Mr Peacock's Possessions

by Lydia Syson

  ‘You worry too much about Albert.’

  ‘Somebody’s got to.’

  ‘If only he wasn’t so obviously afraid of Pa. Albert needs to stand up for himself. Seeing how scared he is – that’s what annoys Pa more than anything, I think.’

  ‘Hmmmph.’

  ‘What do you mean, hmmmph?’ Lizzie gave Ada’s shoulder a little shake.

  ‘I mean it’s all very well for you. You don’t know what it’s like. You’re his favourite.’

  Lizzie didn’t have an answer to that.

  ‘I have to work just as hard as anyone else,’ she pointed out.

  Ada replied slowly and carefully.

  ‘That wasn’t what I was saying.’

  ‘I didn’t ask—’

  ‘But you’re not frightened of him,’ said Ada. ‘What have you got to be frightened of?’

  They lay and listened for a while, absorbing the deadening silence of the rocks that contained them.

  ‘Is Billy frightened of Pa too?’ asked Lizzie.

  ‘Of course he is. Everyone is. Maybe not Ma, so much, but that’s because she knows how to handle him. And Queenie doesn’t notice everything.’

  Lizzie turned prim and distant.

  ‘I don’t think we should be talking like this.’

  ‘See,’ was Ada’s only reply.

  Lizzie looked for diversion. A gurgling sound somewhere far below them was so like a stomach rumbling that it made Lizzie giggle.

  ‘That’s God. Asking when we’re going to say our prayers,’ she told Ada.

  Ada pushed her, but she laughed too. Nervously.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘No, of course not. I don’t know what it is. Has it stopped?’

  They listened. Faint hissing and bubbling from deep within the cave reminded her of their old room above the kitchen at the hotel in the Navigator Islands. There was always a big pot of water coming to the boil on the range below, and the room was warm and made you sleepy in just the same way. When the thumping became louder, more like a distant steam engine’s pistons, Ada slid an arm around Lizzie. By then both girls were floating with the uncontrollable exhaustion of physical labour, their breath slowing and deepening. Ada jerked once, like a dog smelling rats in its sleep. And then Lizzie was asleep herself, dreaming Sal was on her chest, curled up with Spy, her half-grown puppy, and she couldn’t push them off.

  *

  She woke feeling still weighed down, impossibly leaden, as if caught in a kind of dream: you see the danger, but can do nothing about it. Her muscles would not respond. She could hardly move at all. She groaned and poked at Ada, whose eyelids fluttered. Nothing else stirred. Something more than sleep was trying to drag them both towards oblivion. Sulphurous steam had gathered around them in the night in a warmly tempting, invisible cocoon. She couldn’t give in to it, but she desperately wanted to, and her eyes were closing again. No. She had to resist. Lizzie forced herself to sit, and that made her choke, and at last, just in time, she grasped the situation.

  ‘Quickly, Ada! Wake up.’ She shook her sister as hard as she could, shouting in her ear, slapping her face, smacking down the hands which pushed her away. They were both coughing and gasping. Lizzie heaved Ada to her knees and pushed her, still struggling, towards the entrance. ‘Move! Get out!’

  At last Ada understood, and they staggered out together. Gulping down the fresh morning air, they clutched at each other, choking and laughing and crying all at once. Until their skin iced over as they understood the spider-web strength of their luck.

  ‘I thought I’d never wake you,’ said Lizzie. ‘I thought you were dead already. Your lips … they were nearly blue just now.’

  ‘I didn’t want to wake up, ever,’ Ada replied. ‘I thought I couldn’t move. Don’t tell Pa, will you? Please, Lizzie, please don’t tell him. He mustn’t even know we came in here. We were meant to stay by the fire. If he finds out we slept here …’

  Lizzie nodded.

  ‘Of course I won’t tell him. We mustn’t tell anyone about the Oven.’

  They shook hands solemnly.

  ‘And let’s get back as fast as we possibly can,’ said Ada.

  ‘But it’s still so early. And just look at the lake now the sun’s on it.’

  They scrambled back down from the rock ledge with only one thought. Helping each other off with their clothes, the girls waded into the water in shifts and drawers, white cotton and pale limbs turning ever darker.

