onto the highway.
Annabelle listened to the strumming of the guitar coming and going through the roadnoise, the voice of the singer telling biblical stories of defeat and longing, the awful brevity of life, and the binding code of something he called honour.
Zamia Street
T HE SUN HAD BEEN UP FOR HOURS WHEN A NNABELLE GOT OUT OF bed. She stood at the window looking out over the half-shutters. Her parents’ old bedroom faced the sideway and the neighbouring house. From where she stood Annabelle could see the ragged jacarandas along Zamia Street, lopped in an ugly manner to make way for the powerlines. The one-storey houses lined up behind their mowed frontlawns facing the road, painted white, blue and green. Regular lines of pastel shutters closed against the hard winter light. Indian myna birds strutting about chattering on the mowed grass. The muted sound of teevees and radios from neighbouring houses. The persistent screeching of a captive cockatoo next door. There was no traffic. The only thing moving on the road was an old woman in a straw hat and red cardigan walking a Jack Russell, pausing at each jacaranda while the dog sniffed and peed. Coconut palms and the glossy foliage of Bowen mangoes in the gardens. Pink and orange hibiscus blooms fallen to the green buffalo grass. Wattle birds talking and stepping about among the red bottlebrush flowers in the sideway. Above the trees and the house roofs in the pale blue sky a lazy drift of smoke from the cane fires. The faint smell of burning. Time was at a standstill in Zamia Street. She didn’t mind that. She was comforted by her solitary possession of the old house. She could imagine her parents’ pleasure if they knew she had found a haven among their things, to know she had been comforted to sleep in their bed, as if she were still their child. Her mother and father, she realised only now that she was standing in their old room, would not have questioned her but would have accepted her return and made her welcome in the old-fashioned modest way that had been their style until the end. She was grateful to them. She was grateful to know that something endured of what they had once been, and that she was supported by that now in her own life. She would not have noticed this from Melbourne. Or would not have noticed it so immediately and so strongly. And they would not have drawn her attention to it. They would not have thought her ungrateful for not noticing the abiding spirit of their support. She realised suddenly how much she still loved them both.
She watched the woman with the dog for a little longer, drawn into the mesmerising stillness of the sunlit street, then she wiped the tears from her cheeks with her fingers and turned from the window and went out of the bedroom into the lounge. The Burranbah stone lay on a circular table at the centre of the room where she had put it before going to bed. She stepped across and picked it up, hefting its weightiness, considering it and remembering Dougald Gnapun’s unease. The enormous weight of his silence in its presence, indeed the gravitas of his silence. A counterweight to the abiding silence of the stone. Her question as to its use marked by him, never to be answered . Maybe they all hate us, she thought. Deep down. For what we’ve stolen from them. For what we’ve done to them. It was the first time she had considered such a possibility and she was a little shocked by the implications of it. To be hated, after all. It was unthinkable. Like the Israelis and the Palestinians. Not to be forgiven by the people one lived among. For up here one lived among the Murris whether one wanted to or not. Townsville wasn’t Melbourne. Here the past could not be ignored, was not covered over and obscured by the accretions of city life, but was laid bare, the open wounds still visible in the features of people like Dougald Gnapun.
The living room was a long rectangle at the centre of the original dwelling. Darkstained timber
Annabelle listened to the strumming of the guitar coming and going through the roadnoise, the voice of the singer telling biblical stories of defeat and longing, the awful brevity of life, and the binding code of something he called honour.
Zamia Street
T HE SUN HAD BEEN UP FOR HOURS WHEN A NNABELLE GOT OUT OF bed. She stood at the window looking out over the half-shutters. Her parents’ old bedroom faced the sideway and the neighbouring house. From where she stood Annabelle could see the ragged jacarandas along Zamia Street, lopped in an ugly manner to make way for the powerlines. The one-storey houses lined up behind their mowed frontlawns facing the road, painted white, blue and green. Regular lines of pastel shutters closed against the hard winter light. Indian myna birds strutting about chattering on the mowed grass. The muted sound of teevees and radios from neighbouring houses. The persistent screeching of a captive cockatoo next door. There was no traffic. The only thing moving on the road was an old woman in a straw hat and red cardigan walking a Jack Russell, pausing at each jacaranda while the dog sniffed and peed. Coconut palms and the glossy foliage of Bowen mangoes in the gardens. Pink and orange hibiscus blooms fallen to the green buffalo grass. Wattle birds talking and stepping about among the red bottlebrush flowers in the sideway. Above the trees and the house roofs in the pale blue sky a lazy drift of smoke from the cane fires. The faint smell of burning. Time was at a standstill in Zamia Street. She didn’t mind that. She was comforted by her solitary possession of the old house. She could imagine her parents’ pleasure if they knew she had found a haven among their things, to know she had been comforted to sleep in their bed, as if she were still their child. Her mother and father, she realised only now that she was standing in their old room, would not have questioned her but would have accepted her return and made her welcome in the old-fashioned modest way that had been their style until the end. She was grateful to them. She was grateful to know that something endured of what they had once been, and that she was supported by that now in her own life. She would not have noticed this from Melbourne. Or would not have noticed it so immediately and so strongly. And they would not have drawn her attention to it. They would not have thought her ungrateful for not noticing the abiding spirit of their support. She realised suddenly how much she still loved them both.
She watched the woman with the dog for a little longer, drawn into the mesmerising stillness of the sunlit street, then she wiped the tears from her cheeks with her fingers and turned from the window and went out of the bedroom into the lounge. The Burranbah stone lay on a circular table at the centre of the room where she had put it before going to bed. She stepped across and picked it up, hefting its weightiness, considering it and remembering Dougald Gnapun’s unease. The enormous weight of his silence in its presence, indeed the gravitas of his silence. A counterweight to the abiding silence of the stone. Her question as to its use marked by him, never to be answered . Maybe they all hate us, she thought. Deep down. For what we’ve stolen from them. For what we’ve done to them. It was the first time she had considered such a possibility and she was a little shocked by the implications of it. To be hated, after all. It was unthinkable. Like the Israelis and the Palestinians. Not to be forgiven by the people one lived among. For up here one lived among the Murris whether one wanted to or not. Townsville wasn’t Melbourne. Here the past could not be ignored, was not covered over and obscured by the accretions of city life, but was laid bare, the open wounds still visible in the features of people like Dougald Gnapun.
The living room was a long rectangle at the centre of the original dwelling. Darkstained timber
Similar Books
