“Just think Sis—I’ll get a job; a place of me own. Imagine, Sydney. The kids can go to school and I’ll get a job. In a shop or factory. There’s millions of factories there. And the sea. Take the kids to the beach. Manly. I remember Manly.”
Sissy’s future was constructed from the best of her past. Thus her future was fairly restricted. Good times. Someone else will help. Always. Like when she’d recovered from diptheria. Train to Sydney. Ferry ride. Ice cream. Big house by the breakers. Wonder. Magic. Brown arms in the white surf. Long way off—long time ago. Tomorrow. Soon. And Rose had it all already. Apparently Rose belonged in Sydney—why couldn’t she?
She didn’t see the bare light bulb and the shit coming up the kitchen sink or the shared bathroom or the kid from the next door row of flats being carried out under a green sheet because he’d hanged himself, or the ice-cream truck that always went past watched by her big eyed kids with Sydney’s Christmas heat unparched, or the mad woman hosing her onions under an umbrella as the sub-tropic rain of Sydney eventually belted from the sky, or Rose in her grave after all the screaming and the newspapers. That was all to come.
But now they sat in the kitchen rolling cigarettes and drinking tea from a chipped enamel pot, pouring the strong brown liquid into flared cups with roses but no saucers. Floral cups with no saucers promised much. One day the saucers would come. The boy picked up this message. Promises for the future started to undo his memories of the other world.
A child insinuated itself into the kitchen crying of unfair play in the oleander backyard.
“Don’t come running to me with your bloody squabbles. Joe, you’re s’pposed to be looking after the little kids. If you can’t play together then play by yaselves.”
The backyard was his dreaming. Under oleanders and privet were six days of playing. A collection was made. “Play by yaself then.”
Small sticks, bits of glass, old tins, broken bricks, stones and small rocks. A mixture of stiff clay was made in a tin. He cleared an area of ground with a flat bit of wood. Strong uprights were driven into the earth and walls built up with smaller sticks stuck together with the clay. The roof was easily made from a flattened jam tin bent to form a gable. Paths and gardens were demarcated with pebbles and fences were made with sticks. Just like Grandma Leeton’s place. Broken lilac and oleander were urged into the ground for trees and sometimes ran in a shady line on both sides of a path. It was the best game in the world but then, he was only a little kid. That was years before. Of course it could not have all the stuff of Grandma Leeton’s house: the pretty cups with saucers, the shiny tiled bathroom and rose bushes and big china dog called “Man’s Best Friend” which guarded the funereal passage which had a heavy stained glass door and brown velvet curtains where it turned under an arched trellis. Grandma belonged in such a real and beautiful house. Funny thing was, Grandma Leeton never seemed to touch any of the beautiful things in her beautiful house.
The boy could lie in bed at night and picture his little house standing there in the dark. All safe it seemed even if the big rains came and the wind howled. Or when the white moon merely glinted on the roof and turned the lilacs silver. His fingers itched to shape it all and he never knew, not ever, if he liked the building of it better or the knowledge that he would always knock it down and start again. Whatever, it was always a going back—never forward. Back to that which was nearly lost. A long time in the dreaming and he would finally come to that other ritualistic reconstruction of a deeper now-ness; to that which came not from Grandma Leeton but from the Old Granny herself. That black ghost. A flat plain. Love cannot be walled up.
The house the Leetons lived in stood back from the street behind a hedge of privet and lilac and a decrepit picket fence. Along that road in those days all the houses were the same: one-gabled affairs with a half veranda on the front. The barge boards were chalky; the veranda supports at lazy angles with brown stains like wounds from nails etching down what remained of the paint. Paling fences between the houses were supported by dark green choko vines and grapes. In the front of the houses in those days a road stood between the stench of the saleyards and where the people lived. Pot holed and cornflour dusty, flanked by power poles on its western side, it ran straight, right down to the river to the north and along the saleyard fence to the south. There it petered out into meandering bush paths which curved and twisted back onto the lush grassy river flats which lay behind the yards. Roads and tracks.
