Gran laughed. ‘Look over there, in the corner of the carport.’
Fish looked. A long black piece of firewood stared back at her.
‘Pretending to be a stick and terrified of all of us. It’s good pavlova,’ said Gran.
Fish gazed at the stick, then looked away when she realised the snake was registering her attention. She didn’t want to scare it further.
After all, this was its home, its community of animals, too.
Chapter 56
Investment Firm Predicts China Might Become World’s Biggest Economy
Investment firm Goldman Sachs has forecast that Deng Xiaoping’s China’s GDP could be the biggest in the world by 2027. Can the Sleeping Panda become an economic giant?
FISH
It ended up a great party. Wes came over to her, and they talked and talked, then everyone sang, which should have been corny but wasn’t, old songs like Waltzing Matilda or Blowing in the Wind, and people handed out mugs of very herbal tea and biscuits, and the moon rose like a vast gold pumpkin over the trees and river. For the first time Fish understood why the Greats lived here. Why anyone did.
The phone was ringing inside the house as Great-Uncle Joseph parked the car. He’d driven Blue’s, which was big enough to hold them all. Fish ran to answer it.
She picked up the receiver. ‘The McAlpine residence.’
‘Fish, is that you?’ The voice and the accent were unmistakable.
‘Dad!’ Fish sagged onto the hall chair. ‘Where are you? Are you okay? I’m so, so sorry —’
‘There is nothing to be sorry for. I am so sorry you have been so worried. I did not know till today. I wrote to you at your grandmother’s.’
Not to the flat, she thought. Had he known Fish would go to Gran? Or maybe he thought Mum mightn’t have given a letter to her. But she was the daughter, not the parent. She would not ask. ‘Gramps mustn’t have sent it on.’
‘I know. I spoke to him. He doesn’t check the mail.’
‘Mum has been worried too. We didn’t know where you were!’
‘I thought you or your grandmother would tell her.’
‘Everyone’s been so worried.’ Fish tried to find the words. ‘Dad, I shouldn’t have said —’
‘No, you were right. I have a new life now. I must not cling to the old one.’ She could almost hear the smile in his voice when he said, ‘I have got a job and a flat to live in.’
‘That’s wonderful! Where are you working?’
‘A restaurant called the Golden Orient, in the Valley. I am cooking.’
Fish bit back an exclamation. She had expected a government job, or a translator or even a tutor in Vietnamese at the uni — except there wasn’t a course in Vietnamese. But the more she thought about it, the more right it seemed. Her father loved cooking, loved feeding people. Would create a new life, his own life, not sharing Mum’s life and some memories.
‘I can’t wait to go there.’
He laughed. ‘It’s mostly sweet and sour, not real cooking. They think that is all Australians want, but I do not agree. I will have my own restaurant, as soon as I learn a bit more about how business is done in Australia. In your Gibber’s Creek, perhaps.’
‘No. You seriously don’t want to live here. There are snakes.’
‘Snakes are good fortune,’ he reproved her.
‘Not these ones,’ she replied, then wondered. Because, despite the snakes, despite more death and loss and hardship than she’d ever heard about before, this was a good place, a deeply happy place. ‘Well, maybe,’ she admitted.
‘I have rung your mother too, to tell her, to apologise. She would like you home, Fish.’
‘She hasn’t said so,’ said Fish stiffly.
‘I think your mother does not say things close to her heart easily, to me or to you.’
Fish was silent. Dad was right about that too.
‘She loves you, Fish.’
Actually, thought Fish, quite a lot of people seem to love me. It was a strange realisation. She had acquired a large family here, not all of it related to her by blood. But it was almost time to go home.
‘I love you too,’ said her father. ‘You will be home soon?’
‘Yes. I just need to stay here a little longer. Love you too, Dad,’ she said. She hung up the receiver and went to tell Gran.
Chapter 57
You Can Never Have Too Many Zucchini by Broccoli Bill Smith
Zucchini Cakes
For every cup of grated zucchini add 1 dessertspoon chopped parsley, 2 chopped cloves garlic, 1 dessertspoon chopped onion, 1 egg, 1 tbsp plain flour. Mix well. Drop spoonsful on a hot pan with plenty of olive oil or butter. Cook till brown on one side, then turn.
