Nanberry (23 page)

Papa Moore's voice sounded strange too. ‘Rachel … do you mind? Do you still love the man?'

Mama laughed, but it almost sounded like crying too. ‘No. Of course not. I never loved him in the way that I love you. I … I admire you too, Thomas. You know how much.'

‘Then what is it?' Papa's voice was gentle now.

‘His father insists I put Andrew on the next ship to England. To live with him and his new wife. Thomas, he's only six years old!'

Papa's voice, heavy and trying to comfort. ‘You always knew this day would come.'

‘But not so soon! He's still too young! I can't let him go. I can't!'

‘You must do what's best for him, Rachel. A fine home, a gentleman for a father, a stepmother who will treat him as her own —'

‘But he is mine! Not hers!'

‘I love the lad too. The last thing I want is to see you weeping. But think of the opportunities Andrew will have in England. A proper school.' There was silence, and then he added, ‘He'll be an English gentleman, Rachel. Something I can never be.'

‘You're a better man than any English gentleman. No! He won't go! Not yet!'

‘Rachel …' There was something in Papa's voice he had never heard. ‘Andrew's father is a man of influence. If you refuse to send his son he can force you to do it. All it needs is a letter to the Governor.'

There was silence, except for what might have been a sob.

Andrew lay back on his pillow. His head seemed to burst with the news.

Go to England? Vanish on one of the big ships with flapping sails, creaking its way out across the harbour? Was there even such a place as England?

Leave Mama? Leave home? He couldn't! They wouldn't …

‘Mama?' He hadn't meant to call her, but the swirling darkness frightened him, and the pain in his head. ‘Mama!'

‘What is it?'

Mama appeared at the door, a candle in her hand.

‘Mama … is it true? Do I have to go to England?'

She caught her breath. ‘Maybe. Some day. But not yet.'

‘I don't want to go! Not ever!' He tried not to cry. Big boys never cried. ‘People die on ships. Nanberry said so many sailors die sometimes they can hardly make it to harbour.'

‘Nanberry shouldn't fill you with such tales.' She rubbed her forehead, as she usually did when she was upset. Her face looked strange, as though she was swimming under the sea. Like a fish, he thought. He felt so hot.

‘I don't want to die on a ship. I don't want to leave you.' He could see the tears on her face in the candlelight. Or was it a candle? Maybe it was a sun …

‘Andrew, all we can do is pray. Have you heard of guardian angels?'

‘Yes, Mama.' The Reverend Johnson had talked about them at church service. Mostly Andrew didn't listen at church, but he had that day.

‘We will pray that your guardian angel will look after you.' She shut her eyes briefly. ‘It is all that we can do.'

‘Mama …?'

‘What is it, darling?'

‘There is a sun in my bed. A hot sun. Do you think my angel put it there?'

‘A sun? What are you talking about?'

She bent and touched his forehead. ‘He's burning up! Fetch the doctor … Mr Balmain! He'll come …'

S
YDNEY
C
OVE
, J
ANUARY
1800

She sat with her son as he burnt and muttered. Typhus, Mr Balmain had said. Mr Balmain had been no friend to Surgeon White, but she knew he'd help his son now.

Typhus came with each convict ship, blazing its way through the colony, then dying out until the next ship arrived. Typhus killed more than half the adults who caught it and nearly every child.

Her child. Her precious child. He couldn't die.

She bent her head, feeling the tears cold on her cheeks. How could she live without him? Day after day, year after year, when he was simply … not.

If only she could keep every day of his six years with her, like you stored butter in a well, days that she could take out and live again. But you never paid attention when you should. You spent the days cooking, washing, brushing your hair. Stupid things, when you could have been watching your son.

She knew there would never be another child. Not for her.

There was nothing she could do. Wash his face and chest to try to keep the fever down, bundle him in rugs when the chills came, reassure him when he screamed in his delirium. Try to coax him to drink some boiled water, to eat a spoonful of stewed apple.

And pray.

It was her fault. Don't play with the convict brats, she'd said, as if that was enough to keep him safe. But the whole colony was a land of convicts and their diseases.

