by Lydia Syson
He turns his back on it, and marches towards the mountain. Lizzie fails to follow, for she stands transfixed. A ladder, also newly made, lies at the bottom of the cross. Ropes hang from the end of each horizontal arm. Bewildered, she runs to catch up with her father. All sentiment has vanished from his face.
‘So what do you think, Lizzie?’ he says to her. ‘Will it take his weight?’
45
NO FOOD. NO GUARD. ALL MORNING I HAVE BEEN alone again, voiceless, hungering, catching in my ears only rattling leaves and creaking branches. So when I see my brother far away, how can I tell what brings him, what conversations, fears, decisions? Yet I have grounds for hope: leaving the burning on the beach, they move swiftly, with great purpose. I watch them march up through the lower gardens like warriors, grim-faced Solomona in the middle, a little ahead, closely flanked by Vilipate, Likatau and Iakopo, and also Pineki, whose eyes and feet keep dancing, who throws a black stone from palm to palm, like a memory, and cannot still any part of himself. All but Solomona carry stones, I see now. More stones weigh down their clicketting pockets and drag their stride.
Rustling, unsteady, I back myself to my feet. I press my face and imploring arms against the splintering bars to hear what brings them, to call to Solomona and beg forgiveness for my too stony heart. If he brings promise of escape, I will hide nothing from him, I tell myself. Time, not proof, has given substance to my convictions. I am ready to test them against my brother’s understanding, and he, I have to trust, will hear me with an open ear. So many hours of turning over thought have left me with one desire. Some hideling truths, in this world or another, may never be skewered. I accept that. I know I cannot point to where our blood father’s bones may lie. I cannot thrust my hand into his wounds. But together, Solomona and I, we may resurrect him. Together we can put doubt to purpose, side by side pursue lost stories of all our stolen fathers, ask questions, put words with words, island with island, past with past. Their lives will not be buried. They have left prints in us.
At that moment I see my fellows do not come alone. From the palagi dwellings another, smaller march is leaving, this one led by Ada. As full of purpose as Solomona, the oldest Peacock girl holds her head high. Behind stalks Queenie, and little Gus. Behind them Billy, undecided still perhaps, whose footsteps weave, who looks anxiously from here to there, eyeing uneasily his former workmates across the way.
Lizzie is gone. No sign of her father either. Which means one thing. I swither again, shaken by darts of fear for Lizzie. Land or family? What’s one without the other, for Mr Peacock? I remember how he looked at me at our landfall, sized up my use to him as I lay strengthless under the bluff, washed by tide, watched by the dog. He had marked me out then, perhaps, and he has watched and used me since. I cannot tell how he may be marking Lizzie out today, where he has taken her. Was I wrong to urge her on this quest alone? It was her choice.
On all faces here, both sides, suspicion simmers. They halt, slack-watered. I look from each to each, hoping for understanding. But with a vengeful grimace, the look of his forefathers all about him, Pineki stares at Ada and raises his throwing arm. At once I beat the bars with my bound fists and roar at him:
‘No! No! Stop! Now!’
Like sea reflecting sun, Ada and Solomona each spread wide their arms to hold their parties back. But Solomona speaks first, a king at last.
46
BLOODLESS, SHE FEELS. EVERYTHING THAT MAKES her human drained away. Some demon has taken hold of Pa. Something incomprehensible. It’s turned his mind utterly. And still he rants and seethes beside her. He throws his head back, and spittle flies. ‘How dare they? They’ll soon see what I am. I’m going to make an example of that boy … They’ll see. I’ll not stand for it. Nobody can take my land. That phoney preacher with his airs – all humbly-bumbly – sir, oh, sir. Doesn’t mean a word. I know what they want. Never. Never.’
And then Pa remembers she’s there, and presses her for an answer. ‘So what do you think, Lizzie? Don’t you think it’s fine? Good and strong?’
‘I don’t know,’ she blurts out. ‘But look, Pa, look! Up there! Quick! Run!’
Somehow she has to make her stone limbs move. She’s seen nothing, but Lizzie charges into the forest, certain her father will pursue her for as long as she can convince him of the urgency of this wild chase. She dashes along the track so fast he can barely keep up.
‘Where?’ he wheezes. ‘I don’t see it.’
