The Soldier's Curse

by Thomas Keneally

The letter to Sophia had been through several dozen drafts, and had never been sent. It was a follow-up to the note he had sent her on the eve of leaving Sydney, more than two years ago. He did not know, now, whether the Prancing Stag still stood, and whether she was still its proprietress. Worse, he did not know whether she still had to fabricate a husband, or whether an actual one had taken the place of the illusion. He couldn’t help but fear the latter.

  Monsarrat’s ticket of leave was by far the most precious document he had ever held in his hand. Previously, it had been his call to the bar, although the ticket of leave had a significant advantage over its predecessor, being genuine.

  But of course, the document came with its own drawback – in the one word which sat innocently on it, Windsor.

  Before he left Parramatta, he visited Sophia one last time, letting her know why he could no longer come to her, asking her whether she would be willing to wait until such a time as he had managed to set the situation to rights. To his amazement, she did not seem at all concerned.

  ‘You’re a resourceful man, Hugh, as resourceful as any I ever met. What does it matter if we can’t be together openly for the present? It’s not a long ride to Windsor; you can, I am sure, find appropriate times to come to me when you won’t be missed, and have the sense to get off the road if you hear hoof beats. At least you’re no longer subject to a curfew – you can stay the night here, and be back at the breakfast table as though nothing has happened.’

  Monsarrat’s first reaction was to immediately dismiss the suggestion. The freedom his ticket of leave conferred on him had been his lodestar for so long, spurring him on to be a conscientious clerk.

  But there was that within him, too, which latched onto risk, a Monsarrat who thought an actual reward was worth the prospect – the probability – of punishment. This shadow Monsarrat had not been in evidence since Exeter, when it had convinced him he could pass himself off as a lawyer indefinitely. Whenever the rational part of him asserted itself and forced him to examine the likely repercussions, the shadow Monsarrat squinted, so that the picture blurred around the edges and therefore became less realistic, less likely.

  After a long slumber, shadow Monsarrat suddenly arose in fine voice. What was the good of freedom, he asked, if you weren’t actually free? Should one not be able to live where one wanted, work as one chose, and bed and marry regardless of location? Surely his diligent service entitled him to that, regardless of one word on a piece of paper. Already, the prospect of losing the freedom he had just gained was seeming a little fuzzy.

  But shadow Monsarrat was not entirely without caution. And under his auspices Monsarrat made a big show of putting down roots in Windsor, and only in Windsor. He applied for and won a position teaching the sons of a local landowner and magistrate, a reasonable man called Cruden.

  ‘Just drill what you can into them, Mr Monsarrat,’ he said. ‘If they come out the other end learning to appreciate art and literature, and able to parrot a few phrases in Latin, I will be well pleased.’

  Monsarrat intended to do a whole lot better than that. That was, however, before he met his students. The only school Monsarrat had known was the quiet of Mr Collins’s grammar school, while his university was the old man’s study. It had never occurred to him that not all classrooms were places of silent application.

  Mr Cruden’s boys, while not bad, would certainly have been birched by Mr Collins.

  He taught the boys Latin grammar, algebra, proper handwriting and the history of the ancient world, but the young Crudens were nearly wild children, raised indulgently by their father because, like their new teacher, they had lost their mother, and much adored by a convict housekeeper who – it became apparent – was Mr Cruden’s mistress. The boys were good-natured, hard-riding, cursing and jovial young men of thirteen and fourteen and their father hoped one day that they would hold a commission in the army. Monsarrat could imagine them thundering around some colony subduing the natives.

  Their father was grateful that Monsarrat seemed at least to be making some inroads into their education. He was careful to teach material that would interest them – so the history of the ancient world focused on great battles and great generals, while he had them practise their handwriting by making up stories which cast themselves in the role of knight or redcoat. It was not possible, sadly, to make algebra and grammar similarly appealing; however, he made a bargain with the boys that if he had their full attention for three-quarters of the lesson, they could take the last quarter off, and race outside to wrestle with each other or gallop around on the horses.

