Spirits of the Ghan

by Judy Nunn

  ‘Thank you for your advice, Lilian,’ Angie said, ‘but as you can see I don’t intend to follow the academic path.’ Then head held high, dignity intact, she sailed out the door.

  Lilian admired the girl’s spirit, but she felt sorry for Angie. Looks and sex appeal might well open doors, but on a superficial level only and then only fleetingly. The girl would never be accepted into the art world as she so longed to be. You poor little thing, Lilian thought. When the first signs of age lay claim you’ll be destined for obscurity; your work won’t stand the test of time. There’s no easy way, dear, not in the long run.

  It very soon became evident that Angie had chosen what she presumed to be the easy way.

  ‘That’s Angie,’ Dave said, pointing at the television screen.

  They were watching the ABC news several weeks later, which concluded with a brief report on a red-carpet event, a charity fundraising extravaganza at the entertainment centre. Lilian had no idea what it was – she hadn’t been paying attention. She did now, leaning forward in her armchair, eyes glued to the TV screen.

  Sure enough, there was Angie, looking very glamorous on the arm of a stylishly trendy man probably in his mid-forties but posing as mid-thirties, Armani-suited, highlighted hair pulled back in a pony-tail. He was shepherding her along the red carpet as flashbulbs popped and fresh limousines pulled up behind them, fans squealing at each new arrival. Off-camera a female reporter’s voice kept up a running commentary, tone hushed and deferential, lending an ABC gravitas to the proceedings.

  ‘And now here’s well-known entrepreneur, Josh Bradley, one of the co-producers of tonight’s AIDS Gala concert …’

  Once level with the camera, Josh paused, putting his arm around Angie’s waist, an obvious signal, and together they smiled down the barrel.

  ‘… And with him his protégée, young up-and-coming artist Angela Marsdon, who is to figurehead the Bradley Andy Warhol retrospective next year …’ The reporter read directly from notes sent to her by Bradley’s publicist.

  Josh gave Angie’s waist a quick squeeze, they shared a smile and a brief wave to camera and moved off as the reporter turned her attention to the arrival of the major guest star whose limousine had just pulled up.

  ‘Looks like you were right,’ Dave said. Lilian had told him all about her exchange with Angie and her own feelings on the subject. ‘She’s certainly opted for the celebrity path.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lilian replied, staring distractedly at the screen, where Mel Gibson was climbing out of the limo to the delighted shrieks of young women. She pressed the remote’s mute button.

  Dave sensed her concern. ‘Ah well, love, you can’t begrudge the girl her moment in the sun. Even if it doesn’t last, it’s exciting and she’s young.’

  ‘Of course.’ Lilian returned a smile, not daring to mention what was uppermost in her mind. She wasn’t concerned about Angie at all: she was concerned about her son. Josh Bradley’s manner had been rather intimate – was he just training his protégée in celebrity behaviour as it had appeared or was there possibly more to the relationship?

  The nagging thought remained with Lilian for the next day or so. She said nothing to Dave and she naturally did not bring up the subject with Angie, although she did mention that they’d seen her on television.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it wonderful?’ Angie responded enthusiastically. ‘Josh is going to promote me as the centre of the exhibition’s local content. He says I’ll represent a whole new generation of Australian Pop artists. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime.’

  ‘It certainly is,’ Lilian said. So the girl has become the face of something after all, she thought, no different from a skin cream or fragrance really.

  ‘Matt’s so proud of me, Lilian,’ Angie’s face was radiant, ‘you should have heard his voice when I told him.’ She laughed with delight. ‘He was even more excited than I was. He’s so happy for me!’

  Nobody’s that good an actress, Lilian thought. Relief brought with it an unexpected wave of affection. ‘And so am I, dear,’ she said, ‘so am I.’ She hadn’t wanted this marriage to go ahead, she’d hoped her son would get over his ‘crush’, but she knew now it wasn’t a crush, that Matt deeply loved this girl. If Angie’s love for him is equally deep, Lilian thought, and it certainly appears to be, then surely that’s all that matters.

