Bright Side of my Condition ePub

by Randall, Charlotte

  ‘Wife? Yer mean a Parramatta mattress?’ snigger Toper.

  ‘This were my mother yer talking of,’ roar Slangam, and Toper shrink. Then he add, ‘She only steal a bit of lace.’

  ‘Yair, dint we all?’ Gargantua ask.

  ‘She do only steal a bit of lace! She were just a girl and she were sent out to Parramatta for years and years.’

  ‘So yer father sleep on her and then marry her? Why do he buy the mattress when he can sleep for free?’ This is the question I put and it don’t calm the storyteller down none.

  He rant and rave and somehow I understand that when his poor mother come out of her punishment, his father do indeed marry her for love.

  ‘So were yer a bastard or no?’ Gargantua ask. ‘Were yer born in Parramatta or after?’

  ‘After. She were too scrawny before that.’

  So he have a childhood in the southern ocean, a very strange thing, and say he get to know everything about Sydney town and its coves and shallows and swamps and deeps. He know again and again its summer heats and downpours and thunderstorms and its sweet, mild winter days. He know its insects and birds and beasts, all of them very strange and incredible were it not that he seen them with his own eyes. He grow up, and soon as he don’t look like a child he take a job unloading ships. He say everything in the whole wide world were coming into Sydney town.

  ‘Persian shiraz?’ ask Flonker.

  ‘Irish triple-distilled pot-still whiskey?’ ask Toper.

  ‘Double-fermented Cuba tobacca?’ ask I.

  ‘All of them things and more,’ Slangam affirm, and even though he lie through his teeth it give us each a squirm of excitement to picture our best pleasure unloaded at Sydney Cove.

  ‘How yer make a mess of such a successful life?’ Flonker ask.

  Slangam eye him. He aint sure Flonker really think this were a successful life but Fatty put on his straight face.

  ‘It were women. I weren’t used to them and then I got a wife. I weren’t used to wives …’

  ‘How do any man get used to a wife before he get one?’ Fatty ask.

  Slangam frown dark. He say some men seem to know what to expect. It don’t come clean out of the blue if she give lip, it don’t come as a shock if she outmanoeuvre him, there aint no long slow cold realising that she have a long slow cold plan for him. He say it aint no accident the word cunning come from cunny.

  ‘Do it?’ ask I in surprise.

  ‘No it don’t,’ Fatty pronounce. ‘But it orta.’

  ‘Why yer dint find a wife more loving?’ Toper ask.

  ‘Oh, but she were loving,’ Slangam reply. ‘She weren’t the kind of wife I jes talked of.’

  ‘Yer aint making no sense,’ Toper complain.

  Slangam look like he have a big struggle to explain. ‘Even if it come as a shock to me how them cold bitches act, and I seen it again and again as the men I work with marry them, still I can cope with it more’n how my own wife turn out.’

  ‘Yer really hoped for a cold conniving bitch?’ Flonker ask in disbelief.

  Slangam clutch the thinned straggles that lie about his temples, he clutch his hair and boggle his eyes like he seen a whale shark. He boggle like a blood horror lie before him on the ground, his body go twitchy and contorted and he can’t sit with us, and he rise up and rush off like a man pursued.

  ‘Well, that were an interesting story,’ Flonker say.

  Spring. Glorious spring. On my wanderings I see great flocks of Incognita birds coming home to have their childs. I dunno what they are, but Slangam who do have such a long history in southern climes call them petrels. And another penguin season is come upon us. That mean it’s the start of our third year.

  The gentlemen have jes come home from their sea voyages to start the real estate war. I sit above them like God of the Penguin-Fish, watch all their carry on while a mad wind buffet what remain of the shirt I made. My hair’s growed very long and my beard’s growed thick, and even if I work hard at my clothings and preserve them the best I can, still they’re but a patchwork of rogue holes and odd fixings. The felon that were put ashore by the sealing ship wud not recognise the strange man that come out of me.

