Free Birrung the Secret Friend by Jackie French Page A

slowly, then began to mix the damper for breakfast — white wheat damper again, because the death ships had brought us stores too. We ate, just as the convicts on those ships had starved.
    Sally came out, yawning and tying the ribbons of her cap under her chin. She peered into the pot. ‘What’s this mess you’ve made, girl?’
    Elsie shrugged.
    Sally shook her head. ‘Don’t see why the master had to bring a dumb girl into the house.’
    â€˜She ain’t dumb!’ I yelled. I think we were all on edge back then, with death so much about us. I stood in front of Sally. ‘You take that back! Elsie just can’t speak, that’s all!’
    â€˜I’ll say as I think,’ said Sally.
    â€˜What’s all the noise?’ Mrs Johnson came out of the bedroom, where she’d been feeding Milbah. She looked at both of us as if one more angry word might make hercry again. ‘The Lord tells us to love our neighbours. At times like these we should be thankful for what we have, not argue with our friends.’
    â€˜The girl has filled my good pot with some mess . . .’ began Sally.
    Mrs Johnson made an effort to smile. She peered into the pot. ‘It smells delicious,’ she said.
    Elsie made a face at Sally. She picked up the slate from the shelf, wrote something, and held it up. Sally made out the words slowly. ‘ Onion soup. That ain’t how you make onion soup, girl.’
    Elsie shrugged.
    I took a spoon and tasted it. ‘It’s the best soup I’ve ever ate,’ I said. And it was. But soup needed roosters and vegetables to make it taste good. How had Elsie made a giant pot of soup like this with just onions and fat and water and stale damper, and without Mrs Johnson or Sally to teach her?
    Elsie gave me that look that was as close to a smile as she ever came.
    Birrung came in, fastening her apron. She looked at Sally who was still angry, at me indignant, at Elsie looking smug and at Mrs Johnson who was so tired, with shadows under her eyes for worry about her husband. Ithought she’d do something to make us laugh. Birrung always laughed. But she just took the basket and went out to collect the eggs.
    We cooked. We waited. Day after day we cooked and waited.
    Mr Johnson didn’t come.
    I tried not to think what would happen if Mr Johnson caught the typhus. If he died, like Ma, I could keep the garden going and chop the wood. I could put on new bark to stop the roof leaking too. I could take care of us all!
    Except I couldn’t. And all of us in the house knew it too.
    Mrs Johnson gathered every bit of cloth in the house: her petticoats, the dishcloths, my spare shirt. Everything we could spare went down to the harbour, to cover the patients’ nakedness, to keep them warm, or to be ripped into bandages to cover the sores where chains had rubbed. Why did I need a spare shirt when these men had none?
    I only left the house and garden once, to get some rations. Old Tom and Scruggins, who were looking after Mr Johnson’s other gardens — but taking it easy, I bet — were supposed to bring rations up and leave them onthe doorstep for us. But there’d been no rations on the step that morning, and we’d run out of flour. Sally said it was more than a soul could bear, all this and no bread either . . .
    It was strange, down in the tiny town. The thin wind whispered between the mud huts. There were a few new faces, ghost people staggering about. But mostly there was no one, except on the grass by the shore where the hospital tents flapped in the wind. I could hear a long dull moaning and tried to tell myself it was the wind, not hundreds of convicts, in pain and afraid of the light, not the ghosts of their friends crying, ‘How could man do this to man? How can this be?’
    I stayed away from the tents, like I’d promised Mr Johnson, and even when I saw another person, I kept well away in case they