Wild Island

by Jennifer Livett

  Gus spent most of the evening talking with James Calder, joined at various times by Booth, Boyes, Henry Kay and others. He was not called upon to dance, far more men than women being present, but he did have half a turn with Louisa. She had been dancing with McLeod, he said, talking intently until she left him abruptly and moved away. Seeing Bergman, she said, ‘Will you be kind enough, Mr Bergman?’

  She was trembling, Gus said, in suppressed rage and near tears, he thought, but when McLeod came up and reclaimed her, she made no objection and danced away with him again. McLeod also took her in to supper, where they continued to talk; urgently, quietly, and not altogether amicably, by the look of it. St John was in a corner with Archdeacon Hutchins and Seymour. He took old Mrs Parry in to supper.

  Louisa and St John had come with Archdeacon Hutchins and his wife Rachel in their carriage, and it was planned that these four would also leave early together, before the other guests finished their supper and the dancing resumed. But when Wallace went to fetch Louisa, she was clearly unwilling to go. For a moment it seemed she would resist, then she followed him reluctantly.

  McLeod stood looking after her for a moment, and then he, too, followed. St John led the way off the Terror onto the Erebus, where a servant stood waiting with the wraps, and when these were resumed, the party entered the covered way leading to the shore. McLeod caught up with Louisa and began to speak urgently with her again. Rachel Hutchins went first onto the board-way, steadied by the Archdeacon. The tide was on the turn and the planking rose and fell underfoot with a queasy half-roll. Louisa and McLeod went in next, followed by St John.

  The chief witnesses at the inquest were Mr Tulip Wright and Mr Walter Nesbit, universally known as the ‘Bell-Man’. He was not the town-crier, but the owner of Hobarton’s only business for setting up servants’ bells in the houses of the well-to-do. He had repaired and extended the old contraption at Government House the previous year, but when money grew tight that summer his trade suffered, and he worked occasionally as a coachman for his friend Mr Broughton. He was yarning with the Archdeacon’s coachman when the Archdeacon and Rachel emerged from the covered way.

  The Archdeacon helped his wife into the carriage and stood back to wait for Louisa to enter, but she, McLeod and St John were still some way behind. As Louisa stepped off the planking and onto the wharf, she pulled her arm away from McLeod, turned, and struck him across the face. He caught hold of her, St John stepped up to them and McLeod let go of Louisa and said something ‘in a belligerent manner’ to St John, Mr Nesbit reported. At that moment a young man appeared from behind the carriages, apparently coming to the aid of St John, while another man also ran in to join the melee. Mr Nesbit thought he recognised this last one as Stringer Wynn, but he could not be certain because a fight had begun and one of the hanging lamps had been knocked into the river.

  Nesbit and Tulip Wright could not agree on how long it was—not long—before there was a scream, and a figure toppled and fell into the water between the wharf and the first lighter. A second figure dived in after the first. The military band had started up again to signal dancing would resume, and people were leaving the supper tables, scraping their chairs and chattering in a general movement from the Terror back onto the Erebus. Mr Nesbit did not believe these events on the wharf would have been audible or visible from the ships.

  Tulip Wright restrained Mr St John Wallace, who appeared ready to leap into the water. Wallace was bloody about the head and face from a blow. After a time he ceased to struggle and fell silent. It was his wife who had fallen in, and Dido Thomas who dived after her. The whole incident lasted five or ten minutes from beginning to end. In Wright’s opinion no one could have lasted long in that icy water. He believed the two drowned had become lodged under the small boats forming the causeway to the Erebus and Terror. The verdict was death by misadventure. The bodies were never found.

  It was the Archdeacon who prevented what might have been a scandal. He spoke to Tulip Wright, Nesbit, and Billy Gawler, his coachman, promising their silence would be not only honourable, but well rewarded. He then thought quickly, and chose to go straight to Ross and lay the problem before him, rather than the Governor. He told Ross there had been an ‘accident’, probably fatal, involving St John Wallace, his lady wife, and a convict. It had better be kept quiet—to protect reputations and ensure no pall was cast over an otherwise brilliant evening.

