Forgotten Places Read online

  FORGOTTEN PLACES

  JOHANNA CRAVEN

  Copyright ©2017 Johanna Craven

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in line with copyright law.

  www.johannacraven.com

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR:

  NOVELS

  Music From Standing Waves

  The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

  SHORT STORIES

  Goldfields: A Ghost Story

  The Dutchman

  Afterlife

  Click here to join Johanna's reader group and receive a free copy of Goldfields: A Ghost Story

  CONTENTS

  START

  MAP OF VAN DIEMEN'S LAND

  PART ONE: DERWENT VALLEY

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  PART TWO: HAMILTON

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  PART THREE: HOBART TOWN

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  XXVIII

  XXIX

  XXX

  XXXI

  XXXII

  XXXIII

  Historical Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Inspired by true events.

  VAN DIEMEN'S LAND

  ‘Sacred to the genius of torture, Nature concurred with the objects of its separation from the rest of the world to exhibit some notion of a perfect misery. There one lost the aspect and heart of a man’

  Rev. John West

  Historian and transportation abolitionist

  1842

  PART ONE

  DERWENT VALLEY, VAN DIEMEN’S LAND

  AUSTRALIAN COLONIES

  I

  There were ghosts in this forest. Perhaps she was already one of them.

  She lay on her back, tangled in a faded tartan cloak. Her skin was pale, almost translucent. Shadows beneath her eyes.

  Yes, thought Dalton. Dead. The forest had done the job for him.

  He peered down at her. Long, spidery fingers, veins stark on the backs of her hands. Her hair was a mess of jagged brown curls that barely reached her shoulders; tufty and uneven as though they’d been hacked at with blunt scissors. Some clung to her cheeks and neck. Others sprung from her head like piglets’ tails. A blood-flecked hand lay beside her chin.

  The first white person he’d seen in almost eleven years.

  He saw it then; a faint rise and fall of her chest. He knelt, one hand tight around the legs of the possum he’d pulled from the trap, the other gripping the handle of his knife.

  No one could know of this place. Of him. No one could know he hadn’t died when he was supposed to: eleven years ago in the heart of this wilderness. Out here, the trees were legs of giants; the ferns knitted together like brambles. Rivers carved the cliffs and the earth fell away without warning. This was a place of thick darkness, a straining moon. Soupy fog and rain that thundered down the sides of mountains.

  No place for a woman in a faded tartan cloak.

  Perhaps the woods were shrinking, hacked away by convict axes. Attacked from the east. He’d come from the west. Knew there wasn’t an axe in the world that could penetrate the bush of the western highlands.

  Dalton put the possum down beside her head. Its glassy pink eyes caught the last threads of daylight.

  He had a free hand now. He could shake her, wake her. Food and water and thank you. Or he could press the blade into that milky skin beneath her chin and never have his world invaded again.

  *

  Grace’s eyes flew open. A scream caught in her throat. She scrambled out from beneath the wild creature and the knife hovering above her neck.

  She spun around. Where was Violet?

  “Where are you, angel? Violet! Are you hiding?”

  The girl was crouching behind a tree several yards away, the hem of her pinny in her mouth and tears rolling down her cheeks. Grace ran to her. “I’m so sorry, angel. I don’t know what happened. I just meant to rest. I—”

  Violet grabbed a fistful of Grace’s skirts and stared at the man. Stared at his knife.

  “Stay away from us.” Grace’s voice was tiny. Dizziness coursed through her and made the forest twirl. She gripped the tree trunk.

  A tall man. Hunched and bearded.

  A savage? No. The skin on his bare chest was grimy and tanned, but she could tell it had once been white.

  He picked up the dead possum and walked, his bare feet soundless on the faintly worn path.

  And he was gone. Grace drew in her breath and tried to slow her racing heart.

  The smell of wood smoke began to filter through the bush. And then, cooking meat. Her stomach lurched with hunger. She reached into the pocket of her cloak. A few oats clung to her fingertips. The last of their food.

  She gripped Violet’s hand and followed the threads of smoke.

  The man looked up from the fire as they approached. The knife lay across his knees. Blood on the blade now. Fur was scattered beside a chopping block. He had skewered the meat on two thin branches and laid them across smoking coals. Behind him was a crude bark and clay hut. Crooked and box-like. Barely tall enough for a person to stand.

  A madman, surely. Who else could live in a place so devoid of humanity?

  She ought to run. But they were five days walk from Hobart Town. Miles and mountains from the last settlements. Grace’s steps were crooked and her pockets empty.

  She swallowed hard. “Perhaps you might help us. We’re ever so hungry. And my girl, she’s, well, as you can see, she needs a rest and…”

  He looked past Violet. Stared at Grace.

  “We’ll be no bother,” she managed. “I swear it.”

  He backed away from the fire and stood at the edge of the clearing. Grace glanced at the skewered meat. She reached out and carefully lifted a piece from the coals.

  The food slid hot down her throat. Her stomach turned over at the forgotten sensation.

