Mrs. M

by Luke Slattery

  There was to be no more of this after Captain Sanderson.

  We were barely a week at sea when he had me unshackled and brought to his quarters. I rendered him on paper much as he is in life. I am an artist, after all, not a flatterer! How could I entirely conceal that narrow angled face, the eyes deeply set beneath a tilted brow. Or the mean mouth. And yet the completed portrait was not without compassion for the possessor of these unlovely features. I portrayed them truthfully, and then I softened. I was satisfied with my efforts. Not the Captain. He fixed me with a set of soulless eyes. ‘I am displeased,’ he said sourly. He took a slender knife from his pocket, inserted the tip into a fingernail and proceeded to clean it. ‘You will need to do better,’ he said with a regal inflection. He held out a long thin hand, palm down, for me to inspect his nails. ‘Clean, yes?’ he asked. I said nothing but turned to leave. ‘Wait!’ he snapped. ‘Until you are dismissed.’ It was a good half an hour before I was permitted to leave his quarters.

  I returned the next day with an image best described as an idealised Sanderson. It was modelled, in truth, after a picture of Beau Brummell, resplendent in a snow-white cravat, black tailcoat and an indigo waistcoat, I had seen in a gentleman’s magazine. Sanderson pronounced it good. ‘A fine gentleman I do appear in this likeness,’ he said with a crooked smile before dismissing me.

  A month later I was recalled to Sanderson’s quarters. It was late. The tropical night sky was moonless and starless. The soldier who led me stood sentry at the door. The captain, I observed, had been drinking — a half-drained goblet stood on the desk, and there was a sweet porty aroma to the cramped quarters. He motioned for me to come forward and thrust a sheet of paper at me.

  ‘I presume,’ he said with a show of long teeth, ‘that you are the author of this. This …’ and he trailed off.

  In the dim light I made out a vulgar caricature of a figure in uniform. The figure bore the Captain’s distinctively angled features and thin moustache. It stood atop a few rocks designed to evoke a shore. On each side rose a gibbet, and from each one hanged the strangled carcass of a kangaroo, tongue lolling from its snout. Beneath the crude satire ran the words ‘Captain Sanderson’s Necessary Measures at the Cove.’

  I had heard of harsh punishments meted out by Sanderson aboard the Dromedary and justified by him — or so it was rumoured — as ‘necessary measures’ to maintain discipline. Men had been flogged for insubordination, and beaten for little more than a refusal to submit to some bored marine’s idle taunt. A man who returned below decks with his brow crushed by a heavy blow never regained the use of an eye.

  ‘I may be an artist,’ I replied, ‘when forced by circumstances to set aside my architectural profession. But I am no fool. I have no wish to aggravate. And nor, as should be obvious, am I a draughtsman of such derisory gifts as these.’ I thrust my arm out with the satire in my hand. I was anxious to be gone. ‘Your enemy, sir, is a rank amateur.’

  Sanderson remained seated. I am not entirely sure that he was capable of rising. He called to the soldier to lead me away, then changed his mind and commanded me to wait.

  ‘I will have you flogged, artist, with great pleasure, great ease,’ he said in a strained voice, as if the words were being ground out. ‘Why the cat o’ nine, I have it here in the bag. Shall I let it out? Shall I let the cat out of the bag? Shall I!’

  He stood unsteadily and came forward, reached out, took a handful of fabric from my poor cotton shirt, twisted it and drew me in.

  ‘You … have … no idea … do you?’ he went on through heavy rancid breaths. ‘I am master here. And will be out there. I shall do as I please. If I find evidence of your hand in this insult, this slander … I will act. Why, I will flog you myself!’ With this his eyes widened unnaturally.

  He would not let me alone. Whenever I found myself above decks in his sight he trained those empty eyes on mine. With his right hand he enacted a pantomime of his threat — a flick of the wrist, a hand folded over an imaginary whip handle, and a knot traced in the air.

