A Treacherous Country

by K. M. Kruimink

  ‘She was a girl of fifteen,’ she had said, at one juncture. ‘Just a child. But she would remember me.’

  I wished to confirm that which I dared hope: that if I were successful in the undertaking, Susannah should marry me, for I would have had my ‘making’, as the old lady had put it. And yet I did not speak this hope aloud, for it seemed fragile, and might break.

  The snow, which I had thought would not fall until the morning, had begun to sigh down upon me as I made my weary way back across the fields and home. I was exhausted, bodily but also in my mind, by the interview with Mrs Prendergast. Nevertheless, I crept by the library, thinking I would re-join the conference if it yet continued and make my suggestion that Mamma be allowed book-shelves, and the other comforts I had thought of. I still wore my overcoat, gloves, and riding-boots. The dainty snowflakes caught upon these items had begun to melt. I left great wet footprints behind me, though I trod softly.

  The library door was a little ajar, and I heard Father’s voice. I hesitated. What should I tell him about my interview with Mrs Prendergast? How should he receive the news that I had agreed to leave all I knew within the month for Van Diemen’s Land? As I paused there, wavering between entering and creeping away, I came to realise from the particularly furtive tone in which my father was speaking that my brothers were no longer ensconced within. I was privy to the conversation between Father and Dr Hughes, and none other.

  ‘In the circumstances, a divorce would be widely understood, certainly amongst the more enlightened thinkers in your circle,’ said Dr Hughes. ‘It would free you to—’

  ‘No, Hughes,’ said Father. ‘In her condition, surely, before long …’

  Hughes inclined his head. ‘I cannot imagine it will be so very long,’ he said.

  ‘Shall we have trouble from Customs, for bringing in a dead body?’ I asked, as we recommenced our journey south, rowing in a leisurely manner.

  ‘No, their reach is not so far,’ said William. ‘Not if you know where you might skirt it. There is a shipyard we know that does not give any trouble, and we shall make ground there, and go on foot without Cook, and ask his wife what she would have us do.’

  ‘It is so easy?’

  ‘Yes—this is a rustic place.’

  ‘The poor woman,’ said Mrs Heron, her eyes closed against the sun, even under her bonnet. ‘I should like to go and comfort her.’

  ‘She lives in Wapping, you know, madam,’ said Jack.

  ‘I have seen my share of poverty, and crime, and vice,’ said Mrs Heron. ‘And Cook was a good man—the honest poor live in Wapping, side by side with the fallen.’

  ‘I met Mr Fox in Wapping,’ said William, by way of conversation.

  ‘No!’ said I.

  ‘Yes, the inn where I found you, the Cock and Bale, where you were talking so cosily with that young Woman, who was then ejected from the place for Sinfulness, is a famous place there, famously well-to-do, for there you might buy Wine, as well as rum and beer.’

  ‘Why did you find him?’ asked Byrne.

  ‘What a question! He himself asked me something similar, on our journey down to the station—something about Fate, and the Why of things. I do not understand your question, Byrne,’ said William.

  ‘Your question is clear to me, and I have wondered it myself,’ I told Byrne. ‘Why did you engage with me, and take me on?’ I asked William. ‘Why did you put me in the way of Tigris? Why take me to the station?’

  ‘Do you know of the Harmonic Method, sir?’ he asked.

  There were a few significant glances amongst the company in the boat.

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘Perhaps that is not surprising, as I am almost certain it is my own invention. I do not know—perhaps I read of it somewhere, or someone told me. I do not know. The Harmonic Method seeks to unite individuals, or individual groups, with shortcomings, or obstacles, or problems, which might be solved in a complementary fashion, by coming together in Harmonic Exchange. Our case is a fine example of this: you were in need of a horse, the German was in need of divesting himself of a horse, post haste, and I owed the German a debt, which was weighing upon me. Why can I not, I asked myself, Why can I not introduce the English gentleman to the German gentleman, that one might buy the horse from the other, and thus satisfy both needs, and meanwhile, if I have been of service to the German, and have assisted him out of his difficulty, will that not go some way towards forgiving me my debt? And so it was! Further: the station at which I was employed, managed by the good Mr Heron, was failing—excuse me for saying so—’ This last remark was directed over his shoulder at Mrs Heron, who I could see only out of the very corner of my eye, framed in sunlight and not at all listening to our discussion. ‘I thought: what is there to lose, but that I might introduce a new element to a place in decline, and put Jack in the way of some interesting new Technology, and perhaps improve our luck …’ He trailed off, as the shrouded Cook sucked all the talk out of him.

