by Julie Janson
‘This is the last time’, Jane whispered. Oh, sure thing, they all say that!
‘Sure, bub, last time’ he said.
She no longer cared what people thought. Jane wrapped her legs around David. He nuzzled her soft hair. He said she smelt good. He lay down on the sand and pulled her towards him. No talking now, just love. Dark skin on gold, they tumbled over and swam in sweat. He was like a dangerous drug; he sent bursts of light through her head. She sighed and murmured like a sea siren: this was heaven. Sweat on his lips, pink on the inside of his mouth, a fire and blasting passion shooting through her arched body, and sweet release.
Later, he lit a cigarette. ‘Good barramundi here. I spear one fella this long last night.’
Sometimes, in a bitter inner world, Jane had a tortured anxiety about her future: she knew she it couldn’t be with David. Her mind wandered again, perhaps she could fly to Darwin, take a dream along sex strewn pathways. For David she would even give up drinking. Her lust for her favourite drink – whisky with ice. She could taste it all smooth and silky in her throat. God, she loved whisky. Here there was none, only warmish cordial. She remembered once drinking a whole bottle of Jamieson’s whisky by herself at a school camp when teaching in Sydney. She had awoken after sleeping with a long haired musician teacher, and felt wretched, hung over, an appalling taste in her mouth. No, she would have to learn to be a teetotaller for David. And she would make a move, and apply for a new school, a transfer, a new place with him.
Jane wasn’t the only crazy woman at Harrison Station. She could hear Hubert yelling at Edie again over at the big house. Edie and Hubert’s relationship was getting more dysfunctional, their fights a hushed seething or shouting match. He played the Hammond organ loudly late at night; it sounded like the theme from Psycho. He sang drunkenly. One day, Edie threw a mattress and a pile of cowboy clothes over the balcony while her children ran around the house screaming.
‘And don’t come back, you cowardly snake!’ Edie yelled. Hubert ran down the steps and pulled the mattress back up the stairs with his daughters pulling at the top.
‘You’ll be going back to dirty old Manchester with the cheapest air fare I can find, and you can live on chip butties’, he shouted back. The front door slammed and more shouting went on. Jane listened; it was better than television.
His truck roared off down the road to the nearby sister station. Edie was crying; it was that deep shuddering crying. Then the door slammed and she locked herself in her house while her children whispered.
In the morning, a cloud floated over. Old Lucy stood outside the Boss’s house looking up and listening intently. Jane felt a strange atmosphere, like a fog from the big house. Old Lucy was breaking the rules but she called to Jane and took her by the hand and walked up the steps. They peered into the kitchen. They heard children’s whispers. Elisha said that Edie couldn’t get out of bed. Gertie stood stock still in the room. Lucy nodded to her and crept into the master bedroom; the faded pink chenille bed cover was on the floor. Poor Elisha looked frightened.
‘Mum won’t get up. Gertie gave the little ones cornflakes for little lunch’, Elisha said.
The smallest child took Old Lucy’s hand.
‘Mummy said Daddy’s got a secret.’
Lucy saw that Edie had lain all night by a lamp, watching cockroaches on the floor. She twitched in a damp sheet. Jane opened the window and fresh air poured in. Lucy looked out and there was the familiar white dingo walking around the house sniffing for food. Lucy took Elisha by the hand.
‘Mummy be alright. She real tired.’
Old Lucy told Jane that she would sit with Gertie to watch over Edie.
However, a few hours later Jane was working on her school program when Old Lucy banged on the door. She had a vision: Edie was eating pills. Jane remembered seeing the white pills in a bottle by the bed, so Jane tore out of the caravan and strode up the shaking aluminium stairs. Old Lucy climbed slowly behind her. All the children were playing table tennis under the veranda. Old Lucy said she saw Edie reach for the bottle of sleeping tablets and count them out in a pile, a pale hand shivering and fingers stuffing each tiny white fragment into her mouth.
‘Missus eatem might be a hundred pill. Sure thing dat enough for finish up’. Old Lucy pushed open the bedroom door. Gertie brought water in a saucepan. The bedroom was hushed with a pause between laboured breaths. Old Lucy sat down and began bathing Edie’s head. Jane touched the sweat-soaked sleeping form. She bent down to Edie’s face and noticed brown froth on her lips. There was no time to panic, Lucy pushed Edie onto her side, Jane began cleaning her mouth of vomit. Lucy went to the open window, leant out and called to Elisha.
