Dorothy Eden (3 page)

As towns, or cities, went, for it was said that Sydney would be an important city one day, the place had an air of ramshackle impermanence. Governor Lachlan Macquarie had left his mark in well-planned streets and a number of fine simple sandstone buildings designed by a convict architect, but the general impression was one of roaring untidy life. Inns with creaking signs stood at far too frequent intervals and also too frequently spilled out their staggering customers. The streets were unpaved, so that a fine red dust hung permanently in the air. This was stirred into a cloud when a coach dashed by or a laborious bullock team toiled up the hill. Shops shaded by verandah fronts displayed many wares besides the necessities of life, outlandish souvenirs brought back by sailors, beads, native clubs and spears, gaudy-coloured parrots in cages, fringed cashmere shawls, pottery and red-lacquered chests from the Orient.

The houses, even the smallest, had verandahs to provide a little shade, and wooden fences to separate them from the street. There were many flowering shrubs and creepers of which Eugenia did not yet know the names. Above the unpleasant odour of garbage and manure and the prickling dust she caught the heavy sweet scent of some blossom.

She noticed, as she walked along on Gilbert’s arm, that people turned to stare. Perhaps she walked a little unsteadily, for the wide street had an uncanny tendency to tilt, as if it were the deck of the
Caroline.
Horses, noses in feeding bags, tails switching at flies, were tethered outside public houses. Tangle-haired bare-footed urchins gaped at Eugenia fastidiously holding her neat brown travelling skirt out of the dust. A thin mongrel dog sniffed at their heels.

Suddenly Eugenia stepped aside in dismay from what seemed to be a bundle of rags lying in the dust of the gutter.

‘Rum,’ Gilbert said contemptuously. ‘It’s a scourge here. They drink it good, bad or indifferent. Convicts make it illicitly. Heaven knows what they put in it. I shall educate them to drink wine.’

Eugenia thought it wiser not to comment that that human relic in the gutter scarcely looked educable as far as wine was concerned. One could hardly imagine that dirty hand lovingly holding the stem of a wine glass. But it would be pleasant if it could be done, of course. She agreed with Gilbert on the principle of his argument.

A moment later she was diverted from that sordid spectacle by an infinitely more distressing one, a line of men shuffling along the street with chains clanking. They were dressed in shabby grey clothes liberally daubed with arrows. Most of them kept their eyes on the ground, but one looked straight at Eugenia. No, not at her, through her, for the strange melancholy light eyes were seeing nothing but some unrealizable dream.

In spite of the heat, a violent shiver went over her. Her fingers tightened on Gilbert’s arm.

‘A chain gang,’ Gilbert said briefly, answering her unspoken question. ‘They’re on their way to the stone quarries.’

‘How perfectly dreadful!’

‘It’s a sight you will have to get used to, my dear. You must remember that these men have all committed some crime.’

‘But surely not one to merit that treatment!’ She had turned to look back at the shuffling line, the drooping heads, the unkempt hair, the general air of degradation. Her dismay was intense. She had never been able to bear witnessing the humiliation of a human being, but this was much worse than humiliation, it was barbarism.

‘There are cases of injustice, I agree,’ Gilbert said judicially. ‘But usually in those the man’s natural honesty allows him to rehabilitate himself when he gets his freedom. There are plenty of ex-convicts in the colony leading honest lives. Come, my love, don’t look so shocked. If one is ill one takes a dose of medicine and recovers. That’s what those fellows are doing.’

‘Medicine doesn’t always cure.’

‘No, I admit some cases are irreclaimable. They become permanently degraded.’

‘And what about their keepers?’

Gilbert looked at her with suddenly sharp eyes.

‘You think administering punishment is debasing?’

‘I am sure it could be.’

‘Do I looked debased? I have several convicts in my employ. I often have to administer punishment. But I think I remain a decent enough fellow.’

‘What sort of punishment?’ Eugenia asked apprehensively.

‘The lash. A couple of dozen strokes. That’s light punishment compared to what the courts mete out. I don’t care for it, but order must be kept. I narrowly avoided a mutiny last summer. You get one bad element among these fellows and then there’s trouble.’

‘You—do this—yourself?’

‘My love, it’s nothing you must worry your head about. Of course it must be a shock to you at first. You’ve lived a sheltered life. I hope to go on keeping it sheltered and protected. But this is a phase of colonial existence which you will have to accept.’

