‘That’s okay.’ Evie brushed it aside.
‘I went to tea with those friends of Charlie’s. Lee and some others. Lee’s giving a talk at the University tomorrow. About land rights I think. Or something.’
‘That sounds good. A protest. Maybe I’ll come too, after what we were talking about.’
Even with the phone inches from her ear, Marian could hear the mischief in Evie’s voice.
‘Not a protest. A presentation, she said. I want to hear it. Do you think we’d stick out too much? You know, if it’s all students.’
‘Students come in all shapes and sizes these days. Let’s do it. But aren’t you seeing this psychologist person tomorrow?’
‘Not till the afternoon. I wouldn’t mind going to this thing in the morning. What do you think?’
Somewhere in all this was a key. An explanation. But still Marian was nagged by the feeling of guilt. She should be sorting things out, not running around with Evie.
But what things?
The unreality of it all hit her again. Two people were dead. All that business was going on right now. People facing their grief, their disbelief, trying to gather the will to keep going, the rest of their lives changed forever.
‘Marian? Are you there?’
A racking yawn forced its way up from Marian’s chest. Her mouth stretched open and she exhaled noisily.
‘Sorry. I keep getting the yawns. God, Evie. I don’t know. I can’t send flowers or anything. Can I?’
‘Oh.’ Evie’s voice was suddenly flat. ‘You mean the families.’
‘I keep thinking maybe I should talk to them. But they probably wouldn’t want to see me. I don’t want to make things worse for them. How would I know?’ She gulped.
‘Too soon. You can’t do anything yet. Maybe later.’ Evie sounded uncomfortable.
‘Even so, there must be things I could do. Things for Charlie, too.’
‘Listen. You can’t help Charlie by moping round that dreary hotel. And you can’t do anything about the funerals. Let’s go to this thing. We might learn something, find out what makes young people tick. I don’t know much about land rights, but maybe there’s something we can do.’
Marian shook her head helplessly. Here we go again, she thought. Evie charges off and I follow. But she couldn’t argue. Her mouth was forced open by another great yawn.
‘Marian? Sounds like an early night for you. Don’t do anything mad, like pick up any strangers.’
‘No,’ agreed Marian, cheered.
The laundry was in the basement. Marian washed her spare tee-shirts and undies, put them through the dryer and sat watching the blur of clothes going round. At regular intervals yawns pushed their way out of her. She made no attempt to cover her mouth. There was no one else around.
On the way back she stopped at the vending machine and got out a muesli bar. Time to eat something.
Back in her room, she lay down on the bed. But the yawns weren’t about tiredness, after all. Sleep was a long way off.
She pulled her clothes back on but didn’t bother with her shoes. The carpet in the halls and Reception area was luxurious under her feet.
Against one wall was a glass-fronted cupboard full of old books. Seven Little Australians in battered blue cloth, title in gold. Marian turned the book over in her hands remembering the story, the tree falling on Judy, the terrible inevitability of it. Death. The hot choked feeling of unshed tears. You cried, but you could never cry enough.
That was not what she needed. Her whole body protested against the idea and she pushed the book back into its place.
Georgette Heyer. That was more like it. Arabella. The cover showed a young woman in regency dress helping a young and very dirty boy climb out of a fireplace. That was promising.
Back in her room she pulled the bedclothes around her ears and opened at page one. Everything about the book was reassuring: the cover, the creased pages, the poor vicarage family, the children all playing together. Mr Beaumaris—rich, handsome and kind, was certain to marry Arabella eventually.
It was not Australia. It was not now.
Marian lost herself in the story, until it blurred into nonsense and she slept.
friday
Marian woke disoriented. The light was still on, but the sky beyond the curtains was bright. Arabella had fallen shut and her glasses were under the pillow, one arm slightly bent, but still usable. She opened the book, hunting for the place where she’d left off, willing any other thoughts away.
There it was. Relieved, she sank back into the improbable world of Georgette Heyer.
