The Far Horizon

by Gretta Curran Browne

  ‘No whip at your back and a great achievement ahead of you – not only for each of you personally, but for all the people of Australia.’

  And just in case Lord Bathurst objected, Lachlan forestalled any opposition with an outrageous piece of flattery that no Minister at the Colonial Office would be able to resist – the site of the first town he planned to be built on the route of the road, would be named Bathurst, adding:

  ‘For many of the convicts it will knock only a year or so off their sentences, and this way the work needed will be done with greater effort and with less trouble.’

  Upon receipt of the letter Lord Bathurst was delighted that his family name would be immortalised in a new land on the other side of world – but the Exclusives saw it as just one more example of Macquarie's infamy – selling freedom to convicts.

  *

  The drought continued relentlessly on the eastern side of the mountains. In the region of Sydney and its outlands the rivers had dried up. The Government Stores had almost run out of grain.

  In the town of Sydney the merchants were selling wheat at £2 a bushel. These speculators had held out until the price was as high as it could go, and now they were making a small fortune!

  Every complaint was taken to the Governor, the people clamouring to give him their tales of woe and deprivation. Wheat at £2 a bushel was completely beyond them. Soon they would have no bread at all to give to their children. Could he not force the Exclusives to reduce the price?

  No, he could not. They were free settlers – free to do whatever they liked. He could only threaten them with empty threats. Then he sent for more cheap wheat from Bengal.

  And while he waited for its arrival, and in order to feed all the soldiers and convicts, he was finally forced to use large amounts of Government money to buy the local wheat from the Exclusives at £2 a bushel.

  In October 1815, after a disastrous three-year drought, the rains at last fell as heavily as an Indian monsoon over New South Wales.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  In 1816, Lachlan Macquarie made history by becoming the longest-serving Governor of New South Wales.

  The two years he had agreed to stay had turned into six years, and still he showed no signs of wishing to return home, telling Elizabeth – ‘There’s too much work still to be done here.’

  The new Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh, sent him a dispatch stating, ‘Lord Bathurst tells us you have served us very well …’ then Castlereagh went on to offer Lachlan, upon his return to England, a pension for life of £1000 a year in return for his service in the Colony – if he would continue ruling the Colony and agree to stay for a further two years.

  Lachlan replied:

  The Colony, as you call it, is now developing beyond its former state of a small convict settlement into a country we have named Australia.

  The Blue Mountains have been crossed and the area of land has expanded into the interior where regular towns and new habitations are already under construction.

  Numerous Georgian-style buildings have also been built in the town of Sydney itself, as well as two schools and two churches and a home for orphaned children, all designed by the skill of emancipist architects and surveyors and erected by the labour of the convicts.

  ‘I don’t know about a measly pension,’ Elizabeth said curtly. ‘It’s a knighthood they should be offering you.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Mary Neely no longer cared about where she was or what had happened to her on the transport ship or anywhere else before arriving in New South Wales, all she knew was that her life now in Government House was wonderful, because George Jarvis was there.

  George was the handsomest man she had ever seen, so full of that strange attractive charm that was his alone. Even his conversations with her were different to any others she had heard or known.

  The gardens of Government House now bloomed with roses and many other beautiful botanical varieties, all due to the passionate work of Mrs Macquarie who had now introduced some tame wallabies to languish or play on the front lawns.

  But it was the long and large gardens at the back of the house, filled with large bushes and private little pathways where Mary often met George to take an evening walk, away from the prying eyes of others in the household.

  During one of their walks George stopped by a bush of beautiful red roses, plucked one, and handed it to her.

  Mary held the rose in her hands and smelled its delicate perfume.

  ‘I have always loved English roses,’ she said.

  ‘Roses are not an English flower, Mary, all roses originate in the East.’

  She looked into his face and protested, ‘That can’t be true. Everyone knows that roses come from England.’

  ‘No, travellers have carried the seeds back to England and elsewhere, but the roses that grow all over the world have all descended from the Persian rose.’

  Mary looked amazed, she had not known that, and how could she know, until now.

  ‘I thought … we all thought … that roses were an English flower.’

