Cicada

by Moira McKinnon

  He shook the thoughts of war from his head and called out for John to slow down, to ease off on the whip.

  The colt joined the herd. He looked back at Jurulu and the brumby, and then scanned the horses as if he was counting his brood.

  ‘Good horse.’ Jurulu grinned.

  ‘Crazy horse,’ replied Trevor.

  When Emily woke the night was gone. The blood was gone and the sheets were clean and fresh. The sun was bright against the wire screen of the open door and there was a hum as loud as ten men sawing wood. Cicadas. Thousands, breaking through the red dirt beyond the scraggly lawn. Birds swirled and dived, hungry for the nymphs with their moist bodies and soft pink coats. Their shadows swooped across the room and Emily shielded her eyes against the changing light. Her face hurt. She felt the bruise with her fingertips. Her hand slipped from her face and she turned. Her husband sat across from her, his blond hair unkempt and falling across his hazel eyes.

  ‘I should not have hit you.’

  She looked past him to where the cot should be. ‘The baby?’

  William rose in a sharp burst towards her. She cringed back. He stopped.

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Where the larks sing, and the flames are howling.’ He gave a small dry laugh, but looked to see if the words of their long-ago poem hurt.

  Emily pushed the bedclothes back and tried to stand. The room spun and she dared not close her eyes. She held on to the bed and lowered her head.

  He watched her for a minute then he pushed her shoulder so that she fell back against the pillows.

  ‘That baby tore you, huh,’ he said, gazing to the outside as though something else had caught his attention.

  Emily twisted the sheet in her hands. ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘Sorry?’ He hooked his thumbs in the belt of his trousers, looked directly at her and his voice became loud. ‘Say sorry to your God. I thought you were his angel but you are the devil tricking me.’ She watched as his long fingers, white and smooth, worked slowly to unbuckle his belt. She felt tightness in her chest, then numbness as though all the shadows in the room were suddenly leaning against her.

  He coughed and a breath rasped in his throat. He stood looking at his wife, pale against the pillow, her brown curls still stringy with dried sweat. High on the clay-pasted wall, two milky geckos chirped and searched with their velvet feet and darting tongues for moisture in the corners and cracks of the room.

  Emily raised her hand towards him, wondering how to ask forgiveness, to explain what had happened, so that their life could be repaired. She fought to make words come. They didn’t and the noise of the cicadas tore into the room and filled every space. William let the belt go. He stood with his hands by his side. He dropped his head to his chest and for a moment was still. He turned and his boots clicked on the floorboards into the hallway.

  Emily drifted in and out of sleep. In moments of wakefulness she pushed herself to rise, determined to sort out what to do, but she fell back, her body gripped with tiredness and her mind flooded with a tangle of despairing thoughts. She lay facing the hallway door so she would see the nurse bring the baby to the room. Surely any moment now, or maybe the priest will come first. I will ask him. Where is the baby, can you tell me, Father?

  The geckos stopped and listened to her whispers. She fumbled with words, knotting and twisting her fingers, thinking of how she could say sorry, what reason to give.

  ‘There is no reason.’

  She stared at the wall where the painting had sat. At the edge where the light met the dark a gecko snapped and caught a moth in its mouth, shaking it until its wings stopped beating. Emily raised herself, her elbow on the pillow.

  ‘I will give the child to Wirritjil and we will hide him when the police come by searching for the coloured children. William will be angry for a long time. Kathryn, help me, I am sorry for hiding the rosary beads, I will believe truly in God. I will pray every day. I will tell the priest everything—everything.’

  She sat and pulled her knees to her chest. She heard the galahs screeching and imagined their quarrelling flight in the brightness of the sun, flapping pink and grey in untidy curves over some spilt seed or maybe fighting over the nuts and blossoms of the red gum. Their calls faded and there was just the sound of the geckos with their odd chirrups.

  Emily held out her hand as if to touch someone sitting by the bed.

