by Jean Plaidy
“I like to hear you say it. My mother gave it to me. She was Swedish.”
is it right for me to call you by it? Perhaps I will… when we are alone! It will be necessary to remember when others are present. It will be necessary not to show by a look…”
She paused, wondering how he would take this suggestion that love between them was to be no isolated incident.
He said: “I have plunged you into this deceit you who are so young and have been entrusted to my care.”
She laughed softly.
I said I would tell you something, if you would not despise me.”
“Despise you! It is you who should …”
She laid a hand on his lips.
“No,” she said, ‘the fault is with me. It is I who am wicked, abandoned. You see, I could not bear to think of your going miles away. I wanted to see you … so I came to your door … and asked if I could help…”
He was enchanted. He would not know that a woman could be like this. He thought her naive, more innocent than ever. How repulsive were those women like Lucille, who stood guard over a virginity which one had no wish to assail, who handed out favours one did not greatly desire, as though they were the most precious gifts on earth! And here was this girl, this innocent child, giving so freely, and so naively confessing that she wanted to give. He was overcome with tenderness.
“Listen to me, Carolan,” he said. This must never happen again. I cannot understand myself, I must have been possessed by the devil.”
She gazed at him. Physically he was magnificent; his features were not unattractive. She liked his simplicity: the puritan in him appealed to her because Marcus might be many things, but never a puritan. Marcus was a liar and a cheat: he would caress one with his eyes, with his words; he was full of artifice: he would suit his methods to the woman of the moment Why think of Marcus, knowing him to be a cheat? Now here was Mr. Masterman … Gunnar, as she would think of him in future … a man of power in the colony, and a man who was more completely in her power than Marcus could ever be. A simple man, a puritan. A man who had strayed from his virtuous path because he could not resist Carolan Haredon, his convict servant. He did not seek passion; his love was natural and pure as the wind and the sun and the rain; Marcus’s was something grown in a hothouse, cultivated, seeming delightful because so much care had been spent on it, completely artificial. Yet there was no natural recklessness about Gunnar. Why, he had locked both doors leading into his room before he had made love to her! Now Marcus was the essence of recklessness. Marcus was unsafe, and that locking of the two doors was in itself a symbol … a symbol of safety and security which one must enjoy if one walked beside this man. She had learned cunning from Marcus perhaps.
“You see, Carolan,” he said, his brow wrinkled, ‘that there must be no other time. It will be difficult, but I shall go away, I shall spend much time at the stations.”
“Tell me about the stations,” she said.
He was rather slow of speech, reluctant to enthuse, but he gave her a picture of a lonely station surrounded by grasslands where sheep fed and cattle were raised and wild horses tamed. It appealed to something in her. She imagined the two of them living there, cooking their own meals after a day in the open, making love out of doors. Mr. Masterman, the master. When men spoke of him there was awe in their voices. She thought of his trembling before her, whispering that there must be no more; and she smiled, for she knew it was for her to say whether or not there should be any more.
She listened to his description of a muster. She could feel a horse between her knees; she could feel the wind on her cheeks as they galloped … both of them together. He belonged to fresh air and camp fires, and it was pleasant to think of enjoying these things with him.
She was almost happy; if only she could forget this nagging ache for Marcus she could be happy. Gunnar Masterman offered such balm to her wounded vanity. The master who was in the power of his servant. The strong man who could only be weak with her.
She lay against him.
“Tell me more. I want to know all about you.”
He told her about the Swedish mother who had died on the journey across the Atlantic. He had been born, he told her, just over thirty years ago, during that year and this always seemed strange and very significant to him when Lord North became Prime Minister of England, and Captain Cook discovered New South Wales. He was a man, he assured her, who for ever tried to override superstition, but did she not see the significance? Who had been responsible for the loss of the American colonies? Chiefly Lord North and his half-crazy monarch. Who had been responsible for the opening up of this colony? Captain Cook! Did she see now what he meant? He, Gunnar Masterman, had been born in that year when the fate of America and of New South Wales was decided. He had always seen it that way. When he was quite a small boy, he and his sister Greta and his parents had left America for England, for his puritan father had been a staunch loyalist and had no place in the New America. Gunnar remembered only little of his life before the journey across the sea, during which his mother died. It was a new life for them all on the other side of the water; it was a step from moderate prosperity to a desperate privation. The Old Country had little hospitality to offer those of her loyal sons who had fought for her three thousand miles away; there were little reward but vague promises of a chance in the new country discovered by Captain Cook, promises which did not materialize. His father was a strange man; he did not complain; he had tried to make puritans of those people who lived in the fever-infested huts and haunted the low taverns along Thames-side. It was a self-appointed task, and he starved and preached, though at the wharves and on the barges he did work sometimes. It was there by the river that he met his second wife. She was beautiful and abandoned; she picked up a living from the sailors and wharf-men who frequented the taverns. He took her to his shabby little home and married her, because he must have wanted her as his son now wanted his convict servant. Listening, Carolan felt a tenderness for the man and for his son twining itself about her cunning. She saw the eldest of that poor family, a tall, lean boy, almost hungry. They kept a lodging-house by the river at one time a squalid place; but the stepmother could not be weaned from the gin bottle, and the father from the saving of souls; and thus they could not expect to become successful lodging-house keepers. They had several children, and Gunnar, who had hazy recollections of a sunnier life, soon decided that they could not go on living that way. He began to earn money, carrying parcels, loading barges… anything to earn some money.
