The Secret River (34 page)

The boy had gone slack now, sagging against Dan’s arm.

Let him go, Will
, Sal shouted, her voice stringy with feeling.
Can’t be no good come out of this
. She took a step towards the boy to release him herself and he cringed away from her in fear.
Dan, for
God’s sake let him go!

But Dan only looked at Thornhill.
Let him go
, Thornhill said, and Dan started to say something, but Thornhill took a step forward.
Or you get a flogging the both of youse
, and Dan let the boy go then, but not without first hawking up a gob and spitting it on the ground. Not on Thornhill’s boots exactly, but near.

Released, the boy could barely stand. The spongy wound around his eye had begun to weep down his face. His skin had a chalkiness to it. He seemed not to understand that he was free. They almost had to push him away.
Go
, Dick said in a small tight voice.
Go
.

The boy stumbled through the corn, lost his balance and staggered, nearly fell. He had hardly reached the trees before the forest absorbed him, and only the patch of trampled corn showed that he had ever been there.

The corn rustled around them. A sudden wind was blowing in off the river, shaking the trees. Thornhill looked up at the forest, tufts of leaves from everywhere waving at him. A cockatoo screeched, was answered by another. A cicada started up a long high vibration.

Bub, hanging onto Sal’s skirt, said,
They gone, Da, ain’t they?
and Thornhill looked down, startled to see him there. His little face was pinched with worry. Thornhill said,
Yes lad,
they’ve
buggered off
. Bub fingered the barrel of the gun, still warm from the shot.
Where but?
he asked.
With us stopping here now?
and Thornhill pointed up at where the forest covered the ridges.
They got all that
, he said.
They ain’t fussed
.

His legs were trembling, the muscles in his knees quivering. No instruction from his brain seemed able to stop them. It was amazing how a man could say one thing while his knees were saying another.

Bub was still not sure, but Dick pushed him aside.
We can give
them bread and that
, he said urgently.
Can’t we, Da?
But Willie went glum at that, for he was a lad always hungry, there was no filling him up. And now his brother was talking about giving away someone’s dinner.

We ain’t got no call to worry
, Thornhill said.
They buggered off for
good and all this time
. He heard the false authority in his voice, whipped away by the breeze.

That afternoon they brought in what corn they could. Even Bub was put to work, piling the cobs in the baskets, and Johnny sat with him entranced by the way the tassles shone and swung. Sal hardly ever lay the baby down on the ground but she did so now, the little thing kicking at the sky and crowing away.

It was slow work. The cobs grew out of the stalks with a strong stem that resisted being snapped off, and the plants grew so close together there was no room to move. Sal worked mechanically and kept her eyes on the cob in her hand, or the one she was reaching out for. Thornhill tried to work beside her, but she seemed to be making sure there were always a few plants between them. He watched her face in profile as she reached and pulled: not so much angry as removed, as if busy listening to a conversation.

They’d a taken the lot
, he said.
Six months’ work
. She gave no sign that she had heard. He took a breath to say it again, but she cut him short:
I heard you the first time, Will
, she said, and went on wrenching the cobs off their stalks so hard her cheeks shook.

While the sun hung high in the sky, they could pretend. Thornhill even heard Dan whistling as he worked. But when the sun started to sink he fell silent, and by unspoken agreement they began to pick up the few baskets of corn they had gathered so far.
The line of shadow from the ridge swallowed the hut, travelled over the river and up the cliff-face on the other side. Behind it, everything held its breath, waiting. The smoke from the chimney went straight up into the pale twilight sky and the river was as still as a cup of water.

In the light that remained when the sun slipped behind the ridge, Sal pushed the children inside. Clipped Johnny on the ear when he tried to come back out, so hard that he stumbled against the doorframe and set up a wailing that filled the whole valley before she grabbed him and shoved him inside.

Thornhill watched her heaping wood on the fire with a crash. The children stood watching warily. He knew what had happened to her, because it had happened to him too: fear could slip unnoticed into anger, as if they were one and the same.

~

In the moment of waking he smelled the smoke. From the door of the hut he could see how the valley was full of it, a haze hanging low over the river, and every breath smelling of ash. A bird balanced on a fence-rail and cocked its head at him. From the river came the chorus of birdsong, every kind of sound joined together, as if nothing was the matter.

Down at the corn patch, the haze was thick above a tangle of blackened stalks. In the air was a bitter smell that got into his chest and brought tears to his eyes: the stink of corn turned to ash.

That corn patch was the first thing they had made, half a year before. He had dug that dirt, he had poked in those seeds, had watched them send out their tender tubes of leaf. He had chipped out the weeds, feeling the weight of the sun. Had done it again and again. He had come down at dusk to stand among his crop and see the way each plant built its buttress of roots. He had caressed the leaves, so smooth and cool, and the plumpness of the cobs under their sheaths.

He might as well have done none of it.

He had thought himself secure at last on his hundred acres, with his boat and his servants. Had begun to take for granted his tin of tea, his strongbox filling with coins. What a blind hope that had been. His corn was gone, not just the cobs themselves, but the promissory note for a future. Life had been lying in wait for him all this time, waiting for him to trust it again. Now it had pounced, in the form of those black men who with nothing better than a burning stick could destroy all that he had sweated for.

The birds had come down and were watching from a branch, those big black birds with unblinking yellow eyes, but there was nothing left there to interest even a bird. The ground was still hot. The heat beat back from the bare blackened earth.

There was no smoke rising from the blacks’ camp, none of the sounds they were used to. No child shrieked, no dog barked, no stone chopper knocked against wood. He caught himself wishing he could hear those familiar sounds.

