Tears of Glass A fin de siecle soap opera in three acts or a musical idea in process.

Mark Svendsen BA (UQ), Graduate Diploma Business Administration (Arts) (QUT).

Faculty of Creative Industries School of Creative Writing & Cultural Studies

Master of Arts (Research) 2003

1 Keywords

Fiction; Regional Queensland fiction; Emu Park, Central Queensland; Choral societies; Singers and singing; Leprosy; Racial and religious harmony; Queensland sheep and cattle properties.

Abstract

This work takes as its central “conceit” a specific cultural site, namely a small town choir— The Emu Park and District Amateur Choral Society Inc., which operates in Central Queensland, circa 1965. A discontinuous narrative of interconnected short stories of one chapter each, highlight significant and often highly traumatic aspects of the interconnected lives of selected choir members. The narrative lampoons the English choral tradition against the setting of a society which does not deal with the political and social negativities of Queensland in the sixties. It is a culture in denial. The comedy deals with the often banal, though always good natured, behaviours of the choir members in dealing with often black-edged lives. An Overture introduces all characters, while Acts I, II & III deal with individual’s stories. The Finale deals with the outcome of rehearsals in a culminating performance of the Emu Park and District Amateur Choral Society Incorporated. The short stories, one to a chapter, concern individual choir member’s life stories and form discreet, fully finished pieces of work in their own right. Background action throughout the stories involves a series of rehearsals which structurally tie all the narratives to the final chapter. Lyrics of popular songs of the 1900’s through to early 1960’s are mentioned within the text. For copyright reasons the texts are not reproduced in full. However, these lyrics do comment tangentially on some aspect of the character’s story.

Table of Contents

2

Keywords Abstract Table of Contents Statement of original authorship

Chapter 1 Overture Chapter 2 Act 1: Aunt Martha’s Knickers Chapter 3 Act 2: Salon des Refuses Chapter 4 Act 3: In the sameness of their days Chapter 5 Finale

Statement of original authorship

The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted for a degree or diploma at any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.

Signed: Mark Svendsen

Date:

3

Gently they sigh into my mind

Wild words half uttered, half unsaid,

And when I dream of death I find

Small tears of glass upon my bed.

from The Dolls by Frederic Prokosch. Chatto & Windus, London. 1944.

‘What is dying?’ asked the boy. ‘But living without love.’ ‘What is loving?’ asked the girl. ‘But giving unasked of.’

‘And what is yearning?’ ask the old. ‘But remembering youth’s coveted years.’ ‘And remembrance,’ the choir sings, ‘songs of old merriment and tears.’

from Tears of Glass by Mark Svendsen.

Unpublished ms., Brisbane. 2003.

Cast

4 Chookie Fowler: Late sixties. Owner of local store. President of Emu Park and District

Amateur Choral Society. Master of Ceremonies for all Annual Concerts. Leading mate in the group which includes Tubby Albertsen, Slim O’Dowd and Shorty Lear.

Eileen Fowler: Chookie’s missus. Of same age. A childless woman who loves her dog,

Skippy and gossips too much with her sister Flo. They lost their younger brother in the

Second War which adds bitterness to Eileen’s childlessness.

Florence (Flo) Mills: Ex-barmaid in pubs throughout the entire State of Queensland.

Sister to Eileen. Both, to their grief, lost a brother in the war.

Skippy: Eileen and Chookie’s symbolic three-legged dog.

Josie Yow Yeh: Albino South Sea Islander. Singer and guitarist.

Tubby Albertsen: Retired stock and station agent from out West. Son of Tommy Albertsen, legendary stock and station agent. Mate of Slim O’Dowd, Chookie Fowler & Shorty Lear.

Slim O’Dowd: Estranged husband of Mrs Mercy O’Dowd. Father of Gladys (dec’d), Mick (dec’d) and Edna. Mate of Shorty Lear, Tubby Albertsen and Chookie Fowler.

Mercy O’Dowd: Misdiagnosed leper. Estranged wife of Slim. Mother of Gladys (dec’d),

Mick (dec’d) and Edna.

Martha Fraser & Agatha Clay: Sisters. Agatha (now early 60’s) married Duncan Clay and with him they adopted Charles, her sister Martha’s child, born out of wedlock.

5

Charlie Stone: Late 40ish. Looks much older. One-eyed, homosexual ex-shearer. Son to Martha Fraser and Agatha and Duncan Clay. Serious long term alcoholic.

Shorty Lear: Married Slim O’Dowd’s daughter Gladys. Mate of Slim O’Dowd, Chookie

Fowler & Tubby Albertsen.

Jimmy Bostock: Troublemaker. Same age as Slim, Shorty, Tubby and Chookie.

Beverley Flat: Miss B Flat. Diminutive but musically commanding conductor of the Emu Park and District Amateur Choral Society. Her word is musical law.

Also: Lillian and Flo, barmaids; Dr Wainwright, general practitioner; Shalom (Jesus), garage owner; Ahmed Marek, Afghan cameleer; Cranky Mulligan, property overseer; Abraham & Rebekah, tinkers and Shalom’s parents; O’Neil, overseer on Inamorato station and Dulcie his wife.

6 Overture

A black three-legged dog stands and, stretching out his front legs, whines a weary, unsteady note. An exhalation on the breath of dog. In Emu Park even the dogs sing. Having stretched, he saunters unevenly across the dusty, early summer street. He— he is definitely a he, a fact rendered all the more obvious to the observer by the lack of one back leg— is teetering from one puddle of shade, the morning puddle, to the afternoon puddle, which he’s dug out from under the front stairs of Chookie and Eileen Fowler’s Emu Park Grocery Emporium and Fishing Tackle Store. The finest shop on the whole length of the main street. The other shop is a General Store and Ladies Haberdashery. Chookie says it’s not ladylike to ‘havtadash’ but everyone reckons he’s just jealous that he didn’t think of it first, women being the main provenders to households in the hereabouts. Chookie Fowler himself, attracted by all the action on the street, wanders to the front door of his empire. Stops at the top of the three stairs and gazes, wall-eyed, up and down the road. Pushing a hand secretively into the pocket of his trousers he carefully scratches his goolies from inside, as though nobody can see what is happening. Of course anybody, whether interested or not, can see though trying desperately to avoid seeing especially if they are in company or, even more especially, if they happen to be ladies. Small boys simply laugh and point. But there is no-one on the street at all at this time of the afternoon. Satisfied, Chookie withdraws his hand and wipes the sweat from a dripping brow before picking up a half-eaten corned beef sandwich to finish. Then he nods to the dog so’s not to appear bored enough to be talking to himself.

7 ‘Well, young Skippy,’ he begins, ‘you ready for a bit of a flutter on the gee-gees?’ His dog does not move but, as a mark of respect, opens one eye, gazes ruefully for a moment at his overactive master, then closes it again. ‘C’mon Skip, you might meet Fifi at the gee-gees and see-see if she likes it?’ says Chookie rocking his pelvis in what in a thinner man may have been a lewd gesture. Skippy does not feel obliged to answer his master’s voice this time however. He doesn’t move. ‘I’ve gotta see a man about a dog,’ Chookie threatens. Skippy remains unmoved. ‘Well, I hope you can cope with the responsibility of guarding the place hey!’ Skippy twitches, dreaming of just once catching one of the wallabies he chases out of the green-watered lawn of the park. Of course he wasn’t always called Skippy. In a town where every name has a genealogy with an attendant humiliation of stories long enough to make a grown gossip columnist weep, Skippy was once known as Charlie. But that was before the accident. The irony is, of course, that it was Charlie Stone driving the pineapple truck that hit the dog. Charlie Stone was not just the three legged Charlie’s namesake but the bloke in whose honour Charlie was named, after he gave the pup to Chookie after Chookie’s last dog, Postman, died. Because Eileen, that’s Mrs Fowler, and Chookie never had children, naming and looking after the dogs in their lives was of paramount importance. You’ve heard it all before. They went everywhere together: to the beach for a swim; to the TAB to place a bet; in the truck to town on Monday mornings early to pick up supplies for the week. And Charlie always got to ride up front with Chookie— head out the window, dew flaps slobbering in the truck-wind. He turned heads in the street, did our Charlie.

8 Not that he minded at all, just kept on biting at the wind to chew over later in a summer afternoon dream. Every Monday morning, waiting for the train, Martha Fraser and Agatha Clay would see Chookie and Charlie juggling past from their spot on the platform and every time it was the same, ‘He’ll spoil that dog for everything. Look at him sitting up there like Jacky. Poor thing won’t know whether he’s Arthur or Martha!’ they’d cluck, and Chookie, who wore his best hat for town, would doff it in the cabin saying, ‘Ladies’, as though they were the Queen or something and they’d warm a little and he’d honk them, give them a wave too, and they’d condescend to smile weakly and sigh. Not that Chookie was any great catch as a bloke, besides, he was devoted to Eileen, but it was nice the way he behaved. Gentlemanly. Except for the private scratching thing. (His less complimentary nickname was ‘Goolies’, although it is not known if anyone ever called him that to his face, even in anger.) Be it known now as then, however, that Chookie Fowler was a born shopkeeper. Charlie, on the other hand, was a born mutt, stupid as a drawer-full of hammers and luckier than a cat. Charlie Stone was taking a load of pineapples in for the afternoon train on the day the accident happened. He was late on account of, well he wasn’t late if the circumstances had been normal, but he was unloading the load by himself as he’d got his offsider Shorty Lear offside, so Shorty decided he was working to rule. Not a minute after knock-off time and Charlie could go to buggary. Even the offer of a beer couldn’t sway him, so Charlie Stone dropped Shorty off ill-humouredly at the corner to his street and was hurrying to get the truck unloaded on the evening goods train the afternoon of the accident.

9 To be truthful, young Charlie the dog, nearly Skippy by this stage, had been incrementally excavating himself out further onto the road, as the weather became daily hotter and hotter, by digging more than usual into the side of an old puddle. Though it hadn’t rained for weeks the hole still held a little damp and so was a little cooler. And to be fair to Charlie’s driving, the dog was, to all intents and purposes, on the wheel tracks that ran down the middle of the street and right in the shade of the biggest of the Norfolk Pine trees where it was damn difficult to see anything, let alone a black dog in a black hole in a big pool of shadow just on dusk. Being in the hole probably saved Charlie’s life though, because five tons of pineapples and the weight of the truck would be more than any dog could take if it’d hit him fair and square. Tubby Albertsen had dutifully removed Charlie’s mangled limb because he had been a meatworker and was therefore guaranteed to have the sharpest knife in town and a bit of anatomical knowledge, in a reverse sort of way. He was a Returned Man which supposedly gave him the edge in knowledge of mangled legs and suffering. There was a rumour though that the closest he got to the front was a kitchen in the officer’s mess in Port Moresby but... Tubby reckoned Charlie’s life was saved because the weight of the truck was spread mainly across the edges of the hole and the bit of weight that hit young Charlie was just like a severe ‘bonk’ that hit him as the front wheel passed over. Of course the leg was broken before Charlie was rolled over by the impact and the back wheels got him and mangled the leg up properly. When Charlie looked like coming good, despite all dire predictions, and Tubby was telling the story in the pub as he did often afterwards, playing the hero of the piece, (which was fair enough too really), Jimmy

10 Bostock’d always interrupt him at that point and ask deadpan, ‘How’d that bit go again where the tyre hit the dog?’ and Tubby’d always answer straight up, though he knew Jimmy was just having a lend of him... ‘It went ‘bonk’ just like that mate, ‘bonk’!’ Putting down his beer and thumping a fist into his palm for the sodden flesh on flesh sound-effect. But it was a sign of the degree of respect that the whole town gave to the relationship between Chookie, Mrs Chookie and the young pup Charlie that when Josie Yow Yeh was consoling an inconsolable Eileen Fowler, who was wailing, ‘He’s gunna die! Charlie’s gunna die!’ as though it was her brother, newly wounded on the Kokoda Track before the gangrene swelled him with unendurable pain and his mates wrapped their faces with bandages to be able to be near him for the stench before he died, and not some mongrel bloody dog. With Eileen crying like that, not only did Josie not mention that Charlie might die, but she certainly didn’t sing out for someone to shoot the poor buggar— which is what she probably would have done straight away if it was a dog belonging to anybody else in town. Besides which being a Pacific Islander, from New Hebrides a couple of generations back, meant that no one would listen to her much if she did. Then again, she is an albino, which means she’s a cut above the rest of her mob. She almost a real white man! It’s just a shame it’s a genetic aberration. Anyway, it just goes to show how people are with things that bloody matter. And Tubby did a good job with the amputation too according to a vet who came to town on holiday later that year and, seeing the three-legged Charlie in the street, asked Chookie if he could have a bit of a look at him, out of professional interest. It was professional interest too that brought Tubby a few beers while he described to the vet in detail how he sliced

11 cleanly and quickly through the flesh ‘as though it was a beast’ while Charlie Stone and Chookie held Charlie tight and cauterised whatever arteries Tubby came across with Shorty Lear plumber’s soldering iron, even though the smell was bad, and how he sewed the skin together with Slim O'Dowd’s net twine and a baling needle. ‘Truth to tell but Doc,’ Tubby was heard to have slurred. ‘It just went ‘bonk’ like that and I thought the poor buggar’d die. I couldn’t live with the look in Chookie’s eyes if I hadn’ta tried though. You can’t leave a bloke to do that sort of thing to his own dog can you?’ But the good doctor didn’t ruminate further on the nature of mateship having gone out the back to the Gents to point Percy at the porcelain. Jimmy Bostock couldn’t resist asking though, ‘You reckon Charlie’ll come good then?’ ‘No thanks to you he’ll be chasing wallabies out of the park in no time!’ Tubby responded. ‘Jumping round like one after you butchered the poor mutt!’ Jimmy rankled. ‘Hey! We’ll have ta call him Skippy then!’ he scoffed, looking around for a beer on the strength of his cleverness and the rest, as they say, is history, and Skippy it is still. Just luckily, with a name like Chookie Fowler, you can tell this is not a man averse to having a little irony in his life. So having a three-legged dog called Skippy just added a happy tad. After all it was Chookie who started the trend in nicknames at primary school by naming Slim O'Dowd, Tubby Albertsen and Shorty Lear one afternoon after school when they were all down the beach and it was as hot as, so they were all mucking about on an old inflated truck tyre all the local kids got on and rode like they were surfing or bomb diving.

12 Chookie, who was Chookie even then, was floating off quietly after a full afternoon, possibly dreaming of his future Emporium and retailing empire, or perhaps just knowing with the certainty of youth that life is good or remembering that, as it was close to five, he’d have not to forget to get on his trusty Malvern Star and cycle around his deliveries because everyone would be wanting their bits and pieces before tea and they’d all complain loud and often to his Dad, Rooster, if he was late so he’d cop a caning when he got home. Whichever he was thinking, or nothing at all, he gazed back at his companions in a contemplative frame of mind and decided his confreres were lacking a certain je ne sais quoi in the nickname department. Not being French, but a man of infallible artistic intuition, he guessed they could be permanently scarred psychologically if they ever chanced to measure their lives against his. His would be gracious and expansive of soul, theirs unimportant because only so many citizens could rise to the top in so small a town. Luckily he knew buggar all about psychology so he didn’t buggar up their lives with it but he did name them all joyously, dunking them in turn in the great baptismal font of the South Pacific Ocean. Not that he knew anything about church ritual either, being a State School boy undunked and untutored in the finer points of liturgical process, but he was a child in whom who knows what unconscious confluences conspired. Though it was likely that very few confluences conspired other than a desire for a peaceful and prosperous existence at the top of his own small tree. Of course all the boys had nicknames already, but when the Muse dictated, Chookie was merely a pawn in the service of Art, that most compelling and gracious of mistresses. So verily were they all named

13 there— Slim O'Dowd for his frame of jiggly prepubescent boy-fat. Thin as a rake Tubby. But for the pip-squeak of the group the Muse grew tired and he had to make do with Shorty. Sure enough, Slim and Tubby grew to type as though to an unconscious ironic directive— Tubby so painfully thin in his teenaged years that his old man was convinced he had worms and tried everything from Cod Liver Oil to copper sulphate to Over Proof Bundaberg Rum, without avail— though Tubby did become very cosy with the latter in adult life. Slim always said though, about his namer, he said, ‘Chookie,’ he’d say, ‘That bloke’s got a heart as big as the sea. You ever heard him sing? When he starts with The Maori Farewell or ‘specially Were You There When They Crucified My Lord.’ ‘Serious, it makes your heart tremble, just like it says in the song,’ Slim would muse poetically (usually this occurred when he was about half full and before the booze turned him ugly). ‘Geez he can sing, just like a magpie in winter. But then,’ he’d add, ‘Miss B. can never get the beggar to shut up and ‘blend’ in choir. He’s gotta be M.C. cause there’s no point in trying to force him to ‘blend’ like you need in a choir. He’s a bit of a loner like that, artistically,’ he’d say dropping his voice conspiratorially as though offering a guilty secret about his friend’s failings which, coming sotto voce from such a big git as Slim, always sounded comical somehow, even though he was the sort of bloke who was always in deadly earnest. Anyhow, finally Slim married Mercy, a task in which he fell short, so maybe Chookie’s nicknaming wasn’t so prescient anyway. Mind you, Shorty, on the other hand, must have never felt the compulsion of nomenclatural irony and grew up to be an average sized sort of bloke in every regard. He was very tall for his age by twelve so the name

14 worked for a while, but by the time he was sixteen he’d let every other kid reach his height or exceed it, just like a good elder brother or a Boy Scout leader should, not that he was either, but the analogy still holds good. Anyhow just as Chookie had finished locking the shop before proceeding to the pub on a matter of utmost delicacy on behalf of the Emu Park and District Amateur Choral Society Management Committee, Mrs Mercy O’Dowd, head in the clouds, walks around the corner of the shop and, looking up to see Chookie on the bottom stair, begins to say hello, at the same time as managing to stand heavily on Skippy’s tail. Skippy yelps loudly, leaping from his cool excavation to free his tail, thereby causing Mrs O’Dowd to momentarily lose her footing which in turn causes her arms, or at least her arm and a half, as one arm is amputated just below the elbow, to flail about in an attempt to regain her balance, thereby causing her handbag to slip from her foreshortened elbow to the ground, where Chookie bends to retrieve it after steadying Mercy with his outstretched hand. ‘Bless you dear,’ Mrs O’Dowd thanks Chookie. ‘And Skippy, I apologise to you from the bottom of my heart. I just didn’t notice you there, dear.’ Skippy looks self-righteously indignant under their gaze. He decides to scratch an ear with his hind leg. Given he is without a second hind leg to stabilise his rocking body, he rolls over like a billiard ball. Shaking his head sadly, Chookie muses, ‘You’d have to worry about the brain of an animal that after four years of not having a back leg still thinks he can scratch his ear. Every time he comes a cropper, but he still tries!’ ‘Maybe he thinks it’s important to have a go nonetheless?’ Mrs O’Dowd ventures thoughtfully. Chookie Fowler stares at her as though he can’t decide who’s the most daft, Mrs O’Dowd or the dog. ‘I just think he

15 lost his marbles after the accident,’ he says finally. ‘Now Mrs O’Dowd. How can I help you?’ ‘You were just going out, dear?’ ‘Yes and no Mrs O’Dowd,’ Chookie begins. ‘Yes, I was about to go out on choir business but no I won’t if you are wanting something.’ ‘Well, I can wait, Mr Fowler,’ Mrs O’Dowd says deferentially. ‘I only want some gobstoppers to give the children at rehearsal break tonight.’ ‘Of course. That’ll only take a moment,’ Chookie says, about to mount the stairs. ‘No,’ says Mercy placing a hand of restraint on Chookie’s arm. He winces involuntarily. She notices. He notices she notices. She notices he didn’t wince when he stopped her falling just before. ‘Choir business is far more important than me, Mr Fowler,’ she responds removing her hand from his arm. He notices a coolness in her voice. She notices he notices. Then she laughs, unexpectedly happily and loud, ‘I’ll go and sit in the park,’ she says. ‘Watch the boats and think about old times.’ She glances intently at Chookie, then, satisfied, she lets him off the hook. ‘Perhaps Skippy could come with me? Keep me company until you get back.’ ‘Of course, Mrs O’Dowd,’ Chookie says, smiling his professional smile while privately being relieved at her allowing him to help, ‘Go on Skip. Go with Mrs O..’ Mercy O’Dowd, handbag on elbow, crosses the street toward the seaside park. At his master’s urging, Skippy totters unsteadily after. ‘That’s us then,’ thought Chookie unkindly, watching them for a moment before turning to walk to the pub, ‘The armless leading the legless. Yep there’s no doubt about it we’re in good hands.’ As he turned to leave he stumbles on the uneven ground of the footpath. Though not a superstitious man Chookie takes this as a sign that the thought was

16 unworthy. ‘We’ll muddle through, like we always do,’ he thinks by way of contrition. Then, considering excess of thought an unhelpful and unprofitable occupation, he decides that there is no time to engage in further self-examination as now he has to wrest his mind to matters of importance to the Emu Park and District Amateur Choral Society Inc..

17 Act 1 Aunt Martha’s Knickers

As if it’s not difficult enough to write solemn verse commemorating the dead without that ridiculous woman flopping about like a headless chook from behind the pulpit. I am trying to do the best I can. It’s an important monument, a headstone. And words always force the hard decisions on one. What to say about her that best sums up her essence. It’s a decision that is, literally, set in stone and I’m beggared if I can concentrate on what words to use with her squawking away up there. It’s not just her either. It’s all of them, the entire dashed choir giggling at her antics when they should be concentrating on rehearsal for our 30th Year Celebration Concert. Giggling in church was frowned upon in my day. When I was young giggling was near enough to sinning, but these are grown people, adult people who should know better. I suppose I mustn’t blame them though— and they don’t know about Martha yet. They can’t know if I haven’t told them, though I doubt it would curtail their childishness much even if they did. She’d have joined them too, that was Martha through and through. The problem is, of course, that Miss Flat is too short to see over the top of the pulpit and too short to be seen by the choir to conduct if she stands anywhere else. There’s always someone complaining they can’t see her hands. Earlier this year she tried standing on a chair but very nearly came to grief on several occasions, getting carried away with the artistic intensity of the moment. Chookie made a representation to the church

18 Elders— seeing as how we aren’t an official church choir, (in fact highly secular in parts)— to ask for official church sanction for her to enter into the sanctuary and even for authorisation to use church furniture in a manner possibly not in accordance with the original intention of either the manufacturers or the Elders. Though they did agree to the sanctuary and she entered in, Beverley was still not high enough to be seen. So she stood on a chair. A course of action which was doomed from the start. Blind Freddy could see that as soon as she started waving around up there she’d topple off. That and the fact that the chair was in an advanced state of decrepitude possibly induced by the groaningly fat posteriors of those same Elders who gave permission to use the offending chair being parked on it through groaningly interminable women’s committee, fête subcommittee, font refurbishment committee or flower roster committee meetings. The chair lurched like a Returned Man leaning on a walking stick outside the RSL on Anzac Day. Or perhaps it was just the altitude that affectedMiss Flat so. Whatever the case, it was then she took her liberty. Being a Catholic— although come to think of it, she has played that side of herself so very close to her chest since I’ve been here that she might just as easily be from one of the other mobs, though she has the Catholic look— it was no doubt a small distance in her mind to conduct us from the pulpit as from the sanctuary. Not just from the sanctuary but from on high. Chookie Fowler was not best pleased. When the chair experiment failed he was all for constructing a proper podium to be stowed in the storeroom out back behind the Sunday School from whence he could haul it up into the sanctuary for rehearsals every week. He had even informally

19 approached the Elders (not in his position of President of the Emu Park & District Amateur Choral Society, but as a concerned citizen), to sound out their feelings on the storage, possible pecuniary liability accruing to the choir due to such storage and conceivable insurance implications with particular regard to accidents relating to, or caused by, non-church property being used on or in church property in a possibly imprudential manner. (Although when the matter of imprudentiality raised the eyebrow of an Elder Chookie had quickly downgraded his language to rather indicate the possibility of an unpremeditated action causing an accident in a moment of divine artistic spontaneity— and received a far more relieved and understanding hearing afterwhich.) Come to think of it I am sure Chookie would not be fooling with words for headstones after his sister had died, no matter how unexpected such an event may have been. Chookie was not a friend to the unexpected, nor to unwordliness, if there’s such a word. But even with this determined push into the upper sanctum the woman was still too short. ‘Suggesting’ that he should procure something more stable than the chair to stand on, Chookie, with more dignity than necessary, due, I suspect, to the unexpectedly profane turn the conducting question had taken, procured an old wooden fruit packing box from the storeroom for her. It had the words Dante’s Choice Best Apples emblazoned on the end. He placed the box on the floor of the pulpit, where he found her standing tiptoe. Miss Flat ascended, and lo, her head and shoulders appeared above the lectern, beaming seraphically down at us. Well, now we could see her at least, and if she felt at all nervous about the height she could always grab the edge of the pulpit and manage to beat time and bellow instructions above the mêlée until she regained her

20 balance. This suited everyone except Chookie, who was offended on behalf of his faith that someone should so defile the pulpit; but as his Elders were not the type to flippantly cast him from the fold, as a crumb from a tablecloth, for actions which were not his, and which were, in fact, beyond his control, he remained enfolded. In a world so redolent with examples of fallen grace, he was content to be the simple custodian of the box. It was enough for him most rehearsal nights that the rights of the Choir as a whole were upheld and the honour and integrity of his Church remained untrammelled. Of course Chookie was a different man on Committee nights. He was bold and incisive on Committee nights. He was, after all, President of that domain. Chookie carefully placed the box in the pulpit before rehearsals and removed it safely back to the storeroom after its purpose was served for the evening, in keeping with both a sense of proprietorial housekeeping and in due deference to his role in things. Except tonight, of course, when he couldn’t find the box. On opening the storeroom he had discovered it was missing. And hence the hoo-haa and finger-pointing. It was almost unanimously agreed that the likely box thief was Flo Mills. Being an extraordinarily pious member of the choir she took umbrage at the lack of sympathetic action resulting from her representations to the church hierarchy to not let the choir mistress conduct from the pulpit, it was generally believed that she had taken matters into her own hands in the form of a rogue guerrilla reprisal against the sanctity breachers. (That and the convenient fact that Flo was absent from practice tonight.) Remember she wouldn’t sing in the medley of war songs from last year because of her religious beliefs? War was an affront, she had said, to

21 the teachings of Jesus, despite the fact that this stance was hers and did not find much favour with the Lord’s representatives in her church. Nor did any of the rest of the Christians find any hypocrisy in singing about war. However she had claimed that as she was a member of the choir and as such had just as much right as any other member to sing— despite Miss Flat’s gentlest remonstrations that she empathised entirely, but as Mrs Mills wouldn’t be singing, perhaps she could rest her voice in the dressing room for the duration of the bracket. No, Flo demanded her time on stage as a choir member so there she stood on the risers, third row up, fifth from the end on the right, with her mouth clamped firmly shut like a sucked lemon for the duration of a fifteen minute set. Her mind was set firmly on her brother at Milne Bay and everyone in the audience who saw her silent knew why. She did sing one war song though and that was, Anzac Day. But really she preferred the up-tempo and Australian-like, The Three Drovers. Not, of course, that that had anything to do with the war. The other suspect for the box thief, and the one I thought most likely to have done it was Seamus O’Dwyer. He was the choir props and properties manager with access to all the keys. Flo herself, along with almost every other member, had been outraged by the performance put on by O’Dwyer in the audience the very first evening anyone had clapped eyes on him. It was at the annual concert with the South Pacific theme, when any female choir member without offensively virulent varicose veins was required to wear a grass skirt (with men’s shorts underneath for decency of course). Most though, preferred to wear garish orange Hawaiian shirts that Mrs Fowler managed to procure for the haberdashery department of the Emporium and present miraculously on sale just at the moment when,

22 three weeks before the annual concert, male costuming was suddenly required. Lord love us, you have to laugh. Then it was O’Dwyer who almost reduced the entire Where the Tricky Wicky Wacky’s Woo South Pacific ‘scene’ in one Annual Concert to farce before it began by steadfastly refusing to stand during the singing of God Save the Queen— he being a man of Irish Republican leaning. Several women around tut-tutted him during the opening bars of the anthem. One woman demanded in a not-so-quiet, mother-scolding voice that he was required to stand for the Queen. This ruckus in turn unavoidably brought several gents standing near to O’Dwyer into the conflict. A couple of them spoke to him, sotto voce of course, at the beginning of the second verse. Whilst a third seriously escalated the situation by reaching down and tugging forcefully at O’Dwyer’s suit coat shoulder in an attempt to make him stand. Order was finally restored when everyone sat down. As I recall, Chookie Fowler, who was, as always, Master of Ceremonies for the evening, welcomed the audience and announced, ‘If everybody is now quite ready, we’ll begin tonight’s concert with two old favourites, Look for the Silver Lining and, Elizabethan Serenade.’ Wily M.C. that he is, Chookie had changed the running order so they came first and the South Pacific had to wait. The change threw a panic through the Choir, Conductor and Accompanist alike as they all frantically shuffled their music around, but the change had the desired effect of soothing the crowd with its lyrics of forbearance. Seamus O’Dwyer is at rehearsal tonight, but that seems no reason for some not to directly accuse him of stealing the box for what they are sure are his own nefarious, anti-Empire reasons.

