‘He helped me sit, gave me cold tea to drink and balls of rice. So kind, to buy rice to greet his wife. I had not hoped for a man so kind. We waited there on the sand for the waves to bring the others in,’ she whispered. ‘The rain stopped, but the waves still crashed. At last the waves brought them in to shore. Shadows on the sand, first one and then another. But they had no life, no breath. I cried, there on the sand, next to my dead friends, my friends who’d travelled with so much hope, the unknown man who rowed us to new lives. We had to bury them behind the sand hills. All the hope they’d travelled with, all lost.’
Fish stared. Sand hills! They couldn’t be the bodies in the church then.
‘The boat washed up as well. The men smashed it and let the wreckage float,’ said Mrs Lee’s tortured mumble. ‘If the boat was found, police would know I’d come ashore. No one else could come ashore if they found the boat or bodies . . .’
Crumpled-paper eyelids shut. The tears still flowed.
I have to make this better, thought Fish desperately. I’ve caused this, and all for nothing! I failed Dad. I can’t destroy this woman too.
‘Were you happy?’ It made old people happy to talk about their grandchildren, didn’t it? Kids could disappoint their parents, like she’d always disappointed Mum, but grandkids were different. ‘All your children, grandchildren . . .’
It was as if Mrs Lee didn’t hear her. ‘No one must find out! No one! But at last I told Matilda. Just Matilda. She drove me in her car. We planted trees for them, took food and incense. Every year we visited, just me and her. Every year . . .’
Till Matilda had died, thought Fish. Or till Mrs Lee had grown too frail? But she wouldn’t ask. Had no right to ask, to disturb the secrets buried with the women’s and the sailor’s bodies in the sand hills.
How many other bodies lay unmarked under the paddocks of Australia? What other secret landings had Australia’s beaches seen, back before birth certificates became a necessity for life? Had Mrs Lee ever been able to vote or get a driver’s licence or a healthcare card?
But no one, perhaps, had been tactless enough to question her. Only Fish.
‘You did them proud,’ Fish said quietly. ‘You are loved and admired in Gibber’s Creek. I am so glad you made that journey.’
And suddenly the old eyes were looking at her, truly looking at her. ‘The hardest journey was the first years here,’ she said. ‘Learning English, learning this man, my husband. Leaving my home and all I knew for this country that did not want me.’
Fish flinched. ‘We don’t want you!’ she’d told Dad. She hadn’t yelled at him. She’d spoken calmly, rationally. Told him how his arrival was ruining her life and Mum’s.
And he’d said nothing. Hadn’t packed or even taken his jacket. Just walked out of the house and not come back. He had faced the dark water, just like Mrs Lee, and an even more dangerous voyage. But Fish hadn’t cared about the danger, hadn’t even thought what it must be like to lose your country, home and friends . . .
She forced her attention back to Mrs Lee, the newly sharp eyes watching her. ‘It’s hard for you too, in Australia, eh?’
‘I was born here,’ said Fish. Then, ‘Yes.’ For it had been hard lately. And maybe, yes, she admitted, much more than maybe, before.
‘I had to choose for my children,’ said Mrs Lee. ‘An easier life, or stay Chinese.’ She shrugged. ‘So we became Australian. My son married an Australian girl. His children married Australian, English, New Zealander. My mother would have said barbarians. But that is what I chose.’
‘I am Australian,’ said Fish defiantly. She had been saying it all her life, assuming her father had been a great-grandson to goldfield Chinese. But you couldn’t say that with a South Vietnamese father at your shoulder, one who had not even wanted to be Australian until his country vanished.
‘Ha,’ said Mrs Lee.
‘I’m sorry I asked about the bodies. I didn’t really know about them. I was asking about the other bodies, the ones they found last year in the burned-out church.’
‘Matilda’s church?’
‘I suppose,’ said Fish. It had been on Matilda’s land, on Drinkwater. Dad went to church. It had seemed a bit weird, a Vietnamese going to a Christian church.
‘Matilda was my friend, right from the start. Neither of us fitting in, both young, both girls. But in the end,’ said Mrs Lee proudly, ‘we owned the town between us, and more too. Matilda helped me. Only once the police came asking about how I came to Australia, but Matilda asked Mr Drinkwater to have a word. The squatter’s word was law back then.’ She gripped Fish’s hand. ‘Say prayers for them,’ she instructed. ‘Say prayers for my friends under the sand hills.’