‘You would expect me to accept seeing a man whipped!’ Eugenia said incredulously.

‘You don’t have to witness it. Heaven forbid! But you must accept it as a necessary part of our society at present. When England stops treating us as a dumping ground for human rubbish, then we will have other laws.’

‘But you said in England that you found the convicts a blessing,’ Eugenia said stubbornly. ‘Or words to that effect.’

‘For cheap labour. Yarrabee could not have been built without them.’

Yarrabee. The walls rising as the men in the arrow-daubed clothes built stone on stone. The men with the hate-filled minds, the despairing eyes, the scarred backs.

I am not going to be able to bear to live in it, Eugenia thought. It is going to be a house haunted by these ragged unhappy ghosts…

Gilbert pressed her arm against his side. He said tolerantly, ‘At your age I also was shocked. One learns to accept. The present system is deplorable, but until it is altered we must make it as workable as possible. I promise you I am a fair employer. I keep on every man who wants to stay when he becomes free. Except for the utterly depraved, of course. And that reminds me, you will want a good maid. Was there anyone on the ship who took your fancy?’

‘I shared Mrs Ashburton’s maid, Jane King. She wasn’t getting on very well with Mrs Ashburton, she could never seem to please her. I think she would like to come to me. Of course, this would have to be with Mrs Ashburton’s consent. Jane is a rather forlorn creature. She’s an orphan and needs someone to be kind to her.’

‘And that person is you? So it seems as if both Jane and I need you. I am an orphan, too.’

‘I know,’ Eugenia murmured, but looking at him sideways, she thought that he was an altogether different case from Jane with her timid eyes and skimmed milk complexion. She, poor thing, was ready to fly to anyone who would give her affection. But not this man with the sure lift of his chin, with his keen blue eyes and crest of flaming hair. He had learned to hide or disclaim his hurts. Privately she believed that he was a man to whom ambition came first and a woman second. But even believing this, she had decided to marry him. She was so certain that beneath his strength there would be great tenderness. To tell the truth, she found the situation challenging and exciting. But also a little alarming, for now she kept seeing a tiny figure in her mind, a black shape no bigger than a fly, with its arm rising and falling as the lash was administered on tortured skin.

‘A
ND WHAT DID YOUR
mother say, love, when you told her you were coming all this way to be married?’

Bess Kelly was a homely woman with a big bosom and light fluffy hair that escaped its pins and hung in damp tendrils on her brow and about her plump neck. Eugenia had perceived at once that she would not have been society in England. But standards out here were different. Obviously, if a woman were honest and respectable, she would be accepted in most houses in this country.

Eugenia found the attic bedroom to which Bess had shown her very small and dreadfully hot. The sun struck through the iron roof so that one seemed to have been put inside a stove, preparatory to being cooked.

All the same the room was to be hers alone, for there was only one bed. This was bliss, after enduring three months of Mrs Ashburton’s talkative company in a none too comfortable ship’s cabin. There were sprigged muslin curtains at the slanting windows, the bed and dressing-table had pretty chintz covers. Mrs Kelly pointed to a bowl of cream-coloured flowers floating in water, and said the children had put them there. They were called frangipani and smelled nice. You needed sweet smells because the drains in the summer, and the slops thrown out by the public houses and sluttish housewives, brought less pleasant odours, not to mention flies.

‘Didn’t it break your mother’s heart, my dear, you coming so far? Of course she’d be wheedled by Gilbert Massingham. If ever there was a man who knew how to get his own way, it’s Gilbert. You’re going to have all the unmarried young ladies envying you, I can tell you that. Ever since Gilbert came back three years ago and announced he was bringing a bride out, there have been tears and pouts. But we all knew there was no one good enough for Gilbert in this ragbag of a colony. He intended to have the best. The same as his wines. He’s going to make the best wine in Australia, and what’s more, make people drink it. Well, I’ve been here ten years, and I say it will be something near a miracle if the rum and beer drinkers can be turned to wine. But if there’s a man who can use his persuasions, it’s Gilbert Massingham.’

Eugenia found there was no need to say anything at all. She thought that Mrs Kelly could have few people to talk to, for she was behaving like someone who had been denied conversation for a long time.

She could hear rustles and whispers on the stairs. It must be the Kelly children wanting to have a peep at the new arrival. The children who had thoughtfully put the frangipani on her dressing-table.

