‘Here comes Miss Letty’s captain.’
‘Look at him legging it!’
Bridie and Meg had managed to convey mockery, dislike, and admiration, all at the same time; but in Sydney the Hall girls had said, ‘Oh, Logan,’ and had refrained from looking at her, or at each other. Another strand of hair fell from her bonnet into the wind. She gathered it all together, wound it on two fingers, and poked it beneath her bonnet as she turned to face Mrs Bulwer.
‘How will—they—come up the bay?’
Feeling the occasion to be one for courage, she was sad to be betrayed by her shy voice. And now, forced to persist against Mrs Bulwer’s look of cool interrogation, she sounded shyer still.
‘I mean—the convicts?’
‘Oh, the pris-oners? Why, how else but in a boat? And be assured, they will be made as comfortable as is consistent with their condition. As indeed they were on the voyage from Sydney. There is more room between decks on the Isabella than one might think. If only she could cross the bar I am sure the journey would be less tedious for everyone. Or if there was a way by land. Of course there is a way. The runaways find it. But such a wild rough terrible way it must be, it doesn’t bear thinking of. Do sit down, my dear, you will blow away. Did Letty write you about the Laetitia Bingham? The commandant had her built on the settlement. I believe there’s nothing that man can not do, if he puts his mind to it. He named her, of course, after Letty.’
Against such purposeful animation Frances could persist no further, but was left only with the trifling independence of continuing to stand, and of asserting that Letty’s second name was Anne, not Bingham. ‘So he must have named the boat after their little girl.’
‘Indeed? Oh, but I am certain.’
So was Frances certain, but her bonnet now blew off and saved her from insistence. As she twirled on a heel and threw up her hands to catch it, she let go her shawl, which slipped down her back and dropped to the deck. By the time she had retrieved it she saw that Captain Clunie, who had evidently just come up on deck, had picked up her bonnet and was offering it to her with a bow. He was about thirty-five, big and staid, and during a seven-day voyage on which neither had been sick, she had found him almost entirely silent. Frances was seventeen; she was not stupid, but was often absurd. His silences had had the unexpected effect of making her gush. Shamed by this, she had vowed each time never to do it again, yet at each meeting had done it again, and indeed, was doing it now.
‘Oh, thank you, Captain. You have saved my very life!’
He gave his little blink, his little bow. Mrs Bulwer fluttered up and set herself at Frances’s side. Her clothes had so many loose surfaces—shawls, veils, ribbons, capes, fringes—that in the wind she seemed to ripple all over with sharp little black flames. She confronted Captain Clunie with her muff raised vertically on one hand. ‘Captain, do tell us your wife is soon to join you on the settlement?’
His wife, he replied, was visiting her parents in Oxfordshire. She would soon sail for the colony, but whether she came to the settlement or not would depend on the length of his stay. He excused himself with another bow, then turned away and set himself to pace the small deck.
Mrs Bulwer set her chin in the end of her muff. ‘H’mmm.’ But then she saw that Frances, to free both hands for attention to her loose hair, was gripping her bonnet and shawl between her bent knees. She sprang forward. ‘Give those to me!’
Frances saw in her outraged face the reflection of her own lack of grace and propriety; she unloosed her knees and let her take the bonnet and shawl.
‘Now, either go below, or tuck all your hair under your bonnet. It is better to look skinned than like a tinker woman.’
Louisa Harbin, very tall and thin, and clutching about her with long hands a furred and hooded mantle of dark blue, dragged her feet as she crossed the deck to her chair. She had just come up from below. Her big lips were compressed and her deeply lidded eyes all but shut. She sat down in a resigned but gingerly way, shut her eyes completely, and folded her hands in her lap. The fur trim on her mantle, from her habit of clutching it, was worn to the hide on the breast and inside cuffs. Mrs Bulwer clucked with her tongue and hurried over to her.
‘Louisa, I am happy to see you so well.’
Louisa opened her eyes. ‘I am always a little better, Amelia, in the bay.’ Her voice was languid but precise. ‘But pray, don’t call me well.’
‘The great thing is not to give in to it. Look, here is Miss O’Beirne.’ Mrs Bulwer took Frances by an arm and drew her forward. ‘Here is Frances.’
‘So it is.’ The sick equine face in the dark hood quite pleasantly smiled. ‘Frances, do I look well?’
Frances hesitated.
‘Thank you, my dear.’
‘Well, I did not mean well, Louisa, but well enough. You can help us. Did the commandant name the Laetitia Bingham after Letty or the little girl?’
‘The little girl. He named something else after Letty. I think it was a plain. You are looking at me in great puzzlement, Frances. Why?’
‘Your face looks thinner, ma’am.’
‘But not because she has been sick. She had four teeth drawn in Sydney, and the swelling went down on the voyage.’
‘Yes, Frances, I had that lovely fat face when we embarked. I expect you thought me quite bonny. Come and sit here, out of the wind. I am glad to see you brought warm garments. So many don’t.’
‘Letty told me to,’ said Frances, as she sat down.
‘The first people,’ said Amelia Bulwer, ‘brought no warm garments at all. Not for anybody. They say the whole settlement was a-shiver every night from June to September, but the commissariat in Sydney could not be persuaded of it. They said it was the tropics, and how could anyone be cold in the tropics.’
In spite of her vivacity, most of Amelia’s attention was for Captain Clunie as he passed and repassed. ‘But what a difference these days!’ she said distractedly. ‘Louisa, I have been telling Frances how comfortable we all are now.’
‘You’ve been telling her how good and sweet and amiable we all are. I know you, Amelia. No wonder she looks dejected. You make the place sound insipid.’
‘Then see if you can cheer her.’
Amelia fluttered away as she spoke and accosted Captain Clunie. His pause was of the briefest, his bow little more than a headthrust, like the first forward move of a pigeon; but she was not deterred from falling into step at his side, talking and leaning forward to trace the effect of her words in his face.
‘How her clothes blow about,’ said Louisa. ‘Though it suits her. It makes her look less like a porcupine. She is in mourning again. At this rate her Lancelot will soon purchase his captaincy. These journeys are very tiresome. We shall hardly be there before dusk.’
‘Mrs Harbin, is it an insipid place?’
‘Not exactly. What do you think of our new captain?’
‘If I dislike him, it is only because he makes me dislike myself. I seem doomed to act foolishly in his presence. Some people know in advance how they will act, but I don’t. I am made up of hundreds of persons, and I never know which one will come out. I am at the mercy of my company. I think I divine what they believe me to be, then can’t help acting the part. Which means I respond differently to everybody, and falsely to all but a few. And when I meet one of those few, I am so grateful that I become excited, and talk too much, and put them off. Were you ever like that, Mrs Harbin?’
‘Yes,’ said Louisa in a startled voice. ‘Yours seems an extreme case. But it’s true I was slightly like that.’
‘I shall change, too. I have determined to change.’
‘It would certainly be more comfortable. You must acquire a manner, and refer your intelligence to it, and most of your instincts. That’s the way it’s done. Of course you must work at it. But you will have Letty to help you n
ow.’
‘That’s what Mrs Bulwer told me,’ said Frances in disappointment.
‘Amelia is not always wrong. And I am sure she took the greatest trouble with you. Letty is first in consequence among us, and you share her greater glory besides.’
‘Do you mean our cousin Lord Clanricarde? I have never met him.’
‘Gracious, don’t tell Amelia.’
‘But Letty has, two or three times.’
‘Better not tell her that, either.’
‘I see. Does Letty—’
‘Say no more, child. What we were speaking of before is of more interest. At the mercy of your company. It’s a striking phrase. How did your company in Sydney affect you?’ She turned fully to face Frances, setting back her hood a few inches to disclose a hairpiece of tight titian curls. ‘I speak of the Hall girls.’
Frances quickly put a hand to her smallpox scars, then as quickly folded it with the other in her lap. ‘I felt myself with them. Never more so with anyone. Except the servants at home, and my two little sisters. And one other, a gentleman. But no,’ she said, in her scrupulous way, ‘I am apt to deceive myself about gentlemen. I will only say this—that with the Hall girls I felt almost entirely myself.’
‘And so you talked too much, and put them off.’
‘No. It wasn’t like that with them. I think I let them talk too much. We walked all over the Surry Hills, talking and talking.’ Frances broke into laughter. ‘You should have seen us!’
Her transforming laughter made Louisa look at her with a new kind of attention. ‘I did,’ she said. ‘Not on the Surry Hills, but in George Street. Six Hall girls, of all sizes, and two young men with open collars. The girls were pointed out to me as the daughters of the imprisoned editor. My informant didn’t know the young men, or you. But I recognised you when I saw you on the Isabella.’
‘You can’t be a dyed-in-the-wool tory, then. You were so nice to me.’
‘Dyed-in-the-wool? I don’t think I’m a dyed-in-the-wool anything. From time to time I am reached by these new ideas, but I’m too lazy to disturb myself with them. I confess they could be disturbing. I must tell you this, however—I am not the only one who saw you with the Hall girls.’
‘Mrs Darling? When I visited Government House, I fancied she looked at me strangely.’
‘I was not thinking of such elevated persons. Amelia Bulwer saw you.’
Amelia, now stationary at the side with Captain Clunie, was still talking. Frances pulled a quick wry childish face. ‘Well, I don’t care. They may say what they please. Elizabeth and Barbara Hall are heroines, and Mr Edward Smith Hall is a hero.’
‘I take it Elizabeth and Barbara are the two eldest, who care for all the others?’
‘There are emancipist servants.’
‘You don’t think it irresponsible of Mr Smith Hall to get himself jailed, and leave his daughters with former convicts?’
Frances had seen a portrait of the editor. She recalled a thin face, an intense but smiling gaze, a loose cravat. She raised her chin. ‘He is in jail in the cause of truth and justice.’
‘Gracious, which of your many selves is this?’
Frances was herself conscious of having put it badly, of having been both banal and freakish, the one in the words chosen, the other in the exalted tone. But though tempted by Louisa’s invitation to laugh and forget it, she felt obliged to persist.
