But this made things even worse for the bush mob. It had been bad enough with one grumpy person working there but with the two incessantly sniping at each other and then whinging about the other one to the poor sick bastards who just wanted to have their treatment and to then get the hell out of there, it was intolerable. And try as Father Macredie might, no amount of mediation could quell the growing animosity as both vied to cast the other in an ever-worsening light.
‘But I saw him pick his nose,’ claimed Sister de Lourdes.
‘I caught her trying to steal my pen,’ said Doctor Jeremy.
It just went on and on. So imagine the surprise when Father Macredie unexpectedly threw a large spanner in their works in the shape of Ginger Johnson, the new nurse, a bovine-faced woman in her forties with large solid hands that looked like they were used to a bit of hard work.
And work those hands did, cleaning up the big mess the pair of them had made between themselves. They cleaned up the bush mob’s reluctance to go anywhere near the infirmary too. And they cleaned up the doubts that had been swirling around in Father Macredie’s head about the damned place every functioning properly again. But when Sister de Lourdes heard those hands had also cleaned up Doctor Jeremy’s heart – and given it a pretty good polishing too – that was when she decided she’d had enough.
But Sister was a tough old bird. After being carried back to the infirmary by Shem and the other blokes and having her two broken ankles set by the very man who had literally driven her over the edge, she told Father Macredie right where he could stick the bloody place and the other conniving pair as well because there was no way she’d be working with that whore of a nurse or that filthy Casanova who called himself a doctor.
But they say it’s better the devil you know than the one you don’t and boy was Father Macredie in for a shock. After hearing about Nurse Ginger and Doctor Jeremy carrying on like a pair of camp dogs on heat, he felt he had no option but to send the disgraceful pair on their way. But when the new Doctor Phil fronted up for work a week later Father Macredie could only close his eyes and turn around and walk away in despair.
Doctor Phil was a shifty, weedy-looking specimen with a big shock of unruly black hair that had been scraped back into the semblance of a pony tail. His crumpled clothes were ill-fitting and unkempt and it wasn’t only Sara and Judy who remarked that he looked like he’d been rummaging around in the pile of cast-offs with the bush mob. Most annoying of all were his dirty cracked feet with their long toenails that scraped along the floor like the scales of a snake when he walked. Betty, his braless Amazonian wife who used her cleavage to secrete innumerable surprises, including baby possums that’d lost their mums, was no better. But what a doctor! Totally unflappable in any situation that presented itself, he worked his way through the mountain of afflictions with a compassion and skill that had never been seen by the bush mob before. It was like he really cared when they got hurt or sick or had babies and, most amazing of all, he didn’t want anything from them. Not their souls or their children or their land, he just wanted to do his job and be their friend. Something that was virtually unheard of in the bush mob’s short but turbulent history with the muruntawi*.
*white people (plural)
But you just can’t please everyone and it was with a trembling hand that Father Macredie – with Brother John in tow as back-up – rapped on Doctor Phil’s door a few months later. He had come to discuss the issue of the good doctor’s personal and professional hygiene. And what a sight met their eyes. Doctor Phil greeted his unexpected visitors and ushered them into the kitchen where the braless Betty was busy spooning what appeared to be porridge into the mouth of a baby wallaby sitting on her lap. Having already been exposed to Doctor Phil’s slovenly habits in the infirmary, Father and Brother John were expecting a mess alright. But the place was worse than anything they’d ever seen; it was a pigsty, with every inch of bench space and sink covered with dirty dishes and pots of all description, the shrivelled remains of food stuck to them.
‘Come on Gertie and Flossie, where’s your manners?’
