Salt Creek Page 29

  ‘I will not go,’ Addie screamed. ‘I will not.’

  ‘You will mind your business, Hester,’ Papa said, the words flinging out. ‘Had you been more careful of your sister we would not have come to this. Be grateful you are not next.’

  I followed at a distance after that, for Grace’s sake, but continued to the stable. They had gone inside when I reached it. I peered around the doorway.

  ‘I do not beat you for punishment, or for the joy of it,’ Papa was saying to Addie, calm as could be in his smooth preacher’s voice. ‘I do it because it is right. You will do as I say. I will let you go now but do not dare to move, Adelaide. There, see my hands, how steady they are.’

  Addie stood before Papa shaking, her stare fixed on him. His outstretched hands were pale against the shadows and his black coat and appeared almost to be floating in the darkness. His right hand trembled. He dashed it down his coat front and held it out once more – still this time.

  ‘There. You will not forget about right and wrong another time. I will save you. I will restore you.’ He lifted his riding crop from where it had fallen to the ground. I did not want to see this and drew back, but I could not help hearing it. ‘You will not disobey me again.’ Between the words came the hiss of leather cutting air and the solid sound of it striking her and her cry, which was not only of pain, but also of shock at what Papa was capable of. Five more strokes.

  ‘Enough, Papa!’ I said.

  Papa stopped to speak in a voice become breathless. ‘Be quiet, Hester, I say.’

  ‘Do not, Hester,’ Addie said. ‘Think of Grace.’

  So I held the baby’s warm body close and rubbed her hiccupping back and thought of wee Mary those years ago and how often I had held her like this, curled into me when Mama was sad.

  When it was done and Papa released her, Addie stumbled from the door and seeing me there took Grace, very gentle and murmuring soft words, and carried her to the house, walking upright but jerky, as if a mechanism had come loose inside her and she could no longer move as a whole. I found her in the bedroom where she fed Grace to stillness, never taking her eyes from her, stroking her dark hair until they both were soothed.

  She rose. Her back had become stiff.

  ‘Let me see,’ I said. She stood still while I drew her dress from her shoulders. Stays would have saved her from some of the force of Papa’s blows, but she had not worn any for almost a year. Her back was flushed red, and striped a deeper colour where the crop had struck.

  ‘Oh, Addie. He should not have,’ I said.

  ‘Please, Hester. I will not talk of it again.’

  She stayed in our room that day, packing Mama’s old travelling bag neat and careful, without haste or speed, hardly looking at what her hands did.

  The next morning we waited on the veranda – Addie with Grace, Flora with Bobby, me with the dogs – while Papa saddled the horses and strapped on Addie’s small case.

  He came and stood at the steps. ‘All set?’ he said, a trifle too hearty.

  We walked down. Addie would not look at him. She held a kiss to Grace’s cheek and buried her nose to her neck and breathed her in.

  Papa stamped his boot heel into the dirt more than once and glared at me.

  I put my hand to Addie’s arm. ‘Will you let me hold her?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, Hester. I will die of it. I will.’ She flung an arm about my neck, Grace in the middle, and when we drew apart I was holding Grace, who shifted and murmured. She was sweet and soft. She was made for this, to be held and loved and soothed, and I could see what the doing of it meant to Addie, how it made her and how it became her.

  ‘Come, Adelaide,’ Papa said. ‘Do not make a show.’ His face was a mask of kindness, an uncomfortable fit with his tone. He took her elbow.

  She snatched it from him as if his hand burned. ‘Do not make the mistake of ever touching me again, Papa. Else things will end badly.’ She walked away up the slope to the horses not looking about at anything. Flora took Grace from me, hitching her weight into her side. I went after them – Flora coming behind more slowly – and steadied Addie’s horse while she mounted.

  ‘Goodbye, Hett,’ she said. ‘I will see you again, I suppose.’ She swung her horse around and dug in her heels before Papa could give any signal, and he had to hurry to catch up. It made him appear undignified, as if he were the one being led away in disgrace. I looked around when they had gone to see the small figure of Flora returning to the house, carrying her new burden. Bobby went at her side, as he would have to always from now.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Coorong, March 1862

  WHEREVER I WENT I WAS LOOKING BEYOND: out to sea or at the mail boat or at the dust that sometimes rose from the stock route. I watched that slow brown smudge and it was as if a wind blew me towards it. I could cut my hair and dress as a boy and put on my riding clothes; I could be a drover or make my fortune on the goldfields. Only I could not be easy leaving Addie at the Travellers Rest and Fred on his own with Papa, who I could never trust again.

  Papa had taken Flora and Bobby and Grace to the mission early in February. He said there was no reason for them to stay and there was nothing I could do except weep over the loss of Grace, and not only for Addie’s sake. The longing she had set up in me would not pass. Was this where will began to crumble, at this point, with desire for a baby of one’s own? It would go. I would wait it out. It was not as if I had a choice.

  Papa had persuaded the bank to lend him further funds, on the basis of what he called ‘significant improvements to the land’. I could not help thinking it fortunate that we were so far down the lagoon; it was not likely that they would visit and discover our true situation. It was enough to pay for two more native shepherds – cheaper than white men, but needing more direction, Papa said. There was too much to do without them. He was seldom home at midday.

