by Cameron Nunn
I’d sit under a tree, half pretending to watch the sheep, slowly eating up the words on the page like a starving man set before a feast. More ’n ever, I wanted to go back and tell Amos he were wrong about books and such. And then I grew sad. Amos may not even be alive if I ever returned and how’d I say to him he were wrong all these years. And then I’d wish to heaven I were back in London and done with this whole thing. I can understand why a person might simply wander off into the bush and not care a fig whether they lived or died. Loneliness and memory can be your closest friends and your worst enemies. It were naught but thinking of Kate what kept me going.
If reading came to me slowly, writing were another matter entirely. Paper and ink were too expensive and Kate weren’t going to risk stealing something what her father would easily notice were missing. Instead I were forced to trace letters in the dirt using a twig. Kate tried to encourage me, “When I can get you a pen and ink, you’ll find it much easier.”
I stared down at the letters I’d scrawled into the sand and doubted Kate’s words. But she reminded me I’d thought the same about reading. Part of me were pleased I’d begun to read but it were my name what I wanted to write. Not scrawled in the dirt with the rough hand of a farm labourer, but in ink on clean white paper with the hand of a gentleman. It were my name and my story what I had to write. To read someone else’s story weren’t the same as leaving your own story.
Kate promised she’d ask her father to bring her back some ink on the next trip to Sydney, but that were still weeks away. In the meantime, I’d have to content myself with sticks and charcoal.
The next day Will found an excuse to see Dot. Pa was in one of his “don’t come near me unless you want your head bitten off” moods that always followed the night terrors. Will didn’t take it personally any more, but it was always safer to keep clear.
“Haven’t seen you in a while,” Dot said as she opened the screen door.
“Gran said you might want a hand.”
“Can never have too many hands on a farm. How come you’re not with your pa today? Your gran tells me you two are now getting on like a house on fire.”
“Mostly.” Will shrugged. “Not today.”
“How’s school going?”
“Pretty good,” Will said casually. “The guys in my year are chill. We mostly just hang out and play footy and stuff.” He opened the fridge and scanned its contents.
“Well, that’s making yourself at home. If you’re after Tim Tams, I finished the lot yesterday.”
Will shrugged again. “Can I make a cup of tea?”
“Ah, it’s one of those visits is it?”
“What visits?”
“The kind where you need a cup of tea to get started.”
“I just wanted to ask some questions, instead of you doing all the asking.”
Dot eased herself into a chair. “A young man asking me questions. That’ll be a first.”
Will busied himself with the jug. “Who lived here before you did?”
“I’ve told you that. My parents and before them my grandparents.”
“And before that?” Will plonked a tea bag into an empty cup.
“You can’t really be interested in that. What is it that you’re really wanting to know about.”
“Seriously, I’m interested. I want to know what Brymedura was like when people first came here.”
“Well, I don’t know much about that. I think it belonged to the Mansfields but that might be the wrong name. I think my grandmother said they were the first settlers here but that’s a long while ago.” She paused and folded her arms, looking at the ceiling as if trying to remember some detail. “Is this for a school project or something?”
Will shifted a little awkwardly on his feet and then sat down next to her with his cup of tea. “If I tell you something, can you promise not to say anything?”
“That depends on what it is. But I can confidently promise not to say anything to your grandfather.”
Will tried to work out where to begin. “I think there was a boy who used to live here.” Dot’s brows creased but she nodded for him to continue. “Pa, he . . .” Will hadn’t planned on saying anything and now he didn’t know what would make sense. None of it made sense to him.
Dot unfolded her arms and placed one hand on Will’s wrist. “Okay, now it’s my turn to ask you to keep a secret. I’m not sure how much your gran would want me telling you, but I’m thinking that if I don’t say anything then it could get much worse. This is about your grandfather, isn’t it? He’s told you something about hearing voices, about a boy who speaks to him. A boy who used to live here a long time ago?”
Will nodded mutely. Dot’s hand was hot against him. How did Dot know about the boy?
“Will, a long time ago, the doctors realised that there was something wrong with the way your grandfather’s brain is wired.”
“You think he’s crazy.” Will pulled his hand away quickly and picked up his tea.
“No, I don’t,” her voice dropped sympathetically, “but at times his brain plays tricks on him. It confuses him and makes him cross and act in ways that other people don’t. I’m not saying he’s a bad person, it’s just sometimes things go wrong.
“Doctors don’t know why it happens; they just treat the symptoms. Your grandfather’s been through a lot. Your gran’s been through a lot too. That’s the reason I’m telling you this. It’d hurt your grandmother an awful lot if she thought that you were asking questions about the boy. Your grandfather’s been a lot better. They’ve avoided the doctors for a long time. But your grandfather’s getting old now. If he’s started hearing the voices again, then your gran will be especially worried. Don’t say anything to her about it. Don’t tell her you’ve spoken to me and don’t say anything to anyone else. If your grandfather starts talking about the boy, try and change the conversation. It’s been so good to see you out there working with him. It’s given your gran a real lift. But if you really want to help him, you’ll do what I say and keep it a secret. Can you do that?”
“But what if it’s real?” Will had to ask the question.
