Oyster

by Janette Turner Hospital

  She is climbing slowly up the ladder out of blackness and above her, swimming in the waving air, is her mother’s face, her father’s face.

  ‘Brian isn’t there any more,’ she tells them. ‘He’s not at the Reef.’

  ‘Thanks be to God,’ her mother says. And she is laughing or sobbing, Mercy cannot tell which. ‘Wherever he is,’ she says, ‘he’ll be all right now. God will protect him.’

  It is difficult, sometimes, Mercy thinks, to tell good news from bad, and it is difficult to get her bearings while her mother weeplaughs and Miss Rover is reading aloud, which brings us, Alice, Miss Rover says, to what you must ask the Cheshire Cat.

  ‘I’m not Alice,’ Mercy says. ‘Alice Godwin is Alice, but she’s not me.’

  ‘As Mercy said to the Cheshire Cat,’ Miss Rover reads, ‘“Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?”

  ‘“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

  ‘“I don’t much care where –” said Mercy.

  “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.’

  ‘But it does,’ Mercy said. ‘It does! This isn’t right, it’s crazy.’

  ‘“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

  ‘“How do you know I’m mad?” said Mercy.

  ‘“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

  ‘“Let the jury consider their verdict,” the King said . . .

  ‘“No, no!” said Mr Prophet. “Sentence first – verdict afterwards!”

  ‘“Stuff and nonsense!” said Mercy loudly. “The idea of having the sentence first!”

  ‘“Hold your tongue!” said Mr Prophet, turning purple.

  ‘“I won’t” said Mercy.

  ‘“Off with her head!” Mr Prophet shouted at the top of his voice,’ and Mercy opened her eyes and saw the roots of the gidgee trees and the red earth and the rabbit holes. She shielded her eyes from the sun and turned, and there, suspended over her, was the grin of the Cheshire Cat. A face began to appear around the teeth and she saw that it belonged to Mr Prophet.

  ‘Daddy says you can come home with us,’ Beverley tells her.

  But there’s jostling, there are others, she sees Ethel, she sees Major Miner, and then Jess is there, Jess is scooping her up, she is in Jess’s arms.

  6. Sunday, Bloody Sunday Again

  In the prison camps, Major Miner remembers, the worst things, the things that even nightmares shied away from, occurred in the last days before Liberation. Some special madness, more refined than all the madnesses that had gone before, seemed to swamp the captors. There were moments when one could almost have felt sorry for them, because the prisoners, too, knew that the tide had turned; knew it, in fact, from that very excess of arbitrary power by which the captors sought to disguise the waning of their ascendancy and their certain knowledge of doom. The prisoners could feel the seesaw tipping, they could feel their strength coming back in great gouts from the air they breathed, they could feel their spirits lofting them into a future – a future! – on trembling wings; and so they could almost commiserate with the guards who now went to bed each night with absence-of-future, a frigid lover; they could almost feel a detached pity for the thugs floundering in their wave of vengeful frenzy, so obviously out of control, so lost to rage. To the prisoners, the bloodlust was proof – proof absolute – of imminent change, so that the final random horrors were, in a curious and inverse way, energising . . . that is, for those who were left, for those who escaped the final triage, for those who made the last cut.

  This is what Major Miner is thinking as he drives in from the breakaways toward the Given household on Sunday morning. He knows he will be able to talk to Charles Given, as he had known he would be able to talk to Jess. He will explain that he has Nick and Sarah safely hidden in his shack for the moment, but that a sixth sense tells him it will not be safe for long. They must leave as soon as possible, though he has not yet shown them the Reef. He dreads showing them. He keeps putting it off. There is just one good thing, one hopeful thing, he will say. Unexpectedly, Andrew Godwin’s Troopie has come into their possession, with its reserve tanks full, and he has hidden it deep in the breakaways. Jess and I think, he will say, that you two and Mercy should go with them. We think you must leave tonight.

