A Taste of Cockroach Read online

  Just then Aunt Linda caught sight of the black smudge on Sophie’s right hand. She clamped her thin fingers around Sophie’s wrist and twisted to see more black on her palm. ‘You were supposed to be doing schoolwork, not playing!’

  ‘Drawing is not playing!’

  ‘Don’t shout at me, young lady!’

  ‘Now, then …’ Grace was leaning forward and trying to smile.

  ‘You have wasted another day, haven’t you?’ Aunt Linda’s face reddened as she reeled from her chair and strode from the room.

  ‘But …’ Sophie looked around helplessly, and finding no help. Not from Grace with her smile fading, not from Mary still frozen with her plate of cakes.

  Aunt Linda boiled back into the room, flinging sheets of paper at Sophie. They cascaded around her, charcoal sketches of a bird nibbling a seed, a banksia seedpod looking like a withered witch, a flower drooping in the heat. ‘See, Grace, what I have to put up with?’ Aunt Linda sounded wounded.

  Sophie scrambled after the sketches. ‘They’re mine! You leave them alone!’

  ‘They are rubbish! All that money I’ve spent for your education, and this is how you pay me back …’

  ‘They are not rubbish …’ Sophie turned desperately to Grace.

  ‘They’re nice, dear, but no proper lady fiddles with art. It is messy and ugly. It is a man’s job. A girl doing artwork is almost as silly as a woman writing a novel. You do some crochet work instead. Now that is a nice hobby —’

  ‘Hobby!’ Sophie reared from the sketches, shouting.

  Then Mary dropped the plate.

  Sophie stared at the crumbled cakes scattered on the polished wooden floor. When she saw the plate broken at Mary’s feet her anger died.

  Aunt Linda shook with fury. ‘You stupid darkie woman! Look at what you’ve done!’

  ‘Sorry, sorry, ma’am …’ Mary dropped to a squat and began to gather up the mess.

  ‘What do you expect from a boong?’ Grace said, and nudged Mary with a foot.

  ‘You are going to pay for that, missy …’

  Sophie quietly picked up her sketches and for a moment she caught Mary’s eye. But nothing was said and Sophie slipped away. She could hear the shouting echoing through the house until it slowly died.

  * * *

  The next day Sophie found Mary in the sunroom with her little girl. They had found her father’s spyglass, and the little girl was squinting at Cockatoo Island, which was home to a harsh prison, granaries and a few shipbuilders, half a mile from the Balmain shore.

  ‘I was just cleaning it …’ Mary said, moving to take the spyglass from the girl.

  Sophie shook her head, ‘No, it’s all right, and Mary – I can’t remember the rest of your name …’

  ‘Mary Ann.’

  ‘Thank you, Mary Ann.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For dropping that plate.’

  Mary Ann hesitated, as if she was about to say it was an accident, but then smiled. ‘I couldn’t think of anything else.’

  ‘That saved me. I would have said a lot of terrible things. How could she call my stuff rubbish?’

  ‘She’s wrong.’

  A slow smile crept over Sophie’s face. ‘You think?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The little girl looked away from the spyglass. ‘Mum says you can draw.’

  ‘Sort of.’

  The little girl nodded solemnly. ‘Can I see your pictures? I can draw too.’

  ‘Marina, leave Sophie alone.’ Mary Ann said.

  ‘No, it’s all right.’ Sophie ran to her room and came back with some of the sketches. ‘After all, we are both artists,’ she said to Marina with a spreading smile.

  Marina said, ‘Ooh, ah.’ And used the spyglass on them.

  Mary Ann looked over Marina’s head. ‘Yes, they are good, and with only a burnt stick.’

  ‘But I’m a girl, so they can’t be,’ Sophie muttered.

  Mary Ann threw back her head and laughed.

  ‘I can’t see anything now,’ Marina said and waved the spyglass around the sketches.

  ‘Use the other side.’ Sophie said and looked at Mary Ann. ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘I’ve heard your words before.’ She sat down beside Sophie. ‘In the station, in the school, in the bakery. Everywhere. You can’t do anything good, because you are a woman.’

  ‘You too? I thought I was on my own. In school if I say I want to ride a horse with my legs on both sides like a boy, if I want to play this new game, cricket – they all laugh at me. Boys and girls! “You are a girl, so you can’t, so there!”’

