Great Historical Novels (19 page)

As Michael expected, Calvin Hughes was sitting on the verandah of the last bungalow before the stretch of sand that led down to the bottle-green water. He was smoking a whalebone pipe and had his boots up on the rail and his chair tilted back at a precarious angle. His official, navy serge tunic was unbuttoned and his black policeman’s cap sat on the floor near the chair.

‘Evening, Cal.’ The chair shuddered for a moment as the policeman, startled, brought his boots to the floorboards with a thud. ‘Christ, Michael! Frightened the bejesus out of me.’

‘Mind if I join you?’

‘Certainly bloody not. Fancy a brew?’

‘No thanks, mate. I seem to be making a habit of consecrating the sabbath on Maggie’s imported. Be a shame to sober up too soon.’

Calvin chuckled and puffed on his pipe. He looked at the deserted beach with a sigh of satisfaction. ‘Not a bloody soul abroad. Had a couple of blackfellas roasting a goanna in a sand pit earlier. Don’t see them much on the shore these days. Gave me a piece too. Tastes like a fish one minute and poultry the
next. Bloody decent of ’em, I thought, considering what bastards we are.’

‘They know who you are.’

‘They know that this strip of shore is safe, at least, and that while I’m still breathing there won’t be any shooting of blacks. So what brings you down to my beat, Michael?’ Calvin’s ‘beat’ was the port area, including Customs and Convicts – the greater proportion of newcomers to the colony. He had half a dozen or so hand-picked constables working for him, who were mostly as decent as he was himself. Calvin’s port authority was an oasis of humanity in a desert of misery. For all of its modern enterprise, Sydney was still a prison to most of its inhabitants. The undercurrent of resentment was ever-present.

Calvin was around the same age as Michael and had been in Sydney for almost thirty years. His posting to the colony was intended to be temporary and he had agreed to it reluctantly. But then he’d fallen for the raw beauty of the place and, having neither family nor a sweetheart in London, had chosen to stay. He’d seen it all, the massacres and the starvation and the absconders to ‘China’. In the early days, a series of escapes were inspired by a peculiar notion that to the north-west of the settlement, a river separated Australia from China. In the imaginations of the desperate Irish, the great land across the river contained everything they desired: freedom, kindness, tea and civilisation. Primarily, though, it was women they were after. Amongst the several hundred who undertook the journey to China, few survived, and a trail of human bones still littered the route they had taken – a reminder to others that the Australian interior was more hostile even than British law.

‘It’s curiosity that brings me, as usual,’ Michael replied.

‘Oh?’ Calvin took his pipe from between his teeth and cocked his head. ‘You got something for me?’

The two men had an arrangement. Calvin ‘failed to notice’ the harmless lawbreaking which Michael turned his hand to, and in return the Irishman kept the Port Authority informed of any serious criminal activity he came across.

‘Not sure. It’s been awful quiet down the Rocks.’ Michael had decided to hold back on what Maggie had told him for now, since there was a fine line between what Calvin could and couldn’t ignore. Mick the Fence was well known to the Sydney constabulary, but he was also notoriously professional and unerringly careful. If he was running an operation, you could be certain it was clever and imaginative and that he’d keep his own hands clean. It would be more productive to watch the harbour and find out exactly what was going to be shipped out, if this was, as Michael suspected, what the enterprise involved.

Calvin nodded thoughtfully. ‘I don’t much like quiet – it just doesn’t seem natural in these parts.’

Michael felt the same way. ‘It’s just a feeling I’ve got at present, nothing more.’ He paused for as long as seemed prudent before he introduced his motive. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve come by anything that might interest
me
?’

‘Can’t say as I have. Got a little project on myself, but he’s not local.’

‘Is that right?’

‘A Manx sailor I took in for smuggling some black gold a few years back. Told him that if I ever saw his filthy breeches on my patch again, I’d see him dance upon nothing.’

‘Then he’s come back for his own hanging?’

‘I think he’s on the run. I’ve got nothing on him, so I just locked him up for a night when he was senseless on rum. One of my men had a friendly chat with him and tells me he was frightened and swore he had nothing to do with the death of the Quaker, off Bombay.’

‘That right? Would that be a Quaker who didn’t die a natural death?’

‘Correct. A Quaker who didn’t die a natural death and who clearly knew something he shouldn’t have.’

‘A trader?’

‘Cotton.’

