This Red Earth Read online

  ‘Oh.’ He’s joking, but he’s also telling me what I need to know: you can’t be a fascist and an anarchist. The evidence against Mrs Zoc is contradictory? That’s not a mistake, that’s –

  ‘Rats,’ the old man says: ‘That wasn’t much help, was it?’

  ‘Yes, it was,’ I tell him, through bash-clanging disbelief: our government locks people up on evidence that doesn’t even make sense and there’s not a thing anyone can do about it.

  ‘Hmm.’ The old man taps his cane on the footpath and looks away down the line of shabby shopfronts for the tram, and as I follow his gaze, out of the confusion I see it: I see that there is in fact something I can do, right across the road in the window of O’Rourke’s Office Supplies: Imperial ‘Good Companion’ portable typewriters sold here. Buy British. Buy the Best.

  A typewriter. What a good and timely idea. The flight of Eugenia Frank might be suspended, but not all writing has to be. See if I don’t make myself a professional pest, starting today. I have the time. I have the means. And I have the skill. I am going to write, and write: letters to the Department of Army, AMF, CMF, AIF, North, South, East and Western Command, and to our too-busy-for-trivial-justice Attorney-General.

  I’ve already stepped off the kerb when I swear I hear the old pirate say behind me: ‘Gorn, give it to ’em, lassie.’

  When I’ve lugged my Good Companion up Heartbreak Hill, cursing portable as an outrage in false advertising with every step, Mum is waiting for me in the middle of Arcadia, waving a letter in her hand – obviously from Dad. I almost drop half a ton of British Best on my foot to grab it off her.

  My dear precious Peggy and Bernie … our faces are pressed together as I read, and Mum re-reads for no doubt the umpteenth time already, that he’s in a place called Gaza on the Mediterranean Sea, at a big training camp there. And every precious word strengthens my determination to tell the truth as he serves us up the biggest load of blarney I’ve ever read. He tells us all about how he won first place for the oldies of his battalion at their swimming carnival, and how he trained for the event by chasing around the cheeky Arab boys who sell them fake beer and steal their boots, and I don’t wonder where I get my one and only talent from. All fun, and full of assurance that he’s safe and well, having survived the worst pork chops of his life on the voyage over. But the fact is, he’s ten thousand miles away in Palestine, on the edge of a war we all know he’ll soon be in one way or another, somewhere or other. The Sixth Div is not going to give Bill Cooper special dispensation just because he’s ours.

  Mum squeezes me round the shoulders with love for him. ‘He writes a marvellous letter, your father, doesn’t he?’

  He certainly does. And he would also be horrified if he knew what was really going on here at home. If he knew what they’ve done to Mrs Zoc and her boys, he wouldn’t only be angry, I know he’d be ashamed, it would bring that sadness into his eyes. He would be hurt on their behalf.

  Mum folds his letter into her apron pocket with her rosary, keeping him close, and for a moment I can’t move. I stare up at the gumdrop gable of our house, Dad’s house, breathe in the seaweed smell of the air, our home, and my feet seem planted to this asphalt. A calm and certain force moves through me: I am ready to sit down and fight for my country too.

  My campaign doesn’t take long to take effect. By Friday morning, after my first volley of letters to as many departments as I could think of, the telephone rings with a Colonel Aitkins on behalf of the Minister for the Army informing me in a smooth, posh drawl: ‘It will not do your father any good to criticise the endeavours of this military in this most provocative way, Miss Cooper.’ A warning in his voice: We know who you are and where you live and how to keep you quiet.

  My heart would like to leap out of my chest and bolt away, but I muster a half-strangled and shrill: ‘Is that so?’ Before I give him a good, petrified clunking. The last thing I want to do is get Dad into trouble; why did I make an issue of his service in my letters? As the daughter of Captain William Cooper … I’m a prize-winning dill.

  ‘Who was that?’ Mum says at my back, and when I tell her she flicks her dust rag at the ceiling with contempt. ‘As if your father would care what the brass think! What are they going to do, court-martial him? Take his commission off him and send him home?’ Then she nudges me with her hip, smiling with a warmth I’ve never caught from her before. ‘Don’t you dare stop what you’re doing, my daughter. I’m very proud of you.’

  Proud of me? Oh, Mum. Worth it for that alone.

