Salt Creek (32 page)

‘You must stop this, Addie, the way you are with him. You must,' I said, ‘else where will it end? What is it about him? Why do you like him?'

‘Everything. I like everything. He sees me. Me, if you can imagine it.'

‘And we cannot?'

‘No. You see what you have always seen: silly Addie, spoilt Addie, frivolous Addie. Tull sees me different.'

‘In what way?'

‘Why, that we are both pretenders, appearing to be something that we are not.'

‘He's black. He's no one you should be thinking of the way that you do.'

Addie's face flushed scarlet, but she remained calm when once she might have succumbed to a fit of passion. ‘Don't say that, Hett. You don't know him. You are supposed to be the clever one.' Her eyes were bright with sudden tears.

I took her by the shoulders as Papa had done to me when we arrived in this place, and pressed them in, narrowing her and shaking her with each phrase. ‘You cannot, I tell you. Nothing can come of it. Nothing can ever come of it. You know it.'

‘We could live here.'

‘Who?'

‘Tull and me.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Why, as husband and wife. Here at Salt Creek, and help Papa manage it.'

‘Husband and wife?' It was worse than I had thought, then. Things had progressed to this point. ‘You are mad. You cannot. You would bring shame on us all not only on yourself. You will fall beyond recovery. Your life will be ruined.'

‘What do I care of ruin? I seek it. I wish to be beyond redemption because then I may be with him and you need not try to save me any longer.'

‘Addie.'

‘It's true, Hettie. So nothing you can say will shift my course. I am fixed on him. On
him
.'

‘As if that made a difference. You may not.'

‘
May
. Oh, rules.'

‘Yes, I know your regard for rules.'

‘They are nonsensical.'

‘To you. They keep you safe. They keep us all safe.'

‘Do you believe as Papa does that they are people?'

‘Of course.'

‘Then they are people as we are and I do not perceive a problem.'

‘They are not as we are. They do not live as we do or think as we think. They must be improved. They must want to improve themselves. Then, perhaps—'

But there was no perhaps, as Addie knew. For a moment I saw their hands touching, and imagined their faces touching. Tull all but naked when he was not living with us. Addie and all her clothes and petticoats. What manner of life could they enjoy together? ‘Nothing can ever come of it. It's dangerous for him too, don't you see? How do you think you would live?'

‘Papa needs the help. Tull knows the run better than anyone.'

‘People won't recognise him or you if you are with him. You like company, Addie. You like pretty things.'

‘Do you think I don't know? It doesn't stop me feeling.'

‘If you cannot prevent the feeling you must control your actions until the feelings pass.'

Addie said: ‘I suppose you mean Charles. Have you ever so much as touched him? I don't mean taking his hand in assistance or by accident. I mean did you ever mean to touch him and do so?'

‘I—'

‘Ah.' She fell back with a pitying look. ‘Truly I feel sorry for him for you are a cold thing, Hester, the coldest I know.'

‘You know nothing about me, Addie.'

‘A person could not know you when you show so little. Love is not something you decide.'

I did not want her pity. ‘Not love itself, but what you do – that, you can decide. Charles—'

‘Yes?'

The memory of Charles touching the side of my face, sure, tipping it to the light so my eyes caught it, and his face close and unexpected. ‘Beautiful eyes,' he'd said. Heat rushed up my chest, my neck, my face, at the thought of our times lying on the shells of the peninsula.

I would tell Addie nothing; I would keep those memories safe. I said, ‘I am not free. I may not do as I please. You do nothing but what pleases you and do not think about what I must do as a consequence. You and Stanton: lilies of the field. I suppose Stanton at least helps with the mustering. They have spoilt you that you think as you do.'

‘But have you not seen him?' And she swayed in the direction he had departed as if she could sense his presence yet. ‘I must be with him.'

‘Stop it.'

‘It's too late for me. It is all too late.'

‘I will have to tell Papa.'

‘No, Hester.'

‘If you had children.'

Addie's hands flew to her stomach.

‘Stupid girl.' I slapped her and she blinked once and my handprint appeared on her cheek so sharp it could have been painted there. She turned and ran, throwing the door wide so it bounced the hanging coats against the wall and back again with a groaning of hinges. I did not follow but watched her through the scullery window as she flew down the path towards the lagoon – a grey afternoon with the tongues and mouths of waves whipping up in spittlish peaks. Her hair was a fat black rope down her back now. It had been short when we first came here.

Papa and Fred rode out of the trees in the evening trailing Tull's horse behind. Their faces were gold masks in the last sun and behind them the trees were massive and their outlines sinuous against the darkening sky. The horses were down at head and walked slow and Papa and Fred were not talking to each other and didn't call out to us. I had never seen such an arrival home. Hugh and Stanton went out and met them, taking the horses away to water them and remove their saddles and wipe them down. They drank a long time from the trough. But this was not the thing I was paying attention to, only that which I used to distract myself from what Papa and Fred were telling us.

