The Clay Dreaming (62 page)

‘Two One Seven.’

‘217…’ Wilks looked at Lawrence. ‘
Name of deceased?
’

‘Charles Rose,’ he replied, ‘alias King Cole.’

‘
Date of admission
,’ continued Wilks, consulting a chart, ‘22nd of June, number 814.
Age
?’

Lawrence looked uncertain. ‘Twenty-eight?’

‘
Ward
,’ Wilks looked around, ‘Stephen.
Physician… Date of death
, June 24th.
Disease
, acute pneumonia. Recommend post mortem.’

The other doctor moved a little closer, his face a rictus.

Sarah had to look away. Her eye went to the quotation overhead. ‘
While they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. (Acts
i:9)’ Others were hung above each of the beds in the place.

She was struck full force by the unspeakable nature of tragedy.

Brippoki was dead.

‘
Hour of death
… 9.30.p.m., near enough. Residence?’

Lawrence answered, ‘Queen’s Head public house, Borough High-street. Mrs Sarah Willsher, proprietor.’

Wilks flicked an eyebrow. ‘Temporary residence?’

‘Yes, it is. It is where we…’

Cole was dead.

‘…where I am staying.’

‘As for the mortal remains…’ Wilks gestured for the registrar to shoulder his form for the moment and turned from the bed. The twisted figure in the bloodied coat stepped further forward. ‘This is Mr Alfred Poland,’ said Wilks, ‘a surgeon doctor whose skill and science are indisputable…his dexterity and rapidity without equal…’

The fellow could not tear his avidity from the body in the bed.

‘Guy’s, you understand, is a teaching hospital…’ continued Dr Wilks. He placed an arm around Lawrence’s shoulder. ‘An important centre for the study of morbid anatomy. The specimen, speaking frankly, is unique, an opportunity…’

Showing the requisition slip, he unsheathed his pen. ‘Will you give your consent?’

Sarah stepped in.

‘No,’ she said. ‘His body will not be opened to exhibition.’ Turning to Lawrence, ‘We absolutely refuse.’

Aboriginal ideas of future happiness relied on proper rites of burial being performed: Brippoki’s paradise might well be denied him were his body no longer whole.

‘An inspection at least must be made,’ insisted Wilks, ‘if only to confirm diagnosis. That is the way we do things here.’

‘And it is when you apply theory of one sort to a problem of another that you receive nonsense in reply,’ said Sarah.

Her horn was of iron, her hooves brass. She stood firm.

Nonplussed, the doctor looked to Lawrence. ‘Do you claim the body?’

‘Yes,’ said Lawrence, newly inspired. ‘We do.’

Wilks sighed and turned to Alfred Poland. ‘Cover him up,’ he said. ‘I think we’re finished.’

Sarah, declaring a need for air, returned to the hospital grounds. Lawrence accompanied her. Seeking shelter from a short rain shower, they found a stone alcove – according to its plaque, part of the old London Bridge, removed in 1832.

Above them in the night sky, a pale moon trailed by a little the bright star Rex.

Sarah fixed her eyes firmly on the ground beneath her feet.

Lawrence reached into his pockets, only to find his cigarettes all gone. ‘Dammit,’ he said. ‘Excuse me. I keep wondering how it is that he ended up in the river?’ Of course he wanted to know where Cole had been all this time, but took her very presence for his answer, making it a question imprudent to ask. ‘And without his clothes,’ he said. ‘I fear he was the victim of a robbery.’

Many a poor soul, rolled for a shilling, was ditched in the black depths of the Thames.

‘Not a robbery,’ said Sarah, with some confidence.

‘I don’t believe he could have been merely drunk,’ said Lawrence.

She said nothing.

‘It’s so hard to maintain order, with alcohol around,’ lamented Lawrence. ‘And it always is. Publicans help arrange the fixtures, provide refreshments and our accommodation! Try as I might, I cannot keep it from them. They are every day in touch with cricket-lovers who think it kind to drink their health and chat, and the poor fellows are quite helpless to refuse.’

He started to pace back and forth.

‘When I remonstrate with them, they say to me they are not slaves and should have what they like in a free country. It is always the other gentlemen’s fault and they are just being friendly, which is largely true, so whatever else can I do other than forgive them, and keep hoping for improvement.’

He turned to her, in search of sympathy.

