The Clay Dreaming (58 page)

Within his
Petition
Druce had spoken affectingly of the abuse he had suffered daily, called man-eater, devil and traitor, owing to his tattooed appearance. Sarah imagined his astonishment – at seeing aspects of his life played out as they might otherwise have been; on sale in a shop window, as a cut-out toy; or play-acted before an audience of stunted and ragged children on an anonymous corner, somewhere deep in the very lowest neighbourhoods, the likes of which
he had sprung from and was now returned to, pilloried and destitute, living on the streets. Would they laugh? Would he cry? Stay and watch? Or flee?

A comedy? If so, Flaxman’s statuettes had stepped down from the façade of the Covent Garden Theatre and swapped places. Druce might not have recognised the
mélo-drame
– transformed in the French style into a virtual fairytale – as his life at all.

The houses and their windows are nothing but plaster and paint – a series of canvas flats, receding, virtually featureless, all mass and colour reduced to grey-brown shades. Brippoki is himself the only solid element. Soundlessly he sprints through a luminous haze, not knowing where he is headed, nor rightly caring.

The air is still clogged – choked, and choking.

He carries a firebrand in his hand. Horses gathered at a fence float somewhere above, apparently mid-air. Slowing to a jog, for a moment Brippoki thinks he is returned to countryside, then, turning a corner, senses more than sees solemn buildings surround him – more of the same.

He stands at a crossroads. This street or that, it doesn’t matter which.

Making a wrong choice, he faces another dead end. He can only turn around, go back the way he came, try a different angle. This time he comes to a full stop, facing himself reflected in a broad shopfront, neat and orderly. An instant’s distraction, a blinding flash followed by a sharp crack, and click-clack, the shopfront is gone. Instead, he faces the clapped-out and overcrowded muddle of a dealership in marine stores.

Empty belly, burning chest, mind sloshing about in a soup; his head is a billy-pot, bubbling over. The scenery through which he moves is ever-changing, but never really changed.

It begins to rain.

Lambert woke to the growl of distant thunder. He felt hot, in a light sweat. Troubled dreams were torture enough, but waking to absolute darkness in the middle of the night was worse, for it was then that he felt most alone, at the mercy of haunting remorse. For how long had he been sleeping? Had he slept? There was no sense any more of time passing, and only one certainty – hurt. His head, his chest, his throat – so dry – everything.

Everything hurt.

Sarah lay in bed, the covers pulled up over her head. There could be no escape. An improvised belch of flame – enter, stage left, in a Mephistolean puff of brimstone, Joseph Druce. ‘Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs,’ he said.

Sitting up, she made notes by candlelight, weak and wavering.

Pantomime was a peculiarly English rendition of
commedia dell’arte
tradition: in juvenile imitation of the burlesques of the London scene, all toy theatre
subscribed to it. Studied fully as much as loved when she was young, the traditional entertainment split down the middle. The action opened with a story taken from classical myth, history, or even modern legend, stock characters assigned their various roles – Darling Columbine the heroine; Pantaloon her father; and their servant, Clown. At some point events would reach an impasse, whereupon, hey presto, the hero – there was always a hero – would be transformed into the colourful character of Harlequin, wearing his patchwork of rags. The comedy of the Harlequinade begun, the story would either be resolved, or dissolve into nonsense: it was for the audience to decide which.

Clown, of late, overstressed his part, whereas the drama belonged to all.

As both sneak-thief and sailor, Joseph Druce’s story united what had once been the two most popular genres of theatre great and small – nautical adventure and brigandage – and within a favourite setting, the desert island drama. Meat-hungry stories such as his properly took hold of the public imagination, dominating the London stage, throughout the 1820s – long before Sarah was born, but only shortly after Druce’s death.

Druce was done with the world, but not before the world was done with him.

He suffered for being a man ahead of his time – no longer ignored, but already forgotten – a poor man who very badly wanted to be rich, to have significance, at almost any price. No longer quite so extraordinary, his life was not unique. The same story went on all the time; everywhere amongst those who had no voice, and no one to speak for them – trampled by impersonal history.

And yet, in any society worthy of the term, all persons must possess some measure of significance; must have the right to protest an oppressor’s wrongs. Few claims on the liberality of the nation could be so well founded as those of the British sailor. Instead he received the insolence of office and, spurned, the law’s delay.