  While I am certain that my first portrait failed to capture the likeness he had hoped for — could he really have considered himself a handsome man? — it cannot have been the sole cause of his animus. And the satire? He could not — not in sound mind — have mistaken it for my work. Perhaps he had concluded that I was the inspiration for it, or in some deeper animal sense that a man like me, chained in flesh yet unshackled in spirit, was his natural foe. It cannot have helped that I had become a minor celebrity on board. Those who maintain their station by terror are greatly unsettled by those who rise in the world without it.

  I observed Sanderson once more before the incident in his quarters. We had been barely a month in the colony when Howe, the publisher, decided it was his duty to induct me into the rituals of The Rocks. He was deeply learned in its ways, and rather the worse for it.

  Howe was giving the lie of the land as we sat on stools at the Whaler’s Arms — propped up at the bar to avoid a group of soldiers seated by an open fire. He pointed to the trapdoor behind the bar through which the publican hoisted the kegs from the cellar below. It had a far darker purpose, Howe said. Men, deep in drink, had woken to find themselves shipped to Shanghai or Canton, and well out to sea before the tincture of opiate poured into their rum had worn off. ‘There’d be a tunnel beneath here,’ he pointed towards the floor. ‘It leads to Cockle Bay, where the merchant ships lie at anchor. You do not want to drink alone — at least drink too much alone — at this place. For you may find yourself bound and gagged and stowed aboard a ship in dire need of extra hands. The publican of the Whaler’s Arms declares himself innocent of the trade. But the victims are never seen again — they can hardly be interviewed when they are half way to China.’

  I noticed a figure, pressing close at the bar. Too close.

  Captain Sanderson was no bear of a man. But there was menace enough for two in his sinewy frame.

  ‘How interesting,’ Sanderson hissed, placing his elbow on the bar beside my stool and bringing his head level with mine. ‘The architect-forger and the shoplifting publisher. Two scoundrels toasting their golden futures with coin provided, no doubt, by the Governor himself.’ He paused to take a few deep breaths, seeming greatly pleased with himself. ‘And scheming,’ he went on with a malevolent grin, ‘to upend authority at the first opportunity. The Governor should watch his back. And you,’ I felt a sharp prod below my ribs, cold and hard — a knife handle. ‘You, architect, should watch yours.’

  ‘I believe,’ replied Howe soberly, ‘that His Majesty is in a severe state of incapacitation and the throne is occupied by an unloved prince. It is no crime to speak of such things when they are spoken throughout the Empire.’

  ‘Perhaps. The Regent is not overly popular. But one day soon he will be king,’ he smiled cruelly, turning to each of us in turn. ‘And then — believe me — he will be loved. It would be a simple matter for me to report you to the Colonial Office for sedition. That would be enough to deprive you of your liberty — both of you — for many a year.’ Sanderson turned and wove his way back to the card table by the fire, where he took his place at the centre of a group of officers with their regimental coats placed on the backs of their seats. As they dealt him in, Howe ordered another round of drinks.

  ‘He is right about the money,’ said Howe, patting his pocket. ‘A gift from the good Governor.’

  For a long while I hoped that Sanderson might languish in Patagonia or some ultima Thule. I hear now he was last seen in Khurda. You know how it goes in this colony. News from elsewhere is the most precious of commodities. Now comes word fresh from a trader of an uprising in Khurda. I pray that both rumours are sound and that he is forced to regard a Nawab and his sword at close quarters, just as I was forced to look on his lash before it was laid onto me. I hope you will join me in my prayers.

  Your Architect

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘Here,’ I say, taking the Architect’s arm as the rain swee
ps in. ‘I know a place.’

  We have been riding in the parkland spreading east from Government House. Arthur Phillip claimed this land and set it aside for public buildings and simple pleasures, or such joys as were to be found in those lean years. In my time the sanctuary has been secured with a sandstone wall, laced with pathways and planted with native and introduced species. It has been shaped to my designs. Phillip called it his ‘demesne’. My husband is apt to call it — though only between ourselves — ‘Mrs Macquarie’s Domain’.

