Birrung the Secret Friend (8 page)

She threw down a carrot. It landed
whump
in the pen. Old Black Foot scrambled in after it. I shut the pen quickly.

‘Thank you!' I called, careful not to look up again in case I saw her bare legs.

I heard a swishing sound. Birrung slid down the tree next to me. She pushed her skirts back into place and grinned at me. ‘Walk?'

Go for a walk with her? Just the two of us, when Sally expected me to bring her a bucket of fresh water for the morning, when Mrs Johnson would be waiting to say evening prayers, which she did on the nights when Mr Johnson was away in Rose Hill as he was this evening?

I grinned back and nodded. I was glad Birrung was happy enough to go for a walk again. I was even gladder it was with me.

I thought we'd go down to the harbour. Maybe she'd even teach me to swim. But instead she scrambled up the hill, past the brick pits. At last we came to a big smooth boulder, sitting near the top. She sat down on it. I sat next to her, feeling the warm stone, smelling strange trees, hot and cold breezes weaving around us.

I looked at the harbour. You could see the flagpole from here. As soon as the lookout saw sails from England, they'd run a flag up the pole.

The flagpole was empty. Day after day, no matter how much everyone stared at it.

Would a ship ever come?

It'd be winter soon. We'd landed here with food for three years, but rats and humans had stolen a lot. Even
the officers didn't dig their own gardens, but sat back while their convicts did it for them. Would some folk starve? The lazy ones, the ones who'd rather steal than work?

I glanced at Birrung. We wouldn't starve. Governor Phillip's garden was raided night after night. But the convicts were too grateful to Mr Johnson for helping those who were sick or in trouble, like me and Elsie, to steal from the Johnsons.

Or at least they were so far.

Birrung gestured to me to be still. I froze. I thought a snake was about to bite me — there'd been a big brown one among the corn one day till Birrung had grabbed it by the tail and lashed it down and broke its neck. I waited for this snake to put its fangs in me . . .

Birrung put her arms around a big old tree next to our rock, and then hugged it with her knees. It looked strange, her black legs under her petticoat. She made her way up that tree like a slug, except slugs are slow and she was fast. I thought: That must be how she climbed up the tree by the garden.

She reached into a hole and pulled out an o'possum. It hardly had time to wake before she yanked its head back, sharp, so. The head hung limp, dead.

‘Meat,' said Birrung. She threw it down. I caught it. I watched her legs under her skirts as she climbed down, then flushed when she saw me watching.

She laughed. She picked up a bit of rock. Looked like any old rock to me. But she bashed it against a boulder, and then bit the edges with her sharp white teeth. And suddenly the bit of rock was like an axe blade crossed with a knife.

Birrung cut the o'possum around the neck and paws and backside, glanced at me, then went more slowly, so I could follow what she did, pushing her thumbs under the skin to take the fur off.

Meat. It had been weeks since we'd eaten fresh meat. We'd had to live on the salt pork ration, so hard Sally had to cut it into shreds so we could eat it, just two pounds a week for a grown-up and I got two-thirds of that and Elsie even less, because she was a girl. It was against the law now to kill any hens or goats or pigs or sheep to eat. They had to be kept to breed more animals.

The governor had given the officers their own shooters, convicts who had guns and powder and could bring in wild ducks and kangaroos for their masters. But when Mr Johnson had asked for a shooter too, the
governor had said no, even though Mr Johnson was a gentleman, like the officers.

And now a girl had got fresh meat for us. She didn't even need a musket and lead shot and powder.

Birrung looked at me looking at her. Her hands moved again, slowly, in the grass now, showing me what to do: tearing off tussocks and sort of plaiting them — and there was a basket, to carry the meat.

I wondered if somehow Birrung could make bread for us too. I missed bread nearly as much as fresh meat. More maybe, because I'd never eaten meat much back in England, but Ma usually had a few farthings for a loaf of bread, soft white bread with a hard black crust, English bread, not Sally's heavy cornmeal damper . . .

Then I realised. I didn't think of England as home. The colony wasn't just where I lived. It was where I wanted to live, with the harbour and bright birds and Elsie and Birrung, who could swim and save a baby girl and her mother and get us fresh meat . . .

‘Can you find wheat? You know, to make flour for bread?' I felt stupid as soon as I said it. How could a native make bread? Even Birrung?

Birrung laughed. She reached over to another tussock and shook it, and caught the tiny seeds in her hand. The
palm of her hand was lighter than the back. The seeds looked black and shiny. She put them on the boulder, rubbed her rock backwards and forwards over them, then showed me the paste this made.

It didn't look like bread. She held it out for me to taste. It didn't taste like bread either. It didn't taste of anything much. But damper dough didn't taste of much till it was cooked either. Would this be like bread if it was cooked?

‘You'd need a lot of them seeds to make a loaf of bread.'

I think she understood me. You never did know how much Birrung understood. She just laughed again. She threw the paste away — threw away good food, when most of the colony were wondering if they were going to starve, as if she knew food was all around her. I reckoned for her it was.

The shadows were turning into night. The first star winked at us, above the harbour. The waves turned purple with the dusk. Suddenly it was all so beautiful I never wanted to leave, sitting on this warm rock that had soaked up the sun. But we didn't have a lamp with us, or even a slushie. I said, ‘We better get home. Don't want to be lost in the dark.'

Birrung nodded. She picked up the meat that had
been an o'possum. She stopped, and pointed at the star. ‘Birrung,' she said softly.

‘You think it's pretty?'

‘No. Yes. My name is Birrung. That is birrung too.'

‘You're called Birrung, like a star?'

She laughed. I'd got it right.

Now I knew another native word. I could write words. I could speak native ones . . .

I pointed up to the sky. ‘What's that?'

