Except for the bush mob who weren’t so easily fooled and had a few ideas of their own about where young Treasure had originated from. And didn’t the anger of the bush mob bubble away in their guts as they grumbled at the injustice of it all. The more erudite had reasoned that if they had to hand over their coloured kids then why shouldn’t Odile. No matter that the mother wasn’t black, the kid was still coloured, wasn’t he, and everybody knew what happened to them.
So what a sticky pudding Father Macredie found himself in. He wondered what to do next, mulling over the impact that this little episode was going to have on his theory that black men had black sperm (hence black babies) and white men had white sperm (hence white babies). His own ejaculations had always been under the cover of darkness so he couldn’t very well use himself as an example, but surely it must mean that the fathers of all the coloured kids had the capacity to produce coloured sperm as well as black or white, depending on their genetic disposition. As this phenomenon only seemed to manifest itself in the tropics (his cousin was a missionary in Africa and had seen similar things there) it might have something to do with the weather as well, or maybe the water. It was something he would need to investigate further. So the only plausible explanation for Treasure’s creation was that at the unfortunate moment Jean Claude had somehow managed to slip in a coloured one. Well, that certainly put a different light on things, didn’t it, so there would be no way he’d be taking young Treasure away from his rightful parents and the bush mob would just have to accept and understand that. Despite Treasure’s coloured skin, he would always be white on the inside not like their kids who would always be black on the inside – and that’s where the difference therein lay.
But things have a way of sorting themselves out, and as Treasure’s lungs struggled to breathe and a few days later his wee heart ceased to beat, poor bereft Odile experienced the extreme sadness that the bush mob had already been put through with the loss of their children. Then something really beautiful happened. Those of the bush mob who had lost a cherished child put aside the anger that threatened to consume them and went to Odile to comfort her in her time of need. And the more they looked, the more they found that there was an understanding between them that transcended all the barriers of race and place and other worldly things because despite what they tell you about the heart, where you can only find love or the lack of it, the truth of the matter is that all other emotion is born, nurtured and set free from the depths of our soul. And it was a good lesson for them all that sorrow cuts just as deeply whether you are black on the inside or white.
Punapi
It had long been the tradition for the bush mob to go camping when the timirraringa* flowered because the dry season nights were much cooler than in the wet and it was always the best time to collect sugarbag†. So when Aloysius invited Brother Angus to go camping with him and his family that year it was all the old man could do to contain his excitement. But there’s no such thing as a free lunch, is there, there’s always a catch, and this started to sink in as Aloysius waxed eloquent about the fishing and the hunting and the beautiful sights while lamenting Epiphany’s poor arthritic knees and how hard it was for her to walk nowadays. Brother Angus knew exactly where this conversation was heading, and if taking them in the out-of-bounds-for-bush-mob mission truck was the price to pay for an opportunity of a lifetime then it was definitely a deal.
*Eucalyptus miniata flowers from May until August
†Honey from native stingless beehive
Now Brother Angus was not mean or conniving like some of the other brothers. Nor had he ever been known to have bent or broken the truth. So it was with much thought and conscience wrestling that he asked permission to take the truck to check out a site further around the headland where he’d been told there were large groves of the termite-proof native pine. As Brother Angus reasoned to himself, no-one from the mission had ever been blessed with such a privilege before so it was certainly not a matter to be passed up simply for the sake of honesty. And Father Macredie, never suspecting for a moment that the sweet old man was lying all the way up his alimentary canal and out through his false teeth for his own gain and not for the better good of the mission and all who served there, wished him God speed and insisted that he take extra jerry cans of fuel as well.
‘You sit in the back and that mob can teach you about stuff,’ said the kindly Aloysius when Brother Angus met them at the first bend past the rubbish dump.
And teach him they did as he sat perched on the spare tyre with the wind in his hair, feeling quite the adventurer.
‘Look here, we call this one kuriwa,’ said Mark as he smilingly patted his daughter on her cheeky little bum.
‘And this one is pularti,’ said Dinah as, much to Brother’s horror, she pulled out her breast to suckle her baby son.
‘And what do you call that?’ asked Brother Angus, quickly searching for something to distract them from their intimate body parts.
He pointed to a small python crossing the track behind them. Well, didn’t that cause a stir! Everyone, distracted alright, screamed out to Aloysius to stop before Epiphany, arthritic knees forgotten, leapt over the side in a startling display of gymnastic prowess and dispatched the snake before coiling it underneath the spare tyre away from the dogs so they could cook it up when they arrived at the place they called Punapi. Brother Angus, albeit having been the cause of the unfortunate reptile’s untimely and gruesome demise, was not particularly happy. He peeked down the hole in the rim to reassure himself that the poor thing really was dead before grudgingly sitting back on the tyre and twisting himself away from the sight of Dinah’s shapely breast that hadn’t been properly put away.
