Preservation

by Jock Serong

  ‘But Mr Figge was set on it. We go on, he said. And Mr Kennedy argued with him, in front of the natives. You could see they were shocked. Mr Kennedy was in two minds, you could see that too: he hated the natives and did not trust them. Where are their spears? he kept asking, out loud. Prob’ly in the grass all round us, waitin’ for a chance, for that was how he talked. But he knew Mr Thompson was near finished; Mr Thompson himself could not speak on it. Mr Figge still insisted. I had a dark feeling that he did not want others around us.

  ‘And so we went. Mr Kennedy was talking rough, pushing the native men, though they could have blown him over with a strong breath. He was like a drunk, and they stepped away from him with much grace.

  ‘So we walked on and the sky cleared after the rain, the day was hot, the sweat burned in the places where my arms rubbed against my sides, itches from biting bugs. If the others had not yet thought about what we faced as our strength fell away… Well, there it was, miles of it in front of us.

  ‘We had no eats for a long time after the fish that the Tharawal gave us. They stayed away, I think shy of Mr Kennedy. We looked for things to feed us: anything our teeth could crush up. At the creeks we took water in our hands, but it was often salty.

  ‘Mr Clark tried to keep his hands clean by washing them in the ocean. I went to a rock pool one day—he asked me to go with him—and I saw him on his knees by the water’s edge so he could put his hands in. And this is the—this is how we were: he watched me before he bent to it, as if I would attack him. He looked over both shoulders. When he finally put his hands in the pool he was watching the water, the reflection, to make sure nobody was behind him. We were animals now, wary of everything.

  ‘There were bones broken in Mr Clark’s hands, white splinters I could see. But no one was brave or not brave about any of it: there was no one to talk to and nothing to say. We each carried our ills. Mr Thompson had not spoken in days—he was no man anymore, but a corpse that still walked. The wound in his side had mortified, and it was clear he would not live.

  ‘And so the days. Over the little headlands and crashing through the bush, weaving around strange squatting palms everywhere. Mr Figge went mad one morning: he saw a seal on a rock shelf and he chased the thing and it roared at him and stood tall and there they were: man and seal, up and screaming each at the other like they knew only hell and pain. Mr Figge took a stout branch and he swung it at the seal and it howled and went to bite him like a great fat dog but it missed, and he clubbed its head. I heard the crack when it hit and it broke the stick he was using. He got his senses back and he ran, with the seal behind him, so fast over those rocks with its big—’

  He made a desperate flapping motion with his flat hands. Charlotte laughed, and it felt like releasing something.

  ‘Flippers?’

  ‘Flippers. Yes, ma’am. Slapping. But Mr Figge went like he’d stole something and the seal gave up. He was laughing ma’am, hard as you are, when he came back to us, but the fight had slowed him and he rested in the sun, and so we all did.

  ‘I watched his head resting on the bundle of his things, ma’am, and it shames me but I thought of doing him in. I would just take a rock, just take a rock—’

  Charlotte looked at the boy holding an imaginary rock between his outstretched hands. He seemed too delicate for the deed he had contemplated.

  ‘—and break his head with it. In a world that had my father in it, I would not have thought this thing. This is what the walk had done to us all. I looked at Mr Clark and I knew his thoughts were the same.

  ‘Mr Figge woke after the sun had come round to afternoon. Mr Kennedy had been out looking for food and he came back tired just as Mr Figge was waking. Mr Kennedy was looking to settle down for a bit, and Mr Thompson had already laid himself out in a gap between two rocks. He had pulled a branch over him, to stay warm; or maybe Mr Kennedy had done it. From one of those big bushes with the bark like paper, a dead part. Mr Thompson was under there, shivering.

  ‘Mr Figge woke up to this and he was in a strange temper, very hard to read. Something in him had changed while he slept. He walked around a little. Looked at Mr Kennedy, who’d laid himself down on the open rocks. Oh and he—’

  ‘Go on, Srinivas. You must.’

  ‘—looked at Mr Thompson in his place under the branch. And he looked at me, and I was wishing he didn’t. I was sitting like this with my chin on my hand, resting my head there. So tired. And he bent down and he looked into me, cold knife in my heart and he said, A head is a heavy thing.

