Siddon Rock (16 page)

The boy wants to be Macha,
Granna said.
He's got a free spirit being scrubbed away by that Mabel and her prissy husband.

Whatever the problems between Brigid and Boy Aberline over his son, the rivalry between the cousins pushed Macha to drive faster, shoot further, ride the unbroken horse, in her determination to show her grandfather he was wrong when he said she was not-a-boy.

Mellor Mackintosh, the farmhand employed by Thomas Aberline to help his son's pregnant wife after his son walked away into the desert, stayed on the farm for five years and became the first of a long line of loving workers to share the bed of Brigid Connor. It seems that his farming background was mainly that of the buck-jumping ring on the Country Show circuit where he demonstrated riding and shooting to awed young farmers. It was he who taught Macha how to use the .22 rifle that was kept on the verandah, resting the long barrel on a box so that the small girl could steady it.
Tuck it in tight to ya shoulder
, he said.
Ya look at what ya aiming at through the rear sight, and then move the barrel up or down until it lines up with the foresight. Look through the target. You see and don't see at the same time.

By the age of five Macha found she could see things that were obscured for others.
A veritable hawk
, her grandfather said to Brigid.
Shame she's not a boy.
Macha, who was lying on the cool earth under the verandah listening to them talk, wondered what he meant. She asked her cousin Fatman why she was not a boy, and he showed her the difference.
Well
, Macha said,
that's nothing special
, and at that moment she decided she would do all the things Fatman did, and do them so well that her grandfather would not know she was not-a-boy.

By the time she was twelve Macha Connor could out-ride anyone in the district and could dismantle and re-assemble any piece of machinery known. But her prime skill was with the rifle.

Saw her pick an eagle's eye at five hundred yards
, Billy Brody said over a schooner in the bar. Billy had only been at the Two Mile for a month or two (Mellor Mackintosh was long gone) and was still able to be surprised by the abilities of the Connor women.
As for rabbits – the bloody things stop at the fence line 'cause they know they'll be dead meat otherwise
. And rabbit was indeed a staple on the table at the Two Mile.

… Just fancy that, those bloody idiots at the recruitment table would only let you enlist as a nurse – but I'm glad we got to be together for a while at least
,
just the two of us from Siddon Rock,
Maureen said.
And I'm glad you got to do what you wanted to do. You're so good at it – and maybe one day you'll be able to tell me about it.
But Maureen Mather, thinking about her father's restless nights and sullen days that had been with him since 1918, knew this would not happen.

 

CATALIN MORGENSTERN
walked out of the migrant camp one afternoon with her small suitcase in one hand and the other holding her son Josis. They were accompanied only by the ghosts. The cello case was on her back, as it always was when she travelled. No-one thought to ask where she was going, and if they had she could not have told them.

At the railway station she saw that the trains were older than the ones she had travelled on in Germany, older and not as clean, even without the veneer of war. But the smell of the station – the coal and steam from the engines– was the same. Here though, there were no uniforms checking every passenger; in fact, there seemed to be no-one at all worrying about who got on or off the trains.

Catalin watched which trains had travellers with luggage, and she chose one being loaded with cases of food and packages, and with two other passengers in a small carriage at the rear. She sat with the cello, the suitcase and Josis, and no-one asked if she had permission to travel, or a
ticket. For the rest of that day she did not speak for fear of being discovered.

By nightfall they were alone on the train, but when the engine uncoupled and steamed off into the night Catalin was not afraid that they had been left. The food boxes and packages had not been unloaded, and she knew they were not at the end of the journey.

The stillness, though, allowed the ghosts to expand, and they hung there below the ceiling, whispering things that Catalin did not want to hear or remember. She put her hands over Josis's ears so he would not be frightened, but when he wriggled away she realised that he could not hear them, that these ghosts were hers alone.

While Josis slept against her, she sat watching the turn of the stars in a silence of such depth and darkness as she had never known. It felt, she thought, as if the continent itself was hiding from her. In the deepest dark just before dawn, an engine steamed backwards to the waiting carriages, coupled, and continued the journey.

Catalin and Jos sat for much of the next day, watching the landscape become flatter and browner. Jos, who rarely spoke, pointed at kangaroos bounding alongside the train, as if challenging to a race; or to strange, red-coloured trees that grew with all the leaves at the top of their tall trunks. When the train stopped at the siding before Siddon Rock, Catalin stood to get off, thinking that they were surely far enough from the capital to not be found. She had been dozing, sitting with her feet tucked under her on the seat, away from the wind blowing
through the gap under the carriage door. As she stood her toes pushed backwards, cramping against each other. She lifted her foot and dug her thumb into the unnatural hollow where the muscle compressed above the little toe and its companion, rubbing and gasping at the betrayal of her body. The train moved off before she had time to even look out the window.

Shortly after, the train stopped again. Catalin looked out to see a row of shops and a hotel, and she and Jos stepped down into Siddon Rock. As they stood in the gravel of the station-yard she felt the blue heat lean heavily on her head, pushing her into the earth. She took a step or two after the train, but it was already moving. She watched it diminishing and for some minutes she could hear the slow
tuggetty-tuk
of the wheels and feel the rhythm in her body.

