Forgotten Places

by Johanna Craven

  He saw it then; what life would be like without her. Empty. Silent. Full of death instead of life. Just him, the bush and memories of dead men.

  “You can’t go,” he said.

  She raised her eyebrows. “I thought you’d be glad to be rid of me.”

  Did she not remember the walls of trees and the freezing rain and the earth that sinks and rises with each step? Did she not remember the hunger? The pain in every muscle of her body? He had to admire her optimism, he supposed. Thinking she could flit across this savage island like she was crossing the street. But he couldn’t let her go.

  She didn’t look at him. Perhaps she could see the foolishness of her plan. Perhaps she was afraid his eyes would reflect it back at her.

  His voice was husky. “Where will you take her?”

  She hesitated. “I’ll try again for the northern settlements. I know now I came too far west. I’ll not make the same mistake.” She swallowed hard. “I know you’re thinking I’m mad to try again. But you don’t know her father. He’s become a violent man. I can’t bear to imagine how he’s treating Nora without Violet and me there.” She traced the stick through the mud, her confidence gone. “I tried to get them both out. I tried so hard. Violet, she weren’t sleeping. She hated Hobart Town. When I came to get them, she was already awake. Had her pinny on quick smart. But I couldn’t get Nora out of bed. Harris came back from the gambling houses early. Me and Violet had to run or none of us would have got away.”

  Dalton sat on the tree stump and poked at the fire. “Is that really what happened, Grace? You just left one of your precious girls behind?”

  Her blue eyes flashed. “You wasn’t there, Alexander! You don’t know!” She bent the stick between her hands. It snapped loudly and she hurled the pieces into the scrub. “He threw me into New Norfolk. Do you know what that is? Do you? No? An asylum for the insane. He told them I was mad. And for what? For daring to stand up to him when he became violent! For not standing by and letting a man treat me however he wishes!”

  Dalton said nothing. He was too out of practice with conversation to think of anything that might calm her.

  “You can’t imagine the things they done to me in that place. The cells and the water pipes and the oil forced down my throat til I was sick. I know how lucky I was to have gotten out without being caught. If Harris had found me in the house that night he would have thrown me straight back in. The colony thinks us married, so he has ultimate power over me. Any man can have his wife committed if he got enough money. I tried to tell them the truth at New Norfolk but the bastard just told them it was part of my affliction. I saw the true side of him when we came to this place. I got to go back and get Nora away from him.”

  She’d be lost in an hour. Dead in a week.

  “You don’t even have any oats left,” said Dalton.

  “You’ll give me food and water won’t you? And I’ve thought it through. This river leads to the Derwent, don’t it? I can follow it back to Hobart Town.”

  His chest began to shake with humourless laughter.

  “You think this funny?”

  “The Derwent will lead you straight into New Norfolk. You want to be thrown back in the asylum? Although if you ask me, if you think you can get back to England with a pocket of bread, the madhouse is where you belong.”

  Grace glared at him. “I didn’t ask you, did I?” She folded her arms. “I preferred you when you were silent.”

  Dalton batted the two charred loaves out of the fire. How many times did he have to tell her not to put it on the flames?

  She kicked furiously at one of the burned loaves. There was such desperation in her eyes, he thought she’d charge back to Hobart then and there. He held her shoulders.

  “They’ll catch you if you follow the river. And if they get you back in the madhouse, they’ll never let you out.”

  She shrugged out of his grip and charged down the path towards the river.

  Don’t be like that, now. I gave you a chance to leave. You ought to have taken it.

  He was sure somewhere deep inside, she always knew the girl wasn’t coming back.

  XII

  Hobart Town Gazette

  Friday 6th August 1824

  ‘Pearce is desirous to state that this party, which consisted of himself, Matthew Travers, Robert Greenhill, Bill Kennerly, Alexander Dalton, John Mather and two more named Bodenham and Brown, escaped from Macquarie Harbour … taking with them provisions which afforded each man about two ounces of food per day, for a week.

