by Rachel Leary
She had only walked a few yards on the other side when he called out. ‘Eh, what’s ya name?’
She looked back at him, but then turned around and walked quickly.
...
By the time she came to a cluster of huts at the top of the hill that led down into Hobart Town it was close to dark. She passed a semi-cleared area where a bullock was tied to a tree stump, the animal turning its head slowly as she passed.
Outside one of the huts, a small girl squatted down and spread her hands on the ground. She closed her fist and squeezed mud through her small fingers. A woman appeared and picked her up, wiped the girl’s nose with her hand. The girl pulled her head back away from the intrusion, put her hand on her mother’s face. She started to cry then and the woman took her inside.
Somewhere nearby someone was chopping wood. The air smelled of smoke. Between the huts she caught a glimpse of a girl carrying a bucket that banged against her leg, water slopping over the sides.
Bridget went down the road and, at the turn-off to the right that led along to Marshall’s, she stopped, the shape of the house and of cattle grazing in the fields on either side of the lane leading up to it visible in the growing darkness. She stood looking at the house and then continued down the hill.
She turned a corner and walked along a narrow road. A boy stood in the middle of the road with a plank of wood. Another one threw a ball to him and the boy hit it with the wood. It rolled past her and one of the boys sprinted after it. A door opened and a woman called the boys inside. The smells of cooking wafted from the huts and filled the street.
She followed the creek up the hill, where the street became a rutted muddy track. The first few drops of rain fell. Right at the end of the track, at the base of the hill, she stopped. She had seen Beth, who had been on the ship with her, a few times at the Bird in Hand. Then one day she had been doing an errand in town for Mrs Marshall and had run into her in the street. Beth had brought her up this hill, showed her the hut she was living in. She had married a man with a Ticket of Leave and been assigned to him.
There was a fenced yard at the side of the hut that hadn’t been there before. Close by a bullock bellowed. Something moved in the tree next to where she stood—a possum. There was no sound from inside the hut. The timber shutters were closed over the windows. Bridget walked up to the door and knocked.
The door opened.
Beth.
3
HEADWATER
From the outside it looked the same: same sign, same lamp, same curtains—one of them ripped near the edge just as it had been before. The curtains over the window were half open so that inside she could see a few people sitting around a table playing cards, none of them familiar. A man she didn’t know came out, looked her over before going up the lane, and the heavy timber door came to rest again in the frame. A skinny-looking dog appeared at the end of the lane, stopped there and looked down towards where she stood and then kept going on its way. The next person who came out was a woman, a shawl around her shoulders. Bridget stepped out of the shadows. The woman put her hand up to her chest. ‘You scared the life out of me.’
‘Daniel Rooke in there? You know him?’
The woman eyed her, appraising. ‘Maybe…why?’
‘Need to talk to him.’
‘He’s in there.’
‘Can you get him?’
The woman screwed her nose up, her look suspicious now. ‘Who will I say wants him?’
‘Just ask him to come out.’
She stood there waiting. The door opened but it wasn’t him. It was a woman who hurried off up the lane. She thought maybe the woman hadn’t got him at all, or that she was lying and he wasn’t in there. But then the door opened again and he was standing there, the woman Bridget had spoken to standing behind him peering over his shoulder. ‘It’s alright, Molly,’ he said, and reluctantly the woman shut the door.
‘Didn’t expect to see you here,’ he said.
Beth said there’d been talk around town—Bridget Crack had taken up with Matthew Sheedy and his lot.
‘Where’s Eliza?’
Beth had told her Eliza wasn’t in Hobart Town anymore, had been reassigned to the Interior.
‘Ain’t seen her,’ he said. ‘Reassigned months ago, Norfolk Plains.’
She put her hand into the dress pocket then, pulled out the necklace.
He looked behind him and then nodded towards the end of the lane.
There were three buildings built close to this side of the creek, a field with a few cattle grazing on the other side, one of them with brown and white markings, the patches of white glowing under the moon. Bridget and Daniel stood down the bank, close to the water. Daniel turned the necklace over in his hand. She wanted a ticket, she said, for a ship to England.
