by Alison Booth
She went outside. The leaves of the gum trees by the stockyards were twisting in the gentle breeze, so that they appeared to shimmer in the slanting evening light, like slivers of glass reflecting the setting sun. A hard beauty, she’d thought at first. But now she recognised it for what it was: a different beauty.
‘You look sad,’ said Sarah, when she appeared a moment later.
‘No,’ Harriet said quickly. ‘I’m just a little homesick.’ Yet that was not what she meant at all. Faced with the unattainable, one simply made adjustments and carried on. Her life had been a series of chance events, but soon she would have to make a choice about how she would spend the time remaining to her.
‘Don’t be upset, Hattie.’ Sarah put an arm around her shoulders.
‘My eyes are as dry as the desert.’ Harriet took Sarah’s proffered handkerchief though and slipped it under the cuff of her sleeve. As she did so, she noticed for the first time the dress that Sarah was wearing. The fine white fabric was gathered under her bosom and fell in soft folds over the slight bump that was the baby. How lovely she was; how graceful. I’ve been blind not to notice this change before, she thought. Her sister had metamorphosed into a Madonna. ‘You look beautiful,’ she said and lightly touched the white fabric of the dress. ‘Where did this come from?’
‘I’ve been remaking it for the past week. It was one of my trousseau dresses. I told you earlier but you’ve been so preoccupied with gallivanting about recording nature that you took no notice.’
‘Recording nature was what it’s been. Science and not art, at least on my part.’
‘I was teasing, Hattie. I wasn’t implying it wasn’t art. You always seek out the worst in yourself.’
Sarah was right, Harriet thought. She did seek to identify the worst in her own character. But wasn’t it human nature to do so? Without that capacity, would men be unable to better themselves? She said, ‘I seek out the worst in everyone, Sarah. Isn’t that what you said to me at the cricket match in Palmerston?’
As she spoke, she wondered if Brady would ever reproach himself for what he’d done. She doubted it somehow. ‘Regret nothing’ would be his motto. Perhaps she might benefit from such a philosophy. She would carry on with her life, one day after the other, until they had all run through, and each day she would endeavour to regret nothing.
‘Did I really say that?’ Sarah gave Harriet a little hug. ‘Perhaps it’s true. You are very critical of people.’
‘Maybe I bring out the worst in people. Look at Brady!’
‘You couldn’t be blamed for that. I’m sorry I’ve upset you, Hattie. Being critical is good most of the time. You’re right to stand up against injustice and Henry thinks so too.’
The little glow of pleasure Harriet felt at this surprised her. Perhaps the distance between her and her brother-in-law had been partly her fault. For years she’d blamed him for taking Sarah away from her. For years she’d thought he wasn’t good enough for Sarah.
The dinner bell sounded for the second time. ‘We must go,’ Sarah said. ‘We don’t want to upset Ah Soy.’
Harriet said, ‘When we were growing up, I used to think you were so dreamy.’
‘I was.’
‘Now you’re so strong. I wonder if all that dreaminess was a way of escaping.’
‘Perhaps. What do you think I was escaping?’
‘The endless rationality, all that channelling. Never intentional of course, but it was there.’
‘Music is a wonderful escape but I never felt channelled. That’s because Father didn’t love me in the same way he loved you. In that I was lucky. I’m not an intellectual and I could get away from all that logic in my music. Henry understands that. Father didn’t.’
‘I’m different from Father,’ Harriet said. ‘I’ve learned that here.’
‘You’re logical like him. But you’re artistic too. You’re doubly gifted. But pulled in different directions, I think.’
‘Father believed painting was something people did when they couldn’t do anything more useful.’
‘Do you think so? Perhaps that’s true. But you don’t need to feel the same way, do you?’
‘You can’t help being influenced by your parents’ attitudes.’
Sarah smiled. ‘It’s certainly the case that you’ve always felt that being artistic isn’t enough. You think too much, Hattie. Just do. Just be who you are.’
‘I’m only just discovering who I am.’
