by Kim Kelly
I’m just thrilled out of my mind. Won’t tell him yet, though. Not till I’m sure it’s taken to me. Please baby, be ours this time.
GORDON
‘You’ve never been much of a desk man, have you,’ Professor Richardson says at the door to my desk on the lonely side of the Geology Department. It’s no secret to him that I’m bored stupid here. Indoors, specks of aluminium hydroxide crystals floating before my eyes. If I didn’t hate chemistry before, I do now.
‘Have you given any more thought to your own research?’ he asks me. He’d do anything he could to help me with it too. He still feels bad about recommending me to Southern Star. Not his fault; he didn’t sign the contract. And I shake my head. I know what type of research I’d like to do. I want to study soils, strangely enough. I don’t know what for yet, though. I want to go back to the Flinders Ranges. I want to go into the Centre too. I have to go bush to find out what I want to do. But I can’t, can I. Can’t take any kind of field work now. That would take me away from Bernie. I don’t know what’s wrong with me that I think I can’t live without her for five minutes. The eight hours a day I spend here is hard enough. I’m amazed she doesn’t find me annoying. Yet. I can’t leave her alone.
Professor Richardson smiles, to himself as much as me. ‘You’ll probably make up your mind a bit more quickly once you’re married and the children start to come along. They’re always more expensive than you think.’ I think he means that teaching will look attractive then. Doubtful. He asks me: ‘When’s the big day again?’
‘Eighteenth of August,’ I say and then, ‘Shit,’ as I remember, it’s the sixth today. ‘I’m supposed to be at the tailor for four o’clock – what’s the time?’ I look at my watch: it’s five to.
Professor Richardson laughs as I run down the hall: ‘All fun and games, young Brock – enjoy yourself.’
I bolt out onto Parramatta Road for the tram into town, but there’s been an accident, a cart tipped over across the tracks. The traffic is banked up for miles. So I keep running, up Broadway, up George Street. At the cross of Goulburn the footpath is blocked with blokes, though. Uniforms spilling out of the pub there. Throwing their hats in the air. Falling over each other, celebrating. Someone’s won big on a race, I think, when I hear one of them shout: ‘It’s over now. Oh yes, it’s over now.’
‘What’s over?’ I ask one of them as I push through the crowd. Is this finally it? I’m hopeful as I ask: ‘The Japs have surrendered?’
‘Not yet, mate,’ he says: ‘But they will now. The Yanks just dropped a twenty-thousand-ton bomb on them.’
That’s a big bomb. And that’s impossible. Nevertheless, the suit will have to wait for another minute. I go inside the pub, where there’s a couple of dozen more uniforms but all of them quiet, around the wireless.
‘… early reports say that the city of Hiroshima has been wiped out by an atomic bomb dropped by the United States Strategic Air Force at eight am this morning Tokio time. The smoke and cloud of dust from the attack was said to have been visible one hundred and sixty miles out to sea.’
Someone shouts: ‘Big fucking bomb – ooowee’.
‘Shut up or get out,’ someone else shouts back.
‘… surrender or be annihilated is the message sent to the people of Japan by this new bomb. Early estimates are that the heart of the city of Hiroshima was completely burnt out by such an intense conflagration it could not be compared with a normal fire. The crew of a heavy bomber ten miles away felt the concussion like a close explosion of flak and could not believe what they saw. Mountains of smoke mushroomed up with the stem pointing downwards, some three thousand feet of boiling dust.
‘Exactly how such a fiercely destructive force was created remains secret, but it is understood that Washington military circles have been working closely on the project with top scientists for at least the last two years.
‘We repeat, United States Strategic Air Force have dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, at eight am this morning Tokio time. Tens of thousands of Japanese will have been incinerated immediately by …’
By one bomb. A super-incendiary. Charlie was right. A bit more super than I ever imagined.
It’s too big.
Why have they dropped it now? They didn’t have to do that, not now. The Japs were going to surrender anyway. No one has wanted to show them some rough vengeance more than me, but now … ? They’ve destroyed a whole city with one bomb? The people there, they would have been cremated as they ran. Women and children and public servants just going into work. They would have had nowhere to run with that force.
