Shell

by Kristina Olsson

  She recognized Axel’s way of speaking, or something like it, in the mix of languages that flowed like a braided river across the room, voices rising and falling and drifting into quiet. Beginning again. She tried to pick up the sentences of the Scandinavians, but they were lost in the robust cadences of the locals and the Italians. She watched them speaking and eating and drawing pictures in the air. Even dirt-streaked they were glossy, these Mediterranean men. Their skin shone. The pale-haired northerners looked washed out in comparison.

  The men drifted in and out. Through the staccato of conversation she heard her own internal voice, her fretting questions. How to say what she’d come to say? She’d rehearsed lines in the car as she drove, plain-spoken sentences firmly put. There’s a war on and you need to come home. Will, especially. I’ll get you jobs, good ones. Or: what? As the miles had fallen away so had her confidence. She was, she realized, far more nervous about talking to her brothers than she’d ever been with politicians. It wasn’t just the matters of conscription, of war; it was the matter of love. Love and negligence, love and judgment.

  Now, at the end of this long table of men, she saw she’d expected to find them still boys. Even at nineteen and twenty. But their hardscrabble years alone had grown them up; it was in their demeanor, their acceptance of hard things. Their refusal of pity. They were men now, working men, who wore the mantle of hard labor as their father had. She recognized his approach, his attitude: they were workers and proud of it. Hard labor was their fate and their strength. But they were not subservient. She could see it in the way they held themselves, the way they spoke. They were not slaves. They were good at what they did, and they were paid for it. They had found dignity in it, in this bargain. That is what would save them. They would work, they would work hard. But they would not be trodden into the ground.

  And they would ski! A reminder that their bodies were not merely forms to be bent to the company line, but free, strong. And in the miraculous air of the mountains, in the recklessness of the jump, completely their own.

  So how to speak of government and policy and war in this place? Here in this mess hut—perhaps over the whole immense project—politics had been abandoned. Exactly twenty years before, these men were dropping bombs on each other’s countries, aiming rifles at one another, manufacturing hate. Now, many of them were refugees, without homes or countries except here, in this company of outsiders. Others had left families in shattered cities to seek work to feed them. Somehow they managed to sit at this table and eat together, to work the long night shifts side by side.

  And then there was this: how to say come with me, you’re in danger, when they worked in the face of danger every day? And in company with these men. Who had seen the very notion of it redrawn in the last war, and the notion of belief, of allegiance. She felt the chill wind of her own naïveté, her own failure to think things through.

  She looked up to see them striding into the hut, self-conscious in their clean clothes, their hair slicked down and combed. Some of the men wolf-whistled and one called out: Eh, Jamie, hot date huh? You like older woman? Pearl could see the color rise furiously in their faces. Jamie grimaced. And Will, over his shoulder and stern: Shut up you idiot. She’s our sister. But they enjoyed it, she could tell, it was in the looseness of their bodies as they approached her, their mocking smiles.

  She stood and inhaled the soapy smell of them. Then turned and linked her arms in theirs. She said: Take me to the swankiest place in town.

  You’re in it, said Will, deadpan. And steered her through the door and out into the mugging cold.

  The landscape was muffled, hard to read. Night had absorbed forms and shapes, but the snow, Pearl thought, was lit from within, as if some great fire burned beneath it. The sky was a million points of light. They walked down a path towards another jeep. But you’re in luck, Jamie said, squeezing her hand, it’s lamb roast night at the Cooma sports club.

  She sat opposite them at a vinyl-topped table. Everything was lighter here: the décor and faces, the sounds. Plain white walls with posters and photographs, conversations and laughter. There was a party air. Family groups, couples, faces open and flushed pink. The sounds of a jukebox in a distant corner. No one wore work clothes or dour expressions; like her brothers, the men had shed roughened skins and reverted to ordinariness. There was once more the choir song of languages.

