‘This is not my doing!’ Mama cried, rising to confront Barton across the table. She had forgotten, I think, that her children were still in the room; we had not obeyed her, partly out of concern and partly out of fear. (To move would have been to attract our stepfather’s notice.) ‘They blame me as much as they blame you!’ she screeched. ‘Look! Look at the letters! Read them!’ Drawing a crumpled sheet of paper from her pocket, she threw it at him. ‘They threaten me! In the name of my own children, they would have me cast onto the street!’ Another paper missile followed the first. ‘And you accuse me of conspiring with them? How can you say that when I work and toil and beg and you do nothing to help us, nothing! You are the villain here, you have deprived us, Berry is right to accuse you—’
At this point the storm broke. Barton had caught both sheets of paper and crushed them in his fist. He brandished that same fist as he leapt towards my mother, shouting. But the table intervened. Forced to skirt its edge, he was slower than he might have been, and my mother was granted a few extra seconds. She used them to pick up a chair, which she used as a shield, jabbing at him with its legs.
‘No! Mama!’
James was screaming. Emily and Louisa were wrapped in each other’s arms. Seeing Barton wrench the chair from my mother’s grip, I cast around me. There were butter knives on the table, but I could not reach them. Barton was in the way.
‘Whore! Filthy whore!’ he yelled, pitching the chair aside like a dishcloth. When my mother turned to run, he grabbed the back of her neck with one hand, forcing her to her knees. Then he tried to stuff the letters into her mouth. I saw her clawing at his face and arms. I saw him thrusting the ball of paper into her throat, choking her.
‘You can eat your words now!’ he bellowed.
Bent double, Barton presented me with a wide expanse of buff-coloured corduroys stretched tight across his nether regions— which protruded between the split skirt of his coat. His pistol, I saw, was shoved deep into the pocket of this coat.
I plucked it from its place of concealment almost without thinking.
‘Let her go!’ I shrieked. ‘Let her go or I’ll shoot you!'
Let her go!’ Let her go or I’ll shoot you!
Everyone froze. For several seconds, the only movement was the heaving of my mother’s shoulders as she coughed. Slowly, Barton turned his head to look at me.
Any reasonable man would have raised his hands in alarm. There can be nothing, surely, more likely to cause terror than the sight of an eleven-year-old girl wielding a pistol. Of course, I had no notion of how to shoot the thing. In those days, before the coming of revolvers, the firing of a pistol was not easily accomplished. Nevertheless, when primed and loaded, even a heavy, old-fashioned weapon like my stepfather’s constituted an awful threat.
And the gun was primed. I knew that quite well, having listened to Barton proudly boasting about his good eye, his quick hand, and the fact that his pistol was always ready for use. ‘There’s none will get the drop on me,’ he would say, polishing the handsome wooden butt and long, gleaming barrel.
Now that same barrel was pointed directly at him, wobbling in my unsteady hands.
> ‘Let—let her go,’ I stammered, hardly able to breathe.
And Barton obeyed, though not for the right reason. He dropped my mother only to spring at me, bawling incoherently, his eyes wild and his teeth gnashing. Out of sheer fright I pulled the trigger. I made no conscious decision. My finger simply moved.
But the gun was not cocked.
Nothing happened.
‘Devil!’ howled Barton, and struck me across the face. I lost my grip on the weapon, which he snatched away from me. Though I hit the floor, his pistol did not.
The blow left me momentarily deaf. I could not hear what foul imprecations Barton was jabbering as he raised the gun and cocked it. For an instant that seemed as long as an aeon, I looked down its dark barrel. Then it jerked away and exploded.
My mother had thrown herself bodily against him, spoiling his aim. He had staggered and dropped to one knee; the pistol-ball had buried itself harmlessly in a door-jamb.
Nothing was hurt but a fine piece of cedar.
In the confusion that followed, I took no part. My mother and stepfather were locked together in a flurry of combat, but I made no move to interfere. Servants spilled into the room, but I did not try to explain what had happened. I saw my siblings cowering under the table. I heard a dog barking frantically. I tasted blood, and smelled gunpowder.
