The Commandant

by Jessica Anderson

  The port wine made Robert tipsy instead of drowsy. ‘Hush, son,’ the commandant kept saying. ‘I will stay with him until he sleeps,’ he said to Henry. ‘Pray attend Miss O’Beirne. Mrs Logan is with her.’

  Henry turned down his cuffs. He felt some trepidation, but intended to waste no time. He would be brisk; he would stand for no ridiculous sensibility or nervous nonsense.

  But Frances’s stare unnerved him. Such a jolt it sent through his chest and his pulses, it was like an echo of his physical shock after his vault to the back of the horse. But its agony was of another kind. It was an old agony; Henry had learned to bear it; he was calloused to it. And there was besides something ludicrous about this big young woman sitting crouched on the little bed steps, with her hair pulled back from a face that looked too old again, as it had done on the Regent Bird. And Mrs Logan, who could usually be depended upon to pout and charm, looked hardly less stark than her sister. She stood at a loss, a medicine glass in her hand, silently beseeching him for God knew what. Henry burst into his laugh and went forward.

  ‘Come now, Miss O’Beirne, what is all this? What is all this fuss and bother?’

  Mrs Logan relaxed. She went quickly to the desk and set down the medicine glass. Frances did not move. Henry halted before her.

  ‘Has the medicine settled your stomach?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And otherwise?’

  ‘I am well. I wish I were not. I wish to be dead.’

  ‘Well, so you will be, in fifty years or more or less.’ Henry avoided heartiness, but spoke with the coarseness so often imputed to him. ‘I am sorry you saw a flogged back. But the world sees thousands such every day. The young man will recover.’

  ‘I don’t enquire after him. I don’t presume to enquire.’

  ‘You are too scrupulous, Miss O’Beirne.’

  ‘To bring him to that, and then to enquire after him. No, it would be to insult him.’

  ‘Yours is a sickly tenderness.’

  Frances gave a listless shrug, as if to say, if that were so, she could not help it.

  ‘Sickly and finicky, dwelling on itself rather than its object.’

  He spoke at random, with an anger he did not intend. Frances shrugged again, but her sister, giving Henry a grateful yet warning look across Frances’s head, advanced on her from behind. She would have taken her by the shoulders, Henry thought, would have bent to her ear and added her voice to Henry’s argument, had she not been diverted by the entrance of the commandant.

  Frances sprang to her feet in one movement like a rope flicked straight. A strong colour rose to her face. She was immediately blazing, accusatory. Anyone but the commandant would have seen it. But he was in one of his abstracted moods, and slightly irritable also. He spoke above her head to his wife.

  ‘My dear, go to Robert. I make him only more restive. He is asking for you. And I can ill spare the time besides.’

  Letty went at once.

  ‘Sir!’ said Frances.

  Henry wondered if the commandant mistook that quiver of rage for timidity, and if in his glance at her he mistook her stiff accusatory stance for some kind of deference. He bowed pleasantly. ‘One moment, sister.’ He turned to Henry.

  ‘Cowper, is my son’s injury serious enough to warrant the delay of my expedition? Murray thinks not, but refers me to you.’

  ‘Putrefaction is the danger,’ said Henry. From the tail of his eye he saw that Frances’s colour had not receded and that her breath was fast and shallow. ‘If there are signs of putrefaction in the morning I will let you know. There are none now.’

  ‘And the boy is strong,’ said the commandant in a ringing and reassured voice. He clicked a finger and thumb together and turned with his peculiar sudden radiance to Frances.

  ‘Sister, I thank you for your promptness and coolness.’

  ‘Sir—’

  ‘You and I have had differences. Let us have no more. Let us rest in the knowledge that in important issues we are not at variance. You have been indisposed. I am happy to see you well again.’

  ‘Sir, when I went to the hospital, I saw Martin.’

