Benang

by Kim Scott

  He had been across to Kylie Bay.

  ‘Oh! Again.’

  There were still no kids at that school. No. There was the camp, the reserve, between the tip and the shit pit and hardly any water for the people who were pushed all together like that. Yeah, they were huddled under thin, scraggly trees in tents and humpies, which was okay, but it was such an awful place to camp. He hadn’t wanted to go there but had been told that was his place.

  He’d taken some horses across for Starr, see. When he got there he was sick, something. He went to the hospital, so weak he could hardly stand, hardly talk, and they put him in a room with a sandy floor. The Aborigines Section. It was just an iron shed, with holes in it, and well away from the rest of the building. Someone came, a nurse, maybe once a day. He was out of there in a couple of days, quick as he could. He had nothing. Not the strength to walk back.

  Now he was here. You know, he was wondering. About that mine we had ... You remember? Yes, old Sandy had actually started a mine one time, and got a fair way down. Maybe they could work it again. If Daniel was interested?

  Morning. As if everything had been washed by the darkness, and light was returning its colour. The water tank wagon was hitched up nice and early, and most of the space between the tank and the wagon’s sideboard had been covered with hessian.

  Harriette, Daniel’s wife, stood beside the wagon, seemingly nonchalant and admiring the new day. She stood very straight, a blanket hanging from her shoulders like a cape, or folded wings. Suddenly she hissed, Shh! and tapped the side of the wagon. Nothing moved there, no sound came.

  Chatalong was at the horses. He turned his head toward the police station. Daniel, in the shade of the hut, cursed.

  Sergeant Hall was walking toward them in that way he had, with his head forward on his shoulders, and his arms held out from the sides of his body and swinging stiffly.

  ‘G’day. Who’s this then?’ He spoke to Daniel, indicating Chatalong with his head.

  Because, really, there should have been a permit—if he was working for Daniel. And it was best if he was not here on a social visit. ‘He’s not family, is he, Daniel?’

  ‘No. No, he’s not. Sandy and the old girl just vrung him up.’

  ‘Yeah, well, seeing as how he isn’t family. He shouldn’t be in town. Even if he is family, really.’

  ‘It’s okay, Jack,’ said Sergeant Hall, but then, because he was a good bloke, because he was teasing them, because of course he knew this fellow, he slapped Jack Chatalong on the back. ‘Heading back to Starr’s?’

  ‘Yeah. Yes.’

  He was seething. Daniel had just discarded him, hadn’t he?

  ‘And help collect some water?’

  Daniel held a cup up to Jack, raising his eyebrows and widening his eyes by way of command.

  ‘Yes,’ said the sergeant, and moved over to sit with Daniel by the little fire at the rear of the hut. As Jack walked away from them, having delivered the drink, Hall said, ‘Does he know who his father was? Should we tell him?’

  Sergeant Hall was himself an unusual man, as I realised when I tried on his prose style. By now the diligence with which he had begun his Police Occurrence Book had withered somewhat, but his fine script retained its elegance. In fact, perhaps it was a tribute to his diligence that he now had so little to write: Did Patrols; and, Strictly Routine Work. As the town dwindled so had those patrols, and his routines became smaller and tighter. Occasionally there was a kerfuffle at the hotel with a stranger passing through town. Apart from the difficulties—the nuisance, really, was all it was—Sandy Two Mason and friends had given him in the early years of the town, his time had been most sedate. He had married one of the Starr girls, and helped make this town the peaceful place it was. Everything correct and in order. He even told himself he’d performed his duties of protection admirably, which was something not every policeman could say. No, not by a long shot. Why, he even had natives living next-door. Their children had joined the community. That was tolerance. It showed what could be done.

  Take Kathleen, for example. She was practically like a daughter to his wife and himself. Almost. Perhaps if they’d had children of their own, they might not have been able to save her, as they undoubtedly had. Daniel Coolman was fortunate his family had grown by the time he developed his terrible illness. And whatever he might say about his long-gone brother, if not for Patrick, Daniel would not have had a house and a business—such as it was—and it would have been much harder for Sergeant Hall to have allowed his presence in the town with such a family.

