The Clay Dreaming (16 page)

This is
Bugaragara
, ‘the Way of the Law’.

If a person such as himself hopes to walk any Songline, he must first learn the corresponding song. In singing the song, he becomes one with both Ancestor and path, and contributes to the continuing cycle of Creation. That then is the purpose behind his going Walkabout. For, without song, the land would cease to exist; just as surely as the Men die, when denied the birth lands they belong to.

Only now that he is outside of the World has he finally located his Dreaming.
Bripumyarrimin
ponders this.

Afternoon light fades slowly into evening. A striking sunset flushes the river in shades from bronze to crimson. An entire fleet of merchant ships sails in on the blood-tide.

Smaller barks darting in between, the galleons come gliding, stately and assured as swans. Their wide, white wings are fat and full; the vessels drift, deep-freighted. As each sea-worn prow cleaves the waters, the waves catch
the sunlight, sparking. In the path ploughed behind every ship’s keel settles a trembling shadow.

King Cole’s weary head dips forward. He recovers.

Rust-coloured clouds brew up a storm. The numberless buildings are set afire by the low sun. A single shaft strikes the lip of One Tree Hill,
Panatapia
. The searching orange ray moves on, dappling the deer that graze peacefully in the meadow, before illuminating the gleaming white buildings of the Hospital. They shimmer and disappear, replaced with an ancient palace brick-red in colour.

Lulled, laid back, between pillows of cloud, King Cole looks into pools of deepening blue. A few birds circle there, way up high.

He listens to their evensong. A chorus of church bells answers. He hears the barking of a dog, somewhere off in the distance, and then, faint music At the base of the statue of King George, two Naval cadets take their stand. Sounding the tattoo on drum and fife, they signal the close of another day.

King Cole rests his tired eyes. Glowing lids gradually fade to dimness, a pale grey that soon darkens. Occasional coloured lights bloom and sparkle in the murk, crashing like the spray of waves ashore. His liver, the seat of feeling, opens out like a flower, his consciousness suffused with a delightful fluorescence – the Dreaming.

When at long last his eyes reopen, the moon smiles down, and all is silent. The threatened storm has passed over. Only thin wisps of cloud remain, skimming swiftly by.

‘
Ballrinjarrimin
? Y’alright?’

No response. Dick-a-Dick stands at the foot of Sundown’s bunk, Cuzens close behind. The whole day through, Sundown hasn’t stirred. Dick-a-Dick kicks the wooden leg of the bed.

Jogged, Sundown rolls over. It is clear enough he hasn’t been sleeping. The others look him over.

Dick-a-Dick grunts.

‘
Bripumyarrimin
,’ he says. ‘Ain’t here, eh.’

Dick jerks his chin towards the empty bunk next door. Dark circles under his eyes, Sundown only looks sheepish, and hangs his head.

It is nearly a full minute before he answers.

‘Him…gone.’

‘Where?’

A shorter pause lingers in the air.

‘Walkabout,’ Sundown murmurs.

Cuzens snorts.

‘
Deen
?’ asks Dick-a-Dick, equally incredulous.

There follows another steady silence, before Sundown shakes his head. ‘Him London.’

Dick-a-Dick whistles, and shifts his weight to settle on the opposite hip. He runs fingers through his thick hair, almost seeming to drag his brow up with them. Gloomy Sundown starts, very quietly, to cry.

One of the others approaches, to see what is the matter. Dick-a-Dick shrugs. He relates the news in their
Jardwa
tongue. No one asks when Sundown thinks his clan brother will return. His silent tears speak for him.

Where King Cole has gone, he isn’t coming back.

At first, there was only the void.

Then, hard to place, faint sound, growing steadily louder – the clatter and churn of carriage wheels beyond number, a newsboy’s hoarse cries.

Sarah Larkin awoke with a start. Her sleep had been deep, and apparently dreamless. All the same she felt dizzy, somewhat light-headed, as though woken from dream after all. Still for a few minutes longer, she listened to the world outside, and wondered at what she might have missed.

She recalled with relish her adventures the day before. A whole day spent in crossing the city, in spite of which she had returned home feeling energised. Sarah thought amiably of King Cole, her erstwhile companion. His skin; gestures more eloquent than words; and the great black pupils of his eyes – she had met with an Australian Aborigine!

Upward and onward! It was early but she rose anyway, keen to get on. Her neck felt stiff, and, suffering a little gastric discomfort, she summoned a delicate belch. Better.

Sarah noticed splashes on her shoes where they lay beneath the dresser. They were encrusted with shapes of clay – mud from the burial mound. Taking them to the sink, she began to wash them, gently. It would not do to scrub: this pair would have to last. She doused them with cold water, rubbing at the stains with her fingers.

The wet brown leather glistened.

Seeing her face in the mirror, she gasped then laughed. Nose and cheeks smudged with great smears of soot, she looked as chequered as St Paul’s. Her unwitting fingers must have done that dirty work on feeling the black snow settle.

There, good as new.

