by Sue Lawson
Mrs Axford regarded her son with a raised eyebrow and sighed. “Why don’t you come for lunch too, Robbie?”
“Thanks, Mrs A, but Nan will be expecting me.”
Mrs Axford gave me what I swear was a sympathetic look. “All right then. Have fun. And be good.”
“Mum,” moaned Keith. He shoved my shoulder and we headed out the door. Keith stopped at the tangle of bikes by the fence. He tossed aside a battered smaller bike and lifted his.
We rode side by side along the dirt footpath.
“You going away over summer?” asked Keith, finishing the last of the biscuits.
“Nah, just me, Nan and Dad. For six long weeks. Why would I want to miss that?”
Keith laughed. “Good one.” We pedalled hard onto Main Street, not slowing until we drew level with the RSL. The Australian flag fluttered at the top of the white flagpole.
“Dad had to go into the RSL Friday night,” said Keith, flicking his thumb at the building. “Bloody boong decided to try to have a drink there.”
I glanced at the handwritten sign, “No Abos!!!”, in the front window. Most of the Walgaree stores, pubs and the pool had colour bars, which meant Aborigines weren’t allowed inside, but the RSL and The Railway Hotel were the only places with signs in the window.
“At the RSL? Really? Dad didn’t say anything.”
“It was late – most of the Diggers had moved on.”
I frowned. I always thought they stayed at the RSL ‘til it closed. “Who was it?”
“Reggie Jenkins.”
“I reckon he was in New Guinea with Dad.”
Keith scoffed. “So? Doesn’t give him the right to go to the RSL. Dad locked him up. He and Morph took him back to the Crossing this morning. Pretty sure Dad and Morph reminded him of his place.” Morph, or Senior Constable Morphett, was known for the bruising way he made a point.
“I bet.”
We rode in silence, past the parked cars and the old men in hats and long-sleeved shirts outside the post office, to Memorial Park at the river end of Main Street. Without exchanging a word, we dumped our bikes on the lawn and sprawled under the sparse shade of a massive gum tree.
“Hey, it’s Monday. Cards day.” Keith brushed gumnuts and twigs from the patchy grass. “Shouldn’t you be playing the piano for the old crows?”
“That was one time. I was ten or something.” Nan swore I mucked up the Beethoven piece just to spite her. My piano lessons ended soon after. “Had to get out of there. Bloody house sounds like a–”
“How are you, lads?” Ian Wright, Colin Rhook and David Edwards stood over us. Last year at school I’d had to share a double desk with Ian Wright. It would have been better to sit next to a gorilla. If he wasn’t knocking books and pens off my desk, he was slamming his lid closed to make me jump. And when I did jump he’d cackle and wheeze like a hyena. He tormented anyone unlucky enough to sit in front of us, too. Drawing on the backs of girls’ necks, firing spit bombs at them or just muttering insults. I plucked at the meagre grass.
Keith sat up as though a charge of energy had surged through him. “Beaut day, isn’t it?” He crossed his legs. The expression on his face reminded me of a puppy. “Sit down.”
Since when did Keith ask Ian Wright to join us?
Wright lifted his chin in reply and dropped to the grass.
“Hey,” said Rhook, scowling. “What are they doing here?” He spat “they” as though it tasted like brussels sprouts.
We turned to look where he stared.
Four Aborigine boys sat on the riverbank.
“They don’t belong here,” said Keith.
Wright, eyes narrowed, nodded. “That’s the whole problem. They just don’t know their place. There’s plenty of river out where they belong.”
There were three Aboriginal settlements on the outskirts of Walgaree. The Anglican and government mission, Walgaree Station, or the Station, to the north and Brindabella Crossing Reserve to the south. The shanty town on River Road was better known as the Tip, mainly because it was beside the town rubbish dump. All three were situated on the Narondow River, which twisted and turned through Walgaree.
“There was a black in Wobbly’s this morning,” I said. Waves of disbelief swamped the others. “For real. And this bloke asked Wobbly to serve her first.”
“Fair dinkum?” Keith’s face was distorted.
