The high school mob went to Darwin. After two days on the rough track the bus rolled onto the bitumen rattling like a money box, and with lengths of rope and towing cable holding up the fuel tank.
On the first night that they camped Fatima, Liz and the girls went down to a creek to wash the hot dusty day from them. They waded in. Liz threw off her clothes and immersed herself in the flow, the bubbles tickling along her belly and the rocks smooth and cool on her flanks. Her pale skin glowed in this landscape and light. Some of the girls joined her, bodies glistening in the fading sun, small flecks of foam fleeing from them in the darkening water, their voices teasing Fatima who squatted in her wet clothes, frowning. But she had to laugh too, couldn’t help herself it seemed.
They came back to the fire, the colours of the tents draining away with the light, and they were like a tribe approaching the flames.
In the tents that night. ‘Just like us, the same, but red hair there, too.’
‘Hey Raphael, Raphael!’ Deslie called out. And there was Raphael, in a taxi, in the middle of Darwin, just like that. They ran over to the taxi as it waited at the traffic lights, and Raphael told them he was going to the hospital to see Stella and Beatrice, and they told him where they were staying. Then, green light, traffic moving, he was swept away just as if he was in the river at home.
‘No door handle,’ said keen-eyed Deslie, puzzled, as they walked toward the glass front of the hospital reception.
‘Automatic door.’ Sylvester read it.
‘Aiee! Like videos, you know. You stand, it opens for you, eh Sir?’ said Franny, peering at Billy with his head thrown back and those thick glasses of his balancing on his nose.
Young Jimmy and Deslie ran to the door, and stopped hesitantly before it. The door yawned, they leapt through.
A nurse led them into the elevator. They all crammed in together quietly enough but, squeezed together, the screams of ‘Oh, my guts!’ as the elevator rocketed them upwards, and the giggles, vibrated through them all as one mass.
They followed the nurse’s stiff white dress and rapid pattering shoes through narrow sharp corridors and among hard glossy surfaces.
There was a small room. There, huddled in a dark corner and away from the dim window, was a figure. There, in a creased nightgown was Stella. Her face opened like a surprise, they saw something like fear, and she burst into tears. She held the older girls, and she held Fatima, and she wept, laughing. Smiling once, twice at Billy and Liz through blinking eyelids and tears.
They ate on the lawn by the car park, far below the shrinking room, and breathed properly once more. They moved in close together, and touching now and then, watched the people walking to and from the reception area; watched for anyone who hesitated before the automatic door.
Beatrice hugged her knees. She let no one in. ‘She’s better, she knows you.’ The girl rocked herself gently, her blank face occasionally manifesting a glorious smile, a smile so powerful that it would animate everyone for a time.
‘I ... I dunno if...’
It was getting too much for Stella. The hospital wanted her to remain, for the child’s sake. And she was able to control Beatrice when she went wild, better than anyone else anyway.
Like we said, they had to strap her down, tie her up, stab her with big needles, fill her with drugs. Maybe that helped make her like she was now.
Stella needed a break. Raphael had come but he’d gone again. He was like a child himself and no help.
They took her with them for the couple of days they were in Darwin, driving around in their grubby bus, with the kids ogling the shiny cars, and racing one another to be first to shout ‘My car’ and thus gain imaginary possession of it. And fighting about this. She was with them when they surreptitiously grabbed at the fish the tourists fed at Doctor’s Gully, teased the caged crocodiles at the crocodile farm and stroked the stuffed one in the museum. They went roller skating one evening but only Deslie, Billy and Liz got onto skates. The others were too shy. Too many gardiya. And the girls they saw smoking in the toilets, why they thought they were too good. There were some in there, half-castes, they thought they was film stars themselves.
The hostel where they stayed had a swimming pool. Most of the other residents, mostly young international backpackers, lay around it, working on their suntans. Billy and Liz commented on two of the schoolgirls, Stacie and Rita, talking to a young Swedish girl in the pool. The three of them breast deep in water against the side of the pool, in intimate conversation, and Rita, quite unselfconsciously, stroking the girl’s blonde hair as she spoke to her.
