Sarah Thornhill (30 page)

Never been one to pray but by God I prayed then. Not to be saved, I thought that was something not even God could arrange, but for a quick death. A quick death, and my daughter to forgive me.

Leaving her had been even worse than I'd feared. My last sight of her was seeing her wave from the verandah, her hand in Daunt's. I'd ridden half a mile feeling tugged. Finally had to turn the horse, gallop back, say goodbye again.

The second goodbye was worse. Daunt pale and stiff, trying to smile for the sake of the child, and I thought, what kind of fool am I, leaving this dear man and the dear child we made together, for some old woman a stranger to me? Sadie not crying, but looking at me as if she was thinking the same thing I was.
Will I ever see her again?

Look after her, John, I cried in my mind as the boat swung and jarred, every timber creaking against every other. Keep her from harm, my beloved child!

That far-off day when
Industry
went down, another mother would of seen the same green angry ocean, would of felt a boat like this one toiling through the waves, heard that cruel whistle of the wind in the ropes. She'd of gone into it, breathing water and crying,
Keep her from harm! Keep my child from harm!

If I die here, I thought, sinking with this pip of a boat, there'll be justice in it.

Then the sickness come down over me like a bag. There was a place under the deck with a few berths, the water not three inches from your face behind the planks. I wished to die. There was a dark patch on the wood, Lord only knows what kind of stain, and in my misery it took on the shape of a grinning horse's skull, other times a great fat beetle.

Oh my word I was sick. Make it stop, make it stop, I whispered, but this time there was no Will to laugh me out of it.

No time, no place, no me, no other. Nothing but this grey sick thing and the dark patch next to my eye. Sarah Thornhill, Sarah Thornhill, I said, as I had in the pangs of childbirth, but the sounds meant nothing.

Jack brought me water in a tin cup and a wet flannel for my face. Told me it would not last for ever. Sat with me, held my hand, and the feel of his hand told me he thought I was worth saving. Gulfs wider than oceans lay between us, the deep water of the past. But the touch of his skin was a bridge.

He was right that it would not last. One morning the heave of the water was no longer an enemy, but simply the way the world was. I was myself again, went up on deck, held the hard cold rope of a bit of rigging in my fist. The wind still hurled itself along and the waves reared up, webbed with white foam on their smooth green sides, but the boat rode steadier.

In short, this was not to be the time of my death.

It was cold on deck in the damp blast of air but I wanted never, ever, to go back down to that bunk again. Got myself in a nook between a cask and a coil of rope big as a table, sat down on the boards, watched for land. But there was nothing, only water, every heave and suck of it like every other but different too, arranging itself in a new way every time, and after a while I forgot about land and was content to watch water instead. The sky all rags of cloud and the wind pushing us along like no wind I'd ever felt. It had started on this endless open space of ocean and blown across it for God only knew how many miles and weeks, nothing in its way but the odd boat and seagull.

Up ahead where sea met sky, a line of cloud lay on the horizon. Land, perhaps. That dim colourless shape my first glimpse of New Zealand.

For the girl it would of been her last, every up and down of the boat taking her further away. She'd of stared till her eyes ached, till the cloud became the same as the sky, the last ghost of her home gone.

What Jack had said, how he'd put it to the girl's kin, I didn't know. That it was just for a visit? Or did he talk till they agreed it would be best for the girl?

Did she leave happily? Did they promise her some adventure that would appeal to a little girl? A good life with her grandpa, a new family? But what child, if she knew it would be for ever, would leave her place and go to live among folk she didn't know? That sallow child in the lamplight of the parlour had not been someone having an adventure.

For a moment she was as present to me as if she was standing alongside. She'd of stood like I was, hanging onto wet rigging and feeling the wind stream past. She'd of seen these same waves, these racing clouds, heard the same creaks and knocks of the boat pushing itself through the hills of water. Exactly this, give or take the weather.

