The Clay Dreaming (46 page)
Authors: Ed Hillyer
‘Darwin, you ape. Transmutant! In one fell stroke you have attempted to pave over the Garden of Eden, arrest the Fall of Man, and most unforgivably of all, forgive…
You
! Forgive
us
Original Sin? Should I take your words over the Word of God?’ Lambert shook his grey locks. ‘I must then give up my black gown. The old sublime faith in God and heaven is gone!’
Having half-deliberately made the mischief, Sarah supposed she had to answer it. ‘Darwin is a devout man,’ she said. ‘He does not mean to speak atheistically.’
‘Oh, he professes to love his Maker! The Church, my girl, can be too Broad!’
Lambert Larkin watched her carefully, marking the shifts of colour in her cheek since he had brushed it: first blanching, when he had raised his voice, then blushing brighter than before. With a determination he found impressive she had forced her mood to cool. Only the line of her jaw betrayed her. Her lips were tight; and, he knew, set against him.
‘There is evidence of a grand design to be found in Nature,’ said Lambert, more calmly, ‘and in this respect alone, Darwin is correct. It is the Voice with which the Deity proclaims Himself to man. But if a man believes it discovered in this debased sense, then he is doomed forever, a slave to his own wants. He
will
struggle for life! And a mortal struggle it shall be.
‘The theory of evolution,’ he rattled on, ‘overlooks a most important point, and that is the enormous gap existing between the last stage of the animal and the first stage of man. How is it that we cannot trace the steps by which the
simiae
are advancing, until they approach the condition of men? Show me if you will where the one…’ Lambert laughed at the inherent absurdity ‘…turns into the other.
‘Darwinism supposes a human infant, from parents that were not human. How was the child educated…by a monkey? We ourselves, as men, with all of our accomplishments, are scarcely able to prevent our masses falling back into the state of brutes…savage man hasn’t the ability to advance by himself!’
‘If that is so,’ started Sarah, ‘then how do you explain –?’
‘If,’ stated Lambert, oblivious, ‘at the Creation, man had been cast out into the savage forest an orphan of nature, naked and helpless, he would have perished long before he learnt how to supply his most immediate wants.’
Sarah was arrested by a sudden vision of the fugitive Bruce.
‘Abel, the shepherd,’ offered Lambert, ‘was anything but a savage.’
‘You say the first man cannot have grown from an infant,’ Sarah found herself saying, ‘yet accept the idea of him being fully formed.’
She stated fact in order to frame a question, a conversational ploy she had learnt in dealing with Brippoki.
‘Of…’ Lambert was flabbergasted ‘…of course! There is less of the miraculous in supposing him to have been created a man, than as an infant without human parents,’ he reiterated, spelling it out carefully. ‘I believe it, as I believe in God…because it is impossible to believe the Universe exists without a Cause which is unseen.’ Some small measure of desperation entered into his voice. ‘Male,’ he said, ‘and female…created, thus perfect, and thus endowed… give us the proposition by which we can understand the whole human race! We would have no history, and no civilisation, without faith.’
His voice fell to a whisper. He searched her face for some trace of compassion.
‘Without, all is dark, unintelligible…and irrational. To acknowledge the Lord,’ said Lambert, ‘is to know peace. Secure in the knowledge of His existence, all doubts cease. Why then should a man…or any person…born and brought up in the knowledge of Christ, choose to become an atheist?’
Lambert had been arguing what seemed the entire afternoon. Sarah was tired of explaining that neither she nor Darwin was in the least atheistic.
‘What of these days, and the widespread abandonment of the gospel,’ he went on, ‘through sheer, unlettered ignorance?’
At some point soon, she thought, he must get short of breath.
‘Now is the time when we must be on our guard most of all, the most critical of ignorance and falsehood…rather than running to embrace it.’
Sarah knew full well what, and who, he was being most critical of. Her mind was made up. She would go to the Royal Institute, and attend Sir John Lubbock, and see what he had to say, on this or any other matter.