When had the tears begun to flow down Fish’s cheeks too? She needed to get away. Away from people. Somewhere she could think. ‘Yes,’ said Fish. ‘Yes. I’ll pray.’
Chapter 24
Sale at Lee’s Emporium
Gibber’s Creek Centenary tea towels, now only $2 for six!
Men’s car coat $9.99
Men’s velour V-neck jumpers $24.99
Men’s suit with waistcoat, perfect for that tie-less casual-formal look $91.99
Buckle-trimmed ladies’ boots $29.99
And more!
JED
‘Lamingtons. Yum,’ said Jed, lifting the Gibber’s Creek Centenary tea towel off the box, inhaling the chocolate coconut scent and trying not to drool. Her body craved all the fun she had lost in the last five months of not eating. Scarlett had gone into town to see Leafsong and replenish their larder.
‘The CWA are having a lamington drive. These are Mrs Perkin’s,’ said Blue, with the expertise of over forty years of eating other people’s cakes at Gibber’s Creek. ‘She’s won the award at the Show the last six years running.’ She picked Mattie up from her highchair.
‘Um um!’ said Mattie.
‘Did you hear that?’ asked Blue delightedly. ‘She said Grandma.’
‘Or Mum. Or yum.’
‘You’re brilliant, aren’t you?’ Blue nuzzled Mattie’s head. ‘Now you say bye-bye to Mummy. She’s going to go and see Daddy.’
‘Ummy urgle book!’ said Mattie happily.
‘I thought I might see Sam later, now Scarlett can look after Mattie. Would you mind if I went for a walk instead?’ asked Jed.
‘Why should I mind? We’re going to play Wazzat. Wazzat over there? It’s a chair. Wazzat? That’s Maxi!’
‘Umi,’ said Mattie.
‘See? I said she’s talking.’
Jed dropped a kiss onto her possibly brilliant daughter’s head, took a lamington, then on reflection took three more and wrapped them in the plastic wrap Blue still didn’t use.
She knew where she was walking even before she set off. It was time to make her peace with the billabong. Because the billabong had saved her so many times, not just in the bushfire but also when she met old Fred, and in all the conversations there with Matilda. Even after Matilda’s death, she had gone to the billabong to pretend that she still heard her. And sometimes the whispers were, just maybe, real . . .
She followed the winding river this time, rather than take the more direct path — that was getting overgrown, now Sam no longer mowed it. And Dribble’s gutters needed cleaning too. She’d remembered to keep the water in the batteries topped up, but someone probably needed to check the solar system.
Time to find someone to do odd jobs, or rather the not-at-all-odd jobs, the everyday jobs, like cleaning out the chook house and getting a load of mulch for the fruit trees and checking the dripper system. If Nancy said they were in for a drought, she’d better start thinking what it would mean for Dribble . . .
She took a deep breath of blue and gold air. Matilda had been right to give her Dribble. Her place, even without Sam here. She had Blue and Mah and Joseph, Michael and Nancy and the boys, and, yes, Kirsty and Fish too, her family, her friends and her land, bound by blood and love.
And there was the tree she had sat again
st when she had first come here . . .
Jed stopped: the spot was already taken. And by Fish. Crying in deep soundless sobs that shook her body. Jed moved automatically. ‘Honey, what is it?’
‘I can’t say! I can’t ever say!’
Jed put her arm around the heaving shoulders. ‘Interesting,’ she said, deliberately calm. ‘You expect us to answer your questions, but keep your own secrets.’
‘Yes,’ said Fish, as if it was a perfectly reasonable position.
‘It’s probably not as bad as you think.’
‘It’s worse.’ Fish raised red-rimmed eyes. ‘Everyone would hate me if they knew.’
‘Worse than being a thief? A shoplifter? A would-be con artist? Getting pregnant after your stepmother’s boyfriend raped you, then losing the baby six months in because even stealing wasn’t enough to keep you healthy? That was me,’ said Jed. At last she could say this easily now. ‘And everyone and his dog around here knows it.’
Fish stared at her. ‘Don’t you mind?’
