‘The address is on this bit of paper,’ the girl said. ‘If you’ll put them into envelopes for me and mail them . . . only I can’t pay you for the stamps, we don’t have money, but I’ll give you an opal, I’ll give you two, I’ll steal more for you if you want, but can you, you know, put them in the post one at a time so they won’t be noticed or anything?’
The girl placed the little bundle on the counter and when Mercy did not move, she lifted one of Mercy’s hands and lowered it on to the letters. ‘I trust you,’ she said. ‘I count on you.’
Mercy could think of nothing to say. She picked up the letters and scanned the shelves and tucked them out of sight behind tinned spinach and tinned beetroot, which gathered dust.
‘There’s one more thing,’ the girl said.
‘No, please.’ Mercy felt as though something were stuck in her windpipe, or in her lungs. She could feel herself turning blue.
‘It’s a photograph. It’s not mine, it’s Gideon’s. Angelo’s. Well, it was mine, it was my Polaroid camera, and a man took it for us, that man who lives out in the breakaways, the one who works boulder opal all by himself . . . he took it.’
‘Major Miner,’ Mercy said.
‘But Angelo asked if he could have it,’ the girl rushed on, ‘because he wants – I mean Gideon, you know Gideon, that’s Angelo’s name out there – because he wants to send it to his father . . .’ She pressed her lips together as though to hold back something that exerted a forbidden but inextinguishable pressure. ‘I can’t tell you the relief it was, after that moment,’ she said. ‘I mean, you can’t trust anything you think after a while. Everyone acts as though everything is normal, and so you think . . . you ask yourself . . . you’re afraid it’s only you, that you’re crazy, that you don’t understand . . . and so you . . . and so you . . . you just stop thinking, really. But then suddenly you see in someone else’s eyes, and it’s such a relief! Since then, you know, secretly, we’ve used our real names to each other, Angelo and me. It’s like, it feels like a stick of dynamite in our hands. Gideon and me, you know. You remember.’
No, Mercy thinks desperately. No. She does not want to remember.
‘So could you put the photograph in an envelope for him, and mail it? He put his father’s address on the back.’
‘No, listen, please . . .’
The girl took one of Mercy’s hands and put the print in it, face side up. Mercy saw Oyster, in white, in the middle, Gideon on one side, Amy on the other, and various others in a background blur.
‘No, please,’ Mercy begged. She did not want to think of Gideon. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘You live here,’ the girl said, lowering her voice even further. ‘You must know the ropes. You must know how to get away.’
Mercy could feel her heartbeat shift rhythms: slow, then crazy fast, then a dizzy gap of nothing. She would have to ask. ‘Did you know my brother?’ she whispered. ‘Did you know Brian Given? He wasn’t there when I went. Gideon said he wasn’t there any more. Do you know what –’ She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t ask if Amy knew what had happened. She couldn’t put it that way. You had to ask questions carefully. If you asked the wrong way, you could tilt the way the answer came back. ‘Do you know where he is?’ she asked.
‘Where he is,’ the girl repeated without inflection. She seemed to weigh the order of the words. She seemed to know what the question meant. ‘No,’ she said sombrely, ‘I don’t know. I didn’t know a Brian. We have other names there.’
‘Yes. His was Emmanuel, I think, but I’m not sure.’
‘Emmanuel?’ the girl said vaguely. ‘No, I don’t know. People disappear, you know. They just disappear. There are lots of stories. Some of us just . . . especially the Special Ones. I’m Rose of Sharon out there.’ She put her hands over her eyes and ran her fingers up through her hair like a comb, then she held the hanks in her fists and twisted and pulled. Her hands trembled. ‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘He was so kind at first, he was just like a father to me. “You’re my little Rose of Sharon,” he’d say, “my Special One,” and I still wish, I can’t help it, I still wish, when he sends for me . . . even though I know . . .’
Her body went slack as though the business of the letters and the photograph had used too much energy up. She chewed at her fingernails. She said dully: ‘I’m Rose of Sharon out there. I may not even be Amy any more.’ She looked at the beads of blood on her fingers, puzzled. ‘I used to be Amy.’
Miss Rover Miss Rover, come over, Mercy pleaded urgently. Miss Rover, Miss Rover, Miss Rover, Miss Rover . . .
Amy leaned in close. ‘We want to steal a car,’ she said. ‘Can you help us? I can give you two opals right now.’
