Benevolence

by Julie Janson

  Mrs Masters faints and Smythe picks her up and passes smelling salts under her nose.

  ‘Get Cook. She can loosen her corset. Oh dear, I have gone too far,’ says Masters. ‘I should not drink so much Madeira. I am sorry, dear wife!’ he says as he fans his wife.

  Mary reaches forward and rips the cloth from the table. Roast turkey, wine, cutlery and glasses crash onto the carpet in a terrible scene. She throws plates and cruets at the people, who scatter, terrified. They rush all over the room crashing into each other in confusion.

  Cook runs in and belts Mary across the ear, then the butler tries to grab her. She escapes and races out to the kitchen yard to be alone. She wipes her nose with her hand and hides curled up into a ball on sacks of onions in the corner. But Masters is upon her with a whip. ‘You dare to destroy my dinner party! You black slave!’ he shouts.

  The beating is severe. She feels his whip on her legs, back and across her face. Mary holds her hands up trying to protect herself. She turns her head into the sack. The whip slashes her body again and again. She screams. Masters stops and regards her upturned bloodied face with some satisfaction. He prods her ripped smock and she cringes as he turns his back and with a snort walks away. She grits her teeth and watches him.

  ‘Pig!’ she shouts.

  Masters stops and slowly turns to face her, before coming at her again, lifting the weapon high and lashing her yet again with fury. When he is exhausted, he lays aside the whip and wipes his hands. As he leaves, he sees that Smythe has been standing at the door, alarmed. Mary does not look. She is silently pressing her hands by her sides to make herself disappear, too consumed by emotion to feel her pain.

  The servants pile into the cart to return to Parramatta and Mary can barely crawl into the cart. The road is long and dusty and she hides her face in her apron. She has lost all hope of finding her family. She fears that they are all perished. Her wounds are bleeding and the pain is unbearable.

  Weeks pass and Mary’s physical wounds slowly heal thanks to the soothing balm Reverend Smythe prepares for her wounds. She walks in the garden and stares into the grevillea bushes full of chirping wrens. She feels as tiny as a honeyeater, as if she could fade away and dissolve.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  1825: SEDUCTION

  Lieutenant General Ralph Darling is received in the colony with his separate commissions for New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land. The conquest of lands by violence and bribery is extended through a western boundary to include Fort Dundas on Melville Island in the tropics. The southern boundary extends to Wilson’s Promontory.

  Back at Reverend Henry Smythe’s Orphan School rooms, he has installed modest amber glass windows. Tall oak trees and a garden of roses adorn the porch and a field of yellow maize grows abundantly at the back of the buildings. He is also experimenting with wheat, barley and root vegetables. These are green pastures with earth as warm as blood. His days are long and peaceful.

  Mary no longer works with the orphans. Now her duties are entirely with the Reverend. During the day Smythe writes his sermons and Mary washes and starches his clothes. At night he writes his journal by a flickering candle while Mary brings him cocoa and picks up his clothes from the floor. She sees that he cannot keep his eyes from her body; he is going mad with love and lust.

  She often feels his attention upon her. She knows that he observes her as she bends to gather the white shirts. Lately she admits to her own desire for him. This night is no different from others except that he has been watching with an open hunger. His eyes are glazed over. She crouches on the floor before him as if looking at a stain, so that he might see her shapely backside.

  One morning, Mary sees Henry’s shadow against the window of his office as he arranges some botanical specimens. The house is empty. The moment has come. She enters the room and is excited at the sight of his elegant thin hands. She wants him. She hears her own breath as it pounds and catches.

  She moves swiftly to stand behind him. He faces the cross with Jesus pinned to it and murmurs a prayer, but she whispers in his ear and kisses his neck. Surprised, he turns around to face her. Silence except for their breathing. His shirt is lifting and as he pushes it back into place, his hand makes contact with her bare arm. She takes his hand and places it under her shift and moves her nipple against his fingers. She presses her body against the wall and hooks her leg around his thigh. He pushes her dress up and over her arms and her golden skin is revealed in the sunlight. She thinks he has never seen a naked woman before.

