Behind the Sun

by Deborah Challinor

  Harrie thought so, too. She really wanted an assignment where she could sew and embroider and generally use her needlework skills.

  ‘Well,’ Mr Downey said again. ‘I’ll take this opportunity to wish you the very best of luck now, Harrie, as things will become quite hectic in the next two weeks before we go into harbour. I’ve enjoyed having you as my assistant. I hope things go well for you. I’ve often wondered…’

  Harrie waited, but he didn’t finish, and looked even more embarrassed.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘good luck. I’ve also noted where I’ll be lodging for the month before my ship sails, which is the King Hotel on King Street. If you need help, that is. I mean, if Rachel should require assistance, you’ll know where to send word and I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. That’s very kind of you.’

  As she crossed the waistdeck she tucked the letter down her blouse, out of sight. It had been a very thoughtful and generous thing for him to do, but she wasn’t sure she wanted a testimonial from him. It would give her an advantage over Friday and Sarah and Rachel when it came time for them to be assigned, and she didn’t want that. She wanted them to stay together. Which was silly, she knew, because from what they’d heard it was very unlikely they would be assigned together, but still, it felt wrong. If she used it, or even thought about using it, it would feel like a betrayal. Mr Downey wouldn’t even think about a thing like that.

  Not that it looked like Rachel would be assigned. Oh, she still had her good days, but there were certainly bad days, too. What happened to girls who weren’t fit enough to be sent out? If her condition worsened, she might even be confined to the Factory hospital, which, Harrie was sure, would be nowhere near as clean or orderly as Mr Downey’s. And why would the silly girl not admit to being pregnant? Harrie was sure now she was. Sometimes she felt like taking Rachel by the ears and giving her head a thoroughly good rattle just to wake her up.

  Friday, too, was in a foul mood, and she wouldn’t talk to anyone either. Well, she would, but not about what was upsetting her. Harrie knew she was worried about Rachel and suspected she felt responsible, though God knew why; what had happened hadn’t been Friday’s fault. And Harrie knew from their time in Newgate that when Friday was out of sorts she drank heavily, except her means of obtaining alcohol on the Isla had been cut off, except for a tiny ration Harrie thought she might be scrounging from Joel Meek, which wasn’t enough, not for Friday. Harrie really wasn’t looking forward to what might happen when they finally arrived at Sydney Town, because if Friday could get her hands on drink there, she most certainly would.

  Sarah wasn’t much better. She never really said much anyway and was saying even less these days. She was very patient with Rachel, surprisingly so, and Harrie had caught her crying once when she’d thought no one was looking, after Rachel had had a particularly ugly fit. But then Harrie had watched her when they’d buried Liz Parker — well, dropped her body over the side of the ship — and her face had been as hard as rocks and wearing an expression, she’d realised later with shock, close to triumph. And she’d wondered, guiltily, whether Sarah had done it, had killed her. And Sarah must have read her mind, in that way she had, because the next day she’d said, ‘You think I did it, don’t you?’

  And Harrie, who’d known exactly what Sarah was talking about, had gone red and said, ‘Did what?’

  ‘Topped Liz Parker.’

  ‘No, I don’t!’

  And Sarah had laughed. ‘I was up on deck with you, remember?’

  But not straight away you weren’t, Harrie had recalled disloyally.

  Then Sarah had said, ‘It wasn’t me, Harrie. I certainly felt like it, she was such a bitch to Rachel. She was a bitch to everyone. But it wasn’t me. You know me better than that.’

  Harrie did, and felt bad for even only half thinking it.

  Sarah had given her one of those rare, real-Sarah smiles that not many people saw. ‘It’s all right, Harrie, I’m not offended. And if I had done it, it would have been for Rachel. You know that.’

  And, strangely, the more Harrie thought about it, the more acceptable that notion seemed. Which frightened her badly, so she’d pushed the thought to the very back of her mind.

  Except it kept popping back out.

