The Making of Martin Sparrow

by Peter Cochrane

  Bea got to her feet and looked upriver and down. The eagle took wing. ‘I won’t be long,’ she said and she walked off, downriver.

  After a while Sparrow began to worry. Bea had never before taken this long to see to the necessaries. He readied the pistol and set off. He followed her footsteps in the sand. Rounding a turn he caught a glimpse of her downstream. She was bathing in water to her thighs, unclothed, her hair loosed, thick and black.

  Sparrow stepped from the sand into the brush and secreted himself as best he could. He watched her bathe.

  She laved water onto her body and followed each time with the scrubbing motion of palms on skin. She bent over and washed her face and flicked her hair forward into the water and worked it between her fingers. She tossed her head and her hair flicked left and right and then settled in the middle of her back, errant strands on her shoulder and her cheek. She ran the palm of her hand across the water and looked about. Sparrow shrank back into the brush. He could feel the pulse in his neck, his heart resounding in his chest.

  She set her face to the sun and seemed for a time to be locked there by the warmth on her skin. Sparrow wanted to stay, but he thought best to depart while he could, unseen.

  He snuck off, hurried back to the fire. The dog was still gnawing at the gristly remains of the turtle, the eagle long gone.

  When she returned her hair was secured in the big knot, the wooden pin in place. ‘You should bathe too,’ was all she said. Sparrow did not know what to make of that.

  They walked on, westward.

  At dusk they found an embankment where the scrub thinned out and they made their way without much effort to the forest on the northern escarpment. The sun had slipped from view. The sky to the west was a band of blue beneath a vast stretch of fire-orange cloud, the wisps like flames licking up to the immeasurable heavens. ‘I didn’t know the sky could do that,’ said Sparrow.

  ‘Nor I,’ she said.

  They pressed on.

  Amicus had picked up a scent and he hurried ahead, nose to the ground. They followed him up the escarpment, where they found cover for the night, a shelter scalloped out by ancient floods.

  A possum scampered along a ledge at the rear of the shelter and leapt to the ground and scuttled away and Amicus took chase. When he came back, his coat was flecked with bark and char grit, a cut below his eye, his flanks heaving. Sparrow dropped to one knee and brushed him off.

  They ate the pickled meat cold, made no fire. The shelter was open to the breeze and the night air was gentle and warm, the weather a mystery. They sat listening to the creature sounds. They watched the night shadows, ever shifting, bats coasting into the canopy.

  64

  Much to Cuff’s surprise the spasms in his back eased with the days and with that easing the bouts of numbness in his lower parts diminished in duration such that, by the time they reached Freddie’s patch, he could walk without help, though not without pain.

  He recalled Woody’s peroration on the remedial motion of a ship upon the lungs and the belly and he wondered, by way of analogy, if perchance the motion of the mule had somehow unfixed the seizure in his tailbone region. Whatever the remedy, he could now shuffle about with an ease he could not have imagined upriver, days back, when the two parties had gone their separate ways.

  Freddie was overjoyed to see them, but somewhat puzzled as well. ‘You ain’t Bea,’ he said, staring at Dot.

  ‘No she ain’t,’ said Cuff. ‘This is Dot what Mort and Shug stole off Gordy.’ He dismounted with great care, coming to ground as lightly as he could, his fists locked on the pack leathers.

  ‘Where’s Bea then?’ said Freddie.

  Cuff shook his head as if he could hardly believe his own words. ‘She’s bound for the other side, with Marty Sparrow.’ He threw his arms in the air. ‘One o’ them turns in the road you never see comin’.’

  ‘Oh there’s a lot o’ them round here, lately.’

  Cuff stepped somewhat painfully away from the mule, his fingers pressed in the small of his back. ‘You got some meat we can sup on? We ain’t seen much in the way o’ meat for quite a while.’

  ‘I got fish in a bucket,’ said Freddie.

