His mother and father were very happy. His sister hated Evangeline Langridge.
‘Everybody’s waiting,’ Evie said to her fiancé.
Tait took off his coat, heavy with the smell of tobacco and beer, hung it on the rack by the door. He was suddenly oppressed by the thought of the Langridges’ dining room, just down the hall and to the right. The dark wood and crystal light and fine bone china, the expensive candles that made it smell like a church. Mr and Mrs there, and the old aunt from Hobart, and whichever guests to fill out the enormous table and agree with Mr Langridge’s unimpeachable opinions on infinite subjects. And Evie, always answering for Tait, as though nervous he might say something wrong and embarrass everyone.
‘Who’s here?’ Tait said, following Evie down the hall.
She didn’t say, but hurried along to the dining room door, opened it, smiled broadly and said, ‘Finally!’ as she walked in, as though she’d had to go out and physically look for her fiancé in the streets.
‘Gabriel, where have you been?’ Mrs Langridge said.
‘Working, Mother, where else?’ Evie said. ‘Working hard.’
‘My apologies, Mrs Langridge,’ Tait said and sat down. He looked around the table. The beer was in his heartbeat and he could taste nicotine on his lips and the room stretched out into his peripheral vision and for sure it had been a folly to come. Now endure.
Mr Langridge nodded silently at him.
‘you remember Mr and Mrs Ainsley, Gabriel,’ Evie said.
‘yes, of course.’
‘Mr Ainsley was just telling us about their two boys,’ Mr Langridge said. He was a tall, angular man with, it seemed, only one stern expression ever available to his face. ‘George and Frank have joined up.’ He looked over at the door and motioned for the butler to begin serving.
‘Light horse,’ Mr Ainsley said.
‘Handsome lads,’ Mr Langridge said. ‘We’ll have them in the paper, Wednesday edition.’ He paused. ‘Maybe you could give it a few words, Gabriel.’
‘Of course, Mr Langridge.’
‘Good man.’
Mrs Ainsley began to sob.
‘Miriam!’ her husband said.
Evie went over to the woman, put an arm around her shoulder. ‘It’s all right, Mrs Ainsley,’ she said and rubbed her arm. ‘It’s all right.’
‘No need to fret, Miriam,’ Mrs Langridge said. ‘It will all turn out just fine.’
Mrs Ainsley smiled sadly, regained control. ‘I’m sorry.’ She wanted to say they were only boys, but she’d seen the hard look on her husband’s face. ‘Silly me!’
‘They’re a credit to you,’ Mr Langridge said, ‘and the pride of Tasmania.’ He raised his glass.
Everybody followed suit. Tait reached across for the glass that had been poured for him and knocked it over, spilling wine across the white tablecloth.
‘Bloody hell,’ Mr Langridge said.
OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS
Before Gabriel Tait left for the Tiers with the O’Farrells, the subeditor Lance Landstrom had said, ‘you might want to read some of the stuff in the records. Get a little background on the guy. He was a convict, you know.’
‘Sure.’
‘Take a few days,’ Landstrom said. ‘you’ll have to go down to Hobart.’
‘The paper’s paying, right?’
‘Ask your future father-in-law.’
Tait caught a morning train to Hobart. The capital was grey and overcast, just like the last time he’d seen it. Evie had wanted to come along but her parents wouldn’t hear of it. Tait was relieved, glad to get out of town for a while on his own.
The clerk at the Chief Secretary’s Department led Gabriel Tait down into a basement. It was somewhere under Franklin Square, completely dark, cold, smelled musty and damp. The clerk flicked a switch and something crackled; a single electric globe at the end of a thick black wire in the ceiling lit up, threw weak yellow light. There were open-backed timber shelves against the sandstone walls and dissecting the space in rows, stacked with boxes and huge ledgers, their leather bindings rotted and peeling from the boards. There were more documents piled up on the floor in lopsided towers, all along and at the ends of each row.
‘Convict records?’ Tait said.
‘No idea, mate,’ the clerk said. ‘In here somewhere.’ He pointed to a small table and chair. ‘you can use that. We close at four.’ The clerk headed back up the stairs.
