The Second Cure

by Margaret Morgan

  Winnie was delighted when her widowed father had bequeathed the property to Richard and Brigid, and Richard moved in. She retained a nostalgic pride in her father’s creation and hoped it would stay in the family forever. No matter how old she grew, it always felt like her childhood haven.

  Richard had had some sympathetic renovations done over the years, including a new open-plan kitchen, and had converted the old dining room into a guest room with an en suite. Winnie would be sleeping there. It meant she didn’t have to worry about stairs and would be able to easily access the back verandah.

  That is where she now sat, with Goblin at her feet staring at her in that odd way dogs had. She gazed out into the valley’s palette of khaki and bluish greens and its dashes of creamy blossom in the gumtrees. It smelt like home. She’d seen it through seasons, through bushfires, through droughts, through all the changes of dozens of years, yet it remained timeless. Even the verandah itself, so solidly constructed, seemed eternal to her, having existed before she was born and would remain long after she died. There she’d played with her blocks and her dolls, learnt to read, recited her times tables, jumped with her skipping rope, had birthday parties, kissed Hector for the first time (her mother had been in the kitchen), and here she’d said ‘yes’ when he proposed.

  And then the tears, the shouting and the silences. Hector was not a Catholic. Even worse, he was studying for the Anglican priesthood. Winnie would convert, and Nora, her mother, was broken. Winnie’s abandonment of her Catholicism was the grossest of sins. Winnie was bewildered. It was the same god, surely? She was still a believer, just in a different way. Her mother would have none of it, and Hector reminded her that wars had been fought over the differences between their faiths. It was only once Richard was born that Nora resumed a relationship with her daughter. By the time Brigid came along, grandmotherhood had melted most of her resolve, and she finally allowed herself to like her son-in-law. Nora never accepted what she saw as Winnie’s betrayal of the church, however. Her daughter had dealt herself out of heaven and sinned against God himself. That her own grandchildren were to be damned by that selfishness was unforgivable. She accused Winnie of a weakness in her soul that let her love of the flesh abandon God.

  Her mother’s rancour over Winnie’s defection didn’t extend to her own husband’s lapsed Catholicism. Patrick O’Donnell’s refusal to attend church was never discussed openly in the family, as far as Winnie could recall. It must have exasperated and embarrassed Nora and been the subject of discussion in the parish, but, if so, that was hidden at home. Winnie did remember once, after she and her mother returned from church, stealing down to the garage where Da was working before she’d even changed out of her Sunday clothes. Her father had the bonnet of the old FX Holden open and was leaning in to turn something with a spanner. There was a smell of grease and tools, and the air under the house was cool. Most of her memories of her father entailed him fixing something broken, building things from scratch, with him holding a hammer, nails sticking out between his teeth, or up a ladder with a paintbrush. You could never tell him something needed fixing over dinner because he’d leap up straight away to do it, and if her mother made him wait, you could see him twitching with impatience to get the job done. She adored his practicality and the way he could manipulate the world with his hands.

  ‘Hello there, possum,’ he said, glancing up. ‘Don’t let your mother catch you wearing those down here.’ She was wearing her stiff red velveteen dress, white lace socks and the black patent shoes that pinched her ankles. Her gloves she’d stuffed in a pocket.

  ‘Da,’ she began, running her finger along the polished pale green of the Duco.

  ‘Hmm?’ he answered, from back under the bonnet, now tapping something with the spanner.

  ‘Why don’t you ever come to church with Mam and me?’

  He extracted his upper body from the car’s innards and stretched to his full height. He was a tall man, and when he’d hoist her, giggling, up onto his shoulders, she could touch the ceiling. He wiped his hands on a rag, but there was still grease on them, and when he swiped the sweat from across his brow a streak of black lined his forehead. ‘Well, there’s a question. It’s really not my style, Winnie. I used to go, back when I was your age, but it never made a lot of sense to me.’

  ‘But won’t you go to Hell?’

  ‘Oh, I think your mam’ll have a word with the big fella, get me a spot in Heaven, don’t you?’ He winked at her so she knew he was joking.

