The Clay Dreaming (61 page)

The central aisle of a massive arcade extends forward. Flooded with light, the long hall appears hollowed out, eviscerated. Cast-iron roof supports high overhead are long ribs draped in Nottingham lace. Gate open, he walks the Grand Avenue. Long rails run left and right, festooned with meat hooks. A forest of fresh carcasses hangs there, orderly as a plantation. Bare stalls, either side, heave with more of the phantom flesh, torsos and limbs hacked into prime joints and manageable portions. Huge bins brim with hearts, livers, strips of kidney fat, carefully folded. Severed heads are neatly stacked. All of the bright
white tiles and gutters have been hosed clean. In the midst of this most polite of slaughterhouses, men whose stark overalls are soaked in drying blood sit down to a hearty meat breakfast.

Stone-cold dread knocks at Brippoki’s liver. Stripped flesh exposes bone, a pointing-bone that curses. The thin finger of a corpse, scraped clean, jerks knucklejoints in balled wax. The murderers mouth with their sticky lips. Chanting, pointing, they rise from their feast table. Brippoki’s soul grows mad with fear.

Slip-sliding on the slick surfaces, his legs collapse in a tangle. Fallen on the floor, thick with blood and sawdust, he cannot at first will his limbs to move, not for the hurt and ache in his head or the energy drained from his body. Inclined to sleep forever, he instead rolls back over onto his feet and forces himself to rise, knowing the alternative.

Being boiled, burnt alive, dragged by the heels behind carriages – in the shadow of Old Bailey rise the gallows and the stake.

Sticky with blood, some his own, he daubs the walls as he passes. Back into the open, day for night, Brippoki staggers deeper into this butchers’ quarter.

Dizzy with pain, he lashes out to either side with his
waddy
. From every cellar and basement comes the chunky sound of cleavers, hatchet blows rained onto chopping blocks – the bellowing, roaring, bleating, squealing of every condemned man and beast. Blood gushing, they gurgle and shudder, not dead – forever dying. The gutters foam red, stench terrifying.

The darkness smiles to see the fatal wounding.

Defenceless out in the open, Brippoki seeks refuge, away from the boiling vats of glue, and the air thick with feathers.

He escapes the jaws of death into a No Man’s Land, the mouth of Hell.

Between Holborn Circus in the north and Ludgate to the south, road, rail and bridge construction runs the gamut.

Plagued by the sweats, he sways at the fringes of great earthworks. Layers of earth, peeled back, reveal the Lowerworld beneath: timber supports, a mess of pipes and shaft holes, seemingly bottomless – a steaming pit that casts a devilish glow. Flexed toes and digging heels struggle for purchase in the turned mud. These tracks he cannot hope to cover.

As the ground grumbles and shakes, the hellish light glares fiercer. Darts of flame sear the blackness. A multitude of carriages follows, each so hot on the heels of the other that they almost touch. Screeching to a stop, the metallic centipede vomits out damned souls, then bores a new tunnel. These shells of men do not linger but march mechanically on, disappearing into the surrounding gloom.

‘I fell down a dreadful steep hill,’ dreams Deadman, ‘and came with great violence against an iron stanchion.’

Brippoki backs off. He rolls in the sand and mud, quite deliberately, letting it stick to the blood and feathers until quite numb.

Deadman, in His sleep, in His dreams, He comes for him.

Scrambling, springing, frantic, Brippoki maintains his course for the river, the piercing Serpent, crooked Serpent. A wild longing has seized him, an unseen power.

Flame lick around the mouth of Ludgate. The air, hot and thick, fills with the drone of angry bees.

Liquid fire flows along the gutters, jumps up all around. It lights up the night, illuminates the bellies of huge birds. As overheated windows pop, a rain of glass shards slashes his skin. He dares not any more look up. Falling beams, explosions; Brippoki hears the whoop and scream of thousands engulfed in maelstrom.

The city, the whole city is afire.

The bells ring backwards, from St Barts the Greater, St Mary’s and St Bride’s…a babel, confusion of voices…

Wall and ditch, fluke change of wind; Brippoki runs for cover. Stumbling, writhing, climbing – what impulse drives him?

