by Rachel Leary
The smell of oils from the gum and of the ants at the base of the tree floated like fine notes over the stink beside her.
The sun inched towards the horizon and long shadows stretched over the rough, dry grass. An uncanny quiet clothed the day, held it still in light washed-blue anticipation. As night approached the edges of everything became sharper and the air clearer. The lowest branches of the tree reached out above their heads and smaller branches drooped towards the ground, bunches of leaves nodded in the light breeze, brushing the air. From the direction of the river came the sound of wood being chopped, the rhythm of it steady and certain. Crows moaned. Smaller birds whistled and twittered. Puffs of cloud turning yellow at the edges moved lazily across the sky.
Finally Budders had become silent. She couldn’t tell now what he was doing, if his eyes were open or shut, didn’t want to turn her head and look at him. Kept her gaze ahead and her body as still as possible.
‘When I get off of here I’m gunna fuck you till ya can’t walk. Gunna fuck ya real bad.’
The skin and muscles on the left side of Bridget’s body flinched, tried to draw themselves in. In front of her a leaf fluttered quietly to the ground. Spun as it fell. Fell over, over, over, over. Landed on the ground with the pointy end of it touching another leaf—a brown leaf with a rise in its middle from where it had shrunk as it dried.
‘You hear what I said?’
Next to that leaf there was a stick. No leaves on the stick. Where did the leaves go?
‘Maybe you’ll like it, eh? Maybe that’s what you come here for. Henry says Matt don’t like to share, but I don’t care. I don’t care, I don’t, what Matt says. I ain’t scared a Matt. You hear me? I said I ain’t scared a Matt.’
Where did the leaves go? Where did the leaves go? Where did the leaves go?
‘One day nearly had me a nice bit, I did. Black hair, real white skin. Nice little titties.’ A foul sound came from his body; a laugh like a stream of fast, sharp hiccups. ‘Titties like little buds. Had some book in her lap when we come in, she did. Read it, I says. See her pink tongue behind them fat lips. Read it again, I says. Just ’bout to make meself at home I were and in comes Matt. “Piss off over there. Piss off, Budders.”
‘Better when Ruthers were here. Didn’t like Matt none. Gived me a go sometimes when he’d finished, Ruthers did.’ The rancid laugh again, his grunting chest straining against the rope.
The light of the low sun came straight at Bridget’s face. The temperature was dropping quite suddenly and shadow spreading over the land.
‘Got this little black one once, not even no titties. Whiny little bitch, she were.’
‘Shut up.’
‘Whimpering she were. Had to shut her up, didn’t we?’
‘Shut up!’
‘Shut the little bitch up.’
He laughed and the sun quivered at the level of the horizon. Slipped away. A damp chill clamped the air. Bridget was losing feeling in her feet, her hands. Clenched her fists. Lifted one foot, the other. The delicate shape of the new moon appeared. Cut like a scythe into the darkening blue. Stars like silent sirens.
He was there. Undoing the ropes in the dark. Budders hitting at him. ‘I’ll kill ya, I’ll fucking kill ya.’ Then Budders was running.
The rope released her, her legs gave way and she slumped at the bottom of the tree.
He stood above her. ‘Get up.’
‘Piss off!’ A shriek more than words.
Matt looked away from her, sighed. ‘Just get up.’
‘What do you want from me? What do you want? Go away! Leave me alone!’ She was crying and screaming.
He walked off while she sat there on the cold ground hating him, wishing to God she had never seen him.
...
It was Sam who came to the tree in the dark, stood there and spoke quietly to her. ‘Too cold, Bridge. Come on. He’s calmed down. Wants you to come back. Come on, Bridget. Will you?’
She took his hand to get up.
...
Henry was sitting by the fire. No sign of Budders or Matt. Sam sat her down on a rock, put a skin around her shoulders, a cup of something in her hand. She sipped it. He put some meat in front of her but she didn’t want it.
‘Bit of a lovers’ quarrel, eh?’
