Bright Side of my Condition ePub

by Randall, Charlotte

  ‘Wait,’ Slangam order jes as we about to start.

  ‘What for? Aint we waited long enough?’ Fatty cry.

  ‘We got to decide how many we store for the next growing season.’

  Us three go silent in our dismay.

  ‘Well,’ Toper say careful, ‘we need to plan for if the Captain’s ship go down. It wud take a long while for a other one to come.’

  ‘It wud take forever,’ Fatty reply. ‘For who can hear the Captain shouting from beneath the ocean?’

  ‘Eh?’

  Fatty cup his hands around his mouth and holler, ‘Hey, you up there, I were on my way to pick up some felons when my ship sunk. Can yer sail to a shithole dot on the map of nofuckenwhere and bring them crooks back to civilisation for free? Good. Thankee, thankee. God will reward thee in Heaven.’

  Slangam lean over and divide the pile of dirty tubers in half.

  ‘That many?’ squawk Fatty.

  ‘There’s more spuds in the ground,’ I point out.

  ‘Each time we dig them up, we divide them,’ Slangam say.

  ‘If they aint rotted,’ Fatty splutter.

  Slangam gather up the savings in his arms and carry them off. Fatty’s in a fury, he keep on looking round for what he were deprived of, but me and Toper jes get to work on what we got.

  The meal when it’s been cooked and et linger in the memory like one of them banquet dreams, the dreams where yer get to eat and taste the food and not jes slaver over it. We cook our usual fry sealfish and blubber but as well there were more fry spuds than cud fill us all. We only lament we don’t yet have a gin to get ourselves drunk with, but while we lie back in front of the fire with our bellies bursting Toper plan out loud his leaf and berry spirit. He declare that he soon begin a big collection, he won’t trouble with spuds no more, he see the wiseness of eating and storing and growing them. If juniper and peat can make a drink, sure them little berries and leafs can.

  Course we know it’s now autumn even if there aint much of a way to tell. There aint no flaming oaks here. But the sun get lower, the nights more long, and the Mama seals leave their babies to go fishing in the chilly deeps. They’re gone a longer and longer time and we work with feverishness on our hut. Lucky the hut’s so pressing otherwise Slangam wud want to club them seal babies that are laying about without pertection. No big liquid eyes soften his hard merchant heart.

  Slangam get up earlier and earlier and disappear to where the hut is rising up. Rest of us sit by the fire and take our time over breakfast. Then with reluctance we take up the jobs Slangam assign us, stripping poles, plaiting flax and other longsome jobs to advance the roof. One morning he call out to us when we aint even built up the fire, and when we come to the clearing we see the hut’s all done. We stand about and exclaim at what we made. It aint very beautiful but it’s sturdy, and it surprise me how proud I feel.

  ‘What do we do?’ Gargantua ask. ‘Do we jes go inside or do like them shipwrights and christen it?’

  ‘We aint got a bottle to break on it,’ Toper say.

  Slangam stride to the door and walk in, and that’s the end of whether our hard work deserve any celebration.

  Inside it’s dark because we don’t build no windows – too much time and too many problems of leakage, Slangam say. But soon as yer in there the wind drop clean away, only then do yer realise how much it tug at yer hair and clothing. Also we don’t have no fireplace or chimney yet, but close by under a shelter Slangam dug a fire pit for Toper to cook on. He’s very proud of it and show off the hole for ventilation and the hollow tree trunk that disperse the smoke. Now Toper don’t need to be leaning over hot coals to do his cooking and it lessen his chance of catching a spark and burning up. Further away, Slangam also build a stone firewall for the rest of us and explain because the fire don’t need to be keeped small for Toper, we now can have a big and merry bonfire.

  Jes as soon as we are sitting in the hut, the weather say now I can do my worst. Boom go the thunder and flash go the lightning, and a snow-rain pour down upon us. We look up fearful to our flimsy roof, but it hold. We don’t know if it hold forever, probably from now on we have patching on our list of jobs, but holding out the first winter storm do seem a blessing.

  The first storm turn into the second and then the third, and during the hours of boredness Toper start telling us about Slapsauce. He say he were a lanky cook what come over to London from Nantes.

