Stars were still in the high dark, as a coolwenda called from the fringe of distant mulga. His two notes in the silence rang, pure and slow, far over the plains.
Coonardoo, beside the embers of her fire, stirred and sat up. Already streaking across the rough stony earth towards the homestead, she saw the tall straight figure of Meenie, and Bandogera, stooping a little as she hurried. She was getting old, Bandogera. So quickly the light grew, Coonardoo had no more than raised her baby’s head to her breast and he, shaking his round fair head and bucking, settled in against her, than the sun jumped over the far edge of the trees.
At the same time everybody in the uloo was awake. Warieda stretched and stalked away down to the creek. Fires were kicked, embers thrown together; there were exclamations; dogs yelped, stirred from sleeping bodies. Coonardoo saw a breath of smoke go up from the kitchen chimney.
“It breathes; it breathes again!” she cried to her baby.
She knew every detail of the morning’s work up there at the homestead, and was eager to be at it with Meenie and Bandogera. When they had lit the fire they would pump at the little mill, carry kerosene buckets of fresh water from the mill to the house, fill a kettle on the stove; leave one bucket beside the fireplace and take the other to a brush shed beside the kala miah where they would scrub their heads, make a lather of soap, plaster their bodies with it, and stand while each poured water over the other. Meenie would pour it over Bandogera, shrieking with laughter, while the old woman gasped and suffered the breaking and splash of the water over her head, and as little of her body as possible.
Their morning wash was a real hardship to the old women; but Coonardoo had showered in the shed under the big mill since she was a child, and laughed at Meenie and Bandogera taking their wash by the kala miah.
But where were the white cockies this morning? Already they had flown off and were feeding out on the plains.
Coonardoo could see Hugh striding about the verandas, his legs in blue trousers, stepping briskly. White shirt, blue trousers and the pink blob of his face, she could see them coming and going from the rooms to the veranda, from the veranda to the kitchen.
Coonardoo laughed and pulled a milk-sweet nipple out of her baby’s mouth. To be sure he had sucked until he could not move, the little fat pig. And she must hurry to make morning tea for Hugh’s woman. Already day was growing; the sun was moving across the sky.
The air smelt hot and dry. It was going to be a day which would bring blossoms down from the white gum-tree beside the veranda, showering white threads, and yellow dust. Coonardoo would sweep them away, and she would sit and sing in the shade of the tree when Pinja brought her boy to her during the morning. For it was understood that the old woman would mind the son of a whirlwind while she, Coonardoo, swept the dust from Hugh’s house; scrubbed and washed dishes as Mumae had taught her.
Coonardoo must make tea also, and take it to Hugh’s woman while she was in bed. Everybody knew that. Who but Coonardoo knew how to arrange the little tray, set a cup and saucer on it, with sugar and milk, and a flower? Happily there was milk; a cow with calf in, Meenie had been making Coonardoo herself drink cow’s milk. Coonardoo could see her going up to the stock-yards with a bucket now, and Bandogera tramping after her to help bail and leg-rope the wild red heifer. Hugh himself would milk, most likely, after today.
Coonardoo set her boy in the coolamon she had scooped with sharp stones from the elbow of a river gum and took him to sleep beside her grandmother, warning her, as she laid a leafy branch over the child, not to delay bringing him to the house when he wakened and cried for another meal. Then she ran up to the kala miah, seized a bar of yellow soap which lay on a log there and went down to the shower-shed with it.
How she scrubbed her hair. Was not Youie home? Happiness grew in her until she screamed with glee as she let down the showers of well water, starting and gurgling, when her nerves curled and quivered under it. Was not Youie home? And did he not expect that she should wash like this every day? There was the gina-gina she had worn when he left, hanging in the shower-shed waiting for her to put on again.
Coonardoo slipped the long straight gown of faded dungaree over her body and, with short hair dripping still, went up to the kitchen to make tea. How carefully she measured tea from a red caddy into the big enamel teapot, and poured boiling water over the leaves as she had done for Mumae.
She called to Meenie for milk, and when Meenie brought the bucket, strained milk into a shallow pan, taking some in a little jug for the tray.
Then on silent bare feet, carefully, she carried the tray to the shady side of the veranda. Hugh had hauled the big bed out there, the bed his father and mother once slept in. She was lying on it, the little woman with straight dark hair and grey-green eyes, whom he had brought back with him. Lying there, she looked about her curiously, dismayed, hopeful and adventurous, taking everything in. Her pink gina-gina! Coonardoo could not take her eyes off that.
She stood beside Hugh’s wife holding the tray. Too shy to look up, seeing the gina-gina under her lashes — soft silky stuff like that flush in the sky before sunrise — and the plump little woman under it.
“Coonardoo, isn’t it?” Hugh’s woman queried. “Thank you, Coonardoo.”
Coonardoo’s eyes flashed to her from under their long curling lashes, deep beautiful dark eyes, promising love and devotion.
The morning passed like a happy dream. It was what Coonardoo had thought of so long. Hugh’s home-coming and getting the house ready for the woman he would bring with him, to live in it. Coonardoo had not wondered whether she would like the new-comer. She knew that she would. Was she not Hugh’s woman?
