Grace’s hand tensed around Dalton’s wrist. She glared until Edward gave up and stumbled out to the wood yard to join in the cricket match. She let her hand fall. “He’s just trying to stir you up. Don’t give him what he wants.”
“Stay away from him. He’s a bastard.”
“Course he is. But his pa is paying us and we was lucky to get any work at all.” Her eyes followed the children as they raced after the ball.
“Those kids,” said Dalton. “It’s not good for you to be around them.”
Grace looked at her feet. “I’m fine,” she said, though the drink in her blood sent a tremor through her voice. “Porter’s kids ain’t nothing like Violet.”
“Let’s leave,” he said suddenly.
Grace sighed. “Don’t be mad. Just tell me what’s happened. Is it Edward? Does he know something?”
Dalton shook his head. “These people are just scum.”
“That they may be, but they’re the only way I got of making a life for Nora.”
“The candlesticks on the mantle. They’re worth a fortune.”
Grace glared at him. “No. We ain’t thieves.” She sighed wearily. “You said you’d try and fit in, Alexander. This don’t seem like trying to me.”
*
Grace left the house with a list of medicines to fetch from the apothecary. The wind was icy but the sky a vibrant blue. Her boots crunched on the path, her hair whipping around her cheeks. The days were growing longer and the morning frosts beginning to melt in great bursts of sun. She was craving the spring. Rebirth. A reminder it was possible to start again.
She pulled her cloak tightly around her, savouring the stillness of the walk down the hill into town. After three months in the wilderness, the constant bustle of the house was exhausting. In the two weeks she’d been with the Porters, she’d worked harder than she ever had. Harder even than those first few months with Charlotte Harris when she’d been desperate to prove herself indispensable. She’d been exhausted at the end of every day then too, but it was a mental exhaustion— remembering all the quirks and etiquette of the wealthy. With the Porters, it was purely physical. As the only housemaid, her list of tasks seemed unending— fifteen-hour days of scrubbing, blacking and sweeping. Most days, she welcomed the busyness, the aches in her body every night. It kept her from counting how many months and years she would need to scrub, black and sweep until she had enough to return to England. Kept her from focusing on all she had lost.
She bought the medicines for Mrs Porter and walked back down the sludge of the high street. Suddenly a little girl darted across the road, blonde plaits streaming out behind her. Grace stopped breathing. She dropped the parcel, the bottles thudding at her feet.
Violet.
XIX
Grace leapt over the bottles and ran. “Violet!”
The girl disappeared around the corner. Grace tore down the side street, slipping, stumbling through the mud.
There, at the bottom of the street. Blonde hair. Brown dress, white pinny.
Violet darted out from between two warehouses and into the filthy grog shop at the end of the alley. Grace rattled the door. Pounded on the window. An older woman with a long nose and narrow eyes poked her head out the door. She reeked of tobacco.
“Ain’t nothing for sale today. Coppers are on the prowl. They heard my whisky comes from something other than an honest source. Told ’em they’re wrong of course. This is a fine law-abiding establishment. But I’m shutting up til I can get rid of it anyway.”
“Did you see a little girl?” Grace asked breathlessly. “In a brown dress?”
“Ain’t seen no one.”
“She came in here.” Grace tried to elbow her way through the door. “Let me in. Please.”
“No chance, missy. You could be working for them coppers for all I know.”
“I ain’t working for no-one. I saw my Violet come in here! Let me through!”
“You’re mistaken.” The woman threw her weight against the door and it slammed, narrowly missing Grace’s fingers. She pounded on the glass but the woman had disappeared. Grace’s heart pounded. Was Violet truly alive? Was this woman hiding her? She didn’t know whether to cry with happiness or grief.
She crossed the alley and peered up at the tavern. The narrow building was nestled between two small cottages; one with broken windows that looked to be abandoned. Grace slunk down the lane at the side of the building. She rattled the back door. Locked.
The barmaid threw open the door. “Get the hell out of here,” she hissed. “We ain’t got your girl. Now bugger off before I get my pistol.”
