Chapter 23

23

Mum and Dad’d allowed me, briefly to come home for one of the school holidays but only Dad was there to greet me.

After I got off the train on Saturday morning, the red dust began to cover my school uniform—a grey pinafore, white shirt and green tie in an Oxford knot. I’d curled up the sides of my grey hat and stuck the white, grey and green star school badge to the front, then hung the hat low over my eyes. I hoped I’d looked like the Lone Ranger or the lonesome stranger who rode into town. The air had no moisture in it. There’d been no rain and there was no likelihood of it.

Aunty Bloss’d told me that Dad had tried to set up a fruit and veggie business in an effort to get out of the shearing sheds.

‘It’s just like being married to a shoeshine boy or a beggar going from door to door.’ Mum’s voice shook with rage and shame. ‘You needn't think I’m going to help you make a fool of yourself and the rest of us.’

Mum’s Uncle and his sister hadn’t spoken to each other for fifty years because she’d married a Scot from a mob that had been a sworn enemy for centuries. Mum followed their example. She tried to pretend she’d never seen Dad before.

After Dad brought in fresh fruit and vegetables twice a week on the train, the other shops did the same thing. They stocked the same produce as Dad, only cheaper. Although everyone liked Dad and thought well of him, if they could buy something cheaper somewhere else they would.

Without Mum’s help, Dad’s new business venture became as crippled as his back. He gave it away. After that the stores doubled their prices and everyone began to grumble. Dad went back to shearing.  

‘It’s the way of the world,’ Dad limped down the platform. ‘They never miss you until you’re gone. Give a bloke a hand.’ He put his hand on my shoulder to slowly walk to the ute. ‘Got a cramp.’ He winced as he climbed into the cabin. I felt incredibly guilty for getting Bs instead of As.

‘We have to go to The Mish first,’ Dad said. ‘Got some work on.’ We bumped down the riverbed and rattled down the road. After he parked, Dad stared darkly over the steering wheel for a minute or so before he got out.

White men were in the bough hut with The Mish women. They’d had enough to still be merry, chiacking each other and giving one another a shove but if they had a few more it’d be on. I pushed open the ute’s rusty door and stepped onto the red dirt.

While Dad rummaged around in the back of the ute I went over to Uncle Lincoln’s humpy. All the kids had gathered there in a silent huddle. Lincoln was cradling a baby. Aunty Pearl and Old Granny were holding several more. Fragile desperation wafted through the campfire smoke and mingled with their cigarettes.

I gave them all a quick kiss and a hug.

Some kids shuffled over on the log so I could sit down. Everyone greeted Dad warmly. He wanted to show them his latest invention. Pearl and Granny inspected the packets Dad handed to them while Lincoln was admiring the apparatus Dad gave him.

‘It’ll kill the taste and smell of the mulga in the meat.’ Dad showed them how the long shiny silver cylinder with a needle at the end would work. ‘Instead of brinin’ the meat, what you do is mix up what flavourin’ you want and use it instead. You got different ones in them packets there. You put it in the cylinder, ram the needle into the meat then pump it in.’

Everyone had fed their stock on mulga for years. No one could remember what the meat originally tasted like. People were sick and tired of it so Dad had put his brain to work and come up with the idea of changing the taste of it so people could have a leg of mutton that tasted like pork or chicken.

‘Gee that’s a good idea,’ Lincoln said admiringly.

One of the men beckoned Dad over to the bough hut. As he limped over to see what they wanted, Granny and Pearl took the children and the babies inside their humpies for a nap. Lincoln gave the brine pump to one of the kids to put it inside his humpy for safe keeping.

Lincoln watched Dad as he slowly made his way to the bough hut. ‘He’s had that spasm for weeks. It’s cramped him into the shearing position and he can’t get out of it. He’s putting on a brave face but shearing’s a brutal job and we’re not getting any younger.’

It was dirty, hot, hard and relentless too. I felt even more guilty.  

‘His heart’s bigger than he is. He’ll always try to make a go of things, no matter the odds. He won’t let his back stop him.’ Lincoln began to roll a cigarette. ‘So what have you been up to, bubby?’

I’d hidden my pouch of tobacco under my school hat. I got it out to roll a cigarette, hoping I could finish it before Dad came back.

‘I’ve been trying to earn some money while I’m in the city.’ I licked the rice paper then got a twig to light it. ‘After the nuns go into their cells for the night, I get a tram into the Valley. I play the piano in a coffee bar and stuff. People put money in a jar.’

I rolled the smoke around in my mouth so it didn’t go into my lungs. I didn’t like smoking but it made me feel grown-up. I didn’t explain ‘and stuff’ to Lincoln. ‘And stuff’ was a dyslexic musician who wasn’t interested in women full stop that I’d met in the coffee shop. He played piano and told jokes in the strip clubs. He used to take me to them so I could learn what music and jokes’d appeal to who and when. Timing was everything, he’d told me.

‘I thought that convent you’re in was like Boggo Road Jail—it won’t let anyone in or out.’ Lincoln tore a bit of paper off his lip.

I shrugged and kept glancing around to see where Dad was. He had his back to me.

‘Eileen Joyce did it,’ I added by way of explanation.

‘Yair, but Eileen Joyce had people looking after her,’ Lincoln replied.

‘And Duke Ellington—.’ I added to shore up my argument.

‘Yair, but Duke Ellington had half the world looking after him,’ Lincoln chuckled. ‘But I guess you got to start somewhere.’

I tossed the butt into the campfire. ‘After I’ve got enough money I get a taxi home. The drivers are real good. They park right near the fence so I can get up on the cab roof, hop over the fence and let myself back in. The nuns aren't allowed to leave their cell until morning, and the one on duty is always nodding off so I just dodge her.’

Dad was stooped over as if he were an old man as he shuffled back to us. I felt even worse about what I was getting up to in the city but then I justified it. They didn’t give two hoots about me so I wouldn’t give two hoots about them and cigarette smoke allowed me a way to express my anger without appearing to do so.

