To Love a Sunburnt Country

by Jackie French

  ‘Tell them you saw a swan? Had a feeling that Nancy is alive?’

  It sounded stupid. But still he said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said gently. ‘They have their own signs. If they believe in them.’

  ‘Her gran does. I don’t know about her mum and dad.’

  ‘Neither do I. There are things that … let’s say that I couldn’t have believed, if I hadn’t known Auntie Love. Hadn’t watched her —’ His mother stopped. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It might hurt Nancy’s mother even more. Give her false hope.’

  ‘It’s not false. And anyway, is any hope so bad?’

  ‘No. Hope is good.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Any hope is good. I’ll come with you.’

  ‘You don’t need to.’

  ‘I do. You are going to be telling a mother her daughter is alive. A daughter you met properly only three times, more than a year ago.’

  ‘I know Nancy,’ he said evenly.

  ‘And I’m a mother. Nancy’s mother will need someone with her. I will be there.’

  The Drinkwater gardens had been planted in defiance of the land around them, English trees proclaiming ‘this land is mine’.

  The Overflow homestead had no formal gardens beyond a row of roses next to the veranda, a wisteria tangled along its edges and a vast elderly mulberry tree with branches as broad as a horse’s back. Paddocks out the back contained more fruit trees, but in no neat pattern, and more ordered fields of lucerne, corn, potatoes, tomatoes and other vegetables so necessary to feed Australia in this third year of war, and all produce possible to send to evade the German blockade of England or feed the armies.

  There was no avenue of trees along the driveway here, to both welcome visitors and declaim the importance of those who lived beyond, only a strip of gums and wattles left outside the paddocks, of all ages, tall or little as they chanced to grow. The gate was an ordinary farm gate, except for the sign that said, in neat letters still wet from the paintbrush, This house supports a prisoner of war.

  Ben, he thought. They would send cakes to the Red Cross, hoping that some, at least, would get through, if not to him, then to other prisoners. Like his mother, the women here would make jam, knit baby clothes, turn old curtains into toys, anything that could be sold to raise money for POWs. He wondered if Overflow, like Drinkwater, donated a portion of its income each year to the Families of POW Relief Fund. So much more support would be needed, he realised, now that Australians were being captured on yet another front.

  The house was much as he remembered it from his previous visit, large, but not Drinkwater large, planned and comfortably imposing. This house had begun as the shack that was the shearers’ cook shed now; had grown room after room as wives joined the clan, and children arrived, another cottage joined to the main house by a breezeway that was then enclosed into a veranda, which in time grew rooms behind. But the yellow paint was fresh, applied perhaps by a jackaroo off to war, leaving his mark upon the place like a wombat leaving its scent in its territory. Or maybe, thought Michael, kept freshly touched up from tins long stored in the shed, to welcome home the children.

  Two children, both swallowed by the war. Ben missing. Nancy …

  Somewhere.

  They dismounted, tethered their horses to a post. In the shade of the veranda a woman sat on an old armchair, two dogs at her feet. She must have been there as they rode in, but Michael hadn’t noticed her in the shadows till now; nor had her dogs barked. Seventy at least, dark-skinned, white-haired, straight-backed, heavy around the arms and hips, a green dress and green flat shoes. She seemed older than the woman he had seen only weeks earlier, before Christmas. But she still looked as tough and comfortable as an old boot.

  He saw his mother give the half-smile of sympathy. ‘Mrs Clancy, I was so very, very sorry to hear about Nancy and Ben and his family.’

  ‘Yes. Well. Thank you,’ said old Mrs Clancy. Her face was impossible to read.

  ‘You know my son, Michael?’

  The dark-skinned woman nodded. ‘We’ve met. How is your Jim, Matilda?’

  ‘Good. Hates army food, which Tommy says is the normal reaction of any young man in good spirits. We had a letter from him last week …’ She stopped, probably realising that mentioning a letter from her thriving son might not be tactful.

  Mrs Clancy nodded, her face impassive. ‘You’ll be wanting to see Sylvia. She’s been out checking the raddling harnesses on the rams. Won’t be long. My son’s down at William’s. They’re forming a local Volunteer Defence Corps, working out where to get the Japs if they try to come here. You should join it,’ she said to Michael.

