by Ed Hillyer
‘Charles,’ said Dilkes.
‘Charles,’ she said. ‘Thank you. You’ve been most helpful.’ Sarah was backing away even as she spoke. ‘We both appreciate,’ she said, ‘very much, the time you have taken to show us arou – ’
‘I extend myself to you,’ spluttered Dilkes. He saw the alarm in her eye. ‘My continued service, I offer you, in whatever way it, might be…’ he wanted to say desirable ‘…most useful.’
‘Time is getting on,’ said Sarah. ‘We mustn’t keep you from your work.’
‘I can take a look through papers at the Admiralty, if you’d like?’ said Dilkes. ‘Let me take your address. In case I should find anything more concerning Bruce. That is, if you should wish me to look…’
Sarah raised one eyebrow – it was a sound idea, at least in part.
‘Maybe…’ She thought aloud. ‘Well, maybe,’ she said, ‘in that case, I can take yours…’
Their relief almost palpable, Sarah and Cole entered into the grounds of Greenwich Park.
Sounds of birdsong and laughter carried on the breeze, across glorious acres of wide-open space. They could see a trio of boys with feathers in their caps, running in delirious, diminishing circles, until one caught another and they all tumbled headlong to the grass. A maidservant navigated a three-wheeled baby cart along the main path. As with any popular amenity, the place had become a little frayed at the edges, but these signs of wear and tear, if anything, only added to its charm. Long boulevards stretched forward, planted with exotic trees of extraordinary girth. Sarah and King Cole soon found themselves idling at a central point, a sort of shaded crossways. In the midst of this semicircular grove, fine lawns and thicketed woods surrounded them, the park a curious patchwork of the cultivated and wild. A few tame deer, allowed to wander freely, grazed nearby. Their scent was strong. King Cole eyed them hungrily.
A party of children rolling down from the brow of the nearest hill landed almost at their feet, breathless with laughter. As they turned to climb back up, the curious couple followed their lead.
The Royal Observatory crowned the hilltop, a guiding principle for weary travellers far from home. Commanders of all vessels sailing from the Thames set their chronometers by the red leather ball atop Flamsteed House: the great globe measured, from the Greenwich Meridian, degrees of east-west longitude providing the basis for all British maps and charts. According to the public clock outside the gates the hour was nearly five. Whatever else King Cole might have in mind, Sarah knew she would soon have to make her way back to the house.
They turned to admire the view.
The broad sweep of the Thames valley stretched out before them. London was just part of a wider panorama, a great dark smear alleviated by the occasional protuberance: the Tower; the Monument; the tallest city steeples. Beyond rose the hills of Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Surrey. Smoke piled from out of a hundred thousand chimneys, but at sufficient remove so as not to obscure everything. Rather than brood beneath the metropolitan canopy, for once it was possible to look across to it – even to discern the smell of clean air.
They seemed almost on a level with the clouds.
Screaming children charged to the edge and launched themselves into thin air, pitching themselves down the sharp incline. Sarah very much wished to be a child again, and free of her encumbering skirts. She might then find the courage to join them in their violent, tumbling game.
Instead, Cole led her away from the crowds to climb a nearby promontory, one he appeared to favour. A solitary elm stood proud at the apex. Side-by-side on the grass, they sat beneath its shade.
The banks of neighbouring hillocks extended rich and green. The crest of One Tree Hill, in contrast, was but sparsely covered. Yellowed grass faded between patches of bare earth, the blue haze of fir trees skirting its lower margins.
King Cole grunted.
‘Leg rain coming,’ he observed.
It was true. Piled high along the far horizon, great dark thunderheads gathered. Distant showers fell in fitful curtains.
A little way along, the owner of a telescope had set up shop. Every now and then, his peddler’s cry could be heard. ‘A look through my spyglass, penny a go!’
A way below, their picnic forgotten, a gentleman entertained a lady on the slopes. His hat was off. Every now and then the man with the telescope succumbed to temptation and gave the pick-knickers a closer look. Otherwise, Sarah and Cole were completely alone.
