The Soldier's Curse

by Meg Keneally

  The settlement’s fascination with Mrs Shelborne was returned, and at her husband’s indulgence she was allowed to implement certain measures which she felt would improve the lives of those who lived near her, be they free or felon. She behaved like a normal landlady of some well-run village.

  She was equally solicitous to the wives of officers and to the free wives of convicts who had been shipped here to share their spouses’ period of sentence and lived with their husbands in huts. It was she whose will prevailed on her husband to allow extra rations for those expecting babies, and she noted the birthdays of all the settlement’s children, who attended lessons at the small schoolhouse, given by a man called Wilkins. Occasionally, she would go to the schoolhouse herself and tell the children stories of dragons and princesses, creatures as far removed from their own experience as the kangaroos and platypus had been from that of their parents.

  Her first experiment came to Monsarrat’s attention during one of his early morning visits to Mrs Mulrooney.

  The major had engaged Mrs Mulrooney in Sydney, before departing for Port Macquarie. She had been housekeeper to a family in Camden, who had decided that their antipodean adventure was all very well but it was time to return to the real world on the other side of a long voyage. The major had met the family’s father at a dinner at Sydney’s Government House (a far grander building than its Port Macquarie counterpart), and on his urging had interviewed the Irishwoman. He had been impressed by her former employer’s praise for her efficiency, and even more so by her pleasant but forthright manner.

  The housekeeper was quite taken with her new mistress. She had spent the past eighteen months looking after Government House and its sole, male resident, and longed for a little more colour and chaos in the household. This, she felt, was provided amply by Mrs Shelborne.

  ‘She asks after my health every morning when I bring in the breakfast,’ Mrs Mulrooney had told Monsarrat in wonder. ‘And what’s more, she seems interested in the answer.’

  It was Mrs Mulrooney’s health, in fact, which was the focus of Mrs Shelborne’s first venture.

  ‘She asked me to sit, if you can believe it, at the very table where she takes her breakfast. Well, never mind sitting, I nearly fell over, but of course I did as I was bade.’

  Monsarrat watched Mrs Mulrooney as she spoke. Her hands, usually so efficient and assured, seemed unable to settle to anything that morning, starting a task and leaving it aside before it was finished.

  ‘What can she have wanted?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, she said she wanted my help. In an experiment, to do with the healing powers of the ocean. She’s a dote – you know I think very well of her, but at that minute I feared she might have become a little unhinged. And I must confess, I was frightened of anything involving sea water. You know the ocean is only good for drowning in, I’ve often said it.’

  ‘So you have. But I’m sure Mrs Shelborne is far more trustworthy, and she certainly wouldn’t put you in harm’s way. What is she proposing?’

  ‘Has Gonville spoken to you about his … what’s the word? Anyway, he said it meant water medicine.’

  Gonville, or more fully Doctor Richard Gonville, laboured under the title of surgeon. He was responsible for keeping the settlement’s residents alive, as far as possible. He had traded a chance at the oak panelling of Harley Street, to hear him tell it, for an office behind a partition at the end of a long, narrow room which housed the beds of the sick and infirm. He also had a dispensary, and reasonable lodgings near what would be the church. Denied many of the trimmings of a London doctor’s life, he had decided to take a creative and experimental approach to maintaining the health of his charges. And he had found a willing ear in Honora.

  Monsarrat had been in the major’s outer office when Gonville had been summoned, and had heard that conversation as he heard all others, the door to the inner office having been inexpertly fitted to the frame.

  ‘Yes, she’s mentioned it,’ said the major. ‘What d’you say it’s called?’

  ‘Hydrotherapy or hydropathy, sir,’ said the surgeon. ‘It’s not fully understood, even by me, but it entails improving one’s health through immersion in sea water. My own hypothesis is that sea water contains beneficial minerals which are absorbed through the skin. I also believe the exposure to cold – just briefly, mind – improves the circulation. Makes it work harder, you see, renders it more vigorous.’