  Now the sea and the fish and the birds turn out my chief delight. It aint jes because them other felons is a bunch of arseholes neither, there’s arseholes everywhere, and it aint jes because there’s nothing else to do. It’s because I discover a penguin fish have a family life and a way of doing things, and its way of living go on no matter what the lunatic King order or the poxy Norfolk jailers think or them sad green London virgins pray for. It go on with rules and games and conversations and tragedies jes like a play and it give the lie to them churchmen that say only humans can have such a show.

  Even them know-alls from the Royal Society, do any one of them know how a penguin converse? How one clatter his beak and poke out his chest and wriggle his flippers and the other bend his head towards him like a old man listening? How in a sad moment they stand chest to chest and toe to toe and only the God-given stuntedness of their flippers prevent the hugging of each other? Do the Royal Society know how they play? How they line up on the rocks to dive in and do look very circumspect, for aint the sea full of gobbling seals, and the line go orderly for a while, when all of a sudden, whee! a penguin make a huge leap off the rocks and do his dive through the air like a acrobat and go splat on the water jes for the sheer fun of it?

  The seals is also coming home. Soon we take up our clubs again and smash in their heads, soon their blood spread out wide upon the rocks and beaches. Do I have no heart for the seals? In the beginning, no. Seals jes seem like food and skins. And their family life weren’t attractive to me, it were more like something Slangam dream up. The fat aggressive bulls come home first and start sharing out the boulders and pools and the small patches of sand, and their way of sharing is to fight and fight and fight. They fight and bleed, bleed and fight. They fight so much I never even seen them eat. But not eating aint made them slender, indeed they so much bigger than the ladies it surprise me the men don’t squish them.

  The ladies come ashore a bit after the land wars, and push out their pups, jes one each, when the sun is the most strongest. Then the bull that won all the fights come along and rape them all. After that he leave them alone, they do all the mothering alone, he don’t do no canoodling with his harem, nor do he lower his self to mind the brats. He also don’t do no pertecting of his families so it’s easy for us to go into his real estate with our clubs.

  Course all the seals aint of the same type. Some have a trunk like a elephant, some have spots like a leopard and some have manes like Africa lions. Some walk on four paws and some use their front paws to push their selves on their bellies, some have ears that hang and some have a other type of ear. I bet the Royal Society wud be very grateful to know all of this, there wud not be many of their members that done a seal kill on a Incognita isle and noticed all them things. I think they wud also be surprised how fast a seal can move, anyone wud think a creature so saddled with fat and such shortness of feet is jes a sluggard, but I tell yer it can rush and lunge like a devil and give a nasty bite that swell up like a plague boil.

  But then – when were it exactly? I don’t know, sometime last summer – one seal’s big liquid eye eye me as I raise my arm, her cumbersome escape don’t seem no true match for human ferociousness, she have to travel slow because of her little furry pup she won’t leave behind, and all of it make me shrink down in horror. Course Slangam say we orta kill the pups too, that way we don’t leave no starving childs. It make me sick at heart and I don’t do it, jes leave behind me a whole orphanage of mewling pups slipping about in their Mamas’ blood. Never mind, Slangam bring up the rear cleaning up the mess.

  There’s more horror when the albatross babes is learning to fly. I learned a lot about them birds since I first come here, and I discover the ones gliding high in the late summer aint the current eggs. A albatross chick take a long time to become a flyer. After i
t hatch, the Mama squash it for a while, but then she go off to find food and leave the babe alone in the nest. It don’t have no flying feathers and it wud be a good time for Slangam to steal a special meal, but I neglect to tell him of this abandonment. Eventually though, and it’s cold by this time, them chicks have to get their little selfs aloft. Soon the parents will fly away and them chicks have to go too.

  I take my sewing and fixings to the edge of the cliff and look down on the albatross flying school. The chicks run along the rocky shore with their big wings out a bit, kind of bent like they don’t understand what their body’s trying to do, and then they take a few leaps and hops and get a little lift, maybe a wind come and they get some heighth, they spread their wings and go whee, look at me ma, suddenly the wind is gone off and they sink down to the ground. The cruelty come in when they land on the sea and the big shadder that trolls in the deeps come flashing to the surface with its jagged teeth. Now they see a shark has et their feet and on either side of the big sharky grin their wings beat in vain, in vain.

