This Red Earth Read online

  ‘Pardon?’ Did she just say Hell? ‘Where does he come in–’

  ‘Hell,’ she nods. ‘That’s where the station is, thirty miles north of here. Hell’s Flat. And it is as bad as it sounds – worse for these last few years. It’s the Hell in “Hay and Hell and Booligal”. You know, the poem, Banjo Paterson?’

  ‘Umm.’ I’m sure I do but I can’t think of it at this speed.

  ‘Well,’ Mrs Lockhart raises an eyebrow: ‘Suffice to say that the reality is not nearly so entertaining as Mr Paterson’s poem.’ She laughs lightly over the teapot, a chinkling sound. ‘That I could wish it upon any young woman seems almost sinful. Go to Hell. Dust storms and brown snakes and accepting that you and the children will never be as important as the sheep, the horses, the dogs and the dingo trapper, in that order. Still, I do wish it. Milk, sugar? Do help yourself to a scone, dear, won’t you?’

  I won’t need to be asked twice, I am starving and the spread looks delicious; won’t need to pause for conversation either. ‘Married to the flock, like his dear late father,’ Mrs Lockhart manages very well on her own. ‘Twenty thousand head, we have. That’s a sizeable mob, if you don’t know. Even in a good year he’s often away, Mitch, that is, moving stock up what we call the Long Paddock, three hundred miles long all the way from Deniliquin up to Wilcannia. That’s where my people are from originally, Wilcannia, on the Darling River. Have you been up that way yet, dear?’

  I shake my head; no idea where Wilcannia is, and it doesn’t matter anyway because: ‘Oh, a wonderful part of the world, it is, on the Darling.’ She looks out to the willows, and then back to me, sparkly willow-green eyes. ‘When I was your age, before the war – not this one, the last one – our great fun up there was to take one of the wool boats from Wilcannia across to Bourke. It’s all on the railways these days of course, but in those days, oh, the riverboats were something, and there was always a dance or a party to be had in Bourke. That was a town, before the railways – Bourke was a marvellous town. And we were a wild mob, don’t you doubt it, dear. That’s where we met Brock – the senior, that is. Oh, and could he dance? A striking figure, I’ll say. If I hadn’t already been promised, I–’

  I stop mid-mouthful at the mention of Gordon’s father, a man I know only as strikingly absent, and when Mrs Lockhart sees she’s as speedy with an apology. ‘Oh dear, I am sorry. That was tactless. Of course you didn’t even get to meet Mr Brock, did you, and I carry on with such nonsense,’ she scolds herself, before changing the subject: ‘So, tell me all about this Italian lady you’ve come for. How awful …’

  Awful. I am caught up inside the thought of how awful, for Mr Brock. That he was happy once, dancing with all the ladies of the Darling River, before bleeding misery. Before Gallipoli.

  ‘And so I don’t suppose you’d be interested in doing something like that at the camp, would you? Tell me all about your accomplishments, Bernadette.’ Mrs Lockhart’s chatter breaks through awful.

  And she’s waiting for an answer this time.

  ‘Oh? Um. Pardon me – what?’

  ‘Mrs Werner’s children, in the camp,’ she tisks: Keep up, girl. ‘They’re terribly bored, and bright things, too. She’d like them taught their lessons in English. They’ll be there for some time yet, as their appeal has failed. Such a nasty business. You know, she’s a Jewess – that’s why they had to leave Germany, why they upped sticks to Melbourne. But all the authorities appear to see is that her husband’s papers say he’s a member of the Nazi Party – they simply won’t believe that he was forced into it, like they all were, because that’s what the blasted fascists do, don’t they. The man is a musician, violinist, very refined fellow, for heaven’s sake. Now he’s in the men’s camp – over the other side of the tracks, you would have seen it coming in this morning. Thrown in with the Nazis, he is, separated from his wife and the children, and there’s not a thing to be done about it. Well, that is, apart from flouting the rules to have a teacher brought in for the kiddies.’ Mrs Lockhart’s eyes sparkle with mischief.

