24
Reg Bonner lowered himself with difficulty onto the jetty deck. He swung his body around until his legs dangled over the side above the sway of the water. Matthew had been there for ages.
‘I love it out here, Matty. A man can find either a peaceful place to think or a peaceful place not to think. It’s a marvellous choice to have.’ A thickening dark soup of cloud rolled over Cape Naturaliste and the rain was probably twenty minutes away. Overhead a straggle of gulls flew in towards the shore, dipping and curling on the breeze, free spirits adrift, answering to no one. ‘You seem to be thinking, Matty.’
‘What does it mean when you’re playing someone for a fool?’
‘Well, Matty, let me answer it this way. We play chess. More often than not you win. But sometimes I win. To us it is just a game. In life, though, in real life, the game becomes more serious, the pieces on the board are flesh and blood, the moves … well, often the moves are made by pawns thinking they are kings and queens. There lies the foolishness.’
‘But Dad says …’
‘Trust me, Matty. I know what’s going on.’
The sea slopped against the pylons. Rain was imminent. The breeze blew stronger, picking up flecks of ocean as it scuttled past. Matty tasted the tang of the brine and saw that the cape was now enshrouded with a grey mist.
‘Should we go in, Grandad?’
‘Yes. How about we go back home and have a game of chess?’
Matthew and Vince walked back to the twin-cab, carrying beer and ice and lighter wallets. Service stations like that will never go out of business, thought Matthew, not while beer was still the national drink and cars still needed fuelling, though he often wondered where it would all end, him, and his generation, being the pinnacle of the evolutionary process. Archie was asleep in the front seat, drooling, with glasses askew. The two men considered the old man and Vince’s brows were knitted together in thought.
‘Why the worried look, Vince?’
‘Did the doctor really say that your Dad couldn’t have a beer?’
‘What do you mean, Vince?’
‘Well, he said last night that he was dying, anyway, so what did it matter?’ Vince’s visage was, to Matthew, part-human with sad, sheepdog eyes. ‘I gave him a couple of glasses and it didn’t seem to affect him.’
‘The grog affects his waterworks.’
‘I visited Dad, yesterday.’ Vince glanced at Archie, who was breathing in short, slurpy snores. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. ‘You know, Matty, I would have loved for him to have sat with me in the garden and him telling me what a great end of life he was having. But there wasn’t a lot of joy for him, just lying there, waiting for death.’
‘Aw, don’t come at me with the quality of life shit!’
‘Are a few beers going to hurt him?’
‘You don’t understand. He was an alcoholic. He made my life shit!’
‘And this is payback?’
‘Look, his liver is rooted. What if it kills him?’
‘Have you given him a choice?’ Vince waited, his head cocked to the one side. ‘Just a few beers.’
‘Okay, Vince, it’s your call. But you clean up the mess.’
‘Suits me. C’mon, let’s get back on the road.’
‘All right, we should be in Busselton by lunchtime.’
‘Today or tomorrow?’ said Matthew but it went right over Vince’s head.
—
Ruth Schettino thought kitchen tables were marvellous things. Any family issue could be discussed and resolved around the humble kitchen table. The laminex made it easy to mop up the blood.
‘What time did he say he was comin’?’ A warm slurry of words: two fingers, too many times.
‘He shouldn’t be too long.’ Sophie looked across at her mother. Ruth leaned over the table, her arms folded on the top, her face moving slowly around the room, her eyes searching out the yesterdays, fearful of the change that might never come. ‘Go and have a shower, Mum. You look terrible.’
‘Why should I care, love? Why should we pretend to be something we’re not, just to please him?’ She picked up a cigarette, pushed it up angrily into her mouth and lit it with a flick of the lighter. It came as some relief when she took that first drag. ‘We’re dressing-gown people, love. We’re don’t-do-it-unless-we-have-to sort of people.’ She picked up her glass, swilled the remnant brandy around thoughtfully, then drank it down. ‘We don’t put on all these friggin’ airs and graces. You know what? I’m glad I’m ordinary.’
‘Are you, Mum? Are you glad you’re ordinary?’
