Not the Same Sky (16 page)

‘I don’t know,’ said Bridget.

It was hard to know if this was true or not. Julia was glad she was fit enough to make as much trouble as got her to court. Moral squalor, is it, Your Lordship? I’ll show you yet what moral squalor is.

CHAPTER 20

Charles Strutt had tried to have Bridget Joyce hired by sympathetic people. He had to point someone towards her without them becoming suspicious of why. The work would have to be light and there would have to be room for delicacy. A quiet house might be suitable, with some sensitive female companionship. After the fourth day of hiring he thought he got it right, the magistrate who entered the foyer might be married to the right sort of woman. Of course, he could be wrong. He had seen the most unlikely pairings of people. He made sure that Honora Raftery helped Bridget with her belongings and stayed to wave goodbye. Her trunk seemed lighter than the others, but that could not be. He himself supervised the loading of it on to the carriage.

He turned his back and worried.

At first all went as well as could be expected. But later, the gentleman who was married to the gentlewoman, in this Charles had been correct, had a change of circumstances—twins—so a different kind of help was needed in the house. Bridget was passed on to the gentleman’s brother, who wasn’t gentle.

In the first house Bridget had woken to the birds. The sulphur-crested white cockatoos began their arguments in hurried, clipped voices and then rose to screaming at each other all over the gardens. The kookaburras ignored them, going about their business of getting worms, occasionally looking up at the racket going on in the tree. Wasting time, wasting time, get on with it, get on with it, they said to each other. And then, perhaps, a lull. And then a long monotone delivery, punctuated by a few impatient squawks. The kookaburras, her and him, had their hunger almost satisfied and looked up again. Bad story, bad story, look he’s falling asleep listening. Not the point at all, not the point. Missed the point entirely. Then the coloured galahs took off to go somewhere else, leaving the white birds to fight if they liked—they would come back this evening before Bridget’s bedtime.

Before it was time for Bridget to go and help Madam with the sewing, maybe the satin bowerbirds would come to get the blue thread she had left out the moment she had woken. She had brought it up from sewing last night, but knew it was too late to leave it on the window—they would have been in bed by then, their decorating done for the day. And a wind might come in the night to whip it away, or rain might soak the blue out of it, or lightning might burn it up. She had never seen the birds come to pick up her offerings, but they were always taken. When Madam first told her about the blue bowers who decorated their nests with all things blue, Bridget was not surprised. This surprised Madam. But Bridget knew things about birds—the order to their lives, their personalities. In this garden that she could see well from her bedroom window, she followed the lives of the birds, which she now considered hers. But then the twins arrived.

Madam was reluctant to let this slight girl go to her brother-in-law’s house, but what could she do? She wasn’t, after all, the child’s mother, and she had just had twins who would require much looking after. So her husband took Bridget away at night, so as not to upset Madam.

The decline began almost immediately. There was no window in Bridget’s bedroom. In this house they were laying the new concrete outside the house to stop the encroachment of the interminable growth in this bloody country. Growth everywhere. And the noise of them bloody birds. Growth only encouraged them.

The first thing to go was Bridget’s tastebuds. She tried to put food on different parts of her tongue, knowing there were taste lines marked out on it. She tried to eat food without taste. She knew weakness would envelop her if she did not eat. And still, she wanted to live.

Then the dreams began to come. At first they were fragments of the past, so jumbled that Bridget woke horribly confused. Her mother on a ship. But how could Bridget know of a ship on which to put her mother? She was not from the sea. And why was her mother on a ship at all? Had she abandoned Bridget? And where was her father? Then the dreams came every night, piling on top of each other. Bridget tried to stop them. Before she went to sleep, after her prayers, she vowed not to encourage them. But in the morning she tried to piece them together, fit them together as if they were broken glass. If she could get the glass fixed, then she would know what her heart remembered when it was resting. She tried, as her eyes opened, to do this mending. She ran after the dream, as a child would follow a kite. But then, as wakening steadied its hold, she let it get away. She tried to use the beauty in it to give her strength for the day, not sadness. And soon she looked forward to going to sleep. Here she could see ladders going up and down, always towards clouds, both above and below. Sometimes a great bustle among tadpoles and frogs, caterpillars and butterflies. A kangaroo jumped in and Bridget screamed, which scared it away immediately, and Bridget’s swallows and thrushes got back to their unspectacular soft singing and gentle hopping. Some nights her dreams were full of the colours of dresses—mauve, red, rust, green, with brown thread at the high necks, yellow with a blue sheen, black with a faded pink hidden through it. Or she could have familiar flowers and leaves strewn about. Of course they were familiar. How could they be in her dreams otherwise. They never seemed to be growing—they seemed to be plucked and strewn, the roots of the discarded trees bare. But the flowers and leaves would be fresh. The smell of them often woke her.

One whole night had potatoes, white floury potatoes. Being pulled by black horses, blooming into turnips, slipping down hills. The next day Bridget couldn’t eat, no matter on what part of her tongue she placed the food. That evening the scissors slipped in her hand and cut the tip of her finger. She sat staring as the blood dripped on the cloth she was mending. The woman of the house screamed, ‘Get her out of here.’

Bridget was brought to bed. She dreamt of thorns.

‘Get her out of here. And the noise at night … I have to hold the pillow over both my ears. I cannot, I am telling you, cannot, stand the noise of her.’

Bridget, by then, had started to talk to her mother. ‘Yes, rain is coming in from the west.’ She dreamt that she was in her mother, sewn up inside her, her mother’s arms around her.

‘Get her out of here, I’m telling you. Enough is enough.’

‘But we cannot just throw her out.’

‘Aren’t there hospitals for them?’

‘It would become known. Can’t you get some cure for the dreams?’

