The Commandant

by Jessica Anderson

  ‘No. Who had it from a native black.’

  ‘Who claims he had it from a native black. Or perhaps from Boylan’s ghost itself. Well, if I meet that ghost in the bush, I’ll hobble it with a cobweb and bring it in. But I am likelier to bring in a real animal. The men will search for the horse lost in May.’

  ‘Could he survive so long in the bush?’

  ‘If he has escaped the spears of the blacks. The season has been good. He would not have lasted a week in ’twenty-eight. I go to Cowper now. I am to have a tooth drawn, else it will plague me on my journey.’

  But he had hardly joined Collison before he left him again and came back to Clunie. ‘I’m damned relieved, you know, to be off and away. Oh, I’ve been fretting, man. The place is small, small. And I’ve been in it too long.’

  Clunie thought it just as well that someone was happy to go to Madras; he certainly would not have been. ‘Madras has many advantages,’ he said.

  He watched Logan and Collison walk away. There was no doubting the commandant’s relief. Even his body was rejoicing, his limbs released from their usual curbed severity. Clunie went back to his office, took the folded paper from its pigeon hole, and opened it out on the desk. It was an estimation of the money he hoped to save while in the command. At three hundred a year, added to his army pay and his wife’s small income, he believed he could save a thousand in three years. He had written to his wife suggesting that if he should get the command, they should use the furniture made in the lumber yard and supplied free, rather than transport their own from home and buy more in Sydney. He had added that he certainly did not intend to buy his own horse, but would await a mount supplied by the government.

  He folded the paper again and opened his wife’s letter. She wrote that by the time he had this she hoped to have sailed from Portsmouth in the Hooghly. She mentioned that she had had a visit from his brother Charles, but made no reply to his suggestion about the furniture. As she had neglected to cite the number on his last letter, he could not tell whether her omission about the furniture was deliberate, or whether she had not received his letter in time to comment on it. The shuttling of the mail over such distances, and at such risk, fostered bafflement and exasperation.

  As he put down her letter and took up the one from his brother, a loud fast clanging and hammering started up in the lumber yard, sounding as close, through the thin walls, as if the irons of the newly arrived prisoners were being knocked off in the next room. Clunie thanked God that the Logans would be gone by the time his wife arrived, and that she would be accommodated in a good stout house, at a decent distance from the yard.

  His brother wrote that he had recently made the acquaintance of a Mr Johnson, or Johnstone, who had been at Sydney, and who informed him that Moreton Bay, or, as he called it, Brisbane Town, was a truly infamous place, with a hill above the river on which a row of gibbets stood black and awful against the sky for all to gaze upon, and on which gibbets they hanged upwards of six wretches a day, every day but Sunday.

  Clunie, knowing his brother’s inclination to the new ideas, caught the serious criticism underlying the banter. He was so annoyed by such foolish and dangerous exaggeration that he would have liked to reply at once, but the continued noise from the lumber yard bore its message to him; his reply must wait till evening.

  But as he pulled down his cuffs and called for his cap, he was composing his reply.

  ‘My dear Charles, my wife writes that you have had the kindness to pay her a visit. I trust you also had the kindness, as well as the sense, not to transmit to her the pleasantries of your new acquaintance. Kindly tell your informant, Mr Johnson, or Johnstone, that there are no gibbets at Moreton Bay, otherwise known as Brisbane Town. No capital offences are tried here, for which I thank God, all such miscreants being sent to Sydney for trial, where they are hanged, if that be the sentence—’

  His servant brought him his cap. He put it on and went through the narrow little hall to the front door.

  ‘—in as seemly a manner as at home. On the hill stands only a windmill, used as a treadmill until a fault in its construction can be put right, and a small signalling station—’

  Taking the few steps to the lumber yard, he looked sideways, longingly, at the river.

  ‘—while in the bay fish abound, and up the river is the best fowling in the world. Wild duck, widgeons, swamp pheasants, a kind of teal . . .’

  ‘One for you,’ said James Murray, holding his own letters away to one side, as if Henry might snatch them.

  Henry squinted at his letter, groaned, and slid it under the reports on his desk. ‘From the hound of heaven. I’ve lost the Fay’s forceps. Have you seen the Fay’s forceps?’

  ‘No.’

