Captive Wife, The

by Kidman, Fiona

  Or perhaps it was simply that when Granny left us for the afterlife, I stopped seeing things so clearly.

  My uncles had disappointed their parents by moving away from the farm, so there was nobody to take it over when the family decided to move to Sydney. In my mind, I hold a picture of Granny, on the last day at the farm, walking beneath the trees she had planted, the fruit of which she had gathered and made into sweet jams and preserves, the trees where her children had swung and built houses of their own. Though I was very young at the time, I still hear the melody she was singing, the convicts’ song which she did often sing, only usually more heartily as if it were a bit of a joke. Not that day.

  Singing too-rall-li-oo-rall, liad-di-ty,

  singing too-rall, li-oo-rall-li-ay

  singing too-rall-li-oo-rall, li-ad-di-ty

  oh we are bound for Botany Bay.

  My mother liked all the people around us in Sydney, but Granny said it was the worst day’s work she ever did, packing up and leaving the farm.

  She looked around her and saw terrible sights at the Rocks and wished her grandchildren elsewhere. It was not just the public hangings and the drinking, it was the way we all lived cheek by jowl with the next person in the narrow cramped alleyways, and having to walk through the streets to the standpipes for water. It was the smell of rotting meat and rubbish we couldn’t get rid of, and cesspits in the garden. The smell of your own — well, I beg your pardon — is bad enough but that of a dozen other families on a hot day gets you down. But on the good side of the ledger, when we first left the farm we had money in our pockets, and there were many things to buy. We bought cups and saucers, enough for everyone, and matching china dishes in blue and white, a kettle and a tea caddy, we bought linen and nice clothes, umbrellas for the rain and lamps that cast a pretty glow at night. It is not all bad at the Rocks, whatever people might think, looking in on us from the outside.

  But my grandfather who had moaned about the farm now wished he was back there, and in a short while he was dead, and by that time there wasn’t much money left at all, though Granny had managed to save a little.

  Before long, my mother gave birth to my sister Sophia. At least as far as I know, she was my father’s child, for by that time my mother had begun to act differently, singing and dancing around the house and staying out late. My grandmother’s face would grow black with rage. Sophia was born without trouble. She slipped and fell from my mother onto the kitchen floor before Granny had time to catch her, and no damage done.

  I don’t know what my father thought about all this. Of course it was a man who had brought about this change in my mother. He was a convict, a sawyer by trade, called John Deaves, Deaves being the name you first knew me by. His skills were in demand and he was wealthier than my father. He lived at Lane Cove and before you could say three farthings, my mother had gone there to live, and was in the family way again with the first of my three half-brothers. I don’t believe Granny ever saw any of these boys. She told my mother she didn’t want to set eyes on them. She was left with all three of us on her hands, David and Sophia and myself, not to mention my father Stephen Parker moping around the house and drinking himself to death.

  I became Granny’s right hand from the time I was old enough to do my first errand. She was soft on David too. Anyone would have been, he was more like a girl than a boy. He had yellow curls, not like the rest of us who are mostly dark and take after Granny Pugh. His red lips puckered up like a girl’s, so that ladies always wanted to kiss him. Some people treated him as if he was odd. That is, until the day he tried to save our father’s life.

  After his daily round of the Cat and Fiddle and the Currency Lass when my father came home his face was red, and he stumbled about breaking things. Granny was taking in laundry, and she had had enough of this. The copper was always on the boil and our house smelt like clothing stew. As in Parramatta, she grew a garden too, but it was just a little pocket square of land, not enough to feed five mouths. My mother dropped by from time to time, wearing silks and a shawl with a beaded fringe, and left some coins for Granny. My Aunt Charlotte had taken up with a man called Garside; the two of them were servants for John Guard, my husband as he became. I’ve heard from my aunt, when she’s in a nasty frame of mind, that he fancied her but she fell with her first baby when he was away at sea, and that was that. But at least she was employed and now and then she would leave a shilling for Granny, not because of us, but because Granny was her mother too.

  Granny hid these little takings but my father usually found out where they were, even though she changed the place every time. One day she told him he should go and leave her to bring us children up on her own.

  His eyes filled up with tears and there was an embarrassing quaver in his voice when he spoke.

  I’ll change my ways, he told Granny, I’ll go to sea with Jacky Guard.

  He won’t take you, she said. He’s a hard man, you have to work for people like him.

  I had met Jacky Guard a time or two when we visited Charlotte and was afraid of him. He hadn’t long been at sea since his discharge, but already there were some cruel stories around him.

  You don’t know, my father said.

  I do, because I’ve already asked him.

  Bugger you, you old hag, he yelled at her then. You’d send me away from my children? First their mother deserts them, and whose frog spawn is she? Now you want to send me away. They will have no parents at all.

  I understood from the way he spoke that my father had a sore heart over my mother.

  At that, Granny sighed. Look Stephen, she said, I don’t like what has happened any better than you, but I cannot feed these children and your drinking as well.

