‘Staying on will not mean cutting ourselves off from northern friends,’ she said, ‘or scientific pursuits. The Captains’ arrival proves that. And Henry Kay is here, and young Joseph Hooker, though we see little of him. He is not fond of society. He is ship’s surgeon on this voyage but his real passion is the same as that of his father, Mr William Hooker—Head of Kew Gardens, you know. Both are botanists to the marrow. You see, Captain, Van Diemen’s Land is now truly part of a world-wide community of scientific men.’
Horatio Tennyson had arrived too, she continued. Had Booth met Horry? He was the young brother of Alfred, the poet. The Tennysons were related to the Franklins by marriage, since Alfred had married one of the Sellwood girls, poor Emily. Horry had so far proved to be as dreadfully reckless, idle, and eccentric as the rest of the Tennysons, but he might improve. Allowances must be made for his upbringing. When he was young he had seen the ghost of a severed head walking along the shrubbery path. In that benighted rectory anything was possible. Jane gave a faint shudder before rushing on.
‘And Sir John Barrow’s son Peter is to become catechist at Port Arthur, as you know—and the Goulds intend to return. Even Dr Arnold of Rugby—this will astonish you—has written that he would love to take charge of the new College himself, when all factions are satisfied and it can begin at last.’
And think of Dr Lhotski—well, not Lhotski perhaps—like Horry Tennyson, he was of dubious value. Think of Captain Laplace and all the charming French naval men whose ships seemed to abound in these latitudes! Think of the dear Count, Strzelecki, whose company Sir John so greatly enjoyed. They had wrangled like brothers over the Wollaston boiling point method of determining the heights of mountains . . .think of all the other wonderful men here—why, her husband might wish to continue in Tasmania even after twelve years as Governor! A scientific retirement here would be the very thing! This was the place for discoveries. The northern hemisphere was all known and stale. The only thing left there was the exploration of the Northwest Passage, and Sir John was far too old for that now.
‘You had better not let him hear you say it, my lady.’ Booth uneasily took a jocular line, but Jane Franklin repeated firmly, ‘Fifty-five next April. Far too old for an Arctic winter. The Admiralty would not allow it.’
Again Booth was silent. Last night the question of a new voyage in search of the Northwest Passage had also arisen among the gentlemen, and it was clear that Franklin had discussed it before with Ross and Crozier. Who among the old Arctic Lions at the Admiralty could be counted on to back the venture? Who would oppose? Why should Sir John not take the Erebus and Terror when the Magnetic Expedition was over? The bombs had performed superbly so far, and their strengths and weaknesses would be even better known by the time they returned to Hobart next autumn after another summer in the southern ice. Their return to London in two years would coincide roughly with the end of the Governor’s first term here . . .
‘My brother James is also on his way, ma’am,’ Booth said. Changing the subject. ‘My eldest brother, and his wife and children. He has been Captain of the Trinculo for a decade, but is now to have three years “on the beach” and will spend much of it here.’
As they walked on it came to Booth that he should sell his commission, leave the Army. It would bring in a useful amount. Pay off his debts again, hold a little in reserve against James’s arrival—bound to need money then.
He was in excellent spirits that night when he and Lizzie joined a party going to the Theatre Royal. The moving spirit was Augusta Drewitt. Her sister and brother-in-law were in town, and they had persuaded Bergman to escort her. The Franklins were not involved, they did not approve of plays, except Shakespeare perhaps. This was a satire on the Magnetic Expedition. Lizzie would have preferred to see Mr Loon’s Menagerie Troupe, but said philosophically that the play might be ludicrous and amusing at any rate.
Ludicrous indeed, thought Booth, laughing in spite of himself. Mr Jarvis was playing the part of Franklin as a grotesque, a Sir John Falstaff, a tub of lard so genuinely reeling drunk he forgot his lines. Wags from the pit threw peanuts and jeered, ‘Make ’im walk the plank’. The snow and icebergs were well done, however, and Mrs Jarvis as ‘Fame’ came down on a gilded swing and crowned Ross and Crozier with laurel wreaths. She gave her husband an angry slap, which set the house roaring, and the Misses Adelaide, Emily and Kitty Jarvis, ‘spirits of the North’, ended the play with an energetic dance. To keep warm probably, said Bergman.
