Benevolence

by Julie Janson

  Mary stares at the huge grey stone building, with its many windows and black shutters that look like eyes. The Parramatta Orphan School is three storeys high and, as such, is the tallest building in the area. There is sign pinned to the fence that advertises, in looping cursive script, a situation for a maid. But Mary turns and begins to walk quickly away. She does not like the look of this terrible building; it is terrifying. Granny Wiring catches her and with her arm firmly held marches her towards the school.

  They climb up the stone steps to the great wooden doors and it seems like an evil-looking place, full of goong. Mary feels these ghosts and tries to walk away again but Granny pulls her up the steps, insisting that Mary will take a position and no longer starve.

  ‘Whu karndi nindi mingangun, why you run?’ asks Granny.

  ‘Naiya yanna naiya yunga. I want to run away,’ wails Mary.

  ‘What you gunna do? You not waibala, you not blackfella. You in between. Gotta live! Not alla time looking for husband, he gone. Not alla time look for father, he gone. Look after self now, not starve. You speak English. Work for this place, not hungry alla time, you live,’ says Granny Wiring.

  She pushes Mary in front of her and it begins to pour with rain. The drenching wet and blowing wind forces them under the shelter of the arch at the front door. This stone is now covered in mist and Mary stares at the foreboding doors, like doors to a prison. She tries again to turn away, but Granny holds her wrist fast and batters at the door. There are hinges of hard grey metal and a knocker embossed with bronze lions. The huge bolts are pulled back from the inside and Mary looks up into the iron bars on the small windows. The air seems rank and poisonous; it smells like a death. She is very afraid, but Granny’s fist is still grasping her hard.

  Mary heard about this Orphan School from Mrs Shelley who used hushed tones of righteousness to describe the good they did. Here, small children could be saved from the evil of drink and lecherous parents. ‘Most,’ she said, ‘are orphans with no-one to care for them, so the benevolence of the colonial authorities allows unwanted infants to thrive under its roof.’

  But Mary senses it is a place of many deaths. She can feel the little spirits pounding at the windows and she can see tiny gaunt faces pleading for life. She turns to run but Granny puts out her stick and trips her, then yells for someone to open the door. Mary lies miserably on the cold stone step cursing Granny and looking up at her with pleading eyes. She wants to disappear in the rain but a young man has opened the door. He is the assistant curate and, Mary recognises, Reverend Smythe, the preacher from the wharf.

  He is formidable with his black bushy beard and black silk clothes and a wide pink-lipped smile. He is handsome and strong all at once. Reverend Henry Smythe, the master of the Orphan School, has warmth pouring from his eyes and Mary thinks he is as attractive as the day she first saw him. He takes Mary’s hand and pulls her up, continuing to hold her hand. He looks at her sodden dress as Mary brushes herself down and wrings water from her clothes, before arranging her wild hair. She still carries her violin and he gazes with curiosity at the bundle.

  She looks at her dark hand in his pink one and can see that his nails are clean and trimmed while hers are dark and filled with ash. He smells of camphor, Russian leather bibles and cedar trees. She smells of the eucalypt and smoke. He can see her beauty; again it disarms him.

  ‘Come in. Don’t stand outside freezing. Terrible weather, is it not?’ says the Reverend. He grins and holds an embroidered cloth to his mouth. He can sense the fatigue, the hunger – and the anger. Mary wrenches her hand away from his touch.

  ‘Girl here,’ Granny pushes her forward and Mary’s eyes are wild in apprehension.

  ‘I am not of your aquaintance, dear old lady, but I see you have brought this lovely young lass with you,’ says Smythe. ‘Let me guess. You have responded to my note and wish to offer her as a native servant? Oh, she has lovely light brown skin, like warm drinking chocolate.’

  Mary stands very still. She will turn and run fast into the bush at the first opportunity and she will punch this smiling man on the nose if he dares to touch her again.

  Granny accepts some tobacco from him and he replaces the silver tin in his pocket.

  Mary sees something else in him. He is lonely and young, wanting something he cannot have. She watches him, his shapely body and lovely eyes.

