by Cameron Nunn
“Of course not, Will. We’re Presbyterians.”
Will wasn’t sure what being Presbyterian had to do with ghosts. Maybe Presbyterians didn’t believe in ghosts. “It’s just that sometimes Pa talks about someone . . . someone who isn’t there.”
Gran returned to the pot she’d been scrubbing and focused intently on one spot. Her voice was firm. “You need to ignore that, Will.” She scrubbed vigorously. “Sometimes older people get things muddled, that’s all.”
Will came over and stood beside her. “When he can’t remember my name, that’s getting things muddled. But he talks about this person.” Will didn’t quite know how to say it.
Gran threw the scourer into the water and a cloud of bubbles flew up onto her apron. Her manner changed, becoming awkwardly light-hearted. “Oh, you boys and your imaginations. Now you’re seeing ghosts as well?”
“Not seeing,” Will paused and was about to say hearing, but that wasn’t right either. He wasn’t sure what it was.
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Her tone had flipped back into seriousness. “I don’t want you saying anything to Pa either. I know he can sometimes go on about things, but it doesn’t do him any good to humour him. Promise me that there won’t be any more nonsense about the boy.”
Will had never mentioned that it was a boy.
The day after I fell down the hole I found my way back there. I wanted to work out if it were possible to get down there again and get back up. The ground around were a funnel of leaves and branches. I listened careful to the water and tried to imagine which way it must be running. It were possible it might flow out of the rock somewhere. There were parts where the rocks oozed into mossy folds. The whole area were a maze of dips and gullies above ground. It must be the same below the earth, I thought.
I looked up at the pockmarked cliff face. If I could climb up there I could see the whole of the valley stretched out before me like a sailmaker’s canvas. What lay beyond that, I’d no idea. If I got lost, two days is all they’d be looking for me. If I weren’t found in two days then I’d be dead or would be by the time they found me. The thought were unnerving. I could imagine Mr O’Neill cursing. Not because I were lost but because he’d have wasted two days searching and would now have to haul back to Sydney for a new boy. Life and death were that simple. I threw a rock down the hole and heard it clatter into darkness.
The sun had moved towards the west and I knew the afternoon’s work would’ve begun again. I had to be careful not to be missed. I knew Jack would love to cause problems for me with Mr O’Neill. Jack were a complete bastard.
When I returned, Cain grabbed me rough around the arm. “Mr O’Neill has been asking for you. I told him I sent you to get firewood. I’ll not be covering for you again, if you’re going to be a fool of a boy. Now get some wood and take it back to the huts before I warm your arse with my boot.”
At first I’d started looking forward to the day when they’d bring up some of the mob from the northern paddock and I’d be left alone to look after them. I thought of it as a chance to be my own master. But part of me kept thinking of it as a chance to sneak back to the hole. Whether there were spirits of the underworld or not, the place had already taken a hold of me. But now, as the day approached, I began to feel a sense of dread. As long as we were still clearing land, we’d walk back along the creek track to the homestead each night. Even when Cain were in a bad mood with me, he were still company. But most of all, I looked forward to snatching a brief conversation with Kate.
“The boy can help me carry the things back to the kitchen,” she’d announce when the men had finished the evening meal.
Twice she demanded that Jack carry the pots and plates. “Someone will get suspicious if I don’t sometimes tell Jack to help me,” she explained when I complained. “Besides, Jack hates doing it. He’s too glad that it’s you I’ve asked for him to be aware of anything else. Jack’s stupid and selfish and that’s the best protection we’ve got.”
As we walked back from the men’s hut, Kate would drill the alphabet. I repeated, “A is for Apple, B is for Bumblebee.” Back then, I couldn’t see what this had to do with reading, but Kate said I were making good progress and I liked it that she were happy, so each day I tried even harder. During the day, while I were working, I’d say it softly in my head over and over again. Within a week I could say the whole alphabet and Kate said it’d be time to start soon on reading letters. But as soon as the sheep were to be moved, it were going to mean an end to Kate and the lessons.