“Was the bloke from out of town?” asked Rhook.
“Don’t think so.”
Wright snarled. “It’d be that Barry Gregory. He’s back from London or somewhere.”
“Who?” asked Keith.
“His old man owned the caravan park by the river. Died last week.” Wright set his piggy eyes on me. “What’d Wobbly do?”
“Reminded him whites had to go first. I left after Wobbly served me so I don’t know what happened next.”
“You should have stayed around to find out, Bower.” Wright scowled. “What the hell was a gin doing in Wobbly’s?”
“The Crossing and the Tip are that side of town,” I said.
“I don’t give a rat’s if they’re next door to Wobbly’s. They have no right being there.” Wright watched the Aborigine boys, his face twisted as though he smelled dog shit. He lumbered to his feet. “Let’s go move them on.”
Edwards and Rhook stood too, but before any of them moved, two thickset men crossed the road from the main street and called to the Aborigine boys. The six of them walked along the riverbank, away from town.
“Next time,” said Wright, hands opening and closing into fists. “We gotta go.”
The three of them swaggered towards the pool.
Keith slipped his hand in his pocket and then pulled it out. He smiled and held out his open hand. A few pennies lay on his palm. “Look what I found when I was cleaning up. Come on, let’s go to the milk bar.”
CHAPTER 4
“Robert, set the table,” yelled Nan from the kitchen.
I placed the Biggles novel on my bed and plodded down the hall.
Nan tossed chopped carrots into the saucepan bubbling on the stove.
At the end of the kitchen table, Dad’s balding head bobbed behind the spread newspaper. Every day after work Dad sat in the same seat reading The Sydney Morning Herald, a Craven A cigarette smouldering in the ashtray and a glass of beer within reach.
His seat was always empty Friday nights, when he and his mates went to the RSL straight after work. Dad was a creature of habit. RSL Friday, golf Saturday, and Sunday after church he pruned, painted, cleaned gutters or did other jobs Nan wanted done.
“How was work, Dad?” I asked, laying knives and forks on the tablecloth.
“Busy.” When I neared him he raised the paper and rearranged his ashtray and glass then returned to the paper. “Useless, the lot of them. Bloody lazy. A stint in the army would sort them out.”
Useless, lazy and needing a stint in the army equalled university students. Didn’t matter if the article was about a protest or an achievement, Dad’s response was the same. And they weren’t the only ones who copped it. The Rolling Stones, American civil rights protestors and bloody commies were all in the firing line, too. And anything written about Aborigines just about made his head explode.
Nan slapped chops onto the bench. “For the life of me, I don’t understand why they bother going to university. There are plenty of good jobs for those prepared to work.”
Dad grunted agreement.
“Look at your father, Robbie. A huge success, and all achieved in his home town.”
Nan had wiped Dad’s eight years in Inverell from her memory. She’d also decided my future. Apparently I would work in the Walgaree bank, just like Dad. I’d rather stick a pencil in my eye.
The sound of sizzling and the smell of cooking meat swirled around the kitchen.
“For God’s sake.” Dad slapped the paper to the table and stabbed his cigarette butt into the ashtray.
I hurried back to the cupboard for salt and pepper.
&
nbsp; “Frank!” Nan snapped. “Language!”
“Sorry, Mum, but those layabouts are planning to travel across the state to look at the bloody boongs’ living conditions! For the love of God.” Face as red as the tomato sauce in the jug, he snatched his glass and gulped beer.
“Francis.” Nan pointed the fork she was using to turn the chops. “There is no need for gutter talk.”
Dad slammed his glass on the table. “And there’s no need for those degenerates to poke their noses where they aren’t wanted.”
“I’m not disagreeing with your sentiments, just the way you express them.” A cloud of steam enveloped her as she strained the vegetables.
“Mark my words, this will end in tears.” Dad sculled his drink and stood. The chair slammed into the windowsill, a full stop to the conversation. “I’ll clean up before dinner.” He strode down the hall muttering. “Investigating boongs’ living conditions. What a load of bull.”