I was doing the journey home she'd longed to do, squeezed up in the corner of the window, hour after hour, day after day. It was why I was here. In her place. So little and so much too late. But it was all I could do.

Jack was up at the bow with a couple of the sailors, at ease on the pitching deck. He saw me, made his way along to where I was.

Best watch out now, he said. Mrs Daunt up and about. Good-day to you, Mrs Daunt, glad to see you on your feet.

Under the fierce lines on his face I saw the Jack that I knew, and who knew me.

Making good time, he said. Not far off. Be there tomorrow.

I looked ahead but no matter where you turned your eyes, there was only water heaving itself up and down.

How can you tell, I said, thinking he was saying what I wanted to hear.

See them birds, he said. Stick by the land.

I hadn't noticed them, they were so much like the dark water, skimming so close you'd think they'd scrape the tops of the waves.

Good eating bird that, he said. Like a mutton chop.

I was going where a human face could be carved like wood and a bird might taste like a mutton chop. What else was there? And was everyone carved like him? I tried to imagine it, being the only one with a naked face.

You done the right thing, he said. You're a good brave soul. Always have been.

It was the first time he'd spoken soft to me.
You're a good brave
soul.
Precious, the nearest thing to forgiveness.

We folded ourselves down out of the wind and he got me ready for what was ahead.

First off, there was his wife. Her name was Hinewai.

You'd have children, I said.

Just the one, he said, our Maria, five going on six, smart as paint, never saw such a girl for catching onto a thing.

I heard the pride and love in his voice and was glad.
Be
happy, live long
.

Now I best tell you this, he said. These people, they got a special way of welcoming. Sing a song for you, do a dance. Then you got to do it back. Not the dance, let you off the dance part. But you got to sing something.

Singing out in front of a whole lot of strangers! My thin little voice, and what song would I sing? Could they let me off the singing as well as the dancing?

But I thought of the girl. Her sad face. If having to sing in front of some strangers was the worst that would ever happen to me, I was a lucky woman.

Then after the singing they'll come up to you, he said. One by one. Press their nose up against your nose.

I tried to see past the marks on his face, if he was having a lend of me.

Real gentle, he said. Like we might shake hands.

Press their noses, I said. Right up to me. My nose.

I stared at the cask beside me, a knotty bit in the wood and a nick out of one of the hoops. Needed to think about something simple, something I knew about, wood and iron. The closer we got to the place that had given Jack his new shape, the more clear I saw that the things I knew about would be of no use to me. Where I was going, the person called Sarah Daunt was not as clever even as the smallest child.

One of the men shouted from the bow and Jack went back to them, the hair lying between his shoulder blades with the wind ruffling it sideways.

Next morning when I stepped out onto the deck, the cloud on the horizon had firmed into a shape. Some trick of the light made a pale line between the dark sea and the darker shape so it seemed to float on the water.

By degrees as the morning went on, with no boundary where one thing turned into another, the land made itself visible. A steep place, high and dark, all clefts and shadows. The tops of the high parts sliced off flat where they went up into cloud. Thick bush on every fold, a green so dark it was near black, smooth and thick like the nap on velvet, coming down to the water, only for a skirt of black rocks.

The boat curved past a headland, the high land fell away behind us. Ahead a wide stretch of open water, low hills all round. The water glassy, the land sheltering it from the wind. But under the smoothness, a secretive slow swell like the sea breathing, a long hump of water travelling along under the skin.

We sailed slow and calm towards a low spit of land on the far side, so pale it was hard to see against the water. From this distance it was something the shape of a lizard, flat along the water, the long nose going away to nothing, the small humps of its body. Where the head met the body, a dip in the land like a neck, and out of that neck I could see smoke rising, and dark shapes different from anything I'd seen for two weeks: houses.

People, too, little moving shapes walking down a track towards a beach. One of them the granny perhaps. All those years ago she'd of watched the boat carry her granddaughter away. She'd of waved in the beginning, no matter what she'd of been feeling, sent the girl away with a cheerful face. She'd of seen the girl wave back. Then too much air would of come between them, the girl a speck on the stern, then not even a speck. The sails would of become pale small shapes you might mistake for birds, but the granny would of gone on standing on the beach, looking, even after there was nothing to see.

