Wattle Circus: Chapter Twenty-Two
They passed their free time by trading little scraps of stories they had picked up about Australia in general and Van Diemen’s Land in particular, aware that the island they were approaching was vaguely in the vicinity of that vast, unknown mass of near-mythical land. But it might as well have been as distant as the moon as far as they were concerned, for they were facing years of servitude in Van Diemen’s Land before they would have even the slightest chance of freedom.
Jack enjoyed his role as the repository of the most knowledge about their impending home. He had an uncle – also named Jack – who had been sent to Sydney Cove almost 20 years earlier. A London builder, he had taken on too much work and would never be able to meet his obligations, but had already gambled away the advance payments he had received for the purpose of acquiring the necessary materials. He was sentenced to seven years transportation on the basis of already having been charged over an earlier indiscretion at 16, pickpocketing a kerchief as a dare, and they didn’t hear a word from him for the first five years.
When a letter finally arrived it was an appalling litany of depravations. He wrote of regular floggings and acts of random cruelty, rampant disease and widespread starvation. Yet when his next letter arrived, almost five years later again, they wondered if it was from the same man – he spoke of a burgeoning business in constructing living quarters for the ever-increasing number of new convicts and now, as a free settler, he had also taken a wife. He had fathered three young children, only one surviving past its first birthday. He could not yet afford his passage home, but Jack’s father doubted he would ever return. ‘Why would he come back? There’s nothing here for him anymore, his name would still be mud,’ he told his son.
Abigail had noticed that the days were growing slightly longer, that there was a little more light each evening. They must have passed the equator, she reasoned, for although London and the northern hemisphere would be approaching the winter equinox, the southern hemisphere would be slowly approaching its summer.
Standing on the deck, looking out over the gentle green heave of a placid ocean, she turned to Finn.
“Do you think it feels different?”
“What’s that?”
“Being upside-down.”
“Upside-down?”
“Yes. Have you noticed that the days are getting longer, that there’s more light even though we’re heading into December? It means we must be in the south, down the bottom. I think I can tell. If you close your eyes, I think you can feel it. I feel just a bit lighter, like I’m falling ever so slightly towards my head.”
Finn closed his eyes, putting a hand out to steady himself on a rail. “I see what you mean. It’s only a little bit, but I feel it too. I had been feeling like I was taller than before, maybe that’s why, my head falling away from my feet stretching me out a little.”
He opened his eyes again and joined Abigail in looking out over sea. They were both looking for any sign of land at all, the slightest shadow that may anchor them back in a physical, solid life, a momentary escape from this strange, liquid and liquefying existence. All this water around, the constant sway of the ship as it carved its way through the sea, should have made them feel much more solid in contrast, Abigail reasoned. Yet she felt the opposite, felt her own self becoming more and more subsumed by sea every day.
Abigial felt her body now even had its own tides, subtle pulls to and fro that were not just a flow-on effect of the sea on every side, below them at every moment of their lives, but rather a force that worked from within. This sensation manifested in different ways but was most apparent during the still of the night. She would feel a pull, a pulsing flow coursing through her and settling in one place, then, when it felt like it had all built up and something had to give, slowly start to flow back the other way.
She didn’t like it; she wanted to feel centred, in control of her body and her thoughts. It was most affronting that both were rebelling at the same time, conspiring against her desire to rule her own body, mind and soul. Abigail had been having an increasingly strange litany of dreams. When back in Newgate she had been visited by variations of the same dream over and over, the mayor and his watch, the watch and the mayor. In one the watch in her pocket grew so hot it burst into flames, in another it developed teeth and ate its way right through her clothing, leaving her standing in the middle of a circle of leering onlookers dressed only in her underclothes.
Since leaving port, these dreams had begun to fade, replaced with visions of what awaited her in Van Diemen’s Land. Silent black faces would surround her, sometimes coupled with warm smiles and hands held out with pink palms upturned, gestures of kindness and friendship. At other times however they were scowling, baring big white teeth and approaching menacingly. She would try to cry out for help but only the hoarsest whisper would emerge from her raw throat.
The dreams of her mother and father’s bodies washed up on the beach had thankfully almost disappeared. Whenever she had a chance to read any of her mother’s words they would invariably find their way into her dreams in one way or another, which gave her yet more reason to try and steal some moments with the book if she could, to keep the other dreams at bay.
Siren Songs
Men of foul and swampy seas
Of salt not earth of waves not trees
May tell us wives of sudden squall
Yet we know they speak not all
The danger lies not in sharp rocks
But hidden in those golden locks
What they seek we see so clear
Not with judgment nor with fear
Is your song your siren call
The wet embrace that ends it all
to be continued…
