The Clay Dreaming

by Ed Hillyer

  ‘This next part,’ she said, ‘has been slow going.’

  The manuscript had reverted to that same untutored hand from its very beginnings, rife with deletions and corrections.

  ‘Also, there is also a portion I did not read yesterday.’ Was it only yesterday? ‘A departure from the main narrative…similar to when he was attacked on the Hospital ward, you remember? His account,’ said Sarah, ‘appears to leap forward, to somewhere after 1810, presumably, when he is stranded back in England, the country at war with the Maori of New Zealand…’

  Sadly, this had been true for most of the century.

  Brippoki nodded, and appeared to follow. ‘Here it is, then,’ Sarah said.

  The petition of George Bruce to the Right Honourable, the Lords of Treasury of the Royal Navy:

  My Lords, necessity compels me to address this honourable assembly with the horrid event that awaits the Petitioner’s stay in this kingdom. That is, he shivers to say, my Lords, that sooner or later he shall stretch forth his hand with violence on the body of someone or other of the uncultivated people, for the constant assaults he receive from the lower class of people in the streets daily.

  Some calls him a ‘Man-Eater’. Another says he is ‘The Devil’. And others call him a traitor to his country. And this is because he don’t satisfy them all with the marks in his face.

  My Lords, he wishes to inform this honourable house of the Treasury that he is the same unhappy wretch that has been raving in the streets of London like a madman, all through the insults he has received from the lower class of people and which he daily and hourly meets with in the streets, go where he will, about the marks in his face.

  The original text had been corrected from ‘my’, and ‘the marks in my face’, into the third person.

  Therefore he trusts in God, that he will incline the hearts of the rulers of the United Kingdoms to take his miserable existence into their consideration, and states his wretched life to His Royal Highness so that a speedy removal may be ordered for him from this nation to any of His Britannic Majesty’s isles in the South Seas, where he did his duty in His Majesty’s Ships for seventeen years on discovery.

  My Lords, should it meet with the Petitioner’s Sovereign’s heart to grant him his request, the Petitioner wishes to exhort the grant of a small bit of land as a settler, or there to be returned to New Zealand where he should be ever ready to serve his King and country in anything requested of him on that island. O my Lords, should neither of those great favours be granted to the Petitioner, he, in the name of Christ Jesus our Holy Grand Master, humbly begs your pity for him and that my Lords will at least entreat His Royal Highness to send him out of this kingdom. With fortitude he will take his lot with the convicts by the first conveyance. For his life is a burden to him in this nation. O that the powerful God this day may strike the hearts of every one of the British Empire with affection and pity for one poor creature amongst millions, whose soul and body is wracked by the loss of a harness, and distant from his child as his self-infamy.

  The text at this point had virtually collapsed in on itself, requiring much puzzling to piece together any sense from it; unsurprising, perhaps, considering.

  Please my Lords, to observe, my Lords, he is a cripple by the loss of two fingers of his left hand, which he lost in His Majesty’s service, so that he cannot ship himself. Petitioner adds no more, but with eager hopes of happiness waits with patience for an answer. I will be in duty bound.

  All excepting the word ‘pray’, the remainder had been struck out, although she had been able to make out some of the deleted words; and the closure, ‘your humble petitioner, George Bruce.’

  Putting down his cup and saucer, Brippoki crooked the little finger of his left hand and tweaked the air, like the lobster in his pot, an action that seemed to amuse him.

  ‘Mal-gun,’ he said. ‘Mal-gun.’

  ‘Other stray words,’ said Sarah, ‘were scribbled in the margins…’ She bent forward to consult her own notes. ‘The solitary word “young”; intended perhaps to go with another, “child”?’ Although she had nothing on which to base their juxtaposition, the singular isolation suggested something inexpressibly sad.

  Brippoki instantly launched into a frenzy of urgent mumblings, whispered incantations repeated over and over. Sarah, in no mood for it, could only make out the phrase ‘man-eater’, and also, she thought, ‘young child’ – but that could just as easily have been her imagination.

  Brippoki clapped his hands rapidly together.