She propped the shoes up to dry, and went to heat water for a bath.

‘“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”’

As Sarah gathered together a breakfast tray, she heard the rich bell tones ring out from overhead. Mounting the stair, she gave thanks that her father’s speaking voice should sound so fiery, so strong. Invoking awe of heaven as surely as threat of hellfire, it still had the capacity to scare her a little –
delightfully
so.

‘“The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.”’

As she entered his room, knowing how it would please him, Sarah supplied the rejoinder.

‘“In him was life, and the life was the light of men,”’ she said. ‘You look well this morning, and sound better!’

Lambert Larkin sat up in bed, as craggy and grey as a mountain. His open mouth widened into a rare smile.

‘Amen,’ he said. ‘And all the better for seeing you, my dear.’

Sarah placed the tray and the morning’s papers at her father’s bedside, needing first to move a few of the large books piled there: various volumes of Thomas Carlyle’s monumental
Works
, and Lambert’s beloved Kingsley. Down with the lamb and up with the lark; plainly, he had been busy for some hours already.

Eyes askance, Lambert watched her as she worked. He pulled another quote.

‘“All the seeds of yesteryear”,’ he said, ‘“are today, flowers.”’

‘Or weeds,’ Sarah said. She curtsied.

The shadow of doubt crossed the old man’s face. Almost immediately he noticed the change in her. His smile died a little.

She noted the candle, burnt completely out, and feared he had not slept the night at all.

‘Here,’ said Sarah. ‘I brought you some lighter reading.’ She presented fresh copies of the
Daily Telegraph
and
The Times
, the journals he best favoured.

‘You will be going to the library today?’ he asked – flatly, as if it were a matter of course.

‘I shall,’ she said.

But not for his sake, not today – rather, on King Cole’s behalf, perhaps even her own.

‘Stay a little,’ he said, ‘and read with me, daughter.’

It was not framed as a request. She hesitated.

‘If you would be so kind,’ Lambert added.

His voice warbled a little. Faltering, he concluded with a pathetic little cough.

‘A little while, then,’ she conceded.

They sat in silence. In perusal of the morning papers, he ate the breakfast she had prepared for him. Lambert reached over to turn a page. Below the sleeve, rolled up so as not to trail across his plate, the snow-white cap of his elbow appeared cracked and flaking, the inside of his forearm almost translucent, blue tracks and exposed sinew working within. In between the ferrying of mouthfuls he laid down his fork, and rasped together the tips of his thumb and index finger. Lightly pressed, the powder-dry digits circled first one way, then the other – a habitual, ruminant action. The persistent scrape could infuriate if she let it.

Unable to finish, he broke his leftovers into pieces.

‘Scatter these crumbs on the sill for me,’ he directed.

Watchful not to dislodge the windowbox, Sarah did as she was told. She noticed that some of the plant stems carried dead leaves, and crisply removed them.

‘“To cultivate a garden”,’ he said from the bed, ‘“is to walk with God.”’

Sarah smiled to herself: that was the voice of her father, all right. As a church minister he liked to keep abreast of every topical debate, but his choicest philosophy embodied all of the theory sufficient to a sundial.

Lambert looked suddenly morose.

‘I miss having a garden,’ he said.

In Greenwich Royal Park, at the tip of a slope not far from the Eastern Gate, towers an ancient oak. No other tree in London is so huge.

In the final stages of its decline, age has hollowed out the great giant. From the upper reaches of that wooden crater where he has spent the night, King Cole emerges. Face creased with sleep, he looks down from his perch into the unexpected interior. His expression distorts with a mounting horror. The morning skies are cloudy yet luminous. By their spectral light he is witness to acts of desecration.

Instead of standing tall, the grandfather tree staggers. Out of his side a doorway has been carved. Rough innards worn smooth, the earth below is tiled over, and there is a table, placed at the centre of the dying tree.

Appalled, King Cole descends and quits the scene.

‘I’m so bored with the Abyssinian Expedition!’

Lambert Larkin snatched across the pages of his newspaper. He held it rudely, like a screen, entirely obscuring Sarah’s view of him.

How typical – demanding of her company only to ignore her.

Recalling verses from William Cole’s
The Parent’s Poetical Present
, Sarah recognised little in them concerning her own upbringing. The threat of punishment had always been much more Lambert’s style. ‘Do not rush, child. It is sufficient to proceed at a walking pace.’ That, an admonition occasioned by the breaking of an ornament, had been about his only direct address of her in childhood.

Always there had been a hardness of shell between them, quite impossible to penetrate, she never certain it was not her fault. Neither their temperaments nor intellects matched. Beyond the texts she was obliged to transcribe for him, they did not even read the same books.

Her mother’s death had been so abrupt, so unexpected. One evening she was alive, the next morning, dead. Ever since that evil hour, Lambert’s very gradual decline made his own passing an eventuality that no longer seemed quite real. Over time, they had established separate routines whereby he, at least, could affect self-sufficiency. Sarah counted her blessings, even on the one hand: without the Museum library so close by, she would have been entombed in that house.

