by Molly Murn
When he stopped outside the Simpsons’ little white hump of cottage and swung open their gate, I flushed with inexplicable rage. Eliza Simpson. He was quickly swallowed up inside the house and I picked my way along the road slipping into the scrub that fringed the dunes. I sank to my knees in the sandy dirt and waited by Frenchmans Rock. I knew the words inscribed without even looking. I’d recited them that many times, they were like a song to me—Expédition de découverte par le commandant Baudin sur le Géographe 1803. I looked up to Tigers Hill, the little patch of land where dear Tiger Simpson often set up camp. Father would be wondering where I was now, but I didn’t care. I realised that my worst fears were true: Sol hadn’t given me a second thought when I left. It was obvious. He had a spring in his step; he was light. If I’d been close enough to hear, he would have surely been whistling. He was the same open-chested, ‘clicking my heels’ Sol as always. Nothing had changed for him. He was not a broken thing.
We had walked along this road more than a year ago now, delivering honey to old Mrs Seymour when she broke her hip. Chatting to Tiger Simpson along the way as he tried to catch a lift into Kingscote. We couldn’t hold hands then because people would look at us funny, but we walked so close together I could feel the heat coming from him, the hairs of our arms just brushing. Sol carried the box of honey jars, and I nursed a cake that Mother had baked for Mrs Seymour. As we got to the beach we heard crying, and four boys, perhaps twelve years old, came running towards us.
She’s fallen over, the children said as they ran past us. And I thought I heard them snickering.
Down on the beach we saw a little girl, stranded, weeping. I tried to keep up with Sol as he bounded down to her. He got to her first, and I saw him pass her a hankie and kneel at her level. It was then I noticed a white wicker doll’s pram upturned, and dolls scattered. Broken dolls—heads and legs strewn. The girl was dark-skinned and wore a thin red dress. I didn’t know her.
What’s happened, little one, Sol asked her ever so gently. He placed her plaits carefully over her shoulders, and wiped her tears away with his thumb.
I turned the pram the right way up, and began gathering the dolls and brushing the sand from them.
They broke my dolls.
Those boys?
She nodded and hung her head. I was taking them for a walk. They teased me. Said I was too old for dolls.
Little buggers, Sol said, and stood to see if he could still see them. He would’ve clobbered them.
We put the dolls back together as best we could and I walked the pram and the dolls and the honey and the cake up the beach, the wheels jagging in the sand infuriatingly. Sol carried the girl, and I can still see those little arms of hers wrapped around his neck. When we got to the road, she said she was okay to walk home, and she kissed Sol’s hand. He gave her a jar of honey, and she grinned so big and toothy. Sol and I watched her disappear into the distance, pushing her pram, and he snuck a hand around my waist. For the briefest of moments I nuzzled my face into his shoulder. He was hot and I licked the sweat on his neck.
On the way home, we stopped off at the grass tree. I took off my dress and hung it in the fronds. We didn’t make love, not yet, but it was good to kiss with our skins touching. His hair was dark against my bright thighs; I gasped. When he put his mouth between my legs, even through my knickers, I felt myself swell to meet him, and I pushed his head hard against me.
Squatting there spying on Sol, I pushed that memory away and undid my top buttons. I must have been a pitiful sight. The sweat made my armpits itch. After some time, enough time for my headache to take a deep hold like my brain was banging loose in my skull, the front door of the cottage opened again and out came Sol. He turned and spoke to someone in the doorway, but it was too far away for me to make out who it was. Eliza, probably. I rose steadily and twisted my hair back into a knot. My cheeks burnt. I would confront Sol, I decided, so I waited in the shade of the trees, jealousy flaring through me, setting my mouth grim and my fingers twitchy. I was fire. I could set the trees on fire. I had wanted to be beautiful when we met again, to pick up where we’d left off, but now that I was actually seeing him I realised just how angry I was. We could never pick up again. I was broken now, and he hadn’t had to go through anything. Hadn’t even written me a word. Not a single word. Had he even asked after me? I brushed the twigs from my skirt and stepped out into the middle of the road. When he saw me, he began running, and shouting my name. Nell, Nell, Jesus, Nell.