Naming is the province of the Ancestors, the binding act bringing them closer. Only Named, may one be Known.

He must discover his True name whilst still
Wilyaru
, or else stay lost forever.

The Piebald Giant, crowned in black cloud, glowers over all. An inscrutable colossus, stirring, He heaves His head and shoulders free. The entire dead city destroyed, another is rising up through it.

The fronts of the charnelhouses grow dark. Brippoki casts aside the firebrand, a burnt-out stick, reduced to charcoal.

He sees the light. Crackling air and rolling thunder, he alone is darkness in a city turned to light. The clashing of swords, the trampling of hooves, is replaced now by a sound even louder – the rumble and roar of engines, blasts on innumerable horns, and squealing brakes. Chariots rage in the streets, flaming with torches, jostling one another in broad streams – torches, running like lightning. The earth shakes underfoot.

Weaving through this new traffic, Brippoki runs for the river, where gates open and the meat-and moon-palaces dissolve.

Huge angry moon behind him, the waterhole in front, he seeks the snakehead of the Great Serpent Thames to defend him –
Parramatta
. His shield is of red, his warpaint scarlet.

‘Black friars!’ shouts a warning voice. ‘Blackfriars!’

Meteors run, cross their javelins. Brippoki teeters, poised in that same spot he has ever stood – on the edge of forever, the threshold of an empty page, with anger at his back.

Brippoki turns.

A gigantic black nail fixes him to the spot, and from out of that darkness leers forth a Great Head, shrouded in mist.

It is come – it is there with him, right in front of him.

Blank eyes burn, ablaze with cold fury – inhuman, insane – face, to his face, hideously marked and screaming blood vengeance. The eyes are of haliotis shell, whites gleaming malevolence – nostrils flared, chin jutting, the large wide-open mouth breathing hot fire, devouring.

Deadman reaches for him, closer, clawed hand clasping, bone finger grasping, and with His touch, darkness and death. Brippoki shrivels up like grass.

That roaring sound now deafening, the net pulls taut. Brippoki’s fevered eye takes one last look. The lights of the city quiver on the water, far below.

A burning crown lights up his head.

Panatapia
, red hill rising – his chest distends. Silent, from nowhere, an invisible spear released from the pointing-bone comes sliding out his front. He tastes blood, from the heart, in the mouth – he resigns himself, run out.

An instant later, an eternity, the barest perceptible outline shows in the space where he once stood.

Surging currents flush the colour of blood.

Brippoki cannot move. Conscious of what goes on around him, he is being put into a hole in the ground.

He is
Kertameru
, an infant, placed in a hole his mother has dug for him, in the dirt, where he must remain. The hole is shaped like a basin, at such an angle that he cannot easily crawl out.

‘Sit along this hole,’ she says to him, ‘until I come back for you.’

And secure in this simple impression, he passes out of mind.

Gnowee
, the sun, peeks over the horizon, still in search of Her lost son. He sees the light, and whence it flows, and in it, his joy.

Nothing grows here, nothing walks – the empty earth, pitted with hollows, wants for the water of life. And yet the Clay itself is imbued with the essence of all things, every man, every creature, every invention that will ever be. All aspects of life are seeds therein. Hidden just below the surface, they slumber.

Wichety-grub man, Honey-ant man, crying out their names, call on them. Sun, moon, stars come bursting forth, each with the immortal cry, ‘I AM!’

Snake man, Cockatoo man, and in the sky, Southern Cross. As with the bloom after sudden rainfall, the frogs that have buried themselves emerge. The city comes alive in rivers of nectar, clouds of seed, the fish, the insects, the flowers and feasting birds. The landscape is not dead after all, but as the desert truly is – Dreaming.

Honeysuckle man, Bandicoot man, and he, they are lying in the cold embrace of earth. At the last he knows his True name. His golden hair glitters like a spider’s web lit by sunrise. He is ageless, a young man who will never be old.

A dweller in the earth, he stands proud alongside them all, and sings the World into being.

London is covered over within the net of his sacred song.

‘Larkin,’ the man said, ‘Sarah Larkin. Hello. You were at Went House, although we were never formally introduced. Charles Lawrence.’

