by Jean Plaidy
“For taking.”
“Nicking, you mean?”
“Taking. I didn’t mind. It’s better than the chimley.”
“Chimley sweeps has a terrible time of it,” said Flash Jane.
“I remember a man named Tom what was one. He was a rare one, Tom was. River thief and a regular swell. Done well for himself. Nice big man. He begun as a sweep though. He was smart. Said there wasn’t much you couldn’t hide in a bag of soot. He started on his own. Done well for himself. I wonder what become of Tom?”
The child said: “There ain’t nothing so bad as a black chimley with the fire down below. There ain’t nothing so bad as that.”
Esther stroked her hair, and she looked with wondering eyes up at the girl.
Esther thought: “I’ll teach her to pray.”
Carolan thought: “If anyone torments her again, they’ll wish they hadn’t.”
Change came as suddenly as before. There was something so hideous about the picture that child had conjured up that they could not look at it. Softness was folly. Flash Jane went on to talk of her friend Tom, the big man, the river thief. Her reminiscences were as highly coloured as she could make them, the details as intimate. They listened awhile. Someone began to sing a bawdy song. The woman who had gone to Mother Maybury’s wriggled off her berth and slowly began to take off her clothes.
It was January, and the summer evening was calm and warm. Esther and Carolan lay side by side looking across the sea, for it was the women’s hour of freedom. It seemed to Carolan that years had elapsed since they left England, and here they were, almost on the other side of the world.
“Esther,” she said, ‘how lucky we have been … so far!”
Esther said: “I cannot bear it if we are separated.”
“Esther, do you believe in will power?” I believe in prayer.”
“But I cannot leave our being together to prayers, Esther. Prayers are never answered. Do you know, when I was in prison I prayed. I prayed for Everard to come back to me. He never came. What good were my prayers?”
“Perhaps God did not mean him to come.”
“Perhaps He does not mean us to be together. It would be cruel to separate us now, Esther. We must do everything we can. Who knows, there may be some opportunity. Esther, Esther, what will become of us on the other side ?”
“That we cannot know until we get there, Carolan. But I would have you know, here and now, what your friendship has meant to me. I believe I should have died without it. You are different from the rest of us, Carolan. You are strong and brave. I think you were meant to be a leader.”
“A leader! I should have liked to be a leader, Esther, I should like to lead people against cruelty and wickedness. Oh … not what you call wickedness. Not Flash Jane and her kind, but those who made Flash Jane what she is. I would be a crusader against those who made our laws, against your church perhaps which allows these things to happen … and more, applauds them. There, I have hurt you, Esther, I blunder. I am always hurting you. Wasn’t there a parable about a man who was set upon by robbers. The passed by on the other side of the road, like our churchmen, Esther, our politicians; those people know what is happening, yet pass by on the other side of the road. I like to think that I am the Samaritan of a different faith … the Samaritan who did not pass by. But what can I do… a prisoner? Besides, I know myself. I am not good enough. I am wicked, more wicked than you could understand, Esther. But that is what I would like to be, were it possible … the good Samaritan.”
“You would be, Carolan. You would be!”
“No! I should be thinking of myself as I walked along. I should not see the poor man calling for help… Not until I myself was set upon should I see him. and then it would be too late.”
here was a short silence, then Carolan said: “How good it is to breathe fresh air! I never thought of that in the old days at home. Fancy being grateful because you can breathe fresh air for one hour each day. We must be very strong. Esther, to have survived.”
“We are not very old,” said Esther.
“You are but a child. I wonder how Marcus is. Is he in as good spirits as he was, I wonder?”
“I should like to see him. He is a good man.”
“He is a thief!” said Carolan roughly.
“We are here through no criminal acts, Esther; do not forget that such is not the case with Marcus.”
“Life was very cruel to him.”
“Very cruel. But it will never conquer Marcus.” Unconsciously she spoke his name softly, thinking of the glitter of his blue eyes, and the desire in them.
“Tell me.” said Esther, ‘of how you went to Vauxhall Gardens, and how he was there, dressed as a fine gentleman.”
“I have told you many times.”
“Nevertheless I like to hear it again. I love to hear the stories of your life.”
“I have told you so much, have I not? You must know it almost as well as I do myself.”
