Salt Creek (6 page)

Papa was not to be thwarted in his wish to have Tull come inside, and by degrees he wore Mama down, first by inducing him to have a bath with soap in the washhouse. I did not witness that, but Fred told me of his refusal to have his hair washed or trimmed: most vociferous he was in his protestations. Albert came inside to tell us the news, also carrying a message from Papa that a jacket was now needed for Tull since he couldn't stop shivering.

‘That will be the shock,' Mama said, rising from her chair where she had been sewing, curious despite herself.

‘He's only cold I think,' Albert said. ‘Not frightened any more. He's furious. It was quite funny, if you want to know what I think.' He grinned.

‘Be kind, Albert,' Mama said, in gentle reproof. ‘Come and help me find something,' and she put her arm about his shoulder in the way she had used to and Albert, surprised, leaned against her.

‘You should have seen it, Mama. You would have laughed. You couldn't help it. He was worse than Skipper.'

It was such a little thing that Mama was doing, noticing Albert. Seeing the two of them so affectionate – Albert with Papa's long pale face and Mama's soft brown hair, but with a child's plump cheeks and small nose, and Mama tender – made me see how Albert missed this. There were just these moments when she seemed to remember how to be her old self, as if there were a trick to it. I could try to be like her for Albert's sake, but he looked to Fred for attention rather than me.

Each Sunday morning Papa held a worship service in the parlour, which we must all attend as neat and clean as could be managed and in the correct state of mind: reverential, humble, collected. Beforehand, I took Papa a cup of tea on the veranda and he sat and drank it by way of collecting his thoughts, and on one such occasion, seeing Tull coming down the fork of the track that came to the back of the house, Papa waved his arms in sweeping arcs and called out, ‘Hello, Tull! Please come in, meet Mrs Finch and my daughters, Hester and Adelaide, that is. The boys of course you know. Come and worship with us.'

What Tull made of that I could not imagine. He approached the back of the house, and stepped up to the veranda, pausing there and moving his feet against the flat wood. Papa smiled in encouragement and went to the door and beckoned. The sight of Papa so close in the doorway made him stop. Fred edged around from behind him and said, ‘Tull,' and smiled at him as if they were the oldest of friends. It was the nicest thing about Fred: he was quiet and his sombre colouring made him fade beside Stanton. Still, there was a gentleness and warmth about him that drew people in and made them wish to lighten his mood. It was in part a trick of his physiognomy, gone in a second when he laughed, but they didn't know that at first. Some of the tension went out of Tull and he came closer. Papa beamed and moved into the house and Tull at first peered and then stepped after him and by degrees, following Papa, made his way past Addie, sparing her barely a glance, up the hallway to the parlour. We followed.

‘See who has arrived, Mrs Finch,' Papa said.

Mama came to the door and said, ‘Good morning, Tully,' with a gentle smile. Mary, in her arms, stared and stared and sucked her fingers.

Naturally we were curious to have a native inside the house with us. Mama began to count the seats and I saw what she was thinking: that Tull could only fit in if he squeezed onto the sofa with the boys or if he sat on the floor, which would have displeased Papa as lacking in hospitality.

‘I'll fetch a chair,' I whispered.

‘You're a good girl, Hettie.'

When I returned with Papa's ladder-back, Tull, neat as a cat, was exploring the room and everyone there was watching him. He touched the chest of drawers with a single fingertip and ran his hands across the window and moved his head from side to side to take in the distortion in the glass and felt its smooth hard surface, very delicate in his touch. And we watched him in our own wonderment and curiosity, seeing our house through new eyes. It was very strange and fascinating. Papa went out to call the others (he liked to be punctual and we were already running late); Tull looked after him as if to follow but Papa said, ‘Wait here if you like,' so he did; it was as if he must steel himself to stay in this small room with us.

‘See this, Tull,' Addie said and went to the piano and lifted the lid. Mama frowned at her boldness, but Addie paid no heed, which was nothing out of the ordinary. I expected her to play a crashing chord for the fun of shocking him, but she touched her forefinger to middle C and depressed it once, just enough for the hammer to sound against the string, clear as a bell, and sweet. Tull blinked rapidly, but was otherwise calm, and watched Addie and the piano in expectation, waiting for what she might do next. She played the same note, and then another, higher, G, and played them together, and added an E to make a chord, luring him in by degrees. He came closer. Mama had become curious too and did not interrupt or reprove.

