by Meg Keneally
‘Ah, you must never do that, Mr Monsarrat,’ said Mrs Mulrooney. ‘I’m afraid I do have some bad news for you, however. She took no tea, and that which is in the pot is the last of the chamomile infusion she favours. I’d as soon keep it, and warm it on the stove before I go up again. So I’m afraid your own tea will have to wait, perhaps all day. I am sorry.’
‘While life is made bearable by your tea, I am more than happy to sacrifice a day’s worth for the continuing health of Mrs Shelborne. Congratulations, Mrs Mulrooney. Don’t give too much credit to the saints – you had more than a little hand in this. I won’t forget it, and if I have any claim to know Mrs Shelborne at all, neither will she. Would you like me to fetch Dr Gonville?’
‘Would you be kind enough, Mr Monsarrat? Have you time before you’re due at your desk? I’d like to have her examined as quickly as possible by him. He might have some idea what has caused her recovery, so that whatever it is, we may get more of it!’
Monsarrat assured her he had sufficient time to visit the doctor. His main incentive for being at his desk on the very dot of seven had just ridden out of the settlement. In any case, it should not take the half-hour remaining between now and the official start of his workday to fetch Gonville.
He left a delighted Mrs Mulrooney in the kitchen, humming and neglecting to chastise a single pot, spoon or knife.
There had been times in Monsarrat’s life when he had resented the weather for failing to conform to his moods. The day he was transferred to the prison hulk was quite pleasant, for England. Surely it should have had the decency to rain, and to clothe its sky in a mournful grey.
The opposite phenomenon was apparent on the day Monsarrat received his ticket of leave. He had been, by now, in Parramatta for some years. There, he was sometimes called on to fill out tickets of leave for local convicts. The tickets would come to him up the river from the Attorney-General’s office in Sydney with the names already inscribed by another clerk, and he would write in the sentence, the date, the ship the felon arrived on, and various other minutiae. They would then go back to the Colonial Secretary for signature, before being delivered into the trembling hands of the new emancipee.
The slips of paper were practical documents, with none of the flourish Monsarrat felt they should have, given their importance. They listed the prisoner’s name, what they’d done to get here, where they came from, where and when they were tried, what their trade or calling was, and what they looked like. They entitled the felon, or now former felon, to employ him or herself in any lawful occupation in a particular district. They didn’t warn the newly freed convict that leaving this district would send them back into servitude. They didn’t need to.
Monsarrat was doing this work one day, with his eyes half closed so that he wouldn’t have to be continually reminded he was writing freedom for someone else while he remained enslaved. He completed a ticket of leave, blotted it, and put it to one side. He glanced down at the next one. It informed him that His Excellency the Governor had pleasure in dispensing with the attendance at government work of Hugh Llewellyn Monsarrat, who was hereon restricted to Windsor.
With a shaking hand he filled in his own details. Tried at the Exeter assizes in 1815. Sentenced to life. Arrived per the Morley. Native place, London. Trade or calling, clerk. Five feet and eleven inches tall. Pale complexion. Dark brown hair. Blue eyes.
He put the paper – inscribed with a little less finesse than the others – in the stack to await signature. Within a week it was back in his hand. He needed to take several deep breaths to stop that hand shaking so much it risked damaging the paper, and then he stepped out into the kind of rain England was too restrained to produce, great gouts of water pouring from some celestial amphora. Through the grey sheets, he made his way to the Prancing Stag boarding house, where a certain party would have an interest in both his freedom and its restriction. Then he would try to find a visiting stockman or merchant willing to give him a ride to the area to which he was now confined. Beyond this limitation, however, he now had as much liberty as anyone else.
Monsarrat longed to see that document again, with a fresh date on it. He tortured himself with its image. For a moment he wondered whether Major Shelborne, out of relief at his wife’s recovery, might distribute a few extra tickets of leave or conditional pardons. But the thought made him suddenly a little sick with himself. Mrs Shelborne’s life should not be used as a bargaining chip for Monsarrat’s freedom.
