The Governor's House

by J. H. Fletcher

  For a miracle the rain stopped soon afterwards. Within fifteen minutes the sun was pouring down, the raindrops on the button grass gleaming in a million points of light. Back to the land of magic.

  We followed the track past Lake Salome to Damascus Gate. The track divided here, the western arm leading to Solomon’s Throne, the east to another outcrop called the Temple. Colin would have pressed on along the western track but as far as I was concerned there were other priorities. Like food. Like a break from the endless uphill slog. Like finding somewhere to have a wee.

  By degrees we catered for them all.

  ‘The problem is,’ Colin said, chewing, ‘that in the past fifty years every bushwalker in creation has explored it.’

  He’d told me that Solomon’s Throne was more of a miniature mountain than a rocky outcrop, with gullies and crevices everywhere you looked, but it had been explored so often that it was hard to believe that anything hidden there would not have been discovered years back.

  ‘Does this man Poxon know what he’s on about?’ he asked.

  ‘Almost certainly not. But we might as well go through the motions now we’re here.’

  We left our packs behind a handy rock and set out to explore. Solomon’s Throne was very dramatic in form, with endless places the crown might be hidden. We circled its base and made our way up a rock-strewn gully to the summit. It took only half an hour to get there but we spent the next two hours checking out various holes and crevices where the crown might have been hidden. I expected to find nothing and we did. Not even a dozing tiger snake, which was something to be thankful for. But the views were great, Colin was showing every sign of possessing an awesomely athletic body and I was reminding myself that this trip was dedicated as much to pleasure as science. With the sun comfortably past its zenith I had the definite feeling that pleasure might prove the dominant factor in the hours ahead.

  ‘It’ll be bitterly cold later,’ Colin said. ‘We’d better find somewhere to camp before it gets dark. We can come back in the morning.’

  We were about to begin the descent when I had the oddest feeling. I stopped abruptly but heard only the wind. I stared down at the open ground around the base of the Throne. There were tarns everywhere – at least Poxon had been right about that – but the undergrowth was nowhere more than two feet high; anything larger than a wombat would have stood out like Murphy’s pig, as I’d heard an Irishman say once. I could see nothing and the path running downhill was empty. Yet I had sensed something. Or someone.

  Colin was watching me curiously. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Do you get the feeling someone’s watching us?’

  Celts were supposed to be big in extra-sensory perception but Colin looked blank.

  ‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘Just my imagination.’

  Later, when we were halfway down, I saw a flash of light as from a pair of binoculars, but this time I said nothing. Keep it up and Colin would start thinking I was psycho. We picked up our packs and headed on through a strong growth of pencil pines to the camping ground at Dixon’s Kingdom.

  We gave the hut a miss and pitched our tents side by side beneath some pine trees. Colin had been right about the temperature. With the first hint of dusk it fell through the floor. We gobbled our supper as quickly as we could and retreated to the warmth of our sleeping bags. Earlier I’d had other thoughts but by now I was so tired that sleep was all that mattered.

  I zipped myself into my tent to keep as warm as possible – an hour after sunset there was already a hint of frost in the air – and to keep out the creepy crawlies. I had a great respect for snakes but did not fancy sharing my sleeping bag with one. I took a generous slug of Chivas and fell asleep at once. I experienced no creepy crawlies but at some time in the night a knife slit the tent’s double skin and I awoke to find a pair of unfamiliar eyes staring at me and a blade at my throat.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Cat

  Cat had been with the Morgans two and a half years when Dr Morgan said he intended teaching her to read and write.

  ‘What if I don’t want to read and write?’

  ‘Then I’d say you’re a fool. And that is something you certainly are not.’

  ‘You know nothing about me.’

  ‘I know that much,’ he said. ‘Or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.’

