by Lydia Syson
He glances at Solomona’s sleeping back.
‘If Mrs Peacock say yes. And Mr Peacock.’
Lizzie is shaken by a rush of bitterness, which shocks her. ‘Mr Peacock won’t notice.’
*
Ma makes rules. Lessons are not to interfere with Kalala’s plantation work, nor with the children’s chores. ‘No Sunday work,’ says Solomona when he wakes up. But he’s proud of his brother.
‘You’ll be a real teacher soon,’ he tells him, walking back from the flats, one arm across Kalala’s shoulders. The next afternoon Queenie, Lizzie and Billy gather on the beach, where the sand is hard and damp. They take it in turns to copy Kalala, making shapes with sticks and chanting the names and sounds of letters.
Kalala shows them the word in the Bible and how to spell out G-O-D. Then Sally and Spy bounce up, and chew the sticks, and their paw prints scuff the children’s work, and Kalala uses the same letters to spell out D-O-G. Ada hovers at a distance, with Joey slumped over her shoulder, rubbing his back and peering over his bundled form, and Lizzie knows she is thinking of Albert. She feels unaccountably guilty, as if she is responsible for his vanishing, as if unkind thoughts could snuff out life.
Mrs Peacock observes the lessons from above, one eye on the horizon.
BEFORE
Albert’s triumphant return with the milk goat was tempered by an accident on the way back down the cliffs. They almost lost her. The rope had jerked from his hand, he told the girls later, looking at Pa. I wouldn’t have let go, thought Lizzie. Ada pressed him further. Well, then he’d fallen against a rock, hadn’t he, and landed so awkwardly he’d gashed and bruised his leg. It had swollen quickly, despite Ma’s bathing of it, and for days Albert kept stumbling, and crying out in pain when he walked on it. Ada found him a stout stick to lean on and did as many of his chores as she could.
No time to rest, for Albert was now goatherd, finding new shady spots each day to tether the nanny where the foraging would be sweetest. The male kid they ate, the female they kept. He gentled the goats by degrees, with infinite patience. Quietly scratching the kid under her chin, when he thought nobody was looking, his jaw softened and his eyes cleared and Albert was calm and beautiful again, his pains forgotten.
‘Shhhhh … shhhhhhh,’ he soothed and tried to teach Queenie how to work the same magic.
‘Have you milked her yet?’ asked Pa after less than a week.
‘Not yet. In time,’ said Albert. ‘I don’t think she’s ready.’
‘We’ve not got time,’ replied Pa. ‘Queenie can be our milkmaid. I need you delving.’ He mumbled something else under his breath. Something like ‘not shirking’.
Albert knew it would take even longer, left to the little ones. They would try to rush things – it had been hard enough to keep them calm when he was patiently training young Spy – and the work he had already done would be undone. A few days later, while he was dragging cat’s claw to make a thorny, goat-proof fence for the new vegetable garden, still wincing as he walked, he heard a scream and then a wail. A lightning kick from Nan’s back leg had caught Queenie in the side of her head. Milk soaked into the ground. But that wasn’t the worst of the waste in those early months.
*
Robson was right about the growing of things. The first shoots of sweetcorn appeared within days. Beans really did behave like fairy-tale vines. Every day they pushed back the wilderness of Clapperton Bay a little further, and the island felt more inhabited. Every morning Mr Peacock surveyed the garden with satisfaction. Billy had found some sweet potatoes in the undergrowth, and Ada joyfully uncovered a patch of purple-stemmed taro plants, which had been quietly growing and reproducing themselves for years; tubers vast and hairy, the size of a baby’s head, flesh speckled violet. Soon it was taro cakes and taro stew and taro porridge. That filled you up, for a while. And then the hunger returned.
At mealtimes Ma noticed a dullness in their eyes.
‘Surely Robson must have planted sugar cane – didn’t he say we’d find everything we needed?’ Mrs Peacock said, with a moan in her voice.
‘Do you think I’d not have told you if I’d found it?’
Mr Peacock stomped off with pickaxe and shovel, and didn’t come back for lunch. Ma sent Lizzie and Billy with taro cakes and dried goat meat to find him, and they reported he was digging up a tree – or its roots, anyway.
‘They’re huge. He’ll be ages.’
