The Clay Dreaming (50 page)
Authors: Ed Hillyer
Thursday the 18th of June, 1868
‘Arrived in London once again
His gold he freely spent
And into every gaiety
And dissipation went.
But pleasure, if prolonged too much,
Oft causes pain, you know,
And he missed the sound of the windlasses,
And the cry “Look out below!”’
~ Charles ‘The Inimitable’ Thatcher,
‘Look Out Below’
Brippoki is on the move, heading eastwards, out towards Bow Marshes and the lower Lea Valley. Dampened bunches of green weed, piled and tied atop his head, serve both to keep him cool and as a natural disguise. He weaves through the long grasses, leaping the occasional ditch, body low to the ground to prevent him being seen. Here and there sit fishermen – idle spectators who do not concern him.
Beneath his laboured breath he hums, almost wordlessly, to the tune of ‘Captain Jack’s Song’. ‘The European food…the pease… I wished to eat…I wished to eat.’
Expectation fills his mouth with saliva. Brippoki, low on energy, is tired of chewing on fern root. Roused from his torpor, only the thought of wild honey dares him sufficient to risk exposure in broad daylight.
Quarry sighted, he skids to a halt, hand clutching his chest in sudden pain. Ribcage tight, he collapses back, to lie in the long marsh grass – mouth working, like that of a fish out of water. Brippoki heaves a dry and gasping cough, and, for a while, lies supine in the grass.
Against a backdrop of deep blue, the pale ghost of
Mityan
hangs suspended in the clear noonday sky, more than three-quarters consumed by shadow.
Brippoki, recovered, crawls on his belly over to the nearest water pool. He drinks his fill, then loads his mouth, and rolls over onto his side, where he remains completely immobile – as if one dead.
Presently a bee approaches, poking about the marsh flowers. Hearing its unsteady hum, Brippoki holds his breath. The bee passes high overhead, examining the scene, and then closer, first to one side of his head, then the other.
Buzz-z-z-z
. Brippoki flickers not an eyelash. The bee hovers a moment more then turns, a change in its tune signifying that it is about to drink. The instant brother bee touches the surface of the pond Brippoki spits out a powerful jet of water. Seizing the stunned insect by the wings, he attaches a wisp of white goose feather with a spot of his own blood.
Let go, the bee makes for the hive with an angry drone – marker slowing it down, and making it easier for the eye to follow.
Brippoki’s face, shape only just recovered from a previous beating, was a mass of angry lumps.
‘You’ve been fighting again?’ asked Sarah.
She saw similar swellings over much of his body.
Brippoki the hunter looked sheepish. ‘Bumblies no sting in the World,’ he said. ‘Bee is our pren.’ He raised a rueful sounding lament. ‘Not bloody here. Here him bloody
lolly
pren!’
Bloody fine friend, he is, an English sort of bee: she was finally becoming attuned to his patter.
‘They attacked you?’ said Sarah. ‘Why would they do that?’
His indignant expression transformed into one of delight.
‘Bumbly choogar!’ Brippoki crooned. ‘Climb it tree, nice honey-stuff liket choogar!’
His flickering tongue protruding hot pink between swollen black lips, he resembled some species of lizard or black-headed snake.
Sarah laughed. ‘There’s tea on the table,’ she said, ‘milk and “choogar”. You can spoon as much of it as you like, without fear of injury.’
She sat and watched Brippoki happily sort among the tea set, serving himself – just like a bee at a flower. What complexity of thought might even now be whirling within his skull? If she only knew how to frame the question in such a way that it would not drive him away.
Brippoki sat obediently at her feet.
She fumbled with her notebooks for a while.
They exchanged mute looks, both equally expectant.
Did Brippoki fear mention of Druce’s name, Sarah wondered, simply because he was dead? There seemed no easy way for her to recap events, and so she leapt straight in.
‘This next part,’ she said, ‘has been slow going.’
The manuscript had reverted to that same untutored hand from its very beginnings, rife with deletions and corrections.
‘Also, there is also a portion I did not read yesterday.’ Was it only yesterday? ‘A departure from the main narrative…similar to when he was attacked on the Hospital ward, you remember? His account,’ said Sarah, ‘appears to leap forward, to somewhere after 1810, presumably, when he is stranded back in England, the country at war with the Maori of New Zealand…’
Sadly, this had been true for most of the century.
