by Kim Kelly
As Johno pulls the jeep up outside the club, I feel one of those low tremors and I look at the volcano. Ernie will be up there, on the rim. He’s getting no danger money for it either. He’s just a public servant, getting paid slightly more than nothing, while so far Johno and I have been paid a fortune, for nothing, nothing but blindly drilling through another mile of lithified ash and pumice and, lately, more flaming dacite.
I tell Johno: ‘I’m going over to the office.’ I’m going to demand to see the Anglo-Eastern data or I’ll terminate my own contract. Taylor can’t stop me from being a geologist. If I’m sacked, I’m going to go back to study. Professor Richardson will have me back, he knows I’m not incompetent. He’ll be disgusted at the way this exploration has been handled.
Johno shrugs: ‘All right, here we go.’
But when we get round to Court Street, there’s no one there. The place is shuttered up, and the head houseboy tells us at the door: ‘Bosses go to Sydney. All the bosses go now,’ he says, ‘back to Aussie or to Lae. Administrator boss takem Rabaul to Lae.’
‘The Administration is moving to Lae?’ Johno asks him, in three languages, to make sure that’s correct. It is: the Administration has moved seven hundred miles away, on mainland New Guinea. The town really is empty – it’s being evacuated. No one sent word to us.
The earth shakes with a more determined tremor, and Johno explodes: ‘Fucking mongrels.’
Yeah, that is exactly what they are.
I tell the houseboy: ‘We have to come inside.’ I have to see for myself what I’m already half-expecting to see. I push past his half-hearted protest to find they’ve cleared out everything. All the cupboards and cabinets are empty. No note. No files. No maps. No data at all. Nothing. I could tear this place apart. Looking for – what?
‘What do we bloody well do now?’ Johno asks the ceiling fan.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I suppose we just keep drilling and wait for word. What else can we do?’
‘Hm,’ Johno agrees, as confident as I am that there is something not right here. Surely the powers of greed wouldn’t shy so easily from a volcano that might or might not erupt two miles away? Not without leaving instructions for us. It doesn’t add up.
I look out the window and see Mr Komazaki’s fake Chrysler cruise past. On his way home, to his house overlooking the golf course. He doesn’t look to be in a hurry, and I wonder what he knows.
Johno is wondering the same thing, but he’s more certain. ‘Japs,’ he nods at the back end of the Toyota. ‘That’s what’s coming. Not a volcano. Japs.’
‘No.’ I refuse to believe it. ‘If they were going to do it, they’d have made a move before now – when they still had a few cans in the shed.’ Cans of oil. They must hardly have enough to take a squeak from a door these days, and America is threatening to take even that amount away if they don’t get out of China. Japan is as trapped as we are. I don’t see how they could take on America. Mr Komazaki for one probably wouldn’t be keen to go to war with anyone: he will lose his lucrative Burns Philp contract, and his golf handicap; it has to be far too much of a stretch. I say: ‘They would have to be mad.’
And Johno says: ‘But they are mad, you dozy bastard, mad and ruthless, the lot of them – shoot their own grandmothers if there was a penny in it and tell you that you forced them to do it. I wouldn’t trust a Jap as far as I could boot one.’ That surprises me: Johno’s not one for racialist sprays. He says: ‘I know where we’ll find the proof, too.’
He starts running up Casuarina Avenue, up to Solomon Street, to Chinatown, and I follow. To see it’s closed. Even their school is closed.
‘You don’t get better empirical data than this.’ Johno is staring up the street, breathing hard and not just from running. ‘They didn’t stop trading or sending their kids to school last time the volcano blew – not even when Ah Soon’s roof caved in from the ash. Because at that time, the Japs were in Nanking, weren’t they.’
I clench my fists. What have Taylor and Roycox left us to? What has the Administration left us to? Nanking? Where the Jap Army showed the rest of the world how to go about mass murder. I feel that weakness in my hand. A hand that can haul a million pointless bags of earth but can’t fire a rifle. I still have no intention of shooting another man, ever, but I don’t want to be unable to defend myself either. I won’t have to defend myself, though, will I. If it comes to it, I will put both these hands up in surrender, stick to the plan. I’m a white man, a subject of the British Empire. I am not Chinese. They won’t shoot me. But it won’t come to that either. I tell Johno: ‘It’s not going to happen. They’ll be stopped in their tracks at Singapore.’
