Returning with the children in the afternoon, Alfie was pounced on by Tubby Turkney, wanting to know what had happened on the beach: ‘The bloke looked as if someone had kicked him in the guts,’ he added, when Alfie answered only with a wry smile.
After eyeing him for a moment, she said, ‘Maybe it was rather like that to him. I offered to make a bargain with him.’
‘A bargain?’
‘Yes . . . that I’d swear that silly Oath of his, if he’d promise not to certify Jumbo Delacy.’
With eyes popping, Tubby breathed, ‘Christ!’
Alfie said, ‘I guess I’m on my way out of the Department now.’
When Frank heard about it on her arrival home, he said he reckoned that he would also be on his way out. Not that he minded, he added with that smile of his: ‘The Service stinks worse than Chinatown, really . . . and we mustn’t get contaminated . . . not that anyone could contaminate my lovely little fire-eater!’
‘Do I look like a dragon?’ she asked.
‘Dragons aren’t fire-eaters, but fire-breathers.’
‘That’s what he meant I was, of course.’
‘Well, if he didn’t poor old Saint Cuthbert, OBE, lost a battle he’d very much liked to have won with what must be the loveliest dragon there ever was.’
Alfie was right in her guessing. Next morning, Thursday, she had yet another call from young Constable Gobally, with yet another missive stated to be OHMS:
Dear Madam,
I am instructed to inform you that your services will no longer be required from the end of the current pay period. As your appointment is of a temporary nature, you will be paid one month’s salary in lieu of the usual notice.
Yours faithfully,
E.P.N. Twigg,
Government Secretary.
Alfie took the children to Shelly Beach this time, in the Compound truck, and with the permission of Mr Turkney, who said when it was asked of him, ‘Why not? The kids’re going to miss you . . . who isn’t!’ Alfie sent Barney Bynoe to get Possum Delacy and the couple of kids she had home from State School to join them. Possum was very doleful. Asked if she thought Jumbo mad, she replied, ‘He on’y halfcaste mad, and bit more, too, ’cause he Delacy.’ Over Alfie’s swearing to move heaven and earth to see that he wasn’t sent away, Possum only shook her head, saying, ‘Dat lot Govmin too strong. Nobody can beat him.’
Also while at Shelly Beach, looking out across the harbour, Alfie had another idea for using up the last few hours of her time with the children — tomorrow being the end of the current pay period — a picnic by launch again, but inside the harbour this time, not out to sea. What about it? The children yelled for joy. What about it, she asked Tubby when she got back. He said that, of course he’d have to get permission from the Office, then seeing her face fall, added, ‘But why not do it off your own hook? You did it before. You’ve got nothing to lose. Just bring the launch round, pick up the kids, and off. But just forget you told me, eh?’
Willy Pak Poy took them again, on the in-running tide, past Rainbow Head with its quartz-and-mica substance sparkling with a myriad little rainbows in the early sunlight, along the reef, where the growth on the outcroppings trailed like long green hair in the rush of the limpid waters, so that Prindy, up in the bow with King George beside him telling him about Old Tchamala’s doings round about here, stared as if fascinated, quite missing the beacon on which Lucy Snowball had died and which was the focal point of fascination for the rest. The beacon stood on a flat expanse of rock to mark the low-water channel in to Rainbow Beach, just a stout wooden post supporting a barred triangle, its base elephantine with growth of weed and shell-fish, out of which, higher up, protruded spikes for climbing to the top. Poor Lucy had never reached the spikes. Crabs of many kinds and molluscs scampered and crept and rolled about the mossy flat, evidently in preparation for the flood that would soon come rushing over them; or perhaps in anticipation of more torn flesh to gnaw at, seeing human beings round again.
They came to the channel, swung towards the snowy shore with its backing of low green upland, some three-quarters of a mile away, too far to see the Delacy place as more than a patch of lower and darker green with a hint of red-roofed buildings amidst it. King George up in front and Willie Pak Poy in the stern, announced what it was. George said softly to Prindy, ‘Belong ’o you mob.’ Prindy appeared to be interested only in the scene.
