Far From Botany Bay

by Rosa Jordan

  Her quiet manner did nothing to give offence, which made it easy for people to project upon her their notions as to the kind of woman she was. Opinions varied widely, but most would have agreed that the single word strange summed her up. Had Mary known this it would not have troubled her, as she had not regained the capacity to care what others said. The skill of ignoring what seemed irrelevant—if that could be called a skill—caused her to barely notice.

  In any case, her contact with local people was slight. Her visits to the village were infrequent, and the road she took to get there was some distance from the cottage, on the other side of a field. No one chose to visit her. That was just as well, for the hut remained in a derelict condition, its roof fallen in. Mary placed her bedding in a corner of the room and fashioned a lean-to over it to keep off the rain. There she slept, sometimes in deepest peace and sometimes in heavy sorrow, aching for friends and family lost.

  Once each fortnight she went into the village and, with the aid of a solicitor, composed a letter to Boswell. In early September he replied with news of her friends, which she very much craved. He said that all four had been pardoned and released from prison. Whereupon young Pip had astonished everyone by enlisting in the marines and getting himself assigned to a ship bound for the South Seas.

  Mary looked up from the letter for a moment and smiled, imagining Pip in a mariner’s uniform. He had done this thing, she knew, in hopes of getting back to Kupang, where he might see Mira again. And if he did? Mary did not have to be told that if babu was the Dutch word for slave, and Pip could buy her freedom, he would do that, and either bring her home with him or remain there to be near her.

  Boswell’s letter went on to say that he had spoken to Luke in the courtroom just after the pardon was read. The country man said he was going home to find out if his wife was still waiting. He allowed that he would not hold it against her if she had given up hope and wed another, since more than once he too had thought himself as good as dead. Wife or no, he still had his children to look forward to, as it was unlikely that all had perished in his absence.

  Scrapper, Boswell noted, had in that same courtroom been approached by a journalist who offered to buy him a pint in exchange for tales of his travels with “the girl from Botany Bay.” Boswell said he encountered the scribbler a week later and asked if he had got the story. The man said he had, at a cost of not one but a whole night’s worth of pints. Worse yet, when he got home he discovered that his purse was missing; where and how it had been lifted he could not be sure.

  Boswell’s missive ended with a wish for Mary’s happiness, followed by a postscript: “I was struck down by the ague that day in the courtroom, and was forced to hasten away before I had a chance to speak to your fourth companion, the Canadian. He came by the following day, but unfortunately I was still indisposed, and unable to receive him. He left a book I had lent him, along with a letter of thanks, but it made no mention of his plans.”

  Mary laid aside the letter, read many times over in the two days since its arrival, and went out to work in the garden. Chopping weeds and turning up the soil in a plot seven years fallow had been exhausting to start. But a summer of hard work had transformed both Mary and the garden. Her muscles had regained their firmness, and summer sunshine had changed her prison pallor to a healthy tan. Her hair, which had darkened during confinement at Newgate, again showed streaks of blonde.

  It was that hour in late afternoon when greenery takes on a golden hue, and the sun, having lost its intensity, enfolds the body like a warm embrace. Mary crouched in the midst of the garden and stuck a finger into the dirt alongside a carrot, to judge its readiness for harvest. She decided the carrot was fat enough, and had just grasped the feathery top to give it a yank when she looked up to see James standing a dozen yards away.

  She did not rise at once, nor did she speak; she simply pushed back a lock of hair that had fallen across her eyes, in order to see more clearly. His image seemed solid enough, yet so did many others that had appeared to her since returning home. How many times had she dropped her hoe and run across the field because a red-haired woman passing on the road looked like Colleen? And what of that time in the village when all heads turned—and hers as well—to gape at a black man carrying a dark-skinned child, and for one heart-stopping instant she believed the man was Bados?

