She was standing on a box in one of Sydney’s side streets. A small group of people surrounded her, their upturned faces flushed from neon lights. It was a cold night and some wore shabby overcoats; but she had no overcoat, only a blue, woollen jumper above her grey, flannel frock.
She was a thin woman, with a smile that contained no mirth. Yet it wasn’t an unpleasant smile. It gave one the impression of having been born of some astonishment experienced a long time ago; and the astonishment had never left her. Her eyes were wide open, a little distraught, as if she saw in the darkness beyond the group things that she did not understand.
I went over. I took out my notebook to record some impressions. I stood beside a man who glanced at the notebook in my hand. The self-satisfied thrust of his feet to the earth was in keeping with the smug expression.
‘Are you a writer?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I replied.
‘I thought so,’ he said and he turned to his companion. ‘I can always tell ’em,’ he told him.
‘Besides Paul, who are the other ones, the mighty ones?’ cried the woman from the box.
She waited for an answer. A fat man with puffed, unshaven cheeks who was standing directly before her in front of the group spat contemptuously. ‘Ah, keep quiet!’ he said disgustedly.
‘You are full of drink, brother,’ said the preacher.
The words galvanised the man into sudden action. He snatched off his hat and threw it to the ground.
‘Who said that?’ he cried, and staggered sideways as if an attack upon him was an imminent thing.
‘Go ahead, lass,’ said a large woman, dismissing, on behalf of us all, this unimportant digression. ‘Yer’a great speaker. God bless ya.’
This woman was very tall. She frequently turned and smiled benignantly on those behind her. Her powerful arms were folded across large breasts that lolled heavily upon her chest. Occasionally she nodded her head to selected ones as if confirming the arguments of the speaker.
‘You see, dear people,’ the preacher continued, ‘if you accept God’s word he writes your name down in the Lamb’s book of God.’
‘Hell, he must have a lot of pencils!’ said the drunk.
This flippant remark expanded the big woman’s nostrils in the manner of a horse scenting battle.
‘I’ll hit him, s’elp me God I will,’ she informed us.
‘Hey!’ she addressed the man. ‘I’m big and powerful, you know. When I hit you’ll stay hit. I’ll slap you down, son. Shut up!’
This aggressive remark momentarily sobered the man, who exclaimed in astonishment, ‘Well, PU go to buggery!’ He gazed contemplatively at the ground, adjusting himself to this sudden revelation into woman’s complexity. He fumbled for his pipe and, finding it, thrust it aggressively between his teeth.
‘Smoking is a curse, brothers,’ cried the preacher, pointing at the man. ‘Smoking and drink. Ah, people!’ she continued, clasping her hands in front of her. ‘You love your smoke better than you love God.’
‘Jesus would’ve smoked,’ announced the drunk in justification of the habit.
The preacher, stung by this sacrilege, drew herself indignantly erect.
‘My God, smoke—never,’ she cried.
‘Good on ya, lass,’ cried the big woman.
‘Didn’t Jesus make wine come from the rock?’ demanded the drunk.
‘Do keep quiet, sir,’ pleaded the preacher.
‘Shut up, you,’ growled the big woman making a threatening movement towards the man. She reached over and grabbed his tattered felt hat. She threw it to the ground where, a few minutes before, it had had the significance of a gauntlet.
Her action gave her the greatest satisfaction. She laughed in a manner that included, and made us, all a party to the deed. At the same time she subjected us to a leisured survey that forestalled criticism.
‘You with the cigarette,’ cried the preacher pointing at me. ‘Where will you go when you die?’
I hastily removed the cigarette and wilted under the impact of many eyes.
‘I will save you,’ she promised me at the top of her voice.
The drunk with great difficulty raised his leg and pointed the tattered boot towards the woman. ‘You old Jesus-chasers couldn’t save the sole of me boot,’ he cried.
‘Jesus will give you the crown of life,’ screamed the preacher exultantly.
