Refuge

by Jackie French

  But it was hard to turn his back on kindness.

  He looked down at his bare feet. There was no sign of his shoes. He didn’t want to walk down the street with bare feet, like an alley boy.

  He hesitated, then followed Susannah dumbly onto the footpath, through the crowds of men and women.

  The cement felt warm under his feet. But no one stared at him, even though the men wore woollen suits, though with long trousers, unlike David’s short ones. Each man wore a hat too, not sun hats with ‘Welcome to Queensland’ on them, but grey or black felt. Every woman wore careful clothes: stockings, high-heeled shoes, gloves, hats with scraps of net, or bunches of fake flowers or cherries. And yet the well-dressed people didn’t even glance at his jeans or Susannah’s too-big, much-mended dress.

  It was odd to be in a city again. How long had it been since he had seen any other adult than Jadda? These grown-ups were strangely quiet, with small quiet smiles.

  He glanced at a shop as they passed it. It was a cake shop, but what cakes! Three or four layers high, oozing cream, topped with shaved chocolate. Others, smaller, filled with cream and strawberries, pastry in the shape of a curling wave, filled with cream too.

  He stopped so suddenly, staring at the sheer quantity of pastry, that a man bumped into him. The man gave a slight bow, lifting his hat. ‘Entschuldigen Sie mich bitte.’

  It wasn’t English. It wasn’t any language Faris recognised. He listened to the soft rumble of conversation around him. It sounded like the same language. Thanks to Jadda, he knew enough about languages to be able to distinguish one from another, even if he couldn’t speak them.

  If they were in Europe, he might have thought that they had crossed a border without his noticing. But Australia was one great splodge in the middle of the sea.

  ‘Susannah! Wait! Where are we?’

  ‘David’s Australia.’

  ‘There is only one Australia!’

  Susannah twisted her way through the adult bodies as though she was used to it. ‘You think everyone sees the world in the same way?’

  It was a perceptive comment for a little girl to make, thought Faris, especially a child who had to sound out the letters as she wrote. Of course everyone saw the world differently. But not as differently as this.

  He stared at the shops around them: nearest was a fruit shop, with piles of apples, a mound of bright oranges, small white sacks of cherries. ‘We should go back. What if we get lost?’

  ‘We won’t.’ She walked swiftly past a chocolate shop, the chocolates in vast tiers on silver dishes, dark ones and milk and white, boxes of pink Turkish delight, thick with pistachios, and nougat and bright-coloured squares and packages that Faris couldn’t recognise, but still they somehow looked tempting, as though they’d melt in sweetness on your tongue.

  Faris wondered if this was where David had bought the chocolates he’d brought to the beach, the ones Susannah loved.

  ‘But what if …?’

  ‘Shh,’ said Susannah. She hadn’t even glanced at the chocolate shop, intent on following David through the crowd.

  She really cares for David, thought Faris, but she doesn’t look at him the way Juhi looks at Mudurra. Susannah cares for all of us.

  Suddenly he realised they had lost sight of David. But it didn’t seem to matter: Susannah paused outside a building. This one was larger than all the others. Long white marble stairs led up to tall marble pillars, and then great open wooden doors, intricately carved. Faris stared up at a gleaming rounded roof. Fat pigeons peered down at him.

  ‘In here.’ Susannah climbed the long stairs. Each one shone as though someone had scrubbed it. Faris followed through the doors, into a hall so high it echoed. It too had marble pillars and a blue-green marble floor, shining as though it had just been polished.

  ‘What is this place?’ he whispered.

  ‘You’ll see.’ Susannah led the way across the hall to two closed wooden doors, carved and polished like the front door had been. She pushed. One door opened slightly. She slipped through, with Faris just behind her.

  The room inside was vaster than the lecture theatre at his first school — a hundred times bigger — with tier after tier of seats, all filled with people like the ones outside: well-dressed women with hats and gloves, men in suits but with their hats in their laps. They sat in silence, staring at a wide, empty stage.

  There was no sign of David.

  Even a whisper would break the quiet. Susannah sat in one of two seats that were somehow vacant, the only empty seats in the whole theatre. Faris sat next to her. The lights dimmed. A spotlight shone on the stage.

