This Red Earth

by Kim Kelly

  Mrs Lockhart squeezes my hand and tells him: ‘That won’t do, won’t do at all, Stuart.’ She scolds him, but not too redoubtably; their families are somehow connected; landed gentry, they’re all connected. Even Mitchell and Rock went to the same school, they all went to the same school. I’m not connected. I’m disconnected. Wasn’t even at Mum’s funeral, though half of Coogee was. Was that just last week, or the week before? I’ve lost time too. I only remember the flowers Aunty Ena sent, Dad’s aunty in Gilgandra, sending all the white carnations. And the apricot roses Mrs Lockhart bought herself. In the middle of winter. More than a hundred of them, even though she can’t afford it. House full of heirlooms, Mrs Lockhart has, but no cash and it’s cook’s night off every night because she can’t afford one of them either. And yet she’s so generous. She is all that need ever be known about the verb to give. Looking after me, helping me with everything that needs sorting out. So many things. Mum’s hankies. Dad’s library card. Mrs Lockhart bought me a pretty marquetry box to put all these precious things in, things she says I’ll be glad I kept one day. She is telling the solicitor now: ‘It’s not necessary to deal with the property matter at this juncture. It can wait.’

  ‘But there’s the outstanding loan with the building society, and the death duties owing will poss–’

  ‘Death duties!’ she just about shouts across the table at him. ‘Mr Cooper’s estate should be exempt from such an obscenity.’

  ‘There will be the military rebate, of course, but the probate–’

  ‘No buts, Stuart – find an exemption. The man died in active service. His estate should pay nothing. You’re a lawyer, see to it that it does.’

  ‘Of course,’ solicitor Stuart concedes, ‘I’ll do my best,’ and then they go over my financial crisis, again, without bothering to include me in the discussion this time. They don’t need to; I understood it the first time. With everything taken into consideration, I’ll have about fifty pounds to my name. Roughly nothing, not including any death duty owing. Dad had increased the loan three years ago for improvements to the garage, purchased some whizz-bang hydraulic hoist; no wonder Mum screamed at him about the payments. And the business itself isn’t even profitable now, as most people round the bays either can’t afford the petrol to fill their cars or are conserving it – for the stinking war. That killed my dad. That killed my mum.

  Wake up, Missy. I realise I need to get a job, a paying one. If I want to keep the house, I need a job. Or I’ll have to rent it out, get in borders. There are always people looking to rent around the bays. But I can’t do that. How could I have strangers in our house? Strangers and their greasy pork chops.

  A dull, pounding rage comes for me, through and past this underwater pill. Anger that my father fought in Turkey and in France for that house and that garage, and all of it has amounted to a big fat nothing. So that he could die defending Greece. For nothing. The Nazis have Greece, they have Europe. They have Bardia back now too, listen to the ABC wireless news. And they have my dad. And they have my mum. If I wasn’t underwater, this rage would send me screaming out to the men’s camp in Hay, to the huts where the Nazis have been corralled away from the others now, where I would lock the doors and set them alight, burn them alive. All my dad wanted to do was look after his boys, and now they’re all gone, all dead or in prison. Colin too, and he was only driving the truck. Colin. Oh Colin. The news of him sinks into me now too. He’s missing in action. The Quinns are in the worst hell of waiting of all. Waiting for this nightmare to come true.

  I’m not waiting any more.

  I stand up, I burst up through the surface, and then I run. I run out of the room and down the stairs and out through the foyer and onto Elizabeth Street, into the lunchtime crowds. Across the road, across to Hyde Park, I see Apollo standing above his fountain, arm outstretched like a giant traffic policeman: Stop!

  ‘Miss Cooper!’ It’s the voice of authority, the solicitor, I think; but I don’t stop.

  I run along the sardine-packed footpath, along the windows of DJ’s, past the dismal displays of suits and handbags all cheap and nasty these days because the best of everything – the best wool, the best leather, the best men – all gone to the army. All gone to be chewed up and spat out by the Nazis.

  ‘Miss Cooper!’

  I keep running, turning right, following the windows round into Market Street.

  ‘Miss Cooper!’

