Sarah Thornhill (23 page)

True, there was some ugly characters about and I supposed there might have been some went after the blacks with guns. But not as a common thing, the way these fellers would have you believe. Had to sing for their supper, that was what I thought. Yarns one way of doing it. Scrabblers all of them, dreaming about getting a lot of land and a lot of sheep and dying rich. All this about the blacks just big-noting themselves.

Three fellers come through late one day with a mob of sheep. Been through once before, me and Daunt not too pleased to see them again. Two of them hard-drinking fellers couldn't keep a clean tongue in their heads for any money. But the old feller with them, Billy Undercliff, no harm in him. Billy didn't come in. The others said he'd stay out with the sheep. You could tell from the way they said it they thought he was nothing but an old fool. I thought the better of him for wanting to keep clear of those two.

They lined up bottles on the table as if the place was a public house. I could see Daunt wanted them gone, but it was cold and near dark. I had a pot of stew and luckily three loaves baked that morning. Get plenty of food into them, I thought, mop up the liquor.

They ate all right, but it didn't stop them knocking back the drink like water and getting loud. Even busy in the kitchen I couldn't get away from their talk.

A story started to come out, something gone on somewhere up past Limit of Location. These fellers were cagey at the start, but the liquor loosed their tongues.

They'd been out in a hut miles from anywhere, these two fellers and old Billy Undercliff and a few others. A mob of blacks along with them, the men working with the sheep, the rest camped close by.

There'd been a spearing. Of man or sheep, that wasn't clear. These fellers took it into their heads to teach the blacks a lesson. Sent the men away with the sheep. Got the women and children and old men into the hut. Tied them up neck to neck. All bar two girls of the right age to seem like a good idea for these dirty fellers to keep. And one little boy that Billy Undercliff hid behind a barrel.

Drove the rest up the hill behind the hut and shot them.

Every damn one of them! one of the fellers shouted. Clean sweep!

Didn't know if I believed them or not, but I wasn't going to stay in the house to listen to any more of their nasty boasting. Made up a billy of stew and a pannikin of grog, took it out to old Billy. Had the sheep bedded down in the folds, had his little fire but pleased to see me coming along with the stew.

He got out two tin plates, shared out the stew between them, tore the bread in half.

I already eaten, Billy, I said. This is for you.

Thinking he was a man of more heart than I'd of guessed, sharing his meal with me.

Oh no, Mrs Daunt, he said. It's for my boy. Got my boy here.

He got up and took the plate over to the side. There was a boy there I hadn't seen. A young black boy. Still as a stone, crunched up small against a tree, only his knees and feet and the top of his head showing.

Best leave him, Billy said. Won't never eat with anyone near. Come away Mrs Daunt.

After a while you could hear the little noises of the boy's plate.

Where's the lad from, Billy, I said.

He didn't give me an answer, just worked on the stew. When he'd finished he wiped his beard with his hand, looked over at the boy.

Never speaks a word, he said. Not a word, not ever.

The boy was folded up into himself, the plate empty beside him, bread gone.

He'll come good, Billy said. Come good by and by.

I didn't say anything, just took the plate and went back to the house. But I was feeling a little cold thing somewhere inside, because the boy being there made it seem the story might of had some truth in it after all.

But not wanting to think it. Telling myself there could be all sorts of ways an old feller might end up having a black boy along with him.

Daunt had got the men into the lean-to. From our bed we could hear their voices through the wall, then after a while snoring. They'd stop breathing, then suck the air in sudden with a great snort.

Billy Undercliff's got a boy with him, I said. Young black lad.

Has he now, Daunt said. Has he indeed.

Reckon they was skiting? I said. Reckon that's all there is to it?

Well now, he said. To be honest I'm not sure. There's the devil of a lot of bad about. But what the truth of it might be, hard to say for a certainty.

Think it's true then, I said. Not just a yarn.

There's a lot of nonsense talked, he said. But men killed, you know, that's true enough. Black and white both.

Never heard that, I said. Not that I'd believe.

Yes, well, Daunt said.

I could hear the thought. You don't read. And a woman never hears how men really talk among themselves.

I didn't know what to make of it. How to go about thinking the thing through. Men pushing out with their sheep, they had to make a living, same as we did. Easy to see that. But then on the other side you had the blacks, sent away from where they'd always been. Sent off and sent off, and ending up narrowed down to a camp along from the white man's house, having to go to him cap in hand for their tucker. Or worse, somewhere like Gammaroy. Those women with not too much choice in the matter, and the little ones growing up in the dirt with a mother black and a father God knew which bullocky.

What do you make of it, I said. The rights and wrongs of it.

I couldn't tell you, he said. I think about it and I don't know. But it does put me in mind of the tenants back home. The Irish. Once upon a time they owned the whole of Ireland. Then the English came. My lot. Took it away, one acre at a time. Now there's not an Irishman left hardly that owns his own land.

No doubt about him, Daunt was never a man to jump the way you thought he would.

It made me think about things I'd never thought about before. Once upon a time Thornhill's Point would have been like the country past Limit of Location, wild and empty but for the blacks wandering over it. Somewhere along the line someone took it over. One acre at a time.

My lot was like Daunt's, English. If Pa hadn't been sent out, I'd of grown up in London.
Oranges and Lemons, say the bells of St
Clement's.
Pa was still English. The way he spoke, the memories in his head. Pa could go back, take up life again in the place he'd always known, let the blacks have Thornhill's Point again. New South Wales was nothing to him but the place where he'd made his pile.

