Marjorie leaves by the front door, tears in her bulgy eyes. In the days afterwards, everyone is thankful for the house in between, the neutral territory next door. The two families avoid each other entirely.
Linda’s deliberately wounding words ring in Marjorie’s ears. Marjorie cries, on and off, for hours. And she thinks about the pressure cooker. She does not feel she can go back and get it; this useful piece of cookware is now lost forever.
Jo is on the moon. In the middle distance, there’s an astronaut walking towards her. She realises it is her father, Evan Johnson. He is holding his goldfish-bowl headgear. He’s delighted to see Jo, comes bounding towards her. She realises, with horror, that his face is nothing but a skull.
‘What happened to your face?’ asks Jo.
‘It was eaten off by sharks,’ says Evan matter-of-factly.
‘Are you still alive?’
‘No, ’fraid not.’
Jo screams, waking herself up with the raspy echo of a scream trying to break the surface of sleep. She lies there, remembering the sound of her father’s voice.
Is it morning? Perhaps there’s just the tiniest bit of light. Jo is desperately thirsty. She tries to roll out of bed but she is weighted down, entangled inside a grey army blanket. She struggles weakly, the blanket getting heavier. After a while, she decides to fall out of bed, blanket and all. She drags herself, trailing bedclothes, towards the window. Could that be a sliver of morning light coming in around the edges of the curtains? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it’s just as dark as it was before.
In the strange transitional zone after Evan’s death, Linda takes a job at the prawning factory, pulling the heads off prawns, getting spines caught in her fingernails. She rebuffs kindly overtures and invites those with a hint of danger. She discovers, and invites into her home, a different Port Badminton to the one she knew. She feels more comfortable with prawners and plantation workers who like to party hard. She hosts some big parties where people bring eels out of the river, crayfish, mangrove crabs, mangoes and bananas. They also bring large quantities of alcohol. She barely nods as she passes, in the street, the women who used to be her friends. She takes to wearing flowing cheesecloth, carrying out tie-dying experiments in the laundry. Linda’s grip on where her children might be at any given time is now quite loose. Stella seems to be adapting, but for Jo everything is uncomfortable, unacceptable and wrong. This cannot possibly be her real life. Only the past, before The Fall, is real. She goes into suspended animation, hoping for order to be restored.
Linda does not make it up with Marjorie.
For a while Stella and Jo avoid the Kelly children. This is made easier by the fact that they are Condogs. But one day, before she has time to think about it, Stella finds herself playing with Susan on the footpath in front of the quiet house in the middle. And then she is playing down the side of the Kellys’ house and then she is in the familiar backyard itself. And then there are sleepovers at the Kellys’, with three or four girls sharing a bathtub, giggling. Nothing is said about the galah. The cage is gone and there is a big heavy concrete planter there now, with a geranium in it. It’s as if there never was a galah.
Eventually the Johnsons pack their things into the EH Holden and drive out of Clam Street. They drive out along the main road, blinkering to turn right at the T intersection. As they pass the Dish, it swivels slightly to watch them as they drive away.
THIRTEEN
Water
There is a noise at the back door. For a fleeting moment I think it might be Lizzie coming home. She might be flapping in through the back door in her worn-down thongs, saying, ‘Let’s get the kettle on!’
But it’s the grandniece. She comes towards me assertively. If I were a cat, I’d be hissing. If she tries to touch me I’ll bite.
She looks at the mess of the Lyrebird and my droppings in disgust.
She changes direction and hunts about under the kitchen sink. She comes back armed with dustpan and brush.
‘You’re a messy beast,’ she says. ‘How did Aunty Lizzie put up with all this shit?’
She is speaking of Lizzie in the past tense.
‘Stupid dickhead!’ I shriek.
She goes out to the wheelie bin. I listen to the familiar sound of the lid whacking down. She reappears and heads for a drawer beside the kitchen sink. She roots around in it, turning around with a big pair of scissors in hand.
‘Let’s get you sorted out,’ she says. As I struggle she holds me down on the table, cutting through the long flying feathers on one side. The pain goes searing through. She has cut into a blood feather!