Sarah’s pen, as it moved, darkened the page with ink. Line by line her words collided, crossing over. It was too late and she could no longer see straight, let alone think straight; nor do anything right.

She shouldn’t try to rescue a man already dead, just because she could not save one living. Druce’s own crimes were irretrievable, his consummate anger – pronouncing vengeance, of the most dangerous sort – scattershot. According to Emerson, her favourite authority on these matters, feeble souls were drawn to the south or negative pole. They looked at the profit or hurt of the action, and never beheld principle unless it was lodged in a person. They did not wish to be lovely, but to be loved.

This essential flaw in Druce’s character, his weakness, drew her to him as surely as moth to flame. Any conscience on his part could of course be illusion, virtue after her design – the best in his kind were but shadows, and the worst
no worse. Lines, words on paper, only gained form from whatever dimension she herself might lend.

‘An insignificant individual as myself…totally forgotten.’

Not totally – the idea was too unbearable.

Sarah reflected at length. The surfeit of events in Druce’s life obscured his essential character. The reverse was true of hers.

It wasn’t so much the dead bodies that made her anxious to avoid graveyards, she realised. What Sarah feared most was the anonymity of the grave – an unmarked plot; no name, just a number; or only a name, undeserving. A life lived without consequence, nor any distinction remaining, of whom the most that might be said was the least remarkable: that she was a drudge who did no one harm – and no good either.

Sarah scoured the cupboards and prepared breakfast. Lambert, weak as he was, stubbornly refused all attempts to feed him.

She thought she heard him whisper. Sarah proffered a glass of water with which to wet his lips, and leant in close.

‘Did you say something?’ she asked.

‘There is…none righteous,’ he gasped. ‘No, not one.’

The breakfast tray rested on his lap, but to all intent and purpose he was oblivious. Leaving it with him, she went downstairs.

Sarah parted the curtains in the front parlour. They were of lurid, if faded, design – ‘
Le Grand Opera
’: carnations, roses,
and trompe l’oeil
repetitions of their own tasselled top sash, kept in place with large coils of amber rope. She hated them, even as she loved and missed the parent whose tastes they preserved.

The carpet was filthy, discoloured with dust and ash. She remembered now: Brippoki had been drunk. He had been sick. She filled a bucket with sudsy water and scrubbed at the stains with a cloth. Other traces came to light. A virtual footprint, angry and dark, showed where he had stood the longest. Sarah roundly cursed her petty economies. By dim candlelight, she had missed the fierce wound to his arm.

An almighty crash sounded from overhead. Almost falling up the stairs, from the landing Sarah heard Lambert raving. She rushed to be by his side.

A teacup shattered before her face, into a score of shards.

‘“The foolish shall not stand in thy sight,”’ Lambert snarled and spat from the bed. ‘“Thou hatest all workers of iniquity!”’

The tray and all its contents, thrown across the room, lay in mulch and in pieces.

‘“The LORD”,’ he shrieked, ‘“will abhor the bloody and deceitful man!”’

Sarah galloped to catch up – David, a
Psalm
of David. She hesitated to restrain her father, but in that moment he shrank and flamed to nothing, as a tissue torched by fire.

‘“But, as for meee… I will come
into
thy house”’ he wheedled, his voice high and breaking. ‘“I will come… Lead me, O LORD…make thy way straight before my face.”’

His face, screwed tight, suddenly evened out, losing the worst of its creases. The skin was grey. ‘
Arrgh!
’ he cried.

Sarah let go the soiled cloth, taking up his shaking fists in case he should strike himself again. Eventually, he quieted.

Wetting and wringing out a fresh flannel in a bowl of cold water, Sarah gently dabbed Lambert’s forehead. His low moan interrupted her anxious ministrations.

He turned, examining her closely with a critical eye, no recognition in his face. She hovered over him, willing him well.

‘“Wellfavoured harlot!”’ he hissed. ‘“Mistress of witchcrafts! Children are their oppressors, and women rule over them! Behold, I
am
against theeee…”’

Lambert flinched and squirmed in the bed, resisting her touch.

‘“I will discover thy skirts upon thy face,”’ he spat, ‘“will shew nations thy nakedness, kingdoms thy shame. Abominable filth I cast on thee…thee…vile thee… I will set thee as a gazingstock.”’

The hatred in his voice twisted up his features. Were his body not so weak and wasted, Sarah felt certain he meant to assault her. She backed off, shaking. Where was the doctor? She didn’t know what to do!

