Benang Read online

  The old man’s speech came slow and croaking. He told me nothing new, and there was no comfort in any of it.

  He snarled at me, his jowls shaking. A most dangerous age. I had spent months looking after him, and no sooner had he regained some fluency to his speech than he uttered those words, trying to manipulate me once again, grabbing at power whichever way he could.

  He lifted himself from his chair and took a few steps toward me, and I wrapped my arms around him. It gave me a weightiness which increased my strength. Laughing, I returned him to his chair and did not succumb to the temptation to let him fall.

  Despite the power and strength I felt at such times, I nevertheless felt impoverished, weakened, reduced. It appeared that in the little family history my grandfather had bequeathed me options had disappeared. It seemed an inexorable process, this one of we becoming I. This reduction of a rich and variously shared place to one fragile, impoverished consciousness.

  Once I would have insisted this little story represent nothing other than its grumpy, unhappy narrator. This fuck-me-white and first one born. This drifting lightweight who so wanted to be his grandfather’s failure. This (let me do away with all vanity) faceless, empty-scrotumed, limp-dicked first man born.

  I began, I believe, with how I found the seed of myself (but never, alas, my seed) in Grandfather’s study. He had fallen ill. He fell. I did not push.

  Ernest Solomon Scat fell seriously ill. He was not pushed. His grandson was staying with him, and was himself in convalescence, recovering from a serious accident in which ... Well, it was not a happy time. His injuries were what, depending on your priorities, you might call superficial. That is to say, the damaged and missing parts were not at all large.

  The grandson discovered his patriarch’s study. And although the boy had a timetable of tasks his grandfather had given him, he was forced—not so reluctantly, but oh most nervously—to alter it.

  There was the grandfather to take care of now. And, having found his grandfather’s life’s work—and seeing that it seemed incomplete, and seeing, moreover, how it so directly led to the grandson himself—the aforementioned boy wanted to help. He wanted to play a more active part.

  It was necessary to go further back, but within those walls I could go only so far. It was not something I was able to articulate, but even then I wished to pick up a rhythm begun deeper and long before those named Fanny and Sandy One Mason. But my grandfather’s intentions deafened and blinded me, and so I began with where the paper starts, where the white man comes. I thought, trapped as I was, that this was the place to begin.

  Whatever the confusions of my genealogy, there seems little doubt that my grandfather intended to be my creator. It was he who, if not indeed forming the idea, applied it as Mr Neville was unable to do.

  For Ernest, it was a rationalisation of his desire. It was a challenge. It was as if he—a little too late to be a pioneer, and not really cut out to tame the land—could still play a role in taming a people into submission.

  Whereas for me it was contrition, it was anger. It moved from one to the other.

  Old Ernest watched me as I wrote; brow corrugated with anxiety and doubt, his eyes followed me as I drifted—scribbling, rising and falling—around and around that paper-lined and littered room.

  At first I tried to study and write for a couple of hours each morning. What was it? A family history? A local history? An experiment? A fantasy?

  What kept me at it? Malice? Perversity? To achieve against Grandad’s failure? To better him? I think it was simply that, in such isolation, I had nothing else.

  In the afternoons I worked, as instructed, on the house. It was fitful and poorly planned. I had no strength, no skill. I tapped a hammer and chisel, hacked feebly at the garden. Chip, hack, destroy.

  I prepared meals. On washing days I discovered the pleasure of letting myself flap absently on the line, with only my fingers gripping tight. I was successfully assimilated to the laundry, washing machine, a used car.

  I used to take him out in the wheelchair but, pushing him, my feet scrabbled to remain on the pavement. Even after I had crammed my pockets with rubble, earth, and loose change I still needed to keep a firm grip on the wheelchair or risk drifting away.

  On one downhill run the wheelchair suddenly picked up speed so that, my feet having left the ground, I trailed behind it like a banner. We coasted well out onto the flats before I was able to regain sufficient composure and gravity to drive my heels into the earth and bring us to a stop.

