Bloodlines

by Nicole Sinclair

And Beth, stalking through the door to the kitchen, smiles for the first time in days.

  *

  The next evening, Ned saunters into the restaurant earlier than usual.

  ‘Want something to eat, Mister Ned?’ says Delilah.

  ‘Eating’s cheatin’!’ he says. He places a six-pack of beer on the table where Bill is slurping curried noodles.

  He spends the evening with a can in each hand, talking to Bill but loud enough for everyone to hear: Mate, what about that time in Moresby when the horse I backed won the Melbourne Cup ... the party we had that night ... What about Christmas at the Crown that time when Roo went crazy and shoved you on the pool table and smashed it to shit?

  When Beth clears the table Ned tells her about his town planning job in Goroka: ‘Back in the good old days when the Aussies ran the place, no corruption then, no stinking wantok system as bad as it is now.’

  She knows that Lena’s agitated, that Ruth and Delilah are hiding in the kitchen, but she can’t rally enough to tell him to shut his mouth or get out.

  ‘Try and get a flaming government contract now without a wantok in the game...’ His voice trails off as she heads for the kitchen with more empty cans.

  She’s slicing pumpkin when Ned slides in. He stands too close to her. His breath stinks of beer and old cigarettes. He asks too many questions: How’s school? How long you staying up here? Where were Pirate and Jim going? And as she runs the knife down the pumpkin, cutting the skin from the flesh, all she wants to do is thrust the blade into his chest.

  *

  October trundles on and she teaches, swims and helps at the restaurant five nights a week. Lena says, Nogat susa and yu go long haus when Beth arrives before lunch on the weekends. And when she refuses to leave, Ruth and Lena shake their heads and Lena hands her an apron. Worn down by another day, Beth is asleep before nine.

  2006

  Sam spends two nights a week at cricket training and is gone all Saturday. He’s playing for a mate’s team, hoping a more established club will pick him up. At nights, he wants to talk about scoring runs and his batting technique, the weight training he’s done. He suspends a rope from a rafter outside and ties a tennis ball to the end. A bit childish, Beth thinks, and she’s sick of hearing the thwack as he belts it, over and over. He’s lost interest in films and books, all the stories she used to tell him. Another thing that irks her. She finds herself doing this more and more often, this mental tally of all the things that niggle. Sometimes she feels like she was snared, that Sam pretended to be one thing when they met, and now he’s revealing his true colours: just another beer-loving, sport-worshipping man. At other times she thinks she’s being too judgemental, too precious. Wasn’t Sam entitled to his own life, after all?

  But then she hears the thwack, thwack, thwack, and later, the clang of another empty bottle as it lands in the recycling bin.

  One night, she wakes in the dark and looks at her watch. Two am. Sam, strewn over the other half of the bed, is snoring. Quietly, Beth slips out from underneath the quilt and, feeling along the wall so she doesn’t need the light on, pads down the hall, through the kitchen to the back door. She opens it and steps out into the courtyard, the cold paving stabbing her feet as she walks to the table and rests her hand on it. She looks out to the small backyard, the square garden shed, the clothesline tucked along the wall, everything neat and contained. Streetlights are hanging above the neighbouring houses, casting long shadows on the tiles, and far off she hears a siren, slow and mournful. Someone has a TV on.

  Beth stares ahead. Her throat tightens. This is not what I want. This is not what I want.

  *

  She starts thinking of travelling again. In her mind, she re-traces the path she’d taken, dodging scooters and mangy dogs, from the Chow Kit market back to Mrs Lee’s Guesthouse in Kuala Lumpur. She sees herself as if in a film, outside the Gateway to India in Mumbai, the junkies and their Bunsen burners tucked down some grimy alley. Watches herself sitting at a plastic table in Bangkok, looking at a young boy with a purple hat ride an elephant down the street, cajoling the crowd into feeding it popcorn and giving him baht.

