The Unknown Industrial Prisoner Read online

  ‘There’s the phone inside and here’s the wall. Like that. So? You couldn’t get at it. What did I do? I says to the Good Shepherd, why not make a hole in the wall, nice and neat and put the phone on a little ledge in the middle and you could get at it from both sides? OK. The Good Shepherd always sees sense where there’s sense and he gets the contractor to bash a hole in the wall. Comes knock-off and a new shift, we pass the information on about my idea, but the maintenance men are in a different division. They don’t get any messages, so they wall it up again nice and neat. Night shift does nothing. Next day we bash the hole in again, maintenance patch it up. Three weeks that went on.’

  Cinderella shook her head, finished her can, went to the toilet and back to the comfort shed, open again for business.

  Who will condemn them for trying to imitate their leader and be earthy, loud, mean, generous, shifty, gay? For being sometimes fascinated by being alive? For wanting to be alive in no other age than this one for the simple reason that they were workers, slaves from time immemorial and therefore at home in all ages.

  Once they stepped ashore on the stone-slabbed bank and made their pilgrimage through the thick mangroves and entered the magic circle, they couldn’t help enjoying each day as if there had been no fall.

  SILVER BELL The Great White Father experimented with special calls on the Puroil steam siren, but the management was alerted by an ill-disposed prisoner, so the prince of prisoners commandeered a bell from a museum. It was once ship’s bell on a pleasure craft plying from Sydney to Broken Bay the century before.

  It was a beautiful thing—its tone like highly polished silver—and rang clearly but not loudly from the dense mangroves over the river and on a fine day could be heard at the blue gates. It was rung when a new girl came on, and in emergencies. So far there were no emergencies.

  It reminded some of the prisoners of a church bell and the Two Pot Screamer suggested the hideaway be called The Church in the Wild Wood or The Refuge of the Latter Day Saints, but the Great White Father didn’t want his underground movement contaminated by association with religion, which was famous for making men kiss and polish their chains.

  THE STINK OF SLAVERY At nine o’clock the Great White Father woke and it was a new day. He strolled into the drink hut and swallowed a can of Gold Label.

  ‘Had a dream about atoms,’ he announced. ‘Some with single bonds, some with double and others, like carbon, with four bonds. I was just on the point of making a tremendous discovery that would tie up the behaviour and the future of man with the theory of chemical bonding, when what d’you think stopped me?’ He stopped impressively, standing at the head of the trestle table with one can of Gold Label high in the air.

  ‘You got up for a wee-wee,’ ventured Desert Head, aiming a crack at his own skull to disperse his constant halo of mosquitoes.

  ‘No,’ said the Great White Father. ‘I remembered this is Animal Week and I’ve got to take the ferret for a run!’ He bounded outside and flew in at Cinderella’s front door, his long legs only touched the ground twice between the two sheds. Thump! He descended on the bed, there was a second of quiet, then he came crashing back into the drink hut with a fine disregard for his limbs and years.

  ‘Who’s been eating salmon and onion sandwiches?’ he bellowed.

  A small voice piped up, ‘Me.’ It was the Angry Ant, squatting quietly in a dark corner of the shed after visiting Cinderella. He loved the hoots, he thought she pretended with the others and he was the only one who actually forced the hoots out of her.

  ‘Got any left, Angry?’ asked the Great White Father.

  ‘Half a one,’ said the Angry Ant. ‘Here, take it. I’ll starve.’ The Great White Father accepted the sandwich, shoved it all into his cavernous mouth, chewed a couple of times, then swallowed.

  ‘Must fight fire with fire’ he said, and bounded back to Cinderella singing at the top of his voice the first two lines of the Workers’ Anthem,

  He who works and does his best,

  Gets bugger-all just like the rest,

  to the great hymn-tune Aberystwyth. The hooting revived immediately. Urgent, vibrant, triumphant.

