Published Stories

The Mine Manager’s Wife

‘I see Tom got a letter from Jenny in the mail this morning,’ said post-mistress Gittie Nettles, a large lady with cake crumbs trailing down her front.

‘Moranbah Post Mark,’ she added, more to her ample bosom than to the gathering, as she busily plucked crumbs from her blouse.

‘Moranbah?’ questioned an incredulous Marilyn Mauny, her voice high-pitched. ‘Moranbah? What on earth did she want to go to Moranbah for?’ The gathering chuckled like butterflies dispersing in fright from a blossom. ‘I’m bloody sure if I was gunna leave a husband and run away with some young fella I could find somewhere more bloody interesting than Moranbah!’ Another round of laughter.

’Outa the pan and inta the fire,’ philosophized Gittie Nettles.

‘Tom’s taken it hard,’ said sister Grace Finlay reaching for another scone. She was the town nurse and was expected to know these things.

‘Wouldn’t anybody?’ offered Gittie nettles, undercutting the inferred wisdom of the previous speaker.

‘Maybe,’ retaliated Sister Finlay through half-chewed scone, ‘but Tom has got special problems,’ she said, setting her formidable chin at a rakish angle and clouding her eyes to impress upon the group that she, like all those of the ‘medical model’ shared special insights into the human condition, which the mere mortals of the group couldn’t understand. Also, determined to capitalize on the moment and to retain the mystique she had created around ‘Tom’s problems’ she effectively silenced further interrogation by asking a question of her own: ‘More coffee anyone?’

It worked, for silence floated over the group allowing the growl of the crusher down at the mine some miles away to drift on the desert wind like some malevolent monster stalking in the wilderness. It was the link which these women had with that other woman which seduced their menfolk away, at all times of day or night and reminded them of their dependence upon this creature for their livelihood. Should that mine stop their precarious existence on the edge of the Simpson Desert would cease.

‘He was the young fellow in the yellow charger, wasn’t he Gittie?’ asked Chris Bixbury, a younger attractive girl of the group.

‘Who?’

‘The chap Jenny ran away with.’

‘Yeah, that’s him.’

‘Did anyone know they was havin’ it off?’ asked Marilyn Mauny, hopefully. Apparently, no one knew because heads shook slowly in disappointment.

‘Can’t keep a secret in this place,’ philosophized Gittie Nettles quite oblivious that Jenny had successfully kept a secret.

‘No. There’s no way I would let any of those young fellas from the single-men’s barracks anywhere near my place. He’d only have to be in the house for ten minutes and the whole bloody town would have me screwing for him,’ she continues, shaking her head. ‘Yes, there’s people in this place who would be very quick to draw the wrong meaning from any innocent encounter.’

‘It can’t be that bad?’ said Lydia Crootan, the mine manager’s wife. ‘Surely you can have some sort of relationship with the single men without being misjudged?’

‘You must be joking?’ Said Gittie Nettles raising her voice. ‘There’s over a hundred men over there and only fifteen of us. Each one of them fantasises what he would like to do with us if we were willing and then imagines what our lucky visitor could be up to. Tells his mates and very soon its got back to our husbands and then there’s trouble. Not one of these guys has set foot in my house in three years and not one of them ever shall.’

‘I think you are overacting,’ the mine manager’s wife said, a little forcefully. She wondered if Gittie knew that by her rigidity she was exposing her own sexuality as if it was oozing from her pores.

‘Huh! Mark my words, Lydia, there will be more bust-ups in this place than Tom and Jenny’s and I’m sure we all know what I mean.’

Another silence falls over the gathering. It is as if they have fallen into a dark hole and are unsure how to rescue themselves. Lydia crossed her legs and examined her toenails. This topic was often discussed. She disliked the closed-mind assurance possessed by these women. They had everything worked out as if it were transposable onto a miniature circuit board and they would not, could not divert or discuss deep issues. When the going got rough they all retreated into an uncomfortable silence.

‘Do you know what Colin Searle said to me the other day?’ she asked, trying to regain some of the camaraderie which existed prior to the opening of Pandora’s Box. ‘He said, You’re pretty safe, Mrs Crotan. Being the mine manager’s wife, no bloke here will ever put the hard word on you.’