  Lamb and vegetables and gravy. On us, Will said lightly. Shandy? He tilted his head towards her, hesitant, uncertain of the proprieties. Or—sherry? She bit her lip in a pretense of choosing. I’ll have a beer, she said, whatever you have, Will, and watched him lope away. Jamie pulled out a stackable steel chair and Pearl realized it was for her. She slid onto the cold seat, let Jamie maneuver it towards the table. He sat across from her and beamed. Will returned with a jug and three glasses and sat down beside her. Watch this, sis, he grinned, pouring beer. The head on a beer should never be more than an inch.

  It wasn’t. I’m impressed, she said, and drained half the glass in one go. That’s good, she said. They exchanged swift glances, and grinned.

  When their meals came she watched them eat, as she had the men in the mess. Their energetic jaws, scrubbed faces. They ate quickly, speaking as they chewed, pausing only to shake more salt over the meat or to nod at someone they knew. They talked about the township, the weather, and began to ask questions they didn’t know they had. Pearl’s work. Their father. The twins and their children. Jane. Pearl chewed thick slices of overcooked lamb, cold beneath the warm gravy, and felt the conversation as the same texture. They were muffled, all of them. Everything unspoken. They exchanged surface pleasantries, like people on a bus. No one mentioned the real thing. All the missing years.

  But of course, their disappearance, her own, was like a net thrown over them, Pearl thought; they could wriggle around beneath it, but it caught and trapped them, confined them to a particular space, a particular way of being with each other. She pushed soggy roast pumpkin around her plate. In the oily residue she could see it: there was only one way she could say what she had come to say.

  She struggled with the last piece of meat and finally pushed the plate away. Picked up her beer. There’s something I need to talk to you about, she said, both hands around the glass. Her brothers flicked a look at each other. Knew it, the look said. Then their eyes settled on her.

  You ran away. Didn’t know where you were. Took some finding.

  Their eyes blank, shifting.

  It’s all right, she said, trying to hold them. The fault’s mine. I ran away first.

  She checked them for any sign they might bolt now. But they sat with their hands in their laps, docile as infants at story time. She breathed in, out. So. Let’s see. I think I got the job at the Tele a couple of years before you left. Can’t remember exactly.

  In the pause Jamie lifted his head. His doe eyes. He said: Something like that. You cut out your first stories and brought them to show us.

  Will said: Yeah, we’d sit around and look at them and think, geez, Pearlie’s hit the big time.

  She smiled at him. Yeah. I thought I was big time. Ordinary old Pearlie. This big important job at the newspaper. People wanted to talk to me, read my stories.

  In their faces she could see the patience they’d had as children. Waiting for her to come and play with them or get them out of the bath. Dress them. Their eyes lifting to her from the tub or from their beds. I loved looking after you two when you were little, she said. Though she hadn’t expected to. As if you were mine. You were, in a way. She didn’t wait for a response. But that job. It switched something on in me. Something that had gone off.

  You were good at it. Will’s voice encouraging. And the money. That was good too.

  The words fell into the empty space above the plates, the smears of gravy and fat. She looked at them, their faces open, unbetrayed. Then why did she feel she was in a witness stand? Will shrugged. Two seconds, three. It’s okay, he said. We knew you were busy at work, Pearlie.
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  And then after a while we— Pearl watched Jamie’s Adam’s apple rise and fall in his throat. We had to get out of there. He was a teenager again, lifting his shoulders in answer to a question.

  We hated it, Pearlie. Will’s voice matter-of-fact, as it always was.

  She could barely look at them. But did. I know. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t come.

  They looked back at her. Not angry. But there was an equation on the table: the extent of their suffering, she saw, had to match the heft of her actions, her reasons. It was clear she was still in debt.

  I lived a pretty wild life for a while there. She leaned back, preparing. Worked hard, played hard. Being the child I didn’t get to be. She shrugged. Stupid.

  Perhaps it was her surroundings, these icy fields of labor, hard labor, or just her brothers, finally. Because it was suddenly plain to her: the impetuous leaps she’d taken, the self-gratification. She thought, there was something in me, and still is, that allowed me to do all that; the risks, the forgetting. She had put herself first. Occasionally, she could still feel it: a pure selfishness kicked in, a blindness to others. It drove her then; she went after what she wanted. And usually, she got it.

