Little Exiles

by Robert Dinsdale

  In the doorway, next to the man in black who has always tended the bedwetters’ dormitory, George stands, wearing his own robes of black. He is thinner than Peter remembers, his features more defined. Nobody would ever call George handsome, but his cheekbones are pronounced now, and he has a certain bearing that Peter does not recognise. It might be because he is smiling.

  A gang of little ones, led by a seven-year-old who has already been among them three years, rush past, entrusted with collecting kindling before the breakfast bell rings. Two of the youngest stop and chatter at George as they pass. George crouches, ruffles the smallest one’s hair. The elder stamps his foot down, refuses to run on until his hair, too, is ruffled.

  ‘He was good with them,’ Jon begins. ‘He was, ever since we came. They liked him. And, Peter, he liked them too. You don’t know what it’s like in here … It’s a good thing to be liked.’

  ‘He’s coming with us …’

  Peter is about to step out, but Jon holds him back. Peter only thinks he knows George. He doesn’t know a thing about that night with the wild boy. He wouldn’t understand Coca-Cola and jolly swagmen and leather boots for keeping bees.

  From the shadows behind George, Judah Reed emerges. He puts an arm around George and the man beside him, and then a young girl, twelve or thirteen, turns up to offer them tea and juice from china cups.

  ‘I thought they beat him …’

  Jon can’t answer that. There are things even he doesn’t understand. ‘In the end, they were nice to him. They trusted him. He started keeping bees, making honey for the whole Mission. Do you know how long it had been since any of us had had sweets? Well, George started making sweets. Then all the boys liked him. He stopped wetting the bed, Peter. And he didn’t even tell me, not at first — because he had other people to tell. He was making friends …’

  ‘You were meant to be his friend, Jon.’

  Jon promised himself, long ago, that he wouldn’t tell Peter about that night when George ratted on him.

  ‘I wasn’t a ship to carry George home, Peter.’ Jon moves away. ‘They might be sending him back,’ he says. ‘He’ll go down to the Mission in New South Wales, work with the little ones there, help them settle in, so they can start treating the Mission like home. If he’s good enough at it, they’ll put him on a boat. He’ll be in England, helping to tell boys what promises wait over here …’

  Something relents. Peter’s shoulders sag. Perhaps this is easier to stomach, Jon thinks. George put on black robes because George can go home. A pact like that, maybe Peter can understand.

  ‘When did he tell you?’ he asks.

  ‘Oh, he didn’t tell me,’ Jon admits. ‘But I found out.’

  Peter stares after his old friend. He wants to ride a horse through here, whip George up onto its back like a damsel in distress, and ride on out. He wants to march in there and smash the toadying little bastard’s face into a different shape. He’s waited five years. He made a promise.

  Jon is at his shoulder. ‘Let’s get out of here, Peter.’

  Peter stands, Jon’s fist closed around his arm, until George’s eyes seem to drift his way. For a moment, it is as if their gazes meet, each looking into the darkness on the other side of the expanse. George’s face drops; Peter’s hardens.

  Then, the enchantment shattered, George nods at the man in black on his left and takes off, chirping out for some little ones to follow.

  ‘To hell with him,’ Peter says. ‘England or not, he can go to hell.’

  At the ute, Cormac Tate is waiting, the engine still ticking over. He does not say a word as Peter and Jon squeeze into the cab. He guides the wagon out onto the track, and from there onto the main highway.

  It is a new day in the new world, and together they set out.

  BOOK TWO

  THE STOLEN GENERATION

  XI

  If your mother calls for you, the little girl knows, you must always go — but sometimes, if she is screaming and crying your name, you must run as far as your little legs will carry you. Do you remember the dead tree by the dead river? You must run there and beyond, until you’re up in the bush and away. Watch out for snakes, Dolly, and watch out for spiders — but, no matter how much crying you hear, do not come back. For there is something worse than spiders and snakes — and, one day, the childsnatcher will come for you, just like he came for your sisters.

