I shall tell you something very strange.
As you know, my mother almost never spoke of her ordeal at Belanglo. Certainly she never furnished me with any details. So it was not until I read George Barton’s statement, when I was a grown woman on my way to Goulburn, that I was afforded even an inkling of exactly what might have occurred. Or where it might have occurred.
According to the newspaper report (which I have here now, beside me), the incident took place when my mother and her overseer were ‘going down a steep mountain’ about ten miles from Oldbury. There is mention of a rock and a tree. It must have been a large rock, to conceal the body of a bushranger. It must have been a sturdy tree, to withstand the force of Barton’s whole strength as he pulled at the ropes that bound him against it. This much, at least, can be deduced.
But nothing else in the statement gives any clue as to the precise location of the hold-up. I still cannot tell you where it happened. I can only hazard a guess. And knowing what I know now, I would guess that I passed over the very spot about half a mile from our destination, when Thomas and I were picking our way down the side of a gully.
We were on foot, by then. The parlous condition of the track demanded it. Had we remained on horseback, we would have been unseated a dozen times by low boughs, and blinded into the bargain. Thomas was carrying his bundle, there being no means of attaching it to the horse. He was also leading Sovereign, while I walked behind them both. Thomas would not let me lead. He insisted on treading down all the encroaching undergrowth ahead of me, lest my trailing skirts become entangled in it.
As the ground rose, the foliage thinned out. From dense bush we emerged onto a gentle slope more thinly scattered with stunted trees. At first we were grateful for the change. Upon climbing the ridge, however, we learned that this new terrain was covered in loose stones and twigs, often concealed by sliding patches of leaf litter. It made for an awkward, unstable surface, which was not improved by the headlong drop that we encountered on the other side of the crest. Our path became so precipitous, at this point, that I really wondered if it was navigable.
It seemed to plunge straight down into the gully, where it lost itself beneath a canopy of trees before re-emerging further on, by the edge of a dry and stony watercourse.
‘Well, now,’ said Thomas. ‘Here’s a fine thing.’
‘You can see where it goes,’ I hastened to point out.
‘Aye, but this poor lad’ll have a pretty time of ’t.’
‘Not if we take care. We must be very, very careful, and watch where we tread.’
Good advice, you might think. And it certainly was. Yet as we descended further and further—as the trees became thicker and the sunlight more filtered—Thomas began to exhibit symptoms of increasing unease. His pace slowed. He kept stopping and raising his head, distracted from the task of plotting his course by other, more ominous considerations.
These did not even cross my mind, at first. I was fully occupied keeping my balance until he suddenly stretched out his hand and said, ‘Shh!’
‘What?’ Skidding to a halt, I grabbed at the nearest rock-ledge.
‘Shhh!'
I listened, but heard only Sovereign’s noisy breathing.
At last Thomas lowered his hand.
‘I don’t like the feel o’ this here,’ he muttered. ‘Straight down into a bloody pit, wit’ all eyes on yer feet and none to spare for what’s round about. It won’t pay to linger. We must get on.’
He was right. As I became more aware of my surroundings, I realised that we were well placed for an ambush. Yet I never once made the connection. Though I kept close to Thomas, unnerved by the stillness, and the silence, and the cliff-walls looming above us on either side, I had briefly forgotten my mother. In my conscious thoughts, the past and present never converged. Not having read George Barton’s statement, I knew nothing of a mountain, or a tree, or a rock. It did not occur to me that George Barton’s blood might have soaked into the stony soil over which I stumbled. For I had somehow got it into my head that my mother was attacked at the old sheep station. And it was this unseen station that dominated my reflections at the time, filling me with a curious kind of anticipatory dread.
Nevertheless—and here is the strange thing—I must have felt it. I must have sensed the truth, by some mysterious means beyond all rational explanation. Because the relief that I experienced upon emerging from that gully was overwhelming.
Even my fear of what the station would reveal was dissipated somewhat by a glorious awareness of release, as if taut strings binding my breast had suddenly unravelled.
‘It cannot be far now,’ I declared. ‘There is part of a fence, see? We must be very close.’
