“Where are we?” I asked.
“A woman named Mary owns the house,” said Lottie. “She made her fortune once her sentence were up. Helps out those of us with no place to go. Gives us a place to sleep.”
Still holding my wrist, she led me to a corner of the room where a filthy grey blanket was spread out over the flagstones. A straw basket sat beside it. Inside was a sleeping baby.
My stomach knotted. I had many questions for Lottie too, of course.
“What happened?” I asked. “Why are you here?”
She shrugged. “Got sick of me, didn’t he.” She was trying for lightness, but the tremor in her voice betrayed her. As did the vicious streak of anger. “Threw me out.”
She didn’t look me in the eyes. Afraid, perhaps of I told you so.
On the other side of the room, a child began to wail.
I felt anger roiling inside me. This place was crammed full of women and children. Had they all been as carelessly discarded as Lottie?
I sat beside her on the blanket. The stench of hot bodies was making my stomach turn.
“Who are all these women?” I asked. “Where did they come from?” I was dimly aware that I sounded like a naïve young lady from Clerkenwell.
Lottie shrugged. “Some finished their sentences and couldn’t find nowhere else. Or their husbands had enough of them. Decided they could do better.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t find the words.
“So what then?” she asked. “You a runaway? Or that lieutenant of yours get you a pardon?”
I hugged my knees. “I’ve a ticket of leave,” I said simply, not wanting to venture into details.
Lottie made a noise in her throat. I could tell she didn’t want details either.
A throaty wail came from the basket beside her. She bent over to scoop up the baby.
“How old is he?” I asked. “She?”
“He’s four months,” she answered, her eyes meeting mine for the briefest of moments.
Four months. I realised then that Lottie had been with child long before she had left Parramatta. Long before she and Owen had married.
I swallowed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I knew the answer of course. She and I had barely spoken in the months before she had left. And even if I had known, what would I have had to offer her but another diatribe of abuse towards Owen? What good would any of it done?
She unbuttoned her bodice with one hand and wrangled the baby onto her breast.
“Is he Owen’s?” I asked.
She nodded, not looking at me.
“Did he force you?”
Lottie let out her breath. “What do you want, Nell? To prove you were right and I was wrong? To show me how well you’ve done for yourself? Is that why you’ve come?”
“Of course not,” I said. “I was worried about you. I worried for you every day. I just want to help you.”
She shook her head. “You ought to have stayed in Parramatta with your lobster. How d’you even get here? You have him swing things for you? Persuade him to get you a little more freedom?”
I clenched my teeth. Said nothing.
“You left him,” Lottie said after a moment. “I didn’t think you would.”
I lowered my eyes. “There was nothing to leave.” Heat flushed the back of my neck. I knew myself lying. But I couldn’t let Lottie know how far things had gone between Blackwell and me.
I stood up. “I’ll leave you then. If that’s what you want.”
Lottie rubbed her eyes with her free hand. “Where will you go?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, heading for the door.
She sighed. “Come back, Nell. It’s not safe to go wandering about out there with no place to go. You’re better off here. Safety in numbers and all that.” She spoke without looking at me. “I’ll deal with you in the morning.”
As the salty smell of broth seeped across the kitchen, the women made their way towards the fire. A young girl at the cooking pot brought a stack of bowls from the shelf, and ladled a thin puddle of soup into each. One by one, the women filed their way towards the table in the centre of the room and took the soup bowls back to their own corners. A well-practised routine. I wondered how long some of them had been here.
“Make yourself useful,” Lottie told me, wiping the baby’s mouth with the hem of her dress. “Fetch us some supper.”
I took two bowls from the table and carried them carefully back to Lottie. We huddled together in the corner, angled towards the wall so we might block out the world around us. Lottie bent over her bowl to scoop a spoonful into her mouth, the baby fidgeting in the crook of her arm.
I ate in silence, unsure what to say. Whatever was to come out of my mouth, I felt certain she wouldn’t be interested in hearing it. She attempted another mouthful of broth, swatting the spoon out of the baby’s grasp.
“Let me take him,” I said, as I swallowed my last mouthful. She dumped the child in my lap and picked up her bowl to drink from it.
I peered down at the baby. Tiny pink fingers were darting in and out of his mouth. He felt small and fragile in my arms.
Patrick Owen’s child. And Lottie’s.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
She gulped down a mouthful. “Willie. After my da.”
He wriggled in my arms and began to whine.
“How long have you been here?” I asked, rubbing his back.
She didn’t look at me. “Half a year maybe.”
I said nothing. Half a year. I wondered if Patrick Owen had ever laid eyes on his son.
“I know what you’re thinking. But he did what I wanted. He got me out of the factory.” She lifted her bowl to her lips to drain it, then sat it on the floor beside her, pulling Willie from my arms.
“It’s good to see you,” I said finally. Both an understatement and a lie. I was inexpressibly glad I had found her alive. But my heart ached to see where she had ended up.
“It’s good to see you too,” Lottie said, giving me a ghost of a smile.
I leant wearily back against the wall. There was so much more I wanted to ask, but I had learned a precious skill in my time around Blackwell. There was nothing so good as silence to encourage an answer.
