A Long Way From Home

by Peter Carey

  Smiles and apologies did not buy love. To hell with it. I returned to my residence concerned mostly with petrol, and how to get it. I was not at all pleased to find Cricket Carter in the driver’s seat, smoking nonchalantly, waiting for me, of course.

  ‘You’ve got yourself a new job, I see.’ I was in no mood for a lecture.

  ‘They’ll keep you busy mate.’ I asked him who he meant.

  ‘You’re the chauffeur mate. Swimming. Shooting. They’re going to love you now. How much did you pay to get this car fixed?’

  Sixty quid to get me out of here. I would have paid two hundred.

  ‘Your predecessor had a Kombi van. He spent all his pay on petrol, poor bugger. They drove him mad, mate. Literally.’ He held my eye until I looked away. ‘You know how much petrol costs up here?’ I didn’t care. He supplied the number anyway. He smiled and ground his cigarette on the steering column and came to stand beside me. ‘They’re playing you, mate.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Ah.’

  I thought, ah what?

  ‘The missus has been worrying about you. What are you eating? You used to come to tea.’

  ‘Didn’t want to wear out my welcome.’

  ‘Don’t buy that marda-marda bullshit. You’re a white man, mate, no matter what you think.’

  ‘What would that be?’

  ‘Oh come on, Billy. Everybody knows the story now. Give the camp a rest, eh?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘ What happened with your limpy mate? I thought you were going to come to blows.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  The hateful fellow gazed down at his biceps and his pack of cigarettes secured by a rolled-up sleeve. ‘Then come to tea.’

  He was my sole possible source of petroleum and therefore, arguably, the most important person in my life. So of course I went and was much relieved to find there was company. First, a policeman. That was Buster Thorpe who had arrived with mules and horses and a ‘boy ’ who was presently down at the camp.

  They were about to make a 700-mile ride over the King Leopold Ranges. In addition there were three young jackaroos, white boys of course, and the rather raddled pilot of the Dakota who had been stranded by a Derby willy-willy.

  The policeman had noticed the Redex Peugeot. And I left it to Carter to explain how it was there, abandoned, and to quiz the policeman about its legal status. When it was established that the vehicle could not be legally driven on a public road, Carter stared at me significantly. Did he know what I was up to? Frankly, I didn’t care what he thought. I would depart in darkness and if the Peugeot served only to get me arrested, it would have served its purpose.

  Buster Thorpe had a policeman’s normal animus towards the Redex crews who he described as hoons.

  I frowned and laughed when it was expected. I felt Alice look at me from the curtained doorway. She brought me food.

  Until this evening Carter had never said a single word about the Redex. This was only remarkable because he was a great source of southern sporting news which he garnered from his pedal wireless, QED Quamby Downs.

  Buster Thorpe told stories about the Redex cars, their foolish speed through country towns, and about Dangerous Dan whom it was clear he’d never met. Dan had blown up a showground dunny with a man inside, or so he said.

  Mrs Carter worried that someone might be killed.

  Young Gwynn chose that moment to introduce Mr Redex to the visitors. Had he heard of Redex from his dad? I doubt it. Perhaps it was in response to some private storm, or the simple wish to see the visitors marvel that Quamby Downs should be home to a celebrity.

  ‘He won,’ he cried, blushing so intensely you could see his red scalp shining through his hair.

  I thought, by golly. Is it possible?

  ‘Won what?’ asked the massive Buster Thorpe.

  ‘One?’ cried Carter, rising, holding a large beer bottle high while he counted off the empty glasses as he filled them. ‘One, two,’ he said, ‘and three. And four for you, and none,’ he said to me, ‘none for you, you wowser.’

  Mrs Carter showed me her sweet gums and nodded. So, the small-town Bobbseys were national champions. The Carters must have known for weeks.

  ‘You mean car number 92?’ I asked the boy. ‘Bobs Motors?’

  ‘You won.’

  ‘Go wash your hands,’ Carter told his son. ‘Go on. Hurry up.’

  QED, I thought, God bless bright-faced Mrs Bobbsey, in her overalls, with her singlet showing. She had kissed my neck all night.

