The Soldier's Curse

by Thomas Keneally

  ‘Of course, sir,’ said Diamond. He shot Monsarrat a look as he stalked past, but Monsarrat barely noticed. He was having difficulty breathing, but that didn’t stop his body propelling itself across the workroom. For the first time since he had met the major, he entered the man’s study without knocking.

  ‘Sir, you can’t do this! She has done nothing wrong. For nights she slept in a chair next to your wife while she was ill. You could never imagine a more devoted nurse. She is guilty of nothing but being a murderer’s unwitting tool. I beg you to reconsider.’

  The major sighed. ‘Believe me, Monsarrat, I wish it were different. But there is simply no other way in which my wife could have been poisoned. You spend enough time in that damned kitchen; have you ever seen anybody come in and fiddle with the tea things?’

  Monsarrat knew the major intended the question to be rhetorical. But the fact was, he had seen someone fiddling with the tea things. Recently, too. Under the guise of helping Mrs Mulrooney.

  ‘What possible motive could the woman have for wanting to murder your wife? It beggars belief. Even the ring, she put it by safely – do you know why? She wanted you to be able to decide whether it should be buried with your wife!’

  The major’s eyes began to harden. ‘Please do not talk about my wife’s burial, it is no concern of yours,’ he said.

  Then he sighed again. ‘I don’t know why she would have done it, Monsarrat. No doubt her trial will bring that to the surface. She will go to Sydney. Nothing can prevent that. You know, Diamond wanted me to arrest you, too. He was convinced you must’ve been her accomplice. I can’t believe it of you, Monsarrat, but then I couldn’t have believed it of her, either. So please, be careful how you speak to me, for I am beginning to accept that people will act wildly out of character.’

  ‘There is nothing, then, that I can do to convince you? Forgive me, but I know you are not the sort of man who would want to be a party to the hanging of an innocent woman.’

  ‘If she is innocent, a trial will bring that to the surface too, I have no doubt.’

  Monsarrat wished he could share the commandant’s faith in the legal system.

  ‘No, Monsarrat, there is nothing that you can do to convince me. Short of bringing me another perpetrator willing to confess to the crime and hang for it.’

  Then that, thought Monsarrat, is what I will do.

  Chapter 26

  For the rest of the day, the major and his clerk spoke only when necessary. The various reports demanded by the paper-hungry administration in Sydney had been laid aside during the major’s expedition, and now needed to be dealt with. So the major dictated and Monsarrat wrote. The major also asked him to inform Mr Spring and Dr Gonville that the audits requested by Captain Diamond were no longer required.

  Several times, Monsarrat had to drag his gaze back to the page. It kept drifting towards the door. He had heard no scuffle, no commotion, nor did he really expect one – he did not think Mrs Mulrooney would be the type to resist arrest, nor did he think most of the soldiers were of a disposition to treat an ageing woman roughly. But he couldn’t help wondering whether she still stood behind the walls of the kitchen, or whether she was now behind the far thicker walls of the gaol.

  By the end of the day, Monsarrat thought, Well, the deed must be done by now.

  He went into the major’s office – knocking politely this time, and waiting to be asked to come in. ‘Major, I come to you with a request.’

  ‘I’ll not free her, Monsarrat.’

  ‘No, and nor do I expect you to. I’m aware that your mind is quite made up. However, for someone like Mrs Mulrooney – remember, since her first offence in Ireland all those years ago, she has committed no crime – I imagine the gaol will be quite a frightening place. I would like to ask your permission to sit with her for a while this evening. Just to ease her into it, if such a thing is possible.’

  The major looked up. ‘Fine, Monsarrat,’ he said with some resignation. ‘Please write yourself a note to that effect and I will sign it. It’s important that we follow the appropriate process in this matter.’

  But as Monsarrat started for the door, the major called him back.

  ‘I remind you, Monsarrat, and hope I don’t need to, that you are obliged to report any conversation which has a bearing on this crime.’

  Monsarrat gave his assurance, and made his way down to the gaol. He nodded to the guard on duty, a young fellow called Meehan, and showed him the note.

