An Innocent Masquerade

‘Nice,’ said Fred, beginning to demolish the food where he sat.

Kirstie stared down at him, watching him cheerfully chewing his way through the grub. For the first time her face softened a little.

‘Are you sure that he’s not simple?’ she demanded of Geordie, who had been watching Fred with a trained eye ever since he had helped to haul him out of the dray. ‘He seems simple.’

‘No, Big Sister,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t think that he’s simple. He may have been injured recently, though.’

He squatted down by the sitting Fred.

‘Had a knock on the head lately, old fellow?’

Fred looked up. ‘Think so. Not sure. Fred’s had lots of knocks lately.’ He was impatient to finish his chop.

‘Mind if I take a look at your head? I promise not to hurt you.’

‘Don’t mind,’ said Fred, still chewing busily. He smiled at Big Sister again. ‘Nice, I like this.’

Geordie’s long and skilful fingers explored Fred’s skull gently. He soon found a tender spot. Fred winced and pulled away.

‘You said that you wouldn’t hurt Fred,’ he mumbled reproachfully through his last mouthful of chop.

Geordie looked thoughtfully at him before breaking one of the diggings’ major rules. ‘Do you remember your home, Fred—where you come from? Did you live in Melbourne, or did you go there because of the gold rush?’

Fred pushed his empty plate away and hung his head, muttering, ‘My head hurts when you ask me that, Geordie.’

His distress was so plain that even Kirstie began to feel sorry for him.

‘Do you remember anything at all, Fred?’

‘Yes.’ Fred’s voice was so low that they had to strain to hear him. ‘But not much. It hurts when I try to remember.’ He looked around him agitatedly. ‘Where’s my bottle? Who took my bottle away?’

Geordie stood up, shaking his head. ‘It’s all right, Fred, don’t worry. You can tell me another time, perhaps.’

Fred shook his head agitatedly. ‘No, no, nasty—Fred doesn’t want to remember. No one was kind to him. They didn’t give him chops—not like Big Sister.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’ asked Sam. ‘Is he ill? Or what?’

‘Not exactly ill, no, but he needs looking after. He’s lost his memory, you see. He might get over it, and then again he might not. It depends on whether he wants to.’

He looked sadly at Fred, who had cringed into himself, his head on his chest and his knees drawn up to his chin. ‘He’s had a blow on his head, a severe one, and I think that that was what caused him to lose his memory. He’s obviously forgotten who he is—or rather was.’

Big Sister was suddenly sorry for the unkind way in which she had spoken to Fred ever since they had freed him from the nick.

‘He’s not really ill, then, Geordie?’

‘No, Big Sister,’ said Geordie gently. ‘He’s not really ill, but he does need looking after.’

He looked sharply at her. ‘I think that what he might need most of all is kindness.’

‘Will he get his memory back?’ asked Sam.

Geordie shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who knows? He might, and he might not. Only time will tell.’

The gun went off when he finished speaking, so they couldn’t put Fred to work that day, even if they had wanted to, or thought that he was fit to begin digging. When Fred uncoiled himself Bart took him on one side and explained to him that they had freed him from the nick, washed, clothed and fed him, and in return they expected him to work for their syndicate.

‘We’ll pay you a weekly wage, of course,’ Sam added. ‘We’ll see you right.’

Fred nodded agreeably.

‘I’ll try to be good,’ he said.

Geordie had hurt him a little, but these days his head had begun to pain him less and less. The vague feeling of unexplained misery, which had plagued him during his memory of his recent past and which had led to his drinking to forget it, was also beginning to disappear. Besides that, since the Moore party had washed him he had become aware of Ballarat for the first time, rather than seeing it as a blur of unmeaning noise and colour.

Kirstie watched him demolish another large plateful of stodge with every appearance of pleasure, and his reputation as a man who loved his grub was already on the make. He looked happily around while he ate and listened carefully to Bart, Sam, and Geordie when they told him what they expected of him. None of them, even Geordie, had any notion of how much of their instructions he understood.

In all directions lights had come on. There were small fires everywhere. People sat in the open, eating, laughing and talking. Music drifted from a big canvas tent nearby. Ginger Tate, who worked the claim next to theirs, was playing a banjo; the hard drinking and high living which followed the day’s work had already begun.