  ‘Do I have to go to church?’

  ‘Oh my word, you do indeed. Don’t you start getting notions or your mam’ll have my guts for garters. Now, you get yourself upstairs and out of those clothes, before I cover you with thick black grease!’ He turned his fingers into claws and lunged at her, growling and glowering and she squealed in delight, and then ran off upstairs to where her mother was tending the oven. Sunday was roast lamb and it was Winnie’s job to pick the mint for the sauce.

  She didn’t talk with her mother about her father’s pagan ways, perhaps gleaning that they were tolerated only by being buried. Still, Nora seemed prepared to give him latitude that she denied Winnie, who felt the undertone of her mother’s disapproval in every choice she made in her early life. Over the years, she came to explain it to herself as bitterness stemming from Nora’s inability to have more children after Winnie’s difficult birth. Her mother oscillated between criticism and cosseting, which taught the daughter to keep her emotional distance. She had blamed her mother for her judgementalism, but wasn’t she just as troubled by Richard and Brigid’s lack of faith? Her mother must also have feared for her offspring’s immortal soul. Anyway, perhaps her mother had been right to judge her harshly. If her faith had been strong, if she were strong, would she have lost her belief? Surely, it would not be possible to waver so thoroughly, despite what her doctor said. Was her willingness to throw over the faith of her people a final sign of her early lack of devotion, a spiritual weakness?

  She felt a sudden pang of love and loss for her father. He lived long after Nora had succumbed to cancer, and had contentedly pottered about alone in his beloved, rambling indulgence of a house for a good twenty years before the stroke took him. She missed him deeply.

  Goblin stirred, a deep growl in his throat. It escalated to barking and he shot off into the house. Winnie heard the front door close and Charlie’s call of greeting.

  ‘I’m out here, on the verandah,’ called Winnie, reluctant to be dragged back to the present. The house and its memories were soothing.

  Charlie came out with Goblin bouncing his joy at her return. She reached down and kissed Winnie on the cheek, then frowned and drew back. ‘Are you okay? Have you been crying?’

  ‘No, just remembering. Really, I’m fine. Tell me, Charlie, has Richard ever shown you his grandfather’s throne?’

  22.

  Brisbane

  The crowd was enormous and growing as tributaries of bodies poured in from buses and trains. She overlooked them from her not-entirely-authorised vantage point atop the building across the road from Parliament. People stretched from William Street, along Alice Street, and spilled into the Botanic Gardens. It looked to be at least fifteen-thousand strong. Not bad for a snap protest organised on social media. A protest that was illegal. It took guts to take part in an unlicensed demo in the present climate.

  She noticed other media folk arriving below and hurriedly setting up, caught off-guard at the size of the thing. Didn’t these people read their social media feeds? #Brisdemo had been trending since the night before. There had been protests against Effenberg and his predecessors in the past, but piecemeal and small. Maybe the expectation was that this would be the same, but Brigid had been reading the mood. Things were beginning to coalesce.

  The police clearly did pay attention to social media. They were there in serious numbers, uniformed, plain clothes … and some blokes in a black uniform Brigid didn’t recognise. She grabbed her binoculars to look closer at an insign
ia on a black leather sleeve. ‘QSSA.’ Queensland Special Security Agency. She had heard about this unit being set up by the Department of Justice and Order, but had no idea it was already established, let alone decked out in bespoke uniforms. She shifted the lens to see what sort of kit the agent had and whistled under her breath. Hanging on his belt were a spray dispenser (capsicum, maybe? Or worse?), a handgun, a Taser, a baton and various other gadgets she couldn’t identify, but that didn’t look friendly. At his heavily booted feet sat a black matte shield. The uniform was tight-fitting, of a material that had a faint metallic sheen. Not leather, after all. Some sort of protective fabric? It had articulated armour on the elbows and knees. The helmet was also black, with a dark visor obscuring his face and some sort of mask over the mouth. It appeared to have an electronic element, presumably comms. The overall effect was of power and intimidation, which was obviously the point. She counted forty QSSA officers and took wide shots of them, as well as some close-ups.

