Maralinga (16 page)

‘I really am sorry. I was showing off. I know I sounded arrogant –'

‘No, you didn't, you just sounded like you. And there's no need to grovel, I'm not remotely cross.'

‘Oh, that's good, I am glad.' She commenced her customary ritual of teapot turning – always three times, and always slowly. ‘I thought you seemed a bit snappy.'

‘I didn't mean to be.' He stared down at the revolving pot. ‘I'm just …' He struggled to express himself. ‘I suppose I'm just … distracted, that's all.'

‘Why?'

Dragging his eyes from the teapot, he stared at her as if she was mad for asking, but Elizabeth refused to be deterred. To her, everything appeared extremely straightforward.

‘You want this posting, don't you, Danny?'

‘Yes.'

His response was somewhat lacking in conviction, she thought, and she waited for him to continue, but he didn't.

‘You told me on the phone there were big decisions to be made and that we needed to talk,' she prompted.

‘There's a promotion involved,' he said. Then it all tumbled out. ‘I'd come back a captain – that's the carrot they're dangling. That and very good money in the form of allowances. God, Elizabeth, do you know how long I'd have to serve under normal circumstances to achieve captain's rank?'

‘So why the agony of indecision?' she said briskly. ‘It's all perfectly simple. You accept the posting, I resign from
The Guardian,
we put the wedding forward a fortnight, then we pack our bags and we're off to Maralinga. I can post my articles from there by airmail, it's simple –'

‘There are no married quarters at Maralinga.' Daniel interrupted before she could go any further. ‘In fact, there's no accommodation at all for females. Women aren't allowed anywhere near the place.'

‘Oh.' She was instantly deflated. Of course, she thought, how very stupid of her. Maralinga was no ordinary military base.

‘Your source didn't tell you that, I take it.' There was no edge of one-upmanship this time – he found her endearingly vulnerable when her ego was punctured.

‘No,' she admitted, ‘but then my source wasn't aware of any personal interest on my part. He assumed my queries were those of a fellow journalist.'

‘Well then, you can see our dilemma, can't you? Things aren't really simple at all.'

‘But they are, Danny. Or rather, they can be.' In her determination to solve the problem, Elizabeth was once more on the attack. ‘I'll get a place in the nearest city and work from there, and we'll meet whenever you can arrange any leave, just the way we do now. Except we'll be married,' she added meaningfully. ‘If we can't actually
live
together, then at least when we
do
see each other it will be as man and wife.'

‘Oh, Elizabeth …' His laughter was unexpected. ‘Oh dear, dear Elizabeth, how I do love you.' As he dragged his chair close to hers, there was the rasping sound of wood on cheap linoleum. ‘For such an intelligent woman you really do have a talent for closing your eyes to reality,' he said, and, taking her face in his hands, he kissed her.

‘Why? What did I say that was so very stupid?'

‘Troops stationed at Maralinga won't be popping
into town on weekend leave, dearest. They'll be marooned in the middle of a desert hundreds of miles from anywhere.'

‘I didn't say
weekend
leave, don't be so patronising.' Elizabeth refused to admit to stupidity twice in the space of only minutes. ‘Even if the nearest town
is
a hundred miles away,' she said archly – and she couldn't envisage it being any further, he was surely exaggerating – ‘then I've no doubt the army would grant an officer leave on compassionate grounds, just
once or twice
in an entire
year
, to visit his wife. That would be all I would ask.'

‘Why should the army do that?' Daniel stopped teasing. ‘We're talking about a top-secret military site, Elizabeth. The army wants its men isolated from prying eyes and ears. The army would have no wish to encourage fraternisation, even amongst wives and families. That's why we're being offered huge allowances and promotions. Soldiers need incentives for a job like this.'

‘I see.' Elizabeth's entire defence crumbled. She felt more than stupid, she felt mortified. How could she have been so self-absorbed? She'd given no consideration to his personal predicament; she'd been too busy showing off the knowledge she'd gained through her press connections. No doubt the incentives on offer included danger money, she thought, but even his safety hadn't occurred to her, had it? She was so ashamed of herself she didn't know how to apologise.

‘Well then,' she said forlornly, looking down at her fingers and fidgeting with her engagement ring, ‘we'll send smoke signals, shall we?'

‘Nope.' He took her hands in his, forcing her to look at him. He could see she felt guilty, but there was no need. ‘We won't be able to send smoke signals because you won't be coming to Australia.'