Brippoki nodded, and appeared to follow. ‘Here it is, then,’ Sarah said.
The petition of George Bruce to the Right Honourable, the Lords of Treasury of the Royal Navy:
My Lords, necessity compels me to address this honourable assembly with the horrid event that awaits the Petitioner’s stay in this kingdom. That is, he shivers to say, my Lords, that sooner or later he shall stretch forth his hand with violence on the body of someone or other of the uncultivated people, for the constant assaults he receive from the lower class of people in the streets daily.
Some calls him a ‘Man-Eater’. Another says he is ‘The Devil’. And others call him a traitor to his country. And this is because he don’t satisfy them all with the marks in his face.
My Lords, he wishes to inform this honourable house of the Treasury that he is the same unhappy wretch that has been raving in the streets of London like a madman, all through the insults he has received from the lower class of people and which he daily and hourly meets with in the streets, go where he will, about the marks in his face.
The original text had been corrected from ‘my’, and ‘the marks in my face’, into the third person.
Therefore he trusts in God, that he will incline the hearts of the rulers of the United Kingdoms to take his miserable existence into their consideration, and states his wretched life to His Royal Highness so that a speedy removal may be ordered for him from this nation to any of His Britannic Majesty’s isles in the South Seas, where he did his duty in His Majesty’s Ships for seventeen years on discovery.
My Lords, should it meet with the Petitioner’s Sovereign’s heart to grant him his request, the Petitioner wishes to exhort the grant of a small bit of land as a settler, or there to be returned to New Zealand where he should be ever ready to serve his King and country in anything requested of him on that island. O my Lords, should neither of those great favours be granted to the Petitioner, he, in the name of Christ Jesus our Holy Grand Master, humbly begs your pity for him and that my Lords will at least entreat His Royal Highness to send him out of this kingdom. With fortitude he will take his lot with the convicts by the first conveyance. For his life is a burden to him in this nation. O that the powerful God this day may strike the hearts of
every one of the British Empire with affection and pity for one poor creature amongst millions, whose soul and body is wracked by the loss of a harness, and distant from his child as his self-infamy.
The text at this point had virtually collapsed in on itself, requiring much puzzling to piece together any sense from it; unsurprising, perhaps, considering.
Please my Lords, to observe, my Lords, he is a cripple by the loss of two fingers of his left hand, which he lost in His Majesty’s service, so that he cannot ship himself. Petitioner adds no more, but with eager hopes of happiness waits with patience for an answer. I will be in duty bound.
All excepting the word ‘pray’, the remainder had been struck out, although she had been able to make out some of the deleted words; and the closure, ‘your humble petitioner, George Bruce.’
Putting down his cup and saucer, Brippoki crooked the little finger of his left hand and tweaked the air, like the lobster in his pot, an action that seemed to amuse him.
‘
Mal-gun
,’ he said. ‘
Mal-gun
.’
‘Other stray words,’ said Sarah, ‘were scribbled in the margins…’ She bent forward to consult her own notes. ‘The solitary word “young”; intended perhaps to go with another, “child”?’ Although she had nothing on which to base their juxtaposition, the singular isolation suggested something inexpressibly sad.
Brippoki instantly launched into a frenzy of urgent mumblings, whispered incantations repeated over and over. Sarah, in no mood for it, could only make out the phrase ‘man-eater’, and also, she thought, ‘young child’ – but that could just as easily have been her imagination.
Brippoki clapped his hands rapidly together.
‘Very good!’ he said, his face expressing the complete opposite.
A loose-leaf sheet fell from between the pages of her notebook to the floor: the official Navy list of ships on which Druce had served, forwarded by Dilkes. Bent forward to retrieve it, a sudden breeze stirring her hair caused Sarah to raise her head.
Brippoki crouched within the frame of the open window. Limbs folded, muscles tensed, he struck various fleeting attitudes. His wide and staring eyes gave exaggerated looks, white orbs aglow within his black face. A few more tics and bobs, and the frame stood empty.
Silent as a ghost he would arrive, and silent as a ghost he had departed.
She could have said something. Sarah sat a while longer, then rose herself to shut the window.
She returned to her notebook. Keen to attend Lubbock’s lecture, she had rushed that afternoon’s transcript, and events were not clear in her head. Even though she had lost the wayward Aborigine for an audience, Sarah decided to read the text back to herself.
