A Far Distant Land: A saga of British survival in an unforgiving new world (The Australian Historical Saga Series Book 1)

by David Field

  Shortly thereafter, he had granted audience to two ladies, one of whom, bearing a letter of introduction from Sir Joseph Banks, had successfully requested a fifty-year lease of the old Commissary Store. He had believed himself to be negotiating with a Mrs. Margery Moncrieff of Edinburgh, newly arrived to promote further trade links between ‘the old country’ and Sydney and was not to know that with the liberal application of sufficient quantities of make-up and suitable city gowns borrowed from Elizabeth Macarthur, Martha Bradbury could pass for twenty years older than she really was, while ‘Rachel Julian’, her ‘cousin’ and ‘colonial contact’, was on hand to remind the governor that ‘Mrs. Moncrieff’ was highly connected in the London government circles in which Governor King’s ongoing fitness to manage the colony was currently being debated.

  ‘It was a shame to take the money,’ Martha had told the assembled company in the newly-completed Haberfield house in which she had given birth to Mark Bradbury only weeks before adopting her Scottish persona and heading off to meet with the governor. Any possibility of the Bradbury brood outnumbering their Johnston neighbours had been convincingly forestalled by the birth of Maria, Rachel’s fifth daughter, a month after the pivotal meeting with the governor. A fourth daughter, Isabella, had just graduated from the nursery aged two, to join her three-year-old sister Blanche and the second oldest daughter, five-year-old Julia, in their romps up and down the lawns at Annandale, under the watchful gaze of George’s marine detachment at the bottom of the garden and the ageing Sarah Biddle from her chair on the veranda. Sarah was now assisted by a second children’s nurse, Lucy Bracegirdle, the daughter of emancipated convict Amos Bracegirdle and the object of marital ambitions on the part of family coachman Edward Tolhurst.

  The oldest Johnston son, George Junior, now a tall sixteen year old, regularly rode around the cow pastures with his father, followed dutifully by his fourteen-year-old brother Robert, while seven-year-old David was already demonstrating a preference for books. The oldest child of the family, eighteen-year-old Roseanna, was tall and elegant, with a poise and dignity that belied the fact that she had been born in Newgate Gaol and suckled at her mother’s breast in the foetid darkness below decks on the Lady Penrhyn. Her origins would no doubt one day come as a very pleasant surprise to her latest suitor, Isaac Nichols, himself an emancipated convict who in his darker moments felt himself beneath the ladylike object of his affections.

  Daniel’s rapid promotion to a partnership in the Institute that was a cheekily transparent ‘cover’ for the livestock- and fleece-trading activities of George and Macarthur was thanks to the generosity of his older brother Joseph. In one of his infrequent letters several Christmases ago, Joseph had advised Daniel that he had given up full-time legal practice and was now installed as a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, teaching undergraduates. Daniel had contacted him with a request for books and learned papers on those areas of English law in which he urgently required tuition and he was now something of a colonial expert on matters as varied as ‘charterparties’, ‘salvage’ and the curiously-named ‘bonds of bottomry’ that he hoped never to have to draft. On the commercial side, he knew the difference between bills of lading quoted ‘free on board’ and those subject to ‘carriage, insurance and freight’ and had ensured that sufficient goods came into Sydney in otherwise empty holds to justify the open myth that the Institute was importing valuable items of cultural and commercial significance, when in fact its primary income came from the export of fleece, live lambs and dead cattle.

  The acquisition of the Parramatta had been a natural development, once Daniel had convinced George and John that they could increase their profits by a percentage in double figures by employing their own captain and crew on a return voyage basis and carrying their own produce in their own hold, rather than relying on the availability and goodwill of a potentially untrustworthy shipowner and his scrofulous crew. It had been this particular piece of inspired forward-thinking that had finally secured Daniel his partnership and his first annual bonus had ensured that the house at Haberfield, completed in time for Christmas 1805, wanted for nothing in the way of soft furnishings, wall hangings and other signs of middle-class affluence.

