by Clare Dudman
She opens her mouth, looks to her husband for support but he shakes his head so she sits down.
Caradoc stands, and leaning on his walking stick, looks at Edwyn: ‘The important question is how long will the supplies that we have left keep us?’
Edwyn Lloyd looks around at them all and then looks down again at his hands. The glares are becoming more intense. A few people around Silas are tutting loudly. The Meistr looks more than weary, Silas decides, he looks broken. ‘Without the ewes, without crops – I would say five months, at the most.’
A few of the women gasp. Each face is directed towards him, listening intently.
‘There is nothing else? You’ve made no other plans?’ Caradoc says sharply.
The Meistr looks down, shakes his head slowly, ‘No’.
Mary Jones tuts loudly.
‘Nothing at all?’
Again his head shakes.
‘What about the wildlife?’ Jacob says. ‘Couldn’t we live off that like the Indians do?’
‘We’d have to trap them,’ says Selwyn. ‘Do you think we could do that, find enough to feed the entire village?’
‘What about the guns?’
‘We have to preserve the ammunition,’ Caradoc says firmly, ‘in case we have to defend ourselves against the Indians.’
‘But there’re none here.’
‘They’ll be here soon,’ Selwyn says. ‘You can count on it.’
Everyone seems to be holding their breath. Edwyn Lloyd seems to be becoming smaller.
‘So we are going to starve, then, unless something is done,’ Annie says shrilly from the back, but no one looks around. Everyone is still looking at Edwyn Lloyd, watching him crumple. Mary speaks again, ‘Well, we’re going to have to ask for help. Sometimes, Mr Lloyd, even God needs a helping hand.’ She rocks her baby in her arms so resolutely it seems afraid to cry. ‘Someone,’ she says, ‘is going to have to go to Buenos Aires to ask for more supplies.’
Edwyn looks up, a faint glimmer of hope in his eyes.
‘But I don’t think it should be you, Mr Lloyd,’ Mary says, ‘I think you have let us down. I think it should be someone who has gone through all that we have gone through, and still shown their mettle.’
‘Selwyn Williams would do very well,’ says Jacob, and Edwyn’s head jerks suddenly towards him as if he’s been stung. His mouth opens and then closes again. Jacob blushes and then bows his head. There is a general murmur of agreement.
Selwyn looks embarrassed and pleased at the same time. ‘But I don’t speak much Spanish.’
‘It’s good enough, I think,’ says Mary, ‘and you speak English?’
Selwyn nods.
‘Then I think you’ll do.’
Everyone is standing now, crowding around Selwyn to congratulate him.
‘Shouldn’t we put it to the council?’ says Jacob, plaintively, ‘vote for him, properly?’
‘We have voted,’ says Caradoc loudly and there is a general agreement. No one except Silas has noticed that Edwyn Lloyd has crept away, down the side of the hut where it is dark.
Twenty-six
There is something in the way the Meistr moves that causes Silas to follow him, carefully, slowly, out onto the broad flat plains where they are clearly visible from the surrounding escarpments and Silas shivers, imagining who might be watching them.
Silas looks around him as if seeing it all for the first time: after the rains it has suddenly become high summer and already the plants are changing colour from green to something more yellow. They look as if they are ripening, swelling with something as if they might burst and he stoops down to inspect a bush – something like a thorn that grew outside his mother’s house but with tiny green leaves and red buds. He looks closer – there are orange things like beads dotting the branches. Each one is pitted with a hole that looks too perfectly bored to be the work of an insect. He picks one off – it is just like a bead – then puts it in his pocket to show Myfanwy. Another plant smells vaguely of pine when he steps on it. But it’s not pine, he reminds himself, of course it’s not pine. He feels a sudden intense desire – a need – to walk under trees, to feel the crowded loneliness of the woodland, with the branches crackling beside him with the weight of animals and birds. But instead there is this, and only this – mile upon mile of scrub and grass interrupted by occasional lifeless slopes – a wasteland leading onto a desert. He looks again for Edwyn Lloyd – the man is still striding away to where the land rises in white cliffs. They look unnatural, too white, as if they are made from salt.
