Skylarking (11 page)

TWENTY-TWO

T
HE MOMENT
H
ARRIET WAS TO LEAVE ARRIVED ALL TOO
quickly. The previous day had been filled with the hectic bluster of the supply boat arriving, the unloading of groceries, the news from town. Against all this, Harriet packed and repacked her mother's small travelling case, despite the fact that she had only her three dresses, a few petticoats and one extra pair of boots to place in there. She could not be still, and I was completely exhausted by her.

‘I will look so out of place. Everyone will think me a savage!'

‘You will be fine,' I soothed. ‘Aunt Cecilia will have dresses made for you and you will come back and be the height of fashion around here, although there'll be hardly a soul to show.'

‘Whatever will I do without you, Kate?'

‘Without me?' I cried, jumping up to wrap my arms around her. ‘You will have Melbourne! It is I who should be worried – it is I who will have no one.'

We kissed each other upon the cheeks at least ten times, and it was as if Harriet were leaving forever, and not just for three months, so dramatic were we.

I had promised Harriet I would watch the boat until I could see it no more. I could not bear being near the others and their excited chattering about Harriet's departure, so I announced that I'd walk to the top of the little hill off the track to the junction.

‘I'll come with you,' Emmaline called, hurrying after me, perhaps thinking she might win favour by appearing to comfort me, but Mother stopped her.

‘Let her be now, Em,' I heard her say.

Emmaline whined as they headed back into the kitchen to get the stocks in proper order.

It was only mid-morning, but it was hot. I kept to the shady side of the track and picked a frond of bracken to wave the flies away. I reached the spot where an opening in the bush revealed the hill path. I had to concentrate on where I trod, for the path was narrow and wound up and over tree roots and jutting rocks and I did not want to twist an ankle or fall.

It was loud with the buzzing of insects in the heat. My breath came harder as the track got steeper, and I could see the blue sky not far through the trees ahead of me now. The bush thinned out as I came closer to the top.

When I reached the rock ledge at the summit, I stopped and turned to face the way I had come. Stretched before me was the perfect half-sphere of the coastline. Looking directly below me I could follow the sandy track back to where the station was laid out. The light tower and the three cottages arranged behind it, where some of the others moved back and forth. Beyond that, the edge of the land and then the sea and the sky.

I could make out the supply boat, although from where I was I could not make out the figures on it, only its shape being tugged away by the tide and the wind.

I sat down on the rock and tried to examine the tumult inside me. In some ways I wished beyond anything that I was on that boat with Harriet. And then again, I also wished that I
was
Harriet. But there was this whispering in my head telling me that here I was, on the cape, without Harriet for the first time, really, in my whole life, and that in fact I might make something of this moment after all: something that was mine and mine alone.

‘Oh,' I sighed aloud, and buried my face in my hands for it was too much to have all these confusing thoughts.

A noise startled me. Standing not ten feet from me was a black girl. I couldn't be certain, but she looked like the girl I had seen on that day in the vegetable garden with Albert, years back now. Her feet were bare, but she wore a scrappy skirt, faded to a dirty mauve, that finished halfway down her calves. She wore a man's waistcoat buttoned down, but it barely covered her. She was staring straight at me, her head tilted to one side as though she were asking me what I might be doing here instead of the other way around.

‘What?' I cried and stood up. ‘Go on, shoo!' I waved my hand at her to make her leave for I was a little frightened and suddenly felt a long way from the station. Who would hear me call up here, if there were others? I knew Father said they were all but gone, but she must belong with someone.

I waved my hand again. ‘Go on – away with you!'

But she did not move, just flicked her eyes to where I had been watching the boat on the horizon.

‘Gone,' she said, or at least that is what I thought, and I followed her gaze.

‘The boat?' I said, to myself really, for I knew she could not understand a word I said.

‘Gone,' she said and lifted her arm to point to where the boat was headed, then she brought her hand to the place above her left breast and said it again. ‘Gone.'