  Afterwards they lived eight or nine days on the tops of tea-tree and peppermint, which they boiled in tin pots to extract the juice. Having ascended a hill, in sight of Macquarie Harbour, they struck a light and made two fires. Kennerly, Brown and Dalton placed themselves at one fire, the rest of the party at the other; those three separated, privately, from the party on account of Greenhill having already said that lots must be cast for someone to be put to death.’

  She walked to the river.

  Violet? Are you there, angel?

  How could she stop hoping for a miracle?

  A bird chirruped above her head. She sat on the riverbank. Another five days walk through the mountains. Her stomach turned at the thought. It would be different this time, she told herself. Easier. She’d have food and water. No one chasing her.

  No one to carry.

  She felt an awful sense that she was abandoning Violet. Leaving her lost in this wild land, so far from everything she knew.

  A flicker of white in the river. Grace stood. A piece of leather. Not Violet’s. Her heart lurched with sadness. She’d take anything; a torn piece of dress, a thread of hair. Any clue, any fragment of Violet. Any meagre reminder that she’d once been here.

  The belt had snagged itself on a rock. Grace picked up a thin branch and lay on her front to pull it from the water. It swung, dripping, on the end of the stick like a resigned, weary fish. She ran her fingertips along the stiff leather. An ammunition belt? She’d never seen Alexander wear this. Perhaps he wasn’t as hidden as he believed. He would be furious if he knew another person had been here. She had seen that anger. The enormous gash down the middle of the table was a constant reminder. Still, it was best he knew. She rolled up the belt and carried it in her fist.

  When she arrived back at the hut, Alexander had laid strips of smoked meat on the table. Steam was rising from the boiler.

  “You’re going back?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “When?”

  “I’ll leave in the morning.”

  “And you’ll not change your mind.”

  “No.”

  “Eat then. You’ll need strength.” He poured the boiling water into two cannikins filled with wattle seeds. Passed one to Grace. She wrapped a hand around it, the other clinging to the belt in her lap. Alexander sat opposite her.

  “And you?” she said finally. “You’ll stay here forever? Die alone in your hut and vanish into the earth?”

  He nodded at the strips of meat. “Eat. I’ll not let you go if you’ve nothing in your stomach.”

  She bit off a mouthful of meat. It was tough and tasteless. She washed it down with a mouthful of tea. “You don’t wish for a little more from your life than to grow old and die out in the wilderness?”

  “That’s more than I could have hoped for. Once, I thought I’d die out here as a young man.”

  “Well,” said Grace, “I think you want more, but you’ll not admit it. Just surviving ain’t enough for a person. They got to have a purpose.”

  “Perhaps surviving is my purpose. Perhaps we don’t all have great dreams of revenge.”

  “Revenge?”

  “That’s why you want the other girl, aye? To take revenge against her father for throwing you in the madhouse?”

  Grace stared into her tea. “No,” she said finally. But she felt an ache of truth to Alexander’s words. She squeezed the damp belt, desperate to change the subject. “At the river, I…” She put do
wn her cup. A faint blurriness on the edge of her vision. She blinked hard.

  “You what? Are you well, Grace?”

  “I don’t feel right.” A sharp pain seized her stomach. Sweat prickled her face. She threw down the belt, rushed outside and vomited in the clearing. Alexander followed, holding out the canteen. She pushed it away, gasping. “What d’you give me? What was in that tea?”

  “Nothing. It was the same tea you’ve been drinking since you came to me. You must have eaten some bad meat.”

  “We’ve been eating the same meat. Why ain’t you sick?”

  “I’ve been out here longer. My body’s used to it.”

  “You poisoned me.” Another violent pain in her stomach. She dropped to her knees in the kaleidoscope sunlight.

  “Drink some water.” Alexander knelt beside her and pressed the canteen to her lips. Water drizzled down her throat. She coughed it back up, along with what was left inside her. Her heart raced.