‘They behave very obedient,’ he said. ‘Will do anything to please me, and their best, all things considered. But the demon drink affects every one of them differently. Tiger likes a quarrel and wants to fight. Charley tends to sulk. Others play harmless games and tricks on each other, or endlessly profess their love for me.’ Lawrence showed a wan smile. ‘I became their professor before
we left Australia, so long as I promised not to develop anything they would tell me, and this had a good effect.’

He perhaps meant confessor, just as much; Sarah made no comment.

‘King Cole was such a regular fellow, and always good in attendance…’til of late,’ he mused. ‘That’s what I don’t understand.’

Guilty conscience kept his mouth running – and hers shut.

‘Dick-a-Dick has often helped us out,’ said Lawrence, frustrated. He resumed his pacing. ‘He’d make any Temperance Society a good secretary. Dick’s horror of drunkenness is such that he visits condign punishment on any of his brothers who indulge too much. And he lays it on strong, believe me. An awkward customer, when his blood is up.’

Lawrence sighed.

‘Hah,’ he said, ‘listen to me. These are just a few of the troubles we managers have to contend with. The schedule we have embarked on is gruelling.’

‘For you,’ said Sarah, pointedly, ‘more than them?’

‘For us all,’ said Lawrence.

Moderation might be best recommended, in all things.

He saw that she looked up at the window whereabouts the body lay.

‘He was peaceful at the end,’ he said. ‘Going gently, without a fight.’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘A good sport.’

Something in Sarah rebelled. ‘What umpire should he appeal to that is fair?’ she said. ‘It’s not always the best man who wins.’

Somewhere in the distance, a clock struck the quarter hour before ten.

‘It’s getting late,’ said Lawrence, ‘you must be tired, and wanting to get home. Shall I call you a cab?’

Sarah shrugged.

‘Once the king has gone from the palace,’ she said, ‘there is nothing to look at but walls.’

Lawrence didn’t know what to make of that.

‘I never thought of homesickness in quite those terms,’ he said at last.

She stood. ‘Does it really surprise you, so far removed from all they know, that he should perish in his pride?’ Her voice communicated surprising bitterness. ‘I ask you how they are, and you tell me where. And perhaps that is the same thing for them. If they are, as you say, constantly drinking, then it shows that they are poorly and depressed. He was separate from his brothers, as you call them, his only possible consolation.’

Lawrence thought of Sundown, and what little he had gleaned from him.

‘I believe,’ he said, ‘it was his choice.’

‘His choice?’ she said, surpassing bitterness. ‘To be here?’ Sarah looked around them, her voice breaking. ‘To end
here
?’

‘His ties were less binding than you might think,’ said Lawrence quietly. ‘His consolation, less.’

She waited him out.

‘He has ’istory, as the Blackies like to say,’ said Lawrence. ‘Except they don’t, if you follow me, like to say it. I overhear things…and those tend to hold more water.’

Sarah stayed on, her interest provoked.

‘
Wembawemba
, or somesuch…that’s a word, I believe, to say “half-caste”.’

Despite their standing so close together, and alone in the dark, Lawrence’s voice fell to an urgent whisper.

‘It’s no secret,’ he said, ‘or rather, it is an open secret…the settler communities have always had their “
gin
-men” or “combos”, white men who…who go with Aboriginal women.’ Lawrence winced. Some blackfellows, he knew, entertained ambitions in the opposite direction – Johnny Mullagh, for one. Fruitless ambition, he trusted. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘the practice isn’t confined to just stockmen or drovers. The middle classes also indulge.’

‘What is your point?’ she said.

‘White blood. And they whisper his grandy was no drover’s boy, either.’

‘It was his grandfather?’

She
was
smart. That gave Lawrence pause.

‘Father’s side, mother’s side, I really don’t know,’ he said, ‘but yes, I assume it a generation or two back. I mean, you couldn’t tell just from looking at him.’

She met his stare even as it narrowed. Half-caste, quarter, eighth – what did it matter? Perhaps everything.

She nodded her head, slowly.

‘It has turned chilly, don’t you think?’ he said. ‘Let’s walk on.’

Lonely for some days now, Lawrence felt in expansive mode. ‘There’ll be sad faces when I get back and tell the other lads the news…although I dare say they never acted overly fond. Not one has asked after him, even though he’s been missing for some weeks…’

‘Oh?’ said Sarah. That came as news.

He said, ‘They cut their hair and beards, you know, in mourning for the dead…’

She instinctively put up a hand, straightening her bonnet.

