I return to my violoncello. I play all afternoon; I play till I am no longer able to. I play so that I might lose myself in those celestial harmonies and so guard myself from the fears and the doubts that begin to gather and thicken as Macquarie draws near. Brody’s story alerts me to my own blindness — and to the danger bearing down on me. Is that why he told it?
I cannot count the times I have dreamed of realities other than the one I lived that afternoon. I close my eyes even now and I am there. I am on that table, like a farm girl in a haystack. Not yielding and passive, but braced by my elbows, arms at a tilt, ready.
The Architect, normally a man of many words, is intent and withdrawn.
He is in such haste to take me that he does not even bother to unlace my bodice — that comes later.
With the two of us straining as one for air, he reaches for my breasts. He grows strong. Yes. This now. I am near losing myself to pleasure. So near. I pull him deeper. And I hold him. Hold him there.
PART THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I watch as the world remakes itself around me. The century has barely begun and already it pulses fast and strong with trade, industry and invention. The telegraph devised by the brothers Chappe, and by all accounts used to great effect in the Revolutionary War, will within twenty years — I am quite certain of it — have spread across the land. I expect before my lease on this Earth is expired to send a message from Oban to London without the application of ink to paper and wax to envelope. How quickly things change!
In that colony, far away though not so long ago, signals were sent by a flag run up a staff. Arthur Phillip understood that a flagstaff was needed at South Head to communicate with ships and relay signals — the arrival of a transport or a Baltimore clipper, a ship in distress or one with hostile intent — to the settlement. The first settlers sent a work gang to clear a road to South Head by following an old native path. They were ordered to raze every last wind-bent tree on the promontory so that the signals sent from the place they named Lookout Post could be seen from Windmill Hill. In their wake smaller gangs were sent to keep up the war against Nature. Every few months they returned to shear any renewed growth to ankle height. Even today, the bluff on which the lighthouse stands, save for two lozenges of ornamental lawn, is as bare as Bungaree’s tribe.
The French desired a foothold in New Holland. And Spain, fearing British designs on her prized possessions — the Philippines and Chile — also cast an anxious eye in our direction. She was believed, on the report of an English agent who had risen to a position of considerable rank within the Palacio Real, to have planned a strike on Port Jackson using a new form of incendiary cannon that would reduce the settlement to cinders. But it was the French with whom we danced that spring of 1819.
*
On a gusty afternoon I ask that I be allowed to visit the Architect. Macquarie acquiesces, though he insists that Brody ride with me. It is a delicate game we play. My husband cannot bring himself to concede that the Architect has been exiled in the hope that the bond between us can be broken, or at least weakened. So there are no more meetings at the stone chair, atop an unroofed building, in the Domain or on the verandah. But I am permitted to visit on urgent matters related to the building program in which we — all three of us — are invested. That afternoon I leave with a folio of sketches under my arm. As always, I am accompanied by my chaperone.
We tether the horses at the fence below the lighthouse and approach the long verandah extending between two domed pavilions on either side of the central tower. I knock on the left of two doors. There is silence but for the battering of the wind. Brody steps forward, rapping more assertively with the points of his knuckles. Still there is no answer.
We crab our way up the rise and around to the front, leaning into the wind as we go. Before us is a powerful view of a heaving sunlit sea. Brody’s thick black hair spins about his crown. I tie the ribbons of my bonnet. There, with a spyglass affixed so firmly to his right eye that it looks to have been speared, is the Architect. Something out in the rolling swell, beyond the orderly rank of breakers, has him transfixed. He stands shoeless, coatless, a white shirt flying this way and that in the gale — like a crazed invalid. I can make out that serpentine scar on his forearm: still red, angry and raised. The ocean roars. Sheets of ragged surf and spray erupt from the rocks below. Atop the tower a rusty weather vane creaks and spins. A window slams against its frame.
The Architect turns around, motions busily for us to come to him. He runs his hand through his unruly hair and offers me the spyglass. There is no welcome; no thanks to us for making the journey; no sign, save a quick empty glance, of our previous intimacy. I am hurt. I prepare a rebuke. But as I step up beside him I see.
