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Wild Island

Page 18

by Jennifer Livett


  We sat in silence. I know now, of course, that he was not telling all he knew. Even then I suspected there might be something else, but I assumed his reticence came from a desire not to give Anna more pain. In any case, you can hardly accuse your amiable host of deceit. And wasn’t this the answer I wanted? Booth put down the fossil and stood.

  ‘I am sorry, Mrs Rochester,’ he repeated. He clearly wished to end the interview but could hardly urge us out: a much-tried woman who had come halfway around the world for bad news. I went to Anna’s side and said we must leave the Commandant to his affairs. She did not move.

  ‘Anna, it is not the end,’ I urged. ‘We can go to Spanish Town, to Saint Vincent. Find Rowland’s agent, speak to other people.’

  Anna sat as though deaf and dumb, her staring eyes, brimming with tears, fixed on Booth. After a time he could clearly stand it no longer. He said he could make no promises but would enquire further if that was what she wanted. There were two other officers of the 21st who had known Rochester briefly. They were stationed in outlying parts of Van Diemen’s Land. He did not believe they knew any more than he, but—he shrugged—he would try. It would take several weeks to receive replies.

  Anna looked at him as though he were a beatific vision. He looked away.

  The Lemprieres’ door was opened that evening by a small boy wearing a shako made of cardboard, tied under his chin with a bootlace. He carried a wooden rifle over his shoulder.

  ‘Sentry duty tonight, Thomas?’ said Booth.

  The boy nodded, shy and stern. He led us along the central hall of the cottage towards laughter and voices, pushed open a door and marched away. The room was astonishing. Leafy eucalyptus branches covered the walls in bosky profusion. Ferns, garlands of paper flowers and festoons of greenery were looped with paper-chains and bows of pleated paper. Squeezed into the centre of the room was a long table spread with several overlapping white cloths and places for eight people. Charlotte Lempriere stood with Mr Bergman, looking up at her husband, who was standing on a chair, plump, joyful, excited, holding a sizeable branch in both hands and using the leafy end to brush the ceiling vigorously.

  ‘Et voila!’ he cried, pausing as he caught sight of us. ‘Welcome, chers amis. Now you will be in at the kill!’

  As he spoke, a brown spider the size of a saucer ran rapidly from under the leaves, across the ceiling and down the wall. Charlotte lunged at it with a table napkin but only knocked a paper bow fluttering to the floor. More leaves and decorations were lifted and inspected, amid little shrieks from Miss Drewitt, but the creature had vanished. The search was abandoned and the seating arranged so that Bergman, who declared that he did not fear the insect, was positioned with his back to where it was last seen. We sat. There was a sighing and settling and the last guest arrived: Lieutenant Stuart from the Coal Mines. I was seated between him and Bergman, who had Miss Drewitt on his other side. Anna was between Booth and Lempriere, smiling, comfortably beginning a half-French, half-English conversation with the latter.

  When Miss Drewitt leaned across to introduce me to Bergman, I said, ‘We have met, in Hobart.’

  ‘I was rather hoping you’d forgotten,’ he said, smiling. ‘I was not at my best that day. Now you see me to better advantage I hope. A new man.’

  His loose black curls were cut short now, and he was close-shaven. The gypsyish smile remained. He was not handsome, but his brown eyes were full of amusement and energy, and his long brown face gave the impression of kindness and cleverness. In his black cut-away coat he looked thinner than in the loose brown forage gear.

  ‘I have been warned that many in this island are not what they appear to be at first sight,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you have other aspects also?’ ‘Oh, half a dozen. But I won’t tell you what they are, I’ll let you discover them as we become better acquainted. This colony tends to make new men out of the old Adam—remakes us, whether we know it or not. And you, Mrs Adair? You’re an artist, I believe—and therefore perhaps have just the one settled character—a rather singular one?’

  ‘Singular and plural,’ I said, trying to match his jocular tone, but before I could continue there was a cry from Lempriere. Non, non! C’est impossible! He had noticed that, concealed by the tablecloth, makeshift additions to the table had brought together too many table legs and props at the point where Bergman was sitting, forcing him to arrange his legs somewhat unnaturally around the obstacle.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Bergman. ‘My legs have grown immensely flexible from climbing up and down Booth’s confounded signal towers. Let me lecture Mrs Adair in peace.’

