Lieutenant (11 page)

W
hen the drummer from the regiment came running down the rocks one afternoon midway through the second year of the settlement, Rooke watched him approaching with a blank heart. The lad would have a note in his breeches pocket.
Lieutenant Rooke, I do myself the honour
of requesting your attendance at Government House tomorrow at nine
o’clock
.

His reprieve was over, his time as creator of stars at an end.

But the boy was gabbling something, a message he had memorised and now recited woodenly, his face flushed like a girl’s from his run up the hill.
From Captain Silk, sir, who sends his
compliments and says, you will be interested to know the natives are come
in, will you join him by the stream
.

As Rooke followed the boy past the hospital and along
beside the parade ground, he saw a group of three or four native men coming towards him. Close behind the men was Silk.

The contrast between the natives, clad only in their skins, and the captain in his breeches and jacket, was like a sum that did not add up. Silk did not look quite real, the braid and buttons on his red coat a filigree that bore no relationship to the chest beneath. No wonder the natives had needed proof that what lay under the covering was not a beetle or a bird, but a human being.

As he approached he could hear Silk trying out one of his words on the eldest of the natives, a lean man with a fuzz of grey hair on his chest.

‘
Budyeri? Budyeri
, come on old fellow, let me know you have ears!’

The man did not respond.

‘By God, Rooke, they are as loath to part with any speech as a miser with his gold!’ Silk said. ‘Good afternoon, by the by. I thought you would not want to miss this excitement. They began to come in last evening, Boinbar was the first, then others came, a few at a time. Warungin is here somewhere too. The governor agrees with me that it is clear they mean to stay among us.’

Rooke had never seen Silk so exhilarated.

‘Come, Rooke, I do not intend to miss a second of this.’

He took Rooke’s arm, following the natives as they moved away. They registered no astonishment at the houses, the rain barrels, the gang of shackled convicts. Rooke was reminded of
seeing the Duke of Richmond and his party being shown the sights of Portsmouth. They had strolled along in just this way, looking to left and right with a mild benign indifference.

The grey-haired man went over to a hut. He did not knock on the door or hesitate on the threshold, he simply bowed his head to get under the low lintel and walked in, followed by the others.

Silk went over to get an angle of view inside and Rooke joined him. In the hut a woman stood by the fireplace, a baby clutched tight and two infants hiding their faces in her apron. She was as afraid as they were, but had nowhere to hide. The men moved around the room, picking things up—a teacup, a fork, a clay pipe—and putting them down, making quiet remarks to each other. One took up a piece of bread on the table and sniffed it. He dipped a finger into the mug of tea, licked it, grimaced. Another picked up a china plate, tapped it with a long hard nail, tested it with his teeth, set it down again.

This was the first time they had seen a teacup or a fork. The only time they would need to taste a china plate. It would never again be the first time. Rooke was aware of witnessing something unrepeatable and irreversible. He was watching one universe in the act of encountering another.

When they had had enough they turned to the doorway. Rooke and Silk moved back to let them pass. Up and down the street people were coming out of huts.

‘The savages is come in!’ Rooke heard a man call out of a
window. ‘Quick Meg now and look!’

Brugden the gamekeeper stood in the middle of the street, legs apart, the musket over his shoulder and something furry dangling from his hand, watching the natives come towards him. When they caught sight of him they turned aside, whether because of him or by chance, Rooke could not guess.

They went over to the hut of a man Rooke knew, Barber by name and by trade. On a chair outside his door he had a private lathered up, a towel around his shoulders. He was standing behind him with his hand stopped in the act of drawing the razor through the white foam, staring at the naked men approaching him. The grey-haired one tilted his head and made a little gesture with his hand that said,
Kindly continue
. Barber began to stroke away at his customer’s face, holding the tip of his nose in a finicky way so he would not move his head.

The natives followed every step of the procedure, and Rooke watched the natives. There was no sense in them of alarm or apprehension. It was as if the white men were strolling players putting on a performance for their entertainment.

