Alone on a Wide Wide Sea Read online

  He ran at him, screaming like a wild thing, head-butted him full in the belly, knocking the wind out of him and sending him sprawling in the dust. They rolled over and over with Wes ending up on top, sitting astride him and pounding him with his fists. And we were all cheering then and leaping up and down, until Mrs Bacon came running out from the house and pulled Wes off him, but not before the damage had been done, not before blood had been drawn.

  Piggy Bacon was never quite as frightening to us again after that. His temper could still be terrifying, and we still hated him just as much. But we had seen the wicked giant felled. We’d seen his blood. He made Wes pay of course. He made us all pay. We had no playtime for a week, and no bread with our soup for a week either. Wes got twelve strokes of the strap that night and didn’t seem to mind a bit. He sat on his bunk nursing his hand afterwards grinning up at us, looking happy as Larry. He knew he’d made new friends of all of us, and he was happy. So were we. From that day on there was a solidarity among us. We smiled more. We joked more. All this had been Wes Snarkey’s doing. He’d had his revenge and it was sweet revenge for us all. He wasn’t just a friend now, he was our hero too.

  Saints and Sinners

  Sunday at Cooper’s Station was the only day we didn’t have to work. We sang hymns and psalms, said our prayers and heard sermons instead. They went on all morning, outside the dormitory usually or inside if it was wet – which wasn’t often. Piggy would stand on a box and harangue us with his sermons in between the hymns. Mrs Piggy, as we’d all come to call her, standing dutifully at his side, her dog lying at her feet fast asleep and twitching in his dreams, which broke the monotony of it. It was a welcome distraction and gave us something to nudge one another and wink about.

  Mrs Piggy would play the squeezy box to accompany the hymns, and would sing out, her voice surprisingly strong, leading us all, her eyes closed in fervent concentration. This was the only time you would ever see her confident and full of conviction. She seemed to be carried away on the wings of faith, lost absolutely in the spirit of the hymns. Her piping voice rang out passionate with belief. After every hymn, she would cry out at the top of her voice: “Alleluia! Praise the Lord!” Then she’d lower her head and at once shrink back inside her shell, inside the Mrs Piggy we all knew, timid and tired and terrified, as Piggy Bacon launched into yet another thunderous sermon about the saints above and the sinners below, by which he meant us, about devils and hellfire and damnation. Through it all the dog slept blissfully. We just wished we could do the same.

  But we weren’t the only ones at the Sunday services. This was the only day the Aboriginal people, who lived in the country round about and who sometimes came to work on the farm – the “black fellows” Piggy called them – were allowed to come near the house. We’d see them often enough, the children mostly, when we were out on the farm, just crouching there in the distance watching us. Or sometimes we’d catch sight of a group of them moving through a heat haze on the horizon, not walking at all, it seemed to me, but rather floating over the ground. If ever they wandered in too close Piggy Bacon would go after them on his horse and drive them away with his whip, calling them all thieves and drunkards. But on Sundays Mrs Piggy invited them in for cakes and prayers. Even then they didn’t like to come too close, but they’d squat down at a safe distance from us to listen to the hymns and sermons.

  Afterwards Mrs Piggy would go over to them carrying a tray of cakes and lemonade, and she’d make the sign of the cross on their foreheads and bless them. None of us had seen that many black faces before, just an occasional one passing by in a London street perhaps, and I’d noticed one or two black American GIs in uniform driving around in jeeps back home. These people went barefoot in ragged clothes and their children ran about naked, and they made you feel uncomfortable because they seemed always so still as they squatted there scrutinising you, their dark eyes looking right into yours. They stared. We stared. But we hardly ever spoke. You could never tell what they were thinking. But I liked having them there. They were company. And in this desolate place of wide skies and wide horizons, where we saw so few people, just their presence was a comfort.

