Bridge of Triangles

by John Muk Muk Burke

  His mother’s head was thrown back, mouth open. Her light snore was interrupted by sounds which were like indistinguishable words. Words which sounded vaguely angry—telling someone not to bother her any more. She had sat smoking and speaking quietly with Mary. First Keith, then Joseph and finally Chris had fallen asleep in the rocking carriage which carried them through the winter night further and further away from their father. And the Old Granny and Aunty Paula and Billy and Prince.

  The boy knew he would be sick. Staggering and falling on Keith’s legs he somehow got to the cramped lavatory. Afterwards, his stomach empty and his head light, the seven-year-old boy slept. And through all that fitful sleep was the movement of the train and a mixture of sick excitement and knowledge that they were all doing something utterly terrible.

  When he awoke to a strong grey light he could see into backyards with fowlhouses and paths leading to lavatories. Brick and tile, the houses swept past. Large signs attached to brick walls spoke of ice-creams he had never heard of; shops he’d never seen. And there, on the roof tops, were dozens of wire frames—they must be television aerials. He tried to feel the excitement, force the excitement, but the aerials mixed with the taste of broken sleep and sooty water and the sickening feeling was returning. Still the train moved and swished past backyards and over bridges with early cars crawling under.

  “Nearly there son, nearly there.” His mother’s voice spoke to him.

  “Television,” he smiled. And felt sick again.

  Central Station could not be comprehended. Ice-creams of light winked just below the high roof. Kiosks lined the centre, piled with fruit and magazines and sandwiches. People—so many people—not knowing or caring about anyone else. Rubber-tyed trains whirred past stacked with suitcases. They had carried their own battered cardboard case, tied with rope, in the carriage with them—lifted up onto the wire rack above the framed pictures of trains. But somehow these suitcases looked far more important; leather some of them and pasted with labels and tied up with proper straps. They whirred past and everyone stood back and Sissy gripped Keith’s shoulder and looked worried.

  It was still early morning yet the great room—the largest the boy had ever been in—was already a purposeful place of moving strangers. Chris stared up at his mother and saw her worried face as she looked about, her jaw set and eyes squinted as they always were when she concentrated. But he was alright now, the sickness had gone and he was still with his mother—that big person who was a grown-up. And grown-ups always knew what to do, even if they looked worried. Didn’t they?

  Suspended in the centre of the vaulted space above their heads was the legend ASK THE MAN IN BLUE.

  “Look Mum,” the boy pointed.

  “It’s alright son, I’m looking for the electric trains.”

  The boy’s stomach heaved—not another train ride.

  “Can’t we walk?”

  “There they are,” Joe pointed to the sign leading to tiled stairs going below the floor.

  “Come on youse mob, we’re nearly there now.” Sissy heaved up the large case and moved to the gaping passageway leading down. It smelled of the musty earth. Is everything rotten in the centre? Where were the televisions and the huge ocean he’d seen pictures of? Chris hoped that just around each twisting passage he might glimpse that great blue water but instead there waited another train. Only this one didn’t have smoke or little rooms. But it moved. Silently it moved and the boy’s insides twisted and ached and somehow sent into his mouth a metallic taste of this new and dirty world.

  They got out of the blotchy red weathered carriage and stepped onto a windswept platform where oleanders straggled at intervals down the centre of the gravel surface. Again Sissy looked around. Of course she didn’t expect Rose to be there or anything like that. Jesus, she didn’t even know they were coming. But you never knew.

  “Well, this is the suburb where she lives. I wonder if it’s far. I s’pose we’ll have to get a taxi.”

  Sissy led the little group out through the gate where a uniformed man took their tickets and threw them in a bin by his side. He was seated on a solid varnished chair and didn’t look up.

  They walked out into a suburb and over the street saw a couple of taxis.

  “Come on youse mob—not far now.”

  Clarrie came to the door in his blue singlet and his pants hung below his belly. A cigarette, no longer alive, hung from the corner of his mouth. He pushed open the tattered screen door.

  “You’ve come then. I thought you and Rose were cookin’ up somethin’. She’s out the back somewhere.” He looked at the family without affection and regarded the suitcase. “Ya sister’s here!” he called, turning his head and scratching his stomach.

  “Well, can we come in or we gonna stand on the bloody step all day?” Sissy thought of this house as Rose’s and this showed in the proprietorial tone in her voice.

  Before Clarrie could answer, Rose ran across and pushed him out of the way as she hugged her sister. Both the women cried.

  “Just look at them kids—’aven’t they grown. And look at Joe—he’s so tall. ’Ere, come in, come in. ’Ow’s Mum and Paula? Whendya get ’ere ’eh? Clarrie, bring that port in. Jesus it’s good to see ya, Sis. And all these kids too. Just look at them—’aven’t they grown? Rose dabbed at her eyes and Sissy and her lot went inside.”

  A Sydney house. Yes, there was a television in the corner. Its screen was a dead dark grey and the cloth grid covering for the sound was silent. The house smelled faintly of leaking gas and stale toast and poverty. “Jeez, I don’t know if we got any bread left Sis. I mean I’m sorry but I wasn’t expectin’ nobody. I’ve got some tea. I can make a cuppa tea.”

