Into That Forest - By Louis Nowra Page 0,52

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