The Secret River (24 page)

Thornhill forced himself to break the spell.
Very good, you old
bugger
, he said, his voice harsh, cutting across the flow.
Now you
listen
. He bent down and with a twig drew marks on the dust: a curving line that was the river, and a tidy square representing his own hundred acres.
This mine now. Thornhill’s place
.

The man stared at him.

You got all the rest
, Thornhill said. He could hear his voice getting louder.
You got the whole blessed rest of it, mate, and welcome to it
. But his words seemed to flow past the man as if they mattered as little as a current of air. He had not noticed before how white the white part of the man’s eyes were. He wondered if it was that, the darkness of the skin against the whiteness of the eyes, that made his eyes seem to be lit from within.

The old man took a step towards the fire and from one of the bark dishes picked something up: a cluster of the daisy-roots, six or eight narrow tubers dangling from the stem. He pointed at the roots and spoke again. Finally he took a bite of one of them. Chewed, swallowed, nodded. Even with the words as meaningless to Thornhill as the cry of a bird, he understood. The man snapped off a finger of root and held it out to Thornhill. The flesh was translucent, glassy, crisp-looking, something in the nature of a radish.

But Thornhill did not intend to eat.
Kind of you, old boy
. That was a joke that had not lost its savour.
But you can keep your radishes
. He looked again at the thing on the man’s brown-seamed pink palm.
Monkey food, I would call that, mate, but good luck to you
.

The man was vehement now. He was explaining something in detail. He turned and pointed towards the river-flats, holding up the bundle of roots. There seemed to be a question in his voice now, a phrase repeated, as if he wanted agreement.

Yes, mate
, Thornhill said.
You can keep your
monkey’s
balls that you
like so much
. The old man said something, loud and sharp, and Thornhill recognised the same phrase.

He longed for words.

It seemed that the old man was ready to wait all day for an answer.

We’ll stick to our victuals, mate, you stick to yours
, Thornhill said. He met the man’s eyes and nodded. The old man gave a curt nod back.

A conversation had taken place. There had been an inquiry and an answer. But what inquiry, which answer?

They stared at each other, their words between them like a wall.

~

Good as gold
, he told them all when he got back to the hut.
Not a
worry in the wide world. They’ll be off again by and by
.

Through Christmas and the scorching early days of January, he looked out the door of the hut every morning, hoping that the sky would be empty of their smoke. But each morning it was there, painted on.

Sal seemed to be reassured.
They’ll be off again by and by
, she said one day when she caught him frowning at the smoke.
Just like
you said
. He had to agree, but he was starting to realise that there was a kind of loneliness to telling a story too well.

It took him some time to admit to himself that his hundred acres no longer felt quite his own. A small group of the blacks was always about, even if mostly unseen. Their bodies flickered among the trees, as if the darkness of the men were an extension of bark, of leaf-shade, of the play of light on a water-stained rock. The eye could peer but not know if it was a couple of branches over there, or a man with a spear, watching.

Their manner of walking was like nothing Thornhill had ever seen before. Their bodies seemed all long thin legs, the weight carried low over the hips, their feet setting down softly on the layer of brittle leaves and bark-scrolls. Somehow they could simply float over the ground.

Thornhill would have said all the blacks looked the same, so it was somewhat surprising to realise after a time how easily he could tell them apart. He began to give the men names: humble sorts of names that made their difference less potent. It made something domestic—just another kind of neighbourhood—out of this unpromising material.

The old man reminded him, in the grimness of his mouth and the whiteness of his stubble, of a certain old Harry who had sharpened knives around Swan Lane, and so was christened forthwith: Whisker Harry. Thornhill kept to himself his knowledge that this stern old man was nothing like any London knife-sharpener. The man who had slapped him on that first day was a tall man and stood straight and he became Long Bob. The other younger
man was no darker than any of the others, but his heavy face had a brooding look about it that was less alarming once he was called Black Dick.