  ‘Did you indeed? I would not have had that happen. Such sights are not for women. Poor girl. Now I understand your sickness. I have seen it happen even to men. Even to young soldiers. The hospital of course is out of bounds. But on this occasion your trespass is excusable. I beg your pardon—’ he bowed—‘commendable. It is commendable. And I know you will not go again. By the by, my dear, I allowed myself to be persuaded—no, not persuaded, but swayed—yes, I allowed myself to be swayed by the intercession of your sister. Martin had only a hundred.’

  Henry had seen wind go out of sails before. He had often felt the wind go out of his own, cut off by the commandant’s rigidity as effectively as by a towering cliff or by dense dying trees crowding a bank. The commandant may have mistaken the inclination of Frances’s head for thanks (‘Thank you for giving Martin only a hundred.’) but Henry knew it for defeat. How often had he himself made that slow obeisance? It shaded into a bow as she sat down again on the bedsteps. She folded her hands and turned on her brother-in-law a long wondering look. She was accepting defeat with incredulity but without complaint, her will paralysed by the commandant’s obliviousness.

  It was at this point in his own exchanges with Logan that Henry usually laughed. Frances did not laugh. When at last she withdrew her gaze she sank; she coiled inwards again; Henry could see her incredulity give way to hopelessness.

  But he also saw that the commandant was now giving her a sharper attention, and he was suddenly reminded of another occasion when they had stood side by side and confronted a similarly passive presence. He had swung his keys and said, ‘He will die.’ The black man had been sitting on the floor. Perhaps the black man had also said, in his own way, ‘I wish to be dead.’ To be sure, the statement would be necessary to the operation, whether made in words or not.

  The commandant put a hand on Henry’s shoulder and walked him to the window. He bent to his ear. ‘She is still indisposed.’

  ‘Oh, she is.’

  ‘It is a plaguey nuisance. Robert is used to her. She is needed to help with him. Cowper, persuade my wife to call upon Mrs Bulwer or Mrs Harbin. They are better than nothing.’

  ‘. . . not to disturb Mrs Logan,’ said Amelia’s voice in the corridor.

  ‘Sir,’ said Henry, ‘you have a genie in your pocket.’

  Madge Noakes appeared in the doorway. ‘Mrs Bulwer. Mrs Harbin. For Miss Frances.’

  ‘Do we interrupt?’ cried Amelia.

  ‘No, my dear ladies,’ replied Logan in a delighted voice. ‘But I will leave you. I must go to my wife. My wife,’ he repeated, bowing sideways as he walked quickly towards the door.

  ‘We would not for the world incommode Letty,’ Amelia told him.

  ‘You don’t, you don’t,’ said the commandant, going through the door.

  ‘And how is our brave girl?’ asked Amelia.

  Frances gave a little headshake. Louisa took off her bonnet with both hands and spoke to Henry.

  ‘Strange, in a place so small, I have not seen you at close quarters for weeks. Why are you sober? Have you lost your watch? I have brought one of the London journals for Frances. Frances, my dear girl, it will do you no good to huddle there. You will be easier in a chair. Or do you feel too weak to stand?’

  ‘No,’ said Frances, rising to her feet.

  ‘Then take this chair. Amelia, ‘bring up the footstool for her feet. Henry, how is Robert?’

  ‘Young and strong and doing well. Where are your six red snails?’

  ‘Gone!’ said Louisa in tragic tones.

  ‘For ever?’

  ‘For ever! Frances, in this journal they say your precious whigs may soon form a government.’


  ‘Do they?’ asked Frances with indifference.

  ‘Oh, they will write anything,’ said Amelia in dismissal. ‘Anything!’

  ‘Why should they not form a government, Amelia, if they can form a strong one?’

  ‘Oh, Louisa, Louisa!’

  ‘No, upon my word, the only tolerable government is one so strong that its power is secure. Then its adherents can take their ease, and stop being angry and solemn.’

  ‘They seldom stop being solemn,’ said Henry.

  ‘But at least it gives them that option.’

  ‘Does this mean,’ asked Henry, ‘that if a whig government came to power, you would approve it?’