  The little girl with chestnut plaits skips through my mind, through a vague recollection of Nazis smashing synagogue windows in Berlin and an argument in the papers over us not wanting too many Jews coming here: don’t bring your Continental window-smashing troubles here, thank you. Wasn’t paying attention then; am now. But I have to say: ‘I’m not a teacher, Mrs Lockhart, and I’m only going to be here for–’

  ‘They’re not all Jews, you know,’ Mrs Lockhart ploughs on, ‘although there’s a whole shipload full of men in the same boat as Mr Werner. Plenty of Christian kiddies have been locked up as well, dear, poor little Lutheran kiddies. Hauled out of their homes in New Guinea and the Top End and thrown in prison like common criminals. They take all their lessons in their own language, of course, but their mothers would so very much appreciate a kind and pretty face such as yours to take the children for craft, dance, fun things, take their dear little minds off their predicament – the Italian kiddies too.’

  ‘I can see you’re passionately devoted to them all, but I–’

  ‘Passionate?’ Mrs Lockhart shakes her napkin at me. ‘The Department of Army will know about passionate when I’m finished with them. Coming here, these city people, taking over the place, treating us as if we’re simple Simons, don’t know what’s good for us, and questioning my patriotism. They’ll know about patriotism, my word. My husband didn’t lay down his life in some godforsaken bog in France for little children to be imprisoned behind barbed wire on his grandfather’s old grazing lands!’

  I might be beginning to see what Mrs Overton meant by redoubtable. Mrs Lockhart is a ferocious plum pudding right after my own heart. I think she’s also just told me she’s a war widow.

  But still I have to say: ‘I’m sorry, I’m not a teacher. I have no exp–’

  ‘You’re good with words, though, aren’t you – weren’t you working in advertising for Chalmers before your engagement?’ Mrs Lockhart purses her lips together as if to say, I’ve got your number, missy. ‘You’re enormously clever, so I’ve heard. And once you’ve met the children this afternoon, you won’t be able to say no. The Werner kiddies are delightful, impeccable manners, for little boys. Now, tell me, how are you in the garden, dear? I have some tomato seedlings that need to be thinned out and re-potted before we leave …’

  Good grief. What have I got into here?

  A wide beige land. Hay is utterly beige. The sun is high now and so breathlessly hot it’s leached the colour from everything, so that at first I don’t recognise the camp for what it is. The huts, laid out in a circle inside a circle of wire, are painted the same beige as the dirt, as if the whole camp has been deliberately and very unnecessarily camouflaged. Hughie, but how do people live in this blinding heat at all? With no verandahs on the huts, no eaves. Thirty miles from Hell. Should report this to the Red Cross. I am forming a new appreciation for sheep, too, who have to spend all day in it, in wool. And starving, truly. There is not one stick of grass on Grandfather Lockhart’s old grazing land today.

  Mrs Lockhart hands me a box of tomato seedlings from the back of the ute. ‘Take those, will you please, dear?’

  I would look at her as if she’s the very end of mental – these plants will surely fry out here – but Bess Lockhart is a power unto herself, a kind of sun around which everything else spins. She carries another box of seedlings herself, as well as a string bag stuffed with envelopes full of seeds for a variety of summer veg, which are destined not only for putting roses in the kiddies’ cheeks but to give their mothers something to do. A food garden to supplement a healthy dose of vitamin sponge-cake, all donated by the matrons of the CWA, and an old sewing machine thrown in by a Mrs McDoughal, with half-a-dozen sugar sacks worth of remnant fabric included. These will be the best fed and clothed children in the nation if Mrs Lockhart has anything to do with sticking one in the eye of the Department of Army.

  A guard appears around the corner of the nearest hut and waves to Mitche
ll, who is lugging the sewing machine up to the camp entrance, which is nothing more than an open break in the wire fence. How ridiculous, all this regulation army barbed wire and the guard’s rifle is leaning unattended beside a garbage bin, beside an absent gate. Mitchell and the guard exchange a handshake and a word, like old friends, because they probably are, while behind them a gang of small boys are kicking a ball around, kicking up dust, joyful. They play and yell and shove each other as if they are on holiday camp, and I think, what a strange country this is: closed and callous disregard one moment, and open, boundless generosity the next. Droughts and floods.

  Then I see the elegant black crepe shape step into the sun from the doorway of one of the far huts, a sharp clap of hands, calling in boys, ‘Pronto, pronto!’ and I almost drop my tomatoes. I run right past Mitchell and the guard, losing my hat as I go.