‘It’s the way I am. It’s my life.’ Smoke blew out her nostrils in a great, grey sigh.
‘Haven’t you ever wanted to be something else? Didn’t you ever dream?’
‘Maybe. What if I did? All that changed when I met your father, the bastard!’ Her eyes misted over: for him, for her or perhaps it was the chopped onions of bitter memories. ‘Do you think I wanted it to turn out this way?’
‘Jeez, don’t blame it on Dad. It wasn’t his fault he dropped dead. That was just bad karma, Mum.’
‘Oh, I should have listened to my mother and gone into a convent. Things might have been different.’ She took another drag and stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray. ‘But it doesn’t matter now, does it? We are what we are. Thinking this and that won’t change anything. No, I’m who I am. Leo can just go and get …’
‘Can just go and get what, Ruth?’ Leo stood in the doorway of the kitchen. The lock on the front screen door had failed again.
—
Vince sat on a chair on the porch and gazed out over Thompson Bay. Farther out a fresh northerly wind smacked across the sea, driving up white seahorses that galloped wildly down the Gage Roads and off to points south. The bay, though, was relatively calm. Brave children splashed around at the edges of water, laughing and chiacking, the pricelessness of cheap fun. Parents kept watch in trackies and jackets, perhaps remembering their own encounters with the sea and sand not so many years before.
‘This will blow over by tonight. Weather Bureau says it will be “fine and warm” tomorrow.’ Leo made twigglies with his fingers. Vince had always wondered what it meant.
‘Hope so.’ Tomorrow. Vince and Sophie had thought of getting married at Rotto’s Holy Trinity Church. Because of the number of guests, though, Father Alvaro suggested they marry outside. He said it would be ‘warmer and drier’ towards the end of September. Vince looked out at the sea and the sky and wondered whether it was a sin to doubt a priest.
‘Don’t worry, little brother, it’ll be okay.’ Patty stepped up onto the porch and pulled over a chair. They sat for a while and talked and drank small glasses of port that warmed their bellies from the inside out. It was getting late.
‘We should have played Monopoly.’ Leo.
‘But you always win.’ Patty.
Vince said nothing. Tomorrow, he mused, he would finally beat Leo.
‘Jeez, this place has changed?’ Vince waved his arm, the theatrical sweep taking in the traffic lights of the new port road at Picton and the sprouting of industry around it. ‘There used to be a bridge over a river here. Maybe we went over it already?’
‘No, it’s up a little bit, I think.’ Matthew wasn’t sure. In his memories it all seemed so different. ‘You’re right, Vince. Everything has changed.’ They drove over the bridge. The river was smaller than Matthew remembered, still sludgybrown and barely moving as it followed its course out to the sea. Wagon Wheels are only half the size they used to be.
Vince slowed down to sixty, caution personified; Vince’s next speeding ticket would be his first.
Matthew had finished his first stubby by the time they turned left onto the Bunbury bypass and headed towards Busselton. After all his song and dance, Archie had only managed a few sips of beer from his cup before drifting off to sleep once more. Vince pulled over to the gravel verge and tipped Archie’s cup of warm beer out the window. The old boy snoozed on. By the time they
reached Stratham, Matthew had drunk two stubbies and the remains of his father’s. He’d had enough for the time being and now needed a piss. It was the main drawback to alcohol: the need to wee and, of course, hangovers. The empties were now rolling about the floor with the motion of the ute, clinking together in a tuneless brown-bottle symphony, playing the Andrews’ family song.
Vince kept driving steadily under a blue sky, his own mind thick with apprehension. He wondered what Sophie was up to.
—
Archie woke up with a start and for a few moments wondered where he was. Outside, the bush flashed past. To the left he saw tall smoke stacks puffing out streams of white and grey, the unfortunate by-product of industry; he didn’t care. Inside he only heard the whoosh of tyre on road and the bustle of the hot air sucking through the cab.
‘I need to pee.’ Matthew started at the sudden squeak of Archie’s voice.
‘We’ll be in Capel in a couple of minutes, Dad. Did you enjoy your beer?’
‘Aw, that’s a bit harsh,’ rasped Archie, ‘I’m a human, too, you know!’
