by Anna Romer
‘She is your grandmother,’ Fa Fa said.
My fingers trembled. I knotted them in my lap, forcing myself to calm. ‘All these years I’ve been going to see Jindera, feeling drawn to the camp and never knowing why. And now, when I’m on the brink of leaving, I learn they are my kinfolk. I would . . .’ My throat was suddenly tight and I couldn’t finish. I sipped the brandy until my glass was empty, and said hastily, ‘I would have liked to speak of it to Jindera.’
‘And you will, my Brenna. When next you return to us for a visit.’
I tensed. Rather than reassure me, his sentiment was like an ill-played note, all wrong to my ears. As Whitby’s wife, I might not return to Lyrebird Hill for a year or more; it seemed an eternity.
I went to the window and stared into the darkness.
The encampment was an hour’s walk, up hills and over rocky outcrops, along the narrow river trail. Treacherous enough in daylight, but deadly in the dark. And yet I wanted to run through the night and find my aunt and grandmother, to embrace them with the open-heartedness of a family member, rather than with the shy awkwardness of a friend. Why hadn’t I guessed before now? Why hadn’t anyone told me?
I heard my father pour more brandy. The clink of glass on glass, the gurgle of liquid; the dry click of his throat as he swallowed. And in that moment, a chasm opened between us; it was only the merest breach, a fracture in the foundation of our bond, a hairline crack that might have gone unnoticed – but it was done now, that whisper of damage, and I did not know how it might ever be repaired.
I went back to my chair and sat stiffly. ‘What was my real mother like?’
My father picked up his pipe and prodded the contents of the bowl, then abandoned it. He scratched the stubble on his jaw, clearly uncomfortable. Finally he sighed.
‘Yungara . . .’ A pause. ‘Yungara was a proud girl with the courage of a warrior. And yet she could be tender and shy. She was strikingly beautiful, too – the first time I saw her, I was spellbound. But as I came to know her, I saw her gentleness with the elders, and the soft way she teased her sister, and her games with the little girls as she taught them which berries to gather, or how to weave fish traps, or cut fine lengths of hide to make twine. Her kind, clever spirit touched my soul. I wanted to marry her. I begged her to come away with me, to a place far from the judgemental eyes of the world, where we could live peacefully.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘She wouldn’t leave her clan. She insisted that her people and her land protected her. If we went to another place, she believed she would sicken and die.’
I recalled Jindera’s plea that I stay where I belonged, and not go across the water to another land. Danger there, she had said. Bad spirits.
‘But she died anyway.’
Fa Fa’s lips tightened over his teeth. ‘Eighteen years have passed since I lost her. In all that time, not a day goes by – not an hour, not even a minute – that I don’t think of her. She haunts me. Every night I carry her memory into sleep. And every day I feel her presence beside me. But it brings no comfort. What use is a ghost, when I yearn to hold a woman of flesh and blood?’
The longing in his words touched me, and I ached for him; yet his admittance seemed somehow cruel, selfish. ‘But Yungara was still alive when you married Mama?’
For a long time my father sat silently. I feared I’d lost him, that he would withdraw again and refuse to say more. When he finally looked up, his eyes were wet and pink. ‘I told Florence everything before we were married. About Yungara, and about you. I gave her the choice to back out of the marriage. You see, she was in love with someone else, too. I never found out who he was, just that Florence had cared deeply for him. But her father had disliked the young man’s family, and so influenced Florence to marry me instead.’
He slumped and rubbed his eyes. ‘Florence and I were friends above all else, and we found sanctuary in our friendship. I suppose we thought we could make our marriage work. I vowed to be a good husband and avoid the encampment, to spare her feelings. We were wed, and took our honeymoon in London.’
Fa Fa paused, and stared across the room to the window. It was a black rectangle, and I wondered what he saw there. Mama’s soft kind face, or Yungara’s proud striking beauty; or perhaps he saw me in the darkness of his mind’s eye – me as a baby, wriggling and laughing in my mother’s tawny arms.
