The Secret River (9 page)

Miraculously, the letter spawned another. Captain Watson wrote his own letter up the line to a General Lockwood, who apparently had the ear of Mr Arthur Orr, who was by way of knowing Sir Erasmus Morton, who was second secretary to Lord Hawkesbury. Lord Hawkesbury was the end of the line. In his hands lay the power to reprieve, or not.

Good man that he was, Captain Watson had sent a copy of his letter to Sal. She tried, but could not decipher the fancy letters, so they got the cripple to read it out. He read fast, showing off how well he could do it:
Whereas William Thornhill convict bows and
prays with humble submission depending on your
Lordship’s
clemency and
charity to spare his life, while he and his will ever pray that you and yours may
ever flourish like the green bay tree that grows by the water, praying may the
Sun of Joy shine round your head, and may the Pillow of Peace kiss your
cheek and when the light of time makes you tired of earthly joys and curtains of
death close the last sleep of human existence may the Angel of God attend you
.

And so on, so many flowery words Thornhill lost the thread of them. When the cripple had finished and crept away, they both sat in silence. Sal smoothed and smoothed at the edge of the thick paper, where it had got dog-eared. Thornhill thought she probably felt the same coldness at her heart that he did. It was impossible that the thick hempen rope could be unknotted by such persiflage as this. He feared that Captain Watson had not judged right. Why had he gone on about the Pillow of Peace when what was surely required was a speech of what an upstanding fine man he was, a reliable provider for his wife and child?

He and Sal nodded at each other and even found it in themselves to smile, but he could see she thought he was as good as
dead. Her eyes slipped sideways as she spoke, as if he was becoming transparent, no longer a person in the world.

Sal was ailing, although she denied it. She had lost flesh and grown wan. Lizzie had got them a job of sheets to hem, two dozen, and Sal did them with Lizzie and Mary, but the price of thread had gone up and the price of hemming had gone down. There was a man wanted Willie for a sweep, needed a boy that size to send up the narrowest flues, but the boy cried with fear at the thought of those dark tubes. And now, Sal said, no more work was to be had. She had begged Mr Pritchard, but there were no sheets to be done, and Mr Pritchard had said there was no call for handkerchiefs neither.

There was a little silence between the two of them then, but then Sal cried out,
If no one is blowing their damn noses, are they
snotting
in
the gutter then?
Her laugh sounded forced in the quiet room, but it broke the moment where they had both lain down under the burden of life. He made himself laugh too, and looked into her eyes. She took his hand again and did not look away.

She would have to go on the streets. They both knew that. He looked at her with the eye of a customer and saw that she would have to brighten herself up, rouge her cheeks, curl her hair, set a brazen look on her face. For her sake, he forced the smile of a living man onto his mouth.

Sal had committed no crime, but she was sentenced, just as surely as he was.

~

One morning the turnkey came to the cell door and bawled out his name. Thornhill expected the worst and called out,
Not yet!
Friday
sennight
they said!

The turnkey looked at him, did not hurry to reply.
Do not piss
yourself, Thornhill
, he said at last.
Listen, man
. He stood back for the clerk to come to the doorway and read from the piece of stiff paper
in his hand, his voice barely audible:
Whereas William Thornhill was
at a session holden in the Old Bailey in October last tried and convicted
.

He was gabbling as fast as he could, his duty only to read the words, not to make sure anyone could follow them. His scratchy voice could not penetrate the various noises of the room: the talking, the spitting, the coughing, the shuffle of wooden pattens on the flags. Thornhill pushed further forward and was in time to hear his crime, those familiar words that made him flinch inwardly every time he heard them:
Tried and convicted of stealing
Brazil wood from a barge on the navigable River Thames and had sentence of
death passed upon him for the same. We in consideration from favourable
intercessions
humbly represented unto us on his behalf are graciously pleased to
extend our grace and mercy unto him
.

Not sure what he was hearing, Thornhill made himself go stony, one huge ear, to hear the next words:
And grant him our pardon
for his said crime on condition of his being transported to the Eastern Part of
New South Wales for the term of his sentence, viz, for and during the term of
his Natural Life
.

