Читать книгу Goodbye Lullaby - Jan Murray - Страница 8

Bernie stood alongside what was left of the fire, pouring tea into enamel mugs from her blackened billy and handing them around.

‘Thanks,’ said Miki as Bernie passed her one of the steaming mugs, an offering she knew would be too white and far too sweet for her taste because Bernie loaded her brews with truck loads of milk and sugar. She only knew one other person who took their tea that way.

She could feel her friend’s eyes boring into her, even as the kindly woman moved around the camp with her billy offerings. While Bernie wasn't looking, she tossed the tea out. She loathed sweet tea.

Jimmy and the boys stood about with their hands out for their cha and some of the hard-crusted damper Bernie was breaking off and buttering with her fishing knife.

‘I should’ve been up here helping with all this, Bernie. You've packed up the camp. Sorry.’

‘Thought a bloody croc must have got you.’

Jimmy came across and squeezed her shoulder, his usual show of affection.‘Too tough for a croc, hey, love?’

She booted him in his backside as he walked off.

Jimmy spun around and shaped up with his two fists, shadow boxing around her until she played his game. Their standing joke, this shadow boxing business.

‘Deck an old man, would ya?’

She looked around in mock surprise. ‘Where is he?’

Jimmy laughed and got back to work checking under the bonnet of his truck, a battered old Army supply Bedford that could take on any country thrown at it, according to the man who cherished it.

‘Bet the water was nice, though?’ said Bernie, indicating Miki's wet shirt and shorts.

She folded the hot damper Bernie handed her into a tea towel and laid it on the passenger seat of her own army-issue vehicle, a four-seater Jeep. ‘For the road,’ she said. She had no appetite for food.

‘You went in,’ said Jamie Richardson, indicating her wet hair. The youth was now bearded, long-haired and calling himself Rasta in honour of the dreadlocks he was cultivating.

She lifted the Jeep’s bonnet and reached for the dip stick, turning to the youth biting off a hunk of Bernie's damper. 'You packed?' She liked the look of young Richardson so much more now than on the night in March and hoped, if there was a Heaven, that his mother would be looking down at her boy and approving the changes in him. She had the feeling the boy’s mother had had more spunk than the awful father, Sir Roland Richardson. She smiled every time she thought of the old boy and what he must think of his son today.

‘Thought you told us it was lethal?’ said the tallest and prettiest of the three youths, the one who had modestly named himself The Force.

She gathered up the pile of hessian bags the boys had tossed over the side of the Jeep when they arrived at the Blackburn’s camp this morning and shoved them at The Force’s chest. ‘In the Bedford with these, hero. Then tie on the water tanks.’ She went back to examining her battery and oil levels, wiping the dip stick with her rag and reinserting it before looking around the side of the bonnet lid to check his progress.

The Force stood looking at her, making no move.

‘Please?’ she added, joining her palms together in mock supplication.

He shot her a Nazi salute and frog-marched across to the truck to deposit the bundle.

She flicked the back of his hairy head with her dirty oil cloth. He took aim and hurled it back at her but she ducked low and dodged it with a grin.

Returning to her engine, she poured water into the radiator, aware Bernie was still trying to read her thoughts, gauge her emotional state. She could stick the biggest grin in the world on her face and clown around with Jimmy and these kids but she knew it wouldn’t fool that woman. Not for a moment. Bernie knew what dread tomorrow night held for her.

‘Okay, let’s move it out, troops! Keep it move’n, hep, two, three, four…’ Jimmy banged the side of his truck several times to get their attention. When there was no instant response, he barked orders again. Louder this time. ‘Come on, you lazy long-haired lay-abouts! Step to it!’

‘Cut the military jive, man. Okay? You’re sounding too bloody Army.’ This, from The Force. On the way up from Brisbane, they had each given themselves concocted names, monikers for their new, lawless lives; The Force, Rasta and Giant.

Giant was the shy one among them.

Rasta and Giant climbed up into the back of the Bedford and settled among the cardboard boxes and the wheat bags.

