Salt Creek Read online

  ‘Is it wise to take him back?’ Hugh said. ‘We might all catch it, whatever it is that he has. Put him outside at least.’

  ‘Where is your charity, Hugh? For shame. Have you listened to nothing all these years?’ Papa said.

  ‘You know, Papa, I sometimes think you care more for him than for any of us.’

  ‘Now you are being ridiculous,’ Papa said.

  Addie and Fred took Tull broths and books and put him in the sun and he recovered from his illness – his body did at least; the lingering contagion of his spirit remained. He could not lift our spirits now with his games and distractions and company. I missed that.

  The level of water in the well began to drop and Papa was obliged to put a lock on the lid to prevent the blacks taking any more. He would not refence the soaks. The sheep could not do without them. ‘I do not like to do it, Hester,’ he said when I looked at him holding the well key. ‘I must harden myself, we all must. There are the Chinamen’s wells, north and south. There is no money to drill another here.’

  From the parlour window one morning I saw George and Billy. Tull was with them, all of them talking at once, loud enough so that some of the sound drifted down to me. Their voices were harsh, shouting over Tull, and striking the well lid. I don’t know what Tull said, but whatever it was did not give the natives any hope. When I spoke to Papa, although he looked pained, he said, ‘They will have to move; we cannot.’ He could not allow himself to be more lenient.

  Tull came inside and talked with Papa. So many of the natives had become ill, he said, since they went to rescue him from Point McLeay, and could neither move themselves nor be moved by others. His voice was soft and deep. He knew the right way to be with Papa, as the boys did not. And of his sincerity there could be no doubt.

  Papa gripped the arms of his chair. ‘You do not understand, Tull. I will not go so far as some, but I will not have them eating my stock and so you may tell them. And we do not have enough water to share. Tell them that too. It’s the truth. Explain to them if you please the importance of the farm, how I depend on it. My family depends on it. They are my first consideration. If they must go, they must. I have done all that I can and that is a great deal more than others and so you may remind them.’

  At that, Tull appeared wild and stricken. ‘Sir— Mr Finch.’

  ‘Yes?’ Papa said, with less patience than he was wont to show towards Tull. He stood and drained the last of his tea from his cup.

  ‘My mother.’

  ‘What of her?’

  The strangest thing: I had become so used to seeing Tull as ours that I had forgot about the family that he must have. He came and went, it was true, but I had never wondered overmuch at that. ‘Your mother?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ Tull said. ‘She made the basket you have. You gave her sugar.’

  ‘Rimmilli is your mother?’ The feeling was vertiginous almost, as if everything around me that I had thought clear was not. I did not know. I could not, and how could I ever learn? I had never thought to ask. I wondered if Fred had on their explorations.

  Tull looked from one of us to the other. Finally, he said, ‘My mother is sick.’

  ‘Ah,’ Papa said. ‘How sick?’

  Tull moved his shoulders, and I saw how he was just a boy, and confused and did not know and was even scared. I supposed he had other family who might look after him, and of course he had us, so perhaps he did not fear what the future held as I did.

  ‘Well,’ Papa said, ‘You may take her some water.’ He rocked on his heels, pulling at his moustaches before he spoke once more: ‘And bring her back and she may stay here until her health is improved. Yes. The others must make their own way. We all have to cut our coats, do we not? We do. Off you go now to fetch your mother.’ He opened the door and Tull was gone and it was my turn. ‘If you would make up a bed in the dairy shed,’ he said.

  While Fred was gone with Tull, Addie and I took the old cheese moulds from the dairy and stacked them in the sun and swept the room out. A sour smell lingered. We propped the door open, and raised the window and scrubbed it, walls and floor, sluicing them down as best we could.

  ‘That’s better,’ I said.