‘…and paint themselves in white.’

‘The Israelites did no less,’ she murmured, ‘in the time of Moses.’

‘Such is the curious belief they hang on to,’ said Lawrence, ‘even today. That white people are dead. Their own dead, in fact, returned to life. Although we have changed colour, we feel compelled to return to those same places we frequented, back when we were alive. When we were black. Does this shock you?’

‘Not…entirely.’

‘In early colonial days, they almost welcomed death…hoping to come back, loaded down, as we are, with guns, arms, and provisions.’ Lawrence clasped a weary hand to the back of his neck. ‘Except, the names of the dead,’ he confided, ‘must never be repeated. They refuse even to hear of them. I got into terrible trouble once, for mentioning Jellico by name – ’

Sarah caught him short. ‘You mean to say there have been others, before this one? Other deaths?’

‘Regrettably, yes,’ he said ‘…before.’ A rash of fatalities, in fact. ‘I was not always their captain!’

Sarah turned and stalked on ahead.

‘I have tried my best,’ he said, ‘to expose them to wholesome influences, generally.’

She had noted earlier the weakness of his chin.

‘The management,’ he was saying, ‘cannot be held responsible – ’

She rounded on him. ‘He was in our charge, Mr Lawrence. We let him down.’

‘No, Miss Larkin,’ said Charles Lawrence, ‘you are mistaken. He was his own man.’

Sarah turned aside. ‘“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.”’

Her liquid eyes would meet his no more.

‘So,’ she said, relenting, ‘what will you do now?’

‘Conclude matters here,’ he said. ‘Rejoin the team.’ Their next match was in Halifax, come the weekend. ‘Continue with the tour until our return to Australia. What else can I do?’

The ensuing silence was left for him to fill.

‘And you?’ he asked.

‘I shall go home, Mr Lawrence,’ said Sarah. ‘Isn’t that the best that any of us can hope for?’

Threshing her skirts, she bustled ahead.

‘May I walk you,’ he asked, ‘a little further?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I think I shall go my own way.’

The funeral would have to be organised, and shortly.

‘Shall I see you again?’ he called after her.

‘Goodbye, Mr Lawrence.’

Nothing was inevitable. Some things, however, were intended; and others simply never meant to be.

Lambert, who lived by the Word, had died by the Word.

‘…God.’

In closing his eyes, some time before dawn on the Monday, more so since, Sarah could not yet free herself from the links of heavy chain contained in that one word – the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost.

Why create an Eden, and then set within it a tree whose fruit was forbidden?

Why create deadly poisons, madness, disease, death and starvation; flies, rot and excrement; all the great and petty evils in the world. Why the Serpent, Lord of Flies, of Lies; lies themselves.

Why foster ignorance, attaching to knowledge such a dreadful cost?

In every Eden there lurked a snake.

Sleep on it. Sleep.

No rest.

Sarah reached over, fingers fumbling for a box of lucifers in the dark, striking, lighting the candle at her bedside, scrabbling for a pen, dipping it in the ink; eyes half closed against the pain of the light, scribbling herself a blind note, another in a series of notes; blotting, laying the pen aside, extinguishing the light, turning away on her side.

She turned and turned again in the bed, her mind racing, only to give in and reach for the matches again.

A sleepless soul, there could be no rest, no rest in a world where the one half of mankind was continually at the mercy of the other; if not at the mercy, then at the throat. 

 And even then, the halves were not themselves equal.

The grandfather clock in the hall chimed the half-hour, and, what seemed moments later, chimed the hour.

She had known for herself the thrill of omnipotence, experienced as a child – tempted, as Adam and Eve were, by the God of the Garden: alternately she would tear crumbs from a picnic roll until the pigeons clustered thick around, and then stamp her foot to make them scatter.

Why should the Father of Jealousy behave any differently?

Why, and why, and why, and why…

Her hatred of all that he stood for was the greatest mark of her absolute devotion.

She had been brought up in the absolute integrity of the Word. Covenants, of course, like shackles, were made to be broken. Should terms be disputed, cases lacking remedy in common-law courts sought equity from the highest Court of Justice, in Chancery – a place where, she knew too well, even an angel might be tried and found guilty. The only certain outcome was the loss of one or both parties, and a curse on both their houses.

Sundered from Mother Church, Father from Daughter Church, Godhead collapsed.

