Tiger Men (5 page)

‘Yes, I saw her myself yesterday, and I agree. She didn’t appear to be suffering any undue physical discomfort.’ Amy clearly sensed no tension. ‘Thank you, Clara. I’ll pour.’

‘Very good, Miss Amy. I baked a lemon cake this afternoon.’ Friday was always Clara’s baking day. ‘Shall I bring in a slice or two?’

Clara Goodall served as both cook and housekeeper, while her equally efficient husband, Albert, carried out all the duties required of a general manservant. The two had come to Silas as ‘ticket-of-leavers’, convicts who through good behaviour had been granted a ticket permitting them to accept employment on the condition they regularly reported to the authorities. Within a year of their service, and upon Silas’s personal recommendation, the Goodalls’ sentences had been commuted and both had been granted conditional pardons. Fiercely loyal and devoted to their master, they had been in Silas’s employ for eight years now, and were the only servants he retained these days.

‘How could I possibly resist your lemon cake, Clara?’ Amy said with a smile. ‘What about you, Father?’

‘No, thank you. Not for me.’

Clara nodded and as she left Amy busied herself with the tea.

Silas waited until the housekeeper had closed the door behind her.

‘You know, don’t you, Amy, that I have always respected your desire to make contact with the parents of your pupils in order to gain their trust.’ There was an element of peevishness in his tone as he fought to avoid the issue uppermost in his mind. He had never before had a disagreement with his daughter, and did not relish the prospect now, but he could not ignore what he saw as a betrayal of trust. ‘It is why I have never queried you regarding absenteeism, although frankly I believe you should have told me about Charlie Jordan.’

‘You knew of his absence?’

‘Yes. I checked the attendance records.’

Amy stopped pouring the tea and looked up, concerned. ‘Polly didn’t think I told you, did she?’

Silas found the familiar reference grating, and his daughter’s misguided sense of priority annoyed him intensely.

‘I would have no idea what Mrs Jordan thought, Amy. It is not my duty to enter into personal discussion with the society’s beneficiaries.’

‘Oh.’ For the first time Amy registered her father’s disapproval. She could hardly fail to do so. Silas Stanford spoke sternly to many people and often, but rarely did he adopt such a tone with her.

‘If you wish to pursue a personal relationship with the woman,’ he continued, ‘that is entirely your affair, although why you would bother giving her a silk scarf is beyond me. You surely cannot believe that she values the gift.’

‘Yes, I believe she does.’

‘She will sell it.’

‘Of course she will.’

Silas was taken aback by the light of rebellion in his daughter’s eyes.

‘And whatever money she gets for it will go to her children. That certainly doesn’t mean to say that she does not value the gift.’

Conversation ceased abruptly as the door opened and Clara arrived with the cake.

‘There we are, Miss Amy,’ she said, setting down the plate.

‘Thank you, Clara.’

The housekeeper withdrew, once again closing the door behind her, and the cake, like the tea, sat untouched before them.

‘What is it, Father?’ Amy asked gently. ‘You don’t mind at all about the scarf. I know you don’t. Tell me what’s wrong. Please.’

‘I consider it a betrayal to your mother’s memory that you should discuss her death with a virtual stranger.’ The words sprang out with the alarming force of a slap to the face. ‘I am appalled that you saw fit to talk intimately to Polly Jordan of our personal family history.’

Amy resisted the temptation to retaliate with equal force, though she found the accusation grossly unjust.

‘I did not talk intimately of our personal family history,’ she said calmly. ‘I merely told Polly Jordan that my mother had died at sea.’

Silas gave a snort of derision. ‘And you do not regard such a disclosure as intimate?’

‘No, I do not. I regard it as an offer of sympathy and understanding to a woman who is suffering grief.’ Sensing his further annoyance, Amy carried on hurriedly before he could interject. ‘Polly cried as she spoke to me of her husband, Father. She loved him dearly, and I wanted to share with her the fact that I too had experienced the loss of a loved one at sea. I hoped it might be of some comfort –’

‘And what if Polly’s beloved husband did
not
die at sea?’ Silas’s interruption was as jarring as he intended it to be. ‘What if the man abandoned his expectant wife in order to escape the responsibility of yet another child?’ He paused, allowing the impact of such a suggestion to hit home, and was gratified by his daughter’s look of utter bewilderment. Good, I’ve shocked her out of her complacency, he thought, and the knowledge softened him a little. ‘Do you honestly think that such a possibility has not occurred to Polly Jordan, my dear? It would be the first thing to cross her mind, I can assure you.’

