Georgie folds up the last wrap. ‘Eat lunch.’
We eat. I’m getting pretty sick of kangaroo, but it’s protein, and there are plenty of wild greens that we gather for salad. In a few weeks our lettuces will be ready to harvest, and silverbeet too.
Georgie eats two wraps and drinks about a litre of water.
She looks so calm.
I know the moment a contraction hits. Georgie lets out a low, guttural moan, and grips the edge of the laminex kitchen table. I glance nervously at the door, hoping that Clarita will return soon.
‘Anything else I can do?’ I ask.
Georgie pauses for a moment, then opens her eyes. ‘Distraction is good. When I was waiting for Paddy to come out, I watched two whole seasons of Friends.’
I blink. ‘It took that long?’
She nods. ‘About thirty hours.’
‘Wow.’
‘This one’ll be quicker,’ she says, and stands up. ‘Let’s go for a walk. I want to keep moving.’
We walk down past the car yard to where Jubilee ends abruptly, bitumen and houses suddenly swallowed by vast, endless scrub. The sun is high and hot in the never-ending blue sky. Georgie puts out a hand and leans on the smooth white trunk of a ghost gum, blowing slowly through pursed lips, her eyes closed.
‘Should we go back?’ I ask.
She doesn’t reply, but after a moment she opens her eyes and keeps walking, into the scrub. After the crushing humidity of the wet season, everything feels fresh and clean, and there is a breeze that while not exactly cool is nonetheless energising.
So we walk. Every now and then Georgie pauses as a contraction comes, but she doesn’t make a fuss. She doesn’t scream and thrash around like the women I’ve seen on TV. She breathes slowly, and sometimes makes a low humming noise. Within a minute or two it passes, and we start walking again, and Georgie tells me about growing up in Silver Creek, a small town a few hours away from here. She tells me about how she was apprenticed to the local mechanic, but fell pregnant at seventeen to an Irish backpacker. Two years after Paddy was born, she met Jake, and they got married and moved to Jubilee. Jake got a job at Hansbach, and Georgie opened up her own garage.
We reach an outcrop of red rock, curved lines tumbled against the rough dirt. A tiny grey skink darts away as we approach. I can hear the drone of insects, and the rustling of plants moving in the breeze.
‘It was tough being a single mum,’ she says with a sad smile. ‘Hard for Paddy to have no dad. I was so happy when I got pregnant this time. It was going to be so different. But here I am. No husband. No family. Not even any bloody electricity.’
‘You must be scared.’
She shrugs. ‘Too late to turn back now.’
I’m in awe of Georgie’s calm and strength, how matter-of-fact she is even though an actual live human is about to emerge from her body.
And for the first time since we moved here, I’m in awe of this place. The endless scrub around us. The red dirt beneath our feet. The baking sun overhead. The low spread of buffel grass and spinifex, dotted with flecks of red ruby saltbush and native pea. The insects that hum in the air around us. The wedge-tail eagle wheeling up in the biggest, bluest sky you’ve ever seen.
‘Better head back,’ says Georgie. ‘Not long now.’
When we get back, I assume Georgie will lie down on the bed. But instead she keeps walking. She paces all around her little house, as the contractions come faster and harder. Her brow is beaded with sweat. Sometimes she lets out a low moan as she exhales. But she doesn’t cry out.
I ask her what I can do to help, but she shakes her head, concentrating hard. I hover anxiously.
Minutes tick into hours. I can see how hard Georgie is working. From TV, I’d come to believe that childbirth was urgent and dramatic – gushing waters and screaming women. But this isn’t anything like that. It’s a long, hard, slow grind.
‘Okay,’ she says at last. ‘Go get Clarita.’
I sprint out of the house, feeling intensely grateful that I don’t have to help Georgie deliver her baby on my own. I don’t have to go far – Clarita is heading up the driveway towards me as I come flying out the door.
‘She says it’s time,’ I tell Clarita.
‘How is she?’
‘She seems so calm,’ I say. ‘I think if it was me I’d be screaming the house down.’
Clarita smiles. ‘It’s different for different women. I was a screamer, for sure.’
‘Have you seen many births?’ I ask.
