by Judy Nunn
They’d walked around to the front of the homestead, Jock enjoying playing lord of the manor, and he pointed out the stables, which was a tack room really he explained, and the barn, both about a hundred yards or so to the left of the house.
‘Take your pick, boys,’ he said, it had been agreed they would stay the night. ‘In the stables you’ll get horse shit—normally the horses are out in the paddock, but Molly’s about to give foal—and in the barn you’ll get mice, maybe rats. Take your pick.’ Reg and Bernie opted for the stables.
‘You’ll sleep well tonight,’ Jock assured them, ‘with one of Nellie’s stews inside you, you’ll sleep like babies.’
He’d been right. The stew was the best meal they’d had since they’d left home. And Pearl delivered ample bedding supplies to the stables. With real pillows! Christ, Bernie said, a bloody sight better than camp!
The breakfast the following morning had been even more unbelievable. Steak and eggs! Reg and Bernie looked at each other across the table. Beef that wasn’t tinned? Eggs that were fresh? Bernie tried not to eat like a pig.
Margaret thought Jock had gone too far in his offer of hospitality. There was room enough at the kitchen table, certainly, with Charlotte out on the muster and Terence staying at the base as he often did, but surely Pearl could have delivered the men something to eat at the stables. She said nothing of such thoughts to her husband but as Reg and Bernie took their leave and Jock said heartily, ‘Any time lads, any time, pay us a visit,’ she thought, over my dead body.
Two days later, on his return from the base, Terence’s thoughts had been much the same. ‘They stayed the night, Dad?’
‘Yes, in the barn.’
‘And had breakfast in the kitchen!’
‘They’re soldiers, Terry!’ The old man couldn’t comprehend his son’s lack of understanding.
‘They’re bludgers, that’s what they are.’
Terence had heard the whole story from his mother. ‘They drank beer for hours,’ Margaret had told him, ‘then they had lunch, then dinner, then stayed in the barn, then they had breakfast, right here in the kitchen, before they left.’
Terence didn’t like the sound of it at all. They were privates too, his mother had said, no rank, just two young soldiers out for a free ride.
‘Bludgers,’ he repeated, ‘bloody young bludgers.’
‘Listen boy,’ Jock said, and the baleful glare which Terence remembered well from his childhood days, was as grim and malevolent as ever, ‘these are soldiers! These are men fighting for their country! Just like I did! Don’t you ever forget that! If I meet a man who’s fighting for his country, then he’s a mate of mine, don’t you ever forget it!’
Jock had made his point, he knew it from the look on his son’s face. He smiled. ‘Just like you’re fighting for your country, Terry, and I’m proud of you. Hey, they’re gunners, son!’ He clamped his hand around Terence’s shoulder. ‘These are the men who protect you up there. You owe them, boy. You hear me?’ He gave Terence’s shoulder a hearty thump. ‘You owe them!’
Terence left it at that. His father was still boss, for the time being anyway. But Terence wasn’t at all happy when he’d heard that young Bernie Spencer had paid another visit.
The boy had been on his own this time, and he hadn’t stayed the night. Of course he wouldn’t have dared, Terence thought, he’d have gone AWOL, he wouldn’t have had another day’s leave so soon. But why the hell was he bothering to hike ten miles to the homestead, spend a few hours and then hike the ten miles back to camp?
‘What did he do?’ Terence asked his mother.
‘Had a cup of tea, your father wasn’t here so I didn’t offer him a beer, and talked to Henrietta.’ The look on her face spoke multitudes.
Terence had later queried Henrietta, but she made light of the episode. ‘He’s just a boy,’ she shrugged, ‘he’s lonely.’ And Terence said no more on the subject, but he seethed. Just one more time, mate, he thought. You try it just one more time!
And now Bernie was back. Barely a fortnight later. He had a present for Henrietta, he said to Margaret, knocking back the reluctantly offered cup of tea—Margaret knowing full well that if Jock were there he would expect her to offer tea at the very least—and she watched disapprovingly through her office windows as the two sat on the front verandah and examined the boomerang.
