Skins (14 page)

The canvas slapping in the wind woke her. She sat up and realised that she and Mary were alone. Mary was already awake. She didn't seem to notice Dorothea.

‘Are you alright?'

She didn't answer.

Dorothea pulled herself up. Through the gap, silver light glittered on the water as it caught the wind ripples, and the sound of the waves slapping the sand suggested that the swell had risen overnight. Mary looked sideways at her.

‘Matthew's gone.'

‘Oh.'

She hitched up her skirts and crawled across to the entrance to look out, squinting at the brightness of the white sand beach. The whaleboat was gone. Despite Mary's distress she was relieved.

‘That's good, ain't it? He can send someone for us.'

Mary's eyes were dark. She turned her head towards the dirty canvas wall.

‘Anderson gave him three quid.' She paused for a moment and then continued. ‘For a gown, he said.'

Dorothea frowned. Neither of them spoke for a minute.

Finally she said: ‘I don't understand.'

Mary brought her hand up to her forehead and covered her eyes.

‘Three quid. I'm to be nice to him, he said.'

‘What? Anderson?'

She nodded and choked. Dorothea reached for her arm and stroked it, thinking she always knew Matthew was a stupid bastard but she never thought he was capable of that. She didn't know what to say. She wondered why he needed three pounds, unless that sly dog Jansen was charging him for a place on the boat. But then Anderson couldn't have known that was what Matthew wanted the money for otherwise he would have stopped them from leaving.

The tent rustled behind her. At first she thought it was the wind but then she saw Mary's face. She turned around. Matthew's head was inside the tent.

‘You ain't gone!' Mary mumbled and sat up, her cheeks wet.

He looked grim. His eyes flicked from her face to the ground and he moved inside.

‘Bastards left without me.'

‘That's alright then. You can give Anderson back his money,' said Dorothea, glaring at him.

He squatted down and reached for Mary's hand.

‘It ain't like that.'

‘What do you mean?' asked Dorothea while Mary gazed at him, eyes full and glassy.

He cleared his throat.

‘I ain't got it.'

‘What?'

‘It was for me passage.'

‘Does Anderson know?'

Mary's expression hadn't changed. It was like she didn't understand what he was saying. Matthew took his hand away from her.

‘Yeah.'

‘And?' asked Dorothea.

He shook his head and brought his hand up to his forehead, rubbing his brow.

‘Why?' continued Dorothea.

He started to say something and then he paused, knowing that he had no explanation at all. Only that he had wanted so desperately to get away. The uncertainty of it all, of what might happen to him. Dorothea's jaw was tight with rage. That he was prepared to sell his own wife, the bastard! Mary, who had been sitting dumbly beside Dorothea, suddenly leapt up and flung herself at him. He fell back. A noise erupted from her, violent and torn, and her head shook. Dorothea was motionless. Matthew tried to hold Mary's wrists as she clawed him. Eventually she slumped sobbing on top of him. He pushed her off and got up, and without looking back, left the tent.

Mary curled herself tightly on her side. Her eyes were closed and dark strands of slimy hair entwined her neck. She brought her fists up under her chin and hiccuped. Dorothea reached down and gently pushed her onto her back, straightening her arms and placing them by her side. She brushed her hair away and took a piece of clean rag from between her breasts to wipe her sister's face. She talked softly about things that didn't matter. But when she suggested that she get up, Mary turned away. So eventually she left her.

Dorothea heard someone outside the hut. She moved to the doorway to see who it was. Anderson was bent over a bucket of water. She waited for him to see her. He looked up, and his eyes stayed on her face as he turned around and brought the knife up to a piece of rag. He slowly wiped the blade.

‘What do you want?'

She gripped the doorway and the splinters pricked her hand. She took a deep breath and stepped outside, holding her skirt with one hand and shading her eyes from the sun with the other.

‘My sister,' she began. He replaced the knife in his belt. She let her hand drop from her forehead and turned away.

‘My sister,' she said more loudly, ‘is married.'

Anderson grunted. She felt the heat in her face.

‘You can't have her.'

He looked down at the cloth in his hand, then he wiped his arm, which was covered in sand, and grinned.

‘It was her husband's idea,' he said mildly.

‘But you can't keep him to it.'

He shrugged and turned away, taking the track back to the beach. She watched his back as it disappeared between the trees and then she gripped her skirts with both hands and hurried after him. His long strides put distance between them quite quickly. She called after him as they neared the headland.

‘I want to know what you're going to do.'

Without running she was finding it difficult to keep up with him. He stopped.

His expression had hardened and he said: ‘A dog doesn't bark at his master.'

Then he continued. Her pace slowed. She had no idea what he was talking about. She came to the seaweed beach and struggled through the mounds to the other side. It reminded her of a dream she sometimes had that no matter how hard she tried she couldn't get to the end of the road and her feet would sink further and further into deep mud.

