Refuge

by Richard Rossiter

  Now, some years later, and, for the moment feeling safe on the coast, Greta was still unable to think her way through this pain. However she turned it, in whatever light, it seemed she had promised Marvyn something that was not possible—not in words—but it was something she could not deliver. She could not stay there. She knew there was, of course, no intention to mislead. But that was not enough. Ignorance was not enough. She would be in the line of fire when Corey’s army of lost souls arrived, eyes lit up, hands shaking, as they would, seeking vengeance on those who created the heartbreaking emptiness, eyes that stared into nothingness, minds that created a past they couldn’t quite believe in (no one else did), but sometimes they could pretend; and yet they knew the whitefellas could see straight through them, which made them feel shifty and slight, like a child caught out doing something shameful. Like a clumsy trickster—not even the kids would be fooled. A world of country and culture and names which couldn’t stand up to scrutiny (after all, how were they supposed to know?), but it didn’t matter. They were blackfellas. They were owed, bigtime. And every day the debt increased. The interest grew and grew, and one day, soon, the whole lot would blow up and come tumbling down, with terrible consequences. Greta was clear about this. There was an army building, although Corey would not be among them. Renegades, freedom fighters, black power, guerrillas, bushfighters, crusaders, terrorists. Enough was too much.

  Fifty-nine

  It was hot and his legs were sticking to the vinyl. The sun was shining into his eyes and the dirty windscreen made it impossible to see what was in front of him. Heat and dust and the thump of the car as it hit the potholes. The shockies were shot. Up ahead water shimmered across the road, but he knew what it was. Marvyn had tried—he knew that much. In the city and back in the community. He’d even started a degree in communications. What a joke. It would take more than a degree. And then it had started up again with Corey. He was talking strange, having nightmares, his eyes wild. Who was supposed to look after him? He needed someone, but Gran was crook; she couldn’t do it anymore. She’d already brought up two families and she couldn’t see properly. She needed an operation.

  The road in front of him went on and on and his eyes started to flicker and jump. He wiped away the sweat and the tears. Something was wrong and it wasn’t just the car and the heat. In the distance were thunderclouds, immense bundles rolling towards him. When he blinked he could see yellow and purple flashes. Greta—he couldn’t think of her; his whole body tensed and he thought he might be having a heart attack. Which he always thought of as an attack of the heart. She believed in him: he didn’t have to explain everything, spell it out to someone who looked at him suspiciously. She had a steady gaze and after a while he could return it. He needed her, and sometimes he thought she needed him, but that was the problem: that was what she didn’t like, that was why she’d said she wasn’t his mother. He didn’t have a mother—he’d never had a mother; Gran did what she could. Now it was too late. He had nowhere to go and no one to talk to.

  His head ached and he gripped the steering wheel with hands like claws. If he went faster, maybe it would even out the corrugations. He put his foot to the floor and held it there. The car fishtailed on the gravel and he smiled as he hauled on the steering wheel.

  Sixty

  Tinny had been through a tough time. He’d thought death wasn’t far away, asking to come in through the door of his hospital room. It was polite enough, but not what he was ready for. They’d discovered another tumour, and this time it meant chemo and radio and relying again on Peaches to look after Skel. She already had Rock. Finally, he was back home again and seeing his world anew. It wasn’t always safe.

  There were times when Tinny woke up, early or late, and knew it was going to be one of those days. There was a tingling in his limbs, his heart beat a little faster and there was a clarity, a sharpness, in his head. Or his brain. Anyway, from his neck up. On these days he could do anything, go anywhere—he could see through barriers of people and places, he could be somebody else. On other days he woke with a dull headache, his thoughts blurred and confused; there was a firewall between him and the world around. He couldn’t drag himself out of bed. There was no discernible pattern to these very different days and he wondered whether something had happened to him in hospital that took him down a path where he seemed to live other people’s lives, took over their thoughts and even their bodies, and now it was happening with the elements. Had something, some event, occurred that the doctors and nurses failed to mention? Maybe they’d given him an experimental drug without his consent (or maybe with it—he couldn’t remember) and there were strange side effects. Or was it the result of too many anaesthetics, of chemo and radio, so his brain chemistry was changed, perhaps forever?

