Behind the Sun

by Deborah Challinor

  Being Church of England, Harrie stood on the Protestant side of the first-class dining room for the Sunday service, eyes closed, hands tightly clasped in prayer. Friday was a Catholic though she hadn’t been to church since she was seven, but it was a wet day and rain was coming in on the Catholics’ side so she’d joined the Proddies. Sarah thought it all a load of rubbish but attendance was compulsory so she loitered near the back, gazing out of the window at the wet yard while the chaplain droned on.

  As the women jostled out of the dining room at the end of the service, a turnkey tapped Sarah on the shoulder.

  ‘Are you Harriet Clarke?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘I am,’ Harrie said.

  The turnkey said, ‘You’re to go to Matron’s office right now.’

  Harrie’s heart thudded wildly: it would be about yesterday, she was sure. It had been her fault. She should have taken better care of Rachel and she hadn’t. Tears welled in her eyes, already sore and puffy from weeping, and she blinked hard. Perhaps it was the constabulary come to arrest her.

  She took a deep breath and stepped out into the rain, dodging puddles as she crossed the yard to Matron’s office next to her apartments.

  She ducked into the porch, knocked on the door and stood waiting nervously next to a sodden cape hanging on a hook. When Mrs Dick opened the office door, Harrie’s gaze flicked past her to the other occupants — Mrs Gordon and James Downey.

  Her shock at seeing him was followed immediately by a wave of relief that left her feeling quite light-headed, coupled with a disturbing lurch of her heart. Seeing his honest, open face again felt a little bit like coming home, and the feeling gave her a jolt of alarm. He was soaking wet from the waist down, the fabric of his trousers clinging disconcertingly to his muscled thighs, and his hat and gloves, resting on a side table, were dripping onto the floor. The golden hairs on the backs of his hands were standing up in the room’s chill air, and there was a small leaf or something stuck to the side of his face. She wanted to wipe it away for him. How inappropriate of her. The thought made her blush.

  ‘Come in, Harriet,’ Mrs Gordon said.

  Mr Downey stood. ‘Good morning, Harrie. I’m very sorry to hear about Rachel.’

  Harrie stepped inside and, finding no vacant chairs, stood near the door.

  ‘Have my seat, though it’s probably wet,’ Mr Downey offered.

  Mrs Gordon frowned, Harrie noted. The expression on Mrs Dick’s face was a busy combination of disbelief, annoyance and deep disapproval.

  ‘Thank you.’ Harrie sat. The chair was wet and she felt her bum growing damp through her skirt immediately.

  ‘I dropped by on the off-chance that I might observe Rachel’s progress,’ Mr Downey said to Harrie.

  She breathed an invisible sigh of relief, grateful he wasn’t going to let on she had written to him.

  ‘As my hospital assistant aboard the Isla, you will recall I was experimenting with a new therapy regarding management of her brain injury. Mrs Gordon is of course aware of her fall on the voyage out, which is recorded in the ship’s muster.’

  Harrie nodded like the village idiot. She was aware that the only thing entered onto the ship’s muster, or manifest, was that Rachel had had a bad fall — nothing about the rape or Keegan pushing her off the foredeck. All of that Mr Downey had decided to include only in his report to Governor Darling, for fear of tainting not just Rachel’s chances of finding a satisfactory assignment, if in fact she was fit enough, but those of all the convict women transported on the Isla.

  ‘So I am extremely sorry to hear of yesterday’s tragic incident,’ Mr Downey went on, his face grim. ‘Mrs Gordon has informed me of the Factory policy regarding contraband and Mrs Dick has recounted her version of the laudanum being confiscated, and what occurred yesterday. But I’d like to hear your version of events, Harrie.’

  ‘Version?’ Mrs Dick snapped. ‘There are no versions. There is only the truth and I have already told you that.’

  ‘I accept that, Mrs Dick,’ Mr Downey said. ‘But I understand that Harrie and her friends were in the dormitory with Rachel before the accident?’

  Mrs Dick nodded reluctantly.

  ‘Then I would like to hear what happened there. And also how Harrie perceived the confiscation of the medicines.’

