A Room Made of Leaves

by Kate Grenville

  At my urging, Mr Macarthur came up to the field with me, and had to agree that the wool promised to be very fine. But after a cursory look he turned back to go down the hill.

  – Yes, well done, my dear, he said. Very satisfactory.

  – But Mr Macarthur, I said, putting out a hand to stop him, is it not true that wool can be sent to London for sale, where no other commodity can come out of the hold after six months and still find a market?

  – Oh yes, he said. I suppose that would be so.

  There was an extra degree of the casual in his tone but his face had tightened. I realised that Hannaford was still within earshot, and my husband felt the need to show that his authority was untroubled by a wife piping up at him.

  – That fellow Marsden has some idea of growing wool here, he said. But what is needed is meat. Only a fool would think otherwise.

  His silence let it sink in that I was the fool.

  – My dear wife, your enthusiasm is to be applauded, he said. But let me convince you by means of a little arithmetic. The price of wool is measured in pence, that of mutton in shillings. A difference by a factor of twelve, you see.

  Hannaford had all at once become busy leading one of the ewes away and getting out his knife to scrape at her hoof. Called to the lad to help him, Look sharp, lad, look sharp now!

  – My dear wife, Mr Macarthur said, and patted my arm in an excess of condescension, I think you will find your idea is nothing more, au fond, than a desire for the fields and sheep of home.

  I did not try again to speak to him about wool, but his indifference freed me to picture for myself the culling and the keeping Hannaford and I might do, so that each generation of lambs would have finer wool. I was dizzy thinking of all the combinations and permutations of Bengal and Irish and Spanish that we would have once we went down that path. In-and-in, Grandfather had called it, but you could not do in-and-in unless you knew what every sheep’s parents were, and its parents before that. The way to keep track would be to write it all down in tidy columns like the blue notebook in which Mr Dawes had begun to chart a language new to him. That way you could keep order, so the mounting of ram with ewe was not chance, but system.

  I saw myself striding up the hill every morning to the flock to feel the wool on this one, the chest on that. In the same image, there was Grandfather on the hillside with me, proud of his clever grand-daughter, looking about him with pleasure at what she had done. He might even find it in himself to forgive William Hannaford for stealing a ram that did not belong to him.

  MON PETIT COIN

  Down beside the river I had a spot of my own, where now and then I could slip out of the skin of Mrs John Macarthur. It was screened by bushes that framed a view up and down the stream: another airy room made of leaves. In that lovely place I often wondered what harbour, what river, what street, Mr Dawes might now be looking at. Wherever he was, he would find himself another petit coin, and perhaps, sitting there, remember the woman who had found it so difficult to get her mouth around the phrase. Mon petit coin à moi.

  One evening I went down there, in a musing frame of mind, thinking of the year past and the year to come, and the surprising corners that had led me to this peaceful place. There was a fallen log that, like the rock at the top of Mr Dawes’ point, was as if made for a backside. I sat on its familiar shape and waited for the air to flow in around the disturbance I had made, until I became just one more object in the landscape and the creatures around me resumed their lives.

  A black waterbird stepped across a patch of grass, head bobbing earnestly at each step, and from somewhere overhead another bird sang Pic-ture! Pic-ture! as if it, too, saw the beauty of the scene. There was the softest of rustles as a slim black snake passed from one tuft of grass to another. Threads of spiderwebs hung golden in the soft liquid light and beneath them on the ground the perfect crescents of gum-leaves were arranged in an elegant display.

  As I sat, the river caught the last light, its surface alive with flickering patterns of gold and shining spots where bubbles rose. On the far bank the tangled black trunks of the mangroves stood up to their many knees in the shadowed water. There was the lap of small waves, the gentle whistling music of the she-oaks when a breeze ran through them, the twitterings and chirpings as invisible birds arranged themselves for the night. A cloud of midges hovered in a last shaft of sunlight, each speck gilded by the low sun. As light shifted into shadow, each moment was a kind of soft shock, a wondering astonishment at the beauty of all these simple things around me. The world had created this loveliness, but it had also created some matching thing in me that recognised it as lovely.