There was more, but Thornhill had stopped listening. His hands and feet had gone very cold, his knees weak, but he had to make sure.
I am to live?
he asked, looking from one face to the other, and the turnkey shouted impatiently,
Yes mate, but if you would
rather swing just say the word
. The clerk, shuffling out another piece of paper with a blob of sealing wax on it, said,
There is more
, and started to read again.
I am directed by Lord Hawkesbury to desire that you
will permit
…He stopped and glanced at Thornhill quickly, then away, as if afraid that the glance of a condemned man might turn him to stone.
What is your wife’s name?
he asked, but Thornhill felt that words, thoughts, knowledge of anything in the world except the fact that he was to live, had left him. What did his wife’s name have to do with anything?

The turnkey was shouting now.
Your wife, man, what is your damn
wife’s name?
and Thornhill answered, feeling his stiff lips shaping
the words,
Sal, Sarah Thornhill
. The clerk went on,
That you will
permit Sarah Thornhill the wife of William Thornhill convict who is to be
embarked on the Alexander transport, commander Captain Suckling, to have a
passage with her husband in lieu of Mrs
Henshall
who has declined accepting
that indulgence and also the infant of the said William and Sarah Thornhill
.

The turnkey snorted.
Meaning that your wife has the pleasure of a
sea voyage along with you, Thornhill, he shouted. And may God have mercy
on her soul!

I
t was a sad scrabbling place, this town of Sydney. The old hands called it The Camp, and in 1806 that was pretty much still what it was: a half-formed temporary sort of place.

Twenty years before it had been one of the hundreds of coves hidden within a great body of water as complicated as a many-fingered hand. One hot afternoon in the January of 1788, with big white birds screeching from the trees by the shore, a captain of the Royal Navy had sailed into that body of water and chosen a cove with a stream of fresh water and fingernail of beach. He had stepped out of the boat and caused the Union Jack to be hoisted on a spar leaning crookedly upright, and declared this place part of the extended territories of King George III, Sovereign of Great Britain, Defender of the Faith. Now it was called Sydney Cove, and it had only one purpose: to be a container for those condemned by His Majesty’s courts.

On the September morning that the
Alexander
dropped its anchor in Sydney Cove, it took William Thornhill some time to see what was around him. The felons were brought up on deck but, after so long in the darkness of the hold, the light pouring out of the sky was like being struck in the face. Sharp points of brilliance winked up from water that glittered hard and bright. He
squinted between his fingers, felt tears run hot down his face, blinked them away. For a moment he glimpsed things clear: the body of shining water on which the
Alexander
had come to rest, the folds of land all around, woolly with forest, blunt paws of it pushing out into the water. Near at hand a few blocky golden buildings lined the shore, their windows a glare of gold. They swam and blurred through the spears of light.

Shouting beat at his ears. A sun such as he had not imagined could exist was burning through the thin stuff of his slops. Now, on land, he was seasick again, feeling the ground swell under him, the sun hammering down on his skull, that wicked glinting off the water.

It was a relief to be sick, neatly, quietly, onto the planks of the wharf.

Out of this agony of light a woman appeared, calling his name and pushing through the crowd towards him.
Will!
she cried.
Over here, Will!
He turned to look. My wife, he thought. That is my wife Sal. But it was as if she was only a picture of his wife: after so many months he could not believe it was she, her very self.

He had time just to glimpse the boy beside her, pressed in against her leg, and the bundle of baby in the crook of her arm, when a man with a thick black beard was pushing her back with a stick.
Wait your turn you whore
, he shouted and clapped her with his open hand on the side of the head. Then she was swallowed up in the press of faces, their shouting mouth-holes black in the sun.
Thornhill! William Thornhill!
he heard through the muddle of noise.
I am Thornhill
, he called, hearing his voice cracked and small. The man with the beard grabbed at his arm and in the remorseless clarity of the light Thornhill saw how the beard around his mouth was full of breadcrumbs. From the list in his hand the man bawled,
William Thornhill to be assigned to Mrs Thornhill!
He was shouting so hard that crumbs fell out of his beard.

Sal stepped forward.
I am Mrs Thornhill
, she called above the din. Thornhill was stunned by the light and the noise, but he heard her voice clear through it all.
He is not assigned to me, he is my husband
. The man gave her a sardonic look.
He might be the husband but you are
the master now, dearie, he said. Assigned, that is the same as bound over. Help
yourself dearie, do what you fancy with him
.

The boy clutched a handful of Sal’s skirt and stared up at his father, big-eyed with fear. This was Willie, five years old now, grown taller and skinnier. A nine-month voyage was a quarter of a lifetime for a lad so young. Thornhill could see that his child did not recognise the hunched stranger bending down to him.

