The Passing of a Cook
ALF THE NARK aroused the men at five-thirty that evening by beating an iron bar on the enormous triangle outside the kitchen. The gleam in his black eyes indicated that he was in a towering rage.
Cooking on an Australian station does not induce placidity of mind. In the first place it is a seven-day-a-week job; in the second it very often happens that one or more of the men are late to meals having been delayed by sheep-work in a paddock; and in the third place the hours are long, and the cement or wooden floor of a kitchen is particularly hard on a cook’s feet.
On account of these drawbacks cooks are scarce, good cooks are priceless, and all cooks are martinets. A cook’s uncertain temper is, therefore, regarded with the indulgence given to lumbago, or gout, the sufferer receiving all consideration and sympathy.
When Alf the Nark started work in a kitchen his temperament was well-nigh angelic; but when the first month had passed-and Alf had a ten-pound cheque behind him-the small worries of life began increasingly to annoy him. At the expiration of three months a man accidentally spilling his pannikin of tea on the table, or not removing his eating utensils to the wash-up table when passing out, was quite sufficient to cause the speechless Alf to remove his apron with dramatic gestures, go roll his swag, and almost run to the office for his cheque.’
This indecent haste to quit a job invariably caused great inconvenience to his employer and to the men, who were compelled to cook their own food the best way they could until another cook was procured. That did not worry Alf the Nark unduly. He walked, if he could not get a lift, into Mount Lion, and made straight for Mr Bumpus’s hotel but before he became quite drunk was “bailed up” by Father Ryan and persuaded to hand to the jovial little priest five pounds. Left in peace then to drink his fill whilst the balance of his cheque lasted, Alf passed a gorgeous week or ten days, leaning against the bar for sixteen hours and intermittently sleeping on the hotel wood-heap for the remaining eight.
The culminating brawl that preceded his escorted stroll to the one-cell gaol at the rear of Sergeant Morris’s house was never remembered. When finally he regained consciousness his limbs trembled as with palsy, and his companions were reptiles and insects seen elsewhere only on the planet Mars.
Thencame his appearance in the small court where the storekeeper, who was a Justice of the Peace, regarded him with judicial sternness. The sergeant or one of his troopers gave evidence after Alf had, as usual, pleaded “not guilty”, and the J.P. sentenced him to seven days without the option of a fine, as he had been advised to do by the sergeant before the court day.
Again in the cell, dishevelled, unwashed, tormented by dreadful multi-coloured creatures, Alf was presently visited by Father Ryan bearing the orthodox prescription of a stiff whisky-and-soda. Since Alf had eaten nothing solid during the whole of the debauch, the restorative doses of alcohol were given on the strict understanding that the prisoner drank a bowl of Mrs Morris’s soup.
By the time Alf the Nark was due for release Father Ryan had obtained for him another job. The grand old man never had any difficulty in getting Alf the Nark a job, for Alf the Nark was a most excellent cook-for three months. When the day of release came, Father Ryan escorted him to one of the stores, and there paid out the cash for what clothes and necessaries the man required, thereafter to lead him to the hotel, buy him one drink, and from the hotel escort him to the mail-car, pay his fare, and stand by him talking in his merry way till the car pulled out.
Alf the Nark, with many such another, worshipped Father Ryan. It mattered little to any one of them what religion Father Ryan represented. They respected him for his cloth as they would any other minister, but they loved him-well, because he was Father Ryan.
And when he had seen them go out of the township the little priest sighed, entered his book-filled study, and made up his accounts. Every penny that he so jovially demanded in “fines” was accounted for, and every penny expended in “doctoring his patients” and fitting them out for the jobs he found for them was also entered up. At the end of every month the sergeant and the J.P. were invited to audit his accounts, and they invariably did so, for Father Ryan was insistent.
After beating his triangle calling the men to dinner, Alf the Nark began to cut up two roast legs of mutton. Usually the first man entered the kitchen-dining-room precisely ten seconds after the triangle was struck, but this day the men were in bed and asleep, and it was fully ten minutes before the first of them arrived, having had to wash and dress.
“Soup?” snarled Alf.
“Please,”came the sleepy answer.
“Soup?” snarled Alf to the next man, and so on until all were seated and occupied. Then: “I’ve ’ad enough of this. Ifyous think I’m going to be on deckorl the blasted day and ’angabout ’ere ’arfthe night waiting foryous to greaseyer ’air, you’re mistaken. There’syer tucker. Eat it or chuck it art. I’m finished.”
