Salt Creek Read online

  Tull did not spare Mr Bagshott, but Mr Bagshott persisted and the only agitation he showed was the increasing speed of his smoking, the clouds from it encircling his head in a thick mist. Once, to put Tull off his game, I think, he said, ‘Quite an unusual home then – educating females and natives. I’m not sure—’ He stopped speaking then; Tull had captured his queen. At the end he looked at the devastation and lifted his head, staring from Tull to Fred and back again. ‘I see what you’ve done, the lesson you have taught me, and I thank you for it.’

  ‘Thank you for the game, Mr Bagshott,’ Tull said, polite but still uneasy. He would be wondering whether he should have let Mr Bagshott win, I suppose.

  Mr Bagshott nodded and stood – ‘I do wonder though what will lie at the end of it.’ He put some more tobacco in his pipe and strolled away.

  Charles rowed out to fetch his sketch book and when he returned put it before Mama on the cleared table – the rest of us gathered behind her to see – and sat at her side as she turned the pages, explaining the sketches to us and telling what lay beyond the edges of the pictures he had drawn. Some of the sketches were very fine, I thought, as were the houses in them. They appeared so light to me and must have been spacious. I would like to have opened some of those doors and walked through the rooms of those houses. What would they hold? Who would live in them?

  ‘Where are the people?’ Addie said. ‘I want to see them and the clothes they wear. Are they young or old?’

  ‘Charles is recording the houses, not their owners,’ Mr Bagshott said from the other side of the table.

  ‘No people?’ Addie burst out.

  Mr Bagshott lifted a finger in admonition as I wished Papa and Mama would. Addie subsided, which was a rare enough thing, and he sipped his tea and wiped his whiskers before he spoke again. ‘The commission is for the homesteads, not the owners.’

  Fred came forward to stand at Charles’s shoulder. His eyes were alight and moved swiftly across the turning pages. ‘That’s a good sized book,’ he said.

  ‘It is,’ Charles said. ‘And the paper – see?’ Fred felt the corner of the page Charles held with finger and thumb.

  ‘It’s heavy,’ he said, surprised.

  ‘Gives more depth.’

  ‘Ah, I see,’ Fred said. The longing in him for one of these books was plain. There was paper for writing and book keeping, but nothing like this hereabouts. Mama might be persuaded to write to Grandmama to see if she could send a book or two. I would talk to her later. Fred asked for so little.

  When Mama tired of it and rose and Albert and Addie and Tull had left, Fred remained and when Charles asked if he would like to continue looking he nodded his head but would not speak. Charles said, ‘Be careful, now, you hear?’

  Fred was almost overcome, but managed, ‘Yes – sir.’

  ‘Sir, am I now?’ Charles asked no one in particular. ‘I think Charles will do well enough.’

  Later, towards evening but not yet supper, he found me on the shore looking at the changing light. It was one of our few entertainments in these parts and I had developed a taste for it. I could not help knowing that he had been anchored away from shore sketching our house for a good part of the afternoon while his father dozed on the veranda in the afternoon sun. I had moved further around from our small beach lest he imagine that I was watching him because I was not but was sitting on a tussock of grass that suited me very well. They made fine seats, some of them sat on so oft that they had parted and become bald in the middle like the parson’s head in Adelaide. It amused me to think of sitting on him. He was a dull man, and quite quite determined to impart his views and thereby to improve us all.

  Seeing me, Charles veered from the path through the saltbush, which came up to his waist. The bushes resisted, gave way and sprang back into place as he moved through them. Evidently he did not feel constrained by pathways. I smoothed the skirt of my dress, which was so faded these days that I had to look to remind myself of the old pattern of pink flowers against the blue. Charles tugged free of the bushes and approached and sat on the next tussock over – Fred’s and Tull’s, but he was not to know that.

  He appeared uncertain and removed his hat and turned it in his hands. He had fine fingers, and long. ‘Have I offended you?’

  ‘Offended? No. It is just that I have become unused to company.’

  ‘Yet Addie is friendly. Your father is friendly, and your mother too.’

  I turned from the sky to face him. ‘Addie is nothing but a flirt, Papa hopes to impress you and your father both and Mama is glad of company.’

  ‘I have offended you.’ He gave another of his boyish smiles.

  ‘Do not think you can please me. I know quite well how we appear.’

  ‘I wish I knew what I could say. I wish I knew what I could do to change your opinion of us, of me. I do not pity you if that is what you think. Do you miss town life?’

  ‘I have no fear of my own company, if that is what you mean. It is the tedium. The sun rises and sets; the wind blows strong or a little; the rain falls or does not; and the clouds – their formations change, it is true. There may be reasons for these things, as Papa says, but I have little interest in them.’

  ‘If there is something I could do, I wish you would say.’

  ‘There is nothing. I do not know you well enough to ask anything of you or what wishes of mine you could fulfil.’

  ‘No, you are very capable. You need for no one and nothing. I see that.’ He put his hat back on and stood.

  ‘Not nothing – books. I need to be thinking else my mind is a wheel and I wonder what is to become of us. It is a bad feeling.’ I spoke hastily. I did not really want him to leave.

