The Last Dingo Summer

by Jackie French

An . . . interesting . . . house, thought Fish, not like the ‘six variations on a box’ she was used to back in Brisbane. An ancient slab hut had a newer corridor added on, leading to a more ordinary weatherboard house, all linked with a veranda. There were rose bushes just like you’d see back in Brisbane, and a lawn and a carport, but also a big home-made outdoor oven out the back and solar panels on the roof. Sam’s solar panels, she’d bet. She wondered if they were still used.

  Fish glanced at Great-Uncle Joseph. The pattern of life here had been ripped apart, even more completely than her own. You might cobble the whole together, like the two houses had been, but the join would always show.

  And that must be Great-Aunt Blue coming down the front steps. Boring jeans and predictable shirt, and the same grey grief overlaid with a more recent, urgent worry.

  What?

  Go carefully, Fish told herself. Don’t make things worse by asking what she’s worried about.

  She hoped she could manage it.

  No one mentioned anything urgent — or her pink hair — as she hugged Great-Aunt Blue and Great-Aunt Mah, who had the elf-like build of her Chinese ancestors. Both women smelled of biscuits and gardenia bath salts.

  Fish looked at Mah enviously. Fish had thought her own background was a nice straightforward fifty per cent ‘ancestors came from China’ till a few months ago. Chinese-Australians had been here since the gold rushes, and even before.

  Great-Aunt Blue showed Fish to a bedroom in the slab-hut side of the house, with two walls of bookshelves with interesting books, presumably belonging to the daughter working as a research psychologist in London, though the wall above the bed was bare.

  Fish wondered if they’d like her to paint a mural on it, like the one above her own bed at home, a dozen grinning fish in space helmets swimming in a star-speckled sky.

  Probably not. She looked out the window instead. A view of a creek weaving a thin crevice through bedrock, except where it trickled into deep round pools. And so far, not a single snake or spider.

  Maybe Gibber’s Creek was a snake-free area? She’d better ask.

  ‘Fish? Come and have a cuppa!’ called Great-Aunt Mah. Fish checked her hair in the mirror, then wandered out.

  The ‘corridor’ linking the two houses had become a living room, with French windows opening onto paving in the backyard, though in this case the ‘yard’ contained a woodshed, a chook house and a vegie garden, and then went on forever up a mountain.

  ‘There’s cordial if you’d like it,’ offered Great-Aunt Blue, still with the same look of strain. ‘Home-made lemon from the tree out the back.’

  Fish accepted the cordial. The living room had bookshelves, with medical textbooks and detective stories; much polished wood; a framed circus poster of two girls with long blonde hair and brief, frilly costumes standing next to an elephant. But no paintings and . . .

  . . . no TV set!

  Fish looked around urgently, in case she had missed it.

  How could you survive without TV?

  ‘Er, where’s the TV?’ she asked Great-Uncle Joseph, now seated in a worn leather armchair, cup, saucer and cake plate beside him on a coffee table.

  ‘What? Oh, can’t get reception here between the ridges.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t think Matilda’s father ever imagined TV would be invented when he built this place back in the 1880s. I can offer you a game of Scrabble after dinner.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Fish politely. She always devastated the opposition at Scrabble, which most people didn’t enjoy.

  At least afternoon tea looked promising, a table set with china cups, small cake plates, cake forks and sugar basin. She watched as the great-aunts brought out a teapot dressed in a knitted tea cosy, another pot of hot water, a milk jug, a plate of steaming scones, whipped cream, apricot jam, plum jam, blackberry jam, a still-hot apple cake, small shortbread pastries that looked a bit like commercial ‘squished fly’ biscuits but looked delicious instead of dry, cheese and salad sandwiches on bread that had been cut with a kitchen knife, not a machine, and small hot spinach quiches.

  ‘Thought you might be peckish after your long trip,’ said Great-Aunt Mah.

  Fish approved.

  She did not approve of the deepening silence.

  Not real silence, she thought as she sat in an armchair and helped herself to a scone, then a pastry, followed by two sandwiches, another sandwich, a little quiche, a sliver of cake, another sandwich and another quiche. (She’d forgotten to eat over the last few days. Maybe because food reminded her too much of Dad. Dad loved to cook . . .)