Grace hurried back down the alley and hid between two crooked huts, keeping her eyes glued to the tavern.
As it grew dark, handfuls of men sidled up to the front door, to be shooed away by the barmaid. Some drifted away quietly, others hurled abuse, but the doors remained locked. One man pulled a bottle from his coat pocket and held it up to his friends. They howled with delight and stumbled down the road, laughing and passing it between them. Grace held her breath as they passed. She pressed her back against the wall of the hut, trying to hide without losing her view of the tavern.
One of the men caught her eye and grinned, revealing a gap where his front teeth had been. “And here I thought my night was ruined.” He dug into his pocket and held out a sixpence.
“I’m sorry,” Grace said tensely. “You’re mistaken.”
“Am I? Ain’t that a shame.” He pressed his arm against the wall to block her path. He stank of piss and cheap booze. Grace’s heart began to race. She tried to duck beneath his arm. He snatched her wrist and dragged her back sharply, digging a hand inside her cloak. Her knee flew into his groin. The man grunted in pain and Grace shoved her way past, stumbling in the mud. She scrambled to her feet and ran.
Footsteps crunched behind her. Curses and drunken laughter. She kept sprinting towards the lamps of the high street. A rough hand snatched her arm.
“Grace.”
She stumbled into Alexander’s chest and gulped down her breath. She looked over her shoulder. The men caught sight of her with Alexander and dispersed back down the alley.
“What are you doing here?” she asked breathlessly.
Alexander stared after the men, his eyes black. “I’ve been looking for you. Mrs Porter said you never came back from town. That’s a bad street. Don’t go down there again.”
“I saw her. I saw Violet.”
“What?”
“She’s in the tavern. The barmaid has her, I’m sure of it. She’s hiding her.”
Alexander paused. “Why would she do that?”
“How should I know?”
He took her arm. “Come on now, let’s go back to the Porters’.”
“Are you mad? I ain’t going nowhere! I have to find her!”
He hesitated. “It wasn’t her. How could it be?”
“I don’t know! But it was!”
Alexander held her shoulders. “Listen to me. Whoever you saw, it wasn’t Violet. I’m sure of it.”
“How do you know that?”
He dropped his hands and sighed. “Because it doesn’t make any sense for her to be here.”
“I know what I saw.” She wiped her muddy hands on her skirt began to walk towards the alley.
“You need to sleep.”
“How could I sleep? Violet is out there. That awful woman’s got her. I got to go back and keep watch.”
“Then I’ll come with you,” said Alexander. “You shouldn’t be down there alone.”
*
They sat with their backs against a cottage fence, eyes on the darkened tavern. The lamps on the main street did little to light the shadows. Dalton blinked hard to fight off a wave of exhaustion. Beside him, Grace was sitting up on her knees, eyes alert, squinting through the darkness.
He had to tell her the truth about the girl. Owed her the truth. But he couldn’t stand to think what it would do to her. There was a fragile peace between them he co
uldn’t bear to overturn.
He knew she needed his innocence. Needed the image of an easy death for Violet. No violence, no suffering. Just a dream-filled sleep, surrounded by coloured birds and a glittering river. An end for Violet that would make her sorrow a little easier to carry.
He didn’t want Grace to crawl through her days drowning in guilt and regret. There was too much life in her for that. He couldn’t bear to watch her fade into the same darkness he woke to each morning. Her pain made him ache. He’d forgotten he was capable of empathy. He felt agonisingly human. A part of him longed for that wordless void he had existed in for the last decade.
When the sky began to lighten, he said: “She’s not coming out. Even if she’s in there, we’ll not find her from here.”
Grace stood and whacked at the mud caked to her skirt. “Then we’ve got to break in.”
“We can’t do that. You’ll lose your job. You don’t want that, aye?” He clambered to his feet. “We’ll come back tonight when the tavern is open. If she’s here, we’ll find her then.” He caught a flicker of hope in her eyes and hated himself for it. He put a gentle hand to her back. “Come on now. Let’s go back to the Porters’.”