I pinched my lips to stop them trembling. ‘But you never forgot—’ Yungara, I’d meant to say, but her name caught in my throat. ‘You never forgot my natural mother.’
‘No.’
Clenching my hands in my lap, I breathed away my apprehension and asked, ‘How did she die?’
‘Men came one night,’ he said quietly, choosing his words with care. ‘They rode along the riverbank, armed with swords and hatchets and rifles. They rounded up the clan and herded them into a gully. Some boys escaped into the water, concealing themselves against the banks. Others fled into the trees. Millie was among them, a frightened ten-year-old who only survived because her elderly aunt drew the killers away from her, sacrificing herself to protect Millie’s hiding place. The rest of the clan, nearly fifty in all, were cut down in cold blood.’
I sat very still. A vacuum had opened around me and for a few beats of my heart I could not breathe. Aunt Ida had told me that Yungara died – but now, to learn that she had been violently murdered, plunged me into a shadowland of fear and despair.
‘How did Jindera get away?’
‘Jindera and her mother, Yargul—’ Fa Fa gestured at me. ‘The woman you know as Mee Mee, your grandmother – well, they took you and crawled into a small cave, barely more than a fissure beneath an overhanging boulder. That cavity saved your lives, but at a high price.
‘From their vantage point, they heard everything. The screams and pleas of their families, the dreadful noises of slaughter. Yargul and Jindera clung together, pressing you between their bodies to keep you from crying. Finally, came the silence.’
My father hung his head. For a long time he did not speak. His shoulders began to shake, and when he finally looked back at me, his eyes were dull and wet.
‘When dawn climbed the treetops and fell into the valley, Jindera and Yargul smelled smoke. Later, after the men had gone, they emerged to find that the killers had built a pyre and thrown the bodies of their victims on it to burn.’
A tear dripped from my father’s eye, leaving a dark blot on his sleeve.
I stared at the blot. I’d never seen him cry. I’d never seen him show any emotion other than good humour, and the thoughtful melancholy he’d displayed the night we spoke of Mr Whitby’s proposal.
Now I understood why. A few tears were not enough to wash clean the horror of the night he had just described; the death of my mother required from him a river of tears that might never stop.
Fa Fa drew a thick breath. ‘This all happened a week or so before Florence and I returned home from our honeymoon. Later, when Jindera brought you up to the house in a bundle of wallaby skins, Florence didn’t hesitate. From the moment she unwrapped the fur rug and glimpsed your small tear-streaked face, she loved you as her own.’
I was filled with horror and pity, shocked by my father’s distress. And yet I couldn’t stop myself from asking.
‘Why didn’t Jindera keep me?’
Fa Fa tugged a silvery whisker, and attempted a smile. ‘The Aboriginal people are very protective of their little ones. Each member of the band or clan plays a vital role in a child’s upbringing, and the family bonds are very strong. Under normal circumstances, Jindera would have raised you as her own. But after the attack, she was frightened. She insisted you would be safer with me and Florence.’
I bit my lips to stop the tears, but they flowed anyway.
‘Who were they?’ I managed to ask. ‘The men who came that night?’
My father shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’
The desolation in the room had grown too heavy to bear. I stood, intending to lea
ve my father in peace. I wanted to return to the safe darkness of my own room, to curl in my bed like a child until the storm of my emotions was spent. But as I kissed Fa Fa goodnight, he grasped my hand and drew me back.
‘You must promise never to speak of this again. Not to anyone.’
I frowned. ‘Why?’
‘Not everyone feels respect or even compassion for the native people of this land. There are those who would, if they knew the truth, judge you and cast you down. I’ve always encouraged you to speak your mind, and to regard honesty as the highest of all virtues. But on this subject, I beg you to keep it buried. It must remain a secret, even from Carsten.’
‘He doesn’t know?’
‘The year I married Florence was a busy time for Carsten. Business kept him away from us for several years. By the time he returned, your mama was dead and you were a couple of years old. He doesn’t know the truth about your natural mother, Brenna – and I beg you, never tell him.’