‘“The daughters of Zion are haughty,”’ said Lambert. ‘“They walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing
as
they go, and making a tinkling with their feet.”’

He waved his fingers in a grotesque little mime, before curling them into large fists.

‘“The Lord”,’ he roared, ‘“will smite with a scab the crown of their heads, and discover their secret parts…take away
their
tinkling ornaments… The chains, the bracelets, the mufflers…the bonnets, the ornaments of the legs… the rings, and nose jewels, the crisping pins and the hood, and the veils…all the changeable suits of apparel…”’

Lips glossy with spittle, his maddened eyes roved the room.

‘“The glasses and fine linen…”

‘“And it shall come to pass,
that
instead of sweet smell there shall be stink, and instead of girdle a rent, and instead of well-set hair, baldness…instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth,
and
burning instead of beauty!”’

His eyes, screwed shut, worked indescribable pain.

Sarah too darted a look around the room. Any fine touches were remnants of Frances. Reckoning of some kind fuelled his madness: he spoke of her mother, in borrowed phrases of ultimate scorn.

‘“And her gates shall lament and mourn, and she
being
desolate shall sit upon the ground,”’ he wailed.

He opened his eyes again, wet with tears – no longer of rage but of sorrow. A heavy droplet rolled across his withered cheek.

‘Mine,’ he said, ‘is a
jealous
God!’

The faraway sun gives out light but little heat, a baleful eye fixed on Brippoki’s wayward progress. He wanders out among the ruins, the big empty. Down comes the rain – sharp, like flint. The dust cloud of recent days, settled, churns to liquid mud. It surges along the gutters in great gouts, bubbling into widening pools about clogged drains. The roadways begin to disappear, paving slick with slime – treachery, underfoot.

Brippoki’s senses are on edge. With what light there is subdued, he can barely see five paces in front. The air is heavy, impregnated with sulphur and vitriol.

He straddles the span across the dock on New Gravel Lane, the ‘Bloody Bridge’, in the slang of the neighbourhood.

Dark arch, black flow, bleak prospect – he has returned to the Well of Shadows, very close to that dreadful spot where his wanderings brought him, that first dark time.

He will not be old, but once was young.

He remembers meadow grasslands filled with game, fresh water to drink, roots and vegetables to eat, wood for the fire, and a sky filled with stars – the country he loves.

The firelight of the Ancestors splashes across the surface of the
Millewa
. Stranger footsteps on the far shore, and the fires wink out all at once. Everything disappears into the dark.

Daylight now, and his mother, she is crossing that same wide river. She pushes him in front, balanced along a piece of bark. Floating, the waters rushing, he grips the bark strip tightly in his hands.
Warriarto
, his baby half-sister, is tied to her back in a bundle, dead for months. Mother still carries her with them, everywhere they go.

The next day his mother dies too.

Worrowen
– shivering, Brippoki shakes his head.

Mother meant to carry his dead sister, her dead baby, until they should come to the proper site for her burial, her
miyur
. Each clan has its
mir
or
miyur
, its sacred waterhole, known to every adult and located in a fixed direction from their territory. It is the Spirit land of their birth – Ancestral home, and final resting place.

Mother came from another place. Brippoki has never known her clan. He has no idea of her, or his,
miyur
.

Everything seemed to
yandy
down to that.

Ignorant of his
yauerin
or
miyur
, he cannot take the name of just any place. His mother died before he might know it – father too. He was too young to know. There is no place he belongs to, nor any belonging to him. He will always be a child in a man’s body – lost, forever.

Hard rainfall destroys the calm surface of every pool of water, from the shallowest puddle to the deepest dock. Brippoki stands alone, looking over a stone parapet. Staring down into poisonous blackness, he thinks the stretch of dark water the rough river. The turbulence is honest, and inviting.

He hears again the whispers of the willow. How easy it would be to surrender, to allow oneself to go under. Swallowed within the Serpent’s slick embrace, he may at last know peace – oblivion, sweeter than gin.

The wharf’s stone sides are steep and high, the floodwaters fast and furious. One single step, a bold plunge, and there will be no climbing out again.

