Free St Kilda Blues by Geoffrey McGeachin Page B

waiting family, friends and taxi and hire car drivers, he noticed a tall, freckled and sunburnt man wearing long brown robes. The man was watching the children as they disembarked, head moving side to side as he carefully studied the name cards they were all wearing. His eyes fixed on the boy’s sign and he began waving his arms and smiling.
    The man worked his way to the front, apologising constantly as he moved through the crush of people. When he reached the boy he stretched out his hand. ‘Welcome to Australia, young fellow,’ he said, ‘and praise be to God for a safe voyage. I’m Brother Brian and we have a long way to go so it’s best to get started as soon as we can.’
    Brother Brian led the boy away from the crowded dock and out to a dust-covered Dodge station wagon parked in the street. He opened the back for the boy’s kitbag. The space was already crammed with boxes, several of which were marked with the Kodak name.
    â€˜I keep a photographic record of the mission,’ he explained, ‘and if you like you can be my assistant in the darkroom. I think you might find it to be a lot of fun.’
    So far the boy hadn’t said a single word, which didn’t seem to worry the man. Most of the new boys were like that, shy and frightened, bewildered at their arrival in a new country on the other side of the world.
    The drive to the mission took almost nine hours. They stopped for petrol at a lonely roadhouse somewhere out on the seemingly unending dirt road. The roadhouse had a cafe but they didn’t go in. Brother Brian had greaseproof paper–wrapped sandwiches in a small suitcase on the back seat of the car, thick-cut bread with ham and cheese. There was a thermos of hot water for tea and a couple of rubber-stoppered bottles of weak lemon cordial, warm from the heat in the car.
    The boy watched from the car window as mile after mile of flat, dusty, sun-blasted plain passed by with the occasional glimpse of a far-off farmhouse or bounding kangaroos and, twice, naked black people carrying spears skirting the road.
    After each of their regular stops for sandwiches and something to drink, brother Brian insisted the boy make water before they got back into the car. He stood beside him, hitching up the front of his robe and pulling a flaccid penis out of grubby underpants before spraying the saltbush scrub along the roadside. The boy sensed Brother Brian was looking down at his little jigger as he peed, and he smiled, thinking of Mavis at the bottom of the stairs, legs splayed, her little split exposed at the base of her belly, and the bright blood running from her ears and nose.

EIGHT
    It was only a short walk from the Scheiner house to Gudrun’s school friend Rosemary’s home. Berlin tried to keep his mind occupied with the Scheiner girl, to stop himself remembering, imagining the unimaginable. The idea was totally ridiculous, that it was the same man and their paths were crossing again after all these years on the other side of the world. Berlin walked quickly, head down and with his hands deep in his overcoat pockets. He did it so Bob Roberts couldn’t see the fist clenched so tightly that his knuckles ached.
    The interview with Rosemary Clairmont took just ten minutes and was a waste of time. It was obvious the girl was totally boy-crazy, and the outings to the Saturday night dances with Gudrun Scheiner were a chance for her to run amok unsupervised. Berlin guessed that Gudrun had been pretty much left to her own devices the moment the two girls were out of Vera’s sight and he understood the housekeeper’s anger. Young Rosemary had fluttered her eyes at Roberts one time too many for Berlin, who had to fight the urge to turn her over his knee and belt her bottom. He doubted the girl’s mother would have even noticed if he had. Her odd smile and slightly glazed eyes indicated her way of coping with a dreary suburban domestic life was by combining