The Soldier's Curse

by Meg Keneally

  It was hardly surprising, then, that Monsarrat was quickly becoming one of Bulmer’s chief obsessions. Unfortunately, the man held some sway in the upper echelons of Parramatta society, so his influence may well have contributed to the only word on Monsarrat’s ticket of leave, which made him despondent when he finally achieved it a few months later: Windsor.

  Not so far from Parramatta. One could travel between the two twice in a day, and still have several hours to spare. But he might as well have been restricted to the moon. Being caught out of his area would be a secondary offence. Monsarrat was unable to see Sophia again without risking his freedom.

  Chapter 20

  Mrs Mulrooney whitened as Monsarrat described the contents of Diamond’s letters.

  ‘No wonder she seemed so frightened that day in that dreadful water contraption. But surely this seals it, Mr Monsarrat. Diamond has taken her away, all for ignoring his advances.’

  ‘We are fortunate,’ said Monsarrat, ‘that Dr Gonville shares a similar view. The word of a convict and, with great respect to you, a housekeeper might not stand against that of a loyal officer, but adding the voice of a surgeon might make our case.’

  ‘We’ve not only to make a case against him,’ said Mrs Mulrooney. ‘We’ve to dismantle the one against me, though no one has yet put it.’

  ‘Anyone with eyes to see can tell that you’re not capable of such a thing, and especially when such an obvious villain can be constructed out of the papers in my pocket.’

  No hiding place had presented itself to Monsarrat the previous night in his hut. He had very few personal effects and was unwilling to deposit the precious documents underneath his bedroll, where rats and damp might see them destroyed. But neither did he want to leave them in the major’s office, as the man would have a funeral to organise and attend and might not be spending much time there, leaving the way free for Diamond to search there – Monsarrat had little doubt, now, that these letters were the subject of his recent efforts in the study.

  In the end, he had decided the safest place for them was in his capacious pocket, where he could not stop himself fingering them occasionally to ensure they hadn’t evaporated.

  ‘You mustn’t worry, really,’ he assured Mrs Mulrooney, as she salved her anxiety by making a pot of tea, despite the fact that the two cups in the kitchen were full, and the second ones of the morning.

  ‘Ah, it’s not only me,’ she said. ‘I fret for Fergal too. This business with Dory must’ve brought his own sorry past back on him.’

  Slattery had never discussed his past with Monsarrat in any great detail. It was an unwritten rule of the place: if anyone was unwilling to share details of their past – and there were many who were reticent – they were not pushed.

  The extent of Monsarrat’s knowledge was that Fergal had grown up in a small village in County Wicklow, the son of a farmer, with innumerable brothers and sisters, before being apprenticed to a plasterer. He found the work unsteady, though, and some of his workmates had fallen to lung complaints of one form or another, so he’d thrown it over and joined the army, where, he said, he could get a decent income, free food, and half a chance of seeing the world outside the village. He’d had no idea at the time, he said wryly, how far outside the village that decision would take him. ‘I have the King himself feeding me now, and giving me a tour of the world besides,’ he had told Monsarrat over one cup of tea or another.

  So Monsarrat had a line-drawing view of Slattery’s background, without any daubs of paint to give it colour or texture. This suited Monsarrat, who had no interest in returning the confidence with tales of London, Exeter and so forth. His friendship with Slattery was based on genuine liking, but was superficial in its way, rooted in their shared predicament of being relegated to this place, their love of banter and tea, and their regard for Mrs Mulrooney. Monsarrat had always appreciated Slattery’s generally happy and playful disposition as an antidote to the grim and dour reality of life in the settlement. If there were dark rabbit holes in the Irishman’s past which he occasionally ventured down in moments of melancholy, Monsarrat would prefer not to know of them.

  ‘I was under the impression,’ he said, ‘that Slattery had left his past behind him too, together with whatever horrors it may hold.’

