The Commandant

by Jessica Anderson

  ‘Which is never to employ slaves,’ said Louisa with a bored intonation.

  ‘And never again to strike at anyone whose hands are bound, and who can’t strike back.’

  ‘You already sound like a governess.’

  ‘There are worse things to be.’

  ‘There are better.’

  ‘I shall try those first.’

  ‘A governess! The mortification of it!’

  ‘Yes, and that first day, when one feels so strange, and doesn’t know what to do with one’s hands. But I daresay I should learn to do something with them. When I have learned so much, I could surely learn that.’

  ‘Well, I abandon your education.’ Louisa sat in the servants’ rocking chair, put both hands behind her head, and lazily rocked herself. She had little capacity for sustained physical work. ‘Whatever course you take,’ she said, half-shutting her eyes, ‘no doubt in ten years or so you will arrive at the state of most of us—simply of making do with what one has. Surprisingly enough—’ she opened surprised eyes—‘it is an art in which one may progress. I thought I knew all about making do with what one had, but now I find I can do more with it than I dreamed.’

  ‘Your curious new drawings,’ said Frances flatly.

  ‘Those too! You speak of what you have learned, but it is nothing to what you have yet to learn. Nothing!’

  Frances, who had knelt to empty the contents of a low shelf, sat back on her heels. ‘I think I shall refuse to learn it, have nothing to do with it, if it confuses and overlays what I have come to know.’

  ‘Well, perhaps there are always persons like that,’ agreed Louisa, rocking again. ‘Yes, I begin to imagine a state in which one may collect and make central one’s knowledge, and shelter one’s flame, so that it shall burn ever higher and hotter. When one thinks of it, nuns must be like that. And so must bigots, I expect. You will become a sort of secular nun. Let us say nothing about your becoming a bigot.’

  ‘I think about it,’ said Frances.

  ‘You are conscious of the danger?’

  ‘How could I not be, having lived in this place?’

  ‘What is a bigot?’ asked Robert, limping back. Though he had dispensed with his crutches, and limped only slightly, he tired easily, and every afternoon, when Letty took her rest, he was made to rest on the floor beside her sofa.

  Delft was sent to take the place of the packed china, and in place of the twin mahogany dining tables, and the cluster of card tables, stood one huge oblong table with thick square legs. Robert, able to climb now, used it as a stage on which he and Lucy improvised plays about kings and queens, wore table covers as cloaks, and were not reprimanded until the covers were needed to be washed and packed.

  Frances went one day to the office in the garden to bring Patrick Logan’s personal belongings to the house. There were only three: a dented silver ink pot, a silver pen holder, and a round ebony ruler. Captain Clunie, who had moved into the office by tactful degrees, was working at the desk.

  ‘Captain,’ said Frances, ‘pray, after we leave, may Martin come back to work in the garden?’

  He shook his head, looking into her face with eyes full of meaning and reproach.

  She blushed, but made herself speak. ‘Sir, why not?’

  ‘He has joined the worst men. He has become incorrigible.’

  He wished he could add that he suspected Martin of also becoming what they called a ‘leman’ or a ‘lady’. But to do so would be to outrage her innocence. And yet, as long as any part of such knowledge must be hidden from her, she knew nothing. Her innocence was a danger to herself and to others. She was blushing still more deeply, but spoke in a clear voice.

  ‘I know you blame me, sir, for what happened to him.’

  ‘You must take part of the blame, Miss O’Beirne.’

  ‘I do. I shall. But what of the rest?’

  ‘It is his. I admit it.’

  ‘Then let me take mine, and let him take his. But let King George take his share, too.’

  ‘Miss O’Beirne, on this settlement, I am King George.’

  ‘I know it, sir. So, let you take your share.’

  Such insolence could be met only by coldness or amusement. Since she was so soon to leave, he chose amusement. ‘All of us here serve King George. Would you have us all take a share?’

