The Wreck

by Meg Keneally

  Nurse Haddon had glanced over her shoulder as she led Sarah back into the ward.

  The woman who now sat on Sarah’s bed did not look ill. It had been a long time since the colour of her hair was discernible, and since her cheeks had been smooth, though they were still pink. Her eyes required spectacles, and Sarah wondered if she would push them up her nose as Truman did. She sat upright with her hands folded over a lap that appeared to be generous beneath a plain but good-quality dark-blue dress. She was in animated conversation with Nell, who was sitting so straight that she needed to spread her legs to accommodate her belly, a posture for which Nurse Haddon would surely reprimand her.

  But Nurse Haddon did nothing of the sort. Instead, she cleared her throat, then bobbed a curtsy to the older woman. It was such an awkward gesture that Sarah suspected it was one the nurse was unused to making. ‘Mrs Thistle,’ she said, ‘how good of you to come.’

  Mrs Thistle rose to embrace the nurse. ‘Dear Georgina,’ she said, ‘I can always rely on you for strays.’ She released Nurse Haddon, looking at Sarah and Nell. Her face, comfortable without expression, took on a certain hardness as she assessed Sarah. ‘This is her, then.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nurse Haddon. ‘I believe there is no worthier recipient of your generosity.’

  Mrs Thistle shook her head slightly, her lace cap shifting on top of her silver hair. She reached her hand up to roughly adjust a hairpin, and Sarah suspected that her glasses stayed in place out of fear. ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Because she survived what others did not? Tell me, did she do so out of bravery or virtue, or because she is the anointed of the Lord or the handmaid of Satan? Or was it due to more luck than most girls will ever see?’

  Mrs Thistle had only spared Sarah one glance before discussing her as though she was a horse or a bale of hay. Nell, perhaps sensing Sarah’s irritation, sidled over to her while the two older women were talking and squeezed her arm in a gesture of solidarity.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Sarah said, ‘if you wish to know the answer to those questions, you should ask her.’

  Nurse Haddon gasped, swatting Sarah on the arm. ‘I do apologise, Mrs Thistle. Probably the shock.’

  ‘No,’ said the older woman. ‘No, I don’t think it is.’ She spoke with an accent Sarah had heard in the mouths of some of those with whom she had walked to the mill each day; some of those who had died or been wounded in the massacre. Perhaps not from Manchester, but definitely Lancashire. A practical, unvarnished way of speaking, not given to unnecessary flourishes.

  Mrs Thistle approached Sarah and reached out to tilt her chin up, examining her face.

  Sarah knew she was risking permanent banishment from Nurse Haddon’s protection, but she could not help herself. ‘I am not livestock, madam. You will not be able to tell my age by looking at my teeth.’

  Mrs Thistle let her hand drop, and Sarah earned another swat from the nurse. ‘Mrs Thistle is kind enough to take in poor young women like you. Unless you fancy sleeping on streets you have never seen, I would urge you to greater politeness. Kindly apologise.’

  Sarah looked at Mrs Thistle, whose eyebrows were raised.

  ‘I mean no disrespect,’ said Sarah, and felt Nurse Haddon exhale behind her. ‘But I do not feel I owe you an apology. I simply spoke for myself, as there are no others to do so.’

  Mrs Thistle stared at her in what was surely either outrage or fascination. But then, to Sarah’s surprise, she shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t apologise either, I suppose. We’ve all had enough of being treated like livestock. But if I am to assist you, Miss Marin, this will be the very last time you speak so. And if I am to help you, I not only need to know how old you are, but everything else about you too.’ She brushed back a strand of Sarah’s hair. ‘Including the story behind your family name. I do not think I have ever before heard a voice from Manchester in the mouth of someone with a French surname.’

  CHAPTER 20

  Nell was making a lot of noise. It was noise Sarah had heard before, of course, through the thin walls of the cottage in Manchester. Those low, elongated moans, rising shrieks and animal grunts had kept her awake occasionally in her childhood, but they had never had any more relevance to her than the sound of a brawl in the street.

  This, though, was different. Nell was one of the only women she knew at this impossible distance from home, having a child torn from her body without a flimsy wall between them.

