‘It’s medicine,’ she insists, when Beth answers the door. ‘Lime—good for the throat.’
They sit in the haus win, feet digging into white sand, water drip-dripping into strategically placed buckets. Everything smells fresh and new.
‘You look much better,’ Val says.
‘I feel it.’ Beth smiles, then shakes her head: ‘I’ve never felt that bad before.’
‘You know ...’ Val treads cautiously, ‘you’ve been through a lot. It takes its toll eventually.’
‘Yeah, I guess so.’ Beth leans back against the bamboo wall.
‘I’ve loved having you here Beth, don’t get me wrong, but whenever you’re ready to go home, you can go, you know.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘The school, the restaurant, these meris here’—she gestures to Lena’s, then to Ruth’s house—‘they’ll survive without you.’ She winks. ‘Only just, though.’ Then she takes a quick breath. Now or never. She’s not even sure what she’s going to say but she’s done with asking for divine inspiration. ‘I’m sorry about what happened with him. Truly. It must’ve been so very hard.’
‘Pirate?’ Beth asks surprised. ‘It was only a couple of weeks, Val.’
‘Not Pirate. Sam.’
The name hangs in the air. Val wants to cover it with a funny quip or change the subject but Beth stares out into the jungle. Something makes Val wait.
‘Thanks.’ Beth’s voice is soft. ‘It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, calling off a wedding. Knowing people would talk about it. Their pity. But the accident—’ Her breath catches. She waits. ‘It was awful seeing him in that hospital bed. Knowing it was my fault.’ She brings her legs up and hugs them to her. ‘He’s a good man Val, you know, a really good man. I ruined his life.’
Val takes a deep breath. ‘Maybe it was always going to happen.’ Beth looks at her quizzically. ‘Whether you married him or not, it was always going to happen one way or another, the accident. And there’s no rhyme or reason to it.’ Val’s not sure where this is going. ‘Fate or the great plan, you know. It’s like you see up here all the time. Like that girl who helped at the elections and was raped by those officials, she fled to the police and they raped her too. It doesn’t matter how many letters I write, there’s no investigation. Like Luke Tarnaka in Year Two: his mum, no matter how many bruises she gets, she’s never going to leave his dad. Bad things happen to good people.’
Beth’s big blue eyes are filling.
‘Beth, I know you tried to help Delilah because of Sam. You tried to do what you thought was right and when you knew enough was enough, you stopped. But she’s still here and so is her thumb. She made her choices. Or Ruth did ...’ She trails off, starts again. ‘I mean maybe you reached that point and realised enough was enough, no more trying. No wedding. You’re not bad people, either of you. Whatever happened afterwards was his choice.’
Val knows she’s lost track of what she’d set out to say and she needs something big to try and make sense of it all. She pours more gin and adds a splash of tonic. ‘When I was in my twenties, there was this man. Barry West.’ She looks out at Lena’s meri blouses hanging lifeless on the line, feeling Beth’s eyes on her. Then she’s looking past the laundry to the jungle and she’s telling Beth about Babinda and Friday nights at the plantation, that she’s wondered for over thirty years how her life might have been if she’d stayed in Cairns and made things work with Barry. Let Barry’s fingers do the talking. ‘But I couldn’t shake this niggling feeling I needed more. Something else at least.’ She takes a swig of gin. ‘Maybe I’ll always feel a bit like that.’
‘That’s how I felt,’ Beth says. ‘It just wasn’t enough. Not him. Me. I wasn’t enough somehow.’
Val goes to speak but Beth cuts her off.
‘I got sick of trying to make it work and pretending there was nothing to fix,’ she says. ‘Then I figured his family blamed me for the accident. And he did too. He wouldn’t talk to me. That was the worse thing of all. Some weird form of payback.’ A half laugh.
‘So you did what you had to do, and then came up here.’
‘Yeah. Eva and Clem thought it was a good option. Get me away from all the talk more than anything. But I should have stayed. Helped with the rehab.’
‘Eva said he didn’t want you to.’
‘Yeah I know, but I should have done something.’
‘Well, I think you made the right choice to come up here. You’ve thrown yourself at this place.’
‘And nearly killed myself doing it.’
