The Night Flower

by Sarah Stovell

  She didn’t ask me any more questions, but my head began to ache with the memories of that dreadful time and my heart beat fast in the way it did when I was ill. For a minute I was afraid I might pass out.

  ‘You all right, miss?’

  I took some deep breaths. ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I said, and smiled.

  I was fine.

  I returned to work the next day, but my mind was still overflowing with thoughts of Arabella in that dreadful place, being worked to death at the age of three. Orphanage children followed the same daily routine that the prisoners followed in Cascades, as if they, too, were the worst of criminals. The bell would clang them awake at five, they’d eat a meagre breakfast of gruel and bread, were sent to work for the day, given supper at five and were back in their hammocks at eight.

  In the nursery, when I had a moment on my own with Mrs Sutton, I asked her, ‘Why do the superintendents at the orphanage see fit to work the children so hard?’

  ‘Convict children have been contaminated with their parents’ stain,’ she said, quite firmly. ‘The only way to erase it is through hard work and religion. Both are crucial, in order that they might be redeemed and reformed.’

  ‘But my daughter did nothing wrong.’

  ‘But she carries the convict stain none the less. It has been passed on through her blood.’

  ‘I am not a natural criminal, Mrs Sutton,’ I said. ‘I just …’ I could feel anger rising in my chest and struggled to keep my voice calm.

  ‘I know. That is plain for us all to see. But the governors will not see it that way yet. In time they might, and that will be the time for us to help you get your daughter back, Mrs Winter, if we possibly can.’

  ‘Oh, do you think you might?’ I asked, too eagerly.

  ‘We shall see. If I can, I will help. I can make no promises, but I don’t like to see a mother separated from her child like this. You are a good person who made a mistake and now you are paying a high price for it.’

  It gave me some comfort to know that someone else viewed my situation as I did.

  At lunchtime, I took myself upstairs. Miriam was there already, changing the linen on our beds and sweeping the dust from underneath them. On the floor was my old diary, which I’d kept while living at the Murrays’ and brought with me.

  I snatched it up quickly. ‘What is my book doing on the floor like this?’

  ‘I beg your pardon, miss, but it was under your bed, and I’d gotta do the cleaning.’

  ‘Have you opened it? And read it?’

  She stared at me as if I were quite crazy. ‘Neither, miss. I ain’t never opened a book in my life, and ain’t read so much as a signpost. I’ve never had no learning, see. I told you that before.’

  I sighed, relieved. ‘Of course. You’re quite right. You did tell me. I apologize.’

  She went back to her work. I opened the scarlet leather cover of the diary. My hands shook a little, but I thought it important to remind myself how far I had come, how well I was now.

  Tuesday, 27th April, 1841

  Eighty-nine days.

  Still I count them. I am becoming a sculptor of time – chiselling away the days, hoping for something beautiful to appear in what’s left.

  Or perhaps not even beautiful. Merely something less ugly than this.

  If there is anything left for me, when this has passed.

  Wednesday, 28th April, 1841

  I can still smell nanny in the nursery. Musty clothes laced with souring milk. It’s cold for April, but I opened the window today to air it. The children need to forget.

  Ninety days. I hardly know what I am counting them for. They’re not rationed. I have days in abundance. Relentless abundance. They could go on and on like this for ever. It’s a comfort to know another has gone.

  Thursday, 29th April, 1841

  Last night, I dreamed there was a baby. Mine, wrapped in a blanket and lying beside my bed like a gift. There was a husband, too, shadowy in the background.

  Then I awoke.

  Ninety-one days. I must stop counting.

  24

  The weeks carried on passing, the way weeks do. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been there by now. It didn’t do to go counting all your days like you was expecting something better at the end of em. A few babies got weaned and another few died, and their mothers was sent back to Cascades for punishment.

  I’d got myself a proper interest in the goings-on at the Black Horse, even though the place made me nervous. I watched it all from behind my bedroom window. Every night, and sometimes in the day as well, a fight’d break out between the men what was too drunk to keep their anger to emselves. Shouting and punching and blood splashed on the road – it were a sorry and frightening sight for the good folk what saw it. John Sutton said the police pretended they didn’t know about the bad goings-on of the place, but it was always their first stop after a crime’d got committed, because they knew the bad man’d be in there soon enough.

