Bright Side of my Condition ePub

by Randall, Charlotte

  Back on the ship the captain invite the felons to dinner. He say, come down to my cabin for a fine feed, yer all fine fellows who aint et enough for years. Slangam agree because it flatter him to be a fine fellow, and Toper agree because he’s been dreaming of all that drink, and Gargantua agree because already his mouth salivate jes thinking of so much dripping meat grease. If only they weren’t such excellent examples of pride, drunkenness and gluttony, maybe they suspect a trap’s been set. Down to his cabin they go, bowing and scraping and tugging their forelocks. The captain’s table is already spread. It wear a white starchy cloth and a weight of silver, or what look like silver, maybe the dishes is jes another fake show that glister them apes to perdition. The table also have wine bottles already open and cheese wheels already cut and the odour of roasted meat waft through the cabin like a revenant. A tall fruity cake preen itself upon a sideboard.

  How far do the captain take his little game? Do he let the felons sit down and mumble grace, do he let them enjoy wine and cheese on their hanging out tongues? Nope. Before they know what’s hit them, three burly sealers bundle my brothers into a locker hardly big enough to turn around in. They so close pressed they breathing their indignation right into each other’s faces, it’s a foul smell like rotten cheese. Then the fight for space start. They push and shove and swear and Flonker get accused of taking too much room, but how do he stop his body taking what it take?

  Now the captain can enjoy his lunch with the God fearing men he always lunch with. He ignore the shouting and banging from the locker and propose a toast. He toast the King, the Prince Regent, the Parleyment and the Law. He throw the wine down his throat and propose a nother toast. He toast the southern ocean, the ship, the crew, the fine day – and the Law. Down go a nother wine. If he keep drinking like this, very soon he find his self toasting the whales and seals and the Law, but at least the racket from the locker’s faded away. And it aint because them felons have went quiet neither, it must be the rush of drink to his ears.

  In the locker Flonker start loud recriminating. ‘Why yer have to say we throw him, Grogblossom?’

  ‘How else do he find his self falling off a cliff?’

  ‘How else? A madman jump! Dint he once tell a story of a jumping madman?’

  ‘It dint come to me in time.’

  ‘Best yer keep yer gob shut then. Till yer thinking catch up.’

  ‘Too late now,’ Slangam say.

  ‘Aint too late,’ Toper argue. ‘Jes have to deny it.’

  ‘What?’ Fatty scorn him. ‘Deny the long story Coffin pull out of yer? All them embellishments, the vampires and every fucken thing?’

  ‘Why not?’ Slangam object. ‘Coffin don’t come to the trial.’

  ‘Trial?’ Toper squeak.

  ‘What yer expect?’ Slangam flame him. ‘A reward?’

  I put my hands over my ears. I see their mouths moving but don’t hear nothing else of what come out. I look back to the captain that’s eating a slice of preen cake off a delftware plate. His nose is purple, his ears is red and he sport a beaming smile. But how do Coffin know for sure that them felons in his locker are murderers? He don’t. He jes know they escape from the Law and to the Law they must return. He don’t take it upon himself to decide guilt or innocence. For that he’s free to enjoy his food and wine, his after-lunch rest during which he dip into his tattered copy of An Historical Relation of the Island of Ceylon in the East Indies by Robert Knox, and his later stroll on the sunset deck. Coffin don’t put on the crimped wig when it aint been allotted to him and make himself a happy man.

  3

  In the thick dark I’m wide awake and restless. Do I ever believe the moment of death involve so much waiting? Weren’t there enough of it in life? I call loud, ‘Is anyone out there that know why life and death is so in need of patience? I do so tire of it.’

  No one answer.

  ‘I jes like to be clear, being lazy aint the same as putting up with everything.’

  No one materialise.

  Now I condemn myself out of my own mouth, ‘Yair, I admit to being a lazy man. I also have a temper even if I do hold it in when the punches is being throwed. And I don’t find it easy to go on my knees to other men, even if they declare their selves more worthy, even if others do. Pure vanity, Toper used to say. Or envy.’

  Do anyone reply?

  Nope.