  ‘Mrs. Bradbury to see you, sir,’ his floor manager, James Broadbent, told Daniel, as he stepped deferentially to one side in order to admit Martha, who was carrying a paper bag from which a delicious-smelling steam was still rising.

  ‘Two mutton pies for your dinner, from the bakery next door,’ Martha announced as she handed the bag over with a loving smile. ‘I know you’re busy on delivery days and I didn’t want you to have any excuse to nip down the road to that dreadful Black Swan. We’re having pork for supper, so you won’t be eating the same thing twice in one day.’

  Daniel thanked her and invited her to rest on the chair in front of his desk. As she busied herself in examining her shopping list and ticking off, with the aid of a pen from Daniel’s desk, the items she had already acquired, he reminded himself how lucky he was to have found such happiness and success, not only in his material life but also in his choice of a wife. She would shortly pass the milestone of her fortieth year, several months behind Daniel, but she was still strikingly handsome. Her hair was no longer a torrent of flowing black locks, but had been trimmed neatly into the nape of her neck to suit the climate and it contained streaks of the purest white here and there. But that only made her look more ladylike and her green eyes had not clouded over with age, but could still pierce a man with their clarity and haughty challenge.

  Her figure had grown more matronly with childbirth, but somehow the ample bosom went so perfectly with the broadening hips that it was as if they had been coach-built to the last symmetrical inch. But as ever, it was her personality and zest for life that made her impossible to ignore and demanded the attention of everyone she addressed, male or female. One could not look upon Martha, or listen, entranced, to her ringing, melodic voice without remembering her for a long while thereafter. He was the luckiest man alive, he reminded himself and their children were blessed with the most naturally gifted mother in New South Wales.

  ‘Why are you staring at me like that?’ she asked him, tolerant amusement written across her face.

  He smiled back. ‘Just reminding myself of how beautiful you are.’

  ‘Do you think I look my age?’ she asked with a slight frown, ‘or could I look to be in my early twenties if I applied enough cosmetic?’

  ‘To me you’ll always look like that girl I pulled off the deck of the Lady Penrhyn,’ he replied gallantly. ‘The young woman who ripped all my clothes off in the back room of the cottage next to George and Rachel’s.’

  She blushed. ‘I was rather eager that night, wasn’t I?’

  ‘You still are, some nights,’ he reminded her. ‘I just hope that three children will prove to be our full complement.’

  ‘Which brings me back to the question you haven’t answered yet,’ she reminded him. ‘Could I pass for a girl of twenty-something?’

  ‘Probably, given your skill with make-up and your ability to be anyone you choose,’ Daniel conceded, ‘but why do you need to know?’

  ‘Just curious,’ she replied as she dropped her gaze to the bundles at her feet. ‘Anyway, this won’t get the supplies in. I still have to go back up the road to the gown shop. I took the carriage, by the way, and it’s waiting for me outside. I take it that you came in on horseback, since I saw Ajax tied up outside — is that OK?’

  ‘Of course, my dear. The latest gowns went up the road earlier today, so if you lose no more time, you’ll get the best pick.’

  ‘Thank you, sweetheart. Hopefully Elizabeth won’t be in town until tomorrow or later, so I can make her frightfully jealous with the latest London fashion on my back when we go for supper tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ Daniel replied with a groan. ‘This is the first time you’ve mentioned it and you know that I need at least a week’s notice in order to prepare my immortal soul for another e
ncounter with “Lady” Macarthur and all her vanities.’

  ‘She didn’t tell me until yesterday, when I went over to… Yes, well anyway, it’s tomorrow. She’s got all the latest gossip from London, it seems, and will simply explode if she’s not allowed to recount it, blow by blow. So enjoy your mutton pies. I’d better scurry back up the road before it gets any hotter.’

  A peck on the cheek and she was off, leaving Daniel wondering why she had paid a visit to Elizabeth Farm without even mentioning it to him and why she had stopped midway through a sentence when she was about to reveal more than she wished. It wasn’t the first time that she’d seemed to be keeping something back from him lately and it made him uneasy.

