Sian: A New Australian

by D. Luckett

  ‘I’m not your da, Sian,’ he said, softly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I was forgetting. I won’t call you Da again.’

  ‘It’s all right. I don’t mind. You shouldn’t forget, though. You mustn’t forget home, and your family. And I’m not your da but … well. I’m here.’ He didn’t seem to know what to say next, so he just cut another piece. ‘It’s very tasty. What do you call these again? Squash?’

  I nodded. ‘That’s right. Squash.’

  ‘We must get some forks. So we can eat like proper people. If we’re to have a real supper, we should eat it decently. And I must go and meet your Mr Gok. I think I should say sorry to him, for what I said. They just said that about Chinamen, you see. At work.’

  ‘It’s wrong,’ I said.

  Ellis looked down at his plate again. ‘Yes. Maybe it is.’ He ate another bit of squash, chewed and swallowed. ‘Well, more fool them. It means they don’t eat decent, doesn’t it?’

  Ellis did what he said he’d do. He went and saw Mr Gok and he looked at the vegetables. He talked to Mae and he said he was glad to see that things were growing so well.

  He came and saw the school on open day too. The show of work was at night, after supper, on a Friday. Ellis came in his coat and hat, even though it was very hot. The schoolroom felt like an oven, so people only went in for a while and then went out into the hot night, fanning themselves. Thunder was grumbling to itself, out over the sea. The wet season had arrived. Soon school would break up for the Christmas holidays.

  Some of the children had written out the times table in big numbers on butcher’s paper and it was pinned to the wall. There was a school shop where you bought things with the gold and silver stars that Miss Alberts gave for good work, and you had to add up the prices, and make sure you got the right change. A big map of Australia hung on the wall with all the towns and the gold mines marked on it. And we’d hung pieces of art and drawing and needlework and fancy writing from the ceiling. All the children had something to show.

  My compositions were on display, written out properly, in ink. Miss Alberts said they were worth keeping.

  I introduced Ellis to her, in the proper way.

  ‘Miss Alberts, may I present Mr Williams? My uncle.’

  ‘Ah, Mr Williams,’ said Miss Alberts. ‘How do you do? A pleasure to meet you. You must be very proud of Sian. Her writing is a showpiece for the school.’ She put out her hand and Ellis shook it.

  ‘I am, Miss Alberts, I am. She’s been a very great comfort to me, since my wife died.’

  ‘I should think so.’ Miss Alberts paused but then she said: ‘Sian will be twelve next year, I understand.’

  Ellis glanced at me. ‘Yes. In January.’

  ‘Then there’s a scholarship that would be worth thinking about. To Sydney Girls’ Grammar.’ Miss Alberts turned and picked up a paper from the teacher’s desk, just behind her. She held it out.

  Ellis took it and read it. ‘It says there’s an examination,’ he said, looking up. ‘In Sydney.’

  ‘I believe I could persuade the school board to allow it to be done by correspondence.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I know two of the board members. I am, in fact, an old Grammarian myself, as it happens.’

  Ellis looked at me again. ‘Well,’ he said, but that was only a way of saying that he was thinking about it. He fiddled with his hat, which he held in his hand. ‘I think we should ask Sian about it first,’ he said, at last.

  I was watching Miss Alberts’ face. Her eyebrows went up but then she blinked and nodded in agreement. ‘You’re right, of course, Mr Williams. I should have told her about it before and asked her opinion. I’ll leave that to you to do in your own time. Perhaps you would let me know.’ She looked at me. ‘But, Sian, I know that it’s a fine school, and you would be able to develop your writing. Perhaps you will be published, in time.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Ellis. ‘It would be a great thing, to have a writer in the family.’

  I let them keep talking. School in Sydney. It was something to think about seriously, as Miss Alberts had said. But still, I really didn’t want to go back to Sydney.

  Walking home, Ellis asked me: ‘What do you want to do, Sian? With this scholarship, I mean.’

