Mr Peacock's Possessions

by Lydia Syson

  Lizzie’s next task was to heave the camp oven out from the very back of the cupboard. A gigantic cockroach was scrabbling hopelessly up the side. Ma crushed it, then checked the vast cauldron for the ruddy bloom of rust.

  ‘Won’t you miss the range, Ma?’ asked Ada. Her mother glanced dismissively at the wood-burning stove, and handed her a rag. She would hardly miss the furnace it made of the kitchen. Going back to the open fire and camp oven of the early days of the Peacocks’ travelling life held no fears for Ma. While her eldest daughter bent her head over the heavy metal lid and rubbed in coconut oil until it glistened, Ma’s own head vanished into the belly of the pot. When she spoke – to remind Lizzie to fetch the dolly-stick from the outhouse – her voice moaned like a ghost’s. What would be bubbling in that pot once they reached the island? wondered Lizzie. Not once did she imagine it empty.

  *

  Years ago, Lizzie had asked her father if he ever missed the Yorkshire village where he was born. Would he have left had he known he’d never go back? ‘Never say never,’ he’d replied. But all the children’s unknown grandparents were long dead, while Pa’s cherished older brother, with whom he’d taken passage, had been an early victim of the Maori wars. Nothing left to tie either parent to any part of the world, in either hemisphere, Lizzie realised. And then Pa changed his tune, telling them that anyway, a settler has to look forward, not back. In the midst of Queenie’s brutally efficient farewells (goodbye bedstead, goodbye window, goodbye crack in the ceiling, goodbye dented pannikin – you’re not coming) Lizzie firmly reminded her of this.

  Albert, waiting in the doorway, raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Doesn’t a settler also have to settle?’ he asked, brittle-voiced.

  ‘Of course,’ said Lizzie, with acid sweetness. ‘When the time is right.’

  ‘I hope that’s now,’ said Ada, wearily. ‘It’s about time.’

  Herr Weber hired out his horse and cart for the short journey to the harbour. Pa’s fiddle and music case were carefully wedged on top next to the box of puppies, and the children. Quite the travelling circus, remarked Ma, with more pride than disapproval. The cavalcade scattered chickens across the road, glossy gold and red, and small black pigs scrambled out of ditches with snouts raised. Dogs barked, and Sal replied. The local children followed too, as close as they dared, and from time to time the boys broke into improvised, incomprehensible, and mildly mocking song, which sent the girls into fits of giggles and pointing.

  On the long wharf at the waterfront their collection of trunks and crates and sacks looked considerably smaller. The family huddled together uncertainly. Canoes from all the outlying islands clustered around the Good Intent like iron filings, eager for metal fish hooks, knives and chisels. Already she lay lower in the water, reeking of coconut, her hold filled with sacks of copra. Ma had trained the children not to stare at all the bare flesh forever on show on these islands. But it was hard when the calls kept coming. Look! Look! This way! Over here! The young men’s thighs and knees were engraved with blue as if they wore navy breeches beneath their lava-lava. Women with ambitious hairstyles, piled high with pink hibiscus flowers, lolled enticingly on rafts formed by outriggers, their bare breasts lustrous. Surely the sailors would need a few more coconuts before they left, or how about this lovely comb? Look at this! It had been the same when they’d arrived. It was the same with every ship that came and went.

  ‘When will we go on board?’ asked Albert. Constantly and queasily drawn to the movement of the water sloshing below them, partly visible through the gaps in the jetty planks, he steadied himself on Ada.

  ‘Pa?’ she prompted.

  ‘Not long now,’ said Pa, with satisfaction.

  ‘I’m looking after Sal and the puppies,’ said Queenie, who no longer answered to the name of Harriet. ‘They’re not going in the hold.’

  ‘They might be safer there,’ said Ma.

  ‘They’ll go in the hold if I say so,’ warned Pa fiercely, and Queenie quaked.

  At last embarkation orders sang out across the water and Mrs Peacock mustered the children.

  ‘A fine collection of stowaways we’ve got here!’ said Captain MacHeath, standing at the top of the gangway.

  Why did men always wink at girls? Lizzie thought she might have to watch herself with Captain MacHeath. She did not see the way his mate glanced at Albert, then quickly looked away, coiling his thoughts up fast and tight before they could snarl on the startling beauty of the boy.

