Salt Creek Page 9

  We waited.

  He picked up a nearby stick and drew it back – ‘and we kill them’ – and it flew so straight and true that I could almost see the slain beast of his imagination.

  ‘Like baiting a fish trap? You burn the land so the kangaroos will come?’ Fred said.

  ‘Yes.’ Tull smiled then, as if he was pleased that we were not as stupid as he feared.

  There were some things Tull would not eat, even if he were hungry.

  Hugh and Stanton came home late one spring morning in great excitement over a duck that Skipper had flushed out of the reeds. The poor bedraggled thing, a female, was likely frightened from its nest, and now hung from Stanton’s hand, its wide-billed head swinging and its eyes closed. The feathers on its tortoiseshell wings were broken.

  ‘I had a devilish time getting it away from Skipper, I can tell you that,’ Stanton said. ‘Its wings flapping as if it were possessed, and the noise it made. I tell you I ran, and then Skipper dropped it and I managed to pounce. Look.’ He thrust it towards me. ‘A fine fat specimen.’

  Tull was shocked. ‘You can’t eat it. You should have left it. You’ll be sick. It will make your legs will grow weak.’

  ‘Our legs go weak?’ Stanton said. ‘Why?’

  And Hugh rounded on Tull. ‘It will not. It’s a duck, boy. It’ll do you no harm. It’s our land, and they are all our ducks and we may eat them as we please and when we please, but you needn’t if you are frightened to, if you are frightened of a little bird.’

  ‘Some people may eat them, but not you, or me. Not this one, a Kalperi.’ Tull was very shocked, his eyes round and black, and he drew back from the duck and from Hugh and Stanton.

  ‘Pluck it for us, will you, Hester?’

  ‘Pluck it yourself,’ I returned. ‘I have other things to do and if you wish for a meal at this time of day you may get it.’ I glared at him and he turned away, looking at Addie. She shook her head and he stormed outside, with Hugh following after. Presently, we saw downy feathers wafting past the window and Skipper came inside with a large wing feather drooping from her mouth. We attended to our lessons as best we could, or pretended to at any rate. It was a poor-looking specimen that Stanton brought back a little later. He had given up on the pin feathers and some of the down. Hugh got the big knife and hacked the bird into rough pieces.

  With a clatter, Stanton pulled the black pan from the rack over the stove and drew back the stove lid and slammed it down on the hot plate and gathered the bowl of lard from the winter pantry and the flipper and when the pan was hot scooped out a hunk of lard with the corner of the flipper and set it in the pan. It ran about sizzling and hissing, releasing its meaty smell. Hugh, somewhat hesitant, carried a bowl with the pieces of duck to the stove and Stanton threw them in the pan and it hissed and smoked. Stanton snatched his hand away and sucked the back of his hand. The smell of feathers frying was sharp and hot. Stanton did not look about at any of us, but said, ‘Anyone else want a piece? Fred? Addie?’

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ Fred said, which I doubted was true. He pretended to ignore what was happening, instead working in his sketch book and pulling a flowering branch in a jar of water before him a little closer. He resumed drawing, and from the way he did not so much as glance at Tull I knew that he was aware of him and was ashamed in some way. Stanton and Hugh were only acting in defiance of his words, and though I could not see what could be wrong with eating a duck when there were so many of them nesting all about, I had seen how certain Tull was about food, and what could be eaten safely and what should be avoided. I did not like to go against his words. From Fred’s darting glances I thought it was the same for him. Also, I would not add to Tull’s distress.

  Stanton made a snorting sound of disbelief. He hunkered down over the stove, pulling against the resistance there was in the kitchen to cooking the duck, as a bullock will pull against a heavy load. But he was determined on this course of action.

  ‘Get some bread,’ he shot over his shoulder, and Hugh obediently found the bread and cut two rough slices of it, which he placed, one each, on Mama’s small dark Staffordshire plates. Their dainty flowers presented a strange appearance with the sawn bread, but soon enough they were hidden by the pieces of duck with their blackened skin and frizzled down, which Stanton forked onto them. As the plates were too small, they overhung the rims. He poured the remaining lard over the meat and it began to slide from its dark surfaces and down its edges, finally falling to the floor, setting there in waxy drops. Stanton slammed the plates onto the table.

