Читать книгу Sarah Thornhill - Kate Grenville - Страница 13

MA WAS a great one for visiting. Not gentry, we wasn’t on visiting terms with the quality. Not the folk from along the Branch either, scrabblers with not a boot to their name. The ones we visited with were the better families. Folk on the up-and-up like we were, mostly emancipists. Cobbs from Milkmaid Reach, and the Lewises from Ebenezer, Fletchers from Portland Head. Old Mr Loveday if he was sober. The Langlands. They’d row down of a Sunday afternoon, the river a highway for the families along it. Mrs Devlin would cook up a big batch of cakes and scones, Anne busy all afternoon keeping the cake-stand full.

Ma knew everyone’s stories, which ones were come free and which ones was sent out, and if they was sent out, what they’d done. Different from Mrs Herring, she didn’t mind telling what she knew. Mr Chapman stole a sheep at Burleigh Fair, lucky not to of hanged. Mr Fletcher knocked a man down, took his watch and two half-crowns out of his pocket.

What about Mrs Fletcher, I said.

Can you keep a secret, Dolly? she said, and before I’d said yes she told me. Mrs Fletcher was one of those women sells themselves to men, she said. Got caught when she stole the purse of a man come to take his pleasure.

How did she know all the secrets, I wondered.

Langlands come often, Ma and Mrs Langland out of the same mould, very genteel in their view of themselves. She was a stout woman bursting out of her clothes but dainty in her ways like a doll. Had a shawl, paisley pattern, soft and light as duck down. She’d leave it on the back of a chair and then ask you to give it to her. Be waiting for you to say, goodness that’s soft, and so light! because then she could tell you it was Indian kashmir, a bit unusual, which was her way of saying it was better than anyone else’s.

No secrets stood behind Mrs Langland. From a good family back Home, if you believed what she said. Not too high up to marry an emancipist, mind. Long as he’d made good. My people were in a comfortable situation, she’d say, and settle the shawl on her shoulders. My people. After she said it, I noticed Ma started saying it too, about her people in Brixton Rise.

She liked to lord it over everyone, Mrs Langland. Very pleased with herself, and thought it was all her own cleverness.

Old Mr Langland, he’d worked for a silk-weaver in Spitalfields, Ma told me. Caught running off with twenty-seven silk handkerchiefs under his coat. He was in the first lot sent out forty years before, when the Colony was just a few tents in among the bush and not too many rules about anything. Him and Pa would rather of been out in the yard with their pipes going, spitting on the stones. But they was trying to latch on to being respectable now, so they sat with the teacups and the scones and listened while Mrs Langland went on about her joints.

Langlands had a string of children. Took after Mrs Langland, pale and soft like cakes not given a hot enough oven. Charlie was a chubby fellow the apple of his mother’s eye. Next down was Sophia, not much older than me so everyone thought we’d be friends, but I couldn’t be bothered with her. All she could think about was what her dress was like, and if the ribbons on her bonnet matched her gloves, and how a girl should fix her hair to make the most of herself. Her lacy handkerchief peeked up out her bosom so it drew the eye, and she was forever dropping it to put some colour in her cheeks.

Knew all those tricks. Told me and Mary, only to make us feel like fools that we didn’t know.

Sophia was taller than she thought a girl should be so she never wore anything but flat slippers. Sat down when she could. If she had to stand, she’d kink one hip sideways. Mary said Ma had her eye on Sophia Langland for Will, but I pooh-poohed her. Why would he fancy a dull girl like Sophia Langland, when my handsome favourite brother could have his pick?

Then there was Jack. The oldest of the Langland children by six or seven years, and as different from the others as night from day. Jack’s mother was not Mrs Langland. She was a darkie, long dead. Ma told me, but it was no secret. Everyone knew that Jack was half darkie.

When Mr Langland went with Jack’s ma, New South Wales by all accounts was a rough place. Not much between a man and starvation and not too many women other than the native ones. A man did what was natural. As for the children that come along, the old hands like Pa and Mr Langland thought it nothing so very terrible. What counted was not if you were half darkie, so much as if you could handle an oar or split a log.

But things had changed. The ones that come later, and come free, drew the lines strict. Sent out and come free, white and black. Mr Langland was a churchy sort of feller now and had got himself a respectable wife. Wouldn’t like to be reminded he’d been happy enough once upon a time to bed a native woman.

Everyone knew about Jack’s mother, but no one said. It was like stealing a sheep or knocking a man down for the coins in his pocket. You didn’t mortify anyone by saying it.

Easy in Jack’s case because you wouldn’t pick him straight away. Dark in the face, yes, but the men who worked the ships all got dark. A heaviness round the brow. That might tell you. And the colour of his eyes. A greeny colour, very bright against his skin.

But he was no different from the rest of us. Talked about the blacks the same way everyone did. They were strange to him the same way they were strange to us. He knew Mrs Langland wasn’t his real ma. But he’d never known the native woman. She died when he was too young.

He was on the outer in that family, though. Called Mrs Langland Ma, but she had no warmth for him, and there was no love lost between Jack and his half-brothers and sisters. Didn’t know them that well, because he’d been away on the ships since he was a lad, didn’t have the easy life they’d had.

Jack was younger than Will by a good few years, he’d of been around fifteen when I first got to know him, and Will into his twenties. I was only a girl still, seven or eight. The two of them like brothers, everything about them on a grand scale. Both of them deep in the chest and wide across the shoulder. Black beards, and faces burnt from the sun and the salt. Worked side by side on Industry, Jack a match for many an older man.

When Industry put in to Sydney they’d stop with us till she sailed again. Come up the river on someone’s boat if they could, or on the new road, catch rides off the wagons. Jack would be with us for a night or two, then he’d borrow one of Pa’s skiffs.

