The Secret River (17 page)

Willie went at the digging madly, wanting to be done with it so he could go back down to the
Hope
and sit there whipping a rope’s end or pushing a bit of caulking into a leak. Dick was willing enough but useless, dreamily scratching away at the same bit of dirt for half an hour, smiling his slight secret smile.

But they finished what the moles, or hogs, had started, and by the afternoon they had a tidy square dug over, ready for the seeds: no bigger than the tent, but enough to start with. It was not so much a crop he was aiming for, as a message. Like hoisting a flag on a pole.

He sent the boys up to the tent for the seeds and sat admiring what they had done. He could hear the
pik-
pik-
pik-
pik
of some insect close by in the grass, and a thin high hum. A bird nearby was telling a story, going up note by note, and further away another one was making a noise like a creaky door opening and closing, opening and closing.

In this notched land, where the unbroken forest covered the hills and dales like crumpled cloth, there was nothing a man could recognise as human, other than the small square of dirt they had dug. He could hear the blood pound in his ears, his breath coming in and out of his chest.

Then he saw that he was being watched by two black men. It was not so much that they appeared, as that they had chosen to become visible. They had made themselves comfortable. One had a foot wedged up against the side of a knee, balancing on his
spear, so he was the echo of the angled branches around him. The other squatted as still as a boulder.

Thornhill got to his feet. As if waiting for this, the standing one stepped forward: a grey-grizzled man with stringy shanks and an old man’s boxy chest and high round belly. His parts were shameless under a bit of string round his waist which held various sticks but performed no function of modesty. The other one stood up, as big as Thornhill now that he was at his full height, a younger man in the prime of his strength with a shock of hair held off his high forehead with a band of fur. The chests and shoulders of both men were ribbed with rows of scars that gleamed pale.

They held their spears as if absent-mindedly. He could not read their faces. Their eyes were hidden in the shadows cast by their heavy brows, their mouths large and unsmiling. They stood square on to him, fearlessly. The moment was theirs.

Thornhill wiped his hands down the side of his britches. He could feel his palms rub over the seam where the fabric was lumpy. It was a comfort. He did it again, then slid his hands into his pockets. It made him feel less helpless to have them tucked away where no one could see them. In some sideways part of his brain there was an image of getting into the pocket himself, in the warm and the dark, and curling up safe.

Up in a river-oak, a bird made a twittering as if amused, and a quick breeze sang through the leaves. At last he felt that there was nothing to be done but walk towards the men, speaking as to a couple of wary dogs.
Don’t spear me, there’s a good lad
, he said, addressing the younger one.
I’d give you a drink of tea only we ain’t
got none
.

But the old man cut across his words as if they were of no more importance than the rattle of wind in a tree. He spoke at some length. It was not loud, just a flow of words like his skin, without clear edges. As he spoke he gestured with a fluid
hand down the river, up and over the hills, did a flattening thing with his palm like smoothing a bedcover. Thornhill was reminded of Mr Middleton explaining the set of the tides at Battersea Reach.

But the meaningless words poured over him, and in the end they became maddening. He began to feel like an imbecile. To make up for that feeling he spoke loud and jovial across the man’s words.
Old boy
, he started. He fancied the sound of that. He had never called anyone
old boy
the way toffs did.
Bugger me, you are
making no sense whatever!
It was the way gentry had spoken to him, wanting him to row faster and cost them less, but pretending to make a joke of it.

When he stopped, the men watched him, waiting for more. He licked his lips and made himself speak again.
You ain’t making no
sense to me, mate
, he said.
Not a blinking word
. A thought made him laugh, and that made him bold.
You might as well bloody bark, mate
, he said, feeling his cheeks bunch up with the fun of it.

The old man’s face did not show any appreciation of the joke. Buckles of flesh creased down from his nose, and his long upper lip gave him a fastidious look. When he spoke again it cut across Thornhill’s humour like water on a flame. He made a chopping action with the side of his hand, pointing to the square of dug-up dirt and the daisies wilting in a heap. This time his voice was not so much a running stream. It was more like stones rolling down a hill.

