The Clay Dreaming (38 page)

Brippoki stood.

‘No, no! That is what is written in the book!
He
,’ said Sarah carefully, ‘means Gilbethorpe.’ She indicated his seat. ‘You are welcome yet,’ she said. ‘There is only a little more to go.’

‘Good mate, Gilbeythrop!’ enthused Brippoki.

‘Yes,’ agreed Sarah, ‘a very good man.’

‘Liket you!’

‘Not quite…but thank you.’

A good note for them to end on, and a blessing; for that was all there was. She would have to return to the library and transcribe the next part of the manuscript before they could carry on.

‘Over?’ he enquired.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘for now. More tomorrow, if you’d like. No…’

The next day was Sunday. The Reading-room was closed on Sundays.

For once, even with the story done, Brippoki showed no immediate wish to leave. He seemed glad of her company. She would have been gladder of his, if he only wore a single stitch of clothing. One would do.

His fingers twinkled in the air, a magic trick like she had seen him perform once before. Hey presto, a large golden coin glittered between them. It threw off sparks of candlelight.

‘Where did you get that?’ she asked.

More to the point, from where on his naked person had he retrieved it? Better perhaps not to know.

Brippoki explained that it was his share of the team’s winnings – which allowed he was still with them, after all. Maybe she had quit Lord’s too early, and he had come straight from a post-match display of exhibitionism – so to speak.

‘It you,’ he said.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘It you,’ he said. ‘You help me.’

He thrust it forward, almost under her nose.

‘No!’ she said. ‘No, I couldn’t possibly.’

‘Me gibbit you,’ he insisted.

Sarah studied the coin, but did not take it from him: it was a genuine golden guinea! A relic of Regency England, a ‘spade-guinea’, the side presented bore a shield shaped like the playing card suit of spades. This was most likely someone’s idea of a tasteless, if extravagant, joke – gold, King of Metals, given in prize monies to a mock dignitary. Sarah wanted no part in it.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Really. I won’t accept it… You don’t owe me anything.’

Brippoki held the coin out, silently pleading, until she stood and moved away.

‘Keep it,’ she said.

Sarah instantly felt that she understood the reason why it had been impossible to trade fairly with the Aborigines: just as the notion of reciprocity lay at the very heart of their morality, so did they base their economy on generosity, the giving of gifts. He only tried to pay her money because he thought of it as something she might value, when already he had gifted her something far more precious. All she might share in return was her reading from the manuscript, a very poor exchange.

Sarah forgot herself. All of Brippoki’s expressive body language had wilted. He slumped with melancholia. Was it her refusal of the coin?

Brippoki went to the window. He wanted out.

Sarah moved to comply.

‘When will I see you?’ she asked. ‘I can’t retrieve the manuscript until Monday, and we’ve exhausted the notes I have. I’m awfully sorry.’

He could come again tomorrow, but what then should she do with him? It seemed an improper suggestion: and she had anyway promised her Sundays to Lambert.

Brippoki merely shrugged his shoulders. He would not look at her.

‘Mun-dy,’ he said.

‘Monday, you’re sure? I’ll have some more to read you by then. But come tomorrow, if you’d like.’

According to their match schedule, printed in the morning papers, the Australian Eleven were due in Southsea Monday and Tuesday, and again in Stortford later in the week. The tour continued apace.

‘You will be able to make it?’ she asked. ‘You have cricket all next week.’

‘
Bael
mo’ cricket,’ he mumbled. ‘Cricket…over.’

‘But, the team?’

‘En’t my clan brothers,’ he said. ‘En’t my kin.’ With a petulant flourish he threw his loincloth high into the air. Without exactly meaning to, Sarah caught it on its way down…just a tea towel again.

‘I’ll pray for you,’ she said.

‘Pray,’ he said, ‘tomorrow.’

And with that, he was gone.

Sarah felt her forehead: it was hot, and a little wet.

She had made him unhappy.

Whatever Brippoki made of Druce’s story, she could not say, but he certainly took the man’s words to heart. The way he sat, coiled like a spring. The way he stood, and oh, the way he moved, so swift, scarcely seeming to move.

He went naked, as truth goes.

Sarah looked from the empty fireplace to the seat at the table he had only just vacated, disbelieving almost. An unearthly illusion of character; painted, fancifully wild – she had wanted to see him so very much these last few days. The mess and the soup bowl lent proof where proof was needed.

The strong wind gripped the entire window-frame and seemed to shake it with both hands. Temperatures outside must have dropped; it was certainly chilly indoors. Wasn’t he cold, like that?