  ‘Very good!’ he said, his face expressing the complete opposite.

  A loose-leaf sheet fell from between the pages of her notebook to the floor: the official Navy list of ships on which Druce had served, forwarded by Dilkes. Bent forward to retrieve it, a sudden breeze stirring her hair caused Sarah to raise her head.

  Brippoki crouched within the frame of the open window. Limbs folded, muscles tensed, he struck various fleeting attitudes. His wide and staring eyes gave exaggerated looks, white orbs aglow within his black face. A few more tics and bobs, and the frame stood empty.

  Silent as a ghost he would arrive, and silent as a ghost he had departed.

  She could have said something. Sarah sat a while longer, then rose herself to shut the window.

  She returned to her notebook. Keen to attend Lubbock’s lecture, she had rushed that afternoon’s transcript, and events were not clear in her head. Even though she had lost the wayward Aborigine for an audience, Sarah decided to read the text back to herself.

  I then entered on board His Majesty’s Ship Porpoise, where I arrived in England, 1810. The war was hot, so that no account was took of me, nor New Zealand, at that time.

  I was sent from the Porpoise to the Thisbe, where I lost my two fingers.

  After my wounds was well, I was drafted to the Kangaroo, another of His Majesty’s Ships. From this ship I was invalided in 1812.

  I then went to Limehouse to lodge at a distant friend’s house, where I remained till my money was all gone. I then consulted what I should do for a living. I told my friend of my intent. He highly approved of it. I then went to His Majesty’s miniature-drawer and paid him four pound for drawing mine. My friend lent me money, and as soon as my portrait was down, my friend told me to take it to a man whom he knew to frame it. I asked the man how long he would be about it. He told me a week. I returned to my friend’s house and told him what time the picture would be done. All this was done in order for me to exhibit myself in the country to get money.

  But, O horrid to relate, better for me had the wild beast eat my flesh and drink my blood before ever I had entered that man’s house. For, while I was waiting for my portrait being framed, a man came and invited me to go with him to spend the evening. My friend knew the man and through his persuadings only I went with the stranger. His name was Tucker. Well shall I remember it to my death.

  I went with him to Bow, where he called for brandy hot. In a short time I was quite senseless, in which state I remained till the next morning, when Tucker’s apprentice boy told me to my face that I behaved so bad with him that night in bed that he was obliged to quit the bed and sleep with the servant girl. My friend and Tucker see with what horror and shame I was struck with at this dreadful report. I was motionless for some time. I could not utter a word. But Tucker, knowing the horrid state I was in the overnight when he put me to bed with the boy, and as there was no harm done but the attempt, told me to think nothing about it, promising me at the same time before my friend’s face it should not be mentioned. But my friend Wheatley told me I had better leave that neighbourhood for fear the boy should spread it. And, as I was senseless with liquor when it happened, so I could not prevent him was the report false. I took Wheatley’s advice and left his house that day.

  Men with men working that which is unseemly. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans hinted at such mysterious perversions, sufficient to intrigue.

  Sarah shook such thoughts from her head. She read on.

>   At my departure from Wheatley, he gave me a glass of rum and freely forgive me the trifle of money I owed him, and Tucker gave me every blessing his soul possessed. I took my departure from Limehouse and went to Dovert-street central London, where I had frequented at all opportunities with a woman of the town from the first hour I arrived in London.

  At the appointed time, I went for my portrait. The man told me my friend Wheatley had obtained it, by telling him I sent for it. I then was fully convinced of the most abominable scheme that they had laid for me at Limehouse, to get rid of me and to obtain my portrait, to enrich their selves by hanging it up in the parlour to create custom. It was a public house that Wheatley kept.

  In a short time after, I left Dovert-street and went to Lambeth, where I took lodgings. A few weeks after, I met a man in the street who asked me if I knew Duaterra, the New Zealander. I told him I did, and that I was the person who recommended him to Captain Moody on board the Santaner at New Zealand.

