Then she tries to make out the sign hanging on the front gate, stumbling over words that seem to make sense and make no sense at all.
Val’s looking at her, laughing. ‘It’s Pidgin. It says no smoking or chewing buia—that’s betelnut—so everyone goes to the beach instead.’ She points to a man in a dirty white lab coat. ‘Even the doctor! This country survives on betelnut.’ She squishes a mosquito against the window. ‘Moses chews betelnut, that’s why his teeth are black. Caustic stuff. They chew, then spit it out. You’ll see patches of red everywhere.’
Dogs wander from beach to hospital and back: dogs with stretched nipples, three-legged dogs, mange-halfway-up-their-back dogs, a pup with half an ear gnawed off. Beth sees AIDS Klinik above the door of a dilapidated brick building incongruously close to the next, The Blood Bank. A dog lies outside on the step, nipping at flies. And under the awning of the Pikinini Klinik a nun with a powder blue veil sits cross-legged, rocking a tiny child asleep in her lap.
‘I’ve never had to come here myself, praise be,’ Val says quietly. ‘You’d never want to.’
And she starts the ignition, reverses, sends a dog squealing in fright, and heads back along the coast to town.
‘This one’s best for swimming,’ she says, pointing at the first pier. ‘Too much rubbish further along.’
Children splash in the water and when they see the school ute, they shriek, their voices wheeling, as they wave eagerly, their bodies contorting. ‘Just make sure you head home before dark—about five thirty.’ She looks at Beth, then back at the road. ‘Six is pushing it,’ she says gravely. ‘It’s a beautiful place, Beth, most people are lovely, just don’t walk around on your own at night.’
They pass enormous houses on the hill opposite the beach, their gardens cascading down to the road. One has a new 4WD and a boat at the side.
‘That’s Tom Mason’s,’ Val says. ‘He owns the Bilas Hotel, and we’ll go there too. A lot of the others are owned by government men in Moresby, or expats who run oil palm plantations further south.’
Offshore, there are smaller islands, thick with jungle. A few bush huts butt up against the tumbling mass of it looking over a strip of white coral sand then green, shimmering sea.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Beth murmurs. ‘Bilas ples.’
‘Ohhh,’ Val says. ‘You talk proper Pidgin now!’ and they both laugh as the car hits a pothole. ‘Sorry, Beth. It’s from the war. This place was bombed. The Japanese took most of it. The locals didn’t know whether they were coming or going. If you look closely along the road or the golf course you’ll still find shrapnel.’
Suddenly Val swerves to miss a huge hole, then veers right, heading into town. The road is dusty and, though the place is close to the beach, everything feels parched. They pass the Bank of the South Pacific where two guards, one holding a chunk of wood and the other a length of thick chain, stare at them, mouths open, and then Val slows down outside Lim’s, a sprawling brick building with a lean-to tacked on either side. Dodging deep ruts filled with muddy water, Val pulls into the gravel car park. The walls of the shop are splattered with mud and betelnut spit the colour of old blood. Under the awning, locals sit or squat on their haunches along the pavement, or stand, slouching against the wall. A big, meaty woman leans over, lifts up a tiny girl who pisses, sending dust into the air. Brown, black, grey dogs criss-cross the parking area, run along the street, snapping at each other, cowering from passersby who stick their legs out and tsk tsk at them. Like she’d seen in India or Malaysia, where life happened in the street, not behind the closed doors of neat houses in tidy suburbs.
‘And this is Lim’s. The best place to shop.’ Val parks near a truck loaded with locals spilling over the sides, crammed in amongst sacks of rice, chooks bound at the feet.
‘Hello.’ Beth smiles at the twenty faces staring at her. A few men and women chorus apinun and Beth smiles again. Arpinoon. It almost sounds like happy noon and she likes the idea of that.
‘Masta,’ a small boy says, pointing at Beth as she closes the ute door. Beth turns, head down and hurries behind Val to the shop. ‘White masta,’ the boy calls again, and Beth’s grateful for the cool dark of Lim’s as they walk past two guards, sekuriti printed across their blue T-shirts. A teenage girl with dyed blonde hair and three earrings in each ear looks bored as she hands them a basket. Beth follows Val down aisles filled with bully beef tins, canned tuna in a variety of flavours, white rice, two-minute noodles, Maggi seasoning.
