The Beloved Read online

  ‘I’m not famous, Slug.’ She dipped her brush into a saucer of red paint. ‘I paint for pleasure. Art fills my soul but my belly relies on books.’

  ‘Boring books,’ I said. Aunt Tempe’s job was to sell educational books to schools all over New South Wales.

  ‘Not all boring, Slug. There are wonderful books on how people lived hundreds of years ago; books on artists and pictures of all the marvellous things they did. One man, Michelangelo, painted the ceiling of a huge chapel in Italy. It took him four years. He had to do it standing on a platform with his head tilted back and his arm reaching up over his head.’

  ‘Why did he paint the ceiling instead of the walls?’

  ‘Because,’ Aunt Tempe said, striping red paint down my nose before I could stop her, ‘his boss ordered it. And if you have to earn a living, like I do, you do whatever you are told.’

  I climbed out of bed and headed for Aunt Tempe’s room. A gentle snore came up from the blankets. I prodded her with my stick and a head appeared. ‘What’s going on? What time is it?’

  ‘Half-past five. Get up.’

  ‘Get lost.’

  ‘Get up!’

  I went to the cramped kitchen where she kept her cigarettes and coffee. A few minutes later she shuffled in, tatty dressing gown flapping around her ankles, and swept the Craven A tin from the shelf. Until she’d lit the cigarette and sucked in the smoke, she said nothing. Then she coughed and smoke billowed from her nose. I watched in fascination, half expecting it to come out her ears, too. She wedged the cigarette between her lips, filled the percolator and plonked it on the gas ring.

  ‘What’s wrong, Aunt Tempe?’

  She looked at me and removed the cigarette. ‘What makes you think something’s wrong?’

  ‘I can see your auras.’

  ‘Aura. Singular. And be careful, Bertie.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You might see too much.’ She took two cups from the draining board, wiped them with the edge of her dressing gown and filled them with coffee. ‘Here, take this to your mother.’

  Holding the cup in one hand, I edged carefully through the clutter of the small living room. Mama was sprawled on the couch beside a pile of school books.

  ‘Mama.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘Open your eyes. I’ve got coffee.’ I put down the cup and blew in her ear.

  ‘Jesus! What time is it?’

  ‘Time to get up. It’s today.’

  She opened her eyes and blinked at the red-gold light spilling through the windows. I went to the room I shared with Tim. He was cleaning his glasses on his pyjama top. ‘Thick as snot these glasses,’ he said, holding them up to the light. ‘Heavy as a full dunny-can. Okay, little sister, beat it, unless you want to see something long and wriggly.’

  ‘Yuck, no.’ I’d seen it before, like a worm. Revolting.

  After breakfast I washed and dressed in the red silk trouser suit Dad had sent me from Port Moresby. Mama looked me over and retied the ribbon on my ponytail. ‘All right.’ She turned, spat on her hands and flattened Tim’s chestnut curls. They sprang straight up again so she changed her mind and fluffed them instead.

  He shrugged away from her. ‘Leave me alone.’

  Aunt Tempe stuck her head around the door. She looked smart in a grey pencil-skirt, a red sweater and high heels. ‘Time to go.’ We crammed into her little Austin and headed for Circular Quay. Our ship was a small coastal freighter, the MV Shansi, and the cabin was small. Four bunks, a wash-basin and a narrow cupboard. Aunt Tempe ducked her head to get through the door, peered around and sniffed. ‘Humph, smells like bilge water. Better you than me. This is for you, Tim.’ She handed him a new Biggles book. ‘And this is for you, Slug.’ She gave me a thin parcel and pressed my nose with her long finger. ‘Come and visit me again and I’ll teach you more about art.’

  ‘Don’t encourage her,’ Mama said.

  ‘Why not? What’s wrong with art?’

  ‘Nothing, but it’s not what I want for my daughter. Besides, she can’t draw.’

  ‘I disagree,’ said Aunt Tempe. ‘She’s got a fine style and very much her own already.’ She looked away. ‘Well, must scram, late already. Come and see me off.’

  We clambered up the stairs. ‘Thank you for everything,’ said Mama. ‘You’ve been wonderful.’

  ‘I’ve loved having you.’ Aunt Tempe looked from me to Tim, who was leaning over the rail. ‘He takes after Ed,’ she said. ‘Bertie’s like you.’