  They killed the fish, perch, and cooked them up, devoured every morsel with hardly a pause for breath. They slept a profound sleep in Joe’s cabin, Cuff and Dot sharing the bed in the recess as Freddie went about his chores, his mind full of questions he wished he’d put to Cuff, about Bea and Sparrow and the wilderness and the far beyond, and about poor old Sprodd whose death was another one of them turns in the road, a big shock, very sad news indeed, not as sad as Joe but almost.

  The next morning, early, Cuff and Dot readied to go. The dawn was just a faint grey on the forested rim to the east, the Branch still as a pond, the slack water before the flood tide.

  They took Joe’s boat and provisions enough, bread and corn and some peach cyder, and they coursed down the Branch into the mid-river depths of the Hawkesbury, setting the sail for a faint nor’-easter.

  The cramped confines did not help Cuff, nor did the flukey breezes help their progress. Twice in three days they laid over and not until late on the third day did they reach Prominence.

  The little boat skimmed into the shallows at the foot of the switchback path.

  Dot helped Cuff up the path, past Bet Pepper’s, no sign of Bet, and they made their way to The Convivial Hive. Fish met them on the porch. ‘I’m glad you’re back,’ he said to Cuff. ‘I missed hearin’ you talk.’

  ‘Plenty o’ time for that, Fish. Now, where’s Dr Woody?’

  ‘He’s gone home in the gig.’

  ‘Can you go get him for me?’

  ‘I can, yes. Bad news?’

  ‘Nothin’ you can put a shine on.’

  In the tavern Cuff passed Dot into Sam’s care and Sam took her to the kitchen for a feed and he stayed there with her, while Atilio warmed a broth, hoping to learn all he could about what had happened in the woods, what happened to the boy Jug and what happened to Dan. ‘Where’s Dan?’

  ‘He got drowned in the flood, he’s dead,’ said Dot.

  Upstairs Cuff found Mackie in bed. ‘You don’t look to me to be . . . resurgent,’ he said.

  ‘What do I look to you to be then?’

  ‘You look like a sucked peach. You might have to take to the ocean, like Woody says.’

  ‘That will not happen.’

  Cuff pulled up a chair and sat at the bedside, saw the man’s scrofulous neck and cheeks, swollen and scabbed, smelt the rot on his breath, heard the rattle in his chest.

  Mackie had a tin mug in hand, blood pooled in the base.

  ‘You bring that up in one go?’

  ‘Yes. Did you find the boy?’

  ‘Why don’t I just report, in full.’

  ‘Do, please.’

  Cuff was about to report in full but Mackie appeared to be so diminished he thought better of it. He saw no reason to report on Griffin Pinney’s demise, nor Mort Craggs’ for that matter. And the soldiers dead on the river sands, that was hardly urgent. Best for now to keep to matters that were close to home, and the heart. ‘A bull shark killed the boy, of that I’m certain. But that’s not the end of it. I’m sorry to report, Alister, Joe’s dead and so is Dan.’

  ‘Dan?’

  ‘Yes.’ Cuff hunched over, hugging his middle, staring at his boots. ‘It breaks my heart, that good man.’

  ‘How did he die?’ Mackie’s voice had faded to a faint whisper.

  ‘He drowned, far as we could tell.’

  Mackie covered his face with his hands, his fingers pressing hard on his forehead. ‘I never heard him say a bad word about anyone.’

  ‘That’s Dan, cheerful in all weathers.’

  ‘And Joe?’

  ‘Joe died in his own bed and we buried him, proper.’ Cuff was not inclined to say more, for that would lead to a complicated story best left for another day.

  ‘What of the girl?’

  ‘She’s with Sparrow,
bound for the other side . . . I had to see that girl safe on her way, in company with someone.’

  ‘If it’s Sparrow for company it’s a poor bargain.’

  ‘Not as poor as you might think. Affection for a fellow creature can fix a man, make him resolute, worthwhile.’

  ‘Sparrow is a midge, a wretch beyond salvation.’

  ‘Sparrow was a rudderless heart, that’s all.’

  ‘Not now?’

  ‘I’d say his better self has triumphed and he’s done some good and he might do some more.’

  ‘Wonders never cease.’

  ‘Some of us have the pliability.’

  ‘And some of us don’t?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  They sat quietly, not a word.