As long as she keeps running, as long as her determination can convince him, he will follow. If she stops pretending now, he’ll never drop his guard. Lizzie thunders on, closer and closer to the planned meeting point. Pa gains on her. Afraid he’ll see she’s chasing air, she puts on a final extra spurt to give herself some distance, then makes a sideways dash off the path, and collapses onto her knees.
‘It got away …’ she lies, turning a face to her father, so distraught that his heart melts when he catches up with her. He kneels beside her, hoarse and burning, lurches oddly, but once he’s got his breath, turns gentle. Unsuspicious. Sorrowful.
‘You tried your best,’ he says, with heaving lungs. ‘Sharp eyes, my spadge. I never saw the beast. What would I do without you?’
Lizzie shakes her head, and delays the moment with unfeigned exhaustion. She’s got him away from everyone. Now she must make him speak. Oh, but where’s all her boldness gone? Where’s her cunning?
‘Sorry, Pa.’
‘Not to worry. There’ll be another. We’ll not return empty-handed.’
Both still panting. Both hearts racing. They slump together against tree roots shaped into a kind of seat. He shifts his hand to cover hers, and pats it, reassuringly. She forces herself to smile.
‘No. I hope not.’
And overcoming all revulsion, she compels herself to squeeze his hand, tight as she can, in both of hers. She has to make him trust her, pity her.
‘What’s that for, Lizzie?’
‘I’m frightened,’ she confesses, shivering, clinging on to him. She can’t let go. ‘Frightened of what you’ll do to me.’
‘What’s this, Lizzie?’
He’s slow today. Befuddled. She ploughs on.
‘I mean when I tell you what I know.’
His head jerks back, and he stares at her, impenetrable, while his chest rises and falls, rises and falls, with exaggerated effort. She holds on tighter, the only way she can think to remind him that he loves her, that she’s his Lizzie, and he can never hurt her.
‘Because it’s just you and me now, Pa. Just the two of us.’
She will drip possibilities as slowly as she dares.
‘The kanakas have already turned against us. You know that. You saw them go. But it’s not just them, Pa. Anger’s rising everywhere. Everyone else is going to abandon us, Pa. Even Ma. Remember when she nearly left us before? But this time, oh, this time, if we go back … no, no, we can’t. You see I’ve heard them talking. I’ve hidden, and I’ve heard them, Pa. I’m telling you, we can’t go back …’
‘What’s happened, Lizzie? What are you saying?’
Eyes still on their clasped hands, gripping harder than ever, she fills her shuddering lungs and finally speaks.
‘It’s because of what you did, Pa. What you did to Albert.’
Silence. He shakes his head.
‘Kalala killed Albert. He must pay.’
‘No, no, Pa.’ She sighs, patiently. Only kindness will work now. She actually kisses the hand she’s still holding, and strokes his wrist. ‘No. You know that’s not true.’
And then, at last, she tells him. Though she wants to scream the words, she keeps her voice kind.
‘We all know you killed him. Nobody else could have. Everybody sees that. And whatever you do now, they’ll none of them ever work for you again, they say. Not Ma, not Ada, not Queenie, not even Billy. So no workers. No family. On all the island.’
‘They’ve told you this?’
She prevaricates.
‘
I’ve heard them talking.’
Pa throws off her hand and falls to his knees in front of her, seized with sudden panic.
‘And what about you, Lizzie? My Lizzie? What do you think? Will you still help me?’
She shrugs, tears quietly sliding. Still no denial, but her father becomes pitiful.
‘You’ll stay with me? You won’t leave me? No, you can’t. You’re still mine.’
She can’t let her hatred show. Not yet.
‘Oh, Pa, I don’t know. How can I know what I should do? You haven’t even told me what happened.’
She stands up, loosens his hand, and begins to walk away. Slow, terrified steps, which he must follow.
‘Lizzie! Stop! I’ll tell you. I’ll explain. I’ll make you understand.’
She wants to run again but she waits for him, her thoughts roaring more loudly than his voice, pulling her this way and that, smashing her against cliff and coral, winding her in weed. What exactly is he saying? She frowns at his moving lips, flinches from the fingers whitening her arm. She must not show her fear.