The lights pleased Fred. He stopped listening to the talk around the fire and pointed his knife at near and distant flames.

‘Pretty,’ he said to Big Sister who was gathering up the dirty plates and cutlery.

‘What is?’ she asked him when he obediently handed her his plate and tin cup.

‘The lights.’ He struggled a minute, attempting to find words to express his pleasure. ‘They’re beautiful.’ He smiled at her so winningly that this time, despite herself, she smiled back at him. She wondered what he would look like if his long black hair and his straggling beard were trimmed. He was certainly a fine figure of a man, justifying Sam’s belief that he would be an asset to the syndicate if he were able to work properly.

‘That’s better,’ he said encouragingly.

‘What’s better?’

‘You. When you smile you look pretty. Do it more often—for Fred.’ His artlessness robbed the words of any ulterior meaning.

‘I need something to smile at, Fred Waring,’ she snapped back at him, but it was only a little snap, nothing like those with which she had treated him when they had fetched him from the nick, before Sam and the others had cleaned him up and had discovered that he had lost his memory.

Allie helped her to collect the pots and carry them into the kitchen of the rude hut which the men had built for her. A large hand appeared in front of her when she bent over the washbowl. It was Fred’s.

‘Help?’ he queried. ‘You need help, Big Sister?’

Kirstie stared at him. Whatever their other virtues, the men took it for granted that all the chores around the camp—except for the digging—were done by her. None of them had ever offered a hand to help her during the long day which began at dawn and only ended when she was the last to retire, for now that Emmie’s baby had been born, everything fell to Kirstie.

Here was Fred, though, saying uncertainly and looking anxious, ‘Big Sister does a lot of work. Fred help?’

Sam appeared in the doorway, having followed Fred into the hut. ‘Anything wrong, Fred?’

It was Kirstie who answered for him. ‘No, nothing wrong, Pa. Fred came to help me.’

Sam began to laugh. He went outside to share the joke with the others, leaving Kirstie annoyed and Fred puzzled.

‘Big Sister’s got a kitchenmaid.’ Sam smiled. ‘Don’t wear him out for tomorrow, mind.’

Kirstie bounced to the hut door. ‘He’s got more consideration for me than some I know, Sam Moore!’ she shouted, bringing on another burst of laughter. Even Geordie Farquhar was looking amused.

She let Fred dry the pots, remembering what Geordie had said about kindness. When they had finished washing up Fred went back to the fire where Bart and Sam were passing a bottle back and forth. Geordie was repairing some tack.

‘I need a drink,’ Fred announced, and put out his hand for the bottle.

Geordie spoke before Sam or Bart could answer. ‘No, Fred, you’re not to drink.’

Fred’s eyes filled with tears. So far Geordie had been kind to him: it was the other two who had been rough and thrown him into the water.

‘Oh, I do so want a drink, Geordie. Please.’

Geordie walked over to sit by Fred. He took him by the right wrist, and looked hard at him, almost like the mesmerist in the little fair at the other end of the diggings.

‘No, Fred. Drink isn’t for you. You’re poorly, Fred. Drink will make you worse, not better.’

‘I feel better when I drink, Geordie,’ said Fred, pleading with him.

‘I know you do. But it’s wrong, the wrong sort of better, Fred. Do you understand me?’ He tightened his grip on Fred’s wrist and looked even harder into his eyes.

‘Bart and Sam are drinking,’ said Fred in a sullen voice.

‘It’s not wrong for them. It’s wrong for you. Look at me, Fred. Look into my eyes. Don’t turn your head away.’

Geordie’s stare grew even more piercing. Fred turned his head away to try to avoid it, but something drew him back again and, this time, when he looked into Geordie’s eyes, he was lost. Kirstie, watching them, thought that the usually self-effacing Geordie had suddenly become hard and dominant: a man of authority. Sam and Bart were silent and fascinated spectators of his attempts to control Fred.

Fred dropped his head to break the spell which Geordie was beginning to weave around him. Geordie put a hand under his chin and raised it.

‘Look at me, Fred, and repeat what I say. Geordie says that it’s wrong for you to drink.’

Fred obediently began to do as he was bid—and then faltered. ‘Geordie says it’s wrong, but…’

‘No buts, Fred. You understand me.’ His grip on Fred’s wrist tightened, Geordie could feel Fred’s hammering pulse. ‘No buts, Fred, and no drinking.’

