Nanberry

by Jackie French

  At least she would have a surgeon. At least her baby hadn’t been starved because his mother was desperate for food or half poisoned with gin. At least …

  The Surgeon’s dark shadow blocked the door. She tried to smile at him. ‘Your child is coming.’

  Chapter 45

  SURGEON WHITE

  SYDNEY COVE, 24 SEPTEMBER 1793

  The baby was beetroot, waving red fists as it yelled, its face scrunched up like a tiny monkey’s. It exactly resembled the hundreds of other newborns he had held — and looked completely different too.

  His son. His tiny, perfect, incredible son.

  He glanced at Rachel, sleeping now, pale and still in the bed. He had sent a message on the ferry to Maria, out at Rose Hill, to come and help for a few weeks. She had come on the return ferry, glad of the chance to make a few coins, for the harvest had been poor.

  Maria was downstairs, now chopping the last of the winter parsnips for a chicken broth and giving the peelings to the o’possum, as though she had never been away. Nanberry was on another voyage to Norfolk Island. The Surgeon held his son, wrapped in a swaddling cloth made from a carefully hemmed part of an old sheet, worn so thin that another kick from the baby might rip a hole in it.

  He had dreamt of this day. His wife would be in her silk-hung bed, there would be carpet on the floor, and brocade curtains; they would hold a christening with silver cups and teething rings, and a fine dinner for all the guests afterwards, to toast the baby’s health. Instead he was in a house of crumbling convict bricks; his son’s mother was a convicted felon, still serving a sentence for theft.

  He was not a well-regarded London specialist with honourable colleagues and friends; his brother officers were thieves and rogues, more intent on making as much money as possible, now that Governor Phillip had left, than on governing the colony.

  But today none of it mattered. This small child meant more than anything he had ever known.

  Rachel stirred in the bed. ‘What shall we call him?’

  ‘Andrew Douglass Keble White.’

  She frowned. ‘But that’s what you called Nanberry.’

  ‘Nanberry didn’t want the name. Andrew Douglass was the Captain who recommended me for this post.’ He smiled at her, this lovely woman, the mother of his son, his companion and his friend. ‘Without him I would not be here.’

  And the baby would never have been born. This miraculous child. His son. He touched the child’s hair with one finger. It was dark already, like his, and he had the blue eyes of the very young. The baby let out a yell again.

  ‘He’s hungry.’ She held out her arms.

  He let the baby go reluctantly. He sat on the bed, watching them both. ‘He will be my true son,’ he said softly. ‘Everything my eldest child should have will be his.’

  Rachel smiled vaguely, too worn out to wonder at the meaning of his words. But the Surgeon knew. His son would not be brought up a convict brat. His son would be a gentleman, like his father.

  His son must go to England.

  Chapter 46

  NANBERRY

  SYDNEY COVE, JULY 1794

  Nanberry sat in the kitchen, teasing the o’possum, holding a crust of bread by the creature’s nose, waiting till it ran up his legs to get it, then holding it high out of reach.

  Graaah! the o’possum muttered. It climbed onto Nanberry’s head and stood on its hind paws. But the bread was still out of reach.

  Rachel looked up from rolling out her pastry. ‘Leave off teasing it, do.’

  Nanberry laughed. He bent and put the bread on the floor. The o’possum jumped down and picked up the food in its paws. It ate it reproachfully, growled again, then jumped up and out of the window.

  The baby gave a chortle and then a cry from its cradle by the fire. The cradle had been made by a ship’s carpenter, and the smooth wood was well joined together, unlike most of the makeshift furniture in the colony.

  ‘Pick him up, there’s a lamb, while I finish this.’

  Nanberry peered doubtfully at the baby, who was waving his tiny fists. ‘Babies smell. At both ends too.’

  ‘Then he needs changing again. And it’s a good smell, you silly boy. A baby and milk smell. Here, I’ll take him.’ She lifted the baby, then laid him on the table and took a clean napkin from the pile on one of the chairs.