  Hardly anyone besides them ever came to Cooper’s Station. A truck coming down the long farm track was a real event for us, because it was that rare, maybe one or two a week, that’s all – delivering animal feed, or fencing wire, or seed perhaps. The drivers often sat on the verandah and drank lemonade with Piggy and Mrs Piggy. They had cakes too. We got cakes and lemonade only on Sundays, our big treat of the week, one each with a cherry on the top. We’d line up and Mrs Piggy handed one to each of us. She’d bless us and sign a cross on our forehead too. I liked that. It was the only time she ever touched us. I always took the cherry off my cake, put in my pocket and kept it till last. Sometimes I’d keep it until I was in bed, and I’d lie there letting it melt slowly in my mouth, my hand grasping my lucky key all the time.

  They tried to make us say our prayers at night. We’d all have to kneel there for ten minutes in silence. I never prayed, but I did wish. Every night, clutching the key around my neck, I wished myself out of there, wished myself back home in England, back with Kitty.

  In that first year, like everyone else, I almost found myself liking Mrs Piggy, and not just because of her Sunday cakes either – though that certainly had something to do with it. The truth was I felt sorry for her, we all did. And in a way I suppose she had our respect too. Unlike Piggy Bacon himself, she worked as hard out on the farm as we did. She milked the cows with us in the morning and evening, and she made all our meals too. The porridge and the soup and bread and the milky puddings may have been repetitious and tedious, but it was hot and it was regular. And Mrs Piggy did it all.

  Then there were the good days, the only good days, when Piggy Bacon drove off in his truck into town, and we’d be left alone on the farm just with her. We still had our work to do, but she’d do it with us. And on these rare and happy days you’d see all the tension and the exhaustion lift from her shoulders, and even hear her laugh sometimes. We were the same. Without Piggy Bacon there, we could fool around, have fun! On those days she was a different person.

  But every time it would be over all too soon. Unlike her there was some refuge for us, together in our locked dormitory at night. We had each other too. She still had Piggy Bacon. Sometimes, the worse for drink, he’d throw things at her – you could hear the sound of smashing crockery in the farmhouse. You’d hear him shouting at her, hitting her too, beating her. I never saw it happen, but we heard it.

  “Don’t you dare tell me how to treat them! I’ll do what I like and how I like, you hear me woman?” He’d go on and on at her.

  We’d lie there listening, and the next morning we’d see the bruises. So in time we began to feel she was one of us, just as much Piggy Bacon’s slave as we all were. I’ve often wondered why she endured it, why she stayed with him. There’s really only one answer that makes any sense at all: for the love of God, for Jesus’ sake. I never knew a more devout woman than Piggy Bacon’s wife. She was married to him in the eyes of the Lord, so she could never leave him. As we were to discover, she was a woman who didn’t just believe, she really lived her faith, and she suffered for it too.

  I only once caught a glimpse of the depth of her suffering. Marty and Wes and I had been told by Piggy to go and dig over their vegetable patch behind the farmhouse. It was a hot and humid afternoon. The flies were out and at us, and the soil was dried hard and unyielding. We’d been at it for hours, and we’d had enough. It was Marty’s idea to have a rest and get ourselves a drink. Marty’s ideas were often dangerous. But by now we were beyond caring, and anyway Piggy Bacon had just been round on one of his random patrols. We thought Mrs Piggy was out working on the farm somewhere. We dropped our forks and ran to the water pump outside the backdoor of the farmhouse. We pumped out the water for each other, all of us taking our turns to lie on the ground underneath, letting it splash all over our faces, drinking our fill. I was ju
st having my turn, revelling in the coolness of it, when Marty and Wes stopped pumping. When I protested they shushed me, and then crept off, doubled up, along the side of the farmhouse. I could hear Mrs Piggy now, she was crying her heart out. I followed them. When they stood up to peek in at the window I did too. Standing on tip-toe I could only just see.

  She was sitting there, rocking back and forth in her chair by the stove, her dog on her lap. On the table near us by the window were all the Sunday cakes she’d made. She was trying to stop herself sobbing by singing. It was very soft, but we could hear it well enough to recognise it: What a friend we have in Jesus. Verse after verse she sang, but punctuated always by fits of sobbing that wracked her whole body. There was one moment when she lifted her eyes and cried out loud: “Why, sweet Jesus? Why? Please take this cup from me, Jesus. Please take it.” That was when I saw the purple bruise on her chin, the livid marks on her neck and some blood on her lip too. She was clasping her hands and praying. I remember thinking then that I wanted Piggy Bacon dead, that one day I would kill him. I never made actual plans to do it of course, but I felt like doing it, and so did Marty, and Wes too.