  ‘Except Tim’s easy,’ said Mama. ‘So biddable compared with Bertie. Such an independent little miss.’

  Aunt Tempe smiled and planted kisses on our cheeks. ‘Give my love to my brother and come back soon.’

  We gazed after her. A whirlwind; a tall, skinny, wonderful whirlwind. The gangway was pulled up and a thunderous blaaaahh! leaped from the funnel. A gap opened between the ship and the wharf and I looked up at the great grey spans of Sydney Harbour Bridge.

  ‘Say goodbye to Sydney,’ Mama said.

  I waved at a lone wharfie standing at the end of the dock, glaring into the sun.

  ‘Goodbye Sydney.’

  Chapter Six

  Port Moresby, April 1955

  The Shansi headed for open sea, her prow cutting the water and tossing glistening bubbles in the air. Outside the Heads she began to roll and people lurched about clutching whatever they could – rails, chains, door handles, each other. I smiled. There were sixteen passengers on board and all of them were cripples at sea.

  Every morning Mama gave me grade three lessons. Spelling and reading were no trouble but sums were hard. She lined up playing cards. ‘It’s easy, Bertie. Eleven cards here, fifteen here, thirteen cards over there. How many altogether?’

  I picked up the cards and stacked them into suits. ‘Nine hearts, eleven clubs, eight spades, ten diamonds and one man riding a bike.’

  ‘How many cards?’

  In the afternoons I painted with Aunt Tempe’s beautiful paints, twenty-four colours brighter and creamier than the set she’d given me for Christmas. I drew pictures of the people on the ship and painted them over. Mrs Watts with her watery eyes and cameo brooch, Miss Gilmour who watched the captain with doggy eyes, the four bridge-players who each pretended they knew what the others were thinking and my favourite Chinese waiter, Mr Lee, who I drew as a big yellow smile.

  ‘What on earth’s that?’ Mama said.

  ‘Mister Lee. Isn’t he fun? I’m going to be an artist when I grow up.’

  ‘No you’re not. You’re going to be somebody: a doctor or a lawyer. A professional of some sort.’

  ‘I’m going to be an artist, like Aunt Tempe. But I’m going to have a husband and kids. Why doesn’t she have a husband and kids?’

  ‘She . . . just doesn’t. And you are not going to finish up like her, a poor sad . . . spinster, eking out a living in a crummy little flat.’

  ‘Aunt Tempe isn’t sad. And her flat isn’t crummy. What’s a spinster?’

  ‘A woman who . . . never gets married.’ She frowned at my picture. ‘Why have you drawn Mr Lee like a banana?’

  ‘He’s not a banana, he’s smiling.’

  ‘But he doesn’t smile!’

  ‘Yes he does, on the inside. He winks.’

  ‘It’s not a wink, it’s a tic.’

  ‘A wink.’

  ‘A tic.’

  Clambering around the bowels of the ship one day, I found myself among a sea of Chinese faces scoffing noodles. Someone hoisted me onto a long wooden bench between two bare-chested sailors. I was given a plate of noodles and a funny sort of ginger-drink that smelled like the brandy Mama had put in her Christmas cake. Everyone was very friendly and Mr Lee taught me some Chinese. ‘Ni hao?’ he said, ‘How are you? Wo hao, xie-xie ni. Fine, thank you. Wo bu dong. I don’t understand.’ I practised the words and washed them down with noodles and the ginger drink, feeling very grown up. Strange too, as the ship kept tilting. I woke up on my back in the passageway, sailors pat
ting my face and arms with damp cloths. I felt dizzy, but otherwise okay, and lurched back to the cabin.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Mama said.

  I started to tell her I’d been eating noodles with the Chinese sailors but her colours heated up so fast I stopped before I got to the part about the ginger drink and falling asleep. Like seeing auras, there were some things Mama was better off not knowing.

  After six days a headland appeared. The captain called it Paga Hill. On the other side of Paga Hill was Fairfax Harbour where a hot musky breeze brought strange smells. Trees and flowers dotted the hill – frangipani, bougainvillea and hibiscus, the sailor said – and there, on the wharf, was Dad! He stood like an A, hands behind his back, feet apart. A big man, our dad, dressed all in white – shorts, long socks, shoes. On his head was a pith helmet.

  ‘Good grief,’ Mama said. ‘Look at that get-up. Who does he think he is – some great white hunter out of The African Queen?’ As soon as the Shansi shuddered up against the wharf, Tim raced down the gangway.