  ‘Your report.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There’s not much to leaven the misery.’

  ‘I don’t fix the path, I just walk it, hopin’ there’s more when I turn the corner.’

  ‘As do we all.’

  Mackie set the mug on the bedside stool, on a copy of the Sydney Gazette.

  ‘What news?’ said Cuff.

  The chief constable considered the question with some care, sifting the options for his reply. ‘The William Pitt has docked in Sydney, a hundred and seventeen females on board.’

  ‘That’s good, we’re short on women. What else?’

  ‘The Cape’s back in British hands, the fighting done in half a day.’

  ‘That’s the Dutch for you, all pomp and no punch, nothin’ but a bunch o’ two-legged cheese worms.’

  ‘I’m drowning, Thaddeus, in my own fetid muck.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘My lungs are a swamp, worse by the day.’

  ‘What you need’s one o’ them sulphurous baths, take the waters like the Romans.’

  ‘We’re a bit short on Romans in this neighbourhood.’

  ‘Bit short o’ the waters too, that kind.’

  ‘I’m very tired.’

  ‘I’ll go.’

  ‘Nothing more?’

  There was plenty more, but that was for another day. ‘One thing. We found Dot, she come back with me.’

  Mackie took some time to consider the news of Dot’s return. ‘Tell her she can work here, in the kitchen, if she wants. I’ll see to the formalities, if that’s to her liking.’

  Cuff saw this generosity for what it was, but he made no comment. ‘I’ll tell her,’ he said.

  Sam pushed open the door. ‘You want I light the lamps?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Mackie.

  65

  Next morning Sparrow and Bea resumed their course. They walked for some hours, the river tapering, the brush shouldering in as they went higher, stepping up faint cascades, the waters fanning out, thinning, until the ground went to slush beneath a carpet of fern and a scatter of tumbledown stone. They pressed on to the headwall and then to the rim where they took in the view, the far-flung wilderness in the heat of the day.

  ‘That’s not the other side,’ said Sparrow.

  ‘No it’s not,’ said Bea. The deep green of the forest canopy filled a valley to the west, here and there the completeness of the cover relieved by a column of brutally scoured stone, pillars like totem ruins from some lost world, the far side bounded by a sheer cliff line that ran raggedly north until it disappeared in shadow folds and haze, and south until it did the same.

  The one break in the ridgeline was to the north-west, a mile away by foot, perhaps two, a defile where the forest ran upwards to the cliff top like a smear of thick green paint. The vastness of the panorama frightened Sparrow – a dismembered plateau cut by deep rifts, a sparse upland consorting with thickly wooded valleys; a geography that seemed to have no pattern and no end.

  They crossed the valley and worked their way north, following the cliff line through a forest of tall bloodwoods and mountain ash, past the stone towers they had seen from the headwall, the weathered sandstone filigreed and fretted with bands of ironstone like awry shelving, set at intervals such that a possum might climb those towers, but not a man.

  They searched several gullies and each time found themselves with no means of passage, arrested in deep shadowed spaces where the gymee stood like armed sentinels, their flower spikes twenty feet high, and moss and lichen glowed bright in what might have been some otherworldly minster or playhouse, or some refuge of purpose unknown, walled in by the blackened face of the forbidding cliff.

  Further along they tried a slot gully hardly wider than the span of their arms, the lower parts covered in moss and the long, thick leaves of dormant orchids, the most delicate of fern fronds and maidenhair sprouting from fissures shoulder high, the walls sheer to a ribbon of clear blue sky and the heat on the tableland above.

  The passageway ended at a jam of fallen stone that angled up to a cave high in the cliff wall, the cave backlit by a golden glow from a shaft at the rear.

  Sparrow hefted Amicus onto a narrow ledge above their heads and from there the dog bounded his way to the cave and they followed. They climbed the jam, lumps of ironstone making for footholds and handholds, and then made a short scramble on a more hospitable gradient.

  In the cave their eyes were drawn to the the shaft of light at the rear. They shuffled through bat droppings and bone-dry entrails and the satin green feathers of some bird. They went on hands and knees into the shaft and followed its upward turn and found themselves in a sink on the plateau.

