Little Exiles

by Robert Dinsdale

  In the afternoon, Rebekkah’s husband has time off from the construction site, and takes Pete out onto the river, in a rowboat he has fitted with an outboard motor. Although Elizabeth begs to go, James insists she must stay behind, and a tantrum of epic proportions ensues. Jon watches her face turn scarlet in exactly the same way as Pete’s; then, the way her silence descends like thick, impenetrable mist.

  Though they cajole him to come along, Jon watches them leave from the veranda and plods back inside. It is time that Megan made her telephone call, and there isn’t a chance he won’t be around to overhear.

  In the lounge room, Megan looks up from the rug, where Elizabeth has her dolls lined up, playing a parade.

  ‘It’s time,’ says Jon.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Jon nods.

  ‘Thank you,’ Megan mouths, and gets to her feet.

  The little girl watches as Megan goes to Jon’s side, squeezes his hand, and proceeds to the telephone that stands in an alcove. Dropping onto a stool at the telephone’s side, she begins to dial. First, there will be an operator; then another, and another, as she is relayed through countless layers of exchange. Yet, even before she has reached the first operator, she has stalled.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ she says.

  Jon thinks: this is it. My chance. Say the right thing now, Jon Heather, and she need not speak to her father at all.

  Even so, Jon puts his hand over hers. ‘Do you want me to dial?’

  Perhaps it is Jon’s touch, or perhaps just the thought that, in the end, he really would help her — but Megan shakes her head and, with new strength, finishes the number.

  ‘Yes,’ she begins. ‘I’d like to go to the Broome exchange.’

  Jon stands and watches her until, feeling too awkward, he drifts away to listen in from the other side of the room. Making a show of playing with Elizabeth, he drops onto the rug where she has her dolls arranged, and picks the first one up.

  Sometimes it is in the most unexpected moments that memories attack you: the touch of one of those dolls, and he is suddenly fifteen years and nine thousand miles away. He is a little boy, brought up by his sisters, playing with a dolls’ house and wooden horse.

  ‘Yes,’ Megan says. ‘The Old Arabia. It’s a hotel. I have the number …’

  Back in the present, Jon looks up to see Elizabeth pondering him curiously. Her eyes are aglow with deep suspicion; her new Uncle Pete she can stomach — but this Jon Heather is an unwelcome intruder.

  ‘Do you want to play?’ Jon asks.

  She puts her arms out, draws the dolls close, and shakes her head. Then, thumb in mouth, she scrabbles to her feet, and out into the open kitchen. As Jon watches her go, Megan’s voice comes back to him; her words have whirred along countless lines, through countless exchanges, and now at last she is speaking with her father.

  ‘It’s me,’ she breathes. ‘Dad, it’s Megan.’

  Jon strains to hear more, but she is suddenly speaking more quietly, as if ashamed of what she is saying, or else terrified to hear the reply.

  ‘I tried, Dad. It wasn’t about you. It was just something I …’

  In the corner of his vision, Elizabeth reappears, staring at him accusingly. Clumsily, he teeters towards her. He is closer to Megan now, but she is not saying anything. The telephone receiver buzzes, as if her father is bawling into it from six hundred miles away.

  Rebekkah appears, dressed in an apron splattered with food. The little girl stays close, but it is not as if she is seeking protection; it is as if she is the one who must protect her mother.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Jon, with an attempt at a lopsided smile. ‘I didn’t mean to scare her.’

  ‘You mustn’t worry,’ says Rebekkah. ‘We’re not used to visitors out here.’

  One ear still on Megan, Jon nods.

  ‘I don’t know. Soon, I hope. Dad — I wouldn’t have left if I wasn’t sure …’ Her voice fades. ‘You don’t have to have planned it to be sure. Wasn’t it like that when you fell in love with Mum?’ Then she falls silent.

  In the kitchen, a pot steams on the stove. Where the lid rattles, great reefs of flavour billow out, suffocating even the smell of wildflowers that comes in through the window.

  Jon Heather breathes in the scent. The steam envelops him, forming condensation on his face and neck — and, just like holding that doll, he is suddenly in a different time and place.

  ‘Are you OK, Jon?’