The group laughs but this time it appears rooted in anxiety. Lydia was pleased that the atmosphere had lightened even if it was at her expense. She had made light of her conversation with Colin but it had touched her. It made her realise only too graphically that she was not viewed as a person but as the mine-manager’s-wife: an untouchable. This she resented because she enjoyed flirting: flirting reassured her of her womanhood and her desirability as a person. She wished sometimes that someone would make more than a pass at her. Even at the afternoon tea, which she organized fortnightly, the women spoke guardedly, getting their reassurance from her manner and reactions as to what was a suitable topic for discussion. She was better educated than them, having met her husband while they were both at university, but believed that because of her education and sensitivity she suffered more. She yearned for variety; the flux of new ideas, experiences, and friends, and she resented these women who seemed to live day-to-day in a Valium induced world of monotonous pettiness. She liked to believe that hers was a free-wheeling spirit, seeking adventure and grasping the mystery of life, wherever it lay. They had ventured to the desert in search of adventure after touring the world with nothing but a back-pack and it was here they would get their stake to depart on new adventures. Her reverie was broken.

‘D’ja hear about Mary and Alison last week?’ asked Marilyn Mauny, very proud of herself at having found a new topic.

Heads shook in the negative and all eyes focused on her expectantly.

‘Well, apparently, they broke down on the Boulia road after dark.’

‘Never find me on that road after dark,’ interjected Gittie Nettles.

‘I don’t know, Gittie, it’s a lot cooler driving at night than in the middle of the day,’ rejoined Marilyn, attempting to regain her audience’s attention.

A pause while all searched for where the conversation was heading.

‘Anyway, they were sitting in the car waiting for someone to come and fix it when, in the distance, they sees this light approaching. Relieved that they didn’t have to wait long for help they watched it approach over the plains and then Mary realized – it wasn’t using the road.’

The others drew a communal breath and concentrated silently on the story teller.

‘It approached over the gibber plains floating a metre off the surface to circle their car. Alison said it was bloody eerie, like a light which didn’t throw off a beam, and they just sat there holding hands… petrified!’

‘A bloody min min light asserted Gittie Nettles breaking the spell. ‘What happened then?’

‘Well, it circled for half an hour, then moved off in the direction it came,’ said Marilyn, disappointed that she couldn’t develop the mystery of her story. ‘The mail truck came along soon after and got them started again. Mary said it’s the most frightening thing ever happened to her.’

Much discussion then ensued as to what caused min min lights. Some said it was the dead spirits of the drinkers of the old stagecoach resting depot, the Min Min Hotel, which burn forever in its memory. Chris Bixbury said she’d heard it was the ghost of Ludwig Leichardt, reported in aboriginal legend to have wandered lost in the area. Others said it was burning gas, which was known to be in the region because for years the Commonwealth Energy Commission had been secretly drilling in the desert. Still others, and Lydia agreed with these, said there were probably more scientific explanations.

‘I don’t know why everyone gets into a panic over some lights,’ said Lydia. ‘There’s no reports of harm being done to anyone. They’re probably just balls of static electricity. You all know how the dry makes everything so static? Personally, I’d love something like that to happen to me. I get so damn lonely sometimes I’d probably talk to it.’ Laughter. ‘I think one should just accept these phenomena in order to understand them better…’

‘Speak for yourself.’ Said Gittie Nettles, behind a dry and powdery laugh.

‘There’s lots of strange things goes on in these deserts,’ said Sister Finlay in her most sage-like voice. ‘All those mysterious deaths on the Birdsville Track and those deserted homesteads out in the sandhills which folk say, still have the bread on the table … People just don’t walk away like that!’

The conversation continued in this vein for some time, body snatchers, aliens, serial killers, much to the delight of Marilyn Mauny who had sponsored the topic. It was still on everyone’s lips as they trundled home.

Lydia stood on the doorstep of her isolated fibro home, a kilometre from the manicured settlement below and watched the group wander back to their respective houses. The village’s new buildings shone like bones in the desert sun and the bright green lawns, defiantly gestured a contrast to the low rusted hills of this barren and inhospitable environment. As if performing a ritual, Lydia looked to the horizon, where, towering over the town a massive yet thin pillar of blood-dark rock protruded from a rounded pedestal. It was a landmark visible for kilometres now silhouetted against the gilded western sunset like an ancient fertility symbol. Lydia knew the workers had a more colloquial term of endearment for it than the official name, The Statue, after which the settlement was named.  She followed the ridge-line to the town edge. The dust rolled in off the reddened undulating plains and the stringent impact of the dust on her sinuses made her retreat within the air-conditioned house.