There were concrete troughs at intervals all down the eastern side of the road right on the edge of the footpath. In the troughs was cool green water for horses. Wild red flowers sprang up from the dirt. The boy could see it all from the veranda.
He saw the road that fell away, away to the north and the south. The treeless saleyards with great dusty mobs of cattle or crying sheep. There were horse-high figures with Snowy River coats or khaki shirts and wide hats all under the vast white sky. This high thin sky loomed away to the west in an enormity which the boy knew he owned but could never hold. Somewhere behind all this were the other families—dark shadows which sometimes trailed into town along the foot trod path by the river. The Old Granny lived across there too in her little house next to the wide river and under the great breathing gums.
At night, from his bed Chris could see the the orange smudge of fires and hear the silence of the other people, and they, like the sky, were utterly away, away. He sensed an ache which stretched back into many ages and felt somehow at one with the makers of these distant fires. Sometimes he would be granted comfort from his St Vinnie’s picture. It seemed to promise a future that was nearly now. When the sun lay low behind the saleyard rails and the line of power poles was silhouetted into a lonely sharpness that fell away, he would stare and stare at the track that led to where the eagle rises. But that was a long time ago. When joy was pain. On days when the bruised clouds were piled up in the west he would go on dreaming beyond the saleyard rails and live in the essence of his other knowledge.
Chris Leeton’s knowledge was a painful memory of a memory. Unspeakable. It filled him with a certain joy and a sadness which dragged him to itself so that this world of unbelonging could never take firm hold of his soul. The clouds were scallop edged with fire and he longed to float out there into that world of fiery spinning dust storms and be consumed by the dancing sky.
Then Aunty Rose would come with her boys (but not Clarrie), and sleep in the house. And, all those years ago, the night like a dog’s breath misted all the sun and the road of posts and fences went away and left only yellow lights in window squares. Then, in that time, the boy could hear kitchen sounds steal under doors, hear laughter and smell the smoke of card games and thus continue to construct his insubstantial world by the blue moonlight which fell through the cracked window panes. Beyond his mother’s voice and Aunty’s smoky laugh lay the silence of the night and the dying fire across the flats.
And then, one night, when the world was busy serving beer in pubs and catching trains in smoking cities and leaving machines by half constructed roads for another night, there was the fire. A fire which no one in Sydney or London or even the next leafy town ever heard tell of. Perhaps it got brief mention for a day or two at the Empire.
He went to the window and across the road the saleyards were moving. He knew he had to climb outside. Somewhere in the orange glow was the old Granny’s house. He heard footsteps running, voices calling, animals in distress.
Chris walked towards a world of fire. The dust was white and thick and the air carried a sad message of cold smoke and fear. The trees’ shadows loomed where the river ran. Saleyard sounds were urgent and fearful. The string of sound wound and unwound and finally knotted back within itself across the spreading flatness.
Bellows rose from upturned heads where horn and eye glowed dull in the moving yards. The child stepped into the night of fire and fear. He passed the blocks of shifting sound and turned in under the tangled lowness of trees by the river. White branches twisted and night tim
e foliage shifted in the orange light and the river flowed its black course on his right. All the world was full of sad and personal smoke. It floated in the air with the dulled stench of dung and urine. To the left of the river the plain became a flattened line of silent winking torches. He ran towards the burning shacks. The air was full of sparks.
The other people’s shacks burned. Sheets of flaming bags and nailed-up lino collapsed in upon itself. The wooden poles were burning. Nails stood out in dumb defiance of the flames. Each place was all on fire and the brightness showed the naked interiors with a truth humanity can hardly bear to see.
Before, when they’d walked over the flats to the Old Granny’s place he’d passed these places. He’d seen inside the gloomy shacks where people slept at night. But the other people never really lived inside—the kero tins and woodheaps and the smudge of smoking fires on the ground were the real dwelling places. But now the centres were revealed in their awful helplessness.
