The Forgotten Islands by Michael Veitch

Author:Michael Veitch [Veitch, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781742533957
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia
Published: 2011-09-15T16:00:00+00:00

17

RON’S OTHER STORY

It happened – well, he told me it happened – on another Bass Strait island, but he never said which one.

The two couples lived in the same remote farmhouse, eking out a living from the sheep they ran on different parts of the island. The dwelling was not big, but with a couple of adaptations, it was just spacious enough for them to enjoy a modest level of independence from each other. Once in a while a supply vessel would arrive, their only contact with the wider world.

At some stage, there was a falling-out over something, and the couples stopped speaking to each other. Gradually, the older pair whose living quarters were at the rear cut themselves off completely and established an entirely separate existence. This arrangement seemed to work well enough in the manner of true Victorian-era pig-headedness, and the four carried on their lives for some time in this way, their peculiar situation gradually becoming known around the place, as the two couples who shared the same house on the same island but who would not speak.

One day, however, the older man died, presenting his wife with a dilemma. She was not strong enough to bury him in the hard winter ground, and the supply vessel was not due for some time. She could always give in and ask for assistance from the people on the other side of now the sealed-up door, but that would mean her being the one to break the feud, and that was unthinkable.

Ron couldn’t tell me how long this situation continued, but the widow’s solution to her problem was only revealed, it is said, weeks later when the supply vessel arrived.

Coming up to the house, the captain was greeted in the usual manner by the surviving farmer and his wife. Pleasantries were exchanged and stores were unloaded. He then enquired about their neighbours and was told simply that they’d been quieter than usual, but that they could still hear them talking occasionally.

Making his way to the other side of the house, he chatted with the widow who, he later recounted, seemed quite normal. They discussed the weather, the price of wool and news from the mainland before he enquired about her husband.

‘He’s having tea,’ she replied, ‘come in and say hello.’

Upon entering the house and approaching the kitchen table, the captain’s blood ran cold. There he was, the man in question, weeks deceased, sitting completely dressed as usual at the kitchen table as if at Sunday lunch. The woman, it turns out, had been the daughter of a London taxidermist and was skilled in the art of mummifying a body. After having done so, she seems to have gone quite mad, forgetting he was no longer of this world and treating him accordingly.

In true Victorian tradition, Ron told me, she was taken away to an institution for the insane.

I had, therefore, another story to track down. Perhaps I would have a chance to do it on my next stop, to one of the biggest and best-known islands in Bass Strait, Flinders.

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