Birrung the Secret Friend (9 page)

One morning I came into the house early and there was Elsie, already up, frying onions in chicken fat, putting them in the big pot with layers of stale damper and goat's cheese, then pouring water on top. She put it next to the fire, where it would cook slowly, then began to mix the damper for breakfast — white wheat damper again, because the death ships had brought us stores too. We ate, just as the convicts on those ships had starved.

Sally came out, yawning and tying the ribbons of her cap under her chin. She peered into the pot. ‘What's this mess you've made, girl?'

Elsie shrugged.

Sally shook her head. ‘Don't see why the master had to bring a dumb girl into the house.'

‘She ain't dumb!' I yelled. I think we were all on edge back then, with death so much about us. I stood in front of Sally. ‘You take that back! Elsie just can't speak, that's all!'

‘I'll say as I think,' said Sally.

‘What's all the noise?' Mrs Johnson came out of the bedroom, where she'd been feeding Milbah. She looked at both of us as if one more angry word might make her
cry again. ‘The Lord tells us to love our neighbours. At times like these we should be thankful for what we have, not argue with our friends.'

‘The girl has filled my good pot with some mess . . .' began Sally.

Mrs Johnson made an effort to smile. She peered into the pot. ‘It smells delicious,' she said.

Elsie made a face at Sally. She picked up the slate from the shelf, wrote something, and held it up. Sally made out the words slowly. ‘
Onion soup.
That ain't how you make onion soup, girl.'

Elsie shrugged.

I took a spoon and tasted it. ‘It's the best soup I've ever ate,' I said. And it was. But soup needed roosters and vegetables to make it taste good. How had Elsie made a giant pot of soup like this with just onions and fat and water and stale damper, and without Mrs Johnson or Sally to teach her?

Elsie gave me that look that was as close to a smile as she ever came.

Birrung came in, fastening her apron. She looked at Sally who was still angry, at me indignant, at Elsie looking smug and at Mrs Johnson who was so tired, with shadows under her eyes for worry about her husband. I
thought she'd do something to make us laugh. Birrung always laughed. But she just took the basket and went out to collect the eggs.

We cooked. We waited. Day after day we cooked and waited.

Mr Johnson didn't come.

I tried not to think what would happen if Mr Johnson caught the typhus. If he died, like Ma, I could keep the garden going and chop the wood. I could put on new bark to stop the roof leaking too. I could take care of us all!

Except I couldn't. And all of us in the house knew it too.

Mrs Johnson gathered every bit of cloth in the house: her petticoats, the dishcloths, my spare shirt. Everything we could spare went down to the harbour, to cover the patients' nakedness, to keep them warm, or to be ripped into bandages to cover the sores where chains had rubbed. Why did I need a spare shirt when these men had none?

I only left the house and garden once, to get some rations. Old Tom and Scruggins, who were looking after Mr Johnson's other gardens — but taking it easy, I bet — were supposed to bring rations up and leave them on
the doorstep for us. But there'd been no rations on the step that morning, and we'd run out of flour. Sally said it was more than a soul could bear, all this and no bread either . . .

It was strange, down in the tiny town. The thin wind whispered between the mud huts. There were a few new faces, ghost people staggering about. But mostly there was no one, except on the grass by the shore where the hospital tents flapped in the wind. I could hear a long dull moaning and tried to tell myself it was the wind, not hundreds of convicts, in pain and afraid of the light, not the ghosts of their friends crying, ‘How could man do this to man? How can this be?'

I stayed away from the tents, like I'd promised Mr Johnson, and even when I saw another person, I kept well away in case they had the fever and I might take it back to our house. I scrambled along the rocks above the harbour though, to see if Old Tom and Scruggins were working like they should have been.

They weren't. The bare apple and cherry trees looked dismal in the wind. But there was orange fruit on some of the trees, which meant it was ripe, and no one had pinched it, either because they respected Mr Johnson or because most convicts wouldn't eat fruit. They said it
gave them the runs and stung their gums, and was too new and strange.

