The Clay Dreaming (54 page)

Mother is close by. Father dumbfounds him with a string puzzle.

A round piece of bark, rolling along – pretending it an animal and they the hunters, some of the older boys try to spear it. One of their
teipas
strikes his outstretched arm. The tip, padded with grass, stings sharply, but does not pierce the skin. He cries and cries, and no amount of hugging will make him stop.

He climbs a tree. He falls, and does not cry. He hits the bark with a tiny, balled fist, and then sets to climbing again.

Ngamadjidj
in these days is nothing more than smoke and ugly rumour.
Warri
the wind carries fire-talk down from the north, stories of trees sprouting up out of the sea, and huge winged birds. The dead return from
Pindi
, far to the west, on the backs of giant swans.

At the sight of them, the bravest warriors run away. The women hide their babies in the bushes. In their time away the dead have gained knowledge of another sort, and much of what they knew in life is forgotten. They speak a new tongue, no longer recognising family or friends.

He likes to hear Father tell these stories, but Mother shakes her head and covers her ears. Her people lived nearer the coast, where there has been long time plenty fighting. Talk of
Ngamadjidj
aches her liver.

Marriage is mostly with the
Jardwadjali
, a people ranging alongside
Wudjubalug
lands, partnerships approved according to
yauerin
– skin, or clan – and
goobong
– totem.
Yauerin, goobong
and
miyur
flow from the mother, and it is not good for menfolk to marry women of the same
yauerin
as their mother.

Brippoki’s father marries late. His mother is found wandering the desert. Still very young, already she carries a child in her belly, a child belonging who
knows where – taken one night, against her will, by a wicked
wembawemba
fellow, passing through her country with a party of white men. In revenge her people spear one of the no good one whites. It is said the spirit of the twice-dead man lodges in her. She wants to keep the child, and so is cast out.

No one wants her, until his father takes pity.

He,
Parnko
, is said to be the result.

And that is but one version of the stories told about him – later, with both his parents gone. All he knows for sure is that Mother was unlike the others. She kept herself and her boy apart, because, she said, they were better.

Brippoki remembers being carried, strapped across her back between her kangaroo cloak and two rush mats. Slung by his side is a bag of root, and, waving under his nose, tips of sandalwood. He is swaying back and forth very agreeably. The air fills with seedlings, blowing in the breeze – the smell of herb and lush grasses. The back of her head he knows very well, the honey scent and colour of her neck.

Of her face, he is unable to recall the slightest detail.

Sarah parted the heavy curtains.

The sun rose red and angry, all else concealed from view by a dense, caramel-coloured vapour. Only the very tops of the houses opposite were visible, and even then as dark outlines in the fog. London exhaled an atmospheric dust-cloud thick as pea soup; the recent fine weather having dried and powdered the dirt, the traffic kicked it up in vast quantity. Billowing from below, the street sounds seemed amplified – an effect, perhaps, of lost visibility, or simply greater cause to curse and blow one’s horn.

An antipodean calenture: Sarah pictured herself adrift on a filthy brown sea. Distant island crags, only the tops of taller buildings pierced the veil. Spires, cut loose from context, slipped anchor to crest the waves – stone galleons, spectral and graceful.

‘Darkness,’ croaked a voice behind her. ‘“A day of clouds, and thick darkness.”’

She turned towards Lambert, and then, back to the window, the featureless view. That was certainly the way things looked. He couldn’t possibly see from where he lay in the bed. He must smell the laden air.

‘Morning…spread upon the mountains,’ said Lambert, ‘people…great and strong. A fire!’

‘A…’ Sarah hesitated. ‘You want a…?’

‘“A fire devoureth before them,”’ he spat, ‘“and behind them a flame burneth. The land
is
as Eden before them, and behind…desolate wilderness. Nothing shall escape.

‘“The appearance… The appearance of them is of horses, and as horsemen, so shall they run. Before their face the people shall be much pained. All faces shall gather blackness.”’

Beyond sense, he was still raving, as he had been half the night. He clutched at her and laughed, carefree as a small boy, calling her Emily and Fanny and even a few foul names, and seemed not to know her.

Night, for day – the air itself aglow is filled with smoke, as from a great fire.

Every street is a blind alley. The shifting mist forms a sheer cliff face, a wall that retreats at each step forward, even as its cousin, behind, advances. Brippoki stumbles along within the cloud, more calmed than confused by the lack of detail.

With a silent belch the foul smoke parts. A figure strides purposefully into view, only to disappear again a few paces further on – another, and then another. Each trails darkness. Occasionally they pause to fix and stare at one another, only for a moment, and are then swallowed up, a trick of light. Brippoki knows he walks in the midst of thousands. He can bear the measureless crowds for not seeing them all at once.

Gnowee, Mityan
– somewhere in the sky lurks sun or moon. Brippoki has to take it by faith. Everything has the same colour, neither light, nor dark. The air is ash.

The air is a lie. His chest burns. He feels the weight of shadow, settling there.

‘He is old,’ shrugged Dr Epps. ‘His mind wanders.’

Poised on the landing just outside the door to Lambert’s room, they spoke in hushed tones. Lightly, and for the briefest instant, the fingertips of his right hand brushed against Sarah’s sleeve.

‘You’ve changed your hair,’ he commented.

‘What?’

The doctor looked a little discomfited.

‘What can you do?’ she asked, matter of fact.

‘What can I do?’ Epps replied. ‘That is a good question.’ He checked his pocket watch. ‘I have to go.’

‘But…’

‘I have a train to catch,’ he said, ‘up country.’

The country; as soon as people made their money they would run to the country every chance they got, even if only for the weekend, admitting life in the city a slow poison. A touch of raw nature was the tincture to every ailment, the clear sky a balm.