It was the first time Booth had been in the new theatre, which really was the pretty little gem everyone called it, but as the crowd began to leave at the end, the great defect of its design became clear. An elegant curved staircase descended from the dress circle and boxes into the foyer—but unfortunately the pit also opened into the back of this area. The pit doors were supposed to remain closed until the upstairs audience had gone, but the penny and peanuts crowd were in no mood to wait. They came thrusting out to mix loudly with their two- and five-shilling superiors, turning the foyer into a struggling mass surging towards the outer doors.
Lizzie held tightly to Booth’s arm. She was fearless by nature, but small, easily shoved by the crowd. Augusta clung to Bergman. Her sister and brother-in-law were still on the staircase behind. In the midst of it Booth felt someone staring at him. Among the backs of heads four yards in front, a pale face was turned to look back at him. A woman, not young, her expression filled with alarm. She turned quickly away. A two-shilling patron, or even a five, judging by her head and bearing. Booth decided he did not know her and turned away, before recognition came like the flare of a match: Catherine Tyndale, Rowland Rochester’s woman. Older, of course. Her hair done differently. He scanned the heads near her for Rowland but there was no one resembling him.
He could not abandon Lizzie and push forward—and in any case, he could hardly seize the woman, demand explanations. While he hesitated, her part of the crowd reached the street, and he saw she was with a tall young man and a dark young woman. They moved briskly towards a line of carriages waiting further along where it was darker. Bergman was pushed closer to Booth at that moment, and he was able to point and say, ‘Rowland Rochester’s wife’. The words were half lost in the hubbub, but Bergman looked in that direction.
At this point, the crowd, which had been inching forward, seemed to lose momentum and stop. Looking about him in frustration, Booth saw Mr Tulip Wright, the former District Constable, nonchalant among the jostling mob. The front edges of his black coat were pulled wide apart to reveal his barrel chest; his thumbs were hooked into the armholes of a very splendid purple satin waistcoat. His high collar cradled two or three chins and a verdant swathe of emerald cravat.
‘Evening, gents,’ he said, and nodding outwards, ‘An ’oss gorn down in the road.’ Booth reflected that men like Tulip Wright always do know what is going on, in spite of having no visible source of information.
‘I thought you were gone to Port Phillip?’
‘The wife’s expecting. Come back to ’er mother for the ’appy event.’ He jerked his head back towards the stage. ‘Bit of a larf, eh?’
‘Do you know who that carriage belongs to?’ Booth asked, pointing.
Tulip considered, thrusting his underlip forward to show his poor opinion of it. ‘H’eddicated guess—an ’ired lug from The Ship—being as the jarvey’s Billy Ryan. Want me ter suss ’oo’s ’ad it ternite?’
Bergman, listening too, shook his head. ‘We were interested in the horse.’
Tulip eyed them doubtfully but said no more.
It was midnight before they reached the cottage, and in a few words they agreed Bergman should speak to Billy Ryan. There was no time to say more: Lizzie called Booth away, and next morning, at first light, the couple left to take ferry and coach to Richmond.
Booth did not return to Hobart until the Monday evening three days later. He and Bergman met at the cottage in the early evening and adjourned to a chop-house near the new wharf.
�
�The carriage was hired by an elderly widow,’ said Bergman. ‘A Mrs Ritchie in Fitzroy Place. She had visitors; it was they who went to the play. Their name was Fairfax.’
‘Ah . . .’
Bergman nodded. ‘I wasn’t sure whether to leave it to you or follow it up. But I didn’t know when you’d be back, and decided not to wait. I walked up there and asked if I could speak to Mr or Mrs Fairfax.’ He smiled. ‘A voice from inside called, “Who is it, Dora?” and out came Mrs Ritchie. Straight as a die, no-nonsense. I said a friend and I thought we’d seen Mrs Fairfax at the play. We had been acquainted with the Fairfaxes in the West Indies, and would like to meet them again.
‘She said they’d gone, and she would certainly not pass their address to any stranger who came knocking—but she’d make the same offer to me as to the other gentleman who’d called earlier. If I would write down my name and address, and a sentence to show my bona fides, she would forward it to the Fairfaxes when she next had occasion to write.
