The Crocodile Hotel

by Julie Janson

  ‘It was a posed studio shot, well lit and decorated with salt bush branches – that’s right, presumably for fond colonial memories. Proud moments for generations to look back on, sitting in pride of place on the mantelpiece’, said Brian.

  ‘There is no history, just different versions of the past, different eyes. If we try to prove one version it doesn’t clarify the problem; other sets of so-called proofs are equally possible’, said Rosie.

  ‘What you say? Talkem plain for me, not big corrugated-iron word – you bunkum’, said Old Pelican.

  ‘Yeeai, old man. We listen, not talk.’

  Brian tramped through the bush with Old Pelican and Old Lucy; they spoke with him all day. Jane and Orlando kept busy at school but watched the comings and goings of the historians.

  Hubert came over to where they sat with Old Pelican.

  ‘You finish with these southerners, old man? Hope they pay you,’ said Hubert.

  ‘Yeeai, Boss.’

  Hubert turned to Brian.

  ‘You can pay the old fella, okay? And you don’t want to leave your departure too late – you might get stuck in a bog, and I’m not gunna come and dig you out. Orlando has pissed off to some corroborree – he won’t be able to help you either. He’s turnin into a blackfella.’

  Brian and Rosie packed up their camp and the old Suzuki car lumbered down the road as Jane watched them leave. She felt lost without them. They were her lifeline, a piece of sanity.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Wet

  There were no vegetables in the Wet and there was a lack of vitamin C. Jane imagined that this was possibly causing the crash of relationships. The flood came up quickly and Aaron told Jane it was great that he could jump from the caravan for a swim. Jane eyed the water for snakes and crocs. Jane’s garden of Chinese cabbages drowned. Edie showed Jane how to cook green papaw and some kinds of grass. Jane made ice cream from tinned mix and once she gave some to Margie to take back to camp. After that, Lanniwah people yelled out asking her constantly for ice cream; she tried to keep up with the demand, but gave up.

  Edie gave out free advice on how to cook beef.

  ‘You can grill the ribs on gidjee coals. Frying the liver is good, but there’s no onions or bacon.’

  ‘Aaron won’t eat liver.’

  ‘What about a nice curry? And there’s beef and white sauce, followed by jelly with custard, custard with tinned fruit, custard with jam roly-poly. All nice.’

  ‘It’s so monotonous,’ said Jane. She thought all Edie’s cooking tasted like vomit.

  ‘Then go back to Balmain and you can eat frog legs and goose livers at some fancy restaurant … You know this place is haunted. You can feel it, taste it.’ Edie escorted Jane out, and slammed the kitchen door … Jane stood outside and wondered if Edie was turning on her. It must be the Wet.

  However, Jane had food, and the Lanniwah had so little. The people were always hungry: they lived on little fish from the billabong, beef, tea, sugar and damper; sometimes there was bush tucker like bush banana or a tortoise.

  In the mid-morning, Jane sat outside her caravan eating damper with the schoolchildren. A group of Lanniwah elders waved to Hubert; he walked to the fence and held a meeting. Old Pelican tried to mediate with the Boss because they wanted to carry out a renewal ceremony at a nearby lagoon; they wanted to harvest lily seedpods.

  ‘We gotta make that ceremony or big trouble, like ants comes to eat alla Lanniwah’, said Old Pelican.

  ‘The cattle come first and I don’t want anyone moving about and frightening my cattle’, said Hubert. Old Pelican twitched and struck his woomera against his leg; he looked angry. Mayda and Shirley stared at the scene – no one liked to see Old Pelican angry.

  Later, the music drifted into the school, the children became restless. There was a big men’s ceremony beginning up behind the hills near the camp. Orlando slipped out of the classroom. Jane followed him.

  ‘Where are you going?’ said Jane

  ‘Can’t a man do anything without being questioned?’

  ‘I will have to take your class’, she said.

  ‘That’s right, sorry.’

  Orlando disappeared with a group of painted men and older boys. David went with them. However, David returned before lunch without Orlando, Ricky and Robert. He taught maths to the older children while Jane continued with reading and writing. David watched her pride in each story. After the school day was over, there was still no sign of Orlando and the boys. Aaron pulled David’s arm.

