Nanberry (18 page)

S
YDNEY
C
OVE
, 30 N
OVEMBER
1794

Rachel stared at the o'possum in its cage. She'd expected it to snarl or try to bite. It had shrieked and yelled at first. But now it crouched in its cage, bewildered. It looked smaller, somehow: all big black eyes and fur. She shook her head and walked upstairs, carefully lifting her skirt, and peered at Andrew, curled up in his crib for his afternoon nap. The child had no idea that his father was going to leave them, even before Christmas came.

She wondered what to do next. Something, anything, to keep her occupied, to stop her thinking. The Surgeon's trunks were packed. His clothes were thin, not much better than rags despite all her mending. But he'd need them on the voyage, at least till he could buy better — at the Cape on the way home, perhaps. He'd need one good suit to wear when he landed in England, till he could find a tailor to make him more.

Big Lon would continue to work the garden, to grow vegetables for them and bring the wood and water. The Surgeon
had arranged for extra food to be sent from the land he owned each week too, and goat's milk, or even medicines from the hospital, whatever they had that she needed. She and her son would want for nothing that this colony could give them.

Except for him. A lover. A father. The centre of a happy home, where her son could grow up in peace, their happiness and charity spreading to others. It was all that she had ever wanted.

Stop thinking, she told herself. Do something. He was at the hospital now, overseeing the distilling of more eucalyptus oil to take to England. Precious hours when he could have been with her, and with their son …

Portable soup, she could make him that. Bones and vegetables boiled down till they turned into a hard jelly that would keep for months — the hard months aboard ship with no fresh food. There wasn't dried fruit in the colony for him to take.

She filled the stew pot with vegetables, herbs, chicken bones and beef bones, and called to Big Lon for a bucket of water and more wood. Soon the stock was simmering, the house filling with the scent.

Still no sound from Andrew upstairs. Still no Surgeon's footsteps. She wandered into the study to gaze again at his trunks, his specimen jars, the crates of dried plants. The o'possum glanced up at her from its cage, then seemed to shrink back into itself again.

Perhaps, like her, it had simply given up.

For the first time rage filled her. He was taking an o'possum, but not her! You could boast of a pet o'possum, but not of a convict wife. He was leaving her, imprisoned even though she had no ball and chain around her leg, held in a prison colony across the world. There was no escape, not even when she'd served her sentence. No escape for her, just like the o'possum.

She picked up some leaves to feed it. The animal watched her, its dark eyes wide. She had moved before she knew it. She
picked up the cage, opened the door. The animal sat there as if it didn't know what was happening. Maybe it was simply half asleep.

‘Run, you stupid creature! Wake up! Run!'

She tipped the cage on its side, tumbling the o'possum to the floor.

It moved then, sitting up, staring at her. She shook her head in despair. ‘Run!' she cried again.

And suddenly it did, scampering to the window, jumping out. She peered out of the window, but it had already gone.

She looked at the cage, the gnawed corncobs on the floor. She put them back in the cage and placed it where she'd found it — but with the door open — then swept the floor. When the Surgeon finally came home, dark circles under his eyes, she was stirring the soup. She turned to him. ‘All well at the hospital?'

‘As well as I can leave it.'

She heard boots in the hallway. Porters, come to take his trunks.

‘Handle those jars carefully!'

She watched as he went into his study; she waited, breathless, till she heard his footsteps coming back.

‘The o'possum has gone!'

‘Gone? How can it be gone?'

‘It must have opened the cage door,' he said slowly.

‘Who'd have thought an o'possum would know how to do that?' She turned back to the soup.

‘Mama!' The sound came from upstairs.

The Surgeon stared at her. ‘He's talking!'

She nodded. ‘Just that word so far. I'd best get him before he tries to come down the stairs.'

‘I'll come with you.'

She said nothing, feeling his eyes on her as she climbed up to the bedrooms, picked up Andrew, and began to change his wet
napkin. The Surgeon leant against the doorjamb, still watching them both.

‘I'm sorry about your o'possum,' she said at last. ‘He would have been a fine thing to show off in England. Maybe he'll come back tonight.'

‘No.' His voice was gentle. ‘I don't think he will come back. Not once he's been held prisoner in a cage. You don't willingly return to prison.'

He was talking about more than the o'possum, she knew. He was saying that even if he was offered a posting back here, he'd refuse it.

He held out his arms for Andrew, and gathered the child to him. Tears ran down his cheeks, but he said nothing, just breathed in the scent of the baby's hair.

‘Will you do one thing for me?' she asked abruptly. ‘One thing only. It's all I ask.'

‘What is it?'

‘Tell the fine lady that you marry that the convict woman loved you. Can you tell her that?'

‘I'll tell her. I'll tell her that I loved the convict woman too. I'll tell her that Andrew is the son of my heart, my eldest son, no matter how many children I have in wedlock. He will never be less than that. I will have no woman marry me who cannot accept those words.'

It had to be enough. All that she would get. She let herself cry now, feeling his arms around her and Andrew too. The last time, she thought, for he wouldn't embrace her in public, not down at the harbour. Not even once.

This was goodbye.

S
YDNEY
C
OVE
, F
EBRUARY
1795

Nanberry swung his kit bag over his shoulder, and sauntered up the track to home. Hens clucked, pecking at the weeds in between the huts. A goat baaed up the hill, pulling at its tether. Somehow in the past few years the dead-looking twigs in the gardens had become big fruit trees. He sniffed. Peaches were ripening somewhere near.

