The Clay Dreaming (34 page)

Sarah felt somewhat reassured: Brippoki’s people were not completely without ceremony.

She read on deep into the afternoon, until her enthusiasm began to flag. So little mention was made of the Aborigines. Even the description of Leichhardt’s own native companions never went beyond the names ‘Harry Brown’ and ‘Charley’. And then, just at the point when she was about to give up, finally they made their appearance.

Near to a river, the sound of a stone tomahawk was heard. Guided by the noise, Leichhardt and his party discovered three black women: two digging for roots, the third perched atop a gum tree. These emitted dreadful screams on seeing the strangers approach, and swung their sticks and beat the trees as if it were wild beasts they were attempting to frighten away. The two diggers immediately ran off, and nothing could induce the lady in the tree to descend.

The next time they approached a native party, Leichhardt sensibly quit his mount. Horses were not indigenous to that country any more than the cattle they drove with them; even the wild Bush creatures did not know how to interpret them at first sight. And yet, despite precaution and their own superior numbers, the tribesmen fled as before. Blackfellows, it seemed, could not bear the sudden sight of a white man.

The Aborigines appeared a gentle people. On one occasion when the white camp was surrounded, and might easily have been taken by force of arms, the trekkers kept them in good humour merely by replying to enquiries in respect of their true nature and intentions
.

And yet, as it turned out, the spirit of exploration was far from Leichhardt’s only motivator. Over the course of their travels he had gone about naming and claiming the natural landscape for his many sponsors and supporters. Commercial interests underwrote almost all of his botanical notes regarding the suitability of pastureland for cattle grazing, and ultimately settlement. He had been commissioned to assess the lie of the land with an eye to its future development.

Leichhardt, in summation, confidently declared: ‘We shall not probably find a country better adapted for pastoral pursuits.’

Fully aware of those who would come following in his footsteps, he proceeded in total ignorance of those who already walked the open country before them.

The natives apparently considered that same loamy black soil most especially favoured for ploughing to be the work of an evil spirit, ‘Devil-devil land’. The fertile country they perceived to be under enchantment was seen – perhaps correctly – as their curse.

Sarah felt queasy, a knot deep down in the pit of her stomach.

When the natives suddenly attacked, she was almost ready to admit their actions justified. Following the swift and bloody death of Mr Gilbert, however, she felt the immediate sting of remorse. The spear that terminated the poor man’s existence entered the chest between the clavicle and the neck, but made so small a wound that, for some time, Leichhardt was unable to detect it.

The colonial authorities equated the shock of the party’s sudden reappearance in Sydney ‘to what might be felt at seeing one who had risen from the tomb’. Few had expected them to survive their year-long trek through the interior – as indeed not all did. Thus, their adventurous spirits were commended among the land’s first conquerors, by whose ‘peaceful triumphs’ an empire had been added to the parent state.

Sarah closed up the book, and returned it to the shelf.

Four o’clock. Intent on preparing Lambert something extra special for his evening meal, she quit the library early.

Moving to close the window, Sarah froze. The sill was still filled with crumbs.

‘No birds came today,’ said Lambert. ‘They sense…my mortality…come.’

Sarah took what was merely the delayed end of Lambert’s sentence as an instruction. Moving obediently to his bedside, she laid a hand to his dear head. Very aware of the age in his face, she attempted to smooth out the creases. ‘I am sorry,’ she said, ‘that you don’t feel well.’

‘The machine is made to wear well,’ he said. ‘That it does not, is my own fault.’

‘No…oh, no.’ She lightly stroked his white hair. White. It had been grey before. Even that vestige of colour had gone out of it, and she had not even noticed.

For a time they fell silent.

‘There was another report,’ announced Lambert. He reached across to retrieve the newspaper from where it had fallen. ‘The Australian Eleven…have played another engagement.’

The relevant page was thrust into Sarah’s hand as if an urgent bulletin – and, in a way, it was.

‘Read it!’ he said.