  ‘Do you mind?’ Fred said and drew his books further down the table.

  Hugh got a knife and fork for each of them and they pulled chairs back from the table so their feet squealed against the floor, and sat and began to eat in great mouthfuls, sawing the duck to reveal the thick seam of fat and mopping the bread in the bloody juices and shovelling the food into their mouths, glaring about from time to time. Addie stared, aghast, as if she were waiting for them to die, or at least to sicken, and Tull as if he were watching drowning men but had no means to save them. I scraped the fat off the floor with a knife before anyone could slip on it.

  Once, Hugh looked up and said to Tull, ‘You. You can stop staring and get out. We don’t want you in here. You should not be in here, and while my father is not you can stay outside where you belong. We’ve no need for your superstitions.’

  Fred got to his feet, but seemed uncertain what to do next. Tull looked at him.

  ‘You can’t order Tull,’ I said.

  ‘And you will stop me?’ Hugh said.

  He was much taller and broader than I and I thought it wise to be quiet, even though I hated to hear him speak so and I did not think he would hit his sister. Tull moved to the door and put his hand to the doorjamb. Some compulsion held him there, mesmerized by the sight of their daring. Stanton picked up his remaining crust in his hand and wiped it all around the rim of the plate and circled the middle, gathering up all the last drops of the fat and blood, and stuffed that in his mouth, which was overfull, so the hunks of brown bread and the red meat could be seen as he chewed, and then he picked up the plate and threw it at Tull. It was a low, fast throw and if Tull had not jumped straight up in the air with utmost nimbleness and strength and celerity the plate would have struck its target in the moment before he fled. But it merely hit the door and shattered and fell to the ground in pieces, so that all Mama’s china flowers were as scattered as a posy in the wind on the floor.

  ‘Stanton! One of Mama’s plates. Look at it. For shame,’ I said. ‘Have you gone mad? What will she say?’

  ‘I am sure you will tell her when you see her so we can all find out,’ Stanton said and leapt to his feet and stepped across the shards of china, shoving past me and flinging out of the door. Hugh finished his meat but with no pleasure or speed, only determination. He put his plate in the washbasin and with the broom swept the broken china into a heap, and scraped it into the dustpan.

  ‘Here,’ I said, taking it from him. ‘I won’t give Mama any more reason to be sad.’

  Hugh stood dumb as an ox, while I swept and scolded. Then his throat began to work and he rushed past me through the door onto the veranda where he hung over its edge and was very ill. His shoulders heaved and his head sawed up and down. When he had finished he remained bowed resting his forehead on his forearms as they lay upon the railing.

  I went onto the veranda to see if there was anything I could do. Fred came out too. Tull was by the stable and a moment later Fred was climbing the short rise to see him.

  Stanton stared at Hugh from the stairs. ‘Too rich,’ he said. ‘That’s all it is, Hugh. Don’t go thinking there is any truth in those superstitions.’

  ‘Hugh?’ I said.

  Hugh rolled his head to one side and his face was grey and sweating so it did appear as if he might have been poisoned. He staggered to the settee and lay down with his arm across his eyes and there he stayed. Stanton came and stood over him. ‘You are
all right, Hugh. As well as I be.’

  I thought he did not look very well. Stanton then made a great show of his good health, drinking a cup of tea and playing a game of chess with Albert, which he did poorly. He lacked imagination and did not see the consequences of his actions, qualities that I suppose must be as advantageous in some situations as they are disadvantageous in others. I took Hugh a cup of tea and he sipped it tentatively and by lunch had recovered to the extent that he could contemplate some toast.

