Wild Island (35 page)

Booth married Lizzie Eagle at St David's Church that month. He was well, but far from robust. The Franklins lent them Government Cottage at New Norfolk for the wedding journey. The week after they returned, Dr Pilkington and Lizzie's mother and younger sisters left with the Regiment for India. Her elder sister Nan remained at Richmond with her husband and small children.

The summer began early. There were hot days in November, and on one of them Eliza, Sophy, Miss Williamson and I were walking under the trees near the shore when Miss Williamson discovered she had left her peppermint drops behind. I went back to fetch them and witnessed an amusing incident. As I explained to Bergman, it seemed so very typical of each character involved.

Returning down a narrow servants' back staircase, I was surprised to find Sir John, Henry Elliot, Montagu and Boyes coming up towards me in single file. They must have come through the stables from the Treasury rather than walk round the outside of the building in the heat. Sir John, as wide as the staircase, heaved to a standstill on the tiny landing, puffing like a grampus. Without seeing me he mopped his face with a handkerchief and drew out a pocket watch. A small window behind him threw light over his shoulder and onto the glass face of the instrument, which reflected a quivering luminous oval onto the ceiling. The watery patch of light danced and trembled as Sir John moved the watch. He gave a grunt of pleasure and began to twist it deliberately to skim the light about. In looking up he noticed me and said, ‘Ah, Mrs Adair.
Caught playing like a schoolboy. Do you see my Ariel? It resembles a sprite, eh?'

He made the light perform a rapid circle on the walls and ceiling, rumbled a laugh, shook his head.

‘Light!' he said. ‘What an astonishing thing it is. We take it for granted every minute, but what a mystery! By the grace of God we live in it as fish in the sea, and yet we know so little about it except the vast speed of its rays. And now Dr Richardson sends me an article on a new wonder. Can you believe this, Mrs Adair? A sheet of glass is coated with a preparation of seaweed and silver—seaweed! Silver! I do not wholly understand it—but by means of an apparatus—a light-box of sorts—there appears on the glass a perfect image of a landscape or person, which may be subjected to chemicals and so fixed in place like a painting!

‘Ask Lady Franklin,' he advised me, nodding, ‘she has read it more thoroughly than I. Will such a contrivance rival you artists, do you suppose? Or could it be used as an aid in some manner?'

He went on to talk about the light of the Arctic, the ‘ice blink' and the mysterious auroras which glimmer and flash across the sky in huge wild winter patterns, pink and green, like a mirage of some vast country among the stars . . . Montagu waited two steps below with an air of boredom. He did not look at the light on the ceiling but down at the dust on his polished boots. He stooped, had discovered a coin in a dark corner of the stair, a farthing, some servant's loss. He glanced about as though he might find another.

‘Sir . . .' said Henry Elliot. ‘Mr Lillie will be waiting.'

Lillie was the new Presbyterian minister, zealous for the rights of his small congregation.

‘Ah, yes. Mr Lillie's problems are intractable, I fear . . .' Sir John sighed and turned to Montagu. ‘Ready, John?'

‘Excellency . . .' drawled Montagu, in a tone that made Henry Elliot look at him sharply. Boyes noticed too, Sir John did not. They filed past me, smiling, Sir John talking again about light, Montagu turning the farthing in his fingers behind his back.

Much of the hectic coming and going at this time was in preparation for the Sailing Regatta. Regattas had been held randomly under previous governors, but Sir John had decided to institute an annual event for the first of December, to mark the day when Abel Tasman discovered Van Diemen's Land. Lady Franklin suggested an emblem of wattle sprigs and oak leaves, tied together with royal blue ribbon, signifying England and the colony united. The newspapers sneered at Her Helpful Ladyship: the wattle had finished blooming, and even for clever Lady Franklin would not come again out of season. They criticised the waste of time and the expense, the encouragement of wanton pleasure-seeking. Government House seethed with bustle and heat.

Against all predictions the Regatta was a triumph in the end. Heavenly sunshine, brilliant but mild; the Derwent glittering like splintered sapphires as the rowing crews flashed to and fro. The gubernatorial box fluttered with blue ribbons, ships' pennants and an abundance of flowers. Sir John carried a bunch of dark red roses, Lady Franklin smiled. Arm in arm they came forth and wandered among the cheering crowds who, mellowed by free cheese and beer, waved indulgently at their foolish superiors.

Eliza and I watched for a time and then sat in the shade on a blanket with young Henry, Miss Williamson, and Eliza's servant, Mary Watson. After a time Bergman joined us, and removing his hat, sat down beside me with a smile, which gave me the opportunity to tell him what I had learned about Rowland Rochester's books.

‘I am to go to the Chesneys' at Christmas,' I said. ‘Is it a difficult journey to Copping from there?'

He was about to reply when St John Wallace also arrived and seated himself. Louisa could not be there, her confinement was near. St John had taken her to visit the cottage this morning and she was now resting . . . Oh, had he not mentioned? He had rented a furnished cottage.

‘Louisa will wish you to see it as soon as we are settled. It is a short walk from St David's, and in the other direction only a mile or
two from the Cascades Female Factory. Lady Franklin plans to begin a Ladies Committee to visit the prisoners in the New Year, and Louisa will wish to take part, of course.'

I doubted it. John Gould arrived to urge us towards the Governor's tent for luncheon. He and Eliza set off and Mary followed with little Henry; Bergman and I rambled behind as usual. He carried the folded picnic blanket.

