That Deadman Dance (13 page)
Read That Deadman Dance Online
Authors: Kim Scott
B for Bobby. The name given him.
Bobby had taken to his letters easily with Dr Cross, liked the feel of chalk on slate and made patterns, drew small footprints of animals and birds and the shapes of different skeletons. Some sounds had a shape on the page, too, he learned. The alphabet might be tracks, trails and traces of what we said. He copied things from books, from Dr Cross’s journals and letters, even. That helped him improve his spelling, though not the words of his first language.
Mrs Chaine took over as Bobby’s tutor. It is our moral duty to do so, her husband suggested, to help him move toward civilisation, and our friend Dr Cross established it as a priority, to help and save him.
She could only agree, and it need only be a few hours each week, at most. She looked at his work. Some of it seemed most peculiar, and then she realised he was trying to write his own name—not Bobby, but his native name. And the name he gave his mother he also gave his father, and the same name for Dr Cross, as well. She saw it was no-name, a name for loved ones who’d died, and most of Bobby’s loved ones, including Dr Cross, had died coughing. In his rare sad times, Bobby would also cough and once she saw him by the looking glass doing that cough—a wheezy breath, the slow collapse—and once he lay down, and waved non-existent flies away from his open mouth and eyes.
A lot of his people had died, Mrs Chaine was coming to realise. Our arrival means their death though we do not lift a hand. We help, she whispered, but even then only in her mind, pushing away scenes from near her husband’s public house. You have lost many of your family, Bobby, she said, wrinkling her face in concern.
Yeah, Bobby said, but there was too many family everywhere, and he belonged here, never came from nowhere else.
She corrected his speech. He was a quiet boy, at least with her. Quiet, but sometimes she heard him speak and it could have been Dr Cross. It frightened her to hear a voice from beyond the grave. He had a remarkable ability to mimic, and this came through in his anecdotes, when he was recounting dialogue. She had heard him reproduce her husband’s voice also, swearing and all, conversation overheard at the public house no doubt. Quiet, but who knew what he was like really, or what he was like with his own kind, because there were long days, weeks, when they hardly saw him.
W for Wabalanginy, that was his first name. It had taken Dr Cross some time to master that sound and Mrs Chaine never quite got her mouth working properly that way when she began to tutor him.
Being so young, Bobby Wabalanginy was used to being around women. Loved them. And Dr Cross, let alone Mr Geordie Chaine, had always been too busy really to be properly teaching any boy his letters. So Mrs Chaine took him in hand.
A few years later Bobby hoped maybe her daughter might do the same. Christine, that was the daughter’s name. There was a son, too. Christopher. Twins, see? They were all learning the play of putting their thoughts and sounds on paper together.
Bobby Wabalanginy had been mentally composing a letter to Dr Cross’s wife. First chance he got he wrote it down all in a rush.
Dear Missus Cross,
I hope you to read this.
Just think, your dear husband teached me to write and now I send this to you too. We meet soon I think, and also you and Mrs Chaine who now shows me my letters. Mr Chaine is building a fine house.
I hope you will soon come to where your husband lays and we remember him. Your dear husband gave me my letters, and took me for trips on ships.
Once upon a time a man on a deck on a boat was talking King George Town (that is what they call the huts and where the sailors stay). A great banishment to be sent there, he said.
That is not true.
I did not ask him what he meant, and he did not look to see me speak.
He said they live on salted meat, and nothing grows but rocks and stones, and claimed no one took the trouble to catch the fish of the bay. I do not know what they are doing, he said in a very loud voice. And nor do they.
I spoke up then with my name and handshake and surprised him I think. Mr Godley, I think he said his name. He was more laugh than beard, and more squeezing my hand and keeping me away than meeting me.
He speak loud and look to the others for them to nod and say he speaks true. They stand with him and not with me like many people do when they speak to a black boy.
The rocks and stones I told him are the beauty of the place and he laugh and speak big and very loud. I could not think what to say but that the climate is good and he looked at me then and said, ‘Oh, you are right in that, it is the best.’ I did my best and did not speak rudely. I did not say flowers and parrots too. I did not say stars, moon, the waves and leaves and campfires I thought after. I did not say you handshook the wrong people.