  The man then told me that he was gone out to New Zealand, through the recommendation of Dr Gilliam to the society in London. He also told me that if I went to the said Gilliam, he would do all lay in his power to send me out, as it was my wish to go. I immediately went to Dr Gilliam, who received me with great hope and joy of making me happy, not only in this world, but in that to come. He introduced me to Mr Lancaster and Mr Lancaster introduced me to Mr Fox and all the committee, where every attention was paid to me, till Wheatley my cruel friend, to acquit himself of the ingratitude with which he had used me, came to the school in my absence and told Mr Lancaster the same cruel lie he raise of me at Limehouse. At my return to the school, Mr Lancaster told me to go out and never to come there any more. I went to Dr Gilliam, who told me if I had been in my senses when it happened, he would that day enter an action against Wheatley. I took my leave of Mr Gilliam, fully to go and take the life of Wheatley that night. But on my return to my lodgings the parlour was full of gentlemen waiting for me, so that I did not leave their company till four o’clock in the morning. I told the gentlemen all my pedigree. They gave me money. This stopped me from taking the life of Wheatley.

  Soon after, I went to Chatham, where I was employed in the dockyard till Admiral Young came in the yard. I then entered with him. I was sent to His Majesty’s Ship Ceres. From her to the Namur and from her to the Tower Tender, where I remained till the war was over.

  This was not, then, a reference to war with New Zealand, as Sarah’s first assumption had been: she realised it must be the Napoleonic War with France.

  Ceres, written ‘Searces’, she would have taken for Circes, ‘Lemure’ the Lemur, not Namur (‘Namur at the Nore’). Without the list of shipping Dilkes Loveless had supplied, she would have been…well, quite lost.

  But what ‘committee’ did Druce speak of? What ‘society’? Was it the same as that providential company of gentlemen who, by their timely appearance, had prevented Druce from committing murder? Who were they? A dizzying array of persons came and went in this part of his Life; and, again, not the whole of the story. Why, for instance, should Wheatley act so vengefully towards him, when the swindle involving his portrait had already been successfully accomplished?

  Tucker and Wheatley, two more names to be added to the list – Tucker commonly written ‘Cuker’; and, like Luker before him, a fiend.

  The exchange with Dr Gilliam smacked of something Masonic. Sarah wished that she knew more about the activities of the mysterious Masons.

  The school committee, she guessed, must be that of the celebrated Borough-road School in Southwark, its founder Joseph Lancaster. Under the patronage of King George III, it had been Lancaster’s express wish that every poor child in the dominions be taught to read the Bible. ‘A place for everything,’ was his maxim, ‘and everything in its place.’

  If Joseph Lancaster, then, at a push, that would make Mr Fox the Quaker, Joseph Fox…

  Head swimming, Sarah felt a sense of coming to – awareness that she had fallen asleep in her chair, that she sat alone in a dark room, gone cold. She had been grinding her teeth. Bone curses and superstition; struggling to rise, she groaned out her stomach cramps and stretched. A long day, and too much attention paid to Sir John Lubbock’s theatrics…

  Still clutching hold of her notebook, Sarah took up the short candle in the other hand and made her way upstairs, pressing an ear to her father’s door; cursory ablutions, and then preparations made for bed.

  Unable to sleep for her whirring thoughts, and in spite of her desperate need, she sat propped, just like Lambert, on a bank of pillows. Firefly glow, the stars of a new constellation; at the end of the bed, reflected candlelight played across the brass inlay of the opened lid of the great sea-chest, filled with her mother’s things. Inspired by night-thoughts of Aetockoe, the princess of New Zealand, she had woken to rummage through it early that same morning – or was it the day before? No, not yet midnight. For many years the trove had not seen light of day. She retrieved many of the objects from within: the hairbrush inlaid with mother-of-pearl, reinstated on the dresser; the old nightdress her mother wore. Sarah had only been a girl when these had disappeared into the depths of the coffer. Now that she was a woman, full-grown, the dress fitted her perfectly – too perfectly. Other hand-me-downs hung from the cupboard and curtain-rail, unspoilt but in need of airing.