  When she looked up, the man was gone. She glanced at the hut.

  A little piece of inside.

  It felt easier to face the forest at night with walls around them, however flimsy they were. Walls offered at least the illusion of security against the spiders and snakes, the devil dogs with razor teeth, the savages who roamed this land like shadows.

  She pushed aside the bark door. Inside was dark and windowless. The floor was damp earth, one wall filled with a rough wooden hearth and chimney.

  The man sat on a stool beside a crooked table. A rifle leant against the wall behind him.

  “Are we to stay here?” Violet asked in a tiny voice.

  Grace glanced at the man, searching for some reaction. His face remained unmoved.

  “We need to stay here tonight,” she said, loudly, clearly. “With you.”

  He slid back on his stool until his spine was hard against the wall.

  Grace ushered Violet into a corner of the hut and laid her cloak across the floor. “Lie down here, angel. Good girl.” She glanced at the man, waiting for him to stop them. He stayed motionless, avoiding her eyes. Grace curled up on the floor and wrapped herself around Violet’s body. The man leapt up suddenly and grabbed the rifle. He disappeared into the purple dusk.

  Grace heard he
rself breathe loud and fast.

  A sudden gunshot echoed across the forest. Birds shrieked. And then stillness as night crept over the sprawling woods.

  She closed her eyes and tried to slow her pounding heart. Stay, and death at the hands of this man was a possibility. Leave, and death in the forest became a certainty.

  II

  He heard breathing that was not his own. He sat, yanked from his dreams with a thumping heart.

  The marines come to hang him.

  Greenhill with his blood-slick axe.

  But then he remembered.

  Her.

  Pale morning light pushed beneath the door. She lay on her side, chest rising and falling. He stared at her. More than thirteen years since he’d watched a woman sleep. A part of him longed to reach out and touch her. Instead, he drew the rifle close to his body. A little security. He was as afraid of her as she was him.

  He was suddenly conscious of the animal blood on his toes, the mat of hair down his back. Aware of his ragged clothes and the stink of him. He pressed a hand into the wiry expanse of his beard and felt his leathery, dirt-encrusted cheek. Felt the hollows beneath his eyes. He was a terrifying and inhuman sight, surely. Only the most desperate of situations could have led her to ask for his help.

  Dalton stood and pulled on a yellowing linen shirt. The woman opened her eyes. She sat, face foggy with sleep, and glanced at the hunk of bread on the table.

  “May I?”

  He nodded. She snatched the remains of the loaf and tore at it hungrily. Chewed slow and loud, savouring the sensation of food on her tongue.

  Yes, I know. An incredible feeling.

  “Thank you.” Her voice was husky. She placed the last piece back on the table, nodding towards the girl. “For Violet.” She frowned at him. “You don’t speak. Why don’t you speak? You know English then? You understand me?”

  Dalton turned away.

  “There ought to be settlements here. Hamilton. Bothwell. Have we gone in the wrong direction?” She began to pace. Her shawl slipped from her shoulders and tangled around her ankle. She kicked it away and tugged at her hair, making white beads of her knuckles. “Are we at least close to civilisation?” She clenched her jaw at his silence. “Get up and put your boots on, Violet.”

  She’d come too far west. Walked for days in the wrong direction onto the fringe of near-impenetrable bush. Four days or more to Hamilton and her limbs were twigs. No path, just brutal wet mountains laced with natives’ spears.

  She’d never make it. He could barely believe she’d gotten this far. Leave this hut and a hunger the likes of which she’d never known would take her over. A hunger that would quickly become madness. Her only hope of survival was to stay in that hut with him.

  But he wanted her gone. This life wasn’t made to share with others.

  She held out her hand for the girl. “Well,” she said, the brassiness in her voice doing little to disguise her fear. “Thank you and all. Can you at least show us in the right direction?”

  He pointed northeast and handed her a few strips of smoked meat. She nodded her thanks. Dalton turned away to face the emptiness in his hut. But, once she’d left, he stood in the doorway and watched until her grey skirts had vanished into the settling mist.

  Before her, his thoughts were simple.

  Cold. Tired. Hungry. Afraid.

  A life without words, for what words were to be had in this nothingness?

  The world Dalton couldn’t see had stopped existing. For all he knew, Britain had turned its back on this place, leaving creepers to swallow the huts and gallows. Downpours to wash away the white man’s footprints.

  The emptiness of the land was beautiful. Never silent, of course; there was always the howl of the wind, the devils’ grunts, the patter of rain, of ice against the thatches of his roof. Carolling birds as the sun rose and set. But devoid of words.

  If he were to pick up a pencil, would the language he had once known come back? Would he remember the words he had used when he was among the living? Remember that once he had laughed and whispered and shouted the abuse that would see him thrown onto a prison ship?

  In the afternoon, he thought to make more bread. Something to keep himself busy after the woman had set his mind rattling.