  One night Sam walks in with pizza and red wine: Scarborough Cricket Club has asked him to join the squad again. Within weeks he’s selected for the A Grade team. There’s some suggestion that if his batting form continues, the Tassie selectors who knew him as a young player might be interested. You know, Beth, some older, experienced batsmen are being recalled these days. Most Sundays, he weaves the Triumph through the scarp east of Perth, or south to Bunbury with a few friends from work. He asks Beth to come but she says she has lessons to prepare, papers to mark. Instead, she curls up in bed, reading the weekend paper. During the week she stays late at school, checking out the internet for teaching jobs in Singapore, Nairobi, Bucharest. When she runs in the mornings before the world is up, she heads south along the coastal path till she reaches the statue of CY O’Connor, covered in barnacles, out in the slate-grey sea. A man who rode his horse into the water, put a gun to his head. She thinks of doubt and despair, what it can do to someone. And then she turns around and heads for home.

  *

  ‘We have to talk,’ Sam says one night.

  Beth is making coffee. ‘What about?’

  ‘About this.’ He gestures to the space between them.

  ‘What this?’ Beth says sharply.

  ‘Us, Beth. What’s wrong?’ He reaches for her but she flinches.

  ‘Nothing,’ she says, walking to the table with her coffee. ‘I don’t know ...’ she begins, then loses her nerve. ‘I’m tired, that’s all.’ She sits reading her book and sipping coffee. She wants to throw the cup against the glass door, see the black liquid run down to the tiles. She wants to rear up at him, tell him she’s had enough. That she’s sick with worry they’re doing the wrong thing. That maybe he should go back to Tasmania. He misses it. He is unhappy. And so is she. But the words are stuck inside and she turns the page she hasn’t read, soothing herself by saying things will get better, they have to get better.

  For a few weeks, Sam cooks Beth her favourite meals, and on weekends he suggests they go dancing at a new club, or to a film she’s wanted to see. The latest offering at His Majesty’s Theatre. One day he packs a surprise picnic and drives her to Kings Park, where they sit under lemon scented gums overlooking the river. On the last Friday of term she comes home to find champagne chilling and a small gift wrapped in swirling turquoise paper waiting on the table. She opens it, sees a tiny elephant exquisitely carved from teak. She runs her fingertips over its smooth, round belly.

  ‘Sam,’ she whispers, holding it in the nest of her hands, ‘it’s beautiful.’

  He gently kisses her forehead. ‘I bought it in Rajasthan,’ he says, his voice catching, ‘and hid it in the bottom of my backpack. I’ve been waiting for the right time.’

  She looks up into his grey eyes, gentle and warm, and they stand there, his arms wrapped around her as she tells herself over and over that it will all work out in the end, after they are married, it will all work out.

  But the dinners and the gift are not enough. Beth slips further away and Sam grows quiet. She starts finding empty beer stubbies in the shed, upturned in cardboard boxes, empty wine bottles at the back of the cupboard in the laundry. The recycling bin clanks with glass when she lugs it out on collection day. She heads to bed early, and he stays up playing old vinyls and drinking some more. She hears the back door opening and knows he’s smoking pot again and phoning his Tassie mates. When he finally comes in, she pretends she’s asleep. He bumps the bed, lies down heavily, reaching one leg over hers, his breath stale.

  And then one morning on her drive to work along the highway, she imagines being hit by a road train crammed with bellowing sheep, on its way to the wharf. Half way over the traffic bridge, she sees herself smash into a barrier and plummet into the river, the murky water whirling around the car, her head slumped against the seat.

  1976

 
; Clem hears the baby howling in the night. Every two hours, it must be. He sees Rose roll over, thump the pillow and cry, until he gets up and brings her the baby. Rose drowses, jerks awake, drowses again, Beth asleep on her nipple.

  Once he wakes to see her kneeling on the bed, baby in one arm, punching with the other.

  ‘Rose!’ he shouts, bringing his arm up, terrified but ready to wallop her. ‘Rose, don’t hit her!’

  ‘Clem!’ she hisses. ‘You fool!’ Beth begins to cry and he sees Rose pounding the pillow. She whimpers. ‘I’m just sick of it, Clem, so sick of the crying. Why won’t she sleep? Why won’t she just bloody sleep?’

  ‘Here, love.’ He gently prises Bethy from her arms. ‘I’ll have her. Go back to sleep.’

  He takes the bleating baby, slips down the hallway and out the back door. He grabs his raincoat and covers her with it, feels the tar-black night wrapping around them.

  ‘Here, my girl,’ he says, jimmying a swollen shearer’s finger into her mouth.

