The Last Word

THE LAST WORD

Michael Green

Smashwords Edition

The Last Word

Copyright © Michael Green 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The information, views, opinions and visuals expressed in this publication are solely those of the author(s) and do not reflect those of the publisher. The publisher disclaims any liabilities or responsibilities whatsoever for any damages, libel or liabilities arising directly or indirectly from the contents of this publication.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental

A copy of this publication can be found in the National Library of Australia.

ISBN: 978-1-742843-75-9 (pbk.)

Published by Book Pal

www.bookpal.com.au

PART 1 1948-1950 Abbervale

"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression."

Thomas Jefferson, inaugural address, 4 March 1801.

1

No sleep tonight. No matter how he lay, there was a burning across his forehead, in his brain, a clutching ball in his stomach.

He’d run home, anxious to get away from where it happened, to put it behind him, wanting the walls of his home to take him in and keep it out. He’d shucked off his clothes and slipped into the comfort of his bed.

No comfort there. The silence of the house allowed the night to surround him, the scene to return to lacerate him. Closing his eyes brought no relief, made it worse. Made the drama play like a film, repeating, searing in its tawdry detail.

He sat up, pulling the blankets around his shoulders to keep out the November chill. Then he knew that what he felt was more than the cruelty of her betrayal. It was the heat of his humiliation, his stupid, infantile naivety. Almost twenty two, he should’ve known better, read the signs, listened to the voices.

‘She’s the town bike’. ‘She’ll run you ragged, mate’. ‘Just another sheila’.

But she wasn’t. Not Angela Mackey. Angela Mackey was a long, dark-haired, dark-eyed, ivory-skin beauty, with a body to excite the coolest of men, and she had agreed to meet him tonight, no – wanted to meet him. They had planned it, the place, blanket and all. And the promise had possessed him, stuffed up his ears and mind.

* * *

There was a moment of panic in the afternoon when he heard about the meeting. Even when his father asked him: ‘You coming tonight, William?’ he was minded to shake his head and say nothing. A union meeting on a night like this!

But his mother had looked at him before he had the chance to shake his head or draft a reply. He could often read her mind and tonight it was as clear as if she had written on the village notice board.

‘It’s an important meeting. He needs both his sons’. He had never been able to refuse her and he would not do it now. Then a shaft of relief when Gordon told him the meeting would start at six thirty. He could put in an appearance and leave the meeting early.

He could hardly wait. But wait he did, stopped by his love and respect for Grace and Gordon.

‘Can’t I come, too?’ asked his sister, Millie, pleading.

‘Only the men, Millie, only union members,’ replied Gordon.

‘Couldn’t I just stand up the back and look on, Father?’ A pale and fragile figure, just turned thirteen, her voice strong and insistent.

‘It’s too cold in that hall, Millie. And you and I have books to read,’ said her mother with a smile.

‘Oh, all right, then,’ said Millie, defeated.

Grace was right about the temperature. As he walked with his father along Temple Street, William felt it a cool evening for November, the summer yet to take charge. It would not be long before the heat fell on them from dazzling blue skies, to burn grasses and foliage, crack bark from trees, turn creeks and water holes to muddy pools, and raise dust from unsealed roads.

‘So ....... what’s the meeting about?’

Gordon did not reply immediately. Their boots crunching the gravel, he saw determination in his father’s jaw and steady step, a certain grim seriousness.

‘Threats from the owners, awards, new machinery. There’ll be trouble,’ he said. ‘More than usual. I can’t blame them. They’re tired and scared.’

‘I thought things had improved.’ William had not followed his elder brother down the mine, nor was he well informed on the latest industrial rumblings. His job as a clerk in the mine office kept him outside the close-knit circle of miners, their work and their struggles, and he knew the loyalty that prevented his father and brother from revealing all to him and his mother.

He felt his father glance at him as they neared the hall.

‘They have. More compo, better conditions, better pay. But not by much, and it took us four years. What a lot of ‘em don’t realise is that we got there by negotiation, not strikes. But the Federation’s turned militant and adding fuel to the fire. The men are not happy. I don’t think we can hold ‘em back this time.’