‘Let me help you, Hattie. You’re fiercely intelligent. You’re analytical. You’re unfettered by stupid social conventions. And you’ve got an amazing gift for painting landscapes in a new way. A new way, did you hear me? You can be really proud of that. I certainly am.’
At that moment Ah Soy appeared carrying a tray, and put an end to their conversation.
* * *
At last dinner was over. Once the table had been cleared, Harriet set off on her evening walk to the boundary fence of the home paddock. Though there was no one in sight, the homestead felt crowded; the sound of raucous laughter and shouting from the stockmen’s quarters seemed strange after the peace during the men’s absence. Yet tonight she was glad of their loud voices; they kept at bay the nervousness she’d frequently felt since the encounter with Brady.
Away from the lamplight illuminating the homestead buildings, she trod carefully, avoiding tussocks of grass and occasional stones. When she was almost at the boundary fence she saw the gleam of moonlight reflecting from a white shirt, all she could immediately discern of the black fellow standing there.
‘I knew you’d come.’ As Mick turned to face her, his shirt seemed almost incandescent, and she could see the whites of his eyes and his teeth when he smiled. ‘You always do. But today you’re a little bit late.’
She stopped a couple of yards away from him and leaned on a fence post. ‘Ah Soy made a special effort because of Henry’s return. I couldn’t get away any earlier.’ She wanted to move closer, she wanted to touch him, to rest her head on his chest. But she stayed where she was, shoulder against the post.
‘When will you leave here?’ he said.
‘Soon, when Henry’s contract ends.’
‘Before the wet season. So nothing has changed.’
‘Everything has changed,’ she said sadly. ‘But we will leave after the troopers. They will believe Sarah and me rather than Brady.’
But if only it wouldn’t come to that, she thought. If only Brady would take off somewhere before then. Yet she feared there would still be reprisals. Someone would have to pay for Carruthers’ death.
‘I hope they’ll believe you. Where will you go?’
‘Down south with Sarah and Henry. Then I’ll have to decide what to do.’
‘Will you go back to your country?’
She hesitated. Probably she wouldn’t go back to England. She didn’t want to marry Charles, and Sarah and Henry would be staying in New South Wales. There was her work for the Women’s Franchise League, but that was not really enough to make her think of crossing the ocean again. She could work on those issues in Australia and she could work for Indigenous rights too. She could write articles, she could write letters, she could attend meetings, she could lobby politicians. Her place was here and not in the old country, that small, green, damp island all those thousands of miles away.
‘Where will you go, Harriet?’
‘I’ll stay in Australia.’
‘Where?’
‘Sydney, probably.’
‘You must continue painting, Harriet. You’re very good.’
She flushed with a pleasure that she wouldn’t have felt so keenly just a few weeks ago.
‘We see the same things but we paint differently,’ Mick continued. ‘You see the light; I see the structure.’
‘You must continue to
o, Mick.’
‘Yes, missus.’ It was the first time for days Mick had called her this. It was as if there were already a vast distance between them. After a moment, he added, ‘Can you keep my paintings?’
‘Of course I’ll keep them.’ There might be a noose around her neck so tight was her larynx. She coughed before saying, her voice unnaturally high, ‘I’ll look after them until you return.’
‘I’d like you to have them. A gift to keep.’
So she would never see him again. ‘Thank you, Mick. You couldn’t give me anything I’d like more.’
Although she couldn’t see the expression on his face, she heard the gentleness in his voice when he said, ‘Missus Hattie keepem goodfeller paintings.’
‘I’ll keep them safe. Would you like me to leave you the paints? Not for now, but later when things have settled down. You could hide them somewhere.’
‘No, you take them.’
She didn’t ask him why. It was his affair if he wanted to travel light through life, or if he would never paint again. But she couldn’t bear to think of the latter.
‘Anyway, they’re nearly all gone,’ he added.
