Skins (21 page)

Mainland 1835, James Manning

They rowed into a cove on the eastern side of Mount Arid with the silvery skin of dolphins flickering and leaping through the wake of the bow. The smiling creatures slipped from sight when the boat reached green water. The keel scraped the sand and they stepped out into brown ribbon weed that stuck to their ankles. From the beach heath-like vegetation spread dark and spiky up to the purple rocks that shone with recent rain. Cloud swirled around their peaks.

Isaac threw them a flask that splashed in the sea beside them. Jem picked it up. Anderson and his men worked the oars so they turned to face the shore.

‘Hey!' Manning shouted.

Anderson looked over his shoulder.

‘We need powder for a fire.'

Anderson leant down towards Isaac who brought his oar out of the water. He couldn't hear what they were saying. Then Mead nodded towards him. He waded out into the water until it was up to his chest and grasped the side of the boat, standing on his toes. Isaac handed him powder wrapped in oilskin. By the time he reached the shore and back to Jem, the whaleboat had gone around the flat rocky point.

Drizzle thickened to dense rain. Jem's brown curls were stuck to his face and water dripped from the end of his nose. Manning looked along the edge of the beach for an opening into the scrub.

‘This way,' he said.

They pushed through the bush that although low was thick and hard to penetrate. Their feet sunk into wet sand. Sticks prodded their arms and legs and scratched their faces. They crawled on their hands and knees along a cut away and into a thicket of palms where the fronds splayed bright and green over their heads. They sheltered, leaning up against the thick nobbly trunks where a carpet of moss grew, and listened to the drops as they hit the leaves. Jem hadn't said anything since they left the beach. His arms were folded across the tops of his legs and he stared into the dim light.

‘You alright?'

He didn't answer. Manning clenched his jaw as the cold started. It began in his fingers and then his shoulders, his feet and his thighs. He rubbed his hands on his legs and stamped his feet.

‘We should keep moving.'

Jem slowly lifted his head. The look in his eyes scared Manning.

‘Come on. There'll be a cave or something over the top.'

Manning crawled out of the thicket to the other side where the bush was lower and easier to walk through. He followed a kangaroo pad that twisted up over the ridge and along the line of the coast. Jem was about twenty feet behind him.

The rain kept up a steady momentum, washing their faces and watering their eyes. The big rounded rocks that could be seen from the island towered ahead. The bush clinging to the sides was tough and gnarly but occasionally there was a glimpse of colour and softness. It was low scrub, only just knee-high. Long thin roots lay above the ground to catch their feet. They climbed to a gap in the hills. From there they could see the coast as it curved around to the northwest. Across the steel-grey sea to the south was their island, the whaleboat a dark speck between them. They paused for a moment without speaking. Manning looked down at his feet. His trousers stuck to his upper legs and his lower legs were dripping with water. They would get him there. And it was better than being in a boat. It had to be.

The rain lifted. But mist edged their vision. The sand became whiter and they walked through gullies that were topped with straggly limbs and silver grass. They skirted around a lump of granite which looked from a distance as though its gullies filled with sand were folds in a pink and grey cushion. Clouds became higher and formed fat faces against a darker sky. A shaft of light shone down and moved glittering across the metallic sea. The gap in the clouds widened and bolts of yellow and mauve streaked the horizon behind the headland. The end of the bay was in shadow. A lumpy island lay close to the coast. The steep headland was covered with bush, and where it veered down towards the waterline rows of rocks like oversize tombstones stood at strange angles. And the sea slipped quietly over the flat black rocks.

They dug out burrows into the thick bush at the base of the hill. Although they shivered with cold, they didn't light a fire because they only had a small amount of powder and Manning wanted to conserve it. They had eaten shellfish that morning so they didn't need to eat and there was plenty of water. Wet black sticks crossed overhead and drops expanded and fell. They lay on black dirt that smelt of rotting vegetation. Jem jerked and muttered to himself. Manning would rather him be angry or something. It was impossible to sleep. Images of the past two years played through his mind like cards being shuffled in a pack.

The sky lightened behind black slimy branches. Manning rolled onto his stomach and the damp dirt stuck to his shirt. He edged out of the burrow and stretched. Jem was behind him. Both blackened by peaty soil. A thick blanket of clouds stretched from one horizon to the other, another shade of grey to the sand and the sea. The hills of Arid lay like a man on his back, his head pointing inland, with a round belly and legs trailing out into the ocean. Manning realised then that it was up to him. It was different from before when there had been others. He wondered what Jem was thinking.

‘I'm hungry.'

Manning pointed to the rocks.

‘There'll be limpets.'

‘Light a fire?'

Manning shook his head.

‘We should keep going,' he said. ‘While we can.'

Watching Jem's face, Manning suddenly felt years older, although he probably wasn't. Not by much anyway. Jem's life before would have been different from his even though they had both been forced into work when they were young. Manning's first job had been on a merchant vessel to New Zealand as the captain's boy. By fourteen he was hanging around wharf-side taverns, thin and wiry, ready for anything. But he hadn't been ready for the crew of the
Defiance
. Before he had joined them they had dumped the body of a black woman they called their wife on an island in the Bass Strait. They hadn't found another.

