The Dark Mountain

by Catherine Jinks

  ‘Thief! You thief! Give it back!’ I yelled, as he cried out in pain. My next blow struck him across the ear, and he staggered, trying to shield himself. I was very foolish. Had he not been slightly drunk, I might have run a grave risk in assaulting him thus. But rum had slowed his responses. He was only able to use one arm, since I had briefly paralysed the other. When he reached for my cane, I dodged him easily. And showered more blows upon his head and neck.

  I shall never forget the sensation. It seemed to shoot down my wrist straight to my heart; neither before nor since have I ever felt the same peculiar sense of contact. I have chopped a lot of wood in my day, and whipped a few beasts, and boxed a few ears. I have even thrown one or two tantrums involving walls and furniture, when I was very much younger than I am now. And never has the object of my attack yielded in quite the same way as Barton did on that autumn afternoon. His flesh and bone offered up almost no resistance. Mr Cummings’s cane did not spring back, as it would have from a table or a log of wood. It seemed practically to bury itself in Barton’s skin, though no blood was visible.

  Dropping to one knee, he snatched at my legs, hoping to bring me down. Whereupon I fetched him a kick that nearly upended me. (Hoop petticoats might as well have been specially designed to prevent ladies from kicking, I have found.) He grabbed a handful of skirt, swearing horribly, and I struck him again.

  ‘Let go!’ I screamed. ‘Get your stinking hands off me!'

  Then he caught my stick. He yanked it away, still hiding his face, and hurled it in my direction. In avoiding it, I lost my advantage. Though I clawed at his scalp, he managed to rise; he was bent and unsteady, but upright again. I was lucky that his thoughts were all bent on escape. Had he been prepared to fight, I would have been badly injured at this point.

  Instead he pushed me, hard. There was so much weight behind his push that I went straight over. As I struggled with my voluminous petticoats, he tugged open the door.

  I lunged for his over-stuffed pocket.

  ‘Stop!’ I screeched, hooking three fingers into it. Alas—it did not tear. The stitching was too fine and strong.

  He freed himself with a flailing kick, which landed on my elbow. The pain was immense. I was still battling it when I got up again, bawling imprecations after his retreating figure. He went straight down the front path on ankles like jelly, stumbling and reeling and holding his head. I might have caught him then, if not for my petticoat. I had ripped it while falling, you see, and now I tripped on the tear. So I fell again, and grazed my palms, and jolted my injured elbow, and by the time I had righted myself he was through the gate, running.

  ‘Thief!’ I picked up a stone and hurled it, missing him. ‘I’ll call the police, you thieving pig! Stop, thief! ’

  Had there been anyone about, he might yet have been apprehended. Unfortunately, the street was a windswept void. You could have shot a musket-ball down almost its entire length without hitting so much as a goat. There was nothing else to be seen except rocks, fences, gardens, a sprinkle of browsing livestock and a few widely spaced houses between clumps of trees.

  As I looked about for help, my stepfather must have ducked behind one of these trees. At any rate, he disappeared suddenly. Stamping my foot, I yelled for William Cummings.

  ‘William!’ I called from the front gate. ‘William, quick!’

  Mr Cummings had not even crossed my mind since my first glimpse of George Barton. But now it occurred to me: William might catch him! William was young and strong and uninjured. Moreover, he was not wearing skirts. Barton would never outrun William Cummings.

  ‘William, hurry!’ I shrilled. ‘Or he will escape!'

  I moved clumsily back towards the house, clutching my elbow and panting like a sunstruck cow, my petticoat trailing, my palms smarting, all red and ruffled and wild-eyed. I had not much consideration for my own plight. Then Mr Cummings appeared, framed in the doorway, and I stopped.

  The look on his face told me all that I needed to know. It sent every thought connected with George Barton straight out of my head.

  Two days later Mr Cummings withdrew his suit, and returned to Liverpool. I have never seen nor heard from him since. As I said before, he was not reckless enough to risk his own comfort by marrying a crazed termagant. Certainly not a termagant who was prepared to beat her own stepfather to death in her mother’s drawing room.

  He had not the bottom for that.

