The Commandant

by Jessica Anderson

  ‘—and that Smith Hall will dwop his charges.’

  Stripped to his breeches, he put both hands on his hips. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘That Smith Hall—’

  ‘But it is I who make the charge. A charge of libel.’

  ‘I spoke,’ she said (she was very alert and sober now) ‘of the charge he made in the Monitor.’

  ‘That was not a legal charge. Any man may write anything. The only legal charge has been made by me. And as to his dropping it, he can’t. It is not in his power.’

  She said, ‘I did not mean dwop—’

  No, you meant withdraw. Well, that is possible. He may withdraw his words, and he may apologise with all his might, but I shan’t withdraw my charge.’ He dropped his breeches to the floor and kicked them on to the pile of his discarded clothes. ‘Ring for Elizabeth, if you please. My jacket must be brushed.’ He poured water into the basin. ‘Surely you would not wish me to drop that charge?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know!’

  His astonished voice was half choked with the water he was splashing on his face. She rang the bell, then went to a chest and took out his white uniform trousers, which she laid carefully on the bed. She sat on the stool again, and drooped as if all the energy had gone out of her. ‘It is all so much of a bother.’

  ‘A bother!’ Raising his dripping face from the basin, he spoke with laughing incredulity. ‘A bother! My dear girl, my good name is involved. Can I appear to give credence to a vicious lie?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Letty, ‘it would be much less of a bother simply to dwop the charge. But how can he? It would seem to give cwedence to a lie. Though I don’t mean, Fwances, that poor Mr Smith Hall meant to lie. I think what I do mean, my dear, what I am twying to say, is that it will be difficult for you if we accompany Patwick to Sydney.’

  The commandant had left an hour ago for Dunwich, and Letty and Frances were again in the drawing room, Frances sewing a pinafore for Lucy, and Letty a jacket for Robert. The french doors stood open to the verandah, as did the double doors to the dining room, where Martin was putting a new sash cord in a window. He was out of earshot, but his presence made the sisters speak in low voices. ‘Then it is known when he is to go?’ said Frances.

  ‘No. He will be called by the court.’

  ‘Is that the paper you await?’

  ‘Oh no, they will send. That much is certain, though nothing else is.’

  Frances gave her sister time to continue, but Letty only gave a brief laugh, then a long sigh. ‘Why should it be difficult for me?’ Frances asked.

  ‘Well, if you mean to visit the Hall girls . . .’

  ‘I don’t. They show delicacy in not replying to my letter. I should be an embarrassment to them.’

  ‘They did not find you so before, knowing what they knew.’

  ‘They liked me. And nor would their sense of justice allow them to discriminate against me for something they believed my brother-in-law to have done. But now we are estranged by my letter and by both our circumstances. When I go to Sydney I shall be one of a party. Loyalty to their father will make them see it as the enemy party, and they must discriminate against me as a member of it.’

  ‘Are you—’ Letty flicked a glance at her sister from under her black lashes—‘against them?’

  ‘Yes. But oh Letty, how hateful such compulsions are. And how unnatural.’

  Letty’s sympathetic murmur was mechanical. ‘It is stwange,’ she said, ‘to hear you call those girls delicate, and just. And stwanger still that I quite believe you. Less than a year ago, Cass and I sat here and spoke of those girls. And we decided that they must be perfectly low and wicked. How long ago that seems!’

  ‘Everything seems long ago,’ said Frances. ‘Ireland, even Sydney, seems many years ago. When I came here I believed I had formed opinions that would never change. Now I seem to be without firm opinions at all. What is the use of forming opinions when you know they will change?’ She lowered her sewing to her lap and sent wondering glances through the doors to the river, through the window to the garden and the commandant’s office, through the double doors to where dark little Martin stood on his ladder. ‘And all this will seem long ago,’ she said, ‘if we go to India.’

