Nanberry

by Jackie French

  ‘Will you do one thing for me?’ she asked abruptly. ‘One thing only. It’s all I ask.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Tell the fine lady that you marry that the convict woman loved you. Can you tell her that?’

  ‘I’ll tell her. I’ll tell her that I loved the convict woman too. I’ll tell her that Andrew is the son of my heart, my eldest son, no matter how many children I have in wedlock. He will never be less than that. I will have no woman marry me who cannot accept those words.’

  It had to be enough. All that she would get. She let herself cry now, feeling his arms around her and Andrew too. The last time, she thought, for he wouldn’t embrace her in public, not down at the harbour. Not even once.

  This was goodbye.

  Chapter 49

  NANBERRY

  SYDNEY COVE, FEBRUARY 1795

  Nanberry swung his kit bag over his shoulder, and sauntered up the track to home. Hens clucked, pecking at the weeds in between the huts. A goat baaed up the hill, pulling at its tether. Somehow in the past few years the dead-looking twigs in the gardens had become big fruit trees. He sniffed. Peaches were ripening somewhere near.

  Peach pie, he thought. Rachel’s apricot dumplings …

  He had so much to tell them. It had been a grand voyage, all the way to the Cape and back. The things he’d seen! Waves that towered so high the ship seemed to be sailing uphill, till finally it teetered on the white crests and went plunging down. Whales that frolicked about them, as if they knew they weren’t whalers but, like themselves, travellers in this great ocean.

  And Cape Town … His face clouded at that. It hadn’t been quite what he had expected. No trips into the country to look for elephants or lions. His shipmates had advised him to stay near the docks — in this land of black skins, only whites, the Dutch or English, were welcomed in the shops and hotels. It was different in England, according to Cookie, the one-legged sailor who cooked their stew in the tiny reeking closet of a galley. Black men could get all sorts of work in London, and women, he dug Nanberry in the ribs, some white women were right taken with a black skin.

  But even the docks had been fascinating. He’d seen a monkey and a team of all-white horses. Traders had rowed their little boats out to the ship, selling silks and fruit and carved animals. He’d bought Rachel green silk ribbons, and a carved carriage for Andrew, with wheels that went round and round, and a new pipe for Father White.

  He flung open the front door and yelled, ‘Hello!’ then hung his hat on the peg by the door.

  Baby Andrew chuckled in the kitchen. Rachel appeared, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘Nanberry! Come in, sit down. Oh, I wish I’d known, I’d have got some meat in. There’s bread and cheese …’

  ‘No meat?’ He had never known this house not to have meat.

  ‘Well, there’s just me and Andrew these days, and there is no one to hunt for us now …’ She stared at him. ‘You don’t know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘He said he would leave you a letter. It would be delivered to your ship, so the Captain could read it to you before you came home.’

  ‘I left the ship on the first boat ashore,’ he said impatiently. ‘If there’s a letter someone will bring it to me here and Father White can read it out.’ Father White could read as well as write, but not him or Rachel. Why did a sailor or a woman need to read? ‘Rachel, what’s wrong?’

  Her face was carefully expressionless. ‘Your foster father has been recalled to England. He sailed last November.’

  Nanberry felt his world lurch. ‘Without telling me?’

  ‘There was no time. His orders came. He had to go when the ship sailed.’

  It was as though the deck had suddenly vanished from under him, leaving him stranded in the ocean. A moment ago he had been Nanberry, sailor, foster son of the great Surgeon White. And now … nothing. No man of his clan to claim as family …

  ‘We are to keep this house. There will always be a home for you here.’

  He shook his head, hardly hearing. What use was a house? He needed a clan, people to belong to.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said gently. ‘I’ll get you the bread and cheese. Big Lon can go up to the hospital and get some meat.’

  He followed her to the table, hardly seeing. As soon as he was sitting, the small boy toddled up to him and tried to climb onto his knee.

  ‘He’s grown,’ he said, automatically lifting the boy up.