  ‘I should, sir. It is the whole of my argument. Except my sister,’ she added. ‘I don’t blame my sister.’

  After she had gone, he thought that if she were right (which of course she was not), and they must all take some blame for Martin, she ought to blame her sister as well. He wondered on what grounds she made the exemption. Yet, for her sake, he was pleased she was able to make it. Such an illogicality seemed to put her in less danger of becoming a bluestocking.

  When more than two weeks had passed since Clunie’s report had gone on the Alligator, they began to expect the ship that would bring an answer and inform them of the arrangements made for bringing the family and the coffin to Sydney. The Regent Bird and the Glory were busy plying between the settlement and Dunwich, on each journey carrying crates to be stored in the depot, where they would await the ship.

  ‘The Governor Phillip will be sent for you,’ said Amelia, when all four were folding the curtains in the drawing room. ‘Anything less would be scarcely decent.’

  Lucy, playing on the floor, silently turned her face towards them. Unlike Robert, she seldom asked questions, and all were so busy that they hardly noticed, on the perimeter of their conversations, that pale face, those vague but listening eyes.

  Letty had put off packing Patrick Logan’s clothes, but now at last she had to begin it. She went to the big bedroom accompanied by Amelia, but placed herself apart by her silence, her downcast eyes and heavy, reflective movements.

  Soon, even Amelia’s voice became quieter. ‘Time will show him to have been a martyr.’

  Letty quickly raised her eyes.

  ‘His death, Letty my love, will be the clinching argument in favour of carrying the gospel to the blacks, who, in the words of Our Lord, knew not what they did.’

  But Letty had returned to her packing.

  One of his uniforms had been dispersed in tatters in the bush. She folded the jacket of the other, and put it last into the small wooden trunk that held his remaining clothes. They were remarkably few. In the afternoon, when Louisa and Amelia had gone home, and Letty was resting, Frances, passing the room, looked in and saw Robert standing before the open trunk. He was wearing the jacket, both hands smoothing the breast of it while across one shoulder he considered an epaulette.

  He saw Frances. ‘I shall have one like it,’ he said.

  More and more, he spoke in this questioning tone. It was as if his questions had mounted so high in him that they must permeate every word he said.

  She went into the room. ‘Why, will you become a soldier?’

  Again he questioned her with voice and eyes. ‘Mama says I shall join papa’s regiment.’

  ‘You ought to be with mama now, resting your leg.’

  ‘She fell asleep. I came away.’

  He was of such beauty and quality that Frances was moved to calculate whether the interests of such as Martin were really of much importance if set against those of Robert and his kind. But Martin, and indeed, every prisoner on the settlement, had once been a child, and all, all, must have looked at an elder, if only once, and if only for a moment, with eyes as urgently questioning as these. Regretfully, Frances knelt in front of him, kissed his cheek, and slipped the jacket from his shoulders.

  ‘You know you are not to touch such things without leave. Let us fold it exactly as it was.’

  But she was not practised in folding military jackets. When she saw Murray passing the door she called to him.

  ‘Pray, can you
fold this jacket?’

  He held little repugnance for her now. Even if fresh disaster had not broached it, and time had not begun to fade it, and she had not come to feel that she shared his transgression, she could not have held out against the distress in his dark eyes when he looked at her, or his fluttering beseeching smiles. He put the jacket on the bed, folded it expertly, and carried it on the palms of both hands to the trunk. ‘There is always the question,’ he said, as he set it down, ‘of what to do with them?’

  ‘These go with us.’

  ‘When my mother—departed, my father begged my aunts to take her clothes away.’

  ‘Why?’ cried Robert.

  Frances laid an arm across Robert’s shoulders. ‘Were you a child at that time?’ she asked Murray.

  ‘I was.’

  ‘So was I.’

  ‘And so was Cowper,’ said Murray.

  She shrugged. ‘It is very common.’ Her equanimity made her seem rather hard. She took Robert by the hand. ‘Have you come to see my sister, Mr Murray?’

