Behind the Sun

by Deborah Challinor

  Friday let out a yelp of laughter. ‘We are the bloody destitute!’

  The corners of the girl’s mouth twitched, but she refused to be distracted.

  Friday glanced at Bella Jackson, standing still as stone watching the proceedings, her two trunks nearby, new prison clothes piled on top. She wondered how much chink Bella had stashed away but suspected it must be a lot, and felt a surge of satisfaction at the thought of what she would lose if she hadn’t been smart enough to take precautions regarding the inevitable search. Though no doubt she had; she was mean but she was far from stupid. As she watched, Bella retrieved a tiny pot of rouge from a pocket, dabbed a little on her lips, then walked across the hard-packed dirt of the yard in her smart boots towards Mrs Dick. A short conversation ensued and Bella’s trunks were searched immediately, revealing to a fascinated audience her finery and other luxury items such as lengths of gorgeous dress fabric no one had seen before, and several beautifully beaded reticules and shawls. No money was found, either in her luggage or on her person, after which Bella sat down on a trunk and opened her parasol.

  Friday’s mouth fell open. Was Bella not going to be made to bathe? She must have bribed the assistant matron, which no doubt was the reason for opening her trunks. The cow must have stuffed her dosh up her fanny, too, though Friday didn’t know how anyone could fit in much more than she’d done, which she was finding most uncomfortable.

  The turnkeys went back to going through the sad little piles of possessions, and the first group of women emerged from the baths dressed in their new slops, the fabric clinging to them damply. The next lot stripped and went down, Friday, Harrie, Sarah and Rachel among them.

  The baths, filled with cold silted water from the river, were in a dank, gloomy subterranean room lit by smoking oil lamps. Rachel, groggy from the laudanum, squeaked as she stepped in, but when Harrie began to splash water over her she revived rather quickly. The girls used the lumps of cracked, hard soap lying about to wash themselves and their hair; it didn’t lather well but it was certainly more satisfactory than washing in salt water. Even so the experience of bathing underground in the half-dark was thoroughly unpleasant and they got out quickly, dressed and hurried back up the steps, vowing not to go down there again. There was a trough in the yard — surely that would do for washing in future.

  They emerged into the sunlight to see Harrie’s basket being rifled, and two of the half-dozen bottles of laudanum intended for Rachel being passed to Mrs Dick.

  ‘Stop!’ Sarah shouted. ‘That’s medicine. You can’t take that.’

  ‘Medicine for whom?’ Mrs Dick said, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. ‘Whose basket is this?’

  ‘It’s my basket and that’s mine too so give it back,’ Harrie said, snatching a bottle out of Mrs Dick’s hand.

  ‘How dare you?’ Mrs Dick said and slapped Harrie’s face.

  The bottle slipped from Harrie’s hand and smashed on the ground.

  Rachel fell on her knees next to the puddle rapidly soaking into the dirt. ‘It’s my medicine!’ she wailed. ‘For my headaches and I have to have it and you’ve just wasted a whole bottle, you fucking old cow!’

  Looming over Rachel, Mrs Dick raised her hand again but Friday grabbed her wrist and said in her ear, ‘Touch her and I’ll beat you black and blue. And I swear, nothing you can do to me will be worse than what I’ll do to you.’

  Fear flickering across her face, Mrs Dick slowly lowered her hand. Stepping away from Rachel she wrenched the cork from the bottle she still held and sniffed. ‘Opium. We don’t tolerate drug or alcohol intemperance here.’

  ‘No,’ Harrie protested, ‘it was prescribed for her by the ship’s surgeon. She has to have it.’

  Mrs Dick clicked her fingers at the turnkeys. ‘Confiscate it.’

  They did.

  Rachel burst into tears.

  When everyone had bathed, changed into their new prison clothes and been relieved of any money or contraband, they were herded back into the foyer of the three-storey building. On either side of the foyer, which had two stairwells, were ground-floor dining rooms, above which the dormitories occupied the first and second floors. From the foyer they ascended the stairs on the left side to the west wing, their feet clattering on the wooden risers until they reached the first floor. The first half of the group, including Harrie, Rachel, Friday and Sarah, were directed through a doorway into a long room while the rest — including Bella Jackson, thank God — continued up to the floor above.

