Siddon Rock (15 page)

Macha saw the officer take his pistol from its holster. There was no reaction from the villagers, who could have been ancient statues in their impassiveness. The man held the weapon to the child's head, shouted the question again. Then pulled the trigger. The photographer, too, kept shooting.

Still no-one spoke to the commander. He signalled, and his troops herded the people into the church. A soldier poured liquid from a large can, dousing the door and the base of the wall. The commander struck a match and flames flew up the old wall.

Maybe Macha, in reaction to the horror, made a gagging noise and closed her eyes for a moment. This would have been too close. Killing, for her, was distanced by the sight cross-hairs of a powerful rifle. She looked again and there was the photographer walking through the pines. Towards her tree. As he walked he aimed the camera around him: left, right, ahead, upwards. Upwards, and there was an Australian soldier with a rifle aimed at him. Camera and gun faced each other. Hans dropped the camera and held up his hands in the classic position of surrender; but it was too late. Macha had squeezed the trigger. At the same moment, machine-gun fire cut down the women and children trying
to escape the flames in the church of this small village deep in the Cretan countryside.

Macha swung her rifle towards the village, aimed at the back of the man with the machine-gun and pulled the trigger. As the man fell she shot the commander, who was waving his troops towards the pine forest. But Macha was down the tree, had picked up the camera from the pool of blood around the dead photographer, and was well away before the startled troops had reached the edge of the trees. She ran to a sobbing tune in her head.
The whole town. The whole town. The whole town. The whole town.

The houses on the outside streets of Siddon Rock turned their faces towards the town centre and their backs to the bush. Maureen Mather lived in one of these houses, one that had ramps, and doorways altered so she could move her wheelchair easily between house and garden.

The Mathers' backyard, like all those bordering the town edge, had a high back fence made of pickets nailed close together to form a solid wall and as much of a civilised garden as the indifferent rainfall and scorching summer sun would allow. Maureen's grandmother had started the plantings some sixty years before when the fence had been made of brush cut from the surrounding bush and tied with wire. The grandmother said that she could not sleep peacefully with the wild bush so close to her bedroom window, and that the fence at least gave a semblance of control over her home. She was also the first woman in
the Mather family to see a wild woman squatting on the fence who, she said to the one or two women she could tell such things to, seemed to have two faces and could look in two directions at the same time, as if she was trying to decide whether to jump into the enclosed yard or out into the wild bush.

Since Maureen was two years old she knew the woman as part of the landscape and had no need to comment on her appearances. Macha Connor was the only other person who saw the wild woman. She said to Maureen that one day Maureen would have to help the woman decide which way to jump. Maureen just laughed.
She's been there forever
, she said.
Nothing will change.

Late one night Maureen couldn't sleep and wheeled her chair onto the back verandah. From beyond the back fence came a foreign sound. At first Maureen thought it was a kangaroo, but the steps were too short for that bounding animal. As the noise came closer it resolved into the dragging tread of a long, slow walk of someone, or something, in the laneway between her back fence and the bush.

In Barber's Butchery & Bakery the next day Maureen paused to chat with Sybil, and mentioned the footsteps of the night before. Martha Hinks heard them talking.
I heard something
, she said.
It was like nothing I've ever heard before.

The strange footsteps continued each night, and the stories quickly gathered momentum and size as the town
discussed the mystery. Matron Helith, who had just arrived to take Matron Sullivan's place, asked Nell if she had any idea what it could be, but Nell was so surprised at being asked a question that she just shook her head and looked at the floor. Matron persisted, talking about stories of bunyips and unknown animals, but Nell mumbled something that sounded like
dream
and refused to say more. When Matron passed this on, it incensed Martha Hinks, who remarked tartly that she had certainly not been dreaming, and had most definitely heard the footsteps. How this was possible was uncertain as the Hinks family lived a good half block from the edge of town, but no-one challenged the comment.

Some of the old-timers remembered other darker stories from their parents' parents, and they wondered aloud about Aboriginal wild magic. Harry Best nipped this smartly in the bud by writing an article for the
District Examiner & Journal
which proved that this was impossible,
given that there are no tribes, as such, left in the state.
And anyway, everyone knew that there was no such thing as magic, wild or tame.