Her father talks of the white-hot boiling turmoil that rose like lava inside him, a rage beyond his power to contain. He can barely remember what happened, he says. The details aren’t important, he says. He did not know what he was doing, how it happened. It was all too quick, too overwhelming. He holds her wrist now, as perhaps he gripped her brother’s, and her skin burns as he speaks of his own pain. How can she know the agony of such sorrow, such betrayal, the sharp, unhealing wound carved by ingratitude? From your own son. They are shaded by tree ferns here: elegant, slender-trunked, parasolling far above their heads with effortless grace. Lizzie thinks of the neat unwinding of their central fronds, precise and promising, so like her father’s fiddlehead, always more to come, and she listens bleakly to the wheedling tune he plays so insistently now: ‘This was for him. It would have been Albert’s, for ever and ever. But he didn’t want it. He wouldn’t take it.’
His pleading repels Lizzie. She reels away from the pickle smell of his breath, and shrinks from the pressure of his hands and the reeking pores of his skin. And still this is not a confession. She can’t think while he is so close, surging at her, threatening to drag her downwards in his undertow. She rolls answers round her tongue, tasting them, and wonders how to spit them out. No, Albert didn’t want your paradise. He never did. And of course you never thought of me. You could have let him go, instead of hating him for being what you made him. You who gave him life could have let him live. You think we belong only to you, and we must drift in your wake, or be cast off. You are hardly better than a blackbirder. None of this she says out loud. All pity has clabbered to loathing.
‘But what happened, Pa? Tell me exactly. I need to know.’
BEFORE
‘I can’t see,’ said Albert, and the leaves around him trembled with the dip of the branch they both straddled. ‘Where are you pointing?’
‘Look harder, damn you.’ From behind, Mr Peacock’s hand reached across to clamp the back of Albert’s neck, rotating his skull forcefully to a better angle. ‘There. Over there. What’s wrong with you?’
Albert avoided answering questions like that. Answering never helped. He couldn’t see the ship because his eyes were liquid with anticipation and relief: the day he had dreamed of, longed for, was actually here. He couldn’t wipe his tears away because he needed both hands to grip the branch on which they were both balanced, having climbed up to get a better view of the ocean from the edge of the forest. Staring blindly out to sea, alarm now fizzing in every vein, Albert risked a request.
‘Please, Pa, just tell me what you can see yourself.’
He waited. His father would punish him with silence now, he was sure of it. Albert was wrong.
‘A ship, of course,’ Mr Peacock said slowly, as if he could hardly believe it himself. ‘My kanakas at last.’
He swung his leg over the branch and jumped down, leaving the tree shaking. Albert clung on with closed eyes. He and Ada had talked about this day for ever. He had promised himself and he had promised her. So this was it. He had no choice but to act. He slid after his father, tumbling awkwardly from the tree like a blanket slipping from a hammock in the night. Landing near the limp heap of bleeding goat, he crumpled onto hands and knees, immobile with dismay at his father’s next words.
‘You stay here with that animal.’ Mr Peacock fumbled with the pack, and called to Sal. ‘Here … you’ll need the rope. Hang the carcass up in the tree – let it bleed – you can butcher it while I’m gone.’
‘Stay?’ said Albert, unfolding himself.
‘You heard. Get a move on. That’s enough mithering.’
‘Wait …’ He thought of Lizzie’s scorn, and Ada’s urgings. He had to stand up to his father today, or he would never, ever get away from him. Do it once and for all. Change everything, for ever. But still there was a bleating tremor in Albert’s voice as he made his polite request. ‘Please, Pa. Please can you wait for me?’
Mr Peacock couldn’t. He was already going. Now he would play the silence game.
‘Let me come with you,’ Albert pleaded. Head turned from the animal’s eye, he bent to grasp the goat’s forelegs, bringing a sour burning to his throat. He hastily swallowed it back. ‘Look … we can carry it together. We’ll soon get it back, and then we can butcher it later.’
‘Too slow,’ said Pa over his shoulder. Sal had already rushed ahead. It was useless to try to call her back. ‘You’re always too slow, and I’m in a hurry. Kanakas or no kanakas, I’ll not have this vessel sailing past, and I see no smoke yet.’