  Gabriel Keegan peered out of the small window of his cabin at the distant shoreline. It was miles away, the dark line of land shrouded in low cloud. According to Holland, they were less than two weeks out of port, which was fortunate as he’d polished off his personal supply of cheese and wine and was sick to death of taking his meals in his cabin, not to mention his own company. Downey had made it clear he wasn’t welcome either in the great cabin or on the foredeck, thanks to that sanctimonious prick Cutler and the self-righteous Seatons. But he only left his cabin at night now anyway.

  He’d made that decision himself though, never mind Downey. A few days after the little blonde tart had attacked him he’d been on the foredeck when some slag on the waistdeck had hurled something at him. The missile had been a turd.

  Bloody slit-arsed bitches.

  Josiah Holland carefully rolled up his blueback charts, slid them into a leather map case and hung it on its hook. He’d left two charts out on the table, their curling corners held down by glass paperweights, as he’d need them for navigating into Sydney Cove, but the remainder he wouldn’t require again until the return voyage in six weeks’ time. Once they’d dropped anchor, the convicts had been disembarked and the — slightly depleted — cargo unloaded, he would pay the crew then write up his report. He had also decided to inform Amos Furniss he wouldn’t be required on the homeward journey. And now that the threat of mutiny had passed, if he coerced other crew members to resign, then so be it: there were plenty of sailors in Sydney willing to work. He’d just about had enough of the man’s insolence. He would severely dock his pay, too, to compensate for the missing rum and brandy from the hold.

  This voyage had been a nightmare. Thank God it was almost over.

  Sarah knew they would be split up after they left the Parramatta Female Factory, but while they were there, they’d be all right. She’d heard talk of the Factory in London and, though by all accounts it wasn’t a pleasant place, as in any prison there were ways in which life as an inmate could be made better. She’d also gathered that the assignment system itself could be worked to advantage if you kept your wits about you, which was something she understood well. But she wouldn’t know what that would entail until they actually arrived, and sitting around on this ship waiting for that was stretching her nerves almost to tearing point — and there was still another whole week to go.

  Once they left the Factory they’d need money — they might well have spent their kitty by then. Who knew what they’d have to pay for inside? And it didn’t look as though Rachel would be playing broads for a while, if she ever did again. Their assignments as servants wouldn’t earn them anything, so that meant reverting to the skills that got them transported in the first place. Harrie would make a hopeless criminal, so she was out as far as that went. But Friday, Sarah knew, would be on her back at the first opportunity as it was the quickest way to pay for gin. She could make a lot of money and was happy to share it, and Sarah had plenty of schemes of her own.

  The money would go first to care for Rachel. Sarah didn’t know what form that care would take, but she didn’t need to yet. Harrie would be provided for next, as she couldn’t make her own money while virtually enslaved to someone else. She deserved an allowance — she was the loving heart that held them all together. (There, she’d said the word that always gave her such trouble: love. Thought it, at least.) And if Rachel were pregnant, there would be a child to support as well, because soon it would be too late to do anything about it. It would come and it would not be Keegan’s child, just Rachel’s.

  It could all be done with careful scheming, a bit of hard graft, and money, because money fixed most problems. And in Australia there would be no flash man like Tom Ratcl
iffe to take it all away from her, or to beat the hell out of her or tell her she was ugly and unwanted.

  She wasn’t unwanted here. Or unloved. She had Harrie and Friday and Rachel.

  Matthew Cutler sat at the desk in his cabin writing what would be the last of his shipboard letters home to his mother in England. Some weeks it had been a colossal strain coming up with something interesting to tell her, but lately, over the past month, there had been plenty to write about.

  There had been the terrible storm, though he’d played that down so he wouldn’t worry her; the sighting of the Flying Dutchman, which he’d described at length as she was very interested in matters concerning the spirit world; the mysterious death of the convict woman; and the increase in flora and fauna as the Isla neared the southern coasts of Australia.

