Skins (2 page)

The whaleboat glided into the bay on the stiff breeze. There were nine people on board and it was low in the water. As it came closer, they could see that two of them were women. From the helm there was a shout and a man stood up, waving his right arm.

‘Oy! Anderson!'

Anderson gave no sign he knew him. But Manning knew that he did. It was Evanson Jansen, the captain of a sealer trader Anderson had paid in skins to bring him and his men to Middle Island. Jansen's cutter the
Mountaineer
had left Kangaroo Island fully laden with Anderson's whaleboat, skins, supplies and men, as well as Manning, and had dumped them all on the beach only three months earlier. Manning wondered what had happened to the
Mountaineer
. And it was clear that Anderson wasn't expecting its captain. Manning knew no sealer liked an unexpected visitor, no matter how well he knew him. Anderson stood, legs apart, holding the musket in one hand.

Manning stared hard at the women, realising that he hadn't seen the skin of a white woman for nearly two years. Their faces were pale, framed in tatty bonnets. The men leapt from the boat into the clear green shallows, some of them too soon since in parts it was too deep to stand. They splashed through the icy water and waited for the swell to propel the boat forward. Then they heaved it up onto the beach.

Anderson stood over the men who surrounded him. He held the gun across his body, the end of the barrel resting in his left hand. Manning saw Jansen glance uneasily at it and then clear his throat. Manning knew Anderson well enough to know he was angry. The sealer had made Jansen promise not to reveal his whereabouts to anyone and had given the man his best skins to keep him quiet. But Jansen had brought strangers to Anderson's camp. Manning recognised two of the crew from the trip over. And there was also another man who seemed familiar but he wasn't sure why. The others he had never seen before.

The captain of the
Mountaineer
reached into his pocket for a flask and held it up to his ginger-bearded face, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Jansen then spat, his pale, red-rimmed eyes looking out to sea.

‘We lost her at Thistle Cove. Anchors dragged and she ran aground on the beach.'

He turned back to Anderson and sighed.

‘We got off a couple of barrels, brandy and flour, then she broke up.'

Anderson's eyes were fixed on his face and Jansen looked away.

‘You'd have a good camp here, wouldn't you?'

His eyes ran across the top of the sandhills and to the thicket of trees that lay behind them. Manning followed his gaze. Anderson's hut was completely hidden from view. Jansen focused again on Anderson and the thumb that stroked the barrel of the musket.

‘We're just waitin' for the wind to change. And … well … there are women.'

‘The wind has changed,' said Anderson.

But all the same he looked at the women who stood clutching each other a short distance away, their bonnets screening their faces until the taller one looked up and met his gaze briefly. He turned back to Jansen and inclined his head towards the boat.

‘Well I ain't feeding you for nothing so you better find a way to pay me.'

Manning watched the men empty the boat. The one who was familiar caught his eye. Manning saw him untie the sail and fold it. He stepped back and walked around to the other side of the boat, letting someone else lift the sail higher up the beach. Manning thought he knew then who it was. The man he was thinking of was slightly built and had reminded him of a ship's rat because of his sharp face and small, dark, shifty eyes. The man reached down and threw something that landed at the edge of the granite where the contents of the boat had been unloaded. The other men lifted the whaleboat onto wooden rollers and brought it into the corner of the bay well above the high-tide mark. Manning realised he had been staring for some time and hoped that no one had noticed. He put his hands in his trousers where there had once been pockets and walked slowly up over the granite, trying to convince himself that it couldn't be the same person. The man with a face like a rat turned and watched Manning disappear over the headland.

When Manning reached the other side of the rock the work had almost been done. The women had boiled the soft white fat into clear oil. Some skins had been rubbed with salt and others would be dried. The men sat in a half-circle on rocks that poked out of the sand, cleaning their knives while the boy Jimmy took a bucket of water to the whaleboat and washed out the blood. Seeing Manning, they stopped what they were doing, curious to know who was visiting their island.

‘Twas Jansen,' said Manning to Isaac, who asked.