  Drawing his four unopened letters close again, Murray looked at them like a child at a sweet he is saving till last. Henry had resumed his search among the paraphernalia on the long trestle table. Piled higgledy-piggledy here were splints and weights and pulleys, instruments in and out of their cases, and boxes of bandages and ligature silks. Searching, Henry gave such a prolonged and anguished groan that Murray was distracted from his letters.

  ‘Cowper, were you drinking last night?’

  ‘Yes. And shall be tonight.’

  ‘Cowper, for your own sake—’

  ‘Murray, take no notice. Playacting helps make it tolerable. A drinking man would understand. Forceps, damn you, where are you?’

  ‘Then you are not as bad as you appear?’

  ‘How do I know how I appear? Have I your eyes? Let me look at your eyes?’

  Confronting the tall young man, Henry looked up into his dark lustrous anxious eyes. He exaggeratedly flinched. ‘I am worse than I look! Come and help me find the forceps. I am expecting the noble warrior. He wants a tooth pulled.’

  Murray rather absently helped Henry to look for the forceps. ‘Forceps! Forceps!’ cried Henry cajolingly. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I knew you were there, forceps.’ He held them up. ‘Yes,’ he said to Murray, ‘the Paladin has a dolorus dentus.’

  Murray was laughing. ‘Now if you mean to mock me again—! I have never said or written “dolorus dentus” in my life.’

  ‘But you might have. You have corrupted my Latin, Murray—’

  ‘I—’

  ‘—which was formerly exact.’ He squinted at the forceps. ‘Dusty.’

  Murray sometimes had a shade of a spinsterish gossipy tone. ‘You know they are going to Madras?’

  Henry blew dust off the forceps. ‘Yes.’

  ‘That place! Yet they seem as gay as birds.’

  ‘If you’re bound for Madras, you don’t dare to be anything else. You will miss your amorata.’

  ‘Cowper, you go too far!’

  ‘I always go too far,’ said Henry with modesty. He drew out his handkerchief and wiped the forceps. ‘If the fever or a tiger doesn’t take Miss Frances, a wicked India officer will. You had better propose.’

  ‘Cowper, I have had the greatest kindness from all the family—’

  ‘So have I, indeed, even from the Paladin, in his better days.’

  ‘—but I don’t distinguish among them. The sincere friendship I feel for Miss O’Beirne—’

  ‘Murray, if you had my dolorus cerebrus—’

  ‘Dolorus cerebrus!’ cried Murray on a shout of laughter.

  ‘—you would spare me the speeches. By the look of your boots you have just come in from the Eagle Farm. I hope you have seen to your nag.’

  ‘Of course I—’

  ‘Because no horses came in the Phillip. Take care of that nag, Murray. Lose him, and you will ride out to the Eagle Farm on a bullock cart.’

  Murray, suddenly serious, clutched his letters to his breast with both hands. ‘I should be forced to refuse,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Ha!’ exclaimed
Henry, with deep enjoyment.

  ‘I should certainly refuse, or be the laughing stock of the place.’

  ‘Ho-ho! Oh, Murray, don’t make me laugh. Oh, how it hurts!’

  ‘But the horse happens to be quite strong,’ said Murray with a touch of peevishness. ‘And there will be another ship shortly. More horses must come.’

  ‘Well, they will come one day,’ said Henry in kinder tones. ‘Do you know that Bulbridge and Fagan are taken?’

  ‘No. Poor wretches.’

  ‘You may well say so. They broke into a house at Port Macquarie. They go to Sydney for trial.’

  Murray reflected for a moment. ‘Smith Hall’s trial is likely to take place about the same time.’

  ‘Yes. And will no doubt gain added attention. Of a particular kind.’

  Almost soundlessly, but with distinct lip movements, Murray asked, ‘Could I be called? Is that possible?’

  ‘Possible? My dear fellow, I should think it certain.’

  ‘Cowper, I am deadly serious.’

  ‘No, Murray, no. You won’t be called. You haven’t been here long enough. If anyone is called, it will be Henry Cowper, privileged—’ Henry bowed, reeled, and clutched the table for support—‘in that as in all else.’

  ‘What will you do if you are called?’ asked Murray in the same almost soundless way.

