Salt Creek Read online

  At first Beecham was overwhelming even though I knew of it from Mama’s descriptions. The drawing room would have contained our whole house on the Coorong. In South Australia, after the sun had set and it was time for dinner, Mama would creep down the hall and, as if bracing for the effort, pause at the doorway to look in at us milling about the dining table. She came in and if she spoke, it was of England and her home and her childhood, and her voice being so soft made us unsure if she was reminiscing to herself or wished for an audience.

  ‘The house was large and fine, with a circular drive for the ease of the carriages, you know. The breakfast parlour faced the east so it was pleasant at that time of day, and to the west was the parlour with a fine oak tree outside and parkland. There were three maids – imagine! – and a cook, housekeeper, footman and butler. My sisters and I had a governess but I’m afraid that we teased her more than we should and hid and did not pay attention. Oh, Papa – my papa, that is – used to lecture us.’ And on she went. Her sisters had died, one of fever after having a baby, the other of convulsions before. I am the namesake of one – Mary the other – and although I do not resemble her, yet I feel her with me as if her hand is hovering at my back.

  It had made us sad. With every word Mama told us she would rather she were not there in the Coorong with us, but in that lost green world where we had never been, not even in memory. It was strange to be wished out of existence. She had not often spoken of England when we were in Adelaide, but at Salt Creek she drew her childhood around her as if it were a cloak that might comfort and protect. The thought of Adelaide and our life there was not far enough from the Coorong to console. Perhaps it is inevitable to miss what is gone. If Papa had been less proud everything might have been different.

  When riding the lanes in my trap I felt Mama’s gentle presence by me and heard her voice in my ear: ‘See the fields, how wide they are and how green? Just as I said.’ And the interlacing of hedgerows and meanders through unblemished fields – all those bulrushes and reeds and no one making use of them – and castles and churches emerging like thrilling geographical formations and the blush of late winter woods and shadows as soft as blossom and sheep like clotted cream. The flint buildings, though, put me in mind of Papa’s face towards the end, as if the skin of him barely stretched to cover bone and gaunt muscle and terrible feeling. If my mind drifted to the scrawny and nervous creatures and the salt bone bleached world of the Coorong I am sure that will not surprise.

  These are the moments I wait for. Sometimes when half-asleep at night and lying in a particular way the past aligns with the present and I forget my plump pillow and the feathers beneath me and am in my old bed again, the ridge in the sheets where they have been turned to mend a tear, the salt smell of everything, my book shelf and lamp, the rough wooden walls, Addie tossing nearby, the heavy winter quilts holding me safe.

  The Coorong, 1855

  After that first foray we clung to the house, going about with each other for company if we had a mind to explore. I could not help glancing back. As insubstantial as the house was, and composed of so many of the elements that lay all about or grew from the ground or were of the ground itself, it seemed not unlikely that while my attention was elsewhere it could fly away in a strong gust of wind or subside into sticks and mud in the rain.

  In one of the bursts of energy that overcame Mama she found our old school books and slates and brought them out. ‘You must keep up with your lessons,’ she said, ‘else you will all become savages.’ It gave her some purpose. Her enthusiasm often wavered and it fell to me to keep our school going between times. Hugh and Stanton were too big, and there was nothing I could teach Fred except mathematics, and Addie did not wish to learn and Albert would rather be out of doors. He was not interested in schoolwork, finishing it quickly to be done and then chafing at Fred to leave with him. But Fred stayed for as long as he could.

  Mama was often seen looking from a window or holding to the rail of the veranda as if on a ship on a stormy sea. At first I waved, until I perceived that nothing would reassure. Still, for her sake, for weeks after we lost our fears we did not go beyond the limits that Papa had set for us: up to the stock route, a half-mile away at least, to the shores of the lagoon and around the curve of our point. There were paths all across the land leading to and from different places: an expanse of cockle shells below the house, a small hill from which we could see a long way up the lagoon, a good suck of water nearby, a stand of she-oaks. As we accustomed ourselves to the space and explored further we began to feel and not only think of it as our own.