There, square sails puffed out like the cheeks of a mythical zephyr, is a French corvette flying a frayed Tricolour. She has a stiff nor’easter behind her.
‘The French,’ booms the Architect over the roaring surf.
I hand the glass to Brody.
‘She comes in quickly. It is remarkable.’ The ensign’s face is consumed by a grin. ‘Why, I wonder, does the captain not heave to and await the pilot? If there were to be a sudden change in the wind direction …’
‘The reef. He could be blown onto the Sow and Pigs,’ chimes the Architect.
The French captain pays no heed to the harbour’s hidden dangers and its fickle winds. On comes his jaunty three-master, sails plumped with that bustling nor’easter behind her.
‘This Frenchman,’ says Brody, turning on the spot as the visitor threads through the Heads. ‘I would like to meet him.’
He hands the spyglass to me again. I observe men running the length of the deck. The sails begin to slacken. ‘I think she means to slow,’ I say. ‘Just a little.’
The ensign turns towards the lighthouse with an agitated look. ‘Apologies,’ he says as he makes to leave. ‘I must return to the settlement, and quickly.’ There is nothing for it but to follow. I turn to the Architect with a feeble gesture — a splay of the hands. But he has already returned his attention to the ship.
The ensign and I leave for the Cove. As soon as we reach the guardhouse we part company. He descends to the town by foot as I stride alone up the path. When he returns later that afternoon I am at the pianoforte in the wood-panelled study, playing a few phrases repeatedly but quite unable to concentrate.
‘The town is abuzz,’ Brody says as he enters the study unannounced. ‘Where to start?’ He reports that the corvette is named Uranie, and she swept in so quickly that the garrison at the new fort was alarmed at the sudden appearance of French colours. The twenty-four-pounders were loaded; the twelve-pounders too. The artillery crew stood ready for orders. The entire garrison was mobilised. The soldiers set out for the shoreline in loose formation, muskets raised, bayonets fixed. ‘There was much excitement,’ says Brody. ‘Your husband is at the garrison now. I should add that the Architect is pilloried for his failure to raise a signal.’
‘As if the man’s name could be further blackened among the soldiery,’ I say, pacing the room. ‘I shall explain to anyone who will listen that the blame should be apportioned three ways. We are all equally at fault.’
‘A catastrophe was averted,’ he goes on, ‘when the French captain lowered his colours, fearing that so isolated a colony might have become overly nervous of intruders, despite a year of peace between us. What an immense relief that was!’
‘Brody,’ I chide. ‘By my reckoning you have just narrowly escaped an early grave, riding so hard to a garrison aroused from its stupor and preparing to go to war. You could have been clipped by a nervous marine or, more likely, an inebriated one. How curiously events run — if the French had meant to do us harm their Tricolour might be flying from Fort Phillip now. I fancy they would have allies in this place.’
‘Monsieur Brody,’ he says in his best approximation of a French accent, mouth puckered like a vaudeville performer.
I motion towards a
chair. He accepts the offer. But no sooner is he seated than he is up again.
‘They are such a contrast to us, the French,’ he continues. ‘If I were to spit at Dover it would almost carry to Calais on a high following wind. The French and English languages have borrowed from one another, the royal houses too. But the people seem as foreign to us as, say, the Cantonese. There are French sailors camped at Dawes Point — the Governor requested some separation between the Uranie and the merchant vessels at Cockle Bay — and they are speaking Latin to the ruffians of The Rocks.’
Brody delivers an exemplary report — nothing is missed. He goes so far as to surmise why the French captain, Freycinet, made such show of his arrival. It seems that he was with the expedition commanded by Nicolas Baudin in 1802; the subtly coloured jellyfish painted by one of the French artists on that voyage still hangs in the office. The French must have had their own reasons for recalling that expedition, but in the colony Baudin is chiefly remembered for his encounter with Matthew Flinders on the Investigator, the two explorers colliding along a stretch of barren and unknown coast, as gentlemen might do when taking an afternoon stroll.