‘I hope it’s the best of my selves, ma’am. Mr Smith Hall asks for trial by jury for everyone. He would have no trial by military officers, nor a selected council instead of an elected assembly. And he sets himself against all sentences that exceed the law, and in that respect he spares no one, not Governor Darling himself. You must have heard, ma’am, of Governor Darling’s sentence on those two soldiers.’
Louisa had shut her eyes. ‘I suppose you are proving your theory,’ she murmured. ‘After seeing you with those girls I did expect you to be like this.’
But still Frances would not stop. ‘And you must know that one of them died, and that Mr Smith Hall wrote very strongly about it in the Monitor. And that’s why the governor hates him, and induces the persons he criticises to bring libel actions. No, not induces. Instructs.’
‘Do you know which persons are bringing these current libel actions, Frances?’
Frances looked slightly aghast at this sterner tone, but continued with the same childish exaltation as before. ‘There are a number. I have heard names. I have forgotten. All I know is that Governor Darling is determined to bring Mr Smith Hall down. And he refuses to be brought down. So he is kept in jail.’
‘From where he continues to edit his journal.’
‘He is so brave.’
‘Any reply I make will sound ridiculous. You have fallen into a nest of radicals.’
‘He proclaims himself a liberal tory.’
‘What is that? No, pray don’t tell me. I expect it is something like a heathen christian. There are plenty of those, though they seldom proclaim themselves.’ Louisa was looking at Frances with curiosity and amusement. ‘However did you become acquainted with the wretched girls?’
‘Through a young gentleman. A passenger with me in the Hooghly.’
‘One of the young men with open collars?’
‘Yes. The dark one. Mr Edmund Joyce.’
‘Was he the “one other” you spoke of?’
‘He was. He had a letter to Mr Smith Hall.’
‘He looked as if he would have a letter to Mr Smith Hall.’
‘From Mr Joseph Hume.’
‘Indeed!’ Louisa reflected for a moment. ‘Ah, but there will never be a whig government,’ she then said with confidence.
‘We believe there will be.’
‘Very well. But even so, how radical are they?’
‘I know nothing of radicals. I speak of reformers. There are reformers among them.’
‘Yes, and how they embarrass the rest! And in any case, child, what would be the use? Even if they took the Commons, the Lords would head them off. Here is our bread and gruel.’
But Frances, ignoring the woman who was serving them, said with indignation, ‘Is that what you hope for, ma’am?’
‘I’m sure I don’t care. But facts must be faced.’
‘And injustice must rule?’
‘You must surely be hungry. Thank you, Madge.’
Frances also murmured her thanks, and looked up into the woman’s face. One of the commandant’s household servants, sent to serve her on the voyage, she was short and thick, with swarthy skin lined in a random and peculiar manner, and small black eyes that reminded Frances of struggling beetles. Her dress was of coarse grey cotton, but she displayed no number, and round her neck she wore a clean muslin kerchief. Before she bobbed and turned away, Frances detected in her expression something of the tolerance towards herself displayed by Louisa, but while Louisa’s was open and ironic, this woman’s seemed contemptuous and sly. The gruel was greasy but scented with herbs. Louisa ate and drank with thoughtful slow placidity, but Frances, who felt she had talked herself into a trap she could not define, and who was dismayed because the convict Madge Noakes aroused revulsion in her instead of pity, drank with her head bent and encircled the cup with her hands.
Captain Clunie and Mrs Bulwer were taking their gruel standing at the side.
‘Mind,’ said Captain Clunie, ‘some of Smith Hall’s proposals are already in practice at home, but that is not to say they’re practicable in a colony partly populated by former convicts.’
‘Exactly! It is not to say so.’
‘Besides, I dislike the ranting of fellows like that.’
‘The ranting. Exactly! Here is Madge Noakes to take our cups. Madge, I hope Mr Cowper was able to take some gruel.’
‘He could not be woke, ma’am
.’
‘Is Mr Cowper often in this state?’ asked Clunie when the woman had gone. Clunie had not been long in the colony.
‘H’mmm. I think I shall only say that in this instance his weakness may be compounded by sea-sickness. Oh—but—such a son for such a father! When I called on the Reverend Cowper in Sydney, I asked when the gospel was to be carried to our poor native blacks. His dear face grew grave. “We don’t want a repetition of the Reverend Vincent incident,” he said. Not a word of blame for the commandant. He is a saint.’
But at the mention of the commandant Clunie had coolly turned his head. Across the deck, Madge Noakes was taking the cups from Louisa and Frances. ‘Why was that girl allowed to roam about like that?’ he asked in an offended voice. ‘Why wasn’t she put with some decent woman?’
‘But you were staying with Mrs Pollard,’ said Louisa. ‘Such a starchy old thing. Yet she let you go about like that. Does she tipple?’
‘No!’ Frances was forced to laugh at last. ‘She was sick. She let me go about with her daughter.’
‘Oh. Who had a friend she wished to visit. Don’t reply. I am not asking you to betray anyone. I find it all very interesting. I am not much in the way of meeting radicals. I expect there is a kind of excitement in the lives of such people. They certainly look excited. All the same, you will change these opinions in two or three weeks.’
‘Neither two nor three,’ said Frances. ‘Never!’
The Commandant Page 2