  I decided it was better for Ernest to walk, and so I sat in the wheelchair and pushed the wheels at just the right speed to keep him stumbling along behind me. Weighed down by the wheelchair, I could relax and not have to concentrate on remaining earthbound. I often arrived home with an exhausted Ern on my lap which, given the nature of our earlier relationship, both amused and repelled me.

  It required no concentration, once a month or so, to drive Grandad and his pension into Gebalup for our shopping. Of course it was I (safely belted to my seat) who drove, and then the old man at the periphery of my vision sometimes became an echo of my father on our last long screaming journey. I had to turn to him, to make sure it was indeed just old Ern.

  We hummed along the black top. On either side of us trees, dying, turning white. Once there were many, many more of them, and they were alive, and they drank the rain and returned it to the sky. Now their roots shrivelled in salt water and—thus betrayed—they raised bare and brittle limbs to the sky.

  Vast squares of yellow, or sometimes rippling green, stretched away from the roadside. The sun shone through glass, our air was stale, and when we opened the windows the wind roared and tore at our hair.

  Gebalup was a garage, a hotel. It was faded green, yellow, dark red bricks and—despite the pervasive smell of diesel—the wheat and barley pollen in the air made me sneeze. From the centre of the main street I could see dark rectangular signs, advising how far it was to elsewhere, and which white line you must follow to get there.

  We parked. I unfolded the wheelchair, pushed it to Grandad’s door. Then I seated myself and led him slowly across the shimmering rectangles of concrete.

  Flies swarmed around me, buzzing irritation, and crawled into the corners of my eyes. Various small birds landed in my path, and flapped away at the last moment. Each time I went into Gebalup this happened, and each time I ignored it and pushed on.

  I grinned at whoever I met, and said whatever they wished. Crossing the road, I caught our reflection in a window; my arms thrusting at the wheels, and Grandad stumbling behind, straining to keep hold of the chair.

  Such an arrangement with the wheelchair helped keep me grounded, but I did not present us in this way when we first visited the lawyer and bank.

  I had taken care that Ern’s clothing concealed the scars I’d given him, and held lengthy rehearsals to overcome the difficulty he had speaking. Nevertheless, I was nervous.

  The bank manager glanced sympathetically at the youth tucked up in the wheelchair. I was silent, concentrating, gripping the arms of the chair. Imagine then, how mortified I felt when I found myself drifting upwards. However, to my surprise, the bank manager did not change the direction of his gaze. I studied the little threesome below me—for threesome it was. The bank manager. The grandfather. The youth in the wheelchair who, apart from the marked and mottled skin, could be anyone, except that—as an astute observer would have seen—his breathing was very slow, very shallow.

  My grandfather’s success. Absorbed, barely alive.

  ‘You’re sure, a joint account?’ the manager asked. Although his eyebrows rose in a query, his smile was one of acceptance.

  I noted my grandfather’s nod, and how suddenly fluent and quick his speech had become. ‘He will be taking over our affairs. Despite what you see, he is very capable.’

  It was a victory, I suppose.

  We shook hands and I swung the wheelchair around, and waited for Grandad to position himself before I hau
led him through the door held open by our banker.

  My elation carried us across the carpark. I accelerated, stopped, turned; and Grandad stumbled repeatedly. But I did not let him fall.

  For a time, in the evenings, I shared with my grandfather what I had compiled.

  I read to him, and as the work developed it became obvious he was not impressed. I thought it was the ease with which I did it that infuriated him. I had written pages and pages, and all he had ever achieved were notes, references, and immaculate indexes.

  Question marks sprouted among his words; witness, for example, those genealogical diagrams. But I simply knew, and used my imagination.

  ‘How could you?’ I patiently plucked these words from amongst his bristling tangle of superfluous consonants. ‘What proof?’ He was furious. Why, he seemed to enquire, did I trust whatever it was my father had told me.

