The Lieutenant Part 15

He could hear a bird above them chattering as if scolding, the dry whisper of the leaves. Everything was going on as it always had. For centuries, for millennia, the forebears of that bird had sat out there and the forebears of those leaves had whispered in that breeze. Only in here were things changed.

'I too. I am to be of the party.'

It was a relief to say the words, but did not give the satisfaction he had hoped. Like a child, he had thought that putting the thing into words would make it go away. But it was still sitting between them while outside that callous bird did not seem to realise there was nothing to sing about.

'What is to be done, Tagaran? What is to become of us?'

This was a question beyond the game of words. It was out of the reach of their grammar lessons.

She went over to the fireplace and held out her hands to the coals. He thought it was her polite way of ending their conversation. But then she turned back to him and held out her hands for his. She pressed his fingers with her own. He felt her skin warm and smooth.

'Putuwa,' she said, pressing and smoothing. 'Putuwa.'

Their hands were the same temperature now.

'Putuwa,' he repeated.

She pressed harder, smoothing with larger gestures and he understood the word to mean the action she was performing, that is to warm one's hand by the fire and then to squeeze gently the fingers of another person. In English it required a long rigmarole of words. In England a person who warmed their hands by the fire did so in order to thrust them into their pockets and keep them warm. Tagaran was teaching him a word, and by it she was showing him a world.

Everything in his life had come down to the sensation of her fingers against his. The person he was, the history he carried within himself, every joy and grief he had ever experienced, slipped away like an irrelevant garment. He was nothing but skin, speaking to another skin, and between the skins there was no need to find any words.

A laughing jacka.s.s began to peal from somewhere up on the ridge, and as if she had heard a clock chiming, reminding her of something she must do, Tagaran let go of his fingers.

'Yenioo, kamara,' she said, I am going, my friend. She looked up at him and he thought he saw in her face the same thought he had: This is the last time we will see each other.

He groped for words and none came. He would not give a word to the bleakness he felt. Could not say it: goodbye.

He followed her out of the hut, watching her climb the rocks. As he hoped, at the top she turned. He raised his arm, straight up, the hand opened towards her, and she waved back. Then she turned and was gone.

In his mind he went with her, following her along the path, turning towards the camp in the next bay, watching her go down the long traverse of the hillside past the big rock that was as far into her world as he had ever gone. She would arrive in the clear place where the fire sent up its column of smoke and the women sat on the ground as if growing out of it, where the children ran and poked among the mangroves and where, when the sun went down, they all came together to eat and sleep.

The picture was so vivid in his mind that it was a shock to find himself not there but here, alone on his windy point.

Putuwa.

Just as he did, she knew that something ugly was on its way. But she had left him a word he would never forget, and the weight of trust it carried.

At the parade ground next morning, Silk was full of energy, the early hour no hindrance to his enthusiasm. He spread out a copy of Cook's Plan of Botany Bay on the ground and beckoned Rooke and Willstead and the sergeant to look.

'We will first proceed south-west, travelling through Kangaroo Ground and beyond. Having made a sweep there, we will turn east and, after pausing for rest and refreshment, will launch our attack. Our objective, gentlemen, is the promontory in the northern part of the bay where there is a village of the Botany Bay tribe. We will surround the village and entrap the natives.'

'Entrap the natives,' Willstead repeated. 'Yes indeed, a good plan.'

Silk looked hard at him, but Willstead's face was bland.

This plan showed a grasp of military strategy in Silk that Rooke did not know he possessed. He had thought that Silk would simply lead them about in the woods in various directions. Instead he had come up with a plan that, without Rooke's warning to Tagaran, would have had a pretty fair chance of working. Rooke had not seen the village, but had heard it described as a collection of huts, on a narrow neck of land with deep water on three sides.

He revisited Silk's words. Think of it as a piece of theatre, if you wis.h.!.+ Yet here he was, bright-eyed with his scheme, a coil of rope looped across his chest ready for tying up prisoners.

Rooke supposed that even theatre needed to be convincing.

The sergeant got the troop of men lined up and it clanked out of the settlement like a clumsy clockwork toy of many segments which would twitch its way over the floor until the spring ran down. They marched under a low grey sky, along the same track on which Brugden had made his last journey in the opposite direction.

They had been marching for some four hours when they arrived at Kangaroo Ground, a pleasant park-like gra.s.sy expanse with large trees at intervals and a graceful slope to the land. There, just beside the track, was the hut that Brugden and the others had put together for their expeditions, constructed on the native pattern, of boughs and sheets of bark. Outside they had built a fireplace with stones, and had drawn up logs to sit on.

They had made themselves comfortable, Rooke thought. The fireplace was full of old coals. How many nights had the prisoners and their sergeant sat here, telling each other the stories of their lives? They had carved a piece of the place out for themselves, where the governor and behind him the machinery of empire could be forgotten. As Lieutenant Rooke was out on his point, at Kangaroo Ground they were free men.

The track led up slopes and down valleys. Along low ground they skirted pools of fresh water and a few minutes later a cry went up from the men at the front, 'The sea! The sea!' and they emerged on the sh.o.r.e of Botany Bay. Beyond the arms of land that marked its entrance, there was the ocean, the simple geometry of the horizon.