‘“June eighth–ninth,”’ she read. ‘“Australian Eleven versus Sussex.”’

‘Not to me, you trout!’ chided Lambert. ‘Read it for yourself.’

The fifth match of their tour already. The popularity of the team as both novelty and draw was undiminished: Hove played host to the largest number of persons ever seen on that ground at a cricket match. A galaxy of beauty and fashion, so the article read, had graced the subscribers’ marquees. Their scarlet shirts distinguished by coloured sashes, the Aboriginal team’s form was remarked muscular and full of vigour, although several were noted rather sluggish between wickets, which was felt surprising, given their energy in other respects.

‘Johnny Mullagh played something fierce again. It says that, doesn’t it,’ encouraged Lambert. ‘You can read it out to me if you’d like.’

Sarah obliged, smiling. ‘“Mullagh,”’ she read, ‘“by the way in which he opened his shoulders at the commencement, showed that he meant mischief”… “at the tail end were Peter and Dumas, the latter being run out for one, and he certainly did give Peter pepper for it, and no mistake.”’

Eyes popping, her jaw dropped.

‘What is it?’ asked Lambert.

‘Nothing,’ said Sarah, blushing. ‘It… I swallowed a fly, or something. I’m all right now. No, thank you, I’m fine. I’ll carry on.

‘“Young…”’ She hesitated, disbelieving even as she read the words. ‘“Young King Cole then went in, and scored three off the first ball. He and Twopenny were in for a considerable time, but the merry young soul was ultimately bowled.”’

Sarah reached across the bedside table, pouring herself a glass of water from the jug she replenished twice a day.

‘A fly, you say? Silly trout,’ said Lambert – fondly this time.

The probability that Brippoki had resumed his touring was one Sarah hadn’t even considered. In retrospect it made perfect sense: he couldn’t possibly have strayed all this time in neglect of his other engagements. How foolish!

She cleared her throat.

‘“Eight guineas and a fob watch”,’ she read, ‘“awarded to Johnny Mullagh on the ninth of June, 1868, with the inscription
Presented to J. Mullagh by the gentlemen of Sussex for his fine display at Brighton
.”’

‘Yesterday, and today,’ enthused Lambert, ‘the Blackies have been playing at Ladywell, versus Lewisham. And on Saturday, the M.C.C. at
Lord’s
!’

Sarah worked hard to show no reaction.

‘“By cricket”,’ he declared, ‘“are the prince and the peasant united.”’

Saturday, at Lord’s – did she dare?

Later, all of her chores done and a light supper served, Sarah again sat with Lambert. He seemed lost in thought, or else skirted the verge of sleep. She pretended to read a book, meanwhile listening for sounds from the floor below. Lewisham was not so very far distant.

‘…muscular…and full of vigour…’

‘Father?’ said Sarah. ‘Did you speak?’

‘I was young once,’ he said. ‘Only the once.’

‘And I have seen the picture that proves it!’ she said.

No response. Lambert had drifted away again – if ever really there.

God’s plan:
Go forth of the ark, thou.

‘No birds came today’…

A dove, but black. God’s plan.

It was late. Very tired, Sarah lay in bed, staring at the ceiling in place of stars.

‘Australia Felix’ was the Promised Land, her wild beauty unspoiled…and then exposed.

Sarah tried very hard to picture the country Brippoki had left behind. She had seen it described as a land of limitless horizon…

There was a vision worth dreaming of.

Bunjil Ting-ting
, one, two times, two times, two, two more – very many,
Bool-tha-bat
.

Dead of night swallows one last echo, the final strike of the tolling bell.

Riverside, open sky, hunted moon. Plenty shadow, more plenty light. That good.

Sky dark. No dogs, no piccaninnies. That bad.

The wide dark stream glides far below, blacker even than sky. Moonlight shivers on the troubled water. Shipping idles, the trees on the water, a dark forest silent by night.

In the distance, the Piebald Giant watches over all.

