Salt Creek Page 10

  In the Coorong we lost society, its benefits as well as its strictures, those things that we had not so much as thought of. They were the air we breathed. Even so, two great excitements broke the monotony of that winter. The telegraph line went through along the stock route. We rode up to watch the making of it and after the rough men had gone on their way all that was left were the poles, which were like so many stilts with their walkers departed, and their shadows, which lengthened and shortened as the earth turned, making patterns of shade and substance.

  And in the winter Hugh and Stanton happened upon a group of travelling musicians on the road and invited them to stay for the night. We killed a calf and roasted it outside on a contraption the boys rigged up, and the sparks flew and the fat hissed beneath. They played their music on the veranda and we forgot ourselves in the shabby wonderment of their dandy striped waistcoats and bright trousers and the twang and thump of their instruments. Addie sang. (‘Ye should come along with us, little lady,’ one of the men said.) We whirled around, and Tull did a dance, stamping his heels, which he taught us as best he could. He laughed at us.

  It was hard to settle after they went on their way. If there were time I went for a ride or a walk on my own or with Addie, which Mama did not like.

  ‘Oh, Mama,’ Addie said. ‘The lagoon path is not King William Street.’

  ‘Addie,’ Mama said.

  ‘Sorry, Mama.’

  ‘Truly, Mama, there’s no one about to think us fast,’ I said. What point could there be to demureness and decorum and restraint when there was no one to witness them? She could not compel us, as she knew too. Still, we waited.

  ‘What of the blacks?’

  ‘They’re not back from their winter camp that I’ve seen. In any case, if they’ve done nothing yet I think we’re safe enough. Tull would tell us if not.’

  ‘Well, I suppose.’

  ‘Thank you, Mama,’ we said. When she had gone, Addie rolled her eyes. ‘Next thing she’ll be telling us to put our gloves on before we go out.’

  After that we took more care, slipping away without her noticing so we did not cause worry.

  It was the talk of King William Street that gave me the idea of taking Mama on a day visit to see Mrs Robinson at the Travellers Rest. She was the only female settler within two days’ ride, perhaps more, and I thought the company of another woman might be welcome, and that it might also be a kindness to Mrs Robinson in her widowed state. Papa saw no fault in the plan. He had always spoken well of her. ‘She misses her husband,’ he said. He fell to rumination before rousing himself again. ‘I have never seen her anything but uncomplaining and industrious.’ He sent Hugh to arrange a time for a visit – the second week in September – and Addie and Mama washed and ironed our clothes, and starched the ribbons on our bonnets smooth.

  ‘There,’ Mama said when she saw us, ‘if we are not fashionable, we are at least respectable.’ Addie had to be contented with that.

  All the way up the path from the house I twisted in the saddle to see Mary, and behind her Tull and Fred holding her steady on the fence rail. She was kicking her heels and, I was sure, reminding them both what a big girl she was now. Well, and she was; she would be three by Christmas. Mama looked back too and Mary waved each time. She would be like Mama one day; their hair was similar: waved and brown, Mary’s still wispy. I turned one last time before we rounded a curve to see her reaching for Tull and him taking her and swinging her in a circle. There was her distant shriek of delight and they were gone.

  Poor Mama was not easy leaving her behind. Once she seemed on the point of turning back, then Addie drew her attention and she set herself again. Mary was too small for such a long ride, and so Mama knew, and the dray was out of the question despite the dry winter; we might spend the better part of the day getting there. When we had travelled a little further, Mama became talkative, riding ahead with Addie and Stanton, who had come as our escort. But I would not let the pleasure of riding away from the run, to keep on riding, be spoilt by him.

  The path – wide in places, and narrow where it squeezed between rock formations and water – wound along the shore’s edges, sometimes cutting past small headlands that jutted into the lagoon. The islands that I had only seen from the distance came closer. They were thick with pelicans. The sun, which had early shone into our eyes, drifted higher, as bright as a new penny. Later in the morning we rode over some shallow hills and when they began to fall away, the inn – a low wooden building crouching on a rise – came into view. The creek at its feet was thick with bulrushes moving in the slow breeze, and further down where it met the lagoon there was a short jetty and a tethered boat bobbing in the water. We rode down.