Running after Mr Peacock, head thrust forward, Albert threw himself at his back. ‘No!’ he screamed. ‘I’m coming with you.’ Mr Peacock didn’t stop. His son clung on, feet dragging, words stuttering. ‘I’ll come back for the goat,’ he lied. ‘I’ll help with the bonfire. I’ll do anything you want me to, but I won’t stay now.’
A backwards kick, a jerk of jacket hem from grasping hands – as if loosening himself from a vicious dog – and Albert fell on his back, sprawled against a mass of tree roots. He pushed himself up right away, skinned spine stinging, determined to keep going. His father continued to plunge down the mountain side, back into the damp heat of the forest, crashing through ferns and trees faster and faster. The boy tripped and stumbled after him, voice and knees jarring and jolting.
‘I can’t stay,’ Albert shouted. Parakeets squawked away in loud, colourful protest. ‘I won’t stay!’
The boy could have been invisible. He gave up shouting. It slowed him down too much. No time. One limb after the other, he pursued his father, lurching, staggering, falling, getting up again no matter how often his lame leg let him down. His ankles turned and burned, a stitch needled his side, and he was winded beyond words, but at last he reached his father’s heels again, all the more determined.
‘Wait, Pa, wait for me …’ His words gurgled out, almost incomprehensible. ‘Please … wait. Please … listen.’
Mr Peacock kept going. Across the widening gap, Albert launched himself again with gritted teeth. Scrabbling at fustian, he managed to force an arm around his father’s neck. His wrist was instantly twisted in a smarting grip, his feet swung briefly off the ground, and in a moment the boy was on his knees in front of his father, arms raised in supplication. Albert felt the spit spray in his face, watched its droplets quiver on his father’s beard, refused to turn his head away. Inches apart, their eyes bulged at each other.
‘You will do as I say, or—’
‘I won’t.’
His father dropped him in disgust, and began to unbuckle his belt. At this point, an invisible power, quite unexpected, lifted Albert’s chest like wind filling a sail, like the breaching of a whale. Courage spouted from him.
‘Hit me all you like. Go on. You always do. But I’m not staying here now. I will not stay on this island.’ He stood up and, as if on the point of flight, leaned forward, knees bent, clenched fists behind him, eyes fe
arless. ‘I’m leaving on that ship. You don’t own me and you can’t stop me. You’ll see. You’ll never stop me again.’
Swerving like a hunted kid, Albert dodged past his father, and down the track ahead of him. Then he flew. The angels were carrying him, he was sure. He felt lighter than air. He thought of wind, and clouds, and sea, and he gulped at the chance they offered. He’d thrown away his terror.
But he might as well have tried to run from a landslip. The first stone his father hurled struck the back of Albert’s knee, bringing him down instantly. Before he could rise, a living breathing weight on his back was flattening his lungs. Bone ground on bone. An immense blow to his head.
47
‘RELEASE MY BROTHER!’ ROARS SOLOMONA. ‘THIS is no kind of justice. Not earth’s, nor heaven’s. Kalala is innocent. I’ll not see him punished any longer.’
Look how he stands, an unbowed tree, strength and sap and vigour enough for all of us. How he holds his calm and dignity, I cannot say. And if Mr Peacock could see him now, even he would tremble. I think of all the times I have longed to hear Solomona speak his mind, his own mind, his own alone, and not the mouthed words of another. Hearing it speak for me, here on this earth, with no thought of the next one, I am filled with joy and pride. What glory in this moment. We are brothers again, true brothers, as we were in childhood, when he put me on his back to save my feet from the sharp rocks hiding in the water, and he showed me how thinking sideways catches crabs, when he rolled to my mat and held me fast and sang in my ear till morning while a cyclone passed.
Queenie speaks for all her family but every one of them shares her outrage.
‘What do you mean?’ she cries, a shower of sparks – her mother’s child. ‘That’s what we’ve come for! Help us! Quickly, while Pa’s gone! We’ve come to free Kalala too! We must destroy his prison so there is nothing left of it.’
She runs straight to my bars and pulls with all her might as if she’d wrench them free unaided. All come quickly to surround me, shaking the hut, blow by blow, no system to their fury. When Billy vanishes, suddenly, my terror shadows him. I have no reason yet to trust him. When he returns, swinging the woodpile axe, my fear shouts loudly from me.
