It was the outside’s turn now. Marjorie fed the chooks and collected the eggs; she fed the dogs and watered the vegies. She checked the sheds and sorted and tidied. Then she went back inside to her room. Marjorie packed clothes for Ruby. She packed clothes for Elise. Because the family was going to have to go to the city again. That was for sure. And then she packed things for herself.
After all the jobs were completed, Marjorie went back to the kitchen and sat quietly at the kitchen table. Alone with the house. Waiting. She sat for some time without moving – listening to the house creaking and popping as it acknowledged the night-time overtaking the day.
She stirred when the night-time shift started. She roused and looked around before lovingly collecting Ruby’s hair from the table. She revisited the bedroom and Elise’s folio – where she took out an exquisite, tiny, pen-and-ink drawing. She placed the drawing and the hair inside the remains of the sketchbook. Then she went back to her bedroom and put the book, with all its precious contents, in with the clothes and other things she had already packed.
Marjorie walked into the kitchen one last time. She took tobacco and papers and matches, and odds and ends from the pantry cupboard. She reached up to the mantelpiece and took down the old tea caddy, and she stole Bill and Elise’s money. And now I am a thief as well, Marjorie thought. I really am responsible.
The telephone rang sometime after that. It was the telephone exchange operator passing on a message: ‘Ruby has been very badly burnt. She has to be driven in the ambulance to a hospital in the city. Bill is going in the ambulance with Ruby directly to the city. Pa will drive the car home. You are to wait there and look after the animals until the neighbours come over to give you a hand.’ This was what the operator wanted to say.
‘That would be because of stinking Ruby and her skin falling off. And because Elise – my mother – did, in fact, need to honour a commitment to that institution for the mentally insane. And if you want my tip, it is that my mother is most likely going to have to honour that commitment for the long haul,’ is what Marjorie might have said to the operator if she had picked up the receiver.
The exchange operator rang and rang. Dreaming birds, perched on the wire of the party line, opened their eyes as their feet read the wire’s urgent message. The house, smug in its accounting of the recent event, was quite happy to admit its urgent call.
The telephone tried its best – ringing and ringing into that quiet night. But the operator didn’t get her opportunity to pass on the message to Marjorie. Marjorie had already packed her possessions into her schoolbag and shouldered it. She’d walked one last time through the kitchen and threw for one last time a collection of Mallee stumps in the fire. She’d slammed the kitchen door behind her. Marjorie didn’t hear the telephone ringing. She was outside the house – running.
It was dark outside. There was no moon, just the blazing of millions of stars, as Marjorie ran down the home track, watched all the way by the scrub, which knew for certain now that Marjorie was good for nothing and responsible for everything. She ran with her usual lightness but with a greater decisiveness.
She did not run to Jimmy Waghorn’s place. Although she should have. She did not bother to wonder if Jesse was already there, waiting for her. Although she should have. She did not bother to offer Jesse Mitchell the gift of an explanation of her decisions and her intentions, or the gift of a goodbye. Although any decent person would have.
Marjorie ran instead the length of the house paddock track. She paused to push through the gap between the wire gate and the fence post. She set off running again. She and the load on her shoulders ran the length of the farm track until she got to the bus stop and the train track. And there she rested and waited, opposite the railway crossing and in the gloom of a Mallee tree.
Marjorie and the scrub listened for the sounds of the first night train coming down the track. It took its time, as it always did, and gave plenty of warning, as it always did. Marjorie had been as quiet and still as the Mallee tree she was leaning against as she listened for the train whistle wailing across the Mallee distance, and the growing sounds of the train wheels. She waited until she heard it slowing for its approach to the crossing before turning to watch it arrive. The night wind, quiet until now, had been watching Marjorie all this time – furious at her. And the night wind was determined to let her know of its condemnation. So it gusted hard and slammed the guard’s van door open.
