by Kim Scott
Just the one or two.
Mr Tryer, the superintendent of the Carrolup Native Settlement, had no problem with this. In fact, as he wrote in his letters, it was a trivial matter against the worry and anxiety engendered by planning for quarters for his wife and himself. He enclosed several pages of drawings, and detailed specifications and quotes. He would have to engage a carpenter to assist him.
How valuable Mr Tryer would have found it to have had my grandfather there. If only my grandfather had arrived in this country at this time and offered his assistance to Messrs Neville and Tryer. He could have begun making his contribution so much earlier.
My very literate Neville continues to write. He enthusiastically scribbles to his minister in government—recommending the purchase of an oven, boilers, a sewing machine, a regulation pattern dress or suit for the inmates —and then communicates his high hopes in a letter to Mr Tryer.
But his recommendation is refused. He is asked to remember that the department has only five thousand pounds per year available to it. And this request is for such a small part of the state. It is settled. The natives are dying out.
Not quite twelve months later our Chief Protector records his satisfaction that Mr Tryer is so well pleased with his own quarters and, in a personal touch quite rare in his correspondence, he congratulates Mr Tryer and his wife on the birth of their child.
He encloses a small square of hessian stapled to one of the pages of his letter as a sample of what he recommends Mr Tryer use to wall the remainder of the buildings.
Mr Tryer writes that there are ninety inmates at the settlement. He eventually used a cheaper hessian for the girls’ and boys’ dormitories. The twelve-inch gap at the top of each wall does indeed assist ventilation, but in future he will extend the roof overhang further to prevent rain being swept in. He reminds Mr Neville that it was just as well they decided on tiers of hammock-like bedding because there would otherwise be even more of a problem with overcrowding.
Difficult children are confined to smaller shelters.
There have been a number of deaths.
He recounts an anecdote concerning one of the native boys who, sick and tormented as he lay in bed, swore that after he died he would ask God to come down and burn them all up. Fortunately, notes Mr Tryer, this did not occur, although we could certainly do with divine assistance. I hear Tryer’s humour, his chuckle among these rustling pages. A rueful chuckle because in actuality, Mr Tryer is quite concerned.
There are a lot of natives here ... It is impossible to get everything done. We are giving meals to single men at the compound to try and get improvements done ... We don’t do these things to please ourselves.
The cooking. The mending, ironing, washing. The supervising of the dormitories.
You cannot leave the girls to do things themselves. They must have someone with them to get on with the work.
They are like children, and respond best to being treated as such.
There are a lot of natives here. And Mrs Tryer has the baby which takes up a lot of time.
It is such places that my family has largely avoided. But into this place, briefly, came Kathleen and the others from the reserve at Mt Dempster.
kathleen returns
Kathleen had kissed them all goodbye a good distance from Mt Dempster’s reserve, and Fanny said they’d be back to get her. Sandy One being like he was, there was only so much room, see.
Returning to the reserve Kathleen saw, through and among the trees, some men from the town; a policeman with them, two...
It was like dogs surrounding kangaroos for the kill. The old people were already huddling on wagons. Others stood around in a tight group. People had bundles of clothes, a bowl, a cup; Kathleen saw a broken clock tucked under someone’s arm.
A young man—a boy—turned from the edge of the group and ran several steps clear. He fronted up as best he could to the policeman on a horse, tilting his face up to him. The policeman shook his head, turned, said something to one of his colleagues.
Quickly.
The boy was outside the circle of police and townspeople. Running. The shouts Kathleen heard seemed small across such a distance.
Kathleen called silently to the escapee, wanting willing him away. To her? No, the only way would be up, up into above the trees. Away, away. She watched him turn. He pranced, was up on his toes; swung his thin arms. Kathleen made little noises in her throat as the men walked through his fists. They kicked him, tied him, threw him on a wagon.
She walked to keep ahead of the man she sensed behind her. A hand held her arm, its grip loose but inescapable.
When she finally dared to turn the man smiled down at her, his Adam’s apple bobbing above the white collar.
They were well away from the reserve when Kathleen smelled the smoke and turned to see the narrow shifting stem of it joining the cloudy sky. She let her head fall against the soft and forgiving flesh of the woman whose arm surrounded her.
When the little troupe stopped it was all but dark. A circus, someone said, laughing. A zoo. A bloody freak show. There were a few rough shelters, and a small house and stable.
In the darkness, among the stuff thrown from the wagon, something struggled and made noises. It was the boy she’d seen trying to escape. His eyes rolled above the gag at his mouth as he was pushed into a large hessian bag. He continued to struggle; Kathleen saw the bag swinging on the rope which suspended it from a tree.
In the morning a rectangle of flapping canvas showed where some of the girls had escaped.
Somewhere around the middle of the day they shuffled back through the gate, followed by trackers on horseback.
Kathleen watched from the canvas kitchen. Dinah called her over, sat her before the fire, and had her knead the dough.
Outside, someone chopped wood. Kathleen sat on the step and saw the symmetry of the growing stack he made, and how the wood parted before his blows. The axe rose and fell, rose and fell, and only its rhythm held her day together.
