Free Birrung the Secret Friend by Jackie French

walked up to the house, his hands empty. He looked like he’d seen the hell he talked about sometimes on Sundays.
    Mrs Johnson ran to him. ‘What is it, dearest?’
    He held up a hand to stop his wife coming closer. ‘Best not come near me. There’s fever on the ships. I might give it to you, or the children. There’s . . .’ He shook his head, as though he couldn’t find the words, this man who shouted out his sermons every week. ‘The convicts are just lying there in the stinking dark below the decks,’ he whispered. ‘The dying and the dead together, while the officers laugh and joke on deck. Naked or in rags. Starved and chained below deck for near a year, no light, scarce any food, lying among the dead, the skeletons and filth.’
    Mrs Johnson stared at him. ‘But why? How . . .’
    â€˜Greed,’ said Mr Johnson. ‘No charity. No feeling. The captains kept the wretches’ rations to sell when they got here. The convicts starved to death so the captains can grow rich. At least a quarter of them died on the way here, and most who lived will die tomorrow or next week. Infected sores from the chains, from sitting in filth and salt water for nearly a year. Blind from no sunlight. When we got the first of the prisoners to the shore, they couldn’t stand, too weak to even drink. Just lay where we had left them, in a line, like blind white worms . . .’
    Mrs Johnson handed Milbah to Sally. ‘I’ll get the hospital basket.’ It held bandages that Sally washed and ironed every week and a lotion Surgeon White brewed from one of the native plants. ‘They’ll need help at the hospital.’
    â€˜No,’ said Mr Johnson. ‘You will stay here.’ He looked at the rest of us. ‘None of you will leave this house and garden until I return. You understand?’
    â€˜But —’ began Mrs Johnson.
    â€˜There’s disease,’ said Mr Johnson quietly. He looked at Milbah, then at his wife. ‘Typhus; who knows what else?’ He bit his lip, then added, ‘I’ll sleep at the hospital so I don’t carry infection back here.’
    I thought Mrs Johnson would argue. But she glanced at Milbah, at Birrung and Elsie and me, and she nodded.She kissed her hand, then blew the kiss to him. ‘God be with you,’ she said softly. Somehow in that moment they seemed together, even though they stood apart, and I thought: If I ever marry, I want my family to be like this.
    And then I thought of the white faces down in the dark holds of those pretty ships upon the harbour, the dead and living bodies like white worms laid out on the grass. I wanted to hide up here in our garden till every one of them had got better or died, wanted to stay here where it smelled good and was safe.
    â€˜I’ll come with you,’ I said.
    Mr Johnson shook his head. ‘You’re a good lad,’ he said. ‘You’re needed here. Take care of the women.’
    Then he left.
    We waited, day after day. Messengers came up from the big tents they’d made into a hospital, to pick up the parcels of food we left on the doorstep. I killed three of the hens, for soup, and dug potatoes till my back felt like breaking so Sally could peel them, to feed the sick, the starving. I chopped wood to keep the cook fire going, lugged back fallen branches from the bush, and tried not to feel guilty I was safe and well fed with so many dying, tried not to resent them too, for bringing fear back intoour lives, and taking Mr Johnson from us. Tried not to hear Mrs Johnson crying in her room at night for all she smiled as she led us in a hymn and prayer after supper.
    One morning I came into the house early and there was Elsie, already up, frying onions in chicken fat, putting them in the big pot with layers of stale damper and goat’s cheese, then pouring water on top. She put it next to the fire, where it would cook