Barber seemed to pick up something of that mood. When he had finished shaving the private, he whipped the towel away from the man’s neck with a showman’s flourish. The private sprang out of the chair and played up to the audience too, patting his cheeks clownishly to show the natives how smooth the skin was and inviting them to feel for themselves, which they declined to do.

Barber indicated by gestures that one of the men should sit in the chair. He held his towel ready. The man understood him perfectly, laughing and stroking his face where the black wool grew. He seemed tempted, but another man tested the keen edge of the steel on his thumb and could be seen to advise against it.

Willstead joined the small crowd.

‘By God they are savage,’ he said. ‘Dirty too, look at the filth on them.’

Rooke watched the men catching Willstead’s tone. The older one spoke a word or two and they all moved on.

‘Well, Rooke,’ Silk said, watching them go. ‘At last, eh? I had quite exhausted the literary potential of brick making and road building. God willing, today marks the opening of a new chapter in the affairs of Sydney Cove.’

‘Splendid,’ Rooke said.

‘At last, I can now go forward. Mr Debrett of Piccadilly will get his sparkling narrative after all.’

Rooke nodded, because that was what Silk expected. But he could not comprehend how a man could be presented with a moment as astonishing as a star moving out of its place, and see only the chance to make a story. He saw for the first time how different they truly were, he and Silk. Silk’s impulse was to make the strange familiar, to transform it into well-shaped smooth phrases.

His own was to enter that strangeness and lose himself in it.

T
he following morning Rooke stepped outside into the pearly dawn and saw two figures silhouetted against the sky: unmistakably natives, looking down towards his hut.

Since his encounter with the fishermen all those months ago, he had regretted his cheerful
Good afternoon!
and the silly social smile. He had planned another way to speak the language of welcome and now he tried it. He looked up at the men, a long gaze that said
I have seen you
. Then he sat against the wall of the hut, neither facing them nor turning his back. And waited.

He was impatient for them to approach. The urge to keep glancing towards them was hard to resist. Watching the clouds in the east lit up by the sun that was about to appear, he occupied his mind with speculating on what the top of the
cloud might look like. Would it be rounded, as it appeared, or was that an effect of looking at it from below? After a time it was no longer a pretence: he truly forgot the men.

Then he became aware that they had come down the slope and were standing a short distance away. They still did not look at him, but nor did they stalk past. Moving his eyes but not his head, Rooke saw that one was Warungin.

Their eyes met, and the contact seemed to act as a signal. Warungin came forward and sat down near Rooke. With him, you might almost say.

Warungin put a hand out and said something. Said it again. Looked at Rooke as if waiting for him to say it. It seemed to start with a
b
, but there was a sort of thickening to the sound. Rooke made a stab at repeating the blur of syllables, but could not get his tongue around them.

Warungin said the word again. He was not making idle chat. He was doing a job of work, teaching a word to a man who could not hear it. Rooke tried again, copying the sounds like a snatch of melody.

‘
Boourral
,’ he heard himself say, a formless bubble of language such as an infant might make. Warungin said the word again, and Rooke tried once more.

‘
Bere-wal
.’

Warungin nodded curtly, as if thinking,
as near as he is going
to get
.

Then he began in dumb show to put a pocket telescope up
to his eye and peer through it. He must have used one, Rooke supposed. Perhaps during his captivity, along with the chairs and plates and glasses of wine the governor had offered him. One hand held the telescope, the other eased the tube in and out to focus, one eye looked steadily through the imaginary glass, the other was squeezed tight. He gestured—telescope, distant objects coming up close—and repeated the word.

Rooke put an invisible telescope up to his own eye, moved the tube in and out.

‘
Berewal
.’

Warungin gestured impatiently with curved fingers, bringing the distance closer.

Not the object, but what the object did!
Berewal
was not
telescope
, but something like
a great distance off
.

‘
Berewal
,’ Rooke said again, and copied Warungin’s gesture of scooping the distance towards him, eager to show that he was not so stupid, after all.

But Warungin was not interested in what an apt pupil Rooke was, did not smile or nod in praise. He pointed across the port to where the trees of the northern shore were catching the early golden light.