‘I used to. Now? Secrets are too heavy to carry all the time. And I’m not that girl now. I haven’t been her for years.’ I’m not the abused five-year-old either, thought Jed, halfway between relief and triumph. I am Jed McAlpine-Kelly of Dribble, who loves and is loved.
‘I still am that girl,’ said Fish miserably.
‘But you needn’t be,’ said Jed gently. ‘And one day you won’t be. What have you done that’s so terrible?’
‘I killed my father,’ said Fish.
Chapter 25
Chainsaw Carving Competition Surprises, Delights
Local artists were revved up at this weekend’s aggual Gibber’s Creek chainsaw sculpture competition. The competitors were mostly creative, occasionally accident-prong. (We send our best to Johnny Adderton, who is recuperating well.)
Among some of the impressive specimens on display: a terrifying Jaws, the shark from the popular movie of the same name, a beautiful koala and a brave statue of the mayor’s wife. However, the winner was a realistic carving of the iconic dag on the Tuckerbox, that was so realistic, one of the judges ‘felt like he could feel the fur on the happy and nobble fellow’. The winner, local fencer Jim Headless, received a voucher to Lee’s Hardware Store.
FISH
Somehow as soon as she’d said it, Fish knew it wasn’t true. It was what she’d been terrified of, what Mum and even Gran feared too, when Dad had just vanished like that. Mum had overheard, had screamed at her, even though it was what she’d been thinking too, just hadn’t had the courage to tell Dad.
‘Nonsense,’ said Jed.
Fish looked up at her. It was just what she’d been feeling, but she was still annoyed at Jed for saying it so bluntly. ‘Why?’
‘Because no one has said anything about your father being dead. Or about a funeral.’
‘He’s missing . . . Just like the people in that church must have been missing. And he might be dead, like they’re dead.’
‘And he mightn’t be. People can vanish for a while. How long has he been gone?’
‘Two weeks,’ said Fish miserably.
‘That all? I vanished for years. Tell me about it,’ said Jed, sitting down beside her. She unwrapped a packet of squashed lamingtons and handed her the most intact one. ‘Eat that first.’
Fish looked at the lopsided lamington. ‘Why?’
‘Sugar. You’re in shock. Also this is the best lamington you’ll ever eat from the Queen of Lamington Makers.’
‘It’s squashed.’
‘Doesn’t affect the taste.’ Jed carefully divided her lamington in two and began to eat it in appreciative nibbles.
Fish ate. And the words came. ‘I never knew who my father was. Mum was sort of proud of it. She started a Women’s Studies course at uni three years ago. Kept saying how she and I showed how the nuclear family was an outdated concept.’
‘Didn’t you ask her who your father was?’
Fish nodded. ‘She wouldn’t tell me his name. Said it was irrelevant, I was Felice Johnstone, or maybe I could call myself Felice Ameliasdaughter — like I was an Icelandic girl or a Viking. All I knew was that Mum had met him when she was on a student exchange to the USA. I was born about six months after she came home. I’d always assumed he was Chinese, and maybe he couldn’t come and be with us because of the White Australia Policy.’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Jed. ‘If he’d married your mother, he’d almost certainly have been allowed to settle here.’
Fish shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter, because that isn’t what kept him away. Turns out Mum didn’t even tell him she was pregnant. Can I have another lamington?’
Jed passed one to her and began to eat the last one.
Fish chewed the chocolate icing slowly. ‘Anyway, last year there was a knock on the door. I answered it and there was this Vietnamese bloke on the doorstep, wanting to know if Amelia Johnstone lived there. I said yes and he sort of stared at me . . .’ Fish shook her head. ‘And when Mum saw him, she gave this scream and let him in, and then when she’d made him a cup of coffee, she told him I was his daughter, which he’d sort of guessed, because he kept staring at me.’
‘That would have been . . . interesting,’ said Jed quietly.
‘It was horrible. He cried,’ said Fish. ‘He’d been this high official in the South Vietnamese government. All my life I’d heard people talk about how the South Vietnamese government were just puppets of the USA and hadn’t even been properly elected. And now my father had been part of it. That was why he had been in America when he met my mum — he was in a delegation strategising the war against the North. When the North took Saigon, he was sent to a re-education camp. After three years, he escaped, and a relative bought him a place on a fishing boat so he could flee the country. None of them on the boat knew much about sailing and they didn’t even have a proper map, but they made it to Darwin, well, most of them. Two died . . .’