  The DJ’s doorman is holding the door wide for lunch crush and I rush in with the flow. Take the escalator up to the first floor, ladies cheap and nasty hats and shoes, and I wonder if I should inquire after a job here: I used to work for Chalmers, you know, practically wrote the catalogue. Somehow I have the sense to know that I should not make this inquiry right now. No sense, however, of understanding how it is I find myself inside the DJ’s auditorium next. But I’m just as suddenly glad I am: it’s quiet in here. Cool and quiet, the room is completely empty, apart from an exhibition of paintings. The event poster clipped to an easel on the stage says ABORIGINAL ART AND ITS APPLICATION. That’s nice, I think, these sort of cultural activities still carrying on at DJ’s despite everything, no one turning up apart from getting their picture taken at the opening. There are small safe places in the world where nothing ever changes after all.

  But then I see the paintings round the room: they are landscapes. Watercolours. There are no native dots and boomerangs that you would expect to see down at La Perouse on a Sunday afternoon. I step over to the nearest of them on my left. No, it can’t be. A picture of great big vanilla-trunked gums, river gums, two of them entwined, canopies arcing over mauve hills. And red earth. Oh Rock. I am hallucinating. I must be. My heart is thumping like a bird determined to smash a window. I peer at the card by the painting: Albert Namatjira, Central Australian Desert. How could this Albert know my heart, my Rock? I have never been to the Central Australian Desert, but this my heart. Oh my Rock.

  I reach into my pocket for my jasper B, but it’s not there. I’ve left it under my pillow, and I want to run home to it, I need my Rock. He’s not with the army. He’s in New Britain. He’s safe. The Nazis can’t get him. I run back to the escalators: I need to tell him about these incredible trees. I need to send him a telegram. I can’t trust a letter would get through. The Department steals your mail. They stole my mail. They stole my letters to Dad and to Rock. Yes, they did: Colonel Aitkins had me under surveillance, Mrs Lockhart found out from some connection high up in the Postmaster-General’s Office, but I’m not a person of interest any more. Someone must’ve got the guilts and anonymously sent them back. But they can’t undo stealing my mail and Rock getting none of my letters. No wonder he didn’t write back to me. The war has stolen my Rock from me, too. I’m not a person of interest any more.

  I’ve lost everything.

  I’ve lost absolutely everything.

  I am weeping and weeping inside, haemorrhaging oceans of tears, but I can’t seem to shed a single one.

  And I know before I’m intercepted by a policeman on the ground floor: I’ve also lost my mind.

  GORDON

  ‘Ha!’ says Johno, opening the paper Rico’s just brought back from town. ‘He’s been rolled.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Menzies. He’s been forced to resign. Good. Give someone with an interest in Australia a go.’

  It would be good if the next bloke spends less time in London and more time concerned about the British Army’s decision not to reinforce the garrison at Singapore. They’re too stretched, told us to do it ourselves. That could be difficult as the main force of our troops are still at their disposal in the Mediterranean. Hard to be in two places at once. Alarming as the situation is becoming, though, I can’t join the conversation for a minute: I’m busy thinking about the way Bernie says pig, the way she says her p’s with a little pop of her lips: Pig Iron. Pig Face. What would she call him now? Roast Pig. I’ve got to stop doing this to myself. It’s over. I’ll get over it one day. So will Menzies. />
  Pointless as kicking a dead dog up a hill backwards, isn’t it, Dad; thanks for sticking by me too. I could get bitter about it, if I didn’t have better things to do. Like not being shitty I never bought that Ricky Triumph off Mr Cooper before I left. I loved that bike. Too bloody bad.

  ‘Get another two rods in this arvo, Dozy?’ says Johno.

  ‘Yeah,’ and consider that I only have sixteen months left of this shitty contract. Can’t get that to go fast enough. I was two seconds off packing it in altogether here, just about to write to Professor Richardson, asking him if there was any chance of a position at the uni next year, or any survey work coming up, when we got a telegram from Taylor: Keep on down. Still looking for suitable new office in lae. Contact syd office with developments if nec. That was a month ago, and not a lot has changed, except that Rabaul is even more uninhabitable now. The Malaguna tram has stopped running. The ash from Matupi is so thick on the ground, the air almost toxic to breathe. But still he hasn’t blown. He just keeps spewing up rubbish as if he’s sick of everything that’s going on.