  I didn’t have an answer ready. ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I like Darwin, even though it’s so hot.’ It was too. It was like being in the boiler of a steam engine. You felt as if something was about to happen, something that would release the pressure. The storm out to sea was getting closer. The lightning flashed again and after a moment the thunder grumbled like God clearing his throat. ‘Sydney, well. It’s like it would remind me of … of what happened there. And I don’t want to go away on my own.’

  ‘Yes. But if you go to Sydney for school, it wouldn’t be until the end of next year, and that’s when my contract is up. I could come with you. I could work in Sydney for a while. It would remind me too,’ said Ellis. ‘But, you know, you can’t help being reminded. And it’s not a bad thing.’

  If Ellis would come with me, I thought, I wouldn’t mind so much. I liked school, and I loved to read. All the world is in books, you know. As well as all sorts of worlds that are in books and nowhere else.

  The next Sunday, Ellis and I walked over to Mr Gok’s.

  Clouds were piling up over the sea and coming closer. The wet season had nearly arrived. I was thinking Mr Gok’s mangoes would soon be ripe.

  We came to the dry creek bed and Ellis said, ‘We won’t be able to come this way when it starts to rain properly. There’ll be plenty of water in the creek, running strong.’

  As we climbed up the farther side we saw Mr Gok and Miss Alberts, with another man, older, in a white hat and a linen suit. He was stout and red and he was wiping his face with a large white hanky. He was talking to Miss Alberts and he didn’t look pleased.

  She turned away from him and nodded as we walked up. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Williams. Hello, Sian.’ She was holding her parasol, the white silk one, and wearing her wide shady hat.

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Alberts,’ said Ellis, taking off his own hat.

  She smiled. ‘Please, Mr Williams, no need to stand bare-headed in this sun.’ She waved her hand at the man standing beside her. ‘Mr Williams, Councillor Alberts. My father manages the government store, Mr Williams. I was just introducing my father to Mr Gok and showing him the lovely vegetables.’ She looked at her father. ‘The ones he could be selling in the store.’

  ‘How do you do, sir?’ said Ellis, very polite.

  Mr Alberts nodded but he didn’t say ‘how do you do’ back. He had been talking to his daughter and he just went on doing it. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘He’s clever enough to hide it. I still don’t trust a Chinaman. They’re cunning, the Chinese.’

  ‘Father, you can say what you like. I buy my vegetables from Mr Gok and if you don’t, you’re losing customers.’

  Mr Alberts opened his mouth to say something, shot a look at Ellis and me, and changed what he had been about to say. ‘We’ll discuss this later,’ he growled.

  ‘There is nothing more to discuss, Father. Ah, here comes Mae. Good afternoon, Mae. What greens have you today?’

  ‘Good day to you, Mr Williams,’ said Mr Alberts. ‘You’ll excuse me. I have business to attend to.’ He turned sharply and walked off. I watched him go. He was angry about something, that much was plain.

  Miss Alberts twirled her parasol. She didn’t seem to be bothered by her father’s bad temper.

  Mr Gok was watching Mr Alberts’ back. He said something to Mae.

  ‘My father says that your honoured father does not agree with you,’ she said.

  Miss Alberts smiled. ‘I’m afraid my honoured father rarely does. One gets used to it. He often doesn’t believe his own eyes, either. Or nose. And what about you, Mr Williams? Do you believe your own eyes?’ She waved at the rows of growing vegetables.

  ‘About the … fertiliser question?’ asked Ellis. He shook hands with Mr Go
k. ‘Why, yes, I do. Good afternoon to you, Mr Gok. Sian, you know what you want to buy. Although I’m sure it’s all very good.’

  So we bought our vegetables and Ellis and Mr Gok talked about what you have to do to keep wood from being eaten by white ants. They actually talked, with their hands, like, and Mae helped with the hard parts.

  Miss Alberts listened and shook her head. ‘One last thing, Mae. You should come to school,’ she said. Mae pulled a face. ‘But you knew I was going to say that.’

  Miss Alberts sighed and turned to us. ‘I was just going to have tea, Mr Williams, Sian. Would you care for some?’ So then we walked back to Miss Alberts’ house by the school.