‘What did they want?’ Lincoln asked.

‘The benefit of everything the union has to offer but without paying dues,’ Dad replied.

‘They’ll all vote for Menzies at the next election, you can bet your life on that,’ Lincoln said.

‘Stand for nothin’, fall for everythink,’ Dad said. ‘Better get you home. Your mother will be wonderin’ what we’re up to. I’ll pick you up tomorrow, Lincoln.’

‘Good-o,’ Lincoln replied.

Everyone was examining Dad’s invention. Lincoln and I exchanged glances. It wouldn’t be long before a copy of it was put out on the market and Dad’s idea’d be lost in the process.

Baby Girl stood in the corner of the kitchen as white as a sheet, petrified into silence.

I said hello to her and Mum but no one replied.

Mum continued making a pot of tea. ‘Your brother has got a job further out west,’ was all she said.

I hadn’t realised Baby Girl was here by herself.

Dad used one of Mum’s brooms as a walking stick. He limped over to the dining room.

‘I think we’d better clean the rifles after I’ve had a cuppa,’ he said.  

Baby Girl and I went to get them. She wouldn’t speak or reply to anything I asked her.

The bullet maker was still in the cupboard. It was the best Christmas present I’d ever got. Dad wouldn’t give me real gunpowder so I’d filled the casings up with salt and practiced on everything I could find. When I turned the gun on Henry and peppered him with salt pellets, Dad took the bullet maker off me.

I smiled at Baby Girl. ‘Mum nearly shot one of Dad’s cousins with this.’

I pulled Mum’s rifle out of the cupboard. Dad had market the kangaroo sights with a big X so all she had to do was aim it. Dad’s cousin hadn’t told us he was coming. When he got off the train and made his way down to our place he began knocking on the doors and windows. We had our sights on trained on him as he went around the house.

‘We’ll give him one more go round,’ Mum whispered, ‘and then we’ll fire.’

He gave it away and when he came the next morning he said, ‘Jeeze you mob are hard to wake up. A bloke nearly skinned his knuckles knocking.’

We took the guns into the dining room table so Dad could clean them.

‘One of my grandfather’s sisters, Amy, had married a bloke called Jack Branson,’ Dad said. ‘She was a bit simple and he was a brute of a fellow. They traveled everywhere in a van filled with kids and half a galvanised tank tied over the top so they had somethink for shelter.’

‘Ing,’ Mum chimed as she tic-tacked past in her heels to the bedroom. ‘I’ll go through the rag bag to see if I can find you something to wear,’ she said to me. ‘Then you can get out of that uniform. They cost a fortune.’

‘One day he was beltin’ Amy with his stock whip,’ Dad continued with his story. ‘She was yellin’ and screamin’ and tryin’ to get away from him but he kept on whippin’ her.’

‘Whip-iiiinnnngggg,’ Mum called out from the bedroom.

‘I got Rhodie to run over to my Grandfather and tell him.’ Dad never missed a beat. ‘Well, the old fellow, he strode in and flattened Jack Branson with one blow. Don’t interfere, Granny Olive yelled after him. But the old fellow, he wasn’t finished yet. Get the thirty-two, Grandfather said, get me the Winchester and I’ll shoot the bastard.’

Dad stopped to have a bit of a laugh, ‘Well blow me down,’ he said as he sipped some tea. ‘Amy sticks up for Jack Branson. Don’t shoot him, she says, what would I do without him? I’d shoot him if he belted me with a stockwhip, Grandfather said.’

Dad checked the sights in his rifle. ‘She threw all the kids in the covered van and they drove out to Cunnamulla,’ Dad finished his story. ‘We never saw her again.’

‘He probably buried her out there.’ Mum came back with a pair of old slacks and a shirt for me to wear. ‘No one would know. No one would care. You girls put those guns away. And you,’ she turned to me, ‘after you change you can go up to the Church to make your confession. You,’ she poked Baby Girl in the back. ‘You can go too.’

My feet wouldn’t fit into her old sandals so I had to wear my black school shoes up to the Church. The nuns had rung Mum to give her instructions on how I was to be treated when I was at home so I didn’t undo all their good work.

‘Bless me father for I have sinned it’s been seven days since my last confession and I’ve told three lies and disobeyed my mother once.’ I rattled it off perfectly to Father Forex, and without taking a breath.

Baby Girl went into the confessional after me. I heard her say the same thing the same way. Everyone’d always said the same thing, week in, week out. Everyone got the same penance. Three Hail Marys and a go round once on the rosary. No one did it.

Everyone knew they had to rush through the confessional assembly line so Father Fourex could go back to the pub. Saying mass and hearing confession really made him mad, Dad said, because it was a waste of good drinking time.

Father Forex took it out on everyone. The altar boys and his housekeeper helped him out to the altar every morning. The boys stood on one side and his housekeeper stood on the other. Her arm was missing. Everyone said it had been placed in a cauldron to make magic spells. The first two altar boys clutched bottles of altar wine. Steadying himself on the shoulders of the others, Father Fourex walked up the steps to the altar. Everyone knew he was in the rats. Most of The Town was by Sunday morning.

As if she was part of a sacred ceremony, the housekeeper took the bottles from the boys, placed them on the altar, solemnly removed the corks and gave one bottle to the head altar boy and another the chalice. The housekeeper blessed herself with her good arm and walked down to the congregation to take her place in a pew.

The altar boy filled the chalice up. Father Fourex tried to lift it up to the tabernacle to pretend he was doing a blessing. It spilled everywhere. He intoned a shaky prayer before he knocked the drink back. He’d have four or five chalice-fulls before he was able to get down the stairs unaided and start mass.

‘Heartstarters,’ Dad used to call them.

Father Fourex’d go through nearly all the bottles of wine during Mass. When he stood at the pulpit to deliver his sermon he’d threaten to tell all the congregation’s confessional secrets if they didn’t come to chop his wood or tend his garden.

‘Ah, all that Catholic stuff just ruins havin’ a good time,’ Dad said. ‘No wonder he’s so cranky at having to be in Church.’

