Salt Creek (16 page)

‘Not so much of late. She is tired now, she has not been well.'

He looked with sudden comprehension. ‘I beg your pardon. I shouldn't have—' He busied himself rearranging his things.

‘Oh no. She's not, that is, I don't think she is.' Now I had said something I shouldn't. What if he was right? Her appetite was poor; she was preoccupied. I had attributed these things to her spirits. If she were, out here so far from help—

Charles saw that he had almost made me say something that I should not, that a young lady would not. ‘Of course. Of course.' He sounded like one of those gusting winds. ‘Tomorrow? Could I draw you again tomorrow?'

‘I'll see. Perhaps Addie could cook dinner tomorrow. Yes, perhaps she could.'

For a wonder, while passing through the dining room to the kitchen to see about lunch, Charles behind me, Mama was sitting with the boys and they were all bent over their books and slates, and Mama was explaining something to them. Albert looked up when I came in and his eyes were very round. We had a conversation with just our faces.

Me: eyebrows up.

Albert: shrugged shoulders.

Me: mimes writing on the slate.

Albert: nods.

Me: nods in comprehension.

Mama looked up when I closed the hall door. ‘I thought I would do a little schoolwork with the boys and Addie this morning since you were busy.'

‘Yes, Mama. We've finished. For this morning at least, but Charles has more to do.'

‘This afternoon and tomorrow morning if I might,' Charles said.

‘Of what?' Addie said. ‘Do a picture of me.'

‘Another picture of Hester, Mrs Finch, if you could spare her.'

‘Why? Why do you need another picture of Hester? You have one already.'

‘I have a portrait and now I would like to do a figure drawing. The same face as well as the figure, at a different distance, in another setting. You do not look alike.'

Addie scowled.

‘Could you cook tonight, Addie?' I said.

‘Cook? Me cook? What do I know of cooking?' she said, as if it were the most ridiculous idea in the world. ‘I'm not cooking.'

‘I'll show you then.'

‘If you can show me, then you have time to do it and I need not. There.' She turned on her heel at the kitchen table and made for the door.

‘Addie!' It was Mama. ‘Come here now.'

Addie was shocked, as well she might be. We all were, unblinking, except Charles, but then he didn't know what she had been like of late, especially since Mama refused to allow her to visit Mrs Robinson again.

Addie stood before her. She was quiet, even meek. ‘What, Mama?'

‘I beg your pardon, Mama,' Mama corrected.

‘I beg your pardon, Mama,' Addie said.

Mama put a gentle arm about Addie's shoulders. ‘Come. We can cook dinner together while Hettie is busy.'

The oddness of the next two days was so varied: Mama cheerful, Addie cooking, the company of the Bagshotts at every meal, and I sitting idle with a stranger.

The Bagshotts left two days later after a hearty breakfast of toasted bread and eggs and a slice or two of salt pork. Mama came into the dining room – ‘Fried eggs,' she said – and fled. We were quiet despite Mr Bagshott's hearty observations about life and Addie's attempts to entertain.

‘Oh, it will be dull again once you are gone. There will be nothing but work and lessons and scolding,' she said.

‘Scolding? Who scolds you?' I said. ‘Or makes you work?'

‘Why you, you, you, Hester. And you will be cross with me no matter what I do.'

‘It is that you do nothing but what pleases you that makes me cross.'

She bent her head. ‘See, it's started already.' Her tone was mournful, and then she lifted her head and laughed so that everyone else laughed too. Even I could not help it.

But our good spirits did not last. When the two men had drained the last of their tea and wiped their mouths and scraped their chairs back and risen it was to leave, Mr Bagshott smoothed his hands down his waistcoat over the swell of his stomach, and sighed with satisfaction. ‘Well,' he said, as if that summed up all: life, the world and the few days they had spent with us.

‘Well,' Papa said, standing, and a tide of movement began to flow outside into the morning light.

Charles held back at the door to let Mama and Addie through. I made to follow, but Charles took my arm and stopped me. ‘Write to me,' he said and pressed a scrap of paper into my hand.

I looked at it and took in the scrawl of pencil. It was his direction in town. ‘Write?' The words seemed indecipherable for a moment and his meaning opaque. What could his intention be? And a piece of paper – why, anything could happen to a piece of paper. It might as well be dust in the wind.

