Even though we hide in a hollow we’re afraid to build a fire. It were one of them white hot days when one spark cud burn everything to Hell, but then we grow even more afraid of starving. So we make a small fire and let it burn down, and cook the bird on some pointy sticks that Slangam fashion with his privilege knife. After a longish while, when all the time my heart beat hard in fear of getting catched, we partake of a roasted bustard. And jes as we were licking the grease off our fingers the boy come breathless to us and say our ship come in.
We wait for dark of night and scuttle like mud crabs through the scrub and into our hiding place on the ship. To hide we jes have to take what come, and it turn out to be a large crate on the deck, maybe to toss catched fishes in, I don’t know. Even if it were large for fishes, it aint large for four felons, especially when one of them were big as a circus tent. But there we were stuck squirming and pushing and starving and thirsting until the Captain tumble us out, and we come the full circle to the four of us standing at the ship’s railings, joyful to see our island in the bright distance.
‘Do this island have a name?’ Toper ask soon as the ship vanish. He have a look of disgust like it ortn’t be named, it’s too frightful.
‘A sealer on the ship say no,’ Slangam reply. ‘He say it’s jes a speck in the southern ocean, floating with a few other specks.’
‘Is them specks on any map?’ Toper ask in alarm.
‘How the fuck wud I know?’
‘How do the Captain recall where he put us then?’ he cry.
No one answer him.
‘How we going to say where we been?’ He seem set to grow hysterical.
‘Been?’ Fatty ask cruel. ‘That sound to me like being here have a ending.’
‘Don’t it?’
‘Long as that Captain yer jes talked of have a good memory.’
Toper look pleading from one of us to another but we all close up our faces against him, we don’t want him to think he’s gonna be let off the hook he’s pierced and wriggling on, it aint gonna be so easy that one day the Captain put his finger to his temple and say, oh fuck, I jes about forget them laggers, today we will go and fetch them.
‘It aint gonna be any more easy to escape this island than it were to escape any of them other times and places that snare us,’ say I.
‘Times? Why yer say times?’
‘Were all yer imprisonments on a island or in a jail? No. Often there aint a wall or sea around yer at all, yet still something keep yer running on the spot.’
‘Yair,’ Toper admit, rubbing up his thick hair in bafflement. ‘What were that?’
‘What were it?’ Slangam sneer. ‘Jes yer life, Grogblossom. The one yer were born into, the one that forget to stick the silver spoon in yer gob.’
‘And even if the silver spoon were sticked in,’ Fatty add, ‘the one that keep yer fretting about death and sickness and bad weather and ill-fitting shoes …’
‘Yer jes aint got no proportion,’ Slangam interrupt. ‘Have yer, Fatso?’
‘Aint I? Poor workmen is the only ones that suffer? Is that what yer call proportion?’
‘I more prefer my tight shoes with a silver spoon,’ he snarl. ‘Than without.’
‘Do yer? Many a man choke on it, it stick so far down.’
I look about me. I can’t hardly believe what I’m hearing. The wild Incognita ocean boom lonely on the tiny beach and a bunch of crooks is arguing about spoons.
5
From the first summer laying, I count the days till I see the first albatross egg hatch. It astonish me I count sixty days before any of them Mamas got fluffy chicks in a big squash under her fat white chest. It’s autumn before it happen.
I continue my walks as autumn wane. Something begin to change in me. For the first time in my whole life, I begin to feel free. Wasn’t yer free when you were a child? I ask myself. Yair, say I, but only till my Mama or Papa collar me and drag me to the farm work and drive me till the sun set. This is turning out to be a different kind of freeness, it still have work in it, it still have my nasty brothers, but it’s a freeness in the mind. A child don’t have that. A child can’t stop their thinkings coming, their fretfulness. They always chafing against the parent. Resentfulness at the work eat them up and they don’t have no way to stop the eating. And they’re all the time growing, soon as they get a grip on any thinking about their selves, they grow out of it. A young man also don’t have much freedom. Gain and lust get a hold on his mind more harsh than two manacles. Unless he were born rich he don’t have no choice about the gain, and as for the lust, it take over him like a body snatcher.
