Skylarking (5 page)

NINE

I
T WAS DECIDED THAT
H
ARRIET AND
I
WERE TO HAVE
new dresses. At least, our old dresses needed letting out. Mine especially, for it was as though my flesh had suddenly unloosed itself from my frame and was bulging and curving in ways it had not before.

It was after dinner, and Mother and Mrs Walker sat up under the lamplight in our parlour, chapped hands running over their tiny stitches as they tried to fashion something new out of something old; nipping in a waist here, puffing a sleeve there.

I stood on the piano stool while Mother lowered the hem on my dress; I had grown four inches since last spring. I liked the feel of a dress being pinned and buttoned up around me but I struggled to keep as motionless as Harriet did.

Mother, lips held stiff over the ends of a silvery row of pins, muttered, ‘Kate, I'll put a pin in you if you don't hold still.'

I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window. All those pleats and buttons and puffs made a new shape out of me in a way that I couldn't quite comprehend. I usually tried to avoid the mirror, which would reflect all the bursting new flesh back at me. Harriet, of course, had become a more elegant version of herself, while I felt somehow unrecognisable.

Harriet stood on one of the kitchen chairs she'd dragged in. Hers was a smooth silhouette, tucked in at the waist and curving into the proper shape at the chest, whereas Mother always told me that I looked as if I'd been wrestled into each dress she made me.

Mother poked at me and demanded again that I stand still, for the pins were all coming unstuck where I stretched.

‘For the love of God, Kate Gilbert,' Mother said, ‘how will we ever make a lady of you?'

She shook her head, and Mrs Walker laughed softly with her.

‘Whoever said I wanted to be?'

‘Here we go again!'

The two mothers smiled knowingly at each other.

‘Well, some days, I'm just not sure that I'm cut out for the life of a lady. I mean, who will ever marry a wild girl of the cape anyway?'

Mrs Walker spoke up. ‘Now, Kate, that's not true at all, I know plenty of young men who will think you marriage material, when you come of age. Mr Walker and I are thinking of sending Harriet to Melbourne, possibly at the end of the year, once she's seventeen, to stay with her aunt. See what she can turn up in the city.'

I saw the shadow of a frown pass across Mother's forehead. It was only momentary, but I wondered whether it was fear or envy that creased it so.

‘You'll both be married off soon enough and we'll be left with two fewer sets of hands to take the load and two fewer pairs of ears to listen to our tales,' Mother said.

It was obvious from her face that Harriet had not heard a word since her mother had mentioned the suitors who might be found in Melbourne. Was Harriet imagining a long line of gentlemen, fresh with youth and taut with anticipation, in their dark morning suits and fine top hats, a line stretching out down the busy streets of Melbourne? Maybe she saw herself, a fair maiden escaped from the bleak cape who now spent her days peeking coyly from a window as her aunt received the compliments of each man. Maybe one man, confident and handsome, would glance up and catch her eye, and it would be love, true and divine, and all would be well, forever after. What poppycock!

‘Perhaps I will never leave you, Mother,' I said. ‘Perhaps no suitors will ever come for me, or perhaps I'll not receive any if they do. Perhaps Father will teach me the trade and I'll become the first female lighthouse keeper of this Great Southern Land.'

At this, all three of them broke into laughter.

I bristled. ‘Perhaps, I won't stay after all. Why could I not go to Melbourne, if Harriet does, and see the grand theatres, the library, the bustling city? What stops me from boarding a ship and setting sail for Europe and touring the great cities of the world and reading their literature and hearing their foreign tongues, and seeing the remnants of the birth of civilisation?'

My speech was all garbled now, words spilling out on top of each other. I thought myself so very mature, a few months shy of fifteen, and so full of ideas about my place in the world, my singular potential, my possible greatness, that I had no room for the knowing smiles of the mothers, the blank look of Harriet, who had endured my rants before.

‘Perhaps,' said my mother.

In perfect synchronicity, as if they had some secret code, both mothers set down their pins and scissors.

‘Enough for tonight. We can finish these tomorrow,' Mother said.

Harriet and I slid carefully out of the pinned dresses and drew shawls over our underthings.

‘To bed then, girls,' Mrs Walker said.

