Laurie only caught a word here and there – McGinty … business nous … Coolacane – but she knew that he was going over what had been said at the sugar mill half an hour behind them. They’d stopped there, at the Nambour mill, and stretched their legs while Dad had a yarn with someone about his pet idea. The season’s crush had already started. There was a deafening roar; the tall stack at the back of the mill was smoking strongly and the cool air was rummy to breathe. They’d parked in the mill’s shadow, on a bitumen apron that was wet and sticky underfoot. Two narrow rail lines met there, and they could see the last few trucks of a cane train, as small as a fairground ride and loaded with scorched cane, that had been shunted up around the corner. The little engine was swallowed up by the dark maw of the mill. There was nowhere comfortable to sit or play, so they returned to the car, where they’d been waiting for a long ten minutes or so, getting tired of playing I Spy and counting the birds (‘You can’t do that, Miranda! You’re counting the same peewee over and over again!’), when Dad and Mr McGinty had at last appeared at a side door. The two men had stood talking for a while, side by side with folded arms, exchanging a word and looking up at the pineapple farms on the surrounding hills, for the town lay in a great bowl. They’d nodded to one another as they talked, as if they were discussing nothing more than the lavender tint that the pineapples gave to the hills. Then Dad had gripped his companion’s shoulder, nodded a farewell and left him.
He peered into the car, shaggy brows drawn together over mild green eyes. ‘Out!’ he said with mock severity to Miranda, who was in the driver’s seat pretending to drive, and jerked his thumb at the back seat, but they could see he was elated. Miranda dived over, and he gave her bottom a parting slap to encourage her.
They had taken a turn-off to the right soon after leaving Nambour, and this had led them down among the Bli Bli cane farms on the Maroochy River flats. It was a detour they sometimes took, for no better reason than that the plantations of cane recalled Dad’s earliest days. His voice would change then, becoming spacious, as if enlarged by memories.
But there was a difference this time. Though he rumbled on quietly, taking his time, he didn’t seem to take in the scenery as he usually did. Even the fire won only a glance. He was still excited. Laurie could tell by the way he rested his elbow casually on the window frame and flapped his hand about as he talked. Thermal properties. Low conductivity. By-product. Waste. Laurie contracted the miles ahead in her mind, rising like a raptor on thermals of rich, sugary smoke so that the remaining journey was laid out below her, and she saw their small car creeping through the thick atmosphere with its cargo of five tiny people. She foresaw the River House waiting for them with its doors and windows closed. Wallabies would thump away into the bush. Inside, the smell of kerosene would mingle with the scent of river and sand and she-oaks.
‘Where’s it come from – fire?’ Miranda asked.
Miranda, who was only five but as smart as a ten-year-old and twice as nimble, was now gazing at the passing scene from an inverted position, with her legs resting up against the back of their seat and her feet doing a tap dance in the air. Laurie tipped her head to try the world from Miranda’s perspective and saw a dirty sky.
‘Eh?’ said Dad, caught in mid-flow. ‘They torch it. They go around torching the cane to get rid of the waste. And the vermin.’
‘Yeah, no. But where’s it come from first of all? Fire?’
‘Whoa, Carmen Miranda! That’s another one you’ll have to put to the Barnacle, She Who Knows All. Ask me about the thermal properties of cellulose, now, and I’ll give you an answer.’ And he was off again.
As for Tony, he was dismissive of their father’s enthusiasms, so Laurie hadn’t expected him to crane forward and begin to follow the front-seat conversation. A Holden passed them, coming the other way, and she was surprised that Tony didn’t mention it. She started to say ‘Holden’ herself, and stopped. Tony was frowning slightly, and had stopped fiddling with his Digit puzzle.
‘Yeah but it’d have to be too thick,’ he said.
Dad’s tone was man-to-man. ‘No, the problem’s not thickness. It’s weight. Or mass – let’s be accurate. It’s just a matter of hitting on the right matrix to bulk it up, see. Something that’ll foam up and set that way and not deteriorate over time. And cheap, of course. Cheap it has to be.’