  George sighed and said softly. ‘Yes, that is the delusion of many.’

  Everything George said to Mary after that was like poetry to her ears. Some of the time it was in fact poetry, for his love of the Persian poets was still passionate.

  Her own knowledge of poems was more limited than his, but as they shared their walks in the garden, she shared what poetry she knew with him. He found he could not relate to her English poetry, it was too whimsical for him. In contemplation of life, he preferred instead the realism of Omar Khayaam.

  ‘This world will long survive our poor departure,

  Persisting without name or note of us.

  Before we came, it never begrudged our absence;

  When we have gone, how can it feel regret?’

  The poem vexed and saddened Mary. How could this man Khayaam have such a cheerless view of the world? How could anyone enjoy his words when they made a person feel so unimportant? What had made him such a sad old Persian?

  George laughed. ‘Khayaam was never sad. He believed in the Creator and Heaven and Destiny, but most of all he believed in the wonderful gift of life itself. Of living and enjoying life itself while we have it. Who else but a man who truly loved life would write,

  Allow no shadow of regret to cloud you,

  No unnecessary grief to overcast your days.

  Never renounce laughter or love songs

  Until your bones lay mixed with elder clay.’

  Mary still did not like it, the poetry of this Khayaam, but it helped her to understand the thoughts and attitude that led George to remain so calm and steady amidst the turbulence of life.

  Her thoughts had stopped her, but George had wandered slowly on down one of the long darkening paths in a contemplative mood, pausing to stand and look up at the sky with a sudden smile on his face.

  ‘George?’

  At the sound of his name he turned and slowly walked back towards her.

  ‘What were you smiling at?’

  ‘I was smiling at myself, Mary.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For thinking that anyone who lived before us could tell us how to live now … in a different world and a different time … my own foolishness.’

  She looked at the amusement in his dark eyes, and felt the strength and sense leaving her. She had a sudden longing, here alone with him in the quietness of the garden, to slip her arms around his waist and press her mouth to his and kiss him with passion, a deep intense passion that had began to fill her mind and heart and make her pulses spring alive every time she saw him.

  ‘Ello darlin.’

  The voice broke her trance and she jumped and turned. George laughed as he looked over at a branch where a white cockatoo was looking at them sideways.

  ‘Bappoo …’ He moved over to the branch and the parrot climbed onto his arm. ‘Hello, Bappoo.’

  ‘Ello darlin.’

  ‘Why do you call
him Bappoo?’ Mary asked.

  ‘I named him after our House Steward in India,’ George replied, ‘because whenever he spoke, Bappoo also liked to imitate the way Englishmen speak.’

  And when George began to tell her about Bappoo, a huge lovable man in his turban and voluminous pantaloons, Mary thought she would die laughing as George imitated the way Bappoo spoke – ‘Yes, my dear, by God, by Jove, I report you to Lachlan-Sahib because you bad boy, naughty naughty … you rascally son of slave!’

  When Mary had stopped laughing she was curious about the word ‘slave’.

  ‘Did Governor Macquarie have slaves in his house in India?’

  ‘No.’ George had seen Mr Byrne, the head gardener, coming down the path.

  He walked towards him and held out his own arm to allow Mr Byrne to take the cockatoo and receive the bird’s usual greeting. ‘Ello darlin.’

  ‘I’ll darlin him, if he gets out of his cage again,’ Mr Byrne grunted.

  George frowned. ‘You keep him in a cage?’

  ‘Only at night, Mr Jarvis, only at night. Mrs Macquarie won’t have him disturbing the sleep of her wallabies out front, so she won’t.’

  ‘And how could little Bappoo disturb them?’ George asked mildly.

  ‘With his non-stop “ello darlin” – drives me mad sometimes he does.’

  ‘Then teach him to say something else,’ George suggested. ‘If he can learn two words, he can learn more.’

  The gardener puckered his lips for a moment. ‘Missus Macquarie don’t like him talking at all, she says it’s unnatural.’

  ‘Then teach him to say just that.’

  ‘How d’ye mean?’

