Pearl in a Cage (28 page)

Joey tried to run into Charlie, but Denham blocked his pathway.

‘Back in the cart,' he said. ‘I can't dictate how you choose to live your life, lady, but decent folk don't have to dodge around blacks when they come in to do their shopping.'

‘You've got your head shoved so far up your own backside, you can't see which way you're headed,' Gertrude said, taking Joey's hand, determined to walk him around that sod. Denham caught the handle of her basket and six dozen eggs rained down, smashed, splattered down. She stood looking at the waste of eggs meant to pay for a bottle of hair dye, for a packet of tea, baking powder.

Joey didn't know what was going on. He was supposed to be at school. He was supposed to go into Charlie's but that man didn't want him to. He scampered back up to the cart and sat cowering there.

‘Bullying women and babies won't make you stand taller in this town, you thoughtless mongrel.'

‘Any more of that and I'll slap a charge of abusive language on you, lady.'

She nodded, looked at that little boy who didn't have an ounce of fear in him, and his big eyes were afraid. She looked at those eggs leaking their goodness into hard-packed clay, then she stooped, picked up an unbroken egg, reached for another. Maybe his self-satisfied smirk brought it on, or Joey's eyes; she wasn't sure, but something raised in her a desire to hit back. She did it fast, slapped both hands down on his shoulders, wasted two perfectly good eggs on that mongrel of a man and considered them well spent.

‘Add common assault to that charge, you overgrown cur.'

Rich yolk dribbling, eggshell clinging to his shoulders, his smirk wiped away by surprise, she returned to her cart.

The confrontation took place in front of Charlie and Jean White. They were standing in their doorway. Denham turned to them.

‘You're witnesses,' he said.

‘He's deaf and I'm short-sighted,' Jean said.

Old Betty Duffy, on her way into town to buy a bit of flour and tobacco, claimed the less-broken eggs. Her pack of half-starved dogs picnicked on the rest, then watered Charlie's verandah posts in appreciation.

Denham was just marking out his territory. A man, like a new dog on the block, needs to erase the scent of the last dog with his own stink, but something had to be done about him before he stank up the whole town.

In March of 1930, there were three big sawmills and one bush mill working at full production in Woody Creek, each of them employing eight to fifteen labourers; then there were the bullockies who hauled the logs in from the bush, and the chaps with horse teams, and the chaps who felled the trees. The big steam engines that kept the saws spinning needed servicing by men who knew what they were doing. Horses needed to be shod. Harnesses needed repairs. Cut timber had to be loaded onto railway trucks. What happened to it thereafter was of little concern to the mill men as long as the money kept rolling back into Woody Creek.

But the timber industry was a chain, one link relying on the other.

Snap!

And the chain started falling apart.

A city man had no use for timber unless he wanted to build something: a house, a bridge, a fence. In 1929, houses had been springing up like mushrooms — on borrowed money. In 1930, the building industry dropped dead. The government had been spending up big on public works, spending borrowed money. Australia, reliant on her wool and wheat exports, now at rock-bottom prices, couldn't maintain her balance of payments. Government spending had to stop so public works stopped, throwing more out of work. The country was in debt for millions, which few had known until the crash. Unemployment had been a problem for years, but a problem denied. No
more denial. ‘
FIFTY PER CENT OF CHILDREN ATTENDING SCHOOLS IN THE COLLINGWOOD AREA HAVE UNEMPLOYED FATHERS
' the newspapers howled.

Woody Creek, isolated, insulated from the greater world's woes, sat back and watched for a time — until Mick Boyle gave his fifteen workers two days' notice that he was closing his mill, getting out before he lost the shirt off his back. He'd chosen the wrong time to update his mill machinery, updated with the bank's money. He got out of it with his house, a couple of horses and a dray.

Tom Palmer had been Boyle's mill boss for years. He had five kids to feed and a house he'd borrowed money to build. He knocked on Vern's door. Tom was a good worker, a reliable and decent family man.