  And for the letter I receive the following Tuesday from a Major Fielding of the AMF, Internment Inquiries, informing me that my concerns are appreciated, that you should be assured that adequate food and accommodation is being provided to all internees in accordance with Geneva Convention recommendations for prisoners of war, and most importantly that application forms for enemy aliens appeals will be available in due course. In due course is not at all soon enough, but it means I’m being heard. Or we’re being heard. I can’t be the only one doing this. And I’ll keep doing this: write straight back to this Major Fielding and ask him again: where is Mrs Emilia Zoccoli? I’m going to need to know that if I’m going to help her appeal, aren’t I? And write to him quickly, before the different departments spot this common pest and squash any further correspondence.

  I’ve just sat down to it, Good Companion now permanently planted on the kitchen table, when Mum says to me over her stock pot: ‘Save me that thumping on the typewriter today, will you, love? I’d like to make a start on your bodice this afternoon, if I’m to get the beading done without a panic.’

  My dress. ‘Course, Mum,’ I say; wedding’s got a bit lost in the spin wringer lately. And Mum looks a bit flushed. Weary. I smile at her and the thought of all the beading she’s planned for the bodice. Mum’s means of showing what she thinks of wartime belt-tightening: clear out DJ’s trims section of every last glass pearl they have in stock. I get up from the table to go to Mum’s bedroom, to get my fabric from her blanket box. In five months, I’ll be married. Hurry up and find Mrs Zoc so she can make my cake. So I can turn my mind to organising everything else, make this the best wedding, for everyone. Get some good photos for Dad. Kiss Gordon. For a long time. For good.

  Make a detour to my room and take my little pink jasper B out from under my pillow, press it to my cheek, cool and solid earth, and as if I might better be heard this way, I pray, Please look after us, all of us, before I slip it into the pocket of my skirt, to keep it close.

  GORDON

  ‘Mate, I’m not prepared to take that risk,’ Johno says, standing over me as I sit on the edge of my bunk. I’m wrung out. No sweat left in me. Stifling hot and it’s only just after dawn. ‘Malaria or not, you look like shit.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I’m sure it’s only heatstroke, though, pounding into my skull. ‘It’s not malaria.’ I know it’s not. I’m not shivering with it, I’m not that sick. I can’t be. I take every precaution, smother myself in so much eucalyptus oil I am a gum tree. Besides, it’s Johno’s turn to go into town tomorrow for his weekend, mine’s not for another fortnight, and I’m getting behind in my log.

  ‘All the same, you have to go to the hospital and report it.’ Johno taps the toe of his boot into mine. ‘You’re too crook to work, which makes me the boss, so you have to do as you’re told.’

  ‘But the log–’

  ‘Can wait until you can prove that you don’t have malaria.’ Taps the toe of my boot again. ‘In the meantime, I’m not happy to share mozzies with you. Right?’

  ‘Too right,’ says Reg, our boilermaker. ‘I wouldn’t die for you.’

  That I don’t tell him where to shove that comment proves I’m not that sick. Reg ‘Smith’ wouldn’t do much for anyone. He’s taken his New Guinea contract to make it difficult for the court to get maintenance payments from him, for his wife and four kids. Not the type of bloke I think much of.

  Rico hands me an envelope. ‘If you leave now, maybe you will mak
e the mail plane. My daughter’s birthday is on Wednesday. It would be good if this gets to Melbourne before then.’ He has five daughters and they all mean the world to him. I take the letter.

  ‘Good,’ Johno says. ‘Now, piss off.’

  It’s going to be a long slow walk out, with To-An and one of his cousins, Manulu, on either side ready to catch me, but the headache’s already starting to ease off before we’ve even got to the bottom of the Slippery Dip, and I’m already embarrassed at the thought of fronting up to the hospital to get a test for something I clearly don’t have. So, I’m not going to the hospital.

  But To-An thinks differently. ‘You sick, boss, bad sick.’

  And Manulu nods in agreement, looking worried.

  ‘What sick?’ I say, wondering if I might’ve been bitten by something, like the six-inch millipede I’ve just spotted crawling across the fig root I’m stepping over.

  ‘You sick for mary!’ He slaps his knee and he and his cousin stagger about laughing. I’m sick for want of a woman, he reckons.