But Marjorie wasn’t intimidated by that. Not at all. The train slowed as it always did. Just in case. And whistled as it always did. Just in case. The wheat trucks lumbered past Marjorie as they always did and Marjorie acknowledged each one of them as they passed. Nodding and acknowledging until the guard’s van arrived.
Marjorie threw her bag then, nonchalantly, into the passing guard’s van. She took one quick look behind her at the darkened track to the farmhouse, then followed her bag into the van with an easy, graceful leap. Marjorie might have been incompetent with her mother but this running and leaping onto trains was something Marjorie executed with absolute competence. And the train, after all these night-time years, was at last rewarded for its endless nocturnal patience. And so was the Mallee.
Marjorie huddled in a dark corner of the guard’s van. She didn’t shut the door. She sat there staring out for hours, watching the glooming night-time Mallee staring right back at her. Countless bunches of silent cement wheat silos were passed. Countless lonely night-time roads were crossed. Marjorie felt the slowing of the wheels and listened to the warning whistle each time and waited for others to join her in the safety of the night train. But no one did.
Once or twice, Marjorie saw a car stopped at a crossing, paying homage to the train, waiting for it to pass. And she wondered if it might be Bill and Pa and Elise and Ruby. But Marjorie dismissed the thought. Ruby won’t be in the car, she thought. She’s probably dead by now. Mostly Marjorie just sat and stared and wondered about nothing at all. Because that was the only sensible thing to do.
And the train let her sit there and think about nothing at all because that train, as always, was kind and dependable. And it did the only thing it could do for her that night. It took her carefully through the rest of the night. Down the miles and hundreds of miles to the city.
Marjorie listened to the clickety-clack, clickety-clack and clickety-clack of the train. And she was soothed by the familiarity of the rhythm as it harmonised with her other comforting rhythm. Because inside her head Marjorie was running. Running away, running away and running away. Because isn’t that what any sensible person would do? Isn’t that what any normal person would do after what she had just done?
And all the while, throughout those night-time miles and hundreds of miles, that glooming Mallee watched, and judged, and was satisfied.
Marjorie’s decision was a triumph, the Mallee decided. Someone was leaving. The Mallee delighted in its victory throughout each and every one of those hundreds of miles. And that watching and triumphant Mallee was as sure as any semi-desert environment can ever be that the leaver was never going to come back.
Chapter 14
But the Mallee was only half right on a number of fronts. Probably on account of being only a semi-desert.
So that Mallee might have given a knowing nod at the passing train with its crushed and crumpled cargo lurching and swaying, the eyes staring out into the dark from the guard’s van. It might have stood back and folded its arms in the middle of that night-time gloom, in its relentless, eternal, implacable semi-desertness, and said, Yep. Knew that was gunna happen. We could all see that coming a mile off.
But all through those decades, in its unrelenting unthinking determination to overtake, that Mallee had made a mistake. It was blinded by the shimmer of its own fervour. It failed to see just how much of itself it had managed to insinuate into Marjorie. So it was wrong about Marjorie never going back. Because Marjorie never entirely left. A portion of that M
allee was going to be there with her wherever she went. Even if she didn’t know it. Even if that Mallee couldn’t see it for the glare. That Mallee had spread out under her skin in all directions just like one of those salt lakes creeping slow and sly and silent across the terrain. It had burrowed right in and now lurked below her surface just like those Mallee stumps resting quiet and watchful below the red sand in the paddocks. Just like the water, waiting brackish and stubborn beneath the clay pans.
And the Mallee forgot about salvage. It might have thought about the dirt and the scrub and the water and their collective drive to repossess. Their drive to get back what was taken. To fix what was discarded. But it forgot that a person – a person such as Elise, and even a person such as Marjorie – will also be dogged by what is so recklessly discarded. They too will be haunted by the need to collect all those broken, abandoned things lying around and stick them back together again. Somehow. As best they can. One day they will return to these things, and they will do whatever it takes to convert them into something handy, something useful. Because they will have remembered that you don’t waste anything in the Mallee.