In a single afternoon, they had covered more ground than many Londoners did in a lifetime. They relaxed and rested.
The Aborigine sat with one leg thrust out in front, the other folded back under and supporting his body. He began to scratch away at the soil between his feet.
Looking up at Sarah, King Cole spoke excitedly.
‘In the dust,’ he said, ‘I write.’
He started to draw with the displaced earth. Sarah could not hope to understand; even so, she was fascinated. The longer they had remained at the Hospital, the more its palatial confines had seemed to sap all of their vital energy – Cole’s especially. Apparently revived, he drew with both hands, using the index and middle finger one after the other to create a double dotted line. He drew a number of these lines, each one different, and erased by a sweep of the palm. In the last of these line drawings, she perceived a familiar shape.
Unless she was mistaken, he outlined the loop of the River Thames, just as it was laid out before them.
King Cole grunted again. He inscribed an almost perfect circle, and then with an air of finality struck a line through it, to effect something like a capital Q.
Sarah deliberately held her tongue. Attempting to adopt his gestural ‘body language’, she allowed her facial expression to deliver the full force of her enquiry.
His dark eyes flickered. Seeming nervous, he would not meet her quizzical glare.
She noticed some sort of marks on the bark of the elm tree behind him. Fresh and injurious, the carving had been made only recently. It was a figurine, human, arms extended and legs spread, as if dancing. Eyes, nose, even the joints of the knees were boldly marked, but there was no mouth. Immediately that he saw she had spotted this thing, King Cole shifted his position to block her view of it.
His hands raised and held flat maintained a perfect stillness. He began to move backwards and forwards very gently, seeming as if to indicate all of the land that stretched out before them, as far as the horizon, perhaps even further. Fingers spreading, his hands fell. A small word combined with this dismissive gesture to convey something negative, something not. He touched the grass at his feet – not. He indicated the trees – not. The deer where they grazed and dozed, and all of the people wandering the park – they too were denied. The entire earth lay empty, without any of these things.
Narrating the while in his singsong native language, Cole either spoke in hushed tones, or alternately gabbled in staccato bursts.
His gestures almost preternaturally slow, one thin arm nosed sinuously, gracefully forward – no mistaking the movements of a snake. Cole’s musculature tightened. Instinctively, Sarah understood the concept of great size imbuing this ‘snake’. When it set to shuddering, she trembled. One eye opened and sly, the snake began to gather and rear itself up. Slowly, slowly, it turned its head, taking in the view.
Formerly so quiet, King Cole babbled like a brook. Sarah, beguiled, yet found herself distracted. Storm clouds, building higher in the sky, approached fast; sun breaking out from between them transformed the dirty brown river into a glittering wreath.
King Cole’s snake-arm began to weave its way forward, across the land. Back and forth it slithered, his other hand close in behind it, making short sweeping motions away from the elbow. Sarah thought at first it shed skin. Continuing, the signals seemed more likely to emphasise progress. At a certain point, the snake met and matched the exact course of the Thames.
She had a boat to catch. The steamer service ran late, but her father would be e
xpecting his supper sooner. The library closed at six: if she were absent much longer, he might begin to wonder where else she had got to.
With a snap the big snake retreated, back, back, returning to the place from which it had emerged. The great head turned, pointed towards the ground, and began to…spit? No, speak. Cole called out, the opening and closing of his hand synchronous with his shouts.
‘Mia! … Mia! … Mia! Gala!’
The late afternoon light laced everything with silver. Sarah wanted to stay, but knew that she could not. Already the view-peddler had packed up and gone, and so had the lovers.
‘I must go!’ she said.
King Cole bucked and jerked, popping a loose fist – another, and then another.
Sarah stood.
Cole’s body hunched forward, his tongue protruding slightly, blowing out his cheeks. The expression on his swollen face was comical, ridiculous.
Although no one else was near to see, Sarah blushed. She took a step backwards, retreating unsteadily.