  He snorted when he read of my ancestors floating from the pages and up, up, up among clouded peaks. I hope for more respect when I share the incident with you.

  ‘Language,’ he would say. Croak, stammer, cough stutter sniff. ‘It’s a f-f-f-fence that keeps you out.’

  I knew that.

  ‘Even Daniel,’ he said, determined to have his say, although he need not have rushed, I left him yawning gaps. ‘Even Daniel Coolman spoke some Nyoongar. It was all curses, mind, a black tongue. That’s the sort of language it is. And now there’s no one left to tell you what you want. You can never know.’

  But I knew, and I said ... I wanted to say...

  How could I dispute him, this man expelling his words at me, his face growing into an almost permanent snarl?

  I wanted to strike him, but knew—because of my own lack of substance, my own weightlessness—that if I did I would be the one sent hurtling backwards across the room.

  It was still his story, his language, his notes and rough drafts, his clear diagrams and slippery fractions which had uplifted and diminished me.

  I wanted more.

  I dare say he was all the time thinking, When and how will I appear in this history? Hoping. Worrying.

  Oh, I promised I would get to him.

  I did not continue the readings.

  It may have been a desire to transform myself, or even self-hatred, which suggested I slash and cut words into my own skin. But I soon turned to my grandfather’s flesh. I wanted to mark him, to show my resentment at how his words had shaped me.

  And now I pluck Ernest Solomon Scat from my memories of his insecure dotage, and plant him with his arm inserted in the filing system, up to the elbow in the documents of the very respectable Auber Neville’s office. My grandfather, so recently arrived from his own country, had come to his distant relation Mr A O Neville, the Chief Protector of Aborigines, no less, and—until recently—chief of a department representing the odd combination of the North-west and Aborigines and Fisheries.

  Ernest Solomon Scat, a thin and pale young man, earnest by name and nature. Consider him with his hand deep in the filing system, among shelves he’d helped construct. See him staring—as certain members of his future wife’s family continue to do—down a corridor of words. Unlike them, Ern does not know to be wary, does not need to prepare to flee. He walks toward us; confident, comfortable, awake to an opportunity.

  Yes, that’s our man. He helped construct the shelving—he and his distant cousin both being accomplished amateur carpenters—and was now temporarily employed in clerical duties with the department.

  ‘He’s been reared as a white man! He does not speak for the natives.’

  At first Ern thought he was the one accused. Auber Neville, Chief Protector, was furious, and the shelves and filing cabinets quaked with a violence the figure at their centre could not contain. Ernest, not well acquainted with the man, could not have known how rare was this fit of anger. Having so boldly approached Auber’s desk, Ern now thought of stepping backwards through the door. But then what? Left-right-left backwards through streets; the train, clickety-clack back; a quick glance over his shoulder to judge the leap from wharf to ship and then steam stern-first back home? He couldn’t. Ernest couldn’t even think like that, let alone act in defiance of all he knew.

  For a moment Auber Neville looked directly at him in so habitually superior a manner that Ernest, even as a white man, felt like an intruder.

  ‘Ernest? Ernest. I’m sorry. The newspapers,’ he indicated one on his desk. ‘They delight in this of course.’ Ernest was relieved to become an accomplice. ‘And what of this one? Quadroon. Strictly speaking, he does not even come under the control of the Department. Unfortunately. What right does he have to interfere in its affairs? Who does he speak for?’

  Auber Neville’s voice was very quiet, ticking its regularity and reason. ‘If anything, our powers should be increased so that we can provide further protection and see that justice is done.’ He pulled at his jacket, briskly rubbed his hands together, studied his fingernails, and then apologised for his rudeness.

