Riverslake Page 5

  The press was at one end of the mess. Behind it the ramp led down into the kitchen; and in front of it long trestle tables flanked by backless wooden forms were crammed into a vast, dimly-lit cavern of a room that roared and clattered and stank with the presence of hundreds of men who fed there. Small windows broke the expanse of the walls, and sky-lights pocked the ceiling. All the light they could shed and the pale glow of the infrequent unshaded bulbs did no more than disperse the densest of the shadows from the farthest corners. From the press the faces of the men and their busy hands looked like pale, wind-tossed leaves.

  In the centre of the mess, in a clearing of dark brown linoleum, the copper tea-urns stood on wooden stands—two for white and one for black and one for the breakfast coffee milk. They shone dully in the thin light and were the focal point for the mess-stewards who, until some of the men began to drift and stagger away from the tables, would have little to do. They gathered there and conversed in low tones amongst themselves—a dozen of them, six Poles and the rest a mixture of Lithuanians and Ukrainians and Latvians and Estonians; big and small, old and young, dark and fair, but indistinguishable now in their terrible nonentity. Balts.

  The long line of men shuffled past the gleaming press, picking up their meal as they went. Goulash from Condamine, taciturn at the top of the press, unsmiling and dishing it out as though he paid for it himself; roast meat and gravy from Warner, next to him; potatoes and cabbage from Paramor, another of the stove cooks whom Randolph had met and instantly liked on his return from the crib-room that morning, a garrulous, profane larrikin who had a lot to say and who sky-larked incessantly but still managed to do his share of the work in the kitchen. And when it was demanded of him, a bit more than his share.

  Randolph stood in the line next to him, dishing out the mashed parsnips. Next to Randolph, Charlesworth doled out the soup, splashing it carelessly on the press, talking to the men as they passed him, in smatterings of Polish and German and Russian, all of it ribald and profane. They seemed to like it, and to like him. They chattered back at him, laughing with him and threatening him playfully with knives and forks and knotted fists.

  Watching them, Randolph felt that they responded to Charlesworth’s foolery because after only a few months, they were still strangers in a strange land, and here was one who seemed to realize that they were, after all, human. Most of the cooks, and most of the Australians living at Riverslake, lumped them into a class, labelled them as “bloody Balts” and forgot them—until someone puked in the showers or stole a globe from one of the lavatories. Then it was natural to blame them, the bloody Balts. As though puking and globe-lifting had been unknown before they came to the place.

  Randolph looked at them as searchingly as he could without giving offence as they filed past him, accepting the vegetables he gave them, some of them with hesitant thanks, some with stolid indifference.

  They worked, most of them, on construction jobs about the city, a few as tradesmen, most of them as labourers. Others worked on the parks and gardens and plantations, others clipped hedges and cleaned streets, some few worked in administrative offices as clerks and interpreters. There were boiler attendants amongst them, shunters and mechanics and doctors and artists and musicians, but there was no way to discern which might be which. Their hands were calloused, their clothes dirty, and their faces browned from exposure, and the same drab fabric of disenfranchisement blanketed them all during the two years of their indenture.

  It was the price they paid for freedom—some of them, for life. If in two years hands that curled round picks and shovels forgot the feel of scalpels and bows, it would be unfortunate but not fatal. They were assured of continued work as labourers in a country shorter of doctors than of manual workers.

  Randolph knew from experience that there were half a dozen or more nationalities amongst the men who filed past him, but could distinguish only the Maltese with any degree of certainty—small, dark men with flaring jaws and pansy-brown eyes who almost universally wore tattered black velvet jackets faded to a coppery greenness. For the others, they might all have been Australians but for some indefinable difference on which he had never been able to put his finger.

  He had seen them in every camp he had worked in, sometimes in the big cities. He could always pick them for foreigners before they spoke, and yet could not have said how. He covertly examined the men who filed past him. He looked at their hands roughened with hard work and in many cases still dirty, that held out their plates to him; at their big boots, heavy with red mud as they shuffled along the race. At their eyes, blue, brown, and black; at their hair, fair, dark, and medium; at the build of them, heavy, slight, and in between. It was there, the difference that he could never define.

