Into That Forest (16 page)

She were told to act in one of several little plays based on fairy stories. The teacher who were doing the plays got Becky to play Little Red Riding Hood. It were hard for her to work out how to pretend. She could easily remember the lines,
Easy as pie
, she said to Ernie when he asked her how she were handling it. The problem were that it were difficult for her to know exactly what were going on. One girl were pretending to be a grandma and a boy were pretending to be a wolf. This were truly hard for Becky to figure out. Plainly the boy were not a wolf. He didn’t even act like a real one. It were easy for Becky not to be afeared of him cos he were so not like a wolf or dog but what puzzled her were how the boy became a wolf and a grandma at the same time. And when Becky said,
Oh Grandma, what
big eyes you’ve got
, she could not understand why she were saying it cos the boy had tiny eyes, nothing like a tiger’s eyes, for instance. Other things confused her. During rehearsal she had to pretend she had food in her basket but there were no food in it. The teacher kept on saying that she had to
pretend.
That didn’t work. It were only when she said it were a game that Becky sort of got the hang of it.

It were a couple of days before the performance when Ernie told Becky an audience were coming to watch the plays. She became excited by that cos she were hankering after her father and Ernie said he would be there. The theatre night were held one spring evening on the school lawns. The parents and visitors were seated at long tables lit by hundreds of candles. A stage were built on the lawns. There were three plays, one about Cinderella, one ’bout the Pied Piper of Hamelin and Becky’s play which were to come between the other two cos they had more actors in them, especially the Pied Piper which had dozens of girls from the lower forms who were playing the rats.

After Becky got dressed in her red dress, cloak and hood, Ernie took her aside and explained that her father would not be able to get to see the show in time cos he were marooned inland due to a flood. As a gift to ease her disappointment Ernie gave her me ambergris. She were over the moon. It meant everything to her cos it came from me. She were so thrilled cos she thought I were going to see the show too. Ernie had to tell her I were not going to be there.
Why can’t Hannah and I see each other?
she pleaded. Ernie said she’d soon find out. But when was soon?

Ernie sat down with the rest of the audience, which were a considerable size cos the parents were from both the boys’ and girls’ schools. While the Cinderella story were on stage Becky didn’t watch it cos she were so caught up in smelling the ambergris. It brought back memories of me and Dave and Corinna. It were as powerful on her as it were on me. Then she did something that Ernie were to regret. As she waited to go on stage he saw her eat the ambergris. It didn’t take long before her face were filled with bliss. I knew the feeling; all her senses were alight and alive and sparkling with the rush of memories.

She was so caught up in her bliss that one of the teachers had to push her on stage. When she was up there she stopped, rooted to the spot. She seen all those people sitting at the tables - and it striked her that they were staring at her, which made her very nervous, so much so that she forgot her lines. The boy who were dressed up as a wolf came towards her. She tensed, placed all her attention on him, and lost any sense that she were on stage in front of an audience. It were like she were really in the woods and she were not afeared of the big bad wolf. In fact, she laughed. Her blood were now hot and pulsating and forgetting where she were, she moved in on the boy like he were the prey rather than the other way round. His tiny eyes were firefly-bright with fear and he moved away but she circled him, waiting for the wolf to make his break when she would pounce. She could smell his fear - and that only made her even more thrilled.
Stay away! Stay away!
the boy were yelling. Becky stopped for a moment cos she heard some of the audience laugh and she were annoyed cos she were serious and she gave them a threat yawn which silenced them. Then she went back to herding the boy into a corner. A teacher must have realised something were wrong cos she rushed on the stage and grabbed Becky, who turned on her growling and giving the threat yawn. The boy ran off the stage and Becky yanked herself free to give chase. She ran through the dozens of girls dressed as rats. They all screamed and ran away but Becky only had eyes for the boy. In her mind she were now hunting prey.

The boy ran down the lawns to the tables crying out for his mother and father. Teachers tried to stop Becky but she snarled and spit at them and chased the boy round a long table. There were so much panic that people knocked over the candles. Soon the tablecloths were on fire. There were screaming and shrieking and crying. But Becky were laughing cos she were having the time of her life. As she continued after the crying boy she suddenly seen Ernie coming towards her. He lunged at her but she easily jumped out of his way and then she was off. She ran through the screaming, burning mayhem and the squealing, panic-stricken rats and raced through the gardens out to the back of the school into the bushland, never looking back. She ran and ran and ran and vanished into the night.

We think we know where she’s gone and we think we
know what she’s looking for, Hannah
, said Ernie finishing his story and getting up from the bale of hay he had been sitting on. He motioned to his packhorse near the stable door. I recognised one of his phonographs with a huge speaking horn strapped to its side.
Do you believe me now?
he asked. I looked at his gentle face and then at Mr Carsons hitting his pipe against the wall. He looked tormented and I knew I had been told the truth and we were truly going to search for her.

Mr Carsons were in a hurry and we set off right away in a drizzling mist, through the streets of Hobart and out of the city. Mr Carsons didn’t give me a horse so I rode with Ernie. During the rough sections of the bush I’d try to wrap me arms round his stomach, which were so fat me fingers couldn’t meet, so I put me hands into his jacket pockets. That first night, after we had made camp and eaten, Mr Carsons tied me to Ernie’s leg so I wouldn’t run away, which were stupid cos I had no idea where Becky were and I needed the men to help me. Ernie had a flask of whiskey and as he sipped it he stared at the flames like someone looking at tea-leaves trying to see the future. I listened to the night birds and animals hunting for food, snuffling, grunting, snarling, crunching bones, crackling dead leaves. It were like I were coming home. I knew what the sounds meant. I could see in me mind what the devils, possums and owls were doing. I thought I heard the cough of a tiger and I spun round in the direction of the sound when Ernie leaned over and touched me hand, tapping it like he were doing Morse code of apology, saying to me how sorry he were to take me on this trip. I said I were fine with it cos we were going to find lost Becky. He asked me how might Becky survive. I said most likely she’d eat berries, catch creek crayfish and baby animals.
It might take a long
while
, he said, glancing across at Mr Carsons sleeping in his bag.
It took years to find you and Rebecca in the bush.
Everyone else gave up, but not Mr Carsons.