A strange thinking came to my mind from his eyes. He was angry at me, I wonder. We did not speak very much the rest of the trip, and I felt quite on my own.
Another man I met on a ship trip was Mr Chaine. Mr Chaine, that is the spelling of his name. He is at King George Town now. His family too. I learn my letters with his children and the help of his good wife.
They would all like to meet you and I look forward to our handshaking and Menak and Manit and Wooral too. One day not yet now.
Your friend, Bobby
Having corrected his spelling, Mrs Chaine spoke. It may be that Mrs Cross will now not ever arrive, Bobby. She folded the letter. But I think we shall nevertheless send your message by the next ship.
The Governor Sir came in a ship of his own, Mrs Chaine told Bobby. In a ship of his own, Bobby overheard many of the people of King George Town pronouncing it: in a ship of his own he came with a wife and nine children. He came with:
Servants (two black boys among them)
Sheep
Bullocks
Chickens …
He had a longer list than Mr Chaine! The new governor-resident brought so much with him he needed a second ship. Fruit trees and tools and wheelbarrows and glass panes and mirrors, too …
He had servants, including two young men who were, what? Not quite servants, not quite family. Bobby wanted to talk with them, but they turned away from him on the heels of their well-worn shoes. Their scent was very sweet, and they did not understand Noongar language, only English, which they spoke very like the Governor, who wanted them to have nothing to do with Noongar people and barked at them to get away. And they seemed quite happy to be standing with the Governor’s family, the littler children like emu chicks beside the protective legs of their father, all of them together looking at we people. A red-haired son, not a lot older than Bobby himself, among them.
When the Governor and his family first arrived they had nowhere to sleep unless they remained aboard ship, and they longed to be on land. Chaine said he might put them up. He had a house where his men often stayed, he told them. Where your predecessor, the good Dr Cross, resided.
The Governor and his wife, after so long on a shifting deck, accepted Mr Chaine’s hospitality and stayed in a little hut by the grey sea in the shadow of a hill. The cottage sagged as Geordie Chaine pulled the door open and the Governor and his wife both saw how he lifted the door as he pulled it. One corner was propped up with poles, outside and in. There were insects in the walls, no garden to speak of, and white sand everywhere.
Chaine showed them how their fire might be lit; he set the flames himself. Servants were very hard to come by, he said. Told them their luggage would arrive soon. They were very quiet, and so he kept talking, saying there is no coal, but the timber burns well, see? Warm. Unlike coal, no need to clean.
With two ships at anchor in the inner harbour and two public houses keeping many sailors’ lips wet, it was a long way from the genteel welcome to the country that a good man’s wife and family might have expected.
The grey shingle and whitewashed cottages are a picture and so subtle in the soft afternoon light, the Governor and his wife said. And to overlook the harbour like this … They shivered, pulled their cloaks closer about them. The harbour waters held daylight, or so it seemed because look how it glows blue even though the sun has gone and the sky is darkening.
Voices came from close by, loud in the still, chill air; voices singing, drunken and raucous.
We are not many, Mrs Chaine told them, wanting to speak so those voices would not be heard. All her husband could say was these sealers and whalers and sailors are mostly our guests.
You must dine with us, said the Chaines.
I see we will need to adjust ourselves to our new circumstances, the Governor’s wife afterwards said to her spouse.
The Chaines took Governor Spender and his good wife Ellen to the little bush hut Cross had built at Kepalup which did not even have the wattle-and-daub walls and she-oak shingles of his building in town. They made the journey in Chaine’s new whaleboat (of local timber, he could not help but proudly say, and built by one of my men) and the Governor and his wife pulled in their chins and shrank as they passed the fish-traps and the thin figures with their spears and went to where the river water was so dark. And where, just upstream from where Bobby met the boat and secured it to the bank, a small weir made fine sinews in the river, and a thin trail of foam and bubbles, like someone’s hacking cough had left spit and phlegm in the water. But the river on the rocks sounded like someone laughing softly. Chuckling. As rivers and people do. The same.
The Governor politely spoke of the trees, the grassy bank, this quaint path … The path maintained, he heard whispered, by many bare feet before us.
Chaine clumped his feet on the ground. And now our own boots, he added. But we are not enough, and will put down stone and with hatchets make a future for already they grow few …
Bobby was watching.
