Thomas Keneally - A River Town

“I shouldn’t have sold him the bloody sugar to start with.”

“And he should not have been a provocateur, ” the Offhand insisted. “Is the coming Commonwealth of Australia to operate by such principles? By spying and provocation? If it is, we might as well be in Europe!”

“Except that the climate is better,” said Tim, laughing, and to spite the blaze and black grit of the air.

“I shall toast Australis on my own then,” said the Offhand. “I still cannot get over the Argus actually putting ink to them. It’s bloody rich, Tim. Not you, by any chance?”

“Never,” said Tim.

And the Offhand laughed and passed on his way.

Tim and Pee Dee straggled on a mile and into Kemp Street.

“Tiptoe past the bloody police station,” Tim urged Pee Dee. Everything dormant. Birds vanished from the trees. The trees themselves, between gusts of fiery wind, looking like they were considering the desirability of themselves blossoming into flame.

And yet there was undue movement at St. Joseph’s Convent. Nuns were running by the wooden scaffolding tower from which the Angelus bell hung. Children were moving, and piercing the white heat with excited cries. My God, the poor little savages will faint if they don’t stop! Mad Johnny would run till he dropped. Unless mercifully stopped.

The Angelus tower in front of the convent. It was made of yellow painted struts of hardwood bolted together. Yellow diagonals of timbers rose to the little, corrugated iron roof, beneath which was slung the great crossbeam from which hung the bell. Rung at six o’clock in the morning, twelve noon, six o’clock in the evening. The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary , everyone in the convent prayed as the bell rang out, inviting even the godless New South Wales police down the road to celebrate the Annunciation. Three Hail Marys, one Glory Be. Bandy the Muslim would understand these impulses, these summonses from a tower, better than Constable Hanney. And Missy in her motherless fluid at the cop shop—did redemption call to her thus? Was someone in the town moved secretly to name her, in a bathroom or at the corner of a bar, muttering into his lapel? Daphne or Winnie or Constance. Ellen or Hilda or Dorothea. Naming her on an impulse at hearing the far-off, familiar three-times-a-day bell of the Tykes.

Methodists and the good Wesleyans of South Kempsey didn’t go for any of it, yet shared the town with the mystery for which that tower stood in its plain Macleay timbers.

Where was the sense in paying Imelda a bob a week for a full-time boarder? If they were permitted to run themselves mad under a sun and in an air like this one? Drawing nearer, he saw Imelda striking the uprights of the tower with her cane, and then standing back, pointing the cane to the apex where the seemingly white bell stood.

This white bell at the peak of the structure was not the real gun-metal bell at all. Rather it was Lucy. And in brown pants and a blue shirt, with the dirty bandage on his head awaiting removal by Dr. Erson, Johnny. Somehow they had climbed the tower to the highest side beam together. He could envisage too clearly Johnny going up with his long, pliable feet, Lucy with her crazy suppleness.

Tim drew up Pee Dee and the cart and ran into the convent garden. Someone’s redheaded brat was imitating with hooting sounds the spread-armed balancing pose Johnny took as he walked a little way along his beam and grabbed a corner upright. Tim reached Imelda, who was still whacking the corner of one of the tower’s uprights with her cane.

“Come down, you two ruffians!” she yelled. But the diagonals which someone with climbing skills might well shinny up were too steep to shinny down.

Two girls about Lucy’s age—in pinafores, strolling together, an arm around each other’s shoulder—chattered away, engrossed. To them, time out of the classroom was a gift to amity. Didn’t matter to them that there were two pupils who had got themselves to an impossible point in today’s bloody murderous sky.

Imelda panted from punishing the tower, but would not give up the practice.

“Don’t do that,” Tim called to her. “Could make them jump.”

Imelda did at least soften and decrease the tempo of her blows. Her face broiling under the black cloth, under the white band which covered her forehead for Christ’s sake. No man shall see thy brow…

“Tea,” she called to one of the younger nuns, who was standing by, clutching the huge black beads hanging at her waist from the Order’s thick black belt. “Could you ever get me tea, sister? I’m dying of parchment.”

And before the young nun runs off to do it, Tim mentally complained that parchment was something you wrote on, an animal skin. Parched was thirsty. Was he paying out all this money to a headmistress who didn’t know the difference?

Imelda stopped caning the tower altogether.

“I’ve sent a child for the fire brigade,” she told Tim. “Mr. Crane, you know. And their extension ladder. But God knows, they could be in the bush somewhere battling flames.”

To look directly up the thwarts at the two figures at the apex of the tower was too terrifying a view. He stepped away many paces and tried it from a slightly kinder angle. “Don’t jump!” he yelled. “We have some men coming. Sit still. Wait for the ladder!”

It was Lucy who looked so light up there, as if she might step out and float to ground on the searing westerly. Johnny looked solider, in possession of himself and the tower, and so more endangered.

“I will see if I can come up,” Tim yelled, pronouncing each word.

He wrenched off his elastic-sided boots.

“Oh, dear Jesus,” he said to himself, looking up again and assessing the task. Johnny always putting him up for awful trials for heroism.

He lifted himself into the angle where a diagonal beam came down and bolted itself to one of the uprights of the tower. This diagonal would take him up to a cross bar perhaps twenty feet from the earth, and then another diagonal would begin. No other way up existed. You had to admire and abhor the little buggers for having managed it in such blazing air!

He forced himself to begin climbing the diagonal. Splayed-out feet. Hauling himself on the harsh, barely-planed, yellow-painted timber. Bowed over like a bloody ape. Everything aching. And bent like this, the idea about not casting your eyes to the earth utterly impossible! He knew to all the nuns and all the children he looked graceless, scrambling and frightened. There were bloody convent urchins mimicking him. Swinging one foot out, as he had to to bypass the one which held him to his previously highest point. Up to the first cross bar. Haul yourself up on it and award yourself a breath, grasping the diagonal which might take you up to the tower’s next stage. The thing built in three sections, like the prayers of the Angelus itself. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Three Hail Marys for your sins and the repose of souls. Some bloody repose up here in a sky abandoned even by the magpies!

“Careful, Mr. Shea,” cried a nun from below. Waterford accent.

“Listen to me,” he called to Johnny, who had the grace to stare down, to Lucy who was looking off into the unscannable haze. “Stay there. The ladder’s coming. Papa’s coming.”

How would he stand up there though, looking out at the seared heavens and the valley full of smoke?

His breath as good as terror would let it be, he began the next diagonal. He found he had a way with it all now. Sailors he had so admired, up in the top mast, feet on one of those ratlines. It can be learned. Ascent. He’d learned to rescue Johnny from the stern of Terara . Now in the topmost! Watch below on deck!

Shinnying on further, diagonally to the sky, calling in a voice in which people could hear the quavers. “Stay there! Stay there!” Since history showed that if she jumped for whatever reason of her own, Johnny would step out too, falling like a willing stone and getting joy from it for the instant it lasted.