Published Stories

A Hand of Bananas

‘Coe on Skeet, Dad’s gonna do it today.’

            ‘Gee is he? Wow! I’ll get my bike … Mum, I’m goin’ to Mervin’s place.’

I take my size sixteen bike from behind the shed, and wheel it out to the town’s main street that runs past our place. The wind in the camphor laurels makes a sound like the ocean – each sound-wave washed over by the one following.

Mervin is already around the corner when I swing my leg over the bar and pedal swiftly down the hill towards the railway gates, then brake hard and slide at a right angle on the goat’s pebble roadway into the dirt track running alongside the railway line. I overtake Mervin by the next hill because mine’s a larger bike, and we pedal along in the hot morning sun, speechless, busy keeping the wheels moving and missing the large mud holes in the road.

We pass into a shade-patch and the cool is a change from the summer heat. The road runs close to ‘red-belly-black-snake creek’, which we named after we nearly stepped on a snake there, and the best lobby-hole in the Glasshouse Mountains hides behind the trees: cold, secluded, the water ink black from the stain of tea tree leaves, ideal for us to swim nude, to trade secrets, or to build a world of our own.

            ‘Stop here,’ Mervin says, puffing from the bike ride, ‘Dad said he’d set the lobbie lines for us on the way to work.’

            ‘Gee you’re lucky, my dad wouldn’t set lobbie lines for me in a fit.’

            ‘Oh, Dad likes lobbies. Sometimes that’s all we get to eat. Lobbies … nothing else for days … or fruit an’ stuff that Dad brings home from work. You know, pineapples, bananas, and choko … ugh chokos!’

            ‘Yeah, I hate chokos too, but I like lobbies.’

            A picture of a hot lobbie sandwich rushes into my mind but the thought of why they only eat lobbies hangs on. My dad says we’re poor. He doesn’t let us put too much butter on our bread, and on the three times that we’ve been to the movies we weren’t allowed to buy any sweets because he said we couldn’t afford it, but to be too poor to eat anything else but lobbies is to be really poor. I look at Mervin’s coarse and freckled face and I can see that in his own mind he has moved on – I’m the only one interested in how poor they are.

            A large blue lobbie is tangled in the first of the cotton lines. As we tug it out of the dark water his claws wave aimlessly like a blind person swinging a cane. I wonder how they live down there in the cold, silent darkness. Why they have such hard shells and such soft flesh? If they ever get to make friends? When we put them in a bucket, they seem to tear each other to bits; ripping their mate’s nippers apart, tearing limbs from trunks. I think about these things but Mervin doesn’t.

            ‘Whenever I handle lobbies, for example, I always place a stick over their back to trap their large claws, but Mervin doesn’t. He doesn’t seem to worry as much about his fingers as I do, and quickly puts his hand into a bucket of lobbies and comes out with one held tightly behind the head and nippers. His hands, all cracked and horny, carry many scars from lobbie bites, whereas mine are fine and soft – scarless and timid. Someday, if he keeps it up, one will remove his finger. I hope I’m not around then.

            Three lobbies are taken off the line and placed in the prune tin we use to hold them. The lines are re-baited with pieces of meat, dropped in the water, and the lobbies left in the tin until we return.

            ‘Should we hurry?’

            ‘Nah. Dad said he has to wait until Mr Monk takes the first load of bananas up to the rail-shed before he can do it.’

            ‘Do you think it will be like the other one?’

            ‘Probably.’

I tremble at the thought, and goosebumps run from my cold fingers, up my arms, and along my backbone. I rattle like a lobby rattles its claws. At least that’s what it feels like.

            ‘Dad said we have to use the back road and not to show until after smoko.’

            We pedal on and pass the State Forestry pine plot and pass the abandoned soldier-settler blocks, the galvanised shells of their humpies bloodstained with rust and decay. We break from the tall timbers into a clearing at the top of a hill and can see off in the distance the mountains’ familiar shapes. Within seconds we are back into the timber. A large flock of rosellas wheel in coloured flashes through the overhead branches, their screeches adding to the excitement in my heart and covering the sound of the bicycle wheels on the rough dirt road.