For the first time, my faith in Whitby faltered. What manner of man was he really? What sort of heart and spirit lay concealed beneath his handsome exterior? If Fa Fa thought it best not to enlighten him about such a significant part of myself, then what sort of relationship was I about to enter into?
My father released my hand. I collected my candle and went to the door, but then turned back.
‘Fa Fa?’
He looked up, and in the lamp’s sallow light his eyes were once again dull. I knew he wasn’t seeing me, but her. Perhaps the way she’d been that night beside the river – a proud, fierce warrior girl standing in the midst of her clan, preparing to defend her family to the death.
‘What’s that, Brenna girl?’
‘Why did you never tell me before tonight?’
‘I had hoped to spare you the grief.’ He hesitated, then said in a voice that seemed to cost him much effort, ‘Be gone with you, my little love. You want to look fresh-faced tomorrow. Try to get some sleep.’
Closing the door of his study, I went along the hall towards my bedroom, following my candle’s wavering light. Despite my father’s efforts to protect me, I had grieved anyway. My grief had not taken the form of tears or outward lamenting; rather, it had bubbled up from my depths in the shape of dreams. In those dreams there was always darkness, and the smell of burning. And bare bodies pressed close against me, moaning and shivering – but not from cold. My aunt and grandmother had trembled with emotions of a kind I could not imagine.
Taking out my journal, I loaded my pen with ink and turned to a fresh page.
I want to lash out, I wrote, to rage against the injustice of my mother’s murder and the senseless killing of her people. I want to avenge Jindera’s sorrow and silence, and Mee Mee’s grief. But how? Too much time has passed, two decades. Even so, the impossibility of my desire does not stop me from wishing.
5
Mighty trees can fall in a storm, but a blade of grass will withstand a tempest – saved by its ability to be flexible.
– ROB THISTLETON, FIND YOUR WAY
Ruby, May 2013
By the time I reached Armidale, a rattle had taken up residence under the bonnet of my old Corolla. I had developed a corresponding miss-beat in the vicinity of my heart. My discovery that morning of Rob’s infidelity weighed heavily on me, a huge black shadow that settled across my shoulders, bowing me over the wheel and constricting my lungs. My mind was a whirlpool, flooded with anger one moment, and grief the next. But as the sweet New England air began to infiltrate my system, I managed to steer my thoughts away from Rob, and instead focus on what lay ahead.
It was early afternoon. A bank of dark clouds hung on the horizon, but the remaining sky was clear blue. I decided to bypass Armidale – and my mother – and head straight to Lyrebird Hill. The river would be gurgling over the stones, and the eucalypt leaves would be scenting the air with their spicy perfume. Esther had said to drop in any time, and I calculated that if I took the back route along the old Bundarra Road, I could be there in time for afternoon tea.
My Corolla coughed as I changed gears and slowed at the turn-off. My palms were sweaty on the steering wheel, and a feeling of urgency pumped through me. My mouth was dry, and although I drank continuously from my water bottle, the thirst would not be quenched.
For eighteen years I’d believed that my sister died after falling from a treacherous river embankment. Then, two weeks ago, I’d learned that her death had not been considered an accident after all; my mother had spun that lie to save my feelings. Meanwhile, in a dusty police filing room somewhere, was an inconclusive report that suggested Jamie’s death was homicide.
The truth about what had happened to my sister may have been locked inside my memory banks, but I had no control over what surfaced. The glimmer of memory the other morning had given me hope, but it had also scared me. What if I remembered something I couldn’t cope with?
All I knew about the day Jamie died was what Mum had once told me. She’d arrived home one rainy Saturday afternoon to find the house empty and the back door wide open. Sensing all was not right, she’d rushed along the river track, where she found me wandering in a daze. The bloody wound on the side of my head made her think that I’d fallen, and when she was unable to make sense of my garbled account, she had raced off in search of Jamie.