  The inn yard was neat: within, Lady Banks’ roses speckled in bud climbed the veranda posts and pots of lavender framed a doorway, and on the slope behind the stable was a well-tended vegetable garden. From the back of the building, the kitchen I supposed, came a dab of a woman. ‘Mrs Robinson’, Stanton called out. She was no more than thirty I would say, with fair hair drawn back in a bun and grey eyes and a cross-stitched apron atop her sprigged dress. She came forward in quick, light steps. Mama smiled at the sight of her, and she was so pretty and neat that I did the same.

  Then, ‘Hello there, Mrs Finch,’ she said, and Mama’s face fell. She, Mrs Robinson, was Irish, and quite confident for a small person; ‘Come along now, leave your horses there, that’s right. They’ll be quite safe, I do assure you,’ all the time drawing closer.

  Mama turned and passed the reins to Stanton, who tied them to the railing at a water trough. I thought from her expression, which was trapped, that she wanted to leave already. There was nothing to be done. It was not that Mama disapproved of the Irish exactly – I had seen her speak to several people from that country very civilly in Adelaide – but she thought them feckless and could not think of them as our equals, so few of them being well born in Australia. I am afraid her manner, though polite, became stiff, and she spoke in her crispest voice. ‘How do you do, Mrs Robinson,’ and handed her the tin of biscuits she had brought.

  Immediately, Mrs Robinson lifted the lid. ‘Oh, shortbreads. They’ll be grand. And I’ve made a cake too. We can have a nice cosy conversation.’

  We followed her through the stout door into a vestibule with an entrance onto the public dining room – poorly lit and the walls above the fireplace blackened with smoke – and in the other direction a dark hallway. This took us to a good-sized room, with whitewashed walls and two big windows looking onto the veranda. A plain Welsh dresser filled with Delft stood against one wall, and at the centre was a flowered carpet around which were a settee and several chintz-covered arm chairs with small tables between.

  ‘What a lovely room,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Mama said. ‘Very pleasant.’

  Mrs Robinson bade her sit. She flicked a handkerchief at the chair as Mama crossed the room towards it. Addie looked at me as if she might burst with laughing. I shook my head, but Addie looked so merry that it was all I could do not to. Mama sat on the chair’s edge, her back extremely straight. ‘Girls,’ she said, and we sat too. Stanton’s gaze moved between us. He began to talk, and for once I could see how he might appear to others: pleasant, even charming. But of course he and Mrs Robinson had met before, when he and Papa and Hugh were riding this way.

  ‘Any travellers this week?’ he asked, and Mrs Robinson was able to talk.

  ‘Not a one, not for a while. It’s very quiet. We were run off our feet a few years ago. Travellers, people off to the goldfields. Then the Chinamen. The inland route’s killin’ us, so it is. And Robe. The Chinamen are landing there now. Closer to the goldfields, see. I daresay you’ll have noticed.’

  ‘We’re a half-mile from the track,’ I said. ‘We see no one but natives; we never have.’

  ‘Natives – willin’ workers, I’ll say that.’ She bustled out to arrange tea, and presently a gawky young maid with a number of teeth missing carried in a tray w
ith a steaming teapot and cups – also Mama’s biscuits, which had become crumbly at their edges, and a tall layer cake filled with jam and cream. ‘Thank you, Jane,’ Mrs Robinson said. ‘A nice piece of cake for you, Mrs Finch?’ She cut into it revealing its buttery yellow inside, and passed her some. Mama was mortified. She could not take her eyes from her shortbreads. She gathered herself and was gracious about the cake, pronouncing it delicious. Presently we were all eating it – and I must say that Mama never spoke more truly – and drinking tea, and in this way we were able to pass some of the time.

  Mrs Robinson began to ask Mama questions, about how many children she had, and not to worry if she felt lonely from time to time – it would pass, she said – and where she had grown up. It could not have been worse. Mama took her friendliness as an impertinence. ‘On our estate in West Sussex,’ she said, very cool. ‘And you, Mrs Robinson?’