  In those days Papa was sure of our future success. He rode the run to check on the cattle, which were eating their way along the lagoon shore and into the scrub. Each day, Papa and the boys laboured to fence new areas, creating paddocks that they could be moved between. He wore his gaucho’s hat, which he said all cow hands wear in Argentina, tilted down rather severe at the front, which a person could not help thinking of as foreign even if they had never left these shores. He had it from his travels before he married Mama and never wore another when he was out working and would not part with this one, old as it was. From a distance we could tell Papa from anyone by his hat, which had a wider brim than was usual and the dimple in its crown almost disappeared with age. I wondered whether Papa missed those carefree times and being here returned him to them.

  At first we were in the expectation of seeing more blacks. I overheard a low conversation between Papa and Mama one evening on the subject.

  Papa stretched his legs towards the fire, warming his feet. His chin was sunk against his chest. He watched the flames rather than Mama, and spoke as if he hardly expected an answer. ‘They are wary, naturally. Who could ever know how many of the black women have been taken.’

  ‘Have they?’ Mama asked.

  ‘I know it to be so. Those Kangaroo Island men are rough: whalers and sealers, and escaped convicts too. They row across and up the lagoon; take the women when the men are hunting I suppose. With determination, it’s not so far, and they are the most proficient rowers. They are accustomed to the pursuit of whales, my dear. If you saw them … I assure you they are most impressive. Even if the blacks here saw a boat coming, what chance would they have in their bark crafts? I daresay more than one has killed or been killed.’

  ‘Dear me,’ Mama said.

  Days passed and were marked by nothing but the daily tasks of cleaning and washing and lessons and work, and by the flocks of birds, which shrilled upwards, their opposite selves, black shadows, swarming across the ground and water faster than anything could travel on those fissured surfaces. The weather was cooling and they were preparing to leave, and the weight I felt while watching them was as much of the body as the spirit. We saw no one. Yet wherever I went I could not rid myself of the uncanny sense of someone temporarily absent or recently departed, as if I were exploring a strange and empty house.

  One day I took an old bone-handled knife from the kitchen – seldom used and not valuable – and placed it among the fallen seed cones beneath the she-oak trees. I hardly knew what I hoped for walking the lagoon path next morning – some sign, perhaps only of life other than ours, though who would bother coming out to our point I could not imagine. We were so far from the stock route that we would never see any white person unless they happened down our track. The moment I entered the shade of the she-oaks I knew it would be gone, and so it proved to be. I searched in the needle leaf fall. No creature would take it. I wondered whose hands were touching it now, and the thought made them feel close. At luncheon I examined everyone’s expressions again for signs of concealment, but saw nothing unusual: only Addie pining for company, Hugh and Stanton wishing to go hunting for kangaroos, and so on. What need would they have of a blunt old knife? And how could I say what I had done without becoming an object of ridicule or censure? I repeated the experiment the next day leaving an old tablespoon and a battered enamel bowl with the same result. What could such things mean to a savage?


  I had no way of knowing whether there was a connection between the knife and the spoon and the bowl and the appearance thereafter of one or two natives, seen by us all. Perhaps it was only that they had become accustomed to our presence and saw that we were no threat. They walked the tracks ‘quite as if they owned it,’ Hugh said. ‘It will not end well, Papa.’ But Papa tipped his hat back and scratched his beard thoughtfully and said, ‘I think not, Hugh. There is land enough. Consider how useful they might become to us. I have seen them working very willingly in the hills and at the lakes. Why not here too?’ and he clapped Hugh on the shoulder and went on his way. Mama stayed indoors.

  One morning we found a dead kangaroo, still warm, at the veranda steps, which, kangaroo meat having become so expensive in town, was very welcome. Another day there were three ducks.

  Papa was delighted. ‘See, Bridget,’ he said to Mama. ‘They wish to be friendly. When we see them, we must reciprocate.’

