The Secret River (29 page)

~

As they were rolling the last of the kegs of lime from the hut down to the boat, the barking of the dogs took on a different pitch, high and hysterical, and Thornhill glanced around. Every time one of the blacks appeared out of nowhere it gave him the same cold shock. This one must have come up in the canoe that sat tilting on the shore like a big brown leaf. Now he was standing, waiting for them to see him. He held no spears, only a couple of plump oysters with the water still running from them.

When he had their attention he opened one, just like that, with a twist of his thumbnail. He made it look as easy as squashing a louse. Then he tilted his head back and sucked down the contents. They could see the powerful muscles in his neck as he swallowed. He opened a second oyster the same way, with nothing but his bare thumb, and held it out, offering it to Smasher and Thornhill. He spoke at length, gesturing with the oyster, talking loud and clear, as to someone stupid, pantomiming how good it was to eat.

Smasher was not a man to take a lesson from a black.
Want a
free feed do you
, he shouted.
See you in hell first
. The man ignored him, going over to the mound, from which oily clouds of smoke were now pouring. A blackened oyster rolled out and lay steaming on the dirt. He pointed at it, gesturing insistently, and then down to the rocks where the ebbing tide was exposing the white scars where the burning oysters had once grown.

He was shouting, an angry man.

But Smasher would not let a black have all the running. He went for the whip in his belt and cracked it beside the man with a sound like a gunshot.
Be off
, he shouted.
Damn your eyes, be off
. The black flinched but stood his ground. The next flourish of the whip caught him full on the chest and the black skin blossomed a long red stripe. He took a step back and stood glaring at Smasher, his deep-set eyes catching the light, his mouth a hard line. Smasher lifted his arm to strike again but with a movement too fast to see, the man caught hold of the end of the lash. There was a long moment in which he and Smasher stared at each other, joined by the whip.

Then without a word the black man let go and turned his back. He went down to his canoe and slid it into the water. Smasher ran to his hut and snatched up the flintlock leaning against the wall, but by the time he had run back down, fumbling with the bag of shot, the black man had poled his canoe out into
the current and was being carried out of sight around the rocks. Smasher’s shout echoed around the inlet with the angry blur of the dogs’ barking, the strangled noises of them gagging as the chains jerked at their necks.

He whirled around to Thornhill over the din of the dogs.
You
, he shouted.
We know about you,
cosying
up to them bastards
. There were grey specks of foam in the corners of his lips. His eyes were small with dislike.
You and that Tom bloody Blackwood. I seen the two of youse
.

His face was too close, his voice too loud. Thornhill took a step back.
Shut your gob
, he shouted.
You ain’t seen nothing
. But he felt a kind of panic. He had stepped on a great wheel that was spinning him away somewhere he had never planned to go. He had thought Blackwood’s arrangement was a private thing, his own knowledge of it private too. Now he saw it was not private at all. But he did not want to look at what that might mean, or where it might lead.

Smoke continued to pour over the water. Smasher turned his head away to spit a long brown stream onto the dirt.
They’ll get you
one fine day
, he said. The thought soothed his rage.
You think they
won’t, you’re a bigger fool than I took you for
.

Now Thornhill could not bear to stay a moment longer.
Look
sharp, Smasher
, he said.
I miss this tide, you’re a dead man
. In silence they rolled the last keg along the jetty and into the belly of the
Hope
. As Thornhill cast off, his face turned away towards the open river, he heard Smasher call out after him.
Don’t come crying to me,
Will Thornhill
, he called.
When you get a spear in your guts
.

I
t was on Thornhill’s return from that trip to Sydney that things began to change.

It took them some time to realise that a crowd of blacks was gathering on the point. They came down from the ridges in twos and threes, the men walking in that deliberate way they had, burdened only with a few spears. The women came after, each with a baby on her hip and a long bag hanging from her forehead down her back. Others came in canoes, drifting up or down the river with the tide, the little slips of bark holding a man and a woman, with a child between, and the water by some miracle not coming in over the gunwale.

They came, and they did not seem to go again. Where one feather of smoke had lifted into the sky around the point, now there were many smudged together. Where the Thornhills had occasionally heard a shout or the cry of a child, now they could hear voices all the time, things being chopped with a dull thudding, and the sounds of women calling that came to them on the breeze. There were more kangaroos than there had ever been, and every day groups of blacks could be seen coming back with an animal swinging between them slung on a stick.

The mood at the hut became a little thoughtful. No one liked
to meet anyone else’s eye. Even the children became silent and careful. Sal kept them close under her hand. Thornhill went about his business, cutting down another tree near the hut and standing over Ned and Dan while they broke it up to burn. But he found himself stopping as he worked, listening for sounds beyond the clearing.

Sal had made the mark that meant they were into the month of February of the year 1814. It was the steamy height of summer, the cobs of corn growing almost visibly. Every morning the sun came up already in its full heat and filled the valley so there seemed no air left to breathe. Night brought no relief. The valley began to feel like a funnel in which the Thornhills were trapped with their black neighbours. Thornhill knew that Swift and O’Gorman were waiting up at Ebenezer for the
Hope
to come and collect their potatoes, but from day to day he postponed the trip.

