Wild Island (20 page)

Rochester's saloon became a nest for Anna. Pillows and blankets were tumbled on the bunks, with clothing, scraps of sewing. I looked for her there to measure a half-sewn bodice, and found Louisa instead, curled up on pillows in the corner of the bunk under the stern window. Her thick golden hair was loose in heavy locks almost to her waist. She looked ten years younger. She had been asleep and she was still rosy with it. There was a half-empty bottle beside her, a jug of water, a glass, and the perfumed scent of gin.

‘Harriet. Come in. Shut the door. Talk to me.'

But it was she who talked, her tongue loosened by gin and sleep. Mrs Tench had given her the gin for her terrible monthly pains. I said my stepmother had given it to me for the same reason. The doctor had assured Louisa the spasms would cease when she married, but St John had proved not demanding in That Way and the cramps continued. St John believed that side of marriage was only for the procreation of children, and for three years he had thought it too soon for that—and then they had gone to India, where he judged the climate unhealthy for infants—and now this voyage was a time of abstinence and prayer to prepare him for the work ahead.

‘I should like to have a child,' she added. ‘It would be a way of passing the time. Did you never want a child, Harriet?'

I told my tale briefly, but the thought of my poor babes overwhelmed me and I had to stop.

‘Oh, I'm sorry, Harriet,' she said. ‘I don't know why girls are so eager to marry. We imagine only being loved and know nothing of what may be really in store.'

St John was not ordained when she met him. When he decided to take Holy Orders everyone believed he would soon be a Bishop,
he was such a scholar. She had imagined living in a pretty cathedral close, like Salisbury or Winchester: never dreamed of India or Van Diemen's Land. In India there had been plenty of servants at least:
dhobi wallahs
and
punkah wallahs
,
ayahs
and
amahs
. In Van Diemen's Land they would all be convicts, which was not a pleasant thought.

I do not remember exactly when I knew Anna and Quigley were lovers, but in the latter part of the voyage she no longer used our cabin or Rochester's. She and the Captain made no secret of their happiness. What I found curious was that in spite of this she seemed unshaken in her determination to find Rowland. Several times I tried to hint that this might be awkward if she remained attached to the Captain, but this was met only with a blank stare of incomprehension, and at last I gave up and determined to wait and see what time would bring.

The ship called at the Cape for re-victualling but we stayed only a few hours in the end, and did not take on supplies, because there had been an outbreak of fever. We had enough salt beef and biscuit for another month, Quigley said, and what we lost in fresh vegetables we would gain in reaching our destination the sooner. We had not long left the port when strong winds drove us south, and a maelstrom of noise and water lashed the ship for a week. Meals became monotonous. ‘Fishy' soup—so-called, Seymour said, because it was a matter of doubt whether it contained any fish, though it certainly smelt of it—followed by lobscouse or salmagundi of salt beef. A plague of fleas had erupted. There was much surreptitious scratching. The children were grizzly and the adults irritable. A quarrel arose at dinner one day.

‘Governor Arthur was not well liked, I know,' said St John, ‘but men who act on principle are frequently maligned. Arthur is a model Christian and family man.'

‘That's as may be,' growled Chesney. ‘But it's my belief religion is in the heart and not in the knees, as the saying goes. There's Christians of the spirit and Christians of the letter.'

‘Colonel Arthur is a devoted Churchman,' Wallace insisted, his beautiful face severe.

Mr Chesney had not attended St John's last two Sunday services.

‘Ah well, if it's pious-faced pew-fillers you want, then Arthur is your man,' said Chesney. ‘But his greed for money and property is not what the Good Book recommends. I don't call it Christian to wait until a man's in money troubles and then buy up his property at half value. That's what Arthur did to Knopwood.'

He looked around the table to emphasise the point. ‘Parson Knopwood loved his little house and garden. Everyone admired “Cottage Green”, and the truth is, it lies on prime land above the cove at Hobarton, and Arthur decided he would have it by fair means or foul.'

Seymour said, ‘Knopwood was in debt.'

‘Mr Knopwood is reputed to be a spendthrift,' agreed St John. ‘How else, with a generous stipend and neither wife nor child, could he get in debt? He'd wasted a fortune in England before he went to the colony.'

‘You don't know your facts, sir,' replied Chesney immediately. ‘It was his father wasted the family money. And I won't deny Knopwood likes his port wine, his giblet pie and roast fowl with a good bread sauce . . . ‘ (Mrs Chesney groaned), but he'll share them with anyone. As to family, he adopted little Betsey Mack, a foundling, and doted on her twenty years until she were grown and married. When she died of a fever his heart near broke. It's true he's an old-fashioned hunting-and-shooting parson and no saint—but there's one o' them in every second parish in England. Or was, 'til a few years since. Nowadays,' he added, looking hard at Wallace, ‘there's a new breed o' hoity-toity dry-as-dusts who fancy they ain't flesh and blood like the rest of us.'

‘I understood the foundling girl was Knopwood's own daughter by a convict “housekeeper” . . .'

‘Ladies present,' said Quigley mechanically. He was talking to Anna, only half listening to the conversation.

