The Making of Martin Sparrow

by Peter Cochrane

  Peskett was staring at him, weighing the particulars of Sparrow’s tale.

  ‘Please let me down.’

  ‘You bury this boy, you do the right thing?’

  ‘We buried him.’

  ‘You take us out there on a wild-goose chase I will nail you to a tree and skin you alive, do you understand me?’

  ‘I do I do, yes, please let me down.’

  Redenbach stepped up. ‘Skin you, the bull ants come in droves. Don’t we know it.’

  ‘Why’d you contrive that stupid shark story?’ said Peskett.

  Sparrow was stumped. Why a bull shark when a funnel-web would do just as well? His mind searched in all directions, turning at a gallop. The answer was as much a shock to Sparrow as anyone. ‘The boy was hell-bent to come with us,’ he said. ‘He begged us. I couldn’t tell the doctor his son was ripe to bolt, I just couldn’t.’

  Peskett stared at Sparrow for quite a long time. ‘Why would that boy want to bolt?’ he said, finally.

  ‘Said his daddy at home was something else, nothin’ like his public face.’

  ‘You let him tag along, the boy?’

  ‘He said he’d follow us anyway.’

  Peskett seemed to be greatly saddened by Sparrow’s revelation as to the boy’s intent. ‘Damn,’ he said, ‘that’s cruel.’ He slapped Redenbach’s shoulder with the back of his hand. ‘We’re done,’ he said.

  ‘What!’ said Crispin.

  ‘That ain’t right,’ said Nimrod.

  Redenbach took the weight on the hauling line and fed it out and Sparrow felt his feet plant firm at last but his legs would not hold up. He slumped to the floor and he lay there, his shoulders on fire.

  He recalled what he’d thought before, about small lies and big lies and just what he might get away with and now, in the blink of an eye, he had told a big lie and was compelled upon the telling to make it bigger still. Where had it come from, this monstrous deceiving lie? There was no sense in which he had actually thought it up. No sense in which this lie was wickedly deliberate, meditated upon, nourished in the womb of the pia mater, so to speak, and put together with malice aforethought. No sense in which it was delivered ripe, upon a considered mellowing. No. It just happened into his head, without volition, like ducks in flight shifting into formation. And so he’d said it, and that under no small degree of duress. The big lie was totally absent and then, suddenly, it was present – a most necessary and entirely unavoidable lie. To save him from the rectal pear.

  His pounding heart was settling, the heat in his shoulders moderating, somewhat.

  ‘You give me the pear, why me and not him?’ shouted Crispin.

  The inquisitors did not answer. They departed the gaol, ordering Hat as they went: ‘Lock him up.’

  Redenbach had in mind a column from the Gazette, one of the little settler tragedies that the editor never failed to report with a marked degree of poetic tenderness and a sizable quantum of fateful resignation as to the mysteries of heavenly intent. ‘There was that feeble boy in Parramatta got bit by one of them funnel-webs. He was dead in a trice.’

  ‘I know,’ said Peskett.

  51

  Cuff observed the felons unloading the ketch from Bet Pepper’s porch on the terrace. He liked the early morning hours, the chill air, the sweet purity of the unsullied day. But the stillness of the predawn this particular morning was somewhat disrupted by the bustle on the water.

  He was packing his pipe when Bet brought him a nip of something. They sat for a while, watching as miscellaneous boxes and baskets were lowered onto the barge and secured there by Guthrie’s boy.

  ‘Better go,’ he said.

  ‘Better get dressed first,’ said Bet.

  Cuff was naked save for Bet’s long winter coat and her slippers. ‘Suppose I better,’ he said, as he got himself up. Some of the felons were buckled up laughing, as Cuff posed for their benefit, in full view, hands on hips.

  He dressed, slipping the pipe into his vest pocket, there to cohabitate with his spoon.

  ‘Come again,’ said Bet.

  ‘Never fear,’ he said, taking to the switchback path.

  He made his way to the duckboards at the water’s edge.

  The laden barge slid onto the mud with Guthrie to the fore, his boy on the long ore. Guthrie handed the mail pouch to Cuff and he tipped his hat to Bet on the terrace and the two men talked briefly.