‘Of course I will –'

‘Why? What would be the point? We wouldn't be able to see each other, and you'd be giving up a splendid career for no purpose. You're much better off staying in London.'

‘Don't be ridiculous. Even if we can't live together, I would want to be near my husband.'

‘But that's just it. I wouldn't be your husband. I think we should postpone the marriage until after my return.'

She was speechless with shock, and he hastily continued before she could recover.

‘It's the sensible way to go about things, Elizabeth. When I get back, we'll be in the perfect position to marry. I'll have my captain's rank and my captain's salary and no doubt a huge amount of accrued savings. Well, of course I will,' he said jokingly, ‘what can one spend money on in the middle of a desert?' She made no response. ‘You can see the wisdom of such a plan, can't you?' he urged. ‘This would set us up in our married life, we could even buy a house.'

‘Yes, I can see the wisdom of such a plan,' she replied, although from the tone of her voice he found it difficult to gauge her mood. ‘I can also see that you've made up your mind. You've made up your mind about everything, haven't you?'

‘I'm afraid I have rather …'

‘Then I don't understand your agony of indecision.'

‘Those were your words, my darling, not mine. I said I was distracted. I've been distracted all week, battling my own disappointment, wondering how on earth to tell you. And I'm sorry, I'm so sorry …'

‘Don't apologise, Danny, whatever you do.' The vehemence with which she interrupted surprised him. ‘This is a huge step in your military career – naturally the decision must be yours, and naturally I'll abide by whatever that decision is. But surely.' She paused, and in her bewilderment was the tiniest element of hurt. ‘Surely you'd like us to marry before you leave?'

Of course he would. He would like nothing more in the world. ‘No,' he said firmly. ‘No, that wouldn't be fair to you.'

‘Why?' Then the alarming thought struck her. ‘It's because of the danger, isn't it? You're worried that something might happen to you.'

‘Good heavens, no, I'm hardly going into a war zone.' He smiled, but there was an element of truth in what she said. The work at Maralinga would be dangerous, and accidents did happen – what if she were left a widow? The thought had occurred. But something else governed Daniel's decision, something less definable, a matter of principle.

‘Then why?' she persisted. ‘Why don't you want to get married?'

She was plainly not about to give up, and he was forced to respond. ‘Because it wouldn't be right, that's why.'

‘I can't for the life of me see what would be so very wrong.'

‘It would
feel
wrong,' he said. ‘It would feel wrong to
me,
Elizabeth. It would feel very, very wrong to
marry you and then, barely weeks later, to leave you alone for a whole year. It would feel as if I'd taken advantage of you.'

He knew how old-fashioned he must have sounded, particularly to someone as modern as Elizabeth. He waited for her to make fun of him. He wouldn't have minded if she had. But she didn't laugh.

‘The tea's cold, and it's nearly lunchtime,' she said. Then she kissed him and sprang to her feet. ‘Shall we go to the pub?'

‘What an excellent idea.'

Daniel could not have known that, at that very moment, Elizabeth had made a momentous decision of her own.

From the shadows cast by the grove of stunted eucalypts, Mimitja watches in silence, her sleeping baby clasped to her breast, her other arm encircling her five-year-old daughter. The child presses so tightly against her mother she is like an extension of Mimitja's body. Mimitja hopes the baby will not wake, for if he does, he will alert the white men.

The truck approaches. The two men are scanning the desert through its open cabin windows, and Mimitja hears their voices clearly. She has not spoken English for many years, but she knows the white man's language. She understands every word they are saying.

‘I saw her — a woman with a child. And she was carrying something. It might have been a baby.'

‘Your eyes can play tricks on you out here in the desert, mate. You'll get used to it.'

‘But I saw her, I swear I did!'

‘I'm not saying you didn't, they're around the place all right. But you won't see her again. Not unless she wants you to.'

The truck passes close by the grove of mallee trees where Mimitja stands. She remains motionless until it is well out
of sight and even the dust raised by its passing has settled. The only danger of detection, she knows, lies in movement, for the white man is blind. Stillness confuses him — he sees nothing in the land's shadows.

Satisfied that the danger has passed, she releases her hold on her daughter and the two go about their business of gathering firewood. Mimitja's husband is hunting for their evening meal, but she has no concern for his safety. He does not share her innate fear of the white man, but for her sake he will not allow his presence to be detected.

