The Clay Dreaming

by Ed Hillyer

  ‘Buy, buy, buy, buy, BU-U-UY!’

  Insistent and repeated, their individual calls are those of birds in a forest.

  Back, then, to the manuscript. Having worked a little way further than the material thus far conveyed, Sarah was at a slight loss how best to proceed.

  The transcription itself had become easier. Someone else had worked alongside Bruce and his ‘secretary’, correcting spellings, inserting missing letters. And, once an amended spelling had been introduced – ‘police’, ‘was’, ‘thieving’ – it was invariably kept to: they learnt from the correction. She appreciated the will towards self-improvement.

  Conversely, the narrative began to unravel. Bruce’s flight from justice through the woods continued, but dissolved into a stupefying sort of delirium. His calls on God were many, and repeated.

  For Bruce, waking in the wilderness had seemed something akin to a religious experience, God found in ‘the lap of Nature’; exactly where her father best liked to commune with him. Emerson, a favourite of hers, wrote of an occult relation between man and the vegetable, one that allowed him to never feel alone in the universe. In the woods, where he was returned to reason and faith, Man was always a child – in the woods, and of the woods.

  In her own early childhood, Sarah had much enjoyed their family excursions to Epping Forest. She could not help but see the Australian Bush, through which Bruce made his ‘pilgrimage’, in much the same terms: leafy and oaken. Brippoki, she supposed, envisaged things somewhat differently, and entirely more accurately.

  She fancied they all of them trod a single path through that same wilderness. Bruce went first, plotting the route they must follow. On his trail, she would forge ahead, and then, for the sake of her importunate guest, backtrack and show him the way.

  It was only at rare times that they might happen to walk side-by-side.

  On one of several street corners opposite Brippoki, under the inn sign of the Crown, loiters a gang of three brawny lads. A mean fourteen or so years of age, they stand dressed in black frockcoats and caps. Thieves seldom work alone. Brippoki understands instinctively they are up to no good, and should be avoided.

  A coster’s boy strolls past, banging on a drum, an innovation to draw attention whilst saving of his voice.

  Brippoki turns.

  Queen-street. A man sits making flowers. His hands move faster than the eye can follow, reaching up, on occasion, to pluck dried grasses from the bundles strung overhead: crimson, yellow, blue, and brown. Birds sit stuffed and mounted, sealed in glass boxes stacked behind. Eyes unblinking, their frozen postures suggest not life, but sudden death.

  The loitering trio steps off the kerb. Without uttering a word, they move, as one, into the middle of the street, tailing their latest victim.

  Brippoki turns again.

  Little Earl-street. While her husband waves his fat arms about and parlays his pitch, a farmer’s wife crouches beneath the trestle table. She applies a fresh lick of paint to make rosy turkeys’ legs. A wolfish dog cleaves to her side.

  From Little White-Lion-street, an appleman in his stuff-coat swings out wide, side-pockets loaded. Doing brisk business, he turns to his young helper. ‘Hurry it up with them gawfs!’ he hisses. The boy redoubles his efforts, frantically rubbing at the red-skinned fruit to make it look brighter and feel softer. He drops them into a waiting basket, which the apple-man snatches up, burying the bad in amongst the good.

  ‘Hot eels, O! Eels O! Alive, alive O!’

  Brippoki looks down Great White-Lion-street, into the writhing depths of the tub. He estimates four dead eels to every live one. No odds – they are snatched up with a flourish and cooked before hungry customers may tell the difference.

  Little St Andrew’s-street. A haggard fellow trundles a knife-grinder, offering to sharpen up blades. Great St Andrew’s-street. Brippoki looks after where the thieves’ gang set off to, and shudders.

  He turns one final time.

  Humming gently to the tune of ‘King John’s Song’, Brippoki stares into Great Earl-street, the seventh of seven roads. Just close to the urinal, he sees the strangest apparition of all.

  Layered sleeves all dangling in ribbons, the vendor’s long coat frays into cobweb at collar, cuffs, and elbows, unravelling at its lower margins. He holds forth sheaves of caramel and honey colour, and mutters more than shouts in the way of his fellows, as if, unlike them, he would rather pass unnoticed.

