Riverslake Read online

  “Day off, nothing. My pay goes on,” the dark man said. “I make more’n Chif, these days.”

  “My God, Blackie,” the young man, Fildes, remarked, “you threw that crate around on the way home—I thought we’d prang there by Riverslake.”

  “Don’t knock Riverslake around,” Randolph said. “I live there!”

  “You? You live at Riverslake?” Fildes looked at him with undisguised interest and surprise. “Isn’t that where all the thugs hang out?”

  Hanrahan gave a dry chuckle, and Randolph glanced sideways at him from under lowered lids.

  “Uh-huh, all that don’t hang out in Parliament House.”

  Hanrahan’s chuckle changed to a fully fledged guffaw.

  “My God, yes!” he gasped. “And don’t you wish you could be in on it!”

  “What the hell do you do at Riverslake, Randolph?” Fildes asked.

  “Cook.”

  “Cook? God almighty!” Fildes looked at him as though he had two heads. “I had a queer cow of a cook in my squadron—used to scoff aviation fuel and water, and then think the kites were doves of peace. My God, yes!”

  “Roddy was in the air force,” Spain announced, edging through the door with a tray of drinks. He looked at Randolph and grinned. “Curl the mo!”

  Fildes wore an aggressive blond moustache that spread half-way across his bored face. He had big, doe-like eyes and looked like a sheep peering over the top bar of a gate.

  “No!” Randolph exclaimed with mock incredulousness. He took the glass that Spain handed to him, and held it up against the light. “Hell, Paul—Foster’s? Where’d you get it?”

  “Praise the House,” Spain said succinctly, “from whence all blessings flow!” He glanced round at the others. “You all set? Well, here’s luck!”

  Paramor leaned against the low cupboard near the end of the range. Zigfeld and Warner and Charlesworth were with him—after tea every night the cooks gathered in a clot to suck tea and smoke and talk before they left the kitchen. Serving food and keeping a jump ahead of the guests for an hour without a break became tiring, especially for anyone who started the shift a bit under the weather, like Hughie Mancin. During the meal just passed, under Carmichael’s unpitying stare, the old cook had only just lasted the distance. He did not stop for a cup of tea with the others, but tottered away to his room, mumbling to himself.

  Condamine flounced down from the mess, and Paramor winked at the others, coughing with overdone gentility.

  “Pick your lip up, Con,” he advised, “or you’ll trip over the flaming thing. What’s eating you?”

  “Gimme a cup of tea,” Condamine said, ignoring him. “And I want a smoke, by hell I do!” He pushed in amongst the others and proceeded to pour himself a cup of black tea.

  “One of the naughty Balts told him to go and jump in the lake, didn’t he, dearie?” Charlesworth taunted him, simpering at the others. “Such rude boys!”

  The others laughed, but Condamine snorted viciously.

  “By God, that’ll be the day!” He liked to give the impression of being tough, especially when he stood in no great danger of being made to back it up. “They might get away with that sort of talk to you, Slim, but not with me!”

  “You big Anzac,” Charlesworth scoffed, “what would you do to stop them—splash ’em with gravy?”

  “Shut up, Slim,” Zigfeld said ponderously. “What was the trouble, Con? I saw you stuck into a Balt across the press as I come down.”

  “The bastard backed up three times on the goulash,” Condamine said. He gave a short laugh. “I knocked him back on the fourth, and he bucked. So I went crook—you let them animals get over you once, and you’re a goner.”

  “You let one get over the press and you’re a goner,” Charlesworth corrected him dryly, glancing sideways at Zigfeld. “You’re a tight cow, anyway. Look over there—there’s three dixies of goulash left over. Why not let them back up until it’s all gone? It’ll only go out to the pigs.”

  “And I’d rather see it go to the pigs, too,” Condamine snapped. “Rather than to those greedy bastards, anyway.”

  “Feed ’em up,” Zigfeld wheezed. “Feed ’em up big, and they can do all the fighting next war.”

  “You got to get them in, first, the yellow apes,” Condamine scoffed. “What makes you think they’ll fight?”

