The Trespass (41 page)

‘I have to be able to work!’ said Hetty. ‘It must heal. My life depends on me being able to work!’ Harriet talked to the doctor again; impatiently he rebound the thin arm tightly, causing Hetty to scream in pain.

‘I have much more important matters to attend to,’ he said.

Mr Burlington Brown challenged the magistrate to a duel for some slight no-one else could ascertain:
I will be answered,
he shouted over and over again,
I am a gentleman.
Captain Stark finally managed to dissuade them, but their wives were found screaming at each other on the poop deck for all the world as if they were women from the steerage area, and Miss Eunice Burlington Brown wept when it finally became clear that Mr Aloysius Porter had a fiancée.

Harriet wrote of such events for her dear readers in the early mornings. She stared at the horizon lost in thought. She had studied an iceberg at close range. She had seen an albatross. She had turned eighteen. She had been in a storm on the deck of the
Amaryllis.
She had scrubbed her flooded cabin again. She had seen the sky change completely: instead of the Plough she had often seen from Rusholme, and even occasionally from Bryanston Square, there was the Southern Cross, a new constellation. She felt – it was a new feeling – strength. She was no longer afraid. And one night she took the secret white piece of paper from inside her folder and wrote:
I understand that my father crossed a terrible line and it has damaged me. He invaded me. I believe it will be a long time before I can properly heal. But I will put the past, and the memories of that pain, away now.
Then she tore the paper, over and over, dropped the tiny pieces overboard, into the waters of the Indian Ocean. The laudanum bottles followed:
the last resort,
as she had told herself.

She knew she would never need laudanum again.

TWENTY-FOUR

The island of Tristan da Cunha is known as the loneliest place in the world.

*   *   *

Sir Benjamin Kingdom knew something of Tristan da Cunha, it had been spoken of at evenings he had attended not only at the Royal Geographical Society but at the Royal Geological Society. So when the Captain of the
Cloudlight
said it was imperative they put in to the island for water Benjamin was even more delighted than the other passengers (for of course all were delighted at the thought of seeing land). Benjamin spoke to his brother and the Reverend Boothby as they perambulated the deck, of this tiny isolated spot in the South Atlantic in which England’s only, and brief, interest was entirely due to Napoleon’s enforced residency at the next, nearest island of St Helena, over a thousand miles away.

‘They thought he might try to escape to Tristan da Cunha,’ said Benjamin, ‘and so they sent a garrison. But it was soon considered too expensive for so unlikely an event and they closed the garrison down again. But I believe several of the men asked for permission to stay on, and may still be there. Perhaps—’ and his face lit up, ‘we may even have a chance to make their acquaintance.’

The Reverend Boothby stared moodily at the sea, keeping to himself his less than favourable reaction to meeting rejects from Her Majesty’s garrisons in whatever circumstances. He would put it in his daily report to Lady Kingdom, he thought, though when she would receive such missives he could not imagine. The Reverend Boothby sighed heavily, huddling into his coat for warmth. The two young men had gone to lean on the deck rail; the Reverend Boothby stood alone (or as alone as it was possible to be on a small ship carrying one hundred and sixty-two passengers) beside the entrance to the cabin area.

All he had ever wanted from life was a tiny country parish with roses growing over the rectory front door: here he was in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. He (who made his living by smiling, it might be said, and remaining cheerful) felt God had not been watching over him. He had never wanted a wife, although he was very fond of children. He didn’t even want parishioners, with their problems. He saw the small church, and himself leading little country boys by the hand, to paradise.

