This (true) story is continued from the previous blog ...
And so, there I was – my first pub job, in the middle of outback Australia, loving the wide open spaces, blue skies, horses and my crazy workmates. It seemed so right but I couldn’t imagine any connection it had to do with my deep, incomprehensible desire to spend time with the Aborigine people. None of them came into the resort in the first few weeks and I began to wonder, quite seriously, if I was stark, staring mad, despite the joy of being in this place with these people.
Then, one afternoon, a road gang came in, thirsty from their work. I served them, several times, and one of them, an Aborigine, addressed me as Philip, though there was no way he could have known my name. I dismissed the niggle of curiosity, amid the flurry of serving beers and, eventually, my shift ended. I went out, had a quick wash, changed my clothes and returned to have a beer with two work mates. As I stood at the bar, waiting for Martin to get my beer, the Aborigine road-worker sidled over, leaned on the bar next to me and stared. Feeling awkward, I pretended he wasn’t there till I had to look back. He had the biggest grin plastered across his brown face as he held out his hand and said, “Bout time you come back, Philip. We bin waiting 300 years see you!”
Martin was patiently waiting for me to pay for my beer but my body wouldn’t move. Jimmy (as he later introduced himself as) paid for my beer and led me, groggily, to a table for the two of us.
There was no small talk – he just launched into a description of our time together in a previous life, a description that matched, perfectly, the dream/vision things I’d had a week before, travelling around Uluru. Despite the whole idea of me being an Aborigine hundreds of years ago and then meeting a brother from that time in this lifetime … aah, I don’t know … it seemed so illogical, so nonsensical, so unlikely and yet so right. So normal. Apparently, way back when, we were attacked and killed by white men and, just before our deaths, we made a pact with each other to meet up again and help bring peace to the parched and angry land of our birth. This pact, he said, had drawn me through the centuries, through the dreaming, to meet with him at this time.
As my shift had finished, he told me it was time to remind me of my knowing, my abilities. I clung desperately to the seat as we careened across the rough terrain in his battered Land cruiser and, after half an hour’s exhausting and painful dash, we stopped a hundred yards from a cliff face.
In the centre of Australia there are massive underground rivers. Looking from the air you can see the courses of what look like dried-up rivers. Beneath the sand – sometimes six feet, sometimes a hundred or feet or so – are deep rivers which nourish the land and its creatures. Where these underground rivers bounce off a cliff there is a dent in the sand, like a dried-up pool. This is where the kangaroos prefer to drink … and the kangaroos aren’t silly. If there was water in the pools all the time, the dingoes would sniff them out and lie in wait, in packs, to attack the kangaroos.
Jimmy explained how the kangaroos sing the water up when they want a drink and sing it back down before the dingoes catch them drinking. Squatting on the ground beside one of these dried-up pools, Jimmy started singing and clacking two stones together. Soon, water rose from the dry ground to form a pool about two feet deep. He told me to drink but I couldn’t – it felt as if I was trespassing on the kangaroos’ sacred space. Jimmy smiled and said the kangaroos had asked him to teach me this and for me to drink the water. I don’t know how he talked to the kangaroos but he was adamant I receive their gift with gratitude. I scooped water up and it was the sweetest, most delicious water I’ve ever tasted. I felt so clean, so alive, so much a part of the land – not on it but of it, somehow.
Jimmy then handed me the stones and told me to sing the water back down. I felt awkward, embarrassed and unsure of what to do. He insisted and I tried to copy his sing-song and stone-clicking and, before my eyes, the water slipped away below the sand as if saying goodbye.
“See, you never forget in 300 years!” said Jimmy with a huge grin.
We walked across the flat, empty sandscape and, as Jimmy turned the Land Cruiser to head home, he waved at the water hole. I looked around and there were four big reds standing at the empty pool, staring at us.
“They pleased you come back,” said Jimmy.
All I could do was smile and wave to the kangaroos. They seemed to have appeared from nowhere. I know kangaroos don’t smile but I was sure they were then.
After that, Jimmy would turn up in his battered vehicle, unexpectedly, and take me to different places to show me the land in its dreaming – the reality of the land beyond what our eyes see. He seemed to know when my erratic roster gave me time off and I always felt comfortable in his presence, despite the unusual, illogical things he showed me.
Then, three months later, he dropped me off after showing me how he could put on the invisible dream. As I got out, he told me it was time for me to go and that I’d return and make good the pledge we made all that time ago. He disappeared in a swirl of dust, without so much as a goodbye, and I left the next day for Derby, Kununurra, Darwin and then home to New Zealand.
I have no idea how I’ll honour the pledge I apparently made with Jimmy but I’m sure the way will turn up as unexpectedly and as naturally as he did.
And now we return to the (nearly true) story of Arthur Bayly and Mary Collins, continued from the previous blog ...