‘I doubt that!’ said Matthew. Two and a half stubbies, enough to liberate the tongue, enough to draw it from its well-oiled scabbard.
‘You bastard!’
Matthew said nothing. Nobody said anything. After a few minutes the twin-cab pulled to a stop in the car park behind the Capel Council Chambers. Vince got the wheelchair out of the tray and set it down at Archie’s door.
‘I need to pee!’
‘Vince’s going to take you.’
‘Why?’
‘Does it matter, Dad, as long as you go?’
‘Did anyone ask me? Doesn’t my opinion count for anything here? I ought to contact Howard Sattler or Sixty Minutes about you. My own son treating his father like …’ Archie paused as he felt a wet warmth spread over his groin. He shook his head slowly. ‘It’s your fault Matthew. I said I wanted to go.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Dad. C’mon, Vince, I’ll show you what to do.’ Matthew got the old man’s bag out of the tray and hooked it over the handle of the wheelchair. They pushed off towards the toilets.
Archie chirped out, ‘It matters to me,’ but he didn’t think anyone heard him.
They motored on towards Busselton. Vince turned off onto Tuart Drive. Maybe he should have told Matthew to treat his father better, that you only ever have one dad. Maybe he should have done lots of things. Maybe, maybe. He had a bag full of maybes and couldn’t figure out what to do with them. So he just drove.
—
‘Look, Sophie, so far it’s a little secret known only to the three of us. And I would think it should remain our little secret.’ Leo held his palms out, diplomatically proffering his latest utterance to Sophie and her Mum. ‘He doesn’t have to know. No one needs to know.’
‘I can’t live with this much longer, Leo. It’s tearing me apart! Can’t you understand that?’
‘I realise how upset you are and I’ve offered you financial support.’
‘I’ve got to tell him.’
‘Live with your mistakes, Sophie. Just get on with it.’
‘My mistake! My mistake! You’re an arsehole. You’ve always been an arsehole. Piss off!’
‘Think about the other lives you’ll ruin.’
‘Yeah, always thinking about yourself. What about Vince? I’ve got to tell him.’
‘Think about the money. I’ve been propping you two up for years. That dumb shit couldn’t get a feed in a pie shop.’
‘Get out, Leo! Just get out!’
They heard him slam the screen door and drive up the road. Sophie wished Vince was there and that the pain would go away.
25
Ben stood at the door of the pub watching Jaylene as she walked the blackfella walk towards the Police Station. No worries, he thought. Clarkey was on the desk this morning. He’ll give the little bitch her marching orders for sure.
‘Hey, Ben, you goin’ to keep letting the flies in all morning, or what?’ Squire stood behind the bar, making an effort to work at nothing. ‘What’s happenin’ down the street?’
‘Not much.’ Shit, the thought of being taken down by a black girl … well, he shouldn’t even consider it. He would have to do something. There always came a point when he had to do something. He saw Jaylene stop, then cross over the road to the motel, probably to talk to that simpleton. ‘Not much. Not much at all.’ Ben let the door swing shut and he hoped it would shut out the world, at least till his head stopped spinning. He moved back to the table, hoping like hell the Panadol would work, and sipped at his coffee.
—
‘Who are you, lady?’ Jaylene had pressed herself against the fence, shielded from the track by a straggly copse of stunted tree and scrub. She had heard the quickening pace of high heels click-clacking on flinty bitumen. After a lifetime in Leonora, everyone had a distinctive sound. This was different; she knew she was being followed.
‘A friend. I need to talk to you.’ She swung her head one way then the other, a creature of caution, sniffing the air. ‘About Ben.’
Jaylene stiffened.
‘You can trust me. Your name’s Jaylene, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m Lisbeth. Is there somewhere we can talk?’
