Skins (23 page)

Middle Island 1835, Dorothea Newell

When Anderson returned he didn't say anything about Jem. It was dark when they hauled up on the beach and the three men came through the trees without speaking. Matthew and Mary had left for their tent. Earlier, when she had gone outside for water, she had noticed that a fire burnt brightly in front of it. Church had remained in the hut and for that she was grateful. Dinah had been in before and brought with her a tammar she had snared. Dorothea had skinned it and it was roasting over the fire. When the meat began to brown she wondered about Jem and what he would be eating.

Dorothea looked up and he didn't look at her. Instead he came in and continued through and into the other room. Isaac sat behind her and Mead pulled a chair close to the fire. Eventually she turned to Mead who looked up and smiled a half-smile.

‘Smells good.'

‘Where are they?'

The warmth left his eyes.

‘On the mainland, at the base of them hills.'

‘Will they … will they be alright?' she asked without turning away from the fire.

Mead shrugged: ‘They got plenty of water and as long as they stay on the coast they got shellfish.'

Then Anderson was behind her and he looked over her shoulder and down at the cooked meat.

‘Serve it up, woman.'

She listened to their talk around the table. There had been a sea elephant on one of the flat rock islands close to the coast. Which, reckoned Mead, was unusual for around here. He had been on an English whaler in the Bass Strait and they had brought in a southern right to cut up and try out on the beach. Camped on the island were a group of sealers. There was a fellow, he said, that had a sea elephant as a pet.

‘It's the truth. It was about thirty feet long and about eighteen feet wide. This fellow he'd be stroking it and feeding it. He'd hop on its back or it'd follow him around like a dog. Its big ugly snout waving about. When he was full of grog he got in a fight and some bastard killed him. The sea elephant that is, not him,' said Mead with a grin.

Anderson didn't seem to be listening and neither was Isaac. Church was the only one who appeared interested. Isaac had a mean look and it wasn't just towards her. He seemed to be directing it at everyone, or perhaps it was mostly towards Anderson. She hoped he was on his guard. But then she watched Anderson staring across the table to the wall on the other side, his eyes unfocused, and she wondered why she cared. What he had done to her brother was unforgivable. He was a brute, a savage brute.

Abruptly Anderson stood up and muttered something to himself but they all heard it.

‘The man hath penance done, and penance more will do.'

Church raised his eyebrows and stared at the empty doorway through which Anderson had just gone.

‘Coleridge?' he asked with an odd look on his face.

And then after a while he shook his head slowly. Dorothea realised something had happened but she wasn't sure what. The others were quiet too. Church's mouth was forming words without sound.

When she trod the path to the well she sensed his presence through the warmth of his body and then she saw his outline against the bush. A man created in the image of Adam. She didn't know why she thought that but it suddenly came to her. His arms enveloped her and he drew her close to his chest, her head resting against his skin and the skin of an animal. She could hear the beat of his heart. Steady. They stood like that for a moment, her body tense until gradually it lost its resistance and she yielded to him, and it reminded her of the times when she sat in the sun and the heat made her dopey and senseless. Then he let her go and left her in the dark.

She heard movement outside the door of the storeroom and then there was silence and the sound of the sea, as familiar now as her own breathing. Then she heard another sound, the lonesome howl from the pup captured and brought across the sea by Dinah. But there were no dogs to hear its cry.

She knelt in the clearing beside Dinah. The sky was pale blue and a cold breeze blew down the rock from the south and stiffened their fingers. Dinah and Sal had brought back five tammars that they had snared on the fork of a well-worn pad. Their snares were made out of strong yarn from canvas threads rubbed together. They were about eighteen inches long with a slipknot tied at one end. The snare was like a noose that was stretched out on two small y-shaped sticks and put across the tammar pads or trails to catch the animals around the neck. As the slipknot tightened they would choke to death.

Dinah explained how they worked with her hands. Then she said the skins make very good shoes, very good to wear. She asked Dorothea if she wanted some. Dorothea nodded. Dinah dislocated the limbs of the tammar and explained that it was so the spirits couldn't run away. She cut off the tails at the stump. Then she skinned the largest one with almost a flick of her wrist. She gestured to Dorothea to place her feet over the fresh warm skin. Dinah moulded it to her foot and cut it and stitched the two ends at the top with the animal's tendon. She did the same with the other foot. And then removed them for drying.

