A Long Way From Home Read online

  ‘Drink nother place,’ said the black man. He jerked his weathered handsome head whose creases all pointed to the joining of his forehead and his nose. ‘Much better drink nother place, come langa me.’

  Irene had let her mouth drop open. Dunstan suffered a shudder of impatience. My driver ordered the barman to give me anything I wanted.

  I fancy I will not forget this moment, turning my attention from one actor to the other, at first amused by the size of their mistake. The tattooed woman had barked like a dog when the penny had been thrown. But why? The barman affected great busyness with his beer gun while he kept his secret eye on me.

  ‘Come with me,’ whispered Doctor Battery, although that is an approximate quotation and I am not sure what he said, then and many times afterwards, for his diction was rather soft and indistinct, sounding more like his melodic language than my own.

  He spoke again and there was such a bad-blood odour in the bar, such malice, that I did not have to understand a word, only that there was nothing here to laugh at.

  The hotel was built high on stumps capped with tin, and the time it took me to arrive at the dark sour earth-floored place at the bottom of the stairs was insufficient for me to grasp my situation except I had been ambushed, by whom or why I did not know. I had been set on by an expert, you might say, for it was a Darwin barman’s job, just as it had been the Townsville policeman’s, to exercise the finest discrimination. He had ‘read’ my physiognomy, I suppose, with the same confidence as the previous barmaid who had agreed to serve me lemonade. All this was incredibly upsetting.

  ‘You gimme five quid,’ Doctor Battery said to me. ‘We drink in camp.’

  You rascal, I thought. I opened my wallet and, as I never kept my money there, it was as empty as I had expected.

  Irene had arrived at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Come back up.’

  ‘No good for him up there,’ said Lochy. ‘Don’t like blackfellahs there.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, small and neat and frightened. ‘Come back, Willie. I can’t be with Dunstan alone.’

  ‘Me two fellah stop here, Missus. You gimme five quid. One flagen six beer. Poor fellah come drink langa camp with me.’

  ‘You don’t even drink,’ she said to me.

  ‘He come back, he stop with me, look one thing.’

  ‘Willie?’

  The drinkers upstairs made their own distinct warning thunder, shuffling their railway worker boots across the floor. I looked at Irene’s sweet face, her big wet eyes and saw she was even more frightened of Lochy than she was of Dunstan.

  ‘I’ll do what you want,’ she said. ‘I’m on your side.’

  She was so tiny in her pale bleached overalls. ‘You really want me to pay for a flagon?’

  ‘Plagen port,’ said Doctor Battery. ‘Six beer. Twenty-seven shilling.’

  ‘Do you know what you’re doing?’ she asked, counting out the money into that large pink-palmed hand.

  In fact I was about to be a special guest of those citizens of Darwin who this afternoon were gathered at campfires by the sea, just up the bumpy Bagot Road.

  As he limped down onto the sand, Doctor Battery explained it was not the best day to come, but never mind. These old men had been waiting all day to get ‘that old fellah’ from the morgue. There they had been met by a big mob of police who would not let them have the body of their relative, a Law boss and much respected. The cops wore white socks on their hairy legs. They said the dead man was still a ward of the state. He was a ‘government aborigine’, and they would deal with him dead as they had had cause to deal with him for ‘disorderly behaviour’.

  The flagon and beer were produced and all seals were checked. Now Doctor Battery, who was neatly dressed in his elastic sided boots and moleskins, chose a place beside an old wild-haired fellow sitting cross-legged in his dirty sandshoes and dusty pants. To me he was courteous but not friendly, but he and Doctor Battery were immediately whispering to each other close up while their fellows, most noticeably, looked away as if the last thing on their minds was to eavesdrop. Finally the flagon was given to the next man who passed it, still unopened, down the line, beyond my ken.

  The six beer bottles were a different matter. They had definitely become the old man’s property and he would dispense them according to a system very clear to him. He opened the first bottle and poured it into a large enamel pannikin. I imagined the drinkers’ seriousness was all to do with that sad ‘dead body business’ so I sat respectfully to one side, cramped, uncomfortable, bitten by sandflies, not grasping that it was I, Willie Bachhuber, who was the object of all these frowns and worry. When I was instructed to illuminate myself, to place my face close to the fire, I was like a drowning man who is surprised to find the distance from which he views his present situation.

