Tiger Men

by Judy Nunn

  ‘In which case, she has my sympathy tenfold, for desertion would cause her even greater distress.’

  The scenario her father had presented had indeed taken Amy by surprise, but Silas had misinterpreted the true cause for her bewilderment.

  ‘But if Polly was abandoned,’ she continued, ‘why then did the society accept her as a beneficiary? Proof of widowhood is required, is it not?’

  ‘Of course it is. I personally interviewed members of the whaler’s crew who witnessed both the accident and the burial.’ Silas regretted having lashed out in so vulgar a fashion; he rarely lost his temper. ‘I was merely stating a hypothetical possibility,’ he said stiffly. ‘A possibility that I’m sure would have occurred to Polly Jordan, even in her grief.’ He stared distractedly at the cup of tea Amy had poured him. It would be tepid by now.

  ‘What of the captain? What of the ship’s log?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Burials at sea must be recorded. Was the log checked?’

  ‘Possibly. I can’t be sure. Shall we call Clara for fresh cups?’

  ‘My goodness, Father.’ Her tone was one of disbelief. It couldn’t be possible, she thought. ‘You didn’t lie, did you?’

  ‘I most certainly did not.’ Silas was horrified that his daughter could suggest such a thing. ‘I received eye-witness accounts. I took men at their word, and why should I not?’

  Yes, Amy thought, just as the members of the Hobart Town Businessmen’s Philanthropic Society would accept the word of their founder. If Silas Stanford recommended Polly Jordan as a beneficiary, they would of course assume the records had been verified. Had her father chosen not to delve too deeply into the circumstances in the belief that Polly Jordan, an expectant mother with four children, qualified for support regardless of the rules? It appeared quite possible.

  Amy felt a wave of affection as she studied him, his attention now focused studiously on the teapot, signalling an end to their conversation. She thought how tired he looked, tired and vulnerable and suddenly older than his forty-eight years, and she wondered if she were in any way responsible. He was such an intensely private man. Had she indeed betrayed his trust?

  ‘I am sorry, Father,’ she said. ‘I am deeply sorry that I offended you in speaking about Mother to Polly Jordan. I promise I shall never again –’

  ‘Oh, but my dear, you must.’ Silas reached across the table and took her hand in both of his, though he was not physically demonstrative as a rule. ‘You must speak of your mother whenever, and to whomever, you wish,’ he said. ‘I do not hold sole ownership of her memory.’ He was overcome with guilt as he realised how selfish he’d been. ‘The apology is mine, Amy. Please forgive me, I beg you.’

  ‘Of course I forgive you,’ his daughter replied brightly, and she kissed the hands that held hers. Like her mother before her, Amy was never one to shy away from physical expression.

  She jumped to her feet. ‘I shall tell Clara to make a fresh pot,’ she said as she picked up the tea tray. ‘You need your tea: you look weary, Father.’

  I am weary, he thought as he watched her sail off to the kitchen. Revisiting the past had been strangely tiring.

  Several minutes later, upon her return, she insisted he eat some lemon cake while they waited for the tea. And then she further insisted upon hearing all the news from the latest meeting of the Legislative Council, news which she accused him of having been keeping to himself.

  ‘Come along now, Father, I shall swear an oath of silence if you wish, but do share some secrets with me. Do you really believe London will agree to the renaming of the colony?’

  ‘They will have to agree when we achieve selfgovernment, my dear, and that is only a matter of time. The new constitution will be passed within the next several months I’m sure, and once it has been given Royal Assent by Queen Victoria, the Privy Council will have no option but to approve our decision.’

  Silas was aware of his daughter’s ploy. Amy was fuelling his passion, just as Lucy had done whenever she’d sensed his despondence, and just like Lucy she was succeeding. Amy’s spirit and good humour were a daily reminder to Silas of the wife he had lost, but he found no pain in the fact, only pleasure, for he had long ago accepted Lucy’s death as a message from God.

  ‘Imagine, Amy! No longer will we be Van Diemen’s Land. The dark days will soon be behind us.’