  ‘It’ll be good for her to have a bit of company,’ the guard said. His accent told Monsarrat that he was a compatriot of Mrs Mulrooney’s. ‘This is no place for a poor lady such as herself.’

  Monsarrat could not have agreed more. The man admitted him to the cell, and left him to it.

  Mrs Mulrooney was sitting staring at the wall. She looked as neat as she had on the first day Monsarrat had met her in the Government House kitchen. She seemed perfectly composed, and only someone who knew her well would notice that she was blinking more quickly than usual, which in her was a sign of distress.

  She turned to face him. ‘Thank you for trying, Mr Monsarrat. If you have not been able to manage it, then it can’t be managed. I wonder, before I go to Sydney, would you ever help me with a letter to Padraig? I’d like to let him know what has happened. Assure him his mother is not a murderer, no matter what the courts say.’

  The guard clearly did not consider Mrs Mulrooney a likely prisoner to disappear into the bushes, seeking shelter with the Birpai. He had left the cell door unlocked, so that Monsarrat was able to enter and sit on the wooden bench, next to her. He stared, as she did, at the cell walls. Not the damp, oozing stone of his Exeter cell, but a patchwork of convict-made bricks, as individual as their makers, different colours and sizes, and with flecks of oyster shell in the mortar holding them together.

  She didn’t speak, or look at him then, but he noticed the occasional catch in her breath, the occasional inflation of her lungs to their capacity, as though she was trying to get the next fifteen years’ worth of breathing done before her execution.

  And he had no doubt that if she was sent to Sydney to face trial, execution would be the eventual outcome. If the progressive major was unwilling to spare her, a court in Sydney would not be likely to do so, particularly with the plausible Captain Diamond to give evidence against a former criminal.

  Finally, he said, ‘I very much hope you’ll be able to tell him yourself.’

  ‘It’s a cruel thing, Mr Monsarrat, to give hope when none is possible. And you’re not a cruel man.’

  ‘But there is hope. And the only reason I did not blurt it out immediately on entering this cell is because this hope will break your heart, as well as save your life.’

  She exhaled slowly. ‘You’re going to tell me it was Fergal.’

  In a life which had been full of surprises – mostly unwelcome – Monsarrat had to rank this one chief amongst them.

  ‘How on earth can you know? I’m not completely certain myself – it’s just that, much as I hate to say it, the compass needle is beginning to point in his direction. Away from the execrable captain, whom I’d far prefer to be guilty.’

  ‘I’ve known for a while. His story – dispossession, loss – it’s a fairly common one in Ireland. And it tends to change people. Most of the time they slide into drink or despair, or else become open rebels. One path leads to the grave, and the other leads here. Our Slattery, now he’s a smart boy, I always thought so. But there’s a seam of darkness in him. He took the hurt into himself, in the way his father took gallons of the crater. And then he closed himself around it, that lad, and smothered it with winks and smiles and banter and sometimes his God-awful jokes.’

  ‘But darkness, well, it’s there in all of us. Here, anyway. I’ve often thought you’re the only one here untouched by it. You and Mrs Shelborne, perhaps. It doesn’t make a murderer, not necessarily.’ Monsarrat was surprised to hear himself arguing in Slattery’s favour. He still retained some af
fection for the young soldier, and would have wished Mrs Mulrooney to talk him out of his suspicions, were it not for the fact that in doing so she would be talking herself to death.

  ‘Yes, for a long time I thought that was as far as it went, a stone within him which would always be there but around which he’d made accommodations. And most of the time, he seemed cheerful enough. Occasionally, as I told you, I’d need to put him back together when it had got a bit much and he’d gone and swum in a pool of sly grog. But I can count the number of times that happened on one hand.’

  ‘But you’ve decided, obviously, that his was no harmless personal demon. It was the vengeful sort. Why?’

  ‘I’ve told you the story of his background. What he’s told me, at any rate. And I knew where he was from. And I also knew where Mrs Shelborne was from. A village in Ireland is not like London, Mr Monsarrat. If you live there, you know the local landowner. And his daughter.’

  ‘So you guessed a connection? And felt it was strong enough to drive him to something like this?’

