by Kim Kelly
‘What can I get you, then?’ the lady behind the counter says, and I’m thinking I want one of those death-ray guns, while Charlie answers for me: ‘Egg and lettuce, thanks.’ He looks at me: ‘Two?’ That’ll do. He takes the tray. ‘Professor Oliphant was obviously impressed by your question on uranium at the lecture yesterday – I think your application would be successful.’
That’s flattering of Charlie to think so. Professor Marcus Oliphant is physics royalty, lately famous for giving the Luftwaffe a quilting at the Battle of Britain with short-wave radiolocation. He’s from Adelaide originally and he’s home for the next few months to advise the CSIR and to poach scientists for the atomic project. We had to sign a secrecy document just to attend the lecture, during which I’d asked if the energy given off as uranium breaks down is in direct relation to the heaviness of its nine-two proton-packed nucleus, as in E=mc2, which is pretty obvious really, at least to anyone under the age of fifty. After that, the professor talked a bit about a new synthetic element called plutonium, that’s even more unstable than U-235, went on and on about the possible peace-time applications of the energy, while I stared out the window, wondering if I should take up another position that has actually been offered to me: field geo for a national bauxite survey. It’d be just as relevant to the war effort, and probably of greater national interest, the idea being for Australia to develop its own aluminium industry, instead of importing from the US. It’d be good to make our own aeroplanes out of our own metals, among many other things, but the American Aluminium Company, which has a monopoly on our imports, is stalling that project by not sharing their plant technology with us. A racket that sounds familiar.
I say to Charlie: ‘I’ll think about it.’ A lot to think about, when you’re having trouble concentrating on anything at all. I look at the egg and lettuce as we sit down. I don’t want an egg and lettuce sandwich.
Charlie bites into his and says around a mouthful: ‘I’ve heard a rumour, won’t say where from, that Oliphant’s been in the ear of the PM about uranium exploration here – Flinders Ranges. That’d be more up your street, wouldn’t it?’
It would. Although I haven’t been there myself, I know there’s plenty of uranium in those ranges, in South Australia, old workings mined for medicinal radium, till the company went bust. I could pick uranium up off the ground there and personally deliver it to California to make death-ray guns. I’m not interested in rumours, though. A strange sensation shoots through me, some weird electric pulse. I’ve got to get up and get moving – right now.
‘You want a hit of tennis this afternoon?’ Charlie asks me.
‘Not this arvo, no. No thanks, mate.’ I get up. I don’t need Charlie to thrash me at tennis today; don’t need to be reminded of what a piece of bullshit my hand is.
‘You all right?’
‘Yeah.’ No. No, I don’t think I am. My mouth has gone dry, like I have been running, running for my life. Don’t know what’s going on here. I say: ‘See you later.’
I walk out of the building and see Charlie’s bicycle, standing against a tree. I could knock it off it and just ride. Ride into the gum forest of Black Mountain. Don’t. Walk towards the town instead, try to clear my head. Calm down. Find my equilibrium. Johno laughs. I should see about getting my hand fixed, shouldn’t I. To do what, Brockie? So that I can go back to that spot, that exact spot behind the plantation, and have a proper go. I want to kill the mongrel. I’m not going to find him in Canberra, though, am I. There’s nothing at all going on in Canberra. It’s lunchtime, on a Wednesday, in the springtime. Not a soul to see. I could walk across the invisible, artificial water of the non-existent lake to Parliament House unobserved, to ask the Prime Minister myself: send me to the Flinders Ranges. And leave me there, please. My mind is demonstrating some kind of fission. Splitting apart.
I’m tired; keep walking. I’ve been tired for three years. I’ve had it. I need a good sleep. A solid sleep. Leave the Japs to our eighteen-year-old farmhands at Kokoda. They don’t have a choice – they’ve been conscripted. I’m choosing to go to Ainslie. To my house. I’m going to walk the five miles to sleep. How could anyone not sleep in Ainslie? Empty streets. Two lines of brick boxes and mowed lawns and polished sedans, each one with an identical carport. If you ever do see another person, they don’t say hello. They don’t look at you. This isn’t a town. I don’t know what this alien place is. Even the birds here, little blue swallows that fly around the bottlebrushes, don’t talk to you. How can anyone live here? I’ve lived here for almost six months, going into the CSIR every day, a spare wheel analysing the mineral composition of dirt samples for the Soils Department to see that, yes, unsurprisingly we’ve got a lot salt going on there. And when I’m not doing that, I’m remembering I’ve never been that interested in physics. That’s cracked.