  “What makes you think they won’t?” Warner interrupted quietly. He rarely took any part in their discussions, but stood, as he was now, quietly listening to what the others had to say. “And anyway, why should they rush in if there’s a war?”

  “Why shouldn’t they?” Condamine demanded hotly. “God, if the country’s good enough for them to live in, it’s good enough for them to defend!”

  “That’s not what they were brought out here for.”

  “That’s what you think,” Paramor volunteered. “You don’t reckon they were brought out here just to clean up the mess at Riverslake, do you?”

  “They’d fight if they had to,” Warner insisted, “just like anybody else.”

  “Bull!” Condamine snorted. “Look around at the animals. You might get them in at the end of a bayonet—and half of them are spies, I bet!”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Warner said. “Not unless I had some sort of proof.”

  “Oh, wouldn’t you?” Condamine sneered. “Well, I would.”

  “I bet you would,” Charlesworth observed, casting a bleak stare over Condamine. “I suppose Bellairs told you that bit of bulldust about them being spies?”

  “Why Bellairs?”

  “He told me.”

  “Well, what if he did?”

  “Believe him and you’re a damned sight sillier than I think you are. He’s only crooked because Felix smacked Jerry with the pot, that day. It’s his way of getting even, the animal—spreading a yarn like that.”

  “Might be something in it, too,” Zigfeld wheezed. He shouted at Novikowsky, who was standing by the door lighting a cigarette. “Johnny, bring me a bit of fresh meat from the freezer and a tin of milk!”

  “Millie?” Warner inquired. “Hasn’t she had her kittens yet?”

  “No, the old harlot. She won’t move a blasted yard from my room, and it’s getting mighty close. If she has them there, I’ll break her damned neck!”

  “Stefan’s going,” Paramor said, cocking an eye at the Pole as he opened the door of the freezer.

  “Going where?” Murdoch joined the group, wiping his hands down the sides of his green pants. The potatoes for breakfast were peeled and he was free to knock off. “Where’s Stefan going?”

  “To the war, if there is one.”

  “Says he!” Condamine scoffed. “Easy to talk now, but wait until it happens—they’ll all be the same then, the Balt bastards. No understand!”

  “Stefan’d be a damned good man, too,” Murdoch commented. “I’d rather be with him than against him in any stoush.” He turned to Condamine and looked him up and down witheringly. “As to who’d go where if there was a war, Condamine—you didn’t get too close to the shooting, last time.”

  “That’s my business!” Condamine flashed, blushing deeply. “I was in a reserved occupation.”

  “I hear a few babblers managed to get in,” Murdoch sneered with brutal sarcasm. “Only about one to every couple of hundred blokes. Still, if you were something special …” He turned his back, ignoring Condamine’s enraged glare, and spoke to Paramor. “Think I’ll go up to the game tonight, Para. Be in it?”

  “Nuh. Not me. I’m going over to see my crow. Ask Stefan—he’ll be in it.”

  Novikowsky had just walked up to the group and handed Zigfeld a slab of meat and a tin of milk. Zigfeld walked off without thanking him.

  “Lock up, Ron,” he said to Warner.

  Condamine stared a moment at Murdoch’s back, then went after Zigfe
ld. Charlesworth threw a short hard laugh after him.

  Warner picked up the tea-pot. “Anybody want another?” he asked. Nobody answered him. “All right, then—I’ll put it away.”

  He put the pot in the cupboard and walked to the door. “Lock up, Para.”

  When the door closed behind him, a silence settled on the kitchen. The Balts, as always, had hurried through the last cleanup of the day, and were gone. Only a mild hum of conversation drifted down from the mess where late-comers and drunks gossiped over the tables. The great range glowed, and in their dark corner, the steamers bubbled and huffed. Novikowsky glanced round the three Australians, and spoke to Murdoch.

  “This game,” he said, “what is this game?”

  “You feel like coming, Slim?” Murdoch asked.

  “No, Kerry, I’ve got something to do.”