Edwyn doesn’t look back. Silas watches from the shelter of one of the larger beaded bushes. The Meistr reaches the base of one of the cliffs and begins to climb. There is no easy way up. He reaches just a few feet up and then comes slithering back, then tries again somewhere else with the same result. Silas smiles. He takes a step forward out of the shelter of the bush and Edwyn Lloyd chooses that moment to turn round. For a few seconds Edwyn stops. He sees him. Silas stands his ground. Edwyn moves back towards him, his gaze never moving from Silas. Silas stares back, ignoring his urge to run back into the fort and hide with the rest.
As Edwyn comes closer Silas is aware of his eyes. Blue. Out here, in the achingly bright sun of a Patagonian summer, they seem to have acquired an extra intensity. As the Meistr comes closer Silas notices them briefly leap around in their housing as if they are following a bird or a butterfly in flight.
‘Why did you follow me?’ The eyes become still, and the effect is even more unsettling. His intense unwavering stare gives Silas the uncomfortable impression that he can see inside Silas’ skull. He can’t think of an answer so instead he lies. ‘I was after one of our hens.’
Edwyn Lloyd snorts derisively but then seems to decide to continue the polite charade: ‘Well, no sign of her out here.’ For a few seconds he seems to inspect Silas’ mind a little more then says, ‘I would have liked to have known you a little more, Silas.’ Then when Silas says nothing in return, ‘you have suffered more than most, I know that, but I think we could have been useful to each other.’ He reaches out to touch him but Silas steps back and for an instant Edwyn’s arm is held in front of him, the cloth of his sleeve emptily drooping down. Silas’ eyes flick over him. The Meistr too has lost weight. His face is drawn; there are small hollows where there should be flesh.
‘Ah well,’ Edwyn’s arm drops again. ‘So be it. I have tried with you, Silas. The Lord knows.’ He sighs and turns slightly away. ‘I had such plans... I imagined you my comrade.’ He laughs dryly. ‘Too late now, though. I am taking Cecilia back to Buenos Aires.’
Silas’ mouth opens. ‘Why? There is no need for you to go too. Selwyn Williams is our representative now.’
Edwyn’s eyes drop. His eyelids are long, elegant, fringed with luxuriant eyelashes. A spasm seems to pass over the rest of his face and when he looks up again his face seems to be held tightly in position. ‘My wife is not well, and besides, my place is not here. That has been made perfectly clear to me by all of you.’ He walks stiffly back towards the settlement.
The Maria Theresa has been patched with pieces of timber from the wreck in the river. She looks old and ill, as if her voyage with the women and children exhausted her; even her sails are bedraggled and yellowing. Edwyn and Cecilia’s journey to her is stealthy. When Jacob sees them carrying their bags and boxes from the entrance of the fort he just stands there with his mouth gaping open for a few seconds. Then, as Silas watches him, he runs, his arms like broken windmill sails, his feet making an uneven pattern of thuds, until he is standing next to them, grabbing hold of their arms and then gesticulating for them to go back. Edwyn glances back at the fort and shakes his head. When they go to move on again towards the ship Jacob runs on a little further, holding his arms out wide, blocking their passage, remonstrating with them once again. But Edwyn forces a way past him and Cecilia follows, their bodies straight, their faces looking ahead of them. Jacob goes to follow them again, runs a few paces and stops. He continu
es to stare after them and then his shoulders sink. They are going and there is nothing he can do. He slumps back, face downwards, looking at no one.
All of the colonists watch the Maria Theresa depart. As they lose sight of her Silas turns and reads the faces around him. They are depleted and vulnerable. Besides Selwyn Williams and Edwyn and Cecilia Lloyd, there are others on board who could take no more and have given up – the doctor, one of the three ministers, and several others. They have the means to go elsewhere, and it is not just Silas who envies them. There are just over a hundred souls left now, and as they turn to troop back to the fort Silas realises their isolation: to the north, four hundred miles away over a dry wasteland is the nearest settlement – the outpost of Patagones on the Río Negro, a lawless place; to the west are unexplored mountains reportedly riddled with savagely ruthless Indians; and to the south there is just more wasteland becoming colder and colder until the land ends at Tierra del Fuego; and to the east an empty ocean. They can call on no one. Their one link with the outside world is disappearing beyond the headland. They have to survive alone on the little they have left, and unless Selwyn can persuade the Argentine government to help them and send more supplies they will starve to death. Patagonia is not somewhere anyone passes except to round the straits, and not many people look landwards as they do. No doubt they are forgotten already – completely out of sight and utterly out of mind. The adults walk silently back to the fort, even the children are subdued.