‘If you would like to. If you have need of ought.' He appeared so strange and intent, bending so his face was close to mine.

‘Need of ought? Do you mean note books?'

‘Oh.' Now he seemed confused. ‘Anything at all. Or just write – to let me know how you go on.'

‘Charles!' It was Mr Bagshott shouting.

‘Coming,' Charles called back. ‘I forgot something.' And then turning to me again, ‘I like you, Hester. That is all I mean to say. You are sweet.'

I took a step back. ‘I am not sweet, Charles.'

‘I think you
are
.'

‘Oh.' And I could not help smiling.

Charles stepped forward and bent his head and kissed my cheek. He was closer than on the boat even, and he retreated and looked into my face. I could not speak but I believe that I was smiling and that this pleased him. On this point I am still not sure, but I persuaded myself of it later whenever I thought of that morning. ‘Write,' he said again and I nodded and he was gone, plunging his hat on as he went through the door. He leapt the balcony's edge and turned, chivalrous of a sudden, and held his hand to me, though I could leap it as well as he, and I jumped and for a moment he took my weight. I could feel how he arrested gravity and wondered about Sir Isaac Newton, whether such a moment might have discovered gravity to him as readily as an apple falling, and about the forces that could arrest a fall. It was the moment when I felt for the first time, and knew it to be true and not an illusion, that life and self were not only matters of personal weight and burden and endurance, that they might be shared.

CHAPTER 10

The Coorong, November 1857

I STOOD ON THE TALLEST SAND HILL
on the peninsula and turned slowly, looking all the while through Fred's telescope. To the west was the vast blue plain, the sea – empty today – and to the east across the lagoon was the long stretch of the landward shore, which Tull called
tengi
. Addie and Mary were feeding the chickens, a favourite task of Mary's. From this distance, it was as if they were scuffing through blossom. Mama had taken Addie in hand a little lately. She was in charge of the poultry now, and was learning to cook. Undulating to north and south was the peninsula's unending line of sand hills and saltbush and grass.

I had seen other things from there, on Sunday afternoons when no work could be done: the native women pulling rushes and sedges and laying them aside in bundles, the men poling along on rafts, or gliding in their canoes, fishing spears at the ready, or walking one of the tracks. The natives always carried spears and weapons, several each, which bristled above their heads. They were good fast walkers. Kangaroos had been a common sight once, but none of us had observed any of late
–
a pity for Skipper, it had been her favourite sport to chase them. This country, which we had once thought empty, was busy enough in its own way. A person had to watch and wait to see that it was not. We had to learn to see.

Not a week after the Bagshotts' departure we saw the most unexpected thing. The fish had been running in the lagoon, which not even Stanton failed to notice. He made himself a rod and for more than a week, late in the afternoon, had stood on our point, arcing back and forth like a pendulum weighted beneath, casting and dandling the line on the water. From atop the tallest sand hill, we watched two men, natives, wading waist deep and slow along the water's edge on the opposite shore, perhaps a mile from our house where the stock route pulled away from the coast to cut a curve in the land. Each of them held a stout pole, the two of which were connected by something, netting I supposed – a long stretch of it by the distance between the men. They moved so patient and particular. Fred and I took turns to observe, but Tull, having once seen it did not look again. The sight seemed to annoy him. Slowly, one of the men changed direction, drawing his pole so that the open side of the loop faced the beach and the men came closer to each other and even though I did not understand what I was seeing I held my breath at the preciseness of the task. And the poles touched. Several other men entered the water, one of them with a rock which he used to hammer the poles into the lagoon bed. More poles were inserted at other points of the loop. The encircled water rippled at its surface and there was a splash: fish. They were the most ingenious people.

‘Why not catch them?' Fred asked.

‘They can't eat so many. We can keep them or smoke them when we are ready.'

‘Like the chicken run,' I said and he nodded.

‘So clever,' Fred said.

Tull's smile fell away. ‘Oh yes, blackfella very clever,' he said. ‘Blackfella catch fish, go hunting, dance.' His voice had changed. He performed a half-hearted staccato caper, staring at Fred.

