Mr Peacock's Possessions

by Lydia Syson

  ‘I’m coming,’ says the girl, but she hangs back even as she follows, edging to Lizzie’s side with flickering eyes. ‘Kalala?’ she whispers, in disbelief. ‘You believe Kalala killed Albert? Albert was killed?’

  Moving her hand instinctively to the back of her own head, unconsciously fingering her scalp, Lizzie nods. Her eyes are leaking, brimming like a hot spring. She can’t stop the salt from pouring out. Ada crowds her from the other side. She seizes her arm with bruising strength, a brutal show of love.

  ‘How, Lizzie? Tell us how?’ says Ada. ‘How did Albert die? What did you see and how can this be? Why would Kalala want to kill him?’

  ‘Go away …’ says Lizzie. ‘Leave me alone. I don’t know. I can’t tell you.’

  She wants to push both sisters from her. Without their questions, she has a chance of taking the rope Mr Peacock has suddenly offered. A hope of saving her father – and thereby saving them all, saving everything and everyone, perhaps – except Kalala. If she lets herself believe this lie.

  It’s possible, perhaps. It must be. And doesn’t Pa have an answer for everything? Never defeated. She should have remembered: she could have been readier to steady her weight against his. Yes, she once had faith in Kalala, and now she must teach herself that he has always been her secret foe. It is the only answer. She fell for his tricks because he seemed kind, and was good with words, and full of stories, and he was a friend to her. A mistake. This is Pa’s story. When the ship comes back, Kalala will be taken away, and whatever has to happen will happen to him. Life can continue. Her father can be her father again. Who wouldn’t choose that? All they have to remember is that Lizzie found Albert, and they will mourn him and forget Kalala. The interlopers will go, the scarred earth will grass over, and the new sheep will graze in the place of the old roots. That’s what Lizzie keeps trying to tell herself. She has to make herself believe it. If she can’t, everything will collapse. Everything.

  But Ada won’t let her.

  ‘I thought it must have been an accident,’ she insists. ‘I thought Albert suffocated. Because I never told about the Oven. He didn’t know.’

  ‘What’s the Oven? Why didn’t you tell me about it, Lizzie?’ Queenie picks at her. ‘Is that where you found him?’

  Lizzie’s head will come apart if they don’t both let her be. Everything is in her hands. She has to choose. She can’t. She is tripping and falling over the strange story she wants to tell herself, the one that matches her father’s. Her body, surging hot and cold in turn, refuses her efforts. The skin around her forehead tightens.

  ‘I didn’t say it was an accident.’ She didn’t say anything. Nobody did, not to anyone, except Kalala, perhaps, to the Islanders, from whom he has now been barred. As he has from her. Of course. And then she whispers half the truth, just the part she’s sure of. ‘Albert’s head was broken. Smashed in. Before he was hidden in the cave. Now, please, please, leave me alone.’

  Disturbed, their mother turns back to look at them again, and the girls spring apart.

  Mrs Peacock sets Gussie back on her feet and looks at her youngest daughter with bemusement, as if for a moment she’s hardly certain who stands there. She blinks. ‘Take your thumb out of your mouth,’ she orders. ‘Come along, girls. Quickly. Chores won’t go away. The kanakas have to eat. They have work to do.’

  Domestic rituals need no discussion. The goats are tetchy and restless, obtusely noisy. A kid has pulled free of its tether and pushed its way through the thorn bushes. It has nibbled half the sprouting maize almost to the ground when Lizzie finds and falls on it, blind with anger and fear. Whose fault was this? Who will be blamed? Can these plants recover?

  Her rage disturbs the milk goats, whose hot and straining udders are already veined and aching, and can hardly bear the release for which they long. Lizzie pushes the old white nanny’s head through the usual forked stake, ties her fast, then blows on her hands to cool them down. She kneads the hard bags like dough, and the goat startles and kicks till Lizzie catches one back leg as she raises it to strike again, and squeezes its tendon hard. The animal’s doubly trapped. Lizzie keeps holding on with one hand, and pulls down with the other, releasing a pulsing stream of whiteness. It takes all her concentration. Exactly what she needs. All she wants filling her mind is the zing of milk hitting milk, the ever-forming froth of it. It would be a comfort to lay her cheek against the goat’s coarse, musky hide.

