Bloodlines Page 23

  ‘Too true,’ he says, ‘but she loved the view.’

  And they both look out the window, over the lawn and the hibiscus where they buried Dog the year before, to the orchard, and beyond to the hill with Eva’s house resting on top. And he remembers too, the night he proposed, coming up behind Rose as she stood at this sink, his hands on her rump, her spinning to face him, hot breath on his neck.

  He puts his hand on Beth's shoulder. ‘This is the perfect place for them, love.’

  Clem brings back some treasure from the paddock when he goes to fix a fence, check on the sheep or repair the windmill for the hundredth time. A green and blue feather from a parrot, a palm-sized piece of quartz the shape of Australia, a heart-shaped gum leaf. He finds a nest made from straw and grass, a tiny grey and blue feather still clinging to it, and a doubleheaded honky nut. He lays them out on the windowsill near the photo of Rose. Nature’s prayer flags. An offering. A reminder that the world is still a beautiful place.

  *

  Although he keeps going to church, Clem’s lost faith in the big bugger upstairs. No prayer can right the wrong of a good woman gone. Or a baby who never saw the light of day. Perhaps he goes for Eva’s sake, or because he thinks Beth might be better off with a bit of Catholic God in her, though his real God is bigger and wider than these walls. Sometimes when he’s down at the chooks as the world’s just coming light or when he’s sitting with Beth in the garden, the mandarine sun sitting low in the sky, softening the stubble: it’s then he feels most like singing Halleluiah. Alongside Eva he stands and sits, and kneels and sings, prodding Beth to do the same, but mostly in the long stretches of the homily or the hymns after communion, he’s that younger man again, walking through the orchard holding Rose’s hand, Dog circling them before he’s off chasing wild geese.

  Beth’s been back at school a week. She’s taken it easy: just a few lessons with Lena’s Year Eights, weaving baskets island-style with Mr Reis’s students. One morning she opens her back door and sees Ruth pegging meri blouses, laplaps and trousers on the line. Ruth. Housework?

  Ruth spots her coming across the grass. ‘Delilah has gone,’ she says.

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Gone with the cross.’

  ‘Right,’ says Beth.

  Beth’s heard about the cross. The town’s swollen with excitement. When Father Aloysius announced his retirement a week ago, Val said that preparations were underway to mark the occasion. She told Beth that a large wooden cross decorated with garlands of flowers, fern fronds and shells would begin its pilgrimage along the highway—in this case, from Father Aloysius’s home village in the west of the island—to the church by the beach. Hundreds of followers travel with the cross, she’d said, carried by men, sometimes sauntering in the heat, sometimes running full throttle. At The Bilas, the stories fly thick and fast: how further south, the cross careered off the highway into a cemetery and began digging up graves; how in a seaside village it had smashed right through the windows of the only shop.

  Beth hears stories at school too. In the staffroom Mr Reis tells her that near the airport the cross passed some meris holding rosary beads, and the beads came undone very fast and spilt all over the road.

  ‘There’s no jobs,’ he says. ‘It gives these people something to do, it’s good.’

  Mrs Samin glares at him, jabs a finger in the air, dismisses it as nonsense.

  ‘It’s gone too far,’ she declares. ‘People are too scared to say they don’t believe because they’re afraid of the cross. It’s madness.’

  Beth sees Val from the corner of her eye, leaning on the doorframe.

  ‘I’ve seen a few crosses in my time up here,’ Val says, ‘but this one takes the cake.’

  Like going troppo up north at home, Beth thinks.

  ‘And Bill tells me ...’ Val steps inside the staffroom, ‘he reckons there’s a hundred people following the thing up the highway, and at least three hundred dogs. It’s an absolute crock, he said, not to mention bloody dangerous.’

  Mrs Samin clicks her tongue. ‘Like payback, like sorcery,’ she says. ‘It’s just an excuse not to change, to continue in the old ways.’

  Val turns to Beth. ‘People truly believe the cross dictates its own path,’ she says. ‘You know, chooses which way to go. Except ... have you seen all the bilas lining the streets—all the flowers and streamers, the big banner that says Welcome Holy Cross, farewell Father Aloysius? How on earth does a banner know where a cross is going to pass?’ She laughs. ‘These people,’ she says.

  Mr Reis is fidgety. ‘Some people believe,’ he says.

