Signs of Life

by Tim Winton

BENDER: Fish to eat.

  MONA: But them wadjela —

  BENDER: Whitefulla cockies, they dob you in, quick smart – farmers rather have a dingo down the paddock than some runaway boong from the Mission. But not this place, not this fulla.

  MONA: Big bend in the river.

  BENDER: Lotsa trees, tuarts, marris, rivergums.

  MONA: And some angel-man livin up a pole in the sky.

  LU: Angel, my arse.

  BENDER: Never could tell what he was doin up there.

  GEORGIE: There’s books about it in the house.

  LU: Simeon Stylites, the pole-sitting saint. Pilgrims’d come to see him parked up in the air. Thirty-seven years.

  GEORGIE: Like a vigil.

  LU: Like a love-struck possum.

  GEORGIE: Some kind of gesture.

  LU: To irritate the neighbours, to piss my mother off.

  BENDER: Well, this old whitefulla – he knew someone was camped down there, by the water.

  MONA: Bet he didn’t know it was a little boy.

  LU: Of course he knew. He knew all about the Mission. They all did.

  BENDER: Pa camped under a overhang on the bank. Sandy beach, couple tree branches strung over a log. Good hiding spot. Had a fire at night, right down low. But you’d see it flashin up the trees, wouldn’t ya. Some mornins there’d be a tin of flour up on the bank.

  MONA: Matches, melons.

  BENDER: Beefsteak once.

  MONA: T-bone beefsteak.

  BENDER: Proper human man, he said.

  MONA: Proper human man.

  LU: He was entertaining himself.

  BENDER: And one time the coppers come. There was a warnin shot from up the house.

  MONA: Two barrels, four-ten shotgun.

  BENDER: To let him know, see, give him time.

  LU: He didn’t really care about blackfellas. He just hated the government.

  BENDER: And Pa, he gets his stuff, his flourbag and billy and bit of tucker and he swims it across the river, buries it, and when they come, those wallopers and their dogs, he’s across the bend, in the reeds, like a sweetwater turtle, just —

  MONA: Eyes up.

  BENDER: Watchin, till they go. Course he always got caught in the end. But it was other farms, other whitefullas did him in. Not here, not this old fulla.

  LU: You can’t make a hero out of a man like that. Maybe he didn’t dob anyone in, but he knew what they were doing to those kids at Mogumber; people knew.

  BENDER: But here. If this is really the place.

  MONA: I can feel it, Bub.

  BENDER: Made it his country. Lying there locked in the barracks at night. Nowhere that’s home unless he lets it be the Mission and he isn’t gunna let it be the Mission he calls country. So all he’s got’s this one riverbend. Comin back to him in his mind. For years. All his life. Singin it up in his head, like some kind of —

  MONA: Paradise.

  BENDER: If he really was here.

  MONA: Carn, Bub.

  BENDER: I dunno.

  MONA: (to Georgie) Scared, him.

  GEORGIE: Scared of what?

  BENDER: Nothin.

  MONA: Thassit. Scared there’s nothin. Here, Bub. I’ll look after ya. Didn’t I look after ya?

  MONA takes his arm, gestures for GEORGIE to accompany them. BENDER relents.

  Light softens about them, shimmering a moment.

  SCENE 9

  At the edge of the paddock in the late afternoon sun, BENDER, MONA and GEORGIE stand looking down into the parched riverbed. As they speak LU comes down behind them.

  MONA: Ahh. Look.

  BENDER: Down from the bridge.

  MONA: Long paddock west.

  BENDER: Big bend right here.

  MONA: This the place.

  BENDER: He really was here?

  LU: Yes.

  MONA: Too right. I can feel it. I can see it real.

  BENDER: It’s enough. Knowin that.

  MONA: It’s good.

  BENDER: Yeah.

  GEORGIE: Did he ever come back?

  BENDER: Never could.

  MONA: Scared. Like him, here. Scared it wasn’t real, that he’d have nothin.

  BENDER: Reckon so.

  MONA: Don’t be scared no more, Bub. See? Pa’s here in the warm yeller sand, cookin bream on the fire, river flowin past, birds all round, free and safe. Them balgas, them grasstrees up, that mooja, that Christmas tree out, all golden flowers out, heavy orange flowers just fallin on your head like gold. Sunshine gold. Pollen gold. Fallin on Pa, on Clancy, on William, on Mummy, on you Benderboy.

  BENDER lays a hand tenderly on his sister’s head. And golden-yellow blossoms fall from the sky onto MONA’s ashen head.