  She strokes his curls and helps him take off the clerical clothes and unties his undergarments. He steps out of them and she pushes him to the floor. She momentarily wonders if he has ever done this before and straddles him and takes him inside her with urgency. She forgets her grief and sadness and her body arches with pleasure. He has tears on his cheeks. He quickly dresses Mary, then himself and dabs his brow with his handkerchief.

  The next day, Mary dusts the room with an emu-feather duster. It is full of the aroma of pot pourri, ink and musty Bibles. Smythe’s long gown hangs behind the door smelling of camphor; she inhales. Mary smooths the cloth as though nothing has happened.

  She remembers Boothuri and that love is a thing that must be cherished, like living in the sunlight and playing along the river with joy. She is now Henry’s lover at the Orphan School, beneath the blackbutt desk, on the Persian rug, beneath the oil painting brought from England of the crucified Jesus. A thorny coronet. It cost twenty pounds. The other servant girls seem to know and they do not blame him. Mary hears their laughter but ignores them.

  Henry Smythe is aware of the consequences – of being sent back to London in disgrace, or of being reprimanded by Masters. He knows of God’s wrath and the rotting corpse of guilt. But Mary is his long night in the desert, his temptation. He holds her hand, light as a sparrow, and brushes his lips against it.

  ‘When I look at you, the air is laden with heaviness and I fear an apoplectic convulsion coming upon me. If I’m agitated, oh Lord,’ says Smythe. ‘This thunder in my heart is deafening, my eyes are the lightning, and they glitter with intense longing for your body!’

  ‘Don’t be afraid, you’re not bad,’ says Mary.

  ‘They will judge me. I must tiptoe in this school. Sometimes, I cannot speak because lies might fly from my mouth, like flies,’ says Smythe.

  …

  Mary has taken refuge in this lover’s embrace; she hopes to find protection and security with this weak man. After suffering so much, she needs this love and intimacy. Smythe visits her bed every night. He is not restrained in their turbulant love making but in public he is silent and brooding – torn by guilt and fearful of discovery. She will wait to see the outcome.

  But she becomes like him. She learns to stay inside the house like him, as this is what the English prefer. Her humour is now restrained and she only laughs aloud when she is with other servants. Occasionally it feels like she is dying in a trap.

  Henry gives her a big English dictionary and an encyclopedia full of facts. He tells her to learn new words. ‘I walked in the beautiful Norfolk Cathedral, much bigger than our St Jude’s in Windsor,’ says Smythe, ‘There are Gothic high arches of stone. It is a holy place with soft singing and a glow from stained glass windows. I walked in the irridescent blue and red light. Come and imagine this joy. Let’s close our eyes and I will take your hand and lead you there.’

  One night, Mary and Henry venture outside to sit in the garden under stars. He holds her hand and places an object in it. ‘I have a new telescope so I can see Mars. Do you know of this planet? A red light is actually reflected from the sun; can you believe that?’ he says as he laughs and hugs her.

  ‘I have brought you something that tastes better than honey – lilly pilly jelly,’ says Mary. ‘It’s bright pink and sticky; taste it.’ She holds a finger dripping with the sweet syrup, and he sucks it.

  ‘Delicious.’

  ‘I cooked it on a stove,’ says Mary. ‘You can
try geebung fruit when it’s in season. We call it “snotty gobble”. That planet you talk about is not Mars but a boy who steals food from his mother and he goes to stars. The great serpent sweeps cross night sky; you can see him in a thousand stars.’

  ‘I love you, my dearest, but you must accept the Christian world view as Satan is a beast who lurks within our hearts. I fear he is awake and following you,’ says Henry.

  ‘No, only little hairy men, who might eat children. Why should I believe your story? You are scared of ghosts, like me, eh?’ she asks.

  ‘I have infinite patience with you, because you are like a child,’ says Henry. ‘I wish to cleanse your heathen ways and expose your native intelligence to European knowledge. The music, you have already embraced,’ he says.

  ‘Blackfellas come from the earth, out of a waterhole when a great mother put her digging stick in this earth,’ says Mary. ‘All creatures come from that place. She is born from the sea. Like that story about Noah’s Ark.’