With a superb gesture he ripped off his white apron and threw it on the floor. One of the men impolitely laughed. Alf became speechless and danced on the apron, and, still speechless, rushed out to his room, where feverishly he rolled his few belongings in his blankets, and almost ran to the office. Half an hour later, with his cheque in his pocket, he set out on the eighteen-mile tramp to Mount Lion, visions of whisky-bottles drawing him on, memory of fits of trembling, of awful depression, of frightful creepy tormenting things obliterated.
That night the men washed up their own utensils and cleaned out the kitchen-dining-room, and when Bony had performed his share he sauntered down the winding empty creek until he came to a fallen tree. There he sat and gazed out over the great plain whilst the sun went down, and marvelled at the stupidity of men and the sinister influence of the bush which so greatly augments their stupidity.
Quite suddenly he remembered the two letters slyly given to him by Sergeant Morris, and these he took from a pocket and examined the superscriptions. That addressed to him in his wife’s handwriting he opened first, and read:
Banyo, nr. Brisbane.
Dearest Bony,
Detective Holland came out from town yesterday especially to tell me that you had left Sydney for the Western DivisionN. S. Wales, on another case. He says that Colonel Spender is very angry, because you went to Sydney only to finalize a case and have gone off without authority, especially when there is a murder case giving them trouble out of Longreach.
We are all disappointed, too, because we were looking forward to a walkabout beyond Winton. When are you coming back? We haven’t had a walkabout now for nearly nine months, and you know how it is with us. Little Ed is going to the Banyo school next week. Bob wants to go west and get a fob on astation, and I know you won’t like that. You had better come home and stop him…
Do come home, dear Bony. But there, I know you won’t until your present case is finalized. Charles is going up for his University entrance exam the week after next. He is going to be like you, but like you and me and all of us the bush will get him in the end. It’s in our blood and can’t be resisted.
We send our love, dearest Bony. All are well.
Marie.
The handwriting was neat, the spelling faultless. The writer was a half-caste like Bony, and in her way an equally satisfactory product of mission station education. Bony was smiling gently when he replaced the sheet in its dainty mauve envelope and thought of the pride of his life, his eldest son Charles, to whom he had bequeathed most of his mental gifts, and then of the lad who was always unhappy at school, always pining for the bush. The call of the bush was knocking at Bob’s heart almost as soon as he could walk, whilst the call came to his wife and himself much later in life, but nevertheless was equally insistent, equally compelling.
Once more he smiled, this time a little morebroadly, when he ripped open the official envelope from Headquarters, Brisbane. The typed part was terse and to the point. Below his name and rank it read: You are hereby notified that you are allowed six weeks’ leave of absence without pay, as from October 1st, 1924. Should you fail to report at the expiration of this period your appointment will automatically cease.
It was signed by Colonel Spender, Chief Commissioner, Queensland Police, and under the signature a vicious ink-splashing pen had inscribed three further words: You are sacked.
Whilst returning this communication to its envelope Bony chuckled, for he could so easily visualize the colonel’s purple face when he dashed down these three words with final impulsiveness. As in the past, he would, when the Marks case was finalized, report for duty. He would be shown into the Chief Commissioner’s office, there to receive a lecture on discipline and asked pointedly how the devil and what the devil he thought the service would be without it… “and for heaven’s sake go and help that fool to find out who stole the Toowoomba Bank cash and bonds!” or “assist that ass on the Cairns murder case!”
Presently he rose and in the soft warm darkness walked back to the men’s quarters, where he accompanied the accordion-player on a succession of box-tree leaves.
At six o’clock he was up cooking the men’s breakfast; and the men, who thought they would have had to cook their own meals, were highly gratified. To Jeff Stanton, who came into the kitchen after he had given out his orders, he said in his calm manner:
“I do not like cooking, but I will carry on until you can get a cook. I hope that will be soon.”
“I telephoned to Father Ryan last night, Bony. There is no cook in Mount Lion wanting a job just now. I’ll do all I can to get one. How much have you been making on your breaking-in contract?”
“Somewhere about seven pounds a week.”
“Well, that’s a stiff price to pay a cook. But I’ll pay you that in wages as a cook. The men must have a cook, and it is unfair that you should receiveless wages as a cook than you were making breaking-in horses.”
“But for the money I would rather break-in horses,” Bony said, yet was pleased that Alf had left hurriedly.