An Unconventional Heiress

by Paula Marshall

  In ordinary circumstances Sarah would have felt this as a rebuff, but as things were she inclined her head and gratefully drank the harsh, red liquid. He saw her grimace and smiled. ‘The wine we drink here does not travel well, I am told. But it is probably better than the illicit whisky and gin brewed in illegal and secret stills.’

  Sarah was happy, for once, to engage in small talk. ‘I’m not likely to partake of those, Dr Kerr.’

  ‘No, indeed, Miss Langley. Though we must remember what the Bard says: “We know what we are, but we know not what we may be.”’ Perhaps, he thought, a little glumly, not the most tactful of comments in the circumstances. But she smiled back at him over the rim of her glass, before raising it to say, ‘Bravo, Dr Kerr. To quote Shakespeare in the ballroom—or more properly, the anteroom—is the mark of your true, educated Scotsman, is it not?’

  She was offering him a flag of truce, no doubt of that, and in that sense he accepted it.

  ‘Indeed, Miss Langley—a correct and proper observation, if I may say so.’

  She handed him her empty glass and he replaced it, saying, ‘Shall I send to find what is delaying your brother? I think that you are sufficiently recovered to return home. I advise you to take matters quietly for some days. Do not hesitate to send for me, should you feel the need.’

  After he had gone Sarah lay back on the sofa. What a strange being he is, she thought, such a mixture of sentiments. One does not know where one is with him.

  It did not occur to her that the same words could be used of her, but for the first time Alan Kerr had left her, not in strife, nor in indifference, but in amity. That, at least, must be worthwhile. She did not ask herself why Dr Kerr’s approval of her should be so important that she should treasure it.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Sarah, my love,’ said Lucy a few days later, ‘you seem to be making heavy weather of that.’ The pair of them were sitting in the Middletons’ drawing room engaged in repairing the dresses which they had worn at the New Year’s Ball.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Sarah, sucking the finger that she had just pricked for the third time in five minutes.

  Lucy looked up again and laughed. ‘I shall never know,’ she said, ‘how someone so useful as you are with a paintbrush can be so clumsy with a needle. Why don’t you give up and read us some more from The Mysteries of Udolpho instead?’

  Sarah’s laugh in reply was rueful. She was slowly beginning to understand how cushioned her life had been back in England. There had always been a host of poor relations like her old Great-aunt Drusilla, who was so anxious to please that she was only too ready to mend a torn hem, insert some lace or trim a bonnet. In Sydney, if she did not do these many little tasks herself, they did not get done at all. The mere idea of asking Nellie or Sukie to do them was laughable.

  She shook her head, ‘No, Lucy, I am determined to master the art of sewing a fine seam. Who else will do it if I do not? Pray do not volunteer yourself, I am determined to be useful.’

  She paused before adding lightly, ‘Think how much Dr Kerr will approve of me when I am quite transformed from being a useless fine lady. Perhaps I ought to venture into the kitchen and ask Sukie to teach me to make a milk pudding to complete the picture.’

  Lucy said, apparently idly, ‘You have made up your quarrel with Dr Kerr, then?’

  Sarah shrugged. ‘Was there a quarrel? We got off on the wrong foot when we first met. Now perhaps we are on the right one.’

  She was disinclined to say anything critical about Alan Kerr since the humanity that he had shown to her on the night of the ball. Instead, she tried to concentrate fiercely on her sewing, which, to her disgust, the more she tried to keep her stitches small, grew increasingly grimy. What was really making concentration difficult was that that she could not forget what John had told her about Alan Kerr earlier that day.

  Governor Macquarie had invited John Langley to an informal dinner for the two of them in his private rooms in Government House. He wished to see the drawings and watercolours that John had completed in the first months of his visit.

  After dinner, the drawings having been admired, the Governor had fetched a bottle of port, cigars and a small table set for chess and challenged John to a game. Drinking and smoking companionably together, they were halfway through it when John touched on something that had been puzzling him.

  ‘I know, sir, that it is not done to enquire why someone arrives here as a convict, but I must confess that I wonder why a man as sterling and as gifted as Dr Kerr appears to be should have come here in chains. Who better than yourself to ask discreetly? I know that what I say to you, or you to me, will not reach the man himself. The fact that he is your valued friend only adds to the puzzle.’

