The Sawdust House, page 10
I laugh it off.
It is what James desires of me. A name is such a small thing. I am learning to call him husband.
Is the child –
Now I sit on the bed, my hands behind me, and look at baby Mary, who is settled on the floorboards, sleepy amid her cot of blankets, turning her head to the window.
Of course she’s his child. I’m not a whore, Mr …?
He blushes again at the language I have chosen, an embarrassment made acute by my position on the bed. The poor fool doesn’t know which way to look, so follows my gaze to the baby.
Crane. Mr Thomas Crane.
It’s now that I notice a secondary weakness, with his hands held together at his waist, as though he’s afraid of wringing them.
It’s more than the usual shyness around a severe woman.
Neither is it a secondary weakness. Instead, more of a deception, because he has not once looked at me in the way that all men look at me.
I want him to know that I know.
Do you love my husband, Mr Crane? Desire him, I mean?
He crumples like a paper bag.
It is a dream more real than anything I have experienced in this long life.
I am a child I am pinned on my back. Hands on my face my neck shoulders chest hips feet. I swat at the hands they flutter like butterflies but return in pairs they multiply and press down harder. I cannot breathe cannot see cannot move. My hands swat as the hands multiply and press down harder the weight of fear terror dread despair. No words can describe what I feel how helpless weak damned I wish to die but the hands press down and when I awake I am raised upon a scream.
DAY FOUR
James will not meet my eye.
He appears not to recognise me, something that the guard thinks amusing. His eyes are milky in the dull room, staring down at the floor where an insect crawls across the grey slab of light that filters through the barred window.
No wild enthusiasms this morning, or discussion of escape.
The plate of food beside him, the same bread and beans from yesterday, and the days before, untouched.
Outside, Cora and Casey are still hanging from their beams, twisting in the wind.
James. I sought out your wife last evening. She is quite the … personality.
No sign that he has heard.
And your wee one, the infant Mary. She is very beautiful.
He moves, but only to brace himself for the bout of coughing that wracks his body until his eyes redden, then begin to water. He wipes away the tears with the back of his hand.
In telling him of my visit to the Australian quarter, I realise that I am seeking his approval, for my bravery in doing so.
But he offers nothing.
His wife’s question, that I lingered upon for most of last night, finds its answer now. No, I do not desire him.
To my business then.
James, I begin, you were –
I ran away.
I were put to labouring on the construction of a road. In irons. The pick were my tool. Also the drill, to make a hole for the laying of charge …
I take up my pen to begin the new page.
The newspaperman waits but I do not speak. I remember everything, but that doesn’t mean I have the words. Those early years in Australia in particular. I can remember, and yet it’s like looking through a window whose curtains are on fire and the fuel the flames the curtains my vision is fear and the fuel is anger and the fuel is hatred.
I were myself aflame for many years.
The story of me and Leggo on the Bussorah Merchant that I have related to the newspaperman were dragged out over two precious days. I know why I did that. It were like I needed to keep the final destination over the horizon. It might have remained so if it weren’t for the hangings last night that set those curtains aflame and set me aflame.
I don’t have the words but I have pictures. Instead of placed in the service of Mr and Mrs Robertson. Absconded. Recaptured living under the wharf. A stolen onion and yard of rope in his possession – instead of this first report made against me I have the scent of fish guts of rotting seaweed the crabs I have crushed to secure my wedge of rock beneath the sighing timbers the rising tide the moonlight putting silver on the oily water the rats scurrying workmanlike across the higher beams the tide is rising how high will it rise I cannot swim?
Abscondees:
Placed in road-gang north of Parramatta Feb 14, 1829. Age 16yrs. Five foot eight inches. Red hair. Small burn on right hand. Absconded first night. Recaptured on banks of Parramatta River. Feb 15, 1829. Placed in iron gang with advanced team on road to Hunter Valley.
NSW Gazette, Tuesday, 20 October, 1829.
I watch the ants busy in the pre-dawn light smell the ash from the campfire I am laid on my belly my hands fixed to a stake my feet in irons my britches at my ankles I watch the ants busy near my face the dirt is cold on my cheek the dirt has dried on my face where my tears have run. I have never seen so many ants. Their earthen temple stands two feet tall it is made of mud the ants carry pieces of torn-apart insect they carry grains of sand they carry pale white eggs they carry water in perfect dew-globes they carry the blood that has trickled down the inside of my leg throughout the night their faces red their mandibles holding it up in jewelled chips and moist red droplets that resemble helmets this is what I remember.
James is clearly considering his words. I can see them in his eyes, in the shape of his lips. He stares at his feet before he looks at me.
Did they die … well?
He means Cora and Casey, and I’m not sure how to reply. To lie and say yes, with courage and without suffering, might set up a cruel aspiration. To tell the truth and say no would only add to his fear.
It is alright, Mr Crane. I have seen many convicts go by the gallows. That is not going to happen to me.
A slyness has crept into his eyes. I know that he wishes me to enquire why he’s so certain, but I will not.
He sees this, and nods, as though acknowledging a chess move.
What is the temper of Sydney-town?
As you might expect.
Were every Australian miner to fall back from the mountain valleys to this shore, he says, we could take this city, this province, this state.
But that is not going to happen. Is it?
He smiles. No, that is not going to happen, he says. My countrymen, they would as soon toady up to an overseer, a lieutenant, a governor, as knock them down and stand in replacement.
You speak from experience.
A strange look, as though I have caught him out. Another nod, but there is disappointment and sadness in his eyes.
Yes, experience. It were no different back in London, but in that vast country of New South Wales the space and eerie silence and scalpel-light seemed to distil a man or woman’s true nature. I were a serial absconder, as I have stated, and fast on the break. No overseer or screw warder could match me for manoeuvring through that whipping bush even their dogs set upon me couldn’t stand the pace I set. My strategy confused them too. They looked for me toward the west always the west they assumed I wanted to reach the mythological lands across the blue ridges of the dividing range where virgins wash your hair and honey drips from trees and where you can eat the soil like chocolate pudding. But it were my strategy instead to always head back to Sydney, for I were terrified of the size of that vast blue sky that blazing night-span of stars the birds who speak at night and in my mind’s eye the land that stretched endlessly to the west.
I am my mother’s son, I suppose. I were never gullible to stories of earthly paradise, because my Ma had told me that such places could only exist in the absence of men.
So I would circle behind my pursuers, and if they weren’t led by black-trackers I would sometimes follow them even steal from their camp at night before satisfying myself that they were ready to give up. Remember that there were at any given moment dozens of escapees on the break outside the settlements, and I were just an unimportant boy that no villain would rally around to form a cutthroat gang, and when it looked as though their efforts were waning then I would head back down the tracks and footpads toward either Parramatta or Sydney. My favourites were those tracks worn smooth by native feet over the course of the five thousand years since this earth were created. That were a figure stated by the preacher in the prison barracks over there in Sydney. I had heard it before of course, and always believed it, although I’ll admit that my faith began to waver in that colony because that land is clearly ancient it speaks to you if you are listening and mocks the ideas of the preacher – even the word of God is silenced beneath the weight of that deep and abiding sense of a country not subject to time and therefore outside of human time.
You do not laugh at me? You are indeed an unusual man. My experience of relating what I have just described is of intelligent men regarding me sceptically and often laughing in my face before they remember who they are laughing at and reel themselves in.
No, I find such ruminations interesting. Remember that I’m a child of the Great Plains, and one who earlier grew up among mighty forests of spruce, birch and larch. I think I understand what you are saying.
A true scrivener, so you are. The only other who never raised his eyebrows at me when I explained such things were the poet, I am talking about He of the Open Shirt and Hairy Chest, the remarkable Mr Whitman.
He were initially a foe that I were tasked with beating for what he’d written about my colleagues of the Spartan Fire Service, and our ward boss Isaiah Rynders, but who at our first meeting became a great friend and confidant. I were never able to temper Whitman’s diatribes against Catholics and Irishmen, but we nevertheless found common ground in our shared love of that great city of New York, and in the tittle-tattle that revealed the lever-pulling of the strange and complex political machine that drew our fascination after a few of his favoured penny-whiskies.
I might return to Mr Whitman at a later time, because I would like you to write to him and introduce yourself as my biographer, if that is what you call yourself. You may never have heard of him, but I am certain that you will. He speaks your language, so to speak. He speaks the language of every American man woman child. All of your words songs prayers course through him night and day.
He is also a drinker – a famous carouser and rabble-rouser, and I suspect that he wishes to be a politician, but his true nature is scrivener. He has a way with words that makes you see things that you never knew were there until he says them and then you realise that they have always been there like gold nuggets and jewels at your feet in the manner of the biblical statement I was blind but now I see.
Do not listen to the stories about him. Yes, he is a sodomite, but what of it? What of it, I ask you? It never made any difference to me.
He looks at me, daring me to chastise him, but I am too shocked to speak. James continues to hold his reckoning of my reaction, his eyes sharp in the gloom, and there is sufficient light for him to see that I have begun to blush. Even then, he doesn’t look away. It’s a natural assumption that my silence, and the colour in my face, might be a measure of approbation for his comments, but the truth is that he has caught me unawares. My first suspicion is that he perceives my secret nature, my private desires, and by speaking of the poet Whitman, is encouraging me to reveal myself.
I will not. I will not. I will not.
I would very much like to write to your Mr Whitman, I hear myself say with a surprising calmness. It’s true that I’ve never heard of him, but if he’s a friend of yours then I would certainly like to undertake correspondence.
The words assuage his defensiveness, his surprising loyalty to the man I’ve never met. He sits against the bricks and nods to himself, cracks his wrists, then leans forward to stare at the floor. In the interregnum between now and when he returns to his Australian narrative, I dare to dream that one day he, or any man like him, might display such loyalty toward me, in the full knowledge of who I really am.
I realise that I’m greatly moved by his generosity of spirit, and can feel the pressure of tears welling behind my eyes, which I occupy with the task of refilling the reservoir of ink in my pen.
Abscondees:
16, Bussorah Merchant, No. 28-1608 Errand Boy, Bandon, 5 feet 8 inches, dark red hair, hazel eyes, fair ruddy and much pock-pitted complexion. Scar on centre of forehead, nose flat and cocked, T A on left arm, scar on left thumb in side, wart on knuckle of middle finger of left hand, a burn on left arm, absconded from Hyde Park Barrack.
NSW Gazette, Friday, 3 April, 1829.
Abscondees:
Bussorah Merchant 28-1608, 1829, Bandon, errand boy, 5 feet 8 inches, fair ruddy and pockpitted complexion, dark red hair, hazel eyes, scar centre of forehead, nose flat and cocked, T A left arm, scar inside left thumb, wart knuckle of left middle finger, mark of a burn on left arm, from Dock-yard, since 25th instant.
NSW Gazette, Sunday, 7 June, 1829.
Abscondees:
Bussorah Merchant (1), 28-1608, Bandon, errand boy, 5 feet 8 inches, fair ruddy and much pockpitted comp., dark red hair, hazel eyes, scar on centre of forehead, nose flat and cocked, T A on left arm, scar on left thumb inside, wart on knuckle – of middle finger of left hand, a burn on left arm, from R. Pearce, Sydney, since July 3.
NSW Gazette, Friday, 3 July, 1829.
LIST OF RUNAWAYS APPREHENDED DURING THE LAST WEEK.
Bussorah Merchant (1)
Bandon, labourer, 5 feet 9 inches, fair ruddy and much pockpitted comp., dark red hair, hazel eyes, scar centre of forehead, nose flat and cocked, T A on left arm, scar on left thumb inside, wart on knuckle of middle finger of left hand, a burn on left arm, from House of Correction, Sydney, since July 3.
NSW Gazette, Monday, 3 August, 1829.
