Wild Island (25 page)

For a moment she said nothing, and then replied slowly, ‘You think I should not ask, not care what happened to my husband?'

Booth looked uncomfortable. ‘No, indeed. I meant only . . . Have you considered what the consequences may be? I hesitate to alarm you, but it would be wrong not to warn . . . Supposing, for instance, Mrs Rochester, that your husband has believed you were dead? He may have . . . formed another attachment?'

There was a longish silence. Anna kept her great dark eyes on him and at last said in her unhurried way, ‘When I was a child we were told Saint Paul had a thorn in his flesh. I supposed it to be a real thorn, but Sister Marie Augustine said no,
c'est un façon de parler
. A way to speak of something that pricks and torments so one cannot forget. Rowland Rochester is the same for me.'

From Booth's face you'd have thought she had picked up the poker and struck him.

‘If he is alive I want to know why he did not come back to help me,' she continued. ‘And if he is dead I want to know that too.'

‘I see,' Booth said. And then, more gently, ‘Well, I will tell you what I can. Some of it I believe you already know.'

He sat in the chair behind his desk and at last began.

‘I was one of several officers of the Twenty-first Regiment sent to Demerara in August 'twenty-three at the time of the slave rebellion. We took small detachments from the Georgetown Rifle Corps and marched out to the plantations where there was unrest. To show the flag, mop up generally. One group went to Mahaica to relieve the station there, my party went to Nabaclis.

‘At a small plantation called Belleur we discovered a man half-dead in a shanty. The slaves claimed they had found him. He had a bullet wound in the leg—the bone was broken—and a high fever. His head was on a rolled-up, mildewed jacket, and inside this was a parcel of waxed cloth containing four thousand pounds in Bank of England drafts, paper money and specie. Two of the bank drafts were directed to a Mr Rowland Rochester, but we could not be sure that was the name of the sick man, of course. We did our best for him, but we also had other urgent concerns. The fighting seemed set to break out again.'

Somehow the patient clung to life, and against all expectations began to recover. As soon as he could speak, he told them he was Rowland Rochester, but that he was estranged from his family and did not wish to have his plight made known to them. The money came from his having recently sold a small estate to the owner of an adjoining property. He would say nothing, at first, of how he had come to the condition in which they found him.

When the time came for the 21st to leave Demerara they took him back with them to Saint Vincent. During his convalescence Rowland wrote letters, and at one time received a reply that agitated him considerably, but he did not volunteer any explanation. As soon as he was strong enough, he moved out of the infirmary to a house in the hills where it was cooler, cared for by a quadroon family he employed as servants. Booth saw him less frequently after that. Four or five months later, Rochester, walking with a stick, came to say he was leaving for Spanish Town. Later, perhaps a year later, Booth heard that Rowland had died of a fever there.

Anna's face dropped. Booth turned away, picked up a fossil from his desk and turned it in his hands.

‘How did you learn of his death?' I asked.

‘One of the sergeants who had been in Demerara with me, a man called Elton, was in Spanish Town for some reason, and on his return he mentioned having heard it.'

‘Is Sergeant Elton in Van Diemen's Land now?'

‘No, he died when we were in Ireland.'

‘Rowland Rochester was well when he left Saint Vincent? Why should he suddenly die?'

Booth shrugged, smiled faintly. ‘No mystery there. The mystery is how anyone survives. Yellow fever, or a dozen other kinds of fever, a man already weak . . .'

‘Were there other soldiers in your Regiment who knew Rowland Rochester? Did he have a particular friend?'

‘Our surgeon, Dr Beckett, had a good deal to do with him of course; they played chess together. But Beckett died of fever before we
left the posting. And as I said, after Rowland moved into the hills we saw him less. A couple of times he spoke of the Reverend Smith in Demerara as a friend, but Smith was accused of helping the slaves during the rebellion. He stood trial and was sentenced to hang, but he'd been consumptive for years and died before the sentence could be carried out.'