  The audience rose to their feet, clapping, as David’s small figure crossed the vast empty stage, a violin in his hand. He no longer wore his strange short woollen suit, but black trousers, a shirt as white as morning sunlight and a white bow tie. Somehow the stage no longer looked empty, as though David’s mere presence was everything it needed.

  David bowed, his hair flopping down over his face, then falling back as he lifted his head again. The audience sat. Once more silence filled the theatre.

  ‘Today’s performance will begin with “Jamila’s Song”.’ David lifted the violin and settled it under his chin. He lifted the bow and began to play.

  The music was a voice, a song. It was the melody that Jamila sang back on the beach, a million times now. Its beauty was like an arrow that pierced you and held you still, so that it was only you and the music in the world. Faris could almost hear the words now: words of loss, of anguish, but something more. The music was somehow more vivid than the hall, the audience, the shops outside.

  He shut his eyes and let the notes fill him. He knew little about music. There had been nothing like this since his father had been taken away, except sometimes songs on TV.

  My father would love this music, he thought. His father, working at the Australian hospital …

  Faris opened his eyes. For a second all he could see was grey. Grey, like the storm sea and the sky, though the music still soared around. He blinked, and the audience were there again, the high dome of the ceiling, the red carpet on the floor.

  Slowly a coldness filled him, despite the beauty of the music. His skin crawled as though ants tracked across his body. He felt the tears even before he knew why they were there, felt Susannah’s hand in his, clutched her, the only warmth around.

  ‘Come on,’ she whispered, under the sound of David’s music.

  He shook his head. It would be rude to disturb the audience, intent as they were on the music from the stage. Susannah pulled his hand. This time he obeyed her.

  No one even noticed as they walked out.

  The entrance hall was empty. Faris could still hear faint music; he could almost hear the silence too, from the hundreds who watched and listened. But the song’s almost-words had vanished from his mind.

  Faris stared at the marble pillars, at the shining floor, at the men and women walking along the footpath outside, the gleaming, old-fashioned cars purring along the clean and quiet street.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he whispered. ‘Where are we? I don’t understand.’

  ‘You’re not alone in that, boyo. But come back to the sand hill. I’ll explain it all there.’ There was endless compassion in her eyes.

  ‘You’ll answer my questions?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Susannah gently.

  ‘Billy said we weren’t to ask questions on the beach.’

  Susannah was already walking out the door, into the street. ‘The sand hill isn’t the beach, remember? Billy is a good boy.’ Susannah spoke as if she was forty, not ten. ‘He does his best for us. But happens my idea of what is best isn’t always the same as Billy’s. I keep Billy’s laws on the beach, and he knows it. But the sand hill is my place for talking.’

  They could see the sand hill now, erupting strangely from the city street. Faris began to climb it with relief.

  Halfway up he looked back.

  The city street was gone. Kangaro
os grazed under trees laden with orange blossom, between houses with shiny cars.

  CHAPTER 8

  They sat on the warm sand, the golden beach before them, the young people throwing the ball, Mudurra laughing as Juhi threw the ball over his head, to plop down into Nikko’s waiting arms. Jamila laughed too, as though she had never sung of loss or longing.

  Faris glanced behind him. His own street was still there, even though he could see David’s footprints leading down to what had been a city street.

  ‘What is this place?’ he whispered. ‘What’s happening? Is this Australia?’

  Susannah looked at him with sympathy. ‘It’s hard, isn’t it? When someone new comes, I wait before I try to explain it. You have to find the right time, the moment each person wants to understand.’

  ‘I want to understand,’ he said roughly. ‘Tell me what is happening! Does everyone except me know what’s happening here?’

  ‘I don’t think Nikko understands.’ Susannah smiled as she looked down at the little boy running to pick up the ball rolling along the sand. ‘He’s so young that he doesn’t realise how strange this is. He just accepts it.’

  ‘Accepts what?! How can there be three different lands in the same place?’ Faris tried to keep the desperation from his voice.

  ‘There’s more than that. There’s a different land for every one of us.’

