The Commandant

by Jessica Anderson

‘In this climate the curl would dwop out. And you are too young for a hairpiece like Louisa’s.’

  ‘When does it get hot?’

  ‘It will start in five or six weeks.’

  ‘I wish I had curls like yours, and could wear it short.’

  Letty sent herself a swift glance of approval in the mirror. ‘It is no longer modish . . .’ she picked up a strand of Frances’s hair and felt the texture . . . ‘but Patwick dotes on it.’

  Frances hid her eyes by looking down at her lap. The satisfaction in Letty’s voice (it had sounded so private) evoked in her this modesty, and with it, a rankling surprise that Patrick Logan could dote on anything. Letty had drawn back a pace and was looking at Frances’s hair with her head on one side. ‘So I shall keep my short curls,’ she said absently, ‘until we get back.’

  Frances raised her eyes. ‘Back where?’

  ‘To where modishness matters. If indeed we ever do.’

  ‘Do you like it here, Letty?’

  Letty took the comb and quickly parted Frances’s hair with one long stroke from forehead to nape. ‘In some ways it has been like an island. We will twy this. Hold that half. No, keep your head stwaight.’

  She became as brisk and busy as a cook making pastry. Dividing and combing and plaiting, she said, ‘Fwances, will you teach Wobert?’

  ‘Indeed I will!’ cried Frances in gratitude.

  ‘Are you a good teacher?’

  ‘I don’t know. I have only taught Hermione and Lydia, and they are both so clever by nature.’

  ‘I hope they are not too clever.’ Letty secured a loose knot at one side of Frances’s head. ‘Don’t look, if you please, until I have done the other half.’

  Frowning, she began work on the other half, while Frances obediently watched only her face. The darkness beneath her eyes, purplish near the bridge of her nose, must have been there all the time, though her animation had diverted attention from it. In her preoccupation two thin lines appeared from her nostrils to the outer corners of her lips. These deepened. A minute passed in silence. ‘Are Hermione and Lydia pwetty?’ she asked.

  ‘Pretty? They are beautiful.’

  ‘But only childwen still.’

  ‘Yes, but upon my word, they are beautiful. Uncle Fitz thinks so too. He says such girls may rise to great heights in the world, with the right patronage.’

  ‘I hate to think what he means. He is quite disweputable. Still, he is worldly, and not a fool. Descwibe their manners.’

  ‘Oh, Letty . . .’

  ‘Then their manners are not . . .?’

  ‘I have done my best.’

  ‘Of course. And they will be as gwateful to you as I am. I am sure there is nothing that can’t be mended. Don’t cwy, dear Fwances. You are like me, always cwying for nothing.’

  But Frances, with a handkerchief pressed to her eyes, now began to laugh. ‘I shan’t be able to hear with all this hair over my ears.’

  ‘Never mind. It is charming! There, you may look now.’

  Frances regarded herself first with surprise, then with gathering criticism. She raised a hand to her smallpox scars, but Letty took it and drew it away.

  ‘No! About those you must be absolutely bwazen. There is nothing else for it. Tell me you like your hair.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Frances was turning her head this way and that. The face of the young gardener flashed again in her memory, but again it seemed inopportune to mention him. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘it is too frivolous for my face.’

  ‘Your face will gwow into it. Yes, it will do vewy well.’ She lifted and settled Frances’s frilled collar. ‘Madge Noakes will do your clear starching. She has the twick of making it last in the heat. You must have muslin dwesses. Here it is muslin muslin nearly all the year. Like the seaside at home. You will need at least five more. I had a bolt of white muslin sent from Sydney last month. Are you a good seamstwess?’

  ‘Only a very plain—’

  ‘Well, I am a vewy fine one. And Amelia Bulwer can cut.’

  Frances said she would not dream of troubling Mrs Bulwer, but Letty cried earnestly, ‘My love, you must twouble her. Or else go dwessed like Mother Bunch. On eighteen pounds a year you can’t get your clothes from Sydney or London.’

  ‘Then I shall have to do as I am. I don’t like Mrs Bulwer, and when I don’t like a person I hate taking favours from them. It makes my flesh creep.’