Later came the questions – the counsellors and psychiatrists who had tried to crack open the shell of amnesia I had constructed around what I’d seen that day. But the shell was hard, uncrackable; resisting all attempts to free the terrible kernel it contained.
Mum had never spoken about what happened after that, and I’d always been too scared to ask. Two decades later, nothing much had changed.
When I came to a crossroad signposted Clearwater, I turned right. Immediately the way became overgrown, shaded by tall stringybarks and red gums draped with golden beards of parasitic mistletoe. I passed a sand quarry where the exposed rockface had turned the colour of sun-bleached bones, leaving the earth scarred. Stunted tea-trees pushed out of the parched soil; granite boulders littered the bare hills; willows choked eroded waterways.
It was harsh country, ugly to those who didn’t know it.
To me, it was so eerily beautiful that my heart began to race.
Opening the window, I drank in the fresh air. Out west, I noticed a bank of stormclouds, but they were a long way off. Directly overhead the sky was clear blue, and the air blowing into the car was dry and smelled of wildflowers; there was no hint of rain in the atmosphere; just sunshine and dust and birdsong.
Soon I would be standing on the land I had loved passionately as a child, experiencing it with adult senses. Would memory rush back in one overwhelming hit, or would it continue to elude me? How would I respond to Esther’s recollections – with regret, or sorrow? Had the farmhouse changed, was Mum’s old vegie patch still there, how would it feel to stand on the threshold of the bedroom I had once shared with Jamie?
A thrill of nerves had me clutching the steering wheel.
Generations ago, Lyrebird Hill had been a sheep station. At the turn of the century, the land passed into the hands of my great-grandmother. She had been a recluse, hiding away in the bush, seeing no one for years at a time. She sold off the sheep, then flouted the commercial-minded philosophy of her day by allowing the property to revert to bushland. On her death she bequeathed the farm to her only son, my grandfather.
According to Mum, Grampy James had hated the place. He moved to Armidale, and after his death, my mother had inherited the property. She was married by then with two little girls and quite happy living in Uralla. It wasn’t until my father’s death later the same year that Mum decided to escape to the bush and try to rebuild her life.
When we arrived, the farmhouse had been close to derelict. No one had lived there since the 1970s. The bush had seeded itself back into the thin granite soil around the house. Tea-tree and cassinia had invaded the garden, and tall stringybark saplings had shot up everywhere. The only neighbours wer
e kangaroos and possums, owls and cockatoos; the house was overrun by black skinks, and a great old sand goanna had taken up residence beneath the water tank.
We had a simple life. Lentils and brown rice, candlelight and incense, clothes hand-made and hand-washed. A wood-fired oven, and baths taken on the verandah in an old tin tub. There was no phone, and only a basic solar set-up to run our lights and radio. Each morning, Jamie and I walked along the trail to the school bus stop. It was a secluded existence, but for the most part we thrived. Just the three of us, the occasional influx of Mum’s long-haired friends, and three thousand acres of wilderness . . .
I came back to the present with a jolt.
The sky had turned from blue to grey. The thunderclouds that had been hovering on the horizon half an hour ago were now swiftly approaching. They were huge and dark-bellied, bunching their muscles and growing blacker by the second.
I looked back at the road. As a kid, I’d come this way plenty of times with Mum, but this was the first time I had actually driven this road. In the changed light, nothing looked familiar. I reached another crossroads, and as I turned left, the rattle in the front of my car seemed to get a little worse.
‘Great. That’s all I need.’
I depressed the accelerator, hoping a bit of velocity would dislodge whatever was caught under the chassis. But rather than speed up, the car made a coughing sound and began to fail.
‘Oh no.’
Pumping the gas, I shifted to a lower gear and pumped again. The engine spluttered, and the car slowed. I guided it onto the verge and a moment later the engine shuddered and died.
I sat for the longest time, trying to breathe away my panic. It was a Friday afternoon; the road was deserted. Rummaging for my mobile phone, I checked the display but there was no signal. Walking up the road, I studied the display again. Not even half a bar of reception.
Staring into the grey day, I hugged myself.