Chris saw in one a table, its existence being undone. Its wooden legs were burning. He saw two bottles standing, waiting for the flames. A sorrow too deep filled his young body as he stood beneath the trees and watched. All about the people stood and softly cried in the night. And that low creening went up to the silent sky and deaf moon. He saw the people and the flames shone through their cotton clothes. The babies were clutched to hips and breasts and all the people looked. To the side a huge figure moved about with a dully glowing lantern. It was black Paula. She was speaking as she helped and her voice contained a tinkle of warm laughter.
“Everything gone now—but it’s alright—it’s alright it’s alright—you see.”
Behind and to the left the bleating cattle joined in with the fear and to the right the river merely pushed this little event to one side. No one had seen him.
The boy crept back past the saleyards and climbed in through the window. The room grew slowly darker and the crying drifted further off. Aunty Paula seemed strangely near to him.
The next afternoon Sissy and Rose and the kids crossed over the road and followed the saleyard fence. They were headed for the Old Granny’s. They marched on, under the giant macrocarpas that curved and skirted round the flat following the river. Leaving the shade they struck out across the flat. Off and away in the distant smudges of white smoke were figures moving about.
The flat was cut by gullies and the path the party followed scouted the deepest of these. The sea of grass stretched away and ended in a shimmer of gums where the river swung back behind the Old Granny’s house.
As they came near her old wooden shack they saw her pegging clothes to a low swung line. She was dressed in her long white petticoat and her grey hair hung all the way to the thickest of waists. A couple of skinny dogs lay in dark dirt hollows under the shack, eyes half open, muzzles flat along the ground. Paula, vast and black, was bent over a ricketty tub, singing.
The old lady stepped across the bare earth and it seemed to Chris that she floated. Darkly she pushed her hair from her eyes.
“Where them people gonna sleep now, hah? All them ’ouses burnt up and it seem all them mob gone camp by the river. Billy and Prince s’pposed to go and ’elp but down at Empire more likely I bet.” She grabbed a shirt Paula was wringing out and threw it back into the tub. “Leave them there!”
“Sure Mum—do this ’nother time.”
The Old Granny put her hands on her hips and smiled toothlessly.
“Where’s that Clarrie in his motor car heh?” She grinned again and her old eyes glowed with a dull light.
“What the bloody hell you want Clarrie for?” Rose was quick in anger and panic.
The old woman remained silent.
“What you mean Mum? He been here? You seen him?” Rose looked at Sissy. “Jesus Sis, you don’t think he’d do a thing like that do you?”
“Look—we were there Sis—did you see him?”
The old woman floated forward. “Why you two come, eh? Think I’m blind, heh? You come to tell, heh? Well I seen everything already.” Her skinny hand waved in the direction of the distant line of macrocarpas and the river.
“Well I’m not blind—them’s our people. This our country. I know.”
The boy looked at his grandmother and saw someone he already knew from somewhere else. Her white petticoat was clay and her body was strangely light and airy.
“What you mean ‘you know’?” Rose was challenging her mother. “You don’t know anything do you!” Like two children testing for a fight.
The old woman suddenly looked small and petulant.
“That Clarrie. ’e no good that one—no good. No, I ’aven’t seen ’im and good job too. Where’s all them people gonna sleep now ha?”
The grating sound of someone spitting made them all look around. The man Harry stood in the doorway, swaying. One hand gripped the dirt-shiny frame and the other held a cream enamel mug. His face was grey and his shoes held no laces.
“On the bloody river where they always do and they belong.” He spat again.
“You shut your mouth Fenton,” Sissy turned to the man who lived now with the Old Granny. “Mind your own bloody business. Has he been hitting you Mum? By the Jesus Harry, if you lay a finger on her you’ll cop it. Now piss off!”
The kids all stood with mouths full of fingers and hearts full of fear and their eyes on Harry.
Chris edged closer to his mother but she continued to look at Harry and he felt deserted and in danger. His mother’s face was ugly with anger.
“Come on Sis, don’t start anything.” Rose’s voice was quiet and private.
