Birrung the Secret Friend

by French, Jackie

  I knew we hadn’t. I just wanted something to say, in case I looked awkward after staring at Birrung with no clothes on. After-church school was just for Sundays, when no one worked and had free time to learn to read and write and do their sums. Sometimes there were more than fifty people with me and Elsie, writing on one of Mr Johnson’s slates or with Mrs Johnson helping them read the easy bits in one of their books.

  ‘Today is a holiday,’ said Mr Johnson. ‘A true “holy” day. Did you know that is where the word “holiday” comes from? No one has work today. No hangings,’ Mr Johnson added softly. Mr Johnson was always quiet when he came back from praying with the men going to be hanged. ‘A day of rest for all of us.’

  Except you’ve had to give a sermon, I thought. Mr Johnson really did like praying and stuff, but it was hard work giving one of his sermons, harder even than digging in the garden. He had to shout loud enough for more than a thousand people to hear him out of doors, leading the hymns and things.

  And it wasn’t a day of rest for the convict on lookout on the headland, who had to make sure a supply ship didn’t go straight past our harbour to Botany Bay, which is where the people back in England thought we were. If that ship went to Botany Bay and found no trace of a settlement, they’d think we were all dead and vanished and sail away again.

  And it wasn’t a day of rest for Sally, because she’d been cooking . . .

  I cheered up at that. I’d helped Sally pluck two young roosters, and helped Mrs Johnson stir the plum pudding, except it didn’t have plums or dried fruit in it, but grated carrots from our garden, and berries Birrung had found, and honey that dripped from the honeycomb Birrung had brought back. Christmas dinner! Even at the governor’s table they wouldn’t eat finer than us.

  It was more than fine. Sally cooked Mrs Johnson’s recipes real well, for all she was a convict. Sally said it had been the drink that made her go bad back in England. There wasn’t much alcohol left in the colony — and none for the likes of Sally — so she didn’t have a chance to be bad again.

  Oh, that dinner. The two roosters stuffed with damper crumbs and herbs from the garden, basted on a spit over the fire. Peeled potatoes roasted in pig fat in the Dutch oven and left to keep warm on the hearth. I’d never had potatoes all crisp like that before. Radishes and lettuces and cucumbers with goat’s-cheese dressing, and peas and beans from the garden, and no one made a joke about my name as we ate them. Mrs Johnson told funny stories about her family growing up, and Mr Johnson said how when he was eight years old ‘someone’ let a mouse go while everyone was singing a hymn and all the women screamed and jumped up on the pews. I tried to think of any funny things in prison or on the ship, but there weren’t none. So I told them about how the first time Ma went behind a bush here in New South Wales and lifted up her skirts a bird laughed at her and she got angry, thinking a convict bloke had seen her bare bottom.

  ‘You show yourself, you blaggard!’ she’d yelled, while above the bird laughed and laughed, and me too.

  ‘We don’t talk of things like that at the table,’ said Mrs Johnson. But she was smiling too.

  After that we ate the plum pudding, with goat’s-milk custard all yellow from the eggs, and sarsaparilla tea to drink, made from the pink flowers up on the hill that Mrs Johnson had picked and dried. It was just the seven of us. The convict men only ate dinner with us when they were working.

  ‘And a surprise for you all,’ said Mr Johnson, as Mrs Johnson poured out the tea.

  He smiled as he went out to the storeroom where I slept. I wondered what it could be. It couldn’t be big, or I’d have seen it.

  It was a small sack, just like the others we hung from the ceiling to stop the rats eating the stuff inside. Mr Johnson opened the sack over by the bench. He poured some small dark red things into a bowl, and then put something orange on a plate with a knife. He carried them over to us.

  Mr Dawes stared. ‘Cherries! And a tangerine!’

  I looked at them curiously. I’d heard of cherries and tangerines, but never eaten any.

  ‘The first fruits of our orchard,’ Mr Johnson said proudly. ‘It was worth bringing good-sized trees from the Cape.’ The tangerine was a bit withered — he’d kept it especially for Christmas. He cut each of us a thin slice. It was funny, sweet and sour at the same time, but I’d have liked to eat more. We got eight cherries each, and they were even better.