It was dark by the time she had cleared the visitor’s mess and as her husband was on the afternoon shift, she showered lazily then stood naked before the air-conditioning vent to dry. The cool air played sensually with her flesh as she looked from the bedroom’s undraped window at the dark clouds gathering along the edge of the visible world. She thought of Colin Searle and glanced approvingly in the mirror at her still un-ravaged body. She switched the radio on but the static was so intense she immediately switched it off. Another storm she thought and recalled the dry storms which erupted quickly around the mineral areas, throwing lightening bolts from black ominous clouds to the copper-laden earth. She knew that lightening shot from the earth skywards but preferred to believe like the primitives that the bolts were spears from some angry god. These bolts cracked the earth with an horrific clap shaking the house. For all the expectant waiting of parturition the rain was mostly stillborn.

It was darker than usual and Lydia wrote to her young children at boarding school hoping to catch the mail which left on the company plane to Mount Isa the next day. The wind from the encroaching storm buffeted the door which trembled noisily on its latches as if to brace itself against an intruder. Lydia could feel the goosebumps rise upon her arm as the house grew cooler. The reading lamp threw a secure pool of light around the small figure of Lydia at her desk.

A white moth circled the reading lamp. Lydia could never understand the power which light had over these fragile creatures that they would sacrifice themselves to unite with it. The moth’s circular flight grew tighter until, as if in search of ultimate truth, it landed on the bulb and fluttered lifeless on the page. Sadly, Lydia brushed it softly onto the darkened floor. The house was totally dark. To gather her thoughts, she stared vacantly through the window above her desk.

She gasped in horror, for directly outside her window was a stationary light staring in upon her. Her eyes fluttered in a struggle to comprehend. She pushed back from the desk to stand and fell over the chair. Her nightdress opened exposing her nakedness. She recovered in a backward stumble and, like a child shutting a box containing a snake, she lunged desperately at the drapes and arms-length closed them.

She breathed heavily. Felt she was out of control. After all it was only a light. Perhaps it was only a reflection of a light in her room shining in the window, which against the dark backdrop outside acted as a mirror? She turned and could find nothing. A scream erupted from her inner being, for peering in the opposite window was – the light. She raced to close that curtain and then leaned with her back against the blackened window, conscious of the blood pounding in her ears. She screamed again. The orb of light, like an incandescent eye, was now framed in the lounge room window. Shutting her eyes to numb the fear she raced to the curtains, stumbling against them in a frantic effort to draw them closed. She was panting – sucking wind with a searing urgency. What should she do? Switch off the light. She did and stood immobile in the darkness but could hear nothing except her tremulous breathing. Yet, she knew it was still there – she knew!

If only she could be sure it was merely a min min light or something identifiable. Contrary to her expectations she found she was terrified of the unknown, of the mysterious. This was different from the adventure and sophisticated mind-teasing of putting oneself into precarious but controlled situations like mountain climbing. The light was real, outside her control and it was in threatening relationship to the self. She had the peculiar feeling that it was observing her – like a child, unflinchingly, observes a trapped insect in a bottle prior to removing its legs. She felt, not in a state of heightened awareness as she would in her usual controlling, spectator pose, but violated, dirty, tarnished – the observed. She couldn’t stand the distance between that thing and her; yet in another sense she couldn’t stand the intimacy they had established. She was both threatened by it yet longed to experience it.

Tears ran down her cheeks. The clock ticked. The door rattled in a frenzy. She heard something brushing on the carpet – the wind? She spun towards it – a force, a palpable force knocked her sprawling on the carpet and set her head spinning. A voice, travelling from the distance of another solar system: ‘I’ve got something for you, Jenny. He’ll never come between us again.’

‘Thank God!’ said Lydia, sobbing. ‘Thank God!’

‘

The sun beat unmercifully upon his tanned shoulders, his balding head. It boiled the blue waters in which he bobbed, a hundred metres from shore and had chased the dawn breeze, early, so the waves lolled in with a regular rhythm. Ashore, sunbakers who did move, scurried high-stepping, from wooden steps to towel, from towel to water’s edge, to avoid the hot sand, or to cool burnt feet.

A body-surfer, he waited for the right wave; watched fellow swimmers’ heads bob as the surface slopped, rose, fell; felt no need to communicate with them, cross the unspoken barrier; enjoyed the communion of immersion. Earlier, holding a steady pace to reach the beach on time, careful not to step over the line where each pavement joined, he’d recognised, at block two-hundred-and-sixty-two, another with a similar affliction but, probably, not a ‘counter’, and their eyes swept into, and past, each other, flickered with excitement, before they’d stepped-on without comment. This was a different world.

