by Cameron Nunn
“You made good time, Mr O’Neill,” Mr Harrison said. “Were you able to get all the things that we discussed?” He spoke not just to Mr O’Neill but to everyone else as well.
“The weather were good to us most of the way, though some of the seed got wet as we crossed the mountains. So far as I can tell none of it seems ruined, but we may need to sow it early so it don’t spoil.”
“And I see you’ve managed to get the labour as well. Quite a bit younger than I thought.”
“Seems labour is as hard to come by in Sydney as it is out here. The government is making it as difficult as possible to get skilled workers. I spoke to my contacts and it appears Mr Darling is quite unwilling to assign skilled convicts to any man outside the counties. It were hard enough to get the lad. The only thing in abundance is clerks and paperwork.”
“Is he of goodly character?”
“He has given me no reason to beat him. Even so, I think it worth keeping an eye on him for a while. I shall see to it that Cain instructs him until we can be sure that he’ll be able to do the work.”
Mr Harrison strode down the steps and stood just short of me. I stared down at those boots of his. “He looks rather sickly. Try and make sure that he doesn’t die on us. Not at least before the next clip. I dread to think who you’ll drag back next time, Mr O’Neill.”
A group of men had gathered around the dray and they laughed. I knew Mr O’Neill weren’t laughing. Mr Harrison pushed his hand under my chin and forced my head up until I were looking at him. He smiled. It weren’t a pleasing smile but were like a man who knows power.
“Do you know what sheep are?” Mr Harrison were speaking at me but were looking at the others gathered around.
At that moment I hated Mr Harrison, like I hated Jack. They could all go to hell. But I remembered Mr O’Neill’s words and said, “Yes, Sir.”
“He knows what sheep are!”
Everyone laughed.
“Perhaps he’s not as useless as he appears, Mr O’Neill. Cain!” Mr Harrison spoke to one of the men whose skin were tanned and leathery. He were missing most of his teeth and long strands of thin grey hair stuck out from under the large hat he wore. “Mr O’Neill says you’re to instruct the boy, so you’d better take him before we find out that he doesn’t know a sheep’s head from its arse.” And with that Mr Harrison walked back up the steps and disappeared into the homestead.
Mr O’Neill regathered his control and began ordering the men to unload the dray, his strong Irish voice booming over the top of the murmurs. The mood changed when it were discovered he’d included several large barrels of rum amongst the other provisions that’d been brought from Sydney. The dray were large and were stacked high with supplies. Later on I found out that Mr O’Neill would take the dray into Sydney to carry the wool clip and bring back supplies only twice a year. There were some things what could be bought in Bathurst or traded with other settlers in the district, but many things had to be brought back by dray. Between trips, everything else had to be created out of the land itself.
Cain were an Irishman like Mr O’Neill. I guessed he must’ve been in his sixties at least, perhaps older, though Amos reckoned you could never tell an Irishman’s age. None of the men wore convict slops and I wondered if any of them were assigned, the same as me. Cain wore an old pair of canvas trousers what might’ve been once white but were now stained with wear and a loose-fitting blue serge waistcoat over a pale shirt. He’d have made a passable scarecrow in some field in England.
“’Twere good you had a clear trip,” Cain said as we hauled sacks down from the wagon.
Despite his age, he lifted a heavy grain sack onto his shoulder with ease and adjusted its weight until he had it steady.
“It’s a long way from Sydney Cove,” I said, unsure of what else to say.
“’Tis a long way from everywhere, to be sure. A long way from Sydney, aye, but a lot longer from everywhere else,” the Irishman said with a way what would’ve made Amos laugh. “You used to live in London, if I’m not mistaken.”
“And I mean to go back again,” I said.
“I’m sure you do. They all do, but not until you’ve spent some time here as a guest of His Majesty.”
I spat on the ground. It were one thing to be a convict, ’twere another to be reminded of my place by an Irishman.