There were sandbanks intervening, which the racing tide cut down and levelled as it reached them, the water dancing over the crumbling remains as if in delight in its might. Willy slowed down, to approach the shore crabwise, nosing into the flood as he made his way. Dark spots appeared on the steep beach, a pair of them, that were seen to be human figures at length, women, a couple of old halfcastes who looked after the place, Willy explained to Alfie, adding, ‘Can’t go ’shore there. Delacy no like.’ But they got near enough to take a good look.
The buildings, a big bungalow and a couple of sheds on one side, mean humpies on the other, stood in a grove of shady trees, mostly of indigenous type, probably original growth of the little gully for which the place had been chosen for settlement, for space and for water, stretching back from the beach to the indented wall of micaceous rock that was the promontory behind. A windmill could be seen turning slowly back inside. The beach northward ended in a tumble of rock that at low water connected it with Rainbow Head, which was really the end of the promontory. But now the Head stood as an island, as the head of the fast disappearing reef, as the head of this very special Shade of the Old One, Tchamala. Willie waved to the watching halfcaste women, who waved back. Then everybody began to wave. Willy swung his launch southward to run along the beach.
Another heap of rocks guarded the sacred property of the Delacys on that side. Beyond it was another stretch of beach, a very long one. Near a creek they saw a number of canoes above high-water mark, and after a while several black figures, who evidently had been in hiding until able to make out who the newcomers were. More waving. Willy at his end, and George at his, explained that they were Koonyarrikin people, from back in the Paperbark country. George told Prindy they were ‘half-countrymen’ of his. A lot of no-good loafers, according to Willy, who went on to explain to Alfie that this was the jumping-off place for blacks who liked to come and go between bush and town as it suited them, keeping clear of the Compound, having hide-outs of their own in the town area. ‘Damn nuisance,’ he said. Nevertheless, it was the Chinese community mostly who supported these illegal migrants and profited by their cheap labour and the favours of their women.
Coming to another creek, Willie swung into it, one very different from that out on the ocean beach, as revealed soon after entry, the sandy banks and varied maritime scrub giving way to walls of bluish mud backed by jungles of mangroves. They were here to hunt the giant mud crab, a sport known to most of them, since the creatures were to be found near the Compound, but of necessity, being so toothsome, rarely. Here they were in superabundance, according to those knowledgeable ones, Willie and George. They had sugar-sacks to dump them in as caught, kerosene-can buckets to cook them in, lengths of fencing wire for hooking them out of their holes.
Again Peg-leg and Willie stayed aboard, while the rest, stripped to drawers, except Alfie in her red bathing-togs, scrambled up the slippery southern bank; with the exception of King George and Prindy, who, to the disconcertment of Nell when she saw they had outwitted her, went off down the creek again in the dinghy, taking the cans and the food that was to go with the crabs, to make a dinner camp on the beach. They would come back to meet the others, who would work towards them in a direction arranged by George.
Catching the crabs was a simple if exciting business. All you had to do was to find one of the great cave-like holes in which they lived at low water, shove in the long hooked wire, waggle it about, and if anyone were at home, he or she invariably came out clinging to the wire, whereupon you dumped it in the sack, where usually it would release its grip on the wire, and ta
ckled the stuff of the sack. The excitement lay in getting the creatures into the sack before they woke up to what was going on and tackled you. A nip from one of those terrible claws could mean loss of a toe or finger.
But the going was tough, in mud that would bog you till the tide came in and drowned you and left you for the crabs and crocodiles to finish off, unless you kept close to the mangroves, whose aim was to punish you for intrusion by tripping you up with masses of semi-aerial roots that seemed to reach out like skinny clutching hands. Not that anybody minded, not even the newchum Alfie, soon so mud-bespattered as to be indistinguishable from the rest.