Tait stood for a moment, looking at the shelves, the boxes, ledgers and files. The subterranean quiet had already leeched the space of their voices from only seconds before. The stillness was tomb-like. Only the faint buzzing of electric light hooked his ear, the sole link to the surface.
He took off his hat, tossed it onto the table. He lit a cigarette and went over to the nearest shelf. He looked for some kind of label designation, cataloguing numbers and dates, but there was nothing. He flipped open one of the ledgers. A document slipped to the floor.
There were thousands of documents, maybe tens of thousands. Tait looked for John Myer among them. He couldn’t find him that first day. He couldn’t find him on the second or the third or the fourth day either.
‘How’s it going down there?’ the clerk said.
‘Great,’ Tait said.
RUMOURS
‘So, I hear you’re getting married.’
It was the first thing Wilson O’Farrell had said in at least an hour.
‘Who told you I was getting married?’ Tait said.
‘Nobody,’ Wilson O’Farrell said. ‘Just heard the whisper.’
The fire was going and outside it was already dark and the snow was still falling in long, heavy drifts. They’d discovered a possum in the flue before and the hut was still reeking of piss and adrenaline, the animal hissing and scratching after Wilson had wrapped his arm in rags and reached up into the pipe, trying to grab it. Then he’d attempted to smoke it out, but the fire wouldn’t pull cleanly to flame (‘We’re going to freeze to death ’cause of this bloody thing’) and then finally he’d had to climb up onto the roof with his rifle and shoot the possum down the chimney.
Tait stared at Wilson. Joseph smiled and patted him on the shoulder. ‘Second cousin, mate,’ he said. ‘Mother’s side.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Evie Langridge. We’re related. We used to play together when we were kids.’
Jesus, thought Gabriel Tait.
‘Evie’s great,’ Joseph said. ‘Haven’t seen her in a while though.’
‘She’s moved up in the world,’ Wilson O’Farrell said, poking at the fire. ‘No more playing with little Joe.’ He turned to his brother. ‘Anything to drink?’
Joseph stood up. ‘I’ll have a look.’
The hut was cobwebbed and there were mouse droppings over the floor and dust over everything, but it was dry and well sealed, the wind only reaching in under the door as it gusted now and then, rattling the latch, or when it whinnied through the edges of the animal skin over the window. There was a small table, two chairs and a bench along the left-side wall, stacked timber boxes and a slatted bed frame in the corner (with a straw mattress of sewn hessian sacks) and an improvised shelf with wooden crates slotted in like drawers. Rusted nails in the exposed studwork, one or two with the withered twig remains of some plant, a thin chain on another, a small painting (blue water bay) hanging by the bed. Cutlery, a stack of tins with no labels, a hatchet, jug and bowl on a stand below a mirror the size of a postcard. Tait had noticed a few books on a shelf too, but hadn’t gone to look yet.
Joseph O’Farrell said, ‘Here we go,’ and held up a bottle of whisky.
‘Good work, brother.’
‘They say he’s German,’ Tait said.
‘Prussian,’ Wilson said.
‘Long way to come.’
‘True for everybody here, ain’t it?’
Joseph found cups and poured.
‘How’d you meet him?’ Tait asked.
‘Our old man used to send us up with supplie
s,’ Joseph said. ‘John let us stay the night sometimes, depending on the weather or how late we got in.’
‘What was he doing up here?’
Wilson smiled. ‘Hunting tigers.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Why not?’
Gabriel Tait looked into his cup. He didn’t believe it; but, then, he wasn’t sure what to believe about John Myer. He said, ‘So did he really crack a hundred? Or the one twenty-six, like they say?’
‘I reckon he got the century for sure,’ Joseph said. ‘At least.’
‘And then some,’ his brother said.
‘yeah, you’re right.’
Tait said, ‘Do you know his age for a fact?’
‘Knew it with me own eyes,’ Wilson said. ‘Standing next to the man.’
‘That doesn’t tell me when he was born.’
‘Reckon he was though.’
