She knew why, of course. Jonathan had convinced himself that she must prefer someone with a background so similar to her own. She and Tremain both came from small country gentry whereas his father had been in trade. He could not believe that the distinction did not matter to her when it mattered so much to him.
She had learned to live with his sensitivity. It was like being with a dangerous animal. You tried to understand its nature, you made allowances and acted accordingly.
After they had got into bed, he had returned to the subject. ‘Calling for cheers in such a way …’
‘I suppose everyone was pleased with the governor’s announcement,’ she said cautiously. It took so little for him to accuse her of taking Tremain’s part.
‘I was pleased myself. That didn’t mean I had to start shouting. It was a disgraceful exhibition.’
She tried to change the subject. ‘Gough Tremain must be pleased to have his sons join him.’
‘No doubt. Tall louts, aren’t they? Just like their father. I suspect we’ll have trouble with them before we’re much older.’
‘Why should that be?’
‘We all know Gough isn’t too scrupulous when it comes to the law. I see no reason why his sons should be any different.’
‘I thought I saw one of them talking to the Reverend Pearse.’
‘A man may speak to anyone.’
They were silent for a while. Some small animal scampered across the roof.
‘Tremain’s ideas run parallel to our own, you know,’ Jonathan said.
‘In what way?’
‘I believe he is thinking of building up his interests in this part of the world, as we are.’
‘What makes you think so?’
‘Why should he bring his sons out otherwise?’
‘There’ll be plenty of others doing the same. There were some new arrivals there tonight. The governor welcomed them, if you remember.’
‘Tremain is an officer in the Corps. That puts him in a different category from the rest. He enjoys the same advantages that we do. And disadvantages,’ he added sourly, remembering his talk with Crabbe.
Elizabeth turned on the pillow to look at him. ‘You see him as a rival? Surely the country’s big enough for all of us?’
‘Big enough for many, I agree. I don’t regard the new settlers as serious competition. We may even benefit from them. If they run into difficulties, we should be able to pick up their properties very cheaply. But Tremain is a different case. There may be – there is – room for other settlers and ourselves. Whether there’s room for both Hagwoods and Tremains I am less certain.’ He looked at her. ‘You may not agree, of course.’
‘Why should I not agree?’ On guard.
‘Since you rather favour Tremain yourself.’
She sat up in bed, staring indignantly at him. ‘I have never given him the slightest encouragement and you know it!’
He took her breast in his hand but it was a gesture more of threat than love. ‘Make sure you don’t.’
*
Jack stared defiantly at his father. ‘I suppose that woman of yours showed you my note.’
Gough’s face darkened ominously. ‘I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head! My relationship with Mrs Clark is none of your business. Remember that sentry and be thankful she did what she did. Some state you’d be in now if it wasn’t for Maud Clark.’
‘So for the whole evening …’
Tremain pulled out the other chair and sat down, leaning forward with hands loosely clasped, dark eyes watching his son.
‘I knew. Yes.’
Jack’s lips tightened. ‘Why not just say so?’ He had tried to send the note through the Clark woman because he had known no other way to contact Gwen. He had thought one convict would be willing to help another. Now he felt a fool.
‘Because it wouldn’t have served.’
As soon as he had read the letter, Gough had sent orders to have the newly-landed convicts ironed. Easy enough to justify should anyone enquire later. He would say he’d heard rumours of a possible escape – the truth, after all. Not that anyone would question the decision. No one would care.
Having dealt with the prisoners, he had followed Jack when he left Government House, finally catching up with him at the very second when Jack had come face to face with the sentry. The memory brought sweat to his face, although half a dozen words had been enough to settle the matter.
‘You were planning to take them out to Centaur?’
‘Only the brother. She wasn’t going.’
Gough ignored that. The girl would have had to go. She would have been the bait.
‘Without knowing if they’d let them on board?’
‘It’s what you said you would do, Father.’
