THE SONG MASTER Read online

  She walked past the contemporary canvases around the walls, a collection of work from Freddy Timms, Rover Thomas, Queenie McKenzie, Paddy Jaminji. She paused before an ochretoned acrylic sketch of two strange figures on ingres paper. Wandjina Watching, Rosie Kaminyarli 1983 was pencilled in one corner. The primitive faces surrounded by halos, with huge eyes and absent mouths giving them an alien look, stared back at her.

  The girl untied the sling from her neck. Although almost a child herself, there was no mistaking the maternal care with which she held the baby who stirred and whimpered. At the slight cry she felt her breasts ache with the letdown of milk. The baby wriggled in its confining wrap and she walked to where a dividing display wall screened part of this small gallery. She sank to the floor, spreading the wrap under and around the baby. For a moment she crouched there, letting the infant suck on one of her knuckles, while one small hand curled around a finger. She looked at the minute fingers tipped with just-formed pink nails, and ran her hand from the top of the baby’s downy head to the small perfect feet in the cotton wrap.

  The cloth was crudely hand-screened in a child’s design of plump owls with jutting spiky feathers. Small stick figures in fancy costumes were interspersed with the white hook-beaked birds on the rust-red fabric.

  The girl rose to her feet, looking down at the drowsy baby, mentally burning every feature into her heart. Then, with tears running down her face, she turned and moved swiftly behind the decorated burial poles and out of the gallery room into an adjoining section, and from there down the escalator to the main entrance.

  A chill wind cut across Swanston Street and the sky dimmed to late-afternoon greyness. In the gallery, the guard jerked wide awake. Startled, he straightened up and guiltily glanced around wondering what had awoken him. Looking at his watch, he saw it was near to closing time. He creaked to his feet and then realised what had stirred him – a plaintive baby’s wail echoed through the cold and empty display rooms. He hurried into the Aboriginal section as the cry, more insistent this time, rang out. He walked around the room and, moving behind the screen near the display case, saw the bundle on the floor and let out an expletive. It wailed again and he crouched down and gingerly picked it up. The baby turned immediately to his breast seeking milk.

  Huddled in a corner of a tram seat, the girl hugged herself tightly, her eyes burning, her full breasts seeping and sore. Her belly ached with searing pains, knowing her child was crying and needed her. Silently her lips moved as she repeated over and over in her head, ‘This is for the best . . .’

  When the night nurse at the hospital unwrapped the baby’s shawl, she found the note pinned to the tiny singlet.

  ‘Please care for my baby. This is the only way I can help her. I haven’t any money. My parents kicked me out. I don’t know where my boyfriend is. My baby is part Aboriginal, so I want her to grow up with Aborigines where the kids are all brought up as part of a big family. Please find her Aboriginal family. I think she’ll be better with them. I don’t want my boyfriend to get into trouble, because I really love him. Maybe one day I’ll see my baby again.’

  In a truckies’ cafe along the Hume Highway, a TV set hung behind the counter where filling fast food was dished up with a minimum of style but plenty of friendly chatter. The waitress wiped mashed potato from the front of her splattered apron as she watched the story on the TV morning news. A police spokesman pleaded for the young mother to come forward and seek medical attention.

  ‘Tch, tch, poor little thing. How could a mother do that? I suppose she was just a kid who got pregnant. Funny place to leave it though,’ she mused.

  The chunky driver perched at the counter didn’t pause from shovelling fried chops, eggs and mashed potato from his plate to his mouth. ‘Must be a bloody Abo girl who got into trouble, no responsibility, no idea of what’s right.’

  Layers of sounds settled over each other, the hiss of the gas cooker, the sizzle of hamburger patties, the spatter of popping grease, the murmur of chatter along the counter and at tables while over it, like cream on top, spewed the tinny hoarseness of the television news.

  ‘I thought they were big on families and keeping their kids together. I mean, they made such a fuss over them kids stolen all those years back,’ mused the waitress watching an interview grab with the gallery security guard.