  ‘Not at first. I’ve told you, Mr Monsarrat, how delighted I was when she first got ill. It was my first sign with Padraig, you see. We got little enough food, so it was a terrible pity to see it all re-emerge like that, in the early months. And that’s what I thought was happening to her. Right up until the end, really, I had a stupid hope of it. But then I spooned that tea into her mouth, and she died so quickly that it was impossible not to link the two. Then I started thinking about how Slattery insisted on helping me with the tray, how he fiddled with the tea chest from time to time. Then you told me about that article.’

  ‘The wallpaper,’ said Monsarrat. ‘That’s right, you mentioned it had been scraped.’

  ‘It had. And I’ll tell you what else I noticed – the mousey smell. Or at least I’d got so used to it I’d stopped noticing it. But you said that article had pointed out that wallpaper with the poison in it made a room smell mousey. I’d been wondering why, actually, it was only that room. I was a bit concerned, lest anyone lay the blame for the infestation at my door. I wish that were the worst of my worries now.’

  ‘So you don’t think it was scraped in carelessness. You think it was Slattery?’

  Mrs Mulrooney reached into her pocket and pulled out a small stick, which had had the bark scraped away from one end.

  ‘He was fiddling with this in the kitchen one day. In a foul mood, too, he was. I wanted to box his ears – in fact, I think I might have, I can’t remember. But he was whittling away at this stick, and I noticed that his blade had a few specks of green on it. At the time I assumed it was some corrosion in the metal, but then I saw the green flecks on the stick, as well. There are a few of them still there, you see?’ She handed the twig to Monsarrat. He saw that she was right. There, nestling between the crevices made by the remaining bark, were two or three bright green specks.

  ‘When I told you about the copper … you seemed to take it very hard,’ said Monsarrat.

  ‘Well, until then I’d been telling myself not to be stupid. It couldn’t be him – I’d have noticed green flecks in the tea leaves, he had no means of making it into a liquid. But it turned out he did.’

  ‘There’s something else, as well,’ said Monsarrat. ‘Those words I told you about, the ones we thought might be Irish. Father Hanley told me how they were pronounced. They say chuckie-ar-lah.’

  ‘Now those words I have heard, and I know what they mean, besides,’ said Mrs Mulrooney. ‘Those who speak them tend to finish at the end of a British rope.’

  ‘Father Hanley said depending on your perspective they could be viewed as an exhortation to hope, or as a curse.’

  ‘Probably more like a promise, in Slattery’s mind,’ said Mrs Mulrooney. Monsarrat noticed the rate of her blinking had increased further. She said, almost in a whisper, ‘This is what they do to us. They make us feel unnatural hatreds, without expecting that one day somebody will act on them.’

  Our day will come.

  Of course! thought Monsarrat. It was exactly what Slattery would do, write a message of subversion and cover it, make a secret boast, celebrate some balance he had asserted both by doing physical harm and making a gesture of defiance of which only he knew. He was howling into the gale, but the point was, he was howling.

  Mrs Mulrooney began to cry, quietly. The expression on her face did not change, but tears began to race down her cheeks. ‘I loved that boy, Monsarrat. I still do. I’m ashamed of myself for giving him some of the love that rightly belongs to Padraig, but my son wasn’t there to receive it. Young Slattery is of an age with him, and a similar temperament; it was very easy almost to imagine he was mine, too.’

  ‘But surely you don’t condone what he’s done,’ said Monsarrat.

  ‘Of course not. Mrs Shelborne was a rarity. Sweet, kind and with a sensible mind – you don’t normally get the first two in the same bracket as the third. She should not have died. He should not have done what he did. Her father may have evicted his family, but she can have been no more than a child when it happened, and certainly had no part in it.’

  ‘Slattery clearly believes she did – or at least that the sins of the father should be visited on the child,’ said Monsarrat.

  He braced his elbows on his knees and put his head in his hands for a moment – pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes until he saw brightly coloured pinpricks in the darkness. The tickle behind his eyeballs, the threat of the onset of tears, subsided somewhat.