  ‘Harmonic Method!’ Jack said, with a scoff. ‘Sounds like Opportunism to me—or Communism, at best.’

  ‘I do not know what Communism is,’ said William.

  ‘Neither does Jack,’ said Byrne.

  ‘Have there been other cases of this Harmonic Method of yours, sir, or was this your inaugural attempt?’ I asked.

  ‘By no means; indeed, I have put this method to use many a time, and always with great success. I once joined seven individuals thus. This was in Ireland. The seven people were my wife, our baby, a wet-nurse, the local squire, his daughter, a French tutor, and myself. I shall tell you of it some time.’

  ‘And what did I receive, from our journey north?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You call it an Exchange—what did I get in return for my contributions? For without my letter of credit, and the personal letter I carried, and my clothing, and all my goods that were stolen from me, I feel I am rather worse off than I was before I met you—materially, that is, for I am sure I am bettered for having met you otherwise,’ I added politely.

  ‘Are you? Well. Perhaps whatever is due you is still on its way to you,’ he said. ‘I do not know; I do not control Fate.’

  ‘You told me the day before yesterday that you do not believe in Fate.’

  ‘That does not mean it does not exist. My beliefs do not control the Universe, Gabriel Fox! What a strange suggestion you make!’

  This was a great deal of information to take in. I paused and sorted through the many ideas he had presented before I said, ‘You have a child?’

  ‘I have two children,’ said William. ‘They are twins, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘And they are back in Ireland, with one of your wives?’

  ‘One of my wives!’ he cried. ‘What!’

  Shame-facedly, I said, ‘You told me that you had one or two wives.’

  ‘Oh, for the love of God, you dear simple man,’ he said. ‘I was being glib.’

  I stammered some foolish thing as he shook his head at Heaven. ‘Never mind, never mind,’ he told me. ‘To answer your question: yes, my children are in Ireland, with my—one and only—wife, Mary O’Riordan.’

  ‘Do they not miss you?’ I asked.

  ‘I should hope so,’ he said.

  I climbed the long and narrow servants’ stair to the attic and found Freddie by the attic door, seated upon the hard boards. He was resting his head in his hands. I paused, for he looked quite unhappy, and I thought perhaps I ought to leave him alone. I felt for that moment that our positions were reversed; that I were the elder brother, and he the younger.

  Freddie looked slowly up at me, and I could see the red of recent tears upon his face. I politely inspected the crossbeams of the rude ceiling, that we might both pretend I had not seen his emotion.

  ‘You stayed very late with Mrs Prendergast. Is it terribly cold outside?’ he asked me, his voice effortfully steady. His words fell flat into my ear-drums.

  ‘Oh, rather,’ I said. ‘It has begun to snow.’
>
  Freddie acknowledged this amiably and commenced a remark about how he had expected that the weather would continue clear to-night, and perhaps not snow until the morning, when he very abruptly stopped himself. There was a silence.

  ‘It is quite a heavy fall,’ I said helpfully. ‘I think the roads will be quite covered by morning.’

  ‘Stop that now,’ he said, and then, with odd precision and hollowness to his words, he continued, ‘We must be … sincere with one another. It is difficult.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, without seeking clarity from him if he thought the sincerity was difficult, or the situation in general, because I could apprehend that he meant both.

  ‘I think she must be asleep. At least, she will not answer my knock,’ he told me slowly, as though choosing and plucking each word like a berry from a bush.

  ‘She must be weary indeed,’ I said, in the same strange tone, lingering at the top of the stair. ‘Dr Hughes has spoken at such length about how she must rest.’

  ‘Dr Hughes is an old quack who cares nothing for Mamma and everything for Father’s purse,’ said Freddie, with more naturalness now. He sighed, and rested his head back against the wall behind him. ‘And whatever glamour he feels will rub off on him from the family.’