If the cake sticks, the pan wasn’t hot enough or clean enough. If the zucchini mixture is very liquid, you may need to add a little more flour.
FISH
Fish turned her bicycle onto the track that led to Halfway to Eternity. Gran had vanished to stay with her sister up at Rock Farm for a couple of days, now the great-grandson had finally been born. Fish had decided not to go with her. Broccoli Bill had sort of invited her to paint a mural on their big shed wall. Well, what he’d really said was, ‘Saw that painting of yours at Moura. Cool, really cool.’ Wes had said, ‘How about a mural on the new shed?’ and his father had replied, ‘Yeah, cool,’ and wandered off to get more herbal tea.
Which was enough for Fish. The blonde wig was in place, and she wore her second-best fish T-shirt — not her best one, if she was painting. She hoped they did have enough paint. Wes said the commune had lots of cans left over from various painting jobs, but he’d have no idea how much would be needed. She’d brought her own brushes — from long experience she knew that brushes from past painting jobs had probably been left in the turps too long and grown hard — and the paints left over from her mural at Moura too.
So that was the ‘Eternity’ sign, roughly carved into a bare space where someone had removed some of the bark from a gum tree. Fish smiled. Nancy was so indignant that she didn’t want to be able to tell one gum tree from another . . .
. . . and there was the commune, the one started by Sam, and not what she had expected at all. Half a dozen solid-looking houses scattered along a hill overlooking the river, two old-fashioned stone ones, the others clay coloured but still normal shaped. They even had roses blooming out the front. The only signs of hippiedom were the sagging geodesic dome up on the hill and what looked like a communal barbecue area with a big round pizza oven. Even the vegetable and orchard areas could have been an ordinary market garden.
Someone appeared at the door of one of the clay-coloured houses. Wes waved to her and ran down. ‘Hi. I wasn’t sure if you were really going to come.’
‘Of course I was. Is that the shed?’ Which was a dumb question, as it was the only new shed around, Colorbond and about ten metres long. Ten metres to work with . . . ‘What colours have you got?’
‘There’re a couple of big cans of white, a bit of yellow and brown, and some red and blue. I’m not sure what else.’
‘I can work with that,’ said Fish, already focusing on the space. Colours could be mixed to make new colours, and her work was shapes, not details. She needed to find the subject first, the shape. Something that was needed here, the right painting, the perfect place . . .
‘What are you going to paint?’ asked Wes eagerly. ‘How about the river? Or wombats and roos?’
‘I don’t do trees,’ said Fish absently. ‘Or animals.’
‘Why not?’
She looked at him, trying to explain. ‘I like to paint what needs to be painted. Something I’ve seen and understood. I don’t understand trees, or wombats and kangaroos, because I’m not interested in them.’ And had never realised till she met Nancy that there was anything to understand.
Should she paint the orphans? No, that wasn’t right for the commune. This had to be right for here. Unless . . .
And then she had it. Perfect. Right. So rig
ht that all the pieces clicked inside her mind. It was almost as if the artwork had always existed, then just slid into her mind. Now all she had to do was place it on the shed.
‘Where’s the paint?’ she asked abruptly.
‘In the old shed. Wouldn’t you like a drink first? Nan made chocolate zucchini cake.’
‘Maybe later,’ she said absently. ‘Show me the paint first. You’ve got some turps?’
‘Yeah, sure.’ Wes began to show her the way.
Six hours later the outline had spread across the wall. Flesh tones, pink and brown and yellow mixed with the white: people, because Fish did not paint gum trees, never would understand gum trees.
Fish painted the truth.
And there it was on the shed wall. Just the beginning — it would need another two or three days to complete. But even now you could see the story.
These were the dead. But the dead lived in their descendants, in the future they had created.
