Hill of Grace (12 page)

She smiled and almost laughed. ‘“Oh, Rex, my heart beats like the wings of a – ”'

‘Alright!' Throwing the handle of an old saucepan at her.

‘It's not a gulag,' she said.

He looked at the moon on her face, settling on her high cheek bones. ‘I'm sort of looking forward to it,' he said.

‘That's what I've been saying. Do you know how backward this place is? Quaint.'

And all at once Nathan thought of his father again, William's anachronisms growing cheesier by the minute in contemplation, like so many remaindered postcards of places which no longer existed except in people's memory. Places in which the desperate clung for dear life, catching buses where they no longer ran and singing (mostly incorrect) lyrics from songs no one remembered or cared about. William's world had ossified. Nathan knew that he had to move on, because the alternative was death by hand harvesting. Memories had to be forged, made unique, otherwise they were just somebody else's.

‘I'm not going to be here forever,' she said, as if trying to convince herself more than anyone. ‘Oh, I forgot.' She pulled out a newspaper clipping and smiled. ‘I found this . . . I thought if you had any spare time.' She used her best recitation voice, leaving behind the boy on the burning deck in favour of the Adelaide
Advertiser
classifieds. ‘“Greek goddess. Traditional recipes involved. Discount for the liberators of Crete.”'

He shook his head. ‘I don't understand.' She rolled her eyes and he slowly got it. ‘Oh . . .'

‘There's a number for you.'

‘No, no, I have
The Golden Age of Steam
.'

‘Those long, lonely nights.'

‘I'm a school kid.'

‘Not anymore.'

Where William had harvested news of the 38th Parallel, Lilli had cut out the Adult Services (William had found them too, deciding they should be in his scrapbook of signs, but deferring in the interests of decency). She kept reading, two columns of everything hot and spicy in bluestone Adelaide, cooking away under the nose of Playford and the moral majority, decent folks in frocks with cardies sipping bronchial cure and listening to
Blue
Hills
as Mistress Josephine, severe and sensational, took endless calls on a PMG bakelite phone, alternating between home and a cottage in Wright Street which charged by the hour.

‘This one's for you. “Male to male. Ryan. Tall, dark and gorgeous.”' Nathan laughed and sat back, trying not to think about it. Eventually he crawled over the rubble and sat next to her. ‘I'll take it anyway.'

‘You wouldn't know what to do.'

‘“Sheena. Well dressed . . .”' he read, but stopped, watching as Lilli stretched back, like William in search of lost weather trees, emotionally neutral, curious.

Bloody hell, he thought, watching the rise and fall of her chest.

‘Are you looking at me?' she asked, sounding detached.

‘Of course. It's you or a pile of rocks.'

‘Thanks.'

He moved on top of her. No words necessary. If religion was instruction then nature was instinct.
Michelle seeks pillion passenger.
Hold tight, keep quiet.
He held her arms down and said, ‘Who's feeble now?' feeling, for what seemed like the first time ever, completely in charge of what happened next. No morals to be drawn from the Scriptures. None of William's homilies.

He unbuttoned her blouse, quickly, confidently, and there they were, like a pair of Bluma's Berlei's hung out to dry, bulging like over ripe tomatoes about to split down the side. Verbal instructions followed, putting a momentary damper on things, but he quickly moved onto the fullness of her body as they rolled together over rubble and rusted tools, a broken mixing bowl and a baby's rattle.

As he sat on top of her, shirtless in the full moonlight, he wondered if it'd finish as quickly as it started, Lilli taking off into the night like Grable painted onto the side of a B-17.

And then suddenly, at a crucial moment, William appeared out of the darkness. ‘Seven angels with seven vials full of plague,' he was saying to Arthur, who was skipping to keep up with him. ‘Let's see: TB, polio, smallpox, syphilis, cholera . . .'

Nathan lay on top of Lilli as the men walked past the glassless window, so close he could hear his father breathing and Arthur coughing. He covered Lilli's mouth when she giggled, but then he started laughing too, rolling off her, ending up in the old fireplace, breaking up as William passed into the distance.

‘I've had it,' he smiled.