  Conversation had become a regular feature of their lives. After Cat had been with them three months the doctor had formed this habit of taking her into the library two or three times a week to talk about the things that interested him. At first she’d been uneasy about it. He should be talking to his wife, shouldn’t he, not her? It made her wonder whether it might be the first step to something else, but talk – or more often listening – was all it was. He told her about his work and the plants and animals he found up on the mountain. The way he talked made her curious and after a time she began to ask him about things that had puzzled her all her life, about the stars and the wind and why in winter it was bitterly cold and in summer so hot you could scarcely breathe. Often she didn’t understand his answers but that didn’t matter. What was important was that he was giving her a glimpse of what lay beyond the wall of ignorance that had imprisoned her from birth although there were times, too, when she worried that her lack of knowledge might annoy him.

  ‘I’m not educated,’ she said. ‘I know nothing about anything.’

  ‘I have over five hundred books in this house,’ he told her. ‘Learn to read and write and by the time you have read them all you will be the most educated woman in the colony.’

  ‘I doubt people like that Mrs Byfield would like that.’

  ‘Then this will be your chance to poke your finger in Mrs Byfield’s eye,’ Dr Morgan said.

  Cat saw that the doctor had made up his mind. It didn’t please her – she’d always wanted to read but that should be up to her, shouldn’t it, not him? – but there was nothing she could do about it: she had become his pet project.

  From the time he first raised the subject he made her work at her letters every day. She would just have to make the best of it. She was scared, too, that Mrs Morgan might disapprove of her husband talking to her so much but it seemed she didn’t.

  ‘Good the doctor has someone to talk to,’ she said. ‘I suffer from a little pain from time to time so it’s not always easy for him to have a real conversation with me.’

  Lying in bed at night, hearing the horses moving in the stable beneath her and listening to the owls in the woodland behind the house, Cat thought that maybe, if she learnt enough, she might one day be able to change a few of the things that were wrong in the world. It was a nice thought but impossible, of course. A convict and a woman allowed to change anything? You might as well talk of climbing a ladder to reach the stars.

  Mrs Morgan had been in poor health when Cat started with them and as time passed she grew steadily worse. She stayed in bed longer, sometimes all day, and more and more left the running of the house to Mrs Amos.

  Mrs Amos had been with them from the time Dr Morgan had first had his house built on what had been virgin land. At first she had been inclined to resent Cat as an interloper who for unexplained reasons seemed to have become a favourite with the doctor – all this reading and writing nonsense – but Cat was very careful in everything she said or did about the house and little by little the resentment had faded.

  ‘I don’t know what he sees in her but at least she don’t put on no airs and graces,’ she told Mr Moffatt.

  ‘You’d soon give her what-for if she tried anything like that,’ said Mr Moffatt, who nursed a secret fondness for Mrs Amos. ‘I’ll lay you’d be a real terror, Mrs A, if she ever dared to presume.’

  But since Cat took care never to do so the need for terror did not arise.

  ‘On the whole, Mr Moffatt, I’d say she’s not too bad. As young girls go, I’d say she’s not too bad at all.’

  Mrs Morgan had taken to Cat too, although in a different way from her husband. The doct
or wanted to create a new woman from the old but Mrs Morgan liked Cat as she was and seemed to have no wish to change her at all. Only in one particular did she depart from that, and that was in the matter of Cat’s name.

  ‘Cat is no name for a young woman,’ Mrs Morgan said. ‘Catherine was the name you were given and that is what I shall call you.’

  ‘I’d better prefer to be called Cat,’ Cat said.

  Mrs Morgan was as supple as water in most things but like water had the ability to wear out the hardest rocks and in the matter of the name it didn’t take her long to wear Cat out.

  ‘Call me Catherine, then, if it’ll make you happy.’

  That was important. She respected Dr Morgan but Mrs Morgan she might have come to love, in time.

  Unfortunately time was the one thing they lacked. Cat/Catherine was with her all the time and knew how her strength was ebbing with every day.

  Most fine mornings Catherine took her down to the river, Mrs Morgan claiming the sight of the flowing stream soothed her.

  ‘So clean and shining it looks in the sunlight,’ she said.

  She could no longer walk there unaided so Catherine pushed her across the closely scythed grass in a chariot-type vehicle that the doctor had knocked together in his workshop at the back of the house.

