The Tallow Image

by J. T. Brindle

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  For Rosie

  (who could coax blood from a stone)

  Foreword

  The lunatic asylum in Fremantle and now featured in The Tallow Image is a formidable place, built by the convicts themselves and today preserved as an art and craft museum.

  What initially happened to Matt and Cathy is an actual reconstruction of what happened to me and my husband; though what followed, thank God, is created only within a storyteller’s mind.

  The memory I have of that vast and aged building will stay with me for ever. To stand in that tiny padded cell, to see the narrow iron bed and to imagine the many wretched souls who may have wept themselves to sleep there, was an experience that gave me many a sleepless night. When I put my hand inside that crumbling wall where Cathy finds the tallow doll, a feeling of icy cold came over me, a feeling that someone unseen was watching me. It wasn’t long before I was hammering on the door, desperate to be let out.

  That night in the hotel I couldn’t sleep. The name Rebecca Norman seemed to haunt me. And though my husband and I had thumbed through many convicts’ names during the researching of this book, neither of us could recall the name Rebecca Norman. Even on our return, when we retraced our steps to Liverpool docks and searched the records again, we could find no mention of such a convict ever having been transported.

  Her name, and the experience I felt in that cell, induced me to write The Tallow Image. Rebecca Norman is not real. She is only a figment of my imagination. I have to believe that!

  Part 1

  1880

  Fremantle

  Western Australia

  Through the flames

  Eye to eye

  Only then

  The curse will die.

  1

  ‘They say I should watch out for that one. I’m told she’s bad… evil.’ The warder’s curious gaze was drawn to the dark-haired figure below in the prison kitchens. ‘What a woman, though,’ he murmured, lapsing into deep thought, ‘have you ever seen such a beauty? How can anyone who looks like that be so shockingly wicked?’ Shaking his head, he murmured, ‘Even when I suspect it to be true, I still can’t believe it of her.’

  Below them, Rebecca Norman applied herself to the laborious task of drawing the dark, coarse loaves from the blackened ovens. Captivated, the two men watched her every move.

  ‘You’d better believe what they say, matey!’ returned the other man sharply. ‘Unless yer ready to trade souls with the divil!’

  With stern expression he quietly regarded the young officer, at once being cruelly reminded of how different were the two of them: himself approaching the age of fifty, a weathered and red-necked fellow with drooping jowls and a drinker’s pock-marked nose, while his companion was no more than… what… twenty-seven… twenty-eight? Brown eyed and handsome, and cutting a dash with his tall, uniformed figure. Prime meat, he thought with crushing fear and not a little envy, prime meat for a particular woman who would swallow him up and suck the life blood out of him.

  ‘Mark my words,’ he warned the young man now, ‘if you value your sanity, you’d best stay clear o’ that one.’ He regarded his colleague closely. ‘You’re on loan to the prison, ain’t you?… A minder at the lunatic asylum, ain’t you?’ He sniffed and wiped his hand along the flat uninteresting contours of his face. ‘Since the ‘flu took two of us off sick, we’ve been dangerously short-handed. How long is it before you’re sent back to your duties at the asylum?’ He softly laughed, then pressing his palm against the side of his nose he squeezed a trailing dewdrop between finger and thumb. ‘I couldn’t look after crazy folk,’ he remarked sourly. ‘Is it right you have to wipe their arses?’

  For a long uncomfortable moment the young officer gave no reply. Instead, he watched the woman, seeming bewitched by her. Mirrored in his warm brown eyes was a degree of compassion, and a dangerous admiration for the convict woman; a woman of volatile character, a stunningly attractive woman, a secretive woman who during her twenty years’ imprisonment had made no friends but nurtured too many enemies. In the authorities’ records she was listed as Rebecca Norman, known to some as ‘the silent one’, and feared by others as ‘the devil’s messenger’.

  ‘She’s magnificent!’ whispered the young officer. ‘The most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen. Such dark, soulful eyes.’ When suddenly the woman boldly smiled at him, perfect white teeth flashing in an olive-skinned face and black laughing eyes appraising him, he was visibly shaken. Looking quickly away, he turned to the older guard, saying in a harsh whisper, ‘She doesn’t look dangerous to me.’ He gazed at the woman again. ‘Well, not unless you count her dark beauty as being a wicked temptation.’