I’m wounded, unbalanced. I sink my beak into her flesh, drawing blood.
We are fighting now, beak and claw. I’m fighting for my life, for what little I have.
She shakes me off and goes back to the kitchen sink. I lie gasping on the table, listening to the tap running. No doubt she is rinsing her wounds and applying bandaids. I feel the tears run over the bridge of my beak, dripping onto the table. What is to become of me?
Something dark flaps over me, a malevolent wraith. A bath towel. It’s dark in here. I’m wrapped firmly, the way a baby is swaddled, or an insane person wrapped into a straightjacket, or six sausages rolled into newspaper at the butcher.
The wheel of fortune has turned. I’m being carried away from my home, from Lizzie, from hope. I am probably on the way to the vet to be euthanased. I can’t tell, because, unlike Lizzie, this niece barely speaks to me.
Evan is getting lighter and lighter, rising vertically like Jesus. He rises up through the salt-spray air, into the cloudless blue sky. He rises through stratosphere, troposphere, ionosphere and out into black space filled with glittering stars.
In the dark, in my towel, I can feel and hear the rhythm of walking.
‘Incoming Kelly data,’ says the Dish.
I don’t reply. I’m on my death march.
‘Lucky we had all those session handbags,’ says Marj Kelly. ‘I mean hessian sandbags.’
Marj is at the Civic Centre, staffing the Country Women’s Association trestle table laden with sandwiches and an urn of boiling water. Sandbags and levee banks have saved the main township, but surrounding areas are under imminent threat of flooding in the aftermath of Steve.
Evacuees and homeless strays have been assembled here, accommodated on mattresses that line the large, echoing room. Marj is in her element, feeding them and giving them cups of tea and coffee. It reminds her of the evacuation in Geraldton, back when she was first married. Some of these same ladies – elderly now – were with her then.
Marjorie lifts the lid on the great CWA enamel teapot, the one that has seen duty through world wars, tropical festivals, cyclones, floods and one moon landing. She shovels in ten heaped teaspoons of leaves. Teabags would be easier, but Marj insists on loose leaves.
The evacuees rise up from their mattresses from time to time and come to the trestle table, mainly for something to do. They can have sandwiches now, but later they’ll get hot meals on plastic plates under alfoil. There is a small blathering television set at the end of the hall. Clothes, pillows and toys spill from bags. An old brown dog, a set of guinea pigs in a cardboard box and three budgies in two cages are also present. Each of these has its own needs, to which the volunteers also apply themselves.
With Marjorie out, Kevin returns to his spot at the table, his writing pad open before him. A dozen eggs are boiling in a big pot on the stove. Kevin is under instructions to boil eggs for sandwiches for the evacuees. He will let them boil until the yolks go grey around the edges.
Kevin gets up from his letter and goes to stand just outside the back door. He farts freely and then decides, for inspiration, to listen to ‘True Blue’ by John Williamson. He goes to the living room and heads for the piece of furniture known as the Long Cupboard. Kevin opens the top drawer where audio tapes are kept. It is mostly a
Greatest Hits collection, gifts over the years from the children. There are two compilations of Christmas songs, Roger Whittaker, Roger Miller, early Tom Jones. Kevin stands before the open drawer for a moment, letting the sight of the various tapes transport him to earlier times. There’s Benny Hill with Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West). But what he’s looking for is the True Blue cassette tape, bought some years ago from the counter of the Caltex service station. It is the only musical purchase he has gone out and made for himself. His love of John Williamson came on later in life, after most of the family had gone. It represents a part of Kevin that the girls – remembering the characteristic Kevin of the 1960s and 70s – know nothing about. It doesn’t occur to them that their father might be capable of evolving and changing, having a life of his own.
He walks back down the hall and into the kitchen, glancing at the jiggling eggs. The cassette player is on top of the fridge, coated in sticky dust. He puts the cassette in and presses play, but nothing happens except for the tiniest sense of a thwarted grinding. He ejects, turns it over, tries from the other side. It works. He leans back into the kitchen sink, listening, a delicious yearning welling in his chest.