Peach pie, he thought. Rachel's apricot dumplings …

He had so much to tell them. It had been a grand voyage, all the way to the Cape and back. The things he'd seen! Waves that towered so high the ship seemed to be sailing uphill, till finally it teetered on the white crests and went plunging down. Whales that frolicked about them, as if they knew they weren't whalers but, like themselves, travellers in this great ocean.

And Cape Town … His face clouded at that. It hadn't been quite what he had expected. No trips into the country to look for elephants or lions. His shipmates had advised him to stay near the
docks — in this land of black skins, only whites, the Dutch or English, were welcomed in the shops and hotels. It was different in England, according to Cookie, the one-legged sailor who cooked their stew in the tiny reeking closet of a galley. Black men could get all sorts of work in London, and women, he dug Nanberry in the ribs, some white women were right taken with a black skin.

But even the docks had been fascinating. He'd seen a monkey and a team of all-white horses. Traders had rowed their little boats out to the ship, selling silks and fruit and carved animals. He'd bought Rachel green silk ribbons, and a carved carriage for Andrew, with wheels that went round and round, and a new pipe for Father White.

He flung open the front door and yelled, ‘Hello!' then hung his hat on the peg by the door.

Baby Andrew chuckled in the kitchen. Rachel appeared, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘Nanberry! Come in, sit down. Oh, I wish I'd known, I'd have got some meat in. There's bread and cheese …'

‘No meat?' He had never known this house not to have meat.

‘Well, there's just me and Andrew these days, and there is no one to hunt for us now …' She stared at him. ‘You don't know.'

‘Know what?'

‘He said he would leave you a letter. It would be delivered to your ship, so the Captain could read it to you before you came home.'

‘I left the ship on the first boat ashore,' he said impatiently. ‘If there's a letter someone will bring it to me here and Father White can read it out.' Father White could read as well as write, but not him or Rachel. Why did a sailor or a woman need to read? ‘Rachel, what's wrong?'

Her face was carefully expressionless. ‘Your foster father has been recalled to England. He sailed last November.'

Nanberry felt his world lurch. ‘Without telling me?'

‘There was no time. His orders came. He had to go when the ship sailed.'

It was as though the deck had suddenly vanished from under him, leaving him stranded in the ocean. A moment ago he had been Nanberry, sailor, foster son of the great Surgeon White. And now … nothing. No man of his clan to claim as family …

‘We are to keep this house. There will always be a home for you here.'

He shook his head, hardly hearing. What use was a house? He needed a clan, people to belong to.

‘Sit down,' she said gently. ‘I'll get you the bread and cheese. Big Lon can go up to the hospital and get some meat.'

He followed her to the table, hardly seeing. As soon as he was sitting, the small boy toddled up to him and tried to climb onto his knee.

‘He's grown,' he said, automatically lifting the boy up.

‘Yes.' She smiled as she watched the boy try to pull Nanberry's beard. It had grown longer since he'd been at sea, though he was afraid it still looked as straggly as a goat's beard.

He ate the bread and cheese to fill his belly, not really thinking of what he was eating. What was it like for Rachel with the Surgeon gone? She was a free woman now, it seemed, not assigned to be another man's servant. She was living here on her own, with just her son for company.

How could a woman live alone? No Cadigal woman would, with just her child. He didn't know any woman in the colony who did either. He shook his head. He'd thought he'd understood the English world. But once again he had been made to realise that he could see only the edges.

He stood up. ‘I'm going out.' He needed friends — the men he sailed with. At least he knew where he was with them.

‘I'll cook you a proper welcome-home supper. Roast mutton maybe? And a plum pudding too.'

He nodded, again not really listening to her words. She was just a woman. What did she know of men's business? What if another man took her? Would this still be his home then?

The wind blew hot and hard out in the road. It was a bushfire wind, carrying a hint of far-off smoke, not just that from the cooking fires of the colony. He made his way down to the docks, to the hotel where he thought his friends might be. Yes, there was Cookie in the corner, huddled around a tankard. He started towards him.

‘Hey! No natives allowed.'

He stared at the barman in his once-white apron. ‘I have money.'

‘I'll believe that when I see it.' The man stared at him. ‘You speak good for a native. I remember when Bennelong were here. Bennelong'd dance for any cove who'd give him a rum. You speak better'n Bennelong.'

Nanberry took out a threepence — Cape Town money, but good here. The man looked down at it. ‘Well, mayhap you do have money. But I'll bring your drink outside. I'm still not having natives in my tavern.'

Nanberry looked over at Cookie, but the man was lost in his drink — drunk already perhaps, and there was no sign of anyone else he knew.

‘Keep your ale. And the money.' Nanberry flung the threepence onto the dirt floor, sticky and stinking with spilt rum and ale, and made his way down to the shore.

The waves calmed him. They always did. People came and went, but the waves went on.

Who was Nanberry, really? Not English — you needed a white skin, it seemed, to be English, no matter how well you
spoke the language or knew good manners at a table. He was a sailor, but a sailor couldn't always be at sea.

To the people of the colony he would forever be a native. But to the people he had been born among he was still no one: a boy who had never been made a man, not even allowed to throw a spear or know a woman.

He heard ghost whispers in the breeze.

The Cadigal and other clans that he had grown up with had been lost to the disease. But new clans had formed. He remembered enough about the bush to find them.

The whispers tickled his ears again. No voices, but he still knew what they said.

It was good that his foster father had left. Now he had to face just who he was. White men would never accept him in their world onshore. No white woman would take him as her husband.

He stood up, stripped off his clothes, rolled them into a ball and slung them over his shoulder.

It was time that he became a man.