Skins

by Sarah Hay

  He turned sideways and took her hand again.

  ‘So I sailed again. This time as a boatsteerer. After twelve months we anchored in a bay at Paita. I went ashore with two others for supplies. I didn’t return. There was too much sickness. Then I joined an English whaler heading for Sydney. I had a berth in the cabin. The captain had many books. I read them all. I was happy then.

  ‘We took whales near Van Diemen’s Land. One night the moon was high and bright, it was my watch, four men, one of them, the first mate, came from behind and bound my hands and legs. They threw me overboard.’

  ‘Why?’

  He was silent and his eyes closed for a moment. She turned sideways and saw the pain in his face.

  ‘I offended them. Black men don’t sit at the captain’s table and talk poetry. They sing sea shanties and make people laugh.’

  She watched the way his lips met when he spoke; they brushed lightly and then squashed together.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  ‘I should have drowned. I don’t remember. I untied my hands. I stayed afloat. We were in the lee of an island. I drifted towards it. I was lucky I could swim.’

  His eyes flickered and she knew he was reliving the experience. His hand tightened its grip on her arm and he turned to look at her. Wide- and yellow-eyed. He didn’t need to tell her any more. She remembered when the Mountaineer had run aground at Thistle Cove. It was night and the ocean had been a thin liquid sheet that covered the depths of hell.

  ‘It is easier to be what people expect you to be,’ he said quietly, before hauling himself up. She was surprised that his buttocks were lighter than his back. Raised purple welts crossed his skin like the seams of quartz that ran through the granite. It seemed that his story had ended.

  That evening they ate in front of the fire with moisture seeping in under the door. It hadn’t stopped raining all day. But her gown was crisp and clean and it felt like fabric again. She felt softer and lighter. Stew simmered above the fireplace and filled the hut with savoury smells. Dorothea went to make bread and discovered they had finished the Mountaineer’s flour. She stood at the doorway. He had his back to her. When she spoke he turned around.

  ‘There’s no flour, Jack.’

  He nodded.

  ‘The molasses is finished too,’ she said.

  Isaac looked up and watched Anderson’s face and then he said: ‘We’ve enough skins to fill the boat again.’

  Anderson stared thoughtfully ahead for a moment. Then he looked from one to the other and shook his head.

  ‘Too much of a risk. Another couple of months and the winds will have changed.’

  But for Dorothea that suddenly signalled hope. It meant there was to be an end to this timeless, featureless existence they had been living now for almost half a year. She stored that knowledge in her mind and it was like something precious she could put away and retrieve at anytime, which she could quietly examine and polish so that it shone.

  The first thing she did the next day was to tell Mary that they would be leaving.

  ‘How soon?’ she asked coldly.

  ‘He said in a month or two. I’m sure I can get him to leave sooner.’

  Mary shrugged and pushed the oily strands of hair from her face. She turned her back and lifted the flap of the canvas, disappearing inside the tent.

  Dorothea continued down onto the granite. The breeze that blew across the island from the south ruffled the sea’s surface and lightly brushed the curls on top of her head. The rain had cleared but there were still fat clouds hanging low in the distance. Every now and then the sun broke through and brightened the sea’s colour. She sat on the rock that sloped to the water and watched the weed in the shallows swaying with the swell. A Pacific gull settled nearby and seemed to peer at her from the corner of its red-rimmed eye.

  She hadn’t dared to let herself think about the future. But now he had said he would take the whaleboat to the Sound, it meant she was free to see the way back. There was, though, the memory of reaching the island. But she had more faith in Anderson than she had had in Jansen. What had become of him and the others, she wondered. The sea was as bland and as secretive as ever. There was no way of knowing who had been before. The tide might shift sand so that beaches changed shape, but the sea’s surface was eternal. It enveloped the unmarked graves of men and the wrecks of their ships so that any lesson to be learnt lay hidden beneath the waves.

  The Pacific gull lifted off the ground and settled a short distance away on a large boulder. It was often to be found there, its head turned to the sea, its white waste splattered on the rock beside it. She looked up and saw that it was Anderson who had disturbed it. He sat beside her.