The moment supper finished, Grace grabbed her cloak and charged from the house. Her eyes were red-rimmed with sleeplessness. Her food had gone untouched.
They traipsed into town without speaking. Laughter and yellow light from the grog shop spilled onto the road.
Dalton followed Grace inside. The air was thick and smoky. A fiddler played in the corner, accompanied by laughter and the clink and thud of glasses. Red-lipped women with breasts spilling from cinched corsets sashayed across the room. Dalton looked away, both aroused and oddly intimidated. His every sense felt heightened, overloaded. He fought the urge to run back to the empty street. Instead, he shoved his way towards the bar. He needed a drink.
Grace gripped his arm tightly as though she knew he was contemplating escape. “I’ve got to get into the rooms above the tavern.” She narrowed her eyes at the barmaid. “We’ll wait by the counter until that witch is out of the way.”
At the bar sat Howell, watching the working girls with interest. Dalton cursed under his breath.
Grace glanced at him. “What?”
“Howell. Porter’s government man.”
“So what? He’s nothing. Ain’t even supposed to be here. We ought to report him.”
Howell turned, his face breaking into a grin. He slid off his stool and ambled towards them. “Well now. The silent man.”
“Leave us be,” said Dalton.
Howell clapped him on the back. “No need to be like that. Let’s all be civil and have a drink, shall we?”
The barmaid glared as Grace approached. “You again. Thought I told you to bugger off.”
Dalton slammed a coin onto the counter. “We’re paying customers.” The woman eyed him warily before sliding the money into her apron pocket and handing over two glasses of ale. Dalton took a long gulp. Weak and watery. He longed for the numbing effect of Porter’s brandy.
Three young men joined them at the bar. They wore holey trousers and stained shirts. Their hands and nails were grimy. “Got good news for you, Howell,” said one. He opened the package in his fist to reveal a woolly cloud of tobacco. “New crop’s ready for sale.”
Howell grinned. “Brilliant. I bet my mate here would like a sample.”
The man shoved the tobacco under Dalton’s nose. “Fresh picked. Best in the colony. We’ll do you a good deal.”
Dalton turned away.
Howell gulped his ale. “It’s good stuff. Billy over there brought the seeds all the way from Africa. We been growing it out by the creek. Selling it to the toffs. It’s made us rich men.”
Dalton snorted. “Shame you’ve not got the freedom to use it.”
“That it is.” Howell clapped him on the back. “But you see, silent man, I’m inspired by you. You ought to be swinging. And yet here you are, swanning around this bar with a pretty girl on your arm and Porter’s money in your pocket. You make me think a life sentence may not always be as long as it seems.”
Dalton kept his eyes averted. Howell thumped his arm and nodded towards a blonde man on the opposite side of the tavern.
“That there’s Jim Berry,” he told Dalton. “Serving his sentence in the bloody police force.”
Berry was tall and thin with trousers that reached his ankles. He’d adopted an odd lean against the table while one of the working girls played with the buttons on his coat.
“Happening all the time out here. People started whinging about the bushrangers. Asked them down in Hobart to send us more police. Instead we got Jim Berry.” Howell nudged Grace, who was doing her best to ignore the men. “D’you ever hear such a thing, missy? Police force full of bloody lags.”
Grace gave Howell a fleeting glance, then turned back to watch the door behind the counter.
Howell laughed. “What you reckon, Mr Dalton? Ever fancy yourself as a copper?”
A shout and clatter of glasses rose from the men at the back of the room. The barmaid cursed and shuffled out from behind the counter. Seizing her chance, Grace leapt from her stool and darted through the door behind the bar. Dalton chased her up a creaking timber staircase to a dim, low-ceilinged hallway.
“Violet!” She rattled and thumped on each of the doors. The steps thudded and Howell appeared behind them.