  ‘He did not look at Mr Clark. My bones ached that something was not right. Mr Figge did a little walk around where we were. He found some old bark and he sat down with it, took it apart in his fingers until it was all just…bits?’

  ‘Fibres?’

  ‘When his hands were full of the fibres he went to his things in their cloth and he found his little tinderbox. He worked the tinder and he got a spark up in the fibres and he crowed, happy he’d got it to work this time, and blew on the fibres and they caught nice, and then he got up. He took the ball of burning tinder and he dropped the bundle on the branch that was covering Thompson.’

  ‘What? No…’

  ‘I’m sorry ma’am. It might be best for you if I stop there.’

  Charlotte Grayling steadied herself and thought of what she’d been entrusted with. ‘Please continue,’ she said, as formally as she could.

  ‘It all happened very quickly. The branch lit up—whoosh—and Mr Thompson began to scream. And he fought, ma’am, he shook for all he was worth trying to get that branch off him. But Mr Figge walked away like he had already thought of this; he picked up a rock nearby, a good-sized one, and he walked back and dropped it on the burning branch and he just stood there. Mr Thompson was screaming and screaming and begging, and by now Mr Kennedy had got up and he tried to lift the rock but while he was bent over Mr Figge kicked him so hard he nearly fell into the fire.

  ‘I tried to run forward too, ma’am, but Mr Clark…He held me. He got me around my middle and he said I should stay back. I was duty bound to do as he told me but I was watching a man die…we were both very weak anyways and I don’t know how it would have gone if I had broken free but the screaming had become crying that was not like a man but an animal and there was a hissing sound that, maybe boiling…I don’t know what.

  ‘Mr Kennedy then, he was back on his feet and he took a branch and swung it at Mr Figge and it got him over the ear, knocked him sideways. But the second one was too slow and Mr Figge got the end of it and took it from his hands and hit him with it. Mr Kennedy fell down and now it was getting darker but things were lit up awful by the fire over Mr Thompson, and he was no good for sounds but a groan or two.

  ‘It was clear enough that Mr Thompson was done for but the fight went on—slow for a fight. Every time one of them moved you could see it cost him. I remember Mr Kennedy took a stone about this big and he threw it at Mr Figge and it caught him on the chin. It hurt him, there was blood. But he kept coming at Mr Kennedy and took a hold of him and took him to the ground. Not too hard for him, because he is plenty bigger.

  ‘Mr Kennedy was shouting at Mr Figge, ma’am, foulest curses I’ve ever heard, and I’ve been at sea. I was thinking you’d best use your air for the fight, and Mr Figge just kept coming like he couldn’t even hear it. He hit Mr Kennedy’s face hard enough to kill a man. It was straight and it took him right between the eyes.’

  Srinivas mimed the fist in front of his own face, looked at his knuckles like they were Figge’s again.

  ‘He fell crack with his head on the rock but he started getting back up again and it weren’t on our account I can be fairly sure or even to save his own skin but he just hated the man so much I think it kept him going.’

  The boy was wide-eyed now and his voice had risen in pitch, his breathing shallow. Charlotte stood and stepped to the window; was about to place her fingertips on the sill when she saw marks in the dust there: the shapes of fingertips. The bo
y had been standing there in lonely vigil. His sorrow filled her completely now.

  ‘What happened to him?’ she asked. ‘To Mr Kennedy.’

  ‘Mr Clark was still holding me but I had given up, really. The smoke from Mr Thompson and the branch was on the air and now it was blowing between us and the other two and the smell was so bad. The smuts got in the sweat on our faces, sticking there.

  ‘There was…tumbling, times where everything happened and nothing happened. More fighting. Then Mr Kennedy was down, propped against a tree, eyes maybe open, maybe not. Mr Figge went back to the bundle of his belongings and I was just sure he was looking for that big knife to finish him. But his hand came out holding the gun. It felt like years ago that I’d watched him try out that gun, on the beach when we first started walking. It hadn’t worked because of the seawater. I thought to myself, well why would you go and get that?

