Taboo Read online

  Maureen called them together in a room with a large mirror on one wall. There were several students, all new to the college, and they found it hard to keep their eyes away from the mirror. Mirror mirror on the wall, Tilly almost said out loud, because of the mirror see and because she, Tilly, had been living an evil fairy tale: bitten the poisoned apple, been rescued from the ogre’s castle, once upon a time. To her disappointment the mirror confirmed that she was indeed the fairest of them all.

  ‘Don’t look at the mirror yet,’ said Maureen. ‘Oh, and I want to acknowledge the Traditional Owners, and spirits past and present. Is anyone here,’ she asked, ‘anyone here a Traditional Owner?’ One girl shrugged, said her people were. Maureen said, ‘That’s lovely, dear,’ and continued on. Most of the students were from regions remote from the city. ‘Then you’d know some dances,’ Maureen told, rather than asked, them.

  Some of the girls had dropped their heads, were glancing at one another. ‘I seen them dancing, miss,’ said one of the girls Tilly knew as Sue-Ellen.

  ‘’Course you have. And it’s natural, you’ll see, it’ll come to you. Aboriginal people are all great dancers.’

  A couple of the girls snorted. ‘You oughta see my dad!’ one said, and swivelled on one leg, giggling as she demonstrated even her father’s facial expression.

  ‘No, seriously.’ Maureen frowned. She pushed her sleeves up to her elbows, and adjusted the headband that held her hair back from her forehead. ‘Sue-Ellen.’ She gestured to the girl. ‘Let’s start with you, show us your way.’

  ‘I’ve only seen ’em, I never danced with . . .’ Maureen took her by the arm, and brought her to the front of the group. ‘We’ll need some sort of music, but for now . . . Do they dance to the didj where you come from, Sue-Ellen?’

  Sue-Ellen nodded, twisting with embarrassment.

  ‘Dance then,’ Maureen commanded, and began imitating the sound of a didgeridoo. Sue-Ellen looked around at the others, and lifted her arms. Tentatively she began the steps of a dance she obviously knew.

  Still making didgeridoo sounds, and nodding encouragement, Maureen began imitating Sue-Ellen’s dance. Sue-Ellen stopped, her arms hanging at her sides.

  ‘That’s great. I know that one,’ Maureen said. ‘I taught at Karnama for two years and used to –’

  ‘Not from there, miss, that dance.’

  ‘Oh, but dances are always exchanged,’ said Maureen. She folded her arms and again furrowed her brow, emphasising rather too obviously the intensity of her thinking.

  ‘I can see, I know you’re shy,’ Maureen said to everyone, with a special nod to Sue-Ellen. ‘I can teach you. I think we can start there, with what Sue-Ellen showed us – thanks, Sue-Ellen – but maybe change it just a bit, make it more Aboriginal.’ She was demonstrating movements as she did so.

  ‘But . . .’ began Sue-Ellen.

  ‘S’cuse me, I’ve gotta go,’ said one of the girls, giggling, and two of her companions sidled away with her. Their giggles bubbled from the hallway and through the still closing door.

  The diminished group stood in silence, trying to avoid eye contact with one another. ‘Oh fuck,’ said Maureen, and perhaps she saw the grins or even shock on some of the girls’ faces, because she continued, ‘Honestly, since I’ve been hanging around with Aboriginal kids I’ve been swearing more, drinking and smoking more too.’ She lifted her arms, began to stamp her feet. ‘Like this, copy me.’

  A girl looked at her phone. The door was still open.

  *

  Tilly did not go to the ball, but she saw the photographs as they came online. Lightheaded and thinly bleeding she felt pure and in control – but some of the photographs were disorientating. Gerry had been at the ball, she saw. There were images of the professional dance troupe that had performed on the evening. And there was Gerry again. As the night wore on she saw images of Gerry on the dance floor. It was Gerry, but he looked different somehow. Drunk? Out of his head some other way? There were some shots of him embracing one of the girls. The girl’s face was shocked.

  Some of the girls left early, they said, because of a ghost. The venue – an ex-prison built in the late nineteenth century – was haunted. Some left because of, as they put it, That Creep. Should have thrown him out.