  I heard the soft wash of the ocean and thought of Indonesia, out there, beyond the smoke. I heard glass break. Two men were fighting by an isolated campfire, rolling into the flames. Lochy stayed beside me all this time, sipping constantly, quietly. He spoke and was listened to and had a great deal to say. I heard the word Redex and wondered if he was telling the story of the sick battery he had cured. I was not prepared to become the subject of examination. It was distressing, the sudden, unexpected touching of my face. The mob held lighted sticks to better see me. I saw them as well. Indeed some looked as white as I did. A woman wept. I called to Doctor Battery but it was he who now set on me, tugging at my shirt and I felt myself ripped from time and place and I curled myself into a ball and rolled into the sand which is where the flashlight found me and I was attended to by brave little Irene Bobs who had come out in the unknown dark to find me.

  7

  You would think Dunstan was married to my husband, the way he spoke. He knew all Titch’s secrets, more than me. He was in charge, OK? He forbade me to follow Willie when he disappeared into the night. I would be raped, he said, snatching at my wrist. I would be chopped up with an axe. He rushed at me, then fled the consequences. ‘Wait there,’ he said.

  What had just occurred I did not know, except the whole bar had slammed the door on my dear friend and crew member. They had been ignorant and vicious, like a clique at Geelong High. You’re in. You’re out. You’re not our friend. It was almost closing time. I waited for Dunstan while he consulted with two policemen but then he raised a glass, the mongrel. Clearly I was on my own. I pushed through the six o’clock swillers as they spilled out onto the street, straight into the headlights of exhausted Redex drivers cruising for a hotel bed. I ran across the mown government grass, towards the sea, entering the yellow sandy track which snaked down through the inky ti-tree scrub.

  ‘Irene,’ Dunstan called.

  Alright, I was relieved. That he was behind me. Better late than never. He’s going to look after me, I thought, but no – he handed me the bloody torch.

  ‘Watch your feet,’ he said. ‘There’s broken glass.’

  Yes, I was afraid of black people. I did not understand what a police torch meant to those who appeared in its white beam. I blundered around the ti-tree. At last I found the Aboriginals, like photographs in LIFE: another race, caught in a moment of thoughtfulness. But when I saw Willie I did not recognise him, why would I? A bare chested white man curled up like a seahorse, dried out on the sand.

  I thought, he’s dead. Perhaps I shouted. Immediately I was surrounded by murmurs. ‘Don’t cry. Don’t cry. They bin look after that fellah.’ Everyone was eager to lift the white man to his feet, explaining to me, not quite accurately, but very seriously, ‘That fellah go mad. He bin drinking.’

  What else made sense?

  All the while the waves lapped gently. The smoke was sweet and the air soft and sickly with plonk but they ‘bin look after that white lady’ which, I was slow to realise, was me. Thus we were escorted, nudged, encouraged all the way up to the road, and politely safely back to the hotel. I mean, the concrete guttering on the opposite side of the road. The bitumen was no-man’s land. O
n the far shore stood a moustached white man who should have been told, years ago, don’t wear shorts.

  ‘You’re off at four a.m.,’ Dunstan said.

  Thanks for telling me my job.

  Now he followed me without invitation, and although he did not say a word his tch tch was close behind me like an insect in the night. How could he possibly think himself in charge?

  I knew the way without his help, up the fire escape, along the mesh-floored catwalk high above the leafy yard where, between the mud-caked Redex cars, a solitary vomiter was hard at work. Dunstan followed me inside and chose one of the beds.

  I told him get off. That was for the working crew.

  ‘Irene, be sensible.’

  In the toilet I found the bowl occupied by another huge green frog. It would not be flushed away. I returned to see Dunstan had shifted to my bed, hands on his potato knees, staring at the man lying opposite him.

  ‘You are clean-sheeted,’ he said angrily. ‘Did you know that? Everyone else has lost points.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I know?’

  ‘You simply cannot drive solo for another twenty-eight hours.

  I forbid it.’

  ‘That’s for me to decide.’

  ‘No, it’s not. I’ll meet you by that old airfield after you’ve checked out of Control. At Berry Creek. We can co-drive to Broome.’