  This silence was covered over with words meant to cover up real feelings. Great-Aunt Blue asked carefully after the health of every member of the family, which she must already know about from letters and phone calls. Joseph gave a detailed report of the last month’s weather. Gran praised the jam and the apple cake. Great-Aunt Blue told her which tree every bit of fruit had come from. Finally Joseph even tried the ultimate refuge of someone who had no idea what to say next:

  ‘How is school, Fish?’

  ‘Irrelevant,’ said Fish, piling more apricot jam from the ‘seedling tree that just sprang up ten years ago out of the old compost heap’ onto her scone.

  More silence. She looked up to find the Greats staring at her, and Gran embarrassed. Oh, brilliant. She’d made everyone uncomfortable already.

  She tried to put things right. ‘I know all the subjects to university graduate level already. Mrs Morrison agreed it wouldn’t matter if I took time off.’

  Had she made things worse? Intelligence made some people nervous. She looked at their faces anxiously. But the Greats just smiled.

  ‘Just like Scarlett,’ said Great-Uncle Joseph. ‘She knew it all long before the exams. Still does at uni, I bet. Jed too. And me.’

  ‘Don’t boast,’ said Great-Aunt Blue mildly. ‘Mah and I never had a chance to go to high school or university,’ she explained to Fish.

  Great-Uncle Joseph gave a grin. A good grin. ‘I reckon the circus taught you all you needed.’

  Fish stared at the poster, then back at the great-aunts. Blondes in short skirts and tights? ‘Those girls are you two?’

  Blue managed a smile. ‘We’ve still got the costumes. And the wigs.’

  ‘Great-looking pair of sheilas, aren’t they?’ said Joseph. For a moment the room felt balanced. Then Great-Aunt Blue looked at Great-Aunt Mah and the silence began again. Heavy silence. Too much wasn’t being said. And needed to be.

  Fish hauled her courage up from her sandals. ‘Something’s wrong,’ she started, looking at the faces in the room.

  About four full seconds of real silence, then —

  ‘Of course something’s wrong!’ cried Great-Aunt Blue. ‘My lovely, lovely son!’

  Fish sat, stricken. Great-Aunt Blue sprawled into Great-Uncle Joseph’s arms as if every bone had dissolved. ‘I . . . I didn’t want to tell you till later,’ she managed. ‘I didn’t want to spoil Kirsty’s arrival. The police came while you were out. A detective.’ Sobs overtook her words.

  ‘What? What did he want?’ demanded Joseph.

  I was right, thought Fish.

  Blue blew her nose. ‘You know the body they found under the burned church after the fire? The one with the two old skeletons nearby?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Joseph. ‘The inquest’s in a couple of weeks.’

  Great-Aunt Blue tried to keep her voice steady. ‘They’ve finally found out who he was. A man called Ignatius Mervyn.’

  ‘Never heard of him. What has this Ignatius Mervyn got to do with us?’

  ‘He was “Merv”, the one who . . .’ Mah glanced at Fish and obviously chose her words with care ‘. . . hurt Jed, all those years ago. The detective said they . . . don’t think his death was an accident.’

  ‘Of course it was an accident!’ said Great-Uncle Joseph. ‘He was obviously trying to shelter from the fire.’

  ‘No,’ said Great-Aunt Mah, almost too quietly to hear. ‘Detective Sergeant Rodr
igues said he’d been tied up so he couldn’t leave.’ Her voice grew even softer. ‘I think they are investigating it like a . . . murder.’

  Fish could feel the shock. ‘Murder’ was a word used in newspapers or on TV. Not in living rooms.

  ‘Jed,’ said Joseph sharply. ‘Have they spoken to Jed yet?’

  ‘They were going to Dribble after they left here.’

  Great-Uncle Joseph surged to his feet. ‘You should have told me straight away! We have to get over there —’

  ‘No!’ Blue grabbed his hand. ‘I rang her as soon as the police left. She said she didn’t want anyone with her.’

  ‘We can’t leave her alone at a time like this.’

  ‘Jed was very . . . definite,’ said Great-Aunt Blue shakily. ‘She said she wanted to speak to the police alone.’

  Joseph sat, almost buzzing with the suppressed urge to look after his family. No one spoke.

