Benang

by Kim Scott

  3. The pension.

  31/7/29 C Proud

  Ern had listened to the approach of light and measured footsteps, and was standing slightly behind Mr Proud when Sandy opened the door to them. Observing the exchange between the two men, Ern thought that something about Sandy, his distracted air, his surprisingly fair complexion, his soft voice—it was hard to say what it was really—reminded him of a ghost, some sort of phantom.

  Sandy kept one hand on the door and seemed unsettlingly attentive, almost as if he was studying them whereas, as Ern well knew, it was actually the other way around.

  This was the beginning of Ern’s entry into our family, the first of many entries, I might say. Sandy Mason, as further investigations revealed, was not—whatever his own beliefs—the equal of any white man. There was his proximity to Blackboy Camp, for one thing. And Auber wanted no more trouble with spokespersons petitioning the Premier; he wanted this man under control. He need not have worried, because before too long Sandy Two Mason—having escaped the department’s detection almost all his life—no longer presented it with a problem.

  Ern was a shrewd man, see. Newly arrived, and he had already contacted his cousin Auber, found employment with him in construction and information storage, and become acquainted with—if not yet enthusiastic about—Auber’s expert opinions on the need for both social and biological absorption of the Native Race.

  I like to think of Mr Ernest Solomon Scat stepping off the boat; that initial moment when his leather-clad foot touched the dock. A small sound, but it set up resonances, and those resonances, admittedly diminishing all the time, were picked up by the railway and ran all the way to where a very last vibration rolled into the sand. It was, and is, a long way from that railway’s end to the tiny town of Gebalup, but the land holds all things—even such trivial events as my grandfather’s first footfall—from which we may later select, amplify, and consider the resonances.

  Yes, my grandfather was a shrewd man. A rat-cunning mind, dear reader, mark my words. (And here I must interrupt myself to record my grandfather’s response to having such words read to him. His mouth went even tighter, his nose and cheeks began to twitch. At the time I was encouraged by such behaviour.)

  So who was Ernest Solomon Scat? A Scotsman, with a trade and education enough to pass himself off as a clerk. The youngest in his family, he understood the necessity to make his own fortune, and how patience and information would help him do so. He needed to prove his superiority, and trusted no one.

  He left his home town and the scrawny women of its streets and brothels and, stopping off in South Africa, discovered young and coloured women. The differing hues of flesh. Various entrances.

  So how much was all of this a factor in his interest in Sandy (Two) Mason? In the man’s attractiveness? In the power he could gain over the likes of him?

  I am not yet comfortable to pursue such an inquiry.

  Ernest Solomon Scat’s professional investigations, on behalf of cousin Auber’s department, into the aforesaid Sandy (Two) Mason—invisible half-caste—not only first put my family tree on paper, but also revealed to Ern an isolated and tiny railway which stitched its brief way from Wirlup Haven to Gebalup, at which point it promptly stopped, as if it was a small scar in the earth. To the west, still days away by horse, a vast railway network reached, and wheat fields sprang up and ran away from each of its lines.

  It seemed logical. Get there. Buy land in between the railway tips. Then, just as soon as those lines connected...

  Ernest accompanied the Travelling Inspector of Aborigines, a Mr James Segal.

  James Segal, perceiving the impression he made on the young man, indulged himself. He had opinions, liked to talk, was an expert. He waved his hands at the bush, pointed to farmland either side of the train, and told Ern he had taken up farming himself, for a time, after working on stations in the north-west. ‘The only people making money now,’ he said with considerable contempt, ‘are speculators. They buy up land just before the railway reaches it.’

  Ern grabbed at this information. Filed it away under O, oh, an Opportunity. Cross-referenced to C, for Confirmation. And made a mental note to ask James, at a later date, where he thought the railway might go next.

  James continued; His Life. He’d worked closely with Auber Neville since the opening of the first Native Settlement in 1915. He’d been the superintendent there. And at the other one, which had since closed down under the instructions of an Incompetent Oaf who’d stood in Auber’s shoes for a brief time.