‘I'm stockpiling timber no one wants to buy, Tom, and I can't keep it up indefinitely. Come and see me again when things pick up.'

A man could manage on short rations for a month or two. Things would pick up. The government would do something. They had to.

But the government did nothing. Government machinery had not been set up to supply assistance to the needy. That was what the churches were for, and the smaller charitable organisations. They tried, but charities, set up to offer temporary relief to the needy, were put under pressure as destitution spread. The banks added to the misery. They failed to understand that you could put a stone through a mangle and still not squeeze blood out of it. The banks were owed thousands so they squeezed. Thousands were evicted from the homes they could no longer pay for, throwing more human souls onto the streets. There was real suffering in the cities. Folk were starving in the cities.

Then George Macdonald closed his bush mill. Eight men lost their jobs, and there was talk of Vern Hooper cutting down to a three-day week. And Max Monk, owner of Three Pines, a big property eight or so miles from town, sacked a chap and his wife who had been working out there for years.

‘They say he's up to his ears in debt.'

The rumour-mongers were at it again, circulating disaster, though few believed them until Monk sacked his two farm labourers, and one of them with him for twenty years. He was home with his wife now from Monday to Sunday, home, jobless and unpaid in two months.

‘The bank is selling him up.'

‘Max Monk? Bullshit.'

Three generations of the Monk family had owned Three Pines, and for those three generations Vern's family had been Monk's nearest neighbours. They shared a fence, shared the creek, though the Hooper land was around half the size of their neighbours', and their house less than half the size. Vern's manager now occupied the old Hooper house and he cared for that land as if it were his own. For six months of the year, Monk's house stood vacant while Max, his wife and daughter spent up big on their grand tours.

‘They reckon he's been owned by the bank for years.'

‘He owes Robert Fulton a fortune, I know that much.'

‘There's a lot more than Monk owes Fulton. His wife was telling mine that they're feeling the pinch.'

‘If Monk goes under, he'll take a few down with him. Charlie White was saying yesterday that Monk hasn't paid a brass razoo off his bill in six months.'

‘It's the greed of those big bastards that caused this.'

 

Norman Morrison's job was secure. He'd taken a legislated wage cut. The government was finally doing something. Salaries across the board were reduced, but balanced by a drop in the cost of living. Norman watched his pennies but he managed.

The Church of England had started up a relief committee, so the Methodist church ladies started their own. Who knew for how long the bad times might last. Lorna and Margaret Hooper were good Methodists but drew the line at going door to door collecting old clothes and shoes for the needy.

Vern had wanted those girls home from the city; now he had them at home he wondered why he'd wanted them there. With little going on at his mill, he spent more time out at his farm.

He was walking down by his section of the creek when he saw his neighbour walking in his garden. Old man Monk had built his house so it overlooked the creek. His son's wife had designed the garden leading down to the water. It was overgrown, neglected now, but as a boy Vern had envied it. Flowers weren't encouraged on Hooper land. Vern's grandfather had needed every square inch of his land, and his stock had got the best of it, the house relegated to the driest corner, a few feet back from the road, its only garden, then and now, a stand of shading blue gum trees and an old rose bush neglect couldn't kill. Vern had taken two or three cuttings from it, given that rose a second life in town, and every year it repaid him a thousandfold.

He took his time in approaching his neighbour that morning, in climbing the bordering fence. He waited until Max was sitting on the grassy bank, tossing sticks into slow-running water. He'd spent a lot of his boyhood envying Max.

They said their good mornings.

‘I've been hearing a lot of talk in town, Max. Any truth in what I'm hearing?' Vern was not a man to beat around the bush.

‘According to the bank, I don't own the shoes I'm standing in — sitting in, Vern.'

‘You've got a lot of stock out there.'

‘The bank's got a lot of stock.'

‘That bad, is it?'

‘They won't get everything.'

‘How's your wife taking it?'

‘She's on a boat, halfway home with what she can carry. Our girl and her husband went ahead last month with a bit more. I'll be joining them after the auction.'