‘Boat people,’ said Jed softly. ‘He must have courage.’
Fish shrugged again.
‘Had he ever married?’
‘Yes, when he got back to Vietnam after being in the USA. But his wife died and their daughter was taken on the airlift of babies from Saigon when the Americans left.’
‘I thought the babies airlifted out of Saigon were all orphans. I remember seeing a photo — this plane full of boxes on each seat, a baby in each box.’
‘Dad said some of the babies were the children of officials, like him. It was the only way to make sure their children were safe. The North Vietnamese were already shelling Saigon and the American troops were pulling out. Dad had hoped to get a visa to the USA, but then he didn’t.’
‘Where is his daughter?’ asked Jed quietly.
‘He had no idea. In the USA or West Germany or France or Canada or even here in Australia. There’s no way of ever knowing.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Lin. She was two, so she’d be six now. But there aren’t any proper records of which baby went where.’
‘So your father lost his home, his country and his family . . .’
‘And now he said he had a family again,’ said Fish bitterly. ‘He hugged me and thought I should be as happy as he was. But I’d never even wanted a father.’
‘What did your mother say?’
‘That was the worst bit. I thought she’d just shake his hand and ask him to stay to dinner and maybe lend him some money. But she began to cry too and they were hugging. He stayed in the guest room that night, but a week later he and Mum were sharing a room.’ Fish gave Jed a look of horror.
‘Honey, I know parents having . . . feelings . . . can be a shock. But was it really so bad?’
‘Don’t you see? It meant my whole life was a lie. Mum had been so proud that she and I weren’t a nuclear family, but suddenly she decided we could be. She’d even marched in the demonstrations and called Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Cong heroes. But she’d had a baby with someone in the South Vietnamese governmen
t, and now there she was living with him and saying it was all wonderful and fate . . . and . . . and stuff like that. I had to call this strange guy Dad. He even wanted me to use his surname, but I didn’t. Why should I change my name? It was as if the person I thought I was didn’t exist any more.’
‘Of course you do. You’re the same, even if how you got here was a bit different from the way you thought.’
Fish shook her head. ‘I’m not. All the stuff in the papers about boat people and “economic refugees”, not real ones, and new Australians. That wasn’t anything to do with me. Then suddenly I was them. Everyone at school was talking about it. Half of them were sorry for Dad and admired him, and the other half thought anyone who was with the South Vietnamese government must be corrupt or something. It’s like having a father is taking up half my life. And you know the worst thing? Mum’s been lying all my life.’
‘It mightn’t have been as straightforward as that,’ said Jed. ‘They might have really loved each other, but seen it couldn’t work. After all, your mum didn’t marry anyone else, and if your father’s other daughter was so young, he may have gone a long time without marrying anyone else too.’
‘That’s what Mum said,’ admitted Fish. ‘But that makes it worse, doesn’t it? Pretending she didn’t need a husband? She lied to me and to herself and to everyone. She lied for years!’
‘People do lie,’ said Jed gently. ‘Most people. Not like you and me.’
‘She shouldn’t have lied!’ cried Fish passionately. ‘Not about me! About who I am! I thought I was Australian and half Chinese, and suddenly I’m half Vietnamese and have a father!’
‘I understand,’ said Jed.
Fish squeezed her hands together tightly. ‘Anyway, they were all lovey-dovey for a couple of months. Gran and Gramps liked him. But they didn’t know what it was like for me. I was supposed to suddenly love this man I’d never met before . . .’
‘A bit like an arranged marriage,’ said Jed.
‘Yeah. But you can divorce a husband, but you can’t divorce a father,’ said Fish bitterly. ‘And I did sort of like him. But he thought, because I’m his daughter, I should be Vietnamese too, that I should care about some old bloke centuries ago who was made king because he could make great rice cakes, and how Vietnam has the oldest culture in Asia. I don’t even know if that’s true or not. And I shouldn’t dye my hair or wear my flares because they were too tight and not “modest”, and . . . and all sorts of things. But I’m not Vietnamese! I’m Australian!’
The Last Dingo Summer Page 14