  No matter how bad they was, all the men loved Ma Dwyer, or so John Sutton said, even though he wasn’t the sorta man what was meant to approve of inns and bawdy places. If someone ever told Ma a story, maybe about having rotten luck and hard times, she’d give em a smile and some sympathy and throw a couple of free whiskeys into the bargain, or sherry if they was a woman, or maybe gin instead, if that was what they liked.

  Now, you’d reckon the Black Horse, with all its bad ways, wasn’t the sorta place a reverend’d go to, and I wouldn’t of believed it myself unless I’d seen it with my own two eyes. Even then I didn’t much believe it. But there was times at night, when I was sitting at my window, looking out at the folk what was coming and going, and I’d see a man what looked to me as being just like Reverend Sutton. He’d cross the road and go inside, plain as plain, swinging in through the Black Horse’s dirty wooden door. But he wasn’t dressed up in his suit with his reverend’s collar round his neck. He’d be looking proper scruffy, like all them drunk men.

  I didn’t never see him come out again, for all there was times I swore to myself how I’d stay at that window all night long if I had to. But I was worn out in my bones and couldn’t keep awake long enough. I’d think to myself how if I didn’t see him coming out, then I mustn’t of seen him going in. He was a Christian man, what didn’t approve of liquor and bad women and only had a heart for the Lord. I was so tired, I reckoned I must of been seeing things.

  When I told Rose about what I’d seen, or thought I’d seen, she shook her head and said, ‘You must be mistaken, Miriam.’

  And so I decided I was.

  I used to see Ma Dwyer round and about in Liverpool Street when I was out doing the nursery shopping and she’d stop and talk to me. It were a welcome thing to hear a kind lady talk, and not just because she wanted hard work off me, what was the only reason Mrs Sutton ever pretended to be kind. Mrs Sutton had ideas how if you was nice to your workers, you’d get more outta em, what seemed like a selfish sorta kindness to me, especially seeing as it come from a Christian heart.

  One morning, after Christmas and all its burning hot sunshine’d been and gone and the upside-down autumn was on its way, I saw Ma Dwyer as I was coming out the butcher’s, holding my week’s ox heads under my arms.

  ‘Hello there, Miriam,’ she said, and she give me a friendly smile.

  ‘Hello.’

  Then she said, ‘How’s that scoundrel, John Sutton? I haven’t seen him for a few nights.’

  I looked at her and saw how she’d got a laugh in her eyes, and how she wasn’t meaning John Sutton was a true scoundrel, but just a man with a bit of mischief in him. Or at least I reckoned that was what she meant, so I said, ‘He’s well. He’s about the best of the bunch what live at the nursery. I like him.’

  ‘Believe me,’ Ma Dwyer said. ‘You get to see every side of a man, working in my trade, and there’s nothing not to like about the young Mr Sutton.’

  I didn’t say nothing to that. I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined it, but it sounded
to me like she was putting proper weight on that word young, and it made me wonder if she knew the Reverend Sutton as well, and found him a whole other kettle of fish.

  ‘If you’re feeling lonely, my love,’ she went on, ‘why don’t you pop over the road to Ma Dwyer’s in the evenings? I’ll give you a cup of tea and a place to sit that’ll keep you out of harm’s way.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll do that,’ I said. I can’t say as I really meant it, because although Ma Dwyer was a proper nice lady of the mothering sort, I didn’t know as I wanted to sit there with all the noisy and frightening goings-on all round me. Besides, I wasn’t sure what the Reverend and Mrs Sutton’d have to say about it, and I didn’t want to be taking no risks, not when they could send me back to Cascades soon as they ever felt like it.

  She patted my head. ‘I hope I’ll see you, child.’ She spoke in a soft way, what reminded me a bit of Evelyn and nearly brung tears out my eyes.

  And then she went away.