  Cruden’s gratitude, and his domestic arrangements, encouraged shadow Monsarrat all the more. This man, the shadow whispered, is unlikely to care what you do in your own time, nor is he likely to report you even if he should become aware of the situation.

  With Mr Cruden’s leave, Monsarrat set up a scribing business at a local inn during the evenings, as he had at the Caledonia Inn. With the money from this, and his pay from Cruden, he was able to afford a horse – a nag, to be honest, but one capable of easily making the journey between Windsor and Parramatta.

  One of the many things he enjoyed about being free was that he was not required to account for every movement. So if the tutor was absent from his cottage when not on duty, no one called him on it.

  Thus he visited Sophia once a week – far less than he had when a convict, but he assured her he would write to the Colonial Secretary and beg to be assigned to Parramatta. He might even ask the man for a job as a free clerk at the court – surely the Colonial Secretary would see a benefit in having a clerk there who already knew how the place operated, and who could serve as a model of emancipated respectability to those still bonded.

  But he received no reply from the Colonial Secretary. And as his weekly visits came close to fifty-two in number, Sophia’s discontent was becoming more apparent.

  ‘Why must you only come to me on Saturdays?’ she said. ‘Surely you are at liberty to come on Sundays as well?’

  ‘You well know that I’m not at liberty to come at all. But a Sunday, that would necessitate my absence from church. It would be noticed. There would be talk.’

  ‘What of it?’ she said. ‘I, of course, must be seen at church on Sunday morning. I have a full pardon and I own a business in this community, which makes my appearance essential. But you’ve been going faithfully to the church in Windsor every Sunday for nearly a year. Is it not out of the question that you might find yourself with a sore throat, or a cough, which would prevent your attendance? You could then travel up while I am attending church, and I can meet you back at the Stag. After all, the only reputation which will matter is our reputation together here.’

  Monsarrat, however, pointed out to her that Bulmer was likely well aware of the condition on his ticket of leave – in fact, he suspected the man of engineering it. The possibility of encountering the Reverend on a Sunday, when he was abroad after service, daunted him even against the urgings of shadow Monsarrat.

  ‘And how will you meet him, my love, when you’re cloistered with me at the inn?’ Sophia laughed. ‘I assure you, Reverend Bulmer is not in the habit of coming here.’

  So Monsarrat allowed himself to be persuaded, and made several Sunday visits to his unofficial fiancée, to augment the Saturday ones they had been enjoying for a year.

  This success emboldened shadow Monsarrat, so that he left his departure on a Sunday later and later, having to force his poor horse to feats of speed it had never been called upon for in the past in order to return to Windsor at a respectable hour, to prepare his lessons for the rowdy Cruden brood the next day.

  Cruden, though, was not oblivious to the wanderings of his children’s educator, having called at Monsarrat’s cottage a few times on a Sunday on the way back from church. Monsarrat’s absence there, too, had been noted. Cruden wished that all of the staff associated with him be above reproach – at least in the eyes of his neighbours – and so had visited the man’s cottage in o
rder to drag him to church, even if he was spraying catarrh onto the whole congregation, an eventuality the magistrate considered unlikely, as none was in evidence during his children’s lessons. But his hammering on the door, of course, produced no reply.

  As a magistrate, Cruden travelled, and was in the habit of dining in the inns between Windsor and Parramatta. Both the colony and the guesthouse business were small ponds, and he soon heard the rumours of Monsarrat’s visits to Sophia – a great many of her guests had noticed the tall man making his way up the stairs to her bedchamber, and remembered him from his time scribing at the Caledonia Inn.

  Some of them, too, after Monsarrat had first received his ticket of leave, had heard Sophia rail against the unfairness of his restriction to Windsor. This they gleefully reported to Mr Cruden, always happy to exchange the currency of information for possible leniency later, should it be needed.

  One Monday, Cruden came to the room set aside for classes and asked Monsarrat to come outside into the hallway. He did not lose much time in getting to the point.