23 Whatever the reason for its demise the box was not to be found and rehearsals were on hold until it, or a replacement, was. It was also a blessing, with all these wild accusations flying, that Jimmy Bostock had taken advantage of the delay and was outside for a ciggie with the ‘love interest’. It was a shame Flo wasn’t there to keep a weather eye on them though, she having a wealth of experience as a ex-barmaid, as it is something that worries me greatly that disgraceful age difference thing. It’s certainly not for the want of him trying, but she is too nice a girl. I never liked that Jimmy Bostock. A nasty turn to him and a criminal one they say. I can only pray she has the strength and good sense to keep him away. As both Martha and I should have done with my Duncan. Son of a squatter. Prospects? He was the proverbial rat with a gold tooth if you asked Mother. But Dad liked him well enough and, god-forgive me for not blushing, didn’t I? Our wedding night always reminded me of the saying one of the roustabouts had picked up in the Second War ‘... and the second thing I’m gunna do when I get home is take me pack off.’ Though I might be blushing now a little. And then there’s Martha, my own sister. When I think back, if I think back to try and decide how dear Martha should be remembered, I can see only what I’ve lost. What a fool I am. When we were in our teens, we would sing together around the piano: everything from music hall, to folk song, to sacred works. Mother and Dad encouraged us, so we sang duets at variety concerts, weddings, occasions of all sorts, and also, later on, for dances. By then we could both play the piano and we took turns singing solo or duet from Ave Maria to Ain’t She Sweet. Then I met Duncan and things changed for me and for us. Duncan was a catch. He was thirty, travelled at the army’s expense after he joined up at the very end of the First War. Later he went to

24 Cambridge at his parents’ expense. He was worldly and manly at once. A sportsman, a state-level tennis player. I couldn’t believe my luck. I wasn’t the prettiest, the smartest, the most sporting or the best dancer, far from it, but I loved him. Simple as clear water, I loved him. From the first time Martha met him she hero-worshipped him in a sisterly way. We had no secrets, she and I, so she heard all about his wooing step by step. I went to fewer dances to sing and more to dance. Rather than take this badly, which was what worried me may happen, Martha shone. As clearly as yesterday I remember her. I was almost twenty-two when I met Duncan, which made her seventeen and a half. She’d dress to kill, with my help of course, and I with hers. By the time we’d arrive at the dance, she’d look ravishing. Martha could have passed muster in any sophisticated Sydney night club. In fact, when Mother and Dad took us there on holiday, there was no question she wowed them. She sang in some sophisticated club, after Dad fixed it with the manager, like the proverbial nightingale in Berkeley Square. Honest, but sultry and world-wise as the best. After Duncan and I were married and I’d moved to the property with him, we went out less to dances. Sometimes, though, if Dad were away and Martha was dead keen, Mother’d telephone to ask Duncan and I to chaperone, which we willingly did. On those evenings, I’d play the ‘married wife’ and be relegated to the kitchen preparing and cleaning up supper for most of the evening, though I’d still take the opportunity to pull off my apron and trip the light fantastic with Duncan. Amazing how quickly it happens that— one minute you’re the life of the party, dancing every dance, and the next you’re behind the counter in the kitchen. After the first miscarriage, I didn’t go to dances much at all. Duncan also stayed home, unless it was to take Martha to a concert where she was

25 singing. We tried all the doctors said— rest, diet, no heavy lifting, but to no avail. After the third time, though, and the bloody indignity of a third curette, I was not looking forward to any more pregnancies. As it happened, I needn’t have worried as none came. Women’s problems— they said that when they had no idea what was wrong, which, in my experience of doctors, is most of the time. Duncan took it all so well. Not as young as me, he was keen to start a family. To have a son. During the first pregnancy he was all fearful care and bewilderment. I loved him for it. The second time, a little distance came between us. He was attentive but hurt. By the third time, he was merely dutiful and frustrated. He accepted it like a gentleman, besides which there was nothing I could do, so gracious acceptance was the only option. We did not talk of adoption and he continued to spoil me, with holidays and lavish presents. Even on a new property there was money to be made then, Australia rode on the sheep’s back and he came from a family which valued, and could pay for, the best. I thought I was over babies for good, until the day that Martha confessed to me what a fool she had been. The timing could not have been more wrong, nor more right. It was in the kitchen at Mother and Dad’s place, Constance Downs. I knew the moment I saw her, something had happened. Two cups and a Royal Doulton Nasturtium pattern tea setting were between us across the table. ‘So you’re pregnant!’ I said, a nonsensical statement in the circumstances. Her face was quivering across the tabletop from me. I knew she wanted me to hug her, or show at least some emotion, but it was such a shock I couldn’t, not given my recent past. I don’t know if she understood.

26 ‘You are sure?’ I asked. The question equally as stupid as the first. ‘Of course!’ she exploded, confused, I now realise, by my distant reactions. ‘Am I to be happy for you then?’ I asked and there was such a coldness in my voice that it startled even me. ‘Aggie please!’ she cried, her face falling to pieces before my eyes. ‘I need you!’ I stood and went to her then, after I’d hurt her, and I know with bitter certainty now, just how much I meant to do so. We hugged, she sobbing and a tear escaping me for myself. I could not feel for her. The stupid little flapper. How could she? What would Mother say? And Dad! ‘Have you told them?’ I asked when she’d quietened down enough to breathe. My back was turned, putting the kettle on for new tea. I didn’t want to see her face. I knew it would break my heart. I remember I didn’t tell them about my third miscarriage, not before and not after, seeing them hope and despair twice was enough. I couldn’t carry them again. ‘No,’ she answered. ‘You’re the only person who knows. The only one.’ She began to cry again. Slow tears. ‘I can’t tell them, Aggie, I can’t. Dad would disown me. I can’t face it.’ ‘And the father?’ I asked and the coldness was there again, unbidden. ‘No, he doesn’t know,’ her shoulders began to shake with the coughing sobs that go so deep. Those I’ve seen so many of in the grief of intervening years. ‘You,’ she gasped between sobs, ‘have to help me, Aggie. You’re the only one I can talk to.’ ‘I will. I will. I know,’ I soothed, going to her again, trying for her but struggling. I hugged her and rubbed circles on her back with my hand as she’d loved since childhood. ‘Who is he?’ I asked suddenly, in need of someone to blame for the pain I felt. Real pain in the womb. An aching emptiness. I expected Martha would fall apart at the question. But the

27 answer had unexpected steel in it. ‘You don’t know him,’ she said in a voice carrying a note of imperative command. ‘You don’t. Even if you did you hardly would.’ Her answer was as unexpected in tone as it was confusing in meaning. ‘What do you mean, if I did I hardly would?’ I asked. ‘That makes no sense.’ She wiped her face. Blew her nose on a tea towel. The sobbing under control now. ‘Obviously you don’t know him, so that’s that. I don’t want to know him. It’s happened, that’s all. Fuck men! Will you help me?’ If I was startled by the language then I was more startled by the tone. Our little Martha had grown up before my eyes. It was in the space of a song, not of years. ‘Of course I will. You know that,’ I answered. ‘But what do you want to do?’ ‘We’re not going to tell Mother and Dad, are we?’ Her note of command rang loud again, that and her deciding what ‘we’ would do. ‘Aren’t “we”?’ I queried, eyebrows raised. Martha took a deep breath, ‘Aggie, I don’t want them to know. I want to have the baby, I mean it can’t be too hard, cows do it all the time!’ I almost laughed, it was such a Martha thing to say. ‘I’ve thought about it over the past couple of months and I want to have it!’ I winced involuntarily at the mention of time. She must be almost three months. I had never lasted that long. It was as though something inside me was adamant that I would spend my life barren. At best a childless Aunty to nieces and nephews. Martha was speaking again, quickly and animated. ‘I don’t want them to know about the child at all. I want it to be our secret. Yours and mine and,’ she added conspiratorially, ‘Duncan’s.’ ‘Whoa up, Martha,’ I interjected, ‘It’s all very fine saying we’ll share a secret. We’ve always done that, but you can’t expect Duncan to be in on it.’

28 ‘He wouldn’t dare tell them,’ she said confidently, ‘or he’d have both of us to deal with.’ ‘I wouldn’t dare tell who what?’ The door opened from the verandah into the kitchen. Duncan looked at me then at Martha and asked again, ‘What wouldn’t I dare tell who?’ Martha ran to him, embracing him fully like he was a Christmas present she wrapped with her arms. ‘You wouldn’t tell Dad and Mother that I was pregnant, would you?’ Duncan stood staring over her head at me. Arms wrapped to his sides, his felt work hat still in one hand. His face lost its colour, though, and if it’s possible, his visage darkened like a tropical sunset, quick and deep. I had never seen him look that way before. I didn’t know what would happen. I held my breath. Hoping he would contain the pain I knew he felt just as I did. Slowly, he recovered, unwrapping himself from Martha’s arms. He shifted his gaze from me to her. ‘And why wouldn’t I dare tell your parents what they have every right to know?’ Martha took a moment before answering. When it came, her voice was self assured. ‘Because it would mean you were a lousy chaperone,’ she began directly. ‘Because it would put you in a very awkward position. Because you love Aggie and you care for me. It’s what we both want. And last,’ she said in a voice of both desperate appeal and infinite sadness, ‘Because if you don’t tell them, I’ll let you and Aggie adopt my baby.’ Immediately Duncan stepped away from Martha towards me, saying, ‘Agatha, we have to talk.’ He turned back to Martha. ‘You stay here,’ he said, his voice total command. I could not read his face. I recall hoping it may have been excitement, or was it anticipation? I did not know. I hoped. But even then I guessed then that he hated the idea. I guessed wrong. The conversation we had was strained but mercifully short. I found it

29 so difficult to talk about children at all, let alone my sister’s. ‘I know you want to keep trying to have a baby,’ he began awkwardly as he stood fumbling with his work-hat brim as I sat heavily on our bed. (How wrong he was.) ‘And so do I. So do I,’ he continued reassuringly. ‘But you know what the doctors said, and...’ He gazed at me, searching my face for a sign of acceptance, or possibility, or something to help him through. I knew what he wanted, though, and I’d decided to make it easy for him. ‘It’d almost be like the baby was one of the family from the beginning,’ I said. ‘If we invited Martha to stay with us here for the next six months, it’d be almost like I shared the pregnancy too. Mother and Dad’ll have to be kept busy, or else if they do visit they’ll have to be told we’re off singing together, a long way out, or somewhere. We can drive to Townsville or something, where no one knows us, to register the birth after he’s a few days old. No one will know we’re not the real parents in from the bush for a holiday. We’ll have to keep her inside if any of the jackaroos or anyone is here but Martha’ll never tell Dad, Mother or anyone. I know that. We can do it. It’ll be our secret. Martha’s and yours and mine. We just have to keep it quiet for six months.’ Duncan sat down on the bed beside me, his eyes shining. ‘That’s why I love you, Aggie,’ he said, ‘No matter how hard it is, you always know what’s the right thing to do.’ ***** From the first we’d been like children. We’d shared every moment of the pregnancy together after it was decided. I’d even put on weight, my breasts swelled in sympathy. So it all seemed so natural that I be the midwife the night Charles was born. It all went sweet as a smile. No complications, no complaints afterwards. Besides we’d both read the books and knew what to do. Duncan had the car ready in case, but it was

30 unnecessary. It started gently that night then as it built and built, my little Martha swore like a trooper at the bastard who’d done it to her. Lucky for him, he wasn’t near enough to hear her damn him to eternity. All night though poor Duncan paced the hall outside. Thinking back now, I see how much he looked like his father. When our Charles was born I tied the cord, placing him to her breast. He suckled so peacefully. I started to croon the Connemara Cradle Song. Soon Martha did too. We sang softly together while Charles fed. He grew loving to sing too, his voice a light, lyrical tenor. I lay beside them, stroking them both gently and when he finished feeding she passed him to me. She stroked us too and unfastened my blouse buttons to place his skin to my skin. He nuzzled my breast and I felt what I had no right to feel, milk let down for him and he fed again. We stayed like that until morning. ‘Nothing will ever be this way again, Aggie,’ Martha whispered. At six in the morning, unable to stand the suspense or the silence any longer, Duncan knocked. He found his son there with us. ‘Aggie,’ he whispered, kissing me. ‘Oh, Martha, thank you. Thank you for everything.’ He hugged her then. ***** So the days fell off exactly to plan. Two days after the birth, we all took the trip to Townsville. We went the old track up the back to Hughenden, which was less used so it was less likely that we would meet anyone at all, let alone anyone we knew. It was long and hot but we got there. Martha and Charles slept often on the back seat. As soon as we arrived in Townsville we registered him as our child. A month later, Martha went back to live with Mother and Dad. They were none the wiser though she told me they did ask her why she hadn’t

31 been singing lately. We lied to them that once and never again. Martha didn’t lack for admirers but cast them off as quickly as they became serious. She died as she’d lived, a spinster. A spinster and me a widow— what a pair we’ve made. I’ve often thought that if she had wanted to keep Charles, she would have been spared too much distress. Four years later, in a traffic accident on the way back from the coast, Mother and Dad both died. Dad instantly, Mother three days later in Longreach Hospital. We buried them together. They would have wanted that. But they should have got to retire to the beach. Martha would have been with them but she was scheduled to sing at the Muttaburra Debutante Ball. By this stage she was the undisputed singer of choice for engagements throughout the region. Mother and Dad never found out about Martha and our Charles. I’ve always felt poorly about myself for that. The Deb. Ball was postponed for a week so the two events could be co-ordinated— the funerals on the next Friday, the Ball the following Saturday night. The arrangement cut down on travel for many attendees. Mother and Dad had a wonderful send off. Both Martha and I sang at both events, supporting each other. In a way it was a relief. Is it a sin to say so? Constance Downs was left to us equally of course. But neither of us had the heart to continue where Mother and Dad had left off. We sold, with Duncan handling the business. My half went to improvements and decreasing the mortgage on Inamorato. Martha kept hers (until she lost most of it to that miserable, two-faced mongrel who took her for it.) Luckily she had already come to live with us so we provided all the necessary comforts for her. Only once did she ever leave me again. *****

32 Three days before Charles’ fifth birthday, Duncan and I drove into the home paddock at Inamorato. Martha was minding Charles for the day while we went to town to collect his present. We could see them as we drove up. Charles was perched on top of the prettiest little Arab mare, complete with reins and fitted American saddle, grinning fit to burst. Martha held the bit in her hand and was leading him round and around the home yard while he called out joyously, ‘Look at me riding! Look at me!’ I glanced at Duncan but it was obvious he had as little idea what was going on as I. We were both forming the same idea about it though— she had bought a horse for Charles and taken advantage of us not being home to have somebody deliver the animal. She must have planned it months ago. I stared accusingly at Duncan. ‘Don’t look at me,’ he snapped. ‘I have no idea what’s going on!’ I believed him and said nothing, but I seethed with anger at her. It had been a long day but, we thought, a rewarding one— nothing was too much trouble for Charles— only to come home to this. She knew, the cow, she knew perfectly well what she was doing. It was premeditated. Duncan parked the car in the shed. I walked to the front lawn, leaving him to take the present from the boot and hide it. ‘Look Mummy!’ he said. ‘Aunty Martha brought me a horse. See, I’m riding!’ ‘Yes, Charles, very good,’ I replied in the most pleasant voice I could muster. But my eyes were fixed on her. She refused to meet my gaze. ‘Her name’s Bella. That means beautiful. She is beautiful, isn’t she, Mummy? Look at me!’ I wrenched my eyes and disdain away from her to smile and wave to Charles.

33 Duncan walked into the yard from the shed and Charles’ eyes lit up anew. ‘Look, Daddy!’ he called. ‘Aunty Martha brought me a big boy’s present!’ Martha led the horse to where Duncan stood. The little cow smiled at him. Smiled one of her winning on-stage smiles. If I had been close enough I would have slapped her down to size there and then. To his credit, Duncan scowled at her. ‘That’s good, mate,’ he answered. ‘We’ll have you rounding up sheep in no time.’ He took hold of the bit firmly on the side opposite her, patting the horse’s cheek. Martha did not release her hold. ‘How about you and I ride around to the yards and put her to bed for the night?’ he asked. ‘Can’t I ride Bella more, please, Dad?’ Charles complained. ‘It’s not bed-time yet.’ ‘Sorry mate. She has to have a sleep just like you and,’ he added, ‘it’s time for tea. She’s hungry too you know.’ Duncan tugged at Bella’s bit, but Martha held firm. ‘Let the boy ride if he wants to,’ she said, her voice resonant with the command that had worked so often for her before. But Duncan was not a man easily bested in a contest of wills. I knew he was tired, but more importantly I knew his pride was hurt. We had bought Charles a tricycle which had arrived too late for the usual mail run. It was this which we’d been collecting from town. It was shiny and new with handlebar tassles and a bell, but our present fell short of hers and he felt it. He knew also, she’d been there in the dining room months ago when we’d discussed our present. She knew what it was we were buying for him. Duncan glared at her, ‘We’re going now!’ he said, his voice an Army Captain’s, one I only heard him use with the station hands or shearers and then very rarely. Then she tried her wiles, softening her voice, fluttering her eyelids, guessing he’d concede, ‘Come on, Duncan. Let him have a bit

34 more of a ride. We only just got her and there’s still plenty of daylight left,’ she pouted. She guessed wrong. Duncan pulled the bit hard, but Martha did not let go. Bella, hurt by the see-saw at her mouth, shimmied sideways, pig-rooting just a little. Charles’ little hands gripped the reins, white-knuckled. His face dropped. ‘Daddy?’ he asked querulously, seeking reassurance. Still Martha held on. Duncan was moving rapidly from anger to fury. I’d only seen it once before with him. That time he’d knocked the man he was arguing with to the ground with one clean punch. ‘I’m his father,’ Duncan said clear and loud, ‘and if I say he’s putting this horse away, then by God that’s what’s happening.’ ‘You’re his father, are you?’ she mocked. ‘Well I’m...’ she turned momentarily to me, ‘I’m... his Aunty Martha, and I say he should ride some more.’ Duncan pulled hard at the bit. Bella shimmied and danced, whinnying in complaint. Charles was close to tears. ‘Daddy! Daddy! I want to get off!’ his voice was rising toward hysteria. Martha’s face, just for a moment, registered alarm. Duncan pounced. ‘You’ll be right, Charlie,’ he called. ‘Just hold on tight!’ With a quick reef he jerked the bit from Martha’s hand and started to run Bella around the side of the house toward the yards. Half-crying out, Martha was forced to release Bella. She ran after them towards the corner of the house, watching as he trotted the horse to the yards. ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ Charles sobbed erratically, uncertainly. ‘You’re right, Charlie. No fear, you’re right, mate,. You’re riding like a champ!’ Duncan reassurred again. I ran to stand beside her. I smothered my own concern for Charles’ safety with my confidence in Duncan’s care. ‘You knew what we were buying. Why did you do it?’ I asked grimly. Only a tight-lipped quiver at the

35 edges of my voice. She turned to face me, and for the first time I could recall in all our lives together, there was fear mixed with uncertainty in her eyes. ‘I’ve given you everything,’ she said flatly. ‘He’s all I‘ve got.’ She turned and left me there, walking hunch-shouldered back into the house. I think I can count on the fingers of both hands the number of times Charles rode that tricycle. Only during the rare times it was too wet to ride Bella he’d ride it around the verandah. When finally the trike fell off the verandah one day, bending the front wheel enough to make it unrideable, Duncan did not bother to fix it, despite Charles asking him to repeatedly the next time it rained. Despite the fact that it was a simple job. Martha and Duncan did not speak for several weeks after that birthday. In fact, the coldness endured until he died. ***** And so it continued, Aunty Martha all cakes and ale, beer and skittles, bread and circuses. I was always the drudge. The mother, sensible and boring. I’d buy a smart cardigan from the mail order catalogues the big Department Stores sent us, and a water colour paint set. Aunty Martha would knit him a pullover, made from the finest, softest, imported wool, with a horse pattern on the front and a bright red kite to go with it. I’d buy a crisp white shirt and a Boy’s Own Annual, and she’d respond by unravelling the beloved pullover, that no longer fitted, making it instead into a vest with a horse and rider, half on each side of the front, matching up when you buttoned it with little horse-head buttons. That and a penknife with five blades and a tool for removing stones from horse’s hooves. And so on, and on. The vest became a beanie with a horse race knitted around the top. When the beanie no longer fitted it became a scarf. Duncan removed

36 himself more and more from present giving and family celebrations. At best he was detached and formal when he was obliged. We had no more children ourselves. Who knows if they may have lessened or worsened it? Who knows, maybe Martha would have left if I ever had children of my own? Who knows? Over the next five years, Martha and I fell into the same pattern in all things. If she was the imported French ball gown, I was the singlets and knickers— not even frilly knickers at that. When I taught Charlie through School of the Air, Aunty Martha insisted on teaching music, art and craft, compositions and physical education with him and he loved all her subjects. I intoned multiplication tables and spelling lists. As the song says, she was the cream in his coffee; I was the salt in his stew. The plain condiment. I never knew I enhanced the taste at all. Martha kept up her singing, but showed no signs of ever falling to one of her litany of beaux. I’m sure though, that her marital status never interrupted the satisfaction of her carnal desires, which were substantial, by all accounts. Those accounts, rife around the district, were all I had to go on, as she never spoke to me about it. A silence I reciprocated. It was the winter before Charles’ tenth birthday that Duncan fell ill. At first it seemed nothing, a wheezy cough that he couldn’t shake. He relied on the medicinal virtues of rum toddies and lemon and honey drinks. Duncan ignored what was happening and worked on. But the coughing went from a throat clearing to a deep, hoarse, ominous hack that continued for several minutes. Even when he wasn’t coughing, he was short of breath. After much bullying, we went to visit a specialist in Sydney. He had lung cancer. Due possibly to exposure to gas during the First War. They didn’t know. At least, they couldn’t be sure what caused it.