  Maureen called the police. But the stranger had left before they got there.

  Tilly scrolled images for some days. This was the person probably closest to her now. He’d helped. She trusted him, but who was he? What was he doing? She took deep breaths, felt for the boundary between herself and the world, believed she was distilling to some essence of herself.

  *

  ‘No, not me. I wasn’t even there.’ Gerald held his parole officer’s stare. ‘I was not even there.’

  ‘We got photographs. Statements. The man – you – the man gave his name as “Gerry”.’

  ‘No. Seriously, I was home.’

  ‘Alone, no doubt.’

  Gerry nodded.

  His parole officer leaned back in his chair. Gerry tried to read the titles on the files behind the man, upended as they were and each balanced on an invisible full stop.

  ‘We know you have a brother.’

  Gerry tilted his head. It was the sort of thing Gerrard would get up to. He had a thing for schoolgirls, especially when charged up one way or another. Terrible.

  ‘We also know it wasn’t your brother.’

  ‘You know that, do you?’

  ‘Yes.’ The voice came from behind Gerry. He spun around on his chair. ‘He was with me.’

  A man stood framed in the doorway, a folder in his hands. A bald man; tall, heavily built and dressed in a glossy leather jacket.

  ‘With you! Well you got him properly in your grip.’ Even as he spoke, Gerry’s anger surprised him. His own brother, and Doug.

  ‘Don’t make things worse for yourself. We need trust. Even lying endangers your parole . . .’ Doug began.

  ‘You fucking dog. Crawl back in your hole before I rip your fucking guts out your throat.’

  ‘Tough little man.’

  ‘Gerald.’ The man on the other side of the desk was controlled, but he seemed not to have heard Doug engaging Gerald further. ‘Gerald. Threatening behaviour on its own is enough to revoke . . .’

  *

  The beginning of a fortnight free of classes, Tilly came to breakfast late to find a cluster of residents around Sue-Ellen who was sobbing and distraught. ‘I can’t sleep,’ she kept saying. ‘Every night since then . . .’ The large dining room had a clinical sheen, and the space created by the girls being bunched around one table in the corner of the room unbalanced it somehow. Tilly came through the doorway diametrically opposite, and felt she was walking downhill. The sobbing girl, exhausted from sleepless anxiety since the College Ball, believed some evil spirit must’ve followed her home. Sympathy for her plight had grown, and other residents had also become distressed. The college might be haunted.

  Bustling from the serving area, a metal bucket in one hand, Maureen said, ‘We need a smoking ceremony.’ She was, as usual, authoritative. The unhappy girl’s sobbing grew louder. ‘Miss . . . Maureen . . .’ The students leaned toward conflict. They had become impatient with Maureen, but she was stubborn, resilient and needed to prove herself at the job.

  ‘What you got in that bucket anyway?’

  ‘Incense. Sandalwood incense. They used to have sandalwood everywhere in the south-west, you know.’

  ‘I can’t stay here no more,’ the unhappy girl sobbed.

  ‘Who’s doing this ceremony, Maureen? You?’

  Eventually, a girl said one of her family – yes, he was an Elder – could help.

  The upset girl looked to her. ‘Please?’

  Early next day an older man visited the college. He had his nephew with him, who carried a metal bucket into which small holes had been
punched, a bag of leaves and not much more. The older man was lean, and a little stooped. He smiled politely, but did not engage with any of the residents or staff. He studied the dimensions of the dining room. The boy stood by.

  ‘Just the one room?’ the old man asked.

  Maureen seemed disappointed with the lack of ceremony, and that so few residents were present. She wanted an audience.

  ‘We’re doing this for Sue-Ellen, no one else,’ one of the girls said.

  ‘This everyone?’ the old man asked Maureen. ‘You got them all?’

  Maureen nodded. Close enough.

  As his younger companion bent to fan the flames in the metal bucket, the man introduced himself. He outlined what he was going to do, joked about ‘occupational health and safety’ and asked that all the doors be closed. He spoke for a while, and sang in what Tilly guessed was his ancestral tongue. He walked the perimeter of the room, and the younger man walked inside of him with the smoking bucket. Hands waved, and smoke curled and twisted, evading.

