The Soldier's Curse

by Thomas Keneally

  And then Monsarrat came to the section of the report which he felt did not deserve his penmanship.

  The unreturned absconder Kiernan has been of some service through the intelligence he has on occasion sent us. He has reported a considerable river beyond the mountains to the north of our settlement. This could be the river that debouches into the sea near Smoky Cape. I am about to depart with an appropriate party to look for this river with the intention of following it both some distance into the hills and downriver to the sea.

  We have asked Kiernan to meet on June the sixteenth. He may not have a Christian calendar, so we have also given him the number of moonrises between the date of our dispatch and the proposed meeting.

  Making allowances for such a person! thought Monsarrat. Kiernan is playing you for a fool, my dear major, and you are conspiring in it. I would bet one of my pearl waistcoats that the river does not exist.

  The report continued, ‘Should we find the river, and the pastures which Kiernan says surround it, I propose Kiernan be given a conditional pardon for his services in guiding us there.’

  So, absconding was not the sin. Doing it unsuccessfully got you bread and water, not to mention a back with thirty-times-nine scars. But if you eschewed society and managed to survive in the forest like a wild animal, and insisted on evading capture in a most embarrassing way, freedom would be yours for the price of a fictional river.

  And what if you possessed one of the finest hands to cross the seas between England and the colony? What if you could transcribe, order and organise faster than any other man on this outcrop? Then you must work for a man who sees your freedom as his sentence to a substandard clerk, a man who depends on your continued imprisonment. Then the days stretch out before you without even the courtesy of having a number, uncountable as they slither past the horizon, until they deposit an older version of you on an unknown shore.

  Usefulness, as Monsarrat saw it, was a curse. He was incapable of allowing himself to do work which he viewed as below standard. But that very work kept him bound to a life he did not want. And it had, he felt, been responsible for his first crime.

  As a young man, skilled in penmanship and Latin but with no particular aptitude or enthusiasm for any specific trade, he had got a job clerking for a group of young and middle-aged barristers at Lincoln’s Inn. He had been terrified on his first day, seeing lawyers as enhanced specimens of humanity, with wit, intelligence and drive which had been denied him. Pleased to be of service to such greater beings, he had applied himself to taking dictation, transcribing, and organising the lawyers’ affairs in a manner which earned him high regard from his gentlemen, if not a rise in salary to go with it.

  Knowing he would function better if he understood the lawyers’ affairs, Monsarrat took to reading any document he could. By the time he was able to identify which lawyer was about to enter by the sound his heels made on the stones outside, Monsarrat felt he had a working understanding of the legal system. And by the time he was able to identify the calibre of an approaching client by their footfall (the wealthier the person, the better the shoe leather), he had a working understanding of his employers.

  But as his understanding grew, his respect diminished. The senior lawyer in the group, by dint of years lived, was industrious enough, if unimaginative and lacking in drive. The younger ones, however, in Monsarrat’s opinion, knew nothing of the law or scholarship. They had merely attended the necessary number of dinners at their Inn of Court and had been able to afford to buy a £500 legal library.

  His regard for the profession and those who practised it disappeared altogether the day one of the younger lawyers, worse for wear after a night of carousing, asked Monsarrat to write a brief in his stead: ‘There’s a good fellow.’ And it turned into something altogether darker when he heard the young man accept praise on the brief from Mr Fairburn, the taciturn senior barrister who viewed praise as a finite resource which needed to be used sparingly.

  Monsarrat earned enough to live in the normal London squalor for men without a fortune in a one-room lodging in Cursitor Street. The walls were discoloured by damp, but they were the only walls he saw save for the mahogany panelling of the law offices. By then he was thoroughly sick of the sight of both sets of walls.

  If he left London for a provincial town, he thought, he might be able to live better and more cheaply. He had a notion of becoming a schoolmaster, and believed he could churn out better minds than those which currently inhabited the legal chambers. He had Exeter in his sights because, though it was a long way from London, he had relatives around on his mother’s side and had lived there as a boy. He knew that if he stayed in the law office, he would be a clerk for life, or until his health failed.

