Sarah Thornhill (2 page)

The oldest of us was Will. Fifteen when I was born and already out on the boats doing a man's work. Will was away more than he was home. Up and down the coast with the cedar. Over to New Zealand for the seals
.
Be away so long I'd think he was never coming back, half a year or more.

Captain Thornhill, people called him, though he was really only Will Thornhill who'd worked his way up. Never got his papers, nothing like that. Didn't read, see. None of us did.

Pa had no time for learning. Could sign his name but often said how a few acres and a flock of sheep was a better gift to your children than anything you'd get out of a book. When he needed something on paper he got old Loveday at Beckett's Reach to do it for him. Loveday had come free, could of done all right, but drank it all away in his miserable leaky hut. See, Pa would say. Old Loveday's not got the taint, but tell me this, you rather have his life or mine?

It was never spoke of, but Ma was not really our mother.

I had a few memories, sharp little pictures, of another mother. Will in the kitchen doorway and me sitting on the edge of the table working away at the peas in a pod while this other mother magicked them open down their backbone one by one with her thumbnail, the peas popping out into the blue-striped bowl with the grey chip on the edge. She sat puffing away on her pipe, doing the peas without having to look. The picture was so sharp it even had a smell, baccy and peas together. She'd take the pipe out of her mouth and sing, tuneless and wavery.
Oranges and lemons, say
the bells of Saint Clement's,
she'd sing.
You owe me five farthings, say the
bells of Saint Martin's
.

Will with his hands under my armpits, hoisting me in the air, the underside of the shingles swinging round, the pod clutched tight in my fist while the kitchen rolled up and down and under and over, and then I was back on the table with my mouth open, would I cry or laugh I didn't know, and Will was clattering at the stove, shouting and joking, head way up near the beams, and my mother with the peas all fallen in her pinny lap and not caring.

Then they brought me into a dark room, summer outside but all the curtains drawn across and the shutters closed, someone leading me by the hand over to the high bed where my mother lay, but I was frightened and shy, she was sweaty, her hair in strings, her cheeks sunk in, and her hand on the coverlet waxy and bony.

Whoever was with me, I could feel their hand at my back, pushing, they wanted me to kiss the yellow face on the pillow. Her eyes slid sideways at me, she was smiling, but her lips were so white and dry and her face nothing but wrinkled skin sliding over the bone. I pulled back, how could I kiss such a thing! Her hand crawled towards me over the coverlet and she touched me on the shoulder, top of the head, shoulder again, then the hand fell back and they let me go away.

Like a dream, that first mother melted away and there was another person we called Ma.

Pa had no stories but Ma had enough for the both of them. Turned over the places and names and dates like coins in her hand, counted and re-counted them for the pleasure of it. Her Daddy was in the sugar trade and she grew up in a house at Brixton-Hill,
on the north side, that's the superior side
. A husband something in the army, she was Margaret Grant.
Come free
to New South Wales along with him. Then he died.

I come up the river to help your pa, she'd say. Your mother too sick to care for a houseful of children. Then by and by we was wed.

I loved how neat it was, the way she told it, then and now stitched up tight.

Ma had a scurrying way with her, tilting forward from the waist like a hen in a hurry. Always putting something to rights. She never forgot the stain Pa carried. But the way she saw it, it was a wife's job to hide it, even if she couldn't wash it out.

She had a headful of all the things you did so no one would know you had the taint. Elbows off the table, remember Dolly, she'd say, and a well-bred person leaves a scrap on their plate. She'd be running after us with our bonnets when we went outside, did we want to look like blackfellows? Church, rain or shine, every Sunday, that fog of mothballs.
We have left undone
those things which we ought to have done and we have done those things
which we ought not to have done.
Church was full of hard words, but those were plain small ones mortared together into something that nothing could get into or out of.

Pa did his best, but he'd forget. Eat off his knife, or say
victuals,
when Ma thought that was vulgar.

It's food, William, she'd say. Or comestibles.

By God Meg, he'd say. Combustibles is it?

He'd laugh, but then he'd reach over and touch her arm.

Oh, I'm an ignorant feller, he'd say. Lucky she took me, your ma.

Humour not Ma's long suit, but she'd smile then, and when she did that you could see what they shared. The two of them, no one else in the room.

I'd seen Pa drink out of the teapot spout, but when Ma was watching he cramped up his thick fingers into the silly little teacup handle. At table he'd work the silverware the way Ma liked, squash the peas onto the fork and line it up with the knife when he'd finished.

If we'd go to him about something he'd say,
Best see what your
Ma says.
Not that he was a weak man, Pa. Not by any manner of means. But he'd done his bit. Got us the house, the land, the money. Found us a good mother. Now he could sit back. Knew Ma would see to it his children had a clean break with the past. Leave it behind the way he had.

Pa enjoyed his money. You once gone without, he'd say, you know it's better to have than not. The best if you can get it.
The
best
meant meat every day. All the potatoes you could eat, with sweet fresh butter.

And oranges. Never seen an orange before I were twelve year old, he'd say, not to eat. It was a bit of joke between me and Mary, one of the things we did share. Every time Anne brought in a dish of oranges Pa would force his great square thumb into one and lever up a piece of peel.
Never seen an orange before I were
twelve year old,
he'd say.
Not to eat
.

Mary and me would slip each other a look. She'd suck her lips into a fishmouth and I'd have to make out I was snorting because of my tea going down the wrong way.

Ma would give us the rounds of the kitchen later. Your pa known some hard times, she'd say. You silly girls don't know the half of it.