‘Elly, gettem Boss, in dat truck! You big girl; you drivem’. Jane pulled Edie on to her back and gave her mouth to mouth. Her mouth tasted of sick. The still white face gaped. No breath. Jane thumped at Edie’s chest, thump, thump, then again.
‘Breathe, Edie, you stupid bitch, breathe! Breathe! Don’t you die on me!’ Jane yelled. She tried to remember resuscitation, was it three breaths and ten heart thumps or the other way around? The eyes flickered open and then Edie coughed. Lucy smoothed the hair out of Edie’s eyes. Jane looked around the room, she had a moment of confusion, where was the bathroom? She ran to the kitchen, took a packet of salt, Lucy brought water and she poured the salt into a saucepan of warm water, and stirred. Edie was moaning which Jane took to be a good sign. If she was semi-conscious, Edie might be able to swallow salt water. Lucy lifted the inert woman into her lap and held her head up; she nursed her and sung in Lanniwah.
‘Edie, Edie, wake up, you have to drink this now! Edie!’ Jane lifted Edie’s head and shouted at the dribbling woman. She held her tight against her chest and kept her head up. Just at that moment, the youngest child burst into the room.
‘Mum, Mum! What you doing to my Mum?’ she said.
Gertie beckoned the children to her.
‘Mummy sick, you be quiet now. Come in kitchen, we waitem.’ They crept out and sat outside the door with Gertie’s big arms around them all. Inside the bedroom, Jane held Edie’s mouth and forced her to drink the warm water and it poured down her face. She sat astride the limp body and Old Lucy held the head up as Jane scooped cup after cup into Edie’s mouth. At last, Edie vomited a stream of dissolving pills dripped onto the floor. Lucy laughed and cried.
Hubert came into the room; his eyes met Jane’s. He had a look of compassion and terror.
‘Is she going to be okay?’ Hubert whispered.
‘I don’t know. You better fly her to the hospital’, Jane patted his hand.
Edie murmured and sat up. She stared like a banshee.‘I want Wilt, where’s Wilt? There are ghosts here on this station. I see them. Can’t you hear them late at night? All the crying?’
Hubert took her hand.
‘It’s alright, love’, he said.
Edie snatched her hand away.
‘I hate you. I want Wilt.’
Old Lucy quietly moved into the corner.
‘She must want the last rites’, said Hubert.
‘I guess so’, said Jane.
‘I’ll get him.’
‘You no wantem dat fella’, said Lucy.
“What you doin’ in my house, old woman? No blackfella up here!’ Hubert glared at Lucy.
She shook her head.
“Savem Missus, Boss.’
Hubert held her gaze, his head dropped.
‘Sorry, Lucy, I don’t know what to say. Thankyou.’
She nodded and walked with dignity down the stairs. He called out.
‘You wantem tobacco?’
Old Lucy looked up and shook her head.
‘No wantem your bacca. No wantem nothin from you fellas.’
Jane watched Hubert approach Edie’s bed and lay his head gently against her chest. He took up the end of her red curls, twisted it around his fingers, and breathed in. Edie’s hand stroked his head, she murmured and he gave a great sigh. He nuzzled her neck and la
id his cheek up against her pale face; he cried and softly hummed against her skin. Tenderly he rocked his head, lay his big frame down next to her, and fully embraced her light body. His knee wrapped around her oblivious to Jane’s presence. He pulled Edie to him and buried his face in her body. Jane stood unsure of when to move; she felt that she had always been alone and had never been loved or cared for and all her life she would wait for this kind of love.
He carried Edie down the stairs.
Jane read a scribbled note from Edie: ‘Maybe the kids would have been better adopted out from the beginning. I am a failure as a mother, and I can’t go on being a wife. Stuff being a good wife’.
Gertie read to the children and Jane went back to her home to bathe Aaron. She sat on the side of the small bath and stroked the water. It was soothing, she liked water. She heard Neil Young singing from the cassette player; he was soothing.
Edie’s galah was her friend; and Jane had him sit by her side while she scratched his head. The dingo, now sitting under a bloodwood tree, coughed outside. Old Lucy sat outside Edie’s house and sang a long rippling Lanniwah song, the night filled up with tremulous notes.
