Sissy cried then. For all those yesterdays; for Lenny Dingall—poor silly bugger. And for herself and all those promises which even now might, just might, one day come true.
When Sissy went back up to the campsite the oldest one had got a fire going. She loved him and she longed to fold him to her but she said, “I hope you didn’t let them little kids near the wood—bloody snakes hidin’ everywhere.”
The dark boy smiled. “It’s alright Mum.” He stood with one skinny leg bent, his foot against his knee. He was lean and muscular and already in his toughened brown skin and dark eyes there was a strength and smouldering independence.
Sissy set her jaw and hung the billy on the hook. “He’ll probably piss off forever one day too.”
She had called the boy Joe but Jack had never asked why. The great Paula had laughed and called him “that emu one”, on account of his long skinny legs. All those years ago Sissy never knew how right she would be: the young man Joe took off on another winter’s day with his car-thief mates from the long huts of Sydney’s welfare camp and was never seen again. Perhaps he’d gone back to the bush or maybe he’d died in a drunken swaying car or he might have settled down and had three or four kids in Adelaide or Darwin. Sissy never found out.
But way, way back when Joe was first born, Paula’s flesh would roll as she laughed; “Hey, let’s take that emu one for a walk in the pram, eh? Let’s go down the lake or somethin’, eh?”
They all knew that the Old Granny still half believed that just by sitting near the river a girl could get a baby. Perhaps that’s what led the girls in that direction. Sometimes Rose would join them and they’d sit on the concrete steps near the kiosk and wonder what would happen when the war was over.
“If I see that snake I’ll kill it Mum. I’ll kill it with a stick.”
“I know that Joe. I know you would. Now here’s your father with the kero. Where’s the bloody tea-leaves?”
Jack had bought some devon and bread and a tin of powdered milk. They all had hot tea and bread and jam. Over in the shadows their horse snorted in the falling mist. The years of drifting for the Leetons had started. The winter swept in. Despite Sissy’s pleas the man would not move over as a family to the Old Granny’s shack.
“We can look after ourselves.”
But in reality, Sissy spent a lot of time over behind the saleyards at her mother’s place and they would often stay the night. Jack never did although he sometimes would come and sit in the kewpie doll front room.
“’ere, ’ave a cup of that tea Jack. It’ll do ya good.” The Old Granny would push the teapot across the lino topped table.
“’ow youse gettin’ on over in that tent, eh? Should come and camp ’ere, eh Mum?” Paula would laugh. All the world was a type of joke to her. The kids loved her.
“Make’s no difference. Sleep on veranda if youse like—always room for more ’ere. Never mind ’bout that Harry. This my place.”
But Jack would always go back to the tent and if it wasn’t raining Sissy and most of the kids usually went back too.
What did the dreaming boy recall about the Old Granny’s place after all those years? Laughter and hot sweet tea and bread with syrup. Billy and Prince falling home happy drunk with a few tall brown bottles which they banged on the table. The shiny brass light switches on the dirty door frames. Black Paula bent over the washing tub. The bunyip down in the river, oh so near but never ever seen except in the imagination as the kids lay tucked up in their wogger blankets on the front veranda. The smoke and laughter of card games drifting through the yellow window and weaving past his dreams into the black night sky. With the Old Granny and the great laughing Paula and his mum he felt safe. And that’s what he remembered.
Every aspect of life in the tent was hard. The wood was always wet. The wind blew. The fly came away one night and the canvas leaked. One day Jack picked up a couple of primuses. And a radio. It was a large brown bakelite affair which needed a twelve-volt battery, and was only turned on for the news. The primuses at first were a disappointment. They kept blowing out in the wind. Sissy would not use them inside the tent. Jack made a box from rivetted sheet metal to shelter the pump-up fires from the wind. Sissy was uneasy.
“I’m not usin’ them. The heat’ll get trapped inside and the bloody kero will explode. I’m not using that contraption.”