Fred looked sorrowful. ‘No buts, Geordie, and no drinking.’

‘Promise me, Fred.’

‘I promise, Geordie. No buts and no drinking.’

They sat there for some moments, quite still, Fred drowning in Geordie’s eyes until Geordie took his hand from Fred’s wrist. He said, his voice low but firm, ‘That’s it, Fred. No more drinking for you in the future. You understand me? Say “Yes, Geordie”.’

‘Yes, Geordie,’ Fred said, and then fell silent, inspecting his hands as though he were seeing them for the first time.

There was a moment of silence. Then Big Sister moved away and Bart and Sam started talking again, and although Fred watched the bottle sadly, he made no attempt to take it, or ask for it with Geordie glaring at him from across the fire.

Chapter Two

Whether it was the session with Geordie which disturbed Fred, or simply the consequence of his exciting day, he was too dazed to know. Only when he went to bed that night, lying wrapped in a blanket under the stars, he found himself trying to remember and recall who and what Fred Waring was, for all his memories were of the recent past. He was not even sure that Fred Waring was his name.

Geordie’s voice echoed in his ears. Did you live in Melbourne, or did you go there because of the gold rush?

How to say that he had no notion of who he was or where he had come from when he found it difficult to say anything at all? What were his first memories? Try as he might he could remember nothing before…and he was back there again, where his memory began, standing in the dock of a courtroom in a place which he now realised must have been Melbourne.

He was feeling dreadfully ill, and was hardly able to stand upright. There was a horrible smell of drink. It took him some time to grasp that it was he who was the cause of the smell. His wrists and ankles hurt, too, which wasn’t surprising since he was in chains.

Someone was asking him his name.

‘My name?’ he said. His voice sounded odd, and his mouth hurt. His lips and nose were so swollen that he could not breathe properly.

Someone said, ‘He’s been on a bender for four days. Constable Brown said that he came crawling out of an alley a week ago, too drunk and dazed to speak. He’s been lying round the town ever since, begging. There’s always some fool to throw him money. He promptly spends it all on drink.’

‘He must know his name. Ask him again.’

Someone took him by the hair and thrust a grinning face into his, shouting, ‘What’s your name, cully?’

‘My name?’ He dredged a name from some pit whose bottom he had not yet reached. ‘Fred!’ That’s it, he told himself. Fred.

‘Louder, man,’ said another voice.

‘Fred, it’s Fred.’

He looked around and the room came briefly into focus. A well-dressed man was sitting on a kind of dais: other men, some in uniform, were standing about. Where could he be? A courtroom? Yes, it was a courtroom. What was he doing in a courtroom?

‘Fred what? You must have another name, man.’

‘Not Fred what. Fred…Fred…Fred…Waring.’

He was not sure that was his name, but it was a name, someone’s name, and since he remembered it, it might be his. It seemed to satisfy them, even if he didn’t feel too happy with it himself.

If only his head didn’t hurt so much he might be able to understand what was happening to him. The man on the dais began to drone at him. Then he stopped. The man on the right, who had seized him by the hair, now took him by the shoulders and began to push him out of the room.

‘Where am I going?’ he asked.

‘You ’eard, chum. On the road.’

‘On the road? What for?’

His articulation was so poor that, what with his head and his hangover, his guard could barely understand him.

‘Don’t worry. You’ll find out soon enough.’

He was in a fog again. To some extent he began to grasp that something was very wrong. Trying to understand what the wrongness was, was beyond him.

‘I need a drink,’ he said pitifully.

Someone cuffed him. ‘No, you don’t. That’s why you’re here. You’re a drunk.’

Yes, there was something wrong about everything because some remnant of his old self had him saying with great dignity, ‘I don’t drink.’

For some reason, when he came out with this the whole courtroom broke into laughter, and even the stern-faced man on the bench gave a great smirk. He began to protest—against what, he wasn’t sure—and it took two men to haul the inebriated ruin he had become through the doorway and out of the courtroom.

He was suddenly in a yard in the open with no memory of how he had got there. He was chained to other men and standing in the cruel mid-day sun. It was so strong that it hurt him to endure it.