The water flowed, indecisive, tugged him towards the ocean’s far horizon, then pushed him shore-wards to the line of sand. At times such as this, he imagined he was seaweed with no agency, no will of his own, flowing this way, then that. At other times he floated on his stomach, arms dangled, eyes open, watching the bubbles run up his arms, pretending he was a giant box-jellyfish floating down the coast: an amorphous, transparent, cell-mass drifting with the currents.

Was this characteristic of him? Did he prefer life to happen to him; jobs to overwhelm him, with little room to think; relationships, where others take the initiative? It wasn’t how he’d viewed himself. The possibility threatened him. He nearly inhaled and sucked in water with the surprise. Yet, such inertness described a recent failed relationship and prompted his seaside break to remove its sticky tentacles, perhaps understand it, and salve its burning wounds.

His tentacle-arms swayed with the pulsing surf, his fingers flailing filaments. The longer he held his breath the more translucent his arms became, such that he imagined he could see through them, like you could the sea stinger’s long, poisonous tendrils: Could see veins and arteries, pain and tension, pulse within.

He raised his head, inhaled deeply, and noted, again, his position within the surf tribe, its twenty-six members’ sleek heads bobbing around him like a dark raft of otters. Further out, along the first break, sat the fifteen ‘boardies’ on their Maywood’s, Roxy’s or Sea-Folly’s, their iridescent bodysuits flicking on, off, as they appeared and disappeared on the sea-swell.

To shore, the blue-white, blue-white, shore-breakers tossed against the sand-line, threatened to cross; higher up the beach, above the high tide-line, towels and thirty-six umbrellas shone like coloured flowers in a garden of Eden.

He resubmerged his face; let his breath escape in tiny spurts, watched bubbles, too many to count, burst before him like he’d watched his relationship disintegrate.

Would there be another Sandra?

She wanted him to commit. Said she, ‘she’, had given everything of herself while he always held something back, as if danger, a great shark, or a giant wave, lurked behind him, waiting to strike him down, were he to let go.

He couldn’t explain it. Committing more to something made it more painful to lose. His mother leaving the family when he was but a child taught him that.

The day Sandra pulled the pin, they’d made love at his flat and then, while he showered, she’d shouted through the half-closed door.

‘Bye.’

‘You off?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What’s the hurry?’

‘Things to do; people to see.’

‘I’ll call you, tomorrow.’

‘Don’t bother.’

The note on the bedside-table said it was over. She’d crossed the line; been to bed with someone else. No ultimatum. No negotiable moment. It was as if something had snapped. A Rubicon crossed. Her farewell fuck hadn’t been different, or special, because they always fucked as if it was their last, later emerging onto the street exhausted, exhilarated, like a surfer swirling out of a giant dumper.

The memory of it, her, aroused him. Some life, perhaps hope, remained, at least.

He raised his head; gasped for air. His eyes stung from the salt and the sand-churned water. A wave towered over him: A giant green, blue, emerald wave curving high above. On it he sighted an angel in a tomato-coloured suit, carving along its growling face on a collision course, her long blonde hair streaming like a comet’s tail, her face ecstatic, her teeth sparkling white-as-sand against her tan.

He raised his arms to protect himself from impact. She jagged the boogie-board uphill, towards the wave’s foaming crest to avoid him, and, then, spun three-hundred-and-sixty-degrees – her long legs folded back from the knees, her yellow-and-blue flippers dangling, pointlessly from her feet – then, with back arched, like a yogic salute-to-the-sun, slid the board down the face of the wave, so close to him he could smell her perfume.

He ducked his head beneath the encroaching wave to avoid a dumping, emerged to find she’d disappeared.

As she returned through the shore-break, to catch the next set, he watched her arm muscles work beneath the fabric of her tanned flesh, and her hips roll as her legs thumped the coloured flippers, partly visible beneath the surface. He clapped his hands above his head.

‘Thank you for avoiding me, before. It could have got ugly if we’d crashed… That was a great manoeuvre. I didn’t know you could get so much movement out of those boards.’

‘No problems. My pleasure,’ she said, puffing slightly, but not enough to deter a dazzling smile.

He was a jelly-fish again, transformed by her beauty, and watched, discombobulated, as she paddled past, her petite butt twerking with each arm rotation.

A prospective wave demanded his attention and he accelerated with a heavy pump-kick, caught its momentum, and rode it to shore. He hitched himself to five more sets, then to conclude, let one wave discharge him high on the beach. He panicked for a moment unable to locate his towel and possessions amidst the newly-formed maze of umbrellas, and beachgoers, for, without a datum-point, his step-count was useless. He stepped out, regardless. At the end of his count, he looked carefully around, recognised a faded esky, and located his towel nearby. He laid it in a spot wide enough to spread-out. His mother, when alive, would say: There is social distance and it needs to be respected. Until then he stumbled into other’s space; was often bruised.