Still, he walked to the hospital with more lightness than he had managed in quite some months. But once he entered the long narrow room his step slowed and faltered.
Edward Donald, the orderly, was moving slowly and methodically around the room, washing bandages and cleaning equipment. He looked up, gave an almost imperceptible nod as Monsarrat came in.
Dory was still there. At least, Monsarrat assumed it was Dory. The shape that was now entirely concealed under a white sheet looked to be the lad’s height and breadth. And blood, now browning and congealing, made a large part of the sheet adhere to whatever was underneath it.
The poor boy spent his last days on his stomach, thought Monsarrat. He was looking down from the moment he was tied to the frame. Monsarrat found that thought profoundly depressing – to be laid down facing the earth, never to face the sky again.
Perhaps it’s a balancing of the ledger, he told himself. The strange earth would devour Dory, and spare Honora. He chided himself for thinking like a superstitious Irish peasant, before remembering that the best thinker he knew was an Irish peasant who, while claiming not to be superstitious, still threw spilled salt over her left shoulder to thwart the demon who habitually sat there, urging her to wickedness.
Gonville had heard Monsarrat enter, and came around the partition to see who it was. He saw Monsarrat looking at the figure underneath the sheet.
‘Very unfortunate,’ he said. ‘But an infection entered through the wound on his back, and took hold of his system quite quickly. I have my own views as to the source, as I’m sure do you. He went shortly after I returned from examining Mrs Shelborne. I noticed that he was breathing very rapidly, and went over. I mopped his head, which was boiling hot. He took a few more quick breaths, then he seemed to settle down. I went back to my desk, and when I returned to check on him half an hour later he had gone. You know, when you first start as a doctor, Monsarrat, you expect death to announce itself somehow. You almost expect a small tremor of the earth, or the dimming of the candle, to signal someone’s departure. But most of the time people just slip off. No fanfare, no farewells – they just go. That’s what this fellow did. At some point I’ll send for Father Hanley. He should be told.’
Monsarrat was for a moment disabled by a spasm of grief for such a barbarously inflicted death. He feared, too, that the news would put an edge on Slattery’s darkness. But expressions of sadness from a convict were almost as dangerous as expressions of anger.
‘I can organise that for you in due course, doctor,’ he said. ‘At least when Lieutenant Carleton gives me leave.’
‘Your third master in a month,’ Gonville observed dryly.
‘Naturally I try to serve all masters to the best of my ability, doctor. But it’s on a far more promising errand that I’ve come to you. Mrs Mulrooney reports Mrs Shelborne’s eyes are open, that she is uttering words, and taking water. It is a most unlooked for and most welcome development, and she begs you to come at your earliest convenience, so that the lady’s recovery can be safeguarded.’
‘Truly? This is wonderful.’ The doctor looked thoughtful. ‘I must confess, I don’t know what could have improved the lady’s condition, as I didn’t know what was causing it in the first place. It may become apparent, with time and study, that it’s a new disease which is limited to this place, so that we’ve not seen it before. You know, of course, that many of the natives were felled by a cold which to us would be a minor inconvenience, because their systems had not encountered it before. That may yet prove to be the case with
Mrs Shelborne – an unheard-of disease, encountered by a person with no resistance … But now perhaps she is building up that resistance, and beginning to prevail.’
He smiled. ‘Donald!’ he called. ‘Please have some fresh paper and writing things on my desk by the time I return.’
Turning to Monsarrat, he said, ‘Gonville’s arsenosis, I believe I’ll call it. After its mimicry of arsenic poisoning. Let’s be on our way now, Monsarrat – quickly, man. The more we understand of the defences Mrs Shelborne is developing, the more we can help her shore them up.’
Chapter 16
Monsarrat delivered the doctor into the hands of Mrs Mulrooney, and then made his way to the workroom. Thomas Carleton was standing at the major’s window. He had not had the presumption, unlike Diamond, to settle himself behind the major’s desk. But like Diamond, he was shuffling through papers as though about to sit down to a game of cards with Slattery.