Tait sipped his drink. ‘There’s a story then.’
‘Well,’ Wilson said and swept his arm around the hut, ‘it’s all here, matey. you only paid us to get you up.’
They sipped their whiskies.
‘He was married,’ Tait said. He’d found the names in a marriage register in the archives in Hobart.
‘yeah?’ Wilson said. ‘Didn’t know. He might have been.’
‘John was a handsome chap,’ Joseph said. ‘That’s true.’
DARCEY’S LUCKY WEDDING RINGS
Every morning in Hobart, Gabriel Tait waited for the Chief Secretary’s Department to open its doors. Because he couldn’t sleep, he was always up early and nothing was open and hardly anybody was about.
He walked around town and paused under the shop awnings. He wanted to buy something for Evie before he left, though he hadn’t seen anything yet. He looked into the windows but, really, it was only absently.
All week, the wind was icy down off Mount Wellington.
Tait was staying at the Criterion Hotel in Liverpool Street. They did a good lunch and the room had electricity and a bath. In the evenings after dinner, he read the newspapers, front to back. He read the headline stories (Gallant British Troops) and he read the advertisements, too (Richard Darcey. Ring Specialist. You Find the Girl, I’ll Find the Ring. 84 Liverpool Street. PRICES TO SUIT ALL POCKETS). After that, Tait usually went to bed and tried to read a book.
Evie had lent him Wuthering Heights, but he just couldn’t get a bite on it.
CHILE
Wilson O’Farrell made strong black tea and heaped half-a-dozen teaspoons of sugar into the pot. Joseph poured a good splash of whisky into their cups and passed around a tin of shortbreads he’d brought along.
‘Mum makes the best,’ he said. He put them down on the floor between them. ‘Help yourself.’
‘Just go easy,’ Wilson said, looking at Tait. ‘There’s three of us.’
They sat in front of the fire and watched the flames while the snow gums outside heaved in the gusts of wind and snow. Around them, the timber hut strained and creaked into its joists. The leaves that had blown into the corners sometimes flipped over in the draught. Wilson had his wet boots and socks off now, resting his feet on a crate.
‘They’ll catch fire in a minute,’ Joseph said.
‘Good. Can barely feel me toes.’
‘Kill the stench at least.’
Wilson reached down for another biscuit.
‘What about cards?’ Joseph said.
‘Nah,’ his brother said. ‘I hate fucking cards.’
‘That’s ’cause you can’t play.’ Joseph looked at Tait. ‘you?’
Tait shook his head.
‘Then I’ll have to play myself.’
Wilson O’Farrell laughed. ‘you’ll have to what? Play with yourself?’
‘yeah, that’s exactly what I said.’
‘you heard it, Tait!’
Joseph ignored his brother, dragged across a box and spread his legs to either side. He began shuffling a deck of cards.
‘So did he ever tell you how he escaped to Chile?’ Tait said.
‘Never told us much about anything, really.’
‘All that way and then they brought him back again.’ Four of them were caught, John Myer last of all, down at the Valdivia docks. The North Star to England and then the Sarah back to Van Diemen’s Land. Another trial in 1837 and then serving out his sentence at Port Arthur. Married in 1849. Tait sipped his whisky-laced tea. ‘Imagine that.’ He’d found it all in the records. A few words in ink, this hut; all that remained of a man.
‘Not me, mate,’ Wilson said. ‘No bloody way.’
His brother looked up from his cards. ‘No way what?’
‘Sailing the high seas.’
Joseph laughed. ‘you will be soon, but. you’ll be sailing your arse off.’
‘That’s different.’
‘How?’
‘Well, it’s a big bloody iron boat with no sails and they know where they’re going an’ I just have to sit there, right?’ Wilson O’Farrell grabbed his foot, rubbed it and wiggled his long, bony toes. The muster for the front was the day after next.
‘Still the same high seas,’ his brother said, flipping cards.
HANDCUFFS AND LEG IRONS
They finished the tea and the whisky, too. The fire was blazing. Joseph O’Farrell found a second bottle.