The hut what stood in ruins at the edge of the clearing hadn’t been touched. It seemed no one had even given it a thought. From the time we arrived to the evening, we done naught but clear more and more land without so much as a thought to where I were to sleep. I’d even asked Mr O’Neill if we were going to do anything to fix the collapsing pile of bark. “You’ll have all the time in the world to build yourself a palace. In the meantime a shepherd’s box will serve you as well as anything else.” His voice were humourless and dry. The men were there to prepare for the sheep. With the ground cleared, they’d done their job.
The main homestead weren’t so far that it couldn’t be walked in an hour or so. Cain would bring supplies as they were needed. The supplies what Mr O’Neill spoke of were strips of dried mutton, flour, sugar and tea. Cain promised he’d make sure he added some dried peas as soon as they brought in more supplies.
The journey on the dray, that first morning, were mostly in silence. Cain and I had loaded it with everything I’d need to stay out there on the run. Mr O’Neill made it plain I weren’t to keep wandering back to the homestead. I were there to see to the sheep. They’d be brought up in the morrow.
“’Tis not so bad,” Cain remarked when we’d gone some distance. The slow lurch of the dray rocked us as one. “I’ll be up every few days to bring you word about how things are going. There’ll be time to work on that reading of yours.”
I stared ahead like a man who’d lost his last penny. “There won’t be any reading. Not without . . .” I stopped, unwilling to say Kate’s name.
“That’d be a shame,” Cain remarked. “Particularly, seeing Miss O’Neill has gone to the trouble to give you this.” With that, he pulled out a battered red-covered book marked with gold lettering.
“What’s that?” I said as Cain pulled it back.
“I don’t know why she’d waste her time trying to teach a mutton-headed boy like you. ’Tis a book, is what it is.”
“I know that,” I said, reaching for the book.
Cain examined the lettering on the cover, “You’re a little Proddy heathen, you know. You not even knowing the Bible when it’s given to you.”
“It were hardly given to me,” I said, reaching out and snatching it from Cain’s outstretched grip. “What did she want to give me that for?”
“I told her that you made me a promise that you’d learn to read me my name from the Bible. You’re a great one for making promises, aren’t you?”
“Well, it makes no difference. I can’t read it. And as long as I’m stuck out here by myself, then I guess it’s going to stay like that.”
“Well, if you’re never going to learn to read, I guess there’s no point in me mentioning that Miss O’Neill said she will meet you on Sundays after lunch, where you always meet. I’ll have to take back the message that you’re not interested. Of course, she’ll be wanting that book of hers back again.”
I tried to hide my enthusiasm in case Cain read too much into it but the words bubbled out. “Tell her I’ll be there. Cain, did she say what time? What time did she want me there? How will I know what time it is?”
Cain chuckled. “Too many questions. After lunch she said. I think even a mutton-headed heathen like you can work out when that is.”
When Cain left, a silence more lonely than I could’ve imagined fell on the place. All morning, I just sat there, not able to move. I held Kate’s Bible in my hands and flicked through pages thinner �
��n I thought possible. The finest print set secrets in clear blocks what ran down the pages in two neat columns. I were suddenly aware of how clumsy my blunt fingers were as I tried to turn the page. Mine were a worker’s fingers, holding a book what belonged to another world. I’d never held a real book before and now I wanted more ’n anything to unlock its secrets. I weren’t religious. Apart from an itch to read Cain his name, I doubted there were anything interesting in the Bible. The parson in Newgate and the surgeon on board the transport made a thing about reading the Bible at us morning and eve, but they were mostly about God who were sending us to hell and such like, and I weren’t much interested. But Kate and Mr Harrison and all of them could read this book. They could pick a page and make the letters into words, and the words into stories. The best I could do were to pick out the letters I’d learned and Kate had copied onto slips of rough paper. But here, the thousands and thousands of neatly printed letters near drowned me. I closed the book and smelled it closely, hoping I could smell something of Kate hanging gentle on the cover. Instead, it smelt blue-cold, of dust and mildew.