She should have sent him to England last year, when his father had first written about Andrew joining him. There'd even been a woman passenger, one of the officers' wives, who'd have looked after him, especially with the golden sovereigns his father sent. Andrew should have been in England now, in that fine brick house on the hill, being raised a gentleman, not running wild with muddy feet.

Not lying here, dying.

Her fault. All her fault.

She bent her head. ‘If he lives,' she prayed, ‘I will let him go. I promise. No matter how much it hurts, I will let him go.'

She opened her eyes. Somehow she had hoped that her prayer might have made a difference. But Andrew still lay there in a feverish sleep, from which it looked like he might never wake.

He needed fresh water. She stood, leaving the candle burning by the dish of stewed apples, went out to the kitchen and dipped the bowl into the bucket by the door. It wasn't till she was headed back that she saw the thing on the table.

A fish. A giant fish. Had a friend of her husband's brought it? But they would have left it covered in a cloth to keep off the flies. And this fish had a great gash in its side. It had been speared, she thought, not caught with a net or hook.

It was a mystery. But she had no time to spare for mysteries now. Still she stopped to put the fish away in the fly-proof safe.

S
YDNEY
C
OVE
, J
ANUARY
1800

He was cold, then he was hot. He shivered when he was hot and sweated when he was cold and monsters lurked at the edges of the room, even when his eyes were shut.

He had to go. To death, to England, into the monsters' jaws, it didn't matter. All that was Andrew was going to vanish as though it had never been.

A monster growled at him; a monster with the face of one of the small green birds, a monster with a beak that clacked and chirped …

He opened his eyes, hoping the monster would vanish.

It did. He was all alone. Tears sprang to his eyes. No Mama. No Papa, no Father, no Maria or Nanberry. He was going to die; and if he lived he would be sent away.

Alone. Alone.

Tears made the room shimmer. Something moved on the windowsill.

He blinked, trying to see more clearly.

It was … fuzzy … its shape indistinct in the darkness, but sort of golden with the brightness of the moon behind it. Like a halo, he thought dazedly. But only angels have haloes.

An angel in his room.

The angel gave a tiny growl. It lifted up his bowl of stewed apples and bent its head.

The door opened. The bowl clattered onto the floor, spilling the stewed apples.

S
YDNEY
C
OVE
, J
ANUARY
1800

She caught a glimpse of an o'possum as she came in the door. A big old o'possum, bending down to eat stewed apples, just as the Surgeon's o'possum had, so many years before. The bowl crashed onto the floor. The animal vanished in a blur of fur.

Could it be the same one? She supposed so. Kangaroos and emus were never seen in the town these days, but there were o'possums in plenty, feeding on the fruit trees and the roses. She had no doubt that the Surgeon's o'possum had done very well. And it had loved stewed apples …

‘Mama!'

Andrew struggled to sit up. She ran and put her arms around him. ‘What is it?'

‘Mama!' His voice was weak but steady. ‘Mama, I saw an angel!'

‘A what?' She wondered if he was still delirious. But his face looked cooler now.

‘An angel,' he whispered. ‘By my bed.'

She looked down at the broken bowl, at the scatter of droppings on the floor. ‘That was no …' She looked at her son again. His face was thin, and there were black shadows under his eyes. But the fever had broken. He looked at her in wonder.

‘Is it my guardian angel? Just like Reverend Johnson said?'

‘Reverend Johnson didn't mean …' Or did he? she thought dazedly. Perhaps angels could come in many forms. Even as o'possums …

She looked at her son. ‘Yes,' she said steadily. ‘Maybe it was your angel. I'm sure you have an angel who'll look after you.'

‘Even if I go to England?'

‘Yes.' It tore her heart to say the words. ‘Even in England. Your angel will look after you. Your angel will bring you home.' He nodded, already half asleep. She settled him down on the pillow, swept his hair from his forehead with her fingers, then sat by the bed and watched him. The moon slid across the sky and the o'possum crashed from branch to branch.

Her son. Her wonderful, dear son. But she had promised. She had to think of him, not herself. She had to let him go.

S
YDNEY
C
OVE
, D
ECEMBER
1800

She hugged him before he got into the ship's boat to be rowed out to the
Brilliant
. He didn't like being hugged in public, not by his mama. But this time he hugged her back, as though he'd never let her go.