‘Our responsibilities to our fellow man have become an unspeakable burden. Unspeakable!’ Lambert bemoaned his lot as a preacher out of work and favour. ‘But that is the meaning of doasyoulike,’ he said, ‘free will. To accept, or decline. The choice exists for each individual, as it does for whole societies.’
He reached for her hand with his, and dumbly she took it up. Lambert motioned for her to come closer, and she accepted. His enormous dry hand went to stroke her on the cheek, and she barely flinched.
‘The inferior creatures do not alter themselves,’ he croaked. ‘Man may change, but if he does so, it is by his choice. If he should become degenerate, as he surely does, it is his choice.’
He gave her permission, of a sort.
‘What about the boomerang?’ said Sarah. She felt determined to have her say.
‘
What
?’ Lambert’s hand slid from her cheek.
She stated, calmly, ‘It is a tool said to be, in all the world, unique to the Australians. Doesn’t that show at least one small step in advance?’
Lambert gave every appearance of not listening. Whenever challenged, let alone contradicted, he would put in earplugs – more metaphorical than those favoured by Herbert Spencer, but no less effective.
‘It cannot be a relic of primeval civilisation,’ she reasoned, ‘else how could it be confined to one race only? They have not learnt of it from any invader, for the same reason.’
‘Old birds,’ decreed Lambert, turning, ‘are not caught by chaff.’ He had not witnessed the boomerang in action at the Oval, not for himself. ‘The miraculous art of “boomerang”-throwing,’ he said, ‘comes to us straight out
of the old fairy-tales. There is sure to be a fairy princess who blesses her hero with wondrous gifts, usually a shield against dragon-breath, or a weapon of some sort. A sword, the blade of which may cut through anything. Armour impervious to all blows… Which would vanquish the other, do you think, if those two miracle forces should be opposed?’
Sarah began to wonder. Lambert, however, required no answer.
‘In these same fairy-tales,’ he said, ‘we hear of arrows that always return to the archer. Next you will tell me their cricket bats have the powers of Harlequin’s wonder-working wooden sword!’
In masquerade theatre, transformations occurred whenever the hero, Harlequin, manipulated his ‘slapstick’, two pieces of wood joined together so as to produce the appropriate noise when hitting another prop or character. This often provided the cue for a change of scene: ropes to be pulled, canvas flaps to fall. With cardboard, string, and endless afternoons, Sarah had patiently replicated such conjuring tricks in the toy theatrical productions of her childhood.
Lambert had had no time for them, even then.
Waving his ‘wand’, he affected a ridiculous, high-pitched voice. ‘“This bat receive, with fairy favours graced!”’
‘You would not make so light of it,’ snapped Sarah, ‘if you had seen the wonders their team captain, Mr Lawrence, can perform with a cricket bat!’
She felt foolish even saying it.
‘Pantomime tricks!’ he shouted. ‘Fiddlesticks! The present Australian savages are incapable of inventing the boomerang. It is the invention of their forefathers,
ergo
, their ancestors were superior.’
‘Which would win, do you think,’ said Sarah, ‘if the Armour of God were pitched against the pious sword of the Israelite?’
Lambert’s face went beetroot. ‘“This is an evil generation, they seek a sign. And there shall be no sign given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet. For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation.”’
His words were a fulsome curse. She dared equate the Bible with
fairy-stories
? Lambert lost all self-control; he began to lurch about in the bed, all coherence lost in a cacophony of coughs and splutters.
Sarah ran out of the room, only to return seconds later with a glass of water. She physically restrained him from collapse, pushing him back onto his bank of pillows, calming his fit, and then bringing the moisture to his lips. At length he was quieted.
She sat on the bed with him, herself reduced to a bag of nerves.
Lambert’s eyes were tight shut. His lungs laboured for a time, rattling towards recovery, until he was able to take in sufficient breath to speak again.
Black smears under his eyes, he turned on her. His voice was a rasp.
‘“The Greeks…ask for a reason… Jews look for a sign.”’
Sarah, in a daze, was unable to respond.
The weight of his body was so much lighter than she imagined.