He jogged forward down the front steps of the lobby; extending a hand as if to shake hers, before thinking twice. Immediately Lawrence noticed the dark circles under her eyes, suggestive of late nights, perhaps more. Tall and thin, spare of figure, she was possessed of that sort of beauty not so readily apparent. Rather, it bore study – or else crept up unawares.

‘It is…a pleasure to make your acquaintance,’ he said.

He looked at her slightly askance.

‘We could wish for better circumstances,’ she said, her voice cracking.

‘Where is he?’ she asked. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t wish to be rude, it’s just…’

‘Of course,’ said Lawrence. ‘Follow me.’

He led her away from the cab-stand, up the steps, through the arched passageway of Guy’s House, and into the hospital.

‘They made contact with me yesterday to tell me he had been found,’ he said.

‘And me,’ said Sarah, ‘this morning.’

The doorbell had rung a number of times, the past few days, but she had never answered.

‘No,’ asserted Lawrence, ‘that was me. I sent for you…sent word to you.’

She turned her head to search his face, searching hers. A thousand questions crowded all at once – yet the most important had been asked.

‘He drifts in and out of consciousness,’ said Lawrence, striding ahead. ‘But a number of times now, he has mentioned you by name.’

He held open a double-door for her, assessing her frankly as she walked through. The object of his attentions swung around to face him too suddenly. They exchanged slight but honest looks.

‘My name?’ said Sarah.

‘“Thara”,’ lisped Lawrence – almost suggestively.

She looked away.

‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘…that’s it.’

Mild, distracted, she appeared somewhat dismayed at the rush of bodies all around them. They walked together in silence across courtyards between buildings, along corridors that seemed interminable, and with every ward they passed she hesitated, as if half expecting to be directed into it.

‘How did you – ’ she said. ‘I mean how did you know where to…?’

He too paused, to produce a crumpled paper from his pocket.

‘He was carrying this,’ said Lawrence. ‘One of the few things he had on… uh, had on him.’

The envelope bore her address, in Dilkes’s handwriting. Tucked inside, her fingers felt something alive. Sarah jumped. She fished out a fetish, bound with twine and tiny feathers, a glue of some sort, and made with her own hair.

Lawrence had mercifully averted his gaze to allow a moment’s privacy; still, she again caught him looking at her, sideways on.

‘He places great stock in you,’ said Lawrence.

They gathered quietly by the bedside.

Sarah gasped to see Brippoki’s cheekbones, the surrounding flesh sunken. No longer coated in ash, his skin had nevertheless taken on its pallor.

‘Where did you find him?’ she asked.

‘Not I; some young mudlarks,’ said Lawrence, ‘and lucky that they did, else the river would soon have claimed him. Found his body by first light…stretched out, deep in the mud, just about as far in as he might go. The mud had almost closed over him by the time they pulled him out.’

‘When?’

‘Monday, towards low tide,’ said Lawrence, ‘beneath Blackfriars Bridge, so I’m told.’

Sarah ceased to look the prone body over, and raised her eyes to his, in wonder.

Lawrence shrugged. ‘Perhaps he fell,’ he offered.

Sarah no longer cared what anyone thought. She moved in closer, to examine Brippoki’s face. A burning fever consumed him from the inside out.

‘They cleaned him up,’ said Lawrence. ‘No bones broken, but sickly. Once the stink of mud was removed, they bled him. He raves a bit, every now and
then…moves his legs slightly, as dogs do when dreaming.’ Lawrence watched her brows crease, and her soft lips as they parted. ‘His brain is inflamed, they say.’

Brippoki’s eyelids flickered open. Sarah moved to a position where he might see her.

‘Conscious,’ cautioned Lawrence, ‘…but not lucid.’

‘Have they fed him?’ she asked.

‘He refuses all food.’

‘But they have made the attempt…? Pass me some water.’

She gestured behind, without looking at either Lawrence or the jug and glass on the bedside table. He obliged. Ever so gently she tipped some of the liquid to Brippoki’s lips.

Lawrence warily eyed one or two of the passing staff. He said, ‘Do you think you ought to…?’

‘Someone ought to,’ insisted Sarah.