There was Mrs Devlin in the kitchen and Anne the maid-of-all-work. A woman once a week for the washing and a native boy for the wood. Still, girls of our class, well-off but not gentry, we learned all the household things. Mrs Devlin showed us how to do the bread and keep the yeast bottle going, the basic things like that, and Ma taught us
the finer points
, how to slice the bacon thin and the way to fold the flour into a sponge cake so it stayed light. Mary liked working in the kitchen, but I got sick of Mrs Devlin forever on about Mr Devlin that died, and Ma saying oh yes, how hard life was for a poor widder. I didn't want to spend my time sweating away at the stove, everything eaten by half past twelve and not a thing to show for it.

I learned how to make a loaf and pickle a brisket of beef and all the rest of it, because that's what a girl was supposed to know. But I'd get away soon's I could. I had a place of my own, a cave in the bush up behind the house. It was a steep scramble but not far. Close enough so I could be back if Ma called, she'd never know I was gone. Far enough, it was my own world. That country was full of overhangs where the soft yellow rock was worn away underneath, but this one was big enough to stand in and full of light the colour of honey. The floor level, soft with dry sand fallen from the roof, never wet by rain, not since the world began.

I set up house there, the way a child likes to do. Had a chipped teacup and a milk-jug with no handle and a dipper, because on top of the cave was a hole, made by man or nature I didn't know, that filled with sweet water after rain. The lip of the cave was on a level with the treetops. You could sit there and watch the breeze shivering through the leaves and the river beyond, a band of colour like a muscle. When you sat in the cave the bush sounds come to you sharper. It was like a big ear, listening.

Mary never wanted to go up there. Said she couldn't see why you'd want to climb up there and get all over prickles just to sit on the hard ground. That suited me. The birds were company enough. One I called the What Bird, it had a call like a question.
Dit dit dit dit dit?
it would go, and I'd screw my mouth round to answer,
Dit dit dit dit?

I thought about flying, stood sometimes on the edge of the rock and wondered. But much as I'd of liked to, and young as I was, I had the sense to know I'd have to wait for some other way to fly.

N
ONE OF
us Thornhills had our letters, but you didn't need a book to work out how to count, at least what you had the fingers for.

One day, I'd of been five or six, I went out to Pa on the verandah. A shiny morning, the river with a brush of wind on it that sent a handful of sparkles across the water.

I got three brothers, I said. See, Pa? I know how to count!

His face always seemed bigger than other people's. Big chin, big nose, big cheeks. And his eyes, the way one was a different shape from the other, that you only saw when he looked at you straight on. Which he did that time. Those blue eyes, and his mouth a funny shape.

No, Dolly, he said. You got four brothers.

Took a gulp of his rum-and-water so I could hear it go down his gullet as if it was having to find its way round something in there.

No, Pa, look, I got three, I said.

Showed him on my fingers.

Will, Bub, Johnny, I said. See?

You got four brothers, Dolly, he said. Only Dick's gone away for a time.

How come, I said. How come he went away? Where'd he go?

His face hardened down. I knew that meant trouble, told myself
let it go!

When's he coming back, Pa? I said. When's Dick coming back?

Then he was on his feet, the glass knocked over, the bench clattering on the boards so the dust flew up and he was above me, his big face shouting down into mine. A dizzy ringing when his hand caught me across the side of the head, my ear making a high thin noise like something screaming a long way off.

That's enough, he said. Get away out of my sight, damn your eyes.

Pushed me, hard, so I stumbled through the doorway into the hall. Crept upstairs to the bedroom, Mary still dead asleep. Got in the bed, coiled myself up small as I could go, pulled the blanket over my head. In the stuffy dark I folded my fingers over one by one. Johnny, Bub, Will. One, two, three.

The rest of the day I kept out of Pa's way but after lunch I went looking for Will. He was in the old blue skiff, spokeshave in his hand and a bit of wood on his knees, making a new oar-blade.

Pa told me I got four brothers, I said. But I only got three.

Ready to show him on my fingers, but the spokeshave never paused, Will not looking up. All I could see was the top of his old cabbage-tree hat and his shoulders moving with each draw of the spokeshave, the white curls falling away around his feet.

Oh, well, he said. There was Dick. Between me and Bub. That'd be what Pa had in mind.

He dead? I said. Did he die?

Will lifted up the oar-blade, ran his finger over the edge, blew at it.

Not dead, he said. Went off.

Went off, I said. How's that, went off? Went off how?

Dick was always a funny one, Will said. Had some funny ideas. Never knew which way he'd jump.

Didn't you like him, I said.

That made him look up. His eyes like Pa's, cold blue in his sunburnt face.

Not a matter of not like, he said. Dick and me never had too much to say to each other, all there is to it. Him and Pa, they didn't get on.

How's that, I said. Not get on?

Will put down the spokeshave, laid the oar-blade aside. Stood up in the boat so it rocked on the water.

Come down in here, he said.

Lifted me into the boat, sat me on the seat at the stern, his knees nearly touching mine. It was still and hot, a thick smell of pitch coming out from the planks. Like the two of us gone into a room on our own.

Now Dolly, he said. Listen to me. I never known what went on or what didn't go on. I asked Pa one time. Keep your damned nose out of it, he told me. Belted me. Matter of fact near broke my arm.

For once I sat quiet.

Never asked again, he said. Never thought it was worth another belting. My guess is, Pa had a bust-up with Dick, sent him packing. You know the way Pa is.

Put his hand on my shoulders.

Dolly, we got a brother, he said. Lives somewhere up the Branch so I've heard. But I put him out of my mind and tell you what, Dolly, if I was you I'd do the same. Honest to God I would.