Skins

by Sarah Hay

  Once inside they were still for a moment. Their minds and bodies numb with exhaustion, listening to the drops of rain splatter on the leaves outside. The rock where they had just come from was covered in mist, and water drops from the mouth of the cave increased to streams. Manning started to shake with cold. Jem clenched his jaw tight to stop his teeth from chattering. They moved to the back of the cave, finding dry leaves and branches blown in by a storm. They heaped them into a pile with a small amount of their precious powder. After several attempts Manning produced a spark from friction between two rocks and ignited the powder that lay amongst the leaves. They started to crackle and smoulder. Jem crawled out and collected more wood. Eventually their fire brightened and began to produce heat. They had almost forgotten what it felt like. It lit the walls of the cave, which were smooth and striped. It wasn’t high enough to stand but it went quite a way back so they could escape from the smoke but still enjoy the warmth. They cooked the limpets in their shells and roasted the roots. They had never tasted so good.

  They built up the fire so that it wouldn’t go out and lay down in the soft dry sand. Manning had a vague sense that his body ached but his mind was in another place. Jem’s coughing woke him. It was dark outside and the fire had burnt down to a few glowing coals. He put more wood on and gently blew the flame into life. When he touched Jem to give him some water he discovered his skin was burning.

  He wasn’t any better the next day. His face was flushed and his eyes were glassy. He moaned a lot and wheezed a deep harsh cough and then slept. Manning supported his neck while he sipped water from the flask. He soaked a piece of cloth and wiped his forehead. But most of the time he sat listening to the sound of his rasping breath. Outside the sky was clear of cloud and the air, fresh and crisp. He didn’t want to leave him but he couldn’t sit there any longer either. So he went down to the sea for limpets. It would be the route they would take when Jem was well. He dared not think that he might be doing it on his own.

  The bush was about head height and thick in places. He cut some of it with his knife so that it would be easier next time. He reached the beach when the sun was at its highest and noticed a thin column of smoke a little way inland. It would be natives. Even though they might be hostile, the sign of human life was a comfort. Then he looked along the beach and it seemed to go on forever. It was more of the same. They weren’t any closer to anywhere. Perhaps it would all be like that. He wouldn’t even know the Sound when he reached it. And then he thought bleakly that the Swan River could be the same. He shook his head. What was wrong with him? How could it be anything but paradise? There he would have the chance to be someone else. But he needed money.

  Through the salt spray were islands. He sat quite still on the sloping rock and stared into it, his eyes shifting focus. The haze became like a curtain and it cleared and he saw light through the flickering leaves of trees. A cool peppermint-scented place and moist grass that glistened on the banks of a slow-moving river. A woman spread her arms out wide and she was beautiful with long black hair and red lips. And she settled on the water and folded her arms beside her and her long neck moved with a body that glided with the tide.

  On a nearby rock a big black and white gull lowered its head and its neck began to wobble as it collected the air to sound its laughter. He looked up into its cold hard stare. The gull’s call brought its mate and they stood a little way off with their heads to the side as though they were as disinterested as he was. But he knew their mean little eyes were on his limpets. He picked up a rock and threw it at one of them. Its wings lifted it a little way off the ground and it settled again, as unconcerned as before. He didn’t even matter to a seagull.

  When he returned to the cave Jem had improved. He sat at the fire that had been stoked into a healthy blaze. Together they ate the succulent yellow flesh of the limpets. When it was cooked in the shell, the meat was tender. Raw it was tough like boot leather and it left a strange taste in the mouth. But it was better than nothing. His friend’s cheeks had lost their fullness and the hair on his face was thin and patchy. There were sores in the corners of his mouth. But his eyes were clear and they looked directly back into Manning’s.

  ‘What’s it like?’ he asked. ‘Where we’re headed.’

  Manning shrugged and lifted the shell of the limpet up to his mouth, draining the watery contents.

  ‘Half a mile to the beach. Then the beach curves around. Can’t see for how long.’

  Jem coughed and it rattled in his chest.

  Manning looked up.

  ‘You alright?’

  Jem nodded.

  ‘Leave tomorrow?’

  He nodded again.

  Cicadas clicked outside. Flies whined by the entrance. A fresh breeze from the south blew the smoke into their faces. Manning moved and leant against the wall on the side; from there he could see out across the bush to the sea and the purple islands that wavered in the distance. Jem’s voice roused him from his doze.

  ‘You know, I ain’t ever been with a woman.’

  Manning opened one eye.

  ‘I don’t want to die not knowing what it’s like.’

  ‘Who says you’re going to die?’

  Jem traced lines in the sand with a stick. Manning watched the lines like snake trails move around the floor of the cave and thought that perhaps they would be the only sign that they had ever been here. And then he wondered who would find them.