There were Nancy’s ancestors, stepping from a snaking rainbow; Mrs Lee’s friends, gazing from their boat at a coast they would never reach alive; Clancy of the Overflow hand in hand with a girl with dark skin and a white dress; Pete Sampson’s mates, young, in khaki, as they strode off to war; a woman who might be the Matilda everyone talked about, wearing the green dress she’d seen Jed wear now, standing in that extraordinary gold and green light about the billabong; orphan children who would never grow old gazing from a window.
None of the faces was exact. Fish did not do exact. Truth was not exact, because if you ever told the whole truth, it would take forever, as every fact was linked into another. But they were recognisable. Were recognised, as one by one the commune dwellers came to watch, to murmur, then to stare.
The mural grew, still only outlines. The living faced the dead now and murmured, pointed, smiled.
Someone handed her a cup of herbal tea, which she drank, and home-made lemon cordial, which she enjoyed. She kept on painting. Someone passed her slices of chocolate zucchini cake, and slices of tomato and zucchini pizza. She ate. She painted.
The blonde wig was too hot. She took it off, felt the breeze ruffle her damp hair.
Time to paint the living now, who would one day take their place under the quiet soil as ancestors too. A rough but recognisable sketch of two circus girls from the poster back at Moura; Nancy in the internment camp, staring at the sky that linked her to the country of her heart.
The background changed: a few broccoli and zucchini and enormous ridged tomatoes, solar panels. She’d add more, later, as she filled the work in. She needed more red paint too. And now she added dingoes, because even though she did not paint animals, the dingoes were missing too. They weren’t dingo shapes — she wasn’t even sure what shape a dingo should be — but the faint image of dog-like heads howling at the sky. And then the final face, more detailed than the rest, known from the many photos at Moura and at Dribble.
‘Sam,’ said someone, a woman wearing overalls, her voice choked.
Suddenly Fish heard the sound of an engine. Great-Uncle Joseph’s ute, with Great-Aunt Blue sitting next to him. Dinnertime. She could smell more pizzas from down at the big oven. The Greats must have come to take her and her bike home.
And all at once she was terrified: she understood what she had done. She had painted their lost son, painted him the way everyone spoke of him, not just his shape. She had painted truth, and truth could hurt.
She had vowed she would hurt no more, and yet she had painted this.
She heard Blue’s cry, heard her sob in her husband’s arms. Joseph stared, his face twisted in grief.
Fish froze. She wanted to run, escape. But this time she had to face what she had done.
She felt a hand in hers. Wes. ‘It’s good,’ he said quietly. ‘Brilliant.’
Fish nodded dumbly. Brilliant was not an excuse. Brilliance could just make the pain worse.
Blue looked up. She stared at the mural again, as if taking in each detail. Fish stood, waiting for her to speak.
But she didn’t. She ran to Fish, stumbling on the tussocks, and hugged her. Hugged her hard. When she stepped back, she was smiling. A shaky smile, but a true one.
‘It’s Sam,’ said Great-Aunt Blue, her voice still not steady. ‘It’s perfect. It really is.’
‘It’s not finished yet,’ said Fish hurriedly. ‘It’ll be better when I . . .’
But Blue wasn’t listening. Joseph put his arm around her and they stood there, the two Greats, arm in arm, looking at their son, missing from their lives as he lay in his hospital bed, here again, in the commune that he had begun.
Wes handed Fish another mug of herbal tea, and down at the oven someone hauled out another batch of pizzas.
Chapter 58
Maternity Leave for Aussie Women
The Arbitration Commission has awarded Australian women the right to six weeks’ compulsory unpaid maternity leave with the option of extending the leave to one year. The provisions, which will flow to all awards covering women in the private sector, will take affect on 2 April.
JED
Jed sat, slowly shredding her fingernails, Joseph on one side, holding her hand, Scarlett on the other, in the back room of the Gibber’s Creek Courthouse. The other witnesses sat on chairs around the room: Detective Rodrigues, Constable Ryan, the blokes from the fire crew, a couple of the men who worked at Drinkwater. Witnesses at a coronial inquiry weren’t permitted to listen to the proceedings until they had given their evidence.
She had dressed sedately, hoping that would make her evidence more credible. Leafsong was minding Mattie — the baby was too young to understand whatever was said there that day, but Jed still didn’t want Sam’s daughter to hear anything that might cast suspicion on her father.
