by Sue Woolfe
Again, drifts of a scarcely heeded lecture were coming back to me. Odd, that something that meant nothing to me a few months ago had become imperative.
‘One of the famous early linguists, Stanner, complained it was “just too hard”. Thousands of words. Ten thousand, at least,’ I told her. ‘Almost rococo in its difficulty.’
‘That’s my point,’ Craig said. ‘Highly evolved languages simplify themselves.’
Beth however was exclaiming in surprise, this time not bothering to look at the headmaster, but gazing at me. Suddenly, ignoring him and hoping I could talk to the part of her that prompted her to stand in front of a bathroom mirror dyeing her hair pink, I managed to add more, extemporising a bit though with uncertainty, because if either of them had questioned me, they’d find that I knew little more than them.
‘Some verbs have hundreds of variations of their own. For example, to kill or to hit – their word sounds like just one word to us – but one of the first researchers tracked down sixty-seven variations of the word, which I suppose they’d need, being hunter-gatherers – to kill or hit when you’re walking forward, when you’re walking backwards, when you’re walking on a slope or on the flat, when you’re walking towards home or away from home –’
Craig had heard enough and made an impatient noise that came out as a snort, and even Beth looked uneasily back at the classroom as if she’d suddenly remembered something more pressing than attending to a list of sixty-seven words. So I changed tack and said instead: ‘I was wondering if you’d like me to come and help out with the children here.’
‘We don’t have children here,’ said Craig while Beth gave a nervous giggle. ‘So that won’t be necessary.’ I glanced up at his lips, and saw them thin with bitterness. So I had to come clean.
‘I’m actually looking for an old lady who sings an ancient song. It’s called the “Poor Thing” song. I wondered if you’d be able to help me.’
‘Poor Thing!’ said the woman, softening, giving me her attention again, and I noticed her blue eyes – so blue it was as if they held the sky, with lashes long enough to tangle at the corners. Her upper lip lifted like a child’s hair bow. She had one of those odd, bony faces that could become beautiful, so that you watched it in suspense, waiting for the next instalment of beauty. ‘Who’s the poor thing?’
‘It’s a secret woman’s song, so maybe the poor thing could be a woman,’ I said. I was extemporising even more now, but Beth’s pink curls were somehow prompting the words out of me. Our eyes met.
‘She’d probably been given a hard time,’ said Beth.
‘It’s more likely to be about a poor wombat,’ snorted Craig. He put his bald head close to mine, confidingly, as if we were old friends. I smelled his aftershave, so recently applied it stung my eyes.
‘I wouldn’t say this to everyone, but since you’ve deigned to come to my public relations barbecue – not like the rest of the whites, you can’t count on anyone’s loyalty here – this is the most degraded people on earth.’
I took a step backwards.
‘And I’d know,’ he said. ‘I’ve been out here two years.’
Beth nodded. ‘He has,’ she said.
‘I came out because I’m an idealist. An educational idealist. I was shocked at the state of these people and I wanted to lift the IQ points of their children. You’d know, you’re an educated person – South-East Asians have an average IQ of 103. Caucasians – you and me – have an average IQ of 100. But these people, they have an IQ of a mere 65.’ He bent his head to me again, with another blast of aftershave. ‘Not many people will tell you that.’
Beth had been told it many times.
‘I wanted to save them too,’ said Beth warmly to me. ‘Even as a kid. I’m sure –’ this, glancing at him, ‘we both wanted to help.’
She nodded for him. He just looked at his watch.
‘I remember an old Indigenous man came to our school on Multiculture Day and told us about what he called the old days, and the old people,’ she said to him as much as to me, though he’d clearly heard this before. Now in her enthusiasm, despite him, her blue eyes seemed to be throwing reflections of blueness down her cheeks, like blue pathways on a pink and rolling landscape. ‘They used to be able to do strange and marvellous things, like Indian gurus, because they’d trained their minds.’
‘The old people were different, we all know that,’ Craig said. ‘It’s what they’ve evolved to.’