  ‘Don’t speak of it,’ said Letty quickly. ‘I have made up my mind. The childwen would have to go to Patwick’s mother and sisters. You know how I admire them. They are the best of women, but they are never gay. And there are so many of them, and they are all so tall, it is like being at Stonehenge. Well, I am an army wife, and if they must go they must, but pway don’t speak of it yet. Let us speak of you instead. You need not go to India.’

  ‘He has not proposed marriage, Letty.’

  ‘Lord, that tone!’

  ‘What tone?’

  ‘So distant!’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘And so stubborn. He would not have sent me such a formal letter unless he wishes—’

  ‘I don’t know what he wishes.’

  ‘I do. It is you who is the myst’wy. Tell me what you wish.’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’

  At the wail in her voice, the badgered note, Letty raised her brows, shrugged, and said no more. Accepting temporary alienation, both worked in silence until the door burst open and Robert ran into the room, followed closely by Lucy, and then by Elizabeth, shuffling and scolding and trying to hurry. The children had been sent for to try on their garments, but because they were seldom allowed in the drawing room except to be presented to visitors, it always seemed to them a great empty place to explore. Lucy ran straight to open the door of a cabinet, and Robert, after a few runs about the room in appreciation of its space, saw Martin, and ran into the dining room crying his name. Martin sent a pleading glance over his shoulder towards Letty and Frances; and Elizabeth, muttering that Master Robert must come along, waddled in after him. Lucy, knowing she would soon be stopped, very quickly took a tea chest from the cabinet and tried to raise the lid, but when she found it locked, and saw that her aunt was approaching, she seized a teacup instead and ran to the window to hold it to the light. Robert, led back to the drawing room by Elizabeth, broke away and ran to unhook the curtain cord and let the curtain drop over the window. Frances hooked it up again, took the cup from Lucy and gave it to Elizabeth, and managed to grasp Robert and Lucy each by a hand. The children suddenly became tractable, and stood obediently, though with wandering eyes, while their garments were fitted on them.

  Then: ‘Martin!’ suddenly cried Robert again.

  Martin was coming through the double doors. ‘Excuse me, madam.’

  ‘Yes, Martin?’

  ‘Martin!’ shouted Robert.

  ‘I done that one, madam. Which are the others?’

  ‘Martin!’

  Robert broke away and flung himself at Martin, gripping him about the waist. ‘Mar-tin, Mar-tin,’ chanted Lucy, trying to follow her brother.

  Letty lifted Lucy on to her knee. ‘Come here, Wobert,’ she called pleasantly, without looking at him.

  Grumbling that Master Robert got too excited, Elizabeth went towards them. Martin dissociated himself from Robert’s action by standing still, holding his arms stiffly along his sides, and letting himself be rocked by the violence of the child’s embrace. But his live dark begging eyes had fixed themselves on Frances’s face, and nor could Frances take her gaze from the young man and the child. For she found it a cruel conjunction: the child was so beautiful, tall for his age, his skin so fresh, his red hair so soft and bright, and his strength the easy strength of good health, while the young man was so parched and pinched, his skin already beginning to wrinkle, and his strength a matter of strain and knotted muscle. She found both horror and fascination in the fact that each seemed to distort the scale of the oth
er, so that the child looked too big and lusty for a child, and the young man too small and pinched for a man.

  Lucy, as intent on the pair as her aunt, was still struggling to free herself from her mother’s grasp. Letty held her tight, played with her hair, and called calmly to Robert to come with Elizabeth. But Robert was resisting Elizabeth’s efforts to part him from his wooden staring playmate. ‘We will run away,’ he cried. ‘Quick, Martin! To the bush!’

  He jerked at Martin’s arm and made for the door. Frances met Letty’s eyes and reluctantly got to her feet to help Elizabeth. Martin pulled backwards in an uncertain manner, but when Robert tugged suddenly at his arm, he lurched forward and fell to his knees. Robert, delighted, dropped beside him, pretending he had also fallen, and rolled about the floor laughing.

  ‘Wobert! At once!’

