Suddenly she looked into his face. The frown had come back to her brow. ‘Andrew,’ she said urgently, ‘promise me you’ll marry me as soon as possible. Don’t wait for a house. I’ll go with you anywhere. I’ll …’
‘Sara, darling!’ he said, his lips breaking her words. ‘I won’t even wait till tomorrow. I’ll try to see the Governor this afternoon.’
Andrew faced His Excellency, Governor Phillip, across a table stacked with paper, and gazed with a feeling of faint awe at the man who had pulled the colony through these first five, heartbreaking years. He was an unprepossessing figure, with beaked nose, and only of middle height; his skin had the yellowing tinge of illness. It was now common knowledge in the ragged settlements he ruled that he had been given leave of absence because of ill-health, and would probably sail for England in the Atlantic, at present anchored in the harbour.
From the beginning he offered no encouragement to Andrew to choose his site on the Hawkesbury.
‘I know it’s excellent soil, Mr. Maclay, but the help and protection of the Government cannot extend so far. You will be quite alone, without even a road to join you to Parramatta. You’re in danger from floods and natives who are possibly hostile ‒ and in the winter you may not be able to get your food and supplies overland.’
‘I’ve studied all these difficulties, Your Excellency ‒ and I still feel I can overcome them.’
Phillip looked thoughtfully at the map spread before him on the table. ‘Believe me, Mr. Maclay, I want settlers there ‒ it’s the finest land in the colony, and we could well do with its produce. But the danger lies in your settling alone … if there were others with you …’
But he argued half-heartedly, and when Andrew pressed the point, gave in. Once the decision was made, Phillip behaved as if the objection no longer existed ‒ he was now free to encourage the settlement of land he had first explored and marked down for the free men he wanted to farm the colony. He was generous in his offers of help. The Commissary was short of even the common necessities, but Phillip’s orders would give Andrew whatever was available. On paper the requisition orders were handsome ‒ a large grant of land, convict labourers, farming implements, seed. But Andrew knew the local conditions well enough to realize that he would be lucky if one-third of the supplies could be filled from the stock of the Commissary. He pocketed the signed orders with the same feeling that he would have pocketed a counterfeit coin ‒ wondering if it had any purchasing power left.
When the maps of the Hawkesbury were pushed aside, the Governor folded his dry, thin hands and looked at Andrew unblinkingly. He told him in a clipped voice that he had left instructions with his successor that Sara Dane was to receive her pardon on the day she was married.
There was nothing cordial in his tone as he added: ‘My commission from the King enables me to grant pardons, Mr. Maclay. I allow myself to use this power in view of Mr. Ryder’s testimonials of this woman ‒ and the knowledge that she will pass completely into your care.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Andrew wished his words could have been warmer, but there was no mistaking the Governor’s tone. Clearly, he didn’t approve of the marriage. But his instructions were to encourage settlement, and in this case the only way it could be done was by permitting the marriage. He was giving his consent with authority’s helpless shrug of the shoulders.
Andrew brought the interview to an end without waiting for the Governor to indicate that it was finished. On the veranda of the white-washed Government House he paused, wondering if he would go back and argue Sara’s case more forcefully. But his quick judgement of Phillip’s character told him that the gesture would be futile. He slapped his hat on to his head, and stepped out into the sunshine, hot and resentful.
II
Andrew reached the site allotted him on the Hawkesbury after a long, tortuous journey. He made an encampment on the river bank ‒ a small group of tents to house the twenty assigned convicts, two overseers, and four ex-convicts whose sentences had been remitted, and who had agreed to come with him for a wage, their food and a daily ration of rum. From this beginning, he set about to clear the surrounding forest for the fields where he planned to sow his crops and the spot he had marked for his house. The axes swung and the trees fell rapidly, but still not quickly enough for him. His impatience was never satisfied.
