The next Saturday Eva drives Beth to Midland and after lamingtons and vanilla milkshakes, they pick out two sensible bras: one white, one coral pink. Clem finds them in the washing, feels awkward and more than a little sad, pegging the soft triangular pieces to the line.
*
All good things come in threes, he mutters as he sits down to flick through last week’s Sunday Times. Deodorant one week, then the bra, now her period. Do girls ever let up?
He’s tucked Beth into bed with a hot water bottle strapped to her belly, a mug of Milo on the bookcase. Her second day off school. He’s not sure if she’s having a lend of him but then he remembers Rose writhing in agony the first few days of her period, asking him to rub her lower back. Besides, he likes having Beth home. The weeks and months and years are trickling through his fingers and he wants to catch them while he still has the chance.
That night he sits on her bed, hand on her knee. ‘You orright, Bethy?’
‘I’m okay Dad. Just sore, that’s all.’
‘Being a woman hurts, love.’ He pats her knee. ‘Look at yer mum.’
Beth groans and twists away from him, facing the wall. He lightly touches her shoulder and heads back to the kitchen.
Later he takes his wedding ring from the bedside table and clasps it tightly. Too risky to wear in the sheds and with his knuckles swollen and sore. And every night he goes to sleep holding it, whispering Goodnight Rosie, love.
*
‘Two bits of string and a postage stamp,’ Eva huffs when Beth brings out the new bikini.
But Beth just smiles sweetly, then gives her nan a peck on the cheek.
Beth decides she’s vegetarian on Tuesday, and on Friday when the crackling is done to perfection on one of Smithson’s pigs, she says she’s had a re-think. She and Clem sit down and tuck in, forgetting about the vegetables burning in the oven. She lies in bed on Saturday afternoons working her way through Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Persuasion, Tim Tams by her side.
Clem knows what other fifteen-year-old girls are doing. He sees them walking down the main street when he knocks off work: tight jeans over their skinny flanks, sipping Coke and watching every car that passes, hoping it’s one of the older boys in a Torana or hotted-up ute throwing a lap around town. Takes all of two minutes. Clem knows. He did a few in his time, long before Rose arrived in Hope Valley. He shakes his head: The more things change, the more they stay the same. He sees two girls in Beth’s class hide a cigarette behind their backs when they spot his ute, and he gives them the thumbs up and toots the horn and enjoys their red faces. He’s glad Beth lives on a farm.
They never talk about boys. Not even when he overhears in MacMillan’s that one of the Collins boys is sweet on her. Or when he finds a note with a heart on it in her school dress on washing day. He doesn’t dream of reading it, just throws it in the fire. Or sometimes he hears her crying in her bedroom through pop music turned up loud. I’d cry too if I had to listen to that, and he walks out of the house, taking in big lungfulls of dust and red blossom.
He doesn’t really know what to say to this girl of his. He’d always hoped that being Clem was somehow enough. He knows she’s leaving him behind.
Val rushes into Lena’s kitchen and asks Beth if she’s heard about Roo.
Beth’s elbow-deep mixing chicken and curried vegetables in a basin. ‘What now?’ she asks, looking up and blowing a curl off her face.
‘He’s dead.’ Val shakes her head. ‘Found his body yesterday.’
‘What?’ Beth stares at her. ‘You’re joking.’
‘Would I joke about something like that?’ says Val. ‘It’s true all right.’
‘Shit. What happened?’
‘They found him in one of the bungalows at The Lagoon.’
‘How awful,’ says Beth. ‘A heart attack?’
‘A cleaner found him strung from a rafter by his belt.’ It’s all so peculiar and Val doesn’t know how to make sense of it. She wanted to find Beth straight away, needed to share the shock of it. ‘Can you imagine that? I never liked him, and he knew it too. He was everything I hate about expats and men full stop, but I can’t imagine how bleak he must have been to do something like this.’
‘It’s terrible, Val.’
‘They think he had AIDS—he certainly looked like it the last time I saw him. He was shocking, like a skinny ghost, and these welts all over his arms.’
‘God, I can’t believe it. Ned and Bill must be devastated.’
