by Louis Nowra
Ernie could tell I were very excited to be returning to the sea. The strange thing about ships is despite them being crowded and stinky and at the mercy of Nature, most times they are like wooden islands of freedom, free from petty concerns and the laws of the land. All we did were hunt and if we were not hunting we were preparing to do so. There seemed a purpose that I didn’t find on land. Perhaps it were also me father’s spirit that were snuggled inside me.
After agreeing I would return to whaling with Captain Lee, Ernie helped me pack and took me down to the docks. He said he would see me off the following morning. I put me trunk into me spot in the corner of Captain Lee’s cabin then crawled up the rigging to me possie and sat there rocking softly as the strong tide came up through the Derwent River. You could call that small wooden seat me home, if I had a home. Next morning as we prepared to set out I seen Ernie arrive and slowly, with puffing effort, get out of his gig like a slug leaving behind its shell. He waved to me to come and say goodbye. I clambered down the rigging and were heading to the gangplank when I seen a lean, bearded figure gallop up on a piebald horse.
It were Mr Carsons. He began talking ten to the dozen into Ernie’s ear. Ernie shook his head once or twice and then nodded a lot til finally the two motioned me to come and talk to them. I ran down the gangplank. I were awfully glad to see Becky’s father cos I thought he were there to take me to her. I were asking him to take me to her when he suddenly shouted at me to shut up. He looked stern and his eyes were cold and bright like someone ’bout to throw a harpoon into a whale’s side. Now, listen to me, he said, grabbing both me arms and squeezing them and covering me face and his beard in spittle, We have a big adventurefor you. You are going to find Rebecca. I didn’t quite under–stand and Ernie repeated what Becky’s father had said.
Captain Lee were sad to see me go. It was only when we were at the stables packing the horses with food, camping equipment, ropes and rifles that I realised we were going on a long journey and something inside me made me heart beat fast like when I were afeared in the bush and I sensed danger. From what I could understand - and let me tell you, Mr Carsons were a man of very few words - Becky were lost somewhere and we were off to go searching for her. I were told she were far away. A fear gripped me - were they going to take me far, far away so that I would not be heard of again like her? I told them I had sanged to her but she hadn’t come. They asked me again to come with them. I shook me head like it were going to fall off. I felt dread in the pit of me stomach. I wanted to return to the ship and Captain Lee. The ship would help me find her, not Mr Carsons, who seemed loony. His eyes were shiny with a mad purpose. I said I weren’t going and I were going back to Captain Lee cos I didn’t believe they were going to find her and how come they lost her?
I started to walk back to the ship, Ernie told me to stop. Sing to her this time, he said, and she will come back to you. I were unsure, but I trusted Ernie. He sat me down on a bale of hay and said, I will tell you the truth about us and your Becky. Mr Carsons stood against the wall of the stables puffing on his pipe, leaving Ernie to tell me the truth.
Ernie told me he knew what Becky had gone through cos he and Becky used to spend time together and yabber a lot. Then he flabbergasted me by saying that the real reason why Becky were far away were cos of the ambergris I gave him to pass on to her.
He said that, like me, Becky thought every day of that morning in Hobart when we were separated. As she were driven away in the buggy she looked back and seen me staring out the window and in her heart she felt something awful was going to happen to the both of us. She had a slimy feeling in the pit of her stomach that we were going to be separated for a long time.
Mr Carsons had decided to tear us apart. He thought that Becky and I were not good for each other, that we were not learning what we should and our bond meant that I were holding Becky back. That misty morning Becky were taken to a boarding school where the headmistress, Miss Davis, were told that Becky had been schooled on the farm and it were now time she were taught properly. Mr Carsons and Ernie told Becky that I were being sent to a school on the mainland to get special education cos I were more backward than she were.
Becky were sent to a Church of England school for girls. It’s still there. It were once on the outskirts of Hobart almost swallowed up by the bush. Over the years the city has surrounded it so that its gardens have shrunk and the bush gone. I visited it once, years after Becky went there. It’s built of sandstone and has narrow windows that makes it seem like a gaol. I stood at the closed iron gates and tried to imagine just how Becky were feeling as she were driven up the long driveway to the main house. She had been taken from me and now she were to live and learn at the school. Mr Carsons thought that she needed to be with girls her own age and teachers who would educate her properly. After warning Becky that she must never tell anyone ’bout me and her living with the tigers, Mr Carsons went back to his farm. The only person she knew in Hobart were Ernie, who would visit her every weekend. He knew she’d be lonely cos all the other girls had visitors or went home for the weekend.
