The Secret River (23 page)

W
ith his servants on the place, he was less anxious about leaving with the
Hope
. Dan and Ned were gormless sorts of men, but they were men: it was a little wrench each time to leave Sal, but at least it was not just one woman out there alone among the trees.

Things were beginning to go smoothly. He and Dan had wrestled the awkward stones into place to make Sal a fireplace in the hut with a sod-lined bark chimney and wide enough to take lengths of fallen timber. In the heat of mid-November it was hard to imagine ever needing a fire, but Webb had warned him that the winters here were sharper than in Sydney, and he looked forward to sitting in the hut with the fire blazing. He thought he would never tire of the way a fire here was not a mean creaking thing, two frugal pieces of coal balanced against each other, but an extravagant licking of clean yellow flames around a heap of wood.

The children were flourishing on the river as they had not in Sydney. Johnny, going on for two years old, was on the go all day, poking things into other things or balancing things on other things, always with some scheme in his mind that made his little face go blank with concentration. Dick was growing into a straight and sinewy seven-year-old, the baby clucked and crooned to
herself, and even Bub had turned the corner. Far from suffering from the rough diet, he appeared to be thriving on it. He was still inclined to burst into tears more than a boy of five should, and there were still mauve shadows under his eyes, but he was finally putting on flesh.

Business was good. The Governor had decreed that townships with garrisons of troops be made along the upper reaches of the river. That way, even though the blacks were frequently committing their outrages and depredations, the farmers themselves would be safe and not abandon the place. So humble Green Hills became regal Windsor, and the scattering of huts upstream of it became Richmond. The redcoats patrolled the riverside farms, and went out into the wilds every other week to hunt down and bring to justice the perpetrators of the outrages.

Townships suited a man with a boat full of desirable objects. Instead of putting in to one isolated farm after another, Thornhill need only call in at the new villages and be relieved of his goods on the spot, and load for the return trip to Sydney.

He made a point of getting some little gift for Sal on every trip to Sydney: a pair of teacups, a mat for the dirt floor, a blue shawl to remind her of the one her father had given her, although this was coarse compared to that cobweb of soft threads.

For himself he bought a pair of boots, the first he had ever owned. When he put them on he understood why gentry looked different. Partly it was having money in the bank, but it was also your boots telling you how to walk.

Each time he approached his own place from the river—either on his way down from Windsor with a load of cabbages and corn, or coming up from Sydney with calico and spades—he felt himself tighten. He said nothing to Sal, and swore Willie to discretion, but in the townships there was always news of another outrage by the blacks. Each time he rounded his point and saw the smoke calmly rising up out of his chimney, the fowls pecking away
around the yard and the children running down the slope to meet him, he felt a flush of relief.

On a certain day in December, the year 1813 nearly over, he sailed up the reach towards Thornhill’s Point. A hot squally westerly had made it a rough trip from the Camp, and he was glad to be home. He had hardly slid the
Hope
into its place in the mangroves when there was Willie running down towards him from the hut, his hair wild, his face twisted with yelling. He had to swallow his panting breath before he could make himself plain: the blacks had come.

Thornhill felt his chest clench, like a hand, in pain. Straight away he pictured Sal on her back, the blood drained out of her face, her dead eyes staring up at the sky. Mary beside her, a little bundle of still rags, the blood sucked out of her. Bub and Johnny scalped, sliced up, roasted alive, eaten. Their
best bits
.

But when Willie found enough breath to say more, it seemed that no one was actually dead yet. He pointed, his narrow chest heaving up and down, his dirty face long with fear, but all there was to see was a line of smoke, the echo of their own, lifting in a leisurely way from some place further around the point and catching in the trees, making them blue and misty.

Thornhill felt no fear, just weariness. He wanted only to go about his business, sailing the
Hope
up and down, growing a bit of corn, enjoying the labours of his servants and climbing the ladder of prosperity. It did not seem much to ask, but here they were back again, unavoidable.

Hold your noise, lad, for God’s sake
, he said, and listened. The breeze brought no sounds but the languid barking of a dog, the single distant cry of a child. A woman’s voice called out high and quick. He stared at the smoke, waiting for it to vanish, and the blacks with it.

Willie was watching him, a frown between his eyebrows.
Get
the gun, Da,
he said.
Let them see the gun
.

There were days when Thornhill wished Willie was still that young lad for whom his father was a god, and not a boy who thought he was already a man.

Now Sal was at the door of the hut with Mary hanging off her hip.
They come yesterday
, she said.
They ain’t come near us but
.

He saw with relief that she was not frightened.

Take this down to them, Will
, she said, holding out a bag.
A bit of
pork, some flour and that. And a bit of your baccy I thought you could spare
.

Thornhill did not reach out and take it. A bit of meat, that first day, was one thing. But this matter-of-fact handing over of their food and even his own tobacco: that was different. It had less the look of a gift. It felt more like when she gave him the coins every Monday to take to Mr Butler of Butler’s Buildings.

At last he took the bag, but only to put it back on the table.
We give them something every time, we’ll never see the end of it
, he said.
They’ll be want want wanting, till we got nothing left
.

Dan had come up from the boat and was watching them. He was supposed to bring the oars up when he came, but was empty-handed and Thornhill wanted to hit him, the way he stood there, arms dangling, listening. He was a vile little snipe, but quick. He did not try to hide the pleasure he was taking in the fact that Mr and Mrs Thornhill were about to disagree.

But Sal, the clever thing, disappointed him.
There’s sense in that
, she agreed. She looked out the door towards where the smoke smudged the sky, thinking it through.
They’re like them gypsies back
home
, she said.
Ain’t they. Da give them his old shirts when they come to the
back door, but not every time. And never let them in the house
.