  He blinks at a cloud of dust approaching at great speed. At the core of the red fog are three four-wheel drives, Godwin vehicles. He catches a glimpse of Godwin stockmen and miners as they skirl past him, and sees that each truck is packed with men, and that the men are armed with weapons ominously bigger than roo-hunting guns. They halloo Major Miner and brandish their weapons in the air. They are drunk. They are high on the thrill of aggression.

  Major Miner accelerates, an old sickness of the heart swamping him.

  There is a glow on the horizon, a great soft bloom of coral against the sky. It is arced like the curve of a fire opal, shot through with light. He knows that sort of shimmer. His heartbeat skids about in jazz riffs. He waits for a terrible sound. He waits for the quick silent pain in the ears, and the strange cottonwool feeling that follows. His hands are shaking, he puts his head down on the wheel, he finds he is sobbing, he cannot see, but he keeps pushing towards the glow.

  He can see the seed pod, now, of that carmine bloom.

  He is in time to see the Given house begin to collapse in on itself like a silk scarf falling to the floor. He drives right up to the roaring verandah, but the heat beats him back and he is afraid his petrol tank will go. He reverses, leaps out of his truck, throws the car blanket over his head, and gets as far as the french doors, which still stand. A post crashes behind him. The bullnose verandah-awning lists crazily, and the glowing galvanised metal scorches where it touches his arm. The floorboards give way, and he is battling through smoke and flame and blackened timber. He drags himself out.

  He lies on the ground and sobs and thumps the earth with his fists. ‘No!’ he screams at the sun. ‘No! No! No!’

  The beast is truly on the loose now, he knows, and there will be more horror, because it always goes that way. There will be the same kind of hysteria that ballooned out of nowhere the day Susannah Rover . . . The beast will gorge itself until it drops from surfeit, he knows that. His intuition is so potent that he can see mutilation, see tomorrow, see the arsenals itching to display themselves, see fire, feral pigs, the disposal of evidence. He gags and drags himself into his truck and drives into Outer Maroo. He drives like a maniac. He can feel the claws of the Old Fuckatoo on his neck.

  It’s happening, he thinks. Outside the Living Word, he sees a crowd. He sees Jess, he sees Dorothy Godwin, he sees Ethel, he sees Dukke Prophet, he sees Mercy lying on the ground . . .

  It’s happening, he thinks.

  He sees Jess scoop up Mercy in her arms, and all his own limbs go weirdly soft, he feels as though he is walking in a dream, walking through treacle, walking underwater, but something apparently is working, he must be functioning on automatic pilot because here he is in the kitchen at Bernie’s again, and Jess is here, and Ethel, and Jess is saying to him, ‘Get some ice, and get some Scotch. She’s passed out again.’

  He looks around bewildered, slow, but Ethel comes to his rescue. ‘Here,’ she says, putting a tray of ice cubes in his hands. ‘Make yourself useful, Major M, and don’t blow anything up.’

  He takes the ice tray dumbly and obediently and offers it to Jess. ‘I have something to tell you,’ he says in a low urgent voice.

  ‘She’s feverish,’ Jess says. ‘She’s dehydrated. There’s Lucozade in the cupboard next to the fridge.’

  Ethel says: ‘I’ll get it. I’ll smoke her, Jess. I’ll smoke her with gidgee leaves. She’ll be right then, mate.’

  ‘Jess,’ Major Miner says again. ‘I have to tell you something.’

  ‘Tell,’ she says, impatient.

  ‘I can’t tell you in front of Mercy.’


  ‘She’s passed out. She can’t hear you.’

  ‘Just the same,’ he says.

  ‘You go, Jess,’ Ethel says. ‘I’ll do this.’ She takes the bowl of water and the cloth, and spreads coolness over Mercy’s burning skin.

  ‘Well,’ Jess says, abrupt with him, looking away. She leans against the door frame and studies the sky. ‘What?’