As a child, when he has only a number for a name,
Kertameru
is punished for the things he does wrong, and knows the reason of it. As
Parnko
, a boy who grows towards becoming a man, he is taught
Bugaragara
, the Way of the Law. But when the white men come they break every law, every law including their own, without punishment.
Ngamadjidj
take their land, take their lives, take their gins, and gift nothing in return. No penalty is paid for their wrongdoing – instead, reward!
Truly, God is good and kind. If they pray to him, he forgives them everything. The white God must be stronger than
Bunjil
, than the Truth, the Way and the life. Blackfellows, the
guli
, must have greatly displeased the Ancestors to deserve such dreadful punishment.
Following the disruption of his initiation rites, Brippoki wanders the hills and desert of his former homelands, alone and disorientated. His spiritual rebirth aborted, he is hopelessly lost, in the most profound sense. The land itself transformed is strange to him.
Whether Black Cockatoo or White Cockatoo,
Gamadj
or
Grugidj
, the
guli
have always sung their territorial boundaries – Songlines, working like birdsong. No fixed frontiers exist, but rather points of exchange between different songs – a comparing of notes. Across each territory, swamp or desert, there are many different tongues. Although the words change, each song may be recognised by its melody.
Songlines interrupted, the tracks all but kicked away, they stumble in the footsteps of their Ancestors. Sickness in the land produces sickness of the mind. The melody is forgotten.
Brippoki’s own Songline will always be imperfect, for having been cut short. Although he is a man, full-grown, and scarified as such, his transformation remains incomplete. Without No name, no man, he can never be admitted
bourka
, an elder. He will never be wise, or old. His secret shame is become his open curse.
Mindeye
the destroyer comes,
Mindeye
the avenger. The props that hold up the sky are cut. The World is soon to end, the sky falling. These are the last words of the elders, as they die. Yet the Emu’s egg still rises each morning, and at night rolls back into the black hole of the earth.
Gnowee
still searches for her lost son. The Law is broken, but the World carries on – without its people.
The sacred places are gone. With no country to call their own, there can be no more
corroborees
. Instead they gather around that great hole in the earth, the hole at the centre of all things, and await their turn.
Finding no words that can express or assuage his grief, Brippoki begins a tuneless keening. His afternoon’s labours have produced a length of string – two-ply, woven from two separate strands, and strong. As it lengthens he winds it between two short sticks, driven into the ground and fastened cross-wise.
Time is endless oneness, like a circle, a loop unbroken. If a man is clever, he can find or forge a link to cross from one side to another. Equally, another one who is sly might reach out to redirect his present course, which he follows according to the signs he meets. They may also have the power to alter his destiny – for good, or more likely for ill.
Whether from within or from without, hope and anticipation, or anxiety and fear, characterise each stage of a man’s life. To find the correct way forward, and protect him against the evils of another, requires a powerful charm. He takes up the string.
There, made his
min-tum
.
Grandfather chimes struck the hour of eight o’clock. The daughter hesitated on the landing outside her father’s closed door; wanting neither to go in, nor to face him, but bound to do so.
‘You haven’t touched your dinner,’ said Sarah.
‘I do not want it,’ said Lambert.
His words stung deliberately.
‘And take out my po,’ he said. ‘You are forever allowing it too full.’
Insult to injury. In mute protest Sarah hung back.
‘“CHILDREN,”’ he said, ‘“obey your parents in the Lord.”’
‘“Honour thy father,”’ she answered in kind. Sarah knew this lesson chapter and verse. ‘“And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.”’
‘“…but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,”’ replied Lambert.
The catechistic game sometimes played when she was a child had taken a serious turn. She could never win. Sarah would not stand to hear the next part from his lips:
SERVANTS, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh.
Storming downstairs, she cursed beneath her breath. Charles Darwin posited that the majority of our qualities were inherited. With every proximate step she prayed Darwin wrong.
Wednesday the 17th of June, 1868
‘I mourn the pride
And av’rice that make man a wolf to man.’