  At last came the squeak and creak of pulleys and halyards, and the ghostly rising of the mizzen sheets. The jibs unfurled, almost at once. The mainsail soared into life. A crack like a bullet, as the hot wind caught at an unwary sheet and, ironed by air, the canvas uncreased and billowed. The ship began to roll, the wooden decks to breathe, and they were off.

  8

  MR PEACOCK STARES ME UP AND DOWN, YET HIS thinking seems far away. My wet skin chills. I have again the sense of a man unfathomable, whose powers are hidden, one who will always lead and never follow. I have met no other palagi like him. Then he speaks aloud once more, and I know he is back with me, all sharp eyes again, and my fears gather.

  ‘This is it then? No more of you?’

  Disappointment in his falling voice. And irritation. Does he want me bigger, stronger?

  ‘I will grow a little more, perhaps,’ I say.

  He shakes his head and sighs.

  ‘All this waiting and they sent me only one? Man Friday! To clear all this …?’

  The dog’s eyes follow my master’s sweeping arm as it draws out the whole island, the forest that I know rises behind the bluff, all else that lies still unseen beyond the golden stones of this low cliff. I shake my head likewise, and point out to sea, and we move together up the beach, and climb up a little way on the lowest rocks so we can more easily see how fares our vessel.

  ‘You couldn’t wait?’ he says to me. I could have. Should. I leapt too soon, for little purpose. A lesson there, Solomona will assure me. The small squall passed as I swam through. It’s plain to see a small boat can land now where I shored myself, and not be wrecked. The Esperanza’s sailors have downed the gig and my brothers wait in line to ladder down: blood-brother Solomona, and our four Rock brothers, the most labouring young fellows from our village, whose families bring most cotton to the Church, and still have young men to spare. Broadest of back, most hungry for calico. I lack their years, and have not yet the boldness for further roaming than here, nor desire for plantation work. But still I am no boy. I had my first haircutting some years ago, my mind is big and strong, and my tongue nimble, and that is why I am sent. As for Solomona, he is here for God, to do His ministry, and to put aside his sadness. It is hard to lose a wife to sudden sickness, and harder when it makes you also lose a future long prepared for.

  ‘Look, sir! Now they come. You see we are six, all told. Good workers. Dependable fellows, every one.’

  ‘Good,’ Mr Peacock say, thoughts hiding always. ‘Six, you say? Good. Six. Quickly! Let’s go and meet them.’

  Why does he not stir himself? This man uneases me, the way he goes from light to dark like a forest walk. His sharpness blurs. He looks around this place he knows so well as if it is a strange land to him and not to me. His vision wanders, his forearm hairs upstand themselves and he shivers, though this sun is warm for any body clothed and dry. Has he the sickness? I back myself from him a little. Will it be safe to stay? And what of Cook’s blighters with their wanting eyes – where do they hide?

  A shout of joy comes.

  ‘Pa!’

  And here they are, voices before bodies. Three of the five – tall girl, boy, shorter girl – bouncing between the rocks, through a path in the cleft of them I did not see before. The biggest leads, never turning. Across the beach they run and their legs scissor, scissor, scissor, palagi knees flashing, one, two, one, two, legs that swim and climb and jump. These girls do not hide their ankles as Mrs Reverend desires her girls and ours to do.

>   ‘Wait for me!’ cries the last and smallest one. ‘Wait for me!’

  Six legs stop and straighten, suddenly. Uncertain, with curious eyes, the children tilt their heads; birds collecting courage enough to peck at a prize. Am I that prize, or Mr Peacock? They cannot decide. I see how the two smaller ones watch him, and guess this is not a soft man, nor a rod-sparer, and also that only the big, bold, bony daughter has no fear of him. Nor of me.

  ‘Pa!’ she says eyes bright, mouth wide. A friendly smile she quickly turns on me. I return it, with a head-bow. She is safe and fearless. But I do not shake her hand, and she does not hold hers out to me. This hair-whipped daughter is something between a girl and a woman and I do not know these rules. I have only known married palagi women, with bonnets, and very few. One or two at most have visited our shores. I did not shake their hands.

  ‘Oh Pa!’ she says. So happy. ‘Here already of course. We didn’t see you. We didn’t know.’

  ‘I saw the smoke from the forest,’ says Mr Peacock, nodding approval. ‘You did well, Lizzie. And look – the other kanakas will soon be here.’