Sarah succeeded in calming Lambert only at great length – smoothing his icy brow with a cool palm, talking softly; saying anything that came into her head. He had not spoken for some hours now, and things went easier that way. A few whimpers when she cleared away the fragments from his tantrum, the odd murmur, an occasional request for drink to be lifted to his lips; otherwise he drifted quietly in and out of consciousness, the flutter of his eyelids often the only difference between his waking and sleeping. Each time his eyes opened, he seemed to draw at least some measure of comfort from finding her sitting beside him.

She set all the fires and the lights to blazing, even though it was daytime – anything to dispel the day’s damp gloom. None of it afforded the least comfort: the atmosphere of slow poison permeating the house came from within, not without.

Sarah stood a while in the front parlour, lost in contemplation. She would touch one or other of the furnishings and picture her mother, doing the same. In younger days, she had resented her father for refusing ever to speak of her. Latterly she came to understand, in sickness, as in health, the presence of Frances in almost everything that he said and did.

Light and shade in conflict gave our lives strength and colour, but too much grief, hate, fear – ‘the family of Pain’ – unbalanced the mind. Sarah avoided completing the manuscript. All of his pleas and prayers unanswered – beneath notice, as far as he knew – Druce’s sense of isolation must have been total; her own was awful enough.

She would be having words with Dr Epps on his return.

Pindi
is a great pit in the far west, whence the
Ludko
come – the soul-shadows of the unborn. The ghosts are so thickly packed on that island, there is no room for them to stand. These shiftless spirits wander the earth, miserable and alone. Hovering among the grass-trees, they wait for the hour of conception so that they can enter into a human body. Only after death and a proper burial, observing all of the attendant rites, do they return to
Pindi
– the place that everybody comes from, and must eventually return to.

The wind whips the surface of the waters. Rain hits from all sides, at crazy angles, soaking Brippoki beyond skin.

The seedling of a daring plan, a way he might yet save himself, is hatched within his brain. Slipping back from the brink, he tugs at the
min-tum
girding his loins, and sets off running – away from the dockside.

He heads steadily northwest. The rains cease. In the last hour of daylight clouds part to reveal the thin crescent of a new moon –
Mityan
, horned.

Head throbbing, Brippoki rues his drunkenness. He carries a glowing ember above his head. Naked body newly adorned with markings, stark outlines define his breast and shoulder bones. A wavy line is drawn down each arm, thigh, and lower leg, also bold slashes across both cheeks, and along each prominent rib. Around each eye he wears a large white circle, the ‘strong eye’. The clay daubs are otherwise of red. Taking up arms – his
waddy
club and spear – he is disguised as
Moo-by
, a ferocious demon. By the pale shine of starlight it shows itself – a baring of teeth, a roll of the eyes, all dingo-dog glimmer and glitter.

Footsore, tired, and hungry, despite every caution he leaves behind traces that speak eloquently of his passing. His footprints, tracked through puddles of water, march out across the pavement behind him. He hears the sly pad of paws along a cautious perimeter, the click and drag of long nails, and scrape of sharpening claw.

To the point of death, he cannot sleep.

To preserve one life, another must be ended.

The uppermost part of the house glows like a beacon, the lamps lit in every room. Brippoki’s attention is drawn to the only window that remains dark. The darkness suddenly divides. The Guardian stands revealed in the shaft of light. She looks sad.

Moo-by
ducks back.

A few moments later, and she moves away from the closed window. Brippoki shifts position to get a better view. She stays in that same hole where her father lives. Thara sits nose deep in paper-yabber, like always. She shines, almost a ball of fire. Shadows thicken in the air behind her. His grip tightens on his
waddy
. He sees that she holds the Book.

Eyes in darkness, a lowly scavenger lurks, awaiting his perfect opportunity – not lacking the courage for open attack, but wise, and needful of certain victory.

Brippoki wishes for her to move away from the sick old man. She is afraid for him, when she should fear more for herself.

Approaching the end of the
Life
, concerning the death of a wife and last days’ despairing, Sarah read the last of the manuscript alone. She did not want Druce’s life to be over. Neither did she know how his real story ended – only that it must. At most there was a page or two of text left to go.

She pulled her chair close beside her father’s bed, where he lay, snoring fitfully. Afraid that a chill might follow on from his fever, she kept a fire roaring in the grate, even on such a clement midsummer evening. Window closed against the rising winds, the heat in his room was oppressive.

An after-image of the line before, or premonition of the next; Sarah stared so long at the scrawl on the page that other words appeared, shimmering in the blank spaces between.