  It was just like tea at home – I mean, right back at home – only we had it outside in the shade of a vine arbour, fanning ourselves as a breeze crept up from the sea. It reminded me of when Ellis had come to take tea with us in Caradog Street. Except for the fans, and the vines, and being outside.

  Ellis and Miss Alberts talked. There were ham sandwiches and scones and jam. I ate them with my tea while I watched the tall clouds building over the sea. They were coming closer.

  The next day they arrived and the rains began.

  People think that if it rains the air must cool down. But that’s not the way of it in Darwin. It rains hard, harder than I’d ever seen it rain before but it stays hot, wet and hot, like living in a kettle. It never stops being hot, day or night.

  In the wet season, in the afternoons, the storms come up from the sea like great purple dragons, spitting lightning, with a roar of thunder and a rising wind as if from huge wings. You go to sleep under your mosquito net as the rain comes slashing down on the tin roof. It’s as if you were sleeping under a waterfall. Waking in the steamy morning, you hear water running all around you, channels that become torrents that feed streams that weren’t there only a month ago. But now they’re rushing rivers, tumbling and powerful.

  The dusty country turns green. Frogs come from nowhere and you hear their voices everywhere you go. Birds arrive – kingfishers and bee-eaters like flying jewels, herons, magpie geese. Suddenly the land that was dry and barren is lush and wet and full of life.

  In the wet season ships don’t come in to Darwin so often. It’s because of the cyclones, you see. The wet season is cyclone season and a cyclone is a great storm, not like one of the thunderstorms we have in Darwin most days in the wet. A cyclone is so strong that it can smash a ship out at sea.

  But one ship brought a letter from home, at last. It was the first one I’d seen since that horrible time in Sydney.

  There was no postman in Darwin. You didn’t get letters delivered to you, nothing like that. The mailbag came off the ship and was taken to the store and if there was a letter for you, they gave it to you when you went in to buy something.

  I wasn’t going to the store very often, now that we had the things for our kitchen and I was getting my vegetables from the Goks. But Ellis went in one day after work to buy some nails and he came home with the letter, addressed to him. He sat at the table and opened it.

  Gwynnie had written it. Da was no great hand with a pen. This was what it said:

  8th November, 1911

  Dear Mr Williams

  I wrote to Sian, care of general post Port Darwin, but I had no reply from her, although some of her other letters have reached us, so I write to you. I hope this finds you well.

  We were so sad to hear about Olive. Da says it is the curse of Eve and it took Mother too. We’re sure that everything was done for her that could be done, just as you told us when you wrote, and we wrote to thank the Reverend Mr Broad, too, for his care of Sian.

  But of course Sian must come home now. She belongs with her family. Da says that since it was you who took her away – with the best in mind for her, I’m sure – then it is up to you to send her back. After all, you are not her real father and it isn’t proper for a young girl to be living in such a situation with you.

  Please advise by telegraph what ship she will be on, so that she can be met. Everyone here is well. We look forward to seeing Sian again in this sad time.

  Yours very truly,

  Gwyneth Roberts

  Ellis read it and then he passed it to me to read. After that we sat at the table and stared at each other for a while.

  ‘Gwynnie says she sent a letter. I haven’t had any letter from home,’ I said.

  ‘I shouldn’t wonder at it,’ said Ellis. ‘It might easily have gone astray or perhaps nobody knew you at the store – didn’t know your name, I mean.’ He looked down. ‘Probably thought your name was Williams, too, you know.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘I’ll tell them different, tomorrow. Make sure they know.’

  ‘Good.’ We sat for a while longer, not saying anything.

  It was dusk. The sun had almost set and it would be dark soon, and it was raining. Ellis was working early hours because the afternoons were often wet, and so hot. But the shadows reminded me that supper still needed cooking. I got up and turned towards the door.

  ‘Sian,’ said Ellis, behind me, ‘what do you think? What do you want to do? Do you want to go home?’

