Bridget Crack

by Rachel Leary

  After he was married and the children born he was still living with his father (who regularly pointed out how well his older brother George had done as a merchant, and that Alfred, the next oldest, was now a colonel). So when Alfred told him that George Arthur had been appointed governor of Van Diemen’s Land, that the man was an acquaintance of his and he could write to him regarding the possibility of a position there, Marshall agreed. Their cousin Godfrey was already in Van Diemen’s Land, had written that he’d secured a land grant, found the climate agreeable.

  At first Eleanor had said no, that she wasn’t going to Van Diemen’s Land. Then Jane had said she would like to go, that she thought it was a wonderful idea. He told Eleanor he was going; it would only be for a few years and she could remain in England. Once it had become clear he really was going she came to him one night and said she wanted to come too. At first he’d felt disappointed, had quietly hoped she might stay. But then he’d thought it might be a new start, a chance for them to begin anew. Yet ever since they had been here, she had complained endlessly of her dislike for the place.

  His position in the colony as commissariat officer was dull and required little of him in terms of time and effort. Still, though, he found himself often tired and even more unhappy than he’d been in England. The thought came to him—as it often had before—that whatever was wrong with him was the fault of his middle name: Ferdinand. He’d never liked it. But that was ridiculous, he thought. Ridiculous.

  He reprimanded himself now for his self-pity, stood up straight and went and sat at his desk, folded his hands, stared at the door. He would do something in a minute, he thought. But for now, he would just sit here. It seemed as good a thing to do as any. For all of a sudden he felt entirely lost. Quite, entirely lost.

  Henry shrugged the load off his back and let it fall. ‘Home, sweet home’, he said. They had come down a broad and wooded valley, the understorey open and grassy, a river running down one side of it, a chorus of mountains surrounding it. The men and the dogs splashed through a shallow part of the river, Bridget behind them. There was a track leading through scrub that after about twenty yards opened into a clearing. In the middle of it was a circle of rocks, a rope slung between two trees and, at the back of the clearing, a rock wall with a rough lean-to built against it, only barely visible among the bushes growing around it.

  Sam dropped his knapsack, walked up to the lean-to and went inside it. He came out with an axe and walked off into the trees.

  Matt sat on a log, unlaced his boots, pulled one off with a groan.

  Budders went into the lean-to and came out with a sack, tipped it upside down on the ground and sat by the ring of rocks that marked a fireplace, sorting through the contents. Among them was a doll, a small silver tray, a handkerchief, a knife, a watch and a lump of jewellery, all caught up and tangled. He picked up the doll, lifted its white dress up to its neck and turned it over, examining it.

  Bridget went over to the tree where Matt sat and stood next to him, conscious again, as she had been for days now, of where and how she stood, how she spoke. ‘How long are we going to be here?’

  ‘Got somewhere to be, have ya, Bridge-it?’ Henry called over. He had taken to saying her name: Bridge-it.

  The sound of Sam cutting wood came from the scrub below the lean-to.

  Matt got up, walked in bare feet back towards the river.

  ‘Don’t know about anybody else, but I could do with a feed and a drink. Make yourself bloody useful,’ Henry said to her, laughed.

  Budders put the doll down, shoved everything else back into the sack and took it up to the lean-to. On the way back he walked past Bridget deliberately close, grinned as he went. Henry crossed the river with the dogs, Budders following behind him.

  She took a few steps towards the shelter. It leaned up against a bare rock wall, the mountain rising so high above it that from the camp she couldn’t see its top. The lean-to was made with the boughs of trees, these covered in branches, all the leaves on them dead. At one end there was a door of kinds, an animal skin hanging from the bough above it.

  She pushed the skin back. Inside a smattering of light came through the branches and dead leaves that formed both the wall and roof. Water dripped down the black rock wall that the structure leaned against.

  ...

