Sitting on the back porch after lunch with a cup of tea, Beth, in as casual way as she could manage, told her parents (and Franny, who was loitering nearby) of the plan. Bob Hardy scratched his head. ‘Well, she’ll be in your care, Wes. Can’t think of anyone I’d trust more.’ Lillian, who was not excitable, said: ‘Bloody long trip—for what? That silly old party?—is all I can say.’ The most volatile response came from Franny, who leapt to her feet, tossed the remainder of her tea on the ground where the chooks were gathering in case scones were on offer, and said, ‘You’re going to be four or five days with that boring bitch. Are you mad? I’m the one who cares about you, idiot. What’s the matter with your heart? What’s the matter with your head?’
She retreated into the house and let the screen door slam behind her.
‘Hysterical,’ said Beth.
Franny came storming out again, her cheeks wet with tears. ‘I heard that. Maybe I am hysterical but at least I have a heart. I can love. You, what do you love? The people. Nobody can love “the people”. The people are all different. Loving “the people” is bullshit. You love certain people for certain reasons. I care about Wes in a way you could never understand, you fool. And he’s a fool, too, for not seeing.’
She went back inside. Among those left on the porch, an awkward silence took hold. Di Porter noticed that Beth looked a bit sickened, even if no one else did. Bob Hardy said: ‘Wes, take a stroll with me.’ They walked down to the back of the dairy. Bob scratched his head, his usual preliminary to saying something significant. ‘Wes, here’s the thing. Franny is never going to give you up. I know her. She’s just as stubborn as Beth. It’s a curse in the family. And Beth is never going to give up the party, bastard of a thing that it is. She thinks romance is for people who aren’t serious about life. She’s married to Red Joe. Beth doesn’t know anything about romance. Mate, you’re going to be better off with Franny, believe me. You’d have a queue of blokes in Almond Tree stretching from here to the Town Hall to get a kind word from Franny. It’s you she wants. And hell, Wes, she’ll make you happy. She can cook, she knows how to keep a house neat, that beautiful place you’re building, it’ll be full of kids. And listen, when it comes to how’s-your-father, what in God’s name would Beth know? Take Franny. And take the bloody rabbits, too.’
‘Can’t, Bob. I know Beth doesn’t love me. But I care about her.’
‘Then you’re a mug.’
Chapter 13
THE VEHICLE. The Land Rover. When Wes came down to Collingwood, he took one look at it and let out a sigh. He lifted the bonnet and sighed again. Whatever love and concern the comrade who owned the Land Rover felt for his fellow man, it didn’t extend to his fellow man’s internal combustion engines.
Beth and Di stood watching anxiously while Wes investigated the engine.
‘Can we help?’ said Beth, pleadingly.
‘No. It’ll take me three or four days. Your comrade who owns this thing should be jailed. The neglect is horrible.’
‘It’s Bernard. He’s hopeless.’
‘Didn’t you think of that when you made your plan?’
‘We thought you could fix it.’
Wes closed the bonnet and gave a despairing shake of his head. ‘Okay, I can fix it, maybe. Let me start it up and take it for a drive. At the moment, I doubt if it could get up Hoddle Street and back. Is the party going to give you some money to make repairs to this thing?’
Beth looked at Di with the question on her face. Di shook her head.
‘No.’
‘Well, they take good care of you, don’t they? Wait here until I get back.’
Wes made a rackety exit in the Land Rover down Vere Street to Hoddle Street. When he returned in ten minutes, he leapt from the driver’s seat as if the vehicle were a bomb with the fuse burning.
‘It’s junk. My God. The gearbox would have to be replaced, the timing belt, the steering linkage is barely holding on, the whole engine needs tuning, the spark plugs are worn out and the shockers have to be replaced, too. I need a hoist. Without a hoist, I can’t do much at all.’
Beth said: ‘What’s a hoist?’
‘Lifts the thing up so that you can work on it underneath.’
Di said she’d phone Jerry, not a comrade, just an acquaintance who was a mechanic. Jerry said to drive it over to his workshop in Abbotsford. At the workshop, Jerry and Wes leaned on the Land Rover, one each side gazing down at the disgrace that was the engine.