  She lives outside a cattle station high in the old country. Her daddy is a stockman, but she has never seen him. He is a different daddy to the daddies of her sisters. Mother talks about him like an old legend, but sometimes she has a wicked smile when she tells the story, and the little girl does not know why. One day, your father came riding in, and brought your mother treasures. Then he went — but he left behind the greatest treasure of them all — and that, Dolly, is where little girls come from.

  Though she has never seen her father, she thinks of him often. She plays a game that her father is coming for her one day, bringing her the same treasures he brought her mother. The game raises titters from her mother and the other women, but Dolly plays it all the same. Late at night, her mother warns her: when the man comes riding in, it will not be a game and it will not be your father. He might be dressed up like your daddy once was. He might come on a horse or in a wagon with wheels and a clicking engine. But if you do not believe me and do not run, your mother will be left alone to cry for seven long years.

  The others think she doesn’t remember the day her sisters disappeared, but she remembers it well. It comes in her dreaming. She is too young to play with the other girls, and that, she has learned, is why she was not on the childsnatcher’s list. On that day, she was watching from the deadwoods as her sisters bathed. When they saw her watching, they teased her with names, and she ran into the scrub, to watch from a place nobody knew.

  There came the sound of engines. The engines were loud as monsters, and the women clucked and ran so that Dolly knew something was wrong. Her sisters, lazing too long in those cool, cool waters, refused to be alarmed. As these girls knew, the worries of mothers since time immemorial have always been unfounded, and instead of running, they chattered at each other, splashing in water and singing songs.

  When the man marched in — tall and white, just like Dolly’s father! — the girls froze. In the undergrowth, Dolly chewed on her dress. It was a lacy thing, one that Dolly remembers even to this day. The man smiled, like he was happy to simply say hello. But Dolly saw those teeth for what they were — the gnashers of a monster.

  In Dolly’s memory, he has her sisters’ names on his paper, and he calls them out, one by one. Then he crouches, picks up the girls’ dresses and tells them to put them on. I’m your daddy now, he smiles.

  We have daddies! the girls cry out — though Dolly’s certain they’ve never met their daddies either.

  It’s on my paper, the man insists. Nothing to be done if it’s on my paper. I’m your father and I’ve always been your father. It doesn’t matter who planted you inside your mother. It says so right here.

  The girls cannot run, because now they see other men, in smart shirts and ties, lurking around the waterhole. Instead, they fight. They kick and scream and bite — but nobody comes. The men wade into the pool to take them. They are angry now, and they thrust the girls onto the bank. It does not do to ruin a good shirt.

  The girls are marched, sodden in their dresses, to the waiting wagon. On a piece of paper, a cross is marked next to each name. In the scrub tonight, the women will wail. They will take stones and scratch at their eyes. They will not notice the little girl still left, hiding in the deadwoods, wondering who came and took her sisters away.

  So, listen, Dolly. If your mother calls for you, you must go to her. But if she screams and cries, if you ever hear her telling a stranger that she has no daughters, you must make straight for the deadwoods by the dead river. Because the childsnatcher does not come in the dead of night. He comes in a police car, in the brazen bright of day — and if your
name is on his list, you’ll never be your mother’s daughter ever again.

  XII

  In the north country, the seashores are white as salt, the inland sands the colour of rust.

  By the side of the northern highway, where the road rides the coastline so closely that a lazy driver, bewitched by light playing on the water, might suddenly find himself submerged, a fire is burning. It smoulders below a tin pan, with a billy hanging above. The sea is at low tide, its waters azure where the waves break, and inky blue, further out, where the reef grows large.

  A tall man, with sun-burnished skin and dark hair he has never been able to train, scurries, bow-legged, from a tide pool to the fire, hands clasped tightly around something that would happily snap off each of his fingers. Juggling it, he manages to knock the pan’s lid off and toss the prize inside. The thing rears up and spits, but already it is too late. The brown-haired man grins and his bounty is trapped. He was once told that you could plunge your hands into any tide pool along this coast and bring them out holding enough slippery fish to last a man for weeks on end without ever setting out again. If that is truly so, he must be a most inept fisherman. All the same, they will eat well this afternoon.