Silk called a halt and gathered the men around him.

'The village is at the northern end of this beach, men. We will return to the pools just pa.s.sed and rest there for a short time before we mount our attack.'

By the side of one of the pools the men scattered themselves in what shade they could find and opened their wallets of food. They stretched out, their heads pillowed on their packs, the sergeant snoring. The handkerchief he had laid over his face against the flies puffed up and subsided with each breath.

Rooke found an embayment among tall bushes that was like a room with walls that s.h.i.+fted in the breeze from the sea. He lay too, but did not sleep.

It had hardly begun, but he wished this adventure over.

He went through his workings again. Proposition one: the expedition would only capture natives who did not have any reason to avoid them. Proposition two: the natives had been given reason to avoid them. Ergo, there was no chance of any capture.

Well, he corrected himself, the chance was not zero. He could not put a number on it, but told himself he did not need to concern himself with such a remote possibility.

So why could he feel his face contracting with the effort to calculate it?

He remembered something he had not thought of for years: the way Dr Vickery had once tried to put an overawed boy at ease by likening himself to a bat. But Rooke's eagerness for night was more than an astronomer's impatience. He had only to get through another six or seven hours of daylight. Then the attack on the village would be safely behind them.

Night would fall, and he could roll himself into his blanket. He could lie watching the stars until he fell asleep in their cool light.

They rested for an hour, then set off again, back to the beach and north along the edge of the trees towards the village. At the neck of the promontory Silk stopped and whispered his last orders.

'We will fan out to block any escape. Lieutenant Rooke, you will take your men as far as you can go on the north side, and spread out into a line. Lieutenant Willstead, do the same to the south, and I will take my men up the middle. We will then advance together in a cordon, and the natives will be outflanked and trapped.'

He had his pocket watch out on his palm, opening and closing it in his excitement.

'I will give you, shall we say, ten minutes. Kindly look at your watches, and in ten minutes' time precisely, having formed a human chain, you will commence your advance in order that all groups meet simultaneously at the village.'

Rooke got out his own pocket watch and checked the time. The sun blazed white on its face. Time had no intention and no judgment. A watch had only to move tooth by tooth, jerking the wheels blindly forward. Only among humans was there always this doubt, this fear, this hope and dread and wondering all was.h.i.+ng around together like a sea against rocks.

Rooke led his men across a tangled area of sand and rope-like strands of gra.s.s, heaped and valleyed in ways that could have been designed expressly to make progress difficult. As instructed, he arranged his men across the northern part of the neck of land in a line. Ten minutes after Silk had given the order, he waved them forward.

It was hard going, floundering through sand and gra.s.s, up and down over rocks and in between clefts and sudden hollows. But then they surmounted a rise and found themselves beside the rest of the men in a ragged line at the edge of the village.

The place was as it had been described. Nine huts, solid affairs nearly high enough to stand in, were grouped around a central s.p.a.ce in which a fire burned cheerfully, nearby some wooden dishes, a pile of mussels, a neat stack of firewood.

Silk's strategy had been perfectly planned and executed, a manoeuvre as if from a military textbook. The only problem was that the natives had not waited to be outflanked.

The sound of men catching their breath was mocked by a bird somewhere nearby: Too wee! Too wee! The loop of rope across Silk's chest was uncoiling, one end trailing in the sand behind him.

'There they are,' one of the men shouted.

Even as everyone turned to look, a native was pus.h.i.+ng a canoe off from the sh.o.r.e, sliding in and paddling rapidly across the estuary. Three other canoes, full of natives, had almost reached the far bank. One was already drawn up on the sand there. A group of men stood looking across at where the redcoats panted. Rooke could hear cries and shouts-of fear or mirth, he could not tell.

Silk stared across. His back was straight, his narrow shoulders held stiff. The distance was not enormous, the river no wider than the Thames at Westminster, but a distance and depth impossible for a party of armed men.

Willstead was opening his mouth to speak, but Silk was there first.

'Quick, men,' he shouted. 'They are not out of range, quick now, load and fire!'

Rooke went about it slowly, even dropped his bag of shot, but all around him he could see the eagerness of the men. Next to him a heavy red-faced private was breathing noisily through his nose, the air whistling in and out as he loaded and rammed.

By the time the guns were ready, the natives were too far away for any but the luckiest of shots to find a target. One by one the men fired, Rooke among them. He fixed on a patch of glittering water far from the canoe, and hoped that for once his aim was good.

The last canoe was pitching in the swell coming from the bay. Rooke watched it while around him men put away their powder horns and slung the guns back over their shoulders.

In the stern of the canoe someone turned and looked back. It was too far away to make out features, but the figure was a child's. Across the water Rooke and the child gazed at each other, the canoe bobbing up and down, the paddles glinting wet. He was piercingly reminded of Tagaran and the stricken look she had given him when he had mimed a musket to the shoulder.

Silk turned to face the men, speaking calmly, as if everything had gone exactly to plan.

'Well done, men. Well done.'

Rooke did not think anyone was fooled by this, but no one said so.

