Snake (4 page)

Irene lined the children up and explained the botany of irises to them. The children, tiny and obedient, listened hard. The lesson over, she gave them another one on life.

‘Unlike people, flowers never disappoint,' she said, fixing on something in the middle distance.

An adult hearing this might have snorted with laughter, but the children only grew more solemn, pursing their lips and squinting up at her. Her meaning was beyond them. Flowers? Disappointment? All they knew was that she was their sun. If only she would stop radiating unhappiness!

At such moments, they tugged at her skirts, patted her. Sometimes, in the confusion of emotions that her shifting moods induced in them, they whimpered.

11

Wonderful! Wonderful!

I
RENE'S NEXT INFIDELITY
was at a Saturday night dance at the Catholic Club in Yoogali that she and Rex attended with a party of friends: Gladys and Reggie, Winifred and Charlie, Dulcie and George, Avis and Hans. With the exception of Avis, who worked at the Commonwealth Bank, and Hans, who was a superphosphate salesman, they were all from farms. They sat around a table, awkwardly at first, in couples, drinking ponies of beer and smoking Craven As, until the first dance, which gave them the opportunity to rearrange the table into a more comfortable configuration, men with men, women with women, teasing remarks batted between the two groups like shuttlecocks.

At intervals around the hall, doors opened onto purple darkness, allowing the weedy, mud-spiked smell of irrigation water to waft in and mingle with the cigarette smoke. Hans asked Irene to dance, and Rex followed suit with Avis. The band was playing a medley of Johnny Mathis tunes, and Hans amused Irene by singing the lyrics into her ear:

It's not for me to say you love me
It's not for me to say you'll always care
.

She smiled, moved closer. He gave her a narrow look, assessing her.

Perhaps the glow of love will grow
With every passing day
Or we may never meet again
But then, it's not for me to say
.

They came to a door, and Hans dexterously swung her through it. Rex and Avis were up front near the band, a crush of dancers obscuring their view, but so masterful were Hans's movements, they might not have noticed even if they had been watching.

‘Cha cha cha,' said Hans, when they were on the other side of the door. They giggled, and Irene stumbled. He righted her, holding her by the elbow. Down the rows of cars they went until they reached the outer edge. In a nearby ditch, cicadas drummed.

Irene began to chatter – the cicadas, the plentiful stars – but Hans silenced her by pushing her against a car. He rucked up her skirt, pulled down her underpants. It was over in moments, but she reveled in the act, which she found to be deliciously obliterating, and also the adventure of it – the surreptitiousness, the deceit – which made her heart race. Years later she would remember the feel of the cold metal against her bare backside.

12

For the Term of Her Natural Life

‘L
OOK AT THAT
lovely red canna.' They were driving by the War Memorial Park. Irene braked, jumped out, the children trailing. She bent to uproot some canna bulb.

‘No, Mum, don't! You'll be arrested!' Girlie hopped from one foot to the other.

‘Oh, shut up,' said Irene. A portion of bulb came suddenly free. She staggered, regained her balance.

13

Aitape

I
N THE DESK
in the living room, behind family documents and income-tax papers, was a pair of yellow ivory chopsticks in a narrow wooden box with a sliding top. It was easily the most exotic object in the house, with far more allure than the trio of ebony elephants on the mantelpiece, bought by Rex in a bazaar in Aden, or the piano stool with legs that ended in claws grasping cloudy glass balls.

‘Found 'em on a dead Jap up in New Guinea.'

‘Did you kill him?' Girlie and Boy were beside themselves. Dark jungles loomed, populated by Papua-New Guineans with frizzed hair and bones through their noses.

‘No, I didn't kill him. Go on. Go away. Go and play.'

‘Did you kill
any
Japs?'

‘Go and play.'

Rex refused to talk about the war with anyone, not just the children. He marched on Anzac Day, down the main street of Progress, his medals pinned to his chest, but always remained silent when other farmers at the Returned Services League Club reminisced about the war. If Irene played ‘A Wing and a Prayer' on the piano on those evenings when they invited couples over for cards, he slipped from the room. If pressed, he said, ‘What would I want to talk about that for?'