~ William Cowper,
The Task
The air cools. Colours shifting in the western sky, the light gradually fades. Somewhere above the smudge of no horizon twinkles the first star of evening. Soon his brothers will join him, ready to run their nightly course.
Brippoki is glad to greet the end of days filled with sickness and thoughts of home. Hunger gnaws at his belly. Taking up his boomerang, he approaches a suitable tree, sizes up the odds, steps forward, and releases his weapon with an almost angry stroke. It strikes the ground in front of the tree and leaps high into the branches, but fails to strike any of the birds roosting there. They scatter noisily, and his main chance is gone.
He climbs the trunk instead, and recovers a rotten egg to roast on his fire. Whilst clinging there, he hides some of his shits in a fork between the higher branches.
Since the waterhole has dried up, pigeons no longer fly into his traps. With reluctance, he approaches the canal. To enter unknown waters is to risk the wrath of
Ngook-wonga
, spirit of such places. All same, he selects lengths of stick sufficient to protrude above the waterline, and, in that denuded region where he has plucked the bulrush root, drives them deep into the riverbed. He then retrieves the spear barb from his nostril, and takes up his dilly bag for a net.
Fish are scarce in these polluted regions; his catch is so small there seems little point in gutting them. Brippoki throws them on the fire whole, turns them once, and then scrapes away the scorched scales with a rusted spoon he has found. He devours them warm but almost raw, washed down with a single gulp from the abandoned egg.
The time to move on has already come and gone. Soon, he will have to.
Travelling between canalside and Guardian, Brippoki makes sure to vary his route. He favours stone or tile, keeping to rooftops and hard ground where his
steps leave less trace. With each passing day of fine weather, it becomes easier. On occasion he walks on the sides of his feet, following well-worn grooves left by the innumerable carriages.
A hunter may lose the trail, yet, not having to cover its own tracks, still gains on its prey.
Brippoki takes up Thara’s offer of tea with an avidity little short of desperation. Even boiled and stewed with select leaves, the brackish water near camp afflicts his bowels, but at least counters the lack of salt, which makes him costive.
Gulping liquid makes a man drowsy – and tiredness could kill. He takes only tiny sips. Of late, it is the best he can do to keep his mouth cool and moist, his thirst never properly slaked. One, two full cups are emptied before he finally relaxes.
‘The next section of manuscript begins with a list of shipping,’ said Sarah, returning to the task. Unusually businesslike and formal, she opened her notebooks almost immediately.
‘At first I assumed it another record of those vessels on which Druce served,’ she said, ‘but given the context…’ With barely a pause, Sarah glanced across at Brippoki. ‘That is, thinking it over, I think it refers to ships calling in at the Bay of Islands while he was there.’
She seemed to have got away with saying the name, this time.
‘He was living among the Maori, and had taken a wife, his consort…the Princess Aetockoe,’ she said; her eyes averted, in shadow.
Brippoki repeatedly fingered a woven string, worn as a band around his waist – ‘exhibiting’ his charm. He stank ferociously, of fish-oil. Secured with a sort of gum, a variety of objects dangled from his hair: several small bones; what looked like a dog’s tooth; a scrap of gauze. A short twig peeped from behind one ear, much as a clerk kept his stylus. His dark skin was coated with grease, and daubs of red and white as before, adornments of which he seemed inordinately proud.
Beneath such questionable finery, however, Sarah could not help but be aware of his decline. Complexion sallow, his eyes, formerly so bright, had become dull. His cheek, once full, had become sunken and drawn. Since his return he had refused whatever foodstuffs she provided, and, like some silly mother, she worried he would waste away entirely.
He appeared distracted, barely looking her way.
‘So,’ she said, finally, ‘here it is… Druce quits New Zealand on board the
General Wellesley
with Captain Dalrymple…’
Captain Dalrymple so earnestly requested that I go with him to the North Cape, and he promised me at the same time that he would not take me from
the Island let the weather be ever so bad. I went with him and satisfied him in his ideas.
He then put to sea in order to land me in the place I came from. That night we received a very heavy storm, which prevented him. Next morning he endeavoured to gain the Island, but, the storm still lashing, it was impossible. I was then obliged to take my passage with him to India. As soon as I found I was driven from the Island by bad weather, I endeavoured to console my consort of her grief, which was useless for some days.