  The Governor leaned forward to make his move. ‘You may ask, and I will answer you. It is a sad business. You know that Dr Kerr has a kind and compassionate heart behind his dour exterior?’

  ‘I have begun to suspect as much,’ said John, wondering at the relevance of the reply.

  ‘Perhaps we had better leave our game for a minute.’ The Governor refilled John’s glass. ‘The point is that it was his compassion that brought him here. He comes from an old Border family of good repute—but the family is poor and he was the second son. He wished to be a surgeon, and the easiest way for a poor man was for him to be attached as one to a ship in the Royal Navy.

  ‘I said that he has a kind heart. He rapidly ran foul of his Captain who was a martinet of the old school. He thought that the Captain’s cruelty, rather than the needs of discipline, were resulting in an inordinate number of over-brutal floggings. His Captain was not best pleased when his First Officer supported Kerr and he was compelled to reduce his rate of punishment. But he did not forget, or forgive Kerr for his intervention.

  ‘Some little time later the mutiny at the Nore broke out. One night, in his cups—you must understand that he was very young at the time—Dr Kerr went so far as to say in the Mess, in front of his Captain, that he sympathised with the mutineers, one of whose grievances was the brutality of naval discipline. His Captain saw an opportunity for revenge. He accused him of supporting and fomenting treason, and had him thrown into irons.

  ‘This was at the height of the French Wars. No mercy was shown to the men at the Nore and little to Kerr. Despite the efforts of his fellow officers, who were horrified by the Captain’s harshness, the Admiralty took the Captain’s part, feeling that an example should be made to discourage others. He was tried for treason and sentenced to death. That sentence was later commuted to transportation for life. On top of that his family disowned him, as did the young woman to whom he was betrothed.

  ‘I am told that when he arrived here he was wild at the injustice of it. He claimed to be a loyal subject of King George III, but was so headstrong on the voyage over that he was sent to the penal camp on Norfolk Island. I understand that on the journey from Britain he met Tom Dilhorne, who became his friend and mentor in the convicts’ world and helped him to survive in it. Kerr even succeeded in training Dilhorne to be his medical aide on Norfolk Island. Some time later they were transferred to Sydney by my predecessor since New South Wales was so badly in need of doctors. Dr Kerr is now a valued servant of the colony while Dilhorne moved on to exercise his undoubted talents in the commercial and business world.

  ‘That, Langley, is Dr Kerr’s sad history—and a little of Dilhorne’s, too.’

  ‘A sad story, indeed,’ agreed John. ‘You would not object, I trust, if I told my sister of this? I should like her to know that Dr Kerr’s reason for being transported is not to his discredit. It also explains his refusal to drink alcohol.’

  ‘I should be most happy for Miss Langley to know of it. You must tell her what you think fit.’ The Governor smiled. ‘Your sister is a most resolute lady and I would like to think that she and Dr Kerr were friends.’

  There was something in the warmth with which the Governor said this that made John Langley look across at him sharply, but Macquarie’s
handsome face wore its usual bland mask. The Governor’s enemies often accused him of scheming to attain devious ends. It was the usual Exclusive comment on his attempts to integrate the Emancipists into the social life of the colony. So far, however, John had found him to be a man of great integrity and vision.

  After they had finished their game, John had taken his leave; and on the following morning, at breakfast, he had told Sarah enough of Alan Kerr’s sad story to explain his presence in a penal colony.

  Sarah had listened carefully and had said little, though she thought that it went a long way to explain Dr Kerr’s bitterness. She said nothing of it to Lucy but stitched steadily on until the maid arrived with the message that Captain Ramsey and Lieutenant Frank Wright wished to know if the Middletons were at home.

  Lucy put down her work. ‘Pray tell them to come in. Quick,’ she ordered Sarah, snatching her sewing up and bundling it, together with hers, to thrust it into a bureau drawer. ‘Now you are reading Udolpho to me and we have nothing to do in the world but be fine ladies.’

  She fell into a languishing posture on a sofa so that no one should know that she had been stitching away for dear life until the maid had come in. Sarah, hardly able to contain her amusement, began to render Mrs Ratcliffe’s masterpiece in her best Mrs Siddons-like voice.

