Preservation

by Jock Serong

  It infuriated her, the waiting for him, but there was nothing else to do. She had tried reading but her head hurt. She dozed occasionally but only woke up dry-mouthed and dizzy. She threw back the covers when the irritation overwhelmed her but her legs refused to swing over the edge of the bed.

  By the time Joshua came home she was worse than she had been all day. She’d thrown up in the tin bucket he’d left her, and could not summon the means to get up and rinse it. She could hear him pause at the skillion as he came past the well. The room would stink, but she could do nothing. He showed no sign of noticing the smell when he entered. He stepped swiftly across the room and laid a hand on her forehead, watching her with eyes full of worry. He murmured that she was a sweet girl, and she raised a smile in response. He looked left, back towards the skillion.

  ‘Boorigul’s gone again,’ he said. She nodded. She didn’t want to discuss that. He took the bucket away without comment.

  She watched him go through the same procedure as he had each evening since the illness appeared, his way of resisting futility. He went to the pot over the coals to bring her soup, and she allowed herself a smile at the sight of his back. He placed the bowl carefully on the lap table he had fashioned for her. When she sat up she felt cold air on her shoulders. The night had a chill about it that was new, and the dark had crept forward earlier.

  ‘It’s good,’ Charlotte murmured between sips.

  ‘The kitchen said it’s made from kangaroo tail.’

  She feigned disgust. ‘Can’t we just imagine it’s beef?’ But she sipped again and saw how it filled him with relief. ‘What stirs out there in the colony?’ she asked, mock-serious.

  ‘Army worms. Twice as bad as yesterday, all over the maize and the vines. Don’t know what did it—maybe the damp morning.’

  ‘The place is attacking itself.’

  ‘Mm. Attacking us.’

  Joshua sat on the edge of the bed in his underwear and she dropped a hand on the small of his back as he waited for her to finish the food. She ate against her will, to ease his concern. When she was done, he took the little table with the bowl on it and deposited it by the door. He returned to the bed and she reached an arm out so that his head rested on the slope of her chest, just beneath her shoulder. Her fingers found his hair and traced light strokes through it.

  She found that she was fighting back tears. Everything, everything was at risk. She must defeat this, whatever it was, or she would leave him condemned to the town and the vagrant howling of men unmoored. He was holding her tightly now in the tangle of warm body and bedclothes, as if he sensed her terror.

  Once again, she coaxed him into conversation, to shift them both from the unstable ground of her welfare, and drew from him the details of the discussion with Figge. He explained the unnerving offer the man had made, to attend on her and—had he understood correctly? To offer some cure?

  She waited without a word until he was finished. ‘He’s unsettled you,’ she said.

  He nodded reluctantly. ‘I can’t define what it is. I know I don’t want him near you.’

  ‘Do you think…’ She paused. ‘Do you think there is some great scheme in him?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A plan of some kind…I can’t see how any of it could benefit him. He’s a tea merchant with cargo onboard the ship. It’s in his interest that the ship makes it to Sydney and the tea sells.’

  ‘No. I cannot see a scheme to it. But he’s revelling in this somehow.’

  ‘What about the coast, the way these two described it? You say it runs south of here, this line that goes all the way down to the very end of Van Diemen’s Land.’ She drew it with the tip of one finger down his thigh and he stretched, cat-like, at the pleasure of it. ‘But it is interrupted—’ she lifted the finger. ‘There is a part of the coast that nobody has charted?’

  ‘Yes. Furneaux missed about two hundred miles. He sketched some islands, but west and north of them is a mystery.’

  ‘And that’s where the ship is?’

  ‘Somewhere. Or it’s in among those islands.’

  ‘But further in? Further to the west, where Furneaux—’

  ‘Drew nothing? That is one possibility.’

  ‘Very well.’ She was animated now, clutching his arm. ‘But why would a captain send his vessel in there? I know you would want to shelter from the weather that was damaging the ship, but if it was already in distress, why would you push into that uncharted place?’

  ‘Maybe they had no control over it.’

  ‘Maybe. Surely nobody would do so intentionally.’

  The word hung between them, the idea of someone’s deliberate plotting; a capricious god-hand in the chaos.

  Charlotte watched Joshua lean forward to extinguish the candle with a short breath. The darkness settled over them and she felt the warmth of him and wondered painfully for how much longer their bodies could share comfort this way. The darkness gave her the courage to form the words.

  ‘You know, I’m not getting any better…’

  He did not answer.

  ‘We need to be realistic, Joshua. If I should…’

  He had found her lips with his fingers, stopping her. ‘There’s plenty we haven’t tried.’

  Outside a cold blue moonlight made shadows from the unfamiliar trees. Somewhere near the house, an owl piped a soft vigil.

  They both knew what had not been tried.

  11

  The following morning, Grayling returned to Clark’s quarters, his mind crowded with contradictions.