  Rock wallabies fled a wallow as Sparrow and Bea climbed from the shaft and Amicus took chase and did not return for some time.

  The heat on the plateau was fierce, an upland of stunted heath and stone. They took to the shade of the wallow. Sparrow weighed the costrel in his hand, felt the damp, the leakage. They each took a sip, just a sip.

  They followed the footprints of a heath lizard on a drift of ash and sand through brushwood punctuated by bursts of waxflowers and coral heath, their line more or less westward, the sun angling low onto their foreparts. Not a breath of air. Not a bird.

  They lay facedown in a patch of shade. Amicus lapped the muddied dregs from a puddle in the warm stone. All about them the heath was parched and still, hazed in the afternoon light.

  Further on, a startling scene: a weathered-away place where the sandstone had entirely given up its gathered form and lay as grains, drifts, thick upon the earth and naught but contorted gatherings of ironstone prevailed, defying the elements. They found themselves walking amidst outlandish forms perched on squat footings or slim stems, as if mounted upon armatures for exhibit, some of the shapes resembling things they could name – a gigantic mushroom, the ribbing of a mule, a goat’s head, a chimney, a sea horse, a boot, the splayed tail feathers of a bird – and other shapes, unearthly forms that defied recognition, all the more strange with their silvery filaments sparkling in the light of the sun.

  They walked in this aimlessly sculpted country until the sun was almost gone. They could see no rift that might lead them to shelter and water.

  They made a small fire beneath the sparkling ironstone wing of a great bird and set the quart pot on the flames and set to boiling the last of their water. Sparrow retrieved his teapot and dropped near to the last of the good tea into the pot. He searched for his tin mug but it was not in the haversack. He searched again to no avail. Bea said, ‘No harm, we can share mine.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She had decided they would share not just the mug but the future, come what may: Sparrow wasn’t much but he was something, and he was way better than ever she’d have guessed at the outset. He appeared to be a timid soul and yet he’d rescued her from Griffin Pinney and he’d rescued Dot too, from the man called Mort Craggs, and seen her safe as best he could. Somehow, he had transcended himself.

  Sparrow was pleased they would share the tin mug. He wanted to share everything with Bea Faa. He contemplated the long day just gone and the days before that. He felt hope in his heart, hope on several fronts. The memory of her bathing
came to him, most pictorially. The world would never be the same.

  He unwrapped the last of the pickled meat and set the square-cut pieces on the glowing coals.

  Bea sipped on her tea and then set her mug on the sand by Sparrow’s knee.

  It was dark now and the heat had dropped away as swiftly as the sun and a chill set in about them. A quarter-moon sat squat in the sky.

  Sparrow fossicked about and gathered some dry brush. He squatted down and loaded the brush, piecemeal, onto the fire and the flames took quickly and reared up, the wing of the great stone bird sparkling as if one with the heavens.

  They skewered the meat and blew on the crust, charred in ash and pickling. They peeled away small strips and ate them slowly.

  Bea watched the play of the firelight on Sparrow’s face, how the light betrayed the faded pockmarks on his brow and his cheeks and chin. ‘Did you once have the small pox?’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What then?’

  Sparrow put a hand to his cheek and felt the scarring. ‘My father did that.’

  She waited, wanting more.

  ‘When the sheriff came for me, my father took me by the hair and forced me to my knees. He sunk my head in a tub of hungry eels and held me there for some time, an eternity.’

  ‘That’s awful.’

  ‘I thought they would eat my face right off. I thought I would drown, in that bucket.’

  ‘But you didn’t.’

  ‘I had a awful scabby face for a long time.’

  ‘It’s hard to see now.’

  ‘Small mercies.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just one thing can shape your whole life.’

  The fire faded as swiftly as it had flared and Sparrow went for more dry wood and they built the fire once again and all about them the ironstone gleamed like the stars above. They slept that night beneath the wing, close to the fire and close to one another, with Amicus curled up at their feet, his back warmed by the bed of hot coals.