‘I said I wouldn’t do it at all!’ Exasperation boiled like lava. Couldn’t the boy understand the risks? ‘And for what? Some little drab off a transport!’
Jack’s eyes flared. ‘Be careful what you say about her!’
Gough threw his arms wide in exasperation. ‘There’s not a woman living who’s worth five years on a chain gang!’
He was angrier with himself than he was with Jack. I could have stopped it at the beginning, he thought. I let it run because I wanted him to see the risks he was taking. I thought I could stop him whenever I liked. And I nearly failed.
To the day I die, he thought, I shall never forget hearing that challenge and coming fast along the path in time to see the sentry with his musket raised and Jack, panicking, on the edge of flight.
It was no consolation to know that he had been there, that the sight of his uniform had made the sentry hesitate just long enough for him to shout to him not to fire. He deserved no credit for luck. Jack had come very close to dying.
Yet what he had said earlier was right. Simply to stop the rescue would not have served. Jack would only have tried again.
‘Why did you think Pike would take them?’ he asked. ‘The authorities can confiscate any ship that’s found with convicts on board. Why should he risk that?’
Jack’s blue eyes glared belligerently. ‘To help another human being? That would never occur to you, I suppose.’
Gough shook his head. ‘Pike wouldn’t lift a finger to save a pair of convicts.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I know Pike. But suppose he had kept them. From your point of view, that would have been the worst thing of all.’
‘Why?’
‘For God’s sake, don’t you understand anything? Because he would have seen the pair of you in the skiff! He’d have known you were involved. A man holds a secret like that over your head, he owns you! And don’t think Pike wouldn’t use it. It’s dog eat dog in this place. If you don’t have sharp teeth, you don’t survive.’
He studied Jack. He worshipped the girl – the note showed it. If he was going to protect his son, he had somehow to change that.
Very well, he thought, let’s do it.
‘The man with her …’
‘What about him?’
‘You know he’s not her brother?’
Jack stared. ‘Of course he is.’
‘No.’
‘I spoke to him.’
‘You spoke to someone.’
‘She told me!’
‘She probably told you she never did what she was convicted of either.’
‘They were taken for stealing food. She never tried to hide it!’
‘Stealing, right enough,’ Gough said. ‘But not food. She used to pick up the marks and take them back to their room. When she got them there, the man was waiting with a knife. It’s only because the jury was so jelly-livered they weren’t hanged!’
Jack stood up, chair crashing on the floor behind him. ‘That’s a lie!’
Relentlessly, Gough shouted him down. ‘She was using you to save the pair of them. Up to their old game, by heavens! They were gulling you, too!’
Jack’s face was white. ‘I’ll not believe it.’
‘Please yourself. It’s the truth.’
‘It’s not possible.’
‘To get her lover away? To get both of them away? It’s possible, all right.’ Tremain gambled. ‘You want to see their papers, you can.’
For a moment, Jack looked back at him. Then his face contorted. He picked up the chair, sat down and closed his eyes. After a minute he opened them again and smiled – a hurt, twisted grin. ‘Know something funny?’
‘What?’
‘I had thought to marry her.’
Dear God.
‘You hardly knew her.’
‘You can get to know someone well in five months. Or so I thought.’ Jack rubbed his jaw with the back of his hand while Gough waited patiently. At last he sighed, looked ruefully at his father, and Gough saw that he had won. The realisation gave him no pleasure.
‘She knew she’d be all right married to me,’ Jack said softly. ‘She was worried for … for him. She wanted me to get him away first. But she said she wanted to marry me. For my own sake, I mean. I asked her that. I said I wouldn’t hold her to it, if she didn’t want to. I didn’t want her to think she had to pay me for helping her brother. She said … she said it was what she wanted too.’
Of course she did. Gough, who had never sought a favour from a woman in his life, managed not to say it.
Distress was naked in Jack’s face. ‘If we’d wed, would she have had a pardon?’