  ‘No books, but perhaps you draw?’

  ‘No, nor even write a great deal. I like mathematics.’

  ‘Mathematics.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For Fred then. I have another sketch book. He could have it if you think he’d like it.’

  ‘Oh he would. He’d love it. I know he would.’

  ‘And we have a little plain paper too – for yourself, I mean. Do you have a neat hand?’

  ‘Small at any rate.’

  ‘Better than neatness. You can come out to the boat and I’ll find it.’

  We walked the long way around, up to the junction in the paths and back down to the shore, which was a relief. My dress would have been torn to ribbons if we had followed Charles’s earlier route.

  ‘Are there many blacks hereabouts?’ Charles asked, but not as if he were interested. He was just making conversation.

  ‘Quite a few.’

  ‘Are you afraid to walk about here on your own?’

  ‘I need never fear the blacks. No. They stay away from me. I know a few native women but they don’t care for me. They stay away from us all if they can. They used to think I was dead. Not only me.’

  ‘Dead? Why would they think that?’

  ‘Our skin. They were frightened. They thought I was one of the bodies come alive or I reminded them of the bodies. I am not sure on that point. Pleasant is it not to remind people of a corpse? They know I’m alive. But I make them uneasy all the same.’

  His eyes moved across my hair, which as usual was breaking loose. ‘You don’t look like a corpse to me.’

  ‘I am so glad to hear it. It’s compliments such as that that young girls dream of.’

  Charles laughed and that made me laugh too. I was pleased to have amused him. I meant to. He plucked a tall stalk of grass and stuck its end in his mouth and began to chew it. He had very white teeth, and even but for one that broke the line. It was like a gate that had not been closed. ‘I could tell you other things that would please you better,’ he said.

  ‘But I wouldn’t believe you.’

  ‘I could draw a picture of you if you would let me.’

  ‘And why would you do that?’ I asked. ‘To mock me for my fine clothes? Do you wish to show how far a young lady can fall?’

  ‘N
o, not for that. You could show Addie or Albert or Fred and they would tell you if it was a true likeness.’

  ‘They would only tease.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of my height.’

  ‘Ah. I suppose you are quite tall for a girl.’

  We had arrived at the shore. Charles handed me into the rowing boat and pushed off, stepping in as the boat slid from shore.

  Suddenly there was nothing to say. The wind had dropped and it was quiet and still in the middle of the watery space. I had forgotten how being in a boat with someone feels much like being in a small room with them. Not a single topic of conversation came to mind. Whatever would Mama think of me? Grandmama believed that girls benefit from instruction and that education was important even in the colonies – more important. We were to set a tone and an example for the future of this province. Grandmama said a woman of learning was always welcome everywhere, and should never be short of something sensible to say. I had not found this to be the case. There were few people interested in my command of algebraic equations, the major rivers of the continent of South America or the anatomy of vertebrates.

  As if our minds had been travelling the same path, Charles said, ‘I’m sorry about my father.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Girls. And education.’

  ‘He doesn’t approve?’

  ‘Only watercolours and languages and the pianoforte. “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” That’s First Timothy.’

  ‘Do you disapprove?’

  ‘I don’t know. Really, I don’t care. If I were a girl perhaps. But why it should matter … It is in the bible, I suppose.’

  ‘There are a lot of things in the bible. If I don’t teach them, I’m sure I don’t know who will. Hugh and Stanton would never do it.’

  ‘You teach them?’

  ‘If Mama is not quite well.’

  ‘Also: “If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home.” First Corinthians.’ He couldn’t meet my eyes and his voice in the recitation was flat. ‘Not what I believe. I wish he had kept his opinions to himself, but he will not.’

  ‘I would never learn a thing in that case. I have no great wish for marriage.’

  ‘Why not?’ He seemed startled, and stared at me as if he had not quite noticed me before.

  ‘Why would I? I never met a man I would care to obey.’

  ‘Are you a bluestocking then?’

  ‘You make it sound very shocking. My Grandmama’s mother was one, in the Blue Stockings Society. But how can I be here? There is no society, no school; I have only my books.’

  ‘You think yourself superior to all men?’

  ‘It does not follow that because I do not think myself inferior that I regard myself as superior. My acquaintances are so few here. My family, two police came visiting once, some musicians, and you and your father. That is all. I must obey my father, but I won’t always.’

  ‘Will you stay here forever then?’

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘How will you leave?’

  ‘I don’t know. When the farm makes enough money, when the children are grown, when there’s nothing here to keep me. My grandparents would have me, I could find a position, but I couldn’t leave Mama. Papa would not allow it.’ I looked overboard and beneath the water’s surface could see forests of weed and clearings of sand, but no fish, scared into hiding by our boat I supposed.

  ‘What would you do?’

  ‘I could become a teacher or governess.’

  ‘Like Jane Eyre?’

  ‘You’ve read it?’

  ‘I borrowed it from a friend. My father doesn’t know.’