  Ross’s response was swift. He went immediately to the scene, where he, too, spoke to Tulip, Gawler, and Nesbit. The only others who knew what had happened were St John, still limp in Tulip’s grasp, and McLeod, who had disappeared, two other coachmen who had only seen a fight, and two members of the Erebus crew on guard at the entrance to the covered way. Ross assured the Archdeacon that he would answer for them. They would say nothing. It was the one evening of the year, fortunately, when the newspapermen, who would otherwise be a danger, were out of the way safely eating—and of course drinking—at the ball.

  The Archdeacon looked at Ross and said thoughtfully, ‘It would certainly not do to let it be widely known that the name St John shouted and called across the water was “Dido”, not “Louisa”.’

  Early next morning, the Wednesday, the Archdeacon looked in at St John Wallace, who had been brought to the Archdeacon’s house and given a strong sleeping draught. Hutchins then went, by an arrangement made the night before, to meet Ross at Government House, where they would jointly tell Sir John of the drownings.

  Franklin was astonished and bemused. He seemed to imagine at first that it was St John and Louisa who had died. It took some time to get things straight, but when he did understand, he, too, was adamant that no one must know of it. A short paragraph about Louisa Wallace’s ‘sudden regrettable demise’ would be given to the Colonial Times, the Courier, and the Advertiser on Friday, their publication day. The Governor invited the Archdeacon to return the following evening to dine, when Ross and Crozier would be there too.

  The dinner proved immensely convivial, in spite of the tragic circumstances surrounding it. Towards the end the Governor remembered to ask, ‘Where is Stringer Wynn? What does he say for himself?’

  Stringer Wynn could not be found, the Archdeacon said. A few days later he was discovered dead in the cellar of The Shades, a disreputable tavern.

  On the morning after Franklin’s dinner party, the Friday morning, the Archdeacon rose at half-past six, pulled back the curtains and said to Rachel, who was still in bed, ‘I think we shall have a fine day, dear.’ He went through the door to his dressing room and a few moments later she heard the servant’s bell ring three times in short, agitated pulls. This was unusual. He rarely wanted a servant at this time. Thinking some article he needed was not in place, she rose, wrapped a shawl about her and entered the dressing room just as the servant arrived, but by then the Archdeacon was insensible on the floor and a few minutes later he expired.

  Rachel returned to Wales and lived with her father in straitened circumstances until he died. By that time they had moved from the parish where his living had been, and my letters went unanswered.

  I knew nothing of all this until three days after the ball. From the Tuesday night of the ball until the Friday of the Archdeacon’s death, I was watching by Anna’s bedside at the cottage in Minto Lane. James Seymour had said any hour might be her last, and Mrs T, Nellie and I stayed with her by turns. After a few hours I would walk home to spend time with Gus, or sleep, then return to her bedside. Even Gus did not know of Louisa’s death until the Friday afternoon, when he saw it in the Colonial Times. He went immediately to the Wallaces’ cottage, and discovered from Mrs Fludde that St John was ill in Dr Bedford’s new private hospital, and was not allowed visitors. As before, his illness was more mental than bodily, although there was a head wound. He had asked to see the Archdeacon, and so they had been forced to tell him that the Archdeacon was dead. This news had worsened St John’s condition. Gus decided against telling me then.

  On that night, the Frid
ay of the Archdeacon’s death, Father Therry came to administer the last rites to Anna at about nine o’clock. She died shortly before midnight without waking. As I walked home with Gus I thought of her life. She was dead at thirty-eight, my own age. Beauty, wealth, rank; she had possessed them all in some degree, but what good had they brought her? She had never known a home of her own, or children, or the satisfactions of learning, or pleasant work. Had she known other joys I could not imagine? Had she been happy with Quigley? Unanswerable questions.

  When we reached home and sat for a moment to warm ourselves by the fire, Gus gently told me that I must prepare myself for more bad news. There had been another death—Louisa’s.

  Anna’s death had been long expected; Louisa’s was not. A wave of anguished sorrow overwhelmed me as he spoke, and I could hardly comprehend or believe what he was saying.

  ‘Is there no chance she can have survived?’ I cried, trembling and sick with a helpless sense that this could not be real, not true. It seemed impossible, desperately unjust. I wanted it to be St John who had died.

