For Judith, Minou’s departure brought the same relief as the breaking and draining out of a storm. She felt relaxed and sleepy. Ceiling fans churned the night air. She and Hobday sat intimately, in a pool of light from a silver table lamp.
‘Another brandy?’ Hobday said. He, too, seemed relieved that Minou had left. ‘She’s nervous, you know. She won’t admit it, but until her family has landed, safe, she’s going to be like this – changeable.’ His eyes appealed to Judith to understand. There was a conspiracy of sympathy between them. Neither referred to another possibility, though it was there, humming in the air.
Judith told him about her divorce from Richard, a story which turned out to be long and rambling, and needing several more brandies to sustain it.
She began to cry quietly as she explained how she had wanted to have David aborted, that he was a cuckoo, and that every time she had looked at him in his bassinet he had gazed back at her with reproach.
‘All babies look reproachful,’ Hobday said. He touched her hand for a moment.
She said, ‘Thank you. Yes,’ and knew it was not true, for David had lost his reproachful expression only when he had mastered an imitation of Richard’s air of tolerant scorn for her.
‘I couldn’t bear to be alone with him. I went straight back to work when he was six weeks old. People thought I was brave. I’m really very conventional.’
Hobday’s tone was soothing, but firm. ‘You are wilfully tormenting yourself with these ideas. Stop.’
He felt no urge to confide to her his own years of selftorment. She was too young, too confused, incapable of understanding. ‘You’ve come here to do a job,’ he said. ‘Do it and deal with the other problems when you get home.’
‘Yes. I’m being ridiculous.’
She was none too steady on her feet; Hobday went with her to the guest suite, checked the airconditioning and set the alarm clock for 5.45. She kept saying ‘Please don’t bother’, not knowing his pleasure in these small, feminine gestures of caring, which he passed off now as a host’s good manners.
At the door he turned; she was sitting on the bed, her head cocked to one side. ‘Well, goodnight, Judith,’ he said. He felt old and tired and at odds with himself. But as he mounted the stairs to join Minou he thought, What do I care about that twitchy young woman and her commonplace problems?
Judith knew three things immediately when she woke up. That she had slept like a stone; that she would die if she did not have a drink of water; that she was still drunk.
There was a thermos jug of iced water on the bedside table, but its miserly quarter of a litre was not enough. She bumped into the bedroom doorway as she was moving through it. Navigation of the ocean of white-tiled floor with its reefs of armchairs and table lamps needed caution. It was sickeningly hot in the main reception room now that the ceiling fans were off and the curtains closed. The heat and the dangerous armchairs made progress slow. Walking with feet laid completely flat to the ground seemed the most prudent course.
After a while she had crossed the heaving sea and entered a clothes closet, which smelt of naphthalene and mice. Judith thought she might just lie down quietly for a little while with the clothes and the mice. But then she saw there was another door – that was surely the kitchen. It was an immensely large kitchen; armies of small ghosts were drawn up in the glass-fronted shelves. They were probably wineglasses, but they looked like ghosts. There were two stoves and more than two refrigerators humming to each other selfimportantly. The refrigerators might be the local commissars. Judith thought she would have to run to get past them to the little sink, far away at the end of the kitchen, where a tap dripped sweetly. One of the refrigerators gave her a whack on the hip as she slunk in front of it. And, then, there she was, expanding and contracting, standing at the sink, drowning in nectar.
On the third glass its taste changed to chlorinated water. The refrigerators didn’t try any tricks on the way back. She got tired half way across the white sea and sat down in an armchair. She supposed it was about 3 am.
The noise that woke her, maybe a minute, maybe half an hour later, snapped her head from her neck with a twist and put it back on again the right way round. It was a sound from Bedlam and it came from directly above.
Judith returned quickly to the guest suite. With the door shut and the airconditioner drumming she could not hear what was happening upstairs, where Minou was being pursued by devils. And Hobday. There had been two sets of feet galloping across the floor upstairs. Hobday’s yell of ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ did not sound equal to saving her.
‘Sleep well?’ Minou asked. She was inhaling the steam from a cup of jasmine tea. They were at breakfast. It was pre-dawn and under the electric lights in the shadowy room Judith felt puffy and larval. She nodded.