  I looked at the table with its cloth and empty platters and the rooster bones — I’d chew those after everyone else had gone to bed, if Sally didn’t beat me to them — and thought about my happy belly and Elsie safe here next to me, not smiling but not looking scared either, and most of all Birrung, so pretty and smiling in her blue and white dress, her hair still wet from the sea.

  I thought: Who would ever believe that Barney Bean would be sitting and laughing with gentlefolk?

  And when Mr Johnson bowed his head to give thanks again for the bounty God had given us, I think I almost understood.

  CHAPTER 7

  My Brilliant Idea

  Mr Johnson gave me one of his books to read after Christmas dinner. He had thousands of books, not just the ones on the shelves inside, but kept in sea chests in the shed so they didn’t get wet when the roof leaked. He had brought enough books from England for every convict to borrow six at once, but he had to teach the convicts to read first.

  I looked at the book. I couldn’t even read the first word. I pointed to it.

  Mr Johnson smiled. ‘Dissuasions from Stealing.’

  ‘I ain’t a thief!’ I said. I waited for Mr Johnson to say that Ma had been one — just about every convict here had been a thief. Truth is, I’d been too young when Ma was put in prison to know if she’d stolen anything or not. I hadn’t asked either. All I knew was that Ma had done her best to keep me fed.

  He didn’t. He gave me a book about not swearing instead. That sounded more interesting — there might have been swear words I didn’t know — but it was too hard for me to read. I pretended though, in case he sent me to fetch water for Sally and Elsie to wash the plates and pots, just enjoying sitting there, glancing up at Mrs Johnson and Birrung in her pretty dress reading their books too.

  That’s when I got the idea.

  I waited till it was growing dark and everyone went to bed. It didn’t get dark till late, being midsummer, so I had a long while to wait. Mrs Johnson and Sally and Elsie sewed after supper, and Mr Johnson went down to the hospital to take the sick people the remains of our plum pudding. I’d wanted it for breakfast, but then I thought about Mr Johnson telling us to be grateful for all our good things every time he said grace before a meal, and I tried to be glad I hadn’t had my foot chopped off or my head bashed in, like the folks in hospital had.

  Mr Johnson came back around the cove just as it was getting dark. He said the evening prayers. We went to bed except I didn’t get undressed. I snuck around, next to the lean-to where Elsie slept with Sally and Birrung. Soon as I heard Sally’s snores, I tapped on the door.

  Footsteps sounded on the dirt floor. Elsie peered out, in her petticoat. I beckoned her out onto the grass. She sat cross-legged, with her hands in her lap, and looked at me curiously.

  I handed her the slate Mr Johnson had lent me to practise writing on.

  That was my brilliant idea. Elsie was as good at her letters as Birrung. ‘How about you write your name?’

  Elsie stared at me. She picked up the chalk and wrote something.

  Excitement prickled me like the thorns in the summer grass. I waited till she finished and handed me the slate, then looked down.

  ‘E . . . l . . . s . . . i . . . e.’ I shook my head. ‘I meant write down your real name.’

  Elsie pointed to the word on the slate.

  ‘I know that’s your name now. But what was it afore I met you?’

  Elsie pointed to the word on the slate again. I looked at her, frustrated. Did she mean that her name really had been Elsie all along? I’d met two other Elsies, and three
Sallys too, so I supposed it might have been.

  ‘What about your last name?’

  Elsie took back the slate.

  Ah, I thought. Now we were getting somewhere. If she wrote Smith or Ramsbottom, then I could ask Mr Johnson to look up the colony records to see who her ma was, or her pa if he’d been a soldier or one of the sailors who had brought the ships here, then sailed off.

  Elsie wrote slowly on the slate. She gave me a funny look, and handed the slate back to me.

  It took me a bit to work out what it meant. Like I said, Elsie was better than me at her letters.

  ‘Noname,’ I read out loud. Elsie had written it like it was all one word, like ‘Noname’ really might have been her last name.

  Except no one was called Noname.

  I looked back at Elsie. She crossed her arms at me, and put her chin out. I knew that look. I wasn’t going to get no other name than that from her. Elsie was stubborn. But so was I. If she wouldn’t tell me her real name, then I’d ask other questions.