The sun was gone but the light hung onto the village and surrounding hills as they came to the union hall. They joined a stream of men entering through the front doors. Gordon acknowledged greetings as he moved past them and walked down the centre aisle towards the stage, leaving William to choose a seat among the men.

It was a solid structure, the miners’ hall, double brick supporting a pitched iron roof. The front doors opened directly into a long assembly room, timber floored and flanked by exposed brick walls. Tall windows on each side provided light by day, while the naked bulbs of electric lights dropped from the ceiling. William saw a curtain open on the stage, at the rear a small table supporting a withered bunch of flowers, and above that, a framed picture of the King. He smiled at the sight. Apart from the ritual observance of Empire day at primary school, he had never detected any deep allegiance to the throne in this community.

He watched his father approach a table at the front of the hall, under the stage. Gordon shook hands with Clive Jenman his deputy, secretary Joe Steiner, and sat between the two at the centre of the table. There were nigh on a hundred and fifty men in the hall. He looked around for Bruce but there was no sign of him. His brother was the Federation research officer and at the few union meetings William had attended, Bruce had been prominent, one of the first to arrive, one of the keenest and most vocal in participation. He recalled the quiet admiration in Gordon’s eyes as he watched Bruce moving around the men, working the numbers. Gordon, an active unionist since he first worked the coal. Grace, president of the Ladies Auxiliary for as long as he could remember.

It was accepted in the family that Bruce would be the one to carry the family colours of mining leadership, and that he, William would stay in administration. To imagine a life other than that of continuing the tradition of generations of McCanns was unthinkable.

William looked around the hall. Despite the numbers, the drone of conversation from the men was subdued. As they waited for Gordon to call for order and open the meeting, there were no raised voices, no shouts across the aisles, no joking nor chiacking. Different from other meetings, he thought. Tense faces in the men, apprehension, even hard edges of anger in their quick exchanges. They sat taut on their seats, leaning forward as if expecting, hoping, anxious for deliverance, rescue, or at least some comfort in the insecurities of their future.

It took less than half an hour for battle lines to be drawn.

‘You gotta fight the bastards! It’s the only way. If we let ‘em get away with this, it’ll be the end of us!’

Red Ned was on his feet, face as red as his name, hands and arms carving the air, spitting words, finger shooting sharp accusations at the chairman. He was a stout, strong block of a man, fair freckled face, flashing eyes and short ginger hair.

‘Ya go on about talking ta management! When’s talkin’ gotcha anywhere, Gordon? What has all ya talkin’ done for the miners at this pit?! Strike and then talk, I say. It’s the only language they understand!’

William felt a flush of anger for the man. He knew what his father had done for the men, and what it had cost him, cost the family. They all knew it, the bastards. What was Ned going on about!

His father was not troubled and his answer came back strong.

‘Comrades. Talk of strike is premature. And let me answer the question with another one: What did the strike in ‘45 do for you, Ned? What did it do for us?’ Now it was Gordon’s turn to point. He glared at him. The chatting and chipping faded, as did the banter and insults.

‘Well, I’ll tell you. All the strike did was deprive our wives and kids of money and food for three weeks. And you were the first to line up at the relief centre, Ned.’

‘What about the extra money and long service leave?’ Ned refused to retreat.

‘Yeah,’ retorted Gordon. He rolled his voice over the mob. ‘We got a subsidy for blokes on part compo, and an extra sixpence a load, and better bathrooms. That’s all! Even that came from the Tribunal, two years after we’d gone back to work. It was the talk that did it, not the strike. What we got from management were promises. No long service leave, no extra training, no extra safety.’

‘And the promises, Gordon?’ Ned persisted. ‘Three years later. What’s happened to them?’

Gordon wearily: ‘We’re workin’ on ‘em, Ned. Workin’ on ‘em.’

Then a silence sat uncomfortably on them, and William saw Gordon pause, searching their faces. He knew them well. Grace had told William how his father felt, how his heart warmed to them, in meetings or under the showers after a heavy day at the pit, sometimes at the face, when he saw a miner struggle to work under the burden of a painful back or sprain or heavy cold. Some of them were not long back from the war, having defied their miners’ exemptions by lies and subterfuge.