She smiled. It seemed there was nothing more to say, but the evening was far from silent. From the men’s quarters came the sound of laughter. At the campsite a corroboree was starting. The didgeridoo mimicked bullfrogs, or perhaps it was kookaburras, she couldn’t decide which. The clap sticks beat out a slightly syncopated rhythm, a background to the story the didgeridoo was relating, and occasionally there was a bang, almost like a drum.
The narrative proceeded and life went on. The past few weeks had brought great happiness but now that was at an end, and she and Mick were teetering on the brink of something new.
But it was not something they would share.
‘Time for me to go,’ Harriet said at last. In the distance Sarah was calling her, Sarah who had been inclined to worry ever since the incident with Brady.
‘We’ll see each other again.’
‘Yes,’ she said, although she knew this wouldn’t happen.
‘Good night, Harriet.’
‘Good night, Mick.’ She reached up to kiss his lips. A butterfly touch before she turned away. Afraid to see his reaction. Afraid her kiss might be unwelcome.
Resolutely she made her way back to the homestead. Halfway across the paddock, stumbling over the uneven ground, she stopped and looked around. Mick was nowhere to be seen.
Above her stretched the Milky Way. The river of stars. The big mob stars that were Mick’s ancestors.
Chapter 38
Perhaps It Was the Cockatoos that Had Awoken Her
The sunlight, angling through the trees, cast long shadows on the red earth. In her nightdress and shawl, Harriet sat on the verandah and watched the morning metamorphose. Perhaps it was the cockatoos that had awoken her, screeching as they left their tree by the billabong and wheeled through the sky. The air was cool and she pulled her shawl more closely around her shoulders and tucked it into the neck of her nightdress.
Something caught her eye: a patch of bright red on the table. It was a red cloth wrapped around a small object that weighed down a stack of paper. On picking it up, she saw that it was one of Mick’s red kerchiefs, tied around a stone. Underneath were his pictures, about a dozen of them. This must mean that Mick was going today. She felt an arrow of sadness pierce her heart.
She picked up his painting of the gorge: he could reduce a scene to its essentials. She remembered the spears of light striking sparks from the quartz in the cliffs, and that brief hour when the world seemed ablaze with a brilliant pink glow.
Mick was going today; the place would be impossible without him. Possibly gone already, gone away at first light. She looked around but there was no sign of him, no sign of anyone apart from the plumes of smoke rising from the encampment.
She carried the paintings into her room and placed them on the chest of drawers. Soon she would have to work out how to store them, how to protect them.
* * *
Several evenings later, Harriet was sitting with Sarah and Henry at the verandah table when Bob rode up to the homestead carrying a bundle attached to the back of his saddle. Harriet assumed it was his swag until Bob dropped it on to the verandah table and unnrolled it, revealing a white cotton shirt, worn moleskin trousers and a pair of riding boots. Harriet’s chest constricted and she had trouble breathing. Sarah leaned towards her with a glass of water, and said, ‘Drink this, Hattie. You look as if you might faint.’ Harriet’s hand trembled so much she could not take it, and Sarah held it to her lips.
‘Where did you find these?’ Henry said to Bob.
‘Next to the lagoon eighteen miles down river. They were folded up at the campsite.’
‘Whose are they?’ Sarah said.
Henry shook out the trousers and retrieved from one of the pockets a red bandana of the sort worn by some of the stockmen. A red kerchief like the one wrapped around the stone weighing down Mick’s paintings, the kerchief that Harriet had put in her paint satchel two days before.
‘They’re Mick’s,’ Henry said. ‘And they’re not damaged. If they were found folded, I think we can assume that Mick just took them off and left them there. You know how neat he is. If you’re going walkabout you don’t need a stockman’s kit.’ Henry checked the pockets of the shirt and pulled out from one a piece of paper folded into four. He unfolded it and held it up for the others to see.
It was a pencil sketch of Port Darwin. The crude caricature that Harriet had given Mick on the day of the cricket match, the day he was dispatched by Henry to look after her at Palmerston.