“I lie in the berth and think of it all. Sometimes it helps me to sleep, and I forget I am there. I can smell the horses in the stables, and the mutton cooking before your Aunt Harriet’s fire; and I can smell the perfume Therese is putting on your mother’s gown. When you came, you made me alive. Carolan. I wish there was something I could do for you.”
“What should I have done without your friendship?”
“You talk as though this is farewell,” said Esther with terror in her voice.
“Who knows, it may be! Look!”
Carolan stood up, excited. She pointed.
“I saw something. I am sure I saw something. It has gone now … but look, Esther, can you see?”
Their eyes were fixed on the horizon. For ten minutes they did not move, and then clearly and definitely they saw the dim outline of white cliffs.
There was bustle on board now. All convicts were ordered below; gratings were made fast over hatches. The air was more stifling than ever.
Carolan and Esther lay very close. They held hands in the darkness. Esther prayed: “Please God, having given her, do not take her from me.”
Carolan murmured: “I will not lose her. I must keep her with me. She does not know it, but I need her as much as she needs me.”
The ship lay at anchor, while the new land smiled under the morning summer sun. Forests of eucalyptus trees like an army of giants, had marched to the edge of the land and halted there. On the grassy hills stood out clearly the silver-barked gum trees freely mingled with cedar. The leaves of the great eucalyptus trees cast their shadows where in spring golden wattles and the white flowers of the dogwood bushes bloomed. It seemed a smiling, fertile country that welcomed the newcomers, but it aroused in them nothing but nostalgia for their native land. The warmth of the sun, the brilliance of the sea, the green foliage, the white-crested cockatoos and the gaudy parakeets which gave to the scene that picture quality, could only by their very contrast remind them of the crooked streets of St. Giles’s, grey-White buildings looming up in fog, the clop-clop of horses’ hooves on cobbles, the Thames enveloped in mysterious gloom London, which had been home to them, and which always would be home.
The women were lined up on one portion of the deck. Some way off were the men. Carolan looked for Marcus; she could not see him. Esther stood beside her, terrified. Looking along the lines of faces whose skin had acquired that peculiar quality of bad cheese, Carolan thought what a contrast they made to the sparkling sea and the colourful land. So beautiful, so straight, those trees; so ugly, so distorted, so stunted, this pitiful collection of human beings.
Flash Jane told the company that she had heard through a friend that there was a very comfortable brothel in Sydney, whose proprietress always came to look over cargoes in search of “servants”.
“He! He!” laughed Flash Jane in anticipation.
“If you play your cards right, they say the convict life ain’t so bad … for a woman.”
The little girl whose brother had been burned to death clutched at Carola
n’s fingers.
“Do they have chimleys there? Do they have chimleys?”
“You have grown too big,” said Carolan.
“If they have chimneys they would not think of using you to clean them.”
The child’s smile appalled Carolan; it was like the smile of an idiot.
“I have growed. I have growed!” she said, and stood on tiptoe.
A Marine came walking past them.
“Quiet! In line there!” He dropped the butt end of his musket on a woman’s foot. She screamed. He passed on, laughing.
Indignation rose in Carolan. The humiliation of this! Lined up on show, like cattle. She could have wept with the indignity of it, but she dared not weep. She held her head high, and Esther came nearer; their fingers touched. She could feel Esther’s terror through her fingers. She knew Esther was praying silently all the time.
Boats had been rowing out to the ship ever since they had stood here, and that was quite an hour, Carolan thought. Her eyes ached with the unaccustomed brightness; she would have liked to have fallen down on the deck and slept. She looked at Esther’s face. It had that queer look which they all had that of cheese which is going bad, a little green and yellowish-white; the bones of Esther’s face were very prominent; but starvation and confinement had not been able to dull the splendour of her hair. It was unkempt; it was dirty; but the sun’s rays touched it and made it shine like a field of ripe English corn. People would notice that hair. She thought of Flash Jane’s words and her evil grin. A proprietress looking for servants … Oh, not that for Esther! Not that!
A man with an eyeglass and a very elegant coat had come aboard. He stood near them, exchanging a word with one of the Marines. He stuck his eyeglass into his eye, quizzed the rows of female convicts, said something to the Marine and they laughed coarsely.
“By gad!” His voice drifted over to Carolan.
“A lovely crew! What beauties, eh?”
He approached.
“By gad!” he drawled.
“By gad…”
Flash Jane tittered. One of the women began to sing in order to call attention to herself.
“Silence, you old whore!” cried the Marine.