Maureen listened carefully to the noise for some nights. It was, she thought, like the exhausted march of battle-weary soldiers she had heard during the war. There were only two people she knew who would walk like that: her father Peter, who left the house only to go sit near the fire at the pub, and Macha Connor. She decided to challenge the treader and one night, as the dragging footsteps reached their loudest, from the verandah she called,
Who goes there?
in a strong voice. There was no pause by the treader, and the sound quickly died away.

The next night she wheeled herself to the small cumquat tree that grew just inside the back gate. The trunk of this tree had grown spiralled around another, older, tree trunk; a eucalyptus of some sort which was now dead but still supported the cumquat. With help from her father to do the top clipping, Maureen was able to keep this small tree trimmed into a round mass of leaves. She had seen cumquats shaped like this in a large tub at the doorway of a London home, and liked the effect. Now, in the moonlight, the tree appeared insubstantial and weak. As the footsteps approached, Maureen gripped the arms of the wheelchair.
Who goes there?
she called.
Macha Connor, is that you?
The footsteps faltered, nearly stopped, and then resumed their tramping rhythm.

On the third night, Maureen again wheeled herself to the cumquat tree, and as the footsteps approached she threw off her blanket and heaved herself from the chair and onto the hard earth.
Macha. Macha Connor. I need your help
, she shouted. The footsteps slowed and then stopped and Maureen heard a shuffle and a breaking of twigs.
The back gate's open
, she called, making her voice weak and tearful.
I've fallen. Please help me up.
The gate-latch rattled and stuck for a moment, the gate creaked open and Macha marched in, her hat low over her face and the rifle at the slope. She stood over Maureen for a moment, then leaned the rifle against the cumquat tree and lifted Maureen carefully back into the chair, tucking
the blanket firmly around her. She picked up the rifle and turned to go.

Would you like to hear a story?
Maureen said.
I'd really like you to stay with me for a while.
Macha hesitated, and turned back. She closed the gate, and stood stiffly with rifle-butt resting on the ground,
looking for all the world
, Maureen thought,
like a bare tree in winter
. Maureen recalled a child's poem that her mother had told her, and this is what she recited to Macha, that night under the cold moon of July:

At the pause Macha lifted the rifle smartly to slope position, and opened the gate. Maureen desperately searched her memory for the next verse of the poem.

You think I am dead / The earthworm said … No. Wait, Macha, I'll remember it in a moment.

You think I am dead / The grey goose said … bugger it, Macha, wait a bit. Give me a chance … For I cannot stay and I fly away
, Maureen improvised.

Macha stepped into the lane but paused and looked back, and Maureen could swear that she saw a flicker behind the gaze that seemed to be looking to the far distance. When the gate closed behind Macha there was a long silence, and then the dragging tread resumed.

From this night on, when she couldn't sleep Maureen would wheel herself to the back fence and call to Macha as she passed. At first she did not stop, but it soon became a habit for Macha to open the back gate and wait by the cumquat tree whether Maureen was there or not. Gradually Maureen told pieces of Macha's own story.
Hey, Mach
, she'd say.
Remember that day when the recruitment march came? And what was it the recruitment bloke said when you wanted to sign up? ‘We don't allow women to carry weapons.' And there you were, the best shot in the district, being told to stay home!

And d'ya remember – there was that bloody cousin of yours, Fatman Aberline, signing himself for the airforce. And he laughed! The bastard laughed when he heard you couldn't even join the rifles. He always was jealous of you.

As a child, Fatman Aberline had loved the wild Macha with a passion that would horrify her, had she known of it. His envy was for her abilities and her freedom.

Fatman Aberline wanted to leave the polished calm imposed on his home by his mother Mabel, and the ordered control of his father Boy, and live in the chaos of Brigid's house. He wanted to have Brigid's rough kindness, as Macha did. He wanted to behave as he wished and have the town say of him,
Well, what do you expect from someone who's had no upbringing?
And,
dragged up, that's what she is.
But what the town saw as neglect Fatman knew was freedom, and Macha's abilities proved it.

Each time Fatman ran away from his own home and arrived at the Two Mile Brigid would drop whatever she was doing and ring Boy and Mabel. Often Fatman would stay for a day or so, but there were those times when an angry Boy Aberline would arrive within the hour and bundle Fatman into the truck and back home. Brigid said to Granna that she talked until she was blue in the face, but, no matter what, the child just kept turning up like a bad penny and causing trouble between her and his parents.