In Parramatta they had shaken their heads over this impatience; they advised him to wait until there were other settlers to accompany him to the Hawkesbury. But he took no heed; he went ahead with his task of collecting the few available supplies, choosing his overseers, and finding extra labourers. He waited to help the Ryders and Sara with their move up-river from Sydney Cove to the new land at Parramatta, and he saw his own livestock penned along with James’s, close to the hut where they would live until their house was ready. Then he made plans for the moving of his own equipment to the Hawkesbury. He worked long hours ‒ it was slow, exasperating work that met with endless frustrations and setbacks. The colony was short of every single item he needed ‒ shoes and clothing for the convicts, cooking utensils, carpenter’s tools, firearms for hunting, spades and axes for clearing the land. He endured tedious sessions of bargaining and bartering, fuming over each new delay and hold-up.
Following a hint from his friend, Berry, he sought out an ex-convict settled on a grant of land at Toongabbie, who exchanged him three axes for two gallons of rum, and another at Prospect who let him have two more for only one gallon. He didn’t know where the axes came from, and didn’t ask.
Berry expended himself in his willingness to help; he produced a carpenter of sorts, a man whose sentence had been remitted, and who was prepared to work on the Hawkesbury property for a guaranteed daily rum ration. Andrew realized that a carpenter, even a poor one, was a priceless find in this place which seemed to be without trained workmen of any kind. He guarded his prize greedily, already visualizing the house this sullen, toothless man would build for Sara to live in. Fear that someone else might claim first rights on this emancipist galvanized him into action; he swore the man to secrecy and commenced the rum ration immediately.
He found that this high-pressure speed was necessary to get all he wanted. He had to be quick and ruthless. The constant sight of Sara was driving him on, urging him to decisions which, three months ago, would have seemed impossible. It seemed as if, overnight, his gambler’s instincts had turned towards trade and barter ‒ he sometimes smiled at the idea of himself so swiftly become a man of affairs.
When his provisions and gear were assembled at last, and the nerve-racking weeks of planning and scheming were over, he paid his final visit to the Ryders. He said goodbye to Sara, unwilling to leave her behind, and making no attempt to hide the impatience evident in all his actions these days.
He set out for the Hawkesbury on the first of December.
Through the long, hot days he worked as if he were driven by a demon ‒ he was up at dawn with the convicts, and at night by the fire he was wakeful, planning after the rest of the camp slept. The clearing of the land was slow, yielding to them grudgingly, reluctantly giving up each acre that had never known movement other than the soundless tread of its own dark people. Occasionally he shot kangaroo and wild duck to vary the diet of salt pork. He made the most of the game while it was available, knowing that soon ‒ as had already happened at the other settlements ‒ it would retreat from the advance of the white men.
The days of unvarying routine spun out ‒ his dreams were of the grey gums crashing down, and the astonished faces of the natives he sometimes saw standing stock-still and rigid on the edge of the new clearing. They were not hostile, but they never came nearer the camp than the sheltering outskirts of the forest. Neither the white man nor the black interfered with one another ‒ Andrew’s orders were that the blacks were never to be unduly noticed, and never molested.
He was not completely alone with his thoughts in his nightly watches by the fire. He found a companion in one of his overseers, J
eremy Hogan, an Irishman, transported for organizing, with a minimum of discretion, new recruits for Wolf Tone’s United Irishmen. He was young, twenty-six, and built like a giant. He had still a touch of laughter about his deep blue eyes that the convict transport had not stamped out. Andrew found it difficult to take Jeremy’s politics seriously ‒ he humoured him, delighted by the strange quirk of chance which brought this type of man to share his fire. They talked softly together in the dark, their eyes on the bright, unfamiliar stars of the South. The sound of the river came continuously, like a patter of voices. Of the other’s background, Andrew could learn almost nothing; there was, though, the obvious fact of education and breeding. He thanked his good fortune in having been assigned Jeremy Hogan, talking to him easily in the silence of their nightly camps, telling him without awkwardness of his cherished dreams for the land over which they both toiled.
