PART ONE
Chapter 1
THE HAWKESBURY was a lovely river, wide and calm, the water dimply green, the cliffs golden in the sun, and white birds roosting in the trees like so much washing. It was a sweet thing of a still morning, the river-oaks whispering and the land standing upside down in the water.
They called us the Colony of New South Wales. I never liked that. We wasnāt new anything. We was ourselves.
The Hawkesbury was where the ones come that was sent out. Soonās they got their freedom, this was where they headed. Fifty miles out of Sydney and not a magistrate or a police to be seen. A man could pick out a bit of ground, get a hut up, never look back.
You heard that a lot. Never looked back.
That made it a place with no grannies and no grandpas. No aunties, no uncles. No past.
Pa started a boatman on the Thames. Then he was sent out, what for I never knew. Eighteen-oh-six, Alexander transport. I was a pestering sort of child but that was all heād ever say, sitting in the armchair smiling away at nothing and smoothing the nap of the velvet.
Thornhills was in a big way. Three hundred acres of good riverfront land and you had to go all the way up the river to Windsor before you saw a house grand as ours. Pa had got his start in the old Hope, carrying other menās grain and meat down the river to Sydney. Given that away, now he had his own corn and wheat, beef and hogs, and let other men do the carting of them.
But still a boatman at heart. Always a couple of skiffs down at the jetty, and when they put in the new road to the north he saw an opening, got a punt going. A shilling for a man, half a crown for a man on a horse, sixpence a head for cattle. Where you had people you needed an inn, so he built the Ferrymanās Arms, had George Wheeler run it for him.
I never saw Pa lift an axe or carry a stick of firewood and he had other men now to do the rowing for him. Done enough work for any manās lifetime, heād say. Of a morning heād eat his breakfast, light his pipe, go out to where the men were standing with their hoes and spades. Jemmy Katter, Bob Dodd, Dickie Parson, three or four others. Assigned from Government, serving their time like heād done. Sent out from London the most of them, never seen a spade in their lives before.
Heād set them to chipping between the corn rows, mucking out the hog-pens. Fill his pipe and stand watching them work. Point and call out if he thought they wasnāt doing it right.
He made them call him sir. A flogging if they forgot.
When you done as well as Pa had, no one said sent out or worn the broad arrow. Now he was what they called an old colonist. Still plenty of folk who wouldnāt put their feet under the same table as an emancipist or invite him into their house. As far as some people went, sent out meant tainted for all time. You and your children and your childrenās children. But for other folk, money had a way of blunting the hard shapes of the past. Dressing it up in different words.
Pa was Mr Thornhill of Thornhillās Point now, but he had some habits that were from before. Of an afternoon heād get a bit of bread and go out on the verandah. Sit on a hard bench beside the windowādidnāt want a cushionāwith the bread and a glass of rum-and-water beside him on the sill. Heād put his telescope up to his eye and look down the river where youād see the boats from Sydney come round the last spur into Thornhillās Reach. Sliding up fast if the tide was with them, or having to get out the oars if it was sucking back out to sea. Other times heād swing it round the other way, to the reedy place where the First Branch wound down from among the hills. But mostly heād look straight across the river up at the line of bush along the top of the cliffs. Nothing up there, only rocks and trees and sky, but heād sit by the hour watching, the leather worn through to the brass where his hand clamped round it.
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I was born in the year eighteen-sixteen, Sarah Thornhill, named after my mother. She was Sarah but always called Sal. I was the baby of the family, why I was called Dolly.
Never liked Dolly. Never wanted to be a doll.
Next above me was Mary, nearly three years older and never let me forget it. Got the side of the bed near the fire. Pushed ahead when we went up the stairs. You know, silly things, but they matter when youāre little.
I had three brothers too, all of them older.
Johnny was two years above Mary. Always with a scheme in his head. Got a lot of lemons once and rigged up a thing to get the juice. Begged some sugar from Ma, set up a stall down at the punt, made a shilling or two.
Bub was two years again above him. Even as a boy Bub was like an old man, sober and slow. Never went anywhere without a hoe and if he saw a thistle heād stop and grub it out. It was him got the lemons for Johnny. Him got the hiding for it, too.
The oldest of us was Will. Fifteen when I was born and already out on the boats doing a manās work. Will was away more than he was home. Up and down the coast with the cedar. Over to New Zealand for the seals. Be away so long Iād think he was never coming back, half a year or more.