  ‘Yes. Well, she is certainly enthusiastic about it. Just for a brief period, as you say, I suppose that can’t do harm. There’s the issue, though, of decorum. Of modesty. Bathing in the sea, where anyone could walk past.’

  ‘I was intending to ask you for some assistance on that point, actually.’

  Monsarrat heard the shuffling of papers, and assumed that Gonville was laying before the major the plans which had entered the inner office under his arm.

  ‘Interesting,’ he heard the major say. ‘But how will you place it in the ocean?’

  ‘It could be backed in by draught horse, and moved as the tides dictate. Of course it is only for use on the calmer days, but better than nothing.’

  ‘And you want a work crew to build it? Very well. Cowley was a carpenter. You can have him and two others for a week.’

  Monsarrat, whose job was to make this promise an administrative reality, found that the project in question was a square wooden framework, covered in canvas and open at the bottom, with wheels which would enable it to be manoeuvred into the sea. And now, it seemed, the structure was complete.

  ‘She wants me to get in the box and go in the ocean with her,’ said Mrs Mulrooney, as though trying to convince herself that this was indeed what was being requested.

  ‘I’m sure it would be more enjoyable in there with company,’ said Monsarrat.

  Each Sunday, before muster and prayers in a building which also served as the schoolhouse for officers’ children, Monsarrat was required with the rest of the male convict population of the settlement to take sea baths, and the colonial authorities cared not a whit for his modesty as he did so. He had come to enjoy the practice on warmer days, and had also learned to be vigilant about where he put his feet. Carpet sharks, referred to near Sydney as wobbegongs, didn’t appreciate being stepped on, and weren’t shy about showing their displeasure.

  He decided not to mention the sharks to Mrs Mulrooney, reasoning that the wheels of the contraption would scare them off should any be lurking near the shore. ‘Dr Gonville,’ he said instead, ‘seems to believe immersion in salt water is a powerful tonic.’

  ‘I don’t see him doing it,’ Mrs Mulrooney muttered.

  In fact, Dr Gonville regularly went into the ocean, bare-chested and in breeches, even in the cooler months. Mrs Mulrooney either didn’t know or chose not to.

  ‘So, will you accompany Mrs Shelborne?’

  ‘Of course. I can’t refuse. I’m to report to her any changes in my health in the days after, so she can see how well the cursed box works.’

  ‘I’m sure it won’t be as bad as you fear,’ said Monsarrat.

  ‘It will probably be worse. You know how to reach my son, should you need to inform him of my drowning.’

  Mrs Mulrooney quite enjoyed the experience in the end, bobbing up and down in a linen shift with a woman for whom she had a great deal of affection. She exhorted the other servants to try it, and reported on her health in detail to Mrs Shelborne.

  The settlement’s few female convicts had come as rather a surprise to one of the major’s predecessors, who had expected to be ruling over a collection of male felons. The women, unlike their male counterparts, did not partake in the regular Sunday bathing ritual for the sake of modesty. Mrs Shelborne had intended to ask her husband to build more boxes, so the female convicts might enjoy the experience without worsening their already degraded condition by bathing in plain sight.

  Mrs Shelborne and the doctor had also collaborated on another project.

  A Female Factory had been constructed earlier
that year at Port Macquarie, intended as a place of both confinement and industry for the convict women. The major had informed the Colonial Secretary that he was now able to accommodate around fifty women, and asked for wool and carding supplies so that they might make themselves useful. The supplies had not been forthcoming, and neither had the women in any great number. So the inmates had been set to picking oakum – extracting fibres from hemp rope – and making nails for the settlement’s building projects from nail rod sent from England.

  But the settlement’s lack of women meant that there was demand for females in positions of domestic service – officers’ wives and the like would prefer to have somebody to help them with the daily necessities. So at Honora’s urging, the major had allowed some of the better-behaved women to take up posts in the homes of their free sisters.