He looked at her, seeing if she was serious. ‘Not that easy,’ he said. ‘Need a different name, papers. Travelling alone’d look suspicious. Need someone to go with you, a husband.’ Said he could find out when there was a ship, if someone was going to England and would do it, and do it for what he could get for the necklace, minus his commission—a third, and the cost of a fare. He’d ask around; she should come back to the public house in a week.
...
Beth’s husband had died only months after she married him. ‘God rest his soul, he wasn’t a bad man,’ she said, busy at the fireplace, her broad back to Bridget. The hut and bit of land that had been his were hers now. She had been reassigned to a master in town whom she worked for during the day and she was allowed to return to her own place in the evenings. ‘Not such a bad situation.’
Bridget had bristled when she’d said it. Why couldn’t she say that? Not such a bad situation.
Because of Mary. This was all Mary’s fault.
But it wasn’t—she deserved it. What happens to bad girls.
At the hut during the days she slept. In between sleeping, in the long crawl of hours that she lay awake, she was aware of Marshall’s house a mile up the road. Remembered Mary standing in the kitchen, all puffed up like a bird who’d just shaken itself after a bath. ‘They’re causing a terrible lot of trouble.’ She’d been talking about bushrangers. Said as though it was bad, but a thrill there in her voice. She might even have said his name. Matthew Sheedy: a sound like a sneeze back then and not much more. Again this feeling of ‘back then’…not that long ago, but another time entirely. She rolled over to try to get away from it, eyed the feeling darkly.
...
Bridget was asleep when the hut door flew open and Beth shut it hard behind her. She stood inside breathing hard, had been running. ‘They got him. He’s caught. Henry Evans. They got him. He were caught the day before yesterday, they’ve got him in gaol at Launceston. I just seen Tott Clancy, who knows whenever someone farts in the colony before they even know it themself and he said they got Henry Evans, that someone had come down from Launceston, said the news were everywhere.’
‘Alive?’
‘S’pose so. He’s in gaol. They wouldn’t bother putting him in gaol if he were dead, would they?’
She had to go, she said, had just come to tell her.
...
It was nearly a week later when Beth turned up in the afternoon with the news that Henry Evans was being brought into town. She was going down the hill to have a look on the way back to her master’s place, Bridget was to stay there.
Bridget stood at the door and listened. Sounds of cheering and whistling came up from the town. She sat down in the chair by the table, got up again and walked back over to the door. She opened it and looked out. The bloke from the hut nearby had come to the door the other night, peered into the dark hut behind Beth. ‘Got a visitor?’
‘No, I haven’t, and if I did, what business would it be of yours?’
‘Numbskull there said he seen someone.’
‘Did he, now? And what do I care about what he says?’
Beth had shut the door. ‘Dunno who the good Lord thought he was kidding: �
��love your neighbour as yourself”—he obviously never lived next to Jimmy bloody Ferguson.’
Bridget went back to the table for the bonnet, tied it close around her face.
...
The main street was packed with people. A shot was fired into the air and a soldier yelled for everyone to get back, get back. Bridget pushed through the crowd in time to see the cart coming along. It was pulled by one horse, soldiers walking beside it. People flocked towards the cart and Bridget was pushed forward with the surge of the crowd. The soldiers pushed people back. Another shot was fired into the air. He was sitting on the back of the cart, looking into the distance behind him. There was dried blood on the side of his face. His hands were tied behind his back and his big body was rocking with the movement of the cart. Behind Bridget someone yelled out, ‘God be with you, Henry!’
Through the crowd she saw him, walking close to the cart. Marshall. Captain Marshall. She pushed back through the crowd, hurried back up to Beth’s hut, shut the door behind her. She stood with her back against the door, trying to catch her breath.
...
‘I can organise it, but it’ll take time,’ Daniel said. He knew someone, lived out of the way, she could go and stay there until it was organised. Amy Jenkins, her name.
Beth had been telling her to hand herself in. ‘They’re not gunna hang you, if that’s what you’re thinking. They’ll put you in the gaol for a while, reassign you. That’s it.’ But she didn’t sound sure, Bridget thought.