  My father took his coat then and went out. Perhaps Granny thought that was the last she would see of him, but that night he came home sober, his hands red and raw from hanging on the end of a pick, breaking rocks all day. He gave her five shillings and she was pleased with him. This kept on all week, and on Sunday, my father said he would take David for a ride around the harbour and they would perhaps pull in a fish or two. David was a wee boy, only six at the time, and you could see him glow with excitement. It was as if his father had seen him for the first time ever, and perhaps that he was in need of a father’s attention, for the boys in our street gave him grief, called him names and threw stones if he went near to join in any games. I was the one who taught him how to play hopscotch, and roll his marbles. It was me who taught him how to swim and hold his breath when he dived beneath the surface of the water in the bay.

  When my father suggested this treat David swelled up with joy. For a moment I felt the green-eyed monster at my shoulder for I too would have liked to go out in a rowboat. But then I tried to take pleasure in the way David smiled and skipped.

  It will be your turn next Betsy, said my father, and this was the first time he had ever called me this name. I’ve wondered since if this was his rebellion against the way my grandfather and my mother had joined forces to give me a name without consulting him.

  The boat had been lent to my father by one of the men he worked alongside. It was a solid-looking craft. The day was perfect, the harbour aglitter in the sun and as settled as cream in a jug. And yet, in Cockle Bay, the boat overturned, perhaps a sudden wave. I’ve seen it happen more than once in New Zealand, a surge like a spirit that changes the shape of things in a moment. Whatever it was, my father was not strong enough to contain the boat in its larrikin skip and jump, and he and David were both in the water.

  A passing boat stopped and picked them out of the drink within a few minutes, but my father had already gone and drowned, and might have dropped straight to the deep had not David been holding onto his hair trying to keep his face out of the water, his little feet dog paddling as fast as they could on the spot.

  That is how they found them. People brought food and money for the funeral. John Deaves gave a sizeable amount. Is it blood money, my grandmother asked, with scorn. She took it anyway
. It would be a respectable funeral, she said. Even my mother wore black mourning dress and jet beads.

  My father was laid out in his coffin in our parlour, wearing my grandfather’s second best suit (of course, grandfather had been buried in his best one) and though it was very short on my father’s long body you couldn’t see that when the sheets were in place. Afterwards, a carriage was hired to take him to the cemetery.

  A year or so passed and people forgot we were poor. There was always someone else who was in need. I saw Granny was finding it hard to breathe some mornings. Her face went a nasty spotty red as she gasped for air. Sometimes she acted strangely and I heard her talking to herself, though what she muttered I couldn’t tell. She often sang the old songs. One day I found her sitting in the kitchen with the fire out, and she was singing in a rickety old voice.

  By hopeless love I was once betrayed

  And now I am, alas a convict maid …

  For seven long years I toil in pain and grief,

  And curse the day when I became a thief

  I ne’er had been, alas, a convict maid.

  This is a song often sung at the Rocks, but never with such pain as I heard in Granny’s voice that day.

  I look up, and see tears in Adie’s eyes. One rolls down her round cheek, and she dabs at it with a handkerchief.

  Another time, Granny stood backside out to the street and lifted her skirts at the world for all to see. I pretended I hadn’t noticed and chased after Sophia to stop her falling in the well, doing what I could.

  David had begun to help as well. He was more confident now, and less tormented, though at night he had bad dreams. Often I took him into my bed and held him beside me. In the night, I would wake to find his hands knotted through my hair, and his face wet with crying which must have been what woke him. I did not tell Granny about these things that happened at night, for she would have said it was not right, a boy of his age having to climb into bed with his sister and weep. I did not mind though and I think part of me thought of him as if I was his mother. It went through my head that my hair was our father’s hair that he still held fast in his hand.

  Then there was a lull, and Granny seemed more herself. I don’t know if she talked to my mother about what was to become of all of us. If she did, my mother must have refused us, or whether she simply could not bring herself to see how old Granny was. One morning Granny got up, looking older and sadder than I had ever seen. At breakfast, she said, Well David and Sophia, today is a great day for you. You will have a new life and many more friends than you have ever had before. We will pack your bags and take you to a new home.

  In this way I learnt that David and Sophia would go to live in orphanages. David was being sent to the male orphan school and Sophia to the one for girls. At that time David was seven and a half and Sophia was five.

  When I heard this I begged Granny. Do not send him away I said, meaning David. I did not want Sophia to go away either, but already she seemed better able to look after herself than David. She has always been more like my mother as a person.

  It will be all right child, Granny said. You will stay here with me. But it was not for myself that I was so unhappy. Nobody would know at orphan school that David was a hero and I was afraid he would be hurt all over again.

  Hoping to console me, she said that she was preparing a special meal that we would eat at lunchtime. We would pick fresh peas and she would cook them with a roast of mutton and potatoes, and perhaps there would be some griddle scones and apricot jam.