  ‘And so he has, most of the time at any rate. He’s told me often, Mr Monsarrat, that he tries to exist here and here only. But it’s still there, you know, waiting to jump up and entangle him. And there’s nothing surer to make that happen than having to flog a young man whose story is so similar.’

  ‘I knew they both came from farming families,’ said Monsarrat. ‘But surely that’s where the resemblance ends.’

  ‘Not a bit of it,’ said Mrs Mulrooney. ‘You know the reason he was so fond of Dory?’

  ‘I always thought it was because he had a little spark to him,’ said Monsarrat. ‘He didn’t look at the world out of dead eyes, the way some of them do.’

  ‘His eyes are dead enough now,’ said Mrs Mulrooney, crossing herself. ‘You’re right: that was part of it. But they also both knew what it was like to be dispossessed.’

  ‘Dispossessed? I thought Slattery decided farming wasn’t for him and took an apprenticeship as a plasterer.’

  ‘Ah, no, that decision was made for him. He plays his cards close to his chest, does Fergal, with information as well as with kings and aces. I thought he had told you all of this.’

  ‘No, he hasn’t. You are Mother Confessor to us both, but we don’t compare notes. We don’t have much occasion to interact, apart from under your protective gaze in this kitchen.’

  Monsarrat hadn’t yet mentioned his visit to Slattery’s still. He could feel the weight of unshared information building up behind his eyes, but now was most certainly not the time to further burden his friend.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t have started, had I known that. I’m not one for breaking confidences. But you should probably know, in case I’m not around … I suppose it would be good to know that there was somebody else who understood the young tearaway.’

  So Mrs Mulrooney told Monsarrat how Slattery’s family had been forced off their land and into a Dublin tenement by a classically greedy lord. His gambling debts had prompted him to ratchet up the rent to levels which were unrealistic, and certainly impossible for Slattery’s family. The man had done himself a disservice in the end, losing all his tenants and unable to find others to replace them at such high rates. The ennobled family had slid towards bankruptcy, until some of the daughters were old enough to be sold off to families who wanted aristocratic wives for their sons, families who themselves had wealth but no nobility.

  By that time, however, it had been too late for Slattery’s mother, who had contracted a disease from the constant exposure to human excrement which was a feature of life in the new dwelling, and died. His father had become a ruinous drunk, and followed her when he became incapable of work, or speech for that matter.

  Slattery himself had been at a loss. He was a reasonably bright boy, and had done well enough with learning his letters and numbers. But the only trade his parents had been able to teach him was farming, thinking it was the only one he would ever need. So he went from business to business, offering cheap labour, hoping that if the proprietor liked his work they might consider him for an apprenticeship.

  A local plasterer, whose family had been on the land as well but had to leave due to insufficient yields, took pity on the boy. The man was a Catholic, but did fine enough work to be admitted to the grand houses of Dublin in order to smooth the walls and put up the papers that were in fashion at that time. He had seen Slattery in church, and thinking him devout (erroneously, as Slattery went to church for the express purpose of being seen to do so by prospective employers), decided to teach him the rudiments of the plasterer’s trade.

  Within a short time Slattery was able to plaster a wall as smoothly as any of the man’s apprentices, and showed great attention to detail. Slattery was taken on as his apprentice,
and the man did his best to teach him his craft.

  Slattery had enjoyed the work, and had no problem with his master. But as he saw more of the grand way in which some lived – not his co-religionists, of course, but those who bore more of a resemblance to his family’s former landlord – he became impatient. He would overhear tales of their travels to Europe, and wonder whether his village and Dublin were the only two places he would ever see.

  There was no way, as an apprentice plasterer, that he would ever go beyond Ireland’s shores. And no matter how smoothly he put up the paper, he would never earn the life which these people had been given at birth. He had also heard some speak of young soldiers who had distinguished themselves in the military and thereby been invited into the finest homes, in the hopes, probably, that their valour would rub off on some of those families’ sons.