“I never told anyone else,” he said wonderingly.
“Why do I feel I have to tell you? I think it is because I have fallen in love with you, and you are so generous that it seems wrong not to tell you the truth about myself.”
Carolan felt tears pricking her eyelids and the tenderness within her deepen. I shall never fall in love again, she assured herself. It is well to be loved, but not to love.
He told of winter and the icicles hanging from the gables of the lodging-house, and the cold wind sweeping up from the east, all along the river; pumping water in the yard; chilblains, coughs, colds; some of his brothers and sisters dying off, and his father, preaching in the market place, and his mother, going to bed and refusing to get up until the weather changed. He it was who must wash the children and feed them. Was this Mr. Masterman?
He told of summer. The appalling heat of houses crowded together, and the stench of decaying rubbish in the gutters. Of armies of bed-bugs that could not be kept down himself a campaigning general, a candle his weapon of rats that lived on the stores in the warehouses near the river and who overflowed into the house.
The candles flickered. They would be out in a moment. She had no idea of time, nor did she care. She thought of Lucille, sleeping her drugged sleep in the nearby room, who knew nothing of this man’s life before he had married her; and if he had told her, what would she understand of stinking gutters, of rats and bugs, of a praying father and a drunken mother!
&
nbsp; She saw his face, set, determined, and it was easy to see the young Gunnar there, the boy who made up his mind, as he looked across the ill-smelling river, that he would escape.
“You do not wish to go back to England, Gunnar?”
“No!” he said fiercely.
“No!”
“Nor II England for you is poverty, chilblains, and pumping water from a pump in the yard. I know. The water used to freeze, and it was slippery in the yard. You could have cried with the cold, if you had been anyone but yourself, Gunnar. You would never cry at anything; however bad it was, you would only say “I shall escape from this.”
He said: “Why did you not come here ten years ago? Why did I not find you here when I came?”
“You would have married me … a convict! Why, you married Major Gregory’s daughter. It was a good match. It gave you a position in this town.”
He flinched. Now he was uneasy. A moment ago he had forgotten Lucille. Now he must remember she was here, in this very house, a room dividing them.
She wished she had not said that, but she was tactless by nature, and she wanted to know him absolutely.
“I have made you sad.” She moved nearer to him.
“I am sorry. How can you know what you would have done?”
He said reproachfully: “Surely you know that if it had been possible to marry you, I would have asked you to before … before…”
“Before this happened!” she said, and she felt on safe ground now, knowing her man.
“Tell me the rest,” she said.
“When I was nearly eleven, I decided to get away. I felt grown up. My sister, who was nine, could look after the little ones. I hated the lodging-house; it was getting lower and lower. My stepmother was almost always drunk. My father wanted to teach me how to be a preacher; and I saw that if I followed in his footsteps there was nothing for me but poverty.”
“So you ran away, Gunnar?”
“Not until I knew where I would run to. I had a job offered me in an inn in Holborn, and there I was a pot-boy. I was there for a year; then I took up with a travelling salesman. We went about the country with a packhorse; we sold all manner of things, and when I had learned how it was done, I thought how much better it would be if, instead of working for someone else, I worked for myself. So I saved money and I bought goods which I sold again. I was frugal. I never paid for a bed in summer;
I slept under hedges and haystacks and in alleys, and so I saved money.”
She compared him with Marcus. Marcus, choosing the reckless way, the way that led to trouble; Gunnar, choosing the safe and sure road that led to success. Marcus picked pockets and cheated; Gunnar made plans and went without food and bedding. Marcus was a convict, clever and cunning though he might be; Gunnar was a successful man. She had been right to hitch her wagon to this steady star. But she wanted Marcus. She wanted his merriment, his quick wit, his knowledge of life, his passionate eyes and his caressing hands. She half turned away from the man beside her, sick of the whole business, wishing she could go back to that moment when she had stood at his door with the candle in her hand.
She was not listening to him. He had made his little successes and had decided to come to Sydney. He had discovered the government were willing to help men possessed of some small capital who wished to emigrate to New South Wales. There was more hope for a rapid rise there than in the old country, where a man must have, in addition to determined ambition, a string of noble ancestry behind him. So he waited till a passage could be found for him, free of charge on a store ship, and out he came. And the rest was simple, for men such as he was were needed in New South Wales, and his flair for organization had stood him in good stead. He had risen rapidly; he had married Major Gregory’s daughter; he had a fine house in Sydney; he was accepted everywhere. He was Masterman of Sydney.
“It is interesting,” she said, ‘particularly to me. You see, you went gradually up, which is so much more satisfactory than going down as I did.” Briefly she told him the story of her life. He was shocked by the conduct of the squire more so than he was by the injustice of her and her mother’s being thrown into Newgate.
“My poor child!” he said.
