Skins (17 page)

That was the other thing that puzzled Dorothea. Anderson left Church alone. He never told him to do anything. Church was a shadowy figure in a long ragged coat who hovered on the edge of their circle. Often she forgot he was there. She wondered what he wrote in his diary. She was the only one in her family who could write her name and that was because she was her grandmother's favourite. She ran her hands along the rough edge of the table and remembered that her grandmother's hands had been fine and soft. Her mother's hands must have been like that before she married their father. Grandmother would scrub her palms and her fingernails and after she had wiped them dry with a cloth, starched white with pretty pink flowers sewn into the corners, she would rub perfumed oil into them. It was just as well that Grandmother never knew the place they had come to.

She could see in Mary her mother's likeness. They had married weak men. But she knew they didn't have a choice. Both women were a burden to their families. Dorothea knew that her father would marry them all off if he could, even the younger ones. It was another reason why she had left for Van Diemen's Land. She wanted a choice. She wanted a strong man who would protect her from other men. When the image of Anderson appeared and she remembered the heat of his hand on her skin, she quickly banished it, for he didn't count.

She wrapped her shawl like a scarf over her head and tied the skin around her shoulders. Damp sand stuck to her feet. The other end of the beach was shrouded in fine mist. The sea was black and fierce and its thick white edge washed the shore. Further out, where the swell rolled unbroken from the south, blistered by the wind, foam peaks formed and fell and were a jagged edge along the horizon. A mass of wet clouds tumbled above the waves and then a grey veil crossed the sea. Light leaked through the cracks and the mainland came and went. She breathed the damp air and pushed back her shawl, letting her hair free. The end of the beach came closer. Thick cloud crossed to the islands in the east. Above the sky lightened and the seaweed, gold and brown, shone in piles on shimmering sand. She wandered amongst them, a ragged grey figure, moving the wet silky strands aside with her toe, searching for signs of another world.

Occasionally she knelt down to look at a shell or a piece of sponge or some strange opaque creature. Animal or plant, she wasn't sure. On her way back she walked closer to the waves, and they swirled warmly around her ankles. A piece of brown rubbery weed was being nudged further up the beach by the foam. But it wasn't weed. Carefully she lifted it with both hands. Its eyes were only just still. It had a long nose, flared at the end, and its neck curved like a jaunty pony; its body was almost translucent and flowed into a tail that curled. Skin ribbed and ribbons of weed. It was a sea dragon.

The bow of the boat nudged around the point. She felt for the sea dragon to make sure it hadn't fallen from the shawl she had knotted behind her neck. She wasn't sure why she kept it. She didn't want it to smell like the large shell she and Mary had found washed up a few days ago. She walked from the wet sand onto the gently sloping rock, feet numb from the cold, trying to avoid the sharp broken shells that were dropped from the sky by the big black and white gulls. Water had pooled in small depressions in the rock. She also avoided the black patches of granite in case they were slippery. There in the corner of the bay the wind was still. But further out the tops of the waves were white and irregular. She sat on a section of dry rock and leant up against one of the boulders that were arranged like the pebbles of a giant. The boat was rowed closer to shore. The sail was wound around the mast and brought down. It lay beside each man and poked out over the stern. Anderson stood above them, head cocked to the shore, one leg raised against the leeward side, the long steering oar an extension of his arm as he manoeuvred them clear of the rocks. She thought it usually sat higher in the water but then she realised they had taken down the washcloths, the strips of canvas that were strung above the gunwales. It looked leaner and sleek and with each stroke moved cleanly through the water. When they nosed it up on the sand, the wind muffled Anderson's words. She watched him though. He leapt over the side into waist-high water. His chest sucked in with the shock of it, his arms were held above his head. He ran his hand along the side of the boat, tracing the elegant curve of the empty vessel, and then stood back from the men as they lifted it forwards onto the first roller.

They hauled it above the high-tide mark and gently set it down on the sand tilted to one side. The men left for the camp. Anderson returned with a pail. Her steps were light on the sand so that he only saw her when she gripped the side of the boat beside him. He sprang back angry.

‘What are you doing?' he snapped.

She was startled.

‘What?'

‘Coming up on me like that. Could've knifed you.' And then he leant over and with one finger traced a line under her neck. ‘Across here.'

But his look on that bare section of skin beneath her chin was soft. Despite her coverings she shivered. He turned back to the boat but not before she thought she saw the briefest of smiles. It was hard to tell for he always recovered his mask so quickly. But she had seen more than once that his eyes didn't always belong in that hard face. Still, she didn't doubt that he could be cruel. She only just reached the top of his shoulder. Despite the weather his arms were bare. He leant down to take out the rest of the water swirling around the bottom.

‘Is it leaking?'

‘Perhaps.' He turned his head to the side to face her as he leant over the boat. ‘Stupid bastards hauled her up without taking out the water.'

