The Clay Dreaming (57 page)

Deadman’s Spirit is in the Book, as is that of his people – the Guardian included. And recklessly she flaunts it, in her lap! At this time!

Brippoki keeps his distance, lest there be even the slightest suspicion he might wish to steal it away.

Brippoki switched back and forth in front of the fireplace. Air disturbance guttered the candle in its holder. He jumped and started at his own shadow, jerking crazily about the four corners of the room; very swiftly reaching a pitch of excitement from which, it was clear, no amount of friendly persuasion could possibly bring him down.

They were so very nearly done.

Visibility hampered, Sarah struggled to make out the words.

Ague?

Brippoki set to moaning.

She prayed to hear the old familiar ‘Amen’. Instead, Brippoki moaned louder still.

‘Does he sleep now?’ he suddenly asked.

‘Yes!’ Sarah, misunderstanding, answered sharply: with all of his noise, in his disarray, she still worried after Lambert.

Brippoki fell cowering to his knees.

Sarah paused, shocked – his behaviour was a constant mystery. 

She hurried the words.

‘Does he sleep?’ persisted Brippoki. ‘He sleep now, inne?’

Belatedly, she understood that he asked after Druce.

‘Yes, he sleeps now,’ Sarah said. ‘But not alone.’

Whether he had actually known the woman in New South Wales or not was by the by: ‘a woman in great distress’ surely euphemised a common prostitute.

Brippoki quailed further. Her patience exhausted, she paid him no heed.

‘
Owaaah
!’ cried Brippoki.

‘
Nuuhh!
’

‘
Ahoh!
’

‘
EhHHNn!
’

‘Brippoki,
please!
’

‘
Ih, ih
…’ He writhed on the hearthrug.

They were so close to the end. She read on.

‘
Ihhhh!
’

‘IHHHHH!’

Sarah never finished her sentence. As she had half expected, Brippoki rolled to his feet and made a dash for the window. Giddy and light-headed he fell over his own feet, or else a ruck in the carpet. Whichever, his delay gave Sarah chance to jump up: she surprised herself, acting without thinking. She stood firm in between Brippoki and means of escape.

Scrambling up and back, he shrieked at the proximity of the manuscript, still in her hands.

‘Shush,’ she said, arms spread… ‘shushhh.’

Not taking her eyes off him, Sarah crouched down. She laid the book gently on the floor behind her. Backing off still further, he followed its progress with his eyes, and then looked for a way around.

They engaged in a ludicrous standoff.

‘Brippoki…’ said Sarah, very measured.

Breathing loudly, he mouthed cabalistic phrases.

‘What?’ she asked, in earnest. ‘What is it? Talk to me.
Talk
to me! Joseph Druce…’

Brippoki, poor fellow, grew so frightened he fell over. He groaned pitiably.

Too tired to be clever, she needed to choose her words more carefully. This wasn’t what she wanted… Sarah reached out, taking a bold step forward.

He screamed again, trembling, then coughed, his whole body retching. She dared not move any closer.

Wracked with spasms, he was violently sick. With so little content in his stomach, it was mainly sputum that sprayed out onto the carpet. His beard dripping, he looked dismayed, almost as if, through it all, a sense of good manners prevailed.

‘Ohhh, Brippoki!’ Until that moment she had not even seen the terrible wound on his arm. Her outstretched hand hovered.

‘
Ihhh
.’ He kept backing away, conflicted in fear and shame. He would not, could not, do her any harm: she kept pace, persevering.

‘I am your friend,’ she said. ‘Let me…I can…’

Brippoki darted away. He ran full tilt into the opposite window frame – slammed bodily into it, setting it rattling – before falling back.

‘
EaaaH
!
’ screamed Sarah. ‘What are you…? Are you…?’

She huddled closer to the floor, closer to him.

‘
WHO
?’ she asked. ‘Who
is
he?’ She sounded too shrill – anger in her voice, and ugly insistence. ‘
Who is Joseph Druce
?’

‘Deadman!’

He spat the word out, quite literally – still looking for a way out.
Deadman can come for them when he is sleeping
. The knowledge was forbidden. She could be killed for it.

‘What is he to you? I am your friend,’ she said again. ‘I only want to help you. Please, tell me. Let me help you.’

‘Deadman,’ he said again, shuddering, shaking his head. ‘Deadman from grave.’

They edged around each other, arms stretched forth one to another – hands, without touching, hers reaching out and his, fending off. At risk of hurting her he would not grapple.

Sarah could not bear to see him hurt, nor to see him hurt himself further. She could not stop him. Brippoki gained the open window.

‘Don’t…’

And out.

‘WHY WON’T YOU TELL MEEE!’ She screamed her frustration out of the window, before crumpling onto the sill. ‘Why won’t you tell me…let me…’

Sarah slid down the wall to the floor. She had lost him.