37 Nothing altered the fact, Duncan was dying. He would not accept the treatment they offered. He’d be buggared if he’d die in a hospital. There were many tears and entreaties from me, but to no avail. We returned to Inamorato. ‘I’ll die here,’ he said. He did, and I nursed him till the end. Martha took it badly, especially once Duncan was bedridden. She would not enter the room. But she did take over the lessons for Charles and some of the running of the property. She bought food supplies and ordered fuel, but she left the accounting to me. I struggled under Duncan’s tutelage while he was still able. But in the end I hired an overseer, by the name of O’Neil. He and his wife lived in another residence on the property. Duncan always insisted on doing all the management himself. O’Neil kept the books and his wife, Dulcie, helped with the garden. Him being there meant I could spend my time with Duncan. Charles knew his father was dying, we kept nothing from him. Duncan fell away before our eyes. Mercifully, it was only six weeks from diagnosis to death. Charles spent much time with him, but it was hard for a boy so young. His father understood and I did not force either of them. I am still uncertain how much the child’s romantic view of his dying father coloured Charles’ life even into adulthood. Looking back it was to be expected I suppose, though I didn’t have an inkling at the time. If I did, of course I would have... but there is no comfort for the present on roads not taken in the past. I didn’t, so there you have it. I remember the night so well. Duncan said he was hungry. I made a lamb stew. Hunger was an encouraging sign. It wasn’t really— we both knew that. Why the dying and those attending indulge each other in such false hope, I don’t know. Unrealistic, fantastic, imaginary: the type of hope one expects from a child— like Charles saying repeatedly, ‘Tomorrow when

38 Daddy is well, we’re going to check the bores in the ram paddock.’ No matter how many times I told him it would not happen, Dad would not be well, still he insisted. It was naive, simplistic, childlike, hope against hope, when death against death was the reality. But hope wasn’t the only thing that sent me running to the kitchen. Truth be told it was the noise. Every breath sounded like a death rattle. I slept with it, I woke with it. I tried to ease it with massage, lemon and honey, rum. But as much as I tried I couldn’t face it, I couldn’t escape it. Except to the kitchen that evening. I sent Charles to say goodnight, got him to bed, then prepared supper. Knowing he wouldn’t, couldn’t eat lamb or vegetables I prepared them anyway because I knew he would like to see a meal even if he couldn’t eat it. Potato, peas, carrots and meat all rested on the bottom of a bowl of unthickened clear broth. If he only took some of it I would be satisfied. Some bread too, all on Mother’s best silver tray. With a serviette in a ring and a silver soup spoon. I placed the tray on the bedside table and, as was our ritual now, pulled my chair up close beside the bed. His breathing was shallow and ineffectual. He could see me as I worked, though he could hardly move his head at all. I propped him up slightly, set the serviette beneath his chin. Took the bowl in my left hand, the spoon in my right. I dipped the spoon in the soup, bringing it to my lips first to check the heat then, tilting it ever so slightly to his. Then again, and again. There were no more than a half dozen spoonfuls before he breathed, almost inaudibly, ‘No more. No more.’ ‘Are you sure?’ I asked, pushing him on. ‘You must try. A little bit more, for me,’ I added. He gazed at me, his breathing more pronounced and nodded his head imperceptibly. I took the spoon once more to his

39 mouth, but he’d had all he could take. Most of the last spoonful dribbled from the corners of his mouth. I patted them dry with the serviette. He smiled at me then, what passes now for a smile, and fought to control his breathing. He struggled to speak, ‘You are kind. And good,’ he wheezed. I stopped fussing with the tray, my eyes pricking with tears. I took his hand in both mine, he never wore a wedding ring, but mine shone dully in the evening light. ‘I married the right one,’ he managed to gasp. ‘She’s not like you.’ My mind flew into a frenzy of thoughts and imaginings. Who’s the she he’s talking about? What did he mean? I thought. But I did not ask. This was not going to be a long-winded conversation. What a cruel thing to say, even now, all these years later. I smiled once more with all my strength and asked, ‘You mean Martha?’ He closed his eyes in what passed now for a yes. ‘You’re so good to take my boy from Martha.’ He said ‘my’! My, my, my! Suddenly, blindingly, ‘my’ meant his alone, not ours. Not our son but his, his and... I realised. The way he said it. To think I’d never seen it. Never. Never. But there it was. I knew he would not lie to me now. I could feel myself begin rocking, backward and forward. I remember wondering if it was me who was dying. If, after all my care for him, I would die first. Charles was Duncan’s son and hers. He knew it. She knew it. But they both kept it from me. Until that moment I swear I never knew. I remember thinking, this is what death is. Love can’t do this, love can only wound. Sitting there I looked at him as though from the very distant past, from our past together. I stared through a truth that smothered me like a swadling blanket drawn to close. Tears dripped from my face. I tried to smile, that passes now for smiling. He reached for my hand with a huge

40 effort and coughed out the words, ‘She said she told you.’ I shook my head. It shook violently, wilfully, undirected. I felt like screaming. My own sister. My husband. My son. My son. I dropped his hand. I pushed back the chair. It fell violently. I couldn’t look directly at him, but I could still see his face from the corner of my eye. He was greatly agitated. His features almost black. His breath in huge gasps. ‘I’m sorry! Sorry!’ he managed to pant, his body rigid with exertion. He collapsed back onto the bed with the effort. Although I didn’t know it at the time, within minutes he would lapse into a coma from which he’d only ever wake up dead. I could not look at him. I remember thinking, he’ll be dead soon but all that means is he’ll leave me here with her. And her son. Her son and his. For the smallest moment I thought about taking my own life there and then. Looking at either of them again would only remind me of their betrayal. But then I remember thinking immediately and violently that he could rot in hell, her with him, but that I, and nobody else, would have my son. They both owed me that. It was only just. I took the tray from the table. I moved like a dream out of the room. I passed Martha in the hallway. ‘Is he...’ she asked, trying to stop me, to make me listen. She grabbed my shoulder and held me. The dirty little prostitute. I stared derisively at her. She could not read that look. ‘He is gravely ill. I’m taking his son to see him.’ I handed her the tray, ‘Wash this up.’ Charles was asleep. I woke him, grabbed his pillow and quilt. The one with the cover she’d decorated with appliqué horses. I pushed him, dazed and disoriented, up the corridor into our bedroom. She stood halfway down the hallway, lost, not knowing what was happening, or how I felt, or how she should feel about how I felt. I wouldn’t give the cow the

41 satisfaction of knowing. I closed the bedroom door behind us and locked it. Something I’d never done before. She heard that. Footsteps ran to the door. She knocked, then again, insisting, but I wouldn’t answer. She called quietly, urgently. I did not reply. I told Charles to kiss his father goodbye. He was anxious and sleepy but he did as he was told. Duncan did not move. Only his breath disturbed the silence. Making his quilt up into a nest on the floor I settled Charles to sleep. ‘Mummy,’ he said. ‘I’m frightened.’ ‘I was frightened once too,’ I said, cuddling him close. ‘But not now. Not anymore. Mummy’s here, you’ll be all right.’ I settled him, then picked up the chair and sat down. I prepared myself to watch all night. I thought Duncan was sleeping. I really knew nothing about comas. They say that, though separated by a thousand miles, people can tell when their loved ones are hurt in an accident or die. Martha certainly knew his time was up. It must have been about eleven pm when I woke, slumped in the chair. I noticed a definite change in Duncan’s breathing. More shallow— fragile somehow. I leaned towards him, shook him gently at first, then more and more violently. He did not move. His breathing did not alter. I took the top of one of his ears, as the nurse at the hospital had shown me, and twisted it. He did not wake. I stood up and went to the window. Opening it I unlatched the shutters. Twisting hard, I wrenched the wedding ring from my finger and flung it deep into the night. Even in this most intimate, final moment she forced herself between us. I was startled by her sudden, hard knocking at the bedroom door. She knocked again. ‘Let me in!’ she yelled, pulling at the handle, pounding at the door. ‘Is he all right? Let me in!’ I walked to the door, put my hand on the handle. ‘Let me in!’ she screamed. Her voice had lost all human quality.

42 She wailed and screeched, ‘Let me in! He’s dead, isn’t he? He’s dead! You murdered him! You couldn’t just let him die, could you? No, you had to punish him! He always preferred me.’ My whole body shook, my hand dropped from the door handle, limp at my side. That statement decided me. I wondered for a second if I could ever love anyone again. Then Charles stirred. I heard my voice croak, ‘Go away, you’re frightening my son.’ My own voice and yet, ugly as a snarling dog. ‘Go away, you slut!’ She ran screaming down the hallway, through the kitchen and out onto the verandah. Realising what she was going to do, I rushed to the window, struggling to close the shutters before she could get in. She grabbed them, forcing them open. I changed my effort from the shutters to the windows, pushing them closed before she could get to them. She fought against me but I had the latch fast. I could see her in the dim moonlight, as she bent and took off her shoe, smashing the heel against the window pane. The glass exploded— shattering onto the floor. The sound splintered the silence that had filled the room. I stood back as she climbed in through the shards. She looked wildly towards the bed. ‘He’s dead?’ she said. But there was no question in it. I listened then, as she did, for the sound of his forgotten breathing. There was none. We stood in silence for a long time, panting to regain our breaths. ‘I hope you’re happy,’ I said finally. ‘Charles is all I’ve got left now too! I won’t give him to you. Never!’ She glared at me maliciously, as though somehow she thought I was callous of heart, that I was not grieving for her loss. The selfish cow. She said nothing. ‘Mummy!’ Charles called, his voice shaking. I did not break from her gaze. He called again. For a moment more I stared back at her then turned

43 to reassure my son. When I looked back, she had crawled out through the smashed window and was gone. I did not see Martha again for three months. She simply took the car and some clothes and left. She didn’t come to the funeral. She didn’t send flowers. The scolds admonished, the gossips tattled. Duncan’s parents were inconsolable. The funeral service was merciless, though quick, as civilised funerals are. For a month his mother stayed with me. I decided before Duncan died that I would keep the property. He and I had talked about it. Charles needed somewhere to grow up, and this was a better place than most. Besides, even before this widow had taken off her weeds, the crows were gathering— stock and station agents, local businessmen, even neighbours— as though they thought it was my turn next. They’d arrive at the house at all hours offering to buy the property for half what it was worth. As though they thought a woman could not, or would not, do the job Duncan had. They were wrong. I talked to O'Neil, the overseer. He and his wife were happy to stick with me for the foreseeable future. Once that was settled I let him handle the crows. My mother-in-law finally went home and all was quiet for a time. Then Martha returned. It wasn’t that, but how, she returned that set my mind for me once and for all. She simply drove up one day and walked in without so much as a by your leave, toting a couple of suitcases, back into her room as though nothing had happened, as though it was her right to be there, in my house, lavishing presents and kisses on my son as though nothing had happened. As though it was her right. There and then I decided what I’d do with her. Charles, of course, welcomed her with open arms. I let the years pass. We lived together, she and I, that was all. We never spoke about Duncan or about what was between us. In fact we rarely

44 spoke at all. But we knew what we shared was a bond, stronger even than sisterhood. I knew to revenge myself on her would hurt me more that it was possible to hurt her. Because of that knowledge we existed in fear of losing everything. For the same reason we continued to share a house on a property we both loved, and we tore Charles apart. She started to call him Charlie. Her presents became more lavish and she was always knitting him something, unravelling the wool from a favourite but too small jumper onto his outstretched hands, rolling it into a ball for its reincarnation into her latest creation. Charles always loved his aunt’s presents. Over those years they both saw to it I simply added scold to my other label— drudge. Charles grew to be so like his father. A good sportsman, a hard worker and a scholar. He decided that he wanted to go to the university. He had a plan that he would study economics and commerce, take over the property, then build an empire. Charles had talked often to his father about the empire as he’d lain dying. I let him have it, his dream. I even encouraged him, God forgive me. But there was one part of the script he had written for himself which I could and would change. When I was strong enough. I remember vividly the day of his University homecoming. We were having dinner, the three of us. The discussion was lively, fuelled by the naturally warm emotions caused by being together again. ‘I’ve been thinking about it, Aunty Martha,’ he was saying with the added enthusiasm of a couple of scotches and a wine with dinner. ‘Dad said we need to fence the creek paddock but I think we need a dam there too. That way when we’ve got the fence in we should be able to keep wethers there the best part of the year.’ Her eyes followed his, sparkling as though he were a lover

45 telling her his vision of their future life together. I knew the time had come for the greatest gamble of my life. To win him back from her. ‘Surface water’s a good idea but it doesn’t last long in a drought,’ I began casually. ‘Besides, sometimes these things are best planned from the ground up.’ They both looked at me in vague surprise as though I’d somehow interrupted what should have been a familial communion on well known themes. ‘But, Mum, you know it’s already been planned,’ Charles frowned a little as he spoke. ‘Dad and I talked about all the improvements he wanted before he died and I’ve made a list of my own since then,’ he looked to me for affirmation of his vision. I smiled at him, ‘Well...’ I began relenting a little, but he cut me off suddenly by jumping to his feet. ‘Wait! I’m neglecting my duty as man of the house!’ he said, formally grabbing his wine glass. Martha smiled at him indulgently. I wondered what he had in store. ‘Ladies,’ he addressed us both, ’Please be upstanding.’ Martha sprang to her feet as I fussed myself up, grumbling at his frivolity. ‘To Father,’ he began. ‘And Inamorato. May all his wishes come true.’ As we raised our glasses I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d gone too far with my plan. ‘Your father,’ I said, but she grabbed his arm holding his glass back from his lips. ‘Wait,’ she added. ‘What about your mother? She’s kept the place running for you for all these years until you came of age. She deserves a toast too,’ Martha finished, her smile glittering like a window full of broken glass. Misinterpreting her meaning as completely as she intended, Charles turned to me. ‘Sorry Mum,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to leave you out. Thank you for everything!’ He raised his glass gently to me. I nodded, the best response I could manage.

46 ‘Right then,’ she said, re-proposing the toast. ‘How about we drink to your parents?’ She turned her smile to him. ‘My parents,’ he echoed raising his glass and draining it. She sipped her wine, smirking at me. I slumped into my seat, my wine untouched. ‘No!’ I said loudly my eyes never leaving her face. ‘I’m afraid, Charles, I cannot share your enthusiasm for this place. Inamorato is too full of memories, too full of memories of your Father for me to ever be completely happy here.’ I had the undivided attention of both of them now. ‘Wouldn’t it be better if you started with a new property? Develop it, improve it the way you want without the baggage of the past?’ ‘Mum... what?’ he asked, his face a confusion of furrows. ‘Yes, what are you saying?’ Martha finished for him. ‘Wouldn’t it be better if we all got away, sold up here and left? Make a new start?’ ‘Mum!’ said Charles. ‘No it wouldn’t be better. Didn’t you hear what I was just saying. I’ve got plans for here. My plans and Dad’s plans. I’m sorry he’s gone and we all miss him but isn’t that all the more reason to make his dreams come true here?’ He appealed to me with a look before turning to her, ‘Aunty Martha?’ ‘Don’t be ridiculous Agatha,’ she snapped at me. ‘Of course we’ll stay here.’ She glared at me but, wasn’t there in her eyes, a touch of his uncertainty? I wondered, momentarily, whether she knew what I’d done. Maybe one of her Bank Johnny beaux had let on. But it didn’t matter now if she did or not, the satisfaction would still be mine, because he would be here to witness her hear it. ‘Well, I’m afraid it really is too late for this conversation,’ I continued, dropping my bombshell perfectly as I’d planned for so long. ‘I’ve already sold Inamorato!’

47 Charles flew to his feet, glass in hand, face reddening, sending the wine bottle flying. ‘You what!’ he exploded. ‘You did what!’ But Martha sat uncomprehending. She knew how much Inamorato and its memories meant to me. I leaned back in my chair and drank in that look on her face as sweetly as champagne. When she finally spoke her voice was broken. ‘Why did you do that?’ she asked. ‘Why? You love this place. You always have. Why?’ ‘You of all people, are asking me why?’ I jeered at her, shaking my head incredulously. She actually seemed not to understand. That moment uncovered her self-satisfied conceit as no other in her life. She was naked and exposed. ‘There’s no doubt about it, Martha,’ I said, ‘you’re a beauty and no mistake.’ I stood up to leave, but then Charles made his presence felt. He was glancing wildly from each to the other of us searching for some explanation for the madness that had so suddenly cast his world adrift. She recovered first, ‘Don’t worry about it, Charlie,’ she said trying desperately to reassure him. ‘If the stupid cow has sold the place,’ she spat tersely, ‘I’ll buy you another place just for us.’ But I knew it was a hollow speech. ‘Don’t be foolish, Charles. The little tramp doesn’t have a brass razoo to her name since one of her lover boys did the dirty on her years ago.’ ‘Don’t listen, Charlie! I have some money!’ she yelled wildly. ‘Go on then,’ I jeered, ‘Tell him how much!’ Charles stared at me intently, his eyes blazing. Martha slumped back to her seat. ‘Don’t worry I’ve leased Inamorato back for a year so we can stay here until we’ve found just what we want. Then we can all put the past behind us and start again.’ ‘Don’t you understand? I love this place! I want to stay here!’ Charles yelled at me, his own mother. He’d never done that before. ‘I can take you

48 around every paddock, every bore, every fence line and I can tell you what Dad and I talked about when we stood there. What we planned for it! You can’t just go out and buy that! You can’t sell it either! I love this place, it’s my home!’ he thundered. I waited for the silence to settle while they both stared at me in disgust, dismay, in disbelief; hoping I’d gone mad, I suppose, or was lying. ‘Well it’s too late. What’s done can’t be undone!’ I answered quietly. I gazed calmly at her, though every fibre of my being was screaming in her face. ‘You’re still young, in time you’ll learn to love another property like you love Inamorato,’ I said to him— but I looked at her. ‘It’s just too painful for me.’ Charles glanced from one face to the other of the two women he loved. I’m sure he realised in that moment that he did not exist for either of them except as an means to their ends. ‘Fuck you!’ he screamed, smashing his glass down among the leftovers. ‘Fuck you both! Even better why don’t you fuck each other and leave me alone!’ ‘Charles,’ I began to remonstrate but he was already gone, slamming the door behind him. ‘Now see what you’ve done!’ she spat scuttling after him. I could hear her increasingly hysterical entreaties as I sat unmoved at the dining table. I heard the kitchen door slam, the engine of the motorbike she’d bought him kick into life, then he was irrevocably gone. Martha stormed back into the house, screaming at me, ‘This is all your fault. Look what you’ve done!’ ‘He’ll be back,’ I said standing to begin clearing his welcome home dinner.

49 I never saw him again. Nor did she. That was so many years ago now, but to this day I can’t be absolutely certain where he is. Though I guess. ***** A voice broke into my reverie, ‘Agatha! Mrs Clay! Are you all right there?’ Josie Yow Yeh was asking as she bent down to retrieve the paper I’d dropped to the floor. Luckily my knitting was still in my lap. Flustered, both at being caught and then interrupted in my daydream, I snatched the paper from her. ‘Thank you,’ I managed curtly. Too curtly. ‘Won’t bother twice,’ Josie countered, making as if to move away. I dropped my knitting and took her arm. ‘Please,’ I said. ‘I’m just not feeling myself tonight,’ I smiled weakly. She sat back down beside me. ‘Chookie and Miss B.’s putting on a good show, hey?’ she smiled. ‘Too right,’ I answered joining her. ‘That Chookie couldn’t organise a chook raffle,’ she said. I laughed. ‘Leave him alone. He’s all right. A shopkeeper who home delivers and doesn’t overcharge is worth his weight in...’ I hesitated, trying to think of something good that he was worth. ‘Gobstoppers?’ Josie suggested and we laughed again. ‘What you knitting there?’ she asked. I smiled coyly, ‘A pair of woollen knickers.’ ‘Go for it, girl!’ she giggled. ‘People still wear that stuff like that, do they?’ she asked. Adding quickly at my look, ‘No offence, hey?’ ‘No, it’s fine. No one wears them much at all, certainly not around here. This is only the second pair I’ve ever knitted,’ I admitted. ‘The first pair were for my sister... you know Martha?’ I asked. She nodded giving me a strange look, ‘’Course I do. She’s only been coming to choir for most of my life.’ I smiled at her weakly again.

50 ‘I gave them to her one Christmas with instructions to try and keep them on,’ I intimated. ‘Hey! You’re one saucy girl then,’ Josie giggled. ‘Yes,’ I laughed, ‘And they were made of the most itchy wool I could find too!’ We giggled like a couple of convent school girls at the delicious shame of the idea. It all seems so silly now. ‘These are for her too,’ I continued. ‘But the wool is beautiful, fine and soft. It came from an old pullover that used to belong to her son,’ I explained. ‘She always used the finest wool when she made things for him so I’m using the best for her now.’ ‘Where is Martha? I haven’t seen her with you tonight,’ Josie asked. ‘She’s not unwell, is she?’ ‘Oh no, but she won’t be coming to choir again,’ I said. ‘Really! Why not?’ Josie asked, grabbing at my arm. She was genuinely shocked at the idea that such a good singer and an enthusiastic one would abandon the choir. ‘Martha died yesterday,’ I answered, as though the statement scalded my mouth like hot tea drunk too quickly. ‘Lung cancer. Here,’ I said handing her the paper she’d picked up for me earlier, as she put her hand to her mouth in disbelief. ‘Tell me if you think this will do for her headstone?’

Martha Fraser 1914-1975 Her song is sung, now let her rest

51 Unburdened of her weariness— the unravelling of human hearts.

Josie began to cry and the rest of them noticed, then. Let them fuss. I can’t be held responsible. She was old enough. That’ll do with her now. It’s over. The next thing is to write to tell Charles.

52 Act 2 Salon des Refusés

It’s not true that he didn’t take out his glass eye and put it in his drink to deter beer thieves when he had to go to the Gents at the pub. Some people tried to say it was. That it was a myth built up around him like it was around all glass-eyed men. But Chookie saw it happen. The minute he walked into the pub that afternoon. He had to talk to Charlie about singing the Barcarolle with Eileen. After all, Chookie ruminated, this year’s Concert, the 20th Annual Anniversary Concert for the Choir, that’s 20 years since the original Victory in the Pacific Day Concert in 1945, was the biggest of his Presidency thus far. True to form though, when you wanted him, Charlie wasn’t there. Just his eye was. Truth to tell is there weren’t many people in. Too early for the knock- off rush, just the hard nurses who’d been loitering outside with him since before opening time affecting an air of desperate nonchalance at their own insistent necessity. Those who could nurse a beer along for as long as possible, at least until after the first couple had stilled the nerves and the hand. Or until a benefactor appeared. Charlie was nursing his sixth beer since opening. To be precise Charlie’s glass eye was nursing his sixth beer since opening. Chookie sat down on the stool next to the vacant beer and ordered three more— one for now and the other two to help lubricate his delicate negotiations with Charlie once he’d returned. Chookie sat and waited, trying not to stare at

53 the blue eye which was magnified grotesquely and ogling through the side of Charlie’s half-full glass. ‘Bit early for you, isn’t it?’ Charlie asks, sitting down on the bar stool. ‘That for me love?’ he asks again, leering at the beer she is pulling as though it’s a lover preparing to grant him a most intimate favour. He’s guessing Chookie’s bought him one to lubricate the negotiations which will happen over Charlie’s dead body but which fact he won’t tell Chookie just yet because negotiating is thirsty business even if you’re not actually negotiating at all. Call it bad faith if you have any faith. He’d heard about Chookie’s impending visit hours ago from Josie Yow Yeh who lives next door in the other side of the half-a-house-each flats they share. Josie was told by Eileen earlier in the morning to give Charlie a bit of time to think about it before Chookie got to him. It is a small town. ‘Thanks, Chookie,’ Charlie says clinking his half-empty glass against Chookie’s nearly full one, ‘That was getting warm.’ He upends his glass into his mouth. His glass eye slides down the inside edge of his glass and past his lips. Skilfully finishing his drink Charlie rolls his eye around his tongue cleaning off the residual beer. Then he turns away for a moment, drops his eye into his hand, manipulates it into his eye socket and turns back to Chookie. Immediately Chookie looks at Charlie's eye, as you would. It’s in back to front, completely pallid, blind and wet. Chookie gasps, swallows his beer the wrong way and coughs, choking on it. ‘How many times have I done that to you, Chookie, and you still go bad on me. I dunno,’ Charlie complains, laughing. ‘Now, to what do we owe the pleasure of your company?’ ‘Buggar ya,’ scowls Chookie, out of sorts. ‘All these years and you still give me the gyp with that bloody eye.’ He stares balefully at Charlie

54 who’s taken the opportunity to change his eye to right way about. ‘Where did you get it anyway?’ ‘The optometrist!’ Charlie laughs, provoking Chookie just enough to step beyond his shopkeeper’s smile. ‘You know you’ve lived here for years now and you’ve never told me about what happened. How you lost it.’ Charlie seems genuinely shocked, ‘I thought everyone in this place knew everyone else’s dirty secrets.’ ‘It might surprise someone with nothing better to do than gossip but I don’t know, nor do I gossip,’ Chookie pronounces at his haughty Choir President best. ‘Eileen makes up for it then,’ Charlie jibes. ‘Eileen may but I don’t,’ Chookie answers, ‘It’s not good for business and,’ he finishes on the high moral ground, ‘it’s uncharitable.’ It was Charlie’s turn to splutter and choke on his beer, looking sideways at Charlie’s face, only to find it deadpan and earnest. ‘Well I dips me lid to you Chookie Fowler,’ he says sarcastically but without a trace of sarcasm in his voice. He surveys Chookie’s face again for signs that he’s misread his earnestness, but there are none. He thought, more charitably then, that scratching your goolies is obviously not a fit criterion by which to judge a man’s character. Maybe he owed Chookie an explanation after all. ‘It’ll cost ya a beer,’ Charlie said, ‘or two.’ They settled down easily together at the bar. Chookie knows he’ll have to wait his chance to insert Choir business into the conversation. He’s even brought a couple of extra shillings to fill the time. Chookie settles down to wait, oblivious to the fact they both are. ‘There’s this bloke, you see, name of Jimmy,’ Charlie begins. Chookie knows a few Jimmy’s so he’s straight away interested to see if it’s any of them. ‘It’s about this time every year he remembers New Guinea. The heat,

55 no, not the heat so much as the humidity; humidity that threatened to drown you if you took another breath, that made a man feel like he was constantly swimming through the air and never making any headway; that and knowing he was so close to home, though it felt like ten thousand miles, and it might as well have been. That brings on the depression. ‘Perhaps it’s the Christmas colours that do it most to him though, the green and the red. Remind him of the Milne Bay show. Mud, the dead, the wounded. And days and days of nothing but rain. And the mates. And of course, then he gets a bit maudlin, thinking about them, as you do. One thing leads to another, as it does, and in next to no time he’s sitting thinking about his girl Flo writing him all those lovey-dovey letters when all the time she really meant them for the other bloke she’d taken up with while he was serving over there. ‘When he got back and found out that she was married... it coloured this bloke’s view of the world. She must have been, I don’t know why I still say ‘she must have been’ when I know perfectly well she was, writing him bloody love letters after she was married to that other bastard. Perhaps he should have been bloody thankful that he had something to look forward to when he was up there. Lots of other soldiers didn’t. Some he knew even died without someone to die for. But like I said it coloured this bloke’s view. Anyway, all of that brings us up to Christmas Eve 1947. Boulia— home of the famous Min-Min light and a heck of a lot more of nothing much else. Dining room of the Australia Hotel. Linen tablecloths, serviettes with silver rings, silver service, the full bloody quid. In Boulia of all places! A travelling sales rep. with nowhere to go and, let’s face it, nothing else to do, sits down for dinner.