Sal was looking down from the door of the hut, Mary held under her arm like a piglet. She stared at the ruined corn, a woman turned to wood. He went back up the slope and stood with her. He tried out various words in his mind but none seemed right to offer to her silence.

Even in the worst days in London, when they had both thought him as good as dead and her only future on the streets: even then she had not gone into herself like this. Without looking at him she set off along the track the women had worn, coming up past the hut. Just beyond the yard she stopped and glanced back. He realised that this was further than she had ever gone before. She had probably never seen the hut from this distance. She had certainly never seen the blacks’ camp.

He was close behind her, but her gaze slipped past and she turned away and went on down the track.
Sal
, he said to her back.
Listen, pet, we best leave them be
. But she flung back over her shoulder
at him,
They ain’t there, Will
. He grabbed her hand and brought her up short.
Then where are you bleeding well going?
he shouted, and she came back sharp as a slap.
They come on our place
, she shouted back.
Now I’m coming on theirs
. And was away down the track before he could stop her.

At the camp, the domestic arrangements of the blacks were as they had always been. There were the two humpies, the large one and the smaller one. He had never noticed before how neatly the leafy boughs were tucked in together to make a roof. Inside the roomier one there were a couple of wooden dishes and a digging-stick, and a tidy coil of bark string. There was the fireplace with its ring of stones and its deep bed of fine grey ash. A shiver of heat still rose from the ashes. To the side was the grinding stone and its grinder sitting in the groove it had made. All around, the ground was as clear and clean as Sal’s own yard, the dusty bough that served as broom leaning against the main humpy.

It was quiet as a trap.
Come away
, he whispered.
Quick Sal,
we best come away
. But she ignored him, moving around the camp, looking at the things that made it a home: the way the stones were arranged around the fire so there was a flat place to put the food, the pile where the bones and shells had been neatly collected at the edge of the clearing. When she got to the broom she picked it up and brushed once at the ground before dropping it.

They gone all right, Mrs Thornhill!
There was Ned with his silly words, Willie and Dick behind him, and all the other children trailing down the path into the camp.
Not to worry!
Dick picked up the broom and propped it up against the side of the humpy.

They was here
, Sal said. Seeing the place had made it real to her in a way it had not been before. She turned to Thornhill.
Like
you and me was in London. Just the exact same way
.

She shifted Mary from one hip to the other but the child kicked to be let down, and she bent to sit her on the ground, but
absently, as if the child were nothing more than a parcel.
You never
told me
, she whispered.
You never said
.

He flared up at the accusation not voiced.
They got all the rest
, he said.
For their roaming gypsy ways. Look round you, Sal, they got all that
.

They was here
, she said again.
Their grannies and their great grannies.
All along
. She turned to him at last and stared into his face very direct.
Even got a broom to keep it clean, Will. Just like I got myself
.

There was something in her voice that he had never heard before.
Why ain’t they here then
, he said flatly.
If they reckon it’s their
place
. She looked away down the river, where the mangroves packed in: dense, green, secretive. Tilted her head to take in the wild ridges on every side. He had never before seen her look at the whole place.

They are
, she said,
out there now this very minute. Watching us, biding
their time
. Her voice was light, as though she were discussing the weather.
They ain’t going nowhere
, she said.
They ain’t never going. And
mark my words, Will, they’ll get us in the end if we stop here
.

No call to give up on account of a few savages
, he said. He forced himself to speak as calmly as she did.
Anyroad
, I got something in mind
for if they come back
.

But this whipped her into feeling.
It ain’t if they come back
, she cried.
You’re a fool if you think that, Will Thornhill. It ain’t if but when
.

He put out his hand to touch her, but she ignored it.
We got to
go, Will
, she said. She was gentle with him, like someone breaking bad news.
Don’t matter where, but we got to get them children on the boat
and go
. She glanced over at where Willie and Dick stood watching. Dick shook his head, but he might have been getting rid of a fly.
While we still got the chance, Will. Today
.

For a moment Thornhill tried to imagine it: turning his back on that clearing carved out of the wilderness by months of sweat. Letting some other man have it in exchange for nothing more than a few numbers on a piece of paper, some other man who would walk over it, smiling to himself at all its possibilities.

He knew his place now, by day and by night, knew how it behaved in rain and wind, under sun and under moon. He thought his way along all those green reaches of the river, those gold and grey cliffs, the whistle of the river-oaks, that sky.

He remembered how it had been that first night, the fearsome strangeness of the place. Those cold stars had become old friends: the Cross, nearly as good as the Pole to steer a course by, the Pointers, and the Frying-pan, which was nothing more than Orion, only upside down. He could tell over the bends of the Hawkesbury the way he had once been able to tell over the bends of the Thames.

He tried to show himself the picture he had so often thought of, the neat little house in Covent Garden, himself strolling out of a morning to make sure his apprentices were sweating for him and that no man was stealing from him. But he could not really remember what that air had been like, or the touch of that English rain, could no longer quite believe in those streets. White’s Grounds, Crucifix Lane. The picture he and Sal had carried around with them and handed backwards and forwards to each other was clear enough, but it had nothing to do with him.

He was no longer the person who thought that a little house in Swan Lane and a wherry of his own was all a man might desire. It seemed that he had become another man altogether. Eating the food of this country, drinking its water, breathing its air, had remade him, particle by particle. This sky, those cliffs, that river were no longer the means by which he might return to some other place. This was where he was: not just in body, but in soul as well.

A man’s heart was a deep pocket he might turn out and be amazed at what he found there.

The sun had risen now, high enough to brush the crests of the trees on the cliff, puff-balls of brilliant green glowing against the shadows. The white parrots all rose at once out of the tree
they roosted in and spread like a scatter of sand into the sky, the sun catching the brightness of their wings.