Jane dreamt of the suicide attempt, but it was somehow Old Lucy who had swallowed the pills with warm milk and Jane floated with her in warm brown water. She sank beneath it in the tiny square bath where she curled into a foetus shape and held Lucy cupped beside her. There was a bubbling in her ears and they kept their heads above water and floated in a boat down an underground river, splashing water on the sides, their hands languid in white foam. The river cave was cool and Lucy drank the water until it began to drown her, delicious and dark and warm. She sank to the bottom. The next day, Lucy called out to Jane:
‘You dream ’bout something, me not dead. True, eh?’ she chuckled.
A few days later, Edie came back from town with Hubert. At first no one spoke of the incident; it hadn’t happened. Jane looked at Edie as she sat hunched over a small mean cigarette. She was not psychotic, she was the camp’s midwife, invaluable as a nurse, as a person. Jane even loved her a bit – after all, Lucy had wanted her saved.
‘I have seen a thing or two and stitched many legs after a goring by a bullock. One bloke had his intestines hanging out’, Edie said. In her chatting, she hid her real despair but reminded Jane that she was a bush nurse who cared for people.
‘You might not know it, but I look after everyone, black, white and brindle. You reckon I discriminate, but I don’t. I use my best medicines on all of them. I actually love them all. Old Lucy knows that. That old woman knows everything that goes on. I shouldn’t have tried to kill myself. I would rather have killed Hubert; that old lady would have some magic to do that’, she said.
‘She’s a real joker’, Hubert said. Jane smiled awkwardly at Edie.
‘Don’t have any more children. They’ll just grow up and become a pack of dingos wanting to drink your blood’, Edie said.
Elisha let out a wail, she ran from her mother’s side. She sniffed and Jane held out her hand and rubbed the child’s arm. ‘Don’t worry, darling, we all get a bit crazy out here’, Jane said. She walked towards home but Edie followed for a moment on the steps.
‘Don’t you tell Hugh what you saw.’
‘Or what?’
‘You’ll have to go.’
Jane moved away and sat next to Old Lucy outside. The elder smoked a wooden pipe and tore up pandanus between her thorny nails. Aaron sat beside her plaiting the string.
‘We’re all in a kind of hell’, said Jane.
‘Dat womans real sad, but she not gottem bad heart; we know all ’bout dat.’
‘You were strong, Aunty. How did you know she was trying to die?’
‘Spirit tellem me’
‘How that happen?’
‘Just come sittem near me, say come now.’
‘What did it look like?’
‘Dat Missus spirit lookem like her. Me face alla cold down side, can feelem.’
‘You helped save her. Even though she treats you so badly.’
‘Help alla fella: no fella should be killem for nothin.’ Old Lucy walked slowly up to her camp with her dogs by her side, Jane watched her go.
CHAPTER 3
Dance
It was a quiet cool evening on the station. The waters had long subsided leaving dried mud on grasses and trees, and it was the beginning of the luscious Dry. Jane and David prepared to run the school dance at Harrison. The little cassette player sat on a school desk in the paddock, blaring out Johnny Cash, Charlie Pride, Elvis Presley, Slim Dusty or even the Rolling Stones. The community loved to dance. Sammy was the disc jockey. He beamed at David. ‘Now, dis one for all the kiddies out der, ‘I wanna hold your hand’ by Beatles.’ Everyone squealed.
The children loved to rock and roll; jive was fast and exciting to watch. The kids loved to stand around singing, ‘One o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock, rock! Let’s rock around the clock tonight …’ Grown Lanniwah men in tight jeans and shiny cowboy boots moved seductively as they smoothed their perfect Akubra hats and danced with the kids – frenzied boys dancing with boys, girls dancing with girls, no touching the opposite sex allowed. A wild bunch of small boys with Aaron in the lead tore around with their tin trucks.
Suddenly, Hubert and Edie arrived at the dance, the country and western music was too much to resist. David’s eyes met Jane’s; he whistled. Hubert grabbed Jane and pulled her close for a slow waltz to Slim Dusty. (She nearly fainted – was he drunk?) The Boss was full of grace: he held Jane tenderly and waltzed around the dirt dance floor, then changed gear with his hand held gently behind his back as he slow waltzed in front of her.