  Dad took Tim’s skinny shoulders in his big hands. ‘G’day, Woolly Bull.’

  ‘G’day, Dad. Guess what? We saw dolphins and whales and phosphorescence.’

  ‘Did you indeed?’ Dad knelt down and pulled me into the fresh, starched smell of his shoulder. ‘CP, don’t you look terrific in my suit.’ He tugged my ponytail.

  ‘My suit, Dad. Phosphorescence looks like stars.’

  ‘You’re my little star.’

  ‘Little star, ni hao ma.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Ni hao. You have to say, “Wo hao, xie-xie ni”!’

  ‘Woe how si-si, yourself, Bertie.’ He laughed. ‘Now that you’re here, you’ll have to learn Pidgin if you want to talk to the locals.’ He stood up and held out his arms to Mama. She went into them and he rested his cheek on her hair. ‘Bean . . . it’s been so long.’

  Mama looked up at him and smiled. ‘Yes, too long.’

  He kissed her. She put her arms around his middle and snuggled against his chest. Dad looked so happy I thought he’d burst. ‘Geez, I’ve missed you lot. Come on, let’s go home.’ He put our bags into an old brown jeep.

  ‘Yours?’ Mama said, looking like she knew the answer was yes but wished it was no.

  ‘Too right. She’s a beaut. Yank tank, though; left-hand drive. Takes a bit of getting used to.’

  ‘It’s got no doors,’ I said.

  Tim scrambled over the side. ‘Jeeps don’t have doors.’

  Nor sides, nor a roof either, except a canvas cover you could pull on and off and a windshield to stop you blowing away. Dad helped me onto a metal tray at the back which was supposed to be a seat. ‘Crikey, Bertie, you need to get rid of that brace or stop growing; you weigh a ton.’

  Get rid of the brace.

  The road home took us by the sea, green and waveless, so different from Ocean Grove’s wild blue surf. The main swimming area, Ela Beach, was a curve of golden sand lined with coconut palms.

  ‘Be careful of coconuts,’ Dad said, driving with his leg stuck out on the mudguard. ‘They fall without warning and if they hit you on the head you could wake up dead.’

  Tim was staring up into the trees. ‘Where are the monkeys?’

  Monkeys, it was all he ever talked about. Mama had promised us one each.

  ‘Sorry, son,’ Dad shouted over the engine. ‘There aren’t any monkeys in New Guinea.’

  Tim’s face fell. He’d been going to name his Kong, after the King Kong movie. I’d been going to call mine Olive after Oliver, the only other person I knew who saw auras.

  ‘But guess what?’ Dad said. ‘I’ve ordered you a dog. It’ll be up from Sydney on the next boat. How’s that, eh?’

  Tim’s glasses misted. The sun beat down and the wind messed our hair. We drove past a place called Koki Market where lakatois – canoes with big square sails – drifted on the water and black people traded fish, vegies and fruit. There were big shady trees which made the market look cool and pretty but it stank worse than Dad’s farts. After Koki we turned inland and drove over two hills to our new home at Six Mile. It was the last of five houses on the edge of Moresby and sat on stilts, surrounded by deep verandahs screened with fly-wire. Inside, three bedrooms and a bathroom were separated by a hallway. The toilet was under the house. In the backyard, which disappeared into low, scrubby gum trees, was a little house draped in red and orange bougainvillea.

  ‘The boi-haus,’ said Dad. ‘Where Willie lives, the native boy who does our housework.’

  I pictured a boy of my own age and felt sorry for him having to do housework but Willie turned out to be nearly as old as Dad.

  ‘Why do you call him a boy?’ I asked.

  ‘Colonial hangover,’ said Mama. ‘I suppose they call the women girls.’

  ‘No,’ said Dad. ‘Meris.’

  ‘Do you cook?’ Mama asked Willie, as she looked around the kitchen. It wasn’t much of a kitchen compared to Melbourne; just a corner of the verandah with a stove, fridge, sink and some shelves.

  ‘No, Sinabada.’

  ‘Well, perhaps I can teach you.’

  ‘No, Sinabada.’ He stared at my leg as if it might bite him. ‘Willie no cook.’ A greenish sludge leaked from his chest and he backed out the screen door, leaving it open.

  ‘Slack bugger,’ said Dad, pulling it shut. ‘You must keep the screen doors closed or the mosquitoes will carry you off. Malaria. Every Sunday, rain, hail or shine, we take our quinine tablets. Compris?’