'Copping is about twenty miles from the Chesneys at Richmond,' he said, resuming our earlier talk. ‘If the weather is good it can be done easily enough with a little planning.' He said he was going down to the Huon over Christmas—he had bought ten acres from Lady Franklin—but he would come to the Chesneys when he returned, and see what could be arranged.

‘If Anna and the Captain return soon, I may not be able to go to the Chesneys at all,' I said. ‘Quigley may wish to start again for England without delay. Unless they've forgotten me,' I added jokingly, ‘left me marooned here.'

‘Would that be so terrible?' he asked, smiling. He took his hat off because the light breeze kept threatening to blow it away. His black hair lifted; his brown face was full of life, the lines at the corners of his eyes vivid in the sunlight. ‘You could stay, we could marry.'

This came so abruptly I did not take it in for a moment. When I did, I said, ‘Oh, but I must go back!'

‘Why?' he objected. ‘Quigley will take Anna to England—if she still wishes to go. Any news about Rowland Rochester can be conveyed by letter.'

‘I don't . . . I hardly know what to say. You've taken me by surprise.'

‘How can I believe that? You must surely have thought of it. We've hardly stopped talking since the day we met, we gravitate together at every gathering, play music together, and are both unattached.'

I had of course. But because I knew of his convict mistress, and because we both knew my stay in the island would be brief, I had considered our flirtation simply a kind of manner that develops in society between a man and woman whose real lives are elsewhere,
but who are thrown together and feel they might as well make the best of the situation. We had talked, yes, but only superficially of personal matters. Our conversation was light banter, agreement and disagreement about books and music or the island's politics, or occasionally about Rowland Rochester. I could see now, though, that he thought I was only pretending surprise; that I had solicited this proposal always intending to refuse. Speaking curtly and low, I said, ‘I believed you were not unattached.'

‘Ah,' he said, with a trace of bitterness. ‘I should have guessed. “The island is full of noises”—but not always harmless here. Alice left me a year ago. Her common-law husband was serving a sentence at Port Arthur. When he was released on a ticket-of-leave and posted at Jericho as a constable, she went to him. I did not foresee it—but I should have. They grew up together in London as barrow children, costermongers. Looked after each other in back alleys from the time they were twelve or thirteen. Intensely loyal.'

‘I'm sorry.' I was damp and clammy from the heat and agitation.

He shrugged slightly, frowned. ‘We had nothing in common except her son, Tom. He was five when they came to live with me, ten when they left. I'd begun to think of him as my own. He has a great talent for figures which I had hoped . . .'

He made a helpless, dismissive gesture. We were still making our way across the dry grass towards the Governor's marquee, but the public refreshment tents were in the same direction, and it being past noon, many were heading that way. We were becoming part of a crowd.

‘I'm sorry,' I repeated.

‘Or is it the other story that deters you?' he continued coolly. ‘It's half-true, but I would not be ashamed if it were wholly so. My father was Jewish, though he never practised his religion. I regret it now—that he so rarely spoke of it—and that I never asked him. I was embarrassed about it in those days. My mother was half-Irish—which some people consider as bad or worse,' he added, with a smile.

‘No, not that! I've never thought of staying; living here forever . . .' As I said this I was seized by a breathless panic, a feeling of being suddenly trapped.

‘And yet you've said you find it beautiful?'

‘Oh, beautiful,' I said. ‘Hills, brilliant water, fair skies . . . and apart from that? Nothing. Only prisons. A place of prisons.'

‘“Then is the world one”, as Rosencrantz says. Or is it Guildenstern? The world is full of prisons, Hetta, we make our own. It takes courage for a woman to live here, I understand that. But look at Charlotte Lempriere, Bess Chesney, Mary Boyes?'

‘I don't think I lack courage . . .' I knew I sounded too defensive; I did lack the courage for it. I intended to explain that the Goulds had asked me to work with them in London on the new book, but instead found myself saying, ‘You miss the child, and might reasonably still expect to have children of your own. But I cannot . . . I . . .'

My voice sounded angry with the effort of keeping back tears because what rose to my mind was the poor little bluish face of my last baby when she was four weeks old and dying. They put her in the crib beside my bed and in my delirium I imagined that if only I could reach her she might live, but I was too weak from loss of blood, too near death myself, and when they gave her to me she was warm for such a short time and then so cold. I had learned to avoid the floods of useless weeping by swallowing hard and concentrating hard on some nearby object, but Gus Bergman undid me by taking my hand and saying, ‘Oh, Hetta, I'm so sorry.' He added after a minute that he was sorry on my account, for my grief, but for himself it made no difference. It had never been an urgent matter for him, children.

‘Tom was an unexpected gift,' he added, ‘Not replaceable.'

I could not answer, in utter confusion now, because I had taken off my gloves, and as he held my hand a treacherous flow of leaping warm energy entered my skin and ran up my arm to my heart and head, and suddenly I was stirred to the depths as not for years, uncertain of everything.

We were awkwardly, farcically, paused in the middle of a moving crowd, jostled together with the picnic blanket and his hat between us, and now his hat blew away and a black man brought it back. A lion of a black man, with a fierce, smiling face. Broad and strong in the shoulders and narrow in the hips, he was elegantly dressed in light summer trousers and a dark-blue jacket, and with him were two young ladies, one on each arm. He threw back his head and laughed, greeting Bergman like a long-lost friend in a strong Scottish accent—at which I could hardly refrain from laughing although I was still on the quivering edge of tears. Bergman introduced us: Mr Gilbert Robertson, editor of
The Advertiser
, and his daughters.