The Wounded Sinner

by Gus Henderson

  Another Sunday afternoon and he waited for her to come. He sat laid back on his front veranda with an Export lager in hand, puffing on a rollie, outwardly confident and secretly indulging in the swirl of his own charisma. Occasionally the thorny clutter of a wasted life snared on the teflon of his image, but he supposed he could drink that away if he wanted to. In a masochistic way, he would enjoy the wallowing, the slopping about in the foolishness of his own making, for sure as hell, he was good at that. But today he would just sip, slow enough not to get plastered, fast enough not to let the beer get warm, just enough to create the right impression. Women, he knew, loved the bitter mix of tobacco and beer on the breath of a man. They loved the sharpness of a man’s odour, his essence squeezed out by the red-hot hands of the desert sun. The smell of sex, he thought. Black women really went for that.

  It was quiet up his end of town, last house near the railway crossing and very little through traffic. No barking dogs. From where he sat he could see people approaching for quite some distance. He saw her picking her way over the vacant block, the broken glass glittering in the afternoon sun, and double-gees pierce steel. Didn’t seem to worry her and, as he watched her come nearer, he could hear the flap-flap-flap of her thongs beat out their iconic anthem, known throughout Australia. He watched her thin, brown legs moving towards him and he recalled someone telling him Abos’ legs were thin so you could get their pants off quicker. This made him laugh, inwardly and wickedly, and for a half a breath he felt a reddening shame. But, like a foul vapour, it dissipated in the heat and he gave it no more thought.

  ‘Well, well, well, look who we have here. I was expecting your Mumma, but I guess you’d do at a pinch.’

  ‘I’m gonna tell Dad.’ Jaylene stood outside the gate, arms folded across her chest and a serious scowl on her face.

  ‘Tell him what? That I’m gonna be doin’ his job because he can’t get his life in order. He’s lookin’ after that sick old bastard in Perth somewhere while your Mum is starvin’ for pleasure in this hellhole. She needs a real man!’

  ‘We don’t need nobody else, ’specially you! I know about you! Stay away!’

  ‘You know nothin’ about anything. Think you know it all at your age but you know bugger all!’

  Jaylene had already turned away and started off home. Bloody bitch, thought Ben. She had a nerve trying to tell him what he should and shouldn’t do. As if she knew how the world worked at her age. But Ben Poulson, well, there wasn’t much he didn’t know about women and relationships. All that bra-burning and women-on-top shit was a load of old crock. Men allowed themselves to be turned into pussies. Bloody well upset the natural order of things. What on earth was wrong with using women the way it was intended? It kept the world turning around. And who cared if Ben Poulson didn’t read the articles in Penthouse? No one gives a damn. He remembered the 70s with those butch protesters in overalls and crew cuts waving their placards and demanding that men step off the top shelf. Demeaning, that’s what it was. Most of the women he’d talked to liked the old-fashioned type of relationship. Men did the work and the women cooked and cleaned and got some money for the shopping at the end of the week. Fewer problems equalled more happiness. Bloody rabble-rousers and Labor Party trying to change the way it had always been. Besides, he’d been married four times and knew how the system worked. He got up angrily and took another beer from the bar fridge. In frustration and anger he ripped off the top and downed half as he stood there. And then some more.

  When Jaylene stood outside Ben’s front fence a bit after 7pm, she watched him, chin on chest and snoring in his chair, with a piggledy line of empties beside him. She smiled and walked home again, knowing he wouldn’t be fit for anything.

  —

  Jeanie had bathed Little Albert by the time Jaylene got home. The Passmore children had finally left; Jeanie was trying to establish a semblance of order. Bath time was a good place to start. Little Albert was whingeing as the nit comb raked through his hair: every night the same routine, only the cooties were different. Georgina and Robyn, the twins, were in the tub, the water now just a red-brown slurry of suds and Leonora dirt. Nadine was stomping about, defiantly screaming her reluctance to get into a dirty bath. But at five years old, her protests would change nothing.

  ‘Where have you been, Jaylene? Finish off dinner while I do the girls’ hair. Stuff’s on …’

  ‘… the counter. Yeah, I know, Mumma, what’s the rush?’

