The Dark Mountain

by Catherine Jinks

  It was not an unprecedented meeting. The two properties of Oldbury and Mereworth adjoined, and John himself was a great wanderer. Nevertheless, such a happy conjunction engendered great excitement. Even John seemed pleased, and got down from his horse to speak to us. So did the man with him, who was introduced as John Jones. For all I know, he may have been the same John Jones hanged for murder the following year, though I could not now swear to it. John Jones is a common name, after all.

  ‘We are tracking a pair of my father’s cows, which have strayed,’ my cousin revealed. ‘Have you come upon any trace of them on your journey? A small black heifer, and a larger brindled?’

  Sadly, we had not. There was some discussion as to whether the animals might have been taken by a gully-raker, before Jones suggested that he ‘bile up a cup o’ tea’, for it was ‘mortal chilly’. This proposal was well received. We therefore gathered around as the fire was built, exchanging news and remarking on the weather, until our water was boiling away merrily in my cousin’s billy.

  John Jones shared his cup with Eliza, while my siblings and I drank our tea out of a water-bottle. I need hardly add that the two assigned servants became friendly at a rapid rate, laughing and talking as if they had been acquainted for years. James, for his part, was most taken with my cousin’s fine bulldog, and Emily soon fixed her attention on the horses. Thus I was left alone with my cousin—alone, that is, save for Louisa, who had as little to say as the stump on which she sat.

  I had not seen my cousin for some time. (My own family’s attendance at church had lapsed terribly since my mother’s marriage, and John himself was not as keen a churchgoer as he should have been.) Not wishing to waste the precious time allotted to us, I came straight to the point.

  ‘Have you been reading any newspapers?’ I inquired, in muted tones.

  ‘The latest, you mean?’ Surreptitiously, he glanced over at the two servants. ‘The latest Sydney Gazette?’

  ‘Any of them.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What have they been saying? About . . .’ I cocked my head towards Oldbury. ‘About him.’

  John regarded me for a moment. My mother always maintained that he greatly resembled my father in his appearance, and he certainly looked at me then with a remarkably grown-up expression, both sad and sympathetic, as he sipped his tea.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ he murmured.

  ‘Has more been printed?’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since the thirteenth of this month.’

  ‘The thirteenth? Oh yes.’ He drained his cup, and shook the last drops of tea out onto the dirt. ‘There was more last Monday, in the Herald. And the Gazette ran something on Tuesday as well. I read them last night.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘About your stepfather?’ John spoke cautiously, in a low voice. He was obviously reluctant to shock or offend. ‘Well—you know that he was fined?’

  ‘Fifty pounds. For being drunk. I know that.’

  ‘He tried to appeal against the judge’s decision, but the judge said that there was no appeal.’

  ‘What does that mean? “Appeal”?’

  ‘Oh, well . . .’ My cousin shrugged. ‘It means that he had to pay.’

  ‘Did the newspapers say bad things about Mr Barton?’ I pressed, puzzled as to the cause of my stepfather’s all-consuming anger. ‘Anything besides the fine, or the drinking?’

  ‘The judge mentioned “gross improprieties”,’ said John, with a worried look at Louisa—who was drawing in the dirt. ‘And Lynch was acquitted. Lynch and Williamson both.’

  This was a surprise. My jaw dropped.

  ‘You mean they went free?’ I gasped.

  ‘Not quite.’ John explained that the two men, though acquitted of the murder, still had certain charges pending against them. (‘The Gazette didn’t mention what. Theft, I daresay. Items found in their possession.’) As a result, they would be remanded in custody until fresh evidence was filed. ‘At least that is what the newspapers say,’ John finished. ‘But journalists can be mistaken. The Gazette was. That flogging took place in January, yet the Gazette said it happened on March the first.’

  ‘What flogging?’ I was confused. ‘Mr Barton’s flogging?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But what does that have to do with anything?’

  ‘The Gazette said that Thomas Smith was somehow involved in the attack against Mr Barton. And that he expressed himself too freely on the subject, so his mates killed him.’ John scratched his nose thoughtfully. ‘It seems curious,’ he went on, ‘for if Smith is dead, and Lynch was acquitted, then who told this story to the police? Where did they get the notion at all? From your stepfather? From one of the other convicts? My father says that it is all very puzzling.’

