The Clay Dreaming (65 page)

The dove had disappeared, not to return again.

On the 27th of June England declared fresh war with the New Zealand islands.

Barely two months later and Sarah Larkin set her eyes to the horizon: bright and sunny skies to the east held the promise of a Greater Britain.

Their tiny craft leapt the waves; they slapped at the underside, increasing large. The nervous passengers sat well in order. Everyone returned their looks to the shores they left behind; all except for the crew – and Sarah.

There would be no more death – neither sorrow, nor crying – no more pain: the former things had passed away. She looked forward to new heavens and a new earth.

DeVitt and Moore’s Australian Line of Packet-ship the
Parramatta
was due to sail from the outflow of the Thames, calling first at Plymouth, and then direct for Sydney. The emigrants had gathered at Blackwall Pier, the masts of sailing vessels loading in the East India Docks towering high above their heads; they awaited there the departure of their ferry for boarding; the main ship, out in the Channel, made ready to receive them.

Sarah discreetly cast her eye over the huddled bodies, now that all were gathered close in the boat. Aside from a gentleman in incongruous carpet slippers, everybody wore their Sunday best: men in earthen suits of fustian or corduroy, the women pretty in their bright dresses. Even Sarah wore the finest of her mother’s outdoor garments, the cut adjusted to suit – neither thing dared while Lambert remained alive. Her outfit had been only slightly dirtied by a trip on the railway.

None of them was rich; anybody wealthy would presumably be joining them on board by other means. Principally intended for the families of stricken shipbuilders and ironworkers, the East-End Emigration and Relief Fund in
most instances provided. The colonies of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia likewise assisted, to promote immigration. Sarah did not consider herself above charity, so long as it had no direct connection to the Church. According to Aboriginal notions of a Supreme Being, man and God lived independently of each other; and it seemed a fine arrangement.

Her roving eye fell on the bo’sun, a strapping figure with a ruddy, tanned face. Turned a certain way, and beheld in a certain light, he could be mistaken for Sergeant Padraig Tubridy out of Leman-street Police Station; the fellow compared favourably with that kind-hearted rogue, as few men could. She had never enquired, on that June afternoon, as to whether or not the sergeant was married – a question flitting across her mind on many an occasion since. He was, no doubt, and had a dozen children at least to show for it: he had looked the sort. Many an Irishman made this same trip that she now undertook. Maybe somewhere on that wide continent such a one, a real man, as good, waited for her.

The bo’sun caught her looking and tipped a wink.

The steward, taking register, called out to the pale creature seated close to the prow, staring fixedly out to sea. ‘And you, ma’am,’ he shouted above the sounding furrows, ‘what is your name?’

Realising that she was addressed, the young woman pinked and turned. ‘My name…?’ Buffeted by the stiff sea-breezes, her hand reached up to clear her face of loose threads of hair. ‘Larkin,’ she said, ‘Miss Sarah Larkin.’

Sarah looked beyond the steward at the cliffs of her homeland fading from view. The hot sun created a heat haze, but also lit the long coastline as a streak of silver, cut through it like a slash. Above soared the sky, a coalescent dome of deep blue, colour never so pure when seen from inland.

Nineveh was laid waste, and none bemoaned her. The dark history Sarah had dealt with went beyond black. She had seen men that were as phantoms, and phantoms that were as men: it was a waking dream, a living nightmare written in dust, dissolving now.

Emancipist and free object, her purpose held:

Sarah dearly wished to witness the happy Aboriginal freedom she had read about, that tonic simplicity, even as it disappeared from view.

Governor Eyre’s recommendation of sympathy and benevolence, to ‘succour, teach and improve’, felt worthy of the attempt. Not a mission, as such – she knew better than that now, thanks to Brippoki. Rather, on behalf of people so little known and very greatly misunderstood, she would convey their message to the colonists, so that the lives of the forgotten might not be so easily
forgot. In some regard she might help mitigate those evils which the occupation and possession of their country so unnecessarily inflicted. She would devote herself to redress of those compound wrongs, even if it took her lifetime.

She prayed to blue heaven, so spacious: ‘Keep ye judgement, and do justice.’

Coming to, their craft had more than passed the halfway point; the other passengers now sat facing in her direction. Most looked more than a little daunted, others confident. The older ones just looked sad. Sarah also turned. The ocean crossing could not frighten her with its dangers. She had prospects.

The bo’sun, shouting, pointed out their ship now in sight, a white sail fixed among the scattering seagulls. He swivelled his body around, to squint in raw appreciation of their passions, insolently favouring those females among the party he figured unmarried, and calling them every one his ‘pretty butterflies’.

Blithe to their heaving progress, Sarah laid a palm to the cool brass of her mother’s formidable sea-chest. She only took what could fit within it, and no more. Her former life, disassembled, could never again recover its shape, and deliberately so.

She brought with her Druce’s manuscript. Even after everything he had gone through, Druce still clung to hope, to his faith: by hook and by crook she would see him get his wish, and be returned to New Zealand.

Deep in the pocket of her dress, she firmly grasped hold of the carving – like a charm – that Brippoki had gifted her in his final days. Everything ahead would look new and strange, but already her journey felt a homecoming.