Captain Thornhill, people called him, though he was really only Will Thornhill whoād worked his way up. Never got his papers, nothing like that. Didnāt read, see. None of us did.
Pa had no time for learning. Could sign his name but often said how a few acres and a flock of sheep was a better gift to your children than anything youād get out of a book. When he needed something on paper he got old Loveday at Beckettās Reach to do it for him. Loveday had come free, could of done all right, but drank it all away in his miserable leaky hut. See, Pa would say. Old Lovedayās not got the taint, but tell me this, you rather have his life or mine?
It was never spoke of, but Ma was not really our mother.
I had a few memories, sharp little pictures, of another mother. Will in the kitchen doorway and me sitting on the edge of the table working away at the peas in a pod while this other mother magicked them open down their backbone one by one with her thumbnail, the peas popping out into the blue-striped bowl with the grey chip on the edge. She sat puffing away on her pipe, doing the peas without having to look. The picture was so sharp it even had a smell, baccy and peas together. Sheād take the pipe out of her mouth and sing, tuneless and wavery. Oranges and lemons, say the bells of Saint Clementās, sheād sing. You owe me five farthings, say the bells of Saint Martinās.
Will with his hands under my armpits, hoisting me in the air, the underside of the shingles swinging round, the pod clutched tight in my fist while the kitchen rolled up and down and under and over, and then I was back on the table with my mouth open, would I cry or laugh I didnāt know, and Will was clattering at the stove, shouting and joking, head way up near the beams, and my mother with the peas all fallen in her pinny lap and not caring.
Then they brought me into a dark room, summer outside but all the curtains drawn across and the shutters closed, someone leading me by the hand over to the high bed where my mother lay, but I was frightened and shy, she was sweaty, her hair in strings, her cheeks sunk in, and her hand on the coverlet waxy and bony.
Whoever was with me, I could feel their hand at my back, pushing, they wanted me to kiss the yellow face on the pillow. Her eyes slid sideways at me, she was smiling, but her lips were so white and dry and her face nothing but wrinkled skin sliding over the bone. I pulled back, how could I kiss such a thing! Her hand crawled towards me over the coverlet and she touched me on the shoulder, top of the head, shoulder again, then the hand fell back and they let me go away.
Like a dream, that first mother melted away and there was another person we called Ma.
Pa had no stories but Ma had enough for the both of them. Turned over the places and names and dates like coins in her hand, counted and re-counted them for the pleasure of it. Her Daddy was in the sugar trade and she grew up in a house at Brixton-Hill, on the north side, thatās the superior side. A husband something in the army, she was Margaret Grant. Come free to New South Wales along with him. Then he died.
I come up the river to help your pa, sheād say. Your mother too sick to care for a houseful of children. Then by and by we was wed.
I loved how neat it was, the way she told it, then and now stitched up tight.
Ma had a scurrying way with her, tilting forward from the waist like a hen in a hurry. Always putting something to rights. She never forgot the stain Pa carried. But the way she saw it, it was a wifeās job to hide it, even if she couldnāt wash it out.
She had a headful of all the things you did so no one would know you had the taint. Elbows off the table, remember Dolly, sheād say, and a well-bred person leaves a scrap on their plate. Sheād be running after us with our bonnets when we went outside, did we want to look like blackfellows? Church, rain or shine, every Sunday, that fog of mothballs. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done and we have done those things which we ought not to have done. Church was full of hard words, but those were plain small ones mortared together into something that nothing could get into or out of.
Pa did his best, but heād forget. Eat off his knife, or say victuals, when Ma thought that was vulgar.
Itās food, William, sheād say. Or comestibles.
By God Meg, heād say. Combustibles is it?
Heād laugh, but then heād reach over and touch her arm.
Oh, Iām an ignorant feller, heād say. Lucky she took me, your ma.
Humour not Maās long suit, but sheād smile then, and when she did that you could see what they shared. The two of them, no one else in the room.
Iād seen Pa drink out of the teapot spout, but when Ma was watching he cramped up his thick fingers into the silly little teacup handle. At table heād work the silverware the way Ma liked, squash the peas onto the fork and line it up with the knife when heād finished.
If weād go to him about something heād say, Best see what your Ma says. Not that he was a weak man, Pa. Not by any manner of means. But heād done his bit. Got us the house, the land, the money. Fou...