  ‘I’ve joined the one at Gibber’s Creek.’ When I’m home in the holidays, he thought, not stuck with cadets and marching practice and maths homework while the rest of the world fights a war on my behalf. But he was glad Mr Clancy wasn’t here, angry, perhaps, at what he might perceive as false hope given to his wife and mother.

  ‘The Defence Corps is men only,’ Mrs Clancy added to his mother. ‘Though I reckon you or I could outshoot the blokes around here any day of the week. Haven’t any of those blokes seen how a dingo protects her young? Ten times fiercer than a male and unpredictable with it. Come in and I’ll put the kettle on.’ Michael noticed she didn’t ask why they had come. Nor did he think she had been crying.

  The dogs stayed on the veranda, snapping at flies while keeping an eye on the newcomers.

  It was cool inside the house, smelling of roast mutton, rosemary and pumpkin. Mrs Clancy nodded at the living room. ‘Sit yourselves down there. Too hot in the kitchen with the stove on.’

  ‘Can I give you a hand?’

  Old Mrs Clancy waved his mother into the living room. ‘You rest your feet.’

  The living room was large, possibly the most recent addition, created for the extended family now flung far across the world. Two sofas with velvet roses, four matching armchairs; polished wooden floors with Chinese flowered silk rugs; a piano with too many photographs on top to see any but the front ones clearly: a young man in uniform, and Nancy.

  It hadn’t been there when he’d been in this room before. Nor was it the photograph she’d sent him from Malaya — in a white linen dress and white hat with blue ribbons, the one he kept in his wallet. Nor was she wearing the dress she’d worn the last time he’d seen her.

  This must have been taken in Brisbane perhaps, or even Charters Towers. Nancy, in boots and jodhpurs and a man’s old hat, on a horse among the gums. They were thin-topped trees, hot-country trees, not the trees of here or Drinkwater. But the photo still captured the heart of who she was. Nancy of the Overflow.

  He looked at the other pictures. One of Ben Clancy, which had been here before, in a groom’s morning suit with a laughing woman in white froth at his side. Moira, he thought, the woman Nancy had gone to help. Two more recent photos, one of Ben with a bald baby, the other a studio portrait of Moira holding the baby in a long white lace christening robe in her arms. This photo was surrounded by a black ribbon. The others were not. For Moira and Gavin had been declared dead. Ben was declared ‘missing’, and that could mean all sorts of things in the chaos of Malaya. But Nancy had been declared dead too.

  Why was Nancy’s photo bare?

  His mother stood to help Mrs Clancy with the tray. He realised he’d been staring at the photo. He helped unload the tray: flowered china cups and saucers; a silver teapot, obviously kept for company; a silver sugar pot, the sugar lumpy from long keeping; a silver tea strainer; a milk jug that matched the cups; a flowered plate heaped with pikelets.

  ‘Black, thank you,’ he said at the same time as his mother. ‘Three sugars,’ he added.

  Old Mrs Clancy nodded. ‘That’s the way I take it too. Still can’t get used to milk in tea after the long paddock.’

  He didn’t say he’d never been droving the long paddock, never been out for more than a day rounding up stock; that he drank his tea black because the milk at school sat in the sun till the boys on duty
lugged it in for breakfast, and so it had mostly gone and curdled like vomit in the cup.

  He helped himself to pikelets, still warm from the pan — how had she managed to make pikelets so fast? — spread with melon jam. No butter. He supposed that was a habit of her droving days too.

  ‘Dry up your way?’ asked old Mrs Clancy.

  His mother swallowed her bite of pikelet. ‘Not too bad. Got twenty points last week. How about you?’

  ‘Twenty-two.’ Mrs Clancy’s tone held the quiet satisfaction of any farmer who gets slightly more rain than her neighbours. ‘But we’re doing well enough. Every river channel here grows grass knee high, except when it’s in flood.’

  ‘What do you do then?’ asked Michael.

  ‘Wait it out. We get cut off for months sometimes. Get the stock up to higher ground. Always get plenty of notice when the river’s going to rise.’