The new baby had been born when the
Alexander
put in at Cape Town in July. Sal was lucky they were in port when the pains started. They let him see her afterwards, but only for a moment.
A boy, Will
, she whispered.
Richard? After my Da?
Then her white lips could manage no more words, only her hand pressing his had gone on speaking to him. A moment later they took him back to the men’s quarters, and although he could sometimes hear the babies beyond the bulkhead, he had never known which might be his.

Now he did not need to strain to hear him. The baby’s cries were sharp painful blows in his ear.

Will
, she said, smiled, reached for his hand.
Will, it is us,
remember?
He saw the crooked tooth he remembered, and the way her eyes changed shape around her smile. He tried out a smile in return.
Sal
, he started, but the word turned into a choked gasp like a sob.

~

His Majesty’s Government issued Mrs Thornhill, master of the assigned convict William Thornhill, with a week’s victuals, a blanket or two, and a hut up on the hillside behind the wharf. That was the extent of what His Majesty felt obliged to provide. The idea was, the servant William Thornhill would work for his
master, in this case his wife, at whatever employment might be found. He was in all respects a slave, obliged to do his master’s bidding. The felon would thus remain a prisoner, but the master would do the work of a guard. In the case of a family, it meant that the whole household would be able to support itself and come off the Government Stores.

His Majesty’s mercy, saving so many from the noose, was made possible by this ingenious and thrifty scheme.

From that first afternoon, then, the Thornhills were on their own.

Steep and bony, bristling with slabs of rock, the hill where their hut had been pointed out to them was inhabited by humans as a cake might be by ants. A few lived in huts, but most had made dwellings beneath the overhanging rocks that stepped up the slope. Some had hung a bit of canvas up by way of wall, others had leaned a few boughs against the opening. The Thornhills’ wattle-and-daub hut by contrast was grand, even though it provided no luxuries beyond the mud-caked walls and the floor of damp earth.

The three of them stood at the doorway looking in. None seemed in any hurry to enter. Little Willie had got his thumb into his mouth and stared glassily, avoiding Thornhill’s glance.
Least it
ain’t a cave
, Sal said at last. He could hear the effort in her voice, a pitch too high.
Not a worry in the world
, he made himself say. The boy twisted his head to look up at him, then buried his face, thumb and all, into her skirts.
Snug as anything
. To him his words sounded as hollow as a man talking in a barrel.

The sun was slipping behind the ridge and damp air was beginning to shift down the hill. A man and a woman came along the hillside from another cave towards the Thornhill family. The man sported a huge matted beard but was otherwise quite bald, the woman had a sunk-in toothless mouth and a skirt that hung in shreds around her calves. Both their faces were dark with dirt and
they staggered with drink. The man carried a smouldering stick, the woman a kettle.
Here
, the woman said.
We brung youse this, lovey,
help youse out
.

Thornhill thought it was a joke, because the kettle had a wooden bottom. Laughed in the woman’s face, but she did not laugh back.
Dig a hole
, she started. A hiccup that jerked her whole chest stopped her.
Light the fire. Round it
. She had to close her eyes from the force of the hiccups.
Good as gold
, she cried. Came right up to Thornhill to lay a hand along his arm, so he smelled her, rum and filth.
Good as fucking gold!

The man was so drunk his eyeballs were swivelling around in his head. He shouted in a booming voice, as if the Thornhills were half a mile away,
Look out for the poxy savages, matey
, and laughed a gusty laugh full of rum. Then he grew serious and bent at the knees, staggering, to peer at Willie.
They’s partial to a tasty bit
of victuals like your boy there
. He bent to knead Willie’s chubby cheek with his hard fingers, so the boy began to cry and the woman, still hiccupping, dragged the man away.

They cooked the rags of salt pork on sticks in the fire and laid them out on pieces of bark by way of plates. Having no pannikins, they drank the tea that the woman had given them straight out of the spout. The bread fell apart in their hands but they picked up the crumbs from the ground and ate them, feeling grains of dirt crunching between their teeth.

The baby, sucking noisily on Sal’s tit, was the only Thornhill to finish the meal with a full belly.