  Neither of the police nor their new comrades-in-arms was moving. They stood, impassively, while the crowd in front of Parliament House grew in number and volume. Placards and banners competed for space above the protesters’ heads, indicating the broad range of concerns of the demonstrators: abortion, gay rights, thete pride, Indigenous rights, the environment, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly. Brigid spotted one saying simply, ‘No gerrymander!’ Good luck with that, she thought. Sporadically chants broke out, led by someone with a megaphone. ‘Not the church, not the state, women must decide their fate!’ An oldie, alas still relevant. It faded away to be replaced with another: ‘Sexist, racist, anti-gay! Born-again bigots, go away!’ One sign caught her attention: ‘Get your rosaries off my ovaries!’ Nice sentiment, she thought, but she suspected its owner wasn’t too familiar with the accoutrements of Effenberg’s Protestantism. Not a lot of rosaries in his government. The protester turned her sign around. ‘Get your eucharist off my uterus!’ Ah, well, at least that was ecumenical.

  It seemed odd that the police hadn’t moved the demonstrators on yet given they had no permit to be there. Subtlety wasn’t Effenberg’s style, and tolerance certainly wasn’t. The atmosphere was eerie, and even from up on the roof Brigid thought she could sense the uneasiness of the crowd. It felt wrong.

  Enough of this distance, she decided. It was time to get among it and interview some protesters. Phone recorder primed, she returned to the fire stairs and went to join the fray.

  One thing you could say for Effenberg. His scattergun attack on civil rights had ensured a diversity of protesters, and Brigid was keen to interview a good cross-section. She avoided the obvious activists, preferring to get statements from average punters. An Aboriginal woman worried about cuts to Indigenous health programs. A teacher enraged by moves to deregister his union. A couple of teenagers protesting the flagged abortion laws. By far the most visible of the demonstrators, though, were from the LGBTI community. The crowd was dotted with rainbow flags.

  Her people, her tribe.

  Brigid found a man in his sixties or seventies, clearly unused to protests, but determined to be heard.

  ‘Jeff and I got married in 2018,’ Ron told her, ‘as soon as we could, when they changed the law. We’d been together for twenty-eight years before that. And now this Effenberg reckons he’s going to unmarry us? There’s no way. No way we’re letting him do that. And we thought the fights were over.’

  ‘Is Jeff here today?’ she asked.

  ‘No, he’s not too well. His heart. Effenberg does this to us, it’ll probably finish him off.’ The man blinked tears from his eyes.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Ron. Thank you for talking to me.’

  ‘Am I going to be on the radio?’ he asked, gesturing at the phone she was using to record him.

  ‘I’m with the Brisbane Chronicle,’ she said, ‘so I’ll be quoting you. Should be online tonight.’

  He nodded. ‘Jeff’ll like that. He’ll be proud of me.’ A fragile smile and he walked off to join the throng.

  The crowd was growing denser as more people threaded into the throng from the Botanic Gardens and the University of Technology. The heat of the day was moving from oppressive to overwhelming. Some in the pack were becoming restive, and she heard shouts directed at Effenberg, challenging him to emerge from the Parliament building. They rattled the cyclone-wiring barriers with increasing force. The mood was becoming angry. She held up her phone to get some footage, when, from the direction of William Street, came the sounds of yelling.

  She glimpsed police horses moving slowly towards her, pushing the crowd ahead of them. She turned. From the other direction, a tight line of QSSA officers was moving in, marching in slow lockstep, shields aloft. The air filled with booing, but the pincer was as relentless as it was sedate.

  The crowd was being squeezed from each end of the street and there was nowhere for them to go except over the wire fencing and onto the Parliament grounds.

  Kettling, it was called. A deliberate means to ensure panic and violence, it closed in a crowd and let psychology do its job. It was working. People were screaming in fear. The barrier gave way and people toppled over the green wrought-iron fence. Bodies upended. Limbs splayed. Terror.

  Now Brigid started to worry about her own safety as she was jostled by a mass of bodies moving as one. Even if she’d wanted to escape, she couldn’t. All around her people were crying out. A teenaged girl in front of her started sobbing hysterically.

