‘I don’t tell you everything.’
‘No, and I don’t tell you everything either. That’s the way it should be between an old man and a young tacker. But I’d still like to see the photo.’
Reluctantly, Colm handed it over.
Bill squatted down next to the fire and held it close to the flames. Then he laughed out loud. Colm wanted to sink down into the ground. Why had he said it was his mother? It had to be someone Bill knew.
‘You reckon she’s your mother, eh?’ asked Bill.
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ said Colm, looking at his hands, avoiding meeting Bill’s gaze. ‘She could be. She looks like her. Like the way I remember her.’
Bill passed the photo back. It was looking much grubbier than when Colm had taken it from the cigar box - well fingered and with a smidgen of ash in the top corner.
‘You know her, don’t you?’ said Colm.
‘Maybe I used to. Maybe I don’t want to talk about her.’
‘Then you don’t mind if I keep the photo? To remind me of my mother.’
‘Sure, but I don’t reckon that gal’s got any kids.’
Colm didn’t want to hear. He put his hands up over his ears. ‘She looks like my mother, that’s all,’ he said, lying down again and turning his back to the fire. ‘Besides, maybe she had a boy and you just don’t know.’
‘Maybe,’ said Bill softly.
They drove into Coober Pedy in the middle of the afternoon. ‘I thought you said there was a real town here,’ said Colm, unable to disguise a twinge of disappointment at seeing only a couple of tin shanties.
Bill laughed. ‘You’ll see. There’s a town here all right.’
Colm followed Bill into what looked like the entrance to a cave in a mound of rock and discovered a whole world of activity going on underground. Inside the dugout there were shelves of tins and boxes of dry goods piled up to the rough-hewn stone ceiling. It was like being in a cave but the floor and walls had been ground smooth and the coloured rock almost looked as though it had been painted for special effect. When they emerged from the dugout, the light seemed so stripped, so white, that Colm felt his whole face grow tired from squinting.
Beyond the town were great white hills of rock and rubble, like a strange moonscape. Bill drove down the road to a white mound of rubble. A piece of corrugated tin acted as a sign above a doorway in the rock. As they passed through the door, Colm smelt the familiar odour of a pub. Bill knew the man behind the bar and ordered a glass of squash for Colm and a beer for himself. It was cool inside the dugout pub, and the air felt heavy and still after the endless rattling of Tin Annie.
‘You’re only going to have one beer, aren’t you?’ asked Colm hopefully.
Bill turned the glass of amber brew around in his hands, admiring its head.
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ he said.
Colm pushed his squash away and walked out of the pub. The last few weeks had been so much better since Bill’s beer supply had run out. They’d sat around the fire in the evenings and Bill had told him stories about Ireland and going to school in Dublin. He’d talked about a wild limestone desert called the Burren where he’d played as a small boy. Sometimes he’d hum a fragment of an old Irish tune and Colm would play it for him on his harmonica. If Bill started drinking again, he’d go back to staring morosely into the fire or reciting long, incomprehensible poems about the bush.
When Bill came out of the pub carrying a box full of beer. Colm kicked the back tyre of the old ute. ‘Bloody beer.’
Bill shook his head, laughing in a way that was more angry than amused. ‘Crikey! I reckon you could be Blue’s boy. Once she got her mind set on something, you never could shake that girl loose of the idea.’
‘You know Blue Delaney? Why do you pretend you don’t? Why do you have to drink that stupid stuff?’
‘Like I said, just like Blue. Big on telling a man how he should live his life.’
‘Maybe she was right. Maybe you should have listened!’ shouted Colm.
Bill slapped Colm hard across the face. Colm gasped. He held a hand against his stinging cheek and stared at Bill. A hot wind blew down the street, sending grit and dust into whirling eddies. Bill turned and walked away, disappearing back into the underground pub.
Colm felt blind with rage. He reached into the front seat of Tin Annie, fumbling for his hat and a canteen of water. He strode down to the highway, kicking a stone ahead of him. When he reached the main road he turned south, with a vague idea of hitchhiking a ride and going in search of Doreen. The desert was completely still, not a car or a human in sight. He pulled out his harmonica and played a fierce marching tune.
