The Clay Dreaming (24 page)
Authors: Ed Hillyer
Brippoki stares at the young boy. From the gruffness of his voice, his mock gravity – dressed exactly like his elders – he thinks him a grown man, stunted by deformity.
Eliciting no response, the boy turns aside.
‘Oy, cocksparrer,’ a street-seller calls him over. ‘You odd-jobbin’? Over ’ere, then.’
‘Want a boy, Bill?’ says the youngster.
‘Just said, didn’ I? An’ me name’s Jack,’ croaks the barrow-merchant. ‘Come an’ cry the goods for me. Me voice is all but broke. There’s bunse in it for ya!’
The youngster’s face shines. For a split-second, he is a boy again. Tugging proudly at the trailing corners of his neckerchief, he proceeds to hawk the weary coster’s wares.
‘Fish, fried fish!’
he shouts.
‘Tuppence f’r three!’
The barrows clog pavement and road alike with oranges, onions, herrings and watercress, cheap second-hand furniture, old iron, and rabbit skins. Brippoki is obliged to step over the heaving baskets as they spill out into his path.
‘Soles, oh!… Live haddick… Ee-ee-eels alive, oh! Mackareel! Mack-mack-mackereel!’
‘Oranges, two a penny!’
Spoiled fish and fruits form a greasy mash underfoot. Brippoki’s senses reel. He jams a thumb into each ear, and cross-weaves the fingers of both hands across his face to press his nostrils shut. The din and confusion melts into a low background hum, accompanied by the sounds of his own steady breathing.
Through this fleshy mask, he watches as the people float past. Mouths open and close, issuing their dumb, indifferent cries; baby birds and gasping fish.
Passing behind the stallholders, he looks into the avid faces of the crowd. They find their meals in the streets, and eat them on their thumbs.
Brippoki makes his way down Dudley-street, a mart for old clothes,
secondhand
boots and shoes. He sidles up to one of the displays, slips off the footstinkers that Thara has most recently gifted him, and leaves them there.
A bird-fancier parades by, tame songbirds perched along each outstretched sleeve. An eager line of waifs and strays follows on. Intrigued, Brippoki joins them.
They arrive at a point where seven streets meet.
Brippoki turns on the spot, dumbfounded. Seven paths to choose from, and each looks much the same as another.
Which way now?
He squats with his back to the pillar raised at the centre of the Seven Dials. He dares not move forward. Brippoki looks around, and around, and around.
In all directions the markets proliferate, street vendors offering up for sale every possible trinket – cutlery, old clothes, rat poison, toys and spectacles, pet goldfish. Bird-and dog-men, singers, peddlers of prints, the makers of doormats, the blind hawking matches or needles; each pursues his trade with a single-minded fixity, verging on obsession.
‘
Buy, buy, buy, buy, BU-U-UY!
’
Insistent and repeated, their individual calls are those of birds in a forest.
Back, then, to the manuscript. Having worked a little way further than the material thus far conveyed, Sarah was at a slight loss how best to proceed.
The transcription itself had become easier. Someone else had worked alongside Bruce and his ‘secretary’, correcting spellings, inserting missing letters. And, once an amended spelling had been introduced – ‘police’, ‘was’, ‘thieving’ – it was invariably kept to: they learnt from the correction. She appreciated the will towards self-improvement.
Conversely, the narrative began to unravel. Bruce’s flight from justice through the woods continued, but dissolved into a stupefying sort of delirium. His calls on God were many, and repeated.
For Bruce, waking in the wilderness had seemed something akin to a religious experience, God found in ‘the lap of Nature’; exactly where her father best liked to commune with him. Emerson, a favourite of hers, wrote of an occult relation between man and the vegetable, one that allowed him to never feel alone in the universe. In the woods, where he was returned to reason and faith, Man was always a child – in the woods, and of the woods.
In her own early childhood, Sarah had much enjoyed their family excursions to Epping Forest. She could not help but see the Australian Bush, through which Bruce made his ‘pilgrimage’, in much the same terms: leafy and oaken. Brippoki, she supposed, envisaged things somewhat differently, and entirely more accurately.
She fancied they all of them trod a single path through that same wilderness. Bruce went first, plotting the route they must follow. On his trail, she would forge ahead, and then, for the sake of her importunate guest, backtrack and show him the way.
It was only at rare times that they might happen to walk side-by-side.