She crawled over to him. ‘Of course. Why did you come to Menge's cave?'

Unable to find the right words, he continued.

As far as trains were concerned, he guessed he'd either end up loving or hating them.

It all started on the trip down from Tanunda when the conductor, having found out where Nathan was going, started in on the history of the Brill railcar in which they were travelling.

‘Built by the Railways in 1928, Islington workshops, by fellas just like you.' Taking Nathan up front to meet the driver, who explained the crunch gear-box and clutch, how the Brill would come to be seen as the pioneer of diesel railcars, moving on to a history of broad versus narrow gauge, which itself was a discussion of colonial politics, Federation and opportunities missed.

Nathan was saved by Islington station – a platform hemmed in by depots and workshops, parallel and criss-crossing lines filled with steam and diesel and rolling stock: eight-wheeled side loaders and four-wheeled sit-ups, the cafeteria car and the Governor's Vice Regal. Men in overalls sat in the sun against workshop walls eating stale sandwiches of corned beef and pickled onions beside white and red geraniums (to Islington what carob trees were to Tanunda).

Nathan was overcome by the smell of the place: coal dust drifting and settling like mist in the Flaxman Valley, into every pore in every man's skin, hair, car windscreens – floating through windows onto official SA Railways correspondence, over the fence and across Churchill Road, settling on the washing of the double-fronted red brick homes. As he crossed the tracks the smell of oil came up in vapours, emitted from gravel, quarried in Kavel's day, that had never seen weeds or grass or anything remotely green. A big, black loco moved off from taking water and blasted him; Nathan jumped and kept walking, feeling like a mite lost in the train-set his father would never build him.

Peering inside giant, cavernous workshops he saw men at work on axles and wheels and pistons and rods, welding, hammering, illuminated by arc lights and skylights and cathedral windows covering whole walls, the message of Christ replaced by the homilies of Commissioner William Webb:
The only basis of economy in
railway operation is the reduction of train miles by the use of large capacity
cars and the largest possible locomotives
.

Nathan, now kitted out in green overalls and workboots, was introduced to Bob Drummond, a lightly bearded man of about fifty with rampant nostril hair. ‘Bob looks after the refrigeration apprentices,' a supervisor explained – teaching them, watching their work, keeping them in line and, in Nathan's case, having them board with him and his family during the week.

‘I have a son a little older than you,' Bob said, ‘he'll keep you busy.'

Nathan smiled. ‘Busy?'

‘Nothing your parents wouldn't approve of.'

And Nathan thought, I wouldn't be so sure.

He was led through the yards, through a door into the western end of a shed given over to refrigeration and hydraulics. ‘S'pose it's a bit of a culture shock,' Bob half asked, stopping to look at him more closely. ‘You from the Barossa?'

‘Tanunda.'

‘Nice spot.'

He means for day trips, Nathan thought, for a quick Sunday motor, wine-tasting and authentic yeasts.

‘What's that little bakery?' Bob asked.

‘Apex.'

‘Yeah. Bloody beautiful. I could get you to bring some down on Mondays.'

‘Sure.' Thinking how it'd be a good reason to visit Lilli, and how impressed she'd be with him in his overalls and workboots.

Bob took him into a side office and sat him on a sofa of ruptured springs. Seating himself behind a desk he went through the indenture papers Nathan would have to sign, and get co-signed by his parents. ‘Miller . . . you're not one of those humourless Lutherans then?'

Nathan paused and sighed. ‘Actually, we were Muller before the war.'

Bob kept reading. ‘I generalise. Still, you seem okay. You'll need a sense of humour to work in this place.'

‘How's that?'

‘These fellas are salt of the earth, no bullshit. Meat and three veg, football and milk on your back doorstep. Don't bring your ballet shoes, and leave your Bible at home. What you give is what you get and if you're a smart arse . . . you don't seem like a smart arse . . . you wanna learn?'

‘Of course.'

‘Make some money?'

‘Wouldn't be bad.'

Bob paused and looked at him. ‘Your lot have always stuck to themselves,' he said. ‘I always thought that was strange.'

‘They were persecuted in Germany.'

‘Wouldn't a happened here.'