Jacob is standing at the front of the warehouse wearing his best clothes – a darker version of the clothes he always wears: a black woollen three-piece suit, with small white collar showing. He is thinner than he was of course, they all are, but this loss of weight suits him.
He smiles uneasily and clears his throat, but no one looks up. The council members are slumped around the room as lifeless as the sacks of flour they are sitting on.
‘Ffrindiau, we must not give up,’ he says, ‘there is still time to sow seeds if we work hard.’
No one replies. A few of the men sink back against the wall, their faces dour and immobile.
Jacob tries again. He claps his hands half-heartedly and forces a smile. ‘Brodyr! Listen to me! All is not lost. The good Lord means for us to be here.’
One man snorts, ‘I think you’re wrong there, Mr Griffiths, I don’t know where the Lord meant us to go, but if it was this place then He has a strange way of showing it.’
His neighbour nods in agreement.
Slowly Jacob’s smile fades. He searches the face of one man then the next, but they all look down or pretend to be engaged in conversation with the man next to them.
‘Well, there are still things that need to be done. I need a volunteer to help me with the track into the fort…’
Silas sighs. It’s hopeless, everyone knows it. He eases himself forward off the sack. There is no point in staying here – no one is deciding anything. He starts off towards the door but someone else is moving too, someone at the back: Caradoc Llewellyn.
Caradoc simply stands where he is and looks slowly around the room with a deliberate eye. He’s a stout small man, but with both hands on his walking stick, holds himself high. ‘Mr Griffiths is right. We have to continue, brodyr. There is still hope, still something we can plant. Let us show the Lord what we can do.’
‘It’s too late now,’ Silas says flatly. ‘Summer, it is, not spring. No one tries to sow seeds in the summer.’
‘But no one can know what will happen in this place! It is untouched, untried. It is up to us. With the Lord’s help we could still make the desert bloom.’
John sniffs quietly. ‘I suppose it would do no harm to try.’
Caradoc looks over at him and nods. ‘Yes! We must try. The ground is prepared. It is soft now, ready for planting.’
Two of the men near John sit up slightly and look at each other.
‘It should be easier this time.’
‘And the weather is fine.’
Caradoc looks at them too. ‘Exactly. What is there to lose?’
There is a murmuring as if they are rousing from sleep.
Caradoc marches over to where Jacob still stands, his stick against his shoulder, talking quickly. ‘We can still succeed, my friends, I am sure of that. The Lord is with us. He has left us with enough grain to try. It is a message. Hope. Remember the dog he sent us? Antur. Our future. Our promise. There is still something we can do.’ Now, standing next to Jacob he breathes in and then out noisily, and then taps with his stick against one of the sacks. ‘Come, gentlemen! Look lively!’
Silas looks around him. Something has fallen from all their faces. They are talking, planning, and some of them are beginning to stand up. Yes, they should try, they might yet succeed, certainly if they do nothing they will not.
Caradoc looks around at them, nodding his approval. ‘Yes, yes, that’s right.’ His voice is becoming louder and more clipped. ‘We should start today. This minute. No time to lose…’
‘Yes, indeed!’ says Jacob, his face brightening too. ‘We should…’
But Caradoc is already leading them out into the sun like the Pied Piper.
Silas follows. The rest of the colonists are walking briskly now; some of the younger men are actually trotting. They call to each other and soon everyone is there, chatting and laughing – even Megan – almost as if Caradoc has announced a celebration. They go in groups to their plots, concentrating on ground they worked before – between the meanders where there used to be grass. Silas rakes over the soil. It does not take long – the soil is light and already prepared. At the end of it he looks at his work and shrugs. It will do.