Mimitja's memories of the Hermannsburg Mission are vivid — even those from the times when she thought she'd been happy. She still recalls how she enjoyed her lessons at the mission school and how she liked to sing hymns during the church services on Sundays. But the pleasant memories have long been outweighed by the sound of her mother's wailing and the screams of her sisters on that fearful day ten years ago. She remembers returning from the waterhole to the reserve, hearing the sound, running towards the humpy where she lived with her parents only to see her two little sisters being forced into the car by the man from the government. She still hears the voice of the missionary, the man whom, above all, they had trusted, as he holds her mother back.

‘It's for their own good, Lila! It's for their own good!'

Then she sees the look in her mother's eyes and she hears the desperate scream. ‘Run, Mimitja! Run! Run!'

She had done her mother's bidding. She had been fourteen years old, strong and healthy, and she had run as she'd never run before.

Mimitja has her own children now, and her mother's ordeal has taken on a new meaning. As a mother herself, she dares not risk the loss of her babies.

She knows that the men in the truck are not government men. Nor are they missionary men, but she has heard of these trucks that patrol these lands. And she has heard what it is these men do. They do not steal children. They offer lollies to people and they make friends with them, and then they put whole families into their trucks and they take them away. She does not know where they take them, and she has no wish to find out. But always they say the same words. ‘It is for your own good,' they say.

The white men are not to be trusted.

Daniel had very quickly discovered that ‘the middle of nowhere', as people were wont to describe the desert area of Maralinga, was in fact overwhelmingly beautiful. He was astonished by the depth of his reaction, which was totally unexpected. It wasn't that the information imparted during the briefing sessions at Aldershot had been incorrect – much of the terrain was indeed ‘flat with little scrub cover', and there were indeed ‘sandhills to the south of the village' – but nothing could have prepared him for the sheer magnitude of the desert, nor for its primitive and ever-changing splendour.

As an officer with the transport corps, one of his first major duties had been to acquaint himself with the surrounding area, particularly the route to Watson. Access to rail being essential for the delivery of supplies, the proximity of the Trans-Australian Railway line had been a major factor in the choice of location for the township, and Watson, the nearest siding, was roughly thirty miles south of Maralinga.

A young private called Toby had accompanied Daniel on his reconnaissance trip, a pleasant lad from Manchester, very talkative and all of nineteen. But then Daniel had noted the majority of non-ranking British soldiers were very young, some even seventeen.

They'd left in the early morning, Daniel taking the wheel of the Land Rover himself, keen to adjust to the desert driving conditions as quickly as possible. The military's well-laid and well-used road to Watson had proved no hardship, but after they'd passed the railway siding with its fettlers' camp, they'd driven a further seventy miles along roughly cleared desert tracks, Toby directing the way, to the main coastal road, which led to Ceduna – a further 150 miles or so to the east, Toby had said. Time to turn back, Daniel had decided, and he'd allowed Toby to take the wheel on the return trip.

During the drive south, Daniel had been aware of the dramatic landscape, but the task of driving and Toby's chatter had been a distraction. Now, with the late autumn breeze fanning his face through the open window, the immensity and power of the desert had overwhelmed him. Beside him, talkative Toby, sensing his awe, had remained mercifully silent.

They drove through vast saltbush plains that stretched for miles – squat, round little bushes forming bubbling seas that shimmered from silver to grey-green and back again, dependent upon the continuously changing light. At the capricious whim of passing clouds, shadows would brush the land, giving a constant sense of movement, as if the very earth itself was breathing, and, in the far-off distance, the silhouettes of mallee trees circled the mottled mass
like stunted sentries. Then, past the saltbush and the mallee scrub, they were suddenly surrounded by the leafless, treeless, barren grey stubble of a frightening and lifeless landscape; and a little farther again, the salt pan, flat and stark, a parched white patch set against an orange earth. But, as they approached Maralinga, the greatest surprise was yet to come, for just beyond these apparent wastelands lay the Ooldea Range. Here, at the south-eastern border of the Nullarbor Plain, the earth was vibrant with colour – undulating sandhills of vivid ochre-red, vegetation no longer silver-grey but startlingly green. Here, the landscape took on a raucously coastal appearance, which was in keeping with its history. The place was a palaeontologist's paradise. Here, fossilised shells and marine life abounded, as a reminder of a time when the sea had covered the Nullarbor.

Over the ensuing weeks, as Daniel had settled into life at Maralinga, the ever-changing face of the desert had remained a source of fascination. But today his eyes had been opened to another aspect altogether. An aspect which, upon his arrival, he hadn't even known existed – the people who belonged to this land. During the briefings at Aldershot, he and his fellow officers had been told the desert area of Maralinga was uninhabited. No mention had been made of the local Aboriginal population.