  ‘Do?’ cried Henry, throwing his arms wide. ‘Do?’ Both heard the footsteps in the corridor. Henry turned to the door, arms spread, forceps clasped in one hand. ‘How do you do, captain?’

  ‘Murray,’ said Logan, acknowledging Murray with the word and a nod. To Henry he said, ‘You have been drinking, Cowper?’

  ‘No, captain, upon my word. It is Murray’s breath you smell. Look into those dissipated eyes! And he is not only a drunkard, sir, but a dangerous amorist as well. Last night he scaled the wall of the female factory.’

  Murray was bowing. ‘Yes, Murray,’ said the commandant. ‘You may go. I see you have your mail. Go along, man, and read it.’ As soon as Murray went he turned to Cowper. ‘Well, you are Clunie’s problem now. Your clock has stopped.’

  ‘The ticking was terrible.’

  Logan opened the glass door of the clock and tapped the pendulum. ‘I go inland the day after tomorrow. Are you fit to pull the tooth?’

  ‘Of course I am fit. Perhaps Clunie will ask for my removal. Well, good, I will go to Batavia at last.’

  The commandant set the clock at half past eleven, waited for it to strike, then set it at twenty to twelve and shut the door. ‘I can’t answer for Clunie,’ he said, ‘but it may have come to that if I had stayed.’

  ‘I have never been to Batavia,’ said Henry, ‘though in my seventeenth year I planned to go there with a scoundrel named Nobby Clark. We intended both to set up as surgeons and exchange our services for diamonds and gold plate.’ He rang the bell for the attendant. ‘Shall I tell you how we proposed to finance the venture? No. You would order me a retrospective two hundred.’

  The commandant was removing his jacket. ‘You have been here longer than any of us. I haven’t forgotten your help to me when I arrived. I hope you are as helpful to Clunie while he is finding his feet.’

  ‘If I am on mine. Knowles,’ said Henry, to the attendant who came to the door, ‘bring a ewer of water, a basin, a cup, and three towels.’

  The man went. Henry waved a hand at the office chair. ‘Well, commandant!’

  Logan sat down. ‘Clunie is pretty well disposed towards you. It is your lack of—’

  ‘Head back, commandant! Mouth open! Now, which tooth?’

  Logan indicated an upper molar. Henry inserted a tobacco stained finger into his mouth, tested the tooth for looseness, and felt the gums about its roots. ‘Ah. Very good. We’ll soon have her out.’

  Logan wiped his mouth. ‘Clunie is worried lest he does not have a free hand while I am in Sydney. Because, mind you, I will hold the command until I leave for India. It is a matter of form only, his hand will be free, but he points out to me, in a signifying way, that there will be a biggish space between Smith Hall’s trial and my departure, and by that I infer that he is worried.’

  ‘Thank you, Knowles,’ said Henry. ‘I shan’t need you. You may go. What I infer by that,’ he said, as he tied a towel round Logan’s neck, ‘is that he’s worried for you. He thinks there will be revelations at the trial that will put you in danger of disgrace and removal. Retain the command, and you retain that danger. Relinquish it, and you are in danger only of military disgrace. Come now, head back! Mouth open!’

  But Logan sat amazedly scowling. ‘Military disgrace!’

  ‘How like you to fear the lesser danger. The command tries to shelter its officers.’

  ‘Has Clunie said all this?’

  ‘No. Nor needs to. He is a man of sense, and so am I, whatever you may think. And by our similarity I divine his opinion in the matter. And indeed your own blunders and quarrels may be accounted for by the same principle. Nobody thinks as you do any more. Or hardly anybody. Come, mouth open! Head back!’

  Slowly the commandant opened his mouth, and slowly let his head fall back, while his eyes and scowling brows retained their look of shocked and furious reflection. Henry inserted his forceps and tugged at the tooth, and the commandant helped him by setting his feet firmer on the floor, gripping hard on the arms of the chair, and tightening the muscles of his neck to make his head as stable as possible; but his eyes, though they rolled now in his head, never once altered their shocked expression. Henry panted and swore, and muttered that this was harder than he had supposed, but at last, with a relieved breath, he tugged the tooth slightly loose of its socket, and then jogged it, and twisted it, and at last pulled it free.