Meanwhile, Prindy and George had fixed things for the dinner camp in a shady spot where the tiny black and red seeds of the jerquity bean, much used in decoration by coastal tribes, lay about in profusion. Prindy pounced on them to gather them, but was told by George to leave them for a while, because he wanted to take him somewhere to see something special. They made up a fire of driftwood, filled the buckets with sea water and set them to boil. Then they got back into the dinghy and went on southward along the shore for somewhat less than half a mile, where there was another creek like that they had left. They entered it, travelling swiftly on the flowing tide, through mangroves, to come soon to a rocky region, where the country rose steeply from the creek as ragged bush. George tied the boat to a tree well up the bank. Then rapidly he led the way up through the bush. It would be a climb of about three hundred feet, quite a height in that low region, in fact the highest prominence around the harbour, called the King’s Table by the kuttabah, as George explained, adding with a giggle, ‘Belong ’o me, eh?’
From the top they had a view of everything from the ocean back to the town. But it was in the opposite direction that George wanted Prindy to look, southwest, where above the horizon of a grey-green sea of trees could be seen a spot of violet. ‘Dat-one Mooragetaghee . . . proper big hill,’ said George, and repeated the name slowly: ‘Moo-ra-get-a-ghee . . . mean porkypine, lingo dat country. Belong ’o Porkypine Dreamin’.’
‘Country belong ’o you?’
‘Half-country. My mumma from dat way. Dat country you gitchim wife from ’nother-one mob. My properly country lo-long way more far.’ George lifted his projecting chin, still in the same direction, and sighed, in nostalgia so obvious that Prindy looked at him.
Prindy asked, ‘When you go back country?’
George shook his head: ‘I don’ know, Kokanjinni.’
Evidently Prindy had heard, probably from the talkative Barney Bynoe, that George was forbidden to return home. He asked, ‘Wha’s matter you no-more go tchinekin?’
George looked at him: ‘Might-be . . . by’n’by . . . you’n-me-two-feller, eh?’ He laughed and rumpled the fair hair. Prindy nodded gravely. Then George said they must be getting back, because they must eat before the turn of the tide so that Willie could take them home on the ebb.
In no time they were down the hill, and rowing down the creek on the now slackening flood. Round and up the beach again, to find the water bubbling merrily in the cans, and to hear laughter in the bush behind. Then the muddy ladies burst out upon the beach with their bulging squirming sugar-sacks. The smallest ones rushed to gather the bright seeds but were soon stopped by the others, saying they all must bathe first. George took the bags and shook out the contents of three of them into the seething cans, giving rise at each shaking to death-shrieks scarcely audible, except to one, whose brow knitted above his grey eyes, and who murmured, ‘Poor bugger!’
The girls went racing to the sea, now close and swirling up the beach in silver loops. ‘Look out shark!’ they yelled, but plunged in as if unheeding. What a feed the sharks would have had if they’d known about it, with all those round brown bottoms and one white one bobbing about while their owners rung out their muddy bits of garments. But all were decently clad, at least to the navel, except the one in red who had hers covered, as they came up to feast. There, too, was Willy coming sailing up the beach, to drop anchor offshore, while George went out to him with the dinghy. Queeny came ashore this time, and showed that her alleged difficulty in getting about in sand was all what one would say with a blowing out of lips: Burrup!
Even the claw of a great mud crab makes a meal. But everybody ate at least one whole crab, and some more. The next thing was sleep. But there was no time for sleeping ashore, with the little quartz pebbles rolling backwards now and the hermit crabs popping out of the sand where they had hidden to avoid the buffeting. The kids grabbed up the abrus seeds by the handful to make into a double necklace as a prejent for her they now called, with unconscious appropriateness, Mitchis Elvy. Then out in the dinghy to the launch in several down-to-the-gunnel batches. Old Tchamala’s Shade, invisible this long while, was beginning to show again in sea-serpent-like humps.
This time they steered straight across the harbour, close enough to the leper island to wave to those who crowded the shore, and over some of whom, known to those aboard, some of the picnickers wept a little. Then most fell asleep as they swept down the harbour to the Compound.
