Wild Island (22 page)

‘North and east, yes. Handsome properties. You would be astonished,' Sir John rumbled on. ‘But to west and south, no. Impossible. Which is to say, r-rugged . . .'

‘Mountainous, from the charts, sir?' said Hasluck. He sensed a growing uneasiness in the air but laboured on.

‘M-m-m, yes,' said Sir John, nodding. ‘But of great b-beauty. Or so we hear. We hope to make a tour in that region next spring, don't we, m'dear?'

‘There is a road then, sir?'

‘No, no road,' Sir John laughed. ‘The surveyors are carving a track, and if necessary we shall make our own. Explorers, eh?'

‘A carriage road runs up through the centre of the island,' said Lady Franklin. ‘From Hobarton here, to Launceston at Port Dalrymple in the north. Some enterprising gentlemen from there have recently begun to make a settlement across the Bass Strait at Port Phillip on the mainland of New Holland. The town is to be named for Lord Melbourne.'

‘And if you're minded, Hasluck,' added Sir John, ‘to take a landsman's view while you're here (ha! ha!), Mr Cox's coach makes the journey up twice a week. Pretty countryside. Said to resemble the L-lake District at Home.'

‘You will understand, Captain Hasluck,' Lady Franklin leant forward, spoke urgently, ‘how much we wish to advance commerce between south and north here. The chief impediment at present lies in fording the Derwent River. Hobarton is on the southern shore, as
you see. The river near the town here is far too wide to bridge, and therefore the coach must travel twenty miles upriver to Black Snake to cross where it is narrower. At present this is accomplished by ferry, but there have been tragic accidents. A causeway and bridge are in building, and the completion will be a great thing. It is one of Colonel Arthur's valuable schemes—and Mr Montagu, of course,' she added hastily, ‘has pursued it since the Colonel's departure.'

Montagu looked at her and inclined his head a contemptuous inch. Lady Franklin flushed. Mrs Maconochie gave Montagu a basilisk stare and said loudly, ‘Of course, Captain Hasluck, when the crossing is finished, the land beyond the river will increase greatly in value. Do you not own a very vast piece of land there, Mr Montagu?'

Boyes said quickly, ‘Further up beyond the causeway there's another pleasant hamlet. Its official name is Elizabeth Town but the inhabitants call it New Norfolk, many having come from Norfolk Island when that was resumed for a penal settlement. Our Government cottage and farm is at New Norfolk. We call it His Excellency's “country seat”.'

‘We
laughingly
call it that,' explained Jane Franklin, following his lead. ‘But do not imagine a Petit Trianon or anything of that sort, Captain. The place is neglected and a little too thoroughly
en plein air
. The wind whistles through it.'

‘But it sits so picturesquely by the river, my lady?' said Henry Elliot. ‘A little paradise in my view.'

‘Oh, I grant you, Henry, the sweetest spot imaginable. A perfect refuge from civilisation.'

Maconochie, hearing this last remark, called cheerfully across the table some Latin tag about civilisation and rustication, which he then translated into impenetrable Scottish-English, blank to the growing hostility. Boyes and Elliot both began to speak but paused to give way to each other. Mrs Maconochie's voice drove harshly through.

‘As to that, my dear, a new scene of civilisation would be well enough. But at present Van Diemen's Land is nothing but a little stage where the tragedy of misused power is played out every day.'

‘Have you seen our new theatre, Hasluck?' asked Henry Elliot. ‘We have Mrs Robinson in
The Bandit of the Rhine
this season, disguised as a . . .'

‘Disguised!' cried Mrs Maconochie in quivering tones. ‘There are venomous reptiles in this island disguised as gentlemen. There are wolves in sheep's clothing. There are TOADS of loathsome complexion!'

Montagu threw down his napkin, pushed back his chair and made to rise, saying distinctly, ‘Lamentable, hardly unexpected . . . madwoman . . . want of breeding . . .' but Captain Hasluck was now also on his feet and speaking urgently. The alarm of his words made itself felt on the whole company, and as he spoke Eleanor Franklin also rose, with a sharp cry of, ‘Oh, look!'

‘Your Excellency, Lady Franklin, pray excuse me,' said Hasluck. ‘I believe there is a brig afire in the harbour. If I am not mistaken she lies directly between the
Neptune
and the
Calcutta
. The
Calcutta
has her masts unstepped and cannot move. May I beg your permission, sir, to go to my ship? My lady, will you excuse us?'

