Bloodlines Read online

  Ruth huffs: ‘You were pikinini long time before Lena!’ She turns to Beth and says, ‘You be careful, Beth. PNG men bad men now. You smart meri if you don’t want husband. But maybe you lie when you here and say you have husband. You safer that way.’

  Beth is quiet and still. She sees movement through the louvres of Ruth’s house, and though she can’t be sure, she imagines that Delilah is watching, always waiting for something.

  ‘Think I’ll go home,’ she says, standing up and stretching tall. ‘Lukim yu tupela long skul long morning.’ Then bending over and kissing Grace’s head, she whispers: ‘Night, pretty Gracie.’

  ‘Bye Aunty,’ Grace murmurs.

  Lena glares at Ruth. ‘Nait, Beth,’ she says. ‘Sleep good.’

  *

  Standing up from the table, tired from marking homework, Beth is caught unawares. Sam. She feels the tug of him, long arms that won’t let her go. She wills herself to smell the stench of smoke on his breath, see empty beer bottles lined up by the couch, the hurt in his eyes when she told him no. She sees him sprawled on the road the night of the accident, the terror of how bad it could have been.

  Next door, she hears Lena talking softly to Grace. The TV is turned down. She leans on the table. She will not cry here.

  1975

  Clem’s loved Rose since the day he saw her standing outside MacMillan’s. He smiles every morning when he wakes at five, knowing he’ll see her in a few hours. The days in the shed swim past quickly. Weekends are tough but he finds reasons to visit the Smithsons: a part for the water pump or a question about rapeseed a few farmers are trialling, giving Pat some rabbits he’s trapped. Clem falls asleep thinking of Rose and swears he smells the lavender of her hair when he wakes.

  ‘Gawd, Clem,’ Eva says one Sunday lunch. ‘Look at you! You got a smile on your dial as big as Africa! What’s going on?’

  ‘He’s got a sheila, love,’ says Tom, reaching for more bread.

  ‘Oh,’ says Eva. Then smiling: ‘Bet it’s Rose. It is, isn’t it love?’

  Clem looks at the kitchen clock hanging above the stove, and is about to speak.

  ‘She’s a beauty,’ says Tom, beaming. ‘And can cook up a storm. So Harry says, every bloody time I see him.’

  ‘I’d like to think my son wants someone who is more than a pretty face and a good cook.’ Eva looks sharply at Tom. ‘We can do a lot more than that, and you know it.’

  ‘She’s flamin’ nice too, all right?’ says Tom. ‘She’s friendly every time I see her. Okay? And polite.’

  ‘She is lovely, Clem,’ Eva says, ladling more soup.

  Clem sits between his parents with a stupid grin on his face.

  And before long everyone seems to be aware of it. For the first time in his life, Clem shaves every morning and rakes a comb through his hair like a scarified paddock. He throws away his ripped shearing singlets that Eva’s patched four times before, and orders new ones through MacMillan’s.

  *

  One Tuesday morning as Clem struts into the shed, Benny tells Clem that he looks all spruced up.

  Tommo whistles. ‘This is a shed, mate, not a wedding.’

  ‘Not yet anyway,’ quips Harry, and they all laugh as Clem, red-faced, reeking of Old Spice, leans over and gets his handpiece ready.

  Rose sits near him at smoko and they break off into their own conversation. She piles his lunch plate higher than the others. And when Jock and Tommo drive home from the pub on Sunday afternoon, Clem imagines what they will see: two silhouettes on the ridge above the orchard, and a dog wildly circling then running in front and back behind. He knows he’ll get a ribbing on Monday but he doesn’t give two hoots.

  Lena’s class is struggling. They have Romeo and Juliet open before them, as an introduction to different kinds of plays. Beth’s talked to them about Shakespeare and shown them photos of the Globe, but when she reads out the prologue they’re distracted, can’t make any sense of it. Not even Hosannah and Nin seem interested. Beth’s about to throw her hands in the air and give up, move on to short stories or something, but she tells herself this is Shakespeare. And most of these kids are fifteen or sixteen, they’ll love Romeo and Juliet.

  She takes a deep breath.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ she says, waving her hands through the air as if wiping the slate clean. She nearly uses kids’ names but quickly, mercifully, remembers that would embarrass them, shame them, to say they had fallen in love. So she takes another deep breath and begins.

