watch the Aboriginals fight. The fights are supposed to be banned but who can resist the spectacle of one black man on another, tearing each other to pieces. Itâs cheaper than the circus.
But neither can I stay in, day after day, because Jacky will not speak with me. He has a dark and brooding stare that he keeps corked up in the corner of the room near the hearth where my aunt, Charlotte Pugh, prepares our dinner. I would help her but she will not let me. As if I am an interfering guest. The heat is rising outside, soon it might rise to ninety-five in the shade, but still he sits near the flames, and I am afraid of him. He has an old water-stained book in his hands that he turns over and over. It was his fatherâs book and his fatherâs before that. This book is not the Bible, it is worse than that. I need to get away from Jacky and the book, and whatever it is telling him he must do, for that is something I do not know, what lies between its covers.
Besides, it will be Christmas soon and I have decided that John and Louisa will have presents this year, even though we have fallen on hard times. They have spent a winter in the bush among the Maoris, and now that is all behind us, and we are here in Sydney, safe and sound, and I am a mother who does the best she can. I would like to remind my husband of that.
In the room next door, Louisa begins to cry again, the forlorn wail of a child who cannot be comforted. My mother will soon be here, I tell Charlotte. She is coming and she will care for Louisa. Charlotte looks at me with a dislike that makes me want to weep. Charlotte was always well disposed towards me; she took me in when my mother went off with Deaves the sawyer, and my grandmother had died. It was Charlotte who rescued me, gave me a roof over my head. Without her, I might never have met up with Jacky again, never gone off to New Zealand, never been shipwrecked.
Never? I say that as if I wouldnât have missed the experience.Perhaps that is so. But what does it matter, when everyone has their own salt to put on the meat.
I have dressed modestly today in a dress of grey linen. I wear no jewellery. My bonnet is without feathers and the light scarf I wrap around my neck is plain wool, even though the day is warm. For that is where their eyes slide, those of the people who stare at me, straight to the base of my throat, to see the wounds of which I have complained, and which the newspaper has taken up with such enthusiasm, the spot where they tried to open my vein and drink my blood.
It was only a little cut, I might say, all healed over, and no teeth marks at all. Their thirst went unquenched. Oh, so much that I might say. Even if I did, they would want to see.
I wonât be long, I tell Charlotte. Already I hear my motherâs approaching footsteps, heralded by the chattering of young John, who has become a handful since he lived among the Maoris. They told him he would be a chief and let him run wild, and now he wonât do anything I tell him. I donât want to see my mother, I have little to thank her for, but sheâs about all I have at the moment.
Goodbye, Jacky, I say. Iâm going no further than George Street, Iâll look up the old shop and see what treats I can find for the little ones, Iâm sure theyâll let me have a little favour or two up there, you know how kind they were.
He doesnât speak a word. I take the back door so I wonât have to walk past him, out through the gate that leads across the ditch, where sewers drain. In town they have men who come with their buckets when the lights are out and nobody can see.
So I make my escape, heading towards George Street where I hope to find my employers of some years back, when I was still a girl, not taken, though I was promised. Their names are Mister Spyer and Mister Cohen, two Jewish gentlemen dealers who came from England free men, not convicts like my grandparents, and my father and my stepfather,
But neither can I stay in, day after day, because Jacky will not speak with me. He has a dark and brooding stare that he keeps corked up in the corner of the room near the hearth where my aunt, Charlotte Pugh, prepares our dinner. I would help her but she will not let me. As if I am an interfering guest. The heat is rising outside, soon it might rise to ninety-five in the shade, but still he sits near the flames, and I am afraid of him. He has an old water-stained book in his hands that he turns over and over. It was his fatherâs book and his fatherâs before that. This book is not the Bible, it is worse than that. I need to get away from Jacky and the book, and whatever it is telling him he must do, for that is something I do not know, what lies between its covers.
Besides, it will be Christmas soon and I have decided that John and Louisa will have presents this year, even though we have fallen on hard times. They have spent a winter in the bush among the Maoris, and now that is all behind us, and we are here in Sydney, safe and sound, and I am a mother who does the best she can. I would like to remind my husband of that.
In the room next door, Louisa begins to cry again, the forlorn wail of a child who cannot be comforted. My mother will soon be here, I tell Charlotte. She is coming and she will care for Louisa. Charlotte looks at me with a dislike that makes me want to weep. Charlotte was always well disposed towards me; she took me in when my mother went off with Deaves the sawyer, and my grandmother had died. It was Charlotte who rescued me, gave me a roof over my head. Without her, I might never have met up with Jacky again, never gone off to New Zealand, never been shipwrecked.
Never? I say that as if I wouldnât have missed the experience.Perhaps that is so. But what does it matter, when everyone has their own salt to put on the meat.
I have dressed modestly today in a dress of grey linen. I wear no jewellery. My bonnet is without feathers and the light scarf I wrap around my neck is plain wool, even though the day is warm. For that is where their eyes slide, those of the people who stare at me, straight to the base of my throat, to see the wounds of which I have complained, and which the newspaper has taken up with such enthusiasm, the spot where they tried to open my vein and drink my blood.
It was only a little cut, I might say, all healed over, and no teeth marks at all. Their thirst went unquenched. Oh, so much that I might say. Even if I did, they would want to see.
I wonât be long, I tell Charlotte. Already I hear my motherâs approaching footsteps, heralded by the chattering of young John, who has become a handful since he lived among the Maoris. They told him he would be a chief and let him run wild, and now he wonât do anything I tell him. I donât want to see my mother, I have little to thank her for, but sheâs about all I have at the moment.
Goodbye, Jacky, I say. Iâm going no further than George Street, Iâll look up the old shop and see what treats I can find for the little ones, Iâm sure theyâll let me have a little favour or two up there, you know how kind they were.
He doesnât speak a word. I take the back door so I wonât have to walk past him, out through the gate that leads across the ditch, where sewers drain. In town they have men who come with their buckets when the lights are out and nobody can see.
So I make my escape, heading towards George Street where I hope to find my employers of some years back, when I was still a girl, not taken, though I was promised. Their names are Mister Spyer and Mister Cohen, two Jewish gentlemen dealers who came from England free men, not convicts like my grandparents, and my father and my stepfather,
Similar Books