‘And you?’
‘Always, la.’
The Black and White put in front of Judith a plate with two eggs, fried in rancid-smelling butter, then stood back with her hands on her hips watching, as a child might stand back to watch with delight when it has lit the fuse to a large firecracker. Judith stared at the rubbery white and orange things – the texture of squid, she knew without even prodding them. The Black and White cackled.
‘You drink wine too much. Ha-ha,’ she said.
She had given Minou a bowl of fresh, peeled fruit and a lacy little pancake over which she poured, drop by drop – alert for the order to stop – a citrus syrup.
‘I don’t know how you can eat eggs for breakfast,’ Minou said.
Judith had not asked for eggs. Perhaps the appalling noises in the night had been another of Minou’s jokes? She looked, now, like an advertisement for something wholesome or beautifying – muesli, breath freshener? Her face was painted-on carefully and her eyeliner toned accurately with her green skinny-legged trousers. The cap with Hermes wings was lying where she had tossed it on to the sideboard.
‘Hurry up,’ Minou said. Her tone nevertheless suggested that she would indulge all of Judith’s eccentricities, despite inconvenience to herself. ‘Now remember: you’re my assistant. You’re working the film projector. If they ask about your tape-recorder, say that you’re recording the children’s singing. Look like a High Commission hausfrau, la!’
Film cans of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck’s Birthday and Goofy Goes Fox Hunting, plus Perth – Gateway to the West were stacked on the front seat of the Citroen. They were using Minou’s car today. The projector and I Can Speak English books were already in the boot, Bala said. The morning air was a watercolour haze through which the jungle trees in gardens on the other side of the road loomed silently, like friendly ships encountered at sea. A kingfisher swept forward from them and lassoed the Residence front garden in its flight before landing on a frangipani tree near the car. The blue of its wings almost hurt the eyes. Judith stared at it.
‘You’re as bad as Adrian, la,’ Minou said. ‘He’s always looking out for that silly bird.’
Minou spent the drive – through the forest suburb, past commercial areas of boarded-up Chinese shophouses and huge blocks of government flats sluttish with washing lines – chatting to Bala. When he had exhausted the saga of his son’s first tooth, she lapsed into silence.
For the third time Judith checked her cassette recorder. ‘You’ll introduce me to the camp leader, won’t you?’ she asked.
Minou grunted.
The Citroen was now climbing one of the hills that cropped up in the city, a shabby oasis of small trees and vines. The road was winding and surfaced with grey-white sand, barely wide enough for two cars to pass. Since the morning was still cool they had the car windows wound down, instead of using the airconditioner.
Judith sniffed. ‘God, what’s that?’ A smell, not of decay but of concentrated, living filth, had entered the car. Around there was nothing to be seen but sandy road and bright green vines.
‘That is 705 new Australian immigrants waiting for a Qantas flight to take them to the promised land,’ Minou said. ‘You should smell Bidong,
la.’ She glanced at Judith’s tape-recorder. ‘A nice little story for your nice little newspaper. My mother and boys will be going to Bidong. Or Cherating. The Malays have cut down all the trees at Cherating and wired in the beach so that the children can’t swim. They can sit all day in the sun and look at the water, which is just six metres away, on the other side of the wire. It was too much trouble for the Malaysian government to use another few metres of wire. They said that if they did the communist secret agents – you know, the boat people are all communist agents – would swim away and start a revolution. So instead they give the children sunstroke.’ She snapped on her larrikin grin.
A tree-denuded area of ground had come into view and a high fence of cyclone and barbed wire. Behind it there were shelters made from packing cases and sheets of galvanized iron. Newly washed rags of clothing were spread out to dry on the drunken houses. A few children had hooked their fingers through the diamonds of wire. As they caught sight of the car they shouted.
The main gate – two metres of barbed-wire overhang – traffic boom and police post now appeared. Rushing towards it were scores of barefooted children. Judith saw a collective smile of worn-down milk teeth and over-large, square secondary teeth that stretched from face to face. Malay police with pistols in white holsters shouted at them to get back, but the kids were reckless with excitement, calling ‘Minou! Minou!’ and hooking themselves on to the wire. A policeman grabbed a boy and pulled him from the gate, as one might pull a cat off an expensive curtain. He tossed the child to the ground.
