Mrs. M

by Luke Slattery

  ‘It is best that I talk around the subject,’ he says, one hand inscribing a circle in the air. ‘I studied no philosophy at school; a little Latin, no Greek. But from a book of myths I was given by a wealthy client I learned a tale the ancients told themselves about the origins of love. It begins in a world inhabited by gods and spirits but no men, and no women. On the face of the Earth lived our ancestors: spherical beings with four hands, four legs and two identical faces on opposite sides.’

  He is much happier now, I notice, addressing the subject aslant. He cannot say what he wants to say, so he will have it said for him.

  ‘These ancestral creatures were clever fellows, highly skilled in warfare. They could fight with swords in both hands while defending with two shields.’ He makes a little pantomime, slashing with one hand, parrying with the other. ‘Only the centaur could match them for speed across the ground. They grew bold. And in time they came to challenge the immortals themselves. The twelve Olympians resolved to have them lured by a trick of Athena’s, captured by golden nets tossed from the heavens, and one by one cloven in two. Apollo the healer purified their wounds, forging them into the shape we possess today. And that is the origin of desire guiding us towards the person from whom we have been separated, healing the split in our nature.’

  ‘So how then,’ I inquire, ‘do we recognise our perfect lost half when we see him?’

  ‘I believe he will build a seat for you, a seat of stone. Each time you sit upon it you will recall a bridge over a sweet stream. You will feel yourself reunited with your past. And you will long to be united with him. Even if,’ and here his voice falters, ‘it is impossible.’

  I take a step towards him. I reach out. I take his hand. And then his forearm. Slowly, very slowly, I unbutton the sleeve, folding it back on itself. I search out the serpentine scar.

  ‘With the very first lash of the whip I raised this hand to defend myself.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ I put two fingers to my lips and lower my head over the scar. I trace the taut raised surface with the other index finger. Gently. Gently.

  And when I raise my eyes to his again, the Architect’s gaze is very wide and very still.

  *

  The storm is less than half an hour spent when Brody comes for me on his bay Arab. He drops lightly to his feet and helps me into the stirrups and saddle, offering to walk back himself. Tree limbs, branches and leaves are strewn everywhere. The harbour waters have muddied. I tell him where to find the grey mare I had taken out — terrified, no doubt, in the stone stables.

  Macquarie is pacing the verandah when I ride up to the house. He strides stiffly towards me, shirt damp beneath the arms and neck, as I pass the reins to a stable boy.

  ‘Elizabeth! Where in God’s name have you been?’

  Later that day I feel compelled to disclose the secret of the old cave if only so that he grasps how I had endured the storm in safety and returned without a soaking. I am chastised nevertheless, my husband charging me with a ‘passion for seclusion’. He is right. I cannot deny it. I have begun to retreat from the troubles of this small world to my own sanctuary: my stone chair at the edge of the harbour. To retreat there — with my secrets.

  I have come to understand how a marriage, so outwardly solid, can wither over time from within. I liken it to a citadel that might resist any number of siege engines and enemy stratagems yet capitulate within the space of a month if deprived of water and sustenance. And how I yearned for the sustenance that only he, in that small world of exiles, soldiers and adventurers, could offer.

  The subjects upon which the Architect conversed were those on which I had an answering interest — the very same. He was cultivated, impassioned; his wit replied to mine, his expressive eyes also. I could ask him to explain the origins of the Ionic order and he would decant his knowledge of its origins. His particular passion was design that would take from Nature — and outdo her. Mine ran rather more to Nature invested with art. He revered stone, which he could chisel and carve; I loved branch, flower and leaf, which I could train into grove, garden bed and bower.

  I was warmed by his attentions — excited. And how I craved excitement.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  At Macquarie’s insistence, the Architect is to take up residence at the lighthouse. I bring a glass of warm milk in preparation for bed and as I set it down on the bureau I offer a mild protest. I am careful not to press the point. But the Governor will brook no opposition.