  ‘From where?’ Slangam ask.

  ‘It were a French place. He come over to escape them noyades.’

  Seem no one have a clue what that is.

  ‘Yair.’ Toper puff up when he see he’s the only one that know a noyade from a pig’s anus. ‘It’s a way of drowning. Yer get a rotten barge and load the people on and push the barge out on the water where it sink.’

  ‘What people?’ Gargantua ask in a tone of doubt.

  ‘Them that love the King.’

  ‘Oh, yer mean the Royalists,’ he reply airy.

  Now Toper look like he aint sure. But he carry on with his story. He say Slapsauce don’t give a fuck about the King, he jes want to avoid a republican wedding.

  ‘Why he don’t jes marry like they want him to?’ Slangam ask with a confused look.

  ‘Marriage aint what a republican wedding were about. It mean a man and a lady get stripped naked in public and tied together with ropes. Then they’re made to walk down to the edge of the river between two lines of soldiers, and all the way the soldiers jab and poke at them poor wretches with their bayonets. The wretches get put on the barge and when it sink the ropes mean they aint got no chance to swim for it.’

  I been feeling a bit sorry for myself having to sit in a crude hut in a snow-rain in the southern ocean but it do seem cosy compared to a forced swim at the end of a bayonet.

  Now Gargantua try to atone for his ignorance with scorn. ‘Yer say a Frenchman escape to London? When we were at war with France?’

  ‘Yair, there were thousands of them. He dint even stick out.’

  ‘Thousands?’

  ‘They also go to Belgium and them Nether Lands. France were bleeding Royalists like a stuck pig.’

  Slangam begin to huff and puff like the story bore him. That aint a surprise. Our stories have to pitch and jerk through all the objections just like the Royalists, most of the time they bleed like stuck pigs their selves.

  The winter get a heavy grip. But we can’t jes sit listening to stories. In weather that’s less cruel, wood and water have to be got, food catched and cooked. Course it were Slangam that teach us how to fish. That were another gather-round lesson. He take one of them stripped sticks that we build the hut with and brandish his sealing knife. We watch as he cut crosshairs into the end of his pole. I were expecting one sharped end, but no, he turn it into a prong. He force the ends apart with some plaiting and then wrap his plaiting round and round the prong’s base so it don’t snap off the long handle. He sharpen each end of the prong and then harden the points in the hot embers. Fatty ask, don’t we have more success if we jes wait till the end of winter and tie a penguin to the end of our stick?

  Next we have to build rock pools in the shallows. Then we have to practise jabbing his prong at any flapping fish that remain after the tide go out. We aint very successful. Most fish aint stupid enough to hang about in poor-built pools under the shadder of four hungry felons. But Slangam make us a weapon each and exhort us to work on our skill. He say there aint no seals or eggs to fetch, aint we got all day to stand about grasping our prongs?

  None of the rest of us catch much, but Slangam go off alone and quite often come back with a big fish. It’s his fury that catch it, he’s furious to conquer everything around him, not jes the fish, not jes the tide, he want even to conquer every sparkle in the water. But it do make me very content to gorge on a fry fish fillet, so I do my share of the fishing even if it do mostly result in freezed feet and soaked clothings.

  On the better days in winter, Slangam also make us gather rocks for
a indoor chimney because the smoke pain him when we set a fire indoors. Course it pain us all, make our eyes raw and red, but Slangam’s pain aint his eyes, it’s his objections. There’s a lot of rocks hereabouts so collecting aint a problem, except it keep us all under Slangam’s eyeball, a very miserable place to be. Even though he do pick up rocks himself, he’s all the time shouting, stop dawdling! that’s too fucken small! what’s the fucken matter with yer? look at me! Yer have to admire his skill, though. His plan for the chimney wud flatter a palace.

  Toper’s tale about Slapsauce continue only after we done our work. ‘London have a population of fifty thousand,’ he say to set the scene. ‘Taverns everywhere. And all them drinkers need to eat. Slapsauce begin his London life as a costermonger. He pick up some fishes at Billingsgate and go around them gin shops and alehouses and whatnot and sell a few oysters or cods to the drunks. I were the potboy at one of them establishments. Through me the ostler soon get to know Slapsauce, and he become another potboy alongside me. But he learn bad habits out there on the street with them other costers and soon he teach them to me.’