Much later Marian put the book down and thought about getting up. The familiar drone of traffic had passed its morning peak-hour pitch, the world outside was gearing up. Breakfast time was long gone.
It would be so easy to spend the day in bed.
But she couldn’t. She imagined how it would sound in the paper. While the families of the victims grieved, the killer’s mother lay in bed reading a romance novel.
Her pleasure in the regency froth was destroyed. She swung her legs out and sat on the edge of the bed until the cold drove her to shower and dress.
At least she had clean clothes.
The muesli bar, still in its wrapper, lay on the bedside cabinet, no more appealing than it had been last night.
Evie had been right, as always. The lecture theatre was full of people of all ages. Impossible to tell which were students and which were visitors.
A young man with dreadlocks was organising Lee and two other women at the front. He called the room to order and introduced himself as the chair of the session.
The first woman had a habit of pushing her glasses up on her nose. After fiddling with the microphone she spread her notes on the lectern and began to read. Her talk seemed to be about changes to welfare laws affecting single mothers.
Single mothers. That’s what Marian was.
The speaker glanced up from time to time and stared earnestly at the audience, but Marian could only hear half of what she said, and didn’t understand all of that. The familiar drowsiness, which she was beginning to dread, clouded her mind. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, forcing her eyes unnaturally wide open, eyebrows raised. Hopefully the speaker, if she noticed, would mistake it for intense interest.
The second speaker had a long fringe that fell across her face when she looked down, which she did most of the time. Marian’s thoughts began to jumble. Her mother spoke to her. Watch out. There are tiger snakes under the seats. She heard a strangled snort and Evie dug her in the ribs with an elbow. Sam was peering concernedly from the other side of Evie. Marian cleared her throat. The snort must have come from her. The shock roused her and she pulled herself up in the chair.
Perhaps she imagined it, but the whole atmosphere seemed to change when it was Lee’s turn. People sat up and clapped loudly.
Lee stood at the lectern and gazed around, gathering them in. She spoke some unintelligible words. Wandju wandju …
Marian nudged Ros, eyebrows raised.
Ros shook her head and gestured towards the front.
‘Those are the words to welcome you to Whadjuk country,’ Lee said, looking straight at Marian. ‘Normally an Elder would speak them but today it has to be me. And I wanted you to hear some language. The point is that we’re on Nyoongah land here. I pay my respects to the Elders and the ancestors and the traditional owners.’
Marian pushed herself further back into her chair.
The computer in front of Lee hummed when she touched it and the screen behind her filled with images of trees, a swamp-like tangle of paperbarks. Marian blinked. It was exactly what she’d been imagining the other day, down by the river.
‘Here, where I’m standing, would have looked like this,’ Lee said. ‘Derbal Yerrigan. What you call the Swan River.’
The next image was of higher ground, bigger trees.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it? Rich country.’
She flicked through a couple more bla
ck and white images. ‘Here’s the coast. And this is Rottnest. Hasn’t changed much. But look again. See what’s happening?’
The image shrank and a row of figures appeared to one side, accompanied by a uniformed man on horseback. Lee tapped with a ruler at the space between each figure. They seemed to be connected by loops.
‘Chains,’ she said. ‘And what about this? This is from up north. Not so orderly up there.’
An image of two men in wide brimmed hats with guns under their arms. At their feet lay an amorphous heap. Lee zoomed in on it and the blur at the edge resolved itself into a tangle of hands and feet.
The room was filled with the silence of suspended breath.
Lee flicked a switch and the image disappeared. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘You can breathe.’
There was an uneasy laugh.
‘We’ve heard a lot about terrorism lately,’ Lee said. ‘We’ve had a whole war on it, in fact. I won’t bother preaching to the converted. You already know the problems with that sort of thinking, the threat to human rights …’
Marian sank back in her chair. Human rights. She couldn’t listen to this, she shouldn’t have come.