56 Anyone with any money is over on the coast spending it. He hasn’t been in the travelling sales game long enough to even get an invite to a roustabout’s piss up on Christmas Eve. But then, right in the middle of him airing all his bad blood to himself, in she walks. Barmaid, cook and chief bottle washer. Publican’s daughter. Her name is Florence. Florence Mills. He tries to start up a conversation. He can tell she’s a little bit keen. She’s a bit of a looker too, but the clincher is, her name’s Flo. And the name brings it all back personal again. He’d sent a telegramme to his people a couple of days ago just to let them know he’s all right. It’s all brown out here and I like that, he told them. He still needs a bit of brown and some space before he faces them, and his ex-Flo, and the whole social catastrophe again. Probably sounds like double dutch to them but... he sent them the telegramme. ‘What’ll it be then, luv?’ she’s asking, one hip thrust out in classic waitress pose, the menu in her hand. Early twenties, white apron, quite tall with a graceful neck and long brown hair fixed in a bun on her head. Hazel green eyes and a laugh that opens like a door into the darkness. Not that she’s laughed for him. ‘Looks like dead sheep, doesn’t it,’ Jimmy smiles. There’s nothing else on the menu. ‘There was fish when we could get a yellow belly but it hasn’t rained since March,’ she smiles at him. ‘The name’s Flo. Flo Mills,’ she says. ‘Yair,’ he answers. ‘Caught that while I was in the bar. Jimmy,’ he introduces himself. ‘Jimmy Bostock.’ ‘My father owns the place.’ ‘Yair, caught that too,’ Jimmy replies. ‘Cripes, not much you haven’t caught then,’ she giggles.

57 ‘Haven’t caught you yet,’ he said looking dead in her eyes. I think they both blushed. Deftly she changes the subject back to business. ‘You staying long?’ ‘I don’t really have anywhere to go, so it depends what’s to keep me,’ Jimmy paused, eyeing her up and down. ‘Boxing Day,’ she offers. ‘We have races.’ ‘So I noticed,’ he said nodding toward the walls which were decorated with race day photos, all recently framed and captioned. The usual: Ladies’ fashions in the field; Lads most likely; The field entering the straight, First past the post. ‘They’re last year’s races,’ she enthused. ‘We had a professional bloke come out from Townsville to do them for us.’ ‘Very professional,’ Jimmy agrees. One in particular catches his eye. It’s of a young man in his early twenties dressed in racing silks. Swarthy and quite small, but it’s the caption that really intrigues him, ‘Jesus Nearly Wins’. ‘Strange name for a horse,’ Jimmy suggests pointing at the caption. ‘What horse?’ Flo replies, her expression perplexed. ‘Jesus, the horse that nearly won!’ he explains, pointing. She bursts out laughing. ‘That’s not the horse’s name,’ she exclaims. ‘It’s the name of the jockey!’ ‘Bloody funny name for a bloke!’ Jimmy chuckles. ‘I thought it must have been the name of the horse he was riding!’ ‘You’d better not say that too loud,’ she answers. ‘He’s out in the bar and I can tell you he doesn’t take too kindly to people giving him gyp about it!’ At that very moment the bloke from the photo walked into the room. Sidling up to Flo he slips his arm comfortably around her waist. ‘Hey, hey, fiancee,’ he says. ‘Did I hear someone using my name in vain?’ She smiles

58 at him then glances cheekily at Jimmy. ‘Here,’ she says. ‘I’ll go get your dinner while this bloke gives you a bloody good hiding for impertinence!’ ‘Cripes,’ Jimmy says standing to meet him. ‘No offence meant, mate.’ ‘None taken!’ he replies affably, offering his hand to shake. ‘The name’s really Shalom,’ he offers easily, ‘but everyone calls me Jesus!’ Jimmy can’t help but laugh. ‘Confuseder and confuseder,’ he said. ‘The name’s Jimmy,’ he continued. ‘Jimmy Bostock. Why don’t I just buy you a beer and you can explain it all to me.’ ‘Thanks, Jimmy. Don’t mind if I do.’ He pulls us both a beer. ‘Advantages of being engaged to the publican’s daughter,’ he winks. Then Jesus, or Shalom, or whatever his name was, sat down opposite Jimmy. ‘My father,’ he begins, ‘was a tinker. A Jewish tinker no less, from Russia. He and me mother were kicked out in 1905. Well, they cleared out because they weren’t welcome really. They came to Sydney and then headed north and west straight away. Actually,’ he says, sipping his beer thoughtfully, ‘I’m going to have to start again. The story starts properly with Cranky Mulligan. Cranky was manager of a property east of Middleton. Renowned for his ‘descriptive’ language, if you know what I mean,’ Shalom begins again. ‘Yeah, I met a few of them in the army,’ Jimmy agrees. ‘Hot-heads with water on the brain. When they get up a head of steam they have to blow it out somewhere.’ Shalom nods, grinning. ‘Well, it was Christmas Eve twenty five years ago when Cranky decided he wanted to come over to Boulia for a Christmas Day feed and the Boxing Day races. ‘He started off after work in his Model T utility. He’s not an hour outside of Boulia when he sees a light. By then it must be close to ten

59 o’clock at night. It was a strange light. Bright. Glowing. Shining off in the scrub to the left. He keeps one eye on the road, the other on the light. It’s moving. Away from the road. He knows what it is. Knows he shouldn’t keep watching it. Knows that it’ll lure him away. But still, he’s mesmerised. ‘All of a sudden there’s a man right in the middle of the road waving his arms. ‘B’ the loving sweet Jesus!’ Cranky screams, veering off the road to the left. Hitting the anchors hard. When he finally stops in a cloud of dust, the car rests on the road shoulder. The man runs up beside the car. ‘Sorry, digger,’ the fellow says sticking his head into the window. ‘I should have been more careful. One minute I was watching the min-min light, and the next you were right there. Didn’t even hear you drive up. Sorry, mate,’ he repeated, in a rush of earnest apology. ‘Ahmed’s the name.’ He thrust his arm in through the window which, along with his head in the frame, didn’t leave much space. Cranky didn’t like to be crowded. It was all too much for him, a man of solitary living, to be crowded. ‘Jesus bloody Christ!’ he exploded, spittle spraying over Ahmed’s rapidly withdrawing face. ‘Fuckin’ yes!’ he continued to Ahmed’s confusion. ‘I’ll take you! Just get in!’ Cranky leaned over and opened the passenger side door. Ahmed may have been confused but he was nobody’s fool. He mightn’t have asked the question but Cranky’d given the right answer. The door was open so he ran around and jumped in. ‘Thanks, mate,’ he said. ‘Sorry again. You see the light?’ ‘Yes and I could’a bloody killed you,’ Cranky said, his voice final. Ahmed shut up deciding silence was the better part of discretion. They drove on. Cranky spent the next couple of miles watching the light. Ahmed spent the next couple of miles watching the road. That’s why he saw the

60 car first. Then the driver. Deciding it was not best to interrupt Cranky with too much conversation, Ahmed simply grunted, ‘Look!’ Cranky slowed down. He knew the bloke by sight. A stock and station agent. Couldn’t remember his name. Not surprising, he thought, he couldn’y even remember his own name sometimes. Comes from being alone. As the car ground to a halt, the man walked around to the driver’s side window. Waited for the dust to clear. Up close they could see a spanking new Chevy he had been driving lying off the side of the road. One back wheel was bent out like a broken arm. ‘G’day Cranky,’ he said. Cranky raised an eyebrow imperceptibly in reply. ‘Busted axle. Couldn’t give us a lift could ya?’ ‘Might as bloody well join us,’ Cranky said, his voice unwelcoming. The agent grabbed a Gladstone bag from his car and threw it in the back of the ute. Ahmed slid over against Cranky as the bloke climbed into the cab. They squeezed in like peas in a pod. The stock and station agent was not small but he was genial. ‘G’day mate,’ he said offering his hand to Ahmed as Cranky got under way, revving the hell out of the T Model. ‘Tommy’s the name. Tommy Albertsen.’ ‘Ahmed Marek.’ They shook hands. ‘You wouldn’t read about it, Cranky,’ Tommy began. Cranky made no sign of either hearing him nor of wanting to. So Tommy shifted his attention to Ahmed, ‘I’m driving along when all of a sudden I see the min-min. Course, I should have been watching the road but all of a sudden— whammo! Next thing, I’m off the road and in a gilly with a broken bloody axle. Just lucky you came along or I would have been walking all bloody night to find someone to get me out of that melon hole.’

61 ‘I also thought I’d be walking all night,’ Ahmed said. ‘I have to get supplies. My people do not want to go to town. Too much trouble for us maybe at Christmas— and then there’s the races. Uncle Mustafa is a terrible gambler. It is best he is not tempted. So I left them all with the camels at the Five Mile Bore. I am sure someone will bring the supplies out for me before the races. Then...’ Ahmed’s explanation was cut short by a torrent of abuse from Cranky. ‘What in the name of Sweet fuckin’ Jesus is this? Anyone’d think I was a fuckin’ tram service!’ Beside the road huddled a tinker’s caravan. Beside the caravan stood a man. It was my father waving his arms at them to stop. As they slowed to a halt they could see a fire was lit. Beside it sat a heavily pregnant young woman. ‘Thank-you so greatly, so many thanks,’ the man said as Cranky pulled up. ‘I am Abraham but people call me Abe,’ he said extending his hand to shake. ‘And this is my wife Rebekah. Can you carry us to town? A calamity has occurred. Our horse has died. Poisoned by the weeds. My wife needs to be with midwife. We have no way get to town. Please? Maybe the doctor will be there?’ ‘Jesus fuckin’ wept,’ Cranky spat out as Abraham’s face dropped. ‘Yeah, why not join the Merry bloody Christmas show.’ He switched off the car and sat, arms folded, in the driver’s seat. Ahmed and Tommy hopped out and helped the couple move some bedding, food and a string-tied cardboard suitcase into the back of the utility. Tommy tried to get Rebekah to sit up front, but she insisted on being in the back with her husband. They probably made her more comfortable there anyway, making a bed out of pillows and blankets. Tommy and Ahmed piled back in front. ‘About bloody

62 time,’ growled Cranky. But they noticed he drove more slowly, missing most of the potholes during the last half hour’s drive into town. They pulled up outside the pub in a chorus of thanks. Cranky climbed out of the driver’s seat. Abraham climbed out of the back. ‘Would you mind if Rebekah stays in the car while I find the nurse?’ he asked. His wife moaned softly from the makeshift bed in the back of the utility. ‘Christ, why not!’ Cranky swore. ‘Why not have the whole bloody car and I’ll throw in a free feed too!’ Mistaking his sarcasm for a genuine offer, Abraham thanked him profusely for his generosity. Cranky swore again, shook his head and headed to the bar. ‘Hold up,’ Tommy called. ‘It’s my shout. You want one, Ahmed?’ he asked walking across the road briskly after Cranky. ‘I do not drink alcohol, but I will share some water with you. I am thirsty as a camel.’ When they hit the bar they could already hear Cranky ordering himself a beer, but it was the bit he added after the order that got them, ‘Two meals if you have ‘em for them in the car.’ ‘Bit late,’ the barmaid complained, setting up Cranky’s beer. ‘It’s well after closing time, you know.’ ‘Well, bloody don’t then!’ ‘Keep your hair on Cranky, I’ll see what I can rustle up.’ She shook her head and turned to the newcomers. ‘You blokes right?’ she asked. ‘Another one, thanks, Lillian, and a glass of water,’ Tommy held up a couple of fingers in the “V” for victory sign to indicate the number of drinks. Lil got the message. She was a good barmaid. ‘Not so fast, we hardly know each other yet, Tommy me boy,’ she winked, turning to get a couple of glasses before pulling the beer. Tommy slapped two quid on the bar and turned to Cranky, tipping his glass in the

63 traditional salute. ‘Merry Christmas,’ he boomed, his voice hearty. Cranky grunted. Ahmed was more helpful. ‘Your health, Tommy,’ he offered. They clinked their glasses together then drained them. ‘Didn’t even hit the sides,’ Tommy complained. ‘Another couple, thanks, Lil. How are you going, Cranky?’ Tommy questioned, indicating his empty glass. ‘Still here,’ Cranky grunted. ‘Get ‘im another one too, Lil, and have one yourself,’ Tommy continued. ‘It’s Christmas.’ ‘You can pay for it now, but I’ll drink it later. I’m flat out for the moment,’ she answered. ‘And I’ve got those meals to get.’ The bar was still doing a roaring trade at midnight, when Lil found time to take the meals out to the car. The owner’s wife was helping out at the bar serving a shearing team who had just rolled in. Ten of them in all, and all half full even before they arrived and well on the way to behaving like a bag-full of cut snakes. Cranky relented after his first few, even becoming a little talkative. It goes to show Tommy was a damn good stock and station agent. The two of them shared a table with Ahmed, who nursed his water with the air of a man with nowhere better to go but who thought he could be a hell of a lot worse off. Suddenly Lil walked back through the front door of the bar, between the tables to where Cranky sat. ‘That’s your utility outside isn’t it? The Model T?’ Cranky blinked blearily and nodded. ‘You’d better come and see this then,’ she said beckoning him to follow her. Cranky showed no sign of moving. ‘Now,’ she insisted. More weary than drunk, Cranky eased himself up out of his seat. ‘Love,’ he said unsteadily. ‘I’m all bloody yours! Sounds like you’re me bloody missus.’

64 ‘As if I didn’t have enough on my plate,’ laughed Lil, half-joking. Sensing trouble if one of the shearers had done something to Cranky’s car, Tommy and Ahmed followed. Cranky stood belligerently on the verandah, beer in one hand, hanging onto the railing. Lil stood in the middle of the quiet street. ‘So what’s wrong with me fuckin’ car? Looks all right to me!’ he called, unmoved by her repeated requests to come and look from the middle of the road. ‘I’ll go,’ Ahmed offered. ‘If you’re that bloody stupid, be my bloody guest!’ Cranky invited him sarcastically but his tone was more conciliatory than earlier. Ahmed walked across the street towards the barmaid. They both circled round behind the ute. They gazed into the back murmuring to each other. Ahmed returned to stand, beckoning in the middle of the road, ‘Cranky, you had better come and see.’ ‘All right. All right. There’s no rest for the fuckin’ wicked. I’m bloody coming,’ Cranky lurched down the stairs and onto the open street. ***** ‘I’m as dry as a dead sheep in a bloody drought,’ Charlie complains suddenly, startling Chookie from the reverie of listening to the yarn. Charlie upturns his empty beer glass and stares at Chookie with a questioning look. ‘Got time for another one, Chookie?’ he asks. ‘Is there ever a time when you’re not on the bloody bite!’ Chookie replies angrily. He is aggravated, more by losing the thread than the money. Chookie’s a shopkeeper through and through. He can stand a bit of petty theft but he hates to be conned, either out of money or out of the truth and the truth is he’s enjoying the yarn enough to prevent his bothering to press for the truth about Charlie’s eye. He’s been side-tracked by a master and it makes him tetchy. ‘No buggar ya. Where’s all this bull leading

65 anyway? Jesus!’ he continues, ‘you’re not gunna tell me the truth about your eye anyway. Eileen’ll be waiting. You’re just conning me out of a beer.’ By way of response Charlie stared at him long enough to be off- putting. ‘What!’ Chookie demands. ‘You said yourself you’ve known me for years and you never knew what happened to my eye,’ Charlie finally answers. Chookie nods, uncertain of where this is leading. ‘Did it ever occur to your tin-pot Presidential little, parochial mind that I might not want to tell you? Could it ever occur to you that it might cause me a good deal of pain to tell anyone and that’s why I don’t? Did it ever occur to you that you have no right to know?’ Charlie glares at Chookie and thinks to himself, ‘A vintage performance!’ Chookie is suddenly ashamed. ‘Two beers love,’ he calls, draining his glass. He sits silently, avoiding Charlie’s eye. ‘Didn’t you like my Christmas story?’ Charlie asks as the beers arrive. ‘Yair, it was fine,’ Chookie says looking at Charlie contritely. ‘Why don’t you finish it?’ Charlie relents a little and sips his beer. Chookie isn’t such a bad bloke, he thinks, even if he is too gullible to run a shop, let alone an Emporium! ‘Imagine,’ Charlie begins, relenting. ‘Imagine there’s two blokes right here in this pub ten or fifteen years ago. Chookie shrugs and nods. ‘If it helps,’ he says. ‘On the verandah of this very pub, a holidaying shearer, maybe 21 or a bit more, a young bloke anyway, wanders out onto the verandah. A second, older bloke is already out there taking the air on a beautiful evening. He half turns to the shearer in greeting. ‘Trouble?’ the shearer asked. ‘Nah, I’ve just had enough of inside for one night,’ the bloke

66 answered. ‘I think I’ll just nick back inside though for a night-cap and bring it out here to avoid any drama. Want another one before closing time?’ ‘No, thanks anyway,’ the shearer replied. ‘I just came out here for the same reason. Get away from that mob for a while,’ he pointed into the bar with a blunt thumb. The first man hesitated then, unwilling to leave a conversation which had not properly started, to finish something before it began. He said, ‘Tubby Albertsen anyway,’ formally breaking the ice. ‘Charlie,’ answered the shearer diffidently, ‘Charlie Stone.’ He turned towards Tubby and they shook hands. It took only an instant for Tubby to notice one of Charlie’s eyes was not quite right. One eye on the pot, the other up the chimney, as the saying goes. Made you feel ill at ease somehow. Tubby decided to tackle it straight away so as not to make for awkwardness later on. It was his way. ‘I don’t mean to pry,’ he said in his best stock and station agent’s voice, non-committal but testing. It was a technique he’d learnt from his father who was an stock and station agent par excellence. ‘But what happened to your eye?’ Charlie laughed at Tubby, a look of frank admiration spreading across his face. ‘You must be an honest man,’ he said. ‘Usually I talk to a man for hours before he dares to mention my eye. A bloke’ll look me up and down, try and avoid looking at my face. You know,’ he continued. ‘Look over my shoulder, look at the ground, pretend he’s not looking at my eye— which is my favourite because then he becomes so conscious of needing to not look at me eye that all he can do is look at it, so he gets more and more embarrassed, and looks at my eye more and more compulsively until I have to tell him what happened to it because I can’t stand him staring at the ground any more. Most blokes are

67 just too dishonest to look at me. I’ll tell you but it’s a long story,’ the shearer warned. ‘I’ll get comfortable then,’ Tubby said lowering himself onto the verandah step. ‘I was brought up by two sisters, on a sheep property over west near Longreach, Inamorato it was called. Not entirely true, I can remember my dad quite clearly but he died when I was ten. So to all intents and purposes I was bought up without a dad. Mum and Aunt Martha nearly smothered me. They taught me through School of the Air, read to me, bought me anything my heart desired, made me clothes. Truth to tell is that as a child they almost killed me with love. And they were competitive about it! I’ve never seen anything like it. Mum would buy me a new pullover, Aunt Martha would knit a better one. Mum would make me a new shirt, and a month later a Malvern Star bike right out of the catalogue would be delivered with the mail. I swear they kept points. Looking back, I was in kid heaven I suppose,’ he nodded to himself, considering the proposition that heaven and childhood were comparable. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘‘‘Too much icing on the cake is never a good thing,’’ Aunt Martha always said. By the time I was finished boarding school at Matriculation, I’d decided I was going to University whatever they said or did.’ ‘That explains the way you talk then,’ Tubby interrupted. ‘I’ve spoken to a lot of shearers, but you’re more well spoken than any.’ ‘Thanks, I think!’ Charlie smiled. ‘I did a bit of Literature and Drama at Uni. but mainly stuck to Commerce and Economics. I knew I had to go home sometime and I thought those subjects would be just the ticket for managing the place when I took over the property. Trouble is the moment I’d finished my degree Mother informs me she’s sold the property. It was

68 hers, she said, and she’d do what she liked with it.’ Charlie’s voice became tight as he continued. ‘She knew that place was my inheritance. She knew how much it meant to me. I’ll always maintain she sold it out of spite. But the funny thing is,’ he laughs bitterly, ‘that it wasn’t even me she was being spiteful to, it was her sister. Aunt Martha. Something had happened between them, some bad blood. Whatever it was, though, by that stage I didn’t care anymore. ‘She tried to bribe me with cash to buy another property. Told me it’d be all mine. She never saw the point,’ he added bitterly. ‘Inamorato was mine in a way no money could buy. My earliest memory there was of my father, riding with me around the place showing me how to fix the windmill, mend a fence, pull a sheep from the bog. You can’t buy that. Anyway,’ he said, his voice cold. ‘If I said we had a blue about the property, it’d be an understatement. That was 1939 and I haven’t heard, seen or spoken to either of them since. I’d seen a bit of the world in Brisbane at the University so when she told me she’d sold I just packed up and left. I couldn’t even tell you if either of them was still alive, or care,’ he said, his eyes narrow as an open grave. Tubby felt somehow defeated by the story as though he were in the presence of someone for whom love was dead. It was a vacant, unsettling breach of good fellowship he thought. He decided to hurry the story on, wanting to end it quickly, so he could get back inside. The lack, no not the lack, the denial of emotion was unnerving him greatly. He was an affable man. Amiability was the foundation of his business success. Such negativity chewed like a rat at his core. ‘So, what did you do?’ he asked. ‘I thought I’d try my luck in the Big Smoke,’ Charlie replied. ‘So I tried Sydney for a few years, in the head office of a firm of wool brokers. No

69 names, no pack drill, hey!’ he smiled. ‘I already knew the business backwards and besides,’ he added distantly, ‘it was about as far away as I could get from the pair of them. ‘But I was a boy from the bush. It’s true what they say about taking the boy from the bush but not the bush from the boy. Everything about that place, the property names I dealt with, the family names, the haulage firms, the smell of lanolin every morning. Even,’ he added, ‘the bale stencils, started my imagination and I was instantly back home at Inamorato again. ‘It was easy work too, no thought required, which never helps— an idle mind and all that. I tried, I tried hard to meet at the Club with the owners, do the business thing. I even changed my name. It was Clay, I changed it to Stone, to make it harder, more the real Business type. But I still found myself spending more and more time waiting for work to finish so I could carouse with my buddies.’ There was something about the way the shearer said the word ‘buddies’ that pulled Tubby up short. An intonation. A nuance. An unspoken meaning. Testing his guess Tubby interrupted, ‘So you never married then?’ Charlie grimaced at a question so often asked that he knew the answer, and generally the reaction to the answer, by heart. ‘There are those who say being brought up by a certain kind of mother ruins a man for marriage. I was brought up by two of the worst kind. What chance does a bloke have?’ he laughed bitterly. So there it was. On the table. Tubby knew he’d guessed right about the shearer. He knew too that Charlie knew he’d twigged. Neither would say any more about it, but they understood each other. ‘Anyhow,’ Charlie began again. ‘Then I left Sydney and tried Brisbane but with not much more success. After that I drifted north sometimes, and

70 west others, forgot the whole business thing, and did whatever there was to do. General labourer, wharfie, road navvy, fettler, fisherman. It was when I was fishing that I lost the eye. ‘It was one of those Indian summer times that happen during September in Central Queensland. We were fishing the near islands off Yeppoon, chasing mackerel. The weather was stunning. Warm days with the sea spread out like a blue silk sheet. Heavy sea fog in the morning would roll back like a thick white eiderdown to reveal a stunning blue sea and a blue day. ‘If you weren’t out there an hour before sunrise though, you weren’t fishing. So with the fog, it was pitch black when we left the creek but we were trolling garfish for bait, so we didn’t need the sun so much as if we were using lures. When the mackerel are on the move like they were that year, you’re flat out keeping up with them. ‘The boss took the main boat with a deckie on board with him. Another bloke and I were in a sixteen foot dory each. The dory suited me fine. It meant I could spend most of my time by myself. Each dory had an outrigger pole attached to either side with a mackerel line attached to each one. The main boat had three lines, one over the stern, on a big reel and two outriggers. When you got a strike and a fish on, you hauled the line in— no finesse involved. They call it ‘skull dragging’. You pull the fish in hand over hand or wind it in on the reel. ‘It’s hard work. The buggars can be fifty pound and they don’t want to die so they fight like the devil. Once you get ‘em over the side and into the kill pit you bash ‘em with a hardwood donger, then you set a new gar bait on the line, throw it over the side, make sure it swims properly, and away

71 you go again. Sometimes I’d have one on each line at the same time. Keeping the lines apart then was a real buggar.’ By this stage Tubby must have looked like he felt, anxious not to have any more to do with this cove than was necessary to be polite. Luckily Charlie was winding up the explanation anyway. ‘When you had a few caught, or were out of bait, or the sharks were so bad you were only landing heads, you’d head back to the mother ship— bit glorious for a forty- five footer but still— unload and head out again. ‘The boss’d empty them straight into the icebox. When the box was full and we’d cleaned the lot, we’d be back into shore, ice up, fuel up and straight back out again, slaying ‘em. Mackerel are like that, one minute they’re on the chew, fighting each other for the bait, and the next, you’re singing O Sole Mio and the only thing you’re chewing up is fuel. ‘Anyway I was good at fishing. I’d regularly get half again what the bloke on the other dory, Jimmy Bostock, would catch. After a couple of weeks of me out-fishing him though, he was pretty narky. He was supposed to be the gun fisherman. We were tired but happy when, after two weeks straight fishing, Slim, the boss, decided one night he needed a drink. ‘We’d earned good money during that time and were keen to spend it. We took in a load, fuelled, iced, and cleaned up all according to Hoyle, when he says he’ll take us for a drink. ‘We’ll still have to be out there early,’ he warned, ‘so we have to leave at three in the morning.’ But none of us was going to say no. I was thirsty as a dead man’s dog. So we changed out of our mackerel-gut clothes, got our shoes and socks on, and off we went. ‘It wasn’t more than an hour after we’d got to the pub, when the first few had settled us down, that Jimmy Bostock started. Simple at first, then

