Wild Island (15 page)

‘And someone in the Store has allowed turpentine to drip into a sack of flour,' Lempriere added. ‘A hundredweight ruined and tomorrow is Officer's Ration Day and we are so short of it. Always, everywhere, something to be irritable about if one allows oneself.'

Meanwhile, Corporals Annandale and Quinter were missing, not returned from the search party looking for Cripps and Reid. It seemed certain they must have perished, but the search for them went on in appalling weather until at last they were found, only half-dead.

And Lacey, convict supervisor at the mines, got drunk on his liquor ration and offered to fight the Master of the Swan River Packet, then swore long and inventively at Lieutenant Stuart in the presence of other convicts. Lacey, a pugnacious little gnome of a man, had helped to plan the coal galleries and was known to be a favourite of Booth's. How had he managed to get drunk on his tiny liquor ration? Smuggling? An illegal still? Impossible. Contact with whalers? Or planned mischief? Had the rest of them sacrificed their portions to Lacey and deliberately stirred him to fight because they were jealous of what they perceived as Booth's favouritism? Punishment must be seen to be done. But how, exactly, to carry it out?

A note came down from Edward Macdowell: Cripps not to be tried, insufficient evidence. Booth admitted to himself that he was pleased, but even this disturbed him. Was he peculiar in thinking that the eating of a companion was defensible if there was no murder involved? Would he himself,
in extremis
, eat Lempriere? Casey? Assuming they were already dead, of course. For example, if Casey had died that night two winters ago when they were lost together on the Tiers, and he, Booth, had been starving for days? He thought he might have.

He put the matter to Lemp. Would Thomas eat him? After all, when the spirit departs, the body is no more than a husk. Was it not tantamount to suicide to die when a supply of fresh meat was at hand? Lempriere snorted and said something guttural in German and then something smooth in French—something about difficult to swallow? In English he would only say Booth was working far too hard. He should acquire a hobby, like marriage or bee-keeping or learning the
French horn. In any case, there wasn't enough flesh on Booth to make a decent meal, nor would there ever be if he kept tramping up and down the peninsula at this rate.

In October Booth was called up to Hobart again to sit on the court martial of Private Ward. He was glad of the excuse, desperate to see Lizzie. But poor Ward. He'd been in hospital with disease of the brain a month ago, and had now been caught preparing to kill Captain MacKay for some imagined grievance. ‘Discovered behind MacKay's quarters armed with a loaded musket and nine rounds of ball cartridge about him.' Fourteen years transportation if found guilty. Every day seemed to bring a new ugly knot of trouble on top of the regular grind, and no satisfaction in any of it except the recovery of young Annandale and Quinter. And perhaps if Lizzie . . .

Booth trekked up to Hobart and sat dutifully at Ward's court martial. A guilty verdict. He walked back to the Barracks and heard news just arrived: the King was dead, had died last June. Long live the Queen. Queen Victoria, how odd. He decided to walk to New Town without letting the Pilkingtons know he was coming. Bring them news of the King's death, a perfect excuse. And if they were not there he would lie in the grass of their garden and sleep. His spirits lifted as he walked. This evening spring had come at last—with blossom in the gardens, green fuzz on saplings, a ragged old woman, half drunk, selling flowers from a basket and singing. He bought two bunches of violets and an armful of drooping lilac that smelled of England. So the King had died in June and would never see another spring, and now there was a girl Lizzie's age on the throne.

The Pilkingtons were at home, and Mrs Pilkington went into Irish raptures over the flowers but Lizzie was cool. Said she had not received his notes last month in time to reply. She had been staying with her sister Nan and Nan's husband at Richmond. The King's death proved a useful topic until Pilkington came in and the atmosphere began to thaw. Taking a medical view of the royal demise, the doctor thought it interesting that poor old Billy Boy, who should have been dead anytime these three years, had managed to hang on to life until
his niece reached her eighteenth birthday. The King had said he'd be damned if he'd die to suit the convenience of Victoria's mother and that bastard Conroy who wanted the regency in their hands. He'd keep going somehow until Victoria came of age.

‘But sure there's little chance of the poor girl stopping long on the throne,' added Pilkington.

