Preservation

by Jock Serong

  ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘Your wife, lieutenant.’

  Charlotte peered around the doorway behind the maid. She had never come to this part of the building, never encroached on his working life in this way. Her face betrayed no worry, but he knew better than to make assumptions. He dismissed the maid and Charlotte closed the door behind herself.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m sorry—’ she stammered. ‘I wouldn’t have come here, of course, but I…’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘The man, the one you described to me. He’s come back.’ Her hands rose nervously to her face. ‘He’s taken Boorigul.’ She began to cry.

  Grayling rushed around the desk to her and held her. She plunged her head into his chest and sobbed. With his fingers in her hair and the rise and fall of her breath close against him, he felt again that chaos she brought: steadying him and flustering him by turns. The girl was not their child. She was not even their lodger. She was someone who had sought refuge near them. Not even in their home, but near them. Charlotte’s face, her whole body, was focused down into his heart.

  The man no doubt had some business with the girl. An intended husband, he thought, or a tribal relationship—they seemed as complex and unending as the weather. It was beyond him and Charlotte to stop such a thing, or to interfere in it.

  She raised her head. ‘I had her inside the house,’ she began. ‘I wanted her to try some of the things I’d bought at the Rocks. He came in and he just started to shout and wave his arms, he came in and…’—she wiped tears from her eyes—‘and she screamed back at him and he took the chair and…and he tried to strike her with it and I got between them and the chair hit me and…’

  ‘Charlotte! What were you thinking? Are you hurt?’

  ‘…and then he did, he struck her with it and it broke apart and no, I’m fine, but she fell and he took her up by the hair and the arm and he dragged her out and she was crying, Joshua, she was crying and I have never heard her utter such sounds. Dear God.’

  The rage inside him made him quieter. ‘He hit you with the chair?’

  ‘Well, yes, but it was because…’

  ‘I cannot let that stand.’

  ‘Please.’ She took him by the lapels and looked deep into his eyes. ‘Please, Joshua, understand it’s not that which grieves me. It is the poor girl. She did not want to go. She might…come and go from our house, but she did not want to go with that man.’

  ‘Maybe she had to. Maybe she had done the wrong thing, being with us.’

  ‘Had to? He dragged her out by the hair! Why must you always be so…so…’

  She broke free from him and turned away, wrenched open the door and paused, then closed it behind herself with composure. Because, he knew, she would be thinking of him and the dignity of his place of work even now. He hated himself, and perhaps her too, for that consideration.

  He followed her downstairs, through the hall. She crossed the orchard without looking up at the colourful violence of a mob of parrots attacking an apple tree, and swept through the gate that marked the end of the Government House gardens, where the kangaroo grass began. He realised he did not know what he would say if he caught up with her. He couldn’t descend to shouting at her in the street. People were already turning and looking: eager for a fresh feed of gossip.

  She was striding, determined now, away from the houses of the administrators, their foolish fences and their walls. Her head was down, and though he could only see the angry slant of her back, he knew the grim line in which her mouth was set. Her white dress, so bright in the clean sunlight, beat across the dun-coloured land like a tiny sail. She was aiming herself at the bush. Past the Eora, circling their small fires; towards some mystery in the trees that would always beckon her.

  35

  In the afternoon, Charlotte took off the clothes she had walked in, wrestled them through a cask of water then hung them to dry behind the house. Obscured from the street by the heavy foliage of the peach tree, she stood barefoot in a shift, the sun on her shoulders and chest. The ground was littered with the large woody nuts that the wind threw down from the big trees. The sun and the wind coming over from inland would dry everything by the time he returned in the evening, but she cared less now. What she did for herself, she would keep to herself.

  The washing done, she sent for the boy.

  She tidied the house and broke flowers from the garden, spiked and strange. She stuffed them in a jug on the table; threw open the sash windows so the clear air swept through the two rooms. She swept the floor and took a rag to the spiderwebs in the corners that held the dry husks of enormous flies.

