Salt Creek Read online

  Addie was the best of us at milking. She sat on a stool and leaned her head against each cow’s flank and sang under her breath. The cows waved their ears towards her and flared their nostrils and let down their milk. I did not find it unpleasant for short amounts of time. The cow’s rough coat against my cheek, the vibration of life all through it, and its sweet smell felt almost motherly.

  The profits from the dairy had been modest, sufficient to live on but not to improve the condition of our lives to any great degree. Stores must always be more important than clothes. Papa brooded over his journal, reckoning up columns of figures in ways that never came out satisfactorily if repetition were any indication. It was the simplest of calculations. I had been through the figures twice, upside down, from the other side of the table and thought if I had to listen to any more of his scratching quill I would reach across and snatch it from him.

  ‘What’s the matter, Papa?’

  ‘Nothing, my dear.’ He stared at his book. ‘It’s no way to make money, like this, at a crawl. It’ll take twenty years, more, to get back to what we were.’

  Apart from his frown it could almost be said to be pleasant, all of us spread about the dining room and across the veranda enjoying the evening, reading and sewing and looking at catalogues and drawing. Hugh and Stanton played cards, and Albert joined them. He had grown. He would be a big man one day, like Stanton. He was only thirteen, almost as tall as Fred already despite being three years younger, and stronger when they had been much the same for so long. He had moved apart from him in other ways too.

  ‘Come on, Fred, nose out of your books,’ he said. ‘Come play a game with us.’

  Fred lifted his gaze absently from his reading. ‘Later maybe,’ and his eyes fell again.

  ‘Leave the little bookworm,’ Stanton said.

  ‘Stanton,’ Papa said. ‘If you had spent more of your time so—’

  ‘He could spend a hundred times as many hours and still be in no danger of being called a bookworm,’ Hugh said, and though I do not generally agree with him I had to on this occasion.

  Stanton said, ‘Oh, Fred doesn’t mind, do you, Fred?’

  ‘Pardon?’ Fred asked, which made us laugh.

  Papa announced at breakfast the next morning that he would be away for ten days at least visiting Milang, on the other side of Lake Alexandrina from Point McLeay. He had some business matters to attend to and would also collect the new stores of dried beans and seeds and sugar and tea and so on. We had been keeping a list, which he took without comment and went out with the boys to hitch up the dray.

  We passed a week that didn’t vary greatly from any other, apart from our speculations about the day of his return. We could not help thinking of different foods: me of mustard (something with some bite), Addie of jam and cake ingredients, Albert of the cake itself and so on. It would be years until our fruit trees bore enough for jam, if we kept them alive in this place of salt air and salt water and salt earth. When a week had passed we rode along the track, galloping the few straight sections, slowing through curves and scrub and marsh and around the rocky points towards the north. We saw nothing but a broken-down dray which we made note of to collect for its timber, the blacks having stripped it already of any metal that could be pried loose: hinges and brackets and nails.

  The following day we went out again and found Papa a few miles from home. A canvas cloth covered the contents of the creeping dray, tied down around the sides to shelter the load, which there seemed to be more of than usual. Fred and Tull took over the driving, sitting up straight and serious with the responsibility. I was glad to see them friendly again when they had been cool with each other since the incident with the fish. Papa came with us leading the spare horse behind, grateful to be spared half a day on that hard driver’s bench. Addie’s horse skittered around Papa’s and barged into mine.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Addie,’ I said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Collect your reins; ride your horse, for pity’s sake. Tell it what to do.’

  ‘We’re going forward, aren’t we? That is what I want it to do.’

  ‘Girls,’ Papa said, with no great feeling, just a small secret smile and a serene countenance.

  I wish it were not so, but he filled me with misgiving. Something had made him buoyant. It could not be his accounts, which meant that it might be one of his ideas. He hurled himself at new ventures (sheep, a whaling station) as if he were a drowning man and they would sail him back to shore. He did not say what he was thinking and I didn’t ask; I preferred not to know.