  ‘The Settlements,’ he said, ‘give the natives a chance. They’re a Child Race. It’s our duty to train them for Useful Work, and keep them from harm, from causing harm. They can be an Embarrassment.’ He hesitated, as if considering the varied causes of such embarrassment.

  ‘An ideal camp,’ he continued, ‘is near enough to town to allow the natives to call for rations when they are indigent, to come under surveillance by police and other local protectors, and to provide a ready labour force when necessary. However, it must always be far enough from white habitations to avoid complaints and to discourage unwelcome visits by white men.’

  Ern blushed, remembering the night of his arrival in this country.

  James, like the train, had gathered momentum. ‘They have no place in the scheme of things, and have simply become a nuisance. Many otherwise gentle folk secretly think and openly say it were better that they were dead, were dead, were dead...’

  The rhythm of the train and his words seemed to have overcome James, he was pounding his thigh with the palm of his hand. Ern waited patiently while he regained his composure. ‘There seems a clear choice,’ James continued. ‘Let them multiply in wretched camps, let rations cost more, let them be useless and untaught, keep them out of sight; or absorb them into our population.’

  Absorption, he said, it’s possible. Assimilation.

  For some reason the words aroused Ernest; perhaps because he was still struggling to free himself of certain erotic memories and guilt. Indeed, his erection threatened to intrude into his mental note-making, as if wanting to prove that there was plenty of lead in this pencil.

  James, unaware, made things worse for my grandfather. He began to speak of breeding. ‘Auber is going to write a book on it,’ he said. ‘How we can absorb these people into our community. We know how, but the law needs to be made more rigorous.’

  And, to the various rhythms of train, horse and cart, motor car and the occasional footfall, James Segal spelled out the plan, and having already provoked a reaction he did not see, provoked another he could not have foreseen. He showed the young man what he called ‘paper proof’. Part of a draft of an article Auber had given him to read. They sat side by side, and he showed the younger man photographs.

  They must have impressed my grandfather because so much of his own writing and photographs are modelled upon them. But it was the older man’s life which particularly won him over. Ern savoured James Segal’s story as he never did mine; tales of courage and the treachery of the outback; of the blacks, both good and bad; of full-bloods dying out; of the despised and destitute half-castes. He listened to stories of the confidences and velvet skins of the women; of the scientific rationale behind his talk of breeding. And saw how good could be done, and power won.

  Perhaps it was with James Segal, perhaps another time with Auber. Whenever, with whoever, the fact is that the photographs were numbered, and there were notes pinned to them. I know their kind well.

  A finger—red and lined at the knuckles, flesh sagging from the bone—hovered over one portrait. ‘Now, here, you see? This woman is full-blood.’

  A solemn face. Eyes lifeless and bored.

  ‘And here,’ the voice of authority said, sliding out another photograph, ‘her daughter. Half-caste, first-cross.’ The older man assumed Ern’s knowledge of eugenics and theories of breeding matched his own.

  Ern studied the photograph. ‘Rather attractive, really,’ he said, tentatively, quite prepare
d to be dissuaded. He remembered the family gossip; Auber had once written brochures to attract British migrants to this country, and was even thought of as a purveyor of brides.

  ‘It depends on the genes, you see,’ said James or Auber. At another time it might even have been Ern. ‘Theirs is recessive.’

  And, as if once again flourishing that ace, the dealer produced a third photograph.

  ‘Quadroon!’ he exclaimed. ‘The freckles, you see, are the only trace of colour.’

  ‘This woman’s eyes must be blue, or green!’ Ern was beginning to understand such enthusiasm.

  Ern had to admit he was lonely, the more so when he remembered his first night in this country, its conclusion at one of the aforementioned camps. ‘There,’ his companions had said, ‘now you’re initiated.’ The squeals, the glass breaking, the silence at their backs as they staggered away.