  They looked at the water. The sun threw freckles of dancing light upon its surface and overhead a light breeze stirred the murmuring trees.

  ‘I fear that is I,’ said Mrs Morgan.

  She seldom spoke on these outings and Catherine was startled.

  ‘What you mean?’

  ‘I am like the river, child, going out with the tide. I suspect it will not be long now.’

  Catherine was upset. ‘You’ll feel better now the weather’s getting cooler. You like the autumn.’

  Mrs Morgan smiled. ‘You’re right. Autumn is the best time.’

  She began a rambling story about a valley set between high hills and a lonely chapel with the leaves of the trees turning red and yellow along the banks of the little stream.

  ‘Ice cold that water was. Cold to make the teeth ache. And clear, with tiny fish darting. There is beautiful it was and I always thought I would get to see it again one day.’ She spoke with no hint of self-pity.

  ‘Perhaps you will,’ Catherine said.

  Mrs Morgan smiled. ‘That’s right, child. Perhaps I shall.’

  The next day she had an unusual request.

  ‘I have a fancy to visit the ice house,’ she said.

  ‘Why would you want to do that?’

  The only way to the ice house was up the steps and getting the chariot to the door would be a horrible business with nothing to see at the end of it, but Mrs Morgan only smiled.

  Catherine managed it in the end. She stood at the top of the steps, wiping away sweat and clutching the handle of the chariot to make sure it did not run away from her. She could not count the number of times she’d had to climb up here to fetch ice for the house. The blocks were awkward to carry and as heavy as lead and she looked at the building without affection.

  ‘There it is,’ she said. ‘For what it’s worth.’

  ‘Open the door, child.’

  ‘There’s hardly any ice left,’ Catherine said. ‘I suppose the doctor plans to fill ’er up again over the winter. Fill it up again, I should say.’

  She could have slapped herself. Both Dr and Mrs Morgan had been at pains to improve the way she spoke. Somerset would be in her voice until she died but they’d managed to get rid of the ’ees and ’ers, although the old ways, as stubborn as Cat herself, still had a habit of sneaking in when no one was looking.

  Mrs Morgan continued to smile at her and so Catherine did what she was told. Most of the ice was indeed gone but when she opened the door the cold air might have come straight out of winter. Mrs Morgan’s face opened like a flower.

  ‘There is lovely,’ she said. ‘That’s what I was looking for. This summer’s been so hot. Push me closer, girl. Right inside, if you can manage it.’

  Catherine didn’t feel good about obeying such a foolish request. ‘You’ll catch a chill. Why not wait? It’ll be cold enough in a month or so.’

  ‘Just do it, Catherine.’

  The entrance was so low she had to duck her head to get inside. The ice creaked and groaned, its chill enfolding them like icy steam, but Mrs Morgan sat in the chariot with head thrown back, as though she wanted to bathe herself in cold.

  Catherine began to shiver as the chill took hold of her.

  ‘Wait for me outside if you’re feeling uncomfortable,’ Mrs Morgan. ‘I’ll stay here a while yet.’

  ‘I shall do no such thing,’ said Catherine in sudden rebellion. ‘I shall take you back to the house right now before you catch your death.’

  And did so, taking no notice of Mrs Morgan’s protests.

  ‘What would I say to the doctor if I turned his wife into a block of ice?’

  ‘You could use me to cool his drinks,’ Mrs Morgan said.

  ‘I might have to do that yet if I don’t get you indoors.’ Because the evening was coming down, the first stars were shining above the mountain and the day’s heat was gone.

  That night Mrs Morgan was feverish and by morning was in a sad state. The doctor was with her but halfway through the morning he came looking for Catherine.

  ‘She wants to see you.’

  The old lady seemed to have shrunk almost to nothing. She held Catherine’s hand with fingers like bones. Catherine with tears on her cheeks.

