Into That Forest (15 page)

Me heart beat fast, and me mind was filled with the ecstasy of hearing her. I knew she were singing to me.
Where is she?
I kept on asking, but all Ernie would say were that Becky were far away. Where were far away? I asked but Ernie just shrugged and said it were a long way away. He explained that Becky had made the recording just for me. There were no need for him to tell me that; I knew it. I knew by the beautiful tune that she were saying to me,
I still think of you. You are not my friend, you are my
sister. We have an unbreakable bond forever.

I were so excited I asked Ernie to play it again and again til he said if I played it any more the song would vanish. He asked me if I would like to send her a song. Would I? Course I would. Ernie took me outside where he set up a recording machine with an enormous horn about the length of a man and which I were to sing into while the needle put me song into the wax cylinder. But what would I sing? The only song I knew all the way through were one that I heard on the whaler. The crew sang it when they were working round the windlass and capstan. It were called ‘Hurrah, my boys, we’re homeward bound’. The last bit went: ‘
We’re homeward bound,’ you’ve heard us say,
‘Goodbye, fareyewell, Goodbye, fare
-
ye
-
well.’ Hook on
the cat then, and rut her away.

Ernie played it back to me. I didn’t recognise me voice. It sounded like a boy’s. There were also the sounds of the crickets and birds when I were singing. Ernie said he would send it to Becky so she could hear me and know I were thinking of her. It were then I remembered what I had in me bag. I ran up the stairs and returned with a handkerchief tied in a knot. I undid it and showed Ernie the last bit of the ambergris, about the size of a marble. I told him to give it to Becky when he gave her my song. He promised he would.

The days were long while I waited for an answer. There were nothing for me to do. I watched Ernie build his phonographs and telephones. His fingers were chubby but he were so delicate when he worked, even fixing the tiniest parts of a machine. It seemed a miracle to me the way he put everything together to become a phonograph or telephone. To test the telephone he asked me to go upstairs where he had set up a receiver. He told me to answer it when he rang from his phone in the basement. I jumped when the bell rang and when I picked it up and put the tiny trumpet against me ear I heard nothing except a faint grumbling noise, like it were the sea. Then I heard Ernie’s voice saying hello, like he were next to me. I jumped in surprise. It seemed a miracle that his voice would go all through the wires and pop out of the hearing horn. Now, of course, people take telephones and record players for granted; but Ernie, who were an inventor and obsessed by voices one might say, whether it be on a wax cylinder or coming through the telephone wires, were one of the few people in Hobart who knew anything about these novelties, for that’s what they were at that time.

If he didn’t need me he became so caught up in his work he hardly knew I were there, if at all, so I’d go out into the back yard and lie under the apple and almond trees looking at the sky, daydreaming and growing bored. I were used to doing things. I didn’t like doing too much thinking cos I ended up feeling low ’bout me mother and father drowning and Becky being so far from me. Some times as I lied in the long grass I’d find meself remembering Dave and Corinna and in remembering I thought that those times were a kind of paradise. I know we were cold and hungry sometimes but mostly it were good times. I liked Ernie, but I liked whaling better. Hunting agreed with me. I liked feeling the sudden pumping of me blood when I seen a whale and the cry of
Lower the boat!
as the ship moved in on a monster.

In the evenings Ernie and I walked down to the harbour. He called me Harry cos I were still pretending to be a boy. When I seen girls my age I were puzzled as to how fragile they seemed in their pretty dresses and long curly hair. Their lives were not for me. Ernie didn’t cook much and we ate at one of the seamen’s hotels. He ate huge til he would go puce in the face and burp a lot, especially when he’d had a few beers. He were like me - he hated vegetables and he’d say to the cook when he ever attempted to put even a potato on Ernie’s plate,
I am an animal. All humans
are animals and if it’s good enough for animals only to eat
meat, then it’s good enough for me.