Twenty-seven
Yeluc
Elal has many people. To the north of the Chubut are the men of the pampas, the Günün-a-küna, shorter, more irascible, picking fights with any they come across, but they are all ‘Brave-people’, all Tehuelche. They speak our language, although some of the words they have are strange and the way they say those words stranger still. To the south of us are the Selk’nam and Haush and to the west of them the people that spend their lives cross-legged in canoes: the Yamana and Kaweskar. Then to the west, where the hills start to become mountains, are the Mapuche: aggressive and hostile. They live in houses in one place like the Cristianos and like them grow food in gardens and make pots and weave clothes. They would smother us if they could as they have smothered our brothers the Puelche. They would take Elal’s people and tell us their tales so loudly it is all we would hear and we would forget the great god Kooch who made the world, who was so lonely surrounded by cloud that he cried for a long unimaginable time and made the sea. And this same god, who is not theirs, sighed and made the wind which drove away the clouds and gave us light, and made an island where the great Elal was born – the offspring of a cloud and a giant.
And now there are other people. People Elal doesn’t know. Si-las my brother, Me-gan, his woman, and Mir-ee-am, the girl with the calafate hair. I let their names rest on my tongue then roll them around. Si-las, Meg-an. Like a song. Like a dream. Seannu says that I say them in my sleep.
Seannu and her sisters are well fed and happy now. They crouch about the fire and sew or play cards or cradle their dogs. They shoo me from the toldo and then the hearth. The bolas are ready and the horses harnessed. The knives are sharpened, the traces mended. Go Yeluc, they say. Hssst. There is nothing for you to do here. Go and hunt. So I rise early, my old limbs creaking and stiff from the sleeping, and summon Roberto from where he is foraging for grass.
My people are close. I can smell their fires. Sometimes I think I can hear their prattle. Sometimes I imagine I can see them as Elal would see them, aloft on his swan, peering at his world from behind her black, outstretched neck; their toldos clustered together like thirsty rou around a spring, their fires lighting the dark like a sprinkling of eyes. They know I am here. If they want me they come for me.
Then, near the river, there is Si-las and his people. Meg-an. Jay-cob. Sel-wyn, Mir-
ee-am. I hear them calling. I see them working. Not like we do. Not the lighting fires and then the moving on, careful not to make a mark. No, Elal. These people scrape at your land. They scar it and make it raw. Ah, it makes me angry and sad. All this is no good. I need to watch them, Elal. For you and for themselves. If they continue like this it will be the end of everything.
Twenty-eight
Caradoc sits squarely and massively on the sack at the front, even though he is fifty there is little grey in his beard; but his head is as bare and as shiny as a horse chestnut. Until Edwyn left, Silas had scarcely been aware of him; as head of the Baptists he had seemed remote. But now he is frequently to be seen strutting around the place with his small troop of Baptist brethren in tow. He is a stern figure with a brisk way of both walking and speaking. His wife, when she is seen, which is seldom, is softer and meeker.
‘Has anyone else seen this smoke?’ Caradoc asks, examining each face around him in turn. Almost everyone nods. ‘And this noise that Jacob heard?’
They all nod again. ‘A drumming.’
‘And horses, maybe.’
‘I heard someone calling, as if they were lost,’ says a small voice at the front.
Caradoc looks at her, and then, very unexpectedly, smiles. ‘Did you, my little one?’
The child hides her face in her mother’s skirts and the people around her laugh.
Caradoc’s smile abruptly disappears again. ‘We need a reconnaissance,’ he says. ‘Three brave souls with guns to see if there’s really anyone out there.’
‘Yes!’ Jacob says quickly, ‘I’ll do it. Anyone willing to join me?’ He looks around eagerly but although some of the women smile encouragingly back, the men look away. For a few seconds there is silence, and Silas feels Megan’s eyes on him.
‘I’ll go,’ he says. Jacob isn’t the only hero. The men around him relax a little, and he is rewarded with a squeeze on the arm by Megan.