He looked up when Monsarrat entered. The clerk feared for a moment that he would be chastised for his tardiness, but Carleton gave him a smile – a distracted smile, to be sure, for Carleton was known to be a distracted man – and looked back down at the papers.
‘Monsarrat, can I speak freely and in confidence?’
‘Of course, sir. Without discretion I would be on a road gang.’
‘Well, to be honest with you, I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to be doing. Is there anything that I need to drive forward? Anything I need to tidy up? Or am I just here to make sure the place doesn’t burn down in the absence of the major and the captain?’
‘More the latter, sir, if you don’t mind my saying. And to make sure that there is no breach of the peace, no riots. I shouldn’t imagine they’ll be away long – perhaps a week? Hard to know for certain, but in any case no significant works can be progressed without the major’s signature. I will assist you in any way I can. For example, reports to the Colonial Secretary – should we even need to make one in the absence of the major – you needn’t write those, I can draft them and you can look them over.’
‘Stout fellow, Monsarrat. Very good, then. If you could provide me with a list of all works currently underway, I’ll ride around and have a look today. And I’ll keep up the parades for the rabble who like to call themselves soldiers.’
The lieutenant left, earning Monsarrat’s undying gratitude by closing the door behind him. Monsarrat sat down at his desk and began to sketch out a report on Mrs Shelborne’s recovery – he imagined he would be asked to do so by Dr Gonville anyway, and he had by now long finished the transcribing the major had left for him.
He noted what he knew of Mrs Shelborne’s case to this point. He put the document aside for the moment, under his own desk – until he was officially asked to compile a report; it wouldn’t do to be seen to be taking an unhealthy interest – particularly if word got back to he whose own interest had reached unnatural levels.
He went into the major’s study and scanned the shelves for his old friend Catullus. Diamond had clearly decided to rearrange them so the distracting frivolities of poetry were further out of reach from the desk. As he was taking down the book, he heard something he had never expected to hear from the direction of Government House – a full-throated female roar, anguished, only part-human, and stretched out longer than he would have believed breath would allow.
He raced to the door and listened. It started up again, a little shorter this time, as though the breath behind it was running out. It was coming, he realised, from the direction of the bedroom where Honora lay, on the side of the house which abutted his office and barely ten feet distant.
He sat down at the desk, his head in his hands. He wasn’t sure what the noise meant, but its animal nature left him with the kind of foreboding not even Catullus could dispel. He debated whether to go to the kitchen, in case Mrs Mulrooney had need of him there. But he reasoned that this office was where they would expect to find him, and should he be wanted, this was where they would come.
And come they did, in the form of Dr Gonville. His face was immobile, as though he was putting a significant amount of effort into ensuring it didn’t betray his feelings. But his eyes had a sheen to them which Monsarrat had never seen on the man. ‘Monsarrat, you’d best come to the kitchen. Mrs Mulrooney requires assistance. As, I must say, do I.’
Monsarrat didn’t remember the journey across the courtyard, but he must’ve bounded, as he was in the kitchen in a moment.
Mrs Mulrooney was sitting at the table, her forehead on its scrubbed surface, taking in huge gulps of air with each breath. Her white cloth cap lay on the floor beside her – the first time in their friendship that Monsarrat had ever seen her without it. He fancied that, underneath the fabric, the hair was usually groomed with precision, but now it stuck out at odd angles, and she made no attempt to bring it under control. The tray, her long-term companion on the walk to Mrs Shelborne’s bedroom, lay askew on the table, the pot on its side, its lid off, surrounded by liquid.
Monsarrat looked at Mrs Mulrooney and then back at the doctor, raising his eyebrows to indicate concern at her state.
Dr Gonville nodded. He sat down next to the housekeeper, placed his hand on her shoulder. ‘I’ll leave you here in Monsarrat’s care while I return to the hospital to mix you a sleeping draught. You’ve had a shock which would fell stronger constitutions than yours, and I believe a period of rest is essential.’