Brippoki knew her; she saw it in his eye.

‘Hello,’ she said.

His jaw worked. She gave him more water, drew in closer: the noise of the ward, the moaning from the beds and the troop of shoes back and forth across the bare boards, was fearsome.

‘
Pringurru
,’ Brippoki gasped.

He was struggling to remove the covers, exposing his bare flesh; Sarah hesitated to help. He rolled over, arm bent back, pointing to his lower flank. She could not see anything – no wound, nor mark.

‘I…I don’t…’

His hand feels for his
min-tum
, the cord worn round his waist. Finding it gone, he panics. He falls back, urgently miming – a young woman plaiting a cord of kangaroo hair, passing the line around her head once, taking care to fix the knot in the centre of her forehead. The line then goes around his body, a second knot placed where the spear went in. Flapping wildly, his hands stroke his flesh towards that same point to show how to force out the bad blood.

Lawrence stepped forward.

‘Miss Larkin,’ he said, apologetic, ‘he’s delirious…’

Sarah ignored his protests. Brippoki’s hand drew a line from his waist towards her mouth. He made loud sucking noises.

‘Oh, really. NURSE!’ Lawrence cast around for help. ‘Doctor? NURSE!’

He took Sarah by the shoulders. She shook him off, even as she took a step backwards, almost into his arms.

Brippoki’s face distorted horribly, hands flying about his fretted lips. His sheets, kicked about, were in disarray.

The figure of the matron overtook a junior nurse, hanging back. She took firm hold of the patient, forcing him back down on the bed. At her touch, the air instantly seemed to go out of him. All imprecation ceased, Brippoki went limp as a rag doll, limbs dangling.

‘Fetch Dr Wilks,’ ordered the matron.

‘He’s just coming,’ came the nervous reply.

Sarah stared dumbly at the lace doily on top of her cap, atop her bun, at the tassellated brooch at her throat.

Dead fish eyes turned on Sarah and Lawrence; fell on Sarah’s black dress.

‘Miss Loag,’ said the doctor, and smoothly took over.

Matron marched around to their side of the bed. ‘Come away,’ she said. ‘You have him agitated.’

Well aware of Lawrence’s discomfiture at her back, Sarah stood defiant. Brippoki had been asking something of her.

‘It will do his chances of recovery no good at all,’ Lawrence hissed in her ear. ‘Come away.’

At that, Sarah meekly obliged.

‘He hasn’t his right mind,’ said Lawrence.

Maybe so.

He escorted her outside. They walked around the park, an enclosure within the middle of the hospital complex. It was cloudy, but humid, and late in the day.

Wishing to alleviate Sarah’s distress, Lawrence clutched at straws.

‘With the help of the surgeons, he may yet recover,’ he said.

‘“And prove an ass”,’ she replied. Her features softened, not wishing to seem unkind. Lawrence marched, virile, she working to keep up. A good man, if not especially handsome; his sad and sorry face seemed a stranger to laughter.

‘How is the team?’ Sarah asked.

‘In Hastings,’ said Lawrence, a tad curtly.

In his absence Norton captained the team; the press had been told his hand was injured, ‘a very nasty crack on his finger, which will incapacitate him from playing for some time.’

He discarded another in a rapid succession of lit cigarettes. A lively creature filled with character, Sarah Larkin seemed now that much calmer than he – intelligent, and without the need to show it off. Even by London standards her complexion was remarkably pale, quite unlike the frazzled damsels of Australia. These otherworldly looks attracted; an echo of home.

‘It surprises me that you know Cole,’ he said.

Her grey eyes were drops of seawater.

‘As a friend,’ she said, ‘only recently, Mr Lawrence.’

‘Please,’ said Lawrence. ‘Call me Charles.’

He wore a muffin hat over fine, straw-coloured hair. Pale-suited, his unpressed trousers looked as if they had been slept in, or rained on, or both. His jacket, equally shapeless, was all pocket, straight up and down. Sarah sensed considerable force held in reserve: baggy casual clothing did little to conceal the team captain’s muscular frame.

His hands, strong and tan, looked empty without a bat to clutch.

Lawrence caught her looking.

‘He is…difficult,’ Sarah confessed, ‘to understand.’