He started to fall but was hauled upright by an ungentle hand. He could hear people laughing. Even the other chained men were laughing at him. Out of some dim recess of himself that knew what was really wrong with him, he dredged up a coherent sentence that told the truth.

‘I need a doctor,’ he said, and then everything disappeared around him again.

His next memory was of being in a cart with other men. His neighbour kept complaining bitterly and tried to push him away when he fell, lax, against him, bawling, ‘Sit up, can’t you, mate. You weigh a ton.’

‘Can’t,’ he said, and lost everything once more.

Then he heard someone calling out names. He was standing in a compound, surrounded by huts. He was still chained to other men. Guards stood about—somehow he knew that they were guards, though how he knew, he could not say. They were carrying muskets, old ones. How strange that he knew that they were old, since he knew so little of anything else!

Someone shouted ‘Waring!’

The man next to him prodded him roughly and said, ‘That’s you, ain’t it? For God’s sake, answer him so that we can get this over.’

He said ‘Yes?’ but it was really a question, not an affirmation, and before he could register anything more the world went dark again, a nasty habit it had which frightened him.

He awoke to find that he was lying in the shade and someone was holding a tin cup of water to his lips. He drank it greedily. A voice said, ‘This man’s not fit for work today. He appears to be in a drunken coma.’

‘No,’ he said. It seemed important to say it again. ‘I don’t drink.’ This time he was not greeted with laughter. Instead a hard face swam into view. ‘You’ve drunk enough to kill a horse, man. You’re sodden with liquor. Leave him to dry out. He should be fit tomorrow.’

After that he slept, or rather was unconscious, he was not sure which. Only that, in the morning when he awoke, for the first time since memory had begun in the courtroom he saw his surroundings quite plainly with an almost hurtful clarity, so that he wished that he were drunk again. Now this was an odd thought to have, and it disturbed him greatly, since he knew—how did he know?—that being drunk was something foreign to him.

The thought disappeared when the stomach cramps took him. After he had recovered and eaten a little, he was told to strip. He was given clean clothes—a coarse canvas shirt and trousers—and he put them on, shivering as he did so. He asked for shoes or boots—his had been removed, and the guards laughed at him.

‘No need, chum, you’re making roads, not walking on them.’

From some corner of his mind Fred grasped—if dimly—that he was part of a chain-gang building one of the new roads which was connecting Melbourne to the north. Not that he knew that he had been living in Melbourne when he had been sentenced to hard labour—he only found that out later.

He was clumsy and bewildered at first, because the whole world was strange, but one of his fellow prisoners was kind and helped him when they were fed at mid-day.

‘Keep your head down, mate, and always eat your grub up. You’ll not be able to work if you don’t, and then they’ll thrash you for being idle.’

His shrewd eyes saw more than the court officials or the chain-gang’s guards and overseers. ‘Ill, aren’t you? It’s not just the drink, is it?’

The man’s voice was coarse but kind. Fred’s short memory had no kindness in it, only curses, blows and kicks.

That night, for the first time, he dreamed of a tiger. It ran through his dreams, frightening him, while he looked for something which he had lost—and knew that he would never find again. This thought filled him with such desolation that it was almost worse than his fear of the tiger which nearly cornered him once.

In the morning the memory of the dreams stayed with him, and trying to remember what they reminded him of made his head hurt again—and the desire to drink almost destroyed him.

At this point in his effort to make sense of his brief past Fred opened his eyes and looked at the stars, bright above him in the clear night. He had seen them when he had been a prisoner in the chain-gang and in an odd way they comforted him. It puzzled him that he suddenly remembered some of their names quite clearly when he was not entirely sure of his own.

He had pointed the Southern Cross out to the man who had helped him, and who, when their time on the road gang was over, stayed with him when they were driven back to Melbourne and set free again. They were given a little money in return for their work, and Fred and Corny Van Damm, his new friend, turned into the first saloon they could find and within a few hours were lying dead drunk in the street again.

Corny looked after Fred, found him places to sleep where they wouldn’t be disturbed and protected him from the roughs who tried to steal his pitiful store of money from him. It was Corny who arranged transport for them to Ballarat where he told Fred that there would be easier pickings than in Melbourne. Corny also comforted Fred when he became distressed, usually something which occurred whenever Fred seemed to be on the verge of remembering his lost past.