72 more and more personal. When I spilt a bit of beer, carrying it back to the table during my shout, he said, ‘You gotta worry about a bloke that pours the beer out instead of drinking it.’ It was nothing. I smiled. It passed. But he kept on at it. After I’d told a shearing story it was, ‘Gun shearer. Gun fisherman. Wonder what else he uses his gun for?’ Laugh all round of course, at my expense. Always at my expense. ‘Next he follows me into the Gents, makes a point of standing too close to me at the trough. ‘Jesus,’ he laughs, standing there inspecting my tackle like it was a pound of mashed potatoes. ‘Does that thing work?’ Of course I can’t take a leak with him standing there gawking. Doesn’t worry him of course, just me. He laughs again at me as he’s flicking himself off after he’s finished and buttoning his fly. ‘I’ve seen lots of dicks in prison, you know. That doesn’t look like a dick at all, it’s more like a gherkin!’ He continues to rankle. ‘I’ve seen better in a pickle bottle.’ ‘Even then I left it. Even though there was no one else there, and it was an insult aimed directly at me. I left it. I was trying to work him out but I needed more information. Why me? I knew now he was a jail bird. Why’d he tell me about that? As a matter of fact, for a small bloke he wasn’t built any smaller than me in the tackle department, so what was his game? ‘I found out as soon as I came back to the bar. Jimmy was at the table, glass in hand. ‘Come and join us,’ he yelled. ‘The boss was just telling us he’d never had a drink with your sort before.’ He took me for a victim but I wasn’t biting. I’d dealt with coves like him before, the problem here was though, if I didn’t take him up, I’d be labelled soft, or queer, or both. Either way I’d have no job. ‘There’s no place here for Sydney queers,’ Jimmy mocked. I looked from face to face searching for support from Slim or any of the others, a laugh even, to get me out of the corner Jimmy had

73 backed me in. There was only a question reflected in them all. But with that comment he left me no choice. It was a choice that was no choice. Fight, or walk, and keep on walking. That’s the morality here, tolerate socially as long as there is no difference displayed in public. The fucking hypocrites they fuck your daughters or your sons or me in their squalid little rooms, given a bit of grog and a little encouragement and then, if you dare to mention it, or even ask quietly for a show of love, they’ll belt you senseless for their own moral shortcomings. Or is it just for their entertainment. I don’t fuckin’ know,’ he swore bitterly. ‘Some of them can tell you how they’ve killed a man but none of them can show you their love.’ I had no choices left. ‘Outside,’ I yelled, striding to the door. The little bastard followed me, jumping out of his seat with something approaching glee. ‘See, I told you!’ he squealed at the others. He was on me even before I was clear of the door. He had been to prison all right, or he’d learnt his trade from the meanest street-scrappers in Sydney. While I’m turning to shape up, he jumps and kicks me with both boots in the side of my knee. I heard it crack as I went down in agony. Even as the rest of them were getting out onto the footpath, he starts kicking me there on the ground. Didn’t punch me once, the filthy cunt. But he could use his boots like a football player. I was winded. I heard ribs crack. The bastard was frenzied, all the time yelling, ‘Tell ‘em! Go on tell ‘em! Tell ‘em what you are!’ ‘Suddenly he stopped kicking me. I was rolled on my side, my head back. Slim, the boss, stood there holding Jimmy back with one hand. His face a mask of contempt. ‘You are, aren’t you?’ But there was no question in it really. I didn’t answer, I couldn’t anyway, I could hardly breathe. There was blood in my mouth and a pain heaving in my chest. I wanted to

74 scream, ‘Show me how to love you and I swear I’ll never need to touch you again!’ ‘There should be a fuckin’ law against people like you,’ Slim spat. ‘They should put you on a fuckin’ island somewhere and let you fuckin’ rot.’’ ‘The last thing I saw before I lost my eye was Slim’s boot, the sharp front corner of the heel of Slim’s boot to be precise, as he kicked me in the face. The force of it rolled me in the gutter. My eye spurted warm tears of blood down my cheek. They stood there for a moment watching me bleed. ‘Let’s go and get a feed then,’ Jimmy Bostock said. So they did. Just like that. They left me. ‘I could see them in the moonlight out of my good eye. Clapping each other on the back. Jimmy re-enacting his kicks, congratulating Slim. I couldn’t speak and couldn’t move. All I could see was that she was a beautiful night. The moon like a disc of altar bread flat on a grape-black sky. A small sea slapping the shore. A humid breeze with a cool edge caressed me. And do you know, the whole time I could hear a melody floating through my mind. Barcarolle from Tales of Hoffman— Fairest evening of the year. I could have smiled at the irony, if I could have smiled. Then I heard Flo Mills, she was the barmaid then, sobbing, ‘They’ve killed him! They’ve killed him!’ ‘But they didn’t,’ Charlie finishes, ‘just kicked me eye out.’ Chookie feels awkward now, and moved, though he won’t admit it. But mainly he’s shocked at hearing about Slim and Jimmy, assuming of course it’s true. That it is those two Charlie’s talking about. He’s known them both for years. Jimmy he could believe, but Slim? Slim he’s known since childhood. He’s a good bloke, a bit maudlin and prone to the grog, but he has reason to be. Surely not Slim. And Chookie’s badly shocked too at the perversity of

75 Charlie for staying in a town with men who did something like that to him. Why does he stay? What is he hoping for? Acceptance? Surely not love? Could it be that he was at war with them all, putting himself up as the stakes, and he couldn’t surrender without losing everything? Chookie reasons that it doesn’t make sense, that it’s probably just more bullshit the whole thing, but Charlie had no reason Chookie could think of to lie. Maybe there was a lot more to this town than he ever knew, or wanted to, for that matter. He just wanted them to keep buying at the Emporium and keep him as President of the Choir for the forseeable future. The rest of life you have priests for, so you don’t have to think about it, and if you buggar that bit up you just say sorry and you’re right as rain again. For the first time in his life though Chookie is unsettled enough to know he will go home to Eileen and gossip. No, he decides, he won’t gossip but he will ask if Eileen knows who Charlie’s mother is and that’ll be enough information for a while if she does. He has a lot to think about. ‘That was very honest,’ is all Chookie feels game to venture. ‘That was the truth,’ Charlie replies. ‘Unlike some people, I just look it straight in the eye.’ Chookie winces at the direct, bitter implication of Charlie’s words. ‘Tell you what, Chookie,’ Charlie continues. ‘How about you buy me a beer for Christmas?’ ‘It can’t be Christmas,’ Chookie responds automatically. ‘We haven’t had the Concert yet.’ Charlie just stares at him shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Buy me a beer, Chookie,’ he explains slowly, ‘and I’ll finish my Christmas story.’ ‘Oh! Right then,’ Chookie nods. It’s the least he can do. He holds up two fingers to the barmaid and places two bob on the counter.

76 ***** ‘Cranky Mulligan begins swearing loudly as soon as he gets to the middle of the street where Ahmed is standing. Tommy jumps up from where he’s just got comfortable sitting on the pub stairs and hurries over to stand beside Cranky. Not too close, but close enough that he’s right there if anything turns into a show. Ahmed leads off, taking them to the back of the utility where Lil is talking softly. Another woman is suddenly visible, climbing down out of the back of Cranky’s Model T with Abraham. ‘What the bloody hell!’ Cranky roars, incensed by so many people treating his car like they owned it. They all stare at him and frown. He strides up to the back of the ute and looks in. Rebekah lies there delivered of a baby. A very pink baby, wrapped in a shimmering silk, oriental shawl, it nuzzles at her breast. Her face is plastered with hair, sweated into place. She smiles ineffably at Cranky. His face twists, his jaw drops, he is almost struck dumb. Almost. But he manages. ‘Jesus bloody Christ!’ repeating the words in awe-struck wonder. ‘Jesus bloody Christ!’ Rebekah smiles at that, almost a girlish giggle of accomplishment and relief. Cranky joins her awkwardly. Abraham however, does not see things the same way. His face, which has been a study in wonder, drops, hardening. Cranky on the other hand becomes inspired and animated. Fishing around in his pocket he pushes his hand deep, coming up with a two pound note. He holds it out to Abraham. ‘Congratulations, mate,’ Cranky enthuses. ‘Is it a boy or a girl? Here take this, a Christmas present, for the little ‘un,’ Cranky has altered totally. His changed disposition is reflected in his body, which has become an animation of delight— his legs and arms all skittering to do something to express his unexpected joy.

77 But Abraham scowls at this further insult. He neither takes the money nor shakes Cranky’s proffered hand. Tommy moves closer to Cranky’s side. Ahmed, noticing the tension also, steps up, almost between the two. Abraham looks like a man coiled with violent intention. Rebekah calls to him urgently, her voice making soft music of his name. She speaks quietly to him in his mother-tongue. Ahmed moves again, placing himself between Abraham and Cranky. He takes the money from Cranky’s still outstretched hand and places it, carefully as an offering, on the bedclothes. He bows his eyes before mother and child. Then he turns to Cranky, who is making neither head nor tail of the behaviour of the mad buggars around him. Ahmed breaks the awkward silence. ‘You have offended him,’ he says. Cranky stands amazed. ‘Offended?’ he splutters. ‘Yes, offended,’ Ahmed continues. ‘He is a Jew, and she too, and the child. They are all Jews.’ Cranky is still at sea, his face blank. ‘So...?’ he begins again. ‘So,’ finishes Ahmed, ‘You swore at his first born. If you didn’t mean it as a curse then the fact remains you have referred to the child as Jesus. And next you offer the child a Christmas present.’ The bewilderment shows in Cranky’s eyes. His whole body slumps into its everyday resignation. Ahmed realises he must explain as though to a child. ‘Jesus was born a Jew but he was Christ. He began Christianity. He left the Jewish faith and started his own. He was a deserter in the eyes of the faithful. He was a deserter,’ Ahmed repeated. At last the penny dropped for Cranky. ‘So callin’ the kid Jesus isn’t good?’ ‘No, no,’ Ahmed continued. ‘And no Christmas. Christmas was when Jesus was born. Jews do not celebrate Christmas.’ Cranky looked at

78 Rebekah and then Abraham. He opened his mouth to say the usual but stopped himself in time to replace it with, ‘Jeez, sorry, no offence, hey, Abe.’ He offered his hand to Abraham again, around Ahmed, who still stood intervening between them. Abraham glanced at his wife and son. She spoke to him in music again. ‘I am taking none,’ he said grasping Cranky’s calloused hand and smiling tentatively with relief. Tommy, who’d watched this scene in silence piped up, asking Abraham, ‘So, do you and the Missus have a name for the young ‘un?’ ‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘Yes. Rebekah,’ he said, looking once more at his wife, ‘Rebekah would like to call him Shalom.’ ‘Cripes that’s a bit of a mouthful,’ Tommy laughed adding quickly as he noticed an imperceptible change in Abraham’s expression. ‘Does it mean something?’ ‘It means ‘peace’,’ Ahmed answered for him. ‘Then that’s a bloody good thing to believe in,’ Cranky agreed. ‘A bloody good thing.’ ‘It is not enough to believe,’ my mother said, so softly that her voice could have been mistaken for a cradle-song. ‘My wish for my Shalom is that he may live it.’ ‘Hear, hear,’ Tommy agreed, quietly putting another pound note with Cranky’s. ‘A birthday present.’ ‘And also from me,’ Ahmed added his gift, muttering almost inaudibly, ‘Shalom, God-willing, little one.’ ***** ‘Between the three of them,’ Shalom continues, ‘and the drunk shearers, Lil, the midwife and the publican and his missus, I made thirteen quid on my first night in the world. Father still skites about it! My parents

79 had never seen so much money in one place since they’d arrived in the country. But by the time Cranky went back into the pub to wet the baby’s head and the story got told a few times, I was Jesus whether Father approved or not. Of course he came around in time. And,’ Shalom says, laughing, ‘I had no choice about taking up as a jockey either. I bought me first horse when I was two days old, right after it came in dead last in the Boulia Stakes at the Boxing Day Races. The choice was sell to Father or the knacker’s yard. We, sorry, I, got him for two quid. The bargain of all bargains! He pulled us round in the old caravan for years,’ Shalom continues. ‘It took a while, though, to train a racehorse in full feed to take a harness. He was always kicking and pig rooting and wanting to bolt or something so Father called him Cranky!’ He winks and Jimmy Bostock laughs. He laughs so hard he nearly forgets about what the war’s done to him. ‘Must be my shout, hey?’ Shalom says, slapping Jimmy on the back and taking up the empty glasses. ‘No. Not for me,’ he answers standing up quickly. ‘Why not?’ Shalom asks in surprise. ‘No thanks,’ Jimmy repeats. ‘But can you do me a real favour and fill up my tank and get me a couple of jerry cans of fuel?’ ‘What! Now! Tonight?’ Shalom asks raising an incredulous eyebrow. ‘If you could. I’ll just get me gear, then have a feed when Flo has it ready, then hit the road.’ ‘What’s the rush? It’s Christmas,’ Shalom reminds him, but Jimmy’s mind’s made up. ‘I’d really appreciate it!’ he pushes. ‘Some peace I’ve gotta make for myself in Sydney.’

80 ‘All right. When a man’s gotta go, a man’s gotta go, and I’m going too!’ Shalom replies, turning to get the fuel ready. Jimmy put his hand on Shalom’s shoulder. ‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘I don’t know how to put it in words, but tonight...’ Jimmy founders, unable as he said, to make words of it. ‘Father always reckons,’ Shalom offers, ‘that it takes a lot of time sometimes to get ready, but it takes a lot more good sense to know when you are. You look like a man who’s ready.’ Jimmy shakes Shalom’s hand. ‘Shalom for Christmas anyway,’ Shalom says smiling deeply, ‘And good luck with what you have to do!’ ‘Yair and Happy Birthday,’ Jimmy replies, but he’s already thinking about how much it might hurt if he isn’t ready, he’s already deciding how it might be easier if he simply never faces the past. *****

‘So, that’s the full story!’ Charlie winks at Chookie. ‘How about another beer?’ But Chookie has a lot of thinking to do. About them both— Slim and now Jimmy too. ‘Lucky I don’t gossip isn’t it?’ he says absently as he gets to his feet, ‘Never know what you might say or who might hear you.’ He pats Charlie on the shoulder and quickly leaves the bar. Charlie stares a dull, one-eyed stare after him. He’s thinking about Jimmy. He wonders just how much Eileen knows.

81 Act 3 In the sameness of their days

Miss B. Flat (never Beverley but in happy times Miss B.), Conductor and Musical Director of the Emu Park and District Amateur Choral Society Inc. had her dander up. She was rousing at the nine child members of the choir, ‘If you children do not calm down and stop acting the ninny we might as well all go home.’ We hung our heads in collective shame. ‘I’m sick and tired of coming here to work on serious music-making only to have to put up with your childish prattle and your playing the goat,’ she ranted. We scuffed the legs of the pew in front. We gazed, suddenly awe-struck at the beauty of the mysterious stations of the cross pinned to the walls. We searched our pockets for the lost coinage of humility, or at least a lint- covered gobstopper. Anything to escape the withering disdain of our Conductor. Suddenly, utterly unexpectedly, but to our overwhelming collective relief, a bespectacled old lady rose to her feet in the pew behind us. It was dear old (nearly 90 my Mum said), half-blind Mrs O'Dowd, long-term provider of gobstoppers to child choir members during rehearsal breaks. Her hand brandished her music before her as though it were evidence in a court case. The amputated stump of her other forearm, her real point of power, she held to her hip. The attitude of a woman not to be denied. She turned her gaze sharply to Miss Flat, ‘Acting up my foot!’ she began. ‘They’re just being children, bless them. Goodness gracious, let them have their little games. Weren’t you young once too!’ We child choir

82 members sat in the same dumb amaze as the choir men, choir women and alto choir members. No one spoke against the authority of choir hierarchy. No one gainsaid Miss Flat, ever. For it to be Mercy O’Dowd of all people. I had never, no one had ever, heard her so much as speak during a rehearsal, let alone contradict a statement from the Conductor. Miss B. Flat drew herself up to her full height and dignity and spoke from the pulpit, ‘If it were you making all that noise and disturbing the rehearsal so, I’d have to have you disciplined too, Mrs O’Dowd.’ You could have heard a pin drop in the church as the entire choir turned to face Mercy O'Dowd. ‘Discipline my eye,’ she retorted. ‘Why would you want to discipline me, or anybody, except to prove how important you are, perched up there so high and mighty. Besides which...’ she added, standing above the awe- struck, upturned faces of the choir— faces registering delight, wonderment, or dismay depending on their choir-faction lights. ‘Besides which,’ Mercy repeated, ‘they’re not a problem, bless them. We should let them go and make their noise, and we should just sing louder so we can’t hear them.’ The children who’d been causing all the disturbance were equally reverent, uncertain where this unasked for, blessed intervention on their behalf was leading. But Miss Flat was not finished with disciplinary matters. ‘I am sorry, but you are wrong there, Mrs O'Dowd!’ The whole choir looked back to Miss Flat like a crowd at a tennis match. ‘I am not acting high and mighty,’ she replied archly. ‘My role is integral to the art of the choir. A choir,’ she continued warming to her theme, ‘has a particular genius to it. That genius is, that it is one hundred or even one thousand voices singing as one voice. I raise my hand, we are

83 ready. Yes, I am in control, but someone must be. We must agree that I am that one person, elected by the choir committee to be Conductor. I lower my hand and we sing, through one mouth, one set of lungs, one larynx and one diaphragm. Without their Conductor, a choir is nothing. Without discipline a choir is worse than those... those...’ she floundered, searching for a name. ‘Than those Rolling Stones!’ she finished triumphantly. At the last word the spell was broken. The offending children tittered behind their hands at the word diaphragm. Miss Flat glared at them and their smutty little prepubescent minds. ‘Besides,’ she continued, ‘you can see how they continue to interrupt once they are encouraged.’ But Mercy O'Dowd, once begun on this subject, was unstoppable, much to the delight of the choir members, who were enjoying the debate after the initial shock of it happening at all. ‘It’s you encouraging them,’ she fired back. ‘Besides they’re not interrupting, they’re just putting on a show,’ Mercy insisted. ‘And how, pray tell, do you suggest we stop them without discipline?’ Miss Flat thrust her question at Mrs O’Dowd, their wills contesting, as brittle as old women's bones. ‘Well, what about, if they keep on interrupting we all just get up and leave. Remove the audience. Non-violent non co-operation. We can all go outside and sing in the street. They can stay in here. Ten minutes at the outside and they’d be out there with us, behaving.’ Mercy stood up as though intending to make good her suggestion, closed her music folder, placed it down on the pew and hung her handbag over the stump of her left forearm just below the elbow, where it drew attention to the left sleeve of her long-sleeved floral dress, how it was neatly folded and pinned back to itself with a safety pin to the elbow. ‘Now

84 Mrs O’Dowd,’ Miss B. reproved from the pulpit. ‘You are being simply petulant and childish yourself.’ At this Mercy spun to face her superior. ‘If I am childish it’s a good thing!’ she snapped. ‘But there’s no reason for you to go name calling and accusing people, Miss Flat. I don’t like it and I will not stand for it!’ Whatever had started her off, Mercy had really got her back up. But Miss Flat was no slouch herself in the dander-up department. We all knew it, having seen her in full flight whenever we mucked around. The choir held its breath— in unison. Miss Flat opened her mouth to begin. The choir strained forward in anticipation. When the voice came, it belonged to Chookie Fowler, President and long serving stalwart of the Emu Park and District Amateur Choral Society Inc.. ‘Miss Flat,’ he called up to the pulpit, also climbing to his feet to add stature to his suggestion. ‘Miss Flat, we have been singing for close to an hour now, perhaps we could have a break!’ Shaken from the enraged intensity of one compiling a withering reply Miss Flat looked daggers at Chookie who returned a calm but equally steel-eyed gaze. Finally she quailed under the President’s stare. ‘I suppose we could take five minutes.’ Chookie glanced quickly at Mercy, undertaking a lightning resentment check. ‘How about ten minutes?’ Chookie suggested firmly. ‘Good grief,’ Miss Flat exclaimed. ‘Why not! It’s not like we’re getting anywhere here.’ She turned and began her unsteady dismount from the box which raised her head and shoulders above the top of the pulpit. ‘Ten minutes everyone,’ Chookie called. ‘That’s back here at ten past nine,’ Chookie looked around satisfied. The choir immediately broke up into twos and threes, gossiping wildly about recent events. When instructed to take a break, Mrs O'Dowd sat straight back down.

85 I sidled up along the pew towards her. I knew I was safe for two reasons. One, I was 10, so still young enough to fall into the child category and two, I’d been mucking up all rehearsal and I figured from the way she was sticking up for us I was on a safe bet. Mrs O. chuckled as she opened her handbag. She seemed miraculously unaffected by any resentment about what had just happened. She removed a small white lolly bag from the depths of the bag. That was the other reason I would be all right. Mrs O. always handed out lollies at rehearsal breaks. The other kids were scared off by what had just happened. They’d cleared off outside onto the street. ‘Like a sweet?’ she asked, proffering the bag of gobstoppers to me. I took one. They were three for five cents or two cents each at Chookie Fowler’s. That amount of money was too rich for my blood. I always bought snakes or milk bottles. You got a much fatter bag for your money. ‘Ta,’ I said, taking the lolly and stuffing it into my gob quickly before she changed her mind. She laughed at that. In fact to me Mrs O. seemed almost unchanged from her usual self. Not like someone who’d just engaged in a battle royale. ‘Thanks for being on our side,’ I said, sucking noisily on the sweet marble in my mouth. ‘I’m not really,’ she answered. ‘Really you children should behave yourselves or Miss B. will have an apoplectic fit.’ I decided I just didn’t get Mrs O’Dowd at all. ‘Well why did you say those things you just said to Miss B.?’ I asked confused. ‘About us being allowed to muck up?’ ‘It’s just that I can’t abide her ordering people around. It’s that schoolmarmish tone of voice. It’s just not right. Sometimes, just sometimes, when I hear that tone I just can’t help it.’ Her eyes, the same that twinkled

86 like Santa Claus a moment before, were in deadly earnest now. ‘That and the fact that you are children, so that’s doubly important.’ I was more confused. She was confusing me. ‘You’re confusing me,’ I said. ‘What’s so double important about kids?’ ‘I know that I like kidding about,’ Mrs O. answered, emphasising the joke with a smile. ‘But I don’t have much of a sense of humour when it comes to people mistreating children.’ Just as quick as she was happy, she fell serious again. I couldn’t keep up with her changes. ‘Two of the kids mucking up were Miss B.’s kids though, Mrs O'Dowd,’ I ventured. Her reply was swift, terrible and unexpected, like the God in The Battle Hymn of the Republic. ‘All the more reason not to rouse on them. People who can’t look after their children shouldn’t be allowed to have them.’ It was clear Mrs O. was angry, but for the life of me I had absolutely no idea why. I didn’t mind talking to her anytime, but it was better when she was laughing and giving me sweets and not getting all hot under the collar. As she was being talkative though, I thought I’d try my luck. ‘Mrs O.,’ I asked smiling at her scowl, ‘Mrs O., what happened to your arm?’ She sighed. It was a long sigh. I could feel the anger flowing out with it, like the tide across Fisherman’s Beach. Her shoulders slumped. ‘It was a long time ago now,’ she began. Then she looked at me suddenly, shrewdly. ‘Why do you want to know, anyway?’ she asked. ‘Because,’ I said, hoping I wouldn’t say the wrong thing because she seemed bothered again and I didn’t want to make it worse. ‘Because,’ I answered, ‘I always wanted to know, but when I asked Mum and Dad, they just said you had to have it cut off. When I asked them why, they said they weren’t sure. But I can tell when they’re lying. I’m not stupid, you know.’ It

87 was the right thing to say. Mrs O’Dowd put the sweets back in her bag, then closed the clasp with a snap. ‘It’s a bit of a story,’ she said glancing at me to check my interest. I didn’t speak, so she began telling me, ‘It all started with a brown spot on the back of my forearm just above the wrist. I noticed it first when I was doing the washing. Nothing really to take any notice of, it was only the size of a small fingernail, besides I didn’t have time. I was recently married to the most handsome man in Townsville. I had two children under the age of five with a third on the way. It was war time. The First War. It was a horrible year. The year Gallipoli happened. ‘Slim, my husband, was desperate to go. Some of his friends had enlisted and were in the Gallipoli show that year. I had a devil of a time convincing him that he had other, more pressing responsibilities, with the children being so young and all. To them and to me. I was never sure though, that his sense of duty to King and Country, which I knew gnawed at him like a hungry rat, would not suddenly chew through all that bound him to us. That one day he’d be missing and I’d receive a letter from Brisbane or Sydney saying he had joined up and he was sorry. ‘But you know the saying, ‘still waters run deep’? It was written about Slim. He was a gentle man, and reserved. He had a poetic soul. He wooed me with Shakespeare sonnets. He became a fisherman later on, after the war, when the children were gone. Fishing would have suited him. Given him time to think. ‘But all that was much later, I’m getting ahead of myself. It was close to a year later that I was at the copper, yet again, boiling nappies, when I noticed the brown spot was almost twice as big as the last time I’d really looked at it. I had to take Edna, she was the new baby, to the clinic so I

88 thought I’d see Doctor myself while I was there. The surgery was right next door. I made the appointment. ‘Doctor Wainwright was very thorough. A genuinely nice man and a good doctor. He looked sober as I told him how I began to notice my spot. I was worried it might be a sunspot. He took my arm, examining it closely. His face grew grave. ‘Mrs O’Dowd,’ he began again. ‘I am writing you a referral to a specialist in skin diseases. This specialist fellow will be visiting Townsville within the month. You must be absolutely certain you remember to attend.’ He emphasised the ‘absolutely certain’ part as sternly as a school Headmaster. I bristled, but he knew me too well. ‘Please, Mercy,’ he added softly. ‘Please tell me you will do it?’ He glanced at me keenly, aware I still remained unconvinced. ‘Please? For me!’ he finished. ‘‘Because you asked me so nicely, Doctor, how could I refuse?’ I smiled to meet his smile of relief. He knew he’d made his point. ‘But what do you think it is, Doctor?’ I asked, hoping for an immediate indication while he was in a good frame of mind. But he merely smiled a careful smile and said, ’We’ll both just have to wait and see. But as you know, time flies when you’re a new mother, Mrs O’Dowd. It won’t be long.’ ‘In two shakes of a lamb’s tail and a thousand nappies later, there I was, talking to a surprisingly old fellow from Brisbane with a lot of questions and a lot of sage head-nodding. He took some samples and told me the hospital would contact me. Another month passed. By now my brown mark was almost as long as a dolly peg. And I could feel it, as though it were a bandage or a piece of cloth laid over me like another skin. Even though my arm has gone I can still almost feel it now.‘ She paused, a far away look taking her. The memory, or something, passed a shudder through her whole body. ‘But nothing could have prepared me for the letter.