  ‘Do you mean to say that Thomas Smith flogged Mr Barton?’ I demanded, in utter disbelief.

  ‘Or knew who did. My father thinks . . . that is to say, he was remarking that Lynch is a suspected thief, and may well have had dealings with the bushranger gang now troubling all our sheep stations—the same gang that bailed up Mr Barton. Papa thinks that Lynch did kill Smith, and would have swung for it if Mr Barton had not . . . well.’ A pause. ‘It is all a tangled web, according to my father,’ he concluded feebly.

  ‘Thomas Smith could not have flogged Mr Barton,’ I protested. ‘Nor could John Lynch have done it. Mr Barton would have known them. He would have reported them after it happened. Would he not?’

  ‘Yes. If he had any sense.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ my cousin conceded. ‘Perhaps there will be more in the next editions, and all will be explained.’

  Unfortunately, this hope was soon dashed. At our next meeting, outside the Sutton Forest chapel on Sunday morning, my cousin quietly passed to me a crumpled clipping from the Sydney Herald of August the nineteenth. In it, I read only that the Attorney-General had questioned the propriety of returning Lynch and Williamson to my stepfather’s employment—my stepfather having been fined for contempt of court. Judge Burton, however, had ruled that ‘there was nothing in Mr Barton’s conduct which would authorise him (the judge) to interfere with his assigned servants’.

  ‘Mr Foster,’ the report continued, ‘wished to read some affidavits in exculpation of Mr Barton’s conduct, but Mr Justice Burton refused to hear them read. The offence had been committed in his own presence, and he had called in a medical man who confirmed his opinion. Mr Foster stated that he had certificates from medical men to show that Mr Barton’s state of health was such that it might have caused the appearance complained of by His Honor, but His Honor said that there was no complaint but one that would make a man smell of rum'.

  ‘Oh dear,’ I sighed, aware of how badly George Barton would take all this.

  ‘The Gazette said much the same thing,’ my cousin remarked. ‘It didn’t mention Smith’s murder.’

  ‘I wish they would stop talking about it,’ was my fretful response, whereupon my cousin cleared his throat and gazed off into the distance. He did not ask what I meant—perhaps because he hardly needed to. The gossip about George Barton and his explosive rages had almost certainly reached Mereworth.

  There was one incident in particular that must have been widely discussed. It occurred shortly after the final newspaper report on John Lynch’s trial. Mr Barton was still recovering from the shame attendant upon this public exposure; he had declared himself ‘ill’, and was not much seen about the place. (Whether he was truly ill I cannot say, though all the doctors’ certificates that he had procured in his defence, on top of the fifty-pound fine, must have depleted our yearly income by a very considerable amount.) In his absence, my mother had struggled to manage the estate, while at the same time making determined efforts to educate her children. These efforts were greatly resented by George Barton. I had no idea how much, until he burst into the breakfast room one day when my mother was trying to teach us French.

&n
bsp; ‘So,’ he said, clutching a blanket around his shoulders, ‘here you are, then.’

  ‘Here I am,’ my mother replied. She spoke firmly, but I could feel her limbs tense. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘An attentive wife is what I want,’ he rejoined, scowling about the table. ‘What are you playing at? What is this nonsense?’

  ‘It is French,’ said my mother.

  ‘French? French?’ Barton snorted. ‘What have the Frogs to do with us, may I ask? French, by God! It is as good as treasonable.’ He flipped at a book with one finger, upsetting his fragile sense of balance so that he reeled slightly where he stood. I saw then that he was drunk. ‘Why fill their heads with such nonsense?’ he demanded. ‘What good will it do them, croaking like a Frog?’

  Why I spoke at that instant, I cannot understand. Perhaps my knowledge of Barton’s drunken exploits had filled me with a dangerous contempt for the man. Or perhaps I felt secure that he would not recognise an insult if it was delivered in French. Whatever the reason, I turned to Emily and whispered, in scornful accents: ‘Je prefererais coasser comme une grenouilles que grogner comme un cochon.’ (I’d prefer to croak like a frog than grunt like a pig.)

