Hammers Over the Anvil Read online

  ‘Who the bloody hell took my trace chain off this bloody hook? Here – look at it, that bloody hook there’, and he pointed to a hook in the wall of the stable.

  ‘I didn’t take it, Mr Hanrahan.’

  ‘Well, somebody did.’ He pulled at his beard and looked around him. ‘I think I must have shifted the bloody thing myself.’ He sat down on a chopping block near the door of the slab stable and started to shave tobacco from a plug of Dark Havelock.

  He was a tall man, over six feet high, with a loose body that sat on his long legs with a forward lean. When he rose from sitting down he straightened out in sections. He took big strides, his eyes looking straight ahead like a thirsty man making for a beer.

  Father reckoned he was not properly contained, whatever that meant, and that he’d been badly handled when he was a kid. He was an old man – he must have been easily forty – but he talked to me like as if I knew what he was talking about. I always believed what he told me but father said he was the greatest liar this side of the Black Stump.

  I didn’t like father saying that, but then he said, ‘There are liars and liars. You see, when a man tells a yarn and aims to get a laugh, he’s pulling your leg; he’s not a liar. If a bloke tells the same yarn to build himself up – well, he’s a liar.’

  ‘Mr Hanrahan doesn’t make me laugh.’

  ‘No, he makes himself laugh. Look at his eyes when he’s telling you a yarn. They are as bright as a rooster’s.’

  I liked Mick Hanrahan telling me about the fights he had.

  ‘There was Big Jim Bourke from Mortlake. Ever heard of him?’

  I hadn’t, but I made up my mind to ask Dad about him.

  ‘I fought him once – two hours it lasted.’

  I looked astonished.

  ‘Well – er – make it an hour. I tell you, I fought him for an hour in front of the pub at Purnim.’ He lit his pipe, drawing on it with hollowed cheeks so strongly that it gurgled in protest.

  ‘An hour’s a long fight, Mr Hanrahan’, I said.

  ‘Yes …’ He took his pipe from his mouth and looked into the bowl. ‘It’s a long fight, but then he was a tough man. The tougher they are the longer it lasts. There are some blokes that won’t lie down. He was like that. I was having a drink with him and he said to me – and I won’t forget it in a hurry – but all the Bourkes are skites. He said, “I’ve been cutting colts all my life and I’ve never lost one.” “What about Wilkinson’s draught colt you did last year?” I asked him. “What about him?” “They found him dead against the fence.” “Yair that’s right”, he said, “and he’d still be alive today if you hadn’t told Jack to gallop him around the paddock to bust the swelling. You killed that colt – I’m telling ya.” I heard him all right; that’s what he said, so I said, “Come outside and say that.” Now, I had Big Jim’s measure. I knew bloody well that if I went down he’d get stuck into me with those Blucher Boots he was wearing.’

  (‘He’d never do that would he, Dad – not kick him with Blucher Boots?’ ‘When you’re mixing it outside a pub, anything goes’, Dad said.)

  ‘It didn’t take long to finish him’, Mick continued. ‘I kept him off while pasting him with my right – he didn’t have the reach of a sick dog. I waited for an opening like Jack Johnson used to, then I moved in and knocked him cold.’

  ‘But you said you took an hour’, I said.

  ‘Yes, it took an hour to bring him round’, Mick explained.

  PETER McLEOD

  I was sitting on the top rail of a fence watching the bar doorway of the pub across the road. The shouts and exclamations of angry men fled through the doorway like a flock of escaping bats.

  It was hot with a north wind blowing and each horse in the gigs and buggies in front of the hotel rested on three legs in the shafts. Their heads drooped in the heat.

  Above the whip-cracks of curses and abuse I could hear the bull-bellow of Peter McLeod sending out his challenge. The surge of accompanying sound erupted in a sudden explosive burst and a man came staggering backwards through the doorway, arms outstretched seeking balance, a smear of blood on his upper lip, his face still wary from a blow.

  In front of him, following his backward plunge with ferocious purpose, came Peter. Arresting hands gripped his shoulders, arms like ropes encircled his waist. As this knot of men spilt across the roadway, Peter began shedding them like pieces of box-thorn hedge hooked on to him in his passage through a pig-yard fence.

