Playing Beatie Bow (16 page)

‘Be quiet!’ said Abigail, in so cold a voice that Beatie faltered. Her fiery gaze dropped, and she muttered, ‘I hanna any right to speak like that. I ken no other way but to bluster, you see, Abby, because it’s the way of folks about here.’

Abigail was silent.

‘Nobody’s going to make Dovey unhappy,’ said Beatie sullenly. ‘Nobody. Not while I’m around. Granny’d let her lose Judah if it meant saving the Gift. The Gift comes first with Granny, but it dinna with me! And Dovey’s sae gentle – she’d never stand up for her rights, even if her heart broke.’

‘Has Dovey noticed too, then?’ asked Abigail. Beatie shook her head. ‘She hanna mentioned anything. Well, then,’ she said, with a return to her previous aggressive manner, ‘what will you do about it?’

‘This,’ said Abigail. She seized Beatie by the shoulders and shook her with such violence that when she let her go, the little girl fell on the floor.

She gaped at Abigail, not knowing whether to screech maledictions, or leap at the older girl like an infuriated monkey.

‘You’re a stirrer, that’s what you are,’ said Abigail. ‘Don’t you breathe a word of this to Dovey or I’ll break
your
head. You don’t know that what you said has a word of truth in it.’

‘Granny will know,’ said Beatie, half tearful, half triumphant.

‘Yes, and I’m going to see her, right now,’ said Abigail.

The old lady removed her brass-rimmed spectacles and put aside her knitting.

‘Ah, there you are, pet,’ she said. ‘I’ve been expecting you this last day or two.’

Abigail sat down beside Mrs Tallisker’s chair and leant her head on her knee. The touch of the work-hardened hand on her hair was dear and familiar to her.

‘You feel that something verra frail and precious, maybe like a china cup, has been chipped and cracked, is that so, Abby?’

Abigail thought about that.

‘No,’ she said at last, ‘it hasn’t been spoiled or changed. I just didn’t want her – Beatie – or anyone, to look at it because it was private.’

The hand went on stroking.

‘I suppose I’m too young to know anything about – about falling in love,’ said Abigail humbly. She knew she could never have spoken like this to her mother. She would have died in torment rather than say such a thing to any of the girls at school. It seemed to her now that they were just a bold-mouthed, sniggering rabble of children, too old to be innocent, too young to be fastidious.

‘But I suppose that’s not fair, either,’ she thought. ‘How do I know what they feel in their hearts? They talk like that because other kids think they’re freaks if they don’t.’

‘It wouldna be for me to say that you’re too young to know true love, Abby,’ said Granny tranquilly, ‘for I was wed at fifteen myself.’

‘And you’ve not forgotten what it’s like?’ asked Abigail, amazed.

‘Look into my eyes,’ said Granny. She took Abigail’s chin in her hand and made the girl look steadfastly at her. The cloudy blue of the old woman’s eyes cleared, widened, became a sky with clouds running over it like lizards over a wall, a sea far below, leaping, boiling, a marvellous blue-green.

‘Like a mallard drake’s neckband.’ She heard Granny’s voice far, far away, hardly distinguishable from the squealing of the birds, white and dark birds whirling in to and out from precipices that stood like walls and battlements.

‘Guillemots, sea-shag and terns,’ said Granny. ‘Look at yourself, lass.’

Abigail was no longer herself. She was someone else. A dark-brown braid streaked with blond fell over her left shoulder almost to her waist. Her hands were red and chapped. She wore a coarse ankle-length black skirt and a white apron. The very eyes through which she looked were different – clearer, further-seeing, and, she instinctively knew, desperate and wild.

‘My own e’en,’ said Granny, ‘when I was eighteen, new-widowed.’

Down that giddy steep Abigail gazed, her whole body thirsting to thrust itself out on that wild wind that whirled the birds down to the sea and up again in tatters and ribbons and shoals of small living bodies; to fall like a stone amongst the black shining reefs and the ever-tossing serpentine arms of the kelp.

‘I can’t, I can’t!’ cried Abigail, and her voice was different, her words in a dialect she did not know yet understood. ‘There are the bairnies, there are my old parents and yours, Bartle. I cannot come and leave them without a care, I must live on, in spite of pain.’

‘I can’t bear it,’ whispered Abigail. ‘I can’t bear it!’

In a second she was back in the parlour. Mrs Tallisker, her eyes very bright, was gripping her hands.

‘Are you all right, Granny?’ panted Abigail. The intensity of her feeling had not left her; she felt she had been through a lifetime of happiness and woe.

