Benevolence

by Julie Janson

  ‘Mary, you dirty, dirty girl! I will not stand by and see you show such lack of respect for our guest.’ He takes her by the arm, wrenching it as he grabs his whip from his belt. He holds the weapon above her and she looks at him boldly as the whip crashes down. She does not cry out.

  ‘No, no hitting, I wasn’t spitting. I was cleaning the bottle.’ Mary looks down at the Reverend’s boots. Full of hate. She will piss in the milk churn next.

  Masters has a rage upon him. He wants to punish her for being part of the surviving race. For having ears and eyes. He wants to punish his Cornish wife for leaving him and the clergy who sent him far from the green shores of Home.

  He grabs her arm again but the captain takes his hand and stretches it backwards until Masters calls out in pain. Mary falls from his grasp. Next time she will shit in his lamb stew.

  ‘I am sorry, so sorry. I don’t know what comes over me. I lack control. A consequence of dark humours that should be bled. A sickness. Mary, I’m sorry, girl,’ says Masters.

  ‘Enough, Reverend, just leave her to clean up after us. Then she can play her violin for you another time. Go on, Mary, run away. That is what you are good at.’ The captain pulls Masters’ hand from the whip and throws it into a corner.

  He can beat her all he wants, but she will not bow down for him. He is not a man of God, for he has no compassion.

  Captain Woodrow tousles her hair and grabs her chin.

  ‘Oh, I think we can make you do anything we wish. Can’t we, Reverend? You will be useful one day. Go on, out you go.’ He slaps her backside and pushes her towards the door.

  She feels anger coming but beats it down. Not now, not at this moment, she will wait for a better one. As she walks out of the room, she knocks another wine bottle over. The precious English claret flows like blood and the cook flogs her again with a wooden spoon for being careless.

  …

  The next day, Mary hears that Jerungi and his band have stolen from an outlying farm and have taken muzzle loaders and lead shot, and wheat. She wonders how the Governor will make his peace with them now. And the kitchen is alive with rumours of her helping the prisoner escape. Mary is now also the enemy. She must run away or face imprisonment.

  Before she leaves, Mary sneaks in Masters’ bed chamber. There she sees Mercy sound asleep with Masters’ leg pushing her against the sheets. Empty wine bottles lie about the room. Mary quietly finds the Reverend’s medicine cabinet and takes his Epsom salts and stool softener and adds them to his wineglass by his bed. That should fix him. She imagines him hurtling to the thunderbox with his buttocks squeezed together.

  In the early light of morning, Mary confides to Mercy that she must leave her, and there are tears. Mercy clings to Mary and sobs. They fetch Eleanor from the servants’ quarters and the child is delirious with joy to have her mother take her on a journey. Mary dresses her daughter and tiptoes into the night carrying a bundle of clothes and her violin. Eleanor skips beside her with the pleasure of being out in the night, to watch the stars and wonder at their new adventure. She is like her mother – she is full of amazement for new places. They look back and see Mercy waving from the gate.

  Mary stands by the road with her child and bundles and looks both ways. Which direction? She thinks about heading to Freeman’s Reach, where her true country calls, but there are stories about bountiful employment in the wineries at Lower Portland on Deerubbin, the Hawkesbury River. What taunts her is the worry of not knowing where she will sleep along the road or when the next meal will come. Eleanor chatters and sings. She is not afraid.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  1834: SACKVILLE

  The quiet, green Deerubbin near Portland Head is now a wide creek and Mary and Eleanor are escorted by a ferry-man. A hand steadies them as they cross the mudflat to the tin shacks where fifty Aboriginal workers are employed to pick grapes. The workers camp by the river and play music at night. The sounds of violin, concertina squeeze box and a gumleaf band fill the air. Despite the wine that is pressed, this is a place where Christianity rules and hymns are played. The workers are sober people.

  Mary takes a job as a grape picker and a big Italian foremen shows her how to pick them and load them into baskets for crushing, and how to tread them into wine. The man loves her violin playing and requires a nightly recital down by the river at sunset.