  He needed to stretch his legs, so he stood up and walked to the window, looking down from his upper storey office into the bustling street below. He noticed, with surprise, that the coach was still outside, with their coachman Devlin still seated with the reins hanging loosely in his hands, pipe-smoke wreathing upwards into the warm morning air. Then Daniel looked to the side and was puzzled to see Martha deep in conversation with two men. The older one looked familiar enough, but the younger one to whom Martha appeared to be giving the most animated attention was a stranger. He was tall, handsome and self-assured and Daniel felt a pang of insecure jealously as he gazed down at his wife giving ‘the treatment’, as he called it, to a man half her age. Then he recalled her earlier question about her seeming desire to look as if she were in her early twenties and the uncomfortable feeling deepened.

  ‘Here’s the sales invoice for the chandler’s store, sir. If you could sign it immediately, the carter’s ready at the back door to take the consignment away.’

  Daniel turned round to where Jim Broadbent stood, the invoice in his hand, and he beckoned him to join him at the window.

  ‘Who are those two men down there with Mrs. Bradbury?’ he asked.

  Jim took off his spectacles and peered down. ‘The older one’s Robert Sidaway, sir. He owns the bakery next door. I’m surprised you had to ask, since he was in here only a few days ago with Mrs. Bradbury, while you were down on the quayside with Major Johnston. They seemed to be taking floor measurements and Mr. Sidaway was most inquisitive regarding how empty the lower floor gets between shipments. I hope I did the right thing by letting them in, sir, only with it being Mrs. Bradbury…’

  ‘Yes, that’s fine, Jim, don’t worry yourself about it. No doubt she’ll tell me in due course. But who’s the younger man?’

  ‘Never seen him before in my entire life, sir. Handsome cove, isn’t he?’

  ‘Depends on your tastes, I imagine,’ Daniel replied curtly, then returned to his desk, signed the invoice, watched his floor manager disappear back down the stairs and sat wondering.

  His mind wandered back to the days before he and Martha had finally got together and his fear of committing his heart to a woman who would remain beautiful while he aged. A woman who now seemed anxious to appear younger than she was and was plying her charm on a handsome young stranger in the street. A woman, what’s more, who made visits to friends without telling her husband. Should he be paying her more attention, or perhaps making discreet enquiries instead of instinctively trusting her? After all, her life before he met her had been largely a succession of deceits and dishonesty and there was a well-known saying about leopards and spots.

  21

  The following evening Daniel was studying Martha’s face closely as he tried to block out Elizabeth Macarthur’s river of gossipy drivel following the receipt by her, from the Parramatta, of the latest letters from her society friends back in London. He was praying for the meal to end, the port bottle to appear and the ladies to withdraw, leaving George and John free to discuss business with him.

  ‘Depend upon it,’ Elizabeth was insisting, ‘his days out here are numbered.’

  ‘He almost seems to think so himself,’ George confirmed, ‘although he’d rather go on his own terms than be dismissed from office.’

  Governor King seemed to be in a hopeless spiral, from which the Sydney English Exchange Institute was benefitting handsomely. The official word from London was to encourage all trade and commerce, while the unofficial order was to suppress what was seen as the growing commercial predominance of military officers who were neglecting their official duties in order to grow fat. The more that King followed the official line, the greater the number of letters of complaint winging their way back to London regarding the ‘overweening arrogance’ of the officers and men of the New South Wales Corps and their monopoly over rum supplies.

  The truth was that rum was only the excuse, the symbol of much more that was wrong with the colonial economy. Men like Johnston and Macarthur had long since abandoned the rum trade after its initial success, together with craftily-acquired land grants, had facilitated the more secure trade in livestock and fleeces. Those who had not been granted the wide acres needed for such activities and particularly those who had sought to make their own fortunes in the development of the new colony, were the ones now bleating back to Whitehall about being blocked by those ahead of them, who in the main were army officers. Since it was known that legitimate trading and commercial expansion were being encouraged in government circles back in London, it was necessary to focus the complaints on other areas of alleged mismanagement and the obvious targets were the military officers who appeared to run things in open defiance of the governor and who were allegedly trading in human misery by their stranglehold on spirituous liquor in an age in which virtuous sobriety was the touchstone of a Christian community.