  When Tull and Fred arrived hours later, we went out to see, Mary bouncing in my arms, and with a great flourish, Papa threw off the canvas to reveal the cause of his hope: thirty large metal cheese moulds. All but Mary were silent. ‘Show me, Hett.’ She patted my cheek and leaned towards them.

  ‘More cheese moulds?’ Hugh asked. It was hard to see our future prosperity in these still shapes.

  ‘So we can make more cheese. We could sell twice as much as we make now.’

  ‘Twice,’ I said. ‘That would take a great deal of milk. Will you bring all the cows closer? Do we have enough feed?’

  He fluttered a hand in dismissal. ‘It will pay, Hester. You will see. Think of the time we’ll save making large cheeses, the ease of stacking, the quantity. Why did I not think of it before?’ He clapped his hands together. His tone, though, was becoming querulous. I was not the only one looking dismayed.

  Mama said, ‘Where are they from?’

  ‘A gentleman farmer of my acquaintance at Lake Albert.’

  ‘I see. And did they cost a great deal?’

  ‘It’s an investment, my dear. We must spend money to make money.’

  Such a summer. The house became a taut drum until it seemed a careless match or a spark would explode it into flames. At night it let out its heat in slow groans. I threw off the covers and slept in a shift and the air was like a hot touch on me. The sky was of the deepest blue and hard overhead and white hot on the horizon and the air above trees and water trembled and hurt our eyes to look at. Addie and I abandoned our petticoats and rolled our sleeves as high as they would go and undid our bodice buttons too if no one else was about. ‘Girls,’ Mama said sharply when she saw us and we waited until she had gone to rest again and undid ourselves.

  What grass there was at Salt Creek was sparse and dried quickly and the cows produced not half the milk of the previous summer. Papa would not admit any concern. He was determined to prove the usefulness of the large moulds and we must all take our turn stirring the cauldron of hot milk and waiting for the curds to form, even if it was more than one hundred degrees in the shade. Through the open doorway of the dairy Addie and I watched the blacks disporting themselves in the lagoon, all shiny in the blue, the children leaping from the sides of their rafts and plunging about.

  ‘I wish I could do that,’ Addie said. ‘What would be the harm?’

  The curds formed and we called Papa, who came up the path, rolling his limp sleeves and wiping the sweat from his face with an old kerchief. He said not a word, just filled the moulds and left them to drain before departing on some other pressing task.

  We watched until he had gone and then, ‘Come on,’ I said, and took Addie’s arm and dragged her along the path – the heat from the hard packed earth pouring from it and filling our skirts – until the house was out of sight. ‘This can’t harm anyone. I shall go mad otherwise.’ We were damp with sweat and our sleeves would only roll a little above our elbows; the material prickled against our skin and sweat trickled down our faces and necks and legs. We were choking in clothes.

  We took off our boots and stockings and left them on the shore and lifted our skirts high above our knees and waded into the cool water – oh, the feel of it sliding up our legs: a silken density. I shut my eyes. Addie slipped on a rock and sat in the water and her skirts were like an anemone and she laughed. I sat too and suddenly we didn’t care and were in up to our
shoulders with our dresses wafting around us, dragging against us when we moved too quickly, holding us back.

  ‘Hester, Addie!’

  We turned to see Fred and Tull and Albert and even though I was shocked that we had been discovered I could not make myself leave the water. Addie scooped glittering handfuls of water across them. ‘Come in, come in,’ she screamed and soon we were all plunging about.

  A wet dress is not easy to walk in. The folds of material clung to our legs on the way home. If I could see the outlines of Addie so clear, the same must have been true of me. I sent the boys ahead of us. Addie would not stop laughing and gave up on modesty, swinging her boots by their laces and holding her skirts high, and the boys looked back and laughed at the sight. Before we reached home the skirts were dried stiff as paper and we crept past Mama’s darkened room where she lay panting on her bed, and into ours and when we removed them the salted dresses half-stood on the floor as if dwindled figures remained within.

