Sarah Thornhill (21 page)

But for things you needed cash down for, we had to go pretty steady. Every few months the carter come through, we'd give him the order for what we couldn't make ourselves. Daunt told me what we could run to, never more than the bare essentials. Two bags of the good wheaten flour. A small sack of black sugar. Box of tea, but just post-and-rails. A bolt of calico, the cheap kind, so loose in the weave you could shoot peas through it.

The good flour was the main thing I missed. Always plenty of cornmeal from the mill at Gammaroy, but without the wheat to stick it together and puff it up, the bread fell apart in your hand, the scones turned out hard as stones. But as long as you knew it wasn't for ever, you could get a kind of pride out of doing the best you could with what you had.

Me and Daunt was on the go from morning till night. Then a sit in front of the fire of an evening in the room we called the parlour, even though it was parlour and dining room and office all at once. I'd be doing the mending or hemming some calico for curtains, and he'd be reading or doing the accounts, scratching away into the ledger. The
Gazette
come up on the dray with the other things, he'd put them all in order and read them one by one, as if he'd stepped back into February when where I was sitting with my mending it was already May.

One night Maeve come into the parlour with us, and Paddy after her with his fiddle under his arm.

An hour of music, Sarah, if you don't object, Daunt said. Three Irish in a house together, can't go long without some of the old songs.

I might of thought I had the measure of these people I shared my life with, but that night showed me a different face to each one of them. Paddy looked taller with his fiddle tucked under his chin. Didn't play a jig you might dance to, or the songs I'd thought, thump out the beat with your hand and shout out the chorus. Stood in the corner with his eyes closed and out of the fiddle came a wild keening voice, frantic you could say, a soul in a torment of sadness. He swayed with the music, the fiddle part of his body, his hand on the bow quick as a ferret. Taken away into some other place, some other self.

After a time Maeve lifted up her voice and sang along with the fiddle, the words caressing the music as it went up and down. Her face wet with tears, but lit up with the joy of her sadness, I could see the joy and I could see the sadness both. Of course I didn't know what words she was saying, but I heard the refrain, a woman's name, Eileen Aroon, so I thought it must be some sad tale of lost love.

And there was Daunt, sitting in the armchair watching and listening, and whatever the words might of been, and however few of them he might of known, they made the tears stand glittering in his eyes and his mouth go tender with feeling.

I was the only one dry-eyed.

That was what it was to belong to a place. To be brought undone by the music of the land where you'd been born. The loss as sharp a pain as mourning a lover.

Us currency lads and lasses had no feeling like that about the land we called ours. It had no voice that we could hear, no song we could sing. Nothing but a blank where the past was. Emptiness, like a closed room, at our backs.

Most nights it was just me and Daunt in the parlour. I'd of liked to talk over the day then, but Daunt would have his hand up to his forehead against the glare of the lamp, and might as well of been back in County Cork. Gone away into reading like another country where I could never follow.

Now and then he'd get a letter from Archibald Campbell, or from Ireland.

Your sister sends her fondest love, he might say and glance towards me for a moment. Or, my mother extends her warmest respects to Mrs Daunt and hopes to have the pleasure of meeting her before too long.

It crossed my mind that his mother had said no such thing. Just Daunt, knowing he was safe telling me whatever he thought fit.

It was a surprise to me that you could be more lonely, sitting with another person who didn't speak to you, than out in an empty paddock. There could be lonelier things than empty.

What's that you're reading, I said one night. That's got you so interested?

He read me a piece out of the
Gazette
, some feller called Boland thought you could grow grapes round our way and make wine. Got to the end, turned the page, something else caught his eye. He forgot me, reading in his head again.

You know I don't read, Daunt, I said. Don't you.

He looked up startled, closed the pages.

Life is long, Sarah, he said. You can't read
yet
. Could teach you your letters if you wanted. Fact is, you'd pick it up in no time.

Daunt was still a stranger to me in many ways but I knew him well enough to know that when he started something with
fact is
, it meant he was feeling awkward.

Where I was from, no one had their letters other than poor pickled Loveday. No shame in it. But now I wished I knew how to turn marks on paper into words. Would of liked to take up a pen and soften my loneliness with a letter to Mary. Have one back from her. It would be some kind of conversation.

I should of said,
Thank you, yes.
But Daunt being so awkward pricked my pride. Instead it was,
Oh no, I'm all right the way I am.
Haughty, so he didn't insist.

Some nights he'd get out the ledger and the pen.

How's it coming out? I'd say. Just the two bags of flour next order, or could we stretch to three?

Oh well, he'd say. I can't altogether tell you at this minute. What will be the return on the clip, you see, that's not known as yet.

