hour in front of the mirror to find and keep his aitches. After years of effort, he had succeeded enough to hoodwink those in authority, but for all that, he had only managed to obtain a post on this miserable island where she languished along with him. Superintendent of the Government Mission For Aborigines, indeed! A grand sounding title for a poorly paid job, but then he wasn’t up to anything else. He was so inept at numbers that she had to keep his books for him. Thank God, her daddy had been a shopkeeper and had made sure that everyone in the family could figure. If it wasn’t for her father, God rest his soul, and herself, that worthless man would have stayed the bricklayer he was meant to be. Sweet Jesus, she had been such an innocent ninny to allow herself to be taken in by his sweet words. That’s all he was: words. And that’s all he had, never anything else, and she had allowed him to persuade her to follow him here and to live among an almost extinct tribe of savages.
And here they were, right on schedule, beginning their unearthly din in the middle of the night while she lay in constant suffering, while that great lump of a husband snored on beside her. God, those savages were melodious compared to his bestial snorting. And how healthy they were. Not a sickness among them. No, that wasn’t right. The poor bastards were as badly off as she was. Dying off under the ministering hands of her inept husband. He would be the death of all of them, just as he would be the death of her. Why, when she was well enough to get around, how it hurt to see the little ones lying there so sickly. It made the heart so heavy, but perhaps they were better off away from it all. Sometimes, she thought like that. You know, getting it over once and for all. It would be better off all around. What good was medicine when that unfeeling brute of a husband rationed it out? No good at all. What he should do was give them as much laudanum as they needed. Give us as much laudanum as we need and save us good and proper. No more any of us suffering and calling and singing out our woe, our pain, our ill-health, our need to enter into a realm of health. No more of that – but a constant supply of laudanum would never be, not while that good Christian, the Bringer of Salvation was in charge. Christ, how he snored. Well, he wouldn’t for long.
Savagely, the woman dug her husband in the ribs. He gave an extra loud snort and turned on his side. The cacophony of his snores resumed. Out of tune with the natives singing outside, they angered her so much that her pain disappeared. She hit him savagely across the nose. Startled, he sat up wildly. Aghast at her action, she sought a victim and settled on the convenient victims caterwauling the night away with their pagan cries.
Both now awake, they listened as on the wind came the voice of Jangamuttuk miming out perfectly words in the very voice of her husband. She couldn’t help grinning at him in the darkness.
‘They made of me,
A ghost down under,
Gave me a dram,
It tasted like cram,
Real as my dream
Way, way under.’
The intent of the words rankled her and the grin turned savage. This brute, this brute beside her had lured her out from London in that smug voice. Him and his promises. ‘Stop them, stop them!’ she demanded of her husband.
Fada had rather enjoyed the mimicry. He took great pleasure in the natives and their simple, but effective ways. In fact, so much were they in his regard, that he was in the midst of writing the definitive text about them. Nothing would have suited him better now than to pick up his pen and jot down the rude but simple rune. It was with such amusing anecdotes that he wished to lighten the heavy brief of his volume: the taking of the message of goodwill to the poor natives of the Empire. He sighed at the greatness of his mission.
‘Will you make them stop! I can’t stand it. I’m not asking much of you. I have never asked much of you. Please God, just make them stop. I’ve had enough for one night.’
Fada sighed in annoyance. How could he have dragged this woman all the way across the ocean? How could he, when she so obviously was not a help to him in his mission, more a hindrance? ‘So help me, God,’ but it was so, and he sighed again.
‘Well,’ the demand fell between his bed and his journal.
There would be no rest this night, unless he went to quieten his charges. In many ways this could be made to work for his benefit. Why, it might prove to be the basis of an entire chapter of his volume. The thought pulled him out of bed. His wife groaned at his portly unromantic figure clad in a long nightshirt and with a nightcap pulled low over his balding head. With a deep sigh, she turned and faced the wall, waiting for him to be gone so that she could have a dose of her favourite medicine and achieve blessed sleep.
It was not in the nature of Fada to play the sneak. Thus he strode away from the mission compound and along a track (a visible fruit of his labours), in the direction from which the sound of clapsticks and digeridoos came. With a smile, he waited for the mimicking voice to begin again, but it did not. His eyes adjusted to the starlight and he walked briskly along, sensing that the music did not come from the cemetery at the end of it. A cemetery too quickly populated, he thought. The rhythm came from somewhere to the right and from the forest. Knowing that there were no dangers to be feared from savage or tame animals on the island, he confidently left the track and groped his way through the dark bush. The starlight made the scene tremble and become a romantic wilderness. Trees assumed fantastic shapes. A storm had lately come crashing through the forest. It created havoc among the giant trees. Huge boughs were ripped from the mother trunks and tossed yards away, or had just been pushed down to crack and lean half-detached. It was as if a giant had charged through the bush without heeding the consequences. Fada breathed a prayer of thanks. His flock had been spared from this natural calamity.
The fallen boughs made for rough going. Fada for an instant forgot his good nature, and cursed the tricky devils who sought to hide their shenanigans deep in the forest, but his good humour at once returned. He smiled at the childlike simplicity of his charges who had so skilfully evaded his sight, but who were so unaware that the sounds of their revelry would travel to his ears. Then, through the giant boles of the forest, he saw the flickering of fires. He went forward softly and crept to the edge of a sylvan glade. There in a forest fastness, his charges, supposedly safe from his all-seeing eye, were indulging themselves in a ceremony which reminded him of the mass of the Popish Church of Rome. Fascinated, he stayed hidden in the darkness behind the illumination of the fires. His romantic nature came to the fore. He felt like some elf in spirit watching the mysterious ways of the humans.
Jangamuttuk was afraid in the realm of the ghosts. Soaked through, he huddled sodden as the ground beneath and the air around him. After, or before, now, he reached out for his mapan power living in the pit of his stomach. Standing, he took a long look about him. Mist and the smell of decay. In the distance, but what was distance, close, rose a hill fantastically shaped by the weather of this forbidding country. Such was his human reasoning, but then his special ghost knowledge entered his mind. It was a castle, a dwelling of the higher ghosts who would hold the medicine that would bring health to his people. He had to get inside, but as he looked, it receded from his vision. The tall foreboding walls were unbroken and mocked his fragile humanity. He needed his Dreaming companion. With longing, he sang for him. Sang a song that came from his secret initiation. His clapsticks tapped out the strong rhythm. From his external initiation, the didgeridoos took up the rhythm. He let the sound lift him towards the castle walls. He sang his song again, calling, calling. He fell to earth beside the white walls hazy in the swirling mist. Rain began pelting his naked body, washing away the immunity of the painted symbols. His power began ebbing. Desperately, he clapped his sticks together. The didgeridoos roared out his urgency. Now, a familiar warm wetness passed over his head, and his clapsticks changed to a rhythm of welcome. His power flowed as he looked up at the stone axe-head of Goanna bending to accept him. Now with his special Dreaming companion, Jangamuttuk the shaman laughed as he scrambled up on its head. Now the walls were thin as paperbark to him.