  The first dormitory was already occupied by approximately forty women, who stared with expressions ranging from apathy to belligerence, and perhaps a dozen small children. Some of the women were sewing, others were dozing; all were wearing various incarnations of the Factory uniform, though many were barefoot. They all sat or lay on the bare wooden floor. Piled against the only windowless wall were rows of thin mattresses, rolled up with a folded blanket on top of each. Many of the windows in the other three walls were missing their glazing, and there were no drapes or shutters.

  Friday turned to a turnkey. ‘It’s full. It’s already crowded.’

  ‘So it is,’ the woman replied.

  ‘Well, what about upstairs?’

  ‘That’s full, too. You’re to get a mattress from Mr Gordon at the store in the front yard, if there are any, and bed down here.’

  Friday dumped her stuff on the floor and walked across to a window. It faced north-west and from it she could see the yard they’d just come from with its enclosing perimeter of workshops, empty of inmates now, and to the right of that another large yard where laundry hung to dry together with rows of something fluttering from frames that might be raw wool. In the ‘L’ formed by the two yards lay a high-walled compound she assumed was the penitentiary, containing a compact two-storey building and various outhouses. If she hung out of the window as far she could and craned her neck to the left she could see yet another yard, this one dotted with small, stand-alone buildings, and knew instinctively that these were isolation cells. Behind that, but still within the prison walls, was an area strewn with rocks and rubble. Hard labour.

  Beyond was the river itself and on its far banks a grand house with neat, manicured gardens leading down to the waterway. What a lovely view for the occupants, she thought. She crossed the room and looked down onto the yard they had first entered and at the big gates that had banged shut behind them with such finality.

  She sighed heavily. Parramatta Female Factory was smaller than Newgate, and didn’t smell as rank, and instead of a great bustling city beyond its walls there were trees and farmland, but it was, as had already been remarked, without doubt a prison.

  That evening, after supper, Sarah appeared with a young woman in tow and sat her down on one of the two narrow and miserably lumpy mattresses shared by Harrie, Rachel, Friday and herself — all Mr Gordon, the storekeeper, said could be spared because of the current overcrowding.

  ‘This is Nancy Crouch,’ Sarah said. ‘She’ll tell us what’s what in here, the dodges and what have you.’ She looked at Friday. ‘For a shilling. I’ve already paid it.’

  Friday nodded; it was a worthwhile investment.

  ‘Did yous come with a crew?’ Nancy Crouch asked. She was quite an attractive girl with wavy black hair pushed behind her ears, brown eyes, all her teeth and quite a good complexion. The skin on her neck below her left ear was marred by the tail of a thick, purple scar, which she hadn’t bothered to conceal with a scarf, though other women were wearing them despite the rules about the uniform.

  ‘No, just the four of us,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Small crew.’ Nancy nearly but not quite sneered.

  ‘It’s not a crew. And it works fine for us,’ Friday said defensively.

  ‘What about the abbess upstairs?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The mot who come in with all the flash clobber?’

  ‘Bella Jackson?’ Friday shook her head. ‘Nothing to do with us. How did you know she’s a madam?’


  ‘’Cos she’s recruitin’ already.’

  ‘Really?’ Harrie was shocked. ‘But she’ll be sent on assignment like the rest of us. Won’t she?’

  Nancy Crouch snorted and laughed at the same time, blowing out a ribbon of snot that landed on Harrie and Rachel’s blanket. She rubbed it in with the heel of her hand. ‘Got a lot to learn, haven’t yous?’

  Friday said sharply, ‘Yes, that’s why we just paid you a shilling. So, when you’re ready.’

  ‘Well, what do yous want to know?’

  ‘Everything.’

  Nancy puffed out her cheeks. ‘Well, rations are doled out daily and the cooks are lags like us but they’re paid a bob a day. It’s a privilege to have a job as a cook, or a midwife or a turnkey or a washerwoman or the like, but you have to get in Matron’s good books for that.’

  ‘How do you do that?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Behave and keep your gob shut, for a start. Or you buy your way in.’

  ‘Garnish?’

  ‘That’ll work with the turnkeys all right. They say higher up bribery’ll get you a long way. Haven’t tried it meself.’

  ‘Already seen it,’ Friday remarked.

  Nancy pointed towards the ceiling, eyebrows raised.

