The Queen's Colonial

by Peter Watt

  Ian knew that there would be a gathering on the banks of the river in the late afternoon, as young couples had the opportunity to stroll together in the shade of the great gums under the watchful eyes of parents and guardians. Ian also knew that Isabel MacHugh liked to go to the river on Sunday afternoons with her brother acting as chaperone. What did he have to lose? Ian sighed. He would dress in his best Sunday clothes, and go to the river.

  *

  The late Sunday afternoon proved to be more temperate than hot, and Ian stood nervously, gazing at the small parties of families sharing a picnic basket amongst the boulders and spaces at the river’s edge. He nodded to many who passed him, recognising them from his business dealings, and even to the gang of five young Irishmen who at different times could be friend or enemy. Ian knew them all as childhood friends but had avoided joining them as he grew because they were considered yahoos – young men without much ambition, except to bring attention from the constabulary for their anti-social behaviour. Most were the children of former convicts and the district was divided in its view of loyalty to the Crown.

  As the Irish boys passed him, Ian sensed from their swagger they were looking for trouble. Ian glanced around, seeking Isabel, but could not see her. He was about to return home when he noticed the gang at the edge of the river surrounding two well-dressed men and a pretty young woman. It was obvious that the Irish boys were harassing them, and as Ian watched, he realised it was Isabel with her brother, and Samuel Forbes.

  The leader of the gang, a big man of around the same age as Ian, was pushing Samuel in the chest, attempting to provoke him to fight.

  Ian walked quickly towards the gathering.

  ‘Hey! Conan, leave Mr Forbes alone,’ Ian said in a loud voice, immediately attracting the attention of the gang.

  Conan Curry desisted, turning to confront Ian. ‘Is this fancy man a friend of yours, Steele?’ Curry asked. Growing up, Conan had once been Ian’s best friend, and they had been inseparable. But later in life, they had taken different roads to adulthood.

  ‘He is,’ Ian replied, stopping a couple of paces from the bully. ‘So are Miss MacHugh, and Master Edward.’ Ian made the statement confidently, even though he hardly knew the trio.

  ‘So, what are you going to do about it?’ Conan Curry asked. Ian quickly made an assessment of the situation, seeing that Isabel was trembling.

  Without a word, he swung a right-hand hook that caught Conan unawares on the jaw, snapping his head to the side, causing him to stumble backwards. The blow would have felled most men but the Irish boy was tough, and quickly recovered. He rushed Ian with his head down. That was a mistake. Ian grabbed the back of his head and brought his knee up into his opponent’s face, smashing his nose. Curry went down, bleeding profusely. He lay groaning at Ian’s feet while the others looked on, a mix of awe and fear in their expressions.

  ‘Who wishes to be next?’ Ian asked, glaring at the four remaining members of Conan Curry’s gang. None seemed to be keen to take on Ian, who had grown up in the rough and tumble of the colony and whose reputation as a street fighter was well-known to them.

  ‘We meant no harm,’ one of the others said. ‘We was just having a joke.’

  Ian recognised the gang member as Conan’s younger brother, Kevin. They had always disliked each other. ‘Get your brother home,’ Ian said. ‘No one is laughing at your joke.’

  The remaining members helped Conan to his feet. He was holding his broken nose and turned to Ian. ‘I’ll see you again, Steele,’ he said. ‘Next time, I’ll be ready for you. You’re a traitor to your faith, sticking up for these damned English Protestants.’

  Ian watched warily as the gang stumbled away.

  ‘Good God, man,’ Edward said. ‘You certainly gave those ruffians a lesson.’

  ‘I feel that such a forceful application of violence was not called for,’ Isabel said, and Ian turned to stare at her. He was smitten by her pretty pale face, framed by curling locks of golden hair, and big, blue eyes. She was truly a beauty, but she was wrong in this case.

  ‘I mostly acted on behalf of Mr Forbes,’ he said with a touch of anger.

  ‘Well, I appreciate your intervention, Mr Steele,’ Samuel said. ‘I have seen enough violence in my life.’