  ‘Only when there’s money in it for them, luv. You don’t hear boo from ’em until they can make some claim for dollars. Billions we throw at ’em, and where’s it got them? They spend it on cars and crash ’em and ask for another one. They’re always off for bloody meetings to get more government money for something or other, or else they get boozed out of their brain and either bash up their women, break a window or flake out in the street. Bloody waste of taxpayers’ money. Send ’em all back to the bush, I say.’ He used the last of the mashed potato to wipe up the gravy that had escaped dribbling down his T-shirt and over the bulge of his belly.

  ‘So you don’t like them?’

  ‘Don’t have anything against them personally, never have anything to do with ’em. But hell, I read the newspapers. This whole Aborigine scene is a mess, has been for years. Like I said, waste of our taxes.’

  ‘Well, we can’t send ’em back, that’s for sure,’ grinned the waitress. ‘It’s our country now, so I s’pose we have to live with it. Like my mother-in-law, I’m stuck with it.’

  ‘Yeah, but we don’t have to have Sunday lunch with them, either. Best thing they could do for that baby is give it to some decent Aussie family who can’t have kids. That is, if they don’t mind it having dark skin.’

  ‘They could always say it came from the islands,’ suggested the waitress.

  ‘Yeah, well it’s not our problem. Good feed, Cheryl. What’s the damage?’

  ‘Twelve dollars. You be in next week?’

  ‘Guess so. Unless I get lucky and win the lottery. See ya, luv.’

  The truck driver pushed his wallet into the pocket of the Stubbies stretched across his back-side. Yellow and black football socks were bunched above elastic-sided work boots. He crossed the road and opened the door of the cabin on the dust-streaked 60-tonne loaded Kenworth T600. Adjusting his testicles with one hand, he used the other to swing himself into the driver’s seat. He turned on the ignition, listened to the familiar hiss of air rushing from the brakes, shoved a Slim Dusty cassette into the tape deck, pumped the accelerator, put it in first gear and eased onto the highway.

  He and Slim had just started on the second chorus when he was aware of movement behind him where a small bunk ran across the back of the front seats, screened by a bit of curtain his missus had rigged up. He shifted his weight and glanced over his shoulder. ‘Shit!’ The truck swerved slightly and he steadied the wheel, his attention back on the road before he shifted in his seat and looked behind him again.

  Peering between the parted curtain was the pale and frightened face of a teenage girl. Straight away he thought, ‘Bloody trouble.’ It was an immediate reaction. The men of the highway had an instinct about hitchhikers.

  ‘Who the hell are you? If you wanted a ride you could bloody well ask. Get out of there.’ He pointed beside him. Meekly she clambered between the seats and slid onto the passenger side, hunched close against the door.

  The driver gave her a quick glance and turned back to the road. She looked crook, red-eyed, unkempt. Christ, not a druggie. ‘You’re not going to throw up, are you?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m all right, I’m just hungry.’ Her voice was soft, what his mother had called decent, well spoken. Running away from home, he figured. Or maybe from a boyfriend. She looked about seventeen. They took their love life to heart at that age. ‘There’s some chocolate in the glove box. Help yourself.’

  He drove in silence as she gave her attention to fumbling with the wrapper and foil before putting squares of Fruit and Nut in her mouth. She broke off several more but, as her hand reached to her still full mouth, she turned and held out the rest of the chocolate t
o him.

  ‘Just had me breakfast. You have it. Looks like you could do with a feed.’

  She nodded and concentrated on eating her way through the block of chocolate.

  She screwed up the paper and foil. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘So what’s the story? What’s with hiding out back there? Why not hitch a ride in the open? Where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘Sydney. How far you going?’

  ‘This is your lucky day. We’re not supposed to give rides. My company is getting hot on it. Too many problems.’

  ‘I won’t give you any trouble.’