‘Warrigwul.'

Did she mean the sky, or the growing dark? Or maybe all the stars that were popping out through the black?

I pointed to myself.

‘Wungarra,' said Birrung. She touched herself. ‘Guragalungayung.'

We played the game all the way home, me pointing and her giving the Indian names. I don't think I said them right. Maybe I didn't even hear them right. Some of the sounds were strange. But she seemed happy when I tried.

The stars shone like the embroidery on Mrs Johnson's best bonnet. We made our way down through the rocks to the huts, looking at our feet. The dark had jumped up at us faster than I'd expected. I was surprised how easy it was to see my feet though and the way ahead.

I glanced up at the sky. A thousand birrungs stared back at me. Stars . . .

One broke away from all the rest. It darted across the sky, bright as a thin flame, then vanished, like it had dropped into the sea.

‘Shooting star,' I said. ‘Ma used to say you could make a wish on a shooting star.'

Birrung stared at the melting gleam where the shooting star had vanished. Her face crumpled, like a used handkerchief. ‘No,' she whispered. ‘That star says bad is coming. Bad, bad, bad.'

I could see the candlelight in the doorway, and Elsie's face looking out anxiously, but when she saw us, she scowled and went back in. She scowled at me a lot, those days, despite the harvest and learning how to make corn vinegar and cook dumplings so light they jumped into your mouth.

There'd be potatoes hot for us on the hearth, and maybe a scolding for being out so late, but not much of one when Mrs Johnson saw we'd brought fresh meat. And tomorrow we'd have meat stew, the one with carrots and potatoes and onions and thyme that I liked best . . .

Bad? Everything bad had happened already. Prison back in England, those months at sea, Ma dying, those
months going hungry, the plague that killed so many of Birrung's people, and now hunger for all the other men here too.

What else bad could happen to us now?

June 1790

The death ships sailed into the harbour, white sails and a blue sea, but only horror on board.

We danced as we saw them sail through the heads, me and Elsie, while Birrung looked on and laughed. The
Lady Juliana
had come a couple of weeks before, bringing us food and tools as well as more women convicts. Now there would be more people. More food, more tools. More hope that our huddle of huts might grow into a town and farms.

Mr Johnson was on one of the first boats out to the new ships. We watched as he climbed back up the hill, me and Elsie and Birrung and Mrs Johnson holding Milbah. Even Sally mixed her pudding outside today, to get a view of what was happening on the harbour: the new ships, the tiny boats being rowed out to them or back to shore. Would he bring letters from friends back home? Presents they'd sent maybe, like packets of seeds, a sewing kit (Sally had broken our last needle), bolts of cloth?

But Mr Johnson wasn't smiling as he walked up to the house, his hands empty. He looked like he'd seen the hell he talked about sometimes on Sundays.

Mrs Johnson ran to him. ‘What is it, dearest?'

He held up a hand to stop his wife coming closer. ‘Best not come near me. There's fever on the ships. I might give it to you, or the children. There's . . .' He shook his head, as though he couldn't find the words, this man who shouted out his sermons every week. ‘The convicts are just lying there in the stinking dark below the decks,' he whispered. ‘The dying and the dead together, while the officers laugh and joke on deck. Naked or in rags. Starved and chained below deck for near a year, no light, scarce any food, lying among the dead, the skeletons and filth.'

Mrs Johnson stared at him. ‘But why? How . . .'

‘Greed,' said Mr Johnson. ‘No charity. No feeling. The captains kept the wretches' rations to sell when they got here. The convicts starved to death so the captains can grow rich. At least a quarter of them died on the way here, and most who lived will die tomorrow or next week. Infected sores from the chains, from sitting in filth and salt water for nearly a year. Blind from no sunlight. When we got the first of the prisoners to the shore, they couldn't stand, too weak to even drink. Just lay where we had left them, in a line, like blind white worms . . .'

Mrs Johnson handed Milbah to Sally. ‘I'll get the hospital basket.' It held bandages that Sally washed and ironed every week and a lotion Surgeon White brewed from one of the native plants. ‘They'll need help at the hospital.'

‘No,' said Mr Johnson. ‘You will stay here.' He looked at the rest of us. ‘None of you will leave this house and garden until I return. You understand?'

‘But —' began Mrs Johnson.

‘There's disease,' said Mr Johnson quietly. He looked at Milbah, then at his wife. ‘Typhus; who knows what else?' He bit his lip, then added, ‘I'll sleep at the hospital so I don't carry infection back here.'

I thought Mrs Johnson would argue. But she glanced at Milbah, at Birrung and Elsie and me, and she nodded.
She kissed her hand, then blew the kiss to him. ‘God be with you,' she said softly. Somehow in that moment they seemed together, even though they stood apart, and I thought: If I ever marry, I want my family to be like this.

And then I thought of the white faces down in the dark holds of those pretty ships upon the harbour, the dead and living bodies like white worms laid out on the grass. I wanted to hide up here in our garden till every one of them had got better or died, wanted to stay here where it smelled good and was safe.

‘I'll come with you,' I said.

Mr Johnson shook his head. ‘You're a good lad,' he said. ‘You're needed here. Take care of the women.'

Then he left.

We waited, day after day. Messengers came up from the big tents they'd made into a hospital, to pick up the parcels of food we left on the doorstep. I killed three of the hens, for soup, and dug potatoes till my back felt like breaking so Sally could peel them, to feed the sick, the starving. I chopped wood to keep the cook fire going, lugged back fallen branches from the bush, and tried not to feel guilty I was safe and well fed with so many dying, tried not to resent them too, for bringing fear back into
our lives, and taking Mr Johnson from us. Tried not to hear Mrs Johnson crying in her room at night for all she smiled as she led us in a hymn and prayer after supper.