Territory (47 page)

‘You need some help running the household,' he said, ‘you're not getting any younger.'

‘No, sir, no help necessary.' Why did he think she needed help, Fran wondered. The young Mr Galloway would be going to Adelaide in less than two months and there would be just the two of them left in the house. She'd even been a little worried that Mr Galloway might dispense with her services.

‘Yes, I think it's a good idea,' Terence said taking a hefty swig at his drink. ‘A strong young woman who can share some of your burden, she can have the small bedroom near the back stairs. If there's anyone who comes to mind I'd be willing to consider your suggestions.'

Fran knew exactly what he meant. When she had taken up her position in the Galloway household eight years previously, she had rather hoped it might lead to a more intimate and binding relationship than that of a housekeeper. She'd soon realised, however, that she was too old for Mr Galloway, despite the fact that they were approximately the same age. The women who occasionally visited the house, and who Fran recognised as professionals at their trade, were young, not even thirty. Ah well, no matter, Mr Galloway paid well, and she was not worked too hard. But now he was seeking a companion. What a perfect opportunity for her niece, Fran thought.

‘I know someone, Mr Galloway,' she said.

‘Good. Send her along for an interview.'

When Kit came home from the library in the early evening he was surprised to find his father in a most convivial mood.

‘Want a beer?' Terence asked.

‘Sure. Thanks.'

‘I had a visit from Aggie Marshall today,' Terence said as he prised the top off the beer bottle.

Oh no, Kit thought. Aggie's visited and she's said that
I cried on her shoulder and he's as mad as hell and he's playing one of his games. Kit accepted the glass of beer and waited for all hell to break loose.

Terence stared into his freshly poured glass of Scotch and ice. It was the fifth he'd had, and he always poured stiff ones, but he never showed the effects.

‘I'm sorry, Kit,' he said, ‘I've been very hurtful.' He gently swirled the contents in the glass. The ice clinked and it was interesting to note the change in the colour of the alcohol as it melded. A pleasant distraction.

Kit stared at his father. He was saying he was sorry. Did he mean it? Had Aggie wrought such a miracle?

‘I should have shared my grief with you,' Terence said, studying the Scotch with interest as the melting ice slowly turned it into one shade of brown. ‘It was wrong of me.'

‘That's okay, Dad,' Kit said. Oh, thank you, Aggie, he thought.

The interesting swirls had gone now, and the Scotch was boring, the colour of weak cold tea. Terence looked up at his son, put down the glass and held out his arms. ‘Will you forgive me, Kit?'

The two men embraced.

His father was not a physical man, Kit knew that, and their embrace did not last long, but the relief he experienced was extraordinary. The war, the pain, the agony of his brother's death, all seemed to disappear as he felt Terence's arms around him.

Abhorrent as physical contact was to him, Terence had decided it was easier to embrace his son rather than look him in the eyes. As he felt Kit's body beneath the texture of the light cotton shirt, he was surprised at its strength and muscle development. The gangly youth had a strong man's body. And all Terence could think of was Malcolm. This should be Malcolm's body he was holding.

Terence broke free of the embrace as quickly as he could.

‘Thanks, Dad,' Kit said.

‘Yes, well, enough said. Another beer?'

‘I haven't even started this one.' It was enough, Kit thought, it was all he could expect, and he loved his father for the effort he'd made.

Terence couldn't wait for the day when Kit would leave for Adelaide. I hope to hell he stays there, he thought.

Jessica Williams didn't look black. Green-eyed and ginger-haired, she could have been Irish. Indeed she herself didn't know she was black until one day in early January. The day after her eighteenth birthday.

Born in 1950, Jessica had been taken from her black mother as a three-year-old and farmed out to a respectable white couple keen to adopt. Despite the protestations of her natural mother, the Western Australian Aboriginal welfare authorities carried out their duty, as was the custom of the day, in finding the half-caste infant a suitable environment in order that she might be easily assimilated into white society. Such standard practice was for the child's own good. It was to the advantage of all half-caste children that they be brought up as whites, the fact was common knowledge.

It was a shock to Jessica when she discovered she was adopted, although her adoptive parents said all the right things. When they'd found they couldn't have children, they'd been eager to adopt and they'd fallen in love with her the moment they first saw her, they said.

So what about her real parents, she asked. Who were they? Where did they come from?

Dr Williams, a medical practitioner and a sensible man, had discussed such confrontational questions often with his wife. Enid Williams was in agreement that they inform their daughter of her adoption, but not of the fact that her mother had been black.