I had never seen one of the natives' celebrations, though Papa had described them: they painted themselves and the women drummed on their possum skins and their singing thrummed into the dark. Seeing Tull dance in such a way while dressed in trousers and shirt was very strange.

‘I didn't mean anything by it. I don't think of you as one of them,' Fred said.

‘I am one of them,' he said.

‘You don't think it clever?' I asked.

‘We always do this. Clever?' Tull shrugged. ‘You tell me what is clever. You think you know, that you are cleverer. That's what you mean, that you are the one to decide. Now I should say, “Thank you”.' He gave a jaunty little bow to go with his mocking face. ‘Look at that.' He pointed along the shore and towards the low bluff above it where the ground had been trampled and the grasses and rushes torn at by the clumsy cows. ‘Are you clever? You are like children. You take and take.'

‘We're making use of the land,' Fred said. ‘We're farming it. Some spoilage cannot be helped.'

‘Do we not use the land?' he said, as if it were a question, when the answer was obvious.

I did not like to argue with him or offend; what they did was not the same, as everyone knew. ‘Why don't you farm the land?' I said. ‘You could have and did not.'

He had no answer to that.

Like children: the thought of it. Were there others who thought the same?

At dinner Fred mentioned the fish pen to Papa, glancing at Tull at the same time, hoping to please Tull that he had thought it worth mentioning, I would say. It was the sort of thing that Papa found interesting, and he promised to go and see it. But Tull was not pleased. In fact he was nowhere to be seen that afternoon and in the evening hardly responded to one or two inconsequential remarks that Fred made to show that he bore him no ill will, and declined my offer of a game of draughts or whatever else he might feel like. He spoke only to Addie and Albert, quite friendly.

The next day after his week of disappointment Stanton returned with a fine catch of large fish, which floured and fried provided a welcome change at dinner. It was the same the next day and the one after until we wearied of it. Three days later two native men arrived at the house to speak to Tull. I was in the outside kitchen and watched from there. Tull must have seen them from the stable and come out to meet them. The men were tall – well made, Papa would have said – and heavy bearded. One of them was older; his beard was grizzled. Their chests were patterned with scars, lines and dots. Slung on their shoulders were baskets bristling with weapons and tools, and each held a cluster of their slender spears. It was hard to imagine things so fine causing any great damage, but they did. I had seen it. Flocks of emus sometimes waded the shallows of the lagoon and once while out riding I saw two of them struck by spears from a distance of one hundred yards at least. The speed and accuracy were very remarkable.

Papa appeared at the back door and Tull and the men came down, approaching quite close. The natives spoke, touching their hands to their chests, twice, the fingers relaxed, their wrists loose. I copied the gesture against my own chest, feeling the strangeness of it. It was as if their hands were suspended above a piano, the fingers descending with no more weight than was needed to sound a note,
piano
. They were light. Papa clapped his hand heartily to his chest and his voice grew louder. Their heads reared back. It seemed to mean one thing to Papa and another to the natives. Was it a warning to them? I went to the doorway to hear more clearly. They stood their ground and spoke some more. All I could hear with them turned obliquely from me was the roll and flexibility of the sounds and I felt my own tongue moving to try to make them myself. It was strange to my ear and not unpleasant. They raised hands and fingers and gestured towards the distance, as if pushing something away. Then Tull translated, and I stepped closer still and watched with the keenest attention. Someone had stolen fish from the natives' enclosure, Tull said, and he, they, wanted it to stop.

Papa didn't blink, and his voice was deep and unchanging calm. ‘Indeed?' he said. ‘Another tribe, I would suppose. Or Celestials. They are partial to fish, so Nellie Robinson says.' He cleared his throat.

Tull spoke to the natives, telling them what Papa had said, I presumed. By the time he finished speaking they had changed. I could see all the muscle of them tense. The older one spoke again.

‘You will do nothing?' Tull said to Papa.

He did not reply. The natives stared at Papa, and the lids of their eyes drew a little closer and that was all, as if there was something that he was not saying that made things clearer. It was as plain to me as it was to them, I would say: Papa would do nothing.

Fred came to Papa's side and watched with him while Tull and the natives moved away across the grass, stopping to converse once more. Perhaps he wished to be noticed by Papa, as I did. I climbed the stairs and joined them and took in the older native shouting at Tull and gesturing furiously towards Papa or the house or all of us.