‘You make the best choices you can at the time, Beth, knowing you’ll never have to live this life again.’ Val shakes her head, and her voice cracks. ‘You’d never want to.’
They sit in silence for a few minutes. Val hears kids screaming at each other in Pidgin, out on the road, and closer, the click-clack of crickets fills the air.
‘I got malaria once,’ she says quietly. The whole afternoon sharpens; the laundry is whiter, the jungle a brighter green, the crickets are louder, and she knows that Beth is honing in on every word. ‘I know I told you I never had it, but I did: when I first came, when Moresby was on its last legs and most Aussies were going home. The priest put me in a convent, thought I’d be safer there. Some raskols broke in. I could hear them raping Sister Benedicta in her room next door. Her screams, Beth, I’ll never forget the screams. I hid in my cupboard. Stuffed a laplap in my mouth so they couldn’t hear me crying.’ She looks out at the jungle, the vines twisting up round the trunks of the raintrees, the towering coconut palms. ‘Imagine what they’d do to a white woman.’ She feels Beth’s hand on her arm; she hears her own voice sounding strange. ‘You see, bad things happen to good people. And that sister, Sister Benedicta? She runs the best high school in Goroka now. You’d never know. People rebuild, Beth. You will. So will Sam.’ She clears her throat. ‘After that I got sick. Sick from shame and guilt more than anything, probably. That I didn’t help her, that they didn’t find me. Only got malaria once, though. Lucky. I lay in that bed in the stinking heat, fever stripping my body bare and Sister Benedicta next door praying for me each night. She kept that room for years! And I thought, this is it: I could live or die. I wanted Barry West. My Cairns life. But that nun was next door, her ordeal so much more than mine, her faith so much stronger. And I realised I just had to get on with it, keep doing what I really knew I had to.’
The night birds are just starting to sing, their calls softening the heat of the day.
‘I came up here because I felt numb,’ Beth whispers. ‘Because I didn’t give a shit, really, if I lived or died.’
‘I know what you’ve been doing,’ Val says, and in her mind’s eye she sees herself in Moresby in that stark convent room. ‘You’re up here trying to prove you’re still a good person.’
A tear trickles down the side of Beth’s nose.
‘You are good enough, Beth. Truly.’ She reaches for Beth’s hand. It seems the right thing to do. ‘You have to believe it.’
Beth squeezes her hand. ‘Thanks, Val,’ she says.
‘It took guts, what you did with Sam. Don’t ever think otherwise. You could have gone ahead with a wedding and lived a lie. You could have gone under after the accident—turned to drugs. Or ended it all. Guilt. Regret. Grief. They’re mighty huge hurdles.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘You’re a chip off the old block, have you ever thought of that? Look at your dad: no one loved someone as much as he loved Rose. We all know it. I was half a world away and I knew it as plain as day. He still loves her, and he carries on. Loves his life, despite the pain. You aren’t that different. People love you here—the kids, Lena, Ruth, Delilah, people who come to the restaurant.’ She feels herself flush. ‘We all do,’ she says. ‘You’ve meant more to these people in a few months than most expats do in years.’ Beth shudders and the tears are falling now. ‘And for God’s sakes, look after yourself,’ Val says. ‘First. Always. It’s not selfish, it’s smart. It’s a load of crap, this Catholic notion of putting o
thers first. Sorry Jesus ...’—she looks upward fleetingly—‘but it is. Beth, you’re no good to anyone—especially up here—if you don’t look after yourself.’
She reaches over, places her hand gently over Beth’s heart. ‘Service starts here,’ she says.
And then Beth’s pulling her in and holding her, not tight and hard, but a gentle wrapping up. No one’s ever hugged her like that.
‘Thank you,’ Beth whispers, and Val’s eyes feel hot and her own tears come silently and quick.
Beth’s forgotten she’d packed it, but there it is: a gossamer gold bag poking out the side pocket of her backpack. She reaches inside. Before she left, when she’d questioned what she’d done and loathed herself more than ever, she’d stared at this ring, punishing herself. All those months of not wanting to see it and now the silver ring with the small diamonds lies flat in her palm, Sam loves Beth 2007 engraved inside. It looks tiny.