‘Ticket of leave more likely.’
‘But she would have gone free?’
‘Yes.’
Jack shook his head. ‘It’s hard to believe.’
‘What?’
‘I used to see her, nearly every day. Not so often to begin with, but later they used to let them up on deck. I used to see her then. I thought she was … nice. She was gentle and kind. When she told me about taking the food, I believed her. I didn’t think of it being some kind of … scheme.’ His eyes glistened in the candlelight. ‘I was a fool, wasn’t I?’
Gough watched him, compassion and guilt twisting like knives in him. No reason to feel guilty, he told himself. None. Jack’s hurting but he’ll get over it. You have to do what’s best for him. I’ll have the girl and her brother put on the next boat to Norfolk Island. Get them out of the way. That’ll be best.
‘A whore,’ Jack said. His eyes were shuttered with pain. ‘I would never have believed it.’
‘The important thing is to learn from it,’ Gough said.
Jack’s mouth twisted. ‘What am I supposed to learn? Not to trust people? Not to try and help the needy? Not to … to love?’ He smiled, or tried to, face lop-sided. ‘Maybe five months wasn’t long enough after all.’
‘Was it really Cash’s idea?’ Gough asked presently.
‘My idea, Cash’s plan. He worked out the details.’
That made sense. Cash had always been the leader.
Gough looked at Jack. ‘I want you to go and fetch him.’
‘He wasn’t too happy, you sending him off like that …’
‘You and I had to talk. I didn’t want to do it in front of him.’
‘I’ll ask him.’
‘I didn’t say ask him. Fetch him.’
Five minutes later Jack came back, his brother behind him. Cash was still angry. His shoulders were stiff, mouth pinched, eyes hostile.
Gough looked at him. ‘I had to speak to Jack alone. It was necessary.’ There was no hint of apology in his voice.
‘All you had to do was say so.’
‘I did say so.’ He smiled wryly. ‘Perhaps my request could have been more happily worded.’
Some of the tension left Cash’s face.
‘Jack and I had a talk about what happened tonight.’
Cash said, ‘I told you. It was my idea. I should have been here.’
‘It was your plan but Jack’s problem. We had to talk that out. If he wants to tell you what we said, that’s up to him. But we have agreed there’ll be no repetition of what happened.’ He looked at Jack. ‘Correct?’
Jack hesitated, then nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘I’m going out,’ Gough told them both. ‘I want you both to come with me.’
Cash stared at him suspiciously. ‘At this time of night? Where are we going?’
‘You’ll see.’
‘I don’t know that I want to come.’
‘It’s important.’
A pause, then Cash shrugged. ‘Very well.’
Gough fetched a lantern and lit it, then opened the door. Outside, the night was warm and still. He led the way swiftly along the lane that fronted the cottages and then up the path to the crest of the hill. Their feet were silent in the dust and the noise of the cicadas was all about them.
Gough paused at the crest and waited for Jack and Cash to catch up with him. The last fifty yards had been steep and he had walked fast. He was pleased that his breathing was as quiet as ever, his heart beat unaffected.
Not an old man yet, he thought.
They were puffing, though. Out of condition after five months on the water. The idea that he could outwalk them pleased him.
They stopped beside him. Puzzled, they looked around at the cicada-shrill darkness and then back at him.
He put his arms around their shoulders and turned so that they all stood facing the darkness, their backs to the settlement. The empty land lay black and still before them. Not a light, not a sound, even the gumtrees seemed to be holding their breath. Overhead the stars burned in a million silvery points of solitude.
‘There it is,’ he said.
‘Bush,’ Jack said.
‘Not bush. The future.’
‘There’s nothing out there,’ Jack persisted. ‘Reverend Pearse was telling me this evening. No people, no fertile soil, no water. Just … space.’