I breathed out heavily in exasperation. ‘Yes, the boat has gone. My friend has gone.' Futile though it was, there was some satisfaction in saying it aloud. ‘She has gone to Melbourne, without me.'

The girl nodded her head and kept her hand held on the dirty cotton that scarcely covered her breast. I could not help but look there, where she held it, and I began to blush as I noticed the way her long fingers stretched across the fabric and onto the round flesh of her breast.

I had wondered at the growing fullness of my own and I stole glances when I bathed, sometimes, coyly, cupping my hand underneath to see what it felt like. It had been a long time since Harriet and I had peered at each other's chests and giggled. I knew a blush crept up my cheeks, yet I could not look away.

She laughed and began to walk towards me, and I thought about running, all the way down the track and home, but I did not.

When she was quite close, she held out her hand and pointed to my face. Then she tapped her hand against her own cheek and spoke in her strange language. How bold she was! She repeated the sound and then came towards me, so near now, and brought up her hand to touch the sleeve of my dress. I flinched back, and she laughed and touched it again. Then she pointed to my face once more.

‘Hot,' I said suddenly. ‘You think I am hot.'

‘Hot,' she said after me, and tapped her cheeks again and smiled.

I smiled, too, in relief. ‘Kate,' I said now, and pointed at my chest. ‘I'm Kate.'

She formed the word in her mouth. It did not sound quite right, but it was close enough that I felt a strange elation. She repeated the word. Then she pointed to her own chest and uttered a sound. Her name, of course, except that even when I watched her mouth closely, tried to replicate the way she stretched her lips, followed where her tongue seemed to move, I could not make anything like the sound. She said it again and again, and I tried to copy, but she just shook her head and laughed.

A loud call surprised us both, and we spun around.

A tall black man stepped from behind the scrub near the edge of the hill. He called again in his language, and the girl moved away from me and dropped her hand. I stood very still even though I thought my heart might burst through my chest. The girl stayed between me and the man, as though she might protect me. The man called again, harshly it seemed, and the girl spoke back, her chin high, and though I did not understand her, I thought it again:
she is bold.
The man spoke once more, turned, and the girl followed. She flicked her head back once and touched her hand to her cheek and I think she smiled, but maybe I imagined that, and then she disappeared over the edge, and I began to breathe again.

I told no one about the girl when I returned. In truth, I did not know what to think of my encounter. I'd not felt the righteous anger that I had when I'd seen her in our vegetable patch, the hill not being specifically part of the light station, I suppose; we were on more equal ground. As with that day, though, I still had the uneasy feeling that I was being laughed at, mocked in some way. I wondered that she was still living wild, as it were, and how many others there were. The reverend had told us when he visited last that the remaining few were being rounded up to live down on the mission at Lake Myner and that any scoundrels still at large out there in the bush would be brought in sooner or later. ‘Brought in or hunted down. For their own good,' he'd said.

In the days and weeks that followed I caught myself scanning the hill for her as I went about my business, though I did not see her. I would not see her again until later, when everything had changed.

TWENTY-THREE

T
HE DAYS STRETCHED AND LINGERED WHILE
H
ARRIET
was in Melbourne. At first I came up with ways to measure the passing time: I scratched short lines in the soft rock at the base of the cliff face with a stick; I lined up shells along my windowsill; I inked the name of each day and the date in tiny letters in the back cover of a book that I knew no one else would ever open. But three months was a long time, and my rituals did not make the days pass any quicker.

Albert took the opportunity to appear before me at strange times, times when I would usually have slipped away with Harriet.

At first I resisted his invitations to clamber down the cliffs, or take the horses down the track. But the truth was, I was lonely without Harriet. I sometimes thought aloud, when my brain seized on some idea that was wonderful or silly or made me laugh, and then I would realise that Harriet wasn't there to listen, and I would bite off the end of the sentence, feeling foolish even though I was alone.

One still afternoon when the air was sticky with salt and heat, Albert approached the verandah where I was getting the cobwebs down from around the window frames with a broom. Mother had sent me out to do it, saying there was a breeze out there at least and I was better off with that chore than scrubbing the floors. But there was no breeze, and I suspected that splashing cold water over the floors would have been far more pleasant.