  It became harder to rid his mind of black thoughts. After they left the heart-shaped bay, the beaches were shorter and interrupted with steep rocks to climb and stunted and deformed scrub to push through. They had to go inland often but never too far that they lost sight of the sea, and they were torn and scratched by inhospitable sticks and branches and roots. What they needed were small axes but they had only their knives. Often they passed a mob of kangaroos and they would be tormented with the memory of succulent roo flesh. But they couldn’t think of a way to kill them. A couple of times they tried catching seagulls with snares made from the cloth of their trousers, but it was hopeless. They had used all their powder so they had no means to make a fire.

  He began to dream of the black-haired woman. She would turn slowly and beckon with one hand, the feathery ends of her hair reaching her knees and covering her breasts. Her body was white, and blue veins cast a map beneath her skin. But when he looked to her face her lips blurred and became like blood, like raw meat. The pain in the centre of his belly made him feel as though his guts would spill out. When he woke there was only flag-reed root or limpets to eat.

  As they trod gingerly through the scrub Jem would describe the feast he had dreamt about until Manning would have to tell him to stop. And then he would chew on the wallaby skin he wore around his shoulders. But he lacked the strength in his jaws to penetrate the stiff salty hide.

  They became weaker, resting at greater intervals, but the cold seemed to find its way in so that they were never warm. They shivered when they stopped and became exhausted by their shivering. It was then that Jem became like a child, constantly whining about their journey and pleading with Manning to tell him when it would end.

  When they rested beneath a bush, Manning decided that he wanted to stay. That there would be nothing easier than to lie down beneath its gnarled branches that smelt sharply of citrus and to never get up again. The pain left his body and he was at peace. But Jem’s voice, like the blunt edge of a knife on a piece of hide, gradually worked its way through his consciousness and forced him to rally his spirits. Then it struck him that he would not die sooner by having hope. And he had to be hopeful for Jem.

  January 1886

  When it is night I touch the skin under his arms. It is soft and smooth, like silk. Not like the skin on his shoulders which was hardened by the sun. I can see his face when he is refusing to smile. He is good at revealing nothing. Like a stone. He walks sometimes that slow measured walk around my house. He never saw our daughter. He was murdered the year she was born. A sealer told me
that they had found Jack’s body on Mondrain Island. He had been shot through the head and they killed Dinah too. I know that island for it is a day’s sailing from Middle Island. We would shelter there on our way to the Sound.

  Jack believed in the other world, that there were restless souls who wandered. Sometimes I wonder if he were not dead before I knew him. When the natives first saw white people, they believed we were their ghosts. I wonder what they thought of Jack.

  Middle Island 1835, Dorothea Newell

  When Anderson returned he didn’t say anything about Jem. It was dark when they hauled up on the beach and the three men came through the trees without speaking. Matthew and Mary had left for their tent. Earlier, when she had gone outside for water, she had noticed that a fire burnt brightly in front of it. Church had remained in the hut and for that she was grateful. Dinah had been in before and brought with her a tammar she had snared. Dorothea had skinned it and it was roasting over the fire. When the meat began to brown she wondered about Jem and what he would be eating.

  Dorothea looked up and he didn’t look at her. Instead he came in and continued through and into the other room. Isaac sat behind her and Mead pulled a chair close to the fire. Eventually she turned to Mead who looked up and smiled a half-smile.

  ‘Smells good.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  The warmth left his eyes.

  ‘On the mainland, at the base of them hills.’

  ‘Will they … will they be alright?’ she asked without turning away from the fire.

  Mead shrugged: ‘They got plenty of water and as long as they stay on the coast they got shellfish.’

  Then Anderson was behind her and he looked over her shoulder and down at the cooked meat.

  ‘Serve it up, woman.’

  She listened to their talk around the table. There had been a sea elephant on one of the flat rock islands close to the coast. Which, reckoned Mead, was unusual for around here. He had been on an English whaler in the Bass Strait and they had brought in a southern right to cut up and try out on the beach. Camped on the island were a group of sealers. There was a fellow, he said, that had a sea elephant as a pet.

  ‘It’s the truth. It was about thirty feet long and about eighteen feet wide. This fellow he’d be stroking it and feeding it. He’d hop on its back or it’d follow him around like a dog. Its big ugly snout waving about. When he was full of grog he got in a fight and some bastard killed him. The sea elephant that is, not him,’ said Mead with a grin.

  Anderson didn’t seem to be listening and neither was Isaac. Church was the only one who appeared interested. Isaac had a mean look and it wasn’t just towards her. He seemed to be directing it at everyone, or perhaps it was mostly towards Anderson. She hoped he was on his guard. But then she watched Anderson staring across the table to the wall on the other side, his eyes unfocused, and she wondered why she cared. What he had done to her brother was unforgivable. He was a brute, a savage brute.

  Abruptly Anderson stood up and muttered something to himself but they all heard it.

  ‘The man hath penance done, and penance more will do.’

  Church raised his eyebrows and stared at the empty doorway through which Anderson had just gone.

  ‘Coleridge?’ he asked with an odd look on his face.

  And then after a while he shook his head slowly. Dorothea realised something had happened but she wasn’t sure what. The others were quiet too. Church’s mouth was forming words without sound.