  She wondered what he intended for her. Did he expect her to return to the island with him? That was asking too much.

  ‘What will happen, Jack?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘To us. Afterwards?’

  He didn’t say anything but his expression hardened and he looked more like the man she had met on the beach months ago. His head turned slightly and she realised he was watching someone. She followed the direction of his gaze and caught a glimpse of Isaac as he disappeared over the other side of the sandhill, further down the beach.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked as he stood up.

  ‘He has my gun,’ he said. ‘No one takes my gun.’

  The way he said it caused her stomach to contract. Anderson usually wore his pistols but since Manning and Jem had gone he had taken to leaving the brace beside the wooden chest in his room. She didn’t trust Isaac and she wondered how he came to be working for Anderson. What would he do? She knew he was capable of the worst, and that was killing Anderson and taking them all as his own.

  ‘He’s probably just gone after a pigeon.’

  Anderson showed no sign that he had heard and, frowning, he walked across the rock back to the camp, occasionally looking over to where Isaac had disappeared. She followed a little way behind. Mead was extending the paving out from under the verandah. He was digging holes and placing into the ground the rocks he had split from the granite. He was fitting them together as though they were shapes from a puzzle.

  ‘What’s Isaac doing?’ asked Anderson.

  Mead looked up and would have shrugged nonchalantly except that he saw the look on Anderson’s face. Instead he stood tall and looked nervously about him.

  ‘I don’t know. He was here. I didn’t give him much attention.’

  Dorothea walked behind Anderson and under the verandah to the doorway that led into the kitchen. Church looked up from the table. His thin black beard made his face seem even longer.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘Isaac has taken Jack’s gun.’

  Church’s glance flicked through the doorway to where Anderson leant against a post talking to Mead. He looked back at Dorothea with a frown, pulling his eyebrows together. They knew Isaac. There might be nothing in it. But if he was in one of his moods, he was just as likely to shoot them all. She suddenly wondered where the black women were. They wouldn’t be far for although Sal’s leg had healed she still had trouble walking. And then Dorothea thought of her sister. She should warn her.

  They all gathered in the hut, mostly pretending they weren’t worried at all. But when the wind moved the bough of a tree against the wall, they looked up. Mary and Matthew were with Church around the table. Mead and Anderson were just inside the doorway. Dorothea made everyone tea. There was no sign of Dinah and the others. It reminded her of when their mother had begun to drink. Everyone would fix their faces in expressions of unconcern but they were unable to control the number of times they looked to the door. Except Father. He would yell at them to stop the boy from crying. Then William would cry louder. And their mother would return like a creature from the forest. Her shawl would be damp and smell sweet and sickly of spirit. It would fall over one shoulder, and her boots would trip over the ends. Then Father would take over. And her bruises w
ould hardly have faded before she was gone again. Dorothea couldn’t remember her mother drinking when they lived in England.

  She knew her mother had been disappointed. They all were. It had been a long voyage. They had berths in steerage, separate from the handful of saloon passengers travelling with the governor of the new colony, Captain Stirling. Men with capital, who would walk the upper deck, smoking their pipes, wearing black dress suits. They would be the new aristocracy of the small colony. Her family had nothing when they arrived. They were no different from the natives who wandered amongst the houses asking for flour and biscuit. It was that her mother couldn’t live with.

  She wondered whether her mother knew the Mountaineer had run aground or whether she imagined they were living their new lives in Van Diemen’s Land. Of course she wouldn’t have expected to hear from them and there were four other children to concern her. But who would have thought that it could have ended like this? Dorothea looked around. The hut was like a dim dusty cave. Skins hanging from the walls prevented the light shining through the timber. The hearth glowed orange and smoked.

  She lifted the tea to her mouth, and she swallowed, breathing the sharp fragrance in the steam, no sweetener any more, just strong and black. She moved her chair away from the smoke. As it scraped across the rock they looked towards her and then turned away. Except Anderson who held her gaze with his. But then sticks were broken as heavy feet stepped on them outside on the path. Anderson turned into the doorway, his bulk filling the frame. They couldn’t see past him. Then they heard Isaac’s voice.