One afternoon he set the men to widening the track down to the river and slipped away. No one saw him as he made his way up behind the hut and onto the rock platform, following it around the point, past the fish and the boat in the rock, until he was directly above the blacks’ camp.

It was a shock when he looked down through the trees. Where there had been half-a-dozen adults and a handful of children around one little fire, now there were more blacks than he had ever seen together at one time. There was a settlement of humpies crowded close to each other, and campfires everywhere. The people themselves were as hard to count as ants, moving around, disappearing into the shadows and reappearing again.

On one count he got to forty. That was enough.

He went back to the yard where the family was trying to make themselves cool in the shade.
Just having a bit of a get-together
, he said airily.
Same as we might ourselves
.

Sal, knowing him so well, heard something in his tone but
said nothing. She went about her business, wiping Mary’s face clean with the flannel, concentrating on getting every speck of dirt off.
I got a few jobs for you up here this afternoon, Will, if you would
, she said, looking up at him.
Don’t go back down the corn patch
. Her voice was light, but he saw Mary’s eyes turn to her sideways, her chin still held firm in Sal’s fingers while she worked away with the flannel.

Are the savages coming for us,
mumma
?
Bub asked, quite matter-of-fact.
Silly thing
, Sal cried,
they ain’t coming nowhere for nobody
, and started on his face with the flannel so he said no more.

Thornhill went into the hut, feeling the heat radiating down from the bark roof, and got the gun down from its pegs. He looked along its length and checked that the powder was still dry, the shot handy in its bag. Peered down into the circle of darkness that death could come out of. When he heard Sal approaching the door, he quickly put it back on the wall. But she knew. She looked at him standing with his hands empty and her eyes went to the gun on its pegs. He saw her start to say something, and cut across it.
Nest of damn spiders in the barrel
, he said.

They had their meal early that night. There was a feeling of needing to be ready.

Thornhill did not ask himself, ready for what?

It was only just dusk when Sal got the children into bed and sang to them.
When I grow rich, say the bells of
Shoreditch
. When will that
be, say the bells of Stepney. I do not know, says the great bell at Bow
. Her voice sounded parched. He heard in it a quaver of tenderness.

Or perhaps of fear.

The two of them sat up late over the last of the fire, watching in silence as the draughts flickered over the coals. In their corner the children snuffled and sighed. Dick flung himself over and called out something in a blurred voice. From the lean-to Ned was snoring with a noise like a shuddering saw. They heard him cough, could imagine Dan turning him over, and in the silence that fell they could hear the sounds coming from the camp.

At first it was a sharp clapping, insistent as a heartbeat. Sal turned her face to Thornhill’s. In the firelight her eyes were pools of shadow but he saw how her mouth was tight. Before he could think of reassurance, the singing started: a high strong wailing of a man’s voice, and other voices in a kind of drone underneath. It was not a tune, nothing cheerful that you might listen to like Oranges and Lemons, more a kind of chant as you might hear in a church. It was a sound that worked its way under the skin.

Thornhill tried to speak up loud.
Having a bit of a sing-song
, he said, but his mouth had gone dry. He tried again:
Like that Scabby
Bill. Remember Scabby Bill?
Of course she remembered him. But she knew, as well as he did, that this authoritative chorus of noise was very different from the thin song that Scabby Bill had managed in return for a mouthful of liquor.

He had to force himself not to whisper.
They’ll get sick of it by
and by
.

Out there, between the cracks in the walls, the night was as black as the inside of an ear. The huge air stirred, full of hostile life. He imagined it: the blacks creeping up to the hut, silent as lizards on their wide quiet feet. They might at this very moment be peering in at them. The noises were getting louder, the sort of sound it would take an army to make.

The words not said were like a creature pacing up and down between them.

Now Ned and Dan, woken out of their sleep, came in. Ned went over to the lamp and stood beside it as if the glow would keep him safe.
They coming to get us, Mr Thornhill
, he said.

Hear them laughing
, Dan added.
They can’t hardly wait
.

It was true, they could hear distant laughter. Thornhill felt fear cold on his skin at the picture in his mind of them preparing their spears with a butcher’s glee, how sharp they were, how quick they would kill a white man.

Ned’s voice was on the edge of panic.
They coming to spear us in
the guts, ain’t they
, and Bub’s voice came quavery,
Don’t let them spear
me Da!
He could hear Johnny catch the fear and set up a snivelling that set Mary off too. Sal went over to where they lay and wrapped her arms around them.

If they’d a wanted to spear us they’d a done it ten times over by now
, Thornhill said. Then he thought that might not be the best argument to follow.
We got no call to worry
, he announced, but no one seemed convinced.

Now Willie was speaking up.
They get away with it, we’ll never
see the end of it, Da
, he said.
We best show them good and proper
. To Thornhill’s ears, the words had a secondhand feel about them, borrowed from someone else. Smasher perhaps, or Sagitty Birtles.