  Friday nodded.

  ‘Thought so,’ Nancy said. ‘She looks like she could afford it.’

  ‘Is the food nice?’ Rachel asked.

  Nancy stared at her. ‘Is the food nice? You’re a gawney one, aren’t you?’

  Irritation flashed across Rachel’s face. ‘I’m not gawney. Don’t call me that.’

  Harrie silently cheered, buoyed to see a return of the old Rachel spirit, but Nancy only laughed, and not very pleasantly. ‘Well, what a stupid question.’

  But no one laughed with her and, though the expressions on the faces looking back at her barely altered, she sensed a sudden element of frostiness radiating from the newcomers and shuffled back slightly off the mattress and onto the bare wooden floor.

  ‘It’s all right, when there’s enough,’ she said, her voice brazen to disguise her uneasiness. ‘Breakfast is wheaten bread, and tea with sugar and a drop of milk. Dinner is soup made with meat, greens and potatoes, and bread. And supper is more bread and tea.’

  No one said anything — they’d all existed on more meagre rations in Newgate, and at home if it came to that, except perhaps for Rachel.

  Sarah asked, ‘And this “industrious employment” the matron was talking about? What’s that?’

  ‘We all have to work here, except for the properly sick ones. First class spin the flax and wool and make slops for the Factory and for the lads at Hyde Park —’

  ‘That’s where the male convicts go, isn’t it, Hyde Park Barracks?’ Harrie interrupted, changing position on the mean mattress; her bum was going numb.

  ‘’Tis, some of them. Second and third class do the weaving. Parramatta cloth it’s called, ’cos it’s made here. We sell some, too. Second and third class pick oakum as well. We don’t do that. It’s a rotten bloody job. We get paid if we make more than our daily quota, but you don’t get it all ’til you leave.’

  ‘I heard third class has to break rocks,’ Friday said, giving Nancy a sceptical look.

  ‘Depends what you’re in for, what crime yous have done. In second class you get paid for going over quota as well, but third gets nothing. In summer we start work at six and go for ten hours with two breaks, and in winter we start at eight and go for eight hours with one break, ’cos it gets dark earlier. In our “leisure hours” there’s a school for reading what’s run by the Ladies’ Committee, and straw-plaitin’ lessons.’

  Friday and Sarah looked at each other and sniggered.

  Nancy shrugged. ‘Not my idea. What else? Mornin’ and evenin’ prayers in the dining rooms every day, Papists on one side and Proddies on the other, Sunday services, weekly bath, mornin’ inspections for nits and the like.’

  Sarah scratched her head reflexively. ‘And the flash mob? Who’s the boss woman?’

  Raising her eyebrows slyly, Nancy said, ‘Yous are in luck at the moment. There isn’t one.’

  ‘Really?’ Friday wasn’t sure whether to believe this. ‘Why not?’

  ‘It were a terrible thing,’ Nancy replied without a shred of regret. ‘Edie Dansey, her name were. God, she were a hard woman. Take the pennies off a dead man’s eyes. Been in second class forever. Had a shockin’ accident in the baths and drowned. Only a few weeks ago, it were.’

  Friday looked thoughtful. ‘And there’s no one taken her place?’

  ‘There’s a few of her crew staking a claim, but they’re not up to it. Don’t have the balls. So no, no one’s taken her place. At least not until you lot arrived. Her upstairs, I mean.’

  Friday glared at Nancy.

  Nancy stared back. ‘Or you. It’s between her and you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Well, if you want Edie’s crew you’d better get in quick or her upstairs’ll grab them.’

  Friday said nothing; she had no intention of poaching dead Edie Dansey’s girls, but she certainly wasn’t discussing anything of that nature with someone like Nancy Crouch.

  ‘Doesn’t matter anyway,’ Nancy said. ‘You don’t need a crew, this whole place runs on a series of rackets. You’ll find out.’ She scratched her armpit vigorously, then her groin. ‘Any more questions?’

  Thinking of Rachel, Harrie asked, ‘What’s the hospital like?’

  ‘Crowded, not enough beds, but the doctor comes every day. Useless bugger. And I hope none of yous is knapped, ’cos the midwife isn’t a proper paid one.’

  Nancy caught the quick, shared glance among the four girls and pounced. ‘Which one of yous is it? On the ship, eh? Well, at least someone made a bit of pocket money.’