  Charlotte Lempriere soothed her husband and the servant deposited a tureen of soup with an unpolished thump. Lempriere said Grace and we passed the bowls about.

  ‘This claret is excellent, Booth,’ said Stuart. ‘I hope it’s not the same shipment the boys plundered.’ He turned to me and added, ‘Two dozen cases of what Booth calls his “vinous fluid” were broken into and sampled by boys on one of the transports. They clearly found it to their taste. They were discovered in a state of inebriation . . .’

  ‘. . . not unlike our own regimental indulgences,’ finished Bergman.

  ‘Steady, Gus,’ said Stuart, ‘You’ll give Mrs Adair the wrong impression. Besides, it’s ungrateful; the Army taught you everything you know. Make him talk to you about surveying, ma’am, or music. He can be quite sensible on those subjects.’

  Bergman asked me whether I played or sang, and we talked about London, where he had been born, until Augusta Drewitt claimed his attention from the other side, and Stuart began to explain to me the difference between the artificial horizon on a ship, and the one presumed in perspective drawing.

  ‘The vanishing point in drawing is more imaginary . . . the artificial horizon is real in itself, but it is not actually on the horizon. It is in the dish of mercury held between the gimbals . . .’

  ‘Can one thing be more imaginary than another?’

  Conversation around the table had divided into groups. Charlotte Lempriere was talking to Booth and Anna. Fragments drifted free:

  ‘. . . entire gross of candles chewed by mice. Soap, also, they seem to . . .’

  ‘. . . laughing-jackass bird, which the children say . . .’

  ‘Decent sort of hack for thirty pounds . . .’

  Soup and fish were followed by a goose, rather tough, a round of beef, and a baked ham studded with cloves: Bergman’s contribution, said Stuart.

  ‘Charlotte, what a stunning feed!’ Booth called.

  Lempriere rose to his feet, tapping his wine glass with a fork.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, is anyone still troubled by the pangs of hunger?’

  Groans.

  ‘Then please be upstanding for the loyal toast! To our young Queen. God bless her and long may she reign!’

  ‘To the Queen!’

  ‘The Queen, the Queen.’

  When the gentlemen were seated again, Booth remained standing.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I should like to propose another toast. We are gathered here in genial concord to celebrate, belatedly, the birthday of our esteemed friend and colleague, Mr Thomas Lempriere. As you know, our usual revelries were postponed this year on account of the arrival of little Lucy two months ago. You should understand, ladies,’ he turned to us, ‘that every February the Lemprieres put on a great scald to celebrate the day when Thomas Lempriere entered the world, in a place and time very far from here.’

  ‘Steady, mon ami. Not so very far in time,’ said Lempriere.

  ‘I won’t press the point,’ Booth smiled. ‘Although it may seem to those of us still in the first flush of youth (cheers from Stuart) that forty-one years (cries of astonishment, more cheers) is an attainment of great venerableness and wisdom. You have gathered to yourself a lady of shining worth (hear! hear!) . . . a family of great . . . exuberance (laughter) . . . a position of honour in our little community and strong affection in our hearts. A man of science and the arts, equally excell
ent in learning and sensibility, whose multiple exertions on behalf of this colony are a matter of wonder: ladies and gentlemen, I give you Thomas Lempriere and his delightful spouse, the fair Charlotte.’

  The toast was drunk amid table-thumping from Stuart until Charlotte begged him to desist in case the extensions should collapse under the dishes. Lempriere rose and thanked Booth for mentioning how much of his happiness lay in his family, his friends, his most welcome guests.

  ‘We should thank the Lord every day that “the lines have been laid to us in pleasant places” on this beautiful island . . .’ he said. He spoke of the exciting duty of pursuing the study of natural history in this curious place. He referred to his youth, and asked for blessings on those dear to him in Hobarton and other parts of the world. He blew his nose and sat down. I glanced at Booth, expecting to see a smile for this display of sentiment, and was surprised to catch on the Commandant’s face a wave of similar feeling.

  A distribution of plum pies and crumb tarts revived the conversation until Charlotte Lempriere gave the signal for the ladies to retire. Having shown us the offices and the tiny parlour, she excused herself to attend to the baby. I had wondered if Anna would be tired by the evening, but although she was quiet she seemed happy. Augusta Drewitt, pursing her lips at herself in a wall mirror, began to put drops from a tiny vial into her eyes. ‘Belladonna. For sparkle, you know. Do you never use it?’