‘Tell you what. Take her back to that pansy of a sister-in-law of yours. She’ll probably know something about dreams. Or maybe she’ll even have a native cure. Wouldn’t put it past her.’

Bridget dreamt of fights.

When she was brought back to her original house, Madam was horrified.

‘This is death by pining,’ she told her husband.

She would try to build her up. And she succeeded. A little. They sat her in the garden. They gave her their bird book—John Gould’s beautiful production with the perfect drawings from his wife Elizabeth. Bridget shook the trees sometimes to get the birds out if there weren’t enough of them at her feet. But there was a film over her eyes. She ate a little off small spoons, and then a little more. They brought her into George Street, sat her down to watch passing people. They would be back in five minutes. That was when Julia Cuffe passed by.

‘I think I saw someone I know,’ Bridget told Madam.

‘Yes,’ Madam said.

But eventually the dreams came back. Madam organised a rota of people to sit with her in the last week. Bridget relayed her dreams to these people, who then did their bests to forget them. Hearing such a deluge of grief could not be good for them. Bridget’s last dream had all of her town on top of her sheets—all the people and all the streets. And eyes looking into eyes, looking into eyes that were looking at her. And larks and blue tits.

***

Two years to the day after the landing of the
Thomas Arbuthnot
, Honora Raftery set out baptismal clothes. To go with this good news she had sent a money order home—the beginnings of a fare for her brother. To think she might see him again. In the meantime, she would call the child for him, just in case.

Two years to the day after the landing of the
Thomas Arbuthnot
, Bridget Joyce was buried. One lorikeet sounded louder than the others as the priest said the prayers.

In Brisbane, Julia Cuffe shivered.

CHAPTER 21

‘You would think one could forget them,’ Charles said, in a rare moment of honesty about his work—he felt naked the moment he had said it. He was talking to the commissioner of Sydney about his impending crossing. The ship would be almost empty on the way back from Sydney, but had been signed up on its return journey to bring over the usual number—merchants, convicts, men and three women, a few Liverpool orphan boys, two civil servants, and wives and children of recently established ex-convicts, who at this very moment were trying to keep a lid on their excitements. It was still months away. The ship would probably have a few bright-eyed adventurous people, unburdened by the disturbances being suffered around them. He had noticed this new kind of passenger.

Charles and the commissioner were dining in the yellow sandstone house that gave a panoramic view of the harbour.

‘It must be difficult, having dealt with the number you have in all the crossings. Perhaps you should have some time between journeys. A job here for a while?’

‘No, not yet. I can forget mostly. It’s just them. The faces of other people do come into my mind occasionally, but they seem to … Never mind.’

The commissioner could see that this most stalwart of men might have been excessively troubled by that cargo. He vowed to try to find some information for him, something that would put his mind at rest. He would have it for him the next time he returned. If he could remember. It was hard to remember everything when running a new colony: keeping an eye on all the possibilities, for the things that could go wrong, and things that could go right, juggling the desires and necessities of a people displaced, whether by choice or force. Still some by force—although he hoped that more choice would come into it soon. And of course those girls Strutt was talking about. They would have plenty of children that were needed if you were serious about a colony. He was glad he’d never seen them, easier then to put them out of his mind. Part of his job was to forget. Their pasts, their histories, were for another time and another place. And then there were the small things that could become big if not steered correctly. Only this morning he had to dampen down some hot emotions aroused by the family of a man who had died after a flogging. It had happened a year ago, but the relatives had only just arrived and got their hands on this information. There was a rumour that the man delivering the punishment exceeded all possible guidelines—if guidelines were even possible, it being hard to weigh pressure given to a whip. And it was possible that the man administering the punishment had borne a personal grudge against the prisoner, who, after all, had been sentenced to only ten lashes—surely not enough to kill him.

The commissioner remembered seeing the body. At first the injuries hadn’t seemed too bad. But when the ribboned back was exposed, he was almost sick. And he remembered thinking at the time that it was lucky the man had no relatives here, the death could be reported some other way. And so it was. And here was Charles Strutt worrying about a shipload of girls, who were no doubt well settled by now. Still, he would try to remember to get some news for him.

They finished their brandies in the drawing room, the drink burning off some of the present difficulties. Or so the commissioner thought. Charles looked out at the view and wondered if you could get too much of a good thing. Did excessive beauty make a person lethargic? Did benign weather stall the march forward? And surely being part of that march was the reason for being born. He shook his head. He wanted to shake his thoughts off, as a dog might shake off unwanted water after a swim. He picked up a recently published book.

‘Enjoyable read. I had it on the ship. I found …’

‘Too much social conscience for me. Never get any work done that way,’ the commissioner interrupted confidently.

‘I suppose you’re right,’ Charles responded, untruthfully.

One more smaller brandy and the two men parted. Charles walked to his rooms, surprised at his fury. It was unlike him to be so aroused. He knew himself to be an even-tempered man, not given to excess, sufficiently practical to know the lesser of two evils, contemplative without being depressive, religious without being bigoted. His own Protestantism gave him no sense of superiority, unlike so many he knew. He thought of himself as a compact man. He was not overburdened by a strong libido—he knew this by comparison, having seen rampant desire make fools of many. And worse than fools, users and abusers. Men who could not be told that all in front of them was not theirs for the taking. He had seen these men marry, be cared for, and still have the need to prove their desirability, making a din of their lives, like babies in prams wailing for attention. And their wives continuing to love them despite the futility of such trustworthiness, wearing their stoicism like a shining badge of honour, hoping it might dazzle the men back to them. Charles’s libido was more wistful. And then he reprimanded himself—perhaps he was jealous of those other men, perhaps aware that he had neglected to tend to that side of himself. Maybe there was still time. He would read some poetry next month. Best to turn in. He slept fitfully, waking several times in a net of dreams and dreads.