I’ve got to get out of Canberra.
I go into the house and switch on the wireless, out of habit, just for a voice.
‘The labour crisis is continuing throughout rural industry. In particular, shearers are in low supply in the North and Central Western districts, as well as the Riverina. Despite the severe drought conditions …’
Shearing.
That’s it. Why hasn’t this occurred to me before? That’s what I have to do. There is no other sleep like the one you get shearing. Sort myself out in the sheds. Man against sheep. At home. I want to go home. I have to get home. Because that’s where I am. Back before I ever thought to kill anyone.
I have to go home to find Dad. I have to know what happened to him. That will sort me out, more than anything.
Five minutes, I’ve packed up my swag and I’m walking up Northbourne Avenue, the road out, waiting for a ride up the Paddock.
The death rays might have got here before me, the country is that dry. I’ve just got off the back of a ute on Nymagee Street, and I’m crossing to the Court House to find Jim, when I hear: ‘Gordon! Gordon! Is that you?’
It’s Mrs Wells, waving and running out of the greengrocers behind me. She stands in front of me, looking me over. Looking all over my face. She doesn’t know what to say next. There’s something sad in her eyes, and I’m sure by it already that Dad’s not here. I know he’s gone. I need to know where.
‘Oh Gordie, darling heart, look at you. Is it really you?’ she says, as if I’m five years old. She’s puts her shopping on the ground, then has to stop herself from getting her hankie out to clean my face. She is such a good woman. Looking after me when I was little. Looking after Dad.
I tell her: ‘Yeah, it’s me.’
She’s nearly crying in the street. ‘We’ve all been so worried about you. But look at you.’ She touches my arm to see that I’m real and decides: ‘You look all right. Are you?’
No. If I was five, I’d run up to you crying. I’d go and hide round the back of your skirt.
‘I’m all right,’ I tell her. ‘I’ve come home looking for work.’
‘Oh? What, shearing?’
‘Yeah.’
She gives me a frown: rubbish.
So I say: ‘I’m in between other work.’
‘Oh, is that right.’
‘Gunner!’ That’s Jim, head out the door of the pub, shouting over the road. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Looking for work.’
‘Well, aren’t you a sight,’ he says. ‘You don’t want to get yourself up to Yarranbulla this arvo, do you?’
‘Not this arvo. I want to get home for a spell first.’ I’m that tired now, I don’t know how it is I’m even standing. I have to get home. I have to know what’s happened to Dad.
‘Right,’ Jim says, scratching his head under his hat.
‘Anyone going up that way?’ I ask him.
‘Ah Gordie,’ he says. He looks like he’s going to come over for a word, but he changes his mind. ‘Hang on.’ Goes back into the pub for a word in there, and in a second his head is out the door again. ‘You can take Billy,’ he says. ‘The black mare round the stable. B
ring her back for tea, yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
Billy is up for it and she picks my purpose straight off. My heart goes nineteen to the dozen with hers the whole way, and then, passing the first of the fence posts, I see what I think looks like Dad’s ute out the front of the house. Am I imagining that?
No, I’m not.
It is Dad’s ute.
I have never been more happy to be wrong. This was a good decision, not so cracked after all. Dad’s home. Billy’s over the fence and I’m across the verandah yelling out: ‘Dad!’
But there’s no reply. No Tess barking, either. I push the door open and there’s no sign he’s been here at all. Only a shingleback lizard under the tank. I go round to the ute and look at it. I think I see what’s happened. Someone’s found the ute and brought it home, probably by Jim. Not for Dad, but for me. Where did they find it? Where did they find him? Brewarrina, Tibooburra? How long ago? The cans of petrol on the back are still full, as if he didn’t get further than the back fence. Maybe he didn’t.