The gate was opened; the boom raised. Bala opened the boot and took out the projector. A cheer went up from the children, who had been knocked over and trodden on as the gate was opened. Several scuffled for the honour of carrying the equipment. The police looked bored but businesslike. Only one, an older man, was smiling.
‘Here goes,’ Judith thought. Minou was already out of the car, sauntering over the naked earth towards the police. She had not looked back.
Judith caught up with her as she reached the police box beside the gate. The children swarmed around both of them, their wonderstruck, black-bean eyes glistening. A greasy exercise book was opened for signing; Minou disengaged her hand from the paw of a little girl and wrote. She looked up at the young policeman who was standing inside the box, jerked her head at Judith and said something that Judith did not hear. The cop blinked. As Judith stepped forward to sign the book he snapped it shut. Minou was already moving off, borne away like a cork in water by the laughing children. Judith looked after her but she was ten metres off, walled in by bodies and noise.
The stench of the camp was overpowering now. A group of teenage children had hung back beside Judith and watched her inquisitively. ‘I’m Lady Hobday’s assistant,’ she said. ‘I’m working the projector.’
The policeman smiled slowly; in his line of business he had heard everything. ‘You are an Australian journalist,’ he said. ‘Lady Hobday gave you a lift here in her motorcar.’
Judith laughed; the policeman laughed.
It was the old policeman who finally gave in, spreading his hands palm upwards, in that supplicant, helpless way that Kanan had, and giving a self-deprecating grin for his weakness. What could one do? The problem was too great, his outstretched palms had assigned responsibility to Allah. He had seen, in the set of Judith’s mouth, that she was prepared to argue with him all morning to get her way. The young policemen stood back in a circle, their arms crossed over their chests.
‘White women are as hard as Chinese,’ one murmured to another. ‘Chinese don’t respect anything but money. White people don’t respect any laws.’
‘They stole our country.’
‘They imported the dirty Chinese to rob us.’
‘They kick us around.’
‘No respect.’
When old Rashid bin Ali, the sergeant, gave in, they all smiled at Judith and one offered to find the camp leader for her. All the children had disappeared, sucked up by Minou’s magic like leaves to a whirlwind. Only adults and older adolescents were still around – women in black pyjama trousers and floral blouses were squatting in groups, chatting, or washing clothes in filthy water. Most of the males were as inert as caged beasts: they lay stupefied on the refugee-issue sleeping mats of red-and-white or blue-and-white cotton. Some of them had their eyes shut; others stared at the rice-bag ceilings they had rigged up for shelter. Two young men naked to the waist and with black cotton bands knotted across their foreheads were standing at the camp kitchen, chopping up chickens – heads, wingtips, feet. Only the beaks and toenails were deemed unfit to eat. They had already shredded a two-hundred-litre drumful of cabbage. The chickens had been too long out of refrigeration and were beginning to rot. Judith gagged as she approached. The smell of the camp was shit, piss and high flesh.
‘It is wonderful here,’ the camp leader said. He mouthed the words carefully, slowly. ‘After Bidong it is wonderful.’ Dressed in shorts and refugee-issue rubber thongs, he was instantly identifiable as a business executive – soft belly, spectacles, those bland businessman’s hands with which he gestured to the office-rice-store-film room, the open-air kitchen, the latrine pits, the sign boards above the wood-iron-and-ricebag rows of shelters. The signs said K1067 and L235.
‘They are the boat registration numbers. We are organized according to the boats we came in.’ He had been the manager of the biggest scrap-metal contractor in South-East Asia, he said. ‘I bought the scrap metal from the war – aeroplanes, tanks, any metal things, even spent bullets, and we sorted it and sold it to Singapore, Hong Kong. On May Day, 1975, I was called in and all my possessions were taken away by the State and I was required to stay on, without pay, managing the business for them. You see, I know how to do it well. I know everything about scrap metal, how to manage a big business. I tried to flee three times, but failed twice. That cost most of my money. On the third time we got a thirteen-metre boat, with ninety-six people on board, just a four-day trip it was. Then two months in Bidong. I’ve been in Bellfield three months, waiting for my wife who’s still in Bidong.’ He had been speaking quietly; his voice was now trapped down inside him, as a man’s voice would be if confessing to a crime. ‘My wife, you see, has some problem with her chest and she can’t pass the medical for Australia.’ He stared at the ground. ‘It’s only one lung.’