            Soon we are at the gate of the banana patch. The owner, a frizzled little man, farms chooks, chokos and bananas, and he doesn’t like us kids around much because we like to play African jungle games under the choko vines: stalking the chooks with our shanghaies loaded with the small orange-coloured rocks we call goat’s pebbles. Generally, we bag heaps of chooks in a day’s hunt.

            One day we wounded a chook so badly that Mervin and our mate Danny Simmons, decided that it had to be put out of its misery. Danny Simmons held the chook and Mervin swung the axe. I thought it was a good idea until it happened. The head was severed alright but the chook escaped and raced about madly with blood squirting everywhere – us chasing it. Asked later where the blood came from, we had to own up, and Mr Monk banned us from the farm. I still feel sorry for that chook.

            ‘How come your dad let us visit today, Mervin, after last time? Isn’t he worried old Monkie will catch us?’

            I am. Not only does Mr Monk scare me but so does Merv’s dad. He said he’d ‘cut our peckers off’ if he caught us again. When I asked what a pecker was at home, my dad said I’d soon find out if I didn’t hold my tongue.

            ‘Nah! He said it’s a big occasion, and besides, he promised me. Last time he did it I wasn’t old enough to watch, and he promised I could the next time.

            ‘Well, how come he chose now?’

            ‘They need the money. Mum has to go into hospital to have the new baby. Dad said they couldn’t afford another baby. Mum said he should of thought of that before he stuck his thing into places where it wasn’t wanted. They’ve been fighting for weeks. Mum’s brothers came over and told Dad that if he hit Mum again, they’d make him piss blood for a week. Mum said he just had to work harder. Dad reckons this is the only way … Gee it was good last time, Dad bought us all a bike, and he gave me and my brother a pound note each to spend as we liked.’

‘Wow, that much?’

We leave our bikes at the gate and walk through the rows of banana plants. Most of the bananas hanging from the trees are green, and the wide leaves swish and bash in the breeze, hacking like a sword at the banana hands, and rattling like the hollow skeletons in the pirate’s hideouts of my dreams.

            At the top of the rise we can see the blue smoke of the banana cutter’s fire through the green wall of banana plants. We creep up on it and can see Mervin’s father and another, younger man, sitting on some banana crates, drinking their tea from enamel mugs. It is obvious that Mr Monk is not there, so we stroll into the clearing.

            ‘Hi ya boys?’

‘G’day Dad.’

‘G’Day Mr Heatley,’ I say.

            He’s a tall man with stooping shoulders and his face, like Mervin’s, is freckled, and goes rooster red when he drinks and stays that way for nearly two days after he finishes. My dad says he drinks too much, but we kids think he’s fun when he’s drinking, he allows us to smoke and swear, and tells us all about sex and life.

            ‘This here’s Stan,’ Merv’s father says, pointing to the young man. ‘He’s been with us for the harvest.’ Stan is a dull-faced country lad from the next town. I had seen him at times outside the store eating ice creams while he waited for a lift home. He didn’t seem to talk much but I had heard my dad say that he could work harder than a bullocky.

            Merv tells his dad about the lobbies, and they have a conversation about the size of ‘old blue’, the first lobbie we had pulled out that morning, comparing his size to one they had captured some weeks before. I was busy comparing their relationship to that which I shared with my dad. Theirs always seemed so loose and warm, ours so stiff and cool.

Merv’s father unwraps an oilstone from an oily rag and starts to sharpen his banana knife, a broad-bladed weapon, which throws the sunlight back into our eyes. Our backs are sweaty because of the humid weather, and we sit in silence, listening to the rattle of the banana fronds and the flat bell-like sound of the sharpening stone sliding along the steel blade.

            After about twenty minutes, Mr Heatley rises without a word, has a swig from the waterbag hanging in the shade of a banana plant, and heads off down the track, while Stan plods off cowlike in the opposite direction.

            We scramble to our feet and follow Merv’s father, who takes us down the hill towards the boundary. At the fence, Merv’s father hands him a white handkerchief and says;

            ‘When it’s off, wrap my hand tightly in the cloth.’

