Sarah Thornhill (11 page)

Gave me a great drunken wink, had to stop and think how to do it, screwed up his mouth as well as his eye.

By the end of that year I'd been a bridesmaid three times. Sophia Langland was the one reminded me, not having Will's ring on her finger yet made her catty. Wasn't going to show her I cared, but it unsettled me. Jack and me had an understanding, but only the two of us knew.

The best of every day was first thing, before anyone was up. Had the bed to myself now Mary was gone, my thoughts private. With the sun coming in between the curtains and the birds greeting the day, I'd make believe Jack was with me. The way his eyes softened just before he smiled.

Tried to picture the place where he was, so I could be there with him. But New Zealand, the trees that grew sideways and the natives that ate people, was a blank. Mrs Trevarrow had a sealskin coat, I sat behind her at church and watched the light gleam along it, but it was hard to imagine it a living creature with a pretty face.

They'd never been away so long. Ten months, then eleven.

I'd go up to the cave, look for the marks we'd left on that silky sand. Surprising how quick the wind smoothed them out. The floor of the cave was as if no human had ever touched it. Only the curving line through the sand where a snake had been. I watched the light move round the honeycomb stone of the roof and told myself, Jack lay here where I'm lying. Looked up there at what I'm looking at.

It wasn't much comfort. I was counting the days.

PART TWO

E
LEVEN DAYS
into the eleventh month, Jack was back. But only him. Soon as he stepped off the boat he told us, Will was drowned. Said it flat, as if he'd thought it so many times it had no feeling for him any more.

I cried out like he'd hit me. Pa's face went crooked and his mouth squared up shouting
no!

They'd been at some little island, Jack said, name of Codfish. Storm blew up and this island was no good in that sort of weather, they pulled up the anchor and ran for some place called Easy Harbour. But the boat went on the rocks.

Tipped over like a leaf, Jack said. Scoured off that deck, the lot of us.

And Will? Pa said, with his voice cracked.

Never saw him after we went in the water, Jack said. Only me and a man called Matthew Stone fetched up on the beach.

I was all of a muddle inside, knowing Will was gone but waiting for him to come in and shout
Dolly
! the way he always did. My favourite brother, part of my world, part of my life.

The waste and the stupidity of it. The sadness was going to drown me too, I had to be angry.

Easy Harbour, I said. How come they call it that!

The sea. I was always frightened of it. As a child I'd once been sick in the old
Hope
on a rough passage down to Sydney. The water tossing the boat about, jerking and jarring. I remembered Will laughing at me crouched in the stern calling out
Make
it stop, make it stop.

He'd gone into that cold sea, the waves hurling themselves against the boat. That hollow wooden shell no match for it. Twisting and foundering and all of them pitched off the deck. The fist of the water in your face. Did he think,
Make it stop, make
it stop
, and remember his little sister in the moment before he was swallowed down?

Washed up later, beard glistening, mouth full of sand.

Pa wanted to hear it again and again. Where was it exactly? How far to this harbour, and how did you get on the rocks, and was there a town could send out boats?

Thirty miles to the harbour, Mr Thornhill, and the wind veered round sudden. No town. Just the rocks and the wind roaring and the waves coming up at you.

Pa watching Jack. As if it might come out different if he heard it one more time.

I'm sorry, Mr Thornhill, Jack said.

He couldn't look at Pa.
Sorry
, because he was thinking he should not of been the one that lived.
Sorry
, because it was not Will here telling us the story, and Jack being mourned.

Pa took hold of Ma's hand and hung on. It might have been him drowning.

After Jack brought the news Pa went into himself. Sat in the parlour, listening to the clock tick through time, or out on the verandah in a black brood. Too inward to pick up the telescope, but staring across the river to the bush along the cliffs. Mouth hard, face stony.

Me and Jack sat with him. The boats went up and down the river and I watched for Dick's blue cap but never saw it. I was angry at Dick for being alive, or for being gone, or for not being my brother at all, for being nothing more than a stranger whose parents had happened to call him Richard.

There wasn't enough to be angry at, to fill up the emptiness that was the place Will had been.

Word travelled quick along the river. Every day of that first week, boats stopped at our jetty and people walked up the track. Langlands and Cobbs and Fletchers, but hard to see who they were in their mourning clothes till they got close. Pa went in the parlour while Jack told it all again and Ma sniffed into her handkerchief. They'd all say,
I'm sorry for your loss, Mr
Thornhill
. He'd wait for them to be gone. Then back out on the verandah, watching the bush across the river as if it could explain.

Dead Will lay between me and Jack like a log fallen across a road. We looked at each other over it, spoke a few words across it, but Jack's eyes were blank and my face had forgotten any look except a sad one. I'd catch hold of his hand and squeeze it, trying to remember something that had gone away. This was grief.
Your loss
wasn't just the person who was dead. It was the gap in the ones left behind, a hole that swallowed everything else too. I'd lost Will, and it seemed I'd lost Jack and myself as well, both of us groping in a fog of sadness.

One afternoon Jack came to where I was in the kitchen. Waited for Mrs Devlin to go in the scullery.

A word later? he said. Up the cave?

But his face was troubled. When he said
the cave
, he wasn't thinking about what it used to mean.

We sat there side by side as we'd always done, looking out. Phillip down in the yard, filing away at Valiant's hoof, the smoke rising out of the parlour chimney. Beyond that the river. The tide flowing in strong, making streaks and curls, one current sliding past the other.

Fact is, Jack said.

He had to stop and cough as if his voice had gone rusty.

