by Barbara Wood
"My God," Hugh said, looking again at Adam, who appeared to be mesmerized by the wool-washing machine.
"He must have been crying for days," Joanna said. "And I think that that is somehow the cause for his speech problems now."
"And being frightened of Johnson," Hugh said. "Of course—police in uniforms no doubt took him away from his mother." Hugh went to the wagon and said, "I hear you had a scare this morning, Adam. Well, don't you worry, no one's going to take you away. This is your home from now on. We're mates, aren't we?"
Adam looked at him.
"Come on, come see how we wash the sheep." Hugh held out his hand and, after a moment's hesitation, Adam took it.
They walked to the water's edge, and as the boy watched in wonder at the workings of the machinery, Joanna said to Hugh, "There was something for you in the mail also, Mr. Westbrook—a parcel from the Cameron Town Book Emporium."
"Oh yes," he said, keeping his eye on the sheep going across the river. "Well, you can open that one, Miss Drury. It's really for you."
"For me!"
When Hugh said nothing further, Joanna thought of a book she had found in the cabin—a history of the Australian colonies from 1788 to 1860. In it was a map of the continent of Australia, showing a massive island at the bottom of the world, with towns and settlements scattered along its coastlines. But at the center of the map lay a great blank called the Never Never. This was the silent, mysterious heart of Australia, an unexplored center that had no rivers mapped out, no mountains marked, no landmarks identified; it was just a vast, unknown land that, according to the book, no white man had ever seen. What was there? Joanna had wondered when she had looked at it. What strange world or undiscovered races and cities existed there, at this moment, unknown to those who lived on Australia's coasts?
And recalling it now, she found herself suddenly thinking of the secret heart of Hugh Westbrook. He seemed to Joanna to be like that formidable Never Never—unexplored, enigmatic, unpredictable.
"This is a new process for washing wool," Hugh said after a moment, as if suddenly self-conscious. "We used to send the fleeces just as they were, right off the sheep's back, to the textile mills in England, and they did the washing. But we discovered that we get more money for our wool if we wash it ourselves before we ship it."
"Mr. Lovell said you aren't happy with this year's wool clip, Mr. Westbrook."
"I'm afraid lice got into my best wool producers. As you can see, the wool is brittle, the fibers break up in the water. Those fleeces will be useless when we shear. Five thousand useless fleeces, and a year's profit, literally down the drain."
Joanna had learned in the short time she had been here that a grazier's whole life—his money, his reputation—lay in his wool. Each December, right after shearing, a grazier did not rest until the massive bales were purchased by the Melbourne wool brokers and shipped off to the Lancashire mills, making him one year richer. But, as Joanna saw the fleece fall apart in the water, she realized that Hugh had reason for being discouraged.
Then she saw something that caught her attention—a yellowish foam collecting on the banks. Going to the water's edge, she knelt and scooped the waxy residue into her hands. "Mr. Westbrook," she said, "what is this?"
"It's what is washed out of the wool—grease, yolk, dirt—"
"And lanolin?"
"Yes, lanolin."
"The medical men of India prize lanolin very highly," she said, as she studied the substance on her fingertips. "They say it is absorbed by the skin faster than creams or oils, thereby making it an ideal vehicle for medicines that cannot be taken by mouth. My mother used lanolin in many of her remedies. But unfortunately it was very expensive; we had to import it from England. And here it is, just lying on the river bank! May I collect some?"
"Take all you want. I have no use for it." He picked up a billycan. "Here. You can use this."
"Would you like to collect it for me, Adam?"
The boy reached eagerly for the can.
"Let me show you how. Just skim the surface—yes, slowly, like that."
As Joanna watched Adam fill the can, she laughed and said, "When I think of how carefully my mother measured out her lanolin! Do you know, Mr. Westbrook, that we sometimes paid as much as a pound for a jar of lanolin one fourth the size of this can? And here it is, free for the taking."
"There!" Adam said, holding up the filled can.