‘Yeah, probably, but not surprised. Sort of resigned.’ Bill had knocked on her door and she’d told him he looked like death warmed up. And when he told her about Roo, she’d wished she’d kept her mouth shut. ‘Turns out Roo was mixed up with a girl down the highway and got her pregnant,’ she tells Beth. ‘He would have promised her the earth of course, and she would have taken it. She was married, though. And apparently her husband and his family, this whole village, were coming looking for him, spears and everything.’
‘Shit! Payback you mean?’
‘Yep. Told you before, it’s what this country runs on. That and the wantok system.’ Val’s feeling nasty. ‘It’s probably the most decent thing he’s ever done.’ Then she closes her eyes, cursing herself. ‘It was never going to end well with Roo. He had a face for trouble, and a spirit to go with it. Still, no one deserves to go like that.’ She suddenly looks surprised, because she’d just folded half a packet of serviettes without realising it. Beth begins stirring the curry again with a blackened wooden spoon.
‘The Bilas will probably close,’ says Val.
‘Out of respect?’
‘No. Its major stakeholder has gone and they’ll probably go under!’
‘Val!’
‘Jesus, I—’ She closes her eyes, quickly makes the sign of the cross. ‘I’m sorry.’ Then she says: ‘He tried to grab me once. Years ago. When I first arrived. At The Bilas. Barely able to stand, and he still thought he had a chance.’
‘Really? What’d you do?’
‘I thought of Barry West forty years ago and kneed him in his holy jewels!’ Val feels something like pride burning her cheeks, and then she’s flushing with embarrassment. ‘Shouldn’t talk about the dead like that, I know. But most people have some redeeming quality and I can’t for the life of me think of anything good about the man. That’s horrible, isn’t it?’ Beth just looks at her and wipes down the counter. The silence makes Val’s admission more poisonous, but she’s an angry river now, plunging on: ‘He was the ugly side of ugly, you know? I heard once that the three of them—Ned, Bill and Roo—were at The Lagoon one Australia Day and Roo pissed—’ she hasn’t said the word aloud in decades, and it thrills her, ‘—pissed in his empty beer bottle and handed it to the boy clearing their table, saying, Can you empty this outside mate?’
‘Are you serious? That’s disgusting!’
‘Rude, obnoxious, vile. Amoral.’ Val begins to wipe down the bench. Then, under her breath: ‘That should be on his tombstone.’
‘I can’t believe you just said that!’
‘You know what he was like Beth, what sort of man he was.’
‘I guess you’re right,’ she says. ‘Clem’d say he was the worst type of mongrel. He’s got his own punishment for men like that.’ She puts on her Clem voice, throaty and flat: Drop him the other side of Rotto as shark bait, Bethy. Right off the continental shelf. Or maybe strip him naked and tar him with honey and leave him on an ants’ nest. That’ll sort the bugger!
Val knows they both feel strange, talking like this about a dead man. Beth pours rice into a big pot of water boiling on the stove.
‘This place,’ Beth says finally, ‘it just feels out of control. The cross, Abraham getting knifed going home from school for his shoes, for God’s sake. And now Roo. It’s all gone crazy, like it’s gonna blow or something.’
‘It always was, Beth. You’ve just stayed long enough to notice.’
Beth wakes the next morning to a man’s voice leaking through t
he wall. Grace is giggling and she can hear Lena’s hushed tone but can’t make the words out. Desmond. Has to be. Beth kicks off the sheet and walks naked across the kitchen to the bathroom. She faces the full brunt of the shower: screws up her eyes, shuts her mouth tight, lets the cold water blast her, shaking off the humid night. Later, she eats pawpaw on her back step, throwing the skin to the emaciated kitten skulking across the lawn. It plays with the peel, then gnaws at it, gulps it down, looking for more.
‘Susa Beth!’ Lena calls out. ‘Dispela, em man bilong mi.’ She smiles shyly. ‘Desmond. My husband.’ The tallest man Beth’s seen on the island, a man with limbs too long for his body, follows Lena. Grace scurries after them and runs to Beth, sitting between her knees. ‘I tell him about you.’
‘Hello Desmond.’ Beth smiles, extends her hand.
‘Hello Misis Beth.’ He sounds eager. ‘So nice, nice to meet you.’
‘Yes,’ Beth says, then can’t help adding, and she knows that her voice is loaded: ‘Lena has told me all about you too.’