  ‘Make yourself useful,’ Nurse Haddon said, bustling into the ward with a pail of water, cloths draped over her shoulder. She positioned herself between Nell’s legs.

  Sarah glanced around anxiously. ‘Make my . . . how?’

  ‘Talk to her, for God’s sake. Dip a cloth in the bucket, wipe her brow. Hold her hand. Let her squeeze yours until it feels like your bones will break.’

  So Sarah stroked Nell’s stringy hair, tried not to wince as the young woman’s fingernails pressed into her palm, and told her that it would all be all right and that it was nearly over – assurances no one had any business giving to a woman in childbirth.

  When the baby slid out of her mother into Nurse Haddon’s hands, the nurse exhaled loudly, glanced at the roof, and nodded as though in thanks. Sarah stared at the scrunched purple creature, suffusing with pink as she opened her mouth to cry. There was a defiance to the sound, disrupting as it did the order and silence of the ward. Sarah felt a pull towards the little girl, an urgency to make sure she had no reason to cry.

  ‘Poor little fatherless mite,’ Nurse Haddon said, wiping her hands on a cloth.

  ‘Amelia has a mother, though,’ said Nell, reaching for her daughter and mimicking the scrunched face. ‘That should be enough. And a father can do more harm than good.’

  ‘It will have to be enough,’ said Nurse Haddon. ‘This town, it has been good to some. But I’ve seen it take, too. Do not let it swallow this one.’

  *

  When they walked out of the infirmary one week later, Sarah braced herself for another throng and was oddly disappointed to find the forecourt empty.

  Mrs Thistle was walking between her and Nell, who was cradling Amelia and beaming at everyone they passed. The older woman must have noticed Sarah frown. ‘Don’t fret for them,’ she said. ‘They tried to nibble at you and didn’t get any sustenance, so they have moved to other feeding grounds. And now you’re one of mine, anyway.’

  Sarah smiled as much to ease her discomfort as to acknowledge the nicety. Mrs Thistle had not mentioned her surname again, but that did not mean she was not making enquiries.

  Nell was occasionally turning to smile at Mrs Thistle as though the woman had just showered her with riches, and was being ignored for her trouble.

  Nurse Haddon had given Nell a week to recover from the routine violence of birth, a luxurious amount of time, bordering on indulgent. Many women at the mill had returned to their posts the day after giving birth, and Sarah had seen some stuff rags up under their skirts.

  That morning Mrs Thistle had arrived, and Nell and Sarah had stood at the ends of their beds as she walked up and down in front of them. ‘There is a boarding house,’ she told them, ‘run by a Mrs Vale, with paying customers. She needs maids to serve at table and work in the kitchen, and so forth. You’ll both be equal to it, I’ve no doubt.’

  ‘Oh, a boarding house,’ Nell said, winking at Sarah.

  Mrs Thistle pursed her lips. ‘I know what kind of services are offered at some places that call themselves boarding houses, but I assure you this isn’t one of them. It’s a respectable establishment – visitors from Windsor and Parramatta, vicars, clerks, and so forth. The mariners from my ships stay there, and I assure you they know better than to misbehave. Mrs Vale ensures good behaviour and that guests don’t take their leave without paying.’

  ‘And what will we be paid?’ asked Sarah.

  Mrs Thistle glanced at her sharply. ‘You will be fed and sheltered.’

  Sarah clenched her jaw to stop herself scowling. Another one, at all this distance. Another
who would take hours of labour and tell her to be grateful to work without pay. Another who had probably never been poor or known a stab of hunger that couldn’t be alleviated. Another of those who had built the road her family walked to their graves.

  *

  They walked through a town that looked, to Sarah, as though it hadn’t quite made up its mind on what it wanted to be. A few handsome stone buildings with ornate trimmings quickly gave way to meaner structures: some well-built wooden cottages, some wattle and daub; others little more than sheds, just pieces of wood laid up against each other.

  The streets lacked the mass of people she was used to, though people walked here and there. Women in plain clothes and cloth caps. Black-jacketed functionaries, heads down, stepping quickly towards whatever important business was calling them.

