Aggie continued looking into the cup, turning it one way, then the other. ‘Umm, the box is shifting. See? As I turned the cup around, the lid has lifted a little. The past is moving into the present and into your future. There is a difficult decision for you to make and yes, your destiny is in your hands. The choice will be yours. And a precious stone will be significant for you. Whatever you decide there, all will be well.’
A precious stone? That didn’t make sense. A difficult decision? Well, she’d already made it. She’d left.
Aggie kept talking, correctly guessing that she worked in welfare, which was fairly predictable, being a friend of Lori’s, and then identified some future travel plans she had in mind—travel to an island. Yes, I want to visit Ireland one day, but doesn’t everyone? she thought.
Then surprisingly, Aggie saw what she’d bought her mother for her upcoming fiftieth birthday. ‘See that heart again, at the bottom—it now has a little chain beside it. Have you a heart on a chain? Oh, I see, you are giving someone a heart on a chain.’
Now that was scary. She’d only picked it out yesterday.
‘There’s a lot of love here, caring, protective almost. Is that right?’ Aggie looked up and held her eyes.
Surprised by the feelings Aggie’s words evoked, she couldn’t answer. Heart and chains. That’s how it felt sometimes, her heart in chains, but that’s the past. You make your choices and you live with them. Feeling she might unravel in Aggie’s gaze, she picked up the pen and wrote down Mum’s birthday present.
Aggie put down the cup. ‘Okay dear, would you like to ask any questions?’
Grateful to be back in control, she said, ‘No, that was good, thanks for that, I got a lot out of it. How amazing you knew about the heart necklace, shall I go now? Are you coming? No, okay, thanks, see you shortly.’
Clutching her sheet of paper, she bolted out of the room, down the hallway and into the bright reality of the lounge room and five sets of expectant eyes.
‘How’d you go?’ they chorused.
Caught between this life and the past Aimee struggled to focus on their upturned faces. ‘Um, well, Aggie saw …’ Her bottom lip wobbled.
Lori leapt up. ‘Hey, you don’t have to tell us everything. Here, sit down, tell us the good bits.’
Relieved, she sat on the chair next to Lori’s sisters. Lori dropped to the floor in front of her and patted Aimee’s leg. More in control, she started again. ‘Well, Aggie saw a box where I was sad, that’s probably uni, I was pretty lonely when I first left home but she was right, she saw a ladder and saw me climb out of it and …’
She knew it was more than that. She knew that square building and she still lost her breath when the memories escaped. It rarely happened. Somebody caring loosened the lid. Lee made it move.
Aimee moved onto safer ground. ‘Oh, and she saw me giving someone a heart on a chain. Now I have to admit, that’s uncanny because I just bought my mum one for her birthday.’ A coincidence really, she thought but smiled at their wide-eyed responses and knowing nods.
‘See, I told you she’s good,’ Lori exclaimed. They all nodded again and began sharing their notes. The noise level rose.
Aimee sat back and tried to focus on the woman in the teacup, her arms up, triumphant.
CHAPTER SIX
The familiar morning yearning for a coffee made Aimee look at her watch, an Omega. Ten-thirty. She softly stroked its smooth face and thin black leather wristband then pushed it up her arm. Her parents had given it to her as a combined thirtieth birthday and farewell present in January. Her mother, Susan, chose the watch. Her father, Richard, had taken them to Ruby’s restaurant in the city where she slid along a curved red velvet seat, careful to place herself between her mother and brother, Jon. Later her father drove them to Parliament House for a nightcap and a panoramic view over the City of Lights, with the Narrows Bridge, a snake of metal scales and unblinking eyes, sliding over the Swan River.
It already feels so far away. But it had only been a few months or so; months of taking stock, living alone in Kalgoorlie. And the lid rattling. The tea-leaf reader was right. That night at Lori’s, when the other women had all delayed going home to hear Aggie’s predictions for her, she’d obliged them. Just a little. I won’t be doing that again any time soon, she thought. But her friendship with Lori had continued to grow.