She looked up at him—Henry—sitting on the other side of the fire, his face dappled in orange, features made bigger by shadows. ‘Got your hands full there, girly, I tell ya that much. Got your bloody hands full.’
‘I haven’t got nothing.’
‘’Fraid you have. ’Fraid you got Matty-boy there fancying you.’ He looked over at the lean-to.
‘Always show his affection like that, does he?’
Henry laughed loud. The night flinched.
There was a sound in the bush near the river. Henry turned around and pulled out his gun, Sam too. A figure stood in the darkness among the trees at the end of the clearing.
Henry kept his gun on Budders as he approached the fire.
Henry grinned. ‘Missed us, did ya? Couldn’t stay away?’
‘Shut up.’
Henry laughed. ‘Well. How about that? Bit a pluck he comes back with. Kinda language is that?’
Budders’ eyes throwing hot embers of hate.
‘You shouldn’ta done that, ya know. Shouldn’ta made me do that.’ He stood over her. ‘Why’d ya have to go protecting him? Whattaya expect me to do when you go protecting him like that, eh? Whattaya expect me to do?’
Behind her now, he paced. ‘You should be more grateful. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be dead. If I hadn’t got you from up on that hill, fed you, do you think you’d of survived?’
She felt a surge of heat through her body, her stomach cramped violently and she leaned forward as the water she had just drunk came up into the dirt next to her.
Matt ran his hand across the back of his neck. ‘Christ. Jesus Christ.’
‘Alright!’ She didn’t care what she said. Just wanted him to shut up, go away and leave her alone.
He stopped pacing, stood still behind her. ‘What?’
‘I said, alright.’
...
Days floated out under her like water. She had no grip on them, no grip on anything. Time was lost. Meaning was lost. A sack only brown, rough to touch, rich grassy smell. The fire hot, orange, flickering. Words mostly meaningless—only the quality of the voice: soft, or harsh, throaty or high.
Damp gully, no fire. No stars, no moon. Night like a blackboard that had never seen chalk. Teeth-aching screech of dreams on it. Then the silent sneaking shift of cloud and the round face of the moon, staring, intent and menacing like the face of a school bully. Matt rolled over, caught her eye, held it. For too long. A look that reminded her of the river they were camped beside. Of the water close to the banks where it was cold, dark and hardly moved. She turned her head away from his shape. She lay awake listening to Budders sniff snot back up his nose. Without looking, saw it on his upper lip. Saw his quick tongue take it.
She couldn’t sleep with him snivelling like that. Couldn’t sleep anyway. Sleep belonged to the past. Everything did.
An owl started with its gentle hoot. Whooo…Whooo…Whooo…She rested on the sound somehow. Made it a boat. Drifted away on it. Didn’t care where, just away. Away, away, away. Whooo…away…whooo…away…whooo.
Jane and Marshall left the house early in the morning. It was a beautiful day, summer having arrived in Van Diemen’s Land. Jane was staying with their cousin at Elizabeth River and Marshall had called in on the way back to Hobart Town from a trip to Launceston.
Yesterday afternoon when he’d arrived she’d been down by the river painting a cliff and a splayed tree that grew up in front of it. This morning he followed her out in the other direction, away from the river and up a slope of gum and wattle. It was a dry slope, parched grey rock jutting out from the hill, the shallow soil around it littered with bark like old leather, dead leaves and pale grasses, the colour sucked out of th
em by the summer sun.
Jane stopped, wiped sweat from her brow then bent over the ground, lightly poking something with her finger. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ she said. He went over to see what she was looking at. A flower. A small mauve flower growing up on a single stalk. ‘How does it do that? All around it everything so dry and brown and dead and then this, this perfect little flower. A miracle, isn’t it?’ She had spoken out loud but the words had seemed more like thoughts of her own, directed to the ground where she was looking. Now she turned to Marshall. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose it is.’
He had always felt comfortable in her company, but standing there now he felt rather awkward. She had been at the house less and less, most of her time spent with Mrs Potter. He wondered what he might say to re-establish the feeling of connection he was used to between them, to close the space that he felt. But he couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t sound false and inane.