Dot let out a sigh. “Oh, Will, I told you. Your grandfather was diagnosed a long time ago . . .”
“But what if he’s got proof?”
Dot got up and walked over to the sink. “Do you mean the pipe?”
“You know about the pipe?”
“Everyone knows about the pipe. He’d tell anyone who’d listen in the early days.” Dot refilled the kettle. “It’s a penny pipe. It’s very old. It might even be a hundred years old as he claims, and yes, it’s possible he found it here when he was working for my father. From what I understand it’s the pipe that’s caused all these imaginings. He’s built an imaginary person around it. Apparently that’s not uncommon, to become fixated on an object.”
Perhaps Dot was right. But then Will had the same feeling before he’d even seen the pipe. Maybe he had the same thing wrong with his brain. He thought about his mum lying in bed the night she took the pills. “But what if there was other evidence?”
Dot came back to the table where Will was sitting. “You’ve got to let this go. You don’t need to think badly of your pa . . .”
“But what if I’ve had the same experience? Not voices but thoughts and memories that happened a long time ago. Maybe even before Pa came here. What if I knew I’d been here before, not me, but as someone else? What about the dam wall that I told you about, where I lost my shoe? I knew the wall was there even though I’d never been there before and it was all covered in mud and weeds and stuff.”
Dot pushed herself back into her chair and folded her arms. “If you can give me a name, then maybe we could do some investigation. Perhaps there’ll be a record somewhere at the Council Chambers in Molong.”
Will felt defeated. “I don’t know the boy’s name. When I get these memories, it’s like they’re my memories, only they’re not mine.” How could he explain it? Maybe he was going mad. Then a small
spark sprang to mind. “There was a girl who lived near the homestead with her father. Her name was Kate. Kate O’Neill. Could you look that up?”
Dot reached out her hand again. “Just promise me you won’t say anything to your gran.”
It didn’t take long to realise I were becalmed on a sea of yellow grass. Most days I’d stare at the sheep and they’d stare back. Sheep can stare at you without hardly blinking. I wondered what they were thinking. They didn’t know they were mutton on legs. They ate happily all day without knowing that eventually their throats would be slit and their carcasses boiled to tallow. Only people know they’re eventually going to die. Cain said it’s the curse that’s on mankind. We don’t know when, we only know with certainty that one day we’ll be dead and gone, like Sarah or the girl in the Thames. And so we sit around and wait for that day to come, staring at the sheep and thinking they’re the lucky ones. I done lots of thinking. It’s the loneliness what plays games with your mind.
The snows held off right through the winter but it were still a cold what made your bones ache. Cain said the lack of snow were a good omen for the spring. Each morning the frost would spread its icy lacework across the grass, turning the paddock all the way to the pond sparkling silver.
Just as Cain instructed me, I mixed up the mud and dung and plastered the walls of the hut. At first, the whole hut smelled of wet shit. I wondered if Cain were having a lend of me, but when it dried and became hard the smell disappeared. Inside were dark and hot during the day but it were sturdy and kept the wind out at night. I’d even built a stone chimney from the rocks and mortar what were left over from the wall. And apart from one small accident where I set fire to the bark roof, the fire had kept me warm during the cold winter.
When the lambs came I were surprised how protective I’d become. When I found the first one dead, picked at by the crows, I felt anger bubble up inside so bad I couldn’t describe it. Before the lambing season were over there were many more. Some lambs are born weak and broken, but others looked like they’d just fallen to sleep. The worst were those whose mothers had died, or those what turned their young away and wouldn’t let them suckle. The lambs wandered bleating but no other ewe would feed them. You could see which ones they were. Their heads would hang lower and they’d stand shivering miserably. There were naught I could do but watch. Night would come and take them. If not the first night, then certain by the second. Life could be such a bastard, and here on the edge of the world it were the biggest bastard of the lot.
It barely rained the whole year I were at Brymedura. Only once when we were ready to shear did the heavens open, but it were over in a short time and the ground were so hard and thirsty that in a few days it were as if it’d never rained. Mr O’Neill cursed because the sheep had to be turned out of the pens and the shearing put on hold again until the fleeces were dry. The water held in the small dam we’d built but the grass became brittle. Around where the creek ran, the sheep had chewed the grass down to the roots, leaving the ground cracked and bare. Cain assured me that good rains would come in their own time and then I’d have even more to worry about.
The vegetable garden had flourished the way Cain said it would. I turned the soil with the oldest dung I could find. Every morning, I’d carry water from the creek and soak the plants. I learned from Cain which plants needed to be staked and which needed room to run. The sheep and kangaroos had taken a particular liking to the peas and on more ’n one occasion I discovered that they’d managed to push over the fence to get at the green shoots. But the worst were the possums that’d come at night and chew the buds off everything they could find. If it weren’t for Nelson’s watch, the possums would’ve taken every bit. But not even the possums, despite their regular visits, could get all the vegetables, and before long pumpkins, peas and potatoes were in abundance.