  Humdinger amused himself by creeping up on each of his friends and shoving his fingers under their noses. They had all been at the same girl but there was something objectionable about being reminded of it.

  But even in these surroundings, where the better life had a chance to flourish and where their souls had a chance to grow fat to resist the daily grinding at the works, even here, out of sight of industry, seemingly so safe from the pestilence of work amid the pleasures and luxury they brought with them and renewed daily, even here they took the smell of death with them. Death by plague. They thought the Great White Father was joking when he came back from Cinderella and told them that while he was on the nest he had conceived more ideas for improving the hideaway; naming the sheds properly, painting inside and out and putting a roof over the little courtyard between the sheds. The work would be pleasant because it was for themselves, but it was still work and the smell of it had followed them even here.

  ‘Well, home to Mum and into bed!’ yelled the Humdinger, confident someone would supply him with the reply he wanted. Sure enough. The Sumpsucker poked his head round the door and called, ‘Home to bed and into Mum! If you’re lucky you’ll get home before she gets out of bed. That’s what I do with my widow!’ He would also take home a non-returnable polymer catalyst drum—empty—as a present for her. She had no use for the drums, but felt he should pay something for the use of her facilities. The drums were black and three feet high and filled half her backyard.

  His widow was not offended, like many of the younger wives, by the sour gas smell that penetrated the prisoners’ clothing. Sumpy got a warm reception no matter what his personal condition. Many men, though, whose wives were unwilling to accept the fact that they, just as much as their husbands, were employees of a foul-smelling refinery, were compelled by the boss in the home to keep their street clothes separate from their work clothes, which were denied entry to the family wardrobes. They changed for work in the laundry. As if the fact of their subordination, their dependence on a large industrial enterprise, was something not to be admitted in private.

  CHRISTENING ‘Prisoners all!’ intoned the Great White Father. ‘All of us were born in this industrial prison. Maybe not in the Termitary and Grinding Works, but in suburban wings of the same complex. It is safer for most of us to be shackled in our chains than to be free to fend for ourselves.’

  He punched a can.

  ‘What we have to do is make our little hole in the barbed wire and creep out now and again to our hidey hole where we can forget we are born prisoners and will die prisoners, a little place where there are no bosses and no commands, where nothing we say is taken down and used against us.’

  He finished the can.

  ‘This is our hole in the wall!’ Cheering and a great opening of cans. Another can was slid along the table top. It stopped near his great brown bony hand.

  ‘With the Home Beautiful to come to, life can be made bearable!’

  He had christened his hideaway and headquarters.

  ‘The Home Beautiful!’ The flimsy hut vibrated to the toast. They drank gladly.

  ANARCHY AND ALCOHOL ‘Friends and fellow crabs nestling in the warm armpits and other smelly crevices of Puroil, I have news for you! I am at the end of a period of psychic research, under the influence of an old miracle drug.’

  He held aloft a can of Gold Label, solemnly drained it. Cinderella hooted ten yards away like a busy tug in a fog.

  ‘Those who have gone before us are malicious, waiting above our heads to destroy us. You see, they have arranged the world so that we are more closely prisoned than they were. Every year the screws of supervision pinch us tighter. Even to those of us who are more free than others, they have given an awareness that sharpens our sense of confinement. Everything that spreads this human influence wider over the earth, spreads w
ider the net that meshes us in. It’s our pleasure to escape from this net as often as we can—through the cyclone wire or off the end of the wharf—to our glorious Home.’

  ‘What if they pull down the mangroves?’ piped up the Ant, quoting a rumour.

  ‘Get behind me, Satan. You smell not of man but of machines. To help us survive the coming machine age we must cultivate our peculiarly human abilities and attributes. Machines can’t be beaten at their own game, but the bigger governments and organizations get, the more escape holes there are. We’ll never go short of a Home Beautiful even if we have to burrow underground! In the last resort democracy or dictatorship, freedom or slavery are in here.’ A hand on his stomach. ‘No matter who’s giving the orders. They can’t beat us—’ he moistened his voice passages briefly ‘—while our aim is to drink till the bald moon’s hairy. You know the ones the system finishes off? Those who rely on foremen and show an obedient spirit, those who show initiative in their work, those who make suggestions, those who step back and let others go first. And those who think the company’s fair dinkum and will reward those who look after its interests.’