‘Where shall I put this?’ He had the basket with some lunch Godfrey’s convict servant had packed for her.
Jane had settled her sketchbook on a rock, was rifling through the case of paints. She waved at a spot on the ground. ‘Just put it there, thank you.’
When he left she didn’t turn away from her paints.
They stood under a lone wattle on a slope crowded with gums, Matt in front of Bridget and focused on the scene below, where Henry could just be seen, standing in a field talking to a man. The man pointed to a house in the distance, turned his head and looked up into the trees where Bridget, Matt, Budders and Sam waited.
A few minutes later Henry came up the hill, panting. He put his hand on a thick branch, leaned his weight on it. ‘Only the master and missus at the place, two young uns, no visitors expected tonight that he knows of. Three other servants.’ He laughed. ‘Said he’d heard of us, was pleased to meet me. Fancy that, eh?’
They had walked a long way, had been camped a week at a place called White Kangaroo River. Had walked again to this place, the settler they were going to rob a wealthy one.
They stayed on the hill until dark, when a faint light could be seen burning in one of the windows of the house. Henry put a rope around both of the dogs’ necks, tied them to a tree.
As they came across the paddock the house was a dark square on the plain, the details of its shape becoming clearer as they came closer. They reached the stables first and pushed themselves against the back of the stable wall, Henry peering around the corner.
A dog barked and a door opened. The dog barked again. ‘Rippa, here. Come here.’ It was a man’s voice, but soft, young-sounding.
Now a deep stern voice came from near the back of the house. ‘What’s going on?’
The younger voice again. ‘I don’t know, sir. Rippa seen a roo or something.’
‘A roo?’
‘I don’t know, sir. Something.’
‘Go and have a look.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The door shut and then there was the crunch of boots on gravel coming towards where they stood. Henry looked at Matt, who nodded, and then Matt stepped out from behind the stable. He grabbed the man, pulled him back against the wall.
‘Told you to put the dog around the front,’ Henry said.
‘I couldn’t before—the master likes to feed him and were later than usual today. I were about to take him then.’ The man looked along the back of the stable at the other three and saw Bridget there, a flicker of surprise in his eyes.
‘You said I could trust you, Blakely,’ Henry growled.
‘You can, it’s just that he’s gunna know, ain’t he? He’s gunna know I were in on it.’
Henry sighed. He grabbed the man and pushed him towards the house, his gun on him. ‘Get going.’
Matt dragged Bridget out from behind the stable, yanked open the stable door and shoved her inside with a horse that threw its head up in shock. Matt turned to Blakely. ‘Keep her there.’
Henry, Matt and Budders went into the house and Sam went around the front to keep watch. Blakely stood there looking at the back of the house and then at the stable and back at the house again. He looked dumbfounded, like a man who had just been robbed of all his clothes.
Next to Bridget the horse was showing the whites of its eyes, tossing its head.
The back door of the house opened and Matt came out, opened the stable door. ‘Let’s go. You too.’ He pushed Blakely ahead of him.
Matt walked behind them, stopped at a door that led off a wide hallway and knocked on it twice with the end of his gun.
Henry opened the door. Inside there was a long table, a dark-haired man sitting at the head of it facing the door. He eyed Blakely suspiciously as Blakely, avoiding the man’s eye, went and stood against the wall where Matt told him to stand. Against the same wall there was another man, also a servant, and two maids.
Behind the dark-haired man, the master of the house, a fire burned in the hearth and a stout fair woman in a green silk dress with a glittering brooch on the bodice stood next to it, her hands folded in front of her. The woman’s face was flushed and her eyes shone with the pleading fear of the trapped. Beside her stood two girls, both of them with long auburn ringlets falling out from beneath the bonnets they wore. One of them rubbed her fingers together nervously. The other one kept her eyes on Henry.