Eleanor Franklin called, ‘Oh do look, Papa! Such fountains! They have set the pumps. What ship is she?'

Elaborate consternation, a pantomime babble of relief. Lady Franklin rose and led a clustering at the windows so that Sir John and their guests could watch the burning vessel. Eleanor Franklin prattled on and for once was not reproved. Jane Franklin rang the bell for a telescope. Hasluck and his lieutenant left with Henry Elliot, who was asked to return to explain what was happening. Mutton would be kept for him, said Lady Franklin. And rhubarb tart.

As Mrs Maconochie rose trembling from the table, Boyes upset a glass of wine into her lap. Her anger was already passing into furious wild sobs. She gave a gasp and wail, holding out her skirts. Boyes, apologising, led her from the room. Her husband would have stayed, but Mary Boyes took him firmly by the arm and followed them. The party gradually settled. Boyes and Mary returned but the Maconochies did not. Nobody mentioned them. It grew dark. The burning ship
could be seen heading out into the river, towed by the new steam tug. The ladies left the gentlemen to their port.

Henry Elliot returned soon after the gentlemen had rejoined the ladies in the drawing room. Sophy was at the pianoforte playing a tricky scherzo. She knew everyone expected her to stop, and indeed, would have been glad to. She knew she did not play particularly well, and was struggling with four sharps, which for some reason she always found more difficult than four flats, but a sense of duty made her persist through the repeat. When at last she finished, Henry told them the ship was the
Adastra
, Master Captain Quigley, and her voyage a curious one altogether, apparently. There had been a deathbed marriage and the strange return to health of a beautiful Creole madwoman.

It was just the kind of story to catch Lady Franklin's attention, to penetrate the violent throbbing of the headache beginning to grip her. She was subject to these attacks, usually after high emotion. She felt now the familiar tightness in her brain, the slow onset of nausea, the flickering rim of lights beginning to close off her vision from the edges, the first deep pain. She longed for her visitors to be gone so that she might fall into silence and darkness with fifteen perhaps thirty-five perhaps sixty ruby drops of laudanum in a glass of water. With an odd fixed smile she endured farewells and thanks.

When at last she could begin to make her way upstairs, half-blindly now, she stopped and turned. She asked Henry Elliot to see that the Captain of the
Adastra
and his passengers received invitations to the formal reception for the
Neptune
a few days hence. Sir John would like to hear more about the voyage of the lost ship.

12

OUR FIRST NIGHT IN THE COLONY
—
OR WHAT REMAINED OF THE
night—was spent at the Hope and Anchor Inn, merely because it was barely two hundred yards from the wharf, the nearest respectable hostelry, said McLeod. Although all the inn's conveyances had long since been retired for the night, he persuaded them to rouse a groom and send a wagonette to fetch Anna, Louisa and me. The gentlemen would walk. McLeod and Quigley had found us as the entertaining spectacle came to an end and the crowd began to disperse. James Seymour was at the hospital with an injured crewman.

I was worried about Anna. She was still not strong, and even Louisa and I were near collapsing with shock and weariness. But Anna revived at the sight of Quigley, though his face and clothes were disfigured with soot. When the wagonette arrived we summoned our last desperate energies and rose to mount into it, but as Louisa began to follow Anna, a pony trap approached from the other direction and drew up alongside us. During the evening St John had managed to send a note to Archdeacon Hutchins, and here was a servant with orders to take the Wallaces to the clergyman's house.

It was thus only Anna and I, Quigley and McLeod who entered the inn—just as a single bell began tolling. A death knell for the
Adastra
, I thought, but McLeod said it was the curfew. Convict-assigned
servants must not be in the streets after this time, eleven o'clock. So early! I felt whole days and nights had passed since we had scrambled from the ship. The innkeeper's wife showed a lively interest in the evening's drama. I responded as well as I could, tired to the bone and stifling an impulse towards manic laughter as I looked about me. Twelve thousand perilous miles we had come—to this. It might have been any down-at-heel English coaching-inn from Land's End to John O'Groats.

The smell of stale beer and roast meat filled the entry, and as we went to climb the stairs we passed the door of a loud smoky taproom. Sporting prints hung on the staircase; brown oil-cloth and drugget covered the floors; there was a long-case clock on the landing. Stopped, of course. The cheap ewer and basin in our room came from an English pottery, the dented pewter might have belonged to the George Inn at Hay. What else had I expected? I don't know. The familiarity should have been comforting, but I felt obscurely deceived, caught in an illusion as deep as life. As if all these months we had been going nowhere.