  ‘No rush, daughter, I just thought I’d get the kids in bed early tonight. It’s a school day tomorrow.’

  ‘What are you goin’ to do, Mumma?’

  ‘I … I don’t know yet. Maybe go over to your Auntie Marie’s place and have a cuppa with her. Anyhow, I can’t go anywhere till your father rings. Should have got there by now.’

  ‘Bed ’is moddercar is broke, inni!’ Jaylene half-filled a big pot with water and lit the gas jet beneath it.

  ‘That’s enough, Jaylene! I won’t have you speaking like that or I’ll send you out to the Lands to live. You have the benefit of parents who have good English skills. Your father might think it’s funny but I expect you to talk properly.’

  ‘Is proper for ’ere!’

  ‘It’s not! You sound like some half-caste street urchin, Jaylene. I’m not going to have my children grow up like …’

  ‘Like what? Abos! That’s what we’re s’posed to be! Don’t you know what I am? I’m Wongutha, Mumma but you, you’re a … !’

  ‘A what, Jaylene?’

  ‘Coconut, Mumma.’ A term of derision and shame to Indigenous people: brown on the outside, white on the inside.

  Jeanie’s hand raked across her daughter’s face and a trickle of blood appeared at the corner of her mouth. They stood for a moment of muted shock, just looking at each other with thoughts racing, urged on by a surge of raw emotions, their heads ringing.

  ‘You hit me, you …’

  ‘… I’m so sorry, daughter. I …’ Jeanie immediately tried to draw her daughter close. Jaylene pulled back a step, put her hand to the hurt and tasted blood, oozing for generations, still fresh. Maybe it was defiance leaking. She scowled at her mother a thunder of dark looks.

  ‘I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘Oh, Jaylene, is that what you think?’

  ‘Mumma, it’s what everyone thinks!’

  Nadine was still yelling, much ado about nothing. The twins ran past, slippery-wet, into the lounge-room. Jeanie pulled a handkerchief from her jeans’ pocket and wiped away at Jaylene’s mouth.

  ‘Why’d you come out here, Mumma? Was it the spirits calling you?’

  ‘Yes … no. I suppose I wanted to come home. It’s where I belong.’

  ‘Do you, Mumma? Do you really belong?’

  ‘I was born here!’

  ‘People are sayin’ you don’t belong.’

  ‘What people? Who you been talking to?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I’d better finish dinner.’ Jaylene made a face and spat blood into the sink.

  ‘Can we watch a movie?’ Robyn.

  ‘Not till we’ve had our skeddy!’ Georgina.

  Nadine rushed out to join the twins. Only the bottom half of her body was wet.

  Jeanie stood in the kitchen. She needed air.

  ‘Go on, Mumma, I’ll look after the kids.’ Jaylene hooked Little Albert to her side. The mood was beginning to clear. Little Albert watched the pot of water coming to the boil, magic and mystique for a small child. ‘They’ll be all right with me.’

  ‘Okay. I’m sorry, Jaylene.’

  ‘And I’ll tell Dad …’

  ‘What!’

  ‘… that you’ve gone for a walk.’ Jaylene placed a packet of spaghetti into the water. Little Albert was now sitting naked on the floorboards, occupied, like children everywhere, by the miracle of television, praise the maker. ‘And Mumma, they say you need to find a place to put your heart.’

  Jeanie was going to say she didn’t understand but instead kept silent. She stepp
ed out into the evening. The sun was still on its downward path, pushing down the day, having stolen what it could from the scant goodness of the earth and taking it to that other mysterious side which must be more beautiful than here. Jeanie walked up the drive, away from the house where the children’s voices were now a happy clamour behind her. She drank the bad medicine of her regret and thought it must ultimately be good for her. She tussled with the enigmas of childhood, and wondered what Jaylene had meant.