  Edward thrust out his hand. ‘Ignore my sister, Mr Steele. I thought Samuel and I might have found ourselves a little outnumbered. I know the reputation of the Curry brothers for mischief.’

  Ian accepted the handshake and glanced at Isabel, who he noticed was gazing at Samuel with an expression of fondness.

  ‘Mr Forbes was about to read one of his latest poems to Edward and me when those hooligans so rudely accosted us.’

  ‘Mr Steele appreciates poetry,’ Samuel said.

  ‘Oh!’ Isabel exclaimed, looking at Ian with surprise. ‘I did not think a common blacksmith would have any appreciation of the finer things in life.’

  Her comment stung Ian, and he suddenly felt out of place in the company of the three aristocrats.

  ‘Mr Forbes and I were discussing our appreciation of the poetry of that great bard, John Donne,’ Ian said.

  ‘Please, Mr Steele, my friends call me Sam,’ Samuel said with a warm smile. ‘I think your generous action here this afternoon has warranted such informality between us.’ He held out his hand and Ian could feel a strong grip of friendship.

  ‘A pleasure . . . Sam. Alas, Ian cannot be abbreviated. Now I think we are able to hear your poetry in the tranquillity of the river and the soothing shade of its mighty gum trees.’

  Samuel, Edward and his sister sat down on a blanket they had brought with them, whilst Ian remained standing in case the Curry gang returned. Samuel removed a small notebook from the pocket of his waistcoat and thumbed it open. He began to recite that which he had written, and Ian noticed gloomily how Isabel fixed upon him with adoring attention. When Samuel finished his recitation Edward said, ‘Bravo, old chap. Well done.’

  Isabel clapped daintily with gloved hands, and Ian nodded his head, appreciating the high quality of Sam’s poem.

  ‘It will be getting dark soon, so I think I should take my sister home,’ Edward said, rising from the blanket. ‘It has been a very queer day today.’

  Samuel reached out to assist Isabel from the blanket and Ian noticed how their hands remained together for a short time upon her standing.

  ‘I would like you to be my guest at my uncle’s house this Wednesday evening,’ Samuel said to Ian. ‘He stocks a fine port, and I am sure it may go some way towards thanking you for your timely intervention this afternoon.’

  ‘I would be honoured,’ Ian said. He had come to acknowledge that Isabel MacHugh was beyond his charms and station in life, but he felt a strange kind of bond with this colonial aristocrat.

  *

  That evening, Ian returned to the stone cottage he shared with his mother. She noticed that he was strangely silent as he dined with her on a roast leg of mutton, served with baked potatoes, gravy and garden peas.

  ‘Something has happened today,’ she said as Ian toyed with the peas on his plate. ‘You have a strange air about you.’

  ‘I met Samuel Forbes again this afternoon,’ Ian said. ‘I think we formed a friendship.’

  Mary stared at her son. ‘I had a dream last night that you and he would form a bond that will take you into another world, away from me, far across the sea,’ she said sadly. ‘I tried to call to you in my dream, but you were in a terrible place of fire and death.’

  Ian looked sharply at his mother. His father would often tell him of how uncanny his mother’s dreams were. It was said that in his mother’s Scottish family, the women were renowned as fortune tellers, so much so, that many years before, one of Ian’s great-great-grandmothers had been hanged as a witch.

  ‘I think you just had a nightmare,’ Ian said, but felt his skin crawl with nervous fear. It was
the utter conviction in his mother’s words that made him uneasy. How could it be that he could ever leave the shores of the colony to travel across the sea? His world was restricted to the forge at his blacksmith shop. He may have dreamed of soldiering for the Queen when he was younger and following in the footsteps of his beloved father, but the only army in New South Wales was a British regiment on garrison duties. The last time a British regiment had left the colony was to fight the ferocious Maoris in New Zealand when he was about eighteen years of age.

  Ian shook his head as his mother rose from the table to take her plate to a large basin of washing water. This time his mother was wrong, Ian convinced himself.

  Two

  Ian left early, putting the blacksmith shop in the care of his apprentice. He rode his pony home, quickly washed, changed into his best suit of clothes, and rode to the Forbes estate, about an hour away from the little village that was Ian’s home.