Harriet and I brushed our cheeks against each other's, and I squeezed her hand.

I retired to my room and turned up the lamp, ignoring Emmaline's huffing from the other bed. The conversation had disquieted me, and I needed to lose myself in a book to settle my thoughts. I was reading
The Water Babies
again. How I loved the delicious greens and blues of its cover, split by a banner with a kelp-brown title. Fat silvery fish slid across the book jacket and peered around the spine, and a trio of water nymphs floated amid the centre of the image in dresses that seemed spun from water. In the foreground, a black-haired boy kneeled on all fours, head turned towards the ghostly sea-girls as they shimmered in the distance. Even Harriet had been impressed the day it arrived from her aunt, and had flicked through it as though she might be interested in such a beautiful thing. She soon found she wasn't, and returned to leafing through her magazines.

For a time I was obsessed with the idea that I could live under the sea. Not in one of those strange and ugly-looking diving dresses I had seen pictures of in the paper, nor using a great tank of air strapped to my neck. No, I wanted to dive deep down, skimming the sandy bottom of the ocean with my bare skin. I wanted to glide through fingers of pink weed and velvety fronds of green and come face to face with a mullet, or a gummy shark, slide up to the rubbery flank of a great whale and feel her song vibrate through my cheek to the very centre of my brain and understand what she told me.

These were the peculiar thoughts I never shared with Harriet, or anyone else. There seemed to be an aspect of my interior world that troubled others. When I let slip a flight of fancy or a curious question, others would stare at me as though I were absurd. Sometimes I felt as if there were something amiss in my make-up. That all the pieces had not been put together right.

You couldn't see it from the outside – no, it was my inside that was awry. It made me recoil at the thought of marriage, made me dream of sailing away, of living beneath the ocean. Sometimes on the rocks you could get within a foot of a dead seal, if the wind was blowing away from you. The rocks would obscure it, and you could be right over it, about to step into the putrefying flesh, before you inhaled the unholy whiff of it and realised you'd been breathing it in all along. That's all that was needed for me to be found out; a wind change, and someone would sense what was rotten inside of me.

I focused on the words again and tried not to think of such things.

TEN

T
HE VERY FIRST TIME WE WENT TO
M
C
P
HAIL
'
S HUT WAS
because of the rain. Or at least that's what I told myself. Big, fat rain that dropped between the leaves in sheets.

We'd known it might come; that morning we'd seen the clouds curdling in the south. There had been a flapping urgency to the washing going out, in steaming heaps, wrung and stretched across the lines. But it had been days since Harriet and I had escaped. We pretended we didn't hear our mothers calling for us to come and help.

It was a trek to get down to the white curve of beach at the cove. Back out along the rutted track that stuck to the ridge, and then sharply down to follow a watercourse that seeped through the thick banksia and the blue-green eucalypts.

It usually took us the best part of two hours to make the journey on foot and, by the time we reached the sand that day, whatever sun there had been was hidden deep in grey cloud. We were not inclined to even paddle.

Instead, we tucked ourselves in behind a little dune to eat our thick slices of bread smeared with plum jam and then lay in the nodding grasses with our heads together, watching the sky through the feathery tips. Sometimes there was no need for talking. Sometimes sea and sky and grass and Harriet and a bellyful of bread and jam was all I could ever imagine I would want.

And then came the rain. Whipping in, cold and heavy and all at once, so that we ran, squealing, for the cover of the trees back behind the beach. Even there, though, we could find no protection from the drenching wet of it. It grew dark and thunder vibrated over the sea, booming in waves as it came in over the land.

‘We have to find somewhere to shelter!' cried Harriet as lightning cut the sky above us.

‘Come on!' I yelled, grabbing her hand and heading further into the bush. ‘This way!'

I knew that his hut was close. I could say that we stumbled across it but, ever since I had bowled into the man that day near the sheds, I had wanted to meet him again. I told myself later that the walk and the rain were fate's way of pushing us towards him. I told myself that, but I don't think it was true.

‘There, ahead, Harriet! The fisherman's hut!'

I could see smoke sputtering valiantly out of a chimney and the windows all aglow. I noticed her hesitate beside me at the sight, but we were wet through, and the rain still fell and it seemed we really had no choice at all.