  But when he tells her, she turns pale and stifles a cry with her fist. ‘Did you –?’

  ‘I tried. I tried. It was too late.’

  She can feel darkness swooping at her, she can feel the Old Fuckatoo diving, rapacious, a bird of prey. She covers her eyes.

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘I know. It was horrible.’

  ‘We mustn’t let Mercy know, not till later. If she knows, she won’t leave. We have to get her – we have to get the three of them out. And the others?’

  ‘In my shack, but we have to move them fast. Andrew Godwin is roaring around playing war games.’

  Jess grimaces. ‘I heard. Outside forces are moving in, that’s the word going around on CB. They reckon Charles Given phoned Brisbane. Someone intercepted police radio in Quilpie, and they reckon police detachments are on the way.’

  ‘There’s some very serious craziness about, Jess.’

  ‘Yeah. Armageddon,’ she says with derision, but the joke is bitter. ‘And Andrew’s Troopie . . . ?’

  ‘It’s hidden in the breakaways, I’ll get it. But first I’ll have to take Nick and Sarah to the one place no one will go.’

  She stares at him. ‘Yes. The Reef. They’re entitled anyway. I’ll meet you there with Mercy as soon as I can.’

  ‘Bring Ethel too. She won’t be safe.’

  ‘I know. I will.’

  ‘Jess,’ Mercy calls, and Jess is there, she has Mercy in her arms, she gives her Lucozade.

  ‘There,’ she says, ‘you’ll be right as rain in a minute, as soon as you get some fluid. And we need you right as rain, because you have to drive Nick and Sarah to Brisbane. We need someone who can drive the Troopie on open ground.’

  ‘The photograph,’ Mercy says. ‘I have to get the photograph.’

  ‘What photograph?’

  ‘The one Amy gave me. I’ve kept it safe, it’s hidden in Beresford’s, I have to get it. Gideon gave it to Amy to give to his dad. It’s Nick, isn’t it? He’s Gideon’s dad.’

  ‘Yes, it’s Nick.’

  ‘We have to get it.’

  ‘We’ll get it,’ Jess says soothingly. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get it before we go.’

  And Major Miner leaves then.

  The Reef, he thinks, driving towards the breakaways. He knew it would all come back to the Reef, back to Inner Maroo, back to the bora rings, back to the beginning again.

  And then he sees that the coral bloom flowering above the Given house has put out tendrils. So much tinder, he thinks. There is no water, there is nothing that can be done. He hopes the wind stays low. He hopes the paddocks around the Given place have been cropped bare enough by famished sheep. He hopes there will be no fodder to feed the fire.

  7. Armageddon

  When Major Miner sees again the desolate place, the great charred skeletons of the winches, the scorched trees, the black bowl of rock, it seems to him that the distance between the war and the present is no longer than the blink of an eye. He presses his forehead against the steering wheel. He can never prepare himself.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Sarah says in a faint voice. ‘Oh my God.’

  Nick stares and then wrenches open the door and leaps out. He walks very fast, very jerkily, to the edge of the awful tar pit. He pauses there, but only momentarily, and begins to trace its circumference, clockwise, in the same fast jerky motion, a marionette on someone else’s strings. He begins to run, hugging the rim of the burned circle, as though the pressure of horror and grief and rage are pushing against his body like a gun.

  ‘Oh God,’ Sarah says. ‘Was this –?’

  ‘The Reef. I’m sorry.’

  A bubble of something catches in Sarah’s throat. ‘How –?’ she tries to say.

  But Major Miner cannot answer her. His own stolen sticks of gelignite rise spectral before him, like the yardarms of winches, like gibbets, like judges, like the blackened hosts of bodies on fire. On the far side of the great saucer of ashes, Nick is a small stick figure running furiously. A desert wind scuds out of the breakaways and the ash lifts into wraiths. The wraiths twirl on their pointed toes like dervishes. One of them twists towards the car and spins, poised, in front of the windshield.