  Robert jumped up. Dodging past Elizabeth and Frances, he ran to his mother, vaulted on to the blue sofa by her side, and bent to rest his forehead on Lucy’s knee. He yawned. Martin got to his feet. ‘Excuse me, madam.’ His voice was constricted with rage. ‘Which are the other winders?’

  ‘There are quite a number, Martin.’ Letty pointed to the window overlooking the garden. ‘You may do this one now.’

  When Martin went to get the ladder, Letty bent and said in Robert’s ear, ‘You are a bad, disobedient boy.’ She set Lucy on to the floor, rose from the sofa, and took her children each by a hand. ‘Stay until I come back, Elizabeth.’ She would not punish them before a prisoner. As she led them from the room, Lucy began to cry.

  Elizabeth sat in a chair by the door. ‘Ah miss, these feet.’ Martin came back with the step ladder. ‘I dropped down on purpose,’ he said to Frances. ‘He never pulled me down, miss.’

  Frances was sewing again. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘I was scared of pulling him down.’

  Frances, her head bowed low over her sewing, did not reply.

  ‘So I never used all my strength. Of course not!’

  Her reply was almost inaudible. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Martin!’ called Elizabeth warningly from the door.

  He turned aggressively. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Get on with it, lad.’

  He said disgustedly, ‘Arrr—’ and mounted the ladder. A sudden howl from the nursery, followed by Lucy’s thin wail, made Elizabeth absently click her tongue against the roof of her mouth. But Frances paid no attention. She was looking only at her sewing, but also in her field of vision were Martin’s big boots on the third step of the ladder. They had scuffled and bumped on the floor when he had fallen to his knees, and there he had knelt, in profile to her, perfectly still for three or four seconds, in a silent anger that had attained dignity. Drawing her thread through her white cloth, while his boots obtruded on her consciousness, she tried to think of something to say to him. To say something was a longing, a true compulsion, but it must express only a plain human sympathy, for to express pity would be to condescend. And perhaps even her sympathy would be better expressed obliquely, by tone rather than words. She would start by saying his name. She would say, ‘Martin . . .’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  She raised her head. He was standing on the ladder, looking down at her with expectation, in one hand a frayed and dirty sash cord, in the other a knife. She gave a slight bewildered shake of her head. ‘You whispered my name,’ he said.

  They stared at each other in silence until Frances heard Elizabeth rise from her chair. She gave a more positive head-shake, then, and shaped the word ‘no’ with her lips.

  ‘By Jesus you did. I heard it. No mistake.’ There was no begging in his eyes now, only triumph and belligerence. Elizabeth was shuffling across the room.

  ‘Now now now, lad. Now now now.’

  Letty came in. ‘What is it, Elizabeth?’ But the question was mechanical; she seemed preoccupied. She did not wait for a reply, but sat down and picked up her sewing. ‘The Wegent Bird will be at Dunwich by now. Elizabeth, the childwen are waiting to be washed.’ And to Martin she said, as she began to sew again, ‘Thank you, Martin, for paying no heed to my disobedient boy.’

  ‘I never speak to them no more, madam. I know my place. I am not one of your mad devils. Of course not! At least,’ he added in a heavier tone, ‘I know what is thought to be my place, but which perhaps is not.’

  And now, while he put the sash cord in the window, he composed aloud a tale of his origins and life. In reality he was one of a family of thieves, whose father and grandmother were also in the colony, and who came to the settlement so young that Logan had separated him as much as possible from the older men and had put him to school with Amelia. He must have known that these facts were known, or at least available, to his audience, yet there he was, telling this tale of his gentle birth and happy sheltered childhood. Amelia’s tracts had left their mark. He told of bad companions who had led him into wicked courses, and hinted at rightful parents renounced because he could not bear them to know of his shame. ‘Better they think me dead, see?’ He spoke in a manner both headlong and vacillating, bursts of words being followed by a pause, or by a long-drawn ‘ah’ for fresh invention. Letty’s occasional murmur could have passed for either sympathy or interest, and once she raised her head and gave Martin an amiable but rather absent glance; but Frances was quite silent, and did not raise her head at all, for if she did, she believed her feelings would flare out of her face: the shame she felt for having whispered his name, the embarrassment for his present performance, the pity for his person, and the resentment that it should be she, and only she, whom he had singled out to catch, impale, and hurt by his misery. And all the time, both sisters sewed steadily, drawing their work nearer to their eyes as the light began to fade, for both knew that however tiresome, or painful, Martin’s tale might be, it could last only until the evening bell.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘All is well with Cassandra?’

