by Birch, Tony;
The woman sighed audibly. ‘You were fortunate. Some of our own men, in the past, were no more civilised than savages.’ She looked out of the window as if expecting to see a savage that very minute. ‘The land out here, it does that to some people. It turns them into savages.’ She nodded towards Sissy. ‘Are you escorting the girl to the capital?’
‘Yes. She will be living with her mother. The family have a home in the city and the mother is living there. She decided to leave the countryside.’
‘I don’t blame her. I’ve done the same. Let me suggest that the child remains in the city. It would be for her own good.’ The woman leaned closer to Odette. ‘You know, I miss my old Auntie Sarah. She came to us with her tribal language only. Barely a word of English. We were able to make a change in her life. My mother sat with her for an hour each afternoon and taught Sarah to read and write.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘I had feelings for her, you understand?’
Odette did understand such feelings; those feelings could leave a grown woman being treated no better than a household pet.
‘Although she did not like to talk about it at all,’ the woman continued, ‘we were aware that Sarah had children of her own. They had been brought in from the desert and handed to the Anglicans. Given a proper education. I was fortunate that along with my two older sisters, Auntie Sarah shifted her affection to us. Do you feel the same way?’
‘What way?’ Odette asked. The woman’s shrill voice had given her a headache.
Sissy, counting telegraph poles outside the train window, also wanted the woman to stop talking. She’d never heard her grandmother spoken to in such a way and it annoyed her.
‘You and Cecily are obviously very close. I would expect you have affection for her?’ the woman said.
‘Affection? I love her,’ Odette answered.
The comment startled the woman. ‘So, you do not have children of your own?’ she probed.
‘No,’ Odette said. ‘And you also don’t have any children of your own. Why is that?’
The woman was taken aback. She glared at Odette and moved back to her own seat, abruptly ending the conversation.
Sissy moved into the seat beside her grandmother. ‘I love you, too, Auntie,’ she said, without a hint of performance.
The woman looked from Odette to Sissy. She was troubled. ‘I think the child needs to spend more time with her own people,’ she said.
Odette had had enough of the white woman. Despite her better judgement she was about to put the woman in her place when her response was cut short by an announcement from the conductor. The train would soon be arriving at the next station. ‘All passengers are to leave the train during the period of shunting,’ the conductor ordered. The passengers were invited to enjoy a short lunch break.
At the station, the woman stood up and waited for Odette to retrieve her case. Although she felt like slapping the woman, Odette dutifully took the case down from the rack and placed it on the floor. Sissy opened the sliding door. They watched as the woman struggled along the aisle. Odette had been raised to excuse the ignorance of white people, but it was a difficult task. It will be for your own sake more than theirs, her father had explained to her many times. If you can’t get them people out of your head, they will hold you down for the rest of your life.
‘Are you hungry?’ Odette asked Sissy, once the woman was gone. ‘I need a cup of tea.’
‘Nan?’ Sissy asked.
‘It’s not Nan,’ Odette reminded her. ‘I told you, I’m Auntie. You have to remember that.’
‘I know it’s Auntie. But there is no one here but us. I want to call you Nan when there is nobody else around. I didn’t like that woman, and I don’t like the way she spoke to you.’
‘Don’t bother with her. And you do exactly as I told you to do. We both need to get used to this game. You’re to call me Auntie.’
Sissy kicked the base of her seat in frustration. ‘Auntie. Do you think that I could have another one of those Cornish pasties? Not the cold one, but a fresh one?’
‘You can have two pasties if you want to, as long as you behave.’
‘Auntie,’ Sissy repeated. ‘Do you know why they call them Cornish pasties, and not meat pasties?’
‘No, I don’t,’ Odette answered. ‘But I bet you do?’
‘I do, Auntie. I read about it in a book. It’s because the pasties come from a place called Cornwall, where miners used to take the pasties underground for their dinner. Auntie.’
Odette had thoughts only for the pot of tea she was desperate to enjoy. ‘Is that so?’
‘Yes, it is. Auntie.’
