He’s never had a birthday away from her, and he’s feeling lost. He recalls the trip to Atlantis north of Perth one year, the photo he took of Rose and Beth in homemade dresses of matching fabric, standing at the base of King Neptune, Beth clutching her present, the wind so woolly he reckoned Rose’s hair would give them all whiplash if she didn’t tie it back. Then there was the surprise party at Eva’s, with Beth’s eight-year-old friends and her first ice cream cake. Those times he misses Rose the most, and Tom as well, wishing that Beth had known them, because stories and photos are never enough.
He wonders what she’s doing up there to celebrate this birthday. Mudcrabs maybe, or lobster. Maybe turtle again. He shakes his head, proud that his girl’s eaten turtle, doesn’t know anyone else who has. Sure did earn some respect in the shed when he told them that.
He runs his finger over the tiny baby in the photo. There’ll be a few sherbets, if he knows Val.
1976
Rose shoves Clem in the night and he grunts, rolls over. She pushes him again.
‘Clem,’ she says, ‘the baby’s coming.’
They race to Claytonville Hospital, the headlights shining through silver fog, some luminous path lit just for them. Rose grips the dashboard with one hand and squeezes his arm with the other, moaning with each wave she rides. Legs splayed, she wrestles on the seat beside him, her groans more animal the further they drive.
‘Hang on, Rosie, love.’ He must sound useless. ‘We’re nearly there. Easy does it.’ She rests her head against the seat, panting.
When they finally reach the hospital he parks in the ambulance bay, leaps out of the ute, shouting for help. Rose opens her door and Clem runs to her, tries to lift her out, but she pushes him away with force.
‘I’m not a baby, Clem, I’m having one!’ Then: ‘They’re bringing a stretcher, see.’ Two nurses rush towards them.
When the baby is close, Rose, flat on her back and writhing, brings Clem’s hand that she’s gripping to her mouth and bites down hard. He can feel his pierced skin, blood rushing, but all he can see is Rose, incredible Rose, eyes wild, hair sticking to her face, and all he can hear is her deep guttural sound, a call from somewhere else. And, with one final push, one last scream that rattles Clem’s insides, a dark head hovers, and a baby, black-haired and slippery, is thrust into the air by the doctor. Then Rose, lying back on the pillow, face flushed and glowing, reaches for the wrinkled baby before the nurse can intervene, and tucks it against her breast.
‘A girl, Clem,’ she’s crying. ‘We’ve got a baby girl. A little girl.’
And Clem, beaming, taller than he’s ever been, kisses her softly. Then he kisses the baby’s head, smeared with blood and gunk, and sits down beside them, weeping big soupy, joyful sobs.
*
Rose’s parents say congratulations again. A mean, dried-up word, when all’s said and done. A man could almost feel sorry for them.
‘Aunty! Aunty!’ Grace calls from the back door. ‘Pas bilong yu.’
Beth’s just showered and the towel slips slightly, revealing part of her breast when she walks over and reaches for the envelope. Grace giggles and bounds down the steps and across the grass. Beth studies the big awkward looping letters, laboured over to get the address exactly right; she can see the gnarled shearer’s hands, the swollen knuckles as the fingers grip the pen, struggling over each letter.
She rips open the envelope. There’s a sheep on the front and Happy Birthday to Ewe printed in Clem’s handwriting across the white fleece. Beth smiles and shakes her head. Vintage Clem. Many happy returns for the day. I’ve never been away from you on your birthday Beth and I am not sure what I will do. But I know I will think of you many times and have a lemonade for you with dinner. Happy Birthday my girl. Your ever loving Dad xoxo.
Clem, here in her hands.
She stands the card on the table, trying not to cry.
‘Beth!’ Val’s suddenly at the door. ‘Nek bilong mi i drai.’ And when Beth looks confused she says: ‘My throat’s dry, I’m thirsty. And you’re coming to The Bilas with us.’ Beth looks past Val, sees Lena and Grace, Delilah and Ruth, on the back of the ute, their grins as wide as the afternoon sky.
The six of them sit out the back in the beer garden of The Bilas eating fish and chips and sipping gin. A few dogs nose through the crowd and get cursed and kicked and scurry away, yelping. A band from the Solomon Islands sets up inside.