‘In which case, she has my sympathy tenfold, for desertion would cause her even greater distress.’

The scenario her father had presented had indeed taken Amy by surprise, but Silas had misinterpreted the true cause for her bewilderment.

‘But if Polly was abandoned,’ she continued, ‘why then did the society accept her as a beneficiary? Proof of widowhood is required, is it not?’

‘Of course it is. I personally interviewed members of the whaler’s crew who witnessed both the accident and the burial.’ Silas regretted having lashed out in so vulgar a fashion; he rarely lost his temper. ‘I was merely stating a hypothetical possibility,’ he said stiffly. ‘A possibility that I’m sure would have occurred to Polly Jordan, even in her grief.’ He stared distractedly at the cup of tea Amy had poured him. It would be tepid by now.

‘What of the captain? What of the ship’s log?’

‘Eh?’

‘Burials at sea must be recorded. Was the log checked?’

‘Possibly. I can’t be sure. Shall we call Clara for fresh cups?’

‘My goodness, Father.’ Her tone was one of disbelief. It couldn’t be possible, she thought. ‘You didn’t lie, did you?’

‘I most certainly did not.’ Silas was horrified that his daughter could suggest such a thing. ‘I received eye-witness accounts. I took men at their word, and why should I not?’

Yes, Amy thought, just as the members of the Hobart Town Businessmen’s Philanthropic Society would accept the word of their founder. If Silas Stanford recommended Polly Jordan as a beneficiary, they would of course assume the records had been verified. Had her father chosen not to delve too deeply into the circumstances in the belief that Polly Jordan, an expectant mother with four children, qualified for support regardless of the rules? It appeared quite possible.

Amy felt a wave of affection as she studied him, his attention now focused studiously on the teapot, signalling an end to their conversation. She thought how tired he looked, tired and vulnerable and suddenly older than his forty-eight years, and she wondered if she were in any way responsible. He was such an intensely private man. Had she indeed betrayed his trust?

‘I am sorry, Father,’ she said. ‘I am deeply sorry that I offended you in speaking about Mother to Polly Jordan. I promise I shall never again –’

‘Oh, but my dear, you must.’ Silas reached across the table and took her hand in both of his, though he was not physically demonstrative as a rule. ‘You must speak of your mother whenever, and to whomever, you wish,’ he said. ‘I do not hold sole ownership of her memory.’ He was overcome with guilt as he realised how selfish he’d been. ‘The apology is mine, Amy. Please forgive me, I beg you.’

‘Of course I forgive you,’ his daughter replied brightly, and she kissed the hands that held hers. Like her mother before her, Amy was never one to shy away from physical expression.

She jumped to her feet. ‘I shall tell Clara to make a fresh pot,’ she said as she picked up the tea tray. ‘You need your tea: you look weary, Father.’

I am weary, he thought as he watched her sail off to the kitchen. Revisiting the past had been strangely tiring.

Several minutes later, upon her return, she insisted he eat some lemon cake while they waited for the tea. And then she further insisted upon hearing all the news from the latest meeting of the Legislative Council, news which she accused him of having been keeping to himself.

‘Come along now, Father, I shall swear an oath of silence if you wish, but do share some secrets with me. Do you really believe London will agree to the renaming of the colony?’

‘They will have to agree when we achieve selfgovernment, my dear, and that is only a matter of time. The new constitution will be passed within the next several months I’m sure, and once it has been given Royal Assent by Queen Victoria, the Privy Council will have no option but to approve our decision.’

Silas was aware of his daughter’s ploy. Amy was fuelling his passion, just as Lucy had done whenever she’d sensed his despondence, and just like Lucy she was succeeding. Amy’s spirit and good humour were a daily reminder to Silas of the wife he had lost, but he found no pain in the fact, only pleasure, for he had long ago accepted Lucy’s death as a message from God.