Her smile fades. ‘Only my own. But I’ve been reading up on obstetrics, and I watched a lot of episodes of One Born Every Minute back in the US.’
‘So how will you know what to do?’
Clarita blows air through her cheeks, steadying herself. ‘If everything goes as it should, then I shouldn’t have to do much. Birth is a natural process, after all. And Georgie has done it before, so her body knows what to expect.’ She hesitates. ‘If something goes wrong, though…’ She spreads her hands. ‘Then pray for us.’
I follow her back to Georgie’s house.
Any of the self-doubt I saw in Clarita vanishes as soon as she walks in the door. She is calm and collected as she listens to Georgie’s belly with an instrument that looks like a little brass trumpet. Then she slips a cuff around Georgie’s arm and checks her blood pressure again.
‘Everything seems good,’ she says, snapping on a pair of rubber gloves. ‘You want me to check you?’
Georgie nods, and slides down onto her back with her knees spread open. Clarita kneels in front of her, a frown of concentration on her face as she reaches forward and in.
I see her smile. ‘I can feel the head. Not long now.’
Georgie grunts. ‘Help me up.’
Clarita and I both ease her up into a squatting position. Georgie groans and I feel her whole body shudder with a powerful contraction. Her forehead is damp with sweat. Clarita massages her lower back.
The contraction passes, and I get Georgie a glass of water to sip.
‘Thank you,’ she says, her voice low. ‘Can you do me a favour?’ ‘Of course,’ I say, secretly hoping that she won’t ask me to stay with her. I’m not ready to be initiated into the gory wonder of childbirth.
‘Tell Paddy it’s nearly time to meet his sister.’
My relief twists into discomfort when Clarita adds that Paddy is at Lake Lincoln with Mateo, but I smile and nod and head off.
It’s late afternoon, and the shadows are stretching dark across the land, taking the sting out of the sun. The lake glints gold and green. Neat rows of Ceylon spinach and sweet potato bring order to the chaos of nature.
Paddy and Mateo are kicking a football on the shore. I pause and watch them. Mateo is truly woeful. He can barely make his sneakered foot connect with the ball, let alone aim it in a particular direction. Paddy, on the other hand, zips all over the shore like lightning, kicking, catching, punting. But Mateo keeps at it, soldiering on with as much good humour as he can muster.
He knows that Paddy must be afraid. Paddy, who has lost the only father he’s ever known. Paddy knows what’s happening in the little house behind the car yard. He knows that it’s dangerous. That if something goes wrong, he could lose his mother too.
Mateo understands this. And so he keeps running, and attempting to kick, even though I know for a fact that he would rather poke himself in the eye with a hot fork than play sport.
I miss him so much I can’t breathe.
Mateo aims a kick at the ball and it shoots off to the side and into the lake with a splash. Paddy doubles over, laughing.
‘Everything about this game is stupid!’ Mateo shouts, as he stomps down to the water. ‘Why make a ball this shape? It’s impossible to get it to go where you want.’
‘Don’t you play footy in America?’
‘Of course we do,’ Mateo says with a scowl. ‘But we don’t do anything so stupid as kick the ball.’
This makes Paddy laugh even harder, the infect
ious, breathless laugh of childhood.
They look up as I approach, and the ball is forgotten. Paddy runs up, suddenly serious, his eyes full of questions.
I wonder if Georgie ever looks at him and sees that Irish backpacker, and wonders how her life might have been different if he’d stayed. I wonder if my dad ever thought that. Did he see Mum every time he looked at us? Did we constantly remind him of how she left?
‘Is Mum okay?’ Paddy asks.
‘She’s doing great,’ I say. ‘She wanted me to tell you it’s nearly time to meet your sister.’
Paddy’s off in a flash, sprinting back to town as fast as his skinny legs will carry him, leaving Mateo and me alone on the shore of the lake. I hesitate, not knowing what to say. Or if I should say anything at all.
‘Georgie’s in good hands,’ I say awkwardly. ‘Your mum…’
He nods.
We walk back to town side by side. Mateo doesn’t speak to me, but it feels like progress.