89 ‘Slim was away— he was a fettler on the Western line so he was often away during the week. The letter was signed by the tropical skin diseases man, on the letterhead of the Queensland State Department of Health. The letter informed me that within fourteen days of its receipt, I was to report to the Townsville Base Hospital. The letter informed me that I was to report with a small suitcase of clothes and “minimal other personal belongings as may be necessary”. The letter stated that while inconclusive, it was highly probable that I was afflicted by leprosy. For the purposes of the Leprosy Act, 1892, I was classified a leper, which classification allowed for me to be “detained and isolated for the public good”. ‘I was a leper. I fell into a deep shock. It was as though I was walking with a lantern on a dark night when a black wind suddenly blew out the flame that lit my way. I stumbled in the darkness, but I did not fall! I dressed the children. I staggered to the doctor’s surgery. I argued in the waiting room with poor dear Nurse. I insisted on an appointment immediately. I handed the letter to Doctor. He read it quickly, looked up at me and said, ‘Oh Mercy, not you. I so hoped it wouldn’t be you.’ Then he stood, and I stood, and the dear man hugged me in a most unprofessional manner for which I am eternally grateful. Then I began to cry. ‘I cried so much they had to call for a row boat to get me out of there!’ Mercy O’Dowd laughed almost merrily at her joke. ‘Nurse took me out to the surgery kitchen where she gave me a very sweet tea and two glasses of sherry. When I was once more in control of my senses (well, more or less as I don’t take alcohol too well at the best of times) I told Doctor that Slim did not yet know. Bless him, there and then he wrote a telegramme and, at his cost, had Nurse send it to Slim. I still have it somewhere— “Worst News For Mercy Stop Come Home Now Stop”. Poor Slim, the shock

90 must have nearly killed him, ‘ she laughed, almost gaily it seemed to me. I simply could not understand her. I mean I knew nothing about leprosy except that if you touch one of the lepers you catch it and then all your fingers, toes and even your arms and legs fall off. I couldn’t see how anybody could sound happy telling such a sad story about their life. I shook my head. ‘What, Doubting Thomas, don’t you believe me?’ she smiled softly. ‘Oh no Mrs O’Dowd, I believe you. It’s just that I can’t believe that you are laughing about it. If that happened to me... I don’t know, I think I’d still be upset or something.’ ‘You’re right,’ she said smiling gently at me again. ‘For a long time I was sad. Then I became angry and the anger ruled me for years. I hated the world for what it had done to me. You know,’ she laughed again, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘I was sent away to the Lazaret on Peel Island for twenty years. Twenty years— 1915 to 1935.’ Not once did I leave the island, except to have my arm amputated. I was a leper. An outcast. Untouchable. The anger did not stop until after I left. Not until I’d faced the people who sent me to that place. ‘Only twice, once each year for the first two years, Slim and the children made the trip south. A thousand miles on the train, and then only Slim was allowed to visit. Children under the age of sixteen were forbidden to set foot on Peel Island. Slim did bring me the most beautiful photographs of them though. Before I left the Lazaret I had a special table in my quarters covered with photographs of them. How my little chickens grew in those years. How I missed them. How I missed their faces, their laughter, hugging them close. More than my life I missed them.

91 ‘If the truth’s told, though, I was surprised that Slim came at all. It was such a struggle with three young children and a job, to take them on such a long journey. In the early years of my being gone my mother looked out for the children. But she was quite elderly. I was an unexpected only child, come late after years of marriage. First Father died, then she. Slim’s family were no better placed, his own father having died quite young. His mother was a dear woman but prone to attacks of the nerves. She had several breakdowns in her time. But that’s not why I was most surprised to see Slim when he came. Mostly I was surprised because of the look he’d given me the last time I had seen him. I’d reported to the Townsville Base Hospital as ordered. Slim stayed with me all the while, worried, I think, that they might whisk me away in the middle of the night without him having the opportunity to say goodbye. They assured us that was not the case and they simply needed some time to make final arrangements for my isolation now I had turned up. Often, apparently, lepers would do ‘a runner’ and so the Authorities had decided to apprehend them first, before they had that chance. Because of that they didn’t organise things before the patient was actually detained. ‘Two days later a policeman arrived. I was informed that, as a leper under the Act I was required to be transported to isolation at the Lazaret at Peel Island. I was devastated, but Slim was simply overwhelmed. We clung to each other in shock as the Doctor informed us of the conditions of my detention. I was so glad we’d left the children with my mother. I couldn’t have borne them hear all this. ‘At all times I was to have a police escort. It was then that I first realised, when faced with the reality of an armed policeman to escort me, that it was a life sentence on which I was embarking. When Slim heard that

92 a policeman was required by law, he became quite without restraint. He made a frightful scene. But I determined there and then, that to be outcast by destiny was one thing, to be made a prisoner of fate was something I would never allow myself to be. I still had my dignity. At the hospital I was to be placed in a prisoner’s van for removal to the ship. I refused to get in the back like a common thief, finally being allowed to sit up front with the driver, my police escort beside me. They let Slim get in the back. Only dearest Slim came to see me off at the wharf. My people and my children? I could not face seeing them again. I never said goodbye to them. I couldn’t then, though I knew it was wrong. I’m much stronger now. I clung to Slim as moss to a rock, but my escort forced us apart. Slim was in tears, though I was beyond them. The policeman walked me up the gangplank and directed me towards the forward deck. I thought this strange at the time, because the cabin portholes and other passengers were clearly visible at the rear of the ship. ‘There on the forward deck, tied down firmly by hawsers, was a crate about twice the size of an on-end piano crate. A door slid down from above at one end to close it. I could see the padlock to bolt it firm. It looked like the cattle trucks I had seen for shipping livestock. The policeman directed me with a nod toward the door. Inside I could see a small cot and two buckets, one full of fresh water with a tin cup chained to its side and one to serve no doubt as a toilet. I was shocked to anguish. I turned to see Slim standing there on the quayside. The look on his face at my humiliation was too terrible. I could not fight them. I hadn’t any more strength. I went into the cage meekly like a well-trained milking cow, without looking back at Slim again.

93 ‘Seven days our journey took. It seemed we stopped at every tin pot port down the entire length of the coast. For the first three days, despite the entreaties of my gaoler, I would not eat. For three days, three times a day, a crack would appear beneath the door through which food was pushed on a tray. He behaved as though I was a dangerous animal which could kill or maim him if he showed the slightest compassion toward me. When he took the untouched food away and refreshed the water, he asked for the toilet bucket. I told him to come and get it, moving it deliberately away from the door. I admit it was a foolish act of defiance but it was all I had. When he had picked me up from the hospital he had touched me freely, now when my condition was a public matter, he seemed afraid to enter what had obviously become in the small public mind of my fellow shipmates— my lair. ‘By the end of the third day of my confinement I was beyond desolate. I was angry. I was ready to eat, for revenge. I began by taunting him. ‘I want this toilet pail removed from in here. It’s a fetid, stinking mess. Even prisoners have their filth removed. Come to think of it, even prisoners are allowed to walk out in their chains.’ ‘Mrs O’Dowd, please place the pail by the door where I can get to it, there’s the ticket,’ he replied. ‘I certainly will not be touching it, it’s filthy. You come and get it.’ ‘Be reasonable, Mrs O’Dowd,’ he began. ‘Reasonable! Reasonable!‘ I screamed at the poor man. ‘I’ve hurt no- one. I’ve committed no crime. I am not violent and yet you treat me worse than the most vicious murderer. You’ve given me a life sentence. Why don’t you just hang me and be done?’

94 ‘That’s not fair and you know it, Mrs O’Dowd. I don’t want my bits and pieces to fall off,’ he remonstrated gently. ‘Well it’s too late because you’ve already touched me,’ I derided him. ‘So you will suffer!’ The truth of it was, that at the time, I believed that’s eactly what would happen to me as the disease progressed. Now I’d touched him, I believed it would happen to him just as surely as it had to me. I knew nothing about the illness, and nobody told me anything. I did not know even if I would, or could, survive. Just then my gaoler reached in to change the water bucket. I slumped back sweating on my cot, the smell of my filth blackening the air. It was hot that April. The month the Anzacs failed. ‘By the fourth day the pail was brimming full. I asked him once more to clean the filth. He changed the water and said he’d be back for the plate. But I was ready for him. As he raised the door to take the tray I let him have it— the entire contents of the full pail sprayed out underneath the door just as he bent down to take my plate. Revenge felt so sweet. For all of those who had or would call me an animal, for all of those who said, “The leper shall dwell outside the camp.” Those who sentenced me to exile. I was outside the camp of human habitation, by necessity perhaps, but never beyond the camp of humanity, never!’ Mrs O'Dowd giggled infectiously. ‘You are so naughty,’ I giggled back. She smiled again. I began to too. She laughed as she continued, ‘He had it all over his nice, black, shiny police boots. All over his hands. Splattered up his trouser legs,’ she laughed aloud. ‘He raised up the door and stood towering in the frame, red-faced, fists clenched and scowling at me. I was so scared,’ Mrs O’Dowd admitted. ‘I dropped the bucket and leapt onto the bed, cowering in the corner furthermost from him. I swear by

95 the Almighty that I thought he would hit me. I had not thought of the consequences of taking my revenge. Only of the act itself. The look in his eyes, his fists. Finally he spat out, ’You disgust me. You and your kind!’ But you know, looking back now, even if he had hit me I would have done it all over again. ‘It’s a little known fact about leprosy that it badly affects the nerves. Whenever I was feeling low in the years to come if I recalled that statement, that look, it nearly finished me off. It would have killed me, I believe, if I didn’t have the children. Thinking about them may have made me despair at ever seeing them, ever holding my dearest ones again, but at least there was hope in that memory. And another life. ‘Which reminds me of the matron on Peel the day I told her of finding Matty James, his throat cut by his own hand. He was a good man, a good friend. I was overcome by grief, sobbing and sobbing, ‘The dead,’ matron said, ‘have no use for love. Save it for the living.’ ‘I have no-one to love here!’ I screamed at her. ’I have no life here. Everything and everyone I love lives their lives without me.’ ‘Then perhaps, dear,’ matron replied, offering the bitterest medicine I’d ever been forced to swallow, ‘it would be best to make the most of living here. Perhaps it would be easier to imagine that to all intents and purposes, they are all dead.’ ‘Of course that was much later in my stay,’ Mrs O’Dowd said. ‘And by then matron knew what had happened to Slim and the children.’ ‘I don’t mean to interrupt, Mrs O’Dowd, the story’s fine and everything, but you haven’t really told me about your arm,‘ I interrupted. ‘Well, well, dear, no I haven’t.’ She smiled, opening the clasp on her handbag and digging around for more sweets, I hoped, but coming up

96 instead with an embroidered hanky to clean the outside of her rimless glasses. ‘Oh the arm! That’s quickly told,’ she continued, replacing the hanky in her handbag which she shut with a loud snap. I jumped, laughing aloud anxiously. She looked at me in surprise and, to my relief, joined in. ‘The funny thing is, you see, dear,’ she began. ‘I never did have leprosy, but they still cut my arm off. I did have a large discoloured growth, as I told you, which was growing rapidly. It looked like leprosy but diagnosis was so difficult in those days. It turned out to be a type of skin cancer.’ I was gobstonkered. ‘You mean you were on that island place for twenty years but there was nothing wrong with you?’ ‘Well there was the growth on my arm and Hansen’s Disease,’ she added, patting me reassuringly. ‘That’s what they call it nowadays. Hansen’s Disease is very, very slow to develop. It can take thirty years before it is noticed. Twenty years on Peel Island was certainly twenty years longer than I’d like but,’ she shrugged. ‘There it is. It’s only an arm, only half an arm really. But the saddest part for me is Hansen’s Disease is not in the slightest bit contagious. Did you know that there are no recorded cases of any doctor or nurse who worked with lepers anywhere in the world actually contracting the disease?’ I was speechless all over again. ‘The actual amputation was the only time I left the island. It was three years to the month after I had arrived. They put me in a cage on a dingy tied behind the official Government supply launch and towed me like a dead whale to the Cleveland Jetty. From there I was escorted by a police officer in an ambulance to the Brisbane General Hospital. ‘The entire time I was so scared. I cringed away from them— staff, other patients. I thought they must know I was a leper. An outcast. Unclean. On that trip I realised how much I’d become what they told me I

97 was. When I got back to the Lazaret I knew in my heart I would never know my children again. Even if I saw them I was untouchable. How could I see them and not hug my darlings so tight to me. The reasons for my living. I cried once again on the day of my return, even after all those years when I’d cried myself to sleep missing them. Wanting to touch, to hold. Some mornings, clutching at my pillow, I’d wake from a dream that I was holding Gladys, or Mick, or dear little Edna so tight, that I’d close my eyes, willing the dream to come again but of course, it wouldn’t. ‘ Mrs O’Dowd sighed deeply before she continued, ‘But just when you think nothing can hurt you anymore, when you think you are dead to all feelings, something happens. ‘You know that Slim and I have not lived together for over thirty years. Never, in fact, after I came back from Peel. He had moved back here to The Park from Townsville so this is where I returned. There was nothing up there for me anyway. My parents were dead and there were only old acquaintances who knew my story too well to understand how to be kind. I could not face them. So I came to Emu Park. Rented a cottage in Hill Street. I felt more at home now near the sea. I knew it was over between Slim and me. I asked Edna, my youngest, to come and live with me but she said she was unable. I know now she was also attached to the bottle. But she’s better now. I went and found her and I brought her back. ‘I saw Slim many times but he wouldn’t, no, by the haunted look he gave me it was more likely he couldn’t, face me. For a thousand reasons: for not having visited; for having lost the children; for having lost himself. Of course I knew about our eldest, Gladys, bless her, but I needed to know exactly what happened before I could find a corner of the graveyard of my heart, to bury her in. Edna was an alcoholic and the youngest, Mick, left home at 14 and hadn’t contacted his father or sisters since. I found out

98 when I tried to find him that he had died in New Guinea on a coconut plantation. ‘I was so far away when all this happened. By then I had found it easier to live if I thought of the outside world as a dream but I never could accept Matron’s advice to think of them all as dead. So when I heard of Gladys’s death it was like another door slammed behind me in a dream. It was a dream in which I was walking a long, long corridor full of doors. At every door I stopped and glanced longingly in. In every room I could see the people I loved. I knew I could not enter the rooms. I was forced onward down the corridor, unable to stop or turn. Every once and a while, behind me, I could hear the doors slamming shut. ‘I cornered Slim in the Public Bar of the Pine Beach Hotel. It was blowing a strong south-easterly. He was drinking with some of his fisherman mates. None of them could go out because of the weather. He would not come out to face me. So I stood in the street and called in through the window. I hadn’t come so far, for so long, not to speak to him. But he refused to talk, hanging his head in shame. Finally I yelled so the whole pub and most of the town could hear, ‘Come out or I’ll hang out your dirty linen for the whole town to see!’ I had nothing left to lose. He came reluctantly. He must have been drinking for some time I guessed, from the slur of his voice. ‘What do you want, woman?’ he asked sourly, emphasising the ‘you’ viciously. ‘We might be married,’ he said brusquely. But it’s the words he said next I’ll always remember, ‘We might be married but you know that we’re both dead.’ Mrs O’Dowd sighed. ‘He was right, I suppose. I certainly knew what he meant. There are only so many doors can slam shut in a life before you’re dead forever.‘ She glanced sidelong at me, patting my head as

99 though I were a pet cat. ‘Thanks for listening,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone my story before outside the confessional. Now seems the right time somehow, and you seem the right person. You won’t judge me the way they do,’ she cast her good arm around the adult choir members. ‘I don’t mind listening,’ I offered as unconvincingly as I knew how. I let my mouth hang open a bit. I wiped my lips with the back of my hand. Apart from drooling like a dog, I don’t know what else I could have done to score a lolly. Mrs O’Dowd’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. ‘Would you like another sweetie?’ she asked. I nodded innocently. ‘Take one then,’ she offered, opening her bag to let me slip my hand quickly inside for another gobstopper. Grasping one I stuffed it into my mouth and sat back, content. ‘Now don’t say a word, bless you,’ she insisted. ‘I am enjoying this unburdening to someone.’ Mrs O’Dowd gazed off at the altar and began again. ‘Slim is a poetic soul. I like that about him even yet. When he told me what happened to Gladys he made her life seem somehow heightened, as though what had happened was more than real and she was less human and more tragic than she must actually have been. They say poets are off with the fairies but it’s all bosh. My Slim looked the world, and his own frailties, in the eye until his failings hurt him so much that he had to drown them like unwanted kittens. He says he can sleep if he drinks, without dreams. Anyway we sat in the park, at the picnic table underneath the Norfolk Pine that overlooks the sea. We sat side by side, a lifetime apart.’ ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he began, expecting me to blame him. He couldn’t have know how much I didn’t. ‘No,’ I said touching his hand. I felt him recoil at the touch of a leper.

100 ‘It wasn’t my fault I wasn’t here to help you with the children either. But I wasn’t, and you couldn’t, so here we are. There’s no sense to blame— no use, because we can blame whoever we like and we still have the guilt.’ He winced beneath my touch. I felt it. ‘I know you. I know you must be feeling it as much as I do. I can’t live with it. I should have been there for her, for you, for me. I should have. I can’t think straight about it. It’s too slimy to grasp. It’s like a jellyfish floating inside me. It needs me, like a jellyfish needs the sea, to give it shape. But I can’t live with it, Slim. The guilt’ll kill me. Look at you. Look at what it’s done to you already.’ Slim did not wince at my comment. He knew as I did we both suffered the same disease. ‘I have to start dealing with it somewhere,’ I said. ‘Tell me what happened to our dear Gladys and it’ll be my start.’ ‘Gladys only had one parent, her father,’ said Slim and I realised he could not bear to tell the story unless it seemed to be about someone else. Unless it wasn’t him. ‘A man beyond redemption. I heard no one ever speak well of him and she herself never spoke of him. If asked, he would say that her mother died when she was a child. After she died he ran away from his friends and family to here. ‘After she died, he struggled to pay the bills and raise three children. At first, with much help from her mother, he managed. But then she died too. Left to himself, he could not continue. He tried to cope. He tried to give them what he thought she would. He even imagined himself as Mercy, their mother, trying to think as she would, giving his untutored hands their mother’s touch, his tongue their mother’s voice. He even tried to teach his heart a mother’s love. But he failed. He was not strong enough for them. He could not be all things, so he became nothing.’

101 ‘No one expected you to be, Slim,’ I murmured. ‘No one expected you to be everything.’ Slim did not look at me. He gazed ahead at the milling sea. ‘He expected so much more of himself, he should have done better. There was no one else to blame for it. No one. For a short time in her teenaged years, he sent her to stay with his sister. But it was no use. By then she was as wilful as her mother. She ran away. She wanted only one thing, and that was to be married. That was always her one wish, to be married in the wedding dress her mother had left behind. To become a wife like her mother had been. To have her own children to care for properly too. ‘Even when she was a young girl and her father took himself off to the pub, she would play make believe dolls made from the round- headed pegs in the laundry. These she covered with lace she found in a sewing basket which had belonged to her mother. Once, when he came in quietly, he had overheard her speaking the parts in her play, ‘...as long as you both shall live?’ ‘I do.’ ‘She wanted to become her mother so she would have a mother. ‘You have to believe me, he tried to provide for her and Mick and Edna. He even brought home a lady friend once. A good woman, but the children, particularly Gladys, would not even try to warm to her. Edna would have, but Gladys poisoned her affection by comparisons with her ‘real’ mother. In the end he decided it was lucky that the woman left because she could never be expected to replace his wife. It would have ended in tears. Not that he considered marriage, the shame of such a final betrayal would have been too great for that. There were some things even he could not do. He decided, for the children’s sake that he

102 must simply try to be her, be their mother. But all Gladys wanted was to be exactly the same thing. Gladys wanted to be her own mother as well. ‘But it was more complicated in her late teenaged years, after she had blossomed into womanhood. And she did blossom. I sent you the photos,’ he continued. ‘Gladys would brush herself against him as a wife would, or press herself too warmly to him in a less than simple show of affection. He could see what was happening though, and pushed her further away, searching more and more for solace in the bottle. ‘That young woman kept house begrudgingly for her father and her brother and sister. But even they, her siblings, did not have a close or loving relationship. She didn’t want to be their mother just her own. They were a family in name only. And without guidance Gladys’ homemaking was a slipshod effort. Besides which, by the time she was seventeen her father was trying desperately to be rid of her. ‘Quite simply, by then he could not bear a woman other than his wife in his house, let alone one wanting so desperately to replace her. Encountering an interest from one of his drinking partners, Shorty Lear, in taking her off his hands, he needed desperately for her to acquiesce. But she was even more ready to become a married woman than he was to be rid of her. ‘By the time she arrived at her marital bed it was with very few material possessions and less love. Her father was a wastrel. He’d drunk all they owned and pushed her away because he was too weak to hold her, to love her as a daughter. ‘By this stage he had sold their house before the bank had the chance to foreclose on him. What money there was left after paying arrears on repayments, the loan principal and rates, was soon gone. He

103 took two adjoining rooms at the pub and secured a job there as a cleaner. But he did buy his children some nice things with the proceeds. He bought Edna a music box and a brush and comb set; Mick a set of leather-plaited reins for the horse he’d inherited from a boy who’d left town; and for Gladys a brush and comb set, a veil to match her mother’s old wedding dress and a honeymoon away for a week on one of the islands off the coast. ‘The wedding ceremony was to the point. The bridegroom she’d met on many occasions both in and outside the pub. In attendance, other than the groom and bride, were four other people: the priest; the bride’s father and Eileen and Chookie Fowler. Tubby Albertsen was out West. And her brother and sister of course. Some of the town ladies overcame their disapproval enough to gather in a knot outside the church, but no one else set foot inside. ‘There was a telegramme from her grandmother in Townsville which was delivered to her father's house the Monday after the affair. Gladys did not receive it from him until three weeks after the wedding. But she was grateful somehow that her nerve-shot grandmother thought well of her, or even thought of her at all. Her father was too weak, (or perhaps that’s not fair) perhaps he was just not merciless enough to tell her mother. The degree of mercy depends on how you look at it. ‘The spiritual celebration was brief. The priest congratulated the couple. Handed them the signed certificate and motioned them to kiss. The groom lifted the veil and kissed her cheek. His lips were thin as a snakes. Her cheeks were wet with tears. Her father never knew whether they were of joy. She replaced her veil and clung tightly to his arm, her other hand clutching the bouquet of flowers she had been given by Flo

104 Mills as she entered the church. The church was full of fresh flowers too, which must have been put there by her. In this manner they proceeded down the two front Church steps, through the desultory confetti thrown by the townswomen and into married life. The only photographs were taken by Mrs Florence Mills. Her father had not thought of that.’ ‘Slim stopped then and searched for his wallet. Finding it in his shirt pocket, he opened it, taking out a small black and white photograph which he handed to me. It was obvious as he handed it over that the photograph was now mine. She looked so beautiful, so very young. I began to cry. Slim fished out a handkerchief for me. ‘Here old stick,’ he offered, handing it to me. ‘It could have been worse,’ he said. ‘Shorty was a fair bit older than her. All right he was my age, old enough to be her father, but he had a house and a good job at the meatworks. She should have been all right. At least she wasn’t somebody's leavings. ‘The tin cans Mick tied to the backboard of Shorty’s Model T clattered unceremoniously all the way to the pub. I took the other kids up to their room before going to the pub myself. Little Edna was crying. I couldn’t stop her. Frustrated, I told Mick to do what he could with her and left. In all the years, I never lifted a hand against them. Never. You would never have done that, so I didn’t. Perhaps if I’d shown more discipline things might have turned out different. Shorty told me what happened next. ‘‘Coming in for a drink love?’ he asked, opening the car door for her. ‘‘No... thank you,’ she answered. She’d only ever been to the pub with me before. Sat outside on the footpath most of the time, or more recently upstairs in our rooms, minding Mick and Edna.