  ‘Yes. Does she know there is a ship?’

  ‘I think not. She is sleeping.’

  Robert broke away from Frances’s grasp. ‘A ship! A ship!’

  But he was still unable to run. They caught up with him before he reached the drawing room. Captain Clunie had arrived. In one of the settlement chairs, he faced Letty, who was sitting on the sofa.

  ‘Mama,’ cried Robert, ‘the ship has come.’

  Letty sent a drowsy look over his head at Murray and Frances. ‘The Mary Elizabeth,’ she told them.

  ‘Edwards has gone to Dunwich,’ said Clunie. ‘We must not be sure that she brings a reply to my report. She could have left Sydney before the Alligator arrived. But we may hope, we may hope.’

  Robert had left the room as soon as his mother had spoken. Frances, who had caught a glimpse of his face, excused herself and went after him. She found him in the nursery, flung prone on the floor with his face hidden in the crook of an arm. Lucy, who had a heat rash between her shoulder blades, was scratching herself against the door jamb and watching him with open-mouthed interest. Elizabeth Robertson, standing above him, was making mild placatory sounds.

  Frances knelt beside him and touched his shoulder. He angrily twitched in rejection of her hand. ‘Robert,’ she asked, ‘why did you run away?’

  ‘The Mary Elizabeth!’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘It ought to be the Phillip.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She is only little. All of us, our goods, and papa’s coffin. We will be herded in her like beasts or prisoners.’

  ‘Robert, if you had not run off, you would have heard what Captain Clunie said. We are not to go in the Mary Elizabeth.’

  ‘We are! I knew we would!’

  ‘Robert, come with me.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘I will, Aunt Fanny,’ said Lucy.

  ‘No, Lucy. Elizabeth is to bathe your back with calamine. Come along, Robert.’

  He allowed himself to be raised by an arm, and went sullenly by her side from the room. In the passage they met Captain Clunie, on his way out of the house.

  ‘Captain, pray tell this boy that the Mary Elizabeth has not been sent to take us to Sydney.’

  ‘Does he think—?’ he asked with amazement, looking at Frances.

  She nodded.

  ‘Why, my boy, of course she has not come for that. Most likely she brings news that your transport will arrive in a few days.’

  ‘Will it be the Phillip, sir?’

  ‘Very likely, little man, very likely.’

  Murray now came out of the drawing room, and he and Clunie left the house together.

  ‘How is the horse?’ asked Clunie.

  ‘Cowper says he will not survive. But he says so only to vex me.’

  They were in the garden, and had paused at the junction of their two paths, Murray’s to the road, and Clunie’s to his office. ‘Why should Cowper do that?’ asked Clunie.

  ‘Oh . . .’ Murray hesitated. ‘It is his way. For my part, I think the horse will live. And even if he doesn’t, if they send the Phillip for the family, there are bound to be fresh horses in her.’

  ‘I believe there will be. I put my request in the strongest and clearest terms. I hope it is the Phillip. Indeed, if they are to travel with all their goods, it will need to be. Did you ever see such a pile as lies at Dunwich? The boy thought they were to go on the Mary Elizabeth.’

  ‘Impossible, sir!’

  ‘Murray, of course it is.’

  ‘To subject her to so ignominious—’

  ‘Murray, Murray, let us not bother even to speak of it. Governor Darling will pay the greatest respect both to the family and to Captain Logan’s remains.’

  Must pay the greatest respect, he had almost said. But in spite of his conviction that the governor, by supporting the honour of the late commandant, supported his own, he found himself arguing silently but hotly, during the rest of the day, that of course they were not intended to travel in the Mary Elizabeth. He went alone that afternoon to inspect the prisoners’ barracks. The dormitory was utterly empty (for the men slept on the bare boards), and the floor had just been scrubbed. And yet it stank. If there were such a thing as a clean stench, he thought, this was it. He could have permitted himself to imagine it as the stench of bodies from which some vital spirit, or even perhaps the soul, had gradually been drawn. He could have permitted himself to hate and dread it.