As we approach we see a crowd outside Georgie’s house. Violet, Barri, Jan and the Brattons, Peter Wu, Laurine Zubek. Clarita and Paddy are still inside. The only people missing are Keith, Grace and Keller. Everyone is holding gifts for Georgie and the baby – knitted hats and jumpers, soft toys, a hand-stitched quilt.
‘Any news?’ I ask Violet.
She shakes her head. ‘Not yet.’
We wait.
There’s a fizzing energy in the air, like invisible lightning.
It feels like hope. If this baby can be born and survive in this terrifying world, then maybe the rest of us can too.
A cry sounds from within the house. A baby’s wail.
And it’s as though a tide is released. People hug, and everyone is crying.
I hug Jan and Barri and Laurine and even Peter Wu, even though I’m not sure if you’re supposed to hug a minister. I feel giddy with excitement and relief. I spin to hug the next person but am brought up short – it’s Mateo. I fall back a little, and try to think of something to say. My whole body aches to touch him.
He nods at me, and slips away, off to the hotel.
Paddy and Clarita emerge from the house. Paddy is holding a little bundle, wrapped in a white cotton blanket, like it is the most precious treasure in the world.
And it is.
‘This is my sister,’ he says. ‘Her name is Natia. It means hope.’
Clarita tells us that Georgie is doing well and getting some much-needed rest.
One by one, we step up to meet Natia.
When it is my turn, I look down at the dark wisps of hair on her head, her enormous eyes, her tiny fingers curled in a fist. And I desperately want the world to be okay for her. I want her to grow up in a world where people are good and kind.
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
I glance over to where Peter Wu is deep in conversation with David Bratton, and I think, maybe.
Maybe we can come out of this stronger and braver and kinder. Maybe we can take the terrible things that have happened and use them as lessons to shape a new world where things can be better.
But I know it’s not just going to happen. The world doesn’t learn and grow and change with the seasons. It comes from hard work. From kindness and courage and sheer stubborn persistence.
And I realise how much I want to be a part of that good fight.
I lean over little Natia. ‘I promise I’m going to do everything I can to make the world better for you,’ I whisper. ‘I promise.’
As I head back to the post office, I feel a prickling in my skin and turn to see Mateo watching me from the window of his hotel room. I can’t decipher his expression, but I lift my hand in a wave.
He hesitates, then lifts his own hand in response. I can’t tell if he’s smiling or not.
I step back into the relative cool of the post office, and freeze. I can hear noises in the office where Keller sleeps.
Sex noises.
I back out of the building and park myself under a coolabah tree, waiting for whoever is in there with Keller to leave. Who could it be? There aren’t many options, and all of them make me feel nauseated.
Eventually Keller himself comes out, buttoning up his shirt and smoothing his hair with his hands. Ew.
He sees me waiting, and for a moment I see something cross his perfect features. It looks a bit like guilt. Then he smiles, and he is as fake as canned cheese.
‘Lovely evening, isn’t it?’ he says, and I know the hatred I feel for him is mutual.
He disappears off to who cares where, and I wait a few minutes longer for someone else to come out. I realise that perhaps Keller was in there on his own, and feel marginally less creeped out. Then more creeped out.
I get to my feet and head into the post office.
The daylight is fading fast, but the post office has high windows and a skylight. Grace is sitting behind the counter in front of a small stack of unopened letters.
Grace.
She glances up at me, and she knows I know. She lifts her chin a little, her eyes cold. She doesn’t offer excuses or justification.
I remember the tangle of naked limbs I saw in the Paddock. It seems like it happened years ago.
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ I ask. ‘I thought it was Blythe. But you were sleeping with him even then, weren’t you?’
She picks up a letter and runs her finger over the address, the stamp.
‘Grace, why?’
She puts down the letter. ‘He loved her. Everyone loved her. She was the bright shining one, and I was always in her orbit. I just wanted to…to be her. For a little bit.’
‘But he knew, right? Back then in the Paddock? He knew it was you?’
‘Of course he knew. That was never the point.’
‘Did Blythe know?’
Grace shakes her head.
‘And you’re still doing it.’ I can’t even begin to wrap my head around this. It’s so disturbing. So dangerous. So wrong.