“How cruelly life has treated you … and to send you here… to such a monster!”
But she would not have it.
“Please!” With a pretty gesture she laid her fingers on his lips “I believe you are the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
“My poor child … My dear child!”
“Gunnar,” she said, ‘you have no children. Did you want children?”
He did not answer, but held her tightly against him.
“I too,” she said, and she thought, If I had a child, I should cease to think of Marcus, cease to think of Everard. A child… a child of my own! And a child should have a father to whom it could look up. Not a lecher like the squire; not a weak man like Darrell; not an attractive philanderer like Marcus. It was not men like that who made the best fathers. It was the calm men, the practical men, the puritans who would perhaps be a little stern, but firm and wise and kindly.
She wanted to show him how happy he might have been had he, ten years ago, met Carolan Haredon in Sydney instead of Lucille Gregory. How wicked I have grown, thought Carolan. Did Newgate do this to me? Or was the evil there, waiting to grow, and was the Newgate climate such as to nourish it?
He was saying: There is something else I want to tell you, Carolan. You will despise me for this, you who are so truthful and honest.”
“What! You have been dishonest then?”
“My name is really Morton. I changed it when I came out here.”
She said soberly: “Masterman is a good name. I like it, and it suits you. Why should we not choose our own names! It will be a good name to pass on to your children.”
“I shall never have any,” he said. He added desperately: “You must go now, Carolan. You see, it is so difficult, and it was so wrong…”
She said: “Oh, my darling, it is not so easy for me.” And she saw how the endearment delighted him and charmed him. who seemed unable to speak them himself.
“You must go,” he said, ‘you must!”
She moved nearer to him; she put her arms round his neck and pressed her body against his.
“Carolan!” he said.
“My dear…”
He must know that it was not for him to say she should go;
from now on, she would command. She liked him, this master of men. He appealed to her senses, if not to her heart, and her senses were important to her; she had gone too long unloved. She could accept his caresses, even if, as she did so, she might dream of Marcus. To see him, the good man, falling deeper and deeper into what must seem to him unbridled sin, stirred in her that bitter contempt of law and order which Newgate had nurtured in her.
Now he was throwing away every one of those good resolutions he had made but a second ago.
“Gunnar. Please, my dear, do not go away tomorrow. I could not bear that.”
“No,” he said fervently.
“I cannot go. Of course I cannot go tomorrow… Just another day
…”
Carolan went about holding her head high.
Not the woman who has just been thrown over, thought Margery. Not if I know anything about it. And talk about arrogance. She would flounce into the kitchen, for all the world as if she were mistress of the house. Lovely she was though, so that Margery forgave her. Her hair was soft and all shining__and if she wasn’t dressing it up fashionable now! And she had a new frock; and she had secrets in her eyes. Hard as nails she was too. Bright and glittering and beautiful with her mermaid’s eyes green as the sea… icy cold sometimes too!
Golly. thought Margery. Am I to be frightened of her, and that in my own kitchen? Why don’t I have a talk with Mr. Masterman about her? Wasn’t I put in charge down here in the kitchen?
But she was rarely in the kitchen now; she detached herself. She no longer slept in the basem
ent. She had her own room upstairs.
“Mrs. Masterman wants me near her in case she needs me in the night.”
Did you ever hear the like? The mistress doted on her; as for the master, he seemed struck dumb. Not a word in protest had he raised, and him such a stickler for his rules and regulations! So up she had gone, and now she was demanding that Poll should take up her own special bath water!
And this, said Margery to herself, is where I do put me foot down. Bedrooms is one thing; frocks is another … and so is fashionable hair styles; but when it comes to having bath water sent up… that is where I has a word with the master.
But somehow it did Margery good to look at her, even though, when she came flaunting down to the kitchen, it was all she could do to stop herself boxing the girl’s ears. Rather her any day, thought Margery, than that moping Esther. Miserable little slut, whining and praying, getting up every morning white as a sheet; scared out of her natural, that was what she was. Serve her right too! And one of these days the master would have to be told.
“Now tell me, Margery,” he would say, ‘what was this man doing in the house ?”
“I don’t know. I don’t really!” muttered Margery.
“A nice bit of trouble this is. Things is going to happen in this house and happen soon, or I’m very mistook.”
She rocked backwards and forwards, laughing. She hadn’t enjoyed herself so much for a long time.
He came often, that Marcus, and with him that Tom Blake. They couldn’t keep away from Carolan, neither of ‘em. And the haughty piece pretended not to care a jot about them, tossed her head, threw a smile at Tom though, and looked through Marcus as though he wasn’t there. Funny. And funny-I-don’t-think when the master gets to know they’ve been coming here. The cheek of them, coming into the yard to pay visits just like they was gentry. Marcus had a word with Esther, tried to cheer her. told her he’d look after the baby, tried to show her that what had happened wasn’t much, nothing to get frightened about. He would go on talking to the miserable girl, and Mistress Carolan would flounce in, and if looks could kill she would have killed him, but Margery wasn’t born yesterday and she knew how it was with both of them … crying out for each other, that’s what they were. It made you feel funny to see them.