  So he sought an appointment with Mr Fairburn, knocking gently on the older lawyer’s door the following week.

  ‘Come,’ said Fairburn, who was sitting at his desk with papers spread in front of him. He didn’t look up as Monsarrat entered, deeming the papers of more importance. Nor did he offer Monsarrat a seat.

  ‘Mr Fairburn, thank you for seeing me,’ said Monsarrat. He noticed that the crystal decanter which sat on the older man’s desk was relatively empty today. He often tried to gauge the lawyer’s mood by the amount of liquid in the vessel. Empty, or close to it, was either very good or very bad, as old Fairburn had either been celebrating or commiserating the night before.

  Fairburn didn’t respond to Monsarrat now, knowing the young man would state his business and seeing no point wasting breath asking.

  ‘Mr Fairburn, I would like to inform you that I have decided to leave London, and my employment with you. I am grateful for your generosity over the past two years, and I would like to respectfully ask for a letter of reference.’

  ‘Mr Monsarrat,’ said Fairburn, finally looking up. ‘Be so kind as to locate the contract of employment you signed when you commenced here.’

  Monsarrat went to fetch it, but he could have told Fairburn what it said: he had two years left to work for the lawyers. He had nourished a faint hope that Fairburn would overlook it, but knew Fairburn overlooked very little.

  When Monsarrat laid the contract in front of the lawyer, he examined it only briefly. He too, Monsarrat realised, already knew what it said.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘You see, you have two years left to serve here. You could of course depart without our permission, but you would have no letter of reference, and I would make it my business to ensure any prospective employer knew of your tendency to break your word.’

  ‘I am sorry, sir, but I was hoping you would forgive the additional two years.’

  ‘Out of the question. You are far too good a clerk. We would not be able to find one of similar quality for the same wages. That will be all for now. But see you bring the Harkness documentation to me by the end of the day.’

  So Monsarrat worked on. He decided that if his usefulness was not to be reflected in his wages, he would make sure he was compensated in other ways.

  His intelligence and discretion were relied on by the lawyers, even Fairburn, and if he was found in possession of a file which wasn’t directly relevant to the task at hand, it was assumed it was being used in the service of one of the other lawyers, and Monsarrat’s silence on the matter was seen as completely appropriate.

  But outside of the daily fourteen hours Monsarrat gave to his employers, he turned his penmanship in a new direction. On the walls of the offices hung many documents saying that this or that of the barristers had been called to the British Bar and had the right of audience in the higher courts – the House of Lords, the Court of Appeal, the High Court, Crown Court and county courts. In between other work, Monsarrat took rough notes of some of these ‘call to the bar’ documents. He also took notes when he could of the seal and wax and red ribbon with which the documents were encrusted. At night and on Sundays, he forged a wooden seal to make the right impression, and experimented with melted wax.

  He left the law offices on the day his
contract expired. He took with him no financial consideration in gratitude for his years of service, nor any verbal thanks. But he did take a document, perfect in every respect except for its authenticity, admitting Hugh Llewellyn Monsarrat to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn.

  Chapter 5

  Monsarrat felt he had been virtuous in applying his best penmanship even to the sections of the major’s report regarding Kiernan. He collected the papers and took them into the major’s study, anticipating a pleasant half-hour with the Edinburgh Review. It was more liberal-minded than Blackwood’s, so he read the Edinburgh Review to confirm his opinions and the Tory Blackwood’s Magazine chiefly to give himself the thrill of disagreeing. He took care to surround himself with the signs of business, so he might lay the magazine aside and look plausibly industrious should Captain Diamond come by.

