The Ballad of Desmond Kale (51 page)

THE ANCHOR WAS PUT DOWN in Sydney Cove. Signals were made and officials welcomed aboard. Orders of the superintendent of convicts were signed and countersigned. Prisoners brought forth.

‘Who is the old chump?'

‘His name is written here, on the manifest, male, aged fifty-four, attempted murder, Convict Matt.' The receiving constable took a hard look into the moon face of this Matt, and thought, ‘If I hadn't heard old Parson Stanton was hanged, I might of guessed …'

‘Shepherd and sheep handler?'

‘That's what it says.'

Convict Matt sat on a bench in the half dark below decks, his stockings lumpy between his legs, head slumped on his chest.

‘Stand on your feet, old Matt, an shake your cods.'

He stood, and pulled his stockings up.

‘Where is your master?'

‘Over here,' answered Cribb, from the dim side of the passage. He signed where they thumbed him, at the end of a recital of duties — to maintain and clothe the said convict, to give him a ration and
clothes equal to that issued from government stores, for which he would perform a government task, as subjoined: and if his master could give him employment for the remainder of his time, which was eight years! at the established rate, he was to do his master's work in preference to any other person's.

The constable said to the convict:

‘Understand, it is not all bad here, mate, your master will provide both you and your missus with a sheltered lodging on his farm, or at his habitation, which is it to be?'

‘It is on a farm,' said the convict.

‘Laban Vale,' said Cribb, ‘is the name of the holding.'

The constable wrote it down. ‘Laban Vale … Laban Vale …' he wiggled his pencil, having heard that name.

‘Mr Cribb is a little too anxious to belong,' said the convict, looking at Cribb. ‘He cannot help himself. But strictly speaking, Laban Vale is the property of his wife.'

‘Strictly speaking,' agreed Cribb.

‘She is an heiress,' added the convict, showing far too much pride and impulsiveness in the matter for the constable to let it pass, in his guesswork over their exchanges, which were so testy, and ripe with embroilment, that he wondered what Bramley, Cribb, Hardcastle, & Co., were in together, and what could be in it for him, if he put his hand out and touched their secrecy.

‘The aforesaid Laban Vale it is,' said the constable, continuing his recitation, ‘from which you are not to absent yourself without leave, nor in any case to go from one settlement to another without a pass from a magistrate.'

Hardcastle came down and signed where shown with less distaste than a resemblance of slavery might have roused in a regularly passionate abolitionist, now put over a man as an overseer.
‘If either one has just cause to complain of neglect of work, or Convict Matt your servant not obeying your orders, or absenting himself from your farm without leave, you are to report it to a magistrate, and, on conviction, said Matt will receive a flogging.'

‘A flogging! — from a magistrate would be good,' said Matt with all the snide humour expected of his class, but so brazenly that the constable struck him hard on the left cheekbone, and forced him back into the shadows.

‘I say,' said Hardcastle.

‘Learn up your fists, if you're to be his keeper, Mr Hardcastle,' said the constable, who by this outburst had driven from his mind all thought that the convict was someone greater returned from the grave.

(It would not be until the following morning, when the news that Stanton lived went around, that the constable was to remember his guess. The
Edinburgh Castle
was the first ship to reach Sydney since the reprieve, and while it expressly brought no news — London papers were all following in the next ship along — the information among some of its women, that Convict Matt was otherwise than who he said he was, was there to get out, as soon as they were intimately settled with some dispenser of favours and felt like a gossip and a good laugh about their equal under the law.)

Now there was a lot of shouting from a boat drawn alongside, whistles, drums — and firecrackers!

‘The bitches are on heat,' said the constable, tilting his head to the sound of bare feet dancing on the decks above their heads. ‘And the dogs are primed.'

Here was a party of around forty men, come from up country New South Wales to get themselves wives. They scrambled aboard while the howling, odorous, primped, flushed chorus of women,
rattling bangles, pulling up their skirts to thrust out their legs and show their furze bushes, were held back by a party of turnkeys — who said, ‘Forty into sixty shall go, ladies' — and stood there getting themselves groped between the legs by those of the front row, to repay them for their humour and may be encourage them if they ended being the ones left out, to take a pick in the lottery of life.