'Now form up, we will return to the place where we rested. We will make camp there and tomorrow we will continue our search to the south.'

The party moved quickly on the way back down the beach. Rooke came along behind at a leisurely pace. All at once the afternoon was benign, the breeze coming from the sea soft against his cheek.

'A native, sir, a native in the water,' one of the soldiers called. 'Out in the water, sir!'

Rooke shaded his eyes against the glare of the water and made out a speck.

'Do not look,' Silk called. 'Mr Willstead! Mr Rooke! We will continue up the sh.o.r.e, we will not stop here. Pa.s.s on if you please with your faces turned away.'

Willstead still squinted out at the water.

'Do not look, Willstead,' Silk said sharply. 'You are still looking, man. March on!'

But Willstead unshouldered his musket and rested it b.u.t.t-down on the sand as if prepared for an argument.

'Are we not to take him, then?'

'At this distance we can neither seize him nor shoot him. Any such efforts would simply have the effect of rendering us ridiculous. We will pa.s.s by without letting him see that we have noticed. March on, quick, man!'

They turned away, but Willstead must have been looking after all.

'He is coming to us! He is coming to join us!'

Sure enough, the man was wading through the water towards them. Rooke could see his torso turning with each step and his arms out to the sides to speed his progress.

It was no longer possible to pretend.

'Halt!' Silk called. 'We will allow him to come to us.' He was sweating, his face waxy, his faded red jacket dark under the arms.

Rooke had not thought that a piece of theatre would look quite like this.

'Do him no harm, men,' Silk shouted. 'No harm, do you understand? He is coming to us in trust, it is no part of our intention to betray trust, only to punish.'

His voice strained to be heard over the sounds of the breeze in the trees and the water against the sh.o.r.e.

'But, sir,' Willstead said. 'Are not our orders to take any male natives?'

'Take, yes, but only by force, what would be the point, man, if the native invites himself to be taken? There is no message there for the others.'

'So if they run away,' Willstead said, dogged, 'if they run away we can take them, except we cannot catch them. But if they come to us we must not take them?'

The soldiers closest to him caught this and there was a stirring, perhaps even a sn.i.g.g.e.ring.

The man was running up the beach towards them. They could see the sand spurting at each step and he was close enough now that they could see the woolly hair on his face, the band around his forehead, his feet caked with fine yellow sand like a pair of slippers: Warungin, coming to meet them with every appearance of good cheer.

He caught up to them, hardly out of breath, and greeted such men as he knew. When he came to Rooke there was not a flicker of any consciousness, no hint of acknowledging a collaborator.

If Warungin did not know the purpose of their expedition, it would be normal for him to enquire what they were doing there, and Rooke was glad when he did so. Were they hunting kangaroo? he mimed. Were they fis.h.i.+ng, or had they come for something in the trees, honey perhaps?

Silk did not commit himself on the matter of kangaroo hunting or honey gathering.

'Warungin,' he said, smiling, the effort to appear casual evident in his voice, 'Warungin, my friend, can you tell us where we would find Carangaray? Where is Carangaray?'

Warungin frowned at the name.

He gave a short speech, in the course of which he mentioned the name Carangaray frequently, each time flicking his hand in a broad gesture that started with it hanging from the wrist and finished with the palm up, facing south.

'Mr Rooke, you are by way of being the linguist among us,' Silk said. 'What is he saying?'

'He speaks too fast,' Rooke said. 'I cannot follow.'

This was so irreproachably the truth that Silk did not insist.

Silk now tried charades to convey his meaning. Walked his fingers though the air, repeating Carangaray. Warungin watched stolidly, copied, the fingers walking in the air, but he improved on Silk's performance, pus.h.i.+ng his arm out as he did so to demonstrate the idea of a long way. Then he did a palm-under-cheek motion and a sweeping gesture across the sky to indicate the pa.s.sage of the sun. The message was unmistakable: Carangaray was at such a distance that the sun would travel two or three times across the sky, and men would lay their palms under their cheeks to sleep three or four times, to reach the place where he now was.

Much too far, in other words, for thirty heavily armed but lightly provisioned soldiers to go in pursuit.

They tramped back to the pool behind the beach. Warungin made no signs of leaving them. Willstead grumbled that he was hanging about in the hope of a meal at their expense, but Rooke did not think the delights of dry crumbled bread, and a handful of shreds of salt beef, would be much of a temptation.

As the men cut ferns to sleep on and gathered wood to last their fires through the night, Warungin did in fact disappear. Rooke and Willstead paused to watch the lightness of his step as he went off down the path with his fishgig swinging backwards and forwards.

'They come and go like children,' Willstead said. 'He is a good enough fellow, I suppose, but you could never rely on any of them. When the whim takes them, off they go.'

But, by the time they had the fire going, Warungin was back, eight plump mullet hanging from his hand, strung together with a length of vine. He sc.r.a.ped a few flat places among the coals, briefly cooked his catch, and then broke the fish into pieces with his fingers and shared them out among the officers. Laughed to see how squeamish they were about the heads. Took them back and crunched the heads entire, indicating how good they were.