Sarah Thornhill (3 page)

All right, Will, I said, because I was a bit frightened, never seen Will so grave.

But I was thinking who could I ask.

Iris Herring lived up the river at Cat-Eye Creek, fowls pecking round outside her hut and a few goats watching you sideways. A patch of potatoes and a bed of the same blood-red geraniums we had at home. A plain woman like a boulder, getting on in years, always with an old pipe in her mouth. But if a baby was on the way or you cut your leg open and needed stitching up, she was the person you got.

Mrs Herring knew everything that went on along the river. Didn't always tell, but she always knew.

Next time Jemmy Katter rowed Ma up to Mrs Herring's with a flitch of bacon and a basket of oranges, I come along with her. Sat on Mrs Herring's lap, on the pinny with all the stains, and leaned my head against her cushiony bosom. They drank their tea and talked about little pitchers having long ears, then Ma went outside to pull a bunch of Mrs Herring's special scallions and I got in quick.

Did you know my brother, I said. My brother Dick?

Course I did, Mrs Herring said. Heaven's sakes, I borned the whole lot of you!

Held out her hands, brown and swollen round the joints, shiny bulges on the knuckles, the skin wrinkled as crepe merino.

You was a good handful of bub, Dolly, she said. Come out looking round like you owned the place. And yell! My word you had a good pair of lungs.

Did he die? I said. Dick? Did he die?

Course not, silly goose, she said. Went away for a time, that's all. Now hop down quicksticks, we get them taters done for tea.

Ma was back then, we could hear her knocking the dirt off the scallions on the wall outside. Mrs Herring touched my cheek with her finger.

Best look forward, lovey, she said. I don't never look back.

Never ever.

That was how it was on the Hawkesbury. Everything hidden away and those everlasting cliffs and ridges blocking us into the narrow valley. Would of liked to push them back, get a clear look at all the things people knew but wouldn't say.

T
HOSE DAYS
there was blacks all round. People talked about the wild blacks that lived further out where the whites hadn't got to yet. Went about stark naked and ate their babies, they said. Killed any white man they saw, cut his heart out.

I didn't believe it. Only ones I ever saw had clothes like us, but more raggedy, and you couldn't see them killing anyone.

They'd come to our back door sometimes and wait, one or two women in rags of clothes, a couple of little ones with snotty lips. Didn't knock, didn't ask, didn't look at us.

Here you are back again, Mrs Devlin would shout. Come to cadge again are you?

They might of been deaf. Never answered.

Mrs Devlin would go to the cupboard, get out a loaf and some bacon, yesterday's leg of mutton. Eggs, oranges. Grumbling as she put the stuff in their billies.

Up to me or your ma, we'd send them packing, she said. It's your pa. Said to me, when they ask, Mrs Devlin, you be sure and give. Now Dolly, you get right away or you'll get their fleas off of them.

When Jemmy rowed Ma up to Windsor with Mary and me, we'd see the smoke drifting up from places away off in the bush. That'll be the blacks, Ma would say. I'd look, but I never saw anyone, just the smoke, and that sometimes so faint you couldn't be sure.

At Windsor there'd be groups of them on the edge of town, under the trees or sitting round a few smouldering sticks. So dark and still you had to look twice.

Ma would grab our hands, hurry us along.

One time a man got up, joint by joint, walked over to us with his hand out. Close up I could see how his palm was pale as mine, only threaded with dark lines. His hair stuck out like feathers, his face all rough from the smallpox.

Ma had a hold of me so tight it hurt. Panting, she was pulling us along that fast.

Who's that, Ma, I said. Who was that man?

She bent down to us so we'd listen.

Now girls, she said. I got nothing against the blacks. I pity them, truly I do, hardly better than beasts of the field. God in his wisdom put us above them.

He smelled, Mary said. I smelled him, pooh!

Not civilised, see, Ma said. Can't help it, poor things. We give, you've seen them at the house, we're forever giving out. Our Christian duty, do right by them. But this begging in the street, that I can't abide.

I looked back at where the man was sitting with the others. The smoke from their little fire whipped around in the wind.

Where are their houses, I said. Why don't they go home?

I wouldn't know, Ma said. But I wish they'd take themselves off and not go bothering respectable folk.

We had some blacks near us, only I never knew for a long time. Bub and Johnny was mostly off on their own boys' things, but now and then they let us girls tag along. Up in the bush behind the house, or out on the river in one of the skiffs. Pa made sure we could all handle an oar. One morning the four of us took it into our heads to go along the riverbank further than we'd ever been. I loved to see a new place, couldn't wait, ran on ahead.

At the start it was a sweet sandy track under the she-oaks, a breeze coming and going with that dry whistle through the leaves and the water shining in the sun. A pair of wallabies hopped up the ridge, an emu stalked along. A fat lizard made me jump, sliding through the grass like a snake.

I waited for the others at the end of Thornhill's. No fence there, but a stony spine of ridge coming down into a jumble of rocks. The end of the good land, nothing past that but prickly bush.

Mary wanted to go back, but I had my heart set on seeing what was further on. There was still a track, rougher and not as clear as before. I started off along it and the others came after.

Pretty soon it stopped being a novelty. No shade, the sun hot, and we hadn't thought to bring any water. Mary got a blister and cried to go back and Johnny called for me to stop, but I made out I didn't hear.