  There had also been the ongoing tension concerning Gabriel Keegan, who had shut himself in his cabin, to the relief, Matthew was aware, of almost everyone. He saw the girl Rachel Winter on the waistdeck from time to time and was gratified to see that, remarkably, she seemed to have recovered from her awful injuries, though James Downey had hinted she wasn’t as hale as she looked. She appeared even more of a waif with her trailing, silver-white hair and stick-like wrists, but then Matthew supposed that travails of the nature she had endured would certainly sap a person of her strength. He definitely hadn’t mentioned to his mother anything about that particular affair; she would have found it all extremely distasteful. He had himself and couldn’t wait to see the back of Gabriel Keegan.

  Because of it, he’d never summoned the courage to speak to Harriet Clarke and now he supposed he never would. He might have if Keegan hadn’t sullied the waters by committing his brutal assaults, but since then the line between the prisoners and the passengers had been as impassable as a brick wall, crossed only by Mrs Seaton and her school for letters. He’d lost his opportunity, and he’d lost his convict girl.

  He took up his pen again:

  We expect to be dropping anchor in Sydney Cove in five or six days and I must say I am very much looking forward to my new life. My first task will be to post these letters to you, and what a large bundle they will make. My second task will be to report to the offices of the Government Architect — and I do not mind admitting, Mother, that I am somewhat nervous about the prospect — and my third will be to find suitable accommodation. Though, on second thoughts, perhaps after I have located the post office I will visit the nearest public house that will sell me a good meal consisting of fresh vegetables and beef. We are coming to the end of our better edible provisions and if I have to eat one more tooth-cracking, stomach-bloating ship’s biscuit I shall mutiny. We have even run short of lime juice, though not wine, though it is not very good wine that remains, being a very rough Spanish red.

  But the sun is shining, despite a cooler temperature than I had expected, and my spirits are high, and I will be stepping onto Australian soil with a glad and expectant heart.

  Matthew nibbled the end of his pen. Should he also add that he was very much looking forward to not having to listen to any more of the Reverend Seaton’s interminable sermons, or the sound of his snoring through the cabin walls every night? No, perhaps not.

  I will write as soon as I have found myself rooms. Until then I remain,

  Your Affectionate Son,

  Matthew

  7 September 1829, Port Jackson

  The girls were on deck with everyone else watching Port Jackson open up before them. Last night barely anyone had slept, such had been the level of excitement as the Isla had sailed the last few nautical miles through the Tasman Sea up the coast of New South Wales, and this morning everyone had been out of their bunks well before the ship’s bell had rung, ready to come up on deck. More than a few had taken the time to pretty themselves: for those who used it, rouge had been applied to cheeks and lips, bright scarves retrieved and the mould wiped off, and silk flowers and ribbons threaded into prison bonnets. Many women wore their own clothes beneath their prisons slops, the cheap Navy Board garments now in varying and immodest states of disrepair. They had passed through the towering cliffs of Sydney Heads after breakfast and the women had hurried through their chores to be free to watch the scenery and other ships pass by on the final leg of their journey into Sydney Cove, where they would drop anchor later in the morning.

  To the English and Irish women aboard the Isla, the landscape appeared utterly foreign.

  For a start the rocks that rimmed the vast harbour were coloured a startling peach to orange to grey, and stood or lay in great slabs that dropped right into the sea. The trees, too, were disconcertingly strange. They ranged from scrubby clumps of acacia and paperbark and banksia, low and dense and hugging the earth, to fan-crowned cabbage-tree palms, to eerie, soaring stands of blackbutt and red gum with slender white trunks like the bones of a hand. Absent entirely were the majestic trees of England, the elms and oaks and beeches. But Port Jackson was breathtaking, the sea eating into the craggy shoreline and reaching fingers far inland, forming tiny islands and endless sandy bays and coves and peninsulas and headlands, making patterns like the gaps in an intricate piece of filet lace. Nothing like the Thames, which drilled into the side of England and simply kept going until it was absorbed.

  At first the landscape seemed to be empty, but soon a patchwork of fields and a handful of tiny buildings near the shore became visible. And the farther the Isla sailed into the long harbour, the crew shouting to one another and tacking furiously as the wind changed direction, the more evidence of civilisation was revealed. Then, rounding a headland and encountering the bristling masts of dozens of schooners and cutters, brigs and barques, whalers and even warships, the women realised they had reached Sydney Cove.

