Mallawindy (5 page)

Each day, Ellie Burton grew more afraid of the measles. Bronwyn was a sturdy six-year-old. She took the spots in her stride, but Linda Alice, not yet three, had never been strong. For two nights Ellie was up with her.

The closest doctor was in Daree. She thought to ask Bessy if she could drive Linda down, but she hated troubling her sister. It was probably unnecessary. Children had to get the measles sooner or later. Everyone said it was better for them to get it while they were young.

You could have counted Annie's spots on one hand. A strange girl, she refused to give in to illness, and this morning she was champing at the bit to return to school, to the man she now called the keeper of answers. Ellie didn't like the fat old drunk, didn't trust him, but she had to admit he'd been good with Annie. Up with the roosters this morning, Annie was trying to hurry the hours
along. She helped bring the cows down to the shed, helped with the milking. Since Ben had been sick, Annie had actually been a big help around the place, but both she and Bronwyn were going back to school today.

Ben, who now worked for Bert Norris, left for town at eight. Ellie cut the girls' lunches, then took a minute off for a cup of tea, thankful little Linda was finally getting some sleep.

It had been a wet spring. Everyone had coughs and colds. The rain was pelting down again, slamming against the window. It hadn't stopped for days, and the low paddocks, which Ellie relied on for summer feed, were flooded. She watched the rain as she hung nappies and cot sheets on the clothes horse before the stove. Every time she managed to get Linda started on toilet t
raining, she had some setback. Linda looked a little like Liza, her hair was blonde, but she didn't have Liza's curls, and she was thin and sickly.

With her dark curls brushed, tied up in pigtails, Bronwyn looked so much the girl, but she was as wild as they came. She spent too much time with Annie. Ellie buttoned Bronwyn's coat, kissed her cheek, and said, ‘Take your wet shoes off when you get to school and put your slippers on, Bronwyn.' No similar words were spoken to Ann, and no kiss given. The girls headed out into the rain, and Ellie tiptoed into the bedroom.

Linda was sound asleep, only her little blonde head peeping out of the blankets. With a careful hand, Ellie eased the blanket back.

And she knew. She screamed.

Bronwyn heard it. She turned, grabbed Ann's hand and they ran back to the house just as Jack came from his bed, dazed and hung-over. He pushed Ellie away from the cot where Linda lay, stone cold, her gown covered in vomit.

Shock registered slowly, belief more slowly. He felt her limbs, her brow. He picked her up, patted her back, knowing she'd been dead for hours.

‘Do something, Jack. God help us. What have we done
to deserve this? What are we being punished for?'

He wiped the vomit from the tiny face. He closed the cold marble eyes, and placed Linda back in her cot. His hands covering his face, he stood there while Ellie screamed.

‘God help me. God help me.'

‘Shut up with that shit,' he said, and she silenced. ‘Why didn't someone hear her?'

‘She should have been in our room, Jack. I wanted to move her cot into our room. I would have heard her, Jack.'

‘Don't pile your bloody guilt on me. I've got enough of my own. Don't you come that shit with me.' Seeking escape, but forced to stay, he turned away from the cot and away from the accusations, his eyes finding Ann, her school bag in her hand. ‘Why didn't you hear her, you shamming little bitch,' he snarled.

‘Don't start on her, Jack.'

But he needed a focus. Someone else had to shoulder the blame. He turned to Ellie. ‘Why didn't you take her to the doctor yesterday? Haven't you got brains enough to know she needed a doctor?' He pulled the blankets from the cot, tossed them to the floor. ‘Get me something. Get me something clean.'

Ann handed him a sheet, and he placed it over the tiny figure, covered it, hid it away. He hunted the children from the room and walked to the kitchen, where he snatched up his Aspros, peeled four and crunched them between white even teeth, washing them down with whisky. For minutes he stood, breathing deeply, looking out at the yard. ‘Shit on this hole,' he howled to the rain, and he kicked the fly-wire door open. ‘Shit on this bloody God forsaken hole.'

He drove into town, and returned with Ben and the new policeman. The ambulance came later. It took Linda Alice away.

Ann stood at the window, watching the black clouds weeping their buckets of tears. Everyone was making tears in the kitchen, but it felt empty. She walked to the girls' room, stripped the cot bare, and threw the sheets and blankets into the outdoor laundry.