Even though he was angry with Bill, he couldn’t help feeling a rush of relief when he heard Tin Annie chugging down the road. The old car pulled up alongside and the passenger door flew open.
‘I was wrong to hit you, Colm,’ shouted Bill through the open door. ‘But don’t you be stubborn and crazy. You get in this car right now. You can’t walk to the next town. It’s over five hundred bloody miles.’
Feigning reluctance, Colm climbed in. He folded his arms across his chest and looked out the window as Bill turned the ute around.
‘Oi, you,’ said Bill. ‘Cobbers have to forgive each other. You and me, we’re a team. A good working partnership. You don’t want to go breaking up a partnership when it works, do you?’ He glanced across at Colm.
A million angry thoughts swirled in Colm’s head, and a million questions. At last Bill had volunteered something about Blue Delaney, but Colm knew that if he asked questions, the fight would go on. He sat staring through the windscreen.
‘Dare and McCabe, fencers extraordinaire. Jacks of all trade, masters of none. That’s you and me, cobber,’ Bill said, nudging Colm with his elbow.
Colm wanted to stay angry but he couldn’t. He could feel a slow smile creeping across his face.
‘Yep, that’s us, Grandad.’
20
The letter
By the time they reached the border of the Northern Territory, every bone in Colm’s body was aching. Even when he lay down at night, he could feel the grinding bump of each corrugation they had driven over. In his mind, he could see those endless red ridges - thousands and thousands of them - that Tin Annie had chugged across in the journey north.
Every evening they’d pull over to the side of the road and pitch camp. Colm had got used to sleeping out under the stars now, even though the nights were cold. He felt it was growing inside him, this love of the desert. Slowly, some days almost imperceptibly, the landscape changed. The further north they travelled, the more alive the desert became. One night, Colm was woken by the sound of hopping mice scouring the tin plates that they’d left by the fire. On another night Rusty woke them, barking furiously at a dingo that was circling the edge of their camp.
The days grew into a rhythm of dust and driving. Sometimes, when the road was sandy, Colm would have to lay spinifex in front of Tin Annie to keep her from getting bogged. They could drive for hours without seeing another living soul and then suddenly, like a mirage, a herd of feral camels would loom out of the desert. Other times the camels had Aboriginal riders herding bedraggled flocks of sheep through the dust. A cloud would herald the arrival of another car, though it was a long time before the vehicle actually came into view.
Bill always knew where to find water, as if the desert was mapped out on his hand. Often it was brackish or salty and Colm would still be thirsty after drinking it, sometimes it was so sweet and clean it would make his eyes moist and dewy, his whole body grateful for its freshness.
On a hot Saturday afternoon, a line of rugged ranges appeared on the horizon.
‘Alice Springs coming up,’ said Bill pointing ahead.
‘In those hills?’ asked Colm.
‘No, we pass through Heavitree Gap to get there. Those are the MacDonnell Ranges, oldest mountains in the world.’
As they drove through the gap, Tin Annie started to make loud banging
noises. It was as if she knew they were drawing near to a place where she could rest. Colm hung out the window and looked up at the high cliffs of the pass through the MacDonnell Ranges. After months in flat country, it was strange to look upwards and see something other than sky.
They crossed a dry riverbed and the town loomed ahead. Colm felt a tight excitement in his chest. This was a proper town, the first they’d seen since leaving Ceduna. There were wide streets and peppercorn trees and green lawns with sprinklers clicking rhythmically in the warm afternoon. People walking along the footpaths turned to stare at the loud explosions Tin Annie made as she chugged to a stop outside the Alice Springs Hotel.
Colm felt ten pounds lighter when he stepped out of the shower. The water had swirled red and brown down the plughole and taken the desert away. Laid out on the bed in their hotel room Bill had left a new shirt and a pair of shorts for him. The clothing felt like silk against his clean skin.