‘It’s one of mine,’ Harriet said. ‘I gave it to him.’ She was beginning to feel hope. Mick must have simply abandoned his clothes as he travelled further from Dimbulah Downs. And he’d been carrying her drawing all this time. She looked away from the sketch and towards the billabong and blinked rapidly. The late afternoon glare was hurting her eyes and her relief made them water.
‘Oh,’ said Sarah. ‘It’s rougher than your usual.’
‘I did it hurriedly.’ Harriet averted her face so her sister wouldn’t see her expression. Mick had sent her a message. She would never have guessed that he might keep her drawing, that he might have been carrying it with him all this time. Although he’d discarded his clothes and with them the sketch, he must have known that they would be found; the lagoon was a regular resting place for the stockmen.
‘You didn’t find anything else with Mick’s clothes, Bob?’ Henry said.
‘No. Just what I brought you. He could be dead.’
‘Drowned or shot maybe,’ said Henry slowly. ‘That would be a most convenient story to tell the troopers if they come looking for him.’
I’ve misjudged Henry all this time, Harriet thought. He is kind, which I am not always, and he’s been a good friend to Mick. She knew, as Henry did, that Mick wouldn’t have drowned. While he was mission-educated, he hadn’t lost his Aboriginal culture and he knew how to look after himself. He was a good swimmer too; Harriet remembered that afternoon she’d seen Mick swimming in one of the rock pools while Sarah was telling her about Carruthers killing an Aborigine.
Mick would have floated downriver, leaving no tracks. He would head for the Kimberley and lie low there. ‘Drowning would be the better explanation,’ she said. ‘And rumour has it that the crocodiles have been terrible this year.’
After Bob left for the men’s quarters, Henry put the drawing of Port Darwin on top of the pile of clothing on the table and stared thoughtfully into the distance.
‘Perhaps Mick’s gone to Adelaide,’ Sarah said.
Henry put an arm around Sarah’s shoulders, whether to protect her or himself was unclear. ‘If Brady tells the troopers Mick speared Carruthers, there’s no harm in them thinking he’s dead.�
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‘Drowned,’ suggested Sarah. ‘I believe he was a poor swimmer.’
‘If anyone asks,’ Henry said, ‘we’ll tell them he’s vanished, presumed drowned. The water’s deep down from the lagoon where Bob found his clothes.’
Harriet picked up the dog-eared drawing and examined it. There was nowhere to conceal such an object when one wished to travel light. ‘I’ll keep this,’ she said. ‘Although it’s not very good.’ She folded it carefully and put it into her skirt pocket before heading off, rather earlier than usual, for her walk across the home paddock.
Chapter 39
‘If I Come Upon It Suddenly, I Might
Take It by Surprise’
Several days later, Harriet set up her easel behind the shed where the horse feed and tack were kept. There was a patch of shade there, cast by the shed and a pair of salmon gums, where she was unlikely to be interrupted. The homestead was peaceful; the only sounds were a few bird calls and Ah Soy whistling somewhere nearby. She put her oil paints and palette on a kerosene tin and sat on a folding stool that she’d taken from the verandah. To the top of the easel she pegged her sketches and notes from that first visit with Mick to the gorge. The moment when the sunlight struck the rock face and set the colours on fire had been obsessing her ever since she’d learned of Mick’s departure. It was like a mosquito bite that she’d find no relief from, unless she could scratch at it, although she knew she might bleed as a result.
Flexing her fingers, she shut her eyes. Once more she could see the gorge, in that fleeting hour when she’d witnessed the transformation of the rock face into colours and pulsing light. When she opened her eyes again, the image was still with her and she picked up one of her brushes. All morning her hand and her brushes worked as if divorced from her head. Almost autonomously, tiny daubs of paint appeared on the canvas: yellow ochre, pink, carmine, rose madder, burnt umber, purple, and mauve too, their incandescence reflected in the pool of water below the cliff and their colours in the pale sky above. The canvas became a luminous united whole that had a profound meaning that she couldn’t verbally articulate but could recognise as something far bigger than she.