  ‘Let go of me, blast ya!’

  ‘Hold your horses, Peter!’

  Excited men with flushed faces poured out of the bar.

  ‘Make a ring.’

  ‘Hold on! Peter’s been boozing all the morning.’

  ‘He’s on his feet, isn’t he!’

  ‘The bastard asked for it.’

  ‘Is Sam having a go?’

  Then I heard Peter’s voice:

  ‘Where’s that lyin’ cow?’

  ‘I’m …’

  ‘Ugh!’

  ‘Ah!’

  There was a sudden flurry of blows. I heard gasps and grunts. The crowd reeled back.

  ‘Give them room!’

  ‘Stand back, bugger you!’

  I hurriedly clambered from the rail and grabbed my crutches from the ground. I bounded across the roadway to the circular wall of men, flung my crutches to one side and dropped to my hands and knees. I lowered my head and thrust it between the spread legs of a tall outside man, pushed through and kept going. I went through legs, by the side of legs, around legs all anxious to avoid me. Some sidestepped when I touched them or swung away from me as if bitten by a dog. Above me in the world of heads I could hear curses and exclamations of concern.

  ‘It’s that bloody Marshall kid!’

  ‘Look out or you’ll step on him.’

  ‘God Almighty, can’t a man look at a fight without him tangling with your legs!’

  I shot underneath the last barrier of men and squatted cross-legged like a Buddha in front of the two fighters.

  This was the moment for which I had waited – to see Peter McLeod punish a bullying man. He would flatten him like a tack, of that I was sure. A hundred tales, a hundred victorious fights had been my preparation for this proof of Peter’s courage.

  I waited for the killing straight left, the merciless right hook, the magnificent uppercut which his yarns supplied in plenty. But this staggering man struggling to lift himself out of a stupefying fog – this wasn’t Peter McLeod. This wasn’t the man of a hundred tales. He wasn’t even defending himself properly. He swayed and lurched into the pathway of blows that a bobbing head could have avoided. He was always off balance. No swift, tigerish leaps here, only a will that held a body upright against blows that made it recoil with sudden jerks.

  Charlie Robbins was stone cold sober. He watched Peter with eyes of a hawk, watching for openings through which his fists shot like the kick of a horse.

  I had never regarded Charlie Robbins as a fighter. He was a heavy, thick-set farmer who rested his hands on the backs of cows while walking them into bails. He milked Friesians and in some way resembled them. Dad always said he was a good cheese man, then added as an afterthought – ‘Immature cheese.’

  When he knocked Peter off his feet Peter would get up again. This was good. I liked Peter for getting up. But in the end he had blood on his face and his eyes were closed and he couldn’t get up. Some men lifted him and carried him behind the pub where they put his head under a pump.

  A man got my crutches for me and I went home. I didn’t want to tell father about it. I felt I had taken a hiding too, so I shut up; but he found out somehow. All he said was. ‘Well, he took a fall. Go down and see him in the morning and take it with him like a man.’

  I walked down to his farm next morning. He was sitting on a box outside the stable door looking at a white horse tied with a halter to a ring on the wall. That’s all you could say about this horse.

  ‘Good morning, Mr McLeod’, I said.

 
; ‘Goodday.’

  I sat on the ground beside him.

  ‘I didn’t mind you getting a belting, Mr McLeod.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  After a while he straightened up and said, ‘I’m sore as a boil this morning. I can’t move my bloody neck to the left. What’s wrong with the bloody thing? I can move it to the right, but when I move it to the left it catches me here’, and he pointed to a sinew like a piece of fencing wire that braced his neck to his shoulder. He screwed up his face and went on, ‘Do you know I was sober as a judge at three o’clock. That bastard O’Connor put my head under the pump. Well! I didn’t mind that. He’s a good chap. But he needn’t have held me under it for ten minutes. Sometimes he’s as stupid as a green colt. Anyway, I came round all right. I felt good, so I walked down to Charlie Robbins’s. He’d belted me when I was drunk; I wanted to see if he could belt me when I was sober. I came across the paddock but he saw me coming and took shelter amongst his cows. He’d yarded them for milking. He was standing in the middle of them like a bull.’

  ‘“Listen, you bloody fat bastard”, I yelled at him, “I’m sober now. Come out here on the grass and let me cut you down to size.”’