Jem levered three limpets from the rock. He wrapped them in cloth and secured them around his waist. Manning also took two. But he was keen to get moving. The bush behind them was impenetrable so they retraced their footsteps from the day before. They had been covered by the tide and were now only slight indents filled with water. When the bush cleared they went inland but only to cut across the headland to the other side. They reached a wide white beach of hard sand. It was easy walking and they kept a good pace. Water ran from a creek to the sea. Although stained brown it was fresh and they filled their water flask. They dug with their knives and their hands to the root of the thick reed beside it for they knew it was good eating. They ate it raw and it filled them.

Jem seemed almost cheerful, whistling as he strode out beside Manning. The clouds were higher and there was no wind. Their pace kept them warm. The green glass water reared and rolled beside them, spreading a silky sheen on the sand as the foam slipped away from their footsteps. Black birds with red stick-like legs darted in and out and poked the wet sand with long red beaks. Black and white birds too. And there were flocks of little birds that when startled rose over the waves like a swarm of bees in perfect formation. Breakers formed several lines of foam, like layered cream on a cake, which rushed towards them over and over again.

But Manning saw only a few feet in front of him for he was thinking about what he was going to do when he reached the Sound. He had a picture in his mind of whitewashed cottages nestled comfortably in a valley between two hills overlooking a harbour that sparkled in the morning light. He would wait there for Anderson to bring in his skins and then he would get the money that was owed to him. Jem shrugged and kept walking. Manning decided that Jem didn't care.

‘Don't matter that's all,' said Jem defensively. ‘It's over. I don't want to have that black jack looking at me like he's going to open me up.'

Manning made a noise in his throat that sounded like a snort.

‘He ain't nothing to worry about. We're here, aren't we? That was our plan.'

‘It was your bleedin' plan. And we're not there. We don't even know where we're going.'

‘What are you on about? Look at this.'

Manning swept his arm out wide and gestured towards the end of the beach.

‘We'll be there in a few days.'

He could just make out the shape of another headland in the distance. And when he stared hard enough, he left the beach and stood in the middle of the hut on the island. His hand was resting on the table and he remembered thinking about what he was going to do. There had been a shaft of light that fell through a crack in the ceiling in front of the storeroom door. He passed through it. Inside the storeroom it was different. Since the women had been there. Shells were twisted on a line of twine across the back wall. Skins hung from the other two walls and a chest and two barrels were stacked in a corner. On the top of one of the barrels was a small chest and it had the letter R carved on its lid. He picked it up. It was a well-made oak chest with black hinges. It was heavy and when he shook it, it rattled.

He noticed the pain in his legs. It was like the muscles were pulled short. He stopped. Jem too and they looked around. He had no idea how long they had been walking but suddenly he saw that nothing had changed. Sky and more sky and a flat land and a flat sea that were like the undefined walls of a prison. Instead of a black hole, it was a bleak nothingness. They were free to move in whichever direction they fancied but they would never get anywhere and there was no other person that lived. A gull soared high overhead, catching the southerly wind draughts. Through the bird's eye he saw two ants, their nest poisoned, crawling over the endless expanse of white. Waves wiping away their prints.

That was not how it would be. No! He concentrated on the air leaving his lungs in an effort to get his breathing under control. They would not die here. He had always been conscious of the tenuous grip he had on life but never had he felt panic at the thought he might die before he reached where he was going.

Jem had stopped whistling and was watching him curiously. ‘Do you think God can see us?' he asked.

Manning faced the sea. Calm again. ‘Mmm.'

‘Why?'

‘Don't know. That's what they say,' he said as he turned back to the beach and started walking again. Jem slipped in behind him and stepped into his footsteps. After a while he called over the roar of the surf.

‘Don't you think that even for Him we're too far away?'

Manning shrugged. He didn't know what he thought. He stepped on the little brown balls like peas that popped. Then he slowed and walked beside him.

‘Tell me what it was like in England.'

‘Don't remember much,' said Jem and then he lifted his head. ‘We had a house on the edge of the green. It was a big house and my grandmother lived in the front. It was her house when my granddad was alive. We moved there after Mother had William. He was the seventh.'

Jem paused.

‘Then the overseer told me dad that he couldn't afford to pay him.'

‘For what?'

‘For harvesting the corn.'

‘You had no money?'

‘Me dad sold the grandmother's house.'

Manning was picturing Jem's family. Seven children. He only knew that his mother came out on the convict ship
Hero
. He didn't know where she was from or what she had done, just that her belly was big with a child when she reached Botany Bay. She had died a few years later with the effort of trying to produce another fatherless infant. Manning was made a ward of the new state and looked after by the Benevolent Asylum. He had a friend, a small girl. They would go down to the creek and play amongst the rocks, skimming pebbles across the clear surface. On hot humid days they would discard their rags and splash and paddle in the shallows. It was their secret until the matron found them. She reminded him of a crow. Always in black and with a large pendant at her neck. Her eyes flickered darkly and she had the same ability to make him feel that there was evil about. On that particular day his friend was whipped and sent out into the street. He knew she was only a child and until now he had never thought of her.