  ‘Father, forgive me, I disobeyed my husband. He closed his door, shut me out. I wanted to cry and then I needed to run, to fly away. I went to the horse yard and the black mare was pacing along the fence, she wanted to stretch out, to gallop.’

  She heard footsteps. It was Blackgirl, her eyes shining.

  ‘The baby?’ whispered Emily.

  ‘Nyimpilawuny?’ Blackgirl shook her head, she didn’t know. She sat on a chair against the wall and leant forwards, staring at Emily. Emily let herself drift back onto the pillow. ‘He did not know I was gone, until they took him his supper.’

  High on the wall the gecko panted with the effort of eating and his belly was fat and dark.

  ‘He is captivated by words. Lady Josephina, dear mother, insisted William be taught so he could be like us. She called him her Blue Monarch, a royal butterfly. He learnt the things I couldn’t, the piano, how to remember Shakespeare, the speeches of kings. Father, I adored him. I adore him.’

  She thought about whether to say that William hurt her with his words, his silences. The priest might not understand how a man could hurt like that. Emily drew herself into a ball, thinking of William, how he had changed, his narrowed eyes, the way he threw letters from home roughly in front of her. She saw, in the last year, the small cruelties to animals and natives, and his slight smile at any story of misfortune.

  ‘Father,’ she whispered as she fell asleep, ‘please help William.’

  The emptiness of her body woke her.

  It was mid-morning. Emily could hear children laughing. She rose unsteadily and opened the doors to the veranda. Heat shimmered across the plains to the horse paddocks and up to the homestead. The air had the smell of the soil and was hazy with the lives that the moisture had sparked. Cicada nymphs struggled in frantic motion on gossamer wings to the camouflage of the trees. The native children gathered fistfuls, shrieking as the newborns pummelled against their fingers.

  ‘Yirilyiril, yirilyiril!’

  They ran naked through the grey-green spread of the wattle and thin leaves of the hakea back to the women at the edge of the camp waiting with their bark laanturrji resting on their hips.

  Emily trembled as she watched. Her baby should be here.

  The thick stone walls of the inner house kept the hallway silent and dark. Emily felt her way. She could see the spill of light from the front room. There was a murmur of conversation. An Irish voice.

  ‘I do not really know if savages have souls, but I am willing to pause on that account. Indeed, even so, their salvation is to kneel to God.’

  ‘Father, we are grateful.’ William. His voice was careful, practised, the words clear and rounded.

  The Irish voice began again. ‘There is great need in this parish.’

  Silence. Emily put her hand against the wall; it was cool against her palm. Someone in the room coughed, a slight moist cough.

  ‘The dangers are considerable, no-one should travel alone. They spear people, innocent travellers. At least those slain have a chance to meet with God. This opportunity, to meet with God, to know God, in life and in death, is what we must offer the natives. Until that time, I am afraid the jails here will always be full.’

  Emily traced along the groove of the render between the stones. The grains of sand cemented with lime and clay paste crumbled and trickled to the floor. Her fingers touched the wood of the doorframe.

  ‘I know Lady Lidscombe has shown you prayer and your baptism is surely to be celebrated. I don’t understand how, how she, how she fell . . .’ The priest hesitated. ‘There is, as always, a poss
ibility of redemption. Your wife’s redemption. You want that. Don’t you?’

  There was no answer and the brogue began again, but the words were loud and sharp at the edges. ‘God forgives those who ask to be forgiven.’

  Emily stepped into the room. The rough shutters hewn from planks of strong woollybutt trees were pulled back against the wall, bathing the room in a strident morning light. The furniture and art was arranged as it was in the visitors’ parlour of Lidscombe Manor. William sat on a high-backed chair upholstered in the Earl’s favourite colour, Prussian blue. His hair was tied back and his wispy blond beard combed and waxed but his skin was pallid. On a floral two-seater with lacquered oak arms sat the priest and the nurse.