  After the robbery at the lake they had spent the night in the hollow of a huge tree. Matt had been standing so close to her that she could feel the pressure of his arm against hers. She’d wanted to move away but Budders was on the other side of her. Matt and Henry had argued about having a fire, Matt saying it was too risky; if there was a party after them the smoke would give them away. Henry said, ‘You worry more than a woman. There’s not going to be no one after us, and if there is, it won’t be for days.’ He said that they’d forced the men at the lake to drink so much rum they wouldn’t even wake until morning, and when they did they wouldn’t have a clue which way they’d gone. In the end smoke filled the cramped inside of the tree, the struggling fire impotent against the cold, and she sat shivering until Matt threw her a dry woollen coat, part of what they’d taken from the men at the lake. She took the damp one off and put this one on, the sleeves coming down over her hands, the wool full of the smell of a stranger. The men emptied out everything they had taken onto the ground. Salted pork; flour; tobacco; three candles; a tin, a few pennies in it; a leather pouch containing a letter and a brown curl of hair; a pipe, the letters RP engraved into the wood.

  Bridget eyed the pipe. ‘Can I have that?’ She had lost the one from Pigot’s; it had come out of her pocket somewhere.

  They all turned to look at her. Henry shrugged, looked at Matt. ‘Can she have it?’ Matt picked it up and chucked it to her.

  Bridget turned it over, inspected it, closed her hand over it.

  Henry passed a letter to Sam. ‘What’s it say?’ Sam read it slowly, tripped over the words.

  She put her hand out for it and all four of the men stared at her. She read it out. It was to dear Mr Price, about someone called Miss Lacy having died.

  Bridget sat and listened as the men talked. The men they had robbed were a government surveyor and some convicts in his service. ‘Mapping Van Diemen’s Land,’ Matt said. ‘Settlers and sheep up here soon. Stick a sheep on a pimple on a black’s arse if they thought it’d live there.’

  Their clothes steamed with the heat from their bodies and stank as they started to dry out. She felt Henry looking at her, kept her gaze on the ground. The smoke stung her eyes and the air was too thick, the silence too thick also. She stepped over Higgins, who lay across the entrance, and he stood up suddenly so that for a moment she straddled him and almost tripped over. Laughter came from inside the tree. She turned around to see Henry and Budders laughing. But Matt was not laughing. He was looking straight at her, his face serious and puzzled.

  ...

  In the morning Matt squatted near her feet, picked them up and looked at her heels. He pressed salt into them while her eyes watered. Then he cut two pieces off his skin blanket. ‘Put it over them.’

  They trudged through flat, cold country, the ground rocky and covered with clumps of dry grass, prickly heath and low bushes that grew between gums with twisted limbs, their trunks as fat as ten men. Snow had fallen, the day becoming strangely quiet, as though all the birds had vanished. The snow stopped and the sun broke through the thinning cloud but the wind had teeth. The men had been slower since the lake, were loaded like donkeys.

  ...

  A ridge. Miles and miles of wind and cold and space. No road. No houses. Nothing. All day traipsing across a plateau, shimmering and still, a dusting of bird calls. They went down into a gully and when they broke out of the darkness of the forest the mountain she had seen in the distance earlier in the morning was close enough that she could see the shine on the wet black rock, the thin cloud that swept over its peak. The next time they had come down into a valley they had come here, to this place.

  ...

/>   Henry went down a skinny track and came back with five bottles of rum. He and Sam and Budders had come back earlier with a good-sized roo and they’d eaten well. Sitting on a rock near the fire, Henry opened the lid of one of the bottles. He passed it to Sam, who swigged, passed it to Bridget. She watched Henry pack his pipe, asked for tobacco. He handed it to her across the fire, watched her as she dragged smoke into her lungs. Her knees were warm and her face was warm but behind her the cold curled against her back. Orange sparks from the fire raced off into the dark sky and smoke filled her eyes.

  By the time Henry opened the fifth bottle his speech was slurred and he was unsteady on the log where he sat. ‘What was her name? I can’t remember her bloody name now. From bloody Norwich, ugly as the day is long, but fuck me she could sing.’ He laughed. ‘She were just about old enough to be my mother.’