  ‘The lighthouse tower is a splendid monument at this point in time but that, sadly, is all it is,’ he says icily from the high-backed seat behind his bureau. ‘The detachment that was intended to man it — one officer and twelve men — has been dispatched to the countryside where they are sorely needed.’ He pushes aside an official dispatch and an inkwell, stands his quill in its holder, and eases back into his chair.

  ‘The lighthouse battery has been abandoned,’ he goes on. ‘Four cannon stand at its base, pointing vainly out to sea. But every last man has been sent to the countryside to quell the native disturbances; our sights are all trained inwards. The store room holds shot and powder, but there are no gunners to load a muzzle and light a fuse. There is nothing to be done about that for the present, as much as it irks me. But at least the edifice could be inhabited in order that it might serve as a beacon. There is no real work involved at present, though he will have to man the flagstaff.’

  ‘I once knew a lighthouse keeper — for that is what you would have him become — who would beg to differ. It is lonely work.’

  ‘You are not forbidden from visiting,’ he says a little sourly, ‘though you may find over time that there are fewer reasons to visit. Brody, on the other hand, will ride out from Government House with regular correspondence. And for fellowship there are dwellings at Camp Cove. It is a splendid fishery. The fishermen have sons and all owe favours to the Governor who has set them up there so that they may make their fortunes. Indeed, the fishermen never so much as venture out to sea.’

  ‘He will have the company of fishermen and he will discuss … what precisely? Nets, lines and bait? Tides and currents? Can you imagine how lonely his nights will be?’

  But I have blundered. A man whose favourite book is Walton’s Angler will never be convinced of the fruitlessness of fishing tales. And with my grousing and my advocacy, I have laid myself bare.

  He shoots back, ‘I do not concern myself with his nights and how wisely or well they are spent. And nor should you!’

  ‘I only mean to …’

  ‘And consider,’ he goes on, lacing his fingers together and cradling them behind his head. ‘It will be a service to the colony. If the Government architect were to move there with his papers and pens and books and sketches, he would have nothing to restrain his dreams — his imagination. If there is a site to visit, I will call for him. In the meantime Captain Gill, our very capable engineer, will be charged with the business of construction. Gill informs me, in any event, that the Architect is wont to attend a site two days a week and then not at all for a month. His talents would be better deployed, it has for some time seemed to me, more in the conception than the realisation. If he could only give me ten more designs from the tranquillity of the lighthouse at South Head. Leave the execution to others.’

  It was, of course, a form of banishment.

  With a distance of some seven miles between us we resolved to correspond. It was a virtue fashioned from necessity. I believe that we set out instinctively to save one another from oblivion. Each missive was a hand extended across that queer landscape of wild bush and wind-battered scrub.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The Architect leaves the Cove on a bullock-drawn dray laden with furniture, his tools of trade and his few reference books. Most certainly his worn leather-bound copy of Palladio goes with him.

  Barely a week later I write him with a sensation. It is already the talk of Sydney Town, but of course in his exile talk will reach him slowly, if it reaches him at a
ll.

  The first road across the Blue Mountains to the interior has been completed with thirty convict labourers. A rider has returned to Port Jackson, unheralded and unaccompanied, with the news. A bedraggled figure with a long ginger beard and a somewhat vulpine smile, he rides straight to Government House to inform us that the grand undertaking is complete. Jenkins is his name. He is an overseer of the work gang, having graduated from the ranks of the common felonry.

  No inquiry is made as to the nature of his former crime — that would seem small-minded in the circumstances. And he is naturally disinclined to tell. A tall man, and stooped, he has the fiery look of Ezekiel who has come among the exiles to tell of the Temple. He is given a square meal in the kitchen by Mrs Ovens, which he devours, mopping every last trace of gravy with a half-loaf of bread. ‘The plate was spotless,’ reports our cook. ‘And the noise! The man eats like a savage.’