  I reckoned I had to keep them simple, so she could write yes or no. That way I’d be able to read them too.

  ‘Are you a convict?’

  Elsie’s writing was slow and careful. No.

  ‘Is your pa a soldier?’

  This time she shook her head, just like she had when I first found her. I didn’t know if she was saying, ‘No, he’s not a soldier,’ or, ‘I’m not going to answer,’ or even, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Is he a sailor?’

  Elsie stared at me in the starlight. She seemed to think. She picked up the slate again and scratched on it. My heart began to beat faster. This was longer than yes or no. It had to be a proper answer! Maybe even her pa’s name, and the name of his ship! Because every single person in New South Wales was a convict or a soldier or a sailor, or the son or daughter of one, except for Mr and Mrs Johnson. Even the governor and surgeon worked for the navy. The only other people were the Indians. Elsie was tanned from the sun — we all were. But you only had to glance at her to know she wasn’t an Indian.

  She handed me the slate again. I concentrated, making out the words. Then my excitement drained away, like the custard from the jug at dinnertime. She’d written Is Birrung prettier than me?

  I looked at her, irritated. We’d been through a lot together, Elsie and me. I had a right to know who she was! And instead of telling me now we had a chance, she asked a stupid question like that.

  ‘Of course Birrung is prettier than you,’ I said.

  Elsie scrambled to her feet, glaring down at me.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. ‘I’m only trying to find out —’

  I stopped as Elsie stamped into the lean-to. She slammed the door. Sally asked sleepily, ‘What is it?’ Then I heard her snores again.

  I sat there on the ground, trying to work out why Elsie was angry. Of course Birrung was prettier than Elsie. Birrung was older, taller. Elsie was just a little girl. Maybe when Elsie got a bit fatter and taller and grown up, she’d be pretty . . .

  Above me the big bats flapped past, one lot and then another, like the waves in the harbour. There’d been clouds of bats each night ever since it had got hot and dry in spring. No one knew where they came from, but now they hung upside down in the native fig trees in the gullies, then flew off at night.

  And then I thought: Maybe Birrung knows where the bats came from. Birrung knows where to find berries. I’ve never seen fingers move as quickly as hers when she was making a grass basket. I bet she knows where the bats come from too, and where they go each night.

  But I never asked her.

  Summer grew hotter, so hot even the flies rested till the cool south wind blew in each afternoon, bringing storms most weeks, with enough rain so I didn’t have to carry water to the vegetables.

  I had to work hard even so. We all did, at Mr Johnson’s anyway, though most in the colony were still as lazy as before, the soldiers and the convicts too, just eating their rations from the storehouse and grumbling.

  Still no ship had arrived from England, even though we’d been here two years. Had they sunk? Or had everyone in England forgotten they’d sent us here, across the world?

  Mr Johnson’s household wasn’t going to starve, not with the three big gardens and his hens hatching so many chickens we had to build another pen to keep them safely locked up at night away from the native dogs. I brought the goats and sheep into a pen each night too. But rations got reduced again and the convicts’ working hours too, so they could spend the extra time working in their own gardens to grow more food.

  Except most of them didn’t. They just spent more time trying to steal from others.

  But we had a harvest to bring in. The men assigned to Mr Johnson were working less, so he and I had to work all the more. The governor also sent Mr Johnson out twice a week to supervise the convict fishermen, and Mr Johnson had his other work. He went down to Rose Hill every week now too to give a sermon there and pray with people, a whole day to get there and a day to come back.

  So it was mostly me, picking melons and cucumbers and stripping corncobs from the stalk.

  Then Birrung started to help me, even though she was a girl, then Elsie — she was almost as strong as Birrung now with all the good feeding — and Mrs Johnson picked the runner beans with us, the ones with the pink and black seeds for drying to eat in winter, though Mrs Johnson was what Sally called ‘delicate’ right now, her baby so close to being born she had to wear her apron loose, and got giddy sometimes when the sun sucked all the coolness from the world.

  I wore one of Mr Johnson’s hats, and Elsie wore an old hat of Mrs Johnson’s, but Birrung worked with a bare head, and laughed when me and Elsie’s skin peeled in long strips after we got sunburnt, like bark peeling off the native trees.