When Bernie took Henrietta’s hand to assist her down the steps and they walked together towards the stables, Margaret continued to watch for a moment or so, then rose and walked purposefully into the kitchen where Charlotte was making herself a cup of tea.
‘That cheeky young devil’s on the make,’ she said, ‘he just took her hand.’
‘Oh Mum, give it a rest.’ The muster was over and Charlotte was assisting Jackie in the roundup of pack horses from the home paddock in preparation for the annual drive when 1,000 head of beef would be herded 600 miles to the meatworks at Wyndham. Charlotte had no interest in her mother’s fanciful gossip. ‘He’s a boy and he’s lonely,’ she said, repeating Henrietta’s words to her. ‘There’s nothing more to it than that.’
But Margaret appeared not to hear. ‘Terence is coming home this afternoon, he has three days’ leave. He told me so.’ She poured herself a cup of tea as she added, with some relish, ‘He could arrive at any minute and I wouldn’t like to be in that boy’s shoes when he gets here.’
Charlotte wondered briefly whether she should warn young Bernie. What the hell, she thought, and she sipped her tea.
Bernie Spencer had racked his brains trying to think of a present he could give to Henrietta. Something that would impress her. Then it had hit him. Of course. The boomerang. It was his most prized possession, but that didn’t matter, he didn’t mind parting with it one bit if it would impress her.
He was a bit disappointed to discover that she knew what a boomerang was, but her laughter as he chased after the thing, retrieving it and returning to her like a faithful puppy, was reward enough.
Finally, exhausted, he draped himself over the fence poles of the yard. His antics with the boomerang had taken them around the back of the barn to the horse-breaking yard at the rear of the stables. ‘I reckon you better keep it just as an ornament,’ he panted, ‘it doesn’t work too good, does it?’
‘You really mean to give it to me?’ she asked. ‘It’s such a lovely thing. Surely …’
‘Yep, it’s yours,’ he interrupted, and he scuffled his feet in the sand, not looking at her. It was the possession that he valued above all else and he dearly hoped that she would accept it. ‘I’d like you to have it.’
‘Thank you, Bernie.’ Henrietta was in a dilemma. She’d been a fool, she suddenly realised. Naive, stupid. The boy was infatuated with her. She had ignored Margaret’s disapproval and Terence’s possessiveness, they were both overreacting, she’d thought, to a lonely young man starved of female company. If her Terence were marooned somewhere in the outback and enjoying the company of a woman she would feel no jealousy. But now, as she realised the importance of the boomerang, the value of the gift she was being offered, she knew she’d been wrong. She would have to tell Bernie not to visit the homestead again.
She turned the beautifully carved piece of wood over and over in her hands, caressing the smoothness of its surface, buying time, wondering how to say the words without being too hurtful.
‘It’s made out of ironwood,’ Bernie said, proud that she was so taken with his gift. ‘They make a lot of their spears and woomeras and boomerangs and things out of ironwood.’
‘Where did you get it?’ she asked.
‘From Talc Bay, it was where we were sent first when we came up here. It’s the south side of the harbour, pretty remote, and there’s lots of Abos there who don’t speak English. Not even a word of Pidgin, they just live in the wild the way they have for thousands of years. It’s something to see, I can tell you.’
Bernie’s young face was flushed with excitement in the telling of his story. ‘Really friend
ly they are too. At least they were to us. We used to give them the leftover catch from the net and they’d carry on like kids being given a present, jabbering away and dancing about.’
Henrietta looked bewildered, and Bernie made himself slow down as he explained to her how the men in his unit would set up a complex fishing trap to augment their supply of fresh food. ‘With thirty-foot tides, you’ve got to go out a long way,’ he said. ‘We’d lay a couple of wings of wire netting out into the sea. Twelve-foot wide and 100 yards long, with a big mesh trap at the shore end. The fish sweep around a bay at high tide,’ he explained, ‘and if they bump into something they follow it.’
He told her how he and the others would service the net at low tide. ‘There’d be hundreds of fish all flapping about,’ he said, ‘trevally and bream and baby shark, good eating. We used to deliver fresh fish by barge across the bay to the other units posted around the place.’