She sat, uselessly hugging herself.

No sound came from upstairs that might indicate Lambert had been disturbed.

Sarah had managed to hold herself together: she had not cried. She would not cry. Eventually, reaching for the sill, she hauled herself to her feet.

A breeze riffled through loose-leaf pages, scattered across the floor. Some paperwork had dropped from her lap when she’d leapt to intercept Brippoki; more, blown off the tabletop.

The precious book lay on the floor. Sarah took it up – the manuscript, Druce’s Life.

They had come so close to the end. She found the page.

Pasteboard defences crumbled. Her tears came in floods, and there was no stopping them.

Sarah closed up the window. There was no telling how long it might be before she would see Brippoki again; the last time, he had disappeared for over a week.

She looked over Druce’s recent
Life
in vain search of some clue or cause to explain the Aborigine’s reaction.

According to the shipping list, Joseph Druce had served aboard the sloop
Congo
from November 1816 through March of 1817. The proceeding seven months he spent laid up with fever in ‘
sincehiedoor
’ – Singapore? That would have been the middle part of 1816, the notorious ‘year without a summer’. A gigantic volcanic eruption had affected weather-patterns across the whole of the planet for months on end, a dust cloud created thick enough to blot out the sun.

Does he sleep? Brippoki had asked. Was this another of Druce’s prodigious sleeps?

Sarah herself felt she could sleep for a hundred years.

She went to put away the most recent documents received from Dilkes Loveless, and found that she had misplaced the envelope. Gathering up the last of the scattered pages, Sarah tucked them inside the closed manuscript, then opened wide the window again in case there was even the slightest chance Brippoki might return.

Checking in on Lambert one last time,  she prepared to retire herself.

Sarah stewed in her bed. Exhausted though she was, still she could find no rest.

Some impulse made her pull back the covers, re-light and take up the candle, and crawl towards the bed’s nether end. She returned to her mother’s sea-chest, and the treasure buried there – a large and sturdy object, not at all fashionable as heirlooms went, the stiles foursquare, the corners not canted,
more suited to a sailor’s belongings than a lady’s accoutrement. Lambert, she recalled, had considered it something of an embarrassment while Frances was still alive. Undoing the clasp she opened it wide, sliding to the floor beside.

A whistle or a painted chip, lead dragoon or gingerbread-dog – once the lid was up there could be no going forward, only back. Sarah dug deep, no longer afraid to unearth the remnants of childhood – her own, and her mother’s long before her – toys, games, and all the emotional attachments that went with them, long lost, nigh forgotten. One by one she plucked them out: THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG, an alphabetical caper; random pieces of a puzzle; an oxblood marble. Eyes fluttering shut, Sarah plunged both hands in. Her questing fingertips stroked the coarse edge of card-paper.

She extracted a large piece of folding card from the bottom of the chest, bringing the candle in closer so that she might study its design. She saw trees laden with foliage, groaning and generous, rich in emerald greens and deepest browns, and a mud track leading away into a hazy middle-ground. High on the horizon sat a huge mountain, stormy skies beyond. Sarah blew some of the dust off the image, almost extinguishing the candle. Refreshed, the foreground disclosed a mud hut, bird of paradise idling on the inclined roof. Visible zephyrs, drawn as curlicues of air, darted back and forth, and an ominous puff of smoke arose in the distance.

The flipside illustrated a tropical island backdrop. Twisted tree trunks formed bizarre and dream-like shapes, palm fronds curling. Fantastical caves, rocky outcrops and waterfalls surrounded a choice of trails into deep and dense jungle – a scene she knew by heart.

‘Scenery unrivalled in its picturesqueness’, ran the advertiser’s puff.

‘Jumble,’ whispered Sarah.

In her other hand she held a flimsy paper doll, a figurine. What was this one? Her thumb wiped the base of the card –
Tabassa
.

The paper-theatrical play set had been old even when she was young: the byline on the reverse side of the two-sheet read ‘William West Toy Theatre, theatrical print publisher’. Sarah dug out an ornamental stage front in copperplate print, for framing the ‘curtain’. To either side stood gaudy representations of the twin pillars of toy theatre repertory – Clown for pantomime, and Orson the Wild Man for the
mélo-drame
, a mixture of dialogue with action.

A minimum of stage machinery was required to mount any childish production: grooves cut into the stage floor for scenery and wings to be slotted through, and slid back and forth to change a scene; a trap door, for Ghosts; and, at the front, a shallow trough in which to place oil lights. The wooden stage was long gone, but all of this the front would have been arranged to artfully conceal.

Once shown how, Sarah had put on shows for her mother, and on rare occasion Lambert too. First, the characters were cut out and mounted onto pasteboard, ‘Prime Bang Up and no abuse’. Then they were glued onto sticks, or thin wire – which was better: ‘invisible’ – ready to be pushed out onto the stage. Others might pop through the trap door – rise, and speak, the various parts read in different voices appropriate to the supposed manner of each.

