Benang Read online

  It was not a deep shaft but still, coming up, he saw its entrance as a fissure in the darkness. He saw a wound bleeding light, and imagined inserting his fingers in this opening. The backs of his fingers would be together; and then, opening his arms slowly, in an arc, as if they were wings about to launch him, he would thrust them down. He would pull the world inside-out. It would be another world.

  He resumed the pulley, and his jerky, mechanical ascent.

  To Harriette and Kathleen it seemed he was materialising from a diluted wash of light and bottomless darkness. And Jack Chatalong, looking up at his sister and aunty, seeing with their eyes as well as his own, saw both himself rising from the dark earth and their silhouettes dissolving in the wound of light.

  He had reached where the ladder should be and remained standing in the bucket, bemused and blinking. The ladder was not there.

  A few feet above him, his aunty and sister lowering the ladder. And Daniel’s voice muttering, ‘Yes all right all right. All right.’

  As he came up the ladder Jack Chatalong took Daniel’s outstretched hand and squeezed it, hard, as men do. And leaning backwards, still holding tight, he hung all his weight on that hand. Jack Chatalong imagined geometric shapes—squares and rectangles and diamonds—suddenly exploding, suddenly being blown apart. He pulled on Daniel’s arm and, despite their relative weights, Daniel’s body came arching over his own. Clumsily, flailing, a balloon body and bloated tongue arms legs brushed Jack’s back. Who would have thought Jack had such strength?

  Daniel’s echoing scream was abruptly muffled. Stopped.

  Jack saw awe, something like fear, and even relief in the faces above him as he took on the light of day. What? They had not seen him pull. It was as if Daniel had dived in. They looked down upon the man jammed head down in the shaft. A last kick from the legs. Some strange plant that would not quite wilt.

  Daniel’s coffin was huge.

  And so, finally, Sergeant Hall—although uninvited—wound his way among the overturned water tanks and timber to what he thought of as the dead man’s shed. He was surprised to see a small crowd gathered under a sort of lean-to at the back, the adults drinking tea. Hall had expected to see merely the members of the household. But there were children playing, so many children. Although startled at such numbers, Sergeant Hall was composed enough to survey them with a professional eye.

  There was:

  The tall, old woman, Fanny (Full-blood. Widow, married an Englishman. Must be sixty, seventy, years old or more). Daniel had said she’d gone.

  Her daughter, the dead man’s wife; Harriette (Half-caste. Recently widowed, married a white man. She’d be, what? fifty-ish?). Sergeant Hall saw the woman glaring at him and, uncharacteristically, he turned away.

  His own Kathleen (Old Fanny’s niece? Granddaughter? Quadroon? Half-caste? Patrick Coolman presumably the white father. Aboriginal mother, Dinah; deceased?). Kathleen was no longer a girl. Yes, he was fond of her and wouldn’t want to lose her, and nor would the wife.

  The boy, William. How old? Twelve? (Quadroon).

  And that fellow Jack Chatalong, the shit-cart driver. He’d be late twenties, surely (Half-caste?).

  And children. All looking at him, all suddenly quiet. So many of them, from toddlers to teenagers. His calculations faltered. He had to call them all half-caste, and ignore the range of hues. One—there—the backs of his legs covered with weals as if from an old or inherited whipping. Another with feet so long and thin they might have been worn flat from running, from being repeatedly chased from town to town. A third with a skin evidencing a startling range of colours; black, brown, tan, red and white and even blue swirling together in scars formed from burnt flesh. Hall’s eye was caught by a girl staggering as if drunk. The child was somehow damaged, unable to stay still or move properly. She rolled her eyes at him and held out a hand. A fifth had a shock of red hair, and freckles like spattered blood. He recognised a strong jaw, and saw youthful caricatures of people who lived, had lived, in his area. Mustles, Starrs, Dones; even Coolman. Hall? His memory flickered.