They sat on the ground outside the hut in the dusk, looking down at the place they had come to. From up here on the hillside the settlement was laid out plain. It was a raw scraped little place. There were a few rutted streets, either side of the stream threading its way down to the beach, but beyond them the buildings were connected by rough tracks like animals’ runs, as kinked among the rocks and trees as the trees themselves. Down by the water was
the wharf, and a few grand structures of brick and stone pressed in along the shore. But away from the water the buildings unravelled into hovels of bark or daub, nothing more than sticks plastered together with mud, set in mean yards enclosed by brushwood fences. Hogs rolled in the pale mud beside the stream. A child naked but for a clout of rag between its legs stood watching a pack of dogs snapping at a hen with its chicks. A man dug in a patch of ground behind a fence leaning all skewiff.

It all had an odd unattached look, the bits of ground cut up into squares in this big loose landscape, a broken-off chip of England resting on the surface of the place.

Beyond was mile after mile of the woolly forest. It was more grey than green, tucking itself around the ridges and valleys in every direction, uniform as fabric, holding the body of water among its folds.

Having never seen anywhere else, Thornhill had imagined that all the world was the same as London, give or take a few parrots and palm trees. How could air, water, dirt and rocks fashion themselves to become so outlandish? This place was like nothing he had ever seen.

For every one of the years of his life, this bay had been here, filling its shape in the land. He had laboured like a mole, head down, in the darkness and dirt of London, and all the time this tree shifting its leathery leaves above him had been quietly breathing, quietly growing. Seasons of sun and heat, seasons of wind and rain, had come and gone, all unknown to him. This place had been here long before him. It would go on sighing and breathing and being itself after he had gone, the land lapping on and on, watching, waiting, getting on with its own life.

Down below Thornhill could see the
Alexander
. With a sick lurch he remembered the hammock, the knot in the beam above his head, an always-open eye watching him while he woke or slept.

Night after night, lying there, he had thought of Sal until the memory of her had become stale. But that was her hip pressed in against him now. That was her thigh stretched out alongside his. If it were not for Willie, sitting with his knees drawn up to his chin, making himself small, he would be able to turn and see her eyes, her lips, feel her warmth against him as they embraced.

Up the hill behind them, a bird repeated a sad regretful cry,
Ah, ah, ah
. But it was the only sad thing in the whole world.

~

It was hard to leave the fire and go into the cheerless hut. Thornhill went in first with a burning stick to light the way, but it only flamed for a moment, then choked them with the smoke, so he threw it outside. They spread the blanket out by feel and laid the baby down on it. He gave a sigh as if the ground underneath him was a feather bed, and was asleep at once.

At first Willie could not be got to lie down beside the baby, although he was exhausted, close to tears, his voice gone high and querulous. Thornhill had hoped that he and Sal would be able to go back to the fire and talk, stitching up the nine-month’s gap in their lives, but the only way Willie would go to sleep was with Sal beside him, so the three of them lay down side by side. Sal had the last edge of the blanket. Thornhill was on bare dirt, listening for Willie to become quiet.

At last he felt Sal shift against him.
He’s gone off, Will
, she whispered.
Poor little bugger
.

They had not touched, other than that touch of leg against leg, up till now. He felt a kind of shyness: Sal had had her own voyage, invisible on the other side of the bulkhead, and who knows where she had arrived?

He thought she might be feeling the same. Her shoulder pressed against his and her leg was lining itself up alongside his, but diffidently, as if by accident. He could feel the warmth of her,
her flesh and skin. He felt her hands moving over his chest and up to his face, working to remember the husband she knew.

Thank you Mrs Henshall for declining the indulgence
, she cried, trying to whisper but blurting it out on a laugh, and in that moment she was with him again, that cheeky girl, his Sal, finding poor Susannah Wood funny. He laid a hand along her thigh, turned to her so he could dimly see her face, that he loved so well. He knew that she was smiling.

And Mrs Thornhill
, he said.
I got to thank her too, pet
. Her fingers threaded themselves into his and squeezed hard. He heard that she was crying: but smiling too, crying and smiling both at once.
Will
, she whispered, and tried to say more, but the touch of their hands was all the words they needed.

~

The first morning, Thornhill wondered if the black man he had confronted in the darkness had been only a dream. By daylight, the memory of their conversation—
Be off! Be off!
—was hard to believe.

It was easier to turn to the familiar, this speck of England laid out within the forest. Sydney looked foreign, but in the ways that mattered to the Thornhills it was the Thames all over again. It had no means of surviving except for the thread that bound it to Home. The authorities hoped for crops and flocks eventually, but in the meantime the settlement turned inwards, towards the ships that brought the necessities of life. Between the wharf and these ships full of flour and pease, nails and bonnets, brandy and rum, the boats of the watermen plied backwards and forwards just as they had done on the Thames.