Paying passengers were meant to be out of the way, and ashore by now, for this was a scene of human traffic, and not very suitably exposed to those of better breeding, but as their disembarkation was blocked by the flesh bazaar, there was the chance of being spectators while they waited for their boatman.

Standing forward of the other passengers in a row behind the last of the convict women was the young Mrs Cribb: pale face miserably pinched getting away from her husband's arm. Cribb gave her an angry talk, that morning, about how she was not keeping her side of their bargain at all. It was time to stop it and make a better show, he demanded, as Cribb had hard work to do ashore establishing himself. Their bargain was that he would marry her to save her reputation and her parents' battered pride (done); that he would admit proudly to being the father of her illegitimate child (done); that he would support and protect her parents, as best he could under prison colony law (done); and that she in response might try and love him, just a bit, bit by bit, starting on their voyage to New South Wales (not done).

There was nothing about Cribb she liked, not his hands, his face, his temper, nor even his tried patience in restraining himself from taking his husband's rights until she came to him freely. He loved her, he said, like the open mouth of a furnace roaring, and in other ways, many ways, which when he expressed them she tried not to
listen. She liked nothing about him except that he'd rescued her. It only got worse. He was old. She wished she was on this market and could make an escape. She hated the way Cribb held her captive, and worse, the way she held him captive. How pitiable, that if you dreamed to be loved, and were, it came out as the worst thing. It made the man weak, when in every other capacity he was strong. He was brought down leaving you with nothing.

As for her humbled parents, Ivy ruled the family affections as she always had. Her parents were more afraid of her than they had ever been: she had been elevated and placed. It was all in their position now, with their lives reversed. But Dolly in the role of maid found herself giving calm advice she'd never given as a mother, their intimacy now being truer, having restrictive rules, as brought out good and prevented bad. She told Ivy that being loved was not always the worst thing, that love was a story that grew of itself, of its own unintended accord. One day she would tell Ivy about Cribb when all Ivy knew was that her mother and Cribb went well back, to the same little scatter of villages under the moors. She would tell Ivy that out of that passion came the strangest love story of all, when it was properly untangled — the abiding love of Mrs Dolly for Mr Matt. It was seen on the ship that the pair were as affectionate as could be, always with their arms around each other or holding hands viewing the horizon, and sharing the same three-quarter bunk in the same narrow cabin, frogged up together during storms.

 

The convict women were baying. The men looking them over roared. It did not matter for the day that none of the men coming to claim them was handsome. They clattered around the deck in their noisy boots and then they bunched up and settled, a mob of bulls
breathing hoarsely ready for the join. Some of the men were strong, with stone-breaking hands and dusty cold eyes; some were defeated by work, but hopeful of comfort; and some were shy as dry sticks who came with ribboned gifts; others had a bottle or two, for an imminent roister; some drooled; and some looked starved for lightning. Some were foreigners and carried nosegays to offer; and one with that thought, a man who'd been alone too long without civilising himself while he made money, was Paul Lorenze. Getting himself rich, he'd learned, took a man so far — but if he wanted to be richer there were niceties to be observed. You did not get greatly rich without being accepted into great houses, where men made arrangements in each other's favour. It helped most never having been a convict. Oh but he was an ugly bastard, though. And crude.

Of the women, looked at from the men's side, most found no beauty there but plenty of hard-working scrubbers, which was what they had come for: they had eyes for stout arms, solid legs, broad backs and a gobful of teeth.

‘Will ye take me? I've got a place — forty acres.'

‘All right!'

And a woman would go with that man, taking a gamble. Forty acres was such a lot.

Then a few men sensed each other out, as forceful bidders do at an auction, the ones who count. They looked sidelong and almost died right there for the need they had for that woman blazing into their vision, Anne Kemp wearing a green skirt and a trim red jacket. They'd come with more practical wants on their shopping lists, someone to milk the ewes, do washing, hoe the potato patch and sweep the earth floors clean. Someone to walk out with them across country, and not get tired while carrying a bundle. Anne Kemp might do all that. It did not matter. They had to have her.

