Skins Page 12

Mary stirred beside her. The sky was pale purple and the odd star remained. They were wet, the heavy air had left droplets on their hair and faces and the skin that covered them. Her fingers were frozen and her back and her legs were cold. She knew that if she moved she’d let in the cold air between them but if she didn’t she would become stiff. They shook the moisture from their coats and put them on. They climbed back up the rock to see if there was any activity at the camp. There was no smoke. Dorothea stood still for a moment, thinking. The island sparkled and shone and below her the tops of the trees rippled. If they were still at the camp they would have lit a fire. Perhaps it was best to return and hide in the bush near the camp so they could see what was happening.

  They trod through clumps of green and brown, their feet sinking every now and then into a muttonbird burrow. The scrub began to thicken again and then it opened out into a thicket of tall trees. Cool and enclosed with a grassy floor, treetops towered above them and rustled in the breeze. Long strips of bark like shredded rags hung from the limbs of tall eucalypts. They startled a big black goanna that stiffened on splayed legs then shot into a burrow at the base of a trunk. The sea was a muffled boom and a fly whined. Discarded bark crackled beneath their feet. The sea flickered through the gaps in the trees and they knew they were heading in the right direction. Then they reached the thickets of ti-tree that lined the beach.

  The wind had picked up, blowing strongly from the northwest and whipping up whitecaps out to sea. A boat was on the beach and men walked from it towards the hut.

  ‘That’s Matthew,’ said Mary in surprise.

  Dorothea recognised their brother too and Anderson. She picked up her skirts and looked down at her hands that were scratched and stinging. Her ankles too were spotted with blood. She turned to Mary, wondering if she looked as battered as her sister. Her face was marked by dirt and framed by hair that was knitted with twigs and leaves. Around her neck, the fur of her skin coat curled outwards. They came over the crest of the hill and almost walked into him. When Anderson saw her, his eyes widened and he grabbed her arms, tightly so that it hurt.

  ‘Ouch … what are you doing?’

  She pulled backwards but he held firm, his eyes fiercely intense. At first she thought he was going to hit her. He didn’t say anything. It was as though he didn’t have the words. And then he let go and walked around her to the beach. She stood rubbing her arms, wondering.

  On their return they discovered the sealers had beaten Church. They bathed his wounds and listened. He told how he was tied up. He said they ransacked the camp, taking with them an unopened barrel of flour and a bundle of skins before leaving early that morning. Anderson said he knew who it was.

  Later when she brought water from the well to wash their dishes, he stopped her before she reached the door. This time he took her arm gently and she let him but she turned her face towards the darkness. He didn’t say anything for a moment but she could feel his eyes moving over the side of her face.

  ‘Bastards. They always find me. They take everything. I send them to hell.’

  He paused and brought his other hand up to his chest, rubbing it, and she sensed that he had turned away.

  ‘I had no life when I came over the sea but I found another. I’m reborn … like Jesus.’

  Startled, she turned. His features were loose and the moonlight caught the white of his eye. But when he turned back, he was grinning.

  Then his grin disappeared and he said: ‘They won’t get another chance.’

  There was no light after he had closed the door. He let go of her arm and she could feel with her feet that she was at the base of his bed.

  ‘Take off your gown,’ he muttered.

  She didn’t want to for it was cold. He was waiting for her to do something. She could feel the heat from his body even though they weren’t touching. Breathing beside her. Then he moved his hands to her waist, along the seam of the fabric, until he reached under her arms and then over the swell of her breasts, tracing the outline with his fingers. She noticed the heat in her face and a sensation that came from her core and outwards, flowing fluid and loose, and contracting. Her breath caught and he moved his hands up over her shoulders, pushing back her coat, and she let it fall down her arms and onto the floor. He stepped back then and she could hear him undressing. She was out of her gown and his fingers found her again, pressing her down, hands coarse from calluses that scratched her skin so that she shivered. She breathed into his salty neck and traced the hard curves of his arms and shoulders, following the scars crossing his back as he pushed into her and she opened: soft moist skin that enclosed.