She slips an envelope with the ring and a note under Lena’s door. For you, susa. Diamonds get good money here. Keep the ring or sell it and buy things for the restaurant or for you and Grace. Love, Beth.
She knows that Lena will ask questions and, for the first time, she’s ready to answer them.
*
The night Beth walks into Lena’s Place, finds Ruth standing at the bain-marie, stirring kakaruk into curry noodles.
‘Ah Misis Beth, you are back!’ Ruth says excitedly. Her voice brings Lena bustling out of the kitchen.
‘Susa, susa,’ Lena coos, rushing towards her and taking Beth’s hands in hers. ‘You look pretty again. More fat now. Not so black in the face.’ Beth is perplexed. ‘You happy,’ Lena says, pinching her arm.
Lena is wearing the ring on her middle finger and Beth smiles. ‘Might as well get to work,’ she says, reaching for the broom. ‘No pay this week and I need kina for kaikai.’ She rubs her belly.
The next day Beth walks through the mission to the beach. People stop her: neighbours, students, parents, the nuns. They all ask about her fever, her malolo. They hold her hands, smiling their big red smiles.
1981
One October morning Eva offers to bring Beth home from kindergarten, to give Rose a few extra hours to herself. Rose naps before lunch, eats baked beans on toast and feels the afternoon stretch out before her like a long straight road. She feels restless and clammy; the house is too hot for spring. She takes a glass of iced water and sits on the back verandah, resting in Clem’s favourite old chair, the springs digging into her back. The egg and bacon flowers and the powder-blue leschenaultias have wilted, and for a moment she feels caught up in the sense of things fading.
It’s getting harder to move now. She wasn’t this big with Beth. Everything’s looser second time round love, Eva said last week. Reckon it’s a boy for sure; look how low you are. Now, Rose rests a hand on her overripe belly, feels the tightness high up under her ribcage. Probably a foot. She’s not sure she can stretch much more and there’s still five weeks to go. Her legs have been swollen for months; puffed up old lady’s legs that hurt to touch. She’d never had that with Beth, either. Rest, Doctor Cousens says. Blood pressure’s up on last month. Take things slow. She laughs, remembering: With Beth and Clem to look after? Fat chance! Still, she wouldn’t have it any other way. A son, she reckons, will make the family feel complete. Though they’ve never said it, she knows they’ll call him Tom. She looks out to the first line of flowering plum trees in the orchard, and thinks of the cherry trees in Japan, imagining herself and Clem walking arm in arm one day beneath the pink papery flowers. But like yesterday, the trees are blurred into one long hazy hedge. She blinks a few times. Still blurred. She hasn’t mentioned it to Clem, her vision—or lack of it. She doesn’t want to worry him, but it’s bad today. The worst it’s been. She needs to lie down. She stands, quickly reaches for the side of the house to steady herself and she’s soaked with sweat and all of a sudden her heart’s thundering and she’s gasping for air, can’t take enough in.
This is the moment when she knows it’s all gone wrong, that there’s no time to call someone, that Eva’s gone to town anyway and she needs help right now. She needs to get to Smithson’s. She can just make out the edge of the verandah, nearly slips off the top step as she struggles towards the car. She’s stranded half way between the Cortina and the house when her legs go and she hits the dust hard, clutching her belly. She can’t see anything and the blood’s rushing to her head, her heart’s racing and her chest’s stretching and searing with heat. Her belly burns; her big beautiful belly with the maybe-son feels ripped apart. Beth flashes into her mind, waiting by the kindergarten gate, and then Eva, more a mum than her own. Her heart’s thumping like it’s coming through her chest. Something hot runs down the inside of her leg. Her ears roar. Then it’s Clem: warm, clumsy, fool of a man Clem outside MacMillan’s all those years ago, claiming her there and then, and she’s clawing at her dress, trying to get air, but her arms won’t do what she wants. They’re jolting in spasms, whacking the dirt, slapping her head, and her legs are twitching too, and electricity rushes through her again and again and again, her body jerking, her heels kicking up dust, saliva frothing in her mouth. Everything goes black.
‘Eclampsia,’ he tells him. ‘It can fool even the most experienced doctor.’
Clem rocks backward and forward in the chair. ‘It was out of the blue.’ The doctor’s voice is small.