‘What kind of tree?’ Ma asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Lizzie. ‘It had a trunk. Leaves.’
Ma narrowed her eyes, checking for cheek, and bent over her mending. This place was so hard on clothes. Even denim ripped too often and too easily. And washday was coming, but what would they do for soap if the Good Intent wasn’t back soon? If she never came back?
‘He said to start digging a pit,’ said Billy.
‘Well, you know where the other spade is. You’d better start right away.’
Whatever his plan, it would become clear in the end. She had to trust to that.
*
When Pa returned with a full sack, and told them to look for rocks, for the pit was deep enough, Lizzie realised what they were making: a hangi, an earth oven.
‘Why is Pa being so mysterious?’ whispered Ada. When the flames were roaring, Mr Peacock finally emptied out a sack of uneven logs – thick and heavy and very hairy – and a load of leaves. Albert cut short a disappointed sigh and reached for one to throw on the fire. Pa caught his arm.
‘Stop! That’s not firewood. That’s ti. Cabbage tree. That’s what we’re cooking.’
‘That!’ said Billy in disgust, sick of roots. Pa smiled and set to with the axe, splitting the lumps, then hammering at the glinting slabs to crush them into tenderness.
‘Get on with it then,’ he said, with impatient scorn. ‘All this needs to be wrapped in leaves. Don’t want it burning after all the trouble I’ve had digging it out.’
The fire subsided into a rippling mass of glowing coals, a heat so fierce it sweated up your face if you bent too close, and when the stones were good and hot, Ma laid over them a frame of green sticks, piling that with a layer of nikau fronds. Pa arranged the heavy, leaf-wrapped parcels on the platform of leaves, put more leaves on top, and finally shovelled the loose earth back to form a damp, steaming mound.
‘There!’ called Billy. From a tiny hole, a wispy ribbon was worming out.
‘And there!’ said Queenie, enjoying this game.
They patched and watched, patched and watched.
‘That’s it now. No touching, mind … No roast children here.’
Then he walked off to find his fishing rod. For two and a half days, no mention of the oven.
*
‘So shall we look?’
‘I’ll get the shovel!’ Queenie cried.
‘And the tongs,’ called Pa.
A line of children followed him to the hangi. Pa drove the blade into the earth with concentrated tenderness and the pile crumbled inwards like a suet piecrust, releasing a cloud of steam from the new-made crater, a fragrance which made the children sigh. Honey-sweet. They licked the air, inhaled, and when Pa opened the first blackened bundle and they breathed in syrup, they groaned with ecstasy.
‘Joseph Peacock, you’re a magician,’ declared Ma.
Lizzie reached out a bold hand, but Pa shook his head.
‘Not ready yet. Have to wait. Need to boil it down. This is Maori cooking. Can’t be hurried.’
‘Can’t they just taste it first?’ said Ma.
Ada nudged Lizzie.
‘Please, Pa,’ she said. ‘Just a little.’
And suddenly it was like Christmas on Monday Island. Moans of delight fell from the children’s mouths. They chewed the strips of root until left with nothing but a tasteless, stringy mass, a memory of sweetness to pass from cheek to cheek.
‘Will there be more, Pa?’ asked Queenie.
He answered in a strange language: ‘Ehara i te ti e wana ake.’
They
looked at him blankly. ‘Unlike man, this tree grows up again even when you cut it down. Yes, there’ll be more.’
25
FIVE MORE SUNDAYS PASS, AND OUR WORK PROGRESSES well, until we are pitted against a difficult stump. It refuses to be uprooted, and yet its sap is scorched so it cannot grow. Mr Peacock sends me back for ropes. I have his trust now, I believe, and I mean to keep it. I understand him, he tells me. I am not like my brother, referring every question to Him above. There are times when a man has to decide a thing for himself, he says. I bow my head and decide some other things for myself, like not to cross him, and also to watch my back, and to watch Solomona’s for him. I will not let him divide us.
And while I am bent-backed in the outhouse, two coils of ship rope already on my shoulder, and measuring out a third from hand to elbow, I hear the sisters passing. Little pitcher, Mrs Reverend used to call me. How else can a fellow learn?