I pushed wet strands of hair from my forehead with a frustrated sigh and leaned on the broom as I watched him draw near.

‘There's not a breath of wind. It's unbearable,' I said miserably.

‘It's not a day for cleaning, I'll give you that.' He'd grown into himself these past few months and his limbs now seemed to match his height. He still didn't seem entirely comfortable in his body, but he moved more like a man and less like a boy, and I realised I found that satisfying.

‘We're going down to Murray's for a swim. Your brothers and me with Harry and Ed. I wondered whether you'd like to join us?' His gaze was challenging, as if he were saying,
I know you'll say no, Kate Gilbert, but I'll damn well ask you anyway.

It was so easy for the boys to just take off and not worry about chores, or how much help Mother needed.

‘Yes,' I said. ‘I'll come. My brothers won't thank you for asking me along, though. They'll say I will spoil their fun.'

Albert seemed pleased. He said he'd wait, and I put down the broom and ran inside to get my costume.

We kicked off our shoes when we arrived at Murray's, and the sand was hot beneath our feet. The sun glinted on the dimpled pelt of the water.

My brother James took off straight away. ‘I'm going along to the end to search for fossils,' he told Albert, but Albert just nodded and James stomped towards the end of the beach where the rocky headland tumbled down into the sea.

‘Why not stay with us?' I called after him.

‘No thanks,' he yelled back, obviously annoyed that his big sister had spoiled their boys' own adventure.

Little Edward, who was as full of life at four as any child I had ever known, whooped and headed for the water, all arms and legs.

‘Shouldn't you go in with him?' I asked. ‘He'll be knocked over by a wave and crying to go home before we know it.'

‘He can hold his own,' Albert said as he started to unbutton his shirt. ‘But if it will make you feel at ease, Kate, I'll go in.'

He called to Harry and Will, who were running madly about, telling them he was going in with Edward. They thought themselves too old to play with Edward usually, but on a day as hot as this, it did not matter. On hearing Albert's call, they made straight for the water.

I stood watching them for a time. The water, the sand, the vibrant blue of the sky. Dampness spread under my arms, between my breasts, where my skin creased and stuck. Out in the shallows the boys were kicking up the water in great arcs of spray, and the droplets seemed to sparkle and glisten in the sunlight. There was nothing for it. I slipped my dress off from over my swimming costume.

I threw my hands up to the sky and spun around to feel the air cooling the sweat on my skin. I was not yet accustomed to the strange new lines of my body and where I had once felt completely at ease in the sand and the waves, running amok with Harriet or the boys, I now felt like a stranger to myself, as if I could not move so freely in the world.

When I turned back towards the sea I saw that Albert was watching me. I dropped my arms, feeling silly.

Albert raised his hand and motioned for me to join them in the water. I wiped my fingers across the coarse cotton around my waist and looked down at my pale shins, the fine dark hairs visible in the sun. Perhaps the boys would not notice that I seemed to have lost control over my shape. They just wanted to play. I ran down the sand to join them.

The first brush of the water against my toes was deliciously cold, and I squealed and ran back from the edge.

Harry squawked in delight. ‘She's in, she's in!' he cried, and bent low to scoop his hands through the water and splash me.

I arched away as the spray hit me, a hundred pinpoints of cold against my bare arms, my neck.

I splashed back, and then it was all kicking and laughing and great sprays of glittering water, the sharp cold and the hot sun, the briny seaweed scent of the day. Whatever charge I had thought there had been between Albert and me unspooled and rolled out in the sun and the wind, and we were like children again, splashing and squealing and running away only to come back with greater force to splash and splash again.

When we eventually tired, we left the water and flung ourselves down on the hard wet sand that the receding tide had left behind. We lay like starfish, toes aimed up to the sky, the three younger boys in between Albert and me, our arms shielding our eyes from the sun.