  39

  NOW I HAVE NO CHOICE. I AM A CAPTIVE AS SURELY as my father ever was, the walls around me secured, in silence, by my own brothers, watched over by our master. Billy brings me food, silently pushing a pannikin under the lowest of the bars they built too willingly, but he is too scared to help me eat it, and my wrists are still bound.

  ‘Billy?’ I twist from my stake, turning as much as my rope will allow. ‘Do you believe your father?’

  He walks away. I am losing hope that Lizzie will come.

  Some hours later, I hear movement, a lumbering thud and rustle just beyond my walls. I strain body and ears. ‘Who’s there?’ I call, low-voiced. ‘Pineki?’

  ‘No. It’s Luka.’

  ‘Luka!’ Tallest and strongest of us all, but he is not the bravest.

  ‘Yes. But I cannot talk to you.’

  ‘You are talking now.’

  ‘It is forbidden. I have come to fetch tools – that is all – I must hurry back. We have to build a new storehut, now, on the other side.’

  ‘Who can stop you talking?’

  ‘I am afraid.’

  I think of all that steel and wood, all the tools on this island – too many for Luka to carry alone – spade and hoe, hammer, fork, shovel, pick and axe, plane and chisel. Knives and saws. The whetstone sharpening with a hungry rasp. Mr Peacock is only one man. But with one tool he can control us all.

  ‘Who can hear you?’

  A sigh.

  ‘Nobody. I am alone.’

  ‘Then listen to me … step to the other side, where he cannot see you talk.’

  ‘No, no. I cannot. I dare not. He watches me now.’

  I am impatient.

  ‘Luka! Step where he cannot see you!’

  ‘No. He will come if he cannot see, if I do not hurry.’

  ‘Because of the gun?’

  ‘He carries it always now. Or the boy does. I must go.’

  In my mind I take myself to the sea and dive through tumbling waves, striking out with every limb at liberty, cutting with ease and pleasure through the water’s resistance. I thump my bound fists on the stake behind my back, and the rope scorches my wrists.

  *

  The shadows of the bars slide slowly across the dusty floor, narrowing, narrowing, then widening again. Once I hear a snatch of song: Queenie’s breathy up-and-down hum, as she clunks up the path behind my hut to fill her water pail. I remember her sisters passing, the argument I overheard that first drew me in. Her tune stops in its middle, as if for a moment she had forgotten all that has just passed, and now remembers.

  *

  At last Solomona is permitted to come to me. Still he counsels patience.

  ‘All will be well yet. It is like a fever, this conviction. A kind of madness, brought on by fear and the death of his son. It will surely pass in time. He must see his error.’ He tells me he has bargained a parley with my accuser, protests again that he believes our master will be amenable to reason in time, when grief and shock abate. As my brother speaks, Mr Peacock stands a little way off, listening and looking on with a sideways slant, his face blank and hard. I wait for Solomona to tell me to pray for this stricken man, and know I never will. We are backsliders both.

  ‘Yet can you reason with mind-sickness?’ I ask Solomona. He does not answer. ‘Can you?’

  Then my words spew out in a chaos of complaint. How can anyone believe his accusations? Can’t they see what he is hiding with them?

  He looks over his shoulder, and tries to hush me. And then he whispers:

  ‘But, that first day w
e all looked for the boy, did you search alone?’

  ‘No. With Pineki.’

  He swallows, with effort, like a man taking foul medicine, unwilling to remind me of what I had forgotten, and only half remember still: how long I sat in the green light of the clearing, waiting for Pineki to return, listening and hoping but seeing no one. Perhaps I have spent too much time alone all through these months, or only with Lizzie and Queenie. But what does it matter when there is no fono to hear us out, and all our voices all together add up to nothing. Not even Solomona’s.

  ‘And Lizzie? She has still said nothing yet?’ I ask, recalling how urgently she spoke in my defence on our return, when first her father beat me. Until I can talk to her, convince her, I can risk no accusations. And yet she hides from me. Behind my back my fingernails pierce my skin and my palms weep blood.

  ‘Nothing. It is the madness of grief. He has no one else to blame and he wants to make a sacrifice. Who else here can suffer for the boy’s death?’ murmurs my brother, pressing his forehead against the bars, his eyes trying to steady mine. ‘When the crew have departed.’