  13

  ‘Oh Mrs Bobs, where is your lovely husband?’ So said the airline hostess as she led me to my seat.

  ‘What a bag of tricks he is,’ they said, checking out my swollen eyes. ‘Mrs Bobs, you must be proud.’

  ‘Of course the kiddies must miss their mum,’ they said. ‘What a shame you couldn’t stay in Sydney for the fun.’

  ‘Can you trust him, Mrs Bobs?’ they said (nudge, wink) and I knew they had seen the photograph in that morning’s Telegraph. Titch Bobs at Chequers club, his face between the breasts of the so-called exotic dancer. WINNER TAKE ALL. And I was there when it was taken, at the table, not even included in the photograph of the support team, Arthur Dunstan, formerly of General Motors, Mr F. Green, a well known racing identity, and Mr Joe Thacker who now gave his occupation as motel proprietor of Ballarat.

  I had ridden on the roof of the Holden waving to the crowds on Parramatta Road but I ended up in the hotel room, on the telephone talking to my children, I should say daughter. Ronnie was locked in the laundry ‘playing with the cat’.

  I was proud to have given my husband what he wanted. He was happy. He was over the moon, there was no-one who could know it had been a nightmare, the general public banging on the car, taking our windscreen wipers, souvenir of the 1954 Redex Trial. It was not a race but there was a chequered flag and Titch climbed out the driver’s window – what a circus – and joined me on the roof where he publicly performed his red scarf trick. I grinned until my face was aching.

  WINNER HAD SOMETHING UP HIS SLEEVE.

  You can see him in the photos, stamping on the roof beside his gormless wife.

  I had bought a special dress from Gowings. It was à la Travilla, they said, bright red with a fitted bodice and straps around the neck and pushy-uppy bosom. There was a great knees-up at Chequers. You can say I was stupid to leave early. I said it was the kids, but I would not grin like a ninny while he was a dirty flirt. In the hotel room I cried and cried. Dunstan and Green delivered him back to our room at four in the morning, covered with lipstick and smelling like a bar-room floor.

  And he was the one in a rage. Imagine. I had made a fool of him.

  The airline hostess offered tea and biscuits but I turned my back, ashamed to be this wretched sniffling thing when I had been, so short a time before, a heroine, down there, with wheels on fire, driving through those snowy mountains with no brakes.

  Nervous Nellie had never been in an aeroplane before. And now she was frightened of the bumpy plane, a Vickers Viscount, same as the one that crashed in Hobart on Christmas Day.

  I should have stayed at the dinner until the end. I should have stayed sitting between Green and Dunstan and shoved my chest out, but I was too busy being betrayed.

  We landed at Essendon Aerodrome, a dark paddock and two taxis sitting in the rain. The first driver was outraged that I would ask him to drive thirty miles to Bacchus Marsh. He’d never get a fare back. He’d miss his tea.

  The second fellow was no better.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Bacchus Marsh.’

  ‘Oh I don’t know about that.’

  ‘It’s not as if I’m going to have a baby in the back.’

  How cruel the world seemed. How pathetic I had let myself become, standing in the headlights. I crawled into the back seat and wept.

  ‘Are you alright love?’ he asked.

  How could I explain or justify myself ? I said my husband had died and then I howled as
if he really had, howled and snotted and blew my nose all the way down to Rockbank, past Dan’s garage. We came into the Marsh through the Avenue of Honour. I got out at Lerderderg Street, at the sale yards where I breathed the damp cold air of my real life. It smelled of mud and panicked cattle and I thought of dear decent Willie Bachhuber with his wheelbarrow and his shovel and I saw our lighted windows but I passed them, and ran my fingers along next door’s rain-wet privet hedge. Willie was back home of course, he must be by now. I felt it in my bones. So gently, gently I lifted the latch on his rusting gate. Slowly, so as not to make a noise, I swung it open. I was smiling, a real smile. His wet unopened letters lay on the floor of his front verandah, white as bones.

  I knocked cautiously at first, and then could not hide my feelings any more.

  14

  Written confirmation of Bobs Motors’ Redex victory reached me courtesy of Alice who retrieved the Melbourne papers from the Big House garbage and delivered them directly to my kitchen table where she smoothed out the crumpled pages and – with her intelligent face made sweet with mischief – went through the stories and the captions to learn each individual’s connection to me.