On they bounced and swayed as Aloysius expertly wove between trees and skirted rocky outcrops and ant mounds. And it was while gazing aloft at the flight of a brahminy kite that Brother Angus suddenly felt a stabbing pain in his arse, like he’d been jabbed with a pin. It took a few seconds for his poor old brain to register the fact that the snake had risen from the dead and was expressing its obvious displeasure at its treatment at the hands of Epiphany and its subsequent incarceration under the tyre. A second later another angry strike propelled him into the air and before the shock had time to register on Mary Magdalene’s face he lunged forward, still in his sitting position and landed on top of her. The cigarette that was halfway to her lips spun through the air and landed down the arse crack of Mark’s shorts. Mark, who had been deep in conversation with Dinah, let out a scream of pain mid sentence and started whacking himself on the buttocks much to the enormous amusement of Dinah, Epiphany and Matthew who, oblivious to the flight of the smouldering object, thought he was simply acting the fool. Suddenly the snake fired out of the rim like a coiled spring and all hell broke loose. Dogs were barking and trampling people as the snake frantically tried to escape amidst the flailing paws and legs and arms. Aloysius, on hearing the commotion, slammed on the brakes sending Dinah cartwheeling over the side with her son still asleep at the breast. Luckily she landed on her back sparing the poor child from any serious physical trauma.
Meanwhile the snake had found its way to Matthew’s lap and was making every effort to burrow up his t-shirt. He rolled around, screaming hysterically while everyone selfishly abandoned him, jumping overboard to safety. Somehow in the melee he managed to grab the snake by the tail and, swinging it wildly around his head, flung it into the scrub. Even before the snake hit the ground the dogs were after it, but fear lent wings to the terrified reptile and it took to a hollow log before the stampeding women reached it. Mary Magdalene was all for flushing it out and killing it but Brother Angus, not having the stomach for a repeat performance, leapt to the hapless snake’s defence, saying that it deserved to live after all it had been through. Ignoring his pleas, Mary Magdalene stalked around the log with a steely determination in her eyes, a look that they’d only ever seen once before when Mark had nicked the old woman�
�s last cigarette and she was going to choke him.
Despite Mary Magdalene poking sticks up the log and kicking it, the snake wisely refused to budge. It had safely squeezed itself into the hollow around a bend and had no intention of being killed a second time. Of course no-one thought to bring the axe along to chop it out so the snake was finally left in peace and they travelled on. Mary Magdalene sulked the rest of the way to Punapi. She had quite a fondness for carpet snake and was making sure that if she wasn’t happy then no-one else would be either.
While the women set up camp Brother Angus and the blokes headed off to do a bit of fishing. Being real insensitive bastards they were having a good laugh at Matthew rolling around with the snake until Matthew decided he’d had enough teasing and hurled the bait at Mark’s head before stomping off. Misery loves company alright, and he sat down with Mary Magdalene under the trees where mother and son could sulk together.
After gorging themselves on fish that had been roasted to perfection in the coals, the contented Brother Angus and the others prepared themselves for sleep. But Brother Angus had never spent a night out under the stars before and so it was with a sense of uncertainty but also of wonder that he listened to the sounds of the darkness and the symphony of snores around him. Even the baby was snoring. As the constellations turned and the stars moved across the sky, Brother Angus’s thoughts strayed to all sorts of things. He thought about this wonderful family that had befriended him and what it would have been like to have been born with black skin or crippled. He wondered whether he would have been a good father. And who could blame him for feeling the odd pang of regret as he lay in the darkness contemplating opportunities that had wafted tantalisingly close but had never been taken up and decisions that had seemed so right at the time but in all probability weren’t.
And as the dawn broke, Brother Angus decided to take a nice long walk down the beach to think some more. Off he set and he walked and he walked until the camp was nothing more than a mere speck in the never-ending distance. All alone with his pigeon-toed footprints in the sand and the wind and the waves, he could have been the only human being in the world – alone that is except for a dark shape, way down in the distance. He set out to investigate. It not being the right shape for a stranded whale or anything that his limited knowledge of flotsam or jetsam could identify certainly wasn’t a problem for gentle Brother Angus. He just kept on walking, marvelling all the while at the beautiful dawn that was unfolding in all its pearlescent glory. As he got closer to the large object recognition sunk in and Brother Angus began to accelerate until his sixty-seven-year-old legs were moving at what could only be described as an undignified trot.
Providence had smiled upon Brother Angus in a big way that day. He came to a halt and his eyes feasted upon a palette of rum that had jumped ship and somehow managed to find its way over the offshore reefs and landed undamaged on the beach. If he had been a non-believer this would most certainly have given him an excellent reason to consider the existence of a greater being, but Brother Angus’s faith was already secure. With a prayer of heartfelt thanks he cut through the plastic wrapping and cardboard with a shell and opened the first bottle that his eager hands could grasp. Having never been adverse to a little tipple Brother Angus’s hands shook with anticipation as he took a good swig and then another, blissfully savouring the rich flavour. His head spun from the sudden rush of alcohol and excitement coursing through his veins. Clutching his bottle he headed back to the camp.