Mum wouldn’t let anyone say a bad word about Father Fourex. When he came to our place once to seek a donation Dad wrote him out a cheque and, with a giant flourish signed his name. It was for a halfpenny. Dad hated the Church even more than Bob Menzies, his Gov’mint and the Queen. He loathed what they did to the working man but he never protested about what the Church did to us.

One day he was thumbing through my catechism book, looking for something to bait Mum with. ‘They’re real scientific, them Catholics,’ he announced triumphantly. ‘Look, it says here that God is three different people in one body and you can eat him as a cracker every mornin’ at communion.’

‘Ing,’ Mum snapped. ‘And stop telling the children that.’

‘I’m not sayin’ anythink different from what Fourex is tellin’ them. At least I’m sober while I’m sayin’ it.’

‘Ing,’ Mum chimed angrily to end his words for him. ‘Ing. Ing. Ing.’

Dad’d come to the church one day to see what happened in it.

‘It’s funny. Jesus was born black in a blackfella country but by the time he got here he’d changed colour. Probably read the White Australia policy. Must be the miracle they all talk about. Happens in this town all the time.’

Dad’d looked at some more statues before he stood back to observe the pictures on the Stations of the Cross. Each picture had innards hanging out. Everything was about death, dying, man’s inhumanity to man, and abuse.

‘By Jove I do believe that someone in the church needs to take some lessons in how to butcher somethink humanely,' Dad said. 'They've made a flamin’ botch of this mob.'

Dad was furious when he heard that Menzies, in a last ditch effort to win an election against the Labor Party, had told the priests that he’d fund all the Catholic schools out of taxpayers’ money.

‘What about the separation of Church and State?’ Dad said to anyone who’d listen. ‘The cornerstone of democracy.’

Father Fourex condemned Dad and us to hell. He told the rest of The Town that they’d join us there if they didn’t vote for Menzies. When I was sent back to the convent, the nuns punished me for being a communist because Dad and his brothers were trade unionists.

‘No other country in the world pays for religious schools,’ Dad’d argue with anyone. ‘It’ll be a millstone around our necks, you’ll see.’

‘You can’t buck the Catholic Church,’ some of the men said. ‘We don’t want to end up in hell.’

‘Y’already livin’ in it,’ Dad’d replied. ‘And since when has Menzies ever given a hoot about the working man. We can’t even borrow from the banks to buy a decent house. He’s using them priests to blackmail you into votin’ for him. You’ll see. You’ll find out that purgatory’s the Catholic Church and hell’s payin’ for it. You know what the real miracle is? It’s that you mob believe all this hooey.’

Dad was disgusted when Menzies was swept back into power. 

After tea I helped Dad onto the back steps so we could watch the thousands of stars I never saw in the city.

The campfires across the river reminded Dad of something to tell me. A woman from The Mish had snatched her child from the hospital. With the medical staff was after her, she’d run down to the dam and dived in, child and all.

It’d been ill with a fever for days and it was feared he’d die. Because it was winter, the staff had piled blankets on him to keep him warm. Nothing would bring his fever down. The cool water of the dam did and it kept it down. He didn’t get pneumonia as the doctor predicted. He was fine the next day.

‘It was one of the Old People’s remedies,’ Dad said. ‘Now if we get a fever we just lie in the creek or dig a hole in the river.’  

‘No one’s adopted your mother’s kerosene and sugar for a sore throat, have they?’ Mum came out to join us.

‘Nothin’ wrong with suckin’ a gum leaf,' Dad replied innocently enough.

‘Ing,' Mum said.

Baby Girl materialised behind Mum.

A terrible hissing sound came from a tree down near the creek. A little possum ran for his life to the end of the branch.

His parents came after him. They rained blows down on him.

The little possum tried to duck and weave as his parents hit and bit him.

After they finished they went back to their hollow in the tree.

The little possum waited a while before he crept down the branch and attempted to rejoin the family. They beat him back again, over and over.

‘They’re real cruel when they get rid of their young, possums,’ Dad’s voice caught in his throat. ‘Real cruel, but that little fellow will have to make it on his own or die in the attempt.’

After a while Dad broke the long silence. ‘You can’t stick around here forever either. You got to leave home sooner or later.’

I watched the baby possum gingerly hop down to the next branch then look back up at his home.

His parents came out one more time to hiss threats at him.

The little possum ran for his life down the trunk of the tree and took off into the darkness.

‘Well, you have to be cruel to be kind.’ It was one of Mum’s favourite sayings.

It seemed no one was going to talk about what happened to Henry.

Mum’s stilettos tapped on the grey wooden steps as she went back inside.

‘You two get a move on,’ she called back. ‘The washing up isn't going to do itself.’

Dad leaned on Baby Girl and me as we helped him back inside. He grunted in pain.

‘I should’ve married Betsy Bailey while I had the chance.’ He hobbled another foot or so into the kitchen. ‘At least she could cook.’

We took him over to the table to he could sit down. Mum poured him a cup of black tea before she went back to her magazine.

Bye Bye Blackbird played on the radio.

Dad drummed his fingers to it.

I washed while Baby Girl dried. 

Chapter 24

24

Aunty Bloss and her daughter had bought me a new outfit and put make-up on me so that I could impress Mum and Dad with how lovely I looked. I’d nearly reached my full height of around five feet ten inches. Under their encouragement I’d stopped hunching so much to hide it.

My time at the boarding in the convents had come to an end. I’d hoped Mum and Dad’d let me finish high school by correspondence so I could get into University. Either that or let me go to the high school with my cousin in the next town for the next two years to qualify for Uni. I was full of ideas and excitement. I sat up all night in the train, not moving a muscle so the make-up wouldn’t be ruined. In the morning I watched as The Mish came into view before the train went over the river. I was nearly home.

I got off the train with my suitcase and put it down. I could see Mum and Dad at the other end of the platform. A shaft of sunlight stopped on my shoulder before it slid into my bones. I’d missed the warmth of the desert air. A ray of light lit my parents.