Mercy’s voice was lost in a swelling in her throat and she had to gasp and cough to get it out. ‘It’s impossible,’ she whispered, her throat sore. ‘It’s impossible. It’s . . .’ – and then the sound freed itself, and came out in a rush – ‘See, everything’s strange now, everything’s turned really strange since Miss Rover was transferred . . .’
That was so long ago, so terribly, infinitely far back. That was the Stone Age. That was before history began. That was nearly a year ago now.
‘Angelo tried to talk a guy into helping us . . . the one who got you away from the Reef, what’s his name?’
‘Donny Becker,’ Mercy whispered.
‘Yes, Donny Becker. Angelo wanted him to take us, to make a run for it . . . but he’s changed. He’s too scared now, Angelo says.’
‘It’s not just that. There’s nothing he would be able to do.’ Mercy heard something, a footstep, and shoved the photograph down the front of her shirt. She spoke low and quickly. ‘No one’s allowed more than half a tank of petrol at a time, except, you know, Ma Beresford or Mr Prophet or . . . when they make their trips. So even if you stole a car, you couldn’t . . . You wouldn’t even get to Eromanga. Unless you stole Bernie’s or Ma’s or Andrew Godwin’s – but that would never –’
‘Help me steal petrol.’
‘It’s impossible. There’s just the pump outside here, and the tanks on the properties.’
‘Properties?’
‘Dirran-Dirran, Jimjimba, the cattle properties, the sheep stations, Mr Godwin, Mr Prophet, and . . . you know.’
‘No, I don’t know.’
‘Well, the graziers, the cow cockies. They get their petrol from the depots in Quilpie. They truck it back in forty-four-gallon drums.’
‘Help me steal one.’
‘It’s impossible. They’re always watching.’
‘Who’s always watching?’
‘I don’t know. Everyone. Ma Beresford, Bernie, Mr Prophet’s people, Andrew Godwin’s people, the elders, everyone. I don’t know who’s watching. Everyone’s watching. And Oyster’s got people watching, I know he has.’
‘Oh yes,’ the girl said bitterly. She chewed her lip. Mercy could see that her nails were bitten raw. ‘Isn’t there a policeman somewhere?’
Mercy laughed. ‘In Eromanga. But he’s Bernie’s cousin.’
‘There must be a way,’ the girl said.
‘No,’ Mercy whispered. ‘There isn’t. Except walking, and then you would die.’
‘I’ll walk, then,’ the girl said quietly.
Ma Beresford came into the shop, and Mercy had a sudden coughing fit.
‘I want to send it airmail,’ Amy said calmly, putting a postcard on the counter. ‘It’s very important.’ She rested her eyes on Mercy and smiled. ‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘And thank you for everything.’ She nodded and left, but at the door she paused and turned. ‘Goodbye,’ she said again.
‘Bye-bye blackbird,’ Ma Beresford called, and after the door had closed she said to Mercy, ‘What was that all about?’
‘I don’t know,’ Mercy said. She bit her lip. ‘They’re all strange, aren’t they, Jess?’
‘Foreign,’ Ma said. ‘Whad’ya expect?’
She picked up the postcard. ‘Dear Mom,’ she read aloud. ‘Have you noticed
that the Yanks can’t spell “Mum”?
‘Dear Mom,
Our life here is amazing. It is not at all what I expected. When you live in a community of perfect harmony, each atom in the group having its perfect function as each organ does in the body, then everything changes.’
Ma Beresford rolled her eyes. ‘None of these foreigners talk sense. Will you listen to this, Jess!!
‘We live underground, in the bosom of our mother the Earth, from which God our Father made us. It is amazing how cool it is in the tunnels where we work and sleep. But above ground it’s like an inferno, around 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Out here, everything runs to extremes.’
‘Rubbish. What rubbish,’ Ma said. ‘What’s extreme about Outer Maroo, Mercy? It’s only extreme if you’re used to a different normal.’
Mercy could not comment, since Outer Maroo was the only normal she had known.
Later, much later in the day, when she dared to look behind the tins on the shelf, the letters were gone.
‘Ma?’ she asked tentatively. ‘Did you . . . you know . . . ?’
‘What?’ Ma asked briskly.
‘I . . . Nothing. I lost something. I think I might have left some letters on one of the shelves . . .’
‘Honestly, Mercy.’ Ma Beresford tapped her brow. ‘I don’t know what gets into you, I’m forever finding letters you haven’t mailed. But I always post them for you. They all get into the keg.’