  Over the ensuing weeks, however, as Josh Bradley continued to promote his protégée and as Angie’s celebrity status grew, Lilian found it difficult to remain unconcerned. Apparently there was innuendo in the gossip pages of tabloids and popular magazines. They were publications she never read and she might not have heard of the fact had it not been for Angie herself.

  ‘They’re actually suggesting we might be an item.’ Angie had been filling them in on the latest developments over Dave’s Sunday roast. She’d decided not to go home that weekend. ‘It really is wicked of Josh,’ she continued, ‘he always says he’s my mentor or patron, and that we’re just good friends, but I think he plants the gossip himself. He’s a shameless publicity monger.’

  ‘Which is why he’s so successful, no doubt,’ Dave said, spearing another potato and reaching for the gravy boat.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Lilian looked from one to the other. Suspicion was obviously the farthest thing from Dave’s mind, but then Dave always took people at their face value and he’d liked Angie right from the start. Lilian couldn’t help feeling a stab of concern. Is the girl perhaps covering her back? Matt’s due home in three weeks.

  ‘I wonder how Matt will react,’ she said.

  ‘Oh he thinks it’s funny,’ Angie replied airily. ‘I’ve told him all about it. I read the gossip columns out to him and we have a good laugh.’

  There were smiles all around and Dave refilled the glasses of red.

  Lilian found it difficult to believe that Angie was anything other than genuine: she appeared so guileless, so incapable of duplicity. But if I’m wrong, she thought, disaster is looming. If Angie betrays Matt it will break his heart. Lilian hoped fervently that the girl was above suspicion and that nothing terrible was about to happen.

  But something terrible did happen.

  It was just five days later, early on a Friday evening.

  Dusk had fallen. The road was gloomy and deserted and the Porsche was travelling at a hundred and twenty kilometres an hour, not fast at all by European standards, he said, and besides, in a Porsche 911 you’re only cruising at one-twenty clicks. He promised her he wouldn’t go any faster, though. He appeared to be driving responsibly and they were both enjoying the ride, but he was talking in the vigorous, animated way he so often did and that was perhaps why he didn’t see the semi-trailer until it was virtually upon them.

  She’d been vaguely aware of lights in the distance, but she’d been listening to him so avidly she hadn’t realised that the Porsche had slowly crept over to the other side of the road. Then she saw the truck bearing down on them and screamed.

  The truck saw them also, directly in its path. The driver leaned on the horn and there was the awful bellow of air brakes, but the truck couldn’t stop. Nor could the Porsche change direction in time. Seconds before impact it veered, but not enough to get clear. The truck caught the driver’s side directly, crunching through the metal and sending the Porsche spinning like a toy, over and over, to land a hundred metres away.

  Josh Bradley and Angela Marsdon were killed instantly. The force of the impact left Josh virtually unrecognisable, but Angela, with a cleanly broken neck, remained in death as beautiful as ever. Autopsy reports would later show a considerable presence of cocaine and Dexedrine in Josh’s body. Angela’s body was drug free.

  It was, not unexpectedly, headline news for weeks. A spokesperson for Josh Bradley’s production company said the pair were travelling to Canberra in order to visit the modern art exhibition at the National Gallery the following day. Josh’s decision had been a last-minute one, the publicist said, and separate hotel rooms had been booked at the
Hyatt, a fact which the hotel verified. There was nevertheless endless conjecture in the press about the personal relationship shared between Josh Bradley and his protégée, which inevitably led to discussion at dinner tables and parties. Were they sleeping together or weren’t they? The general consensus of opinion seemed to be in the affirmative.

  ‘Nothing was going on between them, Matt.’ Lilian didn’t know what to say to her son, who seemed to have disappeared into himself. She loathed the press for adding the suspicion of betrayal to his burden of grief. ‘Their relationship was purely professional, nothing more …’

  Matt slowly turned to look at her, his expression unfathomable. What was it she could see in his eyes? Contempt? Amazement? Disbelief? Then she realised it was all three. He didn’t for one minute believe the press reports and he didn’t care in the least what was being said. He was simply amazed that she should bring up the subject.