‘Come to my place for dinner,’ Lori suggested last month. Now it was a regular date. Aimee had complained about missing good Italian cooking. In reality it was Lee’s delicious lasagnes she missed. And Lee.
A loneliness gnawed at her gut. Red wine and pasta, always a winner, she mused, trying to ignore the ache. Lori clearly loved cooking—and her community. ‘My papa’s passion for life, for food, the land, growing things, being grateful for your blessings, that’s stayed with me,’ she’d declared last night between mouthfuls of spaghetti. ‘And always give something back, he used to say. I’m beginning to understand what he meant.’ Lori leant forward, hands on her chin, her dark eyes shining. ‘I love this town but, I dunno, Aimee, some things need to change. Or maybe I’m just noticing it more, since … since my reading with Aggie.’ Unwilling to revisit that subject, Aimee had nodded slowly and veered the conversation towards their work; over a glass or two of red, they’d talked long into the night.
Aimee rubbed her forehead. Time to go down for morning tea, she thought, looking forward to the fifteen minutes of staffroom togetherness. She enjoyed the easy chatter, her growing bond with them all but particularly with Lori and, more recently, with Gerry Mitchell, who, despite spending a lot of time out of the office at the outlying camps and reserves, she was getting to know better. She had spent several Sundays with Gerry, and his wife Jan, an anthropologist who was recording desert languages, and whose Sunday roast lamb made her salivate every time she thought of it.
Pushing back her swivel chair, she heard loud barking and looked out from her second-floor office window. She saw a group of people sitting on the pavement below, circled by several tall, skinny dogs; they were barking at a man trying to walk past. He hurriedly crossed the road and scurried along the opposite pavement. There were several men and women in the group, some with a red cloth-band around their heads. One of them hit the dog with a stick and another grabbed it closer. They would all be waiting for Gerry, she guessed. He was the only social worker who spoke Wangka, a local dialect. She had been studying it for several months now using tapes and a book she’d found in the office resource library. She’d managed a few basics: yuwa for yes, wiya—no, minyma for woman, iti for baby, kuwarra—to wait. And mirri for dead, which she learnt after fumbling her way through her first indigent burial.
And nyarru. Sorry.
The only language she’d tried to learn before was French, at high school. Until coming here, she hadn’t considered that she lived in a country with Indigenous languages she could have been taught. Now she wondered about what it was they were trying to do, working with local people without being able to speak their language.
She remembered the day Lori warned her that the next duty appointment was an indigent burial. It’s what drove her to find the language tapes.
That, and a sense of shame.
She had raised her voice thinking the elderly couple had not heard, tried to make eye contact, leant in closer when they responded in whispers and worst of all, used the deceased’s name. They had come to bury their son. She had come to complete forms. They turned away from her. It was Gerry who rescued her, translated for her and revealed her shame. She’d learnt none of this at university or working in the city.
‘Look, Aimee,’ Gerry had said gently, ‘you don’t use a deceased person’s name and it’s disrespectful to keep looking an elderly person in the eye like you’re used to doing. And you lose respect talking loudly. A person doesn’t need to speak loudly to be heard.’
She’d cried afterwards while Gerry patted her on the back.
Aimee turned from the window and grabbed her stained coff
ee mug off the desk, keen for a break. She’d been writing case notes for nearly two hours. She descended the wide staircase and admired the smooth ebony of the curving banister, running her hand along its length. It was similar to the one she had stroked as she descended with her father after lunch in the Parliament dining room.
The lid rattled. Her hands moistened. She gripped the handrail.
‘Good morning, Aimee.’
‘Oh!’ She took a deep breath. ‘Good morning, Paddy,’ she said, recovering, ‘I’m about to make real coffee. Want one?’ she offered, reaching the bottom of the stairs.
‘No thanks, Aimee, I’ll stick to tea. Better for me,’ Paddy laughed, saluting her with his large white mug. ‘Case allocation meeting at eleven, see you shortly, I have a few phone calls to make. But Hayley might like one—she loves her coffee. I can take her one.’