I was pushing soggy peas and mashed potato onto my fork when Dad next spoke to me. He and Nan had been discussing the gum tree out the back and whether it might drop a branch on Nan’s bedroom. As far as I could see that wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. Unless she wasn’t in her room when the branch fell.
“Found a job for the holidays, Robbie?” asked Dad. He was lighting an after-dinner cigarette. “This is the best time of your life to learn how to …”
Dad’s voice trailed away like the smoke from his cigarette. I knew this speech off by heart. “… best time of your life to learn how to manage money, open a savings account …” Blah, blah, bloody blah.
He was a bank manager, so he was obsessed with money and savings and budgets, which was fair enough, but I couldn’t care less about any of it. I watched the smoke twist and curl and swirl to the ceiling.
“Robert.” Nan’s bark snapped me back to the table. “Listen to your father.”
Dad tapped his cigarette over the ashtray.
“Sorry, I just …” I looked out the window to the backyard. “You know, a good gust of wind and that big branch will drop.”
Nan rolled her eyes at Dad. Translated, the look said, the boy is as dense as red gum.
Dad’s green eyes stared into mine. “Ted Sherman from Walgaree Stock Agents said he could use a hand at the yards.”
I tried not to shudder. Herding sheep and cattle into dusty pens that stank of fear and shit was not my idea of a job. Torture yes, job no. I stared at the cinders that used to be chops on my plate. “Not really my kind of thing.”
Dad sucked hard on his cigarette.
Nan slathered butter onto a slice of bread. “Actually, Robert, I’ve organised a job for you.”
“What?”
Nan stopped, knife poised over the bread.
I swallowed. “I mean, thanks, Nan, but if it’s all right, I’d like to find my own job.”
Nan scoffed. “Hell will freeze over first, my boy.”
The words “I’m not your boy” danced in bold red letters through my mind.
She pushed the butterdish towards Dad. “I’ve arranged for you to mow lawns and do gardening for the card girls. Starting tomorrow at Mrs Fielding’s.”
Gardening for those twittering, squawking women was an even worse prospect than shoving sheep and cattle into putrid yards.
Before I could protest, Nan had changed the subject. “Oh, Frank, did you hear Arthur Gregory’s boy is back in Walgaree?”
“Barry and his mother came into the bank today to sign papers. He’s taking over the caravan park. Scruffy no-hoper. She’d be well-advised to sell rather than put him in charge.”
I felt as though I was bound tight with rubber bands. I wanted to push against the binding, to break free. But I couldn’t. With their attack on Barry Gregory fading into the background, I took the plates to the sink.
CHAPTER 5
Thelma Fielding stood on her front path, hands on her hips, watching me sweat and grunt. Her rotary mower looked older than her and Nan combined.
Her cockatoo screech was easy to hear over the whirr of the blades. “And you can cut back that shrub when you’re done.”
Nan’s parting words as I left for Bat Face Fielding’s had been, “Mind you do it graciously.”
I gritted my teeth. “No problem.”
“The shears are in the shed.”
So too was the world’s entire population of huntsmen spiders. At least it looked that way when I went in there for the mower. I forced a smile. “No worries, Mrs Fielding.”
The telephone rang inside her house. “I’ll be back,” she screeched, before waddling down the cement path.
I leaned against the mower handles, relieved for the break from her ear-piercing orders.
“Oi, Bower.” Ian Wright’s gravel-in-the-washing-machine voice.
I gritted my teeth and shoved the mower forwards, the whirring blades creating a dust storm that swallowed my feet.
“Off to the river.” Still on his bike, he rested one foot on the pedal and the other on the footpath.
When I still didn’t answer he added, “Meeting the others there, mate.”
The river would run dry before he was my mate.
“Marian Cavendish is going.” He did his high-pitched, seedy giggle. “Heard her tell Sally Marshall she had new swimmers. One of those two-piece jobs. You’d like to see that, wouldn’t ya?”
For the first time, I was glad to be mowing in the heat. The blush spreading down my throat merged with my already red and sweaty skin.