Thornhill gestured at the cliffs, the river glinting between the trees.
My place now
, he said.
You got all the rest
. He drew a square on the air with his arms, demonstrating where his hundred acres began and ended.

In the scheme of things, his was surely an insignificant splinter of this whole immense place of New South Wales.

The man was not impressed. He did not look around to follow the sweep of Thornhill’s arm. He knew what was there.

There was a crashing and shouting as Willie and Dick ran down the slope with the bag of seed. When they saw the blacks the fun drained out of their faces. Sal appeared at the flap of the tent with the baby in the crook of her arm. Thornhill saw the fright blossom on her face. She grabbed at Bub who was making to rush out, swivelling him around so hard that his skinny arm was nearly yanked out of its socket, and only let go of him to take hold of Johnny as he tried to follow his brother.

The blacks seemed to be waiting for something. Thornhill wondered what he might offer them. The pick, the hatchet, the spade: all were too precious. He wished he had thought to bring something from Sydney for this moment. Beads. He had heard of beads being given to the blacks. Mirrors.

It would have been so easy to get a handful of beads, a couple of mirrors.

But Sal was shouting down from the tent,
Give them a bit of that
pork! Look sharp, Will, here it is
, and she was on her way with the baby over her shoulder and the pork in her hand. It was the way she had dealt with Scabby Bill. Something told him that these two men were different from Scabby Bill, but at least the pork—not in its first youth, but still edible—was something to give them. With luck they would take it and be gone.
Run up quick, Willie, and fetch it
here
, he said. He could hear the urgency in his voice, and something he recognised as fear.

The offering of the bits of pork and the hard heel of damper seemed a way forward: the black men at least accepted them. Then they waited with the victuals in their hands. It seemed they did not recognise the pork as food. Thornhill demonstrated by swallowing some himself, feeling his throat dry around the strings of meat. But no amount of miming would make them eat.

After a while, the younger man put his piece of pork down on the dirt. Smelled his fingers, wrinkled his nose, wiped his hand on a tussock of grass. It was true, the pork had gone a grey colour
that in some lights was green. They had got in the habit of holding their breath as they ate, so as not to have to smell it.

It seemed that this was not what they were waiting for.

Thornhill thought of the coins in his pocket. There was a penny and a silver sixpence, not as good as beads, but they might do the trick. He was sliding his fingers into his pocket for them when Willie gave a hoarse shout:
Oy you thieving cunny, give us
that back!
and there was the old greybeard, caught in the act, the spade in his hand. Willie was grabbing him by the elbow and trying to yank it away from him, wrestling with all his boy’s sinewy strength. The old man wrenched himself free, keeping hold of the spade.

He was shouting angrily, the same word again and again, and Willie was shouting back, right into his white-whiskered face:
Give
it here, give it!
The two streams of words rushed together like a sea meeting a river, pouring over each other hard and muddled.

The morning was spiralling away into panic. There were too many people here, and too little language to go around. He heard himself shout one word:
No!
What he meant was, no to this moment, in which things had got away from him.
Leave him be,
Willie
, he called, and went over to the old man. He had no plan, but found that he had pushed at the man’s shoulder. It was warm and muscular. He slapped it lightly, and when he had slapped once, it seemed easy to go on doing it. He pointed to the spade and with each slap shouted
No! No! No!
right into his face.

The slaps on the man’s skin were like slow ironic applause.

The riverbank seemed to undergo a change of air. The old man’s face closed down into its creases of shadow. His hand reached around and got the curved wooden club from the string round his waist. The younger man took a step forward, the spear up in his hand, poised on the balls of his feet, his face grim. From the trees Thornhill heard the scrape of wood on wood and knew it to be the sound of spears being fitted by invisible hands along
spear-throwers. He heard Sal give a squashed cry as she heard it too, and a wail from Johnny cut short with her hand over his mouth.