Lizzie’s pleading voice trots behind Ada’s steps. She bleats her sister’s name over and over again. The younger girls come to me for stories, to listen and to wonder, to fill up that hole in their family which I know may otherwise swallow them all. They love to talk to me because I cannot talk of Albert. Ada never comes to hear my tales, and remembers her brother all the time, but never speaks of him. There has been some falling-out between her and Lizzie over Albert. Like wheeling birds, their wing tips never touch however near they swoop. There is a strangeness to this oldest girl, a taut and twitching sorrow. When I see how the other children watch her, I know she has changed. I think of raindrops pearling and sliding from a banana leaf, never wetting its flesh.
‘Please, Ada. Please talk to me. Please stop.’ Then, almost to herself, Lizzie mutters: ‘Oh, please stop all of this. You can’t go on like this for ever. What have I done?’
They will both pass by and never see me, I am certain, never think to look. I will hurry back to work when they are gone, before trust snaps and sours the air. I do not expect Ada to stop a few feet from my ear.
‘What?’ she says.
‘I – I just wanted to talk to you.’ Breathless. Lizzie catches up. ‘Didn’t you hear me calling before?’
‘Calling?’
‘Yes. Are you listening to me, Ada? You never seem to hear me.’
‘Yes, I’m listening. What is it?’
Her voice is sharp and dry and wounding.
‘Where are you going?’ Lizzie asks.
‘Where are you going? Where are you going?’ A mean mimic. ‘You never stop asking. Nowhere. I’m not going anywhere. Look. I’m not moving. I’m talking to you.’
In my head Ada stands arms folded, head tilted back, eyebrows upped in challenge. And Lizzie is a riser.
‘But you were going somewhere? Nightbell Gully?’
‘Maybe. No. I don’t go there anymore. I don’t like going on my own.’
‘Then I’ll come with you.’
‘I don’t want you to.’
I shift my weight.
‘Ada. Please stop,’ says Lizzie.
‘Stop what?’
‘This …’ Lizzie stamps her foot. A dull thud. ‘We’re all sad. Not just you. We all miss him.’
Then Ada says something so hard and sharp it stops Lizzie’s mouth.
‘But I’m not sad, you see. I’m glad.’
Clack go Lizzie’s teeth.
‘Glad?’ she asks. Perhaps Ada nods. ‘Glad Albert’s dead? How wicked. You don’t mean it.’ The woven walls of the storehouse shake and whisper as Ada is pushed against them. ‘How can you say that? How can you be glad?’
Now I cannot move.
‘I’m glad Albert’s gone,’ says Ada, each word careful clear. ‘I didn’t say I’m glad he’s dead.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t believe he is dead.’
My astonishment nearly uncovers me. Thought soaks into Lizzie’s head, like water into sand, unfirming her. A rush of questions, no time for answers, and her voice grows testing. ‘Where is he then? Is he hiding? Have you seen him? Is that where you’re going now? That’s why you never want me with you! Why you’re always trying to get away from me now.’
‘No, no. Shhh. Listen now. No. I haven’t seen him. And I didn’t say he was here. Of course I’d have told you if he was. Don’t you see what must have happened? He’s not on the island. He’s escaped! He’s gone.’
I pray that Mr Peacock does not send Billy to find what’s keeping me. Not now, I beg.
‘Escaped from who? From where?’
‘From us.’
26
‘FROM US?’ LIZZIE IS UNCONVINCED.
‘From all of us. From here.’ Ada hesitates. ‘From Pa.’
Lizzie can only laugh, but it’s not really laughter at all, and with every gasp her world feels less real. ‘Why would he want to leave us? We’re his family. You can’t escape family.’
Even as she says these words she doubts them.
‘It’s mostly Pa,’ said Ada. ‘Albert hates Pa.’
Lizzie flinches.
‘That’s wicked. To say a thing like that.’
‘Not as wicked as what Pa has done to him.’
Ada looks at her with a kind of contempt, which Lizzie doesn’t even notice because she has just realised something else.
‘You hate him too,’ she says, drawing away. ‘You do, don’t you? Your own father.’
Ada is unrepentant.
‘Of course I do. If only you knew, you’d hate him too.’
‘Stop it! Shut up! I never will. I love Pa, more than anyone or anything else in the world.’ Lizzie’s proud of her devotion. It’s how it should be. ‘I feel sorry for him. How dare you talk about him like that? He doesn’t deserve either of you.’