  He rode up a long well-maintained road to the large house surrounded by lesser buildings housing convict labour, and sheds for storing bales of wool before they were transported to the Sydney docks for the voyage to the English mills.

  He passed by men in shabby clothes chipping at weeds along the road, and could see other men working in gardens, where European trees were being planted. It was as if Sir George Forbes was attempting to turn the harsh Australian landscape into that of the English countryside, with its evergreen trees and shrubs.

  The house was constructed of sandstone carried from the quarries around the harbour and had a wide veranda encircling it. A couple of majestic chimneys stood tall at either end of the house. The afternoon was very warm, and Ian could feel sweat trickling down his chest under his starched shirt.

  He reached the front of the house and hitched his pony to a rail provided for such a purpose.

  A well-dressed older man stepped from the house to greet him. Ian knew that this was not Sir George, but one of his many servants.

  ‘You must be Master Steele,’ he said with an accent that revealed he was not colonial-born. ‘Sir George and Mr Forbes are expecting you.’

  As Ian stepped up onto the sandstone-paved veranda, Samuel appeared to greet him.

  ‘I am pleased to see that you were able to join us this evening,’ he said.

  ‘Nice to be entering your house through the front door, and not the servant’s entrance at the rear,’ Ian said, accepting the handshake. In the past, he had been greeted with grunts due to a mere servant.

  ‘Ah, yes, standards must be retained – even in the colonies,’ Samuel said with just a hint of embarrassment. Ian followed him into the house and was surprised that it was just a little cooler than the outside. The house was relatively large with luxurious wallpaper and fine furniture. Paintings adorned the walls; portraitures of family members beside rural scenes of an English countryside, and fox hunts filled with horses, dogs and riders in red jackets.

  A young girl wearing the dress of a servant dusted a dining room cabinet. She smiled shyly when Ian passed her. Sir George rose from a great leather armchair when Ian and Samuel entered a room with a billiard table at its centre. Ian reflected on how much Samuel and his uncle looked alike, and it struck him that, as his mother had noted, he too shared similar features to the English aristocrats.

  ‘Sir George, this is the man I spoke of, Mr Ian Steele,’ Samuel said. Sir George walked towards Ian but did not proffer his hand. Ian felt like he was being appraised, as one would a fine horse.

  ‘My nephew has spoken of nothing else since you and he first made acquaintance,’ the English aristocrat said. ‘I welcome you to my home, Mr Steele, and pray that you enjoy yourself.’ Ian did not bother to say that he had met George Forbes earlier when he had delivered goods to the estate. He had simply been the local blacksmith then, and not an honoured guest, and easily forgotten.

  ‘Dinner will be served at six o’çlock sharp,’ Sir George said, returning to his comfortable chair to continue reading the Sydney newspaper.

  Samuel turned to Ian. ‘I think that we should go out to the garden for some fresh air,’ Samuel suggested, and Ian followed him through the front door to a gazebo covered in a grapevine. There was a bench encircling the inner part of the structure, and the men sat down facing one another. The servant girl delivered a jug of water with sliced lemon, pouring two glasses before departing.

  Ian was thirsty and quickly swallowed down his drink before pouring another. The summer sun was setting but the heat was still in the air.

  ‘I am pleased that you were able to join us for supper tonight.’ Samuel said. ‘I should learn more about a man I may deem as a dear friend in the future. It is obvious that you are both learned and courageous.’

  ‘I am a mere blacksmith,’ Ian replied. ‘My father was a soldier for the Empire, and my mother, who you have met, was born in Scotland. She despairs of me ever being a church-going person.’

  ‘Ah, we have that in common,’ Samuel smiled. ‘I fear that I prefer to write poetry on Sunday mornings than attend our church. My absence has raised the eyebrows of God-fearing people in the district. But I have noticed that you colonials are less religious than those I remember from my early days in England. I am afraid that I have been exposed to Charles Lyell’s geological works on the great age of the earth, which disputes religious thought on the matter. I think science may be able to explain many things our rather ignorant religious leaders profess to be irrefutable dogma.’