  The priest stood in a quick movement that made a silver crucifix on a short cord bounce against his hip. The nurse remained seated, her eyes fixed on a black bag balanced on her knees. Instead of the loose light uniform she had worn at the birth she was now dressed in a long dark skirt, a blouse buttoned high and a white hospital veil that was starched stiffly above her head to a board with three sharp points. Behind the visitors was an oil painting of a vase of country flowers. It was riven with cracks and small craters where islands of shrivelled colour had dislodged and fallen. Tea had been served on a low table but the delicate china cups with their gold-leaf rims were untouched.

  The priest ran his finger around the inside of his collar. ‘Lady Lidscombe, you should be resting.’

  His gaze fell as he saw the bruise on her face. He reached to take her hand but she kept it by her side. The nurse looked away. William stared out of the window to where the station workers were hitching horses to a buggy. The dusty road was strewn with the scarlet blossoms and twisted brown pods of the kunjiny trees. Small white parrots, corellas, swirled and dropped in unruly waves and clamour as they hunted for seeds among the red splashes and drifts of coin-shaped leaves.

  Emily took a step towards her husband. ‘The child?’

  He replied in a low voice, ‘Limbo. Is that the place between heaven and hell?’

  ‘Did he die?’

  William eyes sparked with anger, but his face was cold and drawn. ‘Yes.’

  She reached out to brace herself against the wall. It was too far.

  ‘Will he go to heaven?’

  William looked to the carriage outside. ‘He was not baptised.’

  Emily willed herself not to fall. She focused on her feet. They were freckled with dried blood.

  ‘He must be baptised.’

  The priest pressed his hands together and bowed his head. ‘There are rules, guidance.’

  The nurse shifted her gaze between the floor and the window. The priest held out his hands to Emily again. His eyes were watery blue and the lower rims were red. This time she took his hands. They were soft and moist.

  She came close to him and bowed her head. The words came out in a jumble and she couldn’t put them right. Confession, I must, horses, shorthorns, moon, stars, cold, cold, black mare, so quiet, skin, crescent moon, whistling kite. She shook her head and was silent for a moment then looked up.

  ‘The sun must hurt your eyes,’ she murmured.

  ‘Oh,’ the priest said, smiling, ‘I protect myself.’

  Emily tightened her hand on his. She wanted to ask him what he knew of the child but nothing came, she could not speak. A cough scraped in William’s chest. He walked past them to the door.

  ‘Father and dear nurse, you have a long journey ahead. The men will accompany you to Halls Creek. They have rifles.’

  The priest took his hand from Emily’s grasp; he looked at William and smoothed his robes. ‘Thank you, Mr Lidscombe. I long for the day I have a motorcar—a shiny one, I hope.’

  The nurse walked quickly past William without a word. The priest followed, pausing at the door to make a quick sign of the cross. Emily stood still, then with a start hurried after them. A sudden cramp in her belly made her stumble. Blood dripped from her legs onto the red dirt. She reached the nurse and stretched out her hand. ‘Where is he?’

  The nurse hesitated. She sucked her lips in and hissed in little syllables. ‘Near the fig. Closer than it should be.’

  ‘It?’

  ‘Him.’

  The priest opened the door to the buggy and waved the nurse in as if to sweep her to safety. They sat high, the nurse opened her umbrella, and the stockman took the reins and jiggled the horses into a swift trot. The corellas rose in an indignant rant, their wings white against the green of the trees and the blue of the sky. They circled low around the buggy, coming close and back again as if they thought the nurse’s white veil was one of the flock trapped under the umbrella.

  Emily stood in the swelling heat of the sun. She tried to remember the sound of his cry but all that came was the whirr of cicadas and the screech of birds. She held her hand to her head and in the light that was wavering with darkness she saw William, a diffuse shadow at her side. She felt his arms around her as she fell and heard his words high pitched and floating away from her.

  ‘What have I done?’

  William carried her back to her room. Blackgirl was crouched in the hallway. She waited as they passed and hurried behind them. He laid Emily on the bed. Her hair was plastered in strands against her face and her smock stained with blood. He sat by her and stroked her hair from her face. He reached to trace her lips with his finger.

  ‘No love in vain, no cry lost in the world’s countless refrain?’