  ‘Dint teach yer very well if yer both end up in Norfolk,’ Gargantua say.

  Toper ignore him. ‘Turn out Slapsauce can cook real good. Soon he’s appointed to help the cook and up I come with him. Then the cook go off in a boiling rage because Slap tell him how to do things. Now we’re alone in the kitchen for the most part and Slap start to do a little business.’

  ‘Yer mean molls?’

  ‘No, I don’t mean that. He cook with more sauce and less meat. He start to sell the saved meat at the kitchen door. But he don’t sell them offcuts to the poor. He sell them to the costers he know and take a cut off their mark ups. And it go on and on. Them crooked costers don’t waste good meat on the down and outs, they supply the ladies and hike the price high as it can go before its bumhole show.’

  ‘Sound like good business practice to me,’ Gargantua say.

  ‘Sound like a lot of work,’ say I. ‘Much easier to steal the silver off rich ladies when they’re having a gin sleep.’

  Toper sigh. ‘The business grow like topsy. Soon the diner have to go fishing in his gravy for a hour before he find the one bit of gristle. Then we get catched. Next yer know, we’re on the ship to Norfolk.’

  ‘How do he get his nickname?’ Gargantua ask curious.

  ‘Aint yer got no imagination in that lardy skull? The customers give him the name when he slap down their meatless dinner.’

  ‘They must of been fucken stupid customers if they keep on coming.’

  ‘How were yer catched?’ ask I to stop a ferment.

  ‘The ostler’s brother brung his family in for a meal late one night. We were both too drunk to do any enquiring. Out come the sauce dinner and not the meat dinner we always reserve for the ostler and them that got his ear. Before we know it, chairs is being throwed and punches and tankards as well. The ostler stride into the kitchen and find the evening’s meat trimmings. It were a big pile hidden under a tarp, but it give us away by bleeding all over the floor. He lock us in a storeroom and go down to the courts in the morning to lay his complaint.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘We were in the hulks until we were sentenced. Then we were sent off to Norfolk straight away.’

  ‘I heared a lot about them hulks,’ say I. ‘Were they as bad as the stories?’

  ‘Worse,’ Toper reply. ‘They were the worst place on Earth.’

  ‘What were so bad about them?’ Gargantua demand. ‘Least they were in England.’

  ‘That was what were bad. Everyone come down to stare at yer and shout abuse. The soldiers take yer off to work from dawn till dusk, all manner of disgusting jobs, and every time yer turn around even the pilgarlics is laughing and pointing.’

  ‘Yair,’ say Slangam, ‘but if yer escape yer don’t fry in the dust.’

  ‘There weren’t no escapes. The convicts cud hardly walk in their leg irons.’

  ‘That aint true,’ Gargantua argue. ‘Everyone know all yer have to do is pay off the overseer to have yer irons loosened a bit.’

  ‘Most dint have no money.’

  Fatty shake his head like that’s even stupider than getting catched.

  ‘Anyway, we set sail for Australia,’ Toper continue. ‘And oh Lordy, we find ourselfs in the second fleet, the worst of all.’

  ‘That’s a mistake in yer telling,’ Gargantua say. ‘Yer cud not know it were the worst till it get there and discharge its cargo.’

  ‘This is a story, aint it?’

  ‘Yair, but yer moved the ending to the beginning.’

  Slangam begin to roll up his sleeve.

  Fatso still don’t shut his piehole. ‘A story’s a line, see? It go from first things to later things. That’s how yer do it, yer ignorant gomerel. Yer don’t go and spoil it putting the ending at the fucken beginning.’

  As usual Gargantua know everything about all writing that were ever writ, all stories and poems that were ever told.

  ‘We think we come to Paradise when we first see the island,’ Toper carry on.