There were the young singles, just out of school, scarcely past sixteen, a few of them. Still strong and keen, muscles, limbs and minds revelling in the satisfaction of hard work, joyful in the comfort of camaraderie. The young marrieds much the same, but the stresses of holding their jobs and earning enough to support growing families beginning to furrow their faces. The grinding years of work had all but finished the job for the faces of the experienced miners: skin marked, but stretched like parchment around eyes and mouths tight with cynicism, at times stinging with bitterness, sometimes merry with teasing and easy laughter.

William looked at those around him, the faces, what they were wearing. The lack of variation in dress would have been noted by an outsider who bothered to cast an eye over this congregation. Little variation from standard combinations of striped and plain cotton shirts, sleeves rolled to the elbows, an occasional vest or jacket, brown, green or khaki trousers, black or brown boots. Some came in with woollen caps, others with felt hats. Not a bright colour to be seen.

Gordon had told him about the old timers who sat at the back of the hall. They were retired and came to meetings for friendship and beer. They had worked out the last minute of their sixtieth year – condemned to compulsory retirement - reluctant to give it up, afraid of losing the only life they knew, unattracted by suggestions of the satisfactions of fishing and gardening, they and their wives nervous at the threat of constant companionship.

William noticed old Don sitting just behind him, unaccompanied, an independent observer, saying little to anyone. Everyone knew him. Donny had seen it all before. He had spent forty five years in the coal mines. It was ten years since he had surrendered lodge chairman to Gordon, but he never missed a meeting. His wife had died last year. Donny lived in the house they had built together, kept it clean, cooked and wrote to his children.

He listened to each speaker, eyes bright and interested, mostly unmoved but occasionally shaking his head and chuckling.

Gordon pressed on.

‘Comrades. This much of what Ned says is true: we’ve got bugger’all from the government and the bosses since 1945. They haven’t come through on their promises. The Miners Federation has had little success in arguing for better conditions. There’s still dust in the pits and in the lungs of too many good men. Money still poor. And now there’s a bigger challenge, perhaps the most serious in our history. Mechanisation.’

The hall erupted again with angry voices. ‘Please, comrades!’ Gordon struggled to maintain order. ‘Hear me out on this!

Cries of ‘Quiet! Let him speak! Go on, Gordon!’ lent him support and showed William the authority his father commanded.

‘We’ve heard about new machines, but we don’t yet know what that will mean for our industry.’

Suddenly the meeting exploded. Men were on their feet, shouting and waving fists. ‘Come on, Gordon! Of course we know what that means! Less jobs! Less work! More profits!’

Gordon waited, allowing the outburst to run its course. After a couple of minutes they began to tire and most sat down.

Jim Cullimore stayed on his feet. A powerful man, short but built like a rock, his baritone voice one that commanded attention, rich and retaining the music of its Welsh origins. A member of Gordon’s pit team, William knew that Gordon respected him as a friend and tough miner.

‘Gordon, we know that you’re a man of caution and we respect that. It’s served us well over the years. But, in your own words, this is serious. Whatever form it takes, it will mean one thing for us: less work, fewer jobs. (‘Dead right! Good on you, Jim!’) If it’s in one pit, it’ll soon be in others. And then, where will we go? It’s not that there are other jobs around. The country is still getting on its feet after the war. In any case, most of us know nothing but the pits. The young blokes might learn new skills. But not us. Who would employ a forty-five year-old miner? (‘Yeah! We’d starve!’) Mechanisation is a hungry beast. It not only eats coal, it eats miners. We know enough, Gordon. We’ve talked to the lads from Ebba Valley who’ve lost their jobs. I say we strike and demand from management full information on their plans for this pit!’

Pandemonium broke out again. They were on their feet, shouting, waving fists. ‘Let’s do it! Stop’em now! Strength in solidarity!’

Gordon held up both hands, arms extended, attempting to regain control. It had no effect. Then one man rose to his feet. Those around him, noting who he was, lowered their fists and voices and sat down around him like a receding tide. In a short time there was total silence.