‘Staple diet of PNG,’ Val says, shaking her head. ‘After the war, this was the legacy.’ She kicks a can of Ox in Brine that’s fallen onto the ground, sends it cartwheeling under the shelf. ‘These people survive on tinned fish and rice or tinned meat and rice.’
‘You’re kidding, right?’ says Beth. ‘There’s a sea just there. Surely they fish.’
‘Some do. Most don’t. Lazy. And others sold their land to developers or plantation owners, so there’s no food garden now.’
They wander down another aisle end to end with biscuits: shelves of Sao biscuits like the ones Clem loves with slabs of butter and Vegemite, and here they are, all lined up and seasoned with chicken, beef, spices. Further along, there are packets of cream biscuits. Beth picks one up: from Indonesia. She thought it would be markets and smiling women sitting under the shade of palm trees, fresh fish and tropical fruits, sweet potatoes and coconuts. She hadn’t expected this.
‘Get what you need,’ Val says. ‘I’ll wait out front.’
Down the next aisle Beth finds porridge oats, honey that costs the earth and a small packet of pasta. Around her she knows dark eyes are watching. Women nudge their friends and point in her direction. But she doesn’t care. She likes the grit of the place, the stench of the snack bar in the far corner—old oil burbling away in the deep fat fryer—and the kids who run to the end of the aisle, giggle and cover their mouths when she looks up, then scamper away.
Not one of them knows her story.
*
Beth can tell that the Bilas Hotel has seen better days. Paint peels in tiny curls from the wrought iron lattice, and the tables are grimy with other people’s dirt. Dogs lie under the shade of the hibiscus hedge in the overgrown beer garden. A few men sitting at the bar greet the women as they walk in, Val waves and smiles, then leads Beth to a table towards the back, closest to the beer garden, overlooking the golf course shouldering the back fence. Someone places a tall glass of gin and tonic in front of Val.
‘Thank you, Justice.’ Val smiles, exhaling loudly. ‘I need it today, definitely. This is Beth. She’s here for a few months, working at the school. Her father and I are cousins.’
Justice seems nervous, wipes his hands down his dirty jeans. ‘Apinun Misis Beth. Yu laikim sampela dring?’
Val laughs. ‘No ken tok tok pisin. You speak English here.’
Beth wishes she could talk Pidgin. Something about a drink? Val orders her a gin and Justice heads to the bar, rubbing a hand over his dark hair, clipped close in patches, revealing light skin underneath.
‘This place,’ Val says, and smiles benevolently, like some colonial Queen. ‘This place will be your saviour, Beth.’
Beth looks at the cracked concrete steps, the paint pulling away in patches from the wall, a dog cocking its leg on a potted palm by the bar, sending a yellow stream of piss pooling on the floor.
‘Really?’ she says.
‘It’s the closest thing to home we’ve got,’ Val says. ‘I know it mustn’t look like much but some days all you need is a drink and some peace. The Good Lord knows, you don’t find it anywhere else.’
Beaming, Justice places a tall glass—lip smudges around the rim—in front of Beth.
‘Thank you, Justice.’ She smiles back at him, then brings the glass to her mouth. Should she have ice? She and Sam never did in Asia. Val watches her and drinks again, and Beth takes her cue, has a sip.
‘Plus,’ Val continues, ‘a few expats come in here who are half-decent, and sometimes you j
ust need to talk about normal things. Not kids with no shoes or sewerage leaking into staff housing or the local medicine for malaria or who’s beaten up by their husband this week.’
Like delivering a sermon, Val recounts the past thirty odd years: when she was first in Moresby working at one of the settlements in the day, travelling at night to the compound. Seven times the van was carjacked. Seven times. Don’t drive alone at night, Beth. About her time in Wewak living in the convent, helping the nuns learn English. Raskols broke in and raped the cook and some of the nuns. Never trust the men, Beth. Not ever. When she first moved here, the locals brought her fish every day for a month, then expected free schooling for their kids. They’re a crafty lot, all right. Watch them, Beth. The families who come each Christmas, tears rolling down their faces with such earnest gratitude, shaking her hand, praising her for another good year at school, and bringing crabs and mumu tapioca and fish. The mudcrabs are the best in the world; manna from the heavens. Each parable laid out.