‘Sometimes they're curious and want to say hello,' Pete Mitchell told him. ‘And sometimes, if they've heard about us, they'll come up to the truck and ask for lollies. But if they're scared, you won't see them. Or if you do catch a glimpse, like you did today, they'll vanish,' he snapped his fingers, ‘just like that.
Here one minute, gone the next. They're experts in the art of invisibility.'

‘That must make your job difficult.'

‘Too right it does, mate. It makes my job a bloody farce.'

Lounging in a corner of the officers' recreation mess, cold beers in hand, Daniel had brought up the subject of the woman he was convinced he'd seen through the truck's window that very afternoon. The image of the woman and her child remained vivid in his mind.

It was the first time he'd accompanied Pete Mitchell on his patrol, and he'd been flattered to be asked, knowing it was an invitation Pete didn't offer freely. But in the month Daniel had been at Maralinga, the two had formed a friendship of sorts. They'd had to – they shared a donga. The dongas were the two-man rooms in the orderly rows of prefabricated aluminium barracks set out in blocks and dissected by the grid system of streets that formed the basic structure of the Maralinga township. Each of the barracks, with lavatories and showers at the far end, housed a dozen men, and it was generally considered a good idea to get on with the person whose donga you shared. Pete Mitchell, a wiry, sun-leathered man of forty with permanent facial stubble that saw a razor once a week just before a beard threatened, had made the fact abundantly clear to Daniel upon their first meeting.

‘I wasn't too happy to hear I was copping another Pom,' he'd said. ‘The bloke before you was a real whinger and I was hoping for an Aussie. Unrealistic of me, I know – this is a British establishment and we're hugely outnumbered. Still, you seem like a nice enough young fella, so welcome to Maralinga.'

The none-too-subtle hint had not fallen on deaf ears, and the two had got along from that moment. Daniel was only too eager to learn, and Pete Mitchell had opinions he was willing to air to those few he liked, of whom young Dan Gardiner appeared to be one.

Daniel had found Pete Mitchell an interesting but strangely contradictory, character right from the start. Even his name had come as a surprise.

‘My real name's Petraeus,' he'd said. ‘My mother was a Boer – Petraeus was her maiden name.' Pete's father had been killed at the Somme, and he and his four siblings had been raised by their mother on a small property near Tea Tree Well, about 100 miles north-west of Alice Springs. ‘She was a teacher in the Transvaal,' he'd said – ‘raised on a farm herself and as tough as they come.'

The surprise of his name was only one in the series of contradictions that was Petraeus Mitchell. The second was his academic background. It turned out Pete, the quintessential ‘outback bloke', was a highly qualified anthropologist.

‘Ironic when you think about it,' he'd said with a snort of self-derision. ‘My big chance came via a university scholarship from the AFA.' In response to Daniel's querying look, he'd added, ‘The Aborigines' Friends' Association – founded by a group of bored, wealthy socialites for the most part, but it does serve a purpose.' Then he'd given one of his rare barks of laughter. ‘Some
friend
I've proved to be, eh? Here I am all these years later doing the government's dirty work. I'm the Lolly Man who kicks the poor bastards off their land.'

Although Pete's official title as head of the patrol team was that of Aboriginal liaison officer, he was commonly known as the Lolly Man. He accepted both the joke and the title – the lollies had, after all, been his idea. ‘Ah, well,' he'd said with a philosophical shrug, ‘I get paid big money and it's better than slogging it out in the army, so who's complaining?'

Pete Mitchell's anthropology degree had seen him commissioned into the Australian army as a lieutenant in 1942, and he'd worked with the PNG natives as a coast watcher in New Guinea for three long years. Following the war, his academic background and fine military record had made him the perfect candidate for a government position, and the name Petraeus Mitchell had quickly become well-known in federal government circles. Petraeus Mitchell was the perfect ‘fix it' man for all forms of Aboriginal problems. No-one knew exactly how or why, but he seemed to understand the blacks – he could cut corners and get the results others couldn't. Now, with the Maralinga project underway, Petraeus Mitchell was invaluable. Indeed, given the added attraction of his military background, there was no man in the country more qualified for the job. He could even be accommodated in the army barracks. The civilian quarters were mainly reserved for the scientists and administrators on site, and for the high-ranking boffins and government officials who would fly in for the detonations.

