This Red Earth

by Kim Kelly

  ‘We’ll see you soon enough in December,’ Mrs Cooper says, and she’s bright about the thought. So am I as she adds: ‘I’ve just picked up the fabric for Missy’s special dress.’

  ‘Good. I can’t wait to see her in it.’ The rain had better flaming well come on time for us so I get my leave then. Apart from the obvious, I just want us to be married; put an end to that question in my mind, sort out the details of where Bernie will live later. Make me exempt from the militia while we’re at it. ‘Tell Missy I miss her. Tell her I want a letter from her too. I’ll phone again in about another six weeks’ time.’ I have to go. It’s Saturday, town is packed, and there’s a queue for the line.

  As I sign for the call, Mrs Chittaway says: ‘Rough sometimes being so far from home, isn’t it, pet?’

  ‘It is,’ I agree. ‘But there are worse things than a bit of homesickness.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she sighs.

  I’m not in Palestine, for one, I think as I wander back out over the lawn. I’m in a garden full of red hibiscus flowers in a tropical holiday resort. Mr Cooper is in Palestine. I wonder what for. Is Britain going to use the AIF for protecting their Near East oil reserves? Most of the older militia blokes last night were saying our troops should be brought home. I’d thought that sounded a bit of an overreaction, as if we’re going to be invaded by Nazis any minute, but I don’t now. Mr Cooper shouldn’t be asked to serve the Empire, not again. He should be at home. And Mrs Zoc shouldn’t be in a prison camp, misunderstanding or not. That is the most half-witted thing I’ve ever heard. But Bernie’s gone off to Orange to rescue her? That makes me smile. She’s never even been to the Blue Mountains and now she’s charging right over them. In her high heels.

  And I’d better get going myself, round to the office. There’s been a continued discrepancy through these last three hundred yards’ drilling in the amount of dacite I’m still finding across the overlayer. It’s not matching up with the Anglo-Eastern data which says we should have hit a band of limestone by now, and I want to go over some of the broader analysis of the area to check that we’re not too far off the mark of where we should be. We’ve just finished our palatial hut by the rig, too, and we really wouldn’t want to move the whole production now if I find we are in the wrong place.

  I walk round the corner into Court Street and find my chief geo, Roycox, is still in his pyjamas. It’s twenty past eleven. ‘Young Brock, I thought you were off back to the drilling?’

  ‘I will be in a minute,’ I tell him, and repeat that I want to go over the old Anglo-Eastern papers for comparative ore samples, because I’m sure he’s forgotten our conversation yesterday: I’m sure he has gin on his Weet-Bix.

  He waves me away with his fat hands. ‘No need for that – you are perfectly on track. Keep on, boy. No dillydallying around the office.’

  I could smack him in the mouth for that. As if he’s ever done a day’s work in his life. As if I am not fit enough to tear his head off from all the dillydallying I’ve been doing lately. But he’s my boss, like it or not, so I say: ‘I’ll take off then.’

  He seems to understand he’s put my nose out of joint and calls behind him for one of the houseboys to drive me back out to Kabakada. I would say don’t bother but I can’t be bothered, and the kid looks too thrilled to be going for a drive to disappoint him. I grab a stack of old newspapers from the club before we go, and I only just remember Johno’s order of tinned peaches. He loves tinned peaches, all this fruit that drops from the trees and he wants a tin of Ardmona for his birthday.

  Bouncing out of town along Tunnel Hill Road, I open one of last week’s papers, looking for news of the AIF, and see instead: JAPS NEAR HONG KONG. That grabs my attention. They’ve come down as far as Hong Kong now, right to the border, but the report says: Despite the evacuation of many women and children, British officials are decrying alarmist tendencies, and say that the Japanese measures are merely precautionary against Chinese guerrilla operations. A Jap official is quoted as backing that up: ‘We wish only to continue our neighbourly relations. We are here in peace.’

  The hairs stand up on the back of my neck. No you’re not here in peace: there’s a trail of blood behind you all the way through China giving the lie to that remark.

