by Sue Woolfe
‘Yes,’ I said, smiling at her lovely face in spite of my heavy heart.
Bruce sat in an office papered with lists, names and phone numbers, his toy dog on his lap, his feet on the desk between stacks of paper. His dog was gazing trustingly at his face. I was moved by that gaze. I was full of self-pity and envy.
Neither man nor dog rose for me. But the look Bruce gave me, from my toes to my head, was like a long lick, except that his teeth were bared. I tried not to notice.
‘Do you have a moment?’ I asked. ‘I know it’s late.’
‘Do we have a moment?’ he asked his dog, but in a voice that was a mimicry of mine. ‘Do we?’
I felt foolish, because his mimicry seemed to mock my politeness, as if politeness was absurd. I decided that he’d probably had a long hard day – he’d probably worked as Adrian did from five or six in the morning and now it was time for his little joke.
He spoke as if his dog had answered.
‘We probably have a moment.’
He played at giving me all his attention, and even moved his dog’s head around so that the dog could gaze at me, but the dog yelped at such a twist, so he shoved the dog’s body around to face me properly.
‘Thank you,’ I said, not knowing if this was intended to put me at ease or to disconcert me. Bruce’s face was deeply tanned and unlined, so his white curly hair was a shock, but as he leaned his head near the dog, its coat of white curls seemed like an extension of him. I asked if I could sit down, mainly so that I could hide my body and avoid a second lick.
He nodded, lifted his foot and kicked another chair in my direction.
I was determined to find nothing unusual in addressing four pairs of eyes, two of them canine. I wondered briefly if I should make small talk about whether the dog had been menaced by the other dogs when it had arrived out here, but words failed me and I came to the point immediately.
‘Rayleen and Kathy were just visiting me,’ I started.
‘And who might they be?’
He asked this of the dog. The dog gazed at him unblinkingly.
‘Oh, those young girls.’ He replied, nodding to the dog as if the dog had told him. ‘Pretty young things.’
I could’ve sworn the dog nodded.
‘They’re relatives of Libby. And when they asked me if they could have a shower, they told me there was no running water at Libby’s house and hasn’t been for a while.’
At that moment, everything changed. The game with the dog stopped. ‘Why were they at your house?’ he asked.
‘I invited them. Also, most people don’t have power – but you might already know that.’
‘You had them in your bathroom? Were there men in the house?’
‘The girls asked to have a shower!’ I cried.
‘Ha!’ he snorted in disbelief. ‘You got a permit to be here?’
I explained that I was invited to record a special song only women could hear. I told him that Collins had invited me.
‘That happy-clapper!’
‘Skeleton welcomed me. But that’s not the point – I wondered if you knew the problem about the running water,’ I said. ‘And the power.’
‘It is the point. You get a permit from Central Land Council, or you get out.’
‘It’s Skeleton’s land,’ I said.
‘But it’s Central Land Council’s permit. Have I made my point?’
‘Of course,’ I said. I tried to mollify him. After all, I was here for Libby’s family, not for an argument. I asked him for a permit application form, adding that I’d have to contact my university and ask them to apply.
‘They’d better get a move on,’ he said. ‘Get them to fax it by the end of the week. Or you’ll be out.’
I stood to leave.
I was surprised that he took his feet off the desk, and unfolded himself out of his chair, as if he still remembered how to be a gentleman. But in his sudden movement, the dog fell to the floor, yelping in a tumbled heap, its toenails scrabbling. It didn’t seem to know how to get up.
I bent to help it. But I froze because he’d risen to the full height of his anger.
‘How dare you speak to me without a permit!’ he cried, his voice rising above the dog’s scrabbling. ‘You left-winger university types, no one knows what you’d get up to! Encouraging young girls to take off their clothes in your house! You live in your ivory tower but I have to deal with the real world. You want to know why these Indigenous people don’t have running water? Or power? Because I give them three chances. Three strikes and they’re out! I say, you throw disposable nappies down the toilets and block them – three times running – so I have to get plumbers out here – and you know what – you’ll have no toilet! See how you feel about that! And if they don’t pay their power bills, the same! Do you think the government gives me dozens of plumbers to run and fix their stinking toilets?’
