’Tis a weariness born of twenty years of ‘rastlin’ with Truth and Lies,
And of writing on rum and blood-stained tears, that the People might Wake and Rise!
I am wild, Damned Wild, at the wages paid for fighting with Freedom’s Foes,
And the awful blunders the people made when at last they Woke and Rose.
Henry Lawson, ‘A Song of General Sick and Tiredness’
MATILDA
They drove her home, Michael and darling Nancy. She sat in the back seat with Tom’s and Clancy’s small warm sleeping bodies either side of her, with Jed and Sam and Scarlett following in Jed’s silly, wonderful sports car, like a convoy to escort her. She kissed the boys before she got out of the car at Drinkwater. ‘Sweet dreams,’ she told them as they slept.
The breath left her as she walked up the front steps, leaving a heart cramped with pain, which she knew would expand, soon after she had lain down.
Michael and Nancy kissed her good night at the front door. ‘You okay, Mum?’ asked Michael.
‘Of course. Sweet dreams,’ she said to him too, as she had always said to him when he was young.
He smiled. ‘Sweet dreams to you too, Mum. We’ll get them another day.’
‘I know you will,’ said Matilda, trying not to let her breathlessness show, watching as they walked back to their boys in the car. Her son. Her wonderful, incredible, precious son. His wife, to comfort him, and keep his feet strong on the earth.
Jed helped her up the steps, into her nightdress, to bed. Jed, her true daughter. Blood and generations didn’t matter. ‘Sleep well,’ said Jed, kissing her lightly.
‘I will,’ she promised.
She heard her chatter to Sam and Scarlett downstairs. Then they were gone. But they were there too. All were still with her. Love never truly leaves.
Maxi lay now beside her bed.
Maxi knew.
But she couldn’t die yet. Nor would she lift the telephone by her bed to call an ambulance. For she would die, here where she had slept and loved, not in the antiseptic ward of a hospital, nor with tears. She had said goodbye to those she loved, had even rung Jim that morning. She had carefully said everything she needed to the last two years, knowing that soon she must walk through the last door. And now she was almost there.
She lay back, looking at the night. Only those who had grown up with electricity thought the night was dark. The golden highway of the moon, the silver paths of stars, faint as bandicoot tracks across the universe. Two small bats winged by, and then another. A deeper darkness: that would be an owl. Two old-man possums snarling at each other. Stupid creatures. There are trees enough for both of you.
And then, at last, the soft notes of the cuckoo.
Daybreak then, soon. Her last. Day breaks as an old woman breaks, the last scissor snip of life . . .
She could hear Maxi’s breathing. Feel the dog’s alertness. Maxi, doing her duty to the last. A dog’s duty to love, and to be with her.
She held on to the last notes of her strength, knowing that if she closed her eyes now, they would never open again. She had to see the day . . .
Dark grey, light grey, soft grey, gold grey, silver light upon the world. She found the strength to whisper, ‘Good dog. Find Jed, Maxi. Jed!’ And at last, what she had been waiting for, the eagle, riding the thermal down towards her.
She had never told anyone she was an eagle. Not even Flinty, or Rose Clancy. Auntie Love had told her, a year after they’d been together, but it had taken Matilda years to understand. She suspected Jed had guessed.
Dear Jed. Michael, Jim, Nancy, Tommy, darling Tommy . . .
She was the eagle now, the old woman’s body left on the bed. She rose, her wings more powerful than the earth, then let the thermal carry her up again. Why waste energy when the land itself would make you fly?
And there it all was below her. The land and people. She had thought she would need a last farewell.
It wasn’t needed. This was not goodbye.
Matilda smiled, and let the eagle carry her.