‘They apparently could raise the temperatures of their bodies on cold nights –’
‘Probably by lying near their dogs,’ he said, but he seemed to be laughing fondly at her so she continued.
‘And they could travel across the desert at astounding speeds, so it seemed they could fly.’
We both gazed at her. She was trying to persuade him of her vision, trying to ease him out of his disappointment, using my presence to restore his sense of purpose, and for a moment I thought she might succeed.
‘This old man described a life so different from our hum-drum one that afterwards, I’d hang around in the bush – in those days everyone in the suburbs had bush in their backyards – and I’d draw pictures on the rocks, hoping that one day a lost tribe would see my pictures and come and find me. And I’d run away with them!’
She tried laughing into his eyes.
‘Like running away with the circus?’ he suggested.
She was dashed.
‘That was then,’ he said, wanting to indulge her. ‘But now, they have the lowest IQ in the universe.’
She had one more try.
‘Don’t you think,’ she added, almost beseechingly, ‘we’d look bad in any IQ test they devised?’
She turned to me for corroboration.
‘Their kinship system,’ I began, remembering the builder and before him, lecture notes I’d taken down uncomprehendingly in what seemed a century ago – but I couldn’t go on because I knew no more.
Craig saw me flounder.
‘We owe it to them to lead them out of darkness,’ he said.
We were interrupted by a shout. One of the boys had fallen out of the tree and was lying on his back in the dust. Beth gasped. I started to run towards the fallen boy. At exactly the same time, a beeper sounded and a red light flashed on Craig’s belt. He cried out in alarm.
‘Hell, it’s feeding time. I promised to go to her.’ He caught my arm. ‘Here, make yourself useful, take these to the barbecue,’ he said, thrusting his burden into my arms. To Beth, he said, ‘You check the boy. I put hours into a requisition to have that tree cut down – too late, wouldn’t you know it!’
Then the beeper sounded again and he was no longer an authority figure but a desperate man, breaking into a wild run towards the teachers’ houses, his stick legs under his large belly flailing, one foot turning out sideways in a limp brought on by anxiety, his shirt coming untucked from his jeans and flying out behind. Beth, on the other hand, broke into a neat, athletic run towards the boys.
I looked down at what he’d thrust at me and found I was holding half a dozen stiff animal tails. Kangaroo tails, said the shop labels. They were black and hairy, frozen, with Glad Wrap around each. At least they didn’t smell.
‘Where’s the barbecue?’ I yelped to Beth’s back.
‘Follow the smoke!’ She didn’t pause in her stride.
Behind me was the roaring of a car motor and a clanking of hooves. I wheeled to see that the donkey was trotting across the schoolyard with the pack of bald dogs that had menaced me now running and jumping at its throat, open-mouthed, teeth bared, but the donkey, head held high, hooves elegantly lifted, refused to seem menaced by this lowly mob, as if to trot ahead of them across a schoolyard was its considered choice. Behind this cavalcade was the newly washed troopie of last night’s journey. Adrian screeched to a dust-clouded halt near me.
He was shouting so angrily, he forgot to wind down the window and I couldn’t lip-read. At last Daniel in the passenger seat leaned across and cra
nked the window down.
‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you,’ Adrian yelled.
‘There’s an injured child – a boy fell out of the tree – could you tell your doctor?’
‘Not now I’m sacked,’ he said.
Daniel and a young man in a white coat both strained to see through the windscreen to see the boy. There was a woman in a nurse’s uniform in the back. I appealed to Daniel.
‘Is anyone here a doctor?’
‘The clinic’s on strike,’ Adrian said.
Daniel didn’t meet my eyes. He just looked straight ahead, trying, I saw, to do what he was supposed to do.
‘But the boy might be injured! He might be dead!’ I said.
‘They know how to fall. They’re always falling,’ said Adrian.
‘Help him!’
