The Dreaming

by Barbara Wood

  Payment for services!

  How dare she say that to him! Frank could have had any woman in the city. But he had stayed with Ivy. And she had become a comfortable habit, like broken-down slippers.

  But no more. She was welcome to go her own way, with her painted photographs and notions of thinking she was something more than she was. Frank didn't need the flat on Elizabeth Street; it was time to let go of it and find someone new. Lucinda was young and fresh. He'd mold her into the kind of woman he wanted. And then his life would be his own again.

  As he went back to the carriage, Frank paused and looked at the city lights.

  He didn't like leaving things this way. If it had been he who had ended their relationship, then he could go to Carmichael's with an easy mind. But it was Ivy who had done the discarding, adding further insult by denigrating his generous gift—"payment for services" indeed!

  Ivy had had the last word, the last insulting word. And Frank couldn't allow that. He wasn't finished, not just yet. He couldn't go to the Carmichael house feeling this way. It was his right to get the last word in.

  And that was exactly what he was going to do. Go back to Elizabeth Street one last time and tell her everything that was on his mind. Ivy wasn't going to get off so easy, just by saying, "We go our separate ways." He wasn't going to make it painless for her. She was going to have to suffer. He was going to go back and insist that she see him; then he was going to tell her exactly what he thought of her; and then he was going to tell her that she had to be out of the flat by tomorrow and not a day later.

  He pounded on the door, and when it opened, Ivy stood there framed in the firelight, her eyes red from weeping. Frank, having rehearsed his diatribe on the ride back from Princes Bridge, removed his hat and heard himself say, "Marry me, Ivy."

  TWENTY-TWO

  S

  UDDENLY THERE CAME A CRY FROM THE WOOL ROOM: "DUCKS on the pond!" It was shouted by the wool presser to alert the shearers that a woman had entered the shed. The overseer, having heard it, passed it along the board, shouting above the clamor, "Watch it, mates! The ducks have landed!"

  The warning was not meant to offend the intruding female, but to warn the shearers to watch their language and to go easy on nicking the sheep while a lady was present. The "lady" in this case was seven-year-old Beth Westbrook, who loved being treated like a grown-up. Whenever she came into the shearing shed the men whose hands were free tipped their caps to her, and a merry banter ensued for the benefit of the girl.

  The noise in the shed was almost deafening—clippers clacking, dogs barking, men shouting and sheep bleating above the din. The shearers, twelve of them, were bent over their animals in deep concentration as they guided their dangerously sharp cutters under the fleeces, peeling them away from writhing rams or ewes. The rouseabouts dashed around the shed, whipping the massive fleeces out from underfoot and running with them to the wool-rolling table, while shearers shouted, "Wool away!" or "Shake that broom, boy!" Outside, the musterers were driving the frightened sheep into pens to get them ready for shearing.

  Beth loved shearing time. It was more exciting than Christmas and lasted longer. She loved the yolky smell of the new-shorn wool and the laughter of the men as they wrestled with protesting animals and expertly stripped the wool off them. And most of all she loved shearers.

  They seemed to her a romantic band of men, like the kind she read about in adventure stories, like pirates, Beth thought, or highwaymen or knights on chargers. Beth had learned all about shearers from her father, who himself had, years ago, been a shearer. Every year, at the onset of winter, there was a mass exodus of men from towns all over the Australian colonies, men who shouldered their swags, kissed their wives and sweethearts good-by and struck off on the "wallaby track," where they would be gone for months, moving from station to station, following the jobs, passing through places with exotic names like Cunnamulla, Alice Downs, and One Tree Plain. It was something of a glamorous life for a young man with no roots, Hugh had said, heading off into the unknown, on foot or on horseback, never sure of finding work, sleeping under the stars, drinking tea out of a billycan and drawing comfort from the company of mates. And they were a queer bunch, too. Beth thought there must be no one like them anywhere else on the face of the earth, with their sturdy, beefy bodies and rough language, but with hands, because of the lanolin in the fleece, softer than a baby's. And a tighter band of mates never lived, because it took a rare and special spirit, Hugh had told his daughter, to stick to shearing. It was a life that broke your back and ruined your marriage and punished you with illness and injuries and hard labor in sheds where the temperature often reached 120 degrees. It was a dangerous job, with the ever-present threat of being kicked or slashed by a hoof or losing fingers in the clippers. And at the close of each exhausting day, when the bell rang for tea, a shearer was plastered from head to foot in sweat, blood, urine and feces. Then, at the end of the season, it was off to the nearest pub, and waking up three days later with no memory of the binge, followed by the long weary trek home to wife and kids and the vow that this was the last season for sure. Only to feel the call the very next year, when once again the roaming shearers hit the wallaby track.