‘Donny.’ Gordon eyed him with respect and affection. ‘Donny, you have the floor.’

‘Thank you. I don’t need to tell you all how long I worked the pits and how long I’ve been in the federation. There were years when I spent more time on strike than at work. But I think I need to remind some of you of our history. You talk about strength in solidarity. And you’re talking about one pit going out. What nonsense! There’s no strength there, lads. You’ve gotta pick your fights. You only take’em on when you know you can win. And you can only win with the support of other pits, the labour councils, the government, public opinion. Ya gonna get nuthin’ without that.’

His voice carried years of weariness and frustration, loud and rich but chest and chords husky with the dust of the coalface. He paused and looked around the hall. No one stirred. Complete silence. Heads turned to him. Donny was not a tall man, a strong, rotund figure, he had lost most of his hair. His face was creased and blotched, but his eyes were bright, piercing and fierce.

‘Now, wake up to yourselves! You’ve gotta make a decision: do you just want to make a noise, or do you want to face reality? If you just want to make a noise, fine! Go out on strike and see what happens. I’ll tell you: mechanisation will simply roll over you and you’ll starve. The bosses and the government are all for it. You talk about jobs and money. Wake up! Jobs will be lost, there’s no doubt about it. It’s already happening. Jobs in the mines, yes. But there’ll be others and there’ll be better pay. That’s what we have to work for now. More jobs everywhere and better pay.’

He paused, then dropped his voice a few tones, into a low pleading trough.

‘Friends. Gordon’s right. We’ve gotta talk to ‘em. Talk to the owners, to the labour councils, to the government. Let’s find out what’s goin’ on with mechanisation, how to cope with it, how to turn it to our advantage. Then, if it’s not good enough, we can talk about a strike.’

Don sat down to a ripple of applause. The room hummed with talk, the voices carrying fear and doubt. Gordon hesitated. William saw stress on his face. Then suddenly it lifted and his voice rang out firm again.

‘Thanks for that, Donny. It was good to hear you talk about money and jobs. There’s something you all should know. The miners at Ebba Valley are now the highest paid miners in the State.’ They stopped talking and looked up at him. ‘How did this happen? They negotiated more money and better promotion opportunities for loss of positions. We don’t know how many jobs were lost. But we do know that the gains were made through talk, not strike.’

William felt something new in the air, a relaxation of tension, a quickening of interest. A conversation between his parents flashed into his mind.

‘You know what they’re like! Grace had complained to Gordon. ‘They’re moody and quick to jump when threatened.’ ‘If you want time and caution, you’d better give them something to hang onto.’ He wondered if Gordon had decided to ride with that, on the wave that Donny had created.

Clive Jenman was quick to stand, all six feet six of him. He had a firm, no-nonsense appearance and a ring to his voice that told the gathering it was time to put something practical on the table.

‘I agree with the chairman. There’s no point in going off half-cocked about this. We’d be made to look fools, here and in the Tribunal. I move the following motion: That this meeting establish a committee of three members to do three things: one, talk to management about their plans for this pit; two, have a look at Ebba Valley and any other pit where mechanisation is advanced; and three, discuss this and working conditions with the Labour Councils. The committee to report to this meeting one month from tonight.’

The meeting took its usual course. Arguments for and against were heard. When the vote was taken, the shouts of Aye prevailed. But he heard a restlessness in their voices, in the gripes of their comments and complaints. The talk told him there was no heart in their surrender, no enthusiasm in their acceptance. Just disappointment and an effort to hold onto hope.

He was glad he’d stayed. He knew he owed it to Gordon – and to his mother – to see it through. And, despite the stirrings of his expectant heart, he had been caught up in the drama of the meeting: the passion of the arguments, the rise and fall of emotions in the hall, the eddies and currents, the sudden changes. He admired Gordon’s skill, his reading the feelings and moods of the men, his management of the debate, the conviction and persuasion in his voice. But as soon as he saw the tide turn and vote taken, the awareness of his assignation returned to possess him.

Gordon rose.

‘The motion is carried. We’ll get Clive, Joe and Bruce to do the work for us. They’ll report back at our next meeting. By the way, where is our research officer?’ He looked around the hall intending to ask William.