  The people he was speaking to nodded, but they were the very ones the Great White Father described. To a man they felt in their bones merit was rewarded, that the company could see into the heart and was a just parent who handed out appropriate rewards for nice conduct and for sucking up to its petty officers. None of them had a clue that the higher ranks, though their technical knowledge was greater and their shirts white, were the same sort of people as themselves, scrimmaging for scraps that fell from richer men’s tables, dobbing their lifelong friends as soon as they imagined they were in the slightest danger of disapproval from above.

  His few hearers settled further into their places; listening and not listening. The words were enough, the deep, penetrating voice and the great man’s concern for their tiny fates. The hooting came slower. It should have stopped. Someone was holding out, getting his half-hour’s worth.

  ‘When I was a boy I first woke up to our sort of economy when I saw string being wasted. If I’d rescued it from the waste bins, that would have been stealing. It had to be burned in the proper way. Like the overalls and boots. Burned and written off. Take one out the gate they dismiss you for theft. Built on waste. Why all the records at the top office? They burn ’em in a touching little ritual at the tip. Why keep ’em in the first place? Why make all this colossal mess in the first place? Why the gasoline? So a few million motorists can burn it up going from nowhere to nowhere, then come back and buy some more. We can’t even say, Look! I made this! I’m proud of it! The damn stuff’s gone up in smoke.’

  He sat down, his eyes glazed with alcohol and anarchy. He continued from a sitting position, legs sprawled. The hoots stopped, then started again after half a minute. Cinderella was coining money.

  ‘Beware the evils of temperance and sobriety and embrace the worship of the bottle! Beware the dangers of isolation from your fellow man in haunts of coot and hernia! Every man needs homoeopathic exposure to germs and windy ideas. The temperate man sees the same world always, the proper inebriate finds the world never presents the same aspect twice. The bottle keeps a man away from his family, preventing over-exposure and low ratings. Stops him working about the place. Diminishes self-esteem which is a good thing, the world of keeping up with appearances and neighbours is a world well lost. Be not led into the wretchedness of right conduct. Temperance drains off surplus money into the maw of commerce. Without the bottle there’s women always hanging around for wrong reasons; you become a victim of intolerance, covered with the bruises of respectability, narrow and evil-minded. Compare this with our present seclusion with the eternal bottle as god. Let me give you an example of early man’s lead in the matter. One of my ancestors was a missionary in Northern Rhodesia—grog forgive him—and he found the noble savages in obedience to custom everlasting had grain for bread and grain for beer and every year or so they endured a cruel shortage of food rather than touch the grain set aside for the beer. With such a magnificent lead from primitive man, what else can we do but drink? Drink! And the deliverer from this bondage and the refuge to which you fly are in you!’

  The hoots stopped. A quickie.

  TENTACLES Prison sounds followed prisoners wherever they went. Sleeping by day, off night shift, the scream of motor mowers and power tools brought the life of the factory into every backyard; and radio and television with their howl of advertising extended the market place into every private house.

  CORROSIVE PRAYER The man next door to the Samurai was a fireman, also a shiftworker. His wife was working and he was alone with his dogs, for he was a great lover of dogs and of what they could do for him. His dogs were greyhounds and provided they had the best of care they were very little trouble. One had become sick with distemper before he could arrest the disease and although to his wife and relations and anyone who cared to listen he was overpowering on the subject of his love for dogs and the money they won in races, he was at the mercy of a disastrously quick temper. The Samurai was also at its mercy. He had a sleep of perhaps five hours to look forward to and had enjoyed only an hour, so that at nine o’clock, when the Great White Father was bounding amorously from shed to shed at the Home Beautiful, the Samurai was wakened from the deep, dreamless sleep of the shiftworker by sounds of terror and hysteria under his window. The man next door had despaired of the dog’s recovery and reacted with his usual speed.