  When I could speak without breaking down, I told Gus everything Louisa had told me about her marriage, and about McLeod, which I had not felt it right to do while she was alive.

  ‘Could that be the cause of the quarrel? Because Louisa told McLeod at the ball that Thea is his daughter?’

  ‘If so, he seems to have denied it,’ Gus said. ‘But then he followed them, and said something to St John? About Dido, or the marriage, or Thea . . . which began the fight?’

  ‘So St John may know the truth now. Oh, what will that mean for Thea? And what about Stringer Wynn? Where is he?’

  ‘He’s vanished.’ Gus shook his head uncertainly. ‘He’s been spoiling for a fight with St John.’ He paused. ‘Louisa probably didn’t know it, but if she did tell McLeod, it was a bad time to do so. He’s been paying court to a Mrs Henderson. She’s Scottish, a few years older than McLeod. Arrived three months ago from New South Wales and bought a substantial property at Magra. She was not at the ball.’

  We slept at last, fitfully, and the following morning Gus would have stayed with me, but when I said I would walk over to the Wallaces’ cottage, he let me go. I found James Seymour there with Jane Fludde and Thea. St John wanted Fludde to continue caring for the child, but Seymour thought it would be well if I came to visit Thea when I could. No one had seen McLeod. The office of the Derwent Jupiter was closed.

  Fludde was composed, brisk and calm as always, but her eyes were red-rimmed. She was cautious with me at first, but gradually, as we bathed, dressed and fed Thea together, or played with her before the fire on those melancholy winter days, she softened.

  After a month she told me she had two children herself, two boys of twelve and fourteen left in Liverpool with her sister. She also had a girl, five, in the Orphan School at New Town, a bad place. Louisa had promised to help her write a letter to her sister—but it had never been done, somehow. It could be sent to the corner shop. The shopkeeper had a son living foreign and was always fetching letters from the post office. He would read it to her sister. I wrote a letter at Fludde’s dictation and posted it, gaining her strong approbation. My reward was to take Thea home with me for a night, while Fludde accomplished an overdue ‘proper turn-out’ she had been itching for.

  Thea was nearly three. Always a contented baby, she was now a lively, strong-willed infant whose character looked set to match her carrotty hair. She liked Gus, patting his brown face and smiling at him, making him chuckle. Nellie Jack allowed her to stroke the old cat, carefully, and Ada and even Mrs Tench came in to dandle and smile and fuss. My heart was wrenched with pleasure and pain together as I watched her pretty ways and remembered my own children—and Louisa, and Anna.

  Anna’s funeral was small. She had wanted a Roman mass, which meant that few of our friends attended. She is buried in the graveyard near the old Customs House just above the harbour. The headstone carries her name, dates, and the word Resurgam; ‘I shall rise again’.

  After the funeral Mrs T came to me and said she would go. Find her sister, perhaps. I asked if she would not stay at least until the winter was over. Longer if she liked. After some demur, she did. I offered her money but she said to keep it until she was ready. In late spring she asked for it and I gave her a hundred pounds. She counted it, nodded, tucked it into her bodice and walked away with Dasher and her old pipe, and her clothes in a bundle tied at the end of a stout stick, leaving Aristo with us.

  Nellie Jack moved in with Ada Sweet and her father. Old Mr Coombes had asked her to marry him but she would not. She was fond of him she told me, ‘But her teeth did not allow of it.’ At any rate, whatever arrangement existed between the three seemed peculiarly amicable. The Minto Lane cottage was thus empty, and Gus and I began to make plans to enlarge it so we might live there.

  29

  JANE FRANKLIN RETURNED FROM NEW ZEALAND IN JULY, FOUR weeks after the ball, and the newspapers at once resumed their vicious criticism of her ‘unfeminine passion for travelling, which amounts to a mania’. Sir John was ridiculed for allowing her to evade her wifely duties and go rambling about the world.

  ‘It is all Montagu, of course,’ said Mrs Parry, calling on me to gossip. ‘And Robert Murray.’

  ‘But why? What have the Franklins ever done but forgive Montagu his trespasses?’