Shaven haired women, dressed in hessian and flour bags, stepped from the kitchen with food slops.
An old man felt his way along the wall toward her. Kathleen did not move, she held her breath, and the old man’s hands found the doorframe. He detoured in a little half-circle around where she sat. The old man’s eyes were sealed, and he moved slowly, perhaps one or two steps to each blow of the axe.
Kathleen felt herself at the centre of a most orderly destruction. The wood split, was stacked. The axe man winked and smiled at her.
Once he was past her, the blind one resumed feeling his way along the wall. He coughed, and seemed to tremble with each axe stroke. Kathleen watched him draw himself up and, in a show of bravado, stride across the open space to the stable. Then he followed his hands along its wall of stone until, finding a doorway, he turned and disappeared.
Mrs Tryer carried her baby into the kitchen, and handed it to Dinah, the woman who took responsibility for the food preparation and who Kathleen had been told to assist. Dinah handed the child to Kathleen while she continued to receive orders from Mrs Tryer.
The baby held its head back, and looked into Kathleen’s face. Kathleen tickled the infant, and it chuckled and clutched at her.
Kathleen realised Mrs Tryer had stopped speaking. She turned reluctantly because surely there would be a rebuke but the pale, furrow-browed woman only smiled at her.
‘Dinah, how old is this girl?’
‘Oh, about ten years, Miss.’
Dinah spoke without hesitation, as if she knew.
A small boy sat on the steps one afternoon. He was thin, his bones but a frame for the rags he wore, and his head seemed too heavy for his neck. He rested his chin on his knees, and turned his head to Kathleen when she sat beside him, then turned away again. His eyes were open, soft and unseeing.
Light thickened. Kathleen was in a wash of purple, and the raw wood, stacked and rigidly patterned, bled into the air. The flickering yellow light of a fire was at her back.
The rhythmic cracking and splitting of an axe.
Kathleen put an old jam tin of tea and a piece of bread at the boy’s side. The axeman shook his head and would not stop. The boy dipped his bread into the tea, pushed the soggy pap to his mouth, but hardly chewed.
Mr Tryer appeared from the darkness, and put his hand on the axeman’s shoulder. He took the axe from him (you have done well) and pushed him away.
Shivering in the pale morning, Kathleen stood at the woodheap. There was yesterday’s symmetrical stack of wood and two cylindrical bundles of canvas, one larger than the other. One held the body of the old blind man; and from the smaller bundle a small hand protruded, as if frozen in a secret wave of departure.
Kathleen helped clean the fireplace. She rubbed the ash into her hands, and made the fire blaze and crackle.
In the kitchen, white flour in the skin of her fingers.
Sometimes there was a teacher and Kathleen sat at the front of the class. Sat still. Did not speak. Learned to empty words into her head and spill them out onto a blank page.
She wondered what it was like in the wood-box when the lid came down, and the silent class listened to your snivelling. And she was glad she was not the one roped beneath the faraway desk at the back of the room.
When she spoke she wondered why her voice did not spring from her as other people’s seemed to. She thought of her brother, Chatalong, and how it must be to see people smiling back at you when you spoke.
Her voice did not carry, only some of her words left her. She felt them all, trapped, vibrating the bones of her face. It was easier to keep your face averted, to remain intent upon a page, or weaving, sewing.
She liked to be among others in the kitchen; the warmth and sound of fire, the smell of dough, the soups they made in the vast pot. And the kitchen had Dinah who immediately reclaimed the place taken by Fanny.
post marked kathleen
Dear Mr Tryer,
I would be glad if you will inform me whether the young Benang girl is in fact Kathleen Mason.
Sergeant Hall, of the Police Department, Perth, believes we have a girl of the above name and is desirous of obtaining her to assist his wife in domestic service.
Yours sincerely,
Chief Protector Neville
Dear Mr Neville,
I have the honour to inform you that the girl’s mother does not wish her girl to go to Perth. She thinks it is too far for her to be away. The mother thinks she may get sick at any time and would not be able to see her daughter.
Yours sincerely,
Mr Tryer
Memo:
Mr Dean. Inform Mr Tryer I shall be glad if he will give his own views when replying to our questions as well as consulting the wishes of the natives. Furthermore, inform him that we very much doubt that the girl’s mother is at the settlement.
A O Neville
Mr Neville,
Regarding your correspondence of ... and the matter of the girl referred to as Kathleen Benang. In fact her actual name is Kathleen Mason. She is a very quiet child, but it appears that the girl is not in fact Dinah Benang’s daughter but was only adopted as such by Dinah once she arrived here. Such is the attraction between the two however that Dinah is now claiming to have changed her own name from Mason back to Benang, her own mother’s tribal name and has concocted a remarkable story to support her claim.
Kathleen is a most capable girl, although perhaps a little young for such duties. It is believed that she is about ten years old.
Yours sincerely,
Mr Tryer
Mr Tryer,
Please arrange for the girl Kathleen Mason to come to Perth by train and inform me of expected arrival time. I will arrange to have her delivered to Sergeant Hall.