My hands were now the hardened hands of a farm worker. Mr O’Neill had offered to pay me two shillings for every extra acre of land what I cleared. Cain said Mr O’Neill were a fair man and that were true, at least when it came to clearing land. If there were hard work to be done Mr O’Neill were in the middle of it. Cain claimed it were on account that he remembered what it were like to wear the broad arrow. He knew a man needed dignity and a bit of extra baccy to work hard. But every man feels the loneliness and emptiness of the bush and it eats away at his heart like a canker and leaves naught but a lump as hard and as cold as a stone, so that he feels naught, and his right and his wrong no longer makes sense. I seen it many times before in London. I heard of a woman what strangled her own babe to sell its rags for a tot of gin. I never seen Mr O’Neill smile even once, and I’d never heard him speak a soft word neither, even to Kate. Mr O’Neill were a fair man but he were also a hard man who had long ago lost the soul to feel as kind men do. He weren’t wicked like Jack, but he’d lost himself.
Cain told me in Ireland Mr O’Neill had been a wheelwright and carpenter. I wondered if he’d been happy then. He’d come to New South Wales as a convict, the same as near every other Irishman in the colony. He had burned a landlord’s house to the ground after the man had turned twenty of his friends off the land they’d been farming for years. According to Cain, the landlord cared naught if they should freeze to death. All he cared about were the sheep he wanted to put on the land.
“Every man has a right to the land where God placed him.” Cain were never short for a sermon when it came to the English and English landlords. Mr O’Neill were charged with arson and sentenced to seven years. Cain and Mr O’Neill were both assigned to Mr Harrison on the Hawkesbury, near Richmond. When he were given his ticket of leave, he’d taken up a land grant on the edge of the colony. But the ground were poor and before long he were back working for Mr Harrison as his overseer. When Mr Harrison took up a squatter’s run on the edge of the counties, he placed Mr O’Neill in charge. Mr O’Neill had buried a wife and a son within the first year.
It must break a man’s spirit to get his freedom, only to have to sell himself back to the one who’d held his chains. I were determined that I’d never serve a master when I got my freedom. I’d have my own land, and my own sheep and my own house and my own servants. As Amos would say, we can make many a promise to ourselves but Luck and Fate won’t be commanded by men.
I knew how to swing an axe and to cut undergrowth with a brush hook. I knew the sheep and could read their moods. Even the run what had once seemed broad and mysterious had become as familiar as any lane in London. I knew where to watch for the kangaroos that’d come down to the water in the afternoon. I knew the giant lizards what wandered boldly around the camp searching for any meat that weren’t in the meat safe, hanging from the tree. I knew about the black snakes what fled as soon as you approached and the brown snakes that’d stay their ground ready to spring. I knew the sounds of possums as they fought in the trees and many of the birds what called out to one another in the branches around the clearing. It were the sounds I couldn’t hear I feared the most.
I don’t remember when I first started thinking again about the black people. I mean, I’d thought about them lots in the early days. Jack’s words had stuck in my mind, no matter how hard I tried to shake them. But Jack were full of piss and wind and I tried to tell myself that you can’t spend your life jumping at shadows. The night were never quiet, but a person can only stay awake for so long and I were determined Jack weren’t going to get at me.
But one night I remember clearer than most. It were a winter’s night and the air were fit to snap. It weren’t like London cold that were wet and a good excuse to stay by a gin-house fire. This were a lonely cold what ached your fingers. Nelson started up his barking. I’d taken to keeping him inside the hut during the cold, but this night he were ready to break through the door. Normally, that meant the possums were about. They’d drop onto the roof with their hobnail boots and scream as though the Devil had got them by the tail. But there were no sign of possums on this night. So I let Nelson out and followed him into the darkness.
It were quieter than a graveyard. Even the sheep were still. It were only Nelson what were giving whatever he’d heard an earful.
“Shut up, you mongrel,” I shouted.
And then that thought crept into my head, there were someone watching me. Jack’s words come back again, “You never see them until the spear’s already in your guts.” It were like Jack were in my head. I couldn’t see a bloody thing in the dark but I got the idea in my head and I backed into that hut faster than I could curse. I pushed the door shut and tied it with the piece of leather what were used as a latch.
Nelson were still barking and then he stopped and it were silent. I could hear a snuffling at the door. I knew it were Nelson wanting to come in but I weren’t going to open the door and get a spear through me. I knew it were a coward thing to leave my dog outside and I wanted to get up and let him in but my legs wouldn’t let me. I took up a pair of shears and a brush hook in each hand, but I weren’t sure they’d be much good against a spear. The tallow candle were burning low and it were the last one I’d got. Nelson still wanted to come in.
The candle flickered and guttered and went out. I were sitting in the dark near pissing myself, staring at the faint shadows stirred up by the fire. Eventually, in spite of the belief that I were going to end up eaten by savages, I fell asleep. I dreamed it were Jack and Cain and the other men come to murder me.
When I woke I were still alive, much to my surprise. Nelson began the day by ignoring me. He hadn’t forgotten about last night either. The sheep were penned where I’d left them and there weren’t the slightest trace of anyone having been there during the night. I don’t know what I expected to see but there were nothing. I still weren’t convinced that I weren’t being watched. That’s what being alone does to you. It eats away at your sense, until you are jumping at shadows and whispers.