When my mother shrieked for help, James Barnett helped her. He had been standing on the threshold, hesitant and appalled. Given a direct command, however, he obeyed it, stepping forward with a flustered air to seize hold of Barton’s wrist. His aim must have been to disarm my stepfather. ‘Please, sir—please!’ he exclaimed. ‘If you kill your wife, you will hang for’t!’
Barton panted up at him, eyes glaring. Gripped firmly around his right wrist, my stepfather was prevented from pounding my mother’s head to mush with the butt-end of his pistol. For his other hand was fully occupied, plunged into a great hank of her dark hair.
‘Let go!’ he gasped.
‘Please, sir—’
‘Let go!'
Barnett glanced helplessly back at the other servants who were ranged around the walls. Following Barnett’s gaze, my stepfather must have come to his senses. He must have realised that James Barnett was right. If he killed his wife in front of so many witnesses, he would hang for it.
So he dropped my mother and lurched to his feet. He dropped his pistol too; it hit the floor with a clunk. Seeing this, James Barnett released him, reaching for the weapon just as Barton did. They both paused, eyeing each other and breathing heavily.
‘Will you take it, Mam?’ said Barnett.
‘No!’ cried Barton, but his wife was too quick for him. She grabbed the weapon and whisked it away, scrambling under the table.
Whereupon my stepfather suddenly bolted.
I am not certain to this day what was in his mind. Nothing, perhaps; I doubt that he was thinking clearly. He simply pushed Barnett aside and ran, hurling himself out the door into the dining room, his heavy soles echoing on bare boards. We heard him dash into the vestibule and clatter up the stairs.
‘Gone to guard ’is shot and powder, I’ll warrant,’ Henry speculated in a dry voice. ‘Locked ’isself in, and to hell wid t’lot of us.’
Sure enough, a door slammed overhead. After which we heard the faint sound of keys jangling.
‘Shot and powder don’t fret me,’ Barnett murmured, ‘so long as he’s got nowt to put ’em in. Mam? Is it safe to leave him? There’s no musket upstairs? No paired pistol?’
‘No, I—no.’ My mother could hardly speak. ‘Ch-Charlotte,’ she whispered. ‘Charlotte, my darling . . .’
She crawled towards me, the dreadful weapon still in her hand. When I saw it, I winced. So she pushed it across the floor to James Barnett.
‘Are you hurt? Charlotte? Did he hurt you?’ she croaked, and wrapped me in her arms, rocking me like a baby.
I shook my head.
‘Show me.’
But I could not. How could I? The bruise on my jaw was nothing—nothing compared to the terrible wound inside. I had pulled the trigger, you see.
I had pulled the trigger, and stared Death in the face.
Nineteen
It was a long, dark tunnel that we entered in the winter of 1839.
I doubt that I can explain to you the nature of the shadow cast over us. I felt myself perpetually under siege. We lost many of our assigned men, for we could no longer keep and feed them. Eliza, who received her ticket-of-leave, left us to marry. My uncle John abandoned Mereworth for Goulburn, taking my seven cousins with him. As for Barton’s temper, it became worse and worse.
You should know, by the by, that the incident on my birthday was never mentioned. It being far too horrible to contemplate, there was a concerted attempt to ignore what had actually occurred: namely, the fact that
I had tried to shoot Barton, and the fact that Barton had tried to shoot me. Having shut himself in his room after that unspeakable act, my stepfather had proceeded to drink himself into a two-day oblivion, from which he emerged with an impaired memory—or so it appeared. For he never again referred to his murderous impulse, rather as if it had vanished from his entire consciousness.
He did, however, inquire as to the whereabouts of his pistol. Therefore I am convinced that it was all a pretence: that he remembered everything, but chose to ‘forget’. As did everyone else in the house. We ignored or put aside unpleasant thoughts and feelings in order to concentrate on more favourable ones.