  There was such a lot to keep track of. Sergeant Hall hoped he could avoid having to write all this up in a report. It looked almost like one of the missions, like one of the settlements. Here in his own street. His mind buzzed, settling into its rhythm of calculations. half-caste, quadroon, octoroon. What word next? One-sixteenth. No. It was all too much.

  And there was Ernest, with his tongue practically hanging from his mouth. His face flushed and unable to keep his eyes off Kathleen. His hands, too, seemed to be blushing, or was it that they were scrubbed raw?

  Sergeant Hall was due to retire in a few months. What would his successor think? What would he say?

  The older women tried to explain, their fathers had deserted these kids, the mothers didn’t have a chance ... Where else? Who else? Fanny and Harriette hesitated, fearing they’d said too much.

  But Sergeant Hall hadn’t noticed. Sergeant Hall waved her silent. All this, next-door to the police station. Where did they keep them all? The rainwater tanks, the shed...

  It’s a wonder there hadn’t been more complaints from the townsfolk. His brain ached from the mathematics.

  He saw Kathleen look at him from under her brows, behind her lashes; shy, like she did. He’d thought ... For a moment he wondered if he’d been made a fool of.

  He was a policeman. He was the Local Protector. He reminded himself—and it came as a relief—that these people needed his help.

  Had Daniel been deceived?

  Officially, he was off-duty. He said his goodbyes gruffly, and left.

  Ernest guessed ... Ernest thought about what could happen. He’d looked into the law, had listened to Auber and James Segal. There was every chance the policeman would sell the property, transfer the funds to the Aborigines Department, and send the lot of them away. That was what usually happened, and this case was only a little different from the majority because of the husband being—having been—a white man.

  Ern had got on well with Daniel. He had understood the man, which was no mean feat when confronted by a speech impediment like that.

  It was a gamble, whichever way you looked at it. But Ernest had plans, and did not yet suspect that he may have erred in reckoning on the railway coming across this far.

  Auber had sung the praises of these native women. James too, more intimately. Ern had seen the results himself, those children of Daniel and Harriette’s, for instance; they were practically white. Should be free, he thought.

  Ern, already, wanted to make them as I am; free to drift away like bright fair flowers, free to float out to the islands.

  And Ern elaborated to himself what Daniel had implied. After all, what do you need a woman for anyway? There’s no trouble, they make great mothers, great wives, and it’s easy to let ’em know they’d be in the shit without you. Ernest did not dwell on his choice of metaphor, did not think that it might one day be he who crept up behind the white townsfolk as they turned their backs on him and squatted.

  It was a matter of who he was going to save, and where the best investment lay. Course, he was getting lonely. Know what I mean? I know all about loneliness.

  And yes, I felt lonely, even in writing that, as I hovered over the keyboard, my fingers tap-tapping and my heels in the air. I feared I was losing my people, that options narrow down all the time. That I was losing. Even when family welcomed me back, they did so warily—but it became easier when I no longer carried my grandfather on my back wherever I went.

  I was frightened, I remain proud.

  When I first began to sing around the campfire, my body rising and falling with my voice, a cousin to whom I had been introduced offered to accompany me on the didj, but we could not get it right. He cried out, ‘Relax, loosen up, you be singing like a wadjela next,’ and stomped away. Almost weeping at that I let the song come, and my hovering body resonated something like a didgeridoo itself, except that the notes were so high and varied, and then my cousin
came back into the campfire light.

  But my singing still makes people uncomfortable. It is embarrassing I suppose, someone looking like me, singing as I do.

  But...

  Sergeant Hall looked at Ern warily. This was some proposal; he was not sure what to make of it.

  It bettered his own plan, and it would hurt Kathleen less. Yes, again, he had to admit he’d grown very fond of that girl. It seemed a fair plan. All things considered, it seemed best for all concerned. Everything correct and in order.

  Sergeant Hall said there was no need for permission from the department. ‘I am the Local Protector. And I judge Kathleen, unequivocally, a white girl.’