‘You’ll…you’ll be all right, making your own way?’ she said.
King Cole answered with a loud croak. Entire body bloated with mime, he hopped, a big fat frog. Lightning fast, his whole form shifted. Once more the snake slid over his belly, brushing up against it.
Sarah forgot herself a moment.
Again the frog, Cole’s mouth sprang wide, his swollen shape contracting. He began to heave and void himself out of his mouth. And to laugh! Vomiting. And laughing. Sarah, perturbed, took another step away.
Ten fingers sprouted, questing upward, arms flinging towards the treetops as his hands fluttered away. Faster now, physical forms shifted and changed, his lips moving but the torrent of words barely audible.
‘…arkooloolalaranakaratharagarshayarrawa…’
He jumped, hiccupped, and flew, swam and galloped and slid, populating the landscape with a thousand different animal likenesses.
The great snake reappeared and spoke in an angry voice. ‘Wia ma pitja,’ it shouted. ‘Nungkarpa lara pupinpa!’
Such fantastical nonsense, after all the help she had so selflessly extended, unnerved and annoyed Sarah. Absorbed in the telling of his mystic tale, Cole acted as if she were no longer there. Why tarry?
Their joint quest, whilst inconclusive, had not been entirely fruitless.
‘I hope that some of what we learned today has been of use to you,’ she said. ‘Shall I see you again? To…tomorrow, perhaps?’
The Aborigine fixed her with a fierce black eye, as if he could turn her to stone.
‘Read in book,’ he said, ‘like whitepella.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed.
Sarah tripped haphazardly down the hill. The tumbling children had all gone. Making towards the park exit, she allowed herself one look back. Filtered through the trees, the sun threw long dark shadows far across the grass, claw-like talons that seemed to reach for the huddled figure of the Aborigine. He sat immobile atop One Tree Hill, dwelling on his deep, unknowable thoughts.
King Cole abruptly removes the shoes he has been given, stiff and sopping as pig snouts, and throws them carelessly aside. With a swipe of his bare foot he erases the dirt drawing. The tale of the Rainbow Serpent is done. He stretches out, flexing his toes, no longer fervid, but pensive. He cannot recall the last occasion on which his spirit knew peace.
Spirit Ancestors walk the land, as they have since the dawn of Creation. They sing the World into being. This is Truth. Nothing exists that does not also exist in Truth – where it is, in fact, more real. In order to honour his debt to the Guardian, for all the help she has rendered, he has tried to gift Thara a little of this ancient knowledge. This he has done in the manner of a story best fit for children, as much as the limitations of her sex allows.
An invisible weave, he knows, coheres the World: a network of pathways formed throughout the Dreaming, the footprints of the Spirit Ancestors. Such is the fund of learning he has been taught. The path an Ancestor takes when forming the land becomes a Songline, or Dreaming trail. These Songlines both define the World and maintain its integrity, handed down the generations of man to be replenished through their Dreaming for all eternity.
This is Bugaragara, ‘the Way of the Law’.
If a person such as himself hopes to walk any Songline, he must first learn the corresponding song. In singing the song, he becomes one with both Ancestor and path, and contributes to the continuing cycle of Creation. That then is the purpose behind his going Walkabout. For, without song, the land would cease to exist; just as surely as the Men die, when denied the birth lands they belong to.
Only now that he is outside of the World has he finally located his Dreaming. Bripumyarrimin ponders this.
Afternoon light fades slowly into evening. A striking sunset flushes the river in shades from bronze to crimson. An entire fleet of merchant ships sails in on the blood-tide.
Smaller barks darting in between, the galleons come gliding, stately and assured as swans. Their wide, white wings are fat and full; the vessels drift, deep-freighted. As each sea-worn prow cleaves the waters, the waves catch the sunlight, sparking. In the path ploughed behind every ship’s keel settles a trembling shadow.
King Cole’s weary head dips forward. He recovers.