“What in hell is she doing?” Behind Howell stood one of the working girls from the bar. She was tall and broad shouldered, her curves accentuated by a tight bodice and dirty blue dress. Yellow hair was piled on top of her head, loose pieces clinging to her cheeks and neck. She looked to Grace and Dalton with creased, flinty eyes. “What do you want?”
“My little girl, Violet. Where is she?”
Howell clamped a hand around the top of Grace’s arm. “I’ll get rid of her, Maryann. The little dishclout can’t hold her drink.”
“Let go of her,” hissed Dalton.
The woman snorted. “Too late for you to start being helpful, Daniel Howell.” She turned to Grace. “Only girl in there is Emma. My daughter."
“You’re lying. Open the door.”
Maryann sighed and pulled a key from inside her bodice. Grace pushed her way into the room. Maryann stepped back to allow Dalton and Howell inside.
The bedsit smelled of tobacco and bodies. A lamp hissed on a crooked table. Blankets were strewn across the mattress in the centre, a crib pushed against one wall.
A little girl was asleep on a pallet by the hearth, her blonde hair in two messy plaits. A rag doll lay at her side. Her face was unmistakably Howell’s.
Maryann folded her arms. “That who you saw?”
Grace stared at the girl for a long time. Her eyes glistened. Finally, she cleared her throat. “I’m sorry. I thought she were someone else.”
*
Grace walked back to the Porters’ house in silence. She sat on her bed and hugged her knees, without bothering to remove her cloak or boots. The loss of Violet felt raw.
She reached beneath her mattress and pulled out her pouch of money. Six shillings. Wouldn’t get her back to Hobart Town, let alone London. She piled the coins into a stack on the mattress. They shimmered in the glow of her lamp.
She missed her girls so desperately. Longed to hold them to her, one little head pressed into each of her shoulders. She’d never hold them both that way again. Violet was lost forever and each day she felt Nora slipping further away too. Even if by miracle she made it back London, where could she go? And to what future? No man would have a barren woman for a wife. Was she to leave Nora in the hands of her gin-soaked mother while she went out at dawn each morning to work in the factories? Sell her body like the mother of Howell’s daughter?
She’d trawled through the same arguments with herself when Harris’s child was growing inside her. They’d led her back to the blue house. Without Harris, she had nothing. But the blue house was gone. Her relationship with
Harris had rotted and crumbled. How was it possible, she wondered, to have such love for the twins and such hatred for their father?
She’d heard love and hate were two sides of the same coin. Never understood such a thing until James Harris. She’d loved him with a passion that went deeper than her desire for the good life. She had drawn close to him for his wealth and the security it offered, but she knew even if he were the poorest man on earth, she’d have followed him to the slums and been happy just to wake up beside him.
Once, however fleetingly, he’d loved her too. She was sure of it. If he truly were a poor man they might have been together for real, without the critical eyes of society. It had been a thrill at first; waiting until the house was silent to sneak into his bedroom. Curtseying by day, undressing him by night. But she’d learned quickly that being in love made you want to share. She longed to tell the world she fell asleep with James Harris’s lips in her hair. But she would never have what Charlotte had had: that freedom to walk on his arm, to welcome him home with a kiss.
She’d believed Harris had hated the secrecy as much as she had. Believed he longed for the relative freedom Van Diemen’s Land would bring. But with the thrill of the secret ripped away, she saw their relationship for what it truly was. Master and concubine. She’d been no more than a toy to warm the cold sheets left by Charlotte’s death.
A knock at the door made her start.
“Grace?”
“Go away, Alexander. What if someone sees you here? What will they think?”
“I don’t care.”
“Well I do care!” She waited for his footsteps to disappear down the hall. Instead he opened the door and sat beside her on the bed.
“Go away,” she said, not looking at him. And then: “What do you want?”
“I’m worried for you.”
Grace stared at her coin stack. “You must think me a right fool.”
“You’re not a fool. You’re grieving. And you think her death was your fault.” Alexander’s voice was husky. “But it wasn’t.”
Forgotten Places Page 15