  ‘Oh, how pleased we are to see you,’ Lucy exclaimed when the two officers entered. ‘Sarah and I have been positively rigid with boredom. We have absolutely nothing to do. Pray tell us all the news from the garrison and the town.’

  Neither officer needed much encouragement. In a society where women were in a small minority, to enter a room and find in it two females as attractive as Sarah and Lucy eagerly waiting to be entertained was an opportunity few encountered.

  ‘Little news,’ said Pat Ramsey dismissively. ‘Fred Waring was carried home drunk again, and a couple of convicts have escaped into the bush.’

  His tone was so casual that Sarah looked at him in some surprise. ‘Do you not follow them, Captain Ramsey? Or do you simply leave them there? I confess that I am not conversant with the nature of the bush.’

  ‘No need for you to be, Miss Langley,’ said Frank, ‘since you are never likely to be lost in it. When convicts escape, so long as too many do not go at once, we leave them there. The bush will do for them soon enough—great heat and little water, you know. Some say that there are small camps to be found there, lost to our knowledge, but one doubts that. Few ever come back.’

  ‘Frank’s right,’ said Pat. ‘Some of the poor fools who escape think that if they can cross the Blue Mountains they will immediately reach China and freedom.’

  ‘Surely not,’ said Sarah, who had spent several days trying to paint the Blue Mountains satisfactorily. ‘The Pacific is in the way.’

  ‘Oh, you’re a clever lady and you know that,’ said Pat gaily, ‘but they don’t. They believe anything. Why, I do believe that most of those who have been transported are as stupid as the aborigines.’

  ‘But not Tom Dilhorne,’ said Sarah, teasing him.

  ‘No,’ conceded Pat. ‘Whatever Dilhorne is, he’s not stupid.’

  Frank decided to change the subject. ‘How the dooce did we get into this boring line of talk?’ he asked. ‘Miss Lucy will be yawning, and you too, Miss Langley. Do tell us that you will both be coming to Race Day.’

  ‘Race Day?’ exclaimed Sarah and Lucy together, with Lucy adding,

  ‘I thought that the Races were over for this year.’

  ‘So they are,’ explained Pat. ‘But some of us have decided that life in this benighted hole needs a little cheering up and the 73rd have decided to run a special Race Day—with O’Connell’s blessing, I may add. And you, Miss Langley, are to bet on my Hercules.’

  ‘No, indeed,’ interjected Frank Wright. ‘By no means. You are to bet on my Vulcan. Hercules is past his best. He was last year’s winner. You’ll only lose your tin, Miss Langley, if you bet on such a spavined creature.’

  ‘I never bet on any horse until I have seen it,’ said Sarah, ignoring the fact that she had never bet on a horse before. ‘Who will be your jockeys?’

  ‘No jockeys,’ said Frank heartily. ‘We are our own jocks, you know. Gentleman riders all.’

  ‘And ladies? Are ladies allowed to compete?’

  Both men laughed. ‘You are funning us, Miss Langley,’ said Frank. ‘No offence, we know that you are a fine horsewoman.’

  ‘Your brother, though,’ said Pat. ‘He could be a jock. He has bought Menzies’s two blacks, has he not? Castor and Pollux.’

  ‘Oh, I doubt that John will take part in the Races,’ said Sarah. ‘He would be too worried that he might have an accident which would prevent him from painting.’

  ‘Speaking of that,’ said Pat Ramsey, ‘the organising committee wondered if your brother would consider giving one of his recent oils of Sydney as a prize for one of the races. It would make a change from the usual piece of cheap plate.’

  ‘You must ask him,’ said Sarah. She wondered if something by herself would do instead, but since Charles’s dismissal of her painting she had been shy of showing it to, or discussing it with, others—particularly men. She would always be worrying if they secretly despised her or considered her unwomanly.

  ‘A penny for your thoughts, Miss Langley?’ queried Pat brightly. He was wondering why she had suddenly fallen silent.

  ‘I was just thinking,’ Sarah said, not prepared to tell the truth, but needing to say something, ‘what a varied life you live in Sydney. The Park in the afternoon, races and balls and drives to the Point. Just like Hyde Park and Ascot and celebrating the King’s birthday at home.’

