Wild Island (59 page)

Fludde's face like stone. Trying to find me. St John. Thea must go into the Orphan School. Today. She, Fludde, had tried to argue. He was adamant. Whereupon she had run from the house with Thea. ‘But why, why?' Because she was a child of sin.

He opened the door himself. An angel of death. Thin, hollow-eyed, saintly.

‘Ah, Harriet. I have been expecting you.' Calmly.

He led me into his study. Fludde and Thea went to the parlour.

‘Why?' I asked.

‘Because she is no child of mine, but McLeod's bastard.' Righteousness disguising a perfect revenge. Did he know it, or not? He gave a smile before adding, ‘I thought you and my wife were such friends, Harriet. I made sure she would have told you.'

He could not say their names. A perfect day outside, excellent for viewing marrows and posies. I opened my mouth to say,
but Louisa did tell me
, and begin the long argument, but before I could start, he cried in triumph, ‘So she
was
ashamed, or she would have told you. She never showed any sign of remorse to me, no flicker of guilt. Corrupted to the core. It will be no use to argue with me, Harriet. I have thought and prayed and made up my mind. I shall go to India again, where I shall soon die. No English constitution survives long in that climate. In this reduced state I shall not last. The child shall become Mr Ewing's ward.'

He smiled at me, his face beautiful, kindly. ‘I thought at first of taking her with me to India to die beside me, but this is the better solution. She is a child of this colony. Her fate shall follow its fortunes.'

My mind was filled with a violent hot wind, burning but not consumed, beyond fear, fury, beyond pain, searching.

‘How do you know,' I said, ‘that Thea is McLeod's child?' Merely enquiring. As calm as he.

He smiled. ‘Louisa told me so herself. She told McLeod at the ball.'

‘What did McLeod say? Did he confirm it?'

The smile faded. ‘No. But why should he?'

‘Louisa was angry with you these last months. She would have said anything to hurt you.'

He looked at me, acknowledging the truth of it.

‘Louisa never showed any sign of guilt or remorse to you,' I said slowly, musing, as it were, ‘nor to me. She did not tell me McLeod was the father—and yet she did talk about other intimate matters. Your marriage, for instance . . .' I paused, watching St John's face. Blank, but a slight flicker. I added, ‘McLeod does not acknowledge the child—and this sudden claim came out when Louisa was very bitter against you. Are you very certain Thea is not your child?'

‘Yes,' he said, adding, ‘The child has ginger hair. She resembles McLeod.'

I made a movement as though I would rise and leave, saying, ‘Am I wrong in thinking—Louisa said—your sister Mary has auburn hair?'

He did not reply, stared into an imaginary distance.

‘If Thea was your own child,' I said, ‘would you wish her to go to the Orphanage? Is Ewing the best guardian you can imagine? Gus and I would . . .'

For a terrible moment I thought I had overplayed my hand. Cursed myself, cursed St John, willed him to fall dead at my feet.

‘Bergman? You?' He was astonished.

‘I cannot bear children of my own, St John.' I did rise now, forced myself to move towards the door. Nina would have been proud of me. Casually, I continued, ‘And Fludde, of course, Fludde could come to us as nursemaid still.'

I knew he had a soft spot for Fludde. He approved of her reticence, her stoicism. But nevertheless, it seemed he was going to let me leave. He sat silent, unmoving. My mind searched for delay. I looked at him, noticing the first grey hairs in his side-whiskers; they only made him look wiser, more distinguished. Behind his head were chintz curtains Louisa had chosen, beneath his feet the India carpet she had bought in Kolcutta, badly worn at one corner, which we had decided to put under the desk. Smiling, my mind in a red rage, I decided that if he said nothing further I would simply go to Fludde on my way out, seize
Thea and take her. Gus would disapprove but he would understand and help me. The veins in my neck throbbed. I felt ill. I reached the door of the study, turned and said mildly, ‘You will let us know, St John, before you sail?'

‘Wait, Harriet. You really believe she would have . . . That she tried to deceive me . . . That Thea is truly . . .'

And it was done. By a mild smile and a great lie, I secured Thea and Fludde to myself and Gus. There was much more to endure, of course: two weeks of ghastly fear that St John might renege on the promise I exacted then—but in the end it was done. Gus, after his first astonishment, took no persuading. ‘How the devil did you manage Wallace?' was all he said at first. When I explained he shook his head at me, smiled, and said he must speak privately to McLeod—who would only say he was about to marry Mrs Henderson, whom he had been courting. She was childless and preferred to remain so.

Gus also stipulated that St John must allow us to adopt Thea legally, which, to my distress, delayed matters further until the documents could be drawn up. I was in an agony of apprehension until the ink was dried on the last line and St John Wallace on his way to England, where he would farewell his sisters before leaving for India. But long before then, it was as though he were already far from this colony in his mind, gone forward to the fatal task he had set himself. He signed the papers almost absentmindedly, kissed Thea and bade her be a good girl, telling her they would meet again in a better place.

During those harrowing weeks of waiting until Thea was finally ours, my mind was wholly occupied with her, with St John, Fludde, the progress of the legal papers, and my gratitude to Gus, who calmly brought it all to fruition. I had no feelings left to spare for anything beyond. And yet when I look back, the ‘Barrow Letter' remains for me the perhaps the strangest episode of those months—all the more because it carried echoes of Louisa's life.

