Arthur Upfield - Death of a Swagman

“Read over the witness’s evidence,” ordered the magistrate.

The clerk read it.

“Well?” asked the magistrate, again regarding Bony with those searching dark eyes.

“Must have been mistaken,” admitted Bony.

“Any further question to put to the witness?”

“Only that I wasn’t doing any harm sleeping on the bench.”

“What else have you to say for yourself?”

“Nothing, your honour.”

“Humph! Ah well! We cannot have people sleeping on benches on our sidewalks in broad daylight. You are sentenced to ten days’ detention.”

“What! Only ten days? No option?” exclaimed Bony.

The clerk’s mouthsagged a fraction. Gleeson’s stiffly erect body trembled from the chest upward. The magistrate said sternly and still deliberately:

“You are granted no option of paying a fine. Ten days.”

“Come on,” said Gleeson, and he and his prisoner marched from the court back to the cells.

“Disappointed, sir?” asked the constable.

“Why, no. It has been a new experience, Gleeson. What is the magistrate’s name?”

“He’s Jason, the garage proprietor.”

“Oh! So that is Mr Jason.”

“Peculiar bird,” Gleeson said. “In his way he’s all there, is old Jason. He’s chairman of the bench and deputy coroner for this district, and a good man for the work, too. Likes himself a lot on the bench, but then, I’d like myself if I were chief commissioner.”

“What’s the wife like?”

“Never knew her. She was dead when he and young Jason came to Merino eight years ago. He’s been an actor in his early days, I understand. The son is a bit of a trial.”

“How so? Tell me about him.”

“He is, I think, twenty-three. Dark like his father but not so tall and much stronger. Has a harelip and one shoulder is higher than the other. Surly disposition and has no respect for the old man. What with his harelip and one shoulder higher than the other, I suppose he couldn’t be expected to have a sunny disposition. To make him worse, one leg is shorter than the other and he has a crooked spine. Still, he’s active enough and as strong as a young bull.”

“They live next door, do they not?”

“That’s so. A woman goes in every day to clean up and prepare the midday dinner. I have heard the old man cooks the breakfast and gets the tea. If you are going to the funeral this afternoon you’ll see the old bird in his funeral regalia, which is in keeping with the hearse. You are not going to forget it for many a day.”

Half an hour after Gleeson had departed for the station office Marshall entered Bony’s cell.

“What was the idea of arguing about eyes?” he asked.

“I wanted again to hear the magistrate’s voice,” replied Bony.“Why the ten days? Was I not to get fourteen?”

“Old Jason sometimes isn’t as tame as I’d like him to be.” Marshall scratched his nose.“Was in one of his cranky moods this morning. Still, ten days is better than a five-bob fine, I suppose.” The sergeant grinned and then said sternly, with faint mockery in his voice: “Now you… you’re here for ten days and nights. You’ll find time drag a bit, and in here it’s a bit hot during daytime. If you’ll do some painting for me I’ll let you take your meals with me, and I’ll give you a couple of bob a day to spend over at the hotel before closing time.”

“Sounds fair enough to me,” Bony agreed.

Again Marshall grinned and suggested:

“Why not come over to the house for a drink of tea before you start? I’d like you to meet the wife. I told her who you are. She’s safe. Wouldn’t have married her if she hadn’t been.”

“Wise man.”

“Perhaps. You married?”

“Yes. Three sons. Eldest at Brisbane Uni. Going to be a medical missionary to his grandmother’s people. Good lad, Sergeant, but he’s always chronically broke and always, therefore, touching me for a quid. The expression is his, not mine, I hasten to assure you.”

A minute later he found himself being introduced to a woman as tall as her husband and larger.

“I know all about you,” she said after welcoming him and urging him to be seated with her husband at the kitchen table, where she served tea and little cakes. “I am to call you Bony. Rose Marie told me all about the tea party in the cell yesterday.”

“You are fortunate in being the mother of Rose Marie,” Bony said, bowing slightly from his chair. Mrs Marshall glanced at her husband, also seated at the table, and said:

“She is a sweet child, but she’s terribly precocious. The things she gets to hear other people say is extraordinary. There’s no need for me to visit to hear all the news. I only hope to goodness she doesn’t relate to other people what she hears us say.”

“I gathered from what she told me yesterday that your daughter didn’t like Sergeant Redman,” Bony observed. “I do not think that odd.”

“Nor did we,” Mrs Marshall said. “But Rose Marie hated him. Did she tell you why?”

Bony nodded, saying:

“It appears that Rose Marie likes young Jason, and that Redman bullied young Jason.”

“Redman as good as accused young Jason of having murdered Kendall, but then he as good as accused a dozen people of having done that,” Marshall put in.

“What is your opinion of young Jason?” Bony asked.

“He’s a surly pup, and he’s a long way from being handsome,” replied the sergeant. “There is one great thing in his favour, and that is that children like him and trust him. Our Florence has long conferences with him; quite often she will sit with him on a box or against a petrol pump and talk and talk. And sometimes there will be half a dozen children in the conference.”

“He tells them fairy tales,” Mrs Marshall said. “But are you actually going to do the painting about the place?”

“Of course,” replied Bony. “Didn’t you know that I have been sentenced to ten days’ hard labour with paint and brushes?”

He rose to his feet. “A fortnight hence you won’t know your police station. Thank you for your morning tea… and the breakfast you so kindly sent over.”

“And I am really to call you Bony?”

Her large open face pleased him.

“Pro temmy name is Robert Burns… with apologies to every Scotchman,” he said, smiling. “However, all my friends call me Bony, and I hope that I may include both of you among my friends.”

After he had left her kitchen with her husband Mrs Marshall sat down at the table, poured herself another cup of tea, and stared unseeingly at the hot stove, her mind seeing him bowing to her prior to his leaving.

At the expiration of the lunch hour, which began at one o’clock, Bony returned to the front fence from which he had begun to scrape the old paint. The previously clear morning sky was now filling with blue-black clouds having ponderoussnowcaps, each cloud mass sailing like a galleon upon an azure sea. There was no wind, and the air was slightly oppressive.

When, a little before three o’clock, he left his work and walked to old Bennett’s hut, a vast cloud shadow lay upon the land between the township and the Walls of China, which were sunlit and rested along the distant horizon like misty blue velvet upon which were the blue-black undersides of distant thunderclouds.

The dead man’s hut and the large group of people gathered outside the gate were all bathed in the hot sunlight. The tin-sheathed dwelling gleamed like gold, smeared here and there with the fire of opals. Shimmering heat rose from the bonnets of several cars parked beyond the hut as though incense was being burned in honour of yet another representative of a great and vanishing generation.

“Looks like there’ll be a storm before Ted Bennett’s put away into his final bed,” predicted one of the group.