Addie nodded at Tull in encouragement. ‘You can touch it, Tull. Go on. Play a note.' She struck a key, and took his arm (Mama drew in a sharp breath), startling Tull though he did not pull away, and led his hand to the keyboard that he might play a note on his own, which he did, loosing a smile that I think must have been part relief. There came the sound of the boys at the back door, of Papa shushing their weekday voices, and of them tramping through the house. Then they were in the parlour and the space shrank.

Tull watched intently as one after another we sat. Fred was the first to understand his confusion. ‘Move, Albert.' He pushed Albert further along the sofa. ‘Here, Tull.' He patted the space beside him and Tull looked at it. Fred turned him around and pulled him down. ‘There.' They bounced together.

From what I saw from the vantage point of the piano – which was nothing at all while I was playing – Tull sat through the service with fair patience. He fidgeted a little through Papa's sermonette on the subject of gratitude for bountiful riches and blessings etcetera, which we had heard variations on many times before, but we were all guilty of that. My stratagem of giving the appearance of listening while setting myself mental calculations to while away the time having worked quite well, I could not attest to the details. Papa chose the new hymn ‘Onward Christian Soldiers' which had been quite the rage in Adelaide when we left, and sang with gusto, particularly for the line ‘We are treading where the saints have trod', which I could not help feeling was inaccurate, there being no saints in Australia and not much saintly behaviour, if the newspapers we had read in town were to be believed. Hugh's voice rang out for the warrior lines: ‘marching as to war' and ‘like a mighty army moves the church of God'. (Looking back I have come to see that he was one of those people who seemed always to be presenting a picture of himself – noble warrior, determined pioneer, chief advisor – but seldom inhabiting his true self.) We made a poor army.

Papa invited Tull to stay to dinner. Tull watched the table being set and the other preparations of serving dishes being taken to the kitchen and Addie outside collecting a bouquet of whatever flowers she could find to make the dresser nice for Sunday. Without saying a word, Tull went past the table and out of the back door and flowed up the slope and away. He did not come to the house the next day and he didn't seek out Papa and the boys out on the run. He was gone again, we had no idea where, and in the week that followed Papa would not stop blaming himself that he had progressed too fast with him.

CHAPTER 6

Chichester, 1874

I WAS FORTUNATE IN THREE THINGS
, none of which I deserved. My mother and father believed daughters to be worthy of education, Grandmama favoured me, and although we were ourselves poor, there was sufficient money in the family to save us from the very worst that poverty could inflict when we came to the time of severest trial. Together, they saved me. Now, all that I have from those early days, which were both terrible and wonderful, are some flints, a basket and a few stone tools.

Two books in my possession have been a comfort: one by a Mr Gould about the birds of Australia. A few of the birds in it are familiar – swans and pelicans and emus and gulls and so on – and are so lifelike in colour and in the cast of their eye that when I pass the book left open on a stand in the gallery they sometimes startle me, as if a breeze had lifted a wingtip or caught a tail or they are tracking my passage past.

The other book is by Mr Angas and contains many fine sketches and watercolours of natives, including on the Coorong, which he made while journeying in Australia. (It is not the copy we had in South Australia. Fred might have that one.) We used to look at Mr Angas's book when we were preparing to leave Adelaide and Papa would try to reassure Mama of the gentleness of the Coorong tribe.

‘They have spears and clubs. See them there,' and Mama had poked the page, ‘and there. Everywhere. Savages.'

‘For hunting,' Papa said. ‘For animals, not to fight people – not white people at least.'

‘People
are
killed. What about
The
Maria
?'

Everyone knew the story of
The Maria
– I couldn't remember a time when I had not known how the survivors of a shipwreck had been helped by natives on the Coorong and after a time had been turned on and murdered – all of them – and their possessions stolen. The governor had ordered a search party to be sent to discover who had done it and two natives were hanged and more than one shot. It was hard not to think of sometimes, when so few of us would be living in so remote an area.

‘And people have also been helped. Other survivors would have died without the natives' help. I do not believe them barbarous, merely uncivilized, and that can be remedied. They have treated others with kindness as we will treat them and I believe that charity is rewarded, as I hope it will be for us when we are living among them.'

‘Oh.' It was a drawn out despairing sound and Mama put her handkerchief to her mouth to stop it. ‘And no one there but us?'

‘There is an inn run by man and wife, the Robinsons.' At this Mama brightened. ‘But ten miles further down the lagoon,' Papa added.