Their single shared enthusiasm was for
The Illustrated London News
. Saturday mornings would normally be spent
à deux
, poring over the latest issue and supplying a running commentary. Only after noon – weekend opening hours at the Museum – could she resume her duties following a morning ‘off ’. A thin patch of common ground, to be sure, but sometimes it could be made to last out the week.

With this in mind, perhaps, or as some perverse show of favour, Lambert had retrieved the last weekend’s edition from the bottom of the pile. He no doubt saw entirely different virtues within its pages, but without the evidence of the newspaper’s many engravings Sarah might have doubted the larger world existed at all. She could read there about the galas and gatherings, the theatre shows, gallery openings and lectures, and stare long and hard at picture representations of faraway lands…places and events she would never see for herself.

Sarah studied the ornamental logo on the front page as it was presented to her, almost as if truly seeing it for the very first time. A part of the design depicted the annual Oxford and Cambridge boat race along the River Thames. The shining dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, transcendent, speared the heading with splendour. A block of waterfront buildings marked out the foreground: warehouses in deep contrasting shadow, likely under a cloud.

Lambert stabbed a finger at the open page, startling Sarah from her reverie. She took it up.

‘You want this?’ she asked. ‘
Nocturne for Piano, “A Dream of Enchantment
”?’ He had pointed to a list of adverts under the heading ‘New Music’.

‘Nooo,’ he scowled.

Sarah stared at the page. ‘Which?’

Impatiently, he snatched the paper back.

‘Just tell me,’ she pleaded.

‘The book they are advertising, by a Dr Doran,’ he said, scribbling out a note. ‘I want you to fetch me a copy.’ Waving it a second or two in the air to dry, he thrust the inked scrap into her hand. ‘Vain fantasy,’ he muttered.

Sarah looked down at an unsteady scrawl that few could hope to decipher. The book she wanted to search out was another entirely, yet this presented the perfect excuse for her to leave.

‘Abyssinians,’ Lambert rattled on. ‘
Pchah
! Sinners from the abyss! Sin the very fulcrum to their name!’ He wrestled the oversized pages about. ‘First the Indians,’ he said, ‘then the Negroes and Jamaicans…abysmal beasts, all of them. They deserve what’s coming!’

His eyes, having clouded over a little, just as suddenly cleared. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Sarah.’ He looked at her, seated by his bedside, as if unsure of time or space. ‘My dearest lily! Forgive me…I’m tired. I think I shall take a nap.’

Despite his outburst, Sarah was more annoyed at herself. She had lost yet another chance to assert herself, by leaving of her own accord.

She was always free to go; it remained within his power alone to release her.

Quitting the house, Sarah half-expected to find King Cole waiting on her doorstep. She was disappointed to find that he wasn’t.

The sky was low, the cloud dense, the air thick. Just a day like any other. She turned and walked the short distance down the street to the British Museum. Passing into the entrance hall, she headed directly towards the Reading-room, fumbling in her purse to find the small pink card that was her means of entry.

Appended on the reverse were a few rules and regulations she knew by heart.

The Ordinary Reading-ticket, once a cumbersome and inconvenient
full-sheet
affair, had been much reduced in size. Sarah was presented her first on turning 21, as if it were the keys to the kingdom. Little did she realise, then, how the lock would be turned behind her.

Looking at her card, noting her name down in the register, the attendant allowed her to pass. Sarah left her coat in the ladies’ cloak-room and her brolly in the umbrella-room, making use of the water-closet before proceeding into the main Salon.

The distinctive odour of the Reading-room greeted her at once – leather and cork-carpet. The floor covering, chosen for its sound-absorbing properties, was kamptulicon, that peculiar compound of rubber, cork and gutta-percha, a greyish rubber-like substance obtained from the sap of various Malayan trees. The elastic composition made it exceedingly pleasant to walk on.

Thirty-five tables – nineteen long, and sixteen short – converged towards the centre of the Reading-room, all covered with splendid black-japanned leather. Two on the near inside, designated A and T, were exclusively reserved for the use of lady-readers: hassocks, cushions for kneeling as found in church pews, being provided to accommodate the voluminous skirts
à la mode
. Sarah exercised the feminine privilege of taking a seat wherever she pleased. She selected a suitable vacancy, one located an agreeable distance from her nearest neighbour, made a mental note of it, and went to consult the New General Catalogue of printed books. This was stored amongst the semi-circular desks that made up the centrepiece to the room, a diminishing ring of three concentric circles.

The smallest, innermost stand, its floor raised, enclosed a space apportioned to the superintendent of the room, and his immediate staff. The attachment of a glass-enclosed avenue, up and down which the attendant clerks ran their errands, widened as it extended from this mid-point. Seen from above, the arrangement might suggest a giant keyhole, the readers’ tables radiating outwards like a spider’s web.

A pair of novice members, newly constituted, stood adhered to the spot. They seemed at a loss, bewildered by the complexity of the arrangement, the great arcs and galleries of books that lined the expansive and airy dome.