The Secret River Read Online Free PDF Page A

robes. One, weighed down with a great bronze chain over his shoulders, said, Morning Richard, and how is Mrs Middleton? And Mr Middleton spoke back in a wooden sort of voice, Middling, Mr Piper, we can’t complain .
    Thornhill had never heard anyone address Mr Middleton by his first name, or seen him like this, tight with anxiety and humility. He saw that these men sitting behind their mahogany table were as far above Mr Middleton as Mr Middleton was above him. He had a sudden dizzying understanding of the way men were ranged on top of each other, all the way from the Thornhills at the bottom up to the King, or God, at the top, each man higher than one, lower than another.
    The man with the chain asked, Who is this lad, Richard? And Mr Middleton answered in the same stiff way, This is William Thornhill, your lordship, and I am here to vouch for him . Another of them asked, Can he handle an oar? And a little one on the end chimed in, Has he got his river hands?
    Mr Middleton’s voice was happier now, on solid ground as he answered, Yes, Mr Piper, I had him row from Hay’s Wharf to the Sufferance Dock and from Wapping Old Stairs to Fresh Wharf for this past week gone . The man with the chain cried, Good man! in the sort of way he might have spoken to a boy, but Mr Middleton stoodquiet, not seeming to think it cheek to be spoken to in such a way, which made Thornhill all the more apprehensive.
    The flames were becoming uncomfortably hot on his behind. He had never been near such a roaring in a fireplace, had never known what it was to be too much heated, but he could feel the glow of it piercing his britches. His bottom was just about on fire, but he could not move forward without seeming impertinently close to the gentlemen in their robes. It all seemed part of the ordeal, something he must endure, along with the glances of these men who could reject him if they fancied.
    Mr Piper was saying it again, Good man , but he was an old trembly sort of man, and it was clear that he had forgotten who was a good man, or why, patting his own arm as if congratulating himself.
    Then a bald man said, straight to Thornhill, Blisters healed yet, sonny? And Thornhill did not know whether to say yes or no, or even whether he should speak at all. His palms were still puffed up from all the heavy rowing Mr Middleton had been making him do, but they were no longer bleeding. He held them out without speaking, and there was a general laugh.
    The bald man said, Good lad, they have the look of a waterman’s hands already, eh gentlemen? License granted, I would say , and it was done.
    ~
    Mr Middleton was a good master. For the first time in his life, Thornhill was not always hungry, not always cold. He slept on the flags of the kitchen on a straw mattress, rising and sleeping with the tide.
    The tide was a tyrant. It would not wait, and if a lighterman missed the flood to get a load of coal up the river, even strong William Thornhill could not row against it, and would have to wait twelve hours to the next.
    His blisters never got a chance to heal. They grew till theyburst, then they formed again, burst again, bled again. The oar-handles of the Hope were brown with his blood. Mr Middleton approved of that. Only way to get your river hands, lad , he said, and gave him a knob of fat to rub on them.
    Seven years seemed a lifetime, but there was a lot to learn. The sets of the tide from Wapping over to Rotherhithe, where the tide swept onto Hay’s Roads and the eddies would drag a man down in a second if he fell overboard. How at Chelsea Reach the currents pulled and pushed at the boats because, they said, a set of fiddlers had been drowned there years before, and the river had been dancing in that spot ever since. How an oar, four times as long as a man, could take charge of its owner. How to shift the oar from the rowing crutch in the bow, canting the blade with a turn of the wrist, then running along the narrow gunwale with the oar as far as the