The cinders fluttered down. Dad rested his arms over the steering wheel and looked up.
‘Bli Bli snow,’ he said.
‘Would you r-a-t-h-e-r,’ Miranda began slowly, ‘be forced to eat a whole tin of golden syrup, or –’ she considered the possibilities, and then came a tumble of words, ‘be-grabbed-by-a-giant-octopus-so-you-couldn’t-escape?’
They were back on the highway again.
‘O-n – t-h-e – road to Man-da-lay,’ Doug sang, spreading his elbows and sinking his chin to assume a virile bass, ‘Where the flying fishes play …’
‘Mount Baroodi!’ screeched Miranda. And there it was, standing hump-backed above the trees.
They’d made the long climb up the range behind a slow caravan, and they’d had to pull off the road once to wait for the engine to cool. There they stretched their legs and ate the pies they’d bought at a town below. A train, looking as small as a toy, was working its way around the flanks of the range, climbing steadily. On the inland side the highlands rose, so close you could see the shapes of trees up there. Below them spread the cane farms, black, russet and yellow-green patches under a general yellowish haze. Fires were scattered about like signals, as if the farms were communicating with roils of smoke. Here and there, where the smoke was thickest, they could see a fiery thread. The farms covered the river flats and eventually petered out in the scumbled grey of wallum. And beyond that was the seam of glitter that was the sea.
Since they’d reached the top of the range the landmarks had become more telling, and they looked for them eagerly. Now they were entering the tall forest on the rim of the scarp, where they would begin the steep, winding descent to the coastal plain. Miranda was sitting bolt upright, alert as a kangaroo, watching the road ahead, her fringe cut square across her forehead, her eyes green and quick, and in her chin the little dint mimicking the cleft in her father’s.
And there was Mount Baroodi again, revolving, as they travelled, above the tips of the trees. Mount Baroodi was one of several weathered-down volcanic peaks that dotted the coastal plain. It was set further back from the sea than some, at a point where the timbered hills climbed steeply towards the range – a plug of basalt with a hunched back, wooded skirts and a seaward face of bare rock. This was where, some said, the Broody River rose, though in fact you could follow its course beyond the mountain’s stooping mass and into the freshwater lakes and swamps that lay in the lee of the high dunes to the north.
The appearance of Mount Baroodi marked the beginning of the descent. Any moment now there would be the turn-off, and they would crawl in low gear down into the dim light of the forest with the mass of the range behind them, down, far down, taking the hairpin bends at walking pace, jangling across narrow bridges past memories of creeks, almost touching the moss and ferns that grew in the cuttings, smelling the rich loam and rotting leaves. And then the incline easing, the country growing scrubbier, a few cattle, the westering sun reaching them again at their backs, the soil turning sandy and blackboys, she-oaks and scribbly gums edging the road. There was a point where they would look back and see Mount Baroodi’s stony face before the woodland thickened again and it was lost behind treetops. Now streetlights coming on in Teebah, illuminating the old civic buildings, the houses under their trees. And at last, through the gums and she-oaks growing tall here, a gleam, the river opening out in front of them, and the ferry, straining against its cable, crossing to meet them.
If Laurie had realised that this was to be the last time for many years that they would come to Broody River, she would have taken more notice of the days as they passed. Later what she could recall most was the qualit
y of those days, rather than the things they did. The bush smelt of wattle. The August light hit the river askance and came powdery among the trees. In the afternoons the shadow of the house reached out onto the river, so you could see the skewed peak of its roof, darkening the water to bottle green. The chill of night came early there, while the tents on the southern shore were still bathed in sunlight.
The wallum was in bloom, and her memory was that they spent days walking there, passing through pools of scent – honey, possum, eucalyptus – and flushing wrens and finches from among the heath. The bush was so prodigal they thought nothing of carrying home armfuls of may and boronia and filling jugs and jars with them, till the house was decked like a church for a wedding. Rosie set up sprigs near her easel and worked with her watercolours to reproduce their starry shapes, their subtle hues. Laurie recognised the care her mother took as homage, for she had her own collection too – cicada cases, snake skins, ladybirds, dragon-flies, the skeletons of gliders, whelks and periwinkles. The detail of them absorbed her, their completeness, the bother they had taken with whorls and flutes and iridescence before they were broken or abandoned, their utter dedication to the small lives they had led.