The Captain used us with every kindness till we came to an island three thousand miles distant from New Zealand, where he proposed to me to remain to procure him a second cargo of sandalwood and to stay there till he returned, which proposals I refused. From this moment he took most bitter censure against me and in a few days afterwards turned me and my wife out of the cabin, telling us we must seek an abode for ourselves among the lascars of which the ship’s company consisted.
Sarah paused.
‘You know what a lascar is?’ she asked.
‘Yellowpella!’ said Brippoki.
He sat on the carpet a few feet distant, winding a curl of hair around his fingers, and sipping slowly at his tea.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘An oriental, an oriental sailor.’
I had no bed, for the bed that I and my wife had, belonged to Captain D. My laying was on the timber with which I loaded her. In this miserable condition we existed till we came to Malacca. The voyage was prodigiously long (we was on the voyage from New Zealand to Malacca 9 months). The provisions all being exhausted necessity compelled us to eat the vermin, the Captain showing the example. The vermin being entirely dispersed, a silent motion in the ship was made to devour one another. There being a great many Englishmen on board as passengers, they secretly and firmly joined together to devour the black people.
‘
HOLO
!
’ cried Brippoki, and started from his sitting position. His face assumed a look of absolute horror.
Witnessing his reaction, Sarah was mindful to move swiftly on.
The horrid act was to have been committed at 12. But the providential God prevented it by sending us a gale of wind at 8 o’clock the same night, which carried us to an island called Sulo in three days. The wind being fair cheered every soul that they felt not hunger. I have to say with truth that me and my consort, during a long famine in this ship, felt but very little of it for we was generally in good while the rest was in torture and pain.
‘They not eat blackpellas?’ enquired Brippoki, between hisses.
‘No,’ said Sarah.
He recovered his seat, appearing mollified; gently rocking the while. Sarah was glad of it, for stormier waters lay ahead.
The ship being supplied at Sulo with every necessary she wanted, I then went to Malacca in her, Mr Cummings on board, who was a gentleman passenger. He went on shore and reported my case to the Governor, and all the
illtreatment
I had received from Captain D. The Governor immediately sent for me. It being late in the evening when I landed, the Governor was then gone on a party of pleasure with the officers of Malacca so that I could not see him that night. When the Captain heard the Governor had sent for me on shore he ordered the people to weigh the anchor and get the ship under way. He then went to Penang, carrying my consort with him, for she was aboard.
In the morning I waited on the Governor at his usual hour of doing business, where I was received in the most hospitable manner. The Governor took me wholly under his care and told me to console my mind regarding my wife, for it was in his power to restore my wife to me and make me amends for all the ill-treatment Captain D. had gave me. I was immediately clothed with the best and furnished with money and like necessaries I wanted. I wholly lived at the Governor’s house. The Governor as soon as possible wrote to Penang respecting my consort, where he found she was bartered away by Captain D. to Captain Ross. The Governor wrote several times but receiving an impertinent answer every time he was fully determined to put the law in force against any person who should have detained her. He then wrote a letter to the Governor of Penang respecting me. I then went to Penang.
When I came to the Governor of Penang, he told me to content myself that I should have my wife the next day. I left the Governor and returned to Captain Barrett, who had brought me there, and consulted him what I should do concerning my consort. He told me I had best go to Captain Ross who then had my wife in possession, and if he were a gentleman that considered his character, he would deliver up my wife without further hesitation. I immediately went to a tavern and got my dinner and then went to the house of Captain Ross. When I came there he was not at home, but his servant pointing him out to me in a distance from the house among a body of gentlemen I advanced towards them.
He knew me, but I knew him not.
As soon as he saw me he left the company and come and met me. In as polite a manner as I could I asked him if he would oblige me by pointing out Captain Ross among those gentlemen. In a very rough manner he asked me my business with Captain Ross. I told him. He then acknowledged his person to me. I solicited him in a most humble manner my wife.