  Cuff tucked the mail pouch under his arm, the duckboards squelching in the mud. He stepped to one side and waved on the felons with a flourish, watched them heft the supplies up the steep slope.

  He followed on their heels but only as far as the doctor’s cottage. He stepped lightly onto the porch and looked through the window, saw the doctor prone on his cot, dead to the world. He pushed at the door, the slack hinges no longer fit for purpose.

  Woody woke with a start. ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘You with him all night?’ said Cuff.

  ‘Not quite.’ The doctor scratched at his whiskers. ‘He’ll tell you it’s winter bronchitis. I’ll tell you it is pneumonia, again.’

  ‘I tell him he looks like death warmed up. I swear the man wheezes like a concertina.’

  ‘Those lungs crackle like fat in the pan.’

  ‘That too.’

  ‘He was delirious half the night and weak as a wet chicken,’ said Woody.

  ‘Did he surrender any secrets?’

  ‘I doubt he’d surrender a secret in the extremities of a terminal delirium.’

  ‘It ain’t terminal, that’s something.’

  ‘These pulmonic bouts worsen every time.’

  ‘Did he say anything?’

  ‘Just wild talk, kept saying he was late for something kept saying it’s gone it’s gone and he blathered about the grub in the wheat somewhat obsessively.’

  Cuff laughed and smacked the mail pouch on his knee. ‘He doesn’t wander far does he, not even in a delirium.’

  ‘That’s hard to know,’ said the doctor.

  Woody sat up and put his feet on the floor and put out a hand to steady himself with Cuff’s assistance. His wispy grey hair was mussed as waste straw. He put his glasses on and pressed the bridge firm on his nose, picked his coat off the floor and pulled it on, crossed the room and peered out the window. He was no longer chilled. He pulled on his trousers and tucked in his shirt.

  ‘You ought sleep,’ said Cuff.

  The doctor took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. ‘My boy is dead in some cave.’

  Cuff already knew the content of Sparrow’s confession. Another story entirely. ‘I know you need finality, Thomas, but pray be careful what you believe.’

  ‘He says the boy got bit by a funnel-web spider and died, in a cave, on the Branch.’

  ‘Do you believe that?’

  ‘I need a sighting I can trust. Will you go? I cannot, Alister cannot, and I would trust Reuben Peskett only to confirm whatever is convenient to himself, or to Henry Kettle . . . conjure some tale for my assuagement. I expect he’ll spend more time finding that dog than he will the cave.’

  ‘Sparrow’s story might be true,’ said Cuff. ‘Nature is pitiless cruel, indifferent to all pain not least the pain that passes on to grieving hearts.’

  ‘I need someone to sight my boy, or not, as the case may be. Someone I can believe, someone who will not invent a fable for to give me and mine naught but never-ending doubt. Do you understand me, Thaddeus?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’ll go. I’ll take Sprodd.’

  Guthrie was on the porch, peering in, his arms freighted with a box of medicine bottles and phials, the glass clattering, the cork stoppers like a little sea of top hats. ‘You’ll have to catch them, they’re gone,’ he said.

  ‘Who’s gone?’ said Cuff.

  ‘Peskett and Redenbach with Sparrow in tow, rationed up for quite a tramp,’ said Guthrie. He put down the box and readied to depart. ‘Can you sign for th
ese?’

  ‘Not now,’ said the doctor.

  Guthrie departed as Woody lifted the bottles, one after another, reading the labels side on. ‘Sparrow to guide them?’ he said.

  ‘I know, God help us all,’ said Cuff.

  ‘He tells Peskett this cave is on the Branch.’

  ‘That don’t make it simple.’

  ‘The unknowing – eats at me like a tapeworm.’

  Cuff had almost forgotten. ‘The mail’s here, you want I open it?’

  ‘I want you to find my boy.’

  ‘There’s warrants here for the girl and the sealers, the whole bunch.’

  Woody worked thumb and forefinger upon his eyelids. ‘Alright, read,’ he said.

  Cuff opened a warrant bearing the girl’s full name and read silently for a few moments. ‘Lord,’ he said.