  BENDER: And Bobby.

  MONA: True? Really?

  BENDER: Aw, yeah.

  MONA: Yellow flower dust, like sunshine?

  BENDER: That’s right.

  MONA: They here.

  BENDER: That’s right. All of em.

  GEORGIE: All of them?

  LU: All of them.

  LU hovers behind them, wants to touch these people, his wife. But refrains. Sits by them, stares into the river of their memories, of their story, their vision until the sound of water begins to purl and gurgle.

  GEORGIE: But it’s dry. And everything’s dying.

  MONA: Nah. Just dreamin of rain. Like one thirsty woman. Lyin awake, thinkin of water. Everythin singin for rain. To make it real, just from wanting.

  BENDER: Like you, Sis.

  MONA: Like Pa.

  BENDER: Them stories.

  MONA: Bub, we in the story now.

  GEORGIE steps off a little way to give them space. LU comes close to GEORGIE. She senses him.

  GEORGIE: It wasn’t a mistake. Coming here with you.

  LU: The weirdo and his prickly girlfriend, planting olives.

  GEORGIE: In the alkaline dirt, above the river, in the days when there was still rain.

  LU: Early years there was enough to keep the saplings up.

  GEORGIE: But after that they were on their own.

  LU: They found the water down deep.

  GEORGIE: Good trees.

  LU: Good fruit.

  GEORGIE: Lovely lovely oil.

  LU: Should have planted natives.

  GEORGIE: Scrub?

  LU: Scrub is what you call vegetation you don’t understand.

  GEORGIE: Well, you can thank your mother for the olives.

  LU: I do. Did.

  GEORGIE: All those years expecting you to drown, for God’s sake! And I come out and there you are.

  LU: Watching the sky inhale the clouds and the birds, like the last warm air from my lungs —

  GEORGIE: Lying on the dirt, smiling, like a five-year-old who’s finally caught the ball.

  LU: All those dragonflies riding the updraughts.

  GEORGIE: Under the house tree.

  LU: Of all the trees. The first she planted.

  GEORGIE: Smiling. Making me a widow. It was . . . incomprehensible. Ridiculous.

  LU: But it felt calm, love . . . fair.

  GEORGIE: It was good, wasn’t it? Us?

  LU: Yes, love. It was good.

  GEORGIE: I want it all again.

  LU: It’s always here.

  GEORGIE: Did I make you happy?

  LU: Mate, I couldn’t believe my luck.

  GEORGIE: And now there’s none of you left.

  LU: Not true. Dust. Ash. Still here. All of us. Stubborn bugger, the olive. Once the roots are down. Hard as a story, tough as a song.

  LU retreats to his tree.

  GEORGIE: As a song.

  GEORGIE leaves the others by the bank as the light begins to fade toward dusk.

  MONA: Seen it. Him in the water, in the reeds, eyes out like a turtle.

  BENDER: Yup.

  MONA: Save ya pennies, boy. Come back, we buy this place.

  BENDER: That’s a lotta dead cats, Sis.

  MONA: When we’s sleepin under that b
ridge. I knew.

  BENDER: Too right.

  MONA: Didden believe me.

  BENDER: True. But you could feel it.

  MONA: Feel him. Yeah.

  BENDER: Done good.

  MONA: Ay. Done rool good.

  Crickets herald the night.

  SCENE 10

  The veranda that evening. GEORGIE, MONA and BENDER sit on the step gazing out into the hot darkness. MONA’s brief period of lucidity has passed. She rocks and fidgets, paying only occasional attention.

  GEORGIE: I was thinking of heading into town tomorrow, do some shopping. You need anything?

  BENDER: We’ll be gone.

  GEORGIE: Gone? What about the carbie? The radiator, the tyre, the headlight?

  BENDER: Bit of fence-wire, she’ll be right.

  GEORGIE is stunned, unable to process this news.

  BENDER: Your husband. Gone, isn’t he? Like, permanent?

  GEORGIE: Six weeks.

  BENDER: Shot through?

  GEORGIE: Died.

  BENDER: Oh.

  GEORGIE: There in the yard.

  BENDER: Oh!

  GEORGIE: Yes.

  BENDER: I’m . . . sorry. Heart attack, was it?

  GEORGIE: Broke his neck.

  BENDER: Jesus.

  GEORGIE: You think you see your own death?

  BENDER: You talkin personal or general? Cause —

  GEORGIE: In general.

