Mrs. M

by Luke Slattery

  ‘You have been drinking,’ I say, springing up against instructions. ‘Drinking to still your fears? It demeans you. Men can smell fear, especially fear that needs dousing in a night of port wine. And you have been imbibing with the men of the regiment. Was that why you went to them? For the comfort and succour of their prejudice?’

  ‘You will sit when I address you!’ he roars.

  ‘I’ll do nothing of the sort. I am not your chattel. And I mean to protest. The lash should not be laid upon men who meant no harm and caused no harm, who in all likelihood wandered drunkenly across our garden after a few too many tots of rum. But of course you return home in a four-horse carriage because you could not walk without doing yourself a damage. If not for a man to open the door, guide you to your seat and bring you here, you might be wandering as lost as they. You,’ I raise a scolding finger and with it my tone, ‘talk about the company I might have kept if they had assailed me. And what of the company you have kept this very evening? Those blackguards of the regiment. Yes. Blackguards! In what manner are the men of the regiment, snobs and greedy speculators, superior to men and women who toil in your colony? You express these sentiments oftentimes yourself, and yet this evening you speak as another. I have always heard you advocate for the poor in this argument of the age; you now argue for the wealthy. You have become contradictory!’

  ‘Watch your tongue woman! It runs on. The men of the regiment, whom you consider idle, take the fight to the natives. And remember: it is to check others who might not be so mild that I …’ It is his turn to rise. He does so slowly, his unbuttoned coat falling open to reveal on his white shirt a claret stain the shape of an oak leaf. ‘Severity is, on rare occasion, a necessity,’ he proclaims as if he were speaking to an assembly. He retreats to the back of the armchair and stands scowling at me. Heavily, wearily, he leans against that solid piece of convict-made furniture. Its unadorned legs of native blackwood slide forward over the Turkmen rug, pushing it into a ripple. I stand on the other end of the rug. I feel at that moment as if my Lachlan is lost to me. That the man I know is broken down, dispersed and blown away; that some imposter stands before me.

  ‘So it will be done then?’ I ask. ‘You mean to go through with the sentence? Why not simply replace the fallen blocks of stone and deprive the men of their freedom for a day or two. Issue a proclamation!’

  He stares towards the blazing fire with garnet eyes. ‘I must make a stand.’

  ‘Do you realise how much you sound like … like them?’

  I leave him, flushed and unsteady on his feet.

  That night the Governor’s study serves once again as his lodging.

  *

  It was not the only instance I observed in Macquarie of a capricious and most unattractive rage, a willingness to exercise power in some quarter simply because the exercise of it had been thwarted elsewhere, frustrated perhaps in his own home. There was a contretemps with John Piper over the collection of excise; the latter had been a little too eager in his work.

  A much graver matter still was the pursuit of retribution against the more aggressive tribes beyond the main settlement. Two companies, guided by native trackers, were sent out with a list of names and orders to either capture or kill. Among those named was Wallah, whom the settlers knew as Warren.

  In the pursuit of these fugitives an entire tribe was driven to the edge of a cliff in the district of Appin, which we had named after my homeland. All chose death — leaping from the precipice — over submission. The next day a pile of crushed corpses — men, women and children — was discovered at the foot of the gorge. Fourteen natives had died. Wallah was not among them. The soldiers who returned from the massacre drank heavily, it was said, to forget the plaintive chant of the native children as they leapt to their deaths. At least one soldier took his own life, down by the shore named after Bennelong. It was a still moonlit night and I believe I heard the sharp crack of rifle fire carry up from the harbour shore as he went to the afterlife.

  And yet Macquarie’s better angels continued to wrestle with his demons, for it was at this time that work on Hyde Park Barrack, grandest of the buildings conceived by the Architect, began.