He felt a spurt of love for her, that she was providing a way to explain the new world to herself.
We got to steer it narrow
, she went on.
Like Da done
. Her hands, pressed together, weaved to one side, then the other.
Keep them happy, but don’t let them take advantage
. She looked up at his face.
And they
’
ll be gone by and by, with their
roaming ways
.

She had put into words his own sense of the thing. A line had to be drawn with the blacks. Just where you drew it was something he could not see. But he knew that it would be no good waiting for the blacks to draw it for them.

He made his voice casual.
I’ll step down and have a word
, he said, as if speaking of any other neighbour.
Get things straightened out
. He saw a little furrow form between her brows at this. But she had nothing better to offer.

Come back quick
, she said.

He thought to take Ned or Dan, but this was not a matter of arithmetic: so many men on one side, so many on the other. If it was, the Thornhills were beaten before they had even started. It was some other thing, although he did not know just what kind of a thing it might be. He set off towards the smoke, striding along the ground like a man measuring it up.

All the same, he felt naked.

~

The blacks had made an encampment around on the far side of the point, not far from where he had seen the fish on the rock. It was a good spot for a camp, soft grass and scattered trees making a sweet shady place that caught the breeze from the river, and there was another rivulet, although smaller than the Thornhills’. Two humpies—bark and leaves heaped in a mound on a few branches leaning together—sat in an area of cleared ground as clean-swept as the one around their own hut. There were bark dishes lying together, a pile of knobbly berries, and a big saucer-shaped stone with a handful of grass-seeds in it ready to be ground up.

It took him a moment to see two old women by the fire, as still and dark as the ground they seemed to grow out of. They sat with their long bony legs stretched out straight in front of them, their spreading breasts down to their waists. One of them had paused
in the act of rolling threads of stringybark on her sinewy thighs, turning it into coarse brown string. A child stood behind her and stared at Thornhill. The women glanced up at him but with as little interest as if he were a fly come to watch them.

They were all stuck in this tableau until a skinny dog got up stiffly from where it was lying in the shade and barked halfheartedly. The woman making string called out at it, only a word, and it stopped. The dog snapped at a fly, then lay down again, watching Thornhill from one eye.

The other woman stood up, a dead snake hanging limp from her hand. She flicked it onto the coals as casually as if it was a bit of old rope, then bent forward with a stick and scraped some ashes over the top of it. Then she sat again and began to pick over the berries in the dish, not looking at Thornhill.

Youse lot best bugger off
, he said, mild enough but firm. The words seemed to drop out of the air. The women did not move. Their faces remained folded like fabric around their thoughts, their eyes turned away from him. Their long upper lips, and the deep buckles of skin that cut down their cheeks beside their noses, gave them a stern haughty look.
Best stay away out of it
, he said.
Out of our place
.

The words swelled and passed, leaving silence behind. He took a step closer. Without haste, the one making string put it to one side and stood up. Her long breasts swung, the nipples staring blindly down at the ground. She stood watching him, the way a tree stood on its piece of the earth.

He could not bring himself to look at her straight on. He had never seen any woman naked. Even Sal he had only ever seen in parts. She had never stood before him like this woman, with nothing covering any of her except for a string around her hips. If she had, he would have rushed to cover her up. But these women seemed not to feel ashamed. It seemed that they did not even feel naked. They were clothed in their skins, the way Sal was clothed in her shawl and skirt.

The one who had thrown the snake on the fire lifted her arm and flapped a hand at him. She began to speak, brusque and emphatic, her deep-set eyes catching the light. She had no fear of the man in his hat and britches, and whatever she was saying, she did not expect any disagreement. After she spoke she turned away as if shutting a door between them.

He hated the way she did that, as if any response he might make was of no account.
Old dame
, he said loudly,
I could fetch me
gun and blow your heathen head off easy as anything
. He could hear his voice straining to fill the space around itself. The woman did not look towards him but her face was heavy with disapproval. The other one spoke now, and jerked her head sideways. He understood that she was telling him where he should go: back the way he had come.

Something made him turn. Behind him was a group of men standing together watching. They had arrived so quietly they might have risen up out of the ground. There were six of them, or perhaps eight, or ten. Something about the way their skins were shadows among the shadows of the trees made it hard to see them straight.

In London William Thornhill counted as a big man, but these men made him feel small. They were as tall as he was, their shoulders sinewy but powerful, their chests defined with pads of muscle. Each held a few spears, the lengths of wood shifting like insects’ feelers.

He stood legs apart, his heavy new boots planted on the ground. He imagined the way he looked to them: his mysterious clothes, his face shadowed under his hat.

It seemed important to act the part of host. That way, they were his guests. He made himself hail them in a jovial way, looking them right in the face, as if they were dogs that would bite if they caught the scent of fear.

Good-day to you gentlemen
, he called.
How are you this fine day?

He heard his words evaporate, thin and silly, into the air, and was glad that Ned and Dan were not with him to hear. He felt something hot in his chest: anger? Or was it fear?

He wished he had the gun.

A bird began a long tweetling somewhere in the trees and the humming in the grass swelled and faded, swelled and faded. A stick fell in the fire with a soft collapsing sound.

A haze of steam was starting to come up from the place in the coals where the snake was cooking, and a good greasy smell was wafting over to him, like nothing so much as a nice fat mutton chop. He found himself wondering if a yard of serpent might not be such a bad dinner.

Cat got your tongues
, he said.
You black buggers?
As if this was a signal, they came towards him, moving in that loose-kneed way they had, the spears easy in their hands. One—the same greybeard he had slapped the first day—separated himself from the others and came right up to Thornhill, reaching out and placing a long black hand on his forearm. Authority radiated from this naked old man like heat off a fire. A stream of words began to come out of his mouth.