  Baby, baby, baby, thought Nanberry. It was all his father and Rachel could talk about now. The whole house revolved around the baby. Except the o’possum. He grinned. The o’possum had more sense.

  Tomorrow he’d sail to the Cape, not as a cabin boy, but as a proper sailor, through the most dangerous waters in the world. Giant waves that crashed ships into splinters, sea monsters with gaping jaws, islands of ice that lured ships to their doom. A new land with different trees and people from this place and tiny Norfolk Island, with carriages pulled by horses, and giant buildings larger than anything he’d seen here, and giant animals called elephant and lion, with teeth the size of carving knives.

  He could hardly wait.

  Chapter 47

  SURGEON WHITE

  COCKLE BAY HOSPITAL; SYDNEY COVE, NOVEMBER 1794

  The first of the thunderstorms had come, bringing hail that flattened the corn and stripped the baby peaches from the trees. But he would not be here to see either the peach or corn crop.

  Surgeon White stood in his office at the hospital and stared at the pages in his hand, just delivered from the newly arrived Daedalus, along with its cargo of pale-faced wretches, sick or dying of scurvy and fever. But after so many years they were no longer his concern. Not now.

  The paper was yellowed from damp and the voyage, the ink already fading even though the orders had only been written a year ago. His hand trembled as he read the words.

  He had longed for this moment for years! At last he could sail from this accursed land! He had been ordered back to England, to civilised company. Back to the world.

  Almost as good — and astonishing — was the news that his Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales had not only been published, but been a massive success, translated into German and about to be translated into French. He was a respected writer and had never known it. There was money waiting for him in England, far more than just his wages while he had been here. Enough money for a proper house, his own carriage and horses …

  At last, finally, he was going home.

  Let others deal with the ships of living corpses who screamed when they saw the sun, their bodies like walking sticks leaking dysentery, or typhus that spread like butter in the heat. He would be back in green England.

  The Surgeon put the letter down and stared out the window. Now — somehow — he had to tell Rachel.

  She was sitting in the chair by the kitchen fireplace, the boy on her lap, spooning mashed carrot and potato into his mouth. The child was just beginning to toddle now, holding onto chairs to steady himself. Soon he’d be running … Pain gripped the Surgeon’s heart. And he’d not be here to see.

  Rachel smiled as he came through the door. ‘He’ll be finished in a moment. I made us a steak and kidney pudding and treacle dumplings …’ She stopped, and looked at his face. ‘What is it?’

  ‘My orders have come through. I’m recalled back to England. I sail on the Daedalus.’

  She stared at him. ‘But … I’ve a month of my sentence to serve yet. Can’t you wait till my papers come?’

  ‘Rachel,’ he said gently. ‘You’re not coming with me. You know that.’

  She stared now at the child, all expression vanished from her face, then nodded. ‘It’s true. You never promised me that. Only that you would take care of me.’

  ‘I will. I’ve arranged for you to keep this house as long as you want it. There’ll be rent from the farm here, meat, milk, whatever they cost. I’ll have money sent to you regularly, enough to keep you in comfort.’

  ‘And Andrew.’ She still gazed at the baby’s face, not at him.

  He shut his eyes. He knew what this would do to her.
‘Rachel … the child must come to England as soon as he is old enough to travel.’

  ‘What?’ It was obvious that she had never even thought of this. ‘No! You can’t do that!’

  ‘He is my son,’ he said softly. ‘A father has every right to say what happens to his child. What is better for him? To stay here, as a convict brat, or come to England as a gentleman? I will send Andrew to school, Rachel — a proper boarding school. Buy him a commission in the army, perhaps.’

  She stared at him, her face like the stone cliffs above the cove. ‘And if you marry? What then?’

  ‘I will never marry a woman who does not respect my son and give him a loving home. Andrew will always be my eldest son.’ He crossed over to her and held out his hand. ‘I have never lied to you. Never promised more than I could.’