  6

  Vince’s twin-cab dawdled through the last of the dry air, still hot in the late afternoon. Soon they would be at the edge of the escarpment and down into the humidity of the coast, and home. The turn-off to Northam slid away to the south through the belly-rolls of the summered earth; in the distance, a gathering of red tiles and tin roofs that formed the town poked up from the Avon’s rich valley floor. Cut off by the asphalt strand of the bypass road, Northam clung to the river’s banks, defiantly insular, hunkered down and resolute. A sense of permanence, like most things European; from the road, even at Vince’s speed, the town quickly disappeared back into the creases of the landscape.

  They passed an old farm. Matthew thought, nature is a fickle mistress and permanence an illusion. The earth constantly yearns to take back what is hers. She breathes in and out upon civilisations, wearing them away as desert dust or tangling them with the vines of years. Towns rise up and wrap their concrete talons around the bedrock of history, driven by past glories and fed on a desire for transformation. Towns fall down, those that are not so hardy, not so strong, not able to stand against the ravages of time or change. Often there remains just the rubble of brickwork, a solitary chimney, bits and pieces of past endeavours and hopes scattered about.

  ‘You see this place, Matthew? What do you think?’

  ‘It’s kinda spooky, Grandad. It’s a bit like a footy oval, only smaller.’ They stood in a large clearing in the bush at the intersection of two dirt roads. In the distance some farm machinery was working away at the earth. Working, working.

  ‘I used to work here, many years ago.’

  ‘Where, Grandad? There’s nothing here.’

  ‘This is the site of Bruce’s Mill. There were tall jarrah trees then. Tall and straight.’ He looked about himself, scanning the bush, his face sad. Matthew thought he was going to cry. ‘We cut down every bloody tree, almost as far as you could see. They didn’t seem to grow back straight or tall, did they?’

  Matthew took his grandfather’s hand as they walked back to the car. ‘What happened to all the people?’

  ‘It was a gradual death. Most of us saw the end coming, year by year, till there were no more trees to chop and saw up. At least not here. We dismantled the mill, lock, stock and barrel. This is all that’s left.’

  Matthew kicked the ground: yellowish dust, nothing more. ‘But the people, Grandad? What about the people?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose most went away to different places, different mills. Some got jobs in Busselton or further south. One thing for sure, though, unless they were unemployed, they were all part of the great push forward.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Progress!’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘I said we’re finally makin’ some progress. Pull over when you can. I need a smoke.’ Matthew looked at his watch. One hundred kilometres to go. Maybe 7:30, 7:45, into Guildford. One final smoke – he wished.

  ‘There’s a parking bay just ahead. I’ll clean the windscreen off.’ A setting sun and a screen of insect mash was a dangerous combination and Vince was a cautious man. He slowed and veered off into the gravel lay-by, coming to a halt in a cloud of light brown dust, an indication that he was within coo-ee of the coast.

  Matthew leaned against the twin-cab’s tray, smoking with some urgency, such was his anxiety to get moving once more. He stubbed out the cigarette and strapped himself back in and waited as Vince struggled to convince himself the windscreen was clean.

  ‘Christ! Come on, mate! Let’s go!’ Matthew swigged down the last of a bottle of Coke, warm but wet. He wondered absently if things did go better with Coke, or if they went at all the way they were supposed to, life being what it was.

  They were soon off again and edging closer to Perth. Vince was humming, always a precursor to an outbreak of singing, and Matthew was quick to engage him in conversation.

  ‘The Italians are big on the family thing, aren’t they? Yours the same?’

  ‘Yeah. And me and Soph will continue the tradition. Well, as much as we can. Working away can cause a few hassles.’

  ‘Tell me about it. Sometimes I wish Dad would … you know.’

  ‘Jeez, mate, what a thought. That’s terrible!’

  ‘I suppose. But shit, Vince, he’s ruining my life.’

  ‘Well, put him in a home.’

  ‘I gave my mother my solemn oath that I would look after him. I didn’t think he’d last this long.’

  ‘Bring him to your place or you guys move down there. From what you’ve said, that house in Guildford could hold a whole tribe.’ They looked at each other. ‘Well, you know what I mean.’

  ‘Vince, Dad is a bit old school. He doesn’t believe in anything interracial. You know, mixed marriages and the like.’

  ‘Whaddya mean?’