Mama's face became bleak again. ‘Ten miles,' she repeated. ‘Too far to walk. Too far for company.'

Papa gave his sweet patient smile. ‘We must do this, Bridget,' and his voice was low and pleasant and his arm about her holding her to his side. Mama's forehead rested against his chest and he stroked her hair so gently I could almost feel its silkiness myself. ‘It is our best chance; it is our only chance. We will become paupers else. I will not see our station so reduced.'

Mama's head moved against him, as if she were grinding her feelings and thoughts into him. ‘If I ask Mama—' she began.

Papa stepped back and took her by the shoulders and held her away from him. ‘No. We will not do that. We will not accept their charity.' And he shook her once, not with any violence, but in emphasis that was enough to shock. ‘No more of that.'

‘I am sure she did not mean, they did not mean—'

Papa released her and stepped back and the distance between them continued to increase as he spoke. ‘Let us not discuss this further. It is not to be thought of. I will not give them further reason to question my duty to my family.' He stepped backwards again. ‘It is
my
family. I will not be beholden again. I will not be lectured.' He was at the door by then. ‘Let that be the end of the matter.' He opened the door and was gone, leaving Mama trembling behind.

She turned to me. ‘It's not that they— They only wish to help. I am all they have left, you see, your Aunt Mary and Aunt Hetta being gone.'

‘Mama.'

‘They came here to be with us. To leave them here in town – I cannot feel it is right.'

‘We will be back, Mama. I know we will.' Mama began to sob. ‘Please, Mama. Don't feel it so,' I said.

‘How can I do otherwise?'

I did not know what answer I could give Mama that would reassure, so I left the room too, which I should not have.

I did not altogether blame Papa. Grandmama was accustomed to managing people and set his back up. ‘Surely not another lease,' she once said, and her eyebrows lifted and her thin cheeks flushed. Mama said that I took after her. She was tall and straight-backed, with an abundance of faded red hair and fine pale skin that was much admired. ‘A bird in the hand,' she would say, and look at Papa. She and Grandpapa were much the same height – he perhaps a fraction shorter – and they seemed so much equals to me that it surprised me when he said, ‘Now my girl,' and touched her arm in mild admonition. Then her eyes snapped and she sometimes left the room in such a rush that her skirts flew out behind.

I followed her once and found her further along the hall with her hands pressed to her cheeks and wearing a rather wild expression. When I asked what the matter was she said, ‘To spare you all my terrible tongue, Hettie. It does no one any good. Mind what I say now.' She stroked my cheek – ‘You're a good girl' – and then, collecting herself, gave it a smart pat and said, ‘And if you will take my advice, never forget your bonnet. Dear me, what will become of you all?'

There was no more talk after that. Not even Georgie's untimely death the week after could delay departure. It was hard for Mama to leave his grave behind. All the sadness of that time became muddled.

I have Mama's old flint arrowheads that she discovered near this house when she was a girl. They were from the ancient Britons who lived here when the Romans invaded. They were something like talismans to her. I keep them in a case in the gallery with a spearhead and a stone axe and a carved wooden club that Tull left behind. I thought Papa might discard them and took them with me when I left. Of course, flints are not so remarkable to me now that I live in a country and among buildings that fairly bristle with them. In the Coorong, they brought to mind Mama and her stories of traipsing lanes and meadows and woods; more often now I recall Tull making use of them, how quickly he understood them and released their energy to make fire or implement or weapon, how they became more than stone in his hands.

And finally there is my Coorong basket, acquired through a trade I made with someone I knew at Salt Creek, which gives no indication of the purposes for which it was made or used. Addie said that the women who made them told stories while they were working; the stories were woven into every strand. For a while I had it on a shelf in the gallery, a mere artefact, but it began to lose meaning, almost to die before my eyes, so I put it to use thinking it better for it to wear out and break – to live and die – than to be shelved as if it were a fly drowned in amber. One summer morning I lifted it down and took it with me into town. ‘Who would think savages could make anything so fine?' one lady of my acquaintance said. Several others touched it, which I did not like. Now I use it to pick flowers or fruits or vegetables about the garden and it has come alive again; it pleases me to see it returned to unremarkable utility.