The man had worked silently, not even telling the woman what it was he was making. He was always like that—as if he was the only one who knew what was good for everyone else.
“They’ll be alright. Here give me a billy of water.”
“But I don’t want hot water, I want to cook. Anyway what are you tryin’ to do—blow us all up? Get back youse kids.”
Jack successfully brought the billy of water to the boil. “See, that’s alright isn’t it? And it didn’t blow up.”
“Jack lifted his contraption off the primus and put his hand to the side of the tank. It’s a bit hot but that’s alright. Kero can’t explode just because it gets a bit hot. There has to be a spark.”
“Well there’s more than a spark there—what do you call that bloody flame, eh?”
“But the flame can’t get to the kero can it. Use your sense woman.” jack was getting angry.
“Use your sense you mean. How the hell does the kero get to the flame, hey? Answer me that. Out a little hole, hey? And the flame can go through that little hole no trouble. Next thing me and the kids are all dead.”
Suddenly Jack picked up the metal frame and threw it away. It landed with a metallic crumple on the roots of the twisted gum tree.
“Let the bloody wind blow it out for all I care.” And the man walked off towards the river.
The two younger kids went over to the frame. “Can we play with it then?”
Sissy was confused and sorry. “No, leave the thing alone.”
She comforted herself with the idea that he brought out the worst in her. “Why couldn’t he tell me what he was doing? Why can’t he ever listen to me? That’s what I’d like to know.”
Did the white man ever know himself what he was doing?
Later, when she had peeled some potatoes and tried to cook them the primus kept blowing out. Sissy looked around and went over to the tree and picked up the box Jack had made with his hands. She easily pushed the thin sheet metal back into shape. She carefully placed the box over the primuses. With greatly exaggerated precision she lowered the billy over the flame.
“Stand back youse kids—this thing’s liable to explode.”
“I don’t think so mum,” said Joe, “Dad’s right I think.”
“Just stand back and don’t argue. That’s the trouble with youse kids—are and cause trouble all the time. Now get back away from this.”
“What’s explode mean Mummy?”
“Kill ya—what do ya think it means? Just about everything in the world is dangerous and don’t forget it.”
Sissy put the billy full of peeled potatoes above the sheltered flame.
“Stand back youse kids—stand back.”
The family stood back and every now and then Sissy went up and looked into the billy. Eventually she said, “Well bugger me, at least they’re starting to boil.”
The man said nothing when he returned. The potatoes were mashed with powdered milk and eaten with devon and bread.
The winter dragged on. Sissy enrolled the two older kids in the school over near the garage. They went off each morning with their apricot jam sandwiches and ragged clothes. They came home with drawings and french knitting and shared these wonders with the younger ones.
Neither Jack nor Sissy were ever able to manage money. The miserable unemployment benefit that Jack picked up at the post office every fortnight lasted four or five days. He did the odd job at the garage. They ate lots of bread and jam. One morning only Chris and his father were at the campsite. The boy heard the man mumbling in the tent. “Where the bloody hell has she put the things? Man can never find anything.”
The family’s few clothes were in a battered cardboard suitcase at one end of the tent. A couple of Sissy’s dresses hung on a rope between the tent post and the tree.
“Socks, where the hell are my socks?” Jack was preparing to go over to the garage.
“Christ, these have got bloody holes in them. And they haven’t been washed for a month. Man’s got a good mind to piss off by myself.”
His voice was close to breaking. The boy heard his father. He walked to the tent flap and looked in. His father’s shoulders were heaving—his back was to the boy.
“Daddy,” the boy said.
The man did not turn around.
The child was encouraged—at least he wasn’t shouting.
“Daddy,” the boy whispered again.
The man half turned.
“Go away son, go away.” He sounded different, washed out and helpless. “Go away, your father’s alright.”
Confused, the boy backed off.