  ‘Seem to me I orta try to understand how our passions can be seen in a new light,’ I say, hopeful that someone like my change of tack. ‘Maybe without all them rages and envies and vanities we all jes lie about in the sun and nothing ever bother us. Not only do no one change out of the vices they were borned with, maybe they even let their virtues lie fallow. I mean, what’s the point of all the trouble?’

  No answer.

  ‘Because it sure is trouble to put yer virtue to work in the world. Get it past all them obstructions and the bloody mindedness. Sometimes a rage or passion’s the only wind that puff the sails.’

  I wait.

  And wait.

  If the penguins were slapping and barking, they now gone stone quiet. Maybe they like to hear how they make better penguins of their selves. Course fishes don’t have souls. That’s how a penguin’s virtue aint above a penguin, a whalefish’s aint above a whale.

  Without no answers I finally fall asleep. I wake up and find it’s another blue morning. I never see so many in a row in all the years we live here. Indeed, I wud say of some years there weren’t two fine days to rub together. And it aint the niggardliness of memory neither, tarnishing all life’s good things like it do, even if memory do sometimes have the opposite vice and put a silvery sheen on many events that were pewter.

  I look over at Coffin and the prisoners on his ship and get a big shock to see they all under a big grey cloud, it bloat all over their heads and the crew of the ship and the crow’s nest and the top of the mainsail and the circling albatrosses. In astonishment I realise I have went beyond the ordinary weather.

  Also I speed up a little. Maybe my houri and the physickists get sick of waiting for me, maybe God get tired of slacking and have a good crank on the wheel. I hope the blue sky and faster speed mean I soon fly off and don’t end up a broke man under the grey cloud that cover the living. Then what happen to me? Nobody wait long enough on the island to scoop up my innards and bones, pack me into my skin, set me on my legs again.

  Suddenly a little girl go pop! in front of me. I don’t recognise her till her hair get coloured in, it’s like a invisible hand take a moment to find the straw crayon.

  ‘Oh, yer died!’ exclaim I.

  ‘Yer leave me alone at the well,’ she accuse.

  ‘I dint mean to.’

  ‘I were hungry,’ she pout.

  I nod. ‘Yair, yer always were.’ Then a panic come over me. ‘That weren’t what yer die of? Them crones dint leave yer to starve by the well?’

  Her laugh tinkle like a bell. ‘No. I fall in and drown when I try to get a drink. It were very quick.’

  ‘What’s funny about that?’

  ‘Everything down there seem funny when yer wake up.’

  ‘Wake up?’ I ask perlite. Do drowning still enslime her brain?

  She study her skeleton hand, her phantom nails, and say, ‘Yer find out soon enough.’

  ‘Yer talk good for a little cambion,’ I compliment.

  ‘There aint no ages here. And I weren’t a cambion.’

  ‘Yair, I know that.’

  ‘Aint no such thing.’

  ‘No.’

  She look sweet and dance upon the air like a string puppet.

  ‘It pain me that yer dead,’ blurt I.

  ‘Why? It don’t pain me.’

  ‘All of life missed out on.’

  She sigh. ‘There weren’t much gave to me. Jes the coal shed, the run through the forest, the well.’ She brighten. ‘It were the most fun, that run through the woods with yer, me peeping out of yer big coat. The tasty little meals yer brung me. Yer singing on t
he log when we have a rest. That were fun, weren’t it?’

  ‘It were,’ I agree. ‘Course I have all the worry. Where to steal the food, where we gonna sleep.’

  ‘Yair,’ she reply, and say stubborn, ‘but for me it were all a delight.’

  ‘Yer ask for so little,’ mumble I.

  ‘I were gave little. I dint ask. There aint no asking.’

  It startle me a child cud speak like this and I say so.

  ‘I already tell yer, there aint no ages here.’

  ‘Here,’ I fret. ‘Where is here?’

  She jes find this funny.

  ‘And what are yer?’ I persist. ‘If yer aint any age, why do yer look like a child?’

  ‘How else can yer recognise me? Yer eyes are still in the world.’

  Maybe I orta feel happy but I don’t. I feel like weeping fat black tears.

  ‘I tell yer a secret,’ she offer. ‘I were in my body like a hand in a glove. Now yer see the hand.’