  ‘Young fool,’ Mrs Samin says, and cuffs him across the head.

  1987

  Beth goes everywhere with Clem. She loves the sheds: plays with the ewes in the pens during smoko, making up names for them, jumping on their backs pretending she’s at a rodeo, enjoying their weaving and kicking. When the men crank their handpieces she grabs a smaller sheep by the front legs, rolls it onto its rump and clatters through the gates, dragging it to Tommo or Jock or Clem. At twelve she’s driving the old Ford 5000, ripping the home paddock, ready for seeding. She helps pull a calf once. They’re down in the line of jam trees that run on each side of the gully.

  Clem rests his hand on the cow’s back and gives Beth, her jeans slippery with mucous and blood, the instructions: ‘Feel for its leg up high love, the shoulder if yer can, turn to your right, clockwise you know. Easy easy, then gently pull it towards yer.’

  And eyes watery with pride, he takes a step back as little Bethy, shoulder deep in a cow’s behind, squeezes her eyes shut and gently pulls, until two tiny hoofs the colour of cold fat appear.

  She watches, mouth open, as Clem guts a sheep, its entrails of red and gold pouring over the back verandah. He hangs the carcass and goes inside to wash and knows that Beth’s standing out there counting the ribs, poking at the translucent sinew of the sawn off legs. When he kills a roo she pulls the pelt with him, her little fingers hurting white as they drag back the dark fur. She stands with the fridge door open, staring at smooth pink rabbits, skinned and gutted on the top shelf. When he chops the head of a chook for roasting and ties it to the clothesline, Beth sits out there for ages watching the headless bird flapping itself stupid in the fading afternoon light. So much dying a part of their living.

  After lunch at The Lagoon one Sunday, Val drives a sleepy Beth home. She’s fizzy with gin but can still see a mass of people swarm over the road—kids squealing, dogs barking, women with bilas in their hair chanting—and as the ute draws closer they see the cross: four bare-chested men shouldering it like a coffin. The men run, their spare arm punching an angry fist in the air, and when they see the two white women they whoop and holler.

  ‘That’s about as sacred as pekpek,’ says Val, and Beth does the translation: shit.

  She erupts into laughter.

  *

  As they head to town the next day, Ruth’s eyes are wild as she sits next to Beth on the back of the school ute.

  ‘Have you heard?’ she asks.

  ‘Heard what?’ says Beth.

  ‘This cross close now.’ Her voice is high with excitement. ‘Will be here in a few days.’

  ‘Of course.’ Beth wants to show respect. She is a visitor here.

  ‘Maybe it will come along this road.’

  ‘Look at all the bilas, Ruth. Of course it will go right through the mission. Father Aloysius has lived here for twenty five years!’

  ‘Oh I hope so!’ Ruth must be pushing sixty but her eyes are glowing and her fleshy body is all twitchy like a kid’s. The hard woman, keeper of the infected thumb, seems a lifetime away. ‘You know ...’—she drops her voice even though they’re the only ones on the ute—‘there was this bad woman who had ...’ She stops, then whispers so softly that Beth almost misses it: ‘an abortion.’ She shakes his head. ‘It was secret,’ she tells her. ‘But this cross, he’s smart one. He go straight to the place where baby is buried and starts to dig at the dir
t.’ She clutches Beth’s arm, squeezes it tightly, spit collects at the corners of her mouth. ‘But it wasn’t just the baby. This cross digging up all these babies, all the small bones, telling what’s really there.’

  Beth coughs, edges away.

  ‘People very scared now,’ Ruth says with satisfaction, hands folded in her lap. ‘There’s no hiding. This cross, he knows.’