  ‘He has no regard for anyone outside of an Anglo-Celtic gene pool. I live with an Aboriginal girl. He won’t acknowledge the relationship, or our children. He’s really an old bastard.’

  ‘Doesn’t like dings, either, hey?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘I’m sorry, mate. I can see you’re under a bit of pressure.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You’ve got to love him just the same. I mean, he’s your father. He brought you up, didn’t he?’

  Matthew said nothing and wished Vince would start singing again.

  7

  Jeanie knocked on the door. Inside could be heard the hum of air-conditioning, Foxtel and the sounds of family in debate: so many stations, so many choices, only one television. She knocked again.

  ‘Someone’s at the door, Mum!’

  Another voice, female and smoky. ‘Can one of you lazy … Oh, don’t worry!’ Bare feet dragged tiredly on wooden floorboards. The sturdy door opened wide in the rural fashion; the security screen, however, remained locked, a reflection of the desperation of the times. An even sturdier Marie Hodge, secretary at the Leonora School, fumbled with a jangle of keys. ‘You’d think I’d know which one it was by now.’

  ‘You sound worn out. Can we talk for a minute?’ Jeanie stepped inside.

  ‘Go-karts in Kal all day. The boys and I are buggered. But I’ve always got time for you.’ They walked through to the kitchen where they sat at a small, fancy table. In the centre was a lead-cut crystal bowl, full of fruit sprinkled with minute flies, each one reduced to pedestrian activities in the cool air.

  ‘Jesus, you look terrible. What’s happened? You look like you’ve been bawling.’ Marie competed with a Tom Selleck movie: gunshots, fast cars and a face carved out of granite. The noise afforded them some privacy.

  Jeanie began crying again. ‘It’s Jaylene, I’ve just about reached the end of my tether. It’s turning into a noose.’

  ‘Oh, God, don’t say that. It’s the last thing I want to hear, that sort of talk.’ She continued over Jeanie’s sobs. ‘Come on, it can’t be that bad.’

  ‘Well, it is.’ She pulled out her hanky to dry her eyes. The sight of Jaylene’s drying blood, however, brought more tears. It didn’t go unnoticed by Marie.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The blood. It’s Jaylene’s. I hit her, I really hit her.’ Jeanie’s head was bowed, uncomprehending, waiting for the wafer and the wine, hoping they would come to bring an easing, however mysterious.

  ‘What made you do that? It just doesn’t sound like something you’d do. I know you’ve had problems with Matty.’

  ‘Yeah. Matty and I argued most of last night and I … just …’ She
sucked in some air. ‘I just want my life back, to how it was before.’

  ‘I told you all men are arseholes. I’d never have another one!’ Marie stood up, all breasts and hips and wild fair hair. ‘Look, I’ll get us a cuppa, okay? I’ve got some scones in the freezer.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think a cup of tea is going to fix it, Marie!’

  ‘But it’ll help. It will be a place to start.’ Tea and scones, a curious succour. The kettle gurgled away; the microwave did its thing. ‘Is Jaylene all right?’

  ‘I guess she’ll be okay. She’s built like a whippet but emotionally she’s pretty tough.’

  ‘So, what’s the problem? School? Boys?’

  ‘No, it’s not her. She’s a good girl,’ Jeanie dabbed at her eyes, ‘but she questioned my motives for being here in Leonora. Pretty well said I don’t belong here.’

  ‘So, you hit her?’

  ‘God, I was angry. But what she said was true. It hurt to hear it from my own child.’

  ‘So, she wants you to leave!’

  ‘I don’t think she meant that. It’s the person that I am now who doesn’t belong here. I think she wants me to change, to find the real me.’ Jeanie’s body heaved in sad resignation and she dabbed her eyes amid the aromatic cloud of freshbrewed tea. She thought for a moment about Matty and Ben. ‘Sometimes I think she can see right through me.’

  ‘Well, she’s right, you know. “Know thyself.” I think one of the Greek prophets said it. And it’s true. You have to know who you are.’ She placed the scones on the table: more than enough. ‘When Frank ran off with his floozy, I got depressed at first but then, after a few weeks, I experienced this wonderful sense of freedom. Put on twenty kilos and never felt better.’