Many would frown on having a woman head of the kingdom. When she married, England would virtually pass into her husband's hands. Especially if she died in childbed and her child survived; her husband would have the Regency. Look at King George's daughter, the poor Princess Charlotte: she would have been queen this very moment if she'd survived her first lying-in. At any rate, the Queen would appoint a new Secretary of State for the Colonies, which would stir things up here.

Former comfortable relations were re-established during the evening. Lizzie's younger sister came in with two friends and conscripted them all to play ‘Anagrams' at the dining-room table. When Lizzie won by swiftly changing Booth's ‘L-E-O-P-A-R-D' into ‘P-A-R-O-L-E-D ', smiling archly at him, he pleased her by saying, ‘Bravo! I certainly know one young lady clever enough to rule the world.' Then she gave him a present, supposed to have been for his birthday in August: it was a china dog, a brown terrier which looked a little bit like Fran.

8

WE WERE TWO WEEKS PAST THE ISLAND, AS SAILORS CALL
Madeira, when Rochester began to be ill. The weather was warm now, and the rest of us, even Mr Chesney, moulted our woollens and emerged as thinner, summery creatures. Most of our time was spent on deck under awnings, like some straggling, ill-assorted family at a picnic.

Rochester generally stayed below in spite of the humid closeness of the cabins and saloons. When he did emerge he wore a dark frock coat and waistcoat, a black hat, which he was often forced to remove on account of the wind, and gloves. It was as though, with a perverse disregard for the present real conditions, he was dressing as if he were still in an English autumn. At ‘Thornfield' he had always been scrupulously well attired, but with a degree of studied carelessness which seemed like a show of patrician disdain for mere clothes. Now, when there was excuse for laxity, he was too correct, making an odd contrast with Jane, who looked like a child beside him in lilac muslin—half-mourning for her uncle—and a calico sunbonnet. More than once I saw her look at him anxiously, but she knew that any fussing would irritate him.

Jane and I took turns in giving Adèle and Polly a lesson each day. Apart from the lessons, Jane stayed below with Rochester in their
stifling seclusion. Liddy and Mrs Chesney were occupied with Natty, preventing him from tottering determinedly towards the side and trying to climb the rigging. The gentlemen occupied themselves with books and sports. They had the shark chains out and hauled in a great saw-toothed fish which was hacked into bloody portions for dinner, making surprisingly good eating. They practised target shooting at barrels tossed into the sea and read the sextant with Captain Quigley at the noon sightings. In the afternoons we played cards, at which Mrs Chesney excelled, or chess, at which Louisa and I were evenly matched. Seymour was better than either of us. We dozed, and lapsed in and out of straggling conversations as the hours passed. Rochester and Jane took no part in any of this. When they were on deck for brief airings, Rochester observed our activities sardonically; like a corpse at a feast, as my grandmother used to say.

On Sundays, Jane and Rochester made an exception to their usual withdrawal. They attended St John Wallace's morning service on the deck and afterwards dined with us. Our hymns rose thinly into sails, and on up into the vaporous blue. St John prayed for us all, for our safe arrival in the colony, and for the sick woman in our care, that she might be restored to health, as Our Lord Jesus had restored so many, even those lame, blind and afflicted for many years. Rochester seemed amused by this. He leaned towards Jane and murmured something that made her look at him reprovingly.

Louisa told me Lord Caldicott had so much admired St John's sermons as to offer him a living, but the congregation was small and wealthy, and St John considered his talents more needed among the less fortunate. A mixture of pride and resentment seemed to govern Louisa's attitude to this. Her sister was married to a clergyman who held a living in a pretty village near Bury St Edmunds.

We began our dinner that day with soup as usual, and by the time we had finished were hotter than ever in consequence. We were fanning ourselves, waiting for the next course in perspiring patience, when Rochester suddenly leapt to his feet without warning. While we looked on in astonishment he tore off his jacket, then his waistcoat and
cravat, as though freeing himself from shackles. Using his one good hand and scrabbling with the maimed one, he flung each garment down, stood panting like someone escaped from a furious pursuit, and suddenly sat again without a word, his shirt open to the waist. In any man it would have been strange: in Rochester it was shocking.