            ‘What about the other bit?’

            ‘Don’t worry about it, just stop the bleeding.’

            Father and son stare at his hand, like my father and I go quiet, and stare at the board when we play dominoes.

            ‘Jeez, won’t it hurt?’ I ask.

            ‘Not as much as having no dough, son,’ he answers. ‘That hurts!’

            He puts the old finger-stump up his nose to make it look as if he has pushed his finger right up into his brain. I can’t help but laugh. I think about the chook, which didn’t realise its head was missing.

            ‘How’d you like to lop it for me, Skeet?’ Merv’s dad asks, holding up his good finger. I pale and shrink back in horror, before I see him laughing behind his eyes.

            ‘Jeez no, Mr Heatley, I say. ‘I can’t chop straight.’

            He doesn’t laugh. He wants to but he’s distracted by the thought of what he has to do.

‘All right, Merv,’ he says, like a man taking a big breath before jumping into a cool pool. ‘Ready with the cloth.’

It seems like ages while Mr Heatley stares at the finger he has placed on top of the fence post. I can feel the prickly grain of the post cutting into the flesh. He raises the banana knife to about shoulder height and makes a tentative swing at the finger, stopping half-way, taking aim. His lips are drawn back from his teeth like a man already in pain. He makes another slow half-stroke then raises the blade again. I can see the sinews on his freckled arm tighten and can tell that this is it, the final swing. Quickly, I avert my eyes and stare at a large bunch of green bananas hanging at eye-level, each finger of the hand perfect and swollen with nature’s goodness under the flawless green skin.

I hear the ‘thunk’ of the blade crunching through bone into the top of the fencepost, and the whoosh of air from Mr Heatley’s lungs as he grunts in pain. I turn and stare at his green and sweaty face; the blood squirts from the end of his finger.

Mervin, who has watched it all, watched the blade part the flesh, and the finger separate, like a chop bone in a butcher’s shop, reaches out to place the handkerchief over the bleeding stump, but his father is swaying, as if he’s going to collapse, and the blood sprays a neat red line down Mervin’s face. The cloth is quickly in place but it immediately turns red. Mr Heatley, then, squats on the ground with his hand between his legs.

‘Oh Jesus … oh, Jesus,’ he gasps. He looks up at us. ‘Okay, Merv, piss off now,’ he says, between his clenched teeth. ‘I’ll be alright.’

I’m not so sure, but I can’t wait. I turn and start to run, brushing against the banana fronds as I race like a rat through grass to my bike. I can’t believe how fast I can run. Merv catches me some seconds after. He still can run faster than me. We hear Merv’s dad call out.

‘Stan! Stan! Come quick … I’ve cut me bloody hand … Hurry, you dumb bastard, I’m bleeding to death!’

On our way home I can’t bring myself to talk to Mervin or even to look at him.

The dirty little dingo. How could he watch his father do that?

It is as if I blame him alone for his family’s troubles. He stops at the lobbie pond to check the lines and I will not help. I sit on my bike and watch him disappear into the shadows.

‘Come here,’ he says, ‘I need a hand.’

Grudgingly, I hop off my bike and walk towards him.

‘Dad said us kids could have five pounds this time,’ he says, as I approach, as if he’s giving me an answer to my unspoken question. He is digging around in the prune tin of lobbies.

‘Ow … oh hell,’ he says, hurriedly handing me the bucket of lobbies, and doubling up in agony. ‘The bastards taken my finger.’

Oh no, I can’t take this twice in one day. I look into the prune tin to see ‘old blue’ lobbie waving a severed and bloody finger jubilantly in the air, like a freedom fighter carrying a flag into a conquered city. I feel sick and get flustered until I realise that it isn’t Mervin’s finger at all, but his father’s.

Mervin is laughing, his grin broad across his blood-stained face, and as our eyes meet, he says.

‘I wonder if they really could cut a finger off?’

He takes the prune tin from me and walks towards his bike.