Brody returns to the seat offered to him, though he sits like a patron of the theatre with a front-row seat for a tragedy, bent forward, arms crossed. ‘Freycinet is a fine mariner and seems to know the coast well,’ he continues. ‘Knows our own waterway well. Consulted his own charts and saw no reason to bother the pilot. This, in any event, is the talk.’
Up once again he springs. ‘Ah,’ he says, snaring an afterthought. ‘And here is the best of it. Freycinet has brought his wife, Rose, on the journey, had her stowed aboard, secreted away in a cabin fashioned by shipyard carpenters under his instructions. Her hair was cropped short like a deck hand, and she came aboard dressed as one. All of it against instructions from the French court. Why, his Rose is said to move about the ship as if she belongs at sea, much to the displeasure of some old salts. Her hair is now grown, of course. John Piper, who was the first to greet them on behalf of the Crown, says there is a great stillness in her black eyes, a great deal of life in her bow-shaped mouth, and that all in all she is an enticing beauty.’
We strive to divert ourselves with all available means from our true situation — as a mere offcast of European society affixed to an unknowable vastness at the world’s end. But we are in some way merely biding time. Waiting. Novelty and excitement come from the sea. And so it is with the arrival of Freycinet and his Rose.
Of course, I sense a rival for the attentions of the men whose company is worth keeping. There are so few pretty women in the town. Well, there are beauties — but scarcely any of virtue. The settlement, on the other hand, is rent by rivalries. I resolve at once that our French guests will not be the cause of further division. If Rose Freycinet is keen for friendship, well, I am for it too.
Brody is standing with his hands behind his back, his breathing a little shallow, a look of exhaustion on his young face with its cherubic dimples. I have seen him dismount after a six-mile gallop over rough terrain but I have never seen him look so weary, and at the same time so exultant.
‘It seems the French captain is no different to an Englishman,’ I remark, ‘except that he is more knowledgeable in the ways of the world. A man should never leave a young wife at home when setting out on a long voyage, if it can be helped. Who in his right mind would leave behind such a Rose to be picked by another? And if she is all for the adventure — why not? Besides, this Freycinet is a bold enough seaman to hold no fears for his command.’
The ensign has been staring absently out the window with the irregular panes.
‘You have not been listening this past minute, Brody. I have been saying’ — he snaps to attention — ‘that the French in my view are not so very different from us. Not, at least, intellectually. Morally, though? Perhaps. Our Church is very bleak. The French I think are … more like the Irish in their attachment to pleasure. But how much of the Irish gaiety is drink?’
‘I wouldn’t rightly know, ma’am, though of course I am Irish as you know. Try as I may, I can remember few pleasures from a childhood in Connemara.’
Brody shoulders so much responsibility that I sometimes forget his youth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
As light fades, I summon the Governor’s trap and make my way, uninvited, to the military barrack. I sense a foreign presence in the streets and alleys. It is as if there has been a shift in the town’s geometry; something is out of place, subtly altered. Despite the gathering dusk there are more people out than usual, and the townsfolk are better dressed — as if for show. Where has this colour come from? Where has it been? I detect a current of excitement, and what seems to be a suspension of normal labour. There has been drinking on the streets, a thing normally forbidden by Macquarie till after dark.
A small function is underway at the regimental headquarters, a two-storey sandstone building with large windows, described by the Architect as Palladian. These are always spotlessly clean, thanks to the convict labour expended on their maintenance.
Macquarie turns sharply when my name is announced at the door. Resplendent in regimental dress, as I’d expected, he stands directly beneath a magnificent chandelier, a glass of claret in his hand and a flush to his cheeks.
‘Elizabeth,’ he says. ‘I thought you would be gardening, or reading, or sketching out a new adornment for the town.’ He turns beaming to a ruck of soldiers, as if anticipating their affectionate laughter.
The Governor moves off hastily to fetch la fameuse Rose. Justly famous, I have to concede. She has long, heavy black hair, a small triangular chin, shapely lips glossed blood red, and an equatorial tint much too deep for the salons of the Palais Royal.
‘Mrs Freycinet,’ says Macquarie, inclining a little towards the newcomer. ‘My wife, Elizabeth.’