  Mr and Mrs Johnson never said they were worried about no ship arriving, or even about the baby coming. But I knew they must be. Just about all the women I knew who’d had a baby in prison died, or their baby did. I knew lots of women didn’t die or none of us would be here. But you could see Mr Johnson didn’t like leaving Mrs Johnson now, even just to visit the sick.

  And still no ship came.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Screams in the Night

  March 1790

  The scream woke me.

  It was a hot night. My shirt stuck to my back on my bed. The damp cabbage-tree walls seemed to breathe out moisture. There’d been a storm and the whole building was still damp.

  I ran out of my storeroom lean-to into the house. Birrung looked out of the other lean-to, with Elsie behind her. Sally pushed past them, holding up a slush lamp, a wick floating in sheep fat. ‘You go back to sleep,’ she told us.

  The scream came again.

  Mr Johnson appeared at the bedroom door, holding a candlestick. He looked scared. I hadn’t ever seen Mr Johnson scared like that. ‘It’s Mrs Johnson,’ he began.

  ‘Better boil some water, sir,’ said Sally. She looked at me. ‘You help him. You two,’ she repeated to Elsie and Birrung, ‘go back to sleep.’

  ‘No,’ said Birrung. ‘I help.’

  Mr Johnson hesitated.

  Sally pushed Birrung away. ‘This is no place for you, girl. Nor Elsie neither.’ She went into the Johnsons’ bedroom, the slush lamp in her hand.

  ‘Do as you’re told,’ said Mr Johnson quietly to Birrung.

  ‘I stay,’ said Birrung softly. Elsie took her hand and just stood there too.

  Mr Johnson didn’t say anything more. He just put sticks on the fire. The coals flared. I took the candle and went outside to get a bucket of water from the well. When I came back, Elsie and Birrung sat by the fire. Elsie looked frightened. Mr Johnson was praying silently. Birrung’s face was a shadow in the firelight.

  I put the candle down and poured the water into the pot and hung it in the fireplace. Mrs Johnson groaned in the bedroom, then she screamed again.

  ‘Go to bed,’ I told Elsie. She shook her head. Like I said, Elsie was stubborn.r />
  ‘Amen,’ said Mr Johnson. He looked up from his prayer. ‘God protect my wife,’ he whispered. ‘When we first landed, we had a son. He was born dead. So small he was. So still. Mrs Johnson was ill. I thought she might die too. I would be alone in a strange land . . .’

  Another scream came from the bedroom.

  ‘No,’ said Birrung. She stood up. She said more, in her own language, like a song from the black and white birds that sang in the mornings. She took the candle and went out to her lean-to bedroom. I thought she had decided to obey and go back to bed. But she returned with the grass basket she kept by her bed. Sally had told me there was a chip of stone in there and some dried toadstools and a few dried leaves. Rubbish things, said Sally, but Birrung wouldn’t throw them away.

  Now Birrung took the basket into Mrs Johnson’s bedroom.

  Mrs Johnson cried out again. I heard Sally’s voice, angry. I heard Birrung, stern with lots of words, some I could understand and unclear ones too. I had never heard Birrung talk like that, not laughing at all.

  The water steamed in the pot. Mr Johnson prayed again, quiet, by the fire. I wondered if I should pray as well. But why would God answer me if He didn’t answer Mr Johnson?

  I clasped my hands and shut my eyes anyway. Please, God, I prayed. Let Mr Johnson and Mrs Johnson have a baby who stays alive. They have been father and mother to us all. Give them a baby now.

  A sweet smoke smell came from the bedroom. I realised I hadn’t heard Mrs Johnson cry out for a while.

  Was she all right? Was she . . . dead? I thought of the woman who’d died on the ship, her body thrown overboard and her dead baby too. Made me wonder how the world still had people in it, so many women and their babies dying.

  ‘Amen,’ I whispered hurriedly, like Mr Johnson had taught me to when I came to the end of a prayer. I looked at his face, tight and white in the firelight.

  Elsie put her hand in mine. I held it, hard. It was almost like we had been last year, the two of us close for comfort.