‘Who owns this thing?’ said Jerry. ‘Must think an engine repairs itself. A mongrel.’
‘A bloke named Bernie. Criminal what he’s done to this engine.’
And then the inevitable sighs and shaking of heads and expressions of doubt common to tradesmen everywhere in the grip of disapproval.
‘I don’t know. Might be beyond saving.’
‘Could well be.’
‘And you say the shockers are buggered?’
‘Completely, Jerry. And the steering linkage is only just hanging on. Gearbox needs replacing.’
‘Bugger me. I’d take it to the wreckers.’
‘Same here.’
‘And you say the girls want to go two thousand miles in it? Might as well say they want to fly it to the moon.’
‘Might as well.’
Jerry knew where he could get a reconditioned gearbox and some serviceable shockers. The steering linkage? Have to search around.
‘Let’s get it up on the hoist and have a frig about with the gearbox, get it out. And the shockers.’
As they worked together, Jerry asked what it was like to be a Quaker. And was told. Then: ‘So now we’ve got Menzies. Pig-iron Bob, Wes. How do the Quakers feel about having a Tory as a PM?’
‘We mostly vote on the left, Jerry. Pass me that three-eighth socket, will you?’
‘There you go. Yeah, even in school at Christian Brothers down in Elsternwick, I thought there was something shonky about the whole business. Brother Marco, he had us memorising this what-do-you-call-it? Like a prayer. The Lord is my shepherd.’
‘Psalm twenty-three.’
‘Yeah, that’s it. A psalm. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, so on, so on, he leadeth me by the still waters, so on, he prepareth a table before me and annointeth my head with oil.” I’m thinking, “What the fuck?” Excuse my language, Wes. But that’s what I’m thinking. “What the hell? He annointeth my head with oil?” For what? He pours oil on your head? Speaking of oil, have a look at the crap coming out of this sump. You think this bloody Bernie’s ever changed it? Like hell.’
The Land Rover was just about roadworthy in three days. Di packed three sleeping bags, two tents and enough food and water to sustain the population of China for a year. Wes packed four spare tyres into the back, and he would need them. Car tyres after the war had all the hardihood of plasticine.
Di had worked out a route to Mildura with half-reliable maps, up through Bendigo to the Murray then on to Mildura. They would stay with two comrades for the night, Nettie and Deb, then next morning, down the highway to Adelaide, stay with Di’s sister-in-law, Marsha. Then Marsha would tell them the best way to Maralinga.
Beth suggested singing. She launched into ‘Click Go the Shears’, then ‘The Road to Gundagai’. Beth’s singing voice was awful. She couldn’t keep a tune. Di offered her a thousand pounds if she would stop.
They took the highway north to Bendigo, on Beth’s advice—she was in the front with the maps—missed Bendigo after one of her shortcuts and wound up in Charlton, well north-west of Bendigo. By this time all three of their bladders were bursting and they raced for public toilets in the park. They ate their ham and cheese sandwiches at a bench under a jacaranda. Di went back to the Land Rover and fetched the maps.
‘I’m taking over the maps,’ she said. ‘Honestly Beth, you couldn’t find Myers if you were standing in the middle of Bourke Street.’
Wes had the car filled at a servo before Di called the way to Ouyen, taking a route that led them over
shabby dirt roads from one highway that crossed to another. They passed towns they’d never heard of, four or five houses, a grocery shop with a red phone box outside.
But Di knew what she was doing and got them to Ouyen, then to Mildura on the Murray, chain-smoking her Dunhills all the way. Beth, in the back now, didn’t stop complaining about the persecution that communists were enduring in Australia under Bob Menzies.
‘Beth,’ said Di, ‘shut up about Menzies. You’re boring the daylights out of me. And probably poor Wes.’
∼
Deb and Nettie lived in the heart of an orange orchard to the west of Mildura. Di had the directions, and also some information. Nettie owned the orchard, left to her by her widower father, as his only child; Nettie’s mother had died in her early thirties of something or the other. Nettie and her father had adored each other.