‘Show him the cuffs,’ Wilson said.
‘Want to see them?’
‘Sure,’ Tait said.
Joseph went to the shelves stacked with crates and pulled one out and put it on the floor. ‘The very ones they clamped on the poor bastard.’
Tait sat up now and moved to the edge of his chair. He watched Joseph take a few things out of the crate and then reach deep into it, his hand rummaging until there was the sound of metal scraping on the thin wood. He pulled his arm out and held up a rusty set of handcuffs.
‘Nasty things,’ Joseph said. ‘The English type with the ratchet arms, makes them really tight.’ He handed them to Tait.
‘Try ’em on,’ Wilson said.
‘No thanks.’
‘Don’t you want to know what it was like?’ Wilson checked his socks in front of the fire, turned them over.
Tait stared down at the cuffs in his hands, thinking of John Myer. Thinking, this lonely hut.
‘We used to play bushrangers with them,’ Joseph said. ‘The thing you don’t think of is how hard it is to run with your hands cuffed behind your back.’
‘you’d fall over all the time,’ Wilson said.
‘Wils was always the law; I had to try and escape,’ Joseph said. He pointed at the cuffs. ‘One time the ratchet arms got stuck and we couldn’t get ’em off. Had to wear the bloody things for a day and a bit.’
Wilson laughed. ‘I had to pull his trousers down so he could take a leak.’
‘And give me something to eat.’
‘Bread and water.’
‘And the time you put the leg irons on me.’
‘Barefoot, like they used to do.’
‘Took the skin right off my ankles.’
‘Then I had to bash the things with a hammer to slip the rivets.’
‘Big toe went black and blue.’
‘Ha!’
‘yeah,’ Joseph said. ‘Swelled up so I couldn’t walk. Real funny.’
‘Go on,’ Wilson said to Tait. ‘Try ’em on. you can use it in your story.’
‘GREENSLEEVES’
Gabriel Tait knew that Evie would love the music box. It had cost him a week’s wages. She’d love it, and then most probably she’d hate it.
On the train back to Launceston he stared out the window and watched the empty, damp yellow paddocks sweep by, crows lifting out of the scrawled gumtrees in the distance, the sky streaked with thin clouds.
Had John Myer come this way? Tait tried to imagine the man, head down and trudging the bristled bush, searching for the place where he might no longer be called to account for his existence.
WAITING
Gabriel Tait said, ‘you signed
up?’
Wilson nodded, rolling a cigarette, tongue poking out the corner of his mouth.
Joseph had his eyes closed. ‘yairp.’
The second bottle of whisky had about a third left. They passed it around and swigged straight from the neck. The hut glowed with amber light, warm like a promise; but soon the whisky would be drunk and the fire would burn down and then the light (this light) would be gone.
Gabriel Tait wanted to tell them about John Myer’s wife. That she was most likely his great-grandmother, Mary Myer, née Richardson, who died in childbirth. He believed it, knew it for sure when he saw the record. Mary Myer, whom the family never mentioned, because she’d married a convict and then died, her child taken away and raised by a sister. Mary Myer, gone to all but saved in the marriage register with pen and ink. And where was the child? Where had this other line run?
‘Go on, then,’ Gabriel Tait said and suddenly stood up. He wobbled a little on his feet and put his hands behind his back. ‘Arrest me.’
Joseph smiled, reached for the handcuffs on the floor and got to his feet.
‘Make sure they’re tight,’ Wilson said.
‘yep.’
‘Maybe we should put the leg irons on, too.’
‘yeah!’
Everybody awake. Second wind.
‘Do it,’ Gabriel Tait said.
THERE’S A WAR ON
The music box and the letter arrived from Hobart and Mrs Langridge gave it to her daughter and Evie saw the handwriting and knew straight off that it was from Gabriel.
‘Why is he writing to you?’ Mrs Langridge said. Instantly, she’d a bad feeling and she didn’t like this letter, not at all. ‘He’s supposed to be back in a few days.’
Evie smiled. ‘Mother! Have you never heard of romance?’ She took the letter to her room to read in private.
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