  Thirty-one

  An interlude

  My mother did not have George Barton charged with theft. She may have found it a difficult case to prove, since he was, after all, her husband. Had he claimed that the trinkets in his possession were given to him freely—as tokens of affection, or for the purpose of raising money—she would have been hard put to refute it. Moreover, she had no wish to drag her name and character through the courts yet again.

  So she let the matter rest. And this despite the fact that Barton had made off with my brother’s silver fob-watch, which James had inherited from my father, and which bore my father’s name. ‘I know you have suffered a terrible loss,’ Mama said to James, ‘but with the watch in his custody, he will be frightened to return, I am sure. And even your dear watch is not too high a price to pay for the removal of Mr Barton from our lives.’

  I am not convinced that James entirely shared this view. He mourned the watch, much as my mother mourned the locket containing miniatures of her own deceased parents, painted long ago in London. But Mama’s instincts were correct. Mr Barton did not return. Neither she, nor James, nor my sisters ever saw him again.

  To the best of my knowledge, I was the only member of my family who had anything more to do with the monster. And I was granted a long reprieve, because it was not until 1857 that I met with George Barton for the very last time. I have never spoken of this to anyone. I hardly like to do so now. But at my age I have little to lose, and nothing much to regret. Besides which, this is a private memoir. It is not intended for public consumption.

  I have undertaken to illuminate the dark corners of my past—and cannot fulfil that promise without reference to the winter of 1857.

  I was then living at Cutaway Hill, on the farm that we were later obliged to sell. At the time, it was a fairly prosperous concern. We had enlarged it by several acres only a few months previously; my husband had bought an adjoining block of Crown land, and cleared nearly half of it. The weather had favoured us, too, for we had not yet been brought low by the drought of ’58, nor yet by the fatal floods of 1860. Flora, at nine, was old enough to help around the house. Ernest had not yet been conceived, so I was free of that burden, at least until the following year. As for our health, it was remarkably good considering the season. Past illness had brought about some tragic losses—losses from which I shall never fully recover, no matter how long my life might prove to be. Nevertheless, our family had survived them. We had not been overcome. And by the winter of ’57, I was beginning to feel more confident of the future. I allowed myself to hope. I tempted Fate, perhaps, in assuming that we had faced the worst and come through it. My arrogance was unpardonable.

  No wonder I was punished.

  Do not mistake me; I should emphasise that we were not living easily, even then. The work never ceased. In winter my husband went off to his labours directly after breakfast, and was absent until the light began to fail, at around five o’clock. In summer his day was even longer. Having no help but that which Flora could provide, I myself was just as busy. I toiled from dawn until dusk and beyond, cooking and cleaning, mending, feeding, ensuring that the milking was done, the water fetched, the woodpile replenished. Without Flora, I should have been lost. Nor would I have accomplished all my allotted tasks had there been more than two or three children to mind, for it is a hard thing keeping them out of the fire and away from the well. So you must not believe that I led an existence made pleasant by idle pursuits. When I say that I was feeling confident in the future, it was not because we were considering the purchase of a carriage, or the e
mployment of new staff. I mean only that our prospects seemed better than they had been, since we now owned our own land, and were working it well enough to supply ourselves with more than the basic necessities.

  On the day of which I speak, the prospect from Cutaway Hill was as grim as I had ever seen it: grey and lowering, with a threat of sleet in the air, and a stiff wind from the south. What a bitter wind it was! I remember wrapping myself in two layers of shawl every time I left the house, however briefly. I remember the whistling draughts that penetrated every chink in our slab walls, and made the fire leap on the hearth, and tugged and banged at the shutters, though we had secured them as tightly as possible. It had been damp for some days, and the weather was still uncertain, so the kitchen was hung with wet laundry. Charles was in a dreadful mood, as a consequence of being so much penned up. I had a sick turkey on my hands, and a pudding on the boil, and an insufficiency of butter to contend with. I was also worried about my husband. Every day, while he was out, I worried that he would not return. I worried that he would cut himself mending fences, or be crushed while clearing timber, or contract a deadly chill in the process of rescuing a calf from a muddy wallow. It was only when he became a carrier that I stopped worrying, no longer having the strength to waste on such a fruitless activity. There was nothing to be done about a man on the drays, you see. He might be shot, trampled, crushed or robbed, but worrying could not help him. It was better to direct one’s thoughts away from such troubling possibilities, and get on with one’s life as if the worst had already happened. get on with one’s life as if the worst had already happened.