The trouble was that every time that this began to happen it was not only Fred’s head which hurt him, but something else which seemed to be associated with his heart. This new pain was so strong that Fred found that the only way to overcome it was to drink himself into a stupor—whereupon it disappeared.

Corny also taught him to steal, beginning with fruit off stalls and barrows, but Fred wasn’t as clever at this as Corny. He was clumsy and got caught and kicked for his pains, but Corny looked after him as much as he could. One day a very bad thing happened. Corny was helping a stupefied Fred to find a nice corner to lie down in, out of the sun, when a pair of policemen stopped them.

The bigger one took a good hard look at them. His eyes widened when he saw Corny. ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘You’re Corny Van Damm. You went bushranging with Ryan’s lot.’

Corny let out a shrill cry, dropped poor Fred and bolted. One policeman ran after him, and the other bent over Fred and hauled him to the nick. Neither Fred nor the police ever saw Corny again—self-preservation being the name of his game. Without Corny Fred was lost. People tripped over him, and he was dragged in and out of the nick until Sam and Kirstie had arrived to free him, feed him, and promise him something of a future.

Remembering all this not only made Fred’s head hurt again, but disturbed him so much that when he finally slept not only did the tiger run through his dreams, trying to eat him, but somewhere in the background there was an old man who disapproved of him and frightened Fred even more than the tiger.

He shouted his distress and one of his new friends came to comfort him.

The odd thing was that when Fred woke up he remembered the tiger, but not the old man…

Sam decided that the new chum was to be put to work at once, and Fred, who had heard him tell Big Sister to feed him, was anxious to oblige him, never mind that Sam and Bart had thrown him into the water.

Fred had suffered from cramps in the night, and had begun to shout wildly in his sleep. Geordie, who shared a tent with Sam and Bart—Emmie and Kirstie slept in the hut for safety—heard him, and went outside to look after him.

He was thrashing blindly about. Geordie put a gentle hand on his shoulder and asked, ‘What is it, Fred?’

Fred opened his eyes, clutched at Geordie’s wrist and gasped, ‘It’s the tiger, Geordie! The tiger’s after Fred. Don’t let it catch him.’

‘Don’t worry, Fred. Sam, Bart and I will keep the tiger away. I’ll fetch you a drink of water and then you must try to sleep.’

‘Thank you, Geordie. Don’t let it catch you.’

‘It won’t, Fred.’

Fred drank the water down obediently and went back to sleep. The tiger was to run through his dreams for months but he never woke up shouting about it again, as though Geordie’s reassurance had made it toothless.

He enjoyed his breakfast. His head had cleared even more, and while he sat eating and drinking he really saw them all for the first time.

Sam was fair, well built and powerful, both in mind and body, the true leader of the party. Bart was dark and ox-like. He depended on Sam and Geordie for leadership and advice, but he was a tireless worker—and reliable. He always did what he said he would. All three of them were dressed in guernseys and moleskins, and Sam and Bart were heavily whiskered.

Geordie was small and sallow and, Fred came to understand later, somewhat sardonic. He was one of the few men in the diggings who was clean-shaven. His eyes were watchful, occasionally moving over Fred, assessing him slightly. Fred didn’t mind this. Geordie was his friend. He hadn’t thrown Fred about as the other two had. Geordie had given him these nice warm clothes, and had been kind: the tiger had been chasing Fred in the night but Geordie had made it go away.

The diggings were alive with noise and movement while Big Sister and Emmie Jackson handed round the grub. Big Sister, Fred thought, was a puzzle. She was nasty-nice. True, she gave Fred his grub, but she wasn’t pleased with him, Fred knew.

On the other hand, Fred could see how well she looked after everybody, even though she snapped at them, and cuffed large Pat and small Herbie when they were naughty. She had nice, fair hair even if it was screwed up. Her eyes were nice, too, bluey-green. They reminded Fred of someone, but every time he tried to remember who that someone was, he felt so sad and ill that he gave up trying to remember. He thought that he didn’t really want to know if knowing made his head hurt.

Big Sister looked after baby Rod, giving him his food, tying him up to the kitchen-table leg with his reins so that he couldn’t stray and get lost or hurt. In his new awareness he also saw that she looked after Emmie Jackson and her baby as well. It was a pity that Big Sister was so cross at times, particularly with Fred.