‘Is she getting treatment on Bidong?’
He smiled apologetically. ‘There are no medicines. There’s no refrigeration on Bidong – no electricity – so there’s no point in taking medicines there. They would only get ruined.’
‘How long will you wait for her?’Judith asked.
He gestured with his soft hands. ‘You see, her baby died on Bidong. If I leave Malaysia she will lose contact. This man here …’
A Chinese or Vietnamese – it was difficult to tell the difference – was approaching them. Everyone, even Minou, admitted that few could distinguish by appearance Hoa from non-Hoa. The man was wearing an ill-fitting woollen suit and carrying a cardboard briefcase. A woman in black pyjamas trailed behind him in a daze.
The man beamed at Judith. ‘G’day, Aussie,’ he said. He had his hand out. ‘I’m from Newcastle – y’know Newcastle? I work in the injineering shop for BHP. Y’know it?’ He turned to the woman and swept her forward: she looked drugged. ‘Seven years! I got a scholarship to study injineering in Sydney seven years ago. Left her with the kids for a year and, y’know, the war … She had to move, I moved to Newcastle. Seven years! And I found her this morning. Spent all my money looking for her. Been to the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore. Probably lost m’job, now.’ He roared with laughter. Judith and the camp leader laughed; the woman smiled, uncomprehendingly. ‘Just think. She coulda got down to Aussieland, maybe gone to Newcastle even, and we might never’ve met. Passed each other in the street. Tsk.’
‘That would have been crook,’ Judith said.
‘Real crook,’ he agreed. For a moment he was dumbfounded by misery, but amazeme
nt reasserted itself quickly. ‘Y’should see the kids now,’ he confided to Judith. ‘Grown!Y’wouldn’t believe it.’
The camp leader gave a little cough of distress and the man and his impassive wife moved off towards the junk-heap shelters.
‘Do you think I will find work in Australia?’ the camp leader asked. Behind his spectacles his eyes pleaded; he was apologizing for bothering her.
‘Unemployment is high.’
‘I have been told. Before I left Ho Chi Minh City I taught myself to cook. I learnt to cook twenty different menus, so maybe …’
‘Vietnamese food is certainly becoming known in Australia. There are two Vietnamese restaurants in Canberra.’
‘Really? Do you yourself like it? I will cook for you. I will come to your house. I will show you how I can cook.’ His soft hands coaxed at the air to get her to believe in him.
From a wooden building nearby there had been shouts of children’s laughter. This was now replaced by singing. ‘Lady Hobday – we call her The Angel. She comes almost every day she is in Kuala Lumpur. In Bidong she sleeps on the ground like everyone else, uses the same – you know, the latrines there. There are thirty thousand people and only two latrines.
Judith nodded stiffly. She thought, Ralph said he’ll be back from Bidong this afternoon. I’ll ask him, as a favour, to get me on to the island. If he says no, I’ve had it.
‘And she is not even … well, she is of mixed race,’ the camp leader added.
‘Yes. Most unfortunate,’ Judith replied primly. She had been wondering, since Minou double-crossed her at the gate, where she would stay when she at once moved out of the Residence which, inevitably, she must now do. Perhaps Minou would let her walk back to town, as well, down that ankle-breaking sandy road. ‘Shall we?’ she said to the camp leader, thinking again, Here goes.
Judith squeezed past the sacks of rice – big tight bellies lurching against each other – that littered the corridor leading to the film room. Outside the sun had already burned off the early haze and had been strong enough to make Judith sweat lightly. The corridor, with its sharp smell of jute-sacks, was uncomfortably hot; the air in the film room must have been 43°C. Scores of children were sitting on the floor, singing. It felt to Judith as if the air in there was pure carbon dioxide and that she would pass out. She breathed deeply, preparing herself to outface Minou, to say to her, Thanks for the lift. I’m walking back to town, now.
Turtle Beach Page 18