From where they were, behind the stables, well away from the house, neither Bernie nor Henrietta heard the Landrover pull up in front of the homestead.
‘You had to be careful when you were sorting out the catch, though,’ Bernie said, ‘baby crocs’d get in the trap, and stingrays. Dozens of stingrays, and they were the worst, they hurt like a bastard! I beg your pardon,’ he hastily added, then aware that he hadn’t offended, he continued, ‘They’ve got a barb under their tail, you see, and the sting’s really poisonous. One of our blokes, Goliath, giant of a fella just like his name, got stung by a whopper, right in the joint of his ankle, and three seconds later he’s yelling in agony. That was nearly a year ago and Goliath still gets pain, and his anklebone sticks out all crooked like he’s got arthritis, it’ll never be the same again he reckons. I tell you I’d rather cop a bite from a baby croc than a stingray.’
Bernie realised that he was babbling again. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘when we were sorting out the catch and chucking the stingrays away, the Abos kicked up a fuss—there was always a few Abos gathered around to watch us—they thought we were mad not keeping the things. So we chucked the rays to them, and that was the start of it. We got to be mates and they gave me that boomerang. Good people, they were. And they can do things like you’ve never seen …’
Henrietta was enthralled. So much so that she had momentarily forgotten her decision to tell Bernie he mustn’t visit again, and was listening and watching in rapt attention. And Bernie, aware that he had a captive audience, was spurred on to even greater heights.
‘Like the way they spear fish! I’ve seen a black bloke stand still for an hour amongst the mangroves. Like a statue. Spear raised above his head like this,’ Bernie struck a pose, ‘not moving a muscle, just staring into the water. You can’t see a thing yourself, the water just looks green. Deep green, like jade. Then suddenly thwack!’ Bernie hurled the imaginary spear with such force that Henrietta jumped, startled, ‘And there’s this bloody great fish on the end of his spear! Honest, it’s amazing!’
‘They’ve got the quickest reflexes you could possibly imagine,’ he continued. ‘You can be standing next to a bloke—just passing the time of day—and suddenly his hand’s moved faster than you can see and he’s plucked a march fly out of the air. He gives it a squidge between his fingers, chucks it away, and doesn’t even know he’s done it. Like magicians, they are.’
Henrietta knew what Bernie meant, she’d seen Jackie Yoorunga do exactly the same thing, but she didn’t want to interrupt so she nodded for him to go on.
Neither of them heard Terence’s customary call from the front verandah, ‘I’m home.’
‘One time, me and Reg and Goliath made a canoe out of a log of wood,’ Bernie enthused. ‘The way the Abos do. They showed us how, and it took us over a month, but we didn’t mind. We had nothing else to keep us busy, there was no action, the odd Jap recce that was all, and we were bored. Well, when the canoe was finished it looked pretty good, I can tell you. Over fifteen feet of hollowed-out log, a work of art Reg said, and the Abos seemed to reckon it was all right too. They inspected the thing and jabbered away and patted us on the back and grinned a lot. They were always grinning. And the day we launched it they were all there, along with the rest of the unit, must have been close to forty people watching. Reg had worked out how we were going to do it, he used to be a surf life-saver at Bondi, you see.’
Henrietta obviously didn’t see, but she wanted to know, Bernie could tell. ‘Bondi’s a beach near Sydney,’ he explained, ‘it’s pretty popular and lots of people go swimming there, and when they get into trouble the local lifesaving blokes launch a wooden boat into the surf, and jump into it and belt out and rescue them, it’s dramatic stuff.’
‘Ah,’ Henrietta nodded helpfully. Whether or not the picture in her brain was the correct one was immaterial, it was certainly colourful.
