The Book of Emmett (7 page)

To some, Australia is Europe distilled, but to Emmett Brown, it's just distance. And that is its strength. The Browns emerged from the round-shouldered question mark British Isles about 180 years ago and settled into the width of Australia, bringing every single one of their bad habits with them.

The small Scottish island in the chilly North Sea was steep with rocks and rich in sky and they stepped onto the great southern land with many reservations.

For one thing, the vastness really bothered them. The scale was all wrong. Everything was way too big. The sky and the sea and even the fish were huge. And it must be admitted that the trees with their tattered drooping leaves were a sore disappointment, though it was also true that back on the island their own trees had long since been felled for warmth and money.

Puzzled, amazed and isolated, not one of them expected to love this country but there was nothing left in Scotland – the highland clearances had seen to that. They had been turfed out of their own country by their English landlords and replaced with sheep.

They expected to tolerate this place, to eat and maybe even to make some money (they never did manage that) but then, somehow, love grew in their bones like a secret, at first quietly and then wildly and randomly it grew within each of their hearts until it reached Emmett Brown and in him, love of place culminated. Australia is his first belief.

‘Wouldn't mind going over to Pommy land one day,' Emmett declares one evening stretching back on the chair and balancing lightly, a long man lounging on a small chair in a narrow room. ‘Just to check up on those bastards who wanted to get rid of us so bad they kicked us out of their puny little runt of an island. Bloody Poms, can you credit them?' He laughs, comes upright with a thud and takes a pull of his tall golden beer. There's an art to pouring a beer and the Brown kids know it. They poured this one to perfection, a small head and the beer, the aspic clear of amber.

Tonight he's in a positive mood and possibly a reflective one, even on the subject of politics. The children are gathered again and know they must keep the mood where it is. Must not let it drop. They are the audience to his life and while not the ones he would have chosen, they'll do. Louisa is caught dithering in the kitchen and is frozen there, not knowing when or if to move.

Emmett is explaining to the kids that he doesn't actually hate many people he knows but there are exceptions among those he doesn't – the Poms, well, the toffs anyway, and then, chiefly anyone associated with the Liberal Party, particularly that old bastard Menzies and the low-life, Bolte. Both eternally unforgiven.

Louisa edges over. Rob sees her and gives a small mean smile. Emmett is rocking again and slams the chair down. ‘What the fuck are you up to Louisa? Sneaking and skulking around. Get over here now.'

He reaches her and pushes her and she skids into the table and bangs her head on the corner. She finds her seat and sits down, the room seems to have shifted and she's having trouble seeing. She ought to have gone to the toilet and the knowledge of the pressing fullness of her bladder inches into her. Her mother, holding a smiling Daniel, reaches over and pats her arm. Rob stifles a laugh.

Emmett continues telling them that he hates snobs of any sort. Though they also know that he can be contrary because he admires people he thinks are classy. He's not mad on people who drive newer cars than his and he hates all bosses, but that's a matter of course, a simple routine hate, one most people would go along with.

He hates
World of Sport,
a Sunday afternoon football program and a universal favourite, a show where footballers are encouraged to act like idiots and give out hams and bottles of orange juice to other, younger footballers; but again this isn't a major hate, it's more of a niggle really.

Louisa wants to lay her throbbing head down but that would be fatal. She fears she might be sick. The need to wee grows. She holds on hard.

Her father's big hates, he declares, are reserved for Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung because they got communism off the rails and ruined a perfectly good idea. The Vietnam War is a bad mistake because the Yanks went poking their noses in where they did not belong. ‘Helpful Joneses,' he ruminates, falling back on one of his favourite negatives, ‘ought to leave bloody people alone.' Still, he has a soft spot for that American bloke Kennedy even though he really got them into the Vietnam War with his meddling but then the poor bugger got his head blown off, so there you go.

Around the table the kids and Anne listen to Emmett. They smile and think of dashing for the door. No one dares, not even Rob.

On the wall behind Emmett is a pale map of Australia and each state is a pastel colour. He's been to all of them but can most easily be encouraged to rave about Western Australia. The ochre deserts and the scrub alive with wildlife and the engulfing sky and the white white sand and even the sea which is vastly superior to any other sea in the world. It's definitely bluer. Yep, there's something sacred about the west.