Cain put down the sack he’d been unloading and dusted himself off as though he were wiping off an argument. “Now, what’s got you riled so quickly? If you think I’m mocking you, then you’re mistaken. Most of us here are guests of His Majesty.”
“But no one is wearing slops,” I said, indicating the clothes what marked me so clear from everyone else.
“Aye, that be the truth. Mr Harrison has to clothe his assigned workers but that don’t mean we wear slops. Soon enough you’ll look like the rest, but you’ll still be an assigned man, sure enough.”
I realised I’d misunderstood the comment but were in no mood to apologise. I were tired from the journey and hungry. I could see Jack talking to some of the others and then look my way and laugh. I hated him more deep than ever.
We worked in silence for some minutes before I spoke again. It must’ve been the sight of Jack talking to the others what made me want to tell Cain I weren’t the same as other convicts. “I mean to get ahead,” I announced with what I thought were a sense of dignity. Suddenly a desire for him to think of me highly seemed stupidly important, like a sparrow what wants to appear important before a pigeon.
“Do you now?” Cain said. “That’d be a fine thing.”
“I mean to become a gentleman and own a carriage.” I don’t know what made me say that. I just remembered the fat peacock had said as much and now I wanted Cain to think of me as something other ’n his dog.
Cain stopped what he were doing. “That’d be a fine thing,” he said.
I weren’t sure if the Irishman were mocking me, but there weren’t even a hint of a smile.
“I used to play the fiddle once. I’d plans to be the best fiddler in County Wexford.”
I were about to ask him why he didn’t do it no more, when Cain held up his left hand. I hadn’t noticed it before. The last two fingers were missing completely and the middle finger were only a stump.
“Courtesy of an English sabre,” he said. “I were terrible at the fiddle.” He smiled. “The soldier put an end to what were probably not a very promising line of business.” He laughed at himself, a big gap-toothed laugh, and I found myself laughing too, despite the hideous-looking hand. “We all try and get ahead when we can. Sometimes Fate can have other notions.”
The afternoon were spent following Cain around the homestead, unloading things from the dray and moving them to such places as Mr O’Neill ordered. Cain talked the whole time, pointing things and people out to me. As the afternoon stretched the run began to take make some sort of sense. The homestead, Cain said, were on the highest point because, “When the rain comes off the mountains and the rivers run high, Mr Harrison intends to ‘keep his heels dry’,” but there were no bitterness in his voice. He bent down and picked up a handful of dirt and let it slide between the fingers of his good hand. The light wind caught the dust as it tumbled dryly. “Not much chance of being washed away today.” He winked at me.
The homestead were the largest building on the run. Mr Harrison knew the superintendent at Wellington and had managed to get a stonemason and a couple of carpenters from the convict settlement to build most of the house. “’Tis who you know,” Cain said. Mr Harrison had land on the Hawkesbury, so it fell to Mr O’Neill to manage the run and oversee the men. Mr Harrison would arrive before the shearing were finished and leave after Mr O’Neill returned from Sydney. Sometimes he’d stay longer, but he were always gone before the end of summer. “’Tis such a shame to have a big house and never live in it,” Cain reflected.
Behind Mr Harrison’s homestead were Mr O’Neill’s cottage. It were a much smaller version of the homestead and built of grey tim
bers what stood upright in the ground. In the front of the cottage were an area shaded by a bark roof and held up by poles, the same colour as the rest of the house. The whole building sat on the dusty earth. Someone had tried to scratch a garden out the front of the cottage, where a few pink and red flowers struggled to find a place among the dust.
“That’s where Mr O’Neill will call you to if he has a particular job for you.”
The cottage looked pitiful and it surprised me that Mr O’Neill would want to live there. “I wouldn’t be going and sharing your thoughts with Mr O’Neill if I were you,” Cain replied. “At least not if you’re still planning to get ahead. Not all men live in dream castles.”
Between the homestead and the overseer’s cottage were the kitchen, larder and washhouse. Like the homestead, these were partly built of stone and partly of sawn timber. A stone pathway had been lain between the kitchen and the house.
