Morgan’s Run (87 page)

What are they muttering about? wondered Kitty, drying the bowls and spoons with a rag and putting them on their shelf before starting to wash the new pewter plates, mugs and eating utensils. Oh dear, I truly do cramp their style!

Though her
world still consisted of Richard’s acre, Kitty was too busy to think of exploring; her only trip to Sydney Town apart from divine service had been to identify her attacker, neither an occasion to take notice of her surroundings. All her farmer’s bones were asserting themselves; Richard could not have picked a better kind of woman than Kitty for the kind of life she was called upon to lead.

She kept hearing about “the grubs,” and on the 18th of October she experienced them at first hand. The wheat on Richard’s acre was in ear and thriving, but the Government wheat in the more open parts of the vale had been hit by high, salty winds and blighted, though by no means all of it was ruined. The year was a dry one, the crops saved only by an occasional night of heavy rain which had vanished by the morning. Perhaps for this reason, the grubs had not come during winter. Then suddenly it seemed as if every growing thing was covered with a heaving green blanket—the caterpillars were bright green, about an inch long, and thin. Again Richard was lucky, for Kitty had no fear of wrigglers, crawlies and bugs. She was able to pick the creatures off without revulsion, though the solution of tobacco and soap was more effective. Every woman on the island save those who danced attendance on the marines and the sawpits was put to picking and sprinkling. Within three weeks they were gone. There would be a harvest, very soon for the Indian corn, early in December for the wheat. Though under Major Ross’s new scheme everything the freed Richard grew was his, he was very scrupulous about sending excess produce to Stores, for which he accumulated more notes of hand. What he kept was either eaten by the humans or Augusta, or saved for seed.

The weather in Norfolk Island, she occasionally thought as she toiled with her hoe or got down on hands and knees to weed, was truly delightful—balmy, warm, never hot out of the sun. And just when things began to wilt from lack of water, one of those nights of solid rain would roll in, disappear at dawn. The soil, blood-red and very friable, grew anything. No, Norfolk Island could not compete with Kent in her affections, yet it did have a magical quality. Rainy nights, sunny days—that was the stuff of fairies.

Some of those she had known on Lady Juliana had fallen to the lot of Richard’s friends. Aaron Davis, the community baker, had taken Mary Walker and her child. George Guest had taken eighteen-year-old Mary Bateman, whom Kitty had known very well, had liked, but yet sensed a strangeness, as of madness yet to come. Edward Risby and Ann Gibson were happily together and planning to marry as soon as a person empowered to marry visited the island. These women and Olivia Lucas visited—how delightful it was to be able to offer them a mug of tea with sugar in it! Mary Bateman and Ann Gibson were both expecting babies; Mary Walker, whose child Sarah Lee was toddling, was also expecting her first by Aaron Davis. The only barren one was Kitty Clark.

Of fish there were none. Sirius’s cutter, which might have ventured well outside the lagoon to fish, was smashed to pieces trying to land six women convicts off Surprize, one with a child. The oarsmen drowned, as did a man swimming to their rescue; one of the three women who survived was the drowned child’s mother. So the very occasional catches of fish the coble managed all went to the officers and marines; neither Sirius’s seamen nor freed convicts received a share. But Justinian had carried plants, including bamboo, and Richard was given one small piece of it from which to grow a clump of potential fishing poles. Hand-lines caught nothing fishing off rocks.

There was a panic at Charlotte Field, where the paddocks were hedged in by a mixture of creeper skeleton and a very thorny bush; one of the fences accidentally caught fire and the flames spread into ripe Indian corn. At first Sydney Town heard that all the corn had been burned to the ground, but Lieutenant Clark, speeding there at a run, reported back to the distraught Major Ross that only two acres had perished thanks to the great exertions of the convicts, who beat the fire out. So grateful was Lieutenant Clark to the damned whores of Charlotte Field that he gave each of them a new pair of shoes from the Government supplies.