  ‘Did ya fuck her?’ Budders stood on the other side of the fire. He thrust his hips back and forth.

  ‘Jesus Christ, do you have to cheapen everything?’ Henry looked over at Budders, his eyes bleary. ‘It were pure bloody love. I’m telling you about pure love.’

  ‘Pure fucking,’ Budders said, and did a dance on the spot, his face almost splitting with excitement. ‘Pure fucking!’

  Henry shook his head. Next to Bridget, Sam was scribbling on a rock in front of him with a piece of coal.

  Budders sat down, picked up the doll that he’d had earlier. He grinned at Bridget, lifted the doll’s dress and started rubbing between its legs with his forefinger. Matt stepped around the fire, ripped the doll out of Budders’ hands and threw it into the bush.

  Budders stood up. ‘What you do that for?’

  ‘Get some manners,’ Matt snarled, sat back down.

  Henry drank. A bead of rum escaped into his beard. He passed the bottle to Budders, considered Sam sketching on the rock for a moment then moved on to Bridget. His gaze was foggy with drink. ‘So, what happened to you then? How’d you end up in good Van Diemen’s Land, Bridge-it?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Don’t flaming give me that bullshit.’ Henry shrugged, mimicking her. ‘What is that bullshit?’ He cocked his head towards Matt. ‘Why’s she do that all the time?’

  Matt drank from the bottle that Budders had just passed him, held it out to her. He wiped his mouth. ‘I don’t fucking know.’

  Henry turned back to Bridget. ‘Why do you do that?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘See? Did it again.’

  Matt ignored him.

  ‘Come on, aren’t you gunna tell me?’

  She tipped the bottle, felt the prickle of rum in the back of her throat. It heated her stomach. She drank again.

  ‘Come on,’ Henry said, ‘fucking tell me. Why’s everybody so fucking touchy? Eh? Fucking touchy this, touchy that. Why don’t you just fucking tell me?’

  Bridget looked up at him. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘What did I do? I hit a bloke who deserved it. When he fell a rock got in his way. Nothing to do with me. I didn’t put the rock there.’ He looked over at Matt, who was exhaling smoke, looking up at the dark top of the mountain. ‘Not like Matt over there. Smashed a bloke’s head in with a log of wood. Didn’t ya, Matt?’

  Matt slowly turned his head, landed his dark gaze on Henry. Then he stood up and walked away.

  No one spoke then, not even Henry.

  Budders was looking at her. She stood up. She wasn’t going to sit there with Budders there and Matt gone. As she walked away she heard Henry: ‘Going after her beau.’

  Bridget walked down the skinny track where Henry had gone earlier, stopped near a big tree, messy with dangling bark. Above her the top of the escarpment was visible in the pitch-black—the rock in the night blacker than the sky. The river was running fast, chatty as a drunk priest.

  She heard the sound near the river, someone coming through the bushes. The dark shape of a figure approached the tree where she stood. Matt. He stopped where he was a few yards away. Both of them stood still, the moon shining on one side of his face. He approached slowly, bark cracking under his boots. He stood close in front of her, his hand going into her stubby hair and gripping. His hand went to the inside of her leg and he shoved her dress away. He pushed her back and she was against the tree. Overhead a cloud smothered the moon.

  Marshall sat alone in the sitting room, blue evening light coming in through the muslin curtains, his ears full of the sound of crickets. Eleanor was unwell—or so she said—and was in bed already, and Jane was upstairs putting the children to bed. Marshall picked up the book that Jane had been reading earlier, opened it at the marked page.

  I wandered lonely as a cloud

  That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

  When all at once I saw a crowd,

  A host, of golden daffodils;

  Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

  Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

  Continuous as the stars that shine

  And twinkle on the milky way,

  They stretched in never-ending line

  Along the margin of a bay:

  Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

  Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

  The waves beside them danced; but they

  Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

  A poet could not but be gay,

  In such a jocund company:

  I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

  What wealth the show to me had brought:

  For oft, when on my couch I lie

  In vacant or in pensive mood,

  They flash upon that inward eye

  Which is the bliss of solitude;

  And then my heart with pleasure fills,

  And dances with the daffodils.