  ‘“Not me, not me, Peter. I‘m not that bloody stupid. You’d paste hell out of me when you’re sober. I’d never fight you when you’re sober.”’

  ‘“Look here”, I said. “You fought me down at the pub when I could hardly stand on my feet. Come out here now, you mongrel.”’

  ‘“Look, Peter. I fought you because you were drunk. I’m not bloody well mad. If I came out there you’d give me a hiding. What sort of bloody fool do you think I am? No! I’d only fight you when you’re drunk. I’ve got a chance then. But anyone who takes you on sober – well – he’s asking for trouble. Let’s forget it.”’

  ‘“Well, I’ll go to buggery!”’

  ‘“You can go there too, but by hell you’re not taking me with you. I’m stopping here.”’

  ‘“You haven’t got the guts of a louse”, I said to him. “You’re a cowardly bastard.”’

  “Yes, that’s right. I’m a cowardly bastard when it comes to fighting you sober.”

  ‘Well, what could I do. There he was amongst his cows; I’d have to wade through a foot of cow shit to get at him.’

  ‘“Where did you pick up that white horse down the paddock?” I asked him.’

  ‘“I bought him at the sale last week. I gave a fiver for him.”’

  ‘“What’s he like as a hack?”’

  ‘“Never had better. I tell you, I’ve never had better. You never move in the saddle. He’s like a rocking horse.”’

  ‘“I’m looking for a hack like that. Is he quiet?”’

  ‘“Like a lamb, that’s what he is. Like a lamb.”’

  ‘“What’ll you take for him?” I asked.’

  ‘“Look, Peter, seein’ as how I should never have hopped into you while you were drunk, you can have him for what I gave for him – a fiver – an’ that’s dirt cheap.”’

  ‘So he came out and caught him, and threw in a halter, and I paid him and led him home. I haven’t had a proper look at him yet. I’ve just run him in.’

  We sat in silence looking at the white horse tethered to the fence.

  ‘Did you look at his mouth?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. He’s rising five.’

  ‘He’ll never see five again, Mr McLeod,’ I said, then I added, ‘I don’t think he’s much of a horse.’

  ‘Why, what’s wrong with him?’ asked Peter aggressively.

  ‘Well, he’s down in the hocks, he’s hollow backed and he’s got a ewe neck.’

  ‘That’s enough’, roared Peter with sudden anger. ‘Shut up, will ya.’

  I shut up.

  After a while Peter got up and walked round the horse. He spat on the ground, then leant on its rump while he scratched his beard.

  ‘Of course’, he said, ‘I hadn’t sobered up properly when I left the pub. I wasn’t quite right in the head. That bastard, Charlie, belted me when I was drunk and then ends up by robbing me when I’m sober. I tell you this. That bastard is a proper bastard.’

  He paused a moment. ‘Now get to hell out of here.’

  JIMMY VIRTUE

  I wasn’t allowed to go near the pub. I didn’t know why. I was five and I knew a lot about pubs. Father had told me stories of outback pubs where men wearing white moleskin trousers and riding boots would come out of the bar singing, and jump on horses that bucked all over the place. I often thought of these men. They yelled out ‘Wild Cattle’ while their horses were bucking and they could all fight like threshing machines. I wanted to be like them when I grew up.

  Jimmy Virtue didn’t ride bucking horses. But that didn’t matter with him. I liked him because he could climb trees better than any other man. I knew this because Mr Smith told me. Mr Smith lived in a wheelchair and he was all twisted. His hands curved round until the fingers were hooked like soft claws, and he would never be able to straighten them again in all his life. I couldn’t see his legs because he had a possum-skin rug over them but he could tell stories just as good as my father.

  He would throw back his head and laugh at his stories, but his teeth needed cleaning. He wrote articles about birds for the papers. He used to teach me about birds, but he was no good on horses.

  He used to go for drives in a phaeton. They wheeled his chair up the back, and he would sit in it all the day. Jimmy Virtue pushed his chair into the phaeton and then he would drive him where he wanted to go.

  They used to look for parrots’ and owls’ nests in hollow limbs so high up it made you giddy to look down. But Jimmy Virtue could climb up to them. He climbed up on a rope and put his hand down the hollow limbs and pulled out eggs to show to Mr Smith, then he would put them back again.

