Bright Side of my Condition ePub

by Randall, Charlotte

  ‘Yer do know seaweed and kelp aint the same?’ Slangam ask Toper. He push his specialty around his plate with the tip of his skinning knife. He stab a piece and bring it up to his eye. He squint hard at it. Then he flick it into the bushes.

  ‘Yers aint the only one that sail to foreign climes,’ Toper now announce, and that do seem a very obvious claim seeing we all sitting marooned on a Incognita isle. ‘I were in the navy …’

  ‘What?’ Gargantua exclaim. ‘Straight out of the pig sty?’

  ‘Yair, the Royal Navy were sailed by pigs. Exactly right.’

  Now Slangam reach over and push Fatso into the mud. ‘Yers aint the only voice a man want to hear,’ he roar.

  Fatso pick himself out of the mud as Toper carry on his tale.

  ‘I were in a shipwreck in the East China Sea. I were washed over to the shores of Japon by a miracle wave. Hand of God it were.’ Toper cross himself at the memory. ‘I were nearly drowned and were brung back to life by a Japonese sage.’

  ‘Pack of fucken drunken lies,’ Slangam say flat.

  ‘Japon’s a closed country,’ Gargantua add. ‘I hear they murder foreigners.’

  ‘How yer close a entire country?’ Slangam demand. ‘It aint possible.’

  ‘Yair it is,’ Toper reply. ‘Their soldiers stand on the beaches swishing their swords. They split yer right down the middle if yer dare to rush the sands.’

  It were just as well another storm break over us right then or probably we all strangle each other. A sleety rain come hard down like a angel up-tip a bucket upon us. We been sitting under the shelter but now we all rush for the hut at the same time, it jes luck we don’t get jammed together in the door.

  But later on boredness drive us back to the same topic. We’ve et, we done our little bit of cleaning up, a storm rage outside and bully us all awake even if for a little while we drop off due to our full stomicks.

  ‘So,’ say Flonker like he’s about to begin a prosecution, ‘did yer Japon sage live in a castle?’

  ‘No, a hut.’

  ‘Oh, he were a peasant.’

  ‘No. I seen his money sacks.’

  ‘Oh, a hoarder.’

  ‘No. He let the beggars help their selves.’

  ‘A fucken madman then.’

  ‘No. He dint do no eye-rolling or twitches or nothing of that sort.’

  ‘Really? Such a sophisticated definition of madness,’ Flonker scorn.

  Toper tell us the sage’s hut were much like our own except it have a big thatch roof and some fancy pots set here and there. It also have a fire under the floorboards.

  ‘What?’ Slangam object. ‘The place wud of burned down.’

  ‘No, it dint. The floorboards were open, not shut.’

  Them others look confused and he say, ‘A sunken hearth. That’s what I mean to say.’

  None of the rest of us know what that is, but it don’t matter, we come to live on the side of the Earth where very strange birds and beasts walk so a fireplace under the floor aint a very large surprise. Nevertheless no one really believe Toper were washed up on a beach of Japon.

  Toper’s search for new things to cook bring home some strange fruit. Mostly they little berries and the rest of us look upon them with suspiciousness. We don’t want to be poisoned. But one day he come upon a vegetable that’s most southern in its look. Jes as a elephant have the look of India, this big plant look like Incognita. It’s quite big for a vegetable or else it’s stunted for a tree. That’s why I say it’s such a Incognita thing because everything appear wind stunted here, until the thought come to yer that yer don’t really know the true size. The true size of everything on Incognita remain a mystery, is it small for its type or is it big, how can yer answer when everything’s so new?

  But anyway, Toper come back with this big green stalk that’s topped with purple flowers. These flowers aint of the unfurling type, they more like pinheads in a pincushion. He set it down and we all regard it out of one eye like it’s a wild animal. It’s as dangerous to us as such a beast because for sure Toper’s going to cook it, and even if we protest he’s going to smuggle it into some sauce and then we eat it in ignorance.

  ‘What yer think?’ ask he.

  No one say anything.

  ‘I don’t think something so pretty can be harmful,’ he say.

  ‘Pretty? Maybe yer can jes stick it in a vase,’ say Slangam.

