by Scott, Kim
He kept walking, though, since that lulled and stopped his thoughts tying themselves in knots the way they did until he got angry with himself and anyone crossing his path. The sheep did not move fast, there was plenty of grazing, and except for the middle hours of the day when, despite the season, he needed to rest in some shade, he spent the day plodding with them. Trying not to think.
Making his way back, not yet able to see The Farm but knowing he was close by the lay of the land, a spear landed in the ground beside him. He stopped. The spear swayed a little, but stayed upright. A dark wood, he noted, oiled and well handled. His heart leapt and raced. They don’t need to land no spear in me, my heart will just stop if any spear comes closer than that besides which I’ve had my quota of spearing. He thought to run. Glanced over his shoulder. A group of natives, all with spears at the ready, were some distance behind him. Not so far as he’d like. He looked ahead at the sheep, kept walking. His limp was worse.
A few steps later the black men were in his peripheral vision, on either side and no doubt behind him, too, but he was not turning to look. What was the point? He had no weapon to fight with and maybe they were the kind that didn’t take to spearing a man in his back. Those were very long spears. Not that he wanted to see them. He could hear the men talking to one another, hear their bubbling laughter. He stopped walking. Spears pointed at him from either side. Skelly faced ahead, not moving, only his eyeballs going rapidly side to side.
Then—it must’ve been the veering sheep that alerted him—there was the boy, the boy that came in with Wunyeran. He walked up to Skelly, talking, and took him by the hand, still talking. Skelly could make nothing of it. Did he hear names? Menak? Wunyeran. Swore he heard ‘Cross’. The boy led him away by the hand.
Dr Cross’s boy, he said, tapping a hand on his chest. We spear you, already, kaya? Nitja baalapin waam.
But Skelly could not understand, could not speak. The sheep scattered again, suddenly startled. He saw a sheep fall slowly to the ground, its legs folding beneath and a spear waving from it like a mast in a stormy sea. He squeezed the boy’s hand. They kept walking.
Spear you already. Speared, Skelly realised. The boy knew he had been speared. Skelly saw the clearing and buildings of The Farm. Was it only he and the boy now? Yes? Skelly was striding out, trying not to run as the sheep scattered before him, but he did not let go of the boy’s hand; he held tight to that hand.
Why the boy had been in the vicinity and come to Skelly’s assistance was a constant source of conversation among the settlement’s population. Not that there was a shortage of subjects attracting attention. This business of Cygnet River, for instance.
Yes, Cross answered Sergeant Killam, who had interrupted Skelly’s account of how he’d been saved by the boy, Wabalanginy. Yes, Cross said, colonial headquarters for this side of the continent will be Cygnet River, not here. They are sending a party overland from Cygnet River, we should expect them in some days. No, he did not know what was to become of this place. He believed that people would be granted land here as at Cygnet River according to their capital. Investment is a measure of commitment, he said, why, at Cygnet River Mr Peel plans to …
Even Killam, so long away from the mother country, had heard of this name. He who has created law and order in London? he asked. Peel’s Bobbies?
No, not he, not him. But yes, Peel is the name behind those men of law and order. Those Bobbies.
The three men glanced at Bobby Wabalanginy, sitting by the fireplace.
Nevertheless, you are well informed, Sergeant Killam. But we have our own Bobby here, do we not?
Wabalanginy was the centre of their attention, then. He returned their look, wanted to know, Who these Bobbies over the ocean?
The name stuck from then. Bobby.
*
Menak suggested the boy Bobby stay with Cross for a time. Learn things from him and his friends. The one that died, he said, brother for me, he Uncle for this boy. You Uncle-friend too? Babin, we say.
Dr Cross had not seen his children since they were babies, but had his own ideas of what a youngster needed. The boy was quick to learn, fed himself and kept himself clean. Bobby Wabalanginy surprised Cross with how quickly he mastered things, not least the alphabet. They began with slate and chalk, and although Bobby soon proved himself adequate to quill pen, ink and parchment, Cross kept him to the slateboard. There was a shortage of paper so far from home. They sat outside his hut, usually in the morning sun. At other times they worked by the fire, although Cross’s eyes were not always good enough for such light.
Within a few months Wabalanginy spoke English better than Wunyeran ever had, and of course it was English he was learning to read and write, even though very early in their consideration of phonetics and letter patterns they tried to reproduce some of the sounds of his own language. But that is no easy task.
Even his name:
Wabarlungiyn?
Warbarlung-in-y?
Bobby.
Bobby could soon make out words even in Cross’s journal, but put them differently in his own hand. From trying to write his own language he used phonics.
A most intelajint kuriositee.
We haf taked ther land.
Deseez and depredashen make them few.
Not then quite fully understanding the meaning of the words he wrote.
No, laughing and loved, Bobby Wabalanginy never learned fear, least not until he was pretty well a grown man. He never really had no sense of a single self, because … Well, he was young and he was like a spear, thrown and quivering in the air and only the pointed tip, that very spirit of a spear, remains still.
Bobby never knew himself then as do we, rapidly moving backwards away from one another, falling back into ourselves from that moment when we were together, inseparable in our story and strong.