It started to feel as if he'd as soon tell the horse anything that mattered as tell me. Not ladylike to go into the money side of things, I supposed. That would be vulgar.

Come along Daunt! I said. Not asking for chapter and verse, just are we getting ahead or behind? Two bags or three?

Oh well, he said. Best stay with the two bags for the time being.

You can't force a man to talk, if he's not of a mind to. I had to go back to my mending, but bleak inside. This was the life I had ahead of me. Me and Daunt, together, but strangers. Till death parted us.

Along from the house was a piece of rising ground, grass and scattered trees, and at the top a cluster of boulders, one just the right shape for your backside. When the day's work was done I'd walk up and take a breather.

It was a lovely spot in the last of the sunlight, every rock and tree a long straight shadow. The trees up to their knees in grass, the trunks with streaks like watered silk, lemon-yellow and dove-grey, leaves a soft green that was halfway to blue. The hills all velvety folds, the mountains changing shape as the light faded.

A bigger sky than ever there was at Thornhill's Point. Such a lot of sky, it made my life seem small, nothing but a tiny bud of light. It was so important to me, but it was lost in the greatness of a world that went about its own mysterious business with no thought to the young wife sitting on a hill with the dusk around her.

How high would you have to go, to see New Zealand? A bird might do it. Rise up into this soft light, turn its head east, start flying, not stop till it got to Jack. Did he ever climb a hill in New Zealand, wonder how high he'd have to go to see me?

I tried to picture him. Jack on a sloping wet deck, or stepping out of a boat onto a beach. He'd turn and see me, on the deck or the beach, and smile.

Sometimes I could only see the other picture. Jack flinging off my hand like a spider. Striding up the hill, his bundle hanging off his shoulder. Then gone, gone, gone.

He could of been dead. But I didn't think he was.

I thought of the girl sometimes. She'd of surely settled by now. A person couldn't go on locked in on themselves for ever. But oh, that house by the river must be lonely. No one but Ma and Pa, and nothing for that poor child to hope for.

I'd like to have her here with us. A fresh start, her and me. In this open place, under this broad sky, she'd come to life. Couldn't see how she might come to us, but it was as Daunt said, life was long.

From up on the hill you could watch the weather coming in. The far-off mountains fading away into grey, one peak after the other, and a wall of cloud creeping towards me across the valley.

I'd go back down to the house and wait for the sound of the first drops on the shingles. They were like old friends. I'd watched them make their journey all that way across the country.

Daunt never asked what I did on the hill. He might of understood it was the same as him going away into his books. He had his way and I had mine.

There was blacks round about. More than on the Hawkesbury. Had a camp further down the creek, in among thick trees. You saw the smoke. Stand at the front of the house, look out, you'd see a darkness above the trees in the valley.

I'd been at Glenmire a day or two when I saw two black fellers walking up the hill. One in a pair of trousers all tatters round the ankles, the other with a woollen undershirt more hole than shirt and trousers gone at the knees. Their square feet coming down soft on the dirt. Walked round to the back of the house. When I went to see, Daunt was trundling a barrow with an axe in it out of the shed.

You'll be seeing a bit of these fellers, he said. This one is Wednesday, the Lord alone knows why. Gets the wood. Skipper fetches the water.

Skipper was already heading off down to the creek, a pail in each hand.

Now they'll be coming to the kitchen later, he said. For what they're owed. Maeve's inclined to stint, I'm afraid to say. Be glad if you'd keep an eye out. Plenty of meat and potatoes, and baccy enough for the week.

The man called Wednesday took the barrow, wheeled it away. Daunt looked at me rather intent.

Not frightened of them, are you, he said. Because I know there's a lot are frightened of a black.

Never seen any cause to be frightened, I said. Poor things, no harm in any of them.

Told him about the blacks coming to the kitchen at home, Mrs Devlin grumbling but giving. The camp where Pa took victuals.

Took it down himself, I said. Took it down, give it to them from his own hand, except they wouldn't take.

Did he now, Daunt said. Did he indeed. Mr Thornhill down at the camp. Glad to hear that, because you'd know not everyone would agree. Beresford, you'll meet Beresford by and by. Got a down on any black face. Coulters along the road not so hard on them. But pay them scraps. Leavings, what we'd give the fowls.

He watched Skipper walk up from the creek, his arms straining with the full pails. Over in the paddock Wednesday was starting on a dead tree, the axe blade shining as he brought it down, the noise of it coming along after.

Good workers when they turn their hand to it, Daunt said. Any one of them worth two of the government men. Worthy of their hire in my view and agreeable with it.

This was a way of looking at the thing that was new to me. Not
cadging
and not
Christian duty
. Not even
because your mother took
their part
.