‘The
Parramatta
, ladies and gentlemen. A splendid new frigate-built ship, she is,’ the steward advertised. ‘A1 tip-top, only thirteen years old, John Williams her commander. This fine vessel has a full poop, unusually large cabins for first class accommodation, with desirable opportunities for a few second cabin passengers,’ meaning themselves, ‘and will carry on board an experienced surgeon.’

A few people gulped at that.

‘Once on board,’ the steward advised, ‘I will be coming around to collect the bedding-money. Please have ready your fees of one pound, or ten shillings for each child…’ he smiled ‘…further to the terms of your freight or passage.’

Coming close, they could now quite clearly see the white letters painted across the stern of the much larger vessel.

A large woman at the back raised her voice high above the roar of the billows. ‘
Parramatta
,’ she asked, ‘is that a word?’

‘Yes,’ shouted back the steward, ‘the name is taken from the earliest pioneer settlement, in the days of the First Fleet…now the second town in that colony, about fourteen miles distant from Sydney. Other towns include Windsor, Liverpool, Campbell Town, and Newcastle.’ He found that listing familiar sounds lent his passengers comfort.

‘’Afore that,’ rumbled the bo’sun; slyly, and speaking less formally, ‘it were a local Aboriginal word.’

‘Does it have any meaning?’ someone close to him asked.

‘Yes, it do,’ he affirmed. ‘It means “head of the water”.’

The steward carried on in singing Australia’s praises, but Sarah paid him no heed. Their small boat was turning, and in another few minutes would be coming up alongside.

‘Don’t look so gloomy, my lovely!’ the bo’sun said. He spoke to her directly. ‘We s’ll be there before you know it.’

That word, gloom
…

Sarah turned her face aside, looking further out to sea. She followed in the footsteps of a traveller from a timeless land.
He lives there, still
.

Turning back, she returned the bo’sun’s gaze; smiling, quite openly.

Later, if he was fortunate, he might even hear her laugh.

Nyuntu Anangu Tjukurpa Wiltja Nga Palya Nga
.
‘Your Aboriginal dreamtime home. Wish you peace.’

In no particular order (you’re all first): David Kendall, Corinne Pearlman, Andreja Brulc, James Hollands, Simon and Susan D’Souza, Kim Neville-Harman, Ravi Mirchandani, Frank Wynne, Woodrow Phoenix, Jason Pratt, Lilian Hillyer, Eddie and Annie and, bah, even Hayley Campbell, Sean Morris, Cathal Coughlan, Faithless, Shriekback, Robin June, Aaron Cometbus, Peter Ackroyd, Ed Wood and Simon Campbell of Waterstone’s Quarterly and all at Pleasant Studio, Margaret Curd, the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers, Hawthornden posse (Kate Rhodes, Leslie Brody, Carolin Window, Shelley Leedahl, Janne Moller), Arvon folk (Jan Woolf, Kay Stopforth, Jo Hurst, Xanthe Wells, Gill Farrer-Halls, Stephanie Hunter, John Thynne, Hardish Virk, Ioana Sandi, Lindsay Clarke, Adam Thorpe), Ivor Watkins and John Rennie at
East End Life
, Peter O’Shaughnessy, Graeme Inson and Russel Ward for
The Restless Years
, Peter Sculthorpe, John Greenway, John Nicholson (London
Revisited
Walks and Talks), Tim Mars (‘Approaches to Doom’), Donald Payne (
aka
James Vance Marshall), Professor Stephen Hopper (Kew), Joanna Latham (
KANYINI
), Ray Newton (Wapping Trust), Madge Darby, Brian Nicholson, Thames Lighterman Eric Small, David Kemp and Molly Potts (Malling Society), Mr Madgerly (West Kent Hunt), Margaret Friday (Dreadnought Librarian, site tour of former Infirmary of the Royal Naval Hospital), Lorraine Finch (very helpful guide within the Chapel and Painted Hall at the Royal Naval Hospital, Greenwich), National Maritime Museum Curator of Paintings Roger Quarm, Neil Rhind MBE (‘Thomas Noble’s Blackheath’), Clare Nelson, head of Research and Development at Trinity College of Music (‘The Greenwich Pensioner’ by Dibdin), the British Library, the Newspaper Library, Colindale, Tower Hamlets Local History Library (Christopher Lloyd and Malcolm Barr-Hamilton), Public Record Office, National Maritime Museum Library, Wellcome Institute, Docklands Museum, Greenwich Local History Library, National Library of New South Wales (Martin Beckett, Microfilms Librarian, Original Materials Branch; Jennifer Broomhead, Intellectual Property and Copyright Librarian; and latterly, Julie Wood and Kevin Leamon), all residents at No.89 Great Russell Street; and, last but certainly not least, all at Myriad – Candida Lacey, for keeping faith; Vicky Blunden, for endurance and pollarding; Linda McQueen, for her interest, insight, and scary mind. My sincere apologies to anyone that I might have forgotten.

No thanks at all to: wood pigeons, Clancy focken Docwra, and house flies.

The use of an apposite or commentary quotation at the start of a chapter is a recognised form common in nineteenth-century literature (see, for instance, Tom Brown’s Schooldays). These are called epigraphs. Some are taken from newspaper articles; others, snatches of traditional song; there’s Biblical verse included; but mostly, they are taken from works of literature, including poetry. All sources are deliberately contemporary or else works in print prior to 1868.

I have limited the attribution of quotes in situ to author and title, so as not to distract. For those who wish to know more, here they are again (where incomplete) in more detail:

Picture Credits