  I was up to my elbows in flour when the knock came. You must understand that a knock was the rarest of noises, at Cutaway Hill. Who, after all, would have bothered to make the toilsome trip up from the Old South Road? It required crossing all that dirty, boggy ground near the creek, then climbing a raw-looking track through a lot of partly cleared land and over numerous jagged outcrops. We were on the very edge of settlement, in those days, with nothing much between us and the Wollondilly. Why, even the Joadja Mines had not been thought of.

  So we were unaccustomed to receiving visitors, and jumped when the knock sounded.

  ‘Who can that be?’ I said aloud. ‘One moment, please! Flora, see who it is. No—not the door, child, the window.’ I was being cautious, because we had no grown men about to protect us. And although bushrangers were no longer quite the threat they had once been, they could still be found here and there. Why, Ben Hall himself was in the district no more than eight years later. ‘I doubt that anyone would knock who meant us harm, but—’

  ‘It’s an old man, Mama,’ Flora interrupted. She was peering through a crack in the shutters. ‘A ragged old man with a bundle on his back.’

  This was unwelcome news. Not being directly positioned on a main road, we were spared many of the itinerant men who roamed about looking for work, or begging for money. Such men were, in any event, more likely to approach big houses like Oldbury or Mereworth, where tradition decreed that they should receive some sort of hospitality (unless there was an inn nearby).

  Yet even modest huts like ours were subject to visits from wandering men with empty bellies. Their number had grown, in fact, since the opening of the goldfields. In the old days no bush homestead would have turned away a stranger, but times had changed. It seemed to me that I could not be expected to feed and accommodate every vagrant who came along, especially in light of my own reduced circumstances.

  ‘Give him some bread and cheese,’ I snapped, ‘and tell him there’s water in the well.’

  ‘Yes, Mama.’

  ‘Tell him it’s not so far to Berrima, but if he wants to rest here, he must take his ease in the barn. We have no room in the house, tell him. Charles, leave the turkey alone!'

  I was not eager to abandon my pastry for the sake of an old beggarman, so I continued to knead away as Flora collected the bread and cheese. I heard the door creak, and glanced over my shoulder to check that no one tried to push past her into the house. I remember taking comfort from the fact that a big iron pot lay within easy reach, should I find that it was needed.

  But the vagrant made no attempt to invade my kitchen. Instead he announced, in loud, hoarse accents: ‘Tell yer Ma I’ll be wanting more than that, or she’ll regret turning me away, by damn—you tell her.’

  Even then, I had no idea. His voice had changed, you see. It was a ruined instrument, cracked and worn down, its back broken by drink or smoke or illness, or perhaps just the miseries of incarceration. Not until I turned and approached him (much alarmed by his choice of words) did I glimpse his face under the slouch hat.

  Then I stopped. I stopped moving, I stopped breathing—for a moment I even stopped thinking.

  ‘Hello, Charlotte,’ he wheezed, with a ghastly grin. ‘Reckernise me, do you?’

  Though my hands were caked with dough, I had snatched up my iron pot in response to the threat that he had voiced previously. Now I dropped the saucepan and slammed the door in his face. This was done without proper consideration. I acted instinctively, making no conscious choice. For I wanted only to block out the sight of my very worst nightmare.

  ‘Flora!’ I gasped. ‘Fetch Papa, hurry!’ As she blinked at me in astonishment, I almost cursed aloud. ‘Go and find him! Take your brother! Use the other door!

  ‘But—’

  ‘Now! Quick! Put your shawl on! Run!'

  She ran. Flora was no fool, and she knew better than to argue. She took Charles and went, even as Barton addressed me through the kitchen door.

  ‘If you turn me away, there’s others hereabouts will take me in,’ he rasped. ‘And they’ll hear what I have to say, Charlotte. You know how folk relish a good tale in this part of the world.’