But she was getting ahead of herself. Before commencing the Performance it was necessary to refer to the Drama, and to set the Scenes and Wings accordingly for the next Act. She did so.

Tabassa was chief – there were also Thingaringue, Thurm, and Arkoval, collectively ‘
Les Indiens
’. Even as Sarah marvelled at the tiny, colourful figures, they fell apart in her hands, rainbow-dusting her fingers.

She turned and searched among some papers at the very bottom of the box, retrieving a slender booklet, the Drama,
DES PETITS ROBINSON DANS LEUR ILE, comédie (‘Of the Little Robinsons on their Isle
, a comedy’). It was a pastiche play based on
Der Schweizerische Robinson
by Johann David Wyss: the story of a Swiss family who leave their native land planning to settle in Australia, but during their sea voyage are shipwrecked and marooned on an apparently deserted island. First appearing as a supplement to the French edition, and the conceit of translator Isabelle de Montolieu, the title page of the battered and discoloured pamphlet bore the publication date 1816.
‘Orné de douze figures en taille-douce et de la carte de l’île déserte,
’ it read; and, ‘dedicated to children everywhere’. Smudged and smeared, the flyleaf also bore a clumsy and childish inscription in pencil – her mother’s maiden name, ‘Frances Twytten’.

Sarah’s hands shook as she turned over the pages.

The family of the novel – titled in reference to Defoe’s
Crusoe
– were Monsieur and Madame Bonval and their sons Fritz, Ernest, Jack, and François.

The listed character to grab Sarah’s whole attention, however, was ‘George Tippahee, eight years of age, Indian prince’.

Tippahee
?

Breath held, she scanned through the text, written in both French and English. The action began pretty much straight away.

Passing mention was made of Crusoe himself, and ‘
Vendredi
’, and then some part missing. Sarah flicked through the pages ahead.

There could be no mistaking the personage of Aetockoe, Princess of New Zealand. Thrown into the bottom of a sea-chest, locked away in some remote region of Sarah’s heart, sense-memory of her had endured.

George Bruce! The Sneak-thief Sailor, reunited with his Princess…

The playlet named ‘Akotoe’ as the mother of the fictional little savage George Tippahee. The lost child of ‘George Bruce’ and his consort, Aetockoe, had been reimagined a son instead of the daughter.

At this point in the text, the paper of the booklet was curiously wrinkled and worn, as if water-damaged. Even the ink itself was faded.

It continued in much the same vein, with copious introductions,
politesse
, and niceties. Sarah had to lay the booklet aside a moment, and take a much-needed breath.

Madame de Montolieu, writing in 1816, had taken an episode of Druce’s story – presumably from the same original source as his 1810
Memoirs
, the tale concerning Aetockoe’s kidnap – and given him his much-wished-for happy ending. Her whimsical playlet was a confection: perfectly suited to delight
well-educated young girls from comfortable homes, but surely too sweet for the robust London stage. Yet circumstantial evidence suggested otherwise: to become a children’s toy theatre production, it must have enjoyed at least some level of popularity. Action was usually prerequisite over and above spectacle and exotic scenery.
DES PETITS ROBINSON
was all talk, with no fighting, no grand procession, nor even any wild beasts. Tastes had changed since those far-off days; the delicacy of the early Romantics curdled, becoming gothic, and dark.

Around 1816, 1817, the craze for toy theatre would have been at its height, William West and his many rivals desperately keen for material. A story already in circulation as a street patterer’s penny blood was as ripe for adaptation as anything else. Examining the jungle scene more closely, Sarah could see it had originally belonged to a different production entirely: tiny voided lettering in the corner read ‘Forty Thieves No.2 – a Grand Oriental Spectacle’. Similar works in a genre
en vogue
meant certain articles of scenery could be endlessly recycled.

Not content merely to change his only child’s sex, the playwright blessed Bruce with many daughters, doubtless intended to wed the Bonvals’ numerous sons. A little scene followed where Monsieur Bonval gave Tabassa a bottle of rum ‘to cement their perfect union.’ Tabassa balanced a child on each of his broad shoulders, and they raised a toast: to the future, presumably, one in which they all lived happily ever after.

Sarah searched around for the figurine of Akotoe, but could not find it.

Beggar urchins had their penny gaffs, for street entertainments such as
Punchinello
; Wilton’s Music Hall and the like, the yards of galleried inns such as the Belle Sauvage, sometimes held matinee plays suitable for children. In his wanderings, ‘George Bruce’ himself might feasibly have stumbled across just such a production – witnessed a version of his own life’s history in performance – one in which he was returned to New Zealand, the fabled isle of Typpayassa, after all.