  There was an unaccustomed grimness round Charlesworth’s mouth, and his voice lacked its usual easy humour. All the evening he had been occupied with the problem of his girl and his girl’s mother. While he dished out potatoes to the line of men that shuffled past him, unseen and unheard by him, he had been turning it over in his mind. He had decided that he was getting nowhere, and that it was time for a show-down.

  “What?” Paramor said.

  “I’m going out—and I’d better get moving.”

  “I’ll come with you, then,” Paramor said. “I’ve got to have a dig in the grave or the sheila’ll go crook. Lock up, Kerry.”

  They walked through the door, and Murdoch and Novikowsky watched them go.

  “This game,” the Pole repeated, “what it is?”

  “What is it, Stefan,” Murdoch corrected him.

  “O.K.—what is it?”

  “Swy—two-up, you know, with the pennies? Up at Ainslie Hostel. They run a game there, in the scrub behind. Would you like to come?”

  Novikowsky shrugged. Murdoch felt like saying, “Well, don’t put yourself out!”

  “No—I don’t know this game, this two-up,” Novikowsky said, thoughtfully. “I hear men speak about it—you win money at it, no?”

  “Yeah—or vivi voce!” Murdoch grinned. It was like tagging round with a school-kid, with Stefan. Murdoch was slowly getting into the habit of explaining things that others took for granted, and of searching his meagre vocabulary for words that would take the place of the ones that the Pole did not understand. “You bet—gamble. You know?”

  Novikowsky nodded, so he went on. “Well, you want to give it a burl—you want to come? You’ll have to learn some time, if ever you’re going to be an Old Australian!”

  It was an old joke, and they laughed together in friendly understanding. From Murdoch’s first day at Riverslake, when, cagy and a little suspicious, he had looked round to gauge the worth of the men who would be his workmates for as long as he cared to stay there, he had been drawn to the thin, intelligent foreigner with his snapping dark eyes and his curious air of being still in uniform. Murdoch had been too young to see any war service, but Novikowsky, who was not much older, had been through a lot. Murdoch found that out, not from Novikowsky, but from the other kitchenmen. He had been a soldier and a prisoner and a partisan, and some of the glamour of those crowded years when manhood was forced upon him had stuck to him, in his looks and his bearing and his speech. His proven quality found a ready response in Murdoch’s slumbering manliness, and they became fast friends; until Randolph’s arrival they had gone everywhere together, but Novikowsky did not resent it that now Murdoch spent most of his time with Randolph. It was natural—they spoke the same tongue.

  “Then I come,” he announced, “and maybe I show some Old Australians how you play this—swy.” Murdoch could see that another word had been ticketed and filed away behind his dark, smooth forehead. “Maybe I win enough for buy———”

  He stopped, and Murdoch said: “To buy, Stefan, not for buy. To buy what, anyway?”

  “To buy something I think about,” Novikowsky said. He began to walk towards the door. “We go, eh? Some day, I tell you.”

  “A flaming motor-bike, I’ll bet!” Murdoch said with a swift grin, following him.

  That was what most of them bought, after they had a good suit and gloves and shoes and a hat, and a heavy belted overcoat. The Australians did it in reverse order, he reflected, grinning to himself. Most of them went into hock for a flash bike, or a car, and then drove round with the seats out of their trousers while they saved up for clothes that wouldn’t laugh at their vehicles. “You’ll finish up breaking your damn neck, that’s what!”

  Novikowsky flushed slightly with half a smile, but said nothing. It was something else he found strange still, this frank discussion of each other’s means and hopes and plans. While he would like to discuss it with Murdoch, he found himself unable to. Murdoch watched him for a moment, speculating, and then turned away with a shrug.

  He was not over-interested in what Novikowsky was saving up for—his question had been more or less routine. Most of them were saving for something. Some for clothing, some for marrying, some to send things to their people, those who still had people in parts of Europe not yet swallowed up by Russia. It was their own business.

  They parted at the door of Murdoch’s hut.

  “You be down at the gate by about half-past seven,” Murdoch said, “and we’ll get away. We’ll walk over, eh?”

  “O.K.,” Novikowsky agreed.

  As he walked away in the dark, Murdoch heard him saying aloud, “Swy—two-up.” He said it a number of times, trying it out on his tongue and his ears, finding a spot for it in his head.