  Sarah had been expecting to see others: the dark-skinned people who had inhabited this place before the British government had uncoiled across the sea and seeped onto the shore. She asked Mrs Thistle about it.

  ‘Rarely see them in town,’ the woman said. ‘They’ve been moved on. Out. Only a little over thirty years since the first of us arrived, and it’s as though they were never here. If you go out west you’ll see them, in Blacks Town or Parramatta. Some are living in the bush a little south too. I know the governor was keen to bring them in, to civilise them. They seem to prefer their own ways, though.’

  So, thought Sarah, the government that cut off my brother’s head after strangling him believes it has something to teach others about civilisation. And Molly Thistle, the woman on whom she now had to rely, was speaking as though these people were an abstract idea or a fairy story. Or an exhibit one had to go to the trouble of travelling west to see.

  Sarah had her hands clasped behind her back, and she squeezed one painfully with the other to stop herself screaming. She, too, was part of a faceless mass, toiling down in the basements of grand houses or begging on the streets. Yes, those on the upper levels knew people like her existed, but they didn’t have to see or speak to her. They could conveniently ignore her humanity, as they were doing with the original inhabitants of this place.

  She was unable to resist asking further questions. ‘Why would they want to be civilised? Why would they trust any promises they get?’

  Mrs Thistle shrugged. ‘You hear stories of shootings and the like. Men and women and children marched off a cliff a few years ago. And the school at Parramatta, now. The Native Institute, they call it, set up to educate native children, although they forgot to inform the parents they would be keeping the children until they are fifteen. Of course there are those who think they’re not worth educating, nor capable of learning. Although I did hear,’ she lowered her voice conspiratorially, ‘that one native girl came top in an examination, ahead of over one hundred settler children.’

  None of the settlers in this part of town looked as though they had ever taken an examination. They passed a tavern that even at this early hour had dribbled customers outside, where they leaned against a wall and drank. Perhaps some were the husbands of the women who sat outside several of the small shacks that were increasingly interspersed between the stone cottages. Sarah thought that if the deterioration continued, by the time they arrived at the boarding house they would find they were staying in a tent.

  But when they arrived a short time later, squinting into the low afternoon sun, the building looked as though it had been picked up from a different part of town and set down there. A sign swung out the front, THE ENGLISH ROSE in florid letters above a faded portrait of that flower. The front garden, neat and blooming with well-behaved gardenias, was on the other side of a little fence from scrubby bushland. There were shacks and a few wooden houses dotted around, none of which matched the two-storey grandeur of the guesthouse. Brick rendered with unchipped paint, it looked as though it wanted to lift its skirts to avoid the dirt road.

  The promised chatelaine, Mrs Vale, opened the door. Her face was thin and square as though it had been baked in a bread pan. Her hair was severely scraped under her cloth cap, and her expression changed from neutral to annoyed when she saw baby Amelia.

  Mrs Thistle bustled up, fully a head shorter than her companions, in her matronly lace and her plain blue gown. Sarah would not have thought of her as one to inspire deference. But the landlady clearly did not share this view, and curtsied as soon as Mrs Thistle reached them.

  Then Mrs Vale stood aside and swept her arm in what she clearly thought was a grand gesture of invitation. Mrs Thistle walked through the door without acknowledging her.

  They passed reception rooms with deep-red brocade chairs and green swagged curtains, then walked out through a door across a small courtyard and into an outbuilding kitchen. Mrs Vale invited Mrs Thistle to a seat; she made no similar invitation to the girls.

  ‘Mrs Flaherty has just been delivered of a child, as you can see,’ said Mrs Thistle, smoothing down her skirt as she sat.

  Nell glanced at Sarah, presumably confused by being referred to as a married woman.

  ‘Perhaps, Mrs Vale, you would care to offer her a seat?’ Mrs Thistle said.

  ‘Why of course.’ The woman had a high, oddly babyish voice, strange from such a tall person, with a quaver in its tone. Sarah thought that surely Mrs Thistle was bound to be the kind of woman who did not appreciate displays of weakness.

  ‘And of course it would be quite rude to leave only one standing,’ Mrs Thistle said.

  ‘Sit down, if you please,’ Mrs Vale said to Sarah, the words rapped out like the commands Captain Watkins used to give.