‘And what do we say when she asks about her natural parents?'

‘We say we don't know anything about them,' Enid said, ‘which is true.'

But Grahame Williams disagreed and, when the time came, his wife reluctantly capitulated.

So, following the shock of discovery that she was adopted, Jessica was further confronted with the fact that her natural mother was black. It was a lot to take in all at once.

Grahame Williams told his daughter all that he could. Jessica's father had been a white drover on a cattle station near Onslow, and her mother a Yamatji woman. Her father had left his Aboriginal mistress shortly after their child was born and three years later Jessica had been taken from her mother by the area welfare officer on the instructions of the Western Australian Aboriginal welfare authorities. And that was as much as he knew.

Jessica was confused and bewildered. Her mother hugged her and told her how much they loved her, as she glared accusingly over her daughter's shoulder at her husband. She told Jessica that she mustn't let herself be upset by the facts, they didn't change anything. After all, she was still their darling girl, her life hadn't changed.

But her life had changed, Jessica thought as she lay in bed that night. She didn't doubt the love that she shared with her adoptive parents, but the facts had most certainly changed her life. They had changed who she was, who she had always perceived herself to be.

She became preoccupied. She stared at herself in the mirror, trying to come to terms with the truth. How could
she be black? She didn't look black. She didn't feel black. She didn't even know any black people. She and her parents lived in Claremont, one of the more fashionable suburbs of Perth, and no black people lived in Claremont. Occasionally, when she caught the train into the city she saw Aborigines hanging around the railway station. Usually dirty, sometimes drunk. Was that who she was? Her perception of black people, through her own ignorance and through reports she'd read in newspapers, was negative, she needed to know the truth. Jessica then became determined to find out everything she could about her background and her mother's people.

Enid Williams worried about her daughter's preoccupation with her new-found identity, and she blamed her husband. ‘We should never have told her,' she said. But Grahame, after his own initial misgivings at perhaps having opened a Pandora's box, was convinced that he had done the right thing. Jessica was a very intelligent young woman and, having obviously pondered her situation, was now asking questions and seemed bent on discovering her origins. Grahame would help his daughter in any way he could.

They came up against a brick wall with the Aboriginal welfare authorities, and no amount of insistence could alter the fact. It appeared the Williamses had no automatic right to trace Jessica's birth parents and, even if they had, it would prove ‘an impossibility', they were informed.

Jessica was shortly to attend the University of Western Australia. She'd had excellent results in her Leaving Certificate the previous year and could have enrolled in any number of courses, but she'd decided on an arts degree, majoring in English literature, although she wasn't sure to what end. She really had no idea what she wanted to do with her life.

The discovery of her adoption altered everything. She now had a purpose. After meeting with university faculty
advisers and discussing her reasons, she opted for an arts degree majoring in anthropology. The Chair of the newly created Department of Anthropology was Professor Ronald Berndt, a bald, pear-shaped man with milk-bottle lensed spectacles who puffed incessantly on a meerschaum pipe. His wife, Dr Catherine Berndt, was a senior lecturer and, in contrast to her husband, was a colourful woman with a bird's nest of grey hair and a penchant for hippie-style long floral dresses. They were a bizarre couple, but experts in their field, both specialising in Australian Aboriginal anthropology. The Berndts keenly encouraged Jessica on her journey of self-discovery.

From the outset, Dr Catherine Berndt became Jessica's inspiration. Catherine Berndt was, herself, passionate about her work and, during her many field trips over the years, she had so befriended the Aboriginal women that, in certain areas, she had been accepted into the very fabric of their society. Catherine found Jessica's background of great interest and promised that, upon the successful completion of her bachelor degree, Jessica could accompany her in the field as a research assistant.

Jessica's mother didn't at all approve of the turn her daughter's life was taking.

‘She's become obsessed,' Enid said. ‘It's not healthy.'

‘Of course it is, it's the best thing that could have happened to her.' As his wife shook her head in obvious disagreement, Grahame continued before she could interrupt. ‘She's found a direction, my dear. She's enjoying university, she's finding it stimulating. Vastly preferable to stumbling through an arts course with no idea where it's taking her. This will lead to a whole new career, I couldn't be happier.'

Enid, who had been quite content ‘stumbling' through her own arts course and meeting the young medical student she was to marry, had presumed Jessica would follow suit. University was an excellent introduction
agency through which one could meet the right marital prospect, what was wrong with that? Enid hadn't really considered that Jessica would embark upon a ‘career' as such.