  Lilian had no words of comfort. She longed to offer some show of support, to be of some practical assistance, but she felt utterly inept in the face of her son’s grief. He was far better off alone with his father. Dave who said and did nothing seemed able to reach out simply with his company. The two, so alike, had always shared a connection that didn’t need words.

  She was grateful for one thing though. Matt’s memory of Angie would remain unsullied. She would always be his and his alone. But in Lilian’s mind there was an element of uncertainty. Had the girl been faithful? No-one would ever really know.

  1879

  Emily is called Akarletye now. She has forgotten she was once Emily. That name is of no importance. Distant memories of her father and her mother and her previous life remain buried in the recesses of her mind, but they no longer come to the fore as they once did. That life belongs to another person, another person who existed in another time.

  ‘Akarletye’ is the Arunta name for the pretty white blossom of the bush orange tree that grows on the river flats. The family named her so for the whiteness of her skin, and they fondly refer to her as Letye for short. But there are times when they are careful to cover Letye’s whiteness. The singing string that now stretches across their desert land and the lands of others, its poles humming a high-pitched baleful song, is linked here and there by the houses of white men. When the family’s travels take them near one of these houses they cover Letye in mud, or if there is no water to make mud they cover her in charcoal dust mixed with kangaroo fat from the cooking fire. If the white men see her they will steal her back as one of their own. But Letye is no longer theirs. Letye belongs to the family now.

  Letye runs her hands over the bare skin of her swollen belly, feeling the movement of the child within. She glances at Nyapi, sensing he is watching her from where he sits by the fire’s embers some distance away. Their eyes meet and they share a smile before Nyapi returns to his work. He is making a new spear, melting a portion of the spinifex gum that he carries with him at all times. With the softened resin he will attach a shard of quartz, hard and sharp, to the slender acacia tree limb he has selected with care and straightened after heating over the embers. He has been working on his spear for some time now and is fully focused upon the task, just as his father and his grandfather are when making weapons and tools, for it is a laborious business that requires intricate skill. But unlike his father, Tjumuru, and his grandfather, Atanum, young Nyapi finds himself occasionally distracted. He cannot help his eyes flickering over to where his wife sits with the other three women.

  In their wooden dishes they are winnowing and panning the grass seeds they have collected. When they have separated and discarded the chaff they will grind the seeds into flour with their grinding stones and the flour will be mixed with water to form seed cakes to bake in the hot ashes of the fire. The women’s work, too, is laborious, but their full focus is not essential and they chatter together as they toil. The current object of their attention is three-year-old Kwala, who is playing with the dingo pup. Or perhaps the dingo pup is playing with Kwala, it is difficult to tell, but the two infant creatures rolling around in the red dust of the dried creek bed where the family has set up camp are a source of amusement to the women.

  Letye laughs at the sight and her pleasure so delights Nyapi that he wants to laugh with her. He is proud as he watches her caress her belly, knowing she is feeling their child. When they are alone he puts his hands on her belly and presses his ear against the tight skin and he can hear his baby. He whispers to the child he will soon hold in his arms.

  He resists the urge now to laugh along with Letye. Instead he pretends indifference to the women and their chatter. Not far away Atanum is butchering the kangaroo that Tjumuru speared that afternoon; it would be unseemly to laugh. But Nyapi is secretly bursting with pride. He is two years younger than Letye and had only recently been initiated into manhood when he and his father and grandfather had found her, close to death. Now three years later and barely nine months after their marriage, his wife is about to give birth. Having sired a child so soon after wedlock is proof of his virility. Now he is truly a man.

  In truth Nyapi is bursting with something far greater than pride. He is bursting with a love so fierce he finds it difficult to disguise.

  Letye tips a portion of the now separated seeds from her wooden dish onto her flat base stone. Then, taking up her round hand stone, she starts grinding the seeds into flour. The two stones are her personal tools that travel with her, carried in the wooden dishes and bowls she bears, like the other women do theirs, on her head, the weight cushioned by emu feathers.