  Her fingers on a white paper napkin now; she rubbed it over an imaginary spill. And. I got pregnant. To a married man. The gaps between words meant to ease them, but still she shocked even herself. Again, it was more than she’d expected to say.

  In their faces, the fight for words, or equanimity. Selfish, she thought, I’ve said too much. A cheap shot to clear the debt; to make the debt theirs. It wasn’t fair, the equation was wrong. But that’s nothing to do with you. The distress in their eyes. Nothing at all. And anyway, it’s all in the past, she said. Trying to absolve them of the need to respond. A long time ago. A thin smile. I’ve grown up now.

  Out of the long silence: Bloody ’ell. It was Will. His lips moved to speak again but nothing came.

  You’re okay then? Jamie’s head was down; he looked up through dark eyelashes.

  I’m fine.

  The baby?

  Lost it, she lied. Though it wasn’t a lie, not really.

  Then Will’s fist against the table. Jesus, Pearlie.

  They finished the jug of beer. Will fetched tea. Pearl watched them stir sugar into their cups and turned the talk to them. Their lives since she’d seen them. Fruit-picking, laboring. Then the miracle of the Snowy. It didn’t take long to realize how their experiences had changed them. The Labor Party was full of communists; Menzies has saved them, the whole bloody country. Students and protesters were louts. They should get a job, said Will. See what real work feels like. He rubbed his shoulders as he spoke. What do they know? Sitting on their arses all day. Do they even know what they’re talking about?

  Pearl’s lips pressed together. Keeping her feelings behind them. So you get the news up here, people talk about it? she said. Politics, protests.

  The wireless. Jamie nodded. And the papers get shared around.

  All ripped and greasy by the time we get ’em, Will said.

  Jamie lowered his glass, thoughtful. I do like a fresh paper. He looked to Pearl, suddenly shy. You know, with a cuppa and a smoke. Like Da.

  They grinned at each other. But her pleasure was smothered by the way they spoke, their odd opinions. Her brothers had turned into Tories.

  But if they read the papers they’d have to know about the war. About Vietnam. Still she struggled with a way to speak. A way to put things. Will got up to get trifle and when he returned she blurted: So you’ve read about Vietnam? This war? Menzies is sending our men now, conscripts too.

  Jamie poured more tea.

  Pearl said: Twenty-year-olds. Accepted the full cup he slid to her. Like you. The tea burned in her throat. She pulled her coat tighter.

  They exchanged a glance. Yeah, we know, Pearlie. Will lowered his spoon, licked crumbs from his lips.

  Later, she’d see that was the moment when knowledge struck. When they spoke again she already knew the words. How they would sound. A cold stone sinking in her belly. The room collapsed in on their small table, the three of them, their hands.

  Jamie examined his palms. We’re going too, Pearlie, he said, then dared to look at her. We’ve enlisted. Just waiting to be called.

  Yep! A grin cracked across Will’s face. Reckon Da would be proud.

  She was aware of her mouth opening and shutting. No sound. It was like a dream that was hard to wake from, one without voices. She was frozen, mute, powerless against them. For several seconds she understood this as the truth.

  Then Will spoke again. What do you reckon? A couple of tours of Vietnam and then they’ll train us in a trade. Metalwork maybe. The smile hadn’t left him. But it wasn’t the Will of a moment ago, who could still smile like a child. Suddenly in front of her he was a man. With a future. And a mission: to save the country. Himself. Her.

  It’s the commos, sis. They’re like insects up there, hordes of ’em, taking over the world—

  For Christ’s sake. She was barely aware of speaking. Her head moving slowly, side to side. She opened her mouth, unsure if she could trust her voice. You’ve signed up? She tried for calm. Both of you? And looked at Jamie.

  Didn’t get drafted, he shrugged. Had to volunteer.

  She turned to Will. Couldn’t let him go alone. Grinning. Happy.

  Her voice when it came was a muted cry. You’re too young, Will. They won’t take you. Then to Jamie: And you don’t have to go.

  I’m in, Pearlie. At that moment a man appeared at their table, confusing her. She didn’t know who had spoken, Jamie or Will.

  Evening, he said. Who’s this? She looked up into leery eyes and immediately looked away. The boys must have warned him off; when she looked up again he was gone.