Doctor Phil shooed two chickens that were roosting on the back of the chair away and motioned to Father to sit down. Noting the dried chicken shit on the back edge of the chair, Father gingerly lowered his arse down, praying all the while that he hadn’t sat in any while doctor Phil lifted a small hairy dog off the other chair for Brother John. Upset at being shifted, the canine snapped at Doctor Phil who, without batting an eyelid, dumped it onto the floor and then proceeded to rifle through the mess on the kitchen table for some cups. Finding two that were empty, he blew the dust out of them and after wiping them with his filthy fingers filled the cups with tea and handed them to the goggle-eyed visitors.
‘Don’t worry about Rastus, he wouldn’t hurt a flea,’ Betty airily reassured them.
The dog recovered from being bounced on the floor and planted itself at Brother John’s left leg, glowering at him. Fearing for the safety of his leg, Brother John crossed it over the other one while he twisted his arse around more to the right so he was a little bit further away from Rastus and his fangs.
But the best laid plans went astray that day and the gutless Father Macredie and Brother John left a short while later without having said what they had gone there to say, or finishing their dirty cups of tea either. Maybe Father was too shocked at being pissed on by the baby wallaby when Betty dumped it in his lap while she went to the toilet, or maybe it was Rastus’s decision to attach himself to Brother John’s trouser leg that caused them to forget the purpose of their mission. But after promising to return another day to see Doctor Phil’s pet snake that couldn’t be found in the chaos of the bedroom, the pair returned to the presbytery grumbling about the doctor’s menagerie and the filth and the utter stupidity of it all.
As always, if you want a job done then give it to a woman. And so it came to be that the tactless Sister Jerome and the guileless Sister Damien were sent the following day to do the job that Father Macredie and Brother John couldn’t. And what a scene it was! Doctor Phil, stung to the core by Sister Jerome’s vitriolic accusations, sunk to the ground in shock (Rastus and the chooks were sitting on the chairs) while the braless Betty with a tiny pink possum face peering from her cleavage threw every hair-curling expletive she could think of and then some at the nuns as she boldly sent them on their way.
‘And don’t come back,’ she screeched to their hastily retreating backs while Rastus the dog yapped wildly in their wake.
What a stir it all caused back in Father’s office as he paced up and down, wondering what to do next while Sister Jerome huffed and puffed about the rudeness of braless Betty.
‘And that horrid woman swore at us,’ said Sister Jerome.
Sister Damien dabbed at her eyes and honked loudly into her hanky. ‘I didn’t know what to say.’
That would have to be a first, thought Father Macredie unkindly as he watched the woman’s face contorting while she struggled to hold back the tears.
Poor doctor Phil didn’t know what to say either. He sat on one of the now-vacated chairs while braless Betty rummaged around in her cleavage for a cigarette. And when Betty blurted the whole sorry saga out to a group of women that she’d bailed up under mango trees a few hours later, they were lost for words too.
‘You should have seen Rastus giving them curry. They scurried off like a pair of cockroaches,’ snorted Betty.
They all nodded, not knowing what the hell curry was but getting the gist of the story all the same.
Still, the problem of Doctor Phil hung heavily over Father Macredie’s head like a big black cloud and it was only after much careful thought and endless tossing in bed that he finally decided that there was only one thing left to do. He had to get rid of the filthy doctor once and for all. But what a silly sausage Macredie was. Imagine thinking that the bush mob were going to help him or agree to anything
that had the rank and redolent tang of shit hitting fan blades attached to it. They weren’t that stupid.
In fact complacency was now as much a part of the bush mob’s make-up as the toes on their feet and the frowns that were appearing on their faces as they listened to Father’s tirade. As much as they liked Doctor Phil it just wasn’t their problem. They didn’t ask him to be their doctor. It was none of their business.
‘Maybe you should let God work it out,’ suggested Judy cheekily. ‘You reckon he knows everything.’
‘He’s not interested in trivial stuff like that,’ retorted Father testily.
‘Well who keeps telling us that God can do anything if you pray hard enough?’ insisted another. ‘You must be telling us big lies.’
‘I’m not telling anyone lies,’ said Father, his voice rising a few octaves higher. He had never been put on the spot by the bush mob like this before and wasn’t liking it.