D’arcy Wentworth was deputed to move to Charlotte Field with his mistress Catherine Crowley and little William Charles as soon as a house could be built for him; he was to be superintendent of convicts and also Charlotte Field’s surgeon. The duties of this latter position varied from midwifing to deciding when a convict being flogged could bear no more strokes. If the culprit were a woman, Wentworth tended to be lenient, whereas Lieutenant Clark, who despised the women of Charlotte Field, would of choice have had Richardson lay a meaner cat on harder.

Much to Kitty’s pleasure, the variety of food increased. She now had a wonderful cooking area because Richard had fixed an iron shelf across two-thirds of the big fireplace and a rod over the naked flames of the other third. She had covered kettles for braising, open ones for stewing or boiling, pans for frying and a spouted kettle she kept perpetually simmering on a coolish back corner of the shelf so that she could make herself or her visitors a pot of tea, tip a dollop of hot water into her washing-up dish. Richard had even made her what he called a soap-saver: a wire basket attached to a wire handle in which she could put a chunk of soap and swish it through the water without losing the soap.

Richard told John Lawrell firmly that he must give up some of his chickens and ducks, so Kitty added to her living charges and was able on special occasions to put eggs on the menu. Augusta farrowed twelve piglets and only twice rolled over to squash them; she was considerate enough to leave all six females alive as well as two males Richard intended would be roast suckling pig at Christmas. The pig produce was entirely theirs. If any successful breeder wished to sell pork to the Stores, he or she (Ross had made no sexual distinctions) was paid for it; if anyone wished to salt pork down, he or she was given the salt and a barrel to do so. Ross’s objective was, as he had said at the outset, to take as many convicts as possible off Government Stores. Folk like Aaron Davis, Dick Phillimore, Nat Lucas, George Guest, John Mortimer, Ed Risby and Richard Morgan demonstrated that Ross’s scheme could work, given time.

The Major’s chief troubles rested with the marines and Sirius’s sailors, who refused to soil their hands by growing vegetables and other fresh produce, demanding that Stores supply them. When Stores could not, they were prone to steal vegetables, melons and poultry from the convicts, a transgression Ross punished as severely as if the larceny were the other way around. The grumbles and dark looks among these free people increased; they all believed absolutely that no convicted felon ought to be able to keep the fruits of his or her labors, that every morsel the convicts grew belonged to them and must feed them ahead of any and all convicts. Why should they labor in a garden when so many convicts were growing enough to feed them? Convicts were the property of His Majesty the King, they could own nothing, keep nothing.
Convicts had no rights,
so who exactly did Major Robert Ross think he was? The fact that Major Ross levied two-thirds of the produce of convicts for Stores was conveniently overlooked; only freed men kept everything.

Christmas Day,
a Saturday, dawned fine and clear, though the wind was in the south and a huge sea thundered into Sydney Bay. Richard killed his two boar piglets, Nat Lucas two geese, George Guest three fat ducks, Ed Risby four chickens, and Aaron Davis baked full wheaten bread from flour ground out of grain all of them had grown surplus to Government requirements. They picnicked under the shade and shelter of the pines on Point Hunter with Stephen Donovan, Johnny Livingstone and D’arcy Wentworth and his family, the pork and poultry turning on spits D’arcy had commandeered from the smithy. Stephen and Johnny contributed ten bottles of port, enough for both men and women to enjoy half a pint each.

The Major had publicly proclaimed that this was to be a dry Christmas for the convicts apart from small beer, and the marines were ordered to consume their half-pints away from any convict eyes; King had always given the convicts rum on festive occasions, whereas Ross, especially in the aftermath of discovering what Dyer, Francis and company were planning to do with their sugar cane, had no intention of doing the same.

For Kitty, the day was the happiest she had known since her father died. Sirius canvas was spread out for the women to sit on, pillows provided to ease the awkwardness of the pregnant ones. The pines broke the force of the wind, fathers took their toddlers down onto Turtle Bay to paddle and build sand castles, mothers gossiped comfortably. Kitty had brought her kettle to make tea for her friends, setting it on its own fire. The men, once duty at the water’s edge was over, moved off a little way to squat on their haunches and talk together, while the women attended to the spits, prepared bowls of lettuce, celery, raw onion and raw beans, buried potatoes in the embers. About two in the afternoon they sat down to feast, then the men joined the women in a toast to His Britannic Majesty and afterward lay flat out for a postprandial nap, toddlers cuddled against them.