The small yellow dog sniffed around their feet for meat. And taking hold of a piece of skin with its sharp little teeth, it growled and tugged until it got what it wanted. Then it lay in the dirt, chewing and playing with its find. Dorothea reached down and rubbed its neck. It lifted its head and playfully snapped at her fingers. Dinah was watching and they both smiled.

The women skinned the rest of the animals and stretched the skins over sticks to dry. It was pretty silvery-grey fur with reddish-brown patches across the shoulders. Dorothea collected the tails of the animals and soaked them in boiling water until the fur could be scraped off easily and then placed them in the hot ashes in the hearth where they would cook slowly for several hours. She had also learnt that from Dinah. At first she had been uncomfortable with her light-footed presence. But then she got used to it and it made up in some way for Mary's continued silence. She thought that maybe Matthew was responsible for the way Mary was acting. He had his wife back and he wasn't going to let Dorothea come between them again.

Sometimes she wondered if Anderson had lain with Dinah and Sal before she came to the island. She wanted to know but most of the time she didn't have the will to find out. Rules elsewhere held no meaning for her. After a while she sought out the company of the black women and felt emboldened by the knowledge they shared with her.

So when Mooney asked for her hair she gave it willingly. The others sat in a semicircle around her while Dinah used the sharpened edge of an abalone shell to cut it. It was very long, almost to her waist and it had become a matted mess. Dinah hacked through it and cut close to her scalp, the brown coils falling in the dirt. The women reached forward, picking up pieces, holding it up to the light and then from end to end, admiring its length. Mooney collected it all in a bundle and then thinned it out with her fingers. She picked up two small twigs about four inches long and placed one across the other in the form of a cross. Then she rubbed the strands of Dorothea's hair across her bare thigh and when it was thick enough she wound it around the sticks and it became a thick reel of strong twine. That way she could store it in her skin pouch and use it when she needed it.

When Dorothea stood up, her neck felt cold and exposed. But her head was unburdened and she shook it. They watched her. Then she smiled and they all smiled. That evening Anderson ran his big broad hand over her scalp and chuckled and told her she looked like a boy. But Anderson was different since the night he had returned to her bed.

It was a few days after the boys had left. She had hardly seen him. He would leave the hut before light and return after dark but she knew he didn't leave the island. That night she woke, startled, staring up into the darkness, not seeing but knowing that his bulk was only just above her. She was frozen with fear for she thought he had come to harm her, and her breathing was tight and shallow. But instead he leant back on his heels and shushed her.

‘Let me lie with you,' he said. ‘I want to feel your goodness.'

He lowered himself onto his side and his body was pressed hard against her side. She could see now that he faced her, his head rested on the palm of his hand. She lay on her back, arms by her side, and gradually her breathing became more regular and she noticed his smell which was strong but not unpleasant. He brought his other hand up to her neck and lightly traced the contours of her cheek and jawline.

‘You're the first white woman, I ever had.' And he chuckled. ‘But it's all the same in the dark.'

He paused and when he spoke again his tone had changed.

‘But it ain't, is it? Not like it says in the Bible. That we are all children of the same parent,' he added bitterly. ‘That's a story for children.'

She listened to the scratching of an animal on the other side of the wall.

‘Where I come from it's against the law. A black can't love a fair woman because their children will be brown.'

Instead of sounding angry, his voice was soft and regretful. He sighed and then he started again.

‘When I was a boy my father was an old man. A British sailor owned him. But he was freed after his ship was captured off New England. So he went to live in Hartford. There were other free blacks there and they elected him leader. I was named after him. He wanted us to be good Americans. Good black Americans. He always said that we would earn the respect of our white neighbours if we worked hard and were sober and honest.'

He laughed then. A harsh-sounding laugh that startled her for his voice had been like a lullaby. She hadn't really been listening to the words.

‘But we couldn't go to school with their children. Nor could we sit with them at church. The old man wasn't beaten though. He had his own school and our book was the Bible.'

He paused then and breathed deeply as though the burden had grown heavier.

But he just muttered: ‘He was a foolish old man.'

He brought his hand down, which had been resting in the curve of her neck, to her stomach and rubbed it as though he wanted to erase the past.