‘If you’re not telling lies then who is? God?’ asked Caleb as Judy stood next to him and nodded encouragingly to the crowd, egging them on. She was a real shit stirrer that one.
And so it came to be that for the first time ever, the mission mob found themselves sitting where they’d never sat before – between a rock called ‘you didn’t see that one coming did you’ and a hard place called ‘bush mob indifference’. It was starting to sink in to the mission mob’s brains that the bush mob weren’t the subjugated imbeciles they’d always imagined them to be but clever individuals who had learnt to sit on the wobbly fence of cultural evolution without falling off. They had adapted; they were survivors.
Marigold
And so life went on pretty much the same as it had before. The mission mob came and went as their age, interest or scandalous behaviour decreed while the bush mob found new continuums on the ever-changing line level of their existence. Then one day, while the bush mob were busily absorbed in themselves and least expecting any disturbing ripples or ructions, something totally unheard of happened – one of the coloured kids turned up. Now it was only unheard of because none of the bush mob had actually heard anyone speak about it before. They’d been told the coloured kids wouldn’t want to associate with their black mothers once they’d had a taste of the white life. Besides, if you spoke about it then it might actually make it come true and what would they do then?
And as for the mission mob, well this wasn’t supposed to happen. They’d done their bit over the years sending the coloured kids off to families armed with various menial skills. So the arrival of Marigold, the first child of Judy, who was once known to the bush mob as Tapalinga really threw them into a quandary. They couldn’t bundle her off to the Garden of Eden again because she was too old for that. Nor did Mrs Jones want the wanton hussy back as their servant having sprung the little slut underneath Mr Jones in the spare room. The poor man was still traumatised by the ordeal. This wasn’t the first time she’d raped him, he claimed.
Marigold’s arrival was evidence enough that she certainly wasn’t one of the docile ones who took their lot uncomplainingly. It was abundantly clear to all that she could think for herself. How else could she have made her way back to the mission unassisted? The story that an unnamed but kindly priest had given her the money from the poor box to pay for her passage on the barge did seem a bit farfetched. Everyone knew that priests didn’t do things like that. They spent the poor box money on more practical things like stocking up the wine cellar.
And so it came to be on that hot steamy wet season afternoon when the crinum lilies were in flower and the stingrays were fat and ready to be hunted that Sister Benedicta and Father Macredie met to discuss the awkward predicament that had walked off the barge that morning armed with a small bag of clothes and a head full of defiance.
‘But what would the stupid child want to come back here for?’ asked Sister as she fiddled with the pleats in her habit. ‘She had the Jones family with their five children to clean up after, what more could she want?’
Father Macredie nodded. He couldn’t understand it either. Marigold had been with them since she was twelve, having been through three families prior to that. Untameable, they had all said, and it was only the kindly Mr Jones who had agreed to take the girl on and do something with her.
‘They even let her go out with them in public occasionally,’ said Father. ‘I know from their letters to the Bishop what they felt about her.’
‘Well, I doubt they’d have her back again after this, the ungrateful fool,’ muttered Sister as she silently prayed, as only a woman could, that a gravid uterus was not the reason for Marigold’s absconding.
Back at Judy’s house meanwhile Marigold was eyeing off the pannikin of tea that Judy had handed her. She had been an excellent student when it came to the ways of cleanliness so Marigold was not at all comfortable with the grimy vessel that her lips were now expected to make close contact with, or the fact that her mother was, of all things, drinking out of a corned beef tin. Unsure if this peculiar behaviour was something to do with local custom or sheer eccentricity, Marigold reluctantly dragged her attentions back to her tea. This hadn’t been lost on Judy who was watching her closely out of the corner of her eye and smarting at her daughter’s rudeness. She’d given up her own cup for Marigold to use and didn’t like the way Marigold was inspecting it so closely. Only Judy had drunk out of it lately (and her favourite dog Panacua, of course, who was allowed to lick up the dregs). Marigold could have the corned beef tin if she was going to be like that.