  ‘Sing for me. In your language?’ he asks.

  He is looking at her with kindness and a willingness to understand. So she stretches her dress over her knees like a stretched drum, just as her aunts had done with possum skin claoks and beats time with her hands and sings.

  ‘Werowi tuabilli bulga, dungarra bayley,

  Girls from mountain tribe, dancing swinging their hips,

  Karabi yan kaundi, dun gittan,

  Black cockatoos fly above, yellow tail feathers.

  Gundungurra werowi, muruku mulamundra.

  Mountain girls, dance in rain, droplets run down legs.

  Mula muruku

  Kuthaling kaianyung.

  Darkinjung, Darug kaianyung.

  Nguttatha werowi.’

  She looks up and his face is transformed. She doesn’t know what she has done.

  Mary accompanies Henry into bushland as he looks for exotic insects and flannel flowers. He has jars full of plants and insects in his study and a board with hundreds of butterflies all pinned and dead. They sit beside a chart of drawings of sea horses and fish.

  They walk along the creek bed and he stops to catch a big green beetle in a small wooden box. Over their heads wattle birds eat nectar from bottlebrush bushes and tiny honeyeaters run up the trees. He catches a cicada and is about to pin it.

  ‘No, don’t kill this little one. This is Yarramundi, like our chief, his totem,’ says Mary, as she takes his hand.

  ‘It will be swift. Death for an insect has no meaning. It cannot feel like us.’

  ‘You’re wrong, we all the same: insect, people, all like you. There are lots of cicadas called jirrabidirrin, Floury Monday, Greengrocer, Black Prince and the Pisswhacker. You must only kill when you want to eat animals.’ Mary shakes her head and holds tight on his hand. The cicada flies away thrumming.

  ‘In God’s world, we human beings rule over all the animal domain,’ says Smythe. ‘I have heard that the Hindus believe in many gods, and some are indeed animals, but we are Christians. You will come to the Lord in good time, although, being out here with you in this wild, terrifying new world, I sometimes experience a doubt. I wonder why on earth we are here at all. You see, I have been blinded by forbidden fruit, my Eve. I have commited a ghastly sin.’ Henry sits down and clutches his head.

  ‘Loving is not bad. It makes us happy. It’s not bad to feel happy,’ says Mary.

  ‘I don’t think I can ever feel truly happy, not after my journey out here on a convict ship. I was minister on board and the men were chained in the hold with seawater around their legs,’ says Smythe. ‘It was a filthy stench and they were in starving misery. And I, absurd as it was, was forced to lead the wretches in prayers and hymns. I held my Bible aloft, singing aloud like a lunatic in front of the damned.’ Mary pats his hand.

  In the afternoon, Henry Smythe looks across the table in the dining room where afternoon tea is being served. All butter cake and jam, the English women titter and sip tea, their poverty hidden in ten-year-old dresses and homemade bonnets of cabbage palm leaf. Mary is rendered invisible. She is asked to fetch cups and plates from the kitchen. She catches his eyes and senses the look of love. She inclines her head and purses her lips upwards.

  Smythe hurries from the room and kisses Mary in the kitchen then, with a dreamy expression, he returns to the table. He spoons cream onto a fairy cake, flushed and sweating slightly as he discusses Genesis with an English woman.

  Mary thinks she might be carrying the reverend’s child and the congregation might run him out of the town.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  1826: PREGNANT, BINDIMARI

  King George IV is the English monarch who reigns over them and the Governor of New South Wales is Lieutenant General Ralph Darling. He has the power of life and death over all the people of New South Wales. He has overseen the installation of the colony’s first street lamp in Macquarie place Sydney, burning pure whale oil.

  …

  Mary walks with Henry in a forest near the huge old spirit trees of Windsor. Three men could join hands around one trunk and still not meet. They walk in deep-ferned gullies, among weeping staghorn ferns, mist, snakes, strangler fig trees and a cacophony of birds. A giant emu with huge yellow claws is eating purple fruit and ignores them. Henry takes a sample from a shrub.

  ‘Look, some lemon tea-tree, leptospermum.’

  ‘That’s called budjor, it’s good for wounds,’says Mary.