One bomb? One.
I can’t understand it but I do.
A new type of chaos has been let out into the world and I don’t feel good about that. Not good at all. That rock have Akurra in him. You won’t know what he’ll do. This is your E=mc2, whitefella.
My head fills with the screams of the marys and the kids and the chooks at the market, the shells falling all around us on Rabaul. To-An is shaking me: You enemy, you fella enemy, and I start to run again.
BERNIE
It’s six-fifteen and I start to worry. Half an hour late is not even late. He’s been delayed at the tailor, that’s all. Just because he’s always home by five forty-five doesn’t mean he’s been hit by a tram tonight. I’m becoming – I’m becoming a spud-watching housewife is what.
I put the wireless on, something not the ABC news. Find the soothing tones of ‘The Wonderful World Of Plants’ as I go and put one of Gordon’s jumpers on over mine. It’s damp and cold tonight and the wind is finding its way through the bricks. Not helping. He’s been hit by a tram, and we’ll know who and what to blame, won’t we, Dad: petrol rations. He’d take the bike but it’s so expensive to run and petrol is so precious. Do the patriotic thing and take the tram. And listen to yourself: you’ve just suggested it’d be safer to ride a motorbike than catch the tram. Does every woman go completely mental when they’re pregnant or is it just me? And I’m only two months gone.
Six-thirty and the phone rings, and I pounce on it. ‘Hello, Bernadette Cooper?’
‘Oh hello, darling, it’s only me.’ It’s Mrs Lockhart: ‘I just wanted to check that you’re all right.’
‘I’m all right,’ I say. Why wouldn’t I be all right? Fear screams up the back of my neck again: Gordon’s been hit by a tram on the Sturt Highway and the CWA has found out before me. I ask her: ‘Why do you ask?’
‘No reason, really. Just calling for a chat …’ Not now, I’m wailing inside: what if Gordon’s trying to ring? She blithers on about this atomic bomb thing for several interminable minutes, ‘… you know, dear, I don’t think John Curtin would have liked this at all. Always had a respect for that Jap tenacity …’
‘Did he?’ I hope the Americans drop ten bombs on them, surrender or not.
‘I can hear you’re not with me, dear – did I catch you at dinner?’
‘Hm yes,’ I say. ‘I’d better go.’
‘All right. Bye bye, dear. Love to Gordon, bye bye.’
I go back to ‘The Wonderful World Of Plants’. Did you know that aphids and lace bugs can be deterred from your roses by – another blooping bulletin on this bomb thing:
‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are suspending our normal programming this evening for a special bulletin on what is expected to be the imminent surrender of the Japanese, followed by discussion of the topic from the physicist Doctor–’
I switch it off. I don’t care what happens to the Japs. I only want to hear that it’s finished and never think about them again.
I hear now, coming up the front path: ‘You put your hands on me again and I’ll–’
Gordon. Angry. Swearing. Very foul language. I open the door and he storms straight past me without a word. And Colin is behind him. Paying the cab fare, apologising to the driver and to me: ‘Bernie, I’m sorry. He’s drunk.’
Mrs Zoc is standing at the fence between our houses. ‘Bernadetta, what is it?’
>
‘I’ll tell you later – don’t worry,’ I say, and push Colin down the hall. ‘What’s gone on?’
‘I don’t know,’ Colin says. ‘He was putting them away down at the Bay, one after the other. Not talking to anyone. I thought maybe you’d had a barney or something. Then this other bloke, behind him, he says something, and your bloke turns around and decks him. Knocks him flat. Don’t worry, it was no one local.’
Oh good: so we won’t have a mob of enraged surfies banging on the door in a minute.
‘Stuff you.’ Gordon’s in the bedroom banging things around. I have a look through the doorway: he’s packing.
‘Gordon, what are you doing?’
He ignores me.
Colin says: ‘I’m sorry. I thought bringing him here might calm him down. Don’t worry, I’m not leaving you alone with him. There’s something wrong in his head. The way he decked that bloke – it’s not normal.’
‘Gordon,’ I ask him as if I might calm him down yet, ‘what’s happened?’