There had been, in his youth, some – he always explained it to himself thus – minor transgression; Lady Kingdom’s elder sister had extricated him because he was the son of a distant cousin and because his name was, as theirs had once unfortunately been, Boothby. The ‘trouble’ had disappeared into the mists of time past, for years he had been no trouble at all. He still always wore his clerical garb and he was useful when a sudden prayer was required. He was useful too, he knew, as a fourth at bridge, or as an escort to ladies at functions which must be attended. He was always available, smiled a great deal, and never offended. His only weakness was a perhaps over-enthusiastic consumption of alcoholic beverages: even regarding that small frailty he had become, over the years, extremely cunning at secluding himself, during moments of extreme inebriation, at the bottom of Lady Kingdom’s huge grounds. If he was occasionally found talking to trees it was averred that he was really talking to God. When Lady Kingdom’s sister died many years ago it was only natural that Lady Kingdom herself inherit the Reverend Boothby, along with the family silver. For years he had smiled and smiled and never offended anybody, yet here he was, being tossed about upon raging salt water and having to walk round and round the deck of the
Cloudlight
in the freezing wind, like a punishment. (Whether Ralph and Benjamin felt it was a punishment to have to walk round and round the deck of the
Cloudlight
in the freezing wind with the Reverend Boothby it did not occur to him to consider.) The Reverend Boothby sighed heavily again at the unkindness of fate, hoped the Captain would invite him to join him for a tot later this evening, put a smile on his face, and rejoined his charges.

There was a small scrawny boy (the son of a coffin-maker from Bow travelling to New Zealand where he hoped his trade might prosper), who perambulated the deck of the
Cloudlight
also. The boy had taken to following Ralph and Benjamin and the Reverend Boothby wherever they went. Something about the trio fascinated him, the fat man in his clerical collar and the thin men in their beautiful clothes. Although his parents rebuked him continually, threatened him with hellfire or at least the back of their hand, the small boy always somehow evaded them, was always at the corner of the main deck when the gentlemen appeared, waiting for them. He would hop and skip along beside them and offer over and over again like a parrot the words ‘hello, hello’ always given in an enquiring tone, as if one day he expected an answer.

‘Hello, hello?’ he said, as they continued their discussion about Tristan da Cunha. Benjamin explained to his companions that it was actually three islands with the largest known as Tristan; explained that the islands lay, one of the most southern outposts before the Antarctic, between southern America and southern Africa. They discussed together whether the place was of any strategic importance.

‘If Tristan da Cunha is on the route between two great continents,’ said Ralph, ‘it would seem madness not to make sure the Union Jack is safely flying there.’

‘Hello, hello?’ said the small boy, walking just behind them.

‘Surely the climate is not conducive to any sort of constructive life,’ smiled the Reverend Boothby, hearing the rigging rattling in the wind and fixing the grey-green rolling sea with a stern eye.

‘It is indeed prone to the sudden, violent storms of this part of the world,’ Benjamin agreed. ‘Yet I understand that for a great deal of the year the climate is relatively mild – bracing if not exactly temperate – and much can be grown there successfully. The largest island is, I am informed, an extinct volcano and this I do long to see.’

‘Hello, hello?’ came the small voice from behind them. ‘I’m George.’

Ralph, slightly irritated by the incessant voice, stopped and rather impatiently gave the boy a penny and told him to go away. Instead of taking the penny the boy George gravely indicated that Ralph should keep it.

‘You don’t want the penny?’ said Ralph, somewhat surprised.

‘I want you for my good friend,’ said the little boy.

Ralph couldn’t help being amused by the first urchin who had ever given a penny back. He went down on his haunches so that he was nearly (but not quite) level with the boy.

‘And what would you like your good friend to do for you, George, if you do not want my money?’

‘In them stories,’ said George, ‘the gentlemen swear about being good friends.’

Ralph laughed, rose, and gave the boy his hand to shake.

‘I swear,’ he said, ‘but you must not interrupt adults again when they are talking. Do you swear?’

‘I swear,’ said the boy. ‘I’ll fight in your army.’

‘You may fight in my army too,’ said the Reverend Boothby, his voice booming with jollity.

This interesting conversation was terminated by the wife of the coffin-maker who, mortified to see her son with the gentry, grabbed George and took him away, apologising and curtseying and nodding shamefacedly to Lord Kingdom as she did so.