‘Got a name?’

‘I’m working on it.’

‘You got any men keeping an eye on the inlets to the south, Cal?’

‘I don’t have enough men just to watch the harbour, Michael. Why?’

‘Could be your man’s hiding out in one of them.’

‘Is that the only reason?’

‘I don’t know. But when I do, I’ll be sure to tell you.’

‘I expect no less. Now, since Maggie Long has seen fit to squander her good liquor on you, and in the spirit of the approaching season, I suppose I should keep you in your cups?’

‘I’d appreciate it, Calvin.’

The blazing sun sank mercifully low, and the two men sat on the verandah watching the sea turn from clear green to inky blue, and the ghostly white ruffs of tide glimmer as they cascaded to the sand. The cliffs to the southern reach of the harbour paled in the twilight and the spiky silhouettes of shrubs along the shore rang with cicadas. A sweep of fruit bats descended on an outcrop of papaya, squabbling and rustling the fronds of the palms as if they were being blown about by a strong wind.

On the days when Michael was at his best, he felt privileged, as well as punished, to have seen a land so wild and so untouched by the polluting industries of men. He wondered if he would miss it, when he went home.

Cloth

Fresh snow had fallen on the night market at Covent Garden, turning it ghostly white under the carriage lamps. Plum duffs and gingerbread and sugared almonds all looked better by gaslight. They sparkled in their little paper cones. Rhia bought some gingerbread and stopped to watch the courting pairs and young men singing odes to ale. The trees were laced with snow and the lamplight soft with fog. Everything seemed a little magical until a gang of urchins darted in front of her, playing a game with the carcass of a rat.

When Laurence gave her directions to the Red Lion, Rhia had almost asked him if he would like to accompany her. But he was already dressed for a night on the town, or rather, he had oiled his hair and looked vaguely less dishevelled than usual.

The tavern was along one of the alleyways off the square, and smelt of woodsmoke and mulled wine. Rhia stopped inside the low door for a moment to allow her eyes to become accustomed to candlelight. A branch of mistletoe hung on a string from a low ceiling beam and an enormous plum cake sat in a bed of holly behind the bar. A blazing fire cast flickering shadows, and the room was rowdy and merry. Judging by the noise, the Red Lion was a trade workers’ alehouse. It was the second time Rhia had entered a tavern on her own since leaving Dublin. Her father would despair.

Sid beckoned Rhia over from a snug by the fire. Judging by the angle of his hat and the glint in his eye, he was something of a libertine – but he had a kind smile, in spite of his teeth. ‘Won’t you sit down, Miss Mahoney, and let me fetch you a beverage. Will you have some sherry, or a negus?’

‘I’d prefer a glass of stout, if you don’t mind.’

‘Mind? Why, I’m pleased to see a lady take a proper jar.’

Grace giggled nervously as he left them alone. ‘Don’t mind Sid, he’s just fresh. But he’s a good heart.’

‘I can see that he has.’ The girl’s temper seemed vastly improved by the contents of the empty glasses on the table, but she still eyed Rhia warily.

‘I hope you don’t think me bold, but don’t you think … isn’t it unlikely that Mr Montgomery would want to employ … someone such as yourself?’

‘Such as myself?’ Rhia wondered where the conversation was leading.

‘I mean, for a woman. Well. How will you marry, if you have a trade?’

‘Perhaps I won’t. I wouldn’t mind.’ Rhia shrugged as nonchalantly as she could. ‘I don’t really think of it.’ This was only partly true, in that she hadn’t thought of it lately. She must just get used to the idea that she wasn’t the kind of woman men liked. She wasn’t convinced that marriage was of any real benefit to a woman anyway.

‘But, you cannot have a family unless you are married.’

‘It is physically possible.’

Miss Elliot blushed.

Rhia was no expert on less-than-immaculate conception. She and Thomas had discussed it as children, piecing together what little each of them knew or suspected. They had concluded that the entire business was unfeasible and had not, that
day in the forest, managed to prove or disprove their theory. She could hardly imagine the kind of love that might lead to an act of such momentous intimacy. It all came back to love, of course, the greatest problem of all.

Before Rhia could think of anything to say to help cool down Miss Elliot’s burning cheeks, Sid returned with a glass of stout and a slice of plum cake for each of them.

‘Christmas cheer to us all,’ he said as he lifted his glass.

‘Christmas cheer!’ they chorused.