  ‘There’s a girl who lives ... near the hospital, and her name is ... Pauline ... and a boy from down the highway, his name is ... Terrence.’

  The Prince becomes the Provincial Governor, the market square is the parking area outside Lim’s shop, the Friar is the Bishop. Beth paces round the room, sharing the story of the ill-fated lovers, their controlling parents, the authority figures who give poor advice to impetuous, passionate youth. The students are silent, and watch her; even huge, moustached Tony and Francis in the front row. Terrence is not banished to Mantua but to New Britain, a two-day slow boat ride away, and Pauline’s dead body (but not really dead, Beth reassures) isn’t kept in the crypt but held across the road in the church (with a few dogs keeping guard, she can’t help but add, and a few kids giggle at the back of the class). She feels the tension in the room as the climax looms: Terrence returning from New Britain, diving from the boat and swimming the fifty, hundred metres to the wharf, running to the church, leaping over sleeping dogs, seeing his beloved Pauline surrounded by candles near the altar. And then Beth becomes the desperate Terrence as he sees his dead Pauline. Overcome with grief, Beth pretends to drink the vial of poison. Clutches her throat. Falls to the ground.

  ‘Now,’ she says, from the cement floor, ‘this is what Pauline does.’ Beth slowly rouses, brushes back her curls, smooths down her skirt, looks a little dazed, and then sees Terrence lying beside her. ‘Oh my heart’s love,’ she whimpers. She finds the vial. ‘Oh, oh ... what is this? Is it poison? No drop for me?’ Beth tips back her head, shaking the imaginary vial above her open mouth. She steals a look at the class: they are transfixed, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

  She flings the vial dramatically, then rummages for Terrence’s dagger (she’s found Terrence’s bush knife, she explains), and plunges it once, twice, into her side, finally falling limp over where the other body would be.

  No sound. Beth is trembling with exhilaration, breathless from so much talking. At last she stands and the students clap and cheer and they’re up from their wooden benches, re-enacting her performance, calling each other Terrence or Pauline, stabbing themselves, clutching their throats. And amid all the clamour and wheeling bodies, Beth feels something welling up inside her, an old, familiar feeling, something like joy, and she finds herself laughing now as she sinks to the floor again.

  *

  Beth sits in the library, the overhead fan nine-tenths useless, as Clem would say. Val’s asked her to prepare a unit on myths and legends, and she sips her water bottle as she flicks through a Year Eight textbook, looking at the options the kids can study: legends from Korea and Poland, the myth of Cagn from Southern Africa. It’s been niggling at her since she arrived in the classroom, really, and now that she’s face to face with it, she knows what’s been worrying her. She checks the publication details of the textbook: Scholastic, Sydney, 1993. She’s on an island, thousands of miles from home, and she still feels like she’s teaching Australian kids. Sure, they might say prayers in Pidgin in church, or study local carvings in art, but most of their work could be straight from Hope Valley, circa 1988. She finds herself wondering about the old stories of this place, the legends the kids might already know. You just have to hear the market meris talking in island language, see the kids in the playground, grave one minute, reeling with laughter the next ... rumours, sorcery ... the place is steeped in story and drama. It gets her thinking, too, about local authors and poets, playwrights even, people writing now, maybe in Moresby or Madang or somewhere
else.

  And so when Lena comes into the library, Beth knows she has to ask.

  ‘Do you know any PNG writers?’ she says.

  ‘No, susa.’ Lena checks the dial of the fan. ‘When I was at college I heard of some,’ she says. ‘But I can’t remember their names.’

  But this is not enough. And so after school, when all the students have gone, Beth sits with Val in the staffroom and asks the question again.

  ‘Why do the kids have to study so many Western stories?’ she says.

  ‘Well, we have to go with what we’ve got,’ Val tells her. ‘We get donations from Rotary—books, textbooks, stationery. And the Catholic Church in Cairns still sends books up to me, too. We’re lucky to have them at all. You know, our library is better than the one in town.’ It’s as if Val’s been waiting for this question, because she ploughs on, barely drawing breath. ‘When this school first started,’ she says, ‘the missionaries who came from Queensland, the nuns, and then Father Aloysius who’d been in the seminary in Australia ... well, the hope was that the students at Saint Mary’s would excel. Those connections with Australia brought funding, and donations of—you name it—textbooks, computers, science lab equipment, sport stuff, and loads of books. Everything. The idea was floated—then it took hold—that maybe in the future our kids could get a scholarship for one of the big schools down south, like Townsville or Cairns or Brisbane. Maybe they could go on to university, and come back to PNG, make it better.’ Val looks out over the garden. ‘I really do think we have future leaders here, Beth,’ she says.