But I wasn't English. I had no other place in my bones than this one. The ones like me, currency—we had no
back
to go back to.

Ireland's a small place, I said.

To myself as much as Daunt, thought he'd gone to sleep while I'd been trying to work the thing out.

We got all the room in the world here, I said. Don't we.

Enough for all of us, Daunt said. That your thinking?

It was, I supposed. But I wasn't satisfied. Fell asleep trying to balance the thing out. Blacks on the one side, us on the other. How could you make it right?

N
ATURE TOOK
its course, and late my first year as a married woman I knew I was in the family way.

When I told Daunt his face frightened me. Joy, but something like fear too, and a wildness I'd never seen in him. Put his arms round me, started to hug me, then jumped back as if he thought he might squash the baby. Jumped back so fast he knocked up against a chair and sent it crashing and Maeve come in to see what was wrong.

A baby, by God, he said. A baby, Maeve!

As if a baby had never happened before in the history of the world.

He was thoughtful in those ways a woman values. Got up even before Maeve, had the fire going and the porridge on. Would come to me while I was still in bed, saying, Will you not have a good hot cup of tea now. Took over all the heavy work, I'd never thought to see a man wringing out sheets. Saw me carrying a bucket of water one day and was the nearest I'd ever seen him to angry.

Promise me, Sarah dear, he said. Want you to promise me you won't be doing that again.

Heaven's sakes, I said, not a piece of fine china going to break!

But did as he wanted.

As the time went on I ached everywhere, legs, feet, back. Told Daunt and he took to one of the chairs with the hand-saw. The low chair eased the aches and I sat for everything I could, peeling potatoes, mixing up a pudding. Touched, that he cared enough to think of it, and not mind cutting into one of the good chairs.

He'd always kept himself clean-shaved but now he grew out his beard. Like letting go the picture of himself that he'd made every morning in front of the mirror. Now he was just himself, a man hairy like any other.

I'm a great ugly lump of a feller, he said. Pity that poor child if it takes after me.

You're a fine-looking man, I said, and as I said the words was surprised at myself, because I told no lie. Handsome you'd never say of Daunt, but I seemed to of come to another way of seeing things, where a man needn't be handsome to be a fine-looking man.

Daunt had the idea that a woman carrying ought to have a lie-down of an afternoon. He was not to be shaken in that view. But I'd never been one for lying down in the daytime. Tried, but had to say to him, thank you, Daunt, for your care, but I'll scream if I have to lie in that room once more.

We worked out a middle way, which was that I could go over to the hill and sit there, take it easy that way. But only on condition I went slow and careful on the track, and took the little bell from the kitchen in case I got in trouble and couldn't call out.

Jack had always been with me in that private place on the hill. But the woman who sat there feeling the little flickerings of the baby stirring was not the same one who'd sat in the dust and tore at her hair. Not the one who'd said yes to the first man who asked, because what did it matter? Not the one who'd feared she could only love Jack Langland's child.

Here I was with a bub I knew I would lay down my life for, but he or she had no part of Jack Langland.

Those pictures of Jack I'd gone over so often were stale from so much remembering. Shrunken like an apple at the end of winter. Still the shape of an apple, the colour of an apple, but no life left in it.

I'd gone on and I was someone else now. It was a shock to see one day that Jack would of gone on, too. When he'd taken that last stride out of sight it felt as if he'd stepped out of the world. But it was only my world he'd stepped out of. He'd of gone on walking, unseen by me. Somewhere in the world now was the Jack he'd become. Not just the man in the pictures in my head, those dried-up memories, but a living man going about his unknown life.

He'd of got some lucky other woman by now. A New Zealander most likely. He'd watch her tenderly, the way he'd watched me. He'd have little ones that he'd love. They'd be like the girl, a foot in the black world and a foot in the white. He wouldn't of forgotten her. He'd think about her and he might think about me now and then, too. I hoped so. But I'd be growing distant and faded, the way he was for me.

Be happy, Jack, I said, out loud into the air of the glowing afternoon. Be happy, live long.

It was a cold windy season when I started to show, every gust blowing in at the empty places in the walls. Of an afternoon I'd sit beside those window-holes to get the last of the light, stitching away at the things I had to get ready for the baby.

Daunt found me there one day, my skirt blowing around me.

Sarah dear, you're frozen, he said. Look at you. Come away from that damn window!

Got me settled in the armchair, lit the lamp and brought it over, piled wood on the fire till it roared.

Instead of going back outside like I'd expected, he sat in the other chair, his heavy eyebrows drawn into one troubled bar of black.

The wool will come up, he said. Never been so low. Everyone feeling the pinch.

Yes, I said, it will come up.

Thought we'd be doing better by this, he said. I promised you. For better or worse.

That was true enough, but poor man, how could he help the price of wool?

Well, there's this about it, I said and looked over to one of the holes where a square piece of hill was bright in the late sunlight. No need for any pictures of scenery on the walls, we got the thing itself.

I hoped my poor joke might cheer him up but he put his face in his hands.

I brought you here, so far away, he said. Let you down. That's the fact of it. That damn
Gazette
comes, I go straight to the wool price. Still sixpence the pound! Do they not need their socks and blankets? Has the damned equator shifted and made County Cork as warm as paradise?

I knew what I was getting into, I said. Made my choice. Never wanted or needed a palace. Just a good man to go through life with.

A good man! he said. I made you those promises! Can't look you in the eye, thinking of them.