I half filled my bag with the really orange ones — I wasn't sure what they were. The tangerines were still green. Then I hurried over to the storehouse.

‘Why, it's Barney Bean. Ain't seen you in an age. How are you growing, little bean?'

‘Ha ha. Very well, sir,' I said politely. ‘Can I have the rations for Mr Johnson's house?'

The storeman went in to get them just as someone spoke behind me. ‘What are you doing here, boy?'

It was Scruggins. He looked tired. Huh. Tired with doing nothing while Mr Johnson was busy, I thought.

‘Getting the rations because you didn't.'

‘Well, I'm getting them now, ain't I?' But Scruggins sounded weary, not defensive. ‘As you're here, you can do it. Saves me lugging them up the hill. Tell Mrs Johnson I'm sorry they're late.' He rubbed his whiskery face and I realised his hands were trembling. ‘I were down at the tents, holding down this poor bloke while Surgeon White cut off his arm. All rotten it was. Surgeon said it was the only thing that might save him. I stayed with him till he slept. Held his other hand. Man shouldn't be alone at a time like that. I'll head back there now.'

My heart gave a little
thunk
, like it was made of stone. I'd been bad-mouthing — well, bad-thinking — Scruggins, and he'd been doing far more than me.

‘Old Tom down there too?'

‘Won't leave Mr Johnson's side, except to get him what he needs. You tell Mrs Johnson we see he eats, at least. Can't get him to rest. He reckons he can feed the sick and tend their bodies and pray for them at the same time. He says the Lord will give him the strength to do his duty.' Scruggins looked at me, almost man to man. ‘I'll tell you what, Barney boy. Every convict in this colony thinks that man is an angel. Don't know how many lives he's saved.'

I thought: Mr Johnson saved mine too. And Elsie's.

When I got back, I took off my clothes behind the shed and scrubbed them in the trough, then scrubbed myself, over and over, till my skin was red and my hair was sticking up like a rooster's comb. One louse or flea could carry the ship's fever, could kill Elsie and Birrung and Milbah and Mrs Johnson and Sally, and me too.

Then when everything had dried in the sunlight, I dressed and went inside to help Birrung, who was peeling potatoes for more soup. She never slipped down to swim in the harbour now, or went roaming in the dusk.

It had been weeks since Birrung had laughed. Suddenly I needed to hear laughter. Birrung's laughter would drive away the shadows that flickered through me after Scruggins's words.

I took one of the potatoes and carved it into a man's face, with holes for eyes, and a pointed nose, and a big grin. I held it up to Birrung.

‘Hello,' I said in a funny voice. ‘I am a potato man.' I held up a carrot, and made it bow to the potato. ‘Hello, Mr Potato,' I said in another voice.

Birrung laughed, just as I'd hoped she would. She picked up a long parsnip, and made it bow to the potato too, just like Mr Johnson bowed when he met the governor. ‘Hello, Mr Potato,' she said in Mrs Johnson's most polite voice. ‘I am Mr Parsnip.' She laughed again.

Someone made a noise behind us. I turned. Elsie stared at us from the doorway. Had she been trying to say something? I'd never heard her make a sound before, even when she cried each night the first week we were together.

‘Oh, Elsie, come and —' I began.

Elsie whirled, her skirts swishing against the floor. She ran to her lean-to. In a few heartbeats she was back, Mrs Johnson's old hat on her head, and a bundle in her hand.

I stared at it. ‘What's that?'

Elsie didn't answer. She marched over to the front door, and outside.

I went out the door too, and caught up with her on the path past the brick pits. ‘Elsie! What are you doing?'

Elsie glared at me. She nodded down towards the huts huddled around the harbour.

‘Are you taking something to Mr Johnson?'

She shook her head, then gave me a rough push on the chest. She began to march down the track again.

I caught her arm. ‘Elsie, you can't go down there. You might catch the typhus.'

