Your friend in life and death
Sar
A reply from Alice Aldread lay amongst Sarah Bernard’s letters.
Lovingest Sar
I send this to you by a constable for a high price. I am in such trouble here the surgeon disliking me. You must get me to the Factory for it can not be worse and must be better. My life and soul depends on it for I am so misused here. One thing is I shall see your kindly face.
Yours ever
Alice A
PRIM WOKE IN STILL, COOL AIR which seemed – no other concept fitted – laundered. This was strange enough by the standards of Khartoum to cause her an instant of frenzy in which she knew nothing – not her name, her starting-out point, nor this destination. But then the stampede of her brain gave her back the faculty to name her place. She was in a bedroom in her sister’s house, the house of Mr and Mrs Brendan D’Arcy. The curtains were drawn, but she knew the window looked south over blue reaches of water to Shark Island and a distant Opera House and Harbour Bridge. She rose and verified this with some fear. For this was the landscape of her shame. But she was pleased to see too that the afternoon sun, reddening subtly down-harbour, carried barely a flavour of reproach. Thought of in Khartoum, the Auger affair seemed perhaps a pervasive tale of Sydney. Had Mrs Auger entertained people with the tale of the berserk student who had been so naively besotted with her husband the professor that she had stolen the words and opinions of an international scholar to impress him? ‘Ah yes, the plagiarist!’ She had felt the reflex of terror when, on boarding a Qantas flight in Rome, having flown from Khartoum to Rome on the ethnically neutral Austrian airlines, she had heard the Australian intonation of the pilot, that long, dry accent merciless as the Mount Bavaria landscape, and just as full of ambiguity.
But now that she woke beside that great pool of blue harbour, she could see by the nature of the light that these fears had been vain. She knew she could deal with this situation, not with total confidence but with valour. And the place, as seen from her window, had an air of vast, splendid, loutish indifference. Sydney, as ever, was sailing on its heedless way towards dusk, hauling intact its plentiful and traditional cargo of sins, rackets, venalities, forgeries, accommodations and systems of favours. It was also true – how had she forgotten it? – that it was always this year’s fish, this week’s, that were frying in Sydney. Dazzled by harbour light, the city had a short memory. Social commentators, historians, said that. So Sherif could have been here, sleeping the profound sleep of a tourist who had flown from Khartoum to Rome to Sydney. Sherif could have woken here with bewilderment in his eyes, and she could have been, in her own city, the expert, the casual local. ‘Darling, you’re in Sydney! Look … Do you see those ferries!’
In three nights time, the anniversary would occur. Before then Prim was to meet her boss Peter Whitloaf in Sydney, and then, the day after the celebration, make a speech in Canberra to the United Nations Association and supporters of UNESCO and sundry NGOs. On Tuesday she would leave Australia and be back in the Sudan in nine or ten days.
Dimp’s unpretending delight at seeing her – sudden energetic hugs, shrilling expletives – had been both wonderful and scary, a cheque presented against a bank of sisterhood and love which was supposed to be located in her, in Prim. She feared she looked good only on paper, and was a ghost company. The ghost of the Nile. As always it was Dimp who seemed so substantial, so present.
Prim wandered out, on the third of four floors, into a house full of stillness. She delighted in the works on the walls – Dimp had acquired these paintings for D’Arcy, and amongst them were the now fashionable native artists, the desert ochres of people not utterly unrelated to the Burranghyatti – the renowned Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri for one. On the walls of the hugest room, the harbour was echoed by two nineteenth-century paintings of that great reach of water by Conrad Martens, and by the light-drenched works of Australian impressionists like Roland Wakelin and Grace Cossington Smith, their late 1920s, early 1930s preoccupation with the great arch of the Harbour Bridge rising incomplete into the sky. On a far wall hung a Brett Whiteley nude-by-the-harbour, and a flamboyant John Olsen celebrative of this particular place, the bowl of deep blue by the shores of which her sister and Bren lived, and the emblematic gold of sky above. There was further Australian vividness scattered through the rooms: Ned Kelly; the explorers Burke and Wills whom Central Australia consumed; the Australian digger and the mad bride of the bush, a woman dashing in her phantasmal veil through the vertical of the ghost gums. Prim half-amusedly recognised her former Sydney existence in this harpy–victim. She, Primrose herself, with her phantom, sullied veil, run mad in Sudan?