He couldn’t know I liked Wobbly’s daughter, Marian Cavendish. Because the only way he’d know was if Keith had told, and Keith had sworn on his mother’s wedding ring, which she’d left on the kitchen windowsill, that he’d never tell anyone. Not even Billy.
“I’ll check her out and tell you exactly how she looked, mate.”
His leer made my stomach clench. “Bugger off, will ya?” I tried to be menacing, but only managed to sound out of breath.
Wright pushed off the fence with another burst of creepy giggling. “I’ll say hi to Marian for you, Bower.”
“Hope you drown, you stupid mongrel,” I muttered, watching him pedal away.
“His father’s a mongrel, too.”
I leaped back from the mower as though electricity had surged through the handles.
The man from the milk bar stood on the footpath. “You’re Frank Bower’s boy, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“Barry Gregory.” He reached out to shake my hand. “Your nan is Dawn, right? With the mulberry tree?”
“That’s her.”
Barry grinned. “When I was young, me and my mate Gaz used to steal the mulberries, or at least try to. Your nan was a mean shot with a broom.” He pointed to a gap in his front row of teeth.
“Fair dinkum? Nan did that?”
“Yep. One time Gaz copped three stitches to the eyebrow. She’s tough.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t I know it.”
He nodded at the mower. “Do you like mowing?”
“It’s kind of soothing.” I glanced at Bat Face Fielding’s front windows. The curtains fluttered. “Not a fan of being watched all the time, though.”
Barry’s laugh made me feel lighter. “You’re on holidays, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“Would you consider mowing for me at the caravan park?” He pointed at Bat Face’s ancient mower. “With a powered mower.”
“Today?”
“Tomorrow. If you’re interested.”
Nan hadn’t said if she’d arranged another job. “I guess so. Sure.”
“You know where to go?”
“Walgaree Caravan Park.”
“See you tomorrow, then.” He waved as he strolled towards the river and the caravan park.
The lightness in my stomach drifted away like smoke.
Last night Nan and Dad had talked about Barry Gregory as though he was the devil in disguise. In fact, not even in disguise. Would they let me work for hi
m?
Barry had reached the corner when Bat Face Fielding flapped out the front door, more flustered chook than cockatoo. “What did Barry Gregory want?”
“Nothing.”
“That was a lot of talk about nothing.” She folded her arms.
I swallowed a sigh. “He said I was doing a good job.”
Bat Face Fielding frowned. “A slow job.” No wonder she and Nan were friends. “Well, get on with you. I want this finished before dark.”
When she didn’t move, I clenched my teeth and pushed the mower forwards.
CHAPTER 6
Bone and sinew bobbed in a tomato sea on the plate in front of me. I grimaced. Of all Nan’s concoctions, this was the worst. Meat – chops, I think – and a can of tomatoes cooked until the meat was tougher than the soles of my school shoes. Thank goodness for the mashed potato island. Nan did good mashed potato.
She pulled her chair up to the table. “Frank, grace.”
Dad bowed his head and mumbled a string of words. “Blessuso Lord and these Thy gift swhich we receive from Thy bounty through Christour Lord Amen.”
“Amen,” echoed Nan. “How was work, Frank?”
“Alby Duncan dropped in today.” Dad held his cutlery over the plate. “There are plans to let Abos into Walgaree High next year.”
Nan shook her head. “He must be mistaken.”
“Alby’s on the school board. He’d know. Some government initiative to get them out of Mission schools into the state system.”
Nan clutched her chest. “In all my days …”
“Four for starters, as a trial.”
Nan fidgeted in her seat. “This really isn’t a dinner conversation. Tell me, Robert, how was Thelma today?”
And Bat Face was a dinner conversation?
I stared at the tomato sea splashed against the edge of my plate. “Good.”
Which was a complete lie. When Nan said she had organised a job for me, I expected to be paid with actual money. Bat Face Fielding, after making me mow and rake the lawns, trim the edges, prune the shrub out the front, clean up the leaves and branches, sweep the paths and wash all the outside windows, paid me with a jar of pickles. Pickles!