Off to Langlands now, he’d say. Back in a few days.

That’s what he called it, Langlands.

Don’t think anyone at Langlands cared if Jack visited or not. But it was the right thing to do, visit your kin, so that’s what he did. Be back from Langlands a few days later, with us the rest of the time.

Pa and Jack sat by the hour with their pipes. Will with them sometimes, but more often away up and down the river visiting, a sociable feller our Will.

Jack knew as much about the weather and boats as Pa, but clever enough to make out he didn’t.

In for a bit of a blow, Pa would say and whether Jack agreed or not he’d say, Yes, Mr Thornhill, looks that way.

A rough unlettered man, but had a natural courtesy.

Pa thought Jack Langland was near as good as a son of his own. That Jack Langland, he’d say, good a man as ever you’d find. Honest as three men.

Ma not so warm.

Well Jack, here you are again, she’d say when he first arrived with Will. Be off to see your pa and Mrs Langland directly I expect.

Pa would come in very hearty. Your ma and pa can do without you for a time, he’d say. Stop with us long as you like, Jack lad.

We had a dog, white with dark speckles all over and silky black ears. Jack was always a soft touch for a dog. Now get away off! he’d say when it lay on his feet, and it’d stand up and turn round, but next thing it’d be lying closer than before. Wherever Jack was, that speckled dog would have its paws one over the other, grinning up at him with its black lips as if he was the best thing in the world.

~

Will and Jack kept us entertained of an evening, the fire flickering shadows about the parlour. The ship’s biscuits so full of maggots they was rich as a Welsh rabbit when you roasted them. The weather so hard the trees grew on a slant.

Get away, Johnny said. Pull the other one!

So Will and Jack stood on the hearthrug leaning sideways together being the trees of windy New Zealand, but we still didn’t know if they was having a lend of us.

Now what about the seals, Pa said. How would you go about the killing?

They’ll be on the rocks with a flipper in the air, Will said. Like they’re waving good-day. Get your stick, one good whack on the nose. Not spoil the skin, see.

Then what, Bub said. Peg them out or salt them down or what?

Peg them out, salt them down, the both, Jack said. Got to peg them out perfect to get the good price.

What would a skin be worth, Johnny said. Three shillings, four?

Five, Will said. What they pay for them in China. That’s with no marks on it.

You know they do got a pretty face, Jack said. Like a dog, only not so long in the snout.

Pretty face! Will said. What, you reckon it’s a pretty face do you Jack?

Not a thing I like doing, Jack said. When they fix you with that eye of theirs.

I pictured one of the dogs, only not so long in the snout. Whacking it on the nose hard enough to kill it.

Whyn’t you do another trade? I said.

Five shillings a skin, that’s why, Jack said. Man got to put something by.

That made us go quiet. There’d be plenty of money for the Thornhill boys down the track, but Jack would have to make his own way.

There was natives in New Zealand, but to hear it they was different as could be from the ones in New South Wales. Mad for fighting. Set against each other, tribe against tribe, the winners sitting down after and eating the losers. Tattoos on their faces all over, chin, cheeks, nose, everything.

Special clever man does it, Jack said. Gets a little chisel, little mallet. First time cut the skin. Second time put the ink in. Saw it done to a feller once. Tight as a bowstring, not to cry out with the pain of it.

Are they black? Ma said.

Not like our natives are black, Mrs Thornhill, Jack said. More a brown.

Like your kind of colour skin? she said.

Oh, he said. I suppose similar, Mrs Thornhill.

Will threw a log on the fire and thrust his boot in to settle it so the sparks flew up.

Get yourself one of them damn tattoos, Jack, he said. Pass for a New Zealander!

Everyone laughed, but when you thought about it, what was so funny?

Only don’t eat me, there’s a lad, Will said. Make a damn tough meal. Now get up, Jack, we show them that dance.

The two of them yelled and slapped their arms and stuck out their tongues and stamped on the floor so hard the windows rattled, what they claimed was the New Zealand way of saying how d’you do.

~

From the beginning Jack and me liked each other. Somehow we saw eye to eye on things. He never called me Dolly, only my full and proper name. How did he know I didn’t care to be a doll?

When they come back from sea Jack always had some little thing for me, a shell shining rainbow colours inside, a pebble with a hole in it. The sort of thing a child takes a fancy to. But one time when I was older, ten or eleven, he brought me a slip of green stone, polished smooth, with a hole in the end to take a cord.

Made by a New Zealander, that one, he said soft and private. So’s you won’t forget your friend Jack.

The stone sat in the curve of my palm like a jewel. It was the loveliest thing, even though it was nothing but its unadorned self, soft in your hand as green water would be if you could hold it. I wrapped my fingers round it tight. Didn’t know how to say I couldn’t never forget you, Jack.

But Mary saw.

Oh, Dolly! she said. Going to marry Jack Langland, are you?

She was laughing, Johnny too, everyone watching me.

I was shamed at my feelings so easy to mock. Could feel the blood pounding in my cheeks. That got them laughing harder. Even Will smirking.

Jack took hold of my hand.

That’s all right, he said. Question is, what finger’s the ring going on?

Touched my fingers one by one.

This one, he said. Reckon it’s this one. Got to get the money first. Get the gold ring. Put it on that finger there. Then we’ll be right.

His steadiness shamed the others.

He always had something for Mary after that, a shell necklace or scrimshaw he’d done, Industry under sail. And for me, nothing that would make trouble.

It got to be always good for a laugh between us. When he and Will come back from New Zealand he’d wait for a quiet moment with no one about. Still want to marry me, Sarah Thornhill? he’d say. I’d come right back at him. Course I want to marry you, Jack Langland!