Oh, what he must have thought when we arrived, dripping like drowned rats as we knocked on his door.

‘Can we come in?' I had to say, once McPhail opened the door and stood staring at us.

Harriet was trembling a little beside me – I could feel it through her sleeve – and I thought she was cold but, then again, it may not have been that. This was the first time she had seen the man.

McPhail broke his silence. ‘Right, of course,' he said. ‘Come in.' He tucked his hair, stiff with salt, behind his ears. Even as we stepped into the hut, the briny scent of him was everywhere. Something beat like a little trapped fish high and fast in my chest.

He gestured that we should sit down at a small table and asked if we would have tea.

We hesitated before we sat for there were only two chairs. He stood near the stove, waiting for the billy to boil. We rested at the table, bodies angled in towards the heat. Every few seconds we would steal a glance across at each other and stifle a giggle.

There was steam coming off the skirts of my dress where they were closest to the stove. The thrum of the rain and the crack of the thunder outside made the storm seem very close and the hut very small. I could have crossed it in three big steps.

There was a table in the centre of the room, the little stove on one wall opposite the door. Against the wall to my left was a long bench, with two shelves running behind, planks of wood propped on bricks. On the shelves were some tins, and odds and ends, grimy and stacked upon each other – a wooden spoon, a length of rope, a jar of hooks, a small painted portrait in a frame. Against the other wall were a thin cot and a wooden cupboard, a rifle propped at its side. A heavy oilskin hung from the cupboard door.

McPhail twisted the lid off a tin, shook leaves into the bubbling water, then took the billy from the heat. He let it stand upon the wood block on the table. There were only two tin mugs. Harriet undid the first three buttons of her bodice and patted at the skin there on her neck with her handkerchief.

McPhail looked up from the pot. ‘Sugar?'

We nodded.

He poured the tea and scooped in three spoons of sugar each, then moved to the shelves and took down a bottle. Even with his back to us, I saw him take a swig of the tannin liquid. I felt bold.

‘Can I have some of that?'

‘Kate!' warned Harriet.

‘Your father won't thank me for that,' he said, glancing at me.

‘My father gives me a glass every now and then, for Christmas and the like.' His eyes on me made me bolder still. ‘I'm the head keeper's daughter, you know. I'm Kate.'

‘We've met.'

‘And this is Harriet.'

Did I make it happen, I wonder? By saying her name out loud, sitting there in the crackling warmth of the stove, under the heaving noise of the storm. Was I like one of the witches in
Macbeth,
stirring the future with my words?

Harriet looked up properly then, and he held out his hand for her to shake.

‘Daniel McPhail,' he said, the corner of his mouth hitching up ever so slightly.

Once he'd turned back to the fire, saying we'd be better to wait out the storm and then he'd see us home, I noticed that Harriet's face was lit up, as if the fire were in her and not in the hearth.

ELEVEN

W
ITHOUT EVER ACKNOWLEDGING IT TO EACH OTHER
, Harriet and I started to turn our attention to the cove for our adventures. Before, we had liked to vary our walks, sometimes to the furthest jetty, or the point, or down to Murray's Beach. Now we took the same path over again. It did not provide us with so much as a sighting of McPhail until two weeks after that day in the hut.

We were stretched out, toes wriggling in the sand, when the shot echoed down to the cove. We both turned our heads at the same time, peering back into the shadows of the trees.

‘What was that?'

‘Sounded like a gun.' I was up, brushing the sand from my skirts. ‘Let's go see.' I started towards the tree line before Harriet had a chance to quarrel.

‘But we don't know who it is. Or … or what they might be doing.' Harriet hurried after me, picking up our boots and stockings and swinging them in her hands.

‘We'll find out then, won't we?'

‘But what if they fire again?'

‘We'll be careful.' I raised my arm to shield my face from the sun. ‘Maybe it's the fisherman – he might be shooting his supper instead of hooking it today?'

Harriet stopped and stared at me, then hurried on. ‘Oh, do you think?' she said, as though it were no matter to her at all.