Epps could not bear the scorn in her face. He excused himself. ‘I must go,’ he said. ‘My own mother ails. She too is old.’

‘Old’, as if it were a disease. His mother, she knew, lived many hours away.

‘What if,’ said Sarah, calmly, ‘what if he should take another turn for the worse?’

For an awful second Dr Epps looked genuinely doubtful.

‘…I will come and see you first thing Monday morning,’ he said. ‘You have my word. First thing. How’s that?’

How was that? He was always there first thing on Mondays, that’s how it was!

‘We’ll see what…what progress he is making then,’ he said. Epps showed his watch as much as checked it again. ‘Really, must dash. Ten-thirty train.’

‘No treatment?’ she said. ‘A sleeping draught?’

He considered a moment. ‘I don’t advise it. You’ll be staying with him, I take it?’

‘Yes.’ Sarah felt suddenly guilty.

‘That is for the best,’ said Dr Epps. Running down a few steps, he paused, adding, ‘The best medicine, I mean.’

Sarah remained on the landing. She listened to the sounds of Dr Epps moving about on the ground floor, shutting up the surgery, and then, finally, the front door. Only then did she turn.

Lambert was quiet now. The doctor had not seen the worst of it.

‘Is that you?’ he asked. A small bubble burst on his lips. ‘My Angel.’

She had sometimes been his Darling, but never his Angel. Her mother was the Angel in the House.

He grasped her small, cold hand in his – gentle this time. ‘My Angel,’ he repeated.

Lambert’s milky gaze wandered across her brow, her hair cut short.

‘It…it is me,’ she said. ‘Sarah.’

‘Sarah? Our little girl?’ His features glowed with wonder.

The doorbell rang, insistent. Lambert was cooing and babbling. She wanted to wrest her hand from his, yet, at the same time, did not want to. It was probably one of the doctor’s nearsighted patients – except it might be the doctor. He must have forgotten something, or locked himself out.

Running to the first floor landing, she saw the street-door letterbox open; a dark shape, bobbing beyond. Not Brippoki surely? In the way of
Kings
, he knew not how to go out or come in. The shadow moving aside, light through the front door letterbox held her frozen. An envelope popped through the slit, flip-flap. Why would the postman be ringing their bell? Sarah went down on tiptoe to pick up the letter lying on the mat. Addressed to her, it bore an Admiralty seal. She recognised the handwriting of the clerk, Dilkes Loveless.

There was no stamp.

Sarah made her way back up the stairs, slowly. The clerk had paid her a personal call? She sat by her father’s bedside, Lambert’s delirium only slight distraction.

She opened up the letter – more documents. She had asked Dilkes to check for Druce under any likely alias. Logs from the
Porpoise
, unlike those for the
Lady Nelson
, made no specific mention of him; other than catalogued close links between ships’ personnel, there appeared to be little worthy of comment. The ship’s muster, however – duly transcribed by the clerk, in an entry dated May 1st, 1810 – nominated one ‘
Jas. Druce
’.

Whence and whether –

– the next word, smudged, was illegible –

– or not:
Sydney
.

Place and country where from:
London
.

Age at time of entry on this ship:
30
.

His true age, falsified on deportation in 1792, would have been closer to 32 or 33. Druce’s declaring himself 12 years old as opposed to 15 was probably what had saved him from the gallows.

Ordinary seaman? Dilkes Loveless rather presumed upon her knowledge of naval terminology.

He had come to the house?

Druce was said to be a slight man. These figures possibly represented his height – a level of detail that helped to make him seem that little bit more real.

 
‘Zinder’?
Tender?

Dilkes noted that same individual mustered May through October of 1810. A final entry read: 

‘
Jas
.’ Short for James, or Joseph? Whether assumed or reclaimed, the change in name made sense if he was leaving the colony to escape debts incurred as ‘George Bruce’.

Four foot six –

Sarah replaced the papers in their envelope. There was no accompanying letter, as if her faithful correspondent had been fully expecting to speak to her himself.

The return address should have been Mills & Wellman, the Receiving House at No.38. In her rush she must have put their home address, since that was written on his envelope. Dilkes Loveless had interpreted it an invitation to call on her.

Heaven only knew what trouble she courted.

Brippoki wishes an eye for an eye.
Waanyarra
? No, small bird is easier.

His spirit shakes itself loose. He rises up above, looking down to see the top of his own head, far below. High up, now higher than the housetops, he ascends swallow-swift, to soar above the dust storm on a level with the clouds.

Warri
, the wind, whistles through wing tips. To the east sprouts a spinifex patch – sharp spike towers stabbing at the sky, as many spines as a cactus. Down south writhes the Serpent, choked on sail feathers caught in His gullet. Downcast looks see feet, scaled and clawed. Hidden sun glints off the metal moving parts of distant vehicles. Subtle rays fling faint shadows of larger birds onto the ground around. They cut in swathes and arcs, and circle-surround him – sharks about the small rowboats, taking them into the bay to board the
Rangatira
.

Below, complex strands flow out from the Piebald Giant, squat and patient at their centre – capped in dark blue, brooding. Above, a black star crosses the sun.
Waanyarra
, flying crow, looking down on the swift swallow’s back. Crow-eye. Crow black.

Black death plunges.

Brippoki is returned, back beneath the shadow of St Paul, hard heart of London, ankle-deep in filth and the smell of the rookeries there. The air is thick and burning – the sky, stone, same as the city.

A mistake returning to
Pindi
, where dead men lurk in the wings. Bird brought low by crow, Brippoki sinks lower, buried in the graveyard for lifetimes of pain. The city crushed dry, bone-brittle, works its way into his eyes, ears, nose and
throat. It suffocates the skin. Fine particles fill his mouth and scorch his lungs, catching breath. It is more than the dust of the ground, and to be feared.