Skins (4 page)

There was no money in the new colony but that didn't stop Matthew from wanting to sever his ties with the man who had brought him from England. All of sudden he noticed other indentured servants abandoning their masters for land of their own. Although he couldn't afford it, he wanted to be able to say that he was no longer a servant of the Resident Magistrate's household. Jem, his new brother-in-law, told him the stories that he had heard down at the harbour. Of where there was money to be found. When the captain of the
Mountaineer
sailed into the harbour offering for just three pounds a passage to the east, Matthew was easily persuaded. While they were preparing to sail, Dorothea decided to go with them. She hadn't wanted her sister to leave and neither had she found work after her mistress's husband died of consumption. And Captain Jansen had offered her a free passage. He had also promised to buy her a gown.

Dorothea looked up and watched tufts of cloud arch over the endless blue. One passed over the sun and suddenly it was cool. They gathered up their shawls and put on their bonnets. As they retraced their steps Dorothea, who was walking ahead, untied her bonnet again. Mary caught up with her.

‘What are you doing?'

‘I don't want it.'

The ties were crisp with salt and had rubbed a sore under her chin. She threw it into the bush.

‘But you can't.'

Dorothea came around the side of the hut and almost walked into the man who had directed them from the beach. Mary bumped into the back of her. Dorothea wished now that she had kept her bonnet. At eye level was silver fur and hard black skin. She looked up. He had a purple scar under his eye.

‘You found the well?' His voice sounded in his chest.

Dorothea nodded.

‘Get some water for tea.'

The sealer turned away. She stood there for a moment clasping her hands, squeezing them until they hurt and then letting go. Mary nudged her. They peered through the doorway into the kitchen. The room was full of eye-watering smoke. A long trestle table stood in the middle. Along each side of it was rough wooden seating. The air was heavy with a strong rancid smell that reminded Dorothea of the stench of dull-eyed fish at the end of market day. The floor was paved with lumps of granite that had been dug into the black dirt. There was a doorway into another room. But they didn't go through it. Dorothea reached for the poker that hung at the side of the fireplace and stoked up the fire while Mary went to fetch the water. She looked over her shoulder, half expecting him to be standing behind her, but he must have gone through the other doorway which was shielded by a piece of canvas.

Just before the sun disappeared, golden light edged the scrub at the top of the sandhill and softened the men's harsh features. Some of them sat on tree stumps and logs, while others sprawled or squatted in the dirt in front of the verandah. A small fire spat and crackled in the middle of the clearing. Occasionally one of them would lean over towards it and take out a stick to light a pipe. Flasks of drink were shared and the sound of their voices rose and fell like the waves, which could be heard, more loudly now, crashing on the beach.

Dorothea and Mary watched the Aboriginal women tend to a pot over the fire. Although the air was dense inside the hut, they preferred it to the atmosphere outside and the voracious stares of the men. One of the black women added dark bloody meat and a vegetable that looked like a yam. The other two chopped and sliced at the other end of the table, their breasts swaying against their dusty bellies.

Dorothea found their nakedness disturbing. She thought that they should wear clothes like the natives at the Sound. It made them less like savages. She remembered the day the black women were given their red flannel dresses. She had been on the shore with Mary, looking longingly at the clothes worn by the women who had just arrived from England, when a wooden crate was lifted off the pilot boat. It was hacked open there on the landing and they could see it was full of red fabric. They were told it had been sent by a group of English society ladies and a duchess to protect the modesty of the natives. Later that day the black women were rounded up and brought down to the harbour. They came in small groups, some shrieking with laughter and others giggling shyly as they held up the dresses and inspected them closely. A few put them on. The magistrate told them that they had to wear them if they wanted to come into the settlement for tea or flour or sugar. When the women left, Dorothea remembered thinking how strange it was to see flashes of red between the trees as they slipped back into the bush.

Occasionally the two women at the end of the table looked up but just as quickly they turned away again. Dorothea tried to catch their eyes. After a while she looked at Mary.

‘Are you hungry?'

‘I think so.'

The last time they had eaten was in the whaleboat. They had shared bits of mouldy biscuit between nine of them. Now there was just a knot where Dorothea's stomach was. But the juicy smell of meat stewing caused her mouth to moisten and the knot to unravel.