I caught my breath.

They were so beautiful—tall and slender. Dad was standing straight again. At six-foot-two he was all muscle, his skin still soft from the lanolin in the wool. His jet-black curly hair framed his slender chiseled face and made his blue eyes bluer. Mum had her head tossed back, haughty with laughter. Dad wore a navy-blue suit. His dapper felt hat had a bright feather in the brim. Mum was thinner than ever. Her cherry red dress clung to her tall, slim body; nylons shimmered down her long legs ending in black shiny stilettos; a black cartwheel hat spun on the side of her head; a slash of red lipstick was on her mouth; her cheeks were rouged with red geraniums, giving them the right red glow.

For a moment their beauty took my breath away then I became puzzled as to why they hadn’t seen me. I was the only girl to get off the train. When they didn’t come over to me I dragged my suitcase up to them.

‘Hello,’ I said.

They stared at me. They didn’t know who I was.

‘I’m your daughter,’ I introduced myself. ‘Jenny Jae.’ I put my hand out to shake theirs.

They looked down at me then Mum began to giggle and then to guffaw.

‘It’s Jennifer, Tom.’

The townspeople on the platform began to look our way.

‘Look at her, Tom.’ Mum stuttered in between peals of laughter. ‘Have you ever seen anything like it in all your life? God Almighty look at her. She’s the most stupid, fat, ridiculous looking creature I’ve ever laid eyes on.’

‘Git in the ute,’ Dad picked up my suitcase. ‘Go on, git a move on,’ he added in a voice rough with rage when I didn’t run fast enough.

I got in the back with the dog.

Mum was still laughing, almost doubled over.

‘What a waste of money that thing is. We could’ve gone to the city with the amount we spent on her. Or gone round the world. Instead we got Fatty Arbuckle.’

I crouched down in the back of the ute so no one would see me. Why didn't Aunty Bloss tell me what I really looked like? Did she too think I was nothing but a joke? Was I too stupid to notice what I looked like or know what other people thought of me? There weren’t any mirrors in the convent and I was so excited by getting dressed up to go home I don’t think I even glanced into one at Aunty Bloss’ house.

‘Git that muck off your face,’ Dad said as we pulled into the driveway. ‘You can see what it’s doin’ to y’ mother.’

I ran into the bathroom and washed my face. Mum was still giggling. I picked up a wire hairbrush and tried to take the makeup off with it.

‘She’s like that all the time.’ Baby Girl emerged from the shadows in the bathroom. ‘It’s all the pills she takes.’

I hardly recognised her. She’s done everything to turn herself into the boy that Dad’d longed for. Her hair’d been chopped into a short back and sides. She was dressed in jodhpurs with a white shirt tucked in neatly. She wore riding boots. Baby Girl put her hand out to shake mine. The contact was very brief.

After we had morning tea Mum told me I was to go up to the Convent to see the nuns.

‘They want to see how you turned out.’ She tried to stop giggling. ‘They want to see you in your uniform.’

‘I left it with Aunty Bloss.’ In her incinerator.

Dad signaled for Baby Girl to follow him outside. She got up immediately. I heard the ute drive off.

I put some powder over my face to hide the scratches on my face. I put on the fresh skirt and blouse Aunty Bloss’ daughter’d given me. I put some lipstick on then blotted it so it wasn’t too obvious. My leaden feet made every step reluctant. I kept talking to myself about how grown up I was and how they couldn’t beat me anymore because I was nearly fifteen and no longer in school.

I knocked on the door of the Convent.

The smell of the incense and soap made me feel sick and scared. I knocked again ready to bolt then I heard rattling rosary beads coming down the corridor.

Sister Mary Catherine opened the door and peered out. Her vile rimless glasses glinted in the sun as she grabbed my arm and pulled me towards her. Her chalk white face was wrapped in a black veil and a starched white wimple. It was filled with hatred and about half an inch away from mine. Her breath was putrid. I tried to hold mine. She spat in my face then ground her dirty cleaning rag into it and began roughly scrubbing as hard as she could. She stopped to look at her handiwork.

‘You’ll always looked like a slut.’ She shoved me backwards and slammed the door.

‘How’d it go?’ Mum couldn’t keep the smile off her face.

‘Exactly like you knew it would,’ I heard myself say.

‘Well, you should’ve known better than to go there looking like that. You’d better fix that face of yours up—you've got lipstick from one end of it to the other. You look like Bozo the clown.’

She flounced out of the room, her stiletto heels tic-tacking on the floor. ‘When you've finished go and join your sister,’ she called out. ‘I don’t want you in here.’

I sat down in the woodheap with Baby Girl. 

‘I thought you were with Dad.’

Baby Girl shrugged.

‘I’m only allowed stay in the house when it’s necessary.’

She was biting her fingernails. They were bleeding stumps on the end of her fingers.

‘Animals,’ Mum shouted from the house. ‘Filthy dirty animals, stinking up my house.’

As the sun beat down on us, I suggested we move under the shade of a tree or go over to The Mish to Lincoln but Baby Girl shook her head.

‘Don’t cause trouble.’

I tentatively put out my hand but she knocked it away.

I thought I heard Dad’s ute come back. I was determined to speak to him about Mum. Baby Girl and I went around the side of the house. Three men got out of an old red truck. I had no idea who they were.

‘It’s the Wright boys,’ Baby Girl said.

The oldest Wright must’ve been thirty or more. His two brothers were kidding him, laughing and hitting him.

When Mum came out on the verandah, they straightened themselves up, adjusted their hats and walked soberly through the front gate.

I melted back around the corner by the lounge room. Baby Girl stood behind me as we listened in at the window. Mum led the Wright boys into the lounge room. I could hear the tapping of her stilettos on the lino. She was being very gracious while the Wright boys made themselves comfortable. They talked for a while about the weather then Mum lead them to the point of their visit.

‘You know, Missus,' the middle Wright boy drawled, ‘we only come into town once a year at most and the rest of the time we work on our father’s place.’