  Why God don’t make it so a fellow creature learn from this mistake? None do. Each albatross babe run and fly, it jes a matter of luck if it come down on the sea or land. And if it come down on the land today, maybe it come down on the sea tomorrow. Why do this hazard not even touch their little bright souls, indeed why don’t everything that creepeth upon the Earth shrink down and refuse to budge? But in the world of hazard, God make His creatures blithe.

  As I stitch and watch, the flying school catch at my deep thinkings about how the world were made. Why do most folks think the shark were made by the devil and the albatross by God? Surely that’s a big mistake, a blasphemy. Don’t God love His shark and provide for him? Who are we to say He ortn’t to provide albatrosses?

  ‘Some of us that done a bit of learning,’ Gargantua say when I give him this opinion, ‘know precisely where yer going wrong in yer thinking.’

  He say precisely with a lot of precision, like when he say exquisite exquisitely.

  Lucky Slangam aint here or he wud of said Gargantua dint ever learn a fucken thing worth knowing and get to work. Toper stir a berry and blubber stew and don’t speak.

  ‘How’s my thinking wrong?’ ask I irritated.

  ‘Yer think yer can look at the beasts and learn how we orta live.’

  ‘That’s what I think?’

  Gargantua nod in a glum way, glum that my stupidness turn so outwards.

  ‘But everyone know that the way things is don’t have any relation to how they orta be.’

  ‘Do they!’ say I flabbergasted.

  ‘No need to be indignant. It were a very famous man that thought of it first.’

  ‘What if how it is is how it orta be?’

  Gargantua shake his head. ‘A man can’t learn from nature. Nature’s too brutal.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what he need to learn most.’

  ‘Don’t yer feel sick when a seal or a whalefish eat one of yer penguin childs?’ Toper ask.

  ‘Yair. But aint my sick feeling jes another example of what is?’

  ‘It’s moral revulsion,’ Gargantua pronounce.

  ‘It’s revulsion but I don’t know how moral it is. Do I think he ortn’t to do it? Do I think a whalefish orta starve? No.’

  Gargantua poke the fire.

  ‘Do I think ants that swarm upon a nestling and eat it bit by bit orta starve? Do I think a snake that swaller a little mouse whole orta? The answer’s no.’

  ‘No need to rave,’ Fatty say sour.

  ‘Well, do yer think a cannibal orta starve?’ Toper pounce.

  ‘Yair. If he want to eat me.’

  ‘See now yer contradict yerself,’ he reply looking round very pleased.

  ‘A cannibal have other things to eat, not least all of the birds and beasts. But how do a whalefish eat a boiled potata? That very famous man can say yer can’t get orta from what is, but aint the opposite jes as bad? Making up a bunch of rules and saying the world orta be like it, whether it can be or no?’

  ‘Is that the opposite?’ Toper ask blinking.

  Slangam don’t allow no time off if we don’t do what’s useful, and to him there aint nothing useful in sitting and looking and musing about God’s creatures. He do agree to fixing the clothings that we wear and near wear out, so he allow me to take my awl and last year’s skins to the cliff. I like this sewing but it aint because I’m a leopard that change my spots. My spots come out red and itchy if ever I get near a proper day’s work again, they weep pus if a day turn into year after year. But yer got to wear clothes, it’s as simple as that. And when there aint no tailor shops, jes like there aint no butchers for our meat, yer got to do the fixings yerself. I have to say, often when I look up from my handiwork at the restless sea, freedom come down like a spell, like love without the madness.

  But I know fixing the clothings don’t let me to escape the blood. Spilled blood’s at the bottom of everything, it’s something yer have to come to grips with fully, and there aint no escape for anyone. Even if yer gird yerself in a homespun gown and eat nothing but oat porridge and turnips, yer still must have some truck with commerce, need for example yer spade or axe or spinning wheel, yer book or map or physick, and the foundation of all commerce is killed beasts, make no mistake. And if yer stupid enough to think it’s all jes a human folly, yer can sit here and watch how the whalefish keep on swallering seals, the seals keep on swallering penguins, the penguins keep on swallering squid, it all go on without yer permission and there aint nothing yer can do about it. It aint up to man how the world were made.

