The Clay Dreaming (22 page)

Brippoki’s face looked plaintive, his brow creased. ‘He is in…Wool Itch?’ he asked.

‘In one of the prison ships at Woolwich, yes,’ she said, slightly hoarse. ‘They are still there, as far as I know.’

‘He is imprison?’

Brippoki’s black pupils rapidly darted around the room. In his dismay he seemed to look at everything and nothing. She found it impossible to read his thoughts.

‘Is…’ she said ‘…is this…?’ She searched for some way not to ask it as a direct question. ‘It has been in some way helpful to you?’

He did not answer. His habitual silence was unnerving.

In place of the manuscript itself, Sarah brandished her notebook. ‘We’ve found the book!’ she said. ‘Bruce’s book. Aren’t you pleased?’

‘Oh,
yes
, miss!’ he said.

Brippoki’s utmost sincerity disarmed her.

‘His early life…’ she said. ‘He records everything in such detail, I wasn’t sure you would want to hear it all.’

‘I want to know all things,’ said Brippoki.

In the wake of so firm a declaration, Sarah proposed her earlier excellent idea. ‘Come with me to the Museum,’ she said. ‘As a member of the ordinary public you may attend, on certain days in the week. We’d have to obtain for you a viewing pass, of course, but then…you could see…for yourself?’

Brippoki looked aghast, and violently shook his head. Fidgeting, he stood and paced about the room.

Sarah was nonplussed.

The clock in the hall began to chime. The hour was more greatly advanced than she might have guessed; it would not do for Brippoki to remain so very late into the evening. Sarah leapt to her feet. As she struggled to summon the correct phrases, her hands motioned him outside.

‘Until tomorrow, then.’ She blurted the words. ‘We’ll have to continue tomorrow.’

She made for the door, only to turn and see Brippoki heading for the window. It gaped only slightly, in order to air the room, but, grasping the rim forcefully, he rammed it open wide. The drapes guttered in the sudden breeze.

‘Oh!’ she gasped.

Gathered in the interstice, Brippoki turned and nodded a goodbye.

He was gone.

Standing within the frame of the open window, the strands of her hair trailing, Sarah took some moments to gather her wits. She heard the strangulated yowl of an alley-cat, a short distance away.

The woodsy smell of her gentleman caller imbued the air. She dared breathe not a word to her father concerning Brippoki’s nightly visitations. Let him remain her very own secret: to savour, even when stinking; to reveal – or not – as and when she saw fit.

Lamps extinguished, heading upstairs, Sarah put her ear to the crack of Lambert’s bedroom door. His loud snores for once reassured: he remained fast asleep.

Her face broke into a wide and self-satisfied smile.

The dove of deliverance had brought her an olive leaf, pluckt off.

At long last, she held on to something exclusive; that precious something never before experienced – a life of her own. 

The players confined to lodgings, their custodians in the main lounge, the Aboriginal Australian Eleven made ready to quit the Bat and Ball Inn, Gravesend.

‘Our third match, and already two men down,' railed their captain, Charles Lawrence. ‘If it ain't one thing, it's another. We haven't played at full strength since we got here!'

William South Norton raised one eyebrow: not having forgiven Lawrence his slights the previous Sunday, he implied a sore loser.

‘Two?' he queried. ‘Who else is it has gone missing?'

Lawrence turned away, lest he be tempted to smack South Norton's smarmy face for a six.

‘Not missing,' Bill Hayman clarified, pouring oil on the waters. ‘But may as well be, for all the use he is.'

South Norton gawped, clueless.

‘Sundown, lad,' said Hayman. ‘Laid low by some mystery illness. It's all we can do to turn him in his bunk.'

South Norton began to chortle.

‘What's so funny,' growled Lawrence.

‘Sundown,' he said, ‘tied to his bunk. Very thoughtful, considering how much you've to pay for the things.'