  Looking back up the slope, between the trees I could make out the darkness that I knew to be the house. As I watched, a point of light sprang out there, failed, grew bright and steady. That would be Mrs Brown lighting the parlour lamp. Then another joined it. The lamp in the dining room.

  Soon I would walk up the hill and into that golden light. The children would be there, those beings who had blossomed out of this place. I knew every crease in their bodies, every impulse of their small souls. I knew every corner of those rooms, every pattern of the grain of every floorboard. I knew every tree and rock in my petit coin, every shape the water took around the bed of the river at every height of the tide. This land—this dirt and stones and trees—was connected to me now by a thousand days and nights of breathing its air, a thousand filaments of memory. In my seat by the river, it had never occurred to me to calculate which direction England lay in, so I could point my longing beak towards it. This spot did not make me think of somewhere else. I only thought of what was here about me. This sky. This dirt. This water and these stones.

  It was not flesh of my flesh, bone of my bones. Devon was the land that held the bodies of every man and woman whose couplings had ended in me, the place where my forebears had lain in the churchyard at Bridgerule for so many years that the words on their gravestones had blurred. Yet I belonged here now, better than I belonged to any other sliver of the globe’s mighty bulk.

  I let myself enter the story of being in this place for the rest of my life. Of putting my feet down and letting them grow roots. Of walking every afternoon down to this river with its mysterious shadows. Of watching my children—perhaps my grandchildren—grow sturdy on the sunlight and dry sweet air. Of the place growing around me, a second skin. Of growing old and dying here, gladly becoming part of its dust.

  Like the hand of a compass swinging and hesitating, wavering and finally pointing, my thoughts showed me what I must have known for a long time without recognising: this was home.

  The water was sombre now, the mangroves eerie. Sitting beside this river, seeing the forest gathering shadows on the opposite bank, I could not see how a future here could come to pass. Sooner or later Mr Macarthur would say, Now we are going home, and what would I do? I might know this place to be my home, but Mrs John Macarthur was obliged to find her home wherever her husband decreed. Staying here was a dream, a longing without form.

  But the idea was stronger than the impossibility of it. Even to recognise that longing and give voice to it was a kind of power.

  AS ELUSIVE AS SMOKE

  It was extraordinary that more than two years had passed without a new governor sailing into Sydney Cove. Rumours arrived on various ships. It would be this man; it would be that. He had not yet been appointed; he was on his way. With every ship there was a different story, told with the same breathless certainty as the last.

  In the meantime, poor Major Grose became less and less able to go through the motions of his duties. The wounds he had received on His Majesty’s service in America had a debilitating effect that no amount of rest seemed to improve. When, on my rare and brief visits to Sydney, I glimpsed him, he was a bad colour, and corpulent in a way that suggested illness rather than high living. It came as no great surprise when he announced that he must return to England to regain his health.

  He handed the reins to his deputy. Power d
id not corrupt pleasant Colonel Paterson: he remained as agreeable as ever. He was happy, as he put it, to do no more than keep the seat warm, and did not object to any suggestions made by the Inspector of Public Works. On the basis of our expanded flock, and some buttering-up by Mr Macarthur, the colonel was happy to award him a hundred acres beyond the settlement at a place called Toongabbie, then a further hundred. Mr Macarthur was not the only one to benefit from the colonel’s largesse: land was being granted away on all sides, farms springing up near every watercourse.

