Tiger Men (4 page)

He lifted his gaze out across the river and was distracted by a particularly fine-looking ship in the distance. Under full sail and with the wind behind her, the clipper was making her way up the Derwent in spectacular fashion. He halted to admire the vessel and, as he did so, he realised that his mind hadn’t really been on the meeting of the Legislative Council at all. It hadn’t even been on the new constitution and the prospect of self-government. He’d been trying to distract himself, he realised. He’d been trying to distract himself from the moment he’d left Polly Jordan’s house.

‘It’s hard bringing up youngsters on your own, isn’t it, sir?’
He couldn’t get her words out of his mind.
‘Just as it’s hard losing your loved one to the sea. You’d know that too, wouldn’t you, sir?’
Yes, he thought, oh yes, indeed I would. Why, he wondered, had Amy chosen to confide in Polly Jordan of all people? He had no idea what could have possessed his daughter to do such a thing, but whatever the reason, it had brought back the past.

‘H
e’s a fine lad, is young Silas, Lucy,’ Bernard Drayton had declared. ‘You’ll need a husband to run the business one day when I’m gone, and you’ll find none more worthy, I’ll warrant.’

Silas had not heard this declaration from the mouth of his future father-in-law, but rather from the mouth of his future wife, whose impression of her brashly likeable Yorkshire father had been both amusing and accurate. Lucy was a skilled mimic.

‘Why, young Silas Stanford knows the wool and cotton trade better than I do myself.’ She stabbed the air emphatically with a pointed forefinger as Bernard Drayton was wont to do, then laughed and dropped the act. ‘Father seemed to believe I needed convincing. Little does he know it was
I
who proposed to
you
.’ She hadn’t actually proposed to him at all, but in suggesting he take the initiative, she might just as well have done so. ‘Don’t be shy, Silas,’ she’d said. ‘If there is something you wish to ask me, I can assure you, the answer will be in the affirmative.’

Silas’s reluctance to declare his intentions had not been due to shyness. He was quite confident that he would make an excellent husband and he had very much wanted to propose to Lucinda Drayton for the past six months. But he was aware that his intentions might have appeared suspect, if not to Lucy herself, then most certainly to her father. In the four years since he’d started out as a raw, young accountant with Drayton’s Wool and Cotton Company, he’d worked his way up through the ranks to become assistant manager at the age of twenty-three. Bernard Drayton had not only taught him the business, but had offered him every conceivable opportunity for advancement. Surely, after such generosity, if he were to propose marriage to the man’s daughter he would appear the most shameful opportunist.

‘So we have your father’s blessing,’ he said. ‘I am so very glad, my dear.’ He was more than glad: he was profoundly relieved. There would be snide mutters from some that he’d married the boss’s daughter in order to inherit the business, but let them say what they wished. They were wrong. He loved Lucy. At least he was reasonably sure he did. He couldn’t be altogether positive, as he’d never been in love before, but he certainly loved being in her company. Lucy was everything he was not. She was funny and uninhibited, and the way she spoke her mind openly was even a little outrageous. There were times when Silas wasn’t entirely sure what to make of Lucy, apart from the fact that she quite simply delighted him.

‘Oh yes, we have Father’s blessing all right,’ she replied airily, ‘he’s so keen to be rid of me he can’t wait for you to make a formal request. The poor dear’s been sure I was destined for life as an old maid. In fact he’s probably been grooming you for the role of husband all along.’

Silas laughed. ‘You’re being wicked now,’ he said.

Lucy
was
being wicked. She liked to make him laugh. Silas was an attractive, intelligent man whose conversation she enjoyed, but he was so terribly, terribly serious. Making him laugh was a challenge that gave her inestimable pleasure. Her banter, however, was closer to the truth than she realised.

Bernard Drayton, a widower for the past five years, was certainly not keen to be rid of his only daughter, whom he dearly loved. However he did worry greatly that at twenty-eight she remained unmarried. For a woman to lead a fulfilled life she needed a husband and children, and Bernard had, for some time now, viewed Silas Stanford as a potential son-in-law. The five-year age discrepancy he considered irrelevant for there was no youthful fecklessness about Silas. Indeed the lad seemed a good decade older than his years, a fact which only added to his credentials in Bernard’s eyes.

