Thea glanced up from her whitework and followed her mother’s gaze into the soft light. She shrugged.
Anna Maria patted her daughter’s knee. ‘He visits us quite a lot now. Do you ever wonder why?’
‘Probably to escape his father,’ Thea said, snapping thread between her teeth. ‘He works him and his brothers like dogs.’
‘Still,’ Anna Maria said quietly.
‘He likes your cooking. He likes those yams you get from the women.’
‘Honestly, Thea.’ Anna Maria looked steadily at her daughter, and when Thea did not meet her eyes placed a hand over her sewing.
Thea looked up, exasperated. ‘What do you want me to say?’
‘He’s fond of you.’
I was sitting at Thea’s feet, looking up at her, my head resting on her knee, but at these words I stared at the fire like I might throw myself onto the embers. I did not want to see Thea’s face. An ache gathered in my gut.
‘I . . .’ Thea hesitated. I felt tension wire through her body. She pulled her knees together.
‘I know it embarrasses you.’
Thea said nothing. Sap ran sticky down the length of a burning branch, hissed into steam.
‘You may want to consider your future,’ Anna Maria said softly, ‘in case his thoughts turn to marriage.’
Thea laughed and then fell abruptly silent. Water issued through my hair. Liquid gathered at the ends of my fingers.
‘I don’t understand why he would be thinking of such a thing.’ Thea’s voice was quiet. Strangely empty.
‘Well . . .’ Anna Maria sighed. ‘He is his father’s eldest son. He has two brothers. Four men there, on that allotment. In time he’ll need to find his own home, his own land.’ She hesitated. ‘Like you say, Christian works him like a dog.’
I was drowning, next to the campfire. My heart was caught in salted current.
‘I don’t understand why he visits me . . . for that.’
I heard Anna Maria shuffle closer and turned to see her place an arm around Thea. Maternal love wrapping around a doubting daughter.
‘He would be lucky to have you. He knows it too.’
‘Why not one of the other girls? Christiana is desperate to be married.’
‘You’ll have to ask Hans.’
The light around us swam. I lifted my eyes and saw sharks circling in the darkening sky.
There is little doubt in my mind that, had the Peramangk not shown the congregation how to find food, many would have died. That first spring the piglets were growing but not ready for slaughter and the chickens provided by MacFarlane were too young to lay. The wheat was growing on the cleared slopes – my father had been right about the fertility of the soil – but it was still green and not ready for harvest. Much of the ship’s biscuit bloomed with the same mould scrubbed from it on the Kristi, and bread baked from rice and wheaten flour had become a Sunday treat rather than a staple.
MacFarlane had supplied some of the men with rifles, but the shot frightened more kangaroos, pigeons and ducks than it struck. Only the Aboriginal men, using spears and clubs, or ambushing the animals and driving them into nets, were able to kill enough to feed whole families. The ringing of a rifle never matched the elegance of the snares made from small branches that deftly, quietly, strangled birds in the long grass.
I liked to watch the Peramangk commune with the country. I liked to listen to their language, even if I did not understand it. Over time, however, I noticed that if I drew too close, there were always a few men or women who seemed to grow uncomfortable.
‘Krinkri,’ they would say, and the others would pause in their work and straighten their necks, as though they were aware of being observed. As if they knew I was there, in their number, trying to remember what it was like to hunger.
In early summer I looked up from Thea’s side at the morning’s campfire to see my mother approaching, Hermine toddling at her side. My sister had grown, and while I still sometimes tried to attract her attention, tickling her feet with rushes from the creek or whispering her name in her ear, she no longer seemed to notice me. She had grown leaner, a little neck emerging from baby fat. I watched her bend clumsily and pick up a fragment of quartz from the ground and flushed with memory from the night of her birth.
Thea, in firelight, hand on mine.
‘Good morning,’ my mother said to Anna Maria.
‘Johanne.’
Mama turned, looking out at Thea’s flourishing vegetable patch. ‘I was speaking with Eleonore and Emile. They’re sending their girls down to Adelaide. Pastor Flügel told Elder Pasche there is a dearth of fresh vegetables amongst the English. The women at Neu Klemzig are now getting two or three shillings a cabbage head. I thought Thea might like to go down with them. You have so much produce already.’
‘As the moon swells, plant for above ground. When the moon wanes, plant all for below.’
‘When are they leaving?’ Thea asked.
Mama sat down at the campfire, pulling Hermine back from the embers. ‘Tomorrow evening,’ she replied. ‘Augusta and Elize are going, too.’ She cleared her throat. ‘And Christiana Radtke.’
I noticed Thea glance at Anna Maria.
‘Thea, if you all leave at midnight, you should reach the plains by morning. Then you can sell the vegetables and return with the money. It will be a full moon and light enough. You can follow the new track through the Tiers.’ She lifted Hermine onto her lap as the breeze shifted the smoke into her eyes. ‘I was hoping, Thea, that you might take something from my own garden for me. Until I am free to go myself, there being no other . . .’ She stopped short, lips pressed together.
Thea looked at Mama and something passed between them.
‘Of course you’ll go,’ Anna Maria said gently. She inclined her head at my mother. ‘How are you?’
Mama pulled down her headscarf, passing it to Hermine to play with. ‘Things are as good as can be expected. The new cow is yielding excellent milk.’ She smiled at Thea. ‘I have some butter I would like you to take. Pastor Flügel says it is like gold to the English.’
‘And Matthias? How is he?’
Mama raised her eyebrows. ‘He is well. The work, this land . . .’ She shrugged. ‘He thinks he is a man now. He wishes to marry. Start a family.’
My mouth slipped open and I fought a sudden rush of jealousy. Matthias? Already? He has a family. I had been his family. For so long we had shared everything, and for a moment I did not understand why he had not told me this himself.
‘Truly?’ Anna Maria looked surprised. ‘He works hard. I often see him.’
‘Thank you. He does.’ Mama looked down at Hermine sucking on the headscarf. ‘How quickly they grow.’
Matthias, you are leaving me behind. The thought filled me with sadness.