by Meg Keneally
It had been a long time since Hannah had seen anyone in the grips of panic. But in the bloodied days of the rising, she had seen it often, and she recognised it now in Rebecca. The tendency to focus on the trivial to the exclusion of everything else, to try to scrub the spot out of an apron while the house burned, to try to make sure the milking was done when the redcoats were muddying the fields with their boots on the way to the house.
Or the tendency to worry about unconstrained hair when your hands were bleeding.
She took Rebecca’s wrists, looked her squarely in the face and marshalled the stern voice she usually saved for the worst of Monsarrat’s transgressions.
‘Now, you’ve had a shock, but you must stop this scrabbling about in the dirt fixing your hair. We have to get your wounds attended to, so we do. Stand up now, and come with me into the superintendent’s residence. We’ll get you cleaned and set to rights and you’ll feel the better for it.’
Rebecca let Hannah lead her inside, and she seemed to have recovered much of her composure by the time they sat down at the table – which had borne significantly harsher scrubbings since Hannah had taken to tidying the place each day.
Henrietta Church was often at the table, in varying states of consciousness and sobriety. Hannah tried to urge tea on her when she could, but Henrietta rarely acknowledged her, and when she did she seemed to be under the impression that Hannah was a Factory woman, still a convict.
Heavens knew where Henrietta was today – possibly drinking with some of the women. The kettle showed no sign of having been used since yesterday, and the tea leaves in the caddy were dwindling, becoming damp as they did so. Hannah did not know how long the tea would last, or when it would be replenished. Nevertheless she set the teapot and kettle to the business of making something palatable, perhaps even restoring, out of the leaves.
Once the best cup of tea she could produce under the circumstances was in front of Rebecca, Hannah said, ‘I was a little worried about you just then. You seemed in fear of your life. Have you hurt yourself more than is apparent?’
By this time, Rebecca had all of that startling red stowed neatly under her bonnet again, and it had been tied so tightly at the chin that flesh was bulging out on either side of the ribbon.
‘I am absolutely fine, dear. Thank you for worrying about me – I must admit, it’s something of a luxury to have someone else doing the worrying. I do apologise, I don’t know why I acted as I did – very silly, and I flatter myself that I am not a silly woman. A momentary lapse. Please do your best to put my unseemly display out of your mind.’
‘Of course. You shouldn’t scold yourself. I find there are plenty willing to scold us, without us adding to it. Ah, I’d forgotten – I brought this.’
Hannah reached into a basket and extracted the blank pages, which stared accusingly at her as she remembered it had been a few days since she’d written to Padraig.
‘Marvellous! We were nearly out, you know. Tell them to take more care, they do tend to gouge with the pen. All part of the learning process, I suppose.’
‘Will we be using them today?’
Rebecca frowned. ‘Perhaps not …’ she said absently. And then, ‘I have a far more joyful duty for us in mind today, as it happens. I thought we might visit the lying-in hospital, you see. Time with new people will do us good. Two last week, and another yesterday. I suspect all three of them will look like Robert Church – unfortunate, particularly for the girls – but that’s not their fault.’
Spending time with babies was not something Hannah considered a chore, no matter how loud they were or how distasteful their emissions. By the time she’d arrived in this place, she’d had enough of the kind of noise death made, and the emissions which followed the firing of a musket.
‘I’ll not object to that,’ she said. ‘But I had thought to perhaps visit Lizzie again. Convince her I’m not a monster. It might bring her poor mind some comfort.’
‘Lizzie … She’s not making a lot of sense at the moment, even for her. Leave her, for now.’ Rebecca reached for the stack of papers, riffling through them as if expecting to see a message written on one of them. ‘It occurs to me,’ she said, without looking up, ‘that you and I are doing the same as the late superintendent, except in reverse.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. He spent all his time trying to remove things from the Factory; we are trying to bring them in.’