  The boy, jostling against his sister, is hungry for praise.

  ‘Billy saw the ship first,’ she says. ‘Where’s Albert?’

  ‘With the goat,’ say Mr Peacock, shortly. Not a man who must explain himself to any person. The talking quickly ends. Four faces turn to mine. But my tongue grows stiff and heavy and will not obey me before so many listeners. I can only look.

  Close-quartered, these children seem stranger still. Not what I thought I saw before, no, not at all. Not as young, perhaps. Needing no urgent rescue. Precious little flesh on bones to spare, yet they are not starving. Nor dressed or cared for like the Mission children: no white pinafores for these girls, no ribbons, no boots, no stockings. Dull clothes which would never please my mother nor our cousins. I hope that is not our bargain. Their hair blows wild under faded palm-straw hats, the tall girl’s dark, her sister’s light and straight. The brother dresses much like a deck boy. Sun-brown skin as dark as sailors’ too, all three, though lighter than my own. And yet I see these children are clean and tidy and stand with pride. Like me, awaiting orders.

  ‘Mrs P coming?’ Mr Peacock looks around again, darting eyes, still swiftly moving, disquiet in them now that startles me.

  Then barking breaks from the rocks, and two more come down the stony path, one daughter small indeed, still round of cheek, the other grave and careful, her hair darkest and longest of all the girls. With them walks the lady-wife of Mr Peacock, leaning on both. Slow of step and short of breath and red of face, the mother is heavier even than I had thought, closer to her time. Her husband turns before she reaches us: we are ahoyed. Already the Esperanza’s first boat’s close to landing. Mr Peacock runs, first to meet it, and catches the rope the sailors throw him. They heave her up the beach together, children hanging-helping on either side, careless of foam, all fighting the backwards pull. A quick unloading, Likatau and Pineki tumbling with bags and baskets, and then some Esperanza men, and Iakopo and Vilipate following more carefully. Finally jumps Solomona, heavy with his dignity, stony eyes searching mine. I have cut across him and though he will say nothing now, he will surely find time to tell me his disappointment later. I take my shirt from him with lowering eyes and put it quickly on, and play my part.

  *

  When the boat is safely shored, there is a separation, like oil from water. Island palagi and Rock fellows eye the other, all twitched, suspectable. Slippery-gazed, the children mumble behind hands. What kind of hunger haunts them? How will we fare together? Too soon to tell, for all is busyness and shouting, questions, answers, orders, sharp and fast. Nearly straightway the second boat needs pulling up the sand. People and voices mix and muddle, all working hard, crew and Rock fellows and this family haul and hoist. Captain is here now, talking, talking, talking to Mr Peacock, nineteen to a dozen, too quickly for me. Mr Peacock pull his beard and shakes his head and nods it, and push back hat some more to scratch his head. Baggage mounting, hens and cockbird chuckling in their cage, children poking fingers in, and pulling out again, pecked bloody. And Solomona checking and double-sure checking that all our gifts are safely stowed and nothing left behind, counting every mat and parcel.

  *

  Then all together we become a great snake of folk, children and parents and then sailors and last fellows, from the beach up through the rock cleft, where now I see a rough path winds. Baggage passed hand to hand, from sand to stones to rocks – up, up, up – and then we are high, and marching across thick grass and under trees through planted gardens, neat and fenced, to the Peacocks’ settlement, and roast meat salty smells. Not far. The trees are tall behind, and tufted scarlet. Small cottages huddle, talking each to each, built not of wood or coral, but fading leaves, growing from the ground. Ready to blow away. Nothing painted. No verandas. No window frames. No glass. Poor dwellings.

  9

  ‘TOO MUCH,’ MURMURS MRS PEACOCK, smoothing the stretch and ache of her belly with one hand. ‘A miracle.’

  She all but collapses into the chair Ada brings, while Lizzie fans her. Ma, so swiftly felled? But she is an ironwood tree, spreading her roots deep and wide beneath a canopy that endures all storms and shelters all. Where no sustenance is visible, nor can even be imagined, she seeks it silently, out of sight, below ground, wherever you are not looking, threading towards moisture and worming out the tiniest pockets of soil. Above ground too, she makes new roots, that reach through air, twisting and multiplying in emptiness; if a branch topples, her knotted outriders are ready to grope and grasp solidity wherever it may be. She can anchor herself on bare rock, plant herself on pumice. She is indomitable. From time to time she blazes.