...
‘Jimmy came over again asking,’ Beth said, the pitch of her voice heightened a little, a miniscule waver in it. ‘Dunno who the Lord thought he was kidding with that “love your neighbour as yourself” business—he obviously never lived next to Jimmy Ferguson.’ The sound of it altogether different from the last time she’d said it—forced frivolity in it now where before there was disdain, and now a short laugh came after it, nervous and thin.
...
Daniel led Bridget to a hut, where he introduced her to a man called Tranter who had a bullock already harnessed to a cart, ready to go.
It was hours later, the afternoon sloping towards evening, when they stopped at a hut near the river. Tranter got down off the cart and a man came out of the hut and Tranter got down and spoke to him, gave him money.
The man walked ahead of her, held a lantern up in front of them. The night was cloudy and the river was as dark the sky. The boat sat tied up to a narrow jetty, the water plink-plinking quietly against it. He held the side of the boat while she stepped in and then untied the rope and stepped in after her. Beth had given her a jacket that she now pulled tight around herself.
It was a quick row across, but there was no jetty on the other side. He held on to a handful of reeds while she stepped out into the water and then climbed up the bank. He pointed down the river. ‘The road’s that way. Walk down there and you’ll come to the place where the ferry pulls in; that’s where the road starts.’ He nodded, picked up the oars again and she stood there until he’d melted into the blackness.
The day had started out sunny but there were only a few patches of blue left now, and by the time the track opened up into treeless flat land the sky was all grey. Muddy tracks crossed a rough field where logs had been dragged along the ground. Further on, a cottage built from rocks sat alone on scrubby land. She stopped and watched the cottage for a while, walked up close to it and stopped again. A dog barked and then the door of the cottage opened and an old woman shuffled out. Bridget bought bread and lamb from her with money Daniel had given her and the woman stood on the doorstep looking at her and kept watching as Bridget walked along the track.
After another mile or so the track met with the creek it had been following and she sat down to rest. The sky was growing darker grey now.
At Green Ponds, Daniel said, go to the first place past the public house, tell the bloke there I sent you, he’ll tell you where to find Amy. At Green Ponds she found the hut and a man with a tattoo on the side of his neck who sent her along this track: about two mile along look for a hill on the right, rocky with two humps. A creek flows along at the bottom of it. Look for the two-hump hill.
Bridget looked back along the way she had come. Maybe she’d missed it? She scanned the landscape for a hill with two humps. There was a hill beyond the stumpy field but no two humps. Mist was easing its way over it now, obscuring it. A fine net of drizzle settled over her hair. She walked on.
...
Rain veiled the two-humped hill and Bridget peered at the hut through the blur.
‘Who is it?’
Bridget spoke to the door. ‘Mathilda. Mathilda Maloney.’
A lock was slid across and the door opened to reveal a thin fair woman with nervous eyes, the hut behind her a tumble of children, dogs and animal skins.
...
Amy Jenkins had pale blue eyes that might have been darker had life not drained the colour out of them. She had the face of a person who moved, who worked, who spoke without knowing why they were doing it anymore. Tiredness was living in her bones, but her eyes betrayed guilt, an apology that she could not do more. Amy Jenkins was a husk waiting for a wind. Her children were wild. They were mean to their mother and mean to the animals.
The hut was full of kangaroo skins she used to make caps that she sold to the government. They were for the parties of soldiers and constables who went out after bushrangers, to keep their heads warm, she said.
At the fire with a child on her hip Amy apologised, her voice small. ‘Sorry we ain’t got much. How’s it ya ain’t got nowhere to go? Husband run off s’pose.’
Bridget nodded.
‘You was in Hobart Town then?’ she asked later.
‘Yes,’ Bridget said.
‘Don’t say much, do ya?’
...
She sat close to the fire near Amy, a roo skin draped over her knees. Squinting to see in the half-light, she shoved the needle into the fur, pushed until she felt it pop through the skin on the other side, then pushed again until it went through the second skin. She pulled the sinew tight and started again. Amy had been talking but now she had gone quiet and they sewed to the sound of the popping fire and the sleeping children’s breathing.
