The Songmaster (4 page)

Her time had come. She’d defied statistics and outlived her contemporaries by decades.

Grey hair in thinning clumps was pushed
behind her ears, her face was deeply etched with lines of life, her body plump, fattened by starchy foods, sugar and carbonated drinks. Florrie was tired. The creative powerhouse of artistic expression that had fuelled the Florence Namurra art industry and earned her a reputation and income from aficionados around the world, had run out in that moment she’d put down her brush.

She’d taken it up a mere nine years ago. A white welfare lady had first brought the paints, wax, dyes, cloth and canvas to the women in the 1970s, but Florrie had kept in the background, seemingly disinterested, huddled around a campfire, surrounded by scattered possessions, mangy dogs and grandchildren. Then early one crisp morning, after downing her mug of sweet tea, she’d thrown back the old grey blanket she wore as a cape and announced she was ready to ‘do dat paintin’ work’. She heeded no advice or suggestion but turned her back and worked alone, developing her own technique of stabbing and plumping paint in bold, vivid strokes, singing her stories onto canvas after canvas.

The explosion had happened within two years. The old woman of the outback was hailed as a major art find and dealers scrambled, galleries demanded, and money poured into the camp.

But just as fast it was dispersed, in the Aboriginal way of sharing what’s mine is yours.
The demands of the clan had kept her painting most of every day. Another car, more cash, more, more. The talent, the reputation, the money, the recognition brought with it a spectrum of art dealers, unscrupulous, sensitive, shrewd, clawing and trawling for Florrie’s work. Tourists trekked to the blazing scruffy camp pleading for her to ‘do a quick little Florrie for us’. She obliged, it was the Aboriginal way. But now Florrie was sucked dry. Used up like an old piece of fruit.

She walked away from the fire, past the tin humpy shelter where she slept, spurning a bed. She drifted towards a spindly cluster of coolibah trees and she lay on her Mother Earth. Clutching her now trademark blanket tightly to her, Florrie rested. And slept. And died.

Her spirit, now released, slipped from the frame that held it and rose and began its journey to rejoin her ancestors, her children lost in childbirth, their fathers and her friends.

Within days the art vultures circled and descended.

Susan Massey towelled her body dry and dressed to the ABC radio morning news. Her mind was filled with the brief she would take to court this morning. She opened her closet and stared longingly at her favourite bush-look gear
but chose the navy suit and neat white silk shirt. In a small gesture of defiance she pinned a marquesite lizard brooch to her lapel, turning towards the radio as her attention was caught by the newsreader.

One of Australia’s most successful Aboriginal painters has died at the Bungarra art colony in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Believed to be more than eighty years of age, the artist had become internationally renowned for two of her acrylic masterpieces which recently sold for more than half a million dollars in Europe. The family of the dead woman has asked that she not be named, according to Aboriginal custom.

‘And I bet the dealers are heading north as fast as they can, with greedy art-grabbing hands outstretched,’ mused Susan, as she switched off the radio, grabbed her car keys and walked out the door.

Putting the leather satchel she used as a briefcase on the passenger seat, she turned the car radio to the FM station that played her favourite music and listened to the eight o’clock news. No compunction about observing Aboriginal lore here.

In the Kimberley
. . .
famous Aboriginal artist Florence Namurra . . . better known as Florrie, the old lady of the outback . . . has died. Florrie left a fortune in unsold artworks. Major overseas galleries have already begun bidding for the paintings expected to sell for up to $300,000.

Susan turned the radio down to concentrate on her presentation to the Family Court judge. She had a positive feeling about the outcome of this case: her argument was sound, she’d assembled the facts meticulously and schooled her client on how to present himself. Besides, she thought, his wife was a drunk and a tart; he deserved custody of his kids.

The nurses had named the abandoned baby girl Sunny, short for Sunshine. Everyone who saw her smiled. The woman from the Aboriginal Child Care Agency who had come to collect the baby shrugged at the word written on the identification card above the hospital bassinette. She knew the child would eventually be named with the appropriate ceremony when she was united with her people and her country. Whether the father or mother was Aboriginal was irrelevant, she would still be able to claim her heritage,
Joyce Guwarri thought. In the Aboriginal community there would be no doubt the baby was one of them. And there was no doubt the father was Aboriginal. Joyce knew that no Aboriginal mother would leave her child.

The baby was warmly dressed and had been bottle fed every four hours by the nursing staff. The cloth that had been wrapped around her was washed and folded over the end of the cot. Joyce lifted the cloth and shook it out, gazing at the owl figures she knew must represent an Aboriginal Dreaming story. But whose Dreaming?