  ‘Why did Orly go? I want him to read to me’, said Aaron.

  ‘No worry, Aaron. They back tonight maybe. You go home’, said David. Aaron ran outside to play.

  Jane smiled and put away books; a pile slipped from a shelf and hit her on the head. David rushed to pick her up from the floor, his arm around her back to support her.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yeah, just bumped my head. That shelf’s too high’, she said.

  He took her arm to help her get up. She looked into his eyes. He turned away.

  ‘Thank you.’ She laughed.

  There was a silence between them. Then Orlando came to the door. He surveyed the scene and Jane moved awkwardly away from David. Orlando wiped his face, the ochre smeared across it.

  ‘Miss me?’ said Orlando.

  Embarrassment was in the air. David shuffled to get his hat, mumbled goodbye and tore out into the afternoon light, and then he looked back to the caravan school. She stood watching him. An arc of black cockatoos flew by, and then she blushed.

  Orlando held Jane, his face ablaze,

  ‘They put stones in me’, he said. Aaron climbed into his arms.

  ‘Are you going to be my Dad?’ said Aaron.

  ‘Don’t know, mate’, said Orlando.

  Next morning, Jane went to the store and lined up with the women from the camp. Beatrice leant against the corrugated iron shelf. Hubert glared at her.

  ‘Before you can have any sugar you must pay back what you owe.’

  ‘Just little bit tea, little bit flour.’ Beatrice whined.

  ‘Fill in your welfare forms and we will get money for you so you can bloody buy food.’ Hubert was exasperated and his face grimaced at Jane. She was supposed to sympathise.

  ‘But I not want hand out, just gib job. I workem like all mens. I ride; I muster alla time good work.’

  Hubert slapped the counter to stop Beatrice as she reached for a packet of tea.

  ‘You are holdin up the queue. Move away. You are causing trouble. Are you mad? Learn to write your name and we can fill in the papers. Raymond, push her out of the way, will ya?’ Raymond looked away.

  Beatrice stood her ground and Hubert leapt out of the door and lifted her aside. She raised her fist and he stood in front of her breathing hard. Jane moved next to the old woman, reached onto the counter, and held out a packet of sugar. Hubert grabbed her hand and his face relaxed.

  ‘She has to learn.’

  ‘Beatrice is fifty; she deserves respect and kindness.’ Jane stared into the Boss’s eyes and he lifted his hand. The sugar was given to Beatrice.

  ‘Put it on my bill.’

  ‘We will.’ Edie licked her pencil.

  Beatrice accepted the bag and walked away with dignity.

  Jane was at the counter and she piled up the tins of fruit and powdered ice cream. Her overflowing string bag of stores made the women around her stare. Orlando, impatient, stood next to her to help carry the supplies.

  ‘When will you ever have enough, Jane?’ he whispered.

  ‘Thankyou Edie, could I have another two tins of peaches please?’

  ‘We look so greedy.’

  ‘I never had enough to eat as a child, so now I can afford it I will buy plenty. There will never be an empty cupboard at my place, Okay? And I feed half the starving school children who come to play with Aaron.’ She hauled away the huge shopping bag and flung it into the Toyota.

  Orlando watched Jane; he looked wary and conc
erned.

  ‘I love you; don’t go all troppo on me. I’m going back to the ceremony’.

  ‘I want more equality in doing housework’, she said.

  ‘Not this again. A clean caravan for what? For who?’

  He sometimes attempted to cook some exotic concoction using fish and vegetables. It was disgusting but he swallowed it with tea. He demanded that Jane clean his boots. This was too much. Jane felt isolated; the role of wife sat heavily on her. Surely, it was supposed to be better than this. She sensed that it was all a mistake.

  ‘I don’t want to be like a 1950s house wife, welcoming my ‘husband’ home at the end of the day in lipstick and crutchless knickers with a chop on a plate’, she said.

  ‘Sounds alright’, he said.