‘You’re a prick Mervin, A real prick.’ I shout at him, and if he wasn’t so big and so easily able to bash me, I would punch him. Instead, I snivel a bit, straddle my bike and follow him home.                                                             

The day after our arrival in Sydney Cove, Mr MacArthur arranged with Governor Phillip for me to be attended to by the Colony’s Surgeon, Mister George Worgan. The surgery was located in a tent by the Tank Stream below the Governor’s hut, and by the time I’d arrived, three patients were sitting outside, upon a log waiting their turn: a Marine in dark trousers with braces crossing his white shirt, sans coat and hat, and two scruffy fellows in convict’s outfits.

‘I know youse,’ the eldest of the convicts, declared while I stood quite unsure what to do. ‘Youse was on our ship wot arrived yesterday. I’m surprised there’s not more of us ‘ere after wot we went thru these past months.’

I smiled, politely, as I’m want to do, regardless of how I’m feeling and was about to reply, when interrupted by the surgeon peering through the tent’s door-flap.

‘Mrs MacArthur? … George Worgan, Ship’s Surgeon … You found us alright? … This way, mind your step,’ says he, raising the flap for me to enter.

His voice was gentle, and his speech, like mine, middle class, but his smile was the smile of princes and that’s where it all started, I’m afraid.

****

‘But, dear Elizabeth, you simply can’t accept it.’

‘Of course I can, John.’

‘Whatever will people think, a married woman accepting a gift like that?’

‘They’d think lucky woman.’

‘A piano is too generous a gift. It’s nearly the equivalent of half the man’s salary.’

I gazed longingly at the delicate wood-grained instrument on its insect-curved legs.

‘It’s beautiful.’

‘You would be indebted to the man for life.’

‘That may be so but it’s unlikely I’ll ever set eyes on him again.’

‘Well, folks will think he must be indebted to you, to make the offer, or is awestruck. It’s, simply, not only improper but, preposterous.’

****

When Mister Worgan escorted me inside the surgery and privacy secured, I explained to him that I’d miscarried aboard ship in the rough seas below Tasmania and that, Mr MacArthur, and I, were keen to ensure I’d suffered no permanent damage.

I saw concern register across his face.

‘Undress Mrs MacArthur, please!’

He pointed to a curtained area.

‘Call me Elizabeth, please, Doctor.’

‘Thank you, Elizabeth. Undress and lie upon the stretcher.’

I did so while he rinsed his hands in a small, flat dish perched upon a three-legged stand. His hands looked so soft and his fingers, so long and delicate.

‘Are you feeling uncomfortable?’ he asked, when ready to examine me. ‘In the pelvic area?’

‘I am,’ I said.

‘All right relax and I’ll have a look-see.’

He moved his hands over my bare flesh and his touch was so gentle compared to Mr MacArthur’s rough caress. He tapped in various places and pushed and squeezed in others.

‘Have you been lactating?’

‘A little.’

‘Sore? … Your breasts?’

‘A little.’

‘I’ll need to examine those … for infection.’

He did.

‘No, I think they’re fine.

He moved one hand and placed it upon my brow to take my temperature.

‘No fever. Raise your knees for me, please, to allow me to check.’

I expected some painful intrusion but he was so gentle and barely touched.

‘It all looks fine but, as you’re feeling some discomfort, we’ll delay further examination until the pain ceases, or it gets worse … Watch for any discharge.’

A hand moved to my shoulder. I felt a reassuring squeeze.

‘You can dress whenever you’re ready.’

Simple as that.

*****

‘Can’t a man and woman be companions, John?’ I asked.

‘Not out here. We have to remember our station.’

‘One has no station, from what I can determine. The highest-ranking person, the Governor, is a mere military Captain and his subjects the filthiest wretches that ever inhabited the home country.’

‘Even so, can’t afford to offend those in power. We’re totally dependent on them, for advancement.’

‘As crass as they are.’

*****

After I’d dressed, Mr Worgan made me sit while he jotted spidery notes and enquired about my family; how Mr MacArthur had taken the loss; why we were here; and, future plans? I explained it was an opportunity: An adventure. I didn’t tell him that John had seen the miscarriage as a mere inconvenience.