‘Imagine, Amy! No longer will we be Van Diemen’s Land. The dark days will soon be behind us.’

‘But surely now with the end of transportation, the dark days are already behind us, Father. Why, just the other day an article in the
Courier
said something about “an end to the shameful stain upon our history”, which I must say I found very dramatic. The journalist called the Jubilee Festival Dinner “a triumph for the Anti-Transportation League and a testament to its members’ belief in a free land for our children”. Or words to that effect. I can’t quite recall – I may be misquoting a little. In any event, I wholeheartedly agree with him.’

Following the docking of the last convict vessel on 26 May of that year, Van Diemen’s Land had indeed given itself up to endless celebration. Hobart Town and Launceston had conducted lavish festivities, the Jubilee Festival of Hobart Town culminating in a giant outdoor banquet for the children of the colony. A massive marquee had been rigged among the trees, rows of cloth-covered trestle tables placed end to end, and huge platters of food laid out for the hundreds upon hundreds of children who had gathered for the feast and for the fireworks that followed.

‘How proud you must be, Father, after your years of striving, to finally see an end to our days as a penal settlement.’

‘I am proud, it is true,’ he admitted, ‘to have played my small part in the proceedings.’

Silas was being overly humble. He had played a large part, and the battle had at times been hard. He had made powerful enemies in the group of wealthy landowners and merchants who, having prospered under the assignment system, had banded together in a bid to retain convict transportation and the ready availability of cheap labour it provided. But they lost, Silas thought with a sense of triumph. Times had changed. Those days were over. And every minute of the fight had been worth it.

‘You are right, my dear, I am proud of our achievements. Although we may well be witness to further inhumanities before the day is done,’ he added, his face clouding slightly as he recalled the road gang he’d watched at work on the docks. ‘I fear the government will continue to employ convict labour on its public works until the current prisoners have served their sentences. In the interests of future integration, I would have preferred to see a greater concentration upon the acquisition of trade skills for high-risk prisoners, and the general issue of tickets-of-leave to all those convicts considered low-risk. I’m afraid I was outvoted on these issues, however. The majority of my colleagues considered my suggested course of action premature and impracticable. They accused me of being unrealistic.’

Amy was not particularly surprised. There was much that was unrealistic about her father. Silas Stanford was so driven in his quest that he sometimes failed to see the real world at all, and that included the real world of his family.

‘Education,’ he announced, changing the subject with surprisingly dramatic flair. ‘Education is the way of the future, Amy. The education of a new generation to lead a new free colony.’

She could certainly not disagree with him there.

The tea arrived and for the next half-hour they talked about the plans for the Hobart Town Ragged School Association, or rather Silas did. He was joining forces with the philanthropist Henry Hopkins in the creation of a new welfare scheme modelled upon the English ragged school system.

As he spoke, Amy was heartened to see the change in him. No longer did he look tired and old. In his excitement for the future, he was rejuvenated. It is a pity, she thought, that so few can see the man for who he really is, including, sadly, his two older daughters.

Amy remembered how marooned they’d felt, she and her sisters, upon losing the woman who’d been the very anchor of their existence. She recalled how, in the wake of their mother’s death, Harriet and Isabel had so craved their father’s affection that they’d competed with each other to see who could best garner his interest. But Silas Stanford had appeared barely to notice his children, leaving them in the sole care of the governess he’d employed, and Amy had often wondered how it was that she had not shared her sisters’ desperation. Had she been more resilient simply because she was younger? Or had she perhaps sensed her father’s love? He’d displayed no favouritism, and her sisters had never appeared to suspect any, but she’d always known Silas loved her. Unfortunately, neither Harriet nor Isabel had experienced a similar confidence and, as the years had passed, their father’s perceived indifference had had radical repercussions.

Harriet Stanford had embraced the Church with fervour, perhaps in a bid for her father’s approval or perhaps as a replacement for the love he’d failed to give her, but she’d certainly succeeded in gaining his attention when, as a twenty-year-old, she’d left to join the Sisterhood of the Holy Communion, an Anglican order of nuns in Sydney. Silas had been immensely proud of his eldest daughter.