  By the time the private returned with the boy, she’d wrestled the cottage into a satisfactory state. The soldier was tall, the red sleeve of his coat extended with disdain to where he had the boy’s upper arm in a painful grip. She had no idea whether Srinivas was in custody, or this was merely one of the small acts of bullying that made up a private’s busy day.

  ‘You may release him,’ she said firmly, and the soldier shoved the boy forward. She thought to tell her husband about the brute; but she knew he had no sway with the Corps. She would only make it worse for him and the governor. Srinivas shook himself loose with a flash of anger and gave her a nod that might have been a shallow bow, but without words. The soldier shuffled a few paces back and stood to smirking attention. Charlotte glared at him as she retreated inside and shut the door.

  She turned and gestured to the boy to sit. Studied his face as he did so. She found shades there of wariness, and the glimmer of something illicit.

  ‘You didn’t speak to the soldier?’

  He smiled faintly. Now they were conspirators. ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘I should have come for you myself. It’s just…I was worried for you.’ Shut up, said an inner voice.

  He accepted a cup of tea, some bread. She waited through the slow clearing of his hesitance, busying herself with trivial things around them. Re-closing the windows, poking the fire. The last discussion had shaken her deeply: curdled her misgivings about the tea merchant into deep loathing. But of Joshua’s motivations she was less sure. She knew he also hated the man, but perhaps in his case it was that Figge had handled her, had laid his hands on her body and—as ugly as the reality was—had cured her.

  Her back was turned, the boy slurping loudly on the rim of the teacup, when she abruptly began.

  ‘Can you tell me what happened afterwards? After the two men…’

  He put the cup down, watchful. ‘Ma’am,’ he said softly, ‘I hope I am not impolite, but I have a question.’

  She nodded eagerly. ‘Of course, dear. Go ahead.’ Dear. It echoed falsely in her mind.

  ‘What will you do with what I tell you?’

  She had considered this. She had spoken to her husband, told him the shape of her thinking. ‘We must go to the governor. He needs to know, Srinivas. He needs to know what happened, and to take appropriate measures.’

  He did not seem agitated by this. ‘My safety…?’

  This she had worried about. She knew no firm answer but the need to reassure was the greater thing. ‘You will be safe.’

  And when he nodded calmly she had the sense that he had accepted it on that basis: good intentions—nothing more.

  ‘We walked all that night, ma’am. I don’t know why. Mr Clark’s no longer in charge—it’s all Mr Figge, but he’s not saying much. We’re following him, I suppose. He acts as if he knows where to go. Cliffs, and we’re high on the edge of them, then beaches then cliffs again. North-east, not straight north anymore. And every cliff I wonder if he will catch us off guard, just throw us to our deaths.

  ‘By dawn we’re on that long line of high rocks with the sun coming up below us, weak and grey. A fever dawn, you understand, ma’am? I think Mr Figge had walked us through the night because he was in fear of the natives. But by then I’ve forgotten what to be scared of. We’re walking so we can watch each other. Sometime
s we walk into things: trees, or holes in the ground, because we’re watching each other.

  ‘Someone falls down, I can’t remember who. It could have been me. Never have I felt the pull of sleep so strong as that morning. There we are ma’am, the middle of the morning, the three of us capsized in the grasses by a swamp, a pool that reflects the light, filled with reeds and things moving. Turtles, maybe. Ducks. So bright there it makes a great weight on my eyes.

  ‘There is some time there, hours. When I wake up I’ve got the sense to keep my eyes closed, to look without being seen looking. I can see Mr Figge and Mr Clark sitting. Awake, talking. They’ve made a small fire and they’re talking quiet. Talking about their plans. And then they’re talking about killing me.

  ‘Mr Figge has a rock in his hand, ma’am. The rock is the size of that loaf, and he’s pushing it towards Mr Clark, saying do it. Mr Clark’s upset, saying he doesn’t have the stomach—stomach?’

  ‘Yes,’ Charlotte replied.

  ‘And Mr Figge’s laughing at him. How many more must I do for you, Clarkey? he says.