  The first thing I think is: shit, Malaya. They’re going to go after the oil in Malaya. But that is a half-witted thought, come from someone with too much on his mind. Why would they do that? It would be a lot less expensive, and inconvenient, for them to keep on with their American contracts, put up with America’s hollow complaining about their unneighbourly relations with China, than provoke a war with Britain. Or provoke a war with America itself. You’d have to be completely out of your flaming mind to do that. But another thought follows that line of logic: what if Japan took sides with the fascists? Then it wouldn’t look so mad, would it? All three of them could cut off oil supplies throughout the Empire: in the Near East, across Asia. Then we would be completely stuffed.

  Which is why the British Army has Singapore so well fortified, isn’t it. The Japs could try it on all they like, but they’ll never get through Singapore. All their oil would be cut off immediately: their air force would be grounded, all industry would stop dead. This is not the unbelievable plot of an evil alien story in Amazing science-fiction monthly, which I might be missing a bit after six months off it. The Japs are not going to try anything on, because above all they are not stupid. They want an economic victory over us. A more realistic line of logic says they will bide their time till the war is over, when they can flood the whole world with genuine artificial everything, probably made by Chinese slaves.

  Even still, all this makes me want to step up my own game. Find this oil down here on New Britain and find it fast. Just in case.

  BERNIE

  ‘How can you not know where she is?’ I groan at the dull-eyed corporal with the clipboard at the gate. Through my chattering teeth, because it is snowing. The first time I have ever seen snow, and I am not thrilled about it. I am freezing, the snowflakes are piercing my face as they fall, but at least according to the clipboard Mrs Zoc is not here: corralled by a double barbed-wire fence in the middle of a showground, showing half-a-dozen huts and sheds that look like they’d more appropriately house cattle. In the snow. Hasn’t rained here for six months apparently, but now it is. In snow. There is a little girl with long chestnut plaits skipping with a rope between two of the nearer huts; poor little bare legs in the snow. I want to poke the corporal’s blockheaded forehead with my indignation: ‘Someone must know where she is.’

  He looks down at his clipboard again, taps it with his pencil. ‘No.’

  ‘What?’ I don’t think his dull-eyed stare is a military pose; I think he is either subnormal or he is lying, or both, and now my impatience snaps: ‘What do you mean, no? No one knows where Mrs Zoccoli is? Not a soul? She’s vanished into thin air?’

  ‘Er,’ his eyes shift up to the left, and after an eternity he mumbles out of the side of his mouth: ‘It’s secret information, miss. We’re not allowed to say.’

  ‘For Pete’s sake! Is she or isn’t she here?’ I am almost crying with frustration.

  ‘Er. No, miss. She’s not here, but I can’t say where she is.’

  I stamp my foot on the stoop of his little sentry hut and just about break off the heel. Speechless, I almost really do start to cry. I’ve spent almost six hours on the Western Mail from Sydney for this? I knew it would be a waste of time, and he’s only giving me the same answer as the ones I received from each of my telephone calls. The prison in Townsville simply hung up on me as soon as I said the word Italian, while the Attorney-General’s Office let me know how far a protest will get me: We make the laws and you abide by them – THAT is national security, Miss Cooper. And no, Mr Hughes does not have time to investigate each and every trivial complaint. Unless you haven’t noticed, there’s a war on. Clunk. Mr Hughes, our Attorney-General, too busy for trivial matters of justice, and why should he care anyway? Mum
said he was Prime Minister in Charge of Boy Sacrifice during the previous war.

  I’m about to turn around and take my infuriation with me, when I feel this Corporal Blockhead grab me by the elbow and push me into the little hut beside the gate with a grunt that sounds like: ‘Here.’

  ‘What?’ Fear screeches up my spine as he slams the door shut behind us, and the first thing I see in the far corner of the back wall is a rifle. I freeze inside and out, despite the heat thumping out of the kero heater at our feet. I turn around and he is blocking the doorway, leaning across it onto a filing cabinet. I back up against the desk in the centre of the room and tell him as steadily as I can: ‘If you lay another hand on me, I will scream.’

  And I damned well will; I glare daggers to convince him. I don’t need to be afraid of you. I’ve done nothing wrong, and I’m not alone: there’s a Mrs Ethel Finlay of Orange CWA waiting for me to be back for tea only half a mile down the road, sister-in-law of a Mrs Meredith of Nyngan branch. I always thought Rock had to be exaggerating about the bush telegraph provided by these ladies, until Mum suggested I phone the Sydney Dee Why branch for accommodation advice. They make the Catholic Daily look positively sluggish. Mrs Finlay not only knows where I am, but who I am: Gordon Brock’s fiancée, Bill Cooper’s daughter, she even knew I worked at Chalmers. And she’s not happy about this foreigners’ camp business ruining her showground and putting the branch’s winter cake judging out of their home. She would take this corporal out with her rolling pin as soon as look at him.