As is often the way with people who haven’t seen each other for twenty-odd years, there wasn’t a lot of conversation going on. Marigold and Judy racked their brains for something in common to talk about and it was a bit of a relief for both when one by one the bush mob started to stop by on the pretext of looking for a cigarette or asking whether Gypsy the dog had come that way or wanting a cup of sugar. The news of Marigold’s arrival had spread like wildfire fanned by gale force winds and the mob were turning up in their droves to check her out like ashes falling from the sky. Yes, she certainly looked like her mother, there was no mistaking that. But it didn’t take much for anyone to see that was where the similarity began and ended.
But the gathering crowd of curious bush mob had in all their excitement totally forgotten their manners and how to be kind to others. They’d forgotten that Marigold was flesh of their flesh and blood of their blood and that she had once lived in their hearts. In fact they weren’t being very welcoming at all as they busily focused on Marigold’s differences, not sparing a thought for the poor young woman who had spent the better part of two decades having all bush mob memories beaten out of her and the empty spaces filled up with muruntani stuff. No all they could say (in lingo) were things like ‘look she’s washing her hands again’, or ‘did you see her face then when Ephraim junior farted’, or ‘what’s wrong with her, Gypsy only wants to sniff her arse to be friendly’.
And as Judy returned from the kitchen with some food for the famished Marigold they gave each other sidelong glances and tutted and looked away in shame as the daughter turning to take the food from her mother let out a bloodcurdling scream having been startled by the sight of the singed furry forearm of a wallaby just inches from her face, the little claw clenched in defiance at the miserable bastard who was about to make a meal of it.
On the other hand, perhaps Marigold should have spared a thought for her mother. Judy had been looking forward to having this tasty morsel for her own dinner that night; she didn’t know Marigold was going to turn up out of the blue. Instead Marigold only thought about herself and the fact that she was expected to put the thing in her mouth and eat it. She lurched blindly out the front door and, falling to her hands and knees, vomited in front of everyone.
It soon became obvious to Marigold that being the fruit of Judy’s womb was certainly no qualification for her acceptance either among the bush mob or by her mother. Even Kwarikwaringa could
only shrug and turn away when Marigold passed on the message from Perpetua her daughter. The food and the filth were only a small part of it, she realised, as she struggled with her memory and the hand of cards that Judy had just dealt to her. Judy had been trying to teach Marigold how to play cards all morning but she may as well have been explaining the molecular structure of kryptonite or how to build a particle accelerator for all the sense it was making to Marigold. And Judy, determined that her daughter was going to learn how to play, couldn’t have been more disappointed at her progress.
‘Why you wave your card around so I can see everything?’ screeched Judy. ‘You want to make me cheat or something!’
‘No.’
‘Well, serve you right now. You can give me that King and that Jack.’
The more Judy railed at Marigold, the more Marigold forgot until in the end it was decided that Marigold and Judy were to pay a visit to Rebecca, the undisputed card queen, for some much-needed lessons. But what a scene it was that greeted Judy and Marigold as they arrived at Rebecca’s house. Both she and her husband Lazarus were in tears and being comforted by shocked family members. From the conversation Marigold managed to work out that something had happened to someone called Angel. She watched in disbelief as Rebecca threw herself on the ground, wailing, while Lazarus stood with his head in his hands paralysed with grief.
‘What happened?’ Marigold enquired of a girl next to her.
She watched Rebecca grab her husband’s legs from her seated position on the ground and drag him down like a sack of shit. He lay moaning beside her. She was utterly transfixed; she had never seen anything like it.
‘Angel can’t live here anymore,’ the girl whispered back.
‘Angel?’ asked Marigold. ‘Is that their daughter?’
‘Yes,’ said the girl.
‘Where is she now?’ asked Marigold.
Every Secret Thing Page 12