  ‘Mr Clark’s cursing Mr Figge, words I don’t wish to repeat, and still Mr Figge laughs. And Mr Clark, he says Give me the rock then, and Mr Figge hands it over and I can feel such a fear in me, I’m choosing a moment to find my feet and run. If Mr Clark had the rock he would be slow, but Mr Figge would run me down quick.

  ‘Of course it will be me next. I can see it then. And the chance to run has been closed off, as Mr Clark’s already on his feet with the rock in his hand. I close my eyes and think once of my father, praying that this blow would join me to him once again.

  ‘But instead ma’am there’s a noise, a thud, and I open my eyes to find that Mr Clark has struck Mr Figge with the rock, hit him right between the eyes. His nose is broke, that is clear, and there’s a great deal of blood coming down through his beard and over his chest, making drops on the rock as he falls back. He goes back on the rock on his arm, like this’—the boy demonstrated with his elbow on the table—‘and Mr Clark’s quick on him and hits him again. This time over his head.’

  Again, the boy demonstrated by pointing at his own scalp.

  ‘Both times, ma’am, they are enough to kill anyone else. And I cannot say, I do not know what’s in his mind, but Mr Clark, he just drops the rock and runs. He has the bag over his shoulder, the one where he keeps his diary and his instruments. But he doesn’t stop to pick up anything else. He doesn’t speak to me. He just goes.’

  ‘Perhaps he couldn’t finish it. Kill him, I mean,’ offered Charlotte.

  ‘Maybe. But before long Mr Figge’s moving about. Making sounds of pain. And he reaches a hand for the rock and there is such terror in me, I cannot say. A man may have to take up a rock against another one day and with good reason, but Mr Clark had raised a hand against the devil himself. I could not imagine what terrible fate he had opened for us by doing it.

  ‘So I go too, ma’am. I get to my feet and go blind into the scrub as fast as I can run. It makes a lot of noise—a lot of cracking branches and my breathing—so I cannot be sure what’s happening behind. Only that he’s coming. I know he’s coming.

  ‘Ahead of me I see Mr Clark and I’m calling to him. He doesn’t look back, just head-down running, and that is what I got for all my good service. We’re on a path—sometimes in the thick places there’s a path that’s clear and it goes where you’re going—and this one followed the cliff top. Always close to the edge so you could see out to the sea, but far enough back so you would not fall.

  ‘Mr Clark’s running ahead and I’m chasing him, calling, and Mr Figge’s coming behind. I look back at him and I can see him at the bottom of a rise in the path, carrying his bundle as he always does. That means he has a knife, the gun and the tinderbox and I do not know what else. There is much blood on him and he roars like a beast. I try to keep looking ahead because it’s hard not to trip, even though the path is good. On both sides are the trees, the ones with the big flowers that become cones.’

  ‘Banksias. After Mr Banks.’

  ‘Oh. Yes. They make roots across the path sometimes. Easy to trip on them, is the thing I was saying. Many times I fall, and each time I get up Mr Figge is closer.

  ‘After that last beach, we run the length of it, heavy, deep, and then the cliffs are high and straight and there’s no break for maybe, I don’t know, three or four miles. I’m staying with Mr Clark though he’s not helping me at all or even looking at me, ma’am, but we’ve both lost the path. It just comes to a point…some thin trees had fallen, and we just crash through and go straight ahead and we’re in the bush. I’m thinking at any minute we’ll come through blind and fall and die on the rocks below.

  ‘As we’re running I’m shaking again, thinking only let me lie down and allow what comes. Perhaps the reason I am still going is the fear it would not be a quick death. I’m calling out to Mr Clark, just loose words, but saying I can no longer hear Mr Figge, that we could stop and hide and he won’t find us in the thick bush. Mr Clark must have heard me because one skip left and he throws himself down a little ditch and behind a heavy log and lies still. There’s time for me to do the same, then we both lie there. Breathing hard but trying to make no sound.

  ‘And soon Mr Figge comes by, moving fast, breaking everything in his path. I can see his eyes ma’am and they’re… There is no man living in there.

  ‘Then I press my face into the earth and in front of my eyes is one of the holes that the ants make, the big ones…?’

  ‘Yes, I know the ones.’

