A Few Right Thinking Men (24 page)

In the end, MacKay slammed his fist on the desk in disgust. “I would like nothing better, Mr. Sinclair, than to march you up to Mr. Campbell's door and tell him he's been played for a fool….” He glanced at Delaney. “However, the operation the Detective Constable is involved in is crucial to the security of this state, so I will have to tolerate you despite my better judgement.”

“Very good of you.” Rowland held back a smile.

“Get him out of here!” MacKay barked at Delaney as he stormed out the doorway back to whatever was left of his dinner party.

Delaney took Rowland back to the car. When they were safely away, he grinned.

“I'm afraid the Superintendent's not very happy with you, Mr. Sinclair. I'll venture you've spoilt his evening.”

“I'm sure he won't starve.” Rowland gathered that the Superintendent was a formidable man to work for. “Look Delaney, there's no reason we should be enemies—we may even be able to help one another.”

“I was thinking that too, sir.”

Now that the subject had been broached, the two exchanged information freely. Delaney, posing as Jack Harris the printer, had joined the New Guard to gather intelligence for the police force. He was looking for any signs that Campbell was inciting revolution. While he did not say so explicitly, he intimated he was not the only police agent who had infiltrated the movement.

“Why is Dynon so obsessed with playing cards?” Rowland asked, remembering the Guardsman's cryptic allusions and the winks that went with them.

“It's a code but I'm not sure what for.” Delaney frowned. “Dynon's paranoid about spies, so he keeps you in the dark until you're standing in it. Seems he gets a fair bit of churn in his unit. He regularly chucks people out for disloyalty.”

“All things considered, his paranoia's probably not unwarranted.” In turn, Rowland told Delaney everything he had already passed on, but unlike Inspector Bicuit, Delaney did not dismiss it.

“You may be onto something, sir,” he said. “I'll keep a lookout…let you know if I find anything.”

“Thank you, Delaney…I mean Harris,” Rowland corrected himself. “You don't think Campbell's really planning a coup, do you?”

“That's what we want to find out.” Delaney shrugged. “They seem ready to fight, but it's hard to know what they'll do when they're faced with it. It's easy to march around and shoot when there's no one shooting back…They may just be in it for the parades. I certainly hope so.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

Sydney by Day

SYDNEY

A feature of the ball in the great hall at the showground will be ultra-modern and old-time dancing by Lady Anderson Stuart with a professional partner. Lady Anderson Stuart won praise in English society competitions for her foxtrot and waltzing.

The Argus
, February 19, 1932

The gramophone was playing a swing recording when Rowland walked into the drawing room. The furniture had been moved to the walls and Milton was collapsed on the couch, clutching his ribs and laughing. Clyde and Edna stood in the middle of the floor, the latter scolding Milton, and the former looking mortified. Lenin sat watching them, his head tilted at an angle that accentuated the fact that he was missing an ear.

“What's going on?” Rowland shouted over the racket.

Edna led Clyde in a stumbling swirl over to the gramophone and lifted the needle. “I'm teaching Clyde to foxtrot,” she said. “Can't you tell?”

Milton started to laugh again and Clyde strode across and cuffed him.

“Why?” Rowland asked. Milton and Edna had always kept up with the latest dances, but Clyde?

All eyes turned expectantly to Clyde. Clyde stuttered for a moment and then, with the sigh of a man defeated, admitted, “I met a girl.”

Milton started laughing again.

“So why do you need to foxtrot?” Rowland was still a little perplexed.

Clyde glowered at Milton. “I'm told it's necessary.”

“Whatever for?”

“My point, exactly,” Clyde grumbled.

“Because,” Milton intervened, “if one is to court a girl, one must be able to take her to a dance—it's how things are done…unless she's a Methodist.”

“Oh.” Rowland removed his jacket. “How's it going then?”

“Clyde should consider becoming a Methodist.”

“Be quiet, Milt. You're not helping,” Edna said crossly.

“If he must dance, Ed, why don't you teach him to waltz?” Rowland suggested. “It's easier and, trust me, the foxtrot will never catch on.”

“How long has it been since you went out dancing, Rowly? All the bands are playing foxtrots now. And Clyde needs to make a good impression.”

“You'd better get back to it then.” Rowland turned. “I'm going to find something to eat.”

“Wasn't there a supper after the meeting?”

Rowland laughed at the image of five thousand Guardsmen arriving with plates of sandwiches dutifully prepared by their wives and mothers. “No. No supper.”

“What happened?” Clyde was clearly desperate for any reason to postpone his dancing lesson.

