by Kim Scott
Waking with the taste of metal in his mouth and his jaw tight, Jack heard Ern’s voice among the others escaping the walls of the pub and—to the accompaniment of bottles clinking, a motor coughing, a couple of horses clip-clopping—disappearing in the direction of the claypan at the edge of town.
Jack wondered if Kathleen was awake.
Now that Will had gone to be with his Uncle Sandy, Ern had Jack and Harriette collecting the nightsoil. Topsy was finishing at school, and Ern was reluctant that she take on domestic work, and thought it would be a shameful waste if she was to assist Harriette.
Since Kathleen seemed unable to bear him children, he took steps to have her earn some income from cleaning, washing and ironing for the townspeople. If not enough work came that way, then she could assist Harriette. ‘We certainly don’t need you going off into the bush with Harriette, hunting.’
Although he took no notes, Ern was—discreetly—observing Topsy, and—doubtless—did so as dispassionately as the scientist of whom Mr Neville wrote:
with his trained mind and keen desire to exert his efforts in the field investigating native culture and in studying the life history of the species, supplies an aid to administration.
Little Topsy, he noted, was no longer so little; breasts budding, hips altering the way she walked.
He bought her books, and English magazines, and even engaged a tutor for her. It was obvious to him that she had outgrown what the school could offer.
Harriette tried to reassure Kathleen that Ern, in this way, was doing little more than what Daniel had done for his own daughters.
Ern took to buying Topsy articles of clothing and having her parade for him. He wanted, he said, for her to learn deportment, and how to dress like a lady.
A different policeman was stationed next-door, and Ernest was quick to advise the man of his part-Aboriginal wife and Aboriginal domestic. He gave the policeman the benefit of his own, progressive ideas on the best means to uplift and elevate the natives and of the manner in which he intended to raise his own children. ‘My wife...’ he began, and the new constable, staring at something behind Ern, finished the sentence for him: ‘...is very young.’
Ern noted the envy and admiration on the policeman’s face and, turning to introduce his wife, saw that it was not Kathleen who was the object of the official gaze, but Topsy. Never one to lose an opportunity, Ern said, ‘She is older than she looks,’ and introduced Topsy as his wife. ‘This is Kathleen,’ he said, looking directly at the girl, determined that she should not contradict him. Ern was thrilled, and just a little frightened, at what he had begun, had seen he could do.
It made sense. Kathleen’s child had been fathered by Sergeant Hall. Kathleen was too attached to her Aunty Harriette. Kathleen was tall, and Ern was already having to instruct her as to her diet. She had changed, and not to Ern’s taste. But Topsy ... Topsy was young, and small, and as fine-boned as a bird. She looked exotic, her hair sometimes seemed almost golden, and she spoke and moved with remarkable elegance given the limited tutoring he had given her. She seemed, my grandfatheras-scientist told himself, almost a new species.
When Kathleen found Ern embracing Topsy, bending her over their matrimonial bed with her skirts all bunched up, she could only give a little noise of surprise. Ern looked up and saw her. He pushed Topsy’s face into the bedspread, hissing, ‘Just a moment. Don’t move.’ Topsy lay still, her face hidden and limbs splayed like a discarded doll. She was so small. Ern straightened up, adjusted his trousers, and—walking across to where Kathleen stood in the doorway—closed the door in her face.
Kathleen did not slam doors, did not stamp her feet. She was in the dusty street, near where—so many years ago—her Aunty Harriette had run toward the violence, not understanding her own terror. Harriette had been only a toddler, and her father, Sandy One, had chased her, caught her, thrown her to Fanny who had quickly hidden her away.
Now it was Jack, who—seeing Kathleen striding into the distance—ran after his sister. My grandfather, Ernest, stepped from the front door of his house. Jack Chatalong was striding toward him. The way Jack was moving would have alerted Ern to danger, and—indeed—Ern’s own nagging dissatisfaction had quickened his perception. But for all that he would not have expected to be hit, so hard, so soon.