On one of several street corners opposite Brippoki, under the inn sign of the Crown, loiters a gang of three brawny lads. A mean fourteen or so years of age, they stand dressed in black frockcoats and caps. Thieves seldom work alone. Brippoki understands instinctively they are up to no good, and should be avoided.
A coster’s boy strolls past, banging on a drum, an innovation to draw attention whilst saving of his voice.
Brippoki turns.
Queen-street. A man sits making flowers. His hands move faster than the eye can follow, reaching up, on occasion, to pluck dried grasses from the bundles strung overhead: crimson, yellow, blue, and brown. Birds sit stuffed and
mounted, sealed in glass boxes stacked behind. Eyes unblinking, their frozen postures suggest not life, but sudden death.
The loitering trio steps off the kerb. Without uttering a word, they move, as one, into the middle of the street, tailing their latest victim.
Brippoki turns again.
Little Earl-street. While her husband waves his fat arms about and parlays his pitch, a farmer’s wife crouches beneath the trestle table. She applies a fresh lick of paint to make rosy turkeys’ legs. A wolfish dog cleaves to her side.
From Little White-Lion-street, an appleman in his stuff-coat swings out wide, side-pockets loaded. Doing brisk business, he turns to his young helper. ‘Hurry it up with them gawfs!’ he hisses. The boy redoubles his efforts, frantically rubbing at the red-skinned fruit to make it look brighter and feel softer. He drops them into a waiting basket, which the apple-man snatches up, burying the bad in amongst the good.
‘
Hot eels, O! Eels O! Alive, alive O!
’
Brippoki looks down Great White-Lion-street, into the writhing depths of the tub. He estimates four dead eels to every live one. No odds – they are snatched up with a flourish and cooked before hungry customers may tell the difference.
Little St Andrew’s-street. A haggard fellow trundles a knife-grinder, offering to sharpen up blades. Great St Andrew’s-street. Brippoki looks after where the thieves’ gang set off to, and shudders.
He turns one final time.
Humming gently to the tune of ‘King John’s Song’, Brippoki stares into Great Earl-street, the seventh of seven roads. Just close to the urinal, he sees the strangest apparition of all.
Layered sleeves all dangling in ribbons, the vendor’s long coat frays into cobweb at collar, cuffs, and elbows, unravelling at its lower margins. He holds forth sheaves of caramel and honey colour, and mutters more than shouts in the way of his fellows, as if, unlike them, he would rather pass unnoticed.
A rat pack of dirt-black boys scampers around the stinking urinal, leaping and snatching thick handfuls of air. Tilting at the tall spidery-man, they fling their arms out. Catching flies, they toss them at his fly-papered hat. If their aim is true, and one of the insects should stick, the
warrigal
caper and send up a mighty shout. Often as not they miss. Dead or alive, the flies lodge in the man’s thick hair and beard – the long and greasy threads of the miserable man-spider stuck fast with little black bodies, some struggling, mostly still.
Wheresoever Brippoki looks, all is false and foolish. There is nothing but the frenzy of buying, of selling, of eating and drinking, of noisily fighting, and dying.
~
The tendons of Sarah’s right hand ached, her fingers black with ink. She had transcribed as much of the manuscript as she could manage for one day.
It had been hard going, compared to what had gone before. Her temples fairly throbbed from wading through a welter of prayer. The text’s urgent tempo had accelerated to a fever pitch almost unbearable, but at its height had come astonishing revelations. The secret was perhaps unwittingly revealed, its significance unclear. She could hardly wait to share the news with Brippoki.
Giddily, and only a little guiltily, she moved around the book presses, looking for another location, suitably remote, in which to conceal the manuscript.
Ah, perfect.
Evening draws in. London’s West End lights up.
Brippoki has gathered courage sufficient to quit Seven Dials, and drifts further south, then east. Brought to a pause consistently now, he very gradually traverses the length of Long Acre.
Rouged cheek by sunken jowl rise the national theatres: the Alhambra Music Hall on Leicester-square; the Pavilion, the Royal Italian Opera, the Queen’s Theatre, and the Theatre Royal, Drury-lane. The beggars themselves grow more artful, singers and pavement artists, but also circus strongmen, acrobats, jugglers and conjurors. There isn’t a crossing-sweeper or shoeblack, it seems, who cannot turn his hand for an extra coin.