I turned my chin to press my lips against the skin of my shoulder and felt its coolness, the tang of salt when I pulled my lips away. I thought of the water babies, and young Tom, cleaned of all his soot and grime and unhappiness as he discovers the new world, washed clean by the river.

I remembered some lines from the book, and I spoke them aloud to my audience of four.

Strong and free, strong and free,

The floodgates are open, away to the sea.

Free and strong, free and strong,

Cleansing my streams as I hurry along,

To the gold sands, and the leaping bar,

And the taintless tide that awaits me afar,

As I lose myself in the infinite main,

Like a soul that has sinned and is pardoned again.

It felt like a song on my tongue, and the words lingered on in the space around us even after I was silent.

‘Again, again,' cried little Edward, and I reached over to run my hand through his damp hair.

‘I don't understand it. What is it?' said Harry.

‘Sounds like a load of nonsense to me,' said Albert, and he stood, brushing the sand off his woollen trunks as his eyes met mine.

I frowned.

‘I mean, it's lovely, how you say it. You make it sound lovely.' He looked contrite now, but the damage was done.

I sat up. ‘It's from
The Water Babies,
Harry, and I wouldn't expect your ignorant brother to understand. I never saw him pick up a book, even in the schoolhouse.'

Albert dropped his head and stormed off along the beach. Edward's face fell as he watched his big brother, but he was soon distracted by Will and Harry, who found a sponge that resembled a ball and a stick that could do as a bat. They marked out a pitch, and we all had goes bowling the dried sponge at each other. We laughed, and they seemed not to mind at all having a girl in their midst, especially one who could bowl as hard as I could.

Every now and then, though, I looked down the beach after Albert. I hadn't meant to hurt his feelings, but he had scorned my poetry.

‘Good ball, Harry!' I called as Ed swung wildly with the bulbous end of the banksia branch and Will raced to grab the sponge where it had landed. I clapped my hands together.

I could see Albert kicking his long white legs at small black objects on the sand, which spun up into the air in a spray of sand. James was still nowhere to be seen, off in the rocks somewhere, searching for his fossils.
Serves them both right to be alone,
I thought.
Spoilsports.

The younger boys started to tire, and I pulled my dress on over my costume, now dry and stiff with salt. I hoped that Albert and James would see I was gathering our things and brushing off the boys, helping them into their shirts and trousers.

The sun was dipping low in the sky now, and out across the sheltered nook of the bay, the entire surface of the water rippled with gold light. Just when I thought I would have to call out for them, soften my voice with kindness and apology, Albert came back up the beach with James trailing behind. We gathered up the rest of our things and made our way off the beach, into the lengthening shadows of the track back towards the station.

The bird calls were raucous, echoing in and out and about the canopy and the underbrush. The last rays of the afternoon filtered through the leaves as though through green lace, and it seemed that there was so much to see and hear and smell that it did not matter that Albert and I did not speak.

When we were in sight of the lighthouse the other boys dashed ahead, Harry calling to his father, who held a mallet raised to strike at a fence post.

‘Your father works hard,' I said, because it was true and my annoyance at Albert had faded with the afternoon. I thought we should be on speaking terms when we returned.

Albert was a little ahead of me, and he stopped and turned around so abruptly that I almost ran into him.

‘Yes, you're smarter than me, Kate Gilbert. Everyone knows it. But it doesn't mean that I'm not good enough for you.'

I could not speak. I was astonished.

‘My father says,' he went on, a little breathless and red now, ‘he says there's nothing to stop me asking for your hand, and your parents would be lucky to have such a fine and hard-working lad as me as their son-in-law, and even though Mother thinks you are hot-headed and not as pretty as you are quick, my father says it doesn't mean you won't make a good wife.'

I opened my mouth and closed it again, once, twice, perhaps even three times, before I could force any sound out. And then it came all in one breath, hot and sour.

‘Then your father is mistaken. For I will not make a good wife and I will certainly never be yours.'

I pushed past him, blinking fast and shaking, and when I was a little distance from him and heard him calling my name, I ran.