by Ruth Park
‘Are you all right, Granny?’ panted Abigail. The intensity of her feeling had not left her; she felt she had been through a lifetime of happiness and woe.
‘Yes,’ said the old woman. She seemed revivified, her bent back straightened, her faded eyes glistening with triumph and excitement.
‘Aye, that was a good flash, like a sky full of lightning! Like the old days when past and future were spread out before me like a field of flowers.’
‘Was I you?’ breathed Abigail. ‘Yes, I was you! And Bartle was your husband.’
‘Drowned off the Noup like his son Robert. Near nineteen, he was, like his grandson Judah Bow. Aye, the young can experience true love, and true sorrow, and true selflessness too.’
‘I don’t think I could,’ faltered Abigail, ‘be unselfish, I mean.’
Mrs Tallisker looked at her with something like scorn.
‘If you love truly, you will also know how to live without the beloved, no matter whether you lose him to death or some other.’
Abigail felt helpless and anxious. ‘But I don’t think I’m good enough to be like that. Maybe when I’m older …’
‘Age has naught to do with it, Abby,’ returned Mrs Tallisker.
‘But,’ faltered Abby, ‘already I feel jealous of Dovey.’ She was ashamed. ‘When I was shaking Beatie …’
The old woman laughed heartily. ‘You shook Beatie? ’Twill do that one a world of good.’
‘Yes,’ confessed Abigail, ‘I shook her till her tonsils rattled. But all the time I was wishing it was Dovey. It was horrible, like a kind of black oil smeared over everything. I’m afraid, Granny – that I’ll be nasty to Dovey, say something cruel. And I don’t want to.’
‘And why, Abby? Because you like poor Dovey so much, and she hasna done you anything but kindness?’
‘Yes, that,’ said Abigail, ‘but mostly because I don’t want to make Judah unhappy, ever, and he would be if anyone hurt Dovey.’
Mrs Tallisker leant over and kissed Abigail’s cheek lightly.
‘You’ll do, my honey.’
She would say no more, but asked Abigail to fetch the lamp and light it.
‘And send Beatie to me, hen.’
Beatie went in glowering and came out snivelling. She joined Abigail at the kitchen table where the girl was scrubbing potatoes in a dish of water.
‘Granny said I was to be civil to you, and I will; but ’tis not for your sake! So if I smile at you, ’tis from the teeth outwards!’
Abigail sighed. ‘I hope it rains on Sunday, so we can’t go cockling. Because it will be hell with you glaring at me with steam coming out of your ears.’
‘It inna fair!’ said Beatie, crimson with wrath and tears. ‘Granny said if I didna behave sweet and kind to you she’d give me a look. And if it inna any better than the one I got ten minutes agone, I dunna want to live to see it. And she said I wasna to give as much as a hint to Dovey that you’re mooning over my brother Judah.’
‘If you’d hurt Dovey that way, then you don’t love Dovey as you say you do,’ said Abigail sharply. ‘You just watch your tongue, because I for one am sick of it.’
Beatie turned to her forlornly. ‘Well, I ken it is sharpened both ends, but your ain inna much better, Abby, all said and done.’
‘What did Granny say to you,’ asked Abby, ‘to upset you so?’
‘She said,’ confessed Beatie forlornly, ‘that on Sunday Judah would know for true whom he loves, and oh, Abigail, I’m afeared it might be you.’
For one moment Abigail’s heart filled with bliss. It blazed up and it was gone, she did not know why. All she felt then was a premonitory sadness, not a child’s disappointed sadness, but something sterner and more adult. But this was not a thing about which she could speak to Beatie. It was as private as love. She knew now why her mother had been silent all those years about her hurt and loneliness.
‘Well, then,’ she said composedly to Beatie, ‘at least we know that Sunday will be a fine day and we’ll go cockling.’
‘Will you promise me, solemn, that you won’t let Dovey get hurt?’ pleaded Beatie.
Abigail thought about that. ‘I can’t promise it any more than Granny can promise it. But I don’t want Dovey to get hurt in any way, and that’s for true.’
Beatie considered this. ‘Verra well,’ she said grudgingly. ‘But I’ll keep my eye on you. Sharp!’
