This Red Earth Page 5

  We get in the ute and Jenny makes the forty miles go by telling me all about who’s doing what where, and she’s happy for me when I tell I’ll be going straight into work on the survey from here. She says: ‘Better adventure than this army business. You know Lindsay Ferguson’s gone and joined up. No other prospects, though, has he, with the farm gone to his brother.’ That might be a common story too, but I don’t give it any thought. Don’t give anything any more thought as we pull up at the Palais in town and the first face I recognise is Merle Oberon. Staring out of the poster for Wuthering Heights. Of course. It’s been playing at every theatre in Sydney for the last few months. I’ve seen it three times already myself. Always with the same result: me spending an hour and a half telling Merle she’s nothing next to Bernie Cooper. And it’s no different this time.

  Afterwards, we take a booth inside this new California Cafe and Jen is wanting to talk about the film. ‘Wasn’t that Laurence Olivier good?’ she says. ‘But all that deep emotion – oh the drama, oh the agony. I suppose that’s art, not that I’d know. Oh Heathcliff,’ she puts on Merle’s Cathy. ‘Oh don’t let me go.’ She laughs: ‘I was a bit glad when they killed her off. Real people just don’t carry on like that, do they? Well, maybe they do in Hollywood, or Sydney,’ she supposes, adding, ‘or Hobart,’ trying to get my attention with another shot at our Merle, but I am obviously a lot more interested in how much butterscotch sauce I got through my bowl of American Beauty. Jen gets to the point: ‘Have you got a girl in Sydney, Gordon?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I’m examining a cross-section of ice cream.

  However I’ve said that has given me away, though, because Jenny’s onto it: ‘Oh, I see. You’re in agony.’

  She stares at me with that arched eyebrow across the table till I admit it. ‘Um, yeah.’

  ‘What’s she like?’

  And that’s all Jenny wants to talk about the forty miles back to Yarranbulla. ‘Has Bernie always lived in Sydney?’ Yes, I tell her, but her Dad, Mr Cooper, is from Gilgandra way. ‘Oh good. Does she work?’ Yes, she works in advertising at Chalmers. ‘Oh, that’s impressive, she’s a career girl?’ Not really, she hates it. ‘Oh good. Does she ride?’ Horses? No. I doubt that Bernie owns a pair of strides, much less boots. She wears high heels. Jen pretends to be shocked. And when I tell her Bernie can surf, that she could cartwheel across the length of the beach and then bring in a bream off the rocks for tea in those high heels, Jen decides: ‘She sounds wonderful, Gordon.’

  Jenny’s such a good sport, a good friend, I should marry her. If I wasn’t so in agony with Bernie Cooper.

  I drop Jenny and the ute off at the homestead and walk down to the shearers’ quarters just about as convinced as Jenny is that ‘of course she’s only playing hard to get, Gordon, unless she’s blind as well as silly’. Agony is only what you make of it. Things will work out all right, however it happens, so let’s get on with it: sleep, sheep, cash, diamond engagement ring …

  But before I can take that good thought to my bunk, I hear Rennicks getting stuck into one of the chaffers, a bloke called Simon Carter. It’s true he’s not that good with the shears, not his calling, but Rennicks is going on about it as if the ability to fleece a sheep is the only true test of manhood. If you reckon wrestling and barbering sheep all day, with fleece stuck to your sweat and shit all over your boots is manly. ‘We should get you some blades and see how many you can butcher.’ Rennicks thinks he’s comedian of the year. I’d like to see him on the blades; I’d like to shove a mechanical handpiece down his neck and turn it on, actually. Simon is copping it, though, he doesn’t care, but Rennicks is pissed, and he’s wanting more, wanting to blue. There are four on the verandah, looking at him laughing at his own jokes, and they’re thinking as one: How are we going to shift this idiot?

  He turns and sees me coming down the track. I have every intention of walking straight past him and through the door. But he has to say: ‘Hoi, city boy, did you get a good root in her?’

  I don’t say anything, and I don’t think twice. I give him the weight of all that’s been on my mind and I enjoy the sound he makes when he hits the tin wall.