My siblings and I were particularly adept at such stratagems. We lost ourselves in books, for example. We created our own epic stories, and acted them out. We also acquired a pet—a native bear—called Maugie, to whom Louisa, in particular, became utterly devoted. Attending to Maugie’s needs kept us thoroughly occupied, and therefore reasonably cheerful, for he was a dear little thing, as good as gold, though we did have to mind his claws. The claws of a Phascolarctus fuscus should not be trifled with, I assure you.
It was partly on Maugie’s account, and partly owing to Barton’s baleful presence, that we began to spend more and more time in the bush. With Eliza gone, this was easily accomplished; my mother was so busy that she was not always available to supervise our movements. At eleven, I had also grown very bold, and would happily lead my small band of siblings out into the wilds of the stringybark forest in search of adventure. It was a species of recklessness that cannot be wholly attributed to my advancing age. Something in me changed after my birthday, and not for the better. I became more subject to sudden, hot moods, and flurries of furious excitement that propelled me to do rash and ill-considered things.
Upon stumbling across a clutch of snake eggs, for instance, I brought them home. My intention was to keep them as pets, and perhaps frighten my stepfather with them. Since they had to be kept warm, however, I placed the eggs under one of our hens—where they were discovered, and destroyed, by a horrified servant.
On another occasion, I decided to excavate the tumulus that stood on the slopes of Gingenbullen. My mother had informed me that this large hillock, about one hundred feet long by fifty high, was the resting place of numerous natives, though the last burial had occurred long before I was born. The importance of the site could be deduced from the carved trees that stood about it, and the signs of excavation that lay in front of it. Having been exposed to Gibbon and his tales of the Roman Empire, I was determined to discover any treasures that might have been interred with the old bones. So I put my brother and sisters to work, and we hacked away at the side of the mound until my gang of workers refused to pretend anymore that they were Roman slaves, assigned men, or tomb-robbers. ‘I don’t want to see any bones,’ Emily declared. ‘And if you bring some home, I’ll tell Mama, and you shall have to bury them again.’
She was rather a squeamish soul—unlike her elder sister. One of my dearest wishes, at that age, was to happen upon the remains of an escaped convict. My cousin John claimed to have done just that; some distance from Mereworth he had found a weathered corpse, all bones and leather, wearing a few tattered shreds of prison garb and chains around its ankles. Whether this was true or not, I certainly believed him. And I strove to emulate him also, searching hidden gullies and rocky fissures for skeletons, disappointed when my efforts turned up nothing. I cannot emphasise too strongly my strange preoccupation with mortality, at this time.
Perhaps my nerves had been somewhat overthrown by illness in the family. Winter had brought its usual budget of colds, and Louisa was very sick with congested lungs. I remember many long, dismal days, when the rain fell ceaselessly, and the dark clouds brooded low over Gingenbullen, and damp patches began to show on some of the walls. For Oldbury was already sinking into a state of disrepair. It is always the fences that go first, followed by the roof-shingles. Our fences were not in good condition. Moreover, some of the huts were beginning to subside, and several of our windows were kept shuttered because we could not find money to mend the glass.
Needless to say, George Barton was to blame for the cracked windows. Because his drinking was by this time almost constant, he was unable to contain his anger, no matter how minor the offence. He was drinking his way through my father’s cellar, which, though greatly depleted, had not been entirely drained; our want of funds was therefore no impediment to his headlong descent into madness. Had he been forced to buy his grog, we may have suffered less.
He was drunk on the day that we received tidings of John Lynch, whose very name seemed inseparable from dark and troublous times.
It was a chilly August afternoon. Owing to our reduced staff, there was far less wood to burn, and fewer fires lit as a consequence. So we were pretty much confined to the sitting room, where—as we awaited dinner—my sisters and I tried to coax Maugie down from his high perch on top of the book cupboard. James was struggling with a French translation, and my mother with our latest delivery of mail, which was full of unwelcome missives: reminders of debts to be paid; waspish correspondence from Mr Alexander Berry; notices from various dealers in Sydney, whose goods we could no longer afford. The newspapers, too, were depressing. They seemed concerned with a busy, prosperous, alluring world full of recently docked ships and performances at the new theatre. How dreary our own lives looked, compared to the eventful bustle of Sydney!