That night in the small room in the hotel, Catalin took the cello from its case. She held it to the light and rubbed her fingers over the words that were written on the front of the instrument, flowing in an ongoing line around the edge like an intricate decoration. Near the top where the neck joined the body the words had, with time, worn so low that she was unable to decipher many of them, but the last names stood clearly:

 

Margit Catalin 1879 to 1930 … Viktoria Margit …

Catalin Viktoria … Josis Matthieu …

 

Her fingers lingered on the space after the words
Viktoria Margit
, and the smoothness made her smile. She turned
the cello over to look at the back, which was covered by a seeming jumble of overlapping painted scenes of cities and countryside. Interspersed were intimate details: a right hand with a particularly beautiful ring on the middle finger; an unusually styled red boot; an opened fan that almost fluttered off the cello, so real it appeared; a silver teaspoon with a twining pattern on the handle.

At the place where the neck of the cello joined the body, there were small pictures of several women. Catalin found her grandmother's face and touched it gently. She was a child when her grandmother died, and had no memory of her. She wished she could have known her.

Catalin's mother's picture was not yet there for she was, as the words at the edge of the cello told her daughter, still alive.

Catalin propped the cello against the wall and stepped back so that the details of the painting were not so clear, and a sense of wholeness flowed towards her from the instrument.

That first night, Catalin slept with Josis curled against her back. Her dreams had no uniforms, running figures or gunfire, but she woke some time in the grey of pre-dawn with a profound feeling of unease. The shadows in the hotel room reminded her of the dream that had stirred her, and she recalled its nothingness, its world filled with white light that flowed over her with no sense of peace, and stretched forever.

Macha Connor sat with Nell on the steps of the war memorial, her hand on the head of one of the dingoes, watching the train enter the town and draw to a bumping, grinding halt.

A woman climbed down the steps of the dog-box carriage carrying a small suitcase and a large cello case. Macha did not see the small boy jump down behind her, but only the army of dark ghosts that floated out of the train around the woman, almost lifting her off the ground as they crowded close. Some wore uniforms of the German or Allied Forces, some had only rags drifting from vaporous figures, and they ebbed and flowed around her like a black tide.

The dog under Macha's hand stirred and its hackles lifted as one of the dark shapes detached from the group and drifted towards them. Macha picked up her rifle. Nell looked at the dog, and then at Macha who stood trembling with her finger tightening on the trigger.
Hey, Mach
, she said,
whatcha doin'? You can't kill someone else's ghosts.

Macha lowered the rifle, slung it over her shoulder and walked quickly away down Wickton Street, gaining speed until she broke into a trot and then a run. She rushed past the pub, where Kelpie Crush was sweeping broken glass off the steps of the bar; past the bank and the Council Offices, and vanished up the path over the rock.

When Catalin and Josis appeared in the doorway of the pub, Bluey Redall called to Marge, who led them to a bedroom and then to the bathroom.

After an hour Marge Redall went upstairs again.
Got something to eat in the kitchen
, she said, and they followed her to where she had set two places at the huge work-table.
What's yer name, love?
she asked as she ladled beef and barley soup into large bowls. Catalin hesitated, wanting to protect herself and her son, but not wanting to lie to this woman.
Morningstar
, she said.
This is the closest, is English. I am Catalin, and this is Josis.

Here'ya, young Joe.
Marge gave him the bowl of soup.

Not Joe, Jo-sis
, Catalin said as she opened her bag and tipped some coins on the table, pushing them towards Marge.

Don't be silly, love.
Marge pushed them back.
Let's wait and see what happens.

Catalin returned them.
I pay
, she said.
I work
. Marge Redall looked at the slightly built woman, and at the boy who had taken his bowl of soup to sit close to her, and wondered just what she would work at in Siddon Rock.
As you like
, she said and put a couple of pennies in her apron pocket.

The next day Marge took Catalin and Jos to Meakins' Haberdashery and Ladies & Men's Apparel.
Now this ain't charity, love
,
and you can pay what you can
, she said.
But you've gotta have some clothes for young Jos.
She had seen the one tiny case and guessed the rest.
On my account
, she muttered to Alistair Meakins. When Catalin put a five-pound note on the counter to pay for a shirt and shorts for Jos and a dress and some underwear for herself, Alistair took it and put it in the till, then he gave her back a mix of notes and silver that more than equalled the note she had given him.
Without looking, Catalin put it in her bag. Much later, when most barriers had been dismantled, Alistair asked Catalin if she had known how to count Australian money at that time.
Yes
, she said,
but I knew you were trusty.
She didn't tell him that in her experience, violet-coloured people were usually timid, and liked to be liked.

Catalin saw the world as various colours, and the days of the week of Siddon Rock were very differently coloured from the days of the week in Germany, or those in the camp at the capital. Take Tuesday. In Berlin this was a pale icy-green with smudgy white edges; in the camp it was still green, although much darker; but here in this small town in the middle of who-knows-where, it was a deep russet. Wednesday was pale pink and Saturday a spiritual and glorious blue. She found, however, that if she focused her eyes in a certain way, by looking at a point at the tip of her nose, she could see familiar colours just under the veneer, so that Siddon Rock Friday orange barely concealed Berlin Friday ecru; and the deep purple of a Hungarian Sunday flashed under the Siddon Rock red.

But Catalin had no problem with the colours of the place; it was the people who seemed to be uniformly brown, except for Alistair Meakins, and Marge Redall who glowed like a silvery-blue beacon in the forest.
But there is no forest
, Catalin thought.
Nothing but nothingness.

Catalin and Jos were hovering at the edge of the town, where the track went around the silo and up the rock, when
Kelpie Crush walked up behind them.
You can go up
, he said,
it's quite safe
. But Catalin recoiled from his dark grey presence. She saw, too, that when he spoke to her he had a blue and smiling eye, but when he turned and looked back at her from the path ahead, a sharp, gingery glare shone from an eye that looked like that of a fox. She hurried back to the town centre.