  BENDER: Generally I’d take dyin personal. Where’d they bury him?

  GEORGIE: Well. They didn’t.

  BENDER: Some people the crematin sort.

  GEORGIE: Not him.

  BENDER: So . . .

  GEORGIE: I buried him, myself.

  BENDER: You what?

  He looks out across the moonlit paddocks.

  GEORGIE: True story.

  BENDER: Isn’t that . . . illegal? Isn’t there a rule?

  GEORGIE: Lu wasn’t very big on rules.

  BENDER: You mean you dug a hole and buried him yourself?

  GEORGIE: Took me two days.

  BENDER: Jesus. Where?

  GEORGIE tilts her head toward the river.

  MONA: Not the river.

  GEORGIE: No, the other side.

  BENDER: Dragged him —

  GEORGIE: Drove him! Had to put him on the backseat.

  BENDER: Across the river, what’s there?

  GEORGIE: Some limestone pinnacles. He had a thing about them. Besides, the sand’s softer there; it’s easier to dig.

  BENDER: I’ll be buggered. And no one knows?

  GEORGIE shakes her head.

  BENDER: But . . . won’t they come lookin?

  GEORGIE: Who?

  BENDER: Someone always knows. Gov’ment.

  GEORGIE: No phone, no credit cards, no paperwork; didn’t vote, didn’t pay tax. He was invisible. Even his vehicles are unregistered. I used to think it was mad, but maybe it was genius.

  BENDER: But in the district?

  GEORGIE: Like his dad, a – weirdo. No one comes here.

  BENDER: But people must see him come and go.

  GEORGIE: But he goes off all the time, gone – pff – normal.

  BENDER: And, what, it’s your place now? Cause you’re married. That’s one bit of paper.

  GEORGIE: Well, actually . . .

  BENDER: You weren’t married.

  GEORGIE: Not on paper.

  BENDER: So you got no . . .

  GEORGIE: Title, no.

  They share a moment’s mutual recognition.

  BENDER: Still, people like you always get good lawyers, you’ll be right.

  GEORGIE: Bit awkward. Especially with a body on the premises.

  BENDER: Right.

  GEORGIE: So here we are. All of us.

  BENDER: No paper. No title.

  BENDER looks at MONA but she’s lost the thread. And a fresh thought occurs to him.

  BENDER: Listen, how’s a fulla get a broken neck out here?

  GEORGIE: There was a kite.

  BENDER: A kite? A kite broke his neck?

  GEORGIE: Up in the tree; it was all tangled, line and everything. Been there for days. Don’t even know where it came from, just drifted in on the southerly, but he wanted to get it down, said it made him sad to see it up there like a wounded bird in a snare, flapping away in the hot wind.

  He points to the kite on the wall.

  BENDER: Not that one?

  GEORGIE: Same one. He slipped, fell. I came out, and there he was.

  BENDER: True?

  GEORGIE: True.

  BENDER: Doesn’t look like a fulla gunna be killed by a kite.

  GEORGIE: How do you know what he looks like?

  BENDER: Seen the photos.

  GEORGIE: You went through my photos?

  BENDER: I was lookin for something else.

  GEORGIE: Like, a screwdriver? Icecream?

  MONA: (stirring) Icecream?

  BENDER: Not a bad lookin fulla.

  GEORGIE: No. Not bad at all.

  BENDER: And you buried him?

  GEORGIE: I did.

  BENDER: And kept the kite that killed him.

  GEORGIE: Yes.

  BENDER: Jesus, and you reckon the men’re eccentric.

  GEORGIE: Bender, I’m thinking of buying my own press.

  BENDER: Good luck to ya.

  GEORGIE: What’s the point of growing olives and selling them on for a pittance if you can press them yourself? Triple the money – more.

  BENDER: Wouldn’t know.

  GEORGIE: I’ll sell the boat, all the gear. There’s sixty, seventy thousand dollars’ worth.

  BENDER: What? With no papers?

  GEORGIE: People round here, Bender, they’re not too zealous about documentation. I think it’ll work. I think we can hang on.

  BENDER: We?

  GEORGIE: Well.

  BENDER: That’s a lotta money to blow on farm machinery when it hasn’t rained in five years.

  GEORGIE: There’s birds aren’t there? If there are birds the world is still alive. I think it’ll work.

  BENDER: You been drinkin?

  MONA: Fuckin have not.

  GEORGIE: Come on, you know a bit about machines.