They are all so easy together, thought Kitty. Because of shared experiences and hardships, she had grown up sufficiently to realize. We are a new sort of English people, and what we make of ourselves will always be influenced by the fact that we were sent here as unwanted by our betters. Betters who are not betters at all, but rather people who do not see beyond their own noses. Out of the blue, it seemed, she suddenly had a feeling that none of these convicted people would return to England. They have lost respect for England. This has become home.

What about herself? Never having been to the shore, she sat with her arms wrapped about her knees and propped her chin on them to look along the reef, invisible under billows of foam and tendrils of spray. Though its spectacular beauty was not lost on her, it did not draw her either. In her mind’s eye true beauty was Faversham, a good big stone house with bullioned casement windows and tumbles of pink and white roses—snapdragons, stocks, columbines, pansies, foxgloves, snowdrops, daffodils—apple orchards, yews, oaks—grassy green meadows, fluffy white sheep, birches and beeches. Oh, the perfume of her father’s flower garden! The placid, dreaming quality which overlay all human activity and endeavor. This Norfolk Island kind of beauty was too alien, too untamable. This humbled and crushed people. Whereas home enhanced people.

She looked up to find Stephen’s eyes upon her, and blushed crimson. Clearly startled, he transferred his gaze at once to the reef. Oh, Stephen! Why will you not love me? Did you love me, Richard would let me go—I know he would. I am not the center of his life. He has put me in my own room and he bolts the door between us, not because I tempt him—if I did, the bolt would be on my side of the door. To shut me out of his home. To pretend that I am not there. Stephen, why will you not love me when I love you? I want to cover your dear face in kisses, take it between my hands and smile into your eyes, see my love shining in their blueness like the sun in a Norfolk Island sky.
Why
will you not love me?

As soon as the strength went out of the sun and the toddlers became tired enough to grizzle, everybody started packing up. Families dropping off as they went, Richard and Kitty walked home with their share of the leftovers, Nat and Olivia Lucas the last to leave them. Olivia’s tiny son, William, was but recently born, and her twin girls were extremely proud of him. What nice folk!

“Did ye like your first antipodean Christmas?” Richard asked.

“What sort of Christmas? But I did, I did, truly!”

“Antipodean. That is the correct name for the ends of the earth—the Antipodes. It comes from the Greek, and means something like ‘feet at the opposite end.’ ”

The sun had gone behind the hills to the west, Richard’s acre was plunged into deep cold shadow.

“Would ye like a fire?”

“No, I would sooner go to bed,” she said rather mournfully, her mind occupied with Stephen, the way he had turned from her in rejection. Of course she did know why: she was as plain as a pikestaff despite the weight she was so delighted at gaining, fancying that her breasts were now quite as nice as most, her waist as small, her hips as properly hippy.

“Close your eyes and hold out your hand, Kitty.”

Obeying, she felt something small and square put into her palm, and opened her eyes. A box. Fingers trembling, she prised its lid off to see that it held a necklet of gold. “Richard!”

“Merry Christmas,” he said, smiling.

She flung her arms about his neck and pressed her cheek to his, then, in an ecstasy of gratitude and pleasure, kissed him on the mouth. For a moment he stayed very still, then put his hands upon her waist and returned her kiss, which transformed it from a thank you to something very different. Far too intelligent to mistake her response for anything other than what it was, he contented himself with savoring her deliciously soft lips. She neither fled nor made a protest; instead she nestled against him and let the kiss go on. Vibrant warmth kindled inside her, she forgot herself and Stephen to follow where his mouth led, thinking with what remained of her to think that this first real kiss of her life was a very exotic and wonderful experience, and that Richard Morgan was more interesting by far than she had realized.