Chapter1  :  The Undesirables.

‘William,’ I asked, ‘what do your people call this town?’

He squinted and rubbed his cheek. ‘We call it Warrallama. It means, The place where the white bastards put their town.’

Mine is an Old Australian family.  The family that moved in next door is nevertheless much older.  I saw them arrive, emptying from a taxi:  the man wore a football jumper, his wife a kind of asbestos overcoat, a child grafted to her hip.  Tiny genitals hung from the child.  I told my wife.

‘Oh dear,’ she sighed, filling her earphones with Mozart.

We live quite comfortably in half an acre of rolling house.  There are times, watching the ivy and rosebushes through our soft-curtained windows, when we could almost be in England. Almost.

Some nights the air is ablaze with voice:  ‘By Jeez, I’ll give you such a clip!’  ‘Pack’t up, yous kids!’  Radios whinge.  ‘Don’t you lock that bathroom door, Gary!’ A smell of grilled thongs drifts in.

‘Oh God,’ says Penni, my wife, arranging her face to suggest fatigue.

Beyond our lawn, their front yard seethes, dense as jungle. Penni frets about bushfires, snakes. Some nights, the wind beating at our windows, she imagines them out there. The neighbours. Crouched beyond the yellow pool of our kitchen light, watching us. Bare shoulders among the lupins, rabid with blood lust. Knives flickering in the trees.

‘Warwick’s concerned about our neighbours, she said once over dinner.

‘I’m concerned?!’

‘My dear, tell me all,’ said our guest.

‘They’re ethnic. We rarely see them.’

‘How interesting!’ elegant nose poised, facial decor set.

‘We think they may be full-blood.’

‘How fabulous,’ a tinkle of musical jewelry.

‘We’ve decided to keep to ourselves.’

‘Very wise.’

Some evenings they light fires in their back yard. Penni sits on the patio, guarding the fence, waiting for a picket to go. The space like a missing tooth, quivers with flame. I think she sees herself as an American pioneer, wagon train surrounded, the air alive with flaming arrows, possessions ablaze; loved ones scorched, raped. ‘Their yard’s on fire,’ she said.

‘Oh, I see.’

‘You see?!’

‘Penni, it’s their yard!’

A car began to grow in their front lupins. It didn’t grow much, but then I never saw anyone water it.

‘I suppose I should visit them,’ I said. ‘Be a little neighbourly.’

‘Are you mad?’ she asked, planting a cigarette in her face.

‘Is that a rhetorical question?’

‘Oh Warwick!’ She stood. All her family come in six-foot lengths, and use them to effect. ‘Do mind your own business!’

‘Me?! You’re telling me?! Really, as their Christian minister, I really ought … ‘

‘Good God! C’est tres ridicule.’ She likes the effect of French words on her mouth.  ‘Tres ridicule!’ she repeated, banging the bathroom door.  It’s where she retreats after putting her foot down.  She’s a stickler for cleanliness.  As a child she had every illness her parents could afford.

I sat and unlatched my clerical collar.  My back-to-front harness. Up under the jaw, it prints a neat red line. ‘It gives you authority,’ Penni says.

‘Gives or lends?’

I signed a few cheques she’d left on my desk. She doesn’t bother me with the trivia of Church accounts. Money.

*

We live in the “old” part of Town, on the coast. Around us, immaculate lawns cling to the skin of the land. There is some sand. It haunts the streets, a fine orange mist, whispering across lawns, carpets, our hair, our beds, into every orifice. ‘I cannot abide this wind!’ shouts Penni, slamming down a window. She braves the streets like a Bedouin in scarf, sunglasses, gloves, a mist of sand snapping at her heels.

‘I’ll retire soon,’ I say.

‘I might be dead.’ She peels off her gloves. ‘We’ve been out of the City too long, Warwick. You’ve done your bit.’

‘It’s not so bad here.’

‘You see? It addles the brain. ‘

‘Nonsense.’

But driving up the coast, I notice my car drifting like a tiny aircraft. The land is a sky, red and kilometres high, cloudless. I try to sing; practise saying my name and address. I creep at last into a garage. ‘What’s up, pal?’

I point into the car. ‘My radio. It doesn’t work.’

He studies my eyes, nods. ‘Go into the shop, champ. Watch a bit a TV. You’ll be right.’

*

Someone is giving the front door the beating of its life. I flick off the reading light and listen. Whoever is there really hates doors. Short jabs have given way to a welter of uppercuts, left hooks and king-hits. I imagine some fancy footwork out there on our welcome mat. There is a kind of pattern to it, like someone trying to make contact along plumbing.

‘Oh God,’ sighs Penni. ‘You’d better intervene.’

A man stands panting under the verandah light. ‘G’day.’ Hair leaks from his face and overalls. ‘I’m William.’ He offers a kiln-fired fist.

‘How do you … ‘

‘From next door.’ He points behind him. ‘Could I use your phone, Rev’rend?’

‘What for?’

‘To ring up.’

I think of Penni, her face already greased for bed, her hair strapped up for the night. ‘No. Sorry.’

He flexes his brow. ‘Well, could you change a fiver for me?’ He flashes the note.

‘I’m afraid not.’

He examines the corpse of his fiver. ‘Righto.’ His forehead buckles. He stands sanding his cheek with one palm, as if someone has hit him in the jaw.

‘Is it important?’

‘Yeah.’ He puts one leg forward. A child is attached at the knee. ‘She wants to talk to her sick grandma.’ The child gazes up. Its eyes are like pebbles of chocolate shining in cream.

‘I suppose…’

‘Ta, Rev’rend.’ He lurches across the carpet, the child causing a slight limp. ‘G’day, missus.’

Penni leaps up, clutching her throat.