It was after six before they reached the big old federation house in the Land Rover. Nettie and Deb strolled out to greet them. Di, the only one of the three who knew Deb and Nettie, introduced Wes and Beth. Nettie tall and lanky, with short fair hair, dark trousers, a short-sleeved red cardigan; Deb shorter, older, with greying hair that reached her waist. She wore a sleeveless white summer dress, and, oddly, dark spectacles. ‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ said Deb. She gestured at her spectacles. ‘I struggle with sight every now and again. Optic neuritis.’ She spoke with an American accent.
‘We’re ready to eat,’ said Nettie. ‘You’re late.’
After dinner—a casserole and apple pie, cooked by Deb—Nettie showed them around the house, three bedrooms, vintage furniture. Matisse had a stranglehold on the walls, reproductions in every room.
‘Deb’s taste,’ said Nettie. ‘We happened to be looking at Matisse in the Met while I was visiting New York. We were strangers then. Not for long. Deb moved here with her two kids, Dad didn’t make any fuss. He was puzzled, wasn’t he, Deb?’
‘Oh sure. And my husband, Harris. It’s our task in life to puzzle people.’
Including Wes. ‘And the kids?’ he asked.
‘Both at Sydney Uni. Happy with the arrangement. One mom and a spare. Except that Nettie is a commie and I’m a Democrat, tried and true. I’m praying that Adlai wins. Adlai Stevenson? You know of him?’
‘Yes I do,’ said Wes. ‘Best of luck to him.’
‘Nettie, you wouldn’t tell me on the phone why you were going to South Australia. But it’s the British, isn’t it?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Everybody knows the British are making an atomic bomb. And they’ll have to test it. A while off yet, but they’ll have to test it. And where do they have the ideal test site? South Australia. Not so many Aboriginals to clear out of the way. Miles of desert. Am I right?’
‘Nettie, you know we can’t tell you.’
‘It’s the British. The bloody British. And Tom Play-ford—he’s been the premier since forever—will let them do what they like. They could test a bomb on Glenelg Beach if they wanted to.’
Beth, changing the subject: ‘I think I’ve seen that you have eight comrades in the Mallee branch,’ said Beth. ‘That’s right?’
‘Yes, eight.’
‘Plus Nettie, who is part comrade and part mother hen,’ said Deb. ‘They come here for meetings. Anything Nettie says goes.’
‘That’s an exaggeration.’
‘Darling, you peck them for the whole meeting.’
They chatted after dinner about politics before Nettie, who had forty pickers coming the next morning at seven showed Wes and Beth the route to Adelaide on the map, gave each guest two towels and went to bed.
‘You have a foreman?’ asked Wes.
‘Yeah, me,’ said Nettie.
‘And believe me,’ said Deb. ‘She talks, they listen.’
Deb was up early to make Nettie and the guests some breakfast: bacon and eggs and her own home-made yoghurt. Nettie left her guests to deal with the pickers. Deb’s final words to them were, ‘Hope for Adlai.’
They drove to Morgan over a road rough as guts, then south through countryside so sparse in its vegetation that the sight of a full-grown tree was a novelty. Abandoned farms with decaying homesteads and corrugated iron sheds rusting away were visible from the road. What the farms would have produced was a mystery, unless it were sand and rocks.
While they drove, Di filled Wes in on her sister-in-law and brother.
‘Brian writes a gardening column for the Advertiser, and Marsha runs a charity shop that benefits people suffering from arthritis. Their kids, son and daughter, can’t recall their names, have left home. Marsha is fifty-five and very jolly. My brother is fifty-eight and quiet.’
‘So,’ said Wes, ‘a pair of firebrands?’
‘But comrades, in their way.’
When they reached Adelaide and finally found Marsha and Brian’s house off Fullarton Road, the couple came out to the front veranda of their white weatherboard house to greet them. And Marsha, a woman with a robust figure, was indeed jolly, and Brian was quiet. Brian, who did the cooking, provided lamb shanks and roasted vegetables.
‘Why Maralinga?’ said Marsha, as they sat around after dinner, listening to ‘American Jukebox’ on the radio. ‘There’s nothing there, darl. A few blokes in tents scratching away for gold, best of luck to them.’
‘Party stuff,’ said Beth. ‘A bit secretive. Sorry.’