Odette stopped in the middle of the platform and put her case down. ‘Okay, Sis. I know you’re frustrated and I can see where you’re going with this Auntie business. You can give it a rest, as long as there is only the two of us around.’
‘Yes, Nan.’ Sissy smiled.
Chapter Twelve
The cafeteria was at the end of the main platform. A crowd had gathered around the entrance. Odette saw a policeman standing with two other men, each wearing a dark suit and tie. She and Sissy were forced into a queue behind a group of school students and their teacher. Odette overheard the station master explaining to the teacher that the Immigration Officers were searching for a Polish migrant who’d run away from a local hostel.
‘The young fella has got himself into some sort of strife. They’re not saying what it is. He absconded before Immigration could get hold of him. They expect he’ll try and get away from here by train.’
The Immigration officials watched closely as passengers filed through the cafeteria doors. By the time Odette and Sissy were inside the room it was crowded, with most chairs and tables taken. Odette spotted two spare seats at a table in the far corner where a man sat alone with his back to the room. Odette shuffled between the aisles and pulled a chair away from the table. The seated man turned around. He was clearly Aboriginal, and about Odette’s age. She looked around the room for another place for them to sit. There was none.
‘Do you mind if we share this table with you?’ she asked.
‘I don’t mind,’ he said, with little enthusiasm, and returned to the newspaper he’d been reading.
Odette sat down and handed Sissy a menu card. ‘I’m sure one of them pasties will be on here. But maybe you’d like to try something else. You can choose anything you want.’
Sissy ran a finger down the menu card. ‘It says here that they have a toasted cheese sandwich. Could I have one of those?’
Odette, distracted by the Immigration officers moving through the cafeteria, didn’t hear Sissy’s reply.
‘I would like a toasted sandwich,’ Sissy repeated. ‘Can I have one of those?’
‘If you like,’ Odette said, keeping one eye on the policeman. He looked about as friendly as Sergeant Lowe. ‘You be sure not to move from the table, Sis, and I’ll go and order us a sandwich and a cuppa.’
The officers moved systematically between tables, questioning people as they went. Odette stood in line to order, watching closely. Patrons were being asked for identification. One of the Immigration officers had what appeared to be a photograph in his hand and was showing it to people. Odette looked back across the room to where Sissy was seated. The man sitting at the table was talking with her. Once she’d been served, Odette carried the tray of food back to the table. She frowned at Sissy, who was talking animatedly, as if the man was an old family friend and not a complete stranger. Odette sat down, handed Sissy a sandwich and poured each of them a cup of tea.
‘Nothing better than a good cuppa,’ the man remarked to Odette. He offered his hand, appearing friendlier than he had a few minutes earlier. ‘They call me Jack Haines,’ he said, his chest rising slightly, as if the name carried some importance. ‘I’ve just been speaking with the lovely young lady here. You’ve covered some distance today, and you have a w
ay to go, all the way to the capital. Travel like that would wear me out, and I’ve covered a lot of distance over the years. You’ve come all the way from Deane, the young girl tells me. It’s a lonely place out there.’
Odette was annoyed that Sissy had provided so much personal information to the stranger. ‘You know Deane?’ she asked cautiously.
‘That I do. There aren’t many places I don’t know. I worked on the shearing for a time. The season would have taken me through nearly every town across the state at one time or another.’
Jack Haines looked harmless enough. Something about his mannerisms reminded Odette of one of her cousins, Marcus. He’d also worked at the mine with her father and husband. Marcus narrowly escaped the accident, but had witnessed the deaths of the other men. Jack Haines, like Marcus, wore a friendly, open face. His voice sounded as if it could break into a show tune at any moment, which Marcus had been prone to do, particularly after a glass or two of beer.
‘You spent much time in Deane?’ Jack asked.
‘I was born over that way,’ Odette offered, without being more specific.
‘Then you’d be off the old mission out there, I’d reckon. It was the Proddies who ran that place, wasn’t it?’