Mrs Smith were the cook, Cain said. As a convict, she should simply have been called by her first name, like the rest of us, but getting a cook so far west were near impossible, so everyone had to put up with Mrs Smith’s demands, including Mr Harrison. Cain dropped his voice a little as though he were sharing the king’s secrets. “You’d think she’s a duchess the way she orders everyone around. She’s a tongue sharper ’n an adder.” I’d soon see no one felt that tongue more ’n Sarah. She were a mouse of a girl with hunched shoulders and a cough what hacked and scraped as though she were trying to shake loose her own spirit. All night we would hear that sick barking, even from the men’s hut. Later, I wondered whether she were intentionally slow or too weak to work any harder. Either way, she were the constant victim of the birch-wood broom what Mrs Smith kept behind the kitchen door.
Around the homestead were the beginnings of an orchard and a large vegetable garden. “The land is good around here,” Cain continued his ramble, “particularly close to the river. A man only has to scatter the seed and pray for rain and the earth does the rest.”
The hot day steadily gave way to a warm evening. For the next few weeks, I were to stay with Cain in the men’s hut. It were a large one-room hut made of split logs what were driven straight into the ground. The roof were made of sheets of bark which dressed the whole building an ugly brown and made Mr O’Neill’s cottage seem like a palace. At one end a stone fireplace and a chimney had been built at angles what looked like it might topple in the slightest gust. There were no windows, only a single opening and a hinged bark door and the constant smell of smoke.
“’Tis nothing grand,” Cain acknowledged. “Mr O’Neill has organised another hammock to be slung. I guess after travelling, anything will be better ’n sleeping on the ground.”
“Does everyone sleep in here?” I asked. Then, hesitatingly, “Jack?”
Cain considered me for a moment and read my voice. “Now, don’t you go worrying about Jack.”
“I ain’t worried,” I added, in case he thought I were afraid of Jack. “We just don’t get on, is all.”
Cain raised his eyebrows as though he were expecting more of the story. I weren’t sure who I could trust and I weren’t about to tell all to an Irishman that I’d only just met. A fool’s words flow like quicksilver, Amos would say. Cain nodded, and naught more were said.
Supper were brought down from the hill by Mrs Smith, with Sarah coughing behind and another girl I hadn’t seen during the day. All the convict men sat outside on a long table what had been cut from the same timber as the hut. There were talking and joking. I mostly listened. Neither Mr O’Neill nor Mr Harrison appeared at the table. The smell arrived before the cooking pot were put down. It were a hot mutton stew what filled the whole body with tiredness beyond reckoning.
“Grew the vegetables myself,” Cain said, pointing at the pieces of cabbage and carrot what floated in the stew.
I weren’t one for eating vegetables but I were so hungry I shovelled them down with the scalding broth.
“Who’s the girl?” I whispered to Cain when I were sure no one were listening.
“Sarah?”
“The other girl.”
Cain smiled, knowing full well who I were referring to. “You’ve an eye for pretty girls then?”
I ate another mouthful before answering. “I just asked who she were. I didn’t say I thought she were pretty.”
“Aye, but you do think so, don’t you? Or you wouldn’t be asking.”
“Cain!” Jack were no more ’n a couple of feet away, and he were the last person I wanted to hear our talk.
Cain touched his nose knowingly and winked. “Kate. Kate O’Neill, and if you haven’t guessed, I might as well tell you she is Mr O’Neill’s daughter.”
“So? I were only asking her name.”
Cain winked again. So what if she were Mr O’Neill’s daughter. I knew what Cain were thinking but I were just wanting to know a name the same as I knew Cain’s or Mr O’Neill’s. I looked at her again as she ladled more of the stew onto the men’s plates. She were sort of pretty. Cain were right about that, but not uncommon pretty. Her hair were a dark red, tied back tight, and her skin were freckled. Her face were handsome but I wouldn’t have called her a beauty. Cain could talk up the hangman.