Thomas Elt, proprietor of the Bat and Ball, proposed to charge £40 for their accommodation, a small fortune well above the average. Further, he had applied to the local Board of Guardians to supply beds and bedding – the hotel's existing linen too good for the black cricketers.

Lawrence balled a fist and stepped forward. Bill Hayman intervened. He motioned for his brother-in-law to back off. William South Norton was, for the moment, wise enough to hold his peace.

Charles Lawrence seethed. He had altogether too much on his mind of late, not least this most recent unpleasantness. King Cole was still missing. He struggled to recall the last occasion on which he had seen him. Despite interrogation, neither Sundown nor any of the others would admit to anything. His corps had closed ranks: if they knew where Cole had gone to, they weren't saying. At times like this Lawrence resented their otherworldliness, the secrecy inherent in their faith, their complicated code of brotherhood.

‘They said the blasted idiot's gone “Walkabout”!' he ranted. ‘For no damn good reason.'

Bill Hayman paused in the packing of his bags. ‘They said that?' he asked.

‘For no good reason that
I
know of,' said Lawrence. ‘You know what it's like, blood from a stone…'

So they might take off for days, weeks, months on end, and who knew why? In order to join up with their kinfolk, somewhere out in the Bush. For the sake of some unholy communion, or whatever else constituted the rhyme and reason of their ritual life.

‘Don't he realise he has prior obligations?'

‘If he could spell it,' said South Norton, ‘he might realise it.'

Lawrence ignored the remark. ‘From now on,' he said, ‘they'll have to return to their sleeping quarters each night, and we'll have to make double sure of it.'

‘Or there'll be Elt to pay!'

Lawrence went for William South Norton, stabbing finger-first. ‘Mention that blackguard again,' he shouted, ‘and…I'm warning you!'

Bill Hayman, steadfast between them, spoke
sotto voce
to his kin. ‘And I warned you,' he said.

Turning, he took hold of Lawrence by the shoulders and spun him halfway about. ‘More to the point, old chum,' he said, ‘what are we going to do about it?'

All Lawrence's air went out of him. When he spoke again, his voice seemed pathetic and small. ‘What
can
we do?' he said. ‘Inform the press?'

‘And tell them what, exactly?' Hayman, sounding very take-charge, had obviously been thinking things through. ‘Cole's only been missing a day or two, at most. And he may come wandering back at any moment. Then how would it look? No, publicity-wise it would be a disaster, and that's something we don't need. I'd go to almost any lengths to avoid it, in fact.'

Hayman raised his right shoulder and, stretching one arm out behind, tried to iron out a kink in his back. ‘Best,' he advised, ‘to say nothing, just yet.'

William South Norton nodded curtly.

Lawrence pursed his lips, reflecting.

‘Outside of ourselves,' said Hayman, ‘who would even notice if Cole doesn't appear on the pitch?'

‘Instead of “not out”,' South Norton quipped, ‘we may say “never in”!'

Hayman offered up the most practical solution, since it seemed entirely down to him. ‘We'll keep their caps swapped around,' he said. ‘Nothing the Abs themselves haven't done before now…'

Lawrence walked to the window, attempting to cool off.

‘What on earth does he think he's playing at?' he said, mostly to himself.

Charles Lawrence looked out over Gravesend, not even seeing it.

The booming notes sound, deep and low. They resonate throughout Brippoki's body. Trembling, he has to clutch at the walls for support. In the aftermath, the air yet vibrates.

Craning his neck, he marvels at the Piebald Giant.

Buried to His chest, He is yet massive above. Aside from the gunmetal blue of His bald head, the skin is either very black, or very white. The markings fall in uneven patches, half a bone here, the swell of muscle there. Wreathed in smoke, stacked like a thunderhead, He is the stone-silent master of all He surveys.

Brippoki feels daunted, but in the same moment reassured by the sight of an old friend.

Even here, Truth is. Spirit Ancestors walk the land, as they have since the dawn of Creation.