  ‘Give them black crows a bit of a fright.’

  There was silence.

  ‘Aww Jack … why you looking like that?’ he spoke with a whine in his voice. ‘Here, you can have it. There ain’t no shot in it anyways.’

  Anderson took the gun and retreated into his room. Isaac stepped through the doorway and looked around, grinning.

  ‘Right little gathering in here.’ He nodded towards Dorothea. ‘Make us a tea.’

  After a while he left again.

  Church and Matthew resumed their conversation.

  ‘It’s in a gully behind the ti-tree,’ said Matthew.

  ‘What?’ asked Dorothea.

  ‘A grave,’ replied Church. ‘There’s a copper plate over the top of it.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘Douglas, 1803.’

  ‘Whereabouts? Copper’d be useful,’ said Mead.

  ‘You can’t disturb someone’s grave,’ said Church, frowning. ‘That’s a sacrilege.’

  ‘That’s what?’ said Mead. ‘Poor bastard don’t know, do he?’

  ‘If I were to perish on this island, I would like for the sake of my family to have my grave marked.’

  ‘Ain’t got no family,’ said Mead. ‘Last I heard anyways. But that’s not accounting for the gin I had on Preservation.’

  Matthew looked at his wife and then around at the others. ‘When you’re dead, you’re dead. I’ll promise you though,’ he said to Church, ‘if you pop your clogs, I’ll bury you with a few stones and a cross on top.’ He grinned. ‘But if you want something written, you better do it now ’cause there ain’t anyone here who can write.’

  ‘Jack can,’ said Dorothea.

  They all looked at her.

  ‘What would you write?’ asked Mead, ignoring her, his eyes scrunched at the corners. ‘Here lies a swell’s son run out.’

  He chuckled into his beard and wiped the spit from the corner of his mouth. Something crossed Church’s face. Regret, perhaps. She thought he looked closer to death than the rest of them. While the faces around the table were like hardened leather, including her sister and, she supposed, hers as well, he had remained pale. He had stayed indoors most of the time and he always wore his black beaver hat.

  ‘Can you talk about something else,’ muttered Mary.

  After a short silence Mead began one of his stories of chasing sperm whales across the Pacific, explaining that he was like a cat with nine lives. Dorothea remembered an earlier version of his yarn and left to get some salted meat from the storeroom.

  In the evening she sat with Anderson under the verandah looking out over the clearing. They hadn’t seen Isaac for dinner and she didn’t dare ask after him. The upper branches and the trunk of the eucalypt glowed white with the light from the weak golden sun that disappeared behind the dune. The night air drew around them like a damp blanket. Frogs chorused, their numbers having increased considerably with all the rain. But tonight the sky had cleared. And the first star appeared against the pale purple backdrop and hung between the leaves of the two trees. Voices murmured through the open doorway. Anderson sighed and her eyes traced his heavy profile as he stared ahead. Then he turned and asked what she wanted.

  She looked down at her hands that were never clean. They were working hands. Her nails striped black and the knuckles worn and peeling. She turned them over. Her palms were worse, reddened and blistered. The lines strongly defined. What did she want? She knew she wanted to leave the island. Since she had known that they didn’t have to wait for a trader, she had become more and more anxious to fly over the crest of the wave, to go against the swell rather than to have it roll towards her every day. Only then would she be able to breathe freely, to expand her heart.

  And what of him? She kept her eyes down as she cleaned the dirt from under one fingernail with another. She would like to see him in fine clothes. Tight pantaloons and a twilled cotton shirt, the collar held in place with a stock of the finest silk, and a waistcoat and coat of camelot. He could take her arm and they would walk between the houses, past the Sherratt Family Inn, up the road that wound towards the hill. And she would show him into her family’s home and they would admire his dress, her gentleman of means.

  The sea surged onto the sand and then thundered as the line of the wave broke further along the beach. The action at one end triggering the foam to fold into itself all the way around to the other end. Even though the sand and the bush that grew like the hair on a young man’s face hid the waves from view, she knew how it would be.

