had started moving in Edna's circles, he had fallen into a sort of gap between the social classes, observing them both from a distance.

Rowland's eyes moved around the crowd. It was mostly male. Troubled faces wearied by hardship nodding at the stirring rhetoric, and murmuring assent.

And then, a lone cry of dissent. “Get a job, you Red mongrel!”

Rowland's gaze shifted immediately toward the voice. The heckler was not far away—among a group of men whose crisp suits didn't show any signs of wear. There was a certain militaristic uniformity in their posture and stance, their arms folded rigidly across their double-breasted chests.

Ryan responded to the derision by escalating his own fervour. The response from the crowd increased, both for and against him. When Ryan called for revolution, the jostling began and within minutes a scuffle broke out near the group that had started the heckling. Several men were now attempting to drag Ryan from his podium and Morris ran forward to help his comrade. Despite the numbers they'd attracted, the Communists were grossly outnumbered, especially when reinforcements emerged to support the men who took exception to the words of rebellion.

Milton took exception to the imbalance. “Come on!” he motioned to Rowland and Clyde, a split second before he leapt into the fray after Morris. Rowland glanced quickly at Edna and did likewise.

The skirmish was now in earnest. Rowland and Clyde fell in behind Milton who was already in the thick of things. Rowland had boxed at Oxford, but Clyde, who had spent those same years on the wallaby, in search of work, really knew how to fight. He seemed to move very little but men staggered all around him. From within the mêlée, a defiant voice belted out the first bars of “The Internationale,” and soon the Communist anthem rang out. To Rowland, it was a bit surreal.

He ducked a fist and tried to pull Milton back, but the poet would have none of it. Clyde called out to him, but too late, and Rowland caught a blow to the jaw. He recovered quickly and turned toward his assailant, finding himself face-to-face with a blond man disfigured by a jagged scar that ran from his ear to his chin. Rowland remembered the scar.

“What the…?” the man started, his eyes widening in shock. For a moment he seemed confused and then realisation dawned.

A hand grabbed Rowland's and jerked him away. It was Edna.

“Ed! Watch out!” Rowland pulled her into him as a plank swung wildly. It missed her and glanced off his shoulder. He cursed and looked for a way out through the incensed factions.

“Hey! Back off!” The scarred man who had punched him just a moment earlier intervened to block the blow of a pick-axe handle.

“Rowly, Ed!” Clyde beckoned for them frantically. They followed him and, after considerable weaving and dodging, and some belligerence, he managed to lead them out of the worst of it. Policemen were now a presence, separating the throng with force and batons.

“Where's Milton?” Edna looked back anxiously.

“Morris dragged him out a little while ago,” Clyde assured her. “He's fine.”

“That was getting nasty,” Rowland murmured, rubbing his shoulder.

“Morris got out of speaking.” Clyde replaced his hat over tousled sandy hair. “He'll be stoked.”