It wasn’t for years and years that the boy understood how much love was locked up inside the man—how much pain he’d buried. How his humanity would not, could not ever express itself. How afraid the man was of seeming weak—after all, wasn’t he responsible for people who needed help? He never accepted the trappings of the old lady Leeton’s Christianity but he sure as hell picked up her sense of being right. After all, wasn’t he white?
Sissy came across the grass. “Gee it’s windy. Where’s your father?”
Jack was still sitting on the mattress in the tent staring at the stiff socks he held in his rough hands.
“Hadn’t you better get going?” the woman said.
The man did not answer.
“Aren’t you doing any work today?”
The man was silent.
“What’s the bloody matter with you?”
The man raised his face. It was gaunt and tear stained.
“I can’t find any decent socks.”
“Is that anything to cry about? Well bugger me, a pair of bloody socks.”
The man looked at the woman and said not a word.
He knew somewhere he was not crying for a pair of socks.
Kookaburras laughed down on the river bank.
As spring arrived so too did Sissy’s brother Mick. He pulled up in his wagon quite close to the Leeton’s tent.
“Mum said you’d be here. Good spot.”
Shirl and the two boys were with him. Sissy was delighted. The Leeton kids had not met Mick and his family before and it was years since Sissy had seen Mick. He usually spent his time travelling around in his wagon doing a bit of tomato picking here, a spot of fruit picking there. Mick was a big man with dark wavy hair, large white teeth and and friendly open face. He was the only male in Sissy’s family Jack had any time for. He and Mick had been in New Guinea together. Even so he was not happy that Mick looked like staying.
The first thing Mick did after he unharnessed the horse and hobbled it out on the river flat was set about cutting gum branches for a shelter. Expert with an axe he and Shirl and the boys soon had a springy green pile a little way off from the Leeton’s tent.
“You’ve never seen a house like mine before,” he promised the kids with a twinkling eye and slow smile.
In the spring all that time ago, as the broad river flowed and the light breeze picked up the scent of newly cut branches and the tent flap moved lazily as the canvas dried out in the sun, Mick built his family a shelter. Four straight branches, fairly stout, were stripped back and fashioned into posts. Forks were left at the top. The posts were sharpened at the base and driven into the ground. They became self-supporting when long, straight branches were placed between the forks, making the framework for a box shaped room. Rope was attached to each forked upright and, tent fashion, the whole structure was pulled tight when the ropes were secured to angled short, thick sticks driven into the earth. Mick had everything he needed in the wagon—twine and wire and pliers. More poles were laid across the top and then bushes were placed on top of them. Heavier logs were used to weight the whole roof down. By the time Shirl had spread a canvas sheet on the ground and thrown a few army blankets about the family had a home.
The Leeton children were wide eyed and wanted their father to make one for them too. Jack grunted and muttered something about not living like a tribe of blacks.
Shirl unloaded a few tea chests from the wagon. The kids’ astonishment and delight grew as various boxes and flour drums were lined up under the shelter.
The two families settled down together and Mick and Sissy soon got into the habit of spending a day or two at a time in the town pubs. Their favourite was the Empire. Jack would leave the kids in the care of Shirl and comb the bars looking for Sissy.
“Don’t youse kids worry ’bout your mum. You’re alright with your old aunty you know.” She had a curious smile—full of sadness and resignation. Many of her babies had died but she stuck with Mick even though the welfare eventually took the living kids.
TB finally caught up with her frail body. Mick spent his last few years pedalling round the countryside on a bicycle, a bottle of sherry buried deep inside his coat pocket.
“Don’t you worry ’bout your mum.” Shirl would smile and her toothless gums would show. All the kids loved her. She could make crepe paper roses of yellow and red and surprising blue to sell down at the Empire. She let the kids wind green paper round the thin wire stems.
The boy especially grew to love and rely on his aunty. When the others kids were asleep in the tent or the wagon and only Shirl was there to keep watch, he would creep out with his stained face and let her cuddle him. Shirl smoked a pipe and she would take it from her lips and say, “Come on sugar—can’t you sleep? Well you just come over here to your old aunty.” And she would rock him to sleep in her arms.