"Yes, yes, I'm here … awake," he said softly, knowing she needed reassurance in physical form.
"Oh Arthur, it's been all night and now you're back," she said as he felt a dampness on his face and then her soft face against his cheek …. her soft and very familiar face against his cheek.
His temple, his cheek, were caressed in warmth and his eyes closed at the sweetness. The caress stopped and his eyes opened. The face became less blurred, more distinct. He knew the face. It had a name. His mind reached for the name. It did not come. He looked more intently and the focus improved. Her face was still close, still saying words that were starting to straighten themselves out and become separate, nearly distinct.
The thudding continued to close in on him and a small pain crept into his head. His mind went to his body and he could sense nothing - a no-body, a no-sense, unfelt, unsensed. He tried to move a finger and was surprised to find it was there, as usual. Satisfied, he looked back at the face, now becoming more distinct, more … mmm, more … oh gosh, he knew that face! It spoke of love, caring and a deep history to him but no name came. It then spoke a name, its name, and he was filled. It spoke of Joan and all those shattered fragments of memories fused together in a quiet completion of a life that was his own. He tried one arm and it had a familiar weight. He tried raising it and fancied it did as he bid it do. As his arm reached for Joan's face, he felt dripping on him and she embraced him as he smiled and was complete.
The thudding had filled his head now and its intensity was growing.
"Is he alright?" asked Arthur weakly.
"Is who alright dear?" asked Joan.
"The man," said Arthur, taking another breath. "The man I hit."
"Ah him, that damned Sanderson?" asked Joan. "Yes, you rather damaged his kidneys and other bits, you savage man, you!"
"But … is he alright?" asked Arthur, desperate for an answer as he struggled for another breath.
"Well, he was in a pretty bad way after you'd beaten him with that vase and cabinet," said Joan. "I didn't know you had it in you, darling!"
"I didn't hit him with it …" protested Arthur weakly.
"Well, no one else was there to do it!" said Joan, laughing and interrupting him before he could get another breath. "You're quite the hero, my dear!"
"But I didn't hit him with …" said Arthur with more to say while his strength to say it deserted him. He needed to know if the man was alright but the thudding was closing in. He just wanted to escape it, in blissful sleep, which was also closing in.
"And the others?" asked Arthur weakly.
"Yes, unfortunately Sanderson got taken off to hospital while Amanda and Toby were arrested," said Joan. "One of Martin's colleagues is working with Lord Atkinson to have them released."
"Oh dear," said Arthur as words became harder to manage.
"Can I tell you what else happened?" she asked and he sensed … knew … her need to keep him talking, keep communicating, lest their link be broken. But only the link between capsules could be broken, he knew, somehow. The link between essences was always there.
"Yes dear, what happened?" he asked to help reassure her he was still with her. In that moment he knew all that had happened. It was not a sequence of events, one thing after another that went through his mind. It was as if the Hands of Time - the Hands of God, perhaps - held the long telescope of time before him and then had silently collapsed it so that all events and sequences came to him in one bundle of knowing. He let her tell her story, however, for the throbbing was closing in and he knew he must return to more sleep to have it soften its thudding.
He could hear her voice telling of events that he already knew as the deepness of sleep called invitingly to him. Soon Arthur wasn't aware of anything.
The Tribe Gathers
Wednesday, 14th March 2012, 6.48 a.m.
As Arthur softly snored in the key of G minor and dreamed in the key of C happy, the world went by without him; living and dying, laughing and sighing, truthing and lying, selling and buying. In that other imaginary world, Mary and her cohorts, with briefcase of uncertain contents and menacing intent ... well, anything uncertain is always menacing, in our fevered minds ... woke to a different day. If it's possible to wake from a night of not sleeping, that's what they all did. All but Ahmed looked bleary-eyed and slept-in. Ahmed, of course, looked his usual dapper self, despite wearing yesterday's clothes.
Choosing not to appear in public any more than they needed, they gathered around Ahmed's and Halee's coffee table, seated on beds and chairs, as a quiet London slowly stretched and yawned. Mary and Angus tucked into a hearty English breakfast of fried eggs, sausages, bacon, mushrooms, beans, toast and tea while the others preferred fruit, muesli and coffee. With the previous night's excitement over and without the familiar office and roles around them, Mary, Ahmed and Halee looked awkwardly quiet while John and Melinda looked on, bemused. Angus, like a bouncing puppy just released from his kennel, grabbed the precious briefcase Mary had brought with her and rifled through the papers, between mouthfuls of hot, dripping food.
"Dere's gotta be somethin' here," he said, undeterred by the frowns and smiles around him. "Dere's just gotta be."
"Look, Angus, we've been through it," said Mary, pouring herself another cup of tea. "There's nothing there …"
No comments:
Post a Comment