My mother was entertaining us with a few choice excerpts from the latest Sydney Herald when she suddenly fell silent. I looked across at her, and saw that her jaw was set and her brow creased as she pored over the newsprint. Something in it had struck her like a blow.
‘What’s wrong, Mama?’ I inquired.
There was no response.
‘Mama? What is it?’ I crossed the room, and my approach seemed to startle her. She straightened suddenly, and shook out the flimsy, black-and-white pages.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Nothing at all.’
Immediately, however, she fell into a brown study, knitting her brows and chewing at her bottom lip. I sidled around the back of her chair, and peered over her shoulder. The Herald was open at the Supreme Court news. Buried among its murders and armed robberies was a paragraph that began with the words: ‘Thomas Barry was indicted for stabbing John Lynch, at Newcastle, with intent to murder him, and Charles Wilson and Thomas Bolson were indicted for being present, aiding and assisting.'
‘Oh!’ I said. But my mother did not even hear me.
The item went on to explain that both victim and accused were members of the ‘ironed gang’ at Newcastle, where Lynch had apparently given offence by informing on his attackers. Since they all slept in the same room, revenge had come swiftly. Lynch reported being stabbed in the chest one night by Barry, as he was held down and gagged by Bolson.
The verdict, I saw, was ‘guilty’. And the punishment was to be Death.
‘If only they had killed him,’ I muttered. ‘It would have put Mr Barton’s mind at rest, perhaps.’
‘What?’ said my mother. She turned her head, and frowned. ‘Charlotte, are you prying?’
‘Killed who?’ asked James. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘No one has been killed,’ my mother declared. Then she rose, still clasping the newspaper, and looked about her in a nervous, troubled fashion, as if searching for a place of concealment.
My own thoughts were keeping pace with hers.
‘He will miss it,’ I pointed out. ‘He will ask where it is.’
‘Shh. Let me think.’
‘The servants will not lie, Mama. They’ll be afraid to.’
‘Will you be quiet, please?’
I shrugged, and subsided. As my mother moved towards the blazing hearth, Emily leaned close to me, whispering in my ear. ‘What has happened?’ she asked. ‘What is in the newspaper?’
‘John Lynch,’ I replied. ‘Someone has tried to kill him.’
‘But he is not at lar
ge,’ my mother added, in a firm voice. She was feeding the Herald, sheet by sheet, into the fire. ‘There is nothing to fear, I assure you.’
Except, of course, from George Barton. No one queried my mother’s decision to burn the newspaper. We all of us understood that any mention of John Lynch would be detrimental to my stepfather’s peace of mind (such as it was).
Unfortunately, the disappearance of the Herald left him equally disturbed. Though it had seemed to me that this might be the case, I was not prepared for the violence of his reaction. It began with a worrying restlessness, which commenced during dinner. We heard his heavy tread move up and down the stairs several times, into the study and out again, across the back veranda. We also heard hinges creak, and doors slam. When he entered the dining room, we could see at once that the signs were not good. Though well primed with liquor, he was not by any means incapacitated. He could still make a fist, and employ it accurately.
‘Where is the latest Herald?’ he demanded of my mother.
‘The latest Herald?’ she repeated, with a kind of bland sprightliness that I found utterly unconvincing. ‘Why, it did not come.’
‘It did not come?’ he echoed. ‘What do you mean, it did not come?’
‘It was not included among the rest. If you refer to the edition of the nineteenth of August, then yes, it did not come.’ My mother swallowed. ‘I shall write to complain, of course.’
Barton scowled. I held my breath. He was a truly awful object, with his wild, untended bush of greying hair, and his scrubby chin, and his bloodshot eyes. It was incredible to see him in the same room as my mother, whose pale, refined face and upright posture were clear evidence of her superior intellect and breeding. I recall how in Myra, Louisa described the union between her villain, Guy Kershaw, and his unfortunate spouse: ‘There is nothing more melancholy,’ she wrote, ‘than the binding together of the dove and the vulture. Coarse, sinful, without one spark of nobleness about him, how could even his kindness not be revolting?'
The Dark Mountain Page 20