And it forgot, too, about the peculiar way of people from the Mallee to congregate in their groups: in the red dust and dirt out the front of the post office; at the supper table after the tennis grand final; leaning against the bonnets of cars; clumping at the bar of the pub; or collecting and huddling in the ladies’ lounge. To crowd together, stubborn and steadfast, to barrack for that person who was doing their best to mend something. Because nobody should ever underestimate the abilities of fencing wire or baling twine. Or the capacity of a person to fix any amount of broken things with enough of either of them. Even if that person took a long time to do it. Even if they were not very good at it.
And it was also only half right on account of where was Marjorie going to go to anyway?
Marjorie went to Aunty Agnes. But it took her more than a week to get there. She had thoughts of having to fend for herself in the city. Down by the river. Trapping rabbits in the vacant lots and under abandoned warehouses. But Marjorie, just like the Mallee, didn’t account for a person’s need to salvage. It didn’t take too many days before she was overtaken – there by her campfire, staring at the river and smelling the sea, all by herself with her cooked rabbit and her billy tea. So, all she could do was pack her things back in her schoolbag and head for Aunty Agnes’s place.
Agnes had been keeping a lookout ever since the telephone call. Pa had telephoned her about the accident. His voice snaking down through the miles. ‘There’s been a bastard of a turn up here, Agnes,’ he bellowed down the line. ‘Elise’s had one of her nervy turns. A bad one. Bill’s had to take her back to that lunatic asylum. She’ll come good eventually. The doctors reckon it’s going to take a hell of a long while this time, but what do they bloody know about anything? She’ll come good. But Ruby got burnt on the stove.’
‘What? How?’
‘Elise was stark raving mad. The girls were there with her. They were trying to look after her. Crikey, we all were. But it was Elise and her mad bloody fit that did it.’
‘How badly is she burnt?’
‘She might die, Agnes. Skin hanging off everywhere. Half her hair burnt off her head. Her arms and legs, stomach – all a mess. The ambulance met us at the doctor’s. We put butter on her – Marjorie and me – it’s the best we could do. The poor kid trying to scream but nothing coming out. Marjorie all of a shake and starey-eyed.’ Agnes’s brother ran out of words. He took a deep, raggedy breath. That breath managed to suck in some more words but the new words weren’t as stout as the earlier ones. They were thin, crusty words. ‘I don’t know if our best will be good enough, Agnes,’ the new words croaked. ‘I don’t know. I reckon there’s a good chance Ruby could be bloody dead by the time they get her to the city.’
Agnes listened to her brother. She stared at the Sacred Heart of Jesus standing in his alcove at the end of the hallway while her hand stuck to the receiver as if refusing to let go of it might save Ruby.
‘Are you still there, Agnes?’ Pa said.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘And Marjorie has taken off.’
‘What?’ said Agnes as the Sacred Heart gazed serenely at her.
‘She’s bloody gone. Shot through. I came back home here after the ambulance left the doctor’s and she wasn’t here. She was supposed to stay here and look after things until somebody got back, but the place was empty. And nobody has any flamin’ idea where she’s got to.’ Her brother’s voice was wobbling to a standstill now. It was tired from all those wire miles it was riding down. So very tired from having to say these things.
‘Has she taken anything? Books? Clothes?’ Agnes asked.
Agnes listened as her brother heaved a sigh large enough to shake all the waiting crows off the miles of listening telephone lines. ‘How the bloody hell would I know, Agnes?’ he said.
‘Poor Bill. Poor Elise. Those poor girls,’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ said Pa. Then: ‘You haven’t seen her, have ya?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘It’s a bloody mess I tell ya, Agnes. It’s really bloody shook me up, all of this,’ he said. His voice scraped and stopped. He tried again but his voice splintered. It had had enough and it gave up and left.