  The solution seemed clear, then, to Slattery – travel, and the opportunity to return a hero and be invited as a guest through the doors at the front of the house, rather than entering at the rear as a tradesman. So, like many before him, and dimly aware that he would be serving the monarch of a nation responsible for setting up the system which had robbed his family of their livelihood, he joined the army and donned the red and buff coat which put him on the same level on the parade ground as the sons of wealthy Protestants.

  ‘He once told me,’ said Mrs Mulrooney now, ‘that he might have done the same thing as Dory – had considered it on a few occasions – but an opportunity had not presented itself. He would have seen stealing for the sake of his mother as only a fraction of what his family was owed. He could have as easily been here wearing broad arrows as a red coat and that ridiculous hat.’ Mrs Mulrooney did not approve of the dress hats the Buffs wore – tall and cylindrical, with a small brim and a plume sticking out the top. She saw no point to them, and had occasionally threatened to use Slattery’s as a duster.

  Monsarrat listened to Mrs Mulrooney’s tale with astonishment. Slattery had always been light, with enough of the rogue about him to make him interesting, but not enough to make him seem untrustworthy. He had none of the darkness which Monsarrat would have associated with such a history. He said as much to Mrs Mulrooney.

  ‘Oh, but he does,’ she said. ‘He’s uncommonly good at hiding it – I’ll give you that. But on one occasion, he got a hold of some sly grog – a terrible thing for those who aren’t used to it – and he came hammering on the wall of my room in the small hours. Heaven alone knows how everyone else stayed asleep, or perhaps they didn’t, they’re just so used to hearing drunkards late at night, but I bundled him into the kitchen, got a slurred promise from him to stay there until I went and dressed. By the time I got back, his head was on the table and he was drooling into those little grooves in the wood. So naturally I had to hit him in the back of the head to wake him up.’

  Monsarrat glanced down at the table briefly, then asked, ‘What did he want from you?’

  ‘I don’t know, and I doubt he did. Perhaps he had some vague idea of having me grant him absolution for being taken with drink. I asked him what had got him into this state, and he said he’d remembered that morning it was his sister’s birthday. She’s dead now, he said. He said an evil man blighted her, and then moved on to the rest of the family. He was cursing the man – he used one of my favourites, actually, wished the fellow’s cat would eat him and then the devil eat the cat. He was wailing about it so much that I readied a pail of water to dump over him, just to shut him up – I was greatly concerned he would wake the major and Mrs Shelborne. This was a couple of months ago, you see, before the major left and herself got ill.’

  In spite of everything, Monsarrat found himself smiling at the image of a dripping-wet Slattery. ‘And did you carry through on your threats?’

  ‘As it turned out, I didn’t need to. I was well prepared to’ – Monsarrat didn’t doubt this – ‘but all of a sudden he went deadly calm, and he said he’d come by some information which might help make amends, to allow his mother’s soul to lie quietly in her grave, and his sister’s too.’

  ‘What information?’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure. But he said he’d been helping unload a ship and had found himself holding a packet of letters. He said the address on one of the letters – the place that it was from – showed that while the tree was still standing and rotten to its core, some of the branches might at least be pruned.’

  ‘Well, that’s rather cryptic of him.’

  ‘Would you ever stop using words like that, Mr Monsarrat? Be a plain-speaking fellow – people will appreciate it.’

  ‘I do apologise. What I meant was, it’s puzzling.’

  ‘That it is. I pressed him for more information, but he just rambled. He was becoming very difficult to understand then. Kept saying names – I assume the names of his brothers and sisters – and wailing for them to come out and join him here, where there was good farmland to be had. He was really getting most irritating. And then put his head down on the table again, and that was it. Snoring within seconds. I took off his neckerchief and put it under his mouth – if something had to soak up the drool, better that than my table. I went to bed then, and resolved to return to the kitchen a little early so I could send him on his way before he was missed.

