Of course, we rarely had to endure George Barton’s kindness, revolting or otherwise.
‘Are you not hungry?’ my mother continued, trying to turn the conversation. ‘Will you not be eating?’
Barton’s reply was a snort. He turned on his heel and left the room, shoulders hunched, slippers flapping. I hoped with all my heart that he was satisfied. But my hopes were dashed, for soon there were more noises: the rattle of papers being shaken and tossed; the scrape of drawers being pulled in and out; the low mutter of a man unhinged by anger and suspicion. He shuffled out of the house and shuffled back in again. He jangled his keys and cursed under his breath.
At last, as we were finishing our stewed apple, he strode across the vestibule from the sitting room and kicked open the dining-room door. He was carrying a small iron shovel full of ashes.
Some of the ashes, I saw with horror, were not properly consumed. There were a few yellowed fragments of newsprint, scorched around the edges.
‘You burned it!’ Barton spat, wide-eyed and panting.
‘No.’ My mother rose. ‘No, those were old pages. We lit the fire with them.’
‘You burned it!’ Barton raised the shovel, scattering clouds of grey and white ash. ‘What are you hiding from me?'
Wielding the tool like a two-handed sword, he ran at my mother. But it was an awkward weapon, heavy and ill-balanced. His first blow glanced off the edge of the mantle, leaving a splintered scar. By the time he had swung the shovel back up over his head, staggering slightly, we had all of us escaped through the great double doors into the breakfast room—and James was already on the veranda.
I cannoned into him there. My sisters joined me moments later, and Mama dodged the second blow just in time. She yanked the rear door shut an instant before Barton’s shovel smashed against it.
‘Lock it! Charlotte! Quickly!’ she cried, clutching the knob with both hands. She hung her entire weight off that sturdy brass fitting, bracing herself against the doorstep and leaning back. I fumbled with the bunch of keys that dangled from her waist; fear was making me clumsy. Perhaps, if Barton had had his wits about him, he would have broken through to us at that point. He would have stopped hammering on the door with his shovel and tried to turn the knob instead.
Fortunately, however, he did not. He kept pounding on the door until I turned the key in the lock. Then, at the sound of that crisp little snick!, he seemed to come to his senses. I heard him thudding out of the breakfast room.
He was heading for the study, I knew. The study also opened onto the veranda.
‘Run!’ gasped my mother. ‘Quick!’
We ran. We followed her straight to the kitchen, where Bridget stood, open-mouthed. My mother snatched up a huge carving knife on her way to the larder.
‘In here!’ she snapped. ‘Quick!’ And she unlocked the larder door with her free hand.
‘Mama—’
‘Get in!'
Hearing Barton’s shouts, my siblings and I tumbled through the open door. My mother slammed and locked it, just as Bridget began to speak.
‘Please, Mam,’ she quavered, her voice muffled by the intervening walls, ‘is it the Master comin’?’
‘If he runs at me, you must strike him with that saucepan.’
Beside me, Emily squeaked, ‘Oh no! Oh no!’ The four of us were huddled in a corner, amidst bags of flour and half-empty jars of rice. The shelves of the larder were miserably depleted. Even the serried ranks of bottled preserves had thinned out.
‘Shh!’ I whispered, straining my ears. Was Barton’s raised voice getting louder? Yes, it was.
‘You’ll not escape me! I want to know!’ A terrible crash made us jump. Later I discovered that Barton had swept a litter of dirty plates off the kitchen table with one swing of his fire-shovel. ‘What are you hiding, damn you?'
‘John Lynch,’ my mother informed him.
There was a brief silence.
‘John Lynch has been stabbed, and the men who did it condemned to death.’ My mother’s voice was surprisingly steady. ‘There was a report in the Herald.’
‘Is—is he—?’
‘He is alive. He was in court. At Newcastle.’ Another pause.
‘I knew it would discompose you,’ my mother went on (more firmly now), ‘and sought to spare your feelings. Next time I shall know better. Of course, you have every right to read even unpleasant news.’