Rust-coloured clouds brew up a storm. The numberless buildings are set afire by the low sun. A single shaft strikes the lip of One Tree Hill, Panatapia. The searching orange ray moves on, dappling the deer that graze peacefully in the meadow, before illuminating the gleaming white buildings of the Hospital. They shimmer and disappear, replaced with an ancient palace brick-red in colour.
Lulled, laid back, between pillows of cloud, King Cole looks into pools of deepening blue. A few birds circle there, way up high.
He listens to their evensong. A chorus of church bells answers. He hears the barking of a dog, somewhere off in the distance, and then, faint music At the base of the statue of King George, two Naval cadets take their stand. Sounding the tattoo on drum and fife, they signal the close of another day.
King Cole rests his tired eyes. Glowing lids gradually fade to dimness, a pale grey that soon darkens. Occasional coloured lights bloom and sparkle in the murk, crashing like the spray of waves ashore. His liver, the seat of feeling, opens out like a flower, his consciousness suffused with a delightful fluorescence – the Dreaming.
When at long last his eyes reopen, the moon smiles down, and all is silent. The threatened storm has passed over. Only thin wisps of cloud remain, skimming swiftly by.
‘Ballrinjarrimin? Y’alright?’
No response. Dick-a-Dick stands at the foot of Sundown’s bunk, Cuzens close behind. The whole day through, Sundown hasn’t stirred. Dick-a-Dick kicks the wooden leg of the bed.
Jogged, Sundown rolls over. It is clear enough he hasn’t been sleeping. The others look him over.
Dick-a-Dick grunts.
‘Bripumyarrimin,’ he says. ‘Ain’t here, eh.’
Dick jerks his chin towards the empty bunk next door. Dark circles under his eyes, Sundown only looks sheepish, and hangs his head.
It is nearly a full minute before he answers.
‘Him…gone.’
‘Where?’
A shorter pause lingers in the air.
‘Walkabout,’ Sundown murmurs.
Cuzens snorts.
‘Deen?’ asks Dick-a-Dick, equally incredulous.
There follows another steady silence, before Sundown shakes his head. ‘Him London.’
Dick-a-Dick whistles, and shifts his weight to settle on the opposite hip. He runs fingers through his thick hair, almost seeming to drag his brow up with them. Gloomy Sundown starts, very quietly, to cry.
One of the others approaches, to see what is the matter. Dick-a-Dick shrugs. He relates the news in their Jardwa tongue. No one asks when Sundown thinks his clan brother will return. His silent tears speak for him.
Where King Cole has gone, he isn’t coming back.
II
Martyrdom
CHAPTER XXIV
Tuesday the 2nd of June, 1868
A NEW WORLD
‘Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar’
~ William Wordsworth,
‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’
At first, there was only the void.
Then, hard to place, faint sound, growing steadily louder – the clatter and churn of carriage wheels beyond number, a newsboy’s hoarse cries.
Sarah Larkin awoke with a start. Her sleep had been deep, and apparently dreamless. All the same she felt dizzy, somewhat light-headed, as though woken from dream after all. Still for a few minutes longer, she listened to the world outside, and wondered at what she might have missed.
She recalled with relish her adventures the day before. A whole day spent in crossing the city, in spite of which she had returned home feeling energised. Sarah thought amiably of King Cole, her erstwhile companion. His skin; gestures more eloquent than words; and the great black pupils of his eyes – she had met with an Australian Aborigine!
Upward and onward! It was early but she rose anyway, keen to get on. Her neck felt stiff, and, suffering a little gastric discomfort, she summoned a delicate belch. Better.
Sarah noticed splashes on her shoes where they lay beneath the dresser. They were encrusted with shapes of clay – mud from the burial mound. Taking them to the sink, she began to wash them, gently. It would not do to scrub: this pair would have to last. She doused them with cold water, rubbing at the stains with her fingers.
The wet brown leather glistened.
Seeing her face in the mirror, she gasped then laughed. Nose and cheeks smudged with great smears of soot, she looked as chequered as St Paul’s. Her unwitting fingers must have done that dirty work on feeling the black snow settle.
