Coonardoo

1

Coonardoo was singing. Sitting under dark bushes overhung with curdy white blossom, she clicked two small sticks together, singing:

"Towera chinima poodinya,

Towera jinner mulbeena …"

Over and over again, in a thin reedy voice, away at the back of her head, the melody flowed like water running over smooth pebbles in a dry creek bed. Winding and falling, the words rattled together and flew eerily, as if she were whispering to herself, exclaiming, and in awe of the kangaroos who came over the range and made a dance with their little feet in the twilight before they began to feed.

"Towera chinima poodinya,

Towera jinner mulbeena,

Poodinyoober mulbeena."

("Kangaroos coming over the range in the twilight, and making a devil dance with their little feet, before they begin to feed.")

It was no more than a twitter in the shadow of dark bushes near the veranda; a twitter with the clicking of small sticks. Coonardoo was not supposed to be there at all. Everybody was asleep in the long house of mud bricks and corrugated iron, and under the brushwood sheds beyond the kala miah. But Coonardoo did not want to sleep.

A little aboriginal girl about nine years old in a faded blue gina-gina, she sat there, part of the shadows, with her dark skin, fair hair, and brown eyes shadowed across the cornea. Clicking and singing, she watched the plains, the wide shallow pan of red earth under ironstone pebbles which spread out before her to the furry edge of the mulga, grey-green, under pale-blue sky.

There was not a breath of wind. The windmills struck hard lines against the sky, their fans motionless, although roofs of the buggy shed, harness-room and smithy shivered in the heat. Stones on the plains, glistening in the clear white light, shimmered and danced together.

A crested pigeon, on the bough of a dead tree beside the garden, seemed to be watching the plains too. He sat there under the brush of dead twigs, his tail stuck out like a rudder, tipping backwards and forwards.

Yellow moths drifted down from the white gum-blossom. Its fragrance of dry grass and honey made Coonardoo feel sleepy. And she had decided not to sleep, but to watch the plains for first sight of the horses and buggy coming from Nuniewarra.

Her eyes fluttered after the moths. She could see low brown huts down there beside the well, a deep narrow well the Gnarler had dug long ago at a little distance from the creek. Coonardoo they called it, the dark well, or the well in the shadows. Coonardoo had been named after the well near which she was born. The huts were the huts of her people.

Trunks of gum-trees were chalk white all along the dry bed of the creek, and beyond the creek, bare and red, soared the ridge of dog-toothed hills, their lower slopes tawny with spinifex. Horses and a buggy from Nuniewarra — tomorrow, they would be taking Youie across the creek and away over the ridge. Away and away by a long winding track across the plains, through those stretches of country where mulga was standing, stiff and shining as metal, so long it had been dead and bleaching in the sun. Away and away, farther than Coonardoo could think, beyond blue backs of the hills, mulga scrub, and again away, and away, to the sea.

"Towera chinima poodinya …"

Coonardoo sang with sobbing breaths. It was so far that Youie was going, and for so long. She wailed with fear of it all. Her thought could not follow where he was going.

Poodinyoober mulbeena, mulbeena, mulbeena! she wailed, while yellow moths beat the air before her, black markings of their wings flickering, jiggling with little feet of the kangaroos, and white threads of the blossom which were falling. Little feet, fluttering wings, threads of falling blossom wreathed a cobwebby sleepiness over her. Very drowsily, the faint reedy voice twanged. Coonardoo’s head drooped, the fine silky jet of curled lashes swept her cheek. Her singing ran out, and started again in a flurry.

Coonardoo shook herself and sat up. She was determined not to go to sleep.

But nothing was stirring on the wide stretch of the plains before her, except the tail of the crested pigeon in that dead tree down beside the garden gate. It tipped backwards and forwards as he sat, red legs clasping a slim branch.

"Towera jinner mulbeena …"

Coonardoo’s fingers grasped the little sticks she was holding tightly. They clicked faster and harder. She was very eager to be awake and ready to play with Youie when he ran out from the house.

