This Red Earth Read online

  BERNIE

  All in a rush, he says: ‘I’ve only got the three minutes, there’s a queue all the way to Shanghai today, but I hope to be back in Rabaul early September, and I’ll confirm it then with the powers and call you again too, but plan for me to be home by Monday the second of December at the latest – I’ll just have to make that happen however I can. That date should give me enough time to get a suit, though, shouldn’t it?’

  ‘A suit?’ I almost ask what for, I’m so caught up in the surprise of his call, his voice. Determined. Purposeful. Caramel.

  ‘Yeah,’ he laughs. ‘A suit.’

  A flood of desire in me: Rock in a dinner suit is – just about worth getting married for. I say: ‘Don’t worry about a new suit. The one you’ve got is fine.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ he laughs again. ‘It’s got too small in the shoulders, from all the navvying.’

  ‘Oh.’ I’m drowning in it now. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah really. Thanks for your letter, Bernie. Geez, it was good,’ he says. ‘Really good,’ he adds, and I can almost feel his breath on my ear, his warmth. ‘You’ve got a real way with a yarn. Where’ve you been hiding that light?’

  And I haven’t even told him about Eugenia yet. Slipped my mind, with all that’s been happening. It’ll keep. I tell him, and I’ve never believed in it more: ‘I can’t wait to be with you for good. Forever and ever.’

  He groans, softly, then says: ‘Um, yeah …’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ I look over at my bodice pinned to the mannequin in the lounge, Mum’s first arabesques of tiny glass pearls curling down from her sweetheart neckline, passion flower tendrils, not like anything you’ll find in a catalogue, one of a kind, work of art, labour of love, everything she’d have wanted for herself if she and Dad could have afforded it then. The line crackles and I remember where we are now, what we’re doing, and that four days won’t be nearly long enough for the tailor. ‘You’d better send me your measurements, darling.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Your suit.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  GORDON

  But that’s not exactly the way things are going to work out for us. The day I book my ticket home is the day the Luftwaffe start blitz-bombing London. And the day after that, Taylor drags himself away from his Sunday morning Weet-Bix and gin to tell me in the breakfast room of the Weekender: ‘All Christmas leave is suspended.’

  Instead of quilting him on the spot, I say: ‘I’m getting married on the seventh of December.’

  ‘Not if you work for Southern Star, you won’t be.’ He taps one corner of a folded telegram on the edge of my bread plate. ‘You will have to reschedule your personal affairs. The board of directors has decided that you are all to work through until you’ve struck the crude or gone down the full six thousand feet.’

  ‘Through the rain?’ When it comes, the drill rod is going to get bogged every six inches.

  ‘Yes.’ There’s a look that comes over his eyes as he glances away. Regret or impatience, I can’t tell. ‘Given the changing circumstances of the war, it is now imperative to push on, and push on quickly.’

  I can understand that well enough. No more cruising in the South Seas for any of the board members, either. At least one German raider is lurking around this way somewhere. We know this because it’s just sunk a Kiwi freighter in the Tasman.

  Shit. This time yesterday, Bernie and I were holding up the queue again planning a honeymoon in Blackheath and deciding that she will decide where she wants to live and what she wants to do afterwards. All I can do now is send her a telegram: LEAVE HAS BEEN SUSPENDED UFN DUE TO WAR. DELAY WEDDING TIL WHENEVER IT CAN HAPPEN. I LOVE YOU. SO SORRY. What else can I say? I run most of the way back to the rig, as if we might strike the crude if we get another rod in this afternoon.

  There is a lot of language at the receipt of the news. Reg threatens to resign, which provokes Johno to tell him: ‘Go on, then. Piss off, you fat hairy sheila.’ Among other things. That shuts Reg up, for the next three weeks, until Japan signs the Axis Pact with Germany and Italy and moves down into Indo-China. ‘Youse are all bleeding mad to stay here, sitting ducks,’ are his parting words, and Johno brings me back a rifle from town: ‘Not much choice now, Brockie.’