Lee studied her audience. ‘I said we. Let’s think about that. Who is this we? Who is the terrorist here, and who is the victim? Think about the Swan River Colony. There’s the lonely shepherd in his hut, trying to save the boss’s flock from blackfella spears. There’s the Governor sitting down in St George’s Terrace with a Nyoongah woman rattling the gate and shouting at him. Kim Scott tells that story. They built Government House on her land. But the Governor doesn’t know that because he never asked. He feels a bit worried because there aren’t too many whitefellas in the colony and an awful lot of black ones. Let’s face it, he’s scared.’
‘So that brings us to policing …’
Marian didn’t want to hear this. Terrible things happened, she knew that already. Don’t tell me again.
The lecture theatre was lined on one side with a row of windows. By twisting slightly in her seat, Marian could see treetops beyond the red-tiled eaves. The sky between the leaves was grey.
In a classroom, she remembered, you could blur the teacher’s voice in the same way you could blur your eyes. She let Lee’s voice slide out of focus and counted the windows. Eight of them, wooden framed, longer than they were high. The dark wood was satisfying against the rough cream walls. It was the same wood as the exposed rafters. The effect was pleasing, homespun and honest.
‘Honesty …’ Lee was saying. Marian jumped. ‘… isn’t a quality that this white culture values, though it claims to. It doesn’t tell the truth about fear, and it doesn’t tell the truth about violence.’ Lee sounded calm and reasonable, not angry.
‘Honesty can be conveniently suspended when it comes to remembering the frontier.’
The frontier. Davy Crockett. Cowboys and Indians. No, Lee was talking about Australia. Perhaps if the Aboriginal people had had horses? That might have evened things up. But they walked. And they didn’t have guns. That’s what got people, Marian thought. The unevenness of it. We want to be able to claim that we won a fair fight, all above-board and by the rules.
It was like bullying. You hate the victim that you’ve bullied. Maybe it was the same with anyone you wronged, however you hurt them, because they let it happen. They shouldn’t have let you hurt them.
Maybe that’s how Mac had felt about her, Marian.
There was a texta scrawl on the laminex book-rest attached to her chair. CU4T? Someone’s initials? She ran her finger over the symbols, but could make nothing of it.
Lee’s voice was louder. ‘Until this society is prepared to include everyone, there will be anger.’
Uh oh, she was angry after all.
Marian became aware of Ros beside her, sitting slightly forward with one fist pushed into her other hand. She was angry too. Even gentle Ros. Angry with Lee? No, agreeing with Lee. Marian twisted around. A young woman behind her was staring bright-eyed, muttering yes yes under her breath.
Were they all angry, these kids?
And how far would they take it?
There was no end to anger and violence. It seemed to be in everyone.
Even in me, she thought. I’m furious. With Lee, with Charlie, with Ros, with Sam for being so young and eager. Marian wanted someone to blame.
Most of all she was angry with herself.
This business about the blacks. It was true that she’d kept quiet. Everyone did. They didn’t want to work out the rights and wrongs, feel the messy and confused feelings, didn’t want to have anything to do with it.
But Marian did know really—it was unavoidable, this knowledge. It had always been there, waiting for her. Waiting on the other side of the fence, down in the south-east corner. Waiting till she was too low to avoid it any more.
She watched the treetops outside the windows and a bird walking around on the tiles.
When Charlie was born Marian had thought he would be especially close. Her baby. She tried not to play favourites, but Brian had always followed his father. As soon as he could toddle, without a backward glance. Getting away from her. I want to go with Dad.
Whereas Charlie was the sort to hang back, see what she was doing. Calm, serious, very private.
When did he start to get angry?
Mostly it was directed at Mac. Baiting him, Marian thought. Blow-ups between Mac and Brian were straightforward, soon over. With Charlie it had always been different. There was the vegetarian thing. And she remembered an earlier time. He and Mac had gone off to shoot kangaroos. Only Charlie hadn’t. Apparently he’d lain down on the gun and refused to budge. Mac was shamefaced, telling her about it later, because he’d hit Charlie. The boy gives me the creeps, he said. The way he stares at me. Waiting for me to blow. Then he says nothing. Looks away as though I’m some sort of cockroach. Mac was hangdog, wanting Marian to let him off the hook, sitting with his head in his hands. I’m sorry, love. I do try.