  He found the doctor beside Clark’s bed, a basin on the bedclothes. He was carefully washing the hand wounds. Grayling watched, transfixed by the water trickling through his palms and into the dish, tinted and flecked. Ewing peered over his smooth white fingers as they tended the edges of the wounds. He did not look up. Grayling was aware now of another man, seated in an armchair on the far side of the bed. The man had his hat placed neatly on the floor beside the chair, but he nodded his head deferentially when Grayling looked his way.

  ‘Who is this?’

  Ewing answered him. ‘This man is William Martin, lieutenant. An assistant surgeon with some interest in my work here with Mr Clark. But he has…other interests, don’t you Mr Martin?’

  Martin stood. He extended his hand enthusiastically.

  ‘Lieutenant, I have not taken the liberty of speaking with Mr Clark here until you arrived.’ He looked both to Grayling and to Clark as he spoke. ‘I work with Mr George Bass, sir.’

  ‘The surgeon.’

  ‘Yes,’ Martin smiled. ‘We also have an interest, as you might know, in the coast hereabouts. Mr Bass is at sea right now on the Enterprise, but I thought I should take the opportunity to hear Mr Clark’s tale.’

  Grayling looked at him blankly.

  ‘It concerns a section of the coast that has greatly exercised our minds.’

  ‘This supposed sea passage north of Van Diemen’s Land?’

  ‘Precisely.’ The easy confidence marked him more as salesman than navigator.

  Grayling looked at the doctor. ‘Doctor Ewing, have you been sharing these discussions outside this room?’

  If Ewing was shocked at the accusation, he didn’t show it. ‘Not at all, lieutenant.’

  Clark watched the exchange without interest.

  ‘I see.’ Grayling thought for a moment. ‘You understand, Mr Martin, that what transpires in here is confidential.’

  ‘But of course. The same can be said of our interest in this.’

  ‘Very well. Observe without comment, please. Mr Clark’s condition is still very delicate. Which brings me to you, good sir.’ Grayling patted the bedclothes somewhere near Clark’s knee. Clark glared at the hand and Grayling withdrew it. ‘Are you improving, Mr Clark?’

  The wounds on his face were darker and drier now, the inflammation slowly easing.

  ‘Somewhat. Mostly now it is irritation.’ He looked from Martin back to Grayling. ‘You have my journal
with you again. Is it the handwriting you’re struggling with?’

  Grayling was much too interested to be deterred by Clark’s show of reluctance, or by the presence of Martin, the opportunist. He drew a chair close to the bed, while Martin returned to his on the far side. The doctor packed his implements and left.

  ‘It is the longboat journey, Mr Clark. Your journal, of course, doesn’t commence until the overland journey begins. Would you kindly tell me how the longboat came to grief?’

  The wind blew consistently through February, though it was warm and mostly dry. My responsibility on the company’s behalf was to watch over the cargo, but that aside, I was little occupied.

  The longboat, as you know, was slipped on the beach at the southern end of Preservation. Mr Kennedy had added two runs of straking planks so the sides were higher, less likely to admit any waves. After about two weeks the captain set about crewing it. He’d made a decision that it was he who should stay with the wreck and the cargo, though I am the supercargo and all of the bailed goods are my responsibility. I don’t say it was the wrong decision: only that it might not appear conventional.

  The longboat had no name. Just an open hull, no shelter, under the command of the chief mate, Mr Thompson. He is—or he was—a reasonable fellow, though much in the way of all ships’ mates he was abrupt. We took the carpenter, Mr Kennedy, because such a voyage demands repairs from time to time, and having worked on it for two weeks he knew the vessel best.

  Yes, we took Mr Figge. Well, lieutenant, you would have to ask him why. I imagine he would say that being a trader he was in a good position to assist with a salvage claim.

  Like? ‘Like’ is not a word that comes into it. You stagger through the bush with a man and it is dark and light and wet and dry and you are hungry and sore. There is no place for notions of friendship. If you asked me did I admire his bravery or tenacity or skill, I would answer no. None of those things.

  No, I do not wish to speak further of him.

  So. It was Thompson and Kennedy and Mr Figge and me. There were a dozen lascars, along with my manservant Srinivas… yes, the boy in the next room.

  I do not know their names, other than one was the boy’s father, Prasad. He was their serang. Why do you want their names? Heavens, I wonder at times where this questioning is going.

  At any rate, the letter you have in your hand, addressed to Governor Hunter, was written by the captain. I saw him write it, in case that is also animating your suspicions. I have not read it because I am not in the habit of reading that which is not addressed to me, but I understand that it explains the ordeal of the storms and the wreck and the island, that it gives an inventory of the cargo, which I could have supplied you in any event, and that it asks for a merchant or government vessel to render assistance and deliver the crew to Sydney.

  We departed the island on February twenty-seventh, my twenty-eighth birthday, as it happens. You will want to know what we had with us, no doubt. We had latitude, through the use of the Sydney Cove’s sextant; given we were planning to follow the coast north we had little need of longitude. There was one small mizzen sail rigged up because we believed we’d be sailing downwind most of the way, and two sets of oars.