  ‘Mrs Zoc!’

  GORDON

  ‘Uncanny.’ Sid’s still scratching his head over it. ‘The way you handle a rifle. You’re the image of him. Dunno how I didn’t pick it before.’

  That I look a lot like my Dad. I don’t know, either. Probably because Sid hadn’t seen me with a rifle before. I’m still holding the butt to my shoulder, out on this range that lies between the cemetery and the golf course. Sid’s less impressed by the bullseye just now than the resemblance. I’m still looking through the sight, not at the target now but at the steam drifting out of Mount Matupi beyond the eighteenth hole, waiting for the urge to yell out all manner of shit to express the relation of percussive impact to pain still reverberating through my hand. Eye-watering.

  ‘Your dad’s got dark hair, though, hasn’t he? You’re a bit fairer than him. Maybe that’s it.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You will give him my regards, won’t you?’ Sid asks me again, as he’s asked me several times since yesterday afternoon. I look at him now and he’s not a mean bastard at all, just an old bloke asking after an old mate. He obviously thinks a lot of Dad. He only knew him briefly. Dad’s was a very brief war. They met in training, in a paddock in Campbelltown outside Sydney, a few weeks before they embarked, and didn’t get a chance to say hooroo when they landed at Anzac Cove. In the scheme of things, he knew Dad for less than five minutes, but Sid’s thrill at the recognition seems that much of a deal, I couldn’t say no to coming out here shooting with him. In this break in the rain. Miraculous what a break in the rain can do for your personal equilibrium.

  I say: ‘Yeah, of course I’ll tell him you said hello.’ If I could. I don’t tell Sid that Dad’s gone AWL. And I don’t tell him that Dad wouldn’t be pleased I’m here, on any rifle range; I don’t think Sid would understand that much at all. Somehow, for Sid, his Great War seems to have been just that: the best years of his life. Beats being a shipping clerk for Burns Philp, I suppose it might seem for him. Eye-watering.

  Sid finally notes the accuracy of my shot and shakes his head. ‘Dunno what you were shy about. I’ll have you in my company.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ I can tell him, with confidence now. ‘I’m not going to be any good to you in the militia.’

  ‘No? Why’s that, son?’ Sid is smiling as if I’m having him on, waiting for the next line of the joke. I don’t think he’s the sharpest blade in the drawer, either.

  I tell him: ‘I might be a good shot, but I can’t fire two in a row.’ Not without a rest of several years in between.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I put something out in my hand, in a blue. About a year ago. It’s no good.’ Not too good at all, I reckon as I prise it off the trigger, but I couldn’t be more pleased about it. This is my exemption from national service, end of issue. I wouldn’t pass the medical examination – I couldn’t pass the flaming handshake. But I could send a Christmas card to the shearer that caused it.

  ‘Oh.’ Sid rolls his shoulder, awkward. ‘You could have told me that in the first place, I wouldn’t have given you a hard time.’

  Don’t point out to him that he has no business giving me a hard time about anything. He’s a sad old man. Hard case. Just like my father. Same disease, different manifestation.

  He pulls out his hipflask. ‘Rum?’

  ‘No thanks.’ I hand him back the rifle. ‘But I could murder a beer.’

  I want to go back to the bar and hear him tell me a couple more times what a good bloke my dad was. Having some fun on the ship, mixing up everyone’s boots in the night, putting salt in his CO’s sugar bowl. A man I don’t recognise. And one I do: someone who’d give you his rum ration if you needed it more than him, somehow convincing you it was yours in the first place. A man Sid last saw tearing up the steep face of a gully above that beach, firing and reloading the whole time, unstoppable. Whatever happened to him after that, I don’t know, and I don’t think Sid does either. I just want to hear Sid tell me how much I look like him a couple more times before I go back to the shithole of the rig tomorrow.

  To help me keep sight of why I’m doing this. Oil for Empire, soldiering for Southern Star Greed Incorporated, and for national industrial security against an axis of evil that is threatening my house on the harbour for Bernie. That’s why am I doing this. Isn’t it, Dad?

  BERNIE

  ‘So, did you write to the wonder people?’ Mrs Zoc asks me, as if we’re chatting over the back fence in Coogee and not in the empty and airless hothouse of the dining room of Hay Women’s Camp, six months after our last conversation. She’s just told me she’s already made an appeal against her internment herself, and it’s failed. As if no more has happened than she’s missed the tram. And now I have no idea what she’s talking about.

