by Mike Ashley
It was in January, 1788, that the miracle finally happened. We reached our destination and dropped anchor with the other vessels. When the marines had seen their fill, they opened the hatches and brought us up on deck to take a first look at Botany Bay. It was absolutely stunning, a glimpse of paradise, a Garden of Eden that lay unspoiled in the bright sunshine. But, then, of course, almost anywhere would have seemed wonderful to emaciated, desperate, disease-ridden convicts who had spent over eight months in a storm-tossed purgatory. My two awe-struck eyes were deceived just as easily as the single one belonging to the now literate Luke Fillimore.
We’d been led to expect grassland with deep black soil and well-spaced trees, where crops could be planted without clearing. Instead, we were gazing at a flat heath of paperbark scrub and grey-green eucalyptus trees, stretching far into the distance. There was no obvious source of building stone and no protected anchorage. Botany Bay was at the mercy of the violent Pacific rollers. The water was shallow, the holding ground poor. This was no place for a permanent settlement. Disappointment swept through the whole fleet like an icy wind yet I didn’t shiver in its blast. Alone of that ragged band of watchers, I saw my future in those massive eucalypts and in the cabbage-trees and lush vegetation that sheltered beneath them. I was filled with an elation I had not felt since my two minutes of joy between the ample thighs of Annie Creed, the hapless chicken thief. A whole new life beckoned.
I would one day be a botanist.
“What shall we do today, Mr Beresford?” he asked, deferentially.
“Work in the top field,” I said, “lifting those carrots. You can take Ned with you but tell him not to eat too many of them.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And the same goes for you, Davy.”
Fifteen years had made a new man of me. Long before I’d served my allotted seven, I stopped feeling like a criminal. I earned the trust of the administration and was given responsibility as a result. Ned Paget called me a catchfart but I was no sycophant. I simply learned the rules and bent them to my advantage. Ned, by contrast, kept getting into trouble and feeling the lash upon his back. He was even deported to Norfolk Island at one point. One-eyed Luke Fillimore was also his own worst enemy. Persistent theft and disobedience meant that his sentence was increased indefinitely. The repeated attempts at escape by little Davy Warren kept him in the convict barracks for years beyond his release date. It was almost as if he wanted to remain in custody.
As I became respectable, they remained what they’d always been and the gap between us widened. Out of a misguided nostalgia, however, I asked for my old friends to work on my farm. Ned Paget and Davy Warren were employed as labourers with Luke Fillimore, keeping his one eye on them as overseer. Luke also made sure that Ned didn’t pick another fight with Cicero, my Jamaican gardener, an ebony giant of a man who’d been convicted of robbery with violence at the turn of the century so had only been in Sydney Cove for three years. Cicero was a friendly, placid, easygoing character who’d been driven to crime by hunger. The burly Ned Paget resented the fact that he had to toil in the fields while Cicero had real status and a softer time of it as my gardener. It rankled with Ned.
“Why can’t I dig your garden, Tom?” he whined.
“The name is Mr Beresford,” I corrected, reminding him that we were on different sides of the law now. “And I need you to lift the carrots, potatoes and turnips.”
“So you prefer that big, black scabbado to me, do you?”
“He’s no scabbado. You’re the one who caught syphilis.”
“Cicero is a cooler-kisser.”
“Stop calling him names.”
“He’s a satchel-arsed son of a whore.”
“Cicero has a proper respect for plants and flowers. In return, they grow for him,” I said, indicating the dazzling colour and richness of the garden. “You respect nothing and nobody under the sun, Ned. What do you know of mosses, ferns, roses, carnations, orchids, gymea lilies and waratah? How many species of camellia can you identify? You couldn’t tell me the difference between a wollemi pine and a mint bush. If I put you in charge, this garden would turn into a wilderness.”
“And I thought we was mates,” he said, spitting with disgust.
“Perhaps you should remember who had you brought back from Norfolk Island. I had to use my influence with the governor to do that. Would you like to be sent back there?”
Ned Paget glowered at me but said nothing. He knew that I had power over him. After shooting a murderous glance at Cicero, he went off to join Davy Warren in the field. Luke Fillimore went with him. They were not the only convicts that I employed but they were the sole survivors of the voyage of the First Fleet. Others who’d served their time had gained release and become part of the growing community of Sydney, a town with a magnificent harbour, lying some seven miles to the north of Botany Bay. It was the latter place that remained synonymous with transportation but the convict prison of slab timber was actually sited in Sydney, named after that callous bastard of a Home Secretary who decided to send us all here – Viscount Sydney.
After the early years of struggle and starvation, the colony had slowly begun to prosper and I prospered with it. While I was still a convict, my skill as a cabinetmaker was recognised both by Arthur Phillip, our first governor, and by our second, John Hunter, who, like his predecessor, was a tough old sea dog. They each commissioned pieces of furniture and helped me to build a reputation for quality work that stood me in good stead on my release. Settlers came from England and looked upon my craftsmanship as a reassuring sign of civilisation. Their wives were soon seeking items of furniture that would turn their huts into something akin to a home.