  George imitated the parrot’s voice. ‘Ello darlin – oh, this is unnatural! Ello darlin – oh yes my dear, by God, by Jove – this talking of mine is unnatural!’

  Even the bird was squawking and flapping when George had finished, unsettled by the laughter of Mr Byrne and Mary.

  *

  ‘There's nothing between you and George is there?' asked Mrs Ovens secretively when she got a moment alone with the girl the following morning.

  ‘Nothing, Mrs Ovens, nothing at all …’ Mary was straining halfway out the window on the front landing, eagerly watching George Jarvis, looking so handsome, wearing riding breeches and leggings of brown leather and a cool white shirt, riding down the driveway beside Governor Macquarie.

  When she withdrew and turned round to face Mrs Ovens, her blue eyes were sparkling. ‘Where on earth did you get such a ridiculous notion?’

  Mrs Ovens rocked with laughter as she told Mrs Kelly later that night. ‘She likes him, likes him a lot, she does. And he likes her too.’

  Mrs Kelly's eyes became dark with memories, and then she endowed the air with one of her huge sighs.

  ‘Ah, he's only playing with her. She shouldn’t trust him. Trust no man is my motto. If she gives in to him, he will only use her as his plaything. Then when he's got her where he wants, lying on her back, with her hair like a cloud on his pillow, he’ll use her lovely young body only for his enjoyment, only for his own selfish pleasure, and then he’ll deceive her…’

  Mrs Kelly quivered emotionally, sat back in her chair and put a hand to her brow in grief. ‘As I myself was used, and deceived...’

  Mrs Ovens shuddered deliciously and rushed for the rum; she loved to hear the stories of Mrs Kelly and her lover in Ireland, a handsome young rogue who had seduced her into a whole springtime of passionate lovemaking, and then had deceived her shamelessly – and she a defenceless young widow – unjustly sent to Botany Bay for near killing him.

  ‘But the romance, m'dear,’ said Mrs Ovens as she pressed a glass of rum into Mrs Kelly's hand. ‘And the thrill you felt that first day he touched you ... As you often say, it does no harm to turn the memory back to the good times.’

  ‘Oh!’ sighed Mrs Kelly passionately. ‘Will I ever forget?’

  Mrs Ovens sipped her rum excitedly, moistened her lips, and urged Mrs Kelly to tell of her lover.

  Mrs Kelly again sighed deeply. ‘Young I was then, young and tender. As slim as a larch, with the hair rippling like a fountain of black silk down my back, and my skin as smooth as pure milk. And he – he the fair and handsome son of the squire; charming, elegant, and so respectable you would think butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.

  ‘A young widow I was when he calls on me in my cottage. And then he stretches out a hand to caress my skirt as I served him a glass of ale. I was so shocked I just looked at his hand caressing my skirt … then I looked at his smile. Oh! What a smile! And there I stood with suspended breath, my heart quivering, drawn between desire and pride. I looked into his shining eyes until my breast just rose in confusion.

  ‘"If you are not sure," he says to me later, "then draw back, draw back now my darling," he says, holding me so tight against him I could hardly breathe. "For, oh, my love, I do not want to press you against your will," he says, as I was laid down with misgivings...’

  An hour later Mrs Ovens lifted her apron and wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘Such a rascally young man, but what a lover!’

  ‘Aye, after that first time, he only had to reach out and I was his for the taking.’ Mrs Kelly's bosom heaved in another turbulent sigh that convulsed her body, and then she collapsed back in her chair like a spent storm.

  ‘So you see,’ she said, recovering herself, ‘Mary must be warned in time. No man is to be trusted until he puts a wedding band on. And even then he must be watched with a suspicious eye.’

  The next morning Mary listened silently as Mrs Kelly sought to warn her. ‘I am only trying to spare you the heartbreak that fell to me, cherub. Have nothing to do with him!’

  And later, Mrs Ovens advised her in a totally different way, quite the opposite. ‘I knows George, and I knows he’s fine and decent, so if you can have a bit of a romance with him then do so while you can, because I warn you, Mary, that’s all you’ll get – a bit of harmless romance – because Governor Macquarie would never allow George to get too serious about any convict girl.’

