Mr Peacock's Possessions

by Lydia Syson

  Back on the bluff, Billy takes the glowing log from Lizzie and blows it hot again, then kneels as if he’s praying. Through a hollow green stem, he whistles up a flicker from the pile he’s made of twigs, dry leaves and broken embers. It falters and retreats a little before the flames take hold. Finally, urged on by both children with all their might, a thick dark column spews angrily from the bonfire and billows into the sky.

  They pile on more green branches – and more. Burning leaves take off like fledglings, swirling and dancing above the flames, rising and falling, glowing and dying. Blackened fragments stick to Lizzie’s sweaty face as she pokes impatiently at the mass of vegetation, shifting branches here and there to make passageways for the air, then stepping back with outstretched hands when the heat becomes unbearable.

  ‘They’ve seen us!’ shouts Billy, staring out to sea again with red-rimmed eyes, which he wipes with the back of his hand. He blinks a few times to clear his vision. ‘Look! She’s coming about … she surely is.’

  He’s jumping again, in danger of waving both arms from their sockets. Lizzie’s eyes are streaming too. When she squeezes them shut, it’s like closing her lids on thorns. She tries to shake away the piercing, forcing herself back into the heat and smoke to heap yet more sticks onto the fire, young ones, leafy ones, mossy ones.

  Can’t be sure yet.

  Billy still might be mistaken. The ship’s captain could change his mind and course at any time.

  More fire, more smoke. Don’t stop. Effort now, reward later. That’s her training. She’s learned it well.

  ‘Did you see Pa?’ Lizzie asks Billy for the second time. ‘Are they back?’

  ‘I’ve not seen him or Albert. I already told you.’

  ‘I do wish Ada would hurry up.’

  Ada will be rounding up her smaller sisters, soothing their mother. She’ll hardly dare look out to sea for fear of disappointment.

  More wood. More smoke.

  ‘Oh, where are they?’ Lizzie frets. ‘Did they say? How long can they be?’

  Billy doesn’t remember either where Pa planned to hunt – just that Ma wanted to smoke and barrel up some meat while the smokery was going.

  ‘If they’ve struck lucky, they’ll still be butchering, and never looking up,’ says Billy. ‘You know Pa told Albert he had to do it by himself this time? So he’ll be watching him. Making sure he doesn’t do it wrong.’

  ‘Poor Albert,’ says Lizzie. ‘How he does provoke Pa.’

  She swings on another log. Smouldering branches shift and crash, releasing a new stream of sparks. Satisfied they’ve both done all they can for the time being, Lizzie plants herself beside her younger brother. Feet apart, they stand and watch the sea. That’s it, she thinks, and her heart contracts. The windjammer is some way off still, but she’s surely seen them. Yes, she’s changing course. She’s drawing closer. No doubting. Again Lizzie regrets she cannot see her father’s face.

  ‘Look, Billy! We just need patience now.’

  ‘You’ll tell Pa I saw the ship first?’ Billy says.

  ‘Maybe I will,’ Lizzie teases. ‘Maybe I won’t.’

  Billy aims a sideways kick at her shin. She catches his leg without a thought and traps his muscled calf in the palm of her hand, so that he’s left tottering on the other foot.

  ‘What’s it worth?’ she asks.

  He twists away from her, unsuccessfully, for now she’s used to catching kicking goats by the hind leg, and she knows how to hold on. His hands go down for balance, his head hangs between them. He doesn’t reply, because she knows the answer: praise from Pa means everything to Billy.

  ‘But will you?’ he pleads again.

  Grinning at the desperation of his desire, Lizzie lifts his leg still higher. She can afford to be amused. She hardly needs a ship-sighting to prove herself. If anyone does, it’s Albert, she reflects, and this makes her hope harder he’s seen it too by now.

  ‘Yes. I’ll tell him. Of course I will.’

  Her younger brother escapes without much trouble, and pushes her briefly, not hard.

  ‘A ship!’ she shouts, pushing him back.

  ‘A ship!’ he replies, crashing back into her. Hysteria erupts with the speed of overboiling milk, a crazy, barking laughter that leaves them quickly still and empty.

  ‘We mustn’t stop watching,’ says Billy, eyes back on the sea.

  Something’s changed. Lizzie can’t say quite what, but it unsteadies her.

