Land of Golden Wattle

by J. H. Fletcher

  ‘No one would believe you,’ William whispered. But would not look at her.

  ‘Dr Morgan would. People say he’s an honest man. I’d show him and he’d know. Maybe you’d go to gaol, maybe not, but think how people would talk. Your uncle wouldn’t like that much, would he?’

  Richard went to speak but her raised hand hushed him. Her eyes were intent on William’s damaged face.

  ‘Look at me,’ she said.

  Reluctantly he did so.

  ‘We got a deal?’

  For a moment nothing; then, slowly, he nodded.

  ‘Say it.’

  ‘I won’t tell anybody,’ he said.

  ‘Then we can all be friends,’ she said. ‘That’s best, isn’t it?’

  They headed back towards the house, William walking a little easier now, but his face was like a shipwreck. At the edge of the woodland they stopped and Alice turned to Richard.

  ‘I don’t think you should come to the house,’ she said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Look at your hands.’

  Richard looked at his skinned and bloody knuckles.

  ‘People might wonder,’ Alice said.

  She was obviously right but he led her to one side.

  ‘Watch out for him. He’s tricky.’

  ‘You think I don’t know that?’

  ‘I need to talk to you. Tonight.’

  Alice thought. ‘Six o’clock. I’ll have time before dinner. I’ll be walking down the lane.’

  Richard mounted and rode away. Alice watched him go then returned to William.

  ‘Let’s get you home. And remember what we agreed.’

  His puffed eyes looked sideways at her. ‘And if I don’t?’

  ‘Next time he’ll kill you.’

  ‘Not if I have him arrested first.’

  ‘Then I’ll do it,’ Alice said.

  William laughed, painfully and unconvincingly. ‘Just joking,’ he said.

  ‘Best not make jokes like that,’ Alice said.

  They went back to the house. