by Jem Poster
‘Don’t do that, Nell’
‘What?’
‘That rocking. It disturbs me.’
She glowered at me, but sat back in her chair and composed herself a little before continuing.
‘I ran out on to the landing, calling for my mother. But it was my father who appeared, banging back the dining-room door as he rushed out into the hallway. I can see him now, the way he looked that morning, staring up at me as I leaned over the stair-rail, his face grey like dirty pastry and his mouth twisted as though he were trying to smile and couldn’t. “Get dressed,” he said, “and stay in your room until I come up.” Then he turned to go back into the dining-room, and at that moment I heard a cry – not a loud cry, but a kind of sobbing moan. I knew for sure then that something was amiss and I pelted down the stairs and caught up with him in the doorway. “I want to see Mama,” I said, and made to squeeze past him into the room, but he moved to block my way, grabbing at my arm and knocking me sideways so that my head struck the door-frame. Not hard, but I fell to my knees; and as I tried to scramble out of his reach, I saw her lying there.’
‘Your mother?’
‘Yes, stretched out on the floor with the top of her dress unbuttoned and Mrs Denman kneeling over her, smoothing the hair back from her forehead. I must have stopped short at the sight of her – her face drawn with pain and the skin white and shining with sweat – because next thing I knew my father was bundling me back through the door and up the stairs. “Do as you’re told,” in he said. “Stay in your room and I’ll come up when I can.” He was trying to soften his voice, I could tell, but it came out wrong, and his fingers were gripping my shoulder so tight you could see the bruising for weeks after.’ She put her hand up to the place, rubbing it gently as if it were still tender.
There was a long silence.
‘And when your father came back?’
‘He didn’t. When I was dressed I sat on my bed for an age, and at last Sally – the maid we had then – came up and told me I was to go out and play, and wait for the baby to arrive. So I put on my shoes and my sun-hat and – have you been down to the creek?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Well, when you go, leave the main path at the fork and take the narrower track through the trees. After about half a mile you’ll come to a small patch of rough grazing. Cross that and you’ll find yourself at the edge of the most beautiful stretch of the creek. There’s a bend where the water slows and deepens, and a stillness all around that frightens people who aren’t used to it. That’s where I go when I need to think. It’s where I went that morning.
‘I walked slowly along the bank, talking to my brother as I’d grown used to doing, pointing out the things he liked – dragonflies, spiders’ webs, the swallows dipping over the water. But it seemed to me that he wasn’t quite with me – drifting away as I tried to interest him in this thing or that, his attention wavering and fading like a dying candle-flame. Or perhaps it was me – my own attention somewhere else so I couldn’t see him clearly or hear what he was thinking. After a while it became so difficult that I stopped trying and let him go. And that’s when I saw Mama, standing at the edge of the grassland, her dress as pale as the silver stringybarks she stood against, so that I could hardly make her out at first. But as I looked, she seemed to come into focus – to sharpen somehow, I can’t say how it was – and then I saw she was bareheaded, her hair unpinned and tumbling loose about her shoulders. And that was strange because I’d never seen her take a step beyond the garden gate without first putting her hat on; but it wasn’t as strange as what happened after.’
She had begun to rock again, the chair creaking softly with her movements. ‘I can’t help it,’ she said, catching my glance. ‘When I think about these things—’
‘There’s no need to go on if it distresses you.’
‘But it’s important to tell you. I’ve never told anyone before – never met anyone I thought would understand.’
I was surprised to find myself blushing, flattered no doubt by her implied regard for my perspicacity, but stirred too, as I was later to acknowledge to myself, by the subtle suggestion of intimacy. I don’t believe she noticed my discomfiture; at all events, she took up the thread again, moving smoothly on as though there had been no interruption.
‘No, the really strange thing was this: one moment she was out there by the trees, and the next – I don’t know how it happened because there’s some gap, a blank space where something must have gone on that I didn’t see or can’t lay hold of – she was with me on the bank, almost as close as you are now. I remember thinking how young she looked, her features fine and her skin soft, but very pale, and her gaze so mournful I can still make myself cry by thinking about it.
‘I’d thought when I first caught sight of her that she must have come to show me my brother, but now I saw that her arms were empty. “Where is he?” I asked. And then, because she appeared not to understand, I said his name, “Edward,” very softly like that, the way I liked to whisper it to him on our walks together. That seemed to rouse her in some way, and she fixed her eyes on mine and held me with her gaze. Her lips didn’t move, but I knew then, as surely as if she’d spoken, that she’d come to let me know that my brother was dead – that he wasn’t coming to join me and I shouldn’t wait any more.’ She leaned forward again, cupping her chin in her hand, and I saw that her eyes were bright with unspilled tears.
‘And your mother?’
‘Not there, though I saw her clearly enough. She couldn’t have been.’
‘Couldn’t have been? Is this a ghost story, Nell?’
‘Not a story, but the plain truth. And my mother couldn’t have been a ghost either, not in the way people usually think of ghosts. She didn’t die until late that evening. But I suppose some part of her must have broken free before the end and wandered out to find me.’
I regarded myself at the time as a thoroughgoing sceptic in such matters, but there was something in her words – or perhaps simply in her guilelessly expressive features – that set my skin prickling.
‘I think we should take a stroll outside in the sunlight,’ I said.
‘Let me finish.’ She brushed angrily at her eyes with the back of her hand and stared hard at me as though daring me to move. ‘I began crying then, whimpering like a hurt puppy, wanting it not to be true but knowing beyond all doubt that it was. But she reached out and took me up – I don’t mean in her arms, and I can’t say exactly what I do mean, but I felt myself gathered and raised, riding upward the way a boat lifts at its moorings as the tide turns in. And after she’d gone – and she seemed to slip away without my noticing – I was still held there, very quiet and still, sensing myself a little apart from the world but seeing it all so clearly – the ripples and creases on the surface of the water, the play of light on the eucalyptus leaves, the shadows sliding across the grass as the day wore on. And even that night, lying in bed, listening to my father sobbing and moaning in the next room, I could still feel myself supported, as if she were trying to …’ She trailed off, lifting her eyes to the cavernous roof as though she might find among its shadows the words she was searching for.
‘To console you?’
She seemed to consider this. ‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘I suppose it was something of the kind. I felt she was offering me her protection, though I think in the end she wasn’t strong enough to shield me from the worst. If she’d been able to give me everything she seemed to promise, the past ten years would have been very different. We’d have kept that gentleness about the household, the gentleness I remember touching us all – myself, my father, the servants – as she moved among us in life. And certainly my father would never have mistreated me as he does.’
‘Come now, Nell. I can see that you and your father have your differences, but you’re hardly—’
‘You can see nothing,’ she cut in angrily, starting to her feet. ‘Nothing at all.’ The colour was up in her cheeks again, her breathing fast and shal
low. She leaned over her drawing-board and began to unpin the paper. ‘I did this for you,’ she said, ‘but I might have saved myself the trouble.’
‘Nell,’ I said, moving towards her, ‘you’re not to talk like that. Do you hear me? Let me look.’ She glared but made way for me, stepping back from the table so that I could see the painting more clearly.
What is it in art that opens our eyes and hearts to truths barely glimpsed in life? I had spent the best part of a morning staring at a succession of small corpses without registering what I was dealing with. Now, bending above Eleanor’s painting – nothing, on the face of it, but streaks and clots of pigment on a cockled sheet of paper – I was jolted into awareness like a man roused suddenly from a profound sleep. The bird had been represented in profile and at such an angle in relation to the paper that, with bill slightly parted and neck extended, it seemed at first glance to be singing in blind ecstasy. Even the stiff left wing, held just wide of the body, might have been taken to indicate a taut vitality; but then the eye travelled to the dull badge of blood on the breast, to the legs, folded too close against the belly, and to the cramped grip of the feet on thin air. It was a remarkable achievement. By some expressive sleight of hand, Eleanor had contrived to suggest, more or less simultaneously, both the brute fact of death and the vibrant life from which the creature had been plucked; and it was in that poignant double focus that I discovered a truth which none of the morning’s cutting and probing had succeeded in laying bare.
It was undoubtedly the image itself that moved me in the first instance, but it may be that what tipped the balance was Eleanor’s giving of it – half sullen, half eager, her eyes lifted to mine as she handed me the sheet. At all events, my voice cracked as I thanked her, and I found myself, quite unexpectedly and with some embarrassment, on the verge of tears.
11
You’ll be pleased to know,’ said Vane as we sat at lunch that afternoon, ‘that Bullen has made arrangements for your expedition to the mountains.’
‘He was here this morning?’
‘He called by on his way to the store. You’ll be starting out on Thursday, first thing. I suggested he join us for dinner this evening to discuss details with you.’
Bullen and I had, it was true, worked our way round, after a little unpleasantness and a certain amount of further haggling, to a broad agreement on the matter but I found myself vaguely disconcerted, not only by the fellow’s high-handed assumption that he might plan our itinerary without further consultation with me, but also by the news that we were to leave so soon. I was debating the wisdom of saying anything on the subject when Eleanor spoke up.
‘Mr Redbourne has scarcely been here a week,’ she said. ‘You’re bundling him off into the bush before he’s had a chance to settle.’
‘Mr Redbourne is here with a purpose,’ said Vane with a flicker of irritation, ‘and Mr Bullen has kindly agreed to help him. It’s not for you to interfere in their business.’ And then, turning to me before Eleanor had time to reply: ‘There’ll be four of us tonight – I’ve invited Merivale.’
‘Five,’ said Eleanor. ‘Five of us.’
‘Male company,’ said Vane brusquely. ‘I think you might-prefer to take supper in the kitchen with Mrs Denham.’
‘And then again,’ she retorted, the colour rising to her cheeks, ‘I might not.’
Vane gave her a long, hard stare. ‘As you please,’ he said, ‘but I want no nonsense from you. You know what I mean. If you’re addressed, you may speak. Otherwise, keep your thoughts to yourself.’
‘Thank you, Father’ – under her breath, the words themselves innocuous enough, but the insolence unmistakable. She laid her knife and fork carefully on the rim of her plate, rose to her feet and swept out of the room.
From the moment we sat down at the table that evening it was clear to me how profoundly Eleanor had subverted her father’s plans: seating herself at Vane’s side with Merivale to the left of her, she effectively isolated the young man from our company. I could see, glancing across as he bent smiling towards her, that he himself was by no means dissatisfied with the arrangement, but Eleanor’s apparent determination to engage him in private conversation was plainly an irritant to her father. At intervals during the main course Vane would attempt to draw Merivale away, seeking his opinion on this or that matter of concern, but on each occasion Eleanor drew the young man back again, reeling him in as an angler plays a hooked fish, and Vane eventually abandoned him to her.
‘The thing is,’ said Bullen, glancing up as the maidservant reached over to set the fruit bowl on the table, ‘that we’ll have more equipment than we can carry. The train journey poses no problem, of course, but once we’re out there we shall need assistance. I’ve made arrangements for one of the local guides to go out with us – fellow by the name of Billy Preece, highly recommended by one of my contacts in the area. More than willing to shoulder his share, I’m told, and knows the region like the back of his hand.’
I have a naturally romantic outlook, and Bullen’s reference to the railway gave me a moment’s pause. I had imagined us setting out from the villa on horseback, and plunging almost at once into the unknown: a train journey seemed altogether too mundane.
‘Oh, you’ll get your fill of the wilderness,’ said Bullen, when I touched on the matter, ‘once we’re in the mountains. On ponyback first, and then on foot. By the time we return to civilisation you’ll be more than ready to take advantage of its comforts.’
‘No doubt,’ I answered, ‘but sometimes I think how the face of England has changed since my childhood – the railways reaching into all those quiet corners, the cities spreading outward like dirty stains – and I find myself wondering whether we may not be paying too high a price for the comforts of civilisation. Out here, with so much splendid scenery still unspoiled—’
‘That’s precisely the point,’ interrupted Vane. ‘There’s so much of it that our own petty activities – railway construction, tree clearance, mining – make scarcely any impression. If I were to return to England now, I might well share some of your anxieties, but Australia’s a different matter. You can’t imagine it, Redbourne – the sheer immensity of the land, the resources we’ve scarcely begun to draw upon.’
‘Besides,’ said Bullen, ‘there’s nothing wrong with taking Nature in hand and letting her know we mean business. As a culture we possess certain skills, certain powers. They’re the reason we’re here – I mean, they’re the reason we own the country and the blackfellow doesn’t.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘we own it at the moment, but who’s to say we won’t be dislodged a century or two from now?’
Bullen shook his head. ‘If we are,’ he said, ‘it won’t be by a race of barefoot dreamers but by a civilisation even more forceful in its dealings with the world than we are.’
‘True enough,’ said Vane, selecting a ripe peach from the fruit bowl. ‘I’m with Darwin there – it’s the strong who inherit the earth. That’s the way things work. And there’s no doubt that the native tribes here have had their day.’
I sensed, rather than saw, that Eleanor had turned to look in our direction. ‘Forgive me if I’m wrong, Father,’ she said, cutting in with chilly precision,‘but isn’t it the meek who are to inherit the earth? Or has that text had its day too?’
Vane ran his knife round the soft flesh of the peach, twisted the halves apart and set them carefully on his plate. ‘I wasn’t aware,’ he said, ‘that meekness was a quality you held in particularly high esteem, Eleanor.’ He leaned forward and took up the decanter. ‘More wine, gentlemen?’
As he reached across to fill Merivale’s glass, Eleanor interposed her own. ‘Thank you,’ she said. I saw Vane hesitate.
Eleanor looked around the table. ‘My father believes that good wine is wasted on young ladies,’ she said.
‘Your father believes,’ said Vane, gruffly, ‘that one glass is ample for any young lady worthy of the name.’
‘But not,’ Eleanor pers
isted, ‘for a young gentleman.’ She turned to Merivale. ‘Do you think that’s fair, William?’
The young man’s confusion was almost comical. Undoubtedly flattered by her appeal, yet clearly conscious of his obligation to his host, he stuttered and goggled until Vane, perhaps out of pity for his predicament or perhaps simply in hope of restoring order to the proceedings, replenished Eleanor’s glass.
‘I don’t think,’ said Eleanor, picking up her thread as deftly as if the interruption had not taken place, ‘that meekness means letting other people have their way at your expense, or being silent when you’ve a right or a duty to speak. I think it means being humble in the face of a universe we can hardly begin to understand. I think it means knowing when we should stop trying to set our stamp on everything we see – knowing when to stand back and admire the world instead of forcing ourselves on it.’
She took a gulp of wine and set her glass back on the table with clumsy emphasis. ‘Mr Bullen seems to imagine,’ she continued, ‘that our culture will have fulfilled its destiny once it has taken everything else – the wilderness, other cultures, life itself – by the scruff of the neck and shaken it into submission.’ Merivale shifted uneasily at her side and leaned forward as though to intervene, but if she saw the movement she chose to ignore it. ‘We’re cut out for better things, Mr Bullen – for higher things – but we live blindly, striking out at whatever displeases us, gathering up whatever takes our fancy. We don’t see the damage we’re doing or the suffering we cause. And until we do—’
‘Whoa there, young lady,’ cried Bullen, good-humouredly enough, I thought, given the circumstances. ‘You can’t hold me responsible for all the ills of the world.’