  ‘He went over to Mr Kennedy ma’am and I need to say again it’s no pleasant business but he put the gun up against the man’s chin and moved his head up that way, and Mr Kennedy was just there enough to look evil at him and Mr Figge, who was much busted up himself, was singing or maybe chanting low sounds and I could not say for sure what it was. Nothing I ever heard on board.

  ‘Mr Kennedy showed his teeth at him like a mad dog, even though the gun was up under his chin and if it worked it would make a big hole in his head from there. Mr Figge had his foot on him so he could not move and Mr Kennedy said to him clear as day, and forgive me cursing ma’am, he said Ye cannae kill a man wi’ a gun that doesnae fuckin’ work.

  The boy sighed and gathered himself. Charlotte felt his disgust, his reluctance to go on. But they shared a hateful desire that this thing be said, and be heard.

  ‘Mr Figge took him by the hair, ma’am, and pulled his head back hard and he said oh it works all right and he opened Mr Kennedy’s jaw with his fingers until we could see the teeth he had and his tongue and a funny sound came out of him and I started pulling away from Mr Clark again—I’m not sure if it was to help Mr Kennedy or whether just because of the smoke—and the thing he was doing was…well, he had got the gun. He had his fingers pulling the mouth open and he took the gun, ma’am, and he rammed the barrel down the man’s throat until it was five, maybe six inches down there all the way to the trigger guard and Kennedy’s eyes went huge and Mr Figge struck the butt of the gun a couple of times with his fist and stuff shook out like spit and…and it went even further down and Mr Kennedy turned a bad shade of dark and the blood started to come up round the edge where his lips were round the metal and it was spillin’ around the gun and Mr Figge was laughing and slapping his legs like he’d never seen a thing so funny. Like he were a child and the pedlar’s monkey had danced for him, but the blood was bubbling in the poor man’s throat and the veins in his neck and all bursting flesh and spots that came from bleeding inside and when he got tired of laughing, and it had been quite a long time now that the man had been in these torments, Mr Figge just pinched his nose and held it. He looked back at us with this empty, smiling face and the poor man went even darker and the part of his eyes that was white went red as blood. And then he stopped.’

  ‘Oh, dear God.’

  ‘I’m sorry, ma’am.’

  Charlotte nodded; swallowed hard. Her task. The end of this saga, these awful men. ‘Go on, Srinivas.’

  The boy studied her for a moment.

  ‘Mr Clark let me go then. Mr Figge stood up and Mr Kennedy stayed sitting as he was but he was dead as the rock under him. The foul smoke was over us and in us and I made to be sick, but I’d not eaten a thing for days by then. It was more just a sound.

  ‘The goin’ should be easier now, Mr Figge said to us like it never happened. Then he went back and he pulled the gun out of Mr Kennedy’s mouth and wiped it on the leg of his breeches and put it back in his bundle. And there were other words on his breath as he did so. Taking those as none shall miss, he said. Small lives go unmourned.

  ‘I couldn’t take my eyes from Mr Kennedy because his mouth and his eyes were wide open and there were two of his teeth that the gun had broken off and they were stuck to his lip in the blood.’

  The boy slumped a little where he sat. ‘That was all that happened there. As I said, ma’am, I’m sorry.

  ‘It is a fearful thing to be told. But that is the man you have here.’

  34

  Joshua Grayling had been admitted to Governor Hunter’s office but not invited to sit. In the clear bright light of the room, William Clark had brought a chair around to the same side of the desk as Hunter, and neither appeared to register his presence.

  He watched the two of them, deep in discussion and shoulder to shoulder, the merchant explaining to the governor how the escarpment ran closer to the coast as it stretched north, until it was a straight line of cliffs rising almost vertically from the sea.

  It was obvious to Grayling that Clark’s confidence surged when he got on to the commercial opportunities he felt he’d uncovered. The prevarication, the evasions he practised when asked about his companions: they were gone, and in their place was a condescending ease that infuriated Grayling. Why would the governor not push him harder?

