“Great day, Mister,” said the craftsman.
“It is, Mr Penwarden.”
“Ah, now! How did ’e know my name?”
“The weather hasn’t quite obliterated it from over your door,” replied Bony. “My name is Rawlings. Staying at the hotel for a week or so. You’re very busy this morning.”
“Aye, I’m allus busy, Mr Rawlings, sir.” The old man’s eyes were as blue and as clear as those of the dark-complexioned man who seated himself on a sawing-horse and made a cigarette. He was seventy if a day, and his mind was as alert as it had been forty-odd years before. “You see, Mr Rawlings, the Great Enemy never gives himself a spell. He rushes here and there tappin’ this one on the shoulder and that one, and it ’pears to me the only way to beat him is to keep as busy as he is. He don’t take notice of busy people. Hasn’t got the time when there’s so many folk too tired to appreciate the joys of living.”
“There is certainly nothing better than an occupied mind and busy hands to keep the Enemy you mentioned at bay, Mr Penwarden.” Bony knew, but he asked the question: “Have you been long in this district?”
“I built this forge and workshop pretty near sixty years ago,” replied the workman. “Twenty-one I was then, and just out of me apprenticeship to a wheelwright. No motee cars and trucks them days. No flash roads to Lorne and on to Apollo Bay. Only the old track from Geelong. In summer the track was feet-deep in dust, and in winter yards-deep in mud.”
Bony gave another cursory glance about the ancient building, ancient but still sound. Verging upon a discovery, he left the saw bench to study the wall and roof beams and rafters at closer range. The old man watched him, in his eyes an expression of enormous satisfaction, but on Bony returning to the saw bench he was working with the plane.
“You didn’t drive in one nail,” Bony said, almost accusingly. “All you used were wood pins, and I can’t see where they were driven in.”
“That’s right,” agreed Penwarden, proceeding to adjust the plane. “I’ve a flash house down the road a bit. Old woman had to have her built the years war came, and she’ll be rotted out afore this shop starts to wobble in a sou’-easterly gale. Houses! They build ’em with raw wood full of borers and plaster and putty and a dab or two of paint. There’s mighty few jobs left these days for a real live tradesman. Me, I won’t work with such trash ... exceptin’ on a certain kind of job which no one looks at for long.”
“That’s a beautiful board you’re working on now,” Bony observed. “Looks to me like red-gum.”
The blue eyes shone.
“Ha, ha! So you know a thing or two, eh? Thought you might when I set eyes on you. Red-gum she is. I get these boards sent down special from Albury. They come from ring-barked trees on the Murray River flats, and ring-barked wood or wood killed by water will last for ever. None of your three-ply veneered to look like silky oak is good enough for my special customers. One time I could give ’em teak. Now it has to be red-gum, and I ain’t sure I likes teak the best, neither.”
“And what are you going to do with it?”
“Build her into a coffin. Like to see one almost done?”
“I think I would,” answered Bony, a trifle slowly. The coffin-maker put down his plane with care not to jar the blade, and said:
“Lots of us take comfort in thinkin’ we’ll be lying snug when we’re dead. There’s graveyards and graveyards. Some is nice and dry, and some is as wet and cold as a bog. Then again, cremation is against The Book, which says that on the Last Day the bones of the dead shall be drawn together. Can’t be if they’re all burned up.”
He turned from the bench and Bony stood to follow him. Waving a hand contemptuously to the stack of ‘boxes’, he went on:
“Don’t look at them over there. Three-ply and gum and tin-tacks to hold ’em together. They’ll give you a squint if you looks at that trash what I send to Melbourne for ten pounds apiece and are sold to the dead for fifty. Come this way, and I’ll show you what a coffin should be.”
Bony accompanied the carpenter to a small room and stood beside trestles set up in the centre and supporting something covered with an old and moth-eaten black velvet cloth.
“You don’t see a coffin like this every day,” Penwarden said as he faced his visitor above the pall. “Times is changed. People don’t think about next week, tomorrow. They don’t worry about being a nuisance to their relations or the State when they perish. No pride these days ... get through work as quickly as possible for as much as possible ... and refuse to do any thinkin’ because thinkin’ hurts.”
He whisked away the cloth.
The casket was like a slab of ruby-red marble, producing the illusion of colour-depth as does red wine. Save for the two plated handles either side, there was no ornamentation. The surfaces were as smooth as glass and the colour matchless.
The old man lifted the cover, watching always Bony’s face to detect his reactions. Bony bent over the lid, and stooped to examine the ends and the sides ... and failed utterly to see the joins. The casket might have been fashioned in one piece from the heart of a tree.
Their gaze clashed, and the old man closed the lid when the air faintly hissed at the final compression. Again he raised and closed the lid, and again there was the sound of air being caught in a trap. The lid was raised yet again and poised on the side to which it was hinged, and Bony bent to see into the interior and to note the curved floor to take the back and the curved rest for the neck. Finally, he stood away and gazed at the coffin maker without speaking.
“Inside is only the natural gloss,” Penwarden said. “I do a lot to the outside to bring up that colour in the wood. Nothing wrong with her to sleep in for a long time, is there?”
“Nothing,” softly agreed Bony.
Penwarden caressed the lid before closing it, and his hands fluttered like butterflies as he wiped away the finger marks and drew the cover over the casket.
“Got two like it at home,” he said, cheerfully. “One for me, and t’other for the old woman. They rest under the bed. Our shrouds are in ’em, too. Now and then the old woman opens ’em up and airs the shrouds and pops a bit of lavender in. My father and mother had their coffins waitin’ for ’em, and my grandfather brought his’n with him on the ship from England. Ah yes, times is changed, but us Penwardens don’t change, and there’s others what don’t change, neither.”
“They must be rare, these people,” Bony commented, when following the craftsman back to his bench.
“You say true, Mr Rawlings, sir, you say true. And gettin’ rarer.”
“How long does it occupy to make a coffin like that in the other room?”
“Well, it would be guessing. I don’t work on one continuous. Tallying the time, I suppose it’d take me thirty ten-hour days ... I must have begun that one three months back. You see, there’s them other jobs to slap up with glue and tacks. I’m always behind orders with them.”
“And the cost?”
“Depends,” replied the old man, and the note in his voice barred further questioning on this angle.
Pensively, Bony watched the plane glide to and fro along the red-gum board, and the shavings which fell to the floor, already deep with shavings, were wafer-thin. The over-long white hair tended to obscure the workman’s vision, and now and then he would toss back his head. The bare arms were fatless and hard, the legs encased by drill were sturdy and strong.