‘I did so, and asked whether the other gentleman who had called was dressed in elaborate style. She looked at me for a moment and then said she supposed there was no harm in telling me, as I seemed to know anyway; it was the Constable, Mr Tulip Wright. He claimed to have found a pair of gloves at the theatre belonging to Mrs Fairfax. After that I went to the coach depot and learned the Fairfaxes had travelled to Launceston on Saturday morning. Then I went hunting for Tulip and asked him what he meant by it.’
‘He’s one of Forster’s cronies.’
‘They’ve fallen out. Forster owes him money. And Tulip says he doesn’t like the company Forster keeps nowadays. Told me he’s not against “a bit o’ violence in the right place”, but there’s some kinds of violence is “downright narsty”. Butcher Wynn’s kind, and John Price’s.’
‘You believe him?’
‘I don’t think he’d have been so indignant about Forster if it wasn’t true. He says Forster owes big gambling debts and has chosen to forget the small ones. When I asked Tulip why he’d gone to Mrs Ritchie’s, he said he was just curious. But it occurred to me that Tulip could be employed to go to Launceston and look for Fairfax—if St John Wallace agrees, of course.’
He hesitated. ‘There’s something else I should explain to you.’
He recounted to Booth what the Carmichaels had said.
‘And you haven’t told St John?’
‘No.’
‘He’ll have to be told now. We can’t leave him in ignorance that Catherine Tyndale is here—which suggests that Rowland is too.’
They walked up to Davey Street, were admitted by Mrs Fludde, and found Louisa at the piano and McLeod standing by the fire. St John was down at the Church, they said. He had eaten dinner with them and then gone to a Church meeting.
Booth and Bergman walked down the hill again as it began to grow dark. Neither made any comment on the strangely domestic scene they had witnessed. They found St John with Dido, locking up the vestry. He opened it again, Dido relit a lamp, and in its golden light St John’s splendid profile outlined itself against the black cassocks ranged on hooks along the wall. They sat on three straight chairs among the musty smell of garments. Dido stood at St John’s side, avoiding Booth’s gaze, shifting between his good foot and the thick, built-up sole of his club foot. The convict’s face was young, unformed, a piece of dough not fully modelled into the detail of a face.
Wallace listened while they explained, let a silence fall before he said, ‘There is no need for Mr Tulip Wright’s assistance. I know where Fairfax is.’
Booth frowned. Bergman said, ‘You know? How long have you known? Why did you not say so? I thought you wanted the Arthurites brought to justice? Have you told Mrs Adair?’
Wallace shook his head, smiling.
‘It has been a hard lesson for me,’ he said, irritatingly calm, ‘but salutary. After Walker died I was greatly troubled in mind, as you know. But I at last began to understand that I had been wrong about him. He was a dark angel, tempting me. He led me into the belief that I could do good through my own righteousness.’ His face took on a sombre expression. ‘Pride, the sin of Lucifer, the greatest sin. Now the Lord has given me this man, one of his lowliest servants, to help me continue my work.’
He laid his hand gently on Dido’s shoulder. ‘“Judgement is mine, saith the Lord.” Those who caused Walker’s death must be left to Him. Their punishment will be more fitting than anything I, or any court of law, could devise. Even now I can see it beginning. Henry Arthur lying on the brink of death at his brother’s house, a ruin of drink and debauchery. Forster ill and floundering in a debtor’s mire of his own making; Montagu returning to this island against his will, because for all his cunning he has not achieved the preferment he craves.
‘Even Governor Arthur.’ He nodded at Booth. ‘You’ve told me how, when it came to leaving, Arthur wept—but why did he leave if he did not wish to? He had land, money. He could have stayed as a gentleman farmer, a member of the Councils, contributing to the island from which he’d taken so much. He went back because he was a prisoner of England’s ideas of advancement and his own greed; hungry always for higher rank, greater wealth.’
‘But the crimes of his followers are not matters of private morality,’ said Bergman, visibly angry now. ‘They have concealed a violent death . . .’
‘I know what they have done. I met Fairfax, he told me.’