  Why? she said, the word shocked out of her into unsteady air. It’s not even our war, we don’t belong there. She looked from one to the other. You don’t belong there. And—her trump card—you’re wrong about your Da. He’d be appalled. Shocked. And your mother— But it was too hard to continue. She squeezed her lips together. Looked away.

  They seemed devoid of a response to this. None of them have been our wars, Pearlie. It was Jamie, rubbing his thighs as he leaned forward at the table. We’re lucky, living here. We haven’t had a war. But we could, all that stuff happening up there. In Asia.

  She frowned at him.

  All this shit, Korea, Indonesia. That bloody mob in China, it’s them. They’ll work their way down.

  What did he mean by this? What did he know of Asia, of Europe, he hadn’t even finished school. She wanted to shake him. Instead she dropped her hands to her lap, and her voice took on a kind of pleading. But Vietnam. Again she looked from one to the other. It’s like eating your own. Those boys in the north, they’re just like you.

  Still don’t want ’em here, said Will.

  What do you mean?

  Jamie’s right, they’re on the march, Pearlie. All that empty country up there, Cape York, the Territory. We’ve been in those places, they’re as empty as the sea. We wouldn’t even know they were here ’til they were. He shrugged. Gotta be stopped. See?

  They stepped outside, their bodies changed by the conversation, their limbs stiffer, hands at a loss. So they were surprised by cold, by shapes made precise, unarguable. The hard beauty of frost, and silence.

  The night sky wheeled above them. Jagged stars, light colliding. Pearl looked away from it, nauseous. Found, once more, that she could not speak. Not struck dumb so much as quieted by her own reluctance to say hard things. And by what she had seen as she sat there with them: that her absence had removed her right to admonish, even to advise. She had relinquished it when she left them to find their own way.

  War’s a disgusting thing, she said finally. It’s not cowboys and Indians, Will. It’s not toy guns and nice uniforms and girls.

  We know.

  Even if they don’t kill you. It’s your mate dying horribly in the dirt next to you. It’
s mothers and children blown up by bombs and mines.

  Silence.

  Bloke got killed on the job up here not that long ago. Buried alive. Jamie pushed the top of his boot against dirt. Had a wife and kid. We knew ’em. He stopped, looked at her. That was a horrible way to die, Pearlie.

  She suddenly saw where he was taking this. Dying in Vietnam would be better. Braver. She wanted to say: this is brave, what you do here. You’ve been brave all your lives. But couldn’t. Could not humiliate them, diminish their fledgling sense of worth. You want to defend the country, is that it? Protect us.

  They both looked at her blankly. Then Will shrugged. Dunno, Pearlie, he said. It’s just the right thing to do.

  They stood together at the door of her motel room. Hands pressed into pockets. Pearl felt numb, her body deadened, her heart scooped out of her chest. They stood in the kind of silence that precedes a parting. Jamie turned then, peered up at the cold sky. Flung out an arm to take in the mountains, iced with snow and luminous in the dark, the dark shape of their world.

  Camped out for nights, looking up at that sky.

  Three heads tilted to the stars. In the silence Pearl fancied she could hear them, the stars, the sky, the bare rasp of ice beneath water, or snow forming as it falls.

  Will said: Had to find the Cross. Every night, before we went to sleep, like it was a lucky charm or something. He wrapped his arms around himself. And if we woke up and couldn’t sleep, it was still there, low and kind of— He looked at the ground.

  What?

  Kind of, reassuring. Reliable. You know?

  Pearl stole a glance at his face. He was blushing. Just there, he said, night after night.

  The new day dawned crystalline. Pearl stood at the window and could see only a cruel beauty. The blue and white clarity of it mocked her; she would have preferred a gray rain, a mournful air. When the boys came to her after their shift, their faces emptied by the night’s labor and bodies sagging towards sleep, she tried, as she knew she had to, one last time. In the mess hall she said: You don’t have to do this. I’ve got a friend at the opera house, there’d be jobs there, good ones. She was aware of the pleading in her voice. Tried to smile. Brave jobs. You’d be serving your country too, working on that.