  He looks at me, confused. ‘What?’

  I tell him: ‘Don’t you think you can make me disappear. I’ll have you know I’m the daughter of a captain of the Sixth Div and if you harm one hair on my head the lot of them will be out for you, right?’ Squint at the CMF insignia on his tunic: you’re not even real army, you’re just citizens’ militia and don’t you forget it: a koala, not for overseas export or being shot at.

  ‘All right, I won’t make you disappear,’ he smirks, but not unkindly, not dull-eyed, and not that bad-looking, really, for a blockheaded marsupial. He opens the middle draw of the cabinet and flicks through the files at the back. ‘I could get in big strife for this, but–’ He pulls out a sheet of paper, some sort of form, a carbon copy: ‘Here.’

  ‘Oh,’ I breathe out as I take it from him; it’s Mrs Zoc’s particulars, stamped across the top: DEFENCE SECRET.

  He adds, a croaky whisper: ‘See, she was here, but I don’t know where she is now – honest. Maybe Bathurst camp, maybe back in Liverpool. See, we’ve run out of room here. If you go to the AMF Eastern Command in Sydney, at Victoria Barracks, you might find out something, but I didn’t tell you that, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. Good. Thanks.’ I’ve already tattooed the Australian Military Forces phone number at the top of the page into my memory, FO455, and I’m reading on, to the paragraph towards the bottom of the page under a title OUTLINE OF EVIDENCE, to exactly what I need to know if I’m going to argue that Mrs Zoc is no one’s enemy. I could kiss Corporal Blockhead; until the words sink in:

  Member of Fascist Party, January 1924, w. husband Marco Z. & eldest son (of 3 total) Armando Z.

  Seized from Coogee property various pamphlets of anarchist literature of revolutionary nature.

  All 3 sons (Armando, Antonio & Arturo aka Manny, Tony, Arthur) described as ‘arrogant’, ‘volatile’ and ‘secretive in dealings’ by Mr Alan Raymond, neighbour, fellow mango farmer, also of Horseshoe Lagoon, Nth Qld.

  RECOMMENDATION – further interrogation as required, internment for duration.

  I don’t believe one dot, but nevertheless it’s overwhelming. I had thought that the evidence might be something stupid, a mistaken identity, a misspelling of a foreign name, some carelessness I could step in and clear up. But this is more than a misunderstanding … seeing the Zoccoli names laid out in this smudgy blue official type, these accusations. No. These have to be lies. Don’t they?

  I hear Blockhead say: ‘If you’re stopping over in town, I don’t spose you’d want to come to the pictures with me tonight?’ Thinking he’s earned one.

  ‘No.’ I throw the form back at him. ‘Thank you.’

  I shove past him out the door, my mind reeling with the blast of cold through my flimsy coat, the slip and slide of the snow beneath my flimsy heels as I run, fear whipping through me like nothing on earth. Who would make up such lies about the Zoccolis? They must be lies. How could they not be lies? It’s just name-calling, nasty name-calling. Anyone can call names … This Queensland neighbour, Alan Raymond, mango competitor gone sour? But members of the Fascist Party, anarchist literature? I don’t exactly know what anarchist means, but it sounds revolutionary. My mind is turning every which way, racing over the years I’ve known Mrs Zoc, how she’s always kept a bit to herself, always goes to early mass, avoiding the stickybeaks. Secretive? No!

  The white witches’ fingers of plum trees point at me as I run past the orchard at the top of the street, towards the row of pretty pastel weatherboards beyond, white picket fences and regimental flowerbeds trailing off into church steeples and blue hills. Picture-perfect country town, but with a prison on the showground, one that swallows up little old ladies and little girls with long chestnut plaits, swallows them up with outrageous lies.

  I have never been so cold, so very angry. Oh, yes, I’ll be asking some questions at AMF Eastern Command and demanding to see this evidence for myself, or I’ll … I’ll – I don’t know. I don’t know what I might do.

