The Vintage and the Gleaning (21 page)

And I remember once a grim-faced man came in a car and drove me and Sister Bernard across the dusty roads to a black encampment, and the blacks lying about in the shade of their shanties and the man called them out and they came and sat before us on the ground and Sister Bernard had me sing for them, conducting me as I sang. And afterwards a man in a sack suit came before the assembly and I watched as he stood just as I had stood, taking on all the appearance of a young boy, chest out, head up, and his face become innocent as a cherub and he began to sing too, in a high falsetto and another man put his coat over his head and waved his hands about, his smile the smile of Sister Bernard's, and the blacks all laughed and the grim-faced man grew angry and shouted at them and struck the singing man with the back of his hand and Sister Bernard pulled me away and it was only then I realised they were laughing at us.

Lined up with our bowls in the great hall, waiting for watery porridge for breakfast and watery soup for tea, lucky sometimes for a chunk of bread, the sisters doling it out of a great iron pot and there was only one, breakfast, tea, every meal come from that black steaming pot. And stopping to look for a clump of oats, a chunk of meat on our way to the table and disappointed usually, and we sat and ate and licked our bowls and our stomachs gurgled. Treacle in the porridge on Sundays and that was close as we got to heaven and hope.

And the teams of stockmen would come in, hard-faced men with kangaroo-hide whips coiled over their shoulders and butcher's knives in their belts. And they would water their huge dusty horses from the bore pump and the sisters would line up the black boys and the men would pick out a few and strip them naked and squeeze their arms and legs and bark at them and give them a kick or a backhander to see if they would cry and the ones who cried they pushed back to the sisters. And the sisters would bring out the doctor's reports and any man among them who could read would read aloud to the others, who smoked and talked and looked at the naked piccanins all the while, their pale eyes made all the more pale by faces filthy as ours. And us whites and the half-castes would stand looking at the Chinaman cooks with their coolie hats and long braided queues that reached to their horses' flanks, and strange broad wizened faces with slits of eyes that watched us without acknowledgment or emotion, and sometimes one of us would hurl a rock at them when the sisters weren't watching. And the stockmen would talk and spit and empty out their pipes and hoist one or two of the piccanins onto the saddles of their great stomping, snorting horses and they would ride off and we would never see those boys again.

And I remember flocks of birds that blocked out the sun, turning day into night, lizards that came out in the cool of evening, running about in front of you and so thick on the ground that it seemed as though the ground itself was alive, the mouse plagues and frogs falling from the skies before the rains, plopping about the place and sitting surprised for a moment before hopping off, and then the rains coming down, water to your chest, the whole desert turned into a dirty sea and running in torrents, and after the rains the wildflowers, tiny things, the ground covered with them, every inch massed with bright colours, everywhere you turned and for as far as the eye could see, and they only lasted a day or two and then red desert again.

Sunday morning and the world is white, everything coated in residue and glistening in the sun, the lawn thick with powder.

It is like winter in other places.

I am still not feeling right and decide not to go into church.

I get out my bible and try to read it, tracing my finger along the page, silently sounding out the words. I doze, I don't know for how long. When I wake it has clouded over again.

Charlotte is in her room with the door open. I look up at the mirror above the mantelpiece and in it I can see her reflection. Charlotte is brushing her hair and I watch. She parts her hair and leans to the side, brushing in slow, steady strokes. She brushes one side and then the other. She looks up into the mirror and sees me watching. She smiles at me.

So it all started with the Florence trip, says Charlotte, Brett, my father, everything. But I suppose there was a time before that and a time after, and I don't mean in weeks, months or years, but I mean in memory, and the time before soon forgotten and then the time after turned into now, and now I feel like I am at the end of things, but it has been like that for so long now and I remember at the start it seemed too dreadful, too dreadful to live and I didn't think I would live through it, because how can you live when there is nothing, no hope, no future and no emotion, not even sadness, and all good things in the past and lost to the past, and knowing they can never come back. But during that time before, not knowing, never knowing that, not then.

And so now at the end of things, and for a long time now, and as though stuck in time, waiting and watching life pass and everything pass me by and me falling apart, fading, growing older, and how could I live with that? I couldn't see how and I thought it would kill me because how could I possibly live like that, and knowing. But it is still at the end of things now, and the feeling that there is nothing and there will never be anything and that every day will only be as it is now and every day the same only worse because of time passing. And I remember I would lie as though dead, already dead, and I waited and I wanted to go out into the streets and shout, let people know, tell someone, because someone had to hear and see and care. But there was no one and there never will be anyone and nothing changed, and I feel as though a part of me has died and there is less of me now, that's true, no hope, no emotion, not even sadness, just getting through each day, and I don't expect the world to notice, not anymore, so I have learnt that much.

And sometimes I think that it was because things changed too quickly for me or that I lived too much in too short a time, like I used it all up, because even then I knew something was wrong, I could see that, and everybody could see it at the time and they told me, of course they told me, and they talked about consequences, that I should think about the consequences, but it isn't consequences, it's nothing to do with that, what you do, how you end up. Because in the end nothing matters, not really, not in the end. It only matters to yourself and that's the thing, there's really no such thing as consequences, not in the end, it's just how things are and it doesn't matter why you are there because there's no going back, no changing things, so no, it was never about consequences, but it was that I never thought it would all be so brief, like I lived my whole life in that short time, not starting exactly with that Florence trip but with the time before and the time after, but brief, still so brief, such a short time, and now gone and at the end of things and only left in memory.