The lying-in hospital was supposed to be the sole preserve of women about to give birth, but the reality was that Dr Preston’s wards were often unable to cope with the dysentery and other ailments that seemed to flood the hospital in waves, so the women sometimes found themselves joined by these patients, whose moans had nothing to do with childbirth but came instead from the pain of gangrenous limbs or poisoned blood or bones.
Unusually for this place, the women in the Factory’s hospital were well cared for. In fact, their free sisters often chose to come and give birth here rather than braving the solitude of their homes.
Hannah had no idea, then, what she would face at the end of the short walk across the yard. Three women and their babies, certainly. But possibly the wife of a merchant or a sailor or a labourer, bringing into the world a child she would be allowed to take home and keep after its fourth birthday, assuming the infant could survive until then.
Today, though, the only women in the hospital were the three inmates. Two of them were nursing their babies and a third was asleep with her child so the place was oddly quiet – a situation the babies would no doubt remedy soon.
Rebecca led Hannah over to one of the women feeding her newborn.
‘Ann, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, missus.’
‘And who is this? I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.’
‘This is Tobias, missus. Four days old.’
‘And how is Tobias faring?’ It was more than a polite enquiry, it was a question of the utmost significance – a great many babies did not reach their first month.
‘He’s feeding well. Seems to be gaining weight. Not sickly.’
‘He’s a good lad,’ said Rebecca, smiling. ‘And, tell me, who is Tobias’s father?’
Ann flushed, lowered her head.
‘There can be no secrets between us here, you know,’ Rebecca reassured the girl. ‘He was not born in wedlock, we know that, and I for one make no judgement. However, I may be able to bring some influence to bear on this young man’s father, depending on who he is, in terms of upkeep. Tobias’s, and possibly yours, when you are freed.’
‘Tom Felton, then,’ Ann said. ‘The Third Class turnkey. He gives me bread when he can. A little extra meat sometimes.’
Rebecca smiled as though Ann had just told her Tobias was the son of the King of England.
‘You are to have no worries, Ann,’ she said. ‘I’ll make certain that Mr Felton continues to meet his responsibilities to you and his son.’
Ann smiled back. There were very few who troubled themselves with ensuring anyone kept their promises to the women here.
They moved on to the next new mother. Unlike Ann, this one was not stroking her baby’s head or murmuring maternally. She seemed detached, as though the feeding were just another task to be accomplished before the dinner bell went.
‘Sarah,’ said Rebecca. ‘How’s your daughter?’
‘Well enough,’ said Sarah. No elaboration, no boasting.
‘And her name?’
‘Eve.’
‘What a beautiful name.’
‘The first that came into my mind.’
The baby came off Sarah’s breast, full of milk, sleepy now, insensible to her mother’s apparent lack of interest in her.
‘She looks … a strong young lady,’ said Rebecca. ‘May I ask who her father is?’
Sarah turned away. There was no embarrassment in her, though. Anger, perhaps.
‘Sarah, the child’s father?’
‘Who would you think the child’s father is? Who has fat
hered half the children in the orphan school? Most of the babies born in this room were put into their mother’s womb by him, I shouldn’t doubt.’
‘I see. So this is Robert Church’s baby.’
‘No father left to keep any fine promises to me,’ said Sarah.
‘I do see your point,’ said Rebecca. ‘Nevertheless, I’m sure we can come up with something to ease the burden on you. May I hold her, do you think?’
Sarah handed the little girl over to Rebecca without question.
‘You should rest now, Sarah. Can’t you see, over there – Amelia and her child are sleeping. Best way to build strength, to manage whatever might come next. So you roll over now and try to sleep.’
Sarah did as she was told. The rise and fall of her chest soon became even and deep, and she seemed almost to sink into the thin bare mattress which lay on top of the narrow iron bed.
Rebecca jiggled the tiny baby up and down somewhat awkwardly, but the infant seemed happy.