  ‘But surely now with the end of transportation, the dark days are already behind us, Father. Why, just the other day an article in the Courier said something about “an end to the shameful stain upon our history”, which I must say I found very dramatic. The journalist called the Jubilee Festival Dinner “a triumph for the Anti-Transportation League and a testament to its members’ belief in a free land for our children”. Or words to that effect. I can’t quite recall – I may be misquoting a little. In any event, I wholeheartedly agree with him.’

  Following the docking of the last convict vessel on 26 May of that year, Van Diemen’s Land had indeed given itself up to endless celebration. Hobart Town and Launceston had conducted lavish festivities, the Jubilee Festival of Hobart Town culminating in a giant outdoor banquet for the children of the colony. A massive marquee had been rigged among the trees, rows of cloth-covered trestle tables placed end to end, and huge platters of food laid out for the hundreds upon hundreds of children who had gathered for the feast and for the fireworks that followed.

  ‘How proud you must be, Father, after your years of striving, to finally see an end to our days as a penal settlement.’

  ‘I am proud, it is true,’ he admitted, ‘to have played my small part in the proceedings.’

  Silas was being overly humble. He had played a large part, and the battle had at times been hard. He had made powerful enemies in the group of wealthy landowners and merchants who, having prospered under the assignment system, had banded together in a bid to retain convict transportation and the ready availability of cheap labour it provided. But they lost, Silas thought with a sense of triumph. Times had changed. Those days were over. And every minute of the fight had been worth it.

  ‘You are right, my dear, I am proud of our achievements. Although we may well be witness to further inhumanities before the day is done,’ he added, his face clouding slightly as he recalled the road gang he’d watched at work on the docks. ‘I fear the government will continue to employ convict labour on its public works until the current prisoners have served their sentences. In the interests of future integration, I would have preferred to see a greater concentration upon the acquisition of trade skills for high-risk prisoners, and the general issue of tickets-of-leave to all those convicts considered low-risk. I’m afraid I was outvoted on these issues, however. The majority of my colleagues considered my suggested course of action premature and impracticable. They accused me of being unrealistic.’

  Amy was not particularly surprised. There was much that was unrealistic about her father. Silas Stanford was so driven in his quest that he sometimes failed to see the real world at all, and that included the real world of his family.

  ‘Education,’ he announced, changing the subject with surprisingly dramatic flair. ‘Education is the way of the future, Amy. The education of a new generation to lead a new free colony.’

  She could certainly not disagree with him there.

  The tea arrived and for the next half-hour they talked about the plans for the Hobart Town Ragged School Association, or rather Silas did. He was joining forces with the philanthropist Henry Hopkins in the creation of a new welfare scheme modelled upon the English ragged school system.

  As he spoke, Amy was heartened to see the change in him. No longer did he look tired and old. In his excitement for the future, he was rejuvenated. It is a pity, she thought, that so few can see the man for who he really is, including, sadly, his two older daughters.

  Amy remembered how marooned they’d felt, she and her sisters, upon losing the woman who’d been the very anchor of their existence. She recalled how, in the wake of their
mother’s death, Harriet and Isabel had so craved their father’s affection that they’d competed with each other to see who could best garner his interest. But Silas Stanford had appeared barely to notice his children, leaving them in the sole care of the governess he’d employed, and Amy had often wondered how it was that she had not shared her sisters’ desperation. Had she been more resilient simply because she was younger? Or had she perhaps sensed her father’s love? He’d displayed no favouritism, and her sisters had never appeared to suspect any, but she’d always known Silas loved her. Unfortunately, neither Harriet nor Isabel had experienced a similar confidence and, as the years had passed, their father’s perceived indifference had had radical repercussions.

  Harriet Stanford had embraced the Church with fervour, perhaps in a bid for her father’s approval or perhaps as a replacement for the love he’d failed to give her, but she’d certainly succeeded in gaining his attention when, as a twenty-year-old, she’d left to join the Sisterhood of the Holy Communion, an Anglican order of nuns in Sydney. Silas had been immensely proud of his eldest daughter.

