Mrs. M

by Luke Slattery

  ‘Bungaree.’

  ‘A great, as you English say, character. He told us Sydney was his — his domain. His! Well, King Bungaree would be serving the Governor’s table if La Pérouse had not been so, er …?’

  ‘Tardy. Very close to the French.’

  ‘Tardy,’ he says with a shrug. ‘Tardif. Yes, you are right. Bungaree would not be cooking a big fish over a fire, attended by his queens, as described by my friend Brody. How delightful! No. He would be pressed into service. Enslaved. Shipped away never to be seen by his family again.’

  *

  I have a signed copy of Arago’s Voyage Autour du Monde bearing a scrawled dedication. It reached me on Mull — quite how he knew where to find me after Macquarie’s death I do not know. Ah, but perhaps I do. In any event, it comes with a note to say I am fondly remembered. And there is an invitation to lunch — in Bordeaux.

  In his chapter on Port Jackson, Arago wrote of magnificent hotels; majestic mansions; houses of extraordinary taste and elegance; fountains ornamented with sculptures worthy of the chisel of Europe’s best artists; spacious and airy apartments; rich furniture; horses and carriages of the greatest elegance; and immense storehouses. On and on it went.

  He singled out John Piper’s harbourside mansion and in his recollection extended it by several floors in height and in span until it became a veritable Fontainebleau. He fancied he had been transported to one of Europe’s finest cities, because he wished so fiercely to be home. He smiled at the settlement, and the settlement returned his smile. He was adored in the colony — by me as much as anyone else — for his gay talk and his endless treasury of traveller’s tales. He sought the company of those who found him sophisticated, and in return he attributed sophistication to them.

  I know full well what he did and didn’t witness in Sydney, how he sugared what he saw and what, as he sat in his cabin with his journal on the voyage home, was phrased to give texture to the narrative or balance to a sentence. If Arago had been an historian he would — he confessed this to me himself — have made Antony the victor at Actium in order to spice the tale.

  I find it difficult, even now, to get Arago’s measure. I came to know him well enough in that brief time, and found him delightfully candid, generous and gay. But he was far too liberal, I thought, with his enthusiasms. Arago’s aim was to gain renown as the discoverer of an Antipodean Utopia, and in so doing to finance his next round of travels. But, of course, if he had given the right words to the evil that was afoot — the evil of which Freycinet had warned — it would have seemed no sort of Utopia at all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Overnight there is a change. Before bedtime — Macquarie is already asleep, mouth open — I catch the soft crunch of thunder far away. I open the curtains of the bedchamber as a thick fork of lightning cleaves the night sky to the north. I finish my sad novel by the light of a bedside lamp and, though I remind myself it is only a novel, a mere fancy, it strikes me as such a true falsehood.

  Dawn brings a lid of grey cloud, heavy and unvarying, from the north. The grey-green harbour is dull, flat and lifeless. Around mid-morning the waters are needled with rain, and then the shower, like everything else in this inert monsoonal weather, gives up — exhausted. It is not unpleasant; in fact the syrupy air out of the north is sweetly caressing when it stirs itself into a breeze. But there is little sleep to be had when the breeze drops at night.

  In the summer months we women who have the wardrobe and the help will go through several changes of clothes a day, if only to rid ourselves of the unsightly perspiration stains that attach themselves like limpets to the underarms and the lower back. The men on the chain gangs suffer badly. The pace of work slows. And the skin of every Port Jackson citizen — man and woman, fettered and free — takes on the damp sheen of a tree frog. Ah, the democracy of high summer humidity! Even grey glare does nothing to reduce the risk of sunburn, as I learned in my first year.

  ‘I adore it,’ says Arago as we leave the sloping lawn of Government House. He is fanning himself vigorously with a misshapen grey fedora as I open a floral parasol. His hat once, I can tell, had crisp lines. But that was before it was crumpled in his fist. ‘For me — for one who will never return to this latitude — there is a scent on the air of this place and no other … It tells me that I am far from home. It reminds me of my adventure. One day, when I am old and lame and … aveugle … Comment dit-on?’

  ‘Blind.’

  ‘When I am blind … thank you,’ he tilts his head, ‘I will long for it.’