  And although Beth sees Val’s point, and knows that the donations of equipment and books, whole class sets of Shakespeare, Romantic poetry, Peter Pan, all of it needs to be made use of, she still can’t help feeling uneasy. Do people still need to go to the West for success, to know things. To make things better?

  *

  By the time Friday rolls around, she’s exhausted and ready for a sleep-in.

  It’s the sound of Grace’s crying that wakes her. It always is. Beth, heavy-headed, stretches out along the single bed, feeling the wire spring jutting into her hip. She can hear Grace whimpering and then Lena’s hushed voice, pleading with the child to be quiet. Today Beth wants to thump the wall and scream at them for waking her. In the shower, cold, sharp water hits her. It’s just becoming light and even though she’s slept for eight hours, she feels weary, bone-sore. She closes her eyes against the full brunt of the water, lathers soap into thick suds, digs under her arms, sweaty from the hot night, scrubs hard at her back, between her legs.

  For breakfast, she toasts fruit bread from Lim’s Bakery, counting a generous two currants per slice. This country, she shakes her head. She sips tea and reads The National. She’s pleased, at least, that it’s Saturday, especially when the sky is clear and she can get her washing dry. After breakfast, stooping under the pawpaw tree and dodging the deep holes of land crabs, she carries her bundle of dirty clothes to the laundry by the back fence. She empties bucketloads of water into the twintub, stuffs in her clothes and adds caustic Indonesian washing powder, the only type available on the island. The old twintub jerks into life as the early pink sky fades, becoming muddy blue in the distance. Leaning against the Hoover, Beth looks out at the thick jungle. Vines twist over each other, clambering up the raintrees, their vast limbs with lush green ferns trailing down: outstretched arms fringed with an elaborate shawl.

  ‘Morning, Misis.’ Grace startles her and she bangs her knee against the machine. Grace’s hands fly to her mouth, stifling a giggle.

  ‘Morning Grace,’ Beth says. No matter what time it is or how dark Beth feels, Grace, standing here now in nothing but big, floppy underpants, her belly button poking over the top, makes her smile. ‘Yu orait?’

  ‘Mi orait Aunty,’ Grace says. ‘Mummy say you up early for no school day.’

  Although it riles her, Beth has come to accept that she has little privacy here. ‘Washing, then market, Gracie girl.’ And though she knows it will be lost on the small girl, she adds pointedly, ‘Plus I was woken up early.’

  ‘Oh, look Aunty!’ Grace squeals excitedly. ‘A pusi!’

  A ginger and black kitten, low on its haunches, skulks across the grass. It must be able to smell the fish bones in the fire of the haus win. Grace bounds out of the laundry and runs toward it, and the kitten quickly spins around and scales the back fence, diving into the jungle.

  ‘Don’t worry Grace,’ Beth calls, hauling the washing into the spinner. ‘It’ll be back for sure.’ She thinks of what Clem would say: And I’ll be waiting for ya with a length of poly pipe when yer do. He hates the thought of cats getting the native birds, but this is no morning to be thinking of Clem and home. She’s determined to be completely here, in this one place, sick of the bits of herself lying scattered in Hope Valley, Fremantle, even Europe and Asia; old tattered pieces she no longer wants. For the next few months she just needs to live in the present. And surely she deserves that, after all that’s gone before.

  She pegs her washing on the wire strung from the back fence to the pawpaw tree sagging with ripening fruit, then reaches for the long straight stick leaning against the fence, a nail tacked near the end. She slides the nail underneath the line and forces the washing high. There’s no hint of breeze this early in the morning and her brightly coloured shorts, skirts and T-shirts hang like limp Tibetan prayer flags.

  *

  Swinging two bilums, one from Lena, the other from the school librarian, Beth walks along the road, pockmarked with shrapnel wounds: from the war, Val had told her. She heads towards the market in front of the main pier, greeting locals balancing tapioca bound in tight leaf squares stacked five-high on their heads. Or they’re carrying bilums filled with yams or kaukau, or shouldering bulging dirty rice bags stuffed with Chinese greens.