Isaac tugged at his long thick beard, straightening it. He looked over towards his woman. She was called Mooney because she had a round face. Manning could see her climbing over the rocks looking for shellfish. But her face wasn't round any more and he knew that the clear whites of her eyes were now tinged with yellow.

Manning had been with Isaac and three sealers from another boat when they took Mooney from the mainland near Kangaroo Island. Manning was told to keep his mouth shut while they waited in the bush. They grabbed Mooney as she passed and another woman who fought like a polecat. He felt for his ear where Isaac had cuffed him for letting her get away. Mooney had squirmed like a dying snake and the baby at her breast was torn from her and left in the dirt, screaming. Three men held her as they pulled and dragged her towards the boat. She wailed in a way that made Manning think she would summon a strange spirit to crack open the red earth. He had hurried to get into the boat. She sat at the stern facing him. Her head slumped forward. And as he pulled on the oar, blood from her nose dripped onto the wooden deck and into the water lying at the bottom where it swirled like thin red ribbon. He pulled again on the oar and peered over the top of her head at the line of breakers, which surged towards the shore. A dark figure entered the water. When he didn't come up Isaac and the others laughed. A couple of days later they said they were going to hunt kangaroo. Afterwards, he heard how they went back and took two men around the point and shot them and beat out their brains with clubs.

Manning didn't like Isaac very much, especially when he was in one of his moods. His eyes seemed to widen then and bulge, and the black bit in the middle stood out so that it looked as though he had fish eyes. They all kept out of his way. Usually he went after Mooney and bashed her. One time though he hit Sal by mistake and that's how he came to have a red knife mark along his cheek. For Anderson didn't like other men messing with his women.

‘Baccy Isaac?'

‘Son of a bitch,' said Isaac in the same way he always did.

Manning stood scratching his lank sandy hair for a moment. Isaac had never parted with any of his tobacco before but it never stopped Manning from asking. When he turned away he stubbed his toe on a rock. He swore under his breath. The boy Jimmy giggled. Manning swung around as though to clip him for laughing at him.

But instead he spat: ‘Little bastard.'

Isaac's eyes narrowed and he said to no one in particular: ‘So … Jansen's back.'

At the place where two rocks sat like stone tablets, leaning against each other, Manning met the young lad from Jansen's boat coming the other way. He had brown eyes, a protruding bottom lip that made him look a bit simple, and a thick lock of brown hair which flopped across his forehead. He seemed to be wandering aimlessly. But when he saw Manning he took his hands out of his coat pockets and grinned.

‘James Newell. Jem, most people know me as.'

Manning nodded. ‘Got any bacca?'

The lad pulled out a small bundle wrapped in oilskin from his pocket. ‘Yeah, I nicked it, when they was unloading the boat.'

Manning hadn't expected him to have any. It was just something to say. But he took it and they walked on until they reached the water's edge and sat down.

‘Where are you from?' he asked as his mouth flooded with saliva and diluted the bitterness. He looked sideways at the boy, eyes half closed. He thought they were about the same age, maybe the lad was a bit younger. He gave him back the rest of the tobacco.

‘Surrey in England. Came out on the
James Pattison
last year. To King George Sound. Me dad's a labourer.'

Manning grunted and spat.

‘What you doing with Jansen?'

The boy stared ahead at some point on the horizon.

‘Work. Van Diemen's Land.'

‘What? There ain't nothing at the Sound?'

Jem shook his head slowly and his hair fell over his forehead. He flicked it back.

‘Me dad … we done a bit of thatching and that. But it ain't enough to feed us.'

‘I heard they was paying good money in the west.'

‘When there's work,' said Jem. ‘But it ain't often and people stopped coming. Me dad he was mad when we got here. It ain't how it's supposed to be.'

Small waves rolled over the point, swirled onto the sand in front of them and then retreated, leaving behind little bracelets of foam. Manning spat a lump of tobacco-stained phlegm onto the rock where it lay glistening. He wondered what they had expected.