Legacy (6 page)

During her visits he would tell her about his time growing up, of going to find pippies with his father and steaming them in a big tin over a fire on the beach, his time working on the fishing boats up and down the south coast, about his wife from Cowra, and their search to find the family she had been taken from as a child, her too early death from cancer and, Beth Ann's favourite part, the stories his grandmother told him about the life before white people came, before the struggle over their land. He introduced her to the poems of Kath Walker and Jack Davis. Beth Ann read him the novels of Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway.

While she read, Murray seemed to drift off and Beth Ann would wonder whether he was caught up in the story or back with his memories. She, in return, was given a new way of looking at the world around her, became aware of a history that she had not learned in school but that inhabited the same landscape she did.

Murray's stories also made her realise that there was something shameful about the way Aboriginal people had been treated, an injustice that had been swept under the carpet. He told her about the policy of removing Aboriginal children from their families, of forcibly being moved from their land, of going hungry, of mission managers, of kids not being able to finish school. He also taught her about dignity and patience, of spirited optimism not being crushed by bigotry and indifference. Murray passed away, dying peacefully in his sleep, the summer before Beth Ann's last year of high school but the memory of him and his stories, and the way he had opened her eyes about the silent history, stayed with her forever.

Her two older sisters had left home as soon as they could - Helen, the oldest, marrying her boyfriend the day she turned eighteen and Pamela, her other sister, moving to Wollongong and sharing a flat with her friends. Left alone, Beth Ann still felt she was in their shadow, especially with the leering from men who assumed she had the same morals as her sisters. And without her sisters' fussing and bickering, the lack of warmth in the house was even more apparent. And with Murray gone, there seemed nothing to hold her to Stanwell Park.

When she finished high school, she wanted to escape the house that was so empty of affection. She was accepted to go to veterinary school and intended to move to Sydney at the end of February when her course started. Just after Australia Day, she read in the newspapers about the Tent Embassy that had begun in Canberra, started by just a handful of Aboriginal people but whose numbers were rapidly swelling. She thought of Murray Simms and recalled how after hearing his stories she had felt something was profoundly wrong, unjust, but she did not know what to do to make a difference. This, she thought, might be one way to show that she cared.

So in the heat of a late January afternoon, while her parents were in the midst of a screaming match, Beth Ann had packed a bag and walked out the door, hitching a ride to Wollongong and then across the mountains and inland to Canberra. The sense of liberation, that thumping in her heart, the giddiness as she set out was a feeling she never forgot.

‘Such a long time ago,' Beth Ann whispered to herself, ‘but I guess it takes a long time to realise that belief and love have faded.'

12

‘What have I got on today?' Tony asked.

‘Something your wife didn't check before you left the house,' Carol smiled.

She checked the appointments calendar on her computer. ‘There's that Darren Brown at nine thirty. He's a nice-looking kid. Seems smart. Don't know why he keeps wanting to see you.'

‘Yeah, thought you'd like him. And he wants to keep seeing me because he is interested in my life, in my achievements.'

‘If he was only interested in your achievements he should be finished with you by now,' Carol quipped, knowing full well she was walking a fine line when it came to Tony's healthy ego. She knew when to stop and softened. ‘You have a busy day ahead of you, Champ. Back-to-back meetings until five so I'll just keep sending them down.'

‘Okay. And Carol, make sure there are no unannounced visitors.'

Rachel had taken her suit jacket off and Tony could see the tattoo that ran all around her arm in an intricate band. He hated tattoos. They were bad enough on men, let alone women. He had always told Simone that if she ever got one he would disinherit her. But at this moment Rachel looked sexy, fresh, and the tattoo didn't matter. He leant with one arm on the architrave and sucked his stomach in.

‘What's up, beautiful?' Tony asked, trying to sound casual.

Rachel looked up. ‘Well, good morning,' she smiled, leaning back in her chair and placing her arms casually above her head.

‘Did you miss me?' he asked.

‘Nope. I'm getting sick of you already.'

She said this with a laugh but Tony could only muster up the weakest of smiles. Her teasing made his shoulders tighten.

‘I thought we could get some DVDs and take-away tonight,' he said.

‘Nice thought. But I've signed up to a lecture at the Law Society tonight.'

‘Can't you cancel? We haven't spent an evening together for ages.'

‘No,' she laughed again. ‘We could meet later though.'

Tony began to feel the prickles of agitation. ‘It will be too late.'

He walked down to his own office and closed the door.