And we were. Within another twenty minutes the old hut was in sight. Within half an hour we were pushing open the door. If you are unacquainted with sheep stations as we knew them back in the early days, let me assure you that they were by no means large or magnificent. Commonly, they comprised a simple slab hut and accompanying fenced yards, together with a water source and perhaps (if the two or three shepherds assigned to the place were of an industrious bent) a modest kitchen garden. This particular property was no exception to the rule. It had been hacked out of the forest, which was rapidly reclaiming its own. Though the hut was still standing, its bark roof looked the worse for wear. Many of its fence-posts had collapsed. Its wood-pile was utterly overgrown. Yet from heaps of dry dung and black embers in the hearth, we deduced that passing stockmen must have made use of the facilities not long before.
Even so, the accommodation left a lot to be desired. It stood in the most half-hearted of clearings, hard up against a lowering hill; I did not like the way those invasive trees seemed almost to be jostling each other as they slowly, invisibly, advanced towards the hut. One had an eerie sensation that the path behind us would rapidly disappear, if left unwatched—that the hut itself would be engulfed and stifled by the forest overnight, trapping us there forever.
To escape these unnerving fancies, I quickly went inside. Here I found reality in all its starkness. There was only one big room, little better than a cow-byre. A stone fireplace at one end of the room was the sole concession to comfort. The floor was hard-packed earth. The walls were unsealed. Canvas had been tacked across the ceiling, but even this hung here and there in tatters. The wooden frame of a bed had been rendered useless by the rotting of the ropes that would have supported a mattress. The rickety table stood deserted; no doubt every bench or stool had been chopped up for firewood.
I cannot fully convey to you the desolation of that scene. It was not simply poor and dilapidated. It was deficient in every trace of animation or activity: even the flies were avoiding it. Torn ribbons of canvas fluttered in the draughts that penetrated through every crack. The pattern of sunlight on the floor shifted slightly as a stray breeze punched at the flapping, creaking door. Yet these slight movements seemed only to accentuate the sheer emptiness of what was, in effect, a lifeless shell. Everything was grey: the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Everything was weathered to the point of petrification.
I looked around, and saw only a dry husk. I could not imagine that the place had ever been occupied. It conveyed to me not the slightest hint of human emotion. There were no ghosts in that flimsy structure—no faint echoes of past torment. There was nothing. Nothing spoke to me at all.
It was dead.
Slowly I lowered myself onto the table-top, which was the only available seat. Though it wobbled dangerously, it did not disintegrate. The same cannot be said for my spirits, however, which were profoundly and peculiarly affected. Even then, I realised that I must have been expecting some sort of solution—some sort of answer to a question that was never properly formulated. But I found no solace of enlightenment within those four walls. The perpetual, chafing discomfort within me was not eased.
Overwhelmed by a black tide of bitterness, I dropped my face into my hands and wept.
‘Why, what’s this?’ said Thomas, upon entering the room. ‘There’s no call for this, lass, we can fix ourselves a royal bed for the night.’ He came over and wrapped his arms around me, without risking a seat on the table. He must have seen at a glance that it would not bear his weight. ‘Shh, now,’ he continued. ‘Once we have a fire lit, and a bed o’ heath put down under my blanket—why, we’ll be happy as kings!’
I shook my head, unable to express the cause of my despair.
‘Aye, that we will, I swear. There’s an old potato patch out by the creek, and a board I can use to dig it. I’d be right flummoxed if I couldn’t find a pair o’ tubers under all o’ them weeds.’ He dropped a bracing kiss on my brow. ‘What wit’ my tea and sugar, and yer raisins, and a couple o’ roast potatoes, we’ll be t’envy o’ many a poor Irishman,’ he said. ‘So dry yer tears. Sovereign needs tendin’, poor lad.’
‘I thought it would be different,’ was my muffled response. ‘I thought—I don’t know what I thought . . .’
‘Darlin’, ye’ve no cause to fret.’ Thomas pushed the hair from my eyes, fixing me with a serious and tender look. ‘I’d not offend ye for the world. If it’s two beds ye’ll be wantin’, I’ll make ’em up. But I’ve only one blanket, and the night’ll be a cold one.’
‘No, I—it’s not that.’
‘If we’re to be married, lass, I want it done right. So we can face the priest with a clear conscience, though everyone else might wag their tongues.’ He hesitated briefly. ‘It’ll be Father McGinty, won’t it, Charlotte? Ye’ll not be wantin’ a Protestant to wed us?’
‘I don’t know. I never thought.’ And I was appalled at my own lack of foresight. ‘Mama will be angry, but—it’s really not so very different, is it, Thomas? Not for me. My family has always been quite high church, you know.’