“See for yourself.” Rowland tossed his notebook over to him. “I won't be long.”

He returned shortly, with a tin of Mary Brown's highland fruitcake. He shoved Milton, and the poet made room for him on the couch.

“What's going on here?” Clyde pointed to the drawing of men with their right arms raised in the Fascist salute. “Who are they waving at?”

Rowland told him about the pledge.

“I didn't realise we went to war to crush Communism,” Milton muttered. “Thought it was the Huns.”

“It was like a Masonic meeting gone mad—I was expecting someone to come up with a secret handshake.” Rowland broke off a hunk of fruitcake and told them about Jack Harris who turned out to be Constable Delaney.

“They have someone investigating your uncle's murder from within the New Guard.”

“No,” Rowland replied. “Delaney is working directly for Bill MacKay, not Bicuit. He's more interested in whether Campbell's really going to lead a coup any time soon.”

“What do you think, Rowly?” Clyde decided to help his friend finish the cake. “Are these people serious about revolution, or is it all talk?”

“I don't know…maybe.” Rowland frowned. “You'd feel a bit of a fool with all the drilling and saluting and singing, if you weren't serious, don't you think? If they don't do something soon, they run the risk that history will remember them as clowns, and I'm pretty sure Campbell would declare war just to avoid that.”

“What about MacKay?” Milton asked.

“Looks good in tails…a jolly, determined sort of chap.” Rowland fed the remains of the cake to a grateful Lenin. “According to Delaney, MacKay's got spies and informants everywhere, and not just with Campbell's men.”

“Well, that's comforting,” said Edna. “But you don't think this is getting too dangerous, do you, Rowly? You were nearly found out today.”

Clyde snorted triumphantly, but said nothing.

Rowland smiled. Compared to the 50–50 Club, the New Guard seemed very tame indeed. “No, I think it'll be all right,” he said. “Although, I'm probably bloody lucky not to have run into someone else who knows me.”

Milton chuckled. “We could always call your brother to ransom you if things go really wrong.”

“I'm not sure his lot is all that different than Campbell's, you know…they're just quieter.” He wrinkled his nose. “All this fanfare is very bourgeois.”

“Marvellous,” said Milton. “All we have to do is manoeuvre between the ruling class and the really ruling class.”

“Rowly…” Edna took down a frame from the mantelpiece. She studied the picture of the young man who looked so much like Rowland Sinclair. “Was Aubrey like Wilfred?”

The question was unexpected, but Rowly wasn't surprised that Edna would ask it. The sculptress had a very direct way of dealing with anything that caught her attention. “I was barely ten when I last saw him, Ed—even Wilfred wasn't like Wilfred back then.”

“Would Aubrey have joined the Old Guard?”

“I don't know that Aubrey ever took things as seriously…I vaguely remember him calling Wil, ‘Lord Wilfred Properly of the Colonies.' I had a couple of his letters from the front, before he died…he probably would have come back changed. Wil did. Most people did.”

“Why the sudden interest in Rowly's brothers?” Milton asked.

“I was always interested.” Edna returned Aubrey's picture to its place. “Just haven't asked before.”

“We just missed it.” Clyde spoke wistfully. “…the war…if we were a year or two older, we would have gone, too.”

“Of course Rowly would have got a commission,” added Milton. “You and I would have joined the rest of the proletariat in the general infantry.”

“But we would have seen service, all the same.” Clyde's eyes were distant.

Rowland was unsure whether it was regret or relief, but he thought he understood how Clyde felt. They were all of a generation who could not possibly have seen war service, but who were marked by the lack of it, all the same. Certainly, he was aware it lessened him in Wilfred's eyes. Perhaps Clyde felt it even more keenly. A couple of years his elder, Clyde had finally managed to make himself look old enough to enlist, but he was too late…the war was won by then. Milton, too, would probably have volunteered as soon as he could, although Rowland suspected the poet would have been shot for insubordination before long.

“We've dodged that bullet.” Milton was unusually reflective. “I don't know if the Great War was the war to end all wars—it probably wasn't—but there won't be another one in our lifetimes.”

Clyde snorted. “What about Campbell's revolution?”

That had crossed all their minds.

“So, Rowly, have you finally started Campbell's painting?” Edna intervened before the mood became too sombre.

“Tomorrow,” Rowland replied. “Really.”

“How are you going to paint him?”

“I'm tempted to paint him pruning his roses…or sitting in the sun with a big fluffy cat in his lap.” Rowland laughed. “But I won't…I'll paint him as King Campbell surrounded by his Fascist legions.”