We'd come close now, but not close enough to make out the faces of the people on the beach. The anchor chain clattered against the boards and the boat stopped moving, quietly riding the breathing of the water.

From the bow I heard a man calling, a long run of words sent out towards the land. It was Jack, standing up at the bowsprit, his hands cupped round his mouth, and it was no words I knew. He stopped and a call came back from the group on the beach, the voice of a woman, but strong, a rope of human sound flung out across the water.

Backwards and forwards, Jack's voice and the voice from the land, and then it seemed the exchange was finished. The sailors heaved a skiff over the side and there was Jack helping me over the rail and down the ladder. I watched the land come to meet me and for one frightened moment wished I could go back, all the way along the miles, all the way back to quiet familiar Glenmire. Then the bow crunched into the sand and I stepped out onto that unknown shore.

I
'D THOUGHT
New Zealanders might be in the same mould as our natives, black and skinny, with that way of not meeting your eye. But these folk were tall and strong, well covered with flesh, legs thick with muscle. One or two of the men had faces carved like Jack's, some of the women had a shape drawn round their lips and on their chin, a neat blue line like on a teacup. But no grass skirts, like Will and Jack had told us about, just trousers on the men and serge skirts on the women, and the most of the faces as unmarked as mine.

They stared at me, spoke to each other about me, laughed and called. Long ago Will and Jack said they cooked their enemies and ate them. I could believe it, but I was not here to be a meal.

They had a name for Jack, something that slipped away when I tried to catch it. He spoke to them in their tongue, a big dark man among other big dark men, not the same as them but welcomed like kin returning.

Jack's wife reminded me of my sister. High round cheekbones, skin tight over the bone, chin like a spade, only browner in the face than Mary, and her hair black. She smiled, held my hand and spoke to me, shapes and sounds like water.

Hinewai says you are right welcome, Jack said. She thanks you for making this long journey. Says, you are a brave woman. That's the truth of it, Mrs Daunt. You are that.

Hanging back behind Jack's wife, a little girl.

Our lass Maria, Jack said. Our dear lass.

Maria reminded me of the girl. The colour of her skin, paler than the others, and the different shape of her face. I wondered if Jack saw the likeness too.

She carried so much in her, this girl. Hinewai, and Hinewai's mother and father, all the way back, the life of this place. Jack too, and through him old Mr Langland, and the woman whose kin I'd got a glimpse of at the house by the lagoon. All those men and women, coming together in this solemn big-eyed child staring at the woman her father had brought.

They took me towards the houses. On a rise of land behind them was a building bigger than the rest, with an open space in front.

They'll greet you, Jack said. Make you welcome. Women's business, I got to hang back.

I smiled and thanked and let myself be led, sat on a chair brought out for me, and all around me that other language flowing past like a creek of thick water where there was nothing for me to latch onto.

The girl had floated like this. Our life at Thornhill's Point, so crisp and real to me, had been something she'd floated and floundered in, a place where nothing had a reason, where every face was unknown and every object was without the softness of knowing what it was or what it was for, where it was from or where it was going. A place you hoped was a dream, so you could wake up from it.

The women got together in front of me. They'd changed their serge for grass skirts now. Sang a loud fierce song and twirled themselves about, doing things with their hands and shoulders and sliding their eyes sideways. I thought it must be the welcome song Jack had told me about, so I stood up and tried to look welcomed. In truth I was frightened. When they sang and danced it wasn't one woman here and then another woman next to her. It was a single creature stronger than any of them. It was warning as much as welcome.

Then they stopped with a great shout. It was my turn now. So many faces watching. Hinewai not smiling, nothing so sociable, but there was a warmth about her.
Let me see who you are
, her face said.
Show me who you are.