"Once I get the impurities out," Joanna said, "and separate the lanolin from the wax, I shall have a fortune's worth!" She looked down at the waxy foam that was breaking away from the river bank and being carried off downstream. "It seems such a shame to let the river carry it away."
"This is the first time I've used this machinery," Hugh said. "Up until now, I've always sent raw fleeces to England. I hadn't thought of doing anything with the residue."
Joanna stared at the river for another moment, then she said, "Did you know, Mr. Westbrook, that Mr. Thompson, the chemist in Cameron Town, charges ten shillings for an ounce of lanolin?"
But Hugh was already deep in thought, watching the waxy foam break away from the river's edge and swirl downstream around the bend.
The afternoon was hot and still, and while Adam napped in the cabin, Joanna sat on the veranda, going through the mail Constable Johnson had brought, while Bill Lovell constructed a small cage for the orphaned koala.
The first of the letters Joanna opened was from a government office in the Queensland colony, but it contained none of the expected maps or information, just a brief letter saying, "Please remit sixpence for the topographical survey, and twopence to look up the records of the Makepeaces."
The second letter, from Cambridge University, however, was more promising. Patrick Lathrop, the letter said, had attended Christ's College from 1826 to 1830. "The last the university heard from him," the letter added, "was in 1851, when Mr. Lathrop sailed for California. The address we had for him at that time was the Regent Hotel, in San Francisco."
Joanna frowned. That was twenty years ago. But still, it was something to go on, because if he was indeed a close friend of her grandfather's then he might know where in Australia John Makepeace had gone to serve as a missionary.
The last item was the parcel from the Cameron Town Book Emporium, which was addressed to Hugh Westbrook and which he had told her to open. When she tore away the brown paper and string, she found a book titled Codes, Ciphers, and Enigmas. She stared in wonder as she flipped through pages filled with codes and alphabets, and realized that Hugh must have ordered it for her, to help her decipher her grandfather's notes. "We made a bargain," he had said that first night at Emu Creek. And Joanna knew then that the book was going to be very special to her.
"Listen," said Bill Lovell suddenly. "Someone is singing."
Joanna looked up, and she heard a girl's voice, a melody ...
Then she saw Sarah standing across the yard in the shadow of the shearing shed. The shed was empty and silent, as were the pens and the yard; shearing was done, the gang had moved on, and the heat of the day pressed down upon a deserted, almost lifeless homestead.
Sarah was standing near the same spot Joanna had seen her in that morning, but now she was singing a high-noted melody, repeating it over and over, in words Joanna could not understand. And as she sang, she kept her eyes on Joanna.
"Bill," Joanna said, suddenly uneasy, "how did Sarah come to be here at Merinda?"
"We took her in because the director of the Aboriginal Mission, Reverend Simms, asked us to take her. He said she was in danger of losing her soul."
"What do you mean?"
"Well," he said, looking across the dusty yard at the girl, "apparently they caught some of the old women performing an initiation on her. Simms intervened and got her out of there. One of the purposes of the mission is to train the young Aborigines to white ways, to keep them from learning their tribal customs."
"What sort of initiation?"
"I don't know, really. It's all very secreti
ve, taboo. It has to do with teaching the young ones the laws of the clan, the ways of the Ancestors, the song-lines, the mythology of their race. When an Aboriginal youngster is initiated into the clan, he or she is considered an Aborigine for life, and the missionaries don't like that, because then the Aborigines are difficult to control. If, however, the young ones are deprived of the initiation, then they aren't accepted by the clan and they turn to the white culture for help, for identity."
"How cruel," Joanna said.
"The missionaries mean well, Miss Drury. I believe they are acting on good intentions, believing they are making a better life for the Aborigines. But unfortunately, some missionaries themselves also fear the Aborigines. They believe the natives have a dark, evil side to them that has to be kept suppressed."
Joanna watched the girl. Sarah had long, slender limbs and skin that glowed in the sun. Her hair, fluid and silky, made Joanna think of a waterfall. The melody she sang was quite lovely, with a haunting refrain.