  First, a fire. It had drizzled throughout the day and the undergrowth was damp. He whittled away the wet bark to find the dry hearts of the branches. He set a pile of twigs flickering on last night’s ashes, inhaling the scent of wood smoke and damp eucalyptus. He carried the flour into the clearing and poured in the water from the pot he kept beside the woodpile. Stirred it slowly with a stick.

  Had he impressed her with all this? The way he could make something from nothing? Bread from crushed seeds and river water. A fire from rain-soaked branches. House from a fallen tree.

  Stay out here long enough and the bush begins to give up its secrets. Eat this berry, crush this pod. Dig here, lay a trap there. Instinct, they call it. Like the animals have.

  Instinctive animals have no need for language, of course. But as he stirred the dough, words circled through his mind.

  Cold. Tired. Hungry. Afraid.

  He lifted the stick from the pot and ran its pointed end through the dirt, tracing letters beneath the blue gum.

  Greenhill.

  He stared at the word for a long time.

  “That your name?” she asked. “Greenhill?”

  He wasn’t surprised to see her. Just surprised it had taken her so long to come back. How far did she get before she realised they were truly surrounded by nothing? Dalton stood and stamped out the writing. His throat felt dry and tight. Why of all the words for all the things on this earth was it his name he’d chosen to scribble first?

  “No?” She chewed her thumbnail. “Then what?”

  For near on eleven years he’d been a ghost, a dead man. Nameless and invisible. He didn’t know if he could go back to being real.

  He carved a careful ‘A’.

  Paused. Should he hide himself? Use another man’s name? But perhaps if he gave himself his identity back, he could pull together some other pieces of his life he thought were gone forever.

  A dreamless night.

  His voice.

  Careful letters. Alexander.

  The woman gave a tentative smile. Those hacked curls danced around her cheeks. Dalton saw a sudden beauty that had not been there when her face was twisted in fear.

  She took the stick. “Grace,” she said, carving her name in childlike letters below his.

  And for a moment they were children in the schoolyard. Lovers carving their names in a tree.

  “We’ve nowhere else to go,” she said. “I can’t take Violet out into the open again. There ain’t nothing out there. Just miles and miles of forest.”

  Dalton heard a grunt from the back of his throat.

  “You’ve been most kind to us, Alexander. Violet and I are very grateful.”

  Such a strange thing to hear his name spoken aloud after so much time. How had she found some lingering scrap of Alexander within this wild animal? He glanced down at the scribbles.

  Alexander and Grace.

  Above it, his angry footprints where he had scrubbed out that name.

  “Who’s Greenhill?” asked Grace.

  With a sudden swipe of Dalton’s boot, the writing disappeared. He felt a dull ache in his chest. The ache of being Alexander Dalton again.

  III

  Colonial Times, Hobart Town

  Tuesday 11th December 1832

  ‘Ship News

  Dec. 7: Arrived the barque Duckenfield, from England.’

  “Carry me,” said Violet. She clutched a grimy rag doll beneath her chin, its one beady eye peering up at Grace. The stitching of its mouth had come loose and left it with a permanent look of bewilderment.

  Grace pulled Violet into her arms, her legs and back aching. Last night’s hot supper had brought back little of her strength. Violet wrapped her legs around Grace’s hips.
<
br />   “You’re getting too big for this, angel.” She walked slowly to the edge of the clearing, drowning under Violet’s weight. Alexander disappeared towards the river.

  Had she angered him by returning? Those grey eyes were hard to read. She’d eaten the last of his bread. Interrupted his silence. But surely he knew she had no choice. Surely he knew she couldn’t take a little girl any further into the forest.

  Five days, she and Violet had been out here. Five days since she’d escaped. She’d swallowed half a pot of paint so they’d take her to the hospital wing where the windows were unbolted for ventilation. They'd fed her castor oil and laudanum. Scrawled in her record. She’d made it out the window and over the gate before emptying her stomach on the edge of the Hobart Road.

  There was a fogginess to her memories; the details lost in a drug-induced haze. She remembered little but the walking. The crunch of boots on earth. Back to Harris’s house in Hobart Town where she’d plucked Violet from her bed. They’d buried deeper into the woods until the lights of the settlements had disappeared. Grace had woken to an otherworldly pink dawn, Violet curled up beside her.

  She looked down at the pot of dough Alexander had abandoned. Should she put it to the fire? Did she need to wait for coals? She’d never been much of a cook.

  Violet chewed the end of her blonde plait. “I’m thirsty.”

  Grace set her down and ushered her inside. Took the canteen from the table and handed it to Violet. She dragged a stool across the hut and used it to prop the door open. A rat darted out from beneath the table. Daylight flooded the room, making stars of the dust motes.

  A crooked shelf was hammered high on one wall. Along it sat hunks of wood, finely whittled into human forms. Some were whole bodies; lanky legs, sunken chests. Others just smooth wooden busts, their features meticulously detailed. Eyebrows. Lashes. Buttonholes and ribboned bonnets.