  After Beth finishes her shopping at Lim’s, she waits for Val and Ruth to come out of the bank. And then a bark, a squeal, razors the afternoon. A black and tan dog is screaming with fury as it’s tumbled under a ute. Everyone stops and stares and Beth can’t look away, and then somehow the dog is freed and limps off, giving the most hideously pitiful yelp Beth has ever heard: such venom and outrage at the injustice of it all. And then she’s nineteen, driving Clem’s ute home one afternoon, an icy, cold block of a dog on the back. Boy had taken a bait the week before, and though the vet had tried everything, he’d died anyway, and Beth had offered to collect him. She feels the weight of it now: the dog was Clem’s shadow, and the closest thing she had to a sibling. She talks to Boy all the way home, sings ‘Amazing Grace,’ ‘The Lord is My Shepherd,’ even ‘Silent Night,’ and then ballads she remembers from primary school, tears streaking her cheeks. In the rear-view mirror she watches the stiff dog, winces as it jostles over the corrugations, slides across the ute when she rounds the corner near Smithson’s, rams against the sides as she rattles along the drive. Clem stays inside when she pulls up, searches for the old spade in the garden shed and digs a hole out near the wattle. She jabs into hard, thirsty dirt. She knows Clem’s in the house, probably crying at the kitchen table, face in his gnarled, shearing hands, big shoulders shuddering.

  Perhaps it was then she realised that things were beginning to change.

  At church on Sunday, when the whirring fan does little to cool her or shift the strangling stink of sweat or betelnut, Beth closes her eyes, sees the shattering crystal of the night sky hanging low above them, feels the warmth of Pirate’s hand on her thigh, and then lets the feeling go. She returns to Father Aloysius, boiling with rage at the altar, and she’s grasping at the quick flowing Pidgin, can’t keep her eyes off the tiny man gesticulating wildly, pointing at shining black Jesus behind him, then waggling his bony finger at every section of the congregation. Beside her Val sits a little straighter, crosses her arms over her chest, purses her lips.

  ‘This cross foolishness must stop.’ The priest has switched to English. ‘The cross represents the Holy Father, the Good Lord, our God. He is benevolent. Compassionate. He does not damage properties or assault people. Or dig up cemeteries and graves.’

  The mob is silent; four hundred people completely still. Even the dogs. Beth searches the front pews on the other side of the church for Ruth. She’s staring straight at Father Aloysius. And beside her is Delilah, face flushed and full.

  ‘You should not believe these vicious stories,’ he says. ‘Gossip is evil.’

  *

  ‘Morning Misis Beth.’ Delilah’s in the laundry at noon.

  ‘Hi Delilah.’ Beth dumps her bag of washing in the trough. ‘Welcome home.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says dreamily, ‘I have been with the cross.’

  ‘Aha.’ Beth pours soap over the clothes and forces the tap till it gives. Delilah is smoking, and Beth scans the yard for Ruth.

  ‘Aunty’s at school,’ Delilah giggles. ‘Back later.’

  ‘Right,’ says Beth, and plunges her hands into the water, rubs at grass stains on her skirt.

  ‘In the village you know,’ Delilah says, ‘one man did not believe the cross, how smart it is. And the cross knew and the men carrying it suddenly go off the road and the cross hits right into the man’s house, right through the wall, glass smashing, wood everywhere!’ She’s feverish with the news.

  ‘But it’s wood, Delilah, and it doesn’t have legs. Maybe those men carrying it did the damage?’

  Delilah shakes her head.

  ‘Didn’t you hear what Father Aloysius said in church?’ says Beth. ‘The cross is meant to be good. Why would it do something like that?’

  ‘This cross.’ Delilah stubs out the cigarette on the window ledge, puts the butt in her bra. ‘This cross is very strong, it’s a smart one.’ And then she walks away, head in the air.

  Beth wrenches a skirt free and twists it, wringing the water from it until her fingers hurt. She tries to keep an open mind, wants to make sense of this tangled place. She knows all about miracles: at the girls’ school in Fremantle there was an annual European trip that included a visit to Medjugorje. For the rich kids, anyway. And in Rockingham a few years ago there was the Mary statue that wept tears. Three times Eva caught two trains and a bus and queued up to see it, was devastated when the church declared the statue was a fake. Beth wrings out another shirt, plunges her hands in for a laplap.

  When she tells Clem on the phone about the cross, he’s real interested. He wants to know what it looks like (wooden, six foot by three foot, covered in flowers and shells like some Zulu totem), where it is now (perched on the altar under black Jesus). Then he’s laughing: ‘Eva said to me just last week: Lourdes...’ imitating Eva’s high pitch ... ‘Wouldn’t it be marvellous to go there, Clem? I mean Rome is the obvious place, but wouldn’t Lourdes be something?’ Then it’s Clem’s own voice again: ‘And I said, Lords, did you say mum? As in the cricket ground? Now that’s something truly sacred.’

