Owen laughed. ‘So long as you aren’t tempted to go further, eh?’
Irritation took Pike’s voice. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Staring contemptuously at the strutting little popinjay.
‘One hears things, in my job.’
‘So?’
‘There’s talk you might be tempted to break the Company monopoly. Take a cargo to England.’
‘I am not responsible for the tittle-tattle of the dockside, Captain!’ How the devil has he heard that? he wondered.
‘Be warned, Captain. That’s all I’m saying.’
Pike had had enough. ‘You think you could stop me, if I did decide to go?’ Arrogant in his turn.
‘Stop you?’ Owen laughed complacently. ‘I’d stop you, Captain. Sink you, if needs be. I flatter myself an East Indiaman is more than a match for a merchant ship.’
Pike said, ‘You’re talking nonsense, man. I’d laugh if it wasn’t so stupid.’ And stalked away into the crowd, leaving an outraged Owen staring after him.
*
That evening, being a Thursday, Cash visited the Somers house where the usual weekly card session was in progress.
He took care to get there early and the tables were not yet made up when he arrived. Mrs Somers dithered and hissed but did not try to prevent him from taking a hand of whist.
Three players were already seated at one of the tables. Mrs Somers introduced Cash to them. One was the Reverend Mr Mason, the tubby little clergyman who had recently arrived to take over the new living of Parramatta. Another was Rupert Huggett, the ensign whom Cash had met on a number of occasions and thought a fool. The third man was Thomas Birkett.
Cash smiled at Mrs Somers. ‘I think I have changed my mind. I believe I would prefer to play faro, if that would not be too much trouble.’
She looked put out. ‘These gentlemen are waiting to begin and you did say, did you not, Mr Tremain, that you wished to take a hand of whist?’
‘I did,’ Cash said. ‘Now, on the whim, I fancy I would prefer something involving a higher level of chance and a little less skill.’
‘If the competition is too hot for you …’ Birkett said disagreeably. He lifted the full glass at his side and half-emptied it.
‘It is difficult to say anything about the competition,’ Cash said evenly. ‘So far there has not been any.’
Birkett shrugged. ‘Nor will be, if you lack the courage to join us.’
The Reverend Mason intervened. ‘I would esteem it a personal favour if you would join us, sir. For a newcomer like myself, it is always a pleasure to meet new company.’ Even his voice sounded plump.
Huggett gave a sly, foolish grin. ‘I see that ship of yours is back. Centaur? We gave her a good going over before she left for the Cape. Perhaps we should pay her another visit. I would enjoy that.’
‘She’s not my ship,’ Cash said. ‘But if your senior officer thinks it’s worth your while …’
Huggett flushed. ‘Convicts are shipping out on every vessel that leaves Port Jackson.’
‘Some vessels. Not all. As you say, you conducted a search of Centaur and found nothing. A word of caution. Don’t try to make a fool out of Silas Pike simply to prove your own courage. He’s not a man to permit undue harassment.’
Birkett said, ‘It ill befits a man to talk of courage when he is frightened of a friendly game of cards.’
‘Frightened?’ Cash said. ‘Frightened, you say?’ He turned once again to Mrs Somers. ‘They have persuaded me. Whist it shall be, after all.’
He sat and picked up the deck of cards. He bared his teeth as he smiled at the three faces watching him. ‘Draw for partners.’
When, an hour later, Jane Somers came into the reception room with Elinor at her side there were three tables of cards in progress. All the players were hard at it and no one looked up.
The first person she saw was Cash. Her immediate reaction, unalloyed pleasure, changed quickly to resentment. Yesterday she had heard a rumour that he was moving into his own house and that this Cuddy was going with him. Now he had the impertinence to turn up here. If he thought he could play up to her while he kept a girl like that in his house, he was greatly mistaken.
She lifted her chin. ‘There are a number of things I’d be willing to do but not that.’
Elinor looked at her. ‘Whatever do you mean?’