  ‘Oh, come now,’ I said. ‘That is not true. I will allow that he does have a touch of the sycophant about him, but that does not make him bad.’

  ‘No, indeed; he is bad besides being sycophantic.’

  ‘He was always very good with our various maladies—do not forget that he saved me from the Scarlet Fever.’

  ‘He would have killed you, with his Fashionable methods, had we not engaged that good sensible Nurse to assist him, and discreetly undo all his work,’ said Freddie.

  ‘I do not remember a Nurse,’ I said.

  ‘She was there,’ he told me. ‘She was a Frenchwoman, so Father did not approve. You could not understand a word she said to you. Mamma engaged her. Do you truly not remember? Comtois was the name. Quite a small person.’

  ‘No, indeed, I truly cannot remember.’

  ‘Well, you were very ill, I suppose.’

  I could not decide what would be best: to go away, or sit by Freddie, or remain standing. He was only a few feet from me, and yet he seemed far away, off in the distance. Indeed, I felt a curious remove from events as they were unfolding; from Mamma’s plight, Father’s cruelty, Freddie’s distress, Susannah’s rebuffal, and from my imminent journey. If I thought too deeply of any of these matters an affliction came over me, and so I allowed them to exist as they were and remained cautiously in their periphery.

  Freddie saw my uncertainty. ‘For God’s sake, just come and sit by me,’ said he. ‘Are we not brothers?’

  ‘Where is John?’ I asked.

  ‘Do we care?’ he said.

  When I slid down onto the creaking boards by him, we both faltered. Our conversation until this point had been uncharacteristically candid, and somehow, by drawing closer, and committing to the talk by seating myself with him, I had hurt this strange intimacy. We exchanged pained smiles. I reached up to the doorknob and tried it.

  ‘You know it is locked, my dear Gabriel,’ said Freddie.

  ‘Why do we not call Mrs Tully?’ I asked. Mrs Tully was the housekeeper, and would let us in.

  ‘Father has taken her key,’ he said. Dropping his voice, he went on with a new surge of emotion. ‘Dr Hughes gave Father the advice that, because Mamma requires rest and seclusion, Father ought to exert full control of her situation, and her company, and, in short, collect all spare keys to this door. Only he might unlock it now. He—and Betty Sikes. She was deemed worthy,’ he added, his pale cheeks flushing a deep red.

  I could not immediately come up with an appropriate response to this. Finally, I said, ‘What shall you do when he goes to London? How shall you get in?’

  ‘Why, then we must rely on the good graces of Mrs Sikes.’

  ‘She does not have any “good graces”!’ I said.

  ‘Gabriel—why did you say, “what shall you do”? Why not “we”?’ he asked, as though he had only now truly heard my previous words. He shifted his position, so that he might look at me better. ‘What did Mrs Prendergast want of you?’

  I looked again into the ceiling-beams. Perhaps I might take a lesson from the servants. If I were still enough, and silent enough, he would forget I was there!

  ‘I need your assistance in this matter,’ he said. ‘I do not wish to make this fight alone.’

  But in every line of my body, and my every guilty breath, he read it: I would be gone within the month.

  THE MOST WRETCHED WRETCH OF ALL

  I had seen Hobart-town only in the rain-slicked night, and then in the pre-dawn silence, with my head down and my harpoons over my shoulder. It had seemed an icy, impossible world, black, with oily lights in the distance.

  It was afternoon as we finally rowed into the harbour in the whaleboat—late afternoon, when the shadows grow long, and workers begin to flock homewards. Hobart-town was grand on the large scale, and mean on the small. It was cupped between a great snowy-shouldered mountain and the slate-grey harbour, spilt at the bottom of wooded slopes, pooling its houses and streets in the little hollow afforded it by Nature, and setting its populace free to wander around and around. Well—Free is of course the wrong word. We skirted the flanks of the great Ships in the harbour, and rounded a point to steal guiltily into a shipyard.

  ‘Stay there, if you wish,’ said McAvoy the Scotsman to me, as we drew close enough in that we might roll over the sides and heave the boat up the ramp and ashore.