Attempting to withhold personal or family information from another Aboriginal person was never easy. ‘That’s the one. And you?’
‘Oh, I’m a north coast fella, originally. Up near the border. A saltwater boy, I am. Do you mind if I ask your name?’
‘Odette Brown.’
‘You’re a Brown? Okay then.’ He nodded his head knowingly. ‘You would be related to Jimmy Brown, for sure. I knew that fella well.’
‘I’m a Brown by name,’ Odette explained. ‘My late husband’s family.’ Odette had a faint memory of Jimmy Brown, from when she was a child. He was taken away before she started school. If Jack Haines expected Odette to get excited hearing the name of a long-lost in-law, he was mistaken. Reuniting with family, if only through memory, could be heartbreaking. As tragic as it was, some of those who’d lost family found it more bearable to forget. ‘He could be the same fella,’ Odette said casually.
‘Not could be. I’d bet he is one and the same. Me and Jimmy Brown were in Kingsley Boys Home together. He used to talk about the mission days at Deane all the time. He had a big mob of family over there.’
‘What did this Jimmy look like?’ Odette asked.
‘Well, he had a big mop of dark hair and he was as thin as a creek snake. That was Jimmy.’
The description was familiar to Odette. All of the Brown men grew up to be thin and wiry.
‘Like a snake! That’s really skinny,’ Sissy said, laughing.
‘It is, young lady.’ Jack held up one finger. ‘Like that, he was.’
‘How’d he get to be so skinny?’ Sissy asked. ‘I bet he didn’t eat any food.’
‘Eat? Oh, he ate like a horse. Jimmy was as good on the tooth as any fella I’ve ever come across, even the big boys out on the shearing. I would be willing to wager that boy could have eaten a whole elephant in an afternoon,’ Jack said to Sissy, enriching the story. ‘One time we stole a dozen bread rolls from the kitchen. We snuck off, just the two of us, and climbed a ladder into the bell tower above the chapel to have our feast. In the time it took me to eat three bread rolls Jimmy had demolished the other nine.’ Jack Haines grabbed hold of his ample stomach with both hands. ‘As you both can see, I’m a bit of a porker these days, but back then we were built the same. Jack Haines and Jimmy Brown, we were like twins. They’d get us mixed up all the time. Couldn’t tell one young blackfella from another.’
Odette couldn’t help but ask an obvious question. ‘Where’d he’d get to, Jimmy, after the Home?’ she asked.
Jack paused. ‘I don’t know, not for certain.’
It was obvious to Odette that Jack was hiding something. ‘Did he get himself into trouble?’ she persisted.
Jack’s eyes sparkled to life. He slapped his hands together and told Odette and Sissy another story about Jimmy Brown.
‘Well, this is what happened to him. Jimmy loved his freedom. We all did, but Jimmy, he could not be held down. It didn’t matter to him how many ways they tried keeping him in order, that boy would find a way to escape. He was like that magician fella, Houdini.’ Jack chuckled, having transported himself back in time. ‘In the Home, we must have lived by a hundred and one rules. Well, your Jimmy,’ Jack said to Odette, ‘he would have broken every one of them. He was a good kid, but he could never do as he was told. And he was a runner. Took off every chance he got. They’d bring him back and lock him up on his own for a week. Soon as they let him out, he’d be off again, sometimes that very same day. That boy couldn’t help himself. His people,’ Jack asked Odette, ‘I believe they were originally desert mob?’
‘Some of them were,’ Odette said.
‘It figures. I used to get out west to the desert now and then and listened to the old boys tell stories about freedom days. My thinking was, if you come from out that way, with a big sky above and the big ground under you, you couldn’t survive with a fence around you, let alone in a box with iron bars on the windows.’ Jack’s tone shifted. ‘I mean, a poor camp dog can’t survive in a box without going crazy. It has no choice but to give in to its master. Or go on the attack, of course.’
Odette looked up as the policeman moved closer to their table. Their eyes met and Odette quickly looked away.
‘So, did Jimmy give up on running away?’ Sissy asked.