  ‘You are quite sure that scent on the air is not the kilns, the abattoir, the putrefying mess that clots the Tank Stream?’ I ask. I have become a little arch with this man. It is his charm that provokes me.

  ‘That perhaps,’ he concedes. ‘All that. And the dozen or so species of eucalypt, the tranquil air of the harbour mixed with the breeze that spins the windmills on either side of the Cove.’ He sweeps a hand from Dawes Point to Woolloomooloo. ‘Though I would not call that,’ he raises a finger, ‘cloud. It is more of a false ceiling. I find it hard to believe there is sun, moon and stars beyond it.’

  ‘More like an ocean of rain just waiting to fall.’

  ‘There was some this morning but then’ — he makes a fist and snaps it open — ‘pschew! It is gone.’

  ‘Pschew.’ I purse my lips. ‘The word is foreign to me. Is it French?’

  ‘You are fond of teasing, madam, making fun. Undercutting.’ There is a courtly lengthening of the neck, straightening of the back. ‘I am a Romantic. You must allow … some space.’

  ‘Yes, of course. A Romantic must roam. But truly! You are a Frenchman whose English has more polish than the Governor’s. They will think you a spy.’

  ‘I have been spying on you this morning — that crime I will confess to. The maintenance of that garden, which I believe you undertake yourself — to your great credit — has allowed you to maintain a … a fine robust form. You possess, madam, and I hope you will permit it’ — he leans towards me without breaking stride, lowering his voice — ‘the form of Venus and the wit of Madame de Staël.’

  I beat the air with my fan. ‘I am relieved the likeness is to her mind not her countenance, for she was reputed to be plain.’

  ‘To a woman, ugly perhaps. To a man: jolie-laide. And yet she had more lovers than many a beauty. One for the morning, another the afternoon, and then the evening …’ He gestures breezily.

  I am sure Arago enjoys the sight of my flushed cheeks, for he cannot keep his eyes from me as I stroll beside him beneath my parasol.

  We pause before the low stone fence and turn to look back at Government House. A more humble dwelling than John Piper’s villa at Eliza Point, it surely seems, to our visitor.

  Arago tells how he has spent the early morning wandering the gardens, admiring the harbour. The guards opened the gate and let him enter: they had no orders to do so, but his charm evidently served as a passport to the grounds. He lingered for some time on the wicker chair beneath the canopy of our Norfolk pine. The tree’s shape reminds him, he says, of the Vesuvian ash cloud described by Pliny. There is something about this generation of men. The Architect has it too — the classicising disease.

  ‘Shall we walk?’ Arago extends his right arm.

  I take it. ‘We shall.’

  ‘Excellent. A mariner spends too much time at sea. He is driven here and there by the power of the breeze. He is its servant; it is his. But God made us with legs — not sails. And the muscles of locomotion, they tend to wither without use. I am sure you noticed me at the stirrups — not the most elegant dismount.’

  As we stroll from Government House down the hill to Macquarie Place, I indicate a small public garden, triangular in shape, into which I have set a water fountain; and in the process I detach myself from Arago’s arm. I explain that the Architect’s designs for this park were a trifle extravagant when first conceived, but even in this more modest form — Doric columns supporting an entablature and
frieze — they still give us a fountain such as one might have found in Edinburgh or London.

  ‘Or Paris,’ Arago adds.

  Lending further distinction is an Egyptian obelisk of nicely dressed sandstone, completed but for the inscriptions that will give distances to the main settlements: Parramatta, Botany Bay, Windsor, Pitt Town. It was the Architect who had first suggested this small adornment. Macquarie began by rebuffing him. Privately, though, he was charmed by the idea. It persisted. Eventually Macquarie, without bothering to tell Bathurst in advance, asked for it to be done. And so we have a small pleasure garden near the Cove, facing the fine homes of judges Bent and Field.

  Further to the west, the two main streets of the town join. On the right rises the sober, red-brick male orphan school; on the left the high walls and wooden gates — essential to deter theft in a colony of thieves — of the lumber yard.

  ‘We stand now on the main street — George Street named after the King.’

  ‘The mad king,’ Arago says, casting me a pleading look as if asking permission to mock.

  ‘So it is said,’ I confess in a quiet voice. ‘In the words of a fine young poet: “Old, mad, blind, despised, and dying.”’