But William had already left.

* * *

William moved quickly and quietly through the rear door and around the western side of the hall. It was now dark, and the few street lights in Abbervale provided little illumination away from the main streets. A pale moon assisted William to locate the gate at the extremity of the hall property. He hurried through it into the wooded parkland stretching all the way to the creek which cut through the western corner of the village. On the bank beside the creek there was a huge willow. Its rope-like branches, thick with showers of yellow leaves, hung protectively over soft grass, providing a shaded hollow and a perfect arbour for the privacy of lovers.

He was a few yards distant when he first heard the sounds: a groaning, insistent and quickening, repeated rhythmically on high and low notes. He came to the willow. Parting the foliage, he could see the two bodies. Leaning closer he saw who it was. He stopped and watched, stunned, unable to move for a full minute. Then he drew back, let the branches fall into place, and stood for a time, shocked and numb, striving to cope with what he had seen. Finally he turned, staggering, stumbling over the uneven terrain, tripping over a fallen log. He got up and ran.

* * *

In his bed, the anger came, with bitterness, and in spades. She’d promised, the bitch! Angela Williams had promised him, only two nights before when they kissed behind the Union Hall. He had believed her. She had betrayed him. It all came back to haunt him and he burned with shame.

‘Meet me at seven thirty,’ she’d said. ‘At the creek. I’ll bring a blanket and we’ll .... I’ve never had a virgin! It’ll be fun! She had laughed at his embarrassment.’

Later, in a cooler mind and place, he felt a firm refusal, a change of heart, he could have tolerated, with annoyance and disappointment. But seeing the betrayal in all its naked drama, seeing the promise broken by the rise and fall of Bruce’s pink and pimpled bottom between Angela’s crossed ankles, their bodies heaving on that very blanket, at that very place ....... that, William decided, was too much. A hard, wet slap across his face would have been kinder.

2

Gordon was in no mood for the pub. He would have been poor company. He walked past the open doors of the hotel, deep in thought, oblivious to the rumble of voices inside. Ignoring the law, the publican kept it open after union meetings, and the law had decided not to interfere.

The business of the evening had unsettled him and had left him with a salty taste of dissatisfaction. In all the meetings Gordon had attended, both on the floor and on the executive table, he had not seen the men as they had shown themselves tonight. They’d let him have his way, but unwillingly. They were tired of their lot and had shown a simmering, bitter mood that pointed to recklessness. That worried him. He knew that gentle argument and pleas for patience would not hold them back for long. There was a line.

He slowed his pace as he passed the village shops and police station. Just beyond them he stopped, turned and looked back in the direction of the mine. He could see the black outline of the poppet head, silhouetted in the moonlight against the night sky, stars pricking through its hard steel braces. The main frame and its workings were the head and heart of Abbervale and its community, usually symbolising security and identity, but for him tonight, threat and warning.

Gordon accepted that the industry was changing and had to change more. It was so different in his day. Gordon had mined since he was sixteen, joining his father’s team as a wheeler. He and another dozen sixteen-year-olds were in charge of the pit ponies who pulled the coal-filled skips to the flats. There the clippers, youngsters like himself, hooked the skips to an endless rope system that dragged them to the pit head. A year later his father’s co-miner had been carried out of the mine with a smashed leg that kept him above ground for the remainder of his working life. Gordon had begged his father to let him take his place. With misgivings about his age and strength, his father had relented.

Gordon remembered how proud he was at six thirty that first morning, walking beside his father with the men, dressed in hand-me-down shirt and trousers, carrying his crib can stuffed with lunch his mother had prepared. His father shielding him from the quips of the seasoned miners. The nervous thrill of jamming into the cage with the men and falling with them some six hundred feet to the pit bottom. Walking more than a mile to their bord, two hundred or so miners in silence trudging a road lit with the dancing lights of their caps. Then the grind of his first assault on the face, his thin arms swinging the pick, desperately hiding the exhaustion that slowed him, but sustained by his resolve and his father’s oversight. Gordon remembered the days before machines, when a miner, lying on his side, would work the cut with a pick and brute strength. It took a man with arms of steel and an iron back to work for twenty minutes without succumbing to exhaustion.

