The ends of the earth - Page 3
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 28: Still the Lucky Country?
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Emma Ashmere
WHILE IT IS true that James warned there would be few women of my kind in the colony, I had not quite understood he would vanish so regularly for weeks on end to survey the great beyond, compiling important field notes for the Surveyor General, studying the clay beds and pink quartzite cliffs, and perhaps finding pleasure and power in the warmth and sport of darker flesh.
James?
I am not ashamed to admit I often speak his name in his absence.
It was well over a hundred degrees, I write in my diary. It is far better to tell of simple, familiar things. We hung the hams from our tents and the Reverend Merton read psalms, and we raised our make-believe glasses to King and Country, having lost most of the glassware when the trunk was dropped on disembarkation. James and I intended to mark the Christmas occasion with as much spirit as was possible.
I AM ALSO lying in my bed with as much spirit as is possible, listening to the ship-like creaking of the house. For some hours I'd been trying to read one of my husband's favourite books, The Myths of Greece and Rome, but I became overpowered by the labyrinthine parables and their savage imagery.
Suddenly I hear it: a rumble. It begins as a whispering, a chattering. The fidgeting of furniture. Paintings rattling against the walls. Books jostling along the shelves. The bedside light flickering on and off. Is it an earthquake?
I stagger from the bed, perhaps to the appalling sound of Surveyor Palmer's two hundred horse carriages rocketing over cobblestones. Or is it Enceladus, the giant punished by Jupiter to lie beneath the weight of Mount Etna, bound forever with adamantine chains? Poor Enceladus, forever turning in his lair, sending up great shots of molten fire to shake the tender plates of the earth.
Adam-an-tine? I know the word – I have read it somewhere else recently.
I feel my way downstairs, trying not to trip over the things scattered across the floor. I prise open a kitchen cupboard to discover the cups and saucers have been dancing together and now lie intermingled in jagged heaps.
I light the gas, heat a little milk, then sit down on the cold, hard floor. What luck! A scrap of blank paper and a runaway pen. James has given me the duty of arranging a reception in honour... What is that appalling noise? Just the fire alarm again, screeching overhead. The milk pot is spuming, brown with fire.
JAMES HAS GIVEN me the duty of arranging a reception in honour of the arrival of the new Governor and his wife; hence I am in charge of the decorations, the supper provisions, the guest list, the musical entertainment. At last, more of life's necessities have arrived: another piano, kale and cabbage and river bean seeds, a selection of wines and, mercifully, letters and books; also, bolts of woollen cloth as the winter will arrive surprising chill, an oak dining table and chairs, herds of much needed cattle and flocks of sheep driven in from the east, and scores of impoverished married men and women, hungry for opportunity.
I venture a small smile at the sky. There is much to do. Doctor Myles has asked me to visit a labouring man's wife, Mrs Ambrose Asquith, who has given birth to a girl a week after the poor husband extinguished himself.
I duck my hat as I enter the tent. I expect – but am still shocked by – the smell. I sit by the Asquith woman in the sorry little tent, watching the grey curves beneath her eyes, the red dots spreading and then receding across her face. I wipe her doughy wrist, then take up the baby and stare at its eyes. The child lies unmoving in the crook of my arm, its mouth separated from my swelling breast by three layers of damp cloth.
Eventually I hand the baby back, informing Mrs Asquith that I must see to the reception for the new Governor.
The evening air is still stifling. The sky remains orange behind black trees.
The reception must be a resounding success, so no one will remember that the previous Governor was recalled to Britain under a cloud. James has suggested that the new Governor's wife shall become a great friend, there still being a shortage of certain kinds of women in these parts.
The sky has been orange for at least an hour. How these southern sunsets scald and sear the night. At first there was no sign of the new Governor and his lady wife, but we soon learned they had been sighted.
We wait in the yellow square of light thrown out from the door of the makeshift hall. A note arrives. Regrettably, the Governor has been detained. Somebody stays the violins. Food has begun to wilt on plates.
When the Governor finally appears, he is red and swaying. One look at the Governor's wife and I know she and I will not be friends. Her china-doll face; her furious eyes.
‘The heat,' the Governor's wife says at last.
‘I trust your Excellency's belongings arrived in an agreeable state?'
No answer.
‘I trust...'
Nothing. Stillness in every eye and mouth. Then a sigh, long and loud. The Governor's voice booms. He smells of rum. And still the bawdy dusk refuses to fall.
The airless dark brings no relief from the day's heat. I lie wrestling with my sinful conscience, especially the duty of looking in on the Asquith woman thrice daily. Of course I will go tomorrow, to pat a fresh cloth to her face and filthy hands, but I will not note it in my diary when she clutches at me and cries, ‘It was like a thousand bees had stung my heart, missus, when my little boy found my husband face-down in the ditch.' Nor will I mention giving my agreement when she said the nights were so dark and the towpaths so wet. Down by the ditch where the cold water glitters and the winds sing out softly, calling you in.
I AM ALSO in bed wrestling with my conscience. I look over to see my late husband's book of myths on the floor. Adam-an-tine. No. That's not the word I've seen somewhere.
Look. Here, on the labels of my collection of unopened pills. A-man-ta-dine. I've been squirrelling them away with the diaries in the shoebox for ‘the event'.
As I reach over for my glass and gulp down a handful of the pills, a trail of water rains down, darkening, expanding then disappearing like tiny footprints across the sheets.
Over there, the fat yellow envelope addressed to The Editor, The Australian.
Outside, another unrepentant morning sun. But if we lie here very quietly, we might see the sky blackening with flocks of parakeets. The gouged, parched hills might bristle with saplings. The great rivers might begin to run again, tumbling through the thirsty earth. And the cool wind will carry voices of loved ones long dead. ♦