A one-armed man, upon whose hollow cheeks the fluff and dirt of his last sleeping place still clung to the covering of stubble, pushed forward and called out wildly:
‘For Christ’s sake take my life and be done with it! What’s the good of it to me.’
‘God said . . .’ went on the preacher.
‘He didn’t say not to have a smoke,’ interrupted the drunk.
‘. . . That the rich with their silver and gold are going to burn,’ she shrieked.
‘Listen to me,’ began the man with one arm.
‘Go ’way will you,’ growled the big woman who moved towards him as she spoke. ‘You’re only a lunatic.’
The man raised his one arm defensively and backed into the crowd.
‘God can make a man of you, sir,’ called the preacher as he turned away from her.
‘Do ya reckon,’ he replied sarcastically over his shoulder.
A small woman, her face loosely wrapped in an excess of leathery skin, touched my arm and said, gently, ‘Give me half a cigarette.’
I held a packet towards her. As she drew the white cigarette out she muttered fervently:
‘I wish you luck. I’ll ask the good old Saviour to give you a go. My old Saviour . . . I wish you luck. I’ll pray for you.’
She raised her eyes heavenwards and lowered them again. The one-armed man bumped her roughly as he forced his way through the group. She turned on him swiftly.
‘I hope everything you do hurts you, s’elp me God I do,’ she said savagely.
‘Why, it’s only nineteen hundred years since he was here,’ shouted the drunk in answer to a declaration from the preacher.
‘You know why he’s not here,’ she answered triumphantly. ‘He’s choosing a bride in his own image and the bride will be sealed.’
This statement convulsed the drunk with mirth. He slapped his thigh and doubled up as if in pain. He staggered with laughter; then he suddenly straightened, feeling that the reason for his reaction was lost on those behind him. He faced them and, with one hand in the air, kept repeating:
‘Didja hear that! Oh, my God, didja hear that!’
The woman on the box started to sway hypnotically. ‘Let your sins go. Let them go,’ she cried; then, with sudden power, she raised her voice to a scream, ‘We’re all dying. Everyone here is dying.’
This dire prophecy jerked the drunk from a temporary abstraction. He looked at the preacher with his mouth open; then he turned to me and said, fearfully, ‘There’s something. There must be.’
‘Come to me all ye that labour,’ cried the preacher.
‘By God I’m feeling queer! I can see the light!’ announced the drunk to those around him.
‘Grace is the favourite of God.’
The large woman who had moved so that she stood beside me bent to my ear and remarked:
‘Grace Darling wrote a book, you know.’
‘Did she!’ I answered.
‘You are a writer, eh?’
‘I do a little.’
Her face assumed a conspiratorial expression. She opened a window in her eyes; then they narrowed and she whispered, ‘Like to come with me tonight?’
‘No thank you,’ I said.
Her expression immediately changed, as if she had suddenly closed the window; and she exclaimed, with an air of dismissal, ‘Forget it.’
‘So you are a writer,’ she went on with a change of attitude. ‘So am I. Have you ever read “Tess of the Storm Country”?’
‘Yes.’
‘I wrote that.’
‘Very good, too,’ I said.
The preacher had finished her tirade and had left the soap box. She looked spent.
The big woman placed her arm around the preacher’s drooping shoulders and said, ‘What us three ought to do is to worship God on our own—meet of a night, like, and do some worshipping where there ain’t nobody drunk, or that.’
She was interrupted by the drunk, who touched her shoulder and whispered, ‘Like a drink? I gotta bottle.’
‘Got any money?’ asked the woman over her shoulder, her arm still clasping the preacher.
‘I got a coupla bob.’
‘I’ll be with you in a minute.’
She again turned to us and continued, ‘Just the three of us, singing to God.’
‘Have you been saved?’ the preacher asked me.
‘Come on,’ demanded the drunk, becoming impatient.
‘I think I have been,’ I said.
‘I’ve got to go,’ said the big woman. She patted the preacher on the shoulder. ‘You did a good job, lass; God bless you.’
She took the drunk’s arm possessively and with confident steps piloted him away into the shadows of the little street.