Dovey prepared them a picnic basket. Her excitement over the beauty of the day, the pleasures in store for them, the feast of cockles they would have that night and on the morrow, seemed almost as if, lame as she was, she frolicked with honest joy at the thought of someone else’s good fortune. Inside her Abigail felt a bitter humiliation. If Judah thought of her as a child, as Beatie had once said, Dovey thought of her as even more of one. Even if Dovey had guessed her love for Judah, she had no jealousy towards her. But perhaps she didn’t know. Gentle and good as she was, she was not as sharp-witted as Beatie or Gibbie.
Abigail gave Dovey’s bride chest a spiteful kick. But that made her feel she was a child after all. Heavy at heart, she went down the crooked stairs and through the shop. Mr Bow had banked the great open fire, as he always did at night. A downy blanket of grey ash lay over the winking, slow-breathing fire that drowsed in the depths of the immense log at the back of the chimney. Once a month a log was hauled with chains through a little trapdoor specially built in the side of the house next to the fireplace.
Mr Bow sat on the bench beside this sleeping fire, his hands dangling between his legs. Abigail bade him good-bye but he did not answer.
‘I’m not gey happy about him,’ confessed Judah as they went through The Cut and over The Green. ‘His spells are more frequent, there’s no denying. But there’s no drink in the house, and he’s amenable to Granny. Come now, Beatie, you’ve a lip like a jug. Cheer up, lass, all will be well!’
But Beatie was fidgety and capricious, running ahead of them through the empty Sunday streets, short with Abigail, impudent to Judah, sometimes sullen, sometimes curvetting and prancing like an urchin, vanishing down side lanes and bobbing out at them again, until Judah caught her by the tails of her pinafore and said, ‘Will ye take hold of yourself, hen? I’m weary already of ye jumping about like a nag with a chestnut under its tail. Now, quieten down, for once we get in the boat you’ll have to turn into a mouse, and you might as well start practising now.’
Beatie meekly took his hand. They walked ahead of Abigail towards what she knew as Darling Harbour, but which The Rocks people still called Cockle Cove.
Occasionally Beatie turned round and glared at Abigail, as though warningly. And, when Judah was not looking, Abigail glared back, knowing what Beatie meant to convey to her.
‘Monkey-face,’ thought Abigail. ‘Blanky little watchdog!’
Several ladder-like wooden stairways ran down to the beaches and slipways below Miller’s Point. The beaches were littered with the refuse of ships – broken gear, rotted rope, rusty iron things half-sunken in the sand and gravel. There was a fearful smell of rotted fish and vegetables from a mountain of muck where the Pittwater boats that brought the northern farmers’ produce to the markets dumped their unsold cargoes. Children and old women rooted amongst this garbage for anything edible.
The little boat rocked in a foot or so of water. The girls took off their shoes and stockings and waded out. Judah was already barefooted.
‘Get in and be smart about it!’ he ordered.
Abigail and Beatie climbed in, and Judah pushed the dory off the sand-flat, running alongside till she was well afloat, and then jumping in and taking the oars. With a couple of strong pulls he had them out in deeper water. Cockle Bay stretched to the south, and beyond their bow were the headlands of the North Shore, bronze green and forested, with faint chalk smudges of domestic smoke drifting up from what looked to Abigail like isolated settlements. Only North Sydney seemed fully built upon, though it was eerie to see it without the Bridge’s mighty forefoot coming down upon Milson
’s Point.
What took Abigail’s eye was not the majestic half-wilderness of the North Shore, which she had known as a twin city as tall-towered as Sydney, but the Harbour itself.
‘The ships, the ships!’ she shouted. ‘Hundreds … thousands of ships!’
For the Harbour was an inhabited place. Barges with rust-brown sails, busy little river ferries with smoke whuffing from tall stacks, fishing-boats and pleasure boats with finned paddle-wheels, sixty-milers, colliers, towering-masted barquentines with sails tied in neat parcels along what Abigail thought of as their branches – every type of vessel imaginable: huddled in coves, lying askew on slipways and beaches, skipping before them over the water, rocking gaily, or slowly and grandly, at buoy or wharf berth.
‘What did ye expect, then?’ snapped Beatie. ‘Cows?’
Abigail, entranced at the magnificent sight, scarcely heard her; but Judah frowned at his sister.
‘Whoa, now, lass, what’s wi’ ye? Is that any way to talk to a guest, and our own Abby at that? Mind your manners, I’m telling you!’