14

The Biggest Fool

G
IRLIE AND
B
OY
were at school and Rex and Irene were in the kitchen when an army mate of Rex's turned up unannounced. They heard his footsteps on the verandah.

‘I was in the district. Asked around. Hope you don't mind.'

‘Oh no, not at all. Good to see you. Fancy that. Look who's here, Irene.'

Irene's eyes went flat. For once, Rex didn't give a damn. Instead of asking Irene to make more tea, he went to the pantry and fetched the wicker-covered demijohn that held the sherry they served up as refreshment on card nights.

‘Have some plonk,' said Rex to his old friend. Glasses were filled, clinked together. The sherry was heavy and sweet, with a pronounced meniscus. At first they talked only about recent events, what they had done with themselves as civvies and the fates of the men they knew. Eventually, they fell to swapping yarns about the war. Rex didn't resist; he was squiffy from the sherry.

The two men talked a blue streak, interrupting and finishing each other's sentences, as women do. Every now and again, one of them pushed back his chair and went out to the garden to relieve himself on Irene's crepe myrtle. By the middle of the afternoon, the kitchen table was sticky with plonk. ‘We're drunk as skunks,' they chorused, by this time finding their every utterance a source of amusement.

Irene hovered at the kitchen sink, listening to the men's conversation and staring at her garden. For Lent, she had decided to drink her tea cold, with no milk and sugar, a version of sackcloth that she had come to like. As the day progressed, she drank a quantity of this bitter brew, pouring it from a teapot that stood on the sill above the sink. She grew increasingly jittery, in counterpoint to the men's relaxed inebriety.

Girlie and Boy came home from school. Something was wrong. Girlie sensed it before she was at the gate. In the kitchen, her father and a strange man. Her father's face was flushed, and he stank of sherry and scratched his crotch as if nobody else were there. She had never seen him like this. He was telling the story of his only brush with the law.

‘We were at a pub in Crows Nest. It's raining, and we've had a few. I go to hail a taxi. There's one coming. I can see the light on top. It doesn't stop. So I whistle and yell, I jump up and down like a madman. That works all right. Blow me down if it isn't a police car.'

Rex stopped, conscious of the children standing in the doorway. He lurched out of his chair.

‘Here's my bonny lass. Come and dance with me, lassie.'

Girlie ducked.

Boy hugged the wall, trying to make himself invisible so he could listen to the men's stories, but it was too late; his father's friend was taking his leave. They were both unsteady, so the army mate flung an arm around Rex, and he likewise, and they proceeded awkwardly through the door and onto the verandah, trailed by Irene, Girlie, and Boy.

They forsook the steps and made for the edge, where they fell off and landed in a heap on the lawn. They picked themselves up, giggling like girls. Proximity sparked their next idea: they must dance a tango. Heads together, arms leading at a stiff right angle, they pranced down the lawn. And fell in another heap.

Irene, Girlie, and Boy were lined up on the verandah watching this spectacle. Irene, hopped up on caffeine, was genuinely amused; she had been mollified by some complicitous glances that had passed between her and the army mate. She laughed, throwing back her head, as if this were the funniest thing she had ever seen. Girlie turned red and kicked herself in the ankle; she found what was happening unbearable. Boy's eyes tracked from his mother to his father and back again and then took his mother's lead and brayed like a little donkey.

15

Sex Is the Big Preoccupation of
My Life, and Why Not?

R
EX BORROWED A
bull to service his cows. The bull came crated on the back of a truck, a self-satisfied brute with stupid eyes. Girlie loitered near the water tank, hoping nobody would notice her. She didn't know why she shouldn't advertise her presence, except that every time the subject of the bull came up, voices were lowered. Boy was there, too, running around, getting underfoot.

Neighbors had dropped by to help: Cecil, Ernie, Roy, in blue overalls and heavy work boots. They had a purposeful air; this was serious work. Men's work. A ramp was attached to the truck, and the bull came down it gingerly, urged along by the men; they yelled and poked at his flanks with sticks.

‘Ya ya ya ya.'

‘Ho. Ho. Gittalong.'

The ramp bowed under the bull's weight.

‘Hurry it up.'