I go back inside. The mail I left there three years ago is still on the table under the lamp, with a couple of extras brought in, probably by Mrs Wells. There’s my Christmas card to him from Rabaul, and two more newsletters from the AWU before someone’s told them Dad’s not union any more. And there’s a small package for me. I open it. It’s my university medal, with a letter I don’t read. I close the lid and put it in the dresser drawer, where I pocket the keys to the ute and grab my rifle.
I look at Dad’s, alone by the door now. How could no one tell me this? Dad’s dead and no one can mention it. I know why that might be, because it was his decision to walk off for good, and it’s not as though that possibility hasn’t crossed my mind a thousand times – this morning. But no one telling me? Bullshitting that he’d gone off for work. What, hoping I wouldn’t notice given enough time passing? If I was angry before, I don’t know what the state of me is now.
I grab my swag off Billy’s back and chuck it in the ute. For a second I think it’s wrong to leave her here, one of Jim’s good horses, before I think: stuff that, stuff Jim. I unbridle her and hope she finds a break in the fencing before he comes looking for her.
I start up the engine and put my foot down. What I wouldn’t give to hear Dad getting into me for it now: You’ll break a flaming axle one day, kid. I put my foot down further even though this road is cracked up to shit. I don’t want to hear myself think above the engine. I don’t want to think any more. Think anything.
I drive straight through town. I can’t stop here any more. But where can I go? West, I decide without thinking. Turn right onto the Barrier, the stock road heading out to the top of the Paddock, out to Wilcannia. I don’t know anyone up there, but I know there will be work: shooting sheep if not shearing them. As I drive, there’s only dust, behind me and ahead. No little purple flowers by the road today. Not even an emu to watch me leave.
Sixty miles on, coming up to Cobar, I hear myself laughing: Wilcannia? Shearing? I couldn’t handle the shears over a two-hour run, let alone a whole day. My hand won’t do it. I could shoot one sheep every two hours. I could shoot myself. Or I could just keep on driving. Keep driving till I stop. Drive to Ayres Rock. Drive to Perth and then drive into the sea.
BERNIE
I look across the river, mystified and frustrated that Dad never thought to teach me a thing about mechanics. The McDoughals’ irrigation pump has gone on strike. There’s no blockage that we could hear in tapping the pipe up from the river, so it must be in the mechanism – centrifugal, apparently. Fancy that.
‘Damn and blast you!’ Mrs McDoughal kicks the motor, and my hand flies to my mouth. Mrs McDoughal just swore.
‘Bernadette!’ Now here’s Mrs Lockhart charging down the row as if I might be responsible. ‘Bernadette Cooper!’ Oh dear. That tone implies: Stop what you’re doing right now and look at me, young lady. One to make you stand up and open your mouth to say it wasn’t me who did it.
‘What?’ I squint into the sun.
‘What?’ she repeats, opening and then closing her mouth, words momentarily suspended.
‘Yes, what. Is it?’ Oh no, what could I have possibly done?
‘That thing,’ she points behind her. ‘That thing you’ve been typing at since you got home from Sydney. I read it.’
‘You what!’ I shout. ‘You did not read it. That’s private!’ Oh Hughie, my hand flies to my mouth again, for what’s in that thing, that pile of dreams. Me. Gordon. Kissing. All manner of other things that are very, very private. ‘No, you did not.’
‘I did,’ she says, thoroughly unapologetic. ‘And it’s quite the most astonishing thing I’ve ever read. Oh darling, I’ve spent the day in floods with it. Floods and floods. Couldn’t put it down. I’ve never read anything like it. I thought you were writing a romance, that adventure about the girl pilot, but it’s …’
‘What is it?’ says Mrs McDoughal, looking from me and back to Mrs Lockhart.
‘Well, Alice, it’s a … well, I don’t quite know what you’d call it,’ she says, and she searches the coolabah above us for the words. ‘A love story, I suppose you might say – a true love story. Quite the loveliest ever written. It’s swept me right up and away.’
‘You’ve written a love story? Oh, aren’t you clever.’ Mrs McDoughal leaves off her despair at not getting the water up to the tomatoes and claps her hands together. ‘You kept that light under a bushel, didn’t you?’
Doesn’t Hughie know it. I’m lit up fuchsia with all bells ringing at the thought of Mrs McDoughal reading a word. I stand there gawking, and as I do the pump splutters back to life, giving me a face full of diesel smoke.