  ‘This Mary James, servant. She work,’ says Granny.

  ‘Arr, I have heard about this Mary James. You must be about sixteen years old, yes? Of course you have no idea, do you? What is your true native name?’ asks Reverend Smythe.

  ‘Muraging, but they gave me a new name,’ says Mary.

  Mary stares at his chest. He is wearing a white shirt with lace and a black hair pokes above the neckline. This man will surely imprison her as a servant. She looks about for possible escape routes. Yes, down the steps and over the fence, or she can swim across the river. This man keeps nodding and smiling.

  ‘Oh dear. I know who you are, dear girl. Your old teacher, Mrs Shelley, will have to be informed, but don’t worry. I do not care about it,’ says Reverend Smythe.

  ‘No! I don’t want work here, I don’t like you or this place!’ says Mary.

  Mary stares straight into his eyes in the way of English insolence.

  ‘We shall see. Don’t be too hasty, please!’ says Reverend Smythe.

  ‘Girl speak English. Can read write. Girl workem hard,’ says Granny. Mary grimaces.

  ‘Mary, please don’t be frightened. Let’s look at you. My, my, jolly good. Has your mistress allowed you the privilege of an English education? Do you cook and sew? Laundry, I’m certain. Would you be disposed to living here, not as an inmate of course but as my indentured servant? I can make arrangements. I can sign the papers. You will be most welcome and will have a generous allocation of board and food and a small stipend. Come along,’ he coos.

  He holds out his hand and takes Mary’s gently. He leads her inside the door and she is hypnotised. A lamb to slaughter.

  ‘Off you go, Granny. You may go to the kitchen to receive as much tucker as you like. I believe Cook has cold mutton with Indian pickle,’ he says.

  Granny nods and lights her pipe. She hobbles off around the back of the building without a backward glance.

  Smythe leads her along polished wooden floors with rich carpet runners. On the way, she glimpses inside a room with a piano, red Persian carpets and blue glass bottles that gleam like bright sparkling stars. Along the walls are hundreds of books.

  ‘We shall see what training you have had at the hands of Mrs Shelley. And we have also a succulent apple tart, with whipped cream. Would you like some?’ he asks.

  ‘Irish beef stew but made with kangaroo. One can only assume that you would like that as well? That is if your wild tribesmen have not succumbed to temptation and killed all the beasts,’ he says.

  ‘Terrible times, Mary, the suffering of the tribespeople. I am so sorry, you see. Taking you on is my redemption for Jesus. Do you know Jesus? Of course, Mrs Shelley has seen to your Christian education. I am quite certain you can read and write. Oh, we will have such a nice time, you and I. And you will play your violin, such a curiosity!’ Smythe continues.

  Mary fears this place that has few windows, like a prison. Mary is taken to be bathed by the plump middle-aged Matron, who is Welsh. She is ferocious. She glares at Mary and shoves her head in a basin of soapy water.

  ‘Keep still, you dirty thing! I don’t know why he brings you to me for looking after. Covered in lice, I bet. I have too many to look out for,’ says Matron.

  Mary sleeps in a cold dormitory alongside the white servant girls who snore all night. The children sleep nearby, in another cold dormitory.

  Mary’s curiosity about the Reverend and the school stops her running back to the bush. He has books with drawings and wondrous paintings hang on the wall. They reveal strange countries and beasts, like lions and elephants; she is mesmerised. He shows much kindness toward
s her.

  Each day she rises before the sun to fill woodboxes with firewood and light stoves in the kitchen. She carries heavy trays of food and washes dishes by the hundreds. The food is good and her bed is warm and clean. Mary stays.

  Mary becomes acquainted with polishing the shiny, waxed floors in the Orphan School corridor, where the children buff them on their knees. The five-year-old girls in grey smocks push cloths along in front of their knees until the boards shine bright. It is a game to the little children. There are high ceilings with beige cracked walls and black iron bars on the windows – shipped from London. Once they were used in the hulks for African slaves. Not far away there are African children in Dixieland, also called Baulkham Hills, born to the ticket-of-leavers from Jamaica. Mary has seen them in Parramatta, dancing to drums.

