Free Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar Page A

which I should not have.
    I did not altogether blame Papa. Grandmama was accustomed to managing people and set his back up. ‘Surely not another lease,’ she once said, and her eyebrows lifted and her thin cheeks flushed. Mama said that I took after her. She was tall and straight-backed, with an abundance of faded red hair and fine pale skin that was much admired. ‘A bird in the hand,’ she would say, and look at Papa. She and Grandpapa were much the same height – he perhaps a fraction shorter – and they seemed so much equals to me that it surprised me when he said, ‘Now my girl,’ and touched her arm in mild admonition. Then her eyes snapped and she sometimes left the room in such a rush that her skirts flew out behind.
    I followed her once and found her further along the hall with her hands pressed to her cheeks and wearing a rather wild expression. When I asked what the matter was she said, ‘To spare you all my terrible tongue, Hettie. It does no one any good. Mind what I say now.’ She stroked my cheek – ‘You’re a good girl’ – and then, collecting herself, gave it a smart pat and said, ‘And if you will take my advice, never forget your bonnet. Dear me, what will become of you all?’
    There was no more talk after that. Not even Georgie’s untimely death the week after could delay departure. It was hard for Mama to leave his grave behind. All the sadness of that time became muddled.
    I have Mama’s old flint arrowheads that she discovered near this house when she was a girl. They were from the ancient Britons who lived here when the Romans invaded. They were something like talismans to her. I keep them in a case in the gallery with a spearhead and a stone axe and a carved wooden club that Tull left behind. I thought Papa might discard them and took them with me when I left. Of course, flints are not so remarkable to me now that I live in a country and among buildings that fairly bristle with them. In the Coorong, they brought to mind Mama and her stories of traipsing lanes and meadows and woods; more often now I recall Tull making use of them, how quickly he understood them and released their energy to make fire or implement or weapon, how they became more than stone in his hands.
    And finally there is my Coorong basket, acquired through a trade I made with someone I knew at Salt Creek, which gives no indication of the purposes for which it was made or used. Addie said that the women who made them told stories while they were working; the stories were woven into every strand. For a while I had it on a shelf in the gallery, a mere artefact, but it began to lose meaning, almost to die before my eyes, so I put it to use thinking it better for it to wear out and break – to live and die – than to be shelved as if it were a fly drowned in amber. One summer morning I lifted it down and took it with me into town. ‘Who would think savages could make anything so fine?’ one lady of my acquaintance said. Several others touched it, which I did not like. Now I use it to pick flowers or fruits or vegetables about the garden and it has come alive again; it pleases me to see it returned to unremarkable utility.

    The Coorong, November1855
    Two weeks after the church service Tull returned. Papa was jubilant, and invited him to attend our small school. He had no idea of Tull’s finer qualities at first, of the acuity and retentiveness of his mind. His invitation was nothing more than part of his goal to civilize. Perhaps he offered some inducement at first; I don’t know what they talked of when they were out working on the run. What we saw was Tull being more often with us around the dining table for lessons than outside at work. Most days, Mama set a lesson for each of us, and tested us in turn and if she did not come to the dining room the job fell to me, but Tull worked with her; if she was not there he worked alone, on a