  What he did next could so easily have made a murderer of me, if I’d had the means, if I’d had the courage, if circumstance hadn’t intervened.

  Mrs Piggy to Ida

  It was Christmas time – our second Christmas on the farm – about eighteen months or so after we arrived at Cooper’s Station. For lunch on Christmas Day, Piggy Bacon and Mrs Piggy sat at opposite ends of our long trestle table and ate with us. We’d had the day off – in all we were given three days off in the year: Piggy Bacon’s birthday, Easter Sunday and Christmas Day. The morning had been all carols and prayers, and of course sermons too, just like a normal Sunday, except that I liked the carols a lot better than some of the dreary hymns we usually sang. We had sausages and mashed potatoes and gravy, and then jam roly-poly and custard afterwards, and all the lemonade we wanted. The best feast of my childhood; I’ve never forgotten it. With Piggy and Mrs Piggy there we none of us of said a word, of course, none of us dared. But I don’t think any one of us wanted to talk much anyway – we were all far too busy eating our fantastic feast to have any time at all for conversation. We were savouring every mouthful. Ever since that Christmas Day I’ve always loved sausages.

  It happened after the meal. As usual one of us had to stand up and say grace, not just before but after each meal as well. It happened to be my turn that day, and Piggy Bacon made me say it all over again because I’d mumbled it. “Say it loud to the Lord,” he told me, “and he will hear you.” So I did. Then he stood up himself, cleared his throat and announced that they had decided to give us each a Christmas present, “A gift from the Lord,” he said, a gift that we could keep with us and treasure all our lives. Then he showed us what it was. Dangling there from his forefinger on a piece of cord was a small wooden cross. “From now on every one of you will wear this every day.

  This is the badge of Jesus and you will wear it with pride,” he said.

  One by one we were summoned up to receive our present. He hung a cross around each of our necks. We said thank you, shook his hand and went to sit down again. Except for the thank yous the whole ceremony was conducted in an awkward silence. Mrs Piggy, who was standing meekly at his side with a bunch of crosses hanging from her wrist, handed a cross to him as each of us came up. I noticed she kissed each one before she gave it to him. Then I was called up. I was standing there waiting for my cross, looking up into Piggy Bacon’s face, when suddenly his whole expression altered. “What’s this?” he roared, and lunging forward he grabbed my key from around my neck and with one violent pull jerked it off.

  “That’s mine,” I cried, reaching out to grab it back. He held it out of my reach, examining it, puzzling over it.

  “A key? What for? A key to what?”

  “It’s my lucky key,” I told him. “Kitty gave it to me, my sister in England.”

  “Luck!” Piggy Bacon thundered. “Luck is magic, and all magic is the devil’s work. There is no such thing as luck. It is God who makes all things happen, in this life and afterwards too.” I kept trying to jump up and snatch it from him, but he was still holding it too high. “It’s a lucky charm, which is devil’s magic, witchcraft, mumbo jumbo. You will wear a cross or nothing at all.”

  “Then,” I said, surprised at my own sudden courage, “then I won’t wear anything at all.” And I turned and walked away. He strapped me that evening of course, and afterwards I had to bend my head in front of him as he put the cross around my neck. He said that if he ever saw me not wearing it, he’d strap me again. “What about my key?” I asked him.

  “I’ve thrown it out,” he said. “It’s where all witchcraft belongs, in the rubbish.”

  That night I cried myself to sleep. Neither Wes nor Marty could comfort me. My precious key was gone, gone for ever, and I felt utterly alone in the world without it, like my last roots had been ripped out. As I lay there that night in the darkness I had murder in my heart. And I don’t just mean I hated Piggy Bacon. I mean I really wanted to kill him. I might well have done it too. I had found the courage now – revenge and fury gives you powerful courage – but I just couldn’t think how to do it. I had no idea how I could murder him, not yet, but I was determined to find some way to do it and do it soon. Luckily for him, luckily for me too, it didn’t come to that. Luck intervened, or fate, or circumstance, call it what you like, and when it came, it came from a most welcome and unexpected source.