  We keep spewing up rubbish too, more and more dacite. I think we had a trace of basalt last week, though, black pocks in the grey. Or was that my imagination too? I have no specific data to check against for this hole at all, apart from the general indication that we should hit basalt sometime this century. And the burning knowledge that as the threat from Japan increases, so does our need for oil reserves south of Malaya. For the defence of Singapore. I still can’t believe the Japs would ever be that mad. If they breach Singapore, America will smash Tokio from their bases in Hawaii and the Philippines ten minutes later. It will be a suicide move. The Japs will only have one shot, with whatever high octane they’ve got stockpiled. Whatever happens, it will be quick.

  ‘Oi, Brockie, chuck us that spanner then, will you?’ Johno asks me. He’s fixing one of the hosepipes on the engine before we can do anything else, as we have no boilermaker now. We’ve gone through two of them in the last six months. No one wants that contract. Can’t imagine why not. There are two wagtails chatting behind him on the bottom branches of a big balsa tree. There are wagtails all through the balsa trees here. You don’t usually see them in groups like that. It’s the volcano, I’ve worked out. The birds are waiting, like we are. Waiting for Matupi to blow. They’re happy enough, though, in amongst the balsa branches. That’s the thing about birds. They only have one mood. Happy. Birds are working all the time and happy about it. Otherwise, they are asleep, or dead. Sometimes I wish I was a bird.

  If I was a bird, I wouldn’t be bothered when we pull up granite again a month later. I wouldn’t be bothered by the idea that to drill into granite instead of basalt like this once can be written off as an unfortunate and expensive error, but to do it twice looks deliberate. It means that the original maps and data I was supplied with were either compiled by an idiot, or by someone who did not want us to strike the oil. You just can’t get that sort of geological data accidentally wrong. Twice.

  ‘But why?’ I ask Johno, not expecting an answer. Why would this consortium of old-school ties and service-station owners have us undertake this pointless drilling? Because there’ll be a point to it somewhere, won’t there.

  ‘Come on,’ Johno says, ‘into town.’

  I don’t know what it is I think we’re going to find when we get there, apart from alcohol, but I’m in a hurry to get going. I would like to find Taylor and Roycox and hurt them before we flatten them, actually. They are crooks of some sort; I just know it. They’ve set up one of those fly-by-night companies and taken off with all the investors’ money. I just know it.

  Johno is thinking more broadly this time. He says, taking charge, and more serious than I’ve ever seen him: ‘Rico, you too. We stick together from now on, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rico says, and I can hear the shit in it, whatever that might be in Maltese.

  We pack up the camp and carry everything we can manage down out through the jungle. We walk along the North Road towards Matupi. His plume is black and orange-bellied with fire.

  If any of us have been wondering if Southern Star might not have left us out here for dead, we wonder a little bit louder when we get into town. The news at the bar is that America has put Japan under a complete oil embargo now, and Britain has finally stopped selling to them too. This means one of two things: either the Japs will accept that their entire economy will grind to a halt, or they will declare war.

  ‘Looks like we’re going to make them shoot their grandmothers,’ Johno says through his teeth. Then he looks across the harbour at Komazaki’s wharf. ‘We should get you two onto a ship home.’

  Yes, that would be a sensible idea. Except that now it’s come to this, I’m not leaving Johno here. I’ve got nothing to go home for anyway. I realise, with some shock: Johno, and my drinking companions at the club, that’s all I’ve got. I say: ‘I’m staying.’

  He says: ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, mate.’ Looking at my hand.

  I tell him: ‘I’ll practise left-handed. I’m staying.’ And I’ll aim at the sky until I put my hands up in surrender.

  It’s not going to come to that, I’m saying to myself even now. The AIF has reinforcements in place in Singapore. I don’t think too long about the other news: questions about the capacity of the anti-aircraft guns there, the use of Tiger Moth training planes and troops with no combat experience. Singapore will not be breached. I hold this line like a rope tied to a cloud.

