Free The Clay Dreaming by Ed Hillyer Page A

Hayman filled the awkward silence.
    ‘When we originally recruited the team,’ he said, ‘from Pine Hills, Brippick, Miga Lake and so forth, our choice was…limited. Many of the stockmen were the last of their clans, their mobs up-country numbering only a few old men and their gins – ’
    A high-pitched laugh interrupted. ‘I’m sorry. Did you say “gins”?’
    ‘Their womenfolk,’ Hayman explained. ‘The young women are lubras , the older women gins .’
    ‘So they are, as I’ve heard, dying out?’ said the scientist.
    Lawrence and Hayman exchanged a look across the table.
    ‘If there’s a right time to make this tour,’ blurted Lawrence, ‘it’s now or never.’ His face burned. ‘This team has played together,’ he said, ‘in some shape or form, for over two years now. When I came on board, after their previous tours, numbers were down.’ He threw a dark look at Hayman. ‘It fell to me to put a new side together…from the best of those remaining, and some other Blacks.’
    ‘“Remaining”?’ a voice queried.
    ‘The ones that were still alive,’ said Lawrence.
    His seeming callousness drew gasps.
    ‘You make it sound a massacre, Charles,’ pleaded Hayman. Rallied to his own defence, he addressed the table as a whole. ‘We lost only four.’
    ‘A drop,’ said Lawrence, lightly, ‘in the ocean.’
    The orchestra finished a popular number; the dancing couples separated and clapped to show their appreciation. Applause at such a juncture sounded sardonic in the extreme.
    Before Cuzens even, the players had been coached by Old Tom Wills – a fine cricketer, but a dangerous drunkard. His influence had proven fatal: four of the Aborigines died from alcohol poisoning. Others, including Dick-a-Dick, took severely ill, almost dying. Wills had left the team in disgrace.
    As his successor, Charles Lawrence utterly condemned the former laxity. History could not be allowed to repeat itself.
    Nor should it be repeated in present company. In seeking a way out of their predicament, Bill Hayman succeeded only in digging them deeper.
    ‘A glass of grog is a potent reasoner with a blackfellow,’ he breezed. ‘An Aboriginal will drink anything any time, and he calls everything “rum”… everything that he don’t call “him”!’
    The promising scent of scandal attracted a growing audience. Lawrence looked into the flushed pink faces gathered around. He stood abruptly, grasped Hayman firmly by the arm, and whisked him away.
    ‘Well, I never!’
    ‘Quite extraordinary!’
    The eyes of all at table followed their retreat into the milling throng.
    ‘Perhaps the orchestra struck up a favourite…’
    As the partners passed Trollope, his sharp tongue cut Lawrence to the quick. ‘’Twas an evil hour for cricket,’ it rasped, ‘when shrewd men saw where money was to be got.’ The literary giant seemed to turn and leer, baring vast yellow incisors. ‘The English,’ he sneered, ‘are accused of reducing all things to pounds, shillings and pence. I trust the Abhor-riginals will reap some benefit from the revenue they have helped to earn.’
    He knew he was right.
    Charles Lawrence was almost shocked to find the world still turned on its axis. The ball swirled about them, orchestral music a speeding carousel. Resolving not to drink any more, he advised they both should stick to sober-water . Hayman sulkily announced his retirement to the dunny. Lawrence undertook a circuit of the room – to clear his head as much as to reassure the flock of his abiding presence. The soul of constancy he was, clambered onto the wagon, steady as a judge, temperate as an…as an ammonite.
    He wanted to belch.
     
    The grand occasion was not nearly so intimate as that enjoyed at Went House, by dint of its sheer scale. Scattered throughout the great hall of the Athenaeum Club, the Aborigines, finding themselves isolated, became subdued. Unfailingly polite when approached, they by and large sought to avoid direct