She mused, half to herself: ‘What is it, do you think?'

The sealer entered and glanced over.

‘Tammar stew.' It was hard to read his expression. ‘I taught them to make it. They use the wallaby on the island. They call them tammar.'

Dorothea looked at Mary and then back at him and asked: ‘What are their names?'

He stared at her and she wished she hadn't spoken.

‘Who?'

‘Their names.' She nodded towards the fire. ‘The women,' she added almost under her breath.

He walked over to the tallest of the three and grasped her short matted hair. He turned her to face them.

‘Dinah. Say hello to the fine English ladies.' His tone was sarcastic.

She glanced up briefly and mumbled something.

‘She can speak like you if she wants to.' He gestured with his other arm. ‘This one's Sal and that's Mooney.'

Sal giggled, revealing a wide white grin. Mooney looked at the floor. Dinah continued to stare ahead at some point on the wall behind them. At that moment Matthew, Mary's husband, appeared at the doorway. He looked around and then went to stand behind Mary. He placed his hand at the nape of her neck, his eyes on the other man. Mary looked down at her hands, which were clasped tightly on the table. No one moved. Dorothea watched an ant as it crawled along the edge of the table. Matthew straightened.

‘I'll be outside,' he said.

The light in the room had dimmed. The sealer appeared as a shape in the other doorway. He had put on a shirt with sleeves torn from the shoulders. It hung over the animal skin wrapped around his hips. He reached for a lamp that was hanging from a hook on the wall. He placed it in the middle of the table and filled it with oil. Lit, it illuminated his broad forehead, shadowing his eyes and deepening the lines that ran down the side of his nose to his mouth. He had shaved with his sealing knife, leaving behind a few shiny dots of congealed blood on his neck and at the back of his skull.

The black women left and they ate their meal undisturbed. Pushing her plate away, Dorothea reached across the table for her sister's hand. Her eyes glittered in the light of the lamp as she looked back at Dorothea.

‘How do you feel?'

Mary shrugged in a way that suggested even that was an effort.

‘Jem said there is a tent in the trees near the beach.'

They stood in the shadow of the verandah, looking out to the clearing. Three men sat against the trunk of the eucalypt, legs stretched out in front of them. Some were lying in the dirt having unrolled their bedding. The sealer was talking to a man they hadn't seen before. His beard was long and thick, an animal-skin cloak around his shoulders. He was sitting with legs bent, arms resting on his knees. One hand clasped a clay pipe, which he used now and then to stab the air. He used the other hand to tug at his beard. They were both talking in low voices, heads close together. The man with the beard glanced over at Jansen and stood up. He walked to the edge of the clearing where another small fire burnt healthily. The Aboriginal women were squatted before it. Mooney poked a stick into the coals. The man leant down and took her arm. He pulled her upright and led her towards a bundle of skins beside the wall.

Their brother left the fire and walked towards them.

‘Jem,' Dorothea called out softly. ‘Jem.'

‘Bleedin' Jesus, Sis, you give us a fright.'

‘Can you take us to the tent?'

‘It's through there.'

‘Please Jem.'

They disappeared quietly through the trees. Dorothea looked back. The thin pale trunks of the paperbark trees glowed in the moonlight. They half circled the camp and looked like silver bars. She hurried to keep up. Through a gap in the bush she could see the beach. The wind had dropped and the silky sea unfolded towards the mainland where a path was lit by the moon. Near the island it rippled silver and dispersed into flashing bits of light that caught the top of the waves as they swelled and tumbled onto the sand.

Jem said something to Mary that Dorothea couldn't hear.

‘I said I'm going out tomorrow with Anderson.'

‘With who?'

‘The sealer.'

‘What for?'

‘Sealing, what do you think?'

‘Are they all going?'

‘Don't know … that James Manning told him I wanted to work. He says he'll pay me when he takes a load to the Sound.'

Jem left them in front of the tent. It had been erected beneath wattle trees that were bent over by the wind. From the entrance they could see the edge of the rock that led out towards the headland and to the beach. She could see that they would be sheltered from most weather and they were fortunate tonight for it was warm. Wattle leaves covered their floor and smelt musty. They would sweep them out tomorrow but for now they used the loose canvas from one side for a mat. Taking off their shoes they lay down, covering their bodies with their shawls and lying close together for comfort.