Dr Seymour asked him if he was well. Was he overheated? Rochester did not appear to hear. The steward had served him beef, which he began to eat with a kind of weary persistence. Nothing further occurred, but later, when Rochester went below with Jane, the doctor followed. On his return a short time later, he was met with general enquiry.

‘Mr Rochester is well,' Seymour said smiling, ‘or at least well enough to consign me—and all medical men—to perdition. He declares himself sound as a bell and refuses to hear any other opinion.'

‘That's reassuring, at least,' I said. ‘It would be more alarming if he had
lost
the will to abuse you.'

Seymour smiled, nodded. ‘Miss Eyre says much the same.'

Several days later, while Jane and Rochester were taking a turn around the deck, they paused near where Mrs Chesney and I were sitting. Jane murmured something to Rochester and moved to the companionway, evidently returning below to fetch something. He went to the side and stood motionless, a strange fixity in his attitude. After a moment he pointed out to sea and began muttering. Raising his chin, he snuffed the air like a dog finding a scent. A cold wave passed through me at the strangeness of it.

‘Glittering, glittering,' he said loudly, pointing at the water, which sparkled with sharp tremulous points of light. ‘Long grey hair and glittering eye. “
Wherefore stopp'st thou me?
” It is my father's eye. I'd know it anywhere. He was a devil in this life and left a devil's mischief behind him.'

Mrs Chesney gaped. I put down my book and went to his side.

‘Mr Rochester, sir, will you come and sit in the shade?'

‘There is no shade,' he said. ‘I smell sun and rottenness.
Fee, fi, fo, fum
. D'you know that song, madam?
I smell the blood of an Englishman.
Too bright, too hot, too red.' His tone began to falter. ‘Pray excuse me, Mrs Poole . . . Ah! No, not Mrs Poole. Another woman who keeps changing! If they would only stay as they are! Pray excuse me, madam, I am not myself.'

He seemed to collect himself, seized my arm and pointed into the distance.

‘Look!' he said. ‘It comes again. The bird . . . red feathers. So steadily it approaches. Feathers. Help me, for God's sake, I am suffocating! Ugh! Ugh!'

He washed his hands vigorously across his face as though to clear an obstruction, staggering until he fell to the deck and lay in a glaze of sweat, muttering. At that moment Jane returned from below and Mrs Chesney arrived with the doctor and McLeod.

Between us we helped the stricken man down to his bunk. Jane went into the cabin with Rochester and the doctor, and I started to return to the deck, but as I passed the cabin I shared with Bertha, I heard the low sound of a woman singing. When I opened the door I saw it was Bertha, and again there passed through me that shudder engendered by the sight of something inexplicably strange. She was still asleep, lying flat with her eyes closed, her condition apparently unchanged—except that she was singing. Or not so much singing as humming; a wordless melody like that of a woman lulling a baby to sleep. Bertha, who for years had not spoken more than a few cracked words. Rochester's cabin door was wide open and the rise and fall of his delirious monologue made a counterpoint to Bertha's wandering tune, a weird duet. Rochester stopped first. She sang on, softer and softer until she ceased altogether.

Rochester's condition did not improve that night. The doctor administered paregoric, bled and cupped him, and at last he fell into a restless sleep.

I woke next morning to the sound of someone moving in the cabin. Bertha was sitting up in her bunk, shaking as though with palsy, breathing hard.

‘Bertha!' I said foolishly.
‘Bertha?' she said slowly. ‘No, I am Anna. Anna Cosway-Mason.'

She paused, looking at me. ‘I remember you . . . Not Grace Poole . . .Who was Grace Poole?'

I was in such confusion that I could find no words to answer her. She had pulled her hair out of its plaits and it hung in black abundance around her face, which, ravaged though it was, still possessed a swarthy beauty. At last I gathered enough presence of mind to say, ‘Grace Poole was your first nurse, and I . . . My name is Harriet.'

‘Christophine is my nurse,' she said. ‘But she would not come. We are such a long time sailing to England. Are we near arriving?'

‘We . . .' I began, but she did not wait.

‘Christophine did not believe in England,' she went on slowly, breathing heavily. ‘“No such place,” she said. “Come,” I begged her, but she would not.'

Every movement was clearly exhausting to her. She tried to swing round to sit on the side of the bed but fell back on the pillow, closing her eyes.