The Clay Dreaming

by Ed Hillyer

  ‘What can I do?’ Epps replied. ‘That is a good question.’ He checked his pocket watch. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘I have a train to catch,’ he said, ‘up country.’

  The country; as soon as people made their money they would run to the country every chance they got, even if only for the weekend, admitting life in the city a slow poison. A touch of raw nature was the tincture to every ailment, the clear sky a balm.

  Epps could not bear the scorn in her face. He excused himself. ‘I must go,’ he said. ‘My own mother ails. She too is old.’

  ‘Old’, as if it were a disease. His mother, she knew, lived many hours away.

  ‘What if,’ said Sarah, calmly, ‘what if he should take another turn for the worse?’

  For an awful second Dr Epps looked genuinely doubtful.

  ‘…I will come and see you first thing Monday morning,’ he said. ‘You have my word. First thing. How’s that?’

  How was that? He was always there first thing on Mondays, that’s how it was!

  ‘We’ll see what…what progress he is making then,’ he said. Epps showed his watch as much as checked it again. ‘Really, must dash. Ten-thirty train.’

  ‘No treatment?’ she said. ‘A sleeping draught?’

  He considered a moment. ‘I don’t advise it. You’ll be staying with him, I take it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sarah felt suddenly guilty.

  ‘That is for the best,’ said Dr Epps. Running down a few steps, he paused, adding, ‘The best medicine, I mean.’

  Sarah remained on the landing. She listened to the sounds of Dr Epps moving about on the ground floor, shutting up the surgery, and then, finally, the front door. Only then did she turn.

  Lambert was quiet now. The doctor had not seen the worst of it.

  ‘Is that you?’ he asked. A small bubble burst on his lips. ‘My Angel.’

  She had sometimes been his Darling, but never his Angel. Her mother was the Angel in the House.

  He grasped her small, cold hand in his – gentle this time. ‘My Angel,’ he repeated.

  Lambert’s milky gaze wandered across her brow, her hair cut short.

  ‘It…it is me,’ she said. ‘Sarah.’

  ‘Sarah? Our little girl?’ His features glowed with wonder.

  The doorbell rang, insistent. Lambert was cooing and babbling. She wanted to wrest her hand from his, yet, at the same time, did not want to. It was probably one of the doctor’s nearsighted patients – except it might be the doctor. He must have forgotten something, or locked himself out.

  Running to the first floor landing, she saw the street-door letterbox open; a dark shape, bobbing beyond. Not Brippoki surely? In the way of Kings, he knew not how to go out or come in. The shadow moving aside, light through the front door letterbox held her frozen. An envelope popped through the slit, flip-flap. Why would the postman be ringing their bell? Sarah went down on tiptoe to pick up the letter lying on the mat. Addressed to her, it bore an Admiralty seal. She recognised the handwriting of the clerk, Dilkes Loveless.

  There was no stamp.

  Sarah made her way back up the stairs, slowly. The clerk had paid her a personal call? She sat by her father’s bedside, Lambert’s delirium only slight distraction.

  She opened up the letter – more documents. She had asked Dilkes to check for Druce under any likely alias. Logs from the Porpoise, unlike those for the Lady Nelson, made no specific mention of him; other than catalogued close links between ships’ personnel, there appeared to be little worthy of comment. The ship’s muster, however – duly transcribed by the clerk, in an entry dated May 1st, 1810 – nominated one ‘Jas. Druce’.

  Whence and whether –

  – the next word, smudged, was illegible –

  – or not: Sydney.

  Place and country where from: London.

  Age at time of entry on this ship: 30.

  His true age, falsified on deportation in 1792, would have been closer to 32 or 33. Druce’s declaring himself 12 years old as opposed to 15 was probably what had saved him from the gallows.

  Qualities: Ordy.

  Ordinary seaman? Dilkes Loveless rather presumed upon her knowledge of naval terminology.

  He had come to the house?

  Slop clothes supplied by Navy: 4…0…6.