  Mary Ann nodded. ‘It’s not quite like that for me. It is: “You can’t do anything good because you are a boong woman.”’

  ‘Oh,’ Sophie said clumsily. She remembered what Aunt Linda had said in the beginning.

  ‘It is magic!’ Marina skipped around the sketches, giggling and spinning the spyglass from end to end.

  ‘That’s my father’s,’ Sophie warned.

  Marina stopped and looked around with her eyes wide. ‘He’s a wizard, is he?’

  ‘No, no. He’s a sailor. He’s away for months.’

  ‘Yeah, mine is too. He’s not a sailor, but he’s been gone for months and months. He’s on the island —’

  ‘Marina!’ Mary Ann warned.

  Marina pressed her mouth shut and looked away.

  Sophie looked at Mary Ann.

  But Mary Ann shook her head. ‘It’s nothing. Do you paint with colour?’

  ‘Oh, I would love to paint with colour. I dream about it. But no, I don’t have the money for oils. I wanted to paint my mother when she was well —’

  The front door slammed shut and Aunt Linda shouted angrily. ‘Damn stupid ass! Where are you, you lazy bag of rubbish?’

  ‘Coming ma’am!’ Mary Ann turned to Marina, and with fast hand signs told her to put the spyglass in the study and disappear. Then she moved towards the shouting.

  ‘Mary Ann …’ Sophie whispered after her. ‘How do you put up with that?’

  She smiled at Sophie. ‘It’s worth it.’

  ‘How can anything be worth that?’

  But Mary Ann hurried away.

  * * *

  Two days later Sophie found an old cigar box on her dressing table. She lifted the lid and found a few flat cosmetic jars, but they were not filled with cream and powder, but with bright powdered colours – flaming red, sunset yellow, arctic blue, purple lavender. She sat on her bed, trembling for a long moment, then she crept past Aunt Linda’s room to Mary Ann’s door. She tapped very quietly.

  Marina opened the door. She was standing on a chair and yawning.

  ‘Oh, sorry, did I wake you? I was after Mary Ann.’

  Marina shook her head. ‘Not here.’

  ‘Oh, where is she?’

  Marina looked at Sophie and hesitated. ‘She … she is by the water. She is always there at night.’

  ‘At the water’s edge. But why?’

  Marina pressed her lips together and would not say any more.

  Sophie slipped out of the house, padded barefoot across the lawn, past the whispering banksia and into the dark shadows of the trees at the bottom of the garden. She found Mary Ann hunched before the moonlit water, staring at the skeletal buildings on Cockatoo Island.

  ‘Hello.’ Sophie slithered up to her.

  ‘Hey, you shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘I had to thank you for those paints. How could you pay for them?’

  ‘Cost me nothing. Those were from flowers, grinding down bark and a few rocks. My mother taught me. She taught me a lot.’ Mary Ann watched a dim light on the island.

  ‘My mother is gone,’ said Sophie. ‘The sickness.’

  ‘Yes, I am sorry.’

  ‘One moment she was laughing, chasing butterflies, then she was coughing and wheezing … The doctor didn’t help. I tried everything – soups, honey-lemon drinks, the herbs – everything.’ Sophie stared at the water. ‘At first I fe
lt like it was my fault, and then I was angry at her for leaving me. Crazy girl.’

  ‘Blame doesn’t fix it.’

  ‘I know, I know, but I wish that I could blame everything on Aunt Linda. She has moved into our house because father is away sailing ships and otherwise I would be all on my own. But I wish that I was on my own.’

  ‘Just hang on. Things will change.’

  ‘What about your father?’ Sophie pictured a tall man with a tangled beard, scars on his chest and a long spear.

  ‘Well, he’s stocky, bearded, he’s quite an important man around Gloucester, leads about forty shepherds, and he is white.’

  ‘Ah.’ Sophie smiled as some of the pieces of the puzzle that was Mary Ann clicked together.

  ‘That’s why I went to school in Sydney, learned reading, writing, arithmetic – all the things that proper young girls do. But, of course I was different. I guess he didn’t know how it would be.’

  Sophie watched as Mary Ann stabbed a thin piece of metal into the ground.