  ‘We’d be disqualified.’

  ‘Only if they knew. They won’t. Titch will land in Broome an hour before we get there. No harm done.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And then your navigator leaves the race.’

  ‘That’s not your decision.’

  Willie was gazing at Dunstan without particular expression.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Dunstan said to him, ‘make yourself decent.

  Irene, can you hear a word I say?’

  ‘Mrs Bobs to you.’

  ‘You can win if you don’t muck it up. Your business will be famous. Your life will change for ever. I’ll help you drive until Broome. Once Titch lands you can check in at Control. Then, Mrs Bobs, I require this fellow to withdraw.’

  ‘He’s the navigator.’

  ‘He’s a bloody liability.’

  I thought, here is a pencil pusher, wishing to dismiss the most talented member of the crew.

  ‘Mr Dunstan, do your bosses understand what you are suggesting?’

  ‘Bosses? Which bloody bosses? There are more serious interests in this car than General Motors. If you come in first there are a number of interested parties.’ His moustache and open mouth looked like a smirky sea anemone. ‘Irene,’ he said, ‘you were very long odds when you left Sydney. You were a great investment.’

  ‘Titch has put my money on a bet?’

  ‘Maybe don’t tell Titch I told you. We’ve got bigger problems now. Put your bloody shirt on, man.’

  Willie opened his mouth wide and dragged at his lower eyelids with fingernails.

  ‘He has a black son he has abandoned. He is probably black himself.’

  My navigator groaned loudly, rolled over twice and sat upright, staring at me.

  ‘Irene,’ said Dunstan. ‘Did you understand what happened in the pub?’

  ‘Mrs Bobs,’ I said.

  ‘He is half-caste, Mrs Bobs, don’t you get it? He is being sought for child support, he is a known adulterer.’

  ‘Ha-ha,’ cried the navigator and drummed his bare feet on the lino floor.

  ‘He has been seen consorting with the worst elements in Darwin. The police know who he is. He’s a half-caste or a quadroon or an octoroon or a macaroon for all I care. If you were the Redex sponsors would you want him representing you?’

  ‘There’s a black man on the two-bob stamp. His name is One Pound Jimmy.’

  ‘Oh shit, get real, Irene. You’ve got seven hours to sleep.’

  ‘I thought this was “Australia’s Own Car”? You can’t get more Australian than that. In any case, you better leave.’

  ‘You want me to tell your husband what you’re about to do?’

  I thought, Dunstan is a shameful disease given me as punishment for infidelity. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes I do.’

  He slammed the door behind him, his brand-new heels thumping along the catwalk.

  ‘I’m not black,’ my navigator said quietly. ‘I can’t be.’

  He was seated with his sheet wrapped around his shoulders, his thick fair hair standing as if electric-shocked. I thought, who cares what they think in Darwin?

  ‘I know who my father is, my mother, grandparents. I look like my father. I am his son, you see. Why is everybody trying to drive me mad?’

  ‘Of course you’re not black. It doesn’t matter to me.’

  ‘You think it doesn’t matter to me?’

  Now I looked at him I saw the deep black worry showing on his forehead, the same corrugated frown I had observed amongst the drinkers on the beach. ‘If you were black you’d still be the best navigator in the Redex Trial.’

  He had begun to weep, slowly, gently, making dirty trails on his travel stained cheeks. And then, really honestly, there was nothing left to do but turn out the light and cuddle him. ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘squeeze over.’

  ‘Darwin to Christmas Creek,’ he said. He meant the nightmare tomorrow.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Eight hundred and seventy-two miles. Then Mardowarra, Broome, Port Hedland.’

  ‘I would trust you with my life.’

  ‘I won’t let you down,’ he said and I would not let him down either. I pushed up hard against his back and I massaged his head, his neck, his knotted shoulders. I made him sleep.

  Gently, gently, back in the bathroom I took down the shower curtain and managed, finally, to wrap it around the frog. He must have thought his death had come but I carried him outside and left him to find his freedom.

  I double locked the door and lay back down beside my dear old navigator. I was all roiled up.