Beatie turned her face away, lip poked out, eyes full of angry tears, which Judah ignored. Abigail rose to her knees, crying, ‘It’s marvellous! I never dreamt it could be like this!’
‘Sit down!’ ordered Judah, ‘or you’ll have us all in the salt. Look overboard and see yon fellow.’
Abigail gingerly sat down, and looked where he pointed. She saw a large shark, with an eye like a willow leaf, cruising three metres below them. A cloud of sprats fled before it. But the green eye was fixed on the boat.
Beatie looked at the shark with a shudder and yet a certain satisfaction.
‘No doubt,’ reflected Abigail, ‘she’s imagining me falling overboard.’
‘There’s The Brothers,’ said Judah, jerking his head towards a sturdy two-masted brig, very shabby. ‘She’s square-rigged on both masts. Handy for the coastal trade.’
Abigail asked what these hosts of coastal vessels carried.
‘Coal from Newcastle,’ said Beatie instantly, ‘cedar from the northern rivers, whale oil from the whale station at Eden, and wool from up and down the coasts for the clipper ships to take to England.’
She looked triumphantly at Abigail. ‘And what do they carry in your time, then?’
‘I don’t think there are many ships,’ said Abigail. ‘Things like wool come in trains.’
‘We’ve got steam trains,’ said Beatie proudly.
‘These would be electric or oil-driven, I think,’ said Abigail, ‘and then a lot of goods come overland in huge semi-trailers … that’s a kind of horseless carriage,’ she added hastily.
Judah listened politely. ‘Seems a sad waste of good money when the sea and the wind are free for all,’ he remarked.
Judah’s complete lack of interest in the marvels of the future cheered Beatie instantly, and Abigail, no longer irked by the sullen ill-temper of her young companion, gave herself up to the joy of the day.
They drifted past innumerable coves, some a rich green with mangrove swamps, empty of all but a tall white heron picking around in the mud, others already claimed by a little ship-yard, a spindly jetty, a half-ribbed whaleboat skeleton on the slips.
Though Abigail had learnt to know the Harbour and its endless bays from her crow’s nest at the top of Mitchell, she had long since lost her sense of direction as the dory nosed around the rock inlets, the warm airs sometimes bringing a Wanderer butterfly, or once a Black Prince cicada, a tinselly creature that clung to the bow with hooked feet, creaked once or twice, and flicked away towards land.
Under cliffs dribbling water, Judah pulled in towards a crescent of beach, dragged up the boat a little way, and jabbed the anchor into the mud.
‘I’m hungry, I’m hungry!’ cried Beatie, hopping out.
‘No, cockles first, while the tide’s low,’ commanded Judah. He took three wooden pails from the dory. ‘Tuck your skirts up. The Dear knows I dunna want you both dripping all over me on the trip home.’
He showed Abigail how to find the breathing hole, and sometimes the track of the cockle, and dig for the shellfish with a stick. Beatie stayed close to her brother, and for much of the time Abigail wandered around alone on the cool, faintly sucking sand. A kind of certainty had fallen over her that this day was to be her last in 1873. She could no longer doubt the Gift, and Granny had told Beatie that this day Judah would know whom he loved. She did not know how this would come about, but she knew that it would.
‘And it won’t be me,’ she thought. Her pail full now, she put it in the shade of a tree, and wandered by herself amongst the rocks, shoaly falls from the cliffs, their crevices filled with driftwood, empty crab-shells, dead and dry starfish and sea-eggs.
In the heat there was uncanny silence, as though the sea itself was too exhausted to sigh or murmur. And in this silence she heard the sounds of farewell.
She sat amongst the fallen cities of the rocks and watched Judah and Beatie, high on the beach, lighting a campfire. Beatie filled a billycan at the spring seepage on the cliff, and once or twice Judah went out and towed the now-afloat dory nearer the shore. The tide was rising fast, with a long whispering hahhhhh.
The billy must have boiled, for Beatie came running to get her. The little girl’s face, though she wore a cabbage-tree hat, as did Abigail and Judah, was scorched with sunburn.
‘You’ve been doing it again!’ she accused.
‘Doing what?’
‘Staring at him. I seen you, sitting on the rocks like a mermaid, staring and gawking.’