She reaches out and looks searchingly into my eyes. Without returning her gaze directly I reach for her hand. She rests hers in mine. I am unnerved to find it is like shaking a paw. It is still gloved.
‘My wife,’ Macquarie goes on, ‘says she has been reading a French novel about a princess.’
‘La Princesse de Clèves,’ I say. ‘The most sober love story I have ever encountered.’
Rose Freycinet gives a little pucker of surprise. ‘En France toutes les ecolières …’ She pauses, a little frustrated with herself. ‘In France,’ she goes on in strongly accented and quite deliberate English, ‘this is the novel all schoolgirls — you say schoolgirls? — must read.’
Her speech may be stilted but her movements are languid and assured. Her hands move about freely, rattling her many-hued bracelets. A dress of aubergine-coloured silk divided by a ladder of pearly buttons hugs her hips, and from her long neck hangs a silver chain with an inscribed gold pendant resting on the swell above her neckline. She has a gypsy look. If I were to place a wager on her deep ancestry, I would say … Catalan. Or Sicilian.
The French captain detaches himself from a group — a mingling of some of his men and some of ours — to join us. His pepper-and-salt hair is short, fashionably pushed forward, and clipped to reveal the ears. His eyes are dark, cheekbones high.
‘A great pleasure,’ he enthuses in more fluent English than his wife’s. His full, cherry red lips are rather self-consciously mobile, as if newly acquired. ‘We have been marvelling, all of us, at the fine city you have managed to build. And from such poor beginnings! It was not much to look at when I first saw it almost twenty years ago. But it will very soon, I’m sure, become a fine European city. My draughtsman, Arago, asked as we took in the sights of the harbour if our best architects had not committed crimes in London and come to the colony as’ — he stirs the air with his hands — ‘convicts.’
‘Mais vous nous flattez, monsieur,’ I say. With this little flourish of my schoolgirl French, the Captain seems unsure whether to use his mother tongue, or the language of his hosts, and so he uses both.
‘Pas du tout,’ he demurs with a half step
towards me. ‘We are quite envious. It could have all’ — he spreads an arm — ‘been ours. If Bougainville had been able to penetrate the Grande Barrière de Corail he would have beaten Cook to the trophy et voilà, I might have one day welcomed you to these shores! If La Pérouse had sailed to Botany Bay avec plus de vitesse he would have arrived before your first fleet and pfff!’ — he opens his hands as though releasing a dove from his grasp — ‘Qui sait ce qui … Who knows what could have happened?’ He steps back, with an expression of mild chagrin.
‘Our architect,’ the Governor says in a tone of forced bonhomie, ‘has a fresh idea for a new building every hour. It is not your architects we need, it’s your idle hands to quarry, carry and dress the stone.’
A fellow officer joins Macquarie, apologising profusely yet demanding his attention. They move off together.
‘So you are not concerned then, about the Commissioner?’ Freycinet inquires. He adopts a conspiratorial tone. Rose, wearing a fixed smile, watches on.
‘The Commissioner?’
‘Bah! Of course. You have not been told. It’s as I thought.’ He turns to his wife with a troubled expression, drops his shoulders and head an inch or two, flaps a hand excitedly to bring her closer in, addressing her as she comes near in rapid French.
She takes my arm and we move, the three of us, towards the corner of the room. Several sets of inquisitive eyes follow us. A finger is pointed from the midst of a group of soldiers and a waiter follows bearing glasses of wine and punch.
Freycinet and I each take a glass of wine and Rose, removing her gloves, chooses the punch.
She takes a sip and her eyelids flutter. ‘This ponch.’ She shakes her head. ‘It is very strong.’
‘Regimental strength,’ I say. ‘Mostly rum and gin. A touch of fruit juice to make it respectable.’
We pause beside the large window and gaze onto a darkening view of the garrison’s barren parade ground. I catch the highlights of our reflection in the glass. ‘We encountered him in Rio de Janeiro,’ offers the French captain. ‘Not in person, of course. But we, or rather Rose, discovered through some of our agents, that he comes to Port Jackson with a commission to inquire into the workings of the colony. I should warn you — it is not a friendly commission.’
Mrs. M Page 18