  The four of us sat on the back step that faced the garden and shelled the peas into a pot, as if nothing bad was going to happen. Granny held up a large fat pea to the light before opening it with a cry of satisfaction. You must remember girls, she said, though Sophia wasn’t listening, being too busy stuffing her mouth with raw peas, a pod that holds five peas or nine is lucky. If you place it above the door the next dark man who comes through will be the one you marry. Come Betsy, she said. She had taken to calling me this name my father had bestowed, that last day before he met his maker, perhaps out of respect for him. Here is a pod with nine, let’s see what lad comes passing by.

  To please her, because I knew she was hiding sorrow, I took the pea and climbed on a chair so that I could reach to put it on top of the door. I had hardly pushed the chair back under the table when a shadow fell across the path, and around the back of the house came Jacky Guard.

  Jacky is not a tall man but he has shoulders like an ox. His black hair reminds me of a crow’s wing, though these days it is streaked with gray, and so is his beard. He is a fair-skinned man, which shows up this darkness. His eyes are not exactly brown, but lighter with flashes of green in their depths. The colour changes when he is angry, the green glowing almost with a yellow light that is hard to describe. I was scared stiff. And then I started to laugh. My grandmother gave a reluctant chuckle when she saw what I was thinking, but he was not in a mood to be amused, and her smile faded.

  Charlotte has told me of your plans for these children, said Jacky. I must ask you to reconsider. If it is a matter of money, I would be glad to help out.

  It has been decided, it is done, Granny said. I have had a letter written to the Colonial Secretary, and the children have been accepted. There is no turning back. I am too old for it.

  I see, he said. He did not like what he heard.

  I think it will be the best chance for them, she went on. They will learn some reading and writing which is useful in this colony. Their mother was taught a little but she has never made use of it, and now she only has time for Deaves’s brats. Looking over her shoulder at David and Sophia, she said, They’ll have food and shelter and someone to watch over them.

  He shrugged, taking her point. My own house is already crowded out, he said.

  I know all of that, Granny told him. Charlotte’s hands are full too.

  She sighed and turned away from him, not wanting to talk about it any more. It has been decided, she said again.

  And what of you, Granny Pugh?

  The girl will look after me, my grandmother said, her gaze falling on me.

  Betsy is just a child said Jacky, glancing at me. He stood with his thumbs hooked through his braces. He was wearing a straw hat with a flat brim and a blue cotton shirt, and didn’t look as threatening as I had first thought.

  She is ten, Granny said, and wiser than you think. I don’t want anyone else but her.

  After Jacky Guard was gone, I said Granny, he is an old man, I cannot marry him.

  He is not that old, she said, thirty or thereabouts.

  I looked at her to see if she was serious but she never said another thing. Soon we would eat and then the children would be taken to the orphanage. A woman was coming to collect them. For them, it was like a great adventure, they did not understand that they were leaving us.

  But I did. I stood and waved and waved to David, trying to look happy for him, because I did not want to frighten him before he had even left us. Just as they rounded the corner of the lane, he looked back. Betsy, he called, I want to come home.

  After that, I did not see my brother and sister for two years. My grandmother never saw them again.

  There is not much more to tell of Granny Pugh. I was with her to the end. Death never comes the same for any two people and I have seen my share, although I am still twenty years of age. One minute, Granny was talking to me, the next she was not. I think she had found some peace in herself, for she talked not of old England, but of the farm at Parramatta where her children grew up. Look, she said, look out there, old Daisy is ready to be milked. Fetch me the bucket, child. And while my eye followed whatever it was she saw, she grew silent.

  Shortly after this, I took myself over to my Aunt Charlotte’s house and said, Granny has passed on.

  When Charlotte had seen for herself, she said, You had better come and stay here for now. I tried to say that I could look after myself in the house, because I had been looking after two of us for more than a
year, but I was overruled, and anyway, the house hadn’t belonged to Granny; it was rented.

  That is how I came to stay for a short time with my Aunt Charlotte and her children, who had various fathers all with the first name of Samuel, which I thought strange.

  Later on, I went to live with my mother and her new husband, and after awhile they sent for David and Sophia. We were told that we must take the name of Deaves, which my brother and sister did without complaint, but it did not feel right to me. I wore the name like a hair shirt and every time I was thus addressed I felt a prickle of anger. Nor did I care for living with John Deaves for he was a forceful man and given to rage when there was too much noise, which there often was on account of so many children. He did not mind it so much from his own boys, but the three of us Parker children learnt that we must creep around and not give him bother. My little brother was white as whey from living in the orphanage, and sometimes he was so quiet I thought he had simply melted away in the distance of Sydney Harbour. Our mother did not seem to notice, but then she never had. She sang and shrieked, as if she must entertain Deaves whenever he was around, and sailed down the street with him, dressed from head to toe in her finery. At night, when we were abed, I would whisper to David in the dark. I would say the old nursery rhymes that Granny taught us, even though he was growing to be a big boy now.