  “What d’you give me? Am I going to die?”

  “Of course not. It’s a little bad meat, is all.” His voice was distorted and distant.

  “This ain’t bad meat.” She tried to stand, but her legs gave way beneath her. Trees swung in front of her eyes. Alexander carried her into the hut and laid her on his sleeping pallet. The heat of the fire was unbearable. She felt his fingers at the buttons down her chest. She thrashed her arms. “No! Stop! Get away from me!” She tried to force away the heaviness in her eyelids.

  Alexander placed his hands on her cheeks. “Grace, calm down now. You messed up your dress. I just want to clean it for you.”

  The softness of his voice, his lilting accent made her muscles heavy again. She dropped her arms and felt him open the buttons of her dress, sliding her out of it. She shivered in her shift, though her skin was damp with sweat and her cheeks burned.

  “I got to go. Nora…”

  “Not today,” Alexander said gently. “Not today.”

  Grace felt her cloak being laid over her body. A damp cloth against her face. The chalky smell of the fire, the hiss of his breathing. In and out. In and out.

  *

  Pink gill mushrooms.

  You ought to have been more careful, Grace. We live in a vicious land, where nature is against us and the men are animals.

  He knew of those mushrooms and the way they messed with your body as well as your head. He’d swallowed some early on, gambling with his survival on the edge of starvation. Had spent the afternoon curled up beside the river, puking out his insides and dreaming he was chained at the legs to a string of men.

  Where were they taking her? Back to the asylum? Her eyelids were fluttering as she rolled about, pulling the sleeping pallet to shreds, groaning, clutching her stomach.

  Yes, I know. I’m sorry. The pain will pass.

  In a moment of lucidity, she opened her eyes and said: “I know you put something in my tea, Alexander. Why?”

  She could have come up with a thousand reasons if she’d tried hard enough. Let her mind wander and think of how he did it to save her from Harris, from New Norfolk, the bush. Or did it out of jealousy, or love, as if he were capable of such things, any more than a dog that wags its tail and slobbers over the hand that feeds it.

  “Why kill me?” she said.

  Oh no, she had it so wrong. He didn’t do it to rid himself of her; he did it so he’d never lose her. So he’d never be alone again.

  She tossed and groaned and wretched into the pot he had placed beside her bed. Then she fell still, lying on her back with her cloak tangled around her legs. Dalton dampened the cloth and ran it over her face. He slid it down her neck and across her white shoulders. One, two, three buttons at the top of her shift. He undid them carefully and drew the cloth over her chest. He rested his palm between her breasts, feeling her heart beat beneath his hand. Feeling her rib cage rise and fall. Feeling her life flood into him.

  As night closed in, he crawled across the hut and threw a log on the fire. He noticed something white lying beneath the table. A bandoleer. He had worn one himself many times. His heart quickened.

  “Grace,” he hissed, shaking her shoulder. “Where did you find this?”

  She rolled onto her side, mumbled a stream of rubbish and batted him away. The belt was damp. Had she found it in the river? The rivers flowed downstream to Hobart Town. This could not have come from the settlements. The bastards must have been here. Searching. For which one of them?

  He stepped into clearing and squinted in the dark for any signs of life. The bush was still. He could hear the river hissing in the distance. Could hear his own breath.

  He took a step, then froze as twigs crackled beneath his boots. The noise seemed to radiate across the forest. He felt a pang of deep loneliness. He peered through the door at Grace, but she was asleep on her side; her flushed face lit by the fire.

  Was there someone out there to see their light? To see the glow of silver smoke? Dalton pushed aside the bed of leaves on the floor of the clearing and dug up a handful of earth. He hurried inside and tossed it on the fire.

  Blackness. Silence. The kind of stillness that falls over a place touched by death. From deep in his memories, Dalton heard Pearce’s mournful lilt, singing to break the silence. So real he could swear the men were sitting in his clearing.