Aloysius was delirious with joy. He jumped around like a big kid. Although it was illegal for the bush mob to imbibe alcohol he knew the taste of rum well, having had a few furtive sessions behind the hotel near the wharf when he’d been to the Big Joint. The blokes headed off to perform the salvage operation while the women got busy making a shelter to shade the rum and themselves from the sun.
‘I didn’t know I was such a good hunter,’ joked Brother Angus.
‘Might be that you were born bush mob under that white skin of yours,’ said Mark.
The other blokes laughed and clapped him on the back in a show of conviviality and mateship. Considering he was one of the mission mob, he was pretty alright. Taking a moment to have another sip of liquid treasure, they finished loading up the truck with their bounty and headed back.
And goodness me what faces Dinah, Epiphany and Mary Magdalene made as they sampled their first mouthful of alcohol. Not at all like a good old cup of tea, was it? But as they became accustomed to the strange taste so the frequency of the sips became more urgent and their tongues loosened and their speech became incoherent. It didn’t take long to get through the first bottle or the second. After that it just made more sense if everyone had their own bottle. What a good time was being had by all. In fact it was so good that by breakfast Dinah was completely drunk and Mary Magdalene and Epiphany close behind. By mid morning everyone was roaring drunk except for Dinah’s baby who was busy sucking on an empty bottle and Dinah who was comatose.
One by one they followed in Dinah’s stead – one passing out here face down; another passing out there with their lips still locked around their bottle; yet another sinking into a twisted and spent heap, their bottle slipping from their limp hand and draining its precious contents into the greedy sand. And good old Brother Angus, he wasn’t bothered by the noises of his second night under the stars, was he, as he heartily joined in the chorus of snoring drunks. What a blissful state unconsciousness is although sadly we don’t know it until we wake up. And boy oh boy, did Brother Angus know it when he came to the next morning with the sun shining in his eyes. His poor old head felt like it had been hit with a baseball bat while his bowels blurped and heaved around like molten lava. Propping himself into a sitting position, he peered through bloodshot eyes at Mary Magdalene and the blokes who had all taken on a terrible shade of grey. All he could see of Dinah was her skinny arse wobbling around as she vomited frenziedly into the sand, her baby screeching hysterically beside her.
And what a treacherous drive home it was. Stomachs heaved uncontrollably, emptying their contents over the side of the truck if they were quick enough, streaking it down the sides of the truck if they weren’t. And if the fumes of Dinah’s rum-laden vomit on the passenger side floor and her dress weren’t already bad enough, the stench of the baby’s unchanged nappy assaulted Brother Angus’s senses even further. He gagged and stuck his head out the window to suck in deep draughts of clean air. But, grateful for small mercies, he was more than thankful when the baby, after suckling a decent quantity of Dinah’s rum-spiked milk, finally shut its infernal grizzling up and went to sleep.
Poor Brother Angus had never been this drunk in all his life, let alone driven like it, but he was certainly paying for it now. Trees suddenly appeared out of nowhere, or the track turned into a bend or a ditch when it wasn’t supposed to, causing more than a few heart-stopping moments. But whether through divine intervention or just sheer good luck, Brother Angus got them safely to Ampiji where they refilled the water container and guzzled their fill. And it was here, as they sat wallowing like a family of buffaloes at the edge of the water, heads pounding and indifferent to the threat of crocodile attack, that they heard the news from Shem and Seth who were heading out to Fourcroy for wallaby. Dear old Fatima had passed away. She had asked them when they left to bring her back some crab but all they had was a truckload of rum. Sobered by the sad news they reached for another bottle to drink to their dear old friend.
The Good Doctor
It was a sad day for Sister de Lourdes when she handed the keys of the infirmary to young Doctor Jeremy and after checking the time on her watch and straightening her habit, threw herself off the cliff in the exact spot where Horace the horse had taken a fatal tumble earlier in the year.
And it was only three hours later when Shem and a few of the other blokes were going fishing and they heard her pitiful cries for help that any of them knew that the woman of steel had fina
lly reached breaking point.
Born in Newcastle, the diminutive Sister de Lourdes had worked in a leprosarium before being sent on to the mission where her sharp tongue and tiny little shoes click-clacking on the tiled floor continued to strike fear in the hearts of all that lay in her path. Preferring the pain of their injuries and suffering to the pain of her rebukes, the bush mob made it their business to keep well clear of the little shrew. She had an uncanny ability to make you feel guilty about being sick which only made you feel even sicker. It was just easier to steer clear of her.
Taking Sister’s advancing age – and the increasing ill health among the bush mob – into consideration, Father Macredie had decided to bring in another health professional to work in the infirmary, a decision that had not been discussed with Sister or accepted by her either when she found out about it. And when Doctor Jeremy had arrived all bright and bubbly with his perfect sutures and sharp wit, the battle lines were drawn straight and true right down the middle of the infirmary floor. From day one Sister let him know in no uncertain terms which side of the infirmary he was to stay on and woe betide him if he dared to challenge her. This suited Doctor Jeremy fine. There was no way he was going to put up with her shit anyway. And so it was that this strange arrangement came to be.
Every Secret Thing Page 11