  . . . All persons in the territory of New South Wales and its Pacific neighbourhood are hereby required to aid and assist, by information or otherwise, in apprehending or causing to be apprehended the convicted felon Beatrice Faar. Fled convict transport Sea Stag in Rio. Tall, five feet ten inches, age seventeen, dusky, limpid green eyes, black hair, good teeth. A pleasant countenance and a lowland brogue. A party, subsequently, to brutal murder on the southern sealeries, a rival crew with prior right of occupation butchered while sleeping, save for one survivor, a Boston negro. The greatest caution advised . . .

  The doctor was on his feet, searching for his glasses. ‘Limpid green,’ he said.

  Cuff clucked his tongue. ‘With a little black dot on the iris!’ He scanned the rest of the document, then he tapped the papers with his forefinger. ‘They’re all here: Jonas, Gudgeon, Nimrod, Crispin.’ He read the conclusion out loud:

  Any person harbouring, secreting, or employing these individuals will be punished with exemplary severity . . .

  ‘By command, et cetera, et cetera.’ He folded the warrant and returned it to the batch in the pouch.

  ‘How much of this does Alister know?’ said Woody.

  ‘I know he gave Jonas Wick short shrift. I know he’s got the girl neatly sequestered on the Branch, again. I know he’ll use her for the curing if ever he gets pelts to cure . . . but if she imperils his rank or reputation in this little world he will cast her adrift quicker than a rat up a drain.’ Cuff stepped onto the doctor’s porch and surveyed the river. ‘Better go see Alister.’

  ‘I’ll come too.’

  At the Hive, Sam provided a brief account of Mackie’s night while Fish scuttled up the stairs with the mail pouch. ‘He’s had a good doze, last few hours,’ said Sam.

  At the end of the counter was a wicker basket with a blue ribbon tied into the weave. ‘What’s that?’ said Cuff.

  ‘That is a squab pie, courtesy of Agnes Archambault. But I wasn’t about to let her see him. As a consequence she called me an ill-mannered oaf, but I never deviated from civility.’

  ‘A slice of pie will do him good.’

  ‘Did he sleep, finally?’ said Woody.

  ‘He did, yes, he took the laudanum.’

  Woody drummed his fingers on the counter. ‘Samuel, you are to confiscate any laudanum you find up there. The man has to cough. In that regard laudanum is a most devious elixir for what appears to be improvement is in fact the veiling of the problem, thus its augmentation.’

  ‘Alright!’ said Sam.

  ‘We may all wilt in extremis, Thomas, even Alister,’ said Cuff. ‘Here’s a man who swore blind he’d never take the laudanum, said he valued his faculties more than his life.’

  ‘He wilts at his peril.’

  ‘Shoulderblades like chicken wings. I tell you, he eats but the weight’s comin’ off him,’ said Sam.

  Mackie was propped up in bed, his greatcoat over his nightshirt. The warrants lay open by his side. The doctor peeled back the coat and put his ear trumpet to the chief constable’s chest.

  ‘The thing is, the more purulent and copious the matter the higher the temperature and the greater the frequency and violence of the cough, for the body is now in a loop, but the coughing is most necessitous for to expel the superfluous phlegm.’

  ‘Otherwise what?’ said Cuff.

  ‘Otherwise the patient drowns in his own fetid muck.’

  ‘Now there’s a delicate formulation.’

  ‘This is no occasion to paint the lily.’

  Woody waved a finger close to Mackie’s nose. ‘No more laudanum. Contrary to the quackery, it hides the problem, allows it to congregate in the sink of your lungs, you take it at your peril. Alister, you have to cough.’

  ‘Claret?’

  ‘Claret yes, laudanum no.’

  Mackie nodded. Not the slightest ripple of defiance. The rattle in his breath was readily audible at all points in the room.

  ‘You look wasted and you sound worse than you look,’ said Cuff.

  ‘And I’m the sharp tongue!’ protested Woody.

  ‘I doubt I could pull a damp weed,’ said Mackie.

  ‘What’s he need if not laudanum?’ said Cuff.