“Just paint slowly,” Milton warned. “The way you usually work, you'll be finished in two days and you'll have no reason to hang around.”

“You have a point,” Rowland sighed. “But I'll have to show them something soon.”

“Do some large preliminary sketches.” Clyde flicked through Rowland's notebook. “It'll make him think you're working and allow you to waste a bit of time.”

“That's not a bad idea.” Rowland closed the empty tin. “I'll take some in for our next sitting date…Now, shouldn't you be learning to dance?”

Clyde cursed and complained, but allowed himself to be dragged back to the makeshift floor by Edna. Within minutes, Milton had resumed laughing. Rowland watched more politely, but even he had to struggle not to smile. Frustrated, Edna bid Clyde to watch and grabbed Milton to demonstrate. A very accomplished dancer, now with an audience, Milton incorporated the flamboyant moves of a skilled exhibitionist. He dipped and twirled and flourished with aplomb. Clyde laughed and made some quite unnecessary aspersions about the poet's masculinity. In the end, Edna used Rowland to show Clyde how normal people danced.

***

A few evenings later, Rowland stood at his easel working on a series of drawings to present to Campbell as drafts for his portrait. It was late, but the quiet in the house allowed him to concentrate. Until the front door burst open, and Clyde charged in.

“Where's the fire?” Rowland didn't look up.

“Bankstown. We've got a problem, Rowly…Milt's been arrested.”

Rowland put down his pencil and grabbed his jacket from the back of the couch. “What for?”

“Riotous behaviour.”

“In Bankstown?” said Rowland, as if the location was more surprising than the charge.

They walked briskly toward the stables. “What was Milt doing in Bankstown?”

“We were both there,” Clyde replied. “At a Party meeting. The New Guard arrived to break it up.”

“I see.”

The New Guard had been making it their business to break up left-wing meetings.

“I'd better drive.” Clyde slipped in behind the Mercedes steering wheel. “That way, you can duck if we happen across any Guardsmen…which we might.”

“So, what happened?”

“The Fascists turned up—about twenty carloads. They fronted the meeting and started singing ‘God Save the King' at the top of their lungs. Of course the Party faithful hit back with ‘The Red Flag.'” Clyde shook his head. “It was kind of ridiculous.”

“There's a lot of that going around.”

“Well, after a while, the singing—if you can call it that—turned into a general rabble…people only ever remember the first verse anyway, and anything after that is mumbling guesswork. So, we're all standing there, tunefully abusing each other when things start to get a bit interesting. Someone clocked a Guardsman with a garden stake, and then it was on…and you know Milt, he made sure he was in the thick of it.”

“Is that when the police…?”

“No. The Labor Party was holding some big do across the street, in aid of the unemployed, so they raced over and joined in and, all of a sudden, there was brawling in the streets. The Guardsmen got back into their cars and drove around in circles, shouting threats.”

“But how did Milt get arrested?

“The police did finally turn up and they arrested a few people—Communists, of course, not Guardsmen. And Milt, the bloody fool, just couldn't keep his mouth shut, accusing the police of being in league with the Fascists. He's lucky they didn't shoot him.”

Rowland sighed. “I guess it's part of his charm.”

“Listen, my cousin lives near the police station,” Clyde said as they got close to Bankstown. “We'll park at his place; posh cars aren't too popular out here right now.”

Rowland nodded, giving the dash a comforting pat.

Bankstown was one of the suburbs on which the Depression had settled. Many of the businesses down the main street had been shuttered for months, the weatherboard cottages had not seen paint in far too long, and fences were dilapidated. Windows were broken and boarded up and the remnants of barbed wire flagged those houses that had been the subject of eviction sieges. Vacant blocks were piled high with the trash, and though the recent public works schemes had seen sewerage extended to the area, the air was tainted since sanitation mostly still relied on poorly maintained outhouses. Bankstown had more than its share of unemployed, and it had become a stage for riots and unrest as political extremes collided.

Clyde pulled into a large block and drove the Mercedes right down the back. The motorcar's headlamps caught the glow of startled eyes as several rabbits hopped out of its path.

“Bankstown roast,” Clyde pointed to the hopping rodents. He hadn't eaten rabbit since he moved to Woodlands House.

Lights came on in the cottage and the tenant emerged shortly thereafter, still in his nightshirt, but ready for a fight. “Put the cricket bat down, Mick,” Clyde shouted by way of greeting.

“Clyde! What the hell…?”

Clyde calmed him and introduced Rowland.