Elsie wrenched her arm away. And suddenly I understood. ‘You want to leave the Johnsons? You've got your things in that bundle?'

Elsie nodded.

‘But why? We've got it good here! And I'm learning how to grow things and Mrs Johnson is teaching you to cook.'

Elsie shrugged, her eyes on mine.

‘It's dangerous down there! There's the fever and . . .' Things that you shouldn't see, I thought. Because I reckoned sometime Elsie had seen too much.

Elsie waited maybe five breaths, in case I said anything more, then turned to walk away.

‘No!' I said. ‘Wait! If you've got to go, I'll get my things too. You can't go down there alone!' Mrs Johnson had taught Elsie enough for her to work as a cook for an officer. But she needed someone to take care of her. She needed me. Maybe, deep inside me, I knew I needed her too.

She stopped. She turned and looked at me. ‘It's you and me, Elsie,' I said softly. ‘Always was. Always will be. I don't understand, but if something's happened and you want to leave, just wait till I get my hat and shoes.'

Elsie smiled. It was like the moon rising out of the dark mountains. I'd never seen her smile properly like that. She put out her hand, the one that wasn't holding the bundle. I took it. She led me back inside.

Birrung had gone. I saw her sitting with Sally on a rough seat Mr Johnson had made out in the garden, plaiting onion tops together to hang them up to dry. Mrs Johnson sat in the sun too, patting Milbah's back to make her burp.

Elsie let go of my hand, then marched into the girls' lean-to. When she came back, her hands were empty.

‘So we're staying here?' I asked uncertainly.

Elsie nodded. She took up the potato peeling where Birrung had left off. After a bit I joined her, making more soup for the almost dead.

I never did work out what Elsie had got upset about. Like I said, she could be stubborn.

Days passed in a shiver of winter. Weeks passed, bleak and cold, except in the garden, which was sheltered by the house, or our big warm room with its fire. But all through the colony the bodies stank where they'd been buried above the Tank Stream.

One morning I came down to the garden to find an arm among the potato plants. It was a woman's arm, I think, probably dug up by a dingo, maybe dropped when a sound from inside our house scared him the night before.

I didn't tell Mrs Johnson about the arm. I didn't tell anyone. I thought I'd take it back to the Tank Stream graveyard, but the dingoes might just dig it up again. So I buried it under an apple tree, and said a prayer for whoever had owned the arm, for all those white-faced wretches and for Mr Johnson trying to help.

For us all really.

And then I dug up potatoes and onions to make more soup.

At last one day Mr Johnson walked back up the hill, just as the cease-work drum roll sounded for the day. He was thin. His hands trembled as he hugged Mrs Johnson. He smelled of soap. The skin under his eyes was yellow. I thought: He's been sick. But he won't tell Mrs Johnson that.

I looked into his eyes and wondered what else he wouldn't tell her. Because I'd been down in the dark of ships like that. Not as bad — not near as bad. Captain Phillip had forced us to live, even whipping coves who wouldn't eat their fruit when we stopped to get supplies. But I knew how that dark got to you, how the stink seeped into your soul. Mr Johnson carried some of that darkness now too.

We sat at the table, Milbah on Mrs Johnson's knee. Mr Johnson gave thanks as he always did for what we were to eat, for what God had given us. ‘And thank you too, Lord,' he added, ‘for the gift of letting us give help to others.'

I stared at him as he finished the prayer. Was that why he'd brought me and Elsie home with him? And helping others made him happy?

I thought how good it felt to dig potatoes for everyone, to know I'd helped look after Mr Johnson's family while he was nursing the sick. Mr Johnson was right.

Sally served us, then sat down as usual. She'd made apple dumplings, so as to give Mr Johnson a treat, made from the first apples from the trees he'd planted, stored in a sack in my lean-to. Mr Johnson pretended to eat. And then he went to bed, though it was still light, and Mrs Johnson followed him.