Bony and the Kelly Gang Page 3

  “Nat Bonnay, Grandma,” replied Mike Conway. “He’s going to lift the tatees.”

  The flames rouged the round face and banished the wrinkles. The flames quickened the dark eyes, and the diamonds in the rings on the doll-like hands lying on the black cloth of her lap returned the flames about the logs.

  “So you be taking Nat on to dig the tatees,” she said, snappily. “And what will you be paying him, Mike?”

  The brogue was unmistakable, and when her grandson spoke it was in his voice, too.

  “Seven shillings a bag, Grandma. That’s the price these days.”

  “Just as well the market price is forty pounds a ton, or ’tis ruined we’d all be.” The old woman studied Bony, and Bony resisted the habit of bowing slightly. He could detect only curiosity. “What else can you do, Nat Bonnay?”

  “I can ride, and muster cattle. I can mend a fence. I’m not very good at it, but I could shoe a horse.”

  “And steal one,” added Conway, chuckling.

  “So ’twas told to me,” admitted the old woman. “You seem well set up. Can you throw a boomerang, now?”

  Bony was conscious of other people behind him, filling the space so evident when he entered the room. The woman in the high back chair knew how to wait, and the throng behind him knew how to wait, too.

  “I think I could,” he said. “Haven’t thrown one for years. I used to be able to play a tune on a gum leaf.”

  “A musician eh!” chortled the old woman, her eyes and her voice showing that she was needling him.

  “Mike!” called Mrs Conway. “Dinner’s on the table.”

  Bony smiled into the dark eyes of Mike’s grandmother and turned to the table where several men, women and children of differing years were gathering. He was told to occupy the place at the far end. Mike wheeled the high back chair on its castors to the place set on his right, and sat at one end of the great table with his back to the open hearth. When his wife sat on his left, he gave thanks.

  That was a surprise following surprises, and more were to follow. The plates were piled with food, little mountains of potatoes and sprouts next to an alp of curried meat capped with snowy rice. Then he noted that they were not plates but platters. His eyes roamed over dishes of butter and cheese, jugs of cream, jars of pickled onions and bottles of sauces. His attention was then captivated by the diners; there were eleven people at table in addition to Conway and his wife and grandmother.

  On his right was the boy who had held up the trap for him. Beyond him was an older boy, and beyond him sat a man who was completely bald and had a face like the proverbial Irishman depicted in Punch. To his left was a girl who immediately captured his romantic heart. She ate quietly, keeping her gaze on her platter. She had dark hair, and even without makeup her face was vivid and wildly beautiful. Two men and two women, with children all older than Bony’s immediate neighbour, completed the company.

  The meal proceeded in uncommon silence, the adults seldom speaking and the children not at all. Everyone was overtly interested in the new man, and once it was apparent that old Mrs Conway was discussing him with her grandson.

  In character with the shy, police-hunted, horse-stealing half-aborigine, Bony at last politely arranged his knife and fork on his empty platter, and sat back in his chair. He waited to be spoken to, and no one did. One by one other diners finished the course, and the girl on his left rose to gather the platters and carry them to the bench. The paintings caught his attention. The room, large though it was, was too small a setting for them. One was of a castle beneath the black draperies of lowering clouds, and was surely the home of the original Dracula. Another was a battle scene, and the third portrayed a man and a woman in the costume of a century long past. The man reminded Bony of the red giant called Red Kelly.

  A large plate loaded with apricot pie was set before him, and he smiled his thanks at the girl who served him, his lefthand neighbour. She gave no answering smile, her expression being slightly bored, but after she had again occupied her chair and was eating, he found her looking at him when her face was tilted downward over her spoon and fork. He noted a sustained and furtive interest.

  The final course was cheese, bread and butter, and the children were given glasses of water. Bony hoped for some tea or coffee, as without one or the other no Australian meal could be ably digested. When the children, whose ages ranged from ten to about fifteen, departed one after the other, he despaired.