‘Mate, I hope you’re right,’ he says, and then takes off up the road again, round to the rear of the reserve, where we find just about every other civilian left on New Britain, kitted up, preparing for the invasion. Johno sees Sven and runs over to him, but I don’t follow. I watch a company of militia marching up Namanula Road, east towards the village of Nordup, through the soot, and I am stuck for a moment: these blokes are getting paid a quid a year to be prepared to fight the Japanese Imperial Army. That is crazy. And it’s not going to happen. The Japs aren’t coming. Not here. Not anywhere across New Guinea. There’s nothing here for them. You can’t fly an aeroplane on palm oil. I consider if we should halt drilling altogether: if we don’t strike crude, the Japs can’t have it for themselves, can they.
I don’t know what I should do.
I walk back to the club, alone, and find Mrs Chittaway gone too. She’s gone home to Brisbane, not prepared to risk it here evidently, and somehow that’s more significant than anything. Nothing for me here other than a newspaper on the counter telling me the German Army is planning to take on Russia. Crazy. Telling me I should get on the next ship out of here, to Lae or straight home.
Home? That rips my chest open again. What is there for me at home? No one. Not in Nyngan. Not in Coogee. I go upstairs, up to the room, and open my copy of Geological Formations, for my photo of Bernie. What happened to you? What happened to my girl?
BERNIE
‘Miss Cooper,’ Alby Werner looks up at me from his reader with blue eyes that could sell snow to Santa Claus, ‘is this a transitive verb?’
‘A transitive verb?’ I repeat, thinking: fancy anyone bothering to know. Look at the verb he’s pointing at, to give, and I say: ‘Hmm, well, why don’t you hunt through my grammar book for me and work it out yourself. There’s a lolly in it for you if you find out before the end of the lesson.’
He nods eagerly, grabbing the book from the end of the table and diving into it. He’s eight, reading at first form level. And deceptively sweet. Leave him idle for more than ten minutes and he’ll have his little brother Eric hanging by his toes off the roof edge. I’m no teacher. My work here is only to give his mother a few hours’ respite from wanting to throttle him while she works on her next appeal; and to try to keep the children’s English going without an accent so that they don’t suffer too much when they eventually get out of here. Bit of a task as half the inmates of similar age tend only to speak German, being mostly the children of Lutheran missionaries, while the other half speaks Italian, with two Finns and one Hungarian thrown in free. Thirty-seven of them, present count, not that any of the other children stay long: most of the mothers are released as soon as they can convince the Department they’re not going to bomb parliament, even if they have to leave their husbands as security. Leaving poor Anna Werner stuck here with Alby and Eric under a ream of paper lies and stubborn bureaucracy, trapped, as Mrs Zoc remains too, and she just as stubbornly still won’t let me try –
‘Mith Cooper?’ Eric looks up at me now with the same resolve-dissolving eyes as his brother. ‘Ith thith a good picture of a doggy?’
‘It is indeed, Eric,’ I say. And it is a good one, too. He’s only six and such a little trier he is one hundred percent adorable, which is possibly why his brother teases him so relentlessly.
‘Loo
ks like a chicken, dum-dum head.’
‘Alby,’ I warn, ‘If you tell lies, one day, when you least expect it, your pants will catch fire. Whoomp!’
He opens his mouth to backchat me, but the voice of authority beats him to it: ‘Miss Cooper?’
I think it’s Ken Morely, one of the guards on duty today, come to warn me that some unexpected brass is on the warpath and I should skedaddle from this subversive childminding in the dining room, but when I turn around, I see it’s Mitchell.
‘Oh?’ Unexpected visitation from Hell. His hat is in his hands and he looks uncomfortable, as if his mother has pushed him into church, as she did at Easter, and me too, Hughie forbid my own mother ever discover I stepped foot in that particular enemy camp – St Andrew’s Presbyterian, no incense, no lightning bolt, no shame. ‘What is it?’
He swallows. Clears his throat. And finally says: ‘There’s been a telephone call for you.’