‘Yes,’ said the old woman. She seemed revivified, her bent back straightened, her faded eyes glistening with triumph and excitement.

‘Aye, that was a good flash, like a sky full of lightning! Like the old days when past and future were spread out before me like a field of flowers.’

‘Was I you?’ breathed Abigail. ‘Yes, I was you! And Bartle was your husband.’

‘Drowned off the Noup like his son Robert. Near nineteen, he was, like his grandson Judah Bow. Aye, the young can experience true love, and true sorrow, and true selflessness too.’

‘I don’t think I could,’ faltered Abigail, ‘be unselfish, I mean.’

Mrs Tallisker looked at her with something like scorn.

‘If you love truly, you will also know how to live without the beloved, no matter whether you lose him to death or some other.’

Abigail felt helpless and anxious. ‘But I don’t think I’m good enough to be like that. Maybe when I’m older …’

‘Age has naught to do with it, Abby,’ returned Mrs Tallisker.

‘But,’ faltered Abby, ‘already I feel jealous of Dovey.’ She was ashamed. ‘When I was shaking Beatie …’

The old woman laughed heartily. ‘You shook Beatie? ’Twill do that one a world of good.’

‘Yes,’ confessed Abigail, ‘I shook her till her tonsils rattled. But all the time I was wishing it was Dovey. It was horrible, like a kind of black oil smeared over everything. I’m afraid, Granny – that I’ll be nasty to Dovey, say something cruel. And I don’t want to.’

‘And why, Abby? Because you like poor Dovey so much, and she hasna done you anything but kindness?’

‘Yes, that,’ said Abigail, ‘but mostly because I don’t want to make Judah unhappy, ever, and he would be if anyone hurt Dovey.’

Mrs Tallisker leant over and kissed Abigail’s cheek lightly.

‘You’ll do, my honey.’

She would say no more, but asked Abigail to fetch the lamp and light it.

‘And send Beatie to me, hen.’

Beatie went in glowering and came out snivelling. She joined Abigail at the kitchen table where the girl was scrubbing potatoes in a dish of water.

‘Granny said I was to be civil to you, and I will; but ’tis not for your sake! So if I smile at you, ’tis from the teeth outwards!’

Abigail sighed. ‘I hope it rains on Sunday, so we can’t go cockling. Because it will be hell with you glaring at me with steam coming out of your ears.’

‘It inna fair!’ said Beatie, crimson with wrath and tears. ‘Granny said if I didna behave sweet and kind to you she’d give me a look. And if it inna any better than the one I got ten minutes agone, I dunna want to live to see it. And she said I wasna to give as much as a hint to Dovey that you’re mooning over my brother Judah.’

‘If you’d hurt Dovey that way, then you don’t love Dovey as you say you do,’ said Abigail sharply. ‘You just watch your tongue, because I for one am sick of it.’

Beatie turned to her forlornly. ‘Well, I ken it is sharpened both ends, but your ain inna much better, Abby, all said and done.’

‘What did Granny say to you,’ asked Abby, ‘to upset you so?’

‘She said,’ confessed Beatie forlornly, ‘that on Sunday Judah would know for true whom he loves, and oh, Abigail, I’m afeared it might be you.’

For one moment Abigail’s heart filled with bliss. It blazed up and it was gone, she did not know why. All she felt then was a premonitory sadness, not a child’s disappointed sadness, but something sterner and more adult. But this was not a thing about which she could speak to Beatie. It was as private as love. She knew now why her mother had been silent all those years about her hurt and loneliness.

‘Well, then,’ she said composedly to Beatie, ‘at least we know that Sunday will be a fine day and we’ll go cockling.’

‘Will you promise me, solemn, that you won’t let Dovey get hurt?’ pleaded Beatie.

Abigail thought about that. ‘I can’t promise it any more than Granny can promise it. But I don’t want Dovey to get hurt in any way, and that’s for true.’

Beatie considered this. ‘Verra well,’ she said grudgingly. ‘But I’ll keep my eye on you. Sharp!’

Dovey prepared them a picnic basket. Her excitement over the beauty of the day, the pleasures in store for them, the feast of cockles they would have that night and on the morrow, seemed almost as if, lame as she was, she frolicked with honest joy at the thought of someone else’s good fortune. Inside her Abigail felt a bitter humiliation. If Judah thought of her as a child, as Beatie had once said, Dovey thought of her as even more of one. Even if Dovey had guessed her love for Judah, she had no jealousy towards her. But perhaps she didn’t know. Gentle and good as she was, she was not as sharp-witted as Beatie or Gibbie.