Was she not her father’s daughter?                   

Not Lambert; who had killed her mother for it.

Who was her father? Who was her mother?

…nothing but a body found floating in the Thames, homeless, and anonymous.

Had she more family, similarly unaware that she existed?

Of all the secrets brought to light these last few days, not knowing one’s relations was the hardest to come to terms with. She had thought she knew her mother, insofar as she could know her; past all dishonour, she was beyond judgement now; and Lambert, too. She did not care to think of who he might have really been, all that time.

But then, who was her father?

Another life kindled in her bosom, one filled with nothing but possibilities. Had she a sister? Had she a brother?

She surely knew better than to trust to dreamy hoping. This last month, for the first time in a long time – perhaps ever – she had begun to consider herself an independent object. She should not so swiftly wish away her freedom; so hard fought, and harder won.

Sarah stood at the front window, staring into the depths of the gulf. Only in hindsight could the costs be counted, of all the unwilling sacrifice made. Her frequent tears were as much of anger as sorrow. The grief she choked down only added to that growing knot of cold fury.

Sarah turned her back to the window, studied her shadow a while, and then eventually returned to the bed. In extinguishing the lamp and attempting to doze, she laid herself bare to fitful snatches of dream.

Druce on board the
Thisbe
(‘vile Wall’) waved a crab-like claw: his hand with two of the fingers missing – his wife and his child perhaps, whom he had abandoned, but was unable to leave behind.

She opened up the pages of the book containing the manuscript, only to find it filled with her own handwriting…

Sarah awoke with a start.

She listened to the night-time creaks and breathings of brickwork and floorboards, against the background hum of the city. She sensed the distances contained within them, between one another and from her self.

Phantom limbs could ever be felt, it was said, long after they were gone. The ache remained of what was lost.

The blood of prophets had been shed since the foundation of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zacharias. Our forefathers stoned the prophets, and we continued in the amiable custom, judgement not our own but that of other people. Her faith in God’s goodness had slowly perished, like Zacharias, in that gap between the altar, tomb of martyrs and marriage, and the temple, in which God resides.

She still believed, but could not forgive. God existed and God was evil – or at the very least oblivious of his creation, mankind; which amounted to much the same thing. She was wrong before, in her thinking: God resembled nothing human in thought or deed. The Australian Aborigines, according to Lubbock, had it more correct. Their Spirit Ancestors laid down the living Law, but in their own behaviours – murder, rape, cannibalism – set no standard for man. They were, in very essence, inhuman. And, unlike the gods of Ancient Greece, they neither solicited nor expected obeisance or worship. They were oblivious.

God was no friend to the Aborigine, but an unforgiving or rather uncaring deity. Hapless man was inherently good. The Christian God, meanwhile, relied for his benevolence on Original Sin – man’s inherent evil.

If Druce’s faith had acted guarantor of sorts of his good behaviour, then this idea had perhaps preserved Brippoki from his own inner demons: once he thought that protection gone, all hope went with it.

Allowing her mind, for one moment, to enter into the perspective, the relationship, of a flower fairy – no, a lowly insect, hidden among the grasses; then, seen from this new angle, even human activity resembled that of uncaring gods, heedless giants striding across the earth. Except in this equation we were not gods, as we might think – we were the ants.

Beware of false prophets… Ye shall know them by their fruits.

A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth –

But why keep returning to the Bible? A lifetime’s habit, ingrained, she had seen for herself how the words, the semblance of wisdom therein, could be turned to a virtual infinity of individual usage; an endless hall of twisted mirrors, reflecting only what the user best wished to see, or show.

Suffice to say, good fruit could not come from a source that had been corrupted. A thorn tree did not suddenly sprout mulberries, or juicy grapes.

Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Thorns also, and thistles; she considered herself secondary to Lambert, and subordinately under God’s grace, no longer – that was just the chain, binding in fetters, by which the young and strong were held in willing subjection to the old and weak.

She had awoken, as if from a long slumber.

She had dreamt, in her sleep, an England of spring meadows and gently rolling hills, where farms and tall church spires dotted misted vales. On waking, the air turned parched and arid, and glowed hot white; then by night, in a featureless desert of cracked earth, hanging icicles formed under blasts of chilling wind. Both desolation and a curse…

Sarah had never acknowledged that her life, up until then, could be called living; but she had not gone so far as to think it a lie.

Hers was a rude awakening, from dreams that were false.