The Soldier's Curse

by Thomas Keneally

  ‘Wouldn’t you say, Monsarrat, that it is a sadness to think that Mrs Shelborne in her indisposition is locked away from such a tonic evening as this?’

  ‘It is a sadness,’ Monsarrat agreed. He knew it was important to act as though his presence on the beach with a freshly caught fish was sanctioned. If he behaved as though culpable, Diamond would not doubt his culpability for a heartbeat.

  ‘Believe me, I have served in Madras, where there are no evenings as fine as this,’ the officer said.

  ‘I’m sure not,’ said Monsarrat, drawing on the practised convict skill of neutral agreement.

  Diamond looked down at Monsarrat. But his face didn’t look like that of a man with the power to snuff out any lingering hopes Monsarrat had of freedom; he looked in need himself, this young man. ‘You are very trusted by the major,’ he observed.

  ‘I try to earn that honour, sir,’ said Monsarrat, hauling in his line. All the pleasure had gone out of the evening and only the dark lust was left. That and the necessity to talk like a white slave.

  ‘An honour indeed, and one with which I am familiar. The major looks after his most useful tools, particularly those who perform certain tasks with which he would rather not be bothered. Messages need to be sent on occasion, you know. Sometimes to the Colonial Secretary in Sydney. But sometimes, also, more than a copper-plate hand is required. When we were stationed in Madras, I needed to convey a message on the major’s behalf to a Madras nabob whose sons believe beating an English soldier to death is an activity which can be undertaken with impunity. In both cases, the major would prefer not to have his hands stained with … with ink.’

  Monsarrat did not think Diamond was drawing the parallel out of a sense of fellowship. Possibly, instead, it was a warning. People sometimes used one tool to destroy another which had outlived its usefulness.

  ‘It’s a funny thing about servants,’ Diamond said. ‘They will sniff a liberty they are permitted to take even before the master has thought of it.’

  Monsarrat kept focusing on his line, whipping it up and down as he hauled to dislodge imaginary kelp. He could think of no safe response.

  ‘I could, of course, report you. But then under the current circumstances, I’d be reporting to myself. Still, what say you? D’you feel like transcribing a recommendation to the Colonial Secretary that you be sent to the work gangs? Although, you are unused to physical labour – perhaps the lime gang would better suit your capabilities.’

  Monsarrat kept his eyes lowered. The panic he believed would flash from them would no doubt make things worse. ‘I apologise if I’ve caused any offence, sir.’

  ‘Well, apologies are fine things when they’re offered freely by someone who hasn’t just been caught in a transgression. Still, perhaps His Majesty could spare you one bream.’

  Monsarrat thought that given the untold multitudes of fish off all the coasts of the Empire, His Majesty might not be too alarmed by the loss of a Port Macquarie bream. Nevertheless, he felt his next utterance could prove fatal. If he thanked Diamond for the indulgence, it would be tantamount to an admission of guilt. He would be saying he knew he wasn’t permitted to fish for his own purposes, but had done so anyway. But failing to show gratitude might inflame the protocol-driven officer.

  Fortunately, though, Diamond hadn’t finished. ‘Of course, I would expect a service from you.’

  ‘Naturally, sir, it is your right to ask of me any service you wish.’

  ‘Any service which goes towards the running of the settlement, yes. But this service is of a more personal nature. You are friendly with the major’s housekeeper, the Irishwoman, yes?’

  ‘We are on amicable terms, yes. I see her sometimes when I need to pass the kitchen on an errand for the major.’

  ‘Hmph. And you have a great many errands for the major which take you to the kitchen, I understand. And this housekeeper is currently functioning as a nurse to Mrs Shelborne.’

  ‘She does what she can – under the surgeon’s direction.’

  ‘Mrs Shelborne’s condition is of significant interest to me. I wish to stay apprised of it so I can alert the major should he need to return. And Gonville, charming and qualified as he is, may not provide sufficient … texture.’

  But surely you could ask Gonville for as much texture as you want, and he would be obliged to comply, thought Monsarrat. You are, after all, acting potentate. But then, he might be too busy with the Book of the Dead you have set him to writing.