  Isabel Stanford had given up trying to please her father at the age of fifteen, and at nineteen had married Percival Buxton, a young captain in the British army whom she’d met just six months previously at a gala fundraising function held by the Hobart Town Businessmen’s Philanthropic Society. The couple had moved to Launceston where Percival was stationed, and they planned shortly to return to England upon the completion of his two-year commission, all of which suited Isabel perfectly. Silas had been bewildered by the speed of events, but happy that his daughter had apparently found her ideal match.

  ‘No child in the colony, no matter from how impoverished a family, will be denied an education.’ He was now at his pontificating best.

  Amy nodded encouragingly, although she wasn’t paying attention to his actual words. This is the only father Harriet and Isabel knew, she thought, a father whose compassion for his fellow man had added to their sense of deprivation. But it shouldn’t have, for he had always loved them, and still did in his own mysterious way. Silas Stanford’s tragedy in life was his inability to show his personal feelings. He did today though, didn’t he? Amy thought. Today Silas Stanford, albeit unwittingly, had revealed a glimpse of his innermost self. She hadn’t known he still ached with the pain of his wife’s death. None of them had known.

  ‘And you, my dear, will be a part of it all,’ Silas announced with pride. ‘When the ragged school system is established, we will be in need of teachers, and you shall be one of our first.’

  ‘I would consider that a great honour, Father, a great honour indeed.’ She picked up the teapot and started pouring herself a second cup. ‘Now finish your tea and let me make you a fresh one.’

  ‘Oh dear, I’ve been ranting, haven’t I?’

  ‘No more than usual. Now finish your tea please, I wish to propose a toast.’ She smiled as he obediently drained his cup.

  ‘So what is the toast?’ he asked, watching her pour.

  ‘To the forthcoming success of the Hobart Town Ragged School Association, of course,’ she replied.

  ‘But of course.’

  She passed him his fresh cup and they made their toast. Then Amy proposed a second.

  ‘And even more importantly,’ she said, ‘let us drink to Tasmania.’

  ‘Oh my goodness me, yes.’ Silas considered the imminent renaming of the colony after its Dutch discoverer, Abel Tasman, to be of the most profound and symbolic significance. Van Diemen’s Land was to be newly baptised. The sins of the past were to be washed away. ‘To Tasmania,’ he said, raising his teacup, ‘a new name for a new land and a new people.’

  ‘To Tasmania,’ Amy said and they clinked cups. But changing the name won’t really change the people, she thought as she sipped her tea. Van Diemen’s Land was a wild place that attracted a certain kind. It always had, and quite possibly always would.

  As if to prove her right, it was at that very moment that Mick O’Callaghan caught his first sight of Hobart Town.

  CHAPTER THREE

  After rounding Cape Raoul with a blustering southerly at her stern, the Maid of Canton had fairly raced up Storm Bay. She was a clipper built for speed and few vessels could match her. A former opium runner, the Maid, as she was affectionately known, served a more respectable master these days, working the British trade routes for a wealthy merchant company.

  Past Cape Direction and on up the Derwent the Maid had sped, her skipper eager to make dock before afternoon became dusk.

  Then off the port bow, beyond the endless masts of ships at anchor, the hustle and bustle that was Hobart Town suddenly came into view.

  To Mick O’Callaghan it was a magic sight.

  ‘There she is, Mick.’ Seamus gave him a nudge. ‘You’ve made it, you lucky young bastard.’

  ‘I certainly have,’ Mick responded with a grin, ‘and most obliged I am for your help, Seamus.’ I’ve made it all right, he thought. And as far as luck went, Seamus didn’t know the half of it. Arriving in Hobart Town was perhaps not remarkable, but arriving as a free man was little short of a miracle. He should have been one of those poor bastards dragging their chains off a transport ship.