‘
Cammera-gal
,’ he said, slowly enough that Rooke could hear the separate parts. Then he laid a hand on his chest, over the lines of scars. ‘
Cadi-gal
,’ he said. ‘
Cadi-gal
.’

That suffix Rooke remembered from Silk’s list of words.
Gal: tribe, or perhaps place
. Warungin must be saying,
I am
of the tribe or place called Cadi
.

Warungin leaned forward and put a hand on Rooke’s chest, on the front of the red jacket.

‘
Berewal-gal
,’ he said.

He left his hand there, as if understanding could flow out of it, pass through the red wool, and into the heart of the man beneath. Rooke could feel it, the slight pressure of his hand against him. The first touch between two such separate beings. He almost expected a flash, as when lightning leapt between air and earth.

And with Warungin’s hand on his red wool chest, Rooke understood.
Berewal
, a great distance off.
Gal
, tribe. Warungin was teaching him the name of his own people:
Berewal-gal
, the great-distance-off tribe.

He was pleased to have been named: it was a gift. But it was shocking, too. None of the mysterious belongings or impressive skills of the white men—the ships, the muskets that could split a shield, the telescopes, the gold braid—gave them any special standing. They were just one more tribe.
Berewalgal
, the great-distance-off people.

He hungered for more. How did you say,
Good morning,
good afternoon, please, thank you, goodbye?
How did you say
Will you
teach me your language?

But once Warungin saw that he had been understood, he got up and turned his back, facing the ridge. He gave no sign, made no sound. But a group of natives filed into view and down
the rocks: another two men, three women, three children.

They stopped in front of Rooke’s hut and ignored him. He felt as if he were as unremarkable to them as any other part of the place: hut, rock, trees, man standing with his hands clasped in front of his privates like the reverend at prayer. He supposed these people did not expect much of a man who had to be taught even the name of his own tribe.

They were watching Warungin, who was delivering himself of a short speech. He pointed with his chin towards the hut, at Rooke, down to the settlement. He paid out his flow of words like a rope with knots in it: a piece, then a pause and another piece. Rooke felt his ears bulge out of his head with listening. Not just the words were opaque, even the cadence was unlike any language he had heard. Every phrase began emphatically and faded away. Trying to hear its form was like trying to take hold of running water.

Then all the men joined the one who had arrived with Warungin, sitting or squatting with their spears beside them. Rooke took a step in their direction. Should he join them? But one of the women, lean and wrinkled, her long dugs flaccid, her thighs fleshless, was walking towards the doorway of his hut. He made exaggerated ushering gestures.
Come in, welcome, I am
pleased
to see you!
He was glad there was no one there to watch him. The woman did not respond to the pantomime. Her dignity made his eagerness seem false.

She went into the hut and glanced around as if it were not
so very interesting. When she called back over her shoulder to the other women, a few curt syllables, they crowded inside. They inspected his domestic arrangements, murmuring to each other. One of them picked up a corner of the grey blanket over the bed and held it to her cheek, exclaiming, he thought, at the scratchy texture. They ran their long-fingered hands over the gleaming wood of the table, touched at the brass hinges where the legs folded. One lifted the cover of Montaigne and turned the pages.

He wondered if they were saying:
Look, he has bark here in a
little square
.

Would they have the idea of square? Would some wild Euclid among them have pondered the marvels of the triangle?

Even in that tight space they had a remarkable way of not meeting his eye. They moved around him and he guessed that they were not speaking loudly because he was there. And yet he was not there.

The children had been hiding themselves behind the legs of the women, peeping around at Rooke and retreating if he looked at them. Now he caught the eye of a little boy, a sturdy fellow of five or six, who ducked back behind his mother’s leg but then looked out again. Rooke smiled and even tried a wink, and by degrees the boy grew brave enough to dart out and touch one of the brass buttons on Rooke’s jacket, dabbing at it as if it might be hot. Discovering that the button did not bite, he lost his shyness entirely, dancing around Rooke, plucking at his
sleeve, pulling at his buttons and by the look of it shouting something to the effect of,
What are these? What are they for? Where
did you get them? Can I have one?