  More things, childhood memories, lay buried at the bottom of the chest, but Sarah had not yet touched them: never before could she have braved the day, too afraid of dissolving in tears at every moment. They were relics, preserved against the day…some vain hope, a day that would never come.

  Events did not sit well with her: nowhere was the fate of Aetockoe’s baby girl mentioned, or even pondered – if Druce even knew it. The Petition within the manuscript had read ‘distant from his child as his self nfome’.

  Elusive Druce; she thought both more and less of him as the result; and Lambert too, distant from his child as his self-infamy.

  The notebook lay open in her lap, ready to receive her thoughts. Her pen hovered, loaded with ink with which to darken a fresh, blank page. She wrote it out in note form.

  distant from child as self-infamy

  For an unlettered man, Druce was at times possessed of rare eloquence. What was that awkward phrase, that came just before?

  wracked by the Loss of A haness

  Sarah did her best to replicate the slant and loops of the hand she knew well from long hours in study of the manuscript.

  A harness? There had been a correction above it, but the ink was too faded to make it out. ‘Heinous’? That made no grammatical sense.

  Traces of a rubric – against the spider-scrawl of red ink, the blaze of white page was fearsome: her eyes watered from puzzling overlong.

  An ‘heiress’ perhaps; or ‘her highness’, meaning Aetockoe? No, he knew very well she was no real princess. ‘Wracked by the loss of an heiress, and distant from his child as his self-infamy.’

  His self-loathing was justified – an heiress, abandoned. But what, anyway, would have been her likely inheritance?

  Sarah’s eyes burned like twin coals in her head. All the crowding objects in the room appeared unstable, looming near then far: a thick mist, like smoke, and flying colours shot about before them. She knew it was her own fault, working each night in such low light conditions, all in short-sighted quest of economy. Too many years of close reading without spectacles had anyway begun to spoil her vision.

  The circle of light about her rapidly diminished, the bedside candle guttering. The darker it became, the brighter seemed the glare of the open page.

  She closed the book.

  Phut-phut-phut came that panting intake of oxygen, the whippoorwill call of drowning wick. As if on cue the room was plunged into darkness.

  The sound carried on. It came from downstairs.

  ‘…Father?’

  CHAPTER LI

  Friday the 19th of June, 1868

  BROKEN BONDS

  ‘It was
from out of the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil as two twins cleaving together leapt forth into the World.’

  ~ John Milton, Areopagitica

  It is another fine and clear day. Warri the wind shows his strength.

  Brippoki enters into the canal waters. He wears a crown of marsh grass, broadleaf frond beneath obscuring his face and beard. In one hand he carries his dilly-bag, empty, and in the other a tat-tat-ko – a very long, tapered rod, the last joint of which is a twig tied with witchi, bulrush-string, in the form of a deadly noose.

  Submerged up to his chin, he wades gently towards mallanbool, that stretch of water where he has previously planted the lengths of roosting-stick. Warri makes waves, disguising his approach. His liver shrivels. No diving-birds perch there.

  He floats a while in hope, then catches sight of an even better prospect wending its way downstream. It glides closer, a stately white swan. He must be swift and sure – a single blow from its beak might break his arm. Leaving go of his tat-tat-ko, he takes a deep breath and submerges. He means to seize the legs and pull the bird sharply under, snapping the powerful neck, breaking both wings for good measure.

  A boil of bubbles startles the swan. It takes immediate flight. Brippoki breaks surface in a thrash of limbs. Choking, spluttering, he is barely able to drag himself to the bank.

  Kau-we? Kumpu! Kuna! Wuhrm-numbool kuna! Whatever this shit is, it does not deserve the name of water!

  Only when the wind blows is the air not foul and choking. The smoke of a million fires finally clears, for the first time in days. A huge commercial gas works stands revealed, less than 500 paces north of Brippoki’s campsite.

  The sickly cloud and its smell have seeped into his bones, these last days. A fool to his senses, senses fouled, the willow, the stream, the rushes before him no longer seem quite natural. Collapsed within the ruins of his makeshift shelter, Brippoki shivers on a sickbed of leaves, weaker, and still weaker.