That Australia is God's Own Country has been explained to them many times. They know it. And when he tells them in detail about the high country in Victoria with snowgums the colour of bones and wallabies the size of cats, they feel proud. But the wonders have not ended. In Queensland there are houses built on stilts to catch the low cool air as it drifts and eddies under them like the currents of the sea. Could you credit that?

Emmett's love for Australia is based on the idea that this is the country for the worker, and so the fairest place in the world for the ordinary man. He believes you don't need to be rich to live well here and rejoices that there's no poxy aristocracy. He applauds free education and hospitals, and that he believes there should be more and better of both is neither here nor there. A quibble.

Louisa is sitting very straight and listening hard, holding the wee in but now she feels it happening before she can stop it. Oh no, she realises in an emptying moment, she's wetting herself. She feels betrayed, because it started so slow and then sneakily gathered hot speed. She cannot believe it. She's too old for this. Far too old. Shame has her in its sticky grip. Rob has noticed and checked out the puddle beneath her and she thinks wildly, overwhelmed by disgust for herself and aiming it straight at her brother, that he'd just better watch out. Suddenly she's had it with him and his smirking ways.

‘And speaking of dead leaders,' says Emmett, oblivious to Louisa's puddle, ‘when Harold Holt the Australian Prime Minister disappeared swimming off a rough beach in Victoria I knew immediately what had happened. Shark,' he announces as if he's top brass and takes a tug at his beer. ‘No bloody doubt about it. Great White, I dare say. Still, he wouldn't have felt a damn thing.'

Sharks are always an attention-grabber around the table. Each of the kids has a deep-seated terror of them although none has ever seen one. The thought of the suddenness of a shark attack, and the power of it, works through them.

‘Excuse me Dad, have you ever seen one, a shark?' Daniel asks, his eyes luminous.

‘I have my boy, many a time, but mostly when they are swinging by their tails on the pier,' he says and roars laughing. ‘The shark is a short-sighted creature and he senses movement in the water. Nothing personal when a shark takes you, he's just cleaning up.'

Why do sharks take people rather than eat them? Rob wonders, but it's best not to interrupt. Louisa squirms. The warmth has left the piss and the cold stinging has begun on her poor red legs. She prays no one else notices the puddle. Rob picks some snot from his nose, rolls it sneakily on his leg and flicks it at her under the table and it sticks to her leg. She wearily brushes it away.

Emmett often pauses in his stories and waits and scans the kids individually like a conductor eyeing the orchestra. He uses time to make sure they are paying the correct amount of attention and then, after holding the pause for longer than you'd think he could, he begins. Sometimes he seems full of life and happiness. This is when their hearts really sink. The story of the Balts is one where he shows himself off.

‘I was there at twenty or so, helping out the Balts in the reffo camps in WA. The Balts were the poor old refugee bastards who'd been kicked out of Europe after a war; truth is, they're always having one war or another over there.

‘They are all mad in Europe, let me tell you that for nothing, bloody stark raving mad, but that's the Europeans for you, hopeless, that's why they have to come here to get some peace and bloody quiet in this wide brown land of ours. This is the best country on earth,' he says sternly, ‘and don't ever let anyone tell you anything else.

‘Anyway the reffos, they were nice people. One of them taught me how to cook, she was a woman named Rina, and she was from somewhere Baltic, somewhere cold and grey, coastal lands, I think, by the sea.

‘The strange thing was that they all spoke German as well as their own personal language. They taught me a few words of it and I picked it up pretty damn fast, “Sehr Gut”, you know what that means?' he bellows and burps and sounds exactly like Sergeant Shultz on tele. They say nothing.

He thinks it's weak of the kids to be ignorant but he lets it pass. ‘I cooked their tucker; they liked lots of sausage and potato. I liked it too. There was a woman who was very nice to me, I told you about her though, didn't I?'

Emmett stares off a bit and the kids know that this is just a ruse, that he's concentrating on the story and on them and should they lapse in their listening, things can change fast, the shark can rise from the depths. They stay tuned in to the story.

‘One night they sent me over to get a start on tea for them in the big kitchen and I did, started sweating off some onions and garlic and I just got going. Initiative, that's what you need in life kids, I'm telling you.

‘Simple initiative and I had it, piles of it. Trouble is, the pot I'd picked turned out to be lead-based and I damn-near killed nine Balts. How was I to bloody know it was lead? They weren't very forgiving and I lost the job in the camps. Came home not long after that and met your mother not much further along the road. So it all worked out for the best.'