  ‘When I came back a few hours later, he was already gone. He showed up for his usual morning cup of tea, looking a little bit bleary, and begged me to say nothing. He said that men misspeak after strong drink, particularly if they’re not used to it. You arrived a short time later, actually. You seemed too absorbed in your own matters to really notice the state of him, although how you could have missed the smell coming off him, I’m not sure.’

  ‘I probably didn’t miss it, as such. I imagine I would have just ignored it – I’m used to Slattery and the rest of the soldiery smelling rather ripe.’

  ‘Ah, you must never miss things like that, Mr Monsarrat. Even if you just tuck them away at the back of your head, and don’t mention them to anyone. Like I’ve tucked away the fact that you asked me about wallpaper a little while ago, and then stalked off without telling me where your line of questioning was going.’

  Monsarrat sighed. ‘I was going to tell you, but you’ve enough on your mind at the moment, and I didn’t want you to worry. It’s probably nothing, one of those random connections that seem like they might be significant and turn out to be meaningless.’

  ‘I don’t believe there is any such thing as a random connection, Mr Monsarrat. There’s a pattern everywhere, you just need to keep your eyes open enough to spot it. Your own eyes have been cast downward too much of late, who knows what’s passed you by. Now, the price of the continuation of your tea supply is to let me know what you were getting at that morning.’

  So Monsarrat told her about the article, about the connection between green pigment and illness. ‘But it was Diamond, and he used the arsenic that he sent the private to requisition from the stores, pretending it was for rats,’ he said. ‘It’s an interesting wrinkle but I don’t think it can really be anything more than that.’

  Mrs Mulrooney sat down heavily. ‘And yet with green wallpaper being put up just in the next room, and some of the plastering crew sickening from it,’ she said, ‘do you not find that just a little too wrinkly altogether?’

  ‘I don’t, as a matter of fact. She can’t have been exposed directly, because she was never in the parlour while the paper was being put up, and while some children have died from licking it, I can’t imagine Mrs Shelborne doing so! And how would Diamond somehow synthesise the pigment into something he could give to her without himself being affected by the stuff – For that matter, how would he give it? You or Dr Gonville were always with her.’

  ‘Some interesting questions you raise, Mr Monsarrat,’ she said. ‘And I’ve not a hope of answering them. But there may be answers. Just have a care you don’t miss them when they show themselves, or mistake them for some more, as you put it, wrinkles.’

  Monsarrat hated leaving M
rs Mulrooney that morning. She had no one to cook for or fuss over, and it was telling on her, for all that she tried to hide it. Her pinafore bore a grease stain – the first which had been allowed to mar it since Monsarrat had known her. And she was rearranging the teacups on the shelves, over and over, as though trying to parade them like soldiers.

  But he would be of no use to her if he was on bread and water for neglecting his duties. So in the absence of any word to the contrary from Lieutenant Carleton, he made for the hospital.

  Gonville was not there, and neither was Edward Donald. Nor, unusually, were any of the beds occupied. He found the doctor in the dispensary, being assisted by Donald in mixing a draught.

  Gonville looked up. ‘Good morning, Monsarrat. I’m taking a precaution here – I’m not a betting man but I’d suggest Major Shelborne may be in need of a little soothing on his return. And I hope that return is sooner rather than later. There is no fitting place for the lady to rest in the hospital, so she remains in her bed, washed by Mrs Mulrooney and her tears. Thank God it’s winter. But if the major is gone for much longer, he will unfortunately have to return to a gravestone.’

  ‘Shall I go back to the major’s office, then, and wait until you have need of me?’

  ‘Before you do, I have a message for you to deliver to Lieutenant Carleton for me,’ said Gonville. He moved away from the bench he was working on towards a small table, on which papers and ink rested. He scratched out a hasty note, not bothering to blot it, leaving it to the fibres of the paper to soak up the excess ink. He folded it and handed it to Monsarrat.