It was not a rare thing that a beautiful woman would present herself as an opportunity. He had travelled a lot around New South Wales in his work as an activist and now in his role as Director of the Aboriginal Legal Service, giving talks and attending meetings. Women would often front up to him and tell him that they admired him or were moved by what he had said.

It was hard to be unaffected by admiration, especially when he was so far away from the comforts of home – from Beth Ann – and had only a chilly, nondescript hotel room awaiting him. It was too easy to give in to the temptation of sleeping against the skin of someone who adored him, someone who looked up to him.

His seductions would usually end in the faded florals of fibro motel rooms in sleepy country towns. Every so often a dalliance evolved into a romance that he would enjoy until the expectations upon him became too great. Then he would say: ‘There is no future for us. I told you that I would never leave my wife. You knew that from the start. You have to admit that I was honest with you from the beginning.'

This speech he knew well. He could say it with tenderness, without revealing the resentment he felt when the excitement and fun of a tryst had transformed into something tiresome and difficult, something he needed to escape.

Rachel was different. When she had started working at the Legal Service she had inevitably become the subject of much male banter (‘hot body', ‘great legs', ‘love to do her' were the more polite jibes), especially at after-work drinking sessions. Instead of joining in, as he usually would have done, he found himself defending her, wanting to protect her. He would get angry at comments made about her that he would have found funny had they been made about anyone else. Once he even had to suppress the urge to thump John Franks and was now plotting to have him dismissed after he insinuated that he had known Rachel intimately.

Tony had conspired to create projects that he could work on with Rachel and would find meetings they both had to attend. The more time they spent together, the more intrigued he became with her. She was more than just darkly beautiful. She had a sharp wit, a clear mind, a good sense of humour. She made him laugh and didn't seem afraid of him or even in awe of him. It didn't matter how long he had spent with her, he couldn't wait to see her again. When they had become close, when she had first leaned into him and kissed him softly on the lips, drawing back slowly as she held his gaze, it had felt magical.

Now he was more than smitten with her. Everything about Rachel seemed new. She seemed to respond when he spoke seriously about cases or politics, was constantly interested in what he thought. She pushed him to think about things. He found himself wondering why, with all her sweetness and smarts, she would want him. For the first time he found himself fantasising about a domestic life with someone other than Beth Ann.

He entertained these daydreams but never shared them with Rachel. He'd told her from the start that he would never leave Beth Ann. Rachel had accepted his terms, had never sought to change them. While he was clear about the boundaries between Beth Ann and Rachel it was easy to navigate. But now that his attachment to Rachel had become so deep, so desperate, he was worried that the lines would start to blur. Three weeks ago he had told Rachel that he loved her. He'd surprised himself as the words slipped from him, falling towards her before he could pull them back. It was the first time he had said these words to anyone other than his wife and his daughter.

Tony's thoughts were interrupted when Carol rang to say that she was sending Darren Brown through.

*

‘You can go through now, my brother. Oh, and do you mind dropping these off to the woman in the third office along the way? Her name is Rachel.' Carol handed over a pile of phone messages. ‘You can't miss her. It's on your way to the boss's office. Would save me the walk,' she smiled with a wink.

Several minutes later, Darren knocked on Tony's door.

‘Come in,' said Tony in his friendliest voice, gesturing at the chair opposite him. ‘How have you been, son?'

‘Good thanks, sir.'

‘You're not going to start with that “sir” business again. It's Tony. Call me Tony.'

‘Okay, si-er-Tony,' Darren stumbled over his words.

‘Where did we get to last time?'

Darren flicked through his notebook to find his notes, ‘Ummm …'

Tony smiled. He found the nervousness in younger people when they were with him endearing.

Darren looked at his notes. ‘Oh, here we are. You had been talking about how you got to the Tent Embassy. And the impact of men like Maynard, Ferguson and Cooper the generation before. And about the 1967 referendum.'

‘Yes, well, you need to understand what life was like for blackfellas back then. The Freedom Rides that Charlie Perkins had organised in 1965 had really highlighted to many people the way in which there were two Australias, that while there was an emerging middle class for most people, Aboriginal people were living in Third World conditions. And in many country towns there was blatant segregation, like apartheid.

‘The white people in the town hated us and there was always some campaign to close the mission down, especially when others around the state were closed and people had to move over to the remaining missions that were already overcrowded.'

In the town he had grown up in, Tony recalled, there was a separate playground for black kids and no expectation that they would be schooled past the age of twelve, whatever their capability. Even going to the theatre meant sitting in a different section to the whites. The pubs would not allow Aboriginal people inside - although they would sell alcohol at inflated prices out the back door to them - and shop owners viewed Aboriginal people with suspicion, sometimes refusing to serve them. Tony found these indignities humiliating.

