A Distant Dream

by Vivienne Dockerty

  There was silence, broken only by a giggle from Mrs. Dickinson and suppressed by a frown from her husband and a not too gentle nudge, before the bosun whispered into the captain’s ear urgently.

  “Ah-ah. Sir Rodney and Lady Harriet,” the captain said. “ I beg your pardon, my lady. Welcome. Would you and Sir Rodney like to sit over there?”

  He pointed to two empty places at the table, one at the bottom facing him and one to the left, next to Bessie. Her heart quailed as the woman flounced to sit at the end of the table. Sir Rodney, who nodded pleasantly, sat at the side of her.

  The bosun brought two glasses of sherry on a silver salver, then he continued to ladle soup into white china, silver trimmed bowls. The soup was potato and tasted rather salty, served from a matching tureen placed on a small, separate, white table-clothed piece of furniture, which could have been a seaman’s chest underneath.

  There was a silence, except for noisy slurping or delicate sipping, while everyone assessed each other, wondering who would be the first to speak.

  “Good grub, thank you Dunsty.” The captain finished his soup and the bosun asked if he had enjoyed it, before taking the empty bowl away. He glanced around quickly, wondering if he had been too familiar with the man who was acting as his servant.

  “Thank you, very nice.” Clarence was also happy to praise the first course. Everyone followed his example, as none, except the First Class passengers, knew how to behave in esteemed company.

  “A little too salty for my taste,” boomed a voice from the top of the table. “Have the cook informed of it immediately.”

  “Yes madam,” the bosun said and clearing all the bowls onto a large wooden serving tray, he left the saloon.

  He returned with a wooden trolley, which was apt to roll with the swell of the waves if a firm hand wasn’t placed upon it. He began to distribute silver edged dinner plates to each of the guests.

  “And it’s her ladyship, not madam,” Lady Harriet said rudely, wiping her plate with her napkin after the bosun had placed it before her. “Kindly remember my title.”

  The bosun nodded politely and began to put tureens containing hot vegetables and two white serving platters, one containing slices of beef, the other of pork and two large sauce boats, one of them containing pureed apple, on the table. Once the lord and ladyship and the captain had helped themselves, so did the rest of the captain’s guests.

  It seemed as if conversation was destined to be off the agenda, no doubt caused by the brooding presence of the titled couple, until Mrs. Dickinson swallowed a piece of pork too quickly, resulting in her husband having to give her a good thumping in the middle of her shoulders. From where Bessie was sitting he appeared to be enjoying the opportunity. Everyone began to speak, relating their own incidence of choking, or of someone they knew who had nearly died, and suddenly the room was alive with the buzz of conversation.

  Later, after a dessert of apple pie and cream, followed by coffee and a small, sweet biscuit, the ladies were asked to leave the table and adjourn to a small area provided in a corner of the saloon. The men were given cigars and glasses of port and sat at the table near the captain.

  “So, what do you do?” asked Lady Harriet, who had decided she would chair a meeting like she would at the ‘Ladies At Home’ gatherings back home in Derbyshire. “What is your name, my dear?” She looked at Bessie, whose heart missed a beat. How was she going to reply on this occasion? It was like being summoned to the Big House back in Mayo, although she had only ever got to meet the housekeeper there. She swallowed and tried to speak nicely, reminding herself that she was not in the bogs of Ireland now.

  “My name is Bessie Filbey and my husband is called Clarence and we had a farm near Ballina in Ireland.”

  “And?”

  “Oh, we have left the farm as we had problems keeping the staff. Because of the blight, you know.”

  “So?”

  “We’re going to Australia to buy some land and carry on with the farming.”

  “Ah, so we have something in common, Mrs. Filbey. You and your husband are landowners as we are.”

  Lady Harriet turned her attention to Mrs. Dickinson, who answered her quick fire questions with a lot of giggling. It appeared that her husband was to be in a senior command position, helping to organise a police presence in the various townships that were springing up around Adelaide.