  ‘It was mostly just rock platform through there,’ Clark explained as he pointed to a drawing he had made with the governor’s assistance. ‘The platform was big flat stretches of sandstone, good on the feet, although the oysters could deliver a cut. Some boulders at the foot of the cliff, little pebbly cove here and there but no harbour, no landings. And the land, as I said, was narrow between sea and cliff, and so thick as to be nearly jungle.

  ‘But what was so very interesting here,’ Clark continued, ‘is that I wandered the beach in search of driftwood to make a fire and to my amazement, I found a block of the purest black coal.’ He looked at them both like he had produced a rabbit from somewhere under his coat. ‘Yes. Black coal, of a fine enough grade that I was able to burn it in a small campfire.’

  An eyebrow betrayed the governor’s interest. ‘Did you find the source of the block?’

  ‘Yes, Your Excellency, a seam running back into the cliff. A rich reserve, at least to my untrained eye. I believe it might be amenable to quarrying.’

  The governor made careful note of this.

  ‘Now I take it that Mr Figge and the lascar boy joined you at this coal fire you’d made…’

  ‘Indeed they did, sir.’

  ‘And they were still in reasonable health at this stage,’ the governor said, as much to himself as to the room. The quill made its swirls over the page. Grayling saw now how his impatience had blinded him to Hunter’s strategy. He’d seduced Clark, imperceptibly, into dropping his guard. ‘But you and the two crewmen? Had your pace fallen by now?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Clark. ‘I neglected to explain. As you will have seen from the journal, we had been forced to leave Mr Thompson and Mr Kennedy behind by this stage.’

  ‘You referred to him only as “the carpenter” in your journal, I think,’ Grayling said.

  ‘I did, sir. I did not know him well to begin with, and once I had reached this sorry pass, what with my hands and all, I didn’t find detail to be a priority.’

  The governor frowned but did not look up from his work. ‘Tell me a little about that parting. When you left the two of them.’

  ‘Well now,’ Clark rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. ‘What do I remember? Late afternoon. As the day wore on, I’d made several entreaties to them to get up and move before dark. We held grave reservations regarding the attitude of the savages in those parts. But despite my pleas, Thompson was lying down and could not get up. Mr Figge made a fire, and there was an argument—Kennedy became quite vocal in his defence—then Mr Figge intervened and the matter was settled. We were forced to leave them there.

  ‘Where exactly, Mr Clark?’ The governor held his quill ready again, quivering over the page.

  ‘The cliff country, but north of where we found the coal. There were about ten miles between the c
oal and the beach where we were rescued, and I would estimate it was the day before…the place must be two or three miles south of the rescue site. Yes, yes—I am satisfied that is it.’

  ‘Mr Clark,’ said the governor, ‘you seem less sure of this than other matters, yet it is quite recent.’ The governor looked up and spoke to Grayling as though Clark wasn’t there. ‘Is that where we’ve sent the boat on the basis of this man’s journal?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I think it is, more or less.’

  He turned back to Clark, and Grayling could see, from having watched him over the years, that the governor was closing in. ‘Mr Clark, the fishing vessel that picked you up on the sixteenth went back out again on the seventeenth, after the lieutenant and I had read your journal. I expect they will be back later today. I had asked them to make urgent searches and to inquire of the natives if they could. So we may hope’—he watched Clark as he formed the words—‘that they will have news of your abandoned companions.’

  The governor’s pale eyes never left Clark. His weathered face betrayed no judgment, nothing but a calm expectation.

  ‘Yes,’ Clark replied eventually, looking down at the wounded hands resting on his lap. ‘We can only hope. But I fear the natives will have done them harm by now.’

  After the meeting was over, Grayling sat with Clark’s journal in a small anteroom off the governor’s office, studying the book with his head in his hands. The morning light made squares on the desk, framed by the window panes.

  Our disagreeable and treacherous companions continued with us on our journey until mid-morning, when they betook themselves to the woods, leaving us extremely happy at their departure.

  He had always assumed it was Clark’s disdainful reference to the Wandandean, or the other natives that Charlotte said the boy had mentioned, the Tharawal. Now it seemed loaded with meaning.

  He was lost in the words, so that the knock at the door made him jump. Mrs Butcher, the governor’s head maid. She stood with a hand on the doorhandle, which for her meant reaching up to eye level.