  Rose saw Chris eyeing the television. “You won’t get nothin’ on that till six o’clock love. But the kids are round somewhere. Youse can play with them. But I’ll make a cuppa tea first. ’ow many cups we got Clarrie?”

  Chris looked again at the TV. A Sydney house, with a TV. He kept thinking—a Sydney house with a TV and he looked up at the ceiling. Yes, there was an electric light. It had a fly-blown shade with yellowed tassels hanging from its scalloped border. It must be real because it was on even though it was daytime. A Sydney house with a TV and electric lights. It must have lots of rooms too. These wonders somewhat allayed the gnawing feeling of hunger which he had. But when Aunty Rose and Sissy came out of the room where the gas smelled strongest they banged a plate onto the laminex table. It held a pile of broken biscuits which Rose had smeared with butter.

  They sat around and ate the food and drank sweet tea. Clarrie fiddled with his cigarette and matches and rubbed his rough chin while making little clicking noises of disapproval with his tongue. Rose seemed not to be the queen the boy remembered with her clothes and cigarettes and lace hankies. But she had a TV, he reminded himself. And electricity in this Sydney house.

  Later Rose’s two boys returned from the neighbour’s house where they’d been playing. They were both older than Chris by about three years so they showed little interest in him. After filling their mouths with biscuit they ran off again, taking Joe with them. The boy explored the backyard which was wrapped around by tall straight paling fences which separated Rose’s place from three other houses. The houses all had thick corrugated fibro roofs and low brick chimneys. A few had TV aerials.

  There was an outside lavatory, which made him think—after all this was Sydney. Even Grandma Leeton’s house had a toilet inside. But this one did flush, so that was nice. But it still smelled, and had a few dirty newspapers strewn about the wooden floor. Manton Street had had an outside lavatory which was emptied once a week by men on a horse-pulled cart. And Waterbag Road had a can which his father emptied into a hole he dug and covered with earth.

  He explored the wonders of the yard: concrete paths; a clothes line which spun around. It had some pegs on the wires. And wooden steps leading down from the back door and an old fridge lying under the house. There were several bikes under there too, wi
th flat tyres and bits missing. He poked around until he couldn’t think what else to do. Keith and Mary were still inside. He tried to feel the excitement of being in Sydney and sure, there was something—a waiting feeling—but it was not anything like he expected. He didn’t know what he expected but surely Sydney should be more than this. He kept going up to the power pole that stood outside the front fence and looking at the wires which were attached to the fibro wall, just to the right of the front door, under the eves. The wires hung down in a gentle sway across the yard. Somehow, mysteriously, they connected up to the television set which stood inside waiting. Perhaps Sydney would get better at six o’clock. But six o’clock seemed as far away as Christmas.

  There were a few straggling shrubs lining the front fence which someone had planted with the best of intentions. They still held a few torn looking leaves and a couple of plain grey sparrows flitted about in them. There were ants on the footpath. Ants in Sydney, now that was something he didn’t expect. Fancy ants living on this concrete foot-path. Perhaps there were lizards. He would look all around, he would look everywhere for lizards. The boy looked as the screen door made its little sound. There was Clarrie, leaning against the frame. “So, youse ’ave come to the big smoke, eh? Pissed off from the old man eh?” It was more a statement than a question. Chris remained silent. His head hung down and he raised his eyes a little to look at this man who seemed to pour out so much hostility.

  Later on that night, after the disappointment of the grainy television and Aunty Rose had made up a bed on the floor in her boys’ room for Keith and himself—lucky Joe was sleeping with Paul—he listened for the sounds of Sydney. It seemed like the middle of the night. Five boys in bed in the small room, but he couldn’t hear them breathing. He could only hear the silence, like a buzzing, ringing sound which was not exactly in his ears. The room was black. Aunty Rose had not shut the door but all the big people were in bed. His mum and Mary in bed with Rose. And Clarrie, well he didn’t know where Clarrie was sleeping. But even with the door open the house was black and silent. Was he the only one awake? Why was he left watching the dark and wondering? Why was he left listening to this silence? He could feel Keith’s side. It was a little comfort in the silence. The air seemed full of tiny grey dots that swirled about in the blackness. The faint smell of gas seeped along the narrow hallway and into the air he breathed. What made that sound which seemed to be inside his head? Could it be an insect in his ear? No it wasn’t on just one side. Perhap he got an insect in both ears? It didn’t sound like an insect. Once an insect had got in his ear at Waterbag Road and his mum had poured some melted butter into his ear and he heard and sort of felt the poor thing squelch around till the high pitched screaming stopped. Then he’d kept sticking a finger in his ear to see if the insect had floated out on the slippery butter. This noise, he decided, was the sound of silence. He lay there thinking about that in a vague sort of half sleep. His mum’s face and trains and the TV and ants on concrete drifted all around a lonely man huddled in front of a smoky fire in a little place in a lane a great distance from here, and none of it would go away, not even when he finally slept his first sleep in Sydney.