  Lady Harriet dismissed the woman quickly as a woman without a brain. Alice Foley, sometimes nurse in assisting her surgeon husband, was not cowed by the woman’s probing questions and answered them briskly, leaving Lady Harriet in no doubt that if she was sick there would be no “flimflammery” in the treatment she would receive. This left Margaret Trowbridge, who answered brightly that her husband was to take up a position working in the city and it was something to do with constructing building there.

  “So, it looks as if Mrs. Filbey and I will be the major landholders in Adelaide.” Lady Harriet pressed Bessie’s hand patronisingly. “We could go to the land titles office and stake our claims together, my dear.”

  Bessie flushed, muttering that it wasn’t her place to make any major decisions about their future, wishing that a hole in the floor would appear and she could jump in. Then she smiled to herself, thinking that if she did that she could end up sleeping in steerage with Molly.

  Chapter Five

  Molly was fast asleep in a top to tail position under the blanket in Hannah’s bunk. She had enjoyed being with the young orphanage girls, especially Hannah, who with her dark hair and thin frame, reminded her of Maggie. All the girls had taken an interest in playing with the pretty little newcomer, who had arrived for her afternoon nap accompanied by a basket full of goodies. Molly didn’t miss the woman, who had taken her from the cabin and washed her in a tin tub, though the man with her had been nice and she was beginning to like this little holiday at the bottom of a boat.

  “I’m thinkin’ that if the Missus wants a girl to look after her Molly when we get there, I’d put me ‘and up” Hannah had said quietly that evening, as she sat with Maura on an adjoining bunk bed. “I’d even work for nothin’, just me board would do. It ‘ud be better than goin’ to that place in Adelaide yer told me about.”

  “But that is why I’ve had my passage paid, Hannah, to take you girls to King William Street, where there is a place for orphan girls to stay before being hired out to the gentry.”

  “But can’t you lose me, say I disappeared at one of the ports we’ll be stoppin’ at?”

  “You’re not so green as you’re cabbage looking,” Maura replied with a smile. “Where would you like to be dropped off then, a Canary island or somewhere in darkest Africa?”

  *

  Bessie didn’t feel well the next morning. The ship was rolling at a frightening angle and she felt fragile from the meal she had consumed at the captain’s table and a couple of glasses of wine and a sherry. She had told Clarence to see to Molly as she wasn’t feeling up to it. The sound of others retching in the nearby cabin quarters didn’t help her mood.

  Clarence lurched along the ship until he came to the hold which housed the steerage passengers. The hatch was closed and sounds of crashing and lots of angry shouting came up from down below.

  “Can’t go down there, Sir,” said a thick set, bearded sailor with a Liverpudlian accent, as he staggered along the deck himself. “Captain’s orders, I’d go back to your cabin if I was you.”

  Clarence nodded. The wind was howling and he could hear the roar of the waves from where he was standing. He made his way slowly back.

  “That was quick,” Bessie said languidly, as she lay in her bunk with her eyes closed.

  “I’ll have to go later,”Clarence replied. “They’ve shut the hatch for safety’s sake.”

  Down in the bowels of the ship which was taking more of a pounding from the elements than up aloft, people, mostly the men, cursed and swore as possessions flew off bunk beds, with utensils and food that they were trying to eat sliding down the
table or onto the floor. Those who had taken to their bunks, feeling sick or after having thrown up the contents of their stomachs into the communal buckets, did a few rows of their rosary beads or sent up prayers of deliverance. Others sat morosely, or wide eyed like the orphanage children, who looked to Maura for reassurance that the ship wasn’t going to sink.

  “Tis the ocean we’re travelling,” she said kindly, patting Molly’s hand, who upon waking had gone to use the bucket behind the curtain and found it so full of liquid she had wet her bottom using it. It had taken ten distressing minutes to calm her, as she cried in anguish for her sister. It was only a cuddle from Hannah that had soothed the sobbing child.

  People around began to mutter uneasily, especially when someone noticed that water was seeping through one of the planks nearby, and there was sounds of crashing as buckets were being overturned. One man, frustrated at the turn of events, began to stand halfway up the ladder, shouting.