‘Right.’ I’m on my feet. ‘Alby, take Eric back to your mother now and no shenanigans or I’ll chop off your elbows and feed them to a bunyip.’ I’ve already grabbed my handbag and I’m out the door, asking Mitchell: ‘Was it Gordon?’ Has to be. Must be. Haven’t heard a word from him, or of him, since he called Mum in March and they got cut off. My last letter must have worked: telling him I’m blooping well cross about it, too. Worried. I know he’s no great letter-writer, an exquisite hair comb can speak well enough for itself, hardly leaves my head, but four months now with no word at all is not on.
‘No,’ Mitchell says, and it’s a brick to the belly. I know something awful has happened, but he is now saying as we’re half-running across the camp yard: ‘Your neighbour, Mrs Quinn, she wants you to phone back straightaway.’
‘Mrs Quinn?’ My mind whirls four hundred and fifty miles an hour. Colin’s mum? But the Quinns don’t even have the phone on in their flat, do they? I can’t think what Mrs Quinn might be calling for. She and Mum aren’t that close beyond the Catholic Daily and even then only to talk about the price of fish. My heart is racing with fear as I climb into Mitchell’s ute, trying to keep calm: ‘What brings you to town anyway?’
‘Stock agent,’ he says, accelerating, racing.
‘Oh,’ I say. Oh no, what’s happened at home? I should be at home. Why did I ever come back here to Hay? Because Mum said I must. For the poor little mites. For Alby and Eric. No, love, you needn’t come home again, she said at Easter. It’s such a long way. It is. Nine hundred miles return. I didn’t argue. I spent Good Friday by the river with an exercise book, romancing in the dream-warm autumn air. Under a coolabah tree. I’ve got the story right up to chapter six now, Eugenia’s mauve sea, running out of fuel, getting cross looking for Will. I’ve sketched the whole thing out all the way to chapter twelve, was going to start typing it all up, and now it’s July, and all this while I should have been, I knew I should have been –
Mrs Lockhart already has Mrs Quinn back on the line as I run into the house.
To hear Mrs Quinn say: ‘Bernadette,’ her Belfast brogue harsh on my name before she says: ‘My poor love.’
‘Yes?’ My voice is small and I don’t want to hear any more. I don’t want her to tell me.
‘We’ve had some bad news. About your dad.’
No. I don’t want to hear what she says next. But I do. I hear it all.
And I drop the phone.
‘I will not hear of you travelling alone at a time like this.’ Mrs Lockhart is a cyclone through the house, hasn’t drawn breath.
I haven’t moved from the teal velveteen settee.
Dad. Died of wounds. Mum got a telegram. Wounds received in Crete, died in Suez. In Egypt. Where? No sense, no idea. He wrote only a few months ago, at Easter, telling us he was fine, any finer and you wouldn’t see me, I’m that skinny. Mum read the whole thing to me over the phone. He wrote about Cairo and going sailing on the Nile that’s as big as a sea, and how they use their Vegemite from the soldiers’ comfort parcels for boot polish. Never had so much rotten mutton in his life, and he’s missing her lamb cuddles and asking her and me to write. Mum’s had a turn. Mrs Cronin found her this morning; had a funny feeling, popped in and found Mum in the hall, with the telegram in her hand. She’s had a heart attack. They’ve taken her to Sydney Hospital.
I say: ‘Don’t pay any attention to me.’
Me. All my life I’ve been so plumped up on me, on myself, overfed on my parents’ attention, their gratitude for having me, just the one. Wanting to be important. To go somewhere. Do important things. But they made me important. And how have I repaid them? By not being where I should have been when they needed me. Mum needed me. And I knew she did. I knew.
‘What did you say, dear?’ Mrs Lockhart asks me.
‘Nothing,’ I say.
I have stopped. Life has stopped. Here, on the teal velveteen.
Stopped until Mum is safe.
Please, Mum.
Please don’t do this to me.
‘It’s not possible to visit Mrs Cooper, no,’ a nurse tells Mrs Lockhart. ‘She is far too unwell at the present time.’