  Anna and I watched as she dropped the poison into her eyes.

  ‘Rouge is quite passé in London, worse luck,’ she went on. ‘I always think I need a little colour, but one looks a superannuated fright if one wears it now. Do you think Captain Booth the more handsome, or Lieutenant Stuart, or Mr Bergman?’

  She went on without pausing, ‘Bergman has had a convict mistress five years. He has a son by her and is much attached to them, apparently. He is wealthy but a Jewish, of course. I wonder why Captain Booth has never married? He is thirty-seven, you know, and must have means. I should hardly wish to marry out here, in any case.’

  She moved to the cottage piano, plinked a few chords and began turning sheets of music.

  ‘Will you play, Mrs Adair? Mrs Rochester? Or shall I? ‘

  She launched into an écossaise. Anna sat by the fire slowly turning the pages of an album of engravings: Picturesque Scenes of England and Wales. Exactly the kind of prints I had hand-coloured for a few pence each, in that winter after Tom died. Nina and I were so poor I might have stolen a loaf or a piece of blanket if I’d not had that work. I went to the window, held the curtain aside and stood looking down the dark slope to the sentry box with its soft lamplight, wondering whether the prisoners could hear the piano. Miss Drewitt lost her place and came to an abrupt halt. In the sudden silence it seemed to my imagination that the frail music had been vanquished by the strangeness of the thickly treed hills and the water lapping its own song into that cove since the beginning of time. Miss Drewitt recovered and plinked on. I wondered what Mr Bergman’s mistress was like, and what she had done to deserve transportation.

  When the gentlemen came in, the parlour grew crowded. Lempriere was saying to Stuart, ‘But the pursuit of the sciences cuts across every boundary of country and race. Napoleon’s armies had orders to let Sir Humphry Davy and the young Faraday pass through the battle lines . . .’

  A high young voice called in triumph from the doorway, ‘Papa knows, don’t you, Papa? Papa was a spy!’

  A small girl appeared. She wore a white nightgown and clasped a thick red counterpane around her shoulders that trailed behind her.

  ‘Mary!’ said Lempriere. ‘Qu’est-ce que tu fais? Where is Miss Wood?’

  ‘She is sitting in a chair making noises, Papa. I think she is ill.’

  Mary came up to Bergman and said, ‘The others are asleep but I cannot sleep.’ She turned to Booth. ‘I have made some paintings with the colour-box you gave me. Could I ride Jack tomorrow?’

  Booth smoothed her hair. ‘We’ll have to see what your mama says,’ he answered smiling. He chose a custard tart from a dish on the table. ‘One of these and then you must go back to bed.’

  ‘You spoil her, Booth,’ said Lempriere.

  There was a knock on the door and a thick shout of ‘Mary?’ A woman came in. She was at the petticoat-and-stays part of undress and had thrown over the top a voluminous brown shawl. A white cotton cap, strings hanging loose, was crammed over hair partly in curl papers. She had been drinking.

  ‘Oh, I do beg your pardon,’ she said in tones of slurred politeness. ‘Come, Miss Mary!’ And descending into a whimper, ‘Now come along, do!’

  The governess subsided into tears, and followed Charlotte Lempriere out with Mary, snuffling into a large handkerchief. An odd intrusion, a reminder of what I might have been, might still have to be. The conversation resumed slowly.

  ‘Settlers like Gregson and Fenn Kemp won’t stop until they get a voice in Government,’ said Stuart.

  ‘Well, I don’t know how they’ll do it,’ said Booth. He yawned. ‘Oh, excuse me! Life is too short. I’d rather spend time building jetties and dining with friends.’

  ‘“The summer of a dormouse,”’ said Bergman smiling. ‘Do you remember what Byron says? “When one subtracts from life infancy, which is vegetation—and sleep, eating and swilling, buttoning and unbuttoning—how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse.”’

  Lempriere brought out a violin. We must try a Mendelssohn song for two voices he had sent for. Bergman sang the low part, playing it on the violin at the same time, Augusta was soprano and I accompanied on the piano, managing the lovely little piece with some false notes and laughter. Lempriere, deeply affected by the music, seized his trumpet when we finished, vowing to play a dirge for those in peril on the sea. It was after midnight now, and Charlotte reminded him of the children already abed.