  ‘I have heard of your awkward situation, Monsarrat,’ said Cruden. ‘You’re not the first convict on whom Bulmer has had a geographical restriction placed in order to prevent moral turpitude. Don’t look so surprised, man – of course it was Bulmer. He’s an impossibly inflexible man. He has an eye on a spot on the bench, you know, and I understand he brought some influence to bear to make sure you didn’t keep your position there. Clerks as good as you, I understand, are not lightly disposed of.’

  ‘With the greatest respect, sir, what precisely do you mean by my awkward situation?’ asked Monsarrat, careful to lather his words with the appropriate tone of subservience.

  ‘Now, Monsarrat, despite your nefarious background and convict past, I have never treated you other than as a man of intellect. I would appreciate the same consideration in return.’

  Monsarrat bowed his head. ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘I will only say it to you, Monsarrat, and will deny it if you repeat it, but it seems improper to impose a legal sanction for a supposed moral failure, if it be just that, a moral failure, but not a murder, or a robbery. I am no friend of the Reverend Bulmer either, as you might have inferred. His brand of morality is wholly unsuited to life here, and serves only to cause a great deal of anger and worry amongst his parishioners.’

  Cruden was silent for a moment, staring at the former convict thoughtfully.

  ‘I understand what you are sometimes doing with your long rides. The letter-writing, yes, that is quite licit and appropriate, but … the visits to other places … Let us just say, I shall not take any action unless forced to, but I must warn you, if you are brought before me for a technical breach, I will be required to apply the appropriate ordinance, and will thus lose a very good tutor to my wild children. So be careful. I don’t expect a man to be inhuman, but I expect him to be wise. And as for frailty, be frail as infrequently as you can manage.’

  Monsarrat felt he was already doing this – his frailty needed expression at least twice a week. And though he was newly awake to the dangers after Cruden’s warning, shadow Monsarrat chose to interpret it as a permission as well as an admonition.

  In the failing light of a winter Sunday, Monsarrat left the Prancing Stag and set out for Windsor. Shadow Monsarrat was unfurling and quickly occupying all available space, having not held this much sway since Exeter.

  His recent dusk departures came at the expense of speed – the roads were rutted enough, in places, to lame a horse. He lacked the funds for another, and would never be able to make the journey to Parramatta by foot in time. Nevertheless, Monsarrat made considerable haste, weaving his way across the gouged surface at a trot, rather than the canter he would have employed in full daylight. He always felt safer when he reached the Windsor police district.

  On hearing the wheels of a carriage behind him, quarrelling with the rough road surface, he rode into the fringes of the eucalyptus forest and watched the vehicle go by containing a well-dressed male and female and a driver. When it had clattered past, he emerged onto the road again, but the sound he had thought was the departing carriage was a second one bearing down on him. There was a curse from the driver of the second carriage, Monsarrat spurred his horse out of the way, came to a standstill on the verge of the road, and saw, staring at him in the last of the light, the Reverend Bulmer and his wife.

  Monsarrat felt an impulse to gallop off then, but he resisted it, from gallantry but more accurately from a sudden desire to defy this minor consecrated bully who nonetheless had the authority to destroy him.

  Bulmer’s nasty smile crept over his face. ‘Out of your district, I see, Mr Monsarrat,’ he squealed. ‘And are you coming to your concubine, or going from? Do you think you are free to be? Out of your district, I mean?’

  ‘By a technicality,’ said Monsarrat, ‘no, sir.’

  Then shadow Monsarrat gave a final flex, and wholly consumed his host. ‘But by the laws of natural justice, I am where I should be.’

  Bulmer’s smile transformed itself into a thin red line, a sword slash. ‘I have my own views about where you should be, according to the laws of divine justice,’ he said. ‘Return to your district at once. And do not think for a second this will go unreported.’

  Again, Monsarrat felt the compounding anger. ‘May I ask, sir, if marriage be the most desirable state – the only morally possible one – between a man and a woman, why you go to such lengths to prevent the development of the amity which leads to it?’