Abigail said nothing, but scowled at her and stalked ahead along the beach. A big old redgum, almost one with the sandstone rocks, sheltered them as they ate, hats pulled over their eyes to keep out the sea-dazzle. Judah talked idly of his work: ‘Ten bob a month and found, but ’twill be grand pay when I’m an AB.’
Abigail translated this into dollars, couldn’t believe the answer, and then remembered that loaves were a penny each, and that Granny often bought a whole fresh fish for twopence. She remarked that being ‘a boy’ on a coaster seemed to equate with being a man for a boy’s pay and status. Judah laughed.
‘Well, a boy’s a boy, no doubt of that, and he’s kept in his place. Me, now, when I started nigh four years ago I brought the food along from the galley and, by jings, I waited till the men had taken their share before I ventured to help myself. Swept the fo’c’sle, took the dishes back to the galley, learnt to know my place right smart after a thick ear or two from one of the crew.’
It seemed to Abigail it would be a hard life, even for a hefty fourteen-year-old as Judah must have been. A boy worked cargo like the rest of the crew, always went aloft to furl the highest sail, and never ventured to offer an opinion during fo’c’sle talk. On the other hand, he was expected to smoke a pipe or chew tobacco.
‘Yuk!’ said Abigail.
‘And sink your quota of rum when you’re ashore with the men,’ added Judah. ‘But Granny – wouldna she skin me alive if she caught me at it and, any old road, I’ve no taste for either. And I promised Mother besides, so that clinches it.’
He yawned. ‘Come on, lassies, let’s awa’. I’ll show you a pretty place or two, Abby, if you fancy.’
But Beatie wanted to climb the rocks and scramble out onto a little peninsula of grass and pink pigface to be king of the castle, as she said.
‘You’ll do as I say. Time to move,’ he said, stamping out the fire, and gathering up their belongings to put in the basket.
‘I want to stay here and paddle,’ said Beatie. ‘And I’m sick of the boat, up and down, up and down, and nothing to see but water and places with no people in them. I want to play Robinson Crusoe!’
‘I don’t mind staying a while longer –’ began Abigail, but Beatie turned on her roughly. ‘Your opinion inna asked! On this voyage you’re only the boy!’
Abigail laughed, but Judah took hold of Beatie, gave her a little shake and said sternly, ‘What’s up with ye today, ye wee smatchit? Y
ou’ve been girning and groaning pretty near since we left home. Are you ailing?’
‘I just want to play Robinson Crusoe,’ muttered Beatie. Suddenly she aimed a kick at Judah’s bare shin.
‘Right, that does it,’ said her brother. ‘You’ve a temper like a ferret today and I’ll stand nae more of it. Stay here and play Robinson Crusoe, while I take Abby for a little row. Get in the dory, Abby.’
He put a wet sack over the cockles and cautioned Beatie: ‘Now, see the sun dunna get on them, or they’ll all die afore we get them home to Granny. Or do you wish to change your mind and come with us?’
Beatie glowered at him, and he said, ‘Stay here then, ye self-willed brat. Dovey’s too soft wi’ you and Gibbie both. We’re off – how do you like that?’
‘I dunna care a blanky damn!’ screamed Beatie, wading out a little way into the water and shaking her fist at them. ‘I hope the boat sinks.’
‘No, you don’t,’ yelled back Judah, laughing. ‘You play Robinson Crusoe there for a while, while I show Abby the Harbour. We’ll be back before Man Friday comes to eat you up!’
Beatie sat down at the water’s edge, her arms around her knees, scowling.
‘If she could hurl thunder and lightning she would,’ Judah laughed. ‘Rest easy, Abby. She’ll be as sweet as pie when we come back to get her.’
The dory skidded softly over the water that was coloured like a glass marble, here a clear streak and a sun-speckled sand-bar plain to be seen, there dark blue like polished stone.
‘Perhaps we shouldn’t have left her…’ began Abigail, but Judah shushed her. He pulled out into the stream and around the edge of the little peninsula that Beatie had wanted to climb. Waterbirds of all kinds flew up from the brown pocked terraces sluiced with translucent water. A glistening native bee landed on Judah’s hand, and Abigail leant forward to brush it off.
‘No, no, she’ll go in the water. She hasna sting, so don’t fret.’
He went on rowing, and in a moment the bee arrowed back to the shore.
‘I ha’e a great liking for this land,’ he said. ‘Man hasna spoiled it yet, not even with steam factories and all the dirt the rich make around them.’