  So Harrie told him, resisting the urge to embroider her account of Mrs Dick meanly taking Rachel’s laudanum without a thought regarding the outcome. And she didn’t need to embellish what had happened yesterday; it had been horrific and the image was seared into her memory forever.

  Mr Downey listened with his hands behind his back. The leaf on his cheek finally fell off.

  ‘So despite the fact that you were told that Rachel Winter had been prescribed the laudanum by me and that it was essential to her welfare, you confiscated it anyway?’ he said to Mrs Dick in a deceptively conversational tone.

  ‘Yes. I did.’

  ‘May I ask why?’

  ‘I thought she was lying. I thought they all were. I suspected they’d stolen it. If you care to recall, sir, most of these women are inmates of the Factory for lying in some form or another. And if they weren’t lying, I thought they would trade or sell it. Neither practice is permitted at this institution.’

  Harrie kept her eyes on the floor; trading, selling and smuggling of contraband went on every day, and not just among inmates. Mrs Dick should know, having apparently feathered her own nest considerably.

  Mr Downey said, ‘You were wrong, Mrs Dick, and your mistake resulted in yesterday’s tragedy. I believe you did Rachel Winter a grave injustice by depriving her of her medicines and, as surgeon superintendent of this shipment of convict women, I will be including my comments on this affair in my report to Governor Darling.’

  Mrs Dick opened her mouth, then shut it again. Harrie felt deeply gratified at the expression of guilty trepidation that settled across her pinched features.

  Mr Downey introduced himself; Sidney Sharpe, the Factory surgeon, shook his hand. He was older than Mr Downey, and shorter and fatter, and Harrie hoped he was equally proficient as a doctor.

  ‘What is your interest in this patient?’ Mr Sharpe asked, his tone clearly indicating that the real question was, What are you doing in my hospital?

  ‘I prescribed her the laudanum after her initial injury.’

  ‘Ah. Yes.’ Mr Sharpe inclined his head towards Harrie. ‘I’ve been informed of the history.’

  ‘If she’d been allowed to keep it,’ Mr Downey said tersely, ‘this might never have occurred. I happened to drop by this morning to enquire regarding her progress.’ He frowned slightly. ‘Pardon me for asking, but how long have you been surgeon to the Factory?’

  ‘Just over twelve months.’ Mr Sharpe looked at Mr Downey shrewdly. ‘So no, I wasn’t in attendance during that business with Mary Ann Hamilton.’

  Harrie noted that Mr Downey had gone pink and wondered why.

  Mr Sharpe started walking. ‘I wasn’t here when she was brought in. Your ex-patient, I mean. I don’t live on the premises. I attend from one to three every afternoon, unless there is some sort of emergency. I was summoned yesterday morning just after nine o’clock. The patient has a gash to the ventral aspect of the right forearm, not too serious but requiring sutures, and a closed fracture of the right radius and ulna near the wrist. I’m astounded there are no other injuries, given the distance she fell. It is her mental state that concerns me, however. She is obviously deeply disturbed.’

  He also explained that Rachel had been given a bed to herself, not because the hospital wasn’t crowded but because he had thought it very unwise to put another patient in with her. When brought in she had been foul-mouthed, noisy and, despite her injuries, violent.

  He stopped at a metal bedstead topped with a thin mattress. On it lay Rachel, apparently asleep. Her right arm was splinted and bandaged from above the elbow to the tips of her fingers. Blood had leaked through the bandage onto the mattress. Her left arm and ankl
es were manacled to the bed, and a rope had been passed around her chest and beneath the bed frame so she couldn’t sit up. A strong smell of urine suggested she had peed where she lay.

  Mr Sharpe said, ‘We considered a straightjacket but decided against it because of her arm.’

  At the word ‘straightjacket’ Harrie bit her lip. She reached over the bed-end and gently stroked Rachel’s bare white foot.

  ‘She was manic when she came in. She had to be sedated and I have recommended she be kept in that state for the time being. There will also be some pain in the wrist, of course,’ Mr Sharpe added.

  Harrie had not been allowed to stay with Rachel after she had been brought to the hospital so there was a question she had to ask.

  ‘Sir, has there been, has anything else happened with…with her body?’

  Mr Sharpe looked at her sternly from beneath bushy brows. ‘What do you mean, with her body?’

  Harrie sent an agonised glance towards Mr Downey.