I shout above it, at Mrs Lockhart: ‘It’s not even finished. It doesn’t have an ending.’ In fact, I don’t think it even has something that might be considered a story.
‘Doesn’t want one, my dear,’ she shouts back. ‘It’s brilliant. Perfectly brilliant. Just as it is.’
GORDON
I start to run out of petrol in the desert sometime late on Saturday afternoon. It’s only a few miles outside Broken Hill, and that’s about right, I reckon. I’ve calmed down a fair bit. Probably because I slept last night. Just me and the stars. Properly alone. I slept like a dead man. I’m going to find a phone in town, call the CSIR, tell them I’m going to take that bauxite survey job, with the Geo’s Office. I’m just not made for working indoors, am I. I’ll phone Charlie, too, and explain. Apologise. After I’ve found a pub, though. First, I’m going to get more crappered than is good for me.
The first pub I find is a place called the Pig & Whistle, and inside there’s about a hundred miners just come in off shift and going hard. It’s a tight squeeze. Suits me. They can hold me up in a minute. I haven’t had a beer in … since we ran out in Rabaul.
I’m just about to catch the barman when I hear behind me: ‘Oi! Oi! Dozy! Dozy Brock.’ I think it’s a trick of perception again, from thinking about Rabaul just now. But I see a hand in the air in the middle of the mob.
It’s Errol. Errol Flynn. Kiwi surveyor and part-time professional rescuer of women and idiots.
‘Jesus. Mate.’ He smacks me across the shoulder. ‘I’ve been looking for you. Bloody hard to find and then you turn up out here? You wouldn’t read about that. Jesus. Look at you. Looking a bit less shit than the last time I saw you.’
‘Thanks,’ I say, and that wound-up feeling I’ve been carrying around all this time just goes. The relief at seeing him, it’s like a keg’s worth. My face has got shocked into smiling. I ask him: ‘Why were you looking for me?’
He says: ‘I’ve still got your swag, haven’t I, and that bloody camp oven with the air vents. I want to get rid of it, ay.’ He’s joking, and not joking, and I might need holding up from that. He changes the subject: ‘What are you doing here anyway?’
‘Nothing. About to take a bauxite job.’ I suppose. Maybe. Am I? Change the subject: ‘What are you doing?’
‘Unde
rground surveys, silver and zinc, boring as a box of nails. About to take a uranium job, though. Should be some fun. State secret.’ He taps his nose and winks like a clown. ‘Dunno why but – it’s only uranium.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘No. But hey, they’re having difficulty finding a field geo out of Adelaide for it – the location is a bit remote. You wouldn’t want to come out with me, would you?’
I laugh: fully, in a good way. Back in myself. At last. ‘Would I? Course I flaming would.’
There might be no such thing as fate. Life is just a series of random events and the degrees of insanity caused by them. But this is exactly where I’m meant to be. Isn’t it.
BERNIE
‘Emma, oh Emma, that’s such good, good news,’ I hear Mrs Lockhart shriek into the phone. ‘Thank you so much for thinking to telephone me with it. How is he?’
I stop what I’m doing to eavesdrop harder. I’m tying the string bow on my pages of dreams, going to give it to Mrs Zoc to read before I give in to Mrs Lockhart’s insistence that I send it off for some stranger to appraise the most intimate details of my longing. I think she’s speaking to Emma Wells, of Nyngan. Do I dare to hope he heard me calling him and has responded accordingly? Course I do. I am flung somewhere between a great vault of joy and a collapse into kneeless relief.
But Mrs Lockhart’s happy squawking has dropped away. ‘Hm … Mm … Oh … No. Not at all … Oh dear … Oh no … Oh our poor darling boy.’
What’s wrong with him? Something awful. I find my knees under the dressing table and race across the hall into the sitting room. Mrs Lockhart’s eyes are filled with concern as she looks at me, waves for me to sit by her. I know they’re talking about Gordon. She says into the phone: ‘Yes dear, of course – no, none of us can afford it these days, believe me, but you call again and have the charge reversed if any other news come to light, don’t hesitate. Please … Yes, dear. Bye bye now. Oh yes, there was a reasonable turnout at Wagga … Ha! … Love to Kathy and hers … You too, dear. Bye bye.’