‘Fairfax told you? Then why have you not . . . ? If you let their offences pass, you make a mockery of the justice this island is supposed to serve. Many of the wretches imprisoned here are less guilty than the men who sit in judgement on them.’
St John smiled, shrugged. ‘You speak as though wickedness in high places were new, Bergman. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes is a very old question: “Who shall judge the judges?” My business is with God’s law, not the human variety. In six months I shall return to England to argue against transportation—when the Huon chapel is finished and the new College is properly begun.’
‘Dido must stay—for the term of his natural life,’ said Booth.
The convict ducked his head convulsively, made a gulping noise.
‘He will come with me,’ said Wallace, his jaw tightening. ‘Who will prevent it? You, Captain? The Colonial Office has wiped his name from the records. He is dead to them. It is time Louisa went home, too. Her character is weak, she needs guidance.’
‘And Rowland?’ asked Bergman. ‘Where is he? Of course you’ll write to the Rochesters in England about him, and explain it all to Mrs Adair?’
‘My conversation with him was under the seal of the confessional. Circumstances make it necessary for him to preserve his secret at present. And Mrs Adair is about to sail home.’
On the last day of his leave, Booth joined the Government House party that sailed up to New Norfolk for the Governor’s laying of the foundation stone of the new College, dedicated to Christ. Coins were laid underneath the stone, with copies of an oration by Gell in his several languages. Ten days later, when Lizzie came home bearing a Colonial Times, Booth read that the newly laid foundation stone had been jemmied up by ‘a person or persons unknown’. Everything under it was gone. And the Erebus and Terror had sailed, to spend summer exploring the southern ice. They would return in autumn, April or May.
27
AT THE END OF WINTER, IN LATE AUGUST, I HAD TOLD LOUISA I would leave for England. The Mountain had been covered in snow down to the foothills the day I said it, a great white bastion against a blue sky, the bright air as chilly as I believed Bergman now felt towards me. No reply had come to my note. I had not seen him for months. I knew from Louisa that he had been in town for a day or two now and again, which probably meant that he was avoiding me.
I was sitting on the hearthrug in Louisa’s parlour, in front of the fire, building a tower of blocks with Thea.
Louisa said, off-handedly, ‘Augusta Drewitt seems to have overcome her dislike of marrying here. She speaks constantly of Bergman these days. She
is three-and-twenty, and begins to despair, I suppose.’
My back was half-turned to her; she was sitting in a chair looking through a magazine I had brought her, but the fire would have excused my burning face in any case.
‘Gus and Gusta,’ I said mockingly. Then I added that I was tired of waiting for Anna and Quigley, and would return to England soon.
‘You think of your time here as waiting?’ Louisa said, interested. ‘Why not think of it as staying on until you are tired of it? I am coming round to that view myself.’
I shook my head, and when I left her I hurried down to the wharf, feeling compounded of fire and ice, frozen on the outside as the cold wind scoured my face, burning within. I discovered the Lady Dorothea would sail at the beginning of December and booked a passage. I would be in England by spring, and I was glad of it, I told myself. But the heart is a contrary organ, with a mind of its own, and I discovered mine had put out tendrils and attached them to certain aspects of Hobarton during these three years. No sooner was the deposit paid than I began to think of the friends I would miss, and of saying farewell to my snug little cottage, and how I would never see again certain favourite views through odd gateways and now-familiar trees to the Derwent.
‘You are thirty-seven,’ said Mary Boyes crossly, ‘making an excellent living doing what you love—and since Hobartians appear to have an insatiable propensity for having their portraits taken, why on earth are you leaving?’
And there was Nellie Jack. Fifty-nine, a tireless grumbler with a contrary streak, but we managed comfortably together, suited each other. She pottered with old Mr Coombes in the garden, helped out in Ada’s shop, fussed over an old stray cat. Bess Chesney had three servants, already one too many. She would take Nellie in, but Nellie would be a fifth wheel, a known charity case—and the cat must be left behind. When I told her I was leaving, her face dropped into a look of weary hopelessness very terrible to me. She nodded curtly and set her mouth to stop it wobbling. All the blows in her life had taught her this: mute resignation to the fates which had so often used her so ill. I had to turn away to hide my own eyes, filling with tears.
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