Elinor, avid, sat forward in her chair, foolish mouth agape.
‘At that point, nothing. Unfortunately some of the man’s friends determined to get her back so that night – the night of the Hagwood party – my brother and I waited to see if they would try to burn the house about our ears.’
‘And did they?’
‘They came, certainly, but I managed to talk them out of it.’
‘Unarmed?’
He hesitated. ‘I had a gun.’
‘Heroic …’ Elinor breathed.
Cash looked at Jane. ‘That was why I wasn’t at the reception. Yesterday I brought her here to be out of harm’s way.’
‘What do you plan to do with her, now you’ve got her?’
‘I shall do nothing. I leave in two days for the south. The hope is that she will be taught a trade.’
‘Other than the one she knows already‚’ Jane said.
‘There is probably little we could teach her about that.’ He stood up. ‘Surely you can see I had no choice?’ He was exasperated now.
‘No‚’ she said. ‘I see nothing of the sort.’
‘You would perhaps feel differently if you had been the victim.’
‘I don’t get myself into such situations.’
‘I hope your luck holds.’
Angrily, she snapped‚ ‘I think you should have considered what you were doing – to others as well as yourself – before you let yourself get involved.’
‘My father agrees with you.’
‘I think most people will agree with me.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘And tonight?’ she asked. ‘Had you planned to tell me this if we had met as arranged, if I hadn’t turned up here unannounced and found you … as I found you?’
‘I told you. I went to your parents’ house tonight as we had arranged. I was going to tell you exactly what I’ve told you, no more, no less, and your mother sent me about my business.’
‘Do you wonder?’ she cried. ‘In the circumstances?’
‘In the circumstances, perhaps not.’
Jane had risen, too. They looked at each other, helpless, inhibited by the presence of a third person. They both wished Elinor out of the room but could not ask her to go. Etiquette forbade it; besides, it was still pouring with rain.
‘Somehow … having seen her, it is different‚’ she said.
‘In what way?’
‘Before … if I’d heard about what you did, perhaps I, too, would have found it heroic. Now I’ve seen her, I can think only of what she is, the things she has done. The men she has known.’ She shuddered. ‘I don’t know how you can allow her in the house.’
He watched her, eyes dark. ‘Is there no redemption, then?’
‘I don’t know! All I think is … I think perhaps I was mistaken about you.’ She no longer sounded angry, merely sad.
‘Perhaps you were.’
They went shortly afterwards. It was still raining and he pressed them to stay but there was no more to be said. They were both glad to bring the evening to a close.
Cash looked around the empty room. So, he thought. An end, then. He felt empty but by no means distraught.
Perhaps when he came back from the south things would be different.
SIXTEEN
Next morning Cash had a headache and his mouth was dry from the rum he had drunk.
Maud Clark must have come back some time after he had gone to bed. She made him some coffee, which helped a little. Of Cuddy he saw no sign, although Mrs Clark said she was working in the kitchen.
‘How’s she coming on?’
Her dour expression showed no sign of softening. ‘Early days yet.’
At least there was no open warfare. It was probably the best he could expect.
After Cash had finished his coffee and eaten a piece of dry bread – all he had stomach for – he walked out of the house and down the hill towards the jetty. The storm had blown itself out. Over the harbour, the sky was the colour of cornflowers. The air was cold and clean. He hoped it would clear his head of the rum fumes that still lingered.
He was on his way to see Wilkes Doggett, master of Pelican, the blunt-prowed, ugly, tough little sealing ship in which Cash would be leaving next day, to find out when he was required on board.
The Tremains had bought a fifty per cent interest in the vessel which, under Doggett’s command, had already completed two successful voyages to the Southern Ocean.
It was likely to be a difficult relationship. The arrangement was that Doggett would teach Cash navigation but Doggett had tried to get out of it, saying he didn’t want him along at all.
‘You think you can learn in one voyage what it takes a man a lifetime to learn?’