  At last Fish asked the question that surely had to be asked: ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s not our business, Fish,’ said Gran quietly.

  Great-Uncle Joseph looked at Gran and then at Fish. ‘You’re family. It is your business,’ he said slowly. He glanced at his wife. ‘I think Jed may not want us to hear how that man . . . assaulted . . . her.’

  ‘I’m fifteen,’ said Fish. ‘I know the word “rape”. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’

  ‘I hope you don’t know what can come with it,’ said Great-Uncle Joseph evenly. ‘A country doctor gets to meet rape victims. Sometimes the rape itself isn’t the worst part. It’s what happens later, when you need to live with it, have to explain it to people.’ He shook his head. ‘Jed shouldn’t be alone.’

  ‘Her choice,’ said Great-Aunt Mah. ‘I . . . I just wish she’d let us help sometimes.’

  They were missing the point. All of them were missing the most important thing of all. ‘But what if the police arrest her?’

  The others looked at her blankly.

  ‘The police might think Jed killed Ignatius Mervyn,’ said Fish.

  To her relief the Greats shook their heads, almost simultaneously, like they’d been trained.

  ‘Not possible. Jed had a baby the afternoon of the bushfire,’ said Mah. ‘Darling Mattie. We all thought Jed had come into town as the fires were spreading — it was a confused day, all the evacuees . . .’ Her voice broke off. That had been the day her husband had died too, Fish realised, looking at the pain on the pretty face. When would she learn to keep her mouth shut?

  ‘Jed went into labour and couldn’t get to town.’ Joseph continued for her. ‘Luckily Sam . . . Sam had put in a sprinkler system at Dribble and burned firebreaks. The fire passed around the house. Scarlett and Carol and I got through to her just before the baby was born.’ He shook his head. ‘I doubt Jed would have the strength to tie a man up and put him in a church. And there is no way she could have done it that afternoon.’

  Fish looked at him, at her great-aunts. She carefully bit down the next question. Because no one had said, ‘Jed would never have done anything like that.’

  And if Jed couldn’t have done it, there seemed to be one person with the biggest motive of all. Fish could see the second Great-Uncle Joseph came to the same conclusion. He looked at his wife in dawning horror.

  ‘The detective wanted to know where Sam was that afternoon,’ whispered Great-Aunt Blue. ‘They wanted to know if he might have . . . killed Merv . . . to protect Jed.’

  Fish met Blue’s eyes. She didn’t care if they thought her weird now. And sometimes pain was necessary. Because this mattered. The Greats were scared, and when you were scared, you needed to admit what you were scared of. Even at fifteen she was sure of that.

  ‘Do you think Sam could have killed him?’ asked Fish softly.

  Blue stared at her in anguish. ‘To protect Jed and Mattie? I don’t know,’ she said.

  Chapter 3

  Inquiry into Aboriginal Education: Anti-discrimination Board Report on Aboriginal Education

  The Anti-Discrimination Board Report on Aboriginal Education recommended that the NSW Education Department develop education policies with Aboriginal people that would support self-determination.

  It also recommended employment of Aboriginal people at higher levels of management and decision-making.

  JED

  Jed put the telephone receiver down and looked blankly out the screen door. She had been waiting for the police to call since the body was found in the burned-out church months after the fire. Or even since she had learned about the burned-out car that had been found on the track to the billabong the day after: a car so unrecognisable that only she knew it had been driven by Merv.

  It was almost a relief to stop wondering if the body in the church would ever be identified. Because she had been very sure that that body had been Merv’s. If it had not been, he’d have come back for her again.

  It had even seemed gruesomely appropriate that a man like him should be flanked by two other skeletons. Not that anyone deserved to be near a bloke like Merv.

  She looked numbly around the house. Things had got into a mess since Scarlett went back to her flat near uni after Christmas. After Jed had urged her to go back, claiming she needed the solitude to write, when really her life just seemed to have narrowed after the accident. There wasn’t room for anything in her mind except Mattie and Sam, Sam and Mattie, not even the pile of manuscript she was supposed to be revising.

  It would be Mattie’s first birthday soon. But a party was impossible. Everything was impossible . . .