  Now everyone burst out laughing and Toper smile wry. He make me recall again my own arrival and early days. Yair, Norfolk isle look like a Paradise on Earth when the convict ship I were on first sail into the bay. The sea were blue, the sky were blue, and the strange Incognita pines and bushes glistened in the sun. Landed on the beach, where yer see yer first banana tree and them huge stands of harakeke, yer can’t think how a place so beautiful can ever be a jail, or if it were moulded into one by a mad hand how it can feel like a jail to its inmates. That jes show how wrong yer can be about the mad hand.

  Already the easy jobs us convicts cud do been tried and found wanting. The plentiful Norfolk pines jes waiting to be felled for ship masts dint have the proper strongness, and the harakeke, a special Incognita flax, weren’t at all simple to turn into sails. The mad hand need to import some wahine from New Zealand but natural enough them wahine don’t want to come. What sensible woman want to come and get surprised in a flax grove by more’n a hundred sex mad convicts?

  So our main job were to feed ourselves and Sydney town eight hundred miles away, and it mean a lot of hoeing. It mean a big fight against the salt, the caterpillar and the Polynesian rat. In short, it mean a lot of work, work from sun-up to sun-down, and for a lazy man who were only accustomed to stealing, the work alone turn Heaven into Hell.

  But it weren’t the work alone. It were the men too, as usual. There were a chance to better yerself there, yer cud do yer time and then rise up to settler. A settler were allowed to grow his own grain and have some animals. He cud take a wife – there were some women transports too – and raise a family, all with a nice sea view.

  ‘Nah,’ say the bone idle, of which I were one, ‘I aint gonna touch another fucken hoe long as I live.’

  ‘Nah,’ say the wild men, ‘I don’t wanna be tied to no apron strings.’

  ‘Nah,’ say the lustful, ‘one quinny aint enough for me.’

  ‘Nah,’ say the sad bastards, of which I were also one, ‘I already have a love even if she’s lost to me. Why do I want another?’

  And anyway, even them settlers weren’t really settled. The men in charge keeped going around saying there aint no proper safe harbour here, everyone orta go off to Van Diemen’s Land, this isle orta be closed down.

  3

  We been here nearly a year. There aint no doubt. One day I wake up and the sun appear to change in its habits. The days get a little longer, enough to notice anyway, and the penguin fish start to come home again.

  I sit on the cliff and look down on the penguin domestics and it seem like a free show. The first big pile come ashore and give me a laugh of glee, they so look like gentlemen that been swimming in their evening suits. I call it a beach where they come in, but it aint a beach like Norfolk with bright sand and banana palms, it’s more or less a shelf of flat rock that glisten with freezing sea water.

  Then the noise st
art. I dunno what to call it, it jes a raucous kind of beak clatter, and it get louder and louder with every fish that come home. Now come the stoush over the real estate. Each penguin want to find a palace for its eggs but, same as in the human world, there aint a palace for everyone. Now I look more close, a palace from the penguin viewpoint turn out to be a little hollow in the shade of a tree. That mean they all got to waddle uphill from the beach, and it do turn out to be a lesson in what easy walking require. It require arms. Them flippers is useless to help the upper body forward. It require legs. Them duck feet the Lord find cause to bless the penguins with is even more useless. Why do God design a fish so handicapped?

  The pecking start. Each penguin want a palace but most get pecked till it come bright in their tiny heads that they only get a townhouse, or worse, jes a hut. And the latecomer get chased hither and thither and pecked bloody till it learn its place is on the edge of everything, where its egg will roll down the slope straight into the gaping mouth of a whalefish.

  Course Gargantua know more about penguins than me.

  ‘No,’ he say, ‘they don’t nest in hollows.’

  ‘I seen them.’

  ‘No. Incognita penguins stand in a huddle in the blizzards and keep their egg on their feet. They got special heating there.’

  ‘These aint of the same sort.’

  He draw himself up. ‘All penguins is of the same sort.’

  ‘No, they aint.’

  ‘What do you fucken know?’

  ‘Yer jes have to go over to the other side and look.’

  ‘Why do I have to look when I already know?’

  That’s the way with Gargantua. He were born knowing everything, but if he find himself a castaway in the southern ocean and horror! there’s a gap, a northern poem come to fill it.