  A burly dog rises and shoves his snout, inquisitively, into the dish. The brown-haired man pushes him back, scolding him but grinning, nonetheless, at his transgression. The dog will get his share, just like the men. One for all, and all for one.

  The brown-haired man looks up. On the bank above the beach, his companion is grunting under the hood of their ute. The old girl has carried them far and wide — but today she is guttering again. His companion rises out of the engine, red hair plastered to his brow. When there is no more water in his canteen, he tosses it down onto the beach. He skids down the bank soon after, sniffing — in his best imitation of a fine city diner — at the smells curling from the pot.

  ‘She’s done for,’ he says, wiping his hands.

  ‘She’s never done for.’

  ‘She’ll take us through the night, but after that …’ He slaps his hands together. ‘One more angel in heaven.’ He drops, just like the dog, and shoves his nose ridiculously in the pot. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s a bastard big crab,’ the brown-haired man answers, aping one of his friend’s favourite expressions.

  ‘We had crab last night. And the night before.’

  ‘What can I say, dear? It’s my speciality.’

  They sit to eat as the midday heat starts to fade. There are dampers, too, and they wash them down with billy tea, laced with so much honey — donated by a grateful beekeeper whose fences they fixed somewhere down the coast — that the dog turns his snout up at his share.

  After they are done, and the dog is cleaning out the still-scalding pan, they throw their gear in the back of the ute and turn their gazes north.

  The brown-haired man drifts to the wagon door, patting the roof for good luck. ‘I’m driving,’ he says, teasing his fingers.

  The other tightens his fingers, joyfully, around the keys. ‘The hell you are. Who taught you how to drive?’

  Reluctantly: ‘You did.’

  ‘Then it stands to reason, I’m the better driver.’

  ‘Just because you’re older?’

  The red-haired man nods. ‘I’ll always be older.’

  A deep breath — and then the second man throws himself, dramatically, into the passenger seat. ‘You can’t keep using that!’

  The first man slides into the driver’s seat, kicks up the ignition. ‘I reckon I got a few years yet.’ The engine complains bitterly, but she is as good a friend as any and she lets him push her back onto the road. ‘Come on, Jon Heather, you know I drive faster. And he isn’t going to be there forever …’

  The wind whips through the window, a chill for which both of them are thankful.

  ‘Don’t you believe it, Peter. He’d stick around for you until there’s snow all over the Nullarbor Plain.’

  The red-haired man flicks his head back and beams. ‘True enough,’ he says.

  It is the first day of December in the year of 1960 and, in the north country, an old friend awaits.

  They reach the town of Broome long after nightfall. The highway plunges them straight into a town of wide, unsealed avenues, stretched out so that they might be in the centre of town and not know it, for the red ridges and scrub that abounds. They coax the battered ute in circles, until they stall on the banks of a bay, thick with mangroves and the choral sounds of night. At last, they see lights: Chinese lanterns hanging, gaudily, over one of the broad thoroughfares.

  Leaving the ute by a jetty that extends over the mud flats, they head out. Dog stays behind to guard the truck — but there are a thousand new smells to chase down tonight, and Jon doubts he’ll still be there when they get back.

  ‘You hungry?’ asks Pete, idling in a window where some sort of duck, glistening, is strung up by its feet.

  ‘We ate this afternoon, remember?’

  ‘You never know when you’re going to eat next, Jon Heather. Maybe we should fill up.’

  ‘I’m not a snake, Peter. We’ll eat when we’re hungry.’

  A man emerges from what might be the entrance to another den and, with a bow, invites them in. Pete is almost through the doors, haggling a price, when Jon Heather claws him back.

  ‘Later, OK?’ he says. ‘I thought we came here for a reason?’

  The buildings around them tower, rickety and ill-kept. Walls of corrugated iron have been patched in stone, wide verandas sprawling out front. Each building sits alone, not like the crowded terraces of their childhoods. Trees line the avenues, boughs laden with blossoms to sweeten the night.

  A mere amble further on, and the town stops dead: an oval of grass and dirt is before them. On the other side, the town simply begins again, as if nobody has noticed the hole.

  ‘You reckon this is it?’

