Bridge of Triangles

by John Muk Muk Burke

  Frequently Mary failed to return to the hut at nights. She had pasted pictures of filmstars and singers onto the wall with a mixture of water and flour, and roamed around with her lot who’d done the same and crimped their hair and swapped tight peddle-pusher pants.

  Sissy and her daughter argued.

  “If ya don’t like it ’ere you can git out and find ya father.” Mary had been told about her father back when she and Joe were led off into the courthouse.

  “Yeh, well I might do that one day too. Don’t tempt me—just don’t tempt me.”

  “Don’t ya speak to me like that—I’m still ya bloody mother ya know.” Sissy softened, aware that the city was winning both against herself and her kids. “Anyway Mare—ya gettin’ to be ya own boss now. I don’t wanta argue with ya all the time. Ya growin’ up—youse are all growin’ up I s’pose. ’cept for my babies.”

  “We’re not babies,” shouted Chris and Keith together.

  “Yeh youse are—you’ll always be my babies—my little babies all of yas. An’ I’m ya mum and that’s that.”

  So Sissy clung desperately to those who were still too young to walk away and find a path through the myriad offerings of that metropolis with its tall canyons carrying grit and paper and the silent screams of its citizens past shiny windows full of cars and televisions which they could never have. But still these things attracted—perhaps one day a substance might form from the dream. For Joe and Mary Leeton, just like their mother, the essential lie that was the city, began to work its subtle promises. Began to seem as true as the cheap sparkling wine, or third tall brown bottle of beer clouded the littleness and limitations of the Leetons’ reality.

  At first Sissy never thought that she would not be able to transform herself into someone new. Years ago, when the kids were younger, before Sissy saw herself clearly mirrored in their life pattern, she imagined that she would take them, and they would take her, into that new place and time where the change would happen. But it wasn’t happening. But she had to live in the happy lie of the song-sung pub evenings even though they were never part of her conscious plans. Sure, she had more money now than she’d ever had before; a few nice dresses; an array of shiny jewellery; high-heeled shoes and packets of stuff to set her hair. And there was always a few bob left for a drink, or at least to get to the pub with the crowd where someone would buy you a drink or lend you the wherewithall.

  Eventually of course, Joe drifted off more and more with his Koori friends and finally took the soft tartan bag down from the top of Sissy’s wardrobe and filled it with a few clothes and his bottle of after-shave. A mate revved up and they piled the bag, the guitar and their bodies into the patchy wreck of a car and took off. With the lingering smell of blue smoke floating over the bullring and in through the square window the battered car joined the stream of traffic on the main road. Sissy never saw her eldest son again. In the first few weeks she would not let the other kids speak about Joe or speculate where he might have taken off to.

  “Let him go to buggery for all I care.” Her eyes and her increasing frequency at the pub showed she did care. And that was years and years ago. The ache of his leaving moved in to live permanently in Sissy’s heart.

  Jack turned up to take Chris and Keith out for a day. He’d driven up from the bush in his first car but his courage failed just outside the city and he’d taken a train for the last leg of his trip to the settlement and his two sons.

  Jack and the two boys took the train to the city. He allowed them to eat whatever they wanted in a cafe. Later they walked over the great steel bridge. Chris and Keith peered down the airy distance to the water. Below the bridge the water stretched away in a huge polished sheet of black and silver flatness. The sun shot silver and blinding white as the little group moved past the rails and wire mesh of the walkway. Overhead the great triangles hung grimy and salt-encrusted against the sky. Trains roared across this steel ribbon which floated in the air.

  “We’re higher than the birds,” said Keith.

  Chris looked sideways at his father. This stranger in a coat and hat who was now saying to his brother words which tried to connect him to them.

  “Yeh, that’s how high we are.”

  This was followed by a barrage of words. There were more words from the man that afternoon than all the afternoons of years before. He told them of the midget submarines and torpedoes and a ferry that had been sunk.