Empty. No more. Gone like Liza, but not like Liza. The pusher in the corner was empty. She backed away from it, returned to the kitchen, wanting to share the tears she couldn't make.

Nappies, hung before the stove didn't need to dry now, so she moved them back to let some heat out. Nothing was the same. No one was the same. Bessy was holding Ellie, letting her cry. Jack was smoking. The policeman left and Bessy made tea, then more people came.

It was later when the words began. Ellie sat at the stove, hugging Bronwyn to her. ‘My fault. My fault. I should have checked her before I did the milking, before I did Bronwyn's hair. I should have checked her. There might have been time. She might have been – '

‘It's no-one's fault, Mum,' Ben said. ‘I'll have to go back to work. Dooley is there on his own.'

Ellie nodded, and kept staring at the nappies while great rivers of tears leaked away. ‘The calves,' she said when Ben had gone. ‘I meant to ask him to feed the calves. Poor little mites.'

Ann turned to the paddock, thought of the tiny calves taken from their mothers. Lonely. ‘I feed,' she signed, but her mother didn't understand her signing, and Bronwyn was crying because her mother was crying.

Ellie stood, placed Bronwyn down on the chair. She kissed her cheek. Jack looked up, saw the kiss, and his face changed. Ann saw the change. She walked to the verandah. It would start in a moment. The people were all gone. She could see the bad brewing in her father's eyes. Something would happen, and the bad would spill over.

Ellie sniffed, wiped her face. She took her raincoat from behind the door, and walked out towards the shed where the calves were locked in. Jack ran out behind her, a skater in the red mud. ‘Where do you think you're going?' he asked softly, herding her back to the house.

‘The calves, Jack.' Ellie's tears and the rain, one and the same.

‘The calves. You heartless cow-eyed bitch. Your baby is dead and all you can think about is your bloody calves.'

‘Stop it, Jack. My heart is breaking. I'm just trying to go on.'

‘Then let me see it breaking, you cold bitch.' He dragged her back to the kitchen. ‘Sit down,' he said. ‘Sit with me.'

Ellie sat. She reached for her black Bible, grasping its comfort in her hand, but he hated her Bible. He snatched it, tossed it through the goal post of the open door, and Ellie followed it, Bronwyn in her arms, the Bible left where it fell. She ran for the river and for Bessy. Ran from him to the safe side.

Jack walked the room, moaning, holding his head, walking, walking. Then the bad won the war, and it began.

From the verandah Ann and the dog watched him up-end the kitchen table, clear the sideboard with a sweep of his arm, toss the clothes horse and its load of Linda's things outside, kick in the cupboard doors. Like a mad bull, he raged, then he sighted Ann, leaning against the verandah post. She was wearing her raincoat, still holding her school bag, her head to one side, silently considering the chaos, the total demolition of her mother's kitchen.

She stood her ground as he came towards her, and she frowned, wondering if she was to be next on his smashing list. She never ran for the river when her mother and Bronwyn ran. Sometimes the bad got more bad, but sometimes it didn't.

He stopped before her, his hand raised, then like a stiffly starched tablecloth, placed in the laundry copper, he folded, sagged to his knees, his hand reaching palm up, open, empty, like everything else was empty. And he cried, cruel, hard tears that only he could cry.

The tears hurt a place deep inside her. She watched him for minutes, wanting to pat his back, like her mother patted Bronwyn's back. But she was too afraid to touch people. She sighed and walked by him to the stove, moved the kettle over the hot plate. Like everything else, the metal tea canister was on the floor, but
its lid was firm. She measured tea into the tea pot, carefully poured in boiling water, then left it to draw while she searched the floor for the enamel mugs that always survived his rages.

The heavy table heaved back to its feet, wiped down with a dishrag, its wobbly leg kicked straight, she set it with the milk jug, and the screw-top sugar canister. ‘Mmmm. Mmmm,' she said, pouring tea into two mugs. ‘Mmmm.'

He lifted his head. Slowly. He climbed to his feet. ‘What goes on in your crazy bloody little head?' he asked.

She shrugged, pointed to the second mug of tea, and sipped from her own.