  Sergeant Hall was proud that there was no nigger problem in his town. He’d seen that trouble off long ago. Not that there had ever been many, what with the Mustles, and Starrs, and Dones doing all they could to tame and pacify the place.

  With Coolman’s family, and even with Kathleen ... well, you had to watch them lest they regress and revert to less civilised ways. He was grateful to have been fortunate enough to help enact an answer to such an onerous, yet strangely engaging issue; the Native Problem.

  Ern seemed deeply absorbed. As she approached him Kathleen studied his shadow; head forward on the neck, back bowed, and one hand working rapidly to and fro between the legs. All this with just one foot on the ground.

  Ern was sawing, yet again.

  ‘Mr Hall said would you like a cup of tea?’

  Once again, Ern thought to himself: she is slim, she is young. A native woman, of course, but she wore shoes, and her faded dress was clean. Her hair shone. Ern sniffed, and believed he could smell the soap and fresh water on her. He breathed all the more deeply because of it.

  It’s hard for a white man here, poor Ern thought.

  He admired her as she walked away, savouring the sway of her hips beneath her dress, how thin her ankles were. Perhaps he did not yet think of it as admiring, but whatever the case, he ate her up with his eyes.

  Yes, only a native girl, of course, but there were few white females in a little place like Gebalup.

  Sergeant Hall and his wife called, ‘Kathleen, Kathleen.’ They wished to talk to her. ‘Sit here,’ they said, the sergeant speaking first and then the wife repeating it. ‘Sit here.’ She sat with them, at the same table. The same cups. The same best china, although hers had chipped at the rim so that one blood red rose was completely missing. The same dark, milky liquid from the same one pot.

  ‘This builder. Ernest. You’ve been talking with him?’

  Sergeant Hall had conversed at length with the likes of James Segal, was familiar with the ideas of Auber Neville. Sergeant Hall was remarkably progressive in his ideas, particularly for a policeman. He understood it was necessary to raise the level of debate.

  Raise it? Raise it from the level of troublesome indigenous fauna, of vermin control, of eradication and slaughter; raise it to the level of animal husbandry.

  A submission to yet another Royal Commission, a few years later, would reveal how progressive were the people surrounding my family:

  In regard to aborigines and their multiplying too much, which half-castes are prone to do, I should suggest sterilising them and preventing them breeding, because they will get as numerous as rabbits, and we do not want them and something ought to be done to them at once.

  So should I be grateful?

  And need I repeat radical, progressive thoughts of the time?

  Their English, being reconstructed ... a firm hand ... boarding house and breeding ... cut out the sore spot ... absorb and dilute like a small dirty stream into a large and clear one...

  No.

  ‘You like him?’

  Kathleen saw that they wanted her to say yes.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re a sensible girl, Kathleen. You can make a life for yourself. For your children.’

  She didn’t know where to look.

  ‘You could have a home of your own. A house like this. Cups like these.’

  It was Mrs Hall who said that the sergeant would be retiring soon, and they would be
moving. Far away. They would not be needing her any more.

  Kathleen knew that Sergeant Hall was trying not to look at her. And then, having succumbed, he would not look away again. ‘It’s for the best, I think. It’s the only way.’

  Ern’s work was nearly completed. Kathleen brought sandwiches, and for Ernest and the sergeant, a bottle of beer and two glasses.

  The white froth rose, the glasses tinkled their pleasure. Sergeant Hall had asked Daniel to join them.

  They spoke of breeding and uplifting. These two hairy angels wished to seize people in their long arms and haul them to their own level. Their minds held flickering images of canvas Ascensions, with pale fat cherubs spiralling upwards into the light. They saw steps leading up stone pyramids, and realised that some creatures were simply unable to continue higher, even though the steps were there for them. Their noble selves sat at the top and no, they did not see themselves as leering, as guffawing, as throwing scraps to those below.

