The Clay Dreaming (15 page)

‘You speak as if that were a bad thing!’ said Sarah.

‘Oh, but it
is
!’ Dilkes Loveless took another urgent sip of tea. His cup rattled in its saucer. ‘Valour, duty, honour, loyalty,’ he said, ‘our national symbol, Jolly Jack Tar, is but a pale shadow of his former self!’

Sarah thought of Lambert in his bed.

Entirely uninterested, King Cole monopolised the sugar-bowl.

‘Of necessity,’ said Dilkes, ‘we are obliged to maintain Hospital security, and management, of course. Where once there were
20
officers in charge, today there is only the Governor, a captain, a commander, and three lieutenants, including myself. Seven wards closed, two out of the four blocks no longer in use… The expense! You can’t imagine! Annual running costs have doubled in the last eight years, to 114 pounds
per capita
!’

Sarah gasped. An entire family might be supported on half as much. She and her father survived on little more: only because there were just the two of them could they class themselves better off.

Dilkes, carried away with the matter of accounts, looked a little abashed. He finger-traced the lip of his teacup.

‘It is the payment of out-pensions,’ he said at last, ‘Government’s previous great mistake, which may finally do for us. Recently reinstated, they have proven too popular, two-thirds of residents taking up the Duke of Somerset’s offer. Out-pensioners, you see, can draw their money whilst living with their families. It is tantamount to an
inducemen
t to leave…in search of those consolations, dear lady, which only social and domestic affection will bestow.’

An odd sort of transparency appeared in his wide blue eyes: he was looking at Sarah through bottle-top lenses with what might, in another, have passed for a soulful expression. She looked away.

For a breathless moment or two, Dilkes Loveless fell silent. His empty gaze shuttled around each wall of his office in turn.

Abruptly, he stood.

Sarah turned around to find that King Cole, too, was standing. She turned back. The clerk, his hand outstretched, was showing them to a small side door.

‘Shall we?’ he said.

They made their exit via a small antechamber, and then across a dark corridor. Outside once more, they paused, standing within what appeared to be the inner courtyard of the King Charles block. King Cole’s attention had begun, rather obviously, to drift. Sarah wondered how to bring their tour to a close without offending the clerk unduly.

‘Just 371 inmates survive,’ he was saying, ‘including those in the Infirmary. That’s what we have left,
rattling
around, in an institution built for 3,000.’

Dilkes Loveless moved on, the gravel grinding beneath his heel.

They passed beneath an archway at the riverine end. The clerk came to a halt beside a length of railings that, bordering the Hospital grounds, overlooked a narrow strip of pathway beside the Thames.

The tide was coming in.

He talked incessantly, like a tap that could not be turned off.

‘We would be closed
already
,’ he said, ‘were it not for the “Guv’nor”, bless his old boot. Closed by the suffrage of those for whom the Hospital was originally founded!’

Curiosity got the better of her; Sarah advanced a few steps to peer through one of the lower windows of the riverside apartments. The superiority of fixtures and fittings to anything seen in the wards was immediately obvious. The ceiling was vaulted, the handsome door-cases carved from stone.

‘What’ she asked, ‘is through there?’

‘Why, the Governor’s apartments,’ said Dilkes. ‘Even if their posts have been abolished, the majority of officers and their families have of course chosen to remain in residence.’ Dilkes Loveless seemed to indicate the entire southeast pavilion.

‘Of course,’ echoed Sarah.

She was wrong in her earlier assessment: no guilt of any sort found its expression here. 

‘The conscience of civilisation’ was not troubled in the slightest.

King Cole, head dreamily inclined to one side, listens to faint strains of a weirdling music. He feels it in his liver as he knows it in his bones: this sad place contains too many dead. Reason enough for the site to be abandoned. It is contaminated, destined to lie empty forever.

Sarah felt a slight panic rising in her breast. King Cole, who always lingered a little too far behind for comfort, was missing.

She hurried back, passing through the courtyard to the centre of King Charles, just catching sight of his muddied trouser-leg as it disappeared through a doorway.

Sarah followed on, back to the stone-flagged foyer where the water troughs were gurgling. No sign of Cole.

A door stood ajar opposite that to the deserted ward. It had not been open before. She ran to the threshold.

The Hospital clerk, puffing along behind, struggled to keep up. When he came to the inner doorway he found Sarah just inside. The Aborigine gentleman hesitated a few steps further on, at an apparent loss.

Brows pleading, King Cole communicated his vexation to Sarah.

‘Where are we?’ she asked of Dilkes.

‘The Peacock Room,’ he said.