I then entered on board His Majesty’s Ship
Porpoise
, where I arrived in England, 1810. The war was hot, so that no account was took of me, nor New Zealand, at that time.
I was sent from the
Porpoise
to the
Thisbe
, where I lost my two fingers.
After my wounds was well, I was drafted to the
Kangaroo
, another of His Majesty’s Ships. From this ship I was invalided in 1812.
I then went to Limehouse to lodge at a distant friend’s house, where I remained till my money was all gone. I then consulted what I should do for a living. I told my friend of my intent. He highly approved of it. I then went to His Majesty’s miniature-drawer and paid him four pound for drawing mine. My friend lent me money, and as soon as my portrait was down, my friend told me to take it to a man whom he knew to frame it. I asked the man how long he would be about it. He told me a week. I returned to my friend’s house and told him what time the picture would be done. All this was done in order for me to exhibit myself in the country to get money.
But, O horrid to relate, better for me had the wild beast eat my flesh and drink my blood before ever I had entered that man’s house. For, while I was waiting for my portrait being framed, a man came and invited me to go with him to spend the evening. My friend knew the man and through his persuadings only I went with the stranger. His name was Tucker. Well shall I remember it to my death.
I went with him to Bow, where he called for brandy hot. In a short time I was quite senseless, in which state I remained till the next morning, when Tucker’s apprentice boy told me to my face that I behaved so bad with him that night in bed that he was obliged to quit the bed and sleep with the servant girl. My friend and Tucker see with what horror and shame I was struck with at this dreadful report. I was motionless for some time. I could not utter a word. But Tucker, knowing the horrid state I was in the overnight when he put me to bed with the boy, and as there was no harm done but the attempt, told me to think nothing about it, promising me at the same time before my friend’s face it should not be mentioned. But my friend Wheatley told me I had better leave that neighbourhood for fear the boy should spread it. And, as I was senseless with liquor when it happened, so I could not prevent him was the report false. I took Wheatley’s advice and left his house that day.
Men with men working that which is unseemly
. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans hinted at such mysterious perversions, sufficient to intrigue.
Sarah shook such thoughts from her head. She read on.
At my departure from Wheatley, he gave me a glass of rum and freely forgive me the trifle of money I owed him, and Tucker gave me every blessing his soul possessed. I took my departure from Limehouse and went to Dovert-street central London, where I had frequented at all opportunities with a woman of the town from the first hour I arrived in London.
At the appointed time, I went for my portrait. The man told me my friend Wheatley had obtained it, by telling him I sent for it. I then was fully convinced of the most abominable scheme that they had laid for me at Limehouse, to get rid of me and to obtain my portrait, to enrich their selves by hanging it up in the parlour to create custom. It was a public house that Wheatley kept.
In a short time after, I left Dovert-street and went to Lambeth, where I took lodgings. A few weeks after, I met a man in the street who asked me if I knew Duaterra, the New Zealander. I told him I did, and that I was the person who recommended him to Captain Moody on board the
Santaner
at New Zealand.
The man then told me that he was gone out to New Zealand, through the recommendation of Dr Gilliam to the society in London. He also told me that if I went to the said Gilliam, he would do all lay in his power to send me out, as it was my wish to go. I immediately went to Dr Gilliam, who received me with great hope and joy of making me happy, not only in this world, but in that to come. He introduced me to Mr Lancaster and Mr Lancaster introduced me to Mr Fox and all the committee, where every attention was paid to me, till Wheatley my cruel friend, to acquit himself of the ingratitude with which he had used me, came to the school in my absence and told Mr Lancaster the same cruel lie he raise of me at Limehouse. At my return to the school, Mr Lancaster told me to go out and never to come there any more. I went to Dr Gilliam, who told me if I had been in my senses when it happened, he would that day enter an action against Wheatley. I took my leave of Mr Gilliam, fully to go and take the life of Wheatley that night. But on my return to my lodgings the parlour was full of gentlemen waiting for me, so that I did not leave their company till four o’clock in the morning. I told the gentlemen all my pedigree. They gave me money. This stopped me from taking the life of Wheatley.
Soon after, I went to Chatham, where I was employed in the dockyard till Admiral Young came in the yard. I then entered with him. I was sent to His Majesty’s Ship
Ceres
. From her to the
Namur
and from her to the
Tower Tender
, where I remained till the war was over.