  ‘Fwances! That is wicked pwide.’

  ‘I suppose it is pride.’

  ‘You must pway to God to purge it from your heart.’

  ‘Could I not pray directly for five white muslin dresses?’

  Letty sank into the winged chair opposite Frances’s. ‘Fwances!’

  ‘I am sorry, Letty. I know it is wrong to treat God as a haberdasher.’

  ‘Enough! You are showing a side of yourself I find most stwange.’

  ‘It is a new self even to me.’ Frances gave herself a glance in the mirror. ‘Perhaps it’s my hair.’

  ‘It is blasphemy. Patwick would send you back on the next ship.’

  ‘Is Patrick so very—’

  ‘But we shan’t mention it to him or to anyone else. You will never do it again. It is fwightfully unlucky to blaspheme.’ Letty leaned out of her chair and set a hand on Frances’s wrist. ‘My love, do let Amelia cut the dwesses. You judge her too soon. How long have you known her?’

  ‘Only—’

  ‘Exactly! She is kindness itself.’

  ‘For convenience’s sake, I shall try to think so.’

  Letty released her wrist. ‘You are vewy sharp, sister.’

  ‘I know,’ said Frances unhappily.

  ‘Either too shy, or too sharp. So shy last night you could not find a word to say to Patwick. And yet, today . . .’

  Frances put both hands over her eyes. ‘I know! I wish I were more like you and Cass. Upon my word I do!’

  ‘Cass was not too pwoud to let Amelia—’

  ‘You are right, it is a kind of pride.’

  ‘Now you are being sensible. We will ask her to cut only four. You think I am making a gweat fuss about a little thing. Well, uncover your eyes. I must speak to you on an important matter. I will be quite candid. It is best to be candid about this.’

  Frances uncovered her eyes. ‘You are going to speak of the company I kept in Sydney.’

  ‘What company?’

  ‘Mrs Bulwer has not told you?’

  Letty shook her head. ‘If it is something I ought to know, you will tell me yourself, Fwances. No, I was going to speak of husbands.’

  ‘Husbands?’

  ‘Yes. Do you want one?’

  ‘I—suppose I do. Yes, I do. But I hardly like to say so, lest I sound like a husband hunter.’

  ‘I said we would be candid. We will be more than candid. We will be bold, and admit that ev’wy woman who wants a husband is in some degwee a husband hunter, though it is a hateful term. Vewy well! What are her weapons? First,’ said Letty, holding up a forefinger, ‘her looks. If she is pwetty, so much the better. If not, she may attend her skin and hair with diligence, wub her teeth with salt and chalk, and be fwesh and pleasant in her dwess. Second—’ Letty held up another finger ‘—her manners. It is better to be shy than sharp, but better still to be neither. You must cultivate a weliable manner.’

  ‘That’s what Mrs Harbin told me.’

  ‘Louisa is vewy clever.’

  ‘Yes, and so are you, Letty. So I suppose it is true. And I don’t know what makes me resist it.’

  ‘Pwide.’

  ‘I suppose that is true, too.’

  ‘To be sure. Now we come to her backgwound.’ Letty raised a third finger. ‘I am not sure that I ought not to put it first. Because when a man see
ks a wife, he first sees the young woman as part of a backgwound. There is a comfortable house, and good food, and pleasant conversation. And always an older woman, a mother or aunt or sister. She is important. By speaking to her more than to the young woman, he may disguise his intentions until they are quite firm, and that gives him a feeling of ease and safety. And as well, she may pwaise the young woman, whereas the young woman may not pwaise herself. And if she twuly loves the young woman, so much the better. She teaches others to love her.’

  ‘And yet,’ said Frances, ‘you had none of that. Oh, you had it while you and Cass were living with our aunts, but not when you came home on that visit.’

  ‘And met Patwick. No. But there are not many such men. A fine-looking captain may easily find a wife with means, and indeed, having spent his patwimony on his commission, he was looking for exactly that. But once we met, he cared nothing for means or backgwound. He would have had me if I had lived in a twee.’