That a land where Ancestor Spirits walk could be created any less than perfect is unthinkable. And yet, from everywhere around there comes the noise of busy digging, digging, digging. Brippoki looks back in the direction he has come. Droves of labourers teem over great mounds of displaced earth. Others, high overhead, clamber across a wickerwork of scaffold. He emerges only gradually from his daydream. The scene is one of very great destruction.

Brippoki's face twists and falls.

He moves closer to the precincts beneath the cathedral. To every side throngs an army of darkness, entire suited regiments on the march. At each road junction the dense clusters amass and disperse, a mirror to the flight of crows, crying overhead.

Crushed in the midst of such impersonal mass, Brippoki lets events flow over him.

Without the Spirit Ancestors' enduring presence, he would be lost in this false London.

Sarah Larkin checked in on her father, made the breakfast, cleaned up a little from the night before, and then set out for the Museum. A short queue of patients coughed outside the front door, waiting on the late arrival of Dr Epps.

The dense cloud cover of the last few days persisted, sky almost settled on the rooftops. Sarah's blouse stuck to her flesh from the unusual humidity. She let none of it dampen her mood. She breezed into the Reading-room, eager to set off on her travels.

Bruce's manuscript remained where she had carefully chosen to leave it, in between
A Dissertation on the Properties of Pus and Essai sur le Dyssenterie Putride
, a spot surely little frequented. Sarah caught sight of Benjamin J. Jeffery, watching. Jaw set, she blinked a subtle acknowledgement. He shied away.

Sarah soon found her place within the text, the point at which their juvenile hero was to be deported to Australia; the sentence of death commuted to transportation for life, for the stealing of two silk handkerchiefs.

The tale of the ‘
plumpuding'
and the
‘poor little doge
' had been at once both horrible and amusing. Sarah felt rather fond of the young George Bruce, so shameless, yet so filled with shame that he should admit to picking pockets on the Sabbath!

The
Life
seemed as honest, in its way, as a confessional.

Events moved apace. Sarah primed her pen.

Port Jackson was a main port of Australia; ‘Towngabbe', she guessed, the name of another settlement of that colony. As for the ship on board which he travelled, following a few whispered experiments she settled on the
Royal Admiral
, East-Indiaman – as identified in the
Memoirs
. Regardless of the dates' conflicting by as much as two years, it seemed safe to assume the vessel was the same. The captain's name, Bond, sealed it.

According to the
Memoirs
, Bruce had served as ‘bo'sun's boy', with no mention of his trial or imprisonment. Calling muster on board ship or carrying water on land – he might have been employed in either situation, even as a convict.

Sarah turned to the continuation of her transcript.

Oh!

Recollection?

Horrific circumstances notwithstanding, Sarah smiled at the happy accidents of language; his ‘bad side' for bedside; ‘infirmity' – well, almost – for affirmative.

‘A good boy', ‘good boy' – the phrase kept recurring. The Fagin-type character from the Limehouse passages had also used it, but in a sense quite distinct – in praise of his efforts in stealing the widow's watch.

On that separate sheet of paper where she had written ‘Royal Admiral,
East-Indiaman, Captain Bond?'
Sarah added ‘
the
Cumbellin –
a schooner, commander Lieutenant Bishworth',
and then ‘
Norfolk Island?
' The library was not exactly short of reference books, and at this stage any detail could have relevance.

And was a ‘brig' – in the
Memoirs
– some sort of a prison ship, as it sounded? She would have to ask someone more familiar with nautical terms.

The Greenwich Hospital clerk, Lieutenant Loveless, had offered to enquire after George Bruce at Somerset House, something she had largely dismissed. She could do worse than to write him a quick letter. She might then forward a brief questionnaire.

Sarah returned to the manuscript.

Sarah was trying to concentrate. There had been a spattering of rain earlier in the day, while she was still working at the Museum. She recalled the intermittent thrash of it, drumming on the glass lantern of the dome, and how the wind, having risen, had hurried her home. That one brief shower had been the only rain all week. The winds howling outside might hopefully blow the clouds away.