  Sergeant Hall was a good policeman. He could only blind himself for so long, could only bend the rules to a limited extent before bending them back the other way. His successor was about to arrive, and Ern and he agreed that this much was clear;

  1. These people weren’t white.

  2. There was no hope for them now with Daniel gone. (And surely he had never known that they gathered like this.)

  3. It would be unfair to burden Kathleen with them. They would drag her down.

  4. The townspeople would not like it, and the children would never be accepted at the local school.

  5. It was necessary to act for their own good.

  Sergeant Hall hired a good solid cart. He couldn’t get anything too luxurious, the Aborigines Department was not a wealthy one. And, anyway, there was nothing else available, not for so many. Although in fact, there were less on the cart than there legally should have been because Harriette had remained, subject to Sergeant Hall and Ernest’s goodwill. The two men had assured her, had assured them all; things were different now. This place the others were being sent to had a school, it was like an agricultural college. It was a place to learn, to gather skills, to equip oneself for life.

  Harriette had no choice. She wanted to believe them.

  Sergeant Hall tried to reassure them. ‘I have a friend,’ he said, ‘who will care for you.’ He handed them over to another policeman, and gave them one last (unreturned) wave.

  At the siding there was a man to guard them. He made a little sign, and wired it to the carriage. Niggers for Mogumber.

  The farmer told himself he was affable and egalitarian, leaning against the fence post like this, and speaking to Jack Chatalong.

  ‘You got a job lined up after this one?’

  The farmer leaned very hard against the post as he spoke. He was looking for a discount, but the fence post did not move.

  Jack shook his head, tightened the last wire.

  ‘I hear they found a mob at Daniel Coolman’s place, they’re moving them all.’

  Jack was on his bike. He slewed through sand, through alternating shadow and light, concentrating on the path his wheels must take, and it was as if the shadows were of people, silently willing him to maintain balance and momentum.

  There was no one at the yard and there was only quiet among the water tanks. A couple of late magpies danced before him. He looked at the ground. How far to the railway?

  As the night closed in around him, his breathing grew ragged. He rode until he was exhausted, slept, and rode again in the morning.

  It was dark before he got to the siding. He heard the train shriek. And then he was rushing past the siding; the train moving away, trailing its plume of steam. He moved in steam, or was it now mist?

  The bike twisted under him, and he was running, stumbling on sleepers, chasing the train, knowing even then how foolish he was. He called out into the darkness, his thin voice joining the giant hissing and panting, the rumbling of metal on metal. Then his hand got hold of something. The train dragged him, and his breath had been left far behind, when he saw a figure leap stiffly from the carriage, hit the ground and roll, and roll, and roll. He saw this even as the train dragged him. Fanny?

  The train slowed, stopped.

  The guards pulled him to his feet, counted those in the stock car. With this one, who had obviously tried to leap off, there were seven. Okay.

  Those on the carriage were thinking of old Fanny, somewhere out there in the bush. She would not have been able to survive such a fall, surely. Should not have even been able to leap like that.

  The train continued on, its unhappy passengers in the stock car now a little less sullen, and strangely cheered even though Jack Chatalong had his hands cuffed. Just in case, you know. It would look bad, now that it had been decided, if anyone were to escape

  Some of these are heading, inexorably, toward the first proper white man born. The others, irrespective of caste or fraction, will mostly make a different future. I fear I have lost them. I fear it is being proved once again, I am so much less than I might have been. I fear that once were we, and now there is only I.

  Nevertheless, I can offer a further glimpse. In some ways it corresponds to my own experience, the treatment I took at Ern’s hands. This is from what I have been told.

  Someone at the carriage, opening it. The sand felt luxurious at first, and you let your feet sink into it. Earth.

  ‘Someone will be here for you in the morning.’ What could you do? You didn’t know where you were. Some of us were about to find out we didn’t know who we were.

  In the morning you saw a series of unconnected carriages which had been released of their human cargo. Not just your family’s. You were rounded up by a few fellas in half uniforms; a jacket, a whip, a spear tipped with glass, sticks and waddies.