Mum proceeded cautiously. ‘I thought it was unusual for you to be in town at this time of the year.’

The youngest Wright boy cleared his throat. ‘We've got some of our own cattle out on agistment. We’re pretty hard workers.’

Mum sounded completely bamboozled. ‘There’s no denying that.’

‘We heard your daughter was back from the convent,’ the middle Wright boy said, ‘so we thought we’d come into town to look her over before anyone else got to her.’

‘I see,’ Mum said again as she sought some clarity.

‘The fact is,’ the middle one added, ‘since Mum died we’ve had no one on the property, not for the past few years.’

‘You must be missing a woman’s touch,’ Mum said.

‘That’s a fact,’ the youngest one said. ‘That’s a fact.’

Mum lit a cigarette.

‘You want to say something, Frank?’ the middle Wright boy asked his eldest brother.

‘Nuh.’

‘Well, to get to the point,’ the youngest one spoke on Frank’s behalf, ‘Frank here is looking for a wife.’

‘Oh.’ Mum sounded stuck for a reply.

The middle Wright took up the slack.

‘We sat around the other day and thought about it,’ he explained, ‘and we said to ourselves, we said we need someone who’s young enough to work hard and do all the cooking, the cleaning and the mending, and be able to give us a hand at mustering time.’

‘I see.’ Mum's chair creaked. ‘With four of you, I imagine there’d be a lot of work to do.’

The Wright boys mumbled in unison. ‘That’s a fact, that’s a fact,’ they said. ‘Which is why we’ve come to you, Missus,’ the middle Wright informed her.

‘I’m afraid I don’t know anyone,' Mum began but the middle Wright boy interrupted her.

‘I guess we haven’t made ourselves clear.’

‘No,’ the youngest one agreed. ‘The fact is, Missus, Frank here has decided he’d like to marry your oldest. That is, if you’ll let him.’

‘But she’s hasn’t turned fifteen yet,’ Mum stuttered.

‘That’s a fact, that’s a fact,’ the middle Wright replied, ‘but they’re easier to break in when they’re young; haven’t got any smart ideas and the like.’

The younger Wright hesitated. ‘Besides,’ he cleared his throat before he continued, ‘she’s been broken in already so to speak, which is why Frank thought you’d let him have her.’

‘He’d treat her good,’ the middle one said. ‘I can vouch for that. She won’t get many chances, not around here anyways, where they know,’ he added.

‘I see.’ Mum stubbed her cigarette out.

‘I won’t beat her or nothin’,’ Frank finally spoke up. ‘Long as she does as she’s told.’

‘I’ll speak to her father about it.’ Mum ended the conversation.

The chairs scraped back as the Wright boys got ready to leave.

‘Heard his ewes were flyblown,’ Frank commiserated.

As they came out to the verandah, they all shook Mum by the hand.

‘Thank you, Missus. If he agrees, we’ll fix it up for the next time we come into town.’

The middle Wright boy paused on the front steps. ‘Frank’s willing to marry her. Not many blokes’d be good enough to do that considering.’

Mum smiled stiffly at them. ‘Perhaps not. I’ll talk it over with her father.’

The Wright boys tipped their hats in unison then made their way back to their truck. 

Mum watched them drive off then went back into the house. 

Dad came home shortly afterwards. They sat in the shade of the front verandah. The canvas awning darkened a corner to give it an illusion of shelter from the heat. The rain birds were calling in vain.  The red dust lifted itself lazily up and down on the roadway. They finished talking. Baby Girl and I couldn't hear what they were saying. Mum went down to water the garden. Dad picked up the racing guide. The bees buzzed in the tiny flowering tree buds as Mum tugged the hose over towards them. The small sick pit that was always in my stomach began to spread. Bees swooped from the small mauve flowers of the crepe myrtle and over to the rose bush.

I came around the corner, walked up the stairs onto the verandah. 

‘It’s about time you went out to work,’ Dad said from behind his paper. ‘From what I hear you’re already causin’ trouble. The nuns aren't happy with you either.’ The knots in Dad’s arms muscled into a fist before they ran up into his throat. ‘The Patterson’s want a gov’ness for the Fuller kids out at Springfield. You can git a lift on the mail truck this afternoon.’

Dad got up and walked away. When he saw I hadn’t moved, he came back.

‘Damn sight better than gettin’ married to them tyre-kickers, the Wrights,’ he added. ‘That’s about the only future you've got around here.’

Mum moved the hose down to the next tree. The hose dragged behind her like a long grass snake. Some kids who were riding on their billy carts stopped outside the front fence but Dad didn’t see them.

‘It’s about time you learned to fend for yourself.’ Dad walked down the verandah to the steps.

‘I don’t want to be a governess, Dad.  I could finish school here and then go to university.’

Mum came up to me. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous. I don’t know where you get your airs and graces from but you’re too stupid to go to university and you’re not going to stay here to bludge off us either.’

Baby Girl’s head came around the verandah.

‘But I got all A’s in my last school report,’ I protested. ‘Six of them.’ I didn’t add that I’d deliberately failed shorthand-typing and cooking.

‘If you don’t take the job you can git altogether,’ Dad said.

‘Keep your voice down. We don’t want to entertain the neighbours.’ Mum glanced around desperately in time to see the kids push off on their billy carts.

‘Go orn,’ Dad said. ‘You’re not wanted around here anymore. You’re nothing but a bloody disappointment and an expensive one at that.’

I looked at them both for a couple of seconds then turned on my heel to go and pack. I went over to the wardrobe and threw some clothes into a blanket on the floor. I picked up my brush and comb set. They had delicate drawings of faeries in a woodland garden on the back of them. Gran had given them to me when I was little. They once belonged to Aunty Jane. I used to imagine that I could join them in their magical garden and we’d all dance together.

‘It’s about time she learned to look after herself.’ Dad was talking to Mum outside the window. ‘Been mollycoddled all her life and she’s cost a bomb already. I'll never get that back.’

