Sarah Thornhill (31 page)

I knew I had to sing. Not very much was going to be asked of me here. Nothing at all compared to what had been asked of the girl. I must not fail her. But my mind was empty of any song and my voice had dried up.

Then from behind me, Jack started.
Oranges and lemons, say
the bells of Saint Clement's.

He faded off and I heard a reedy voice take over. It trembled and stretched thin, weak as a child's. But I was singing.

You owe me five farthings, say the bells of Saint Martin's.

Such an odd thing, the sort of thing as happens in those fussy worried dreams when you've slept late. So strange and odd to be standing in this open space with these women smiling and watching, and my little voice. The words floated up as easy as if I'd sung them the day before. Stored like a cheese in its rind, all that time.

When will you pay me, say the bells of Old Bailey. When I grow rich,
say the bells of Shoreditch.

But I was ashamed. What kind of world was I from, where this was all the answer I could make to a song of welcome?

When I was finished Hinewai laid her fingers on my arms and leaned in to me with a bright open look. Her face coming in to me close and the feel of her skin on mine the softest thing in the world. I'd never been so deep in another person's eyes, or had them so deep in mine. Felt the warmth of her face, her nose pressed against mine.

They all did it, the whole line, must of been twenty women, all leaned in to me with that bright face. By the end they felt like family. You might kill a person you've kissed. Kill a person you've done the other thing with. But it came to me that it would be hard to kill a person you'd joined your face with.

Hinewai took my hand again and we walked together with all the women into the building behind the open space. High like a church, but dim lit and hazy with smoke. She took me to the far end, let me go. Everyone fell back and I was on my own, facing an old woman in a cloak of a soft straw colour with dark tassels all over it. The skin of her face was creased and crumpled and on her chin a pattern, neat blue lines gone soft with age along with the skin.

She made a sign and I sat down on the mat facing her. She put her hands round mine so I could feel the warm skin of her palms. Smooth as a lady's.

She started to talk, or perhaps it was a prayer or a poem. The other women now and then murmured something, like in church when everyone says Amen.

After a time she stopped. Was that the end of it, should I get up? But behind my ear Jack spoke, quiet and low.

What she's been telling you, it's about the girl, he said. How it was when she was born, middle of summer. Trees in flower, the cod running.

We'd never marked the girl's birthday. Never as much as wondered when it was.

Born as the sun was coming up, he said.

He hesitated as if thinking how to say it.

Lovely, he said. Lovely as the sun, she says, her face like the stars and her body strong as the sea.

I wanted to turn away from the woman's gaze on me but I had to face her. Made myself look at her, listening to the way she loved the girl.

I got to say the next part now, Jack said. What I can't forgive myself for. How I took her away.

His way of speaking the New Zealand tongue was slow and careful. I could hear the sounds like beads on a string, paid out one at a time. He stopped and she said something. Not gentle. He bowed his head.

Now you got to tell her, Jack said. What happened after she got to your place.

Everywhere the broad brown faces watching, waiting for me to speak. Some of these women here might be aunties to her, like I was. That made us kin, in a roundabout way. If Pa hadn't sent for the girl, she'd be here now, among these folk, holding her granny's hand and helping her on her way.

I'd thought about what I'd say. Made myself look at those pictures. Not pretty pictures. That wasn't what I was here for, soft false comfort.

I told how the girl stood in the parlour and hung onto the edge of Jack's coat. How she heard her mother's name and looked around and the light went out of her face. How she got up on Jack's bed that first night. After that, locked in.

I stopped, thought Jack might put what I'd said into the old woman's language. I was pleased to stop. It was hard looking at those pictures.

Go on, I heard Jack say. Best go on.

I made myself say about how sad the girl was. Every minute of every day a sadness. Got out the words for the thing I most hated to think of, how I'd made her put out her hand to the horse, how frightened she was. How she never spoke. Sat all day in the window watching down the river for the boat to take her away.

Might as well of taken a knife to her heart, I said. Only we did it by inches.

The old woman's eyes were fierce as an owl's. Whatever part of my words she understood, she didn't need them in her own tongue. She was looking past the words, into the woman speaking them. My voice was thready, telling it with those eyes on me. My feet and hands cold and trembly. Wanted to stop, but there was too much silence, and stopping would be one more lie. The women pressing in around me, and not a sound, except my voice, pushing on into the quiet.

I went away to my husband, I said. To my own life. I left her there.

Wanted to say things. How I was sorry. How I should of. How I wished. But my being sorry was nothing but air.

Next I knew, word come she was dead, I said.

Everyone waiting.

I can't, Jack, I said. I don't know. How she died. None of that.

The lines round his eyes made him stern.

You got to tell it as best you can, he said. Got to say.

His voice hardly his own, it was so grave.

I turned back to the old woman. She bent forward a little, as if hearing the words I wasn't saying. I met her eyes, that looked into me, saw who I was. She knew I couldn't tell her how her granddaughter died. It wasn't the hows and the wheres and the wherefores she wanted. That wasn't what I was here for.

What she needed, what I was here for, was to watch me go through the telling of it. To hear the shake in my voice and see the twist in my mouth. To watch me see the pictures one by one and put them into words, word by sad word. To know I felt it, what had been done.