  The women rose, and left the room, leaving only the very old dame and the men. The men began to fill pipes or roll cigarettes, and when his pipe was working, the hairless one joined Bony and so banished his feeling of being in a desert. He said, easily:

  “I did hear you could throw a boomerang. Never did I see it. Somewhere about there’s an old one as long as a cutlass. Would you throw it some time?”

  “If it’s a large one, it would be for ceremonial use,” Bony explained. “Those made for throwing are much smaller.”

  “There’s a book which says the aborigines throw them to knock birds down. Would that be the kind?”

  The dark grey eyes were serious, but deep in them natural humour gleamed like sand grains seen through clear mountain water.

  “If the birds are close enough,” agreed Bony. “Hit or miss, you know. Always chancy. Actually, the abos throw them for amusement.”

  He was enlarging on the subject and the bald man was engrossed, when Mike Conway set before each two china cups, one containing black coffee and the other a whitish liquid which might have been kümmel. Baldhead watched Conway until he was again seated, and broke off in the middle of a question. When the old woman and the others lifted the cups of white liquid, he did likewise. So did Bony.

  Mike Conway said: “The Kellys.”

  The contents of the cups were tossed down throats and the cups of coffee taken up and sipped. Bony was running a little late. He lifted the right cup and tossed the contents down his throat. It must have splashed the sides for his head exploded and his breathing stopped. Fire streaked before his eyes, and water drowned the fire. Beyond his clouded vision he saw Grandma Conway shrieking with mirth. Fighting for air, he staggered to his feet, and someone banged him on the back with a sledge hammer. Baldhead was saying, soothingly:

  “Should have warned you, Nat. You take it fast, or you take it extra slow. You never fumble it.”

  Chapter Four

  The Spud Digger

  INSPECTOR BONAPARTE dug ‘spuds’ in the most beautiful valley in Australia.

  Conway’s potato crop occupied the crown of a low plateau in the centre of what comprised about three thousand acres of cleared rich land, bordered by broken country massed with trees and surrounded by steep mountain slopes crowned with rock faces. From where he worked he could see the mark of the track slanting down the slopes from Conway’s brother’s house to cross the valley to the settlement. Behind the settlement, the fall of water dropped from ledge to ledge and was sometimes golden, sometimes blue, and sometimes amber, according to the angle of the sun. Early and late, it was polished pewter.

  The big house stood on the far side of the valley and in the morning the slate roof gleamed beneath the sun and at evening the windows reflected the sunlight and could be counted. For Australia it was a mighty house, the transplantation of memory of one in the old country, and there lived Patrick (Red) Kelly, the descendent of the first Kelly who found Cork Valley and settled there.

  In that year there had been no railways out from Sydney, and the track from Sydney to Melbourne Town was barely defined by the pioneers’ bullock drays. It was the hunting-ground of Starlight and bushrangers of his stamp.

  Legend has it that the original Kellys had two children, a boy and a girl. The boy Sean eventually sought a wife, and one day rode up from the valley. A week later he rode into the valley with a woman behind him, whom he claimed, he had captured on the track to Melbourne, and had been married to her by a priest travelling with her party. The sister Nora came of age to seek a husb
and, and she copied her brother by riding forth from Cork Valley. On returning she was accompanied by two priests and a notorious gentleman of the road known as Black Daniel, with horse pistols stuck in his belt, a beard shaped like a spade, and the price of a hundred guineas on his head. The poor fellow thought he was tough. He must have been comatose from the eyebrows upward, because he thought he was bringing home Nora Kelly to do a trade with her father. How the priests came to be of the party isn’t on record. However, they were present when negotiations for ransom were opened with Nora’s father and brother.

  It is said that Black Daniel had the drop on everyone, his mind occupied with gold, and forgetful of the demure female, victim of his avarice, who was standing with him, her eyes downcast and hands clasped in anxiety. Then something fell on him; one of Nora’s heavy boots, it is said; and on returning from unconsciousness he found himself being married to her by one priest, with the other holding him up on his feet. It was then learned that his name was Conway.