He threw his arms around me and picked me up. Oh my god, Nell. It’s you.
I wanted to collapse into him, bury my face in his hot neck, but my body wouldn’t let me. For a while now it had been doing its own thing. I was stiff as a board. He set me back down and cupped my face in his hands.
Nell. Darling. What is it? What’s happened?
He looked tired. Great brown circles around his eyes. He was unshaven, giving his face a kind of rough look. Older, he looked older.
I shoved him hard in the chest. No letters. Not even a single word.
Sol tried to respond but I wouldn’t let him speak. How could you? You didn’t even think of me, did you—
Nell please, I—
And now Eliza Simpson. Like I was nothing—
What? Nell—
Shut up. I hate you.
Sol tried to embrace me—Please, Nell—but I pummelled him. It felt good to make hard physical contact. I punched him vigorously in the upper arm, until he grabbed me forcefully and pinned me in a hard embrace. For a moment, out of exhaustion and relief, I dropped my forehead into his chest. We said nothing, but he was breathing hard and fast and I was trembling all over. But then I remembered with a sort of panic those little scrunched red and waxy faces peeping out of blankets at the home—all those other babies with their mothers and mine gone. Did I see for a moment a thatch of dark wet hair? I just don’t know. Say goodbye, the nurse said, and then she took him away. Just like that.
I burst free of Sol, whose own body was starting to relax into mine. Say goodbye. I hate you. Just like that.
I’d wounded him. Sol’s jaw tensed and he backed away, but I couldn’t bear to look at him. I just turned and bolted.
Father remembers it differently. When he couldn’t find me, he set out himself along the road. He says he saw me arguing with Sol. He saw Sol getting rough with me, and then I’d broken free and run away.
Don’t you go anywhere near her ever again, Father shouted, his voice sprung tight, even though Sol had, by then, stopped speechless in his tracks.
Father says Sol just stood there running his hands through his hair maniacally, and was still standing there when later we passed him in the bullock cart. I looked for him everywhere, scanning the bay and the road and out the front of the pub, but couldn’t see him. My heart sank. Even on the road home, I looked for him between the trees that bowed towards each other in wooden tunnels over the road. He was gone. Gone. And Gem-Gem. I realised with sudden dread that Sol’s little dog, his shadow, his familiar, had not been with him. Oh, Sol. It was then I cried out, choked with tears. Oh god, what have I done?
You’ve got to forget him now, Nell. He’s caused you nothing but pain. He’s driven you almost crazy. Father’s hands on the reins were sunburnt, and he held the reins from underneath to keep them out of the sun. I worried that the bullocks would veer, that he wasn’t in control. We bumped jarringly along the pot-holed track.
Your mother and I are just so worried about you, Nell. She was a mess while you were gone. An absolute mess. We need to get back to how we were. I just can’t bear it any longer, Nell. You’ve got to forget him.
I was incredulous. You can’t bear it any longer, I thought. Forget whom, I wondered. Did he mean Sol or the baby Samuel?
Then why did you make me do it? I knew as I said the words, I was gutting him. It was Mother that made me do it. I knew that. But I wanted him to suffer. Why had he let it happen? Why hadn’t he protected me, as a father should?
He brough
t the bullocks to a skidding halt and we slid in the shale along the side of the track. The smell coming off the bullocks was pungent—like off milk. He turned to me and took off his hat, tears in his eyes. Behind him a sliver of water beside the track shone like the scales of whiting. I imagined a great big fish flopping by the road.
I want to show you something.
I still have that letter from his solicitor, tatty and overly folded, that he took from his pocket. And the words still sting—but they shut me up for such a long time. I was that great silver fish flopping out of water, each word scraping away a scale, until I was denuded, pink raw, burning in that interminable sun.
