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by Larissa Behrendt

  By the time Bob turned forty-five, the pain was relentless. It made him short of breath. It became so unbearable that he went to see a doctor who, concerned, ran some tests and ordered him to hospital for treatment of a suspected heart condition.

  There, under the anaesthetic, an old dream returned to him.

  The old man stood on the other side of the fire, beckoning to him with his hand.

  Through the heat haze, he could see the man’s dark features and the white paint in thick lines on his body. His hand was held out to Bob. Bob did not feel afraid. He wanted to cross the fire. The man spoke to him. “No matter which way you turn, there is something that you are not facing.”

  New, experimental open-heart surgery saved Bob from the medical condition that had taken his mother and eldest sister. He awoke to the months of recuperation with the same restlessness he had felt since Patricia died, but now he seemed to have lost something of himself. He constantly wondered about Danny — what had happened to him, where he was now? Danny, who would not have known that Bob had married Carole and was a father of two, nor that Patricia had died.

  When he was finally released from hospital, his thoughts were still on Danny. He kept thinking of their time in the home, and decided to go back and see it again. He had not been there since he and Patricia had collected a sullen Danny. Bob brought his family with him, wanting them to see where he had lived; he thought of the irony of being with his wife and children in this place where he had first come because he no longer had a family.

  It was Christmas, so most of the children had been sent to distant relatives or foster homes; the place was empty. When he explained that he had once been a student there, the superintendent gave him a tour a round the dormatories and grounds.

  He walked into the large ward where he and Danny had spent their first night. The ward looked clean, painted white, beds made expectantly for when the boys would return after the Christmas holidays. The room seemed smaller than he remembered it, almost cosy. He remembered how Danny and he had slept together in the same narrow bed for warmth and comfort, younger then than his own children were now. He looked down at his daughter. Never, he thought, would I have imagined then that I would be able to create something so remarkable as children — little Kingsley standing with his mother near the door, and Candice standing loyally beside him.

  “This is where Uncle Danny and I slept when we first came here. I would sneak into his bed to keep him warm. Well, I guess it was also to console myself, I was so scared,” he said to her.

  While many things had changed — no more chicken coops and no cows for milk — some things were exactly as they had been thirty years ago. He could see the toilet block still standing and he remembered that behind the bricks was the place where he had kissed Annabel Stewart. Even now he could remember how good it made him feel to have Annabel be his friend, and the desire to touch his lips to hers. It was the same feeling he had the first time Carole had agreed to go to a movie with him, something he had not felt since Patricia died.

  Walking back to his car, Bob looked at what remained of the stone wall. He stared, imagining a row of young boys seated there, looking hopefully down the road. He wondered what happened to them — Annabel, Benny Miller, Thomas Riley, Charles Wainwright, and Frank Phillips. Did they have families? Were they still waiting for someone to come along? Or were they like him, somewhere in the middle?

  On the drive home, with so many memories swimming around him, one in particular seemed to haunt him. He kept thinking back to the day when Danny had stormed off the cricket field, hissing “I hate you” as he passed him.

  Bob had no leads on where Danny might have gone, did not even know who his friends were when he disappeared. He had been travelling a lot with the Navy then, but when he was in Sydney, Patricia would be so worried about Danny, fretting that he was going out late, not coming home. Just as Daisy had done before she ran away. And Danny always seemed to be on one of his wild sprees when Bob was visiting, as if he could not stand being in the same house as his brother. He remembered the punch to the stomach Danny had given him, winding him and leaving a bruise. He had never understood that anger in Danny. But, Bob reasoned now, Danny would be an adult, and those boyhood tensions would be far behind them both.

  Bob thought the best way of finding Danny would be to start at the post office. Painstakingly he looked through the phone books of every Australian state and territory for listings under ’Brecht’. It was over thirty years since he last saw Danny, but it took him only an hour to look through the directories of the major cities. Bob found listings for ’D. Brecht’ in Marrickville and Turramurra in Sydney, Subiaco in Perth, Toorak in Melbourne, and Townsville.

  The first number was a David Brecht. The second number was a Darren. The Perth number was another David. The Melbourne number did not answer. The fifth number was answered by a woman.

  “Is Danny Brecht there?”

  “Hang on,” she said, and Bob could feel the sweat rising on his palms as he held the phone. “Honey, telephone.”

  “Who is it?” Bob could hear a voice yelling. He felt a chill of familiarity.

  “I don’t know,” the woman said patiently.

  “Hello?” the voice asked abruptly.

  “It’s your brother,” said Bob excitedly.

  The line was silent.

  “Danny, it’s Bob. Your brother.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Well, nothing. I was just ringing because I was wondering what happened to you. Wanted to get in touch with you. I’ve married with two kids since I saw you. My hair has turned grey.” Bob gave a nervous laugh. “I — I thought you would like to know that Patricia passed away about a year ago.”

  “Why didn’t you call a year ago, then?” Danny said.