On most days they went boating and caught bream from the sandbanks. Miranda always wore her Mae West float on these occasions, sitting in the bow with puffed-up importance, her bobbed hair lifting in the breeze. When the distance was short they’d leave the Cockle beached and launch the little dinghy. Then Tony was allowed to take the oars. He rowed with an air of serious purpose, glancing over his shoulder to correct his course while his passengers’ heads jerked gently with the rhythm of his strokes. Only occasionally did his oar snag and stand bolt upright in the water, lifting the rowlock clear out of its socket, or skim the surface and flail in the air. He was eager then, with his explanations about the trickiness of the current, or Miranda’s fidgeting, or treacherous logs.
They learnt by heart the rule of twelfths to read the tidal flow. One-twelfth, it rose or fell, in the first hour; two-twelfths in the second; three in the third and fourth; then back to two; then one. Slow, faster, fast, fast, slower, slow.
When the weather was warm they made the trip to the surf at Broody Head. This was a day-long expedition – driving upriver, taking the ferry across, driving downriver again, crossing the rickety bridge over the Backwater, where people emptied their slop buckets, and then grinding up the steep hill that hid the Broody Heads township. It was worth it, though, for that view of the vast, crinkled sea transformed by the angled light to beaten foil. Worth it, too, for the beach lit like a stage set – the crisply folding waves, the ragged pandanus on the rock-face, the umbrellas scattered about with their fringes stirring in the breeze, the basking bodies, children squealing at the water’s edge – and for the sweet, biscuit smell of the shop and the warm bitumen underfoot. At first plunge the water was always cold enough to make Laurie gasp and suck her stomach in, until after a while some private, slow-burning heat warmed her through from the inside out to her skin, and she swam with fishy ease. When she tilted her head, the water ran hot from her ear.
It was a trip they made several times. Some days were so still that even the fish hung unmoving in the water; some were windy, with a slap-happy surf that sent the seabirds up into the sky and the swimmers headlong through legs and foam. Every now and then the clanging shark bell called them from the sea, and they stood about with everyone else on skinny legs and gazed through wet eyelashes all in the same seaward direction. Then the all-clear would sound and they’d rush back, whooping their release, into the blue.
Was this the way it was – the sea cold, the sun warm on Laurie’s back, the water so clear she could see strings of bubbles rising from her fingernails as she swam, the beach far away, the close clicky hushings of the water in her ears, Rosie still wearing her goggly sunglasses as she rose on tiptoe with each wave, her arms lifted as if in surrender, Doug sidling up to her like a shark? Or was it only the darkness that followed that made this time, this transparent layering of day on day, in memory, luminous?
In the late afternoon, when the shadows stretched down the sand, Laurie, Tony and Miranda would leave the pale sea and stand blue-lipped and shivering in their towels. They’d be driven back to the ferry along a river turned to slabs of black and gold, feeling the rub of sandy thighs against their own, and then home along the rutted track, the headlights bouncing.
Once they boated over to the Heads and beached the Cockle in the lee of the spit, where the Backwater joined the river proper and kitchen scraps bobbed in the ripples. Coming here meant crossing close to the entrance to the bar where the current ran swiftly, and Doug was anxious. They had to pick their course carefully, now throttling back, now opening out, and on the way home they ran aground on one of the eternally shifting sandbanks that choked the Backwater’s mouth. Then it was all out and push, and the water was chilly around their legs and they could feel the crabs stir under their feet. Out on the wide river at last, with the night coming fast and the air turning cold, they sang ‘Waltzing Matilda’, as befitted the epic they had lived, while the surf rose to thunder on the bar.
At night they played Monopoly by lamplight and kept the wood stove burning. As the hour grew late, the fire dwindled to a few red coals and Miranda was put to bed, the grown-ups’ talk turned to Coolacane and what they would do with the money when the patent went through and the deal came off. A few mod cons for the River House, they agreed.