  Elizabeth stands on tip-toes, trying to steal a look in the pot. ‘It’s my favourite,’ she says. When she sees the way his face has crumpled, she gives him another scolding look. ‘Don’t you like mutton?’

  Rebekkah seems to be looking directly into him. They might have shared a whole conversation, and yet no words have been spoken.

  ‘You still make this?’ he asks.

  Rebekkah lifts the lid to stir the pot and flavours erupt. ‘I suppose …’ She pauses. ‘I got good at making it. I’ve adapted it since then. We have herbs and … It’s kind of our Sunday roast. You might even like it.’

  Jon does not say as much, but he knows he will go hungry tonight. All it would take is a single spoonful of this muck and he would be a little boy again, shovelling it into his face just so he doesn’t feel the cramps at night.

  ‘There was a girl at the Mission, a year or two older than me. She got good at making it too. You could tell when it had been her in the kitchens.’

  ‘Chop into fist-sized pieces and throw in a pot. That’s about as much as they ever taught us.’ She is trying to laugh, but reining it in each time she suspects Jon will not join in. ‘How long were you there, Jon?’

  Jon shrugs, as if he cannot remember every blasted second. ‘I was ten.’

  ‘I was only there two years,’ Rebekkah begins, almost as if tendering an apology. ‘Some of us my age, they sent straight off to keep house. On board ship, I thought I was going to a place in Perth. But I suppose things changed.’ She has not once looked at Jon; she stirs the pot instead. ‘They wanted me to stay. One of us went down to New South Wales to be a cottage mother. But me, well, I wanted something different …’

  ‘Home,’ breathes Jon.

  This time, Rebekkah looks right into him. Jon thinks it is as if a seal has been broken. Then, her face creases, confused. She shakes her head. ‘I remember the boys used to talk about it a lot. They were going to be like pirates — steal a galleon to get them home and plunder for treasure along the way.’

  Jon thinks it a fine idea, can almost imagine himself hoisting the black flag as he retreads the route of the HMS Othello — but he hears Rebekkah laughing.

  ‘We didn’t talk the same way,’ she goes on. ‘I suppose you could say — it wasn’t home we wanted, it was just a home.’ She bends low to give a spoonful of the simmering stew to her daughter.

  ‘You got yours, in the end,’ says Jon, looking around.

  Rebekkah nods.

  ‘Peter …’ She checks herself, shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry — Pete says you had sisters back in Leeds.’

  ‘Two of them,’ Jon utters through tight lips. He will not forgive her for using the past tense. ‘Twins.’

  ‘Maybe it would have been different, if we’d have had those things.’ She puts the lid back on the pot, granting Jon momentary respite from the terrible smell. ‘I suppose Pete must have told you about our mother … but, when there’s nothing to go back to, you don’t really think about it. I’ve got everything I ever wanted here. I suppose that’s why Pete’s got his eye on that smallholding with your friend Mr Tate …’

  Rebekkah quietens. She sees the look on Jon Heather’s face. ‘What is it, Jon?’

  He breathes deep. There is mutton stew in his nostrils. The little girl is on her tip-toes, eager for more. She wouldn’t be eager for that filth if she knew where it came from. Somebody should tell her. Somebody should make her take her medicine.

  ‘What holding?’ he demands.

  Rebekkah lets go of the spoon. It cla
tters to the floor and, as if a much bigger thing has crashed down, Elizabeth starts. At first, she wants to run from the kitchen — but the big bad ogre, Jon Heather, is standing in the way.

  ‘Jon,’ Rebekkah begins, her freckled face turning red, ‘I thought you knew. I didn’t …’

  Jon steps forward, deeper into the mist of mutton and steam. ‘You didn’t answer my question. What holding, Rebekkah?’

  ‘The one he’s looking at with your friend Cormac.’

  From the other room, Jon hears the telephone slamming down. A stool is pushed back, there are footsteps, and then — through racks of pots and pans — Jon sees Megan crossing the lounge.

  ‘And you?’ he says, whipping around as soon as she approaches. ‘You knew this too?’

  Jon hardly sees that she has been crying.

  ‘Jon, what happened?’

  He cannot bear her to touch him, but he does not want to step back, lest he has to touch Rebekkah and Elizabeth too. Shaking Megan free, he pushes past, finally breathing air that is not thick with mutton and herbs.