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled as she watched the boy try to pull Nanberry’s beard. It had grown longer since he’d been at sea, though he was afraid it still looked as straggly as a goat’s beard.

  He ate the bread and cheese to fill his belly, not really thinking of what he was eating. What was it like for Rachel with the Surgeon gone? She was a free woman now, it seemed, not assigned to be another man’s servant. She was living here on her own, with just her son for company.

  How could a woman live alone? No Cadigal woman would, with just her child. He didn’t know any woman in the colony who did either. He shook his head. He’d thought he’d understood the English world. But once again he had been made to realise that he could see only the edges.

  He stood up. ‘I’m going out.’ He needed friends — the men he sailed with. At least he knew where he was with them.

  ‘I’ll cook you a proper welcome-home supper. Roast mutton maybe? And a plum pudding too.’

  He nodded, again not really listening to her words. She was just a woman. What did she know of men’s business? What if another man took her? Would this still be his home then?

  The wind blew hot and hard out in the road. It was a bushfire wind, carrying a hint of far-off smoke, not just that from the cooking fires of the colony. He made his way down to the docks, to the hotel where he thought his friends might be. Yes, there was Cookie in the corner, huddled around a tankard. He started towards him.

  ‘Hey! No natives allowed.’

  He stared at the barman in his once-white apron. ‘I have money.’

  ‘I’ll believe that when I see it.’ The man stared at him. ‘You speak good for a native. I remember when Bennelong were here. Bennelong’d dance for any cove who’d give him a rum. You speak better’n Bennelong.’

  Nanberry took out a threepence — Cape Town money, but good here. The man looked down at it. ‘Well, mayhap you do have money. But I’ll bring your drink outside. I’m still not having natives in my tavern.’

  Nanberry looked over at Cookie, but the man was lost in his drink — drunk already perhaps, and there was no sign of anyone else he knew.

  ‘Keep your ale. And the money.’ Nanberry flung the threepence onto the dirt floor, sticky and stinking with spilt rum and ale, and made his way down to the shore.

  The waves calmed him. They always did. People came and went, but the waves went on.

  Who was Nanberry, really? Not English — you needed a white skin, it seemed, to be English, no matter how well you spoke the language or knew good manners at a table. He was a sailor, but a sailor couldn’t always be at sea.

  To the people of the colony he would forever be a native. But to the people he had been born among he was still no one: a boy who had never been made a man, not even allowed to throw a spear or know a woman.

  He heard ghost whispers in the breeze.

  The Cadigal and other clans that he had grown up with had been lost to the disease. But new clans had formed. He remembered enough about the bush to find them.

  The whispers tickled his ears again. No voices, but he still knew what they said.

  It was good that his foster father had left. Now he had to face just who he was. White men would never accept him in their world onshore. No white woman would take him as her husband.

  He stood up, stripped off his clothes, rolled them into a ball and slung them over his shoulder.

  It was time that he became a man.

  Chapter 50

  NANBERRY

  WOCCANMAHULYE (FARM COVE, SYDNEY COVE,

  NOW THE B
OTANIC GARDENS), FEBRUARY 1795

  He wore a crown of plaited reeds and a bracelet of reeds on his arm. His face was painted white; on his chest was a broad black stripe. The darkness was soft around him, the firelight very bright. He stood as still as possible, digging his toes into the ground so that he didn’t cry out as the old man shoved the oyster shell up into his gum, back and forth, loosening his front tooth. The world was swaying when at last the man put down the shell.

  Another man approached, his skin oiled and gleaming in the firelight. Behind them warriors chanted. Nanberry tried to make out the words. He still remembered everyday language, but these were ritual words, banished from his mind for many years.

  The second man had a long bone in one hand, a stone in the other. He laid the point of the bone against Nanberry’s tooth and tapped it with the stone, once, twice, three times, then suddenly a heavy blow.

  Blood gushed into his mouth. He could feel the tooth lying on his tongue, the blood flowing down his throat. He fought to stay upright, not to show pain, not to vomit from the blood.