  “Will someone get their fecking arse down ‘ere before we all fecking drown!”

  There was no response, so a few of the single men took his place and started to hammer their fists against the hatchway door, then another brought his slane and began to knock against it violently, but still with no avail. They kept it up until one by one, tired out by their efforts to attract the crew’s attention, they gave up the ghost and peace, as much as it could be, began to reign again.

  It was two long hours before the sea began to calm and the hatch was thrown open, to the relief of all who sat below. The man in charge was a swarthy bloke with a bit of a mean streak, who went by the name of Jimmy and had sailed the seas with Captain O’Neill for a number of years having escaped from a squalid existence in the back streets of Liverpool when he was a fourteen years old. He couldn’t quite understand how the inhabitants of the hold on this voyage, had to be treated that much differently from the slaves that had been transported before. Maybe it was because these people weren’t black, or prisoners of Her Majesty. One of the crew had said that the queen actually wanted the English to sail to the new colony and was paying Captain O’Neill to get them there. He ignored their complaints and accusations, as one by one the bucket carriers came up the ladder rungs, by parroting the captain’s words:

  “If you don’t like it you can get off at the next port of call.” This seemed to keep the buggers silent as they meekly passed him by.

  *

  Clarence made a second attempt to see Molly that afternoon. They were passing the coast of France at that time, though the passengers were unaware that it was in the distance, as black clouds were still hanging low over the Bay of Biscay. He took along a share of Bessie’s rations, his dear wife still feeling nauseous and confined to her bunk. He wondered how she would feel if he left her to go to the saloon again this evening for supper? According to Monica, their servant, that was where they would be eating their meal.

  He thought back to the conversation he’d had with Sir Rodney, the evening before. He was a timid man to the onlooker, but a more astute man than Clarence was yet to meet. From an impoverished family distantly related to royalty, Sir Rodney had been encouraged to marry one of the daughters of a man who had inherited a great deal of land from his wealthy wool manufacturing parents in Derbyshire. The man had been only too glad to be rid of his waspish tongued daughter, Harriet, heaving a sigh of relief on her wedding day, as he walked her down the aisle. Not a man of handsome looks, nor having a charismatic personality, Rodney was happy to become the husband of the cranky Harriet, as with her came a pleasant house overlooking the Matlock Hills and the River Derwent and an allowance of one hundred guineas per year. There were no children resulting from their union, as Harriet had a distaste for all things carnal, so Rodney threw himself into becoming a valued member of Her Majesty’s Commissioners, by involving himself in the Ordnance department in London, where several talented cartographers worked on survey maps for the colony of Adelaide. For the first time in his life, he had felt excited by a project, whilst dreaming of owning sizeable acreage in a distant foreign land. It was there for the taking, at a cost that was minimal, compared to the rising costs in London at that time and with a bit of luck, although that hadn’t been the case unfortunately, Harriet might have been persuaded to stay behind in Derbyshire. Clarence had been promised a look at a copy of the maps that Sir Rodney had been charged to take along with him. It covered a township with the name of Willunga in the southern regions and all the land around. Sir Rodney had heard tell that the soil in that area was very fertile.

  Down at the bottom of the ship, Clarence, like Bessie, was appalled by the confines of the passengers’ accommodation, where the herding of so many souls in such a narrow area meant listening to a stranger snoring, breaking wind and any other noise that a body might make during slumber. It could have been them and he thanked the man above that he had decided to pay for a cabin in the end.

  Jimmy, who was in charge again now that the sun was shining and the ship was sailing through calmer waters, had orders to let groups of ten steerage passengers at a time take the air whilst the hold was being swabbed and their bunks were fumigated. He had saluted Clarence as the man had asked for permission to descend the ladder, no doubt thinking that Clarence was the inspector sent by Her Majesty, who was rumoured to be travelling on the the Umpherston.