  There were enough spiderwebs in the windows to weave a parachute, enough dog hair to sculpt at least two more Maxis. But the phone call gave her enough time to move the stack of unfolded nappies from the armchair, as well as the books from the sofa and the pile of unopened mail.

  I should make scones, she thought vaguely. Gibber’s Creek’s tea ceremony was as important as the Japanese one. A decade of life in the country had taught her you must offer food and tea to guests, but there wasn’t even a packet of biscuits in the house. She supposed she could offer the police one of Mattie’s bananas . . .

  Maxi pricked up her ears. She began to trot towards Mattie’s room just as the baby gave her first gurgle. Jed followed her. A quick nappy change, she thought automatically, then feed her before the police arrive . . .

  Police. She shivered. She could never quite lose her fear of police. Living rough did that to you.

  Mattie was already standing in her cot, holding on to the bar. ‘Book?’ she demanded.

  Jed felt a smile quiver behind her fear. Her daughter believed that ‘book’ meant food, because every time she needed to be fed Jed muttered, ‘I’ll just find a book.’ Reading while she fed her daughter had been her only escape these past months. Everything else reminded her too much of Sam. ‘Nappy first, little frog. And no book today.’

  She’d just wiped the small bottom, Mattie’s chubby legs waving, when Maxi gave three sharp barks. The doorbell rang. Jed did the safety pins up swiftly, balanced Mattie on her hip and went to answer it, Maxi at her heels.

  Two men stood on the patio: young Will Ryan in uniform, looming as large as a backyard dunny, brown skin and darker eyes, looking uncomfortable, embarrassed and sympathetic; and an older stranger in plain clothes, forty maybe, tall and wiry. Neither looked in the least terrifying.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Rodrigues?’ she enquired, forestalling his greeting. ‘Please come in. Down, Maxi.’

  ‘You don’t want to see identification?’

  ‘I already know Constable Ryan,’ said Jed. She managed a smile, holding Mattie firmly to stop her hands trembling. Constable Ryan smiled back apologetically. ‘And my mother-in-law phoned me to say you’d be visiting,’ Jed added.

  ‘Of course she did,’ said Detective Rodrigues. She watched him assess the dust on the hall telephone table, the living-room carpet that hadn’t been vacuumed since . . . actually Jed couldn’t remember when she’d last vacuumed. Christmas? Not that anyone h
ad felt like celebrating . . .

  Maxi jumped onto an armchair, turned around three times, then lay down with her nose to the visitors, watching them with deep suspicion as men with no more than the slightest fragrance of sheep or other animals. Jed sat in the other armchair, leaving the sofa for the police. It creaked under Constable Ryan’s weight.

  ‘I’m so sorry we have to bother you about this,’ he said. ‘How have you been going?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Jed briefly.

  ‘If you ever need a hand or are worried about anything at all, you only need to call.’

  ‘I know. Thank you. You’re very kind.’ How many times had she said those words in the past five months? None of the offers could give her the one thing she needed. Sam.

  ‘Urgle bugle book!’ Mattie pulled at the buttons on her shirt. Another one of Sam’s shirts. Jed had taken to wearing them every day, not just to bed. No need to decide what to wear each day, just jeans and a shirt. Easy to undo the buttons for feeding . . .

  . . . and if Mattie wasn’t fed in ten seconds, she’d begin to wail. Her daughter had the appetite of an elephant. Should she retire modestly to the kitchen?

  Mattie gave a preliminary roar.

  Constable Ryan wouldn’t be bothered by her feeding Mattie — she’d seen him in the Blue Belle when she’d fed her there. But a detective from Sydney probably felt that women and babies needed to stay decently out of sight. Well, he could lump it, she decided. Male chauvinist pigs deserved to be made to feel uncomfortable.

  Jed unbuttoned her shirt defiantly, then moved Mattie as discreetly as possible to her breast. The baby began to suckle.

  She looked up. Constable Ryan was carefully keeping his eyes above her bosom. Detective Rodrigues watched her thoughtfully. ‘My mother was put on a train to a concentration camp in World War II,’ he said at last. ‘She said there were eight babies in the carriage. No water for three days. My mother breastfed me. I was the only child who lived.’

  Right. Time to put away preconceptions. This man was not a fool. And what was she supposed to say to that revelation? ‘Rodrigues doesn’t sound German.’