Way back then Spring arrived, Mick arrived and the floods arrived.
Sissy and Mick were off at one of their sessions in the Empire. Jack was doing some casual work at some place or other. The sky was low and roaring, yellow and sinister. Shirl was looking after the six kids. Joe and little Mary had not been to school since their mother had taken off with Mick.
The wind whipped through the long polished grass and the children sensed the electric tension in the air. It was quite dark at about three in the afternoon. Shirl’s toothless mouth was tight. Her deep set eyes kept scanning the sky and her forehead crinkled. Every now and then she would wander off to look at the river. The wind ironed her red cardigan flat against her slight body. The cardigan was but-toned up to her chin with tight little plastic rosebuds. Shirl fancied the river was rising. Bobbing sticks and leaves went swirling past. She pushed a stick into the mud. Chris pushed another little twig alongside the worried woman’s marker. “Good boy. We’ll test this old river.”
Mick’s horse stood cropping the grass and the hobbles’ clink was blown into the wind as the animal moved a step or two at a time. The rushing wind made its coat shiver—cold, muddy brown.
Shirl was a placid woman. Calm and wise she went again to check the marker. The boy’s had gone or was covered. Her own was now showing just the tip, and even as she looked it disappeared. She climbed the bank and said quietly to Joe, “We’ll go to the Old Granny’s. The river’s up a bit.”
Joe shouted to the kids. “Righto youse kids—we’re going to the Old Granny’s.”
“What’s wrong?” the younger kids wanted to know. And Shirl did not say anything.
As if to confirm the general feeling that something was wrong there was a hideous crackling of electricity like a rag being ripped and a roar of thunder that made everyone stand quite still.
“Jesus,” said Joe.
Shirl and the kids set off, whipped by the wind across the flat. The Old Granny would know what to do.
By the time the party could see the shack great drops of icy rain were beginning to splash onto their skin. The old woman and Paula were around the back between the house and the river. Shirl and the children found them there.
The boy saw the Old Granny with her face set like a rock against the wind. She was encouraging the activities of Paula. The wind pulled at the great woman’s clothes but her bulk seemed immoveable.
Without looking at the new arrivals the old woman said, “Youse come. Well reckon youse should go straight back to tent and wait for Jack. Flood’s comin’ but not yet. Reckon you go back and Jack will pack up, leave river. We goin’ Pine Hill I reckon. That’s right Paula, give it a good shake.”
Paula was shaking the wire of the chicken coop. She was laughing. “Come on youse chooks—run away and save yaselfs. Get outa there.”
The hens jerked sporadically about the scratched earth making urgent noises. Their small black eyes glistened and their white feathers were brilliant in the strange electric light pushed down by the heavy clouds. One hen suddenly found the opening and flapped out into its freedom. There was an instant following and the rest jammed and bustled in the doorway. As they rushed out there was an explosive separation of the birds. They fanned out in all directions and the coop was empty.
“Where they goin’ Old Granny?” asked the boy.
The trees along the river were making a huge rushing noise. The grey wooden walls of the old shack were washed clean by the wind and the galvanised nails were polished cold.
“They probably gonna die!” shrieked Paula, “If they don’t learn to fly real quick.” And she laughed her enormous laugh.
The boy saw the retreating white feathers lifted up from behind and blown against the grain. Soon the hens disappeared, small and white and separate.
The Old Granny gave them a cup of hot tea and then bustled them outside into the wind. The air was exploding.
“Gee, there’s gonna be a flood, everyone in town says.” It was Sissy smiling and leaning on Mick. Brother and sister stumbled up to the veranda, cigarettes drooping from their mouths. Sissy looked windblown and drunk. “I thought you’d be over here. Good old Shirl, eh?”
Bridge of Triangles Page 4