He takes a deep swig and sighs. ‘Things work out, usually, they work right out...'

They've heard this story so many times before. Still, they sit listening, holding onto the relief of the story. This is a good night with Emmett. Good nights come and they go, but while you are in a good one, you try to stretch it.

The map of Australia tilts on the wall as if it too is drunk. The light in the room is beer-stained yellow and there is a furry film of dust clinging to the sweaty wall and the smell of Louisa's puddle of piss is becoming unmissable.

She focuses on green Tasmania, the diamond island, and a place away from here.

She's always known that time is elastic. Bad times take so long but the good times slip away like a piece of wind and here it is again.

The change from good to bad can be instant because bad things happen faster. Rob usually messes it up. He will tonight, that much is clear. He is already not paying enough attention and teasing her about the pee and if you want to keep Emmett going, keep him in the good zone, telling the good stories, you have to pay attention. Is it so hard?

She pinches Rob on the thigh, just to warn him, to get him to focus, but she must have pinched too hard, she does have a mean streak, everyone says so, and here it is again, revealed.

It turns out the pinch is the wrong thing to do and Rob belts her and Emmett slams the table and the knives and forks (which are still on the table even after tea because there is no clearing away when he is in the good zone) scatter, and here it is, everysinglething spoiled. Ruined by Louisa herself and, she thinks, fuming, also by Rob. Always Rob.

They jump up in unison, rise as if they are levitating. ‘If you little bastards can't concentrate, then you can bloody leave the table right now!'

He leans towards them and the trick is to escape the moment without being hooked on it and stopped. Louisa gets up but the mess is there and she's caught in the fear of the puddle.

She thinks she's being meek but she mustn't be meek enough because he smacks her face and her teeth cut the inside of her cheek and a tide of salty blood rises in her mouth and then she slips on the pool of urine. The twins are running everywhere and Anne is saying, ‘No. Please, please.'

Rob cops a belt that sends him staggering into the wall. ‘I'll give you ungrateful little smart-arses a taste of manners!'

Emmett hates them now. His voice has snagged on itself. His eyes are narrow. In his hand still resting on the table he grips the glass. A wave of beer slops forward like an amber sea and spills and this makes him worse. Louisa has slipped again and is under the table, hiding.

He's gone from being dark on them to insanely angry in a sentence. ‘When I was a kid!...' he yells, swiping and grabbing at them, ‘you have no idea what pain is...!' Louisa crawls out. He wants to go after the three boys as they back away from him. Time has stopped.

Bravely she dashes forward, covering her head with her hands, legs red from the piss, and catches up to the boys. Tears and blood. Later, she decides that the rules you have to follow to live this life are many and complicated but the first rule is head down.

Maybe if she were smarter, but there it is, plain to see, she's just not smart enough. They keep the sound of their tears down because they don't want things getting worse. Emmett throws his glass at the wall and at this moment they run away to the hedge.

The twins sleep in her bed that night. They hear their father slamming around in the kitchen for a long time. Is their mother all right? The sounds of the night.

Walking to the primary school down the long bluestone lanes that run behind their houses, they stretch their steps to land on the highest blocks. Mostly they stick to the lanes.

People's back fences always tell better stories than their neat front fences and it feels safer in the lane and even the weather feels better, cooler in summer and warmer in winter. The lanes are their highways. Full of old bike tyres and knots of rubbish that can yield anything, including the occasional rat.

But the Browns don't often walk together and sometimes they even seem to hate each other. Maybe they remind each other of their old man. Their life at Wolf Street is the weight behind everything. When they are out, by accord, they pretend home doesn't exist. They know other kids' fathers are rough and some are alcos too but they think the world believes that their own is normal and they want to keep the illusion going.

Still, down the lanes they walk, laced with the sense of each other being close by, if not too close. They spread out with Frank the dog in the lead, then comes Rob and Louisa, and the twins, together even when they're stepping around dog turds and under passionfruit vines, straggle along behind.

One day Louisa is coming last in the little procession down the lane. There's been yet another fight with Rob over his treatment of the twins. Strange, she thinks, how they make up with him more easily, even though she's been the one protecting them, and while she's mulling over this strangeness, Louisa is confronted by a man looming before her.

His mouth is open, his pants are down around his ankles and he's pulling at his white stalk of a thing, his red footy socks glowing. In that moment, it seems he wants something from her and she is stunned and she realises the lapse has come again, the moment between action and inaction, and she stands there shocked, waiting to be released from her own fear.