  “And look, now, bloody Jap tyres advertised everywhere.” He seemed abjectly bitter, truly confused, a pawn in a game others were playing. A game others would always play. The man stood, small on the mightly steel bridge. And looked and glimpsed himself. He felt used.

  And how the man on a horse cut the ceremonial ribbon when the bridge was being opened and how there were white cats walking around the top of the pylon of the bridge.

  “Can we see them—can we see them?” chanted Keith.

  “Alright, we’ll go up on the way back then.” So the day was filled in. They returned to the hut and Jack left them near the bullring and walked off into the early evening. On the road beyond the patch of wasteland cars sped after their own lights. A bus protested at gear changes as it edged its way into a stop. He knew he could not get there before it pulled out. He silently swore. Bloody city. No place for a man or his kids. In the gathering gloom of an early Saturday night he waited for another bus.

  After Jack’s departure Sissy felt a kind of foreboding. Something was about to happen—some event of shattering significance. She wasn’t only worried about Jack and what he might do with the boys. But for a time things went on normally: Sissy rose early and travelled to the frypan factory, returning in the late afternoon to try to give the dregs of her energy to the boys. It was all she could do to peel a few potatoes and fry some chops. The boys were at home more often than they were at school but Sissy hardly had the energy to argue. They lied to her in any case. Rose arrived periodically on a Friday night or Saturday afternoon and, while the races blared out from the radio the two sisters would spend time on their faces and clothes. One Saturday Rose arrived with a new boyfriend. Sissy didn’t take to him and said she wouldn’t go out that night.

  “Alright then Sis, we can look after ourselves, can’t we love,” Rose looked at her new man. “Anyway if you’re not comin’ then I’ll take your coat. It’s gonna be cold tonight.” The fluffy white coat had been much admired and touched when Sissy finally took it off lay-by. Sissy went and got it from the wardrobe.

  “’ere ya’are then Rose—don’t forget who bloody owns it!”

  She put the coat on straight away, and with her hair piled up and decorated with a spangly clip which held a couple of lemon-coloured feathers, and the big chunky beads around her throat everyone agreed Rose looked lovely.

  “I’ll bring it back tomorra—about dinner time. Give meself a chance to recover from tonight—won’t I love?”

  The boyfriend wrapped an arm round Rose’s shoulder. “Yeh, sure, I’ll make sure she gets it back. I’ll be sticking round from now on won’t I—won’t let her out of my sights.” His oiled hair gleamed under the electric light and his fingers tightened against the soft cloth.

  Rose pulled back slightly and gently pushed him in the centre of his chest with a long polished nail. “Who’s a fast worker then, eh?”

  By dinner time on Sunday there was still no sign of Rose. It was about three in the afternoon when Sissy was sitting out on the ramp having a smoke to try to dispel her sense of unease. She was joined by her neighbour who clutched a young baby that was crying.

  “Can’t get the young tyke to stop. Rockin’ him all bloody day but it’s no good.” She settled down on the ramp next to Sissy. “Here, hold him a sec will ya, I’ll just roll a smoke.” Sissy took the crying child. It looked up at her big face and the crying subsided.

  “You’ve sure got a way with kids Sis. Terrible murder in the national park last night wasn’t it? All over the front page this mornin’.”

  Then Sissy k
new. The baby was smiling by now. She looked at it and wondered why it was smiling. Her head had gone quite cold. She held the child perfectly still. A pale blue sky framed the child’s head. Sissy saw the line of little yellow buttons down the middle of its jump suit.

  “Did himself in too—after. Here—I’ll go and get it. I’ve read it. You can have it. Jeez you’re good with that kid.”

  At the same time the woman returned with the newspaper the police car began to edge its way through the winter mud behind the straggling geraniums that more or less marked off the Leeton’s own bit of yard. That’s when Sissy started to scream.