  But I’m ashamed of myself again by the time I hit the hay. Dad wouldn’t be happy with me. ‘What was the flaming point of that, Gordie?’ I don’t need Jim to yell in at me either. After this job, I’ll never see Rennicks again, probably. And I let him win. By lowering myself to him. By letting myself be pushed that step too far. Always stick to your own course, son. Yes, Dad. I fall asleep wondering if that’s obsolete advice.

  I wake up with a sore hand, glad it’s Sunday, but it’s not better by Monday, and Jim rips in at my having to pull out of Yarranbulla with five thousand head still to go: ‘Gunner Bloody Useless!’ Rennicks doesn’t gloat as I knock off early: he’s been docked for bringing alcohol onto the station, lucky not to be sacked; and

  neither of us is particularly happy about me going back to Nyngan to see if I didn’t break my knuckles on his face.

  I didn’t. I couldn’t have. It’s just sore, and Doctor McCullough is more interested in asking me: ‘Heard from your father yet?’

  ‘No.’

  He gives me that same look Sergeant Brant did: sort of not knowing but knowing at the same time.

  I ask him: ‘Is there something you know about Dad that I don’t? Is he not well?’

  ‘Not well?’ Doctor Mac looks at me over his specs, and he’s overdoing the surprise. I’m sure he knows something I don’t.

  I say: ‘I have a right to know.’

  ‘No, Gordon, you don’t, in fact.’

  ‘Well, it’s a matter of my health then – it’s driving me mad. What’s wrong with Dad? Please, tell me.’

  He sighs. ‘Nothing is wrong, I would hope.’ But there’s something weighing on his mind. I’m going to sit here until he tells me. He knows that; he sighs again, but finally he says: ‘Your father’ll be back. It’s been a long time but he’s done this before, I mean disappeared, a few times, before you were born. And that’s all I will say. It’s not my story to tell.’

  Well, that I consider to be good news. Thank you. Evidence that he’s gone bush. That’s all I need to know. Medical opinion: he’ll be back. Then Doctor Mac changes the subject, back to my knuckles, clicking his tongue.

  ‘Not like you to be getting into fist fights, not like you at all.’ Shaking his head. ‘Now, unfortunately the X-ray’s gone phut, again, still waiting on a part from Sydney, so I’ll have send you off to Dubbo Hosp–’

  ‘What for? I have to be at Murrawombie on Thursday.’ I told Jim I’d make it there, team of six on ten, already cutting it fine, never mind the pay I’ve already lost over this.

  Doctor Mac looks doubtful. ‘I don’t think continuing in the sheds would be advisable,’ but he’s onto my concerns as well: ‘You start with the Geological Survey soon, don’t you? If you need some money to tide you over, I can give you a loan.’

  ‘No, thank you.’ I almost smile, at his generosity and the fact that you can’t scratch your arse in this town without everyone knowing about it. ‘That’s very good of you,’ I tell him. ‘I’ve got enough money, I …’ Just don’t have enough for Bernie’s diamond. Sixty-eight pounds, I need. I could get her a cheaper one, I could get her a decent one for a third of that price. I could get her one for a fiver. No, I couldn’t.

  ‘You what?’ Doctor Mac wants to know my story.

  Knowing that the answer will be back to Mrs Fitzgerald and right through the CWA in five minutes flat, I admit with no shame left: ‘I’d been hoping to get enough to buy a girl a ring.’

  Doctor Mac’s eyebrows just about jump off his head. ‘This Sydney girl we’ve been hearing about?’ He sits back in his chair, thumbs in his waistcoat, happily married father of nine with two bob’s wisdom to give me. ‘But you don’t need to buy her a ring, my boy. Just tell her that you love her. That’s what a good woman wants. Go to Sydney and tell her that you love her!’

  Of course. Tha
t makes perfect sense. And there’s nothing stopping me, is there. Except … I hear myself actually say: ‘But I suppose I’d better stop in at Dubbo first.’ As if I have any intention of stopping at Dubbo to have an X-ray machine tell me exactly how much of a halfwit I am. Doctor Mac’s clap on the shoulder sends me back out onto the road. ‘Yes, my boy, and give my regards to Doctor Wilmot while you’re there, will you?’

  I look at my knuckles; it’s just a bruise, one that looks a lot happier than the face it clouted. I can’t let Jim down, I have to get myself to work. But I can hardly close my fingers round the grip of the bike’s handlebar as I head back to Still Waiting. How am I going to ride all the way back to Sydney like this? I could catch the train of course. I don’t think the train comes through till tomorrow evening, though. I have to go to Sydney now, to tell Bernie that I love her, to ask her if she will marry me. Now.