  ‘Are you sure she’s seen us?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes. No. Yes, I’m sure.’ His fingernails dig into her arm with every urgent contradiction.

  ‘I suppose they could be …’ Lizzie’s other fear is best not spoken. What kind of ship is this? It’s hard enough to judge the character of a captain when you’ve spent weeks as his passenger. From a clifftop, it’s impossible. But weren’t their fortunes turning now, the scales rebalancing at last? The Peacock family was surely on the up. Pa had said so, just a few weeks ago, looking at the thriving vegetables, and Ma had agreed, and they had looked at each other in such a way Lizzie knew it couldn’t be for show. They had earned their change in luck, Ma said. And this ship would be the proof and crown of it.

  Holding her elbows, Lizzie moves her weight back and forth from foot to foot, side to side, a slow but deliberate rocking rhythm. Step by step, she is bringing this ship in with willpower, as you might sway a baby into slumber.

  Some moments later, she spits hair from her mouth, and thrusts her hands into the pockets of her flapping tunic to hold its skirts down.

  ‘Do you feel the wind rise?’ she presses Billy.

  ‘No. Yes. A little, maybe. It’s always windy up here.’

  It seems windier than before though. The clouds are moving faster. A squall? Now? No. No. No. She refuses to contemplate the possibility.

  ‘Lizzie! Billy!’

  It’s Queenie, running to join them, slowed by her reluctance to take her eyes off the sea, and the awkwardness of her burden.

  ‘Oh no,’ she wails, as she gets closer, letting her logs fall. Her fingers pincer Lizzie’s arm. ‘It’s not going away, is it? It can’t leave us now. It can’t.’ Queenie shouts out, uselessly, waving and jumping as she calls: ‘Ahoy! Come back!’

  Then Ada and little Gussie climb to meet them, with more wood, and also the young dog, Spy, barking sharply.

  ‘Come and see! Quickly! Ada!’ calls Lizzie.

  Whirlpooling in the children’s flood of desperation, Spy rushes around the fire and leaps and growls and, without Albert there, Queenie and Gussie can do nothing to calm him. Lizzie begins to wave too. She’s sure the pitch of the growling surf below is rising. And the ship now seems to be getting smaller instead of bigger.

  ‘Keep waving, Queenie. You too, Gussie, wave harder! Make sure they see us.’

  Ada is waving hardest of all of them, her body stretched to snapping.

  ‘Oh look over here! This way! Come on!’

  They leap and sweep their arms through the smoky air like nesting terns. Ada stops to fumble in her tunic pocket.

  ‘Wait! I’ve brought Pa’s spyglass. Ma’s idea. He won’t be angry.’ She unscrews the instrument and screws up one eye. But her hands are loose and bony, and the horizon is bucking with her nerves.

  ‘It is a windjammer,’ says Billy at last, with satisfaction, without the need of magnification.

  ‘Can you see a flag?’ The words burst from Lizzie, who balls her fists to stop them snatching the glass from Ada.

  ‘Of course not,’ says Ada. ‘Not yet.’

  In fact Ada can’t see a thing. Her eyes are filling with tears – of relief, of hope. She’s not even sure herself why she’s crying.

  3

  ESPERANZA ROLL AND PITCH, STILL IN DEEP WATER plenty lengths from land, and beyond her monstrous roaring. On the quarterdeck, our Yankee captain shake his head and flatten his lips. We six Rock fellows stand together, skin to skin, breath hard and quick, all holding tight the foredeck rail, keeping
nerve and body steady. Here we are, but this place has yet to show itself. Our hearts little know if they should leap or bottom-sink, and we cannot command them.

  We had no imagining of an island so unlike our own, so small from far off and yet so tall before us, rising high, even into cloud, so many trees above and so wild of sea below. Scatter of islets to one side. We stare through spray at breakers hurling on a grey beach of sand and stones, and stare at the green land above, upping here and downing there, dark and light in turn. Most of all we stare at the creatures we spy out where the land rises close and high above the shoreline and no trees grow, human creatures who up and down themselves as quick as quick.

  Vilipate questions Solomona. Have we come to work only for children? How will they pay us? My brother’s shoulders rise and fall. He hate to say he does not know. He knows as much of this as you, I say, but silently, to shield my brother. What can anyone know from this distance?