She tells Beth about the wantok system. ‘The only social security system this country has,’ Val says. ‘The village and clan always feed, house and look after their own.’
‘Sounds like a good idea.’
‘It’s the saving grace for many,’ Val says, ‘otherwise they’d be destitute. But it’s a double bind too: you can never get ahead, you always have to share, help, hand out. Lena and Ruth send a lot of their wage home to the village. And when someone gets elected into government, well, then the wantoks expect special treatment, especially if they’ve voted to put them there. The corruption begins.’ Val drains her glass. ‘The wonders of the wantoks. It’s a blessing and a curse.’
Beth sips her gin, notices a dog rubbing its rump against a post.
‘It’s not just about family or bloodlines of kin,’ Val tells her. ‘Wantok sort of means one talk, you know, to speak the same language. That means something here—there are over eight hundred different ones.’
‘Wow. Eight hundred?’
‘Yep. Can you believe it? A third of the world’s languages and this blinkin’ country’s only got four million people.’ Val swirls the ice around in her glass. ‘Most people, even our students, know at least four or five languages,’ she says. ‘Their mother’s language, their father’s, the local language, and then Pidgin, and English.’
‘Incredible.’ Beth is impressed. ‘I know English, and that’s it.’
‘Puts me to shame, too. I tried the local language. Too hard. Pidgin is enough for me.’ Val leans back in her chair. ‘But I love it here, that’s for sure,’ she says. ‘I could never go home.’
She tells Beth that Saint Mary’s was her sole purpose for living now, such joy, such reward, thanks God, crossing herself. The school has gone from strength to strength. She receives a letter from the Governor every year when the results come through, ranking schools across the country for Year Eight exams. Saint Mary’s is always in the top ten.
‘Not bad for an island school.’ Val is smiling broadly. ‘Even beat the international school in Moresby once!’
She orders two more gins and a packet of peanuts, then asks about Clem, the farm, how Eva still manages on her own and Beth, the first gin already loosening her, talks the most she has since arriving. The bar fills. Local men clap Justice on the back when he delivers their beer cans in dirty foam stubby holders, and a few older white men stand by the dart board, deep in conversation. Everyone looks over to Val when they enter. Their gaze slides across the table and rests on Beth and she’s aware of a heightened energy in the bar. Or it could be the gin. But even though they’re the only women in the place, she feels safe here with Val.
Another gin arrives and more peanuts. Beth babbles on about the farm, her job at the girls’ school, the relentless drought. She sums up the past few years: the bare thirsty bones of it. At one point she sees Val looking at her sharply. Don’t ask me, Val, don’t.
‘So,’ Val says slowly, ‘come to school when you’re ready then.’
‘I’ll come tomorrow.’
‘There’s no rush, Beth,’ Val says firmly. ‘Once you start there’ll be no end. Trust me.’ And she rattles off the jobs she thinks Beth might be interested in, not everything, mind, just the things you wish to do.
Beth hasn’t drunk gin for years. She’s only eaten a banana, some pineapple and a few peanuts since the plane landed, and she’s relieved when Val says it’s time to go. Concentrating hard, she follows her through the bar, waving to Justice and hurrying to the ute. They drive home along the beach; offshore, the islands now just grubby smudges, the first fires sending silver ribbons into the sky.
Leaving the motor running, the headlights streaming across the grass as Beth fumbles with the key at her door, Val clicks the heavy padlock on the gate.
‘Lukim yu long morning!’ she yells as Beth finally gets the door open. ‘It means see you in the morning!’
Beth tries the words in her head then calls back: ‘Look him you!’
The house is sweltering, like it’s falling in on itself. She opens both doors, even though there’s little hope of a draught, and just as she snaps on the fan, a loud knock at the back door startles her.
‘Aunty!’ Grace calls. She’s standing on the step, offering up a plate of rice and two cooked fish. ‘Rais na pis bilong yu.’ Grace smiles. ‘Lukim yu!’ And she runs across the grass to her home.
‘Look him you!’ Beth shouts. ‘Thank you Grace.’ She throws her head back and yells louder: ‘Thanks Lena!’ Somewhere nearby a couple of dogs howl and whine.
Beth sits at the table under the fan, ripping at fish, chewing through the fine bones and scooping up rice with a spoon. Jesus with his pulsating heart hovers to her left, the night birds start their calling, and the crickets click.