He was born, reborn, took on new shapes around the one spirit that need never fear an ending. Then that one name stuck.
As a much older man on the harbour shore, Bobby Wabalanginy sometimes wore a policeman’s hat—a bobby’s hat. It took him some time to get hold of such a thing; not until the first steam ship slunk into the harbour in the dark of early morning and moved across the still water, clunking and groaning enough to terrify people. Bobby made a trade with a retired policeman onboard: a boomerang for his hat.
Tourists smiled at the hat perched above Bobby’s white-ochred face as they disembarked, and in his performances he would sometimes bend at the knees so that the returning boomerang knocked the hat clean off his head. Oops, he’d say, grinning. Kerl kaart baaminy. And then stand there twitching and looking around as if another flaming boomerang might come out of nowhere. Like a fool, perhaps, but all eyes were on him, and he was in command.
And although he was a clown—perhaps because he was such a light-hearted, laughing fellow—he could sometimes take his audience and turn their mouths down, furrow their brows and squeeze their hearts until tears welled. But it was never good business to stray too far from laughter.
He talked with the tourists, grateful for their ears. Staring down their smiles, he told of himself and other pioneers of those who were once his friends and though at the time he did not understand them or know their thoughts, he does now. He understands them now.
I was raised to be proud and to be friendly, he says. My family thought we could be friends and share what we had.
After the tourists, after the ships—some with sails, some driven by steam and almost spouting like a whale—old Bobby goes to his little humpy on the hill to the west of the valley in which the town sits. His women and children have gone away, and he has no real friend or family in the white man’s camp beside the sea to welcome him. Only tourists. He can only talk. On a bad day he grabs people, insisting they understand what he is saying, but they look at him and do not.
Once upon a time he danced and sang for people, but that was no good, and talk is less. He sits in camp and talks in his head (since no one understands him anyway)
of long ago when he first saw the big boats up close, and had hardly seen such a boat before … But now there are too many of them … He looks all around. So many things have gone.
Women no longer see an old man like him.
He has a language for the real story inside him, but it is as if a strong wind whips those words away as soon as they leave his mouth. People say he twists words, but really it is the wind twisting and taking his words away to who knows who will hear them.
Too many people in this camp and this town should not be here.
Once he was a whale and men from all points of the ocean horizon lured him close and chased and speared and would not let him rest until (blood clotting his heart) Bobby led them to the ones he loved, and soon he was the only one swimming.
After a time of darkness with only heartbeat and humming in his ears, there came light and bubbles, and then he walked across beach sand and among wattle and peppermint trees. Barefoot, he breathed the air and opened his eyes properly. There were no more of his people and no more kangaroo and emu and no more vegetable. After the white man’s big fires and guns and greed there was nothing.
Old Bobby sits and shivers; he and summer wait for one another.
One day, flesh and bones folded in dark wool and warming in the sunshine, old Bobby looks up to see he has visitors. Has to blink, blink, look again. White folk come to see him? Oh, the grown daughter and son of Jak Tar and Binyan! Sent by their mother.
They ask is he well? Looking around at this place where he lives they say, How might we help you?
Bobby finds himself telling of when he was a young boy on lookout, scribbling not what had happened but what will. Why, he still has the old oilskin-covered journal in his hut. He and the grandchildren of Binyan and Jak Tar turn the yellowed pages and study the faint lines of ink. There is nothing of how he sang and danced on a whale’s back as the inside of the sea spilled all around him. Nothing of the people he had known, nothing of what they were seeing, thinking. And although their children are here with him, Binyan and Jak Tar are not the only ones he is remembering.
Part III
1836–1838
One day not yet now
B for Bobby. The name given him.
Bobby had taken to his letters easily with Dr Cross, liked the feel of chalk on slate and made patterns, drew small footprints of animals and birds and the shapes of different skeletons. Some sounds had a shape on the page, too, he learned. The alphabet might be tracks, trails and traces of what we said. He copied things from books, from Dr Cross’s journals and letters, even. That helped him improve his spelling, though not the words of his first language.
Mrs Chaine took over as Bobby’s tutor. It is our moral duty to do so, her husband suggested, to help him move toward civilisation, and our friend Dr Cross established it as a priority, to help and save him.
She could only agree, and it need only be a few hours each week, at most. She looked at his work. Some of it seemed most peculiar, and then she realised he was trying to write his own name—not Bobby, but his native name. And the name he gave his mother he also gave his father, and the same name for Dr Cross, as well. She saw it was no-name, a name for loved ones who’d died, and most of Bobby’s loved ones, including Dr Cross, had died coughing. In his rare sad times, Bobby would also cough and once she saw him by the looking glass doing that cough—a wheezy breath, the slow collapse—and once he lay down, and waved non-existent flies away from his open mouth and eyes.
A lot of his people had died, Mrs Chaine was coming to realise. Our arrival means their death though we do not lift a hand. We help, she whispered, but even then only in her mind, pushing away scenes from near her husband’s public house. You have lost many of your family, Bobby, she said, wrinkling her face in concern.