  Not long after Rose’s funeral the Welfare lady turned up at the flat. It was no good arguing, there had been a complaint from the children’s father. They would to go a Home until everything had been sorted out. And a record had been kept over the last two years she would have to realise. Yes it would need a court case and yes the complaint had come from the boys’ father and it was no good abusing her—she was only doing her job. The boys would be picked up next week. In the light of what had happened to the older two it was unlikely that Mrs Leeton would be permitted to keep the boys—but that of course was up to the courts. But look at them—wouldn’t it be better if they had a bit of security in their lives—good hot showers—a thorough check up at the doctor’s? Yes she realised she was their mother but sometimes the hard decision had to be made—and there was those who would make it too if certain people couldn’t or wouldn’t see reason.

  Perhaps it was the smell of Aunty Rose, and the memory of Joe and Mary, a sort of madness in that low hut, which made Sissy pack the battered suitcase with the barest collection of necessities for herself and her two boys.

  Perhaps she thought she could avoid the courtroom and the welfare and her pain and somehow keep the remnants of her little family close to her. Whatever the reason, Sissy felt she had to move out to go on living. She had to act. Yes, Rose was dead, Joe had gone and what in God’s name had happened to Mary? Had she found her father?

  It wasn’t for years that Sissy heard that Mary had found her father out in the opal fields. He’d been a drifter all his life. Drifting into small towns and leaving them and his women as easily as a drained glass of beer is left in a closing pub. Mary hadn’t had much chance to know her father though. Not long after they had met he was caught cheating a mate who retaliated by bashing his brains out with a pick.

  Sissy’s actions were those of a desperate woman. Every new flat she looked at was dearer than the settlement huts. Eventually she rented a bed-sitting room in a worn, paint peeling inner suburb. It was the closed-in veranda of a converted suburban house which had once stood proud and neat in a row with others almost identical. It dressed itself up with weathered floral curtains and brown lino worn paper thin, a chest of drawers and a bulky ornate wardrobe. When the landlady learned that the two boys shared the double bed and Sissy slept on the floor she insisted that this flat was “for a single lady only—no pets or kids allowed—I told you that. I’ll have to speak to the Child Welfare about them kids you know.”

  “Don’t you worry yaself lady—I’ll be speaking to them meself.” Sissy knew she was finally defeated. Deep within herself she had known it would come to this.

  From Rose’s house Sissy had taken almost nothing other than two white and gold ornamental angels, possibly won in some coconut shy years before. These fragile little figures finally enabled Sissy to speak to her kids—it was some weeks after the funeral.

  They were eating their tea. Sissy had moved the tiny kitchen table between the bed and the one chair and put a loaf of bread and devon sausage on a plate. She let them eat a few slices of the bread and meat before she told Keith and Chris that they would have to go away. Like a sort of trip or holiday. Now that Aunty Rose was an angel, and she held one of the shiny little dolls to her breast, then she didn’t know what was going to happen anymore. She couldn’t go on. Anyway they were going to a place where they could swim in the sea and it would be nice. And why were they looking at her like that? Keith began to break up a piece of bread. His little fingers rolled the doughy pieces into soft grey pellets. Chris looked at his mother and saw her. This woman whose big round face was wet with tears. On the radio a man was singing about a girl called Mary Ann. The woman and the two male children were silent, thankful that there was a radio. Chris looked at his young brother. He tried only to hear the song.

  The Welfare came with a voucher for brand new clothes for the boys. Sissy and Chris and Keith returned from the shop with the strange smelling short pants, shirts, pyjamas, underwear—a new suitcase. Tomorrow Chris and Keith would go away with that suitcase. It was now dark in the little room so Sissy reluctantly switched on the electric light.

  A government car’s back door was slammed by the Welfare lady. She lowered herself into the front and neatly arranged her nylon legs. The mother rushed towards the house. As she wrenched open the screen door the car’s engine started. A mother heard a car drive away. On the back seat were two boys leaving their mother. A small boy’s hand reached out. An older boy took it and smiled through his tears. “Don’t cry, don’t cry mate, please don’t cry. She’s gonna be alright. Everything’s gonna be alright. You’ll see.”