  ‘To the right is The Rocks,’ I change the subject. ‘Our … entertainment district. To the left, further up, is the military barrack. At the outer limits of the settlement, along the road to Parramatta after it crosses Brickfield Hill, stands a Gothic tollgate. One of my finest things, even if it has been called a “fugacious toy” by some choleric critic in the Gazette who believes it will not withstand the next winter storm.’

  Ten years have passed since I first strolled out with Brody along this path through the town. There is still much squalor. And crime. And suffering. New South Wales, after all, remains a penal colony. But the town of Sydney has such a pleasing aspect now. It prospers and grows. And its flowering is an argument, by my reckoning, with the age. It speaks a truth: that the lowly, the stunted and the poor will grow tall and strong if conditions are right. Villains are made not born, and they can be unmade. But it is an argument that men such as Lord Liverpool are determined to silence — certainly to ignore. This is, it would seem, the reason for Commissioner Bigge’s impending visit. The conclusion of his inquiry, says the rather unfit Frenchman beside me, is foregone.

  ‘Have we walked enough?’ complains Arago, fanning himself with his fedora.

  ‘A little more. I have yet to show you the finest parts of the town. From the water, on your arrival, you viewed the Gothic keep at Bennelong Point. On the western side of the harbour the fortification is answered by the Dawes Point battery, named Fort Phillip after our first Governor. But further on here’ — I turn around — ‘visible only in glimpses from Government House, rears the castellated stable that you admired yesterday. To the south, a little inland, rises the pinnacled chapel of St James, across from it the three-storey male convict barracks, both of them forming a gateway to the handsome promenade of Hyde Park. All but one of the buildings in that direction — the Rum Hospital — are from designs drawn up by the Architect and myself. His forms have answered the call of my ideas.’ I check myself. ‘Though of course he has ideas of his own.’

  ‘Why the Rum Hospital?’ he asks. ‘For heavy drinkers? If such a principle were adopted in France we would have an Hôpital du Vin in every town. A fine idea.’

  ‘It was the rum trade that financed the construction,’ I explain. ‘But that,’ I screw up my face to conceal my amusement, ‘I think you already know.’

  ‘I have spent only a few days in the colony and already I have heard of the Architect’s convalescence in that hospital,’ Arago says with a sympathetic smile and a softness in his round eyes. ‘I have heard, too, of the assault that sent him there. I would have thought a society such as this needed its architects living, not dead.’

  I take a breath. ‘He did nothing.’ I feel a jolt of anger and my heart kicks mulishly at my ribs. ‘Nothing to bring it on.’

  A surge of memory. In an instant I am inundated. I tell myself there is no need for guilt, or shame. I raise my chin and give my parasol a merry twirl to mask my feelings.

  ‘Come now, Mrs Macquarie. That’s more like it. Cheer up. The story endears your architect enormously to us. We think his — your — achievement extraordinary. Rose Freycinet thinks him a hero for even provoking the man — Sanderson was it? To endure such vicious abuse! To then take the man to court in a garrison town! To brave the “barren fields” of justice — yes, we have had some sport with that ourselves!’

  I offer the kindly Arago a smile of gratitude.

  I had wondered about the balance of things between such strong personalities: Freycinet and Rose, and Arago as well. All three were recording their impressions with an eye to publication. ‘Is it true,’ I ask, ‘that not one but three books about the voyage of the Uranie will contend for the attention of the French public?’

  ‘It is a surprise to even me,’ he says, raising both hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘I, at least, announced my ambitions beforehand. I draw and I write. Draw and write. And talk. I do little else — it is my work. And yet Madame Freycinet passes me on the deck as we approach Rio de Janeiro and pretends that I am a novice who comes late to the business of drawing and writing. Moi!’

  A theatrical sigh, a pause, and he goes on sourly. ‘She tells me she is putting down her own impressions. Freycinet too. I did not believe when I agreed to accompany him that I would be so long aboard a ship of scribes.’

  ‘It seems,’ I put in, ‘that where we English send out men with muskets, you French arm your corvettes with quills.’

  ‘C’est ça,’ he says wearily, his fedora crumpled in his fist. ‘C’est vraiment ça.’