Fact is, he said, Will had a wife. Native woman. On the boat, drowned along of the rest.

A wife! I said. Will? What, Will married?

Married proper way, Jack said. Went to the parson. I seen it done.

Straight off, I was glad. That Will had a bit of life before he died. Sophia and the dull small life he'd of had with her, that wasn't the end of the story. But I wished he'd told me.
You should
of said
,
Will
.

And Jack. Jack knew, all that time, and not shared it with me, even when we'd lain together and I'd thought two human beings couldn't be closer.

Whyn't you tell me, Jack, I said. Should of told me.

He was too sad to scold, but I was hurt.

Kept it to myself, if that's what Will wanted, I said. I can keep a secret.

But that word
secret
shot through me like the white flash of a splinter under a nail.

You got a wife too! I said. Like Will!

He put an arm round me, the first time since he'd come back.

Why'd I do that, he said. When Sarah Thornhill's enough for any man.

Well thank God, Jack, I said.

Shaky in the voice, because that flash showed me life could have claws.

Have to kill you if you did, I said. Know that, don't you.

Trying to turn it into something we could laugh at, but my voice giving me away.

One of them knives you keep so sharp, I said. Be ever so sorry to have to do it, but I would.

He come to meet me, trying to make the shape of a smile.

You would, he said. I know you would.

Jack, don't go back, I said. Don't go again.

One more trip, he said. Two at the outside.

Didn't like the sound of two more trips, but two was better than five or ten.

Sullivan's after that, I said. That what you're thinking?

That's my thinking, he said. By and by.

I'd of liked to talk about Sullivan's. Was there a well, and was there a bread oven, and did the chimney draw properly?

You tell Pa about the wife? I said. Or best not?

I told him, he said. Had to, he wanted to know every little thing. Soon's I told him he asked me straight off, was there children?

Oh, I said. Children?

So I had to tell him yes, he said. A little girl. Five or six year old.

She'd be granddaughter to him, I said. And niece to me! What did he think, Jack, what did he make of it?

He wants her, Jack said. Your pa wants her.

Wants her, I said. How do you mean wants her?

Says to me, she's an orphan girl, he said. Best here with her kin. Wants me to fetch her. Not let her grow up a native, see. Thinks she'll be better off here. Grow up white.

Well and she is, I said. Half white.

Half white, that's right, Jack said. Half black too.

Half black! I thought of a little girl with Will's face, but skinny and raggy, living in a humpy, watching me ride along on Queenie.

My niece. I was her auntie.

Have a better life, wouldn't she? I said. Here with us. With her kin.

She got kin over there too, Jack said. Way they work things, everyone's kin. I doubt they got a word even, for orphan.

Turned my hand over, looked at the lines on the palm as if they'd tell him something.

Damned if I know what's best to do, he said.

What's her name? I said.

He said a word that was no name I'd ever heard, to my ear nothing but noises strung together, gone as soon as he'd said them.

Your pa wants it real bad, he said. Begged me, the tears standing in his eyes. But damned if I know. All's I can think is, should of been me went down with that boat. Should of been me.

But I wasn't having that, and at last he let me take him in my arms.

B
ACK FROM
New Zealand, him and the girl, on a night of a sudden squall, the rain throwing itself against the house. They come into the parlour, Jack carrying the girl. Brought the night in with them. He gave me a smile, but his heart not in it. Put her down and she hung onto his coat like she'd never let go.

She was little, five or six like Jack said, and dirty as you'd expect, coming all that way in the boat. A brown pinny on, and another kind of brown down the front where food or sick had been wiped at. Barefoot in spite of the wet and cold. Black hair hanging all over her face and her dark child's hand fisted round the edge of Jack's coat.

Nothing of William about her that I could see.

This the girl? Pa asked. You vouch, do you man? This the girl?

Jack put his hand under the child's chin, pushed her head up.

Look Mr Thornhill, he said, see that face, that's from your Will. Vouch or no vouch, this is the girl.

He does not know
vouch
, I thought. But too proud to ask.

It was true, she had a look of Will in the shape of her face. When he let go she looked down. You'd of thought she wasn't breathing, she was that still. Like someone with the toothache hoping for the pain to ease.

Glad to see you back safe, Pa said. And bringing her. I thank you for that. Will you take a glass with me now?

Jack went to the chair and the girl stuck to him like a tick, four fingers and a dirty thumb latched round that edge of coat, head down as she shuffled with him.

Going to fetch the girl had aged Jack, thinning him out in the face. And brought some kind of doubt over him.

Now Dolly, Ma said, this is a poor orphan New Zealand girl. Will, dear soul that he was, he wanted us to take care of her.

No, Meg, Pa said. Best we all know where we stand.

Pulled the girl over to him in the armchair. She stood between his knees looking at the floor.

This girl is Will's child, he said.

He was going to say something else. His fingers pressing the girl's shoulder. His hands on her so big, I thought she'd be frightened, but she didn't seem to be.

Will's child, he said again, as if the words gave him comfort. Mother a New Zealander, name of, what was her name again now Jack?

Rugig, Jack said. Name of Rugig, Mr Thornhill.

The girl heard her mother's name in among all the talk she didn't understand and her small dirty face lit up. But of course her mother was not here. Never would be. In this room her mother was just a word. I saw her understand that, saw the light go out of her.

Our Will married this Rugig fair and square, Pa said.

But a heathen woman! Ma said. A black!

What Will done over there, he done right by his own lights, Pa said. Won't have it said otherwise, Meg.