  Mr Smith told me Jimmy never broke an egg, and when he pulled out baby parrots he held them the right way, and he would never crush them by holding them tight. He was a good man, and Mr Smith liked him, and so did I.

  I was standing near our fence one day, and Jimmy Virtue came walking towards me. He nearly fell over several times. His legs didn’t work properly. They carried him from one side of the path to the other. He stopped near me and hung over the fence. He vomited. His face was twisted. He looked as if he was going to cry. He suddenly flung back his head and cried out, ‘Oh, no, no, no, no! …’

  I fled inside to my mother and hid my face in her black apron. I lifted my face to her and sobbed, ‘Jimmy Virtue can’t walk straight and he’s hanging on our fence calling out No, no, no, no.’ Mother looked out the window while she held me against her.

  ‘Poor Jimmy Virtue’s sick’, she said.

  ‘Why don’t you bring him inside and put him to bed?’ I pleaded.

  ‘He’ll get better soon. Don’t think about it.’

  You told me not to think about it mother.

  Why then does Jimmy Virtue come to my room now that I am old? Why does he stagger in the dark, a symbol of all sickness, echoing my own thoughts with his terrible No, no, no, no. There is no black apron to shield me now.

  ELSIE

  My sister, Elsie, was very beautiful. There were always stars in her sky but she never noticed them; the sun under which she walked was too bright.

  She knew all about poetry but bugger-all about horses. If I said to her, ‘That horse has greasy heels’, she would say, ‘Yes’, and that was the end of it. When it came to horses she was as dumb as they come, but as Joe said, ‘You can’t have everything.’

  Joe pumped the church organ for her when she was practising. She liked playing the pipe organ. The handle at the back of the organ was like that on a blacksmith’s forge and Joe lent his elbow on it and pushed it up and down like Mr Thomas.

  He told me once he would only do it for Elsie and for no one else.

  ‘You see, I am a Catholic’, he explained, ‘and I’d get into a power of trouble if Father Guiness heard about it.’

  ‘To hell with Father
Guiness!’ I exclaimed.

  Joe shied away from me when I cursed priests. He thought he’d be struck by a bolt from heaven or something, standing close to me like that.

  Joe was strong on righteousness. He liked Elsie but he thought Jeanie McLean had gone too far when she had a miscarriage after having had two babies to other men.

  I was a bit vague about the miscarriage business. Anything to do with carriages always suggested horses to me, but I did know Jeanie McLean was a bad girl. Everybody said that.

  She used to come to our place once a week with a lot of others from the church to practise songs for a church concert. Elsie used to play the piano and they would all gather round it. There was Fred and George Black, Minnie Sturgess, Ida Foster, Bill Atkins, Robert Barnes and three other girls who were members of the church choir.

  They must have been pretty good because, once when they were singing Irish songs, Paddy Flynn, he was an Irish man and he was sitting in the kitchen with Dad listening to the singing from the front room, he said – and I heard him myself – ‘I tell ye, Bill, it tears the heart out of me to hear the voices of them. They sing like bloody angels; by hell they do.’

  I think it was Jeanie McLean whose voice tore the heart out of him because she was a hell of a good singer. Her voice was soft and gentle but you could always hear it somehow.

  One night I was sitting in the front room listening to them singing when Jeanie suddenly knocked off and sat down. Later on she took Elsie aside and said, ‘I don’t feel very well, Elsie. I’ve pains in the stomach. I think I’ll have to go home.’

  Elsie was concerned. ‘Wait until I get you a cup of tea, Jeanie. I won’t be a minute.’

  Jeanie followed her into the kitchen and drank it out there while Elsie stood watching her with a troubled face. When she had gone Elsie said to mother, ‘I hope she’s all right.’

  I thought she looked all right. Elsie used to worry over nothing. Next day mother told Elsie that Jeanie had had a baby that night. The doctor drove four miles in the middle of the night to help her have it – the doctor’s horse is a bay with white points – but she didn’t really have a baby at all; she had a miscarriage, which is quite different according to Joe who had heard his mother talking about it. With a miscarriage you are the same as you were before although you feel crook.