Will put down the spokeshave, laid the oar-blade aside. Stood up in the boat so it rocked on the water.
Come down in here, he said.
Lifted me into the boat, sat me on the seat at the stern, his knees nearly touching mine. It was still and hot, a thick smell of pitch coming out from the planks. Like the two of us gone into a room on our own.
Now Dolly, he said. Listen to me. I never known what went on or what didn’t go on. I asked Pa one time. Keep your damned nose out of it, he told me. Belted me. Matter of fact near broke my arm.
For once I sat quiet.
Never asked again, he said. Never thought it was worth another belting. My guess is, Pa had a bust-up with Dick, sent him packing. You know the way Pa is.
Put his hand on my shoulders.
Dolly, we got a brother, he said. Lives somewhere up the Branch so I’ve heard. But I put him out of my mind and tell you what, Dolly, if I was you I’d do the same. Honest to God I would.
All right, Will, I said, because I was a bit frightened, never seen Will so grave.
But I was thinking who could I ask.
~
Iris Herring lived up the river at Cat-Eye Creek, fowls pecking round outside her hut and a few goats watching you sideways. A patch of potatoes and a bed of the same blood-red geraniums we had at home. A plain woman like a boulder, getting on in years, always with an old pipe in her mouth. But if a baby was on the way or you cut your leg open and needed stitching up, she was the person you got.
Mrs Herring knew everything that went on along the river. Didn’t always tell, but she always knew.
Next time Jemmy Katter rowed Ma up to Mrs Herring’s with a flitch of bacon and a basket of oranges, I come along with her. Sat on Mrs Herring’s lap, on the pinny with all the stains, and leaned my head against her cushiony bosom. They drank their tea and talked about little pitchers having long ears, then Ma went outside to pull a bunch of Mrs Herring’s special scallions and I got in quick.
Did you know my brother, I said. My brother Dick?
Course I did, Mrs Herring said. Heaven’s sakes, I borned the whole lot of you!
Held out her hands, brown and swollen round the joints, shiny bulges on the knuckles, the skin wrinkled as crepe merino.
You was a good handful of bub, Dolly, she said. Come out looking round like you owned the place. And yell! My word you had a good pair of lungs.
Did he die? I said. Dick? Did he die?
Course not, silly goose, she said. Went away for a time, that’s all. Now hop down quicksticks, we get them taters done for tea.
Ma was back then, we could hear her knocking the dirt off the scallions on the wall outside. Mrs Herring touched my cheek with her finger.
Best look forward, lovey, she said. I don’t never look back. Never ever.
That was how it was on the Hawkesbury. Everything hidden away and those everlasting cliffs and ridges blocking us into the narrow valley. Would of liked to push them back, get a clear look at all the things people knew but wouldn’t say.
THOSE DAYS there was blacks all round. People talked about the wild blacks that lived further out where the whites hadn’t got to yet. Went about stark naked and ate their babies, they said. Killed any white man they saw, cut his heart out.
I didn’t believe it. Only ones I ever saw had clothes like us, but more raggedy, and you couldn’t see them killing anyone.
They’d come to our back door sometimes and wait, one or two women in rags of clothes, a couple of little ones with snotty lips. Didn’t knock, didn’t ask, didn’t look at us.
Here you are back again, Mrs Devlin would shout. Come to cadge again are you?
They might of been deaf. Never answered.
Mrs Devlin would go to the cupboard, get out a loaf and some bacon, yesterday’s leg of mutton. Eggs, oranges. Grumbling as she put the stuff in their billies.
Up to me or your ma, we’d send them packing, she said. It’s your pa. Said to me, when they ask, Mrs Devlin, you be sure and give. Now Dolly, you get right away or you’ll get their fleas off of them.
When Jemmy rowed Ma up to Windsor with Mary and me, we’d see the smoke drifting up from places away off in the bush. That’ll be the blacks, Ma would say. I’d look, but I never saw anyone, just the smoke, and that sometimes so faint you couldn’t be sure.
At Windsor there’d be groups of them on the edge of town, under the trees or sitting round a few smouldering sticks. So dark and still you had to look twice.
Ma would grab our hands, hurry us along.
One time a man got up, joint by joint, walked over to us with his hand out. Close up I could see how his palm was pale as mine, only threaded with dark lines. His hair stuck out like feathers, his face all rough from the smallpox.
Ma had a hold of me so tight it hurt. Panting, she was pulling us along that fast.
Who’s that, Ma, I said. Who was that man?
She bent down to us so we’d listen.
Now girls, she said. I got nothing against the blacks. I pity them, truly I do, hardly better than beasts of the field. God in his wisdom put us above them.
He smelled, Mary said. I smelled him, pooh!
Not civilised, see, Ma said. Can’t help it, poor things. We give, you’ve seen them at the house, we’re forever giving out. Our Christian duty, do right by them. But this begging in the street, that I can’t abide.
I looked back at where the man was sitting with the others. The smoke from their little fire whipped around in the wind.
Where are their houses, I said. Why don’t they go home?
I wouldn’t know, Ma said. But I wish they’d take themselves off and not go bothering respectable folk.
~
We had some blacks near us, only I never knew for a long time. Bub and Johnny was mostly off on their own boys’ things, but now and then they let us girls tag along. Up in the bush behind the house, or out on the river in one of the skiffs. Pa made sure we could all handle an oar. One morning the four of us took it into our heads to go along the riverbank further than we’d ever been. I loved to see a new place, couldn’t wait, ran on ahead.
At the start it was a sweet sandy track under the she-oaks, a breeze coming and going with that dry whistle through the leaves and the water shining in the sun. A pair of wallabies hopped up the ridge, an emu stalked along. A fat lizard made me jump, sliding through the grass like a snake.
I waited for the others at the end of Thornhill’s. No fence there, but a stony spine of ridge coming down into a jumble of rocks. The end of the good land, nothing past that but prickly bush.
Mary wanted to go back, but I had my heart set on seeing what was further on. There was still a track, rougher and not as clear as before. I started off along it and the others came after.
Pretty soon it stopped being a novelty. No shade, the sun hot, and we hadn’t thought to bring any water. Mary got a blister and cried to go back and Johnny called for me to stop, but I made out I didn’t hear.
The track did a turn and suddenly I came out in a flat part with shady trees and a little stream. And a couple of bark humpies round a smoky fire. Three old black women turning their faces towards me. A couple of pot-bellied children and an old man by the fire with a blanket over his shoulders. All of them so skinny you could see the knobs on their joints.
And leaning hard on a pole, a tall crooked man. One side of his head was shiny stretched skin where something bad had happened and never mended. The stick was mostly what was holding him up.
Stood