  She became flustered. ‘Ireland. I suppose you can tell that from me accent.’ She laughed nervously and her hands twisted in her apron. All but Mama smiled, which I know Mrs Robinson noticed from the way her gaze rested on Mama’s face. ‘In fact I came from a poorhouse, Ma’am. We would have starved if our parents had not left us there. I was lucky to leave, lucky to be here.’ Her voice was steady enough, but had become respectful rather than friendly.

  Mama said nothing in reply and dropped her gaze to her plate as if the cake had become very fascinating. I saw her face from the side. She appeared almost stricken, and if I did not perfectly understand it then, I think I did later. Mrs Robinson was no comfort to her and never would be; she was the measure for Mama of how far she had fallen.

  Addie said, ‘This is the loveliest cake I have ever had.’

  Mrs Robinson came to life, and said confidingly, ‘’T’is, en’t it? A nice lady I was maid for in Mount Barker taught it me, gave me the recipe when I married my poor Willie. Knack and practice is all it is. I’ll show you one day, if you like.’

  ‘I would like that,’ Addie said. ‘May we come again, Mama?’

  ‘We will see what might be arranged, shall we girls?’ Mama said, and then to Mrs Robinson, ‘Mr Finch can’t always spare the horses. It’s a busy time of year at present and I’m afraid we must take our leave.’

  ‘Oh, so soon?’ Addie said.

  Mama ran on. ‘It was so kind of you to have us to tea.’

  Poor Mrs Robinson. Her face fell so. It was as if Mama had struck her.

  Within a very short space of time we were riding home, Mama very quiet and Addie chattering. ‘I still don’t see why we had to go in such a rush.’

  Finally, in a small strained voice, Mama said, ‘She is just not the sort of person I would wish you to be around, Adelaide.’ And then began to sob.

  I drew alongside and was able to lean from my saddle and pat her shoulder. ‘Don’t, Mama. Please don’t,’ I said.

  She drew a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her nose. ‘What have I become? I’ll send her a note. Will you take a note to thank her, Stanton?’

  ‘Of course,’ Stanton said, rather short.

  ‘I’ll write it just as soon as we’re back. But what was your father thinking?’

  ‘That you were in need of company,’ Stanton said.

  ‘He should have told me.’

  Mama and Papa were cool with each other for several days after that, and Mama became fussy about our manners. Addie would not stop talking of Mrs Robinson and her pretty dress and pleasant furnishings. When we lamented the things we had lost, company among them, Papa said that we had been spoiled and should take advantage of this opportunity.

  ‘What opportunity?’ Addie said cheekily.

  I was glad I had not said it.

  ‘To think of others and not yourself, to improve yourselves,’ Papa said.

  My efforts to improve things for Mama had come to nought, but I did not like to remind him of that.

  ‘See how Fred takes Tull with him?’ Papa said.

  ‘Actually, I think Tull takes him,’ Addie said.

  Papa ignored that. ‘You might undertake something of your own when you’ve finished your work.’

  The advice gave me no hint about details and specifics. I thought I would try to befriend a native of my own since it pleased Papa.

  In the morning after all the breakfast tasks were done there was some time before our lessons started. The next day I walked up the lagoon path, as I often did for the quiet of it, to the place where native women sometimes worked. They had returned to the lagoon’s shores from their winter camp now the weather was warming a little. They caught things at the water’s edge or pulled reeds or collected small crayfish or dug for things along the slope. I never went close to them, but sat on a rock a little way off and they glanced in my direction, wondering about me, perhaps, as I wondered about them. Sometimes they laughed. The little ones, fingers in their mouths and eyes huge and round, didn’t trouble to conceal their curiosity and would creep closer and scream in delighted terror and run back to their mothers if I smiled at them. Their talk and laughter made me lonely.

  I took a little packet of sugar; Tull had a sweet tooth and I thought that they might too.