She told the other gins about the pink gina-gina Mollie wore when she was in bed, as they drank their strong black tea, sweetened with plenty of sugar, and ate the bread and jam Hugh had doled out to them. He was as gay and generous as when he had been a little fellow. Everybody ate until they were full, and very happy, smoked and gossiped about Mulli. What was it he called her? They tried to get their tongues round the name, and laughed at the queer sound it had.
Hugh himself cooked the breakfast that morning, and his wife came to eat with him in the dining-room, a gown over the pink gina-gina, at which Coonardoo opened her eyes wider and wider. So many birds and flowers were scattered over it, and fruit that you could almost take off with your hands! She stood transfixed in awe and admiration; and Meenie beside her gurgled and exclaimed.
“What is it?” Mollie asked.
“They like your kim,” Hugh explained.
Meenie put out her hand to see if the apples on the chintz of Mollie’s kimono would come off, giggling and cuddling herself shyly when she found they were only coloured drawings.
Hugh said all the dishes in the kitchen were to be washed in boiling water with plenty of soap, the veranda must be hosed down, every room had to be swept and scrubbed out. The gins went eagerly about their work, treating it all rather as a joke, laughing, and exclaiming to each other.
And Mollie, sitting beside her trunk on the veranda, unpacked, strewed the worn jarrah boards with ribbons, frocks, underclothing, lace, pictures, bright scarves, shoes, scented soap, and silver-backed brushes; trinkets and wedding presents of all sorts. She took out a bottle of sweets and called the girls to her; poured a handful of small boiled lollies into Coonardoo’s hand and into Meenie’s; gave Coonardoo a long piece of blue print for a dress and Bardi a necklace of red beads.
Hugh came stamping along the veranda.
“Now then, you fellows,” he called; and the gins, from watching and exclaiming over the treasures which poured from Mollie’s box, scattered about their work.
Hugh had fastened spurs to his boots, and was itching to be out with the boys after the killer they were going to bring in that afternoon.
So the morning passed. Hugh opened tins from the store for lunch, and made damper.
“Most people don’t let the blacks cook for them,” he said. “Mother used to do most of it herself. But please yourself about that. She taught Coonardoo and Meenie to do nearly everything. They can sew and cook quite well. But Bardi’s a lazy little swob … not too clean. I don’t know that I’d trust her —”
“Oh, I can cook,” Mollie replied.
Hugh laughed and kissed her.
“It’ll be awfully strange and lonely at first,” he said. “But you’re a brick, little woman. I hope you’ll like being here.”
“It isn’t what I expected,” Mollie confessed. “But the abos are different — nicer than any I’ve ever seen before.”
“That’s because they’re Pedongs, for the most part — haven’t had much contact with white people,” Hugh said. “A good deal depends on how you treat them. Mother handled them extraordinarily well. It’s the iron hand in the velvet glove does the trick, she used to say. Was very strict about some things. Respected them and their ideas. Made ’em respect hers. If they wanted the things she had to give, she made them do what she wanted, obey her, wash, and not take anything without asking. They’re naturally honest … fair dealers.”
“Who’s that laughing?” Mollie asked, as merry girlish laughter rippled again and again from the wood-heap where the blacks were eating their midday meal.
“Oh, that’s Coonardoo,” Hugh said.
When he rode up to the veranda on Hector a little later, Hugh looked as full of exuberant vitality as the chestnut.
“I’ve got to go out after a killer. You’ll be all right?” he called.
Mollie looked up, startled. Was he going away already? Far? And would he be long?
“Be back before sundown,” Hugh cried gaily.
Hector had not been ridden for months and was bounding and reefing under him.
“Isn’t he gorgeous?” He swung and posed the horse for Mollie’s admiration.
Mollie gasped, watching the chestnut with more fear than pleasure.
Coonardoo, going across to the gum-tree beside the veranda, where she intended to sit in the shade and feed her baby, stood a moment to watch Hugh and his horse. She smiled to herself, knowing he was showing off, to let the horse play up like that. Hugh seeing her, and knowing Coonardoo would guess what he was doing, laughed across at her.
“Coonardoo’ll look after you!” he shouted to Mollie as Hector swung and danced out, tail stretched and neck bowing. “Won’t you Coonardoo?”
Coonardoo’s eyes, their steady gaze, met his. There was no need to reply. He knew, and she knew, how loyal her caring for his wife would be.
Warieda, Chitali, and Mick were cantering down from the shed. Hugh turned and rode out to them.
Mollie went back to unpacking and stowing clothes and wedding presents from her boxes, to drawers and cupboards in her new home.
Coonardoo sat down under the gum-tree, opened her gina-gina and gave her breast to her baby. He clutched and clung to her.
She sang as he sucked, watching the blossoms fall:
“Towera chinima poodinya
Towera jinner mulbeena …”
The words of her little song bubbled and burbled together. White sweet blossoms on the tall tree waved and fell over her. The tree became dark. The blossoms were stars in a dark sky, and drooping, as her baby dropped from her breast, Coonardoo stretched to sleep there in the shade under the still blue sky.