Nathan looked back at Bob, who was busy printing words in a slow, simple script. He looked at his mentor's sideburns and fat, pasty cheeks and imagined him sitting in his living-room, surrounded by Cornish seascapes and a portrait of the King. He imagined Bob carving corned beef (encased in fat) and dead-heading his agapanthus on a quiet Sunday afternoon. He wondered how comfortable he'd be losing his ironstone heritage.

‘Tanunda is inbred,' he smiled. ‘You find yourself fancying your cousins.'

Bob grinned. ‘You're a bloody lunatic, Muller.'

‘Sieg heil.'

‘Just don't forget my bloody streusel.'

Nathan was set straight to work on an eight-wheeled Butcher van, a refrigerated Commonwealth Rail carriage which formed part of the Tea and Sugar train. This supply train, he was told, made weekly runs across the Nullarbor desert, stopping at sidings to sell groceries from one carriage and meat from another. The Butcher van featured a cool-room stocked with whole animals on hook, a pair of resident butchers cutting by request. Over time water had ruined the wooden panelling which lined the cool-room, holding in thick insulation which did its best against Nullarbor summers as compressors worked tirelessly to keep everything cold.

With gloves and mask he worked beside another apprentice, pulling nails and stripping back the wood. At one point the older red-head warned, ‘Watch out, they'll be coming for you.'

‘Who will?'

But the red-head just shrugged and wouldn't elaborate.

After they had stacked the wood and removed the insulation, Nathan was left to sweep out the carriage. Finishing up, he heard voices outside and then saw a group of six young men, all in green overalls, standing in the doorway.

It only took them a minute to strip Nathan, putting his boots back on and locking him in. The compressor clicked on and a cold vapour as thick as mist rose from the floorboards. For an hour he stood and sat, jogging on the spot, swinging from the stainless steel beams which held the carcases on hook, unsure whether he was pissed off or amused – either way, determined to laugh about it when they opened the door.

Which wasn't the ending he'd expected. Being carried across the workshop by the same six in overalls. Lowered into a 44-gallon drum full of cold, murky water and honoured with a crown of geraniums and a toilet-brush sceptre. Bob stood in the background smiling. Nathan could read his lips as he whispered, ‘No bullshit.'

‘Here stands the King of Kings,' the red-head mocked, and they all laughed uncontrollably.

Nathan shook his head. ‘When do I get out of here?'

‘When you've been judged,' the red-head laughed. And with that they led in half a dozen office girls, who took seats and settled in with smiles on their faces, obviously used to this game.

Nathan lowered himself into the drum until his shoulders were just above the water.

‘We can wait all day,' one of the girls called, and with that the whistle blew for the fellas' smoko.

Nathan waited another ten minutes but by then his toes and fingers were numb. ‘Is this for real?' he asked, and they all laughed, choking on sandwiches and fighting back tears.

Attack was the best form of defence. Nathan submerged his head and used his weight to tip the drum over. As the group leapt about to save their shoes he climbed from the drum and ran towards the office, making no attempt to hide himself, shouting Navajo war cries and leaping through the air like a gazelle.

(Just the same, one of William Webb's old secretaries made a sighting. She returned to her office with the others and typed up a memo which later appeared on every notice board around the works. Like one of Lilli's personals, it didn't pull punches, describing form, shape and general appearance. Bob Drummond asked for them to be taken down but Nathan said he didn't care.)

Walking home with Bob that first night, Nathan felt a thaw which extended beyond his fingers and toes. Bob said, ‘If you give it, you gotta take it,' describing how Phil, his son, had mastered the art. ‘This one time, he got me good. I couldn't afford to get power into the shed, so when I used to come home at night, I'd drive the car in until this tennis ball, hanging from the roof, touched the windscreen.' He smiled, remembering. ‘So this one night, I'm slowly edging the car in and, crash, right into the back wall. Got out, scratched me head, couldn't work it out. Turns out Phil had moved the ball six inches forward.'

He kept walking, smiling. ‘Never got it repaired. Use the shed for me wheelchairs now.'

Another story, Nathan guessed, as they walked on under crows balancing on power lines and someone somewhere starting up a Hoovermatic.