  Often—much too often—Charlotte and Emanuel had appeared out of nowhere, only to disappear in the same mysterious way. The most terrifying moment was but a week ago, when she imagined she saw them standing together at the edge of the cliff. Heart in her throat, she had gone flying down the path to prevent them from falling over. Even after she reached the place where she imagined they had been, and chided herself for not grasping that it was only a hallucination, still she had clambered down to the beach and searched the rocks to be certain that no small bodies had tumbled there.

  True, none of those apparitions had ever come as close as this one, which was standing at the corner of the cottage, only a dozen yards away. Slowly, she rose and waited to see if he would speak, because that was something which, as far as she knew, only the living could do.

  The thing that might be James reached up and touched a bit of thatch that brushed his dark brown hair. “Your cottage roof is in need of repair,” it said.

  “Indeed it is.” Mary spoke softly, because if it was an apparition she did not want it to go away. “Back in Botany Bay my friend Colleen said that when there’s a garden to be made and a roof to be mended, best do the garden first, for a little rain is not likely to kill a person, whereas hunger can.”

  She paused and added, “Besides, ‘tis a job I cannot do alone, and I have no friends hereabouts.”

  “Here is one,” he said, twisting round and round the hat he held in his hand, “who would wed the mistress of the house, before or after fixing her roof.”

  This made Mary smile, for while she did not know if apparitions spoke, she was fairly certain they were never so nervous as to crumple a perfectly good hat.

  “The mistress of the house has an annuity, so is dependent on no one, nor inclined to wed. Would this friend be willing to share her bed outside the bonds of marriage, but in freedom, as once he promised?”

  “Only if that freedom inclined her to stay with him all their days.”

  “In body I can make such a promise, but in mind . . .” Mary’s voice faded and she looked away. “I do wander.”

  He came close to her then, laid a hand on her cheek, and turned her face to look at his. “And where do you wander to, Mary?”

  “Mostly into the past, to be with my children. Although sometimes they come here.”

  “And would I be with you there?”

  Mary considered. “Perhaps. But most of the time, I think I must go alone.”

  She looked up at him, into those brown eyes flecked with bits of gold that held the light of intelligence within. “All I could promise is that, if that friend were waiting for me here, his love for me, and mine for him, would always bring me back.”

  Acknowledgements

  Special thanks to Andrew Gibson, who, when I was first researching this story 25 years ago (pre-internet) obtained from his university library a copy of C.H. Curry’s dissertation, “The Transportation, Escape, and Pardoning of Mary Bryant,” and a copy of Frederick Pottle’s 1932 address to the Elizabethan Club of Yale University titled, “Boswell and the Girl from Botany Bay.” Both provided invaluable source materials.

  Thanks, also, to Lester Cole who located for me 1792 newspaper accounts about Mary in the British Museum, to John Varley who put me in touch with the Port Arthur (Tasmania) Library Resource Centre when I was trying to track down details about the six-oar cutter that Mary used for her escape, and to Kim Lee at the Port Author Library for sending me information which I hadn’t been able to find elsewhere.

  My daughter Jona Jordan’s insight
ful comments on the manuscript were especially helpful. Above all, thanks to Derek Choukalos, my partner in love, writing, and everything else.

  Originally a freelance journalist, Rosa Jordan has in the past 15 years published nine books: four non-fiction (two set in Cuba), four juvenile fiction (set in the US South), and Far from Botany Bay, her first novel for adults (set in England, Australia, and the South Pacific.) Whatever the form or geography, Jordan’s writings illuminate landscapes where social and political realities intersect with personal courage and compassion.

  Jordan grew up in the Florida Everglades, attended university in California and Mexico, and emigrated to Canada in 1980. An environmental and social justice activist, she has been on the board of Earthways Foundation almost 20 years. In that capacity, she facilitated the development of an organic agriculture project in the mountains of Guatemala and a jungle cat reserve in Ecuador’s Chocó rainforest. She and her partner Derek Choukalos live, write, ski, and cycle in the Monashee Mountains of British Columbia.

  rosaj@look.ca

  www.rosajordan.com