  ‘Amity, is that what you’re calling it now?’ Bulmer sneered. ‘Marriage has one purpose and one only, Monsarrat: the production of children, for which amity is not required. As for any marriage you might make, I’ll do anything I can to prevent you breeding. Intelligence and criminality in the one form is a dangerous thing, and those who carry both within them should not expect mercy.’

  He gave a little nod, then, as though agreeing with himself. Well done, he was likely thinking. That was very elegantly phrased. I might use it in a sermon.

  The gesture, though small, irritated Monsarrat beyond words. ‘I would not expect mercy from your pulpit, sir,’ he said, thinking that he never would have expected to miss Exeter’s reverends, or London’s, who put off their moral strictures at the end of the workday. They served a god of nods and winks. The antipodean god seemed to be a much harsher deity, if His representatives here were anything to go by.

  The Reverend Bulmer reached forward and pulled a coach whip from its holder beside his convict driver. He slashed it in Monsarrat’s direction but it merely grazed the shoulder of Monsarrat’s horse. ‘Get going, sir,’ said Bulmer, in a tight voice, ‘lest I forget that I am a man of peace.’

  A sudden dispassion descended on Monsarrat. He skirted the glorified dray in which the Reverend and his wife were travelling and cantered up the road to Windsor. But when he had gone perhaps a mile he waited until he was certain that Bulmer’s carriage had passed.

  Monsarrat was still in a sufficiently defiant state not to realise the full weight of what he had done. He had not only been found out of his district, but he had also been guilty of insolence, and magistrates – even sometimes the progressive Cruden – loved to have the insolent flogged, since they knew that without servility they might face some sort of white-slave uprising.

  So Monsarrat doubled back to Parramatta to warn Sophia what was to happen.

  He had expected a more emotional reaction. True, one perfect tear from each eye strolled down her cheek – anything more would have been overdoing it.

  She walked up to him, and he thought she was going to kiss him. Then she drew back her hand and struck him, hard, across the face, opening a small gash in his cheek with her ring. It was a fake engagement ring she wore, together with a gold band, as a silent warning to amorous boarders. Monsarrat had hoped to replace it with a real one, but knew that would never happen now.

  ‘You foolish man,’ she said. ‘What an awful, awful waste. We could have
been amongst this place’s first citizens.’

  He did not point out that it was she who had encouraged him to extend his visits. He touched an index finger to his face, examined the blood on it, and looked at her pointedly.

  She did kiss him then, and started crying in earnest.

  It was a great honour for a man in New South Wales to be wept for, because few in the place were in a position to utter promises of deathless love. Congress between men and women was either headlong and reckless or a matter of convenience, of sensible choice, of the person possessing the resources to keep a man or woman out of want and out of trouble.

  There were no New South Wales Eloise and Abelard, no Dante and Beatrice, no Romeo and Juliet. He could not expect the comely Sophia to wait for him – he had not asked for such a thing, nor had she offered. She would not remain a nun to honour his misfortune, a banal one by New South Wales standards. She would see how things turned out – he knew it and she knew it, and though neither of them said it, they both understood that was the way a sane person should proceed. In any case, Sophia would be unlikely to remain alone for long, especially in a place where men so emphatically outnumbered women.

  He rode home undetected later that night, taught the Cruden boys on Monday morning, and was visited by a constable with a warrant on Monday afternoon. He would have been held in gaol pending the Wednesday morning magistrates’ court, but Cruden insisted to the constable that Monsarrat could safely stay there, on his property.

  Taken to court by Mr Cruden in his own surrey, Monsarrat faced his employer in Cruden’s persona as magistrate, and was stripped of his ticket of leave and given into the care of two constables who were to escort him to Parramatta and then by river down to Sydney, where he was to be detained in the prison at Hyde Park awaiting the discretion of His Excellency.

  Monsarrat had feared that he would be flogged, but Mr Cruden and his fellow magistrate were not willing to accommodate the Reverend Bulmer to that extent. But by the judgement of the magistrates, subject to approval by His Excellency, three years were added to his sentence.