  ‘No,’ she whispered. She took his hand in hers.

  ‘Then trust me on this too.’

  She shut her eyes, perhaps to stop the tears. ‘A baby wouldn’t survive the voyage. Not without his mother.’

  ‘I know. There is no hurry. When he’s five, perhaps, or six.’

  A silence. At last she said, ‘When do you leave?’

  ‘As soon as the ship can be restocked.’

  ‘So soon!’

  ‘There may not be another ship for months. Rachel, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I wish it didn’t have to be this way. But we both have known that this was coming.’

  She wiped Andrew’s face, then stood, the little boy held over her shoulder. ‘I’ll go and start your packing.’

  He watched them leave. The boy had still to say his first word. I will miss that, he thought. Hearing him say Papa, watching him learn to walk, losing his baby teeth.

  And Rachel too …

  She would never know how close he had been to saying: Come to England, as soon as you are free. Despite what it would mean he had almost said the words.

  She had been more than a mistress, more than a housekeeper, more even than the mother of his son. She had been a friend, someone he trusted utterly, a good woman. He would leave part of his heart here with her and the boy.

  But he couldn’t stay here. Couldn’t stay and let the place destroy him, as it had Phillip. A man could only take so much. And if he went home he could make a future for his son.

  This was for the best. It had to be for the best.

  He wanted to go upstairs to Rachel, to spend as many of these last hours with her and the boy as he could. But she needed time to accept the news. She wouldn’t cry in front of him, he knew. She wouldn’t plead. Not Rachel.

  Instead he stepped into his study, looking over at his specimen jars and leaf press, deciding which of them to take, for luggage on the ship would be limited and some would be spoilt by the damp air. He would bring some of the eucalyptus oil he had distilled: it was useful for afflictions of the lungs and skin. The dried eucalypt sap that had proved so effective against dysentery, just like the fern root had been: if he could create a demand for that it might bring him even more than his book. His preserved frogs and snakes, the bats, the paintings of the birds, each one exquisite, though none as beautiful as Rachel as she gazed down at his son …

  All at once he remembered the French ships, long ago when they first landed at Botany Bay. The French were taking live animals back with them, for men of science to study back home. A live kangaroo would certainly make an impression …

  And just as certainly die on the ship. He shook his head. There was no point even trying.

  Grahhha! Something rattled the shutters in the next room. It was the o’possum, demanding to be fed again. Rachel must have shut them to keep out the draught.

  ‘Come along now, here you are,’ Rachel’s voice sounded like she had been crying as she let the animal in. He crossed over to the door and watched her; the o’possum perched on the kitchen table, taking a cob of corn from her fingers.

  Corn, bread, hard tack … that animal ate anything. And it was small enough to keep in a cage in his cabin.

  True, an o’possum wasn’t a particularly interesting beast — so like an American o’possum it was hardly worth describing in his book. But on the other hand it was tame, would eat from his fingers. No one had ever managed to tame an American o’possum. He imagined it sitting in its cage while the members of the Royal Society listened to the talk he would give. The ladies would coo and the men feed it biscuits.

  ‘Big Lon!’

  The convict ran up from the woodshed. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Find me a cage. One big enough for the o’possum.’

  Big Lon stared. ‘Why, sir? The animal is tame enough.’

  ‘Because I am going home at last. And the o’possum is coming with me.’

  Chapter 48

  RACHEL

  SYDNEY COVE, 30 NOVEMBER 1794

  Rachel stared at the o’possum in its cage. She’d expected it to snarl or try to bite. It had shrieked and yelled at first. But now it crouched in its cage, bewildered. It looked smaller, somehow: all big black eyes and fur. She shook her head and walked upstairs, carefully lifting her skirt, and peered at Andrew, curled up in his crib for his afternoon nap. The child had no idea that his father was going to leave them, even before Christmas came.