But the sweet smell and the heat were making her feel a little suffocated. The day had already held too much. She had a scarcely formed thought that if the first sight of Gilbert had filled her with unmitigated joy she would not have been so aware of the other things. The sickening glare of the sun, the dust, the rawness of the town, the ragged children, that shattering glimpse of a chain gang.

On her first day she had hoped and expected to be aware of nothing but the pleasure of her reunion with Gilbert.

Letters and absence, she realized, were dangerous things. They led to dreams that were too euphoric and unrealistic. She simply hadn’t expected Gilbert to have taken on the colour of his surroundings the way he had.

‘You’re a very fortunate young lady, do you know that?’ Mrs Kelly was saying. ‘No bride ever had more preparations made for her. Have you brought a wonderful wedding gown?’

Eugenia shook her head. ‘No, it’s very simple. I thought a too elaborate one would be out of place.’ She tried to sound gay and excited, since this friendly woman obviously expected her to. ‘But I have a veil of Brussels lace that my grandmother and then my mother, and last year my sister Jessica wore. I have to send it back for my sister Sarah, though I am not so sure she will marry, she’s very serious and studious. But there’s still Elizabeth and Milly to come after her.’

‘Five girls! My, your mother must be pleased to find husbands for you, even if you had to come all the way to Australia.’

There was no had to about it, Eugenia thought indignantly. But she remembered being surprised that Mamma and Papa had agreed so readily when Gilbert had made his request. She had thought they might have protested about this impetuous young man, of whom they knew very little, planning to carry their daughter off to such an impossible place. But they had emphasized how much they had liked his vitality and his ambitiousness.

She herself had always known that in Gilbert’s mind she was inextricably associated with the dinner party at Uncle Henri’s chateau. He had seen her through the euphoria produced by her uncle’s vintage wine. She was part of a set piece, and therefore an essential figure in his ambition. She had wanted to be this, and still did, in spite of their somewhat uneasy meeting today. But she had to smile a little, for if she had been secretly dismayed by his sunburnt earthy appearance, what had he thought of her, wind-blown, semi-speechless, with a sunburnt nose? That was not the elegant poised young woman of the French dinner party. Had he been disappointed?

If so, he had gallantly hidden his feelings. That was kind and thoughtful of him, and prognosticated well for the future. When her bags had arrived, and she had bathed and changed and rested, and perhaps begun a letter to Sarah, she would feel more composed. The letter-writing to Gilbert in a far-off country which had been a balm and a release would now have to be done in reverse, with her dearly loved sister Sarah as the recipient.

Mrs Kelly did finally leave her, though not before three bashful children had been brought to meet her. They were plain sunburnt freckled children, the youngest a toddler, and a fourth, said Mrs Kelly, lying in the graveyard. The summer heat was hard on little ones.

As always, Eugenia’s spirit calmed when she took up her pen.

Sydney, 18th June 1830

Dearest Sarah,

I am supposed to be resting before dinner, but I am talking to you so busily in my head, that I might just as well put my remarks on paper.

I have arrived and safely disembarked from the
Caroline.
Strange as it may seem, I was sorry to leave the ship as I had grown quite fond of it (though
not
of Mrs Ashburton, who was the most indefatigable talker I have
ever
met).

I have not time now to regale you with my impressions of this town, and of Australia generally. Anyway, I know you must be longing to hear of only one thing, my meeting with my affianced husband. These comments are for your eyes only, for I must tell you that he seems rather uncomfortably a stranger. He has grown so weathered-looking, his skin is the colour of the burnt umber in our paint boxes, a rather hard unbecoming colour caused by the climate here. He is broader, too, and looks very strong and healthy. You remember how quiet and observant he seemed to be when he came to Lichfield Court. Now he is brisk and confident, and more hearty in manner. I was amused that he seemed more concerned to know that his vines, rather than I, had travelled well. However, he could see immediately that I had, so there was no need to enquire. And how do I know that, if he seemed a stranger to me, I did not seem even more of one to him. I have been sitting here trying to reassure myself by going over my good points. I count my hair, my eyes, my neck, my waist and my hands as good. But my funny crooked nose has caught the sun. I am too thin because I could eat so little of the food on board ship. I really look half starved, with hollows under my cheekbones. I could see Mrs Kelly looking at my small bosom. Really, how can I be critical of my dear Gilbert’s colonial look, when I am such an inauspicious example of an English gentlewomen!