  I shake my head: no. I don’t have a choice. I’m not going to pick up a gun against another man. Not a German, not a Jap, not anyone. In the very unlikely event that they, whoever they might be, get through the British Army defence of Singapore to get down here, let them intern me. Good enough for Mrs Zoc, good enough for me. I am a civilian and they, German or Jap, are civilised people. If I don’t pick up a rifle, I won’t die. I will be safe. And they won’t come anyway. They can’t, not with any great force. America has now, very sensibly, prohibited the export of high-octane fuel to the Axis countries so none of them can fly a plane as far as Singapore. Uncle Sam will keep the Pacific blitz free and I will be getting married as soon as we pull up the first traces of petroleum on New Britain. As soon as we hit that basalt capping stone. That has to be there. Somewhere between five hundred and three thousand feet from now. It just has to be.

  I tell Johno: ‘Let’s get another rod in this arvo, yeah?’

  BERNIE

  Put aside your dreams for tomorrow, Pig Face said over the wireless, be prepared to sacrifice yourselves to the point of exhaustion. God Save the King, full complement of plums in his mouth, and you’ve never seen a twenty-one year old so quick to get their name on the roll, with two days to spare, my birthday falling as it does on the nineteenth of September.

  ‘Who would Dad vote for?’ I ask Mum, though she’s never been on the roll herself, and Dad’s never been one much for politics other than to have cultivated a reasonably firm conviction that the King can save himself.

  She says with no hesitation: ‘That Curtin fellow from West Australia.’

  ‘Right.’ As I’d thought: Labor Party. I know Dad would go that way, because Mr Curtin does appear to have a dream for tomorrow, an Australian one, with a matching accent, one that doesn’t involve sending every last twenty-one year old abroad. In his speech, he didn’t go on about war and sacrifice. He said we need to put the brains of our nation together for self-reliance, for our own industries, our own oil and our own aeroplanes – ones with steel wings, as opposed to Irish linen – to win what he calls the Peace. Pig Face keeps having a go at him for being a pacifist socialist and not caring about the bombs in London. But who better to win a peace than a pacifist? And socialists believe women should get equal pay, don’t they? Fancy that. Blooping well get on with it so that Dad and Mrs Zoc, wherever they are, can come home and Rock and I can be married by Christmas.

  ‘But who do I vote for here, in our seat?’ I ask Mum what I actually meant to ask her. Who do I vote for in our seat of Watson? Currently held by someone from the United Australia Party, who is on the way out if I have a say in it. I need to be sure I mark the right box.

  ‘That Jewish chap,’ says Mum, again without hesitation. Religious intolerance suspended for the Catholic Daily consensus. ‘Young Russian fellow, all eyebrows, married a Baptist and his mother hasn’t spoken to him since.’

  Right. Father Gerard confirms it on the day anyway. ‘Morning, Bernadette. You’ll be voting for Mr Falstein.’ Mr Max Falstein. Find him on the paper and mark that box.

  Most of Coogee does, and he wins. Mr Curtin doesn’t, though. He loses by a whisker, and we end up with a hung parliament: we don’t know what we’ve decided. War or Peace.

  ‘Never mind,’ says Mum, and she makes me shepherd’s pie for tea, even though it’s not Monday.

  Never mind. It’s only an election. Just like it’s only a wedding. Only a formality. Truly one that doesn’t matter, because I have realised over the long weeks since I LOVE YOU. SO SORRY, that I don’t need a priest or a certificate or a million glass pearls to tell me what I’ve always known, through all my carry on: if I should ever lose my Rock, my heart will be rendered null and void. A dead blac
k lump of coal, wrapped in magnolia silk, packed in naphthalene, and stamped: YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'VE GOT TILL IT'S GONE.

  Gone. No. Not gone. It’s only delayed.

  Postie comes with a fat letter in October, and I run up to him like a pup, but it’s not from anyone we love. It’s from Colonel Aitkins of the Department of Stonewalling to inform me, at length and in reference to the enclosed copy of the Official Secrets Act, that any attempt of mine at further correspondence with any officer of Eastern Command or the Attorney-General’s Department will be referred to the Commonwealth Investigations Branch. All I wanted to know is where Mrs Zoc is and when the enemy alien appeal forms will be ready. But I’m not allowed to know. It’s against the law.

  Knowledge, like everything, is suspended. Hung. The universe is holding its breath. Week after week, I hardly want to move from the house, in case Rock phones. In case Dad writes. In case the paper says: THE WAR IS OVER. THE PEACE IS WON.