  ‘How did the feminist thing happen? I can work a full time job, raise my child, do all the washing, cooking, shopping and still be a brilliant anthropologist conversationalist at night while having raging hot sex’.

  ‘Okay, let’s go back to the crutchless knickers part, what colour are they?’

  ‘Just stop. I’m exhausted with feeling this burning rage beneath a pleasant smiling surface. Keep a happy face, that’s what my mother said’.

  ‘Don’t wreck it, Jane. What we have, it’s special.’

  Orlando strolled up to the men’s camp. She watched him walk away and thought he might leave soon. She wouldn’t cope. But she was glad that she was near Arnhem Land – it was nicer somehow than her old university life. My God, she needed whisky and the bottle was empty – Orlando had drunk it all. God, she hated him sometimes.

  CHAPTER 8

  Old Pelican

  The hot humid morning lay around them, the heat so languid and unforgiving. The nights were restless and full of dreams. Jane stood at the stove cooking while Old Lucy recounted a dream about Old Pelican that she had the night before.

  ‘For God’s sake, don’t say his name, he will come. You know he’s psychic – whenever I think about him, he appears. He’s scary.’ She scraped the fat from the pan and laid eggs on a platter. The sound of cockatoos, bullocks and a weird whistling. They looked at each other; Lucy rubbed her head and shook her body in a shudder. There was a faint movement outside the caravan, a soft padding of bare feet. At that moment, Old Pelican stood at the door. His piercing black eyes stared at Old Lucy. A broad grin and his teeth shone, perfect for an old man.

  ‘You tellem me your dream.’ Jane looked uncomfortable; he sighed and she laughed. She ushered the old man into the van. His eyes flickered over the breakfast: there was the smell of supermarket bacon and he breathed it in. She served her old grandfather a breakfast of eggs and bacon, and he ate hungrily.

  ‘Year, tellem me now.’

  ‘There’s an old man walking, he stares and he swings his woomera in his hand’, said Jane.

  Old Pelican listened closely as Jane fidgeted. ‘Yeeai. Where dat place?’

  ‘Don’t know; it was a dream.’

  ‘Might be here eh?’

  ‘Might be; might be Sydney.’

  ‘Dis place. Who comes?’

  ‘Another man has a shovel spear between his toes, pulling it along in the dirt behind him.’ Old Pelican leaned forward, eyes searching. Old Lucy put her hand on Jane’s arm.

  ‘Who dat one?’ Jane shifted nervously.

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘You tell me dat name, eh?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. Jane guessed that he knew exactly who it was but she was afraid to tell. She went on. ‘So no one can see that spear. He brings it up and throws it right through the old man.’

  ‘No good. Thank you. I know ‘im, might be Wunungah, you know ‘im, yeeai’, Old Pelican said. He went out the door whistling, he swung his woomera from hand to hand.

  Jane looked down to Old Lucy. ‘I don’t want to be responsible for some bloke being speared just because I saw something in a dream.’

  ‘Not worry.’

  ‘I have to train myself not to even think his name, because if I do, every time, he stops me in the middle of the road and commands me to take him somewhere, like the store, and he expects me to pay for anything he wants. It’s fair enough but so strange’, Jane said.

  ‘Dat one in our head powerful. He killem might be ten men.’

  ‘No.’

  Old Lucy, David, and Jane packed up some children onto the back of the Toyota and headed down to the distant river. As they passed the camp, Old Pelican called out to Jane:

  ‘You get big mob fish for me, yeeai?’

  ‘Okay old man, I already gave you some yesterday,’ said Jane.

  ‘Later, you bring five fat one now. You better watch out, I singem.’

  The elder watched them drive by, David shook his head.

  ‘That old fella, he got magic; gotta watch him, he see everything’, said David.

  They drove for a few hours across a grey and green landscape. When they arrived at the river, Jane ran into the water and cooled off. She stood waist deep and beckoned to the children. They held back nervously.

  ‘Come in, it’s lovely.’ The children stood away from the bank silent and staring, reluctant to swim. Robert and Ricky broke big branches from trees and hit the water, splashing and shouting. David spoke to them and they threw rocks and bellowed out in Lanniwah language.