But here a man aint got nothing at him. Slangam can bellow about the sealskins, but already we got ourselves a stack of them and at least two of us believe the Captain aint coming back. Us two that know this have a special edge to our freeness now, we can bend and stretch and sweat and bludgeon, but we’re jes doing, we aint believing. Anytime we sit down to rest we do it with a free heart, there aint nothing we’re giving up, no London fancy house or Boston mansion, no huge Australia farm or Spanish palace. Fuck, we aint even giving up a serf’s cottage and our daily bread.
Another winter come on. It do seem to come very early. Very soon come the early dark and the raw cold, the furious storms and the driving rain. Many a day and night we can scarce go out. Slangam don’t talk much, yer can tell he’s all in a fret about the work that aint being done, but what that work cud be no one ever know. Toper stir and stir the cooking pot that contain bits of seal or bird or fish that we dried in the summer, and I fetch wood from the big stack outside the door. When it’s throwed on the fire we all cough from the smoke that envelop us, but that’s the only smoke that come at us now, Slangam’s chimney mostly do a fine job. Flonker alone don’t have no winter job, no potatas to tuck in, no skins to say his poems to. But that don’t mean he can keep his gob shut.
‘We’re all like Robinson Crusoe here,’ say he one night when our evening meal were et long ago but it’s too early to sleep.
‘Who?’ Toper ask.
Slangam begin to fidget.
‘Aint yer read that book?’
‘I weren’t ever a big reader,’ Toper admit.
‘Probably yer can’t read at all. Wud not be surprised. Jes learn to make yer scratch on a bit of paper did yer, and that were fancy enough?’
‘Jes tell yer fucken story, Fatso, so we can have some peace,’ Slangam growl.
‘It aint my fucken story. But the title say it all, it do have a very long title. It were The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an uninhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates.
‘That’s the title?’ ask I. ‘It sound like the whole fucken book.’
‘That’s the way they done it in them days.’
‘What days?’
‘Last century.’
‘All the mariners perish but himself?’ Toper ask. ‘That aint like us at all.’
‘So far,’ Slangam say. Then add, ‘What a blessing to be alone! If I were alone, life wud be much better.’
‘Wud it now,’ Flonker reply, but it aint like a question. ‘Yer can’t cook and gather firewood and kill seals all at the same time. And probably yer go frothing mad from isolation like the felons in the dumb cells. Then when yer start wandering about stark naked and baying at the moon, yer break yer stupid fucken legs and die slow of starvation.’
‘Jes tell the story,’ plead Toper.
Looking pleased he shut Slangam up, Flonker settle himself for the rest of the story. ‘Well, he weren’t alone for good. One day he find a cannibal.’
‘What? Jes hanging about?’ Toper ask.
‘No. The cannibal chiefs brung him to the Island of Despair – that’s what it were called – to cook hi
m. But Crusoe sprung him free.’
‘From a whole clutch of chiefs?’ Slangam ask incredulous.
‘Yer have to suspend belief.’
‘Yer have to be a fucken idiot.’
‘Most stories is like that,’ Toper say helpful.
‘Do yers want to hear or don’t yers?’
There aint nothing else to do so we listen while Fatty drone out the tale of Crusoe, a man that seem to know everything about how to survive on a island in the middle of the ocean with jes a savage called Friday, stupid name if yer ask me, why cud he not jes call him something ordinary?
Fatty drone and drone but what do his story do but take away my own thinking? I don’t want a story to stand between me and … what? I sit bolt upright. It’s like them Fates jab me in the spine and I think, how long is it I been sleeping in this hut waiting for the time to go out? Were it the palmy charms of Norfolk that make me so particular?