  It was strange but the little dote appeared contented, sitting there on a narrow bunk as the girls waited for their turn to go on deck. She was playing with a knitted doll. She raised her eyes in answer when Clarence said her name, but there was no look of recognition, which strangely enough pulled at his heart strings.

  “She’s been asking for someone called Maggie” Maura said, after accepting his gift of a wedge of cheese, two thick slices of beef, a loaf of bread and a small pat of butter spooned into a hole in the bloomer. “She had a bit of an upset earlier and the poor little thing was quite distressed.”

  “Ah, she’d be askin’ after her nurse,” lied Clarence, “ the girl who was looking after Molly back in Mayo. She was like a sister, but it was unfortunate that she went to England to be married before we came away. I’ll take Molly up on deck and get her a breath of air. Mrs. Filbey is confined to her quarters and I was wonderin’ if it would be too much trouble if I brought her back to you again?”

  “Ah, she’s no trouble, Mr. Filbey and she seems quite content when she’s not after crying for this Maggie. Shall I come with you and watch her while you light a pipe?”

  It was while they were on deck that Clarence met the man who he remembered was being called George Colmayne, whom he had talked to on the Bessie Belle. The man looked withdrawn, and was not answering the questions of his little boy, who was tugging on his coat tails.

  “The top of the morning to you” Clarence hailed him cheerfully. “Looks as if we could be in for a spot of golden weather, according to the sky over yonder. I suppose it’ll get warmer the further down the world we sail.”

  He seemed to have struck a chord with the poor weary looking fellow, who suddenly nodded brightly then told his son to join his mother, who was walking along with her other children further along the deck.

  “Exactly what I was saying to the wife. I know we’ll be into autumn when we land on the other side of the world, but the winters won’t be anything like we have had in Ireland.”

  “Is she doing a bit of suffering like my wife is?” Clarence asked, after drawing again on his pipe because it kept going out. “Mine’s taken to her bed, doesn’t seem to be bothering with anything.”

  “It’s being down there in our quarters that’s getting to my wife.” Clarence had the feeling that George was talking on behalf of the two of them when he said it. “She’s used to the fresh country air, walks along the beach, looking out across to the islands at Westport and she liked to help me with the children I used to teach. Now she’s got nothing and she’s worried sick that I won’t get a job as a carpenter when we get there.”

  “Of course yer will”Clarence soothe
d. “There’ll be a thousand and one houses needing to be built for all the folk that’ll be settlin’ there in Adelaide and I’ve heard there’s lots of townships springin’ up all over the place. Have you thought about doing a spot of teachin’ to these children whilst we’re travellin’? Molly is only three, but I’m sure yer could help her count on her fingers.”

  George perked up considerably at his suggestion.

  “Do you think I could? Oh, but I’d have to get permission from the captain and it’s difficult trying to get past that Jimmy.”

  “Leave it with me” said Clarence, puffing out his chest at the thought that if he hadn’t got the captain’s ear, he certainly had Sir Rodney’s. “And seeing as I like to be philanthropic, (he’d remembered his brother-in-law’s use of the word) I’ll chuck in a shillin’ a week meself.”

  Getting permission for George to teach hadn’t been difficult. It appeared that the captain had noticed the rapport between Clarence Filbey and “his honourable and honourableness” as he had privately named Sir Rodney and Lady Harriet, so when Clarence broached the subject in front of all the guests that evening, Bessie included, as she thought she might be able to keep a little something down, the idea had been roundly applauded.

  “Can’t have the children frittering away their time and getting up to mischief,” Lady Harriet boomed. “What did you say the man’s name was, Colmayne? I wonder if he’s related to the Colmaynes from the Scottish borders? Their family originally came from Ireland. Westport did you say?”

  Maura, plain of face but with the Irish beauty of auburn hair and green eyes that could change her appearance to attractive when she got around to smiling, was finding that she had a bit of a problem with Jimmy. She had taken the children up on deck one day and whilst standing there looking out towards the golden shores of southern France in the distance, her charges busy chasing each other around the deck excitedly, she was approached by the steerage overseer.