As my success grew, I earned enough money to buy a farm in Parramatta, where the rich black soil allowed me to indulge my passion for botany and to do a favour for those who had sailed with me in the Charlotte all those years earlier. My crime had now been buried forever but theirs still hung around their necks like halters. I tried to offer a modicum of relief. Davy Warren was obsequiously grateful, one-eyed Luke Fillimore was proud of his rank as overseer and Ned Paget, exiled for life, hated me because I’d bettered myself.
It was only Cicero who appreciated what I was trying to do.
“The garden is beautiful now, sir,” he said, approvingly.
“You must take some credit for that, Cicero.”
“I only do what I’m told, sir.”
“But you do it without complaint,” I observed, “and that’s more than I can say for Ned Paget and some of the others. The first thing I noticed when I came here was the diversity of vegetation. Sydney is built on sandstone so its plants offer little sustenance. There were no tasty fruits, roots and berries growing here until I imported some from Africa and South America.”
“You have acres of them now, sir.”
“I wanted to vary our diet. Unlike the Aborigines, we could never learn to suck those honey-filled flowers. There were countless species of plants growing within a small radius of Sydney but none that we could eat. I’ve tried to remedy that.”
“It’s good to help you, sir.”
“You worked on the land in Jamaica. You have a feel for it.”
“Thank you, Mr Beresford.”
“My fruit and vegetables now bring in a tidy income,” I said. “One of these fine days, I may be able to stop being a cabinetmaker altogether and devote my efforts to this garden.”
“Will you keep your promise, sir?” he asked, seriously.
“I always keep my promises, Cicero.”
“You’ll teach me to read?”
“Not directly, perhaps, but I’ll find someone to act as your tutor.”
“Luke told me that you taught him to read and write.”
“Yes,” I recalled, “and I did it with the help of a Bible. Luke may have learned to read the words but he certainly didn’t mark any of them. He’s still the same crooked, one-eyed, God-forsaken thief he was when we sailed from England.”
&
nbsp; Cicero burst out laughing. It was a braying, uninhibited, full-throated expression of mirth that made his muscles flex involuntarily and his whole body ripple with sheer joy. Laughter was freedom for him. He savoured it for minutes. When he stopped, Cicero became penitent.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said.
“No apology is needed.”
“So I will be able to read?”
“If you study hard enough.”
“I want to know the names of all these plants,” he said, gesturing towards the botanical profusion that was my garden. “The real names, sir, in that strange language you sometimes speak.”
“It’s called Latin.”
“I know, sir. And even Luke Fillimore never learned any Latin. I want to be able to read your book, Mr Beresford.”
It was another reason that I liked Cicero. He was slow, uneducated and ponderous in his movements but he was a man with whom I felt able to share things. Everyone knew that I was writing a book but only Cicero had been shown the illustrations that accompanied it. Having read everything on botany that I could import, I’d become something of an expert and had started to write a column for amateur naturalists in the Sydney Gazette. I’d also corresponded with botanists in England and astounded them with drawings and descriptions of the remarkable fauna that abounded on this eastern strip of the Australian coast. The next logical step was to write a definitive work on the subject.
I intended to dedicate it to my bride.
The pilfering began early on. Since it was intermittent and on a small scale, I tolerated it. When you employ convict labour, you have to allow for occasional irregularities. I knew full well that people like Ned Paget ate some of the fruit and vegetables they were employed to pick, and, having lived off their mean diet myself, I didn’t begrudge them their pickings. When a few things were stolen from my house, however, I had to draw the line.
“I’ll not stand it, Luke,” I warned.
“No, sir.”
“Tell the others. If this goes on, there’ll be repercussions.”
“Yes,” said Luke Fillimore. “I will, sir.”
“You’re the overseer – see over them, man!”
Smarting from my rebuke, he slunk away to pass on my comments to the others. It’s axiomatic that you should set a thief to catch a thief but a mangy, one-eyed lag like my overseer was not an ideal choice. Also, of course, Luke Fillimore had divided loyalties. He owed gratitude to me for employing him and friendship to those who shared his convict life. Though he tried to be more vigilant, the thefts continued. What upset me was that the crimes slowly became more personal. It’s one thing to have a tiny amount of your farm produce stolen from time to time but quite another to have an item of great sentimental value taken from your workshop. It was an exquisite little table that I’d made as a wedding present for my bride-to-be. Its disappearance proved that someone was deliberately getting at me.
It was galling. When I called at her house in Sydney that afternoon, Margaret saw the distress in my face immediately.
“Why, Tom,” she said with concern. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing – nothing, my love.”
“You look so anxious. Are you not pleased to see me?”
“I’m always pleased to see you, Margaret,” I promised her, trying to hide my worries behind a warm smile. “I can’t wait for the time when I’ll be able to see you every day.”
“The wedding is exactly six weeks away now.”
“It couldn’t come soon enough for me, my love.”