As Jane swooshed past, Old Lucy began to choke with laughter, and cried out, ‘Oh, look out!’
Meanwhile Edie danced with the Reverend, who was dressed in a sports jacket. Her head pulled back, she seemed to swoon and her flaming hair flowed behind her, like in a Botticelli painting. The Reverend danced with jerky strange steps, as if he was breaking glass. Sweat lit up his forehead; he wiped his eyes with a handkerchief and looked like a happy man. He twirled Edie and around she spun. ‘Oh, Wilt. Stop it’, she said, and laughed, swinging her head back.
The music revved up and Hubert jived with Jane (he was definitely high on something – Jane wished she had some). She was amazed at his gyrating hips. She was amazed that the couple were even there. He looked occasionally into Jane’s face with a self-conscious smile and twirled her around in a delicate pirouette. He was light on his big feet, a man with rhythm.
Elisha led the other children in rock and roll. They had the time of their lives but did not go near the Lanniwah dancers. After a few dances, Edie gathered up her brood, and took them, whining all the way, home to bed.
The black sky pinpointed with stars, an impossibly beautiful sky reaching down to the Arnhem Land horizon. The older Lanniwah girls arrived at the dance smelling of lavender eau de cologne, their hair in ponytails and glitter bands – a late night entrance. Then ‘Greased Lightning’ poured out of the cassette player. Hubert tipped his white Akubra hat and skidded to his knees in front of Shirley. He had the John Travolta rhythm and a cigarillo like Clint Eastwood’s in his teeth. He jumped up and jived in front of the girls. They giggled and hid their faces.
‘The Shimmy Shimmy Shake’ blared out. Mayda moved towards David, her eyes on his, she shimmied and her round breasts wiggled in the firelight. She was a disco dancer. The girls wiggled their hips and Jane saw Hubert staring at their slim backsides, his face transfixed. That rock and roll music got into people’s bodies and took them away.
Shirley and Lizzy ran up to Jane. Shirley held Jane’s hand, her eyes aglow with the magic of a night out. Shirley had just turned fifteen, she showed Jane a ring, a present from someone, she didn’t know who. She found the present wrapped in newspaper outside her shed. Jane guessed it was from poor love-struck Robert.
Shirley’s father, Raymond, stood a way off, gleaming with pride next
to his wife Gertie.
‘Missus, you dancem wid us girls?’ Shirley held Jane’s hands. Jane swung the girls around in rock and roll wildness. David watched as she danced. He was always the showman. He taught the boys some hip gyrating moves, which sent them into hysterics. They mimicked him, the same boys who would disappear one day soon for initiation.
In the firelight, Jane could see that Hubert had left and was lurking in his truck in the darkness. His cigarette burned, he flicked the ash out the window and gazed with fierce lust at the young girls’ little backsides in the jeans he had just sold them. David looked over at Jane, a fleeting moment of connection and longing.
Some days after the dance, Jane was worried that Shirley hadn’t come to school. She looked out the caravan door towards Raymond’s shed, but no, she was not around.
‘She bin gone Missus Jane, but now we findem her’, Lizzy said.
‘Where was she?’
‘She bin gettim some clothes. Missus sent for her, but red dog bittem Shirley and he pullim her to Boss truck, slam door.’ Jane sat Lizzy down and held her hand.
‘Shirley cry now, Boss drive and, you know, he gets her.’
‘Take me to her, Lizzy’, said Jane. They walked to a bough shade near the womens’ sacred site, where Shirley lay on a blanket in the dust. She looked up and then hid her head under the grey blanket.
‘Tellem Miss Jane’, said Lizzy.
Shirley sat up and wiped her nose. ‘He say, he not know why he do it, but say he had a right – me half white anyway. He say, “Stay away from young men”.’
‘Did he hurt you?’
‘He open the truck door and he naked. He say little golden Shirley, little golden Shirley, all grown up now, promise him really by Raymond, but my Daddy not do dat’, said Shirley.
‘You tell Missus more’, said Lizzy.
‘Me shame. After dance. He take hair, pull, and tear my dress off. I scared and cry alla time, he do it, I scratch him face.’
‘After that, he got off, try kiss her but she cry’, said Lizzy.