He saw the boy anew: a mulish skinny lad who had outgrown his strength, all bony neck and bat-ears and a mouth that was trying to be strong. Willie stood squinting at him, scratching the back of one leg with a long bare foot.
Get the gun, Da,
whyn’t
you get
the gun?

But Dick had got up from the stool and faced up to his brother.
Ain’t no call for the gun, Willie
, he said.
They just having a get-
together, like Da says
. Willie grabbed his shoulder and shook it.
Bulldust
, he cried.
Bloody
bulldust
that is, we got to get the bloody gun
.

Shut it the both of youse!
Thornhill heard his voice filling the hut, and the boys said nothing more. Then Dan spoke out of the shadows near the fire.
I got the knife here in my hand
, he said, his voice rasping on his fear.
Them buggers come close, they get it in their black guts
.

After he had spoken, the high indignant voices and the rattle of the sticks seemed louder. The hut had become a compressed cube of fear.

Standing by the half-open shutter, Thornhill remembered the nights in Newgate, listening to the beating of his own heart, not able to stop himself waiting for the next beat, the next, and the next, and trying not to wonder how many heartbeats he had left.
He was stifling in the hut, could not bear the closed-in feeling. It was too much like being in a coffin deep in the earth.

He started to speak, fell over the words, coughed, tried again:
I’ll just take a look
. His voice was thin in his own ears.
Make sure
they’re not up to no mischief
.

~

It was a relief to be outside in the fragrant night. A full moon rode in the sky, dimming the stars and lighting the forest in shades of grey. Under the noise from the point, the place was going about its business, ticking and whirring secretively. Something rattled in the dry bark near the woodpile and the black shape of a bird swooped over the clearing.

Glad of the moonlight, Thornhill made his way up to the shelf of flat rock and around towards the camp. He wanted to be unseen, but he knew how his shirt, dingy though it was, must stand out bright against the trees. His skin, that inescapable envelope, glowed white and dangerous. He tried to move without making a sound, but by moonlight his familiar place had become somewhere else. Rocks came at him unexpectedly, trees were not where they were by day. He stumbled along against the grain of the place until, from behind the powdery flank of a paperbark, he could see the camp. No one turned or pointed. If the blacks knew the white man was there, they were not concerned.

They had a huge blaze going at the centre of their camp. He could see the firelight illuminating the trees from beneath, flickering on the skin of the trunks, making a cave of light. Figures passed in front of the fire so it winked on and off.

A circle of men stamped and jumped around the fire, and one sat at the side with his legs crossed and his face tilted up, singing in that way that made everything urgent. They were striped with white, their faces masks in which their eyes moved. The firelight made them insubstantial, webs of light dancing.

Women and children sat around them clapping sticks together to make that brittle pulse underlying the song. The women’s long breasts were outlined with white, with a collar effect around the upper chest that was absurdly like the neck of Sal’s bodice. Their faces, like those of the men, were barred with white. The children were painted too, even the smallest of their faces. It was only a bit of pipeclay, but it gave them the look of the very earth made human.

War paint, he thought. They’re doing a bleeding war dance. He was surprised by the calmness he felt at the idea, and realised he had been expecting this moment for a long time.

The dancing was recognisable as being from the same world as Scabby Bill’s, but it was as little like his as Thornhill’s warped hat was like the Governor’s plumed tricorn. Scabby Bill had danced with his eyes nearly closed, his face blank, absenting himself from the moment. These men danced with their eyes full of light from the fire, the lines of white on their bodies twisting with life.

After a moment Thornhill recognised Long Jack. He crouched with the others, his spears in his hand, then leaped with a powerful spring and came down again stamping his feet and scuffing the dust up into the air. Jack was no longer a man, but a kangaroo made human.

To the man listening behind the tree, there was no more sense to the sound than there was to an insect’s drone, no sense of it having a beginning or an end. But then the sticks all stopped on the same instant, the voice of the singer gave a final flick and was silent. He realised it was the same as the way everyone in church stopped singing at once, because they knew that they had got to the end of the hymn. Watching from behind the paperbark, Thornhill was the only one who did not.

They started up again, with a different beat this time. Now there was one old man dancing alone, his feet stamping into the ground, so that the dust flew up around him, glowing with light:
Whisker Harry. His body was sinewy with muscle, turning into the dance like a fish in a current. The pounding of his feet seemed the pulse of the earth itself. When he began to sing, he threw the song up into the air, its long crooked line the sound of the blood in the veins of the place.

Thornhill saw that this person was not Whisker Harry, who existed only in the minds of those who had given him that name. This man, dancing in his white paint, wrapped in a mystery of song, was another person entirely.

The others watched, clapping one stick against another. He saw that they were not simply watching a man dance, as people might sit at the Cherry Gardens and watch folk do a jig. There was a drama alive on their faces. There was a tale that they all knew being told in the language of this dance. It was like Christmas at St Mary Magdalene: everyone in the church took pleasure in the telling of the nativity, the same from year to year.