Distantly, from the blue water beyond the windows, the voice of a commentator on a tour ferry could be heard, and the vivid paintings of this huge sitting room continued to echo the nature of things beyond the glass doors onto the sundeck.
Dimp and her husband arrived home at the same time, at dusk, loudly entering. Bren said, ‘Jesus, a man could do a glass of wine.’ And then he lowered his voice, ‘Do you think your little sister’s up?’
Prim remained quiet like a child hiding, as Dimp, business-suited but with her jacket undone, went to check Prim’s bedroom, came frowning towards the front of the house and discovered her. ‘Here she is! She’s up!’ And there was no doubting the delight, even the relief, which entered Dimp’s face, as if she knew explicitly how indefinite Prim felt, how skittish and likely to bolt. She subjected her flighty sister to an intense scrutiny and murmured presciently, ‘Bet you’re sad you didn’t bring your bloke! Fucking’s the best cure for jet lag.’
‘He’d be fascinated by the paintings. He’s the sort of man who would want to know everything. He’d be asking me about Burke and Wills and what they meant.’
Brendan, in shirtsleeves – a tailored Italian shirt – came through carrying bottle and glasses on a tray, and with easy command led the women to face the low sun on his massive, tiled sundeck. Out here, Dimp put her hand on her sister’s shoulder as they all sat at a white table.
‘You’ve got to miss this, where you are now,’ said Dimp with the standard Sydneysider pride. It was their great and simple vanity, this unmerited harbour which had fallen into their hands and which had imposed a particular style on their lives.
‘Of course I miss it,’ Prim said at last, but it came out as the sullen enthusiasm of a teenager.
Dimp inclined her head to murmur, ‘I reckon I know why you wouldn’t bring your Sudanese fella.’
‘The truth is,’ Prim lied, ‘he’s very busy.’
Prim could see, behind her sister’s face pressed up close to her own, her own features submerged.
‘Oh yeah, yeah. Too busy eh? The truth is, you were scared he’d become the tame fuzzy-wuzzy at the party, and be patronised.’
With a tug, Dimp undid the string at the neck of her blouse. It reminded Prim how the small Dimple Bettany had always wrestled within her clothes, and would unconsciously unbutton herself at the wrists, the school tie already hanging loose from her collar. All the teachers asking her why she was not more like her little sister Primrose, and Dimp so incapable of imagining or desiring regularity in her dress that she did not even take her sister aside later for vengeful slaps.
Prim said, ‘Sherif has to scramble to put together a living. And he’s too proud to let me buy him a ticket.’
‘Yeah. But just the same … I’d love to see the guy,’ said Dimp, then turned to her husband, who was still struggling with the wine cork, and asked, ‘How do you think my little sister looks?’
‘Right up to the family standard for pulchritude,’ said Brendan, pouring glassfuls, passing them to Prim and Dimp and then himself hungrily drinking. ‘Christ, much needed. You must be zonked, Prim.’
‘I’m fine. It’s just a bit unreal, being back.’
She was delighted that all peevishness seemed to have gone from her voice. The hateful tone from the inept past, from Auger-obsession. She did not want to
be the mad, sullen bride.
Dimp smiled lusciously. ‘If you’re a little culture-shocked now, it’ll get worse with the party. Rich bastards who don’t deserve to exchange the time of day with a true labourer in the vineyard like yourself.’
‘Rich bastards,’ nodded Bren, still concentrating on his wine. ‘In other words, undeserving friends of mine. But you know I’ve come to a theory – no, not a theory – a conclusion on wealth.’
‘Save us that,’ said Dimp.