—
Kalgoorlie has been many things in its history. Back in the days of the Dreaming Spirit the area was the meeting point of many languages and dialects and later, with the coming of the Europeans, even more. Those white men crawled like grubs into the earth and laid waste the woodlands around as far as the eye could see. They built a town that sat pretentiously in the red dirt, tarted up like some fair desert queen, but underneath she was just a rough old moll. She was a frontier town; maybe she still was. Often, she found herself on the brink, seemingly too exhausted, too poor to go on. But if nothing else, she was resolute, and at those low times she stood at the doorway to the desert, kicked the faithless up the arse and bid them a foul-mouthed goodbye. Despite all this, she had been a fertile, productive mother. Lately though, through necessity, she had given herself over to the new age of super pits and mechanical giants and slick-talk hooks for the investors, wise and foolish alike, where the urbane and cultured maintained at arm’s length a manufactured poverty. In that respect, nothing had changed.
‘Dis a big place, dis Kalgoorlie.’ Auntie Peggy nodded out over the spread of trees and tin roofs that suddenly appeared at the top of the last rise. ‘Yeah, plenny big.’
Jeanie turned off the highway at the top end of the town. She drove onto Boulder Road and swung left onto MacDonald Street. The sign on the building read BEGA GARNBIRRINGU: ‘Sickness gets better’. Everyone just called it BEGA. Jeanie pulled in under a broad awning at the front doors and the passengers began to make their way inside, till finally the clatter and jangle of language died away. The kids moved down to the front of the bus.
‘We’re ’ungry, Mumma.’
‘Don’t drop your haitches, Robyn. We’ll get something in a minute.’ Jeanie had the rent money in her purse. She could always get Matthew to make it up on Thursday. ‘How about Hungry Jack’s?’
There was no argument. Jeanie parked the bus, door open, out in MacDonald Street. The doctors and health workers would service the Leonora mob within an hour, maybe two at most, and the bus would gradually fill up once more. Hopefully they would be back on the road by 2pm. That was the plan. Right now, though, Jeanie, Auntie Peggy and the kids needed feeding. They walked down to Boulder Road and turned left. HJ’s loomed large, dead ahead.
Jeanie and Georgina collected the order. The place was packed: white people, mostly, school kids, office workers, tradies, all sorts, all chowing down, arteries clogging by the mouthful. Auntie Peggy had found them a couple of tables outside in partial shade: better than nothing. The other customers and staff had breathed a silent, collective sigh, thankful that the round, old, black woman with the dusty clothes was sitting outside and that the smell followed her. Thirty pairs of eyes
watched her go.
‘Nebber bin ’ere.’
‘No, we don’t come here very often. Mainly as a treat for the kids.’ The three girls had each taken a single bite out of their burgers and disappeared into the playground. The gate swung shut behind them. Little Albert waddled along in their wake and stood at the fence, crying. Crying, crying, crying. Georgina let him in.
Auntie Peggy considered her hamburger, nuggets and fries with an amused wonderment. She picked up a nugget and cautiously put it in her mouth and chewed. ‘Plenny good, dis one, ’ey? Taste like ngirriki.’ She took a swig of Coke. ‘You see dis town. Before it was ’ere, was still a place.’ Then, looking Jeanie in the eye: ‘You unnerstan’?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Was a place, ’ere. Red dirt, trees, plenny ’roo. Was a place. White man come, cover ’im up wid all building. All dis shit. But undernead is still a place. You part of that place, you part of d’earth. You jus’ covered wid white-man shit.’
Auntie Peggy picked up the burger and began to eat.
—
‘What was this place?’
‘It was a church. My grandad used to preach here. I come here to get close to God.’
‘So it’s still a church, then?’
‘I guess so.’ Jaylene lit a candle. A truck rumbled past on the road towards Leinster and the sound was soon eaten up by the vastness of the desert. In the distance, the tink-tink-tink of hammering, workmen building the detention centre. Whatever.
‘Can anybody hear us in here?’
‘Only God, I suppose. Nobody else ever bothers to come near the place.’
Lisbeth turned her head one way, then the other, checking for ears, the glint of an eye. She spoke in a whisper: ‘Can I trust you, Jaylene?’
‘About what?’
‘About Ben. I’m only having an educated guess but did he do anything to you?’ Jaylene said nothing, just looked down. ‘You know what I mean, don’t you?’ A nod, a string of tears. ‘When a dog has got among the lambs, you know what has to be done. You know, don’t you?’
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