Preservation

by Jock Serong

  Grayling had never learnt an instrument but, turning his mind to the sound from upstairs, he sensed a tiredness in the bowing, little cracks at the edges like the faintly slurring speech of a man on watch in the deep hours.

  ‘What is the music?’ he asked, turning his head finally to Mrs Butcher. She did not look back at him but down at her hands.

  ‘Geminiani. His Excellency has been working on it for many weeks.’

  ‘Oh. Splendid.’ Grayling took out his watch and examined it. ‘Will he perform it for us, do you think?’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘He will perfect it, then move to another piece.’ The knots in her knuckles. The worn nails. The liver spots on the backs of those hands, the abrasions from scrubbing.

  ‘Why do it then?’ It felt like something he would wonder privately; but he had asked out loud.

  She looked at him now. ‘With the utmost respect, lieutenant, why do anything?’ There was no censure in her expression. She took a fold of the fabric in her lap; rearranged it under her hands. ‘It’s the largo from the Sonata in D. The final bars. He will put the instrument aside momentarily.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘I taught him when he was a boy. Impatient, like you. Will you take tea, lieutenant?’

  The violin had been returned to its case and removed from sight. The easel was still shrouded; these were planes of other existences in the man. The governor had opened a chiffonier and was stooping into it uncomfortably. Grayling had heard stories about the wounded leg, but the governor never spoke of it.

  ‘I have brandy,’ he said, his back turned to the lieutenant as he searched among bottles. Receiving no answer, he turned to look at Grayling.

  ‘I’m sorry sir, I thought…’

  ‘You thought I’d banned it? Public example must give way occasionally to private necessity, lieutenant.’ He smiled gently. ‘I’m having one. Won’t you join me?’

  Grayling nodded assent. The governor poured them two rummers and took a seat in the armchair that faced Grayling’s. He heaved a deep sigh.

  ‘I have to find someone to replace the sails on the windmill.’ He laughed at himself. ‘My great edifice. My two-hundred-year windmill.’

  ‘You don’t need to concern yourself with the details of it, sir.’

  ‘I know. I know. It’s just…there’s so much. This place so strongly resists civilisation.’

  ‘The natives, you mean?’

  ‘Not just them. The land…the bush, good lord. Snakes and insects. The wind. Much of what I’ve done seems undone already. The windmill’s a sort of public demonstration of the futility of it all. Why did I have to go and say it had two hundred years in it?’

  He laughed again; Grayling smiled with him.

  ‘You brought the place up out of lawlessness, sir. Now it’s a society, isn’t it? It might be rough, but it bends to the rule of law. A few more years and we’ll—’

  ‘There won’t be a few more years. The home secretary has me singled out. I brought the convicts back in from the farms to appease him and now I’m culpable for the farmers’ anger.’ A shadow crossed the lined face, where Grayling had only ever seen kindness. ‘Can you imagine Westminster from here? I can’t. But they’re speaking my name in Westminster, speaking it with derision.’

  Grayling sipped silently from the brandy. He had never heard the governor speak this way; had become accustomed to the man’s dry practicality, his caution.

  ‘There is much at stake for the Corps.’ The governor motioned towards the dark window. ‘Fortunes. And these men who’ve come in from the wreck: if there are seals down south in the numbers they say, if this new strait takes days off the voyage from the west, if there is, indeed, coal to be found…if all of these things come to pass, the commercial pressures will be significant. Civil administration like this, it only works when it has support from home. And I don’t have it.’

  The governor placed his glass on the desk.

  ‘This place won’t be ruled,’ he continued. A wry chuckle escaped him: ‘Remember that herd of Afrikanders we brought over? Wonderful beasts. Hardy; docile, usually. Then they go and break out of their enclosures like something’s possessed them, wander inland—and now we have a herd of ten dozen minotaurs somewhere out there in the bush. They were just bloody cows until we brought them here.’ He shook his head. ‘Terrors without and thieves within.’

  ‘The Corps?’

  Hunter shrugged faintly. ‘Well, we’re stuck with them. Maybe the presence of parasites tells us there’s some worth in the host. But Macarthur is already moving against me. He tells the Home Office we’ve had forty-six escapes this year and they conclude it’s my inattention. Perhaps it is.’

  ‘Some have escaped. On the other hand, there’s been three hundred births. Doesn’t your measure of success depend on what you think the experiment is?’

  ‘I’m tired, lad.’ He considered the glass in his hand, tilted it. ‘Well. You came here for a purpose, I am sure.’

  Grayling was no longer convinced his proposal was a good idea. He hadn’t expected such pessimism. ‘I do not wish to delay you with long-winded explanations, excellency, but—’

  ‘Excellency, now?’ A hint of amusement in his voice.

  ‘But I believe you must order the arrest of John Figge.’

  One of the silver eyebrows shot upwards. The humour vanished from his face. Grayling pressed on quickly.

  ‘The lascar boy, Srinivas, has spoken extensively to Mrs Grayling, as you know. He describes a plot between Mr Clark and Mr Figge to ensure it was only them that reached Sydney.’

  ‘You mean by murdering the others?’