  No one was there, but since there was nothing to go back for save more work and lessons, I set the sugar down on a dry rock and stood at the water’s edge trying to see what they saw there to collect. It was just reeds and grasses and a few bubbles rising from the lagoon bed. Thinking they might be from crayfish I found a stout stick and twisted my skirts up out of the way onto my lap and began to dig, pulling and twisting at the reeds and their roots. Determination set in and I tugged and dug, scooping the silty sand to shore. A clump gave way with unexpected ease and I fell back and there was a shout of laughter from behind: natives – women, girls and small children, seven or eight of them. I recognized one of them as the one with the scarred face we’d seen on arrival. She was tall, about my height I would say, and wore a fringe at her waist and a grassy looking cloak and at her side had a bag that carried her tools: sticks of different sizes, some with pointed ends, and other things that made the bag bulge. Like all the women she had one long fingernail that had been sharpened to a wicked point, the purpose of which I could not imagine.

  She gave me a steady look – not amused or annoyed or disturbed – resigned, rather, to something unpleasant. I scrambled to my feet and brushed the gritty mud from my hands onto my apron. The laughter stopped. The children slid behind the women.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  And then, ‘Whatever are you doing?’ the woman said, the words running along in the way that Tully’s had when I first spoke with him.

  ‘You speak English?’

  She didn’t reply and her eyes moved across the mess I had made, the scattered reeds all different lengths and the roots mixed with the grassy tops and the muck I had splattered on the shore.

  ‘I thought there was something there I could catch,’ I said. ‘You can have them if you like. The reeds, I mean.’

  She regarded them and then me. ‘Good for nothing now.’ She looked away. I would sooner endure the worst of Papa’s lectures than that disdain.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, which was true, but I did not know what for, just that my being there was a sorrow.

  She made a contemptuous noise and if anyone thinks natives dull witted one look into this woman’s face would teach them otherwise. The other women hung back still, but the tall woman took my hand in both of hers and thrust it at the other natives and rubbed her fingers and thumbs across it, hard, lifting the skin on its back and releasing it, showing the other natives as she did it and she said something too, and they edged in until they were all around, and there were the faint nibbling touches and tweaks of their hands at my skirts and sleeves. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, of course, but one word or phrase was repeated enough that I remembered it. One girl, bolder than the rest, lifted the bottom of my dress and looked at my stockinged leg and the cracked boots on my feet. It gave the others courag
e and soon both my hands were being held and squeezed and pinched and inspected – a strange feeling, as if my body were no longer my own.

  ‘Your hair,’ the tall woman said. ‘Blood hair.’

  ‘Red.’

  She shook her head. ‘Blood.’

  I touched it. ‘They think it has blood in it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh.’ I wanted to sit then or hold something to steady myself, remembering Tull when we first spoke. It was not a pleasant feeling to be thought a horror. I reached up and untwisted my hair and it fell in dark red coils. They were aghast. I stroked my head and held my hand out palm upwards to show them how white it still was and lifted a curl in the air and teased it apart and bent over that they might touch it. One of the children caught the end of a curl and the children shrieked at her daring. I could have cried but I shut my eyes tight and the moment passed. I put my hair back in a plait as best I could without a mirror and seeing it some of the girls wanted plaits too so I showed them how, using a few of the torn reeds to bind their ends so they were not all wasted.

  The women began digging some daisies growing above the shoreline and put their roots in the baskets they had brought. Having lost their fear of me they talked again, a sound that was as incomprehensible as birdsong or waves hitting a shore. I thought it the foreignest thing I ever heard, which much later made me blush to recall, and fascinating. I wondered what English might sound like to them, its words being so distinct. The tall woman paid me no more attention until I had to go, when I took her the packet of sugar, opening it to show her what lay inside. She took it from me with reverence almost and reached into the packet and drew out a pinch and tipping her head back released the sugar. She shut her eyes and her face was suffused with pleasure. Seeing her, seeing this, everyone gathered around and she showed them how sugar might be enjoyed, licking her finger and plunging it into the sugar and into her mouth, and each in turn copied her and was delighted.