  Doesn’t happen, of course; nothing does, except facing up to calling all of our happiness off. St Brigid’s, the Bay dining room, Yoohoo, the photographer, the flowers.

  Friday the sixth of December, the day before what should have been our day, I go out and sit on the step of the laundry in the sun, look up into the branches of our lemon heavy with fruit, and all I can see is the Yellow Peril step-stoning across New Guinea to take everything else from us. Despite Pig Face continuing to call that far-fetched. I don’t believe him now; I doubt anyone does. If the Japs are no threat, why then is America giving money to China to fight them? Why has America put sixteen million of their own boys on notice, and why have they stopped selling the Japs aeroplane oil? The Japs say all they want to do is have a new world order with the fascists, as if everyone should want one of those. I shudder in the sun. What does a new world order mean? What do they really want? A new fascist order? Where there’s no such thing as trade contracts, you just roll in the tanks and take what you want, like the Nazis do? Has Pig Face not considered this, or is the parliament so hung it’s ignoring it? Why would they do that? Because of our trade contracts? But we wouldn’t ever sell the Japs aeroplane oil, would we? I shiver again: I don’t want one drop of Rock’s sweat going to this new world of fascists, not for any money.

  Piccolo settles down next to me on the step with a yawn. He looks at the paper on my knees and mewls as if to say: Don’t believe anything you read in that.

  Unless it’s true. Who would know? The Department of Information is in charge of all the papers and the wireless now. Maybe they’re deliberately trying to addle me. I decide to go straight to the Classifieds for some sense, see if there aren’t any good sales on anything that doesn’t involve armaments or serviceable twill. I’ve had enough of news I don’t want to know about. And don’t understand.

  I scrunch the broadsheet awkwardly as I fold it back, and my eyes fall on a series of notices from the Department of Supply and Development, inviting tenders for work and produce at various military and internment camps, Orange, Bathurst, Tamworth … Yawn. Perhaps I could disguise myself as a purveyor of lemons and a small quantity of haricot beans, get myself inside the system, and bust Mrs Zoc out. But then, halfway down the list, I see something not so ridiculous, something that pulls me up with a start: Purchase of Waste Food, Fat, Bone, and Dripping, ex Hay Internment Camp. Hay Internment Camp. In all my pestering and poking about, I’ve never heard of that camp. I’ve never heard of Hay.

  ‘Mum!’ I sing out to her through the kitchen window, where she’s been cumquat marmalading all morning, presents for Dad and Rock. ‘Where’s Hay, the town Hay?’

  ‘Hay? Is it near Wagga Wagga, love? Don’t know.’

  Never mind, I’m already on my way to ask the exchange.

  ‘Hay Internment Camp?’ the telephonist repeats. ‘Certainly, madam.’

  She’s going to put me through now?

  ‘Hay Internment Camp,’ says the man who eventually picks up, a voice that’s somehow bored and busy at the same time. I imagine he’s a corporal and decide to throw caution to a cyclone, going straight for a series of outrageous lies.

  ‘My name is Monica Brockley, of Brockley and Brockley Solicitors,’ I charge at him. ‘I understand that you are holding a woman at your camp, my client, Mrs Emilia Zoccoli. Can you confirm this, please?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Yep what?’

  ‘Yep, that’s right. She’s here,’ he grunts, as if everyone knows Mrs Zoc has been there for the last hundred years.

  This can’t be, can it? But I continue to charge: ‘It is of the utmost importance then that I see her, as soon as possible. Can you arrange this for me now?’

  ‘Sunday,’ he grunts again. ‘Visitors are permitted Sundays, from two pm until four. Just turn up.’

  ‘Right,’ I say, only just, and only just restrain myself from demanding to know how this has become suddenly all so easy. ‘Sunday then.’

  ‘Good-o. Is that all?’ Apparently I’m wasting his time now.

  ‘Yep. Thank you.’

  Blow me down. Hughie, you do move in mysterious ways.

  ‘Mum!’ I sing out again, grabbing the atlas from the bookshelf in one hand and the telephone receiver again in the other, to call Central Station, to find out how to get to this Hay place, but the doorbell rings first and I open it to the postie boy, holding out a telegram.