  Speaking that thought would have seen him back on a work crew by morning, the small privacy of his hut afforded to some other trustee, and Catullus and the Edinburgh Review left to their own devices.

  ‘Housekeepers,’ continued Diamond, ‘know everything. This one probably more than most. Find out what you can. I am most interested in the kind of information Dr Gonville is unlikely to note. Mrs Shelborne’s spirits, for example. The tenor of her speech. Any prognosis the surgeon gives in the housekeeper’s hearing.’

  Kiernan manages to survive in the wild, thought Monsarrat, but he might have trouble negotiating this forest. There was no way Monsarrat could refuse the captain’s request. He had no doubt the young man had every intention of following through on his threats.

  It was less clear, though, why the captain wanted such information. A simple inquiry as to Mrs Shelborne’s condition would be enough to satisfy propriety, to show concern, and in any case could be directed to Dr Gonville. But an interest in the state of her mind, even in the way she spoke, seemed disturbingly intimate to Monsarrat, especially as he had no indication that Mrs Shelborne would welcome such interest, were she in full command of her senses.

  If he were caught by the major, implicated in some sort of sordid plot to spy on his wife, he would be lucky to get the work crew. That said, Diamond might have some questions to answer himself. But if Diamond denied all knowledge, claimed that Monsarrat had a twisted fascination with Mrs Shelborne, Monsarrat wasn’t sure whom the major would believe, or which tool he would view as having the greatest long-term utility. And even if Diamond was ejected from the regiment, that didn’t help Monsarrat.

  The worst of it, though, was that he now had to conceal information from the only person he trusted. She would think his inquiries sprang from a shared concern for the dwindling life in the settlement’s best bedroom. He would extract information from her and put it to a use of which she wouldn’t approve, she who had never extracted anything from him but admiration and the occasional chuckle. And he would need to make sure she never found out, as in his mind her disapproval stood alongside the lime gang, equal in both severity and permanence.

  * * *

  Monsarrat washed the fish and himself in a bucket of sea water, before wrapping the bream in a cloth and trudging back to the hut to change back into his clerical garb.

  Half an hour later he was walking through the settlement, the fish under his arm as though it were a copy of the Edinburgh Review.

  The few female convicts here were mostly in service, and could not often be found wandering around the settlement waiting to be propositioned. Daisy had her own hut, but could not afford to be indiscreet. The phrase ‘improper association’ had the potential to bring with it an extension of her sentence. Monsarrat had to try to catch her at home, rapping quietly on the door. She would see him and nod, and he would walk away and wait for her to arrive at his own hut, assess the compensation on offer, and decide whether it was adequate.

  He didn’t want to be doing this. He nearly turned back several times on the way to Daisy’s, as he usually did on this journey. He was driven on not by passion alone, but by the knowledge that something dark had begun to grow and gain strength inside him, and needed to be exorcised.

  He knocked on the crude bark door of Daisy’s hut, which opened slightly to reveal her face. There was no stab of affection when he saw her features. In the dim light she looked both agelessly young and agelessly aged.

  She nodded, and he went to his hut to await her. I am d
oing this, he thought, so I’ll have even better reason to dislike myself.

  She walked in without knocking, and he handed her the cloth-wrapped fish. ‘I caught this today.’

  She opened the cloth and looked at the bream. ‘Well done, Mr Monsarrat. I can’t be long, so let’s make it sharp.’

  The transaction complete, Monsarrat was setting his cravat to rights with more than his usual haste, and less than his usual precision, anxious to have the draughty safety of his hut to himself.

  ‘Will she educate us again, do you think, her ladyship?’ said Daisy, rearranging her clothes. She, too, was anxious to be getting along, so she could cook and glut herself on the bream.

  It was hard to tell in the dark if Daisy was speaking sarcastically. But her tone did not have the avidity of someone looking forward to another treat.

  In some ways, Daisy was better than Monsarrat. She, like he, had been transported on professional matters, and they both still practised the professions they had in London. But Daisy, at least, had not pretended to be something she wasn’t. Still, Monsarrat couldn’t help feeling supercilious, if only for a moment. Perhaps even mythology, he thought, is too challenging for some.