1828
American River
William can hardly remember what it was like before Minnie arrived. Minnie, the little sister he and Maringani both now share. And certainly before Maringani and the women came that first night, shivering and whimpering with their hands tied behind their backs. If he remembers back to those times it is just a blur of seal blood and rough voices and always feeling a little bit hungry and wishing his father would carry him sometimes.
He thinks of the days when Minnie was just a walking baby, following Maringani and him around like a babbling, curious shadow. It seems so long ago now that his father worried about him ’sociatin’ with Minnie he can hardly remember the night Anderson held his hand to the coals. The scar is more white than pink now. Clumped and smooth like melted wax. Maringani had wrapped his burnt hand with leaves for days afterwards, and William has not looked his father in the eye ever since. He had managed to keep visiting his sister in secret until eventually, because Maringani was able to keep Minnie out of the way of Anderson, his father seemed to forget about her. William carried her on his back before she was walking, while he and Maringani went digging for kuti, or laying snares for wallabies, or hunting for mutton bird eggs. Minnie’s plump arms around his neck were worth his disfigured palm, William remembers thinking.
Now everything has changed again. William feels himself more serious, the long uncluttered days stretching narrowly into a tight feeling. Something uncompromising. He can no longer slip between shadows unnoticed because everything he does and says has a weight to it now, even in his imagination; he looks like a man, so he is suddenly expected to behave like one. But what is it to be a man? Does it mean everything is yours for the taking, even the light of hope from the eyes of another? He shudders at the thought of ever hurting Maringani. Anderson needs him more than ever now. The men are building a ship near the salt lagoon and William must cut down trees, gather salt for ballast, and hold battens in place till his arms judder and twitch with strain.
Maringani is more distant and William doesn’t think it is because they are spending less time together. He notices that she won’t look him in the eyes like she used to and sometimes she doesn’t really want to talk with him. Emue, Poll and Maringani take off on what he assumes are hunting trips for days at a time, sometimes taking Minnie or sometimes leaving her with Mooney and Puss. The men occupied with building the ship don’t seem to mind the long absences of the women. When Maringani returns from the trips she is increasingly quieter and more serious. To William, she still moves like a bird, but she is rounding out in secret places.
And the last time she came back, she was scarred across her upper arms and back like the older women. The small cicatrices form a deliberate pattern, which he can’t make out and which he doesn’t stare at for overly long because he knows she doesn’t want him to.
Now she collects salt from the lagoon for curing skins, along with Emue and Poll, and Anderson watches her. William works on the other side of the lagoon because the men need more salt back at the ship. He stands up to flex his back and have a swig of water from his pannikin, when he sees Anderson standing on the edge of the lagoon. It is unusual for Anderson to be so still and so quiet. William can on most occasions detect his looming presence. Anderson is looking straight at Maringani as he blows smoke from the corner of his mouth. William doesn’t appreciate it. He has come to know a certain expression of his father’s, his mouth drawn into a hard line and his eyes filmy with exhaustion, that William finds disturbing. He knows not to speak to him when he looks like that but he can bear his father’s gawping at Maringani no longer.
Needin’ somethin’? I’m just ’bout done here, William calls out to Anderson.
Get back to the cove, Anderson says, stalking away.
William pours the rest of his water over his hands and down his neck and tries to dismiss the white heat of panic. He rubs his eyes with his wet hands and manages a quick glance at Maringani, who watches him. She bows her head and her hair falls in front of her face—clouds obscuring the sun. He turns and abandons the lagoon, following the staccato strides of Anderson down to where the half-built schooner lies, the ribcage of a giant fallen animal; and the men, like industrious ants picking clean the bones. Except they’re not picking clean, they’re putting flesh on bones, thinks William. Always wanting more.
Anderson decides that after the shipbuilding is complete, he and the men will go on another Sabine expedition. He is tired of Emue and Poll and Mooney and Puss coming and going as they please as if they belong to no one.
Yes. I will cotch meself a wife. A young ’un, Anderson mutters to himself, taking a swill of rum.
What’s that? William asks, dumping more wood on the fire. I was just fancyin’ meself a new gin, son.
Anderson moves back from the fire—the mallee roots catch and the hut brightens.