‘No. I’ll run it by your sister and see what she thinks. I mean, I know a lot of the rich, she knows a lot of the poor. Between us we have the basis of an opinion.’ He turned to Prim. ‘My theory’s this. Wealth is generally interpreted in economic and political terms, and so it’s a great cause of social unrest. But wouldn’t people on both sides of the economic divide be a bloody sight happier if they knew that wealth or affluence or whatever you want to call it is a biological outcome as much as it is the fall-out of an economic system? It’s like having red hair, say, as much as it is about the classic Marxist view of capital.’
Dimp said, ‘Holy bloody hell. Wealth’s genetic as long as your father leaves you a bloody goldmining company!’ She winked at her sister. ‘This is Bren the thinker at work.’
‘Well, I won’t bother responding to the goldmining gibe,’ said Bren with good humour, ‘except to tell your sister that gold was in the pits when I began my public life, that’s why I went into the venture business. My father didn’t leave me a Chicago office. But say gold was flourishing when I started, and say my father did have a Chicago office to service Canadian and US mining companies. Aren’t such assets themselves genetic markers? As much as an ability to be good at rugby or to be able to paint well?’
‘The answer,’ said Dimp, ‘is no.’
‘But,’ Bren continued, ‘I’m not arguing this in a way which counts wealth as a superior gift or something. The simple truth is that most of the wealthy people I know are that way because they can’t bear not being that way. Everyone vaguely wants wealth, but not everyone needs it to be able to breathe. Others have some little genetic spur that makes them, above everything else, want to race pigeons, or paint, or study classical Greek.’
‘Genetic spurs eh?’ said Dimp. She seemed to be enjoying herself, Prim was happy to see. All her talk about the annulment seemed distant from this sundeck, and its wine and disorganised chatter. ‘That’s funny talk for a bloke who sees God’s will in all things. So God chooses the wealthy by giving them these little DNA sprigs.’
‘Yeah, but biology is part of the divine plan too, the rules of the game he created and plays by.’
But then Prim saw a shift behind her sister’s eyes. Even if Dimp’s tone remained jovial, the conversation was no longer mere game-playing. ‘Pity he didn’t make a game where we’re not all ripping each other’s throats out all the time. And if biology drove you to me, why did God need you to get an annulment from the Holy See?’
‘Oh come on,’ said Bren, looking at his wine. ‘Low blow!’
Prim saw from the peculiar narrowing of Dimp’s mouth she was familiar with from childhood, and from the rounding of D’Arcy’s shoulders, that the harsh edge of an unappeasable discord had been casually reached. It was frightening to see that the annulment question did seem to lie at the bottom of all argument.
But Dimp was ashamed that she had let the beast out into the daylight, and turned quickly to her sister.
‘From tomorrow, there’ll be a bit of noise in the house. The housekeeper will be back and people delivering stuff, and one of Bren’s secretaries supervising everything.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Prim, wanting herself to fill the air with busy sound. ‘I have to have coffee with people from the Sydney office of Austfam tomorrow.’
Bren abandoned the question of wealth, biology and God’s will. ‘By the way – tell me if you’re too tired to discuss this – but you wouldn’t know a place called Adiel, would you?’
‘No, I’m sorry.’ And she tried to sound it.
‘How about Melut?’
‘Melut’s down south, on the White Nile.’
‘That’s the one.’
Prim smiled. ‘You know more about the Sudan already than most outsiders.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s what we do. D’Arcy Coleman Venture, I mean. My Chicago office found the capital for a Canadian company, Alberta Petroleum, to go into a joint venture with the Sudanese government extracting oil from a well at Adiel. After extraction, they pump it to the river and ship it north by barge. I’ve got to tell you, it was a decent sum we raised. The deal was made in good faith with the government, which assured us it had sovereignty and control over the area.’
‘Sovereignty shifts around a bit down there.’
‘That’s what we found out.’
‘But are you still involved in the well? Isn’t it the problem of this Canadian company now?’
‘I’m not directly involved. I have to keep tabs. I have to be ready to restructure the financial deal in case of problems. And there have been problems. A month ago a group of rebels turned up at the well and told the Alberta personnel that the site would be attacked if they did not immediately withdraw.’
‘I really had no idea,’ said Prim.
‘The next thing is,’ Bren went on, ‘I see a memo telling me that the Sudanese government has moved a battalion of infantry with armoured support to secure the well area.’