‘They’re famous the Bondi lifesavers,’ Bernie continued, ‘and Reg used to be one of them so we left it to him. He said that Goliath’d have to sit in the stern to keep the nose up which made sense, but we had a bit of a disagreement about how we got the thing into the water. Reg told us that him and me had to carry the bow between us, one either side, and Goliath had to carry the stern and we had to belt along the beach and into the surf and then throw ourselves into the canoe and paddle like hell as if we were on a rescue mission. Well Goliath doesn’t like a lot of fuss, and he pointed out that there was no surf—which is true, the water there’s like a millpond—and that nobody was drowning, so why didn’t we just drag the boat along the sand and plonk her in, and Reg said “where’s your pride mate!” and I have to say I agreed with him.’
Terence tapped on the open door to the office. ‘Where’s Henrietta?’ he asked. Then he saw by his mother’s expression that something was not right.
‘So there we were,’ Bernie continued, ‘me and Reg up front, Goliath at the rear, somebody yelled “go” and we belted for the water. We were up to our knees and everyone was cheering and we were looking pretty good, and then we dropped the canoe in the water, pushed her out and jumped aboard. Well, we didn’t last one second. She rolled in an instant and we were all dumped in the harbour. Everyone laughed of course, particularly the Abos, but we didn’t care, we were going to show them! We just didn’t have the balance right, that was all. At least, that’s what we reckoned. So we did it again, a bit slower. Same thing happened. Then we did it again. And again. We tried every which way to control the thing, but no matter how carefully we got in she just rolled on us. It was like trying to ride a greased pig.’
Bernie’s laughter at the recollection was infectious and Henrietta’s returning grin encouraged him all the more.
‘By now, everyone in the unit wanted to have a go,’ he continued, ‘and blokes were laying bets they could last a minute, but no-one could, and the Abos were laughing fit to burst, they couldn’t control themselves …’
Henrietta herself laughed out loud, not only at the imagery of the men and the canoe, but at Bernie’s enthusiasm in the telling.
Neither was aware of Terence’s approach as he rounded the side of the stables and walked slowly towards them. He came to a halt barely twenty yards away and stood watching.
‘… and crikey those Abos could laugh!’ Bernie swore, thoroughly enjoying himself. ‘The blokes were squatting on the sand holding their ribs, the women were covering their mouths and pointing and squealing and the kids were rolling on the beach like hysterical puppies.’
Terence studied Bernie and Henrietta. The intimacy of their shared mirth angered him beyond measure. To Terence, the peal of Henrietta’s laughter had the unforgivable ring of betrayal. Never had she laughed like that with him. He studied the soldier, no more than a boy. Terence wanted to kill him.
‘Go back to the house, Henrietta!’
The steely edge of his voice cut through their laughter, which died in an instant. They turned to see him. He was so close by, how could they not have noticed him, Henrietta thought briefly, at the same time wondering what it was she had done so very w
rong. Terence’s face was flushed with rage and his eyes glittered with an icy anger she’d never seen before.
‘I don’t think you’ve met Bernie,’ Henrietta said in an attempt to cover the awkward pause. ‘This is …’
‘I said go back to the house!’
Bernie himself had automatically jumped to attention, he was in the presence of a senior officer. ‘I was just telling Henrietta where I got the boomerang, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s a gift.’
Henrietta! He’d called her Henrietta! And he’d had the effrontery to bring her a gift! If Terence had had a gun he might have shot Bernie there and then. But he wisely decided on a different tack.
‘Stand to attention, private,’ he commanded.
Bernie, who was already standing to attention, visibly stiffened.
‘You’re AWOL, aren’t you?’ Terence demanded.
‘Um, well, sir,’ Bernie stammered, ‘just for a few hours. I um …’
‘And it’s not the first time you’ve gone AWOL to come here, is it?’
Bernie hesitated for a second, then shook his head.
‘If I see you anywhere near here again I’ll have you court martialled, is that clear, boy?’ Bernie nodded. Terence turned to discover Henrietta still standing there, frozen, the boomerang in her hand. ‘Give it back,’ he said.
Without a word, Henrietta handed the boomerang to Bernie and, without a word, he accepted it.
‘Now get off this property!’
Bernie saluted. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. Then he dropped the boomerang, picked it up, saluted again, and fled.
Henrietta was about to say something, but as Terence turned and marched back towards the house she knew it was her duty to simply follow.