  ‘Yeah. Very funny, To-An.’ Though he’s probably got a point: I have been missing Bernie worse than normal over the last month, not that he’d know that. But I do know he’s about to get married himself, Johno told me, by way of explaining why To-An performed a series of death-defying backflips down the derrick the other day.

  He hands me a banana and he and Manulu stagger about again.

  I’m nearly staggering myself by the time we reach Kabakada. Not sick, only tired. That’s all this malaria is: buggered. I’m confident of that. I can hardly keep my eyes open on the drive into town. But I get there, just in time to post Rico’s letter, and for Mrs Chittaway to tell me: ‘Oh pet, you look awful. Working like a black out there, the way you do, in this heat. You need a rest. You know, we’re not made the same as them.’

  ‘No we’re not,’ I yawn, and I laugh, or try to, from somewhere under this wet blanket. ‘They wouldn’t know the difference between dacite and limestone if … there was a million pounds in it.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Mrs Chittaway arches her eyebrow at me as if I might be troppo.

  Because, obviously, I am. In half a second my skull is pounding with the worry again. I have to be back at the rig. Johno doesn’t know the difference between dacite and limestone either. Why would he? He’s not a geologist. He’s an engineer. I can’t rest. I’m already behind. And with every rod we pull up, I get more and more worried we’re drilling in the wrong place. And that if we are it will be my mistake. I can’t make a mistake.

  ‘You look like you need a drink, pet.’

  I’m sure I do need one. I need to settle down or I will make myself sick. Thinking Johno wouldn’t know the difference between dacite and limestone is like thinking he wouldn’t know the difference between black and white. Do I? I’ve got permanent silver specks before my eyes from looking at too much flaming dacite. Dacite that does not mean we won’t hit the basalt capping stone anyway. The limestone layer has been eaten by subterranean aliens, that’s all. Troppo.

  I need more than a drink. I ask Mrs Chittaway: ‘Has any mail come for me?’ Bernie must have sent me a letter by now. I’d prefer to call her but it’s almost six; I’ve missed this afternoon’s line.

  ‘Sorry, pet, no mail.’ Mrs Chittaway is disappointed for me.

  The state I’m in, disappointment goes straight to disaster. Why hasn’t Bernie written to me? A proper letter. It’s been a month and I need to know what’s going on at home. She doesn’t really love me, does she. She doesn’t care for me. And I don’t blame her. I’ve never been good enough for her. I’m not a boring geologist these days, no – I’m a geologist with no flaming idea. What would she want with me anyway? She’s always been too beautiful for me. She’s met someone else. She met someone in Orange.

  ‘Would you like me to book you a call to Sydney for tomorrow morning then?’

  ‘Thanks, yeah, that’d be good,’ I say. Troppo as.

  I’ll talk to Bernie tomorrow. It’s just the distance playing with me. Like too much dacite in my pyroclastic overlayer. The feeling that all manner of untold shit will happen if I don’t find this oil we’re drilling for.

  ‘Gordon! Where are you running off to now?’ Mrs Chittaway squawks as I head out.

  ‘To the office.’ To check the Anglo-Eastern files there. The old data. I have to know we’re not drilling in the wrong place.

  When I get round to Court Street, though, the place is locked up. No one about at all, not even the houseboys. It’s getting on for sunset; they must have left for the Rabaul dining room already. Given the boys the night off? Odd. One of the neighbours sees me from his verandah and waves; he works for one of the banks, can’t remember his name. He shouts across the bougainvillea hedge between us: ‘You’ve missed them – they went off this morning.’ Orrrf, have another Scotch and go back to counting your coconuts.

  ‘Where’ve they gone?’

  ‘Tahiti,’ he raises his glass. ‘A fortnight’s cruising. Said they’d be back tenth of August, I think.’

  Tahiti? Roycox and Taylor, together? I manage not to ask him if they’ve gone orrrf on bloody honeymoon. Who has a holiday in Tahiti in the middle of a war? Roycox and Taylor do. These are, after all, men who said no to Rico’s request last week for a pedal phone for us, after one of the cables on the hoist snapped and nearly took Johno’s head off with it. A phone is apparently an unnecessary expense. But a honeymoon in Tahiti, well, that’s essential. This is why the rich are rich, isn’t it? Because they don’t flaming well care.