  Summer come on. The albatrosses been gone awhile but now them big birds come back. I dunno where they went. Flonker say he heared some whalers track them to the south of America but probably them men were all drunk on rum and wud not know a albatross from a quetzal bird.

  I gaze out at the albatrosses sitting on the cliffs. Weren’t I going to take a walk towards them? Aint they really just like them bush turkeys? What happen to that idea? Course I aint gonna eat a albatross, I aint got a suitable albatross weapon. If I were to creep up upon a nesting albatross and try to club it, before I know it, it will be flapping about my head like a raged angel. It will be swooping and flapping, swooping and flapping, and soon my head will be beat to death. And although I aint got no truck with Gargantua’s poem, and don’t believe for a moment it’s more unlucky to kill a albatross than any other kind of bird, any fool can see it pose a special problem of size and wings and southern fury. It’s in the foolish choice that the bad luck lie.

  Then come a special kind of day, one of them days of blue sky and strong warm wind that bend all the vegetation and whip the froth from the sea high into the air. It’s the kind of day I love, the kind of day when my heart break free from its tight cavity and roam free, it seem to jes melt in with the rushy air and stop its painful throb. Somehow without willing it, I’m on my feet. My body point itself towards the angel birds and one booted foot go in front of the other. Really it aint that frightening. Now here come my right boot through the air, just skimming the ground, and it land on the naked earth, a place where them plants have been scratched clean away. Here come the left boot again to stand beside it and hold it in a balance. So one boot go in front of the other and then another go quick and then – then it’s time for lunch.

  ‘What yer been doing all morning?’ Gargantua ask when I get back.

  ‘Been thinking of killing a albatross. They sure do look meaty.’

  ‘Yer can’t kill a albatross,’ squawk Slangam in alarm. Indeed he’s so alarmed he clean forget how afraid I am. ‘When our ship come, it wud sink to the deeps on our journey home.’

  ‘It aint coming. And if it don’t come, the bad luck don’t come. And Flonker’s poem turn out a lie.’

  ‘It aint a fucken lie,’ Flonker say very irritable. ‘It’s a allegory. A allegory aint a fucken lie jes because it aint the literal truth. It try and teach yer something, see? And it aint jes that if yer shoot a albatros
s yer ship get wrecked.’

  ‘What do it teach?’ Toper ask.

  Gargantua take up a pose and spout:

  O happy living things! no tongue

  Their beauty might declare:

  A spring of love gushed from my heart,

  And I blessed them unaware:

  Sure my kind saint took pity on me,

  And I blessed them unaware.

  Well, this rile me up. In the spare time he have, Fatty lie about in front of the fire, he never roam the island and seek out the happy living things. He don’t know how they live or if they even happy. And for sure no blessing gush from his bloaty heart.

  ‘Happy living things!’ I disdain him. ‘If yer went out there and looked, yer wud see killing and dying everywhere.’

  ‘The world is beautiful,’ say Toper in a strangle tone.

  ‘So it is,’ I agree at once. ‘But living aint.’

  Part Two

  THE MIDDLE YEARS

  1

  Is being born divine punishment, as Fatty once tell me? Of course Toper consider that a terrible blasphemy, but the idea catch at me like a burr. It do seem to me, if that were true, in one stroke God wud be freed from making Earth a paradise. No longer wud it be required of Him that everything be good here, or there orta be no suffering. No longer cud a man wail, I am a good man and God orta save me. No longer wud God need to know everything so He cud arrange good men’s lives and deliver them from harm. All He wud need to do is hold up a dirty soul to His searing eyeball and say, off to Earth with yer, yer gotta learn a lesson.

  Aint that what all punishing is for, to teach a lesson?

  And like God yer can do it with goodness of heart for the sake of them yer punish, or like Mincemeat and Fovo yer can do it with evil hearts for yer own enjoyment. Either way, don’t every punisher hope to instruct? Why otherwise do anyone bother? Fovo and his ilk cud jes stick a bayonet through yer guts, they wudn’t need to bother with no whipping post, and God cud jes obliterate yer for eternity, He wudn’t need to bother with no world.