  No. I can’t do it. I really do want to get her that ring first. Stick to my course. Keep to the plan.

  Keep to the course of excuses that have stopped me from asking her before now, a month ago, a year ago. Why? Because I don’t want to hear her tell me no. And that’s the simple truth of the matter: I’m a coward.

  I see some mail sticking out of the letterbox at the gate. Three letters. I’m hoping there’ll be a good excuse not to go to Sydney in there, hoping more specifically that there’ll be something from Dad. No luck here, though: they’re all official-looking envelopes.

  One is from the New South Wales Surveyor-General’s Office and, once I manage to open it, tells me that indeed I do have another job to go to, beginning in February, so long as I pass a medical examination at such and such. Another is from the Australian Workers Union for Dad, put it under the lamp, probably rubbish. The third is for me, from the Southern Star Oil Company. Never heard of them. But they have heard of me I see when I read that they are offering me a job in New Britain, oil and other mineral exploration, in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea, a three-year contract at a salary of £595 per annum plus travel expenses, and asking would I like to come to their Sydney offices at three pm, Friday the eighth of December to discuss it?

  Yeah, I think I would like to do that – £595 a year! That’s almost £200 more than the Survey is offering, including a travel allowance. Oil, not exactly what I had planned fossicking, and New Guinea is not exactly on the top of my list of places to go. I hadn’t planned on leaving the continent. But it wouldn’t be bad to have a look at the volcanoes of Rabaul, would it, and – £595 a year! Two hundred pounds is a lot of money. Three diamonds, or a good deposit on a harbourside house at the end of the three-year contract, during which Bernie could be a company wife, in a company house full of servants, with shopping trips to Singapore, holidays in Hawaii. I am ten thousand miles ahead of myself but that sounds like a decent prospect, doesn’t it? Not a very boring one. I hear the whistle of a willie wagtail and see her land on the fence post by me, not ten feet away, her white eyebrow raised on her little black face saying: Well, go on then.

  When do I need to be there? The eighth of December. And the date today is? It’s the fourth. This was meant to be. If I hadn’t quilted Rennicks, I wouldn’t have got this letter in time. I don’t subscribe to any ideas about fate ordinarily. Life is just a series of random events and the decisions they cause. But –

  The wagtail whistles again and flies off. I see there are two of them, their black feathers fanning out against the hot blue sky, and suddenly I can’t get to Sydney quick enough.

  BERNIE

  It must be almost six now and I’m late for tea; I have to get going. What’ll I tell Mum when I get there? I missed my tram. I’ve missed three, wandering into the park past Museum Station, to the Anzac Memorial, to sit on the steps looking over the Pool of Reflection. What for? Nothing in particular. The pool is still as glass, reflecting the evening overcast. It’s Wednesday and Mum will have Dad’s favourite ready, lamb ‘cuddles’, her little pastry rolls made from Tuesday’s leftover roast and mint sauce, and she’ll follow it with pineapple upside-down cake, Dad’s second-favourite pud. She always knows what she’s doing and she’s been sticking to the routine as if it will stop time, or make Friday night come faster, when Dad will be home. Is this how she got through the last war?

  I turn on the step and look up at the memorial, again. It’s not a very attractive building, always looked like some sort of industrial furnace to me. Or a gigantic mausoleum. I suppose it’s supposed to look like that. It’s strange, though, how quickly it’s become just part of the park. I pass this memorial every working day and I don’t ever think about it. Lest we forget? Hmm. It’s stranger that I’ve never been inside it. I came here on school excursion once, not long after it was opened, but we weren’t allowed in because of the sculpture of the soldier, which the nuns deemed too explicit for us young ladies. I’d forgotten there was anything inside it at all.

  Forgive me, Sister Columba, but I think I have to see it now. As I get to my feet I see I’ve been sitting right by a sign saying, It is an offence to sit or loiter on the memorial steps. That’d be about right. Law-breaking time-waster, that’s me. I take the steps up quickly, but inside the entrance I can’t see any sculpture. It’s a bit gloomy in here, despite the huge windows on all four walls, or maybe because of them: the glass is amber. I peer harder but I can’t see anything but an empty space above a stone balustrade, circular, like a gallery railing. I peer over that. And now I see him. The soldier.