‘Ahh . . .’ Mercy said.
She felt sick. She felt that she was going to faint. ‘What’s the matter?’ Ma asked sharply.
‘Nothing! Nothing. I just . . . they make me miss Brian, that’s all.’
‘Too many of them,’ Ma said irritably. ‘I’m sorry about Brian, Mercy, but if you go in for religion too much, that’s what comes of it. They give me the pip, the whole lot of them. They can go up in smoke, for all I care.’
LAST WEEK
MONDAY AFTERNOON
1
Alone in Beresford’s, Mercy walks slowly to the empty window where the foreign man no longer stands. Instead she can see the bald spot on the back of Mr Prophet’s head. He leans against a verandah post and shades his eyes, observing Digby’s truck. Mercy puts her hand up to the cleared oval shape within the grime of the window glass, the space which the foreign man has rubbed clear, and lets her fingertips rest there. From memory, with her index finger, she draws the outline of his head. Sensual, she murmurs, savouring the taste of the word. She stands on tiptoe and presses her lips against the glass.
Through the oval, she can see the man again, the foreign man, on the far side of the truck, striding purposefully toward the pub (striding, she thinks; purposefully). She loves the way he walks. Fluid, she thinks. As horses move; as water moves. In Outer Maroo, men move awkwardly, as though the act of walking embarrassed them, as though they would rather be on a horse or behind the wheel of a truck. What amazes Mercy about the foreign man is the complete absence of uncertainty. There is no hesitation in him. Red dust rises in puffs around his shoes. He walks for all the world as though he has been in Outer Maroo before, as though he knows the place intimately, as though he knows and has always known exactly what to do. And there is something else, some sense of compressed energy. He will turn out to be one of the angry ones, Mercy thinks, and her heart misses a beat because the angry ones are such easy targets and are the first to go.
The man does not even pause on the verandah of Bernie’s Last Chance, the pub that has never run out of beer, not during floods, and not during the longest drought of the century, which is what this is; they could all pin medals on their chests if they so desired, Ma Beresford says. The man does not so much as glance back over his shoulder toward the truck where he has abandoned the foreign woman. The dark behind Bernie’s swing doors swallows him up.
Jess will be waiting for him there.
Later Jess will tell her – Mercy knows exactly what Jess will say – Jess will tell her it is because the man comes from somewhere else that Mercy feels these pins and needles in her blood. ‘You think everything’s magic that doesn’t come from here,’ Jess will say. ‘But people are much the same on the coast, and everywhere else for that matter.’
‘Excuse me.’ Someone touches Mercy’s shoulder.
‘Uh!’ she gasps, whirling around.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten –’
‘No, it’s just . . .’ She cannot quite believe that she has not heard the screen door. Head in the clouds, Ma would say. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’
It is the foreign woman, the woman in white, the one with the battered straw hat and its crumpled ribbon, which Mercy now sees is chewed.
‘I wonder if I –’ The woman sways, and catches hold of one of the grain bins and lets herself slide down, leaning against it, until she is sitting on the floor. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ she says. ‘I don’t feel very – it’s the heat . . . I have a horrible feeling I’m going to faint.’
Mercy runs behind the counter. She takes an ice-cube tray from the refrigerator and reaches into the little cupboard below the till where Ma Beresford hides a flask. Back at the grain bins, the woman has not fainted, but has gone limp.
‘Do you ever get used to such heat?’ she murmurs. ‘I suppose you must.’ Her eyes are closed. She is curled into herself like a new leaf.
‘Here,’ Mercy says, pushing the unstoppered flask to the woman’s lips. The woman gulps. Rivulets and tributaries of brandy spill down her chin. Mercy tips a handful of ice cubes out of the refrigerator tray and drops them down the front of the woman’s dress.
‘Uhh! ah! ah!’ the woman gasps, leaping to her feet and shaking her dress violently. There is the rapid-fire sound of bullets as the ice falls through to the floor.
‘I’m sorry,’ Mercy says. ‘But it works.’
At the sight of the woman dancing, lifting her dress away from herself with thumbs and index fingers, lifting her sandalled feet in quick tempo time, Mercy presses a hand over her mouth, and in spite of herself begins to giggle.