I lay in the shadows while the sun grew in the sky. All my life I’d been surrounded by noise. I’d ached for silence. But now the emptiness lay like a blanket what crushed any wish to move. It were only hunger what eventually drove me to begin foraging through the hessian sacks what Cain had left, along with the tools. I searched for a branch to hang the food sack on and keep it from the ants and possums. We’d cut down near every tree in the clearing.
Down the bottom of one sack, I found a small pouch of baccy. Cain must’ve put that there. Tobacco had to be brought from Sydney and were used instead of money among the men. T’were never enough to go around. I loved the times when Cain slipped me some that he’d been saving and I stuffed it sparingly in my broken slender clay pipe. For a moment, I thought of smoking it then and there, but instead I decided to save it. There’d be a time when I’d want it more.
I made a small fire of stones and watched it lick and twist amongst the wood before sticking my white damper into the ashes. When I’d eaten, I got up to look around. Perhaps it were the full belly but the place took on a difference. I knew every foot well, after clearing it for so many days. I knew the place the roos would come down to drink in the afternoon when they thought the men were leaving. I knew the brush on the far side where I’d seen a brown snake slide out between Joe’s feet and then move down towards the creek. Cain told me how Saint Patrick had driven all the snakes from Ireland but the snakes here were a curse from God on account of the wickedness of men. T’were a load of wickedness in a place like New South Wales, so God weren’t short on the number of snakes he sent.
Shoots of grass were already appearing in the area what we’d first cleared. Picking up a stone, I threw it as hard as I could into the pond what had grown behind the wall. Ripples spread silent across the water and then it were flat again like glass. I thought about the grey Thames what slid its way through home and out to sea. Perhaps there were a beauty in the place that weren’t like London. It had its own colours, the soft orange of the earth, the yellows of the grass, the dull green of the leaves and the brown and silver of the bark, the gold of the cliffs what towered above, and all of it set below the brightest blue of heaven. Cain called it the land of Eden, which were the first place what God created, he told me, and then he made Ireland. But it were a hard land, where trees bent fingers upwards, pleading for God to send rain. Without water, everything dies. I looked at the pond we’d made and wondered whether it were being fed by my underground stream. For the moment at least, we’d brought life.
Eventually, I walked back up the slope to where my life were set out in the bundle of belongings. They’d brought a shepherd’s watch-box, which reminded me of a coffin, with handle poles sticking out each end so it could be moved. It were a long timber box with an opening along the side to climb in each night. It were long enough to lie in but not high enough to sit up. For the moment it’d keep me dry should it ever choose to rain, but already in my mind I were making plans for a new hut. It wouldn’t be some broken-down hovel, like the hut on the edge of the clearing. It’d be big and strong. I imagined something like Mr Harrison’s homestead of stone and timber with a verandah and real glass in the windows.
I examined the collapsed wreckage of the old bark hut and thought how weak it must’ve been even while it stood. I imagined the boy what’d built it and tried to remember if I’d been told his name. If he were dead, would he be watching me now? I tried to hear the whisper of his soul in the same way I’d heard Sarah’s. There were naught but the stillness of the air and the ringing of winged insects what pulsed through the late summer days and evenings. He weren’t there. He’d already passed out of memory. Perhaps Cain were right. Maybe he were hundreds of miles away in Sydney, scrounging on the outskirts of farms; a boy without hope and without a name. It’d be different for me, after I’d got my ticket. I’d get sheep of my own, on my own land, with my own convicts to order around. I’d be a freedman who could read and write my name. I’d write letters to them in London and thank them for sending me to the colony and making me rich. Then I’d tell them they could all go to hell for all I cared. I’d carry a purse full of money and have a fart-catcher of my own to follow me and do as I bid him. It’d be a grand life. The bark hut glared back at me and laughed, If wishes were horses then beggars would ride.
Gran decided we needed to be enrolled in school. There was no longer any talk about exactly when we’d be going back to Sydney.
“Sometimes things take a little while,” Gran remarked to Rosie. “You just need to be patient, that’s all.”