Ice-cold fingers steal through hair at the root. Across the bridge ghostly horse-men ride in file. They shimmer, unstable: in the half-light, by the sliver of moon, the tall buildings and distant hills show through them. The fall of their ghastly hooves makes no sound.

At length the bell sounds again, a single toll.

That prickling sensation returns. Something prowls the outer dark. The subtle hunter stalks; forever present, always just out of sight.

Wide eyes sweep the gloom, aching for the new day’s piercing diamond – fearing the glimpse of a greater darkness, finding form in darkest hour.

The vault of sky turns a deep, dark blue. Dawn comes.

Less than a mile downriver, on the south shore, the stale piss-stink of tanneries fouls the air. A moat of stinking sludge encircles a bleb of housing, so tightly it oozes a poison. The open channel, a wound knit by a dozen or more wood-scrap bridges, fills with every high tide. 

The sun’s first rays striking the sides of their dens, the native islanders emerge. As bugs scuttle to ground after the lifting of a rock, they gravitate
river
-
wards
. Cloaked in oily rag, wreathed in smoke, their movement between houses is hard to track. All along the shoreline, the blackish dots congregate –
gins
and
lubras
mostly, from near-infant to decrepit crone. They roll their trousers and bunch their skirts, as if eager for a swim. Clustered about the various stairways leading down, impatiently they wait for the churning waters to recede.

Tide running low, they scatter along the exposed mudflats below the wharves, in either direction. Submerged to their ankles, they begin to feel their way forward with their feet. On both sides of the river, scores of bodies, mired,
knee-deep
, wade into the shallows, even up to their thighs. As outlying vessels become becalmed or beached, they struggle forward and disappear among them.

One youngster lifts another up, between barges. Soon she is on board, a little girl. She skips about the deck, knocking lumps of coal over the side into the wet mud. The older boy races backwards and forwards to scoop them up before they sink without trace. The girl in her big bonnet kicks over the wrong side from her brother, and he hollers and stamps in exasperation.

Eora
, this place, is a smudge, a swamp. Everywhere
ngamaitya
, toiling in the thick of Serpent’s cast. Wanting for grubs? Mussels?
Nung
?

Everywhere, dead people, washed up on the dead shore. They come from dirt, and they return to dirt – clay people, made of muck.

Lambert Larkin could taste his own tongue. His nostrils flared as he licked the air.

‘My mouth is hot and dry,’ he said, ‘as it is every morning.’

‘And I have brought you tea,’ said Sarah. ‘As I do, every morning.’

She laid down his breakfast tray and parcelled out the contents. He glared at her disapprovingly, as only a parent could, before his features softened.

‘You must learn to let me complain, my dear,’ he said.

‘Never.’

His appearance improved appreciably with his mood, as if having reaped the benefits of a good night’s sleep. Sarah opened up the curtains and then the window, quick to brush away the crumbs remaining on the sill.

Lambert professed a hearty appetite. ‘Today I shall eat all of the toast you can bring me,’ he said. ‘Crusts as well!’

It was indeed a beautiful morning.

Sarah proposed to sit in company a while. Lambert accepted. Once breakfast was cleared, rather than commune with the morning papers, he requested that she open the drawers of the far cabinet, and bring to him various specimens from his collection of natural phenomena: sea-shells, dried broad leaves, pine cones and so forth. Each of these items he handled gladly, turning them over
and over between his large hands. He ruminated with a soft and chesty rumble, exhaling gently.

‘“No longer dead, hostile Matter”…’ He looked to Sarah, smiling. ‘Nature,’ he said, ‘lends to our everyday a small portion of the eternal.

‘This pine, I picked up on one of my many high mountain walks, the same as with the small rock samples. I can recall precisely when and where each one came into my possession. Each one may be read, as easily as a book…and what’s more, learnt from.’

He handed her the pine cone. Sarah nodded, absently.