  ‘In any case, I do not see the problem. Adelaide is growing; there must be more schools, and they must need teachers. I will live on my own and never make another cheese. It is common sense not fiction that gives me hope.’

  After several more strokes of the oars Charles looked around to check his course and made a slight adjustment with a delicate feathering of one oar. It was a relief when he spoke. ‘I would like to draw you, Hester, if you would let me. I need the practice. That’s the truth. A house and a farm is not the same as a person, and the owners of farms sometimes wish me to draw them and their families. If you would let me I would be grateful. Think of it as payment for the paper, if it makes you feel better.’

  ‘Why not Addie? She would love it.’

  ‘I would have to listen to her.’

  I wouldn’t say anything that was disloyal. In fact it seemed a cheek for him to say such a thing, but it was true too, and part of me couldn’t help being pleased. ‘Very well.’

  We drew alongside the sailing boat, which loomed above us. The rowing boat bumped against it with dull thuds, moving away and back in, and the water slopped about. I didn’t know how I would climb aboard, not with my skirts in the way. But Charles threw a loop of a rope over a bollard to steady us and leapt up and reached over the edge to heave me up and I was there, the smooth wood deck moving pleasantly beneath me, and I was able to explore. It was tidy without and within, the ropes neat, and the sails furled, and inside the cabin the narrow beds, one on each side up against the curved walls of the boat, were made up with red striped blankets and quilts, reminding me of the little houses we used to make under the big table in our town dining room, with cushions for beds and a space for our books and blankets all about the sides for curtains.

  It was strange to be in the private quarters of men who were not family. It smelled different. I felt I had been caught spying. The roof was low over my head. I couldn’t stand straight and when Charles poked his head through the doorway – ‘I’ll just fetch that paper,’ he said – and came down the stairs and had to move past me I didn’t know where to stand. There was so little space between the beds or at their ends and Charles was making for shallow cupboards above one bed. I thought we might brush against each other. I did not see how it could be avoided. I felt his warmth when the fabric of our clothes touched. And then he was past me. I did not look at him, but moved back to the stairs where there was the smallest wood stove I had ever seen, with room beneath for the wood that fuelled it, and a kettle on top and a billy and a saucepan hanging on hooks above that.

  ‘You are good housekeepers for men,’ I said, to fill the quiet.

  ‘There’s no room for mess, as you can see.’ He was back at my side, both our heads bent as if we were whispering secrets, and holding two books towards me. They had brown covers and were about an inch thick and six inches tall and perhaps ten inches wide. There was nothing inside those pages but they seemed full of such possibility to me that for a moment I was fearful. I didn’t want to spoil them with things of no importance.

  ‘There are two here,’ I said.

  ‘One for Fred, to draw in. One for you for your mathematics.’

  ‘It’s too much. We can’t pay.’

  ‘There’s no need.’

  ‘I can’t take them both.’

  ‘But you can take one? There’s no difference.’

  I handed them both back. ‘Keep them.’

  He put his hands in his pockets. ‘You are so quick to take offence. Come, Hester, it’s not comfortable in here standing and I think you will not sit.’ He went up the steps before I could reply but when I came into the light, taking the hand he offered me, he said, ‘I have the answer. I’ll make two pictures of you. You can earn those books with your boredom.’

  I did not know what to say to that, so I agreed.

  The next morning when the light in the parlour was good – Charles had walked about the house looking for the best position – he placed a chair near the window and bade me sit on it, adjusting my posture, and commenced to draw. He had little to say, so I fell into silence and was able to watch him or to look about as long as I didn’t move my head.

  ‘What does it matter?’ I asked w
hen he remonstrated once.

  ‘It matters because every part of the light on your face changes when you move it. It’s hard enough with the clouds.’

  ‘There’s not a cloud in the sky.’

  ‘The sun shifting then.’

  ‘I can’t stop that, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh,’ then silence.

  ‘May I move my mouth to talk?’

  He bit his lip and his hand moved on the paper.

  ‘Charles?’

  His head reared up. ‘What?’

  ‘May I talk?’

  ‘I suppose. But I must concentrate, so don’t expect me to talk back.’

  ‘Charming, gentlemanly.’ I spoke in a voice that was so low and temperate Grandmama would have been proud. She would have offered up prayers of gratitude that it seemed I was coming to something after all, despite all her worst fears. It was strange, pleasant almost, to be obliged to sit still when there was so much to be done. Fred and Tull and Albert would be gone and Addie running wild and no one to make them attend to their lessons. Albert was only twelve and all he could think of was mending things or exploring or farm work. He liked to be doing things not thinking of them. It was not always easy to see the point of book learning here. But we all had to do it if we were to be fit to return to town. And even if they were to stay, they still needed to know how to keep accounts and write letters and to calculate quantities. It was as Grandmama said: education was important in any station of life. I don’t know what she would have thought of the blacks. Would they need an education? News had come of a mission being started at Point McLeay to educate the blacks and to bring them to a knowledge of God. If Grandmama were here she would be involved. In Adelaide she took food to the natives in the parklands. It was the duty of those with much to give to those with little, she said.