Ada shakes her head, sadly triumphant. ‘I knew you’d be like this.’
A fearful sensation sweeps through Lizzie, waves of heat and ice rushing from the roots of her hair all the way down her shaking legs, interrupting her outrage. Albert is alive. Somewhere, her brother is breathing, thinking, seeing, hoping.
‘Tell me, Ada.’
‘Oh, I should never have said anything.’ Ada retreats. ‘And I promised, I promised I wouldn’t.’ Her eyes dart here and there, as if she has brought a curse upon herself. What are its rules? When will it strike? ‘Albert begged me not to.’
Lizzie reaches out an appeasing hand but Ada shrugs her off. Lizzie persists, holding on tightly this time, because she needs to stop herself shaking. She has to tread carefully. Lizzie isn’t certain whether to tear or to tease the truth from Ada. Rip it out, fast, like a sea urchin spine, or untangle it knot by knot, picking each one apart, so the thread stays whole and good and usable again?
‘Oh, please don’t be like this. I won’t say anything. To anyone. I just don’t understand. Please tell me. Quickly! What do you mean?’
No revelation Ada can offer could be as terrible as this anticipation, this dread, this not knowing.
‘Ada … please?’
Ada hasn’t always hidden things from Lizzie. Only since they came to this island. In fact only since they moved to the North Bay. That was when she and Albert started taking themselves off without the others. Sneaking away, Lizzie used to think resentfully.
‘I can’t tell you,’ says Ada suddenly. ‘I can’t. I promised. You’ll tell Pa. I know you will.’
‘No, no, I won’t,’ Lizzie protests, pulling her closer, into a kind of embrace.
Ada shakes her head and cries: ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. I knew I shouldn’t.’ Snot strings in her hair and onto Lizzie’s pinafore, while Lizzie awkwardly rocks her, back and forth, back and forth, and blotches form beneath her sister’s skin. Sun and salt have blurred the outline of her lips. She needs to put on balm, thinks Lizzie, absently. They need to gather more kawakawa leaves for Ma to crush and mix with mutton-bird fat. The baby needs it too. She keeps rocking and soothing, mind and body strangely separate.
‘Shhh … shhhh … stop,’ she murmurs. ‘Someone will hear. M
a will come. We mustn’t upset her. Look, here’s your hanky. Wipe your face. Shhh.’
When Ada’s gulps have slowed to hiccups, Lizzie tries again.
‘Albert …’ she prods. ‘What did Albert not want to tell me?’
A long pause.
‘He couldn’t stay here. So we decided. Next ship that called, he’d beg for passage. Whether Pa liked it or not, and wherever it was going. Whatever happened, whoever came, he would find a way to escape.’
‘Oh, but Ada, how could you? How could you?’ she says. ‘You knew and you let us think he was dead.’
The gap between them widens.
‘I told you,’ she said. ‘I promised him I’d never tell.’
‘It was wrong of you to promise. You’ve betrayed us all.’
‘And I told you that you’d never understand. You’re just like Pa. That’s the trouble. And now I’ve betrayed Albert too.’
‘But you let us search, all those hours and days, and said nothing. You let Pa make his gravestone. The funeral service … Solomona … You’ve lied to everyone. How could you, Ada Peacock?’
‘Because I promised,’ Ada protests, weeping. ‘It broke my heart when he first told me he wanted to leave. It’s breaking my heart still. You’ve no idea how much I miss Albert.’
‘Ada, that’s not the same.’ Lizzie’s voice sharpens.
‘It feels the same.’
‘It’s not. And to think you let Ma believe … And all the rest of us. How terrible you are.’ On the verge of dragging her sister to confess to their mother, Lizzie is scared by the wild panic distorting Ada’s face.
‘Shhh, Ada. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I won’t say anything to Pa and Ma. Cross my heart …’ She finishes her oath with a finger sliced across her throat. ‘But only if you tell me everything …’
Ada seems to have decided to believe her. Maybe her cautious confession will bring relief.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Why? Why was he so desperate to go? And why now? Everything on the island is better than it’s ever been. We’re making so much progress.’ She’s bewildered, all the more when Ada’s shiftiness returns. Her fingers pluck at leaves.