  ‘I’m that sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t be. Lovely it was. These months I have had such a longing for the cold. I could have died up there quite happily instead of in this old bed. So don’t you go blaming yourself.’ The bones patted Catherine’s hand. ‘Take care of the doctor for me. He has a fondness for you and I fear he’ll be lonely after I’m gone.’

  Catherine nodded. She could not speak for the lump in her throat.

  ‘You could do worse than marry him yourself,’ Mrs Morgan said. ‘A convict woman marries a free man, for all intents and purposes she is free. You knew that?’

  Catherine nodded. She knew; every convict knew.

  ‘I shouldn’t mind. He’ll have a better chance of happiness with you than by himself.’ Mrs Morgan managed a little smile. ‘Now off with you, girl. And send my husband in to see me. Forty-seven years,’ she said. ‘So parting won’t be easy. But there comes a time when there’s no help for it.’

  Mrs Morgan died that night, with the surface of the river a shimmer of silver in the starlight. Catherine went out of the house and walked down to the bank. She watched the water and remembered what Mrs Morgan had said about her spirit going out with the tide.

  ‘I hope she finds that valley of hers with the chapel and the red and yellow leaves,’ she told the night. ‘I reckon she’ll be happy there.’

  Of Mrs Morgan’s other remarks she would not think but their last conversation was embedded so deeply in her memory that she suspected she would never forget it.

  The funeral was a sad business, well attended but with none of the joy of life that had been so much a part of Mrs Morgan’s nature. Cat – she had reclaimed her preferred name now Mrs Morgan was dead – sat with Mrs Amos and Mr Moffatt at the back of the church. She was a convict with much of her sentence still to run and there were those in the places of honour near the altar and therefore, presumably, closer to God who were not about to forget it. Mrs Byfield gave her a cold look as she went out, remarking audibly to her weak-shouldered husband about thieves’ kitchens and those who out of a false sense of charity were permitted to enter the house of God.

  Cat returned Mrs Byfield’s scowl with a sunny smile in which equal portions of contempt and derision were plainly visible. When they met by chance after the service Cat compounded the offence by a curtsey so extravagant that Mrs Byfield only just avoided stamping her foot, instead sweeping past without acknowledgement, her long nose raised to impale the sun.

/>   The incident would have made Cat’s day had she not felt sad at Mrs Morgan’s death. She was also scared about what might happen to her. Would the doctor close the house? Might he even decide to leave the colony? If he did either, Cat would be packed off back to the Cascades and there would be nothing she could do about it.

  To begin with nothing was said but two days after the funeral a constable came to the house and was closeted with Dr Morgan for half an hour.

  The first thing Cat knew about it was the sound of the doctor’s voice bellowing furiously in the library.

  ‘You get out of it! Get out now!’ The raised voice was more Welsh than Wales.

  The next moment the library door was flung open and the constable left a lot quicker than he’d arrived.

  ‘Never have I heard the like. Never in all my years! Catherine!’ Dr Morgan yelled. ‘Get in here at once!’

  Cat and Mrs Amos stared at each other.

  ‘What’s to do?’

  ‘Better do what he says,’ the cook said.

  With doom in her heart Cat obeyed.

  Dr Morgan’s eyes were sharp as pincers as he stared at her.

  ‘Is it true that you took my wife into the ice house the day before her death?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘And why would you do such a thing?’

  ‘Because she asked me to, sir. Very insistent she was.’

  ‘You are saying it was her idea and not yours.’

  ‘Yes sir. The truth is I didn’t want to – those steps aren’t the easiest and with her in that chariot there could’ve been an accident – but she was that keen I couldn’t hardly say no.’

  ‘Why would she want such a thing?’

  ‘She had a longing for the cold.’

  His fingers beat tattoo on the desktop. ‘You are right. She often mentioned it. Well, you will be interested to know someone has suggested you did it deliberately.’

  ‘Why should I do that?’

  ‘To kill her off.’

  Cat felt a rose-red flush rise from her stomach to her hair. ‘I wouldn’t ever do such a thing. Not ever! Why, I loved her, sir. Truly.’