The track did a turn and suddenly I came out in a flat part with shady trees and a little stream. And a couple of bark humpies round a smoky fire. Three old black women turning their faces towards me. A couple of pot-bellied children and an old man by the fire with a blanket over his shoulders. All of them so skinny you could see the knobs on their joints.

And leaning hard on a pole, a tall crooked man. One side of his head was shiny stretched skin where something bad had happened and never mended. The stick was mostly what was holding him up.

Stood watching me. Didn't as much as blink.

One of the children coughing, on and on, that was the only sound. The women turned away. One of them reached forward and moved something in the ashes. The man never moved, never took his eyes off me.

The others caught up to me. I heard Bub go
Oooh!

Come away, Dolly, Johnny said. Quick, we best go back.

Bold as I was, something about this place, the man staring, made me glad to leave. We started back, Mary running, blister or no blister, and none of us looking behind.

Back on our place we all got brave again.

What was you running for Mary? Johnny said. Think he'd eat you? God, that old feller?

Bub and I laughed along with him, but all of us avoiding each others' eyes.

We never told Ma or Pa. Never talked about it among ourselves. But never went along that track again.

The only blacks we knew to speak to was the two fellers worked in our stables. Pa learned to ride late in life, it was like oranges, something else he hadn't grown up with. But riding was what gentry did, so he'd got a stableful of horses, and Jingles and Phillip to look after them. Been with us since I could remember, lived in the stables along with the darkie boy who did the firewood. Jingles was very big, very black. A thick beard with threads of grey and his eyes set deep. Don't think I ever heard more than six words together from him, and those few mumbled in his throat. Kindly enough, but I never saw him smile. Nothing jingly about him that I ever saw.

Phillip was a different make altogether. Younger than Jingles and nowhere near as dark. Must of had one parent white. A tall sinewy feller, amazing the weight he could move round with those skinny arms. Lift a saddle as if it was nothing. His face long and clever in the shade of his hat, the skin yellow, with black freckles the size of farthings.

He was a charmer, Phillip. Thin as a lizard, with a smile that could melt stone.

My word Phillip had a good way with the horses. I watched him with one just come in, never had as much as a halter on, that big eyeball swivelling and the scared poor thing tittupping around all left-footed with fright, and Phillip so patient. Walking him in the horse-yard talking softly to him by the hour. Next thing I knew he had the halter on and the horse pacing beside him as nice as ever you saw.

Pa rode now and then, but he was never at ease. He was frightened of his big thoroughbred Star, you could see it in the way he mounted, needed Phillip to hold the horse beside a stump so he could get up in the saddle. Once he was astride he was awkward, perched up like a cherry on a cake.

Will didn't get on a horse if he could be on a boat, said he got seasick in a saddle, but Bub and Johnny rode. Riding meant they could come and go as they pleased, Bub off to the end paddocks with his hoe and Johnny up the hill on the Sydney road, he'd go as far as Martin's Corner, work the horse too hard on the hill and get in strife from Pa when he brought it back all of a lather.

I couldn't wait for the day I was old enough to ride. Knew the world would be a bigger place once I had legs under me longer than my own. I'd go down the stables, talk to the horses, feed them bits of apple off my hand, the way Phillip showed me.

Ma didn't like that. No place for you girls, she'd say. I catch you in the yard with them blacks, you'll get a hiding you won't forget.

Why, Ma? I'd say. Why can't we? But she wouldn't say, just press her lips together.

When Pa thought we was old enough—I'd of been around eight, Mary ten or eleven—he got us a couple of ponies. I'd never seen a sidesaddle before. That funny bent post sticking out of it, and the stirrups on the same side.

What's this thing for, Jingles, I said. I want a proper saddle.

How ladies ride, Phillip said. Hook your knee round, see? Legs together. More polite.

Damn that for a lark, I said, something I'd heard Pa say, and Mary looked at me as if the lightning would come down and strike me dead.

I'll ride the way the boys do, I said. Or I damn well won't ride!

Plonked myself down on the stones of the yard. Mary was already up on Belle with a knee bent round the post on the saddle but I wouldn't get on Queenie, wouldn't go near her, never mind how Phillip coaxed me, and never mind how I wanted more than anything in the world to ride.

Phillip went up to the house. Stood at the back door tapping until Mrs Devlin stuck her head out the kitchen window and called what did he want. Then Ma come and talked to him through the window.

She walked down to me very brisk.

Get up this minute, Dolly Thornhill, she said. Making an exhibit of yourself in front of the blacks!

Grabbed at my wrist, but I leaned my weight back against her. Phillip and Jingles watching, and Ma getting red in the face.

Your pa's the one to settle this, she said. You come along with me, my girl, that's if you don't want me to fetch him down here.

Pa cranky was one thing. Pa cranky and hauled away from his bench would be another, so I went with her. He laughed when he saw me.

My word Dolly, he said. You could sit on that bottom lip!

Ma put it to him, it wasn't ladylike for a girl to ride astride.

But Pa, I said, I don't want to be a lady!

For a little thing, I had a good dose of cunning.

Old Loveday's a gentleman, I said, but you always say, who'd you rather be?

No doubt about you, Dolly, he said. Got all the answers. Look, Meg, way I see it, what's the odds how they ride? Long as they got the best bloodstock under them. Hold their own with anyone if they got that.