  Very frostily, Harrie asked, ‘The babies, the ones that come from England and those born here, they stay in the Factory with their mothers?’

  ‘’Til they turn four, then they’re sent to the orphan school.’

  Harrie immediately thought of Evie Challis’s daughter, already five, and her heart sank. And all the other children over the age of three who had travelled on the Isla with their mothers. What had been the point?

  ‘Where is it? The orphan school?’ Rachel asked, her voice uneasy.

  ‘Down river. Not far.’

  ‘But who the hell stays here for four years?’ Friday said.

  ‘Mothers with kids under four do. But if they really want to get out, their kid might die.’ Nancy winced slightly. ‘There’s a lot of that.’

  Horrified, Harrie gaped at her. She swallowed. ‘But the children who do go to the orphan school, the mother gets them back?’

  ‘Usually not ’til she gets her ticket of leave. Most employers won’t have a servant with kids hanging off her apron strings.’

  ‘So what happens to them?’ Rachel asked. ‘The little children?’

  ‘They stay in the orphan school,’ Nancy replied.

  Sarah demanded, ‘Do they ever see their mothers?’

  ‘Sometimes. I suppose so. I dunno. I haven’t got any kids, have I? Yous’ll have to ask someone who has. Look, I got to be somewhere else now.’

  ‘Just a minute, please,’ Harrie said. ‘Can we send letters out?’

  Nancy nodded.

  ‘Visitors?’

  ‘On Sundays, approved by Mrs G.’

  Friday’s final question was predictable. ‘Drink and tobacco?’

  ‘If yous can pay, there’s ways.’ Nancy couldn’t resist a question of her own. ‘So come on, tell me, which one of yous is expectin’?’

  The response was a stony silence.

  Rachel, wide awake now that it was night and she should be asleep, got up from the mattress and crossed the floor to stand by a window. The September night was cool, but not cold. The air was different here, much clearer than it had been in London, and the stars were so very beautiful, the sort of thing a princess who lived in the sky might wear in her crown.


  She had glimpsed something earlier in the evening, just after dusk, something even more beautiful than the stars, a dark shape that had glided on the silky air only a few feet from the window. She had run to see and minutes later more and more had sailed past, just a few at first then dozens and dozens, coming from the direction of the river, silent and graceful, the sharp black curves of their arms silhouetted against the bruised sky, their little sweet faces lifted to the rising moon.

  She’d come back to the window often just in case there were more, even though Sarah said they were probably the same as in England and only came out at dusk. But Rachel wasn’t convinced she was right. And she couldn’t sleep anyway.

  She heard a noise behind her, and knew it was Harrie.

  ‘I can hear them, Harrie,’ she whispered. ‘I can hear them crying.’

  Harrie rubbed her eyes. ‘Who, sweetie?’

  It was her turn this time — Friday had got up an hour ago. They were terrified Rachel would have one of her fits; without any laudanum, there would be nothing to stop it escalating into a full-blown episode that would see her in the hospital, if not the penitentiary.

  ‘The girls.’

  ‘What girls?’

  ‘The girls who’ve died here.’

  Fifteen

  James Downey sat in the dining room of the King Hotel and sniffed the milk that had arrived in a small jug with his pot of tea; it smelt off so he pushed it aside. He preferred milk in his tea but was so accustomed at sea to going without that drinking it black was no hardship. He poured himself a cup, added sugar and stirred while contemplating the correspondence lying beside the remains of his breakfast. One letter he knew was from his wife Emily, but the handwriting on the second he didn’t recognise at all. And what an odd letter it was: instead of the usual pages folded and sealed with wax, this was a packet fashioned from what appeared to be a checked cotton handkerchief. On one side was attached, presumably sewn but with stitches so tiny he couldn’t detect them, a square of white fabric, and it was on this that his address had been written in ink, in a very tidy hand.

  He put it aside and opened the letter from Emily, the third he’d received from her since he’d departed England. The first two had been carried on a clipper whose voyage to Sydney had evidently been faster than the Isla’s, and had, to his delight, been waiting for him when he’d arrived. This letter, dated the 29th of May, had arrived on another yesterday evening. Knowing Emily, he would receive many more before he set sail for home in a month or so.