  Fred began to stay out overnight after working all day on the run. He was wild eyed and hungry on his return, and had an air of sort of desperate triumph. I asked where he had been after his first night away.

  ‘On the peninsula, seeing if I can survive there without Tull.’ He blinked and rubbed his eyes and his hair. When he took off his jacket sand fell from its folds.

  ‘Do you think you can?’

  ‘I can learn to. It’s lonely. He said it would be.’

  ‘You must tell me next time,’ I said. ‘Promise me, Fred.’

  Papa was often gone overnight too. I did not ask where, but tended the garden and did the washing and went along the shore, remembering bathing there that hot summer, and walking with Mary and meeting Rimmilli. It was late afternoon – a good time of day in the heat. Once, everyone and everything would have emerged blinking from shade and shelter and done the work of a day in an hour. But there was no one about – I had seen no natives for months – and no pressing tasks, only birds moving about in the trees. A flock of pelicans came in a few yards above. They are enormous in flight and look around with intelligence and they continued at that height, cruising the length of the lagoon (one of the tracks of their world I suppose) until they were gone from sight. I stood at the last to see them for longer.

  In the distance Skip barked, which Sal took up and I looked about: Charles covering the ground in big strides and the dogs dancing about him. It was as if he’d left the day before.

  ‘You,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve been watching you since the house. I could tell what you were thinking from there – the same as always. Still fighting your nature.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  He stopped, his hat tipped back, and gave the question some attention. ‘Why, to leave. To flee and never to look back. You know that.’ He had changed. He was older, more defined. His voice rang out but his expression was less certain, assessing me as I was him. Was I glad to see him?

  ‘How would I do such a thing?’

  ‘I think you would if you could.’ He came closer.

  My face was hot and I turned from him so
he would not see. ‘All the time you’ve been gone and that is the first thing you say.’

  ‘The second. And I am the opposite – always trying to come back even while I am travelling away.’

  ‘That makes no sense at all.’

  ‘No. I tell myself the same. It makes no difference.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘Everything. That’s what I was thinking, looking at you.’

  ‘Oh.’ I had forgotten him, how dangerous he was to me, and folded my arms to make a wall between us.

  He leaned in and kissed my cheek, a prickling touch; he had grown his whiskers. He smelled of sweat and the road and of himself.

  ‘Why did you come back?’

  ‘I said I would.’

  ‘I thought you would not.’

  ‘I thought that too. I told myself I was done.’ He lifted his shoulders and let them fall, as if there were no accounting for the behaviour of some people, and looked along the shore and back to the house and stable. ‘Where is everyone?’

  I told him some half-truths about Addie (that she had been working at the Travellers Rest for the past two months) and explained Fred’s current activities.

  ‘A sort of Robinson Crusoe?’ Charles said.

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Is Mr Finch about?’

  ‘Out working.’

  ‘Tull?’

  ‘Away.’ I considered this true, as far as it went.

  ‘So it’s only you here.’

  ‘And Skipper and Sal.’ They lifted their heads and panted a little and flopped back down on the path. ‘Papa will be home later, and perhaps Fred. Would you like something to drink? Tea?’

  ‘Just to be here.’

  I returned to my tussock and he sat beside it, his legs outstretched. I pointed out a suitable seat a yard away but he shook his head. ‘It’s nice here.’

  ‘It’s the same over there.’

  ‘In the sun.’ He held his face into it and turned slowly until he was looking at me. ‘Near you, I mean.’ He took a fold of my skirt in his fingers, idly, and felt it.

  ‘Oh.’

  He lay back and shut his eyes and the dogs circled him and collapsed at his side, resting their slender heads across his belly so they rose and fell with his breathing.

  ‘Stop it,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Looking.’

  ‘You’ve ridden from Melbourne and now you’re sleeping in the sun.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking of this. Being here. You. That’s all.’

  ‘This particular moment?’

  ‘I am but a simple man, a poor player, strutting, fretting etcetera.’

  ‘You say that.’

  He lifted a hand to stroke Skipper’s head and fondle her ears.

  ‘I’m sorry for how I was,’ I said.

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘It’s not.’

  ‘I did not expect … anything … anything you might have been thinking. I was too forward. I’m sorry for it.’

  ‘So, friends.’

  His hand on Skipper stilled and his eyes opened with the startling blue flash of a kingfisher’s wing. ‘Friends, eh?’

  ‘Yes. I’m going back now. Are you coming?’

  ‘Where you go I must follow. Help me up though.’ He lifted a hand and I pulled him up and before I could step away he put his arms around me very tight, like a dare he could not resist, and said, ‘I missed your little self, Hester,’ and released me. ‘Come along then, friend,’ and we walked up the path with the dogs at our side.

  He kept me company through the afternoon, milking the cows while I grubbed up a few potatoes and fossicked for late tomatoes, and sat in the kitchen doorway as he had done in the past with his feet against a post and when I joined him he told me of Melbourne and the gallery school.

  Papa rode in late. Charles went to meet him, taking his horse.