  Takes my breath away. The last of the daylight shines down over his body, the lines of his chest, his legs, the backs of his wrists. It’s not his naked state that’s shocking, no more shocking than Apollo on his fountain up the other end of the park. It’s that he’s dead. Held up on what looks like a shield, his arms lying across a long sword, like a crucifixion.

  ‘Excuse me, miss,’ a man’s voice says behind me, ‘the memorial is closing now.’

  ‘What?’ I turn, but I can’t see anything except the outline of his sovereign hat in the dimness.

  ‘I’ll give you five minutes if you like.’ The voice is kind and footsteps leave me to myself. I suppose he imagines I’m grieving.

  I just need to catch my breath. I lean on the railing, and as I do I look down at the soldier again. Made of bronze, perfectly formed, and the colour of tar in this amber light, oilskin, just come in out of the rain. Below him, set into the floor, is a great golden sun. But he’s still dead. He’s just a boy. And I am overcome by the sadness of it.

  But it’s not sadness in me alone. I don’t know what this feeling is. Anger? Disbelief? That we’re at war again – again. Do people like the taste of greasy pork chops, or do they just eat what they’re given? Nothing’s changed, Dad said when he telephoned last Saturday night, spinning me a yarn about the shenanigans going on for him at Ingleburn, that he’d spent most of the week teaching a young English lieutenant some lessons in the AIF, taking this Pommy kid out on a march to the Blue Mountains, telling him to catch his own tea and see if the rest their company didn’t know how to look after themselves and each other better than him. He had me in connipting stitches, but it’s not funny here. The facts of Dad’s responsibility: that he has a hundred and twenty boys in his charge, to train for war. Boy warriors. Twenty thousand our Prime Minister promises the King, Colin Quinn and half of primary school among them, and they will be going abroad to fight the Germans, or whatever the Empire requires. Again? Aren’t we still paying off our debt to the Bank of England for our last lot of sacrifice? What would this Pig Iron Prime Minister Menzies know about war anyway? About as much as Dad’s lieutenant Pommy kid. It’s a place he’s never been.

  Neither have I. I’ve never even been to the Blue Mountains. I grab the cold hard sandstone of the railing. I have to do something, play my part. But what can I do? There’s a lot been said in the paper these past few days about what girls might do. The Country Women’s Association wants to organise a women’s land army similar to what they have going in England, and others want t
o see women’s auxiliaries in the forces this time. But there have been just as many words on why that won’t or can’t happen, one long column in particular arguing that Australian girls would never go for slacks and short hair like English girls. And my response to that was? Oh, but slacks aren’t very flattering on me. Let that be the bottom end of my vanity. Please. But at any rate, what would I do on a farm or in the air force? There’s been a registry set up for women to volunteer their services, but what services can I offer? Hughie knows, I have no practical skills.

  Apart from wearing a blooping swimsuit. I have half-a-dozen copies of the Summer Sensations programme in my handbag to attest to it. Now, what might my country do with that talent? Enter me in the Miss Coogee pageant next weekend with an eye on the national title? Blawch. But then again, maybe I should, for Dad. He’d love it. He’ll also love this programme photo, just as he’ll love Mum being scandalised by it. Bill, you’re ruining that girl, she’ll squawk round the table come Friday night, and the comforting sounds of my parents bickering over nothing will follow, because they love the sound of each other’s voices. And they love me. And they’ve only ever asked one thing of me. Have you written to Gordon yet, Bernie love? Dad asking me on the phone. Asking me, please, Bernie love.

  ‘Can I close up now, miss?’

  ‘What?’ I almost jump over the rail. The man is back to close up the memorial. ‘Oh yes, of course,’ I say and dart past him, back down the stairs, back out into the park.

  What’s the time? It must be well past six now. Mum will be starting to worry, she’ll have her rosary out. And I’ve been doing what, precisely? I’ll tell her I went to St Mary’s to light a candle for Dad and his boys, not too far from the truth, and if she says, Get away with your blarney, Missy, I’ll tell her I’ve been contemplating going to mass with her this Sunday; that’ll flummox her. And I might go to mass, too. That is a small and easy something I can do, at least for her.