Each day a small portion of rum was allotted to the convict labourers. As long as they were assured of this, these men were prepared to work until they dropped; no threat of flogging or any other punishment meant as much to them as a suspension of the rum ration. With reluctant fascination he watched them lining up for the spirit, which was their only hope of forgetfulness. Their eyes and hands were greedy for the sight and feel of it. It was the spirits, he knew, which he had brought off the Georgette, that had done far more to bring him to his present position than any of the privileges ordinarily given to settlers. Rum was needed to make his men work; rum would bring the small comforts to make this sort of life possible for Sara. He calculated his store and found that it was dwindling fast. It was obvious that he must find some means to supplement it.
At first he felt his way cautiously, but as soon as the opportunity opened to give him not only rum, but other vital supplies, he took it without hesitation. He risked the money he had invested, the slice of land by the Hawkesbury River, even the hope of soon being able to marry Sara ‒ everything he had he risked on the turn of a card. He played coolly, fully aware of the weight of his gamble. Sometimes he lost, but more often he won.
The officers of the New South Wales Corps were his mark. Since Governor Phillip’s departure, the Corps had become supreme. Francis Grose, the Lieutenant-Governor, was steeped in militarism; he was strangely pliable in the hands of his officers, who, each in his turn, was given the position and authority to behave as a small despot. The civil courts had been closed in both Sydney and Parramatta, and a jury of six military officers and a judge-advocate now dispensed a rough justice to their own soldiers, the convicts, and a few private citizens. It was a world suddenly ruled by a select military elite, and Andrew found his way into its heart with a pack of cards.
He was accepted in the first place because he had held a commission with the East India Company. Although most of them were contemptuous of his plan to marry an ex-convict, they faced him readily enough over a table set with glasses and cards. He found the little bored groups willing to gamble on anything from five gallons of rum to a chit on the public stores for a frying-pan. As soon as he was quite certain of his place among them, he made frequent trips to Sydney and Parramatta almost with the sole motive of drifting into an evening’s play at the barracks.
‘He has the devil’s luck!’ they grumbled, disheartened, but playing on in the hope that his run of luck might turn. Whenever he was beaten he paid up calmly, and came back again the following night.
He played to a purpose which took him some time to achieve. He was impatient, but waited until the debts began to mount up heavily against his partners, and then he suggested that they should be cancelled by concessions for him in the trading-ring they had formed. Their monopoly methods were simple ‒ they had permission from the Lieutenant-Governor to pool their credits in England and to buy the entire cargo of the occasional American ships which were beginning to appear in Port Jackson; they were allowed to charter ships to run to the Cape and the East for the purpose of their own trade. There was no single transaction in the colony from which one or another member of the red-coated ring didn’t make his profit. The bartering power of rum was higher than anything else, and it flowed into New South Wales in an increasing stream. Andrew bought his right to share in the rum monopoly with his skill over a card-table. He gained more and more ground with his friends in the Corps, until even the arrogant, black-haired John Macarthur, the leader of the trading-ring and the most ambitious, energetic man the colony possessed, no longer questioned his right to share the prized cargoes. Like the rest, Andrew bartered rum for convict labour, rum for food, rum for boots and loads of timber. His supplies were taken inland over the rough track to the Hawkesbury; he went with them light-heartedly, and worked, for a few weeks, as hard as two men on the clearing of his land. And then, when his stocks began to run out, he started back again for the barracks at Sydney and Parramatta.
The walls of his house rose slowly during the months of the autumn and early winter; the forest reluctantly yielded space to sow his crops and run his livestock. The progress was hardly measurable week by week, but at the end of May, Andrew judged that the house would be ready to live in before June was over. It was small ‒ only four rooms, with a lean-to kitchen, whitewashed, half-furnished, and uncurtained, patterned exactly on the Ryders’ new house. Sara, demanding to hear every detail, begged to be allowed to return with him to the Hawkesbury when he made the next trip. Remembering the loneliness and silence awaiting him by the great river, he was seized with impatience. He looked at her eager face, and suddenly knew that he could not wait any longer to have her there with him.