  Hawkins leads him, a little unsteady on his feet, to one of the spare servants’ bedchambers. He sleeps the sleep of the dead as the grinding light of the afternoon softens into a mauve twilight.

  Before nightfall Macquarie gives instructions to Miss Ringold that some coin be given him in a small purse of kangaroo hide. I cannot resist watching from the far end of the corridor. She opens the door nervously, as if feeding a morsel to a lion. A great blast of a snore propels her out. She returns to his chamber soon after with a tray bearing an entire tart of plum, a shaving apparatus, hot water and a mirror. As she emerges she notices me at my end of the corridor. I raise my shoulders questioningly and she shakes her head to indicate that the man is still insensible.

  Early next morning the door to his chamber is discovered open, and the herald has vanished. Miss Ringold wakes us with the news. ‘He has eaten the entire tart,’ she says, clasping her stomach and puffing out her cheeks. ‘The money has gone, and so is the blade.’ I go to check. Jenkins’ ginger whiskers are evidently still attached to his chin, for there is no sign of them about the basin.

  Macquarie has the town searched. But Jenkins is nowhere to be found. Around midday inquiries at the turnpike reveal that he has purchased a Baker Rifle, cartridges and powder with Macquarie’s gift of coin. He was last seen riding at a gallop from the turnpike, heading west in a cloud of red dust.

  Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth discovered the first passage over that formidable mountain barrier, and any citizen with horse and carriage and the stamina for such a journey will now be able to cross it. What riches might lie beyond? Jenkins must have seen something, when standing on those blue crags bathed in the setting sun, to excite him. And here lies the great difficulty with the colony’s present path of expansion. The wealth of the land is a gift and a curse. I imagine Jenkins propped up on his verandah with the rifle purchased from Government money, taking aim at any man or woman, white or black, unlucky enough to venture unawares into his sights. There is his Temple — his Promised Land.

  No sooner have Macquarie and Howe drafted an announcement of the news than plans are put in place for an official journey on the new westward pass.

  I write to the Architect:

  I will insist that you be invited, as in former times, for your civic imagination — if that gift is not so severely taxed by your labours in the Governor’s service that its powers have waned. And then there is your unequalled company, the absence of which I sense acutely even now. Even if my request is denied and you are compelled to remain behind — enslaved to your paper and your instruments — can you not envisage, my Dear Friend, how quickly the settlement will grow? Within a year townships will line the route and the demand for your services will double — triple. The settlements will require churches, schools, bell towers. You may yet make your fortune in the colony! And if by chance my request to the Governor is favourably received, tell me you will come on the journey west, like a faithful knight, for my sake alone.

  And here is something interesting! I believe you will have a view on it. We are told that the natives on the rich plains beyond the mountains greatly fear a deity of thunder and power enthroned upon the highest peak. The spears their sky spirit hurls are lightning bolts; his rage stirs the storms from their mountain haunts; flood is an instrument of his displeasure. Is there not something familiar to us in his wrath — in his weapons of anger? We look down on these people because they have not, like us, built upon the land or imposed permanent settlement upon it. Instead they roam its surface. And yet if we would only consider their stories we might perceive how much like our esteemed ancestors they truly are. We might recognise ourselves in them; they in us. They have many refinements, these people, even if a taste for elegant living is not one of them.

  It is a kind of possession — this capacity of theirs for myth — is it not? I doubt that a British court or a parliament would accept that the native people, long domiciled in a place, inhabiting it with stories, have earned the right to live out their days unopposed by us. But that is only because the courts are ours, the parliament too.

  It is a week before I have word from him. Brody delivers a large envelope. Inside is a sketch of Sydney viewed from atop the lighthouse tower. It is a fine and spacious panorama quite oblivious to the beastliness of some of the town’s inhabitants and the ruinous state of the worst parts, sensitive only to the growing town in its folds of forest and water, its windmills and rising edifices. He thanks me for my letter, inquires after our health, expresses his hope that he be allowed to join the first party across the mountains. These are polite preliminaries; the kind of throat-clearing gestures made by an orator before speaking. He has a theme, and he is warming to it:

  The convicts on that road gang will be commended for their sweat and their strength and their forbearance. I await my copy of the Gazette bearing the official proclamation. The Governor promised the convict labourers their freedom should they accomplish the goal. And they have earned it many times over.