Was he not going away tomorrow? Going to school? And they would play no more in the garden down there near the windmill. The garden with its rows of cabbages, turnips, lettuces and onions, all the bright green vegetables Mrs Bessie was so proud of. Mumae the blacks called her, because Hughie did as soon as he could talk. Mumae in their dialect meant a father, and was not Mrs Bessie, father and mother to her son, the woman master of Wytaliba since Ted Watt had died so long ago, before Hugh could speak. Soon after he was born indeed.

The pigeon flew off with a whirra of grey silken wings. What had he seen? Yukki! There was Youie running through the kitchen on to the veranda.

Coonardoo’s singing bubbled away as Hugh stood on the veranda, fresh from his shower, a small boy of about her own age, tucking blue trousers over a calico shirt, torn and all the colour washed out of it.

Tani wali (Come quickly), Coonardoo! he called, sun-red legs wide apart, sunburnt chubby face and snub-skinned nose turned upwards. Blue-eyed, very assured and bossy, he searched for Coonardoo, knowing she was somewhere near; and saw her creeping from under the dark bushes.

Comin’, You, she called.

She started to run, and they raced together for the swing gate of the garden, lifted the wire hoop holding the gate to the fence of wire-netting which surrounded Mrs Bessie’s green plot, and let themselves into the garden. Two other children trotted up from the uloo, a tall loutish boy and a little fat girl, younger than Coonardoo. They pushed back the gate Hugh and Coonardoo had left swinging, and went into the garden.

Hullo, you fellers! Sharp and scratchy, Hugh’s voice rose. You watch me!

He ran and turned head over heels in a patch of newly turned red earth. The black children shrieked and screamed their applause.

Now you, Coonardoo! And then Wanna and then the little fat grub, Hugh ordered.

Coonardoo ran, her blue gina-gina wrapping itself round her thin brown sticks of legs. Over she went, legs waving in the air. Hugh shouted delightedly.

Good man! Good man, Coonardoo!

Bardi? Bardi now? cried the little fat girl, jumping excitedly.

No. Wanna next.

Wanna, the big boy, ape-like with sore eyes, a mop of dark dusty hair, calico slacks, once white now gingery grey with grease and red dust, took his run, turned and rolled clumsily.

Now you, Bardi!

Bardi, who was named after the fat white grubs the blacks like to eat, could scarcely run she was gurgling and chuckling so. The other children danced and screamed hilariously as she tumbled over in the dust.

Hugh ran again to show how the thing was done. Coonardoo followed him, light and fleet; her legs waved in the air; she jumped up, shaking red dust from her fair hair.

Over and over again, with shrieks of joy and clatter of laughter, eager gleeful chatter, the children ran, threw themselves on their hands, swung over and jumped up till, wearying of the game, Hugh dashed off crying, Narlu! Narlu!* and the little girls followed him with Wanna in pursuit.

Round and round the garden they chased, jumping the cabbages, in and out between beds of onions, turnips, and lettuces, under vines Mumae had trained against the fence, and through the legs of the windmill. Bardi was narlu, then Coonardoo, and then Hugh; and he was a very fierce wild spirit of an eagle-hawk chasing little birds, whom the blacks feared and fled in terror of, through all the fun and laughter of the game.

Suddenly, in full flight, Coonardoo stood still.

Sam comin’, she called.

Hugh, Bardi and Wanna looked out to the horizon. Against misty clustering trees beside the creek crossing, a puff of dust had risen.

Sam comin’, they chorused all together.

In the long low house of whitewashed mud bricks and corrugated iron there was a sleepy rustle and stir. Gins who had been asleep in the shade of brushwood shelters on tall sapling posts sat up and looked out across the plains. Bandogera took a pipe from the pocket of her gina-gina, bent over, lifted a stick from smouldering embers of the fire and put it to her pipe. Meenie stood looking out to the crossing for a moment, then she stalked over to the house, a tall stately figure in her long dress of dark blue dungaree.

Mumae stepped out of her room on to the veranda and looked across at the moving dust.