  ‘Must be a ceremony to welcome spirits of the river’, said Jane.

  It took some minutes before it dawned upon her that there could be big salt-water crocodiles. She realised that the plain stupidity of her decisions as a teacher was overwhelming. They waited and checked the riverbank and surface of the water, then everyone jumped in the river and they all forgot about the crocs – they made too much noise for an attack. The boys caught fish and they cooked them on the fire, they ate damper and drank tea.

  David plunged into the water to untangle a lure, his rippling skin breaking through the surface of lily pads. He took her breath away. She pushed away the attraction. It was ridiculous; she must maintain her respect as a head teacher. Any way he was too shy; he seemed to lack courage. She didn’t like weak men. Yes men. She liked strength and she had responsibilities that other women couldn’t dream of. Many of her uni friends still lived at home with their parents. Still, when David’s smiling face emerged from the water with another fish she was relieved that such a kind joyful man shared their remote school and the kids loved him. Aaron jumped in the lagoon on David’s shoulders and he wrestled with him amongst lily pads.

  As it got dark, they arrived back at Harrison.

  ‘Here old man, we got your fish; we must’ve been lucky’, said Jane. They put a bag of fish to next to Old Pelican’s fire.

  ‘Dat country belong us; dat fish belong us, not you’, said Old Pelican. He threw the fish on the ashes and turned his back.

  CHAPTER 9

  David And Missionaries

  A month later, Orlando went to town and stayed. He had been asked to go back to his town job. Jane was devastated. She felt the billowing onset of sadness. It had been good and bad but she would miss his laughter and jokes, his warm love.

  Jane heard that more missionaries were coming to camp at Harrison; they would stay for a long time in tents and caravans. She hoped for some friends. She searched the road but all she saw was cattle trucks.

  There was a crunching sound outside her home, Jane ran out to find a huge bullock casually eating all her garden.

  ‘Get away, damn you! Shoo, shoo!’

  Hubert rode up to Jane on his motor bike. She looked at the bare ground where her cabbages had been.

  ‘The cattle are destroying my garden and all the biodiversity – there’ll be no native plants left’, she said.

  Hubert shook his head. ‘Now that’s a big word for a little lady. And bullshit … Don’t mind my language … They eat up the rubbish plants, bits of wattle or mulga, no good for anything’, he said.

  ‘It’s home for wild life’, said Jane.

  ‘Who needs that? We’d be better off without
King Brown snakes. How would you like a seven-foot king in yer bed, eh? Kill you stone dead. Or maybe you like a long snake eh?’ He snickered. Jane ignored him.

  ‘The cattle pollute the water holes’, said Jane.

  ‘It’s a competitive industry. Australia has to grow. This meat industry is our future. You can’t sell Aboriginal culture. Trade is what makes this country great, not spiritual oogie-boogie. I want to feed my kids, give them a good start-up farm back in Queensland, and let them grow rich on fat cattle.’ He was so certain. She nodded mechanically, it was no use arguing.

  ‘Why did you let missionaries come?’

  ‘Why did you let Orlando sleep with you?’

  ‘My business.’

  ‘That’s right. You could bloody do with a bit of spiritual guidance.’

  ‘So could you.’

  ‘Come up an watch us castrate the yearlings; you’d like that.’

  Later, Jane sat on the railing and watched men brand the yearlings. She flinched as Hubert seized the branding iron and plunged it into a flank – the smell of burnt flesh, the howls of a cow’s pain. Hubert looked up, saw Jane on the fence, grinned and sniffed the branding iron, then looked annoyed – it was really no place for a woman. David was also watching from the fence, and would think she was out of place. She wondered if he could see her sadness but she couldn’t read his face. He was a shy man in front of his mob, his head always tilted down, his hat shading his eyes.

  Jane tipped her head towards the billabong; David replied with a slight lift of his head.

  ‘I don’t like the stink of the cattle, pushin’ them around. I like huntin’. Real clean to get a wild animal, sometimes I get goanna from seeing him near the tractor’, he said. It was the most he had spoken to her in months.