  He stared at her. It was impossible. But he had already seen the impossible. Life is impossible, he thought, swinging from safety to terror in minutes. But we manage to live it, just the same.

  Susannah was already answering the question he had yet to ask. ‘We just saw David’s Australia. The one he imagined in a place called a concentration camp, before he came here.’

  There was no need to whisper, Faris realised. The gentle whoosh of the waves stopped their words reaching the players on the beach. There was no one to hide from here.

  Susannah looked at him steadily. ‘The home you go back to each night is your Australia. The one you dreamed of.’

  ‘No! My home isn’t a dream!’ Suddenly he remembered his fear on the first night, after he’d been to the beach. His bedroom, his whole new life was exactly what he had dreamed. Even the streets he’d wandered had been just like the Australian streets he’d imagined he’d be coming to.

  But not the beach.

  ‘I never dreamed of a beach like this!’

  ‘Nor did I. Nor Billy. But Mudurra did.’

  Faris looked down at the young man calling out something as he threw the ball to Juhi. ‘The beach is Mudurra’s dream?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Susannah quietly. ‘Mudurra came here first, long, long before the rest of us. Maybe the beach has always been here, waiting for those who need it. Maybe Mudurra imagined it, just like you imagined the house you live in now. Mudurra never leaves the beach. This is all the world he has.’

  ‘Not even at night?’

  Susannah shook her head.

  Faris shivered. He wanted to argue, to yell it couldn’t be true. Yet Susannah had the voice of someone who wouldn’t lie. Couldn’t lie perhaps. She might hold back the truth till you were strong enough to hear it, but she wouldn’t make things up.

  ‘We’re in Australia,’ he whispered. ‘We have to be!’

  ‘How did you get to Australia then?’ asked Susannah quietly.

  ‘I … I don’t remember.’ He didn’t want to remember. The one thing he was certain of was that the dark place in his mind should not be lit up. ‘I … I think I had an accident on the journey here. I lost my memory. It’s called amnesia …’ His words now sounded desperate, even to himself — as though using a technical term could make his words true.

  Susannah gazed at him with soft sympathy in her eyes. ‘But you’re starting to remember.’ She took his hand. Once again hers felt both small and strong. ‘We all arrived here, trying so hard to forget. Every one of us had to face things that are too big for children. But I think you’re ready to remember now.’

  ‘I … I don’t want to remember,’ he whispered. His cheeks were cold. Suddenly he realised tears were falling.

  She held out a handkerchief — a surprisingly white one, given the drabness of her dress, and trimmed with white lace. Then to his shock she called out, ‘Billy!’

  ‘No!’ protested Faris. He couldn’t cry in front of Billy.

  Down on the sand Billy tossed the ball to Jamila. He strode up the sand hill and flopped down next to them. ‘Far Eyes remember how he got here yet?’

  ‘No,’ said Faris. He couldn’t remember. Didn’t want to remember.

  ‘Yes,’ said Susannah.

  And suddenly it was there, his whole life. Jadda muttering with irritation as she put on her hijab to go to her job at school, the blood on the kitchen table after the police dragged his father away, the empty frightened years as he and Jadda withdrew to a nation of two inside the tiny flat. The refugee camp, the boat …

  ‘The wave,’ he whispered. ‘It was like a mountain rising out of the sea. Then it came down —’ All at once he was sobbing, telling it all, from his father’s white face and the blood on his jacket, the call in the night that had begun the journey here, his hands over his wet face, unable to stop.

  He felt Susannah’s arm around his shoulders, heard Billy’s voice, surprisingly gentle. How could Billy be gentle? ‘It’s all right, matey. You’re safe here now. Don’t you fret none. You’re safe.’

  ‘Safe.’ Faris took his hands away. He looked at the beach, the neat waves that slipped up the sand and back, blue waves, not black, and then behind him, at the comfortable clean street, the rose gardens and orange trees.

  It had to be real! But all at once its very beauty stabbed him with grief. And Jadda, the Jadda he had left this morning. How could that Jadda not be real?

  Because she is a memory, he thought, suddenly understanding why his Jadda here had dark hair, not grey.

  ‘We understand,’ said Susannah softly.