Lena looks at the ground, digs her toe into a crab hole and kicks up black dirt. ‘Desmond is trying for work,’ she says. ‘Maybe he can talk to Mister Ned, get a job on the highway.’
‘Yes,’ says Desmond. ‘Mi man bilong hard wok nau.’
*
After school the next day, Beth and Lena sit in the haus win, sipping tea and eating shortbread biscuits. Lena, sitting at her stool, is grating fresh coconut for sago dumplings.
‘Desmond needs work,’ she says.
‘How ’bout the restaurant?’ says Beth. ‘Can he cook?’
‘Bah!’ spits Lena, then smirks. ‘That man doesn’t cook water for tea!’
‘Well, how about the dishes? You always need people to help with those.’
‘No, susa. He never does these things.’ Lena stops grating. ‘Susa,’ she says softly, ‘he doesn’t know.’
‘Know what?’
‘About the restaurant.’
‘What? You haven’t told him?’
‘No. Not yet. I worry. Sometimes these men, they funny. Don’t like the woman to work too much.’
‘But you’re a teacher, Lena.’
‘That’s all right. Not business, though.’ She scoops up coconut flesh and squeezes it into a ball, juice running into the bowl beneath. ‘Some meris in business, they have problems. Men talk to them, you know. Their husbands worry. Cause them trouble.’
Beth puts her cup down. ‘Would Desmond be like that?’
‘Ha! Mi no save! I don’t know! This man, he go for many months. I not sure anymore.’
‘Lena,’ says Beth, touching her arm, ‘you have to tell him. There’s a sign on the main street as big as Moresby that says Lena’s Place. How many other Lena’s are there on this island? As soon as he sees it, he’ll know.’
Lena slumps against the bamboo wall. ‘Tru,’ she says forlornly. ‘Mi know it.’
One night Val invites Beth over to play crib. They sit at the kitchen table sipping gin and nibbling the Jatz crackers Val found on sale at Lim’s, out of code but still good. Val’s pondering her next move, weighing up the options when Beth suddenly says, ‘I’m not sure I’m ready to go home yet.’
‘You’ll know the right time,’ says Val, laying down the joker and taking the trick.
‘Shit, Val! Again! You got special powers from the big man upstairs or something?’
‘With sixty years of love and complete devotion, I’d like to think I get something!’ Then she takes a deep breath and looks squarely at Beth: ‘Are you worried about going home?’
‘Maybe. You know, just what people will say.’
‘It’s been months, Beth, almost a year.’
‘A wedding called off a couple of days before. An accident where someone nearly died, and they’re disabled for life.’ Beth pauses. ‘Hope Valley’s tiny, and our family’s been there for generations, watched my every move because I didn’t have a mum. A good scandal lasts a long time.’
‘We all fear judgement, Beth.’ Val takes a swig and raises her glass to Jesus above the stove. ‘At the end of the day, we all just want to belong.’
‘A veritable world of wantoks!’ says Beth, and has to laugh.
‘If only it was that easy!’
‘Plus there’s Clem. I know he wants me home.’
Val’s running out of time if she’s going to get Beth to stay longer. She steadies her voice: ‘People have to ride their own horses, Beth. You oughta know that by now. Like Delilah and the thumb. You don’t have to save Clem either, you know.’
Beth looks at her cards, at the glass of gin beside her, and finally meets Val’s eyes.
‘It’s hard, you know,’ she says. ‘All my life, I’ve felt like I was all he had. Two peas in a pod, he used to say. I wanted to do everything for him after he lost Mum and the baby. And he lost his dad, too. He used to tell me stories about them because ... I guess he wanted to keep them alive. And he wanted me to be strong.’ She leans back in her seat. ‘He’s had this sticker on the back window of his ute for as long as I can remember: It’s no longer a trade secret: girls can do anything! He really made me think that. He’s made me brave enough to do loads of stuff.’ Then she adds softly: ‘And he’s stopped me doing stuff too.’
‘Nope,’ says Val, ‘I know Clem. I don’t reckon he stopped you.’ She lays down the jinker and takes the lot. ‘I reckon you did.’
Beth throws down her cards, swats at a mosquito. ‘Geez Val! You’re relentless.’
Later, Val leans forward, and looks Beth straight in the eye.