  ‘Perhaps the question Harrie is attempting to ask is has the patient showed signs of suffering a miscarriage? I believe she may have been with child?’ He raised his eyebrows at Harrie for confirmation.

  Harrie nodded miserably.

  ‘Not to my knowledge, she hasn’t,’ Mr Sharpe said. ‘I’ll check with the nurse. If she is expecting I’d be damned surprised if a fall like that doesn’t dislodge the foetus.’ He stood for several seconds, deep in thought. ‘However, if she remains pregnant, it presents the Board of Management with a quandary.’

  Mr Downey said, ‘In what way, Mr Sharpe?’

  ‘Well, I was going to recommend transferring her to Liverpool Asylum.’

  ‘No!’ It was out of Harrie’s mouth before she could stop herself. She didn’t know what or where Liverpool Asylum was, but something about the way Mr Sharpe had phrased the words sounded horribly ominous.

  ‘I beg your pardon!’ Mr Sharpe was quick to reprimand her lapse.

  Mr Downey said, ‘Liverpool is nowhere as grim as Bethlem, Harrie.’

  ‘But it is a mad house?’

  ‘It’s an asylum,’ Mr Sharpe said, ‘and, given the patient’s erratic and violent behaviour, she should be transferred there.’ He sighed, but not as though he were angry, Harrie thought, more as though he considered Rachel’s awful confluence of physical and mental conditions to be just another sad fact of life. ‘But she won’t be now, not while she requires medical care and not if she’s pregnant. They don’t have the facilities for lying-in. And if she stays here she won’t be eligible for assignment, which will be reflected in the Board’s financial returns to the colonial government.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps when her arm mends she can make straw bonnets.’

  Harrie felt her hopes soar. ‘So she’ll have to stay at the Factory?’ Along with all the other women who seemed to have managed to make a home there. She wondered how that was reflected in the Board’s financial returns.

  ‘Only if she remains pregnant. Providing she is,’ Mr Sharpe said somewhat suspiciously. ‘I see no evidence of that. How far along is she, did you say?’

  ‘Thirteen weeks. Fourteen, perhaps.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘I looked after her when she had her…courses…’

  Mr Sharpe moved around to the side of the bed, pushed up the sleeves of his coat, bent and palpated Rachel’s abdomen with extended fingers. She didn’t stir at all.

  ‘Yes, definitely expecting,’ he confirmed less than a minute later. ‘I would say approximately three months, perhaps a little more. I’ll have the nurse watch for spontaneous abortion.’

  ‘In the meantime, the laudanum?’ Mr Downey prompted.

  ‘For the head injury? Yes, I suppose we should reinstate it. What dose were you prescribing, Mr Downey?’

  ‘Six drachms in the first instance when her cephalalgia begins, and another four to six should the first dose not be effective and an episode seems imminent.’

  ‘An episode being one of these fits, as demonstrated yesterday?’

  Mr Downey nodded.

  ‘And who administers the doses?’

  ‘Harrie does.’

  ‘Are you her guardian? A family member?’ Mr Sharpe asked Harrie.

  ‘I’m her sister,’ Harrie replied immediately.

  Because she was. Her, Sarah and Friday. They all were.

  Rachel was asleep, but she wasn’t. She was full of medicine again, and that was nice, but her mind was far away. She thought there might be people somewhere nearby, but she didn’t know who, and it didn’t matter.

  Her arm hurt, but the pain felt a long way away, too.

  She remembered flying, as clearly as though it had happened only a moment ago. Perhaps it had.

  It had been wonderful. Her arms had lifted up from her sides and her feet had left the ground and over the balustrade she had gone, soaring and swooping and diving. And then it had ended, just like that, in blackness.

  And no matter how hard she tried, she hadn’t been able to make it happen again.

  But, oh, she wanted to.

  Harrie, Friday and Sarah sat on the ground in the middle of the first-class yard the following afternoon after the midday meal, far enough away from everyone else to not be overheard. Still, they lowered their voices whenever others passed too closely — and quite a few did, curious to know what the friends of ‘the gawney girl’ were talking about.

  Harrie was still very upset, unable to get the image of Rachel bound into a straightjacket out of her mind.