  ‘Only softly, ma chère,’ he said, taking up her hand and kissing it. But he put the trumpet aside and the evening came to an end.

  We stayed five more days waiting for the Vansittart’s return. The next day I accompanied the party that conveyed Augusta Drewitt along the four-mile track to Wedge Bay. Anna was content to sit in Charlotte Lempriere’s kitchen playing with the family’s collection of curious pets, among them a wombat which slept in her lap like a fat little bear, and a tame orphan kangaroo or joey, whose pouch was a canvas bag hanging from the doorknob. It dived in head first, leaving its long back legs poking out like a bundle of sticks.

  Charlotte kindly supplied me with a pair of thick cotton duck trousers and a short canvas skirt, and we set off on the narrow road through the dense forest. Augusta rode Jack. I was pleased to stretch my legs. Two convicts pulled a small cart carrying Augusta’s luggage, Bergman’s box of surveying chain—the ‘Gunter’s’ chain—and sacks of flour and sugar rations. The track was black sand netted with root fibres, boggy in places. My new boots were soon unrecognisable. The weather was perfect for walking: a brilliant autumn day.

  Bergman and Booth explained as we went the difficulties of the ‘chain and compass’ method of surveying. By stretching the ‘Gunter’s’ chain along the land to determine length; and using a circumferentor, or tripod-mounted compass, for direction; and a theodolyte, the world could be divided up with imaginary lines. But in practice, when the land was not flat and clear, the readings were part guesswork, and errors were common in the surveying done during the early years of the colony. ‘Triangulation’ was a better method, but it used sextant readings, and therefore needed cairns on hilltops for the sightings. These were expensive and laborious to build, and Whitehall had stopped the money for them, forcing Sir John Franklin to order a return to the old method.

  Wedge Bay proved to be an exquisite curve of long white beach with rocky outcrops each end. A whale-shaped island lay in the distance offshore, humped at one end, tapering away to the sea at the other. Two tiny huts formed the outstation, with neat garden beds around them, and a track behind leading to the signal on top of the
ridge. Augusta’s sister, Evie, and Evie’s husband, Sergeant William Wade, were a pleasant couple, plainly happy with each other and their resourceful life. They made tea in a billycan over the fire outside, the baby being asleep indoors, and we shared the ‘scran’ Power had given us: bread, cold meat and cake. When the men climbed to the signal, I left Augusta and her sister unpacking and walked down to the shore to sketch.

  After a time, Bergman joined me and looked at my drawing.

  ‘Your line is skilful and accurate,’ he said, ‘but you also manage to convey the scale of the scene, the sense of this landscape extending beyond . . .’

  I told him that in France, when I was young, I had seen two works by Madame Vallayer-Coster which perfectly captured this effect for me and made me strive to achieve it.

  ‘Curiously, these were not landscapes but still lives,’ I added. ‘“Still Life with Parrot and the Fruits of Summer”, and “Still Life with Bird in a Gilded Cage”. Quiet interior scenes—and yet the painter had imbued her work with a mysterious light which made you imagine a window just outside the edge of the canvas, and beyond it the orchards and vineyards where this fruit grew—and even beyond that, the distant lands where parrots live.’

  Each grape seemed a little green world you were inspired to wonder at, to see how astonishing it is that such things should exist at all, even though we take them for granted every day. A half-peeled lemon suggested some invisible human hand—and there were roses, in bud and full-blown, others already dropping petals.

  ‘An allegory of our brief lives?’

  ‘Yes, but more than that, too. I felt the painter wanted us to think of the glorious breadth of the world and our little knowledge of it,’ I said. ‘I thought she herself might be a prisoner, like the birds she painted; in exile like them and yearning to go home, and yet acknowledging the beauty of her enforced surroundings.’

  I had desperately wanted to buy one of those paintings. My father had given me a generous amount of wedding money, but Tom had taken charge of it and he did not care for them. A pang of unwanted knowledge had come to me at that moment. I suddenly knew I was less free as a wife than I had been as a daughter. Even gifts to me, even my earnings, belonged by law to my husband.

 

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