  If I had Howe’s ear — not even a bellow from atop the lighthouse tower would reach it in my present circumstances — I would expand on this theme. I would sit with my good friend the publisher and ask him to recall that the convicts, from the time they first arrived at Jackson, have fashioned the colony in its many aspects. It would be nothing without their gifts. Where would Sydney town be without Howe himself? It would be a dull old place without Robinson. Lycett’s pictures ornament it. Where would it be without the crafts of carpenters and joiners and the things of beauty and utility they fashion from red cedar, stringy-bark and blackbutt. We are more than muscle and bone!

  I would go further still. Are not the convicts on the whole a more ingenious class than their masters? Contrast the mental energy of a titled man, who inherits a large fortune and considerable land, with the precocious enterprise of the more canny thieves! Consider the clipper, removing slivers of gold and silver from good coin, restoring the coin with a file before returning it to circulation; clip enough coin and there is gold dust sufficient to purchase a small tavern! There is a certain class of crime, I am convinced, that is merely misgoverned talent.

  The Governor would surely share my sentiments, even though it might be considered impolitic to ventilate them.

  If you could please convey these thoughts to Howe himself, Elizabeth, I would be most grateful. I exhort him to incorporate into his article some of these reflections — perhaps tempered and put into his vastly more subtle phrases. He may, on the other hand, wish to commission an article from me. I am known in the colony. I have a point of view. If not an article — a letter for publication? It is a worthy subject, and one that demands a hand worthy of it.

  Postscript: I forgive the Governor for this punishment by exile, knowing full well the cause of it is his anxiety about our friendship. In truth the seclusion benefits me. I work well in the daylight hours; you have the results before you. But the evening wind howls monstrously and I am alone.

  In my reply I write:

  I have just endured a dinner with the Governor, the dyspeptic Reverend Samuel Marsden, the v
ery superior Barron Field, and the merchant Robert Campbell. There was much talk, and all of it of the opportunities for making a fortune out of land taken, in effect, from the natives. Field will not speak of the literature he is reputed to collect because, he says, there is no one in the colony who shares his interests. It never seems to occur to him that I might. So vexing! Property is the colony’s great obsession. And it is such a tedious mania.

  I miss the Architect’s talk about those things that bind the past to the present and the present to the future, and how they are preserved in the Grecian style — or the Gothic — or that most exceptional thing of all: a genius able to breathe the great legacy of the past into something entirely new.

  There is nothing from him for two days and then:

  Dear Elizabeth,

  You once asked me to describe the building I would most desire to erect in this land. I am preparing an answer in the form of an image not of one building but many. In the meantime, I feel I must ask you: where is the place you would most desire to be if not here?

  I reply that I do not dream of places unknown to me; only those that are known and longed for. I dream of my birthplace, of its great uplands and its waterways. I catch a stirring rhythm in that bare, mountainous landscape that can only have been produced by some mighty convulsion of Nature long ago. Of that mysterious force I was, am, and ever will be in awe.

  The very next day:

  I know Rome’s wonders only from the views sketched by others, and from Nolli’s plan of the Eternal City. I pray that once, once before I die, fate will permit me to walk within the Temple of Vesta, the Baths of Caracalla, the Pantheon and the theatre of Maecenas, to walk the cobbled streets, shelter beneath a vault, stand for an age in the antique squares and contemplate the passage of time not with a poet’s mind — I am no Shelley — but a builder’s. By training I know — or think I do — much of what that great city means. It was not made by a single pagan emperor, any single cardinal or pope; it honours many deities, not one. It is a record of survival, long stability, and hope. But I know nothing of how it might feel to stand in the aged yet timeless city.