The coughing has taken very many away.
The Governor looked at this boy, past him. His pale eyes took in the little hut and Bobby, twisting, trying to look with those same eyes, saw the sheep held in a pen of rough posts and limbs and twigs, the leaves still drying. A fence which scratched and rustled in the breeze. The yellowing, scraggly vegetable garden.
Skelly was at work and, trudging heavily, seemed like a bullock. With arms outspread and moving as if signalling with flags, Chaine indicated the timber frame Skelly had erected, the trees that had been felled, the wall down at the riverbank—there—that held water from a natural spring deep enough for stock to drink their fill. His eyes sparkled, and it seemed he wanted to break into laughter but Bobby, following people’s gaze, saw Mrs Chaine turn away from her husband and glance sideways at the Governor and his wife. She is sad, thought Bobby, as her eyes, again sliding away, caught his gaze for a moment.
Their guests looked away from Skelly and Chaine and their achievement, and at the trees standing all around them. Talked of King George Town.
We walked to the top of the hill above the village, they said, and saw we were surrounded, one side by ocean, and the other by grey-green bush rolling as far as the eye can see. You might drown in forest, sink and never be seen.
Such delicate wildflowers we have seen there, they said, taking comfort in detail that, isolated, might be pressed between the pages of books.
Chaine thought the whaleboat would sail them back, and they left late afternoon. The sky was low and grey, and the water of Shellfeast Harbour was grey, too, with some yellow hue of sunlight trapped in the shallows. The wind dropped, and Bobby saw there was rain in the ladies’ hair and bright drops on the wool of their clothes. This fine rain—
mitjal
, meaning tears—jewellery drops reflecting the moonlight when the clouds lifted. They rowed and rowed and thought they could see the dark mass of shore across the water. But the wind came up and blew at them, and the ladies were seasick, even though this was quite sheltered water, and it seemed they would never reach that shore, let alone arrive back at the sand and briefly cobbled streets of King George Town.
Finally they reached solid, gleaming sand, but were still inside the mouth of Shellfeast Harbour. Seeing as how the ladies recovered once their feet were ashore, Chaine thought they might walk and he instructed his men to take the boat as best they could to King George Town Harbour. He expected he would see them in the morning, and they would have a late night themselves because there were still a few miles yet to walk. The Governor’s old war wound meant he could not walk even that distance, and he went with the men in the boat.
Perhaps it was the difficulty of their journey from Kepalup, or they may have strayed from a straight path, but the ladies stumbled, and it was understood that they must rest. Geordie Chaine spread his long coat for them, and they lay together, the Governor’s wife saying, Please do not leave us, Mr Chaine, you have been too kind, sir, but really I must lay myself down …
Perhaps she also thought Chaine was like a rock. You could break against him, cling. A thing of strength, that nothing could shake.
Bobby had slipped away, but the cold made the women prefer to be on their feet again walking, and they found themselves moving closer and closer together, and held one another for support, and stumbled again and again, bushes sprinkling them with silver drops like confetti. Not until dawn, just before sunrise with the sky lightening and space growing all around, did they walk down into the valley of the settlement, and the harbour was a great shallow bowl glimmering before them.
The wind had again dropped. The boat had arrived before them, after all, and here was the Governor, fully clothed, asleep in a chair in their hut.
Still numb and sleep-thickened later that same day, Chaine showed them a mound of earth and a cross newly erected on one slope of the valley that led away from the harbour. A Dr Cross cross. Solid, freshly whitewashed timber. A timber rail around that. Letters that had been neatly chiselled and darkened:
DR CROSS.
A FOUNDING FATHER.
PASSED AWAY 1837.
The man you succeed, Mr Chaine said. The Governor’s wife may have given a little shudder. Chaine did not say it was a shared grave. That the man had asked to be buried with a native, Wunyeran. They saw how the Governor had looked at Noongars, and stood away. How could they explain?
Bobby, hardly noticed and with them again, realised Wunyeran’s name was not on the cross. Why?