He’s buckling the straps round his swag, ignoring me as if I don’t exist at all.
‘Gordon,’ I raise my voice. ‘You’re frightening me.’
‘Frightening you?’ he says, but he doesn’t look at me. ‘There’s plenty to be frightened of. Nothing’s going to be the same from today. Can’t put it back in the ground now.’
He walks straight past me, gets in the jeep and starts it up.
Colin yells after him: ‘You’ll kill someone.’
But he drives off, like a maniac.
Colin says: ‘You didn’t have a fight, did you.’
I shake my head: ‘No.’ Our ending was perfect. Almost.
‘Do you want me to stay, in case he comes back?’
‘No thanks, Colin.’ I want to hide in the back of my wardrobe from whatever that thing was.
Mrs Zoc comes round to stay with me. To wonder what on earth we should do.
‘Bella,’ she says and she is frightened too, ‘that boy has seen the Devil.’
PART SEVEN
AUGUST 1945–JANUARY 1946
GORDON
I don’t get further than the Spot. A dog runs out across the road and I nearly go through the window of a shop to avoid hitting it. I start to sober up, sitting here, looking in this shoe-shop window. My hand starts to hurt. I don’t regret hitting that bloke. I heard: What do you call an Abo with a stutter? I didn’t wait for the punchline. I had to hit him. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong psychopath. I should turn around, go home and explain that to Bernie. Right now.
But I sit here a while longer. The more I sit here, the quicker I sober up, and the more my hand hurts. I know what I’ve done. So I get out and go across the road to the Repat. I should turn myself in as a psychiatric patient. But I call Bernie from the public phone there instead.
She says: ‘Bernadette Cooper?’ Sad and wary.
I say: ‘Bernie, it’s me. I’m sorry, I …’
She says: ‘Hm?’
I say: ‘I might be a while getting back. I think I’ve busted my hand.’
She says: ‘Well, that’s less than you deserve, isn’t it. Don’t expect me to come running up to get you, because I won’t. I never will. I’ll never throw myself after you. Do you understand that? Never.’
And she hangs up. Less than I deserve.
‘Weren’t you ever told to be careful with this hand?’ the doctor says to me when he’s had a look. He’s a military doctor, used to talking to drunken halfwits, so he doesn’t expect an answer. I think he’s going to tell me I’ve done the worst job on it yet, but he says, ‘It’s not too bad. You’re lucky. This time.’
Tell that to the rest of me. Stone cold, I drive back home just after midnight. I don’t know how I do that. I’ve never been this tired. When I pull up I don’t look at Mrs Zoc giving me the evil eye at her window. I don’t need to.
Bernie’s in bed, pretending to be asleep. I get in beside her.
She says with her back to me: ‘You tell me exactly what went on tonight and why, or the whole thing’s off. And I don’t say that lightly – I’m pregnant, you know, and I’d rather raise a child alone than married to a violent alcoholic.’
Fair enough. I tell her everything I can think of to explain myself. Why I got so angry. I tell her about Johno and Rabaul. I tell her about the uranium and that it feels like I just incinerated twenty thousand kids. You’d never know if any of our ore was used. It’s just … it’s all the chaos in my head. I’ve never said so much to anyone about anything and I’ve got no idea if I’ve made any sense. She doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t turn around. She doesn’t move at all. I’m sick of the sound of my voice now too, so I say: ‘I’m not making excuses, but that’s why I went off. I hate myself more than anyone else. I’m not going to do this again.’
‘No.’ She says something finally. ‘No, you won’t do this again.’
BERNIE
It’s just on dawn and a currawong starts calling outside the window, getup-getup getup-getup ringing round the tiles under the gumdrop gable of our Californian verandah. Rock doesn’t hear it; he’s asleep now. I watch the sun light his face as it makes its way up the bluff and through the curtains. I knew that whatever he’d endured was awful beyond my understanding, but it’s personal now … Ernie, he was a vulcanologist, he wouldn’t hurt anyone. He didn’t have a gun. They killed him first. It’s going to take me a long time to understand how he can have any compassion for the Japanese at all. How he could say, I hate myself more than anyone else.