  The driver grinned at the idea of this wisp of a girl hassling him. But seeing the tears start, he spoke firmly. ‘Now don’t start blubbering. I don’t mind you sitting there, but I don’t want any crying, smoking or whingeing about your life story.’

  She nodded. She appeared submissive, grateful, relieved of the need for small talk.

  They drove in the vacuum of the engine noise, overrun by Slim Dusty strumming through his Golden Guitar-winning album of folksy country hits. The driver glanced at the girl once or twice. She rested her head against the window, her eyes closed, an expression of infinite sadness and pain creasing her delicate features. Faint beads of sweat shone on her forehead, her brown hair looked damp and limp, pink dots stood out on her cheeks, the only colour in her pale face.

  The driver turned the airconditioning on to low, reluctantly closing his window in the hope the manufactured coolness might ease her discomfort.

  They drove for several hours, the rural scenery occasionally broken by the highway dross of scattered service stations, small shops, tea rooms and sporadic cheap meccano-set motels. These filtered out to be replaced by a fringe of trees and strips of deep State forest. It was a curtain, an invitation to tourists to turn off the narrow belt of bitumen, to detour, to savour and explore. Unheeding, the oncoming traffic streamed south, noses aimed at towns and cities, while to either side stretched reaches of country that reminded and warned, there’s still untamed land out there.

  The girl shifted and he wondered if she were asleep. Whatever dream trance she was in, it began to overwhelm her; tears that had silently trickled suddenly flowed, unstoppable, as heaving sobs began to rack her thin frame.

  ‘You all right? What’s the matter, luv?’

  She couldn’t get any words out for a moment . . . then, ‘I’ve changed my mind. I . . . have . . . to go back.’

  ‘Christ! I’m not turning around. Go back where?’

  She wrung her hands then balled a fist, pushing it into her mouth, biting her knuckles. Her pallid skin looked translucent, drained of blood, of energy, of life.

  ‘Look, we’re only a few ks from the border. I’ll get you a feed at Corryong and you can decide what you want to do. I can’t hang about, I have a schedule y’know.’

  For the first time she stared directly at him, dropping her hand into her lap while the other gripped the door handle. ‘I have to get out . . . now. I have to go back.’

  ‘Jeez, luv, steady on. I can’t let you out here. Middle of bloody nowhere.’

  ‘I must.’ Strength returned to her voice. ‘Now. Please.’ She fiddled with the door handle.

  ‘Watch it. Listen, hang on.’ Cursing under his breath the driver looked for a width of shoulder, long and safe enough to pull over. With protesting gears and a squeal of brakes, the rig lumbered to a halt and, almost before the engine had quietened, the girl was wrenching open the passenger door.

  ‘This isn’t a safe place. What are you doing?’ he called as she slid to the ground. She carried nothing more than a small handbag slung diagonally over her chest, her denim jacket over the light flowered hippy dress her only protection.

  The pinched face appeared at the bottom of the driver’s door, peering up at him, but there was resolution in her manner. ‘Thanks. Thanks very much. I know what I have to do. It was a mistake.’

  She went to the other side of the road and stood, her arms crossed around her chest, hugging herself and looking determined.

  The driver shouted to her. ‘You sure?’

  She gave a brief wave and he started the engine, signalled, and moved out into the road. Traffic was light now and he hoped she wouldn’t have to wait too long for a ride.

  In the far north-west, in a place called Bungarra – named for the great goanna – possibly one of the most miserable, sun-baked, spartan, desolate dots on the map of Australia, an old woman lay down her paintbrush and eased her creaking weight to her feet. She looked at the canvas, smeared in sweeps of brilliant acrylic, that lay on the red dirt. This was her last story.

  Her time had come. She’d defied statistics and outlived her contemporaries by decades.

  Grey hair in thinning clumps was pushed behind her ears, her face was deeply etched with lines of life, her body plump, fattened by starchy foods, sugar and carbonated drinks. Florrie was tired. The creative powerhouse of artistic expression that had fuelled the Florence Namurra art industry and earned her a reputation and income from aficionados around the world, had run out in that moment she’d put down her brush.