An old blackfellow mutely holds aloft a sheet of newsprint: the paper, so
oft-handled
, is stained quite tan, almost falling to pieces. He wears a dark-coloured shooting coat of tweed. As with so many London faces, his eyes sink into hollows above cheekbones sharp as blades. When Brippoki approaches he shies away, to display in a new direction. The tragic old gentleman will not engage with anyone. He acts through old habit or instinct, a diehard having long ago lost the reason behind his actions.
Back in the World, Brippoki would think nothing of him. Among the Men, those who can no longer fend for themselves are considered a burden. He searches through his inner pockets. He still carries a little of the
walypela
coin. Grasping the old fellow’s free hand, he turns it over, and presses his last shilling into the creased palm.
Brippoki’s progress slows even further. At times he comes to a complete stop, letting the flow of commerce pass him by, or else to observe a peculiar character, an incident attracting his attention. Other times he stops for no reason, and does not care to look at anything in particular, but enters into a solitary trance. The noisome environment then fades from his sensation, and he, also, merges with it, to pass quite unnoticed – an individual spark, lost within a greater fire.
Friday the 5th of June, 1868
‘Who hears, who understands me, becomes mine – a possession for all time.’
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘Friendship’
‘Blackpella bin big-pella worry-pella.’
Brippoki hung his head in apparent shame. He shook his locks in earnest.
He said, ‘All sorry-pella, by cripes!’
Sarah reached out and patted the arm of his chair. Something must have happened that day to inspire such humility: that, or else he knew just how to get around her.
‘I’m the one who should be sorry,
Bripumyarrimin
,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realise the Museum would disturb you. Where did you go?’
Brippoki looked up and grinned, winningly.
‘You say my name, miss,’ he said. ‘You say my name just right!’
He began to hum a distracted tune.
Sarah noticed more white in his eyes than usual, an effect perhaps of the dim light. In spite of their conversation – he was suddenly talkative – Brippoki only seemed to grow more faint and distant.
‘I walk him road, longa town,’ he paused to say. ‘I walk and walk. Now it has tired me.’
He spoke, as always, with feeling. Brippoki shook his head some more, his staring eyes never lifting from the floor.
They sat in silence for a while. Sarah hesitated to begin with her reading, in case he might open up to her a little. She also felt nervous of tackling some of the headier passages to come.
‘It a strange thing,’ said Brippoki, perking up. ‘Saw a man-spider.’
Sarah showed interest.
He raised an arm high above his head, his eyes following, even to the point of pulling him up out of his seat. ‘Tall man, him hat,’ he said. ‘Tall hat, like chimeney-spout. Smokin’ too!’
Sarah smiled a dark and doubtful smile. He began to waft his other hand around and behind the arm that was raised, as if spinning a cocoon of some diaphanous material.
‘Sticky smoke,’ he insisted. With a finger, he stabbed into it here and there, up and down. ‘Black dots,’ he said. ‘Liket sticky bun!’ Forearm held out at a right angle, he mimicked exactly the croak of a street-vendor. ‘Three sheets! Three sheets!’ he said. ‘Catch’m live!’
Brippoki flopped back down into his chair.
‘Bloody mad mob, dem pellas,’ he said. ‘Head spin so much, me think him broken. No more belonga me.’
Sarah laughed. ‘I know how you feel,’ she said. ‘I felt much the same, the day after our trip to Greenwich.’
‘“Grennidge”,’ Brippoki repeated. He looked thoughtful.
‘Some tea,’ she said, ‘might revive you.’
Sarah excused herself.
In the Guardian’s absence, Brippoki further examines her trappings.
The greater part of the chamber is in darkness – as on previous nights, Thara has only troubled to light a single lamp – but Brippoki’s night-vision is keen.
Somewhat mystified, he considers a tiered stand or ‘whatnot’, the walnut legs spiral-turned. Each of its three shelves is topped with a delicate ornament. The same ritual figurines as run along the mantel also cram a side cabinet; he sidles up to the nearside wall, peering behind it.
Crouched and quiet, a spider patiently waits in his white thread-kingdom.
Sarah returned, bearing a full tray, to make ready for their nightly tea ceremony. Her notebooks were, she noted, untouched. Had it been she alone in the room, and their positions reversed, she would surely have sneaked a look. Brippoki appeared not to have gone near them.
‘You like it with milk, that’s right,’ Sarah stated, ‘and plenty of sugar.’
She pushed the silver bowl forward.
‘
Bunjil
,’ he said. ‘Your pappa…him bery worry-pella.’