Rosie was inseparable from Gran. If Gran was in the kitchen Rosie would be there. If Gran was digging in the garden, Will knew his sister would be beside her. At first she’d clung to Gran as though she might disappear but Will noticed that something was changing in his sister. As the weeks moved on, she seemed to have found a confidence that wasn’t there in Sydney. Perhaps she felt safer here. He and Rosie never mentioned Mum and he wondered whether Rosie talked to Gran about her. It wasn’t just sadness he felt but a hollow ache that took hold of him some nights. Did Rosie feel the same? He’d watch her talking to Gran as they worked together in the garden. She seemed happy here. Happier than she’d been at home. Happier than when his mum was alive. Perhaps he was too. Then he felt sick that he was even thinking that.
School brought a routine to Will’s life. At first he’d been hesitant. Starting a new school had a sense of permanence that only increased his worry about what was happening. Gran had taken them to Orange to buy new school shoes. Will knew how expensive shoes were and felt angry that his dad hadn’t at least mailed their old shoes. Gran wouldn’t answer directly when he asked about it. At least Will managed to convince her to get his uniform from the school’s clothing pool.
“Where’re you from?” he’d been asked on the first day that he arrived, as he lined up outside Maths class. Will had rehearsed the conversation many times in his head as he worried about the first day. Canowindra was much smaller than his school in Sydney. Everyone knew everyone.
He was standing awkwardly at the back of the line, his hands gripping his bag tightly. It was the beginning of the term and everyone was talking with jostling familiarity to each other. No one else had their bags with them and that made him feel even more self-conscious. He shifted uncomfortably when one of the boys signalled with his head that he should join them. He’d been talking with two other boys at the front of the line and smiled as Will walked up nervously. “So where’re you from?” His voice was easy.
“Sydney,” Will answered.
“Bloody long way to travel to school.” A grin lit up the boy’s face. It was friendly but Will immediately felt embarrassed.
“I mean, I live in Sydney but I’m staying with my grandparents.”
“How come?”
“Mum’s in hospital.” The lie came out easily.
“That sucks.”
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br /> “Yeah.”
The teacher arrived and began ushering them into class. “I’m Callum,” he said as they walked in and Will began to look for a seat. Afterwards Will wondered whether Callum had been told to look out for him or whether he was just one of those people that could make you feel like you’d always known them. Will couldn’t even remember telling him his name but the conversation meandered generously between boulders of awkwardness. Everyone liked Callum, even the teachers. His grin was the grease that made the school day slide.
“Play footy at lunch?”
Will didn’t want to seem needy, so he shrugged, “Yeah, sure.”
He fell in with the Year 10 boys with incredible ease, immediately feeling at home in a way that he never had in Sydney. There was something natural the way they talked and they quickly pulled Will into the group. But it was Callum who made him feel like he’d been part of the group forever. At school he didn’t have to think about his mum, or his dad who never contacted them, or Pa and his moods, or the strange memories. Especially the strange memories.
In the afternoon if Pa was in a good mood he’d give him a hand, and if he wasn’t he’d wander off to see Dot. Will could usually tell how Pa was going to be even before they spoke. He even sensed that sometimes Pa was waiting for Will to get home from school just so that he could complain about how he’d left him to do all the work. But Will knew deep down that Pa needed him, just like he needed the farm. And for the first time in his life Will started to feel that he was where he belonged.
His hands grew hard with the calluses of the land. It’d be lambing season soon, Pa remarked to him, and that’d mean there’d be more work. His grandparents had sold off most of the sheep but there were still around three hundred in the paddocks closest to the home.
“Sheep have a time all to their own. They don’t reckon in years,” his grandfather had told him. “The land thinks in seasons. It won’t ask what year it is. It doesn’t reckon in years either. Only people reckon in years.” Will understood the idea. Pa was past caring about what year it was. All that mattered was the land and sheep. “Crows are bastards,” he reflected as he tried to work out which ewes were likely to lamb first. “They’ll pick the eyes out of the lambs before they are fully born. Devil’s birds,” he muttered. “You remember that.”