He straightened and threw out the contents of the pail.

‘Been out of the sea too long. The timber shrinks.'

She nodded and looked down the line of the boat and the neat rows of planking at the bottom and remembered what it had been like to sail here. They were long thin boats and on each seat, or thwart as the men called them, one man took an oar. The only place she and her sister could sit was up the front beside the mast. And the waves had been so big. When the boat plunged into the trough, she and her sister clutched the sides, expecting the bow to part the thick blue walls and take them beyond the darkness. But while the front of the boat might sink a little and their faces become wet with the spray, it would rise up and totter above the next wave, only to begin again.

She took her hand away from the boat, suddenly reminded of what lay between her and the place she had come from.

‘What do you want?' he asked.

She half turned and shrugged. With the movement of her shoulders she noticed the creature hanging in the folds of her shawl. She took it out and he took it from her, turning it over and holding it close to his face.

‘Have you seen one before?'

He nodded. ‘They're good luck.'

She looked sceptical and he chuckled and the sound sort of rumbled in his chest.

‘At Wampoa the Chinamen had big baskets full. They were dried for eating I think. They ate all crazy things those Chinamen.' He gave it back to her. ‘But he don't look too tasty.'

That's what she would do. She would dry it.

Mary was beside the door to the kitchen. When she saw Dorothea her breath burst from her chest.

‘There you are. Thank God.'

‘What's wrong?'

‘Twas a woman screaming. I thought it was you.'

‘Where?'

‘Round the back.'

Her sister grabbed the back of her skirt.

‘What are you doing?'

Dorothea paused, listening. She couldn't hear anything. But then there was something that came through faintly over the top of the thundering sea. Like an animal whimpering. She continued along the track. When she reached the well she saw her. She wasn't sure who it was until she came closer. It was Mooney, bleeding from the side of her head. She was tethered to the tree by the well. The eye without blood glanced up and away, almost ashamed.

Dorothea felt for the thin trunk of the tree beside her and wrapped her hand around its flaky surface. She wanted to go closer but her legs wouldn't move. Then from behind a tree came Isaac. He had a club in his hand and as he passed Mooney he raised it above his head as though to hit her again. When she sank into the dirt he laughed and brought his hand down by his side. He walked towards Dorothea and then he saw her.

‘Fancy a bit too?'

‘You can't do that to her. It's not right.'

‘I do what I bleedin' like.'

He was too close for her to run and his face was in her face and the inside of his mouth was like a wet black cavern. His cold eyes bulged. She gasped with the stench of his breath as he spat.

‘Here, I'll give you what you want.'

She turned her head away and he grabbed her hair, holding it tight against her skull. Her eyes watered. His other hand he thrust under her skirt and his fingers invaded her and he laughed in her face.

‘This is it … ain't it … this what you been wanting.'

She struggled against him, pushing his chest with her hands, but he didn't budge. Instead he was pushing her backwards into the bush. She was going to fall. He let go as she fell into the wattle, tearing the sleeves of her gown and scratching her arms. Her mind registered the startled squawk of a rock parrot and sharp pricks of the undergrowth beneath her. He stood over her undoing the buttons on his trousers.

There was a snap like the sound of a thick branch breaking and he fell sideways into the bush. She looked up and saw Anderson standing over him. Mary was behind Anderson. She took Mary's hand to pull herself up.

‘Jack … Jack … the black woman. He tied her up.'

Anderson looked back at her and his eyes squinted hard.

‘It's his woman.'

She sat on a chair by the fire while Mary washed the blood from the scratches on her face and arms. Her gown was ruined. The fabric was worn anyway and now the seams had split from the shoulders.

‘Did you see her? Mooney?' asked Dorothea.

Mary shook her head as she dipped the rag in water.

‘It ain't right,' continued Dorothea.

‘And there ain't nothing you can do about it.'

‘But …'

‘It ain't nothing to do with us.'

Dorothea sighed and looked down at the cuts on her hands. They were only shallow wounds.

It was suddenly dark. Mary took a stick from the fire and lit the lamp in the middle of the table. Anderson came through the door with her shawl. He threw it at her and gave her a look that was blacker than his skin. She hadn't realised she had lost it. And then she remembered the sea dragon. She felt for its outline and uncovered it. But it was crushed and so she threw it onto the fire and watched it sizzle and shrink and the firelight flickered in her eyes.

She sensed his movement behind her and when he left the room she murmured to Mary that she was going to bed. Mary came too and they lay on their bed of skins in the storeroom. Neither of them slept but they felt safer listening to the men's voices through the crack under the door. Dorothea thought he would come for her but he didn't. Mary's breathing was deep and even. The light went out and then all she could hear was the scurrying of small animals and branches sliding back and forth against the outside wall whenever there was a gust of wind.