  But Ern was receiving a lecture. ‘This is what the Department should be promoting. This is the way to help. This is the answer. Sometimes we have to bend the rules.’

  In a tone which signalled a detour from such lofty concerns the voice said, ‘I know of some eighty cases of white men marrying native girls.’

  ‘But, aren’t there throwbacks?’

  ‘No.’ Decisively. ‘No. That’s clear. We know that as far as the colour is concerned—and that’s what matters most, after all, that’s what chiefly disadvantages them—as far as the colour is concerned, atavism is not in evidence.’

  The voice fell silent for a moment as if redrafting its set piece as the end approached. ‘Perhaps, perhaps it is not so much a question of the colour of the skin as the colour of the mind ... No, no, that will not do.’

  Ern spoke quietly. ‘You’re a clever man, James.’ He felt a deep respect for the ideas, if not the man. After all, it could have been any one of a number of clever, progressive men of the time.

  See, already, he was forming plans. Seeking a future, aiming at me.

  Yes, Auber—with all that information at his fingertips—knew of some eighty cases where white men had married native women with whom they now live happy, contented lives.

  And another? An eighty-first, which, in fact, James Segal knew of but Auber didn’t? Daniel and Harriette Coolman, my great-grandparents.

  Even James Segal thought that the Chief Protector sometimes became too zealous, so that people might need a protector to protect them from The Protector. James said as much to Ern, having been sufficiently flattered by the younger man’s attention to take him into his confidence.

  ‘The policeman here is a good friend of mine. This used to be quite a town. He’s seen it boom, and seen it bust again.’

  ‘You’re a carpenter?’ Sergeant Hall asked, and Ern saw the publican’s gaze meet that of the sergeant. Sergeant Hall’s fleshy hand embraced his beer. If you’re always on duty, how can you not drink on duty? Because you have to drink.

  Ern felt a heady elation. He knew he could make something of himself in this country, and that he was surrounded by the very best of men. James; a pioneer, no less. Daniel Coolman was present at the founding of this very town. Sergeant Hall ... All of them experts on the poor Aborigines, and on their situation. All experts on this country.

  The men bent together at the bar, shoulder to shoulder, except for Daniel. He was a very big man with an unpleasant smell about him, and so he was kept at a little distance.

  My true ancestors, those of my blood-and-land-line, the women I must call Harriette and Fanny, sat by a very small fire at the rear of a hut. Unlike myself, they were distinctively of a people, and this fire of theirs was deep among overturned rainwater tanks, wagons, and stacks of timber in the yard right beside the police station. They peered back into their hut, smiling, speaking softly. Kathleen, who has slipped from the policeman’s wife and home, helps bed down the youngest children. But first the one who goes to school must go through his lessons with the others.

  The town would not stand for more of them at the school. They all know the stories of school.

  There was no room for more children at the school, as there is no room for them in this town, and they will all have to go out into the bush again tomorrow, packing themselves into boxes and beneath blankets on the back of a wagon. Soon, it might be time to try another child at the school.

  Someone asked Ern, ‘Have you seen the camps?’

  ‘No,’ Ern said, quickly, remembering the first night. The dirt on his bare knees, and how she turned her head away as her body took his thrusts.

  ‘So, you’re a carpenter?’ the publican said it again, and offered Ern a job.

  Ern drew plans with fine black pencil on clean paper, sat all night over just one pot of beer. Somewhere in his mind, as if tucked behind his plans and paper, he weighed the gamble he was taking. How long could he wait? He’d studied maps, had listened.

  Ern judged the rainfall as about right for wheat, the soil adequate. Transport was a problem. If only that bloody railway reached a little further, or if the ships were subsidised to the same extent as the railway. Ern noted the town’s economy: mines (working fitfully); some mallet bark (going by horse-drawn wagon to the sea); a little work with horses (stables, fodder, farrier...); a general store; a photographer (the displays in the window yellow and curling); two pubs; a bicycle shop...

  Ern paused, he was on the roof. Conscious of the sky around him, he looked out over decaying buildings which ceased barely a block or two from the main street.