  It’s there that my stone refuge sits on its rocky promontory. To reach it on horseback — though I prefer to walk — one takes the walled road that wraps around the Domain’s southern border before swinging north in the direction of the harbour shore. An avenue of English oak trees, swamp mahogany, blackbutts and umbrella pines lines the road. Here lies the finest part of the Domain: my botanical garden. Though it has been styled by my hand, I have introduced no fantastical ornament: no statues of gods or heroes, no summerhouse decorated with fleshy putti or medallions painted with elegant frivolities after Fragonard. Nothing contrary to Nature.

  We draw up abreast. He is first to dismount.

  He comes with a jaunty step to take the reins and to help me down. I take the hand offered.

  ‘Is there not something majestic about my throne on its rocky point?’ I say in jest. ‘I may not command — but I command a fine view.’

  His eucalyptus eyes relax into a smile and he releases my hand.

  Together we admire the view. From Woolloomooloo, to my right, an empty skiff, riding high in the water, heads out to Garden Island as another, weighed down with fruit and vegetables, returns.

  We lead the horses to a little stone stable and return to my seat above the harbour.

  It is early summer. The air is always sweet this time of year. It flies out of the limitless Pacific, picking up the scent — or so my fancy tells me — of the Windward Isles that so entranced Bougainville and Cook, along with numberless bright green islets in their equally bright blue atolls. That afternoon, quite suddenly, the wind changes direction.

  We have a sou’easter, bearer of summer storms, and a keen one at that. The sky above a stand of palm and fig at the Domain’s eastern fringe has purpled. Above it boils a great mass of cloud.

  I take the Architect’s hand to show him the place I know. After a few steps I release it to open my parasol; we must hope that it can also serve as a parapluie. I press it onto him so that he might do the correct thing and shelter me. I cannot always guarantee that the Architect will observe small courtesies, for he is much in his own world. A gust catches the thing and steals it like a thief; it goes careening over the precipice. The Architect curses. The scene would amuse if the storm weren’t gathering strength so swiftly.

  I lead the way along the path, littered with rain-spattered rocks. He has the presence of mind to raise a corner of his riding coat over my bare head. Two or three steps down the side of a sandstone ledge and we are sheltered from the full force of the storm. The rain is flying sideways now. But we are protected. The trees above and around us shake, roar and whirl. I lead us further down the ledge to a cave, almost head height at the entrance, its mouth facing the harbour. He looks down at the drenched sleeves of his coat. We laugh like children.

  Neither of us dares venture further. But here on the outer rim of red rock is a gallery of images: a small hand stencilled by a puff of fading white, and next along the wall a kangaroo clad in its own skeleton. Also revealed by grey light at the cave’s mouth is a round fat fish embroidered with the same keen anatomical eye, as if the artist were peering through flesh. Stick figures, long and thin, mingle overhead in a dance. Some shapes, either too old or poorly done, are unrecognisable to my eye. Ghosts perhaps. Dream figures. A beast — I can at least make out a confusion of legs — that may once have walked these shores. Long, long ago.

  From here a view of the harbour unfolds. A great sphere of sandstone lies a short distance away, concealing the entrance from the eyes of a curious stranger scanning these headlands from the opposing shore.

  ‘I have asked Bungaree about this place,’ I say. ‘It holds some special importance. Yurong, it is called. He speaks of ferocious battles in times past between the people here and their enemies. Brody tells me that rival tribes still do battle on the level ground below at Woolloomooloo. If the cries of the warring parties are heard from the settlement, men will ride out to view the bloody melee.’

  ‘I have heard all this too.’

  ‘And out of delicacy had no wish to speak of it?’

  ‘I’m afraid it is an indelicate — a savage — business.’

  ‘But who are the savages in this story?’ I remark. ‘The native belligerents — or those who view their bloody quarrels as sport?’

  ‘The way you load the question, I believe I anticipate your answer.’

  ‘And what would yours be?’

  He gives a long sigh. ‘Perhaps both. I am a builder not a moralist.’

  The rain drives across the harbour in sheets and eddies as if fleeing from the black clouds in pursuit. I have avoided a soaking and for that am greatly relieved, as my lemon dress is very fine and I have quite forgotten a summer shawl. Suddenly, without warning, I am gripped by a sensation not so much of fear as unease, as if I have rowed too far from shore or ridden into a dense fog. I feel as if I have strayed.