  ‘Death cherries is also quite pretty,’ say I.

  ‘I dunno what them things are.’

  Before I can tell him, Flonker announce it look like a purple broccoli stalk, he’s willing to give Toper’s new comestible a try. Dint I already say he done his thinking in his stomick? His palate – what everyone else call a tongue – has done a long training in special treats and always it hanker for a new taste even if his guts spend the next week in a long green vomit.

  ‘I aint eating it,’ Slangam growl. ‘How do it come here jes like that in our second summer?’

  ‘Maybe it fly,’ suggest Flonker.

  For once, Slangam ignore him.

  ‘Or swim.’

  ‘Likely it’s jes its flowering cycle,’ I say.

  Slangam eye me and reply, ‘Everyone know flowers flower every year.’

  I eye him straight back and say, ‘Everyone know a lot of wrong things.’

  ‘Maybe it’s the weather,’ say Toper. ‘We been having a bit of sun now and then. Yer have to admit, it aint ever a common sight.’

  I say, ‘If we soak it and cook it, then one of us eat jes a little bit …’

  ‘One of us?’ cry Slangam. ‘I aint going to be the dead taster of the King’s dinner.’

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ Fatty say. ‘It look harmless as a cabbage. I eat the whole fucken thing on my own.’

  So Toper do some rudimentary soaking and a brief cooking and the rest of us watch while Flonker stuff the giant herb into his gob. Course he demand a reward, a plate of fried potatas and seal meat to foller. He gobble that all up and belch while we stare at him.

  Nothing happen.

  He don’t spew or get a stomick gripe. He jes grin like a idiot and ask for more. He say it taste very pleasant, a bit more flowery than vegetable, a bit more purple than green, but there weren’t nothing vile about it.

  Course this success jes encourage Toper’s obsession with cooking ingredients. He start talking about birds to roast. There’s millions of birds here, probably more’n any other place in the world. I wager there’s birds no one from a northern clime ever seen before, maybe even some birds that no man ever see. I wud like to tell the Royal Society about all these birds, and have one of their birdmen come to look and say which ones is southern ocean and which ones aint. And I wud like to learn some names for their types. It do seem like I’m jes caught in a Flonker poem when all I can call them is birds and not their names.

  First is the chocolate one that make a lot of racket. It have a silver strip along the under wing and to me it have the strange look of a albatross crossed with a duck. It look very like a albatross when it fly but like a duck when it float.

  ‘Sooty fucken shearwater,’ Slangam say irritated. ‘Why don’t yer useless bastards know anything? There was lots of them living on that island jes off Norfolk.’

  ‘What island?’ Toper ask.

  ‘Philip Island.’

  ‘I dint know about no island.’

  ‘Jeesuz, yer cud see it from the beach.’

  ‘If yer ever looked,’ Fatty say. ‘I had better things to do.’

  ‘Like what? Getting yer fat bum opened up with Mincemeat’s whip?’

  ‘Well,’ I interrupt, ‘since yer know all about sooty fucken shearwaters, what’s the ones that keep hanging around us called? Them little brown ones that’s so curious of us?’

  Slangam shrug.

  How deep his knowledge do go!

  ‘Yer don’t have to name a bird to cook it,’ Toper opine.

  That’s true, but first we have to catch one and catching birds
aint as easy as catching fish. A bird fly off pretty fast when the shadder of a felon fall across him and we aint got no big nets nor any of them nets on poles.

  ‘What nets on poles?’ Toper ask very interested.

  ‘I seen a picture once,’ I say. ‘Of some Injun place maybe. Yer sit under a rock where the birds fly off and yer stick up yer long pole and wave it about like a flag and yer catch so many birds yer can feast for a week.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘So the caption say.’

  ‘But were it true?’

  ‘Probably not. Maybe yer jes catch one miserable fucker that can’t fly.’

  ‘Well, who want their dinner to fly?’

  I eye Toper. I aint sure if he make a joke or not but it seem for once he do, for he grin gummily.

  ‘Eggs is easier,’ Gargantua say. ‘Let’s jes eat eggs like we always done.’