It were hard for her to fit in. She sleeped in a dormitory with the other girls. They teased her cos of the way she’d sniff them or the funny way she spoke. For the first few months she found it difficult to sleep at night. She’d sit for hours in her bed looking out the window, watching the night animals move across the school gardens. If she didn’t do that she’d get up and walk through the dormitory watching the girls sleep and wondering why they didn’t like her. One day it occurred to her that she had to find a way of fitting in and the way to do it were to mimic the other girls. She’d copy a girl’s way of talking, someone’s way of making hand movements and someone’s way of walking. When she began to walk with a limp the poor girl she were copying thought she were being teased and attacked Becky, who on being hit jumped on the girl, tearing at her hair and biting her arm. It took several teachers to pull her off. The headmistress wanted to get rid of Becky but Ernie promised she would behave. Becky told Ernie why she was copying the girl with a limp - cos she wanted to walk like the other girls and be thought of as one of them. He told her to copy a normal student’s walk. He were good for her, that Ernie.
Sometimes he’d take her to his house and record her singing on the phonograph. But he kept lying to her. Every weekend she’d ask Ernie where I were, what I were doing and when we’d see each other again. He told her that I were enjoying me own learning at a special school far away and that he were sending her phonograph songs to me. He also said that we would see each other soon. Soon! It were always soon! But it never happened.
After the incident with the limping girl, Miss Davis and Ernie tried to find different ways for Becky to mix with the other students and become more normal, I s’pose. Her English were really going great guns, but she were still awkward round other girls and they didn’t like the way she’d stare at them with what they said were a strange look. I know what they meant. People still say that ’bout me. When I go to the local store the shopkeeper, Mr Dixon, says I stare at him as if he were food. But it’s not that. It’s not even that I’m listening to his words. What I am doing is closely watching his body and his eyes to see what he’s thinking of doing next or what he’s actually thinking. It’s what me and Becky learned when we were with the tigers. It’s the body and eyes that tell what a person is thinking or going to do. That’s why I stare at people down the village or on the track when I run into them. I can tell when they’re interested in what I’m saying or when they’re curious or when they’re nervous. Mr Dixon said me gaze were putting off his customers so he gave me a pair of sunglasses to wear when I visit his shop. Even years after me and Becky were with Dave and Corinna, this ability or curse, name it what you will, were still there.
One day Miss Davis seen Becky with the gardener’s hound. It were a big dog and all the girls were scared of it but in Becky the dog recognised a kindred spirit and one where she were its master. The girls and Miss Davis were amazed at h
ow the dog would roll over on its back and expose its belly to Becky. One day as she were nuzzling the dog Miss Davis asked Becky a question that had obviously been on her mind for some time. Who are you, Rebecca?
I am Becky, she replied. Why are you like this? asked the headmistress. Becky didn’t understand the question. Then Miss Davis said - and Becky told Ernie she found this a very difficult order to understand or even obey - You are not to go near this dog again. Those words stanged Becky. She said the dog were her friend. Miss Davis told Ernie that Becky must mix with the other girls, other people, rather than dogs - and there were a solution. She said that Becky must perform in the school play, which they did every year with the boys from a school down the road.
She were told to act in one of several little plays based on fairy stories. The teacher who were doing the plays got Becky to play Little Red Riding Hood. It were hard for her to work out how to pretend. She could easily remember the lines, Easy as pie, she said to Ernie when he asked her how she were handling it. The problem were that it were difficult for her to know exactly what were going on. One girl were pretending to be a grandma and a boy were pretending to be a wolf. This were truly hard for Becky to figure out. Plainly the boy were not a wolf. He didn’t even act like a real one. It were easy for Becky not to be afeared of him cos he were so not like a wolf or dog but what puzzled her were how the boy became a wolf and a grandma at the same time. And when Becky said, Oh Grandma, what big eyes you’ve got, she could not understand why she were saying it cos the boy had tiny eyes, nothing like a tiger’s eyes, for instance. Other things confused her. During rehearsal she had to pretend she had food in her basket but there were no food in it. The teacher kept on saying that she had to pretend. That didn’t work. It were only when she said it were a game that Becky sort of got the hang of it.