  But he would give himself no such licence. And nor would he permit himself to believe that his administration would be attended by the muddle, delay, and calamity that had helped to break Patrick Logan. Recrossing the barracks yard, he remembered how he had stood here with Logan on the day after his arrival, and had seen the dangers of isolation. Heated imagination was one of those dangers, and petty rumour was another. Of course they would not be made to travel in the Mary Elizabeth. He went to the lumber yard, where the carpenters were making a cedar press for his office. He was pleased that the prisoners, even those in the gangs, no longer looked at him with the inflammable adoration that had followed immediately on Logan’s murder. ‘Hard but just,’ was the message he was now satisfied to read in their eyes. He had been careful to make no drastic reductions in punishments, but when men were brought before him on the complaints of soldiers and overseers, he would listen patiently to each of their stories, and would make sure he was seen to cogitate before passing sentence or pronouncing acquittal. When the men of the search party, those who had refused to touch Logan’s body, were brought before him, he had not extended their sentences, but had removed, temporarily, their first-class privileges, explaining to them that they had earned this leniency by their willingness to help in other ways, such as cutting and trimming the trees needed for the pair of poles.

  Edwards returned from Dunwich at noon on the following day, coming up the river in the Glory with the six convicts brought by the Mary Elizabeth. Clunie took the mailbag to his office, emptied it on his desk, and rapidly sorted the official mail from the private. He seized on the large letter addressed in the handwriting of Macleay’s chief clerk and opened it first.

  It was with the greatest regret, he learned, that the governor had received the melancholy news of Captain Logan’s murder by native blacks while on a journey of exploration of great importance to the colony. The Isabella and the Governor Phillip were to sail from Sydney as soon as they could be made ready, the former to bear the remains of the late commandant, and the latter his unhappy widow, bereaved family, and whatever attendants they might need, and who could be spared from the settlement. Preparations were in course for a funeral appropriate to the honourable character, zeal, and chivalrous spirit of the late commandant.

  Clunie found that he was smiling,
though he had not (of course) expected much less. He quickly read through the rest of the letter. New brasses for the treadmill had been made from the patterns sent, and were forwarded herewith; Bulbridge and Fagan had been condemned to death; the request for a boatbuilder made by the late commandant would continue under consideration only if he, Clunie, thought such an appointment necessary. There was nothing about horses.

  He put on his cap, left the private mail in Whyte’s office, then set out across the garden to carry the news to Mrs Logan. Murray was coming from the door as he arrived.

  ‘Your mail is with Whyte, Murray.’ He held up the letter and shook it. ‘It is to be the Phillip and the Isabella.’

  ‘Oh, sir, splendid! And sir, the horses?’

  ‘No mention, but let us wait and see what the Phillip brings.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  Clunie shook the letter again. ‘So I hope Mrs Logan is fit to travel?’

  ‘Well, sir . . .’

  Clunie’s question had been only a pleasantry; the smile left his face. ‘What?’

  ‘Sir, if I could have leave to go with her . . .’

  ‘Certainly, if you think it necessary. Indeed, this letter carries that permission.’

  Clunie went into the house, and Murray ran down the garden path to Whyte’s office. He collected three letters for himself and two for Henry Cowper, then ascended the path at the same eager pace, taking the steps three at a time. Today his horse had scarcely got him back from the Eagle Farm; he could not be put to that distance for many more days. Murray skimmed through his letters on his way to the hospital, but even on that brief reading seemed unable to concentrate.

  He found Henry in the office, working on the hospital records. Clunie had asked him to draw up a table showing which diseases were the most prevalent among the prisoners, and which the most fatal. He liked such work; he looked as cheerful as Murray. ‘Only thirty dead this year so far,’ he told Murray, ‘against nearly one hundred last year. We improve.’