‘Crazy, like a rabid fox is crazy. You work hard at it, don't you, you shamming little bitch? Do you think you are fooling me? Do you think for one minute that you are fooling Jack Burton?' He spoke slowly, his vowels rounded, easy.

Her lip caught between her teeth, she studied his eyes, moist, and becoming soft now. Soft as the velvet cushion on the lounge. His eyes were always like that after he'd wrecked things. Like they had to get all the bad out of him before they could be good. Like his double-barrelled shotgun, after its cartridges had been fired. Even though you could still smell the hot, the gun was safe, so you could see it was beautiful. Red polished wood, shiny oiled metal,
it lived behind the old wireless in the kitchen. Sometimes it tempted her hands to smooth and touch it – just like she was tempted to touch him now. But she couldn't.

He touched her. His hand reached across the table and he touched her cheek, then he took her chin, turned her face to the light, and his hand smelt of soap and cigarette. It was a beautiful hand, a gentle hand, almost too frightened to touch.

Pleasure saturated her stomach, flooded her limbs. It took some of the empty away. She sat, barely daring to breathe, to move, lest he take his touch away.

‘She placed no Vevers stamp on you,' he said. ‘You remember that. I saw you at the hospital the morning after you were born.
You looked like a little skun rat but I recognised the Burton in you then. They thought you were going to die. No time to get the bloody priest, so I found a parson preaching his bullshit in one of the wards and I dragged him up to christen you. “Better your faith than no baptism,” your mother said. But you didn't die, and you won't die. You helped me perpetrate the greatest religious coup in bloody history. Do you know that?' His fingers stroked her chin, and a sigh that was almost a sob escaped him.

‘She was always whingeing about having you re-done Catholic ... “like the other children, Jack.” Doesn't mention it now though, does she? Doesn't think you're worth bothering about. Do you know that? To her, you're a problem that won't go away.' His hand patted her cheek, then it fell away to reach for the mug of tea, but its warmth remained.

‘Can you fry eggs?' he asked.

‘I no break egg,' she signed.

‘Well, learn to break an egg. Make me something to eat.'

‘No break egg. Never. I leave alone egg. Maybe chicken in egg.'

‘Crazy little bitch,' he said, but he broke his own eggs, fried and ate them.

She stayed with him for two hours. She toasted bread on a long fork before the embers, while he told her of government departments where births and deaths were all regi
stered. She made a fresh pot of tea, while he told her how the Russians would drop an atomic bomb on Mallawindy one day, and they'd blow it off the face of the Earth and the sooner the better as far as he was concerned. He told her about banks, invented by clever men to steal copper coins from the little man, who put aside his pleasures of today in the hope of buying more tomorrow. He said that bank accounts were sacrifices to the gods of tomorrow, and he didn't believe in tomorrow, so he spent his money today.

He spoke of his great-grandfather, old Samuel Burton, and of how he had carved his acres from a foreign wilderness, and he
spoke of his father and his brother, Sam, and of his father's will. ‘Vindictive old bastard, just because I wouldn't bow down and kiss his bum, he wrote me off. In this world you need to learn early how to kiss bums. Bloody Saint Sam knew how, the dirty perverted bastard. I hate his name. I hate that bastard's name.'

‘I no like Sam talk,' she signed.

‘That land is mine. Mine. But I'm stuck here in this shit hole.'

He spoke as he signed now, repeating words, spelling words. He spoke of his books, and he told her he had memorised the part of Macbeth when he was only sixteen years old. He told her of his mother's back room where he would take his books and read the part to her until he was word perfect. Then he recited the part, as he had to his mother. He recited for half an hour to prove he spoke no lie.

He told her he'd toured country Victoria and New South Wales with an amateur theatre company when he was nineteen, and he told her he could have been great, but he had found bloody Mallawindy. When he stopped speaking to light a cigarette, she tapped the table near his hand, and she signed, ‘You talk more from that time. I like that time talk. Is good talk.'

‘Talk to me,' he said. ‘Use your voice. Talk to me.'

‘No talk. Words talk long time all gone. Gone with blue dress. All finished. Better all finished. I like now. This way talk.'

His eyes filling with tears, he rose and walked into the yard, retrieving the Bible, opening it to the page where his children's births had been recorded. ‘Get me my pen and ink,' he said.