‘Bisi bisi,’ Lena says.
‘Can’t believe it,’ says Val. ‘There must be four hundred people here!’
Justice brings a bowl of melting ice cream to the table and Val ceremoniously sticks a candle in the centre and lights it, leading the others in singing ‘Happy Birthday.’ In the end the whole beer garden joins in and Beth looks at the shining faces of Delilah, Ruth, Lena nursing Grace, and then at the crowd beyond them. She wants to be like them—excited, caught up in the moment, but things are crowding in on her. The card, the green shell, Sam and the accident. Then Bill and Ned arrive with two bottles of wine and Bill’s wrapping his beefy arms around her, hugging her in Old Spice and beer.
‘My shout!’ he says, filling her glass.
Val leans over. ‘It’s warm,’ she whispers, ‘but free!’
Ned talks to Ruth, who teaches his middle boy, and tries to sober up. Bill tells jokes which Beth and Val laugh at, Lena and Delilah play with Grace and slowly sip the wine. Delilah shows everyone her thumb. Pale new skin has sealed the wound and she no longer needs to cover it. Beth is relieved, takes another drink to celebrate. Suddenly she swipes at a mosquito, then squishes it against her thigh.
‘Shit!’ Bill says. ‘Look at the size of it! Yer could put a saddle on that!’
And Beth laughing so hard tears almost come, because in that moment it’s like having Clem right here beside her. She knows he’s missing her more than ever today.
Bill asks Val about school, then he turns to Beth: ‘So, I hear Jim’s gone again.’
‘Yep.’
‘And Pirate.’
‘Yep.’
‘You okay about that? I mean, ya know, you and him had something going, didn’t ya?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Well, look what we have here!’ Roo’s sauntering up behind Val. ‘A nice little party,’ he says, resting a hand on Val’s shoulder. She stiffens, purses her lips, looks fit to kill.
‘Roo, mate.’ Bill stands quickly, sticks out his hand. ‘So great you’re here, I need to talk to you about that job in Madang ...’ And he’s steering Roo towards the bar.
‘Better join ’em.’ Ned can’t get away fast enough.
A smiling Val pours everyone more wine. ‘Saint Bill,’ she says raising her glass and they all chink glasses, giggling. ‘Happy birthday, Beth. Bet you never thought you’d be in PNG on your birthday.’
‘Thirty-two,’ Beth says sipping wine, staring out at the jungle. ‘I’m thirty-two. I’m gonna die an old maid!’
‘Nothing wrong with that,’ says Val. ‘You’re in good company!’ And she raises her glass again.
By the time the band starts, Beth’s had enough gin and wine to feel loose and light, and she urges Lena, Delilah and Ruth to dance. They weave through the crowd, mostly drunk men with a beer in each hand and eyes everywhere. She feels the place press in, and the three women stick close behind her: they’ve never been to The Bilas before. The dance floor’s pounding and before long Beth’s dripping with sweat. The music’s drumming through her, she stomps her feet with the beat, tosses her head back and thrashes about, making the women laugh, then she grabs Lena and sends her into a twirl, then Delilah, then Ruth, the four of them laughing and clapping. She dances away from them, to the stage and back, weaving through the crowd, forgetting where she is, letting the music take her, and imagines what she might look like from above: a lone white ribbon weaving through the black.
*
A few fights have broken out and a man with blood trickling down his face stumbles past. It’s like a swit
ch has been flicked: The Bilas feels ugly. Beth heads to the bar to buy water, then she’ll search for Val and tell her it’s time to leave.
‘You sure can move.’ Roo’s oily voice makes her jump. He laughs. ‘I been watching you. You got the moves orright.’ Beth tries to leave but she’s hemmed in by the crowd. She fumbles for a comeback but Roo leans closer, breath soaked in beer and cigarettes: ‘I like a woman who doesn’t say much.’ He runs a skinny finger along her forearm.
Beth grips the bar, feels something in her snap. ‘Take your fucking hands off me!’ she spits.
‘Everything okay here?’ Val reaches a smooth arm between them and rests her hand on the bar.