Colm had never eaten in a restaurant in his life. Sitting at a proper table in the hotel dining room and having so much shiny white crockery in front of him was like eating in a palace. They both ordered steak and vegetables and Colm had a lemon soda and then jelly and icecream for pudding. After the months of salt beef and tinned vegetables or tough rabbit and roo meat, it seemed impossible that anything could taste so delicious.
‘Good to see you back in the Alice, Billy Dare,’ a voice boomed across the restaurant. A short, barrel-chested man strode across the dining room and pulled up a chair at their table.
‘Colm, this is Ted Kelly,’ said Bill uncomfortably. ‘He runs this establishment.’
‘I thought maybe the young tacker was part of your show,’ said Mr Kelly. ‘Looks a lot like your Clancy. Is he Clancy’s boy, your grandson maybe?’
‘Not Clancy’s boy,’ said Bill, ‘but yeah, he is my grandson. We’re just passing through, Ted. I’ve been out of the business for a long time now. Too old for those sort of capers.’
‘That’s a shame, mate,’ Ted said, shaking his head. He turned to Colm. ‘Your Grandad was the best in the business. I’ll never forget seeing him in Diggers Rest back in ’29. He was a bloody legend.’
Bill shifted in his seat and ordered another beer. ‘Look, Ted, that was a long time ago, mate. No one wants to see that old melodrama any more.’
‘Showing me age, am I?’ said Ted with a chuckle. ‘Well, I’m glad you arrived safely. We were starting to worry you’d never get here.’
‘Someone on the track tell you I was coming?’
‘No, I’ve got mail for you. From Melbourne. Been waiting here for you a couple of months.’ Ted snapped his fingers at one of the waiters and instructed him to go and fetch the letter from his office. ‘I was going to return it to the sender but they wrote “Hold” on the envelope so I guess they was hoping you’d pass through here eventually. Return address was for some lass called Blue Delaney in Williamstown. She a relation?’ asked Ted.
Bill ran one hand through his silvery hair and frowned. He leant across the table towards Colm. ‘Cobber, why don’t you go and order yourself another bowl of icecream. Ask Larry up there at the bar. He’ll see to it.’
The last thing Colm wanted to do was leave the table just when the conversation was getting interesting. ‘But I don’t want any more icecream, Grandad. I’m full—’
‘Full as a tick’s bum,’ laughed Ted.
Bill didn’t laugh. ‘Even if you don’t want a treat, Rusty is ready for one. Here, Ted, do you reckon the cook could give the boy a bone for the mutt? She’s waiting in the ute.’
It was cold outside so Colm took an extra blanket out of the back and folded it around Rusty. It would be the first night in months they hadn’t slept together. He wished he could sneak her up into their hotel room, but he didn’t want to risk annoying Bill. The mention of Blue Delaney always changed his mood, and not for the better.
Colm woke in the middle of the night, startled to find himself surrounded by walls. He wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep. Standing on the balcony, silhouetted against the night sky, was Bill, his cigarette glowing red in the darkness.
Next morning, when Colm came down into the foyer of the hotel he found Bill sitting in the courtyard with a beer in front of him. It was like a warning signal. He was reading a letter and his mouth was fixed in a grimace. Colm slipped into the seat opposite. Bill looked up at Colm and drew the letter close, crumpling the pages in his hand.
‘What’s wrong, Grandad?’ asked Colm, feeling his heart beat faster. There were so many questions he wanted to ask, but Bill’s expression was forbidding.
‘When you’ve finished your brekky, get upstairs and put your things together,’ Bill said. ‘We’re leaving town this morning.’
‘But we only just got here. You said we were going to stay here a while.’
‘Well, I changed my mind.’
‘Was it the letter? Are we going to see Blue Delaney?’
Bill took another mouthful of beer, emptying the glass, and then signalled for the bartender to bring him another.
‘No,’ he said, bitterly. ‘No hope of that. But it set me thinking about things.’
Colm kept staring at him, waiting for an answer.
‘Well, I reckon I’ve been doing the wrong thing by you, dragging you around the bush. You need a roof over your head, you need to be learning a trade, getting an education, not mucking around with a useless old codger like me. I’m taking you north. There’s a station, Tara Downs, they could use a boy like you. Old friend of mine runs it. If I asked, they’d have a place for you there, send you to Katherine or Darwin for schooling, maybe get you an apprenticeship on the station one day.’