  When I’d first come to Cooper’s Station I’d been terrified of snakes, and of spiders in particular. Every day we’d see all manner of strange and wonderful creatures out on the farm, from wallabies to wombats. But it was spiders and snakes I looked out for. We’d see them everywhere, snakes curled up under the dormitory block or slithering along between the boulders down by the creek. Spiders, we discovered, loved the toilet, which was a shed with a corrugated iron roof built on to the side of the dormitory block. It was baking hot in there and stank to high heaven, but it was the spiders I hated, the spiders I feared. I feared them so much that I tried not to go to the toilet. Whenever I could I would try to go outside to do my business. Sometimes though, I was in a hurry and the toilet was nearby and I’d risk it. But I’d do it quickly, as quickly as I could, trying not to breathe in, and trying not to look for spiders.

  They say you never see the bullet that gets you. It’s the same with spiders. I was told later it was a redback spider. I was sitting there on the toilet. It happened when I stood up. I was pulling up my shorts and I felt it bite my foot, felt the stabbing surging pain of it, saw it scurrying away. I screamed then and ran out. I remember stumbling to my knees and Mrs Piggy running towards me.

  I’ve no idea how long I lay in bed. Marty told me later that they all thought I was going to die. I do remember realising I wasn’t in my own bed, that there were curtains and pictures on the wall, and a big cupboard. I remember too Mrs Piggy coming in and sitting with me, and I felt hot and heavy all over as if I was weighted down somehow. And once when she came she wasn’t alone. She had an Aboriginal man with her, a bushman with white hair, and he looked into my eyes and felt my face and gave me a medicine to take and laid some kind of a poultice on my foot. The medicine tasted so bitter I could barely swallow it. But whatever it was that he put on my foot cooled it wonderfully.

  As I got better Mrs Piggy would sit beside me playing her squeezy box and I loved that. All these memories may well not be memories at all. It was Mrs Piggy who told me afterwards when I was better, when I thanked her for looking after me, that it wasn’t her that had cured me at all,but a “black fellow” she’d called in. He’d saved my life, she said, not her. “And don’t say a word to Mr Bacon,” she said. “He wouldn’t like it. He doesn’t believe in their magic. But I do. There’s room for all sorts of magic and miracles in this world – that’s what I think.”

  I’d spent the best part of a month in my sick bed in the far
mhouse, so Marty told me later. He said that both Wes and he had agreed it would be almost worth a spider bite or a snake bite if it got you a month’s holiday in the farmhouse. I told them everything, about how well I’d been fed and looked after, about Mrs Piggy nursing me and how kind she’d been, and all about the bushman who’d saved my life with his magical medicine. And I told them too about the last thing Mrs Piggy had done the morning I was to leave the farmhouse. She came up to my room. I was sitting on the bed buttoning my shirt.

  “Here,” she said. “This is yours, I think.” And she handed me a tiny box, like a pill box. I opened it, and there was my key lying in a bed of cotton wool. “Hide it,” she told me. “And hide it well.” She said nothing more, and was gone out of the room before I could even thank her.

  I never referred to her after that as Mrs Piggy, nor did anyone else because very soon everyone knew how good a person she really was, how she’d found my key, looked after it, and given it back to me. She was Ida after that, Ida to all of us. We all knew from then on that we had in her a true friend, but we didn’t know just how good a friend, just how important a friend she was to be to us. We had many more gruelling months to endure before we were to find that out. And now I had my key back I forgot all about killing Piggy Bacon. So I suppose you could say Ida didn’t just save my life, she saved his. Much good did it do her.

  As for my key, I did as Ida had told me, I hid it well. But I kept it close too. Right above my bed there was a window, and above it a wooden lintel with a narrow split at one end, but it was just wide enough. I pushed my key in deep, so it couldn’t be seen, making quite sure Piggy could never find it, and left it there. But it never left my thoughts. Every night before I got into bed I’d look up at my secret place. I told Marty – no one else.