I tossed the brush and comb set into the clothes on the floor. I changed into the pair of jeans and T-shirt Aunty Blossom had bought me, put the skirt and blouse into the blanket and rolled it up into a swag. I swung it over my shoulder and walked out to the front verandah. 

‘Good riddance to bad rubbish,’ Mum said.

Baby Girl was white-faced and silent. Her eyes stuck out of her head with fear. I touched her on the top of her head before I stalked down the stairs.

‘I’ll come back and get you,’ I said. ‘Soon as I’ve got enough money.’

The bees were still buzzing in the crepe myrtle tree. The kids were still riding their billy carts up and down the street. Mum and Dad still continued to tend the garden.

The red dust drifted on the roadway as I walked down it. I had a few pounds in my pocket from playing piano. I swung the swag over my shoulder. When I was out of their sight, I went over to The Mish, hoping Lincoln was there. I threw the swag over the side of the bank and used the maypan branch to haul myself up.

A blue haze of sullen smoke hung over the humpies. As I walked into the clearing the dogs slunk away with their tails between their legs. The kids watched me from the doorways of their humpies. Some of the old men were playing cards but more were drinking rum. Some of the girls I’d gone to school with lay on the ground unconscious from the grog. Flies crawled in and out of their mouths.

Pearl was doing the washing in her kerosene tin, poking at it with her stick. I waved to her as I went past but she only hung her head down further. She hadn’t lifted it since the day her daughter’d become pregnant to Greenhide’s eldest son. She had four children by him now and Pearl was bowed over like an old woman, her hair as grey as the trunk on the river gums. She’d been a big woman with a merry face and a wide-mouthed smile but now she’d withered away and shrunk from shame. Pearl turned away from me. Her daughter lay on the ground at the back of her humpy. A couple of kids with black skin and golden hair clambered over her. Another one toyed with her empty bottle.

Down at his campfire Lincoln was sleeping. His head rested on a log and his hat was tilted over his face to keep the sun and the flies off. As I squatted down beside him, I saw for the first time that he too had grown old. The stubble of his whiskers was grey.

The Mish was overrun with city blackfellas who were sly grogging. They’d come out to rummage around for what they could get from the isolated camps. They had no respect for the Old People or the Elders and they'd encouraged everyone else to treat them with contempt. The Mish mob had descended into hell and The Town had begun to have meetings to see what it could do to help them. We were all related in one way or another.

A brawl broke out at the back of me. Bottles, fists and branches were used to settle it down.

‘What’s going on?’ Lincoln tipped his hat back to peer around.

‘It’s all right, Uncle Lincoln. They've sorted it out.’

He took a long time to sit up.

‘You’re always going somewhere, bubby,’ he said on seeing my swag.

‘Yeah. Dad’s fixed me up with a really nice job out at the Patterson place.’

Lincoln rummaged around for his tobacco pouch. ‘Heard the Fullers’ kids needed a gov’ness.’

‘Well, they can find someone else because I’m not going there.’

Lincoln rolled a smoke. 'Where are you going to go?'

‘I don’t know. Maybe I can go back to the city and become a singer. Get a job doing something.’ I got out my tobacco and began to roll a smoke.

Lincoln licked the rice paper, stuck his tobacco in it and rolled it up. ‘

‘You need money for that and I don’t suppose you've got much. Maybe you need to work for a while, get some money together then go back to the city.’

I knew he made sense and said so.

‘Good girl.’ Lincoln looked over the river. ‘You’d better get a wriggle on. The mail truck’ll be going soon. You don’t want to miss it.’

He peeled me off some notes from the wad in his pocket. ‘You’ll need something to start y’walkabout with.’

Gratefully I put the money in my pocket and got to my feet.

‘Just you look out at the Patterson place. Ned’s all right but that brother of his—he’s in the rats most times.’

‘If I don’t like it I’m not going to stay.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘I’ll see you when they bring me into town.’

‘Righteo, now you take care of yourself.’

I gave him a quick kiss on his cheek. ‘You too,’ and swung the swag over my shoulder and walked back into town.

It was dark when I was shown my room by Mrs. Fuller. She left me with a hurricane lamp.

The room had bare wood floorboards and an iron bed with a lumpy mattress. It looked exactly the same as the cells at the convent. I shoved my swag under the bed and glanced at the wardrobe. The mirror on it was cracked. I decided not to unpack.

The loud jangle of a cowbell woke me at four-thirty and after breakfast Mrs. Fuller rounded the kids up in the kitchen.

‘This ’ere,’ she indicated me with her thumb, ‘is y’ new gov’ness. She’s come to teach youse y’ correspondence.’

They took one look at me and took off. 

Mrs. Fuller chased after them.

‘Come back ’ere y’ little buggers.’

As I waited in the kitchen I could hear her puffing back up the stairs. ‘Flamin’ mongrels of things.’ She came into the kitchen. ‘While y’ ’ere y’ may as well make y’self useful.' She handed me a bucket and mop. ‘Y’can help me with the cleaning.’

I scrubbed, cleaned, cooked, scraped, carted, washed, ironed and dusted from four in the morning until ten at night, seven days a week. I rarely saw the kids again except at the odd mealtime. The mail truck wouldn’t be back for another month. Ned Patterson, the owner, turned up once to inspect me then announced he was going to Paris for a holiday.

After I had been there a few weeks, Mrs. Fuller sent me out to hunt the kids down. While I tried to find them, a mob of horses came up to the homestead at full pelt headed by Ned Patterson’s brother, Shalto. Fifteen of his sons and about half a dozen station hands rode with him. They were armed to the teeth.

I took shelter behind a tree and picked up a weighty stick.  

Shalto Patterson had over thirty children, twenty or so were by his wife, the rest were from governesses who’d come to his property to teach them. Three of the women shared a house with his wife. Only one left and went back to the city. They were good Catholics people said but the local Country Women’s Association used to meet the train to tell any young woman foolish enough to work for Shalto Patterson about the possible consequences of doing so.