  Amusement over-riding his deeper fears, the other man chuckled. ‘Fancy ’er beneath the blankets, do yer?’ he taunted. ‘Long for the feel of a divil woman underneath yer, is that it, eh? You horny bastard!’ It pleased him to see how his words brought embarrassment.

  Suddenly, though, his mood was serious. ‘Yer ain’t used to hardened convicts, Ryan,’ he warned. ‘You’ll find they ain’t so tame nor manageable as them poor soft-headed inmates in the asylum. Still… there’ll be time enough for you to know what you’ve let yerself in for, I reckon. Time enough to find out the badness in this place.’ His expression was grim. ‘Until then, you’d best listen to them as knows!’

  Disgruntled now, he swung himself round to face the convicts who were using the lapse in discipline to indulge in a flurry of whispering; all but the one known as Rebecca Norman, and she was standing upright, legs astride and her black eyes beseeching the young officer. At once the old guard sprang forward, flailing the leather bullwhip in the air as he yelled, ‘Back to yer work, afore I lay the whip across yer shoulders!’ In an instant the whispering stopped, the woman lowered her dark gaze, and an ominous silence descended. Above it only the occasional clatter of metal was heard as the convicts’ leg-irons chattered to one another.

  Ralph Ryan took up a strategic position, surveying the scene from a curve in the upper level. All was well. He tried not to gaze on the woman, but she was strong in his mind; the bold, slim figure, the way her sack-dress had slipped on one shoulder displaying the tantalising rise of a plump firm breast; the idea of long slender legs beneath a brown, shapeless convict gown; the short-cropped hair that was like a black skull cap over a proud handsome head, and those secretive dark eyes! Powerful and hypnotic, they put him in mind of a moonlit ocean. Even now, though his gaze was deliberately averted, he could sense her eyes playing on him, burning his thoughts, erupting the pit of his stomach and exciting him deep within himself. He could see no evil in such rare beauty. Neither did he feel threatened. Instead, he was exhilarated by the experience; acutely aware of her nearness, yet afraid to turn his head and look on her, being deeply conscious of the turmoil she had wrought in him.

  For the remainder of his duty, Ralph Ryan deliberately concentrated his attention on the other convicts – four in all, three men and one old hag. To his mind, it was the men who demanded extra vigilance; surly of mood and devious in mind, they were already labelled as troublemakers. Down here in the kitchens, shackled in leg-irons and closely guarded, they presented little threat, but their dark resentful moods infiltrated the air, creating a brooding atmosphere. As the convicts went sullenly about their duties – fetching and carrying and generally following the well-practised routine that went into the preparation of food for many inmates – Ralph Ryan allowed his secret thoughts to dwell on the one known as Rebecca Norman.

  He was not yet fully briefed on her background. All he knew
was that she was some thirty-four years of age, although to his mind she looked younger. In 1860, at the tender age of fourteen, she was transported to the shores of Australia to serve out a sentence of twelve years. She might have long since been released, but she had proved rebellious and violent; numerous clashes with both prison guards and inmates had brought severe punishment. Time and again her sentence was extended, until now it seemed she would end her days incarcerated here: or dancing on the gibbet from the end of a rope.

  ‘The witch has got to you, ain’t she?’ The voice of the older guard hissed into Ryan’s ear, startling his thoughts and bringing a deep red flush to his face. When he slewed round, it was to see the weathered face crumpled in a sardonic smile.

  ‘Got the hards for her, have yer… can’t wait to mate with her?’ Suddenly the smile slid away and in its place came a look of impatience. ‘Like I said, yer a bloody fool! Don’t be fooled by dark smiling eyes and a promise.’ He cast a scornful glance towards the woman, whose knowing gaze was instinctively uplifted. For a brief second their gazes mingled; his accusing, hers bold and challenging. In the moment when he surged forward, the fear within him erupting in fury, the woman quietly smiled and turned away, deliberately busying herself before the open ovens, her handsome face blushing pink from the intense heat they generated.

  Frustrated, the guard fell silent, his brooding eyes intent on her face. ‘There’s a witch if ever I saw one,’ he mumbled. ‘If yer ask me, Rebecca Norman shoulda burned, alongside her grandmother!’

