Skins (7 page)

Below, the women stood up. They hit out in frenzy, shrieking with bloodlust or perhaps it was anger or grief. Seals fell over each other. They met the men on the other side and were driven into the rocky corner. It always surprised Manning how quickly the seals moved. And from a distance they looked like sheep, following one another, galloping and bleating. Trapped. They turned, necks wobbling, teeth bared, spitting and red mouthed and roaring. One hit was often not enough. And he had to be quick. Three came at him at once. He swung wildly, barely able to recover from the last before he brought it down again, and again, and again, conscious only that it had to be hard. Those that escaped lolloped away, rolls of fat moving like jelly as their weight shifted from front flippers to back. Around him lay seals that been felled, grey bodies like stumpy tree trunks, sap leaking from their heads.

Seals that reached the safety of the sea bobbed up, straining back towards the island. Their pups, stranded, many motherless, called desperately. Johno reached into a crevice and pulled one out by its back flippers and threw it high in the air. Manning watched it arch over his head and as it did so its flippers moved and its body twisted and then it hit the rock, bouncing a little.

The men moved between the mounds, skinning them quickly. Some were still alive, blowing bubbles through bloody nostrils. Manning was always faintly uneasy with the pink body that remained. Especially the eyes, which appeared larger and blinked. He didn't look around. The women followed, hacking off flippers and slabs of meat that would be wrapped in canvas and hauled across the water to the boat. Mead picked up the thick coil of rope that at one end was secured to the bow of Anderson's whaleboat. When Mead raised his arm, the men pulled the bundles of skin and blubber through the surf. They had to be quick for soon there would be sharks.

When the foam took on a pinkish hue and the boats were loaded, the sharks began to circle. Anderson steered the boat in. Luckily the swell had dropped off and there was no wind. But the storm was close. And as they moved out into the open sea, using only the oars, thunder rumbled in the distance and spears of light flickered above the mainland.

January 1886

Remember our first summer at the Sound. How we were flattened by the sun and the wind that would gust dryly from the north. How our eyes would itch and the hot air was so hard to breathe. We would bring water up the hill to the hut so we could dampen lengths of canvas to hang in the doorway and the windows. But by the time we finished putting them up, they would be dry again. In the afternoon the trees were still and the birds sat quietly. The bush twitched and rustled with the rasping of cicadas. And then if we were on the other side of the hill, for sometimes we took the trail that wound around and down towards Possession Point, there would be a whisper of a breeze that would touch lightly the beads of water on our foreheads. And the fresh scent of the sea would revive us.

Middle Island 1835, Dorothea Newell

Men's voices on the beach woke her. She crouched before the opening of the tent and watched as their dark shapes launched the whaleboat. She thought for a moment that the
Mountaineer
's whaleboat was leaving without them. But then she saw Anderson and his men. They were preparing to go sealing. Some of them, including her brother Jem, followed Anderson over the rocks. One of the men was turning back towards the camp, his coattails blown from behind by the wind. She recognised him. It was William Church. He had spoken to her briefly on the deck of the
Mountaineer,
saying that he had noticed her small posy of blue flowers pinned above her chest. He told her that it was a rare colour for flowers.

The beach was bare and through the crack in the canvas it looked less forbidding than before. Leaves that were slightly damp stuck to her knees. She pushed her hair off her face and coarse grains on her hands scratched her skin. Behind her, Matthew and her sister slept. He lay on his back, mouth open, black whiskers and hair flecked with sand as though he had a skin disorder. When he was asleep his face softened and he looked as though he might have been kind. The dark spikes of her sister's eyelashes rested in a gentle curve on her pale skin. Her breath was light and even.

Dorothea crawled from the tent, her boots and shawl under one arm. She straightened and felt the moist breeze on her face and noticed the faint smell of smoke. Her head felt heavy and a place behind her eyes ached. She sat down to put on her boots and then decided against it. There didn't seem to be anyone about. She walked through the low scrub to the beach, barefoot and hair loose down her back. When she reached the sand she stood still for a moment, letting it seep between her toes, a thick liquid that caressed and tickled the sensitive arches of her feet.

Her skirts rustled and billowed behind her. She noticed the pause and then the crash as the waves broke on the beach. She decided to walk away from the camp to the other headland, which trailed out into a thin strip into the sea. Just off its point was another low-lying island. For every few steps she took, another wave broke.

She had sometimes escaped to the beach at the Sound. Their home was on the hillside facing away from the sea. Surrounding it was bush, dense with robust tall trees that shed their bark. One day she found a thin trail that led to a horseshoe bay where her feet sunk into wet grey sand. She discovered that it was comforting to wander along its shoreline because it was neither suffocating like the bush nor empty like the sea. It was somewhere in between. When she turned around she would step into her footprints and follow them home.