‘And it will be the first Christmas I’ve not spent in Change Alley for a good number of years.’

‘Where is Change Alley?’ Rhia asked.

‘Well, the truth is, Miss Mahoney, the actual place don’t exist, not any more. There was a fire that got the better of the alley, fifty years back, but my pa still remembers it from when he was a lad. My granddaddy was a jobber, like me. It all happens at the Royal Exchange now.’

‘What all happens, and what is a jobber?’

‘You ask a lot of questions, for a lady.’ Sid grinned and Rhia could tell that he was pleased to be the expert at the table. ‘A jobber is a stock jobber, and its punters like me give advice to the traders and financiers and the bankers who have more silver than they know what to do with. Jobbers know what’s going on in the market – what’s good to buy shares and stocks of, and what’s good to sell for a profit. You’d know a little about the marketplace if you’re from the linen trade, Miss Mahoney.’

‘Almost nothing. I know that shares in Irish linen have fallen very steeply.’

‘That’d be because English linen is cheaper.’

‘But only because England can afford bigger factories and better machines!’

Sid shrugged. ‘That’s the thing – there’s always somebody going to do it better and cheaper.’

‘Perhaps cheaper, not better.’

‘As you say, I wouldn’t know about the quality of the cloth, I don’t need to, you see, since I’ve got my Gracey to advise me on it.’ He gave his fiancée a suggestive smile and for a fleeting moment Rhia ached for something that she didn’t know – had never known. Men liked women like Grace Elliot, with skin pale enough to blush and a fragility that made them feel strong.

‘It’s cheap goods most people want,’ Sid was saying. ‘Before the fire, Change Alley was where all the coffee houses were, and that’s where all the buying and selling went on. There’s only one or two coffee houses left in the banking district, down around Cornhill and Lombard Street. The main one’s the Jerusalem.’ Rhia was suddenly alert. The calling card she’d found on Ryan’s floor was from the Jerusalem Coffee House.

To her astonishment, when she looked up from her glass she was met with the sight of Laurence and Mr Dillon entering the pub – as though in remembering that day at Ryan’s flat she had conjured them. Laurence was beaming. He had known she would be here. When they reached the snug, to her even greater surprise, Mr Dillon slapped Sid on the back. He greeted Rhia and Grace politely before disappearing to the bar. Laurence squeezed in next to Rhia while Sid and Grace cooed over each other.

‘You look smashing.’

‘And so do you,’ she said lightly. She found that it was easier to play along with Laurence’s harmless flirtations than to resist them. Besides, she liked him and even if she wouldn’t make him a good wife she didn’t mind being admired.

‘And I’ve not even asked you how you fared with the dragon,’ he added. Rhia darted a meaningful look at Grace and frowned
at Laurence. He nodded and winked and put his finger to his lips conspiratorially. Grace was preoccupied with Sid, though, and had heard nothing

‘Miss Elliot works in the emporium,’ Rhia whispered.

‘Oh, I
see
,’ he whispered back.

‘Mr Montgomery seemed to like my designs, he said he’d think about it, and then he rushed off somewhere.’

‘These dragons are extremely busy creatures, you know.’

‘Speaking of dragons, I’ve been meaning to ask you, is Mr Dillon always so aloof, or is it just the effect I have on him?’

Laurence looked taken aback. ‘I’d not noticed him being aloof!’

Rhia laughed. ‘You wouldn’t notice if your own boot buttons were undone. But you’ve answered my question. It must be me.’

Laurence looked towards the bar. ‘I suppose he does brood. You should have seen him when we were students, though. I used to wonder, on certain mornings, if I should call on him and make sure he hadn’t died, poetically, in the night. He’s a very level-headed chap though. He’s at his worst when he’s personally affronted by something, like this business in the Pearl River.’

‘But
why
is he personally affronted by it?’

‘His younger brother was a scholar who lived in Canton.’ Laurence trailed off as Dillon arrived and placed a jug of porter on the table and a glass of sherry for Grace who hadn’t touched her plum cake.

‘Oh good man,’ said Laurence. ‘Rhia was just asking about your piece on the war.’

Dillon shot her a surprised look. ‘Do the economics of war interest you, Miss Mahoney?’

His tone made her bristle. ‘We are all affected by economics.
My father paid excessive duties to the Crown for the privilege of exporting his linen, so I am merely curious to know how the Crown is spending his taxes.’