Some folk might think Brippoki slow, but his thoughts ran silver-quick.

Lawrence merely nodded. Among a group of men at best difficult to know, King Cole had always been one of the most remote.

‘This may seem odd to ask,’ she said, ‘but is anyone with you from New Zealand?’

‘No,’ he laughed. ‘That was a misprint.’

Mystified, she tried again. ‘So the word “
rangatira
”…that means nothing to you?’

Lawrence’s weathered cheeks turned a whiter shade of pale.

Once news of their plan to take the team to England had reached the ears of the Board – the Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines – the Melbourne newspapers had regularly published letters of protest. As a result, the authorities in Victoria had sought to put an end to their touring: the waggon ride to Warrnambool undertaken so that they might smuggle the team into neighbouring New South Wales.

On the 22nd of October last they had gone to Queenscliff, ostensibly for a day’s fishing. Near to the mouth of Port Philip Bay, their little rowboats had come alongside the steamship
Rangatira
, out of Melbourne. The coastal vessel then took them on as steerage passengers up to Sydney, whereby they were spirited out of the colony and, a few months thereafter, the country.

‘No,’ said Lawrence, ‘nothing.’

Her fierce eyes saw through him, bright and clear.

‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled.

They were beckoned back into the block designated Hunt’s House, to where Brippoki lingered on the ward.

‘Our intent was to relieve the pressure on his brain. Although we have opened the veins of both arms as well as the temporal artery, he has not recovered. I believe it is only a matter of time.’

The doctor introduced himself as Samuel Wilks. The hospital chaplain, he informed them, had performed the last rites. Aside from nursing staff, a second man of middle age lurked nearby. Crooked and furtive in posture, he wore a white coat liberally splashed with blood – disconcerting enough, yet he also carried about what appeared to be a chunk of flesh, set in a small dish, which
he would occasionally raise up and examine under one of the T-stalk gas-lamps dotted throughout the ward. Now that the natural light was fading they had all been lit, lending the scene an oddly festive glow.

Brippoki lay supine and unresponsive in the bed, as if merely awaiting the end to come.

He is standing among a crowd of children, looking down at a man laid in the mud. Then he floats a few feet above their heads, the heads of his friends,
Nei
-Thara and Lawrence. They sit together beside a
wirkatti
, a bier or burial platform, the body of a blackfellow sleeping between.

Taking a closer look at the body they attend – enveloped in cloth, rolled round and tight – he sees it is the body he occupied in life. Why, then, do they not wail and bloody themselves? They better have laid his head towards the east…

Two stranger males dressed in white step across. Facing each other, one stands at the head, the other at the foot. They are talking quietly among themselves. He decides to stay a while, and visit with them.

‘Did he move?’ said Sarah.

Lawrence stopped talking.

‘He looked at me.’

Brippoki looked first to one, then the other of them. They huddled in closer, shoulder to shoulder. With a weak smile, he approved.

‘What did you say?’ said Sarah. ‘He said something. What did he say?’

Lawrence sat back. He told her, ‘I think he said… “Mate”.’

Brippoki started, ever so quietly, to sing.

‘What are those,’ asked the doctor, ‘more nonsense words?’

His songs all sung he is weary of breath. He feels himself drawn away, a sensation something like flying. His vision closes in, growing dark. Willingly he leaves behind all the kindness and the cruelties he has known.

Brippoki fell silent. The others looked to Dr Wilks, who leant over to check.

‘He has fallen asleep,’ he said.

Sarah and Lawrence exchanged an uncertain glance.

‘By which,’ said Wilks, ‘I mean the long sleep. The stream of life has stopped.’

Lawrence threw down his cap. ‘I can’t wait to quit this country,’ he snapped. ‘In Australia, a spade is called a spade and death is death!’

It was true what they said: that you could never go home again.

‘My sentiments,’ said Dr Wilks, ‘exactly. But straight talk is unpopular.’ He indicated a quotation, framed above the bed.

‘Are you willing to tend to the formalities immediately?’ he asked.

‘I am,’ said Lawrence.

Wilks began to dictate aloud to the registrar. ‘Entry for 24th June, number…?’