Chapter Two
The wedding took place in the Ryders’ house on a bright, cold morning in June. There had been a frost the previous night, and the sun had scarcely broken it up by the time Sara entered the sitting-room for the ceremony. The sharp smell of the eucalyptus leaves, which Julia had used for decoration, came instantly to her. James held the door open wide; his gloved hand reached out for hers. She took it, but stood still, aware of the stir her entrance had caused, pleased and reassured by the expressions she saw on the faces of the group waiting for her. She was wearing a gown of white silk brought from China, and paid for in rum; on her feet was a pair of embroidered slippers from Calcutta. She held herself erectly, outwardly calm, yet she sought Andrew’s eyes with a sense of relief. Then, after that one brief pause, she went slowly forward to make her curtsy to the Lieutenant-Governor.
Julia was the only other woman present to listen to the words of the marriage service, read in the Reverend Richard Johnston’s prim tones. The New South Wales Corps was well represented that morning, their red coats brightening the pale sunlight in the room. The guests, with the exception of the Ryders and Johnston, were mostly gambling partners of Andrew’s. John Berry was there, and three other officers from the barracks. John Macarthur, whom Grose had put in charge of all public works in Parramatta, had surprisingly accepted the invitation; Grose himself, up from Sydney on a visit of inspection, had accompanied him.
But the colony’s three women of note were absent. The clergyman’s wife and Mrs. Macarthur had been invited, but both had declined on the flimsiest excuse. Mrs. Patterson, wife of the Corps’ second-in-command, had also declined. Sara had not expected more or less than this. She had known how she would be regarded by that narrow clique of female society; she was not abashed by the snubs, and she carried her head stiffly and proudly among the circle of red coats.
The ceremony was short. Johnston had no great liking for either Sara or Andrew, and he wasted no undue sentiment over the duty he was called upon to perform. They were married just before noon, and left ‒ Sara, Andrew, the overseer, Jeremy Hogan, and another convict overseer, Trigg, brought along to help with the baggage on the return journey to the Hawkesbury ‒ after a gay meal of wild duck and roasted kangaroo meat. The wine, shipped from the Cape, was plentiful enough to loosen tongues, and as she changed from the silk dress into a new riding-habit, Sara could hear bursts of laughter from the narrow, simply-furnished li
ving-room. She imagined, with a smile which was half-bitter, half-amused, how these men would recount the tale of the ceremony they had just witnessed.
The Lieutenant-Governor led the group which streamed out on to the veranda to see the party mount, and most of them, in the heat of wine and good humour, seemed to have forgotten that this was no ordinary wedding. Sara made her last curtsy to Grose with a sharp feeling of thankfulness in her heart that, whatever his reason, he had chosen to come this morning. His presence had given the marriage the envied seal of official approval. She disliked the weak, indefinite character of Francis Grose, but for what he had done for her today, she knew she would never cease being grateful.
Sara had said her private farewell to Julia before they moved outside, and Julia kissed her softly.
‘Do write to me, Sara. I shall expect a letter each time Andrew comes to Parramatta ‒ now you will write?’
Sara nodded, and her lips formed words which seemed stuck firmly in her throat. Impossible to thank Julia for the past months together ‒ even for the strenuous efforts which had produced the wedding breakfast. From that first day on the Georgette they had grown steadily closer, Sara taking Julia’s uncommon good sense to leaven her own impetuous nature, learning from her, copying her in certain ways. Their relationship was complete ‒ still undemonstrative, it had gone deeply into each of them, and there was a comfortable assurance that it would always remain.
Suddenly Sara put her arms about Julia, hugging her fiercely. ‘I can’t thank you ‒ there isn’t any use trying. Nor for all that I’ve had from you. But I’ve never loved another woman before ‒ if that counts for anything with you.’
Then she drew back. ‘Well … that’s enough,’ she said briskly, dabbing at the faint moisture that had appeared on her lashes. ‘I’m not going to make a fool of myself, and a show of you, Julia, for this handful of red-coats.’
Sara Dane Page 14