  Later that evening a rider comes to the house with a gift from Arago in a clean white satchel: a sketch that he has had made of Bungaree in three-quarter profile, needing only a frame to make a perfect souvenir, and a good Rhône wine, ‘to be enjoyed immediately,’ insists the inscription. It is signed by Arago, ‘With gratitude.’

  We Scots take some pride in our filial bond with the French, even if there are times we would like to disown it. We are raised on the memory of the beautiful Mary, ripened to brilliant womanhood at the court of the French king, and cut down by an English queen.

  Macquarie takes the bottle as one cradles an infant, lovingly. Passing his hand over the heraldic crest embossed on the bottle, he asks, ‘Shall we drink it now?’ He answers his own question. ‘We shall.’

  The only sound sweeter than a cork released from its prison of green glass, I think at times like this, is the release of wine from the neck and the slow liquid pulse as it empties: pleasure taken in advance.

  On this last contented, uncomplicated night the moon is near full. Its brilliance is tempered by cloud, which has broken up a little on the evening breeze. And the cloud itself, backlit by the moon, is dappled with an eerie luminescence.

  Just outside the Heads is a strange unknown ship. Many, later, claimed to have seen it that night: the pilots, a few fisherman, and Bungaree himself. Some say that ghostly barque, rising and falling over the light swell but never moving, looked for all the world like a dead bird — long dead — on a funeral bier.

  The next morning Bigge delays his entry to the harbour by several hours. Rowers from his three-master come ashore at dawn with official news of his commission and, in addition, a request for a thirteen-gun salute. Pleading a shortage of powder, Macquarie instructs the garrison at Dawes Point to fire just four.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  He possessed an honest face — round, ruddy and open — disarmingly at odds with his nature. And on reflection he behaved truly, though at the same time viciously: a rather paradoxical thing. For is not fidelity a virtue? It is a fact, however, that the service he rendered to the King was repugnant to me. And for Macquarie, it was catastrophic.

  Even at such a distance from his sources of power, Bigge was skilled in its use: a true Machiavel. He
moved through the colony like a character acting out a part in a plot already written for him — and scripted most adroitly — rather than a man like any other struggling to craft the mess of life to his designs.

  Freycinet, on account of his previous acquaintance with both the colony and Bigge, had, I think, his measure. If the two had been in one another’s company for very much longer there might have been a resumption of Anglo–French hostilities in this far corner of the globe.

  The Commissioner wasted merely a day, not even that, before seeking allies of his own disposition. Then again perhaps it was they, given advance notice from Whitehall — a courtesy denied the Governor and me — who sought him out. He was soon to be seen riding a black Arab stallion, the finest mount in the colony. It was the property of John Macarthur, the wealthiest, most wilful and cunning of the propertied classes.

  Trim and athletic, Bigge was nevertheless — yes, Freycinet had been right — very small. He stood perhaps a head shorter than me, making him five foot four or, to be generous, five; and seemed a mere hand puppet beside Macquarie. Impeccably dressed, he swept his thinning hair forward. The fashion, I believe, was inspired by busts of Tiberius. How contradictory is this age of ours. Blenkinsop invents the steam locomotive, and a Roman emperor inspires a new coif.

  The Governor had been summoned to meet the Commissioner — a rude reversal of roles and already an inauspicious one — aboard his ship the Cerebus. Macquarie never spoke of it. Events sped us forward too quickly. But it must have pained him greatly to be rowed out to his judge and jury, his inquisitor, in full view of the settlement.

  As no suitable quarters were immediately available to Bigge, there was nothing for it but to acquiesce to his demands. It took the better part of a day to prise Barron Field from his fine sandstone terrace overlooking the obelisk and fountain, and to relocate him to an apartment on the second storey of the castellated stable. If not for its excellent view of Farm Cove, the harbour and the Domain, I doubt he would have complied. With this accomplished, Bigge came ashore like a conquering hero. Once installed in the Chief Justice’s terrace he set about provisioning his home as if he meant to stay for an age, ordering enough soap to necessitate an urgent shipment. The final touch was a permanent military guard at the door, for reasons of personal security: a dramatic splash of scarlet. ‘Is it not, after all, a city of scoundrels, papists and desperadoes,’ he was overheard to declare by way of explanation. ‘And am I not the declared enemy of that scum?’