It were a couple of days before the performance when Ernie told Becky an audience were coming to watch the plays. She became excited by that cos she were hankering after her father and Ernie said he would be there. The theatre night were held one spring evening on the school lawns. The parents and visitors were seated at long tables lit by hundreds of candles. A stage were built on the lawns. There were three plays, one about Cinderella, one ’bout the Pied Piper of Hamelin and Becky’s play which were to come between the other two cos they had more actors in them, especially the Pied Piper which had dozens of girls from the lower forms who were playing the rats.
After Becky got dressed in her red dress, cloak and hood, Ernie took her aside and explained that her father would not be able to get to see the show in time cos he were marooned inland due to a flood. As a gift to ease her disappointment Ernie gave her me ambergris. She were over the moon. It meant everything to her cos it came from me. She were so thrilled cos she thought I were going to see the show too. Ernie had to tell her I were not going to be there. Why can’t Hannah and I see each other? she pleaded. Ernie said she’d soon find out. But when was soon?
Ernie sat down with the rest of the audience, which were a considerable size cos the parents were from both the boys’ and girls’ schools. While the Cinderella story were on stage Becky didn’t watch it cos she were so caught up in smelling the ambergris. It brought back memories of me and Dave and Corinna. It were as powerful on her as it were on me. Then she did something that Ernie were to regret. As she waited to go on stage he saw her eat the ambergris. It didn’t take long before her face were filled with bliss. I knew the feeling; all her senses were alight and alive and sparkling with the rush of memories.
She was so caught up in her bliss that one of the teachers had to push her on stage. When she was up there she stopped, rooted to the spot. She seen all those people sitting at the tables - and it striked her that they were staring at her, which made her very nervous, so much so that she forgot her lines. The boy who were dressed up as a wolf came towards her. She tensed, placed all her attention on him, and lost any sense that she were on stage in front of an audience. It were like she were really in the woods and she were not afeared of the big bad wolf. In fact, she laughed. Her blood were now hot and pulsating and forgetting where she were, she moved in on the boy like he were the prey rather than the other way round. His tiny eyes were firefly-bright with fear and he moved away but she circled him, waiting for the wolf to make his break when she would pounce. She could smell his fear - and that only made her even more thrilled. Stay away! Stay away! the boy were yelling. Becky stopped for a moment cos she heard some of the audience laugh and she were annoyed cos she were serious and she gave them a threat yawn which silenced them. Then she went back to herding the boy into a corner. A teacher must have realised something were wrong cos she rushed on the stage and grabbed Becky, who turned on her growling and giving the threat yawn. The boy ran off the stage and Becky yanked herself free to give chase. She ran through the dozens of girls dressed as rats. They all screamed and ran away but Becky only had eyes for the boy. In her mind she were now hunting prey.
The boy ran down the lawns to the tables crying out for his mother and father. Teachers tried to stop Becky but she snarled and spit at them and chased the boy round a long table. There were so much panic that people knocked over the candles. Soon the tablecloths were on fire. There were screaming and shrieking and crying. But Becky were laughing cos she were having the time of her life. As she continued after the crying boy she suddenly seen Ernie coming towards her. He lunged at her but she easily jumped out of his way and then she was off. She ran through the screaming, burning mayhem and the squealing, panic-stricken rats and raced through the gardens out to the back of the school into the bushland, never looking back. She ran and ran and ran and vanished into the night.
We think we know where she’s gone and we think we know what she’s looking for, Hannah, said Ernie finishing his story and getting up from the bale of hay he had been sitting on. He motioned to his packhorse near the stable door. I recognised one of his phonographs with a huge speaking horn strapped to its side. Do you believe me now? he asked. I looked at his gentle face and then at Mr Carsons hitting his pipe against the wall. He looked tormented and I knew I had been told the truth and we were truly going to search for her.