  ‘With all my heart, if it were strong enough.’

  Amelia gave a sigh. ‘Louisa is such an original.’

  Henry laughed. ‘Ladies . . .’ he said, bowing. As he crossed to the door he saw Frances sit upright and pass the sash round her waist. She would not die simply by wishing to. She was a European, and if she wished to die would have to employ their crude and violent methods. Otherwise, no matter how genuine her wish, something would cajole her back into life. She would read a poem that matched her sadness, she would catch at an idea, be amused by a joke, respond to the admiration of a man, or even, thought Henry (who did not really care for women under thirty), only be charmed by a dress.

  While leaving the room and shutting the door he could hear Mrs Logan speaking in the nursery, and as he approached down the dark corridor her words became audible.

  ‘. . . no longer pwesenting her argument in speeches, but in her bodily state. A gween girl, you say! But are all who expwess their disgust gween girls? I have taken my thoughts in these matters from you. My love, have you misguided me all this while?’

  Henry had never heard her so anguished, so recklessly loud. It startled him into looking into the nursery as he passed. But he could not see her. The commandant stood with his back blocking the partly opened doorway, and beyond that dark solid back, rimmed by candlelight, Henry could see only, on the opposite side of the room, the fair, sleeping child.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A fast pace was so unnatural to Captain Clunie that when forced to hurry he bounced and jerked and became anxious-eyed. On this Saturday afternoon in late October, bouncing and jerking and rotating his elbows too high, he was hurrying along the rutted road towards his weatherboard cottage. He had been walking at his own deliberate pace from the brick kilns when he had seen the boat coming down the river, with the two men rowing and the sleeping soldier lying in the bilge. On Thursday the same boat had brought a letter from Sergeant Baker at the Limestone Station.

  The commandant having failed in his purpose, Baker had written, he had begun to bring the expedition back to the Limestone Station when he decided to ride away alone to look for the horse lost in May. He told Collison to go on, and to make camp at a certain spot, and to wait there until he joined them.

  ‘But when he did not come up to that place,’ concluded Sergeant Baker, ‘Collison and the others returned to this station, in the hope that he had come here direct. Not finding him here, Collison and five men went out this day to search. Blacks have been seen in the area.’

  To prevent rumour from unsettling the prisoners, and to prevent it from reaching Mrs Logan (already in distress about her son’s poisoned leg), Clunie had had the messengers fed in his presence, and after questioning them had told them to take advantage of the tide and row back to the Limestone Station at once.

  But now, here was the boat again. He saw one of the men wake the soldier while the other made the boat fast. The soldier sat up; it was Collison. He stepped on shore, where he shook and straightened himself into some kind of precision; but it was apparent, in the clear light of first dusk, that he was still groggy with fatigue, and Clunie was greatly relieved when he proved sufficiently awake to take the path, not towards the commandant’s house, but towards the weatherboard cottage. When Clunie saw him knock he reduced his pace, but all the same he was red-faced and out of breath by the time he himself reached the cottage.

  Collison was waiting in the office. He had been trying to grind his tiredness away with his fists, for his watering, blinking eyes were surrounded by dusty marks. Where he was not dusty he was muddy; he looked ten years older than his twenty-five years. Clunie sat down. ‘Sit down, Collison. What news? Is he found?’

  ‘No, sir. But we came upon his traces. We went thirty miles, more than thirty—’

  His voice was light and wandering. ‘Stop,’ said Clunie. ‘Collect yourself. Be clear. Who went thirty miles?’

  ‘Why, sir, the search party.’ Collison seemed glad to be pulled up and set right. ‘Myself, Private Hardacre, four prisoners. We left the Limestone early Thursday. Light baggage and no bullocks. And went in the direction we last seen him take. As he crossed the ford and rode towards Mount Irwin, that was our last sight of him. It was late when we come upon the traces, at the same place the horse was lost the other time. A clearing about as big as the lumber yard, sir. You could see a circle of cropped grass where the mare had been tethered overnight, and the marks at the creek where he had watered her. And there,’ said Collison, pointing to Clunie’s desk, ‘in a tree stump, was the ashes of a fire. And there—’ he pointed to the farthest corner of the room—‘was his saddle, on the ground, the stirrup leathers cut and the irons gone. And then you could see his footsteps, sir, with long strides, where he had rushed from the fire and mounted the mare.’