  Sundays was still my worst days, though they’d been getting better recently now John Sutton’d help me carry my buckets of water back from the well. I trudged up the hill by myself, collected the water, and then waited for him to come up and meet me. We’d walk back together. It wasn’t thought of as being an improper sorta thing, because everyone knew how John Sutton was one of my employers, and it wasn’t bad for a girl to go walking through the forests with her boss.

  So even though I wasn’t much happy about the religion on Sundays, I used to look forward to my walk with John Sutton. There wasn’t a lot of highlights in the week of a convict girl and I was learning to make the most of the ones I’d got. My happy times come in the hours I spent with John Sutton, and with Rose. As me and John went trudging along them damp forest paths, full of the breath and creak of leatherwood and sassafras trees, and just about every other tree you could think of, John’d ask me questions about my life before I come to Parts Beyond the Sea. I told him all about Evelyn and our old red wagon and the horse what we’d got. I just told him the kushti stuff, though. The only person what I’d ever spoke to about the harder times was Rose.

  I reckoned as the nursery’d be a sad place if ever he left it, and that was what made me say to him, ‘You ever gonna get yourself a job, John, and a house of your own?’

  He shook his head. ‘My father will be retiring from the nursery soon. Once he’s done that, he’ll take over the vicarage on the outskirts of town, where he and my mother will live. My father will carry out church duties for the rest of his life, and I’ll take over the nursery. Of course, it will never make me rich, but it’s worthwhile work, and I have a lot of hopes and plans for improvement.’

  ‘What sorta plans?’

  ‘Well, cleaning it up, to begin with. Then raising funds to buy new cots for the babies. And new blankets. Better food, instead of just soup. Milk. Less crowding. All those basic sorts of things that make the difference between life and death.’

  ‘How you gonna get the money for it?’ I asked, because though I could see these was kushti plans, I couldn’t much see how they’d ever come about.

  He looked at me in a way I reckoned was full of mischief. ‘The church ladies, Miriam,’ he said. ‘You’ll be amazed what a few well-meaning women can do if they pull together. Before you know it, Liverpool Street nursery will be heaven on earth for poor babies.’

  I laughed and thought what a good man he was, to have these ideas.

  ‘If I’m still here then, can I help you?’

  He looked at me and frowned. ‘Why would you not be here then? Are you planning to leave?’

  ‘I’ve had so much trouble in my life, what with one thing and another. I don’t never expect to stay in one place long.’

  He shook his head. ‘Rest easy. We want you to stay with us. We know you’re a good person, and so we’ll defend you and keep you safe.’

  He looked at me a while, then he picked up my brown Gypsy hand and held it to his lips.

  I couldn’t hardly believe my eyes, nor my ears, nor nothing else about me, neither, for that matter.

  25

  AUTUMN

  Reverend Sutton closed the church door. The bereaved were due to be collected by the superintendent of Cascades at noon, and he still had to lead a service for all the mothers at the nursery. The women would need help to understand the mysterious workings of the Lord.

  April had brought with it a particularly cold snap – the coldest autumn Van Diemen’s Land had seen for decades. It was hard on the babies, especially those that were already small and sickly. The nursery walls grew damp and Miriam wasn’t working fast enough to keep the mould from growing and getting to their lungs. They had lost two babies in the last week, and later today he would be christening four more who seemed to be fading. He’d asked the Lord to save them. It was going to be difficult, explaining so many deaths to the board.

  His service was meant to bring some healing and guidance to the desperate mothers. Even though they were tarnished souls, their attachment to their babies seemed almost as strong as a good woman’s, and he believed they needed reminding of their sins and the punishment the Lord saw fit to bring upon them.

  When they were back at the nursery, his wife called everyone to the hall, where Reverend Sutton stood before them, gazing at them with what he hoped was solemn benevolence. He was not reading the sermon today. He’d stayed up late last night, committing the words to his memory. Grave occasions required speeches from the heart.