  I storm back round to the New Guinea, riled up. Flaming bastards. Flaming pansified bastards. Tahiti. While I’ve been working my arse off. Going mad in this humidity. Breathing soup. With the endless drilling, boring into my head. The endless grinding of the motor and the rods. Lugging and logging bag after flaming bag of rock, up to my ankles in leech-infested mud. By the time I reach the lawn of the club, I am a psychopath.

  I want to murder a beer, but the first person I see in there is Sid Triscombe, Johno’s militia CO. He’s standing at the bar, telling a crowd of his old bastard mates: ‘Couldn’t believe it when I heard. Three weeks these companies are on the line at a stint. Three weeks? We were five weeks in the trenches in my day – if we were lucky.’ All shaking their heads. Someone else says: ‘Gone soft, these young blokes.’ I turn around and walk out again. Don’t want Sid to see me right at this moment, telling me how soft I am avoiding my national service in the middle of a war. Because I could get a bit aggressive today. I had better go straight back up to my room and lock myself in.

  Back across the lawn to the Weekender, I can’t credit what I am doing here at all. Why did I sign that contract? Why did Taylor accept it? I am obviously too young, too inexperienced, as well as soft – in the head. I should have gone on the Survey, stuck to my course; I should be at home worrying about what postgraduate research I’m going to do. A treatise on the wealth of New England bauxite my country doesn’t presently want or need, or an exploration of how useless a whole continent of haematite could be as an iron ore resource. Instead of losing my mind waiting for untold shit to happen. Where? In flaming troppos’ paradise.

  ‘Gordon!’ Mrs Chittaway flaps after me as I storm past reception. ‘Here! Here, pet! There was a letter for you after all, slipped under my receipts box, silly thing.’ Waving an envelope. Flaming troppo, too.

  It’s a white envelope. A square one. Clearly not from His Majesty.

  Unless he’s taken to wearing White Lilac.

  I grab it from Mrs Chittaway, my manners taken off with my mind, and I tear it open, taking the stairs two by two, looking for the Dear Gordon that’s surely coming, but reading:

  My wonderful darling Rock

  I wouldn’t be writing you a letter at all if Mum wasn’t sticking pins in me – truly. We’re making the bodice for my wedding dress and I’ve only just managed to escape her with the excuse of writing to you.

  So the madness stops. Here on the stair
s. It all stops still around her words.

  It really wouldn’t matter what she wrote. But what she says is so good, I have to read the whole thing here on the stairs. She’s sorting a million glass beads at the kitchen table with her mum and telling me all about the Department of Stonewalling, who won’t tell her what they’ve done with Mrs Zoc. She makes me see her with her words. Hear her voice. She says, I’m not going to bother carrying on about how much I miss you and all that, and then carries on for half a page about how much she does, how she can’t go to our Niagara, even though it’s reopened now that the police have finally stopped harassing Mr Cominos for being a swarthy milkbar proprietor. It’s just that vanilla malt doesn’t taste the same these days, without you. She misses me. The distance between us shrinks to nothing, and my bearings return, before she even tells me:

  If you ever have any doubt of the worth of what you’re doing, don’t, my darling. The price of petrol’s going astronomical here. Not joking, the traffic on the roads has halved as a result, and Prime Minister Pig Face wants to bring in petrol rationing now too. It’s ironic, don’t you think, that Dad is no doubt making a better living as an army captain than he would if he’d stayed in the garage with disappearing custom? But Dad couldn’t do what he’s doing unless you keep doing what you’re doing, and I don’t just mean finding petrol. I mean being safe. It’s so very important to me that you are safe and well. Everything else is bedlam, I need that one certainty, because you are my love, the love of my life, Gordon – despite your having made yourself so very geographically inconvenient to me.

  Gordon. She loves me and she called me Gordon. She really must mean it. That’s just amazing, isn’t it? That she’s my girl. My spirits go astronomical.

  Somehow I travel the rest of the way up the stairs and down to the end of the top verandah. Find my trunk, where my photo of Bernie is. Here she is in the cover of Geological Formations in her white bathers and I’m not even going to bother with a bath. I’m going to look at her until I am unconscious, and when I wake up, I’m going to go back downstairs and pick up the phone and hear her voice for real. Please.