Meenie, she called sharply and walked with short quick steps along the veranda, a clear-cut figure in her white dress and low-heeled black shoes.

Dust of an approaching buggy and horses swirled across the plain. The children ran to open a gate in the fence below the garden.

Cock-Eyed Bob with Sam, Coonardoo commented as horses and buggy jolted and bounded towards them. Arra, other feller, maybe.

Strangers came so rarely to Wytaliba that to see a buggy and horses arrive was a game in itself. Not that Sam Geary was altogether a stranger to the children. They knew him well enough and he knew them, by name, even.

As the old-fashioned high buggy rattled and clashed to a standstill before Wytaliba homestead, he looked back at the gate and at the children running after the buggy.

Coonardoo, old Joey Koonarra’s kid, isn’t she? he asked the aboriginal boy beside Bob. Maria, her mother … the one that died and there was all the fuss about, couple of years ago?

Eeh-mm, the boy replied, taking the reins and glancing away as Mrs Watt came out to meet Geary.

2

Early next morning Warieda and Chitali brought in two fresh horses for Sam Geary’s buggy, and it was there in front of the veranda again.

Meenie carried out the little black tin box which contained all the clothes Mrs Bessie had been making Hugh for months, and put it in the buggy. Mrs Bessie came out, and Hughie in a suit of navy blue serge, a round felt hat and boots with tabs which stuck out behind, strutted after her. Very grand he looked in his boots and new clothes, saying good-bye to everybody.

Wanna, Mick, Bardi and Coonardoo were there to see him drive away; Joey Koonarra, as well as Bandogera, Bardi’s Polly, Pinja and old Gnardadu, grandmother of the tribe.

Sam Geary swaggered out from the dining-room where he had been having breakfast, Cock-Eyed Bob beside him, a slight boyish figure in dust-stained moleskins, white shirt and the Ashburton felt and spurs, he slept in, some folks said. Sam carried himself jauntily, with an air of being master of the situation. A tall man of thirty or thereabouts, bullock shouldered, buff-coloured shirt open half down its length and moleskins the same colour tight on his thighs, tin match-box, clasp-knife and pipe on his belt, he slouched as he walked, bow-kneed, in the way of a horseman.

Sun-scorched, almost raw his face looked under the felt hat he had slammed down over his thin gingery hair; his eyes, bulbous, pale blue, stared from under pink slatted lids with straight fair eyelashes. A brush of coarse gingery hair hid his mouth, except the thick upper thrust of the lower lip and tufts of hair sprouted from the nostrils of his big sunburnt nose.

Well, Mr Geary, I’m very much obliged to you, Mrs Bessie said.

Don’t mention it, missus, Geary replied. Got to go south meself, and might as well take the young shaver. Bob’ll look after you until our horses are spelled a bit. Then he’s going out prospectin’ in the To-Morrow. Reckons he can smell gold out there, and’ll be making our fortunes one of these days.

That’s right, Bob murmured abstractedly, one shoulder swung over, his head askew, as if already he were following a gleam under the surface of those tumbled hills north and east along Wytaliba boundaries.

Sam lit his pipe, Warieda and Chitali stood at the horses’ heads. Sam undid the reins knotted about the dash-board, gripped them in his hard sun-flayed hands and stepped carefully into the buggy. Mrs Bessie kissed Hugh and hoisted him over the wheel to his seat beside Sam. Sam’s boy climbed in over the other wheel.

Let ’m go! Sam shouted.

The horses swayed and tussled with the traces; the big chestnut reared and plunged, threw himself about; but Sam Geary knew how to handle horses. He let them play; then they sprang forward and out, and in a few moments, buggy, horses, Hugh, Sam Geary and Arra were no more than a feather of red dust on the plains, against a sky, mother-of-pearling, in the early light.

Coonardoo, who ran down to shut the gate in the fence below the garden and windmill, after the buggy had passed through, stood to watch the last swirl of dust through the trees, at the creek crossing. The sun, rising, burnished their green and golden tips. White cockatoos flew out screeching and floated to feed on the plains, as the buggy scuttled over stones in the bed of the creek.