  ‘You are certain it will not be like Flint Island?’ asks Likatau, who we call Luka. ‘The work?’ Ten from our village went last year to scrape guano for Mr Arundel. Mr Reverend say he is a proper Christian gentleman, like our Mr Peacock, but still he sent a native teacher with them.

  ‘You know we come to clear the land for planting,’ I say, staring at the trees, so many and so tall, trusting I speak true. ‘You know our labour here.’

  Then up through the hatch comes Cook’s scowling face, question-full. Solomona points.

  ‘Little ones … Palagi …’

  Up and down they jump, mouths open, flapping wings, dark little birds waiting to be fed. No colour to ’em. We only see their shouts. The sky sucks up smoke from the bluff, and throws it around.

  Cook – a little Englishman who scuttles side to side of his galley kingdom on crayfish legs, all that food and yet so thin – Cook stares too, peg-teeth on show.

  ‘Practising their war dances,’ says he, and raise finger-waggling hands and monster his mouth at us. His tongue is short and whitely scummed. Our eyes return to land. ‘Only joking,’ he says, grinningly, coming to stand with us, his well-cooked smell all about him.

  One by one, one, two, three, four – now five I see – one tiny child on another’s hip – the bodies fall still. Only the dog dances on. They want to see who we are. If we stay or go. I feel their wanting swell me from inside.

  ‘Poor little blighters,’ says Cook. ‘Don’t they have no parents? Who’d have dreamed it? What could have happened? Nasty landing, all right, but have to make the best of it. Can’t leave ’em now, not in this Godforsaken spot.’

  No bumboats here to greet us. At home we send out vaka to meet palagi vessels. Pilot boats – canoes, as Mrs Reverend call ’em – to show the way to strangers, or offer goods for sale, though once upon a time we welcomed no one. Before Christ came. Here we see no greeters on wave or shore. Only these little ones up high, waiting and watching back.

  Lower, the land flattens but is nowhere flat. Small buildings, three or four rough huts with empty eyes, unglassed, gather under tall trees. Another fire’s smoke is whirling there, no, I see two – the darker beyond the buildings. Straight lines of taro and beans grow lush. Near to them, youngster orange trees, too much sapling yet for fruiting but strong of growth. A green meadow where goats are tethered. Not one coconut palm, and strange to say, not one other person.

  ‘Well, there’s a relief … thought we’d be taking on a party of orphans for a moment,’ Cook says.

  Pineki shifts my gaze with a pinch. Iakopo’s smile is wide. I see the reason. Here comes Mother Bird, smallish herself from this way off. We watch the lady climb the brow, dark skirt full-long and blouse high-button like Mrs Reverend. She lean from side to side, and forward and back, for it is not easy for her to walk so fast. She is with child, and near her time by anybody’s reckoning. But where is that child’s father? Nowhere visible. Just one boy stands with all the girls, one white shirt alone on the sky’s edge.

  Esperanza shudders. Our captain nod, and first mate shout order. And down the anchor rattles.

  Now the ship fights her ties, and we must hold the tighter.

  Sails down, davits out.

  Pulley wheels like morning birds as tars begin to down a small boat, ship’s gig, but just as quickly stop for fear it smash. Up it come again, still squeaking. No good for landing yet, in gig or longboat. Captain and first mate still looking, talking, disagreeing somewhat it might seem, for we note more shaking heads. Shame. We need vaka, we fellows all agree. We must ride the surf, not fight it, says Pineki, and Vilipate is with him, and I see Solomona’s eyes agree. Yet he will not change our words to theirs, and I dare not either. We are cargo once again, no longer crew. Cargo make no choices. Besides, we have no vaka with us. So it is idle thinking. We need another way to reach them.

  Loud seas against the ship and shouting orders and wind in rigging all drown the children’s calling voices. Their bodies slump, no longer jump. Hope leaks away, shivery. The dog falls out of seeing.

  My eye measures rocks, sizes rollers, breath-counts waves. I ready-steady my knees.

  ‘Now?’ I say to Solomona.

  ‘Wait, Kalala. Wait!’ he say. He always want to wait.