‘No, it’s okay, I’ll do it. I owe her one,’ she said turning into the office kitchen. ‘Hayley was terrific the way she handled things at the counter yesterday. I was at a loss. I’d never heard of a tjinakarrpilpa before. What was it she said? A kadaitchi man, a feather foot—I didn’t know what was going on. Everyone else bolted.’
She looked around but Patrick himself had bolted. Hmmm, she thought, he didn’t seem comfortable yesterday either. She watched the coffee percolate into the pot and breathed in the rich aroma and sighed.
The more I learn the less I know. She gripped the pot handle and filled two mugs, taking a sip of the black velvet liquid from one, before taking the other out to Hayley.
Lori, rummaging through one of the filing cabinets, called out, ‘And where’s mine?’
She laughed. ‘This is gratitude coffee. There’s more in the pot if you want some. I’m still not sure what happened yesterday but,’ she said, leaning over the counter, ‘I’m glad you were there, Hayley.’
Hayley took the cup of coffee. Yesterday, she believed a kadaitchi man had walked in; a Central Desert man come to ‘point the bone’, a traditional punishment for a tribal transgression.
Halfway across the duty room Aimee had come to an abrupt standstill at the sight of him. He stood next to the counter, over six feet tall, naked but for a loincloth, daubed all over in white clay, a spear in one hand and something clutched in the other. She stood transfixed, unable to move or say anything. Her desk phone rang. Startled into action, she took a step towards the counter. The man whirled around and stared in her direction. The ringing stopped.
Hayley spoke to him. He turned back and she pointed to the door.
He shook his spear and spoke, his voice commanding.
Aimee only recognised one word. Wayi—where? She hesitated.
Hayley pointed to the door again and waved her hand, repeating a name.
The man turned sharply to go but as he did so, he looked directly at Aimee. A shiver went through her. The power in his eyes was unlike anything she’d ever witnessed, the white clay an eerie contrast to the midnight orbs that seemed to suck the light in rather than reflect it.
Then he was gone.
She’d stumbled out to the counter.
Hayley fell back in her chair
‘What just happened?’ Aimee cried.
Lori, upstairs filing case notes in Adoptions, heard the commotion and rushed out but it was all over by the time she came down.
Hayley explained, ‘I think he was a kadaitchi man, looking for the young bloke sitting on the pavement outside waiting for a lift north to Warburton with Neville.’ The young man had come in minutes earlier, looking for Neville, a district officer, but before Hayley could answer, he’d run out the door, unable to wait any longer.
Then the kadaitchi man had walked in.
Aimee took a second sip of her coffee and leant on the front counter, smiling down at Hayley. Although the youngest in the office she’d demonstrated a calmness and quiet dignity beyond her years yesterday. Her freckled face beamed up at her.
‘Thanks for the coffee, Aimee,’ she said. ‘Mum wasn’t happy when I told her about what happened. Wanted to know if he’d looked me in the eye, but he didn’t, he looked right past me which felt weird, you know, like I wasn’t really there. Anyway, it’s over now,’ she said, raising her cup in salute to Aimee.
Aimee smiled and nodded, but she too remembered the man’s stare. Coffee cup in hand, she strode into the staff-room, exchanged greetings with everyone and sank into an overstuffed chintz chair, next to Gerry. She spent a relaxing fifteen minutes catching up on the gossip and laughing, along with everyone else, at Ron Smythe’s bad jokes. A large, round-faced man, his double chins hidden by a bushy red beard, he’d helped her negotiate her way through the myriad of departmental rules and regulations. Ron had been in the department for thirty years, since its Native Welfare days, or, as he called it, the ‘flour and sugar’ days, when they’d handed out rations from the office. His stories unsettled her, a reminder of how little she knew of the past. Or of the culture I witnessed yesterday, she thought. The power of the kadaitchi man remained imprinted on her mind.
She wriggled in her seat. In a break between jokes, she moved next door for the case allocation meeting.