Pete had been quick to take up the offer.

‘The bastards pay me a bloody fortune,' he'd said to Daniel. ‘And, let's face it,
somebody
has to be the Lolly Man. It might as well be me – at least I speak
a bit of the locals' lingo, which shows just a
little
respect, I reckon.'

And that was the biggest contradiction of all, Daniel now thought as he took another swig of his beer. Pete
did
care. It was obvious that, deep down, Pete cared a great deal. The degree of the man's frustration hadn't been apparent until today, but since they'd come back from the afternoon patrol, he'd really opened up.

‘The whole attitude to the Aboriginal situation at Maralinga's been a farce from the start,' Pete continued as he dragged on his freshly lit Craven A. ‘It's a farce that they put up warning signs in English – we're dealing with people living in a primitive state, for Christ's sake! It's a farce when an idiot Pommie brigadier says if the natives have a complaint, they can
take it up with the government
– the Aboriginal population doesn't even have the vote in this country! It's a farce that Butement, the key liaison between the British organisers and the Australian backup team, warns us about
placing the affairs of a handful of natives above those of the British Commonwealth of Nations
!' His very words! God almighty, the man's our spokesman, he's supposed to be protecting this country! And that means the people in it. Except, of course, to him the blacks aren't people, are they?'

Pete downed the rest of his beer in one hit, aware that he'd allowed himself to get a bit carried away, which wasn't like him.

‘Ah, what the hell, there's bugger all a bloke can do,' he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘But Walter's right – we might as well declare war on the poor bastards.'

‘Who's Walter?'

‘My chief patrol officer, Walter McDougall – he lets the situation get to him a bit …'

He's not the only one, Daniel thought.

‘… I tell him not to. “Just obey the job instructions, mate,” I say. “Send the trucks out, locate the Aboriginal people in the region, communicate with them and tell them to move on. Even offer transport if they want it, you can't do more than that.” But, of course, as you saw today, locating them isn't easy. That's what worries Walter. What happens when the bombs go off? What do we do about the blackfellas then?'

The question seemed rhetorical, but surely, Daniel thought,
surely
there must be some form of answer to such a dire predicament.

‘What
do
you do, Pete?'

‘You pray, mate. That's what you do.'

Pete stubbed out his cigarette and stood, calling a halt to the conversation – he'd had enough for now. He liked young Dan, but he sensed the kid was an idealist, and conversations with idealists could be tiring. ‘My round,' he said, and he walked off to the bar where a line of privates from the catering corps stood stiffly in attendance with bottles on trays. White-jacketed and bow-tied, they looked like penguins, he thought. God, the army was a joke. As a senior government official, Pete had an open invitation to the officers' mess, but he preferred the hoi polloi of the beer garden himself.

Daniel was aware of Pete Mitchell's signals, which were eminently readable, and he had no intention of plaguing the man with further questions, but there was much he yearned to know. How did Pete come to
speak the black man's language? This was surely not something taught at university. Why did he pretend not to care when it was obvious that he did? To Daniel, Petraeus Mitchell seemed as mysterious and contradictory as the land itself.

 

Dearest Elizabeth,

This is the strangest place, a place of such contradictions. These early days of winter are as hot as any summer's day at home, yet the nights can be bitterly cold. The desert itself is both terrifying and serene, both ugly and beautiful – far more variable than one could ever have imagined – but even the most barren area's immensely overpowering …

 

Daniel wrote regularly to Elizabeth, always keeping his topics general, avoiding any specific description of the township or the site, knowing that the army would censor all mail. Possibly even incoming letters, he'd warned her before he'd left. They'd been told from the outset that security was paramount at Maralinga.

 

My darling, you will never guess the first thing I saw when I got off the plane,
he'd written the very evening he'd arrived.
The pathway leading up to the small airfield terminal where we were checked through immigration is lined with oleanders! Isn't that extraordinary? The army has landscaped the airport entrance to make us feel at home upon arrival, and apparently the oleander is one of the few flowering Mediterranean plants that will survive in this place. I must say, it worked for me – I felt very welcomed indeed. The
trees weren't in blossom as it's nearing winter, but they were the same rangy, leathery plants as those in your father's conservatory, rows and rows of them, and I recalled that first night when he gave me a lecture on the tenacity of the oleander. Do you remember? He was testing me. He knew that I loved you. And I do, Elizabeth. More than you could possibly imagine. Let me know that all is well, for if anything should happen I will be on the first plane home.