  Megan’s eyes dart between Rebekkah and Jon.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ Rebekkah breathes. Behind her Elizabeth sets up a squall.

  ‘Tell her to shut up,’ says Jon.

  Megan snatches at his wrist. ‘Jon!’

  ‘I can’t listen to spoilt little girls crying. Not when they’ve got nothing to cry about. When they took to us with hockey sticks, we weren’t allowed to cry. You remember that, Rebekkah?’

  The question hardens something in Rebekkah. She is not sorry anymore. ‘I want you to leave my house.’

  Jon tramps across the living room, making for the door. On the threshold, he hears the crash of footsteps behind him, but still he ploughs on out, over the road, to where the ute is waiting, deep in the grass.

  ‘Jon!’

  Jon swings into the driver’s seat, scrabbles for the keys under the dash. He has not yet kicked the engine to life when Megan forces open the passenger door. He claws out so that she cannot climb in.

  ‘Jon, you’ve got to believe me. I didn’t know …’

  In spite of himself, he really does believe her. ‘You’d like to see me there, though, wouldn’t you? Getting up every morning to feed a coop full of chooks. Collecting eggs. Shearing sheep.’ The engine comes alive. He drops his head against the wheel. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you? The two of us living on Peter Slade’s station. Some little cottage at the edge of the grounds. Taking the ute up into town on a Saturday night. Baking in the sun on a Sunday afternoon. Day trips to the coast and visits with Cormac Tate and …’

  His voice has mellowed.

  ‘Jon,’ she says. ‘I hadn’t thought of it. I hadn’t thought much further ahead than tomorrow …’

  He lifts his head. ‘It’s me, isn’t it? I want it. I keep thinking about it, Megan. Ever since Broome. Since Cable Beach and …’ She knows what he means: the time they first kissed. ‘You put it in my head, Megan. You didn’t mean to, but you put it in my head, and now I can’t get it out.’

  Jon reaches to close the passenger door.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I can’t believe he’d give up on me. I can’t believe he’d give up on himself.’

  She whips open the passenger door, flings herself into the cab. When she has slammed the door back shut, her eyes pierce Jon’s. ‘Don’t run away, Jon Heather.’

  It is an instruction. Jon kills the engine. ‘I thought I was strong enough to do this, Megan, take you with me, be with you for just a little while …’

  He leaps out of the cab and rushes around the back while Megan is still trapped inside. Out of the flatbed, he heaves his suitcase of books.

  ‘And that’s it?’ Megan demands, tumbling out to follow him. ‘Damn it, Jon, but you can’t just run away. You’re not a little boy. It was you who asked me to get in that truck. You who kissed me …’

  Some way along the grass bank, Jon stops and turns around. ‘I’m a whisker away from it, Megan. I feel like a breeze could push me over. One wrong foot, now, and I’ll never see my mother and sisters again.’ He does not mean it to, but his voice rises in a crescendo, like a boy in the throes of becoming a man. ‘Don’t you get it? If I gave in, like Peter and Cormac Tate, it would all be your fault. You — for keeping me here. How could I ever love somebody like that?’

  She approaches slowly, tries to take his hand.

  He thinks, if I say it, I can’t take it back — and, God help me, but I’ll have to take it back.

  ‘I love you, Megan. I do.’ It is the first time he has said it, but it seems more like a terrible confession than a wild, unbidden declaration. ‘But if I do love you, well, love can go to hell …’ He looks up, into her eyes. ‘Love,’ he says, ‘just isn’t what I want.’

  When Pete walks through the door, he knows from Rebekkah’s face that something is wrong. Night is beginning to fall, one of those pale northern darknesses, and he has three huge river trout strung over his shoulder.

  ‘Pete,’ Megan says, rising from the settee. ‘It’s Jon Heather.’

  ‘What happened? Is he OK?’

  The look on Rebekkah’s face changes. ‘I didn’t mean to, Pete. I thought he knew. I thought you were taking him with you.’

  Pete traps one foot in the closing door. ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘Anywhere,’ Rebekkah interjects. ‘Anywhere but here …’

  He listens to her story, Elizabeth sitting with a look of quelled panic at her feet. Then, he shoulders back past James, dumping the fish as he goes.