  Shortly after the demise of the original Kelly, Sean Kelly and Black Daniel Conway feuded over the division of the land. They met early one morning, and when Sean fell mortally wounded he had strength enough to pull a trigger and drop Conway dead in his boots. Following the double funeral, the widows voted to continue the feud, but the wife of the original Kelly came up with his will under the terms of which she inherited all of Cork Valley. She succinctly remarked: “Peace or else.”

  The aged widow must have been as remarkable a character as her husband. She sent out for a priest-lawyer, and one month after the double funeral, he arrived to say Mass, and afterwards conveyed the conditions of peace to the young widows. A wall was to be built across Cork Valley; one half would be bequeathed to Nora Conway, and the other to her sister-in-law. Young Mrs Kelly was to have that portion on which the great house stood, and Nora Conway was to build her home on the other portion.

  The priest-lawyer, a truly saintly man named Cahill, supervised the erection of the stone wall, and saw to it that the legalities were duly executed. Old Mrs Conway now living in the modern settlement, was the granddaughter of Black Daniel Conway, the bushranger, and Nora Kelly who first bashed him and then married him while his knees sagged. Sections of the wall still stood, other sections littered the ground and were replaced with posts and rails. Bony sat with his back to it now and ate his lunch. The sun was warm. The air was crystal clear. The sweetness of this God’s garden was ever to remain in his memory.

  It seemed that he was the only one who did any real work. Now at the end of the first week his back muscles had firmed and he was liking the labour of digging potatoes, and taking pleasure in counting the bags he filled. There were, of course, hundreds of cows to be milked. The Conways owned power-driven milking-sheds and a cream and cheese factory, electric power being brought in from outside.

  Bony became one of the Conway family. He was given breakfast at seven, provided with a lunch bag and billy can for tea, and returned to his underground lodging in time for dinner at six. The soft-spoken Mike Conway treated him with consideration, and the bald-headed Joe Flanagan offered limitless conversation. Flanagan seemed to be the settlement’s electrician. The dark Irish beauty, Rosalie Conway, taught at the school and maintained her distance even with her relatives. Sometimes old Mrs Conway impishly delighted in needling the potato digger, and covertly watched at the close of dinner to see if the new man fumbled his Mountain Dew.

  Ever careful to act the character of the horse thief lying ‘doggo’, and ever grateful to the Conways for the opportunity of so doing, Bony made no attempt to climb the social barrier, and made no advances to others of the clan living in the remaining settlement houses. He found himself liking these Conways, for their behaviour in their own home was exemplary. Electrician Flanagan was probably a boarder or a relation. Illegal practices were indeed hard to associate with them.

  The first doubt was born at the end of this first week.

  He was called to dinner by a small boy who must have been over-eager to perform the chore because on entering the large living-room the table was only then being prepared for the meal. The ancient Mrs Conway, seeing him standing uncertainly just inside the doorway, raised a delicate white finger and beckoned.

  Obeying the command, he stood before her where she sat in her high-backed chair at the open fire. She said something in what he presumed to be Gaelic, and waited for his response. Her granddaughter-in-law, turning from the dining-table, spoke a trifle sharply.

  “Talk English, Grandma, if you must talk.”

  “Mind your own business, girl,” retorted Grandma. To Bony she repeated: “I said, young man, you could work faster at the tatees. I’ve been watching you through my spy-glass. I can see you from my window.”

  “Nat can work as he likes,” remarked Mike Conway who had appeared without being noticed. “He’s working contract.”

  “To be sure, he is,” agreed the old lady. “But the faster he works the more money he earns. I know what I’m talking about.”

  There sat a woman who had lived for more than ninety years. She was a relic from an era when only faith and frugality could conquer in the battle with a hard land, and when the ability to laugh was the only ally. Bony could understand her, and perhaps, of all those in Cork Valley, he was the only man who did. Smiling down at her, he watched the swift change in her eyes, and ventured to relax the front he had shown as the hired man.