  Ern, sensing his own calloused hands and grubby fingernails, suddenly felt a little embarrassed. But his embarrassment was also because Mr Auber Neville had obviously not reached so high as the family believed. The entire department was a verandah and two small rooms. Clearly, it was an impoverished and unimportant one, regarded as such because of the status of the people waiting to see its chief. Both the building and the queue at its rear door were tucked away in the shadow of a modest cathedral. Auber’s staff consisted of a secretary, two clerks, and a travelling inspector, with numerous ‘Local Protectors’—usually police, not answerable to his authority—scattered everywhere.

  ‘Tsk.’ Auber glanced down at the newspaper on his desk, and Ernest’s eyes followed his. Yes, Ernest was such a reader—even then—that he could read upside down just as easily as upside up.

  A unique deputation of Western Australian aboriginals, well spoken and in some cases well educated and well read men, waited on the Premier yesterday morning and received from him sympathetic consideration for the remedying of a number of disabilities under which they labour...

  Ernest looked up and saw that Auber Neville, his eyes intently focused, appeared to be reading him. ‘Nothing will come of it,’ Auber said, glancing away and indicating the newspaper. ‘I know these people, I know what is needed.’ The papers on his shelves were still. Not a rustle, not a sigh. Genealogies, personal histories, court cases; requests for marriage, employment, and exemptions from the Aboriginal Protection Act. And now—about to be shelved—one deputation.

  ‘Perhaps you could help us,’ Auber went on. ‘The trouble these natives who have been raised as white men can manufacture.’ He asked Ernest to accompany one of his department’s officers on an investigatory visit. The ANZAC club had contacted Auber regarding a particular fellow, who—as a returned serviceman—had applied to join their ranks.

  ‘What I really want to find out is, since he is a coloured man, whether he is a native in law, or a person of, say, Negro or Maori extraction,’ said Auber. ‘Naturally I do not want this fellow ... er, Sandy ... Mason, to know that I am making this inquiry. I am told that he is a half-caste but I do not know him under that name.’ Auber was offended, not only for himself and his department, but in particular on behalf of his filing system.

  ‘We wish to know his caste,’ continued Auber, ‘because it has a bearing upon whether he is entitled to join the ANZAC Club.’

  Perhaps I am not being quite truthful here. Perhaps Auber did not use these exact words. I take the language from the file of the man the department’s representatives went to ‘visit’; my Uncle Sandy (Two) Mason.

  EXTRACT FROM THE FILE OF SANDY MASON

  I have been to Greenmount on three occasions, accompanied by Mr Scat, but failed to contact Mason until yesterday, when I called at his residence and found him at home.

  Mason, in my opinion, has the appearance of a half-caste, but is certainly lighter in colour than usual. He is a man of only about 40 years of age, tall and very thin. His ha
ir is completely white and he has quite a refined appearance, although he looks a sick man, and this may account for lightness in colour.

  He lives in an ordinary house which from outward appearances is in good order, but no attempt is made to cultivate the ground surrounding the house.

  Bearing in mind the Chief Protector’s injunction that any inquiry must be made without Mason’s knowledge, and in any case not having the powers of a Protector, I could not question Mason as to his antecedents, and try as I would I could not turn the conversation on the matter of his family connections.

  Later, however, I managed to get into conversation with a neighbour of Mason’s named Mustle, who spoke very highly of Mason’s character and behaviour in the district. Mustle told me that Mason has been living at Greenmount, immediately behind the Blackboy Hill camp, for some six years. To his knowledge, Mason has never had a woman living with him in the house, although there was a time when he contemplated marriage to a white woman. He further told me that Mason was suffering from lung trouble and never worked, but that he was a war pensioner and that the house he was living in was rented from Mustle’s own family.

  Mustle, who seemed to know quite a lot about Mason’s sisters at Gebalup and their children, told me that Mason claims to be quarter-caste, and that he had never heard him make any reference to having Maori blood. Mustle talked quite freely and I requested him not to make any mention to Mason of enquiries being made about him, which he promised to refrain from doing.

  I made further enquiries this morning of a friend of mine in the Repatriation Department as to:

  1. The illness from which Mason is suffering

  2. The prospective expectation of life