  It is doubtful that my sister understood what I was saying. George Barton certainly did not. But he understood my intention just as well as if I had slapped him across the cheek. His face became red, his eyes seemed to bulge, and he seized a handful of my hair.

  ‘What did you call me?’ he bellowed.

  ‘Mama!’ I shrieked like a kettle, for I was in agony. ‘Help!’

  ‘Stop it at once!’ my mother exclaimed, leaping to her feet. Louisa was crying, and James was yelling, and George Barton was dragging me out of my seat by the hair, tugging and shaking me much as a dog worries a rat. Tears spurted from my eyes. The pain was unbearable.

  ‘Mama-a-a!’ I screeched.

  Had I been made of more durable stuff, I would have hung off him, a dead weight, and prevented him from moving out of the house. As it was, I felt that I had to stagger after him, lest he denude me of my hair altogether. He pulled me through the door of the breakfast room, across the veranda and into the yard, pursued by the rest of my family. Their cries—and my screams—attracted the servants, who spilled from doorways and rushed around corners, only to stop in their tracks when they saw what was going on.

  ‘Stop! Stop it!’ my mother shouted, wrapping herself around my stepfather’s free arm. He shook her off, and caught her across the jaw with the back of his hand.

  Before she had even hit the ground, Robert—our dairyman— started forward. But George Barton turned on him. ‘Lay one finger on me,’ he bawled, the blanket slipping from his shoulders, ‘and you’ll feel the lash for it!’

  I do not blame Robert for hesitating. What Barton had said was true: any convict daring to restrain his master would have run the risk of being flogged for his pains. At the time, however, I was frantic. Why did they all hold back? ‘Mama!’ I wailed. ‘Help me!'

  And then Barton found what he had been seeking. With a convulsive twist of his forearm, he thrust me to the ground, plunging my face into a cowpat. I was on my back again almost before I realised what had happened; he had released me at the very moment of contact, allowing me to roll away. Still, the stench made my stomach heave. I began to gag and retch.

  ‘If you want to talk filth, you should know what it tastes like!’ Barton hurled at me. After which he retrieved his blanket, wrapped himself up in it, and marched away unsteadily, leaving behind him a silence broken only by the painful noises that I was making as I brought up my breakfast.

  It was a truly dreadful moment, which I have never forgotten.

  Mama was the first to speak. Though much shaken by the blow that she had sustained, she had lost neither sense nor consciousness. Picking herself up, she staggered over to me. Picking herself up, she staggered over to me.

  ‘Charlotte,’ she croaked. ‘Charlotte, my darling . . .’

  I am moved even now to recall how she took up a corner of her shawl, and wiped the excrement from my face with it. Meanwhile Eliza had come. Together she and my mother lifted me and guided me into the kitchen, where I was able to wash myself. Hardly anyone spoke. The servants were utterly silent, displaying their concern only by the speed with which they fetched water and towels. My mother said very little, perhaps because her jaw was aching. Even Louisa held her tongue, in a way that came to concern my mother very much. While James would bawl, and Emily whimper, Louisa—from that time on—comported herself with a troubling restraint. I remember the sudden pain I felt in my heart, when first I read Louisa’s description of her heroine’s earliest days in Myra. ‘The child had an unchildlike way of showing grief,’ she wrote, ‘that plaintive, silent shedding of tears which tells of long acquaintance with sorrow, long, even in three or four brief years of life.'

  This was an exact portrait of herself. It upsets me even now when I contemplate it. God knows how it affected my mother.

  Yet for all that, my mother was blameworthy. Though she cleaned me, and embraced me, and tried to comfort me, nevertheless she showed herself deficient. No doubt Louisa would argue against me, had she been alive. No doubt she would contend that my mother did everything in her power to protect us. George Barton, after all, was her husband. He was her master in law. Only by resorting to the most drastic measures could my mother offer us complete protection, and even then (as we eventually discovered) such efforts could be undermined by threats from another source. How she fought, my mother! I will concede this. I cannot deny it.

  But she married George Barton. This is the crux of the matter. She married him, and in so doing she knowingly relinquished all power over my father’s estate. From co-executor, she became a humble lease-holder. It was inevitable. It became her fate the moment Barton’s ring was slipped onto her finger.

  She threw everything away. Everything. And she would not say why.