He hesitated awhile, asking me by what authority she was my wife. I told him by being ignorant enough to suffer the face God had given me to be disfigured, and losing my blood and suffering pain. According to the rules of her country she was mine.
He told me she was out with his wife and child and neither of them would be home that night, but if I would come in the morning at 8 o’clock, and if she was willing to come with me, I should have her accordingly. I came. He presented my wife to me, after an absence of three months. She was deeply affected, which occasioned her a flood of tears. He accosted me in a very rude manner, telling me not to make her cry, and asked me, as it was the last morning, would I permit her to breakfast with his wife, for she being so careful of the child his wife was very fond of her. To which, I consented. He never had the kindness to invite me, though at that time I did not want it.
During the breakfast time while I was waiting he conveyed my wife with his own into a room and locked the door. After I tired my patience with waiting I went up one pair of stairs to where I had left them at breakfast. I told Captain Ross I thought their breakfast was long. He replied with a half-laugh (as all rogues do) that they had done breakfast some time, and, pointing to the door of the room that was locked, told me that the New Zealand woman was in that room with his wife. And if I liked to call her, I might, and if she liked to come out, she might. But not to enter that room, for there was deposited all his riches. If I broke the door, he would have me hanged.
I went away dishearted.
I then went to the Master of the Court, whose name was MacAvoy. He knew me by the marks in my face, and he told me he would have nothing to do with it, that the business was settled.
I went away to the Governor and informed him of the whole business. The Governor made no delay, but immediately sent for my wife and ordered Captain Ross to quit that island. My wife being questioned at the Governor’s respecting Captain Ross, she informed him that he had told her that
he
was the Governor of that island, and meant to buy a ship on purpose to take her back.
I was then returned to Malacca with my consort with me, where I remained till a passage was provided for me and my consort in the
Sir Edward Pellew
, commanded by Captain Stephens. I then took my passage for Bengal, where the case was tried before the Governor General, Right Honourable Lord Minto. I arrived in June 1809. Everything was arranged, and allowed 180 rupees per month from thence, I was put under the care of Squire Leyden, who was
aide de camp
to the Governor General and also was one of the twelve Masters of the Grand Lodge of London.
I was with this man three long months, where I became well acquainted with most of the signs of the Freemasonical arts, by having a free commerce to his own library. By his free will and permission he put into my hands one day a book which he privately kept locked up, and told me that it possessed the full power which Freemasons was in possession of, at the same time pointing out to me sundry places which was not to be read by one single person. This book thoroughly convinced me of all the Ideas that I had formed within my own breast for several years, my father being one. I was fully resolved to find out the meaning of it. No man on earth was able to instruct another with more
wisdom, which he took every opportunity of his leisure time during the three months I was with him.
I then took my passage by the order of Lord Minto in a ship named the
Union
, commanded by Captain Lutterel, owner Mr Lone. We sailed with express order for New Zealand, my wife being pregnant. There was another woman put onboard who said she was a midwife, to take care of my consort whenever she was ill. We left the land of Bengal in the evening. The next day we see a fleet to windward, which we supposed to be a French frigate who had got English prizes. We kept them in sight the whole day. Dark coming on, we lost sight of them. The next morning the frigate was close to us. The Captain, taking her for a French frigate, ran away from her till she came so close that the shot brought her to, and when the boat came alongside it proved to be His Majesty’s Ship
Cornelia
, commanded by Captain Edgehill. He immediately jumped in the boat and came on board the
Union
, where I introduced my consort. The honourable Captain seemed highly pleased and expressed the highest wishes to serve me and my consort with anything he had on board. It being due time, he honoured us with his company to breakfast. After breakfast he insisted that he would accompany us with his ship till my consort should be safe over her trouble, assuring us at the same time that the surgeon of his ship was well used in midwifery, for he attended several ladies in Bengal. He then gave orders to the Captain of the
Union
to keep close under his lee, and if my consort was to be taken bad in the night a gun was to be fired, and by day a signal hoisted at the Mizen peak. This was September 5th, 1809.