There was a clatter, as if something heavy had dropped onto the stone flags. A long silence followed. I could hear only the loud, anxious breathing of my sisters; Louisa looked quite ill with shock, her eyes shadowed, her lips slightly blue.
After a time, footsteps approached the larder. A key scraped in the lock. ‘You may come out now, children,’ my mother said hoarsely. ‘All is well.’
When she opened the door, I saw that she was no longer carrying her knife.
‘Where is he?’ I blurted out.
‘Gone back upstairs.’
‘Why? What happened?’
‘Yeer Ma knacked the wind right out of ’im,’ Bridget opined, in shaky tones of awe and congratulation. ‘’Twas Lynch’s name did it.’
‘That’s enough, Bridget,’ my mother snapped. ‘Attend to this mess, if you please.’
Had she not been deeply upset, she would not, perhaps, have been so short with Bridget—who became quite sullen as a consequence. The broom was fetched in a grudging manner, while Louisa and Emily clung to my mother’s skirts. ‘Mama! Mama!’ they sobbed.
‘Shh.’ My mother smoothed their hair. ‘Don’t cry. You are big girls, now—you must learn to be brave.’
‘He tried to kill you,’ I pointed out sharply. ‘You should send for the police.’
She said nothing.
‘Mama? Did you hear?’
‘Calm yourself, Captain. Things are never that simple.’
‘What do you mean? He tried to kill you!’
‘No crime was committed. These are matters beyond your understanding. You should be patient, and pray to God, and He will protect us.’
Even now, I find these words difficult to stomach. There can be no doubt that the Law, in those days, did not favour a wife’s situation in cases of ill usage. It had long been accepted that a man might administer moderate correction to his spouse (since he had to answer for her misconduct), and that he might restrain her liberty if she gave him cause. I will acknowledge that to interfere in a domestic dispute was not something that the authorities felt very often justified in doing. After all, a wife back then had virtually no claim to her property or her children, let alone her own person or peace of mind. Nevertheless, I do believe that something might have been done. Surely a visit from the police might have worked on Barton’s conscience? At least it might have stayed his hand.
But my mother appealed to no one, as far as I can see. And I am convinced that this was partly on account of her own shame. She would never concede that the bruises on her body were her husband’s handiwork, not even to her children—who were well placed to know the truth. Her pride rebelled against it. So she must have been even more determined that the sordid secrets of her marriage should not be publicly exposed. Perhaps she thought that the results would hardly be worth the unpleasantness. What man in the colony was ever arrested for beating his wife, after all? None that I have heard of.
Still, she might have tried—for her children, if for no one else. It seems to me unconscionable that a misplaced pride should have held her back.
In this, I think, she failed us. And it was something that I came increasingly to feel during the spring of 1839.
Twenty
In early October, my father’s prized flock of Saxon merinos was put up for auction. These sheep were descended from thirty fine ewes and rams that my father had acquired in Germany. They had been transported to Australia in a specially designed pen, from which they were unloaded into a dray boarded around the sides. One ewe was lame from the voyage, and when the dray camped in the Cowpastures on its way to
Oldbury, old John Macarthur came to look at the sheep and bought the lame ewe.
Yet this notable flock, with its unimpeachable ancestry, received not a single bid when first it went under the hammer. Opinion seemed general across the colony that our sheep could no longer be good, after having been managed for some years by George Barton. That, at least, was the view expressed by Mr Alexander Berry, who wrote repeatedly to my mother warning her against any plans that she might have to oppose the sale. To do so, he said, would be to deprive her children of their rightful property.
I know this because my mother could not contain her indignation. On the edge of hysteria, she would relate with scorn certain assurances that were repeatedly made in Mr Berry’s correspondence. ‘He claims to have the welfare of my children at heart,’ she scoffed, ‘yet he proposes to sell their inheritance! And then he has the gall to claim that my husband would deprive them of their last morsel! When he himself is the despoiler! What hypocrisy! What treachery!’