It took time to settle; to be comfortable on the sand, and allow the sun’s rays dry him. He scanned for the boogieboarder amidst the otters and, once located, watched her catch, and work, eleven wave-sets, until she retired ashore, to a towel close-by, but too distant for conversation. He knew a line was there, a point beyond which you couldn’t shout to a stranger, but was unable to indicate where it was, exactly. Such conventions plagued him for their imprecision: Always had.

He rolled onto his back, closed his eyes, and let the sun’s rays penetrate.

A wind-surfer bathed in silver light, riding a pale, wooden deck, tore across the water towards him. He recognised Sandra but, as she approached, she became another woman; a blonde with a welcoming smile, beckoning him to step aboard. He waited until she was directly opposite, then boarded, heard the stretched-flapping of the sailboard’s sheet, felt the cool spray it flicked across his chest, as the woman turned into the wind.

She appeared delighted that he’d made it; that he’d stepped off the sand onto the board, but he examined the woman closer and it was Sandra. He bathed all too briefly in her smile and gratitude, before the craft tipped with the transferred weight, both sailors having failed to right-it. The sail flapped loose as Sandra fell and he knew he, too, had fallen when his shirt swirled around his face, blocked his airways. He woke.

He seldom sun-baked longer than ten minutes, just enough to dry. Therefore, to fall asleep, however briefly, was unusual, but everything since breaking-up with Sandra was unusual. Living alone, sleeping alone, holidaying alone, all was unusual, but it was as she had predicted. He’d crossed to a space, an age, where romantic dating was rare.

He sat up in panic, squinted against the white light, donned his Ray Bans, and searched for the girl, concerned she may have left; delighted to find her upon her towel; relaxed. It wasn’t as if she was facing him but, for some strange reason, call it desperation, he believed that she was as conscious of his presence as he was of hers.

He stood and drew his shorts over his togs then, bent like a baccarat dealer calling in the bets, gathered his kit – shirt, sun-cream, keys, sneakers, and towel. A discreet scan in her direction showed she, too, now sat cross-legged on her towel conducting a deep dive into a bleached beach bag. Could he cross the line, intrude, comment, introduce himself, take a risk in pursuit of happiness?

He ignored his desire; put politeness before gratification; high-stepped barefooted, disappointed, thirty-nine steps across the scorching sand to the stairs that crossed the dunes to the parking-lot, and cooled his seared feet in the hand-rail’s sliver of shade. His heart skipped with excitement when he observed her following, her multi-coloured flip-flops enabling her to move slower and more relaxed, than he.

He leant against the hand-rail to dust his soles, and slip-on sneakers. Ahead, the broiling bitumen-road needed to be crossed. He dawdled in hope of meeting her; the final shoe-lace knotted as she drew level. Their eyes met. He smiled an apology for blocking the stairs.

‘That sand is so bloody hot.’

‘Yes, it gets even worse in an hour’s time, that’s why I come down early.’

He pointed to her bodyboard.

‘How long have you been boarding? You’re good.’

‘About three years. I come here most weekends.’

‘So, you aren’t here on holidays?’

‘No, I’m back to Brisbane tonight.’

‘That’s a pity, I was hoping to get a lesson from you, tomorrow.’

Her gaze grasped his.

‘Oh, that would have been interesting. Sorry!’

She smiled; so attractive it would have raised Ozymandias from the dead. His heart leapt. He couldn’t believe it. She was ‘interested’.

‘You can’t drift forever’, Sandra had said. ‘You’re not at the age where young women are going to be interested in getting involved with you. Especially you – you know, neuro-diverse, awkward.’

Mesmerised, he watched his angel mount the first seven stairs, her tomato-coloured bikini swinging as her butt swayed, her golden hair backlit by the sun above. He imagined himself surfing, wind in his hair, between the headlands of her breasts, sliding along her womanly curves, holding tight, weaving this way, then that, until he ground upon the beach. For the first time in many years, he was smiling; really smiling.

’Yes, you’re right. That, indeed, would have been “interesting”.’

He collected his gear. Followed the woman. Sandra’s critical words swamped him like an angry wave, but he pushed-up through it.

‘You can go screw yourself, Sandra’, he thought, as he fought to stay afloat; as he asserted his buoyancy. ‘I shouldn’t have put up with your flirting ways so long. I should have crossed that line, drifted, caught another wave, far, far sooner.’

‘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.