  Then he caught himself. My God, he thought, is this how Diamond views me? If so, I’m doomed.

  To Daisy, he said, ‘Did you like it? The lecture?’

  ‘I might have, had I the time and liberty to like anything. As it was, the whole thing made me sick. We need food, and she gives us stories.’

  ‘It is what she is able to give, and it is quite a gift,’ said Monsarrat stiffly.

  ‘I might come for the next one. Those Greeks were dirty buggers, so it could be good for business. One of my gents in London was a schoolmaster. Told me stories about Zeus that’d, well, make a whore blush. I wouldn’t go with a swan like that Leda, I tell you, not for nothing. I have my standards.’

  Monsarrat stared at her, his cravat forgotten. His hands went behind his back.

  ‘Of course,’ chuckled Daisy, ‘it sounds like she’ll be visiting the gods herself any day now. So I will be saved from having a rich woman preach at me to make herself feel better.’

  Monsarrat stalked over to the door and opened it pointedly. His outrage at Daisy’s ingratitude was compounded by the fact that when he knocked at her door, it stayed in the frame rather than flying back out again as his did.

  Never again, he told himself. Of course, he told himself that every time, but now, oddly, he felt that a visit to Daisy would be a betrayal of Mrs Shelborne, who would neither know nor care.

  Risking a further run-in with Diamond, or with one of the fanged denizens of the night-time ocean, once Daisy had gone Monsarrat went down to the river and, as he usually did, turned the corner to the beach, stomped down the sand towards the water, stripped, and washed himself clean. He took care to stay near the northern end – those vicious black rocks towards the south could not be seen at night, but were no less hard than they were during daylight.

  He stood on the shore naked for a short while, punishing himself with the cold, before slowly and deliberately dressing and heading back to his hut, to spend a sleepless night trying to justify using one of the colony’s two best women to spy on the other.

  Chapter 6

  The scrubbed table played host, the next morning, to two sets of forearms, hands clasped, the heads above them bent in prayer.

  Monsarrat paused in the doorway. He was unwilling to interrupt even the observance of a religion which he considered to be the corpse of paganism with a thin cloth draped over it, the features of the deceased still clearly discernible through the shroud.

  He considered leaving, had started to angle one shoulder away from the kitchen, when the man sitting opposite Mrs Mulrooney looked up. ‘Mr Monsarrat. An unexpected delight. Please, sit down.’

  It was neither Father Hanley’s table, nor his right to offer Monsarrat a seat at it. And he certainly was not allowed in the house frequently enough to know whether Monsarrat’s presence was expected or not.

  The settlement’s only church was little more than a large square footprint on top of the hill, slotted into the same space as the hospital and dispensary. Much of the port’s convict muscle was concentrated on raising it from the ground. In any case, it was to be Anglican, and therefore no church at all to the likes of Mrs Mulrooney. Father Hanley no longer had a parish or a congregation, not officially. But his constituency far outnumbered those whose faith would allow them to darken the door of the church when it was constructed. He was a frequent visitor to Port Macquarie, arriving unannounced with the permission of the major to minister to the settlement’s Catholics. He went where he was needed, or where he thought there might be a welcome, and he tried never to leave unfed.

  The priest’s mission today seemed to have been a success, as Mrs Mulrooney was now placing a large bowl of porridge in front of him, anointed with a dab of honey. There was none forthcoming for Monsarrat, nor did he expect it. Tea was one thing – everyone drank it, with the leaves sometimes boiled again and again. Some drank sweet tea made with native leaves, thought to ward off scurvy; however, Monsarrat found it too astringent and preferred the robust black leaves from China, so cheap they resided in a jar rather than in the tea chest beside their more refined cousins. But Mrs Mulrooney risked sanctions if caught feeding a convict – no one was to receive more than their allocated ration – and Monsarrat would never have allowed her to do so in front of an outsider to their small kitchen colony.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Mulrooney. Father.’ Monsarrat nodded to the man as he scraped a chair along the ground with slightly more than necessary force, catching an edge of Father Hanley’s cassock as he did so. Not that it would make much difference, he thought. Like the clothes of most of the settlement’s inhabitants, the black fabric showed signs of repair, but repair effected without finesse or any attempt at concealment.