  ‘What’s that you say…?’ Ralph shifted his weight. It had been a long day and his feet ached. ‘Was her grandmother burned?’ He had witnessed the conflict between his colleague and the woman. Now he was excited and further intrigued by the snippet of information grudgingly imparted. ‘What was her crime?’ he asked quietly. ‘Lord knows, there’s plenty gets strung up, and plenty as deserves it, but the gallows seems a harsh punishment for an old woman.’

  ‘Save yer sympathy, matey,’ the other man replied gruffly, his small shifty eyes surveying the scene below. ‘Rebecca Norman’s grandmother weren’t no “old woman”… no more than forty-eight year old, they say, though o’ course there’s them as is ready fer the knacker’s yard at that time o’ life.’ He grinned broadly, flicking the tip of his tongue in and out of the many gaps between his blackened teeth. ‘Look at meself,’ he prompted, ‘the tail end o’ forty-nine and in the prime o’ life, wouldn’t yer say?’ As though to press home a point, he drew himself up to full height and sucked in his belly. ‘’Tis a handsome fella I am,’ he chuckled, ‘though I do say so meself.’ Reaching up, he took off his hat, straightened his hair and replaced the cap with a flourish. ‘Oh, aye, there’s many a woman would be delighted of a night in my company.’

  Amused, Ralph Ryan roved his gaze over the other man’s physique, at the pot belly straining beneath its broad black belt, the red neck that now grew purple from the effort of suppressing that mighty mound of blubber, and he was obliged to smile. ‘You’re certainly in better shape than many a man at your age,’ he remarked.

  ‘Ain’t that the truth, eh?’ the older man rejoined, thankfully deflating a little and grinning at a certain realisation. ‘Especially when yer consider that most old cronies my age are already worm’s meat!’

  Impatient now, Ralph persisted. ‘You were saying the woman was burned?’

  ‘Yer mean the grandmother?’ When the young guard nodded sombrely, he went on in a quieter voice, ‘Aye. Her crime was recorded as murder, so they say.’ His suspicious gaze darted to where Rebecca Norman was laying out the shapeless mounds of dark-baked bread. ‘Murder, that’s what, but there was talk o’ witchcraft and diabolical acts. The old trout was sentenced to be hanged, but local folk had other ideas. They took her from under the nose of the authorities, and they burned her to death.’

  ‘Was there ever any evidence that she committed murder?’

  The older man appeared not to have heard, and he gave no response. Instead, he shifted uncomfortably. Grabbing the crotch of his trousers, he complained, ‘These bloody uniforms’ll be the death of me!’

  ‘I asked was there any evidence,’ Ralph reminded him.

  ‘Oh aye! Evidence enough, so they say. Evidence that led the authorities to the place where that one and her grandmother were hiding. They were holed up in some filthy shack aside the Liverpool docklands. Candlemakers they were, the two of them. A strange, unsociable pair, I’ll be bound!’ Undoing the buckle of his belt, he sighed noisily. ‘Christ almighty, me belly’s near cut in two!’

  ‘When you say “diabolical acts”, what d’you mean exactly? And who was murdered?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’ came the impatient reply. ‘All I know is what’s been told me over the years. Some say the fellow were known to the witch and her brat.’ When Ralph asked about the Norman woman’s parents, he explained what had been detailed to him down the years. ‘By all accounts, the father ran off with some floozy. Ain’t that what allus happens?’ Agitated, he loosely fastened his belt.

  ‘And the mother?’

  ‘By! Yer do like to know the ins and outs of a cat’s arse, don’t yer, eh?’ He licked his rubbery lips and went on with the story; if the truth were told, he was enjoying telling the tale, especially when the listener was so impressed. ‘Well now, from what I can make of it, the poor bugger was struck down by a terrible illness… died, I expect.’ He had no more to tell, which to his mind was a sin and a shame. ‘The crux of it all is that the brat’s father deserted her and her mother, who took it so bad, well, she just upped and died. The poor girl was deserted by both her parents in a manner o’ speaking. The father going off that way… he med her an orphan, that’s what! The young ’un grew up under the influence of the old witch. Soon after there was a body found and the old candlemaker were charged with his murder.’ He suddenly chuckled. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me at all if it were the brat’s own daddy that was bumped off.’ The idea took his fancy, although it had never been said, as far as he could recall.