  I fall silent. Withdraw.

  ‘Elizabeth, are you unwell?’

  ‘Yes. No, really. Quite well.’

  ‘You have been here before?’

  ‘I come often to this old, immensely old, place. As a child I would vanish from society. At Airds I would escape to an unused little bridge over a stream and sit, alone with my thoughts, in solitude. The habit, once formed … is not easily broken.’

  He turns, hair a little dim and damp, the shine gone from it, and thrusts his hands into his trouser pockets. His eyes are in shadow, and yet I sense that if I were to glimpse them in the light of day they might shine with wonder at the rare gift of intimacy swept in on the high wind. Here there are no prying eyes.

  We enjoy our moments together. Often, alone with the viola or violoncello, I catch myself smiling as I either recall our shared words or rehearse the words we might share at our next meeting. But always, no matter how keenly he is summoned in my imagination, we stand apart like spheres in the night sky whose orbits bring them into rare alignment, though they remain on separate paths. For I am the Governor’s wife, and he is the convict architect.

  But now we are together, and alone, and there is no world, it seems, beyond us.

  I confess some part of this to him — or attempt to. ‘The Governor is so often in the countryside trying to make things right,’ I say, ‘that I am forced onto my books and my music for company. But often, I find, you are there with me, too, in my thoughts. Yes, it’s true. We talk in my imagination. We talk of imagined worlds.’

  ‘Imagination is the child of desire is it not,’ he says, removing his riding coat and giving it a shake. ‘Rarely does it conjure what is unwanted.’

  With each exchange the pitch of feeling rises. Until it reaches its natural limit. Here, again, is that familiar barrier of fear.

  I turn towards the entrance. He moves to follow and we stand together looking out.

  The wind is coming so hard now that it shears across the water’s surface and shrieks across the cave’s opening.

  ‘I would not want you to think that our bond is strong because I am weak,’ I go on after a time. ‘It is not the result of any frailty of temperament or lack of love or respect for my husband.’

  He replies a little too quickly, ‘We have grown close because the time and the place presses us into a conversation. Surely there can be nothing wrong with that. And there is no sin in an … an alliance. Unless it threatens another pact.’

  ‘The Governor,’ I say. ‘You have seen what a man he is, how deeply he cares for his people, how he is driven by a great cause. B
ut that big heart of his! How can I best put this … He is a very public man. His better energies are external. The inner man is subjugated to the outer. There is not much of him left for the long conversation of heart and head that is a marriage.’

  There is something else more difficult to tell, though perhaps gossip has swept it to his feet.

  ‘I think perhaps you know this already, though neither of us has spoken of it till now. I am the Governor’s second wife. Jane Jarvis, his first, died of a lingering illness in the East. When Macquarie returned home from India on furlough he was looking, I believe, not so much for another woman to love as a companion for his travels. That need was very much alive in him. But I do not believe his love was extinguished by her death. He would have named half the features of the Sydney landscape after her if I had not stayed his hand. If not for my counsel we would have a Jarvis Point, Jarvis Street, and Jarvisfield.’ I take a pause. The words, they do not come easily. ‘He loves me,’ I go on after a time. ‘I have little doubt of it. It is a noble love but it is not —’

  ‘I am sorry to hear,’ he breaks in mercifully. His tone is kindly, though not overly mournful. He is evidently charged by the exchange of confidences, by the intimacy. He lowers his head and takes a few paces towards the rear of the cave. Soon he is engulfed by darkness. After a short while he returns: a shade at first, then a form, and finally, as he steps to within a foot of me, a man. He massages his strong jaw and says slowly, ‘I dare not speak of what binds us, dare not give it a name. I am not sure that I even have a name for it.’

  The next words he addresses to the cave ceiling. ‘The Governor is my friend and ally. I am his. As are you. And yet we are, in some ways, one.’ He breaks off, lowering his head and shaking it slowly back and forward. He remonstrates with himself. ‘This tells you nothing of how I feel …’

  He looks for a place to sit and finds one. He brushes a small skull and some bones from a narrow ledge and offers me a seat. I decline the offer, motioning to my light dress, though in truth I dare not sit beside him.