The school kids took over the pool. They played chasey in and around it. Leaping in and out like amphibians, noisily, innocent of pretension. Only once was there trouble. Some young European men, perhaps German, began playing a casual game of water volleyball across the heads of the black teenagers. One aimed at Deslie’s head, and guffawed as he bounced the ball from it. Deslie smiled sheepishly, and made apologetic words as he swam away. The Germans laughed more, and another pretended to take aim. Maybe tears of confusion came to Deslie’s eyes.
Then hot-headed Liz’s voice cut through the braying, and she stormed over and snatched the ball from the young man. The dark youths gathered around their teacher as she marched off to give the ball to the receptionist.
Fatima spent time at the hospital with Stella, but she didn’t like it. They didn’t like you chewing tobacco. There was nothing to do, except wonder at Beatrice, and talk—enough to frighten one another—about why she was like she was.
It was a comfort to look down at the car park. The coloured cars silently going in and out, patiently waiting for their drivers, the little people fast-stepping about.
The doctors didn’t know what was wrong with Beatrice. They were sending her to Perth now, for tests, and for other doctors to look at and poke.
Raphael arrived at the hostel on their last night there. His voice echoed in the dimly lit and late night corridor, ‘Jimmy, Jimmy, you here?’ A hoarse, slurred whisper. Everyone had gone to bed. Billy recognised the voice and went out into the corridor. Raphael was drunk and his breath was tainted with stale beer, cigarettes, and vomit.
‘Hey Billy, sorry. I come see my little cousin-brother, Jimmy, eh? He here, Sir?’ His voice wheedled a little.
They spoke softly together. Raphael seemed a happy, quiet drunk here in Darwin. He faced the stairwell. Behind his back one of the bedroom doors opened. The head of one of the older girls appeared around the corner of it. Her eyes were wide, to see as much and as quickly as possible. Her glance met Billy’s gaze. She raised her eyebrows in a query, grinned. Her head withdrew. The door closed softly.
‘But, they’re asleep, mate. You’ve had a few drinks, eh? You might go silly. Kids, you know. They might get stupid.’
Raphael put his arm around Billy. They were walking down the stairs. ‘It’s good to see you, you know. I miss my home, you know. You?’
There was someone waiting for them downstairs. Looking furtive, and trapped, Bruno waited for them in the shadows by a public telephone. ‘Hey.’ He swaggered over to them. A couple of the young men from the swimming pool stared and smirked.
‘Hey, you got ten bucks for me? Pay you back, true god.’
They went down the street and had a beer. Bruno put his arm around Billy. ‘I respect you, Sir, you know, I respect you.’ He was tapping his own chest. He was hitting his chest, hard. ‘I respect you, true.’
Raphael pushed him away. ‘Leave him you, let him be.’ He put his back to Bruno and faced Billy. Bruno pushed his way back in.
‘We had a fight, Raphael and me. See?’ He pointed to his swollen lip. ‘Raphael, he hit me. He put me down. Boom. On me bum.’ He laughed.
‘He’s drunk, don’t worry,’ said Raphael, slurring his words, and pushing Bruno away again. The barman was keeping an eye on them.
‘Hey, you got ten bucks, for me?’ said Raphael. ‘Don’t give him nothin’.’ One of Raphael’s front teeth was missing.
Billy didn’t want to give them money, because, because ... He gave them an equal amount each, and couldn’t but feel patronising, and condescending, whatever he did. He felt shame for them.
The taxi driver didn’t want to let them in, but Billy persuaded him they were all right.
I am a white boy, I am a good white boy, safe. But this hurts.
‘See you at home, in our country,’ said Billy. Did he really say that? Bruno, smilingweeping from the drink and homesickness, waved frantically. Raphael looked at Billy impassively. His face was swept away into the hot night, the exhaust fumes, headlights, snarling motors.
The kids were all for driving straight home, non-stop, like a bullet. So they said.