  When she trod the path to the well she sensed his presence through the warmth of his body and then she saw his outline against the bush. A man created in the image of Adam. She didn’t know why she thought that but it suddenly came to her. His arms enveloped her and he drew her close to his chest, her head resting against his skin and the skin of an animal. She could hear the beat of his heart. Steady. They stood like that for a moment, her body tense until gradually it lost its resistance and she yielded to him, and it reminded her of the times when she sat in the sun and the heat made her dopey and senseless. Then he let her go and left her in the dark.

  She heard movement outside the door of the storeroom and then there was silence and the sound of the sea, as familiar now as her own breathing. Then she heard another sound, the lonesome howl from the pup captured and brought across the sea by Dinah. But there were no dogs to hear its cry.

  She knelt in the clearing beside Dinah. The sky was pale blue and a cold breeze blew down the rock from the south and stiffened their fingers. Dinah and Sal had brought back five tammars that they had snared on the fork of a well-worn pad. Their snares were made out of strong yarn from canvas threads rubbed together. They were about eighteen inches long with a slipknot tied at one end. The snare was like a noose that was stretched out on two small y-shaped sticks and put across the tammar pads or trails to catch the animals around the neck. As the slipknot tightened they would choke to death.

  Dinah explained how they worked with her hands. Then she said the skins make very good shoes, very good to wear. She asked Dorothea if she wanted some. Dorothea nodded. Dinah dislocated the limbs of the tammar and explained that it was so the spirits couldn’t run away. She cut off the tails at the stump. Then she skinned the largest one with almost a flick of her wrist. She gestured to Dorothea to place her feet over the fresh warm skin. Dinah moulded it to her foot and cut it and stitched the two ends at the top with the animal’s tendon. She did the same with the other foot. And then removed them for drying.

  The small yellow dog sniffed around their feet for meat. And taking hold of a piece of skin with its sharp little teeth, it growled and tugged until it got what it wanted. Then it lay in the dirt, chewing and playing with its find. Dorothea reached down and rubbed its neck. It lifted its head and playfully snapped at her fingers. Dinah was watching and they both smiled.

  The women skinned the rest of the animals and stretched the skins over sticks to dry. It was pretty silvery-grey fur with reddish-brown patches across the shoulders. Dorothea collected the tails of the animals and soaked them in boiling water until the fur could be scraped off easily and then placed them in the hot ashes in the hearth where they would cook slowly for several hours. She had also learnt that from Dinah. At first she had been uncomfortable with her light-footed presence. But then she got used to it and it made up in some way for Mary’s continued silence. She thought that maybe Matthew was responsible for the way Mary was acting. He had his wife back and he wasn’t going to let Dorothea come between them again.

  Sometimes she wondered if Anderson had lain with Dinah and Sal before she came to the island. She wanted to know but most of the time she didn’t have the will to find out. Rules elsewhere held no meaning for her. After a while she sought out the company of the black women and felt emboldened by the knowledge they shared with her.

  So when Mooney asked for her hair she gave it willingly. The others sat in a semicircle around her while Dinah used the sharpened edge of an abalone shell to cut it. It was very long, almost to her waist and it had become a matted mess. Dinah hacked through it and cut close to her scalp, the brown coils falling in the dirt. The women reached forward, picking up pieces, holding it up to the light and then from end to end, admiring its length. Mooney collected it all in a bundle and then thinned it out with her fingers. She picked up two small twigs about four inches long and placed one across the other in the form of a cross. Then she rubbed the strands of Dorothea’s hair across her bare thigh and when it was thick enough she wound it around the sticks and it became a thick reel of strong twine. That way she could store it in her skin pouch and use it when she needed it.

  When Dorothea stood up, her neck felt cold and exposed. But her head was unburdened and she shook it. They watched her. Then she smiled and they all smiled. That evening Anderson ran his big broad hand over her scalp and chuckled and told her she looked like a boy. But Anderson was different since the night he had returned to her bed.

  It was a few days after the boys had left. She
had hardly seen him. He would leave the hut before light and return after dark but she knew he didn’t leave the island. That night she woke, startled, staring up into the darkness, not seeing but knowing that his bulk was only just above her. She was frozen with fear for she thought he had come to harm her, and her breathing was tight and shallow. But instead he leant back on his heels and shushed her.

  ‘Let me lie with you,’ he said. ‘I want to feel your goodness.’

  He lowered himself onto his side and his body was pressed hard against her side. She could see now that he faced her, his head rested on the palm of his hand. She lay on her back, arms by her side, and gradually her breathing became more regular and she noticed his smell which was strong but not unpleasant. He brought his other hand up to her neck and lightly traced the contours of her cheek and jawline.

  ‘You’re the first white woman, I ever had.’ And he chuckled. ‘But it’s all the same in the dark.’

  He paused and when he spoke again his tone had changed.

  ‘But it ain’t, is it? Not like it says in the Bible. That we are all children of the same parent,’ he added bitterly. ‘That’s a story for children.’

  She listened to the scratching of an animal on the other side of the wall.