  A rat pack of dirt-black boys scampers around the stinking urinal, leaping and snatching thick handfuls of air. Tilting at the tall spidery-man, they fling their arms out. Catching flies, they toss them at his fly-papered hat. If their aim is true, and one of the insects should stick, the warrigal caper and send up a mighty shout. Often as not they miss. Dead or alive, the flies lodge in the man’s thick hair and beard – the long and greasy threads of the miserable man-spider stuck fast with little black bodies, some struggling, mostly still.

  Wheresoever Brippoki looks, all is false and foolish. There is nothing but the frenzy of buying, of selling, of eating and drinking, of noisily fighting, and dying.

  ~

  The tendons of Sarah’s right hand ached, her fingers black with ink. She had transcribed as much of the manuscript as she could manage for one day.

  It had been hard going, compared to what had gone before. Her temples fairly throbbed from wading through a welter of prayer. The text’s urgent tempo had accelerated to a fever pitch almost unbearable, but at its height had come astonishing revelations. The secret was perhaps unwittingly revealed, its significance unclear. She could hardly wait to share the news with Brippoki.

  Giddily, and only a little guiltily, she moved around the book presses, looking for another location, suitably remote, in which to conceal the manuscript.

  Ah, perfect.

  Evening draws in. London’s West End lights up.

  Brippoki has gathered courage sufficient to quit Seven Dials, and drifts further south, then east. Brought to a pause consistently now, he very gradually traverses the length of Long Acre.

  Rouged cheek by sunken jowl rise the national theatres: the Alhambra Music Hall on Leicester-square; the Pavilion, the Royal Italian Opera, the Queen’s Theatre, and the Theatre Royal, Drury-lane. The beggars themselves grow more artful, singers and pavement artists, but also circus strongmen, acrobats, jugglers and conjurors. There isn’t a crossing-sweeper or shoeblack, it seems, who cannot turn his hand for an extra coin.

  An old blackfellow mutely holds aloft a sheet of newsprint: the paper, so oft-handled, is stained quite tan, almost falling to pieces. He wears a dark-coloured shooting coat of tweed. As with so many London faces, his eyes sink into hollows above cheekbones sharp as blades. When Brippoki approaches he shies away, to display in a new direction. The tragic old gentleman will not engage with anyone. He acts through old habit or instinct, a diehard having long ago lost the reason behind his actions.

  Back in the World, Brippoki would think nothing of him. Among the Men, those who can no longer fend for themselves are considered a burden. He searches through his inner pockets. He still carries a little of the walypela coin. Grasping the old fellow’s free hand, he turns it over, and presses his last shilling into the creased palm.

  Brippoki’s progress slows even further. At times he comes to a complete stop, letting the flow of commerce pass him by, or else to observe a peculiar character, an incident attracting his attention. Other times he stops for no reason, and does not care to look at anything in particular, but enters into a solitary trance. The noisome environment then fades from his sensation, and he, also, merges with it, to pass quite unnoticed – an individual spark, lost within a greater fire.

  CHAPTER XXX

  Friday the 5th of June, 1868

  UNTIMELY CREATURES

  ‘Who hears, who understands me, becomes mine – a possession for all time.’

  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘Friendship’

  ‘Blackpella bin big-pella worry-pella.’

 
Brippoki hung his head in apparent shame. He shook his locks in earnest.

  He said, ‘All sorry-pella, by cripes!’

  Sarah reached out and patted the arm of his chair. Something must have happened that day to inspire such humility: that, or else he knew just how to get around her.

  ‘I’m the one who should be sorry, Bripumyarrimin,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realise the Museum would disturb you. Where did you go?’

  Brippoki looked up and grinned, winningly.

  ‘You say my name, miss,’ he said. ‘You say my name just right!’

  He began to hum a distracted tune.

  Sarah noticed more white in his eyes than usual, an effect perhaps of the dim light. In spite of their conversation – he was suddenly talkative – Brippoki only seemed to grow more faint and distant.