  ‘Some of the teachers were like Aunt Linda: “Waste of time to teach arithmetic to a boong, they can’t even understand it.” And the girls weren’t any better: “You can come to my husband’s house, Mary, any time – and scrub the floor.” It was the same in the cattle stations, the bakery, the towns. Everywhere.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Sophie awkwardly.

  Mary Ann stopped stabbing the earth and looked at Sophie in surprise. ‘What, you’re apologising for Linda? They are everywhere. Everywhere. My mother met my father when he was looking after sheep near the tribe. The tribal elders were so angry about her seeing a white man that they tried to spear him as he slept.’

  She cleaned the piece of metal with her thumb and stared at the dark island. ‘Mother heard the elders and ran to tell him. So he became my father. She said you have to try to save a good one, because there are so few of them.’

  A fish splashed in the dark water.

  ‘Maybe there’s a shark down there,’ Sophie muttered.

  Mary Ann looked sharply at her. ‘You’ve seen them?’

  Sophie shook her head. ‘You hear about them.’

  Mary Ann pointed the piece of metal at the dark buildings on the island. ‘You know about that place?’

  ‘Cockatoo Island? It is a horrible prison. They sleep on top of each other and they have a dungeon for the worst convicts – a black hole cut down in the rock. The worst prison in the continent for the worst —’ Sophie swallowed. ‘Marina said that her father was there.’

  Mary Ann nodded. ‘Fred, my husband, the children’s father, is there.’

  ‘So that’s why you’re here. To watch the place where he is locked up.’ Sophie thought that was unbearably sad.

  ‘Well, no …’ Mary Ann studied Sophie’s face then she opened her hand.

  Sophie breathed in. The piece of metal in her hand was a file. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Fred once stole horses and that got him to Cockatoo for the first time, but he had finished with stealing when we got married. We were settling down in Dungog – a man with a wife and two children. Why would he steal horses again? He borrowed a horse – borrowed – but it was enough. They just couldn’t get over a white man with a black woman. I went with Fred because he doesn’t see the colour in my face; he just listens to what I say in my schoolgirl voice. And I don’t see his colour.’

  ‘He seems nice.’

  ‘Most of the time. He sings a lot and he’s not too bad. But – that dungeon you talked about? They put him down there for a week after he tried to escape.’

  ‘They say it’s impossible to escape.’

  Mary Ann pressed her lips together. ‘Maybe.’ She rocked to her feet. ‘You know, I think those sharks are like the desert spirit MinMin – a light dancing at night – menacing, but there is nothing there. Well, we’ll find out, won’t we?’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Sophie hissed in horror.

  Mary Ann was dragging off her smock.

  Sophie realised what she was doing. ‘No, you can’t!’

  Mary Ann kicked her shoes off. ‘You better go back in the house, Sophie. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  ‘It’s —’

  Mary Ann dived into the black water, surfacing a long way out before swimming towards the island.

  ‘It’s at least half a mile …’ Sophie said dully.

  She tried to watch Mary Ann’s head moving through the dark water, but the low chopping waves shrouded her. Soon she could not see any glimpse of her, leaving just an empty black sea, and a grim fortress on the island winking a few faint lights. She finally trod heavily to her bed, and tried to stay awake to hear Mary Ann’s return.

  * * *

  But she woke to Mary Ann calling her for breakfast.

  Sophie sat at her bowl of porridge and watched Mary Ann carry a jug of steaming milk and the teapot. She wasn’t looking tired as she sashayed around Aunt Linda and the table. She didn’t look as if she had dived into the shark-infested Sydney Harbour in the middle of the night and swum to the deadly prison island – and back. It was as if nothing had happened.

  But Mary Ann was winking at her.

  Sophie had to ask, even with Aunt Linda there. ‘Um, is it a good day, Mary Ann?’

  ‘A very good day, Sophie.’

  Aunt Linda snorted. ‘What’s wrong with you, girl? It’s a grey day and it’s going to pour.’

  ‘Still.’ Mary Ann shrugged.

  Sophie hissed softly over her porridge. That meant Mary Ann had made it to the island. Not only that, she had sneaked around the guards and – somehow – she had found her Fred in a locked building and got her file to him. Then she had swum back again, never mind about the sharks, the cold, the chop and the currents. How did she find this house at night? Doesn’t matter, she did it.