  Woody was poking at the glands in Mackie’s neck. ‘What he needs is what he will not have: a long sea voyage. See, the ship as she rolls, the muscles of the body are required continually to brace and relax, thus the viscera in the belly is massaged by repeated friction and gentle kneading, a cleansing action, the motion simultaneously stirring the lungs, the vigour thus acquired facilitating the expectorations, say nothing of the sea air.’

  ‘I’m not about to wander the oceans,’ said Mackie. He was reading the warrant again – the warrant bearing Bea Faa’s name in full.

  Cuff pulled up a chair. ‘We got a fair breeze, Alistair. We gotta go, me and Dan.’

  ‘Don’t get your hopes too high, Thomas,’ said Mackie.

  Cuff agreed. ‘He’s right. Sparrow’s a rudderless vessel save for one cause, the salvation of his wretched self.’

  ‘You think he made it up, the cave, the spider?’

  ‘I think Peskett’s gentle arts gave him no choice. And yet . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It might be true.’

  ‘What I want is finality,’ said Woody. ‘If there’s anything in that cave —’

  ‘Thaddeus will find it,’ said Mackie.

  ‘I’ll find Peskett first,’ said Cuff. ‘Sparrow too.’

  ‘Peskett will stop at Joe’s for that dog. Bless the dog, for that will slow him,’ said Woody.

  ‘His priorities are indisputably Kettle-ish, but ours, what are ours?’ said Cuff.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Mackie’s voice was barely audible.

  Cuff picked up the warrant and smacked it into his palm. ‘The rule of law or the song of the heart, Alister, what’s it to be?’

  Mackie did not answer so Cuff continued. ‘This is a young woman who has played her part. Put to the test she’s cared for Joe, kept her nose clean, why, she’s even given you the cure for the pelts and wants nothing save to be free o’ them mangy sealers. This business on the sealeries, say nothing of the transport . . . she could hang.’

  Mackie did not respond and Cuff did not miss the opportunity to continue.

  ‘There’s more at stake here than your enterprise. I say if you can sequester that girl for your own convenience come the curing business then you can call her for what she is. That alone could save her, the vice-regal discretion being most partisan.’

  ‘Me being the governor’s dog.’

  ‘I don’t think that and I never said that.’

  Woody wrapped his arms around himself and hunched over and Cuff took this as the doctor’s submission, like a hedgehog rolled up in a ball, all prickle but no punch. ‘You can wash your hands of this, Alister, but I say you got a chance here; not just any old chance, somethin’ special,’ said Cuff.

  ‘Take them some flour and tea, and some cocoa.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘Joe likes cocoa.’

  ‘What I mean is . . . what does that mean? ’

  ‘It mea
ns see to their needs, as you think best.’

  Cuff shook his head and made a clucking sound. ‘You can count on that.’ He had what he wanted, a free hand.

  Cuff picked up the warrant. He folded it and shuffled it into a pocket. ‘I’ll see to the girl and one way or another I’ll sight this cave in the fastness.’

  ‘Thank you, Thaddeus,’ said Woody.

  ‘Proof o’ life or proof o’ death.’

  ‘Please God.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can.’

  They crossed the square, Cuff and Woody, bound for the doctor’s cottage. They stood at the top of the switchback path, the sun on their backs.

  ‘What of the girl?’ said Woody.

  ‘Who’s asking, the doctor or the magistrate?’

  ‘I’ll not pretend to judge her.’

  ‘And I’ll not drag her back here to get punished, get pilloried or hung, damned if I will,’ said Cuff.

  Woody put down his medicine bag and straightened himself, his fingers pressed into the small of his back. ‘You have to understand, Alister’s one of very few to have risen from the felonry to the seniority, the property, the favour, such as he now enjoys. That’s everything to him, everything. He cannot conceive himself ever again tainted in any way. The shame’s rooted too deep.’

  ‘Well, we all know about shame. First cousin to guilt.’

  52

  They had put in turnips, long rows adjacent to patches fresh sown for onions and cabbage. Freddie managed to talk his way through the entire morning, mostly about the merits of potatoes and the shortcomings of the turnip. Bea sensed he would talk in this manner whether she was there or not, but he clearly knew his subject so she was happy to listen as she worked, occasionally straightening herself to check for Amicus Amico, who was prone to strike out for the Branch if not sighted and called back.