But most important of all to Bernard Drayton was Silas Stanford’s apparent failure to register the fact that Lucy was plain. Lucy had never appeared to register the fact herself, which to Bernard remained both a mystery and a blessing, particularly when suitors with an eye to the main chance treated her as if she were a thing of rare beauty. Frankly she was not. She was by no means ugly, but she had inherited the square-jawed, snub-nosed Drayton features, characteristics that in Bernard’s opinion were overcome by her vibrant personality. This only made the sycophancy of suitors with ulterior motives all the more irksome. He’d come to realise, however, that he had no cause to worry, for Lucy never succumbed to their flattery, failing even to recognise it as such. She merely found the young men shallow and uninteresting.

And now here was Silas Stanford, a somewhat humourless and strangely middle-aged young man who loved Lucy for who she was, just as she did him. Bernard wished the couple well with all his heart. He would pray for their happiness although he had a feeling his efforts would not be necessary. They seemed an oddly apposite choice.

Bernard Drayton proved an astute observer. Throughout the years of their marriage, rarely was there a cross word between Silas and Lucy. She bore him three daughters in rapid succession, but seemed unable to conceive a son, for which she felt guilty. Silas assured her she mustn’t.

‘Oh dear,’ she said, when Amy was born. ‘Another girl. I am so sorry.’

‘I am not,’ he said. ‘I am the happiest man in the world.’

The two elder girls took after their father. Chisel-boned with fine features, Harriet and Isabel were considered handsome children. The baby of the family took after her mother in every single way. Little wonder that Silas delighted in Amy.

Bernard Drayton died in 1842, just one month shy of his seventieth birthday. He left his share of the business to his son-in-law, for by the time of his death the two had become partners. Drayton & Stanford Wool and Cotton had steadfastly grown into an impressive company with distribution throughout Great Britain.

Not long after his father-in-law’s death, Silas decided to extend the business, his express purpose being the provision of top quality imported stock for the company’s ever-expanding UK market.

‘I intend to purchase a sheep property in Australia,’ he informed his wife over supper one Friday evening, after she’d tucked the girls into bed and kissed them good night. He had given the matter considerable thought, he told her. He had discussed it with his colleagues that very afternoon, and they were all in agreement. There was no finer quality wool anywhere in the world than that of the pure-bred Australian Merino.

‘Superior even to Irish wool,’ Silas said.

Lucy made no comment as she poured the tea.

‘I hope to establish the business within three years,’ he continued, ‘after which I shall return to England, leaving a manager in charge.’

‘So you intend to run off to the colonies,’ she coolly remarked, passing him his cup, ‘and for a whole three years.’

Silas paused. Her comment had surely been made in jest. There were still times when he couldn’t tell whether or not Lucy was being flippant. ‘I wouldn’t exactly be “running off”, my dear,’ he said with a smile, ‘and many a colonial business venture takes a great deal longer than three years, I can assure you.’

‘Very well.’ The way she put down the teapot was a definite statement. Lucy was most certainly not jesting. ‘I shall come with you.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Lucy.’ How thoroughly silly, he thought. ‘There are the girls to consider.’

‘The girls shall come too.’

Silas was shocked as he registered she was in deadly earnest. ‘But they’re children,’ he protested. ‘They’re too young.’

‘They’re healthy and they’re strong. That’s all that matters.’

‘Australia is halfway around the world.’

‘Exactly. It will be a wonderful adventure for them.’

‘You can’t really be serious, Lucy, surely you can’t.’

‘I most certainly can.’

The conversation had gone on well into the night. He’d tried over and over to talk sense to her, but she’d refused to listen.

‘If you are to disappear to the colonies for years, Silas,’ she said, ‘then we are coming with you, it is as simple as that. We are a family.’

Try as he might, he couldn’t budge her.

Then, the following morning as the family sat down to breakfast, she made the announcement. ‘Girls, we are going to Australia. Isn’t that exciting?’ Her daughters were understandably bewildered, but it hadn’t taken Lucy long to drum enthusiasm into them.