  My shirt is over my head already. I cannot wait. One hand on Luka’s shoulder, a heave from bold Pineki, and I swing my leg to the topmost rail …

  4

  UP ON THE BLUFF THE WORLD TURNS A LITTLE BUT nobody talks until the windjammer is bucking at anchor. Ada clutches at Lizzie, who grips her back as bruisingly. Still no sign of Pa. Billy has the spyglass.

  ‘They’ve got Islanders on board.’

  ‘Give me the glass,’ says Ma, arriving beside her children, hips creaking and grinding, bones slowly parting. She gathers the air back into her lungs, holds out a swollen hand.

  ‘The ship’s called Esperanza. These must be our kanakas, come at last,’ she says. ‘Look at the colour of them.’

  ‘One of them’s escaping!’ calls Lizzie. ‘Look out! He’s on the deckrail.’

  ‘He’s going to dive!’ squeaked Queenie.

  ‘He’s in the drink,’ says Ma. ‘Gone so quick.’

  5

  IN WATER ONCE MORE, ALL MY LIMBS ARE JOYFUL, AND my ears too, joyful with bubbling whoosh, all sluice and surge and flow, a dulled and busy quietness which is never silence. Eyes open in bluest blue. A slow-winging turtle rises. I rise myself, for air, and sink again. The sea argues; back and forth, it tests me sorely – but I know these tricks and tumbles, and I have power enough in mind and body to work these waves to my delight.

  Head up and out.

  The shore approaches.

  I am down and under, and now give way and let the water roller me in – the rocks cry out a warning – I swim sideways with all my ebbing strength – so fast so fast – and then a mighty power throws me down, hard, in whiteness. Yet I claw for life with so much longing that nothing can pull me back. Fiercely I fight – my enemy, my friend – the suck of it, guzzling and gulping at my legs. Ploughing and pushing, now in air, gasping, now under foam, I launch my body and dive for land.

  My bellowing back ups and downs, unasked. My chest is first fast and roaring, then slower and slower still. Smallest of stones print my face, embed their heat in all my body. Ears whine and sing. Foam flecks and waves reach, rush, drag at my feet, trying to lure me back into water, over and again, but I resist the sea’s entreaties, crawl from its hungry reach. My head hammers and hums and stars whirl brightly in my closed eyes. I wait for all to slow, for glow to dim, for land to cease its tipping.

  And then I raise my head and look up and down the beach. Nobody. Spume slides slowly on flat wet sand where sky and clouds lie spread and wrinkled. Some scattered rocks. So much sand. On and on and on all along the shore. Out of the sea’s reach, the land dries and lightens, stretches up to a wall of rock, grass at bottom and green bushes tipping from on top. Not so high you could not climb it. There will be holes for fingers and toes in the red-brown lumps and chunks. Or I will fin
d another way to reach the houses and the children. When I can breathe. I hardly can hold my head up yet.

  Thud. Thud. Thud. As this thumping lulls in head and heart, I gather strength. Here I am, Monday Island. I have come as commanded. Now it is for you to make good your promise.

  6

  WITH THE SAME GAZING FORCE THAT DREW IN the Esperanza, Lizzie willed the young man’s headway through the waves. Once, his head rose in the foam, and twice an arm flashed, but after that, they saw nothing.

  This island interrupts the ocean like the head of a loosened nail. The rollers drive in with the force of all the Pacific behind them, as if their one desire is to join the waters on the far side. They come crashing against the rocky shoreline and against the sand, and stagger back to battle with the next incoming wave. Unpredictable whirlpools and eddies of current fight night and day for possession of the waters of the bay. But there was nowhere easier to come ashore than the stretch of beach below this bluff. The stranger had a chance.

  ‘He must know what he’s doing,’ says Lizzie uncertainly, scrawny hand dropping from her open mouth. Her grey eyes are dried out with stretching them open in this wind. Where is Pa?

  ‘I hope he does,’ says Ma, chest still heaving. She slips a few fingers down the back of her neck to unstick the linen from her damp back, but does not release a button. She sticks a loose pin back into her hair. Gus, who can walk on her own two feet, clings closer.

  ‘Can you see him now? Can you see him?’ Ada can’t stop fretting.

  ‘Why is he coming alone? Why doesn’t he wait?’ Queenie asks what they all want to know.

  ‘We’ll find out soon,’ says Lizzie. ‘I’m going to see if he’s made it.’