  January 1886

  I still wear the bone of the black woman’s child around my neck. I learnt afterwards that Dinah’s people wore the bones of their friends and loved ones to ward off harm and illness. She told me that it was the bone of her child. Her children were not allowed to live. After everything that happened I am glad of her gift.

  I do not have anything of my daughter, not even a lock of her hair. She was dark like you. Sometimes I see her and I’m not sure if it is you. There was so little time she was with me. I see her playing beside our father’s lime kiln, collecting the pretty blue flowers that grew there, her face clear and her eyes bright with life. She died when she was seven, poisoned by the bush. I was with my third husband, James Cooper, but he wasn’t her father.

  Middle Island 1835, James Manning

  He watched Dorothea bend over the fire. She and the other one were baking seal flippers. She didn’t act like a whore but that was what she was. She didn’t weep either, not even when Isaac had tried to give her one. Manning had wanted to as well, but then he saw what Anderson had done to Isaac. The bastard was bowed as he stumbled back into the clearing. Anderson had walloped him in the stomach with a sealing club. It wasn’t often he’d seen them fight. It was only ever over stinking women.

  They were playing cards and Manning didn’t like what he held in his hand. Anderson’s eyes weren’t on his cards either. His black forehead shone. It wasn’t right that he could have three women. He was just a black bastard. He looked over at Isaac and he knew he was thinking the same. He thought back to Kangaroo Island. How Anderson’s men had rowed quietly away on a still, black night, taking the well-made whaleboat with them. Isaac and Mead were left behind. Anderson had rewarded them for staying. But Manning knew why the other men didn’t take Isaac. He had fought one of them and bitten off his ear.

  Anderson hadn’t noticed Isaac glaring at him for he was watching his woman leave the hut. Manning thought he should be allowed to have a turn with her. She’d learn something then. He smiled faintly at the thought of her lying at his feet, skirts hooked up around her thighs. But then he was disgusted. He didn’t want another man’s woman. She was worse, too, since Anderson had had her. She thought she could tell them all what to do. His thoughts were interrupted with Anderson leaving the table. Mead still hadn’t decided what to do with the cards in his hand.

  ‘Come on, I’ve had enough,’ muttered Manning as he flicked his hand out onto the table.

  He was so sick of it all. He looked down at the weeping red skin on his palms. And every now and then he felt the mass of white water towering over his shoulder and his muscles twitched painfully from when he had had to pull hard to keep the boat from sliding. He remembered the seals’ blood which swirled thickly around his ankles, and the wind that whipped his face and his body locked cold.

  He could hardly think. He was so tired he could have slept with his head in a bucket of water. When they had returned from sealing earlier in the day they had discovered that the sealer Andrews had stolen a bundle of their best skins. Manning was angry too because it meant that Anderson would be even less likely to pay him. Then Anderson had made him and Jem scrape the skins. They were forced to work alongside the black bitches, salting them and boiling up the fat on the fire. Thick clouds churned overhead and the moist granite smelt earthy. When they had finished, he held the branch back for J
em as they made their way to the well. They tried to scrape the slime and blood from their arms. He wondered then if he would ever be free of the smell of seal.

  Sometimes when he and Jem lay on their bedding they talked about what they would do when they left the island. Jem said that he wanted his own boat. Then when he had enough money he would build a house on the harbour at the Sound, a house with big glass windows from where he would watch the boats coming around the point. He would smoke a pipe and drink good rum, not like that black syrupy stuff they had on the island. Manning decided that he didn’t want to see or hear the sea again. He wanted dirt, good black dirt that shoots of new green could spring from. That would grow strong and produce and wither and die without being burnt and bullied by the sun and the salty wind. That was what he wanted but all he said to Jem was: ‘I ain’t going to be told anything by anyone.’

