by Meg Keneally
Mrs Nelson always stood by as the mass of women surrounded the communal cooking pots eager to make their rations palatable enough to swallow and knowing they had only a short amount of time in which to do it. Anyone who had not managed to cook and eat their food by the time the bell next rang would go hungry. So if Mrs Nelson saw anyone struggling, perhaps saw one of the newer inmates being pushed aside by long-timers, she would step in, take the girl’s rations and cook them herself before handing them back (probably, Hannah suspected, with a prayer of gratitude that her own victuals were considerably better).
Now, Rebecca Nelson frowned slightly at Hannah’s suggestion.
‘It was just a thought,’ Hannah said. ‘I watch, of course, the way you manage things. You’re an absolute paragon of efficiency, and I seek to model myself on you, you see. So I have a fair idea of what to do, and I know you’ve been busy enough with Mr Rohan.’
As she was speaking, Hannah was chastising herself for allowing the flattery to reach heights she hadn’t intended to scale. She feared Mrs Nelson would feel mocked or, worse, would guess at the truth – that Hannah was trying to get her out of the way.
Indeed, Mrs Nelson did not seem convinced by Hannah’s suggestion. As she rang the bell, there was a slight frown when normally the action would make her smile.
‘Well … I suppose … Having been a convict, though, I’m not sure you’d be allowed.’
‘Ah, well, that’s no trouble then. I just thought it might be a help to you, you know, with everything you’ve to do this afternoon. And of course as it is not an official task, I thought it might be all right if you were to hand it off to somebody such as myself. No matter, though. How can I assist you while you’re supervising, then?’
Mrs Nelson’s eyes were unfocused. She moved her mouth to one side, so that the outline of her teeth was visible underneath the stretched skin of her right cheek.
‘Well, as you say, it’s not an official position. I suppose it could do no harm, and of course I am extremely busy. You are certain you know what to do?’
‘Yes, indeed. Although I’m sure I won’t accomplish it with the same finesse as you.’ Rebecca smiled, didn’t contradict Hannah.
‘Very well then. I shall be in the residence, do send a guard if you need me. I look forward to hearing about how you got on!’
So now it was just her. Well, her and two guards and an unaccountable mass of women.
She met the guards’ sideways looks with a frank, open stare as she waded into the middle of the group which surrounded one of the cooking pots, looking for those too weak to push their way to the front. Looking, if she were honest, for Helen. Distress was abundant here, but the keenness of Helen’s pain spoke of a soul which had not yet grown a callus, and therefore might be open to accepting help and, perhaps, letting slip some information.
Hannah found her on the outskirts of one of the groups of women. She walked up the girl. ‘Have you eaten yet?’
Helen shook her head, looking at the ground.
‘Well, you’ll not find your dinner down there in the dirt. Come on.’
She took Helen’s arm and they fetched an earthenware bowl of stew, with its sparse meat and the arse end of a stale loaf, and found a seat on the edge of one of the long benches which hemmed in the dining hall tables.
‘Now, you know me, child,’ Hannah began. ‘You know I’m a friend to you, to all the women at this place.’
Helen nodded.
‘Good, very good. Now, you must forgive my bluntness, but I’m concerned about you. Anyone would be in a state, anyone in your position. But I can’t help thinking you also seem a little – well – frightened.’
Helen looked down. ‘You must think me weak, I suppose.’
‘Not a bit of it. Haven’t you reason enough for sadness and fright, with little Eliza at the orphan school?’
‘I’ve not done anything wrong, you know.’
Hannah felt a small, burning frustration rising. Mustn’t give in to it, she thought. Any sharpness now would just send the girl scurrying back behind those downcast eyes. ‘And I’m not suggesting you have. But tell me what scares you.’
‘I’m scared the new superintendent will be like the old. And I won’t have the pirate queen to protect me.’
‘The pirate queen – she took some risks on your behalf?’
‘He would come to us at night, you know. To the First Class sleeping quarters. He said he liked young ones. The younger the better.’