When the moment comes, she gets past him as fast as all speed but the laughing man with the big open mouth and the loose eyes haunts her. And as she runs all the way to school, she sees that whatever this is, it's not personal, it has nothing to do with who she is, it's just
what
she is that matters.

Though he's wildly fascinated, Rob pretends not to believe a word she says. ‘Tell me again about the socks and about his dick, about his eyes,' he says, sitting on the back step that hot afternoon and when she does, and he laughs so much, she thinks he might choke. He loves such stories about anything seamy and enjoys seeing her embarrassed. It's not that funny but who else is there to tell?

When it rains, the troughs in the middle of the lanes run with grey water. The kids straddle them casually. Sometimes other kids push out into the lane from flimsy gates and join them on their way. Rarely a car might want to pass.

Frank sometimes deliberately stops to rouse up dogs behind fences and their fits of barking get him a nudge in the guts and a warning to get moving. ‘Get on Frankie, get on,' they'll say as they move forward like shepherds towards a paddock.

When Peter, with a stick in his hand and a bag on his back, remarks to Louisa that he wishes he could just go somewhere else. ‘I want to live where no one can get you,' he says. ‘Where is that Lou? Where can no one get you? Is it London?'

She looks at his lightly freckled face. Like Daniel's but not identical, she always thinks he's smarter than Dan. She's holding Daniel's hand which is red with chilblains and she says, ‘There's nowhere Pete that I can think of that's safe except maybe being a grown-up, reckon that might be where you get safe, but that's not really a place is it, little mate?'

Homewards the journey is much the same. Frank waits outside Mr Hessian's shop. This is where, if there's any money, they call in to buy a Redskin or some other durable lolly. When they see each other in the street or at Hessian's they act casual, as if they are strangers, and they never share lollies though they might swap, sometimes even generously, if the mood takes them, and if it doesn't, it's no skin off anyone's nose. Walking home, they stretch out, watch the cobalt sky with clouds like trailing smoke, chew their Redskins and take as long getting there as they can. No one ever wants to be first home.

Frank walks on ahead, carelessly leaps low fences and craps on scraps of lawn. When he does, the kids don't know him. Up the sideway into the fernery is the worst part and their scalps tighten as the alertness locks in. When they get there, they suss the joint out. Is he home? Second one home always whispers the same question, what's the mood? The answer varies.

He might be there and then, how will he be that day? Quietly, they take their bags and hope to pass through into the passageway that leads to the bedroom. Even after all these years, smoke from the fire still clothes the passage walls. Leftover smoke that can never bear to leave this home of theirs.

They pray the mood is good because when Emmett needs to be alone not much will save them. Wander past and they risk a swipe that will leave them bruised.

The Browns are hidden children. Mostly good at school though Rob teeters on the edge of delinquency. How far can you go? he wonders. The differences between home and school taunt him. It's amazing how daring a boy can be at school compared to home. How far can he go? Pretty damned far, it seems.

He touches his teacher Miss Summer's bum as she bends over in front of him one day and is strapped for it, both at school and by Emmett, which is far worse. But while they regularly refer to him as insolent in the staffroom, not many of the staff think about pushing things further. The boy often has a subdued quality that seems against his nature. There's something strange there, something broken.

Louisa, Daniel and Peter are quiet, attentive and grateful to be at school; like children of a cult, they are sworn to secrecy. They are no trouble, eyes guarding privacy and always keeping the distance between other people and themselves.

They walk the world with secrets nailed to their hearts. Images of their mother being slammed into a wall and of seeing her head held above a boiling pot of food are seared into them. Crying is a matter of course in their house. Things they do not want others to know determine the way they are.

And they hide the truth of Emmett carefully. Sometimes other kids at school notice, perhaps they see the bruise on Rob's neck where he'd picked him up ... there are always clues and other kids understand without words.

Ronnie Whitehead, a pale boy with honey eyes, sits beside Louisa during lunch for a week after her face and eye are bruised. Ronnie's kindness feels like a life raft, or pieces of bread left out in a fairy story. He gives her a way to not feel alone. He shares his geography book when she leaves hers at home, doesn't say anything, just pushes it between them.

The ones whose fathers terrorise them are a club. And though they hug the secret of themselves tight, they don't need to feel ashamed because all this cruelty, well it's just tradition. Just fathers handing on the past.