  I do not judge my husband harshly for his incongruities. He encountered challenges to his authority at every turn. The hostility of the soldiers and the free settlers to the convicts arriving in ever increasing numbers was now echoed by the Colonial Office. Construction of the Church of St James, one of the glories of this time, was welcomed in London, but permission to build the barrack was declined. The Governor, to his great credit, had it built on the sly, informing the distant authorities only when it was too late to halt the work.

  I wonder if I do not make too much of the dear man’s inconsistencies, for was not Christ himself a sweet soul urging forgiveness one moment, and the very next bursting into the temple courts, overturning the tables of the money changers and blotting his own gentle legacy with the stain of righteous rage. Macquarie had changed. I also had changed, had fewer illusions about the man he was and the woman I thought myself to be.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  How swiftly memories fade when distance conspires with time to dull them. Forms dissolve into chimeras, voices hush, colours fade. Already the Hyde Park Barrack seems half forgotten. Hard to believe that I — that we — fixed our dreams on such a plain structure when London could boast the colonnaded glories designed by Nash for Regent Street. But then it makes as much sense to compare the young colony’s best efforts with those of the mother country’s as it would to judge Windsor by the standards of Versailles.

  In that distant colony, there was something valiant in the ambition to build for the betterment of the male convicts a three-storey structure of some heft, in warm local brick, trimmings of stone, and most elegantly proportioned despite its lowly purpose. Much like its architect, this was no shy building; it demanded attention! All of this for men who had not long ago mouldered on the hulks and fought for their very lives on the transports.

  The Architect maintained his own firm views on the barrack. I had seen it emerge from his hand as a draft; had, in fact, approved its final articulation one afternoon in the Governor’s absence — though with his express authority. My main contribution to this perfectly simple design was to suggest that its centre point align with the pinnacle of the Church of St James opposite so that these two buildings might establish a dialogue: reformation of character on one side of the street, salvation of the soul on the other.

  Our interview took place not in the Governor’s study but in the dining room with the lovely vista of Farm Cove; beyond it lay a blue ribbon of harbour, and beyond that the forested ramparts of Middle Head. The Architect’s bearing, I remember, was a little stiff that afternoon. How excruciatingly painful was the situation we found ourselves in! We were both, I am sure, beset by confusion and guilt — the briefest of exchanges betraying our feelings had, unwittingly, inflamed them. I was sure Macquarie could sense it. How to douse — or quench — what could not even be acknowledged?

  *

  I sit at the round table in the white-walled dining room. With his back turned and his hands clasped behind him, the Architect stands before me at the bay window. He looks out, as if I were a portraitist with an easel and he the subject of my painting. He speaks to me without really speaking to me. From this indirect manner of address I catch only fragments of phrases: ‘Exact impression … strong proportions … clear …’

  I am compelled to insist that he come join me.

  And as he turns, I notice for the first time a few streaks of grey in his wavy hair. He apologises for his manner of address. ‘Sometimes I lose even myself in my work … I was saying … saying that the instructions I have from the Governor have always been clear.’

  ‘And those instructions are?’

  ‘To lend dignity to a class of people that has ever been diminished; to do so by making something that both serves a purpose and delights the eye.’ He takes a few steps towards me yet
declines the offer of a seat. He prefers to stand with one hand in his pocket, the other turning slowly as if he were darning in thin air. ‘In conversation your husband hammers this word — dignity. I perceive that it lies at the heart of his ambition: to dignify what has hitherto been regarded as dross. He is a man not lacking in natural dignity, or gravitas, himself. But … if I may, perhaps he believes the dignity of built things reflects well on himself, too.’ The Architect’s grey-green eyes narrow. ‘Does he — if you’ll permit me — mean to nettle his superiors?’

  ‘He certainly does nettle them, whether he intends it or not.’

  I inspect the barrack on three occasions. On the first it is simply a maze of pale sandstone foundations and, above them, a few feet of red brickwork. I pay another visit when the brick walls and ceiling of the first storey have emerged from the chaos. The windows are still without panes, the doors without jambs or lintels, but the building has form and promise. That day I return to Government House with a pale dress coated in sufficient red dust stirred from the works to warrant a bleaching. I visit a third time, when it is close to completion. All that is required is a gently sloping shingled roof each side of a crowning tympanum in which a handsome clock has already been set.