  She wondered what to do next. Something, anything, to keep her occupied, to stop her thinking. The Surgeon’s trunks were packed. His clothes were thin, not much better than rags despite all her mending. But he’d need them on the voyage, at least till he could buy better — at the Cape on the way home, perhaps. He’d need one good suit to wear when he landed in England, till he could find a tailor to make him more.

  Big Lon would continue to work the garden, to grow vegetables for them and bring the wood and water. The Surgeon had arranged for extra food to be sent from the land he owned each week too, and goat’s milk, or even medicines from the hospital, whatever they had that she needed. She and her son would want for nothing that this colony could give them.

  Except for him. A lover. A father. The centre of a happy home, where her son could grow up in peace, their happiness and charity spreading to others. It was all that she had ever wanted.

  Stop thinking, she told herself. Do something. He was at the hospital now, overseeing the distilling of more eucalyptus oil to take to England. Precious hours when he could have been with her, and with their son …

  Portable soup, she could make him that. Bones and vegetables boiled down till they turned into a hard jelly that would keep for months — the hard months aboard ship with no fresh food. There wasn’t dried fruit in the colony for him to take.

  She filled the stew pot with vegetables, herbs, chicken bones and beef bones, and called to Big Lon for a bucket of water and more wood. Soon the stock was simmering, the house filling with the scent.

  Still no sound from Andrew upstairs. Still no Surgeon’s footsteps. She wandered into the study to gaze again at his trunks, his specimen jars, the crates of dried plants. The o’possum glanced up at her from its cage, then seemed to shrink back into itself again.

  Perhaps, like her, it had simply given up.

  For the first time rage filled her. He was taking an o’possum, but not her! You could boast of a pet o’possum, but not of a convict wife. He was leaving her, imprisoned even though she had no ball and chain around her leg, held in a prison colony across the world. There was no escape, not even when she’d served her sentence. No escape for her, just like the o’possum.

  She picked up some leaves to feed it. The animal watched her, its dark eyes wide. She had moved before she knew it. She picked up the cage, opened the door. The animal sat there as if it didn’t know what was happening. Maybe it was simply half asleep.

  ‘Run, you stupid creature! Wake up! Run!’

  She tipped the cage on its side, tumbling the o’possum to the floor.

  It moved then, sitting up, staring at her. She shook her head in despair. ‘Run!’ she cried again.

  And suddenly it did, scampering to the window, jumping out. She peered
out of the window, but it had already gone.

  She looked at the cage, the gnawed corncobs on the floor. She put them back in the cage and placed it where she’d found it — but with the door open — then swept the floor. When the Surgeon finally came home, dark circles under his eyes, she was stirring the soup. She turned to him. ‘All well at the hospital?’

  ‘As well as I can leave it.’

  She heard boots in the hallway. Porters, come to take his trunks.

  ‘Handle those jars carefully!’

  She watched as he went into his study; she waited, breathless, till she heard his footsteps coming back.

  ‘The o’possum has gone!’

  ‘Gone? How can it be gone?’

  ‘It must have opened the cage door,’ he said slowly.

  ‘Who’d have thought an o’possum would know how to do that?’ She turned back to the soup.

  ‘Mama!’ The sound came from upstairs.

  The Surgeon stared at her. ‘He’s talking!’

  She nodded. ‘Just that word so far. I’d best get him before he tries to come down the stairs.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  She said nothing, feeling his eyes on her as she climbed up to the bedrooms, picked up Andrew, and began to change his wet napkin. The Surgeon leant against the doorjamb, still watching them both.

  ‘I’m sorry about your o’possum,’ she said at last. ‘He would have been a fine thing to show off in England. Maybe he’ll come back tonight.’

  ‘No.’ His voice was gentle. ‘I don’t think he will come back. Not once he’s been held prisoner in a cage. You don’t willingly return to prison.’

  He was talking about more than the o’possum, she knew. He was saying that even if he was offered a posting back here, he’d refuse it.

  He held out his arms for Andrew, and gathered the child to him. Tears ran down his cheeks, but he said nothing, just breathed in the scent of the baby’s hair.