‘I…’ Grace shakes her head. ‘When we’re…I feel like I’m her again. And when I can be her for a few moments, she’s not really gone.’
She picks up the letter again. I don’t know how to get through to her. Dad never prepared me for this.
15
The movies that Dad used to show us always had a sense of urgency. Our brave hero – always some chisel-jawed sweaty white guy – fighting against the odds to save the world. But in Jubilee, life is slow. We work hard, we eat what we can, and we sleep.
We’re not trying to save the world. We’re just trying to survive.
For the longest time there was this feeling of waiting. Everyone kind of assumed that things would change. That the lights would magically plink on one day, or the army would arrive with aid and supplies. But it’s been four months since the power went off, and there’s been nothing.
We’re starting to realise that maybe nothing will ever change. Maybe we’ll be here, like this, forever, unless we do something. We’re not the heroes of this action movie; nobody cares about us, stuck out here in the middle of nowhere. Maybe it’s up to us to escape, instead of waiting to be rescued.
We have no idea what’s happened outside Jubilee. It could be devastating. Nuclear reactors could have failed. Disease, famine, even war. The whole rest of the world could be gone, and we wouldn’t know.
On long nights it can be overwhelming. We’ve built systems so we can survive, and we’re doing really well. But why? We’re not trying to rebuild society. So why bother?
That kind of thinking gets you nowhere.
When my mind goes to those places, I think of little Natia. Whatever her future is, it has to be outside Jubilee.
Georgie has been working on the cars, pulling out wiring and microchips and replacing them with cobbled-together bits and pieces she’s scavenged from the old rust buckets that litter the outskirts of town. Her plan is to have enough vehicles for us all to escape. We’ve agreed that nobody will leave before then.
I suppose I’ll go with Grace and Keller, but where? I’ve wanted to leave Jubilee ever since we first arrived, but as that day slowly approaches, I’m dreading it more and more. There are things to keep us here now, memories of Blythe and Dad and Panda. Our blood stains the red dirt under my feet, and the thought of leaving it behind makes my heart ache.
Once a week, I make a pilgrimage to Snob’s Knob, the highest point that I can easily reach on foot. I take the three mobile phones Dad kept in the Paddock. I keep them charged using the solar panel on the roof of the Heart. At the top of Snob’s Knob, I switch the phones on one by one and wait, checking the screens for any sign of a signal. It’s a pretty futile task, but I do it anyway. I wait until the sun starts to sink low, and then switch the phones off before heading back into town for dinner.
Today as I head out of town, Mateo jogs up beside me, holding one of Dad’s radios. ‘I’m coming too,’ he says. ‘I want to check for a signal.’
I blink. Mateo could climb Snob’s Knob anytime. Why does he want to come with me?
We’re speaking again, finally, but we’re not friends. He tolerates my presence, and I mostly try to stay out of his way, because anything else hurts too much.
We walk in silence as we pass the empty building where Jubilee’s tiny school once was, and a basketball court overgrown with weeds.
‘Did you know that Violet has an art history degree?’ says Mateo, out of nowhere, as we start the long climb up the hill.
‘I didn’t,’ I reply, but I can’t think of anything else to say to follow it up.
We fall silent again, trudging up the hill, loose earth and stones crunching under our feet. I am acutely aware of the sound of Mateo’s breath coming hard from the exertion of the climb, and feel my body respond as I remember us breathing hard together, all sweat and skin and smiles.
When we get to the top, I dig in my backpack for the phones, switch each one on, and lay them side by side on a flat rock. I look around for Mateo, and see him standing at the edge of the bluff, looking out at the sunset. I get up and stand beside him. The far side of the hill is populated by fairly thick woodland, growing closer together as the hill falls away into a shaded gully with a shallow creek. The sky is lit up in one of Jubilee’s stunning sunsets – I’d stopped noticing them lately. Too busy. Glowing shades of pink and apricot spread across the sky, fading to violet at the edges. Glints of colour reflect through the trees on the water of the creek. As we watch, a cloud of screeching cockatoos rises from the gully below and settles in the trees.
After the Lights Go Out Page 21