  These hairy angels, scratching at their groins. Belching. Drinking beer.

  ‘No throwbacks. Except to a white man in there somewhere. Genetically stronger, you see.’

  ‘I’m confident. The women’d back me up. White father. Half-caste mother. Harriette’s sister. Very fair, all of them, civilised and well-mannered.’

  ‘Often a quadroon may appear southern European. You know? It’s the sun.’

  ‘There were different genetic types, you see. Species, almost.’

  Daniel’s wife helped Kathleen. Brought tea and cakes until Mrs Hall left. Then brought beer. The passionfruit vine reached through the wire mesh into the shade. The little stars of sunlight grew and faded.

  Whatever rationalisations Ern played with, the truth is that his loins were tingling, and—especially when alone in the evenings—he played with more than computations. He thought of a reversal, of small white streams entering black. He saw fractions sliding up against one another, the lower numbers growing larger as a single digit skipped from one to the other, always on top.

  Sergeant Hall, his smiling quiet wife, often went on picnics with Kathleen. Kathleen knew a lovely place. Sergeant Hall invited Ern along. They sat by a stream in the shade of paperbark trees. There was a grassy plain, just like a park, and wildflowers to pick. Kathleen showed them the Qualap Bells, but understood it was wisest not to mention the sweet yams that were there for the digging, the eating, the singing of.

  well-meaning friends and that entrepreneurial spirit

  As a youth I had known only the middle Ernest; he was cunning, and a man of sly lust. (I remember winking at him as I wrote that. He grinned his dementia. Lust, cunning; all gone.) Later I came to know him better than he knew himself. After all, not only had I pored over his writings, but I had been very intimate with his little probings, his ‘investigations’ to see the colour of my skin where the sun had not reached. He used to part my hair to see the scalp beneath and—when I was older, and recovering under his care—run his fingers through my curls, and all over me. ‘Looking for traces of colour,’ he’d mutter, stretching my cheeks apart. ‘There (mumble, mumble), a purple tint where we are pink, and that bluish tint to the whites of your eyes.’

  He would begin this way, clinical, but—soon enough—was shouting, urgent with power.

  ‘Keep your eyes open. Eyes open,’ he would say, one hand clamping the back of my neck, the other my shoulder. ‘Keep them open.’ At least he accepted that I could not look directly at him on such an occasion, and so I stared at the wall as he thrust, in his stilted way, trying to get deeper within me, and if that was not violation enough, wanting to remain there even as he shrivelled.

  Having tucked into me, and tucked himself away, he primly fussed in his efforts to smooth the bedclothes and pillow.

  Of course it is difficult to forgive him; I was at his mercy, and weak, and grieving the death of my father.

  Need I write of Ern’s self-deception, his scheming? I could not trust him, but he was family. ‘He’s family, that’s all you’ve got,’ my father had said. ‘You can’t change your family.’

  And he was all I had, back then.

  The younger Ernest had found himself in a backwater, and a salty one at that. He did a little work here, a little there.

  He worked on a salt lake close to Wirlup Haven. When the breeze came up of an afternoon, the sea came gurgling and chortling with it. Thick salt water lapped at him, tonguing little nicks and scratches in his skin, opening them into clean raw ulcers which grew alarmingly.

  In the early days of sharing our stories, I helped him revisit this memory. I bathed him in salty water, was slow and gentle with my touch. The wounds I’d given him grew, and in unforeseen ways. Letters I’d taken so much trouble with changed shape, and the words became hard to decipher.

  Ernest talked to Sergeant Hall, revealing very little except the reflection of the sergeant’s ideas. As if the sergeant was a client, and Ern was about to build for him. Inevitably, perhaps—one being a Protector and proud of his patch, the other introduced to the country through a parish connection to the very Chief Protector of Aborigines—they spoke at length of the Native Problem. Generously, distantly; after all, it was not their problem. Ern, if he considered it at all, would say his interest had been aroused by Auber Neville and the words of the Travelling Inspector. He would never admit to the way his thoughts curled back to the memory of his first night off the ship, and—stiff and obstinate—returned to his present loneliness.

