Legacy by Larissa Behrendt Read Free Book Online Page A

within the Australian state” look like?’ he asks. I imagine Professor Young, his eyes slightly squinting from the low sunlight that would be streaming over him now.
    â€˜Well, there is a strong aspiration for a capacity for decision-making, for community governance but there are a vast range of other goals: the recognition of past injustices, the aspiration for land justice, the protection of culture, heritage and language, to be able to access the same services and have the same opportunities that other Australians have.’ As I explain this idea, I recall my father talking about each of these things.
    â€˜That’s the next stage of your project, Simone. You need to map out what this “Aboriginal sovereignty” means to Aboriginal people and then map the pathway between where your legal system is now and where it should be going.’ I hear a note of caution come into his voice. ‘It may need a political solution at the end of the day, but even so you need to think about the role the law can play in that pathway.’
    I had been thinking too much like a lawyer, I realise, but I liked the message better when it came from my work with Professor Young than when my father said it.
    â€˜I know that you were skeptical about how much I would get done here,’ I say to Professor Young, ‘but I think with this as the new focus of my research, it may be fortuitous that I am back here in Australia.’
    â€˜Hmmmm. My warning about the dangers of attempting to do your project away from the school still stands. You have the opportunity to work at one of the world’s greatest law schools without distraction. Have the family matters you wanted to attend to resolved themselves?’
    â€˜Yes. Yes they have. And I will be making plans to come back in the next week or so.’ I wince a little, knowing that is not quite the truth.
    There is silence, long enough to express disapproval. And then I hear Professor Young sigh.
    â€˜And what are you reading, Simone?’
    I imagine his mannerisms, his facial expressions, the way he tilts his chair sideways so that he can look out the window that is usually behind him as he talks to me.
    â€˜I have just finished Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day ,’ I tell him. I don’t add that I only finished it last night, knowing Professor Young would ask me this question. He always does. Even if I’m tempted to just watch a movie and bluff, I always read a book. But I got caught up in this one and reading it had not been a chore.
    The novel tells the story of an English butler, Stevens, who dedicates his life to the service of Lord Darlington. It had promised to be a love story and begins with Stevens receiving a letter from Miss Kenton, the former housekeeper at Darlington Hall, alluding to her unhappy marriage. Darlington Hall has just changed owners and Stevens has a new employer, the wealthy American Mr Farraday. Stevens, under the pretext of seeing if he can offer Miss Kenton - now Mrs Benn - her old position back, accepts Mr Farraday’s offer of taking a ‘motoring holiday’.
    It emerges that Stevens and Miss Kenton, when working together during the years leading up to World War II, had an attachment that bordered on romantic - always implied but never declared - as they shared intimate moments such as taking tea and talks at the end of the day. Stevens’s inability to express his feelings to the more passionate Miss Kenton eventually led her to accept a marriage proposal from Mr Benn.
    Lord Darlington was a Nazi sympathiser. In the aftermath of the war he is disgraced for his naivety in dealing with the Nazis before hostilities broke out and for his hopes of brokering a deal between Hitler’s Germany and Great Britain. Stevens had been totally loyal to Lord Darlington, as any good butler would have been but he seems incapable of believing his master could be wrong in his politics and actions.
    Miss