I searched my mind for questions. ‘Rowland's injuries—do you think the slaves were to blame, that he was caught up in the rebellion?'

‘No. He told me his wounds came from a duel.'

‘A
duel
?'

Booth shrugged again. ‘Common enough in those days.'

‘Did he never mention Van Diemen's Land?'

‘No,' he smiled again, ‘and if he had, I would not have known where it was, then. After we left the Indies we had a stint back at home and four years in Ireland before we came here—and when we were told our next posting was Van Diemen's Land, we thought it was near New Zealand. What brought Rowland Rochester here?'

‘We don't know.'

He said gently, addressing Anna again. ‘Rowland never spoke of his family. Have you considered, Mrs Rochester, that if he is alive, and has not communicated with any of his people for fourteen years, it may be that he prefers not to?'

She did not reply. Again he turned away from the look on her face.

‘Rowland had quarrelled with his father,' I said. ‘We know that. But old Mr Rochester is dead now and Rowland's brother, Edward, is the only one left except for Anna. If he knew this it might make a difference.'

Booth shook his head. ‘I'm sorry to have no better news.'

We sat in silence. I know now, of course, that he was not telling all he knew. Even then I suspected there might be something else, but I assumed his reticence came from a desire not to give Anna more pain. In any case, you can hardly accuse your amiable host of deceit. And wasn't this the answer I wanted? Booth put down the fossil and stood.

‘I am sorry, Mrs Rochester,' he repeated. He clearly wished to end the interview but could hardly urge us out: a much-tried woman who had come halfway around the world for bad news. I went to Anna's side and said we must leave the Commandant to his affairs. She did not move.

‘Anna, it is not the end,' I urged. ‘We can go to Spanish Town, to Saint Vincent. Find Rowland's agent, speak to other people.'

Anna sat as though deaf and dumb, her staring eyes, brimming with tears, fixed on Booth. After a time he could clearly stand it no longer. He said he could make no promises but would enquire further if that was what she wanted. There were two other officers of the 21st who had known Rochester briefly. They were stationed in outlying parts of Van Diemen's Land. He did not believe they knew any more than he, but—he shrugged—he would try. It would take several weeks to receive replies.

Anna looked at him as though he were a beatific vision. He looked away.

The Lemprieres' door was opened that evening by a small boy wearing a shako made of cardboard, tied under his chin with a bootlace. He carried a wooden rifle over his shoulder.

‘Sentry duty tonight, Thomas?' said Booth.

The boy nodded, shy and stern. He led us along the central hall of the cottage towards laughter and voices, pushed open a door and marched away. The room was astonishing. Leafy eucalyptus branches covered the walls in bosky profusion. Ferns, garlands of paper flowers and festoons of greenery were looped with paper-chains and bows of pleated paper. Squeezed into the centre of the room was a long table spread with several overlapping white cloths and places for eight people. Charlotte Lempriere stood with Mr Bergman, looking up at her husband, who was standing on a chair, plump, joyful, excited, holding a sizeable branch in both hands and using the leafy end to brush the ceiling vigorously.

‘
Et voila
!' he cried, pausing as he caught sight of us. ‘Welcome,
chers amis
. Now you will be in at the kill!'

As he spoke, a brown spider the size of a saucer ran rapidly from under the leaves, across the ceiling and down the wall. Charlotte lunged at it with a table napkin but only knocked a paper bow fluttering to the floor. More leaves and decorations were lifted and inspected, amid little shrieks from Miss Drewitt, but the creature had vanished. The search was abandoned and the seating arranged so that Bergman, who declared that he did not fear the insect, was positioned with his back to where it was last seen. We sat. There was a sighing and settling and the last guest arrived: Lieutenant Stuart from the Coal Mines. I was seated between him and Bergman, who had Miss Drewitt on his other side. Anna was between Booth and Lempriere, smiling, comfortably beginning a half-French, half-English conversation with the latter.