  ‘Not all of us want to jes do the easy thing,’ Slangam sneer. ‘I figured out how yer can catch ground birds. They’re a lot more easier to catch than flyers. Gather round.’

  Oh no, not more of gathering round! I done enough lessons in how to catch and kill to last a lifetime. But how else to keep the peace? When we’re all sitting in front of him, mouths agape, he say yer need a couple of poles, trimmed branches will do, and yer have to tie a bit of soft sealskin to one end and a plaited slip noose to the other. When them brown nosey birds come along, yer have to wiggle the pole with the sealskin. Soon as its curiosity get the better of it and it run to investigate and pounce on the skin, yer jes have to slowly lower the other pole and draw tight the noose over its little head. Presto, a bush chicken for our dinner.

  It do sound unbelievable to me, but when we have a bit of practice it turn out a fine way to fill our bellies with bush chickens. Not that them brown birds is enough for us, soon as we taste one new comestible we very quick want another.

  ‘So what’s them waders with all the stripes and spots?’ I ask as I lick the grease from my hundredth bush chicken dinner off my fingers.

  No one answer.

  ‘The one that make that terrible noise,’ I explain.

  ‘I dunno what yer talking about,’ Slangam say.

  ‘I heared it when I take a walk in the summer moonlight.’

  Slangam turn away. Course he don’t walk in the moonlight, he’s still afraid of the owl, but also he’s afraid he oversleep in the morning and cut into his work hours.

  But walks in the moonlight, in the uncommon times when the moon’s full and the cloud cover roll away and the wind don’t howl or the rain beat upon us, were coming to be one of my chief pleasures. Until I heared that noise.

  ‘That bird yer talking of is a hakawai,’ Toper say with much confidence.

  It amaze all of us that Toper know this.

  ‘Where yer learn that?’ Fatty exclaim.

  ‘Yer mean it’s a cannibal’s bird?’ Slangam ask.

  Toper take exception. ‘A bird don’t belong to no one. But it got to have a name, don’t it? How do them natives know what they hunting for if they don’t have a name for it?’

  ‘They need a name for hunting it but not for cooking it?’ Flonker ask mean.

  Toper blink.

  ‘Alright then,’ Slangam say, ‘but where do a Irish learn the name of it?’

  Toper make a livid face and have to be soothed before he carry on. Even a Irish have feelings about being a Irish. When we done enough of soothing him, he say, ‘When we were waiting to be set down here, I were standing at the ship’s railing and one of them sailors were pointing out the birds we cud eat, and he said there’s one that only come out in the dusk when it walk about like a easy dinner, and he once heared a native call it a hakawai. And I said to him, how do I know I get the right one, and he laugh and say, there won’t be no mistake, it make such a terrible noise.’

  Everyone go quiet and probably fall to thinking about his great fear. Is the noise of the hakawai really a screech owl or a moon snake or a night albatross or lava boiling underneath yer feet? That’s the great trouble with fears and the darkness, no daytime sense wipe out night-time’s nonsense, it grow and swirl and distort itself, it come out in a shape it dint go in at.

  4

  Before I fall asleep that night, my memory jump back to the four of us when we first see the island. It were Toper that make me think of it, telling of how he talk to a sailor about killing birds. But before he ever get to have that particular talk, we first must endure the many difficulties of our escape.

  There were always a escape plot afoot in Norfolk. Sometimes yer heared about it too late and the conspirators was already dead by the time yer even knew what was going on, sometimes a felon come to yer and put it to yer and ask for yer help. I were greatly frightened by the first request. It were put to me three months after I first come in the jail. Some men come to me and ask me to be a lookout while they take on Mincemeat. This suggestion come from a scrawny felon, but behind him stand a giant, a Norfolk pine tree crook, huge in muscle and sporting a bald scorched head. He wear a leather apron, a garment of quality no one else have, and how he get this and keep it and wear it were a great mystery.

  Shaking in fear I say, ‘It’s more’n my blood’s worth to do what yer ask.’

  The giant come up close to me and look down on my trembling. I shrink from him for he seem so medieval in his leather apron I expect he take a mallet out of his pocket and bang copperheads in my skull.