‘The government can’t afford to lose sites of that nature,’ Prim told him like a professional briefer. ‘If they want to pay their foreign debt and go on fighting the war.’
‘And doing something about their bloody awful deficit,’ said Bren.
‘How did the battalion manage?’
‘Pretty ordinary. They were routed one night, some of the Sudanese personnel and one Canadian driller shot, and outbuildings burnt. But the rebels didn’t attack the well itself, because they say it and the oil in it belongs to them … what are they called? The Southern People’s something or other.’
‘Liberation Army, SPLA. Although it has factions. It could be the SPLMA, the Liberation Movement Army! There are tribal and political differences in the South.’
There was a sudden, more muscular mood change from Bren. ‘There always bloody are! I wish the bastards would just let my friends extract the oil, that’s all.’
Dimp laughed, jolly again. ‘Look at my capitalist! Isn’t he a lad?’ She winked at Prim.
When you lived in four levels of grandeur on Sydney Harbour, Prim understood, it would seem reasonable that the politics of distant places should readjust themselves to your desire.
‘Do you stand to lose much then?’ she asked, exaggerating the compassion in her voice.
‘If it goes totally bad I stand to lose commissions,’ he said jovially, but smiling to put her at ease about her sister’s future. ‘Of course it’s not really my money to start with, and it’s all underwritten and insured to buggery. But apart from the commissions, it means the people my staff approach to raise future capital will not be as open to us as before. Look, I’m not asking for sympathy, but if you put the world together, all in all, with Aborigines in Australia, Blackfoot Indians in Canada, the SPL – whatever it is – in the Sudan, the sort of deals I put together become harder and harder to conclude, and less frequent. And I’ve got a sumptuous woman to maintain.’
‘Don’t give the bastard any sympathy,’ Dimp told Prim.
Yet he had a sort of hulking charm which made it easy for Prim to simulate concern. He was a pleasant fellow, brisk, meaning well. But she had never fully seen what it was that had attracted Dimp, who displayed a faint, indulgent tiredness as she listened to him.
Prim was delighted to have got through the conversation well – to have saved it in fact, to have re-channelled it. She had feared, coming home, that she might manifest herself as one of those censorious aid workers. ‘Business is down? Tough luck! You ought to see how people live in the Sudan!’ She k
new that some people had always mistaken her shyness for censure anyhow, and was therefore pleased that with a hard case like Bren she had been able to seem a contributor of interesting fact.
The offices of Austfam were not in any of the high-rent buildings around Sydney Cove but in that seedy stretch west of the point where George Street becomes Parramatta Road. In the spirit of their surroundings and their trade, the employees of Austfam dressed more for down-at-heel comfort – old batik dresses, open neck shirts – than for corporate success. There was very little slickness at Austfam.
Peter Whitloaf, the head of the NGO, who commuted between Sydney and Canberra, was an exemplary beanpole. In his cardigan, he looked like a Trappist monk in mufti. But Prim knew enough by now, from meeting such folk as Stoner, that here at the bosom of aid and development bodies could be found, as well as an undeniable altruism, at least as intense a voracity to prove, to survive, to succeed, as anywhere else in the human scheme. And a hunger for funds, which other NGOs competed for as well, and for credit, credit being something she had unintentionally acquired for Austfam in the case of the Darfur emergency and through Sherif’s health surveys.
Peter was both a decent fellow and an operator. Formerly a federal minister’s press secretary, he was at Austfam by choice. After Prim had been greeted, pecked on the cheek, and answered the inquiries of the outer office staff – ‘Yes, I am thinner. It’s the malaria from a few years back’ – she was welcomed by Peter Whitloaf like an uncle encountering a favourite if over-exuberant niece.
‘Prim,’ he said. ‘Ah, still a girl, still a girl.’
In his office they talked about what he called ‘Austfam’s footprint’ in the Sudan. Peter said how delighted the board of Austfam was at the community health studies Prim had organised. They had not only served as a useful guide for those deploying aid in the field, he said, they had also raised the profile of Austfam in ‘the literature’.