  But now she seems more like a gigantic tree fern, knocked horizontal by a storm, a feeble mass of roots revealed, majesty unsupportable.

  ‘It’s not the baby …?’ Lizzie whispers.

  ‘No, no, not that …’ It’s not the settling of a small head in a bone cradle that’s sent her flying but the chance of change at last. The shock of hope’s arrival, unannounced and out of nowhere. Her mother sets her trembling mouth to a smile of welcome.

  ‘Welcome to my island,’ says Mr Peacock, and Lizzie’s proud to witness awe in the sailors’ eyes, though she notes a strange unsteadiness in her father. What a day! Everyone upside down and topsy-turvy! She pulls herself straighter.

  ‘Delighted to see you here,’ continues Pa.

  ‘Pleasure’s all mine, Mr Peacock. I confess I’ve been full of curiosity to meet you, ever since I first heard of your endeavours here.’

  The captain, an East Coast man named Hawthorne, drops to his knee theatrically to present Mrs Peacock with a new pipe and a pouch of fresh tobacco. Ma eases open the drawstring to inhale delightedly, and Lizzie breathes in rich spiced leather.

  ‘Thank you kindly.’

  Captain Hawthorne is quickly back to business. ‘A whaler’s been putting the word out for you, the Magellan Cloud. I’m told she called on you, some time back? Well, these kanakas will be just the ticket. You’ll find no harder workers in all the South Seas. Recommended by the resident missionary, no less.’ He leans forward, voice dropping so low Lizzie can barely catch his words. ‘Cheap too. Pay ’em in calico and they’ll be quite content, God bless ’em. I’ll take your orders before we go. In writing.’

  Everyone stares at the six Islanders, who stand with shifting feet and hanging arms kept in order by Solomona’s stern anxiety, his capacity for wordless reprimand, and their own astonishment.

  ‘Over here, boys,’ says Mr Peacock.

  They shuffle towards him warily, little by little absorbing more and more of the state of this out-at-elbow palagi family. Their threadbare clothing, too tight, too patched and mended, and their work-worn hands. The children’s faces betray an eager, complicated kind of appetite – can it be satisfied? The Islanders’ alarm surfaces slowly, in glances hurriedly exchanged and barely visible, unnoticed by the E
speranza crew. The sailors sprawl on the rough benches behind their captain, smoking and chewing and growing sentimental, knowing their hours ashore are numbered.

  ‘Plucky little castaways,’ one murmurs, too audibly. ‘Thank the Lord we came.’

  Ada to Augusta, known as Gus, all the children line up beside their parents, framed by the low and leafy hut. Queenie tells Ada and Lizzie to leave a gap for Albert.

  ‘He won’t be long,’ she says to Pa, half questioning, half hoping. She wants completeness, and to know there’ll be no unpleasantness to taint this glorious day.

  ‘He’d better not be,’ comes the quick reply. ‘We need the goat he’s butchering all the more now.’

  ‘Yes,’ whispers Ma. ‘What are we to feed everyone, Joseph? Where will we house them all? This is all so sudden.’

  Across the gap, Ada whispers, listing, in Lizzie’s ear. She wants to run back along the track behind the outhouse that leads up into the forest and yell for their missing brother. Is it too late? This strange occasion has stiffened, turned so formal. Better Albert returns while there are witnesses to curb Pa’s anger? What does Lizzie think? Albert must know the Esperanza’s landed. Surely, surely he’ll be here soon. Why doesn’t he hurry? He must come before the longboat grinds out into the surf for the last time, before sails unfurl and fill. He must. He must.

  Lizzie keeps her head turned from her sister’s soft mosquito moan and her hand itches to slap Ada’s words away. If Albert misses out, it’s his own fault. Ada can’t make excuses for him for ever. Lizzie has better things to think about today, and she won’t let her babbish brother spoil anything. He’ll hobble home. She inspects the new workers surreptitiously, wondering how they will measure up. What changes they will help to bring about. Excitement surges, trembling inside her, so delicate and strong she mistakes it at first for fear or pain. She vows she will remember this moment, always, this turning point, this fresh beginning, this glorious new start on Monday Island which will obliterate or make worthwhile all the months of struggle. This, this will be the day they bury every setback, bid farewell to disappointment, this the afternoon their future truly begins. Everything is opening up again before them. They are no longer alone.