  ‘In relation to the carpenter and the first mate, yes. In other cases, I mean ensuring they didn’t survive.’

  ‘Ensuring they didn’t survive. How does one prosecute such a thing?’

  ‘It is enough that we proceed on Thompson and Kennedy.’

  The governor considered this for a moment. ‘What value was there to the two of them in doing that?’

  ‘I cannot say. It depends on the financial circumstances of the voyage, I suppose. Salvage, maybe, or insurance.’

  ‘This rests upon the testimony of the boy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s reliable?’

  ‘He’s alone. He has no reason to lie.’

  ‘Isn’t there an immediate problem with your idea about a conspiracy? Figge and Clark started telling us about the other survivors almost as soon as they arrived. Why would they do so if they did not want to set in motion the rescue of those people?’

  Grayling hesitated. He’d argued this endlessly with Charlotte. ‘I can only conclude, sir, that it was not intended that the three of them would make it here. I believe Figge aimed to have no companions, and that the sudden arrival of the fishing boat at Wattamolla upended his plan. With the first story in ruins, they’re competing to tell us a new one.’

  ‘In which they feature as heroes.’ The governor stared into his glass again, lost in thought. ‘Clark was lucky, wasn’t he? Managed to evade Figge and then us, and when he gets back to Calcutta he’ll have the protection of his family. No complicity on the part of the boy?’

  ‘He appears innocent. And from my observations he has been in mortal terror of the other two throughout.’

  ‘Charlotte confirms this from her conversations with him?’

  ‘Entirely. The boy had enough wit to conceal his understanding of English. I feel sure he would have been killed, had they known.’

  ‘Very well. Take the boy in and hold him until we can have him testify. You will have to make him understand it is for his own protection. What do you want to do about Mr Figge then? You want to arrest him? The whole place is enraptured by his heroic story.’

  ‘I’m told he’s in Parramatta, giving audiences in the taverns. Yes, I want to go and bring him in.’

  The governor recoiled slightly in his chair. ‘If you’re right, then…he’s a dangerous man.’

 
; ‘I am right. And he is. It doesn’t sway me at all.’

  ‘Drink the brandy, lieutenant.’ The governor watched him stiffly take the glass to his mouth and sip from it.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I was young once, Joshua. So was Phillip before me, and so was…whoever comes after me. I felt that frantic kicking at fate that you feel. It falls to old fools like me to counsel against it, even though young fools like you will do it anyway. I’m so fond of Charlotte. I’m so grateful that the two of you came here with me and gave me the benefit of your youthful energy. I wish, I suppose, that I was dealing with subordinates who were nothing more than machine parts. But you two are…I’m so tired, forgive me. You two are close to my heart.’

  Grayling listened in churning silence. The governor had never spoken this way, even in private.

  ‘Just let the thing take its course,’ Hunter continued. ‘Why do you need to go? Why can I not just authorise a detachment of marines and leave you out of it?’

  The answer had been lodged in Grayling’s heart for days. The evil bastard had touched Charlotte: handled her. Posed as a faith healer and, worse still, succeeded where Ewing had failed. The man had openly defied him. That alone should not have mattered. It was the bigger things: the lies, the deceptions; the fact that he had very possibly murdered his companions. And somewhere deeper, the matter of his identity. It worked on Grayling like slowly creeping nausea. Figge was not what he said he was.

  ‘You gave me this work, sir. You asked me to find out what led to these men turning up on the beach. The last part is to go to Parramatta. Let me bring him to you and put at least this worry aside.’

  The governor tried to scoff. ‘You think I’m beset with worries?’

  ‘I would never presume to comment, sir.’

  ‘Tell me—do you think the Cadigal are out there burning the scrub because that’s the season? Or to send us a message? I’ve heard it said that it flushes out the animals, you know.’

  Grayling knew the governor was trying to move the conversation away from harder realities. ‘Sir, the people out there can deal with Pemulwuy. They know what he fights for, much as he terrifies them. But this man, Figge, he poisons from within. He’s no more a tea merchant than I am. I’ve spent time in his company and I tell you sir, he’s a devil. He’ll sow mistrust, and from mistrust comes division. He is dangerous in a way the plain enemy is not.’

  Seeing the governor had not contradicted him, Grayling hurried on. ‘And then, and then, sir, you can send Mr Bass, Mr Flinders; make an industry down there in the seals. Find that coal on the beach, find the passage west through the strait…’

  The governor smiled at the mention of it. ‘Aye, the bloody strait. I’ll tell you lad, I don’t miss having command of those voyages one little bit.’

  ‘Give the order, sir. I beg of you.’

  The governor raised his weary eyes to Grayling’s once more and saw nothing there but determination. He sighed. Tipped the rummer, only to find it empty. ‘You have my order.’

  Grayling clapped and stood instantly to go.

  ‘But lieutenant,’ the old eyes flamed briefly with wry humour. ‘If Charlotte says no, I’m overruled.’

  38

  Grayling made his preparations. Two days selecting men and armaments and devising an approach to Parramatta. It was a distasteful but necessary aspect of the work that he had to confer with informers, men trading flecks of information for other advantages. The exchanges occurred in their places of work or their homes or favourite taverns because it was in no one’s interest for them to be seen visiting Government House. He hated taking his uniform into such places.