You s’pose you can just take ’em as you please, do yer? William says slow and quiet.
I do. And besides, next time you’ll be coming wid us.
I won’t.
Anderson puts down the pannikin of rum and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
So you think yer too good for a gin do yer? Yer think yerself better’n me? I seen yer makin’ eyes at the gerl. Yer not foolin’ me. It’s allers bin the way to steal gins and maybe when all this land hereaway is full wid settlers, they’ll yarn ’bout the ‘old times’ and us islanders grabbin’ black women for wives. Anderson laughs but is stopped short by the look on William’s face. Beatrice used to sometimes look at him like that. Disappointed. Ashamed. He waits for William to speak, but his son remains far away.
Yer think yer can get by wid no woman do yer. No purty lady is goin’ to have yer. And there ain’t none hereabouts. Not long afore now yer’ll be wantin’ some game, son. And black game it’ll be.
Shaking his head, William spits into the fire. Emue’s more ’an just game to yer. Don’t yer see. Yer nothin’. Yer think yer’d be sellin’ skins wid out Emue? Yer need ’er.
I agrees wid yer, son, but I can still ’ave that and fresh game.
William makes to leave and Anderson rises shakily to his feet. Call the gerl. Go on. ’Ave yerself a treat. Why yer holdin’ back? Or is she more ’an just game to yer?
Anderson shoves William towards the opening of the hut, Go on, son.
William tries to shake him off. Leave me be.
I won’t until yer agree to come gal-huntin’, Anderson says, his hand tight around William’s upper arm. And when William purses his mouth into a hard line, Anderson staggers outside into the cold air and calls for Maringani.
Maringani sits with Emue, Poll and the other women around the fire, talking softly while dinner cooks: a shoulder cut off from the young seals put directly on the coals. Every now and again Poll turns the spitting meat with a stick until it is almost done. Minnie lolls in Maringani’s lap, the weight of her affection soothing, but uncomfortable, as her pointy elbows push against soft stomach or breast. The men’s voices are getting loud and brash across the river, jarring the quiet of the purple dusk. Yesterday they bartered a hundred skins for a store of rum from a merchant ship. Maringani clicks her tongue disapprovingly, lowers her head, and talks in a hushed voice to Emue, as if by making herself quieter the men might forget she is there. She pulls William’s thick woollen coat around her and
Minnie more tightly, shivers and stares into the curling smoke. The coat smells of campfire and dried fish. She hopes Anderson will not call for her. Emue looks over and Maringani knows she is hoping the same thing. She begins to sing in a low, lilting voice. Poll joins her and the song distracts Maringani momentarily from the rising volume of shouts at the men’s camp. Minnie becomes still in her lap, but throws dry leaves into the fire one at a time. Together they watch the crackle and release of wisping eucalyptus smoke.
When the meat is ready, the women and the two girls share it out between them, and eat listening to the swagger in the laughter and the crashing about that is coming from the men’s camp. Afterwards, they rub the oil from their hands up their arms and along their legs to keep out the cold.
Hey Polecat, shouts Anderson from up the track, send Mari down wid yer.
Maringani stiffens and Emue leans in to her and whispers, Nginbulun, nginbulun. Take Minnie.
Minnie’s hand grips her own as she flings the rest of her meat into the fire, runs to the wurlie, grabs some skins and flees with the night and the stars on her back. She glances back, and Emue is walking slowly down the track to the main hut. Minnie yanks at Maringani’s wrist.
William is almost relieved when he sees Emue appear out of the scrub, rather than Maringani. But as soon as his father speaks, he realises that it is not relief he feels, but an overwhelming guilt. He knows that he can do nothing to protect Emue against his father.
Where’s Mari? I called fer Mari, not you … yer black bitch, Anderson hisses, steadying himself against the outside flank of the hut. His face is blotchy and his eyes are pale and glassy. William takes small, silent steps in a wide arc to try and move behind his father without him noticing. He hedges sideways. The other men are in the hut, chortling over one another in loud, gruff tones. William can smell burnt fat and tobacco.