  Though I scarcely wished to jump into the freezing cold water again, I gritted my teeth and went in with the men and set my shoulder to the boat.

  As I was handing Mrs Heron down from the boat to dry land, a man with the largest teeth I had ever seen on Man or Beast emerged from a low shed to greet us like his own brothers and sisters. This man was called Spire, it transpired, and was very congenial to accommodate our presence there, for a token fee. ‘But,’ he said, ‘if you are discovered, I know you not at all.’

  Then we divided our party, with some men and Mary remaining with Cook’s body and the boat, and Mrs Heron, William, Jack and I setting off on foot to find Mrs Cook.

  As we traipsed along the middle of the muddy streets, horse-shit and Urchins underfoot, the low buildings piled up upon one another as they need not be on that mostly empty Isle, the mountain blotting out the last of the sun’s citric rays above, I thought how my mother had always said that all things look lovelier and more melancholy at night, and in the rain.

  A forest of masts moved gently in the hidden swells and tides of the harbour, ropes and furled sails trembling like leaves and vines.

  I reflected again upon the horrors of the voyage from England and was beset by a surge of worriment for Mrs Heron, especially poorly as she was, surrendering herself to such hardship.

  ‘Should you not be afraid of the voyage Home, Mrs Heron?’ I asked. ‘It is very rough.’

  ‘I am not afraid,’ she told me calmly. ‘I have done it once before, and Mary shall go with me.’

  I did not say: but you were much younger then, and not ill, and in the company of your Husband. ‘If you might delay, madam, while I conclude my business here, I should consider it an honour to accompany you, and offer you any such assistance along the way which you—and Mary—may need.’

  Mrs Heron was quiet for a moment. ‘Thank you, Mr Fox,’ she said. ‘That is kindly meant, and kindly taken. But how much longer shall you be here?’

  ‘I do not know,’ I admitted.

  ‘I have been delaying this journey for twenty years,’ she said. ‘It is now time, and past time, that I go.’

  ‘It must be difficult, to be leaving your husband behind,’ I said.

  Mrs Heron again did not respond directly, and when she did, she kept her head very still and very poised, looking straight ahead of her. ‘Mr Heron will manage,’ she said. ‘It
is difficult to leave Tam.’

  ‘Could you not take him with you?’

  ‘What place should he have in England?’ she said.

  We were an unlikely troupe. William O’Riordan was looking more and more dapper and refined the deeper into the streets of poverty we ventured, while the ill fit of my clothes grew more and more pronounced, with my trousers riding up my legs until they were bare to the knee like I were an overgrown schoolboy. Mrs Heron was waifish and brave, fluttering in the breeze, though half invisible, and Jack so like a Jack, so like any man you might see anywhere, it was difficult to remember he was there.

  ‘I have seen the worst of all English words in print in this building,’ he murmured to me, out of the hearing of Mrs Heron, as we went by a brick edifice with some pretensions to beauty rendered in dim and flaking plaster. ‘A word I had never heard—I was young—but instinctively I knew upon sight, when an academic young whore tried to arouse my interest with a scandalous pamphlet from Sydney.’

  Everything the man said sounded rehearsed to be clever.

  As we passed the institution of the scandalous pamphlet, I slowed my pace to glance down the alleyway opening between it and its neighbouring hovel.

  ‘What slows you?’ asked Jack.

  Together, we lagged behind as the others strode on.

  ‘I believe I recognise that place,’ I said.

  ‘The alleyway?’

  ‘Yes. It was very early morning, and I was in a state of some Confusion, but I do think that is where I bought my horse that was later stolen by somebody who I think was an agent of the horse-seller himself.’

  We drew to a halt and looked down the alleyway. It was a dim place, even in the day-time, and reeked of all the dreadful substances one might imagine. Someone had scraped some vulgar remarks on the brothel wall in charcoal very low down, almost at ground level, as though ashamed.

  ‘Why would you buy a horse in a such a place, and not expect deception?’ Jack asked me. His polite tone indicated he asked neither to mock nor chastise, but merely for information. ‘Was it your “state of Confusion”?’