  We waited for the moments when a cold wind would drive in from south or west and the world would turn upside down, the heat coming from the baked ground beneath and the cool from above. They did not last and arrived without rain. Towards the end of summer Tull brought three black men to the back door one Sunday afternoon. I recognized two of them – Billy and George from their visit about the fish. One now wore a feathered ornament attached to his hair at the back; the other wore a sort of cloak, the same colour as a basket but of a thinner and more flexible material. There was a boy too, older than Tull – he had the beginnings of a beard – but his hair was longer and fell about his face. Tull kept his tied back when he was at home.

  The native women of my acquaintance had become used to me, more or less. Once they showed me how to suck the sweetness from the flowers of a grass tree and laughed at my surprise and the children brought me more flowers and wanted me to keep enacting my surprise for their amusement. I did my best to oblige. On other occasions I had bartered sugar and flour for one or two of their useful baskets.

  Now, the native men stared at me and their gaze left me and darted back again. They were curious (or horrified) to see a white woman at close quarters – if it was the first time. I did not like to stare back; would it be impolite to ignore them though? Grandmama’s lessons in etiquette and setting visitors at their ease had not touched on entertaining blacks beyond the edges of civilization. The men stayed behind Tull as if he were a buffer of some sort. They watched him very closely; Tull, I would say, was nervous.

  He said to me, ‘Is Mr Finch about? They wish to speak with him.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Water,’ he said.

  ‘They can have water. There’s the sucks. Papa doesn’t mind.’

  Tull shook his head. ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘He’s in the parlour.’

  It being the day of rest, Papa was doing nothing but cradling his unlit pipe and feeling his tobacco pouch and reading the bible or Quakerish texts, as he did each Sunday. When the religiosity of the day was fading into evening he would smoke his pipe and watch the sun falling, and he might pick up one of the papers that he managed to get from a staging post on the track. But that time was some hours away yet. He seemed glad of the interruption. Mama said, ‘Send them away,’ but he said he would not discourage them for anything. ‘For how will they learn about us if we reject them? No, I am sure the Lord will understand, my dear.’ He had brooded after their last visit and had been short with Stanton.

  From the parlour, I watched Papa walk towards them. Their fingers cupped the air and drew Papa on. It was a gesture that was hard to resist; Papa could not. A string might have attached the natives’ hands to Papa’s feet.

  Mama peeped around the corner of the parlour after they had gone and squeaked in horror.

  ‘You saw them?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Mama.’

  ‘You should not have.’

  ‘How could I prevent it?’

  ‘I don’t know, I am sure, but I wish you had not. Addie?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘At least they weren’t completely bare.’

  There came the sound of the door banging and we went through the dark house to the veranda where Addie, holding Mary, stood watching after Papa and all the boys and Tull and the blacks fading up the hill path. Well, what could we do but wait?

  It was an hour or more and close to dark when we heard their voices, cheerful enough, rolling down the hill.

  ‘Quickly now, girls, get dinner ready. Dear me,’ Mama said.

  ‘Quickly, girls,’ Mary said. ‘Help, help,’ she said. ‘Mary help.’

  I gave her two spoons and she began circling the table banging them together and then went outside where I could hear her voice: ‘Boys, boys, Papa,’ and banged the spoons again, and there came a laughing call back: ‘Coming to find you, Miss Mary.’ Fred’s voice. Mary shrieked with delight and ran back inside and hid under the table. Yes, there were some good times.

  Then they were back – except Tull, who had gone with the blacks – and all was explained. It was the cattle and two favourite sucks of the natives, which they were spoiling, trampling the edge of the deep sweet water. I had seen myself how the water turned cloudy and fouled as the cattle dumbly chewed any fresh shoots before lumbering to an unspoiled patch. It was worse this summer than in the past, the heat having dried the shallower sucks. The blacks wanted Papa to stop the cattle.