  Frances, lowering her eyes from her sister’s face (bemused with memory) considered the commandant in this new aspect, and was forced to grant him the dignity of his love. She raised her eyes. ‘Then may not I also meet—’

  Letty broke in with surprising sharpness. ‘It is foolish to wish for it. Men who make such choices are capable of wecklessness.’

  She would not let Frances speak. She raised a hand. Her gravity was a warning. ‘I say only that backgwound and guidance are safer.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Frances, ‘I see that, because whatever I may crave for myself, I should choose background and guidance for Hermione and Lydia.’

  ‘Fwances, I am glad you say that. So would I choose it for them. I want it for them most earnestly.’

  Letty, leaning out of her chair, pleading into Frances’s eyes, was earnest indeed. ‘In another few years they will need it, and now that both our aunts are dead, who is to give it to them but you and me and Cass? And who knows but that one of us will be dead by then? You know how it is with women—their lives wushing out in their blood. Oh, it can happen so fast, with the world tilting and a shade cweeping over the sun. Oh, let us not speak of it. One can only pway. So you see, when I hear you blaspheme . . .’

  ‘I shan’t again,’ said Frances in a frightened voice. But Letty had risen, and now walked quickly to the window, and stood with her back turned. As a child Frances had often heard the servants describing fatal childbirth: the screams and beating fists, the live torn bodies, the green bloodless corpses. She now watched her sister with the same expectancy she had once turned on the aghast and whispering servants, as if she awaited from that figure at the window the first notes of Bridie’s long wail; but as Letty turned from the window her mouth (though with a wry twist) was smiling, and her hands were extended with a simple expository grace.

  ‘Women,’ she said. ‘Even supposing they survive, they are at the mercy of their husbands. I speak of course of those with no means. They may be widowed and left penniless with young childwen. Or a husband may be disgwaced and thought unfit to employ, and then they must all starve, or depend on the kindness of wich welations. Who are not always kindly disposed. Indeed they are not. Oh, but don’t speak of it, don’t speak of it.’ She sat again in the winged chair, arranging her skirt over her thighs. ‘It will not happen to you. Let us speak of you. Is there anyone you fancy?’

  ‘I don’t know how I can still want to marry, after all you have just said. But there is one young man. His name is Edmund Joyce. But I don’t like him quite so much as I pretend. I met him on the voyage out. We were the only young passengers, and he was so pleasant that it began to seem peculiar in me not to be a little in love with him. He suggested that we correspond.’

  ‘He ought to first ask Patwick’s permission, or mine.’

  ‘Oh Letty, these days—’

  ‘I know. I am not so much behind the times. Is he a young man of leisure?’

  ‘He is a lawyer.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘That pleases you?’

  For Letty’s satisfied response had surprised Frances, who had almost said, ‘only’ a lawyer. However, Letty now modified her satisfaction with a provisional ‘Well . . .’ and went on to say that though the law was not as smart as the army, it was quite respectable. ‘More so, I think, than doctowing. If you and I go to Sydney with Patwick, you may certainly pwesent the young man.’

  ‘If you and I go? But if Patrick goes to Sydney, will it not be because the fifty-seventh is under orders for India? So you and I would certainly go.’

  ‘Oh, but even if the wegiment stays in the colony, Patwick must soon go to Sydney. To pwess his charge of libel, you see, against Mr Smith Hall.’

  Frances put her left hand to her cheek. ‘A charge of libel?’

  ‘Why, yes. It is always a charge of libel with that gentleman, is it not?’ Letty reached out and gently lifted Frances’s hand away from her cheek. ‘Wemember what I told you.’

  ‘In what way did Mr Smith Hall libel Patrick?’

  ‘By accusing him of murder, if you please. Oh yes, I don’t wonder you look surpwised,’ said Letty, though Frances looked less surprised than stupid. ‘He met a convict in Sydney who told him that Patwick had had a man flogged to death. A man named Swann. But that same man Swann died in hospital here, of a disease. And of course there is pwoof of it. Poor Mr Smith Hall. He must have a gweat and noble heart, to be so easily deceived.’

