Sarah Thornhill Read Free Page B

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.

T HOSE 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