Whisker Harry would stalk around on his skinny shanks, unhurried, deliberate. Or he might stand with one foot wedged in against the other knee, his spear upright beside him, watching the distance. When he came face to face with Thornhill, he looked through him as if he were made of air.

Long Bob and Black Dick sometimes watched Thornhill chipping the weeds down on the corn patch with Ned and Dan. They stood or squatted, their spears blending with the other spindly verticals in the place.

They were never without their spears.

Thornhill and Dan had seen Black Dick use his spear one day, aiming at something in the grass. He had bent himself tautly backwards, steadying the air in front of him with his free hand, and shot it with a movement as quick and invisible as the crack of a whip.

Sweet Lord Jesus
, Dan breathed.
Did you see that
.

The men never came so close to Thornhill and his men that words had to be attempted, but the women were more forthcoming with Sal. They skirted around the hut as if it were a new boulder, and got into the habit of singing out to her as they passed.

Thornhill watched one day, coming back up to the hut for a drink of tea with Ned and Dan behind him, as a group of them filed out of the forest and across the end of the yard. Signalled to Ned and Dan to stop and be quiet as Sal came out of the hut with the quart-pot in her hand, and in the still air he heard her call to them
Oy Meg, what’s that you got there?
He stood to watch, gripping the spade harder in case they turned on her, ready to shout out to Ned and Dan to rush them.

There were so many of them, and only the one Sal in the whole wide world.

But the women came up to her and showed her what was in their wooden dishes, crowding around and screeching with how funny it all was. One had a big speckled lizard hanging limp from the string around her waist, slapping against her knee at each movement. She held it up, fat and heavy, its legs splayed out from its pale belly, shouting at Sal as if she was half a mile away.
Very
nice I’m sure, Polly
, he heard Sal say,
but you ain’t going to eat it surely?
pointing at the lizard, miming eating, pointing at the woman, and they all shouted and laughed at her, copying the way she had gone hand-to-mouth and pretended to chew. Their teeth were the most astonishing white Thornhill had ever seen, strong and shining in their faces. Sal was enjoying the joke of being able to say what she pleased.
Ain’t you the saucy one, Polly, what about rats, and how would you
go about stewing a nice little pot of worms?

Behind the older women the younger ones hung back, laughing behind their hands with each other. One, bolder than the rest, darted forward and took hold of a bit of Sal’s skirt and then dropped the unfamiliar texture with a little shriek as if it had burned her. But Sal took a step towards her, holding the skirt out and offering her a handful.
Why, you’re no better than a dumb animal
, she said, smiling, and the girl took it for permission, darting in and this time picking up the fabric in her hand and feeling it. Now the others crowded in around her. One touched Sal’s bare arm, her hand very black against it, first quickly as if it might bite, then laying her whole hand along it and watching Sal’s face, and behind her another was dabbing at her bonnet, the rest screaming encouragement.

Then one of them had Sal’s bonnet off and on top of her own head, sitting white and incongruous on the black curls. It was the funniest thing any of them had ever seen: Sal was doubled over, and the girl did look a sight, stark naked but for the bonnet crooked on her head, her face under it split with mirth. The other women all wanted to try it then, so the bonnet was passed from
hand to hand, head to head, until the lot of them were staggering with laughter.

A man could be blinded by the little breasts and the long thighs of the young girls. When one of them reached out for the bonnet the skin moved silkily over the round gleaming bosses of her shoulders, the buds of her breasts. Thornhill glanced around and caught Dan staring hungrily at these shameless girls, his eyes blazing in his pale face. Ned put it into words.
Look at them titties
, he whispered hoarsely, and cackled.
Get an eyeful of them titties!

Now Sal was showing by signs that she was interested in looking not at the contents of the wooden dishes, but the dishes themselves. The women obliged, pouring the little objects from several into one, so that Sal could turn the others up to admire the underside. Much parlaying ensued, and Sal was holding out her bonnet and making signs to them.
You give me, I give you
.