‘Every fragment of splendour means something dear to me, for being part of that greater continuity…’ Lambert held a shell aloft between the tips of his fingers. ‘Omni-potent.’ He pronounced the word carefully, as a separated compound, his eyes twinkling at his daughter. ‘This shell you see,’ he said, ‘comes from the shoreline near to Clovelly, in Cornwall, where your dear mother and I spent our honeymoon. The briefest of happinesses…’

Lambert drew a fingertip down the shell’s serrated spiral edge. Bringing it close to his gimlet eye, he lightly traced one of the crisp ridges which themselves formed threads of colour around its circumference. His fist closed lightly around the shell, and he kept ahold of it as he sorted among the other objects gathered in his lap.

‘All carries life within it,’ he said, ‘and is itself the meaning of life. Indivisible and one, just as you are, my dear…another link in the great chain which binds us to God.’

Sarah blinked and stared at the sea-shell. She took the compliment, but he’d never before made mention of their honeymooning, nor Clovelly. Her parents had been married ten years before she was ever conceived.

The pine cone resting on her palm, she examined the repetition of its form, neat and regular – the seed fallen close to the tree.

‘“We dream”,’ said Lambert, ‘“of journeys through the cosmos… Eternity…”’ He lost his thread. ‘Novalis,’ he said simply.

Age betrayed him. With not much to occupy his latter days other than thought, his penultimate fear was the loss of mind.

Sarah began to gather up the clutch of objects. They made the bed untidy, and she was scared they might roll to the floor and be lost.

‘You are Nature’s priest,’ she said.

‘Leave well alone, you fussbudget,’ he snapped. ‘Stop scrabbling!’

Roughly he slapped her hands aside.

She should have known better than to interrupt one of his raptures. Her real mistake, however, was in invoking Wordsworth.

‘There are no halves in Creation!’ Lambert stormed.

Jaw jutting, Sarah snatched away the last of the stray items.

‘With every age,’ he persisted, ‘man conceives for himself some new illusion regarding his relationship with Nature. This is especially true of poets.’ He leant his head to one side. ‘We may be part of God,’ he snapped, ‘but we are not
as
God.’

Shamed by his sudden burst of ill temper, the old preacher essayed humility.

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I promote ideas above their station. The work of
my
hand, I neither commend nor grieve. I do God’s work…’ Staring into his open palms, at the flexing of his fingers, he appeared to trouble in their reflex action. ‘It is all I know…’

Lambert fell silent. When he spoke again, his words were barely audible.

‘I didn’t hear you,’ said Sarah, flatly.

‘Put them away…’ he said.

Sarah retrieved the precious shell from where it had fallen. He seemed about to plunge into another of his monumental glooms, and she wished to catch him whilst still on the brink.

‘Oh, father,’ she said, ‘don’t be sad, not today. The day is too bright for you to be sad.’

Lambert inclined his face towards the open window and took in a deep draught. ‘You are right,’ he said. ‘I miss my life in the open air, that is all. I mean my former life…’

He sighed.

‘I pine.’

Father and daughter exchanged a brief smile.

Sarah envisaged manhandling him into a bath-chair, wheeling him down the several flights of steps, and fighting their way through crowded city streets in search of a park or a train into the countryside, or at least the leafier outer suburbs; all of it of course impossible, a madcap scheme.

She settled for clearing the mess the room was always getting itself into.

‘A beautiful summer’s day,’ mused Lambert, seeming sufficiently distracted. ‘Hot enough, do you think, to encourage the Aborigines?’

Caught out, Sarah stopped and stared.

‘You should go and see them play,’ said Lambert, ‘a proper match this time. Then come home and tell me all about it.’

Sarah returned to her tasking. ‘I couldn’t,’ she said, quietly. ‘It was wrong of me to leave you alone so much, before…’

‘You know I prefer it!’ snapped Lambert.

‘But…what if…?’

‘I will be all right!’

Sarah flinched.

‘I believe I am quite recovered,’ he said. His face was stone.