  The captain and Major Shelborne had served together in India and Ireland, and the major seemed to trust Diamond. It was a trust for which Monsarrat could see no foundation, and he could only assume it had been built from extremity, forged at the borders of human tolerance which could generally only be reached through war or captivity. That and the fact that the limited number and unpredictable flaws of regimental officers available in the colony meant that any request for a replacement would be considered frivolous and precious by the authorities in Sydney. The personnel of the garrison did not increase in the same way as the ever-enlarging numbers of convicts. So the major was left to work with Diamond, who had none of Shelborne’s humanity, nor his appreciation for the nuances of life here, the understanding that accommodations and adaptations must be made to build a functioning settlement.

  To the captain, anyone wearing a red coat was fully human, others less so. There were degrees, of course. Free men and women were better than convicts and natives, for example. But jumped-up convicts with a pretension bestowed on them by the ability to write a pretty letter and translate Latin were at the bottom of Diamond’s heap. So for Monsarrat, the ability to look busy was as much of a shield as the well-shaped ovals the Birpai excised from trees.

  He would never have thought himself to be interested in Scottish kelp farming, but found the most recent Review had an article on the matter, and was toying with the idea of mentioning it to Spring when he heard footsteps crossing the courtyard. They weren’t strident enough to belong to Diamond; nevertheless, he calmly laid the magazine aside and picked up his pen.

  The man who entered, Edward Donald, was Dr Gonville’s convict orderly, an uncomplicated northerner who neither sought nor encouraged a fight, but who was quite happy to use his stout frame as a weapon if a fight couldn’t be avoided. Monsarrat liked him – he spoke only when needed and didn’t waste words on trivialities.

  ‘Mr Monsarrat,’ he said, ‘the surgeon has asked me to leave this report for the major on his return.’

  ‘Thank you, Donald. I’ll see it reaches him when he gets back.’

  ‘Mind, he stressed it was for the major only.’

  ‘Of course. The seal will be intact when I put it in the major’s hands.’

  By the way the light was slanting onto his desk through the windows, Monsarrat thought it must be nearly time for the after noon meal. ‘Are you returning to the hospital, Donald, or going to eat?’

  ‘To eat. The bell has gone – did you not hear it?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. May I walk with you?’

  Donald made a guttural sound which could have meant anything. Monsarrat decided to interpret it as ‘if you must’.

  He was grateful for Donald’s silence on the way to the mess. He knew that once he entered, it would be impossible to avoid overhearing convict constables’ talk of drink and women. They would be lucky to get a whiff of either, but their imaginary conquests would have been enough to fill a few lifetimes, and no one called them out on the fallacy of their tales, chiefly because those who would do so wanted to be next at spinning a yarn.

  Monsarrat ate near the coxswain, Farrier, a former wool smuggler from Essex. They’d been smuggling wool out of the country to avoid excise for centuries, and when he was caught Farrier had cracked an exciseman’s skull. He and Mr Neave, the harbourmaster, shared a passion for things Monsarrat failed to understand, talk of lee shores and gunwales far more impenetrable to him than ancient Greek. They could tie bowlines or splice rope without looking, their practised hands remembering the moves, in a process which was the closest thing Monsarrat had seen to a dark art.

  Farrier did not talk about the years when he took wool to the Low Countries or to Dieppe. One didn’t. After a time the prisoner realised there was no profit in reimagining the life that had brought him to transportation and all its indignities. In this mess, and in the other eating places around the settlement, conversation was so much about the here and now that it was as if the there and then simply didn’t exist.

  ‘Did you see the whale went north this morning?’ Farrier asked Monsarrat.

  ‘No,’ said Monsarrat, ‘I didn’t.’ He wanted to say, I’d only be interested if I could travel on its back.