  Then Brigid saw the line of QSSA officers split in two, and between them emerged a black truck. A huge nozzle sat on top. ‘Water cannon!’ screamed someone, and then it hit. The torrent knocked people over, but there was nowhere for them to fall except upon each other. Bodies were collapsing against each other, beneath each other. The crowd lurched into itself. Brigid saw a woman beside her subside and vanish. Others tried to reach for her, but they were so compressed it was impossible to even bend over. Brigid gasped for breath but was so crushed by the flesh around her she couldn’t fill her lungs.

  Then, behind her, the pressure was releasing. She twisted to see and realised the horses were retreating, creating a vacuum into which people poured. Panic drove the mass, shoving, stumbling, running, seeking escape from the relentless pressure of the water cannon.

  Dragged by the current of people along the street, Brigid felt the crush ease slightly and she made her way towards the footpath. She slipped on a slick beneath her feet and looked down. Something black. No, not black. Dark red. Blood.

  That was when she saw the body. Just a glimpse, between legs and feet. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked like Ron, the gay guy she’d spoken with. His face was squashed, a footprint on his cheek and an eye burst from its socket. The image was momentary as the wave of humans carried her along.

  She swallowed vomit and pushed her way to the air beyond. She heard the approach of ambulance sirens. Too late for at least one of the protesters.

  After talking with the ambos and the police – real police, not the QSSA paramilitary thugs – and learning with a thud of horror that she had been right, it was Ron, Brigid shuffled to the bus stop. Her mind was numbed by what she’d witnessed. She’d seen death before, but not like this. Not underfoot. Not someone she’d spoken with minutes before. With each lurch of the bus taking her to West End, her stomach heaved. She looked across the aisle. A man with a leather briefcase, carefully combed hair and a bespoke grey suit was staring at her. Faint disgust flickered across his face. She realised what she must look like. Sodden, bloody, dishevelled. Troublemaker. She thought of reactions, lines to throw at him, but couldn’t summon them. She felt crushed and weakened. She stared at the floor instead, waiting for her bus stop.

  The first thing she did when she returned to her flat was take off her joggers, now crusty with drying blood, and drop them in a bucket in the laundry. Then, peeling off her clothes, wetly rank from sweat and fear and the spray of the water cannon, she headed for the bathroom. She sat on the tiles under the shower and let s
calding water run through her hair and down her face and chest and thighs. Part of her wanted to burst into tears. Another part wanted to curl in a ball in bed and sleep. But she wouldn’t let herself do either.

  She had to write. She had to get it all down, her first-person account of the chaos, what she’d witnessed, what she’d been told, what she felt. Her phone and binoculars were gone, so she had no audio and no photos. They’d vanished in the melee, crushed underfoot. The thought immediately brought back the image of Ron, his destroyed face, and she forced herself to concentrate on it. It was an image that would stay with for her forever, and she’d use it. She’d use it to motivate her writing. Whenever she wondered what her job as a journalist was, she’d remember Ron and think of his widower, Jeff. She would honour them with honesty and courage. She’d honour them by shining daylight on Effenberg and his government.

  Effenberg. Brigid reached up for the soap and began lathering herself all over. She grabbed her loofah and scrubbed hard. Weariness was engulfing her, a reaction to the adrenalin, but she refused to succumb to it. She wondered why the troops had held back for so long. None of the usual warnings about this being an illegal demonstration. Just motionless, impassive silence, until the horses and the QSSA goons began squeezing the crowd, knowing there was nowhere for it to go apart from over the wire barrier. It was a deliberate strategy, calculated to create panic and a press of bodies that could only result in harm.

  They had got the result they wanted. They’d call it a ‘riot’ – they’d demonise the protesters, blaming them for the deaths and violence, and most of the media would play along. Then they’d exploit the public response to justify clamping down further on civil liberties and putting more resources into this new militia. This was why Effenberg had made his speech about abortion and gays and feminists and the Aboriginals and the unionists. He knew exactly which targets to rile, how to get exactly this outcome. Effenberg was many things, but fool he was not.