  She’d taken it up a mere nine years ago. A white welfare lady had first brought the paints, wax, dyes, cloth and canvas to the women in the 1970s, but Florrie had kept in the background, seemingly disinterested, huddled around a campfire, surrounded by scattered possessions, mangy dogs and grandchildren. Then early one crisp morning, after downing her mug of sweet tea, she’d thrown back the old grey blanket she wore as a cape and announced she was ready to ‘do dat paintin’ work’. She heeded no advice or suggestion but turned her back and worked alone, developing her own technique of stabbing and plumping paint in bold, vivid strokes, singing her stories onto canvas after canvas.

  The explosion had happened within two years. The old woman of the outback was hailed as a major art find and dealers scrambled, galleries demanded, and money poured into the camp.

  But just as fast it was dispersed, in the Aboriginal way of sharing what’s mine is yours. The demands of the clan had kept her painting most of every day. Another car, more cash, more, more. The talent, the reputation, the money, the recognition brought with it a spectrum of art dealers, unscrupulous, sensitive, shrewd, clawing and trawling for Florrie’s work. Tourists trekked to the blazing scruffy camp pleading for her to ‘do a quick little Florrie for us’. She obliged, it was the Aboriginal way. But now Florrie was sucked dry. Used up like an old piece of fruit.

  She walked away from the fire, past the tin humpy shelter where she slept, spurning a bed. She drifted towards a spindly cluster of coolibah trees and she lay on her Mother Earth. Clutching her now trademark blanket tightly to her, Florrie rested. And slept. And died.

  Her spirit, now released, slipped from the frame that held it and rose and began its journey to rejoin her ancestors, her children lost in childbirth, their fathers and her friends.

  Within days the art vultures circled and descended.

  Susan Massey towelled her body dry and dressed to the ABC radio morning news. Her mind was filled with the brief she would take to court this morning. She opened her closet and stared longingly at her favourite bush-look gear but chose the navy suit and neat white silk shirt. In a small gesture of defiance she pinned a marquesite lizard brooch to her lapel, turning towards the radio as her attention was caught by the newsreader.

  One of Australia’s most successful Aboriginal painters has died at the Bungarra art colony in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Believed to be more than eighty years of age, the artist had become internationally renowned for two of her acrylic masterpieces which recently sold for more than half a million dollars in Europe. The family of the dead woman has asked that she not be named, according to Aboriginal custom.

  ‘And I bet the dealers are heading north as fast as they can, with greedy art-grabbing hands outstretched,’ mused Susan, as she switched off the radio, grabbed her car keys and walked out the door.

  Putting the leather satchel
she used as a briefcase on the passenger seat, she turned the car radio to the FM station that played her favourite music and listened to the eight o’clock news. No compunction about observing Aboriginal lore here.

  In the Kimberley . . . famous Aboriginal artist Florence Namurra . . . better known as Florrie, the old lady of the outback . . . has died. Florrie left a fortune in unsold artworks. Major overseas galleries have already begun bidding for the paintings expected to sell for up to $300,000.

  Susan turned the radio down to concentrate on her presentation to the Family Court judge. She had a positive feeling about the outcome of this case: her argument was sound, she’d assembled the facts meticulously and schooled her client on how to present himself. Besides, she thought, his wife was a drunk and a tart; he deserved custody of his kids.

  The nurses had named the abandoned baby girl Sunny, short for Sunshine. Everyone who saw her smiled. The woman from the Aboriginal Child Care Agency who had come to collect the baby shrugged at the word written on the identification card above the hospital bassinette. She knew the child would eventually be named with the appropriate ceremony when she was united with her people and her country. Whether the father or mother was Aboriginal was irrelevant, she would still be able to claim her heritage, Joyce Guwarri thought. In the Aboriginal community there would be no doubt the baby was one of them. And there was no doubt the father was Aboriginal. Joyce knew that no Aboriginal mother would leave her child.