*   *   *

Lucy had found a friend on board the
Cloudlight.
She had found Annie. Annie was from Holborn and like Lucy had come upon the FEMALES IN SERVICE REQUIRED FOR EMIGRATION notice. She was fifteen, prettier than Lucy but not as smart and she couldn’t sing, and so they complemented each other, admired and encouraged each other’s talents. They talked about men a lot. They both knew what men did: you couldn’t come from Spitalfields or Holborn without knowing a great deal about what men did. They decided to get kind, hard-working husbands, even if they weren’t handsome; day after day and night after night they planned their lives. And their friendship was set forever when one night Annie held Lucy tightly as Lucy (the girl who never cried) wept at last: bitter angry tears for the terrible death of her mother with the cotton threads in her lungs.
I will never go back to that, never.
Lucy and Annie became inseparable.

‘The men say,’ said Annie breathlessly, running along the deck to Lucy, ‘I just been hearing them talking, that they can earn one pound a week and get ten pounds of meat provided to them. Ten pounds of meat
a week,
do they mean? I ain’t seen ten pounds of meat in my life. A week?
A week?’
And they would literally dance around the deck together in a kind of mad, disbelieving joy.

They planned their new and different lives: how they would save money and how – they had heard that this impossible dream was possible – they would have a
house of their own.
Their husbands, they planned, could be mostly in the back room with their pipes and their dirty clothes. They, Lucy and Annie, would sit in the parlour and sew for their children and sip tea from china cups with saucers.

‘And eat chocolate,’ said Annie and they giggled along the deck, passing the Kingdom brothers and the Reverend Boothby, still perambulating.

*   *   *

Next day the Captain announced they would reach Tristan da Cunha in forty-eight hours, weather permitting. Excitement rippled through the
Cloudlight.
Land.
Land.

‘I imagine,’ said Ralph, ‘that apart from being an expensive business, so far from home and so remote even from our garrisons in Africa, it might have been hard to persuade many men to live for any length of time so cut off from any contact with the outside world.’ He could not conceive of such a life.

‘Hello, hello?’ came the usual voice behind them.

‘The whalers who put in there for provisions have a worse time of it, poor devils,’ said Benjamin. ‘To them, I imagine, Tristan da Cunha represents civilisation.’

‘It is to be regretted,’ said the Reverend Boothby crossly, in one of his very few lapses from polite acquiescence (but he had slept badly after an evening spent with the Captain and his rum bottle), ‘that the young woman who has caused us to embark upon this journey did not choose Tristan da Cunha for her destination. We could almost, now, be arranging our return home.’

‘Everyone! Look,
look!
’ George screamed in such terror that all three men stopped walking and turned to him and saw that he was pointing to a huge iceberg that loomed up to their right out of the sea fog. To see a huge island of ice rising from the sea was indeed an awesome sight, particularly if you had grown up in the back streets of Bow, and George threw himself in fright at his good friend, winding his arms round his good friend’s legs. Ralph looked down on him in some amazement, patted the boy’s head, put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

‘By Jove, that is a sight,’ said Ben. He meant the iceberg of course, but he observed with interest the sight of the little boy clinging tightly to his elder brother.

George raised his head gingerly and looked again. ‘It looks like a monster,’ he said in a small voice.

‘Look again, George,’ said Benjamin. ‘It looks like an elephant.’

George looked. ‘I ain’t never seen a hele – one of them,’ said George.

‘Elephant.’

‘Elephant,’ copied George carefully. He stared again at the ice. ‘Is a elephant a monster?’

‘No,’ answered Benjamin in a considered tone, ‘an elephant is a very big animal but I don’t believe anyone would call it a monster. I think I have a book with a picture of an elephant in it that I could show you.’

George was now holding the hand of Lord Ralph Kingdom. ‘Have you got books?’ he said to Ralph.

‘My brother and I have very many books,’ answered Ralph gravely.

George turned to the Reverend Boothby. ‘Have you got books, Mister Church?’ he asked.

In the ensuing frosty silence Ralph and Benjamin heard the sea, and the sound of the wind in the sails as the
Cloudlight
sped along safely past the iceberg towards the loneliest place in the world.

‘My name is the Reverend Boothby,’ said that good man, ‘and I have lots of books to show you.’

‘Off you go now, young George,’ said Ralph firmly, ‘and play with your other friends,’ and although he looked for a moment downcast George remembered their pact, saluted Ralph and was gone.