She reached the whaleboat a few minutes after Anderson. At the same time Manning and Jem appeared from the other direction. She hadn't seen them since the evening before. She was reminded again of how little she knew her brother. He hadn't even acknowledged her. Mead and Isaac scraped the keel of the overturned boat and briefly looked up at them all. Anderson stirred a pot that simmered on a smouldering fire. It smelt of burnt toffee and its thick crimson liquid bubbled.

Isaac grinned while he worked. ‘Can't get rid of you then,' he said to Manning.

Manning reached for his throat.

‘We saw a sail,' he said.

‘Over the other side,' added Jem, pointing towards Goose Island.

Anderson poured what looked like blood into the liquid and stirred some more.

‘Was it Jansen?' asked Manning.

Mead and Isaac looked up at the boys and then over at Anderson. Mead nodded.

‘Who was with him?' asked Manning, glancing warily at Anderson.

Anderson leant over the boat and with his knife wedged the resin into its joins. He didn't appear to be listening.

‘There were seven of them,' replied Mead. ‘Jansen's mob and that mad bastard Johno. The boy too. He's gone. Bugger me, why they took him.'

‘What about Owens?' asked Manning quickly, his eyes shifting from one person to the next.

‘He's gone,' said Mead slowly, watching him.

Manning shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He seemed to be studying the ground. His long thin hair covering his eyes. Then he looked up. All of them except Anderson were watching him. Then Anderson looked up too and some of the boiling liquid dropped onto his palm. He didn't flinch.

‘What do you want?' asked Anderson.

‘Me and him.' Manning took a deep breath and nodded at Jem. ‘We want you to take us to the mainland.'

Anderson straightened. He wiped the back of his hand on the rag around his forehead but he didn't say anything. He didn't need to. In his hand the red liquid on the end of the stick hardened to a thick glassy substance. Manning looked over his shoulder at Jem and together they walked away, following the wet line of the tide. Jem stopped to look at something washed up by the sea. Manning reached down. But as he did so Dorothea caught the desperate look he gave Anderson.

She was going to speak to Anderson again but she sensed Isaac watching her. The look on his face made her skin prickle for he had eyes like the wild dogs that came in for scraps around the Sound. He scared her more than most men. She turned around and followed her brother and his friend along the beach.

‘What were you talking about?' she asked Jem as she caught up with him.

He looked sideways and then across at Manning.

‘Nothing.'

Why couldn't he act like her brother, just once?

‘You would tell us if you were going to leave?' she continued.

This time Manning answered, and he sneered as he spoke: ‘Why would he tell you anything?'

She looked at him, wondering why he was so hostile towards her. She noticed her boots were collecting sand in the holes at the toes. She stopped to sit on a rock to take them off. Manning was standing over her. She recognised his expression.

‘Bugger off, you little bastard,' she spat, sickened, feeling almost as though she had been propositioned by her brother.

Manning's slippery look vanished and he walked on. She didn't try to catch up with them.

She felt sick, apprehensive sick like when they set sail from the Sound. Jansen had gone. And even though she had wanted to be free of him, his leaving made her feel more isolated than ever. She had been left behind on an island with sealers, men who had their own rules. She felt as though she was on the edge of the world, or perhaps she had fallen off into some halfway place. It wasn't living and it wasn't quite hell. She could feel the wind changing. The sea between Flinders Peak and Goose Island was ruffled with wind gusts and white-capped waves. And in the same direction a solid band of black clouds had formed and was spreading. Manning and her brother continued on past the camp to the other end of the beach where she could see Matthew. He was probably trying to trap fish on the reef. She hoped her sister wasn't in the camp for she couldn't face her.

A blackened log smoked in the fireplace and threatened to go out. She gathered some dry leaves and sticks and tried to poke it into life. Small flames wavered and smouldered and smoke filled the room. She gave up and let the smoke sting her eyes into tears. She couldn't even get a fire started. There wasn't anything she could do and she was tired of feeling responsible for everyone. It had always been like that. She had nursed her mother and tended to her cuts and bruises and made sure that all the children were fed. Mary had helped sometimes but only when she was asked to. Dorothea knew she was beaten. She had always felt she could take care of her sister. Together they were stronger than if they acted alone. It had changed of course when Mary was married, but it hadn't stopped Dorothea from wanting to try. Perhaps it was her fault that Mary was the way she was. Her sister was not unlike the short-beaded weed that grew beneath the waterline on the rock: swept one way and then another by the tide, never to stand straight.

She knew Mary was distraught. She hated Matthew for that. She knew that being married had to be marginally better than being single. But how foolish women were to believe they were protected. There was no security, ever.