  It’s for Mrs WE Cooper.

  ‘Mum!’

  She looks at it from ten paces, from the kitchen door, with a special fear reserved for unexpected telegrams, from her last war. I want to remind her: Dad’s still idling in the desert, where the only war that’s going on is in the form of a gang of lunatic Jews attempting to blow up a British police station in Jerusalem with a bomb that failed to go off. Isn’t it? Nothing’s happened to Dad. No news is good news and this news is hopefully only notification of his court martial on account of his nuisance of a daughter. But Mum’s already snatched it out of my hand, ripping it open.

  Ripping past me and slamming the bedroom door behind her.

  And then I hear her yelp. A small, sharp gulp of pain.

  ‘Mum?’

  Silence. Nothing but silence. A silence that stops time.

  PART THREE

  DECEMBER 1940–NOVEMBER 1941

  GORDON

  ‘There is no answer at that number, sir,’ the girl says, ‘I’m sorry.’

  Not as sorry as I am.

  ‘Give it one last try?’ Mrs Chittaway looks over at the wall clock behind her. It’s two minutes to twelve. I shake my head. Not worth the trouble. The wireless would cut out as soon as I got through anyway. There won’t be another line at four today, either. The afternoon service has been cancelled, as I discovered six weeks ago when I last tried to call. Mrs Chittaway gives me half a smile, with an eyebrow for the muddy puddle I’ve sunk into her carpet. ‘Get upstairs and get out of those clothes then.’

  Yes, that would be a good idea. It didn’t stop raining the whole way here. I went past soaked about five hours ago. About five weeks ago, actually. There’s no respite from this rain, other than when the winds pick up and drives it horizontal. I am looking forward to being dry for the next little while. Dry my feet out. They are that bad with tinea, I’m almost frightened to peel my socks off. But they’re not nearly as disgusting as the leech I find sucking on the back of my left shoulder soaping up. Can’t get used to them. Will never get used to them.

  As soon as I’m dry, though, I go back out into the wet. I’m going to Soon’s Emporium on Solomon Street to buy something for Bernie. Something cheerful, for Christmas. I see it straight­away, right at the counter: a silver hair comb with tiny flowers on it, made from chips of gemstone. Amethyst and topaz, it looks like. Purple and gold, like my flowers from home. Nyngan. Be nice and dry there. ‘Very nice, very nice,’ says Mrs Soon. ‘Lucky lady for this one.’ Don’t think too much about how very nice it will look against her wavy dark hair, or that it’s made in Japan.

  I choose a card, one with a white C
hristmas dove on it. What do I say? Thinking of you, Bernie. Can’t get further than that. I’m not good with a letter anyway. Like Dad. Haven’t heard from him all year, have I. I get him a card with some holly and shit on it, and I write: Merry Christmas, Dad.

  ‘I post for you, Mr Brock,’ says Mrs Soon. ‘You go get out of the rain.’

  ‘Thanks.’ But I’m not out of the rain just yet. I have to go round to Court Street to report to Taylor and Roycox that, predictably, we’ve not drilled four hundred feet in these last six weeks, when normally we’d drill more than half that in a week.

  ‘Why’s that?’ Taylor asks at the door, but he’s more interested in straightening his tie. I’ve caught him at the shirt-change for lunch.

  Instead of yelling: ISN’T IT BLOODY OBVIOUS? I say: ‘Because the rig is swimming in mud, we’ve snapped two rods so far, and the natives refuse to work.’ Sensibly, if you ask me. To-An and a couple of the others come up with provisions out of pity.

  Taylor waves it off. ‘Do your best, persevere, keep on.’

  I will, and this is why I have to ask once again: ‘I need to have a look at the old Anglo-Eastern files. I want to check the data for dacite in the broader area.’ Solid dacite now, nothing but dacite, silver specks playing with me more than ever: you’re drilling in the wrong place, Brock.

  But Roycox appears in the hall and he’s annoyed. ‘Not now, no,’ and Taylor adds with another wave. ‘We’re about to conduct a business meeting, young Brock, you can’t just bowl in whenever you like, and in any event, you will be told if such geological research is needed – by Mr Roycox.’

  I laugh and say: ‘Yeah, and stuff you too.’