Her father, he said, afraid? Sarah didn’t know why Brippoki was right: only that he was.
‘What makes you say that?’ she asked. She steadied the sieve, and tilted the teapot, pouring a cup for herself.
Brippoki looked around the room at great length, and regarded her a little insolently. He said, simply, ‘You would not understand.’
Sarah returned the pot to the tray with a testy bump. Reaching for a spoon, she suddenly dropped it. The teaspoon clattered across the tray.
Brippoki knew about her father?!
Sarah flinched, checked herself, and then mopped up the spillage. She acted as if nothing had happened. She merely said, ‘Let’s see how our “wicked wretch” is doing, shall we?’
Abruptly she took up her notebook, and held it open in her lap. She scanned down the page, all afluster.
‘Last we left off, Bruce and his luckless companions, Farr and Meredith, were betrayed by a man named Luker. They narrowly escaped capture, and were being pursued by a large group of about 30 men…’
‘Untimely creatures,’ Brippoki recalled.
‘Just so,’ said Sarah. ‘The pitiable “untimely creatures” that were hunted are now the hunters.’
She cleared her throat and started to read.
But oh, my dear readers, only think on the words of our Blessed Saviour Lord Jesus Christ: ‘O ye men of faith, call on me in the time of your trouble and I will deliver you out of your woe.’
Quite sensible of that horrid state of life that my sins had plunged me into, from the very bottom of my soul did I cry unto the Blessed Lord for my deliverance. My prayer was as follows:
– O most Merciful God who made and created me. You know that I know nothing of Thy sacred words, nor for what end I was made. Therefore, Gracious God, I hope you will pardon me this morning for calling on You for mercy. What I now speak comes from the bottom of my soul, with the most liveliest faith and hope that ever a poor muck-worm like me possessed.
– Behold them wicked men in the valleys beneath this mountain, how eager they seek my life. And they have brought with them dogs to devour my flesh.
– O Lord, give not my soul to the Serpent nor suffer him to steal it by night. I call on Thou to raise from the earth a poisonous smell to the nostrils of those dogs which at this moment are tracing my footsteps to devour me. Suffer them not to follow me this day. Neither suffer those wicked men to behold me with their eyes, for if they do, Thou knowest they will separate my poor soul from the body. Then she must sink, for my sins are so heavy that my poor soul would not be able to bear them up.
– O spare me, that I may repent me of my wickedness and save my soul. Amen.
‘Amen,’ said Brippoki.
The reader will soon know that God surely heard my prayer that morning, my life was so closely pursued. I watched them till they went into the house of Luker, as I suppose to refresh themselves, after a tiger’s hunt after my life. I then rose on a most careful manner, and went from the high hill into the woods.
You will understand that my father and mother used to quarrel about religion. My father was a man who followed the Church of England, and my
mother used to go to what the people call Methodist meeting. This used to cause a dispute, for my mother would never give in to my father, but that both church and meeting was one by the will of God to Jesus Christ.
In the weekdays he would come home drunk and call her an Old Methodist Dog. Then she, on a Sunday, would what we call ‘roast’ him.
You shall hear what funny discourse they used to have about me, on a Sunday morning, when my father used to take me to church. For they both loved me to excess. And you may depend upon it, that my father and mother loved God better then ever they did their children, though they loved them dear enough.
Sarah turned the page a little too briskly.
Before my mother would let me go she would roast the old man a bit, in this manner:
– Ah, you are very Godly today. You forget how you come home every night in the week drunk, and call me an Old Methodist Dog. So now, Mister Godly Man, today I shall call you an Old Church Lion. So, Old Church Lion, don’t think that you are going to take my favourite child with you to that playhouse of yours, which you know by the behaviour of the people is not much better. Have I not been there myself, and seen the actions of the people? There is one nodding, and another winking, and all of them looking round about them, and laughing and admiring the different dresses. And there is another thing. Don’t you know that God will have nothing to do with you, Old Lion, without you are introduced to him by his Son Jesus Christ?
But my opinion is that God is well pleased with all people that go to church and meeting, for it is a good sign that they are jealous one of another who loves God best. I assure you that my father was devotedly fond of me as well as my mother. God bless them both, and I hope I shall meet their souls in Heaven, together with all my brothers and sisters, friends and relations, for I don’t expect to see them any more on Earth.
Sarah took up her pen to make an adjustment, and in so doing missed how severely moved Brippoki was by the expression of these most recent sentiments.