The dog whimpered, but his voice overrode it.
‘That family, I remember them well, I gave them three chances, and they took no notice of me. I’m a generous man – and on the fourth time, I switched off their water. Now – get out!’
I left his office, the dog still whimpering. As I walked out the door, the women politely downcast their eyes. On the way home, I glimpsed Adrian at the end of the street, talking to a black woman, and for the first time, I saw that he was only an ordinary man.
He stayed at the clinic all evening, and Daniel stayed with him. I forgot to mention the rumour.
Chapter 22
I worked in my bedroom late that night. When I looked out my window, Adrian’s mattress glowed white in the moonlight, like a scar on the dark body of the desert, a scar that wouldn’t heal. He didn’t come to lie on it.
At breakfast, the phone rang. Adrian and Daniel were eating muesli, moodily. They were eating in unison, both spoons going into their mouths together, both spoons dipping into their bowls. Adrian passed the phone over to me.
‘A friend of yours,’ he said ironically.
It was Craig. We exchanged greetings, and then he said he was holding a meeting that morning to discuss what might be going wrong between the school and the settlement – if anything was wrong. He’d like as many whites to attend as possible – would anyone from the clinic be available?
I looked at the grim faces of Daniel and Adrian and said that no one was available today, only me.
‘Don’t stay out long,’ said Adrian as I poured a second cup of tea.
‘Why not?’ I asked.
‘If they sack me,’ he said, ‘I’ll leave straight away.’
‘How likely is another sacking?’ I asked, keeping my voice light. ‘Your twenty-first?’
‘The mob love me, but can you always depend on love?’ he asked.
There was no amusement in his laugh.
‘And Daniel?’
‘Daniel follows my orders,’ said Adrian.
Daniel and Adrian walked together to the clinic, as they seldom did, in step with each other, and even that seemed ominous. I kept watching the road out my window, but no unfamiliar car had arrived by the time I was due to leave for the meeting. There was no one on the streets, and when I reached the school, no children. It came as a surprise to walk into a hubbub of voices in the staff room, a ring of people on chairs. Bruce was nearest the door, his white toy dog on his lap. I noticed for the first time how listless the dog was, how empty-eyed. Beside Bruce was Kana, the Japanese student, and next to her was Dudley, the teacher from the outstation whom I hadn’t met. He was almost as young as Kana, still boyishly thin and lanky, with full red lips and a prettiness about the eyes, round-cheeked and shy.
Bruce didn’t return my nod, as if he didn’t remember me from last night. Beth emerged from a dark corner.
‘Queen Kate has graced us with her presence,’ she called to Craig, who was at his desk writing notes.
‘I’m to take down proceedings,’ said Craig, coming over with a notebook.
He turned the empty chair back-to-front and leaned over it to e
ffect a casual air, while he thanked us for coming.
‘My masters want me to find out why this community refuses education. I’m to ask you: is the school doing anything wrong? And to write down your answers. I’ll ask each person,’ he added.
‘Should we watch our words?’ asked Dudley hesitantly ‘Might this affect our standing with the Department?’
‘Not at all, speak out, say your mind, don’t be timid,’ said Craig. ‘The Department wants your thoughts. But hurry. I’ve got higher duties,’ he added with a proud smile, inclining his head towards his house.
‘The baby has a temperature.’
He took a pen out of his pocket, clicked it, and tried it out on the notebook to check it hadn’t dried up.
‘I’ll go first,’ said Beth. She looked in Craig’s direction, though not into his face. She was more grim and forbidding than ever.