Marian spelled out the texta scrawl to herself, moving her lips without noise. CU4T. Of course. See you for tea. A secret language. She was delighted and looked up, catching Lee’s eye. Lee wasn’t smiling. Marian straightened her face.
Everyone in the room was applauding. In fact they were rising to their feet and lifting their hands towards Lee as they clapped. Marian stood up hastily, just as everyone else began to sit down again. At the last minute she tried to convert her rise and sat down on her bag, pulling it awkwardly from under her.
People stretched and spoke to each other. The young man with dreadlocks called for questions.
This had been Charlie’s world. Serious people with piles of books and clipboards. Had he known what they were talking about? He was a country boy, not a talker. But he was smart. After all, he’d helped Lee with this paper.
A woman asked a question about the Pinjarra Massacre.
Pain, too much pain. Marian examined the floor. Vinyl tiles, nananananana, metal strips, nananananana, vinyl tiles. She began a list of every floor covering she’d ever seen. The scuffed green carpet in her bedroom. The black and white tiles in the hospital kitchen. Her grandmother’s lino, huge roses and a geometric border. The circular rag rugs her mother made for the boys before she died.
‘You whitefellas don’t want to know,’ Lee said. ‘Even now you’re trying not to listen. You might say sorry but you don’t really want to know what you’re sorry for.’
Marian jerked back to attention.
‘The trouble is, you think you’re normal and we’re abnormal. But you’re not. Normal isn’t all cut off from each other and stiff, like you’re made from cardboard. Each one of you in your own room in your own house in your own don’t-touch-me world. Don’t know how to laugh, don’t know how to cry. That’s not normal. You think we can’t see you? You think we haven’t been watching you for two hundred years? We’ve had to find out everything there is to know about you. You find us scary. Boy. I know who’s scary. And it isn’t us. You’re sh
ocked that things are in such a mess, air poisoned, water salty, land dying. Must have happened while you were looking the other way. Sorry, didn’t mean to make a mess.’
Like the time Marian broke her mother’s wedding vase. Sorry Mum. What would her mother say now, about all this. About Charlie. Oh that Charlie. He’s a bright boy, Marian.
Marian’s father died before the boys were born. Her Dad, who spent his last years turning the backyard into a forest. Who gave away tree seedlings to anyone he could persuade to grow them. Make up for all I cut down.
Lee didn’t know about that, wasn’t including all the people like him, people who were trying to do something. Dad never made a fuss about it, walked away from arguments, never bought into Mac’s attempts to stir him, just went on growing his seedlings.
Would he have understood Charlie?
Marian’s mother spoiled the boys any chance she got, though she’d been firm enough with her own kids. Spoiled. Could you spoil children with too much kindness? Funny how people said that about their kids, and then let their grandkids get away with … Marian winced. Not murder.
Maybe Charlie hadn’t been spoiled enough. His grandparents were all gone before he grew up.
Mum, Dad, I’m afraid I’ve got bad news.
Lucky they were dead.
The dreadlocks boy thanked everyone and there was a final round of clapping.
Ros turned to Marian, face glowing.
‘Wow. That was wicked. Let’s go for coffee and celebrate Lee.’
Wicked?
They walked to a coffee shop in another building and Evie went to the counter to order.
Sam was pale and shrank down in her chair.
‘Are you okay?’ Ros asked.
‘I suppose. People are being totally strange about Charlie. Some want to know every detail, real ghouls, you know? But the rest of them run the other way when they see me coming.’
‘They’re embarrassed,’ Ros said. ‘They don’t know what to say, so they just shut up. Don’t you reckon?’ She appealed to Marian.
Marian shook her head helplessly. ‘I suppose so. Perhaps they’re scared of upsetting you.’
The First Week Page 14