The Soldier's Curse (5 page)

Spring tried to share his fascination with the Birpai and their ways with those willing to listen. Monsarrat had cause to see Spring on a regular basis, as with the rest of the settlement he lined up weekly at the commissariat stores for his rations – bread, salt beef, and vegetables, which he was encouraged to supplement with whatever he was able to grow in the small garden attached to his hut.

The patch of red dirt was, in his view, unworthy of the name garden, producing the occasional anaemic carrot or runtish bean, and despite his coaxing utterly failing to give him a pumpkin. He refused to believe this was down to his own gardening skills, adopting an attitude of which Mrs Mulrooney would have approved – it was the garden's fault.

So his visits to the store were necessary for his continued survival. On occasion he had seen Spring there in conversation with a particularly tall and strong Birpai man called Bangar, one of the bush constables, in unmarked canvas. Monsarrat was under the impression he was the brother of Spring's lover, and the pair certainly seemed friendly whenever Monsarrat saw them together,
conversing in the Birpai tongue, although Bangar was an intelligent man, and also spoke English.

Bangar faded in and out of Monsarrat's daily life. In his free time (of which he had more than another, more disciplinarian commandant would have allowed), Monsarrat frequently walked down to the river, along its southern bank, turning as it emptied into the ocean, until he reached the blackened tongue of rock which jutted out from Lady Nelson Beach, pointing into oblivion. He preferred to stand at an angle to it, facing south towards the hundreds of miles separating him from Sydney. Sometimes he would take a few symbolic steps, and tell himself he had begun his journey back.

Occasionally on these walks he would find Bangar in step beside him, the man's movements quick and quiet. Sometimes they talked, sometimes they walked in silence. But Bangar noticed everything. Recently, they had seen the corpse of a pademelon – which looked like a small kangaroo – rolling backwards and forwards at the edge of the ocean. An odd place for it, as pademelons preferred the forest. Bangar frowned at this. The pademelon was his totem, he told Monsarrat. All life had its meaning and purpose.

When he had seen Monsarrat looking towards the Three Brothers, Bangar had told him the story of these mountain triplets.

The land around here, he told Monsarrat, had once been flat, and amongst its people had been three brothers whose mother was the spirit of the lake. When the brothers grew old enough to be initiated into their tribe, they were sent to other Birpai clans. The oldest, Dooragan, went to the stingray people to the north (no, Bangar smiled when Monsarrat asked, they didn't look like stingrays – the animals were their totem). The middle brother, Mooragan, went to the crab people near the sea. And the youngest, Booragan, he went south to the shark people.

Mooragan was jealous of the youngest, and tried to engage Dooragan in a plot to kill Booragan, so there would be more maternal love to go around. Dooragan refused, but Mooragan was not to be dissuaded. He pursued Booragan as the youngest walked south to meet his destiny. That destiny, unfortunately, ended with his death at the hands of his brother.

But the murder did not take place unobserved. A watchful bird, known as a willie wagtail, saw everything, and flew to the boys' mother with the news. The lake spirit was enraged, and immediately exacted her revenge on both of her surviving sons, discovering too late that only one of them was guilty.

In punishing her boys, she angered the Gamal, the head of the Birpai people and the one who had the power to dispense justice. His justice, on this occasion, was to turn the three boys into mountains – Dooragan in the north, Mooragan in the middle and Booragan in the south. He took care to position Dooragan so that the boy-mountain split the lake in two, sundering his mother's spirit.

Monsarrat was fascinated by this tale. He knew the mountains had also been named the Three Brothers by his own people, although Captain James Cook had a far more prosaic reason for giving them the name – when he saw them from the deck of his ship, he simply felt they looked alike. The fact that they had been given the same name by the Birpai countless generations ago made them seem to Monsarrat to have an independent consciousness. After that, and despite himself, he often looked warily at the looming, murderous Mooragan.

‘Why do you put up with us?' Monsarrat asked on one of these walks.

‘You're here, aren't you?' Bangar said.

But of course, it was a little more complicated than that. When the Birpai had first seen a party of whitefellas stumbling their way through the bush, they were somewhat amused at the newcomers' incompetence. We'll keep an eye on these ones, they thought, but they don't seem up to much.

But then more came, and more. And the rougher ones, the cedar-cutters and the like, would just as soon go through a Birpai home as around it.

The Birpai people realised that these men did not share their connection with the land. They didn't know how to use spider webs to pack a wound, how to light a fire in a canoe when fishing at night, using the right wood to keep the mosquitoes away, or how to make fishhooks from thorn trees. They didn't know how
to cut a shield from a tree in a way which wouldn't kill the tree itself. They took what they wanted and more – timber, fish and, it was rumoured, sometimes women. And they seemed to believe the land would always provide more, no matter how much they abused it.

There had been skirmishes – Birpai tribesmen, protecting their land, had raided parties working upriver. From then on these parties were heavily guarded, and the Birpai spears, lethal as they were, did not have the range of the muskets which took many of their lives.

‘If we'd known the nature of you, we might have speared you before there were so many,' Bangar had once told Monsarrat genially. Monsarrat smiled as though Bangar was joking, but he knew he wasn't.

‘There's a lot of land, though,' said Monsarrat. ‘Why not just move on a bit?'

Bangar's face tightened. ‘So what if I come in and take that kitchen,' he said, ‘and I say, eh Monsarrat, it's a big house up here on the hill – which used to be ours. Why don't you just go and make your tea in the bedroom? But there's no stove in the bedroom, you say. Well, this place is
our
house. We have places for hunting, places for ceremonies. Every place has a use. We can't just move on.'