  ‘They’re coming out, many dozens and fast. I have been stung by them before, so I know how much it’s going to hurt and I can see them coming, so I might not cry out. But Mr Clark’s facing the other way. If they sting him he’ll cry out and we will be discovered. I’m pinching them, stopping them as best I can but there’s more and more coming out, and I’m looking at Mr Figge and he’s moving about, searching. Almost smelling, his face close to the ground and not so far from us. The slightest noise and he will know. I cannot understand how he hasn’t seen—we’d torn the ground in our rush to hide ourselves.

  ‘But it doesn’t matter, the ants I mean, because then Mr Clark does the most surprising thing. He was next to me under the log, safe there, but he gets up and stands, only six or seven feet from Mr Figge. I can see the whole thing: Mr Clark’s legs all covered in sores and the ragged ends of his trousers, but past him, Mr Figge, with the blood stuck like tar in his whiskers and on his shirt. And those eyes. The broke-up nose just making them burn worse than ever.

  ‘He drops the bag off his shoulder and out comes the knife. Just holds it low like there’s a snarl in a buntline. Steps forward at Mr Clark and says Where is the boy? And Mr Clark just says I’d got away, gone running off into the bush. We don’t need to worry about him now, he says, but any fool can see there’s no we for them anymore. Mr Figge’s got a bone come out under his eye that says so.

  ‘They’ve still got the log between them, and they’re both shouting and I see that Mr Figge doesn’t have the strength to get past the log, to stick the knife in Mr Clark and end it. His hand hangs like the knife is a great weight to him. Mr Clark steps back, keeps the log in the way. Little steps, watching Mr Figge close, like you might a wild beast. Once he’s back a little he stands on open ground, and Mr Figge comes around the log. Mr Clark backs away some more and the shouting stops. Now they just watch to see what the other will do.

  ‘So Mr Clark goes on walking backwards into the bushes with his eyes on Mr Figge and then there is a noise and he cries out and…he’s gone. Just thumps and breaking sticks and such.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘The cliff. The land just ended and he was gone. Do you understand? When you are in the bushes everything is so close and scratching you and then it just stops: just air. It always felt to me like someone was going to go over.’

  ‘What’s Mr Figge doing when this happens?’

  ‘Coming for him, like I s
aid. To where Mr Clark disappeared and he’s looking down—I can’t see from where I’m hiding—and then he puts himself on his arse, sorry ma’am, like a child and pushes with his hands and he slides a bit and then a bit more. Then, same as Mr Clark, he’s gone. I come out and I’m glad to be away from those ants but there’s very little left in me, just this shaking in my knees.

  ‘I hold on to a tree for a time. There’s no sound. The noise from the two of them going down the cliff has stopped and it’s just the wind and some birds.

  ‘I’m still thinking Mr Figge will come from somewhere like this is a game and he’s won it. I’m stepping forward in the scrub to where they went down and I can see it’s very steep. Maybe they died, I’m thinking, and now it’s just me. But it’s not a great height like I had thought. Only yards, I don’t know, maybe twenty yards through the little trees to the beach.’

  His brow furrowed in concentration. ‘I can see them. They are moving all broken over the rocks, then they are trying to walk across a creek mouth. Up to their knees, but it’s nearly enough water to knock them over. The water goes down, they take a step and then a wave comes up the creek and hits them. Mr Figge nearly has him now, but a wave gets him and he falls down and Mr Clark gets out onto the sand and starts off across the beach. Mr Figge, he’s swept back with the wave to where the seawater is, and he’s rolled over by another wave and he looks like a bundle of rags in that wave rolling over and by the time he’s got his feet again Mr Clark is quite a way up the beach. But then he stops and falls and I think maybe it is the end of him.

  ‘Do I want him to get away from Mr Figge? I can no longer say. The world unfolds now and I can only watch. Duty is nothing: I cannot send loyalty down the cliff. My father would let it be so, whatever it is. That is how I think. Anyway, I have no strength left. I have been several days now without food, and the ground is clean where I lie. Just a soft mat of leaves between the trees, some shoots of the tough grass. The light is kind—it does not burn.