The young man in the white coat said something to Adrian, who gunned the troopie into life so I had barely a chance to jump back. He roared across the playground towards the boy, scattering dust, dogs and the donkey, who had at last deigned to bray. Adrian screeched to a halt and called to the boy by name. The boy stood up, laughing at the fuss he’d created. Adrian did a wheelie around him, so that the braying donkey and the dogs chasing all had to leap backwards out of the way, the dogs falling over each other, and he drove back through his own dust towards me, with the animals, all either barking or braying, racing behind.
‘Let’s go,’ he yelled to me, yanking up his handbrake.
‘But I’ve just started work,’ I shouted, against the din.
‘We’re going back to town,’ he said. ‘My staff are leaving with me. One out, all out – that’s it, isn’t it?’ he called to his passengers, who either stared or nodded. ‘And you’re my responsibility, until Collins turns up, so get in.’
‘But I’ve got to scrape hairs off kangaroo tails,’ I said.
‘For him? For Craig?’ said Adrian. ‘He’s got it wrong. The mob don’t scrape them off. They burn them off. Of course he wouldn’t do it their way. Throw the tails to the dogs. Here, let me –’
He was reaching out to grab the tails. I swung them out of his reach.
Just then two Aboriginal women came through the school gate, heading towards the back of the school, where I now saw smoke drifting.
‘Those must be the women who’ve come to cook,’ I said to him, relieved, and ran after them.
‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ I called.
I sounded absurdly European, and they didn’t turn around.
‘Could you wait?’ I called.
They kept walking as if they hadn’t heard me, and it came to me that English was just a noise to them, as Djemiranga was to me. Behind me, Adrian honked the horn which started up a fresh crescendo of braying from the donkey and barking from the dogs.
I ran in front of the women, and held out the tails. Surprised, they stopped, and smiled.
One said a word. I copied it.
They both corrected my pronunciation.
I mimicked what they’d said.
The first woman added something else, something more than just a word. It might’ve even been a sentence.
I repeated what she’d said after her, though I didn’t know what I was saying.
She laughed approvingly and they both nodded. I was blushing and laughing with my success.
I’d mimicked what seemed to be a whole sentence! My first sentence! And embedded somewhere in it, it could be that I’d just uttered, without knowing it, the travel affix that the Dean and E.E. Albert were so interested in!
But there was no chance to celebrate because Adrian had driven up in another choking cloud of dust, which all three of us had to wipe off our faces. I was doubled-up in a fit of coughing and, as I recovered, the women carefully prised the kangaroo tails away from me before I dropped them in the dust for the dogs to eat, just as Adrian wanted.
‘Get in,’ he said.
The women walked away again.
I called out goodbye to them in English to try to lengthen the moment. They didn’t turn around. I stood staring after them, bereft.
‘Get in,’ Adrian ordered.
‘I can’t leave,’ I cried out. ‘I’ve just had a success!’
‘In the back,’ Adrian repeated. ‘We’ve got to get out of this place.’
But I had to share the moment with that man who was once my soul-mate, perhaps. The Ian of old would’ve cared, surely, he would’ve cared.
‘We had a conversation, well, almost. I mimicked them and they smiled –’
I was gabbling in my excitement.
‘I said, get in.’
The white woman in the back threw open the door for me.
‘I won’t go! I’m staying!’
I turned, walked away.
Adrian pushed open his door, dive-bombed himself out of the troopie and ran in front of me.
‘If you hold out any hope of doing your work, any hope of returning, you’ll come with me!’ he shouted.
‘No,’ I shouted.
‘Yes,’ he shouted.
We glared at each other.
‘Stop making this scene,’ he hissed, ‘in front of my employees.’
‘I have every right to stay,’ I shouted.
‘You’re nothing here without me. Get in,’ he shouted.
The woman in the back leaned out the window.
‘I’m Gillian,’ she said, speaking kindly as if I was a demented patient. ‘I remember when a patient taught me the word for “pain”. I repeated it after her, and wrote it down on a bit of paper and tried it out on the next patient. He understood me! It was a life-changing moment.’
I looked between Adrian and the nurse – his insistence, her kindness.