The bull reached the bottom of the ramp and surveyed the scene, taking his time, betraying no agitation. He had the comportment of a dictator: magisterial, mean. The cows, unsettled by the noise, had removed themselves to a far corner of the paddock. At that moment, Girlie saw what she was not supposed to see: the bull's penis, unsheathed, livid, huge. Girlie stole away. Boy caught sight of the bull's penis at the exact same moment: His eyes bugged out of his head.

16

Kangaroo Among the Beauty

I
RENE MADE
G
IRLIE
a skirt for ‘dressing up' from an old evening gown. The fabric was shot silk. Girlie, who was literal-minded to a degree unusual even in a child, searched for pellet holes. That obstacle overcome, she was captivated by the cloth, twisting it in the light, slanting it, to change the color. Green, blue, bronze. She imagined a ballroom filled with exquisitely courteous men and women: deferential nods, sweeping bows, soft voices, cocked heads, playful laughs.

Whenever a song she found suitable came on the radio – ‘Volare', ‘Mountain Greenery' – Girlie raced to pull on the skirt and waltz around the kitchen table. She whirled faster and faster, her face blotching, until she was in danger of losing her balance. By the song's end, Girlie was dancing not to the music but to a manic rhythm suggested by her own hot blood.

Irene was irked by many things her daughter did, but this, she said, took the cake.

17

Hillbilly Music

I
T WAS LATE,
around midnight, and in the shadows on the ceiling of Boy's room, the Battle of Britain was being fought, Spitfires in dogfights with Messerschmitts, Flying Fortresses and Blenheim Bombers droning across the English Channel. They were model airplanes hanging from nylon fishing line. Fiddly bits of plastic glued to plastic, faithful in detail down to decals and the number of guns in the turrets.

The household was asleep, except for Boy, who was under the blankets, where it was warm and sharp-smelling, like a fox's lair. He was listening to his transistor radio, a Grundig, his pride and joy, which was tuned to a station playing country music. Hank Williams was singing, ‘Hey, Good-Looking.' Boy liked the man's nasal voice, the economy of his message, his restraint. The radio was Boy's school. He learned about life from it, the best he could.

Boy was exactly the child that Irene wanted, sturdily masculine, with a winning manner. He was a great one for agreeing with you and then doing as he wanted.

They enjoyed each other, mother and son. They laughed a lot.

18

Sticks and Stones and Wallaby Bones

G
IRLIE WAS THE
opposite of Boy: eager, earnest, graceless. She threw herself into everything, whether she was good at it or not, whether she enjoyed it or not.

Nobody liked her. Children thought she was a know-it-all, adults recoiled from her neediness. She cornered anyone she could and read them her compositions, which were of epic proportions and always featured a girl like herself – a
fearless
girl – having improbable adventures: captaining a submarine in the Arctic Circle or a junk in the China Seas. Girlie numbered her books and kept everyone up to date on the current figure.

Rex was no help to Girlie. He wanted to tell her not to try so hard but never found the opportunity. Rex was permanently distracted. He was like a character in a Wild West movie who is made to dance by means of bullets fired around his feet.

19

Varanus Giganteus

R
EX BELIEVED A
country woman should be able to do everything her husband could and more. In keeping with this policy, he announced over porridge that Girlie was to help him kill a rooster. This meant chopping off the head, plunging the body into scalding water so that the feathers could be plucked easily, eviscerating it. The mess afterward was terrible, with feathers and globs of gut everywhere. Once, a headless bird had flapped loose from Rex's hands and run in useless, frantic circles; even Boy was more appalled than entertained.

Water was put on the stove, and the stump used as a chopping block placed on the lawn. Girlie stood on the verandah and watched the preparations. She couldn't speak or move; she was paralyzed with revulsion. The rooster lay in the shade of an ornamental grapevine, its legs bound, struggling feebly.

‘Here, Girlie. Come and hold it. Like this.' Rex laid the bird across the stump. ‘I'll do the honors with the axe.'

Suddenly Girlie was running down the path, slamming the gate, hightailing it across the paddocks. She inched under barbwire fences, crashed through stubble, eventually hiding in a clump of box trees, where she stayed all day, concealing herself whenever the utility truck came near, the sheep dogs in the back, Rex calling her name. Eventually, around dusk, under cover of the lengthening shadows, she crept home and lay on her bed, feigning sleep.