  Sarah turns pale and puts a hand over her mouth.

  The wraith doubles itself over then scatters and vanishes.

  Nick is between three and six on the ghastly dial of the Reef; he passes six and keeps on running, a second loop. He has to run interference: there are pieces of charred metal and bits of machinery that roll and buck in the wind. Sometimes he has to swerve, sometimes jump. Once he trips and throws out a hand to break his fall. His hand is covered in coalblack. The heat in the rock startles him, though it should not, since the fierce midday sun falls on his head and shoulders like axe blows. Before his eyes are spinning orange discs. He keeps running.

  Major Miner is still slumped at the wheel, head buried in his arms. Sarah touches him. ‘Everyone?’ she asks in a low voice. ‘Did everyone . . . ?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is there any chance . . . ? Is there any faint hope that some . . . ?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ He gestures at the desert. ‘Where would they go?’ He sighs heavily. ‘Actually, having said that, I must tell you that there are more and more people in Outer Maroo who claim . . . who believe . . . who have convinced themselves . . . that no one died. Not for good reasons, I fear.’ First the claim, he thinks; then the belief.

  ‘So . . . the bodies? There aren’t any bodies?’

  ‘Oh,’ he sighs. ‘The bodies. There are all sorts of stories. About the way the bodies . . .’ He tries to shut out the memory of the ghastly night when young Donny Becker, drunk as a bandicoot, came careering out to the Great Extended in his jeep and raved on and on and on.

  They were all lying flat on their faces with their arms stretched out, their hands praying . . . like Oyster ordered them not to move or something . . . I couldn’t stop vomiting . . .

  Mr Prophet made me . . . it was like he was furious with those bodies . . . like he was disgusted . . . you’da thought we were loading hay . . .

  He made me and Tim Doolan carry all those ones up, the ones close to the ladder . . . He used the grader . . . we dumped them all in this big pit in the breakaways . . . I couldn’t stop vomiting . . .

  ‘In the deeper tunnels . . .’ the Major says. ‘Who knows? It’s . . . you can feel it . . . it’s powerfully haunted. No one comes here.’

  ‘So no bodies . . . ? So there’s no proof,’ she asks, her voice trembling, her voice wanting to believe in some outside edge of hope.

  He cannot bring himself to tell her about what Donny Becker said; nor of the boom, of the great end-of-the-world fireball in the sky with its pendant rockets and shooting stars, the very sign and symbol – so Mr Prophet later roared from the pulpit – of Armageddon, that armed struggle described in the Book of Revelation, the last great battle in the war between darkness and light. He cannot bring himself to mention the dread aroma of barbecue, of some gargantuan cookout for barbaric gods, the terrible succulent smell of roasting flesh that lasted for days . . .

  ‘When?’ Sarah asks. ‘When did it happen?’

  ‘Middle of the night. They used to have a prayer mee—’

  ‘No,’ she says, upset. ‘I mean, how long ago?’

  ‘Uh . . . a year. Just over. A year and one month.’

  She thinks of her hope as a frail and guttering candle. She has kept it alive. It goes out. ‘So if anyone had got away . . . they would have . . . by now, they would have reached . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Or died out there somewhere in the desert.’
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  Nick goes careering past six again, and keeps running. He is staggering now. He is like a drunk man. Soon he will pass out from heatstroke and dehydration, but Major Miner does not feel he has the right to meddle with grief. He keeps his eye on the drunken runner, watching for the moment when he will take the bottle of water and essential salts . . .

  ‘It happened in the middle of the night,’ he says. ‘They used to have a sort of religious meeting after dark, up here, until about two in the morning, sometimes later. Bible studies. Oyster used to preach for hours, apparently. Then they all slept underground, well, almost everyone, because it’s cooler, you know. So whoever . . . it seemed to have been carefully timed . . . The explosion happened about three in the morning.’