  From having been so ill from the duck Hugh could not tolerate this particular duck or any duck at all again, but seeing that Stanton was unaffected, Albert and Papa and Stanton ate them, indeed Papa set about the task as his Christian duty, to prove that superstition held no sway with him. No harm came to any of them. But Tull told me later that it didn’t matter if Papa ate them, so Papa hadn’t proved anything except in his own mind. I do not care for ducks since they are so fatty and Addie refused to eat any thereafter, which I did not understand, and Fred would not out of a desire not to hurt Tull’s feelings. I wondered how Tull explained this to himself but did not ask, merely observing that I never saw him eating one.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Coorong, January 1857

  ONE DAY IN THE KITCHEN AT THE BEGINNING of that year Tull told Fred a long story of an ancestor, Ngurunderi.

  ‘He’s like God,’ Fred said to Tully when he had finished.

  ‘Mr Finch says God is good,’ Tull said.

  ‘So people say.’

  ‘Then Ngurunderi is not like God. He was a man. He made things, but because of what he did, not to make them, not like God. In what he did he created, but this was not what he meant to do, only what happened while he was chasing his wives. There are many other ancestors, Wyunggaree – another hunter. He made the lagoons with the skins of big kangaroos. He stretched them out. I don’t know all the stories. There are many more, but you have only one?’ He looked so pitying.

  Tull grew fast through that summer and by autumn was taller than Hugh or Stanton or Fred and his wrists and ankles appeared from the shirt sleeves and breeches that had once been theirs. It gave him a gangling effect. Occasionally he was gone, for days or even weeks. We had grown used to his absences. I did not stop to wonder what might be happening in his life when he was not with us, or understand that he existed in two worlds.

  Once we caught sight of him with some other natives when he was dressed as they were and we all paused to watch. He moved so easy along the track above the house but made no sign of recognition to us when they passed, and didn’t look back as they walked away. In that moment he was something to us even if we were nothing to him. It made me feel small and temporary in that place and I saw on Papa’s face how discomfited he was too.

  ‘Girls, inside now,’ he said, rather harsh.

  ‘Why?’ Addie said.

  Papa looked about as if someone else might appear to explain the matter to her, but no one did and in the end he said, ‘It’s Tull.’

  ‘We know that.’

  Hugh slipped one hand inside his coat front as if he were Admiral Lord Nelson and pronouncing on matters of state. ‘We should tell them to stay away from the house. The girls shouldn’t see.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Papa said, a trifle impatient. ‘As I said already.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Addie said. ‘I’m sure nothing could surprise me these days.’

  ‘You should not see him so, Adelaide,’ Papa said.

  ‘Why not? He is black, isn’t he? Well, blackish, and they hardly wear a stitch,’ Addie said. ‘We knew that before.’

  Fred gave her a look to wither, and said, ‘You know the difference. He’s one of us too.’

  From long practice this glanced off her. She raised an insolent shoulder and said, ‘He’s not one of me, Fred.’

  ‘Addie, stop it. He is almost a brother to you,’ I said.

  She became serious. ‘He’s no brother of mine,’ and although she came inside with me nothing I could say would induce her to leave the window until he had gone. It was as if she’d never seen him before.

  Fred spent the most time with Tull, though I did see him for lessons and meals and around the run if they were not working at too great a distance. We conversed mainly about books and chess: more than I did to Stanton and Hugh, less than I did with Fred.

  Tull liked to listen to Fred reading, though how it came about – Fred reading a passage before explaining it, Tull asking him to continue – I do not know. At such times I had a sense of Tull needing respite from the effort of learning so much and so fast. Of course, it might be that it was simpler to ask questions of Fred or anyone else around when words were spoken aloud.

  That winter I began to notice how differently he saw almost everything compared to us. Mama might say that the colours of winter reminded her of the highlands of Scotland, and I might say that the sky was sapphire or that the washing lines were like cobwebs on a cold morning. Hearing these things perplexed him, as did so much else – the encumbrances of our clothing, our impractical hair, our heavy boots, the fences that we built – which he made apparent by his stillness or his incredulity and in other ways that I do not recall.

  One day he asked why we had so few stories to tell and so few songs.

  ‘We have bible stories,’ I said. ‘And novels. Of course we have stories and songs.’

  ‘Books. You don’t speak them. Or sing them. Our stories are different.’