  Long before they heard Sal barking, they were back in the clearing beside the hanging goat carcass, with a fire nicely burned down to embers, underthings just a little damp. Ada grabbed Lizzie’s arm. Her eyes were still watering from the cave’s fumes and her voice was hoarse.

  ‘Remember you promised?’

  ‘I’ll never tell anyone,’ Lizzie agreed fervently, wiping her running nose. ‘Never.’

  22

  IT IS FORTUNATE FOR THE PEACOCK FAMILY THAT THEY have my brother here. As Mrs Peacock often say: ‘a blessing indeed’. One child in limbo already, body unfound, soul unblessed, untalked of now except in dreams it seems … (often I hear murmurs in darkness, restless turning) … it would be bitter indeed to lose another to that place between worlds.

  The baby, Joseph, is a big-eyed, small-boned yellow thing, which does not fatten. His skin stretches over his skull, and light glows through his tiny hands. When he cries, opening, opening and opening toothless gums, white-coated tongue curled back, it is a worry to all. But when he is silent, and cannot be woken, the worry is worse. For some days, hope is frail. Palagi babies are much weaker than ours, I think. Passing strange how rarely God and medicine help them. Mrs Reverend has buried two since they came to our island. The last, four years distant, a small infant, a girl-baby again, who did not live to see the world one week before she went to the arms of Jesus. The palagi find our customs strange, so they bury the daughter by the church, and call that place the graveyard. But there is no church here on Monday Island.

  They sent my friend Sidney away from the Mission House when he grew too old. So often do I think of him these days and nights. Something in that lanky-limbed girl Lizzie brings him to my mind. She is like him in her movements, so quick and certain, and also in her zest and thirstiness, how she looks about the world thinkingly. Like Sidney, she lacks fear to speak her mind. For some past days Lizzie has been kitchen-mistress, chopping, stirring, counting, with Queenie at her elbow. Ada guards the baby like a treasure, and Mrs Peacock, soon busy again, moving faster and faster day by day, watches her daughter watching over him. She sees how Ada cannot bear to put him down, and how she whisper in his pink shell ear night and day, telling him to stay with us, not to leave us. Mr Peacock walks away from the crying. Iakopo ask me why the mother ate no ti before the birthing, but I cannot say and he shake his head with sadness and regret.

  Some more days pass. Sunday again. In the days previous we have caught fish and dug an uma in preparation for the ceremony. This is but a small feast and we have found no crabs here of a size to make them worth the cooking, yet the smell of the buried food, slowly cooking in its parcel of leaves, takes me home in my head, and Solomona too, as he tells me softly. How is our mother faring, we wonder.

  It is time for my brother to bless the waters of the warm springs, and wash sins away, and say the words of the Lord, and it is time to name this boy. In rain, may he be able to run, in gales, to run away, by night or day. Let him not be swept away by the waves, let him be swift to escape when his enemies pursue him. Let him live long on the surface of this earth.

  Solomona performs well. My chest swells, and I let him know my pride. How hard Mrs Peacock listens, head forward to miss nothing of a prayer she has not heard before. How joyful her smile. We sing together, and Mr Peacock play his fiddle, and later other songs, not hymns but toe-tingling dances and jigs. A sideways, lilting air he calls a schottische. When a new tune starts, the children rush up and down and round and round like little cyclones. This is a polka, Lizzie
tells me, laughing at my surprise. They try to teach us how to turn and step like them, and cross arms, even Solomona. Mr Peacock flash his eyes and make the music go faster and faster and the dogs bark and jump until everyone fall over, laughing and tumbling on the meadow. I love to hear the girls’ laughter. We fellows cannot sprawl long. Up we jump to our feet when the fiddle tunes, and I offer a hand to Ada, who shakes her head, and then to Lizzie, who takes it, and I swing her to upstanding, and her palm is hot and she looks straight at me and it seems to me too long. Albert’s absence is set aside for a few hours, perhaps.

  Will Mr Peacock drink tonight? I glimpse another man within his skin, one I am loathe to trust. But when sleep gives me no solace, and I face each coming day a little wearier, what faith can I have in my judgement?

  *

  The christening brings a change in the baby.