  Compris.

  Before Dad would take us on a tour of Port Moresby, he said there was something very important we needed to do: we had to learn how to use a gun.

  Mama’s eyebrows nearly leaped off her face. ‘A gun?’

  ‘Yep. The locals need to know we can defend ourselves. Kids included.’

  Tim whooped.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Mama said. ‘Bertie’s only seven.’

  ‘Old enough.’ Dad planted a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Tom Piper, the elf-boy on the tinned food labels, in the middle of the backyard. In his green pixie suit, soft cap and suede boots Tom was the handsomest boy I’d ever seen. Dad showed us how to load the pistol, release the safety catch, aim and pull the trigger.

  ‘Lean into my chest and aim for Tom Piper’s middle,’ he said, holding his arm under mine. I hated shooting handsome Tom but I squeezed the trigger and the gun thumped in my hand. Tom Piper’s mouth disappeared.

  ‘You beauty, CP!’

  ‘Again!’ I said, amazed by the power of the gun to make such a mess. ‘I want to do it again.’ The sound of gunfire brought a bunch of locals to watch us plug Tom Piper full of holes. In twenty minutes he was a splattered wreck: no teeth, no eyes, no guts.

  Now we could go and see Port Moresby. We drove back to the main street of town, Musgrave Road, where Dad had an office on the second floor of a new building. There were two big rooms with push-out windows to catch the sea breeze from Ela Beach and desks for him and Moira, his secretary.

  ‘She’s come to Moresby to find herself a husband,’ Dad said.

  ‘Why here?’ Mama asked.

  ‘There are lots of single white men in Moresby.’

  Mama grinned. ‘Goody, I’m going to like it here.’

  Dad gave her a sour look. ‘Moira won’t like what’s on offer. A lot of Government blokes are lazy bloody rejects from Australia. Most of them drink too much grog. It’s the tropics. It does that to you.’ Dad said his tinned food business was going like the clappers. He was selling heaps of other stuff as well, to trade stores all over Papua – clothes, torches, headache remedies, hurricane lamps and powdered milk. We drove up Tuaguba Hill which looked over the harbour. Black bodies in bright cloths tied around their middles milled about the docks and sweated in the afternoon heat.

  ‘See that island?’ Dad pointed to a blob off the coast. ‘It’s Gemo Island, a leper colony.’

  ‘No, really?’ said Mama.

  ‘What’s a leper colony?’
I asked.

  ‘A place where all your body bits fall off.’ Tim’s eyes crossed. ‘You drink a glass of lemonade and your fingers stick to the glass. Your nose falls off in your hanky when you blow it.’

  Worse than polio!

  ‘It’s curable now,’ said Dad.

  ‘Then why haven’t they cured the people in the leper colony?’ said Tim.

  ‘Too far advanced, I expect.’

  ‘No arms, no legs,’ Tim chanted.

  ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘No heads . . .’

  ‘Shut up!’

  Port Moresby was a long lick of heat. Mama walked around flapping her arms, complaining she was going to burst. Dad said she’d be right once her body learned how to sweat. It took ten days. She gave a huge trembling sigh and mopped her face. ‘Thank God.’

  God made her sweat?

  Mama took me into town to buy sundresses and shorts.

  ‘No shorts,’ I said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘My leg.’

  ‘Oh, blow your leg. It’s the tropics.’

  ‘No shorts.’

  ‘Okay, cook if you want. You’ll change your mind when you start to boil. In the meantime what’ll it be: overcoats or sundresses?’

  ‘Will you let down the hems?’

  ‘Sundresses to your ankles? You’ll look ridiculous.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘What about a new swimsuit? Or would you rather swim in overalls?’

  A swimsuit was different. Swimming made my leg stronger and Mama and I went to Ela Beach whenever the tide was high. I loved being in the water without the brace, moving about freely like everyone else. There were two pontoons made from forty-four gallon drums. At low tide the pontoon closest to the beach got stuck on a carpet of shells, seaweed and starfish but at high tide it bobbed about and before long I could swim out to it and climb on top. Sometimes it was just Mama and me at the beach but one time we came out from the water and there was a little native girl sitting near our stuff. She looked up at us, shielding her eyes from the sun.

  Mama nudged me. ‘Say hello.’

  ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I’m Bertie. What’s your name?’