That had been part of the problem – a small part.
The sealing grounds were secret, that was the real difficulty. Very few skippers knew where they were and those who did kept the knowledge to themselves. Outsiders were unwelcome, particularly those who knew how to navigate.
Gough had insisted and eventually Doggett had given way but Cash knew he would have to prove himself a dozen times before there was any hope of the teak-hard American accepting him as an equal, co-owner or not.
He was halfway down the hill when he was surprised to meet Jack coming up.
‘A word with you‚’ Jack said. His voice was curt, his eyes hot.
‘I’m on my way to see Doggett.’
‘That can wait.’
‘I’m not sure it can. Pelican sails in the morning.’
‘Is Father up at the house?’
‘He’s chasing runaways up along the Hawkesbury River. He left yesterday with his company.’
‘I saw Jonathan Hagwood in Parramatta last night.’
Cash said, ‘I need to see him to give our apologies for the night of his party.’
‘He tells me that Gwen and her brother are sent to Norfolk Island.’
They looked at each other.
Cash said, ‘Well …’
‘He also tells me our father arranged it. Deliberately.’
‘I doubt you can always believe what Hagwood says. It may not be true.’
‘I am here to find out whether it is true or not‚’ Jack said.
‘You’ll have to wait and ask Dad when he gets back then.’
‘I get the distinct impression you are not as surprised by the news as I was.’
Cash said nothing.
Jack took him by the shirt front. ‘I said –’
Cash raised his arms sharply, breaking his brother’s grip, and stepped back to put distance between them.
‘I intend to find out‚’ Jack said.
‘So you shall. When Dad gets back.’
‘I intend to find out now.’
‘From him.’
‘From you.’
They looked at each other – hard looks, anger rising.
‘No‚’ Cash said.
‘Is she gone to Norfolk or no?’
‘No use asking me,’ Cash told him. ‘I can’t tell you.’
Jack was sidling closer, fists clenched. Cash clenched his, too, and took another step back.
‘Can’t or won’t?’ Jack asked softly.
Cash hesitated momentarily. ‘Can’t.’ Even as he answered, he knew it was too late.
‘You’re a liar‚’ Jack snarled.
Cash managed to half-block the first swing, which hit him high up on the side of the head. Then he stepped inside his brother’s guard and gripped him around the waist, head under Jack’s flailing arm. He had wrestled back in Cornwall; Jack never had. It helped. His hands locked behind Jack’s back. He tightened his grip, forcing Jack slowly backwards. For a moment they hung in balance, each straining against the other, then fell heavily to the ground, Cash on top. His grip was broken but he was the first to his feet.
Jack had fallen across a piece of rock and was winded so that it took him longer to get up. Cash watched him, fists raised, but the fight had gone out of his brothe
r. Jack stood there, gasping and swaying, his face white with pain.
‘I was wrong,’ Jack gasped at length. ‘I ask pardon.’
Cash was by no means ready to forgive and forget. ‘I had nothing to do with the damn girl.’
‘Not that. For raising my hand against my own brother. I ask the Lord’s pardon for that.’
‘You’d be better asking mine‚’ Cash said curtly. ‘My ear’s still ringing where you hit me.’
‘You got your own back. My back and ribs feel like they’re broken in pieces.’
‘Serves you right.’
They grinned at each other, shamefaced.
‘Made a spectacle of ourselves‚’ Jack wheezed. ‘Fighting in full view of the whole colony.’
‘It was you started it‚’ Cash said. ‘All I did was finish it off.’
A rueful grin. ‘You surely did that.’
They stood side by side, looking out over the harbour. One or two people passed them on the path.
‘Still feel for her, do you?’ Cash asked.
‘That I do.’ His eyes found Cash’s face. ‘Has she gone to Norfolk?’ he asked quietly.
Cash hesitated. ‘It seems so.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
Cash plucked a long blade of grass and examined it closely, running it through his fingers. ‘I suspected but knew for certain only two days ago.’