Helen’s breathing had quickened quite suddenly. Hannah put her arm on the girl’s shoulder.
‘He said he would never let any other man near us. We were for his personal use, he said. He would come and visit us. He would choose someone and simply lie down on top of them, get to work. The youngest, the most innocent. Some of them virgins. He appeared to like the screams.’
‘And Grace O’Leary, she tried to put a stop to it?’
Helen pulled away, looked at Hannah. ‘I did not say that name.’
‘Neither did you, and there is no need. You are not alone in trusting me. If I was intending to inform, I would have done so.’
Helen exhaled, but her eyes were moving now, skimming over the landscape as they had on the way to Mrs Nelson’s house.
‘She did what she could,’ she said. ‘Tried to make him uncomfortable, to organise the other women to stand around him. It didn’t work very well. But sometimes, if he was drunk enough, she’d haul him off before he could get underway. Roll him right over so he landed on his back on the ground. He’d looked up at her and laugh. Said she would be punished. Then he’d say we were all whores anyway, and a man of his distinction shouldn’t be forced so low, and he’d stagger out.’
‘And she did that for you.’
‘God, I tell you, his breath was almost the worst of it. The man stank, in a way in which no free man has a right to. And he was heavy, lying there, breathing rum.’
‘So he didn’t get you some nights. But there were other nights?’
‘Yes, for years. It’s how I got Eliza. He didn’t care about her, about any of them. She would be asleep, delicate as glass, holding my hand, and he would come and dump her on the floor to get her out of the way. She watched. Always. She is spared that, now, at least, in the orphan school.’
‘Did the pirate queen try to stop that?’
‘When she could. But she disappeared. After the riots. And as soon as she wasn’t here, he came back.’
‘For you.’
‘He wasn’t drunk the next time. He smiled when I cried. He pressed my arms, held them so hard. And then he left and came back the next night. And every time, afterwards, I would cry and say I wanted to go home. The others, they all pretended to be asleep, but they can’t have been. So they would have heard me saying it. Home is lost to me, but I wish I was home.’
Helen had begun to cry. Rocking backwards and forwards, her stew uneaten. Hannah tried to get her to take a mouthful, but she seemed not to see. All she would say was ‘home’, over and over.
One of the guards rang the bell. Hannah helped Helen to her feet. Whispered in her ear, ‘You must calm down now, my love, you must. I am sorry for causing you distress. Dry your eyes now. I don’t think you weak, but others might. And you know yourself what happens to the weak here.’
Helen nodded, wiped her eyes on a calico sleeve that was too short for her arm, and joined the rest of the women going into the workrooms.
How many of them, thought Hannah, had suffered visits from the foul Robert Church? Would she have encountered Church, or one like him, if she’d arrived late enough to be sent to the Factory? She suspected she knew the answer.
Chapter 22
Monsarrat watched Dr Homer Preston dab ineffectually at an ink spot on his shirt. The stain had only been there for a minute or two, the ink droplet sent flying through the air towards him by Napoleon, who had decided that a conference without him could not be allowed to proceed. The cat had very deliberately left his nest near Homer�
��s feet, jumped onto the desk and walked across, trailing his tail under Homer’s nose, languidly stretching until his front paws reached the ink pot, and then stretching that little bit further until it moved off the desk and onto the floor.
‘So – can I rely on your discretion?’ Monsarrat asked.
‘As much as you can on anyone’s, Hugh.’
‘Not exactly the firm commitment I was after, Homer.’
‘Listen, Hugh, I’m not the type to spread rumours, you must know that. And there are some I could spread, oh my goodness, yes. You see everything in this place. Dysentery, smallpox and death do more for equality than any revolution.’
For his part, Monsarrat was somewhat relieved to be here on an Eveleigh-sanctioned visit. The secretary’s growing frustration with him and his lack of progress was all too evident, and Monsarrat suspected that once Eveleigh had made a decision that a cause was lost, he was not to be easily swayed.