Abigail gave Dovey’s bride chest a spiteful kick. But that made her feel she
was
a child after all. Heavy at heart, she went down the crooked stairs and through the shop. Mr Bow had banked the great open fire, as he always did at night. A downy blanket of grey ash lay over the winking, slow-breathing fire that drowsed in the depths of the immense log at the back of the chimney. Once a month a log was hauled with chains through a little trapdoor specially built in the side of the house next to the fireplace.

Mr Bow sat on the bench beside this sleeping fire, his hands dangling between his legs. Abigail bade him good-bye but he did not answer.

‘I’m not gey happy about him,’ confessed Judah as they went through The Cut and over The Green. ‘His spells are more frequent, there’s no denying. But there’s no drink in the house, and he’s amenable to Granny. Come now, Beatie, you’ve a lip like a jug. Cheer up, lass, all will be well!’

But Beatie was fidgety and capricious, running ahead of them through the empty Sunday streets, short with Abigail, impudent to Judah, sometimes sullen, sometimes curvetting and prancing like an urchin, vanishing down side lanes and bobbing out at them again, until Judah caught her by the tails of her pinafore and said, ‘Will ye take hold of yourself, hen? I’m weary already of ye jumping about like a nag with a chestnut under its tail. Now, quieten down, for once we get in the boat you’ll have to turn into a mouse, and you might as well start practising now.’

Beatie meekly took his hand. They walked ahead of Abigail towards what she knew as Darling Harbour, but which The Rocks people still called Cockle Cove.

Occasionally Beatie turned round and glared at Abigail, as though warningly. And, when Judah was not looking, Abigail glared back, knowing what Beatie meant to convey to her.

‘Monkey-face,’ thought Abigail. ‘Blanky little watchdog!’

Several ladder-like wooden stairways ran down to the beaches and slipways below Miller’s Point. The beaches were littered with the refuse of ships – broken gear, rotted rope, rusty iron things half-sunken in the sand and gravel. There was a fearful smell of rotted fish and vegetables from a mountain of muck where the Pittwater boats that brought the northern farmers’ produce to the markets dumped their unsold cargoes. Children and old women rooted amongst this garbage for anything edible.

The little boat rocked in a foot or so of water. The girls took off their shoes and stockings and waded out. Judah was already barefooted.

‘Get in and be smart about it!’ he ordered.

Abigail and Beatie climbed in, and Judah pushed the dory off the sand-flat, running alongside till she was well afloat, and then jumping in and taking the oars. With a couple of strong pulls he had them out in deeper water. Cockle Bay stretched to the south, and beyond their bow were the headlands of the North Shore, bronze green and forested, with faint chalk smudges of domestic smoke drifting up from what looked to Abigail like isolated settlements. Only North Sydney seemed fully built upon, though it was eerie to see it without the Bridge’s mighty forefoot coming down upon Milson’s Point.

What took Abigail’s eye was not the majestic half-wilderness of the North Shore, which she had known as a twin city as tall-towered as Sydney, but the Harbour itself.

‘The ships, the ships!’ she shouted. ‘Hundreds … thousands of ships!’

For the Harbour was an inhabited place. Barges with rust-brown sails, busy little river ferries with smoke whuffing from tall stacks, fishing-boats and pleasure boats with finned paddle-wheels, sixty-milers, colliers, towering-masted barquentines with sails tied in neat parcels along what Abigail thought of as their branches – every type of vessel imaginable: huddled in coves, lying askew on slipways and beaches, skipping before them over the water, rocking gaily, or slowly and grandly, at buoy or wharf berth.

‘What did ye expect, then?’ snapped Beatie. ‘Cows?’

Abigail, entranced at the magnificent sight, scarcely heard her; but Judah frowned at his sister.

‘Whoa, now, lass, what’s wi’ ye? Is that any way to talk to a guest, and our own Abby at that? Mind your manners, I’m telling you!’

Beatie turned her face away, lip poked out, eyes full of angry tears, which Judah ignored. Abigail rose to her knees, crying, ‘It’s marvellous! I never dreamt it could be like this!’

‘Sit down!’ ordered Judah, ‘or you’ll have us all in the salt. Look overboard and see yon fellow.’

Abigail gingerly sat down, and looked where he pointed. She saw a large shark, with an eye like a willow leaf, cruising three metres below them. A cloud of sprats fled before it. But the green eye was fixed on the boat.

Beatie looked at the shark with a shudder and yet a certain satisfaction.