  Beth's father had written a ballad about shearers, "Emu Creek." It was a long poem about men on the move, with names like Crooked Mick and Smiling Jack, and the sheds they'd shorn, from Gundagai to Moulamein, and about the hardships they'd suffered, in places named Broken River and Winding Swamp, and their mateship and sacrifices, and the sweethearts named Mary and Jane and Lizzie they had left behind. It had been one of the first of her father's poems to be published under his real name, and it made Beth very proud.

  The seven-year-old was in love with shearers, in love with the shearing life, and when she grew up, she, too, was going to be a shearer.

  "Well now, little miss," said a shearer nicknamed Stinky Lazarus, striding up to Beth as she stood, excited, in the doorway. "What can I do for you?"

  "Oh Stinky!" she cried. "Isn't it wonderful?"

  He looked around at his weary crew, sweat dripping off their faces, and at the sheep squealing and pissing all over themselves, and he laughed and said, "Yeah, I reckon it's wonderful all right."

  Beth thrust her hands into the pockets of her dress and sighed. She was a tomboyish girl with long braids and a dirty face, barefooted more often than not. Stinky had to shake his head at the thought of Beth Westbrook. During shearing she was always hanging around the shed; at other times she could be seen on her pony, riding around the home-yard, with the old sheepdog Button tagging behind, while her brother, Adam, showed more interest in the plants that grew along the river.

  Beth adored Stinky Lazarus. He came with his band of shearers year after year, always full of funny yarns and always seeming to have time to spare for her. "They call me Stinky," he had once told her—since it was the rare shearer who did not have a nickname—"because it says in the Bible that Lazarus stunk to high heaven." And it was Stinky who had put up the sign in the shearers' cookhouse that read: SHEARERS MUST HAVE A BATH EVERY TWELVE MONTHS WHETHER THEY NEED IT OR NOT.

  Stinky told wonderful stories, such as the one about a shearer named Old Turnip, who had wanted to get out of shearing one day. Shearers didn't shear wet sheep, because it was thought to be dangerous for both men and animals. So Old Turnip, wanting a day off from work, had told the grazier that the sheep were wet, thinking that the man would let him get out of it. But the grazier, being a crafty person, had said, "All right, Turnip, but you still have to shear the lambs, because they're smaller and they dry quicker than grown sheep." But Old Turnip, being even craftier, had said, "No sir. Lambs don't dry faster. They're so little they're farther away from the sun!"

  "I'm going to be a shearer when I'm older," Beth declared now, thinking she might faint from the excitement of it all.

  "You can't be a shearer, little miss," Stinky said with a laugh.

  "Why not?"

  "Because sheilas can't be shea
rers, that's why not. You'll learn cooking and sewing and things like that."

  Beth thrust out her chin and said, "Oh, I'll learn those things, but I'm going to be a shearer, too, like my daddy was when he was young, and I'm going to muster and ride the boundaries and mend fences, just like he does now."

  Stinky laughed and pushed his hat farther back on his head. For October the day was awfully warm. There was still a drought in the Western District, and it looked like it was going to be another hot, dry summer. "And what about your husband then?" he asked with a grin.

  "I'm not going to get married."

  "What about when you fall in love?"

  "I'll never fall in love. I don't like boys. At least, not in that way. I'm going to own Merinda and then I can do whatever I want."

  Stinky's eyebrows rose. "You're going to own Merinda, are you? And who says so?"

  "I say so. It's going to be mine someday."