  Emily opened her eyes. He stood suddenly and stumbled for his balance.

  Blackgirl inched into the room. William spun and spoke sharply. ‘When she wakes, wash her thoroughly and dress her in clean clothes.’

  Blackgirl didn’t understand any of the words. He knew that.

  ‘You hear me? I’ll thrash you if I see her like this again.’

  He went to his room that was lined with shelves of books. On his desk were fine paper and an ornate pen with which to write verse and prose. He sat, occasionally dipping the quill in the ink and carefully writing a word. He stayed there through the afternoon until the night became dark around his lamp. At the edge of the light the walnut stock of an Enfield repeater rifle shone with a dull sheen. It had been his brother’s weapon in the war. He pushed it away but after a few moments reached for it again and felt the smoothness and the warmth of the wood.

  He slid his hand along the coldness of the metal loading mechanism to the wood of the forestock. He stopped at the point where it was attached to the belt that had been slung so often across his brother’s shoulder. He stood and walked to a long wooden box on the floor. In it were several rifles and a couple of small handguns. He took a single-shot Winchester and admired its clean lines. He leant the Winchester against the wall, returned to the desk and picked up a piece of paper marked with his handwriting of meticulous loops and flourishes. He spoke softly. ‘Sweet, your cry of love’s promise. Never to die.’

  He rolled the paper into a cylinder and edged it under the glass of the lamp.

  ‘The Earl, Lord of Lidscombe Manor, Lord of pain, Lord of disdain.’

  Smoke blackened the glass, raising shadows on the walls like troubled waves of a coming storm. The paper fell from the edge of the lamp and flamed on the naked surface of the desk.

  William rested his cheek on the desk and watched the flames die.

  ‘I will not, will not drown in love’s disdain.’

  The cinders moved back and forth with the breath of his words.

  ‘Gilded disdain. I will not drown in love’s gilded disdain.’

  He blew hard and the cinders fell, fluttering black to the floor. He wiped his hand across the desk and reached for the Enfield. He fetched a clip of bullets and pulled the bolt of the Enfield back. He stopped and lay the rifle down. The bullets fell from the upended clip, clattering onto the desk. He pushed the chair back, bowed his head to his knees and covered his face with both hands.

  They brought the herd into the yards a mile from the homestead. Jurulu and Trevor
worked to cut the dark stallion from the others. The horse was thin with the scars of many battles and the raw rake of a recent dragging bite across his rump.

  Trevor rode through the herd scattering it as Jurulu flanked the stallion and pushed him to the fence. The old horese lowered his head. He was breathing heavily, his skin sucking in between his ribs with each breath. Trevor looked to Jurulu then swung open the gate that led to the plain. The stallion lifted his head. He looked back at his herd.

  ‘Go on,’ said Trevor.

  The old stallion trotted out and kept going and the half-moon was high in the sky in the last light of day.

  The other stallion was a muscled grey, flecked with black across his shoulders and down his chest and forelegs as if he had been draped with an ermine cloak. He spun and reared, pacing in front of his mares. John cracked his long whip along the length of the stallion’s back. The horse bucked, flattened his ears and bared his teeth. Trevor shouted for the men to back up. John spat in the dust and coiled his whip to strike again. The stallion fixed his eyes on John’s hands, his weight on his hind legs and the hoofs of his forelegs drumming the air and then the earth.

  Jurulu slipped between the stallion and the herd. Trevor saw him and moved in quickly on the side. The stallion realised he was caught, he had nowhere to go but to the fence. Jurulu and Trevor drove him along the poles that were strapped together with thin strips of cowhide and wire, through the gate to the adjoining enclosure. John swerved in hard and shoved the gate shut. He snapped his whip across the yard and dirt shot up and fell back slowly like a fountain.

  The dust settled and the horses stamped their feet at the fences and knew that they were trapped.

  Trevor rode up beside Jurulu. The sun had gone, leaving a rim of pink above the land under the deepening blue of the belly of the sky, tinting the country yellow and violet.