  The Sydney days at Rose’s became weeks and Clarrie was getting sick of everyone. Sissy had been led by Rose’s two boys to the low cream painted school and enrolled her four kids on the first school day after the family arrived from the bush. She fidgeted and spoke in low little whispers in the school office when answering questions about the birthdates of her kids and where they’d been to school before and everything. But the bespectacled lady was helpful and had a kind smile and the only thing Sissy had to do was sign her name. She did this slowly and rested her free hand carefully on the enrolment forms. Keith was led off to the infants in shuddering sobs and Joe went off to the big school and Chris and Mary were put into different classes.

  No one seemed to notice Christopher Micky Leeton, not even the teacher very much. He was given a free-standing table and a chair with a curved wooden seat to himself. Sydney seats he thought of them as. All the seats in the room were like that. The kids scraped them about and had different haircuts and seemed smart and probably had TV’s. He saw a few of them furtively glancing at him. A couple smothered giggles into their hands and he thought he heard them say something about his hand-me-down clothes. He looked out the window at the grey scudding sky and the few birds. Sydney did not have many birds he decided.

  The teacher seemed not to care if the boy did any work or not. Perhaps his mum had said he was only staying a few days or weeks.

  Routines at this school were different from the one he’d known back in the bush. Here the huge crowd of kids had a big assembly every morning and the teachers sat up on a stage. Songs were sung very loudly and uniformed kids carried flags to the platform and stood there holding them until the assembly ended. Even prayers were said. The Leeton kids had barely begun to adjust to these new requirements when Clarrie kicked them out of Aunty Rose’s place.

  The first the kids knew of it was when Sissy, for the second time, came to their school and took them out long before home time. The only thing he really liked about that school was that if you put some money in a brown bag first thing in the morning it came back late in a box with a pie and a cream bun in it. Chris had never eaten a cream bun before. And the only school work he ever remembered was when the teacher drew with his hairy hands a map of Australia and marked where first Captain Cook arrived and then Arthur Phillip had settled the country.

  “But what about the people who already lived here?” Chris had said.

  “Well, they didn’t really live here. Not properly—not like us. They just moved away a bit further into the bush. You’ve got to understand, they just wandered around the place—there was plenty of room for everyone. Now let’s get back to how the first people in the new settlement set about clearing the land and building their houses.”

  Something disturbed the boy deeply. Sitting in a strange room surrounded by strangers a vague recognition that something of enormous importance had just been said, but he couldn’t identify just what it was. It was somehow connected with the accepted convenience of the teacher’s explanation—the dismissive tone and the neccesity to now get back to a discussion of things that really mattered.

  A vivid memory of a fire by a great flowing river on a night when the moon sailed across the wintery sky, flooded his mind. No, something was wrong here, not just in this room but with the whole world. He looked out the window and the sky seemed not to reach away to forever but to crouch down low over this room, this school, this suburb and the whole great sprawling city.

  “Christopher Leeton, will you go to the office please?”

  Chris could hardly remember where the office was. Sissy stood outside the headmaster’s office looking more angry than worried this time. The headmaster was standing beside her, looking not unrelieved.

  “Well here’s the last of them. Goodbye Mrs Leeton, and good luck.”

  A quite new car with a lady stood waiting just outside the schoolgate and Sissy gathered up her kids and led them to it. They all squeezed in and they were driven off by the lady who chatted all the way about furniture arriving later—although it wasn’t much it would do—and she hoped that that would be alright—but it should be—and they would soon settle in—it was only temporary she was sure and anyway there were lots of families there with children and it wasn’t too bad all things considered.

  The car joined a wide arterial road and stopped frequently at lights which changed colours and there were people crossing the road while all the other cars and trucks stopped too. They drove past a very long building with two huge wrapped lollies on the roof and under bridges that had trains going over them. And Sissy said, “Jesus, I don’t know if I like Sydney. It’s a bit bloody busy for me.” Chris looked at the lady driver and wondered what she thought of a mother who spoke like that. The boy was learning that the world was very big and that not everyone was like all the people he knew best
.

  Even Mrs Ladell spoke differently from his mum. And Grandma Leeton never said bloody or Jesus. The teachers at school never spoke like his mum either. Words fascinated him. Why did his mum sound so different from the rest of the world?

  The lady just smiled and said, “Yes, Sydney’s like that. Never mind, we’re nearly there.”

  The land was quite flat and the road was wide and busy. There were buildings everywhere, big ones with triangle shaped roofs all along their length. Along the side of the road some people walked; old people mostly, with dull coats and hands in their pockets. One old man was waiting at a light and the car stopped so he could cross with his little fox terrier. The man had grey stubble on his face. He was a Sydney man. So, Sydney had old people and dogs too, thought Chris.

  “There” soon came into view.

  “Here we are. Doesn’t look much from the outside—but it’s not bad once you’re inside—and when you get your furniture all arranged and everything...”

  The lady smiled as she edged the car along a muddy track which curved and followed a line of grey power poles to a long building which carried the memory of dull green paint. The flimsy walls were weatherboard up to the window line, then fibro. The windows were small and some of them were open, swung out from either side. Chris saw that power lines hung down and connected to the end of the long house.