  He’d slept in, but he now got out of bed and pulled back the curtain. There was blue sky with grey-white clouds moving at speed, blown by the wind from the west. The trees were bending. He pulled on his tracksuit pants, a shirt and a sweater. Found his thongs and walked outside. Skel had already left for school. Tinny made his way along the track towards the coast, breathing deeply, convinced of the value of negative ions. There was an occasional puddle, a remnant of overnight rain. He came to the top of a small rise and in the distance could see the ocean, mad with whitecaps. He moved slowly, stretching out his arms like the wings of a bird, and then his legs in giant strides. His long hair flicked into his eyes and he moved his head so it blew backwards. He could feel it streaming behind him. Then he bent low to the wind and started to run down the slope: at any moment he could take off and fly over the treetops to the sea. His eyes watered in the wind, he spun around and around, his arms the limbs of a tree, his bare feet digging into the soft, damp sand; he swayed with the gusts, his thoughts deserted him; the leaves of the marri brushed his face and he could feel the coarsening bark of his skin, the red blood sap moving through him. He stretched out, shooting upwards with purple tips of the new leaves, his trunk thickening, feet rooting below the ground, around rocks, through sticky clay and into the stream below.

  When Tinny made his way back to his tin shed he was ecstatic, and worried.

  On days when it was hot and still he would lie down in the dirt with the ants crawling and his head would burst and he would catch on fire, burning, burning like an exploding grass tree.

  On wild, wet days at the coast he would take off, skimming the waves, gliding into the hollows, back into the water with the speed of a flying fish.

  On still, starry nights he would creep like a fox, rush through the trees, a barking owl, hide in a hollow, a brush-tailed phascogale.

  On days that followed these disturbing episodes, Tinny was quiet and content, happy to sit inside and listen to the occasional shower of rain on his roof, to perch on his little verandah and wait for Skel to come home. And then he would check again on what jobs he was supposed to be doing, who needed what before they arrived at their holiday houses for a day or a week or a month. Gutters and tanks, electrics, septics, rooms aired and painted, a trimming of trees, a run over the firebreaks, a supply of wood. Sometimes a box of shopping and a carton of beer, or wine. They could rely on Tinny, no matter how he felt. He pinched himself; he wasn’t always away with the fairies.

  Sixty-one

  Greta sat in the comfortable old chair that stayed in place all year round on the small deck attached to her shed. Whenever she arrived home and registered the chair’s presence, she thought its singularity said a lot about her life, herself. Lonely—and independent. Now she looked up from her reading of the local paper and focused on the patch of bush where the ground was covered in leaves and there was a noise of some slow-moving animal. She was sure it was a goanna rather than anything more sinister, like a snake, but she wanted to be sure. The day was warm and still, one of a string in early summer, and there was no disguising crackling movement over dried gum leaves. Then she saw it—a blue-tongue lizard, moving its head from side to side with a lettuce leaf in its mouth, no doubt gath
ered from her small bucket where she temporarily stored scraps that were to be added to her compost pile. She had been surprised to learn that these ancient-looking creatures had to work so hard to achieve a bite-sized portion of a leaf. Rough gums, but no teeth.

  Turning again to her paper, she thought this was the sort of information, reptilian, along with a photograph, that might appear there. This week’s headline was about dung beetles and a successful breeding program, which meant they appeared earlier in the summer. Inside, there was an article about successful students at the local school; another about scammers—people buying dogs online, except the dogs never arrived at their destination. There was an article about a man receiving an award for his services to St John Ambulance, with a photograph of him smiling and holding the certificate. In the social pages there was a photograph of two beautifully dressed men with the heading announcing that it was the first gay wedding in town. Further in was a photograph of a young surfer, a girl, who was already a champion, following in the footsteps of her father and grandfather.