  ‘But she wasn’t, though, love, was she?’ Friday said. ‘So don’t keep on about it. You’re only torturing yourself.’

  ‘I know, but Mr Sharpe thought she was disturbed enough to need one,’ Harrie insisted.

  Sarah, ever pragmatic, said, ‘Well, she is.’

  ‘And Mr Downey said whatever’s wrong with her head will probably only get worse, remember? And it has.’ Harrie was almost in tears again.

  ‘No,’ Sarah said firmly, aware that Harrie was winding herself into a tizzy, ‘he said we’ll have to wait and see.’

  ‘Who will look after her when we’ve gone?’ Harrie went on. ‘She’ll be all alone and frightened. And what about when she gets bigger? She could…she could kill herself and the baby.’

  Friday tamped tobacco into her pipe, to hell with the Factory rules. ‘What about Janie?’

  ‘Janie can’t.’ Harrie was losing her temper now. ‘She’s got two babies of her own. She can’t go running around after Rachel all the time. And it wouldn’t be fair to ask it of her.’

  ‘Won’t they keep her in the hospital?’ Sarah asked.

  Harrie shook her head. ‘They’ve two to a bed and mattresses on the floor as it is. As soon as she’s settled down she’ll be back here with us. It’s a horrible place anyway.’

  ‘What did you tell her family?’

  ‘Just that she can’t write herself because she’s broken her arm and that apart from that she’s doing well. But surely they’ll be wondering why they’ve never had a letter in her own hand? I certainly can’t tell them what’s really happened, can I?’

  Friday breathed jets of smoke out though her nostrils like a small, fiery-haired dragon. ‘I’ve been thinking. One of us will have to come back. Or not go out on assignment at all.’

  Sarah looked at her. ‘Get a job here, you mean?’

  ‘Yes!’ Harrie almost leapt to her feet in excitement. ‘Me! I could work in the hospital! I’ve got a recommendation from Mr Downey to say I’m good at it. He gave it to me on the ship.’

  ‘Did he?’ Sarah said. ‘You didn’t tell us that.’

  Friday looked thoughtful. ‘We’d need money to grease a few palms, but we’ve got enough.’

  ‘We have now,’ Sarah said, ‘but from what I hear we’d have to keep on greasing. One bung isn’t going to be enough. And what about when the baby comes? Rachel will need decent food for her milk and what have you. You’ve seen how hard it is in here for mothers and babies. We’ll need good mone
y coming in to afford that.’

  ‘So? We’ll just have to go out and make some,’ Friday declared.

  Sarah looked at her. ‘Well, at the moment, you’re sitting on the fastest way to do that.’

  Friday shrugged. ‘Fine with me.’

  ‘Good. Then this is what we’ll do. You’ll stay here, Harrie, and look after her. Friday, you and I will make as much money as we can get our hands on. I’ll do what I can but it might take me a while to get up to speed.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Harrie asked suspiciously. ‘How are you going to make money?’

  Sarah winked and tapped the side of her nose.

  ‘Oh, Sarah! In fact, both of you!’ Harrie shook her head in complete frustration, her excitement at staying behind to look after Rachel ebbing at the thought of the trouble they could get themselves into. ‘You’re both…really bloody well irresponsible, do you know that? You’ll get caught and end up in the penitentiary, and how will that help Rachel? You might even be sent to Norfolk Island or…or hanged!’

  ‘Well, have you got a better idea?’ Sarah said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because we’ll never save enough money while we’re on assignment.’

  ‘I know that!’

  ‘So can I finish what I was saying, then? We use the money to care for Rachel and the baby when it comes, for as long as we need to. And as soon as we can get them out of here, we will. We can apply to be their legal guardians or something.’

  ‘We won’t be allowed,’ Harrie said. ‘Not convicts.’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t looked into it. Let me finish. When you become a sought-after dressmaker, Harrie, you can help with the money then. For now, we’ll just have to find it the best way we know how. Any way, because we need it. Are we agreed on that? All of it? Is it a pact?’

  Friday said yes immediately and, a moment later, so did Harrie.

  Harrie stood nervously before Mrs Gordon’s desk, waiting for her to finish writing. Finally she did, slotting her pen into its holder and rolling a blotter over the page.

  She looked up. ‘Yes?’