At last Nanberry put his hand on her shoulder. Nanberry was a fine young man now, tall and broad-shouldered, his hair caught back in a sailor's braid. Even the gap in his teeth made him look like a sailor who had lost a tooth to scurvy.

She nodded. ‘I love you,' she whispered to her son. ‘Stay safe.' Then she stepped back.

It was a silly request. She knew it. The dangers he was facing weren't ones he could avoid: the enormous waves that crushed a ship, the ice floes that might wreck it. How many ships had already been lost on their way to the colony or back? Had anyone even bothered to keep count?

Dysentery, ship's fever … She shut her eyes, then opened them
again quickly, so as not to lose a second of these last moments watching her son, trying to keep the memory of his warmth on her skin.

The tiny boat bobbed on the waves. The rowers heaved at the oars. She watched as the boat reached the ship, out in the harbour, and as they climbed the rope ladder.

At last two figures stood by the rail: one small with white skin, one tall with black. They waved at her. She waved back.

The ship's sails had already been hoisted. She saw the anchor raised, dripping seaweed, saw the taller figure run off to his duties on the ship. But the small one stayed by the rail. The sails billowed. The ship glided across the blue. Then it rounded a headland and was gone.

She thrust her fist into her mouth so as not to cry out. Her son was gone. She forced herself not to think of shipwreck, his tiny body washed up blue on the ice; not to think of him bullied at school as a
convict brat
; not sick and calling for her, impossibly far away across the oceans.

No. She had to think of the man he could become; an old man with a grey beard perhaps, but still the same green eyes, laughing with his grandchildren at his knee. He would be a gentleman. He would be happy. He would be safe. He would survive.

But the boy she had waved away — the seven-year-old, with scabby knees, who'd played around the rocks and coves of this beautiful, alien harbour — that boy was lost to her forever.

She turned at last to go home and found her husband behind her. He must have waited there to let them have their last minutes alone; he had wished to let her drink in the last sight of her son, to make memories of his face she could call up when the pain grew too great.

Thomas folded her in his arms. He didn't say, ‘We will have other children.' He knew it wasn't likely to happen now.
Nor would it have made any difference to her feelings. One child couldn't replace another. Instead he said, ‘He will come back to us. I know it.'

She nodded, feeling the comfort of his warmth.

A
BOARD
HMS
B
RILLIANT
, D
ECEMBER
1800

Nanberry stood at the rail, Andrew's hand again in his. His brother was trying not to cry. Nanberry picked him up and hugged him, as he had so many times before. The boy felt smaller, somehow, out here beyond the land.

The ship had changed course now; the colony was lost to sight behind them in the massive harbour. The land was treed again, and here and there appeared the small spires of Gungai fires.

Sydney Town is tiny, thought Nanberry, clinging to the edge of a vast land. If the country shivered, if the wind blew strong, perhaps the whole colony might vanish, leaving the land to the black nations once again. Sometimes — just sometimes — he even hoped that might happen.

He put his brother down and smiled at him. ‘Come on, my brother. I'll show you your bunk. It's in a cabin! And how about a slice of your mama's plum pudding? I'll tell you a secret.'
He bent down. ‘Plum pudding is the best thing in the world to keep away seasickness. You won't be seasick, will you?'

‘No.' The boy's voice was uncertain. He lifted up his chin. ‘But I didn't cry, did I? Mama would have been more sad if I had cried. I am going to be brave. Like you.' He hesitated. ‘Will you sleep in my cabin too?' He tried to make it sound as though he didn't care one way or the other.

‘Of course.'

There was no of course about it — mostly Nanberry slept in a hammock, taking turns with whoever wasn't on watch. But there was no need for Andrew to know that. It was his job to keep the child happy. Keep him alive, through storms and freak waves, stop him falling overboard when he had to sit on the high toilet seat above the waves.

And after that …

Nanberry gazed back as the land turned to pale blue haze on the horizon. When his brother was safe he would come home again. It was time to go bush, to listen to the trees, to watch for badagarang prints among the tussocks, to be a Cadigal for a while, instead of an Englishman. To take a wife. He would have children, and they would have children too. He was Nanberry, striding across the world.