  The longboat had no keel to speak of. We thought this was to our advantage. It would enable us to get into river mouths and such, and we could break up the voyage that way. Two weeks, we expected. And why, I ask you now, lying here in this state, why did we have any such confidence? Providence had turned its back on us already, many times. Why would our shallow-keeled tub with its flimsy sail find its way up that coast in a fortnight? Without incident?

  I’m not.

  I am quite all right. The sooner I get through this, the sooner you’ll leave me alone, that’s why.

  We stopped once on the northern coast of a long island that ran south to north. All granite boulders, like Preservation, but forming a great mountain at its southern end. Made a fire, ate some of the large grey geese that frequent those islands. I felt the weight of our responsibility heavily there. Thompson had command of the boat, but it was incumbent upon each of us to ensure the boat made it to Sydney: if it did not, then not only were we seventeen lost, but the remaining thirty-two on Preservation would be lost too.

  But misfortune has tarred us, as you know, lieutenant. There was only a day or so between that stop on the north-running island and the abrupt end of our voyage. Out in a wide stretch of sea dotted at first with rocky isles and then wide open, we sailed the longboat and we rowed it sometimes, or the lascars did. Towards sunset we felt a luffing breeze from the south-east and it built during the evening after dusk.

  Just on dark the sky changed. The early stars went out and the wind picked up sharp. There was worry among us at this turn of the sea’s mood. We set watches for the night: there were enough of us on board that it was an easy schedule and the lascar boy and I slept briefly before they woke us to keep watch.

  It was the two of us and Mr Figge, the rest insensible, and I woke to find we were following a low coast now. Very close, running east, not north, and the waves were sharp under us, rushing foam at our beam. Darkness out there, shrubs on low dunes and some native fires. Mr Figge had the helm. Neither he nor I are sailors but he appeared capable, just bracing the boat against the wind and adjusting sidelong over the waves that passed under us. I gave him no further thought. I was engaged in calculations of various kinds: the speed we were making and the likely distance to Sydney. When misfortune struck, it came from nowhere at all.

  I do not know what went wrong with Mr Figge’s handling of the craft—you would have to ask him—but without warning we plunged nose-first into the trough of a large wave and the bowsprit caught in the sea and we went end-over. One moment I was slumped there on the edge of sleep and the next I was in the water and the longboat was capsized. The provisions and equipment were floating around us, though fortunately some of it had been stowed in oilskins.

  I see it now, their heads in the water. I hear men coughing, calling out to one another. It was not terribly cold, but panic seized us nonetheless. The lascars—Mussulman and Hindu alike—they are prone to band together in any extremity and so they gathered themselves in undisguised self-interest and took hold of one another. The boy Srinivas, of course, found his father and clung to him in defiance of his duty, refusing to separate from him despite my entreaties. I called to them all to get themselves on the windward side of the upturned vessel so that it would not roll onto them. One of the others, Kennedy I think, had busied himself cutting away the shrouds lest we became entrapped. But no one was tangled, and every man was able to find himself something to hold onto.

  I will bring you into my confidence for just a moment, lieutenant.

  Two days into my twenty-ninth year, a time for consolidation. Family, titles, positions. You have a wife, no doubt? Ambitions and responsibilities? Me, I was floating on my back in the night, looking up at the clouds and here and there the stars behind them, taking stock. An orphan, a neophyte in the family firm and in the shortest month of the calendar I’d managed to shipwreck myself twice. I hope you’ll understand if I…

  No, no. Enough.

  Being flipped in the surf at night must be as bad a result as you could wish upon a man but for once, luck was with us. I was floated and bobbed and rolled by the breakers for long enough that I started to shiver. Then my feet struck sand beneath me and I realised Providence had delivered us into the shallows. The first glimmer of good fortune since we slipped the fucking hawsers—excuse me, lieutenant.

  The longboat was gone but we still had many of our stores and we had lost not a single man. One by one the rest staggered ashore. I counted off the crew and the lascars counted themselves. There were no injuries. For some time we stood there in the darkness, just able to make out the shape of our boat as the waves set about dismantling it before our eyes.

  At such a point, strangely, one hungers for activity. But there was nothing anyone could do. Men wandered off to fi
nd refuge, to make fire and dry themselves. I took the boy and we made for the hummocks of sand at the rear of the beach, found a hollow under the overhanging scrub and slept a few hours, damp and restless.

  At daybreak we could see we had made landfall in the middle of a vast, flat beach that stretched beyond sight to the south-west and the north-east. Large pieces of the boat were washing in the shallows. Behind us were unending dunes; before us, a horizon entirely devoid of anything: not a reef, not an island and, most wretchedly of all, not a sail. It was hard to imagine an emptier world, but our minds were already filling it with terrors.

  There were unspoken questions about authority now that we were walkers, not sailors. Nothing was clear anymore and survival was all.

  By the time the sun rose we were burning the timbers of the longboat.

  12

  Clark had turned himself onto one side, facing away from the lieutenant. It was unclear to Grayling whether this was a response to his physical straits or a sign that he had finished speaking. In either event, there seemed little value in pressing on, and he had much to cross-reference with Figge. He made a note to check Clark’s estimates of latitude so that he could update the charts for the governor.