Alan Carmichael turned off the lights in his gallery, set the alarm and locks. The street was wet, pools of light shining on the pavements, wisps of sloping rain misting from streetlights. Passers-by hunched intently homeward, slop-ping through the late dusk. He shrugged his tweed jacket closer around his chest and ran his fingers through his dark hair that prematurely showed flashes of silver in the streetlight. He hesitated, then turned down Exhibition Street, hailing a taxi. ‘Preston. Chambers Street.’

The driver gave him a second glance as they pulled up outside a rambling house with the flying yellow, black and red flag and a printed sign announcing, Aboriginal Child Care.

Inside he felt immediately welcome. No formality here. A mug of tea, a chatty Koori receptionist, then a beaming welfare worker.

‘What can we do for you?’ Joyce’s gaze was frank. This elegant white man, forty something, kind of arty looking, wasn’t their usual visitor.

‘I wanted to make a few inquiries about the baby that was left in the art gallery.’

‘Look, if you’re thinking of adoption, forget it, love. It’s not a baby for white folk. She’s Koori. She’ll go to relatives.’

He gave a smile. ‘I was contacted by a friend in the police department. An Aboriginal sergeant, he asked me to see if I could help.’

‘You a detective or something?’ Her manner cooled slightly.

‘No, not at all. I run an Aboriginal art gallery. He thought I might be able to identify the designs on the wrap that was around the baby.’

Joyce’s suspicions faded. ‘Oh, that would be a big help. It’s got us stumped. No clue at all about the family. Poor mother, it must have been hard for her to give up such a sweet thing.’

They walked past a communal dining room where black teenagers and old men were eating. In a community room, two boys played billiards and several girls watched TV. A wall between two rooms had been knocked down to make a sick bay where beds were lined in a neat row. A window looked out to a suburban backyard. An old iron cot stood by the window, a bundle wrapped in yellow in its centre. It looked no bigger than a family-sized serving of fish and chips. Wrapped, ready to go. Alan watched as
Joyce’s finger pulled down the edge of the blanket. The baby didn’t stir, and Alan felt the sudden pull of the sight of a sweetly sleeping, vulnerable and dependent creature. Memories of the smell of milk and talcum powder, a head nuzzled into his neck, the dawning recognition of love in wide new eyes, came to him. He touched the soft dark hair of the baby’s head. ‘She’s a cutie.’

‘I’ll get the box with her stuff in it.’ Joyce fossicked through a plastic crate full of nappies, clothes and a bottle. At the bottom was the washed and folded hand-screened cloth. She handed it to him and he opened it out, studying the pictures and symbols.

‘I’ve seen them before. But I’d have to go through my reference material to identify them properly. Can I take this with me?’

‘I suppose so. Where do you think it comes from?’

‘I spend a lot of time with artists in the Kimberley and I’ve seen this owl figure there. There’s a white woman who works with the Aboriginal people. She’s coming to see me and I’d like to show it to her.’

Alan re-folded the cloth and placed it in a plastic shopping bag the woman handed him. ‘I’m wondering if the mother could have come to Melbourne from the Kimberley,’ said Alan. ‘Or maybe she’d grown up in the city and knew about the owl story, but didn’t know who her people were.’

‘Or maybe she doesn’t know because she’s white and got no knowledge. Maybe it’s the baby’s father who’s Aboriginal. That could be true, too.’ The woman watched Alan’s reaction. ‘Listen, you take that wrap. But first you show me some ID, and write your phone number and address, and a note to say you’ve borrowed it and will return it within a week.’ She reached for a memo pad headed Aboriginal Child Care Agency and handed it to him with a pen. ‘I hope you can help. For the baby’s sake, I hope so.’

The black woman and the white man glanced down at the dusky infant, unclaimed, unnamed . . . unaware that one day she would be responsible for the intertwining of many lives.

S
hirley Bisson stirred and glanced at the bed-side clock where green glowing numbers told her it was four minutes past 2 a.m.

She kicked a leg out of the white damask sheets and wondered what had woken her. Then she heard it. Water running in the kitchen. Then turned off. Ice being clinked into a glass from the icemaker on the fridge door. She was alone in the apartment. Her mind raced. If someone had broken in … how did they get into her secured building, let alone her apartment? Did they think it was empty, or was the intruder so brazen he held no fear? She looked at the phone, knowing if she dialled it would be heard on the kitchen extension. Did she hear footsteps on the carpet? Should she just hide and let them ransack the place and leave?

Screaming would be useless in the soundproofed luxury in which she lived. Her body was rigid and she felt incapable of moving, and then the shape of a man came through the bedroom door. His movements looked shadowy and sinister. As she held the sheet tightly over her bare breasts, the scream that rose in her throat was reduced to a strangled gasp as he spoke.

‘Hey, Shirley. Miss me?’

‘Get out of here. I told you never to come back. I’ll call the police. How dare you break in.’