  Addie sniffed and wrinkled her nose and left, returning not long after with some of the young eucalyptus leaves that had sprouted from the old felled tree, which she strewed on the floor, and our feet moving across them with Albert’s old bed, and while making it up, crushed them and released their scent and the room began to be more pleasant. Addie put a jar of flowers on a wooden crate. There was nothing to do but wait after that. They did not return for some hours. I did not observe Rimmilli’s arrival and only learned of it when Fred came to ask for more blankets since she was cold despite the summer heat. Evidently, there had been some trouble taking her from the camp, and with moving her here. I heaved two winter quilts out to the dairy. The door was ajar and Tull moved around in the darkness stoking the stove we had used in the cheese-making days.

  ‘Tull,’ I said and when he came to the door handed him the quilts, one of which he laid over Rimmilli. I left to fetch water and when I went back – Addie with me this time (she wished to help, she said) – he opened the door wide to let us in. Addie halted just inside the door, perhaps from fear of contagion. Whatever sickness Rimmilli had we could not help being exposed to now, since Fred and Tull had all but carried her here. I would not make Addie come further in; that was for her. I took the water to Rimmilli and poured some from the pitcher into the tin mug and set it at her side. She gave me her old look and lay back.

  ‘If you have need of anything more, Tull, you have only to say,’ I said, and left. Addie stayed; I don’t know why since she still hadn’t left the doorway when I departed, and did not return to the house until luncheon, of stew and bread and hot tea, which she took back with her. This became her habit over the next few days. I was glad to see her thinking of someone other than herself.

  For the first two days Rimmilli continued to sicken. Addie came to me very agitated asking what she might do to bring her fever down, but there was nothing I could offer but cool water, so Addie took a bowl and old cloths and for that afternoon and into the evening from the veranda I watched her and Tull coming and going, replenishing the water from the well. I went to visit them the next morning. The door was ajar and Addie was there. If she had come to bed, I had not noticed it. I watched Tull curved over Rimmilli, touching the wet cloth to her forehead and arms; on a chair at her side Addie looked on.

  ‘Do you need some help?’ I said, pushing the door.

  They both started. Addie spared me an oblique glance. ‘We’re managing quite well, thank you.’

  I should have seen what was happening I suppose, from the strange feeling I had, as if I should first have knocked. It was a private world that they had built at the dairy and I told myself that it was from busyness that I did not return for some days.

  A week later Rimmilli had recovered sufficiently that I saw her sitting in the sun one morning, weak and swaddled in blankets, but upright. She continued to improve over the next few days. As for the contagion, we none of us caught more than some slight congestion of the lungs, which we did not suffer from overmuch. Tull and Fred and Papa left to return her to the native camp. Addie watched them dwindle up the slope, her eyes fixed on Tull. I wondered how she saw him: was it his slender back and neat head, his long legs, his easy seat on a horse?

  ‘You must stop this, Addie, the way you are with him. You must,’ I said, ‘else where will it end? What is it about him? Why do you like him?’

  ‘Everything. I like everything. He sees me. Me, if you can imagine it.’

  ‘And we cannot?’

  ‘No. You see what you have always seen: silly Addie, spoilt Addie, frivolous Addie. Tull sees me different.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Why, that we are both pretenders, appearing to be something that we are not.’

  ‘He’s black. He’s no one you should be thinking of the way tha
t you do.’

  Addie’s face flushed scarlet, but she remained calm when once she might have succumbed to a fit of passion. ‘Don’t say that, Hett. You don’t know him. You are supposed to be the clever one.’ Her eyes were bright with sudden tears.

  I took her by the shoulders as Papa had done to me when we arrived in this place, and pressed them in, narrowing her and shaking her with each phrase. ‘You cannot, I tell you. Nothing can come of it. Nothing can ever come of it. You know it.’

  ‘We could live here.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Tull and me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why, as husband and wife. Here at Salt Creek, and help Papa manage it.’

  ‘Husband and wife?’ It was worse than I had thought, then. Things had progressed to this point. ‘You are mad. You cannot. You would bring shame on us all not only on yourself. You will fall beyond recovery. Your life will be ruined.’