Then ashore, and for the last time up through the scrub, saying goodbye to King George and Queeny Peg-leg, while they clicked their tongues for the pity of it, and Alfie blinked back her tears. Saying mummuk. No yawarra. Saying mummuk to everyone she passed, embracing and kissing the girls in the kitchen and giving them each a present of money she’d brought for the purpose, including the equivalent of that one month’s salary in lieu of, for Nell. Saying goodbye to Tubby Turkney, who when he heard that Frank would be calling for her, said, ‘Well, why can’t we all go into the house and have a drink?’ But there was no Mrs Turkney out to corroborate.
An hour or so in the schoolroom with the children tangling about her, fondling her, saying that they would soon have her necklace done and give it to Mrs Turkney to give to her, and when they grew up they’d ask if they might go out and work for her. She wept most of the while.
Then there was the old Rolls Royce honking up the road as if it were all a bit of fun. Turkney came running out, made a last plea for a last drink — but still no Mrs Turkney, at least not outside. Surely she saw her Tubby kissed Goodbye — and the way he kissed the creature back! Then they were gone, in a storm of weeping and honking: mummuk . . . mummuk . . . but no yawarra!
When Tubby Turkney went inside he grunted to his Vi, ‘You might’ve asked her in.’
‘What for?’
‘To have a drink and a proper civilised goodbye.’
‘If that was a civilised goodbye you gave her out in front of everybody, what’d it’ve been like when you’d filled yourself with booze?’
‘Arrh!’ He went into his bedroom, came out after a few minutes in whites, said shortly, ‘I’m going down town.’
‘To say goodbye again?’
‘Arrrh!’ He rushed down to his car.
End of pay period night meant a foregathering at the Queen Victoria, the best hotel, of all Junior Public Servants, except the very stuffiest, for a drink or two — or three or more. Seniors went to the Residency for cocktails. It was to the Queen Vic that Tubby Turkney went, there to join his immediate boss, Eddy McCusky, already somewhat molo, but under the watchful eye of his skinny wife. The subject of conversation was, naturally enough, mainly Alfie. And there, suddenly, Alfie was, on the arm of her husband, as on former occasions of the kind, both smiling easily and nodding to this one and that, but choosing a table to themselves on the back verandah. It rather cramped the general style. Tubby came over and had a round with them, then excused himself, since supposed to be on duty. No one else came. Junior Officers must be careful.
Then suddenly there was Eddy McCusky, breaking away from his wife as they were on their way out to go home, coming wobbling up to them, burbling ‘Goo’ on yo’ . . . goo’ on yo’ both. You stoo’ up to ’im, an’ tol’ ’im where t’ge’off. He needed it. He ’ad it comin’ to ’im. It took you, Alfie . . . it took you. Now all their lousy mouths’ll be shut up. I wan’ ’o s
hake y’and . . .’
While Eddy was shaking and reeling, Frank asked, ‘What’s this about shutting all their mouths?’
‘Wha’ they been sayin’ ’bout the bloke keepin’ Alfie on so’s ’e can get ’o bed with ’er.’
They said that?’
‘They said that, brother. Bu’ I . . . I nev’ b’lieved it. I respec’ you both too much. I’m Labor man meself. I’ll sing yo’ Red Flag . . . So lif the shcarlet banner ’igh, ’neath ’sfol’s live’ die . . . though cowards cringe and traitors shneer, we’ll keep the Red Flag flyin’ ’ere . . .’ The last was really beefed out, to be interrupted by a sharp female voice.
‘Eddy!’
Eddy swung to meet his wife’s thin face and blazing blue eyes: ‘On’y sayin’ goo’bye to me lil frien’ Alfie . . .’
‘You’re making a fool of yourself. Come here!’
Eddy swung back to the Candlemases with a beery sigh, blinked at Frank, asking, ‘How’d yo’ be, ol’ feller, with a wife like that?’
Poor Fellow My Country Page 59