  The staff worried about the paintwork. The smoke was surprisingly thick, and pungent.

  Tilly felt particularly weak; she was studying hard, not really eating. She didn’t require a lot of food.

  The old man stopped beside her, smoke billowing around the two of them. Sunlight streamed through a window, spears of light among twisting strands of smoky air.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Tilly. Tilly Coolman.’

  ‘Oh, you Wirlomin mob?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’ She could see Maureen behind the two men, watching.

  ‘I know so,’ he said, and kept on. ‘This tree we burning from your country, down your way. This song too.’ The young man waved the bucket toward her and Tilly felt smoke curl around her, gently cling, enter her nostrils, make some wispy being inside her. Smoke trailed the two men, insubstantial, shape-shifting.

  ‘Open the doors,’ the old man said in a voice too soft for most in the room to hear, but the instruction was carried. The doors opened, the smoke swirled and there was the sky. Tilly’s phone grabbed her.

  Hi Tilly get Esperance bus to lake grace 2moro. Someone will pick you up there for the camp. Gerry.

  She had to go. For her dad, her mum even. She had to trust Gerry.

  III

  THE BONES WITHIN

  Dawn. Tilly dozed, as did most of those in the rooms around her, slipping between the world of dreams and this. Wilfred and Kathy rose before the sun; tended to the fire in the gloaming dawn, their tongues moving with the flickering flames. Then the sky came afire.

  Ruby and Wally moved everyone through breakfast, attentive to the schedule. Peace Park opening day after tomorrow; two more days to stay strong, sober, straight; let the old spirit fill you. Today there were visits to make. And tomorrow, first thing . . .

  The campfire coughed. Its flames were thin in the sunlight, dancing nearer the edge of yesterday’s ashes where the fence post from yesterday lay half-buried, as if thrown onto the dying fire but the flames had never caught.

  ‘Leave it there,’ Wilfred said. ‘Don’t move it.’

  He looked a different character altogether this morning. Was hard to recognise at first, until he spoke. Overnight, he had shaved his beard. His hair was almost as short.

  ‘Bit of a change?’ He stroked his cheeks and chin, rubbed a palm across the short hair of his skull, the white whiskers bristling as his hand passed over them. Patted himself down while he had their attention.

  ‘Still all me but, don’t worry.’

  Kathy drew each dawdling arrival into the group, and the Gerrys – on instruction from Wilfred – kept the fire away from the post that lay in yesterday’s ashes.

  Blind Nita and Kathy wanted everyone by the fire. They stood in the sweet smoke, nodded at Wilfred to speak.

  Wilfred bent to touch the ashes at the head of the fence post. Some of the others put their hands to the soft powder, still warm from yesterday’s fire.

  Wilfred moved ash away from the buried post, revealing a smooth and ash-covered dome at that end.

  ‘Lift it out.’ Wilfred gestured to Gerald to lift the post, and how he should do so. The domed end swung uppermost, and there a human face rose and dipped above their shoulders, fine ash falling away from its face as it exhaled, scanning each of them from its lofty height as if it sat lightly just above their shoulders. Fencing wire, pulled tight and repeatedly around the post seemed ornamental, a chain-mail sash, and the smoke flowed and folded, made a smoky robe. Tilly wanted to reach out, to wipe the ash from its lips and eyes.

  A gust of wind lifted the campfire ashes, and they clung and coated the legs of the little group.

  Wilfred gave the word for the tree the fence post was born from; he gave them the words for head, for fire, for ash and for breathing.

  Gerald tried to get Tilly’s eye, but her face was as wooden as the one moving above them.

  ‘This is what I’m making. Device, unna?’ Wilfred was excited.

  The post was replaced in the ash, again face down. Wilfred shrugged. ‘Grab a piece of wood you like the look of. Take a little walk.’

  ‘Walking today, like our people musta done. Walking. Keep moving,’ said one of the men.

  ‘Old people used to do nearly everything with a stick. Throw it, hunt. Play. Cut with a stick, bit of something else there to help – tooth, stone. Dig too.’