  Druce was said to be a slight man. These figures possibly represented his height – a level of detail that helped to make him seem that little bit more real.

  Tobacco: 3/2.

  Comments: deserter from HM Armed –

  ‘Zinder’? Tender?

  – Zinder Lady Nelson.

  Signed, John Porteous – Commander. These are to certify the Principal Officers and Commissioners of his Majesty’s Navy that the Articles of War and the Abstracts of the Act of Parliament were read for the Ships Company Agreeable to the Printed Instructions.

  Dilkes noted that same individual mustered May through October of 1810. A final entry read:

  15 December 1810 (to) Thisby Paid off. 1.12.1+1.3.4. Boy List.

  ‘Jas.’ Short for James, or Joseph? Whether assumed or reclaimed, the change in name made sense if he was leaving the colony to escape debts incurred as ‘George Bruce’.

  Four foot six –

  Sarah replaced the papers in their envelope. There was no accompanying letter, as if her faithful correspondent had been fully expecting to speak to her himself.

  The return address should have been Mills & Wellman, the Receiving House at No.38. In her rush she must have put their home address, since that was written on his envelope. Dilkes Loveless had interpreted it an invitation to call on her.

  Heaven only knew what trouble she courted.

  Brippoki wishes an eye for an eye. Waanyarra? No, small bird is easier.

  His spirit shakes itself loose. He rises up above, looking down to see the top of his own head, far below. High up, now higher than the housetops, he ascends swallow-swift, to soar above the dust storm on a level with the clouds.

  Warri, the wind, whistles through wing tips. To the east sprouts a spinifex patch – sharp spike towers stabbing at the sky, as many spines as a cactus. Down south writhes the Serpent, choked on sail feathers caught in His gullet. Downcast looks see feet, scaled and clawed. Hidden sun glints off the metal moving parts of distant vehicles. Subtle rays fling faint shadows of larger birds onto the ground around. They cut in swathes and arcs, and circle-surround him – sharks about the small rowboats, taking them into the bay to board the Rangatira.

  Below, complex strands flow out from the Piebald Giant, squat and patient at their centre – capped in dark blue, brooding. Above, a black star crosses the sun. Waanyarra, flying crow, looking down on the swift swallow’s back. Crow-eye. Crow black.

  Black death plunges.

  Brippoki is returned, back beneath the shadow of St Paul, hard heart of London, ankle-deep in filth and the smell of the rookeries there. The air is thick and burning – the sky, stone, same as the city.

  A mistake returning to Pindi, where dead men lurk in the wings. Bird brought low by crow, Brippoki sinks lower, buried in the graveyard for lifetimes of pain. The city crushed dry, bone-brittle, works its way into his eyes, ears, nose and throat. It suffocates the skin. Fine particles fill his mouth and scorch his lungs, catching breath. It is more than the dust of the ground, and to be feared.

  He has gone for too long without sleep. His belly groans with hunger. Beyond exhaustion, only instinct now impels him. He neither knows nor cares where it is he walks – he walks to keep moving.

  The coin only grows heavier.

  CHAPTER LVI

  Saturday the 20th of June, 1868

  ARDENT SPIRITS

  ‘Nor kind nor coinage buys

  Aught above its rate.

  Fear, Craft, and Avarice

  Cannot rear a State.

  Out of dust to build

  What is more than dust…’

  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘Politics’

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nbsp; Sarah looked towards the window. The barest ray of light filtered through the filthy air. The city bled in from the outside – smoke, and a fly. What must it be, late morning?

  Lambert’s body shifted and grumbled. Sarah, unsure if he was awake or sleeping, sat close by his bedside, at the old preacher’s worn writing desk; surrounded with paperwork, she made fresh notes.

  Shortly after I shold have murdred my Poor father with A bras candelstick Wich I froo at him. but he puting his hand prevented it. I was put in to The workhous.

  Only a small child, and already Joseph Druce raged. The workhouse system was a notorious national scandal. Sarah imagined the effect of such appalling rigours at an impressionable age: character-forming, defining perhaps the wayward direction his future life would take.