  Some of them offered their plates tentatively, as though they expected to be rebuffed; their eyes followed his hand as he scooped up the vegetable, watched it to their plates and then scrutinized it carefully. Then they passed on to the sweets racks at the far end of the press, their glances seeking out the gross form of Zigfeld. He walked up and down behind the servers, ready to scream down the ramp to Murdoch, who was running between the stoves and the servers with trays of meat and vegetables. The men in the race kept their eyes on him because he was a man to be watched. If he were in a good mood he would hang over the racks saying to every second man, “Dobra! Dobra!” They would smile back at him and bow, juggling their meal on the small tray provided. If he were not in a good mood, he would lash them with filthy abuse for minor breaches until they trembled with hatred and rage. Every meal-time brought an incident of some sort. It was part of the show.

  “Be on Hughie,” Charlesworth said softly to Randolph. “Talk about a stunned magpie!”

  Randolph glanced round casually. Hughie Mancin presided over the sweets, a small man, thin and colourless, with thin and colourless hair that straggled over his mottled forehead and stood erect from his crown where someone had stiffened it with custard. He started each day just a little drunk from the night before, but clean and neat. As the day wore on, he became less clean and less neat, the hair that he brushed straight back from his forehead fell apart and revealed his scalp in a round bald spot on the top of his head. The white clothes that started the day fresh and crisp became spattered with fat and custard and fruit-juice, but every morning he appeared in a fresh set. He spent all his free time in a daze, so couldn’t have washed them himself. It must have cost him a small fortune in laundry bills.

  He was the butt of most of the humour of the kitchen, and took it well enough in the mornings when the warm and comforting bite of his first few glasses of wine softened the impact of the world. By the time tea-time came he was tired and ragged with drink, and hating the men who filed past him like a cloud of locusts in a wheat paddock, to sweep bare the racks of sweets he put up during the day. In his fuddled mind he resented them for their youth and strength and whatever hopes they still had of life. He glared at them out of ruined eyes, looking as if he might bite or strike the hands that reached out for the plates on the racks.

  Unaware that he was being watched, he swayed and slipped in a mess of spilled custard and shattered bits of pastry that squelched beneath the soles of his cheap patent leather pumps. His huge bunions must have been hurting, for as Randolph stood looking at him, he leaned against the rack, groaned softly, and lifted first one foot and then the other and rubbed them gingerly down the backs of his meagre shanks. His eyes closed for a moment and a look almost of ecstasy stole over his ravaged face.

  “Poor old cow,” Randolph commented with rough compassion. “I hope I’m not toting boots full of bunions and a gut full of plonk round a brothel like this when I’m his age.”

  He had met Mancin during the day, but when the old cook was fuddled with drink and hurrying in a bumbling way to complete the preparation of the sweets for the evening. They would have to be re-introduced in the morning. “What’s his special? Is he a wine-dot?”

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bsp; “Is he hell!” Charlesworth said emphatically. “When he can’t get brandy—or when he can’t afford it. He’s never off it. Right now, he’d give you half next week’s pay for a snort of Tilly Devine, I bet!” He raised his voice, speaking to Mancin. “Hey, Uncle! There’s a bottle of Red Ned in my room—slip down and hit it. You need a kick!”

  For a moment Randolph thought that Mancin had not heard. He continued to stand with his eyes closed and his hands clenched on the edge of the sweets rack. Then he turned to Charlesworth, a vacuous grin spreading over his flushed face.

  “You cheeky little cow,” he said affably, “I don’t need no kick—I been cooking when your bottom was as big as a shirt-button.” It was his favourite reply to the good-natured gibes of the men in the kitchen, and his voice was thick and affectionate. “You go an’ have a snort yourself, you cheeky little ratbag. It might stop you f’m burnin’ the pies tomorrow!”