‘And one of the worst things,' he continued, ‘was the way we were targeted by the police. Where I came from, the police would come from the town to the mission whenever anything went missing. The first suspicion was that it was the black kids. I remember how the police came and took five youngsters away for stealing from the general store. They were sent to reformatory school, as it was called back then. And later they found out that one of the coppers had been taking the stuff.'

‘Did the kids get to come back?' Darren asked, pausing from his note taking.

‘What do you think? But if you are a young kid and you are taken from your family and put in the place where you are being punished, do you think you will ever be the same again? Especially if you were innocent all along but no one believed you because you were a black kid.'

‘Did you ever get arrested?'

‘All the time,' Tony laughed. ‘If we were drinking, if we were hanging around … you name it and we would get into trouble for it. The coppers knew us all. It wasn't a big town. They took a dislike to some of us. I went around with a white girl from the town for a while when I was a young lad, maybe about fifteen or so, and they certainly gave me a hard time after that. A couple of times they took me down to the station and tried to get me to confess to something I didn't do.'

Darren was spellbound and had stopped taking notes. Tony continued. ‘One time I got pinched they took me to the cells and handcuffed me to the door and every time this one copper came past he would punch me in the guts or slap me in the face and say, “Well, you black bastard, are you going to 'fess up to it now?” And you know, the more I stood my ground, the angrier he got. He was going to give me a flogging but I said I would confess and then, when he uncuffed me, I refused to sign the statement. Well, didn't he get mad.' Tony laughed at the memory.

‘How did you get out of that?'

‘Well, when he said, “Now sign this,” and I said “No, I didn't do it,” he jumped over the desk and started to throttle me. And you couldn't hit back or they'd get you for assault. I just had to take it. Sure took me a while to bounce back from that one. And it was only a few months later that I left the old mission for good.'

‘Must have been pretty hard in those days.' Darren was looking up, his brow knitted with the same furrow as when he had been writing intently.

While there were hardships for Tony to face, it was hardest for the older people. They had grown up with the mission managers who controlled their lives - where they lived, if they could come and go. They had to do what they were told or they didn't get their rations; they lived in dirt poor conditions and were subject to inspections to make sure everything was clean. ‘And, you know, over a long period of time when you are told how to do everything, you can lose the ability to do things for yourself.'

Darren nodded solemnly.

‘You can see,' Tony continued, ‘how we needed something to believe in. And those people who set up the Tent Embassy, they created that. The time had come to take control of our lives, to have some protections and guarantees.'

Tony talked about the political leadership of people like Uncle Chicka Dixon, men who had understood how important it was to give a political education to young Aboriginal people to guide them. ‘These fellows had given up on conservative politics, you know, hoping that change would come slowly and knew that we needed to do something more radical, something more drastic, to really get justice. You need to talk to these blokes.'

Darren wrote carefully as Tony listed the names: Billy Craigie, Michael Anderson, Bertie Williams and Tony Coorie. Gary Foley, Paul Coe, John Newfong, Sol and Bob Bellear. Gordon Briscoe and Sam Watson.

‘They were all involved and they'll all have a different version of events. I was new to it when I arrived at the Tent Embassy but those guys had been doing the hard yards - setting up the Aboriginal Legal Service, organising the boycott of the South Africans the year before to protest against apartheid. You should have seen them.' Tony laughed as he remembered. ‘They were sharp dressers. Slick suits all in black, dark sunglasses. Me and my mate, Arthur, we were just country boys, boys off the mission. When I saw them, I thought, “I want to be like
those
blokes”.'

Tony paused. He had reinvented himself after he'd fled the old mission with Arthur that night. The horror could still cause a wave of black dread to wash over him, the images would still haunt him even though there was all that time and distance between who he was now and the events of that terrible, terrible night.

Tony shuddered to dissolve the memory. He looked up. He'd forgotten all about Darren. ‘Sorry, where were we?'

The phone rang. It was Carol announcing Tony's next appointment.

‘Well, that's all we've got time for today,' Tony said with a sigh. ‘How are we doing?'

‘I really need to get more information about its impact, its legacy, of what came next.'

‘Make an appointment with Carol at the front desk,' Tony said magnanimously.

Darren was glad when the session ended. Not that he didn't admire Tony or feel privileged to have an opportunity to talk at such length with the great man himself but because for the last forty-five minutes all he could think about was Rachel Miles.