  Her eyes remain on Nyapi as she works. She is amused by the way he concentrates so studiously on his spear, for she knows what he is thinking. She knows, too, that he feels her eyes upon him, and each time he glances at her she offers a teasing smile. When he guiltily returns to his spear she wants to laugh, but out of respect she does not. They will laugh together when they are alone. This is a game she often plays. Letye’s love equals her husband’s.

  It was Nyapi’s love that saved Letye from the all-consuming terror she knew in the long ago days when she was still Emily.

  At first she had recoiled from the touch of the boy-man, convinced of his intention to defile her. She had recoiled from everything back then: the black faces that surrounded her, the harsh, jabbering tongue, the strange foods and potions she was forced to eat, but most of all she had recoiled from the nakedness. She had never seen a man unclothed and she found the sight shocking. The women shocked her also for apart from a pubic covering that hung like a small apron from a string around their waists they too were naked, and the youngest of the three, little more than a girl herself, openly suckled a child. But the most shocking thing of all to Emily had been her own nakedness.

  The women had stripped her while she was unconscious, coating her sunburnt face and limbs with a foul-smelling lotion and placing small stones on various parts of her body. She had tried to cover herself, but they had not allowed her to do so and she’d not had the strength to fight them. She had been forced to lie there in a state of unbearable humiliation, aware that all, including the men, could see her nakedness. She had wished at that moment that they had left her to die.

  They had never returned her clothes to her. Discarding them somewhere along the path of their travels, the women had provided her with a pubic covering instead. Clothes were obviously of no importance.

  Those early days with the family had all followed a similar pattern. In the mornings when the men had set off on their hunt the women, together with the two children, travelled slowly towards the next campsite, taking their time in order that Emily in her weakened state might keep up.

  Nangala was Atanum’s wife and the matriarch of the family, a lean, strong-boned woman in her early fifties. The other two women, Ngita and young Macanti, were Tjumuru’s wives. They would gather fruits and berries and seeds as they went, and painstakingly extract grubs from the roots and trunks of trees. Ngita’s nine-year-old daughter Tama would keep up a running monologue pointi
ng things out to Emily in eager detail. Little Tama, Nyapi’s younger sister, was excited to be teaching the strange white girl their ways.

  Later in the day the group would meet up with the men at the pre-arranged campsite. The family’s knowledge of their people’s land was intimate. Even Tama carried a map in her head of all the choice campsites. And if by chance the family were travelling the less familiar lands of others, as they sometimes did in order to attend ceremonial occasions, the women would follow the signs their men had left. Little Tama knew how to read all the signs too.

  It had been Nangala who had named Akarletye. Ever-observant and always wise in her decisions, the matriarch had noted the white girl’s innate fear of the men and decided that a family name would help salve that fear. The white girl would be called Akarletye, she had announced, and the women and young Tama had immediately adopted the diminutive ‘Letye’.

  Emily had been grateful to the women for saving her life and for welcoming her into their midst as they had, but the adoption of her new name had done little to alleviate the awful trepidation that visited her daily. The men had remained fearsome figures, arousing in her a sense of terror whenever they came near. At the campsite she would keep her eyes averted from their nakedness, feeling herself start to shake, expecting at any moment the unspeakable. So when the boy-man, whom she had thought the least fearful of the three, had sat on the ground beside her and touched her arm, she had started violently, sure that this was to be the moment of her defilement.

  She had been wrong. Nyapi had shuffled away on his bare backside, hands in the air in a placating gesture. His intention had been to comfort the white girl, who was clearly terrified. He’d had no wish to further alarm her.

  From that moment on Nyapi had taken care never to touch Letye, but he had made it his mission to welcome her into their group as the women had done, and he had determined to teach her that he and his father and grandfather meant her no harm. At the end of each day he would bring her the collection of small prey he had caught, bandicoots and various sorts of lizards and goannas. They would be dangling by their necks from the woven string band about his waist. Each of the men wore such a string band in order to carry smaller prey while keeping their hands free for the hunting of larger game.