True Blue, is it me and you?
Is it Mum and Dad? Is it a cockatoo?
Is it standin’ by your mate when he’s in a fight?
Or just Vegemite?
Pictures and sounds and smells come and go in Kevin’s mind, some vague, some sharp. He thinks of men working, cigarettes hanging from their mouths, their hard, flat stomachs burned dark brown in the sun, cold Emu Bitter after a long hard shift, the sea at dawn, the sound of a prawning trawler, the wake behind. There’s a flash of Mum poking at a mushrooming sheet in a wood-fired copper in the backyard, and Dad in a khaki uniform, the thick prickly feel of it, like a blanket. And the cockatoo . . . he remembers that he used to have a cockatoo. A pink and grey one. Kevin glances down at a big concrete planter standing beside the back door, a geranium growing lushly in it, the deep green of the leaves, the velvety scarlet of the flowers. Where is my cockatoo? For some reason the thought of the lost pink and grey galah sends the tears welling up over the bottom lids of Kevin’s eyes. There are galahs everywhere, of course. Flying overhead, sitting on powerlines, crowding into treetops. There are galahs for the taking. But what about that galah? That particular galah is never coming back, and nor are Mum or Dad or hard brown stomachs or cigarettes. Kevin is frankly wallowing now, as Williamson continues to aim arrows into his heart.
The song ends. Kevin pulls his weight away from the sink, takes one step across the width of the small kitchen, and presses the stop button. In the silence, he stands with his arms over the top of the fridge, cradling the cassette player.
Or just Vegemite?
Kevin’s hand reaches for the plastic bag of sliced white bread, baked locally under the banner of the nationwide Tip Top franchise. He fiddles with the tiny square of hard plastic that the soft thin bag is gathered into, releases it, shakes out four floppy slices. Margarine out of the fridge, the slightly warm Vegemite jar out of the cupboard. He makes himself sandwiches, spreading first the margarine thickly, then the friendly dark substance thinly. He cuts across and across again, creating little squares, not triangles like the ones Marj makes to serve at functions and fundraisers. Kevin enjoys being alone in Marj’s kitchen, doing what he likes. He gets a bit of margarine into the Vegemite jar and leaves it in there, carelessly.
He takes his plate of sandwiches back to the dining room table, back to the homework he has set himself.
I never made any headway, he writes to Kimberly Lamb.
He realises he can be completely honest with her.
He sits at the table and thinks about making headway, about early dreams of making enough money to be comfortable. He had never aspired to rich, just comfortable. But what exactly does he mean by comfortable? Does he want to move out of this house into a two-storey brick house?
He thinks about Susan in her palace on the outskirts of Perth. Three bathrooms, including a bathroom just for the kids. All that cleaning.
No, that’s not what he wants. This laminex table, this backyard, this toilet: they are his life. He eases himself down on the familiar black plastic toilet seat, no longer new. Does he want to travel? Not particularly. Overseas, Over East . . . the imagined difficulties involved – hassles at airports – seem to outweigh the benefits. By comfortable, he simply means not having to worry about money. Not to have to think about whether the can of peas is ninety-two cents or one dollar twenty. To buy each of the girls something nice, like a bracelet or a necklace from the jeweller’s. Or a locket. He realises this is an old desire of his, no longer relevant. The girls wouldn’t want a locket. He doesn’t know what they would want.
To eat steak more often, rissoles less often. That would be nice. He washes his hands after the toilet, sits down again at the kitchen table and thinks of words he might write:
I always wanted my own boat. I always wanted to stand at the wheel of my own boat, to look up at the rigging, the nets, to count them all as mine. I wanted to look at the catch and consider it all my own. This boat, I wanted to hand down to my son.
Kevin’s mind drifts resentfully to Thomas ‘Crowbar’ Wilson, the man who made headway all his life. Who always had the wind behind him.