We saw him before he saw us. He was crouched down in a clearing with his back towards us. The gun lay on the stony ground next to him. He had taken off his shirt and wore only a thin cotton vest. His shoulders were moving rhythmically, as if he were sawing and, as he lifted one hand up to his face, wiping away sweat and flies, I noticed a smear of blood up his forearm.

Next to me, Harriet put her hand on her chest and breathed in sharply. I went forwards to get a better look at what lay in front of him, and the sound of my brushing through the trees made him pause, raise his head and turn it sharply.

‘What in heaven's name?' he said, as he stood up and faced me.

‘We heard a shot,' I said, taking in the blood spattered down the front of his vest and across his pants, his chest heaving a little with exertion and surprise, the dead kangaroo with its stomach slit to reveal a glistening pile of purple viscera.

‘We heard the shot,' I said again, my voice coming out thin and high, my throat constricting with nerves.

He was looking to the side of me now, and I could hear Harriet stepping through the underbrush behind me.

In his right hand he held a knife, tucked in next to his leg as if, perhaps, we might not notice it. Across the silver blade was a thick crimson streak.

‘This is no business for ladies.' McPhail nodded his head at Harriet, ever so slightly, as he turned away from us. ‘You'd best run along now.' He bent down and went back to his sawing.

‘What will you do with it?' I tried to sound daring, but inside I was leaning out too far from the top balcony of the lighthouse and peering into the swirling whitewater below.

McPhail paused. ‘I'll eat it.'

Maybe he expected us to run away, but I wasn't leaving now.

‘What does it taste like?' I'd always refused the dark meat when Mother had been forced to serve it up if our stocks ran low and Father had brought her a carcass from the bush instead of the storeroom. Now my refusal seemed infantile and squeamish.

I sensed Harriet's gaze on me. I think she was nervous and impressed, both at the same time. It had been one thing, to run to the hut in the storm, to take shelter, to be served tea, but this was something else.

The birds sent up a clattering racket in the canopy above us; I thought I could smell the warm wetness of the kangaroo's innards.

McPhail went back to carving up the carcass, but this time he kept talking. ‘A bit tough, but good, meaty. Mrs Everett in Bennett's River – her husband's poorly and she asked that I bring her some meat if I could.'

‘Can we watch?'

‘Like I said, it's no business for ladies.' I couldn't be sure, but it sounded as if he were smiling. ‘Though, you don't seem like one to be put off.' He looked up at me directly.

Grabbing Harriet's hand I moved towards where McPhail was squatted over the carcass.

The animal wasn't a large male like I'd seen standing guard over mobs before. This one was smaller – a female I noted from the loose flap of pouch that had been sliced through. She faced away, eyes rolled back to the white, as if she couldn't bear to watch him take her apart.

I crouched down like McPhail and pulled Harriet with me.

His big hands gripped the knife as he hacked at the leg joint; I noticed a blue-grey vein pulse in his neck. It thrilled me. There was a cracking sound, and a spray of bright blood spurted up. Harriet gasped, and I reared my head back, surprised by the sudden shoot of it, as though the animal were still alive.

I glanced at Harriet and saw a fine spray of red across her cheek.

McPhail was looking, too. He gestured towards his own cheek and said, ‘You've … here.' The phrase seemed to escape him. ‘On your cheek.'

Harriet's white hands fluttered in front of her face, and she made a strange noise.

I pulled a handkerchief from my bodice and reached out to wipe the smear away; the blood was bright on the lace and, as much as I tried afterwards to remove it, the stain was there for good. I found the handkerchief again, much later, and I folded it away to keep.

It took the best part of the afternoon for McPhail to carve up that kangaroo. When he was finished, a canvas sack bulged at his feet. He was neat and methodical; he'd wrapped the dribbling pile of guts in paper and tucked them in the sack – good for catching sharks, he told us – and all that remained was a bloodied patch of ground.

As we made to leave, knowing we would already be late home for supper, gathering our skirts as the afternoon's light unravelled in the sky above us, Harriet paused, and I watched her place her hand gently on McPhail's forearm, darkened with grime and blood.

‘It's kind, your taking the meat to Mrs Everett. She'll be ever so grateful.' And she left her hand there, a second longer than she ought.

I would always wonder, when I had cause to return to the scene again and again in my mind: how did she know that one touch, placed just so, was all that was needed?