  Papa came down. On his way past the kitchen he said, ‘Did you know of this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He might have sent word. Is he staying long?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did you tell him about Addie?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tull?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good.’ He went inside.

  It was not restful with Papa around. It was difficult for him to pretend that all was well with so much evidence to the contrary. When Fred did not come home we sat down to dinner and after a pipe and a drink on the veranda Papa went early to bed. I took the lamp and made up the bed in Tull’s room, which I had not been into since he was sent away. His old shield, curving a little at its edges as it dried, and his weapons were still there, also a shirt on the door and a round white stone on the shelf by his bed, which I picked up. It was about the size of a quail’s egg and fitted perfectly into my hand. I remembered the feel of it; the day we came here.

  ‘He won’t mind?’ Charles asked, leaning in the doorway.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  From the veranda we watched the stars. The air was thick between us.

  Finally Charles said, ‘Remember the first time I was here? Fifty-seven it must have been.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There were so many of you, and all of you so lively, talking and laughing, and your ideas. And you were like a wasp buzzing around. That sting of yours.’ He smiled. ‘Keeping everyone moving. Father told my mother that you – your family that is – were very advanced in your thinking. My mother was very shocked at Jane Eyre.’

  ‘A long time ago. I remember it differently.’

  ‘Well, who could ever know what you think, Hester Finch?’

  ‘You would. But what you think: that’s a mystery. You seem quite open. I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Why, at this moment only that I am glad to see you again.’

  ‘See?’ I said.

  We fell silent.

  ‘I don’t expect anything,’ he said.

  ‘What could you expect?’

  ‘Nothing. Your company.’

  ‘You can have that.’

  At breakfast next morning Papa asked Charles to stay for a few days. He had to visit the inland run, he said. ‘It’s providential that you’re here. I don’t like to leave Hester alone.’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ he said blandly. He had a way of looking transparent. No one would think him dangerous.

  ‘I am quite sure Charles has better things to do, Papa,’ I said. ‘He is on his way to town to see his family. I can look after myself. He taught me to shoot.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Papa said; his tea-cup halted between the table and his mouth.

  ‘Yes, so I don’t need him.’

  Charles said, ‘A break in the journey would be just the thing.’

  Papa left. A wall of cloud was gliding towards the peninsula. It seemed likely to rain – a good time for planting. I went inside to fetch the cabbage seeds from the dresser, passing Charles sitting quiet outside drawing with his old concentration.

  I watched him through the window – no harm in that surely, no risk. His hair was shorter now, cut by someone other than himself, but the fringe fell across one eye. He pushed it back and looked over his shoulder at me and I couldn’t turn away. For once he didn’t smile, but was serious, rather. He stood and passed by the window and came inside.

  ‘You should not have stayed,’ I said.

  ‘I thought we were friends.’

  ‘We are.’ I could not tell him the truth: that he frightened me, that he made me fear myself. ‘The best I ever had. That’s the truth, Charles.’

  ‘It’s no use, Hett. I do not feel friendly towards you. That’s not what I feel at all.’

  ‘I meant what I said.’

  ‘You said you were sorry.’

  ‘For the way I said it. Only for that. I will not become like Mama. If you had seen her.’

  He came closer and reached, pleading, and took my hand. ‘If help had been close it would have been different.’

  ‘It mig
ht have, but it isn’t always enough. It was not only that. That was just the end of everything. It was bad before then. To lose control of my life …’ I pulled my hand away. ‘I tell you, I will get it back and when I do I will never give it to another.’ And I pushed past him, outside, and leapt from the veranda and ran.

  I stayed out all afternoon, first in the garden, and then roaming the shore. High above, birds coiled and twisted with dazzling speed, knitting into expanses and unravelling – a long thread stretching out, trailing the garment behind them. And the sound they made was not so different. A thread to a garment was as a single note to music, or a symbol to an equation. There are patterns and similarities in so many things if one can but learn to see. Six hours of distracting myself with such thoughts when I could have been with him.

  When the sun was a few degrees above the horizon and the clouds were closer and pink light was flooding through and beneath, there was no putting off my return. There was a lamp in the kitchen window and darkness outside and through the swaying vines I watched Charles moving about inside, turning salt pork in the frying pan and lifting the lid of a saucepan to poke its contents with a knife.

  ‘I know you’re there,’ he said. ‘It’s almost ready.’

  ‘Just back from a walk,’ I said, stepping through the door.

  ‘Of course you are.’

  ‘You cook as well?’

  ‘Camp food only. Plates?’

  I fetched two and he put the food out – meat, salad greens, buttered potatoes – and picked up the plates and took them into the house. We were quiet while we ate. The sounds of night: frogs in the old suck, the ratchet and shrill of crickets and cicadas, a distant splash. The wind gusted through the house and the back door slammed. Sound died.

  ‘Sometimes it feels as if nothing happens here,’ I said. ‘But things do all the time. I wouldn’t know how to tell you everything.’

  ‘I’d like to hear.’

  ‘One day. There’s a war in America, did you know?’

  ‘I had heard.’

  ‘Think how many people you would need to have a war.’

  ‘More than there are here.’

  ‘Fred should have come home,’ I said. ‘This weather.’