  ‘Yer blood aint worth nothing here, chicken nuts. Fovo use blood to water his radishes.’

  ‘Not if I do what he say.’

  Leather-apron laugh big. ‘Yer think a torturer care about obedience? Yer think he’s a school marm? Fovo invent crimes jes to quench his blood thirst. And Mincemeat don’t worry about justice any more’n a butcher worry about throat-slitting.’

  ‘Still no,’ say craven I and add, ‘thank you.’

  ‘No thank you?’ the giant roar. ‘Did yer come here straight from a tea party, Mister Bloodworth?’

  The name he add at the end of this jeer make them watchers fall about laughing. And the name stick.

  And what even did I mean, I think later. If something’s worth more’n all my blood, more’n my life, don’t that mean it’s worth everything? But for sure I meant the exact opposite. What I meant was my own blood were worth far more to me than his freedom were. But then my blood come up against my own freedom and aint that a tiger of a different stripe!

  Major Fovo weren’t there for my first two months in jail. Up to that time we think we live lower down than Hell, but that jes show we know nothing about how deep Hell go down. Fovo come in early 1800. Straightaway he change the work habits to much more hard. Each of us per day have to break five cartloads of stone so he can build for his own glory a bigger jail and more barracks and staff houses, and we were beat when our poor tools broke. He feed us on thin and rotten pork, and when it rain we go to bed wet to the skin and on wet pallets because he make us put our bedding outdoors for airing soon as we get up.

  Major Fovo were a man that seem to be in love with the flogger, so often do he summon Mincemeat to inflict the lash. And while Mincemeat do his dirty work upon a man’s back, the Major always demonstrate his enjoyment of the spectacle by smiling. Afterward Fovo order up the medical treatment for the poor victim and it turn out to be a bucket of salt water, but if the malevolence is really upon him he order the bleeder into the Black Cell or down to the Water Pit. In very short order everyone want to get shot of the place.

  So how do us prespective escapees meet each other? It weren’t like any of us done a survey of who wud be good company to escape with, no, jes like the rest of life yer fall in with who stand in front of yer, only later do yer work out yer want to slit their throats, and we don’t make no list of skills – clubbing, skinning, building, fishing – that wud be useful. What happened were the three of us, Slangam, Gargantua and me, strangers to each other, find ourselves chained together in a work gang when it were more usual to work free. />
  ‘I aint gonna put up with this no more,’ Slangam growl.

  Gargantua reply, ‘Oh, yer think the foreman wud release us if I ask him nice?’

  I laugh and Fatty look pleased with himself.

  ‘This way of living amuse the two of yers, do it? Yer don’t have no escape plans?’

  ‘Well …’ Fatty consider.

  ‘I aint thought about nothing else since I arrive,’ froth Slangam.

  ‘I wud like to escape,’ say I. ‘But I aint got no idea how.’

  Do them Fates prick up their ears? Do they find a beginning for their life lessons? Oh, they chirp, them felons think they such good and innocent men they orta be allowed to escape and live free!

  ‘I know how,’ Slangam boast.

  The Irish were a large part of the jail population and always the tales come to the rest of us, the Irish is doing this, the Irish is doing that, and nearly all their doings were a mutiny. Whenever one of the Irish felons reach a bad enough level of crime, Fovo dispatch him to Sydney town for another trial. Course, Mincemeat have a long go at him first and the trial only come to pass if the bleeder live long enough. But that weren’t the concern of the three of us, me, Slangam and Gargantua, who now form a huddle to conspire. Our concern were how to get to Sydney town ourselves, and it soon seem we need a Irish to blacken us.

  We start a whisper, is there a Irish going spare that want to help with our escape? It take a while but soon Toper stand in front of us. He don’t look bold or fierce, he look weedy and cretinous and tug his forelock a lot. Soon we hear he were forced to stand in for a Irish he owe a favour to.

  ‘This aint gonna work,’ Slangam declare. ‘We need a man of evil reputation.’

  Toper blink.

  ‘What crimes yer done? Are yer being sent to Sydney town?’

  Toper shake his head.

  ‘No fucken good at all. We wanna get sent with yer, see? We wanna be damned by association.’