‘We share that, at least,' said Monsarrat. ‘Neither can I.'

‘Oh dear,' said Spring, as they approached Government House. The verandah was again empty, Slattery clearly having given up on his haranguing. Of today's strange events, the young soldier's reaction had been amongst the strangest. Slattery, too, was on good terms with Bangar and some of the other Birpai men. On one occasion, Monsarrat had come upon a group of them on the beach, being taught Three Card Brag by Slattery, using twigs for their stakes.

‘Are you doing them any favours, introducing them to the scourge of gambling?' Monsarrat had asked him later.

‘Probably not, but I may be doing myself some, if the lads in the barracks get sick of losing to me,' Slattery had said.

While Monsarrat had heard the natives spoken to in the most vile manner, he had never thought to hear such verbal violence from Slattery, and wondered if the soldier's friendship with Bangar would survive the report of it from the women.

Spring seemed to be searching for the face of his own woman amongst the mass there. When he'd found her his eyes flew back to Monsarrat. ‘Oh dear. I shall get them moving,' he said.

‘Could you tell me, Mr Spring, what they are doing?'

Spring did not answer him; instead, he began to speak loudly in their language. Some of the older women made dismissive gestures at him. One even laughed. The laugh spread amongst them, but then they became solemn again.

Spring spoke up again. An old woman answered him in the language which sounded to Monsarrat like a cross between the cries of birds and the thud of earth – a voice in fact
from
this earth, which was not his, but to which he was condemned.

The women began to concede, rise to their feet, shake themselves and move off. A beautiful young open-faced native in a kangaroo skin and a string around her waist acknowledged Spring as she left. Spring's mistress. He seemed quite consumed with adoration. If he were a dishonest man, he could probably siphon off enough from the stores to enable him to start farming up here – not an inexpensive matter with all the goods needing to come from Sydney and at a high price. Monsarrat could see that the man would need either to fall out of love or he would live here forever, condemned for his choice of wife by the world. There were probably worse destinies. Indeed, Monsarrat knew there were.

‘Sir?' said Monsarrat, not having had his original question answered.

‘Oh,' said Spring, collecting himself. ‘Tell Mrs Mulrooney – and Diamond if he finds out about it – that it was a prayer for Mrs Shelborne.'

‘A prayer?'

Spring leaned in towards Monsarrat, although they were the only two people on the lawn able to speak English. It occurred to
Monsarrat that Spring, and the accursed Kiernan, might be the only two whites able to speak the Birpai's tongue.

‘They were easing her spirit away from the earth. They are sure she will die. But that means nothing.
They
, I emphasise, believe she will die. Fortunately Mrs Shelborne does not know it.'

‘Well, she is certainly gravely ill, but how would they be aware of her condition, much less care?'

‘As for the caring, I told you, they are peaceable. They acknowledge things, these people. Without rancour, without barracking, without condemnation. They were acknowledging … well – and say nothing of this – they were acknowledging her departure. There is more to it, though. They don't see themselves as owning the land, not the way we do; they believe they belong to it. That all life belongs to it. That includes us, by the way. They resent our hunting their animals and catching their fish. Resources are not so plentiful that our presence hasn't affected their own ability to eat well. But they reason that if the land will tolerate us, it must have a use for us which they cannot perceive. And therefore our lives and deaths have a relevance for them, even if they don't understand why.'

‘But how do they know of her condition?'

Spring removed his glasses to polish their now spotless lenses, and Monsarrat wondered whether word of Mrs Shelborne's illness had reached the Birpai via the Scot. In fact, now he thought of it, he could see no other means for the news to travel, Kiernan being no longer part of the settlement.

‘Well, at the height of her powers, Mrs Shelborne … but I'm saying too much, Monsarrat.'

‘You can depend on my discretion, sir.'

‘Very well. She hunted widely. And fished. And she was indiscriminate – she took totem animals too.'

‘And that made them angry?'

‘Not angry, no. But there is a balance, you see. The land can only support them – and us – if no one takes more than they need. She may have taken too much. And I'm speculating now, but it may be they feel the balance is being redressed.'

He cleaned his glasses yet again. ‘I suggest you tell Mrs Mulrooney they were praying for Mrs Shelborne. That is, actually, what they were doing. Praying for a peaceful passing. And so her soul does not inhabit the trees and river and blight them.'

‘A peaceful passing?'

‘Well, that is their view of what is happening.'

After Spring took his leave, Monsarrat decided he had enough time to quickly report to Mrs Mulrooney before Diamond came to Government House to ensure all was as it should be, and perhaps to imagine the changes he would make when he became commandant, which he saw as probable, given the major's eminent talents and the likelihood of a higher post for him.

He found her in the kitchen, cooking a broth.

‘She loses all her food now,' she said as Monsarrat walked in. ‘I thought maybe a broth would stay more easily where it is supposed to.'

Slattery was at the table too. A morning of yelling at women and labourers had earned him a cup of tea, he no doubt felt. Monsarrat would have preferred to talk to Mrs Mulrooney privately, but lacked the time to wait for Slattery to return to his work. In any case, Slattery was a member of their kitchen commonwealth. Not the most judicious member, but Monsarrat felt he owed Mrs Mulrooney an explanation.

As he had agreed with Spring, he told Mrs Mulrooney the women had been praying for Mrs Shelborne.

‘My God,' said Mrs Mulrooney. ‘And the major away chasing pastures somewhere.'

‘I would not be distressed, Mrs Mulrooney. As Spring sees it, they might believe she is dying for having taken too much game, that there is some sort of cosmic set of scales at work. But she is not aware of it and nor do any of us believe that. So she has no duty to die.'