  Pete looks up. The building is as rough and cobbled together as those on either side. If it is on a grander scale, it only emphasizes the bulging upper storey, the sloping boardwalk and uneven gables. A sign protruding over the veranda reads, in flaking paint, the Old Arabia. A crude camel train, carved into the wood, can be seen below.

  ‘Why would Arabia be in the middle of Shanghai?’ Pete asks, looking back along the thoroughfare.

  ‘But this is the place, right?’

  Pete pats his pockets, searching for the telegram — but it must be back in the ute. Probably Dog has eaten it.

  ‘Let’s find out.’

  Through the doors, the Old Arabia’s reception is empty. Beyond a broad archway to the right, a scattering of guests sit in a saloon bar, drinking to the static sounds of a waltz. At the head of the hall, a staircase climbs to a wide balcony, from which a multitude of doors look down.

  It has an air of opulence, but self-consciously worn; whoever owns this place must certainly have a sense of humour. A big canvas shows a camel train, heading across a desert; below that, a painting of a steam train is making the same journey. Pete tips his chin at it, bewildered; there isn’t even a railway in this part of the world. Above the empty reception counter, photographs show old Chinamen in heavy metal armour, grinning as they show off, in cupped hands, piles of pearls.

  Pete struts forward, slamming his hand on the counter. When no patron instantly materializes, he rolls his eyes at Jon Heather and slaps his palm down again.

  Jon reaches over, lifts a dainty bell, and tinkles it.

  ‘Always using your head, Jon Heather,’ Pete mutters, half in admonishment.

  Still, nobody comes.

  They wander, kicking their heels, into the bar-room. They should probably be wearing shoes in a place like this, but nobody seems to notice; Jon Heather does wear boots when he has to, if he’s mustering cattle or working some fence, but it never feels right. Pete clomps forward. The clientele of the Old Arabia are a mixed bunch: in one corner, men just like Pete and Jon, drifting through town before heading back to the road; in another,
a cabal of men in smart suits and ties, city types who have drifted too far from their secretaries and typewriters.

  At the bar, a grey-haired man polishes glasses while a barmaid, his daughter, rebuffs the good-natured invitations of one of their guests. Jon sidles over, but she has them in her sights before they reach the bar. Nobody has told this girl that the patrons here just want to be watered and fed, straight up with no fussing, because she puts on quite a show. Her brown hair is tied back and she wears a long dress, of the type widows were growing tired of at the turn of the century. Somehow it suits her.

  ‘You boys looking for lodgings? Or is it food and drink and on your way?’

  Pete leaps onto a bar-stool, props his elbows on the counter, and promptly starts chewing on the tree nuts somebody has left in a bowl there.

  ‘We’re meeting an old friend,’ Jon begins. Pete chomps his agreement. ‘He ought to have sorted rooms for us …’

  ‘This old friend have a name?’

  ‘He doesn’t ordinarily use it. Any case, he’s about six feet tall, big white hair …’

  ‘Sometimes has whiskers.’

  Jon nods. ‘He does sometimes have whiskers,’ he affirms.

  ‘About like that old man waving at you over there, then,’ the girl replies.

  Pete and Jon turn. At the far end of the bar, a white-whiskered man sits before a table laden with plates of steak and veggies, his tucker bag splayed open at his feet. Already, he is laughing uproariously. He lifts a meaty hand and clobbers it back and forth.

  Jon and Pete hurry over, sending a plate spinning on a table as they pass.

  ‘It’s bastard good to see you, Cormac,’ Pete says, clasping the old man’s hand.

  ‘And you, Pete.’ He looks over Pete’s shoulder. ‘Jon Heather,’ he nods.

  Jon suppresses the smile for as long as he can. ‘Bastard good,’ he says.

  ‘That’s my boy!’

  Nobody has ever praised the food at the Old Arabia hotel — but for Pete and Jon, eating steak with Cormac Tate is a treat, no matter how tough the cut. Cormac stops short of chopping up their steaks for them, but he does insist on ordering tankards of the weak swill they call beer in this part of the world, and paying for every last drop.