  By degrees as autumn deepened the natives drew closer, as if our lives were aligning. Early one morning while I was letting the chickens out there were two canoes at the lagoon’s centre and poised figures as lean and black as arithmetic spearing fish over the side, perfectly still until the darting strike, and then the impaled fish was flipped aboard. My impulse was to run for home, but they were at such a distance and had not even noticed me so I could not see the harm in watching. Another day, Fred and Albert were passed by some blacks out with hunting equipment: spears and clubs and curved sticks which the boys observed them throw great distances and which curled in the air most ingeniously, returning to the person who had released them. I had heard of them in Adelaide but never seen them demonstrated and envied the boys.

  ‘They were so close, you would not believe it,’ Albert said.

  ‘Were you frightened? I would be,’ Addie said.

  ‘They didn’t even look at us,’ Fred said. ‘It was as if we weren’t there. And we saw that boy, the one who threw the stone. I’m sure it was him.’

  ‘What were they wearing?’ I said.

  ‘Cloaks,’ Fred said. ‘They had sort of cloaks on, and string bags on their shoulders. There were ducks in the bags.’

  ‘Do you suppose it was they who left us the ducks and kangaroo?’

  ‘How would we know?’ Fred asked.

  ‘Don’t tell Mama,’ I said. ‘It’ll only worry her.’

  But Mama overheard and was agitated and told Papa. His eyes lit up. ‘I wonder where their camp is.’ He sawed his meat with enthusiasm. ‘It can’t be far. I must find out and we must learn some language, a few small tokens. We can invite them to one of our services. They might be of use about the run. Do you see how it happens, my dear? So, we begin to civilize them, from a small beginning such as this.’

  ‘There is no beginning,’ Hugh said. ‘They did not communicate; they showed no interest. They are savages.’

  ‘We will see, Hugh,’ Papa said. ‘I expect us all to be friendly if we see them. Greet them, smile. They must know that we mean them no harm or else we fail.’

  Hugh and Stanton shot looks at each other across the table.

  ‘At least they have decided that we mean them no harm and I count that as progress indeed, eh, Bridget?’

  Mama did not reply.

  Thinking to improve Mama’s spirits, Papa put a slatted roof over the walkway between the kitchen and veranda, and at the base of the posts planted grape vines and geranium cuttings brought from Adelaide. He began looking about for timber to improve and enlarge the house. There were trees thereabouts, which grew thickly in parts, but they were twisted and knotty and hard, suitable only for fencing. There was just one large one at the turnoff to our track, which leaned across as if it were fleeing the sea – shaped by the wind as was so much else. Papa and Stanton felled a smaller tree growing nearby. It had a straight section of trunk and Papa wished to see what could be made of it. Hugh and Stanton tried to dig a sawpit but the sandy soil slipped from the sides no matter how they tried to shore it up. Papa went out to survey their progress, folding his arms and nudging at the soil with his toe. Then for a wonder he smiled for all it was such a pitiful mess.

  ‘Well, boys, dig it a little longer and we can call it a grave,’ he said.

  They stood around considering the possibilities and poking at the pit’s edge with their shovels. It had become an amusement. Stanton climbed in and lay there, tipping his hat so it covered his eyes as if to go to sleep and all that was visible from a distance was his hat’s battered crown and the bobbing head of the grass stalk that he was chewing and his booted feet crossed casually at the lip of the other end where his legs were too long to fit. It made me shiver to see Stanton lying there beneath the ground’s surface, and to see them mock it. Georgie’s grave had been smaller than this and the mound over it a hump that a small child could have jumped with ease and all about it had been the dried grasses of summer that bent stiffly with the wind.

  I picked up my skirts and ran at them, stamping my feet when I drew near. ‘Stop. Stop it. Get out, stupid boy. If Mama should see.’

  Papa looked at me mildly. ‘Just a little fun, Hester. They meant no harm. But you are right about your mother. It would not do if she came out,’ and he looked around to make sure she was not approaching – but of course she was not. ‘Quickly now, Stanton.’