  There he was, unselfconsciously wielding a hammer. He got in a good blow on the dog’s head, having thoughtfully taken the precaution of muzzling it, though if you asked him point blank he would have been surprised if you suggested one of his dogs might bite him. The dog’s legs gave out and the howling beast was reduced to dragging itself along on its underparts. The man was upset by this time and ended by dispatching the dog with several dozen poorly aimed blows with an axe, weeping all the time. He buried the dog behind his outside lavatory—an unsewered area—and because he was fond of animals and had a special love for that dog, he sliced off one of its ears and kept it in his pocket in a matchbox.

  The man went to bed and slept soundly, but sleep was gone for the Samurai. He was tortured by the man’s cruelty and by the inaction that his own private principles of conduct bound him to. First it was the other man’s dog and second, the man was smaller than the Samurai. The Samurai would have been less frustrated if he had been a smaller man: the range of his adversaries then would have been so much greater. He could with honour fight only an equal or larger man. Such a man might beat him, but defeat was honourable.

  A prayer on his wall, written on a piece of cardboard, consisted of three words: Help, Care, Listen. Confronted with a situation that did not call for violent action, he found that Help, Care, Listen often fitted well. Since he was a man of action, he had no fretful thoughts about the corrosive effect on himself of his short motto with its suggestive initials, HCL, which he repeated to himself as he tried to find a way to help the man next door. This good intention kept him awake for the remainder of his sleeping time.

  PRIVATE MORALS Back at the plant by three, working a love-shift for a man who’d run out of sick-pay, he moved among the men of a strange shift like a man apart. His week of seven night shifts weighed heavy on him. Several of the shift, noting his dazed condition and because of it moving in for a quick thrust, taunted him with being hungry, believing he was called in on overtime. Many left their phone numbers prominently displayed so they might be called in on days off. He wouldn’t bother to correct them. The trouble with a private system like the Samurai’s was that others had to learn, over a period, where the boundaries were they could not cross.

  He walked out on the plant at sundown, checking over his plant knowledge, following lines. The cracker was a graft on to a patchwork of old plants. Puroil expected men to acclimatize to the old, the feeble, the makeshift, but this was new. It should work.

  The sunset was magnificent, but it was butchered by a few
malicious minutes, and fell in ruins to discoloured cloud.

  There was a little flurry after dark. The Good Shepherd visited the wharf while girls were there; not everyone took advantage yet of the privacy of the Home Beautiful. These girls were rowed from Clearwater Bridge directly to the wharf.

  Quick Tip, quick on the uptake, barred the doorway with his thick body and racing conversation—he had been a bookie’s penciller in real life—while the others got the girls into lockers. Since you could open all the narrow-shouldered lockers with a paper clip, this took only a few seconds. The Good Shepherd left after they had given him a cup of tea. Part of his saintliness was in accepting their tea in mugs tasting of mouth and brewed in their urn. Socks were washed in it. After he left, the gallant seamen of the wharf continued their exercises.

  ‘Back to navel manoeuvres!’ shouted Quick Tip joyfully. It was a phrase coined by the Two Pot Screamer, who delighted in making up words for others to say.

  But the time was ripe to take the women off the job. No consultations were held, no meetings arranged, the general trend of thought moved naturally and gratefully in the direction of the Home Beautiful.

  DIGNITY OF LABOUR The Samurai was eating. He found a neutral seat to occupy and this was important. There were invisible priorities to the tiny patches of seating space available in the amenities room; special places for sitting and staring at certain spots on the floor. Some sat and stared vacant and unseeing at the floor for seven days till pay day. A few adventurous ones ascended to the top of the structure and followed the movie at the Jerriton drive-in.