*
Governor Spender moved out to The Farm and away from the community of King George Town. With so many people in his family it was almost like he made another little town altogether separate from King George Town out there where Soldier Killam used to live nearly all the time on his own. Most of the people at the port walked out to The Farm for a special occasion of flag raising and firing guns and planting trees. A tree will be planted, the Governor said in his speech and pointed. Although it was only small, you could see the storybook shape of it already. Norfolk Pine, the Governor named it. It was only a small crowd really, Governor Spender and his people, Mr Chaine and his, an old soldier, a cobbler, a few merchants and sailors and landowners, ex-soldier Killam and ex-convict Skelly, some wives and mothers and children … A group of Noongar people, too. Governor Spender was accustomed to public speaking and, taking his time, he looked around the small crowd and saw Bobby. The Governor beckoned him, and for once in his life Bobby was slow to understand and so did not respond. The Governor put down his shovel (he did not use it like the other men) and walked toward Bobby. Some people wondered what he was going to do. Was he angry? He brought Bobby back with him and together—both pairs of hands lifting, each taking a turn on the shovel—they planted the tree.
A memorable day, Governor Spender said. I am the King’s representative and … He gestured at Bobby Wabalanginy and everybody started clapping. Bobby gave a bow, and the applause increased. Bobby smiled as big as he could, looking at the Governor’s son and his two black servants (is that what they were, those two?). He felt very proud.
When Bobby was a very old man he would tell tourists to go look at that towering tree. And shake his head.
I was only a little boy, he said.
*
Geordie Chaine took charge of the bar of the public house he’d hired Mr Killam to manage. He even shouted a round of drinks when Mr Killam returned to celebrate their new business arrangement.
It was a low-ceilinged and dark place, cramped enough to suit the habits of the seagoing folk who were its main customers. It did not yet have the great whale jawbone within which Chaine in later years would stand and command his clientele, but there was a fireplace at one side of the room, and at the other a bar and wall of stone. A grid of wrought iron attached to the wall could be folded over the bar to make the grog safe from the hands of the many who would walk through any wattle-and-daub housing presumptuous enough to think it alone could stop them.
And Mr Geordie Chaine now also had a farm managed by Mr William Skelly (who swelled with pride when addressed as such by Geordie Chaine, and then despised himself). The farm, Kepalup, was out of town just beyond the edge of Shellfeast Harbour, on a river leading inland to the mountains, a branch of which apparently ran to yet another sheltered bay to the east.
*
Early morning, and Bobby lay half-asleep. An easy day, a lazy day. He imagined the sun beginning to show above the horizon, emerging from the sea between the islands, where the whale paths ran. He’d come from the ocean that same way, and been borne by the wind like a bird. Now he was earth and stone. He could not see the sun, but the pale sky was opening, light expanding from right there between the islands. His world opened around him, each day grew a little more.
His feet could not take him as far as his eyes might lead … Oh, far enough, but. His piss steamed in the thin morning sunlight. Dew caught the sun. The dark tree trunks, and all around him on leaves and twigs and grasses the water droplets sparkling, so that he was like a spider at the centre of his web.
The blazing orange magic of Christmas tree, they called it. He stayed clear; a branch fell, a feathered-thing flew heavily from the tree, wings straining in the air as it called
Nyu! Nyu!
and turned a very human face to Bobby. Its long legs dangled and swung in the air as it flapped away.
The thin gnarled trunks and crimson blooms of … bottlebrush. For a moment the word returned him to a ship’s door, to a bowl of soapy water and glass bottles. Bobby missed climbing the mast and, like an eagle, looking to the horizon, seeing all, being unseen.
He wandered to where the view was of limbs of land laying in the ocean, and the islands peeping up saying, me too, me too. All spread like gifts before him at the centre of this sparkling morning.
He heard footsteps, something rolling toward him. Was stopped dead in his tracks. Felt like he’d been slapped in the face.
There was a long whiskered face, its tall ears turning and a quizzical expression directed at him. A mule; and the man astride it wore a long coat, bright as a flower, but fading. He had a tall three-cornered hat, shining medals against his chest, and a sword bumping against his side as he went by, unaware of Bobby.
Bobby stepped back, thin branches fell across his shoulders like comforting arms, and prickly fingers tried to shield his eyes.
Despite the hat, coat, medals and sword, the Governor’s hair and skin seemed like nothing, almost as if they were made of the sunlight dappling his clothes, and about to be drawn back through the thin and fragmentary canopy to the sky.