  I had asked her why, before her marriage. I asked her again, after that filthy villain attempted to humiliate me like a dog in the yard. Cradled in her arms, rocked to and fro before the kitchen fire, I struggled to suppress my sobs and said: ‘I hate him! I want him to go!’

  ‘Shh. Shh,’ she replied.

  ‘You must send him away! You must!’ Observe my hysteria: I addressed her as I would have addressed a humble skivvy. ‘This is not his house! This is our house! I hate him here!’

  ‘I cannot send him away, Charlotte.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he is my husband. I cannot command him.’

  ‘Yes you can!’ I protested, drawing back to look up into her face. ‘You are in charge of Papa’s will!’

  ‘No, Charlotte.’ She spoke quietly, staring into the fire. ‘When I married Mr Barton, I relinquished my role as executor. Mr Berry and Mr Coghill are the only executors now.’

  This, I must confess, was a terrible blow. I could hardly believe my ears. Yet when I stared at her, I saw that she was telling the truth.

  ‘Then—then why?’ I stammered. ‘Why? Why did you marry him, why?’

  ‘Hush.’

  ‘Tell me!'

  ‘Compose yourself, Captain.’ My mother’s voice was suddenly strong and harsh. She could be formidable if she chose to be. (Mr Berry once called her a ‘she-dragon’.) ‘These are not matters that should be discussed with little girls,’ she said firmly. ‘When you are older, you will understand. Meanwhile, you will kindly show some restraint. If you had been more polite, this would not have happened. You should think before you speak. You are the eldest, and must set a good example for the others.’

  It makes me laugh, to remember those words. ‘When you are older, you will understand’! How many years would pass—how many decades—before I would come to understand? And not through my mother’s agency, I might point out. It was solely through my own efforts.

  For she would never tell me. Never. She took her secret with her to the grave.

  Eleven

  An in
terlude

  I was not expected at my mother’s funeral.

  She was buried at All Saints, Sutton Forest, and I was living in Mittagong, more than ten miles away. That was in October of 1867, about a year after the Iron Works closed. My husband had lost his job then, but we were fortunate; the railway was still being laid, and Mittagong station was being built. He had therefore secured a good labouring position, and we were able to stay in our little house—one of those humble slab cottages whose ruin my sister lamented four years later, in the Sydney Morning Herald. (Why did she visit Mittagong? Surely it could not have been in search of me? So much time had elapsed; I had been gone from the place for at least two years.)

  I must confess, I have no very pleasant memories of Mittagong. Mining and smelting are never productive of great beauty, and the land around the works was arid and barren, though the peak of Gibraltar, rising up about a mile away, often looked as misty and mysterious as Gingenbullen. From our front door I was able—if given a moment’s rest—to look out across a little watered valley towards the Iron Works, with its great, black chimney and its dilapidated tramway. Soot lay everywhere, on everything, until the works closed. After that, I was always cleaning away red dust, for the ore was inescapable. It could be found in the banks along the roads, as red as the flames of the smelter whose glow had once been visible from our windows at night.

  As for the township, it was hardly more beautiful than the Iron Works. Most of the houses were made of bark and corrugated iron, though some more substantial buildings had recently been erected. W. Coull’s store, for instance. The Wesleyan Chapel. The Roman Catholic school where I sent Ernest and Emily and even Charles to be tutored by a certain Miss Lyons—who was the most hapless soul I have ever encountered in all my wanderings. But what else could I do? Edwin was still tiny then. Eva was born in the autumn of ’67. And the others . . . I will not talk about the others now.

  Flora helped me at first, and would have continued to do so, had she not become a wife. Her marriage to George Garlick occurred a year before Eva’s birth, in 1866. I only wish that Flora’s wedding could have taken place in Mittagong, though of course there was no proper Catholic church, in those days—just the rough little weatherboard structure that also served as the school. Besides which, the Garlicks were better placed to host a wedding breakfast. My husband had just lost his job, while I had more children to feed than the Garlicks, whose brood was all grown up. So the wedding took place at St Nicholas’s, in Penrith, near the house of George’s parents. And I was able to contribute nothing except my daughter’s trousseau, though I worried about her a good deal. I worried about her future, and wondered how she would fare.