‘It will be nice to have some civil society,’ the surgeon said, in that deep voice, intimating we might meet again. His unkempt tawny hair seemed a marvellous counterpoint to his military attire.

‘I’m indebted to you for seeing me so quickly, I wouldn’t imagine you’d have occasion to examine many women,’ I said, ‘… being a ship’s surgeon.’

‘We have a shipload of female convicts accompanying us,’ he replied, ‘and they have their share of troubles, given the harsh conditions.’

‘Well you have gentle hands. Thank you,’ I said and blushed like a school girl, but he got my meaning.

‘That’s because I am a musician by calling and a surgeon by necessity,’ he replied with a light smile, while moving his long fingers across an imaginary keyboard.

***

‘You know I’ve enjoyed my piano lessons, John.’

‘Well I’m thinking now that perhaps there was more to those than met the eye.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, my dear.’

***

I saw George play at Governor Phillip’s house. Our eyes embraced a few times, while I sat there in the front row competing with Mrs Phillip, for one moment of the musician’s attention. Those long fingers poked and stroked the pearly keys in the most expert of fashion.

After that, whenever I was examined, I imagined he was playing the square wooden piano, and when he played the piano, I imagined he was moving those exquisite fingers across my tender flesh.

***

‘The man’s a misfit. No decent military chap would insist valuable space, meant for food and survival materials, be used to transport a piano, for the base entertainment of ignorant natives, cow-brained riff raff and practical men.’

‘Mr Worgan is a cultured man. He would see it as a necessity.’

‘And now he’s going to gift it to you. A woman who can barely play … scratch out ‘God Save the King’ or the ‘Foot’s Minuet’, in a manner barely recognisable.

****

Surely, it’s not so difficult to imagine how a man with whom you’d been so intimate and was so different from all those you associated with in Botany Bay could capture your interest? How quickly he could agree to my request to be tutored in the ways of the piano, how eager he was to make his time available under the glowing wick of the night’s oil lamp; and how easy it was for me to succumb to his easy chatter beneath the southern stars, while he escorted me home through Sydney Town’s muddy streets.

The slight bump of shoulder on shoulder, the brush of long fingers against my delicate flesh, the naked need of feminine company I sensed in his awkward manner, gnawed at my resolve to remain faithful to Mr MacArthur.

George did not appear alien in a place where everything was alien. He transported all that was good and pleasant, and sensitive, and I needed that.

****

I can’t see any good coming out of this.’

‘There will be, John, I promise.’

****

On our last meeting Worgan advised that he was to be shipped out the following week, and would leave the piano with me.

‘I can’t accept it.’

‘Yes, you can. You must. Don’t cry, Elizabeth, each time you play you’ll be able to remember the moments we shared.’

‘There’ll be nothing here when you’ve gone. Nothing.’

‘You’ll be here and music will be here.’

‘How will I protect the treasure from the heat and damp?’

Was it my heart I was concerned about?

‘There will be a way. You’ll give it a home, an audience, and the future will look after itself.’ He clasped my hands in his and added. ‘Who knows; it may outlast us all. The piano may corrode but the ivory may survive like an irritant in a giant clam-shell spawning pearls upon the shore.’

I saw poor George’s operatic vision but was not assuaged.

****

‘I’m sorry, John. I’ll not refuse the surgeon’s generosity. The harpsicord will be a fine thing around which to build our family. Singing, celebration, community … love. It may be the instrument that weaves us all together.’

I couldn’t believe my resolve.

Right there in our tent, I circled the wooden gift with my arm outstretched touching it, as if I were dancing with the princely thing: running my fingers along its entire spine as I spoke, summoning the flesh of Mr Worgan as I twirled. It appeared like the timber had his essence trapped within its polished skin. It was then, beside my reflected smile, I saw Mr MacArthur’s face relax in the mirrored sheen.

Note to editor:

Ship’s Surgeon, George Worgan’s first fleet piano, a gift he left for Elizabeth Macarthur of Marino sheep fame, when he shipped out in 1791, was returned to England for restoration in 2019 to be returned in 2020 for 150 yr commemoration of James Cook’s voyage to Australia. There was some question about the propriety of their relationship.