‘Though I’ve taught in Indigenous communities before, this one is more degraded than most,’ she said to him, and we heard between her words the scratching of his pen. He bowed his head in agreement. ‘Let’s face it, education is boring, but the kids just have to accept it’s boring. The parents don’t accept that, so the kids don’t.’
‘Do you want me to write down that education is boring?’ asked Craig, the pen hovering above the page. There was a hint of a smile on his lips.
‘It’s the people’s fault. I want you to write that,’ she answered.
Dudley had leaned forward, his natural shyness conquered by excitement and perhaps a sense of purpose.
‘Dudley?’
‘I’ve been approached by the mob.’
I was wondering where he’d learned to call them that – perhaps from Adrian. He was the sort of person who’d be sensitive to nuances, and he’d want to please.
‘Your pupils’ parents?’
‘Yes – no, not entirely by the parents, mainly the grandmothers,’ he said. ‘You know how important they are.’
He was speaking quickly, his face shining. ‘They want me to start a shop!’
‘A shop? On school premises?’
‘Not necessarily! I could do it under a tree! It’s for when there’s nothing around to hunt – when there’s a bad season. Sometimes the kids have to go without dinner – they all do. Then they turn up exhausted and hungry – if they turn up at all.’
‘You want to leave teaching and be a shopkeeper?’
Dudley seemed confused by Craig’s line of questioning. It came to me that perhaps he hadn’t crossed swords with Craig before.
‘No – not at all’
He tried a laugh. I was nodding vigorously to encourage him, but no one else was. Beth was looking out the window, and Bruce was glaring. Kana’s eyes were swivelling between them.
‘Just to help them. Lunchtimes and after school. Just flour and sugar and tea.’
Dudley took Craig’s indrawn breath as sympathy.
‘The mob out there, they don’t have a Bruce to help them. And if someone doesn’t help them, the kids can’t attend school.’ This he said with a flash of a smile at Bruce, who kept glaring.
Craig still said nothing, so Dudley felt he had to explain further.
‘Look, I sort things out for them already, make phone calls for them to government departments, bureaucrats that need translating –’
‘You speak Djemiranga?’ I broke in, excited, hoping to improve his standing in the group’s eyes.
‘Bureaucrats don’t speak English!’
I couldn’t help myself.
‘That’d be right. Bureaucrats are prone to using abstract nouns, and there doesn’t seem to be any “could’ve been” or “should’ve been” here – no sense of how the future could’ve been different –’
No one was listening to me, not even Dudley.
‘Or I sort out plumbing and fix things, like if something electrical breaks down, not that they have many electrical things –’ He saw a storm in Craig’s face and hurried on: ‘It’s in my own time, I assure you. I teach vocabulary while I do it, you know, because the kids are always around while I’m helping out – I have a good tool kit – it’s teaching too but in a practical way – that’s the way they teach kids – like, the other day I was using a spirit level, and it allowed me to teach the kids “level”, “bubble”, “flat” – oh I made a mistake at first and called it a spirit level –’
He laughed shortly, looked at our faces. ‘I won’t do that again …’ He wound down.
‘That’s why you’re never here,’ said Craig.
‘Oh, I often sleep in the car – I’ve made it quite comfortable …’
‘You sleep in a government-issued car? The point is, your time is not your own,’ said Craig. ‘Teachers are given short hours so they have time to prepare and mark! You should be returning to your desk and marking!’
‘But there’s nothing to mark; they can’t write –’
Craig ignored him.
‘More importantly, we’re not insured for this. There are health and safety issues here! What if you got electrocuted? What if you made a mistake with a government department – we could be in legal trouble,’ Craig said. ‘And you were planning to use your government car to transport your shop goods, weren’t you?’
‘If that’d make a difference, I could use my own car, though those rough roads –’
‘I had no idea this was going on! If the people out there can’t cope with everyday life, they should come back to this settlement.’
Bruce said: ‘Craig’s absolutely right. They should come back here, or better still, live in town where of course we’ll provide them with all services.’
Craig checked his watch. Something about the time this meeting was taking place inspired him to soften.