  I made her sugary tea and she touched the photographs and then my face. It would not be false to say we shared a kind of love. We were certainly joined by mutual feelings about Carter who was ‘plenty jealous’ of me. But she would be growled if she stayed, so she sighed, and stood, and I walked her to my gate. There I waited until I heard the dogs heralding her arrival at the camp.

  It was a sweaty night and I was alone again, watching the insects committing suicide against the kitchen lamp. I had picked up that awful opera book, when I heard a step on my front verandah.

  A moment later three visitors filed into my house, Doctor Battery, Crowbar, skinny dusty-haired Tom Tailor in his waistcoat and tie. As they entered I saw each one held two flagons, emptied of fortified wine and filled with a clear reddish liquid which must be petrol.

  Molotov, I thought.

  I had some rattan chairs but Doctor Battery, as usual, was more comfortable on the floor and I followed his example. Then, for the first time, I was introduced by name to Tom Tailor, that same intense presence who had for so many nights caused the punka to stir the air above my pink-scalped head. Now he took my hand and I was surprised that the glaring man had such a gentle and unexpectedly adaptive grip.

  Apart from his two explosive flagons the Punka Wallah had brought a small hessian bag which, as he began whispering and making signs to Doctor Battery, he gently laid aside. As blacks were forbidden to visit the quarters of the whites, this deputation clearly had a serious purpose, one that kept the men huddled in a conference wherein there was much coughing and clearing of throats.

  Doctor Battery, being most senior, began speaking, for the most part in schoolroom English. He said that although they had given me the car they were all agreed it was not for me to pinch it.

  Further, he said, I was obliged to remain in my country where I belonged.

  No you don’t, I thought.

  Crowbar was perhaps less confrontational. He said that I could now be taught certain secret Law.

  Tom the Punka Wallah said nothing. I assumed he had no English. As for me, I had a few pidgin phrases, words for earth, fire, good, bad, food, sit down, come here. I nodded to him but he remained aloof, and I finally saw this was the start of a negotiation: they would offer something and take something away, the latter being the car my future life depended on.

  I showed them that I knew the value of what they were offering to give. I said I was honoured that they planned to instruct me.

  The three of us, I said, were joined by lines of blood, but I ‘bin growed up’ without instruction in the Law. ‘Them Welfare fellahs’ had made me a proper whitefellah. My position was such that I was ‘too bugger up’ to receive instruction in the Law (i.e. their part of the bargain was no use).

  Crowbar then spoke to the Punka Wallah, and I saw, by the repetition of certain words, he was translating my speech. I was alarmed to see the fierce little fellow laugh, and then speak rapidly, looking directly at me. I suspect that this had been very tough talk before it was reissued from Crowbar’s lips. In translation he said that when the Punka Wallah was a boy he did Law business and the world would last for ever. Now the world would die. He was sorry I now had to hear what he must tell me.

  Long time ago, Welfare had arrived in a utility truck with a cage on the back, like you might use for stock. The Punka Wallah had been maybe five years old. His mother told him run, run, run. He ran to his father who threw dust at him, and told him, go, go, go, piss off. He headed into the spinifex but the Welfare caught him and threw him in that cage. They took him to an orphanage in Derby. All the way he hollered. W here was his mother? Where was his father? At the orphanage they sprayed poison on him and stole his clothes. He lived in that place a long time without his people. Then the orphanage closed down and the Welfare took him to foster parents. The foster mother took them to a big room with a bed. He never saw anything like it in all his life. Even the Welfare seemed surprised. It was for a king. Then the Welfare left and the foster mother said come with me, and she took him to a little caravan in the backyard full of weeds she used to grow leprosy, he thought, maybe syphilis and other bad things.

  That night a man came to the caravan. There are records of what he did to the little fellah, Crowbar said, looking at the floor. Night after night. It is written down in the judge’s books, kept in Sydney or Big London or someplace. Those books never did anyone no good. Did I understand? He had been used and raped, night after night until they shifted him to another orphanage. He was already finished then. When he fought them, he was whipped. When he ran away, he was starved. When he left school he was a drunk in Derby and then he was a drunk in Mardowarra. He was in jail and out of jail until he finally found his mother but he had lost her language and all he had was mongrel talk.