  BENDER: Some. Not college, no ticket. Don’t know anythin about olive presses. Just passin through. We’ll be gone in the mornin.

  GEORGIE: But you’ve said that every —

  BENDER: And I’m telling you —

  GEORGIE: But I’m asking, offering —

  BENDER: What, why?

  GEORGIE: Why not? You have as much right to be here as I do.

  MONA gets up, growling, she heads inside.

  MONA: Goin to bed. Bloody head hurts!

  GEORGIE: Bender, you’ve got nowhere to go, and what about Mona?

  BENDER: Have to go back, eventually.

  GEORGIE: Send her back? Listen to yourself! She’s safe here. Sanctuary, Bender.

  BENDER: Why’re you even stayin? What’s here for ya?

  GEORGIE: Family. Stories. I dunno. Spare parts.

  BENDER: Can’t sit around here rest of me life waitin for it to rain.

  GEORGIE: Why not? It’s not raining anywhere else.

  BENDER: And I’m sposed to stay, for you? Cause you’re lonely?

  GEORGIE: I took you in.

  BENDER: I don’t even know you.

  GEORGIE: Mona’s right, you’re just scared.

  BENDER: Why you talkin like this?

  GEORGIE: Sometimes the shell comes off.

  BENDER: Arghh.

  GEORGIE: Please. Just think about it.

  BENDER: Got a head like a kicked bucket. I gotta go to bed. I can’t think anymore.

  BENDER leaves and GEORGIE is left with the mournful, questioning call of the owl.

  SCENE 11

  Cockatoos herald the light of morning. MONA emerges onto the veranda, sits at the table and begins to eat cereal noisily. Leaning from the window, BENDER nurses a cup of tea as birds riot about outside. GEORGI
E emerges from the doorway, surveys them, pensively.

  BENDER: Mona. Shut your mouth.

  MONA: (with a full mouth) Didden say nothin!

  BENDER: When you eat. Shut your mouth when you’re chewin, it’s disgustin.

  MONA: Jesus! Can’t drink, can’t eat!

  GEORGIE: Leave her alone, she’s alright.

  BENDER: Who asked ya?

  GEORGIE: Grumpy bugger.

  MONA: Yair!

  BENDER: Christ, a man’s surrounded.

  GEORGIE: What side of the bed you get out of this morning?

  BENDER: No side. Couldn’t sleep.

  GEORGIE: Everything orright?

  MONA: Thinkin, thinkin. Tossin, turnin, fartin, snorin.

  BENDER: Quit naggin me, woman.

  MONA: Not a mornin person, him.

  GEORGIE laughs.

  BENDER: Give over, both of yez.

  GEORGIE: Surrounded! By an army of two women!

  The women laugh. BENDER cracks. He snatches the kite from where it hangs on the wall.

  MONA: Mad bugger. Bad manners!

  GEORGIE: What are you doing?

  He crosses the yard, pauses with the kite a moment and lets them hang a long moment:

  BENDER: See if this bloody thing’ll fly.

  BLACKOUT. MUSIC.

  Production Notes

  Signs of Life was first produced by the Black Swan State Theatre Company. It premiered at the Albany Entertainment Centre on 16 July 2012 and toured regional centres, including Esperance, Merredin, Margaret River, Mandurah, Geraldton, Tom Price, Paraburdoo and Moora. In July and August it was performed in the Heath Ledger Theatre at the State Theatre Centre, Perth.

  CAST AND CREW

  GEORGIE Helen Morse

  BENDER Tom E. Lewis

  MONA Pauline Whyman

  LU FOX George Shevtsov

  DIRECTOR Kate Cherry

  SET & COSTUME DESIGNER Zoe Atkinson

  LIGHTING DESIGNER Jon Buswell

  SOUND DESIGNER/COMPOSER Ben Collins

  ASSISTANT DIRECTOR Damon Lockwood

  PRODUCTION MANAGER Garry Ferguson

  STAGE MANAGER Erin Coubrough

  From 2 November–22 December 2012 the Sydney Theatre Company co-production ran in The Playhouse at the Sydney Opera House.

  CAST AND CREW

  GEORGIE Heather Mitchell

  BENDER Aaron Pedersen

  MONA Pauline Whyman

  LU FOX George Shevtsov

  DIRECTOR Kate Cherry

  SET & COSTUME DESIGNER Zoe Atkinson

  LIGHTING DESIGNER Jon Buswell

  SOUND DESIGNER/COMPOSER Ben Collins

  FIGHT DIRECTOR Scott Witt