Sprawled on the steps, Ernest put one hand up as the constable rushed toward them from next-door. ‘No, no, it’s all right. As long as he goes, I’ll make nothing more of it.’
To be able to speak and behave in such a controlled manner made Ernest feel deliciously superior.
Harriette returned almost surrounded with the bodies of rabbits. They were heaped up behind her, and hanging from the sides of the old spring cart ready to be sold to the people in town, at three to the shilling.
‘I don’t know where Jack is, or Kathleen,’ said Ern, which was the truth. Harriette worried for them. Ern did not say that the policeman had taken them away. What else could Harriette do, other than stay near home? Topsy did not say anything of what had happened. She was very young. What difference could it have made, anyway?
Ern told Harriette he would allow her to live among the old water tanks in the yard, but she mostly stayed away, camping along the coast. Ernest, at least, was pleased because he realised Harriette could only be a bad influence upon the girl, Topsy, who he now called his wife.
a menace in our midst
My dear grandfather Ern had reason to be grateful for that goona cart. Even in a financial depression there remain deposits; liquid, firm, soft or hard.
Topsy, a growing swelling girl, cooked cleaned washed, and invested small portions of the above deposits in the vegetable gardens. Ern was always trying to train the girl in various useful skills; to help her know her role; to look after his needs.
He took her on a long drive, and parked where they could look down over a rough clearing beside the rubbish tip on the edge of a nearby town. Ernest pointed to various things below them, informing and educating Topsy about such things as native reserves, settlements, and missions.
There were little huts, tents, bush shelters.
You could see people milling around the one bush toilet, or making the long walk to the horse trough in the street to get their water, and carting it back in old kerosene tins.
Topsy recognised Jack and Kathleen as just two of the many people who did not look in her direction.
The residents of nearby houses—some of which had windows facing the reserve—believed the place shameful; the idle people, the little children, the shabby huts and tents, the untidiness and squalor of it all. You could see their whole life just about, if you wanted, said these poor townsfolk. It should not be like this. They wanted the situation improved; the reserve must be moved out of sight, and the children sent to some school of their own.
Jack had built a hut in bush just the other side of town. He used old timbers, hessian, flattened kerosene tins. He found a little farm work, but then fell out of it, and someone from the town complained about him and Kathleen living like that, on public land. A policeman and a public health inspector arrived together. The inspector reported that the hut was not fit for human habitation.
They were moved onto the reserve where, having been permitted to salvage the materials from his previous hut, Jack rebuilt it. Within a few short weeks the hut had suddenly not only been deemed fit for human habitation, but was used by the Local Protectors of Aborigines—a policeman and a priest—as an example of what others could do if they only showed a bit of initiative.
Being introduced in such a way immediately put Kathleen and Jack at a distance from their fellows in the reserve. Kathleen wanted to keep a little distance anyway. It was important to her, for instance, that they have a table; she didn’t want to eat on the ground, watched by the people up in those houses.
Some people in the camp said she was stuck-up, toffee-nosed, that she thought she was too good. ‘She thinks she’s white!’ It was only ever the people in the camp who said this;
never those in the town, who either glared, or ignored her completely when she came into their sight.
And it was true that Kathleen wanted to be like a white woman; to have rights, and respect. She dressed as well as she was able to for the long walk to the water trough.
Someone might see her leaving her hut with a makeshift bucket in each arm, and they’d sing out.
‘Hey, look at this white woman coming along this way.’
And Kathleen would say, ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘Well, true. True, sister, we thought you was a white woman coming down to visit us boys.’ And they’d laugh and laugh.
Kathleen and Jack’s hut had an earth floor. Kathleen would wet it, stamp it down, make it just about shine, and sweep and sweep and sweep it with a ti-tree broom just like everybody in the camp used.