  The men play cricket on the flat in the afternoon and the best players are wanted by the town teams. Mary plays violin with the wife of the owner, Signor Florentino, and life is at its best. She meets some of her long-lost Darug family and feels a kind of peace at last.

  The land nearby is rough and stone-ridden, but it belongs to two Darug men. They hold deeds to prove ownership. Little huts dot the steep incline and there she makes their home, where no-one can run them off – at least for a few months. They grow corn and have a government boat for fishing and receive rations for picking grapes. As usual they get flour, sugar, fat and tea from the shed at the back of the estate house. Some families collect rations from the local farms in return for working the corn fields and Mary learns to trade her fresh-caught fish for vegetables and meat.

  Months pass and when the grape harvest is over, the time of plenty is over. There is no more work and Mary is told by the vineyard foreman to move on. She pleads for herself and her child, but nothing can be done. She feels they will be a burden to the good Darug families who can now barely feed their own children. The women watch her walk down the road. She sings out to the currawongs to guide her.

  …

  Mary and Eleanor sleep alongside the dusty road as they head towards the town of Prospect. She has been told that here the estates are prosperous. As they arrive she sees the native workers in fields of wheat and corn, dressed in white cloth trousers and shirts, while a foreman stands guard with a cat-o’-nine-tails. She passes with her head low and keeps Eleanor close. He mustn’t see them.

  The magpies sing and she follows the insects as they fly in the air; she is like one of those flying crickets. A native man sees her and secretly wades through the field with a hessian bag of fresh corn. He is sad and beaten. He hands the corn to her without a word and Aboriginal women sing to her that she must keep moving because this work breaks hearts. They are slaves – indentured without freedom or wages.

  Her eyes reach out to the women; she uses signs to say ‘run away’ but they reply that they are too frightened of the lash. The overseer spots them in the long grass. She crawls and the aching pain in her heart causes her to hide with Eleanor behind sheafs of wheat. The overseer walks towards them. He is gaining ground and the Aboriginal men give piercing warning whistles and she heaves her daughter onto her shoulders and rushes to the road, stumbling, breathing hard with sweat pouring from her body.

  Days later, she is still walking. She does not know what she is looking for but she needs to find shelter for herself and her child. Eleanor is crying with hunger. Too much raw corn has given both of them stomach aches. The child clings to Mary’s back and the heat presses on their bare heads.

  A small but tidy pisé house is before them. Mary looks in the window, holding Eleanor, and sees a white woman carving roast beef brisket with yellow dripping fat. They both drool. The settler woman’s eyes flash into hers and she screams as Mary ducks down into the garden bed and trips on a rake.

  ‘Look husband, there is a wild native at the window! We will be murdered in our beds! Get the gun!’ shouts the woman.

  Mary is too exhausted to be afraid. She falls to the ground. The farmer’s boots are at her head, nudging her. With all her strength she manages to cover her child with her body. He is shouting at them. He is afraid. His memories of black incursions on his farm are fresh.

  ‘Get up, you black mongrel. You come around here stealing! I’ll take a stockwhip to you,’ he screams at them.

  ‘No, sir, we’re hungry. We want work,’ pleads Mary.

  ‘Get! And take your piccaninny with you,’ he says.

  ‘Let us stay. I
read and write, I can play the violin,’ she says.

  He stares at Mary and before he can react she picks up her violin and starts to play ‘The Londonderry Air’. Little Eleanor dances in front of them like a spirit, her body bouncing. They are the minstrels, wondering outcasts in their own land.

  The farmer stops in his tracks as the full meaning of this accomplishment penetrates. His wife drops her saucepan, clutches her bosom and stares in wonder at this freakish person before her. Her visions of screaming Blacks and axes and heads cut off disappear and scenes of the old country take over.

  Averting her eyes to concentrate on the music, Mary plays with passion and the music of an Irish jig pours out into the landscape. His eyes fill with tears when she plays ‘Star of Munster’ – he is Irish. The man drops his gun to his side. Mary is ‘taming the wild beast’ as Mrs Shelley used to say: Androcles and the Lion as she takes out the thorns from their paws.

  Mary finishes and puts down her violin. The woman hugs her thin body. She has fallen in love.