Yeah, Bobby said, but there was too many family everywhere, and he belonged here, never came from nowhere else.
She corrected his speech. He was a quiet boy, at least with her. Quiet, but sometimes she heard him speak and it could have been Dr Cross. It frightened her to hear a voice from beyond the grave. He had a remarkable ability to mimic, and this came through in his anecdotes, when he was recounting dialogue. She had heard him reproduce her husband’s voice also, swearing and all, conversation overheard at the public house no doubt. Quiet, but who knew what he was like really, or what he was like with his own kind, because there were long days, weeks, when they hardly saw him.
W for Wabalanginy, that was his first name. It had taken Dr Cross some time to master that sound and Mrs Chaine never quite got her mouth working properly that way when she began to tutor him.
Being so young, Bobby Wabalanginy was used to being around women. Loved them. And Dr Cross, let alone Mr Geordie Chaine, had always been too busy really to be properly teaching any boy his letters. So Mrs Chaine took him in hand.
A few years later Bobby hoped maybe her daughter might do the same. Christine, that was the daughter’s name. There was a son, too. Christopher. Twins, see? They were all learning the play of putting their thoughts and sounds on paper together.
Bobby Wabalanginy had been mentally composing a letter to Dr Cross’s wife. First chance he got he wrote it down all in a rush.
Dear Missus Cross,
I hope you to read this.
Just think, your dear husband teached me to write and now I send this to you too. We meet soon I think, and also you and Mrs Chaine who now shows me my letters. Mr Chaine is building a fine house.
I hope you will soon come to where your husband lays and we remember him. Your dear husband gave me my letters, and took me for trips on ships.
Once upon a time a man on a deck on a boat was talking King George Town (that is what they call the huts and where the sailors stay). A great banishment to be sent there, he said.
That is not true.
I did not ask him what he meant, and he did not look to see me speak.
He said they live on salted meat, and nothing grows but rocks and stones, and claimed no one took the trouble to catch the fish of the bay. I do not know what they are doing, he said in a very loud voice. And nor do they.
I spoke up then with my name and handshake and surprised him I think. Mr Godley, I think he said his name. He was more laugh than beard, and more squeezing my hand and keeping me away than meeting me.
He speak loud and look to the others for them to nod and say he speaks true. They stand with him and not with me like many people do when they speak to a black boy.
The rocks and stones I told him are the beauty of the place and he laugh and speak big and very loud. I could not think what to say but that the climate is good and he looked at me then and said, ‘Oh, you are right in that, it is the best.’ I did my best and did not speak rudely. I did not say flowers and parrots too. I did not say stars, moon, the waves and leaves and campfires I thought after. I did not say you handshook the wrong people.
A strange thinking came to my mind from his eyes. He was angry at me, I wonder. We did not speak very much the rest of the trip, and I felt quite on my own.
Another man I met on a ship trip was Mr Chaine. Mr Chaine, that is the spelling of his name. He is at King George Town now. His family too. I learn my letters with his children and the help of his good wife.
They would all like to meet you and I look forward to our handshaking and Menak and Manit and Wooral too. One day not yet now.
Your friend, Bobby
Having corrected his spelling, Mrs Chaine spoke. It may be that Mrs Cross will now not ever arrive, Bobby. She folded the letter. But I think we shall nevertheless send your message by the next ship.
The governor family’s tree
The Governor Sir came in a ship of his own, Mrs Chaine told Bobby. In a ship of his own, Bobby overheard many of the people of King George Town pronouncing it: in a ship of his own he came with a wife and nine children. He came with:
Servants (two black boys among them)
Sheep
Bullocks
Chickens �
�
He had a longer list than Mr Chaine! The new governor-resident brought so much with him he needed a second ship. Fruit trees and tools and wheelbarrows and glass panes and mirrors, too …
He had servants, including two young men who were, what? Not quite servants, not quite family. Bobby wanted to talk with them, but they turned away from him on the heels of their well-worn shoes. Their scent was very sweet, and they did not understand Noongar language, only English, which they spoke very like the Governor, who wanted them to have nothing to do with Noongar people and barked at them to get away. And they seemed quite happy to be standing with the Governor’s family, the littler children like emu chicks beside the protective legs of their father, all of them together looking at we people. A red-haired son, not a lot older than Bobby himself, among them.
When the Governor and his family first arrived they had nowhere to sleep unless they remained aboard ship, and they longed to be on land. Chaine said he might put them up. He had a house where his men often stayed, he told them. Where your predecessor, the good Dr Cross, resided.
The Governor and his wife, after so long on a shifting deck, accepted Mr Chaine’s hospitality and stayed in a little hut by the grey sea in the shadow of a hill. The cottage sagged as Geordie Chaine pulled the door open and the Governor and his wife both saw how he lifted the door as he pulled it. One corner was propped up with poles, outside and in. There were insects in the walls, no garden to speak of, and white sand everywhere.
Chaine showed them how their fire might be lit; he set the flames himself. Servants were very hard to come by, he said. Told them their luggage would arrive soon. They were very quiet, and so he kept talking, saying there is no coal, but the timber burns well, see? Warm. Unlike coal, no need to clean.