Roo sneers. ‘Ah, Sister Val. Patron saint of virgins everywhere.’ He gulps his beer. ‘How nice of you to join us. Reckon we could have a real party just the three of us,’ he sniggers, places his empty glass on the bar. ‘You think yer so much better than the rest of us, don’t you? All high and mighty at that convent school of yours. So bloody uptight. You need a bloody good root, the pair of yer. So ...’ He straightens up, shoving his thumbs through his belt loops. ‘Who’ll it be first?’ And he throws his head back, laughing again, and Beth can see the gums black from betelnut. ‘God, you should see yer faces!’ He shakes his head and is about to turn away, then mutters: ‘Tarred with the same brush. Bloody lesbians.’
‘Ah, Roo.’ Val’s smile is slippery. She puts an arm round Beth’s waist, pulls her close, softly kisses her cheek. ‘You don’t know the half of it!’ she says. And then she’s grabbing Beth’s hand and yanking her towards the beer garden. Beth looks back: Roo leaning on the bar, mouth open in disbelief, staring after them.
‘Yumi olgeta bai go long haus nau,’ Val says. ‘Party’s over, you meris. Let’s get this birthday girl home.’
Val swings the ute out onto the road and Beth feels dust in her throat; the place is like a renegade border town tonight. Val drives along the waterfront and Beth sits on the back of the ute, feeling the cool air on her face. She looks out to the islands, sees a few twinkling lights, sees moonlight stepping over the sea where a yacht once anchored. Suddenly the ute swerves sharply and two men leap off the road, calling out and waving their arms, then the ute thumps into a pothole, sending Beth and the others airborne and crashing back down.
Val’s had more to drink than usual, and Beth knows all about drinking and driving. You don’t grow up on a farm in Australia without knowing drinking and utes are a combination looking for trouble. Pissed as a newt, a girl in her class was hurled through the windscreen one Boxing Day after she and her brother had been koonacking at midnight. Killed instantly. A few months later a sixteen-year-old boy went to a party out at the quarry and was thrown off a ute when it hit a tree. They found him twenty metres away, spine snapped in four places. Those were tough months in Hope Valley; the town sunken in on itself. But tonight, sitting amongst these black meris chattering in island language, with gin and wine colliding and her head already throbbing, Hope Valley seems so far away. Val swerves again and a dog squeals and squeals, and the meris grow quiet, and Beth feels herself go loose, gives way to a deep, more dangerous thought: right now, she doesn’t give a damn what happens to her.
Val washes Panadol down with lime cordial and lies on the wooden floor under the fan. She’s always been a believer that hot air rises, and you can’t get cooler than the ground. She can’t sleep. Ruth’s kakaruks woke her early and she’s been fighting nausea and a ripper headache ever since. She drank more last night than she has in years. She’s not sure why. Beth’s birthday perhaps; wanting Beth to let loose a little, though she knows Beth stopped drinking long before she did. She can’t remember driving home but when she peers through the louvres, she sees the ute outside.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ she mutters.
She remembers Roo, though. Seeing him standing too close to Beth at the bar, running his dirty finger up her arm. She remembers Bill buying the extra bottles of wine. Christ, she loved these people, and she hated them. She knew Bill was as good as it got. At times his stories delighted her: pre-independence PNG, overland jungle walking expeditions, making big money in Moresby. And the parties, always the parties. Other times, the stories of the women they had bedded, the men they could have had killed, the complaints of the heat and the country gone to rack and ruin by the corruption, mates rates and the bloody flamin’ wantoks: it all drove her crazy. She’d seen Roo one night drive out of The Bilas shouting Gonna get a woman and Ned, pissing against the gate, yelled Get one for me mate, and she’d watched the ute scream down to Lim’s and stop by a woman who opened the door and climbed in. Roo had stuck his arm out the window and shaken his fist in the air, and Val sat there watching til the ute turned the corner and was out of sight.
She’s been called snob, bitch, stupid white woman by Bill and Ned when they were pissed out of their minds but the next day always, always there were messages and flowers waiting for her at school. Deep down she suspected she hated them but needed them. Maybe it was some bloated, troubled link to home: what she loathed but what she knew.
The floorboards dig into her back, and she shuts her eyes on Jesus above the stove, knowing she deserves the pain.