Not even Mrs Lockhart can do anything about it. I hear a man laugh up the end of the corridor, near the stairwell, and it rattles through my bones like a tram. It’s a doctor. I see his white doctor’s coat, shaking the hand of another in a suit, who is young and tall and familiar somehow. I want to say to them: how can you do that? How can you stand there chatting while Mum is …
Mum is going to be all right. Because I’m going to devote the rest of my life to looking after her. I’ll keep her veggies plump and lovely while she sits in the sun, breathing in the sea air, getting better. She’s lasted three days now. There’s reason to be hopeful, Mrs Lockhart is reminding me, the specialist doctor said so when we got here. Please, Hughie. If I don’t move on this wooden seat. If I don’t breathe. Please.
We wait and wait. Forever and no time at all.
Squeak of leather on lino and yet another doctor is walking towards me. He was with the specialist earlier. I haven’t caught his name. He has a sour face and thick spectacles.
He says, without preamble or a change in that expression: ‘Miss Cooper. I am afraid we have lost your mother. She is dead. There was nothing that could be done for her.’
Mrs Lockhart is talking to him. I don’t know what they’re saying.
I stand up.
What?
A priest I don’t know is walking towards me. ‘Miss Cooper?’
What?
I walk in the opposite direction.
I run. Down the corridor towards the stairs. I run out onto Macquarie Street, where I rip my stupid shoes off and then I run all the way to Oxford Street, and then to Taylor Square. People swarming everywhere and I can’t stop running.
What?
I run all the way home, five miles or so, and I don’t stop till I get to the cliffs at the end of Arcadia, our bluff above the bays, where I stare down past the rocks below and into the sea. The winter sea, cold and angry steel sea, crashing over Wedding Cake.
I stare at the sea until I hear my mother shriek on the wind: Come away from there, Bernadette. Come away and get inside.
I turn around but I don’t know where to go. I can’t go back into my house. How can I go into my house? Ever again. Never again.
I can’t bear this.
I can’t bear this at all. Mum and Dad. Their story wasn’t supposed to end like this. Not like this. The greatest love story ever told. Died of wounds. Dad’s supposed to take Mum on a cruise when he retires, take her all the way to San Francisco. This is wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
I kneel down on the footpath on the corner of Arcadia and Heartbreak. I press my forehead to the cold of the cement.
‘Bernadette!’
Belfast ‘r’ in it growled. I think it’s Mr Quinn, Colin’s Dad. But I can’t move to see.
‘Bernadette, would you like me to open the mail?’ Mrs Lockhart is asking. I don’t care. She’s given me another pill. ‘What’s this
big one here? It’s addressed to you.’ She tears the yellow envelope open, speaking to me like I’m a child, because I am one.
She’s sitting in Dad’s chair, by the wireless. I don’t want her to sit there. But I don’t really care. She’s organised everything with Father Gerard, been through Mum’s address book too. I didn’t like her doing that either, finding out that Mum doesn’t have any family in her book. She does have family, in Paddo, but she ran away from them, from the squalor down there, and that’s no one’s business but Mum’s. She saved her money from Cinderellering at the White Horse in Surry Hills, scrubbing the floors on her knees, till she ran away on the train to Melbourne to meet Dad off the ship.
‘Oh my dear Lord, Bernadette – look.’ Letters spill out of the yellow package. Opened letters. My letters, addressed to Gordon, to Dad. They are all date stamped and initialled on the front. I don’t understand, and I don’t care. Mrs Lockhart is horrified. Outraged. ‘Your mail, dear – they took your mail?’ Did they? Doesn’t matter any more, does it. Who is they or who is me.
I’ve disappeared.
Gone.
Whoomp.
‘There are plenty of developers always looking for land around the bays, Miss Cooper. It would be an easy matter to sell it, and for a good price,’ the solicitor says.
That makes me care.
‘No. You can’t sell the house,’ I say, a thousand years since I last said anything. Sell my parents’ house? The house my dad built? His Californian Arcadia? I stare at the solicitor, stare into him, partly because of the pill, this hypnotic pill that feels like breathing underwater, and partly because I don’t understand how anyone, how this solicitor, who is obviously a nice man, photograph of his family behind him on his bookshelf, could ask me if I want to turn my parents’ house into a block of flats.