  Sergeant Baker’s note had prepared Clunie for anything. He spoke briskly. ‘Any tracks leading away?’

  ‘Sir, too many to distinguish.’

  ‘You searched the area?’

  ‘It was soon too dark, sir.’ Collison glanced at the window. ‘It was about this time of day.’

  ‘You camped there?’

  ‘Not there, sir, you may be sure. But thereabouts, taking turns to watch.’

  ‘And you searched next day?’

  ‘For an hour, sir.’

  Clunie raised his brows.

  ‘It being hard to hold the prisoners to the search,’ said Collison in apology.

  Clunie was silent.

  ‘It sounds like dead silence out there, sir, till you set yourself to listen. They were afraid.’

  ‘So you searched for an hour and then went back to the Limestone Station?’

  ‘Thinking he might have reached there, sir. Hardacre took another search party out today.’

  ‘Very well, Collison.’ Clunie rose to his feet. ‘Go to barracks. Eat, get an hour’s sleep, then report back here to me. I can’t stay to get your full story now. The boatmen will talk, and I am fearful of this news reaching Mrs Logan by any other than myself. But in an hour or so I must have the entire story. We will need it to prime the search party that will go out from here. Unless we hear in the meantime that Hardacre has found him, the party will leave at first light. You will go with them.’

  ‘And would want to, sir. And indeed,’ said Collison, with a touch of indignation, ‘if they had been real men with me, I would have stayed, and beat every bush. I never complained of him, nor called him hard, except sometimes, when it was up to him to call a halt, and him not needing it, no more do we. But perhaps we don’t neither, for we endure it, seeing him do so.’

  Collison’s voice was flagging again; he seemed to be losing the sense of his own words. ‘Well, go along, Collison,’ said Clunie in kinder tones, ‘go and get that rest.’

  As Clunie left the house the evening bell began to toll, filling him again with a sense of urgency. But he forced himself to walk at a normal pace, lest he send alarm before him. As he went he looked sideways, with calculation, across the river to the other bank. The light was no longer good, but he could still see the movement of the pale waving grass, the darkness of the clumps of eucalypts, and the muddy gloss of the
cleared space at the landing stage. At about this time on Monday a group working on the boats said they had seen the commandant standing in that space, with the grey mare beside him. He had made a signal, they said, and they had run to board the barge to go over for him. But before they reached the barge, one looked again, and saw he had gone.

  Clunie had been too busy to pay much attention to this report. The Isabella had arrived, bringing sixty-six beasts. She was not built to carry so many; eighteen were dead on arrival. There were no horses. ‘I wish it were truly a mare they saw,’ he had remarked to Peter Spicer.

  ‘What was it, d’you suppose?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing.’

  Clunie had reached the cottage Murray shared with Hansord. He knocked at the door. It was opened almost at once by Murray himself.

  ‘I saw Collison arrive,’ said Murray in a low voice.

  ‘He hasn’t been found,’ said Clunie. ‘I am going to Mrs Logan. You had better come with me.’

  Murray fell into step at his side. Edwards and Murray were the only two Clunie had taken into his confidence when Sergeant Baker’s note had arrived. Now he said, ‘I wish I were confident of having done the right thing. When you told me the boy was worse I thought it better to keep her in ignorance. But these two days I’ve been of divided mind. Should I warn her? Should I not? Well, now I must. Thank God the boy is better today. The commandant went off alone and slept in the bush with the mare tethered nearby. In the morning he was roasting chestnuts when he was surprised. He escaped on the mare.’

  ‘Surprised? By blacks? By runaways?’