Читать книгу Goodbye Lullaby - Jan Murray - Страница 5

Stretching time, welcoming the warmth of the afternoon sun on their back, the two women, one black, one white, sitting together in silence, a calmness born of familiarity, dozy, comfortable, their long friendship wrapped up in the surrounding stillness, their only activity was to make occasional tracings in the sand.

Miki was aware they should be heading back, give a hand to Jimmy and the boys to help pack up the last of their camp but this was precious time and she wanted their solitude and companionship to last as long as possible. After they shipped out it would be a long time before they saw each other again. Bernie Blackburn; Jimmy’s wife, a Wujal Wujal woman and her friend, her connection to the Bloomfield, the three of them partners in crime these past few years.

They were an odd trio––a skinny old WW11 vet who hadn’t made it any further south than Port Douglas after the war; his wife from the Kuku-Yalanji; and herself, Caroline Patrick, Miki to her friends, a thirty-six-year old woman with a price on her head, in hiding from the Queensland and the Commonwealth Police.

The way it was, Australia, 1971.

Repeatedly, she etched '38' in the sand beside her, rubbing nit out '38' furiously each time.

The sun’s rays highlighted the grains of sand sticking to the hairs on her legs. Like head lice, she thought, recalling their 4th class being marched to the washroom by Sister Redempta to have their heads drenched in a putrid rinse and sent home with a note. They all knew who’d given them nits but it would be eternal damnation for them if they so much as mentioned the scruffy Homes girl. Not that Sister Redempta or the other sisters’ threats had carried as far as the bus stop. Kids were cruel back then. Adults weren’t much better was the thought clouding her memory when the silence was suddenly broken.

‘Mik?’ said Bernie. ‘I been watching you a while, girl. There’s pain behind them baby blues.’ Bernie pointed to the numerals repeated in the sand. ‘Wanna talk?’

Miki hurriedly rubbed out the numbers. A tangle of sweaty curls chafed against her back as she sprang up and brushed the seat of her pants and her sandy limbs. She checked her watch and extended her hand to Bernie. ‘C’mon. Better be getting back.’

‘Not likely his number’s gonna come out, y’know that.’ Bernie was looking up at her. ‘It won’t, y’know.’

‘No?’ she let her hand drop. ‘You know that, for sure?’

‘No. But even if it does … and it’s not gonna … it’s not your fault.’

Bernie tapped her on the back of the leg, a motherly reprimand. ‘It don’t do you no good, all that rubbish you got goin’ on in that pretty head of yours, Mik. Time to start beating up on yourself’s if it happens. Mightn’t even have registered, y’know.’ It was a long speech for the normally taciturn woman and having said her piece, Bernie returned to tracing her own symbols in the cooling sand.

Miki stood watching over Bernie, thinking of other times, seeing Bernie as a younger woman sitting in the dust with Lily, both of them doing their intricate drawings, the patient mother teaching her precious little daughter the old ways. Painting on the smooth Bloomfield River stones and strips of white bark. ‘He would have registered, Bernie. He’d have been brain-washed from the moment they got their hands on him. First in line when the doors opened last month, you can bet.’

‘July,’ Bernie corrected.

‘Yeah, okay. July.’ She tried to blot out a painful scene, one she knew only too well; the twice a year procession of nineteen-year-old youths lining up at their local Labour and National Service office. Filling in those hateful forms. She had used her fifteen minutes of fame during the previous registration fortnight to torment the Government, exposing their Birthday Lottery for the sick joke it was. But had he seen it? And would it have made him question his country’s involvement in the war if he had? Or like everyone else in Australia who didn’t want to get on the wrong side of good old Uncle Sam, would he have written her type off as the idiot fringe, hippy protesters?

More importantly, how would she ever know?

She squatted down on her haunches and scooped up a handful of the fine sand, holding it in her palm for a time before she spread her fingers and watched as the grains slipped through and were lost among the myriad others on the beach. ‘All our somewhere children, Bernie? Where do you suppose––?’

‘Let it go!’ Bernie heaved herself up onto her feet, not as adroitly as Miki had done but a graceful enough effort for the large woman she was. She brushed the sand from her backside. ‘You’ve gotta let it go, Mik. You just plain gotta let it go sometimes.’