One night as we were polishing off our meals I overheard a couple of blokes talking about a whaler ’bout to set off on a voyage in two days’ time. The news stayed with me and when Ernie and I were making our way back to his old house on the hill I stopped to look back at the whaler. It were blazing with lights as the crew hurried to finish restocking. I looked up at the top of the mainmast where I imagined meself sitting, keeping an eager eye out for any signs of whales. Then I seen Captain Lee come on deck. I ran down to the water’s edge and called out to him. He seen me and waved back. Ernie and I joined him on the ship. Captain Lee were like me, he had no family in Hobart and he were bored too. He had hired a new crew and were keen to have me on the voyage. I were the best spotter he had ever had.

Ernie could tell I were very excited to be returning to the sea. The strange thing about ships is despite them being crowded and stinky and at the mercy of Nature, most times they are like wooden islands of freedom, free from petty concerns and the laws of the land. All we did were hunt and if we were not hunting we were preparing to do so. There seemed a purpose that I didn’t find on land. Perhaps it were also me father’s spirit that were snuggled inside me.

After agreeing I would return to whaling with Captain Lee, Ernie helped me pack and took me down to the docks. He said he would see me off the following morning. I put me trunk into me spot in the corner of Captain Lee’s cabin then crawled up the rigging to me possie and sat there rocking softly as the strong tide came up through the Derwent River. You could call that small wooden seat me home, if I had a home. Next morning as we prepared to set out I seen Ernie arrive and slowly, with puffing effort, get out of his gig like a slug leaving behind its shell. He waved to me to come and say goodbye. I clambered down the rigging and were heading to the gangplank when I seen a lean, bearded figure gallop up on a piebald horse.

It were Mr Carsons. He began talking ten to the dozen into Ernie’s ear. Ernie shook his head once or twice and then nodded a lot til finally the two motioned me to come and talk to them. I ran down the gangplank. I were awfully glad to see Becky’s father cos I thought he were there to take me to her. I were asking him to take me to her when he suddenly shouted at me to shut up. He looked stern and his eyes were cold and bright like someone ’bout to throw a harpoon into a whale’s side.
Now, listen to me
, he said, grabbing both me arms and squeezing them and covering me face and his beard in spittle,
We have a big adventurefor you. You are going to find Rebecca.
I didn’t quite under–stand and Ernie repeated what Becky’s father had said.

Captain Lee were sad to see me go. It was only when we were at the stables packing the horses with food, camping equipment, ropes and rifles that I realised we were going on a long journey and something inside me made me heart beat fast like when I were afeared in the bush and I sensed danger. From what I could understand - and let me tell you, Mr Carsons were a man of very few words - Becky were lost somewhere and we were off to go searching for her. I were told she were far away. A fear gripped me - were they going to take me far, far away so that I would not be heard of again like her? I told them I had sanged to her but she hadn’t come. They asked me again to come with them. I shook me head like it were going to fall off. I felt dread in the pit of me stomach. I wanted to return to the ship and Captain Lee. The ship would help me find her, not Mr Carsons, who seemed loony. His eyes were shiny with a mad purpose. I said I weren’t going and I were going back to Captain Lee cos I didn’t believe they were going to find her and how come they lost her?

I started to walk back to the ship, Ernie told me to stop.
Sing to her this time
, he said,
and she will come back
to you
. I were unsure, but I trusted Ernie. He sat me down on a bale of hay and said,
I will tell you the truth about
us and your Becky
. Mr Carsons stood against the wall of the stables puffing on his pipe, leaving Ernie to tell me the truth.

Ernie told me he knew what Becky had gone through cos he and Becky used to spend time together and yabber a lot. Then he flabbergasted me by saying that the real reason why Becky were far away were cos of the ambergris I gave him to pass on to her.

He said that, like me, Becky thought every day of that morning in Hobart when we were separated. As she were driven away in the buggy she looked back and seen me staring out the window and in her heart she felt something awful was going to happen to the both of us. She had a slimy feeling in the pit of her stomach that we were going to be separated for a long time.

Mr Carsons had decided to tear us apart. He thought that Becky and I were not good for each other, that we were not learning what we should and our bond meant that I were holding Becky back. That misty morning Becky were taken to a boarding school where the headmistress, Miss Davis, were told that Becky had been schooled on the farm and it were now time she were taught properly. Mr Carsons and Ernie told Becky that I were being sent to a school on the mainland to get special education cos I were more backward than she were.