Mrs Mulrooney looked up, eyeing the doctor. Her face was blotched red, and if Monsarrat didn’t know she had been crying he might have thought that she too was the victim of an unknown malady. ‘I’ll not be taking any sleeping draught, doctor, so you can save yourself the trouble of the trip. There’re still things to be done for the poor darling, and I won’t rest until all of them have been attended to.’ She drew her shoulders back, challenging him to contradict her.
The doctor knew better than to do so. ‘As you wish,’ he said, ‘but do send Monsarrat or somebody else to me, at any hour, should you require assistance.’
He turned to Monsarrat. ‘I know I don’t need to exhort you to provide Mrs Mulrooney with any assistance she requires. I will leave her to describe to you what has transpired, if she feels able for it.’
Mrs Mulrooney gave him another glare, for suggesting that any force would prevent her from doing so.
‘I’ll locate Lieutenant Carleton, and let him know what has occurred,’ Gonville continued. ‘I’ll also ask him to release you to me for the next day. I am going to want a clerk with a fast hand. Donald does his best, but he’s not up to your standard.’
On another day Monsarrat would have taken great delight in the compliment, would have repeated it to himself over and over. Under the circumstances – or what he suspected were the circumstances – he could take no pleasure in anything.
Before leaving, the doctor took a teacup from the tray, and checked it to make sure there was liquid inside. Monsarrat noticed he held it within a cloth he had borrowed, rather than with his bare hands.
Monsarrat went over to Mrs Mulrooney, awkwardly putting his hand on her shoulder. She shrugged him off with a vehemence which surprised him. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Monsarrat,’ she said. ‘I’m undone just at the moment.’ She groped around on the floor for her cloth cap and, finding it and replacing it, she jammed her hair into its folds with some violence.
Monsarrat moved to sit down opposite her. ‘The doctor beseeches me to look after you, and I need no such urging, because I would consider myself a poor excuse for a friend if I didn’t. But sometimes the best way to look after someone is to leave them alone. I have a great fear of what you are about to tell me, and I suspect I know already, but the details can wait if you would like some time to yourself. I’m at your disposal; I’ll go or stay at your word.’
‘Stay, please,’ Mrs Mulrooney whispered. She took a deep breath, and in a stronger voice said, ‘You look at the sky every day, and you know you’ll see the same thing, more or less. The sun will be there, the moon will be th
ere at night, and you might be lucky enough to see a shooting star. Now the sun has winked off, and my young star has shot away into the bush. I’ve only the moon now. Don’t leave me in complete darkness.’
So Monsarrat sat, while Mrs Mulrooney gradually reconstructed herself. She regained enough composure to realise that some strands of hair were still peeking out from beneath her cap, and dealt ruthlessly with them. Thinking to help, Monsarrat went to take the tray, sop up the spilled tea and set the teapot to rights, but Mrs Mulrooney shot out her hand and grabbed his wrist with a strength he would have more likely expected from Captain Diamond.
‘I wouldn’t be touching that, Mr Monsarrat. Look at it sitting there, all innocence. But it’s the devil’s work, there on that tray, spilling out of that pot. I’m going to leave it where it sits until Dr Gonville advises me what best to do with it.’
Monsarrat looked at the liquid, trying to discern any diabolical intent within it. It looked to him like spilled tea, and nothing more. But he knew better than to defy Mrs Mulrooney, particularly in her domain, the place from which she drew strength. So he sat, and waited for her to speak.
Eventually, she did. ‘She’s gone, you know. God rest her.’
‘But she was improving. Bad enough if she were to go when she was on death’s door anyway, but for it to happen when she’d been showing signs of improvement is too cruel.’
‘You’re right, Mr Monsarrat. It is cruel. And the cruellest part of it is, I killed her.’
‘Now, don’t be ridiculous. You’ve often told me that for an intelligent man I can be an idiot. Well, for an intelligent woman, you’re heading down the same path. Of course you didn’t kill her. You probably kept her alive longer than she would have survived otherwise, truth be known.’