  He waited to tell Charlotte of his plans: the one task he dreaded. And then, on the afternoon of the second day, just as he felt he had everything in place, Boorigul returned. She was sullen and downcast. Grayling could elicit no greeting from her, though he had never built the intimacy that Charlotte had. Charlotte herself was overjoyed, and cared little that the girl wouldn’t communicate. She fussed about, undeterred by Boorigul’s refusal to enter the house, and guided her to a seat on the narrow verandah. Inside, she set about making food for her, looking brightly at Grayling and mouthing the words She seems fine, as though her optimism alone would make it so.

  Grayling smiled back at his wife; tried to enjoy the moment on its uncomplicated surface. They stood at the verge of a hard winter, the governor under pressure from the ascendant Macarthurs and the machinations of the Corps. But Charlotte was healthy and she was smiling, and the dark thoughts that had assailed him over previous weeks, his anger at her wandering; all of it he felt he could put aside. She was happy.

  He went to the washbasin while Charlotte headed outside with bread and stew. The birds were in raucous voice, and across the slope above the Tank Stream he could hear the Eora in their usual exchanges. As they displayed their bodies without shame, so too, it seemed to him, they had no use for discreet conversation. There was a private realm somewhere in them, but it grew in different ground. Over the sounds of the hillside he could hear Charlotte murmuring to Boorigul, just beyond the doorway. Where have you been? she was asking.

  There was a whispered reply. Sibilant, too soft for him to catch.

  Are you hurt? The flat plink of spoon on bowl; a reply in the negative.

  He splashed water over his face and it trickled loudly back into the basin, so that he missed a moment of their exchange.

  …Warrander come for you again? Charlotte was asking.

  Grayling blotted the droplets with his towel to make a perfect silence. He knew the answer to the question.

  The silence lasted a long time, and he thought even the birds had hushed to listen. Then he heard Boorigul’s gentle voice.

  No missus, she said. Warrander finish.

  After they’d eaten, Charlotte walked out of the house and into the darkness, head bowed in thought. Grayling had let her go, understanding her need to take stock of Warrander’s death.

  Outside, as her eyes left the lantern behind, the path became clear, pale grass underfoot between darker borders of bracken. Then the harbour lay before her, the water she had heard the women calling warrane, gleaming with the moon and the stars and the fine speckled lines of reflected fires on other shores.

  The air smelled of an agreeable meeting of humans and nature: wood smoke that may have curled around the boots of the settlers but more likely came from the endless burning projects of the Eora. Eucalyptus, dry grass, old ash and the pungency of exposed reef. Some other scent she could not define, herbaceous and reassuring. For all the endless discussion of the ways in which the land was forbidding, this was a welcoming air. If she thought back, the remembered smells of Leith were not so kind.

  The land was marked out as areas of soft blackness against the sky and the living gleam of the water. In places it threw sharp corners at the sky; in others it was rounded or stretching a bent finger into the bays, a picture made of silver and black and the faint profound traces of blue. The trees bent in filigrees over the water; only the first trees or the last, for those deeper in had given over their individual shapes to the darkness. The birds were silent now. A dog barked here or there. The only human voices that continued at this hour were those of drunks arguing further along the shore. The fireside laughter of the Eora, like the birds, was in repose. She imagined fathers curled protectively around their sleeping children.

  The women were not there in the sleep-warm shelters, not now as the moon worked its beauty over the water. They were out in front of her, part of the night. Two women in each nowie, a fire between them, fishing. Calling to each other, softly, as though they held sacred the peace of the night. They paddled in a straight-backed kneel, balancing the fragile craft with their knees. Her eye followed one of them, an infant clutched to her breast and lit warm by the small flame in front of her as she manoeuvred the craft with the paddle in her other hand.

  The flames flickered when they moved, made burnished glows in the coin of the surface
when they were still. They were lamps adrift on the pond of a temple; more so when the women began to sing together, a song that passed from one nowie to the next, moving around the harbour like something with physical form—a food, perhaps—that could be handed and shared.

  When one of them raised a fish into the little craft, Charlotte could hear its splashing all the way up to where she stood on the promontory, high above them; the small thudders of its last struggle on the nowie’s bark floor.

  Then the splashes sounded at regular intervals, spaced in time and between the boats; the waters surrendering fish one by one. She had seen the convicts bring in nets so full they couldn’t lift them onto the beach; had been compelled to wait for the tide to empty them. A day they had claimed they took four thousand fish: vulgar beside this, this delicate singularity.

  When she closed her eyes the tracks of the moving lights were there on the insides of her eyelids, maps of an unknowable world. The eyes of the women down there, she thought, might see through the ink of the night-time sea; a sense—sight but not seeing—that belonged to the slow passage of generations.

  In the morning the men would have fish for sale, but soon enough the winter would close in and there would be no more fishing. The winter would be different.

  It was time that she told her husband.

  Here at the end of the world and in the heart of the night, the voices and the tiny lights and the thing she must tell him; all of them were more mystery than fact. Only one clear certainty held: she had never seen such a beautiful night.