When Miss Drewitt leaned across to introduce me to Bergman, I said, ‘We have met, in Hobart.'

‘I was rather hoping you'd forgotten,' he said, smiling. ‘I was not at my best that day. Now you see me to better advantage I hope. A new man.'

His loose black curls were cut short now, and he was close-shaven. The gypsyish smile remained. He was not handsome, but his brown eyes were full of amusement and energy, and his long brown face gave the impression of kindness and cleverness. In his black cut-away coat he looked thinner than in the loose brown forage gear.

‘I have been warned that many in this island are not what they appear to be at first sight,' I said. ‘Perhaps you have other aspects also?' ‘Oh, half a dozen. But I won't tell you what they are, I'll let you discover them as we become better acquainted. This colony tends to make new men out of the old Adam—remakes us, whether we know it or not. And you, Mrs Adair? You're an artist, I believe—and therefore perhaps have just the one settled character—a rather singular one?'

‘Singular and plural,' I said, trying to match his jocular tone, but before I could continue there was a cry from Lempriere.
Non, non! C'est
impossible
! He had noticed that, concealed by the tablecloth, makeshift additions to the table had brought together too many table legs and props at the point where Bergman was sitting, forcing him to arrange his legs somewhat unnaturally around the obstacle.

‘It's nothing,' said Bergman. ‘My legs have grown immensely flexible from climbing up and down Booth's confounded signal towers. Let me lecture Mrs Adair in peace.'

Charlotte Lempriere soothed her husband and the servant deposited a tureen of soup with an unpolished thump. Lempriere said Grace and we passed the bowls about.

‘This claret is excellent, Booth,' said Stuart. ‘I hope it's not the same shipment the boys plundered.' He turned to me and added, ‘Two dozen cases of what Booth calls his “vinous fluid” were broken into and sampled by boys on one of the transports. They clearly found it to their taste. They were discovered in a state of inebriation . . .'

‘. . . not unlike our own regimental indulgences,' finished Bergman.

‘Steady, Gus,' said Stuart, ‘You'll give Mrs Adair the wrong impression. Besides, it's ungrateful; the Army taught you everything you know. Make him talk to you about surveying, ma'am, or music. He can be quite sensible on those subjects.'

Bergman asked me whether I played or sang, and we talked about London, where he had been born, until Augusta Drewitt claimed his attention from the other side, and Stuart began to explain to me the difference between the artificial horizon on a ship, and the one presumed in perspective drawing.

‘The vanishing point in drawing is
more
imaginary . . . the artificial horizon is real in
itself
, but it is not actually on the horizon. It is in the dish of mercury held between the gimbals . . .'

‘Can one thing be
more
imaginary than another?'

Conversation around the table had divided into groups. Charlotte Lempriere was talking to Booth and Anna. Fragments drifted free:

‘. . . entire gross of candles chewed by mice. Soap, also, they seem to . . .'

‘. . . laughing-jackass bird, which the children say . . .'

‘Decent sort of hack for thirty pounds . . .'

Soup and fish were followed by a goose, rather tough, a round of beef, and a baked ham studded with cloves: Bergman's contribution, said Stuart.

‘Charlotte, what a stunning feed!' Booth called.

Lempriere rose to his feet, tapping his wine glass with a fork.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, is anyone still troubled by the pangs of hunger?'

Groans.

‘Then please be upstanding for the loyal toast! To our young Queen. God bless her and long may she reign!'

‘To the Queen!'

‘The Queen, the Queen.'

When the gentlemen were seated again, Booth remained standing.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I should like to propose another toast. We are gathered here in genial concord to celebrate, belatedly, the birthday of our esteemed friend and colleague, Mr Thomas Lempriere. As you know, our usual revelries were postponed this year on account of the arrival of little Lucy two months ago. You should understand, ladies,' he turned to us, ‘that every February the Lemprieres put on a great scald to celebrate the day when Thomas Lempriere entered the world, in a place and time very far from here.'