  As more and more land was granted away, the raids by Pemulwuy and the others became more frequent and inflicted more damage. Mr Macarthur might refuse to call what was going on a war, but whatever name you gave it, there was not much doubt who was winning. Soldiers who had been sent to New South Wales to keep order among prisoners were instead standing guard over fields of corn. They could not be everywhere, though, so field after field of precious corn continued to go up in smoke. Settlers in the isolated parts, living in daily fear of a spear sailing out of the forest, spoke of abandoning their farms. From time to time the situation was so grave that there were whispers—hushed as soon as voiced, but persistent—that in the end the colony would have to be given up altogether.

  It was true that natives were sometimes shot. But there was never a decisive victory, because the battle was always fought on their terms: the surprise raid, the quick retreat. There seemed no way to tempt them out into open battle, where guns could do their work. They were too clever for that.

  I could feel that the matter was becoming personal for my husband, chasing after an enemy as elusive as smoke. Pemulwuy was making Captain Macarthur look a little foolish.

  OLD HORNPIPE

  We got word from the Iconic that the Admiral Barrington, with the new governor on board, was not far behind. Mr Macarthur called for his horse and set off for Sydney before the breakfast things were cleared, determined to be the first on board to welcome him. Had himself rowed out to the ship, he boasted, almost before the anchor was let go. Enjoyed a lengthy private conversation in which he was able to lay before the new man an outline of the various personages and dilemmas he would be dealing with, and Mr Macarthur’s own view as to the best way to deal with them.

  The new governor, like the first, was an officer of the navy and was immediately christened Old Hornpipe by Mr Macarthur. For a time he was as credulous as Mr Macarthur could wish. But he had been in Sydney Cove with the original fleet and he was no fool. He saw how the colony was faring, as a kingdom run by the Corps and powered by liquor. It was clear from the first month that he planned to get authority back from the officers by putting an end to those profitable rivers of rum.

  As far as my husband was concerned, Old Hornpipe’s attitude was nothing but malice. It was a wish to destroy him, Captain John Macarthur, personally. It was an outrage. The man was a blackguard and a fool. The Inspector of Public Works threatened to withdraw his services, wrote long scathing letters to Whitehall about the governor, poisoned as many minds against him as he could.

  Old Hornpipe put up a good fight. He called Mr Macarthur’s bluff on his threat to resign as Inspector and appointed a new one forthwith. Was known to be matching Mr Macarthur’s letters to Whitehall with his own, and never let anyone forget that he was, in his person and in his office, the representative on this continent of His Majesty King George the Third.

  Colonel Paterson, now deputy to the governor and commander of the Corps, was still useful, and still warmly cultivated by my husband. But he no longer held those godlike powers that he had enjoyed as acting governor. There could be no doubt about it: the officers’ glory days were numbered.

  More than once I surprised Mr Macarthur in closed dark brooding, a man who had tasted triumphs and now felt them in danger of being taken away. On every side his ambitions were blocked: for the moment there was no more land to be had, his profitable speculations were under threat, and the thing that he would not call a war smouldered on.

  I knew the look of that closed dark brooding. It was my husband with something up his sleeve.

  TRYING TO SEE IT

  One night a messenger from the barracks came to the door with a note for Mr Macarthur.

  – Yes, Mr Macarthur said. Trouble at the northern farms. Yes, I see.

  He was untroubled, unsurprised, as if he had expected this very note to arrive, if not on this night then on another, and he knew what to do when it was delivered.

  – Pemulwuy again? I said.

  Mr Macarthur gave me a bland smile I could not read.

  – Ah, I had best look into it, my dear.

  There was nothing but good cheer in his tone, which surprised me, as his military obligations were usually a source of irritation. He was already out of the room calling for his horse, and he did not return that night.

  I slept uneasily. I could not put out of my mind the way Mr Macarthur had been as he read the note. What are you up to, Mr Macarthur? What do you know, that you are not saying?

  When I rose in the morning all was calm. I went out on to the verandah and Mrs Brown brought me my breakfast cup of tea. Hannaford came around the corner of the house and was about to speak when there was the silly thin pop of a far-off gun, then another. A confusion of shouting came from the direction of the township, whistles blew, a drum started up a jerky banging, there was a flurry of shots.