  ‘Happy to have been of service,’ Seamus replied. And he was. Despite an eight-year age discrepancy, he’d been close to young Mick in the old Dublin days, even closer than Mick’s older brothers. Mick being the youngest of his family, and a late arrival at that, had had five siblings quite a deal older than he was and they’d tended to ignore him. The lad had always been a bit of a tearaway, and it hadn’t surprised Seamus to hear, via his own family, the rumour that Mick had got mixed up with the Young Irelanders movement and had left Belfast in something of a hurry, although no-one knew why. Seamus had thought little on the subject, however. He was not one to pass judgement, and there was nothing he could have done anyway, for by then he was a seasoned merchant sailor and the sea was his home. On those occasions when he wasn’t aboard ship or holed up in a foreign port, he stayed at a seamen’s hostel in Liverpool; apart from the odd family letter he’d lost all contact with Ireland. The coincidence of his having literally bumped into twenty-one-year-old Mick at the Liverpool docks where the lad was seeking work as a deckhand had seemed to Seamus the intervention of destiny. He’d been only too happy to lend a hand, and he hadn’t asked questions when Mick had said he wanted to sign up for a one-way voyage only. ‘I need to get as far away from Ireland as possible and stay there,’ Mick had said, and that was enough for Seamus. If young Mick Kelly now wanted to call himself Mick O’Callaghan that was nobody’s business but his own, and whatever intrigue the lad had got himself entangled in was of little interest anyway. Seamus kept well out of politics himself.

  ‘How about America?’ he’d suggested. ‘There’s a ship leaving tomorrow and I’m good friends with the first mate.’

  ‘Too many Irish in America,’ Mick had said. ‘I was thinking more of Australia.’

  ‘And you don’t reckon on finding Irish there?’ Seamus had wryly queried.

  ‘Not the same sort of Irish.’

  ‘Ah yes, you do have a point, I agree.’

  Young Mick’s choice of Australia had appeared to Seamus another portent of destiny’s hand in the scheme of things, for his own ship the Maid was due to sail for Van Diemen’s Land in only weeks.

  ‘You’re in luck,’ he’d said. ‘The Maid of Canton departs within the month. I’m first mate, and you’re welcome on board.’

  ‘Seamus, you’re a godsend, you truly are,’ Mick had said and he’d hugged his old mate with fervour.

  But neither luck nor destiny had played any part in the fortuitous reunion of Mick Kelly, now O’Callaghan, and his childhood friend. Mick had known exactly where he would bump into Seamus, just as he had known that Seamus was first mate aboard the Maid, which was shortly to set sail for Van Diemen’s Land. The naiveté of his friend in accepting the coincidence of their meeting had not been in the least surprising, f
or even as a ten-year-old Mick had recognised how easily he could manipulate Seamus. But then Mick Kelly had discovered at ten that he could manipulate most people.

  ‘He has the gift of the blarney, that one,’ his father would boast. ‘He could charm the wings off a butterfly and the butterfly would walk away flightless and happy. The boy has the true gift, there’s no doubt about it.’ Patrick Kelly was a dreamer with a romantic love of his tribe, which his youngest son grew to find pointless and rather foolish. Being able to talk your way into people’s affections was one thing, but knowing how to use your power once you got there – that was something else altogether.

  As the crew went about their work in preparation for docking, Mick wondered how Seamus might react if he knew the facts. Good, honest Seamus had believed he’d been rescuing an innocent lad from political thugs. And indeed he had, Mick thought. Sweet Jesus, those crazy bastards had been hounding him for years. They’d followed him from Belfast to London; it would have been only a matter of time before they’d traced him to Liverpool. But Seamus hadn’t known the catastrophic consequences of this innocent lad’s involvement with the Young Irelanders. No-one knew, and no-one was ever likely to find out, for the movement had long since disbanded. The problem now lay in distancing himself from its several fierce supporters who remained bent on revenge.

  There were other facts of which Seamus had been ignorant, and it was to Mick’s advantage to ensure he continued so. Seamus had had no idea he’d been aiding a criminal. The knowledge of that would surely have worried him more than anything, Mick thought, for Seamus although a simple rough seaman was fiercely law-abiding.