‘How soon?'

‘Ask the bank.'

Max never was much of a farmer. His grandfather had been the farmer, and to a lesser degree, his father — who had made the mistake of hitching himself up to Eliza Foote, aunt of Archie bloody Foote. That was when the rot had set in. She'd watered
down old man Monk's blood. They'd only raised the one son, then made the mistake of educating him in England where he'd wed a pom who hated Australia. She'd given him a daughter who, like her mother, wasn't fond of country life.

‘Have you got a smoke on you?' Max said.

Vern didn't move without his cigarettes. He offered his pack and eased himself down to his backside to sit a while and watch that creek. There was something soothing about watching water flow down that same course it had been travelling for thousands of years, something eternal about flowing water. A man's blood might flow as strong and eternal if he made the right alliances. Vern had been guilty of watering down the Hooper blood with bad marriages. It was his grandfather's fault, though. If he hadn't been so deadset against cousin wedding cousin, the Hooper blood would have stayed strong.

‘Do you hear anything of your mad cousin these days?'

No need to mention names. Max only had one mad cousin.

‘The last time I set eyes on Archie was a few months before his old man died. He came up here wanting me to invest money in one of his get-rich-quick schemes.' He blew smoke at the trees. ‘I gave him fifty quid to get rid of him, and considered it well spent.'

‘Is he still living?'

‘They say not. They tracked him as far as Egypt after his old man died. The old bloke went soft on him during his last years of life and left him a few hundred quid. The family reckon Archie's dead or he would have been back for his money — which I wouldn't mind getting my hands on right now.'

‘What's it going to take to get the bank off your back?'

‘Too much — though I might raise it — if I had reason to raise it. My wife hates the place and I couldn't pay my daughter enough to spend a weekend here — and she's barren.' He pitched a stick into the water. ‘It's over, Vern. As poor old Ned said when they stuck the noose around his neck, such is life.'

‘Your grandfather would roll over in his grave.'

‘Could be that he will.'

Max stood and pitched his cigarette butt towards the creek, picked up a small branch and pitched it further, watched it get itself turned around and head off downstream.

‘Life as our old folk knew it is finished, Vern. This depression has been rushing towards us for a while and we've sat back watching it come. It will sort out the men from the boys.'

 

Robert Fulton's feed and grain store spent more days with its door closed than open. He owed, and was owed, thousands. There were whispers that Paul Jenner, out Cemetery Road, was ready to walk off his land.

It was a disease, a creeping, crawling contagious plague, which by the end of 1930 had a grip on the throat of Woody Creek and was squeezing the life out of it.

Fulton's doors remained closed after Christmas. He owed Charlie three months' rent on the shop and more on the house he lived in. A good family the Fultons, with a bunch of well-mannered, well-behaved kids. They'd been Charlie and Jean White's neighbours for twenty years. Jean wouldn't have let Charlie evict them had he wanted to.

Richard Blunt had been standing behind the drapery store counter for forty years, his wife, then his daughter, sitting in the back room stitching fine garments, altering trousers, taking up hems for those who could afford to pay. Not many in town could afford to pay for fine clothes now, but the Blunts, frugal folk, owned a big old house opposite the school. They took the infants' mistress in as a lodger. Her job was secure. She paid her rent to Richard and he paid his to Charlie.

Old man Miller and his wife from the boot shop were feeling the pinch. Boots still wore out but folk weren't replacing them. Crone's café-cum-restaurant did all right. No one expected old mother Crone to give anyone credit.

George Macdonald kept his big mill saws screaming a week longer than Vern's and their howl was a wild thing's call for its mate. Then the howl died, and the town fell silent. And the town grew still. And the mill men grew still. They leaned against verandah posts watching their kids' clothes turn
to rags, listening to their women too proud to beg, but not too proud to send those rag-tail kids up to ask Charlie for a pound of flour on tick, please, to ask the baker if he might have a loaf of stale bread, please.

‘You ask him nicely now, say please. And wash your face before you go.'