  ‘The crew?’ I say, incredulous. ‘You believe a sailor crept away to kill a stranger? Unseen by all? For what purpose?’

  ‘Who else could it have been?’

  My neck, already twisted to look at Solomona, cannot turn far enough to jerk my head towards Mr Peacock.

  I see the sudden falling in my brother, the dipping knees and screw of torso that comes with knowledge. I feel the fall myself. Now he has seen what I have freshly seen, and just as suddenly. And the nature of my trap. How carefully I must tread. But Solomona? Who is free and wise and commands respect. Surely he can find a way to set things right?

  ‘Say nothing out loud,’ my brother warns. ‘He understands more of our language than we know.’

  Solomona forces a hand through a gap between the wooden bars, the closest he can come to touching me. He is still a full arm’s distant, the space between us vast, and I can move no closer. He says nothing of providence or prayer now. He does not remind me that the pure in heart are blessed.

  ‘Save your anger,’ he says softly. ‘Learn from this. Be patient and trusting. In this storm, let hope be the anchor of your soul, my brother. Will your anchor hold?’

  My ropes are straining hard. I say nothing. An angry dog rips at my chest.

  ‘Remember, my brother …’ Solomona puts on his softest, most soothing voice, and I hear the echo of Mr Reverend as he speaks. ‘Until the next ship comes, you are safer in prison than outside. Let us wait for a fair and Christian trial, as Mr Peacock has promised us, and then, then, we surely will have justice.’

  I curse his calmness. He is not caged like an animal. His outstretched hand crumples and withdraws. Finger and thumb press his nose, jam his eye-corners, stuff the leaking. I will not care. I look away.

  The quieter I can make myself, he says, the more freedom I can gain. Little by little. My hands will be bound before me, and not to the stake. He will secure me sanitation. He tells me as a comfort, but to me these victories seem paltry. He wants me to love my enemy, but I would rather take the sword and perish by it. Be grateful for this palagi punishment, he tells me. Better caged here than burning in this hut, or sent out to sea in a vaka, slowly sinking. ‘Turn the other cheek,’ he says.

  I turn my back instead. Solomona stands waiting for some time, and calls my name, then leaves me.

  40

  MR PEACOCK SITS UP AND SMOKES AND KEEPS guard all through the long dark hours. It is like rat-watching all over again. Instead of tending a fire, he cradles a drink. Like Higgins before him, the captain of the Esperanza was generous with his brandy. Mrs Peacock lies wishing her husband would leave off and come to bed, then falls into a sleep so heavy she does not hear the baby in the night and wakes with sweetly leaking breasts, and a milk-soaked shift. So it is Lizzie who tiptoes with tea at dawn, and finds her father slumped and snoring under the tree, arms wound round his gun. His mouth hangs open wetly, a dribbled crust collecting in one corner.

  The Islanders’ hut is silent still. She glances towards the caged front of the storehut. Too late to look away: Kalala’s seen her. Lizzie raises a flat hand – a dulled greeting, but one which Kalala returns doubled, showing his bound wrists. She feels the pull of him, always. She heats and shivers under his scrutiny. He is waiting to see what she will do, and she knows that she must talk to him. But what can she say? For all her doubts, she finds she cannot tear her loyalty from her father. Her oblivion, once so careless, is wilful. She can think of no other way to protect the family. If Ada and Queenie could only understand.

  Mr Peacock does not stir.

  The tin cup burns her knuckles; she has to put it down. She presses flat a circle in the grass so it will not tip and spill, and the steam rises. She startles when her father shifts and stretches, and turns quickly on her heel before he catches her in the act … of what, exactly? Then she sees that Ada has been watching all this time, leaning against the doorjamb of the girls’ whare, arms folded, neck jutted like an egret’s.

  Doubly watched, Lizzie becomes clumsy, trips on a root and stumbles. Rights herself with reddening cheeks. That hissing’s back in her ears, a noisy kind of nothingness she can’t unhear.

  ‘You’re as blind as ever,’ says Ada quietly when she’s back. ‘Blind and deaf.’