Margaret Lentle was the best thing that had happened to me since I left England. She was the daughter of Silas Lentle, a farmer from Devon with a sense of adventure that impelled him to take his wife and family on the perilous voyage to Australia. There were three children in all. Margaret, at twenty-one, was the oldest, bright, buoyant and questing, a charming creature with the kind of hidden beauty that only reveals itself when you get to know her properly. While making some furniture for her parents, I was lucky enough to be in a position where my acquaintance with her could mature gently into friendship before blossoming into love.
“Are you sure there’s nothing wrong, Tom?” she asked.
“Quite sure.”
“You would tell me, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course.”
“If we’re going to be man and wife, there should be no secrets between us. You must tell me if there is something amiss.”
“I will, Margaret.”
“And is there?”
“Well . . .” I admitted with a deep sigh.
“Go on.”
“As a matter of fact, there is.”
“I knew it!” She clasped my hands between hers. “Oh, my poor darling! Share your troubles with me. That’s what I’m here for, after all. Why that worried look in your eye?”
“Because,” I replied, pretending to be more melancholy than ever before giving her a sly grin, “because I can’t marry you this very day!”
Margaret giggled and I stole a kiss before her mother came in.
I’d been a model suitor. Everything was done with the consent of her parents. Knowing how I came to be in Australia, her father was so impressed with the way that I’d survived imprisonment and put it triumphantly behind me, that he was ready to welcome me into the family. Rose Lentle, his wife, was more cautious at first though she later confessed that she found the notion of my criminal past faintly exciting. Yet I never saw myself as a real lag. Stealing a few flowers didn’t make me a thief. It was a highly prophetic act. Thanks to that brief moment in the garden belonging to a judge of the King’s Bench, I was guided towards my destiny as a botanist.
Of necessity, there were several things that I concealed from Margaret and her family. I never talked to them in the criminal cant that I’d had to master, and I certainly made no mention of my initiation into manhood on board the Charlotte. There’d been many other women since, all of them wondrously compliant but none remotely respectable. They’d merely satisfied an immediate need. Margaret, by contrast, would give me the lifelong love and devotion of a wife. Her wholesomeness would obliterate the memory of Annie Creed and her kind.
Marriage would complete my redemption.
Luke Fillimore was waiting for me at the farm. The other convicts had all been marched back to the prison but the overseer had stayed behind for a private word about the thefts. His one eye glinting, he sidled up to me. His voice was a hoarse, conspiratorial whisper.
“I think I know who it is,” he said.
“Ned Paget, taking his revenge on me?”
“No, Mr Beresford.”
“Davy Warren, then?” I asked. “Prompted by envy.”
“Davy wouldn’t do anything like that to you.”
“Then who would?”
“Cicero.”
“Never! I put full trust in Cicero.”
“Then you’re a fool, Tom.”
“Mr Beresford to you,” I snapped, “and you’re wrong to tell tales about my gardener. He respects me too much. Don’t point at him, Luke.”
“I have to, Mr Beresford,” he said, introducing a slight snarl into my name. “I saw that black horse-leech, looking through your window this afternoon and he’s not allowed anywhere near the house. I know what he was staring at – it was them leaves you showed me.”
I was jolted. Cicero was a good man but I confined him exclusively to the garden. He had the use of a shed where he kept his tools but it was well away from the house. He knew about the display case because he had seen me working on it, and he’d even helped me to collect some of the specimens. It was another wedding present for Margaret, a hundred leaves, each from a different species of tree (many of them from the huge range of eucalypts), mounted artistically inside a display case with a glass front. It was a botanical calling card. It was also a symbol that, in getting married, I was turning over a new leaf.
I’d shown the case to Cicero – and to Luke Fillimore – before I moved it to the house. From th
at point on, it was kept under lock and key. My gardener had no reason to peer at it through the window. If, of course, that was what he’d actually done. I only had Luke’s word for it and honesty wasn’t something with which he’d ever been closely associated in the slums of St Giles. He sensed my doubts at once.
“Then there was that little table, sir,” he said.
“What about it?”
“Cicero knew where it was. His shed is close to your workshop. He’d have been able to slip in there when your back was turned.”
“He only goes in there at my invitation,” I insisted. “Besides, why would Cicero steal the table? It’s no use to him. He could hardly take it back to the convict barracks with him. No, Luke,” I decided, “you’re making this up because you’re jealous of Cicero. My gardener has too much to lose. He’s the one person I don’t suspect.”
“We found the table,” he said, bluntly. “What’s left of it, anyway.”
“Where?”
“In your garden, sir.”
I was shaken. I made him take me to the spot straight away. In a far corner, hidden behind an explosion of foliage, was a vast pile of mown grass and rotting vegetation that would in time be used as fertiliser. It was Cicero’s domain, the place where he’d wheeled his wooden barrow a thousand times since he’d worked for me. Sticking out of the mound were the remains of my table. It had been smashed to pieces and concealed in the one part of the garden where I wouldn’t go. I felt sick.
“Who found this?” I demanded.
“Davy Warren, sir.”
“What the devil was he doing here?”