Now the body say, no more. It say, let me stretch my legs, let me feel the southern ocean gale in my hair. My eyes beg, let me not have to look at them stupid faces a minute longer, and my ears whine, I don’t want to listen to their stupid opining a nother split second, and it come souse into my mind that only being out give me a break from the boredness. My mouth water jes at the thought and it make me wonder how I come to be the man that jes sit, jes sit as if he’s still in leg irons in a jail.
‘Think I’ll go for a stroll,’ say I getting up. That’s the hardest part when the fire’s warm.
‘A stroll?’ Flonker repeat. ‘In a blizzard?’
‘It aint blizzarding. Jes an icy rain.’
‘Jes an icy rain! If yer fingers ice up, they turn black and we have to cut em all off.’
‘Yer can’t work without fingers,’ Slangam warn. ‘And we don’t want no loafers here.’
It make me laugh how he think he can order up the kind of men he want to be Crusoed with.
I do some bends as my legs is stiffed up, then I put on my patched cape and pull up the hood. Something in me tremble, it aint fear but excitement, and in two strides I’m out the door. First the cold hit me like a punch and the wind slap me about the cheeks. Then I realise the icy rain is stopped and the low sky have a lot of whorly fascination in it, it spin and spiral like a vortex. It also have a lot of colours if yer look close – sure they all a version of a bruise on dirty skin, but it interest me to see a hint of yellow and some purple, that alone refresh me after too much flame flickering on the faces of men I seen too much of. I dunno much about the lives of Incognita creatures, jes see they spawn in the springtime or the summer otherwise their childs die of the cold, so it’s no surprise to me the sky aint chock with birds.
I start to walk and imagine the men I left behind start chittering like monkeys, maybe for once they do a chitter that’s all in agreeance. Aint he a madman? they chitter. Yair, they all nod solemn.
Where do I go? That’s the question. There aint no landmarks or habitations, there aint a tavern or a oyster house at the end of a road, there aint any of them things a shackled felon lie dreaming of. But a walk soon start itself if yer jes put one foot in front of the other, soon yer can’t even see the hut, and the wild sea heave into view and itself become the entertainment.
One foot after the other the walk build up, it take on a life of its own, and the heart, that stony little thing, squeeze out a drop of warm blood contrary to all northern wisdom. The sun now hide and tease, hide and tease. Don’t I know this southern ocean sun, it won’t stop this game till the very heighth of summer, even then it do frequently repose behind a headstone of cloud.
On and on I go, past them sparse and stunted bushes, and all the while the walk make itself. Soon all the fretting I done about what there is and isn’t to do rise off the top of my head like a steam. There aint nothing to do but what yer do. There never were, only it were hid by the drivingness of things. Now that our surviving has fined itself down, and aint we got it to a fine art, the four of us hairy brutes, all the rest turn out easy as doing.
‘How were yer walk?’ Slangam ask when I get back.
‘Splendid.’
‘Aint yer soaked?’
‘It weren’t raining. See, it seem like it rain all the time when yer sit on yer arsehole in this hut. That’s because it drip. But if yer stick yer head out, yer can see it just drip around the rims and the weather aint actually wet.’
‘Is that so?’
‘It is.’
‘So when it drip, it aint ever wet?’
I aint gonna play this game.
‘What did yer see?’ he ask, still trying to poke me.
‘Sea, sky, bushes. Jes the usual.’
‘Yer aint sick of the usual?’
‘Each of them things change.’
‘The bushes change? I dint notice.’
‘In the winter they don’t lose their leafs and such, but in the summer they got little berries or flowers.’
Now we stare hard at each other. I know my patient botany lesson drive him to distraction when he were jes trying to rib me. It give me a lot of fun to do this. If he come out in a rage against such calmness, he jes look like a idiot. He poke at the fire with irritation. His face crunch up in a frown, I jes know in his head he’s busy working at how to rile me. Sometimes I jes feel like reaching out my hand, patting his sinewy arm and asking, why do yer work so hard at rage?