"And are the Aborigines happy at the mission?" Joanna asked Bill, thinking of her grandparents.
"I couldn't say," he said. "With many natives it's hard to tell what they're thinking. In some ways, the white man has brought improvements to the Aborigines' lives, but in others, there have been great losses. When the young ones are raised outside of the tribes, they lose their cultural identity. They are no longer accepted by their elders, but then they aren't accepted by white society either."
The old Aborigine, Ezekiel, came to Joanna's mind then, and she wondered what he thought of Sarah, half-Aboriginal, half-initiated, working on a white man's sheep station. Ezekiel also sometimes worked for Hugh, Joanna knew. But what did he really think of white men, and the new race that had invaded his land?
"What is she singing?" Joanna said.
"I would guess, Miss Drury, that she's telling a story. Most Aboriginal songs tell a story. It's their equivalent of books. I recognize a few words." He paused and listened. "She's talking about sheep—sheep losing their fleeces."
Joanna was spellbound as she listened to the song fill the still afternoon air.
"Bill," she said, unable to take her eyes away from Sarah, "I've been finding unexplainable objects around the cabin." When she described them, he said, "They sound like Aboriginal magic. And judging by the way the girl is singing, I'd reckon she's the one who put them here."
"But what do they mean? What sort of magic?"
"I don't know. Something Sarah learned from the elders at the mission, I suppose. Sarah isn't a full-blood, she wasn't raised with a clan. We were told that her mother was a full-blood, but her father was white. However, she obviously learned something from the old ones at the mission before Reverend Simms was able to get her away from their influence."
"What sort of things were they teaching her, do you suppose?"
"Well, when I was a boy in the outback—which is more years ago that I care to think about—the Aborigines were still living the same way they had when the first white men came here, a hundred years ago. And I remember that they still held corroborees—dances—when they sang their magic songs. There were songlines then, and a belief in the Dreamtime, and they didn't have any concepts of stealing or property ownership. No one had personal possessions, and everyone was part of the land. Everything was shared. Whenever a family had a stroke of luck, such as killing a large kangaroo, everyone ate well. And nature was allowed to regenerate. They never drank a waterhole dry, or hunted an area until there was no wildlife left, and when they did kill an animal, they asked its forgiveness first. And," he added, "they practiced a very powerful form of magic. I imagine that was what they were teaching Sarah."
Joanna thought of her mother being here as a child, and the Aborigines she might have lived with. And the poison—the magic—that might have come from them, and destroyed her.
And Joanna felt the familiar sense of foreboding come over her again.
"The song that she's singing, Bill, is it good magic or—bad?"
"What were those things again that you said you'd found? Well, as I recall, cockatoo feathers, especially the pink or yellow ones, were generally used as protective magic."
"Protective magic! What do you mean?"
He shrugged. "It's my guess the girl's trying to protect something from something."
Joanna stared at Sarah for another moment, and then she remembered a passage in her mother's diary. "I have had a dream about the past again," Lady Emily had written. "At least, I think it might be the past. I am a small child, and I am with a dark-skinned woman—the same woman who appears in my other dreams, the one I think might have been called Reena. We are hiding behind some rocks—we are afraid. I see her brown hands doing something with feathers, and she is singing."
Joanna went cold, despite the warmth of the day.
"Bill," she said, "are you telling me that Sarah thinks we're in need of some kind of protection here?"
He looked at the eucalyptus twig in his hand, which he had been trying to coax the koala to eat. He didn't say anything. He didn't want to upset her by telling her old Ezekiel had for some reason taken a dislike to her and was telling Hugh that her presence here was bad for Merinda. Hugh had ignored the old man, and so Ezekiel was starting to tell the Aboriginal station hands that there was bad luck here. Bill didn't know exactly what it was Ezekiel had against Miss Drury, but he knew that the old man had influence over the highly superstitious stock hands—enough to make them so nervous that they might leave. And Hugh couldn't afford to lose them right now. They were among his best workers, and he needed them.