“Things were good,” she said. “At first. He was kind to me. Decent.”
“Why did Owen come to Sydney?” I asked. “Why not stay upriver? He had it good in Parramatta.”
“He served his time there,” said Lottie. “Can you blame him for wanting a fresh start?”
“I suppose not.” I hugged my knees, watching a women steer a bare-footed child away from the fire. “And the rebels?” I asked. “Is he involved with them here in Sydney?”
Lottie eyed me. “I suppose so. Dan Brady came down here not long after we did. And there was croppies at the farmhouse all the time. Talking among themselves. But I never heard what they were saying.”
“Are they planning another rebellion?”
She sighed. “How would I know that? Look where I am.” And she turned her eyes away, making it clear the conversation was over.
That night I slept curled up beside Lottie on the floor of the kitchen. The flagstones beneath my head were cold, despite the thick, wet heat pressing down on us. I kept my knees pulled to my chest to avoid kicking the women around me.
Before I had closed my eyes, Lottie had lifted the corner of Willie’s blanket to reveal a pistol tucked into the basket.
“Here,” she said. “In case anyone troubles you. Door don’t lock so good. We have visitors in the night sometimes.”
I stared down at the pistol, feeling an inexplicable tug of dread. “Where did you get that?”
“Stole it from Patrick.”
“Does he know you have it?”
“Course not.”
I closed my eyes and tried to breathe. Far from reassuring me, the sight of the pistol was unnerving. Visitors in the night. Door don’t lock so good…
This was what I wanted,
I reminded myself. This was what I had cajoled Blackwell to get. The freedom to come to Sydney Town and find Lottie, in whatever state she might be in. The freedom to get her out of it.
I wanted to believe there was hope for us. For me. For Lottie. For her son. I wanted to believe we could cobble together a decent life from the wreckage of our mistakes.
My sleep was broken and shallow, interrupted by footsteps and dreams and Willie’s midnight shrieking. I was glad when the first hint of morning strained down the alley.
But I was nervous about the day ahead. And every other day after that. My only plan had been to find Lottie, and now my life stretched out hazy and uncertain. I needed to find work. Somewhere to live. But I had little idea how to go about doing either. Every day of my life, I had been told where to sleep. At least until my ticket of leave had been pressed into my hands.
“Come with me,” I told Lottie, as I tried to smooth the creases from my skirts. After a night on the floor of the kitchen, they were in dire need of a wash.
“Come with you where? I’ve a child. I can’t take him out into the world with nowhere to go.”
“You can no more keep him in this place.” My words came out sharper than I’d intended. I had offended her, I could tell. But surely she could see this was no place to raise a child.
“Get out of here, Nell,” she said. “A ticket of leave lass can do far better.”
I shook my head. “Not without you.”
“If you stay, it’s just another person I’ve got to look out for. Another person I got to worry over. I’m walking around with another man’s child on my hip – no one’s even going to look at me.” Her eyes met mine, and her tone changed suddenly. “But you got a chance. You can make a go of things.” She pressed a hand to my wrist and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Don’t waste it.”
I trudged out towards High Street. I wasn’t abandoning Lottie, I told myself. Getting out of the Rocks and finding a way to earn some money was the best way to help her and her son. It was the best thing for all of us.
I had no thought of where I was to go from here. I was a free woman. Free for the first time in almost three years. It was a lost, shipwrecked feeling.
Here I was without a thing to anchor me. No Father. No Jonathan. No Blackwell. My entire life I had been shaped into what men wanted me to be. How was I to craft a life on my own? I felt horribly, sickeningly free. A concubine let loose in the streets of New South Wales.
A lodging house, I supposed was the logical first step. I had a few coins left in my pouch, courtesy of Blackwell’s incessantly unhemmed shirts. Enough for a bed for a few nights at least.
I went back to the Whaler’s Arms where I had asked after Owen.
“I need a room,” I told the barman. I could hear the tremor of uncertainty in my voice and I cursed myself for it. After all I had been through, was it truly asking for a room that had my nerves rattling?
“Pound a night,” he said.
I reached into my coin pouch and handed over enough to cover me until the end of the week.
For three days I traipsed through the colony, calling at houses and shopfronts in a desperate search for work. But a ticket of leave lass, I was quickly coming to learn, was no great commodity. Why would a man pay a woman to wash his laundry, clean his house, make his supper, when he could pull a lag from a prison ship and put her to work for far less cost? In a fleeting burst of optimism, I’d even called on a wealthy couple seeking a governess for their daughter. Outlined my education and my bank of unused knowledge. There had been enthusiasm in their eyes until I’d laid my ticket of leave on the table.
I slunk back to my room and perched on the bed, hands folded in my lap. My head and heart were thudding with anxiety. My coin pouch was close to empty, and I’d paid for just two more days at the Whaler’s Arms. It felt like only a matter of time before I’d be on the floor of that kitchen beside Lottie.
I pulled the end from the loaf of bread I’d bought and chewed on it, short of anything else to do. I longed for a drink. Craved a few mouthfuls of the Rum Corps’ dreadful liquor. When had I become a person who relied on moonshine to get me through the day?