She folded her arms and rubbed them; well past time she snuffed out the light and went to bed.

Leaping from the high window, his nimble fingers grip the brickwork and he pulls himself up around the corner, out of sight.

Brippoki scales the drainpipe, as if it is a thick black creeper running up the side of a tree. He sits on the roof, in contemplation of the distant stars, bittersweet.

Mityan
, hunted moon, is already half eaten up. What little high cloud remains scoots past, driven by the high winds. The streets themselves are howling. Sleeping, to get knowledge – he dares not go into the Dreaming, scared of what might find him there.

He listens for sounds that he feels more than hears above the rising gale; the interior clicks and shuffles of the house beneath, preparing for sleep. The last of its tiny lights is extinguished.

Brippoki loses some hours.

Three days without sleep. Three days of running without pause, without direction, running in circles around the Piebald Giant, eventually slowing,
to enter into the wormhole of the Great Serpent – wandering into West Monster Abyss. The rock formations here astound, alien and terrifying in their regularity: high mountains and deep chasms, a valley of brick threaded through with a torrent.

Grey days, and featureless, spent tripping back and forth across the Serpent’s back.

Brippoki, coming to, snaps to wary attention. He searches the blackness for signs.

Wicked impulses, gathered, have become shadow, the shadow becoming substance. From Dreaming, it spills over.

Time to slither.

Thinking it no longer safe to stay, he gathers up his
waddy
, his boomerang and skins from the cranny in the chimney, and goes in search of a new fireside.

He runs from roof to roof. It is easy. The houses are all connected. When they are not, distances one to the next are always small in one direction or another. He finds, driven into some walls, row on row of large spike nails: one set to hold on to, another for his feet to race across. Hopping one to the next he barely has to slacken his pace.

Passing into districts less solid to cling on to, he risks being blown off the more crooked rooftops. He slides down towards ground level, sprints along the tops of alleyway walls, the yards behind each tumbledown hollow linked in endless lines. Slathering dingo-dogs lunge at their chains as his heels fly by.

He avoids turning south, towards the Well of Shadows, or west into unknown parts. Instead he heads east, towards that territory best remembered.

He is but a dot etched on the horizon, a blur against the cloud-dimmed sky.

The Guardian has refused him. He has no mate, no one to turn to, nor place to belong.

‘
Bael Thara
,’ moans Brippoki. ‘
Bael ba-been
.’

Without warning, he faces an apparition, his opposite. In shock, Brippoki’s vocal cords clench, the blood freezing in his veins.

A white face, blackened by soot, stares into a black face crusted with clay, ash, and chalk. Cold sweat and hot tears trail contrary streaks across their cheeks.

Met with a May Day lillywhite, the chimneysweep’s eyes roll, perplexed. His hair is dusted with powder, caked in meal; but he wants for his glitter, his gold leaf-foil and ribbons.

White-black hands out, Brippoki backs up, and edges around the black-white man.

The sweep is alarmed to see his nakedness. He bangs together his brushes and tools, crying: ‘Weep weep! Weep weep!’

Brippoki runs on.

And he does.

A slight lifting of the curtain brought light flooding into Sarah's room. An hour or more yet, and then she would get up, spent from a night of dreams without sleeping.

In the gloom of darkness, in the still hour of the night, that deeper shade had lingered. Ash and soot, a king couched among charcoal…a black snake crowned with white feathers.

Sarah rolled over onto her back, properly awake and thoughts busy.

Belatedly she realised the Biblical Joseph that Druce was named for was most likely not the husband of Mary, mother of God, but Joseph ‘the dreamer'. From the signs God had shown him in his fever, it was clear that he knew to identify himself with his namesake.

Joseph had dwelt in the land of Canaan, the favourite of his father, Jacob, and hated by his brothers for his self-aggrandising dreams. Sold into slavery, Joseph had been entrusted with the superintendence of his master's house. Falsely accused and cast into prison, implicit confidence was again placed in him when the keeper committed the other prisoners to his charge.

The circumstances echoed Druce's own life story, if somewhat in reverse – the boy criminal had been given the responsibility of mustering his fellow prisoners while on board the
Royal Admiral
, subsequently serving an army officer, and then the botanist Caley, as his masters in the new colony.

