I found space on a plank and sat myself down. Sparks flew from the fire as a native woman tossed on a split timber. The music swelled again, melancholy and perfect. There was so much to understand in this confusing place. Something about the piano. Something I could not shake. Their rum was strong and warm, and I was not used to it.

I put the mug down and reached into the small bag I had brought ashore. Down among the clothes I felt the leather satchel containing the ship’s papers, and I opened it, squinting to read the fading cursive records of the Howrah under the erratic light of the swaying lanterns.

The passenger list, the insurance papers.

The cargo manifest.

I traced a finger down the list: Tea Chests, Sundry and Velvet Cloth In Roll…

The music wreathed around me, so lovely. Intoxicating.

Another document came to hand. It had been folded and unfolded many times.

Shipped by the Grace of God, in Good Order and well-Conditioned…

I knew the next words before I saw them, drawn like clouds in billowing cursive: Cottage Upright Piano, Pleyel et Cie. According to the bill of lading it was to be delivered by the vessel Howrah to the Port of Hobart eight weeks ago, the Danger of the Seas solely excepted.

I stuffed the document back into the satchel and looked around guiltily to see whether I had been observed. But the audience was transfixed by the girl. She was neither Sydney nor Hobart, nor Aborigine nor Briton. In some way she was all of these things and in their combination something entirely new, wringing loveliness from a stolen piano, a dead family’s furniture.

She was singing now, paeans of love and loss, and her voice was unaccountably old with the music, sad and strange. In a corner, Connolly sat alone with his drink and wept. I looked at my father, sitting on an upturned cask with a mug between his feet. His face was tilted up as though the sun shone on it, and I saw hope there. In that moment I was aloft on his shoulders and he was beaming with pride at something I had done. It was him and me. Not bound by dependence, just him and me.

He was at peace that first night on Gun Carriage, unburdened of the painful secrets he’d carried so long. He was drinking: so there would be sickness and recriminations in the morning. But for once I had no energy to fight it. All this time, fighting him over what I thought was his welfare, I’d been denying him solace from the demons in his mind.

~