‘Was it Father?’
‘Ask him.’
Jack watched his face for a minute, then sighed heavily. ‘I see.’
‘I’m sorry you heard about it from Jonathan Hagwood though‚’ Cash said. ‘Goddamned troublemaker! I’ll pay him back for that, one of these days.’ He looked questioningly at his brother. ‘What are you going to do about Dad?’
‘I don’t know.’ A wry grin. ‘I was ready to carve him up, coming up the hill.’
‘So I noticed.’
‘Lucky it was you I met not him.’
‘Lucky for you.’
Gough was more than capable of handling either of his sons, or both together come to that.
‘Why did he do it?’
‘To protect you. He’s always been afraid you might try again. He didn’t want to see you a convict, too.’
‘That would certainly spoil his grand plans, wouldn’t it? Claiming a kingdom out of the new land …’ Jack shook his head.
‘Don’t you want that?’ Cash asked.
‘I’m a farmer. I’m not interested in grand plans.’
‘It’s easy for you to say that. You’ve got a farm already. All you have to do is develop it. If I want something out of my life, I must go out there myself and get it.’
‘What do you want?’
Cash turned slowly. He looked across the settlement spread out below them in the pale winter sunlight, past Port Jackson’s spreading waters to the enigmatic land stretching in shades of grey and brown to the distant line of blue mountains. In his mind, Cash could see past the mountains to what lay beyond: a continent unimaginably vast, unimaginably mysterious, empty.
‘Can you feel how strange this land is? So old … It’s been drawing me since the first moment I saw it, rising out of the sea.’
‘It’s dirt,’ Jack said prosaically. ‘Soil and rock. Most of it not very good soil at that.’
‘It’s much more than that. It’s space and opportunity and … I don’t know. It has a presence. Something … As though it’s alive. As though it’s been alive for a million years. Waiting.’
Talk of a presence, of something waiting for a million years, made Jack uncomfortable. The soil between his fingers, under his boots – he understood that.
‘Waiting for what?’
Cash laughed. ‘For me, maybe.’
‘You think like that, you’ll never leave.’
‘You’re right. We’re strangers here, all of us. Strangers in a strange land. But that’ll change, in time.’ He paused and looked once again at what he could see with his eyes, his imagination. ‘You ask me what I want?’ he said softly, as though asking himself the same question. ‘I want everything.’ Suddenly confident, he laughed and repeated himself at the top of his voice, shouting the challenge to the vastness of the sky and the land beneath it. ‘I want everything!’
II
TRADERS
SEVENTEEN
Mile by mile, the little vessel clawed its way southwards.
The wind was a blast of ice from the Pole. Seas reared, grey, foam-streaked mountains with crests clouded in spume. Pelican had the barest shred of canvas aloft, just enough to keep way on her, but even that laid her almost flat in the water, the gale punishing her as the raging seas poured along the deck.
Cash stood beside the helmsman, head drawn into the upturned collar of the waterproof coat he wore. Eyes screwed almost shut against the force of the wind, he stared past the bowsprit as it reared first skywards and then down into the troughs. The air itself seemed liquid. He could see neither horizon nor land. They were alone amid a maelstrom of water.
He was glad of the rope lashing him securely to a stanchion. Without it, the wild movement of the vessel could have him over the side. Beside him, the helmsman – grey, stocky, middle-aged, huge hands like chunks of oak grasping the wheel, hair flying from beneath a woollen cap – rode the bucking deck as easily as standing on land. He shouted something, the words plucked by the wind.
Cash leant closer. ‘What?’
‘Twill be rougher, later.’
Thanks very much, thought Cash bitterly.
Pelican was three days out of Sydney Cove. The storm had struck them the second morning. Wilkes Doggett, the American captain, had seemed to welcome the gale, particularly when he saw the effect it had on Cash.
‘Give you a chance to find out what it’s like to be a real sailor. Ain’t no mummy to hold your hand out here, mister.’