  Mrs Mulrooney was openly weeping now. ‘That stupid boy,’ she said, as she had the other day, Monsarrat realised, when he had told her about the copper. Her voice was thickening, emanating from further down her throat than usual. ‘The care I lavished on him, the worry. And he turns out to be as indiscriminately vengeful as any of them. That last morning – he knew he’d be away but didn’t know how long for. Suppose he decided to give her a nudge along before he left? I would throttle him myself were he here. What good did he think it would do to pick such a flower? I’ll venture the darkness is still there. It’s probably grown. So what will he do now? Keep killing people?’

  ‘No,’ said Monsarrat gently, putting his hand over hers, ‘he won’t. We will see to it. I would greatly appreciate your advice on how to raise it with the major – you’ve always been so much better at nuances than I. There is a cutter expected in a few weeks; it will probably take you to Sydney, so we have until then. I’ll write a brief of evidence – I have some experience in that sort of thing, as you are aware – and put it before the major. I’ll have to be very careful with the tone, though – it must not have any whiff of a fabricated allegation concocted by an accused woman and her friend. I’ll read it through to you when it’s done, and you can let me know if I have it right.’

  Mrs Mulrooney’s tears stopped, and she looked at him with a trace of her usual fire. Had she had a cleaning cloth, Monsarrat would have been truly fearful.

  ‘Mr Monsarrat,’ she said, ‘you’ll do no such thing.’

  ‘But how else are we to obtain your release? Not to mention visiting justice on a man who killed an innocent woman. I know you love him, Mrs Mulrooney, and I have a good deal of affection for him myself. But remember how good he is at bluffing. We love what he chose to show us – a version of him which might have existed under different circumstances, but doesn’t now.’

  ‘We are not going to obtain my release,’ she said. ‘Nor are we going to bring Fergal to justice. Once in Sydney, I intend to confess to the murder. I would do it here, but I want the place to have a good memory of me, and I don’t want Fergal to do something stupid like stepping forward himself. Then I shall hang. My only wish is that Padraig know the truth of it – you must promise me you’ll let him know what I did, and why I did it. He has no need of a mother now anyway, big lummox like him, well able to look after himself. One other request – would you hold my money, Mr Monsarrat? Make sure it reaches him? I’ve nearly enough saved for him to set himself up in a public house somewher
e – he can hopefully provide the rest. I could go calmly to my grave knowing he had a chance of becoming a proper gentleman.’

  ‘My dear woman, have you completely lost your senses? Why on earth would you do this? The man is a killer – you can’t settle this debt for him as though it were a grocery bill.’

  ‘As to why,’ said Mrs Mulrooney, ‘it may have escaped your attention but I am no longer in the first blush of youth. I have seen far more in my life than my sisters back in Ireland could ever have imagined. And I’ve reared someone who I truly believe to be a good man. But Slattery, now, he is younger than I was when I bore Padraig, and certainly than I was when I was transported. If collecting on this stupid blood debt has exorcised his demon, even slightly, there may yet be hope for him to make a decent life. I want you to let him know, when this is all done, that that was my wish. Tell him to make sure he behaves – he wouldn’t want me to haunt him. I fancy I’d make a reasonably terrifying ghost; I certainly mean to be.’

  Monsarrat rarely yelled, and had never done so in the presence of Mrs Mulrooney – the threat of her disapproval was far more frightening to him than the prospect of a stint on the lime-burners’ gang. But he felt that of all the provocations in his life, this was the sorest.

  ‘I will not allow this! This is every bit as wrong as an innocent being fitted up for a crime they didn’t commit. I will make sure the truth of the situation is known, and you will be exonerated whether you want to be or not!’

  ‘No, Mr Monsarrat, I will not. They will have a confession from me, together with Diamond’s testimony. Against that, anything you may write will seem like a feeble attempt to save my life, and perhaps even your own – they may conclude that you had assisted me in the business, and were trying to remove the risk of blame. Be careful, or you may earn your own rope necklace. In any case, I’m going to have to leave at some point; what better way to do it than by saving a life? And it’ll be over quickly, and then I will be judged and rewarded by the only judge who matters.’