‘George and Billy,' Papa said, his voice and face heavy. ‘I would not have things become rancorous between us.'

‘You know them?' I said.

‘We have met once or twice,' Papa said.

Finally the two men strode away leaving Tull on the path. Tull began to walk back, slower than usual. I did not like to leave Papa just then. We knew that Papa had spoken an untruth and I think he realized that we were aware – the natives too. He was diminished to us all, himself most of all, and how could he recover from that?

‘You go on now, Fred, Hester. Don't you mind me. I will come around presently,' he said. ‘I always seem to.' He turned and went inside.

Stanton came banging through the door and down the stairs towards Tull, buffeting his shoulder – ‘
Excuse
me' – as he passed him, and grinning as if it were all a great joke. There might have been shame in him somewhere. I would not know; I never saw it unless it was there, in that bravado. Tull was close then. There was nothing I could say that would make a difference to him. My brother a thief, my father unprincipled. Fred raised his shoulder a fraction and forced a small smile. And then came a faint lifting of Tull's features, an easing of everything on it, which with the slow shift of his gaze, as if he were not with us, told me that we did not perfectly understand the fish in the pen and Tull's connection to them. But I didn't ask him and he didn't tell me.

The day after that the fish pen was gone. It might never have been.

I thought of Charles. I could not help myself. What is there to say of him though? I had liked the look of him, his long blue eyes, the horizontals of mouth and brows, the way his hair was cut old fashioned as if he did it himself by campfire with shears, straight at the bottom and tucked behind his ears to fall loose again. I thought of these things and remembered his mouth. Sometimes in the dark I put two fingers to my cheek where his lips had touched.

By November I was sure of Mama's condition: her belly was swelling again and I was filled with dismay. She was too old for another baby. As for Papa, I preferred not to think of his part in it. It was not for me to judge or disapprove, but I could not help thinking, only in passing, that he might not have indulged himself and thus spared her. Mama's spirits were changeable, but not as bad as they had been before the Bagshotts came. Papa was serious and sombre and given to prayer and advice and long graces before our meals. The food at least had improved with spring vegetables: young potatoes and peas, baby carrots and beetroot, salad leaves. There were bunches of grapes on the vines. I looked forward to the sweetness of them at summer's end.

Papa had other things on his mind than Mama. The small cheeses we had made in the past had sold quite well and grocers would buy whatever we had to sell. This was our third spring – the busiest time for cheese-making with the cows producing so much milk. Papa let them go dry in winter when they were in calf and we kept only a few in the home paddock for our own milk and butter. And now the cows had calved again and we all had to rise early to help with milking. Cheese-making would go on all summer and all autumn, but it was never as busy as spring. There wasn't enough feed close to home so some of the cattle must be left on distant pasture with their calves and Hugh and Stanton and sometimes Albert travelled the run to check them, camping out overnight.

Addie was the best of us at milking. She sat on a stool and leaned her head against each cow's flank and sang under her breath. The cows waved their ears towards her and flared their nostrils and let down their milk. I did not find it unpleasant for short amounts of time. The cow's rough coat against my cheek, the vibration of life all through it, and its sweet smell felt almost motherly.

The profits from the dairy had been modest, sufficient to live on but not to improve the condition of our lives to any great degree. Stores must always be more important than clothes. Papa brooded over his journal, reckoning up columns of figures in ways that never came out satisfactorily if repetition were any indication. It was the simplest of calculations. I had been through the figures twice, upside down, from the other side of the table and thought if I had to listen to any more of his scratching quill I would reach across and snatch it from him.

‘What's the matter, Papa?'

‘Nothing, my dear.' He stared at his book. ‘It's no way to make money, like this, at a crawl. It'll take twenty years, more, to get back to what we were.'

Apart from his frown it could almost be said to be pleasant, all of us spread about the dining room and across the veranda enjoying the evening, reading and sewing and looking at catalogues and drawing. Hugh and Stanton played cards, and Albert joined them. He had grown. He would be a big man one day, like Stanton. He was only thirteen, almost as tall as Fred already despite being three years younger, and stronger when they had been much the same for so long. He had moved apart from him in other ways too.