  ‘Home,’ said Frank Wright, and then was silent. They were all remembering home. They were contrasting it with the wilderness that was New South Wales once one left Sydney. Every effort they made to reproduce home, thought Sarah, merely served to point up the difference.

  She looked through the window at the brilliance outside: at the Middletons’ washing flapping in the slight breeze, and at a wallaby that had broken through the fence and was staring at her. It was as strange to her as she was to it.

  Time started again. Sarah promised to bet on Hercules and, as some consolation to Frank, agreed to let him squire her at the Races. The aversion to men that had so afflicted her at the Governor’s Ball had almost disappeared in the weeks since the assault, but she was still warier than she had been before it. Further idle conversation followed until the convict servant brought in the tea board, and they took tea as gravely and ceremoniously as though they were in Grosvenor Square.

  Later, dining on her own, since John was dining at the Officers’ Mess, and busily engaged in eating a pudding of uncommon stodginess, Sarah asked Sukie if she had read Mrs Glasse’s cookery book. She had brought it from England on the recommendation of a friend who had heard that such things were lacking in the Antipodes.

  Sukie blushed and did what she always did when confused or embarrassed: bobbed an inadequate curtsy. ‘Lor’ bless you, Mum, I ain’t got no letters.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Sarah. ‘Then perhaps you could ask Nellie to read it to you?’

  ‘She ain’t got no letters neether, Mum.’

  Sarah was used to a staff that, even if recruited from the children of tenants and villagers, had been instructed in the rudiments of reading and writing.

  ‘Pray fetch Nellie to me.’

  A flustered Sukie returned with Nellie who, Sarah noted with disapproval, was fatter and more unkempt than ever. Even John had noticed her appearance and had said, ‘That girl looks exactly like an unmade bed.’ Mrs Hackett had overheard him, sniffed, and later asked Sarah, yet again, to send Nellie back and get another assignee.

  ‘Nellie,’ asked Sarah, ‘is it true that you are unable to read?’

  Nellie dredged up a sniff and said something which sounded like ‘yessum’.

  Sarah considered them both. ‘I am prepared to teach you to read and write if Mrs Hackett agrees to free you
for a short time each day.’ She was surprised at the reception of what she thought was a magnificent offer.

  Nellie gave vent to a positive cannonade of sniffs. ‘Oh, no, Mum. Me’n Sukie, we don’t want to able to read—t’ain’t natural. T’ain’t for the likes of us. Thankee, Mum, thankee.’

  She took Sukie by the hand and half-dragged her from the room, before Sarah could reply.

  Well, she thought indignantly, that should teach me not to try to help my inferiors!

  Later, however, while Sarah sat sewing, waiting for John to return, Sukie crept into the room.

  ‘Please, Mum.’ She twisted her hands in an agony of embarrassment. ‘Please, Mum, I should like to learn to read and write. I want to cook proper, be more of a lady like…like Mrs Hackett.’

  ‘Tomorrow then, in the afternoon, when the washing up for nuncheon is over, we will start you on your ABC.’

  Sarah felt as though she had climbed a mountain—and it was only poor Sukie, wishing to learn her letters, who had created that feeling of accomplishment.

  Sukie turned at the door. ‘Mum?’

  ‘Yes?’ Sarah wondered what was coming.

  ‘There’s lots of poor girls like me that’d like to learn to read, Mum.’ On that she left the room, leaving Sarah with her cry for help.

  All in all it had been quite a day. John’s tale of Dr Kerr, Lucy’s sewing bee, and now this. Did Sukie really think that she, Sarah Langley, was going to set herself up as the unpaid dame of a charity school to teach convict girls how to read?

  Why was it that she, Sarah Langley, did not laugh, or grow indignant or dismiss the notion, but sat there wondering if, after all, this might be a better use of her time than pining after Charles Villiers, or thinking about Alan Kerr?

  Now, how on earth had he entered her musings again? Drat the man!

  Over the next few weeks the whole colony seemed to be thinking about nothing but Race Day. Even Alan Kerr, when Sarah met him in the street, Carter behind her, carrying her painting materials, had a cheerful word with her on the subject.