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Nothing else!’ The guard eyed Ralph Ryan with puzzlement. ‘If yer mean the witchcraft, well, there was talk aplenty, or so the story goes.’

  ‘Talk, eh? But was there proof?’

  ‘When was such a thing ever proved, eh? If yer ask me it’s true enough. You’ve only to look at that one… at them black witch’s eyes.’ He glanced down, half-smiling.

  Ralph’s inquisitive brown eyes followed the other man’s intent stare. ‘What was her crime?’

  ‘I’m surprised yer need to ask!’ came the retort. ‘She may have been only fourteen year old, but no doubt she were a full partner to what took place. The grandmother swore to the end that the young ’un were innocent… never changed that likely tale neither, the old bugger. Not even when the flames were sizzling her eyeballs.’ He smiled, delighting in the images brought to mind.

  ‘And if this one was innocent,’ Ralph continued to look on the prisoner below, her dark head bent to its task, ‘yet sentenced to twelve years and transported to these far shores; wouldn’t that be enough to bring out the worst in any of us?’

  ‘Innocent? Not that one! If yer ask me, she were every bit as guilty as the old woman. Mebbe even more so. Guilty o’ murder an’ foul practices that don’t bear thinking on.’

  ‘There’s many an innocent been wrongly accused.’

  ‘Aye! And there’s many a bad ’un slipped through the net. But not this one, no indeed. This one’s in the right place, and if it were up to me she’d never again see the light o’ day!’ When he saw Ralph regarding him with curiosity he became cautious. He must be careful not to give away too much. It wouldn’t do for Ralph Ryan to guess the real reason for his loathing of Rebecca Norman. It would be a bad thing if the truth were to get out.

  It was a well-known fact that now and again a desperate guard would press himself on a female convict, especially if she weren’t old and withered by the passage of time in this place. As f
or himself, the old guard mused, he’d never risk catching a dose o’ the scabs on a cell floor, not when he had a fat belly at home to squash up against; his own woman was not the prettiest thing you ever saw, but at least he were the only one to get beneath her petticoats. Oh no, he’d never taken such a fancy to any inmate – at least, not until Rebecca Norman’s black eyes fell on him with a particular purpose. Thinking on it now made his blood run cold. It were fifteen years since, during a shocking night of storms and gales that lashed mercilessly through the dark hours. His colleague was laid low with an injury, leaving that particular duty shift short-handed. There was no trouble, the storm seemed to exhaust and frighten every manjack behind bars. He recalled the night now. Wild, it were, the wind howling like a wolf, the sky black and heaving, except when the lightning tinged everything blue, and it seemed like the end of the world. On that night he had seen Rebecca Norman dancing in her cell. Like a dark, flitting shadow she was, magnificent, and naked as the day she were born. Like a moth to a flame he was drawn to her. Even now he could recall every detail like it was only yesterday – her young warm body merging with his, the delicious feel of her nakedness, the way she seemed to weave herself round him, inside him, her shocking, primeval beauty and those eyes, those dewy fathomless eyes that watched him even while he was in the throes of the deepest ecstasy.

  Later, he was in no doubt that she had deliberately bewitched him. When the rush of pleasure was over, she had begged him to help her escape. When he refused, she turned on him like a wildcat, tearing at him with sharp, jagged nails and leaving him with scars he carried to this very day. Worst of all, she had spat out a terrible curse on him and his family.

  Within hours of ending his shift, he was stricken with a mysterious fever which raged for days and kept him at death’s door. His wife, too, contracted the illness. He survived. She did not. In his heart he knew it was Rebecca Norman’s curse, but he dared not voice his suspicions for fear of punishment. Guards had been severely reprimanded, badly punished, and even dismissed for fornicating with an inmate. These days, a man in his work was more secure than he used to be – trade unionism had come a long way since the leader of the shepherds’ strike was given five hundred lashes for daring to demand higher wages. Even so, a man had to be wary, observe certain rules, and sleeping with prisoners was only inviting trouble. It went on, ’course it did, even to this day, but always with the utmost discretion. Now, once more he had a woman to call his own, again not pretty, but homely and eager to please him in every way. He had learned his lesson the hard way.