The women caught on at once. The oldest, the wrinkled one who had been making the string when Thornhill first saw her, engaged in some exchange with Sal, who went into the hut and came out with a twist of sugar.
Our sugar!
he nearly called out.
Leave it, Sal!
They went into something of a huddle then, but at last the white woman in the skirt and bodice was separating herself off from all the naked black ones, and a deal seemed to have been struck: the oldest of the black women had the twist of sugar and the bonnet in her hand, while Sal had one of the wooden dishes.

As she made to go back into the hut she caught sight of Thornhill standing there and called out, glad as a girl:
Look what I
got, Will, one of them bowls, ain’t it an oddity?
holding the dish out for him to admire.
We got dishes, Sal
, he said.
That ain’t no good to us
, but she brushed this aside.
Will, Will
, she cried,
you blessed dingbat, it
ain’t to use, it’s a curio
. She mouthed the unfamiliar word awkwardly.
Mrs Herring says gentry pay good money for them kind of things, back Home.
I get one a month for five years, we’ll make a pretty penny when we go back!

Her fingers caressed the crude dish.
And it were only that old
bonnet that’s had its day
, she said.
And a mouthful of the sugar. Buck up
with your long face!

She was as proud of herself—of her cordiality with these neighbours, and of the deal she had struck—as a child.
Mrs
Herring got the right idea,
she said.
There ain’t no need for any of that other
business
.

In the face of her triumph, how could he not smile at last, and give her a hug around her waist, which was such a nice shape under a man’s hand?

Thornhill glimpsed the women later down by the river where they dug among the bulrushes. The scrap of paper that the sugar had come in lay on the ground between them, licked clean. Sal’s bonnet was being modelled by the woman who had had the lizard dangling from her waist: not on her head, but on her stuck-out arse, and they were all laughing in a way he would not have wanted Sal to see.

~

The forest had never revealed dinner to Thornhill. He had never so much as glimpsed the things the women got, which Sal showed him samples of—little hard fruits, dry-looking berry-things, knobs of roots—much less thought they could be eaten. All he had ever seen in the forest were ants and flies, and birds watching him askance from branches, and those huge speckled lizards—which he did not think he could bring himself to eat—staring at him, their long heads held high and their eyes never blinking, ready to run up the nearest tree if he tried to get close.

He wondered whether that was why the women found the newcomers so funny. The Thornhill household sweated away under the broiling sun, chopping and digging, and still had nothing to eat but salt pork and damper. By contrast, the blacks strolled into the forest and came back with dinner hanging from their belts.

He supposed that from a certain point of view it might seem funny.

Ned and Dan both scorned the blacks, as being even lower in the scheme of things than themselves. Looking at one of the men squatting in the shade with his spears upright beside him one sunny afternoon, Dan blurted,
By God see his bumcrack with the hair coming out
of it, a dog has more of a modest way with him!
Ned, in whom there was madness at times, threw his head back and yowled.

Never see them do a hand’s turn
, Dan grumbled that night as they all sat glumly chewing.
Just sitting with their balls hanging out, saving
your presence Mrs Thornhill, watching us bust a gut
. Sal said,
We could put
them to work, Will, civilise them enough to use a spade and that
. They all tried to imagine Whisker Harry or Black Dick putting down his spears and bending over a spade.
Even them gypsies been known to do a
day’s work now and then
, Sal said, but Thornhill could hear that she had lost heart in the idea.

~

Thornhill’s blind and deaf conversation with Whisker Harry replayed itself in his mind but never yielded any enlightenment. He knew the discussion was not finished.

One Sunday Sal came back thoughtful from making her mark on the tree.
They been here a good long time
, she said.
They come our fourteenth
week, that was December, and now we’re up to seventeen
. She busied herself by the fire, with her back turned to him.
I’d a thought they’d
of been gone by this
.