Abscondees:
Bussorah Merchant, (1), Bandon, labourer, 5 feet 10 inches, fair ruddy and much pockpitted comp., dark red hair, hazel eyes, scar centre of forehead, nose flat and cocked, T A on left arm, scar inside left thumb, wart on knuckle of middle finger of left hand, a burn on left arm, from Stockade, Illawarra.
NSW Gazette, Tuesday, 6 October, 1829.
Five times in my first year did I abscond from servitude. My punishment were to be barred from domestic service to serve exclusively on iron gangs, road-building and making bridges and the like, and when that didn’t constrain me I began to receive sentences of flogging. Twenty lashes, twenty lashes, thirty lashes, forty lashes, then finally the sentence that near killed me as a seventeen-year-old boy – fifty lashes executed on a wintry day before the gathered citizenry of Sydney, followed by two weeks of solitary confinement on bread and water after which time and with my back still unhealed the secondary punitive application of another fifty lashes were undertaken, this time in the privacy of the stockade because I were so poorly that I were not expected to live.
The sentence were carried out on the frame near the Potters Field as it were called – out beyond the vegetable gardens but inside the prison walls where those who suicided or were executed were buried without a marker to remember them by.
But I didn’t die. After a week of solitary confinement and being doused with buckets of stinging salt water I were returned to the iron gang that were my most recent employment. The overseer there were known to me, as were the guards. There were punishments to be endured of which I will not speak, except to say that I have seen the depths of cruelty that certain depraved men are drawn to commit for the simple pleasure of doing so. The crime however that surpasses all their crimes is that such men are universally useful to governments, and none more so than to the administrators of that penal colony. It were the certainty of me committing murder against that overseer that led me to abscond again even while the wounds on my back were unhealed. With my feet chained I ran through the night-dark forest holding the chinking chain that joined my ironed feet like a lady holds her skirts. I were certain to be caught and my mind were tormented with the desire to throw myself into the river and be done with it all. I weren’t gone more than half a mile crablike up a ridge when I heard their shouts. The moon were swollen which were a blessing because it cast a pale silky light over that tangled forest of sharp-bladed leaves and spear-point branches and twigs. The soles of my feet were tougher than leather but there were edged stones among the loam and gravel that were the path. I were cut and bleeding but I surmounted the ridge and fell and crawled down the other slope toward the river for I were gone beyond stealth now.
It were a light that were guiding me. Yellow and resinous down there on the river-water. I lost the path and crashed through the whipping brush. I had endured a murderous flogging – there were no pain that could hobble me now. The yellow light were a boatman’s lamp. I could see its gentle net cast upon the oily black waters. I tried to arrest my decline but it were too late. My pursuers had broached the ridge behind me, their shouts were mocking, it were the devil or the deep blue sea.
The light went out. I crabbed toward the river’s edge which were an embankment of sucking mud I weren’t thinking about the boat any longer. I were looking down and up the riverbank for a cave or patch of sedge-grass to conceal myself in. The boatman’s extinguishing of his lamp were an understandable ploy. No sane person would involve themselves in the pursuit of a convict it would mean attending court during the show-trial to give evidence before the inevitable sentence were carried out.
There were a low mist on the tidal water and the approaching boatman were like a vision. I ceased my efforts to conceal myself for I thought perhaps I had died and this were the ferryman come to guide me over the Styx if you knew what I had suffered you wouldn’t think this unlikely at all.
The boatman fitted the role, too. He were grey-bearded under a cabbage-tree hat a blanket cast over his shoulders only a wizened hand making come hither with eerie movements. He raised a finger to his mouth as the boat glided up alongside that riverbank. There were deep water before me and only now did I see his other hand on the rudder. I gathered up the chain between my bloody ankles I stepped like a madame into his vessel I lay down in the bow and heard the nearby voices of my pursuers. It were then that the blanket were thrown over me. Whether my destination were hell or freedom I cared not I listened to the sucking kisses of the river against the flanks of the boat. We hit the main current and began to glide downstream the shouts became fainter and then I were either dead or asleep.