  Those that remained, however, had to contend with the twin enemies of incarceration and boredom. They proved inept at extracting the oakum from the rope, and there were only so many nails a woman could make.

  Honora begged her husband’s permission to visit the women in the factory, and he allowed it as he allowed most things she asked, realising that she would get her way eventually so time might as well be saved through immediate acquiescence.

  Honora told the major after the visit that she was distressed to see these women sitting and doing nothing, without enough outdoor time or exercise, wasting away. One woman, she said, was looking deathly ill, and Gonville, who had visited with her, confirmed to the major that the confinement was doing the women no favours.

  Honora had timed her plea well – of those convicts who had managed to escape into the bush, a few had returned, reincarnated as bushrangers who had harried the settlement’s outposts, creeping in to steal food late at night, whereupon they had been recaptured. The Female Factory, she argued to her husband, might be better put to use as a place of incarceration for these men, who far outnumbered the handful of women who currently lived there at large expense.

  Wedged between Honora’s pleadings on behalf of her bonded counterparts, and Dr Gonville’s professional view as to the medical repercussions of such confinement, the major agreed to close the factory, the remaining women to be found situations of employment with families of good character.

  Shortly afterwards, Monsarrat himself was called on to help Mrs Shelborne with another experiment.

  She came into the kitchen early one morning, dressed for hunting. Mrs Mulrooney, who had been preparing breakfast, jumped back from the stove. Monsarrat, on his accustomed morning visit, stood and bowed and moved into a corner.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Mulrooney,’ Mrs Shelborne said, smiling at the housekeeper. ‘I thought I would take breakfast in here this morning, as it’s on my way.’

  Mrs Mulrooney began efficiently assembling a table setting to go with the breakfast, inspecting each item more closely than usual in case it had decided to become blunt, dull or cracked overnight.

  Mrs Shelborne sat in the chair Monsarrat had just vacated. ‘Mr Monsarrat,’ she said. ‘Please, sit down.’

  Monsarrat was paralysed, both by the sound of the ‘Mr’ attached to his name, usually used by itself when uttered by the upper echelons, and by the offer to sit.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘I have an enterprise in which I require your assistance, and I would rather not strain my neck looking up while we discuss it.’

  The kindness wasn’t lost on Monsarrat, who recovered some of his composure. He took the seat opposite her, remaining stiffly straight. ‘I will certainly assist you in whatever way I can, madam,’ he said.

  ‘I am pleased you are willing. Tell me, Mr Monsarrat, what do you think of the prospects for rehabilitation for the convicts under our care?’

  ‘I imagine it depends on the character of the individual,’ he said.

  Mrs Shelborne clapped her hands. ‘Exactly so! I knew you would understand. And how, do you think, we can improve that character?’

  Monsarrat, who had long abandoned the task of improving his own character, because it brought so little reward, had no concern for anyone else’s, and no answer for her. Nor was one needed, it turned out. Mrs Shelborne had decided on her beneficial project and presumed everyone else would see its merits.

  ‘I propose,’ continued Mrs Shelborne, ‘that character may be improved through education. The more one knows of the world, and one’s place within it, the more one appreciates the necessity to uphold order. And education can raise a person’s eyes, don’t you think? Let them know there is more than crime and degradation. Do you agree?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Monsarrat, who had never thought about it in those terms. He had met many men with educations who lacked the wit to dress themselves.

  ‘I’m so glad. So, I wish to give a series of lectures, for the convicts and anyone else who cares to come. We will start with the classics. The Greeks and Romans have given us so much, after all, including the very system of order these wretches have run foul of. I have a notion that some of our audience may need to be eased into learning, so I thought mythology might be a good place to start. All the lessons of a homily, and interesting besides. It will expose them to a system of morality without the need for preaching, which they wouldn’t listen to.’

  ‘It sounds a noble enterprise,’ said Monsarrat.