  Under the stars he walks up and down the back lawn, round and round the weeping willow, past his vegie patch where the corn quivers in the pre-dawn breeze, past a whimpering Dog, past nappies forgotten on the line. He walks past the tractor with the flat tyre he’s been meaning to fix, past Rose’s Cortina and the ute, till he’s facing east and can see the first pink softening of morning. He holds his little girl, inhales the sheep and sweat of his raincoat mingling with the sweet, soapy smell of her, until the little body stops shuddering at last and her mouth gives up the suck.

  Val hurries home from town, hoping that Beth has the night off from the restaurant. She saw her walking across the grass to the library today and realised how skinny she’s become. She’s going to make a big pot of creamy pumpkin soup and force her, if she must, to eat it. Lena’s worried too. In the schoolyard yesterday Val overheard her say to Mrs Samin, Dispela Beth im sik, and she was so concerned she didn’t say a thing about the Pidgin rule. Even Ruth watches Beth like a hawk, worry creasing her tired face.

  Val needs to make the soup and tell Beth about Abraham. She knows he’s one of Beth’s favourite students. Hers too; although she knows everyone is created equal in the eyes of the Lord. Val was at school when the police rang: some raskols had followed Abraham after school as he walked home, got him talking, then pulled out a knife and demanded his trainers. Abraham tried to run—he’s one of the fastest boys in the school—but there were three of them and they got him in the end. One held a knife to his throat while the others ripped off the shoes. Even took the socks. Beth already looks lost enough, and Val’s not sure she should tell her. But better she hears it now than at school in the morning.

  She lies on the couch watching TV. The soup’s been ready for hours but Beth must be working late at Lena’s Place.

  ‘Christ,’ she says looking towards the ceiling, ‘can’t you pull a few strings?’

  *

  She wakes with a cricked neck and a sore hip. It takes a few moments to realise where she is. Val hobbles across the kitchen to her bedroom, squinting at the clock: one am. She’ll have to get up early before Beth goes for her run, tell her about those good-for-nothing raskols stealing Abraham’s shoes.

  The next day Beth feels a cold sweat run across her back and down her left arm, even though the sun’s beating down. She’s standing under the PNG flag with Abraham and Dennis, trying to grasp what they’re telling her. Her throat’s sore, her head’s heavy.

  ‘Misis Beth?’ asks Abraham. ‘You orait?’

  Focus, Beth. ‘I’m fine.’ She tries not to look at the cut below his left ear, feels her stomach lurch. She stares at the shark tooth around his neck instead. ‘Go to class, I’ll be there in a minute.’ She can feel the weight of tears. ‘I’m sorry about your trainers, Abraham.’

  He shrugs and saunters away, and Beth struggles to the office.

  Sitting on the sick bed, Beth stares blankly at the wall.

  ‘Beth.’ Val’s voice in the distance. ‘Are you okay?’

  Beth shakes her head. Pain stabs her shoulders. She winces.

  ‘Aching?’ Val asks, closer now.

  Beth nods.

  ‘Sore throat?’

  Beth nods again. A shiver rips through her.

  ‘You cold?’ Val sounds like she’s in a tunnel.

  ‘A little.’

  Val places her palm on Beth’s forehead, the first time she’s touched her since the airport.

  ‘Shit!’ she says. ‘You’re burning up.’

  Beth just wants to lie down. Be somewhere else.

  ‘Beth ... I’m worried ... it could be malaria. Let’s get you to the hospital.’

  Beth whimpers, watching Val rummage through the medicine box, shoving syringes into a bilum.

  ‘They’ll do a blood test,’ Val says, ‘then we’ll know for sure.’

  The school ute jars through potholes and the seat juts into Beth’s back; everything aches. And in a moment that takes her breath away, turns her wooden, she says it in her mind’s voice: he’s gone. Not Pirate. Sam. Gone. She feels wretched, hurtling towards the hospital. The air feels thick, the sea is a blur as they shoot past. She rests her head against the window, closes her eyes, wonders in a haze if this is her day of reckoning.

  *

  A nurse waves them past queues of people sitting on the floor, and Val helps Beth step around naked babies, dogs, pots of food. It’s her skin or being with Val and she wants to protest, knows she’s pushing in, but her legs are trembling and she’s burning, burning, and then other arms are around her, guiding her into a room.

  The nurse takes a pinprick of blood. ‘You people,’ she says. ‘We have needles!’