I lay awake, my mind running uselessly like a mouse on a treadmill. The room was strangely motionless after the ship; the taproom downstairs continued noisy. There were other sounds too, familiar yet strange, for it was months since we'd heard them; a town clock somewhere rang the hours and quarters, dogs barked and a rooster crowed although it was far from dawn. I prayed, dropped in and out of turbulent dreams. A bell began ringing and the stables of the inn came alive with footsteps and whistling. The jangle and whicker of horses came next, and then bells and more bells. From the prison up in Campbell Street near the Scotch Church, the maidservant said when she came with hot water.

Anna was slow to wake and I was reluctant to urge her, but we managed to meet Quigley, Seymour and McLeod for a late breakfast in a private back parlour where everything except the greasy fried eggs was brown. Quigley had been out early. The fire had arisen from the combustion of McLeod's paper, he said, which had probably become
damp during the voyage, heating as it began to rot. The insurance would pay, but there was no Lloyd's agent in Hobart. He must go to New South Wales to file the insurance and meet his co-owner of the
Adastra
, who was also there. He was worried for his crew, stranded here without pay or work. He would take most of them with him on the
Marian Watson
, leaving Hobarton for New South Wales in four days. He wanted us to go too: to abandon the search for Rowland.

‘What can Captain Booth tell you that will be to anyone's advantage?' he argued, speaking to Anna, glancing at me. ‘Rowland Rochester is dead by all accounts. And if not, how long are you to look for him? Winter is coming. Sydney is warmer in winter, Anna. You will prefer it. And if you do find Rochester he may not thank you. Let sleeping dogs lie, eh? What do you say, m'dear?'

Similar thoughts had occupied me during the night. The search for Rowland, which had seemed so reasonable in the presence of Jane and Rochester, those two inspired romantics, now began to look like mere folly. The Captain's argument was tempting, except that I would have to explain our decision to Jane and Rochester at some future time. In any event, Anna would have none of it. Oblivious to complications, or apparently so, she smiled and said we would find Rowland first—and then go to Sydney. I found it hard to understand why she should still wish to find Rowland when she seemed so attached to Quigley, but we could not change her mind. In the end it was agreed that she and I would wait in Hobart Town until he returned.

‘Four weeks,' he said. The
Marian Watson
was the only ship regularly making the run to Sydney and back, generally in that time. ‘Six at most. Do what you can in four weeks,' he said to me. If he could bring back another ship, we would leave for England. Otherwise, well, it would depend . . .

Mr Chesney came in cock-a-hoop, brushing aside the loss of his cargo. Unfortunate, yes, but it was insured, and nothing compared to the good news he'd just learned. The summer harvest across the island had fetched unheard-of prices, most of it sold to the new settlement at Port Phillip, or Melbourne, where everything was wanted. Potatoes
had fetched twenty pounds the ton! Chesney could not wait to discover what profit his son had made. The Chesneys' neighbours, whose mother had taken them in last night, were returning to Richmond today with an empty cart. With no cargo to wait for now, Chesney was eager to go with them.

‘Port Phillip is barren as a desert,' he said with satisfaction. ‘Lieutenant Collins tried to settle there thirty years a'gone and gave it up. If Fawlkner and his lads are to stay there, they'll need our crops forever and a day. A ready-made market on our doorstep!'

And Chesney's friend Mr Thomas Gregson was released from prison. The new Governor had accepted a petition against the sentence. Ha! A blow to the Arthur faction! If this was Sir John Franklin showing his colours, they suited old Chesney. Arthur gone, a benevolent new Governor in place, and ready markets for the crops. Lord! A new golden age at hand. Nowt to do but fill your pockets.

Our sea legs buckling, we walked slowly down to the Wharf again with Chesney to say our farewells, only to find there was an hour to wait while the ferry was loaded. Mrs Chesney had taken Liddy and the children along to the warehouses, or godowns, or
ghauts
as Louisa would say, at the other end of the cove, but Anna could not walk so far. We sat waiting on two kitchen chairs, which providentially formed part of the freight surrounding us: laden handcarts, chicken coops, crates and boxes, garden tools, a goat. Chesney talked to anyone who came within range. The weather was more summer than autumn, warm and sunny. Dazzling water, layers of blue hills along the opposite shore fading downriver, where a white lighthouse shone on a rocky outcrop.