‘A couple of days,’ Cash managed, ‘and I’ll get my sea legs again.’
This was the morning of the third day and Cash had been right. The seas were rougher than ever but he knew that the worst was behind him. He had gone through the various stages of sea-sickness: afraid that he would die, afraid that he would live. Now he not only knew he would live, he was looking forward to making their landfall.
‘How many more days?’ He shouted the question into the helmsman’s ear.
The man shrugged, hands sturdy on the wheel, eyes carefully watching the sea and the movements of the heavily-reefed sails. ‘Two, three days, maybe. Depends on the weather.’
Doggett stepped out on deck. As always, he turned first to look at the sea, then aloft at the sails. He was a short, swaggering man, almost as broad as he was tall, with a face seamed about the eyes and burned mahogany by the elements. His black beard was threaded with silver and his teeth were brown with the tobacco he always chewed. Like the ship herself and everyone aboard her, he stank of seal oil, salt and tobacco. He stamped aft, looked closely at the compass in the binnacle forward of the wheel and spat a black squirt of tobacco juice over the leeward rail. His teeth showed in an uneven brown line as he grinned at Cash.
‘Where are we, Mr Tremain?’
Cash looked back at him, conscious of the contempt in the seaman’s eyes. ‘I have no idea, Captain.’
‘It’s your job to know, by God!’
The arrangement was that Cash, in return for a fee paid in advance, would ship south as a supernumerary in order to learn at first hand the mechanics of the seal trade – how to handle the sturdy little craft in the violent southern ocean, how to navigate, where the animals could be found, how to approach and kill them, how to preserve the valuable skins and oil that Gough was certain would make the industry the most profitable in the colony.
‘When you teach me – as you’ve been paid to do – I will know, Captain. Until then, I repeat, I have no idea.’
Blood filled Doggett’s face. He clenched fists like hams. ‘You callin’ me a cheat?’
‘I’m calling you nothing, Captain. Simply saying tha
t until you teach me navigation I cannot possibly know where we are. As you are well aware.’
The helmsman watched the sails, saying nothing as the two men glared at each other across him.
‘I’ve better things to do than mollycoddle someone who don’t know the sea from the back end of his ass!’
Cash’s back stiffened. ‘I am a Cornishman, Captain. Born to the sea. I think you’ll find I know more about it than you think.’
Doggett flipped his hand dismissively. ‘I’m talking of the ocean, mister. Not some piss-willy little cockleshell, half a mile offshore. Why should I waste my time, eh? You tell me that?’
‘Because that is our agreement.’
Doggett scowled at him, jaws chewing on the quid of tobacco stuffed into the corner of his mouth. He turned his head and once again spat juice into the sea.
‘Right, then. We’ll make a start.’
Below, Pelican’s timbers creaked and groaned, tormented by the sea. After the fresh air on deck, the rancid stink was so strong that Cash wondered if he had not been too quick to boast of his recovery.
Doggett’s cabin was very different for the one used on Centaur by Silas Pike. The scarred panelling was dark and filmed with grease. A single bunk, partially hidden behind a worn curtain that drooped from the deck head, took up one wall. A small wooden table, fiddles around the edges to prevent whatever was on it from sliding to the floor whenever the boat heeled, took up most of the remaining space. The port scuttles looked as though they had never been opened. There were no pictures, no polished brass or copper. The only brass object was the half-full spittoon on the deck which, by the look of it, had never been polished in its history. It was impossible to think of Wilkes Doggett pouring chocolate from a silver pot. The cabin was like the rest of the ship, like Captain Doggett himself – hard, ugly and serviceable.
Doggett sat in a chair by the table and gestured to Cash to do the same.
‘Word of warning, first. We don’t teach the crew how to navigate. Not ever. Know why that is?’
‘Because if the crew don’t know where they are or how to find their way across the ocean, there’s less danger of mutiny.’
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