  Sensible of the red dust hurled by the wind I wear a dark grey — almost black — dress. On this occasion the Architect invites me up to the roof. He steps nimbly as he leads the way around clusters of workmen planing, plastering and polishing boards still beaded with sap.

  When we reach the top I gasp involuntarily at the fine spreading view. The town tumbles down towards the cove. Windmills spin on the heights. Ships lie at anchor. And everything is laid out before me in folds: lightly wooded hills, the turns of the shoreline, crescents of sand at the harbour’s edge, and the echoing shore to the north.

  ‘I did not dare to think, when I set out on this journey, that I would see anything of this kind in the colony,’ I say with a flat hand shading my eyes from the sun now that the wind has caught the brim of my silk bonnet and bent it back over the crown. ‘It is like standing on a mountaintop. Bungaree might think it was a mountaintop.’

  ‘You did not expect it. But you might have,’ he lowers his voice, ‘if we had met before; if you knew anything of me. Of my work.’

  I turn sharply to face him. Looking straight ahead he avoids my gaze, though I see that he’s smiling. When I turn again to appreciate the panorama he casts another look at me — I detect it from the corner of my eye. We go on like this — the speaker turning towards the listener, the listener towards the view — for some time. It is a species of self-consciousness and one to be expected. We are in strange territory as well as a strange land.

  I press on, ‘It must have been built at considerable cost, I expect. The Governor is nervous. He has only now, this week, written to Earl Bathurst to say the barrack is underway. And yet it is a few weeks, if my senses do not deceive me, from completion.’

  ‘I estimate it will have cost the Government the expense of clothing and feeding the workers,’ he says, joining his hands behind his broad back and spreading his feet as if he were Nelson at Trafalgar and this his Victory. ‘I do not think it will exceed ten thousand pounds; a trifle compared to the sum spent on Millbank Penitentiary, which is reckoned to be upwards of half a million; and then, as the prisoners there await transportation, they die of disease, while the turnkeys wander in that ill-made labyrinth until they are lost. It costs another sixteen thousand pounds to operate, and still it never supports more prisoners than will be housed here.’

  I had read of this. ‘Indeed the editors of The Times have enjoyed the scandal of that prison’s great expense and its even greater failings.’

  I no longer think of myself as young, although there are times when playful instincts grip me. I have grown a little bored with this elaboration on prisons. I hear little else from my husband but the difficulties of administering an outdoor penitentiary; I have no wish to dwell on the theme today.

  I step forward and, clasping the Architect’s arm, turn him to face me. We have this level to ourselves, loftier than anything else in the town. None can see us from below. And a workman or overseer pursuing us up the stairs would easily be heard.

  He is expecting, perhaps, some tenderness. But that is not my intention.

  ‘I have heard said that a young rival architect, Henry Kitchen, has come out from England and that you block him at every turn. I did not think you capable of meanness.’

  After a bewildered pause, he asks, ‘What has he done? What can he do?’ His eyebrows are drawn down, his shoulders raised. ‘On the occasion of our first meeting I examined him on the subject of Gothic vaulting, specifically the ogive arch. It would appear that the word,’ he sneers, ‘is new to him.’

  ‘Are you not then,’ I tease, ‘more than a little competitive? It seems that you must always strive to outdo what has been done, to make an impact and a mark. And now, with a young competitor in the colony, you attempt to expose his weaknesses. You men and your pride!’ I press a hand against his arm.

  ‘Steady,’ he warns. ‘We are far too close to the edge here for such pranks!’

  ‘Bah! I would think we are six feet away, behind the roof’s wooden frame, and you stand with your feet well apart. It would take more than the touch of a woman to topple a man accustomed to heights.’