‘So,’ Homer continued, ‘it’s that Church business you’re here on, I suppose.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘I understood you had a rather convenient perpetrator, a convict who was all but caught in the act?’
‘Not as simple as that, I’m afraid. And somewhat too convenient. I don’t know about your life, Homer, but convenience has not been a hallmark of mine. Not unless someone stands to gain from it.’
‘So, you have someone else in mind?’
‘Well, a great many someone elses. Mr Church was unmourned.’
‘You’re thinking of McAllister?’
Monsarrat fervently hoped that Homer would keep the conversation to himself. An accusation against Socrates McAllister, unless backed by the strongest evidence, was almost too dangerous to contemplate. He employed a crude but effective instrument which had served him well in the past – answering with a question of his own.
‘Ah. You saw that conversation, did you?’
‘McAllister loves delivering warnings outside church. With his good friend Bulmer looking on for spiritual support. You are not the first to have been warned about this or that – in the most urbane way, of course. If something cannot be accomplished with urbanity, Mr McAllister doesn’t attempt it.’
‘I see. And have you been the recipient of one of these warnings yourself?’
Homer’s office had a door every bit as flimsy as the one inexpertly hung on Monsarrat’s convict hut in Port Macquarie. And Monsarrat suspected very few people thought twice about opening it without the courtesy of knocking. Perhaps that was why Homer was standing now.
‘Do you know what, Mr Monsarrat? Hospitals are dreadful places. They smell. And they’re full of the sick, the dying, and of course the dead. I fancy a walk by the river, myself, and I believe Napoleon needs to be left in Coventry for a while, to lick the ink off his paws and contemplate his transgressions. Would you care to join me?’
The river seemed to be feeling the heat too, once they got to it. The earlier high tide which had enabled the merchant ships to come and do business with the likes of Henson had bled out, leaching the waters all the way back along the river’s length and out to the Tasman Sea, promising to replenish them a while later.
But at the moment the grass sloping downwards from the low riverside buildings met exposed mudflats, which gave off the smell of rotting vegetation, while the water that remained was brown and moving so slowly it was hard to discern any movement at all.
‘Not much more fragrant here,’ remarked Monsarrat.
‘Sadly not. Somewhat more private, though. You asked if I’d been warned about anything by McAllister. One of the few things more dangerous than bringing yourself to his attention to the extent that he feels he needs to warn you, is discussing that warning later.’
‘You fear him, then.’
‘I fear what he can do. Did you enjoy your time as a convict, Hugh? No, nor did I, and I do not wish to revisit it. Sending either of us back into penal servitude would be a minute’s work for him, sitting there on the bench.’
‘So what did you do to bring yourself to Mr McAllister’s attention?’
‘I was unwise enough to be in a position to be useful to him. You worked for a time, did you not, for a magistrate called Samuel Cruden?’
‘Yes, I did. I was a tutor to his sons.’
‘You may have noticed, then, that he is no longer on the bench.’
Monsarrat had, actually. He intended at some point to find out what had become of the man. Perhaps even find him, thank him. Cruden had been as kind to Monsarrat as was possible within the strictures of the man’s position, and while it was his ruling that had sent Monsarrat to Port Macquarie as a second offender, he had done so with reluctance, bound by the very specific laws governing breaches of the conditions of tickets of leave.
‘Do you know what has become of him? Is he still out in Windsor?’
‘As far as I’m aware. He’s had some success as a pastoralist, like Bulmer and McAllister – God knows how these judicial types manage to get sheep to fuck each other, but they do.’
‘And the circumstances of his leaving the bench?’
‘I shall tell you, Monsarrat, but I must warn you to listen to the end before passing judgement. Because, you see, I was instrumental in his removal.’
Monsarrat stared at Preston. He knew the man was no paragon. But he hoped the doctor hadn’t been a willing tool for McAllister. He didn’t want to stop liking him.
‘Very well, I’ll listen.’
Preston was silent for a moment.