Val switches on 60 Minutes and boils three eggs. She’s engrossed in a story about Lindy Chamberlain, another where are they now story that Australians seem so fond of, and the toast burns.
‘God love us,’ she curses, then quickly looks at the crucifix above the stove. ‘Sorry, sorry.’ Craning to see the television, she scrapes black into the sink. ‘The poor woman.’
Hunched over the coffee table, she dips soldiers into runny eggs balanced in whisky glasses. She hopes it will work out, Beth being up here.
‘She’ll be all right once she starts working,’ she says aloud, imagining it’s the voice of angels, a divine message. Beth needs fattening up but she isn’t as miserable as Val had expected. She was close to asking her at The Bilas: so, love, how are you coping after Sam? Just like that. But she didn’t call people love. And her tongue had felt thick and she’d sensed that Beth knew the question was coming and Val saw in her the five-year-old at Rose’s funeral all those years ago, and she just couldn’t do it.
She stretches out along the thin couch after dinner, the humming fan and the Sunday night movie lulling her to sleep.
1974
Rose sleeps in an apricot bedroom at the southern end of the Smithsons’ house. The mauve quilt smells musty and, each night, she bundles it up at the end of the bed. From the window she looks out over the vegie garden and its crooked scarecrow made from old pieces of junk, with a yellow bucket for its head, and what’s probably a pair of Harry’s old overalls, faded with holes down the front, covering the skinny frame. Beyond the vegetables the land falls away to the creek line splicing the valley, and a large dam to the right. An orchard of mandarines, oranges and lemons carpets the next hill.
Rose has settled easily, maybe too easily, into her new life. She wakes at five, washes and dresses, then eats the porridge Pat has waiting in the kitchen. The porridge is made with butter and salt, swirling with molasses, and Rose relishes it. After breakfast, Rose begins cooking. Potatoes peeled and chopped first, onions, carrots, then the other vegetables she fancies from the wooden crates in the laundry. No week is the same. She serves up sweet and sour chicken with rice, beef stew and herbed dumplings, and lamb curry—not minced and cooked with sultanas and apple
like Pat’s, but all fire and spice, lentils and red beans, like the kind a Sri Lankan friend in Sydney once made for her. The men have never tasted anything like it. Sometimes she makes pie with tinned fish and hardboiled eggs. But her real specialty, and all the blokes say so, is the smokos. At morning or afternoon tea, Rose comes in laden with scones the way her mother made them, using milk soured with vinegar. And date slice with lemon icing, or sponge cake with cream, lamingtons, Anzacs, sausage rolls or curried egg sandwiches. At night, she sips hot Milo and leafs through a Women’s Weekly from the pile in the sewing room, looking for new recipes. Every Saturday, Pat drives them in the blue Kingswood to Claytonville, the next town, and they push their trolleys, mountain-high with vegetables and fruit, rice, macaroni and custard, down the aisles of the supermarket.
Harry’s shearers come from all over the place. Tommo, a burly red-bearded Scotsman from Lake Grace, and Jock, a thin reed of a man from Bridgetown, stay in the old workers’ hut down by the dam. Teddy Jones, whose parents own The Top pub, helps with the bigger sheds. And then there is Clem. Harry’s the wool classer and sorts out the sheds. But Rose knows on the first day she walks into the shed at nine, basket filled with jelly cakes, ham and mustard sandwiches and oranges cut into quarters, that Clem really runs the show. On that first morning he’s bent over an enormous sheep, drawing graceful lines with his handpiece along its back and swiftly scooping the shaved fleece out of the way. All the men watch every move.
‘Me prize ram,’ Harry says, kicking the wool out from under the ram. ‘He’s a beauty.’
Benny, the young roustabout, seems jumpy as a rabbit, and Rose can see his big-eyed awe as he watches Clem make skillful strokes up the ram’s back. No one talks. Rose places the basket on the sorting table and watches as Clem expertly manoeuvres the huge sheep onto its rump so he can tidy the hind legs and finish the other side. Finally Clem reaches behind him for the cord and pulls it firmly. Silence fills the shed as he straightens and the sheep, edgy and bleating, hobbles to its feet, the other men closing in just in case it bolts.
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