  ‘Look,’ say Ada one afternoon, a few days later, when we fellows return from our daily labour on the flats. ‘Look, Pa.’

  She hold the bundle close to her face, and she look into his blue-as-sky eyes, and tender-thumbs his cheek. Crowding all, we see that life has come at last, and those eyes are steady and seeing and no longer roam regardless. His gaze latches to hers, and I see he understands that this is the world he is meant for, not the other, and he is curious what it might contain. After that, he begin to thrive. No more do you see in his thin skin every blue vein-river, like a feeding breast swollen with milk. And now they use his name. They call him Joey. A few days more, I see his mouth twitch like a smile. A curse is lifted, we fellows tell ourselves. He is blessed. Mrs Peacock call this smile wind, a sore tummy made better, but then she naysays: no, we are right, it is a miracle.

  ‘A true miracle, and we will give thanks to Our Lord that He has heard our prayers.’ Solomona duck his head in happiness like I have not seen since his great disappointment.

  And after that the days go easier. One child is given life, another death. As the youngest shows himself determined to stay with us, to embrace this world’s blessings, so comes the time for the family to mark the departing of the lost one. Mr Peacock spends some hours alone, near the storehut, sawing, hammering, and he returns with a wooden cross to remember Albert. It is an English kind of gravestone which marks no grave. The father carves and burns his son’s name and years of life, and that evening we watch, and the other children watch, as he walks slowly around their settlement with Mrs Peacock alone. They are choosing the place where their son will be remembered. The next morning, before work, he summons Solomona.

  When Solomona returns to us, all the fellows are curious.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he tells us. ‘We will have a funeral service.’

  ‘Without a body?’ I ask him privately that evening, when the others have gone to wash. My brother does not like to show any weakness before them. ‘How can it be?’

  ‘It must be,’ says my brother, with twisted brow. ‘All hope is passed. A funeral will be a comfort to the family.’ And, as ever, he sees how I am thinking. Ministering to heathens is one thing: they cannot know your slips. But a palagi family has expectations, harder to meet. ‘Mr Reverend is not here to consult. I can only ask for guidance from the Lord. And I am satisfied. And perhaps you will sleep better too, Kalala.’

  Yet when the moment comes, and Solomona faces the empty space before the cross, he shakes a little, and speaks too quickly. He wants this business finished and set aside. ‘We brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ Much weeping and sadness follow, lasting all the day, and even after the sun has descended. Not all the family has lost hope yet, I understand. Not Ada, I believe. But the cross is also an anchor, and it marks an end to these days of drifting.

  23

  ‘PLAIN SAILING NOW,’ SAY MR PEACOCK IN THE week after the funeral that was not a funeral. He has praised our work, how well we have cut and laid the underforest where his orchards will grow, and Luka and Pineki are buoyed with joy. ‘When this lot is fine and dry, and the weather just right, we will be ready to burn.’ He look at the sky with a measuring eye, and see how fast the clouds pass. ‘Not long now.’

  So here we are, all moving forward together, this island a boat in open water running before the wind. We have left behind the hidden reefs that might wreck us. Only at night do other currents pull at me, when I hear cries from other huts telling me I am not alone in my ghost-sick state. By day I try to put all that aside. I am mindful of my promise to Mr Reverend that I will forget neither my letters nor my learning. I must be prepared for any ‘opening’ on our return, whenever that may be, a teacher’s post at a village school. I think about things I have already forgotten, or hardly known. The face of my father, and his voice. I wonder how forgetting happens. Could I wake one morning and look at a printed page and find that no longer do I know how to make letters fit together into words? Is this talent not like swimming, or fishing, or walking or talking? (Not sleeping, for it seems I’ve lost the trick of that.) Such a chance makes me fearful. I must take care to guard my talents.

  One afternoon, late, on a day when we have made great progress with the clearing, and Mr Peacock has rewarded us with early freedom, I tire of games with Iakopo and Luka and the others, boys’ games of throwing tika and spinning tops and such. Solomona, who shares my fears, I see, has borrowed a pencil stub from Mrs Peacock, and scratches thoughts for a sermon on a raw slice of wood. He frowns. He pulls his ear.