  “I’m thinkin’ it’s you who is missing out, Mrs Conway,” he said with a dreadful imitation of a stage Irishman’s brogue. “You see, marm, ’tis like this. The faster I work the quicker I earn me money, as you was just sayin’, but the sooner I finish me contract the sooner me eyes will starve from no longer lookin’ at a handsome woman.”

  The old lady tossed her white-capped head and chuckled with glee.

  “A sweet man, it is, indeed,” she chortled. “I’ve never heard such a lie since just before I was married.”

  Suddenly there was suspicion in the bright eyes that he was mocking her; and a stillness among those who had gathered in the room. Bony felt the menace of sudden violence. It was a risk he had calculated early that morning when he had gathered selected gum leaves, and subsequently practised playing on them again.

  With a leaf between his fingers, and the edge of it against his lips, he rendered ‘Danny Boy’, the reedy notes being low and of a texture which no fiddle could imitate. It did not matter that he failed to play it well. It was this new musical accompaniment to the remembered song which captivated his audience, for he trod the bridge, the only bridge spanning the gulf from the ancient race to the new one ruling Australia: the bridge of music. The vibrating leaf sent forth its last note, and instead of bowing and looking for compliment, the wily Bony stood with head drooping as though he were one with all the persecuted ones.

  A fire log hissed. The roast in the oven snoozed. A man said:

  “Play it again, Nat,” and Grandma Conway said firmly:

  “No. Not again just yet,” and began to cry.

  A woman went to her, and Mike’s wife called for assistance in serving the dinner. The others drifted to their places at the table, and for the first time Bony felt the relaxation of reserve towards him.

  “Is it hard to play on a leaf?” asked a much freckled girl of perhaps fifteen.

  “Not very,” replied Bony, smiling.

  “Do all the natives in the outback play on gum leaves?” a boy wished to know.

  “Not all of the station aborigines do,” replied Bony. “The real wild ones can only play on a didgeridoo, a length of hollow wood. It isn’t music as we understand music. They can beat in time with their ceremonial dances, but I’m sure they could never play an Irish tune.”

  It was as if a river had burst its banks. The previous reticence was swept away by the eager questioning of the children. Rosalie Conway set before Bony a platter of Irish stew as though it were an honour bestowed on him for his musical talent, and even the adults were interested enou
gh to listen to his replies.

  “We’ll pick some leaves and play on ’em while Uncle Joe grinds on his concertina,” declared the boy on Bony’s right.

  “I like that,” objected the bald man. “Grinding on me concertina.”

  Another boy enthused:

  “We’ll have a band like they do on television. Instead of fiddles we’ll have gum leaves.”

  “You boys keep quiet and eat your dinner,” commanded Mike Conway without raising his voice, and his control over this family was instantly proved. At Bony’s end of the table there was silence.

  The back-drop of the great pictures, the grandfather clock, the several copper warming pans hanging on the wall, and the small bric-a-brac on mantel and shelves completed a memorable setting for the man seated at the lower end of the great table.

  He was thinking this when a bell rang.

  It was inside an old-fashioned domestic bell-indicator box, affixed to the wall just inside the passage door. The conversation at the head of the table abruptly ceased. Bald-headed Uncle Joe, left his chair and, crossing to the indicator, flicked up the dropper covering numeral one. Unhurriedly, Mike Conway left his seat and came to Bony, saying:

  “Visitors, Nat. Better go to your room and shut down the trap. I’ll let you know when they’ve gone.”

  Bony nodded. Watched by the others, he sauntered to the back door, noting that several sympathised with him at having to leave during a meal. Rosalie Conway did not look at him. She sat immobile as though examining a fruit beetle among the portion of blackberry pie she had in her spoon.

  Having closed the back door behind him, he paused for a moment to accustom his eyes to the dark of early night, and to spend a moment listening for an approaching car or other vehicle. Hearing nothing, he passed between Conway’s house and the open-fronted shed building, coming to the edge of the only road through the settlement.