She had a way of opening her mouth into a rectangular shape like the opening of a letterbox. It opened before she spoke. It made her seem utterly without guile.
Her kindness dissolved me. I capitulated. I stumbled into the troopie and subsided on the seat.
‘Life-changing!’ I said.
‘It made me feel I could belong.’
‘What was it?’ I asked. ‘Their word?’
She looked abashed.
‘I lost the bit of paper,’ she said.
Adrian gunned the engine and I held my head in my hands.
‘We’ve got to stick together to show them,’ said Gillian.
‘Show them what?’ My voice was croaking.
‘That they shouldn’t sack Adrian. One out, all out,’ said Gillian. ‘We’ve got to show them our work principles.’
‘Do you think they’ll be impressed?’ I asked.
She paused.
‘Dunno,’ she said. And smiled. ‘It’s our only hope, isn’t it? Being perfect models of the way whites should do things.’
‘Hope of what?’ I asked.
‘Dunno,’ she said again, and this time I shared her smile.
I lolled back against the metal frame of the troopie. We pulled up at the house. Adrian leaped out and ushered his staff to sit on the verandah. Daniel sat with them, not meeting my eyes. Adrian bustled towards the kitchen to make them a cup of tea before the long trip into town.
‘Pack up your things. Have you had anything to eat?’ he asked me.
I stood in the corridor, refusing. ‘I came to do a job.’
He ignored me. ‘Hurry up. Don’t you understand? They’re doing this for me.’
I went to the bedroom and sat on the bed rebelliously. My old appeasing self struggled with my new resolution. I stood and pulled down the three skirts I’d hung up and the hangers clanked disconsolately. How would I go about doing my work? The only people left here I could talk to were the builder and Craig and Beth, and they made my heart sink. But I should at least try. I left my bag inside my room, and went back to the kitchen, where Adrian was jiggling teabags in the cups.
I tried another tack.
‘Why don’t you just stay here, in the house?’
‘The best thing to do when you’re sacked is to leave. There was
to be a change of staff at the clinic today anyway, and I’ve told the new staff to wait in Alice Springs.’
‘Shouldn’t you stay and stand up for yourself? Not skulk off?’
‘I’ve been sacked twenty times in twenty years,’ he said.
‘And always reinstated?’
He got milk out of the fridge and set it on a tray with the cups.
‘It’s better they experience life without a clinic, rather than listen to arguments,’ he said. ‘These are practical people. What really happened will stand up for me. The mob are fair. I’m sure I’ll be reinstated within twenty-four hours.’
‘But what’ll they do without a doctor?’
‘The hothead will have to run the clinic on his own. He’ll find it’s not all about grabbing power and going hunting. Someone might get really sick.’ He saw my shocked face and added: ‘In an emergency he can ring the Flying Doctor Service.’
As he spoke, the phone rang. He picked it up.
‘We’re leaving now. I’ll bring you back. The roads are worse than ever, the trip’s slow. I asked my friend to make you some lunch. She’s got cable. Put on the TV.’
There was a pause.
‘Don’t cry. It’ll be fine.’
His voice was sweet with kindness. He put the phone back in its holder.
‘That was Meagan. They’re at the house of my friend.’
‘Who’s Meagan?’
‘One of the silly girls I’ve been sacked over,’ he said. ‘Get your bag.’
He was so sure I’d follow him, he turned and walked away through the laundry, heading to the verandah.
‘Just tell me who the old singer is. I could run over to her house and record her while you’re having your tea. Then I can get out of your hair and fly home.’
He laughed. He didn’t look back.
Chapter 7
On the long trip into Alice Springs, Adrian took first turn to drive. Daniel sat beside him, sleeping. Gillian and I sat in the back with the young doctor and a black woman with her baby who Adrian needed to take to a specialist in town, despite his strike.
At the shop we’d sped past last night, we stopped for petrol. The young doctor leaped out, nimble and long-legged in cheerful Hawaiian beach shorts under his white coat, and called to Adrian: ‘Interest you in some hot chips?’