  ‘Haia!’ our fellows cry. I pluck another curling leaf from the fern frond to keep the score. Disquiet will skew their play if I walk away from them alone. They find it strange. ‘What is your trouble?’ Luka ask me. Only palagi prefer to keep their own company. Pineki often taunts me with turning palagi. So I tell them of my promise, like a rainbow, and how I must keep my word to keep my words. And then I beg from Solomona his English Bible, whose pages reach so great a number I think of stars and sand grains.

  ‘Solomona?’ I say, before I leave him.

  He looks up, his mind still churning with his sermon. So many things I need to say. What does he make of our new master? How fares now my brother’s heart, with so much more distance from his sorrow?

  ‘What will be your lesson?’

  He is pleased.

  ‘I will take my text from Luke’s Gospel. Either chapter nine, or chapter fifteen. What do you think?’

  I consider. ‘Not the Lost Sheep,’ I say. ‘Nor the Prodigal Son. Better the Greatest in Heaven. Matthew. 18.’

  By his smile, and soft-closing eyes, I know I have made him happy. And though he has not found me wanting, I resent that he tests me in this manner.

  As I walk I recall the heavy sighs of Mr Reverend, sighs which flitter the pages binding him to his desk into the night. He makes his translations into our tongue, line by careful line, slowly, taking notes, asking questions all the time of me and Solomona and others who are teachers or becoming so, whenever he catches us, questions we all try to answer as best we can, so he can render better the Bible’s meaning to our people. We talk of promises and covenants, salvation and slavery. We count the ways to count. The English Bible is a book with many books within, each book with chapters, each chapter verses, and much work needs to be done to have it all translated and printed on our island.

  As I left, Mr Reverend was finishing the story of a man called Moses. With the Lord God’s help, Moses led his people out of cruellest bondage in a place called Egypt. He told them of a land promised to them which flowed with milk and honey. I recall the day I offered words for this story while together we sat and studied, and considered cows and coconuts, and nectar made by flowers and insects, and when it may be right to leave one land to seek another. Mr Reverend’s mind circled round slavery. To think … he said, eyes on paper, as if a picture appears there which he alone can see. How easily it is done. One man taken captive by another. It takes a moment. And then they are gone. Then Mr Reverend locked my eyes fiercely, and sorrow brimm
ed in his. I cannot forgive myself, he told me.

  ‘You must take care, always.’

  ‘I understand,’ I told him smartly. Only because his hard looking-search discomforted me and I wanted it to finish. I did not understand. Still I do not. But now I have time to think and ponder. Is it chance, or God’s purpose, that Mr Reverend offers such a special kindness to my family? And now I see freshly how all that loving kindness has fished me from my waters and left me dangling, gasping in an air I barely breathe.

  I think of him working on without me. By now, the book called Exodus may be complete. Soon printed, crank by crank, and bought with joyful hearts by brethren in every village. Our printing press is a most beautiful and noisy machine, made up of many parts and sent to us from England by the LMS. It came by way of Sydney, Australia, when I was a small boy. It lay idle many years, for want of parts. Writing on the press, in metal letters, raised, formed words which now I know: ‘Albion’ and ‘Fetter Lane’. But for too long my mother flicked her feathers at the dust which gathered in the corners of these letters, as Mrs Reverend taught her, and clicked her tongue when I asked about this strange and silent machine. She answered with a command to go away and play, and let her do her work in peace. Finally another boat from Sydney sailed with the last, lost case. It came through the reef to our jetty on a double vaka which sat low in the water with the weight of the box, and was brought to the Mission House with pomp and singing and ceremony. I was there when Mr Reverend unpacked tympan, ink and rollers, and all the sundry little things wanting for the press. Faces crowded at the window. I was there when he found the type, and there was much rejoicing, and we drank tea. And that is how my reading life began, at seven years old, with backward metal letters, on blocks, in rattling cardboard boxes, marked ‘Lower Case’ and ‘Upper Case’. And also labelled ‘Blomfield Street’.

  First Mr Reverend asked me to sort loose letters, see which goes with which, matching-matching and keeping all in good order. A game, invented perhaps to allow my mother to finish her work of cleaning and cooking and washing with no more interruptions. Naturally, when Mr Reverend’s son Sidney saw me playing, he wanted to play too. That birthed our friendship. We learned together.