When Marj gets back from the Civic Centre, she finds Kevin standing in the dining room, not going forward or backwards, just standing. He has the look of a dog who meets you at the front door but guiltily, because it is thinking about all the washing it has brought down off the clothesline out the back. Marjorie’s body is tired but her eyes dart about a bit, from habit. Nothing seems particularly amiss, other than Kevin himself.
Kevin: ‘How’s it going down the poor?’
Marj: ‘All right, Kev. A couple of backpackers tried to get themselves a free hot meal.’
Kevin: ‘Bloody freeloaders! Did you give ’em whatfor?’
Marj: ‘And I’ve had a rotten headache all day.’
Kevin: ‘Why don’t you have a cup of tea and a –’
Marj: ‘No more tea for me, Kev, I’m awash.’
Kevin nods and sits down at the table, in front of his cold half-cup of instant coffee and the crossword page of the West Australian. He picks up the pen, casually, and does a little scribble on the white margin, as if testing to see if the pen will go.
Marj goes out to the toilet, and then comes back through the dining room, glancing over Kevin’s shoulder as she goes past, taking in the empty crossword puzzle and the squiggle. She fiddles around at the sink and dries her hands on a tea towel. The bowl of warm boiled eggs on the bench is like a tribute, like a vase of roses.
‘Thanks, Kev,’ she says. She comes and stands behind his chair and gives him an awkward hug across the shoulders. As she does so, she allows herself to go a little bit weak, leaning into him, taking some comfort and energy from him.
‘Can you peel the eggs for me, Kev? Keep the shells for the compost.’
‘No worries, love.’
‘I’m just going to finish the little what’s-it.’
‘Righto.’
Marj settles back at her sewing machine, threads the needle, checks the bobbin. Sewing is a familiar, soothing activity. But this project is small and fiddly. It takes all her concentration.
It is an order from Gemma, the Aboriginal girl who works out on the islands, looking after small native what’s-its-names. Bandicoots?
‘Bloody galah bites and shits everywhere,’ Gemma had said. ‘Can you make me some of these little nappies?’
And she’d shown a page out of a bird magazine, titled ‘Flight Suits’.
‘Sorry about Old Lizzie,’ Marj had said.
‘She had a good innings.’
There will be a big funeral, with people coming from all directions. After that, Gemma’s family will be moving into the house in Oyste
r Street.
Carefully shaped, the bird nappy has elastic straps that fit over the wings, a velcro closure over the back, an opening for the tail and a pouch for droppings. This pouch is designed to take cut-down ladies’ panty liners, to ‘protect the suit and keep the bird comfortable’. A small loop over the velcro closure can be used to attach a lanyard to ‘prevent dangerous fly-aways’.
Marj is not sure what she should charge for this unusual little job. She has used scraps of fabric from her own collection, so there’s only labour to charge for. Gemma has a government job, a nice car. She decides to charge quite a lot.
She snips the thread. That’s done. Prototype complete.
Marj feels tired and heavy. She gets up from her sewing chair and wanders into the bedroom for a nap. She unbuckles her sandals and puts them neatly together on the floor on her side of the bed. She takes off her glasses and places them on the tea chest. She shakes out a slip of folded paper from a small yellow box of Bex powders that lives there on the chest, and lifts a fine crocheted cover off the top of a tall glass of water. The tiny blue glass beads clink against the glass. She pours the powder onto her tongue and follows up with a deep swig, and then another. She fluffs up her pillow, arranges her sheet, and passes immediately into deep sleep.
Marjorie dreams she is standing on the main street, watching the floats of the Tropical Festival Parade go past. At first, it seems there is nothing out of the ordinary, although the colours are strangely vivid, like in those old Technicolour films. Somehow, she is simultaneously at her place on the footpath but also floating above the parade, able to see it as a whole. She sees the camels with teenagers feigning boredom on their backs, and the hospital float with its mad cross-eyed surgeon and lashings of blood. There is a bedraggled brass band unable to quite reach its notes, all as usual; there are astronauts in full regalia on the back of a flatbed truck, in the company of Aboriginal men and women in chains, manacled together.
The Lucky Galah Page 19