  The height, and the solid wall beneath, gave him confidence. He felt important; up in the sky, and with a gentle breeze caressing his resolute jaw, he again thought of possessing land in this place, right here, and then—as soon as the railway connected—Yes! Not just future farmland, either.

  But first he needed money, and to continue accumulating it.

  The railway, he could see, would have to detour around the northern side of the ranges where there was enough of a pass for it to sneak through.

  He identified the properties before him. Shabby houses—huts really—many deserted and already collapsing.

  The police station, with its stables. Nineteen twenty-nine, and they still used horses. Why, even the mail run was by motor car.

  There was a large yard beside the police station, with a small hut positioned at the furthest corner. Not only was it as far as possible from the police station but it seemed that the hut, with its vine-covered enclosure, was intended to be hidden among the many rainwater tanks which surrounded it.

  Ern considered the yard from his vantage point as a newly elevated and self-employed carpenter. There was a lot of old timber there. The gate at the front of the yard was only partially open, and the path from there was overgrown, and apparently rarely used. Within the yard, however, an extremely well-worn path formed a perfect circle. There was a cone-shaped object at the centre of this circle from which a long wooden pole extended. Ern guessed this would be attached to a horse—or horses. The long shaft running from the centre of the circle and into a roofed area near the police station’s fence drove a saw.

  For a moment Ern’s mind moved among the intricacies of the cogs that must mesh somewhere in that central cone. There was timber, there was timber milling technology.

  A movement at the back of the police station next-door caught his attention.

  It was a woman. Young. Slim. Dark? Or was that the glare?

  She leaned against the wire fence separating the police and timber yards, and called into the roofed space just the other side of it. Then she strode to the rear of the police yard, swung her legs across the low fence there and, winding her way through the water tanks, disappeared into the sagging enclosure of wire and vines at the rear of the little hut.

  Ern thought of what Travelling Inspector James Segal had said about the natives, and of Auber’s photographs. He thought of the timber yard, and the railway.

  Opportunity?

  Ernest Solomon Scat was up in the air, back then, and looking around. He had touched jetty, railwa
y, electrical and telegraphic wires, sealed road. He had rarely touched the land. Ernest Solomon Scat floated all his life, in a different way to myself, and never even realised it.

  Although he rarely touched the country it is nevertheless true that in Gebalup—riddled as it is with death and abandoned mines—his footsteps resonate. Oh, it is a subtle thing, and he is one among many, but the rhythm of his steps is peculiar, very particular, and it was this which alerted me to other rhythms, to other memories held there.

  hairy angels

  Ernest Solomon Scat looked to his pocket-watch, looked at the sky, and climbed. Once again he saw the woman step into the night cart’s lane, pushing the wheelbarrow before her.

  He saw Daniel Coolman leave the shed. The woman wheeled the barrow into position behind him, tilted it, and took his weight in her hands as he slumped. Coolman sat as if in a too-small bath. An easy-throne. The woman pushed him to the lane and into the police yard.

  Ern saw her glance toward him and he lifted his hand in a tentative greeting. Her head moved slightly. She is returning my wave, he thought. The possibility that it might be a query, or even a gesture of dismissal, never occurred to him.

  At the rear of the house she tilted the wheelbarrow again, and the big man waddled into the shadows. The woman put the wheelbarrow to one side and followed, and because she had her back to Ern, who was slyly watching her even as he swung the hammer, she did not see him toss the hammer aside and curse. She missed her chance to laugh at him baby-sucking his thumb.

  The gates to the street were closed. Ern went to the lane at the rear where there was sufficient space for a single horse and rider to squeeze through. Or—of course—a wheelbarrow and a very fat man.

  A tall grey horse plodded the circular path at an irregular pace. When it was furthest from the shed it moved very slowly, and the saw was very quiet. But each time it approached Coolman it sped up until the saw was screaming like a siren. A whip, thickly coated with dust, hung on the wall at Daniel’s side.