  And mute. Lizzie ignores her, brushing past her sister to check the milk she’s set out to clabber. Inside, she holds the jar up to the light. The curd has massed together beautifully, and floats above the thin blue whey, like soft high clouds. She drapes a square of muslin across a basin, and scoops out the quivering mass. Squeezing the soft curds into shape, she feels the accusation in Ada’s stare more fiercely with every drip of whey.

  ‘Why can’t you see?’ Her sister moves closer.

  Arms winged on narrow hips, Lizzie tries to bend out the aching in her body.

  ‘Why won’t you?’ They are enemies again. ‘Look me in the eye, Lizzie, and tell me you believe that … that … boy … could have killed our brother.’

  She can’t. Of course she can’t. Queenie comes to the doorway, the big family Bible held to her chest, reproach on her freckled face. She stands with Ada. They face her together, blocking her escape.

  ‘Lizzie, you know who did it,’ says Ada. ‘Stop pretending.’

  ‘We know you know who killed him,’ says Queenie. ‘And we know too.’

  They all know? Yes. All three of them.

  Each girl has worked out the truth, some part of it, quickly or slowly, reluctantly or with relief. And they have each worked out the others know. There’s nobody else it could have been. Maybe, in her heart, even Ma knows too. Lizzie is cornered. It’s almost a relief. She can’t save Pa. But perhaps, she thinks at last, he’s not worth saving.

  ‘So what are we going to do, Lizzie?’ Queenie asks. ‘What are you going to do?’

  41

  I AM LOSING HOPE. I AM LOSING MYSELF. I LOSE HOLD of day and night and every moment is a between time, never one thing nor another. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. Forsaken, I press towards light, and see only darkness. In my dreams I am possessed again, or so it seems, and now my visions take forms too close to truth to bear. I roll, sickening, in the foul hold of the slaving ship, the cries of the dead in my ears. I wake to the smell of my own urine. I no longer know who I am, nor where this journey can take me. Even now, when I should be best prepared, I hear nothing. No footsteps. No knock. Break me down, Lord, I cry again. Enter my soul. Show me the path I must tread to reach everlasting salvation. I hear the wind, and the waves, and I hear the beating of my heart, but still nobody calls. Storm without light rages in my breast. I empty myself, and yet I find no space, nor door, nor keyhole for the Lord to enter.

  Ever since the day Mr Reverend first spoke to me of such things, since I was a small child, I have listened for the Holy Spirit. I have nev
er heard Him speak. I have told nobody. The fault lay with me, I was once persuaded. I have never listened hard enough. Surely I would know Him? He has never called. And now I believe He never will.

  I have made a shipwreck of my faith.

  Since we came here, other creatures burn my soul, maybe devils come to tempt me, maybe outcast spirits, perhaps even my own father. I cannot tell. Why did I not speak earlier with Solomona of the Stolen Ones? What held my tongue? My doubts multiply. If I could only hear the voices clearly, I could be guided, I believe … surely then I would know whether and how they may be honoured – or banished? If they come now to punish me for my forgetting, or to tell me where they lie. My skull rocks with the beating of half-seen fists, and I am deafened, and made sore, or perhaps I cannot truly hear them because they are nothing at all. Agonies my own soul has dreamed up in punishment. I am become my own best persecutor.

  Hour after hour I keep no thought at bay. Perhaps the worst is always this: I cannot hear or be heard because there is nobody beyond to hear me, nobody calling. Nothing but myself. No other world but this. No justice but man’s justice. And Solomona cannot wait for God to save me. But how can I make him see this?

  Solomona creeps by. He kneels at my bars.

  ‘I have sought permission to pray with you,’ he says, seeking to reassure me.

  ‘Pray?’ My bitter laughter frightens him. What binds him still to our palagi master? What blinds him? It is too late. We have been betrayed. ‘But I am a fish in a net.’

  ‘No, no, not yet. Do not despair.’ He understands, he tells me earnestly. ‘Always remember, Kalala, the Lord is my defence; and my God is the rock of my refuge.’

  Thy refuge, maybe.

  I shake my head. I moan. I have no refuge, anywhere.

  ‘Pray for me, if you will. And for yourself. I am done with prayer.’

  Solomona sighs and shivers. Will he tell me again that God will provide? Is this injustice the work of our Lord? Oh, Solomona, can you not see what this island has laid before us? We have to help ourselves in other ways.