  For a moment he thought she meant her family lore, the kind his mother sometimes talked about, explaining how it would rain after the termite queens flew. But then she said, ‘Someone always rides down with a message from upriver. Takes about a day for the flood to reach here from Drinkwater, the way the river winds.’

  He had nothing to say to that. Nor it seemed had his mother. He ate another pikelet to soak up the silence. It seemed wrong to speak of Nancy until her mother, at least, arrived.

  ‘Heard that the Murphy girl from Riverbend is walking out with Terry Rogers.’

  ‘More staying in than walking out.’ His mother sounded relieved to be safely deep in gossip. ‘Those Rogers boys could charm a kookaburra out of a tree. You remember his cousin, Ted Higgins?’

  ‘Amy Higgins’s third boy? No, I tell a lie, the fourth?’

  ‘He joined up last month. Navy, can you imagine that? Never seen the sea in his life. He said, “Mum, I’ve joined the navy to see the world.” And she said —’

  ‘You’ll see the sea.’ Mrs Clancy completed the ancient joke.

  A door slammed. A voice called, ‘Mother?’

  ‘In here.’

  In the dark of the hallway, the younger Mrs Clancy looked like Nancy until she came inside — small-boned, brown from the sun — but her hair was red, not black. Michael stood up politely.

  The woman looked tired; or rather as if life had been drained out of her, and she was forcing herself to continue. She froze as she saw them, one tanned hand touching her heart. She said breathlessly, ‘Michael. Matilda. Has there been news?’

  ‘No,’ said his mother quickly. ‘Not … not really.’

  ‘What do you mean, not really?’ Nancy’s mother sank into one of the armchairs. Soldiers on leave, home after they’d been wounded, could bring back news the censors had forbidden in letters. Families passed news along. But not news like this, thought Michael.

  For once Michael’s mother seemed lost for words.

  Get it over with, he thought. This is for Nancy …

  ‘I saw a swan,’ he said clearly. ‘On the river at Drinkwater. We … we don’t get swans there normally. Nancy said …’ He took a breath, and forced himself to continue, no matter how stupid it sounded. ‘Nancy told me the swan was a … a sort of sign for her.’ He looked at Nancy’s mother and her grandmother. ‘I don’t know exactly what the swan this morning means. But I know it means something. Means she is alive, at least, maybe thinking of home. And I had to come and tell you because …’ He shrugged. ‘Because.’

  His mother sat quietly on the sofa beside him, her face carefully devoid of emotion. Old Mrs Clancy’s face was expressionless too. Michael thought Nancy’s mother’s was as well, then saw the tears running down her face, untouched, unchecked.

  Old Mrs Clancy reached over and took her daughter-in-law’s hands. ‘Means just what you think it means, I reckon.’

  ‘I think … I know that she is alive.’ Michael tried to sound firm.

  ‘And Ben? Moira and Gavin?’ Nancy’s mother’s voice sounded like a small nail scratching in a tin, her will to hold a piece of hope so strong, thought Michael, that she would clutch at any offering.

  ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’ He felt helpless suddenly in a room full of so much hope and grief. He looked at old Mrs Clancy, impassive in her armchair. She gave him an almost imperceptible nod.

  ‘And Nancy’ll come home safe?’ Nancy’s mother looked as if anything he said would be as certain as an entry in an encyclopaedia.

  Michael looked at his mother, her posture perfect, her hands in her lap. At old Mrs Clancy, watching him, and Nancy’s mother, her face so eager it hurt. What I believe happened by the river either means everything or nothing, he thought. And either way I cannot tell these women a lie, give them comfort just to please them. For two of them at least would see the lie in his face, his voice. He suspected the third would too.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said honestly. ‘I only know Nancy is alive now. Was alive this morning when I saw the swan. But I think … if … anything bad happened to her, I mean worse —’ he couldn’t use the word ‘dead’ ‘— then I’d know that too.’

  ‘And we would too,’ said old Mrs Clancy to Nancy’s mother. ‘You and me both.’ She stood and hugged her daughter-in-law’s shoulders hard, briefly. ‘I’ll make us a fresh pot. You can help me,’ she said to Michael’s mother. It was the first time Michael could remember anyone ordering his mother to do anything. But she stood, and followed the old woman.