  ‘Go away!’ I could hardly speak. ‘You’re not welcome in my house!’

  ‘Never was, was I? Though I had every right to be there.’ He coughed wetly. ‘But I wasn’t good enough for any of you, oh no . . .’

  ‘I have a gun!’ (This was a lie—we could afford nothing so costly—but he would not have known it.) ‘And I’ll fire if you make trouble!’

  ‘I know that, by damn!’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Shall I tell yer little lass how you tried to shoot me? Maybe I’ll show her all the scars you left on my poor old bonce, eh?’

  ‘What do you want?’ I was shaking as I leaned against the door, fumbling to bar it. ‘Why have you come here?’

  ‘I came on account of yer Ma,’ he replied. ‘I thought as how she might pay me to go away again. But I find that she’s gone herself—and the rest of ’em, too.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ My mind was racing. ‘James is still at Oldbury.’

  ‘Not now, he ain’t. Rode off to a station, or some such thing. I asked after you, and was told how you married down. Didn’t surprise me.’ He gave another rattling chuckle. ‘In the family way, were you? I allus knew you’d end up hot-blooded. Just like yer Ma.’

  ‘Be off!’ I spat. ‘Or I’ll thrash you again, old man, don’t think that I wouldn’t!’

  ‘Oh, aye? And have yer children’s Pa come upon you? I’ve not forgot the other one. Frightened him off, so I heard. Nothing a man likes less than a woman with a temper on her.’ He hawked and spat. ‘Open the door, girl, it’s bitter out here. Do you want me to die on yer doorstep?’

  ‘There’s nothing I should like more!’

  ‘Is that so? Now, I’d have reckoned different.’ I could hear his tortured breathing through the thick planks of wood. ‘See, if you was to kill me, or send me away empty-handed, I might end up in the papers, like as not. I might be driven to desperate measures—a little thievery, say—and I’d be brought before the magistrates (since I’ve not the wind to leg it) and there’d be questions asked. About me and yer Ma, and why I was away so long, and why I came back only to be treated like a dog by my wife’s own family. And old tales might be told, and things might be said that yer Ma wouldn’t like.’ He coughed again. ‘For pity’s s
ake, will you let me in? I won’t be leaving without a drop of the creature in me, so what would you prefer when yer loved ones return? A dead man on the doorstep, or a happy man long gone? I’d not want to tarry, Charlotte. Just give me what I came for, and I’ll be off.’

  ‘You want money? Is that what you want?’ It was hard to swallow my fury. ‘Does this look like a house with money to spare?’

  ‘I’ll need only enough to send me on my way, lass,’ he wheedled. ‘You’d not want me beached here, rambling on about the past in yer children’s hearing? Just a coin and a crust, and a drop of something to moisten it. Or I’ll be forced to throw myself on the mercy of the vicar—what’s his name? One of them Hassalls, ain’t it? I’d have to tell him how I’d found no charity at Cutaway Hill—’

  I opened the door then, cutting him off. You may wonder at this decision, but it was reached by careful reasoning. I had put aside my anger and despair in order to make some stone-cold calculations regarding the time, the weather, and the amount of liquor in the house—among other things.

  ‘Don’t spit on the floor,’ I instructed. ‘And take off your boots.’

  His boots were in such a parlous state that it must have been hard to keep them on. He peeled them away almost like scabs, before collapsing onto a stool in front of the fire. When he removed his hat, I saw that his hair had thinned a good deal, and turned a dirty silver.

  You could have bred up twin joeys in the pouches under his eyes.

  ‘Aah, now there’s a fine blaze,’ he croaked. ‘Best I’ve seen in many a long day.’

  ‘Where did you come from? Parramatta Gaol?’

  ‘No, no. Been out of there a while. Tried my luck in Bathurst, first, but my friends have all deserted me.’

  I snorted. Whereupon he fixed me with a baleful look, dimmed somewhat by tears. He was sniffing, too, but not from an excess of emotion. It was the cold that affected him.

  ‘What have you got?’ he asked abruptly. ‘Rum? Gin?’

  ‘Brandy and rum.’