  ‘What do I care of ruin? I seek it. I wish to be beyond redemption because then I may be with him and you need not try to save me any longer.’

  ‘Addie.’

  ‘It’s true, Hettie. So nothing you can say will shift my course. I am fixed on him. On him.’

  ‘As if that made a difference. You may not.’

  ‘May. Oh, rules.’

  ‘Yes, I know your regard for rules.’

  ‘They are nonsensical.’

  ‘To you. They keep you safe. They keep us all safe.’

  ‘Do you believe as Papa does that they are people?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then they are people as we are and I do not perceive a problem.’

  ‘They are not as we are. They do not live as we do or think as we think. They must be improved. They must want to improve themselves. Then, perhaps—’

  But there was no perhaps, as Addie knew. For a moment I saw their hands touching, and imagined their faces touching. Tull all but naked when he was not living with us. Addie and all her clothes and petticoats. What manner of life could they enjoy together? ‘Nothing can ever come of it. It’s dangerous for him too, don’t you see? How do you think you would live?’

  ‘Papa needs the help. Tull knows the run better than anyone.’

  ‘People won’t recognise him or you if you are with him. You like company, Addie. You like pretty things.’

  ‘Do you think I don’t know? It doesn’t stop me feeling.’

  ‘If you cannot prevent the feeling you must control your actions until the feelings pass.’

  Addie said: ‘I suppose you mean Charles. Have you ever so much as touched him? I don’t mean taking his hand in assistance or by accident. I mean did you ever mean to touch him and do so?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Ah.’ She fell back with a pitying look. ‘Truly I feel sorry for him for you are a cold thing, Hester, the coldest I know.’

  ‘You know nothing about me, Addie.’

  ‘A person could not know you when you show so little. Love is not something you decide.’

  I did not want her pity. ‘Not love itself, but what you do – that, you can decide. Charles—’

  ‘Yes?’

  The memory of Charles touching the side of my face, sure, tipping it to the light so my eyes caught it, and his face close and unexpected. ‘Beautiful eyes,’ he’d said. Heat rushed up my chest, my neck, my face, at the thought of our times lying on the shells of the peninsula.

  I would tell Addie nothing; I would keep those memories safe. I said, ‘I am not free. I may not do as I please. You do nothing but what pleases you and do not think about what I must do as a consequence. You and Stanton: lilies of the field. I suppose Stanton at least helps with the mustering. They have spoilt you that you think as you do.’

  ‘But have you not seen him?’ And she swayed in the direction he had departed as if she could sense his presence yet. ‘I must be with him.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘It’s too late for me. It is all too late.’

  ‘I will have to tell Papa.’

  ‘No, Hester.’

  ‘If you had children.’

  Addie’s hands flew to her stomach.

  ‘Stupid girl.’ I slapped her and she blinked once and my handprint appeared on her cheek so sharp it could have been painted there. She turned and ran, throwing the door wide so it bounced the hanging coats against the wall and back again with a groaning of hinges. I did not follow but watched her through the scullery window as she flew down the path towards the lagoon – a grey afternoon with the tongues and mouths of waves whipping up in spittlish peaks. Her hair was a fat black rope down her back now. It had been short when we first came here.

  Papa and Fred rode out of the trees in the evening trailing Tull’s horse behind. Their faces were gold masks in the last sun and behind them the trees were massive and their outlines sinuous against the darkening sky. The horses were down at head and walked slow and Papa and Fred were not talking to each other and didn’t call out to us. I had never seen such an arrival home. Hugh and Stanton went out and met them, taking the horses away to water them and remove their saddles and wipe them down. They drank a long time from the trough. But this was not the thing I was paying attention to, only that which I used to distract myself from what Papa and Fred were telling us.

  Sickness had come to the natives of our run. There had been deaths and more would follow, Papa said. ‘They were well three weeks ago. Quite well. If you saw them now—’ His face was almost blank. ‘If only they’d gone when I said.’