  ‘She is well, but her Edward has had the fever. And she is twoubled about the slaves being set fwee.’

  ‘It will never happen.’

  ‘She asks what the poor planters would do for workmen.’

  ‘What indeed?’

  ‘Fwances says they could pay their blacks.’

  ‘Your sister’s notions!’ As dismissive as his words was the commandant’s return to his own mail; he broke a seal. ‘They would be bankrupt in a month.’

  ‘That is what Cass says.’

  He had begun to read again and did not reply. When reading he resisted voices from outside. He had started from Dunwich at first light and on his return to the settlement had come straight to the drawing room, knowing he would find her resting on the blue sofa. Unsorted mail was piled on a table by his side, and the mail he had already disposed of lay on the floor at his feet. The urgent letters he had read last night at Dunwich.

  ‘But so many people nowadays,’ said Letty, ‘would disagwee with Cass.’

  He gave an interrogative murmur but went on reading. She put Cassandra’s letter in the drawer of her embroidery table. He came suddenly to life, dropping the letter he had been reading and reaching for another. ‘That was from the Agricultural Company,’ he said.

  ‘A wefusal?’

  ‘Yes. Clunie was right. The appointment is made.’

  ‘It is of no consequence now.’

  ‘No.’

  He was already reading the next letter. He sat in the low chair in a relaxed but imposing posture. One leg was bent, the other fully extended; the back of his left hand rested on a hip and in his right he held the letter, shifting it now and again (Letty observed) to adjust the focus to his impaired eyesight. In Sydney last year he had been fitted with small round spectacles, but after a week had pronounced them useless and refused to wear them. Letty lay back on the sofa and shut her eyes. A breeze off the river entered the open doors, s
tirring the muslin curtains and carrying into the far distance the slow clanging and ringing from the lumber yard. ‘They say the hill station above Madwas is perfectly charming,’ she remarked. ‘The mansions they have built there! And I shall make the acquaintance of Lady Wumbold.’

  ‘Mrs Harbin, ma’am.’

  Letty was immediately awake and upright. Louisa put her bonnet into Madge’s hands and advanced. ‘So it is Madras?’ She did not wait for a reply, but paused in front of the commandant, who had risen, and extended a demanding hand.

  He looked through the letters on the table, found two, and gave them to her. She examined them, pulled a face, and put them into her reticule. ‘So it is Madras,’ she repeated on a more settled note. She exchanged kisses with Letty. ‘Lieutenant Edwards told me. You know Lady Rumbold is his third cousin? But you need no recommendation from him. You carry your own. They say the hill station is charming. When do you leave?’

  It was Logan who replied. ‘In three weeks.’

  ‘What? Not from Sydney?’

  ‘No. From here. The regiment begins to leave Sydney in March next year.’ He was gathering the mail as he spoke and putting it back in its bag. ‘I had better take these to the office.’

  ‘Does the cutter sail for Dunwich early tomorrow?’ asked Louisa.

  ‘At first light.’

  ‘Then our letters must be at the office tonight.’

  ‘As usual, ma’am. Unless you want to run to the quay in the half light.’

  Louisa watched him leave the room. ‘Those uniforms,’ she said. ‘As summer draws near I could pity even my Victor.’ She glanced at the open door. ‘Though last night in the female factory he took it all off.’

  Letty also looked at the door. ‘They will alweady know that.’

  ‘But not that I know it.’

  ‘Twue.’

  ‘They got in over the wall, I expect.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Victor and Lancelot and Henry Cowper. Or perhaps through bricks loosened and replaced. That part of the story they left out.’