‘My listening, of course, is conditional on your speaking,’ said Monsarrat.
‘Yes, yes. All right. Just gathering my thoughts. So, a year ago – it must’ve been, because I remember the heat – I was asked to examine a woman who was an assigned convict in Cruden’s household.’
‘Asked by who?’
‘By Socrates McAllister. It was known, generally, that he and Cruden did not get along. They disagreed on certain matters when it came to severity of punishment – Cruden felt the lash never reformed anyone, while McAllister felt the more of it the better, and often lamented Governor Macquarie’s soft-heartedness when it came to restricting the maximum number of lashes to one hundred.’
‘I see.’
‘Not only that, but Cruden might have discovered something of McAllister’s less … shall we say … magisterial activities. Certainly he remarked – often enough for it to trickle its way through to me, and no doubt others – that McAllister was not a fit character to sit on the bench. And Cruden, well, he was known as a man of conviction. He would not say such things unless he intended to act on them. So it is reasonable to assume that McAllister felt his position was under threat.’
‘And why did he ask you to examine the convict woman?’
‘He asked me to look for signs of molestation. And he asked me to enquire of the woman as to the identity of her molester.’
‘Did you find anything?’
‘I found marks which could certainly have indicated molestation. Bruises on her upper arms, as though someone had pinioned her. Certain injuries in relevant areas, which I’d rather not go into. So, as I had been instructed, I asked her who’d injured her. She claimed it was Cruden.’
‘I can’t believe that for a moment, Homer. The man doesn’t have it in him.’
‘So I thought. But it wouldn’t have been the first time someone with an outwardly moderate bearing turned out to be a monster. And it must be remembered that Mr Cruden had an unorthodox domestic arrangement.’
This was true. When Monsarrat was tutor to the Cruden boys, it was an open secret that the man shared a bed with his housekeeper, an Irish ticket-of-leave woman like Hannah Mulrooney, who indulged his boys as though she were their mother. Their own mother had died in their infancy, and with a distracted father and a woman whose response to infractions was to bake them little cakes, they had no reason to moderate their good-natured but sometimes disruptive exuberance.
Monsarrat had seen no harm in the relat
ionship then, and didn’t now. But harm there clearly was, for it had obviously been used against Cruden.
‘So you reported your findings to McAllister?’
‘Of course. I might add that it was entirely reasonable to do so – to tell the authorities what I had seen and heard. I didn’t feel I was in a position to judge Cruden one way or the other, only the physical evidence in front of me.’
‘What did McAllister do?’
‘Well, he publicly accused Cruden. Using my report as evidence. Cruden denied it, of course, but there were a great many who were not inclined to believe him. Ultimately he resigned from the bench. It’s my understanding he intended to set in motion a process to clear his name, but if he continues to hold that objective, I don’t know how far he’s come with it.’
‘Was that the end to it?’
‘Not quite. I became aware shortly afterwards that the convict woman in question had suddenly been given a ticket of leave – two years early. She’d also been married off to a former convict – a relatively prosperous one too, a farrier. I gather she is now living out in Camden in a handsome cottage with her husband. Had her sentence been allowed to run its course, she would still be an assigned convict servant, or back in the Female Factory.’
‘So you think McAllister bribed her to speak against Cruden.’
‘I’m not saying that, Hugh. I am simply noting a series of interesting events. But I’ll be honest, if I had known in advance what the outcome would be, I might have moderated my report.’
‘You were complicit in calumny, in the destruction of a good man!’
Preston tensed, kicked a river pebble with his shoe. ‘A few things you need to understand, Hugh. I am not a saint and have never claimed to be one, so any attempt to hold me to saintly standards will only frustrate you. I was following procedure, and obviously did not predict the events to come.’
‘Do you think him capable of it? McAllister?’
‘I would like to think not, particularly given the power he holds. But … I think most people are capable of doing whatever is required to ensure their survival. Or the survival of their reputation, which is as precious as life to someone like McAllister.’