Becky were sent to a Church of England school for girls. It’s still there. It were once on the outskirts of Hobart almost swallowed up by the bush. Over the years the city has surrounded it so that its gardens have shrunk and the bush gone. I visited it once, years after Becky went there. It’s built of sandstone and has narrow windows that makes it seem like a gaol. I stood at the closed iron gates and tried to imagine just how Becky were feeling as she were driven up the long driveway to the main house. She had been taken from me and now she were to live and learn at the school. Mr Carsons thought that she needed to be with girls her own age and teachers who would educate her properly. After warning Becky that she must never tell anyone ’bout me and her living with the tigers, Mr Carsons went back to his farm. The only person she knew in Hobart were Ernie, who would visit her every weekend. He knew she’d be lonely cos all the other girls had visitors or went home for the weekend.

It were hard for her to fit in. She sleeped in a dormitory with the other girls. They teased her cos of the way she’d sniff them or the funny way she spoke. For the first few months she found it difficult to sleep at night. She’d sit for hours in her bed looking out the window, watching the night animals move across the school gardens. If she didn’t do that she’d get up and walk through the dormitory watching the girls sleep and wondering why they didn’t like her. One day it occurred to her that she had to find a way of fitting in and the way to do it were to mimic the other girls. She’d copy a girl’s way of talking, someone’s way of making hand movements and someone’s way of walking. When she began to walk with a limp the poor girl she were copying thought she were being teased and attacked Becky, who on being hit jumped on the girl, tearing at her hair and biting her arm. It took several teachers to pull her off. The headmistress wanted to get rid of Becky but Ernie promised she would behave. Becky told Ernie why she was copying the girl with a limp - cos she wanted to walk like the other girls and be thought of as one of them. He told her to copy a normal student’s walk. He were good for her, that Ernie.

Sometimes he’d take her to his house and record her singing on the phonograph. But he kept lying to her. Every weekend she’d ask Ernie where I were, what I were doing and when we’d see each other again. He told her that I were enjoying me own learning at a special school far away and that he were sending her phonograph songs to me. He also said that we would see each other soon. Soon! It were always soon! But it never happened.

After the incident with the limping girl, Miss Davis and Ernie tried to find different ways for Becky to mix with the other students and become more normal, I s’pose. Her English were really going great guns, but she were still awkward round other girls and they didn’t like the way she’d stare at them with what they said were
a strange
look
. I know what they meant. People still say that ’bout me. When I go to the local store the shopkeeper, Mr Dixon, says I stare at him as if he were food. But it’s not that. It’s not even that I’m listening to his words. What I am doing is closely watching his body and his eyes to see what he’s thinking of doing next or what he’s actually thinking. It’s what me and Becky learned when we were with the tigers. It’s the body and eyes that tell what a person is thinking or going to do. That’s why I stare at people down the village or on the track when I run into them. I can tell when they’re interested in what I’m saying or when they’re curious or when they’re nervous. Mr Dixon said me gaze were putting off his customers so he gave me a pair of sunglasses to wear when I visit his shop. Even years after me and Becky were with Dave and Corinna, this ability or curse, name it what you will, were still there.

One day Miss Davis seen Becky with the gardener’s hound. It were a big dog and all the girls were scared of it but in Becky the dog recognised a kindred spirit and one where she were its master. The girls and Miss Davis were amazed at how the dog would roll over on its back and expose its belly to Becky. One day as she were nuzzling the dog Miss Davis asked Becky a question that had obviously been on her mind for some time.
Who are you, Rebecca?

I am Becky,
she replied.
Why are you like this?
asked the headmistress. Becky didn’t understand the question. Then Miss Davis said - and Becky told Ernie she found this a very difficult order to understand or even obey -
You are
not to go near this dog again.
Those words stanged Becky. She said the dog were her friend. Miss Davis told Ernie that Becky must mix with the other girls, other people, rather than dogs - and there were a solution. She said that Becky must perform in the school play, which they did every year with the boys from a school down the road.