‘Why don’t you offer to take Tobias for a little while so Ann can rest too?’ Rebecca said to Hannah. Hannah needed no urging. She’d crossed the room and was holding the boy within moments, moving gently from foot to foot, humming in a way that had always settled Padraig. She became lost in her own movement, in the low thrumming sound coming from her chest as she breathed out the sounds of an old Irish lullaby. For a short time little Tobias was everything in the world.
But when she glanced up the enchantment shattered. Sarah was still asleep, but her daughter was not, and Rebecca was looking down at the baby, her expression untroubled by any emotion.
The child was certainly feeling something akin to emotion. Probably fear. The little girl’s arms and legs were thrashing wildly, as the hand which cupped her small head forced her face into the fabric covering Rebecca’s chest.
Ann was not yet asleep and Hannah thrust her baby back at her, running to Rebecca in a few steps.
‘She’s suffocating! Turn her around!’
Rebecca looked up, seeming as entranced as Hannah had been, and for a moment she kept holding the baby’s head against her as the little girl’s arms and legs lost power. Then she seemed to remember herself, gave a small gasp as though woken from a dream by a loud noise, looked down at the baby and immediately rolled her over.
‘Hannah! I was thinking about something. She must’ve slipped. Thank goodness you spotted it. Poor heedless thing, my head was full of the miseries ahead of her. The orphan school, though she’s not an orphan, and then … But no, here she is pink and perfect, and all thanks to you.’
Hannah nodded, smiled, said it was nothing.
It wasn’t nothing, though – it was a long way from nothing. It was hard to believe that Rebecca could have been so caught up in her own thoughts that she hadn’t noticed the baby thrashing about. Because in all the years of cuddling babies, and watching other women do the same, on convict ships and in traps and on farms and in gaols, Hannah Mulrooney had never seen one accidentally suffocated.
Chapter 16
Monsarrat was forbidden from visiting Crotty’s shebeen again. But Eveleigh had said nothing about pies. And the drinkers of the colony were known to enjoy them when they could get them, when the vendor was not racing up into the mountains clutching his hot box, but instead hopping from foot to foot on the banks of the Parramatta River.
Stephen Lethbridge seemed to have a good sense of where to position himself to best advantage. Certainly the hungry men outside the Female Factory where Monsarrat had first met him had taken every pie he had to sell. And the same fate looked to be awaiting the pies Lethbridge had today. He stood at the nexus of George and Church Streets, known to residents simply as ‘the Corner’, where he had told Monsarrat he’d be, where news from the river flowed to meet word from the hinterland.
Lethbridge was making no attempt to attract attention. He didn’t have to. The flotsam which flowed past the Corner often snagged a pie on its way past, leaving payment in its wake. And the gaol wasn’t far away, with its hungry guards. But the prison looked like a rough draft of the building that was now rising opposite it. The stippled sandstone of the older structure was unformed next to the smooth stones of the new one, with each block perfectly straight and showing to best advantage the stone’s lines and patterns.
Ironic that the building opposite the prison was a church. Even more ironic that it was a Catholic one.
Mrs Mulrooney would never have given a second’s consideration to joining Monsarrat for services at St John’s, even had its pastor been a less vicious example of the species than Reverend Bulmer. She cheerfully referred to Catholicism as the one true faith, and Monsarrat didn’t take any exception – his religious observances sprang from social and political considerations, not theological ones.
In any case, it would have felt a little mean-spirited to take exception to the profession of a faith that had been outlawed for so long, whose adherents risked shadowy, terrible fates simply for sending their prayers skyward. Monsarrat had just enough understanding of the situation to know that he didn’t understand anything.
Mrs Mulrooney, he knew, spent her time rather differently while he went to St John’s. She, out of a quiet and genuine faith, went to the small room above the gaol where the Mass was said, with the priest using a plank on two chairs and an earthenware cup in place of a marble altar and silver chalice.