  But hand or glove, a apparition aint a comfort to me. It were on the Earth, in life, wherever that place is – it do seem a bit of a muddle now – I wish to meet with her again. It’s on Earth, in life, I wish her still to walk, she’s safe there and possibleness still attend her, all the possibleness of living, becoming. She click her little pearly teeth like I think out loud, maybe I do, and say muttery, ‘There aint as much possibleness as everyone’s teached to think.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But were there more of a plan for me?’ I ask, seeing she know all the secrets of life and death. ‘Were I made special for a special life?’

  She laugh.

  ‘Why yer laugh at me?’ I ask wounded.

  ‘Living do the making.’

  I nod. I’m glad I find that out at last. It do seem only fair.

  Now she frown.

  ‘What? What now?’

  ‘Have to say, there’s a big black mark against yer for what yer done to Mama.’

  ‘But I still think I were special then!’

  ‘All the same.’

  ‘All the same?’ I repeat dumbfounded. Don’t a man get no excuses?

  ‘Look down there,’ she say pointing at the island.

  I turn and look. Ah now, who’s that pathetic creature creeping along in rags and gathering sticks? From high above he do look funny, he look like he make a misery and a fear out of everything. He creep and stoop and gather, and stagger under the weight of his poverty. He look … like me! Were I that man creeping like a insect and gathering like a beggar? For shame it do look like me.

  ‘Don’t stop looking yet,’ the sprite order. ‘There’s more to see.’

  Look now, the repulsive wretch come to the edge of the cliff where he do his handiwork. He drop his bundle of sticks and stand up straight, he even forget to keep hold of a stick to beat his self. He gaze at the ocean without flinching and smile at the penguin fish. He think they’re as irritating a shape to their selves as a Creator ever made, their useless stumpy wings that don’t fly, their duck feet that don’t walk, their bodies jes a starchy morning suit, but look how they contrive to free their selfs from their limits and enjoy their lives. Look how they gather and slip, peck and heckle on their rock slide, yet in the split second they hang in the air between rock and seal throats they grin. When the man see their grin he laugh too, he laugh and quite forget to hate his self and the other hairy selfs he were Crusoed with.

  I look back but the fairy child has went ping. Below me the penguins whistle and clack and scream and grunt. I know the Royal Society wud love to learn from me about the gamut of their conversation, they sure have sweep for a fish that don’t have no soul.

  I’m close to the water now, the water of the ocean I declare I never go on, I cud reach out and scoop it up with my hands. A funny last thought come to me. If I’m going where the physickists and houris and the sprite has went, maybe I get gave another go at life. Maybe I get it right. Forget special. Next time I come back as a whalefish breathing steady in the lovely deeps.

  ‘I always been a coin boy …’

  Hokitika, 1865, at the height of the Gold Rush. In a town with a hundred pubs, young Halfie – aka Harvey, Thumbsucker, Bedwetter, Cocoa and Pipsqueak – gets by as best he can.

  Most of the time he hangs around the Bathsheba pub, washing dishes, running errands and making the odd coin – and observing from close quarters the parade of miners, dancing girls, petty crims and plain drunks that passes through the doors.

  When you’re a coin boy you see a lot of life, and from low down. But how much do you really understand? What’s going on in young Halfie’s world?

  In this beguiling new novel by the author of The Curative, a rattling good yarn reveals that life is rarely what it seems.

  ‘Among our contemporary writers of adult fiction, only Elizabeth Knox can match Charlotte Randall for the sheer scope of her imagination.’

  New Zealand Listener

  Acknowledgements

  Historical information for the Australian portions of the novel came from The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes, Pan Books Ltd, 1988. Details about albatrosses, penguins, seals and whales came from a variety of sources, to which the narrator’s nineteenth century superstition and general ignorance have contributed a unique layer of distortion.

  Many thanks to Penguin, to my editor Jane Parkin and to Creative New Zealand for supporting this work.

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  First published by Penguin Group (NZ), 2014

  Copyright © Charlotte Randall, 2014

  The right of Charlotte Randall to be identified as the author of this work in terms of section 96 of the Copyright Act 1994 is hereby asserted.

  All rights reserved.

  www.penguin.co.nz

  ISBN: 978-1-742-53958-4