The women became bolder, holding things up to show each other as if exclaiming over goods at a market. They spoke to him, finding it hilarious to say the few words they must have already learned from the people in the settlement: ‘Goodbye! Goodbye! How do you do! Mister! Missus!’

‘Good morning, good morning,’ Rooke replied, making them laugh even more. ‘I do very well, thank you, and you?’

His shaving things lay on the table and one of the women—tall, full-figured, so magnificent in her nakedness that Rooke was a little shy—picked up his razor and bent it open. He sprang across the hut to snatch it away from her and all the amusement stopped on the instant. He tried to show them how sharp it was, cut a twig from beside the fire with the blade and kept up a stream of words—
sharp, you see, very sharp, it will cut anything, I use
it to shave, see here?
—out of some instinct that speech was less frightening than silence.

The hut, ill lit at the best of times with its single window, grew dark. Rooke saw that clouds had gathered low and black, and it began to rain, fat drops hitting the shingles hard enough to make them rattle. A smell of cold mud rose up from the ground.

He went to the doorway and looked out. The rain hurled itself down against the rocks so violently it created a sort of
spume. Under its force the bushes lashed about and the water of the harbour was almost invisible, the rain as thick as fog. He caught a few drops on his palm, held it out to his visitors.

‘What is this, how do you say wet?’

The two young girls had hung back up till now, but one came forward and touched at his palm with the point of an index finger. Rooke looked into her face. She was perhaps ten or twelve years old, skinny and quick, with a long graceful neck and an expressive mobile face. He thought he saw in her the same impulses he was feeling himself: excitement tempered by wariness, the desire to explore held in check by the fear of making a wrong move.

She looked straight into his eyes and her mouth made a wry pout, equal parts frustration and amusement. He felt his own lips form an answering shape and saw her watching him—his eyes, his mouth, the look on his face—reading him in just the same way he was trying to read her.

She was like Anne had been at ten or twelve, was his instant thought. Dark skinned, naked, she was nothing like Anne, yet he recognised his sister in her: old enough to want to look into another’s eyes, one human to another, and still young enough to be fearless.

She touched his palm again, this time with all her fingertips, stroking his skin as if to test its texture. Over the roar of the rain she said something. Like a deaf man, he watched her lips moving around the stream of words. Then she stopped and waited, her
teeth resting on her lower lip in a way that said, more clearly than words,
Well? What do you make of that?

He strained to separate some of the sounds, snatching at two that had surfaced clearly enough to be repeated.

‘
Mar-ray
,’ he tried.

She smiled, her entire face involved in the act. He had thought her eyes black, but now he saw they were the deepest brown. To look so freely into the eyes of another felt as dangerous as leaping from a height. He was amazed at such recklessness in himself.

‘
Marray
,’ she said again, pointing with her chin towards the rain. He noticed that Warungin and the men had gone, sheltering somewhere he supposed, and felt a host’s pang that he had not called them in when the rain began.

Marray
. What did it mean? Wet, something like that?

So close to her, with the water cascading over the shingles above the door and pouring onto the ground, it seemed awkward to say nothing.

‘What a downpour,’ he said, raising his voice against the din. ‘Have you ever seen such weather?’

He listened ruefully to the drawing room sound of that. It was the sort of small talk he could seldom manage when it was appropriate, yet here he was, doing it as deftly as Silk might have, for an audience of six naked women and children with whom he shared, so far, one word.

Forthright, fearless, sure of herself, she looked to him like a
girl who had already mastered whatever social skills her world might demand.

‘
Paye-
wallan
-
ill-
la-
be
.’

He could hear the way she was speaking slowly, making it easy for him. He tried to turn the sounds into syllables but could only get as far as the first few. She repeated each one and he said them after her. It was like being taken by the hand and helped step by step in the dark.

‘
Paye-
wallan
-
ill-
la-
be
.’

Even when he had it, it was not a perfect copy. There was something smothered or woolly, a slurring or legato quality to the word that he could not imitate. He could hear it, but his mouth did not know how to make it.