  That meant that the escape was underway. Nobody had got away from Cockatoo Island before, Sophie thought. But there was no Mary Ann before …

  For the rest of the day Sophie walked with tension in her legs and arms. She rolled a pencil constantly around her palms as she furtively glanced at the island. But nothing happened.

  Well that’s it, she thought. Fred was caught filing his leg-irons and we’ll never hear about it. Except that Mary Ann doesn’t seem to be worried.

  Sophie moved closer to Mary Ann as she cooked the dinner. ‘Couldn’t see anything …’

  ‘Wait. Wait.’

  * * *

  The next day, Sophie was jerked awake from a deep sleep by men shouting on the water. She slid from the bed to her window and saw several rowboats zigzagging across the harbour between Cockatoo Island and the shore.

  Sophie swallowed. Fred was out!

  Before breakfast a slightly annoyed policeman knocked at the door. ‘Good morning, madam,’ he said to Aunt Linda. ‘Have you seen any strangers this morning?’

  Aunt Linda squinted at him. ‘No, why?’

  The policeman shook his head. ‘Those damn guards, they ought to be locked up with the convicts. They couldn’t look after a jar of bluebottle flies.’

  ‘The prison, is it?’

  ‘Two prisoners escaped from Cockatoo Island last night.’

  Two! Sophie’s eyes widened. This was getting big.

  ‘Cockatoo Island, where nobody can ever escape?’ Aunt Linda said.

  ‘They will be shivering. They left all their clothes on the island with their cut leg-irons.’

  ‘Naked thieves!’

  ‘Don’t worry, madam. We will catch them by the morning.’ He tramped into the garden with two other policemen, looking for footprints.

  ‘Bet they won’t,’ muttered Mary Ann softly.

  Aunt Linda glared at her. ‘A little bit of respect, thank you.’ She brought an old sword from the study to the breakfast table. ‘I’m not going to take any chances. No stinking convict is going to get into my house!’

  Mary Ann glanced at Sophie but said nothing.

  Most of the day, police trampled up and down on the foreshore,
while soldiers blocked every street that led from Balmain.

  Sophie went with Mary Ann to pick up some groceries at the shops on the top of the hill, where three soldiers had stopped a farmer on a hay cart. Two privates were poking at the hay with their bayonets while a sergeant was interrogating the farmer in deep suspicion.

  It’s a rat trap, Sophie thought. They have no hope, now. But, but …

  Mary Ann smiled at the soldiers as she walked into the shop. She stayed in the shop for long enough to pick up some flour, tea and lamb, and for the soldiers to finish with the farmer. Then she strolled from the shop towards the muttering farmer.

  Sophie realised that she was not worried. At all.

  Mary Ann spoke to him quickly before Sophie joined them.

  The farmer looked surprised for a moment, then he shrugged and said, ‘Why not?’

  She smiled. ‘I will see you this afternoon.’ And walked away.

  Sophie scowled at Mary Ann. ‘What’s all that about?’

  ‘You don’t want to know.’

  ‘Hey, this is me!’ Sophie protested. ‘I know everything now. Almost.’

  Mary Ann nodded. ‘I am borrowing that cart and the old horse for a day. It will cost, but it’s worth it. That’s it.’

  ‘Um, all right.’ Sophie frowned.

  ‘Can you get me an old dress without Aunt Linda knowing?’

  ‘That’s easy. There are trunks in the attic that she hasn’t even opened yet. For you?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Sophie thought a bit. ‘For Fred?’

  Mary Ann nodded. ‘Well, I’ve got Fred’s clothes, but he will probably give them to the other man and take the dress. Fred can act if he wants to.’

  Sophie slowly smiled. ‘And the cart is for them.’

  ‘Enough, enough.’

  ‘But where are they? The police and soldiers are everywhere.’

  ‘Yes …’ Mary Ann hesitated.

  ‘You know.’

  ‘Yes. They’re where they won’t look.’ Mary Ann stopped on the hill and pointed at Cockatoo Island.

  ‘They are still there!’

  ‘In a disused boiler from one of the steamships.’

  ‘But what about the clothes …’