‘It’s not as common these days but it still happens. The symptoms can easily be overlooked in a normal pregnancy.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘You can’t blame yourself.’
Clem places his head in his big hands and weeps.
*
Later, Harry Smithson sits with Clem at the kitchen table, telling him how he’d found Rose. That he had a sore throat and didn’t go to work, came to borrow Clem’s rotary hoe to rip his summer vegie patch. But he’d found her lying in the dirt, one arm still hugging her belly.
‘I reckon she was going for help,’ Harry says, voice wavering. ‘Racing to her car.’
Clem sees the keys still hanging on the hook by the stove.
He clings to the fact it was Harry who found her and not Eva, with little Beth watching from the back seat of the Ford. Or worse still, that it could have been him, coming down over the hill after work, and finding the pair of them too long gone.
*
Clem makes Beth toast for dinner. He can’t eat, can’t even put the kettle on. Eva says she’ll stay, or better still, love, come and stay with me. But Clem wants to be here because Rose is here. Everywhere. And he can’t bear the thought of leaving her. Every time he looks at Beth his throat cracks and he’s biting back a howl. He puts her to bed with a story, like Rose used to do, along with a cup of milk.
‘Mumma?’ she asks, and it breaks him a little more.
‘She’s not coming, Bethy love.’ He chokes through tears. ‘She’s gone, love.’
‘Okay,’ she says. ‘But tomorrow I’ll see her then.’ And she snuggles into bed and rolls over.
Clem stands there watching the rise and fall of the little body, hugging himself as tears come hot and fast.
He walks down the hall and flicks off the kitchen light, then heads for the bedroom, the doctor’s voice haunting him: Did Rose mention a problem with vision? A racing heart? Was there much fluid, puffiness around her legs? He sees her in the rear-view mirror when he leaves for work that morning: standing by the gate, waving till the ute arced over the hill. Here this morning and now she’s gone. And the little one too. Clem can’t get to the bed quick enough, throws himself bellydown and scoops up armfuls of pillow and quilt and buries himself in, stuffs the pillow to his mouth and bawls.
*
‘Mumma! Mumma!’ Beth’s call rips through him.
Clem collects her in his big arms and carries her through the inky black house. Gently, he lays her on Rose’s side of the bed, watching as she nuzzles into the smell of her mother and quickly falls back to sleep.
He tries not to remember th
e phone call. How do you tell the parents, people you’ve never even met, let alone got to know, grown close to, that their only child has died? They’d exchanged empty words and then there was silence and finally a thank you for letting us know.
Clem lays his calloused hand over Beth’s tiny one. His family now. And he will love her to the end.
*
He’s seen other men turn reckless: old Jimmy Harris the gun shearer from Narrogin way, lost his wife in a car accident, and turned to grog and horses. At Rose’s funeral Jimmy says, Mate, when you’ve lost everything, what else matters? But Clem has Beth and that makes all the difference; he has to make sure his little piece of Rose grows and grows. He works hard, takes on more shearing sheds than ever. They go to tea at Eva’s twice a week. Somehow he gets Beth to the school bus with a sandwich and fruit in her bag every morning. He holds her when she cries, pulls her up into his lap and rocks her.
‘You cry as much as yer need to love,’ he always says.
He answers all her questions about Rose; tells her every little scrap of story he can remember, and reassures her that the little brother-sister is safe with its mum.
He knows in the bones of himself that he’s never going to shake grief like this, wouldn’t even want to try. It’s his link to Rose, this bruise, and it will stay with him till he goes. He talks to her, still smells the lavender of her, and it gives him a steady smile. He gets on with things, bundling up his loss and taking it with him. He knows that one day, when he can no longer walk the paddocks, hear the birds and lick the sweat from his top lip, they’ll be together. That’s enough. That, and Beth and Eva and Dog. This place.
*
When Beth is seven, she tapes a photo of Rose, the last one Clem took, on the wall near the sink. In the photo, Rose is standing out the front near the sweet peas, in a yellow dress stretched over her big belly.
‘Ahh good spot, Bethy,’ he says. ‘Yer mum’s favourite place, that sink.’
‘Mum hated doing the dishes. Even I remember that!’
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