  January 1886

  The sealer Billy Andrews looked after my baby and I. He gave my child his name. He knew how Jack died. He had stolen from Jack before. Sometimes we lived on Michaelmas Island, which wasn’t far from the Sound. Then one day he went to sea and he didn’t come back either.

  King George Sound 1835, James Manning

  He couldn’t remember when his tongue began to feel like a lump of dry meat in his mouth. At least he didn’t have to listen to Jem whining any more because he couldn’t talk either. He realised then that he couldn’t hear him at all. Slowly he turned. Any movement was an effort. Just to turn his neck to the side. It was alright when he walked slowly in a straight line. Then he didn’t have to think and he could put one foot in front of the other. He panted and stumbled, his trouser leg catching on the sharp spike of a branch. Jem’s body lay curled into the rock. He reached down towards him, opening his mouth to urge him on. But he had no words. All he could utter was a hoarse cry. It was enough to make him start. Manning looked into a face of raw tight skin and eyes without hope.

  He half pulled and helped him up. They stood leaning against each other, panting. The effort caused everything to shimmer before him. A black shadow crossed in front of him and slipped into a tree. The tree came towards him and he crumpled. They collapsed together, folded one across the other. He lay on his back, his neck tilted behind Jem’s shoulder. When his eyes opened, they held only the sky. Had he died?

  Jem lay beneath him without moving. But he sensed the movement of others. Shapes of people. They were red. A man leant over him and he smelt a strange combination of smoke and an animal in semi-decay. He wore a dog’s tail in his hair. His face was shiny with red pigment and his eyes were big and round. He turned and spoke over his shoulder to the others. Manning couldn’t understand him. And he didn’t care. If this was the way it was to be he was glad for it had been too hard. He clos
ed his eyes, wanting it to be over quickly.

  ‘Enoc eean?’ What is your name?

  The man grasped his hand as though to shake it. He felt Jem stir beneath him. He struggled to get up but managed only to slide off Jem. They both sat on the ground, holding onto their knees for support. Four men who bristled with spears surrounded them. Manning tried to speak. His eyes imploring the one who had spoken to understand.

  ‘E Naaw?’ What, What do you say?

  The talkative one grinned and turned back to his companions. They all laughed and began to move away. Manning struggled trying to lift himself up with his good arm. They hesitated, watching him. Jem moaned and laid his head on his knees. Manning gestured with his hand to show that they needed to eat. He made signals that they were hungry and thirsty, that they had walked a long, long way and that they must go further.

  ‘Ahhh,’ said the man who had turned away.

  He nodded as though he understood. He talked to the others and then suddenly broke into a chant. But they slipped between two bushes and disappeared. That was it then. Manning lay back on the rock to wait for the darkness to begin. He had nothing left: no reserves from which to draw. Jem had slumped forward, his head almost touching the rock, and then gradually he fell sideways.

  Sometime later, it could have been that day, the next day or the day after, the men returned. Manning’s eyes had crusted shut and he opened them with difficulty. They brought with them whale meat and water. They squatted, feeding them small pieces of blubber and pouring water from bark into their mouths.

  ‘Ca,’ one of them said to Manning and helped him to his feet.

  The others lifted Jem and supported him. They carried them away from the sea, light filtered by leaves flickering at the edge of their vision, into more densely wooded country. Smells changed and became richer and more pungent and peppery. A dampness came up from the ground.

  It seemed a long time but it may not have been. The forest cleared and a river lay before them. On the other side rust-coloured rushes and the white twisted stems of the paperbark were mirrored in the still water. Further along an island of granite stones dusted with gold lichen and streaked white with pelican droppings lay in the middle. Birds glided across their reflection. White cockatoos flew overhead and landed amongst the treetops, chattering and shrill with their squabbles and squawks. He smelt a campfire. They veered away from the river and beneath the rivergums there were people. Their homes were a few sticks stuck in the ground, bent over like bows and thatched with the leaves of a grasstree. There were four of them and each had a fire smoking in front of it. Women and children and a couple of old men wrapped in kangaroo-skin cloaks huddled over the embers. They remained where they were as the men brought Manning and Jem into the clearing.