I have run a long way out of our discourse about my father and mother, but this is a way that I learnt, by my poor old mother dragging me every night in the week from one meeting to another to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ preached.
I never was taught anything by man on Earth, only what my poor old Methodist mother would tell me in her wrath. That is, God would punish me for my wickedness to my father, and her, my mother. For by rebelling against my father and mother I also rebelled against God. But, if I would pray in the midnight when I woke out of my sleep, and in the morning and at night when I went to bed, God would forgive me for all my sins and wickedness. And not only that, but by constant prayer night and day, that in all times of my trouble
my blessed Redeemer would take me out of the hands of wicked men every time they sought my life. And I am sure those words are true.
For when we were in Luker’s house, we had no thought of going to Mrs Peck’s house. Farr said how dangerous it was going, so many people venturing our lives. But still I would go. This was that Great and Merciful Jehovah, for my poor mother’s sake, who so constantly prayed to His Blessed Son Jesus Christ.
And well I know it, for when I was at home with her in London, she used to tire me with running to meetings every night in the week.
Parental roles reversed, this was Sarah’s own experience in childhood. She smiled.
But to tell you truth, at that time I was too young to know much of God.
And this, too – her smile quite disappeared.
But I tell you, every time I went with her to meeting the old woman gave me a ha’penny. So you see, I used to go after her for the sake of the ha’penny. And praise be for it! For through the drunkenness of my father, she could not pay for schooling, so I could neither read nor write. But she used to tell me that if I minded what them good men said, it would be better than all the reading and writing on Earth. So it’s true, for many a man that can read and write, when you come to discourse with him, you will find he knows nothing of Christ Jesus.
‘Amen!’ said Sarah.
She looked a little startled with herself. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, before continuing.
It was almost night, and we were nigh the road that leads to the River Oxbury, and those poor wretches so closely pursued our lives, that if they were on the road they would hear us. Then we all three should have lost our lives.
– O Farr, said I, I was born to live and not to die, so night and day I to God for mercy cry.
At those words we entered the road, where we travelled all that night in silence. About the hour of ten o’clock the next morning we arrived at the Oxbury amongst the settlers. When Farr discovered two men with whom he was well acquainted, we all three went into their barn loft for a short time, when Mark Dammers came to us and told us that we could not stay there, for that he expected the police officers and soldiers, who was seeking our lives night and day. This man was one of Farr’s friends. Robert Hobbes was the other. While Dammers was talking to us, Hobbes came and called Farr and Meredith.
They went into the dwelling house of Hobbes and held council how they should leave me.
In a few minutes after, Dammers came and called me in a violent hurry. Farr and Meredith were with him. He told us we had not a moment to stop, for that the enemy was on the adjacent farm. But he only said this to frighten me. He told us to follow him, and he show us a place where we should be safe from our enemies. We all left the house and went into the woods. Farr had with him a large cake and a piece of meat, which Hobbes his friend had given him. He gave me the bread and meat to carry, because he knew he was going to leave me.
Sarah thought she heard Brippoki utter a curious little noise, but, purposeful, she pressed on.
As soon as we had left sight of the house, Farr and Meredith stopped behind, as I thought to ease themselves. Dammers went with me to the side of a large lagoon, where we sat down. But after a time Dammers went back, to see, he said, what was become of them.
I now was left by myself.
Here grief swayed me down to excess. Nay, as I thought, my very soul was melting. But the floods of tears that flowed from my eyes soon gave ease to my grief, and I, after a solemn praying, rose.
Necessarily, Sarah took a breath.
My prayer was as follows:
– Merciful God, look down from Heaven, and have mercy and compassion on me, a poor wretched sinner, and conduct me what either I shall go or what I shall do. For behold, I have now fulfilled my mother’s saying to me in her wrath – that I should wander night and day like a pilgrim in the wilderness, seeking refuge and should find none.
Sarah marked Brippoki’s own sharp intake of breath.
‘Yes,’ she confirmed, ‘his mother’s curse has become his truth.’
– But O, grant me the later prayer of my mother in her calm, for well I remember both that prayer in the wrath, and that prayer in her calm. Behold her later prayer, most merciful God:
– O most merciful Redeemer of all the world, I pray and beseech thee that all of my family who are shut up in darkness by sin may by the light of Thy blessed spirit find their relief. I also am informed by the planet of my dear son Joseph that he is to live and suffer for all the sins of this family.
