Prue Hawkins tugged at a pla ti of dread-locked black hair, pushing it under her straw hat. She was an eye-catching girl, not tall, not short, but sinewy, much like an athlete.
Merryn, sprawled on the grass a little further away from the main group, nibbled the last of her tasteless devon meat sandwich and threw the crust on the ground for the magpies. Carefully, she put the greaseproof paper back in her lunchbox, took a swig from her steel water bottle, and heaved herself off the ground.
Leaning down, she took off her boots, slipped her shirt over her head, and stepped out of her red shorts. Underneath she was wearing a blue one-piece swimsuit. She walked to the edge of the water unaware of the male apple pickers’ eyes on her lithe body. The water was cool, but she had known it colder. She waded out through the rushes and plunged under the surface. Swimming over arm, she was soon on the other side of the waterhole. She wiped the water from her eyes and gazed across to where the rest of the pickers were sitting and saw Michael walking up through the long grass to the orchard. With the smallest of effort, she flipped on her back and lay there relishing the hot sun on her already brown face.
‘Five minutes,’ Prue called.
Turning turtle onto her stomach, Merryn swam breaststroke to the shore and clambered out between the rushes. Not waiting for her swimsuit to dry, she dressed again, pulled on her boots, tucked her wet hair under her cloth hat, and stepped over to Prue. Together they walked up the small incline, past the lavender hedge surrounding the derelict convict cottage on the rise, hidden under a mass of tangled rose bushes and thick wisteria vines. A little further on, they climbed over the white wooden gate to the orchard, where they hitched a lift on the back of a tractor to the top of the long row of heavily laden apple trees.
Merryn had met the unconventional Prue when she came grape picking at Wattle Creek, the O’Neill’s small vineyard in the Hunter Valley. Prue had just finished her political history course at the ANU. As Merryn had decided she wanted a year off after finishing high school, Prue had talked her into joining her in Tassie to pick apples for a month.
Merryn had jumped at the opportunity. Yet in her second week of apple picking, she wasn’t so sure it was such a great idea. She loved the outdoors, and the rest of the group was good fun, but she had no idea it would be so gruelling, not to mention monotonous. Yet Merryn was used to working hard, having picked an entire vineyard of grapes with her father one year.
Prue put her hand up to shield her face from the sun. She called across the tree to Merryn. ‘My brother Jake’s coming down next week. Can you believe the bastard’s gone and got himself accepted into Duntroon?’
Merryn stretched out to grab a huge Granny Smith. Mechanically, she placed it on top of the other apples in her canvass satchel. ‘I didn’t know you had a brother. You’ve never mentioned him.’
Prue heaved her satchel onto the top step of the ladder and shifted her gaze into middle distance. ‘We don’t see each other much,’ she said, tossing a sweat soaked dreadlock over her bare shoulder. ‘Not on the same side of thinking, if you know what I mean. He reckons I’m sort of off. Bit way out for his liking. But he’s got a mate, Sid, in Hobart who I went out with a few times.’ She grinned. ‘He’s a nice enough guy...we’re still friends. Jake’s coming over to see him. Sid rang to see if they could come down here. He’s organized it with Michael. They’re to stay in the pickers’ quarters with us. Help us pick for a week or so ... then they’re off to Surfers.’ She hurled a hail-damaged Granny Smith to the ground. ‘Jake was at uni doing architecture...threw it in when he got accepted into the army. What a waste!’
‘You don’t agree then? With the army, I mean,’ Merryn said.
‘With all his talent and the heaps of things he could have done,’ Prue told her heatedly, taking an angry bite out of an apple, ‘how the hell could he choose to inflict war and pillage on innocent human beings...because mark my words, it won’t be long before Australia will be in Vietnam too. You just wait and see.’
‘Oh,’ Merryn said. ‘I didn’t think the Americans had much option.’
‘Like hell they didn’t.’ Prue’s voice moved up a semi tone. ‘One day I’ll take you to one of our meetings. That’ll open up your innocent brown eyes. Anyway,’ she went on, pulling at the leather strap holding her satchel, ‘he should be here next Wednesday. You can make up your own mind as to whether he’s wasted in the goddamn army.’
Outside Jackson Airport Merryn watched the Holden pull into the curb in front of the terminal. The young soldier jumped from behind the driver’s seat and held the back door open. He was dressed in the same green uniform as Jake—except where Jake wore highly polished shoes and long green socks, he was wearing only sandals on his feet.
‘This is Merryn,’ Jake said to him.
The soldier’s smile was brilliant, his white teeth unstained.
‘Phillip’s from Buka Island, ‘Jake went on, ‘at the top of Bougainville.’
‘Ah,’ is all Merryn could think of to say. Yet at the same time, she wondered why Phillip would have been given such an English sounding name, when in fact, he was the blackest person she had ever seen.
In the time it took to place her handbag on the seat beside her, they had accelerated away from the curb and were heading into town. For some time they drove in silence—a silence so long that it became a matter of suspense to see who broke it.
Had Phillip been told about her? Merryn wondered.
‘I’ve got you a room at the Bottom Pub in town,’ Jake eventually said, without turning his head. ‘I thought we could have dinner there tonight. It has a good view of the harbour with a breeze from the water, more so at night making it easier to sleep.’
This reminded Merryn of how hot she was. Wiping her face with the edge of her scarf, she noticed makeup coming off on the fabric. She turned it the other way to hide the stain. ‘Thank you,’ she said detachedly. But what was the point of having dinner with him? Surely he was only doing it out of duty.
She stared idly over the dry dusty roads—to the fibro houses with louvered windows perched on sunbaked lawns and relieved only by colourful hibiscus bushes, frangipani trees, and clapped out cars. A little further on appeared to be more affluent with bigger houses, greener lawns, and superior cars. Walking each side of the road were heaps of Pacific Islanders in all shapes and sizes and various forms of dress. A few bare-breasted meris were wearing grass skirts, but mostly they favoured floral meri dresses, a sort of Mother Hubbard with puffed sleeves. Some had multicoloured string bags, which she knew were called bilums, hanging from their heads. The men, like those at the airport, wore brightly dyed lap laps or cotton shorts and T-shirts; others had bizarre things hanging from their ears.
Most of the children had runny noses and protruding stomachs. Yet one little boy, cleaner and better dressed than the others, carried what looked like a school bag of books, perhaps dreaming of a future way beyond the imaginings of his parents. Further on, a young girl, nearly as black as Phillip and with her hair in braids, was wearing a miniskirt and carried a transistor radio to her ear. The old and the new, Merryn thought. Tradition versus progress!
She would have liked to talk to Jake about what she saw. That’s how she always imagined it would be. Jake excitedly pointing everything out, telling her what the things hanging from the men’s ears meant. Why some of the people were so much blacker than others. Why some had blond hair. Was it peroxide or were they albinos? He would know Moresby so well, this being his second time here.
Jake finally broke the silence. ‘How’s your mother?’ he asked, giving a small cough.
Merryn shut her eyes. Her mother adored Jake, despite her horror when they’d moved in together just before Jake