  ‘Yes, there was a whale went past this morning. Blowing. Out maybe a mile. A big one. You know what you can find, Mr Monsarrat? Off Point Plomer, there be still lots of the Spanish mackerel. Never known them late as this in the season. It’s very late for the Spanish and spotted mackerel. They’re generally gone by June. Lots of nice bream though. I love bream for eating. What is your estimation of the bream, Mr Monsarrat?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Monsarrat, ‘oh, it’s … it’s very succulent.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Coxswain Farrier laboriously. ‘That’s the word there I would have used. Succulent is what they are. This be a good time of year here. We took one of the cutters right in behind the breakers and took a netful of mullet and bream. And I had the other boat fishing at the same time in the river at the Lemon Tree Hole, hauling in blackfish. This is a wonderful time of year for blackfish. I always says we are fortunate to be in a place where there are not so many human beings but armies of fish, in numbers greater than the heathen. Yes, this is a good season.’

  ‘When is the low tide this evening?’ asked Monsarrat, an idea forming.

  ‘Now, a good question,’ said Farrier. ‘You get down there to that beach about four in the afternoon, and if you don’t have whiting and flathead by half past four then I’d be most surprised, most surprised indeed. In fact, I would stake my soul upon it. You’ll have bream out of the waves and flathead off the bottom within half an hour. Just with the handline. Whiting. And flathead. You complain to me later if it ain’t so.’

  The convict constables and their overseer Nathaniel Conder, a creature of small but ruthless authority over people who had none at all, were actually comparing the private capacities of a number of women of the settlement. One of them mentioned Daisy Mactier, a woman who accommodated men in return for payments in cash and kind – kind being more important here than cash was. It threw Monsarrat into a depression to think that he had visited Daisy in the same way, with the same need, as these loud men.

  The settlement bell rang and everyone went promptly on their way. It was a habit they had learned. If they dallied, they would not enjoy the status they had, and would be eating with the work crews.

  Monsarrat returned to his room to restore himself again with reading, but couldn’t settle to it. The talk of the damnable constables had stirred him despite his abhorrence for anything they did, said or represented. His mind visited Sophia Stark, for whom he had lost his freedom a second time. But he knew his body would shortly have to visit Daisy Mactier (or more accurately call her to him), who was in his view as far removed from Sophia as clay was from marble, but who had the advantage of being present, and available for the right consideration. Monsarrat hoped a fresh fish would act as sufficient inducement.

  He put away his books, locked up and went back to his hut to fetch his fishing line, and change into drill trousers, for he was sure to get wet to the knees, and made his way to Lady Nelson Beach. It was soothing to ha
ve wavelets running over his feet and to hurl the line out and feel the sinker take it into the air and deposit it, if he threw well, just beyond the breakers.

  If Farrier spoke for the fish, he spoke accurately. After a few minutes he felt that electric tug at the end of the line, and quite a weight – although fish were never as heavy as they seemed at the time of the first strike.

  Hauling in a bream, he killed the fish briskly with a knife, since he didn’t like to see them gasp. As he was struggling to gut it in the failing light, a horseman appeared on the track that came down from the inland corner of the headland onto the beach.

  Monsarrat didn’t recognise him at first – an unfamiliar sensation in a place such as this, where he knew every man with sufficient liberty and means to ride a horse. But when the man stood in the stirrups to ride into the shallows, Monsarrat saw it was Captain Diamond, in a civilian suit – or mufti, as soldiers called it these days. Captain Diamond rode his grey horse along until he reached Monsarrat, and rode out of the water. He looked down at the fish, lying half-beheaded on the hessian bag.

  ‘Not bad, Monsarrat. Not bad for a man of intellect like yourself. Perhaps we are applying your talents in the wrong place.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Monsarrat. There was nothing else to say. Strictly, he wasn’t allowed to be here, or indeed in the kitchen with Mrs Mulrooney. His Majesty’s Government intended Monsarrat’s universe to be bounded by his workroom and his hut, regardless of what the major turned a blind eye to. Diamond did not deal in nods, winks or implied permissions. If it wasn’t codified in triplicate, for Diamond it didn’t exist.

  But for a man who was superior to Monsarrat in every conceivable way – young, free, commissioned and mounted – Diamond seemed agitated this evening. He looked out to sea for a while and gathered inspiration for what was to be next said.