Bernie was right. Cultivate a mind that clings to nothing, said the Buddha. Easier said than done, though. ‘Why should we let it go?’

‘Because it bloodywell kill’s you if you don’t.’

Yes, it kills you, alright.

She checked the skies before leaving the cover of the mangroves and started down to the water’s edge. Today was a day of trepidation, of dark feelings. Resentment. Shame. Regret. Bitterness. Anguish. Longing. Let her at it, she could write the thesaurus on the darker emotions.

‘Think about it,’ Bernie said, coming up to her and placing a hand on her shoulder. ‘We’re making fools of the bastards, girl. We chip away at things. At their power. We’re like bloody termites. An army of white ants, that's us.’

Despite her mood, she cocked an eyebrow at her friend and grinned. ‘White ants?’

Bernie got the joke.

‘Well, yeah, some of us aren’t so bloody white but y’know what I mean, you ratbag.’

Bernie ground the heel of her bare foot into the wet sand, twisting it so that tiny bubbles surfaced around it, betraying a secret universe. ‘They can’t see us. Don’t mean we’re not there, though. We’re doing the damage, Mik. With our marches ‘n things.' She pointed up to their transfer camp inside the rainforest. 'With all this ... the kinda stuff we’re doing up here.’

Bernie waved her arm to the sky, to where the choppers had been. ‘We got 'em worried, that’s for sure. Canberra’s gonna have to rethink what they doin’, I reckon. Jus’ can’t keep sending our kids over there. Waves of ‘em come’n back dead or ruined. The country’s over it, fair-dinkum. The buggers are gonna wake up one day ‘n find their game’s up. Whitlam’s gonna wipe the floor with ‘em. End the whole bloody mess, I reckon.’

'You’d like to think so.’

‘Honestly, Mik, we’re the secret army. The bloody secret army and they better watch out ‘cause we’re coming for ‘em!’

Bernie locked fingers with Miki and they walked along the water’s edge, trailing their feet in the coolness of the sea. ‘We’re making fools of the buggers, alright. You more than anyone.' She slapped Miki's backside. 'Oh, yeah, sister. You, more 'n any of us, my famous friend.’

‘Infamous friend.’

‘Notorious friend.’ Bernie laughed. ‘I can just see ‘em, the stupid buggers! Kaper Kops!’ She wiped away the tears with the back of her hand.

Miki wasn't laughing. ‘Yeah, and now that young man back in there, and the other two, and all the others we've shipped off ... they're heading for God knows what kind of life now, Bernie.’ She kicked at the wave as it washed over her feet. ‘And I’ve got a price on my head. So you tell me; whose the stupid bugger? You tell me. Tell me who’s the idiot. Sure, I made fools of ‘em but now that boy … and me … are on the run.'

The pair walked on in silence for several minutes, each away with her own thoughts. Miki put an arm around Bernie's shoulder. ‘I did strike a blow for him though, didn’t I?’

‘Him? Yeah. How else was you gonna reach out to your boy, Mik? You got it right, I reckon.’

‘And make other mothers think about their sons' call-up.’

‘You had to do it, girl. And that kid in there, he was up for it anyway. You didn’t twist ‘is arm. And the Gov’ment had it coming to ‘em, I reckon.’ Bernie put her arm around Miki's waist. ‘Sorry I laughed back there but sometimes you have to, don’t you? Just thinkin' about those Sydney coppers running around like chooks with no heads, it cracks me up ... it fair-dinkum cracks me up, Mik. You and the kid already out the back door and on your way, and them chasin’ their bloody tails!’

‘Those blokes up in the sky, Bernie? They're no laughing matter, though. They’re the real thing.

She slowed her pace, dropping back from Bernie to dawdle along the shoreline, her mind drifting back to March and the rush of blood to the head that had made her risk hers and young Jamie Richardson’s freedom.

Bernie might be right; James Richardson had been up for it.

She had met him through their network and he had been full of idealism and youthful bravado. But as the adult, she ought to have tempered that, tried cautioning him that he would be making himself a massive target. She ought to have warned him but instead, she jumped at the idea.