  ‘Such a walk,’ said Mrs Thistle. ‘I’m an old woman, you know. A cup of tea would be most welcome.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Mrs Vale, whose posterior had already been halfway to her own seat. She straightened and went to the stove.

  ‘I have been known to make tea,’ said Sarah. ‘Those who have tried it say I have some skill. Would you allow me, Mrs Vale?’ She nearly choked on the words, on their willing servitude, but she knew her life would be easier if she won goodwill from the woman.

  Mrs Thistle nodded and gave her a quick smile. ‘If you would be kind enough, Sarah. I’m sure Mrs Vale is run off her feet.’

  ‘Allow me to open the tea chest,’ said Mrs Vale, glancing at Sarah with a frown that showed she did not believe the likes of her belonged anywhere near the tea. The small chest was of polished dark wood, the kind used by grand houses that favoured tea imported at impossible expense and guarded like gold. Mrs Vale took a tiny key from her pocket, opened the chest and watched as Sarah scooped out the leaves, before closing it, locking it and putting it away.

  Mrs Thistle stood with far more speed and fluidity than one would expect from an exhausted old lady, went over to the pot, took a pinch of tea and sniffed it. ‘Not mine,’ she said, narrowing her eyes. ‘This sort of muck would never come into the colony on a Thistle ship.’

  ‘Well, I thought for the sake of economy . . .’ Mrs Vale said.

  ‘You will remember our agreement, if you please,’ said Mrs Thistle, sitting again. ‘I know the trader who deals in these leaves, and he cares little for quality. On my next visit I look forward to a cup of my own tea. In the meantime, this will have to do.’ She nodded to Sarah, who was placing the kettle on a small grille suspended over the fire. ‘Now,’ said Mrs Thistle, clapping her hands as though to bring a schoolroom to attention, ‘it’s very kind of you to offer these young ladies a place under your roof.’

  ‘They are most welcome,’ said Mrs Vale, not bothering to smile. Everyone in the room knew who owned the roof and had made the offer.

  ‘Of course,’ said Mrs Thistle. ‘Your hospitality is legendary, particularly for the needy. And these girls will be earning their keep while helping you to run this enterprise. Perhaps greater efficiency will ensure you are not so late with the accounts.’

  Mrs Vale drew her shoulders back as though she wanted to take offence, breathing deeply until the flush that had risen to her cheeks died d
own a little. She gestured at Nell. ‘It might be difficult for this one to operate . . . efficiently . . . with a babe.’

  Amelia clearly possessed some nascent social instincts, because she had fallen into an angelic sleep.

  ‘Nell is not the first woman to work with a baby on her hip,’ said Mrs Thistle. ‘I managed it. Eight times.’

  ‘And the father?’

  ‘Awful business.’

  Sarah stiffened, thinking she was about to reveal a truth about Nell that would prompt Mrs Vale to throw the young woman onto the street.

  Instead, Mrs Thistle said, ‘He fell into the harbour while unloading a ship of mine.’

  Nell shrugged at Sarah. Well, he might have.

  Sarah tried not to smile as she set steaming cups in front of Mrs Thistle and Mrs Vale.

  Mrs Thistle lifted hers, sniffed it, and put it back on its saucer, perhaps a little too hard. ‘Well, Sarah, you’ve done your best with what you had.’ She glared at Mrs Vale. ‘I look forward to better refreshment on my next visit,’ she said, standing. ‘In the meantime, I leave these young ladies in your tender care. Goodnight.’ She nodded, opened the door onto the dusk that was drawing in, and swept out without bothering to close it behind her.

  CHAPTER 21

  Mrs Thistle’s departure left an absence that Sarah was itching to fill. Mrs Vale was glaring at Nell and her child, while Nell smiled weakly back.

  ‘You will be convicts, no doubt,’ Mrs Vale said. ‘She’s partial to convicts.’

  Probably because they’re desperate enough to work for nothing, Sarah thought.

  ‘Oh, I’m ticketed now,’ said Nell. ‘Seven years, I served. Got my ticket of leave last year. I was only fourteen, you see, when they loaded me on the ship.’