  Late one night, Mary hears shouting from the hallway and the sound of Matron’s voice as heavy objects are thrown and girls squeal. Someone is in trouble for breaking a glass decanter. There are smashing sounds, more broken crockery, and the Matron is cursing.

  Mary recognises the bad words because she has heard them from drunk men. She has seen men bashing each other and screaming; she saw a man break another man’s arm, and heard it snap like a twig. Mary knows when to be quiet, when to run away and cover herself in blankets and to not utter a sound, when to hold her breath and keep still, away from the shouting and madness.

  Crawling down to the bottom of the bed, Mary waits, for she fears that Matron will one day choose to scream at her, and beat her with a broom handle until she bleeds. Matron paces the corridor and holds a lantern to check that the servants are all in bed. The pale shapes of quiet girls huddle in iron beds.

  The laundry smells of fear and drudgery and is under Matron’s constant surveillance. Mary washes hundreds of small sets of clothes and her hands soften and bleed. She works in the nursery where she sees tiny white orphan babies crying as they lay in lines on straw mattresses – the children of fallen women. She walks amongst them and as she touches each one they give a little shudder because they are so unused to human warmth. They will surely die miserable deaths.

  Mary wants to cuddle all the babies, make them warm and loved. She holds three at a time and thinks about how she might one day be a mother with her own sweet little one at her breast.

  Reverend Smythe strolls with the Matron along the rows of babies, sprinkling holy water and reading from the Bible. The servant girls balance as many babies as they can on their laps, feeding them pap and milk as they offer kisses and wipe their bottoms. The smell of poo and vomit is always on them.

  Alice May is an English servant and she smiles when Mary picks up babies, balancing them in her arms and singing a native children’s song. Alice May laughs and imitates Mary’s sounds – Mary is sure it is with affection. The girl sits on a milking stool with a little boy on her lap and plays clapping hands with him, then she holds him up to see outside the window.

  ‘Can you see the trees? Can you see the horses? Can you see my home in London town?’ sings Alice May. The little child giggles and she nuzzles his head. A glimmer of loving hope.

  They take babies into their beds to keep them warm in the freezing winter. They tiptoe into the nursery with candle stub lights and steal them. They are the night minnek wirawai, walking to find babies before they are taken to their deaths.

  Alice May is now her friend and they seek each other’s eyes when they feed the babies. She sees Mary but seldom speaks directly as there are too many critics about. They whisper to each other and begin a friendship of mime. Mary teaches her Aboriginal sign language.

  ‘Where you you going?’ Mary’s hand flicks towards her. ‘What are you doing?’ is a thumb up and head inclined. ‘Where did you get that food?’ is fingers to lips and head inclined. ‘Give me some,’ is a palm pulled towards head. Alice May is her secret and her salvation.

  ‘At one moment, these young babies have health and spirits and next moment we behold souls in the arms of death. We must pray because he who is faithful has promised when thou passest through the waters of death, he will be with them and the rivers shall not overflow them. God is a refuge and a strength and very present in our hours of need. We may meet these babes in that place, where sin and sorrow and sighing are forever done away,’ says Henry Smythe. Mary listens but has little idea what he is talking about. These babies need their mother’s milk.

  ‘If I have baby, I will not be parted from her. I will die before the waibala can take her to a place like this,’ says Mary.

  ‘I already had a baby and he died here in this place,’ says her friend.

  ‘I’m sorry. You would be a good mother,’ Mary whispers.

  When Mary finishes the washing, she picks up a few babies and they turn their pale mouths to her empty breast. The porridge and cow milk spoon fed to them by the servants is pale and thin and their hungry mouths howl. She lies awake at night listening to the wailing and feels always cold. She watches the stars tumbling through the crack in the shutters and sometimes thinks about all that she has seen.

  ‘The other girls say you are a strumpet and you work that night shift near the town hall. They say you got piles of shillings in yer bed,’ Alice May tells her one day.