  To their right lay a scrubby headland that dipped then rose again to a hill on which squatted Fort Phillip. Behind it, inland, were various prominent buildings including a vast windmill. On the horizon were half a dozen more windmills and perhaps three or four church steeples. Buildings several storeys high, solidly built of pale stone, dotted the low hills that ringed the harbour — from this perspective appearing as though placed at random by a child playing with miniatures. Where the hills ran down to the sea the clusters of buildings grew more dense, in places seeming to grow out of the rocks themselves, and stores small and great lined the shore where several wharves extended into the water.

  On the deep cove’s left was another headland, on the tip of which sat the rather mediaeval tower of Fort Macquarie, and behind that lay a vast expanse of park land. Overall the impression was one of open space. To the women on the Isla there appeared to be none of the cramped, overhanging garrets and rookeries of London, no smoke and soot-blackened lanes, no festering cesspits brimming with shit and the corpses of cats and dogs. On the sea air there was, however, the unmistakable taint of a slaughterhouse somewhere not too far distant.

  ‘It looks pretty enough,’ Sarah remarked, gesturing at the shore.

  ‘It isn’t home, though, is it?’ Harrie said, her voice cracking. Home was where her mother and brother and sisters were, and that wasn’t here in this strange, bright new land.

  ‘But is this where the Female Factory is?’ Friday said.

  Amos Furniss, eavesdropping as he secured a rope, laughed unpleasantly. ‘Hell no. That’s miles upriver, and what a shithole it is, too. Nothing but preachers and bloody farms. And cows. Like you lot.’ He spat and walked away.

  ‘Arsehole,’ Friday muttered.

  ‘Don’t listen to him,’ Harrie said, anxious to avoid a last-minute scene in spite of her unhappiness. ‘We’re nearly there.’

  ‘We are, aren’t we?’ Rachel said brightly. ‘And guess what? I’ve got such good news.’

  Harrie, Friday and Sarah stared at her with sudden frightened expectation, each knowing already what she was about to say, but still hoping it would be something else.

  Rachel clapped her hands delightedly. ‘I’m having a baby!’

  Part Three

&nbs
p; Parramatta Girls

  Fourteen

  September 1829, Parramatta Female Factory

  The great anchor chain descended through the bow with a deafening rattle as First Mate Warren bellowed orders. The women, jammed onto the waistdeck with their ratty possessions heaped around them, waited expectantly. Bella Jackson stood beside her two trunks wearing a full skirt of oxblood velvet, a beautifully fitted jacket in emerald taffeta, a very fancy bonnet with a black ostrich feather and her grey kid boots; her prison slops were nowhere to be seen. Her waist was tiny.

  Friday, Harrie and Sarah stood in silence, feeling unsettled and vaguely sick, even though they weren’t particularly surprised by Rachel’s news. Harrie held Rachel’s hand. Rachel was crying, upset that they weren’t as thrilled by her announcement as she’d expected.

  Mr Warren strode about, waving his arms and clearing a path between the door beneath the foredeck and the gap in the ship’s rail where the bosun’s chair had been rigged. There was already a great pile of luggage on the crowded deck, presumably belonging to the paying passengers, brought up from the hold this morning and in the process of being lowered into the wherry waiting below.

  The Seatons themselves then emerged from the cabins, Mrs Seaton wearing a bonnet even fancier than Bella’s, followed by Matthew Cutler. Hester Seaton waved regally as she shepherded her daughters towards the bosun’s chair. One by one they descended into the wherry, until only Mr Cutler remained.

  The women watched restlessly, muttering among themselves, and Captain Holland and James Downey, standing on the afterdeck, watched the women. They had discussed the matter several days earlier and decided there was no easy way of doing this. Perhaps if the Isla had come in to harbour at night something could have been arranged, but she hadn’t and, frankly, Josiah Holland hadn’t felt inclined to make much effort.