‘Ye’ll never regret it. Not while I have breath left in my body.’ He kissed me again and again. ‘’Tis all the same God, Charlotte,’ he whispered.
‘Oh yes. I know. I do believe that.’ Though I was not quite sure about my mother’s opinion. ‘And times have changed, have they not? There is much less uncivilised prejudice, and—and misunderstanding.’ Nevertheless, I quailed before the prospect of what I would endure upon marrying into the Roman church. To defy my class was one thing; to defy my religion, entirely another. ‘Oh dear,’ I quavered, ‘how unpleasant it’s going to be!’
‘Nay! Unpleasant? It’ll be glorious!’ Thomas placed his hands on either side of my tear-stained face. ‘We’ll be together always. We’ll make a new home for ourselves. A new life. If we stand together, nothin’ll defeat us. I do believe that. As long as we love each other, we can be happy.’
‘A new life . . .’ I breathed. And at that instant, I threw in my lot wholeheartedly with Thomas, beguiled by a golden vision. It was the vision of a new life. Make no mistake, a new life was what I desperately, passionately wanted. In one fell sweep, I would reject all my past. I would turn my back on old associations, and on the memories embedded in every space, object and personal exchange at Oldbury. I would embrace a new style of existence, far away from the influence of unmentioned torments that dragged perpetually on my spirits like a dark undertow.
Looking around me, I saw desiccated wood, and vacant corners, and a complete absence of information. I thought to myself: the past is dead. I can be free.
But I was wrong.
Oh, make no mistake: my plan succeeded well enough in one sense. Thomas and I spent the night together chastely, huddled beneath a single blanket. We returned to Oldbury the next day. And we bravely weathered the storm that broke, and the insults that were flung at us, and the tears that were shed on our behalf. I am even inclined to believe that my family’s resistance only strengthened our attachment. In the face of so much opposition, we clung to each other as never before. We were married within the week, quickly and quietly, though not without the commonplace celebration that Louisa described so many years later in her book. Suddenly I found myself plunged into a very different world: a world of shrieking housemaids, thundering dance-steps, and extremely salacious jokes. (A new life, indeed!) I went to my nuptial bed quite shaken by it all, and my experience when I got there was no less disconcerting.
Yet, despite the fact that I spent the first month of my marriage in a virtual daze, it soon became apparent that I had not really escaped the past. Initially, I blamed our physical circumstances. For Thomas and I were still living on the Oldbury estate, trapped in one of the tenant farms until I received my small inheritance at the age of twenty-one. I was convinced that a removal would change everything—that once free of Oldbury, I would also be free of its dismal legacy. For years I believed it. Until, that is, I was forced by sorry experience to acknowledge the truth.
‘Remembrance wakes with all her busy train/Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain.’ I know now that I shall never escape. Not ‘while mem’ry yet/holds fast her office here’. Those early scars remain with me still; there is a hidden canker that eats away at every new bud on my wizened stem. A long, long shadow has been cast across my life, and I can feel its chill even now. For as Milton so truly said, he that hides a dark soul walks benighted under the midday sun: himself is his own dungeon. And even that would not be so intolerable, if those close to me were not likewise affected.
With my own poisoned tongue and grievous actions, I have darkened many lives. I rent apart the fabric of my own family, which was never fully mended thereafter. I almost smothered my husband’s love for me. As for my children—my beloved children— they have fallen, one by one, as if infected by the black rot at my centre. My precious ones. My babies. How can it be that I sit here now, slowly withering, when they are cold in their graves? How can God allow such a perversion of the Natural Order?
I have failed all my children, even those who survive. Even Edwin, who loves me. For he has made his way alone, when he might have had assistance. When I could have spoken, and illumined his path, I chose to remain silent. I allowed him to walk away, in sheer ignorance, from his own cousin. Fear and selfishness drove me to leave him shallow-rooted, in dry, impoverished soil.
I must ask forgiveness for this, and for all my other sins and omissions. I must make some small amends for the bitterness in my blood.
There is a time to every purpose under heaven: a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak. The time has come to sew. The time has come to speak.
With this testimony, I pray that I shall give light to them that sit in darkness. I pray that by my words, at long last, we shall all have some measure of peace. For there cannot be perfect peace without truth—since the truth, in all things, will set us free.
‘Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts:
And in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.’
I ask your forgiveness. I thank you for your attention. And I would have you, at every turning, make better and wiser choices than I have.
‘Bouka’, Byng Street, Orange
October, 1905