I shared her dismay. It seemed to me disastrous that we should be forced from our home, to live modestly on those sums raised from leasing out Oldbury and disposing of our livestock. On the other hand, I was sometimes moved to sympathise with Mr Berry. Though I was only a child, I could see with my own eyes that if Berry did not sell off a good portion of the estate, then Barton certainly would. He was doing it already. He had sold cattle, and flour, and several old hand-mills—none of which were legally his to sell. All these things belonged not to Mr Barton or to my mother, but to myself, James, Louisa and Emily. We were to inherit them. Yet what would be left for us to inherit, if George Barton drank all the proceeds?
I see this clearly now, though it was very confusing to me at the time. I found it hard to understand why my mother should not be permitted to remain at Oldbury if Barton was forced to go. (Perhaps I still did not truly regard George Barton as her husband, and therefore her master in all things.) I would lie in bed at night, turning matters over in my head, trying to make sense of them. I would escape to the heights of Gingenbullen, where I would sit all alone, perched on a favourite rock, mindlessly swatting at ants and flowers with a dry stick while I stared out at the unsullied, enigmatic landscape and pondered our situation.
It seemed to me very bad. As Barton became increasingly unstable, we were losing more of our servants. Bridget left in the spring, as did Jane, her daughter. Louisa’s health was not good. Neither was Barton’s; a man who drinks so unceasingly becomes prey to all manner of ills, both mental and physical, and Barton would have cut a pitiable figure had he not also behaved in such a frightening fashion. He was now subject to fainting spells, and his appetite was completely spoiled. His colour was bad, his headaches were appalling, and his hands trembled so that he could hardly light his pipe. Yet for all that, he could not be disregarded. When the mood was upon him, he had still strength enough to punch a hole in a wall.
Even more alarming were his delusional episodes. The first of these occurred in November. My mother was taking a French lesson in the sitting room one morning when her husband rattled the knob on the door. He could not freely walk in, however; she had recently begun to lock any doors that might separate her from my stepfather, because it afforded her some protection. (He frequently lost his keys, you see—and even when they were in his custody, he was often too drunk to insert anything as small as a key into a keyhole.)
‘Who is it?’ asked my mother, raising her head. But to everyone’s surprise, Barton did not kick or shout.
‘Let me in!’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Quick—quick!’
‘Why? What is the matter?’
‘Quick!’ His voice caught on a shrill note. ‘It’s him! He’s here!’
‘Who is?’
‘Lynch! He’s come!’
My mother’s jaw dropped. We all stared at each other.
‘For pity’s sake, will you open the door?’ Barton pleaded.
I have never heard such genuine fear in anyone’s voice. Responding to it, my mother got up and opened the door, while my siblings and I glanced nervously at the windows. Though the day outside was as perfect an example as God ever made, all warm spring sunshine and gentle zephyrs, I was suddenly struck down by cold fear. Was John Lynch lurking nearby? Had he escaped from the Newcastle chain gang at last? By now, of course, he was invested with quite monstrous capabilities in our eyes. Nothing seemed beyond him, if only because he filled George Barton with such unalloyed terror. It is always hard to believe that fear of this sort is utterly unfounded, no matter how demented the unfortunate soul who displays it. And I suppose that, if John Lynch had indeed killed Thomas Smith, it was reasonable enough to dread the reappearance of the murderer.
Though I myself had never seen Smith’s remains, my stepfather had; possibly their condition had been enough to leave anyone permanently affected, let alone a man as troubled as George Barton.
‘Why—why, what do you mean?’ my mother stammered, as Barton entered, throwing his whole body against the door to close it behind him. He was white, breathless, and shaking with fear. ‘How could John Lynch be here?’ my mother pressed him. ‘Lynch is in Newcastle, surely?’
‘No, no.’ Barton laid his forehead against the panel of the door, sagging under the weight of a truly debilitating terror. ‘No, he is here! I saw him!’
‘Where? In the woods?’
‘Upstairs!’
‘Upstairs?'
'Upstairs?
‘On the landing.’
My mother lifted her gaze in a kind of reflex. As it returned to her husband, an expression of alarm flitted across her face, quickly dissolving into one of doubt and dismay.
‘On the landing?’ she repeated. ‘How could that be?’
‘I saw him! He was there! He has come for me!’