A sculpted bust topped an ornamental fireplace, below which knelt the melodramatic figure of an angel, weeping abject tears.

‘There we are,’ Dilkes suddenly announced. ‘I knew it would come to me. George Bruce!’

Looking again at the bust, Sarah performed a neat double-take.

‘No, no,’ gasped Dilkes. ‘
That
is Charles Dibdin. Died 1816…so the pair, to my knowledge, will never have met. Not in
this
life.’

‘I don’t follow you,’ she said.

‘Dibden was the author of a great many sea-shanties, and the like,’ said Dilkes. ‘One of which was “The Greenwich Pensioner”.’

Sarah nodded, still unsure of his logic.

‘George Bruce,’ he said again. ‘I
knew
the name was familiar to me from somewhere! He wrote a
book
, you see, detailing his own extraordinary story.’

‘A book?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Dilkes. ‘He called it
The Life of a Greenwich Pensioner
!’

Sarah scrabbled for her stub of pencil.

‘Well, I
say
extraordinary, never having
read
the thing,’ added Dilkes, ‘but he crossed the oceans more than once. Every sailor has his stories, and his poor face must have got like that somehow!’

Excited, Sarah looked from the clerk to King Cole and back again.

‘
Guruwari
,’ hissed Cole. ‘
Guruwari!
’

The meaning behind his expression was a mystery, yet he too seemed provoked by the mention of a book. And something must have sent him racing in there at such a clip.

‘Do you know where I might find a copy of this book?’ she said.

‘Let’s see,’ hemmed Dilkes, squinting. ‘No longer
here
, I’m sure of that. No, I must confess, I’m not sure
where
it might be. Most likely among the paper ephemera we’ve cleared out along the way. Your best bet would be the library at the British Museum.’

Fresh and lovely-sounding, Sarah Larkin’s laughter echoed throughout the flagstone lobby, and – louder, longer – inside Dilkes’s loveless head.

The clerk returned his guests to the grass lawns of the Grand Court, the Royal Naval Hospital’s open quadrangle, and the spot where their official tour had begun. Sighing loudly, he turned to observe the incoming river traffic. A flotilla of trade vessels crowded their way upstream.

‘Greenwich Hospital,’ Dilkes Loveless said, ‘is much
endeared
to an Englishman’s heart.’

He twinkled meaningfully at Sarah. His transparent looks lingered; she turned aside.

Raised on a plinth beside them was a statue of King George II, face worn away by the action of the elements. King Cole regarded it suspiciously.

Met with awkward silence, the clerk returned to looking out across the waters, his attention drawn by the sailor-Pensioners still huddled or hobbled at the riverside.

‘Little accustomed to kindness of any sort,’ said Dilkes, ‘
wanting
everything that tends to enliven or endear a home. It is perhaps the monastic character of the place that has proven distasteful to so many.’

Self-pity had crept into the clerk’s droning voice, and Sarah felt he eyed her ring finger, gloved though it was, with rather too much significance.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘thank you, lieutenant.’

They had what they needed. King Cole drifted, patently keen to leave.

‘Charles,’ said Dilkes.

‘Charles,’ she said. ‘Thank you. You’ve been
most
helpful.’ Sarah was backing away even as she spoke. ‘We both appreciate,’ she said, ‘very much, the time you have taken to show us arou – ’

‘I extend myself to you,’ spluttered Dilkes. He saw the alarm in her eye. ‘My continued
service
, I offer you, in whatever way it, might be…’ he wanted to say desirable ‘…most
useful
.’

‘Time is getting on,’ said Sarah. ‘We mustn’t keep you from your work.’

‘I can take a look through papers at the Admiralty, if you’d like?’ said Dilkes. ‘Let me take your address. In case I should find anything more concerning Bruce. That is, if you should wish me to look…’

Sarah raised one eyebrow – it was a sound idea, at least in part.

‘Maybe…’ She thought aloud. ‘Well, maybe,’ she said, ‘in that case, I can take
yours
…’

Their relief almost palpable, Sarah and Cole entered into the grounds of Greenwich Park.

Sounds of birdsong and laughter carried on the breeze, across glorious acres of wide-open space. They could see a trio of boys with feathers in their caps, running in delirious, diminishing circles, until one caught another and they all tumbled headlong to the grass. A maidservant navigated a three-wheeled baby cart along the main path. As with any popular amenity, the place had become a little frayed at the edges, but these signs of wear and tear, if anything, only added to its charm. Long boulevards stretched forward, planted with exotic trees of extraordinary girth. Sarah and King Cole soon found themselves idling at a central point, a sort of shaded crossways. In the midst of this semicircular grove, fine lawns and thicketed woods surrounded them, the park a curious patchwork of the cultivated and wild. A few tame deer, allowed to wander freely, grazed nearby. Their scent was strong. King Cole eyed them hungrily.