And I still remember taking the tram down to St Kilda beach and the hot air through the windows and the seats sticking and burning under my legs and looking outside as it all went past, and the light flashing through the trees and Brett beside me, Brett always beside me, because there were other times too, plenty of other times, after the first, but they all blend together for me now, all into that first time when it was like I had forgotten how to breathe but now I was breathing again and the feeling of a weight fallen from me and I was free, that feeling of freedom like I had never had, not before or since, and there were plenty of other times later, after it all, after it was all done.

And waiting for the tram outside Flinders Street station in the sun with the hot winds blowing and the grit of the city and the cars stopped at the lights and their engines running, the fumes of the cars hanging and you could smell them and see them in the heat. And businessmen in suits and sunglasses and old women in black, all of us waiting at the tram stop, the wind blowing the women's dresses about, waiting until the tram came and me and Brett would sit with our arms around each other, always together, as close as our bodies could get, together and kissing and sometimes we would kiss all the way.

And I had bought a green dress from an op-shop, a tiny tight summer dress, too small for me really, and I wore it every day, Brett touching me through the dress, and I wore a straw hat with a plastic orange sunflower on it and slipping off my sandals and swinging my legs and me and Brett all close and together and our bodies so close that they couldn't be closer and kissing and touching, and we would stay at the beach, lying in the sun until the sea was like a broken mirror, sunburnt and my hair stiff with salt, and we would take the tram back, tired but happy. And, yes, that was not the first time, those days came after, but even then, even back then it reminded me of that first time, and the tram and the beach and the sea were always memories of that first time, and they were the memories of that feeling, of being free, suddenly free.

And so yes, I was happy and I still think about it and if that was my big mistake, if that was the big mistake that changed everything, if it was that, the tram and the beach and the sea and Brett with me, always with me and beside me and my freedom, if that was the mistake then how could I have known? How could I have known when it felt like that? But I was so young, Smithy. I was too young, and how can you know, at that age. How can you know that this is the mistake, the mistake of your life, or that anything is right or wrong, when you don't know anything, when you're too young to know.

You meet someone and you fall in love, or you think you fall in love, because what could you possibly know about love or people or how things are or how they're going to be, when you're sixteen? You don't know a thing when you're sixteen. Everything's so confused and how can you know, how can you possibly know what you're doing or what's real, except love feels real, back then it felt real and you think, just because you're in love, you think you know this person. But of course I didn't know him and how could I have known him, but I thought I did, I thought I knew everything about him.

And I thought he knew me, that he knew me and understood me, everything about me and my thoughts and hopes and everything, as though his were the same, as though it was the same for both of us and maybe that's what love is, but there's no truth to it. It's not real. None of it is real. It was only me, me thinking that the two of us were the same. But really I wasn't even thinking of him at all. It was as though he wasn't even there, as though I had made him up and maybe it was the same for him with me, but it was because of that, because I felt like that and because he felt like that and because we were in love, because we were, even if it wasn't real, and I know that now, that none of it was true or real, but it was because of that I gave him my life.

So I gave him my life, myself, everything, and all because I was so young and because I didn't know, because it felt like that time would go on forever, but it didn't, not for long, hardly any time at all. And first the feeling gone and then the years and somewhere down the track changing, growing up, but still with this person, and somewhere along the way realising I didn't know him at all and I never did know him, because how could I have known him back then, sixteen, almost still a child, of course I didn't know him and even less than now, because even now I can't say I know him, no not at all, because now he's even more of a stranger than he seemed back then. But I had never felt he was a stranger then, even though he was, completely, and so I never knew him. Not then. Not now. Not ever. I'll never know him, my husband, and he'll never know me and that's the sad fact of it all. So, yes, it was all wrong then. It was a mistake, it was the great mistake, the one mistake in my life that changed everything, ruined everything, so, yes, they were right, all of them were right. I was wrong and they were right. But it's all too late now.

But even so, even now, even all these years later I still tell myself that there must be a reason, some reason we're still together and have been together all these years, and I say, well there must be something, there has to be, because this is the man I fell in love with and so there must be something between us, something there, something that was there at the start and must still be there. And I try to find it, try to think what it was, try to remember it, that feeling, and to find it again, to find it and to make myself believe that it's still there, that there's still something between us, because how can I bear the thought that maybe all of it, all these years, that they were some kind of accident, all because of a mistake I made when I was young and too young to know any better, too young to know anything at all. And so now I live with it and I am tired and broken and I just keep on going because there's nothing else to do, because there's nothing else I can do, no choices, not any more, now, at the end of things.

And sometimes I think back and then I think about now and I wonder if people still wait for the tram at Flinders Street station, in the sun and the hot winds and the grit of the city and do the trams still run to St Kilda beach, and do people still lie there until the sea glitters, and do they still have that feeling, going home, tired but happy. And I think, but how? How can it still all keep going? How can it all keep going on without me?

And so, yes, it all started because of the Florence trip, but there was a time before and a time after, and before it was school, the boarding house, and girls and their games, one day friends and the next thing tears and then friends again and someone else in tears and I was the worst of them, I really was, a spoilt little bitch, we all were, me and my friends, nasty, horrible, spoilt little bitches. And we knew exactly what we were, exactly what we were like, and we did whatever we wanted, treated people however we wanted, the other girls, guys we knew, even the teachers. And there was this boy Julian, who was in love with me, and I treated him worst of all.

And there were no repercussions, nothing. We just got away with it and we knew we would, I mean, we never thought we wouldn't, never. We acted like we were these perfect little princesses and that's how people saw us, people looked up to us and they liked us, they actually liked us, no matter how badly we acted, no matter how we treated them, and it was like the worse we were the more they liked us, the more they looked up to us, and not just the other girls, but teachers, parents, everyone. And so we just kept on and nobody told us it was wrong, that we were acting badly, and when I think back, about how we were, me and my friends, I always think that it was like we weren't real, we weren't real people.