She dug out some little grasstrees, young ones, and stuck them in the ground to make seats around her table. She fashioned cushions from scraps of hessian stuffed with grass and leaves.
Jack read old newspapers he had collected, and—in the very act of doing so—dispelled and disproved what those very same papers said about him and his people. But it was hard for him to be aware of this, and it was a lonely battle because he felt as if the print was a wall advancing at him, pushing him further and further away.
A Menace in our Midst: the Aborigines Camp in our Town.
It was very hard to get past such a headline. Such words made it hard to even remember how to read.
Kathleen made trip after trip to the water trough, preferring to do so on her own. She would look out for others returning, and then head off. It would be best of all, she thought, to fetch water after dark, but there was the curfew.
She read the labels on bottles, tins, old magazines. She and Jack tired of reading old newspapers they’d retrieved from bins, or snatched from the wind blowing through the camp.
Kathleen stripped the bark from trees and burned it to a fine ash which, once cooled, she rubbed on her knives, forks, spoons, her pot and pan, until they shone like mirrors, almost.
Like mirrors.
Separately, neither speaking of it to the other, Jack Chatalong and Kathleen Scat would face their gloomy and distorted reflections. They considered their noses, lips, skin, wondered at the lesser brain capacity—according to what they read—allowed by their skulls. I also have studied my features in the mirror, searching for resemblances to my own people and, growing increasingly bitter at my grandfather’s apparent success, I have wondered what else has been taken away, and what remains.
Jack found he could earn a bit trapping rabbits. It led him away, sometimes for days at a time.
Kathleen began to collect water at night, curfew or not. It was a long, mad walk.
So mad, in fact so mad that when you felt a hand on your shoulder as you leant on the trough you might think that, well, you had it coming. It was your own fault. The man wore a uniform like Sergeant Hall had, and if he even looked like Sergeant Hall, this man leading you into a cell, unbuckling his belt? Well, maybe that was the way it had to be for us, the same thing happening over and over again.
Kathleen had kept to herself so much that it was days before it was confirmed that she was missing.
I followed a trail of old Aborigines Department papers; Mogumber, domestic service, a number of children taken away from her. Like Fanny, like Dinah and Harriette, like Topsy and like even my own mother, Kathleen exits this story too quickly. You wonder how we can continue.
Jack felt that way, too, when he returned. How to continue. He went to the police. Dunno, they said. Oh yeah, they’d found her in the street. She was scrubbing the water trough. They’d sent her away, she was crazy. Some nervous trouble the doctor had said. He might be able to get permission to see her.
Jack arrived back at the reserve a considerable distance behind the sound of his very own voice. They were all useless, he was shouting, a dirty bunch of no-hopers, who didn’t even try to stop them and one of them had dobbed in Kath out of jealousy. If he found the one did that...
So it was just another fight, and Uncle Jack ended up pretty sore, in his house of kero tins and old bags with tree-stumps for chairs. Looking into the mirror of a spoon, looking back at himself. Thinking, a menace in his very own midst.
heartbeats in the grass
Within the dunes, the scent of salt and the only peppermint leaves of our country, there you can sleep. You hear the many heartbeats among the rippling grasses, the many whispering voices, and your own is somewhere among them.
Harriette’s camp.
‘Oh, people pass through you know, sometimes.’
And, ‘If you would be quiet and stay still enough, relax, they are still here you know.’
Jack wasn’t so sure.
‘Topsy,’ said Harriette, ‘should be with us here now. All of us should be, even that Ern if he could remember who he is, who we are.’
They lived easily. Jack loaded the old cart with rabbits, swapped things, sold skins and carcasses where he could. Harriette might go into Gebalup on the horse. She tied it up and walked through neglected streets. The wind skipped and spun on vacant blocks, slapped at the houses shedding iron warping boards. Some of the buildings leaned, and fell to the ground very slowly, one corner at a time, as if dropping to their knees first.