  He watched the door of Anderson’s room close behind them and he remembered the woman he once had. Except that she wasn’t really a woman, just some scrawny jillet on Kangaroo Island. When he got to the Sound he would find a white woman that didn’t go with black bastards.

  After Jem left the room, Manning walked out into the cold air which seemed to gust down the granite and through the trees. Anderson had known a blow was coming. The seal colony they had gone to the day before was the easiest to reach for there was a beach to haul up on. Then on the way back the wind had dropped. Their load was heavy and they struggled with the oars. Last night they had sheltered in the lee of an island but during the night the wind had turned into the northwest. They rowed towards the mainland and at dawn they followed the line of the coast, turning south when they sighted Middle Island. Then they brought in the oars and ran with the wind. But they headed a rising swell. The cloths weren’t high enough and they took in water. They bailed and just when they thought they weren’t going to make it, they reached the lee of Goose Island and from there the swell sank into a steady roll.

  He unrolled his bedding under the verandah. It smelt of seal guts but it was better than trying to sleep in the bilge of the whaleboat, half sitting and taking turns at watches. A wind gust shook the bark cladding above him. It lifted a cup that had been left outside and it clanged against the stone. He huddled deeper into his fur. But often after sealing, instead of descending into darkness he would see the pink seal lift its head and its eye, black and glistening, would follow his steps to the boat. An hour or so later he was still unable to sleep.

  He was on edge and he didn’t know why. Through his mind ran confusing scenes of women and seals. They were one and then the other and sometimes they slid together skinless and unclothed, mixing and twisting so they became one. It was damp beneath his skins. In his dream Jem tossed him a thick coil of twine like the rope they would throw from the boat to the island. It would be something to hold on to.

  January 1886

  My life is like tumbleweed blown about in the wind. James Cooper, my third husband, was a good man. He had land next to our father at Big Grove. He was a limeburner too. But he wasn’t a drinker. He kept his money and built this house on Stirling Terrace just above the harbour shore where they used to fly the Union Jack. It is two-storey and made of brick. I had a shop in the front room, downstairs. When my daughter died, it was James who took her to the surgeon’s house. Although the poison was inside her, it came out in her skin. I never saw her small, sore body again.

  Middle Island 1835, Dorothea Newell

  She walked behind Mary and watched the way her skirt dragged in the dirt. Sea water dripped through the fabric onto the sand. Outside the hut Mary emptied the folds of her skirt of shellfish and left for the well. Dorothea entered, bare feet padding quietly across the hard surface. She took the pot off the table and hung it above the fire. When she turned around Manning was at the storeroom door. Their eyes met and he looked away.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  He hesitated by the door.

  Then he walked across to the other doorway and, looking back, said: ‘Left me clothes bag there.’

  She stared after him, unnerved by the hate in his eyes. Hating her. She was still standing there when Mary came back.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Dorothea, shaking her head.

  She turned to the table and cleared more plates away. They rinsed the limpets, getting rid of the furry seaweed that clung to edge of the yellow flesh, and placed the cone-shaped shells in the coals.

  Later, when she went into the storeroom, she knew he had been there. And then she realised Jack’s box had been moved. He had brought it to her that morning after he had loaded all his skins into the whaleboat, saying that she was to keep it. He was taking the skins to another hideout since other sealers had found this camp. Isaac and the three black women were to go with him. She thought he should take Mead instead but he said he didn’t trust leaving Isaac at the camp. She had agreed then for she didn’t want to be on her own with Isaac either. Anderson left midmorning without telling any of them where he was going or how long he would be. The box felt lighter but she couldn’t be sure. She dared not open it. But she would speak to Manning.

  That evening Anderson still wasn’t back and the others were around the table. The empty shells lay in front of them like the discarded hats of miniature clowns. Dorothea didn’t like it when Anderson went away but she trusted Mead. Anderson had given him one of his guns in case the sealers came back. She watched Manning. He knew because he avoided looking up. She had told Mary that she thought someone had gone through Anderson’s things. She looked around the table. Jem used his knife to prise out the flesh from the last of the limpets. Yellow light from the lamp cast a shadow on one side of his face. He had changed in looks. His face seemed squarer and he grew thin tufts of reddish-brown hair from his face. He was looking more like their father and it wouldn’t be long before his cheeks took on that purple hue.