“Yeh, alright. But if he hits you Mum you tell me, alright? I’ll fix him—I’ll fix him good and proper.” Her words floated through the empty door. “Miserable bastard!” she shouted at the space.
The old lady looked at her daughter. She cackled. “Harry—he won’t murder me, not that one.” She grinned toothlessly and everyone traipsed into the dark interior of her house where Paula made strong milky tea.
Sugary biscuits were in a paper bag on the table.
“Clarrie’s miles away Mum. Why do you think he’s got something to do with them fires last night?” Rose’s glass cup shook in her hand.
The old woman slurped her tea. “’e says they pinched his grog don’t ’e? Could’ve done.”
Rose said, “They might have done, but Clarrie wouldn’t do that—not that.”
The Old Granny looked at her daughters’ faces. Paula’s dark and heavy, the other two like maltvinegar. The delicate blondness of her grandchilden. Not hers really, now that everything was changing. Her world was ended. Only Paula looked like family. And somehow Clarrie was to blame. More than Jack. He was a very visible threat to her world. With his red car and Rose stuck up front with those little blond kids in the back seat. You could go a long way in a car like that. You could drive off in a car like that and never be seen again.
“He’s got the car hasn’t he?”
Rose had to think.
“Look, do you think he left the car up near the bridge, crept down by the river and poured kero or some bloody thing all over the place and then just shot through?”
Bitterly Sissy laughed. “I don’t trust him. I don’t trust anyone”
The old woman her mother, said, “Trust your own.”
Rose was angry. “Clarrie’s not a bloody murderer. Jesus, what’s everyone saying?”
“Nobody dead is they?” The Old Granny sounded strangely defensive. “I ain’t talkin’ ’bout that. I’m talkin’ ’bout us. Clarrie don’t ’long ’ere. We all ’long together. But no more. Anyway it all over now. It all over.”
Her grey hair fell about her face and her fingers were limp beside her yellowed petticoat. She stood by the back door and near her bare feet a dog rested on the floor.
This was years before the pink clay bricks supporting the old shack lay scattered and half buried in small mounds of earth and the man would scrape with a stick through waist high paspalum, disturbing lizards
and wary of snakes as he searched to remember.
It was many years before the red and black and yellow flag was raised in that town across the flats and the people saw again with a new vision the kangaroo and lizard and spoke of the Old Granny as Girlie, who once lived with her mob by the river. All so long ago but all so recent. One world forever ending but who is to know how far from the beginning is the ever-present now where still live the great goannas and lightning lizards and black bull ants?
Only Paula’s heart was at peace on that day when the river flowed behind the standing house and Willy wagtails flitted round the water tap and the lush growth of mint beneath the washing tub seemed to lend a solidness to the shack which was pure illusion. Paula’s laugh broke into the day. Her huge body shook and she laid her fat hands on the table and leaned forward laughing. The falls of dark flesh under her arms rolled about and tears wet her velvet face.
“Mum,” you got it wrong again. “You worry ’bout nothin’.” She laughed and soon the children were laughing too. A couple of the little kids crawled up near her legs.
The Old Granny’s collection of kewpie dolls hanging on the wall looked pink and delicate, like they had always been there and always would be.
Billy and Prince swaggered in and banged six tall bottles on the table.
“Youse two been down the Empire. I knew you didn’t go down camp ha?” Had the whole world changed so little?
Prince stood tall and grinning at his mother. His blue shirt was open. Fine dark hairs followed the line of muscles on his arm as he ran his fingers through his thick black waves.
“Youse the laziest pair of mongrels in this world. Now Billy, git sumpin’ we can drink out of. I s’ppose them people’ll find someplace else to sleep. They can still come ’ere I reckon.”
Billy went to the sagging cupboard with its cracked frosted windows and grabbed a handful of tin mugs. Way back then the fine bones in his brown fingers gripped the world and it seemed like he might hold on forever. But that was long before the cell where his madness and his anger made those same fingers grip and tie the knot which held him at an angle so that his man’s feet pointed delicate at the unseen concrete floor where his tears and vomit had splashed.
Bridge of Triangles Page 2