  ‘Fight?’ said Beryl.

  ‘Yeah, but not just fight.’

  The diminishing group walked one of the paths that led from the caravan park.

  ‘Just a little walk, with a stick. Back soon,’ said Wilfred, musing. A few turned back, some went with Wilfred, a couple strayed with Milton as he detoured from the group and most of the women took their own direction. They were they no more.

  It was quite a small group of women among the trees; the young ones scraped their sticks, swung them. Sometimes Kathy pointed out some bush foods for the plucking, or they dug to get at the roots. They talked of what should be said about the massacre at the Peace Park opening, what words would be good . . .

  There were other things on their mind. Needs. The desire to be some other, but of this they did not speak.

  Milton and his small group had gone to a shed the other side of the park. ‘Use real tools,’ he said as they entered the workspace with its hand tools hung against the wall. ‘So long as you smell the wood,’ he told them. Again. Even Gerry was getting a bit tired of being told this. Smell that timber. Feel it in your sinuses, concentrate on that, not the other thing you think you need. We’ll use some other stuff too. Resin, grasstree. Sinew, kangaroo tail. Work out what’s got you by the throat while we’re at it. How to make a snare, get out of one too, different sort of snare. Fire. Smoke. Your sweat and blood.

  They repeated the words he gave, and made them again.

  Walking beside Kathy among the peppermint trees and the hushing of the waves, unseen, as accompaniment to their voices, Beryl held her rough stick of wood in two hands, and made a short, swift arc in the air. ‘Wish I’d had this when that c— . . .’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Kathy.

  ‘All those years ago,’ said Beryl. ‘He raped me.’

  One of the younger ones stumbled. They fell silent for a time, began a slow arc back to their campsite, the caravan park.

  *

  The plastic legs of Doug’s chair bowed dangerously as he rested his weight back against the caravan. To a non-participating bystander – someone like Doug, for instance – roaming the edge of the campsite and peering from outside the circle around a campfire, not much of consequence was happening. This bunch of people who mostly called themselves Aboriginal – Noongar – were making artefacts. They were going for walks. They were sitting around talking, singing, sometimes painting and drawing. Crafts. Crazy-crazy, they were playing with puppets. Puppets were not Abo
riginal art.

  Doug knew most of this group. Quite a few had tried rehabilitation before. Some several times. He sold to a lot of them.

  Sometimes they met in a sort of tent, or in one of the chalets. They’d held a ‘workshop’ (he’d heard them use that very word) under the sky, out in the breeze. Had moments of intense and enthusiastic discussion, in which he thought they were scarcely recognisable.

  When no one was around, Doug went close to their campfire. How come they were the only ones allowed it anyway? A short screen – call it a fence almost – ran not far from the fire to the building where they ate and met. This fence was star-pickets woven with thin branches, twigs and leaves. There was a rectangle of white sheet near the middle of the construction. Like a projector screen, or something.

  Doug walked here and there, found new vantage points for himself. He prowled the camp. He’d wait, they’d weaken, come begging. This bullshit wouldn’t hold them. He reckoned they wouldn’t make it to the Peace Park opening, and if they did they’d afterwards be feeling so civic they’d have to celebrate.

  He had already talked to the local police, and informed one of them, a friend, that he’d unfortunately booked a few days at the caravan park at the same time as an Aboriginal community group were staying. A few of whom, he told his friend, might harbour some resentment against him – almost unavoidable for a parole officer, really, he explained, and they understood completely.

  The police made a very ostentatious visit. Told him they’d make sure they were a presence.

  So when Doug bumped into the twins he was glad they were out in the open. ‘You following us around, Dougie?’ He didn’t reply.

  ‘Don’t let me catch you when there’s no one else around, Dougie-boy.’

  ‘Fuck off, Dougie.’

  ‘It’s a free country,’ he replied. ‘Call the police, Gerry; reckon they’ll listen to you?’ The police car drove slowly by the entrance to the caravan park, and then the group of women were returning; Milton’s little group too. Doug moved away and Tilly saw none of this.