  ‘I walk him road, longa town,’ he paused to say. ‘I walk and walk. Now it has tired me.’

  He spoke, as always, with feeling. Brippoki shook his head some more, his staring eyes never lifting from the floor.

  They sat in silence for a while. Sarah hesitated to begin with her reading, in case he might open up to her a little. She also felt nervous of tackling some of the headier passages to come.

  ‘It a strange thing,’ said Brippoki, perking up. ‘Saw a man-spider.’

  Sarah showed interest.

  He raised an arm high above his head, his eyes following, even to the point of pulling him up out of his seat. ‘Tall man, him hat,’ he said. ‘Tall hat, like chimeney-spout. Smokin’ too!’

  Sarah smiled a dark and doubtful smile. He began to waft his other hand around and behind the arm that was raised, as if spinning a cocoon of some diaphanous material.

  ‘Sticky smoke,’ he insisted. With a finger, he stabbed into it here and there, up and down. ‘Black dots,’ he said. ‘Liket sticky bun!’ Forearm held out at a right angle, he mimicked exactly the croak of a street-vendor. ‘Three sheets! Three sheets!’ he said. ‘Catch’m live!’

  Brippoki flopped back down into his chair.

  ‘Bloody mad mob, dem pellas,’ he said. ‘Head spin so much, me think him broken. No more belonga me.’

  Sarah laughed. ‘I know how you feel,’ she said. ‘I felt much the same, the day after our trip to Greenwich.’

  ‘“Grennidge”,’ Brippoki repeated. He looked thoughtful.

  ‘Some tea,’ she said, ‘might revive you.’

  Sarah excused herself.

  In the Guardian’s absence, Brippoki further examines her trappings.

  The greater part of the chamber is in darkness – as on previous nights, Thara has only troubled to light a single lamp – but Brippoki’s night-vision is keen.

  Somewhat mystified, he considers a tiered stand or ‘whatnot’, the walnut legs spiral-turned. Each of its three shelves is topped with a delicate ornament. The same ritual figurines as run along the mantel also cram a side cabinet; he sidles up to the nearside wall, peering behind it.

  Crouched and quiet, a spider patiently waits in his white thread-kingdom.

  Sarah returned, bearing a full tray, to make ready for their nightly tea ceremony. Her notebooks were, she noted, untouched. Had it been she alone in the room, and their positions reversed, she would surely have sneaked a look. Brippoki appeared not to have gone near them.

  ‘You like it with milk, that’s right,’ Sarah stated, ‘and plenty of sugar.’

  She pushed the silver bowl forward.

  ‘Bunjil,’ he said. ‘Your pappa…him bery worry-pella.’

  Her father, he said, afraid? Sarah didn’t know why Brippoki was right: only that he was.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ she asked. She steadied the sieve, and tilted the teapot, pouring a cup for herself.

  Brippoki looked around the room at great length, and regarded her a little insolently. He said, simply, ‘You would not understand.’

  Sarah returned the pot to the tray with a testy bump. Reaching for a spoon, she suddenly dropped it. The teaspoon clattered across the tray.

  Brippoki knew about her father?!

  Sarah flinched, checked herself, and then mopped up the spillage. She acted as if nothing had happened. She merely said, ‘Let’s see how our “wicked wretch” is doing, shall we?’

  Abruptly she took up her notebook, and held it open in her lap. She scanned down the page, all afluster.

  ‘Last we left off, Bruce and his luckless companions, Farr and Meredith, were betrayed by a man named Luker. They narrowly escaped capture, and were being pursued by a large group of about 30 men…’

  ‘Untimely creatures,’ Brippoki recalled.

  ‘Just so,’ said Sarah. ‘The pitiable “untimely creatures” that were hunted are now the hunters.’

  She cleared her throat and started to read.

  But oh, my dear readers, only think on the words of our Blessed Saviour Lord Jesus Christ: ‘O ye men of faith, call on me in the time of your trouble and I will deliver you out of your woe.’