  ‘Tell me some of your stories then,’ I said, but he would not. It was by chance that I heard him sing once or twice when he was about his work and I was tending the vegetable garden. It was not like our music and the words were not in English, yet he took pleasure in it I think.

  He liked the Old Testament. I would have said it was his favourite part of the bible from the frequency with which he looked at it. I was not sure, though, whether pleasure and displeasure meant anything when words were before him. It was more as if there were a play on a chessboard that he could not read clearly. Fred’s expression when drawing or thinking was something like it.

  ‘You like this story, don’t you?’ I said. He was reading Genesis again, on the veranda. We had grown so used to him that it no longer seemed strange for him to sit on our chairs and to eat from our plates.

  Seeing that I had some time he asked me again about heaven and hell, sin, the Fall, the vastness of the world and its shape. ‘Is it about the white people?’

  ‘All people – about the beginning of everything.’

  ‘We have stories too, about the beginning of this land.’

  ‘Like the one you told Fred? The man chasing his wives?’ I asked.

  Tull nodded. ‘Is your story true?’

  ‘Most people think it is, that it happened this way,’ I said. ‘But Papa believes it is a story that shows us how we all, people, became what we are, sinners who do wrong, that is, that they were tempted and chose their fate.’ Tull still appeared confused and I did not know how to make temptation and the Fall clearer to one who had never even heard of God. ‘Is your story true?’ I asked.

  ‘What is true?’ Tull gave me one of his steady looks and moved his face by infinitesimal degrees, and how could I know what that meant?

  Towards morning’s end Mary often became fretful and Mama took her for a walk, leaving us to finish our work. With no one there to focus our attentions we fell to talking. Later I wondered whether we should not have encouraged familiarity, that it would have been better to keep some distance between Tull and us. But we were young and curious about him, as he was about us.

  ‘Tell us, what did you think of us when we first arrived?’ Addie asked, leaning on the table towards Tull who sat opposite.

  ‘We saw people like you before, a long time ago.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘I am not old enough to see the first people. We stayed away from them.’ He gestured towards the track. ‘When my family saw white fellas the first time, the cattle frightened them. The sound was like thunder. Ev
eryone screamed and ran away across the water.’ He pointed towards the peninsula. ‘They hid there and waited. They thought the horses were their women.’ He laughed at the thought and at Addie’s expression.

  ‘Horses? That is ridiculous.’ Her face flamed. ‘Why would they think that?’

  ‘They carried everything, like women.’

  ‘But if they knew white men were men … We know your men are men – why would they think that?’

  ‘They knew the men were men. They stole our women.’

  ‘Kidnapped,’ I said, remembering that overheard conversation between Mama and Papa. ‘What did you think when you saw real women then?’

  ‘We thought you had no legs,’ he said.

  ‘Legs? Of course we have legs.’ And Addie leapt up, pulling her skirts to her knees.

  ‘Addie, for shame,’ I said. ‘Have you lost your senses?’

  ‘Tull doesn’t mind, do you?’

  He tore his eyes from Addie’s legs and their fallen stockings.

  ‘Tull, if you would go and see where Mama is – Mrs Finch, I mean – I should be grateful. Mr Finch too. Thank you.’

  Tull didn’t move. ‘When we saw you we were afraid,’ he said.

  ‘Of us? We were children.’

  ‘Of Mr Finch.’

  ‘I tell you it was not Papa,’ I said.

  I daresay some would opine that Adelaide was not London, but the most provincial of outposts, and so I learned to see it years later. I had known nothing other than Adelaide and the Coorong and the road in between so that was no odds to me. When we were in Adelaide, ships had come through with news from home, and we might order any book or journal we cared for and after that it was a matter of waiting for the riches to arrive. And if the waiting took a very long time it whetted our anticipation and increased our enjoyment upon arrival. You might imagine the excitement that stirred, and for the next while all materials might be exchanged, since so many of us were known to each other. Naturalists’ books might be had, or fashion almanacs, or novels or scientific journals or records of the voyages of discovery that were then circumnavigating the globe. It is a time without shape to me: a continuum of pleasurable incidents, at the end of which were the deaths of Louisa and Georgie and our departure.