  The younger Mrs Clancy scrubbed her hand across her eyes. ‘I … I don’t know what to think. I want to hope. I so want to hope.’ She looked up at him. ‘Mother, well, she knows things. But this is more than if it’s going to rain next summer. That’s mostly just knowing the land well. This is …’ She shrugged, unable to find the words. ‘It’s not even about the land.’

  ‘It’s about someone who belongs to it.’

  Nancy’s mother shook her head. ‘Predicting rain or bushfire or grasshopper plagues is a form of science. This …’ Again she shook her head. ‘I just don’t know. But you were sure enough to come and tell us. That mustn’t have been … easy.’ She made an effort to change the subject. ‘Nancy told us she was writing to you.’

  ‘Do you mind?’

  She stared at him, then gave a small incredulous smile. ‘You and Nancy? You are a good young man. Kind. Courageous enough to come here today. You and your brother are also the heirs to the wealthiest estate in the district. In New South Wales perhaps. Drinkwater, the factories … You must have girls lining up for you in Sydney.’

  It had never occurred to him that the eager sisters of his friends might be influenced by his parents’ money. ‘None of them are Nancy of the Overflow.’

  Mrs Clancy looked out the window. ‘Nancy was born just after her grandfather had his first heart attack. We put her in his arms, all red and big, big eyes. She was with him six years later when he died. Out mustering cattle, with her on her pony. She said he just dropped to the ground. But he still knew her for a few seconds at the end. She was the last thing that he saw. She said he smiled as he died, old Clancy of the Overflow. It was my husband’s idea to call her Nancy. “How about we call her Nancy, Dad?” he said. “Close as we can get to Clancy.” And the old man smiled and smiled. Don’t think that smile washed off for weeks. So the name stuck.’ Her smile became almost a real one. ‘Even though it’s embarrassed her all her life. But that was what they called my father-in-law. Not Ned Clancy. Clancy of the Overflow.’ She met his eyes now. ‘Did she tell you about the letter?’

  ‘The one written by Banjo Paterson? Yes.’

  ‘Her father read it to me the night he asked me to marry him. Wanted me to know what the world might think, about a white woman marrying a half-caste. I’ve never regretted it. Regretted what people made of it, sometimes. But never for one second regretted saying yes that night.’

  ‘You want to know if I would feel the same?’

  She nodded. ‘Nancy can pass for white. But people round here know she isn’t. That’ll mark your children, no matter how pale their s
kin turns out to be. Can you cope with that?’

  ‘My children probably won’t be any darker than me. My great-grandmother was Aboriginal too.’ He hesitated, realising that his children might inherit darker skin from both sides of the family.

  Children. He was sixteen years old, had only talked to the girl he loved, really talked, twice. And she was who knew where, only that it was away from him.

  Nancy’s mother blew her nose. ‘She will come back. Thank you for coming. I didn’t know till I said that about your children just now. But Nancy will return to Overflow.’

  Chapter 19

  Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 30 January 1942

  Highway Robbery in Main Street!

  There was a ‘hold-up’ in Main Street last Saturday when a band of desperate-looking bushrangers held up passers-by, demanding their money or their life. Luckily for our citizens, they were pupils of Gibber’s Creek Central School, raising money for the Prisoners of War Fund.

  One of the ‘victims’, Councillor Bullant, congratulated bushranger Rodney Ellis (10), son of Councillor Ellis, on his clever disguise. Rodney replied that this was what he always wore on Saturdays, and said that his father had instructed him to say that a councillor’s life was worth more than threepence, especially if they were fat.

  The ‘bushrangers’ raised twenty-three pounds, four shillings and tuppence halfpenny.

  Well done, Gibber’s Creek Central School.

  PULAU AYU, 30 JANUARY 1942

  NANCY

  ‘You will march,’ said the translator.

  Nancy felt the shock almost as strongly as the shot she had been expecting.

  ‘You will not speak.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ The words were out before she knew she was going to say them. Her normal reaction at being told what to do, she realised as the guard’s bamboo cane struck her across the face, was to do the opposite.

  Her face stung as if a hundred wasps had bitten it. The translator looked at her impassively, his glasses glinting. ‘You are being taken to a camp. A comfortable camp where you will be safe. Now you will march.’