  "I don't think so, missy. The property's going to go to your brother, Adam."

  Beth stared up at him. "Why?"

  "Because he's a boy, that's why. Boys do all the inheriting. Girls don't inherit anything."

  "I don't believe you."

  "Well," he said, patting her on the head, "you'll see, someday. And by then you won't mind getting married instead of shearing sheep!"

  As Stinky Lazarus walked away, bowlegged and stoop-shouldered from years of shearing, Beth felt the wonderful happiness of the morning give way to disappointment. It wasn't fair! She was always being told she couldn't do things that she wanted to do. Like working in the pens at the Annual Agricultural Show. Only boys and men got to do that. Girls and women cooked food and served meals.

  Beth knew Adam wasn't interested in Merinda; at least, not in the way she was. He was more interested in his schoolbooks, which were full of pictures of fossils and insects. It was Beth who sometimes rode out with her father when there was work to be done around the station, like during the drought when it had been so hot and dry that the grass was poor and they had had to go "feeding out" to the sheep, and Beth had ridden in the wagon and watched the men distribute grain and hay to hungry sheep. She went out with her father when he set rock salt in the troughs by the river; she helped him oversee the sinking of new bore holes; she watched as fences were mended; she listened to the men's talk of the drought and how far they were going to have to drove the sheep for water; and she sang along when Stinky Lazarus plucked his banjo and the men sang, "We camped at Lazy Harry's on the road to Gundagai ..."

  "I am going to be a shearer," she said quietly, leaving the woolshed with Button. She walked across the noisy yard, and headed down the path toward the river. She avoided the new house, which stood fresh and empty and almost ready to be lived in, and wandered among the ghost gums and poplars, tossing pebbles or trailing a stick in the dirt. When Button suddenly stopped and let out a long, low growl, Beth looked through the trees. She heard something moving toward her. "What is it, Button?" she said.

  He raised his nose and sniffed the air. In the next instant, he was wagging his tail.

  "Oh, hello," Beth said, when she saw Ezekiel emerge through the trees. The old tracker was a familiar sight around the homesteads these days; the drought had caused many itinerant men, both white and black, to stay close to the river. A swag camp had sprouted up a few miles upstream, a collection of tents and huts belonging to men who hired themselves out during shearing season as day laborers. And several miles downstream, a similar camp was home to Aborigines like Ezekiel, men who normally wandered a wide range, but whose movements had been curtailed because of the water shortage.

  "You go walkabout today, little girl?" he said.

  She kicked a stone and watched it roll away. "They won't let me be a shearer."

  "Whitefella got strange ideas," the old man said, as he sat down on a boulder and reached into the pocket of pants that were too large for him. "Now, blackfella, he let the women work. Men sit in the shade, women do all the work."

  Beth gave him a cautious look, and when she saw his grin, she smiled. "What do you have there, Ezekiel?" she said, when he drew something out of his pocket.

  "I take Mr. MacGregor and other whitefella into the mountains. They go hunting wallaby. Plenty of food. Ezekiel take more than he can eat." He held it out to her, and Beth's eyes widened. "Oh my," she said. "It's chocolate. Thank you very much, Ezekiel. Would it be all right if I gave some to Button?"

  "You give him," the old man said, patting Button on the head. "This good dog. Some dogs, not so good. But this dog—" He stopped.

  While Beth carefully broke off a small piece of chocolate and gave it to Button, Ezekiel's eyes narrowed; he searched the woods behind her.

  "Here you are," she said, handing the rest back to him. "It's awfully good, thank you."

  He looked at the outstretched arm, the bright smile. Then he looked past her again, at the shadows that had pooled at the base of the trees. He closed his eyes, and felt something he had felt once before, years ago, when he had met the girl's mother, in this same spot. When he opened his eyes again, he saw that it was still there, the shadow of a dog, lurking behind her.

  "What's wrong, Ezekiel?" Beth said when he didn't take the chocolate from her.

  Ezekiel looked back over his shoulder, and thought of the pair of dingoes he had seen a few days ago, not too many miles from this spot, a male and a female, their ribs sticking out from starvation. Not the tame dingoes found in the Aborigine camp, but wild ones. Dangerous ones.