  You wicked wrich for your disobedince to God you weill Wonder in the wildrness Like A Pilgrim Seeking for Reefouge and will find Non.

  Felled by a desperate fortune, Druce’s atonement for his crimes was to be a life of wandering. Under sentence of death, from the condemned cells at Newgate he was cast out of his country, not yet a man.

  When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return to my house whence I came out.

  And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished.

  Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first.

  Poor Joseph Druce, mired in self-pity and self-hatred: stigma writ large in his face, he was an object of revulsion, frustrated at every turn.

  Before the world began, God, that cannot lie, had promised the hope of life eternal. His immortal anger seemed to be all that survived.

  Sarah arched her spine, stiff and aching. She studied the tumbling air currents. Dust came from the manuscript, laid open on her lap; from any and all of the books piled up in every part of the room; from everything, and everyone – bleeding out from the inside, the pain of a hundred years more or less. Pain, bitterness, frustration, rage: Druce was an unquiet soul crying with a loud voice, screaming and shouting yet seeming never to be heard, not by any who cared to help or were empowered to do so. In the end his screams became incomprehensible – all of his mad cries and gesticulations, only able to stir minor particles in the air.

  ‘In the dust, I write’…

  Sarah shuddered against the awful silence. She listened harder. It was her father’s breath that stirred the dust. They were alone, just she and Lambert. Nothing else moved in the room except for motes, faintly visible, stirred by whatever currents and collisions there were – calamity and catastrophe occurring at an atomic level.

  The golden coin burning a hole in his dilly bag is spent. Knocking down his winnings, Brippoki swigs from an earthenware jug of ‘Miller’s EXOTIC NEAR Neat Imported Gin (medicinal)’. So pleased is he with his purchase that he leaves the shop without thinking to wait for change.

  The shopkeeper, having assured himself it is no jeton or brassy Cumberland Jack, is doubly happy to accept the George III guinea in payment. No longer legal tender but money of account, its value is fixed at 21 shillings.

  Liquid fire, or whatever it is, sold under the name of gin, London’s own demon, serves its purpose. It takes away Brippoki’s pains by giving him new ones. If nameless oblivion is to be his fate, he will drink to his departure beforehand.

  The church bells are ringing, one, two, another one. The sandstorm covers over everything. Although, overhead, it does seem a little lighter than before…

  He takes another swig. The Fire of God is healing, cleansing.

  Whose God, he cannot say.

  Brippoki clambers over the side of London Bridge, settling clumsily onto a broad stone parapet above one of the piers. Slugging gin, he drinks on an empty stomach. Small insects dither in the air above his crown. Specks of drifting ash settle on his skin. The sky shifts around and about. He is but a tiny black speck, sitting always at its centre.

  Gunyas out on the marsh set down roots, grow in size, tree and meadow disappearing. Buried bones harden earth. Soil turns to shit, wood to stone. London Bridge is rising and falling, rising, falling.

  He becomes dizzy with the unfolding spectacle – movement so rapid it approaches stillness, immobility so absolute it assumes blinding speed. Juddering steps and profound pulsations pound out the rhythms of the universe.

  The Dreaming.

  Breech-birthed in silence, from out of a boiling sea, the great bald head of the Piebald Giant rises. Stone fingers arrest the Great Serpent’s curling progress. A livid blot, a rash, creeps along spreading arterial veins, striking out in every direction. Flushed with darker streams, they flow with obscure energy.

  Brippoki answers the call of his Spirit Ancestors, wayfarers who planted first footsteps on the World. From the Creation comes the vision, and at the end is the vision fulfilled. Lifting up his arm, he pierces a large vein, drawing forth the salve of secondary holiness. His accelerated pulse makes the ritual blood spurt.

  The campfires spin as the planets wheel, a whirl of beams and shadows – cool Mityan thick with flesh and thin in hunger, then burning Emu’s egg. Mud-summer madness; at its height comes the storm, very grievous. A blinding flash of jagged lightning, crashing bolts of thunder, not from the skies but rock to rock, a storm such as there was none like it since man was on the earth.