  ‘Neamh thuas!’ the man bows to them.

  He takes off his coat and places it over Mary’s trembling shoulders – now he can see her hunger and her desperation.

  ‘Ay cailin, you play like a professional musician,’ says the farmer.

  ‘I can work for you, too,’ says Mary quickly.

  ‘We will give you food. There’s many a blackfella we have fed,’ says the farmer.

  Inside the house, they are given warm milk in a pannikin. Mary looks over their strange slab structure. It is full of goong ghosts.

  ‘We need a place to stay,’ says Mary.

  ‘I can’t offer a place for you to stay. My wife, Mrs Byrne, would not want that,’ says the farmer.

  His wife looks hard at them and says, ‘They can stay. I need a servant. She can work for her keep.’

  Mary smiles her brightest, willing smile.

  But now Mary becomes more aware of the overwhelming problem of the goong. Ghosts creep around this place. Maybe it was a place of deaths or a burial ground. Mary can hear a howl from some unseen forces. Granny Wiring taught her to recognise these. She argues with herself, thinking that this house is not a good place for her child. Little Eleanor is pulling on her arm with her hair prickled around her face; she is also looking at something in a dark window. Mary and Eleanor get up to leave but the farmer’s wife beseeches her to stay. They are hungry and dirty and need shelter, but this place is invaded by bad things and her intuition tells her to run like the wind from devil-devils. Before they can flee, Mrs Byrne takes Eleanor’s hand and leads her into the kitchen where food is offered and they both fall on it with relish.

  ‘Eleanor, we can live here. We might be happy,’ says Mary, trying to convince herself.

  When darkness comes, Eleanor stirs near her mother. They are on blankets by the stove. They are warm and have been fed, but Mary can hear something strange – the beginning of the goong haunting, like a soft creeping animal; this is a ghost with a deep sadness lurking upstairs.

  ‘Don’t be frightened, we need shelter,’ says Mary as they huddle together and sleep as best they can.

  The next morning, Mrs Byrne serves them a breakfast of porridge with cream and Mary is smiling. She is in a mood of great optimism and they move to the sleep-out at the rear of the place.

  ‘Now, what shall we call you? We will call you Mary and she will be Girly,’ says Mrs Byrne.

  ‘Yes, Mum, but my girl is Eleanor,’ says Mary and curtsies.

  ‘First you will scrub the kitchen floor, then the dining room, then you will dig in the garden,’ she orders.

  ‘Yes, Mum. Then I will look at your ghost place,’ says Mary.

  The woman comes in close to Mary and whispers, ‘Do you feel the banshee too? I’m so scared here but my husband will not leave this house. He built it and he will not take us back to England,’ she says. ‘It won’t be long before that ghost scares me to death. Every night, I feel it as it paces in our bedroom and points at me.’

  That night, Mary wakes to find Mrs Byrne standing in front of the light in a pale nightgown. She is crying. Mary takes her by the hand and walks into the house and up the stairs.

  ‘Give me your words of wisdom. Can you save me from this thing? God has forsaken me,’ Mrs Byrne cries. Mary takes her in her arms and leads her to her small bed, for she does not sleep with Mr Byrne.

  ‘You have some stones? From fossicking?’ asks Mary.

  ‘I have such things,’ she replies.

  Mary looks through them and finds a purple crystal.

  Mary sits on the bed and discovers she is right: the room bristles with the power of goong. He shimmers and has no legs; his dark eyes glow. He is hideous. He points at them and Mrs Byrne is under the covers shaking and cold. Mary holds up the crystal.

  ‘Go away ghost, go away goong, go away ghost!’ she cries.

  He has hair down to his feet. He has to be a dead countryman, she thinks, and he wears shredded clothes as if from a fire. He seems to know Mary. She is terrified also. The ghost shimmers and speeds through her body with a finger outstretched.

  ‘Yan, go away, goyong, white thing, jebuggali,’ says Mary.

  The next day, the women gather peppermint gum leaves and smoke the house to rid it of spirits. Mary carries a saucepan full of smouldering leaves as taught by Granny Wiring, and Mrs Byrne follows her in kind of trance as they flick the smoke all through the house while Mr Byrne laughs.