Lorenze wanted her the way a man dying in battle wants the hot sword of his enemy to finish its work. But before he could step forward, and make his mark, another man stood in front of him. This man was so much the gentleman that all bidders stood back and let him have his say. It was Convict Commissioner Lloyd Thomas, whose hearings, rulings, and investigations were making them all jump.

‘You,' he said, ‘with the grey-green eyes.'

The young Mrs Cribb put her hand over her mouth, and gave a short scream. He was looking straight at her through the crowd of women. It was her Valentine with his hair swept back at his temples, his sword in his belt, his smile so eager and wanting, and through the chance of where Ivy stood they were united! Look at him there so unblinking! He was swept aside from his duty just for her, this great man, his heart had chosen her, his mouth, that had kissed her, was speaking, his fingers, that had begun their sure work at her waist to begin their child, were pointing!

So Ivy reckoned, at least, in those few seconds when the crowd gave a soft little sigh, as if a prince had won.

Cribb wasn't the only one who saw Ivy's mistake; Dolly saw it, and glanced at Cribb crestfallen (they understood each other well in their new relation); they saw how Ivy turned white; how her little strong heart fluttered in its cage, before it folded its silk veins around itself, and crushed itself flat.

Anne Kemp stepped forward of the rest, came out on the bare deck, pirouetted in front of the commissioner, who was never said no to in any department of his life — except in getting the worst of a wager — and he was in power to her scent of oils and powders, to her lean bones, her carelessness of eye. He was no longer a man having young girls over against trees and uncovering malfeasance
in his committees of enquiry, investigating everything under this sun it was possible to imagine — commissary stores, the rum trade, hospitals, flogging practices, hangings, potato farming, gold, and wool. His power in all this deserted him. Just for now, and overwhelmingly in his feelings. He hardly expected it, but had come to the women's ship wanting it, from the time early that morning when Maule made his signals, which were relayed from the South Head, and it was known there were women aboard the
Edinburgh Castle
creeping up the harbour.

Anne Kemp curtsied.

‘You are the prettiest-ankled woman I have seen in my life,' said Lloyd Thomas with a dry throat. He was not aware of a commotion at the back of the gathered females, where a young woman cried to her husband, ‘Where are you, why aren't you by me, you never do anything for me, Mr Cribb!' — and was taken below to recover before going ashore. The name Cribb registered, but as Lloyd Thomas did not see him again he did not remember until later, seeing Lord Bramley's emissary ashore.

Nor was Lloyd Thomas aware that from deck level (in the drop of a companionway) he was watched by a sullen convict with straw in his hair, the man whose daughter he had ruined, and that to save that ruin from being final, much else had followed, even to the lip of the gallows — which was why the convict stayed where he stood, and whenever he thought he might be recognised, ducked his head. How could he as the lowest of the low, presume any higher? His best hope was ignominy. He almost liked it. Being so low managed him into some places he'd never been able to slip under so far — such as into Cribb's cabin, and into his letter-case, kept under his bunk, where Cribb kept the troublesome maps of George Marsh in trust for Warren Inchcape. So confident was
Convict Matt within the deepest part of himself that he did not even shake and tremble when he got those maps in his hands (they after all being the other reason he was low as he was). Damned if they weren't bound in strong tape, sealed with wax. But at least he knew where they were when he needed to get hold of them, which might be very soon, if they did as was planned and got themselves past Sydney and Parramatta and reached Laban Vale before sunset of the next day.

 

The routine of seduction and captivity above decks continued in the bright winter sunshine. Anne Kemp laughed into the dark eyes of the fine man who wanted her. Commissioner Lloyd Thomas frowned, with uncertainty. He was only vaguely aware that he was known as the greatest predatory goat in the place, but seemed to think, because he could never be refused, that he was the greatest master of attraction. It didn't seem to be working on this superlative bitch. Botany Bay had weathered him more handsomely, doing nothing to improve his insides.