‘If you believe,’ she said, ‘then I must too.’

‘I am…glad you think so,’ he replied.

Sarah regretted sounding so peevish.

‘Will you go today?’ he asked.

Could she?

‘Perhaps…’

She would not leave him for an entire day. And it would take at least some planning. ‘Perhaps tomorrow,’ she said.

To go to Lord’s, and to see Brippoki again…was it really possible – and with her father’s blessing? She would pray for it.

‘Then let today be glad, also,’ said Lambert. He reached out a bare arm, fingertips skimming a ray of sunshine where it streamed into his bedchamber. ‘The air has warmth,’ he said. ‘Take yourself into it. I insist!’

Sarah laid down her burdens, took up his outstretched hand, and kissed it. That was all she had really wanted: to be set free.

‘Enjoy it,’ he said, ‘for my sake.’

She left the room.

‘Fetch me back, if you can, some small measure of eternity.’

Lambert Larkin let the mask fall. No longer secretive in his sorrows, he looked more deeply stricken than ever.

Before resorting to the Museum, Sarah took a turn around Russell-square in the noonday sunshine, happy, for once, to obey her father’s behest, as much as to act on his behalf. Strolling across the park, she picked him out a spectacularly fine leaf and, taking great care, secreted it within the folds of her skirts.

Naked beggar children splashed in the fountains. Buttoned up in sailor suit and pinafore, others stood protestant in the grip of nursemaid and governess. They looked daggers at their penniless cousins.

Her father had spoken of former life in the profound sense – the Garden of Eden, before the Fall, when mankind was content in its ignorance.

The weekend could not come too soon. As long as Lambert’s health held up, then, God willing, she might look forward to taking a trip.

Pale imitation at best, it seemed too great a shame to have replaced a rare blue sky with the vaulted dome of the Reading-room.

Moving Druce’s manuscript around the various bookstacks had developed into something of a nervous habit. This time Sarah transferred it between categories; from
Geography, Voyages, & Travels to Biography
. The previous classification had seemed appropriate only because of her familiarity with its content. A glance along the shelves from any casual reader – or worse, staff member – and the title they would see was simply
The Life of a Greenwich Pensioner.

Still in search of the Australian Aborigine, Sarah grazed the available stock in haphazard fashion. Rather than be bound by one man’s experience, or limit herself to any single, lengthy account, she elected to flit back and forth between titles, indices and cross references. The
Travels
section alone held more than 30 books concerning the crown colonies of Australia.

Amongst other things, Lambert Larkin had ever been a tireless antiquarian; Sarah inherited at least this much. The fanaticism for veracity lay at the very heart of her morality. In quest of absolute accuracy she would exhaust every available source of information, and hunger for those that she suspected beyond her reach. Only frustration with herself, with what she perceived as her own shortcomings, might slow her down.

Sarah utilised all of her skills, her practised eye and sharp practice. A promising reference in one volume might send her darting in search of another. Speed-reading, she quickly came to rely on a handful of names whose testimonies she returned to again and again – Captain Grey, William Westgarth, David Collins, the Messrs Jardine, and John MacGillivray – not admitting their opinions definitive, but the tools that she had to work with. She saw a copy of the
Journals
of Edward John Eyre, but this she purposely disregarded. The controversial ex-governor of Jamaica, Eyre had flogged, tortured, burned and hanged the slave descendants of that Caribbean island; only recently had he been returned to England to be put on trial for murder.

She cast him out of mind and sought to concentrate.

The available evidence suggested that there were coastal, marshland and desert Aborigines, each group differing from the others in terms of their physical attributes, degree of friendliness, and dialect most completely of all. Every tribe, no matter how small in number, appeared to have a distinct language of its own. In matters of custom and belief, however, all were broadly similar – insofar as their beliefs could be ascertained, which was not so very far. Beards, for example, found universal favour amongst full-grown Aborigine males; beardless men in European parties they met had been obliged to drop their trousers in confirmation of their sex.