  ‘It is with great sadness,’ he said, in a voice that was loud but did not bellow, ‘that we have said goodbye to two of our infants this morning. The Lord has taken them from us and, we hope, received them in the kingdom of heaven. Many of you here will struggle to understand His decision. But those of you who indulge in the ways of the flesh – those of you who commit fornication, instead of waiting for the sanctity of marriage – will find that the Lord sees fit to deny you the fruits of that sin, and you may never inherit the kingdom of heaven. Let us pray for the souls of the lost children, and ask the Lord to deliver them.’

  The women before him bowed their heads obediently, and he led them in prayer. In his heart, he felt sure it was too late for the souls of these babies and that was why the Lord had taken them. They were the offspring of the two very worst mothers, who had earned their money in the most appalling ways. The babies would never have had the strength to fight the sin they’d been born with. God knew what He was doing when He took them. Until there were powers on earth to rid the world of its evil early on, God would continue to help.

  He had written all this in his presentation to the board about mothers’ milk – that, among all the other benefits of removing a child from the breast of its convict mother, there would be a decrease in infant mortality. The Lord would see how there was hope for a soul not being fed at the breast of a sinner, and He might be slower to remove them from the earth. But the board had disregarded his argument, and refused.

  That night, knowing his wife would be busy caring for the distressed mothers whose babies were fading, he went upstairs to Hattie.

  ‘Why’re you here?’ she asked, as he walked in. She was sitting in a rocking chair, sewing up the holes in the convict babies’ smocks.

  He perched on the edge of her bed. ‘I expect a friendlier welcome than that, Hattie, considering I am the master who is letting you live here free of charge.’

  She put her sewing down. ‘How are the mothers whose babies you buried this morning?’

  ‘They have been returned to Cascades for their punishment.’

  ‘You know, sir, that it isn’t fair.’

  ‘In what way, Hattie?’ he asked. He knew he had to tread gently, and let her speak her mind, in order that he might show her the truth and change it for her.

  ‘The mothers lost their babies and now they’re being sent to the crime class for hard labour.’

  ‘That is right. Isn’t that how it should be? Allowing themselves to get with child was sinful behaviour that must be p
unished. After a few months, they will be hired out again, and this time they will know better.’

  ‘They’ll know better than to go messing about with their masters, you mean – the ones that are just men and easily tempted, and mustn’t be blamed if a convict girl is happy to satisfy their urges. It’s not fair, sir.’

  He nodded. ‘To your mind, perhaps it’s not. But yours is the mind of a convict, and you are not yet on the right path. You are distracted from purity of thought by anger and hysteria, and feelings of injustice for what you believe are your sufferings. Come. Let me help relieve your strong feelings, so you can gain purity of thought.’

  She knew not to refuse. She understood that refusal would lead to more suffering.

  There was only one cure for hysteria, which he’d read about in reports from doctors in England, and he was certain Hattie was a hysteric, with all her extreme views and her anger that would never be controlled.

  ‘Now, lie down with your legs over the edge of the bed, and make yourself comfortable, as usual,’ he said.

  She did so, and he kneeled beside her and lifted her smock. He placed his hand in the space between her legs and began to perform his massage, gently at first, then growing firmer, until after some time – a long time – she let out a moan and passed out in a hysterical fit.

  ‘There,’ he said, when she came round again. ‘Your mind is free of turmoil and your passions lessened. You can focus your thoughts on the Lord and reflect upon the way of life that brought you here. Repent, Hattie, and the kingdom of heaven will be yours.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said.

  He left her, and went outside to the yard to wash his hands.

  26

  The days got colder and colder. They wasn’t as cold as the days we used to get in England, but they wasn’t much better, and folk was calling it the worst autumn the island’d ever seen. It wasn’t easy on the new scraps at the nursery. More and more of em was dying. I did my very best to keep the place clean, but the truth of the matter was that a lot of that dirt’d been there longer than I had, and no amount of scrubbing was ever gonna lift it. Some of them floors was full of bugs – cockroaches and the like – and even though I washed the blankets off the cots every couple of months, there wasn’t much to be done about the fleas what’d made emselves at home in the wool. Babies got bit by em and cried with all the itching of it.