They must of took her to the cemetery, I said. They'd of buried her. I don't know where.

That was the end of what I had to offer.

I had planned to ask, what was the girl's name. Her true name. But there were no more words in me, only tears.

No one moved, no one leaned to me, no arm went round me. The women watched and they listened. My tears would go on for as long as they had to. The women were not unfeeling. But they knew that there were times when tears ought to be shed, as many tears as was right, and this was one of those times.

When it was finished, I was emptied. By and by I heard the women start in to singing, a sad quiet song. At first I thought they were singing for me. But then they all moved up around the old woman, took her in among themselves. They were singing for her. I glimpsed her for a moment, then all I could see was their backs, their broad shoulders, their shining black hair, and out of the body of them came the rise and fall of their singing.

My part was finished. The shred of story I had, I'd handed it along. Paid the only price I could. These women had taken it into themselves. It was theirs now, part of what they would do to honour the girl.

Jack was gone. I waited, but he didn't come back.

I got up at last, went to the door, unsteady like someone who'd been sick in bed a long time. The sun had set, but the sky was still full of light. I went across the open space and down a path that curved over the low ridge of land towards the sea. Walked along half-blind, seeing nothing but my feet moving. Grass and stones and sand, and a dune with threads of grass like the tassels on the old woman's cloak. Then I was on the beach, the wind in my hair, cold on my wet cheeks.

There seemed no reason to do anything. There was just this empty place, and the emptied woman in it.

The wind was cold, the sand grey with the last light. Small waves ran up the shining wet sand, pulled back. A gull, bright white against the grey sky, floated along the wind, then tilted sideways, its wings taking gulps of air, stepping down along nothing.

How will I ever find a way to tell everything that brought me here? How I found myself in that place where the wind never stops blowing and nothing lies between the land and the ice at the bottom of the world but an ocean full of dark water? How tell the story of me and Jack Langland and a girl who only ever had someone else's name? Of those things left undone that we ought to have done, and those things done that we ought not to have done?

Rippling away into all those lives, down along the fathers and daughters and granddaughters. Generation after generation, the things joining us and the things cutting between us. All made by something done so long ago.

I'd go back to the houses in a minute, sit with Jack and Hinewai, be a gracious guest. I'd come to know Maria, and think of my own child so far away. Go back to Glenmire by and by, live out my life alongside of John Daunt and Sadie and whatever other children life might bless me with. There'd be gladness and sadness, mistakes made and things done right. If there was anything I could do to mend things, I'd do them.

I'd grow old, I'd die. All the things I'd seen and done and felt would die along with me, carried off to where there was no bringing them back.

I'm never going to be able to tell what it was all about. Jack would be the only one now, and Jack's not here. I can only tell what I know. Cruelties and crimes, miseries on every side. But of all the crimes done, the worst would be to let the story slip away. For what it's worth, mine had best take its place, in with all the others.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As always, I could fill a chapter with a list of people who made this book possible.

It starts with my mother Isobel Russell, who in re-telling the family stories always mentioned the fact that her great-great-grandfather Solomon Wiseman (on whom William Thornhill is loosely based) was said to have had a daughter ‘who got pregnant to the riding master, was thrown out of the house and died'. In the moment that I realised this story, if true at all, might be about his granddaughter rather than his daughter,
Sarah Thornhill
was born. If my mother hadn't preserved this detail I'd never have gone looking for the remarkable histories that inspired parts of this novel.

Since I wrote
The Secret River
I have learned that ‘history' can be an inflammatory word, so let me say clearly: this is a work of fiction that takes the past as its starting point. (You can find more on the history/fiction demarcation dispute, and on the sources for this novel, at
kategrenville.com
)

Particular thanks and appreciation go to Nigel Prickett, who seemed to know before I did how important the story of Thomas Chaseland would be to this book. Without Thomas Chaseland there would be no Jack Langland. Talking with Lynette Russell and reading her paper on Chaseland enriched and broadened my sense of the man he might have been, and the larger meanings of his story. At an early stage of research Barbara Dawson generously shared her PhD thesis and its invaluable bibliography of sources I'd never have found on my own. Bill Dacker did me the very great kindness of reading the last part of the book and making important suggestions. Pat Grace opened my eyes to the possibility of a story that was not just about the past, but the present and its unfinished business.

My great thanks to all of you for your generosity.

Others whose support and assistance I'm extremely grateful for are: Paul Diamond, Laurie Edwards, Rachael Egerton, Deborah Figuera, Brian and Beryl Forbes, Lloyd Jones, Melanie Nolan, Marita and Ernie Ranclaud, Eric Rolls, Te Manu Adventures on Rakiura, Sir Tipene O'Regan, John Mackie, Patrick Matthew, Don Maunder, Roger Milliss, Jacqui Mott, Des O'Malley, Jennie Pattrick, Henry Reynolds, Michael Skerrett, Kate Stevens, Angela Wanhalla, Dean Whaanga, Lydia Wevers, Suzi Whitehead-Pope and Bellbird & Swallows, and Louella and Gerard Windsor.

As always, the greatest thanks to my family for their unfailing and essential support.