  ‘Do you think he’ll be allowed to go quietly?’ Elizabeth asked eagerly.

  George frowned before answering. ‘That will depend upon majority opinion in London circles, about which you no doubt know more than I do,’ he replied guardedly. ‘But “better the Devil you know”, as the saying goes and at least we seem to have managed to tie the current incumbent in knots. If we’re not careful, they may replace him with someone who’s not so easily managed.’

  ‘When I was in London,’ Macarthur chimed in, ‘there was much talk of a Captain Bligh, who survived a mutiny on board his ship and some were voicing the opinion that he might be just the man to kick us all into shape. Of course they believe all that rubbish about the military running affairs out here, when as we well know it’s the likes of George and myself. The leading lights in London don’t seem to have fully grasped that the real source of our power runs on four feet.’

  Governor King was finally relieved of his command in August 1806 and as John had predicted, his replacement was the stern disciplinarian William Bligh. Public confidence in his predecessor had sunk so low that the incoming Bligh was delighted to be greeted with addresses of welcome, one from George on behalf of the military men who guarded his colony and another from John Macarthur, on behalf of the ‘free settlers’ for whom he claimed to speak. However, it was not long before the suspicion began to form in Bligh’s mind that a knife was pointed between his shoulder blades, when he received letters from other free settlers that left him in no doubt that Johnston and Macarthur were not to be trusted and that they would undermine his rule of the colony just as they had King’s.

  In the meantime, Daniel had increasing worries of his own. He had tried to banish to the back of his mind his initial unease regarding Martha’s desire to look like a woman in her twenties and her animated conversation with the handsome young man outside the bakery and had almost succeeded until one day a few months later, when he was being driven home in the family coach. As they approached the front gates he was aware of someone galloping a fast horse out through the entrance and as he looked back in surprise he thought he recognised the same young man, head down and seemingly anxious to put some distance between himself and Haberfield House.

  He climbed down from the coach and unusually Martha was not there to greet him with a kiss and a detailed description of what cook had prepared for supper. Instead there was only a morose-looking Matthew, bowling a
hoop up and down the section of the drive immediately in front of the front entrance. Daniel put his arm around him and Matthew snuggled up to him as usual and attempted to demonstrate his burgeoning skills as a pickpocket by fumbling in Daniel’s waistcoat pocket for loose change. Biting back the desire to advise him that practices such as that had led to his mother coming out to Australia in the first place, Daniel pushed his eager fingers away and asked of him casually, ‘Who was that man I just saw leaving?’

  ‘I don’t know, but Mama got very angry when I went into the drawing room and found them sitting together on the settle. He was telling her that he must “make her his own” and she was agreeing with him. When they saw me in the doorway, Mama shouted at me to go outside, because she was busy.’

  Daniel sat with a stony face throughout supper and Martha was apprehensive of asking the reason, for fear that something depressing to do with the business might be spoken in front of the children. Matthew was clearly already a little subdued from the earlier incident and Rebecca was old enough to be aware of a bad atmosphere. Fortunately Martha was able to busy herself trying to persuade Mark to eat his fish pie rather than spit it back all over her.

  Finally, after the supper table had been cleared, Martha found Daniel in the drawing room, staring at the wall. She sat next to him and took his hand. ‘There’s obviously something bothering you, dearest. Is it to do with the business?’

  ‘Who was that man who visited you today?’ Daniel demanded bluntly.

  She hesitated, then replied. ‘His name is Michael Hargreave, why?’

  ‘What precisely was he doing here, might I ask?’

  Every second for which she delayed answering was like a whiplash to his brain. Finally she responded lamely with ‘I’m not allowed to tell you.’