Jane realised she had spoken aloud. ‘Be quiet, Elinor. I am not talking to you.’
‘I see Rupert is playing with your Mr Tremain,’ Elinor said.
‘Not my Mr Tremain,’ she corrected her. ‘I have hardly set eyes on him since he came back from the south. You should know that.’
The first of the tables broke and came through into the supper room, the players talking loudly, laughter ringing off the walls. Within a few minutes, they had been joined by the rest of the party.
‘Food and Miss Somers are seldom parted,’ Cash’s voice said in her ear.
She fluttered her fan at him. ‘One could perhaps say the same of Mr Tremain. I thought you would have lost your taste for civilized food.’
‘What should I eat in its place?’
‘I thought perhaps seal meat. The fat, I understand, is a delicacy. What do they call it?’
‘Blubber.’
‘Blubber,’ she repeated and shuddered a little, theatrically. ‘An ugly name.’
‘And most appropriate. A more vile substance you never saw. Even I could not bring myself to sample it.’
‘You disappoint me. So what did you eat on your epic voyage?’
‘The usual provisions for a voyage. Salt meat. Biscuits. The connoisseurs spoke highly of the weevils.’
‘Ugh.’ She shuddered again. ‘Are you telling me you did not eat seal meat at all?’
‘On the contrary. I had it several times, roasted.’
‘What is it like?’
‘A little like beef, only oily and tasting somewhat of fish.’
Jane wrinkled her nose. ‘You make it sound delightful.’
‘It would be interesting to see the reaction if your mother served it on one of these occasions. Or blubber.’
‘That is unlikely, I trust.’
‘I am sure you are quite safe. Unfortunately. I would derive a deal of honest pleasure from force-feeding my opponents with blubber. One of them, in particular.’
She laughed at him. ‘Are you losing so badly?’
‘In fact we are winning. But he is the sort of man who would drive me to my cups if I didn’t know I would find him there already when I arrived.’
‘Why play with him, then? If you mislike him so much?’
‘A mystery. Perhaps because I mislike him so much. There is no mystery as to why I am here, of course.’
She looked at him. ‘Why is that?’
‘To see you.’
She fluttered her fan. ‘You have been back, you told me, for several weeks. I am aware of nothing that prevented you from coming to see me before, if you had a mind to do it.’
His expression changed, only a little, but unmistakably. A tremor of excitement quivered within her. Cash had always been his own man – it had been one of his main attractions – but she could see that the man who had come back from the south was even more independent and dangerous than the man who had left. She could imagine his force-feeding Thomas Birkett with a plate of blubber. The challenge of trying to tame such a man excited her.
‘I am not a person who likes to be ignored,’ she told him.
‘I told you I had been busy. Now I am here.’
She could not admit defeat so easily. ‘Only because I mentioned it.’
His expression did not change. ‘Because I wished to.’
There was a silence between them.
‘You promised you would tell me about your experiences,’ she said.
‘And so I shall. But I see my partner signalling they are ready to resume. I mustn’t keep them waiting.’
‘So you keep me waiting, instead,’ she said, vexed.
‘You said something to me on the wharf.’
‘What was that?’
‘I told you the last time I came here I was shown the door. You said that was the risk I had to take.’
She frowned. ‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning it’s up to you. To wait or not, as you choose.’
The first session at the tables had passed more amicably than Cash had dared hope – a few barbed remarks, an ill-natured laugh or two, otherwise nothing. Cash had partnered Reverend Mason and, as he had told Jane, they had managed to keep their noses just in front of their opponents. By the time they broke for refreshments, they were three guineas ahead.
It was too good to last, of course. Birkett wavered a little as he walked back to their table and slumped in his chair, mouth twisted disagreeably. The alcohol he had been consuming all evening was beginning to catch up with him. Cash’s heart sank.
They drew for partners. Again Cash and Reverend Mason found themselves paired.
Birkett’s red-veined eyes scrutinised his partner across the table. ‘Finished playing games,’ he said. ‘Clean up time now.’
