Bloodlines Read online

  Clem’s tying binder twine to an old iron bedhead and the fence of the chook yard when a thought crosses his mind: if Beth does come home for Christmas it’ll be like the prodigal daughter returning. He’s already been eyeing off an old ewe to slit the throat of—hardly a fattened lamb but she’ll do the job all right. And if Beth decides to go to Kokoda or Hagen or wherever it is, then that will have to be all right too. He still has Eva. Maybe they could go up the coast or stay in Busselton at the CWA flats, like old times.

  He knows he’ll have to make room for a new daughter when she finally returns. He wonders about the shape of her, the space she’ll take up. And how he, too, might have to change.

  For once the four houses are quiet by eight o’clock. You can’t even hear Grace. Beth’s sprawled on her bed in the stifling night air, light already off. Lena decided to shut the restaurant for the night. God knows they all need the break, especially Lena. Beth pulls the sheet up and rolls on her side. Thinks momentarily about Sam, glad he’ll soon be in Tasmania with his family, and truth be told, relieved she won’t be bumping into him whenever she does go home.

  ‘Go well,’ she whispers to the dark.

  *

  ‘Beth! Beth!’ Val’s shouting and banging on the fly wire. Beth wakes with a start. It’s pitch black and she’s struggling to sit up. ‘Beth! Wake up! Fire!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s a fire!’

  Beth scrambles out of bed. ‘Fire? Where?’

  ‘The restaurant. Come on, we’re going down there.’

  Beth’s grabbing clothes and rushing through the door, she’s through the gate, wrenching open the ute. She looks over at Lena and Ruth, Delilah and Grace sitting on the back, all of them in shock and silent. Beth has no words to give them.

  ‘The police phoned me,’ says Val. She’s hunched over the wheel, rocketing down the middle of the road, lights on full.

  When they round the corner near the bank they see the smoke, plumes of grey billowing against the dark sky, and as Val pulls into the car park at Lim’s, they see the flames reaching up and up. Val kills the engine and they wrench open doors and the meris clamber off the back, Grace clinging to Lena. The five of them huddle near the gate watching timbers crack and fall, red blue yellow flames leaping everywhere. Men scurry about dousing the fire with buckets of water, shouting in island language, and Justice has the garden hose spraying at what’s left of the kitchen. Melted chairs and tables lie in twisted heaps. Beth listens to the pop and crackle of hungry fire, water splashing, men yelling, Grace whimpering, Delilah crying, everything too loud, too frantic, too close. Val’s nails dig into Beth’s arm and Lena, face swollen and bruised, looks shattered. Everything is lost. Beth can taste metal, coughs as the smoke catches in her throat. She can feel eyes on her, on them all, and turns around: hundreds of people shifting in the shadows behind them. A few dogs nip at each other, and run towards the road. And then a policeman shouts in Pidgin and the men with buckets stop and stand back, shielding their faces from the heat, and shrug their shoulders at the women. The fire’s burning in on itself and there’s nothing to do but wait. All these people, the whole town it seems, watching the last of Lena’s Place at two o’clock in the morning.

  When Val leaves the group to talk to the policeman, Beth puts her arm around Lena, who collapses into her, shoulders heaving. They cover their noses; the stench of burning plastic, paper, metal filling the night air. They stand there swaying, looking at the charred embers, then Bill is suddenly behind them, slinging his arm round Beth’s shoulders.

  ‘Jeezus, would you look at it. I’m so sorry, love.’

  Val, head down, walks slowly back towards them.

  ‘Electrical fault?’ Beth clutches Val’s arm. ‘Did we leave the oven on?’

  ‘No.’ Val inhales, looks at Lena, breathes out slowly. ‘They think it was deliberate.’

  The women gasp, and Lena stands upright, nearly dropping Grace.

  ‘Holy shit!’ says Bill.

  Grace burrows into Lena, who staggers back.

  ‘Who?’ Beth spits. ‘Who the hell would do something like this?’

  She can’t grasp any of it, puts an arm around Lena and reels her in. But Lena is rigid, keeps looking ahead at the smouldering mess. Then it’s eerily quiet, everything and everyone stopped for this one moment.