  ‘Are you trying to get rid of the taibhse ghost?’ he asks.

  Mary nods at him. This is the truth but he does not see it.

  A wind blows through the rooms. It is a silver light that whispers along the rafters. Mrs Byrne holds Mary’s hand and grins for the first time in her presence. The house is free of spirits. She picks up little Eleanor and dances her into the living room. The child holds out her hands to the mistress and is pulled into her arms. Mary watches and feels jealous – maybe this woman wants her child as her own. Maybe this would be best and Mary could continue the life on the road instead of having to be a servant. Mrs Byrne could give the child her heart. She would be fed and protected – safe. Mary considers how love for her child might make it possible to leave her behind.

  Weeks pass and Mr Byrne watches the growing friendship between Mary and his wife. He is angry for something he cannot express. His wife must be all his. He sees them laugh as they sit up late, sewing clothes for Eleanor and he hates them. He longs for his own child that has not come.

  …

  Mary is trying on a beautiful evening dress in the farmer’s wife’s bedroom while the couple are out. The room has some silver engraved boxes open on the table, but the lovely dress is her downfall. She has seen it in a cupboard – long soft yellow taffeta silks – and lifted it out in front of the mirror. She puts it on over her dirty shift and it fits like a song. She twirls and lifts the hem to examine the fine stitches and her eyes shine in the mirror. How she longs to wear pretty things.

  Then she sees the farmer behind her, snarling like a dog.

  ‘Take it off, you filthy whore! I will thrash you for this,’ he says, ‘How dare you touch my wife’s culaith!’

  He takes hold of her arm and wrenches the dress from her body; it rips down a seam, and they both stare in horror. This is the end for Mary here, there will be no more protection. The constables will be called and she will be sent to the Female Factory to starve and work to death. She stumbles out of the room and leaps from the high windowsill, into the rose bush and there, standing, holding Eleanor by the hand, is Mrs Byrne.

  ‘Mary, why are you crying? Why are you crying?’ she pleads for an answer.

  ‘I will go away!’ says Mary.

  ‘You can’t leave me, why are you leaving?’

  ‘I have to go. I am not safe here. Your husband will call the constables. I want you to take her,’ says Mary.

  ‘Why? She is yours.’

  ‘I can’t look after her. Please care for my daughter until I return,�
� says Mary with tears streaming down her face.

  ‘I will; she can be like my own. I will love her,’ says Mrs Byrne.

  Mary walks out the door, gets her bundle from her room and walks off down the path.

  ‘Mamma,’ little Eleanor calls after her. She runs after Mary, and Mary shouts at her, ‘No, go back. I can’t take you any more. The policeman will come and take me and that Benevolent Society will take you! They’ll send you to that children’s home and I will not see you again. Stay here, safe with Mrs Byrne, she can love you. I will come back, soon, I promise. I promise!’

  ‘Ay, let her go, leanbh beag, child. She needs to go. You will be safe here,’ says Mrs Byrne, but Eleanor screams and tries to fight her off until Mrs Byrne holds her down with force.

  Mary looks one last time then she runs through the trees, runs and does not look back. Eleanor’s shrieks echo through the forest.

  Mary gulps and sees her little ghost brother, also holding out his arms to her in the mist. She keeps going, running in terrible misery, as far as she can. She runs until she can’t turn back. She will find the child when it is safe, when she has a way to make a living and a shelter.

  But her daughter’s face is ahead of her in the clouds. She stops still and all she can hear is her beating heart. Should she go back and get her child? Surely, she can’t leave her, she is still a child. But Mary walks on. It is the saddest day of her life and she feels a granny spirit standing there, twirling her long grey plait.

  Mary talks aloud to her shadow. She tells it to be still and look after her and guide her and give her a strong mind. She calls out to the little spirit fellas and keeps walking. Walking. She will be back and the child will never leave her side but first she must find a way to live and feed her. This pain brings back to her memory the day she walked out of the Parramatta Square held tight by Mrs Shelley. She never saw her father again. Mary looks ahead and forces herself to not turn because if she does she will break her resolve.