  Every week the paper seemed to her much the same. This was a community that knew what it was about, what was important for its continuity, for what held it together. She knew she could never be part of this, not fully. She could live here, certainly, and participate at the edges, doing the things she had always done by herself. But perhaps there was a small step she could take, a move that would nudge her just inside the invisible boundary of the circle? She turned to the classified advertisements, under the heading of Workplace. Unless she decided to pick grapes in the local vineyards, she found nothing that appealed to her, nothing she was qualified to do.

  Greta could see that Tinny and Skel—and Clive—were characters in a space of their own making. For some time, some years, that’s how she, too, had lived, but without the escape into story. She had focused on the particular environment she was in: its challenges, so demandingly physical that at the end of the day she wanted nothing else but to sink into her bed, or curl up in a swag, and sleep without dreams. Everything shut down. Life by default.

  She knew there were other ways of being, and thought of the time when she’d visited Hetty and her beautiful garden, both wild and cultivated: nature left alone, and then the stepping into it to provide a shape and vision. Both had a place. Passivity and action. And Oliver, too. Except for the last few months, he was a man who’d negotiated an uneasy peace, but that didn’t mean he’d turned his back on the world, even if he’d ignored his neighbourhood. But she could see now that what she’d attempted, since moving to her shed on the coast, lacked balance; it wasn’t enough. Tinny and Skel and Clive, they had no idea about world affairs, the events—unknown to them—that shaped their lives. Although it was true that Tinny, at least, could see things from the inside looking out, better than she could herself. Nevertheless, she believed that ignorance of the big picture made you helpless to defend yourself. To mount a counterattack you had to know your enemy, and neither father nor son had a clue, and Clive was in jail. She’d already decided that she needed to get a job, to read and listen and watch, to become informed, to make something of her knowledge and skills, to take some responsibility for the world. And, once again, to earn some money. But what if you couldn’t win? You tilted at windmills and lost your soul? You became cynical and despairing. In the end, maybe psychotic, like Clive. Or sad, like Oliver. Or worse. Marvyn.

  She was good at thinking herself into a corner. She could see that much.

  Sixty-two

  Rock missed waking up to the sounds of the bush and the ocean; he missed his brother and Tinny and walking along the track in the mornings to wait for the school bus. He was worried that his father might die and he wouldn’t be there. He knew that to be in the city, living with Peaches, was the right place for him. On balance, he thought, there was little choice. He needed to make the break because he wanted to get to know his mother, and because he was fearful about what would happen if he stayed put, living in a tin shed, not quite in the middle of nowhere. Already it seemed a peculiar life with its own set of rules, framed by patterns and beliefs that you didn’t question, a prison without visible bars. He didn’t want that, although he was uncertain about what he did want.

  In the first few weeks at his new school, he met a boy he’d known at primary school. He didn’t think they’d become friends, but it was good to have someone who knew what to do, where the classes were, who could tell him about the teachers and options and the names of some of the students. He felt confident enough and could tell Tinny and Skel that he was having a good time. He spoke to them on the phone that was connected after Tinny came out of hospital the second time. Rock decided that Peaches would be called Peaches because no other name seemed to fit. When he spoke to others about her, he sometimes said ‘my mother’. He was pleased that he didn’t have to share a house with Alex, although he liked him. Alex was a careful, thoughtful man, and didn’t talk to him as if he were a child who understood nothing. Nor did Tinny, for that matter, but sometimes he behaved like someone who had no intention of growing up. Although Skel had said he thought their father had changed, especially after the last stint in hospital.

  In his second week in the city, Rock asked Peaches about her parents—his grandparents, who were complete strangers to him. He was surprised to find out that his grandfather, Dick, could still be alive. ‘Do you mean you don’t know? I thought he was dead.’