2005
Beth and Sam travel on the cheap. They camp in Sam’s tent across Wales, Scotland and England, but by the time they make it to Dún Laoghaire in Ireland, sick of rainy nights and muddy fields, they splurge on backpackers and B&Bs. Sometimes they say the same things at the same time and, more often now, they finish each other’s sentences. In tune. They’re brimming with new places and people, the local hooch, and each other. They buy Eurail passes and head for the Continent. Beth likes movement; for almost thirty years she’s never been more than a couple of hundred kilometres from Clem. She loves him, there’s no question, but she needs to know what it feels like, what she’s like, without him. She chews through guidebooks, spouting information about the village they’re passing through, the big town coming up next. She wakes early, raring to see the cathedral, castle, art gallery, have lunch at a cheap cafe that another traveller recommends.
‘A F C,’ Sam says one morning. He rolls over in bed and farts.
It’s the first time he’s done that in front of her, and Beth remembers what a friend once said: that the first fart meant things are changing, that the honeymoon is over.
‘I’m not going today, Beth.’
She sits up in bed. ‘But it’s meant to be brilliant, this castle—it’s in the middle of a lake!’
‘God!’ he says. ‘A F C! I’m over it.’
She bites. ‘What’s A F C?’
‘Another fucking castle. I’m done. You go. I’ll meet you at the little pub by the bridge for lunch.’
And little by little this becomes the pattern. She walks, he sleeps. She looks, he drinks.
*
Once they hit the Middle East things seem to get easier—fewer castles and palaces, although Sam makes an exception for the pyramids, One of those places, Beth, those must-see things before you die. And there’s not so many bars. But in India it changes again; for while Sam marvels at the splendour of the Taj Mahal and the crumbling pink walls of Jaipur, he also gets caught up in a Test Match—India’s playing Australia—and finds hotels and restaurants with cold beer and a big TV, waits for Beth to finish her wanderings.
At night she can’t sleep with him close; the beer and cigarettes strangle her.
Sometimes Sam surprises her. He fishes in his pocket and flicks rupees at a man with bandaged stumps for legs, balancing on a skateboard outside their pension in Panjim. Down near Kanniyakumari, where the Indian Ocean mingles with the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, he joins a group of boys playing cricket near the bus station. You like Justin Langer, one boy says, and Sam beams: I love this country. And when Beth gets sick, really sick, in Bangalore, writhing in pain and vomiting in the bed, stuck in their tiny room for three long days, Sam boils water, buys fresh bread and tiny bananas, and sponges down her burning body. North
of Kuala Lumpur they trek through jungle in Taman Negara, Beth screaming as Sam picks leeches off her legs, laughing till she hurts when he falls out of a canoe paddling back to base. In the cooler foothills, they wander through tea plantations and slurp laksa for lunch.
‘Like Tassie, a bit,’ he says, looking over the lush green hills.
‘Like the farm,’ she says. ‘In winter at least.’
And in those moments, she wills time to stop, to have it always easy like this, and pushes away the thought that they’re from different places. That perhaps they won’t have to choose.
*
Six months later, back at the farm, Beth and Sam are sitting with Eva and Clem round the big table in the kitchen. They leaf through Beth’s passport, admiring the different stamps and trying to decipher the words.
‘Gawd love,’ Clem says, sniffing her passport, ‘it’s a bit rich!’
Sam looks confused. ‘What? You mean, going to all these countries? Well, yeah I guess, but we saved and—’
Eva and Clem and Beth are laughing.
‘No,’ Beth manages to say. ‘He means it stinks!’
The passport is warped, greasy with the sweat. She’s kept it hidden close, liked the snug feel of it against her body.
‘I always wanted to travel,’ Eva says suddenly, a faraway look crossing her face. ‘You know, Alaska and Canada, those sort of places, but Tom was a real home body.’ She sighs. ‘I’ve never been overseas.’
‘You have, Mum.’ Clem reaches for her hand across the table. ‘You’ve been to Rottnest!’
Eva gives Clem a playful shove.
‘So original, Clem,’ says Beth. ‘That’s only the two millionth time you’ve said that.’
But she smiles at him because it feels good to be back home with predictable, bad-jokes Clem.
‘Maybe you could visit Tassie, Eva,’ says Sam. ‘It’s not exactly Alaska, but it’s bloody cold.’ He turns to Beth. ‘We might go there next, hey?’
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