The woman by the fire settled her gaze on Bridget. For the first time in a long time Bridget considered what she might look like, what this woman might be seeing—dirty clothes, matted hair and a man’s coat. Bridget moved further into the corner behind her.
Budders stood on the other side of the table opposite them, gun in his hand, his face glowing with excitement. A painting of a proud stag hung on the wall behind him. In the middle of the table sat a silver candelabra, the six candles in it burning brightly. Red velvet drapes covered the windows.
Matt crossed his arms and surveyed the room. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘very good,’ and sat at the end of the table opposite the master. Only the two of them occupied the table that Matt now put his feet up on. Henry closed the door and stood in front of it, behind Matt. The man kept his eyes on the soles of Matt’s boots.
‘I hear you have a boat, Mr Goodwin.’
The man continued to stare at Matt’s boots.
Matt watched Mr Goodwin then leaned forward, lifted his right foot and looked at the sole of his boot.
Mr Goodwin’s eyes flicked up then.
‘Hear you have a boat,’ Matt repeated.
‘That is true.’
‘Sails alright, does she?’
‘Not at the present, no. She is in need of maintenance.’
‘Really? I’m sure she is. You wouldn’t lie to me of course, Mr Goodwin. I can’t stomach lying, can’t stomach it at all.’
‘As I said, she is not in perfect condition at the present.’
‘Not in perfect condition? I see. And where is this boat that’s not in perfect condition?’
‘She is at Port Dalrymple.’
‘Is that right? Interesting. Very interesting.’ Matt looked over at one of the maids. ‘Can get that dinner you were fixing to serve now. Go with her,’ he said to Henry.
Henry followed the maid out the door.
For a moment the room was silent. One of the girls dropped her head and looked at her feet. In the hall outside the door a clock ticked. There was the faint sound of wind outside. Budders’ eyes roved nervously.
Matt took his feet down off the table. ‘This is a nice set-up you’ve got here, Mr Goodwin. Nice indeed—couple of pretty daughters, wife, big place. Must be plenty of people ’round who want what you’ve got.’
‘Perhaps there are.’
Matt stood up. He walked up the side of the table behind Mr Goodwin and stopped in front of the woman, who took a step back. Mr Goodwin went to stand up and Matt casually pointed his gun at him. ‘Told you about standing up. Won’t tell you again.’ He looked down at the woman’s hand. ‘That’s a nice ring yo
u got there.’
Instinctively she covered her wedding ring with her thumb.
‘Take it off.’
‘Leave it, Margaret.’
Matt turned around and hit Mr Goodwin hard in the face.
The woman gasped, took her ring off and held it out to Matt.
Matt grabbed it off her, put it on the table in front of Mr Goodwin, whose lip was dripping blood.
There was a crash from up the hall. Matt looked over to Budders. ‘Watch them.’ He went out of the room.
Budders eyed the two girls, moved around the table towards them. Mr Goodwin stood up.
‘Siddown,’ Budders said.
The man stayed where he was.
‘I said siddown. I’ll kill ya if ya don’t siddown.’
Mr Goodwin sat slowly. Budders stood close to one of the girls, fingered a loose strand of her hair. ‘Got nice hair, ain’t ya?’ Over Budders’ shoulder, the girl sought her father’s eyes.
Budders looked down at the top of the girl’s dress, moved closer. Mr Goodwin glanced behind him.
The male servant watched Budders, looked at Mr Goodwin and shifted his feet. Mr Goodwin stood up suddenly, grabbed the poker from the fireplace behind him. Bridget saw Budders turn, saw the man lift his weapon and strike. Budders fell. The door flung open and Bridget jumped back as Henry’s figure filled the doorway. He hardly paused before he lifted his gun and fired.
The woman screamed and dropped to her knees beside her husband, who lay on the floor, blood pouring from his chest. She pushed hair away from his forehead. ‘Oh my God, oh dear God, dear God.’
Matt was at the door now. He took a few steps towards Mr Goodwin and then went back to Henry, who still stood at the door. ‘What you do that for?’