She remembered the day she and her family had arrived. Father leading them from the landing along a dirt track between lumpy lime-washed huts thatched with reeds and people standing in front of their canvas tents tending their fires and staring with an expression she didn't recognise. Later she realised it was smugness for what they already knew.

Before reaching King George Sound they had spent a week in a tent on the beach at Fremantle. There their father had learnt that all the town blocks of the Sound had been taken. So when they arrived he borrowed a horse and a cart from a man called Digby. He led the horse while Mother followed, carrying William on her hip although he was too big for her, the wet hem of her skirt trailing in the dirt. Dorothea and Mary walked behind their mother. The others sat without speaking on the back of the cart, too tired to take the last steps of their long journey. As they climbed higher the bush grew thicker. They left the little cottages and the half-finished huts and tents behind. The smell, which she had first caught on the wind as the line of the coast grew nearer, became stronger.

It was thick like honey. The noise of the bush surrounded the sound of their footsteps as they scuffed the dry dirt. Turning back towards the sea, the horizon unravelled emptily. And the bush to the east and to the west was so much of the same that it hurt her eyes.

The wind blew her hair forward on her face. She tucked it behind her ears. Holding it with one hand she knelt down to a clump of seaweed in front of her. A shell the size of her hand shimmered in the sand. Silver ripples that changed to pink and green when held at different angles to the light. She turned it over. On the other side it was coarse and brown. She reached the end of the beach and watched the waves roll over a reef a little way out. Breakers quivered as they came to full height. Briefly they offered a glimpse into another world. Too soon a foamy film came down like a blind and the wave was reduced to a ripple at her feet. Hair whipped her face but she didn't feel it. She breathed deeply and her mind felt clear and whole. She was not afraid any more.

The air was heavy in the hollow behind the beach. Flies crawled over plates left in the dirt. Dorothea and Mary gathered them up and the pot with gravy congealed on its sides. The flies swarmed over their heads. They heard the snapping of branches as someone pushed their way through the undergrowth on the other side of the clearing. Both stopped and looked. Dorothea flicked a fly from her face. Bush tops swayed.

‘Tis only that man, Church,' she said, relieved, as he emerged from the wattle.

Later she made tea and brought him out a cup. He took it with both hands. She sat on a stump a short distance away. The hem of her gown, which was torn and beginning to fray, was smudged with black dirt. She rested her chin in her hands and stared into the bush. She could feel his eyes on her and she wondered what he saw. A pleasant-faced woman who was slightly soiled, or perhaps he just wondered why she wasn't married. He would think she had nice hair for they all thought that. And her eyes too, they were green like her grandmother's. She was strong with good shoulders and well-shaped arms. But her gown was her mother's and she spoke badly. Eventually he turned away. Her eyes followed his to the raven in the branch above them. Its blue-black feathers glinted as it hopped from one level to another. More black birds circled under a threatening sky and landed heavily on nearby roosts. Their eyes flickered.

‘They're smaller here than in England.'

‘Are they?'

‘Which is surprising really since everything else seems bigger.'

Dorothea nodded slightly. She knew what he meant. It wasn't that the trees were any bigger or anything like that. It was just that the distances were greater and there was so much less in between. There was a feeling of weightlessness, of not being anchored anywhere. And in England people lived in towns and villages or on farms. They didn't live surrounded by forest unable to see what might emerge from it. It was that hemmed-in feeling she hated, and not knowing what lay in the bush that drove her to the beach.

Church looked at her again. She knew he was trying to think of something to say so she asked where he was from.

‘Northamptonshire. My father was the squire at Brackley.'

‘Our grandfather was a farmer near Elstead in Surrey.'

He nodded for her to continue. She shrugged.

‘He lost all his land after the war.'

Mary threw away the twig she was using to scrape the sides of the pot. She got up and disappeared around the side of the hut. Church crossed his legs and uncrossed them. Dorothea rearranged her skirts. Surf rumbled in the distance. He sighed.

‘I have never seen more barbarous-looking fellows.'

Dorothea smiled thinly.

He continued: ‘Pray tell, what is a swell's son run out?'

‘A gentleman's son who has spent his fortune.'

‘I see.'

Dorothea pulled at a thread that was fraying the edge of her skirt. She wondered why he wore a black dress suit for travelling.

‘I bought land on the Swan River. The men who said it was farming land were … were thieves. I brought seeds and plants from home. It would grow nothing. I'm sorry, you must excuse me.'

He blew his nose hard into his handkerchief. He had a long narrow face and pale eyes that protruded.

‘So what did you do?'

‘I decided to go to Van Diemen's Land. They tell me it is just like England. And I have an uncle there. Farming.'