Some days on my walks, I laugh out loud at myself. Dint I once hate the ocean and everything fishy? Yair, I were a sandboy, but that were as close to the sea as I ever get. When I were collecting the sand, did I stare at the ocean rollers and pine? No. That sea were grey and flat and pocked with cold rain, and out there on the horizon it swaller sailing ships down in murderous whirlpools. That sandboy, who fill his sand cart and think never do he go willing upon that heaving, swallering devil, he wud die of terror if he see what he wud become, a man that sail to the lowest point of the world, so far away from the place of earnings and supply he can die at any moment, and so free it’s at the same time a thrill and a torment.
Is that how it work? Yer imagine the worst that can happen to yer and that bring it about? And yer have to ask, what even were I brung here for? Jes to walk alone across these cliffs? To walk along cliffs that at particular times and in particular places have albatrosses?
Course I dint know I were afraid of them birds till I arrive. But soon as I imagine them beating their huge wings in the wood, hey presto – fucken albatrosses everyfuckenwhere. Best if I jes stop imagining! Maybe then I don’t bring down no more horrors upon my poor self. Or – and here I surprise myself with a new idea – what if one day I were to walk towards them angels? What do it do to me to make that walk? Do I become a changed man, even more’n I already am? But now that thinking bring me out in a sweat and my heart beat hard and my breathing come in tight puffs.
Course even with the best will in the world, every day aint suitable for wandering about outside, indeed many of them bring terrible gales and huge rainstorms. We try to keep as separate as we can. Slangam make a partition in the hut so he can remove his self from us, and there he set himself to sharpening everything and devising ways of sharpening, as if only a sharp edge can answer to everything our lives throw at us. Toper stir a pot of old fish and tired fat and dream aloud of giant herbs and birds’ eggs, and Gargantua start to look after his potata babies again. The saved-up spuds lived all winter in a plaited crate and now he croon to encourage the little white shoots to push up from their brown baby bodies. He think jes as long as they know a pasty poem they grow up good and strong and all will be well. I take out my awls, I got quite a few of them now, and my plaitings and twines and feathers, and inspect them and long for the time when I can go back to the cliffs.
It’s a long winter. Robinson Crusoe aint enough to fill the long hours in the hut and Toper say, let’s have a real story then, and Flonker ask how aint Robinson Crusoe a real story, and Toper say he mean a story with facts, and Fatty ask in what way dint his Crusoe story have
facts? Toper say, well of course it do have some facts but overall it weren’t true, and Fatty say it were a tale based on the true account of a man named Robert Knox that were shipwrecked in the Kingdom of Kandy Uda and keeped captive there for twenty years. There, say Toper, that second one were the real story and Crusoe weren’t, and Fatty say the second only provide the facts for the first, that aint enough for a story, in fact it weren’t a fucken story at all. Slangam shout them both down and bellow he will tell something that’s real as four felons forgot and forsook on a Incognita island.
Slangam start to tell us the story of his life. He say his father leave his home in 1774 and go out to Massachoosets. He fancy a adventure on a whale boat. He fancy he catch a giant whalefish and with all that bone, oil and ambergrease he wud be set for life. Course it don’t go like that. Even if he catch him, the spoils of leviathan have to be divided up amongst the many. A man can’t sail a whaler on his lonesome, neither can he haul the beast onto the deck single handed, everyone who help have to get his cut. But he don’t catch him anyway. The war come and …
‘What war?’ come our three voices in a unison.
‘Yer all ignorant, yer know that?’
‘Yair,’ Fatty agree. ‘But we aint too ignorant to know how ignorant we are.’
Toper slap his thigh like he aint ever heared anything so smart.
‘It were the revolution,’ Slangam say.
‘Oh yair,’ murmur Flonker like it were something he know all along, jes forgot about it or jes forget when it happened. Still, aint a lot of history like that, yer know there were trouble but not quite the when or why or how of it.
‘It weren’t exactly long ago history,’ Slangam object when I make my opinion out loud.
Slangam say his Papa jes make it out in time on one of them last vessels to the southern ocean. Slangam aint sure what he exactly done except work on boats and end up with a wife and two sons in Port Jackson.
Bright Side of my Condition ePub Page 9