The next morning Cain took me to the north run. He explained that the sheep were kept on runs a short distance from the homestead where the grass were best. The north run were about a mile further up the river. The sheep were brought back to the homestead for shearing and slaughtering but it were the job of the shepherd to take care of them while they were on their run. Cain talked about the sheep and about the job of the shepherd as we walked along the path what wound beside the stream.
“Cain,” I asked, “Are there . . . savages out here?”
“Savages?” he repeated, sucking on the pipe he carried everywhere.
“You know, black savages.”
Cain scratched at the stubble on his chin. “Sometimes, maybe. I think there are blacks nearly everywhere in the colony. I guess there are sometimes some around here, but I shouldn’t be worried.”
“I weren’t worried,” I added a little too quickly. “I were just wondering, is all.”
“I shouldn’t imagine there’d be any for twenty miles or more, seeing as you’re just wondering.”
“Then you’ve never seen one?”
“Blacks? To be sure, I’ve seen blacks. On the Hawkesbury there were a near war, when we worked Mr Harrison’s land. Not just with Mr Harrison, mind you. There were war parties up and down the river until . . .” He hesitated as though searching for a word. “Until the settlers put a stop to it. That’s the thing about savages. They only respect strength. They can’t be reasoned with because they’re not civilised, see. Blacks don’t understand anything. They’re too lazy to farm and they can’t be taught. They can wander anywhere on God’s earth, but as soon as they see a white man working the land, then they want that piece of land.” He tapped his pipe on my chest as though this were the most important lesson for the morning.
“And there were men killed?”
“Aye, good men too.”
“And savages killed as well?”
Cain shrugged. “Aye,” he conceded. “When they won’t listen to reason. But that were more ’n twenty-five years ago and there are no savages nearby here.”
For a while we both fell silent. The bush were alive with the sounds of the insects calling to each other what seemed to fill the gap in our talk. I tried to imagine the savages with eyes like blood, eating the men they’d speared.
“Cain, I were serious when I said, I mean to get ahead.”
“I knew you were serious,” Cain replied. “And what is it that you mean to get ahead in?”
“I made a promise to myself I’d make enough money to return to England and help Amos. He were good to me and I mean to make it up to him.”
“Hmm,” Cain reflected thoughtfully as he scratched the stubble on his chin again. “I guess a promise is a promise, so there’s no point in me asking h
ow a lad like you will make enough money.”
I took this as an invitation to speak my mind. “There are them what come in chains, no better ’n you or me. They ride around Sydney town in carriages and own warehouses full of goods and none’s the wiser that they were a felon, like you and me, Cain.”
“Is that so?” Cain said, though I couldn’t reckon the tone in his voice.
“Take you for example, Cain. What did they send you out here for stealing?” I tried to imagine what an Irishman might do to be sent to New South Wales.
“That’s where you are wrong, young lad. I wasn’t sent here for anything I stole. I was sent here because of what were stolen from me.”
Cain always talked in riddles that I were meant to understand. “That’s nonsense.”
“Aye, but ’tis true. When the English stole our land and gave it out to those what invaded us, they called it the spoils of war. But when we Irish try and take back the land what God gave to us it’s called rebellion. And because I took up the cause to get back my country what were stolen, I found myself in an English gaol and on an English ship banished to an English penal colony with young boys that are to instruct me on how I might get ahead.” He glanced at me sideways and sniffed in a way I didn’t take much liking to.
Most of the beggars and rogues around London were Irish. You could never trust an Irishman. They were thieves and liars and papists the lot of them. They’d cut a man’s throat before saying hello. It were typical for an Irishman to blame the English for every bad thing what ever happened to them but it didn’t stop them flooding into London. What he said were probably not true, but I knew I had to defend England.
“My ma said the Irish are all pig-ignorant potato eaters,” I said. And then to show the comment weren’t personal, I added, “Present company excluded, of course.”