  The old man reached into his mouth, then held up the tooth. It looked so long, far longer than any tooth did in a mouth. The old man sang as he raised the tooth aloft. Once more Nanberry tried to make out the words.

  Then it was done. The song around him changed. A spear was put into his hand, a bark container of water held up to his mouth so he could wash away the blood.

  He was a man.

  Why, he thought, his knees trembling, almost beyond pain now, do I still feel empty?

  He had lost this world when the Surgeon had rescued him, all those years ago. He was neither Cadigal nor English now, but only a small part of both. I am a ghost too, he thought. I walk upon the world but I have no meaning. Maybe I died when the sickness came, and only know it now. Even the pain in his mouth couldn’t make him feel real.

  Hands led him to a tree. He sat, his back to it. Someone handed him a cooked fish. He pressed it into the hole in his gum to stem the bleeding, feeling the blood slow to a seep in his mouth.

  The dance continued around the firelight. Caruey, the only other Cadigal of his age Nanberry knew to have survived, and another young man stood as their teeth were loosened, then struck out.

  Time flowed past him, dark as the blood from his mouth. It was another dance now, another song. Above them the moon rose, large and white. Like the waves, thought Nanberry. Nothing stops the waves or dulls the moon. We suffer here, but the waves still flow and the moon still shines, beautiful and unchanging.

  A bat flickered past the fire. Somewhere wallabies would be drinking, o’possums nibbling at their leaves. What happened to the Surgeon’s o’possum? he wondered. Rachel might know.

  His sense of being an outsider began to ease. The men here accepted him. No matter what, he was a Cadigal warrior now. Perhaps next week he would hunt badagarang with them, learning how to use spears again, this time as a man. No more muskets for him now, but the power of the giant spear of a warrior. They would light the fires to bring the grass, to clear the undergrowth. They would watch the women sweep the droppings from the waterholes and do their duty to the land.

  Being a warrior meant accepting your duty: to perform the rituals; to stand by your friends. If there were battles with the English, or against other clans, he knew which side he must be on.

  But there would still always be a captain eager to have a sailor who knew the ropes and sails, who had faced the waves of the Cape and the terrifying calms of the doldrums. There was still an English house, with Rachel and her son.

  He knew now that his room would still be there, his bed, the clothes he wore on land, no matter how far he travelled, on the sea or back into the bush. Nor would the Surgeon forget him, even if he was far away. One letter waited for him. There would be more.

  Yes, he knew who he was now.

  Slowly he began to relax into pain and weariness. There was beauty and belonging in this world. He had the bush. He had the sea. He had a home with Rachel, at least while no man claimed her.

  That would have to be enough.

  The chant changed once again. And now he understood every word, the child’s language he had almost forgotten coming back to him.

  He was Cadigal still. And he was English.

  He smiled, despite the pain, his swelling mouth. He was Cadigal and English! He could see more in this land than any Englishman ever could, the way he had found birds for Father White. He could travel on giant ships and see the world, as no other Cadigal could do.

  He was warrior and sailor.

  It was tradition to take a new name after the yulang yirabadjang. But he would refuse, just as he had refused to take the name Andrew so long ago.

  ‘I am Nanberry Buckenau White!’ He would wear his name with pride.

  Chapter 51

  RACHEL

  SYDNEY COVE, APRIL 1795

  Nanberry had sailed away again, climbing up the ship’s rigging as though he had done it all his life, with a new gap between his teeth and a tattoo of a ship on his arm.

  She waved him off, down at the harbour, carrying Andrew in her arms. The baby held up his chubby hand to wave farewell to his foster brother as the ship’s boat pulled out from the shore. Now she walked slowly back up the hill.

  The house would feel empty. It had been so good to have someone to cook for, to look after while his mouth and face healed. Silly boy, to go and do a native trick like that. And that tattoo, something else men did just to show they could bear the pain. Let them bear a child and they’d know all about pain, with no need for knocking out teeth or needles and dye.