‘The little girl,’ I explain, ‘wants to speak to her grandmother. She’s sick.. The grandmother.’

Penni blinks rapidly. ‘I’m afraid she’s not here.’

‘On the blower, missus.’

‘Where?’

He takes the receiver by the throat, sinks into the lounge. ‘What number’s Long Distance?’

‘How long?’

‘Kalgoorlie.’

I explain, and my voice seems to be coming from a long way off; perhaps Darwin.

While he phones, the child squats on the lounge. It picks hungrily at a toenail. Twin candles dangle from its nose.

I look at Penni. Her neck is at full stretch, and there is a thin incision where her lips normally are. One elbow rests on the chair arm, her wrist poised like a cobra. I catch her eye, but drop it immediately. There is something nasty in it.

‘Thanks for the phone, Rev’rend.’

‘That’s ah, alright,’ I say.

‘It’s real white of y’.’ He offers the fiver. Penni lifts its crumpled body onto a table as if it is a dead mouse.

‘Been here long?’ He starts to build himself a cigarette.

‘Too long,’ Penni says, clenching her jowls.

‘Fifteen years,’ I say.

‘Yeah?’ He lights the cigarette and spins the match into the fireplace. It lands on the bar heater. ‘That sure beats us.’ He leans forward studying the cigarette, his skin the colour of oiled teak. A blood vessel is scribbled on each temple. His eyebrows form a verandah of bone.

Penni takes a deep, businesslike breath. ‘Well… ‘

‘Are you from Kalgoorlie?’ I ask.

He looks up. His eyes are like polished jasper. ‘I dunno for sure. We was tourists.’

‘Oh. You toured, did you?’ asks Penni. She opens a book and takes a cigarette from it.

‘Too right.’ He flicks some ash into his hand. ‘Direc’ly we toured to one place, we hadda tour t’ some place else.’

She lights her cigarette with a small silver pistol. ‘And why was that?’

‘I suppose it was interesting, as a child,’ I say.

He looks at his own child. ‘Int’restin’. Yeah.’ He draws on his cigarette as if it’s blocked, ‘… int’restin’,’ breathes out smoke. He ashes into his hand again.

Penni slides an ashtray towards him. It is a favourite of hers, made in the shape of a human foot. ‘Does your daughter go to school, Mr…er..?’

He files the ash in his top pocket. ‘Yeah. Lotsa times.’

He sits on the lounge like someone crouched to take off. His body is rounded and withdrawn, as if he’s been tied up and rolled down a hill. He has that pulverised look his people sometimes get.

Penni leans forward. ‘We are a quiet family ourselves, Mr… er… We live a very private life here. You know?’

‘Nice paintin’,’ he says pointing at the wall behind us. ‘I like a nice paintin round the house.’

We twist to look. ‘Yes. It’s Van Gogh’s “The Gypsy Camp”.’

He studies the print for some moments, sluicing his lips in and out. Then he takes careful inventory of the commemorative china, the glass figurines, and some conversation pieces we rarely speak about.

‘Are you from Sothebys, Mr. Er… ?’

‘Penni! ‘

‘Do you like art?’

‘’ken oath.’

‘Ken who?’

He draws on his cigarette, assessing its artistic qualities, his eyes hidden in their dark crevices like night animals. From his shredded overalls, his face emerges like a bruised fist. It is the face, I realise, of poverty. I know: I’ve seen documentaries, attended seminars.

‘Are you working?’ I ask.

He winces bravely. ‘Yeah. Mostly.’

‘Do you need anything?’

I sense Penni’s chair grinding on its rollers.

‘Er …’ The wince vanishes. Such is the elastic nature of flesh. ‘Well, yeah.’ He scratches his raw cheek. ‘Could you lend us a hammer? I’m puttin’ wallpaper in me shed.’

Penni fires off a quick cough. ‘I’m afraid we don’t have a hammer.’ Her neck is up again, her eyebrows hovering like eagles.

‘Yes, darling. I saw one just yesterday.’

All the flesh in her face seems to squeeze towards her eyes. ‘I’m sure you’re wrong. Darling.’

‘I’ll go and check.’

On the back verandah, I find the hammer. Penni fills the doorway. ‘Warwick. Put that hammer down.’

‘These are our neighbours, Penni.’

‘What?!’

‘Shh.’

‘God!’ she whispers.

‘I mean, he’s not a bad bloke.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘We should be generous. As Christians. Surely … ‘

‘What?!’ She stretches for the hammer. ‘To give away our property?’

‘I’m not giving it away.’

‘You imagine this hammer will come back?’ Her mouth clamps onto a smile.

I squeeze the hammer: it is strangely heavy, an instrument I rarely use these days. When did I last repair something, build something? I don’t have the head for numbers.

‘Warwick,’ she steps back, and her ‘Warwick’ smacks me on the chin. ‘No more. You hear me?’ She spins and clumps away.

I stare at my limp hammer. The head is like thin plasticine, the handle melting into the cracks of my hand.

‘Sorry. We don’t have a hammer,’ I tell William.

‘No problem, Rev’rend.’ He smiles with several good teeth. ‘I’m real grateful, anyhow.’ He stands, and the child locks onto his knee. ‘You’re a good bloke. You too, missus.’

Penni nods graciously.

At the door, we shake hands like the leaders of two great nations. Again I am drawn into the recess of his eyes, the strange familiar place there.  I slip his fiver into his hand.  ‘I’ll visit you, sometime.’

His eyes wince. ‘Yeah.  Why not?’

Back inside, Penni has retired to the bathroom, I pour an eyeglass of sherry, and recline.  Around me, the loungeroom lets out its breath. I watch some of the more vulnerable art pieces withdraw their claws and return to postures of delicate balance. So fragile.