  We put Rico on a ship, back to his wife and daughters in Melbourne. Mr Komazaki has likewise left for home, in the other direction. And now we wait. Wait for the Japs to come while we wait for Matupi to blow.

  If I was a bird, I wouldn’t worry. I’d sit up in the hills with the To boys chewing betel nut and taking each-way bets while we wait among the balsa trees. I wouldn’t sit in the sulphur stink of Rabaul drinking rum with Johno and Sven and fourteen hundred other rifles, listening to the wireless, wondering what’s going to happen next. There’s been another change of prime minister at home, the hung parliament swung from Fadden, whoever he is, to Curtin, the Labor leader. Is that even constitutional, to change horses mid-parliament? I wouldn’t know that either. But we all hang on his word over the wireless, listening to him deliver it straight.

  Men and women of Australia, I’m not going to bullshit you. We’re waiting for the Japs to come down into Singapore, so we’d better be flaming well ready for them. And in this event, should it be necessary, we will, with the assistance of our great friend and ally the United States of America, and with great regret for the violence to come, smash the bastards off the pitch.

  Not exactly those words, but that’s the sentiment. And he gets a cheer from this crowd, even devoted UAP supporters like Sid. I voted Labor, because you do on the Paddock seat of Darling, and it does seem a good thing to have a bushie in the top job for once, but I can’t cheer for anything. I can only shake my head at Sid and those fired up by him, looking forward to the match. Christ.

  Still, I go out to the range; I’m not going to bullshit myself either. I need to establish precisely how I won’t be taking a wicket myself. As expected, my right hand remains a one-shot wonder, and I couldn’t shoot straight with my left if you gave me a year to practise.

  It’s only a fairly desperate need of a distraction that makes me do what I do next. I go for a walk along the harbour foreshore, through the puddles of ash mud from the first of the rains last night, round to the Department of Lands office on Mango Avenue. To look for maps. Some decent topographical maps of the island to look at, if there are any. I just want to … I don’t know, see where we are, I suppose, as if a map is going to say something different. I love a good map, don’t I. It’s my birthday tomorrow, too, fourth of November. Happy twenty-third birthday to me.

  I just catch Ted Westby, the senior surveyor, as he’s packing up his desk, off to the mainland, and I ask him if I can have a look at his map drawer for the Northwest Gazelle.

 
‘No,’ he says, veteran public servant chewing down on his pipe, annoyed at being asked for anything, even in these circumstances. ‘They’ve all been packed up.’

  I’m about to say, Well, thanks for that, when he points to a box in the corner behind his desk and says: ‘That’s a load of old Gerry paraphernalia – ancient stuff, from their admin days, a few maps in there. You can toss the lot in the incinerator when you’ve finished, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ I say. This’ll be interesting anyway. But when I unroll the first map I know I won’t be throwing any of this out. It’s a map of East New Britain, including the whole of the Gazelle, with a couple of pages of notes falling out. Including a table showing drill depths and minerals found. It’s all in German, but I think I know what Geologische Daten in the title refers to. The words Dacite pyroklastische feature a lot, and it’s indicated across almost the entirety of the Northwest Gazelle. There is plenty of basalt too, as well as Granit and Kalkstein, which I’m fairly certain is granite and limestone. Beneath the table there’s a couple of paragraphs with the title Gelt – gold. But I can’t find any references to petroleum across any of it. Or oil. What is German for oil? Surely it’s the same or close? But then I think they probably weren’t looking specifically for oil at the time – this data is almost thirty years old, 1912, when aeroplanes were still a bit of an experiment. They would have been looking for gold, wouldn’t they?

  I turn the table over and I can’t believe the answer I find.

  The words, in pencil: No evidence of oil across peninsula.

  In Roycox’s handwriting.

  Proof. Christ. I say it out loud: ‘The thieving bastards.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Ted asks me.

  And I spill my guts all over the shop, while Ted looks at me with a complete lack of interest, before saying: ‘That’s not proof of any value, Brock. Technically, it’s not thieving if you’re protecting the interests of British trade.’