Under Pharaoh in Egypt, the faithful servant Joseph had eventually risen to a position of great power owing to his skill at interpreting dreams. All Druce's
talk of dreams, his ‘sleeping to get sense and knowledge', quite possibly exposed him as a charlatan of the first order. He would often solicit pity via expression of his piety, finding impressionable souls, like the Gilbethorpes, and dazzling them with vivid stories of sin and redemption. That was likely his means of survival, the method by which he had always survived. Perhaps he was not even conscious of doing it, fooling himself with that same brand of biblical signs and wonders he had been raised in; the same as had been burned into her.

So God performed His works through sinners, more than those meek and mild: she would have to take that on advisement. Sarah did not doubt it. Or did she doubt too far? For so many years locked up inside her own head, she envied the active and simple-minded.

She should strive to be more like Brippoki.

Joseph Druce, by his own account, was a character filled with intrigue. His travels had taken him to the opposite ends of the earth. So, too, had those of Brippoki, a fellow equally intriguing. More so, she felt, for being that much less transparent.

He remained, to her, a closed book.

What Sarah wanted most of all was for the Aborigine to sit back and tell her
his
life story. He got his learning by entirely other traditions – and could, no doubt, do wonders by the power of imagination. If only she could see the world through his eyes.

She suspected a whole host of secrets to which she was not privy.

Well before noon yet, and she sensed that the air temperature outside was the highest it had been since the start of the week. The incessant wind was a
scirocco
, hot and heavy as breath. Sarah rose, washed, and began to dress.

Tidying the parlour, she discovered a trail of minute stains marking the carpet, from window, to fireplace, to table. Scrubbing at them, the cloth and her hands showed up fresh scarlet. They were traces of blood.

Brippoki has made an open secret of his sacred shame. And been rejected. His manhood still appears that of a boy. Seeking out a means with which to smother his boyhood self, he raids the wash lines across the backyard walls of Whitechapel for a ‘shammy leather'.

Travelling through this far country, conjuring up the landscape in His wake, an Ancestor Spirit has left behind a trail – a narrow causeway made from scattered words and musical notes. Even as they shape the earth, these Songlines form a map. Only by taking the right path could Brippoki have hoped to meet others who share in his Dreaming, from whom he might have expected hospitality. But he has lost his way. He has strayed from the path…

Brippoki touches the bruises on his face, only now healing. He still feels the ache in his sides. These clay people, many cannot be understood at all, with
their growling and their bits and spits of words. From their stone and wood chambers piled high in a heap they arise, bird-shrieking, dog-howling, the flesh of their faces, stripped red and raw, burst like lizard guts on the fire.

He has entered into hostile territory, at risk of losing more than his life.

During their travels, Ancestor Spirits scatter
guruwari
, shards of Dreaming. Seeds of life, these forms persist, withstanding all ravages of time, death and decay. Anything so imbued with the power of Truth is a
tjurunga
, a most sacred object.

The
tjurunga
is as one with the Ancestor, the house of his Spirit, to be cherished and hidden away. If not, strangers may be tempted to come and steal away the very essence of life. Their campfire tales are filled with such stories of robbery and revenge.

To speak of one's Truth in the presence of any female is against the living Law, but showing a
tjurunga
? That is blasphemy. A blasphemer's life is forfeit. They must be killed, or at the very least savagely beaten. If they do not accept their punishment, and flee, as fugitives from divine justice they will be mercilessly hunted down. Either way, their souls are sure to be damned for all eternity.

But if it is a woman, a white woman showing a
tjurunga
? Brippoki's head hurts.

The impossibly hot day presented Sarah with a quandary. However much her father's bedroom needed an airing, the window could not be opened because the wind was too violent, whipping all of his papers around. She opened other windows in their part of the house. The fresh air forced through them might eventually circulate. She could attend to any damage later.

Sarah read aloud from the Sunday papers, coverage of the match at Lord's, relieved, if slighted, that Lambert should prefer the official version of events to any of her own observations.

‘“Saturday's play”,' she reported, ‘“was in marked contrast to the Friday, when the Blacks had been adjudged to have begun indifferently, only to improve until the point where their performance was agreed the superior.”'

‘So they were in the lead?' said Lambert. ‘Well, well! A rum do.'

‘“Misfortune, however, seemed to attend the steps of the second movement of the Blacks”,' continued Sarah, ‘“at the very outset of their second innings. Dick-a-Dick was clean bowled, and Tiger was doomed to a speedy retirement. Lawrence made but one hit that counted. Cuzens came in and by vigorous but not always wise hitting got up the score to 28.”'

‘Twenty-eight? Ha-hah!' His enjoyment of their collapse brought much-needed colour to her father's cheek. ‘Continue!' he ordered.