  Mrs Shelborne laughed. ‘Nobility doesn’t enter into it. You mustn’t think me some sort of paragon. No, I have a personal interest. My children, when God blesses me with them, will grow up amongst free people who may be the children of these very convicts, or others like them. I wish for them a society where survival or the accumulation of wealth are not the only concerns, where people take the time to think deeply and well. It strikes me that I might play a part in creating such a society, if only in a modest way. And I would like you to help me do it.’

  ‘I am at your disposal, Mrs Shelborne, assuming of course that the major can spare me.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve spoken to him and he is very much in favour. He says you may dedicate one hour a day to the project. He tells me you can accomplish more in one hour than others do in a day. Apparently you are the best clerk he has had, and he dreads your freedom as much as you no doubt yearn for it.’

  ‘How kind,’ said Monsarrat. ‘And how would you like me to assist you, in this one hour a day?’

  ‘You, Mr Monsarrat, are going to write the lectures. Now, do you think we should start with Sisyphus, or no? They may listen more keenly as they probably feel they have their own endless burdens, or it might make them melancholy. What do you think?’

  Monsarrat had not, of course, seen Honora Shelborne since she took to her bed. He found it difficult to reconcile the frail, ill and sad woman Mrs Mulrooney described, with the girl who had seemingly entranced the settlement with her inaugural lecture.

  All convicts were compelled to attend, with the Buffs keeping an eye on proceedings, at the major’s order rather than Honora’s, since he foresaw the risk that she might be ridiculed by the lags.

  She and Monsarrat had decided, in the end, to start with Hercules, in the hope that his labours and their successful conclusion might provide a model of perseverance and industry to the audience.

  The lecture, as Monsarrat had written it, was somewhat dry, as befitting a clerk enumerating a collection of facts. Indeed, he knew there were punishments attached to being flamboyant.

  In Honora’s deft hands, it was transformed into a story with the immediacy of events which had happened yesterday, as she leaned in and related tales of Nemean lions and Erymanthian boars as though she were gossiping over a fence. She did, it must be said, avoid mention of Hercules’ murder of Augeas, after the demigod had cleaned the king’s infamously filthy stables and then been bilked on the promise of one-tenth of the livestock. Promoting murder as a solution to a contractual squabble was not one of her objectives.

  When she summoned him to discuss their second lecture (on the cautionary tales embodied by Icarus and Prometheus), he told her the convi
ct who cleaned the stables was now referred to as Hercules, due to the stables’ frequently Augean nature. He was rewarded with an unrestrained and abandoned laugh of the kind he had only ever heard in alehouses, and only from men.

  But she had not given that lecture, being overtaken by her illness soon after. Mrs Mulrooney had brought her tea on the broad verandah of Government House one sunny winter afternoon, so she could read and look out through the passionfruit vines over the sparkling water.

  On occasions such as this, she enjoyed having Mrs Mulrooney sit with her for company. Sometimes they chatted, and sometimes Honora seemed to prefer to read her book, so Mrs Mulrooney brought some sewing so she could sit with her employer and not feel like a ‘pimple on a pumpkin’, as she put it to Monsarrat.

  Honora tended to keep several books by her on the small round table on the verandah. Some were books designed for educated ladies, fit for her station. But she had a secret passion for rollicking adventures, which she could hide amongst the more sedate volumes from Shakespeare, Goldsmith (Fielding was considered a little too racy for the genteel) and Wordsworth. On the day her illness made its presence felt, she was engrossed in the adventures of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe.

  After a time, when most of the tea she had been absently sipping at was gone, she looked up towards the river. ‘Do you know, Mrs Mulrooney, when I was little I would squint at the water and see thousands and thousands of diamonds. I wanted to get a fishing net and scoop them all up.’

  Mrs Mulrooney looked up from her stitching and smiled at Honora, who returned the smile. Then her expression changed – to confusion, then alarm. She stood, dashed into the house and to her bedroom. Mrs Mulrooney ran after her, and found her hunched over her chamber pot, vomiting violently and slick with sweat.

  She looked up apologetically and gave a weak smile. ‘I might rest now,’ she said.