  The storm is a shelter to him. Having created it, gladly he enters in. Brippoki rides it out, wind-walking.

  Envious Old Father, hidden among clouds. His lolling tongue spills sacred, secret laws. The Great Serpent shoots venom into his veins. Whipcrack reflexes jolt with electricity, stars shooting spears of light. The black sky stone falls to earth, cracking open the heaving clay.

  Flames surge from between his toes to run along the ground. Brush fire! Hot coals spill from under stairs, setting light to the many houses. Within the walls, the stones themselves cry out, and the timber, shrieking, answers. Rafters, ablaze, come crashing down. The conflagration razes. Explosions, screams of man and beast, stampede – the clashing of swords and the trampling of hooves.

  Wave after wave of fire engulfs the city in flame.

  The bells of a thousand churches ring in his ears, their tunes playing in reverse. Blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke, the light of the sun smothered turns to darkness. A blackened disc, outside edge blazing, Mityan moon hangs huge in a black sky – runs, the colour of blood.

  Brippoki collapses onto the superheated stone, a thorn-devil, skin stained red. Blue sulphuric acid, the elixir refined of souls dead and dying, bubbles from his torn vein.

  An eternal firestorm burns the skies scarlet, the horizon a bow of flame. The entire landscape is a furnace, and, ever-present at its core, the cool head of St Paul.

  Heads, severed, driven onto spikes, line the battlements of a great stone gate. Blood streams down the walls, soaking the ground, a foaming fountain at his feet. The seething river too flows red, totemic. It rushes onward, fierce and furious, towards the lip of a bottomless drop, a howling nothing.

  ‘Let the past,’ frothed Lambert, ‘speak to the present. The day is come…when the present shall speak to the future. Dies Irae!

  ‘“The great day of the LORD is near, it is near”,’ he warned. ‘“A day of wrath!”’

  Sarah had to use all her weight to force him back down on the bed.

  ‘All creation awakes,’ shouted Lambert, ‘ready to answer judgement! The noise…’

  ‘Father?’

  ‘The rattling wheels…the whip and prancing horses…chariots, jumping…’

  She had closed the window against the insidious air. She couldn’t do much about the noise. He grasped her roughly by the arms. His eyes, glassy though they stared directly, seemed to look right through her.

  ‘Look not so far away!’ she pleaded.

  ‘“They shall run to and fro in the city. They shall run upon the
wall, they shall climb up upon the houses. They shall enter in at the windows like a thief.”’

  ‘W-what?’

  ‘“He that dasheth in pieces is come up before thy face!”’

  Biblical quotes, she knew that – not any one passage, but from all over.

  ‘What did you – Owww!’ she cried.

  His grip tightened. Eyes bulging as they searched her face, he held her very close.

  ‘You’re hurting… Ungh…’ Sarah managed to wrench herself free, and took a step back.

  Lambert studied the ceiling, or perhaps the skies beyond, her presence already forgotten. ‘“Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision,”’ he wheedled, suddenly pathetic, ‘“for the day of the Lord is great, and who can abide it?”’

  Sarah was thinking to try and engage him in conversation, when he again grew agitated.

  ‘“WOE to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity! Woe to her that is filthy and polluted, to the oppressing city!”’

  Sarah tried for calm, but any word she uttered or move she made seemed only to incite him further.

  ‘“The spoil of the poor is in your houses”,’ cried Lambert. ‘“Bones for bricks. Blood, the cement. WOE to the bloody city!”’ he shouted. ‘“Woe unto the wicked! It shall be ill with you…for the reward of your hands…the reward of your hands shall be given you.”’

  The creases of his face became so deep, Sarah thought he would come apart.

  ‘“Testify!”’ he shouted. ‘“In the awful day of recompense, Repent! In sackcloth and ashes, Repent! Fasting, and with cries for mercy, Repent! Repent!”’

  The prophet of despair lifted up his voice and screeched; helpless, useless, hopeless, Sarah buried her head in her hands.