What was there in saying good-bye to a small boy that should drive the light and living out of a woman’s eyes, Cock-Eyed Bob wondered. Mrs Bessie’s eyes were hard and blue as the winter skies when she stood staring over the plains at that gap in the trees where the buggy had been.

Oh, well, she gasped sturdily, they’ll get the mail at Karrara all right, I suppose, Bob. And I’ve warned Paddy Hanson to look after Hughie if Sam does get on a bender. Paddy’ll keep an eye on Hughie and hand him over to Captain Frenssen, who is an old friend of mine. The school people will meet the boat.

That’s right, Bob murmured awkwardly.

Coonardoo had come to stand beside Meenie and the rest of the gins. The blankness of the world about her Mrs Bessie saw in Coonardoo’s eyes.

We’ll miss Hughie, won’t we, Coonardoo? she said.

Eeh-mm.

If ever mute devouring love lay in mortal eyes it lay in Coonardoo’s. Mrs Bessie realized a suffering and endurance as great as her own. The child’s shadowy eyes, her air of a faithful deserted animal, sprang a train of thought which had been haunting Mrs Bessie, hovering in the background of her mind for a long time.

She could see into the years before her, years and years, stretching mistily, filling her with fear and illimitable anguish; years which she could not touch or control, so beyond her they stretched, her son in them, man-grown, herself unable to help, reach, or care for him, so distant she had become. But the child beside her, she would be there: she could be with Hugh.

A year older, Coonardoo had looked after and played with Hugh when he was little; soon dominated by and obedient to him. Glad of a playmate for her boy, Mrs Bessie taught Coonardoo to read, write and count, as she taught Hugh.

A shy, graceful little creature of more than usual intelligence, Mrs Bessie had thought Coonardoo. But now she looked at the child as if she found something of greater value in her. Mrs Bessie prided herself on treating her blacks kindly, and having a good working understanding with them. She would stand no nonsense, and refused to be sentimental, although it was well known she had taken the affair of Maria to heart. Ted Watt was as good-natured a man as stepped, until he got drunk, everybody agreed. But he could not stand liquor, went mad, ran amuck like an Afghan, or a black, when he had got a few drinks in.

Few people knew what had happened about Maria, except Mrs Bessie, and she held her tongue. The blacks said Ted had shot Maria’s dog and she was badgee with him about it, back-answered and refused to do something he told her when he was drunk. He had kicked her off the veranda. Maria died a few days afterwards; no more was heard of her. And as Ted walked over the balcony of a hotel in Karrara and was killed, a month or so later, the blacks believed justice had been done.

After Ted’s death, Mrs Bessie continued to run Wytaliba. As a matter of fact, everybody knew she had been responsible for management and working of the station, ever since she and Ted bought out Saul Hardy.

Sam Geary liked to think and boasted that Mrs Bessie consulted him upon occasions. But he knew she was shrewd enough to manage her own affairs. He never doubted that it was she, and not Ted, who had snavelled Wytaliba under his nose, and Geary was willing to admit he would swap the million and a half acres of Nuniewarra for Wytaliba, any day in the week.

Mrs Bessie had her head screwed on the right way, there was no denying it, although why she married Ted Watt no one could imagine. A schoolteacher in Roebourne, she had taken up with Ted and gone off droving with him. They knocked about the Nor’-West a long time together, droving and carting from the coast to stations and scattered mining settlements along the Ashburton, the Fortescue and the De Grey.

Ted was as rough as bags, Geary said; a good-looking, good-natured bloke who could neither read nor write. Mrs Bessie taught him to make pot-hooks.

She had an idea if they got a place of their own she could keep him away from the pubs, and used her eyes as they wandered up and down the country. When she made Ted give up droving she planked down all the money they had saved for years to take over Saul Hardy’s lease of a million acres between the Nungarra hills on the west, To-Morrow ranges on the east and tributaries of the coastal rivers north and