bunch of flowers, didnot relish the greatness of this moment. They turned away from me lying puckered in pink, and the man who had contributed his tadpole to the making of me took the hand of the woman who had done the rest: pale now, sunken into her pillows, full-eyed with our struggle. My precious one, he whispered, I thought I would lose you for ever. His voice shook with feeling, for he loved this thin woman of his, whom I had nearly done to death in our battle. His voice shook, his soft eyes filled with tears, and his hands warmed the bloodless dulled hands of his wife as if to infuse her with his own strength. She could not speak, the woman whose hand was being crushed, but did not mind the pain of her husbandâs love around her hand, now the other pain was over, and she managed some sort of a smile that revealed the gold tooth teasing at the side of her mouth and showed him that, balding, egglike, trembling, fearful, uncertain though he was at this moment, she would never feel anything for him but the tenderest love.
There they were then, making their pacts of skin and soft looks together, and I lay unwrinkling like a beetle. I was preparing for great things, though they, myopic of vision, tiny of mind, feeble in their grasp of the largeness of life, knew none of it: they had no inkling that history lay in the room with them, quietly sucking at the air of the brand-new world.
JOAN MAKES HISTORY
SCENE TWO
In 1788, a fleet of ships landed at Botany Bay with the purpose of establishing a British colony there. On board were convicts male and female, and marines, and of course myself, Joan. For this great moment of history I have chosen to take the form of a rough and unruly person of the criminal class, and will now tell you one or two things you did not know, on the subject of that landing.
I, Joan, was snivelling, lecherous, a despiser of men and a woman with a skilled shrill way with a useful lie. I had been sentenced to be transported to the bottom of the earth for the term of my natural life, considered expendable by the authorities of my native land, but I was not one to be cowed by the chilly schemes of His Majestyâs Government. I had decided that, of all the feet on this unhappy fleet of ships, mine would be the first to soil the new land.
As prisoners of His Majesty, we were not allowed up on deck at this historic moment, but we heard the thunder of the anchor chain through water and felt the slimy boards shake under us. It was a sound we had not heard for many weeks, or it could have been months or years, for none of us had cared enough in the beginning to keep track of the days, and now the uncounted flow of time swept us along like animals. I was locked in among weak puling women who had moaned and cried, cowered and shivered and ineffectually rubbed at their arms all the way from the Thames, rubbing at goose flesh even in the smelly tropics. Now I was sick to death of them. Give me a man! I had shrieked often enough on our voyage, and one-eyed Betsy had cackled in her hoarse way, Give him to me after, love, I have never minded the second suck at a bottle, but at this moment I had greater things to think of than men and their pathetic bottles of lust.
It was like stripping skin, paring flesh from flesh, to peel off boots, stockings, skirts, petticoats, bodice, until I stood in the hold, my skin green in that light, with a ring of silent sick women around me, staring as though they had never before seen a nipple, or flesh in quantity. I will now make history, I said loudly, so the women blinked at me in a considering way. But I knew these women, and I knew that nothing like consideration was going on behind their blinking eyes: nothing more interesting than the blossoming thought that my boots, sad creatures though they were, and my skirts stiff with the filth of a year, might be better than their own and might, now they were stripped from the flesh of their owner, become available to one of these
There they were then, making their pacts of skin and soft looks together, and I lay unwrinkling like a beetle. I was preparing for great things, though they, myopic of vision, tiny of mind, feeble in their grasp of the largeness of life, knew none of it: they had no inkling that history lay in the room with them, quietly sucking at the air of the brand-new world.
JOAN MAKES HISTORY
SCENE TWO
In 1788, a fleet of ships landed at Botany Bay with the purpose of establishing a British colony there. On board were convicts male and female, and marines, and of course myself, Joan. For this great moment of history I have chosen to take the form of a rough and unruly person of the criminal class, and will now tell you one or two things you did not know, on the subject of that landing.
I, Joan, was snivelling, lecherous, a despiser of men and a woman with a skilled shrill way with a useful lie. I had been sentenced to be transported to the bottom of the earth for the term of my natural life, considered expendable by the authorities of my native land, but I was not one to be cowed by the chilly schemes of His Majestyâs Government. I had decided that, of all the feet on this unhappy fleet of ships, mine would be the first to soil the new land.
As prisoners of His Majesty, we were not allowed up on deck at this historic moment, but we heard the thunder of the anchor chain through water and felt the slimy boards shake under us. It was a sound we had not heard for many weeks, or it could have been months or years, for none of us had cared enough in the beginning to keep track of the days, and now the uncounted flow of time swept us along like animals. I was locked in among weak puling women who had moaned and cried, cowered and shivered and ineffectually rubbed at their arms all the way from the Thames, rubbing at goose flesh even in the smelly tropics. Now I was sick to death of them. Give me a man! I had shrieked often enough on our voyage, and one-eyed Betsy had cackled in her hoarse way, Give him to me after, love, I have never minded the second suck at a bottle, but at this moment I had greater things to think of than men and their pathetic bottles of lust.
It was like stripping skin, paring flesh from flesh, to peel off boots, stockings, skirts, petticoats, bodice, until I stood in the hold, my skin green in that light, with a ring of silent sick women around me, staring as though they had never before seen a nipple, or flesh in quantity. I will now make history, I said loudly, so the women blinked at me in a considering way. But I knew these women, and I knew that nothing like consideration was going on behind their blinking eyes: nothing more interesting than the blossoming thought that my boots, sad creatures though they were, and my skirts stiff with the filth of a year, might be better than their own and might, now they were stripped from the flesh of their owner, become available to one of these
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