Lieutenant (22 page)

He got up and went outside. There was Betelgeuse and, along with it, as it had always been, the white blaze of Rigel.

They had been there since the beginning. Whatever the beginning was. Would be still there when the speck of matter called Daniel Rooke was no longer even a name on a forgotten gravestone, when the gravestone itself had worn away, grain by grain. Even then, Rigel and Betelgeuse would still be travelling together across the sky.

He had lit his fire, made himself a last dish of sweet-tea.
Warraburra
. Took his chair outside and sat there with his back to the wall as he had so often before, watching the sun rise one last time. He found himself taking large breaths like sighs and there was a coldness about his heart. A gilded bird, one of the white parrots caught by the sun’s first rays, flapped magnificently across the patch of blue sky between the treetops.

At noon
Gorgon
cast off from its mooring and the blocks rattled and squealed as the sails were raised. He stood at the stern and looked towards the point the natives knew as Tarra, and which
he had tried to name after Dr Vickery, but which people seemed determined to call after himself.

He could see the roof of his hut, and the brave little teepee of the observatory. On the very tip of the point, on the rocks below the hut, he could see a few natives. Among them he could just make out the figure of Tagaran.

She had arrived that morning, not leaping down the rocks as she usually did. They had barely spoken. There was nothing to say. But while he buckled up his bag, and clipped the latches on the sea-chest, and sat on it waiting for the men to come and carry it to the ship, she crouched over his little fire. She held her hands out to it—so close he thought she must have burned her palms—and then came over and sat beside him on the chest.

As she had done on another occasion, she took his hands between hers. He felt her fingers pressing and smoothing, transferring their heat to his. He closed his eyes. His skin had taken on the warmth of hers so he no longer knew which was hers and which his.

When the men came for his sea-chest Rooke and Tagaran looked at each other, looked away. He followed the men up the rocks, along the ridge. At the top he did not turn. He kept his hand closed tight around itself, around the warmth she had put there, and went on, down the hill, along the track to where the boats were waiting.

But now, leaning on the stern rail as the ship gathered way,
he could see her down on the very end of the point. She was standing on the rock from which he had once watched a man spear a fish and tuck it into his belt cord. She was so far out that the waves were washing over her feet at each respiration of the water. He found himself smiling: she was as close to
Gorgon
as she could get while remaining on land.

As the wind filled the sails and
Gorgon
picked up speed down the harbour, he waved, and she answered straight away, her arm drawing one large shape through the air. Between them across the water a long thread stretched out, spinning out longer and longer as their figures grew small.

Soon Tagaran become indistinguishable from the rocks around her, the rocks indistinguishable from the headland, the headland nothing more than a distant part of the landscape. Tagaran was invisible now, but she was a part of everything he could see, like the faintest, most distant star, sending its steady light out towards him across space.

T
his is a work of fiction, but it was inspired by recorded events.

Briefly, they are these: on board the First Fleet that brought convicts to Australia in 1788 was a young lieutenant of marines, William Dawes. Although nominally a soldier, he was a considerable scholar in astronomy, mathematics and languages. The record he left of the language of the indigenous people of the Sydney area is by far the most extensive we have. It contains not only word lists and speculations about the grammatical structure of the language, but conversations between him and the indigenous people, particularly a young girl, Patyegarang. Between the lines of these exchanges is what seems to be a relationship of mutual respect and affection.

In December 1790, one of the governor’s gamekeepers was
mortally wounded by a spear. Dawes was one of a party of soldiers sent out to punish the tribe from which the attacker was said to come. Their orders were to capture six indigenous men and bring them back to the settlement, but if that were not possible they were to kill six, cut off their heads, and bring them back in bags provided for the purpose.

Dawes at first refused to take part, but was persuaded. On his return he announced that he regretted his decision, and if ordered to do anything similar again he would refuse. The governor would have court-martialled him for insubordination if the mechanism for court-martial had been available to him.

Earlier, Dawes had expressed a desire to settle in New South Wales, but was sent back to Britain when his tour of duty ended. He never returned to Australia, but worked for the rest of his life in the movement for the abolition of slavery, in London, Africa and the West Indies. He spent his last years in Antigua where, after Abolition, he established schools for former slaves. He died there in 1836.

I made extensive use of historical sources in this novel, and in particular Dawes’ language notebooks. All the Cadigal words and conversations in this book are quoted verbatim from those notebooks with the kind permission of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, (reference MS 41645) and after
consultation with a representative of the Cadigal people. I’ve also made use of direct quotations from
A Narrative of the
Expedition to Botany Bay
and
A Complete Account of the Settlement at
Port Jackson
, by Watkin Tench. I acknowledge these and many other sources with gratitude.

Although I made use of historical sources, I departed from them in various ways. This is a novel; it should not be mistaken for history.

I’d also like to express my deepest thanks to the many generous readers who contributed their knowledge and insight to this book. All errors are my own.

My greatest debt is to Patyegarang and the Cadigal people, who were willing to share their language, and to William Dawes, who wrote some of it down. Without them
The Lieutenant
could not have been imagined.

NOVELS
Lilian’s Story
Dark Places
Dreamhouse
Joan Makes History
The Idea of Perfection
The Secret River

SHORT STORIES
Bearded Ladies

NON-FICTION
The Writing Book
Making Stories
(with Sue Woolfe)
Writing from Start to Finish
Searching for the Secret River

‘A particular kind of stillness marks Kate Grenville’s
characters out as uniquely hers . . . Between the words
and among them, this is a profoundly uplifting novel.’
Independent

‘I’m a shamefully late, and enraptured, discoverer of
Kate Grenville, whose The Lieutenant is a supremely
good novel. It has excited me more than any novel
I’ve read since those of W. G. Sebald.’
Diana Athill

‘Beautifully wrought.’
****
Psychologies

‘Grenville’s novel is much more than just another
culture-clash novel. She deftly avoids worthiness by
making the idealistic Rooke the heart and soul of her
story, making us want to believe that his appreciation
of the indigenous Australians will continue and that
dark clouds won’t gather over this alien paradise.’
****
Metro

‘A fabulous read.’
Marie Claire

‘This narrative is crawling with interesting and tricky
issues. Grenville investigates what it is to attempt to
colonise both another person’s land and their tongue.
She consistently resists melodrama in favour of nuance
and questioning.’
Sunday Times

‘Grenville writes beautifully and her description of these
encounters is graceful and eerie.’
Sunday Business Post

‘Fascinating . . . an enchanting, quietly brilliant novel . . .
enhanced by Grenville’s simple but provocative
use of language.’
Irish Times

‘Wonderfully shimmering and authentic . . .
The Lieutenant is a gripping, fastidiously written
tale and I couldn’t put it down.’
Weekend Herald
(NZ)

‘The Lieutenant gives us a glimpse of a world which
values communication over conquest and understanding
over achievement. Grenville was right about it being
a light to match previous dark, but its weight is also
sufficient to stand on its own.’
Sun Herald

‘Grenville lingers carefully over her exposition of Rooke,
setting him up as a singular character. This enhances the
drama of the book’s later pages, in which his sensibilities
are so disastrously different to those of his shipmates . . .
Genuinely affecting.’
Financial Times

‘Grenville hasn’t written a historical novel.
She has written astutely about dark hearts today.’
Australian