Carolan watched the eyeglass turn on one woman, then on another. It was getting nearer to her and to Esther. She gripped Esther’s hand; Esther cowered close. The indignity of it! The humiliation! Hot colour flamed into Carolan’s face; the eyeglass was approaching her; instinctively she knew that when it reached her it would pause.
Another man had appeared. He was very fair and very large, with big, irregular features. The captain was with him, and from the respectful attention the captain was giving him it appeared that he was a person of some importance. His mouth was a straight line; he looked as if he could be excessively cruel, coldly cruel. Carolan was alert now. Neither she nor Esther must fall into the hands of the man with the eyeglass.In her panic, Carolan told herself that anything would be preferable to that. She began to bargain, which was the only way of prayer she knew: “Please let the other one see us. Do not let that eyeglass find us. If You will only not let that happen, I will… I will… try to believe in You: I will try…”
This way, Mr. Masterman,” the captain was saying. This way, sir. They freshen up, sir. Soap and water will work wonders, sir. A cargo always looks very frowsy on arrival; it’s the conditions aboard.”
“Frowsy is a very mild way of expressing it,” said the man who had been addressed as Mr. Masterman. His tone was cold; his words clipped. The eyeglass was very neat now.
“Hello, ladies.”
The little girl began to scream suddenly.
“I won’t go up a chimley! I won’t! I won’t! I’ll jump in the sea. I won’t be burned to death!”
Mr. Masterman and the captain had paused. They stared at the child who had thrown herself down on the deck and was sobbing wildly.
The Marine kicked her.
“Get up, you baggage! You ugly imp, get up!”
She did not move and he kicked her again.
“Get up, I say! Get up!”
“What is it that the child says?” inquired Mr. Masterman.
“It is giving themselves airs, sir, to call attention to themselves. A taste of the lash will do her good.”
The man with the eyeglass stared down at the child.
“Ugly little devil. Cripple, ain’t she?”
Carolan stepped forward unthinkingly.
“She has been badly frightened. She was nearly burned to death.”
They were all looking at Carolan now. The man with the eyeglass quizzed her with insolent interest.The captain’s face was scarlet; so was that of the Marine.
“Get back into your place. Speak when you are spoken to.” He turned to Masterman. These convicts have no shame, sir. They push themselves forward to get attention.”
“Bless me!” said the man with the eyeglass. He rocked backwards and forwards on his heels.
“I believe it is a redhead. And Dammed, I do declare a little soap and water would make a beauty of the gal!”
Carolan was limp with terror. Impulsively, foolishly, she had done that which she had most longed to avoid; she had called attention to herself. She remembered some of the stories she had heard of prisoners who were taken into households; she guessed the fate of anyone taken into the household of a man such as this one.
It was one of the important moments of her life, and she knew it. She was aware of everything about her, the rocking ship, the changing sea and sky, the bright plumage of birds, the green lush land before her. Perhaps she forgot her cynicism and prayed then, humbly: she did not know; all she was aware of afterwards was that some instinct made her turn her head towards Mr. Masterman, to hold him with her burning eyes, to beg, to plead.
“Save me!” said her eyes. And then as though from a long way off she heard his voice.
“My wife wants a couple to work in the kitchen. She looks a strong girl, that one.”
Carolan thought she was going to faint. The smell of filthy bodies in that fresh air enveloped her. Desperately she fought her faintness. She took an almost imperceptible step forward, and she was dragging Esther with her.
Those queer grey eyes withdrew their gaze. It seemed like minutes before he spoke, but actually it was only a second or two. He said: “Those two look all right. Those are the two I will take.”
The man with the eyeglass dropped it. Carolan heard his exclamation “Gad, sir! I saw the girl first. By gad, Mr. Masterman …” But there was defeat in his voice, which told her that Mr. Masterman was an important person in the new land for which they were bound.