  ‘A lot of things happened when I was very young, and as far as I know he didn’t want to keep in contact. He’d left us, to look after his mother in England, and never came back. I think it was convenient for him, a sick mother.’

  ‘Why did he really leave?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose he got tired of my mother, and me. I went to live with my aunt, Jean, in Sydney, after your grandmother, Rose, died. I was just five.’

  ‘Your mother. That must have been hard. What did she die of?’

  ‘Well, she drowned, but that’s another mystery. No one knows whether it was an accident or not. It wasn’t a day for swimming, but she was found in the ocean. She was wearing her bathers, so …’ She shrugged.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us about these things? I’ve never even heard of your aunt Jean.’

  ‘I suppose because there were things that I didn’t want to remember. But it was good of her, very good, to look after me. I discovered that she knew my father before my mother did. And he told Jean that he’d married the wrong sister. Maybe that’s one of the reasons that she looked after me, because I was Dick’s daughter, not because she was very close to her sister. Jean told me she didn’t know him very well, and didn’t like him. But then I found this photo of Jean with my father, which I don’t understand. That was later.’

  ‘That photo of you, standing at a gate—do you know where you lived, when you were a little girl?’

  ‘Yes, more or less. I went to find the place; Jean knew the suburb, and I had some memories of a street. I wanted to go back because something very odd happened there and I think it affected me.’

  She told Rock about their next-door neighbours, their backyard and the men digging. Her understanding of what she saw. It wasn’t a doll.

  ‘Did Tinny know that? Is that why he held onto the skeleton?’

  ‘No. No. I didn’t know myself until recently, when I tracked down some old newspapers. Tinny wouldn’t do that— he’s not a cruel man. I’m not sure why he was so attached to it, although he did say it was a family heirloom. And I’m only guessing that what I saw then is what made skeletons so troubling for me. It was as if everything else that was going on at that time became focused on this one event. And it’s not as if it’s something you’d see every day for most people.’

  ‘Do you talk to Alex about these things—does he know?’

  ‘Yes, Rock, he does. He’s a good listener, doesn’t play the amateur shrink. That’s what I do. My panic attacks … I need some sort of explanation.’

  ‘Well, you’re not really an amateur, a
re you?’

  She smiled at him, and nodded.

  Rock thought his mother’s story was frightening. Later that week he told Skel about it. Skel didn’t say anything for a while and then he, too, wanted to know whether Tinny knew what had happened.

  ‘No,’ said Rock. ‘Peaches didn’t know herself about the bones. She didn’t remember, or didn’t know what she was looking at. She was little.’ Then down the line Rock heard a long, drawn-out, cackling laugh. ‘Those kookaburras,’ he said. ‘Crazy.’

  ‘They fit,’ said Skel. ‘I wonder why Tinny liked the skeleton so much. He still talks to it, you know. He’s changed since this last time in hospital. I think he’s worse than before. You don’t know what he’s on about half the time.’

  Sixty-three

  It wasn’t a long drive—no more than an hour—but she needed to think about what she wanted to say. She hadn’t finished with him, and perhaps she never would, but if he would talk to her and give her the opportunity to say what she wanted then there was a chance that the troubling images, the disturbing feelings, would begin to lose their hold over her. It was always the same mix that caused her to wake in the night, her heart beating so hard she was frightened she would die. It was gloves and noise and darkness; sometimes skin on skin. She would never see his face. By daylight, she was angry that anyone or anything could have such power over her. She’d learned that Clive was in the regional prison, not condemned to the city, and that he’d tried to kill himself. They’d put him on suicide watch, but now they weren’t so worried. One of the prison guards had told a friend of Greta’s that he’d found God. When she heard this, she laughed. ‘That was always his problem. He hasn’t found God; it sounds like he’s failed to lose him—or her.’