  ‘The Arthurites blame them for everything. The ending of assigned convict labour, the low state of business—the unseasonal rain. And forgiveness, humph!’ She threw up her thin old hands, heavy with rings. ‘Forgiveness from those one hates is like salt rubbed into a wound. Montagu loathes the Franklins and blames Jane for his failure to achieve any preferment in England.’

  ‘But she wrote references and letters of introduction for him!’

  She shrugged. ‘No doubt he suspects she acted as he would have done himself—write in laudatory fashion, and then write again privately to convey a worse opinion. To the pure all things are pure; to the suspicious everyone is corrupt.’

  ‘Isn’t Montagu looking for a new house? Are his thoughts not sufficiently occupied between that and Government affairs?’

  ‘He cannot find a house, or not one he can afford. He wants the grandeur of “Stowell” at half the price. Which only increases his dissatisfaction until he goes about like the Devil, seeking whom he might devour.’

  By this time my quarrel with Sophy had lasted two months and seemed beyond repair. She sent no note or card when Anna and Louisa died, and contrived not to see us at the Archdeacon’s funeral. I was sorry, but also rather guiltily relieved. Sophy’s friendship was demanding, often forcing me to leave work I was enjoying to answer her pleas for company or help. In any case, the happiness of my life with Gus left no time for regrets.

  I was therefore astonished one afternoon about a week after Jane’s return, when Durrell hurried in to say the Governor’s carriage was at the door with the Governor’s ladies, asking if they might come in. It was a day when I had Thea, and I went out with her in my arms to greet them. Jane, Sophy, Eleanor and Miss Williamson had come to invite us to a final private dinner the Franklins would give for Ross and Crozier before the Magnetic Expedition sailed in a few days.

  ‘Oh, you little love,’ cried Eleanor, taking Thea into her arms. And with this distraction, and their interest in our tiny cottage, and the desperate attempts of Durrell to produce a creditable tea, Sophy and I were able to exchange a few words again. Jane, who was still hobbling from the injury to her ankle in New Zealand, drew me aside in Durrell’s vegetable garden and wished me happy in my marriage, adding in a lower tone, ‘I was shocked beyond expression to hear of Louisa Wallace’s death. A dreadful business. And the Archdeacon’s so quickly following! I am sorry too, about your friend Mrs Rochester—but Louisa!’ She shook her head.

  I was wondering whether Sophy had decided to say nothing of our quarrel, or whether Jane had wanted to be a peacemaker—or had chosen to ignore what she preferred not to know.

&nbs
p; On the night of the final dinner with ‘the Captains’, Jane’s limp was still evident, but she was in excellent spirits. At one end of the reception room a table held a display of beautiful Maori gifts—and one object out of keeping with these. It was a double-bed patchwork quilt pieced by convict women on the Rajah, newly arrived. Miss Kezia Hayter, the matron on the voyage, had persuaded the women to make the quilt as a gift to Mrs Elizabeth Fry, the famous Quaker prison visitor in London, their benefactress, and Miss Hayter’s friend. The fabrics came from the sewing pouches that Mrs Fry’s London Ladies Committee supplied to every convict woman transported. Miss Hayter had asked Jane to have the gift sent home to England, and also to help establish a Ladies Committee in Hobart, to visit female convicts.

  ‘I have a bad conscience about Mrs Fry,’ Jane admitted with a rueful smile. ‘Four years ago, before we left London, I promised to send her a report on the Situation of Female Convicts in the island, and . . .’ she groaned, ‘it is still not done.’

  But once the Ladies Committee was begun, the report would be easy. She was counting on me for the Committee—but it must wait another month; Sir John was to tour the Richmond region in early August, and she would go with him. It was a perfect opportunity to call on Captain Booth’s brother James, who had now arrived in the island and established himself and his family in a handsome stone house on the road into Richmond, about half a mile from the town. James Booth’s years as a naval Captain meant the visit was essential, even without their friendship for ‘our’ Booth.

  In the end the first meeting of the Ladies Committee did not take place until early September. It was ‘by invitation’, but Jane must have invited quite a number, I thought, because she was plainly mortified by the few who arrived on the designated evening. Apart from Jane herself, there was Miss Williamson, Miss Kezia Hayter, myself, and four women I did not know. No Sophy.