  Hugh gave me that look with half-closed eyes and a faint smile of his ridiculous rosebud mouth, which made my blood boil, as if he were doing me a favour by conferring his attention. His self-regard was a mystery to me. Nothing could dent it. He kicked some dirt over Stanton who bellowed something low and rough and leapt up alive again and lunged at Hugh, tackling him to the ground and they rolled about, growling and laughing and slapping. I stepped around the grave and up the slope away from Papa’s outstretched hand.

  ‘Now, Hettie,’ he said, but did no more to stop me.

  I heard the boys laughing and did not turn and soon I was over the top of the rise and able to look around without my gaze falling on them.

  They rigged up some larger sawhorses and tried to cut the length of the trunk, but the grain of the wood was fine and its torsion was against the direction of the branch so the saw blade stuck and then broke and they gave it up as a bad job.

  Papa had brought one load of new timber down the stock route from the hills when building the house, but twice it had overturned in the ruts and he would not contemplate it again. Hard work would find us the materials. We fell to scavenging for wood on the peninsula. After a storm the boys walked miles up and down the sea beach. Small lengths, broken pieces and driftwood were for the fire; longer lengths from the wrecked ships that had gone down hereabouts were prized – a terrible labour though. They had to be rowed back and if there was too much the boat wallowed and seemed likely to drown. Albert was sturdy for a boy of ten. He and Fred worked together, searching and dragging back pieces they could manage to the point opposite our house, and Hugh and Stanton loaded the boat and rowed back and forth with their shabby treasure.

  Curved pieces from the ship’s sides were weighted to dry flat; straight bits, which Papa said were from decking or walls, were best; they had been planed smooth – fairly smooth at any rate. He showed me other places in the house where shipwrecked timber that he and Hugh and Stanton had found last winter and spring had been used. It was curious to walk through the house and know that so much of it had once been afloat, and when the house sighed and shifted in the cold of the night, it was easy to imagine that we were at sea ourselves, that whales and shark fish were passing beneath us with a lazy roll of their backs along the belly of the house, and on a windy night that sails above were catching the driven air and we were slicking through water, and on a still night that we were anchored in the limitless sea to stop us foundering on the rocks.

  All through the winter storms we were on top of each other and all about us was disorder and the big boys swearing they’d get more sleep out with the bullocks. The baby screamed until Hugh sai
d, ‘Cut her gums and save us all, Papa.’

  ‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘I’ll mind her at night. Think of Louisa.’

  Hugh was quiet at that, and I remembered that Louisa had been a favourite of his.

  Papa said, ‘It was a fever, the same as Georgie’s.’

  I said, ‘I’ll take her and keep her quiet. The tooth’s nearly through.’

  Papa agreed, so then it was Addie and Mary and me all in that one bed in our narrow room. Often during those colourless hours I rose to her cries and walked her from front door to back until she slept again.

  As busy as we were with collecting wood and caulking the gaps in the walls and battening the roof to withstand the wind’s sting we did not notice when the natives had gone, only that by June we had none of us noticed any for some time.

  ‘They’ve seen that we mean to stay,’ Hugh said.

  Papa was hopeful. ‘We have given them no reason to leave. They may yet return. We shall see.’

  Mama’s spirits shifted about, lifting at the thought of the blacks having gone, falling at her situation. The space unnerved her. She kept to the parlour and its reminders of her old life, only smiling obediently at Papa when he came to sit with her each day.

  ‘We have extended the fence towards the stock route,’ he might say.

  And she would nod, ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Which will prevent the cattle straying so far.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose so.’ She plucked at the fringes of the velvet cushions and shrugged deeper into her shawl. She took a turn about the room as if she’d decided on a purpose and went to the kitchen door and stared at the lagoon or stood at the parlour window, gazing onto the track up the grassy slope as if hopeful that someone might come visiting despite the hour being advanced and there being no company of any kind, suitable or not.