  ‘Desmond.’ Lena stares at the smoking wreck in front of them. ‘Desmond do it.’

  ‘What?’ says Beth. ‘Why?’

  ‘Jealous,’ Lena says, then turns to look at Beth, her dark eyes swimming. ‘I never told him, susa. About this place.’

  Val stiffens beside her, and Delilah and Ruth are snivelling.

  ‘They’re gonna take me outta this place in a box,’ Bill says gruffly, ‘and I won’t know anything. How this place works. What these people really think. I’ll know bugger all.’

  ‘Come on, everyone.’ Val shepherds them towards the ute. ‘Let’s get home, there’s nothing we can do now. Lena, the police’ll come and see you in the morning.’

  Lena stands still. Her steely voice cuts the night. ‘I will open one again,’ she says.

  *

  Exhausted, shaking, Beth sits on the back of the ute, Lena’s hand in hers, Delilah’s head resting on her shoulder as Val swings them south along the beachfront home. The water is still and the air presses around them. In the dark of night, the cowardly bastard, Beth thinks. She wants to hunt down Desmond and scream till her lungs hurt. How can she leave these people now? Lena sniffles beside her and Beth squeezes her hand. She can smell the smoke on their clothes, their hair. She remembers that smell, when she was little and raking the stubble of the paddock in the stink of summer heat with Clem, lighting and containing small fires, working away at them till sunset. Still stinking of smoke after her bath, and long into the next day. And then she’s thinking how hard she’s tried for him: when the girls at school were talking about razors for their legs, about Prince and new watches, she was talking cricket with England, standing on a chair to tap the barometer, chopping wood till her blisters burst, loading black trousers smeared with sheep shit and grease into the washing machine, bending low to pick up fleeces and sweep the boards, her little back pounding. She knew Clem was falling, sinking sometimes, and she’d wanted to talk and chop and wash and scrub to keep him there with her. To make up for all they had lost. It was the same with Sam, trying to make it work. Always trying.

  Grace whimpers and Lena softly sings to her. These tender women. They have welcomed her, and loved her. And she knows there is hope with people like them, and Hosannah and Abraham, in this muddled, wonderful place. But she thinks of the night Desmond could have killed Lena, the fear of payback, the nightmare hours spent worrying that she might have malaria, the raskols who knife a twelve-year-old boy just for a pair of shoes. She thinks of a dead Roo who’s taken more from the country than he’s given, a cross that’s getting sued in a village court, a restaurant turned to rubble, the sim-sim-simmering of the whole damned lot.

  She loves this place and she hates it. But she knows, as Val jolts through another pothole, that she doesn’t long for it. Not like she longs for her own country; not Australia, or Fremantle, or even Hope Valley, but for Clem and Eva and what she remembers of Rose. Beth knows she has to throw out so many things she thought about herself and others, and start all over again. She knows she’ll hurt people and that people will hurt her but she’ll be all right, maybe even better for it, and she’s ready, ready to face what lies waiting at home, prepared for the looks, comments, questions.

  Her feet feel warm and tingly now, and she’d swear she’s smelling lavender as they drive under the great reaching arms of raintrees and how Rose might be here with her. And she can feel Clem’s calloused hand in hers, not Lena’s velvety one, and it’s Eva, not Delilah, resting against her and she knows more than anything, it’s time.

  Glossary of Pidgin Words

  ai wara save pundaun

  tears are falling, crying
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  aibika

  a plant with edible leaves

  aiglas

  eyeglasses, spectacles

  ailan

  island

  ai

  eye

  apinun

  afternoon, good afternoon

  bai

  will, shall

  baim

  to buy, purchase

  bek

  back

  bikpela

  big, great, well-known, famous

  bilas

  finery, flash

  bilong

  belong, belonging

  bilum

  woven net or string bag used as a carry-all

  bipo

  before, formerly

  bisi

  busy

  bruk

  broken

  buai

  betelnut

  cargo

  cargo, luggage

  dispela

  this fellow, this, these

  drai

  to be dry, dried up

  dring

  to drink, sip

  em

  him, he, she, this, that, it

  en

  the same as em, but used only when em falls at the end of a sentence

  go

  to go

  gut, gutpela

  good, well, fine

  gut moning

  good morning

  gut nait

  goodnight

  hamamas

  happy

  hamas

  how much, how many

  hariap

  hurry, hurry up

  haus

  house, home

  haus pispis, haus pekpek

  toilet

  haus sik

  hospital

  haus win

  the summer house, garden house

  helpim

  help

  hia

  here

  i

  predicate marker between subject and verb that improves the rhythm of spoken language