He dealt. On his left, the clergyman examined his cards with pursed lips as he prepared to make his play. Before he could do so, Birkett said in a loud and congested voice, ‘I suggest we liven the game up a little.’
‘What do you mean?’ Huggett asked.
‘He means raise the stakes,’ Cash said.
Birkett hiccupped softly. ‘Damn right I mean raise the stakes. Put a little life into things. God knows it needs it.’
Huggett hesitated. ‘How much?’
‘Ten guineas a trick.’
A fortune.
For a moment, Huggett’s foolish face showed apprehension. Then bravado took over. ‘All right by me.’
Reverend Mason looked dubious.
‘No,’ Cash said.
A dangerous pause.
‘No?’ Birkett’s drink-sodden eyes peered at him.
‘No.’
‘Come, man, where’s your courage, now?’
‘It’s not a question of courage. Stakes like that are stupidity.’
‘In London I’ve seen men wager a thousand guineas on the turn of a card.’
‘I can well believe you have.’
‘Of course, that is how gentlemen play.’
‘That is how fools play.’
‘You would know more about that than I.’
Cash faced Birkett, eyes like blue ice in the candlelight. ‘I told you once before to guard your tongue when you spoke to me. You may remember the occasion.’
At the governor’s reception Birkett had backed off but now the alcohol in his blood blunted his judgment. He spilled cards across the table as he leant forward. ‘Keep that kind of remark for your pigs, farmer.’
There happened to be a lull in the conversation at that moment and Birkett’s slurred vowels filled the room.
Cash stood. ‘Repeat that and I shall send my seconds to call on you. You’ll find yourself very dead, very fast. Is that gentlemanly enough for you?’
Birkett picked up his glass and threw the contents in Cash’s face.
For an appalled instant everything was still as the two men confronted each other, Cash with the spilled drink streaming down his face, Birkett sagging as the liquor he had consumed bit into him. Then there was commotion.
Huggett and Mason were on their feet, trying to keep the two men apart. Elsewhere in the room, shocked faces watched eagerly to see what would happen next.
Judge-Advocate Somers had been playing at the table nearest the door. Now he was on his feet, along with the rest. He strode swiftly down the room, face apoplectic, his wife dithering at his heels.
‘Stop that at once, sir!’
Before Somers could reach the card table, Cash brushed aside Mason’s feebly waving arms, seized Birkett by the shirt front and lifted him bodily on to his toes.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he said through clenched teeth, their faces almost touching. ‘I’ll not fight a duel with a drunken swine like you. But I’ll clean the room of you.’
Disregarding his host’s unbelieving fury, he half-dragged, half-carried Birkett out of the room and to the front door. Other men saw his face and got quickly out of his way.
A servant hesitated, uncertain whether to try to stop him or not.
‘Open the door, man,’ Cash said savagely. ‘Quick.’
Fumbling, the man obeyed.
Cash dragged Birkett the last two yards to the top of the steps leading down to the garden.
At the last moment, belatedly realising what was happening, Birkett began to struggle. It was too late. Shifting his grip, Cash rushed him to the head of the steps, propelled him into space and let him go.
He watched as Birkett tumbled, crashing down the steps to fall in a motionless heap at the bottom. For a moment Cash was afraid he had killed him, then Birkett stirred and started to drag himself upright. Cash dusted the palms of his hands together and went back into the house.
Faces turned towards him as he re-entered the gaming room.
‘Mr Birkett has left. He went in something of a hurry so he did not have time to give his apologies.’ He walked up to the Judge-Advocate. ‘I very much regret the incident, sir. It was not of my seeking. Now, perhaps, I had better take my leave of you, also.’
Somers cleared his throat. ‘No need for that. I heard what the fellow said to you. We all did. I regret the incident, of course, but I would not like you to think that I regard you as being in any way to blame.’
*
‘Which was very handsome of him.’ Cash said. ‘Of course, it is not what other people will say.’
