misfortune at Albury, a bully of a rare and dedicated sort, short, broad-shouldered, small-eyed, a type often mistaken for homosexual by people trying to explain the odd seepings of sentimentality in that otherwise impassive, excessively masculine face.
The others were bully boys to be sure, all leaning towards one another for support, thick-necked, broad- armed followers of orders, and my game made them edgy and uncertain. John Oliver O'Dowd was a good ten years older than his 'bhoys' and it was to him that I addressed my remarks. I informed him of the numbers of men who waited on the track and said they only wished lawful work in the orchards, that they would be using carriages intended for animals already slaughtered or still in the fields, that they would be causing no financial loss to state or individual enterprise and that, if John Oliver O'Dowd should turn his official back, then these presently useless men might get on with producing wealth for the benefit of the state.
I spoke to him nicely. I could have sold him a Ford or a cannon. I did not permit him easily to hate me. I stroked the bastard like a trout until my demands made him turn, reluctantly, from me.
'All very decent, Mr Badgery,' O'Dowd said at last (carefully, carefully). He pulled a hair from his nose and gazed at it a second. 'I dare say. But we are policemen and we have our orders and intend to obey them.'
His zombies dragged their heels through gravel, intent on underlining their boss's remarks.
'If you obey your orders, Mr O'Dowd, I will drill these men for half a day and then I shall march up here and we will go through you lot like a hot knife', I smiled, 'through a block of lard.' I made myselflike him as I spoke to him. And liking him, of course, was more than half of it, to understand why this miserable O'Dowd with his short arms and thick wrists should be the animal he was, to imagine his miserable cot, his nights beneath hessian bags sewed into quilts, his early frosty mornings, his loveless dusks, his unbending father, his withered disappointed mother. You cannot fake this affection, and O'Dowd knew, in the very moment I threatened him, that I alsoliked him. It weakened him horribly.
'That's as may be,' he said, smiling himself.
'As will be.'
'Come, Mr Badgery, those buggers is all commos.'
'Have you not heard of me?' I inquired, spitting out my tea-leaves daintily at his feet. He shifted a boot sideways just in time.
'Can't say I have.'
'You would be familiar with the International Workers of the World?' Oh, what pleasure it was to counterfeit this belief, this membership, to see his small eyes blink at my lovely, shiny lie.
'You're not a Wobbly?'
'I'm a human being, sir, and you won't be permitted to treat these men as animals.' I drew myself up taller. I gave a beautiful account of my career with the Wobblies. In a brief circuit I visited Chicago and Perth. 'Write it down if you must,' I told the fair-haired galoot who was making earnest notes of my confession. 'Do a fair draft and I will sign it.'
O'Dowd snatched away the notebook before his man made a fool of himself.
'All right?' I asked O'Dowd. He did not answer. 'I'm giving you mugs half an hour to make up your mind. If you haven't given us reason to change our minds, we'll come down here and do you.'
'Youse was going to do drill,' sneered the man who had lost his notebook.
'That was before I looked you in the eye, son.'
And then I walked back along the line to report my progress to the men. I swung my cane. The magpie, a lovely bird, gave such a clear happy cry, like an angel gargling in a crystal vase.
50
Of the fifty men gathered at the siding, only three had no inclination for a fight, and one of these was an old fellow known as 'Doc' who shouldered his bluey and whistled up his lame fox-terrier before formally wishing them all well. He made a small speech with many classical allusions. The other two made off without a word to anyone, walking slowly up the road past the railway Johns who were still lounging against the siding platform. O'Dowd called out to them. They slowed, then stopped. The big stooped one took off his swag and gave it to his mate. Then he walked across and was surrounded by the bullies for a good three minutes. Finally he departed with his mate.
O'Dowd knew the bagmen were solid. I looked at my watch and sipped my tea.
Leah had the commie over to one side by some black forty-four-gallon drums. She listened to him with a bowed head and then, lifting her dark eyes, asked quiet, intent questions. The bagmen, I saw, were starved for the softness of children's skin and the agitation of small squirming bodies and you could see it in the eyes of those who did not even acknowledge Charles and Sonia that they, too, ''ad one just like 'im'. The homesickness was palpable.
A big bushman called Clout was at work with a tomahawk making batons. When he had trimmed a bit of ironbark to size, or knocked the worst splinters of a split fence post, he would swing it around his head a few times before crashing it down on the rails. Yet in spite of Clout's displays of violence, it was a very quiet, pleasant, sunny day, only spoiled by the excess of blowflies which gathered on the bushman's sweat-dark back and hung in clouds around the mouths of those inclined to yarning.
At twenty past the hour we heard a train. It was not the one we wanted. It came around the river flat below at enormous speed, getting up chuff for the slow crawl up the hill on whose crest we sat. This spot, fifteen miles from Bendigo, was known to bagmen all through the country as 'Walkers' Hill' because you could – from either side of this crest -jump the rattler at a leisurely walking pace.
O'Dowd now stood and began to stroll towards us and Clout, reckoning the hour had come, began to distribute his batons, the ends of which he had lewdly sharpened 'for playin' quoits'.
O'Dowd came walking carefully, showing great regard for the welfare of his boots at which he stared with great attention. When, at last, he showed his face, I saw what he'd been hiding-a smirk I could not understand.
'All right, Mr Badgery,' he said to me. 'You've won.'
The men cheered. Someone clapped O'Dowd on the back.
'There's a train coming now,' O'Dowd shouted. 'Youse can all get on it.'
'That's the Ballarat train,' the communist said, pushing through. 'These men want to go to Shepparton. It's going the wrong way.'
O'Dowd could not help himself. He split himself with a grin. 'Tough,' he said. He could already feel the uncertainty amongst the men as they hovered, lifted a bag or put one down, whispered to a mate or cursed or spat. Their acceptance or rejection of the train was showing in their dusty irritated eyes.
'It's this train or no train,' O'Dowd said. He was a clever bastard. He knew they didn't want to go to Ballarat, but he gave them a small victory which was enough to make them go soft and lose their fight. He smiled at me just like I had smiled at him. He wasmaking them do the exact opposite of what they wanted.
'There's no work in Ballarat,' I said.
The smile swallowed itself in the cold slit of his mouth. 'There's work', he said, 'everywhere, for them that want it.'
The train engine was in sight now at the bottom of the hill. The men started to check their swags, to arrange a billy, tighten a strap, hoist a bundle, kick a fire apart. They came around and shook my hand. They lifted Sonia and kissed her cheek and hugged her till she grunted. They ruffled Charles's head and we were all, in spite of our defeat, warm – we had won the most important battle, so we thought.
The train drew beside us and we stood in full sight of the driver and the fireman.
There were sheep wagons, not clean, but empty. The men waited for the protection of closed boxcars, rolling back their doors in good leisurely style. It was then, as they boarded the train, I saw Leah. She was running towards me carrying the snake bag in one hand, pulling bawling Charles towards me with the other.
'Come on,' she screamed. 'Get on the train.'
I laughed.
'Get on,' she said. 'For God's sake, I beg you.'
