Death of a Swagman. Arthur W. Upfield
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one great thing in his favour, and that is that children like him and trust him. Our Florence has long conferences with him; quite often she will sit with him on a box or against a petrol pump and talk and talk. And sometimes there will be half a dozen children in the conference.”
“He tells them fairy tales,” Mrs Marshall said. “But are you actually going to do the painting about the place?”
“Of course,” replied Bony. “Didn’t you know that I have been sentenced to ten days’ hard labour with paint and brushes?”
He rose to his feet. “A fortnight hence you won’t know your police station. Thank you for your morning tea ... and the breakfast you so kindly sent over.”
“And I am really to call you Bony?” Her large open face pleased him.
“Pro tem my name is Robert Burns ... with apologies to every Scotchman,” he said, smiling. “However, all my friends call me Bony, and I hope that I may include both of you among my friends.”
After he had left her kitchen with her husband Mrs Marshall sat down at the table, poured herself another cup of tea, and stared unseeingly at the hot stove, her mind seeing him bowing to her prior to his leaving.
At the expiration of the lunch hour, which began at one o’clock, Bony returned to the front fence from which he had begun to scrape the old paint. The previously clear morning sky was now filling with blue-black clouds having ponderous snowcaps, each cloud mass sailing like a galleon upon an azure sea. There was no wind, and the air was slightly oppressive.
When, a little before three o’clock, he left his work and walked to old Bennett’s hut, a vast cloud shadow lay upon the land between the township and the Walls of China, which were sunlit and rested along the distant horizon like misty blue velvet upon which were the blue-black undersides of distant thunderclouds.
The dead man’s hut and the large group of people gathered outside the gate were all bathed in the hot sunlight. The tin-sheathed dwelling gleamed like gold, smeared here and there with the fire of opals. Shimmering heat rose from the bonnets of several cars parked beyond the hut as though incense was being burned in honour of yet another representative of a great and vanishing generation.
“Looks like there’ll be a storm before Ted Bennett’s put away into his final bed,” predicted one of the group.
“Bit of a gamble,” ventured another of the group. “Bet an even quid no rain holds up the planting.”
“That’ll do me,” agreed the other. “And the winner spends the quid on a glass wreath for old Ted. He’d appreciate a wreath bought with a bet. Ah! Here comes Jason and his turnout.”
Originally the massive body of this hearse had rested upon a horse-drawn chassis, but it had been transferred to the chassis of a motor truck and now was grossly out of proportion. In the roof of black wood was the figure of a woman lying in an attitude of grief prostrate, whilst the once-silvered guide rails now were masked with white ribbon. In front of the hearse body, and dwarfed by its size and magnificence, was the low engine bonnet and the driving seat without back or roof.
Down from this roofless and backless driving seat stepped Mr Jason. He was wearing a top hat of nineteenth-century vintage, the crêpe about its middle failing to obliterate its emphatic waist. His frock coat was faintly green down the back and over the shoulders and its hem came two inches below the baggy knees of trousers that had been built for evening wear. The trousers were slightly short for the wearer, and the rear hem of each leg rested with persistent confidence on the top of the rear tag of each elastic-sided boot.
With solemn aspect Mr Jason surveyed the gathered people before striding to the gate and entering the hut.
The driver stayed in his seat. He was a young man with a harelip and deformed body. He wore engineer’s overalls and stared directly away over the engine bonnet, the butt of a rolled cigarette between his lips. A cloth cap, worn peak foremost in deference to the occasion, was none too free of grease.
“Gonna rain, Tom?” asked one of the wagerers.
Young Jason surveyed the sky, rolled his cigarette end to the opposite side of his mouth, spat without removing it, and replied:
“If she does we’re all gonna get bogged.”
Further discussion on the chances of rain was prevented by the appearance at the door of the hut of a clergyman wearing a black cloth gown. After him came bearers bringing out the mortal remains of Edward Bennett, which they placed on trestles in the front yard. The people drew nearer to the fence, the personal mourners, the bearers, and Mr Jason and the clergyman grouping themselves about the casket. From a book the clergyman began to read the first part of the burial service in a high nasal whine, the end of his every sentence higher still in tone.
Not much more than thirty years old, he would have benefited by physical exercise. He looked flabby when his build and years should have suggested hardness of flesh and resilience of muscle. His pale eyes appeared dark in an unwholesome, square face at present devoid of all expression.
Distant thunder preceded the closing of his book with a sound equally significant. Mr Jason signed with his hands to the bearers, stood back, and then stalked ahead of them out through the gate and to the rear of the hearse. There, with dramatic deliberation, he swung open the glass-panelled doors, stepped to one side, and in his full and rich voice directed the bearers when sliding the casket into the glass interior. He closed the doors with the slow deliberation with which he had opened them.
People began to walk over to the cars. Bony counted five. The minister got into one and was followed by two men. Mrs Fanning and husband boarded another, and a tall, angular woman wearing a Merry Widow hat and a tightly fitting grey costume was escorted by two young boys to yet another car. Mr Jason, standing beside the hearse, waited. He waited until the parson’s car was drawn up behind the hearse and the other cars behind it, and not before he was satisfied that all were in order of procedure did he get up beside the driver of the hearse.
Even then he did not at once sit down. By standing he could look back over the top of the hearse for a final inspection of the mourners' cars. Then, without haste, he surveyed the silent crowd. Being apparently satisfied, he touched the driver’s leg with a foot, and the driver started the engine. Thereupon Mr Jason turned to the front, raised his right hand on high, maintained it there as though he were an orchestra leader, and finally brought it smartly to his side. That was the signal for all drivers to let in the clutch and so begin the last journey for old Bennett. Mr Jason sat down, obviously having enjoyed the drama of the ceremony.
In low gear the procession moved away toward the road to the accompaniment of a long and loud roll of celestial drums.
The small crowd began silently to drift from the tin shack to the only street, silently, for old Bennett had been a sterling character and his generation had been great in Australia.
Unnoticed, Bony walked with the others, now and then glancing ahead to observe the hearse reach the road and turn eastward on to the earth track and so begin the downward run to the cemetery one mile from the township. Once on that road, the pace quickened, so that when Bony reached the end of the street the trails of dust raised by the vehicles hid all within a rising red cloud.
Haste certainly was indicated by the weather portents.
On reaching the police station fence, he stood with blow-lamp and paint scraper in either hand, and gazed down the main street to see the Walls of China lying clay-white beneath a vast ink-black cloud from which rain already seemed to be eating up the northern extremity of the gigantic sand wall. The dust cloud raised by the funeral cortege hung steadily in the air above the track, and then abruptly from its left flank dust billowed as the vehicles turned left off the track into the cemetery. Gleeson, who came to stand beside the detective, said:
“They’ll have to make it snappy or they’ll get caught in the rain, and it would be no time, in rain like it is over there, before that track becomes a bog soft enough to stick up a rabbit.”
“Like that, is it?”
“Worst