Mr Carsons were in a hurry and we set off right away in a drizzling mist, through the streets of Hobart and out of the city. Mr Carsons didn’t give me a horse so I rode with Ernie. During the rough sections of the bush I’d try to wrap me arms round his stomach, which were so fat me fingers couldn’t meet, so I put me hands into his jacket pockets. That first night, after we had made camp and eaten, Mr Carsons tied me to Ernie’s leg so I wouldn’t run away, which were stupid cos I had no idea where Becky were and I needed the men to help me. Ernie had a flask of whiskey and as he sipped it he stared at the flames like someone looking at tea-leaves trying to see the future. I listened to the night birds and animals hunting for food, snuffling, grunting, snarling, crunching bones, crackling dead leaves. It were like I were coming home. I knew what the sounds meant. I could see in me mind what the devils, possums and owls were doing. I thought I heard the cough of a tiger and I spun round in the direction of the sound when Ernie leaned over and touched me hand, tapping it like he were doing Morse code of apology, saying to me how sorry he were to take me on this trip. I said I were fine with it cos we were going to find lost Becky. He asked me how might Becky survive. I said most likely she’d eat berries, catch creek crayfish and baby animals. It might take a long while, he said, glancing across at Mr Carsons sleeping in his bag. It took years to find you and Rebecca in the bush. Everyone else gave up, but not Mr Carsons.
Over the next few days and nights as we headed west into the highlands he told me the story of how Mr Carsons came to find us living with the tigers.
When the news came that me family and Becky were missing, searchers went looking for us. They found the smashed boat, me father’s body dumped on the river’s edge and me mother, still caught up in the branches of the tree that had carried her downstream. For weeks they searched for Becky and me.
Eventually they gave up cos they thought we had drowned too. But Mr Carsons wouldn’t give up. He went out in all weather, whether it be snowing, raining or burning hot. He didn’t give up hope, because he weren’t a man of hope. He wouldn’t even think of the idea of hope cos that meant there were a chance we were dead and he could only keep on going, keep on driving himself on his quest if his only thought - his single thought - were that we were alive. He became a lonely, stick-thin figure forever seen on his forlorn horse riding through the main streets of small towns or across fields and paddocks. He were a man who didn’t talk much and he reeked of loneliness, as Ernie said, but he made himself start up a conversation with everyone he met, thinking they might have some clue or rumours about his daughter and me. Some people said he were so filled with dreams and thoughts of finding us that he became not so much a man as an idea of one dressed in human form.
It were in his second year of searching when he were in a country pub that he overheard two loggers talking about a rumour they had heard ’bout two tigers that had killed a sheep with the help of two humans. It were too dark for the shepherd who said he saw this to be sure if they were children or midgets or even some strange new human-type creature - after all, it were a different time then and most of Tassie were still an unknown land and who knows what creatures or monsters lived there? Mr Carsons tried to find out where the rumour came from but the loggers didn’t know. They guessed it were from the highlands in the north-west, a long way from where he had been searching along the length of the Munro River.
Mr Carsons had to stop searching when winter came, as the highlands were freezing cold and the snow so deep that it were impossible to travel through. Once spring came and lambing were over he were out searching again. Mr Carsons were certain that we were alive and no amount of chiacking from people who thought he were growing mad with grief could stop his quest to find us. Near the end of autumn in the third year he met a farmer who Mr Carsons thought were a bit simple. He spoke in whispers of what he had seen. It were a story that he had told no one else cos he didn’t want to be made fun of. He were riding ’cross his paddocks just after twilight when he seen two tigers and two human figures crouched over a dead sheep. All four were bent over it, their faces buried deep within it. He yelled out and rode towards them but they fled into the darkness. When he examined the sheep he seen that they had torn open its throat and crushed the skull in order to eat the brains. There were blood everywhere. The four had been drinking blood from the throat. So horrified were the farmer that he thought the two humans were vampires. No wonder he didn’t tell anyone ’bout it. Though I suppose when you think ’bout it, in a way we were vampires. The farmer were relieved to hear Becky’s father talk ’bout the girls being real and not vampires, but he could not imagine or conceive that two real human girls were living and hunting with tigers. The only way he could understand what he had been told were that the two girls were really the ghosts of drowned Hannah and Rebecca. Mr Carsons, who were practically a ghost himself the way he haunted the highlands and the west, didn’t believe in spirits but he were now absolutely certain we were alive.