  – What is it? I said, with a sour feeling, because something was wrong, and it had to do with the note that had come for Mr Macarthur, that he had been expecting.

  But now the shepherd lad was running up the hill towards us.

  – The natives, he panted. The natives are come in! Come in over the river! Two hundred at least!

  His eyes were shining with the pleasure of being part of something so grand, but safe to tell the tale.

  – Mr Macarthur says to tell you there is no danger whatever, he said. But to stay here, madam. Not to move out of the house on any account.

  – The natives, Mrs Brown said. Oh, the Lord help them, they will not get far against the guns.

  Even as we were speaking, silence fell. There had been a few dozen shots, a few minutes of shouting.

  Whatever had happened, it was over.

  By the time my husband returned that night we had heard an account—actually, several different accounts—of what had taken place. The central fact, common to all the versions, was that, an hour after dawn, a large body of natives, some number between ten and a hundred, with Pemulwuy at their head, had attacked the township of Parramatta. There had been an affray. Natives had been killed. Perhaps six, perhaps fifty. In some versions Pemulwuy was dead.

  I was impatient for Mr Macarthur to return, because to my ear there were many things about these accounts that did not make sense, in particular the central question: why would Pemulwuy, that clever general, make a direct attack, in daylight, on the most heavily armed part of the colony? A thing he had never done before, that he must have known was doomed to failure?

  My husband cantered back up the hill in the evening and swung off his horse with the air of a man who had done a good day’s work.

  – Is it true what we have heard? I said. An attack by the natives?

  Thinking that the story must have taken on a distorted shape as it travelled from mouth to mouth.

  – Broadly yes, he said. But wife, let me catch my breath!

  Called for supper, sat down and gave it his full attention. I poured his wine and a glass for myself, like any patient wife awaiting her husband’s pleasure. But it seemed he would go on buttering his bread for the rest of the evening rather than say more.

  – Well, sir, will you keep me in suspense all night? I said, smiling to soften a sharpish tone.

  He leaned back in his chair, watching me as if to compare my smile with my words.

  – So, he said. This is how it was. More than a hundred natives attacked the northern farms in the night.

  It was as if he were giving evidence, or dictating a l
etter, each phrase clipped out and pasted onto the air.

  – The settlers armed themselves and pursued them through the night, and in the morning came up with them on the outskirts of the town.

  – Through the night, I said. Through the brush. And the natives were going towards the town? Not away into the forest?

  I was not doubting. Only trying to see it.

  – Yes, my dear, that is what I have told you, Mr Macarthur said. The settlers came up with the natives on the outskirts of the town. Then, fatigued from their march, they—the settlers, you understand—entered the town. An hour after, they were followed by a large body of natives, headed by our friend Pemulwuy.

  The words were so very simple. But those stern and knowing men whose acquaintance I had made with Mr Dawes: could I picture men like them doing what Mr Macarthur had just told me?

  – Followed! I exclaimed. Why on earth would the natives follow them, after being chased by them all night?

  Mr Macarthur said nothing. He was watching the candle on the table spilling a grey trickle of wax. He bent forward, stopped the wax with a finger, was attentive in peeling it off where it had stuck to his skin. Something was odd in the feel of the room. A mood like a cold draught had come in and sat down with us.

  I puzzled away, trying to make a picture out of his words. The settlers were followed by a large body of natives. I could only think of one way to make sense of it.

  – Oh I see! I cried. They must have been promised something!

  – Promised something! Mr Macarthur said. What would they be promised, pray, and why?

  He looked at me narrowly, but my question had not come out of suspicion. It was only that fatigued from their march had an air of working too hard to explain, while followed did not explain enough.

  But I had trodden somewhere Mr Macarthur did not want me treading.

  – Forgive me, Mr Macarthur.

  If I were to find out more, I would have to dispel that draught.