Enid Williams didn't lack intelligence. To the contrary she was a bridge player of championship standard, the one extra-curricular activity she allowed herself. In the meantime, she was an excellent cook, hostess, bookkeeper and mother. Like many of her ilk, Enid was a professional housewife, and very good at her job, as her husband fully appreciated. But Grahame Williams knew that Jessica's quest of discovery would give her a much broader life.

He was right. Jessica thrived at university. She loved her studies and was an excellent student. And the more she learned of Aboriginal lore and culture, the more she found herself personally responding to her new-found knowledge. It was as if in unearthing the ancient mysteries of her people she was unearthing her true identity.

Through the university ‘hippie' set who, in between anti-war protests and ban-the-bomb demonstrations, keenly affiliated themselves to minority groups with a cause, she discovered the newly formed Aboriginal Arts Society. A small self-funded group, the society worked out of a modest hall in West Perth where they exhibited Aboriginal crafts and paintings and performed ceremonial dances accompanied by the clapping sticks and the didgeridoo.

Most importantly for Jessica, the society was a meeting place. It was through the society that she discovered, not only Aborigines with a pride in their culture, but several like herself, deprived of their heritage, keen to discover their origins and their people.

Jessica Williams was a popular, pretty girl with a wicked throaty laugh and a delicious sense of humour. She made friends with ease, which was unusual in a student who so excelled academically. Most of those who topped their courses each year, as she did, were bookish types devoted
to their studies. Jessica lived a gregarious existence and yet maintained a passion for her work, a balance which was enviable to many of her fellow students.

She completed her bachelor degree and applied to do an honours year, and in the summer of late 1971, upon the completion of her honours, she accompanied Catherine Berndt as a research assistant in the field.

Catherine's field trip, tracing the myth of the Rainbow Serpent through the valleys and plateaus of the Murchison and Gascoyne Rivers, started out in the coastal region of mid-Western Australia, and it was here that Jessica finally found herself in the area of the Yamatji people. Her mother's people.

After four years' intensive academic study, Jessica felt an instant and personal sense of oneness with the land of her ancestors. Her mentor, Catherine Berndt, was furthermore an inspiration as, in their four wheel drive vehicle, they traced the routes of ancient campsites from one waterhole to another, Catherine pointing out the middens where piles of shells and refuse remained as evidence of meals shared possibly hundreds of years previously.

They spent several days at an Aboriginal mission near Gascoyne Junction and there Catherine, in her customary manner, joined in the women's corroborees, and sat comfortably amongst them by the fireside ashes, playing with their children.

Jessica met with tribal elders who were initially a little wary of the pretty young white woman with the flame-coloured hair. What did she want of them? They quickly discovered that she knew a great deal of their culture and deeply respected it and, upon the further discovery that she was one of their own, they were generous in their recognition and acceptance. They showed her the sacred sites allowed to women, and she listened to their stories of the Dreaming which, coming from the mouths of the elders, took on a different perspective altogether to
the essays of anthropologists and university tutorials. They discussed tribal culture with her, as much as was permitted to be discussed with a woman, and they showed her rock paintings which had existed for centuries.

The paintings were stark white and simple in design. Jessica knew from her studies that the inland Murchison people used white kaolin clay for their paintings, and she was familiar with the imprints of hands, and with the circular swirls of the water symbol. But there was one recurring design which puzzled her. Several of the paintings depicted an oval shape, within which was a mountain peak reaching towards a vibrant sun.

But there were no mountains in this region. Why would the Aborigines paint a mountain when there were none? Jessica discussed it with Catherine, who was equally mystified. Was it related to some story of the Rainbow Serpent myth about which they were unaware? But the elders assured them the picture was not related to the Rainbow Serpent. The paintings had been there for a very long time, they said. On their travels, particularly to the north-east desert region, around the campsites of the Oakover River, and even out to the hills and valleys of the Rudall River, the Yamatji had seen other drawings of such a symbol, but they knew nothing of its origins.

In one painting Jessica pointed out to Catherine the oval shape was hanging about the neck of a man. Was it some form of religious token? But then, as the two women agreed, the Aborigines did not wear religious tokens. Fascinated, Jessica took photographs of the oval object which appeared in the paintings. Dependent upon the results of her honours year, she intended to apply for a masters degree, in which event she would investigate the symbol further in the field trips she hoped to make during the following two years.