That new policeman never challenged her.
my sandy heart
The old men talked to me, or at least the two of them did. We propped Ern up in the shade, and he listened; he was forced to, really, and even though he must have wanted to have his say, we could make no sense of his groaning and spitting, his gnashing of teeth. Uncle Will and Uncle Jack suggested this or that. Occasionally, one of them took up a tool himself. But really, they saw it as my initiative, and my job. Under their erratic and shifting direction I repaired the roof, and re-mortared the walls although quite often, when, say, the gaps between the stones provided an interesting pattern of light, or fluted the air in a pleasing way we left the walls as I had altered them.
‘When Uncle Sandy died...’ and here Uncle Will digressed, by way of characterisation, you might say. ‘He was your great-grandmother’s brother, and he was born at Dubitj River, and went to the world war and was going to marry a white woman, but ... I ran away to live with him. I went all that way to live with him.’ Uncle Will was leaning against one internal wall, and the sun shone through the roof and between the stones of the wall so that he sat among grids and planes of light. He looked across at Ern, who we had propped in a corner, but I knew he was not seeing my grandfather...
‘Uncle Sandy was in the main street, up in a little town among hills. It was a long way from here, he’d got so far away. He had tried to get back to Gebalup but, well, there was always trouble for him. It was hard enough just to get a ticket for a train, let alone get off and walk through some towns. Uncle Sandy was not someone who liked to feel shame, or to have to slink about. So he didn’t get out very much when I went to live with him. He was sick, and I suppose, having made a habit of keeping his distance, he had no one to help him. He was trapped.
‘He was such a brave man, you know,’ said Uncle Will. And it was right in town there, the place he would’ve least liked, that Sandy Two collapsed. The police came rushing. They were first—maybe they’d even been following the man and his nephew—and it was as if it was a big joke for them. Someone walking past tut-tutted, muttered, ‘Take him to a cell to sleep it off.’
Uncle Will was on his knees beside Uncle Sandy who was fast becoming a corpse, and the police were standing around talking to passers-by. Uncle Will told them off, shouting at them even from down on his knees like that.
‘I was just a boy, really, you know,’ muttered Uncle Will, shaking his head. And then, surprising me, he suddenly said, ‘I hate myself, know that?’ The thought seemed to come from nowhere. ‘I hate myself. I should have been like that more often, more angry.’
We both looked at Ern, toppling very slowly to one side, as if in a
n extreme slow motion. We caught him before he fell, and stuffed him in a chair to keep him upright.
‘Should have been more like him maybe.’ Uncle Will indicated Ern. ‘Have things to aim at. Something. But, I can’t hate him, even knowing what he’s done. I’m too soft.’
Will said he watched them drag Uncle Sandy away, drag the body away. Will remembered the soles of Uncle Sandy’s shoes, how each had a hole in it, and together they reminded him of a pair of eyes, staring at him as they retreated.
Then Will got up and bolted.
He came into the post office the next morning, intending to send a telegram to Harriette. He thought, just send it to the post office at Gebalup.
There was a policeman, and he said that Will need not worry about the funeral arrangements, that the Aborigines Department would sort everything all out and had it in hand.
Uncle Will said he wanted to say no, that they did not want the Aborigines Department having anything to do with this funeral whatsoever. But he didn’t. He just didn’t know.
And he didn’t send the telegram because it occurred to him that to do so would be to provide a target for the Aborigines Department to aim at, and that target could be his mother, sisters...
‘What happened, see, is that I have always tried to keep away from Aboriginals because I knew the people would try to bring me under the Aborigines Act. And they took your children, hunted you down, moved you for no reason.
‘I didn’t want any “assistance” from them. All I wanted was for them to leave me alone, and to be free of them.
‘It has made me very lonely, all my life.’
I felt reassured somehow, hearing him say this, looking at him ... Of course we feel very lonely. Look at us, stuck out in the sky like branches from which the rest of the tree has been cut and carted away.