  ‘Morning Misis,’ they call.

  Beth smiles, waving, and strolls towards the market, enjoying the half-pace she now walks with.

  ‘Morning Misis Beth!’ Ruth calls out.

  Just what she needs. ‘Morning Ruth.’

  ‘Yu go long maket?’

  ‘Mi go long maket.’

  ‘Yu late this morning. I was there early early.’

  It’s Saturday and not even eight o’clock, but Beth feels the bite of what Ruth doesn’t say: lazy white woman.

  ‘The market, he’s very bisi bisi today. Those people from the mountains are there. Lots of greens. Good kaukau.’ She stretches open her bilum for Beth to see.

  ‘Gutpela, Ruth.’ Good fella. Clem would love that word.

  Ruth laughs: ‘Gutpela tru. You talk Pidgin good.’

  Beth knows she doesn’t. So many longs to put in front of words. When in doubt, Val says, throw a long in there till you get the hang of it.

  ‘See you at church tomorrow,’ Ruth calls back, waddling towards the houses.

  Beth isn’t sure she’ll go to church. She isn’t sure about Ruth either. On the second day at school she’d walked past Ruth’s class and heard the children reciting The Lord’s Prayer. Thy kingdom come they’d chorused as Ruth slapped a small boy in the second row, sending him sprawling to the floor. Thy will be done, Beth thinks. Ruth must be nearly sixty and not much more than five-foot high and almost as round, but the children are terrified of her. She has marks on her face: tiny vertical dashes a centimetre long all the way along her forehead and along the bridge of her nose. There are three blue-black lines like a tiny fan at the edge of her eyes that crinkle when she smiles. Beth guesses the tattoos are a home job, something for ceremony, but she can’t be sure.

  The sea is a flat blue sheet and she would love a swim, but Saturday is the busiest day and there’s no way she wants to be the big white meri, the only white meri, splashing around for all to see as they select their yams and buy their betelnut. She feels exposed when she swims here: everyone watches as she dives into the water, then running for her towel as soon as she’s out. At least Val had warned her about covering up; she always wears a
T-shirt and long shorts. Still, Clem’s voice is in her ear: Yer stand out like a dunny in a desert, love.

  Beth rounds the corner and the market comes into view: stalls branch out along the beachfront and meris sit, stand, crouch, kneel, squat on their haunches in their purple, red, yellow patterned meri blouses, selling kaukau, taro, bunches of brown and young green coconuts, pineapples, carrots, green mangoes, long beans with vine wrapped around them. Bilums bulging with babies are strung from trees, pushed every so often by a passerby. She hears Pidgin and island language, picks her way around bright red patches of betelnut spit, dog shit and fetid food scraps dumped in piles.

  Beth smiles at the women who sit in the dirt or on grass mats, fanning fish with a leaf. Not like in Thailand with Sam, when they’d felt harassed within two minutes of being in the market. Good price, best price, you like this, tugging at her sleeve, yelling names of fruit she didn’t know. But here she can walk for hours, back and forward along the rows, and not one seller will talk to her. She can leave empty-handed, her kina snug in her bra. Everyone stares though, watching her move from stall to stall, and when groups of kids brush past her, the braver ones touch her white arm.

  Beth buys kaukau, two bundles of long snake beans, small knobs of ginger with the green stalk still attached, a pineapple, small purple capsicums. There are no onions this week and the tomatoes are too bruised from the long drive down the mountains. A boy holding a snowy white possum tied to a pole calls out: Yu want cuscus Misis? Avoiding the huge eyes of the possum, Beth shakes her head, and wanders toward the shore. Black cockles are laid out in small piles and there’s orange coral trout, turquoise parrotfish, shining rainbow fish. She sees these when she snorkels a hundred metres out, circling round a fishing trawler sunk in a storm twenty years ago. She can’t imagine eating them. Large black crabs the size of footballs are bound with reeds and stacked high, and every so often a small boy whacks one with a stick. An old, stringy woman perched on an esky is fanning silver fish with a palm frond. The fish look like small whiting. Should be safe enough. Beth hears Clem’s voice, low and clear in her ear: Just cook the shit out of ’em love, they’ll be all right.