Silas found the prospect exciting too, he had to admit, and his attempts to dissuade his wife from her plan of action grew feebler as the months passed. He had never travelled farther from home than Ireland, and then only for a month or so at a time – he had not relished being separated from his family by such a fearsome distance and for so long a period. Lucy’s spirit of adventure, furthermore, was infectious. What he had perceived to be merely a business decision, a bold one admittedly, but a business decision nonetheless, now took on new meaning. They were embarking upon a voyage of discovery. They were pioneers, and a whole new world awaited them.

‘What thrilling times we live in, Silas,’ Lucy said shortly before their departure early the following year. ‘Who knows what lies ahead for us in Australia? Who can possibly guess what our future holds? The mystery of it all is so very enthralling, don’t you agree?’

Silas had certainly agreed. It was impossible not to agree with one as spirited and passionate as his wife. But no one could possibly have guessed Lucy’s future: that the strength of her body would not match the strength of her spirit.

‘Peritonitis, I’m afraid,’ the ship’s surgeon had said when he’d been called to their cabin where she lay writhing in agony. ‘Her appendix has burst.’ He’d been sympathetic, but they were so very far from land he clearly didn’t hold much hope. ‘There must have been considerable inflammation prior to the rupture. I take it she’s been experiencing pain for some time?’

She had. Silas had seen her in pain. She’d borne it bravely, believing she was suffering the usual abdominal cramps. He’d had no reason to suspect there was anything seriously amiss – neither of them had. These were just women’s problems, she’d told him, aggravated by seasickness.

She’d known at the end though. In a lucid moment, drifting somewhere between the pain and the laudanum, she had known she was dying.

‘Forgive me, Silas,’ she’d said. ‘Please forgive me, my love.’

They’d buried her at sea, in the middle of the vast South Atlantic Ocean, halfway between Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town.

The girls had stood beside him during the burial service. Harriet, just turned thirteen, Isabel, eleven and Amy, nine, had stared uncomprehendingly as their mother’s body was committed to the depths of the ocean.

Two months later, Silas had arrived in Van Diemen’s Land, a widower with three young daughters.

He’d gone about his business, doing what needed to be done and doing it with his customary efficiency. He bought a house in Hobart Town, hired a housekeeper and a governess for the children, and purchased prime sheep land in the southern midlands. Everything appeared to be going according to plan, but it wasn’t. Lucy’s death had changed the course of their lives. In his loneliness, Silas agonised over why God had chosen to take his wife from him. Her death must surely have had some Divine purpose. As the months became a year, and then one year became two, that purpose, he decided, was the salvation of Van Diemen’s Land. It was not God’s intention that he set up a business and return to England to enjoy the spoils. His destiny lay here. Without giving the matter a second thought, he wrote to his lawyers and arranged for the sale of Drayton & Stanford. This was where he belonged. This was where he was needed. Silas Stanford had become a driven man.

Staring out over the Derwent, Silas no longer saw the schooner racing for the harbour and he no longer heard the cries of the hawkers. He saw nothing but Lucy’s face, and heard nothing but her voice.

‘What thrilling times we live in, Silas. Who knows what lies ahead for us in Australia? Who can possibly guess what our future holds?’

Who indeed? he thought. Lucy’s words remained as clear as they had been ten years before, but it had taken Polly Jordan to bring them to mind. He turned his back to the water and walked up Macquarie Street in the direction of home.

*

‘I saw Polly Jordan today,’ he said.

They were seated in the downstairs front drawing room. Clara had just arrived with the afternoon tea, a ritual impeccably timed to coincide with Amy’s return from school. When Silas was away in the country, Amy would take her tea alone, setting herself up with her books and papers at the desk by the windows, which looked out over the small front garden to Macquarie Street.

The two-storey sandstone house was starkly Georgian in design. Functional and lacking any ornate feature, it was comfortable enough, with adequate servants’ quarters out the back, but compared to the lavish homes of other successful businessmen it was an exceedingly modest dwelling. Silas, as always, avoided any form of ostentation.

‘Given her delicate condition, she seemed well enough,’ he added, doing his best to sound casual. Unsure how to broach the subject, he feared his voice might give him away.