It was the next day and the Misses Somers and Goodall had come a-calling on Cash in his new house to see that he had suffered no ill-effects from the previous night’s incident.
‘What will people say?’ Jane asked.
She was wearing a dress he hadn’t seen before, something in blue, with the underskirt and bodice in rose pink; he knew nothing about women’s clothes and could not remember when last he had noticed them.
‘They will say there go the Tremains again, involved in another brawl.’
‘But it was not your fault!’
‘I wonder,’ Cash said judiciously. ‘I could have wiped my face, begged his pardon and carried on playing, I suppose. If he would have allowed me. I suspect he would not but now we shall never know, shall we?’
‘I hear Mr Birkett is very bruised about the face,’ Elinor said.
‘I never laid a finger on him,’ Cash objected. ‘Well, a finger, perhaps, but no more than that.’
‘You threw him down the steps,’ Jane said, laughing at his injured innocence.
‘I suppose there is that. He will survive, I dare say.’
She slanted mischievous eyes at him. ‘I asked you once if you were violent, Mr Tremain.’
‘Now you know.’
‘I would have less regard for you if you were not. Righteous anger becomes a man, I think.’
He raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘I suspect not everyone will see it like that, either.’
‘I do not care what others see. I know what I see and that is all that matters.’ She looked about the room appraisingly. ‘Are you going to show me through your new house?’
‘There is nothing to see.’
She pouted. ‘Even so …’
He knew she wanted to find out whether the rumours were true, whether he had brought Cuddy with him; but Cuddy, as it happened, was out.
‘Two bedrooms and a kitchen. Outhouse at the back. Why should you be interested in any of them?’
‘It is natural to be interested!’
‘A roof over my head, that’s all. But if you really want to see it …’
She got up at once. ‘Stay here, Elinor.’ Imperiously. ‘We shall only be a minute.’ She smiled at Cash, dark eyes brilliant. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’
She looked without comment at the tiny kitchen
and walked on into what she guessed was Cash’s room. She surveyed it, smiling gently.
‘Satisfied?’ Cash asked.
Jane put her little hand on his arm. He looked down at her.
‘Are you not going to ask me what I see?’ she asked him softly.
‘See?’ He frowned, not understanding.
‘I said I didn’t care what other people saw. It is what I see that matters.’
He remembered very well. ‘What do you see?’ he asked.
Her eyes were enormous as she stared up at him. ‘I see a man.’
He laughed, embarrassed. ‘Plenty of them about.’
She shook her head. ‘Not like this one.’
‘You shouldn’t say such things!’ Uneasily.
‘Why not? It’s the truth. You’re a different man from when you left.’
‘You grow up quickly down there.’
‘You promised to tell me about it.’
‘Elinor will wonder where you are.’
‘Elinor knows very well where we are.’ She sat on the edge of the bed. ‘You have been there. I haven’t. Under the stupid rules of our twice-stupid society, I shall never go there. So tell me what it was like. Please?’
‘It was cold, rough, dangerous, uncomfortable.’ He sat down at her side. He told her in as few words as possible what it had been like. Jane’s hand rested on his arm throughout. Her eyes never left his face.
When he had finished, she sighed. ‘To go to these places. To see them …’
‘As I said, it was cold, wet, uncomfortable …’
‘But at least you have been there,’ she said with sudden passion. ‘You do not know what it is like to be shut up in this colony, day after day, week after week, with nowhere to go, nothing to do beyond the usual routine. I feel sometimes I am suffocating here!’
‘Other women don’t seem to mind it,’ Cash said.
Jane tossed her head. ‘I am not other women then.’
He lifted his shoulders helplessly. He had no suggestions what could be done to remedy it.
She turned to him. Close-to, her large eyes were very dark. ‘How do you manage, here by yourself?’
‘I am not here by myself.’
She withdrew her hand. ‘I see.’
‘No. You do not see. I have told you before, not that it’s any of your business.’
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