105 ‘‘C'mon!’ he urged, grabbing her elbow and pulling. ‘‘No!’ she said loud and finally. She pulled back and sat strongly and still. Mind of her own. Just like her mother. ‘‘Yair, all right,’ Shorty said losing some confidence. ‘You stay here, I'll be out in a minute.’ ‘An hour and a half later he returned, drunk, (we’d had a fair few), with two small beer bottles in each hand. She sat as he had left her. Sometimes she was good at waiting. Taking the bottles as he pushed them through the window at her, arranging them at her feet. Later at Sea Wind, you know Shorty’s old place out on the point, don’t you?’ Slim asked. I nodded, dumb with the weight of her story. ‘Gladys changed her clothes. She put on a pink shift, Shorty said. She wrapped her wedding dress and veil in separate tissue paper packages and placed them away in her suitcase beside the bed. I went there and got them after she died,’ he said. ‘I’ll give them to you if you want.’ ‘‘Have a drink,’ Shorty’d said loudly as she entered the kitchen. She decided it was a good idea and took the warm, bitter bottle he held out. She sat down and drank half of it quickly. ‘‘Almost time,’ he winked, moving his chair to beside hers, ‘for us to get to know each other better.’ His hand moved from her knee to her crotch, poking at her crudely. ‘‘Can I have another beer?’ she asked, draining the bottle to the lees and removing his hand as she had often in the past. ‘‘Too right, love,’ he whistled. ‘Too quickly she drained nearly two full bottles of the warm beer as she told herself that next time he would not stop and her father would

106 not, as he always had— even when drunk, stop the hands or the sour beer breath. ‘Gladys knew enough from school friends and from what she’d asked Flo Mills of what would happen to a wife in her marriage bed for it to neither surprise nor disappoint. As he grunted above her, sweating and pawing, she thought about her mother. Without warning she vomited forcefully over him, the agitation and warm beer too much for her stomach. He stopped and stared at her, his voice ugly with disgust. ‘‘You dirty little bitch!’ he said. As he strove to finish the job, she began to cry, sobbing in time. Perhaps marriage wasn’t all she had hoped. ‘When it was over, he washed himself in the tin tub on the verandah. She wiped herself with the sheets, stripped the bed and turned the mattress over. After a short search through unfamiliar cupboards she found more sheets. She told him goodnight as he lay back down. He pecked her cheek, then rolled away from her and slept. ‘The first few years of her marriage were not so bad. Shorty made his advances three or four times a week at first, but after a while his ardour cooled. After all, he was her father’s age. She told me this though I didn’t want to know. I certainly never asked her. ‘She found a place for all the things in his house. He gave her money and she planned meals and clothes. But she had no children to care for as a mother should. Mrs Mills visited from time to time as an acquaintance, but they never were closer than that— acquainted. ‘She did invite her brother and sister to visit, but neither of them could see the point. It’s my fault they don’t love each other like normal brothers and sisters should. But I couldn’t make them. Besides, after she

107 was married I was drinking more. And then the bastards took my kids from me because I was an ‘unsuitable father’. ‘Gladys offered to take them, but the Department refused. They said she was a child herself. Shorty tried to have them too, but it did no good, they took them anyway. They put your children in the orphanage without a whimper from their father— no thunder, no lightning, no scene. I just come home one night from the pub and they were gone. I found the official letter wedged under the door. ‘I know you won’t believe me, but I didn’t drink or sleep that night, I just howled like a bloody dog. Shorty dropped in on the way home from work. He found me like that. Came back later with some tea Gladys cooked. I ate it, but it come back up later. But, you don’t want to hear about me,’ he said wearily. He stretched back and talked of her again. ‘She made the house homely. Curtains from calico with bias binding. Later on, Shorty bought a good wireless and she’d sit with her tea and sandwich at lunch time and listened to Blue Hills and the classical spot after. She ironed the curtains and the sheets, his handkerchiefs and his underpants. She grew some veggies and flowers close to the house. She looked after Shorty’s fowls. Every day she waited for him to come home from the meatworks. His tea was always on the table at six o’clock. She no longer dreamed or pretended. ‘She found through experience that the days were quicker if she kept to strict routine. She looked forward to him coming home— but only because, she realised, this meant that the day was almost over. Sex, when unavoidable, was brief. Then came the part of the day she most enjoyed— sleep. She always slept well, dreamless and deep. The days,

108 when she described them to Flo Mills, were hollow as the drum of waves on the beach where she never ventured. ‘When our Glad found religion she had been married for three years. She found personal salvation in the Lord while listening to negro spirituals on the wireless after Blue Hills. It was as Paul on the road to Damascus, at least that’s how Flo Mills described it. Not a sign of it coming on— no ill health, no marriage problems, nothing, just one day— God. ‘But of course it wasn’t like that— not out of the blue— though that’s how it seemed. She had become the wife her mother never was, but she was barren, with a childless life spread to eternity before her. She would never be anyone’s mother. Her dream had not prepared her for this. She tried again to adopt children, even though Shorty wasn’t keen. But they wouldn’t let her. She was too young they said but I reckon someone in one section of the Department, talked to someone else in the Adoption Section about her family background, and that was that. ‘From the uncharted seas of a life without children she looked for comfort. She remembered her earliest memories with her mother. Of going to church on Sundays, dressed up pretty, like a doll. Sometimes, when the sea-wind sang, she felt her soul beating with the memory. Was not her mother now with God? The love of Christ through his mother, Mary seemed the perfect key to fit the emptiness that filled her. To open her heart again. ‘She found hope there, not hope to ever bear children, that would have been a miracle, just unfounded hope in things being more, of meaning more, than they seemed. She gave herself completely to her

109 husband, seeking the Lord’s revelation through the physical world. Her days were full of silent prayer that He would reveal His meaning to her, through her, His work. Her praise was silent and for some time satisfactory. She waited for Him to be revealed. After a while though, Shorty spent more time with me at the pub. ‘But her contentedness with God did not last long. Soon she found the nights blacker, unfolding to greater length than before. The Lord did not reveal himself compellingly. In fact He didn’t reveal himself at all despite her fervent midnight vigils. She began to not sleep. Sleep had always come easy. Sleep was her ease. Now the night became her disease. ‘It was then also that the sea entered in. As she lay awake or at the brink of consciousness, she could hear the sea on the shore. One day she found herself, in the morning before the breakfast washing up, breaking her routine. She went to the beach where she had before so irregularly been. Somehow that day, miraculously, the sea spoke in the voice of God. The surge and backwash at the edge, the chop in scattered wind, the lift and swell further out, the salt smell and the grey blue green. All His works were revealed in the voice of the water. ‘It was there, as her God revealed himself to her, she conceived of her plan to give herself to Him completely. Must not the wife of God be the mother of all souls? Is that not where she would find her own real mother? Would not all of them come to her for comfort by and by? And she would receive them with love. To give herself completely, in complete sacrifice to Him became her spiritual goal. She would be the wife, and in a miracle only revealed by the mystery of faith,

110 simultaneously the mother, of God. At least that’s what I imagine happened. I’ve thought about it so much for so long. ‘The next day, after he had left for work, it was winter and quite brisk outside, the sea a virulent blue. The islands dotted the bay from where she stood at her clothesline beside the weatherboards. She folded all the washing, filling the basket. She took it carefully to the verandah, placing it gently there. Then she went inside to change. ‘She took a knife from the kitchen drawer and cut an eight foot length from the clothesline. I know the length. The coroner gave it to the police who gave it to me because they didn’t think they should give it to Shorty. I burned it. The knife she placed in the washing basket. Looping one end she tied a slip knot, passing the other end of the rope through its circle. Bringing a bentwood out from the kitchen she teetered on it tying the rope, with difficulty, to the verandah rafter. She placed her neck in the noose. Then after a while, the gurgling wind picked up. It blew her against the weatherboard house, her left shoe knocking against the wall, her dress like an empty mosquito net. The lace veil slipped to blow across her face. Her right shoe fell to the verandah floor. Shorty found her. I never saw her body. They wouldn’t let me. ‘After the funeral I went to the wake at Shorty’s. He showed me the note. It read, ‘Gone to Mother’s. Home soon.’ I wrote and told you. She needed her mother because her father had failed. I haven’t even got the guts to kill myself quick like she did,’ he said. Slim turned his head to look at me but I couldn’t return his gaze. ‘He stood to leave. But before he left he had a final word. ‘You know when I was sitting there on Shorty’s verandah after the wake, I

111 could hear the sea wind knocking the trees against the house just as her foot had knocked and I could hear her whispering in a voice cut from the air, hushing through the power lines. But it wasn’t the sound of her voice even that disturbed me most. I was disturbed most by the closeness of the sea. It reminded me of her spirit, trying to get away, to go home. Try as hard as I like though, I can’t leave this bloody place to get away from it either. When I dream it fills me, but when I drink,’ he finished, ‘I don’t dream.’ ‘He left me by myself then,’ Mrs O’Dowd continued. She sighed, then she glanced at me, enquiring with her look if I was bored. I wasn’t. I’d decided to suck this gobstopper, not crack and chew it like the last one. I returned her smile, content to let her continue. I knew it was sad what she was saying, but I just didn’t really understand. I don’t think Mrs O. cared. ‘I sat there for some time, knowing at last what my absence meant. Knowing not just what, but how, it cost our Gladys and my Slim. That was the difference between Slim and me, he believed he had to take charge, to lead, to be right and strong. For him life was an adventure to be lived just like it was when he was a ten-year-old. But when things fell apart, as things do, he thought it was his fault. He was to blame, a failure, his duty unfulfilled. He couldn’t see that he was human too— just like our Gladdie, and dear, dear, she was just like him. ‘I didn’t think like that at all. Perhaps it was all that time I spent on Peel Island taking my own bitter pills. Of course I believed they were forced on me by someone else. I thought I had leprosy and that that was what fate had handed me. I had to live with what I was given. I thought my life was a torn rag. If I wanted to live half-decently as a human being,

112 I had to sew its tatters back together again. To do that I had to know the fabric was strong enough to take the stitches. I had to know the truth so I could begin to make myself whole. If only,’ she said, a sob now catching at her voice. ’If only I had been there to teach our dear, dear Glad how to sew.’ Mrs O’Dowd sighed heavily, but then suddenly, without warning, she laughed aloud. ‘But that’s all over now,’ she exclaimed. The change in her emotions startled me. I almost swallowed my gobstopper. Being with Mrs O’Dowd was like going to the park with me mates. First we’d be on the roundabout, spinning round so much trying to follow what was going on, until I felt so giddy I could hardly stand. Then we’d run off to the see-saw, bouncing up and down till I couldn’t tell what I was supposed to feel. Finally I shook my head. ‘Mrs O’Dowd,’ I said. ‘That story is so sad. That’s even worse than you not having leprosy... if you know what I mean. I mean I don’t know how you can still smile.’ ‘You’re right. Sometimes to smile is a great battle that takes the greatest effort. Sometimes it feels like it takes my whole being to overcome my anger and bewilderment at the world. But I win, I always win, because bit by bit I have sewed the past together again. When I’m sad it’s because I know there is much to be sad about. But when I’m done with sadness I can decide to smile. But only because I made them all apologise to me. ‘It was the exact same day that Slim told me about what happened to Gladys that I received an official letter from the State Department of Health. I was so frightened to look at it that I put it on the mantelpiece above the stove. For two whole days it sat there staring at me until I

113 plucked up the courage to open it. My hands shook so much I had to place it on the table to read it properly. It was signed by the Minister for Health himself. ‘‘Dear Madam,’ it read. ‘As you are aware you have been for some years detained at the Lazaret on Peel Island under the provisions of the Leprosy Act of 1892 as they pertain to the Detention and Isolation of Lepers. ‘’Section 8 of that Act provides for the discharge of persons proved not to be Lepers. As you are further aware you have been ascertained by this Department as not now, nor ever having suffered from, Hansen’s Disease. In the light of his information, and in recognition of your time spent at the Moreton Bay Hospital, I have decided to extend to you a one-off ex-gratia payment. ‘’Please find enclosed a cheque made out in the amount of £500. Presentation of this cheque will be deemed acceptance of the Conditions attaching to this payment.” ‘Another two pages were attached outlining the conditions of my acceptance, chief among which was that if I accepted the payment offered I could never sue the Government for wrongful incarceration. I folded the letter back up and placed it in its envelope back on the mantelpiece. There it sat for two weeks. Then I took it on the train to Rockhampton where I engaged the services of a solicitor to help me sue the Government. ‘You went to court, Mrs O’Dowd?’ I was full of admiration. To my knowledge only drunks, mass murderers and Ned Kelly ever went to court. I couldn’t picture Mrs O’Dowd there though, she was too proper, too sad, too ladylike somehow. Not that I’d ever been to court but I’d

114 seen it on the serials on Chookie Fowler’s television when he let us look at it. ‘Yes,’ she continued. ‘I went to court. More precisely the Government went to court because I forced them to. They didn’t want to hear what I had to say, bless them, but I said it anyway! ‘It’s a queer set up, court is, they all walk in dressed like half-furled umbrellas with white porcupines stuck on top. As soon as we’d all risen and the judge sat down, I stood up and insisted I wanted to speak. The judge, who looked to me more like he’d be better placed on a camp stretcher in a convalescent home than on the bench said it was highly irregular at this time in proceedings. He asked my legal fellow if I was making the case for compensation against the Government. My bloke said no quickly but I said yes, not as quickly but much, much louder. The judge glowered at me and then at my barrister. The Government’s man smiled wanly over his glasses at us. ‘Well which is it? Yes or no?’ the judge enquired of my barrister, who turned to look at me with the same question. I stood up. ‘I want to speak, My Lord,’ I said to the judge. ‘Calling him My Lord tickled his fancy. He smiled, ‘Your Honor is quite sufficient a form of address, Madam, the seat to which I have been elevated is not yet eternal, though I suspect some would delight in packing me off if I were to be called, or’ he added, ‘in some cases, even before.’ He peered over his glasses at the barristers and solicitors arranged before him, encouraging them to humour him in his witticism. They chuff-chuffed obligingly. ‘That’s just as well, Your Honor,’ I said tensely. ‘As I didn’t come here to pray but to speak to the representative of the State of Queensland.’ They all turned quickly to look at me. ‘Well,

115 please forgive me, Madam, then I am your man,’ the judge said, willing to laugh it off. ‘If I forgive you will depend on what sort of a man you turn out to be,’ I answered. The barristers thought this most amusing and looked away at each other, or at least down to their papers, so the judge could not see their smiles. ‘Madam,’ the judge said testily. ‘I understand you wish to address my court? I must advise you that it is for your protection that you should use the services of the advocate you have engaged to act for you.’ I glanced at my barrister fellow and shook my head violently. He shrugged his shoulders to the judge who sighed sadly. ‘I trust then, that as a lay litigant you will address yourself to matters of fact relating to the issue of compensation before me.’ He forced a slightly kinder look onto his face. ‘Yes,’ I said, not caring whether I had the right to speak or not. I had planned my day in court since the day I received the letter. ‘It is, Madam, highly irregular for an applicant to address the court in this manner and at this stage in the proceedings however, as I am running this court, and as I have the feeling we will hear from you at some time whether we wish it or no, I’ll hear you now.’ He nodded me on. ‘If you are asking me, My Lord, I mean Your Honor,’ I began. The judge waved benignly at me, brushing off my indiscretion with a nod. ‘If you are asking if the compensation I have been offered is adequate for twenty years of feeling more and more isolated, more and more like an outcast, more like a leper. If you are asking me whether the State has paid me enough for branding me a person to be feared, feared so much that no one would even come to visit me. If you perhaps, are asking me for the facts about whether the State is paying enough to salve its

116 conscience so it can wash its hands of me and put me back into society— as though I could ever possibly be normal, a one-armed, ex- leper. At least if I was black they could look right through me as if I didn’t exist. Oh yes I saw that too, even on Peel Island, even lepers want someone to kick. ‘If you are asking me whether the State has provided enough guilt- money for turning me, a grown woman and a mother, into a naughty child who would run off and hide in the bush just on curfew roll call so no-one could go to bed until they had searched the island from head to toe to find me? I did it not just so my gaolers couldn’t sleep, but really so something, anything, would happen to relieve the relentless sameness of our existence in that Godforsaken place. Then, perhaps. ‘Was it enough for my crying myself to sleep every night for seven years because my children were not with me, because you’d taken me away from them? Possibly. Enough for me conducting the choir to sing, Don’t Fence Me In or, My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean on the very occasional occasions when dignitaries visited? Maybe. Do you owe me anything for finding Matty James when he’d cut his own throat for no other reason other than there was nothing to live for? Yes! Yes!’ I yelled loudly, startling them all. ‘Yes you’ve paid enough for that. You’ve paid for all the things that did happen to me. You’ve offered to pay me £500. Enough to buy a cottage, that’s what I would have been paying for for twenty years if I was like everyone else. I thank you for that. It’s enough for me. But what about the other sums owing? ‘Do you have enough to pay me for what I haven’t had? For what you have denied me? Can you pay me enough for not having the love of my husband? A husband to caress me as a wife, to hold me when I was

117 frightened. Enough for nobody ever being game to simply hold my hand? Can you pay me for my longing as I searched for my children in dreams, so that at first I couldn’t wait for night to come to dream but that, as time passed, came so often they became nightmares that made me fear the sleep that was my only escape? Or could you pay me for yearning to hold them, to tell them I loved them, to teach them to sew, or knit, or sing, or prepare for marriage? Can you pay me for the fact that you must have known for years while you held me there that leprosy was not contagious? Can you possibly pay me for that? I don’t think so. ‘Well then, can you pay me instead for a husband who couldn’t cope with bringing up three children so he turned to the bottle until you told him he was unfit to be a father? Until you came and took my children away to live in a home, with strangers? I don’t think so. How could you compensate me for a daughter’s life, dead by her own hand when she should have, could have been, most happy if only I had been allowed to be there for her? Can you pay for what was not? Can you pay for those terrible, terrible absences? They grew up without me. Does it matter to you? To me it is more than my life’s worth. ‘If you wanted my life, My Lord, you have gone ahead and taken it. But my children? They did nothing to you. Did they frighten you so much that you had to lock them away from me, from their father, even from the world itself? You cannot ever pay me enough for what you did to them. You cannot pay for what I did not, could not, have never, had. You must tell them you’re sorry for taking their mother. That’s what you owe me. But you can’t tell the dead so you must tell me. This is your time, this is your place. Say you are sorry, officially. You can never pay with justice any other way.’

118 ‘Madam,’ said the judge. ‘Compose yourself.’ But I could not. I had been forced too far and I would not compose myself. Tears streamed down my face. I felt like a flood had engulfed me, the past had risen up in a huge wave and rolled me over and over and over, washing my life away. ‘Say you’re sorry!’ I screamed. I admit now I was completely unrestrained but something had broken inside. Once, when I had no choice, I would never have done such a thing. Then I did what I was told. But at that moment I was free to make my own decisions and I needed my old life to be washed away in my baptism to a life reborn. I flung the filth of my life at his feet. ‘Madam, please!’ the judge commanded with a hammer-rap. But I was inconsolable. So he adjourned the sitting until I had ‘regained my self-control’, asking the barristers to meet him in his chambers. My solicitor handed me his handkerchief, bless him, then took me out for a strong cup of sweet tea. When the court reconvened the judge would not meet my eyes. He was all efficiency, all according to Hoyle. ‘I order in the matter of O’Dowd vs the State of Queensland that compensation for wrongful detention should be, considering the circumstances in this case, set at £1000.’ Oh yes he was generous. Generous to a fault. It was a king’s ransome. ‘And the other matter?’ I asked quietly, not looking up to him. I could feel his eyes, all their eyes on me, but I hadn’t come so far to turn back now. I couldn’t stop and, I knew how to endure. I’d learnt that much from my gaolers. ‘Madam,’ he began, his voice gentling persuasively. ‘I personally am deeply sorry for what has happened to you. But I speak

119 here for the State. The State has compensated you for a wrong. You must infer from that action that the State is sorry.’ I looked up from my lap to his face. ‘I thought you were a good man, a leader of men, a judge. But you aren’t any better than the worst of them, weak and without fibre. If the State has wronged me say so.’ He opened his mouth to speak but I could tell from his look it wasn’t to apologise. Quickly I continued pressing home. ‘Who is this State you represent anyway? Isn’t it the men and women in the street? Are you suggesting that if I had the chance to tell my story to each of them in turn that they would not be moved, as you all have been? That they would not say, that they would not feel, truly sorry for what has been done to me and mine and damn to money?’ I gazed softly at him. ‘Then do your duty whatever the cost. Make beautiful again the State against its ugliness!’ ‘He held my gaze for the longest, longest time. I could see a niggling question chewed at him. I felt as I did when I’d thrown that toilet pail slop at my policeman gaoler, scared beyond sense that I had gone too far— but sure and safe in the knowledge that there was nowhere else to go. Finally he answered slowly, deliberately, ‘Madam, unused as I am to this type of argy-bargy from lay applicants in my court you have intrigued me. I must point out that I am an officer administering the law of the State and not of the body politic of the State. I am not a politician, Madam. I do not make laws, just or unjust, merely adjudicate on their meaning when applied to cases before me. But you have, as I said, intrigued me.’ ‘He took a deep breath before he continued, as though he needed the air to strengthen his mind. ‘It seems to me that the laws of a just

120 State should, in the best of all possible worlds, represent what an average citizen of that State, in full possession of all relevant facts in a case, considers by the exercise of their own, everyday judgement, to be right. After all that is the basis of our revered jury system.’ ‘He breathed heavily again as though considering the truth of his statement, testing the air as though to ascertain whether, when spoken aloud, his utterance was as clear-minded as his thought. Circling the argument to be sure the very act of breaking the silence would not render these much imagined, silent thoughts inane, or worse, worthless. ‘Further,’ he continued, ‘the laws of the State allow for fair and just compensation to be paid by the State if it is found to have wronged its citizens. But, as you have pointed out, what the average citizen views as right and wrong with regard to laws surely cannot only be counted in pounds, shillings and pence. Surely the scales of justice should weigh right and wrong, good and evil, just as the average citizen judges his fellow citizens in his everyday life, uncluttered by thoughts of commercial interest. ‘It’s only after right and wrong are determined that the scales of justice can measure the weight of injustice in everyday currency. So, Madam,’ he said drawing himself up to his full height on his high seat. ‘Thank you for your dissent. I believe that I am able to say that you were detained lawfully by the State, but subsequently, when the State came into possession of certain scientific facts and persisted in its detention of you it was in breach of its duty of care toward you and in violation of your rights as a citizen. Therefore Madam, as a consequence I believe that as an officer of the State administering its laws, I can apologise to you for the pain and

121 suffering, both in fact and in spirit, which you have endured. On behalf of the State of Queensland Madam, I am deeply, deeply sorry.’ He sat back in his chair with the look of satisfaction of a child who knows he’s done something of which his parents would be proud. Suddenly the judge added as an afterthought, ‘If I have erred in the facts of this matter then let the record show that I have erred in the interest of justice. And,’ he finished, turning to the Government men, ‘I would be obliged if the members of the Bar Table would be so kind as to give the same advice to their client.’ ‘Bless him, even as he spoke,’ Mrs O’Dowd said. ‘I felt the anger wash away like sin. The pain was still there for sure, if it is as deep as mine it must abide. I was no longer angry. I sat in the court for many minutes saying my prayers. For Slim, for Gladys, for Mick and Edna and for me. And then, just like that, it was over. I bought a house with the government money and Edna came to live with me. You know the alcohol and one of the men she knew mistreating her have made her a little simple, but I taught her to sew,’ she smiled. ‘Sometimes now,’ Mrs O’Dowd continued. ‘Sometimes now, when something happens or someone says something that reminds me of the past, the sadness comes. I can’t stop that, but it doesn’t own me now,’ she smiled. ‘Remember, whatever they do to you,’ she said to me, ‘they do to themselves. If they are wrong because they don’t have the faith to imagine what being right means, then to force them to imagine, is worth the added pain. I’ll always stick up for you because I can’t imagine it otherwise,’ she smiled. ‘If I err let it be said that I err on the side of happiness.’

122 ‘Oops! Look out! An angel has appeared on high,’ she laughed, pointing as first Miss B.’s hands, then her head, teetered above the top of the pulpit, her baton clenched firmly in one hand. Once secure atop her box Miss B.’s first action was to glower at Mrs O’Dowd, who gazed back with a look of bespectacled equanimity. I took what remained of my gobstopper out of my mouth and wrapped it carefully in my hanky for later. ‘Thanks for the sweets, Mrs O’Dowd,’ I whispered. ‘For the story too.’ ‘Bless you dear,’ she said, barely moving her lips and not taking her eyes from Miss B. for a moment. ‘Do you know the moral of it?’ she asked sidelong. ‘No,’ I replied uncertainly. ‘I thought it was just a story.’ ‘All stories worth their salt have morals,’ she whispered again. ‘This one’s that some people have despair forced upon them but others acquire it through inattention to their souls.’ She laughed loudly. ‘Of course I’m attending to mine a little too often, she thinks.’ Mrs O’Dowd pointed at Miss Flat. From the look on Miss Flat’s face, I thought she was going to explode. ‘I’ll remember that,’ I said, though I still had not the faintest idea what she was talking about. Then Miss B. raised her baton and, as we were trained to do when it dropped to the bottom of the beat, we sang.