Sarah stopped singing then, and, to Joanna's surprise, walked across the yard and stood at the bottom of the veranda steps. Adam appeared suddenly in the cabin doorway and, when he saw her, he ran down to her. He tried to speak, saying, "Urn." She gave him a curious look, then she reached out and placed her hand on his head. "Wandjitnup," she said.
Joanna quickly stood. "What are you doing?"
Bill said, "Don't worry, Miss Drury. Sarah won't hurt the boy. That's their way of acknowledging a child with affection—placing a hand on his head."
Joanna was further startled when Sarah knelt down and, looking at Adam, said, "You don't speak good. Like Sarah. Maybe we teach each other good whitefella English, okay?"
Then she looked up at Joanna and smiled.
SEVEN
F
RANK DOWNS HAS RECENTLY OBTAINED A MAP, MISS DRURY, that we can look at," Hugh said to Joanna as he guided the wagon onto the main road. "He tells me it takes up nearly an entire wall, and it is the most comprehensive map of Australia that he has ever seen. Karra Karra is bound to be on it."
Joanna had not expected to be invited to the party Pauline Downs was giving for Adam; she had been surprised when Hugh asked her to go. "Adam will want you there," he had said, "and it will give you an opportunity to talk to Frank, meet other people who might be of help. But I think that if anyone is likely to help you in your search, it's Frank."
And so they rode through the hot November sun, past newly shorn flocks of sheep grazing in fields that were starting to scorch. Adam rode in silence, sitting between Hugh and Joanna in the wagon. He was wearing brand-new clothes, and his hair had been slicked down. It had been explained to him where they were going and why, but Adam had not understood. What was a party, and why was it being given to him? Hugh was also wearing his best clothes: a handsome dark-brown suede jacket over a white shirt with no tie, dark brown pants and boots polished to a sherry-colored shine; the familiar bush hat on his head. And Joanna was wearing a yellow satin dress with a matching yellow hat.
They had left Sarah at home; the question of bringing her had not even come up, though Sarah was already proving to be a good companion for Adam. A bed had been fixed up for her on the veranda, and Joanna had altered two of her own dresses to fit the girl. Sarah had begun to help take care of the cabin and to collect wild herbs and roots for Joanna, but mostly Joanna was training Sarah to look after Adam. She was
patient with him, taking him into the woods and telling him stories about the animals that lived there—myths such as "How the Koala Lost His Tail," and "Why the Tortoise Has a Shell." She encouraged him to talk, to take his time and try to repeat words after her; although his progress was slow, he was starting to improve.
Joanna often caught the girl staring at her, and although Sarah always smiled and talked and seemed interested in Joanna's knowledge of healing, she remained an enigma. Joanna had hoped to learn about sacred Aboriginal things from Sarah; she had asked her about the singing, and the objects she had found at the cabin door—had even asked her what she was protecting Joanna from—but so far Sarah either did not understand or pretended not to understand Joanna's questions. But there was a dignity about her, and she seemed to have a special knowledge of natural things, such as knowing that it was going to rain even when the sky was cloudless.
"Pinky!" Adam cried suddenly, pointing.
Coming toward them down the road was Mr. Shapiro's gaily painted wagon, swaying and creaking, with pots and pans clanging on the sides. Pinky, the old horse, came to a halt alongside Westbrook's wagon before Mr. Shapiro reined her in.
"Good day to you, sir," the old peddler called, tipping his battered hat. "What a lucky coincidence to run into you like this. I was just on my way to Merinda. Here you go, Miss Drury," he said as he reached inside his coat. "I've brought you your mail."
"Thank you, Mr. Shapiro," Joanna said. Since there was no postal service in the Western District, bringing mail to one's neighbors was a courtesy practiced by everyone. Joanna read the address on the envelope. It was from the Church of England Mission headquarters, in Sydney—a response to her inquiry about her grandparents.