There was a tight-wound moment. Then the old man gave a grunt as of disgust and turned away, dropping the spade on the ground. In a single step he seemed to recede into the flickering light and shade of the forest. It closed behind him as smoothly as a curtain.

The younger man did not leave. The powerful muscle of his arm was still taut, ready to throw. He came up so close that Thornhill could smell his thick animal scent and see the sharp chips gummed into the tip of the spear: some were stone but he saw with dream-like amazement that some were chips of glass. He reached out and pushed Thornhill hard in the chest, then slapped him three times, hard, on the shoulder. It was like watching in a mirror what Thornhill himself had just done.

The man spoke loud and hard, and gestured with the hand that had slapped Thornhill. In any language, anywhere, that movement of the hand said,
Go away
. Even a dog understood
Go
away
when he saw it.

They stared at each other, the black man’s face a powerful thing, the anger alive on it. Then he turned and followed the old man into the forest. There was no crashing through undergrowth, no crunching of feet along leaf-litter. One moment he was there with fury on his face and a spear in his hand. The next there was only the forest, and a bird trilling as if nothing had happened.

Young Bub’s wan face peeked out from behind Sal.
Why didn’t
they spear us, Da
, he whispered,
while they got the chance
?
Johnny had his mouth squared up to cry, but Sal ruffled his hair so hard that his head wobbled under her hand.
They got no call to spear us
, she cried. Thornhill could hear the gladness in her voice, and the relief.
We give them the victuals and that, they leave us alone
. She glanced at him.
Ain’t that right, Will
?

He did not know how much she believed that, and how much was for the benefit of the children, but he was happy to agree.
We’ll be right as rain
, he said.
They noses was out of joint on account of
wanting the spade, is all
. He picked it up, drove it into the ground, making a deep cut in its surface.
They gone and buggered off now
.

His words came out robust enough, but the silence swallowed them up.

~

Next morning Thornhill woke at first light and crawled out of the tent. In the night it had leaned even further over. Dew lay thick and pale on the grass. Every leaf of every tree gleamed. A glowing mist hung over the river, but around the tent stripes of sunlight slanted through hanging crescents of leaves and made a tender green light. A pelican, serene with its broad wings and great beak, planed through the sky over the river.

There seemed to be saplings all around the tent, sprung up overnight. It was a sick clench of the belly to see they were spears, sent into the earth hard enough to bury their barbs.

He went quickly from one to the other pulling them out of the ground. In his hand each one was a business-like thing. He was not going to think about them flying through the air. If he got rid of them it would be as if they were never there. He was on the last when Willie spoke from the front of the tent.
Be us next time
, he said.
Won’t it, Da
?

He glanced at the cliffs across the river, the dull grey forest that lay thick over the ridges.
They wanted to do us harm, we wouldn’t
be standing here now, lad
, he said calmly, and wrenched the last spear out.
They don’t mean nothing by it
. He flung the spears onto the fire, just a handful of kindling. But there was a hollow feeling in his middle where a spear might slice.

Willie said nothing. Thornhill thought of Sal, coming out so quick with the pork in her hand for the blacks, her sureness about
it.
No need to frighten your mother with what ain’t never going to happen
, he said. The boy looked at him in surprise, and Thornhill wondered at his own words. It was the moment of fear on Sal’s face, when she heard the scrape of the spear-throwers: that was the look he did not want to see.
She’s a soft-hearted little thing
, he said, man-toman with the boy.
Don’t want her worrying over nothing. Do we
?
Willie nodded and scuffed his foot over the hole one of the spears had made until it looked like the rest of the dirt.
Yes, Da
, he said.
She
won’t never guess
.

They could both see the thread of smoke, coming from somewhere up along the First Branch, but they turned their backs on it. The spears blazed up merrily.
We get those seeds in today, lad
, Thornhill said, and Willie nodded, but did not meet his father’s eye.