  ‘I’ve got nothing, do nothing, I just wait for my Granny or father to come for me,’ says Mary.

  Mary wishes the shillings were true but she hates the cruel gossip. Servant girls shun her. She is mostly alone in her toils and, except for Alice May, no-one seems to trust her. Most of the time she is vacant, living in a dream. Perhaps she is invisible.

  She tells herself that she can try to fit in with these convict girls. They sew patchwork and Mary sits nearby hoping one will ask her to join, but she is shunned. They wash her cup twice. Perhaps she can find a blade and cut their throats.

  Some days, ghost women walk back and forth in front of the building. They look up to the high windows. Some squat under trees and hide their faces in shawls. Some are searching for their children. Others want to give their children to the Matron. She sends them away. The school cannot take a child without a letter from the governor.

  Mary walks to the barn in the courtyard where a cow is milked; the cows are also prisoners. Morning frost cracks on the milk pails when Mary dips her billy in. She takes a bucket of milk to warm for the babies. She squats back on the floor in front of the wood stove and hums to take away her feeling of desperation. She must wash these floors every day – Matron will beat her if she neglects this duty. Then Mary takes the dirty water down two flights of stairs to the laundry. It is cold in the stone room. And it is full of spirits: girls who have had their hands caught in mangles or scalded by tubs of boiling soapy water, those who are boiled with the sheets. A bat flies past the windows, and then an omen, budawa, the owl, calls out. She blocks her ears.

  …

  Reverend Smythe changes Mary’s role. Now she has the title Native Servant. It’s a position of respect and she has special jobs. Alice May will not talk to her any more. The Reverend has written to Mrs Shelley to explain this new position and Mary is given a new set of cotton shifts and aprons, but also one fine respectable dress bought by the Reverend for her to wear to church. She can barely breathe when he hands it to her. She fingers the pale blue cloth. She now sits near the front of St John’s, the Parramatta church, admiring the black wooden pulpit and glass windows. The soldiers sit in one gallery and the settler families in another. At the back sit the poverty-stricken, ex-convict ticket-of-leave families. The minister is the Reverend Marsden and his bellowing voice is much feared.

  Mary is the only Native Servant at the orphanage. The others are convict English girls borrowed from the Female Factory. They are fierce and hardened and tear her hair if they find her alone in the cellar. These girls are from Glasgow or London and other places of mystery across the seas. They sing about their suffering. They have stolen shoes or tricked men into giving them their watches. They have sold their bodies and drunk gin by the gallon.
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br />   Alice May is now her enemy; she hates Mary’s rising and hisses at her, ‘You turn your back now and I will flog you. You’ll be fucking the master. Trollop! Strumpet!’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  1825: DINNER WITH MAGISTRATE MASTERS

  There is consternation at the news of the ship Almorah – chartered to deliver supplies such as rice, flour and tea from Batavia – is seized in Sydney Cove for carrying tea contrary to the East India Company charter. The ship carries news of the Lady Nelson to inform everyone that it has been captured by Malay pirates and all her crew murdered. Despite these setbacks the colony thrives and Magistrate Masters presides over the trials of convicts who have escaped and have been returned. He has obtained considerable riches and property.

  Mary and other servants are taken on a journey to wait on the table at the wealthy estate of Reverend Masters. As they approach in their bumpy horse and cart she stares at the unfolding scene and Masters’ grand colonnaded home. Rows of English oaks lead up to the entrance while black and white farm workers, clad in white shirts and trousers, dig and hoe in the fields. It is like a scene from American slave plantations. Beside the barn is a mob of grey wallabies that scamper off as the cart stops.

  The house is by the clear South Creek – once the source of fresh water for her people. The doors are as thick as a man’s muscled arm and were transported up the river by ship. The locks are huge and have come from London. Masters wears black silk and is fat and arrogant with mutton-chop whiskers. He brags about this grand house of sandstone with its mahogony staircases and thick carpets.

  ‘No thief, murderer or marauding blackfella can gain entrance,’ says Masters. ‘You know I pride myself on discipline, morality and industry here and I beat my convict labourers with my own hand.’