‘All right. Go ahead. But don’t use the Department’s car, don’t use the Department’s time, and don’t expose the Department in any way to the threat of legal action. Or I’ll have no choice but to inform the Department.’
Dudley bent double in his chair, so we could barely see his face.
‘Yes?’
There was a long pause. His hands were clenched.
‘I can’t let them down,’ said his muffled voice.
‘Yes?’
Another long pause.
‘Yes.’
The cry of a crow startled us in the playground, or perhaps it was the wail of a young child. Craig cocked his ear, looked at his watch, and though he spoke rapidly, his face had softened. He spoke to us all.
‘My passion is to improve the IQ of these people, too – as you all know.’
His words were now coming so fast, he sounded like a horseracing commentator.
‘Dudley – a noble, manly, egalitarian solution is to put on barbeques. You may use the Department car for Community Relations to transport the meat and equipment. While you’re all eating together you can discuss problems, or do a bit of handyman teaching – and you’ll have witnesses. I’ll help you with the requisitions. We’ll even put in for kangaroo tails. Kana?’
Kana declined to give her opinion about the school.
‘I don’t know any black adults here,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I don’t know how to meet them. I’ve only met the children.’
‘Bruce?’
His dog jerked as if it had been summoned, and panted while Bruce spoke.
‘We fuss about them too much. We wouldn’t mollycoddle whites like this –’
Bruce was drowned out by the crying of babies. The door swung open. Framed by the light was a very slight, very pretty teenager, the girl of the photo on Craig’s desk, wheeling a stroller with a yelling baby and a toddler in it, like two noisy birds in a nest clamouring for food. She clearly was from South-East Asia: Craig’s land, I suddenly remembered, of the world’s highest IQs.
Bruce stood up in an old-fashioned courtly way, smiling, holding his toy dog. Beth shrank back into the shadows. Only Dudley, beaten, didn’t move a muscle.
But the girl looked nowhere but at Craig, as if s
he was unaware of us all. She frowned at him, her face still pretty despite the puckering around her smooth forehead, eyes and mouth. There was a long tunnel between them the way that sometimes when people are newly in love, the air between the two seems to sing with light. The only sound was the accusatory screams of the children.
‘Darling, I’m sorry,’ Craig said. His voice was hoarse, though somehow it carried across all our heads and above the screams. He was stuttering. ‘We started late. I had to deal with complex issues – but they’re over with.’
Under the gaze of all of us, he put his arm around her.
He bent his face to hers. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said tenderly. ‘How’s her fever now?’
All the tension left her body, and she melted into him, her pretty face glowing. She nodded.
‘Better?’ he asked.
She nodded again. They seemed to fold into each other.
‘I haven’t spoken.’ I got to my feet, toppling a chair. The crash startled them all, the lovers, the dog – who uttered a single yelp – and the screaming children. Even Dudley looked up. The older child’s mouth slammed shut, and the baby girl, seeing her older brother startled into silence, slammed her little mouth shut as well. My voice strained thin.
‘Was Libby asked to this meeting?’ I asked Craig. ‘She could tell us a thing or two. Or Quentin?’
‘The meeting was for whites!’ He momentarily dropped his arm from around Sabah. ‘We were trying to work out what we whites are doing wrong – if anything,’ he looked at his wife, smiling at her, and she smiled back, forgiving him. His smile was appeasing, I recognised, for I had smiled that way so many times.
‘You invited me here,’ I said, trying to clear my throat, trying to clear away the years of doing what was expected of me, speaking fast before the children began crying again. ‘So you ought to hear me out.’
Then my mind went blank. I had no words.
‘Well?’ demanded Bruce, and both he and his dog were glaring at me. ‘Get a move on.’
‘The school –’ I began, stumbled, began again. ‘Dudley’s right. We have to hold them, in reciprocity, now that they can’t live in the old ways. If we want them to value our values, we can’t at the same time hunt them away.’