They wanted to stay in the bus as they drove through Katherine. Black people were drunk, and sitting on the ground outside the pubs, or at the back of car parks, or on the grass near public toilets. People looked at our people, too, as if they were drunks, or not good enough. Think they were savages, or monkeys or something? For all these reasons, and more, our young people felt shame.
They all wanted to get home. The bus was hot and smelled of unwashed bodies and clothes. Sun streaming through the windows, hum of tyres, roar of the motor and the wind. Nerves stretching like drumskins.
The kids started to bicker among themselves, and even the adults; Fatima, Liz, Billy were short-tempered. Nearing the end of the trip, Stacie suddenly burst into an explosion of obscenities. They stopped the bus, and Stacie accused Deslie, and he her. They were told to get off the bus until they could behave.
Deslie went meekly. Stacie stayed.
‘Fuckin’ gardiya pricks, fuckin’ Deslie.’
She raved. Liz tried shouting. So did Fatima. Nothing.
‘Leave her, Fatima.’ Fatima wanted to hit some sense into the girl.
‘If I was not so old.’
They were not going to continue on until they had resolved the problem. Billy let the other kids of the bus, if they wanted to. Stacie had to stay. Most of the girls stayed with her, grouped around her seat.
Billy and Liz tried shouting at her. They tried just letting her curses wash over them, trying to shame and silence her by just looking at her quietly.
‘Don’t you look at me. What you lookin’ at? Not a monkey, am I?’
In the rear-vision mirror Billy could see the boys milling around, throwing stones. Sitting in the shade together. There they were, hundreds of kilometres from the nearest station even. A two-wheeled track, red dust and rocks, disappearing into the distance. Heat, and a grimy, clicking, buzzing quiet. Stacie’s mutterings dying away.
It was not going to be resolved, not here.
They spent their last night camping. Stacie and four of her friends retired into one tent as soon as they had eaten. The atmosphere was quiet. In a moment aside Liz wept, briefly, in Billy’s arms.
Franny said, ‘Fatima, tell us some stories, eh? Ghost stories. By the fire, and we’ll sit up late.’ They did, that last night, and all the tents had to be moved so that their openings faced into the fire. All except for that of Liz and Billy. There was a circle of tents looking into a fire which was kept blazing, and there was one tent outside of that circle, in the darkness.
All night, noises and screams. Billy and Liz tried to quieten them, but could not because they were so excitable, and getting close to home. They didn’t want to be controlled by Billy and Liz. Stacie was quiet still. Fatima, out of sympathy for the teachers, yelled at them to be quiet and good, because it was not yet their country to do what they wanted. But then her own words frightened her, too.
The weather was unseasonal, and the heat an oppressive, even intimidatory presence. There were dark clouds low in the sky, crowding in fatly, and glowering. It seemed there had been rain, because once or twice they had to stop the bus, and wade through a creek to check its depth. Their voices sounded thin and feeble in the large space.
And, as they entered the comfort of their home country and there were only a couple of hours or so to go before they were among the buildings of their village, Jimmy said—Billy heard him—Jimmy hit his fist on the seat with excitement and said, ‘I wish I could go back drunk.’ The boys all agreed with him, laughing at the spectacle, the heroes they’d make.
And, closer still to home, Sylvester said to Billy, ‘Know what? I look forward to just eating tea and bread again.’ After all the regular and heavy meals.
Raphael was back, still weak after being drunk for so long. Hating himself again.
In a hospital, in Perth now, Beatrice clicked her tongue and rocked herself to and fro. Her mother filled a space and a nightgown beside her, and the papers documenting Beatrice’s condition grew larger.
Fatima visited some of the other older ones: Sebastian, Samson, Moses too. They talked about her trip to Darwin, Walanguh, and Beatrice.
Liz rang her brother, who was a doctor. He checked on Beatrice’s condition, and what the filing cabinets and computers held on her.
They didn’t know, not really. Maybe some sort of meningitis, or a brain inflammation.
Billy told Fatima what information they had, proving his access to the big automatic-doored labyrinths. Fatima listened, and thanked him.