Sickness had come to the natives of our run. There had been deaths and more would follow, Papa said. ‘They were well three weeks ago. Quite well. If you saw them now—' His face was almost blank. ‘If only they'd gone when I said.'

Tull had stayed. Rimmilli's husband – Tull's stepfather, who I learned then was the native Papa called George – was one of those who had died. And I had always thought Tull a sort of orphan.

‘Who will look after Tull if he sickens again?' Addie said.

Fred shook his head. ‘He won't catch it twice.'

‘But how could you leave him, Papa?'

Papa said, ‘He chose to stay.'

Addie and I wished to take them some rations but Papa would not allow it. He shook his head, and though his tone was gentle, he would not be swayed. ‘If we give them food they will stay for longer. We have done wrong in teaching them to expect it, and must harden our hearts now, for their good too. There is no future for them here and once they learn this they can start afresh elsewhere.'

Addie was stony quiet for days, furious with Papa and, for other reasons, with me. At first she left a room if I entered and when that became inconvenient refused to talk to me, paying great attention to the vegetable garden and the chickens as if she were a woman grown and teaching me what should be done.

‘Wash your hands before dinner,' she told Fred one evening.

‘Wash your hands yourself, Addie,' Fred said. ‘Don't tell me what to do.'

‘Are you ill?' Papa asked her at supper one evening.

‘Not ill, Papa. No.'

Papa took time and some surgical skill in the removal of a piece of gristle from his stew, which I took as a reproof of my cooking skills and as a more general reproof.

‘If you would sharpen the knife, as I asked last week,' I said.

He made no sign of having heard me, just laid the gristle on the edge of his plate as if his burdens were too great to be shared. Skipper would eat it and with pleasure.

Addie's mood had a way of spreading through the house so that we all were out of sorts. I found her crying on the bed one morning, her face to the wall, her hands to her breast and her legs curled up as if she were herself a baby, and when I touched her shoulder thinking to comfort she shook herself free and rose stiffly before stalking from the room. I looked for her later for help hanging the clothes but she had disappeared. I went outside. The chickens were at the far side of their run asleep in the midday sun, a few with beaks open, feathers puffed out like dandelion clocks, one or two looking at me with half-shut eyes as I went up the rise to try and spy her from higher ground. There was no one between me and the water; neither could I see her when I walked the house's outskirts or the yard's perimeter. There was just sky and saltbush and paths and lagoon, and all of them empty.

Late in the afternoon the house cows began to low at the stable door and I sent Fred to milk them and to give them some feed. When he returned to the kitchen with the pails of milk, he said, ‘Tull's back,' rather short – distracted I would say.

‘How is he?'

‘Well, I think. Up at the stable. He'll be along in a minute I should think.' He went out again.

I set the milk in the pantry for the cream to rise and went outside under the grape vines to see if Tull had finished in the stable, but it was Addie who was coming down the slope. I called, ‘Tull's back, Fred says. Did you know?'

‘Yes. I just saw him.' She smudged the curls from her face and could not stop smiling. The edges of her mouth went down, with effort, and flew up again. She was all lit up.

‘Addie,' I said.

‘No, Hester.' And she went on, the tendrils of grape vine reaching for her in the draught of her passing.

I looked back to the stable, from where Tull was now coming without haste towards the house. He put his jacket on as he came and eased it at the neck, adjusting his collar against it.

‘Hester,' he said when he came close.

‘Tull. How are your family?'

‘They are— Some of them are recovering. Some not.' He looked past me to the veranda, which was empty of people, and along the lagoon. ‘Is Fred about?'

‘I thought you saw him in the stable.'

‘Just outside. I had something I wished to ask him.'

‘He went out again – perhaps down to the shore.'

‘Ah.' And he disappeared down the path.

It seemed so long since we had last sat on the veranda in the evening, all of us together watching the stars come out: the Southern Cross, the Ship's Sails, the Telescope. Fred claimed to be able to identify them all from his study of Burrit's
Geography of the Heavens
.

‘You have a lot of stories,' Fred said to Tull.

‘I suppose so,' Tull said.

‘Do you have stories about the stars?'

‘Yes.'

‘Tell us.'

‘I couldn't,' Tull said.

‘You said you could.'

Tull shrugged. ‘I said I know some, but I have nothing to say about them.' He spoke quite plain, and not unfriendly or cold, and looked up at the stars with a sort of reverence, not only interest. I had seen an exchange finish just so in the kitchen, more than once. In the early days Fred would ask again to see if a story could be teased out of him. Now he merely looked at Tull curiously. There was no offense meant and none taken.