  ‘Wonder people?’

  ‘The wonder book people.’ She gives me an admonishing tone: ‘I cut out the advertisement from the Women’s Mirror for you.’

  ‘Oh!’ The light flickers on somewhere in the depths of broiled brain. ‘Wonder Publications? Yes, I–’ I would tell her all about Monica Brockley’s suspended adventure with Eugenia Frank and Will Gordon, but I’m not going to be distracted from the reason I’ve come all this way here. ‘Look, Mrs Zoc, I think I’d better be writing another appeal for you, rather than a six-penny romance. You can’t stay here.’

  I look around the room. We’re the only people in it. I am the only visitor this Sunday, apart from Mrs and Mitchell Lockhart, who’ve gone to look at the bore that was drilled yesterday for the garden water, bore water that is casting a stench over this side of the camp like something’s gone putrid in the belly of the earth. It has: I’m the only visitor in here today because there was a brawl yesterday in the men’s camp between the Nazis and the Jews over the Sabbath and so none of them has been allowed out to see their families. I repeat: ‘Mrs Zoc, you’re not staying here two seconds longer than necessary.’

  ‘Of course I can stay here, Bernadetta,’ she straightens, as if I’ve offended her: she can write her own appeals thank you very much. ‘It is not the worst place I stay in my life. It does not matter.’

  ‘It does matter. You haven’t done anything wrong. This isn’t fair.’ Hear the whine in my voice: don’t let your pride get in the way of my need to rescue you and have us both out of here by Tuesday.

  ‘It is fair enough,’ Mrs Zoc slaps the table briskly. ‘It is my own fault I keep my Marco’s old anarchico magazines from years ago because I keep every little stupido thing of him he ever touch. This is fair enough wrongdoing for the police: they don’t know better, they don’t know that Marco was not more a revolutionary than a Shirley Temple lollipop, they don’t know what it is to have to lie on your papers to be safe, either. They only want to keep this country peaceful. Peace is why we come here, Bernadetta; I will not complain again. And it does not matter anyway because Italia will not be in this war for long. The Fat Head is more stupido than anyone – as soon as the Allies get to Sicilia, it will all be finished for him. You will see. And then I can worry that my bad sons will be free to kill Mr Raymond in Horseshoe, this mango farmer who tells lies about th
em because their fruit is a better quality and price, and then they will be hanged, and I will throw myself off the cliffs below Arcadia. So, it is better to keep these Siciliano boys locked up for as long as they can, eh?’

  She is joking of course, but I am not laughing. Her fiery dark eyes smile and she takes my hand in both of hers: ‘Bernadetta, please, everything is all right for me. And for my sons, too: they are in a camp in a place called Tatura, in Victoria, they write to me that they are well, and they have a big garden there. They have other good neighbours to look after their trees in Horseshoe, too – they are picking the fruit for the Christmas markets right now. The Zoccolis are all right, much more fortunate compared to others. I am happy to stay here, Bernadetta. I am teaching the children here some Siciliano Italiano. They do nothing wrong either.’

  That’s very philosophical of you, Mrs Zoc, but it doesn’t suit my plans, or Mum’s. ‘You have to come home,’ I plead. ‘Mum needs you to.’

  ‘How is your mother?’ Mrs Zoc asks, and that’s all she will talk about now. How’s Mum coping without Dad and will I tell her to go and rescue the strawberries in her yard from the birds? And then suddenly: ‘Ah! Bernadetta! But you are supposed to be on your honeymoon today! Where is Gordon? Is he here too?’ She just about jumps out of her seat at the idea, but then she sees my face, picks up my hand. ‘Where is the ring?’

  ‘There’s been a delay,’ I tell her this war’s got in the way of it, and she cries: ‘Bella! No!’

  ‘Yes. Afraid so.’

  ‘When then?’

  ‘Don’t know. Haven’t heard from him in weeks.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ Mrs Zoc sighs, one hand on mine and the other under the table with her rosary going a decade a second. ‘It is terrible, to be apart for so long and not knowing. But then the worse it is waiting the better it is coming together again, si?’