Bernie stood at the back of the truck waiting to tie things down with her ropes. She gave The Force a hurry-up which he ignored. She looked at Jimmy, gave him a cheeky wink, ‘Gonna miss you, Jimbo.'

'Keep it warm for me, love.'

Miki caught the exchange between husband and wife, saw Jimmy wink back at Bernie and blow her a kiss, one that held a private treaty. Bernie was lucky to have a man who loved her as much as Jimmy did, she thought. It would weigh hard on Bernie while he was gone. After Cooktown, Jimmy’s job was to get the boys onto a Darwin trawler heading to Asia. She knew Bernie would stew about her Jimbo the whole time he was gone, making excuses to the mob, lying about him being down in Cairns, working on a fishing boat. Or gone south for a reunion with his Army mates. Anything to allay suspicion. They were fortunate to have such a good marriage, she reflected as she banged down the bonnet of the Jeep and went across to the mossy stream that ran past the camp.

She scooped handfuls of the icy water up and splashed her hair, her face and then more handfuls across her limbs and down the front of her shirt, welcoming the cooling sensation over her body. The sea water had been itching her since she had returned from the beach and it felt good to be saturated in rainforest water. There was still plenty of heat left in the day and the drive would be a long and sweltering one.

The Force was mid-way aboard the Bedford when he stopped and stared at Miki, making her acutely aware that her wet shirt was clinging to her bra-less chest. She grabbed the threadbare beach towel drying on a nearby branch and threw it around her shoulders.

‘Hey, any girls where we’re going, Pops?’ said The Force, addressing Jimmy while continuing to stare at Miki.

‘Yeah, Mrs Palmer and her five daughters,’ grinned Jimmy as he spat into his right palm, rubbed his two hands together and mimed masturbation before walloping the youth across the back of the skull. ‘Ya bloody tosser. Get in!’

Miki shook the excess water from her hair and heard the embers behind her hiss for a second then die. It was a sad sound but why, she couldn’t say. It just was. Probably because it represented the breaking up of their camp, heading home, mission accomplished. She wasn’t a good one for endings. She was told in the past that it was the melancholy Celt in her.

By the time she snapped out of her reverie she realized there was nothing left of their fire. She gave an involuntary shudder, as if the weather had suddenly turned bitter.

‘Here, let me dry this mop of yours,’ said Bernie, coming up behind her and taking the towel. ‘More hair than a bloody golliwog and just as black. Black hair. Blue eyes. You’re a freak of nature, Caroline Patrick.’

‘Blame my Galway ancestors, Bern.'

Before she had time to protest the rough handling from her friend she found her head buried in Bernie’s bosom beneath the towel.

‘Honestly, you don’t want us to hang around a bit, Mik?’ whispered Bernie. She had Miki in a headlock, the hair rubbing an obvious ruse to question her.

‘Uh, uh. I’m fine. Stop worrying. And ouch, let me go, you bugger.’

Bernie made a towel turban before releasing her from her grasp. ‘There. That’s better, miss.’

‘Ta.’ She was aware The Force was still checking her out.

‘You’re going to last about five minutes up there, man.’ It was Rasta, from under his cardboard and hessian hideout.

‘Wise up, brother,’ added Giant; reddish hair and balding at twenty, a runt who wore John Lennon specs and carried a dog-eared copy of Dharma Bums in his jeans pocket.

She came up behind The Force and pushed him into the truck without apology. The youth reached out and took hold of her arm as she was about to walk away. ‘They’re right, y’know,’ he said. ‘I’m gonna last five minutes up there. Howz about it? A kiss? For the road?’

‘Shut up and get under.’ The suddenness of her temper surprised everyone. There was an uncomfortable silence.

'Joking, alright?'

Bernie gave The Force a look of disgust as she pulled Miki away from the truck. ‘Help me with this, Mik.’ Bernie indicated the already extinguished camp fire, another excuse to get Miki alone. ‘I could stay, y’know?’ she whispered out of the corner of her mouth as she kicked at the dead embers.