Shalto’s mob only came into town when either his wife or a governess was due to have his baby. They’d take over a hotel and drink for a week, then pick up the woman and the new child and go back to the bush. Once, the townspeople hogtied Shalto to a pole to cart him into a truck to take him out of town because he refused to leave the pub and was considered dangerous.

The Fuller kids crept up behind me. It was the first time I’d seen them afraid of anything. We watched Shalto and his boys charge the homestead.

From the stockyards Mr. Fuller and his boys mounted their horses and in a cloud of dust they shot out from the gates.

Rifle fire began to crack through the air. Bullets flew by.

I grabbed the kids and ran towards the house.

Mrs. Fuller was baking a cake.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said matter-of-factly, ‘the boys do this every so often.’ She laughed to herself. ‘They git a bit bush crazy just before the mustering. Need to let off a bit of steam.’

From the kitchen window we could see rumps of the horses, a mane here and there, and the glint of a rifle piercing the dust. The kids got under the kitchen table. More shots were fired and I jumped back.

‘Mostly they miss,’ Mrs. Fuller assured me. ‘They’re that drunk I don’t think they can see straight anyhows.’

Her husband and his mob were being run off the property by Shalto’s. They galloped for their lives down the track. Mrs. Fuller squeezed a lemon for the icing on the sponge cake. Shalto wheeled his horse around and came at the house.

‘He’s coming here,’ I said.

Mrs. Fuller poured the lemon juice into the basin with a sigh. ‘Just sit down and don’t move. You’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘I won’t let him do nothin’ to you or anythin’. Told y’ father.’

Shalto burst in through the kitchen door waving his rifle. The kids cringed under the table. Mrs. Fuller stirred the lemon icing with her wooden spoon.

Shalto aimed his rifle and began to shoot all the china on the kitchen shelves. One by one they exploded as the bullets hit them. Bits of roses painted on white plates filled the air. The milk jug was next. Then Shalto looked wildly all around for something else to shoot when his eyes lit upon Mrs. Fuller’s sponge cake. He drilled it full of holes, wheeled around and left. Mrs. Fuller looked at the kitchen and then at the table.

‘He didn’t have to shoot m’sponge,’ she said angrily. ‘That was uncalled for.’ She put the bowl of icing down. ‘I guess I’ll just have to make another one,’ she sighed. ‘The boys’ll be wanting their afternoon tea soon.’

Having narrowly missed the bullets the kids took off again.

I went into my room and rolled the tea, flour and tobacco I’d taken in lieu of any wages into the swag. I waited until everyone was asleep then threw the swag out the window and followed it. I picked my way cautiously through the homestead garden and navigated my way by the stars out to the main road. I walked for a long time before I pulled off the road near a billabong. I made a small campfire to wait until morning. The water was so clear I could see the small round brightly coloured pebbles on the bottom, then in the blink of an eye, it'd turned silver. 

Up above me Yuri Gagarin floated through the stars in his space ship.

The sun tilted slightly on the horizon and scattered rainbow pencil pickup sticks across the water as it rose. A blackbird rippled through the melted blue, pink, red, yellow, green lines that twisted up to the white paperbark gums. Birds brawled in the trees. A dingo padded down to the billabong and lapped at its edges. With his intelligent wild brownness, white socks and fluffy golden tail, dingoes behaved more like cats—they’d walk with you when they wanted to but you could never really own one.

I walked into the still blackened water. A tiny green frog clung to a half-submerged log. Dragonflies dipped and dived through the air. Water birds skimmed across the surface. A fish was stuck to the bottom. I lay my head on a lily pad. White light star upon white light star rolled their dice across the galaxy. The painted waters flowed around me.

I got dried and dressed and went back to stir the fire. I picked up the billy and returned to the water to fill it. The billabong was streaked with gold. Patches of black where the night’d been were slow to leave. I dipped my billy in and took it back to the fire.

There was nothing for me around here. I mixed some flour, salt and water together to make a small damper and threw it in the ashes near the fire. I scraped some coals on the top of it. Nothing had changed. I had to get enough money to come back to get Baby Girl. I put some tea into the billy and let it draw while I tied my long darkish blonde curly hair up under my cap so I’d look more like a boy than a girl.

After I had a pannikin of black tea and some warm damper I rolled the swag then began walking down the road. As the sun got hotter, I sucked on gum leaves to keep hunger at bay. Going hungry didn't really bother me. Boarding school had taught me I'd eat again someday if not today. 

When I reached the outskirts of The Town, I stood on the top of the rise where I could see the smoke coming out of the chimney at Mum and Dad’s place. I looked at it for a long, long time then I walked down to the crossroads. 

I squatted down to roll a smoke while I tried to decide what to do. 

Chapter 25

25

The Catholic Church’d sent a fourteen-year-old Aboriginal girl to the grazier I’d just started working for as a governess.

I had five children to teach school correspondence to plus lessons from the School of the Air. The job as a governess was considered to be refined or at least a step up from the slushy position I’d held before.

The grazier had a large remote cattle property, a pious pregnant wife who prayed all day and catered to his every whim and cowed children stuffed full of Catholicism. He had a head on him like a chaffcutter—all mouth and no ears. Like most men with a lush flush to his cheeks he was above the law and in most cases was the law. The property was nearly two hundred miles from the nearest town.

Irene, the new housemaid, had been met at the railway station by the grazier’s rouseabouts and driven out to the property. She was small and thin. Her head hung down. She had short dark curly hair, black skin, and a floral dress picked up by the slight breeze that blew through the property. It made her look thinner. A small brown suitcase containing all her possessions was by her side. She had been told by her local priest that she was to work for the grazier for as long as he wanted her, but no one was under any illusion about why she was really there. Irene looked doomed from the moment she arrived.

The graziers’ arrangements with most of the religious organisations that controlled the Aborigines’ every waking moment was to pay three-quarters of the female wages, which was currently half the male wage, back to the Church for providing her to the grazier, with the other quarter being taken by the grazier to provide her with flour and tobacco; the men fared a little better.