I swallowed another mouthful of bread, trying to push the thought from my mind. Sashaying alone down to the tavern and ordering a glass of rum would be wildly inappropriate. I could barely believe I was even considering it.
But considering it I was, and before I could stop myself, I was tiptoeing down the stairs into the tavern. I peeked through the crack in the door that led to the bar. In the late afternoon the place was almost empty, just a couple of older men drinking by the window. I stepped inside before I changed my mind.
The innkeeper was leaning on the bar with account books opened in front of him. I hoped he would be too engrossed in his paperwork to judge me.
“Rum,” I said, my voice impossibly small. “Or whisky, or… whatever it is you have.” I dug a coin out of my pocket and sat it on the bar. A humoured smile flickered within his beard.
He filled a tin cup and sat it on the bar in front of me. “Only our finest for you, lass.”
I snatched it up and scurried into a corner, trying to disappear into the long shadows that lay over the tavern. I took a gulp of the liquor. It was as dreadful as it had been in Parramatta, but I felt a hint of tension begin to slide from my shoulders. When I dared to look up, the barman was peering across the room at me.
“I don’t bite,” he chuckled, nodding to the rows of empty stools in front of him. I hesitated. I didn’t want to be judged. But I was beginning to drown in my own chaotic thoughts. I knew the company would do me good. I carried my drink over to the bar and slid onto one of the stools.
The barman sat his pencil in the fold of his account book. “You find the fellow you were looking for then? Mr Owen?”
I sipped my drink. “I did. For all the good that did me.”
“What you doing here?” he asked.
“Looking for work.”
“His Majesty send you over?”
I felt my cheeks colour. I knew well I did not need to answer – what would I be doing in this place if I hadn’t been hauled out on a prison ship? As a convict woman I was barely a novelty, of course. But I couldn’t shake the shame of it.
Avoiding the barman’s eyes, my gaze drifted over the scrawled numbers on his ledger. I pointed to one of the sums at the bottom of the page.
“That’s wrong.”
He chuckled. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t trust a lag to do my books.”
I straightened my shoulders indignantly. “You’ve not carried the two,” I told him. “You’re out by twenty pounds.”
With a look of reluctance, he glanced down at the page. Irritation flickered across his eyes as he scrawled the correction on his ledger. “I was never one for arithmetic,” he said, cheeks reddening beneath his beard.
I couldn’t help a smile of self-satisfaction.
In the morning, he found me in the kitchen of the tavern. I was hovering by the fire, waiting for the kettle to boil.
He folded his thick arms across his chest. “Papers?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Pardon?”
“Your paperwork,” he said impatiently. “I need to see it. Make sure you ain’t a runaway.”
I pulled out my ticket of leave and shoved it into his hand. “Why’ve you decided now that I’m a runaway?” I asked. “Because you’re annoyed I corrected your arithmetic?”
He said nothing, just skimmed over my paperwork. He folded it messily and held it back out to me. Gave a half-satisfied grunt.
“Can you pour a drink?” he asked.
I hesitated. Was he offering me work? “I can do your books,” I ventured boldly.
He snorted. “I already told you, I don’t want no government lass rifling around in my accounts. I said, can you pour a drink?”
I allowed myself a smile. It had been worth a try. I thought of the woman from the factory who had poured drinks at the tavern in Parramatta. Never in m
y life had I imagined myself doing such a thing. But how hard could it be?
“Of course I can,” I said.
The barman nodded. “Good,” he said gruffly. “A lass behind the bar gets men through the door.” He turned to leave, then looked back at me. “Name’s Charlie,” he said. “I don’t like laziness and I keep things clean. And I don’t need no help doing my books. You can start tonight.”
I smiled to myself as I lifted the kettle. Hoped Charlie’s accounting errors would fall in my favour.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“He is under no obligation to maintain her longer than she suits his inclination. There arises a very heavy national expense, as these women with their children are constantly likely to be turned out of doors; poor, friendless and forsaken.”
Rev. Samuel Marsden
A Few Observations on the Situation of the Female Convict in New South Wales
1808-1817
The next morning, I went straight to the Rocks. I’d spent the evening behind the bar at the Whaler’s Arms, learning my way around barrels of the Rum Corps’ finest, and pouring ale that looked remarkably like dishwater. I’d not made it to bed until long after midnight.
But I’d woken with the dawn, eager to tell Lottie of the position I’d secured. To tell her she and Willie were welcome to stay with me for as long as they needed it. Tell her she had a chance at a life outside that filthy kitchen. Somehow, I would see to it that we both survived this place.
I found her on the street outside the kitchen, dunking her shift in a washtub. She was barefoot in dirt-streaked skirts, brown hair hanging loose on her shoulders. Willie was bleating in the basket beside her. At the sight of me, she stood up from the tub and wiped her hands on her apron.
“I’ve found work,” I told her. “A place to stay. There’s room enough for you and Willie. You ought to—”
“Don’t be mad,” she cut in. “I’ll not think of it.”
“Why not?” I’d not for a second imagined she might refuse.
She planted a hand on her hip. Her eyes held nothing but bitterness.
One of Us Buried Page 18