The Coorong, November1855

Two weeks after the church service Tull returned. Papa was jubilant, and invited him to attend our small school. He had no idea of Tull's finer qualities at first, of the acuity and retentiveness of his mind. His invitation was nothing more than part of his goal to civilize. Perhaps he offered some inducement at first; I don't know what they talked of when they were out working on the run. What we saw was Tull being more often with us around the dining table for lessons than outside at work. Most days, Mama set a lesson for each of us, and tested us in turn and if she did not come to the dining room the job fell to me, but Tull worked with her; if she was not there he worked alone, on a slate. He valued reading above anything. He was so neat with his hands that it was no wonder that his writing was clean once he had the way of holding first chalk, later a pen. I could not tell if he derived pleasure from it, if curiosity drove him in the way that it drove Fred. It was as well that Papa had decided that Stanton need no longer trouble himself with school, else Tull would have had a harder time of it with him. He and Hugh had left earlier with a great jostling through the doorway and a nervous laughing energy that I could not fathom.

‘Have a good day, Hester,' Stanton said at the door. ‘Among your pots and pans.' He appeared so brown and free, his hair grown with no barber around, and he was filling out. He would be a big man one day, with broad shoulders. His jacket would not fit him much longer. He had the swagger of a person who lived in the expectation of admiration. There was none of that hereabouts; we must wait in the hope that neighbours would one day arrive. Until the district became more closely settled he would be thwarted. Love and other such matters were mysteries to me, but I do not think they were to Stanton. All I knew then was the teeming energy and frustration in him. Hugh had it too but contained it better. He contrived to be neat, to maintain some of the habits of town life. He hung his clothes at day's end while Stanton, from his dishevelled appearance, must have left them where they fell.

His mocking tone made me hot inside, but I would not show him that. As coolly as I could, I said, ‘And you, Stant. Let us hope the cattle are able to elevate your mind.'

‘Oh, I will have a good day. You need not worry on that score. And it won't be because of the cows.' He laughed.

‘Stanton,' Hugh said, sharp now when he had been joking before, and Stanton turned to go.

I would not say that I hated my brother, but I did dislike him and could not stop myself saying, ‘Yes, yes. Off you go. And if you later need assistance with matters that might require intelligence, I'm always happy to oblige.'

He turned back. ‘You be careful, Hett. With your sharp tongue no one will have you even if they can bear your ridiculous height.' And he swung out of the door.

‘You can't help it, Hester,' Hugh said. ‘Stanton doesn't mean it. There will be someone.'

His pity and his kind, pompous face were worse than any jeering of Stanton's.

‘Stanton does mean it and so do I. He
is
stupid. I would not trade my mind for anything.' But it was not true, as the tears that rushed into my eyes told Hugh most eloquently. ‘Go. Go. I don't want to see either of you.'

There was the banging and stamping of them pulling on their boots and of them thundering down the steps and the clatter of the gate and soon after the diminishing crunch of hooves.

We became used to Tull's presence through that summer and into autumn – more than that: we were impatient for his arrival each day. He was the most alert, conscious person I had ever met, poised for anything: flight, danger, contests of strength or will, and to learn more – always that. We liked him for the games he knew and taught us, short as we were of entertainments. There was one in which we made two lines and kicked a ball from one line to the other and the people opposite jumped and wrestled for it; and another in which he set a disc of bark rolling and we tried to hit it with the fine blunt spears that Tull made for us. At first he laughed at our clumsiness and the way we stood and threw our weapons. Stanton improved and hit often enough, each time yelling a triumphant ‘Hah!' Try as he might he could not leap as Tull did for a third game in which the boys took turns to throw things at him from a distance, and he evaded them. He was never struck. His litheness and agility were an amazement to us. From standing he could jump more than a yard in the air and twist and writhe to avoid being struck as if suspended and twisting in the wind. From a run he could leap even higher. But he brushed off any praise, the abilities of other boys of his acquaintance being greater, he said.

We knew only a little about him, and that what Papa had noted – that he seemed to some degree to be less favoured than other boys in his clan. His mother's husband was not his father, Papa said. They did not discourage his contact with us even if they did not wish for contact themselves.

From us, Tull learned how to play chess and draughts and marbles and he would play them with anyone who cared to late in the afternoon when the work had been done, or at other times if it was raining. It was a novelty for us all to pit our skills against someone new, one who saw with a mind that was innocent in a way – of this game and its traditions at least. He had never heard of a king or queen or knight or bishop and without a sense of hierarchy saw the game differently. He played as if the king were no more important than a bishop. ‘He is weak,' he said. ‘Why do the other pieces protect it?'