‘Reverend Pearse doesn’t know what’s out there. Nobody knows, neither the governor nor Reverend Pearse nor anybody else. But I know.’ He saw their sceptical eyes and smiled. ‘Not the details. I don’t know if there are rivers or deserts or mountains. But the future – I can see that, clear as day. There’s a future out there for the three of us. Forget England. Forget Cornwall. That’s all finished.’ He took his arm from Cash’s shoulder and pointed out into the darkness. ‘That’s where the Tremains are going. Out there.’
‘To get rich,’ Cash said.
‘Maybe. Probably. But first and foremost to open up a place where at the moment there is nothing. For the family and for the world.’ His outflung arm stabbed the darkness. ‘That is why I have brought you here now. To commit us all to that future.’
The force that flowed from him startled them.
‘If we don’t agree?’ Jack asked. Disillusionment over the girl festered and he wanted no more crazy dreams.
Gough shrugged. ‘If you want to turn your back on it, so be it, but then you’ll get no help from me. You stay or go back to England, as you choose. So far as the family’s concerned – my family – if you go you’re finished.’
Cash looked at him. ‘That’s hard.’
‘Tes a hard country. It’ll not yield to weaklings.’
‘Hard?’ Jack said. ‘It’s inhuman. I don’t know that I want a part of anything like that.’
Gough gathered them close, trying to share with them his own sense of excitement.
‘There’s a continent out there. If we dare, we can win it.’
‘Or die in the process?’
Gough shrugged. ‘There are no guarantees. But a kingdom to be claimed, a kingdom of our own … Tes worth a try, surely? But only if we’re good enough. You. Me. Your children.’
Jack shivered, troubled by his father’s vehemence. In the darkness, on the edge of the vast unknown, it savoured too much of black magic. ‘How can we commit unborn generations to something that may not even exist?’
‘Because the land demands it.’ Gough’s eyes burned in his face. ‘It is so big. Huge. Utterly unknown. It gives us no choice.’ He threw his arm upwards, pointing into the de
pths of the sky. ‘As unknown as the furthest star you can see up there. As unknown as the depths of the ocean!’
He pulled a silver flask of rum from his pocket. ‘A toast,’ he said. ‘Not to New South Wales this time.’ He looked at them in turn. The moon kindled stars of light in the dark eyes. ‘I give you the future.’ Deliberately, he unstoppered the flask and raised it. Their eyes followed the movement. ‘The future. The family. The land.’ He tipped the flask, swallowed, wiped his mouth. He passed the bottle to Jack. ‘Drink or not. As you choose.’
One after the other, they hesitated. One after the other, they drank.
FIVE
At six o’clock the next morning Gough Tremain, wearing a dark green coat and tan breeches against the cool air, took Cash out to Centaur.
The tide was out. Gulls were squalling on the mud flats that edged the eastern side of the cove. Gough looked down the length of the harbour towards the distant Heads where the eastern sky showed ivory above the dark ring of hills. The sun was still hidden but a hint of gold along the ridges showed that it would not be long in coming. Across the harbour thin skirts of mist foamed above the rippled surface of the water. There was no wind.
Gough took a deep breath, drawing into his lungs the smell of salt water, seaweed, the smoke of fires as the settlement woke slow and grumbling to the new day.
‘Grand morning,’ he said to Cash who sat half asleep beside him. ‘Grand.’
Fifty yards from the barque, Gough raised his hands to his mouth and hailed the deck.
‘Permission to come aboard?’
The cannonball head of the mate appeared at the rail. ‘Who is it?’
‘Captain Tremain and his son for Captain Pike.’
The Irishman cackled. ‘I wasn’t recognising you in your fancy clothes, Captain. Is the captain expecting you?’
‘He is.’
‘Come aboard, then.’
The skiff came alongside and Gough and Cash climbed the ladder to Centaur’s deck. Beneath their hands the hemp ropes felt harsh and cold with moisture and the rail as they stepped across it was beaded with dew.
Claim the Kingdom Page 6