  ‘You forget. I have seen you in that garden of yours.’ A renewed smile glides across his face. ‘There is strength in those arms.’

  ‘I consider myself armed for any eventuality.’

  He laughs along with me, though not for long. ‘Seriously, though,’ he presses on, ‘am I wrong to compete? Forget, for the moment, the subject of young Henry Kitchen. Should I not strive to do fine work here even if it is not wanted in London, difficult to execute in these conditions, and — as we both know — regarded with indifference, or even hostility, by the men of the regiment?’

  The Architect leads me down the stairs and out to the gated courtyard. Brody stands conversing with a young guard at a sandstone guardhouse.

  Before we reach him the Architect motions for me to pause. The ensign turns; I raise a hand to indicate that we will be a while longer. The air has stilled a little now and I put up my parasol, a fluted column of cool blue shade falling across my dark dress.

  ‘Elizabeth,’ he says, squinting in the glare. ‘It was good of you to visit. Our pact — it bears fruit. And, well,’ he hesitates, ‘to see this building take shape. It rises — as I have — despite everything. What I am trying to say is … thank you.’

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ I return a little too quickly, one heel already pivoting in the gravel. I am anxious to flee lest Brody or any others take note of the Architect and the Governor’s wife in earnest conversation. It has become a sensitive topic at the residence.

  He steps forward. ‘There is something else, Elizabeth. I have more to say. About … other things. In some depth. Or detail.’

  ‘It is a letter you mean to write? You wish to correspond?’

  He nods. His eyes burn at me. ‘A private letter — a story.’

  ‘Affix it to the back of your next set of drawings and have it brought to Government House next week. The Governor is touring the country …’ I hesitate. ‘Things are somewhat strained between us. And so I remain at the Cove — alone.’

  He stands in the glare. I face him in the shade of the parasol. And then, after an exchange of unfinished sentences, we part.

  As I draw away in the Governor’s carriage I feel my pulse begin to slow and to steady.

  And then, a week later, his letter arrives.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  My dear Elizabeth,

  Many more courtiers than architects have met their deaths at the hands of cruel and capricious rulers. Of that I’m certain. But ART is nevertheless a dangerous business. I have not told you about the origins of the feud between Sanderson and me.

  It started well enough, when some scoundrel on the prison hul
ks with a face as purple as a swede and a nose the texture of gruel spied me with a sketchpad on my bent knees and a pen poised above it. We had been allowed on deck under heavy guard for a half hour or so, to catch some air and light, before being driven back down into the filth and the gloom. A powerful fellow, he stood before me, blocking the winter sunlight slanting across the Thames.

  I waved a hand. ‘Move on.’

  He moved in sharp bird-like jerks around me, stepped behind, and stared over my shoulder in silence as lines receding into space suddenly fused into a recognisable image. It was the circular Roman temple of Vesta, or at least my imagining of it. Transfixed by this mute poetry of form, he rumbled in the voice of a man accustomed to being obeyed: ‘Forget about drawing them ruins and stones and things that don’t exist and instead draw me, alive — for the moment — and going out into the world on an adventure!’

  I paused from my work, smacked the dirt from my trousers of convict-issue duck, and turned to him warily. ‘Get down my likeness right and I mightn’t thump you,’ he said with a raised fist and a mean glance from a meaty eye. ‘Might even save you from a beatin’.’ I think this gesture was meant to charm.

  He was delighted with the result, and even managed to have the sketch delivered ashore as a parting memento. He asked me the very next day for a portrait with an ocean backdrop and its subject — himself of course — with a spyglass. ‘Make me a discoverer,’ he demanded. I delivered that, too. And soon the taste for portraiture spread through the place with the speed of a new season fashion.

  I was besieged the moment we were transferred to the Dromedary. No money came my way, but promises of recompense when fortunes are made in the New World slipped from every damned tongue. There were favours of many kinds offered. From those with a talent for force and its application came pledges of protection. If I had only invoked them at my time of greatest need!