‘That's a wicked lie put about by his enemies,' said Chesney with disgust.

‘Colonel Arthur is a family man,' repeated Wallace. ‘His wife is dutiful . . .'

‘Aye, Arthur's a family man!' said Chesney with a wry look. ‘If that means handing out public offices to all your kinsfolk! Montagu, Forster, Henry Arthur and the rest.'

‘It's a convict settlement. Arthur had to have men he could trust.'

‘What do you know of it, sir? You wasn't there! He had to have toadying, fawning, canting, grasping
creatures
!' said Chesney.

‘Gentlemen, please!' said the Captain. ‘Ladies, let us have some general topic.'

‘You had best both save your breath to cool your porridge,' said McLeod. ‘Colonel Arthur and his faction have been abused and praised in equal measure, at Home and in the island, but his enemies have never managed to prove anything against him.'

‘And why?' cried Chesney. ‘Because he has the courts in his pocket, that's why! He is a pence-counting, paper-thumbing, self-serving jack-in-office.'

‘The truth is less simple than you admit, Chesney.'

Chesney reddened and swelled, and cracked a walnut so hard it was crushed to fragments. Inclining his head towards Wallace, chin thrust forward, he said, ‘If that's your opinion, defend it. The ship is not an ideal field, but I've no objection to stepping on deck to settle the matter. Or ain't you man enough?'

Wallace said, ‘A duel? That would be unwise for both of us.'

This was a taunt in itself. Wallace had been surprisingly accurate at the pistol shooting on deck. Chesney had not managed to hit anything. I looked at Louisa. She was speaking to McLeod and seemed unperturbed by the mounting row.

Chesney crumpled his napkin and threw it on the table, ‘Why you . . .'

Mrs Chesney clutched her husband's sleeve. ‘Chesney! Consider! What are you doing?'

‘Wasn't it just last year, Chesney,' asked Quigley conversationally, ‘that your friend Gregson fought a duel in Hobarton with Mr Jellicoe over the same matter? Gregson got off scot-free,' he added to Anna, ‘but still Jellicoe limps . . .'

Mr Chesney bellowed, ‘Scot-free! Gregson is persecuted! I've a letter from my son telling me that Arthur's nephew Henry—a dyed-in-the-wool villain—has insulted Gregson in the public press. Gregson gave the rogue a horsewhipping for it, and was called to court and found guilty, of course! Fined two hundred pounds for thrashing a known rogue!
And
sent to prison for three months! Well, if I had a horsewhip . . . but pistols will do. We'll soon see, Wallace, whether your pair of pretty toys make a decent hole.'

He filled his mouth with more beef and chewed pugnaciously. Mrs Chesney rose to her feet with a fork in one hand, making stabbing motions in the air to punctuate her words.

‘That's the last straw on the camel's hat! Shame on you all. How can you sit there, Captain? The Lord knows it would be hard for a widow to survive in Hobarton—which, though I love it, I don't deny is a hard place. Every second finger a fish hook to swindle and cheat a poor body. Chesney, how can you?'

Mr Chesney opened his mouth to reply but made a choking, retching sound, turned blue in the face and collapsed in his chair, clutching at his heart. The doctor was out of his seat and with him in an instant. For a time it seemed we might have two more patients aboard, since Wallace looked more ill than Chesney until the latter recovered. The whole affair was ridiculous, as Seymour said, but it could have ended badly.

On the morning of the thirtieth March the
Adastra
sighted Van Diemen's Land, a smudge on the horizon which appeared almost unchanging hour after hour, but next morning we woke to see high
cliffs and a narrow, fluted pillar of rock standing offshore. Seals basked on the rocks at the base and slid easily into the sea at our approach.

We waited for the tide, and towards noon entered the estuary leading up to Hobarton and began beating slowly up-river against a northerly wind. We leaned on the rail to watch the sun shining on wooded hills and pale beaches on both sides of the wide estuary. Smoke rose from a ridge in a lavender-grey haze and we smelt it clearly. Clearings became more frequent, with cabins or huts, and the pilot came aboard and said it had been an uncommonly hot day. A northerly was unusual here, except on rare days in late summer, as now.

Hobart in the distance was a picturesque cove with a great blue mountain behind. Called the Table Mountain at first, Mrs Chesney said, but Mount Wellington now. By the time the sun began to descend behind it, silhouetting its huge purple profile against a salmon-coloured sky, we were close enough to make out Government House, a long whitewashed wooden building among trees. The harbour directly in front of it was busy with two large ships and many small craft and dories. The smell of smoke grew more prominent than ever. Watermen from the shore had surrounded us in small boats, resting on their oars, and suddenly there came a vigorous yell from one of them, followed by a rapid chorus of shouting. This is the last coherent thing I remember before everything became confusion, pandemonium, then a frenzy of action. The fire was aboard our vessel. Piles of corded luggage on deck were in the way, and so were we. Men swung up and down the ratlines shouting. The doctor herded women and children into a group. McLeod and Chesney disappeared. Smoke billowed around us, clouds of choking grey-black, making our eyes water and bringing moments of near-darkness. Natty began to whimper and the girls clung to our skirts and hands.