  Ma’am dear, I remember

  When the summer time was past and gone

  When coming through the meadow,

  Sure she swore I was the only one

  That ever she could love

  The saddest, most desolate sound he ever heard. A lone man’s voice in the middle of an empty world.

  Dalton wrapped himself around Grace’s limp body. He let the blackness engulf him.

  On the edge of sleep, he saw them. Seven men in convict slops, their faces as strained and desperate as they had been the last time Dalton had seen them. Hovering in his hut where the fireplace should have been. He scrabbled into sitting, yanked back to consciousness. His breath was hard and fast. He fumbled in the darkness for the flint and lit the end of a log. Had he been dreaming?

  He felt watched. He stood and whirled around in the flickering light, half expecting to see a little girl with plaits and a dirty pinny. But no. There was a heaviness here that did not come from a ghost girl.

  A dream. Just a dream. A memory crawled from the wilds of his subconscious.

  His ma, she’d believed in these fantasy tales, God rest her soul. Fairies and ghosts and otherworlds. But not Dalton. He didn’t believe in anything anymore.

  Suddenly he wanted to be anywhere but this forest. Tie him to the triangle. Throw him in chains into the stinking hold of the Caledonia. Anywhere but here, where the past hung so thick in the air.

  For eleven years, he’d managed to block out the things that had gone on in this forest. But Grace was right. There was something about this place. The threads of gold light, the cavernous shadows, they trapped memories. Imprinted whispers and screams in the atmosphere.

  His hut felt unfamiliar. The table he had carved with his own hand was suddenly strange, deformed. That sound? What in hell was that sound? And the grotesque shadows made by the firelight; how had he never noticed those before?

  He blew out the flame and curled up close to Grace.

  You wouldn’t leave me, would you? Not alone with these men.

  But oh the false and cruel one,

  For all that, she’s left me

  Here alone for to die.

  XIII

  Hobart Town Gazette

  Friday 6th August 1824

  ‘Pearce does not know, personally, what became of Kennerly, Brown and Dalton. He heard that Kennerly and Brown reached Macquarie Harbour, where they soon died, and that Dalton perished on his return to that settlement.’

  It was two days before Grace managed to crawl from her sleeping pallet. The sky was vast and colourless, the bush dripping. Winter had descended on them while she was curled up with her fevered thoughts. Her eyes were cloudy and her
back ached from days on the sleeping pallet. When she stepped onto the wet undergrowth, her feet turned to ice. Alexander was staring into the fire, the flames hissing and spluttering. He stood when he saw her and hurried to her side.

  Grace pulled her cloak around her tightly. “I need to wash. What have you done with my clothes?”

  “I packed them away for you. In the locker.” He hurried inside and returned with a bundle of grey and white in his arms. “I’m glad you’re well. I was lonely without you. Stay here by the fire. I’ll bring you some water.”

  “No. I can walk.” She snatched her clothes and set off towards the river, her feet sinking into the damp earth.

  Alexander reached for her elbow.

  “I don’t have the strength to leave,” she said bitterly, “if that’s what you’re worried about. Go away. I don’t want you near me.”

  She walked to the river on unsteady legs. Untied her cloak and placed it on a mossy log with her dress and petticoats. She stepped carefully into the shallows and splashed her face, her arms, trying to wash away the grime of sickness. She plunged her head into the icy brown water and felt awake, alive again. From now on she would make her own tea, cook her own food. And when her strength returned, she would go for Nora.

  She’d become a game to Alexander.

  Leave now. No, stay forever.

  Was Violet part of the game too?

  She hurriedly pushed away such thoughts. How could she bear to think them when she was stranded alone in the forest with him?

  A loud crackle from the woods.

  “I told you to leave me alone.” Grace climbed from the river and stepped into her dress, glancing edgily over her shoulder. She pulled on her shawl and cloak. Glimpsed a shock of red through the trees. A tall, broad shouldered marine pushed his way towards her. Grace stumbled backwards. The soldier held a hand out in front of him, as though she was a wild animal he was trying to tame.