  Quite sensible of that horrid state of life that my sins had plunged me into, from the very bottom of my soul did I cry unto the Blessed Lord for my deliverance. My prayer was as follows:

  – O most Merciful God who made and created me. You know that I know nothing of Thy sacred words, nor for what end I was made. Therefore, Gracious God, I hope you will pardon me this morning for calling on You for mercy. What I now speak comes from the bottom of my soul, with the most liveliest faith and hope that ever a poor muck-worm like me possessed.

  – Behold them wicked men in the valleys beneath this mountain, how eager they seek my life. And they have brought with them dogs to devour my flesh.

  – O Lord, give not my soul to the Serpent nor suffer him to steal it by night. I call on Thou to raise from the earth a poisonous smell to the nostrils of those dogs which at this moment are tracing my footsteps to devour me. Suffer them not to follow me this day. Neither suffer those wicked men to behold me with their eyes, for if they do, Thou knowest they will separate my poor soul from the body. Then she must sink, for my sins are so heavy that my poor soul would not be able to bear them up.

  – O spare me, that I may repent me of my wickedness and save my soul. Amen.

  ‘Amen,’ said Brippoki.

  The reader will soon know that God surely heard my prayer that morning, my life was so closely pursued. I watched them till they went into the house of Luker, as I suppose to refresh themselves, after a tiger’s hunt after my life. I then rose on a most careful manner, and went from the high hill into the woods.

  You will understand that my father and mother used to quarrel about religion. My father was a man who followed the Church of England, and my mother used to go to what the people call Methodist meeting. This used to cause a dispute, for my mother would never give in to my father, but that both church and meeting was one by the will of God to Jesus Christ.

  In the weekdays he would come home drunk and call her an Old Methodist Dog. Then she, on a Sunday, would what we call ‘roast’ him.

  You shall hear what funny discourse they used to have about me, on a Sunday morning, when my father used to take me to church. For they both loved me to excess. And you may depend upon it, that my father and mother loved God better then ever they did their children, though they loved them dear enough.

  Sarah turned the page a little too briskly.

  Before my mother would let me go she would roast the old man a bit, in this manner:

  – Ah, you are very Godly today. You forget how you come home every night in the week drunk, and call me an Old Methodist Dog. So now, Mister Godly Man, today I shall call you an Old Church Lion. So, Old Church Lion, don’t think that you are going to take my favourite child with you to that playhouse of yours, which you know by the behaviour of the people is not much better. Have I not been there myself, and seen the actions of the people? There is one nodding, and another winking, and all of them looking round about them, and laughing and admiring the different dresses. And there is another thing. Don’t you k
now that God will have nothing to do with you, Old Lion, without you are introduced to him by his Son Jesus Christ?

  But my opinion is that God is well pleased with all people that go to church and meeting, for it is a good sign that they are jealous one of another who loves God best. I assure you that my father was devotedly fond of me as well as my mother. God bless them both, and I hope I shall meet their souls in Heaven, together with all my brothers and sisters, friends and relations, for I don’t expect to see them any more on Earth.

  Sarah took up her pen to make an adjustment, and in so doing missed how severely moved Brippoki was by the expression of these most recent sentiments.

  I have run a long way out of our discourse about my father and mother, but this is a way that I learnt, by my poor old mother dragging me every night in the week from one meeting to another to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ preached.

  I never was taught anything by man on Earth, only what my poor old Methodist mother would tell me in her wrath. That is, God would punish me for my wickedness to my father, and her, my mother. For by rebelling against my father and mother I also rebelled against God. But, if I would pray in the midnight when I woke out of my sleep, and in the morning and at night when I went to bed, God would forgive me for all my sins and wickedness. And not only that, but by constant prayer night and day, that in all times of my trouble my blessed Redeemer would take me out of the hands of wicked men every time they sought my life. And I am sure those words are true.

  For when we were in Luker’s house, we had no thought of going to Mrs Peck’s house. Farr said how dangerous it was going, so many people venturing our lives. But still I would go. This was that Great and Merciful Jehovah, for my poor mother’s sake, who so constantly prayed to His Blessed Son Jesus Christ.