A party of children rolling down from the brow of the nearest hill landed almost at their feet, breathless with laughter. As they turned to climb back up, the curious couple followed their lead.

The Royal Observatory crowned the hilltop, a guiding principle for weary travellers far from home. Commanders of all vessels sailing from the Thames set their chronometers by the red leather ball atop Flamsteed House: the great globe measured, from the Greenwich Meridian, degrees of east-west longitude providing the basis for all British maps and charts. According to the public clock outside the gates the hour was nearly five. Whatever else King Cole might have in mind, Sarah knew she would soon have to make her way back to the house.

They turned to admire the view.

The broad sweep of the Thames valley stretched out before them. London was just part of a wider panorama, a great dark smear alleviated by the occasional
protuberance: the Tower; the Monument; the tallest city steeples. Beyond rose the hills of Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Surrey. Smoke piled from out of a hundred thousand chimneys, but at sufficient remove so as not to obscure everything. Rather than brood beneath the metropolitan canopy, for once it was possible to look across to it – even to discern the smell of clean air.

They seemed almost on a level with the clouds.

Screaming children charged to the edge and launched themselves into thin air, pitching themselves down the sharp incline. Sarah very much wished to be a child again, and free of her encumbering skirts. She might then find the courage to join them in their violent, tumbling game.

Instead, Cole led her away from the crowds to climb a nearby promontory, one he appeared to favour. A solitary elm stood proud at the apex. Side-by-side on the grass, they sat beneath its shade.

The banks of neighbouring hillocks extended rich and green. The crest of One Tree Hill, in contrast, was but sparsely covered. Yellowed grass faded between patches of bare earth, the blue haze of fir trees skirting its lower margins.

King Cole grunted.

‘Leg rain coming,’ he observed.

It was true. Piled high along the far horizon, great dark thunderheads gathered. Distant showers fell in fitful curtains.

A little way along, the owner of a telescope had set up shop. Every now and then, his peddler’s cry could be heard. ‘A look through my spyglass, penny a go!’

A way below, their picnic forgotten, a gentleman entertained a lady on the slopes. His hat was off. Every now and then the man with the telescope succumbed to temptation and gave the pick-knickers a closer look. Otherwise, Sarah and Cole were completely alone.

In a single afternoon, they had covered more ground than many Londoners did in a lifetime. They relaxed and rested.

The Aborigine sat with one leg thrust out in front, the other folded back under and supporting his body. He began to scratch away at the soil between his feet.

Looking up at Sarah, King Cole spoke excitedly.

‘In the dust,’ he said, ‘I write.’

He started to draw with the displaced earth. Sarah could not hope to understand; even so, she was fascinated. The longer they had remained at the Hospital, the more its palatial confines had seemed to sap all of their vital energy – Cole’s especially. Apparently revived, he drew with both hands, using the index and middle finger one after the other to create a double dotted line. He drew a number of these lines, each one different, and erased by a sweep of the palm. In the last of these line drawings, she perceived a familiar shape.

Unless she was mistaken, he outlined the loop of the River Thames, just as it was laid out before them.

King Cole grunted again. He inscribed an almost perfect circle, and then with an air of finality struck a line through it, to effect something like a capital Q.

Sarah deliberately held her tongue. Attempting to adopt his gestural ‘body language’, she allowed her facial expression to deliver the full force of her enquiry.

His dark eyes flickered. Seeming nervous, he would not meet her quizzical glare.

She noticed some sort of marks on the bark of the elm tree behind him. Fresh and injurious, the carving had been made only recently. It was a figurine, human, arms extended and legs spread, as if dancing. Eyes, nose, even the joints of the knees were boldly marked, but there was no mouth. Immediately that he saw she had spotted this thing, King Cole shifted his position to block her view of it.

His hands raised and held flat maintained a perfect stillness. He began to move backwards and forwards very gently, seeming as if to indicate all of the land that stretched out before them, as far as the horizon, perhaps even further. Fingers spreading, his hands fell. A small word combined with this dismissive gesture to convey something negative, something not. He touched the grass at his feet – not. He indicated the trees –
not
. The deer where they grazed and dozed, and all of the people wandering the park – they too were denied. The entire earth lay empty, without any of these things.

Narrating the while in his singsong native language, Cole either spoke in hushed tones, or alternately gabbled in staccato bursts.