‘It has to be a septic, Doug. We can’t go through another summer …’ said Rosie.
‘Mmm, yeah,’ agreed Doug. ‘And there’s the electricity, of course. What a boon that’d be, eh! Stove, hot water – we wouldn’t know ourselves! George says …’
Each night it was the same.
‘We’ll get an electric pump. Dump that blessed pile o’ junk. What a relief that’d be, eh? You just flick the switch and off she goes –’
‘Yes. But a septic, that’s the main thing.’
‘Yeah. Of course. Yeah. But –’
‘It’s insanitary, with the flies. Not to mention the stench.’
‘And emptying the can –’
‘Running to the mill for sawdust –’
‘But meanwhile, you heard the man, the power’s already crossed the river back at the ferry. Wouldn’t take much to run a line along the track …’
It was the last day of their stay at Broody River, though they didn’t know it then. The morning began with rain, coming in scuds from the sea. Cold. When the sky cleared, the three children sat with their mugs of cocoa on the back steps to catch the brief sunshine, wearing jumpers and long trousers. The red velveteen trousers that Miranda wore were Laurie’s cast-offs and still a bit big for her, so she had to roll the cuffs up. This became Laurie’s vivid memory of her, sitting on the step below, rolling up the cuffs of her red trousers, her fingernails grubby, her brown hair gleaming.
Mid-morning. It was dark inside the house, and now and then a verandah window rattled. The children were sprawled on their beds, sucking homemade toffee and reading. Miranda pulled a sticky amber disc out of her mouth with a pop.
‘This’s too sad,’ she announced, eyes on the page.
Rain spattered against the window.
‘I can’t read this,’ she said, reading. ‘It’s too sad.’
Laurie sank back and peered over her sister’s shoulder. She flipped the book shut, unmoved by Miranda’s protest, to see the cover. Water Babies. ‘You don’t mean too sad,’ she said neutrally. ‘You mean too hard. You can’t read it because there are too many big words.’
Miranda found her place, lips pursed.
‘Go on,’ said Laurie, flopping backwards and running her finger over the page to find a knotty word, ‘what’s this say?’ To support her case. In the interests of truth.
Miranda narrowed her eyes but held her silence.
‘It’s chivalrous!’ Laurie crowed.
‘Find something easier to read,’ suggested Rosie.
>
Tom the sooty little sweep, lost in the dark chimney. How did he get into the stream? Laurie couldn’t remember. She took the book from Miranda.
‘Give it back,’ Miranda wailed in a tone designed to catch a mother’s ear, and snatched the book from Laurie’s hands.
Laurie was felled by boredom. ‘I thought you said it was too sad to read,’ she yawned.
‘I wanna look at the pictures,’ said Miranda haughtily, and settled in with her toffee.
‘It’s all sticky anyway,’ Laurie mumbled.
Doug was up out of his chair again and at the window, watching the drifts of rain. They’d planned an exploratory walk, Rosie and he, to map out a route for the power line. He had a fair idea of where it should go – along the track most of the way, but then cutting through the swamp instead of skirting it. He was pretty sure, he’d explained to Rosie, that the trees were stunted there, dwindling to nothing but spear grass and sundews in the salt pan. That should be close enough to a beeline to the crossing. He just needed to check that he’d got his bearings right, and the salt pan wasn’t further over, closer to the river. But now this weather …
‘Come on, Rosie,’ he said with sudden resolution. ‘Get your raincoat. It’s not going to get any better than this. Kids – we’ll be back before lunch.’
They hung around the house feeling dismal, with little to do, long hours to fill and nothing left of the toffee.
‘My tongue’s sore,’ said Miranda. ‘Is yours sore too, Lol? Tone, is your tongue sore? Mine’s sore.’ She stuck her tongue out as far as she could and tried with crossed eyes to see it. Then she knelt on the bed and placed her tongue tenderly against the cool of the window pane. Her eyes lost their focus.
The River House Page 6