  I had to stay at Quamby Downs, he wanted me to know. I was not too old for Law the translator said. The old Law was forgotten by the young fellahs. He was the boss of a new Law. He would teach me that, but he would need the car.

  You scoundrel, I thought. I was a reader of Oceania. I had read Ted Strehlow and therefore understood new Law was impossible.

  Away he goes.

  The thoroughness of their [Aboriginal] forefathers has left to them not a single unoccupied scene which they could fill with creatures of their own imagination. Tradition and the tyranny of the old men in the religious and cultural sphere have effectively stifled all creative impulse; and no external stimulus ever reached Central Australia which could have f reed the natives from these insidious bonds. It is almost certain that native myths had ceased to be invented many centuries ago . . . They are, in many ways, not so much a primitive as a decadent race.

  ‘There is no new Law,’ said the King of Quiz Shows.

  ‘He say we’re all bugger-up,’ Crowbar said. ‘He show you now.’

  The Punka Wallah removed his tie and waistcoat and revealed damage that made my own shoulder injury look like a mosquito bite. His glistening back bore the marks of a greenhide whip, criss- crossed, raised, woven into his skin. I was appalled, of course, and grateful when he covered himself.

  ‘You teach them kids,’ he said, quietly, as he slipped his shirt back on. ‘I teach you new Law. You be learning from the boss.’

  ‘He no cut your cock,’ Doctor Battery reassured me. ‘His Law don’t cut. He paint ’im on you, no blood.’

  ‘It is book Law Billy,’ grinned Crowbar. ‘You can read it Uncle Redex. New Law.’

  I was shocked by the evidence of torture, but it did not weaken my desire to keep my car. They wished to steal it from me. Their claim to having new Law must be made up to serve this end.

  I asked them where this new Law came from. If it was a book it must be the Christian Bible.

  ‘Out of ground,’ said Tom Tailor.

  ‘Who give you?’

  �
�Calsh.’

  Later I would learn the name Kalch was that of the esteemed anthropologist Arthur Christian Kalch. Bringing in the academics was more than I had bargained for but I would not be bullied about the car which was, obviously, mine by right. Besides, I was not such a fool as to involve myself in any secret knowledge, the possession of which might easily place my life in danger.

  Crowbar uncorked a flagon of petrol. ‘Smell,’ he said.

  ‘You help us Bill,’ said Battery, his expression becoming rather soft and thoughtful. ‘We help you. This is best for you.’

  ‘We show you country Billy. We still go hunting.’

  I pointed out that they would need far more petrol than these flagons.

  ‘You give money,’ Crowbar said sweetly. ‘We find you plenty petrol.’

  Whatever bargain I had made appeared to be a slippery one. I gave them eighteen pounds which was all I had. Then, when we had all shaken hands I turned off the lamps so the conspirators could leave in darkness. I sat out on the verandah listening to a normal night at Quamby Downs, the discord of the camp, the insistent drone of Carter’s pedal radio. Dogs barked. An owl cried. I made out another black figure at my gate.

  It was Alice who had returned to tell me that Tom Tailor was a very bad man. Bad man for everyone. Christian, old fellahs. His Law no good. He crazy.

  Then she kneeled and I saw that I was to kneel with her. Our Father, she said, who art in heaven.

  Alone again, I set up the kerosene lamp and it was then that I discovered, abandoned on the floor, the sugar bag the Punka Wallah had brought with him. Having seen how careful he was with it, I knew this was not due to absentmindedness. He intended me to see the contents: a substantial bark wallet, decorated with white patterning and tied with what was certainly human hair. Inside the wallet I found a book, not a Christian bible but something thinner, puffed, bleeding, water-damaged which I finally understood, beneath its artful ink and ochre decoration, to be Oceania No. 43 Oct. 1952. Here, by means of frequent ochre markings, my attention was quickly drawn to ‘Nativist Movements in the Western Kimberley’ by Arthur Christian Kalch, a learned paper frequently naming a certain ‘Tom the Tailor’. I was, to say the least, intrigued.