  Today, Beth is too tired to say.

  She watches the nurse smear blood between two glass slides. So much riding on one tiny jab.

  ‘The results take an hour,’ the nurse says softly.

  ‘Call me at school,’ Val says, helping Beth to her feet. ‘I’ll let Beth know.’

  *

  Beth lies in bed, sheets twisting around her. She can’t remember the drive home from the haus sik. Her head pounds and she wills herself to focus on her book. Read every single word. No space to wander. In the end she throws the book on the floor and rolls flat on her back. Everything hurts, even the weight of the sheet. Every so often a throbbing pain surges through her body, races upwards, bursts in her head. And though she feels clammy with heat, she can’t stop shivering.

  She closes her eyes, lies very still. Clem’s face, all loose and worried, is before her. Then Eva’s, her grey eyes soft with hurt. What would they say? If anything happens to her, she knows they would never get over it. Why is she even here? To prove a point? To make amends? To kill herself?

  *

  Moments pass. Or it could be hours. She’s here and there, hearing Lena calling Grace through the walls, Clem’s voice whispering Beth, Bethy. Then she turns quickly and vomits on the floor. It smells putrid and she should clean it up but she just can’t move. She’s in the sea off Fremantle, seagulls barking overhead, the sun making her squint. She’s freezing, grabs a fistful of sheet and hugs it around herself. She feels the searing heat of Pirate beside her, then Sam, and she blinks the image away, then Eva touching her hair: It’s all right, love, no one can make you do anything.

  Grace! Lena calls again. Grace! Yu kam bek!

  Clem is beside her, his calloused hands rubbing against her arm. And there are dark curls everywhere, as if her mum Rose, who she never thinks about now, is here, filling the room. And then she sees Sam. Looks into his face and this time, does not turn away. His beautiful, angry, devastated face. Then she sees his body the night of the accident—limp in the arms of his sister who is raking back his hair and sobbing and urging him to Stay still Sam, just stay still. Beth cries now. A grief that gathers like the afternoon storm: purple and dark and furious. For the first time in years, maybe since she was little, maybe since those bleak days when she realised that Rose wasn’t coming back, Beth is crying,
gathering herself in, curling up like a baby, crying.

  Angry clouds are brewing at the back of the mission, the afternoon shower not far away, just as Val hurries across the lawn to Beth’s house.

  ‘Beth,’ Val tentatively calls through the louvres. ‘You there, Beth?’

  ‘I’m coming.’ Beth’s voice is hoarse.

  She unlocks the door and Val murmurs, ‘Beth, it’s okay. It’s negative.’

  Beth is bawling and Val reaches for her just as she falls.

  ‘Thank God,’ Beth cries, and Val feels the threat of tears herself.

  ‘They said it might be glandular fever or a virus or something,’ she says, smoothing over Beth’s sticky hair. ‘You have to rest, they said, and go back next week if you’re not better.’ She feels awkward now, and lets Beth go, helps her shuffle back to bed. Then she fills a basin with boiling water and soap and, holding her breath, cleans up the vomit in Beth’s room: watery yellow spew that reeks and has travelled everywhere.

  But then, through the doorway, she sees Jesus hovering above the stove and she thinks that soaping the floor is like washing the feet of the poor. He’d like that. Maybe this is love.

  ‘Malolo.’ Val’s voice is soft as she pats Beth’s leg.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Malolo. It means rest.’ She looks at Beth. ‘I don’t want to see you at school for a week. At least! I’ll bring over some books and DVDs. I’ll ask Moses to buy fish. Just rest Beth, I mean it.’ She realises her head is pounding and she needs a gin. ‘Christ,’ she says, ‘Clem’d kill me if anything happened to you.’

  1977

  It’s like a switch flicks one day and Rose feels her old self again. She gives up the idea that she can make Beth a perfect baby, one who sleeps and feeds like the clinic sister says. She cuts long lengths of stretch fabric in magenta, gold and orange. She wraps the magenta one around and around herself, like she’s seen in a magazine, women from India, Africa, New Guinea. She tucks Beth in tight against her. She begins cooking again. She weeds the garden. She chops wood, little Beth jostling on her back or snug against her heart. Beth sleeps on and off and when she squawks for a feed, Rose lifts up her blouse, Beth roots for the nipple and Rose keeps working.