  insait

  inside, the interior

  isi

  easily, softly

  kai bar

  tuckshop

  kaikai

  food, meal; eat, chew

  kakaruk

  fowl, chicken, rooster (kakaruk man), hen (kakaruk meri)

  kam

  come

  kari

  curry

  kaukau

  sweet potato

  kina

  PNG currency

  klinik

  clinic

  kukim

  to cook

  laikim

  to like something, to love, to desire, to want

  laki

  lucky

  laplap

  a loincloth, a sarong, fabric

  lapun

  old, elderly, aged

  lewa

  heart, liver, innards, desire (seat of affections)

  liklik

  little, small

  long

  to, on, for etc.

  longlong

  foolish, ignorant, stupid

  lotu

  worship, religious service

  lukim

  to see something

  lukim yu

  see you

  maket

  market

  malolo

  to rest

  masta

  masta, white person, European

  meri

  Mary, woman

  meri blouse

  long, wide dress worn by PNG women

  mi

  me

  Misis

  Mrs

  mipela

  we, us (not including the other/third party)

  moni

  money

  moning

  morning

  mumu

  to be cooked by steaming with heated stones in an earth pit

  na

  and

  nait

  night

  nambawan

  the very best, excellent

  nambis

  beach, shore, coastline

  nau

  now, the present time

  nek

  neck, throat

  nem

  name

  nogat

  no, nothing

  nogut

  no good, bad, evil

  no ken

  cannot be done, absolutely not

  ol

  all

  olgeta

  altogether, everyone

  orait

  all right, to be well

  papa

  father, uncle

  pas

  letter, note, permit

  pekpek

  excrement, manure

  pikinini

  baby, child

  pinga, bikpela pinga

  finger, thumb

  pis

  fish

  pispis

  urine, urinate

  planti

  plenty, much

  ples

  place, village, region

  plis

  please

  pundaun

  to fall down

  pusi

  cat

  rais

  rice

  rait

  right, write

  raskol

  rascal, criminal, gang member

  sampela

  some fellow, some

  samting

  something

  santuim

  to make holy, to sanctify

  save

  know, understand

  sekuriti

  security

  sik

  sick

  skul

  school

  sori

  sorry

  stap

  is, exist, be in a place, stop

  susa

  sister

  taim

  time

  tenkyu

  thank you

  tok

  talk, word

  tok pisin

  one of the three national languages of PNG (to talk Pidgin)

  trabel

  trouble, difficulty

  tru

  true, really, very

  tupela

  two fellows, two;

  wanem

  what, which

  wanpela

  one fellow, one, each

  wantok

  one who speaks the same language, from the same village or province

  wara

  water

  we

  where

  wok

  work

  yet

  yet, still

  yu

  you

  yumi

  we, us, including the other or third person

  Acknowledgements

  Excerpts from earlier versions of Bloodlines appeared in the Review of Australian Fiction (15.1) and indigo (3, 4, 6).

  The published version of Bloodlines began its life as a submission to the TAG Hungerford Award in 2014, for which it was shortlisted. It was written as part of a PhD in Writing at Edith Cowan University, South West, and I have had the invaluable support of both an Australian Postgraduate Award and ECU Research Excellence Award. I thank my supervisor, Dr Donna Mazza, for her belief in my project from the outset, and her shared understanding that a writing life with (very) small children is possible. I am especially indebted to mentor and friend Dr Richard Rossiter. This novel would not exist without him and I feel privileged that he has championed my work. A heartfelt thanks to Dr Robyn Mundy for the wise, thoughtful feedback on earlier drafts, and fellow ECU writers Dr Gus Henderson, Ali Jarvey and Narrelle de Boer.