  Frances continued to sit like a lump, to frown and to stare. ‘Now,’ said Letty, ‘your hair is too fwivolous for your face.’

  ‘But how could Mr Smith Hall have made such a mistake? I think I always knew there was something—something—I couldn’t or wouldn’t think what. Severity. Yes. But murder? I know he writes about—the power of the commandants at the penal stations. Severity, and sentences exceeding the ones given by the courts. But I thought, I took it for granted, that he wrote mostly about Norfolk Island. Or Van Diemen’s Land. Or, if he wrote about this place, I thought it would be something—trivial. But murder. As blunt as that. Was it as blunt as that?’

  Letty said yes, it had been quite as blunt as that.

  ‘But how could he make such a mistake? He is a clever man.’

  ‘Is he clever? I am sure he is a good man. I know he is a churchman, and a member of the Benevolent Society. And he is bookish. But to be bookish is not to be clever. You are bookish. Are you clever?’

  ‘No indeed.’

  ‘You will be clever one day. You still lack knowledge of the world.’

  A knock at the door sent Letty to open it. ‘Yes, Madge,’ Frances heard her say, ‘you may bring it now. One of the men will help you. And Madge—’ Letty’s voice took on an edge of annoyance—‘secure your kerchief, Madge.’

  As soon as she came back, Frances said, ‘Letty?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Letty, in Sydney I became acquainted with the Hall girls.’

  ‘Indeed? Poor girls. And so many of them.’

  ‘Yes, and all so—so—I was going to say clever, but I suppose I must say bookish. I think you would call them radicals, but I call them reformers. I must tell you I was in sympathy with their ideas.’ She broke off to drop into a baffled abstraction, then looked pleadingly at Letty and said, ‘And I still am.’

  ‘So am I, I am sure,’ murmured Letty.

  ‘And you should also know,’ said Frances, ‘that Mr Edmund Joyce is a real radical, and proclaims himself as such.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Letty, smiling, ‘if that is all he does . . .’

  ‘It is not all. At home he wrote about prison reform for one of the radical journals. There was such a great fuss that his father sent him to the colony to stay with an uncle for six months.’

  ‘That sounds as if his father has means. Who is his uncle?’

  ‘A Colonel Anning.’

  ‘Lately of the Buffs! A c
harming man. And poor Mawy Anning. Their only son—only child indeed—dead of a fever at twenty. How vewy convenient. You will have no need to pwesent Mr Joyce. We are bound to meet him at the Annings’. And Patwick and he will find a subject in common. Pwison weform. Patwick says Newgate is a disgwace. How diff’went the poor things must find it here. No damp stone walls, no bitter cold, no jail fever. Indeed, we may be called weformers.’

  Frances’s eyes, alternately baffled and hopeful, had not left her sister’s face. ‘But Letty,’ she said, ‘what of the lash?’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘Is it not—used too much?’

  ‘Gwacious, when one thinks how it was used in the navy and the army! Why, in the fifty-seventh they were called the Shellbacks. And the Diehards too. And as pwoud of one as of the other.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And nor did they always have a medical man pwesent. Here they must be pwonounced fit for the lash. It is a stwict wule.’

  ‘I rather think it makes it worse. It adds coldness and deliberation.’

  ‘Oh, Fwances, my love, you are so silly. Would you have them hit in a passion?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Frances. Then she said, ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Yea-nay,’ scoffed Letty with a smile. ‘Pway, what would you have?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And neither do I, my love. So let us give it up. It is not our concern.’

  ‘But I do know there are persons who say it should not be used at all.’

  ‘Then let those persons come and live in this place,’ said Letty with spirit, ‘where there are one thousand pwisoners and only one hundwed of us, and let them twy to keep order without the lash. Let them come, I say! On the other hand, if they are twue weformers, who want to help the poor and wetched, I am sure they would find useful work to do here, and would set to and do it, instead of weeping over the pwisoners, and giving them notions above their condition. If they were learned enough, there would be work for them at the school.’

  ‘School?’ Frances’s astonishment made her sound aggressive. ‘A school for convicts?’

  ‘Gwacious, no. For their childwen.’