  Darwin to Broome,

  1200 miles

  1

  Mud-crusted and cracked like a dried up waterhole, the leading car in the 1954 Redex Trial had been broken into. Mrs Bobbsey was showering when I found it, at four in the morning, beneath the brilliant stars, its back door swung wide, a pair of elastic sided boots, neat and parallel, resting by the rear right tyre. Someone was asleep inside, not quite snoring.

  The twelve-volt ceiling light revealed Doctor Battery on the back seat, slender ankles crossed, peacefully asleep. It was my unenviable task to now explain, without being rude, that he must leave his bed. The Lord knows, I thought, how he will take this.

  And yet he woke pleasantly, in no way embarrassed that the normal odours of a trial car had become those of a public bar. Indeed he was all business, pulling his boots onto his unexpectedly delicate feet and thoughtfully assessing the stubble on his long chin. No, he had no plans to leave. He come you two fellah.

  I explained we had a Redex Trial to win.

  ‘Sure, sure.’

  ‘No room,’ I said.

  Now, as he returned his white stockman’s hat to its usual place, I saw there was no escaping the strength of his will. His bad eye was soft and vulnerable, but that good eye had a determined character which would make it difficult for me to insist on Irene’s concerns about passenger weight and petrol consumption.

  It had been a long night in which my lovely driver squirmed and whispered and apologised to my back. What torture it had been, to feel so much, to do so little. Around three o’clock I summoned up sufficient character to take the second bed. Perhaps she felt this to be rejection. I didn’t wish her to.

  And now, hours later, here was that dear face in public, tilted up to me, apologetically, defiantly, showing her puffy weary eyes, her bruised blue lips, the smudge of a smile as she turned her head away.

  ‘What the hell,’ she said. ‘Let him come along. He can play the part of Titch.’

  To Doctor Battery she spoke in the form of English used by southern whites in this s
ituation. ‘You hide under blanket,’ she said, and was miraculously obeyed.

  She wound down all the windows and then settled her neat body in the navigator’s place. Now I would drive for her because she needed rest. It was a piece of cake, she said, the first stage south: long and straight like the road from Bacchus Marsh to Melbourne. I installed myself behind that high thin steering wheel, beside the Edgell emergency rations and a second box (Ardmona Pears in Syrup). That is, when the starter motor spun, I was in the company not only of Doctor Battery, but a child’s skull, the victim of ignorance and murderous technology. As we crossed from the car park to the road I was aware of that physical object shifting inside its box, and as we passed through Darwin Control I was overly aware of it, sensing its historic essence, like a ‘wrong’. Battery, thank the Lord, remained unaware of the taboo that we were breaking. He stayed quiet beneath his rug, playing the part of a sleeping co-driver.

  Soon I was following the funnels of the headlights down the empty bitumen, pushing back the curtain of the dark until the torn edge of horizon emerged in the east. The bewitching Mrs Bobbsey murmured in her sleep. Doctor Battery sang, softly, with sufficient authority, it seemed, to lift the sun up from the sand, suck the shadows out across the plain. If the definition of desert (Away he goes) is an area with rainfall of less than 9.75 inches per annum, this was not desert, but the soil was red, the scrub sparse and that horizon very very far away. Later there would be rough conditions, corrugations, bulldust, bone-breaking rock, but for now my only enemies were the hypnotic undulations of the blacktop, and the tendency of wandering bullocks to lay ambush inside cloud shadows. The danger was to let one’s concentration drift and of course, inevitably, I did. I was already dizzy with sleeplessness and a sort of existential lightness in which my Self had slipped off like a shade.

  Of course I did not require a certificate to prove to an ignoramus that I was a German. The foundation of my life was not so easily threatened but, like a sodden hillside after rain, I felt the danger of a slide. Yet everything would turn out to be OK, I felt. We would get to Katherine, then Broome. Every mile brought us closer to a stable place, not here. This landscape could never be mine, nor would I have wished it. My treasured childhood maps showed a German village every eighth of an inch but here I drove two hundred miles without the sight of a human being. I could not begin to imagine where that human might rest, sleep, eat. It was easy enough to say, as my dear grandmother often had, that the blacks lived by hunting kangaroos and eating seeds, but how often might you see a kangaroo and who would conceivably eat those dry grasses or those gnarled trees with their grey branches and rubbery leaves?