‘Going home takes courage,’ she says. ‘Why do you think so many expats are still here?’
*
Val knows Beth will be leaving soon—whether it’s now or next year—and something in her feels like breaking. She’s spent over thirty years up here trying to avoid most white people and now Beth, on the island five minutes, is so far under Val’s skin it hurts. She’s got used to having her around, likes knowing she’s in the far house in their compound: two white meris bookending the others, keeping them safe. She’s going to miss their gin and tonic musings and those hot Sundays after church when she loads the ute with Beth, Lena and Grace, Delilah and Ruth, and they all escape to a waterhole down the highway. She’s asked Beth to Hagen for the holiday break, hoping she might be tempted to stay on for at least another term. She feels guilty—like she’s being manipulative—but she knows the Good Lord understands. All for the greater good. Besides, she’s just got the letter from Moresby: Saint Mary’s will be going to Year Nine next year and Beth would be the perfect English teacher.
Val stretches out on the couch, the old overhead fan chugging away, and places her book on the floor. Tracks. She’s thinking they aren’t too different, she and this camel lady—going into the wild with nothing. She’s just been on her own for so long, too long maybe. Not even had the luxury of camels.
‘It’s a lonely place for a woman up here,’ she says to the crucified Jesus above the kitchen stove. ‘And you can’t count Ned or Bill.’ She closes her eyes. ‘I told her about Barry West and Sister Benedicta and no one knows about that. I even took Ruth for a driving lesson in the school ute,’ she mutters. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ She opens an eye, looks at Jesus. ‘Hmmph.’ She shuts her eyes again, sees Beth standing at the airport, all the white-people gear around her on that very first day. ‘She’s my wantok,’ she whispers.
Clem’s really crook. He’s been up since four, running for the toilet every half hour. Nothing’s left but the bottom paddock still feels the urge to rid itself. He’s slept on and off for most of the day, thinking he’d soon get up, go outside, feed the dog, check the sheep, then he races for the toilet or slips into sleep.
What's he eaten in the last few days? Couldn’t be food poisoning—he’s cooked everything from scratch and it’s been mostly vegetables and mutton anyway, Eva’s pie and scones—nothing harmful in them. It’s getting dark. He should get up and light the fire. But he l
ies like a child, curled up on his side under the old blanket Rose made when they first got engaged. The love blanket, she’d said, holding it up with outstretched arms, a big blue and purple wing. Now its squares are pulling away from each other; it’s thin and dirty and there’s a big gaping hole near one corner. It stayed on her chair after Rose had gone. Years ago, Beth used the blanket as a roof for her cubby house behind the couch and, when he should have been cooking dinner, she’d make him, bone-weary and stinking of the shed, crawl in underneath and sip tea from a plastic pink teacup.
He pulls the blanket closer around his neck. He feels the clamminess between his shoulder blades and wishes he’d set the fire earlier. A shiver makes his eyes open suddenly and he feels his gut wrenching again. He fumbles for the elastic of his shorts, holding it off his belly. A moment later, the cramp has gone.
He glances up at the photos on the mantel: Beth as a schoolgirl, all gummy-mouthed and lopsided plaits with blue ribbons at the ends. Him in the ute, elbow crooked on the door, staring straight ahead, smiling at Rose behind the camera. Their wedding photo: Rose, his Rosie, a woman only slightly shorter than him, in a straight satin dress, her long hair pulled off to the side, a single white camellia clasped around it. He can still feel her hip jutting against him, his arm around her, holding her a little too tightly. He looks at his own face—this bright younger self—as if he’s a brother, even a son.
‘You knew.’ He shuts his eyes and whispers, ‘Even then you knew she wouldn’t stay.’
Another spasm. He turns quickly onto his back, stretching out along the mattress. He wants Beth back. It is enough. He wants to bring her home for good so she’ll never leave again.
And he wants Rose most of all. He wants her here to bring him tea, to rub her hand up and down his back, to make him toast. He’d tell her no matter how rotten he felt, he was glad that she was here.
‘If you stay,’ he says, ‘I’d be okay like this forever.’
His stomach turns in on itself. They wouldn’t talk then, he and Rose, they would just lie here in the dark. She’d coil around him and hold him until he finally slept.
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