  But Mary would not be warned, and only minutes later when she made her escape and ran like lightning up the grand staircase and turned onto the landing – she crashed straight into George Jarvis. His arms instinctively caught her before she slipped, holding her close for a moment, and they smiled into each other’s eyes.

  ‘Saints above!’ cried Mrs Kelly.

  Mary whirled round to see the Irish cook standing there with a tray in her hands.

  ‘No good will come of it!’ said Mrs Kelly. ‘And you, George Jarvis, you should be ashamed of yourself, taking advantage of a poor servant girl that's not wise to men.’

  ‘Mrs Kelly!’ Mary gasped, mortified. ‘George just saved me from tripping over, that’s all.’

  And he has never taken advantage of me, never even kissed me, Mary wanted to shout at the cook, and he probably never will now because of you!

  Mrs Kelly lifted her chin haughtily. ‘Now, you, Mary, come along or I shall tell Governor Macquarie about your loose behaviour. And that will be you back in the kitchen washing dishes and cleaning floors and no more being nursemaid, won't it?’

  Mary was so embarrassed she could not have looked at George to save her life.

  ‘Mrs Kelly,’ George said calmly, ‘there is no need for you to try and frighten Mary with threats of reports to the Governor.’

  ‘The Governor don't like no finagling between the sexes in his house, boyo! That he don't!’

  ‘He doesn't like any rum drinking in the kitchen either,’ George said. ‘I clearly remember him forbidding it. Do you remember also?’

  Mary looked at George now – just the threat of depriving Mrs Kelly and Mrs Ovens of their nightly rum would be as bad as taking their breath away.

  Mrs Kelly stared at him dumbly as if she had forgotten what she intended to say next.

  George rolled his hand down in an exaggerated salaam to Mrs Kelly, smiled at Mary, and then turned and strolled away.


  ‘Oh now,’ said Mrs Kelly, watching him go with narrowed eyes. ‘Now there's a one to watch!’ She looked at Mary warningly. ‘Have nothing to do with him, Mary. He's only a man, and men only like to amuse themselves. No rum in the kitchen indeed!’

  She left Mary abruptly with shoes tattooing rapidly along the landing as if she couldn't wait to deposit her tray and get back to tell Mrs Ovens.

  ‘Ah, George Jarvis would never tell,’ said Mrs Ovens carelessly. ‘You forget, Mrs Kelly m'dear, that I knows George better than you do. I came out here in the same ship as him.’

  Mrs Kelly did not answer immediately, her eyes fixed on some distant memory. ‘He was holding her as tight as tight can be ... God knows what else he would have done to her if I hadn't come along in the nick of time.’

  ‘Dear! Dear!’ Mrs Ovens could think of nothing more exciting than a new young romance to liven the talk downstairs. She wished Mrs Kelly would leave matters be. All was grist to the mill and provided enjoyable breaks in the monotony of the kitchen, and never a dull moment lately, not since Mary arrived. She was such a lovey, such fun with the other girls, and such a beauty – that’s why that mistress of hers in England had jumped on the excuse of the “theft” of a small mirror to get rid of her. Mrs Ovens was certain of it.

  ‘They live in the same house and so you can't prevent them meeting,’ Mrs Ovens protested. ‘And so what if she does have a fancy for George Jarvis? What's wrong with that?’

  ‘Oh, he's much worse than other men, that George Jarvis,’ Mrs Kelly insisted. ‘Not fit in any way to beguile any innocent young girl. Don't you know that in the country where he comes from, the men are so lusty they don't even bother deceiving a woman, they just go to bed with two or three women at the same time. Aye – harems – they call them!’ Mrs Kelly’s head nodded insistently. ‘Aye, that's how the men carry on in that land where George Jarvis comes from. Mary must be warned!’

  Mrs Ovens tutted, ‘I don’t think Mary would care if you told her that George came from the moon or Mars or some place even stranger than that. Now why do you have to go and spoil things? Are you forgetting, m’ducky, that you were once young and in love yourself?’