  How he had spurted his ecstacy on that night. And he had felt so powerful, even as he turned his back and returned to the light.

  Sergeant Hall’s face was pained as he stressed his concern for the welfare of his domestic, Kathleen, who’d been like a daughter to him. He felt a genuine love for her, he said, blushing at having expressed such sentiments. A father’s love. She’s not like most of them, he said. Never been in a camp, not that she could remember anyway. We’ve brought her up, really, like a white girl.

  And so they had. She worked for them, yes, and hard, but they let her eat with them, taught her the niceties of etiquette, and she attended the church as one of their family. At picnics it was Sergeant Hall, wife, and domestic. Ernest was invited along.

  There were nights of cards, when Daniel Coolman came, and Ern—despite the difficulties demanded by the conversation—would shepherd things along, listening attentively. He was exhausted at the end of such evenings.

  Sergeant Hall was a good policeman, the whole town knew this. People would beam at the girl, the policeman’s girl. She showed them that they were tolerant, that the ones they kept away from town were indeed wasters, deserving their poverty and exclusion. If they tried harder, they would be accepted. By arrangement, they could be allowed into town for shopping, providing they first notified Sergeant Hall of their intentions.

  Ern was almost openly courting Kathleen. He was taciturn, and awkward; fingers clumsy at her elbow. They danced in the living room, from one wall to another, and Ern was careful to keep his body away from hers. He moved stiffly.

  Ern was proud of himself; of his daring, his open mind. But—we must be frank—he was also thinking of the wood yard, and Daniel’s health. When the big man died, what would happen to all that timber, and the land? They’d talked, see, Ern and Sergeant Hall, about the danger of leaving any property to Harriette. At present, because of the marriage, she may legally be a white woman, but once Daniel went ... Well, it was risky. A matter of interpretation.

  Daniel would point out to Sergeant Hall that he was not the only one who regarded Kathleen as a daughter. He felt the same, more so. The two men competed as to the strength of their paternal feeling.

  And Ern’s dreams of property (‘dreams’ sounded more innocent than ‘plans’) were more humble than they had been, certainly. A salty backwater? He had to start somewhere. He saw it as a place where he could become someone. He had plans—dreams—for all that timber. There was no market for it in this town. He was the only one who would be abl
e to use it. He could build several houses on that block of land, he could build this town. Just as soon as that railway connected ... There would be wheat. Industry.

  Of course he realised that the economy had slowed. He understood. A bad year for wheat prices. An aberration.

  Ern applied for the contract to collect and dispose of the town’s nightsoil. ‘Go on,’ Jack Chatalong said in an aside to Kathleen. ‘Go on, the Goona man on the goona cart!’ He said it quietly, but Ernest and Sergeant Hall heard their laughter. They put their heads together and arranged that Jack take on the job, for appropriate wages.

  Ern had his first employee.

  Jack Chatalong and Kathleen were brother and sister. Perhaps that helps explain what Jack did. Perhaps Sergeant Hall told him of his father’s identity. Or his anger may have been of a more general kind, and never intended to achieve so final a result. Quite likely he did not think at all, but simply acted on the spur of the moment.

  Slowly, they made their way to the mine shaft. Slowly, because it was a long time since Harriette had been there, and how the bush had grown. Slowly, because there was no hurry. Slowly, because of Daniel. ‘No,’ he had insisted, ‘I can walk.’ He wheezed, stopped to lean against some thin tree. ‘There can’t be anything here, this isn’t much more than dunes where the creek used to finish.’

  There was a small, spindly looking construction above the shaft, which was itself very narrow, once you got past its opening. Jack told them he had left something at the bottom.

  He descended while the others waited at the top.

  As he came creaking up again he thought of Daniel’s continuing rejection of him. Of Kathleen, what she had told him.

  He changed his mind. They would not wish to see these old bones he’d hidden, would not wish to be reminded of all this. What for? What good would it do? Jack Chatalong dropped the small burden he carried.