*
Marjorie and her backpack crept up to Aunty Agnes’s kitchen window. The sun had dipped itself down behind the rooftops on the other side of the house – tucked itself in and pulled the covering of those tin roofs and tiled roofs over its head. So Marjorie knew she would be safe in the shadows on this side of the house. She could see Aunty Agnes there – sitting at her kitchen table – washed over gently with the glow from her kitchen light. Marjorie reached out and pressed her hands flat against the window and touched her forehead, then as much of her face as she could, to the glass. She blinked as the water crept around her eyeballs. Marjorie knew this glass, and she could tell that it knew her. It was as hard and as cold, as thin and brittle and transparent as herself. ‘Aunty Agnes,’ she whispered, as one hand curled and tapped on the window. As the other hand stayed splayed and pressed against the cold hard rigid surface. ‘It’s me.’
*
It was Marjorie’s turn now to stare at the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She could see it through the door, reproving – staring at her as she soaked up those precious, undeserved Aunty Agnes hugs. Watching aggrieved as she wrapped both hands around a cup of hot, milky Aunty Agnes tea. Marjorie was sitting at the kitchen table with her back to the stove. She stared at his hand cupped under his Sacred Heart – there to catch the drops of blood perpetually falling. Falling now, no doubt forever, because of Marjorie and what she had done.
Aunty Agnes was in the hallway next to the Sacred Heart. She was on the telephone. Making a call that couldn’t wait any longer than giving Marjorie a hug and getting her a hot cup of tea. She was standing with her back to Marjorie and talking as quietly as she could given the distance the words had to travel to be heard. It was Bill on the other end of the line this time. ‘How is she?’ he was asking.
Aunty Agnes shrugged. ‘She’s not on an even keel at all. But what would anybody expect, after all that’s happened? And her thinking she had to run off and fend for herself like a swaggie down by the river all these past days?’
Marjorie could hear the soft murmurings. But she was tatty and shabby now so she had no strength left to try to understand what the words were saying.
‘Could you see if you can get her to come to the phone, please, Aunty Agnes?’ Bill asked. His voice snaking down through the hundreds of miles of brown cords with their efficient porcelain plugs. Travelling the lanes and multitude miles of telephony.
‘It’s your sister,’ he said when Marjorie took the receiver. ‘It’s Ruby. She’s gone.’
Marjorie moved from staring at the wall. She turned her head to stare down the hallwa
y at the stained-glass window in the front door. She waited patiently while the words bashed themselves at her ear, trampling their way in.
‘Are you there, Marjorie?’ she heard her father ask.
‘Gone where?’ she said.
‘Passed away,’ said Bill. ‘She’s died.’
‘Why?’
‘Crikey, Marjorie,’ Bill’s voice splattered down the line. ‘What sort of a question is that?’
Marjorie shrugged.
‘Are you there, Marjorie?’ her father asked.
Marjorie shrugged.
‘The burns were too bad. We tried our best: you and Pa putting butter on – you remember? – and the damp tea towels. But it wasn’t enough.’
Marjorie nodded at the wall.
‘Are you still there?’
‘Yes. I’m here. Where would I go?’
She heard her father sigh. And thought about how a sigh can sound when it is coming on brown cord from hundreds of miles away.
‘You’ve missed the funeral. It was last Saturday week. Everybody was there. It was a really big turnout.’
‘Did my mother go?’
Bill stopped short at the other end of the line. ‘She’s been admitted to the mental hospital again. Your mother is in a very bad way. Of course she didn’t go!’
Marjorie nodded again.
‘Marjorie?’ Bill said.
‘What?’
‘Put Aunty Agnes on, will ya?’ His voice was soft and slow like a gentle autumn rain. But Marjorie couldn’t hear that. Perhaps it was too hard to hear that sort of thing after so many miles of telephone wire.
So Marjorie handed the receiver to Aunty Agnes and Aunty Agnes talked quiet, murmuring talk into the telephone again before hanging up the receiver and coming back to Marjorie in the kitchen.
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