When Carolan and Esther went to Sydney it was little more than a settlement, for several years were to elapse before Lachlan Macquarie with the help of a transported architect, was to replace its wood, wattle and daub with stone and brick, and straighten out in some measure the confused crookedness of its streets. The house into which Carolan and Esther were taken was one of the grandest in Sydney, standing on the corner of an up-hill road that branched out of Sergeant-Major’s Row, now George Street, and which was little more than a track which drivers of carts had followed among the low hills. From the upper part of the house it was possible to get a perfect view of what has been called the most beautiful harbour in the world, with its sand and gravel beaches, and its many indentations fringed with green foliage. When Carolan had first seen it, having been sent to clean the attics, she was lost in admiration for so much that was beautiful; and then in one of the narrow, winding, up-hill roads she saw the bent backs and manacled limbs of a chain gang returning from work, and went quickly from the window, wondering if it were possible that one of those scarcely human creatures was Marcus. She had been lucky, she and Esther. So much that was horrible might have happened to them, but they had had the good fortune to be taken into Gunnar Masterman’s house; this man was a leading citizen with his eye on big rewards for the services he rendered the youthful town; a cold and calculating man by all
accounts, but a wise and good man who went to church every Sunday. Upright, commanding, excessively virtuous, he was friendly with Governor Philip Gidley King; he had married the daughter of Major Gregory, a man of wealth and power in the town, and it was a worthy marriage, for everything Gunnar Masterman did was apparently worthy.
Being confined to the basement, it was only rarely that Carolan saw the upper part of the house. The servants were kept to the basement as much as possible, for they were convicts, all except Margery the cook, and she was on ticket of leave. Their bedroom a huge room which every one of them shared was in the basement. Its floor was of earth, and one of its walls was the side of the hill against which the house had been built. There was a small grating high in one wall; and this place was considered adequate, even luxurious, accommodation for convicts.
It was at the end of January when they arrived, and in the next weeks the summer weather grew intolerable. The mosquitoes were a plague to torture English skins, and there were no sleeping nets available in the basement. The moist heat was intense and oppressive; there was no respite. It was too hot to work by day; it was too hot to sleep at night.
Esther, who was adaptable, was almost happy, but Carolan rebelled against this new life, and as the memory of Newgate and the convict ship became more and more remote, her dissatisfaction grew greater.
But Margery, the priestess of the kitchen, the ticket of leave woman, was drawn more towards Carolan than towards Esther. Margery had been sentenced to seven years transportation for bigamy, and had served four years of her sentence in Mr. Masterman’s establishment when she had been given a ticket of leave and put in charge of the convict servants. Having just come into freedom she was ostentatiously aware of it. She flaunted that freedom; she boasted of it; and she was witheringly contemptuous of those who had not yet attained it. She wore blue merino, and when she worked in the kitchen, a white apron over it; she smoothed it happily, contrasting it with the yellow garments the others wore. She was not unkind, but lazy and selfish, sensual and mischievous. Her most precious possessions were her memories and the bunch of keys she wore at her waist, these latter the symbols of freedom. She talked incessantly of her past, and Carolan soon learned that she had begun by being the wife of a small tradesman; he was a good man, but he did not satisfy her for long, and she ran away with a travelling actor who deserted her after three months, when she took up with a pedlar. She loved all men; she couldn’t help it, she told them; there was something about men that appealed to her. They were so strong, and yet such babies. She loved them all. from Mr. Masterman to James who did odd jobs about the house. And the pedlar had been a proper man with whom life had had its ups and downs but had managed to be excellent fun. She had travelled everywhere with him; he had said she was a wonderful woman at getting the men and girls to buy their goods, and so she was. She could sell anything … particularly to men. But the pedlar was a jealous man, and once he had seen her trying to sell a book to a farmer behind a water-butt, and he had been so angry, poor, sweet man, that he had walked off and left her. The farmer had a wife, and would have none of her either; so she had wandered on and on until she came to a cottage, and in this cottage lived a curate all alone, and she had stayed with him; and the poor soul had had but one bed which he had wanted to give up to her, but she would not have that; so they shared the bed, and he, poor religious man, had wanted to marry her after that, fearing he might be damned if he did not. She had had to soothe his poor worried mind, and that was how she committed bigamy and came at last to be a ticket of leave woman in Mr. Masterman’s kitchen. She had taken James, the odd-job man, for her friend now. He used to lean on the kitchen-sill and she would feed him with tit-bits. She was proud of her friendship with James, for he was a free man… free enough in this town of convicts, that was on ticket of leave like herself. Mr. Masterman trusted James. He went about the place as he liked; sometimes he rode out to one of Me Masternan’s stations and worked there for a week or two. At midnight he used to knock at the basement bedroom door, and Margery would let him in; they would whisper together, keeping up a pretence that the others did not hear, nor even guess at these midnight visits of James’s.