Henslowe, Sir John's secretary, who told us about it, believed Montagu was behind this too, but I cannot be sure. The Colonial Secretary's malignant influence seemed everywhere at that time, and some crimes of which he was innocent may have been added to his score.

It came in late November, a glowing sunny morning: not quite summer. There were patches of high wispy cloud and the promise of a warm day. Henslowe took the private mail into the small breakfast room and put it beside the Governor, who looked up from his plate and set down his knife. He pushed aside the top items and pulled out the fattest. Jane was not yet downstairs.

‘Ah, from John Barrow. A good start to the day,' Sir John said to Sophy, who was sitting beside him.

The packet was unusually bulky, Henslowe said. Sir John leaned it against the silver cruet set in front of him while he finished his meal. And then, Henslowe continued, Miss Cracroft put down her teacup and picked up the letter—which was odd, startling. She would not, as a rule, touch Sir John's correspondence—and the next thing she had risen from her chair and was walking rapidly to the door, taking the letter with her.

Sir John had meanwhile turned away towards Mrs Wilson, who had just brought a fresh pot of coffee to the table. When he turned back, the letter was gone.

‘Henslowe . . . ?'

‘I believe Miss Cracroft took it upstairs, sir,' said Henslowe, only just recovering from the shock of seeing it happen.

Sir John hesitated, looking displeased, put down his cup, rose and went out. Mrs Wilson looked at Henslowe but he would not meet her gaze. She picked up the cold coffee-pot—it was a good thing it was empty, Henslowe said—left the room and had begun to cross the hall when she froze and dropped the pot, because a bloodcurdling noise had come from upstairs, a terrible roar like that of an animal in pain.

It came again, a great bellow this time, which must be Sir John because there was no one else it could be, although Henslowe had
never heard anything like it before. He ran out of the dining-room and started up the stairs but stopped abruptly near the top when both he and Mrs Wilson distinctly heard Sir John shout, ‘How dare you, madam! How dare you! You have ruined me with my oldest friend. And as for you, miss . . . Go away from me! Get out of my sight. I cannot bear to look at you. Go to your room. I shall speak to you later.'

They had burned the letter. There it lay, a heap of ashes on the hearth. Jane and Sophy stood beside it, heaving with emotion. Sophy ran from the room. Jane's explanation, given to Sir John first, and then Henslowe, and afterwards written to her sister and repeated to Mary and George Boyes, is patent nonsense. She said she had ordered Sophy to throw the letter in the fire because she wanted to save her husband from a rupture with his old friend Sir John Barrow. She claimed Barrow had written things painfully critical of Sir John, based on ill-informed reports sent to him by his son Peter, catechist at Point Puer. Peter Barrow blamed the Franklins for the fact that he had not been chosen to go to Norfolk Island as aide to Maconochie, whose opinions on convict matters Peter now wholly endorsed.

Sophy and Jane were immediately sent to New Norfolk for ‘a rest'—but it was banishment, and they knew it. They had been there a week when Jane suffered an ‘attack', and first Dr Turnbull and then Seymour went up to see her. Her writing arm was limp, almost useless, and she complained of feeling weak and ill. She spoke of sailing home to England without her husband—something hardly believable. Only with the coming of Christmas, a month later, was some measure of family unity restored. Jane and Sophy were allowed to return to Hobart for the celebrations, which were even more subdued than the year before.

What was really in the Barrow Letter? Was this another attempt by Montagu to drive a wedge between the Franklins? Did he get hold of something damaging to Jane, while he was still in England, and give it, or send it, to Sir John Barrow? They had been warned it was coming: that is the only thing Sophy has ever said to me
about it. I cannot help thinking it was a copy, or even the original, of Jane's passionate farewell letter to Rudolf Lieder in Egypt. It is not impossible. There were people in Van Diemen's Land who were friends of the woman who later became Lieder's wife. I can think of nothing else Jane would have so desperately wanted to conceal from her husband.

Whatever it was, Jane's powers of language eventually repaired the damage, although scars remained. Weeks later she wrote to Barrow, and he was persuaded to resume his friendship with Sir John. The longest shadow fell on Sophy. Her uncle never fully trusted her again. He wanted to send her home at once, but Jane managed to dissuade him.

In mid-December, while all this was happening, there came a letter carrying another blow. A grief-stricken note from John Gould told us Eliza had died in August, of a fever following the delivery of her sixth child. This was so terrible to me that even now I cannot write of it without burning tears. With her death I lost the last vestige of any desire to return to England.

All through this time, the newspapers continued their attacks on Jane, the most vicious and ill-founded being in the
Van Diemen's Chronicle
, set up only six months before by Thomas Macdowell, former editor of the
Hobart Town Courier
, and his brother Edward, formerly Solicitor General, both close friends of Montagu and Swanston. When the paper began, Montagu had asked Sir John for permission to issue news bulletins from his office to the
Chronicle
alone, thus making it an unofficial ‘gazette'. The Governor agreed, and the
Chronicle
proclaimed in its pages that it ‘afforded its readers the only authentic official information in reference to Government matters'. Now, however, when Franklin called Montagu in to ask him to have the attacks on Jane stopped, Montagu denied any connection with it.