Here they were, preserved in detail. The detail without the whole. Deep lines at the sides of the eyes, becoming lighter towards the hairline. Bright blue eyes lit with mischief. Fine light freckles sprinkled across a beautifully shaped nose turned up very slightly at the end. The green of fields, the light of stars twinkling over England.
Pull the needle out, push the needle in. Out. In. While they fade and fade and fade, and come and go and fade. While they are sewn into this cap—a tapestry of fur and faces and memories.
Bridget got up, chucked the skin and needle down on the floor, wrenched the door open and went out. She wasn’t sitting there sewing caps for those bastards to wear while they came looking for her. She wasn’t doing it.
A slight wind had come up and it raked over the plain. She took a few deep breaths. The wind mucked with her hair, its chilly fingers toying with the fine hairs on her cheeks and stinging her eyes.
She waited for it to blow the images away.
...
Amy sat on the constable’s knee, one arm around his neck. The man that had turned up with him sat near the fire, drinking and looking furtively at Bridget. ‘Come on,’ Amy said, held a bottle up to Bridget, ‘have a bloody drink. She’s not very friendly,’ she said to the constable. ‘Know what she needs.’ She giggled.
‘Might not be needing these no more,’ the constable said, after Amy shoved a cap on his head, pulled it down low. He pushed the fur away from his eyes. ‘Henry Evans is to be hung next week. That’s it for bushrangers.’
‘For now, anyway,’ the other one said.
Bridget waited a moment then picked up the whiskey bottle and swigged hard. They all watched her, Amy’s face showing her surprise.
She lay on a straw mattress on the floor with the ch
ildren, Amy noisy with the contstable on the other side of the room, the other constable curled by the fire.
She couldn’t sleep; saw the scaffold, a mob gathered around it.
...
Out on the track she walked back and forth, the rasp of her breath loud in the dark.
...
In the morning, after the constables were gone, Amy didn’t speak to her. Finally she said: ‘You could of gived something to Risby, ya know. I don’t get their business, I ain’t got nothing.’
‘Why didn’t you say there were constables coming?’
‘What’s it to you?’
Bridget didn’t answer.
...
That afternoon, while Amy was sleeping, Bridget took the little money she could find—most of it had been hers anyway—and what food she could carry and, cursing Daniel for sending her to a woman who made caps for constables, she headed back to the main road.
Between tree trunks, sky and water melded in a blur of greyness. Drizzle swirled and branches hissed and Marshall stared at the reverend’s black shoes in the wet grass. It was summer, almost Christmas, but a cold day. ‘Thou, who for the sins of others didst thyself hang on the cursed tree, rescue his departing soul from eternal misery, and forgive him in the abundant riches of thy mercy.’ On the other side of the grave, the reverend continued to compete with the wind. There was no one there to hear him, however, but Marshall and the trees and the convict servant resting with a spade against a tree trunk yards away. The body in the ground was that of a sheep thief, Albert Little; it had been taken down from the scaffold that morning.
Two eagles battled the harsh currents above the cliff as Marshall, present at the burial as the governor’s representative, stood with cold feet, acutely aware of the rise of dirt behind him that was Sheedy’s grave. The morning of Sheedy and Merriweather’s burial had been as windy as this one, the sound of waves breaking on rocks reaching up from the cove below. Marshall recalled how, as he had stood here in the cold wind, whitecaps lettering the water, he had not felt the sense of pride and accomplishment he had heard in the voices of Colonel Gower and Bartholomew White, and the voices of the others who had brought the bodies into town. He had not even felt the sense of something finished, of relief—no feeling of the correctness of the situation. What he had felt was a slight sense of wonder: one of those shapes in the ground was what had led Bridget Crack into the bush. That shape was a thing she had been with, known, possibly even loved. He had reminded himself that the dead man was a thief and a murderer; that he was a general malefactor; that his association with Bridget Crack was the least of what he was. But the whole thing had seemed altogether strange. Despite all the evidence, he still did not know how to put her with them. In his mind she did not fit there.