  I was already looking out of the open door. It was raining so hard that I could hardly hear him over the roar of it on the roof. The lightning flashed out of clouds the colour of violets. I waited for the thunder to answer. I suppose I waited because I didn’t want to answer for myself.

  The thunder came though, a long crack and a slow rolling boom. ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  The rain was tumbling out of the sky, turning into golden spears as it passed through the lamplight. So beautiful, I thought.

  I turned away and faced Ellis. He said to me: ‘You don’t have to say now. But, Sian, it’s up to you. Only up to you. Go now, go later, or not go at all. As you please.’

  ‘What will you do, though?’ I asked. ‘If I go back home, will you go back with me?’

  He frowned and looked away while he thought about it. Then: ‘No. I’ve come out here to make a go of it, and that’s what I’m going to do. Olive wanted the same, you know. In another year I’ll have enough to start a workshop of my own – in Sydney, or even here. There’s a lot of work needs doing here.’

  So if I went home I’d be leaving Ellis on his own. And I’d be going on my own.

  Home. Back to Caradog Street. It would be less crowded with Olive gone but the village and the pit would be the same and so would the smoky streets with their narrow houses built right up against one another where you had to pick coal, go to chapel on Sunday and not play in the street.

  I turned towards the door again to watch the rain and listen for the thunder.

  The Christmas holidays came and the wet season closed in. It made the walk to the Goks’ longer because I had to go around by the bridge. The creek that had been dry was filled with rushing water.

  It was fun to go and play with Mae. We’d get wet but we couldn’t get cold. It was steamy hot.

  There were pools of water everywhere with tadpoles to catch and we liked to put them in a jar and feed them ant’s eggs and grubs until they turned into frogs. Then we let them go in the creek because frogs eat mosquitoes.

  One day, not long after the start of the wet, Mae and I went to find the source of the Nile. We pretended the creek was the Nile River, the longest river in Africa, and we were walking up to find where it started. When the wet really got going it would be running a banker, as they say, full up with hurrying water rushing down to the sea.

  We didn’t find the source of the Nile but we did find something that lives on the Nile.

  Actually it found us.

  We were well away from the town exploring like Sir Richard Burton and Doctor Livingston in the book I was reading.

  So the crocodile was only the freshwater kind, not so very big at all.

  Not so very big but as long as both of us together.

  It was lying in the shade under the bank, on the other side to us. If it had been
on the same side I think it would have caught us. We didn’t even see it until we were close.

  You might wonder how anyone could miss seeing something as big as that from only twenty paces away, but it was the same colour as the shade and lying flat out, as still as a stone. I only saw it when it opened its eye. And it was looking at us. I could tell it had seen us before we saw it.

  I pulled at Mae and then she saw it too. We started backing away, watching it.

  I’d heard stories about crocodiles. People said they could run faster than a horse, for a short way. I couldn’t see how but I wasn’t thinking about that, just then. That eye was still sizing us up.

  When he moved, it was sudden. He slipped into the water with hardly a ripple and we forgot all about him being able to move faster than we could. We turned and ran for our lives.

  I remember seeing the red dirt kicking up from my feet. I remember reaching the scrubby trees at the top of the gully, hauling myself up with my hands and running on. I remember wondering if I should throw my lunch away. Maybe it would eat that instead.

  Instead of me, that is.

  I don’t know to this day if it was actually chasing us. I fell over and Mae pulled me up and we kept running through brush that scraped at our arms and faces. We should have thought about climbing a tree but we couldn’t think, not then.

  When we finally stopped running, we were far off and we could see nothing but scrub and bush and red dirt. It was as silent as the grave.

  I didn’t know where we were. I didn’t know which way Darwin was. I was lost. If it hadn’t been for Mae, I’d never have found the way back. She looked around, squinting at the sun. It was afternoon. She pointed. ‘I think we should head home,’ she said, and that was all. We started back, through the bush.

  We weren’t going back along the creek though. Not now.

  Clouds were building over the sea. Darwin was towards them. We found our way back at last. I have never been so happy in my life to see a tin shed.