  Tull had stayed. Rimmilli’s husband – Tull’s stepfather, who I learned then was the native Papa called George – was one of those who had died. And I had always thought Tull a sort of orphan.

  ‘Who will look after Tull if he sickens again?’ Addie said.

  Fred shook his head. ‘He won’t catch it twice.’

  ‘But how could you leave him, Papa?’

  Papa said, ‘He chose to stay.’

  Addie and I wished to take them some rations but Papa would not allow it. He shook his head, and though his tone was gentle, he would not be swayed. ‘If we give them food they will stay for longer. We have done wrong in teaching them to expect it, and must harden our hearts now, for their good too. There is no future for them here and once they learn this they can start afresh elsewhere.’

  Addie was stony quiet for days, furious with Papa and, for other reasons, with me. At first she left a room if I entered and when that became inconvenient refused to talk to me, paying great attention to the vegetable garden and the chickens as if she were a woman grown and teaching me what should be done.

  ‘Wash your hands before dinner,’ she told Fred one evening.

  ‘Wash your hands yourself, Addie,’ Fred said. ‘Don’t tell me what to do.’

  ‘Are you ill?’ Papa asked her at supper one evening.

  ‘Not ill, Papa. No.’

  Papa took time and some surgical skill in the removal of a piece of gristle from his stew, which I took as a reproof of my cooking skills and as a more general reproof.

  ‘If you would sharpen the knife, as I asked last week,’ I said.

  He made no sign of having heard me, just laid the gristle on the edge of his plate as if his burdens were too great to be shared. Skipper would eat it and with pleasure.

  Addie’s mood had a way of spreading through the house so that we all were out of sorts. I found her crying on the bed one morning, her face to the wall, her hands to her breast and her legs curled up as if she were herself a baby, and when I touched her shoulder thinking to comfort she shook herself free and rose stiffly before stalking from the room. I looked for her later for help hanging the clothes but she had disappeared. I went outside. The chickens were at the far side of their run asleep in the midday sun, a few with beaks open, feathers puffed out like dandelion clocks, one or two looking at me with half-shut eyes as I went up the rise to try and spy her from higher ground. There was no one between me and the water; neither could I see her
when I walked the house’s outskirts or the yard’s perimeter. There was just sky and saltbush and paths and lagoon, and all of them empty.

  Late in the afternoon the house cows began to low at the stable door and I sent Fred to milk them and to give them some feed. When he returned to the kitchen with the pails of milk, he said, ‘Tull’s back,’ rather short – distracted I would say.

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘Well, I think. Up at the stable. He’ll be along in a minute I should think.’ He went out again.

  I set the milk in the pantry for the cream to rise and went outside under the grape vines to see if Tull had finished in the stable, but it was Addie who was coming down the slope. I called, ‘Tull’s back, Fred says. Did you know?’

  ‘Yes. I just saw him.’ She smudged the curls from her face and could not stop smiling. The edges of her mouth went down, with effort, and flew up again. She was all lit up.

  ‘Addie,’ I said.

  ‘No, Hester.’ And she went on, the tendrils of grape vine reaching for her in the draught of her passing.

  I looked back to the stable, from where Tull was now coming without haste towards the house. He put his jacket on as he came and eased it at the neck, adjusting his collar against it.

  ‘Hester,’ he said when he came close.

  ‘Tull. How are your family?’

  ‘They are— Some of them are recovering. Some not.’ He looked past me to the veranda, which was empty of people, and along the lagoon. ‘Is Fred about?’

  ‘I thought you saw him in the stable.’

  ‘Just outside. I had something I wished to ask him.’

  ‘He went out again – perhaps down to the shore.’

  ‘Ah.’ And he disappeared down the path.

  It seemed so long since we had last sat on the veranda in the evening, all of us together watching the stars come out: the Southern Cross, the Ship’s Sails, the Telescope. Fred claimed to be able to identify them all from his study of Burrit’s Geography of the Heavens.

  ‘You have a lot of stories,’ Fred said to Tull.