‘But you said we’re a team. Dare and McCabe. You said we should stick together.’ Colm stared angrily at the crumpled paper in Bill’s hand. ‘What was in that letter?’ he asked.
‘None of your beeswax,’ said Bill, ‘Just my past catching up with me, and that’s nothing you need to know about.’
When the bartender brought the beer over, Bill ordered a big breakfast of bacon, eggs and baked beans for Colm even though he said he wasn’t hungry. Colm pushed the beans around the plate and then mashed them hard with his fork.
21
Into the flames
They left Alice Springs later that morning. Bill gave the mechanic an extra five pounds to rush the work on Tin Annie while he shopped for supplies. Colm sat with Rusty under a gum tree on the banks of the Todd River, waiting. The river was dry and small groups of Aboriginals sat around campfires in the sandy bed. Colm drew his knees up against his chest and watched them. When he shut his eyes, he could picture the evenings around the fire with Doreen and Rosie back in Kalgoorlie. He thought of the nights in the desert, watching the Yartooka bright above them. It didn’t seem to matter how brave you were, bad things could come and change your life in a minute, smash your dreams. He had thought he’d be travelling with Bill for ever. And now Bill was talking about getting rid of him. The world had never felt so confusing.
The road north was smooth black bitumen, like a licorice strap stretching through the desert. After the months of driving on corrugations, it was strange to hear only the humming of tyres on the road. The silence inside the car was so heavy with unspoken thoughts that Colm longed for the rattle and hum of the rough desert tracks.
The landscape grew less familiar the further north they drove. Spiky pandanus palms stuck out of the red earth. Colm shut his eyes and thought of the sparse gibber plains of the south, of those long days when they drove with seemingly no direction. It used to bother him that Bill never told him where they were headed, but now that they had a destination he wished he’d never heard of it. Tara Downs; if only it was at the other end of the Earth, instead of a few days away.
At sunset, they pulled off the road and set up camp. Colm watched Bill pull another bottle of beer out of the back.
He’d already drunk a bottle with breakfast and another at lunch.
‘What are
you scowling at?’ said Bill. ‘Can’t a man enjoy a quiet beer?’
‘I didn’t say anything,’ said Colm.
‘That’s the problem with you, boy. You say everything when you say nothing,’ grumbled Bill.
Colm watched him with growing resentment. All day he’d been thinking about what he could say that would change Bill’s mind but he knew it was impossible to talk to the old man when he was drinking. When Bill opened his fourth bottle and was staring hazily into the fire, Colm quietly took the bottle-opener from beside him. He padded across the red sand until he came to an ant-hill and then he dropped the bottle opener through a hole in the top of the mound. It was as easy as posting a letter. Rusty gazed up at him questioningly and he knelt down and patted her.
‘That’s fixed him,’ said Colm. He knew Rusty didn’t like it when Bill was drunk any more than he did. They crept back to the edge of the firelit campsite and he lay on his stomach in the dust, waiting. He propped his chin in his hands and hummed softly, a quiet, cheerful tune.
Bill began rustling around amongst the supplies. Finally there was a curse and the sound of breaking glass. Colm crawled a little closer. He saw Bill holding a broken bottle, staring at the jagged edge of glass and scowling. Bill poured a little of the beer into a tin cup, then seemed to change his mind. He flung the contents and the broken bottle into the darkness, swearing again, and grumpily settled down with his blanket beside the fire.
When Colm thought Bill was asleep, he crept back into the ring of firelight and whistled softly for Rusty. She nestled against him and he reached into his pocket and took out the picture of Blue Delaney. Having her picture, like the picture of the Virgin, gave a focus for his prayers even though her features had become so familiar that he didn’t need to see the crumpled photograph any more. If it was Blue Delaney’s letter that had upset things, maybe praying to her could change things back to the way they were, and stop them from going to Tara Downs. He touched the photo to his forehead and let the prayers pour out of him and into the starry night.
A Prayer for Blue Delaney Page 11