123 Finale Come with me on a stroll through the unmown grass of my mind. It seems increasingly unkempt now, like a cemetery left to wayward grass. It is melodramatic, nostalgic, pedestrian perhaps, but at least it’s still mine for the time being. And it is full of the memories of the place in which the author grew to sense. Emu Park may be a less than not much place in many respects, but it is a place nonetheless, to belong. We are there now with the author, with his people, in the audience of his memory, at all his remembered Annual Concerts of the Emu Park and District Amateur Choral Society Inc.. Time being what it is we can make the leap backward to where the author sits beside Mercy O’Dowd wrapping his gobstopper in his hanky as he listens to the motto of her never-ending, boring story. A story that now means to him humiliation and pain, both of which are restrained by a supreme act of will in a performance that, if stopped for even a moment, would send the world of one old woman crashing. Just like all our other worldly, or even otherworldly, constructions of mind, of place, of belonging, of love. And, just as an aside, she will always be Mrs O’Dowd to the author, never Mercy— some people have earned that respect, perhaps due to attentions paid to their souls. To think Mercy’d never seen the inside of a church except during Choir rehearsals, but still she possessed the best-tended soul in the entire community gardening competition. As we drive over the hill into the middle of town, or walk toward it, we become increasingly excited. The whole town is atitter with

124 anticipation. But who are these people gathered here? They don’t gather at the river, they gather at the sea. Many of them have come to die here. Turned their backs on the business they ran in the bush, a cattle or sheep station, or a stock and station agency or, if of the working class, from a life as a roustabout, shearer, ringer, wool classer, drover, a labourer in a land where no one stays. They all take what it has to offer, then they leave. There are so few of them left now though, their culture is dying. This is their unpainted elegy, their tears of glass, here at the fin de siecle, the turn of their century. It may have been a shot in Sarajevo which killed the nineteenth century and an airplane bomb in New York which murdered the twentieth. But the culture of those centuries was already dead before their cataclysmic funerals. In Emu Park the death of a culture is a loose thread in a pair of woollen knickers at a choir rehearsal or the fate of a three-legged dog. The people of these memories are replaced now by retired coal- miners and sea-changers who, for some reason, expect this seaside place to provide them with entertainment. But they are insular and they do not sing. What rough beast, the author asks himself, will sing their dirge? But the older culture came to the sea to consider their works and the bitter-blue fading of their allegiances. They gazed on the sea with fear. They did not know it or belong to it, but still it called them. They came to find their true spirit before they died, never admitting they may have left it on their properties, though always fearing they had. In their attempt to belong they lived in houses named for the sea and the debt they owed to their ancestors who travelled it: Sea Wind, Elsinore,

125 Oceanus, Gilfillan, Zebulon. They named their houses to prove they were important things, like children, to prove that they were solidly here where they belonged. And they did find some spirit in the sea, perhaps we all do, a spirit beyond religion. A sea that is the symbol of the eternal. But when they gazed deeply upon its wine-darkness they found themselves spiritually between the Devil and the deep blue. Their minds had been taught to believe what their hearts did not know, that their Bonnie’s lay over the ocean. They were taught to believe they belonged over there. Here, they insisted, they did not really belong. Here was merely a business venture. After it was finished they went to the seashore to wait for their boat-ride Home only to find the boat had been scuttled. The crew had turned away to other business and had deserted them amongst foreigners. But they did not mourn overmuch. They were a practical people who filled their days with the work of the retired and at night they were used to making their own entertainment. But entertainment demands an element of seriousness when it is asked to fill the space between leaving and going. They wanted serious entertainment, entertainment that elevated the soul, so they might chance to find a glimpse of their spirit in it. That spirit they longed to know. So of course they sang, what else could they do? The songs they sang may not have been great art, but they aspired. In the Emu Park and District Amateur Choral Society Inc. they searched to look behind, beyond the meaning of their everyday lives to the meaning of the great abstracts— faith, justice, truth, beauty, goodness, belonging. They wanted the lyrics of their own songs to

126 explode in their minds beyond the actuality of their mundane everyday. Well, at least it was towards that end they aspired. But enough of this idle shilly-shallying, it is time to get on with the performance now. Let the author describe the setting. We have arrived at the front door of a white, weatherboard building. The ‘Emu Pa k all’ according to the sign out front. It is a lowset place with three steps up to the front porch which is groaning as we arrive with the weight of thick- handed retired bush men in clean clothes and younger men from the town, who cut meat or fish. They all wait to pay, while their women and children and some men prepare to sing, or prepare their children or grandchildren for their big night on stage. Whole generations have acquiesced for themselves and are now content to live vicariously through their children, hoping that they at least may find their souls belonging to this place. The dying generation need to know that when they look back on their lives, as they see the calendar numbers teeter, then fall inexorably forward, they need to know how to belong to their past. They need to know when they look at their history that the good is still there, writ large, ready to be transliterated into the words and customs of their children. They need time and history at their fin de siecle to be accounted for, for the equation to be solved, for the final piece to unlock the meaning of their patterned existence. They are men and women of action from an age past, fixed in their own orbit, but they still need desperately to belong. These men are waiting for tickets which are being sold by Chookie Fowler. Tickets both for the show and in ‘The Chookie’s Raffle’— poultry supplied by the Emporium. (Local wags have pointed out it is lucky we

127 never had a concert at Easter, with an Easter Egg prize. Chookie would have been certain to find out they called it the Goolies’ Raffle.) Anyhow Chookie's good with money so there’s no dispute that it should be him taking it at the door. Skippy is under his feet but he’s welcome. Eileen is buttering scones with her sister, Flo Mills and setting up the cups and saucers for ‘half time’ as she calls Intermission. But why are we here in this audience at all? What is it— choosing who we will sit beside and who will sing what— that brings us to fumble so fervently at the edges of this remembrance? What compels us to sit here in an audience with, and of, our people, to search for the enduring? What is it of their lives which will endure despite time, or maybe because of it? Where will we find our people’s value? Only one thing is certain, it will be to our undecorated memories of them we will turn to search for where we belong. Though our past is littered with a million gestures of forgotten consequence we will continue to search through the mullock heap of those old, unforgotten pains, part-knowing the stories of each of the lives of those amongst whom we sit— Chookie, Agatha, Charlie, Martha, Slim, Gladys, Cranky, Jesus, Tubby, Shorty and the rest— choir members all. We will scavenge for some salvageable good, for the things that glitter, catching the mind’s eye, and the heart’s. Perhaps that’s it? Perhaps from where we sit we see a pattern looking forward in time, or back. A pattern we try to complete. We try to complete the circle of time, not understanding that time is as much a sleight of hand conjuring trick as the woman in the box sawed in half or the white dove that is magicked from up some statesman’s sleeve. We cannot know time but by its absence and its distances. Sitting here in

128 this audience, knowing the stories of our people, how sensual, how plastic, how emotional time’s absences and distances are. The crowd is almost complete now. Families from town, fishermen, meatworkers, shopkeepers, teachers, the copper and the publican. The latter’s closed the pub for the duration of the concert, in direct contravention of licensing laws. He always closes up on Annual Concert night. Mind you he’s sold enough brown paper bag takeaways for half- time consumption behind the hall that he’ll do all right, and he’ll open up again for a night-cap after the show, in direct contravention of licensing laws, though the local Mr Plod will be there for his cleansing ale so all’s well. We see memory as what is finished, the closed circle of then and there when really it is spiralling before and after us. Constantly directing and redirecting the future, constantly revaluing the past. Without memory we are merely the ultimate machines, machines that grope into the dark, scrabbling at the future because we have closed the past and we will it not be opened again. That’s why we’re all here. We are searching the mullock-heaped past for what glitters. It’s just such a human accounting procedure as we have devised to deal with the overlapping of things— present, future, past. It's just such a measurement of what may, possibly, be good, or true, or beautiful. The wooden seats are set out side by side, with every second row off-centred to the first, across the wooden floor. The smart money always bring cushions. All the children seated next to their parents sparkle, cleaner than washed milk bottles, with the fear of God in them if they should dare to move. At least in the first half. But they are already

129 eyeing off the wooden forms which line the side walls of the hall. If they play their cards right they just might get away from their parents enough in the second half to sit with their friends on the side forms, the bolder of them at the back near the mob of adolescent yahoos who are perched like crows on a fence along the back. The bad boys sit on top of the backs of their chairs, feet on the seats, their sight and voice lines to the stage unimpeded. They wait their chance to challenge their elders, to prove their place. The girls most likely occupy the back row of seats, for ease of access to the youths. Separate but interested. Under the walled-in lean-to roof off the side of backstage, nursing mothers and those with the youngest children leave them in the communal cot built from a mid-thigh high wall, parallel to the inside wall of the hall, which they fill with pillows and blankets as they take it in turns, on a continuous rotation of changing and feeding and caring, between which they duck outside as others keep watch, or Martha Fraser tells them it’s all right if they want to go out to hear better. She’ll call them if there’s a problem with their child. Chookie is selling his last ticket to Mercy O’Dowd, who can no longer sing, but who still attends the concerts despite being almost crippled with arthritis and blind. She walks with a cane, her daughter Edna follows behind. Chookie organises one of the likely lads from the back wall to escort Mrs O’Dowd, at a snail’s pace, up the centre aisle while he rushes to begin proceedings in his role as M.C.. They are still not even halfway to the front of the hall, where of course Mrs O’Dowd insists on sitting, when Chookie asks the audience to be upstanding for

130 the national anthem. The author stifles a snigger as upstanding is what many of these citizens are not. Chookie signals to Tubby Albertsen who pulls the thick, gold- braided, blood-red, velvet curtain to reveal the choir, some eighty strong, in black bottoms and white tops. Their music folders held open before them. Children on the stage floor, women at both the ends of the risers above, the altos in the middle and the men at the back. On seeing them so arranged the author smiles wryly again. There are three and only three sections in the choir. The men, the women, including most of the children, and the altos who are mainly women and a few older children. When the choir first began it was just too difficult to grasp all the technicalities of the naming of the parts as well as the other practical disciplines of choral work. Miss B. had enough difficulty introducing the concept of altos as ‘providing the necessary harmony half way between the men and the women’, without all that talk of descant, sopranos, tenors, or God forbid, of baritones. Even then the idea of altos incensed Jimmy Bostock enough to at least once hide the vital Conductor’s pulpit-box. Mind you, in rehearsal Miss B. was forever shrieking above the full voice of the choir, ‘Jimmy! You’re singing with the women again!’ In solo work though, he came into his own. When the audience is upstanding and the first strains of God Save The Queen begin, Mrs O’Dowd has reached her chosen destination. Seamus O’Dwyer sits on the aisle chair, two empty seats beside him. He stares doggedly downward. He does not see Mercy. She raps him sharply on the shin with her stick. His reaction is instantaneous and startling. He leaps to his feet, eyes blazing, to face... Mrs Mercy O’Dowd, who nods a thank you to her escort before inching, infinitely

131 slowly, past Seamus to her chosen seat. Edna follows. It seems to take forever but she has, in fact, moved past him and sat down just as the anthem is complete and Seamus flings himself back down. He scowls at her, but to his surprise she giggles. He slowly shakes his head and grins begrudgingly. Acknowledging with respect her little game. It’s not that we spend so much effort measuring our differences, it’s that we invest such value in the act. It makes the act of measuring such a blunt, two-edged sword, as though lives can be reduced to the outcomes of the equations, the acts of measurement. Why measure our lives at all? Compulsion, artistic discontent, insatiable curiosity? Or an irrational need to measure how we belong with people, our people? Yes, that’s it, the irrational need to belong to a people in a place with whom one shares a common history. Take Charlie Stone, one-eyed, homosexual ex-shearer for example. He shares a cultural inheritance with so many other characters, he is of the best of them. But at the same time it may be the case that Charlie represents, quite specifically, one of the guiding moral negatives of his own culture. His life is the result of his culture’s not acknowledging its moral shortcomings. By its wilful turning away. Charlie does not belong. His life is defined by what he is not. How many people, one by one, fall from the world, the nation, the small town, a family because they are wilfully unseen, because they are not allowed to belong? But it is the process of mind involved in excluding him which damages Charlie most, which tries, slowly sometimes, but surely always, to forget him. The author, sitting here with this audience, can view his cast of characters, his own history, his place in his own history and his

132 characters’ place in theirs by using two of hisory’s most blunt measuring techniques. On the one hand he can argue, ‘Charlie belongs because...‘ and he can present x, y and z as examples of commonalities which exist between himself, his people and his place. On the other hand he can argue, ‘Charlie does not belong because...’ and present x, y and z as differences which exist between himself, his people and his place. The negative and the affirmative, both well beloved of civilised debating fraternities. But here in this place, among these people, these positions are not just ways of approaching the arguments of belonging and exclusion, but of fanatically different ways of viewing the world. How many of these people survive, endure only because they rage against those who will not let them belong? How healthy is their society? Where now is Chookie Fowler, our leader? Where is his earnest thought— We’ll muddle through, like we always do? ***** ‘Ladies and Gentlemen! Boys and Girls! Welcome all to the 35th Annual Concert of the Emu Park and District Amateur Choral Society! I am your Master of Ceremonies for this evening,’ Chookie Fowler announces. His voice is a ringmaster’s or a towncrier’s but it’s met head on by the back-wall boys clucking in dishevelled delight, ‘Here Chookie, Chookie, Chookie, Chookie!’ to the mirth of the crowd. But Chookie is a long serving M.C. and a successful shopkeeper in a small town, a breed who say the right thing always— in the spirit of enlightened self interest. ‘Of course Ladies and Gents every year we hold a wide search for someone to take the position of M.C. for the Annual Concert but, just as in past years, this year everybody else was too chicken to do it so I’m

133 delighted to be with you once more!’ he laughs above the heads of the crowd, his guile aimed directly at the back-row boofheads. The crowd laughs with him. The audience belongs to Chookie Fowler. ‘We have opened tonight with two numbers from the choir, Look for the Silver Lining and Elizabethan Serenade which bring us to...’ he moves his glasses to the end of his nose, turns the paper in his hand toward the footlights and half-reads, ‘Josie Yow Yeh, accompanying herself on guitar, with Pearly Shells.’ ‘Yow! Yeah! Josie,’ one of the clever boys from the back calls. Even before he is finished speaking and certainly before his mates have had time to laugh, Seamus O’Dwyer is on his feet, striding down the aisle. The interjector sees him coming though and is out the door quick as a snake. Seamus is by way of thinking that to lose one may not be such a bad thing but he’ll be damned if he’ll lose any more. He closes the hall door purposefully, glares at the remaining lads, nods to Chookie, who nods back, then takes up a position, legs apart and arms folded, in front of the closed door. ‘As I was saying Ladies and Gentlemen,’ Chookie begins again. ‘Before we hear from Josie I’ve been asked by Tubby Albertsen of Pine Trees Real Estate to say that he’d appreciate it if the person responsible would stop painting the letter ‘i’ in the space between the two words on his To Let signs as it is both misleading and expensive to remove.’ The audience laughs. ‘And he wants me to add also,’ Chookie adds, referring once more to his paper, ‘that when he catches the person concerned he’ll be wearing his army boots. Whatever that might mean?’ Chookie adopts a staged musing pose and the audience chuckles as the bold boys at the back mutter.

134 ***** If we do not trust the author when he suggests we exclude people from our fold then let us consider the character of the pre-adolescent author with his gobstopper. A character with a direct, uncomplicated view of the world. A character who does not understand the world, or the stories it contains, but is happy in the moment merely recording it to remember. Perhaps this character best represents the best of us all. Let us give him the negative case in an attempt to see what will happen to his sense of himself. He wishes to ask what he is, how he fits. But if our experiment in historical measurement is to work he must ask what of his experience of his world and his people he is not. He must exclude all of that which is not him to see then how his world turns. What it is about the word ‘no’, that it always carries with it that aspect of sharpened condemnation, condemnation that, in the way of all negatives, carries a sense of overwhelming, irrational censure. No is the fear word. So let this character ask not only what he is not but also what he fears because he is that too. He is not the people in the choir nor is he his family nor his friends. They carry no value for him. He is not the physical town, its buildings, parks, the beach, the blue sky, sea. They mean nothing to him. He is, by definition, not these things. He is nobody’s mother, nor their father, not even the touch of their hands. He is not their pullovers, their knickers, their birthday presents or their glass eye. Surely he has taken his place alongside them, but he belongs only as a negation of them. He is not their stories. He is not their songs. He fears them all and all their unpainted places and things. He has asked the wrong question. We have encouraged him. Isn’t that just like us all?

135 Like all the damaged and the dispossessed. He ends knowing virilently not what he is but what he is not. None of the above. Our character’s case need not, however, be as hopeless as it may seem. We could allow him, even encourage him, or even begin to teach him to take the positive view. To ask the affirmative question, ‘What of you am I?’ But it is difficult, we find it too hard. We survived without asking this question so he doesn’t need to. And so his world view is formed, the die cast, in the easy negative where less thought and less emotional anguish is required. That is until he questions his memory. Until he at least attempts the affirmative. How much of me is you? How much of you am I? And if he does think he may even feel a need to know the truth of why he has always felt the way he has. He feels he belongs but he knows to belong here is a negation because the history he has learned from his people has taught him so. Then he desperately needs the rational, logical systems of law, education, government and his State, in fact the whole of the construction of his people, to continually ask the same. Why do we feel we belong when our history seems to teach us that when challenged by questions of moral substance we have always, as a people, turned our faces away, trying desperately to convince ourselves that if we do not see the suffering we cause our own, it does not exist. It is not in fact caused by us to happen. ***** ‘Now, where were we,’ Chookie continues. ‘That’s right the moment you’ve all been waiting for. A performer who needs no introduction, Miss Josie Yow Yeh.’

136 Josie appears at the edge of the stage in front of the curtain. She’s wearing a floral-patterned cotton shift, her guitar strung on a piece of fine hemp braid across her shoulders. Her thongs flip flop her way across the stage. She faces us and begins to strum. When she changes the chord however, it is obvious that the guitar is out of tune. She stops to tune it quickly before beginning again. Again the guitar clangs into the second chord. Disconcerted now, she fumbles with the tuning pegs, strumming three chords repeatedly to herself. She darts a glance at the audience in an appeal for time but they are shuffling. The louts at the back start a soft chant, ‘Tick, tock, tick, tock!’ At the sound of their voices she glares at the audience defiantly. ‘Well it’s hard to get it right with all youse watchin’!’ she scolds before turning and flip-flopping back off the stage. After a moment of whispers, both angry and entreating, Chookie appears back on stage looking a tad flustered. ‘Well I’m sure Josie will be back when she’s managed to tame her instrument,’ Chookie says hopefully. ‘And tame a couple of O.P. Rums too,’ a voice echoes from the back of the hall. Seamus begins a threatening walk again but stops at Chookie’s uplifted hand. ‘Ladies and gentlemen now let’s give a big Emu Park welcome to two of our favourites, Agatha Clay, and the man of her dreams, Charlie Stone as they sing, If You Were the Only Girl in the World. ***** The revenge Agatha Clay visited on her sister and her son was both immoral and unjust but it was not unlawful. Our systems would accord the motive of revenge to her actions but still find them acceptable under the law. Likewise the penalty Mercy O’Dowd paid for being

137 innocent was unjust and unconscionable but it was not unlawful. But, if we follow the logic of our rational systems of belonging together to their ultimate conclusions, we find at their pinnacle; where justice, love, belonging are all found, the necessary hypocrisy of forgiveness. For Agatha or for that matter for Slim, Gladys, Mercy to attain justice, they have to be forgiven and allowed to belong by the very people who shunned them, but further they had also to forgive themselves in an act of supreme imagination for not believing that they actually did belong. Charlie, of course, waits for justice too. He seems intransigent to those who will not forgive him but his motive is simple he waits because he has forgiven himself and he now knows he does belong. He waits simply for his persecuters to forgive themselves before he turns his back on them. Here in our town, we may all know all about you, even those of us like Chookie who are politically uninquisitive. Any dirty linen you have can be seen hanging in your backyard from every other backyard in the street, but if we exclude you on the basis of your difference alone we quickly find we have no one left to sing with and it is our song which fails. This is the way of small towns our small hypocrisies are necessary so our forgivenesses can sing on every Annual Concert night of the Emu Park and District Amateur Choral Society Inc.. ***** Chookie is back on stage, in front of the curtain, as the thump and scraping of set changes can be heard from behind. They are beginning to set up for the next half, our ‘scene’. This year it is South Pacific but we’ve had the Twenties, the War Years, Here Comes The Show Boat

138 and Gypsies to name a few. Scenes where the choir lets down its hair. Where we dress up, get to star maybe with a solo or two and even act a bit during the snippets of dialogue that tie our themed scene together. Where we squint inanely when we forget the words at where they are pasted on the back of our authentic South Pacific coconuts which lie littered across the stage, or folded under a Gypsy apron or pinned to the back of the person in front. We can’t look at the audience and smile like we are trained to do by our indomitable Miss B.— who pulls maniacally comic faces at us from the podium to make us at least look like we’re enjoying it— when we cannot remember the blessed words. ***** Consider now Mercy O’Dowd. Her plea was not one to law, she had no compensation case she wished to be adjudicated. She was completely disinterested in the case the system wished to argue with her. Hers was an irrational plea, a plea for justice to end her negation, to right her memory, to reinstall the quality of mercy in her life. She asked for a supreme act of human imagination. Irrational, stubborn and beyond logic she asked for justice. For Mercy, law became justice at the sound of the word, ‘Sorry’. The system became just because it no longer followed its own rules, though it had followed to the letter, the processes of administering its laws. For Mercy an act of justice is an act of the imagination, of symbols and of dreams, in which what is most human is transacted and its surety is felt, as well as seen to be, complete. ***** Chookie has the look of an M.C. who’s in control of both the audience and a show that’s going swimmingly. ’And now,’ he begins, ‘having sorted out the problems with her instrument, and before our

139 scene begins, could you please welcome back to the stage Miss Josie Yow Yeh singing Pearly Shells’. The crowd applauds loudly. The yahoos from the back, in more content mood now, merely adding the loudest cheers and a chorus of, ‘Josie! Josie! Josie! Josie! For the second time this evening Josie Yow Yeh walks to the centre of the stage. Her thongs seem to flip flop on behind her as though someone or something is dogging her footsteps. Reaching the centre she takes a stand, legs slightly apart and facing the audience. We will her on, wanting to share her triumph, wanting her to belong to us, for us to belong to her. She strums a three chord introduction and smiles. Perfect tuning. She opens her mouth to sing and then it happens. Josie croaks. No voice issues forth its dulcet tones, just a cracked note. She stops strumming and clears her throat. After her first failure having to begin twice on her second go takes all her courage. As it does to face your accusers. We will her on, we are with her. Our yahoo calls, ‘Come on Josie. Hit me right in the pink-and-shell like!’ We will her to sing. The characters and their author do. We want her to do what has to be done to belong on our stage. She begins again. A strummed introduction, three chords. We all find our mouths opening in willful anticipation. But again it happens— a frog’s croak. Josie cannot endure any further humiliation. She does not wait. She turns and runs, her thongs almost tripping her. Our discombobulated Chookie appears again, flustered and reddened, to advise it is Intermission and the South Pacific scene will begin in twenty minutes— and to remind us about the price of tea and where the toilets are. We clap for Josie anyway, but she is gone. *****

140 Do we sing in desperate unison because we are performing the quiet desperation of our lives? Like Slim and his daughter, who were both in their way content to live with despair. With whose company they were content because, bleak as it may be, despair is certain. They may know it will end in an untimely death, but it will never challenge them. They do not need strength, nor intelligence, nor courage to overthrow it unless they mean to challenge it, which of course they do not. It is a stand-off— the unchallenged against the unchallenging. They surrendered, no not surrendered, acquiesced— quite gently in the end, to an acceptance that despair was a condition of life they were willing to endure. Of course, Gladys was not content with despair as a bedfellow for long, though Shorty was as decent a man as any found hereabouts. But Gladys was not a failure to herself. She was limited by her obsession, her yearning, her family, her people and her State. Seeing her dislocation from us, we all had the ability to intervene, separately or severally. We all failed. Though Flo Mills tried more than most. Gladys is our failure as surely as if we were the rope. Poor Josie. ***** Our ‘scene’ has finished. The curtains close to thunderous acclamation, then immediately open again for an encore. We bow. We applaud. We belong. Most of us at least, even the author. Chookie Fowler enters stage left holding up his hand for a bit of shush. ‘Thank you, thank you, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,’ he begins. ‘I am sure from the generosity of your applause that you have enjoyed tonight's performance!’ Clapping and cheering erupt spontaneously. Chookie raises his hand again, lowering his head in

141 deference to the audience like a speaker at a rally. ‘Of course an evening like tonight is not possible without a great many people all of whom I will thank in due course. But first,’ he calls loudly focussing everyone’s attention on his words. ‘First, can you put your hands together in a show of appreciation for our Conductor and Musical Director Mrs Beverley Flat.’ Miss B. enters stage right. Smiling and nodding she crosses to centre stage where Chookie greets her with a peck on the cheek and a bouquet so large it threatens to hide her entirely from view. Chookie begins once more, ‘Without the infinite patience and care of this magnificent artiste. Without her vision for our shows...‘ Here the author gazes behind Chookie to the collection of old men so well known to him, all are dressed in gay Hawaiian shirts except for Jimmy Bostock who is dressed as a pirate as he is for all our scenes regardless of theme. The author notes the varicose-veined, middle-aged and old women suited in grass skirts who are set in amongst coconut palm fronds hacked from someone’s tree. And the giggling anarchic children. He thinks, ‘This takes vision?’ But immediately he chastens himself for the unworthiness of his thought and its blind ignorance at what an achievement of concerted will, what an artistic triumph this Concert is. ’Without Miss Flat’s sheer dogged determination and hard work,’ Chookie waxes lyrical, warming to his theme. ‘Without her ability to draw us out of our shells to be inspired to create a... ‘ But Chookie’s soliloquy is chopped off at the elbows by a call from the back of the hall, ‘What about Pearly Shells?’ The outburst is followed by a chant from the

142 boofhead boys, ‘We want Josie! We want Josie!’ Charlie tries to quell this misplaced, irrational enthusiasm for that failed item with his hand but, as some of the audience have also taken up the cry, he cannot contain them. We bay for Josie. Our concert is unfinished. We need her back. ***** To attain justice the law steps beyond the law’s rationale. To attain faith, the spirit reaches far beyond its reasonable self. To attain humanity, humankind stretches beyond its everyday, plainsong, hypocritical existence to fumble on, muddling through the abstracts: the true, the beautiful, and the good; until at last, at the point where all the other logics of being together fail, it turns to love. ***** Seamus O’Dwyer finds Josie sitting, nursing her guitar, on the hall porch just outside the door. She’s consoling herself, grieving the unfinished business of her unperformed item, disheartened but still reluctant to leave the celebration. Seamus escorts her into the hall, followed closely by an unnoticed Skippy. The clapping and cheering drown the sound of her thongs as she walks down the centre aisle, up the side stage-stairs, past Miss B., to centre stage. The crowd falls hushed. Josie strums her introductory chords only to realise that Skippy has just sauntered out onto the stage behind her. He sits himself down happily at her feet. The audience tense. Josie stops. Skippy gazes up at her in undifferentiated adoration, as he does to all humans, tongue lolling from the side of his mouth. Josie hesitates. Chookie waits. The choir strains forward. Miss B. stands stock still. We in the audience are hushed.

143 A voice from the back yells, ‘Well doggone! A bit of comedy in the act, hey?’ The audience wants to laugh but doesn’t. Josie looks up from Skippy to us all. She begins to strum the introduction to Pearly Shells. We all breathe a little again. Miss B. manages to free one hand from holding her bouquet. Josie opens her mouth to sing. The audience and the choir open theirs in anticipation of that note. Miss B.’s hand is raised aloft. We all, choir and audience, breathe in as we are trained to do by our art and, as her hand drops, we sing Pearly Shells— in unison. An exhalation on the breath of God. Irrationally, illogically, defiantly, Skippy raises his hind leg to attempt to scratch his ear. He teeters for a moment then rolls inexorably over, to fall with a thud, flat onto the stage floor.

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