  It’s good to hear his voice, and Beth suddenly longs to see him. And a thought flashes at her: maybe it’s time to go home.

  She pushes the idea away.

  She tells Clem what the priest says, and how Ruth and Delilah are caught up in it all. He lets out a whistling breath, then laughs: ‘We’re all the same, aren’t we? Black, white or brindle. Hope Valley or that island up there, whether it makes sense or not, we all just want to believe in something.’

  *

  One afternoon after the lunch rush has finished and Lena has gone to the bank with the daily takings, Bill ambles into the kitchen of the restaurant.

  ‘Too late for some grub?’ he calls out.

  Beth, bum in the air, scrubbing the oven, falls back, startled.

  ‘Jeezus, love.’ He rushes to her. ‘Didn’t mean to make you jump.’

  ‘It’s okay Bill,’ she says, standing. She reads his T-shirt—The Liver is Evil and Must be Punished—the text stretching across his bulging belly, and frowns.

  ‘Gift from Ned,’ he says, grinning. ‘Got it in Moresby.’

  ‘Quality,’ says Beth. ‘There’s not much food left. Sweet and sour fish okay?’

  ‘Sure. I’m on the run though, so can I get takeaway?’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘You’re looking better, love. You were real crook a while back.’

  ‘Yep.’ She piles the food into a saucepan and lights the hob. ‘Much better now, though.’

  Ginger and chilli fill the air, and Bill says, ‘How about this cross crap?’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ Beth shakes her head. ‘I love hearing the traditional stories, and the blending of belief. You know, how they mix some local beliefs into church and stuff. But I just don’t get this at all.’

  ‘It’s absolute shit,’ says Bill. ‘There’s no other word for it. This is real bad though, I’ve never known it like this. There’s talk of someone down near The Lagoon suing it for damage to property! And did you hear what happened just past the airport?’

  ‘No. What?’

  ‘Well, it must be a bloody hungry cross,’ Bill says. ‘Apparently it dived into the sea and fish filled that very part of the sea and there was a big fish feast for the whole entourage!’

  ‘Really? Wow! Were there exactly five thousand fishes, and nice bread rolls supplied?’

  ‘Probably.’ Bill laughs.

  ‘How can Lena’s Place compete with that?’ she says, feigning exasperation, hands on hips. She looks thoughtful for a moment and then asks, ‘How long you been up here again, Bill?
’

  ‘Forty years. Came up when I was twenty-three.’

  ‘You go back much. You know, home?’

  ‘Here’s home, Beth. But I sometimes go to Brisbane. Christmas in the early days, then funerals. My old mum—she’s ninety now—I go back and see her every fifth of March. It’s her birthday. She’s as sharp as an axe and would know if I didn’t come. Plus that’s when I go to the doc, the dentist, you know, do all the sensible things for an old fella.’

  She smiles. ‘Must be real different up here now.’

  ‘Sure is. No cross crap back then, that’s for sure!’ Then Bill looks almost wistful. ‘Reckon I travelled to find myself all those years ago.’

  ‘I travelled to lose myself,’ Beth says quietly.

  ‘Doesn’t look like you’ve had much success,’ he says, and laughs.

  ‘Bugger!’ She throws a tea towel at him.

  Bill looks suddenly serious: ‘Reckon there’s lots of folks who do that, love. To hide, yer know. But I think we all get to that place where yer can’t run anymore, and yer stuck with yerself. Rock bottom.’ His brown eyes are soft. ‘Maybe you got there?’

  ‘Yeah, maybe I did Bill,’ she says, and hands him the container.

  ‘Well girlie,’ he says, ‘the only way is up.’

  1990

  So it’s primary school and reading Dick and Dora, times tables before bed and some binder twine strung between two star pickets to practise the high jump. Bikes and barbies, yoyos and tennis racquets. And with Eva’s help, Clem reckons he does a good job of raising a daughter. The teenage years are tricky though, and he misses Rose more than ever. When Eva buys Beth some pink Mum roll-on, he thinks it’s a kick in the guts, but Beth squeals and launches herself at Eva with outstretched arms. A woman now.

  ‘Clem,’ Eva says one Sunday after church, ’bout time your Beth had a bra.’

  Clem reddens, runs a hand over his greying hair.

  ‘She’s got little boobs, love, and she needs a bra. She’ll be sore, and getting teased at school soon enough.’