The woman’s eyes widen with distress . . . and then, quite suddenly, with shared mirth. She begins to laugh, and Mercy laughs with her, sedately, but their twinned laughter takes on a life of its own, and it spins and spirals upwards and begins to twist faster and faster, like a thing separate from them, out of their control, and it skitters and dances and bends its funnel of hilarity toward them and sucks them into its vortex and they cling to each other, exhausted. The shop is an empty theatre of watchful but sympathetic things. Mercy and the woman lean against the grain bins and hang on to their sides and rub their eyes with the backs of their hands. Their eyes are streaming. They are weeping with laughter.
And then, at some not easily discernible point, Mercy becomes aware that the woman is no longer weeping with mirth, but simply weeping. She is sobbing in a quiet, stifled way. Mercy bites down hard on her own fist, because laughter, rare though it is in recent times, always seems to her merely the brackish foam crest on a great wave of sorrow, a tidal wave, a wave that is pulling her down and will drown her like the wave that left her mother blubbering and coughing on the sand the time her mother was taken, in her mother’s impossibly distant childhood, to the coast.
‘I’m sorry,’ the woman says at last. ‘I’m sorry. This is not like me at all. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’
‘It’s OK,’ Mercy says. ‘It happens to most people who come out here in the beginning. You get used to it. Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘No, no, don’t bother. I’ll get one when I – I have to find somewhere to stay. Where can I stay?’
‘There’s only the pub,’ Mercy says doubtfully. ‘But it’s not a – Ladies can’t stay there.’
‘Ladies,’ the woman says in amazement, and with such a delicate air of derision that Mercy realises she will never be able to use the word again because it will taste too ridiculous on her tongue. ‘And where do ladies stay, then?’
‘Well, uh, they don’t
. . . We’ve never had . . . except in the beginning, you know, the young ones, and they all stayed out at the Ree . . . but not afterwards. I mean, not the ones who’ve come looking, we’ve never had a woman come looking, that’s only been men.’
‘Come looking,’ the woman says slowly, carefully. She straightens her back against the keg stave and studies Mercy. ‘What do you mean, come looking?’
‘I mean . . . I didn’t mean . . .’ Mercy presses her hands together. How could I have said that? How could those words have come out of my stupid mouth? She opens her eyes very wide and shrugs. ‘I just mean, you know, people get lost out here. They come looking for somewhere they can hitch a ride, to Windorah or Quilpie, you know. Or they come looking for opals. But only men.’
‘I’m looking for someone,’ the woman says. ‘I’ve got a photograph.’
‘No,’ Mercy says. ‘It’s no use. Please don’t show me.’
‘Pardon?’ The woman is startled. She frowns, concentrating, translating.
‘I mean –’ But Mercy can think of nothing to say. And then she can. ‘You have to go back with Jake on the truck. You have to go and tell him now. Please. You have to.’
Dust motes, gold in the afternoon sun, dance between them. Now Mercy is aware of the yeasty smell of the grain, of the sharp tight stink of saddles and boots, of the fragrance of cinnamon, of thyme, of rosemary, all of them reaching her singly and in concert from the spice shelves, as though all her senses are on tiptoe, waiting, and the blue rush of the spilled bolt of cloth is like surf in her ears, and each white thread of the dress of the woman opposite is as keen and fine as piano wire and cuts Mercy’s skin.
The woman is very still and observant, as a cat is observant, watching its prey. Without wavering in her terrible attentiveness, without lowering her eyes from Mercy’s eyes, she reaches into her bag, shuffles her hand there, and brings out a photograph. She holds it out to Mercy. ‘I am looking for Amy,’ she says.
Mercy sees the shelves in Ma Beresford’s swaying toward each other; she sees the walls tilt; she sees the floor lift itself like a wave. She closes her eyes. She breathes deeply. When she looks again, the room has steadied itself. She will not look at the photograph. She wonders why dust motes in sunlight always rank themselves in parallel lines. Is there no dust in the spaces in between? Could one adjust one’s life like that, alter its alignments a little, nudge it on to a parallel track, a space in the clear? There were tiny steps that she, that others, might have taken months ago, a year ago, two years ago . . . and if they had taken them, how different things might be now. But how can one know in advance which landslide will be started or averted by the moving of a pebble with the toe? Can she apply to the woman’s life the pressure of a fingertip? Can she lean against one day in the life of this woman just sufficiently to push her out of the gilded bar where frenzied specks of dust collide and crash, into the still space where nothing happens?
Oyster Page 8