  The commandant’s mouth filled with blood. He clapped the towel to his face and leapt to his feet to stand over the basin and spit. Henry turned the forceps and examined the tooth held in its two halves. ‘There’s a piece of the root still in your gum. You’ll find yourself spitting it out. It may be today. It may be in a week.’ Aware that the commandant was lifting his head from the basin, he raised his eyes to meet those shocked and furious eyes above the bloody towel Logan held again to his mouth. ‘My dear sir,’ he said gently, ‘you have realised at last that I have tried to tell you the truth. It’s my own fault that you’ve realised it only now. I’ve always presented it in a bantering way. But would you even have stopped to listen otherwise? Well, in any case, here I am, in all seriousness, telling it at last. I wish you would realise that as well. I’ve told you it’s part of your danger. Now, I will suggest this—go to Captain Clunie and ask him his true opinion of the risk you run at the Smith Hall trial. I think he will give it if asked direct. And I think he will say that Smith Hall’s trial could turn out to be tantamount to an enquiry into your administration. And now, pray,’ said Henry on a sharper note, watching the blood suffusing the towel and creeping over the fingers that held it, ‘pray, spit out that blood and rinse your mouth. You will bloody your jacket.’

  It seemed to Henry that the commandant bent over the basin again almost absent-mindedly, standing with his weight on one foot and a hand spread flat on the table beside the basin. The forceps in Henry’s hand still held the broken tooth. He turned them again, and again looked at the tooth as he spoke.

  ‘You will have an opportunity in Sydney to demonstrate the clemency of your command. Bulbridge and Fagan are bound to come to trial while you are there. Arrange to be called as a witness. Intercede for them. Confound your critics. Prove yourself capable of mercy.’

  When, after a full minute, the commandant had neither turned his head nor replied, Henry put down the forceps and sat with his elbows on the desk and his chin in his hands. The commandant was still bent over the basin, but now stood with his feet exactly together, rinsing and spitting in a rhythm that alone indicated to Henry his
restored composure. Indeed, as Henry watched, his chin sinking heavier on his hands and his eyes turning in their sockets with tiredness, those neat, quiet gestures of the commandant seemed to gather to themselves an inviolate complacency. It was no surprise at all when Logan rose at last to his height, put on his jacket, pulled down the waist in front, and declared that in no circumstance would he compromise himself by interceding for two iniquitous rogues who had been granted numerous chances of reform but had proved incorrigible. ‘Let the court decide that they hang, or be sent to Norfolk Island.’

  Only Henry’s lips moved. ‘There have been runaways enough in the dock in Sydney who have shouted aloud that they are glad to hang, or to go to Norfolk either, rather than be returned here.’

  ‘Let them shout what they please.’

  Henry had sunk so far over the desk that he appeared hunched. ‘Do you want the tooth?’

  Logan gave his brief laugh. ‘No.’

  ‘You’re bleeding again. Take another towel.’

  Henry’s eyes filmed over like a lizard’s. He shut them for a moment, and opened them again to see the commandant going towards the door, the second towel, already bloody, clamped by one hand to his mouth. ‘Rinse it with salt water,’ he called weakly after him. He shut his eyes again. ‘Aqua saline,’ he whispered to himself.

  After several minutes he opened his eyes. ‘I thought he had realised it at last,’ he remarked, in the same weak voice in which he had just spoken to Logan.

  Minutes passed; the big clock ticked; a frown gathered between Henry’s brows. In his seventeenth year, to finance the journey to Batavia, he had stolen the hospital medicines and given them to Nobby to sell outside. ‘It grows, Buck. The pile grows,’ Nobby would whisper. But when the enquiry started, he came to Henry aghast, the rich voice hoarse. The pile had been stolen. Every penny. Every last brass razoo. He wept. ‘Nobby is a broken man.’ It was his habit to speak of himself in the third person. ‘Nobby will drown himself.’

  Henry said the money didn’t matter, and begged Nobby not to drown himself. Nobby did not drown himself. Dr Redfern and Henry’s father then called Henry into conclave in the most serious room in the Cowper house, his father’s study. In this brown and shadowed room, this shiningly clean and stuffy room, they sat and waited for him. He did not look at their faces as they spoke, but at Dr Redfern’s trousers, his father’s gaiters, and at the neat and narrow shoes of both men. Nobby Clark, they were telling him, had spent the money long ago. There was proof in plenty, but to prosecute him would be to implicate Henry.