  ‘How?’ Mama asked.

  ‘Fencing. They showed us which ones.’

  ‘Our water,’ Hugh said. ‘They could go elsewhere, but no, it falls on us to provide.’

  ‘Just two. That’s all we agreed to. It’s not much,’ Papa said. ‘An annoyance. It will rain again and won’t matter so much.’

  CHAPTER 11

  The Coorong, May 1858

  MAMA STARED OUT OF THE WINDOW at the sky, unblinking. ‘I’d never noticed before how like clouds are to lily pads against the sky. See them, Hester, floating on its surface?’

  ‘Be still now, Mama, and save yourself. Please.’ I wet the cloth and squeezed it and held it to her brow, and pressed it to each cheek and she shut her eyes and for a moment her face was peaceful.

  Her eyes flew open again and darted to the window. ‘What lies beneath, do you suppose?’ And her face began to gather up, different from the gathering of an infant’s features on the point of crying. It was as if she saw something coming from a distance and it could not be stopped but only faced as best she was able, fearful as she was. Her concentration on it was fierce. She held my hand between hers and squeezed, then harder until I felt the bones of my hand, my knuckles, grind and shift against each other. A sound came from her – a soft groan. The sight of her face, the frown and the pallor and the set of her jaw and the tremor that ran all through her were too much and I shifted my gaze to the window and beyond, as she had. And the pain in my hand receded, Mama receded, until there were just the clouds: rafts drifting, ships sailing, waves scudding, birds hurtling. All of these things. The pressure on my hand fell away and I looked down. Mama turned her head and then her body until she was all curled up, her knees drawn up as far as she was able against her great belly and her face against her two cupped hands. Just so have I seen Skipper lie when she wishes for warmth and quiet and rest, her nose tucked into her paws. In this way the labour continued through the evening and on past midnight. I went out once to tell Fred and Addie to put Mary to bed and to go to bed themselves, and left them before they could ask any question.

  Once or twice Mama panted. She took my hand and pulled me down until my face was close to hers. ‘I’m sorry for this,’ she said.

  ‘Why, sorry for what, Mama? There’s no need—’

  She broke into my words, her head a trembling shake against the pillow, ‘No. No. Leave here, Hester. Do not stay.’

  ‘All will be well, Mama. Do not say it.’ And I sobbed once because if she was frightened then I was right to be too.

  She panted as the hens
do in the heat: small hot breaths, as if someone were pressing them out of her. ‘I will be here,’ she said. ‘It will be well. We will come to rights. Only if ever you get the chance, take it. Leave. Never come back.’

  ‘Mama. The boys. Addie.’

  ‘Promise.’ This was a groan.

  ‘I promise,’ I said. I did not meet her eyes then, but stared at the ceiling lamp which seemed to hang at an angle, as if the world had tilted, and when I looked again her eyes were clenched, her fists were clenched, her legs were clenched tight together and neither of us said what we were thinking and by night time there was no more to be said. It began to rain. The time for words was over.

  When the waves of pain had abated for that time I left Mama’s side and went to find Papa. He was at the front door, and spoke to me pleasant and calm as if his manner would make the occasion come right. It is in this way that we proceed in life, by convincing ourselves in each moment that events are running smoothly or are about to because the truth is not to be contemplated.

  ‘Papa,’ I said. ‘It is going ill with Mama, at least I think it is.’

  ‘It is hard, always hard, but she has done it many times before and will come through again.’

  ‘Please.’ I took his hand and his arm and tugged. ‘Papa.’

  ‘Yes. Of course,’ he said, and gave one last look up the path away from the house and turned to accompany me.

  We heard her from outside the bedroom, the sound more animal than human: growling almost. At the end of the hallway Hugh peered around the door. I shook my head and he disappeared. We pushed the door open. Mama was in a desperate condition, rocking her head from side to side, her mouth open. I would have known that even without Papa’s stricken face.