  ‘How can you?’ His voice was harsh and fierce. ‘No one can understand.’ He had left Jadda in the water, he realised. Vanished here, to this golden beach, leaving Jadda to the wave.

  ‘We’ve been there too.’

  He stared at her. ‘You … you were in a boat like I was?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Susannah’s voice was serene. ‘Bigger than yours, I’m thinking, but still a speck, a grain of sand in a vast ocean. Coming from Ireland we were, in 1923.’

  1923! But Susannah kept on speaking, as though the impossible date didn’t matter.

  ‘My mam and sixteen children, and every one of us dreaming of Australia. Da was already there, with a good job and a good house for us, with glass in all the windows, he wrote to us, and all the butter we could eat. We could go to school in Australia, every one of us.

  ‘And then I got the fever. Maybe it was typhoid, or the measles. I just remember my head screaming like it was going to burst, my body hot and cold at the same time, the pain so fierce that it was red, then black. Everything was black.

  ‘I woke up here.’

  ‘On the beach?’ She’s lying, he thought. 1923 and a ship from Ireland? She had to be lying. But somehow he couldn’t believe that Susannah would lie to him.

  Susannah shook her head. ‘No one wakes up on the beach, except Mudurra. We all wake up in our own worlds and find our way to the beach. I was in a bed. A lovely feather bed, all to myself — not six of us crammed head to toe, not the bunk we shared on the ship — just like I’d dreamed I’d have in Australia. When I go home each evening, there’s Mam and Da and a pot of stew waiting on the fire, a big jug of milk that never empties, and fresh bread and all the butter we can eat every morning, for me brothers and sisters too. But they don’t come down to the beach. Took me weeks to realise they weren’t real …’ The anguish whispered behind the calm of her voice.

  ‘They are real!’ Billy’s voice was clipped. ‘Real as makes no difference! So what if your brothers and sisters can’t come down here? You’ve got us to
play the game with, ain’t you?’ He stared defiantly down as Mudurra tossed the ball to Jamila on the beach.

  Susannah said nothing. It was the loudest nothing Faris had ever heard. He looked at Billy again. ‘Did you come from Ireland too?’

  Billy snorted. ‘Do I sound like a bog trotter to you? Or smell like Hogan’s goat? I were a convict, weren’t I? But at least I’m an English one, and not no Mick.’

  ‘But convicts were long ago.’

  ‘You think I’m lyin’? Why would I want to lie about that? I ain’t no snollygoster. If I were lyin’, I’d make meself a prince, not convict scum.’ He stared out at the sea. ‘Not sure when we set sail, but it were about 1827, I reckon.’

  1923? 1827? The dates were impossible. But Faris thought about the old cars that had looked new in David’s world, the lamp in the window of Susannah’s house.

  Billy was still speaking, as though the words were being pulled out of him. ‘Three hundred of us, I reckon, crammed down in the hold. No daylight, just dead rats washing around our bunks. One popped once, right by my head. Covered me in rat blood and bits of bone. They fed us once a day, let down buckets of stew, and biscuit if we were lucky. You grabbed what you could and if you couldn’t then you starved.’

  Faris stared at him in horror.

  ‘But I’m big.’ Billy drew himself up. ‘I fought for my food. I fought every day. Then one day I looked around and there in the dark was Lunger McCoy with a knife he’d made by sharpening a spoon to a razor’s edge. He held it to my throat …’ His voice had risen with the memory. He forced it calm again. ‘He was goin’ to cut my throat easy as shellin’ peas, there in the dark, and no one wouldna known who did it. Wouldna cared neither. The fewer of us alive, the more food for everyone else.

  ‘Next thing I knew, I were in a bed. A proper bed, with sheets and quilt, just like in that geezer’s room when we skinned down the chimney to skim his pocket watch and fob. I found the beach, and there was Mudurra, Ah Goon and the others. No more starvin’. No more coves who’d cut your throat for a crust of bread. More an’ more of us came. It were all good then, every bit of it. I didn’t remember nothin’ about the ship, nor about bein’ a convict neither,’ he nodded at Susannah, ‘till she came. She was the one who made us all remember.’ His words were bitter now. ‘Who wants to remember the bad stuff when you got all this?’