It meant a Mission girl worked from four in the morning to ten at night, six and a half days a week, for nothing. Sunday morning was taken up with going to Church and back. If she had no need for flour and tobacco, then she could trade with the other blackfellas employed on the property. Like most Australian women then, she had no money of her own and she’d have to rely on pleasing a man to be provided with enough food to fill her up and to give her shelter. I made sure I always had rations tucked away somewhere with enough money that’d do me until I got another job. No one else had to know about it but me.

When I’d gone on the mail runs with Dad he’d point out all the grazing properties that had treated people badly, and blackfellas in particular, so that we never relied on them or their relatives for anything. Existence in the Outback was precarious and unpredictable. Sometimes it created a terrible life for those who tried to live in it. They usually packed up and left rather than plough on.

‘One time,’ Dad said, ‘Rhodie and me went out to do some work on that place over there.’

He pointed at a nearby property.

‘We didn’t pull in until after dark and we was walkin’ up to the homestead to announce our arrival when we heard moanin’. We looked all around and followed it. We found some blackfellas chained up to hollow logs—that was their home, all they had to live in. They’d been beaten too. Rhodie and me were that wild—we undid them, poor buggers, and helped them over to the ute and put them in the back to take them with us into town—hand them over to Lincoln and his mob. Then we picked up a bit of weaponry and knocked on the door of the homestead. Rhodie and I did to the owner what he’d done to the blackfellas. When we got to town we made sure that no one ever worked for them again. We let them sink—blacked the place; no one would work for them.’

Dad picked out another property. ‘And over there, we found the owner’s kids had locked him up in the hen house. He was naked as the day he was born too. Below freezin’ most times out here in the winter and they were tossin’ water on him, tryin’ to give him pneumonia so he’d die and they’d git the property and all his money. There’s no accountin’ for some human beings, no accountin’ at all.’

Before she looked the other way, the grazier’s wife stared down at her latest replacement. Her eyebrows knitted into a thick, black barbed wire fence across her forehead, keeping everything inside—sick, sore and sorry. As her husband went down to inspect Irene, she stood behind her barriers—her small life’d shrunk to a thin shadow of the girl who’d strode down the aisle. The grazier made Irene turn this way and that, and, if she thought the other blackfellas were going to protect her, when she turned around so the grazier could check her backside, she would’ve seen them laughing at her.

Irene’s head hung lower and lower as the inspection went on. The grazier told her that she could live in the disused lavatory at the back of the house. As the grazier watched, she picked up her suitcase and began to walk over to it.

The grazier turned around to walk back to the main house when he saw me striding past him over to Irene.

‘You don’t have to stay here,’ I said. ‘I’m not. You can come with me. I’ll take you to the city or somewhere safe.’

‘She’s not going anywhere.’ The grazier was behind me. ‘There’s laws against blackfellas leaving without permission.’

‘My uncle is the head of a union in the city, my other uncle edits a newspaper,’ I said. ‘I’ll make sure both of them know about you and what you do.’

‘Be quiet,’ Irene muttered under her breath. ‘They’ll kill us.’

‘They wouldn’t be game to touch me,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

The blackfellas had come up to stand in solidarity with the grazier. They looked menacing as if they wanted to tear me apart.

‘Don’t make a fuss,’ Irene pleaded.

‘I have to,’ I replied. ‘They can’t do this to you. They have no right. Not to you. Not to anybody.’

‘Is that right, girlie?’ the grazier said.

I stood facing him with my hands on my hips.

‘When I leave here I’ll make sure everyone knows what you do and who you are.’

‘How are you going to get out of here?’ the grazier asked. ‘Have you thought about that?’

The rouseabouts snickered.

‘I’ll walk. And I’ll take Irene with me.”

‘Well, you can start walking,’ the grazier drawled, ‘but she stays here.’

The men formed a half-circle around Irene to prevent her from leaving.

‘You can still come with me, Irene. They won’t be game to do anything to us. They’re rubbish people, not worth two bob. They won’t do anything.’ I put my hand out to her but one of the blackfellas grabbed it and twisted it behind my back.

‘Stop causing trouble … stop causing trouble … git out of here,’ he said.

He and the others frog-marched me to the gate of the property and threw me outside it. I watched them walk back over to the grazier. He slapped them on the back. He pushed Irene in front of him towards the disused lavatory. She gave a half glance over to me, desperate, frightened, and turned away again, compliant, head down. She walked inside he toilet and the grazier pulled the door shut then locked it from the outside.

I began walking into town in what I stood up in. I patted my pockets to see if my money was still there. I was sucking on a gum leaf to slake my thirst when I heard a car coming. I stuck out my thumb as I continued to amble down the road.

‘Everything was all right until you came along.’

The grazier’s wife shouted at me over the noise of the car.

‘It was never all right. You know that.’

‘He told me to give you a lift into town. He doesn’t want any trouble.’

‘I’d rather die.’

She threw my possessions at me.

‘So would I,’ she said.

A shot rang out.

It ricocheted around the bush, shook the spear grass and made the birds take flight.

It was the only noise she’d ever made in her life.

A truck going the other direction to me pulled up at the car.

I picked up my things and kept waking. There was no going back. You can never go back again. The nuns’d provided a good training in survival. I’d left school as nothing with nothing—nothing gave me a chance to up the ante.

I travelled down corrugated roads and blue gum bitumen Kerouac-ed streets, hitchhiking red dirt highways to get to the next job always with the aim of getting back to the Ginsberg blackout bars in the city where wild men played congas while wired on weed and women ate smoky schnitzels made by a French woman at the Primitif Café.

I’d listen to folk people there as their blues gathered into a jam session of angry protest, freedom, jazz and gospel—driven by Gandhi and Martin Luther King—while a harmonica wailed underneath.

And I’d take Baby Girl with me.

But before that I had to make more money. I only had twenty pounds in my pocket and it wouldn’t get me far.

I breathed in the north-westerly winds that swirled around me.

The Old People who rode inside took me with them.

I drifted down the highway for a while before it was time to go our separate ways.

###

    

END