  ‘How will you know which way he went?’ Megan calls.

  ‘Only two ways to go on a road like this,’ Pete says. ‘Forward and back. I know where my money is, don’t you?’

  He reaches the ute at a run, twists the ignition. When he pushes onto the highway, he sees Dog, harrying more birds at the edge of the marsh. If he is not careful, a crocodile will leap out and end an ignoble career. He slows down, tells the bedraggled mutt to jump up back, but Dog is more interested in trying to taste these new birds than he is in a ride. He presses his foot to the floor, and the ute takes off.

  The night is deepening, shadows spreading until they hide completely the hollows and crags through which Pete drives. He has gone scant miles when he sees a figure loping into the darkness, a single suitcase at his side.

  Leaving the ute upended on a tall red bank, he scrambles out. ‘Jon Heather!’ he barks. ‘Jon Heather, you better turn round! I’m not about to hit a man who isn’t looking me in the eye …’

  This is not the greatest incentive for a man to turn around, but Jon does it all the same. Pete bears down upon him like a rampaging bull. At last, only a few feet away, he rises to his tip-toes, struggling not to launch forward.

  ‘You’re yelling at my sister, Jon Heather? With that little girl in there, wondering what in hell’s going on? What this damn stranger’s doing in her house, just hollering hell at her mummy?’

  ‘You’re just as much a stranger to that little girl, Peter …’

  ‘She’s my goddamn niece, and she doesn’t need you yelling like that.’

  ‘Well?’ Jon Heather says. ‘Is it true?’

  ‘Her daddy’s about ready to come out here and teach you a lesson. Megan’s had to calm him down.’ Pete rocks back, like he might throw a punch. Instead, he hurls his hands up, runs them through his hair. ‘Jon, you can’t just walk into my sister’s house and …’

  ‘We all know it, Peter. She’s your sister. Well done.’

  ‘I don’t even know you anymore, Jon Heather. I mean — what’s going on in there? It’s like that brain of yours is just rocketing around your skull. You don’t got no control.’

  Control is all he has ever had, ever since he was a boy. Rule one: if you’re angry at them, don’t let them know that you’re angry. But — Pete is right. It wasn’t just Mr Cook. It wasn’t just Rebekkah. He feels coiled, like a spring he’s been crushing down for ten years — only now the spri
ng is fighting back; it’s been coiled too long.

  ‘What is all this, Peter? You and Cormac Tate, sloping about some smallholding … behind my back?’

  Pete’s shoulders slouch. At last, the fight drains from him. ‘There wasn’t supposed to be any secret in it. Cormac heard about it the last time he saw Booty. It was just some old man, selling off his little plot before he’s run out of time to go see his grandkids … A few fields, some wheat, probably some chooks …’

  ‘And you bought it.’

  ‘I didn’t buy a thing!’

  ‘Cormac Tate bought it for you. Told you to ditch me and shack up with …’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ Pete admits, his voice wearying. ‘Cormac’s been hammering on about it for months, a year even. He’s there right now, but I’d have followed you to the end, Jon — I’d have followed you all the way to England, if it hadn’t have been for …’

  Jon does not need him to complete that sentence. If it hadn’t been for coming here. If it hadn’t been for seeing what my sister’s got, what I might have one day: the only thing that matters in the whole of this world.

  ‘Peter, please. You’ve got to listen to me. Don’t let them turn you. Own a farm? That’s exactly what the Children’s Crusade wanted for us! They’ve got you, and you weren’t even in the Mission …’

  ‘It isn’t about winning and losing, Jon. If the Children’s Crusade want me in Australia, and I want to be in Australia too, it doesn’t have to mean they won. You can’t let your whole life be about the Children’s Crusade.’

  ‘If you go to that holding, Peter, it’s you who’s letting your whole life be about what those bastards did.’

  ‘Jon, I can’t leave. I could never leave …’ Pete’s voice quavers. Not since he was eight years old has he told anybody he loved them, but the thought comes to his lips now. ‘I’ve been thinking about it so long, Jon, but I can’t leave Cormac Tate. Damn it, Jon. I thought I could, but I just can’t.’