He had stuck to it and survived. That’s what the men of the village did in those days. Indeed he had persevered and prospered. On his father’s retirement Gordon had taken on leadership roles, with his own team and in the Miners’ Union. Did he love the life? The tough, grinding work, daily ripping out the coal, meeting the challenges of bosses and the vagaries of the market? He did not reflect on it. He did it. It was his life.

He would have preferred gentler occupations for both his sons. But there was no holding Bruce back from the mine. It had been a struggle to keep him at school and his enthusiasm for the pit crushed any inclination for the trade which he and Grace urged on him. He was a powerful man, of solid build, overflowing with energy. Gordon was relieved when William displayed no such inclination. William, tall and slender, not weak, indeed athletic and strong, but given to books and music and discussion. There was little of that about Bruce. In the end they were content to see Bruce off to the pit with his father, and William to the mines office as a clerk and trainee accountant.

Gordon turned away from the mine head and his ruminations and walked on. He knew his wife was well informed on the situation in the mines, but she would be interested to hear what had happened at this meeting. As usual, he expected her to have something to say.

‘How did it go?’ Grace sat in an armchair in the living room. Needles and balls of wool rested in her lap, but her hands were still, her face in a book. The wireless played softly at one ear. She looked up at her husband for an instant as he entered the house, then she lowered the book and took up her needles, studying the product through horn-rimmed glasses, as if she had never left it.

Gordon McCann stood for a short time at the door. Hands in pockets, a folder of documents and notes under one arm, he absorbed her comfortable solidity, at rest but busy. Whether sitting or standing, at home or in public, Grace was never seen to be discomforted, all five feet two inches of her. He envied her capacity for quiet, unhurried purpose, the way she took to tasks with resolve but without tension or anxiety. Her unspoken satisfaction if successful. Her unruffled acceptance if not. He knew himself to be too quick to judgement, vulnerable, stubborn in pursuit and bitter in defeat.

‘Hard to know, said Gordon. We got the OK to do some research on what’s likely to happen with the new machines, and to talk to the labour councils. But they weren’t happy. Only got it through when Donny threw in the prospect of more money and better jobs.’

‘Aha! Something to hang on to!’ She claimed her prescience with a smile.

‘How long they’ll hang on to it, I don’t know. It’s a prospect rather than a promise. It should work out for the best. The country’s recovering, new businesses and factories, more jobs, but they’re slow coming.’ This he added without any stamp of confidence or authority. Tension stretched his face. His brow was creased, eyes narrow, lips taut. He knew he was a worrier. Never satisfied that he’d done all he could, wanting things to be ....right. ‘Life’s not like that’, Grace would say. ‘Never can be’. He would listen but he could not accept her counsel. Sometimes Grace would lose patience with his quest for perfection, as she called it.

‘No, they’re not happy at all,’ he repeated.

‘Well, you can’t blame them for feeling unsettled. They’ve got mouths to feed,’ she said firmly, eyes still on her needles.

He deposited his file on the side table but remained standing.

‘True. All right for us old blokes. But a lot of the young ones are just getting on their feet, raising families. They want work and don’t enjoy strikes. The radicals enjoy the battle. But the others worry about who wins the war.’

‘The war?’ she asked.

‘Yes. The war, or rather the peace.’ He leaned now against the door jamb and looked at her through tired eyes. ‘Peace and work when they can feed their wives and families, and their old people. You know how it is. If you’re sick or injured, your compensation’s poor. And the pension only kicks in after twenty years’ service. Without your Women’s Auxiliary some wouldn’t survive.’

Grace looked up. She pinned back an errant lock of rich brown hair, much of it gathered into a tight bun. At fifty, she maintained a soft cream complexion, mostly unmarked, firm over her cheeks, eyes and forehead. Her lips were full, under a neat, straight nose. Eyes deep, brown pools, bright and warm with knowing and understanding. She wore an amply-cut, full-skirted cotton dress, deep colours of browns and yellows, white collar, buttoned to