An hour later she sat looking at the files piled up in her in-tray—five new cases—bringing her caseload to thirty, a mix of child protection, juvenile justice and family support. Thirty families, thirty stories. It disturbed her how little she had to offer when the problems were indicative of, or exacerbated by, poverty and inequalities. Picking up the top one, she read: ‘Steele—Family support.’ She hadn’t recognised the name at first but as Paddy had discussed the case, she’d remembered them; an IPTAAS claim, earlier in the year, now a referral from their doctor recommending family support—‘father, Paul, has terminal silicosis; mother, Kerry, distraught; one child, Amber. Home visit required to determine level of support needed,’ she read.
She picked up the phone and rang their number.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A loud rumble trembled the earth and foundations all over Williamstown faltered. Kerry wondered if they might all be swallowed up one day.
Swallow, wallow, hollow.
Shaking her head she hugged her knees to her chest and stared blankly down at her bare feet hanging over the front verandah step. A siren wailed its warning of a second coming and the earth moved again.
Shiver, quiver, deliver.
Grabbing her ears she again shook her head, trying to stop the words. Searching for a distraction she started counting the poppet heads—she’d name each mine as she counted: one, Mt Charlotte; two, Lake View and Star; three …
The front flywire door squeaked open behind her.
‘Hey, love—what time’s the welfare lady comin’ again?’
She turned, surprised to see Paul off the sofa. He usually slept for a couple of hours after lunch until she woke him with a cup of tea. She noticed his hand holding open the door, shaking with the effort of staying upright.
‘Two-thirty,’ she reminded him, smiling up at his face, watching it turn wistful as he stared out across the flats, ‘so we can talk a bit before Amber gets home. Another hour yet. Do you want a cuppa tea?’
‘Nah, I’m happy to wait. The blastin’ woke me. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.’
Standing up, she moved beside him, sliding her arm around his back. He leant into her and she felt his ribcage, the unfamiliar hardness startling. They sought each other’s eyes, a soothing back and forth. She kissed him, gently at first, then as yearning filled her throat, closed her eyes and sucked hard on his lips, wanting to pull him inside herself forever. Releasing him, she stroked his thin face. He let go of the door and let her help him back inside.
They sat down together on the sofa and held hands. Turning towards her, he lifted her hand to his lips, kissing it softly, while looking at her. She felt the dampness of his palm and smelt the disease. Her stomach tightened and she looked away. Staying present was becoming harder for her and Paul knew it; now he was the one making plans, agreeing to the of
fer of support from the doctor, wanting to make a will. More and more she was somewhere else, unable to focus or talk about the future.
It was Paul who’d decided it was time to tell Amber about his illness, last weekend after their Sunday morning ritual of a cooked breakfast together, Amber on his knee and her beside him, gripping his hand, shaking. They’d all cried, then at his suggestion, left the remains of breakfast and climbed back into bed together, Amber in the middle, hugging each other till they felt like one being breathing. They’d stayed like that until he started coughing.
‘It’ll be okay,’ Paul now said, stroking her fingers.
She stood up from the sofa, gently slipping her hand from his grasp.
‘I know,’ she lied. ‘I’ll go get the Will Kit from the bedroom. You’ll need to get the welfare officer to witness it when she comes.’
She watched herself leave the lounge room, turn into the hallway and walk to their bedroom at the front of the house, watched herself pick up the Will Kit from the bedside table, then sit on the bed. She stared hard at the rectangular fawn-coloured envelope to help bring herself back into focus—the sum of a life, your will and testament. What kind of sum is thirty-eight? Thirty-eight years old, thirty-bloody-eight years old. A scream gagged in her throat; she was moving out again. Screwing her eyes tight, she breathed deeply and thought of Amber.
Her body relaxed and she opened her eyes. She looked around the room, the room where they had spent their wedding night and except for their annual seaside holiday, almost every night since. The room where they learnt to trust each other completely, touch, taste, take each other, lie in each other’s sweat, taste each other’s juices. The room where she sucked him in till each part of her expanded—her body, her mind—and she flew, flew out and returned, limp and laughing while he slumped, laughing too, half with her, half at her, nervously, for he was never sure, he told her, where she’d gone, in awe he could take her there and relieved when she came back.
The Secrets We Keep Page 4