Miki felt tears coming on.

‘Go south with you for a few days … till this business blows over?’ insisted Bernie.

‘I’ll be all right, I promise.’

‘I’m thinking you mightn’t be all that right, sister. You’re not in great shape, y’know. Those bloody emotions of yours are all over the place.’ Bernie tapped Miki's forehead. ‘You’re stewin'.’

‘I’m angry.’

‘Same bloody thing.’

‘Don’t worry about me. That’s an order.’

‘Of course I bloody worry about you, girl. Of course I bloody do! What do you reckon? Have y’got a bloody mother to do it? No. Y’got me. So belt up!’

Miki knew their closeness worked both ways. Bernie was half right; she had no mother. But Miki helped fill an aching hole for Bernie, too. A surrogate daughter, probably, she reasoned as she felt Bernie’s sad eyes fixed on her.

They were both on the brink of tears. Bernie reached out to her. 'Come here, girl.'

Miki put her cheek near Bernie’s and felt the other woman’s tears joining her own. The aching, the longing, it never goes away, she thought. Bernie just puts on a better front, that’s all. Bernie’s braver, much braver.

They clung together, ignoring those around them until, finally, she looked across at Jimmy and saw his hang-dog look.

These partings also upset Jimmy, she knew, but she also knew that Jimmy would just as soon stand in a corner and give himself six hard uppercuts than let anyone think he was up for a bit of affection from a sheila! He stood with one foot on his running board, holding the driver’s door open and feigning impatience with the two women.

Miki forced him to let go of the door handle, insisting on a farewell hug. The old digger might pretend to be embarrassed but she knew he expected a show of affection at times like these. In their business, camaraderie was a given but it didn’t hurt to seal it with a big, friendly clinch.

‘Bye, Jimmy. Keep your head down, mate. Look after yourself.’ She planted a sloppy kiss on his cheek to go with the hug––one he ostentatiously wiped away with the back of his hand. She looked over her shoulder. ‘And her,’ she added. ‘Look after your old lady when you get back, Jimmy. She’s precious.’

She moved to the back of the truck, to where her escapees were settling in among their camouflage, the youths she was surrendering.

Holding James Richardson young face between the palms of her hands, she planted a kiss on his forehead. 'We made it. Who'd have thought, hey?' She looked into his eyes for several more seconds then hugged him to her chest. ‘Your mum would be so proud of you, Jamie,’ she whispered. 'God bless.'

He nodded slowly and blinked away his tears.

She moved on to her next charge. Taking Giant’s gaunt and bearded face between her hands, she planted a kiss on his receding forehead. ‘Goodbye, Robert.’ She produced a small paperback from her hip pocket and handed it to him. It was another Kerouac, her own much-rubricated copy of On the Road. ‘Keep the faith, comrade.’ She smiled at the serious young man, ruffling what was left of his hair before she moved up to where The Force was busy trying to avoid her.

He looked contrite. She pulled his face towards her and planted her motherly kiss on his forehead. ‘You be kind to the girls up there, okay David, you bad boy?’

She looked into three sets of hopeful, defiant young eyes and tried to fathom all kinds of things she couldn’t name. ‘Live well, kids. Have a good life.’ She stepped back from the truck, turning before they could see her tears.

Bernie tied down the last of the ropes and climbed aboard, her elbow resting on the window.

Jimmy started up his engine and threw the Bedford into reverse.

Miki stood, hands in her shorts pockets, watching them drive off.

‘Peace!’ A loud farewell from the youths, accompanied by the zeitgeist’s salute.

‘Peace,’ she whispered.

She watched the Bedford make its way between the bushes, turn the bend in the track and disappear. Where would life take these young men, she wondered. The only thing she knew for certain was that she felt vindicated in having done her small part in helping them find their way there, wherever it was.

God help the others, she thought as she climbed into her own vehicle and threw it into gear.

It was a long way home.