  ‘I am of the same mind,’ Ian agreed. ‘The answer to many questions can be found in books.’

  ‘You view the world with a questioning eye,’ Samuel said. ‘My impressions of you are that, had you not been born to the lowly state of a working man, you might have been able to mix in the world that I was born to.’

  ‘Ah, but this is the place in the British Empire where a man such as myself may aspire to fame and fortune,’ Ian said.

  ‘Do you wish to aspire to fame and fortune?’ Samuel asked.

  ‘Does not every man?’ Ian countered. ‘It appears we are only held back by the circumstances of our birth. You have been very fortunate in life. You have been born into wealth and privilege.’

  Ian saw a dark shadow cross his friend’s face at his last statement.

  ‘Before I was sixteen years of age my father took me against my wishes to a barracks in London, where I was commissioned as an officer,’ Samuel said stiffly. ‘He cared little for my feelings. I found army life tedious and rough. Eventually, I was sent to New South Wales with my regiment on garrison duties and was fortunate to have my uncle living here after his exile from England by the family. I have grown very fond of my uncle, who is not like the rest of my family in England. But I was shipped to New Zealand, and what I had always dreaded eventuated. I found myself holding the regimental colours on some damned piece of ground fighting in a battle for the Queen against her enemies. We lost that day against the noble Maori warriors, and soon after I fell ill. My regimental commanding officer gave me leave to return to my uncle’s estate until I was well enough to resume my duties with the regiment. That was a few years ago now and I have since resigned my commission.’

  ‘You fought in a battle?’ Ian asked with a note of awe, feeling a new respect for his friend. ‘I would not have believed that you would be such a man.’

  ‘I had no choice,’ Samuel replied bitterly. ‘My memory of those hours was of noise, fear and young men dying horrible deaths from musket-ball wounds. As for my courage . . . well, I was shaking so badly, I thought I would drop our colours. I never want to return to the regiment.’

  ‘I know that I may be naive but all I have ever wanted to do is serve regimental colours for the Queen. I have read every book I could get my hands on about tactics and strategy. I expect fear and carnage will be the experience of a soldier, but I have a need to find out myself. Alas, being a colonial gives little opportunity to be commissioned into a British reg
iment.’

  ‘Beware of what you desire, my friend. It might come true,’ Samuel said as the manservant called them to supper. As they walked towards the house, Ian pondered Samuel’s mysterious warning.

  At supper, Ian felt ill at ease. Servants carried dishes of rich food to the table, with its fine linen cloth and silver cutlery. Ian closely watched to see what Samuel did, and quickly picked up the etiquette of dining amongst the privileged. They sat at the end of the table, with Sir George occupying the top end.

  Conversation was polite. The hot weather, the fortunes of those seeking gold, and Sir George even complimented Ian on his enterprise, supplying the eager prospectors.

  ‘Do you intend to remain with your trade?’ Sir George asked, sipping from his bowl of kangaroo-tail soup.

  ‘I have little choice,’ Ian admitted. ‘I have prospered well of late.’

  ‘What if you had a choice in life?’ Sir George asked. ‘What might you do?’

  Ian paused. ‘My father was a soldier. I always dreamed of following in his footsteps.’ Ian also noted the exchange of knowing looks between uncle and nephew.

  ‘That is a lowly aspiration, to be a mere soldier,’ Sir George said. ‘They are recruited from the scum of the British Isles. But to be an officer in the Queen’s army is a privilege.’

  ‘A privilege only a gentleman can afford,’ Ian said. ‘It requires a great deal of money to purchase a commission.’

  The subject was dropped, and the three men finished their supper. Ian had never partaken before of such fine food, but it was time to return as he would need to be at his forge before sunrise. He bid his guests a good evening and mounted his pony to return in the dark to the village.

  *

  Sir George and Samuel retired to the billiard room to smoke cigars and share fine brandy. Samuel stood by the billiard table, idly rolling the ivory coloured balls across the smooth surface.

  ‘I must agree that there is something in what you told me after you met Mr Steele,’ Sir George said. ‘He and you have an uncanny likeness, albeit Mr Steele is more robust in appearance.’