‘“Mullagh – ”'

‘Johnny Mullagh!' cried Lambert. He clapped his great hands together in anticipation of grand doings.

‘“ – the greatest card,”' she read, ‘“was then played, but not with the spirit and style of the day previous. He seemed to hit anyhow. At the fall of the sixth wicket for 40 runs it required no prophet to foretell the issue of the match. Bullocky was absent without sufficient reason being assigned, and, to make short work of what may be called a travestie upon cricketing at Lord's, the Blacks were defeated by 55 runs.”'

‘Dear, dear. A travesty?' Lambert gloated. ‘I knew they were getting ahead of themselves.'

‘I thought cricket allowed the peasant to play the prince.'

That was impertinent: Lambert was shocked, but not so much as Sarah. She had betrayed her partisan feelings.

He looked a little stormy.

‘The lamb may lie down with the lion, but that does not make them equal,' he said. ‘You misunderstand me, my girl.'

Sarah felt her bonds tighten, but was equally convinced that no apology was necessary.

‘“Marylebone”,' she read on, ‘“were the eventual winners, but not without facing a sterling piece of bowling from Johnny Cuzens, who took six for 65 runs of a second innings total of 121.”'

She refused to look at her father's face.

‘“At the close of the first day's play”,' Sarah read, ‘“Dick-a-Dick caused a sensation by inviting members to pay up to a shilling to try to hit him with a cricket ball from 10 paces. Cuzens is showing more batting form, but the Blacks are not doing much, and bid fair to be only a fleeting attraction.”'

‘Whatever happened, I wonder,' mused Lambert, ‘to Johnny Bullocky?'

Sarah continued her reading, and not purely for Lambert's benefit. Among the related news articles there appeared a curious sort of commentary, journalist responding to journalist between their respective papers. Making mischief, she chose to share it.

‘“To those”,' she read out, ‘“who have any doubts as to the identity of the manhood in the white-and black-skinned races, it may be satisfactory to learn that the same
hopes
and
fears
, the same
zeal for the honour
of the Institution, the same
pride
in the cricketing
uniform
and
colours
, the same complacent
vanity
in looking ‘the thing', animated on this occasion the
quondam denizens
of the wilderness – ”'

‘Is this to be one of those sentences without an end?' interrupted Lambert.

‘It is,' admitted Sarah. ‘The emphases are theirs. “ – the cricket match at Lord's proving incontestably that the Anglican aristocracy of England and the ‘noble savage' who ran wild in the Australian woods are linked together in
one brotherhood of blood
– moved by the same passions, desires, and affections – ”'

‘
Tcha
!' scoffed Lambert.

‘“ – differing only because in His wisdom God had ordained that His revealed truth should travel
westward
from the hills and valleys of Canaan, until at the appointed time the stream of Divine knowledge should turn eastward, and cover the whole earth ‘as the waters cover the sea'.”'

‘What on earth…?' he spluttered.

She was perhaps being unnecessarily provocative; still, there it was, in black and white.

‘Let me see that!' Lambert snatched the paper. He merely checked for himself – as if she could have made it up – and then threw the pages down.

‘
Pshaw
!' he complained. ‘A savage is not so simply turned citizen.'

Patiently, Sarah gathered what had scattered and slid to the floor.

‘You can take a horse to the water,' said Lambert, ‘but you cannot make him drink. We are finding, as a general rule, that the dumb beast has to be coerced.'

‘You are cruel,' Sarah observed.

‘In order that we may be kind,' smiled Lambert. ‘It is often necessary.'

‘An influence amounting to the same as authority might be arrived at through a system of kindness,' Sarah asserted. She looked her father over, coolly. ‘A person might accept almost anything,' she said, ‘from one to whom they were suitably attached.'

Lambert considered for a moment.

‘We must take direction from
our Father
,' he stressed the words unkindly, ‘the Almighty Disposer of Events. The pious Israelites could not build the walls of Jerusalem without holding the trowel in one hand…and a sword in the other.'

Brippoki knows he has strayed from the correct path. It is not enough to follow the way that is already there – that is the wrong way. It is necessary to sing, and to send the landscape and the road out of oneself. This is
Bugaragara
, the Way of the Law.

During his first nights' fast travelling in a city of the dead, he forgot the importance of this distinction. He fooled himself into thinking that he forged a path, when, all along, he has been following one – his course somehow directed.

He might as well have worn a ring through his nose.

He has not followed in the footsteps of any Ancestor; instead, a devil.

And now the devil is following after him.