But I look at his hand, all bandaged up there by his side, and I’m still cross too. Blockhead thug, whacking people in pubs. Never mind that: you will never walk past me like that again, as if I don’t exist. Ever. You will never do that again.
No, he won’t, that’s a fact. There’ll be no repetition of these events. How could there be? Man goes to pub for a drink to try to calm himself down because of a bomb in Japan, and whacks a complete stranger for making a joke about Aborigines. Why? Because his friend Johno had a theory about thermodynamics. Much of what Gordon said last night is beyond me, but this is a one-off.
Isn’t it?
The war ruined them both. Mrs Lockhart’s words keep coming back to me, corellas shredding a rivergum. Ross and Caroline Brock. That’s what’s kept me from sleeping at all. Bill and Peggy Cooper. Our parents, all ruined by this. How can I ensure that this history will never repeat? What can I do differently? What can we do differently?
Not marry. That’s the only sure thing. I touch my belly: you poor little lamb. Both parents mental. Hughie, do you listen in to this channel for a laugh?
My Rock groans into the pillow now: ‘What’s the time?’
I say: ‘It doesn’t matter. How are you feeling?’
‘Shi– headache.’
‘I bet you’ve got a cracker.’
GORDON
She phones the uni and tells Admin I slipped in the bath. No one’s going to miss me, are they. I don’t get out of bed. I can’t, I’m that tired. She says: ‘You stay there, sleep it off.’ I sleep for three days. But then Professor Richardson calls on Friday, to talk to me, so I get up.
He says: ‘A second bomb, yes, on another city, Nagasaki. But this one is a plutonium bomb.’ He asks me: ‘What’s the difference between the plutonium and the uranium? Can you shed some light?’
Not really. I can’t get past my own questions. Why didn’t the Japs surrender on Tuesday? Why have the Americans dropped this second bomb? Because they wanted to see the difference between the crude uranium and the more unstable synthetic themselves. I tell Professor Richardson: ‘Two protons. I don’t know.’
‘You don’t sound well. When will we see you?’
‘Monday.’ I don’t know. I’m not well.
I go and turn on the wireless. Bernie says: ‘Don’t.’
But I want to know: Estimates of fifty to eighty thousand perished in each of the cities.
She turns it off. She says: ‘It’s got nothing to
do with you – it’s not your fault.’
No, it’s not. But I’m not rational. Nothing is. I turn the wireless back on. The Japs are arguing the terms of the ultimatum. That’s almost admirable. Life goes on. The Japanese are flaming cracked as.
Monday morning, I get up. Face the day. Tell Bernie: ‘Don’t worry if I’m late. I will be with the tailor this time.’
She says: ‘No, don’t do that.’ She’s getting up too, putting on her dressing-gown, yawning. ‘There’s not going to be a wedding now.’
‘What?’ Don’t do this to me. ‘No. Please, Bernie, I–’
‘Don’t be silly, it’s nothing like that. I just don’t want to get married now.’ She walks off, waving it away. I’m a pest.
‘But you’re pregnant,’ I say, following her down the hall. ‘We have to get married.’
‘No. Not now. Maybe afterwards,’ she says.
‘After what?’
‘Just no – shush, will you.’ She closes the bathroom door on me.
There’s rational for you.
I walk down to the tram under some new weight of gravity. I can’t believe nothing’s changed. People going to work, schoolkids mucking up at the back of the tram, being told off. Don’t they know how much has changed? America has just ransomed the whole planet. Until someone steals the science off them or works it out themselves. Then what? That’s too cracked to contemplate. What are we doing bringing a baby into this?
I go into work, but I care about aluminium hydroxide about as much as I care for tinea, and it’s annoying that I have to get a student in to write for me. I get the shits when I see he’s started putting all the Al(OH)3 results in the a- AlO(OH) column and mixed up my slides. I yell at him: ‘Are you a fucking idiot?’
He’s not. He goes and complains about me to Professor Richardson, who comes in to tell me to pull my head in. ‘Why don’t you go home, Gordon. The sun’s not going to refuse to shine if you have another week or two off. You’re obviously in pain.’