‘Well it’s a bloomin’ long drive, darl. You have to go up through Port Augusta, get onto Tarcoola Road for about a year, then across country to Maralinga.’
Brian, washing the dishes, muttered, ‘Wouldn’t do it for a thousand quid.’ Then, lifting his head, ‘Hey shush. Let me listen to this. Patti Page.’
They listened to Patti Page sing ‘I Went to Your Wedding’, Brian with a tea towel in his hand and a rapt expression.
‘Beautiful voice,’ he said, wiping a tear away.
Off in the morning, with directions to Port Augusta, and then to Tarcoola Road. Wes had changed two tyres on the track down from Morgan to Adelaide, and stopped to buy three more in Port Augusta. He paid for them by cheque.
‘Sorry the party can’t help out,’ said Di. ‘Worse than the most miserly bank in Australia.’
Finding Tarcoola Road was a chore. Wes pulled over and asked four people for directions. It was sealed in a fashion for a way, but tough going.
They pulled off the road at six in the evening and Wes set up the two tents. Beth and Di searched for firewood, found enough under the eucalypt bushes. It was gourmet night off the Tarcoola: baked beans on toast, and billy tea. They slept, at least, or Di did; Beth was kept awake by the cries of animals.
‘They sounded like tigers.’
‘No tigers in Australia, dear heart,’ said Di. ‘Dingos and possums. Calm your little self down.’
The countryside was barren—just the low eucalypt bushes. It was late afternoon before Wes found the turnoff, a metal sign riddled with bullet holes; kangaroo hunters exercising their jovial humour. The road was barely a track and the Land Rover lurched and threw the three occupants all over the place. Two hours of bumping along was enough.
‘Will this do?’ said Wes.
‘There’s no sign.’
‘What do you expect?’ said Di. ‘“Wait here for a few years and you’ll see an atomic explosion?”’
Wes said that they should set up camp and take the pictures tomorrow, and this was agreed.
He made a campfire; Di cooked omelettes and bacon. Wes set up the two tents again, with painstaking care. They washed and cleaned their teeth in a round enamel basin, said goodnight. It was freezing cold. The night was full of alien sounds; a deep humming cry that never abated; the howls of dingos; an intermittent chirrup that came closer then retreated; the hissing of God knows what, not snakes, surely, maybe lizards. Beth lay awake for a while, then brought her sleeping bag into Wes’s tent. ‘Di is sound asleep. I’m terrified.’ She maintained a chaste distance from Wes, but kept him awake with questions: ‘What’s that? It’s a snorti
ng sound. Are there wild pigs here? They can kill you. They eat human flesh.’
By dawn, Beth had moved her sleeping bag up against Wes and had one arm stretched across him. Wes woke first and lay there in smiling comfort. When Beth woke, she saw what she’d done in her sleep and was aghast. ‘It doesn’t mean anything. Don’t think it means something. I was unconscious.’
‘Relax.’
The next day, Di took a hundred pictures of the barren landscape. Here and there, they found yellow stakes driven into the dry earth. Mining claims? The stakes were numbered. The heat of the day was intense and the cloudless sky a lazy, interminable blue. Dried-up water courses formed a network over the surface of the parched ground.
Wes, like Nettie, knew very well the reason for the expedition. It was widely rumoured that the British were developing their own nuclear weapons, and where else would they test them but here? He thought of what Patty had seen in Hiroshima, and that one day it might be seen in Adelaide, in Sydney, Melbourne. When he prayed—as he did each day, silently, with his eyes shut—he begged God to spare the world a nuclear conflict. At the same time, he did not believe that God had the power to stop war, to inhibit evil. He believed that God had given humans the power to love, but that was all.
Di’s pictures showed nothing but desert. Bored, she asked Beth and Wes to stand together for a snap. Beth was reluctant, but she gave in.
‘Put your arms around each other.’
‘No!’
‘Go on. It won’t kill you.’
Wes circled his arm around Beth’s waist. She managed a smile.
‘Didn’t hurt, did it?’ said Di. ‘Now me.’
She gave Beth the camera, then stood beside Wes with both arms around his waist. Then she kissed him on the mouth, a proper kiss.
The Bride of Almond Tree Page 8