  He put the book down on the arm of the chair. What came to him was the smell of dry oak leaves after rain, so clear and certain that he may have been standing in his father’s garden right then, a thick carpet of shining leaves at his feet. Next to the oak tree there had been an acorn tree. He and Jane used to collect the little hard casings from the acorns and put them on the tops of their fingers, make little puppet shows with them. Marshall smiled and a small sound came out his nose. But the feeling that was left when the smile faded was a terrible emptiness.

  Outside the window a veil of darkness settled over the land and for a while everything seemed to pause, entranced by its whisper-black touch.

  Marshall sat in the dark. Then he hauled himself up out of the chair, closed the door to the sitting room behind him and went slowly up the stairs.

  Bridget was so itchy she’d scratched until her skin welted and bled. She pulled all the animal furs out of the lean-to, dragged them to the river and dumped them in. Later she threw them over tree branches to dry. Matt had shown her how to make a pair of soft boots from roo skin and the skin on her heels was finally less raw. He took her other boots and fixed the gaps between the leather and the sole, sewed them up with sinew.

  Budders sat down next to her by the fire. She adjusted her position to move away from him. He had been watching her. Slits for eyes, always following her. Matt watching him watching her. Now Budders sat with his arm around Higgins, who tried to lick his face. He grabbed at the dog’s flicking pink tongue with his fingers. As he got hold of its tongue the dog yelped and Matt glanced at Budders. He put his foot on a branch that was lying next to the fire, pulled one end of it. It cracked. He put the half he held on the fire, looked up, straight at Budders. ‘Leave the dog alone,’ he said, his voice rougher and darker than she’d heard it.

  There were two tracks off the clearing—a faint one that led to the river, and the one she’d gone down the other night. She followed that one again now, past the scraggly tree. A few yards from where it stopped there was a hollow tree, the opening covered with a flap of sewn-together skins. She pushed it aside. Inside there were more skins over the top of a crate, three caskets, two full sacks, a bayonet leaning against one of them, and four more guns
sitting on top of the crate.

  She dropped the flap, stepped back.

  In town there’d been stories about bushrangers—they’d killed settlers and and a soldier. But there’d been stories about everything.

  Now Henry’s laugh came from up near the fire, the realness of it echoing off the escarpment.

  ...

  As the sun skulked away behind the mountain and the camp was taken over by shade, Henry produced bottles of a stringent-tasting drink. ‘Cider,’ he said, when she nearly spat it out.

  ‘Blacks get it. His black woman showed him how to get it,’ Budders said. ‘She were the one what brung us up here.’

  ‘That she was,’ Henry said, drank. ‘That she was.’

  Bridget looked over at Matt. He didn’t say anything, didn’t look up.

  ...

  In the morning Bridget came out of the lean-to to find Henry, Sam and Budders asleep by the dead fire, their blankets over them. On the ground near them were three empty bottles, a pipe lying in the dirt next to one of them. Henry’s feet were near a squarish rock—the rock that Sam had been drawing on again. Sketched in charcoal, clear enough to make out what it was: a figure with a rope around its neck. A man hanging. She looked over at Sam who had just sat up, now rubbed his face.

  ...

  Bridget picked her way to the river and put one foot into the freezing water, pulled it back out. She could feel Matt’s gaze on her back from where he lay under a tree near the bank. He’d brought her down here to a deep bend.

  She crossed her arms over her breasts and looked up the river towards the camp.

  Matt was propped up on his elbows. ‘They’re not going to come.’

  She gasped as the cold sucked the air from her lungs, scrambled back to the bank.

  ...

  Matt sat on a rock at the edge of the river, his boots off, his trousers rolled to the middle of his shin. He’d hacked his beard short and now he held a razor close to the side of his face, the bottom half of which was lathered with soap. She sat on a rock a couple of yards from him, watched the soapy hair fall into the water, a rainbow-coloured slick forming around the clods as they washed away.