‘Not a chance in a fiery Hell. He woke me up early one morning, said he was taking off and would never ever be back. I’d heard it before from him, of course. But that morning, well, he had a fearsome look in his eyes. He had the courage of a dingo, that young boy. He absconded while the rest of us were in the showers and that was the last we saw of him. Jimmy Brown was never heard from again. The lad finally beat them. Got away. I’d bet he’s out there now, moving about all over the country. That would be his way.’
Sissy, who’d fixated on the story, applauded. She’d always enjoyed a happy ending.
Jack looked across at Sissy and smiled openly. Odette had listened closely to his story and was grateful to Jack for telling it that way for Sissy’s benefit. But the story was partly a lie. Both Odette and Jack knew it without another word passing between them. Jimmy Brown of the Kingsley Boys Home was indeed the same skinny kid off the mission at Deane. And he was a runner. Along with other boys in the Home, including the outwardly amiable Jack Haines, Jimmy was worked into the ground. Each time he ran off he was hauled back to the Home, where the beatings became more severe. In the eyes of the institution, Jimmy had to be broken. In his own mind, he’d decided that he couldn’t let that happen. The last time Jimmy Brown ran off he’d tried jumping a ride from a passing goods train. He fell under the train and was killed. His body was returned to the Home for burial in a pair of hessian sacks. After the funeral, the blood-stained sacks were left on display as a warning to any other boy with the idea in his head to escape.
Although Jack Haines continued smiling, the deep pain he’d experienced was obvious to Odette. ‘And you?’ she asked. ‘After the Home? Where did you end up, Jack?’
‘Oh, I was lucky. I was sponsored by a fishing business and worked all along the coast from north to south. I love the sea and earned my wage on the boats. Worked with an old boatman, the first decent whitefella I’d ever met. He taught me a lot about working the tides and where to lay the nets. He was a good man. I was about as free as a blackfella could be around that time. When I wasn’t working on the boats, I would head off fishing for myself. Same as we used to do in the old days. Then the boating business went bust, so I tried my hand at shearing with a couple of other boys, a whitefella and a blackfella. We were a team of three. Ten years I was on the shearing. All over I went.’
‘And what do you do now?’
‘Now I
live in the big smoke. The capital. I’ve just come back for the funeral of an uncle. I’m about to head home.’
‘You have family in the city?’
‘Sure do. I have a wife, two grown-up daughters and my own grand-kid. They’re at home there in the city, holding the fort.’ He patted the inside pocket of his suit coat. ‘I have a pay packet here. While I was up this way I picked up a bit of work. I’ll hand this money over to my wife tonight. She’s in charge of the savings at our place.’
Odette had never met an Aboriginal person who had experienced freedom like Jack Haines. Not one who’d lived among white people, at least. It was obvious Jack could tell a good yarn. Odette remained a little suspicious. ‘How is it that you get to travel around so much?’
‘What do you mean?’ He frowned. ‘I follow the work.’
‘But what about the Act?’ She whispered the words – the Act – as Aboriginal people generally did. It was a curse, rarely spoken aloud. ‘It would hold you back from travelling, wouldn’t it?’
Jack scoffed dismissively at Odette. ‘The Act doesn’t mean nothing to Jack Haines,’ he boasted. ‘I was finished with the Act years back. It can’t touch me. I don’t need it. And I’m free of it.’
Odette thought the man a fool. ‘You’ve finished with it?’
Jack raised a hand in the air. ‘Hold on, Sis. Showing is better than explaining.’ He took a beaten leather wallet from his back pocket and took out a piece of paper, sealed in an envelope. He carefully unfolded the document and placed it on the table.
‘There it is,’ he said, looking as satisfied with himself as a man possibly could. ‘My exemption certificate.’
Odette looked down at the photograph of a slightly younger Jack Haines. ‘Exemption?’
Jack threw his hands in the air in mock disgust. Sissy giggled at the display of theatrics. Jack reminded her of a sideshow clown she’d once seen at the Deane showgrounds.