His gestures almost preternaturally slow, one thin arm nosed sinuously, gracefully forward – no mistaking the movements of a snake. Cole’s musculature tightened. Instinctively, Sarah understood the concept of great size imbuing this ‘snake’. When it set to shuddering, she trembled. One eye opened and sly, the snake began to gather and rear itself up. Slowly, slowly, it turned its head, taking in the view.

Formerly so quiet, King Cole babbled like a brook. Sarah, beguiled, yet found herself distracted. Storm clouds, building higher in the sky, approached fast; sun breaking out from between them transformed the dirty brown river into a glittering wreath.

King Cole’s snake-arm began to weave its way forward, across the land. Back and forth it slithered, his other hand close in behind it, making short sweeping motions away from the elbow. Sarah thought at first it shed skin. Continuing, the signals seemed more likely to emphasise progress. At a certain point, the snake met and matched the exact course of the Thames.

She had a boat to catch. The steamer service ran late, but her father would be expecting his supper sooner. The library closed at six: if she were absent much longer, he might begin to wonder where else she had got to.

With a snap the big snake retreated, back, back, returning to the place from which it had emerged. The great head turned, pointed towards the ground, and began to…spit? No, speak. Cole called out, the opening and closing of his hand synchronous with his shouts.

‘
Mia! … Mia! … Mia! Gala!
’

The late afternoon light laced everything with silver. Sarah wanted to stay, but knew that she could not. Already the view-peddler had packed up and gone, and so had the lovers.

‘I must go!’ she said.

King Cole bucked and jerked, popping a loose fist – another, and then another.

Sarah stood.

Cole’s body hunched forward, his tongue protruding slightly, blowing out his cheeks. The expression on his swollen face was comical, ridiculous.

Although no one else was near to see, Sarah blushed. She took a step backwards, retreating unsteadily.

‘You’ll…you’ll be all right, making your own way?’ she said.

King Cole answered with a loud croak. Entire body bloated with mime, he hopped, a big fat frog. Lightning fast, his whole form shifted. Once more the snake slid over his belly, brushing up against it.

Sarah forgot herself a moment.

Again the frog, Cole’s mouth sprang wide, his swollen shape contracting. He began to heave and void himself out of his mouth. And to laugh! Vomiting. And laughing. Sarah, perturbed, took another step away.

Ten fingers sprouted, questing upward, arms flinging towards the treetops as his hands fluttered away. Faster now, physical forms shifted and changed, his lips moving but the torrent of words barely audible.

‘
…arkooloolalaranakaratharagarshayarrawa…
’

He jumped, hiccupped, and flew, swam and galloped and slid, populating the landscape with a thousand different animal likenesses.

The great snake reappeared and spoke in an angry voice.
‘Wia ma pitja,’
it shouted.
‘Nungkarpa lara pupinpa!
’

Such fantastical nonsense, after all the help she had so selflessly extended, unnerved and annoyed Sarah. Absorbed in the telling of his mystic tale, Cole acted as if she were no longer there. Why tarry?

Their joint quest, whilst inconclusive, had not been entirely fruitless.

‘I hope that some of what we learned today has been of use to you,’ she said. ‘Shall I see you again? To…tomorrow, perhaps?’

The Aborigine fixed her with a fierce black eye, as if he could turn her to stone.

‘Read in book,’ he said, ‘like whitepella.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed.

Sarah tripped haphazardly down the hill. The tumbling children had all gone. Making towards the park exit, she allowed herself one look back. Filtered through the trees, the sun threw long dark shadows far across the grass,
claw-like
talons that seemed to reach for the huddled figure of the Aborigine. He sat immobile atop One Tree Hill, dwelling on his deep, unknowable thoughts.

King Cole abruptly removes the shoes he has been given, stiff and sopping as pig snouts, and throws them carelessly aside. With a swipe of his bare foot he erases the dirt drawing. The tale of the Rainbow Serpent is done. He stretches out, flexing his toes, no longer fervid, but pensive. He cannot recall the last occasion on which his spirit knew peace.

Spirit Ancestors walk the land, as they have since the dawn of Creation. They sing the World into being. This is Truth. Nothing exists that does not also exist in Truth – where it is, in fact, more real. In order to honour his debt to the Guardian, for all the help she has rendered, he has tried to gift Thara a little of this ancient knowledge. This he has done in the manner of a story best fit for children, as much as the limitations of her sex allows.

An invisible weave, he knows, coheres the World: a network of pathways formed throughout the Dreaming, the footprints of the Spirit Ancestors. Such is the fund of learning he has been taught. The path an Ancestor takes when forming the land becomes a Songline, or Dreaming trail. These Songlines both define the World and maintain its integrity, handed down the generations of man to be replenished through their Dreaming for all eternity.