What was happening in there? Had the coroner already said who the police thought had killed Merv? She twisted her fingers again, trying to hide her nervousness.
No one talked. A heat-drunk fly buzzed at the window. Once the seat of local law, the courthouse was used infrequently now for the odd wedding or for tourists on Heritage Day, to admire its wooden panelling. Or, as today, for an inquest.
Sam, she thought. Please, please don’t let them say anything bad about Sam. My wonderful Sam . . .
Constable Ryan was called first, presumably to describe how the body had been found, then Detective Rodrigues. Jed watched him go. She wanted to hate him, but he was only trying to find the truth.
Time passed. Terror crept from her toes, paralysing her. She couldn’t talk now even if she wanted to.
‘Mrs McAlpine?’
Jed stood, her body suddenly working. Joseph stood too, hugged her quickly.
‘You’ll be right,’ said Scarlett, trying too hard to sound confident.
Jed nodded numbly. She followed the man into the main courtroom and took the seat he indicated.
The room was crowded. Hot. They were all there, her family by blood and her family by adoption, Julieanne next to the whole McAlpine clan, including Fish, with that boy from the commune, Broccoli Bill’s son, sitting next to her, and the Thompsons. Even Jim had come down from Sydney for the inquest.
She had the strangest feeling that Matilda was in the room too. Matilda Thompson had ruled the district for nearly a century. Love and control like that did not erode just because your body died.
The coroner was a woman. Jed hadn’t expected that. Carol was the only female lawyer she knew. But were coroners necessarily lawyers? She realised she didn’t know, though their barrister, whom Michael and Joseph had insisted they have, had explained that the rules of evidence were not the same as in a court of law. Hearsay evidence was admissible, and people’s opinions.
She hunted for Carol in the crowd. Yes, there she was, at the back, with Broccoli Bill and Mack and all the Beards from the factory.
Questions from the counsel assisting the coroner. Jed tried to concentrate on her answers, keeping them true but as uninformative as she could. She could not risk even
the slightest suspicion that she had been involved in Merv’s death . . .
Yes, Mr Mervyn had threatened her, demanded money or he’d tell everyone about her past. She had told him that everyone who mattered already knew everything that mattered. Yes, she was scared of him — not of what he might say but because she knew he could be violent.
‘Could you be more exact, Mrs McAlpine?’
Jed shut her eyes briefly. She could not say the word ‘rape’ in front of so many strangers. She gave a smaller slice of truth instead. Mr Mervyn had assaulted her in the past. Yes, she had tried to follow Scarlett into town the day of the bushfire.
‘Why didn’t you, Mrs McAlpine?’
This was it. She was under oath. Admit she had seen Merv? But what if they decided she had killed him? Even if the court decided it had been in self-defence, manslaughter meant a jail sentence of a minimum of three years. Three years without Mattie. A mother labelled as a killer . . .
The only thing she could do for Sam now was keep his daughter safe.
‘My waters broke, and I went into labour suddenly. My car went off the road. I managed to get back to the house.’ This was the truth, but not the whole truth, which she had sworn to give. ‘The flames were all around by then, but the house was protected by the firebreak and the automatic watering system. I . . . I tried to think how to deliver my baby myself . . .’ She didn’t try to stop the tears, the terror in her voice. They were real, her story true. Please, please let the tears and anguish stop them asking for more.
‘I know this is hard for you, Mrs McAlpine. Would you like a little time?’
Jed shook her head numbly.
‘Only one last question. Once you were back at the house, did you see or hear Mr Mervyn, or a person, car or engine, until Ms Kelly-O’Hara, Dr McAlpine and Ms Carol Endacott arrived?’
‘No,’ said Jed, desperately glad that she could tell the whole truth with this.
‘Thank you, Mrs McAlpine.’
Her barrister stood. Mr Fox, dark haired and dark skinned, slightly rotund and totally unfoxlike. ‘Mrs McAlpine, when your husband found out Mr Mervyn was harassing you, what did he do?’
The Last Dingo Summer Page 25