  She smiled down at her son, peering over her shoulder at the harbour’s bustle, then quickly wiped the smile away, looking down at the ground in case any man thought the smile was encouragement. There was no protection for a woman in New South Wales, not from convicts or soldiers of the Rum Corps. The officers of the Rum Corps (not that anyone called them that when they could hear it) had come out at the same time as she had, to serve in the colony. But the only ones they had served were themselves. They did what they wanted, took what they wanted. They hanged anyone who tried to stop them. It was hard, living by herself, putting the bolts up on the doors and shutters at night in case some drunken soldiers tried to get in; making sure no light showed to let them think a woman might be inside.

  Big Lon still worked the garden each day, growing the fresh vegetables and fruit the Surgeon believed to be so important to a child’s health. He chopped their wood and brought them water, but he went back to the barracks each night. She couldn’t see Big Lon protecting her and her son from anyone either.

  But at least she had money — the rent from a land grant the Acting Governor had given the Surgeon. The tenant sent meat and milk once a week as well. Already sea chests had arrived for her. Each chest contained coins in a purse hidden in bolts of cloth for clothes and sheets — good sensible linen and flannel. There had been a toy horse for Andrew and a letter in each chest that took her a day to read, for she wouldn’t ask anyone else to read her out something so private.

  The chests and letters had come from the Cape. In a few months he’d reach England, and in another year perhaps they’d hear from him again, that he had reached port safely. He said that he was safe and well; he said to kiss the child from him; and he said he was hers, always affectionately. No word of love. But he was keeping his promise, caring for them. She was sure he always would.

  But a woman needed more than linen and flannel, or even silk if it had ever occurred to him to send it. She’d had a silk scarf once, the one that the Master had given her back in England, the one he had claimed she’d stolen. The one that had sent her here …

  Yes, a woman needed more than silk. More than love, even. The Surgeon had been the first man to talk to her about why the birds flew north in winter, or how men got scurvy. Her world had been so small, survival and nothing else. He had opened a window to a wider life, but now it was shut again.

  Yells f
loated across from the marketplace just up from the harbour. A crowd had grown, jeering men and toothless grinning women. She shuddered, and turned Andrew’s face away, in case he caught sight of whatever they were watching. A flogging, perhaps, or a public hanging. The crowds loved sights like that.

  She had just started down the track to the house when the breeze caught the words. ‘And what am I offered for this fine wench then? Six more years she got to serve. A bit o’ feeding and she’ll be good as new …’

  Her skin grew cold. They were auctioning the women off the latest ship, the one that had brought her sea chest and letter. The Rum Corps officers had first pick, of course, inspecting the women as they lined up on deck, taking the youngest and plumpest and prettiest. The officers’ friends could choose next, also paying nothing for the privilege. The other women were auctioned to whoever would pay the highest price.

  ‘No more’n that?’ The auctioneer’s voice was scornful. ‘Sold then, for a pint o’ rum to the cove with the withered hand. And I bet she’ll warm it up for you, eh? Now the next wench is a right good piece. Don’t laugh now, me dearies. She may be tiny but she’s a good worker, and freshly widowed, so she knows what to do, eh?’ The crowd snickered.

  ‘The natives killed her husband just ten days ago and …’ The woman let out a cry of anguish.

  ‘Maria!’ Rachel whirled around and began to run, holding Andrew against her. Her arms ached but she didn’t dare put him down.

  How could Maria end up at the auction? A widow, the man had said. Maria was still a convict. If her husband had died the officers must have decided she was worth selling. Legal or not, there was no way to stop them …

  Rachel struggled to get closer; the crowd was too thick. But she could see the auctioneer standing on the back of the cart and Maria next to him. She looked so small. She had always been tiny, but now her face was thin and pinched, with shadows under her eyes like they’d been smudged with charcoal. Yet even here she looked neat, her dress worn but well mended.