  She didn’t want to confront Manning. There was something about him that made her uneasy. He was like a snake, thin and unpredictable. So instead she turned to them all.

  ‘One of you has been at Jack’s box. When he finds out, there’ll be trouble.’

  Mead tilted his head and raised his thick eyebrows. Church too looked puzzled. Manning and Jem exchanged glances.

  ‘What are you on about?’ asked Jem.

  ‘I said someone has been at his box. If there is anything missing ...’

  There was silence except for the crackling of the wood. And then Mead turned to the two lads.

  ‘Jack’ll kill the bastard.’

  Manning swallowed and then grinned at Jem.

  ‘Don’t know nothing, do we?’

  Jem didn’t return the grin but he shook his head.

  Dorothea was standing on the sandhill when Anderson returned, skirts billowing out in front of her like the sail on the whaleboat. She liked watching him. He steered the boat through the swell and caught a wave so they surfed onto the sand. Isaac leapt out over the bow and held the boat steady before it could be sucked back with the backwash. He saw her and shouted for her to get the others.

  Two grey kangaroos lay damp and bloody inside the boat. Their limbs were tied to an oar and they were lifted out and taken up to the camp. Both were a good size. From the other side of the boat her eyes met Dinah’s briefly. She moved closer to see what the others were looking at in the boat. It was a small wild dog, snarling and spitting. Dinah grinned.

  ‘He like taraba. Bite.’

  She showed the mark on her hand and then reached in and grabbed it by the scruff of the neck. It bared its teeth and the women chuckled gaily.

  Anderson left the storeroom with the open box in his hands. His face made her feel as though her stomach had already received its blow. She clutched the top of the chair, thinking he was going to hit her with the box, but instead he threw it on the table. He leant close to her and she smelt old meat on his breath. She turned to face Mary who was on the other side of her. Their
eyes met and Dorothea could see she was rigid with fear.

  ‘My money is gone.’

  The wall shimmered in front of her and in it was her brother’s face. She knew that Manning had taken the money, Manning and her brother. But she couldn’t say it. Then he slapped her with the back of his hand and shouted something she couldn’t hear because her ear was ringing. He hit Mary on the side of the head so that she fell against her shoulder.

  ‘Manning took your money,’ Dorothea said in a flat voice, not looking at Mary, not looking at anyone.

  Mead and Isaac stayed at their end of the table. Anderson drew his gun and fired it into the ceiling. Church scrambled underneath the table.

  Anderson was yelling, ‘I’ll blow his brains out.’

  Afterwards Dorothea thought he would have too if Manning had been there. They must have heard his shouting for they stayed away. But Anderson waited until they thought they were safe. When they returned that morning he pointed his gun at both of them. At first Manning claimed to know nothing. She knew this because Mary heard from Matthew what had happened. Isaac was there too. When Anderson gestured for Manning and Jem to stand before him, he asked Isaac: ‘Shall I shoot them?’ Isaac had grinned. Manning muttered that he could have his money and Jem’s head shook. Anderson made the boys turn around and walk to the edge of the clearing. They thought he would shoot them in the back. But he didn’t.

  Now they were gone. And Mary blamed her. How could she do that to their brother? She watched from the sandhill as they set off in the whaleboat. The sea was sullen and flat: their bodies stick-like against it. Maybe he would shoot them later. But even though he frightened her, she sensed Anderson wouldn’t do that. Matthew said she should be happy that Anderson had got his money back. But perhaps, he said, it was Manning’s all along. Anderson had offered to give him fifteen pounds for working the boat but Manning said he wanted all of it. So apparently he didn’t get any.