  ‘Tea?’ asked Mrs Mulrooney, she who was usually incapable of asking such a question in less than five words.

  She turned away to the hob, Monsarrat observing her face during its transit. The eyes displayed signs of a night uncomfortably spent. And strands of hair were escaping her cap with impunity. She placed her plain, worn wooden rosary beads on their customary shelf.

  ‘How is Mrs Shelborne this morning?’ he asked, unable to do so with any equanimity since his acceptance of Diamond’s secret commission. The presence of a priest did not make matters any better, even one whose claims to sanctity were as spurious as they were impossible to confirm. Father Hanley made the room feel stifling, even though its air was now clear of smoke thanks to the recent removal of the chimney’s bird population.

  Mrs Mulrooney didn’t turn away from her tea things and Monsarrat noticed there were four cups out, perhaps in expectation of Slattery’s usual morning visit.

  ‘You might say she’s no worse. The rackings of the disease come no more frequently than they have been. And they’re no more severe. You might point all of that out, if you were Dr Gonville.’

  ‘And is that in fact what Dr Gonville points out?’

  ‘Yes. Like a man saying there was no more rain today than yesterday, while he stands on the broken banks of a river.’

  ‘You disagree.’

  ‘I agree as far as it goes. But she’s so weak now. Sometimes, during the worst of it, I think she’s going to break in two, or smash like a poorly made jug.’

  ‘How did it start?’ Hanley said. ‘Vomiting? Difficulty breathing?’

  ‘Perhaps you’re best advised to keep your probings for ills of a spiritual nature, Father,’ said Monsarrat quietly. He was irritated, not just at the question, but at the fact that Hanley was taking more space than his rough wooden chair was able to give. It seemed to Monsarrat the height of rudeness to presume a kitchen chair was capable of supporting a rear much larger than those belonging to the kitchen’s regular inhabitants, those without access to favours from every Irish cook in the Hunter Valley and the wild country between there
and Port Macquarie.

  Hanley seemed willing to turn a fleshy and red-veined cheek to this. ‘Indeed, sir,’ he said, pronouncing it ‘sore’ in the same way as Mrs Mulrooney. ‘And so I shall, but I have another reason for asking, which I’ll tell you about should the answer be relevant.’

  ‘She asked for honeyed tea a lot in the beginning, yes,’ said Mrs Mulrooney. ‘And there was some coughing, but nothing unusual for a wet winter, not at first. The damp, it does these things. And the parlour smells like mice, which wouldn’t have helped. Mr Monsarrat, while I think of it, would you ask Spring for some more of that white powder for me? I’ve used it all since I started smelling them, and there’ll be a ship in soon.’ As she spoke, she handed him a pottery jar, empty but for a few white grains clinging to its sides, to be refilled at the stores. She always made sure she had plenty of poison stored up for the arrival of a ship, as most of them disgorged rats as well as convicts.

  ‘And have you seen any?’ asked Monsarrat, who was usually asked to dispose of the corpses, his friend having an aversion to touching her victims.

  ‘Not a one. I expect Slattery’s lummoxes have scared them off.’

  ‘Slattery has one less lummox,’ said Hanley.

  Boots on the other side of the door were having the mud stamped off them. And here, thought Monsarrat, is the lummox-in-chief.

  ‘God bless all here,’ said Slattery automatically as he and his sheepskin coat entered.

  ‘And you as well, dear Fergal,’ Father Hanley said expansively, rising to clasp the young man’s shoulder. ‘What a burden and a sorrow today must be for you.’

  Monsarrat rose as well, a sign of conditioned respect for a clergy which had done nothing, in his view, to earn it. One must observe the niceties, even if one was a twice-criminalised agnostic. Especially then, in fact.

  ‘Good morning, Father. Hello, Magpie,’ said Slattery, dispensing with the more profane aspects of his usual greeting. Like Monsarrat, he did so out of respect for the office rather than the man. Recently, as his crew had smoothed plaster on the wall next door, Slattery had told Monsarrat he didn’t approve of Father Hanley. There was, for a start, the nature of the transgression that had brought him from Kildare to Port Macquarie.