Patrick White - The Fringe of Leaves

Nothing would have induced her to behave so unprofessionally as to break the silence with a comment. If her mere physical presence might disturb him, the leaf-mould would surely help make it less obtrusive.

Presently he began to demonstrate his talent. From out of the trills, the suspended notes, the lush warbling when bird-vanity seemed to disguise itself as innocent rejoicing, she thought to recognize the thrush.

‘I’ad a little bird-organ I’d carry with me, but didn’t use it overmuch. I’d say me voice served me better.’

A while farther, in darkest forest, he launched into a prolonged jugging: the sound spilled and glowed around them and would have illuminated worse shades than those through which they were passing. In spite of her exhausted blood and torn feet, everything in fact which might have disposed her to melancholy, she was throbbing with a silent cheerfulness; until, from somewhere in the distant sunlight, an actual bird announced his presence in a dry, cynical crackle such as she associated with the country to which she and the convict were condemned.

Soon after, they came out into the blaze she had learnt to accept as their normal condition in life.

They marched, and she never dared ask to be informed on the progress they were making, but assumed that her guide was possessed of knowledge he did not wish to share. Seduced by the mystery of timelessness, she might have chosen to prolong the journey rather than face those who would quiz them upon their unorthodox arrival.

That, she preferred not to think about, since the settlement at Moreton Bay had begun to exist for her in brick and stone, in dust and glare, in iron and torment, as though she too, had escaped from it only yesterday.

He told her one night as they sat warming themselves at the fire after a dinner of roasted goanna, ‘I was never out of hobbles the years I spent at the settlement. They kept all us lifers in chains. I forgot what it was to move like a free man, but I noticed more for bein’ slowed up. I reckon I got to know every stone, every stump, on the tracks round Moreton Bay — the hairs in another ganger’s nose, the corns on the next feet at the treadmill. That heavy light you been floggin’ against all of summer. None of it you can forget, Ellen.’

She would not.

He said, ‘We didn’t go without our little luxuries and pleasures. Some of the coves at the lumber yard — that is where the “better class”, mostly short-sentence men — is put to work at makin’ various articles — nails and bolts like, boots, soap and so on — some of these beggars might bake a pumpkin and pertater loaf, and smuggle a lump to our mob if we was in good with ’em. It was lovely, I can tell yer. And terbaccer. There was one elderly customer whose sentence was just on finishin’, who they put to shoo away the crows from the corn down around the point. This codger — a gentleman by all accounts — used to grow a fair crop of the weed. ‘E’d hide a wad of it under a stone for we gangers to come across. We’d pass round a pipe and enjoy a coupla puffs while the overseer was away.’

His usually lifeless eyes shone. ‘By Ghost, I could do with a pipe of terbaccer! Or cud to chew.’ Deprived of it, he spat in the fire, and ran his tongue over craving lips.

She had noticed before how the more perfect among his teeth were stained brown, as though still influenced by tobacco; the worst of them were rotted stumps.

Now he put his hand on her knee. ‘What we’ve got, Ellen, is often better than what we haven’t.’

She did not exactly shudder.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘It’s cold by this time of evening.’ She hoped to have hidden the truth of the matter.

He appeared convinced to the extent of drawing her close; when for days he had not touched her, seeming to have taken a dislike to physical contact, or perhaps remembering his dead mistress.

So she must make amends to him for her passing revulsion. ‘Shan’t we go inside? We’ll find it warmer.’

He said, ‘If that is what you want,’ and laughed, but gently.

Because it was what she most desired, again she shuddered, and hoped he would interpret it as shivering.

She wanted to be loved. She longed for the vast emptiness of darkness to be filled as she encouraged him to enter her body and pressed her mouth into his, against what she only momentarily remembered as a grille of broken, stained teeth.

What she offered was in some measure, surely, a requital of all he had suffered, as well as remission of her own sins? Of deceit, and lust, and faithlessness. She hoped that if they could prolong their journey to Moreton Bay, if not lose themselves in it for ever, she might, for all her shortcomings, persuade him to believe in true love.

So she cried out, and he redoubled what might have been demonstrations of love. Or was it desperation? After they had fallen apart, exhausted, they continued soothing each other with the hands of hardened criminals.

Again she remembered the teeth, and was driven to kissing his throat, a cheek, a shoulder, one of his nipples, disguising her remorse as tender frenzy.

Because he no longer responded, she asked, ‘After Mab — was there no one, Jack, you could bring yourself to love?’

She lay listening for his reply. A wind was ruffling the roof of the hut. There were moments when the thatching failed to protect those inside against a cold interrogation by starlight.

‘Nobody at Moreton Bay’, she suggested, ‘you was able to form a relationship with?’

Nobody could sound as crude and awkward as Ellen Gluyas.

‘There was the women’, he said, ‘at the female factory. But who in chains could ever take up with a woman? with the iron eatin’ into ’is legs! An’ the women — they wasn’t chained, but as good as. The poor sluts was never ’ardly let draw breath. They was put to pickin’ oakum, an’ other occupations. They did the laundry for we men, so far as it was done.’

Her interest was to some degree requited; more when he rolled over and submitted her again to the length and weight of his body.

He grunted, and said, ‘I’ll tell yer,’ when ready to resume the topic they had dropped, ‘there was one — an Irishwoman — we’d look at each other. I never got to know ’er bloody name, not even after we was in a position to speak to each other. Some fight shy of askin’ or tellin’ names — like there are those who’ll not tell why they was sentenced or ’ow long they’re in for. Oh, some are only too ready to boast — make it sound bigger than it is — like you’ll find inderviduals in real life. An’ some are all for jemmyin’ a cove’s secrets out of ’im. But speakin’ for meself, I respect delicacy if I reckernize it in others.’

She had never felt more indelicate, but waited, and he continued after moving his hand until it rested in the moist hair between her thighs.

‘This woman I see’d often enough. She was one of a party they used to march down early from the female factory to the ’orspital — as we in our gang was trailing’ out to hoe along the point, or hull maize, or break stones for road-makin’. These women were nurses, see? though I’d lay a bet none of ’em was in any way experienced before they come to the Colony. They was that rough. Whores among ’em. But here it’s a case of a pig in a poke. Anyways, this Irish never missed lookin’ in our direction — in mine I was persuaded of course, though the others were shoutin’ at ’er. She’d those eyelashes you see on some of the Irish, so thick they look like they’re gummed together, or loaded with flies.’

She tried flickering her own lashes in the dark, but could barely persuade herself she still had them; they might have been singed off by the sun, or the rims of her eyelids eroded by privation.