  ‘Let me write that down.’

  ‘Henry, you know I’m bindimari,’ says Mary.

  ‘Is that a type of berry? Can you make a jelly with it?’ says Henry Smythe.

  ‘Bindimari, I’m pregnant. Baby,’ she whispers and strokes her belly.

  ‘Oh my, no!’

  ‘That Birrahgnooloo, she is an emu spirit in the sky who brings babies,’ says Mary.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ says Smythe.

  He freezes and cannot move but he turns and there she is, with the bump in her body clear as the alarm in Henry’s face. She knows he will not come to her again.

  He packs up his specimens and they travel home in silence. Mary caresses the growing baby but her mouth is dry and her lips cling to her teeth. She falters on the path but he does not try to help or comfort her. She is now his enemy. Poisonous thoughts rise up like bile and Mary vomits into the bushes.

  Henry avoids her now. He shuffles off into corridors and locks his bedroom against her. This baby will be born with no father named on its baptism certificate.

  Mary’s shift grows tight and the baby quivers incessantly. It will be a gold-skinned child and she will name her Eleanor.

  …

  The Reverend is not home the night his daughter is born. He has fled at the sound of the labour pains and the cook helps Mary by making a clean place for her to lie down. She births the baby on the kitchen table and it is bathed in a basin. Cook moves Mary to a cupboard bedroom and the baby is wrapped in a flour bag and placed in a washing basket. Later, Cook feeds Mary pudding and syrup. When Mary is alone with her baby, she is struck by the feeling that this is the first human who will not desert her.

  In the early morning, Henry knocks on the door of Mary’s room. He enters and gazes at his daughter.

  ‘Please, may I hold her?’ he asks.

  Mary places the baby in his arms and Henry Smythe cries and hums at the child, rocking her back and forth. Mary touches his arm and he looks lovingly at her while the baby struggles, little legs kicking at him. The swaddling cloth falls to the ground and the golden limbs stretch up with tiny fists that push at his chest.

  ‘I had no idea they could be so strong. Look at her taking my finger. This child will be a fighter. She is in a hurry to grow up. Look at her chin, dimpled like mine,’ he says.

  ‘She is healthy and always hungry. Her name is Eleanor. You will love her?’ asks Mary.

  ‘I will protect you both, I promise,’ he says.

  Henry spins the child around in his arms and laughs with joy and Mary has a moment
of pleasure. The warmth swims up her body and she is humming in hope of a life of being loved. He smiles into her eyes and tilts her chin towards him. All hurt is gone.

  Mary recovers quickly from the birth and goes back to work in the laundry with her baby tied to her back. Eleanor does not cry. She is a smiling, beautiful baby.

  As the months pass, Henry becomes more and more uncomfortable when others are nearby. He does not want them to notice Mary, and turns his back as he pretends that she has nothing to do with him. He watches Eleanor playing beside Mary while she scrubs the floors. He watches the child growing from a painful distance.

  Mary visits Mercy at the Masters estate. Mercy declares the baby is a gift, saying she will bring Mary good fortune. Mercy is her aunty.

  Not long after her visit, there is surprising news from visiting servants: Mercy has disappeared from Masters’ estate. She was seen packing things into a bag and, the next day, she had gone and only a crumpled pile of clothes was left on her pallet – Mercy had stolen a white lace gown. She vanished in the night like a spirit.

  …

  Henry calls Mary into his room. He sits her against the fire so she can warm herself and takes Eleanor and hugs her tight. He sighs and smiles and Mary thinks that their former intimacy may begin again.

  ‘It is time, would you like to join your people in one of the camps? You must miss your tribesmen? I can pay you some money to assist with your relocation,’ says Henry.

  ‘No, we like it here. We’re happy,’ says Mary.

  ‘Please, I will raise the child,’ says Smythe. ‘As you must see, your presence is an embarrassment for me, even if no-one knows I am Eleanor’s father. You see, I care for you both and love you deeply, but I can’t be seen to condone immorality.’

  ‘She’s a happy baby and no trouble. She’s not going to embarrass you. And, anyway, everyone here knows you’re her father,’ she says.