Monsarrat felt a vague unease that she celebrated her genuinely held conviction in these conditions, while he professed his nonexistent belief sitting behind the box-pews purchased by Parramatta’s wealthy. But soon she would have a church to rival his. Those engaged in the work of building it were hungry. And Stephen Lethbridge had an unerring sense of where the hungry were to be found. But his customers were mostly the overseers. Those doing the truly backbreaking work lacked the funds for pies.
‘Mr Monsarrat!’ Lethbridge yelled when Monsarrat was still dozens of yards away. He must have been relatively easy to see from a distance, given his height, his habit of walking with his hands clasped behind his back, which gave him an identifiable rolling gait. This, together with his black coat and somewhat prominent nose, had earned him the nickname of Magpie in Port Macquarie.
‘Mr Lethbridge,’ he said as he arrived on the colonised corner. ‘It occurs to me that I have heard much of your pies, yet not had the chance to sample one.’
‘I’m afraid it’s a pleasure you will have to wait a little longer for, Mr Monsarrat. I am fairly sold out, apart from this misshapen thing, which is promised to a foreman who has gone to fetch the means to pay for it.’ He looked down at a torn pie.
‘Well, I shall have to content myself with some conversation for now, then.’
‘A commodity I am always happy to dispense, sir,’ said Lethbridge, swaying slightly from foot to foot. ‘Is there a particular topic on which you would like to converse?’
‘There is, as it happens. But I must ask, Mr Lethbridge, may I rely on your discretion? You’ve no reason to give me any assurances, of course. However, there is a matter of justice which hinges on my discovering the truth of certain things, and you seem a just man. So have I your word that this conversation will not be reported to anyone?’
‘Of course, Mr Monsarrat. I adore Justice, blindfolded whore that she is. If you’re in the business of tidying her up a bit, I shall not impede you.’
‘Excellent, and I thank you. The topic on which I would like to converse, then, is sly grog.’
‘An interesting matter indeed, Mr Monsarrat. Homer – that’s the Greek gentleman of antiquity, of course, not our friend the good doctor – said no poem was ever written by a drinker of water. I shall have to resign myself to my failure to write poetry, as I don’t touch the harder stuff. While drinkers of water might not write poems, they have a better chance of running up mountains and back at the pace I can produce. And in any case, poetry is usually the last thing on the minds of those in this place who drink substances other than water.’
A man with a
red face and the look of one familiar with sly grog ran up to Lethbridge, handed him a coin, received the pie in return and walked off eating it. The whole transaction was accomplished wordlessly. The man clearly had a better use to put his mouth to.
‘Well,’ said Monsarrat, when the man was out of earshot. ‘When our mutual friend of whom you speak tells me of the dysentery he so regularly sees at the hospital, and of the foulness it produces, I might argue against the health-giving properties of water from our river. But I do see your point. I do touch grog, on occasion, but far less often than I used to. It seems I lack the constitution for it.’
Lethbridge nodded. ‘Wise to recognise our limitations, don’t you think?’
‘Were I to list mine, I would be on this corner too long. And in any case, it is not the drinking I would like to discuss, but the procuring.’
Lethbridge nodded. ‘A pleasure to converse with someone with enough wit to realise the two are not necessarily the same,’ he said.
‘Nor, it seems, does all of the grog in Parramatta flow from the same source. You mentioned Crotty to me when we last spoke.’
‘Ah, yes. An example of one of my main contentions when it comes to the properties of drink – that it cannot enhance poeticism when there is none there to enhance.’
‘I fear you may be right. However, it’s not the man’s artistic sensitivities, or lack of them, I’m chiefly interested in. It’s where he and others like him are getting their grog.’
Lethbridge raised one eyebrow, a gesture which carried more impact because his face was the only stationary part of him. ‘Now that’s an interesting topic to be enquiring about, if I may say, Mr Monsarrat.’
‘Interesting? I suppose so.’
‘And you’re not going to enlighten me as to your interest in this matter?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t at this stage, Mr Lethbridge. However, I do assure you that the possibility of sparing an innocent life hangs upon it.’