  ‘This way,’ they indicated. ‘This way.’ You were driven to the settlement like animals, really, but of course it was not for slaughtering. For training? Yes, perhaps. Certainly it was for breeding, according to the strict principles of animal husbandry.

  And one, of pure but rejected strain, must have been absorbed into the earth further back along that long railway.

  The children were distributed variously.

  Wire mesh on the windows. As soon as the sun falls you were locked into a dormitory. Insects in the mattresses stung your shivering body. You heard bare feet padding across the floor. Muffled cries. Whispers. Other bodies slipped into your bed, to investigate the newcomer.

  Small children shat on the sandy floor of one room, and like cats they covered their heap.

  If you were very lucky, a woman who worked in the kitchen said, ‘You call me Aunty. Aunty Dinah.’

  They ran a comb through your hair, speaking of your scalp. ‘White, really.’ Someone jerked at your clothing. ‘See, where the sun has not been?’

  ‘Elsewhere. We need somewhere else for the lighter ones.’

  They kept you at the compound for a few days.

  In the schoolroom the teacher was shouting across the room at a girl. A thin web of spittle trailed the words, and fell as short of the mark as the words themselves. The girl was dragged from the room.

  A young one on the floor, tied to the leg of her desk.

  A girl returns to class with her head shaved, wearing a sack for a dress. Those who quietly snicker nevertheless suffer with her. Because you never knew. It might be you.

  The evening meal. You sat together at long benches, and did not talk. Cold. A thick yellow skin formed across the bowl. You tapped something solid at the bowl’s centre. It bobbed, and the yellow skin broke apart.

  Eyeballs floated across puddles of greasy soup, and crusts of bread showed signs of having already been gnawed by tiny mouths. If you were lucky there was a dull spoon.

  Locked up of an evening, wire over the windows. Things in the mattress bit you, and you welcomed the others into your bed. Because of the warmth, see, and the company.

  You dreamt that you were punished, like the boy you’d seen put into a bag and suspended from a rope tied high in a tree. Swinging. Trying to keep your head above your feet. Feeling that you were not quite drifting, but released; set free, thrown out and abandoned. It was dark, the weave of the hessian making rectangles of light. You could not distinguish trees, but only sky and earth.

/>   Cut down, crawling out of the bag. You could not walk, and fell, kept falling; the earth had moved away, rolled away and left her behind.

  In daylight you were bundled into a train again. A proper carriage this time, and a man in a suit watched you. A woman dressed in stiff white clothes receives you at the station.

  You walked, almost breaking into a trot at the woman’s side. It was very hot. The sky blue. Heatwaves everywhere, rippling the air above road, red brick. So many lines against the sky and rumbling trams reach up to them.

  And yes, the children here were all paler, as you must’ve realised, taking the cue from your inspectors. It was all so much nicer here.

  So do you disappear from me, from us? Accept this kind of death? Keep secret your many miseries, your joys and laughter too?

  I laugh at the reports of the visitors to the settlement, just as some would have at the time. But it is a peculiar kind of laughter. The Ugly Men’s Association sent a delegation there. I am sure some of our white uncles and fathers were among them. It was written up in a church newsletter:

  A visit to a native settlement is always a joy to me. Any place where they are caring for the original inhabitants of Australia should receive the sympathetic support of all who have made this country their home.

  In company with the supervisor we drove in a sulky and tandem across the sandplain which brought us in sight of the settlement. Delightful people with black skins were running about, and great was the excitement at the arrival of a visitor.

  Lunch was ready on our arrival, and after refreshing the inner man, we set out on a long sandy walk to visit the cemetery, accompanied by about one hundred and fifty natives.

  What a blessing for the natives that they have got a sympathetic superintendent and self-sacrificing staff.

  Segregation is the only thing for the Aborigines. But let their segregation be Christian, and the natives taught to be useful...

  I do hope I am being useful, I used to say to Ern. I do hope I am being useful.