  The ring was not easily found, in a narrow gully hung over with gum-trees a couple of hundred yards beyond the farthest hut of Ainslie Hostel, on the lower slopes of Mount Ainslie. Half a dozen men lounged at intervals along the rocky path, and if Murdoch had not been well known and a regular visitor they would never have gone more than half-way. As they neared the ring a soft murmur of voices and the golden light of two Tilley lamps filtered out amongst the leaves. The game was in full swing.

  They stopped at the outer edge of the crowd for a while, Murdoch to have a look at how the pennies were falling and to search for the tail-betters and for faces he knew. Novikowsky watched the spinner and listened to the calls round the ring.

  Murdoch took a five-pound note out of his pocket. He did not ask the Pole how much he had brought with him—it could not have been much, for he did not get much, and although he was not mean he was careful about money by the standards of Riverslake, where it was made to be got rid of as quickly and in as flamboyant a manner as possible. Some of the players drifted away and before long they had edged right to the side of the ring.

  Murdoch had stood on the edges of rings like this more times than he could remember, and in some funny places, but the curious drama of a two-up ring at night was never lost on him. Perhaps it was just the light that so palely gilded the two circles of disembodied faces, of the men kneeling at the ringside and of the men standing behind them. Perhaps it was the faces themselves, all naked expression without a visible body to water them down. He found himself thinking, as he had done a hundred times before, If I make a killing tonight I’ll be damn careful getting away from the ring and back to the camp!

  Novikowsky stood staring round the ring, listening to the babble of talk and betting, only half understanding it. On the way across from Riverslake, walking along the dark road between the lucerne paddocks, Murdoch had patiently explained as much as he was able of the game; now a quiet smile wreathed the Pole’s lips as he remembered the earnestness Murdoch had put into it, the pauses while he searched for words to make his meaning clear.

  The only friend I have made in a year and a half amongst the Australians, he mused, the smile deepening into bitterness. And he one who talks only of drink and women and gambling. God! I am a stranger yet!

  Staring straight ahead of him, h
e became aware of a small skinny man in a grimy singlet who squatted on the opposite side of the ring, his hands red with the red dust of the hillside, his eyes black and button-bright with inquiry in the light of the lamp. A wet, foul butt drooped from one end of his mouth. He spoke round it, looking straight at Novikowsky.

  “Ten bob he tails ’em!” he intoned, the butt wagging raffishly as he spoke. “I got ten bob to say he tails ’em—ten bob the micks!” He raised his brows and waved the note in his hand.

  Novikowsky, as though he had been doing it for years, slowly peeled a note from the thin roll he had in his hand and tossed it across to the other side of the ring.

  “Set,” he said, as he had heard others say. Murdoch, standing beside him, grinned.

  The pennies flickered in the air like moths. The ring-keeper’s mate stooped over them where they lay on the ground and sang out, “Heads! Heads are right!” The thin man smoothed out the notes on the ground in front of him and looked up at Novikowsky.

  “Double up?”

  “Sure, double up,” Novikowsky said.

  He won that bet, too, and a lot more. When the spin worked round to him, he turned to Murdoch with a lift of his shoulders. It said all that he wanted to say without his opening his mouth. Murdoch took a quick look at the roll of notes in the Pole’s hand. His eyes opened wide in surprise—without searching for them, he could see at least three five-pound notes.

  “Yeah!” he ejaculated. “You get in there, an’ spin, for God’s sake. You got plenty!”

  “How much I spin for?” Novikowsky demanded. By now, most of the side betters were set, and there was not much noise around the ring. Everybody was looking at them, waiting for the new spinner to come in. “Ten bob, is enough?”

  The ring-keeper looked them over impersonally.

  “Come on, gents,” he said, softly. He was a big hulk of a man, built like a church and dressed in a clean white singlet that advertised the fact. He could afford to talk softly and call the animals round the ring gents. In that company, he would need to be able to back it up. “Come on,” he said again. “Make up your mind, digger—a good game’s a fast game. Spin if you’re going to.”