  Bob could feel the antagonism in his brother’s voice. He still hates me, he thought glumly.

  “Look, I’ll give you my number. If you’re ever down this way and want to get in touch with me, give me a call. If you need anything, you know where I am. Just ring and ask.”

  “Well,” said Danny after a pause, “there is something you could help me with. I’m a bit short. Could you lend me some money?”

  Bob was quiet for a moment. He wrapped the telephone cord around his finger. “How much do you need?”

  “Well, five hundred would tide me over.”

  “Five hundred,” repeated Bob. It might as well have been five million. With the medical bills from his bypass surgery, his lowered income while he was on sickness benefits and the usual pressures of maintaining a mortgage and raising two children, he had no spare cash. In fact, he was in the worst shape financially that he’d been in since he joined the Navy.

  “Look,” Bob said, “It’s not a good time.” There was silence from the other end, so he added, “I will send you up something to help out, though.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” said Danny curtly.

  Bob felt hollow after his phone call, as though his healing heart was numb. Danny had all but told him that he didn’t want Bob in his life, saw him only as a possible source of money. He sat down in front of the television, the cricket on but the sound down, and opened a can of beer. He stared at the screen but thought of the dream that had come to him since he had been a small boy.

  In his youth, the dream used to frighten him and the figure on the other side of the fire seemed threatening. The dream was a nightmare. But over the years, he’d become familiar with the figure and, although he would not cross the fire, he felt simply unable to move rather than rigid with fear. Since he had the heart attack, he had wanted to cross the fire — the figure was almost familiar to him and offered him somewhere to be safe. And in the dream, the man now spoke to him. “No matter which way you turn, there is something you are not facing,” the old man had said to him. And that is how he felt, more so after the phone call to Danny. So he left Carole, Candice and Kingsley to go and find out what it was.

  Carole was unable to get out of bed fo
r the first few days after her husband packed a few bags and drove away — “To find myself,” he had said to her. When she finally raised herself from her bed and focused on her children, her disappointment and hurt started to brew into anger.

  She hadn’t realised how Patricia was the heart of their family until she passed away. Patricia had always assisted her in minding Candice and Kingsley, had been her confidante as she tried to navigate Bob’s moods, one of the few friends that she had whom Bob approved of. With Patricia’s passing, she’d lost her best friend. Bob had been too consumed with his own sense of loss to notice his wife’s grief.

  Carole studied the job section in the newspaper and soon found herself a position as a secretary at a real estate agency, answering phones and writing receipts. Because she had not been in the workforce for such a long time she could not find work that paid well. She looked at the self-confident young men who worked as real estate agents in the office. She frowned upon their lack of ethics and their rudeness to her and the other women. She thought, I could do a better job than them. So she signed up for a course to become a real estate agent.

  The shift in their circumstance was hardest on her children, who had been used to pretty clothes and new games and toys. Kingsley was growing so fast he needed new clothes every six months, while Candice needed new clothes all the time to keep up with her friends. Saying ’no’ to Candice was hard for Carole; to a fourteen-year-old it would seem like the end of the world not to have the latest fashions. It was at these times that her fury with Bob would rise for abandoning her, for leaving her, after all his promises, without adequate means to support herself.

  While she was trying to get qualifications for a better job and continuing to work during the day, the housework would fall behind. She had to leave the children on their own from when they arrived home from school until she returned. The gate would be left open, the house a mess, the laundry left on the couches waiting to be folded, dinner needing to be cooked. Carole sighed. She remembered how, when she was first married, there had seemed to be too many hours in the day. Now, there were never enough and so much work that the house and garden were always an embarrassment.

  She laughed inwardly to herself at what the wives of Bob’s friends would think if they could see how she was living now. She could make the kids do more to help, she thought, but she’d made a deal with them that if they were doing their homework, they did not have to do housework. They were getting good reports from school despite the changes with their father gone. As she looked around the mess in her kitchen, she thought wryly to herself that her ingenious plan to keep her children excelling at school seemed to have backfired.

  “Candice,” she told her daughter, “never trust a man who says ’Trust me’.”

  When Christmas came and the children’s lists of wants grew lengthy, she rang the Aboriginal Medical Service and asked for the name of a family in need, and how many children they had. She then had Kingsley and Candice ask the neighbours for donations of food and toys while she asked her colleagues from work to contribute. The children took their task seriously, going through their own belongings for items that could be given. Carole felt a swell of pride as Candice and Kingsley sat on either side of the hamper on the train as though guarding something valuable.

  When they arrived at the tiny tenement house in Redfern, her children turned shy. The woman who opened the door was skinny with long black hair. There was a black bruise around her eye. There was no furniture in the house except a table and three small chairs. This gave Candice and Kingsley some pause for consideration of their own situation. They were quiet on the train ride home, while opening the presents Carole had bought them, and during the hot dinner they sat down to that night.