My mother knew better than to take issue with this. Had she done so, she would only have been condemned by my stepfather as a traitor, a liar, and a bloodthirsty villain. Besides, she could not be absolutely sure that Barton was delusional.
So she summoned James Barnett, and ordered him to conduct a search of the house and its grounds. Nothing was discovered, however. There were no strangers in the vicinity. Nor were there any signs that a stranger had ever been present: no latches were forced nor valuables stolen.
Nevertheless, Barton was not reassured. He kept his bedroom window shuttered and bolted, day and night, from then on. And he became obsessed with ensuring that every dark corner was well lit, distributing lamps and candles around the stairs, landing and vestibule. We children appreciated this, for we were none of us fond of the dark, but my mother abhorred the practice. Not only was it ruinously expensive; it was also dangerous. She therefore made a point of staying awake until she heard her husband’s snores. Then she would go about extinguishing every flame, claiming in the morning that they had guttered, or consumed all their oil.
I was very much afraid that Barton would begin to suspect her. Though his faculties were dulled by drink, he was not a complete fool. It happened, however, that Mr Ash arrived towards the end of the month. And his appearance so enraged my stepfather that the matter of the mysteriously draughty landing was forgotten.
I never knew Mr Ash’s first name. He never used it, and we never required it—for he was as pale and dry and bloodless as his namesake. He was sent by Mr Alexander Berry for the express purpose of keeping an eye on George Barton, though he also carried letters for my mother. In these letters, Mr Berry informed her that the Oldbury sheep had at last been sold. He also urged my mother to prevent George Barton from selling off our furniture. I do not know where Mr Berry’s information came from, but he roundly condemned George Barton as a thief, instructing my mother to tell anyone who might buy our furniture that, for every shilling paid to Barton, another would have to be paid to my father’s executors in recompense. Mr Berry also announced that he intended to take legal action against my stepfather to recover money collected for flour milled at Oldbury—money that rightfully belonged to James Atkinson’s h
eirs. And he informed my mother that Mr Ash had been engaged to supervise the farm.
Stationed under the sitting-room window, in a patch of sweetbriar, I heard much of what my mother said in response to these proposals. For she made no effort to moderate her tone as she discussed them with Mr Ash. She thought it outrageous that her children’s estate be encumbered with the cost of an overseer. How could such a thing be justified, she demanded, when we were being forced to sell off our sheep? Mr Ash replied calmly that the decision had not been his. He was simply acting under instructions, and would do his best to prevent George Barton from selling any property henceforth. In the meantime, he suggested that my mother make her own preparations. If she herself sent various fitments or furnishings to Sydney for safekeeping, then they would not be accessible to her husband once he decided to dispose of them.
‘You’ll forgive me for saying,’ he declared in his quiet, level voice, ‘that yer inability to reason with Mr Barton in the past does not bode well for the future. Mr Berry is determined that measures should be taken to preserve yer children’s birthright. He feels that, if I am here, Mr Barton’s excesses must be curbed.’
‘On the contrary, Mr Ash—your presence will only anger him, and drive him to even wilder acts,’ my mother replied. ‘You cannot know—it is quite impossible—oh, this is absurd! What right has your master to dictate to us like this? And I suppose you expect to inhabit Swanton, now you are here?’
‘It being empty,’ said Mr Ash, ‘I would have no objection.’
‘You cannot live in this house, not even for a night.’ My mother was adamant. ‘Mr Barton would not allow it. He will be angry enough, without a stranger occupying the next room. Oh dear, this is such a very bad notion. This will end in disaster, I know it will. And I shall be blamed, as usual.’
There was a brief pause. ‘Perhaps, if I were to explain to Mr Barton that I am acting under Mr Berry’s orders—’ Mr Ash began, but was prevented from finishing.
‘Oh, he will not listen to you,’ my mother said fretfully. ‘By all means, though—talk to him! See what success you have in persuading him to see reason! He is asleep upstairs at present, but no doubt when he hears your voice he will come down to demand an explanation. I only hope that the one you give him does not condemn us all to the most dreadful scene.’
The Dark Mountain Page 21