  Zigfeld had stopped behind him, listening in. He knew that Charlesworth was ragging the old man, and threw his weight in behind Mancin.

  “By hell, that’ll be the day!” he growled. “I hope I live to see it.” Charlesworth glanced quickly over his shoulder. A little of the cockiness went out of him, but he tried a come-back.

  “Never mind, Uncle,” he said to Mancin, “you come down to my room after and tell us the story of your life.” An edge of nastiness touched his voice; like most cocky youngsters, he could dish it out but he couldn’t take it back. “Tell us how you cooked for Melba.”

  Mancin had not heard him. Verity had left his stand at the end of the race, and walked a few paces away to speak to Carmichael, who stood in a clear patch of floor beside the moving line, watching the men go through. For a few moments, the end of the race was unguarded, and one of the guests approached to take a sweet.

  Mancin straightened up with a jerk.

  “Get away, you Balt bastard!” he barked, his voice cracking with anger. “You go round the right way if you want a blasted sweet!”

  The man addressed halted in his stride. He looked round him uncertainly, and then continued towards the sweets rack.

  Mancin shuffled unsteadily with rage.

  “Go on, get going, you hungry bastard!” he shouted. The men at the tables nearest him stopped eating and looked up expectantly. Mancin appealed to Verity. “Jack! Chef! Send that damn Balt around the right way!”

  Verity looked round quickly. The Balt, a Pole, stood at the end of the race, facing Mancin across the rows of sweets. His face slowly suffused with red as he realized the old cook was screaming at him. A partial silence fell over the mess-hall, and the men in the race, halted by one standing at the end, craned their necks to see what was holding them up.

  “Chuck that bloody Balt out!” Condamine said loudly. “The bastards know what to do if they want a sweet.”

  He looked round at the other cooks, seeking affirmation, and then across the press with brittle defiance to encounter the angry glances and mutterings of the foreigners in the body of the hall. Murdoch, standing behind Randolph, shot Condamine a sizzling look.

  “The little rat!” he swore softly. “He wouldn’t be so damned cocky if he was on the other side of the press!”

  Verity tapped the Balt on the shoulder.

  “All right, Johnny,” he said, pointing to the end of the line which was down by the door; fifty or more men had crammed into the race. “You can’t come in at this end, you know that. On your way!”

  Carmichael had followed him and now stood behind him, looking on but saying nothing. The men in the halted line began to get restive.

  “Go on, you Balt bastard—get going!”

  “Get out o’ the bloody way! We ain’t got all night!”

  The Pole ignored him. He began a patient but voluble explanation, until Verity took him by the shoulder and started to propel him away from the sweets racks. He shook himself free, waving his arms angrily.

  “I am not!” he cried. “I come———” he gestured down the length of the race. “I have goulash———” he held out one hand. “Zoup———” he held out the other. “Sweets, I cannot. I come back!”

  “Then take a tray!” Carmichael cut in angrily, pointing to a pile of them at the top end of the race. “What the hell do you think they’re put there for?”

  It was one of the situations he had met before, somewhere, and usually overcome, somehow. Every hostel or camp he had managed had added something to his understanding of the men in them, and had finally case-hardened his attitude to the point where he understood all their failings and foibles and was willing to help them if they needed help and deserved it. It was a quality strangely at variance with his cruel intolerance of their shortcomings. Compassion played no part in his dealings with men—it had until he realized it was too often mistaken for softness. The respect and gratitude he sometimes won affected him as little as the hatred which his actions and orders more usually aroused.

  “Ah—tra’s!” The Pole made a curt movement with his hands. “I not!”

  He was a thickset, powerful man, browned with exposure to the outside air and with a crop of flaxen hair. He brushed the spindly Verity aside, grabbed a sweet and made to return to his table. Carmichael stepped in quickly, snatched the plate from his hand and sent it spinning across the press. The contents splashed the floor as it went.

  “Now, get out, you cheeky hooer!” he said coldly. “You know the rules—abide by them, or get out. Go on—on your way!