  Mum has no doubt, punching her bread dough into the tin. ‘If Emilia Zoccoli is a fascist, I’m the Queen of Sheba, and the only bad thing those boys have ever done is work too hard and too seldom visit their poor mother. This is the work of bigots!’ And she should know. ‘Ruddy Queenslanders,’ she hisses to prove it.

  ‘Fascist?’ She slams the oven door. ‘I’ll tell them about fascist – that woman’s brother was killed by those black-shirted thugs. Hanged in the street! That’s how much of a fascist Emilia Zoccoli is.’

  I didn’t know that, about her brother. But now I do, cold runs boiling hot. ‘I’ll tell them, Mum. Don’t worry, I’ll tell them.’

  Then she tells me I missed Rock yesterday and I could kick a cat. No, I couldn’t: Piccolo scratches at the back door, not for his dinner, but with a heart-mashing mewl that sounds like he’s crying, Emeeelia.

  By Monday morning my steam is high as I take the Bondi tram to Victoria Barracks at Paddo, undoing my coat and the top two buttons of my blouse as I walk up to the gates to beg the stone-faced guard who blocks my way: ‘Please, you must let me in to speak to someone from Eastern Command, there’s been a terrible mistake.’

  ‘Sorry, miss,’ is all I get from him and the pistol in his holster, together with a ‘Hey cutie’ from a pack of idling soldiers beyond the wall. Cutie? What picture theatre have they just left their blockheads in? ‘You can’t just wander in,’ says pistol holster. ‘You have to make an appointment.’

  ‘Well, I want to make an appointment.’ At the AMF zoo.

  ‘You’ll have to telephone the inquiries office then.’

  So I walk the few yards back up to the telephone booth outside the town hall to be told that I can’t have an appointment because: ‘There is no means at present for enemy alien appeal.’

  ‘What?’ I am stunned.

  Nasal drone repeats: ‘There is no means at present for enemy alien appeal.’

  ‘You mean there is no one to tell that there has been a mistake?’

  ‘Ah, that is correct, madam. Not at present.’

  I explode: ‘You can lock people up and throw away the key and no one can say boo about it? Where are we? Nazi Berlin?’

  Clunk.

  Don’t think this will stop me, I glare at the receiver. But it has stopped me. Stopped me like a blowfly in a bottle. There’s nothing I can do. I have nowhere to go. But home. I move on the few yards further to the tram stop to wait, the very same tram stop where Mum met Dad all those years ago, and a
s I wait that picture of the little girl with the chestnut plaits sends the chills through me again, as she does every time I think of her. You can’t lock up children this way. It might not be illegal, but it should be. Is she getting enough to eat? If I knit her a pair of stockings, will they reach her? What about her school lessons? Is it her fault her parents are revolutionary fascist anarchists? Are they even fascist anarchists at all, or just plain Italians? What’s a stupid fascist anarchist anyway?

  ‘Cheer up, lassie.’ I hear a rough voice beside me, growly, like a pirate. An elderly man, bent back leaning on his cane, and a crinkly smile. ‘Even the darkest hour’s only sixty minutes long, eh?’ I give him a polite smile in return, and he says: ‘Oh, that bad, is it?’

  ‘Pretty bad.’ I can’t help a genuine smile.

  He winks, funny old man, old suit, old hat, asking me: ‘Can a silly old man help a pretty young girl?’

  ‘I wish you could,’ I tell him.

  ‘Hoi!’ he waves his cane. ‘Are you calling me a silly old man?’

  The face he pulls makes me near connipt, so I toss it back: ‘That depends – are you silly enough to know what a fascist anarchist is?’

  ‘Oh.’ His frown is like a scrunched paper bag, regretful, and still teasing me, as if he’s only going to disappoint. ‘Well, I do know it would be impossible to be that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He clears his throat with pretend solemnity. ‘As you are speaking with an esteemed professor of the University of Woolloomooloo, faculty of Silly Old Wharfies Law, I can tell you that fascists and anarchists are the opposite of each other. The fascist is a cold-blooded animal with no heart, and the anarchist is hothead, with no brain. The one wants everything controlled by rules and laws, and the other wants bedlam. You’d have to choose which one you wanted to be, lassie.’