  He frowned. He had to think. Since the white men came, everything had changed—the songlines, the Dreaming Sites. It was hard to go walkabout now, too many signs had vanished. The grove of gum trees, where the Emu Ancestor had sat on his nest, was gone. How could blackfella keep the world created if he couldn't go walkabout?

  And so Ezekiel, and others like him, had simply thought: This is the end of the world, the end of the Dreaming.

  But now, as he looked at this little girl, and recalled her mother, to whom the Kangaroo Ancestor had spoken, another thought began to occur to the old man. For months he had watched the new house go up by the river and become part of these woods; he saw new paths laid; new trees brought in. And he hadn't known what to make of it. But now he began to wonder: Instead of this being the end of the Dreaming, mightn't it simply be the beginning of a new Dreaming? And now that the thought was fully formed in his mind, he looked around the countryside again with new eyes, and all of a sudden he saw new songlines, new Dreaming Sites, belonging to a new people.

  And here was this little girl, at the beginning of it all, just as the Ancestors had once been at the beginning; and he wondered, therefore, if that made her an Ancestor, too.

  Ezekiel wore the same kinds of clothes the mission people had given to him long ago, when his family had been broken up—basically, a shirt and trousers. But underneath these foreign clothes he still wore what he would have been wearing if the white men had never come—a hairstring belt around his waist, and a small possum-skin pouch in which he carried his treasured possessions. In the old days, men carried sharpened stones in such a bag, as well as string, a spearhead, sometimes a lump of beeswax, a hook for fishing, and flint for making fire. But today the men carried matches and tobacco, a small knife, shoelaces, and, if they were lucky, a few coins.

  The old man now reached under his shirt and dipped his hand into the pouch concealed there. Then he held his hand out to Beth, saying, "This is for you."

  She looked at the curious object lying on his palm. It took her a moment before she realized it was an animal's tooth. "Golly," she said. "What is it?"

  "Tooth from dingo," he said. "Very old, very powerful magic. I give it to you."

  "It's for me?" she said. "But why?"

  He didn't want to frighten her by telling her the truth—that she was in danger and needed protection. So he said, "Good-luck piece," with a smile. "Little girl of Merinda always nice to old Ezekiel. Now I give you a present. This will keep you safe and happy."r />
  "Golly," she said again, taking it from him. "Thank you, Ezekiel!"

  "Keep it with you all the time," he said. "Very strong magic."

  An Aboriginal song suddenly came into Sarah's mind:

  "I climb the high rock,

  I look down,

  I look down,

  And I see the rain falling, falling, falling,

  Falling on my darling."

  How strange, she said to herself as she drove the buggy through the tawny countryside, I haven't thought of that song in years. Old Deereeree taught it to me when I was little. Why should it suddenly come back now? Sarah had been remembering a lot of things lately: the way Old Deereeree had taught her to make a stringybark basket; a girl named Becky, who had been her best friend at the mission; secret rituals in the woods nearby. The memories were returning because of the questions Philip occasionally asked, usually beginning with, "How do your people do this ...?" And Sarah realized how nice it was to think of such things again.

  She had gone into Cameron Town this morning to make some purchases: embroidery thread for Alice, baking soda for Mrs. Jackson, pencils for Adam—and to collect the mail as well. There were two letters for Joanna: one from Mr. Robertson and the Karra Karra Mission, and one from England. There were also letters for Alice.

  Sarah thought about Philip's wife, so quiet and unobtrusive, baffled, as Alice herself had said, by this frontier life. She seemed to spend a lot of time writing to the many friends and relatives she had in England. She wouldn't be seen or heard from for hours, and then she would emerge from the bedroom with a packet of letters to be mailed. She would receive postcards and photographs and newspaper articles from her family, and she would spend hours carefully pasting them in her scrapbook. It was apparent to everyone that Alice McNeal was terribly homesick. Which was why it had not really come as a surprise last night at dinner when Philip had announced that, now the house was almost finished, he and Alice and Daniel would be leaving for England as soon as possible.