Over the next few days and nights as we headed west into the highlands he told me the story of how Mr Carsons came to find us living with the tigers.

When the news came that me family and Becky were missing, searchers went looking for us. They found the smashed boat, me father’s body dumped on the river’s edge and me mother, still caught up in the branches of the tree that had carried her downstream. For weeks they searched for Becky and me. Eventually they gave up cos they thought we had drowned too. But Mr Carsons wouldn’t give up. He went out in all weather, whether it be snowing, raining or burning hot. He didn’t give up hope, because he weren’t a man of hope. He wouldn’t even think of the idea of hope cos that meant there were a chance we were dead and he could only keep on going, keep on driving himself on his quest if his only thought - his single thought - were that we were alive. He became a lonely, stick-thin figure forever seen on his forlorn horse riding through the main streets of small towns or across fields and paddocks. He were a man who didn’t talk much and he reeked of loneliness, as Ernie said, but he made himself start up a conversation with everyone he met, thinking they might have some clue or rumours about his daughter and me. Some people said he were so filled with dreams and thoughts of finding us that he became not so much a man as an idea of one dressed in human form.

It were in his second year of searching when he were in a country pub that he overheard two loggers talking about a rumour they had heard ’bout two tigers that had killed a sheep with the help of two humans. It were too dark for the shepherd who said he saw this to be sure if they were children or midgets or even some strange new human-type creature - after all, it were a different time then and most of Tassie were still an unknown land and who knows what creatures or monsters lived there? Mr Carsons tried to find out where the rumour came from but the loggers didn’t know. They guessed it were from the highlands in the north-west, a long way from where he had been searching along the length of the Munro River.

Mr Carsons had to stop searching when winter came, as the highlands were freezing cold and the snow so deep that it were impossible to travel through. Once spring came and lambing were over he were out searching again. Mr Carsons were certain that we were alive and no amount of chiacking from people who thought he were growing mad with grief could stop his quest to find us. Near the end of autumn in the third year he met a farmer who Mr Carsons thought were a bit simple. He spoke in whispers of what he had seen. It were a story that he had told no one else cos he didn’t want to be made fun of. He were riding ’cross his paddocks just after twilight when he seen two tigers and two human figures crouched over a dead sheep. All four were bent over it, their faces buried deep within it. He yelled out and rode towards them but they fled into the darkness. When he examined the sheep he seen that they had torn open its throat and crushed the skull in order to eat the brains. There were blood everywhere. The four had been drinking blood from the throat. So horrified were the farmer that he thought the two humans were vampires. No wonder he didn’t tell anyone ’bout it. Though I suppose when you think ’bout it, in a way we were vampires. The farmer were relieved to hear Becky’s father talk ’bout the girls being real and not vampires, but he could not imagine or conceive that two real human girls were living and hunting with tigers. The only way he could understand what he had been told were that the two girls were really the ghosts of drowned Hannah and Rebecca. Mr Carsons, who were practically a ghost himself the way he haunted the highlands and the west, didn’t believe in spirits but he were now absolutely certain we were alive.

It were in the late autumn of the fourth year and he were riding through the hills just after dawn when he heard a man’s voice, as clear as a bird, singing somewhere in front of him. When he eventually caught up with the singer he discovered his name were Ernest and he were travelling through the valleys, plains and highlands recording songs on his phonograph. They were all sorts of tunes: sea shanties, drinking songs, love songs, ballads, folk songs. He were recording the songs of farmers, shepherds, drunks and old women. He thought these songs would soon die out and be forgotten and believed it were his mission to make sure this didn’t happen. His father had been an opera singer and Ernie, as I heard many times, was no mean singer himself. He had a lovely clear voice like a boy’s, and when you first heard him, the soft voice didn’t seem to sit square with his big, round body. When he saw Mr Carsons for the first time, he thought he looked like a wraith on a stick. Mr Carsons had a long, black, unruly beard and were starvation thin, and looked as ancient as any prophet in the Old Testament. Before even introducing himself, Becky’s father asked whether Ernie had seen two girls out in the bush. Ernie thought Mr Carsons crazy. How could two girls survive in that wild countryside? When Carsons told him how long he had been searching and that he believed the girls were living with tigers, Ernie thought him, what’s the expression - that he had a couple of kangaroos loose in the top paddock.

Ernie were about to set off again when Carsons asked him where he were heading. Ernie said he were going to record a bounty hunter. When he heard this Mr Carsons said he might tag along, but Ernie were having none of that. He were afraid that this lunatic might rob or kill him. Mr Carsons demanded to accompany Ernie and refused to take no for an answer. Ernie led the way, but during the next several hours he had the creepy sensation that Mr Carsons were going to shoot or jump him from behind.

When they dismounted at the bounty hunter’s shack, Ernie told Carsons that the man were part blackfella so he were hoping he knew some Aboriginal songs cos there weren’t many blackfellas left. The tiger man were at home. He had to be. He had put an axe through his leg a few weeks before and it were in a splint. His walls were covered with curing tiger skins. Once he were fit again he were taking them to Hobart to sell. He were one of the few professional hunters left cos there were less and less tigers.