  And indeed the great trees still stood immoveable by the river. The bridge with its strong white triangles still stood solid above the treacherous swirling waters. The bull ants still swarmed across the plains and logs and goannas lumbered through the bush. In the clear blue sky the cry and scream of birds still floated to the clouds and echoed in the woodland. He would feel and see and touch that again and then he, the boy, would remember that there was his home and he would return because he had never really left. His vision of the oneness had been cut off for a time. He would feel again that joyous ache which so powerfully had filled his heart and soul. And somehow the unbroken threads which tied him to the Old Granny, Paula, Prince and Billy, Aunty Rose and his mum—all the young world—would come again into view and all would be well.

  Life in the Home for Chris and Keith indeed seemed to be a never-ending series of hot soapy showers. The kids had never showered before and after a few of these sessions where all the naked little bodies lined up shivering and shyacking, they grew to enjoy them. The Home contained many other ritual to be initiated into as well: cooked breakfasts, fruit, crisp white sheets on a bed you had to yourself. Marching up the curving white staircase to the big airy room where Chris’ bed stood neat and stiff with the others.

  The teachers took them on long rambling walks along the beach and they discovered octopuses hiding under rocks and star fish and scuttling crabs. They had ice-creams and swims and learned to wash their hands before meals and were given toothbrushes and pyjamas. Chris decided he liked the clean smell of bedtime.

  He was being molded to forget. Bit by bit his world over the past years had been undone like an onion being peeled back and back. In the end there may be nothing. He tried to cling to the memory of the knowledge he had once felt—that knowledge he seemed to share with the Old Grany and Aunty Paula. But here around the Home there were no trees which had existed forever to remind him. To inform him that the place where was once more real than reflected water in a rough really did exist. He had merely forgotten how to touch it and drink deeply of it.

  In his upstairs dormitory a wide window opened out to a view of the ocean and let its roaring in to inhabit the Home. The sea drew him into its mystery as he lay and listened to its ceaseless pounding. It was crashing against the sand as he waited for sleep, reminding him of a story his mother had told of long ago, about when she was a girl. He was disturbed. The vastness of the sea and his mum and Canon Wilson’s talk of God all got mixed up. He tried to recall what the man had said about praying. He must pray to this God—this Grandfather Leeton figure, and ask him to look after his mum and brothers and sister. But what about his dad? It was years before he decided that his dad and all that lot needed prayers far more than his mum’s mob.

 
; And Aunty Rose floated on the sound of the sea and came into that long upstairs room. There she was, in her polished box being lowered into the earth. Surprising how it should be so dry when you get down a bit. Now he wondered what it meant. Death. It only exists for the living. And since Rose’s death Sissy was only partly living. Pray for us now in the eternal moment of our partly dying. He dreamt—remembered the boy in his oversized boots and the talk of rafters and ropes and a fear rippled across his young mind. He tried to concentrate on the indistinct flowers sprinkling across the wall and listen to the gentle moving slatted blind but death kept coming back. Chris fell asleep frightened and in the white-sky mornings the great ocean’s sound was still there.

  It was years and years before he realised that the great tragedy was not that Aunty Rose had died but that her death had been so alien. Sissy needed the Old Granny and Paula beside her to wail and keen for the death of Rose. But they were not there. The people were scattered—scattered into separate little sprinklings who did not know, could not remember, who they were. They were liked caged birds, suddenly released into a storm. The screaming wind tore at the flimsy fabric of their being and scattered them terrified and one into the chaotic landscape. If only the people could have buried their dead like a people—with the flag and soul-rending singing and a real gathering back in a loungeroom or backyard where big friendly faces kissed you and great fat arms embraced you and contained your pain. But no, poor little Rose was all one and Sissy was all alone. Mockingly the surrounding black of that day was the shiny car and the huge massed summer clouds behind the pines fringing the cemetery.