  The man stood still for a moment, his hands roving searchingly across the front of his body, as though looking for something. His brown face seemed to shrink, and his blue eyes started. He swung round.

  “I am not Balt!” he shouted thickly. “I am not bastard! Who say bastard?”

  His face was scarlet and bloated with anger, his thick legs planted wide apart, his body and eyes swinging from side to side with the defiance of an animal brought to bay.

  Randolph was conscious of a rising tide of disgust—not for him, but for the men who taunted him.

  The Pole’s challenge brought a torrent of laughter and of catcalls and abuse from the men at the tables. Although he did not understand it, he understood its import. It seemed to infuriate him. With a strained shout, he lunged at Carmichael.

  “Hell,” Charlesworth whispered with evident relish, “that’s the rock he stumbled on. The Bastard’s no slouch when it comes to a yike!”

  Carmichael stood quite still, his eyes fixed on the Pole. Suddenly he stepped in, grabbed one of the flailing arms at the wrist and with a quick twist had it up behind the man’s back, forcing it towards his shoulder-blades. Randolph, watching intently, saw the hand go white as the Pole bent almost double, trying to relieve the pressure on his arm.

  A flood of agonized words, punctuated by panting groans, fell from his lips. Every man in the hall had stopped eating, intent on the brawl. The mess-stewards, all of them foreign and most of them Poles, stood in a tight little group by the tea-urns, their faces dark with anger; the only sound was the occasional clatter of a fork on a plate or the scrape of a chair as someone stood up to get a better view.

  “What’s that you say?” Carmichael demanded crisply. When the Pole continued to mutter and groan, he shouted over his shoulder, “Get Vodavitch!”

  Vodavitch was a kitchenman, a Yugoslav who spoke half a dozen languages of Middle Europe as well as fairly good English. He was used a lot in the kitchen as an interpreter. He was a big man, stout with a greasy skin and greasy clothes, and small brown eyes that pitted his face like blotches on an overripe melon. And he stank, vilely, with the stench of the unwashed.

  Because he was useful he was tolerated by the Australians, but the other foreigners shunned him. On the slightest pretext they showered him with vicious abuse, which he shrugged off with a sour sneer.

  “What’s this man saying?” Carmichael demanded, when he came up from
the kitchen. “Tell him to say it again!”

  “This man is Pole,” Vodavitch volunteered.

  “I don’t give a damn if he’s a Hottentot! Find out what he said!”

  Vodavitch listened to what the Pole was saying. He stood up and shrugged.

  “Well—what?” Carmichael barked.

  “He say———” Vodavitch’s small brown eyes ran over the stooped figure in front of Carmichael, and then to the group of mess-stewards who stared back at him with open hostility. “He say, your mother a prostitute.” He shrugged again, spreading his thick hands. “And other things.”

  “Oh, does he?” Carmichael’s eyes glittered as he jerked the Pole’s arm savagely, forcing a cry from his lips. He knew the insult to be a common one amongst the Poles. “Oh, does he?”

  He wheeled roughly, and with the Pole stumbling in front of him, marched the length of the hall to the door. As he went the faces of the men at the tables, pale ovals in the diluted light, swivelled round to watch him like steel shavings turning to a trailed magnet. He shoved the Pole through the door and swung round.

  “Come here!” he called crisply to Vodavitch. His voice cut clearly through the hum of interest mounting in the mess-hall. When the Yugoslav lumbered up to him, he said, “Tell that swine he can pick up his gear tonight. Tell him he’s had it here.”

  Vodavitch stared through the door at the man standing outside in the dark, almost sobbing with rage and pain.

  “Where to?” he asked. “Where I tell him?”

  “I’ll attend to that,” Carmichael said curtly, already walking back to his place by the press. “Just tell him he’s through.”

  He knew Vodavitch’s type, and resented having to use him; once the Yugoslav’s usefulness was finished, he snubbed him mercilessly. He reached the spot where he had been standing when the brawl began, looked coldly at the men in the line, and turned to Verity.