Yours sincerely,
Chief Protector Neville
almost a grave orgasm
‘Well, the train had a lot to do with it,’ said Uncle Will. ‘What happened to our family. Yeah. And the law, like I told you. The train took over for a lot of the teamster’s work. Grandad—you’re calling him Sandy One—he got by for a while because he worked for the Dones, and he got that mine. My dad, Daniel, he became a businessman. What could he do? He had to look out for us, his children. I was a grown boy now. I was his only boy, the rest all daughters.’ Will paused, and I suppose he was thinking about his sisters, and himself. Their pride and their shame.
‘Yeah, the girls all married white men. Dad wanted that, it was an escape, see? And Hall, the policeman, he thought that was the way to go. No, he wouldn’t’ve let ’em marry Nyoongars, he wouldn’t even let any get close. And the law said that, you had to get his okay.’
Uncle Jack wanted to have his say. ‘It’s another sort of murdering. What the law was doing. And helping people do. Killing Nyoongars really, making ’em white, making ’em hate ’emselves and pretend they’re something else, keeping ’em apart.’
Uncle Will was not comfortable with such an explanation. He liked to speak in the way of the local histories he had read; of individual struggle, of alignments of technology and progress. ‘And the train, to the west, brung a lot of people close to here, but not quite this far, most of ’em.’
Yeah, one train wheezed along the railway stitched from Mustle Haven to Gebalup.
There was a big show; speeches and clapping and all that stuff when the train made its first little trip. Almost the whole town was there. They cheered, and the train showered them with what it coughed and spat.
Daniel Coolman, wanting to make a mark, to be a pioneering man of the town, had diversified. He took Will with him whenever possible, and they—Coolman and Son—carted water to households, and various stuff from farms and mines to the railway. The train showered them in black shit and rain and deafened them with its puffing and screeching.
There was still a living to be made with horses; at the mines for instance, and clearing, and carting.
The government built dams and there was less need to cart water.
Daniel Coolman’s body began to swell, and he could dress himself only with Harriette’s help. She draped a coat on his shoulders, and tied shoelaces across the increasing space between button and buttonhole.
He had lost his upper lip through cancer, and so grew his moustache long, combing it down over his mouth and parting it when he ate. His food disappeared, as it were, in encores of exits, entering his mouth as if between curtains.
‘Youse vould ve starving if not for ve,’ he yelled at Harriette, in his frustration, ‘vere vould you ve if I vasn’t here?’
Once Constable, now Sergeant, Hall returned to Gebalup with his wife and new servant, Kathleen Mason. He noted that Fanny and Harriette were working as domestic servants in the town. It was a very good thing, a very suitable position for them, he said.
And it was also just as well, said Sergeant Hall, resuming a twenty-year long habit of social visits, that Daniel had been such a well-known man of the town, regarded as a pioneer in fact, else ... Well, people would have talked.
Had been? Daniel worried at Hall’s use of the past tense. But what about Hall’s use of the conditional? Would have talked?
Of course people talked. They yakked and yarned.
Look at him, sending his two gins out to work and staying at home. Always was canny, and shrewd. You know he helped kill them, all his wife’s people? You know?
And see how fat he’s got? Yes, there’s two men there, you know. Being kept. Living off the earnings of...
Well, of course.
You reckon?
Sergeant Hall had known Daniel long enough to talk straight to him. ‘Your wife, well, she’s...’ His voice trailed off, and he began again. ‘You married her, so she’s exempt. And your mother-in-law is too, while Old Sandy’s still alive and she’s with you. While you can support them, Daniel. You’re fortunate you’ve only the one left at home, and that I keep the blackfellas away. And lucky you got your daughters into good white marriages, it was worth marrying them all so young.’
&n
bsp; What could Daniel say?
‘There’s Will—he’s yours—and Chatalong ... Well, I can turn a blind eye. He looks all right, could be quartercaste. But really, legally, he’s a ward of the state.’
But Chatalong was working, and he and Will were bringing in money.
Sometimes, during the long days, Daniel wheezed and shuffled to where they’d propped Sandy One so that he might see the sky through a window. Sandy was a sailor once, you know. He liked to watch the clouds sailing across blue sky.
No one came to see them. Daniel and Pat had thought themselves such wild men, once. Daniel wondered where Pat was now. What made him just off and leave Dinah like that? Now their sons were working together to help support the family. It was funny how things worked out.
Old Sandy One had shrivelled. He had never been a big man, and now he seemed just a pile of clothes with a head on top. His eyes rolled, tears welled and rolled down his cheeks, and his jaw worked almost all the time, and he made strange clicking sounds.
Daniel eased himself to the floor beside the little old one, and tried to see what was worth such attempts at singing, for this was what he supposed old Sandy was trying to do.
It was sometimes a cloud, sailing. A bird. Probably the light changing over the course of a day. Oh yes, old Sandy One sang, after a fashion. It sounded very much like a moan, and he clicked his tongue. Remembering.