  At these moments she hated Bob. This was his first Christmas away from his children, away from her. She hadn’t understood when she married him how deep-seated his lack of self-esteem was. She would sometimes say to herself that if she had known, she never would have married him — except, she would quickly remind herself, she could never be sorry for having Candice and Kingsley.

  Carole had seen the impact Patricia’s passing had on Bob. It was she who had noticed the bump in Daisy’s stomach at the funeral, nudging Bob. Carole had shared his disgust at the way in which Daisy had moved in, taking Patricia’s husband and her house and enjoying the spoils of the restaurant Patricia had helped Pasquale build. Unlike Bob, Carole did not despise Pasquale. She felt pity for him. It was Patricia’s children she felt sorry for, sent off to boarding school while Daisy set about redecorating her new home. Carole struggled to explain the situation to Candice and Kingsley, why it was they did not see their cousins now.

  Carole obtained her real estate licence and started to earn a good income. She was honest and approachable, and buyers and sellers, landlords and tenants respected her. She enjoyed the renewed independence of having her own income and making her own decisions about how things should be done in the house. The more she regained her ability to do things her own way, the more she liked it. It was two years since Bob had left, since she could not face getting out of bed because of her despair at his leaving. Now, she had to admit, there was a part of her that was happier with him gone, even though a bigger part of her missed him every morning she woke up and he was not there.

  Bob wished that he had asked Patricia what she knew, what conversations she may have had with their mother that could unlock the secret of who they were. Bob had never forgotten his father’s response to his question about their dark hair and eyes, the question about what they were: “You are as white as anyone else.”

  He was reluctant to make contact with Daisy after cutting her out of his life when she became pregnant to Pasquale. But the more he thought about what information she might have, the more he wanted to call her.

  She was frosty about the subject. “I don’t know why you want to open that one. It would be best if we left it alone.”

  So like her, he thought as he replaced the receiver. Daisy had said nothing of Pasquale or the children. She had spoken as though it were a usual thing that Bob should call her to ask about their family history; yet it had been twelve years, since he had last raised the topic with her, just after Patricia’s funeral. He shook his head.

  Bob’s next step was to call his father. The last time he’d seen him was their encounter in Strawberry Hills, when Bob still worked for the post office. Bob spent an afternoon looking through phone books, but there was no listing for a ’G. Brecht’, not in Lithgow or anywhere else. He decided to try a different course.

  Bob had applied for his parents’ marriage certificate. It stated that his mother was born at Dungalear Station in 1905 and that her maiden name was ’Boney’. He could find no birth certificate for her. He then applied for his mother’s death certificate. It noted her place of birth as Walgett, and the year of her birth as 1904.

  He began to look at maps of all of the pastoral leases. Dungalear Station sounded like a farm property. He looked on maps around the town of Walgett, to see if he could find the connection. As he searched, he was trying to make sense of what he knew. Somehow he had always known that he was Aboriginal, knew it just as the children in his class at school had known it, even though his mother had never told him and his father would not reveal it.

  He began to search the Mitchell library for histories of Walgett and any mention of a Dungalear Station. He’d taken a small studio flat in Liverpool Street in Surry Hills, but he spent so many hours in the quiet book-lined caverns of the library that he began to recognise the faces of other regulars, obsessed with solving mysteries of their own.

  His break came not from the books but from a conversation with another man similarly haunting the library’s halls.

  “Writing a PhD?” he asked Bob.

  “No — it’s the beard, isn’t it?” Bob laughed, rubbing his stubble. “Actually, I’m not really sure what I’m looking for.”

  “Makes it kind of hard, doesn’t it?”

&
nbsp; Bob found he was talking to an historian, Peter Read, who was writing a book on what he called ’the Stolen Generation’. Peter told him about the Aborigines Welfare Board and how they removed children from their families and regulated the lives of Aboriginal people across New South Wales. There were documents, he explained, in the government archives of the Board’s activities. “A lot of their documents have been destroyed, but you may find something in there.”

  Bob had few clues when he went to the NSW Archives. Dungalear Station and Walgett. 1904 or 1905. Boney. He began searching every year from 1903 for a trace of Elizabeth Boney from Dungalear Station. After two-and-a-half months of filling out request forms and waiting for copies of old documents to arrive, he unrolled a scroll to see a certificate from the Aborigines Protection Board that showed an Elizabeth Boney had been removed from Dungalear Station. Date of birth was listed as 26 June 1904. ’Removed at Girl’s Own Request.’ The certificate also listed one brother, Sonny Boney. Lines on paper, like a map, all pointing the way home.

  28

  1982

  BOB PULLED UP OUTSIDE the neat weatherboard house in Walgett. There was a wire fence and gate and a path that led straight to the front door. Bob could feel his heart pumping as he took the two steps up to the front porch, opened the screen door and knocked. He heard a dog bark and the sound of footsteps. The door clicked open. Standing before him was an Aboriginal woman with short dark hair and curls around her face. She looked at Bob, arched one eyebrow and waited for him to explain himself.

  Bob began, “I am looking for a Sonny Boney.”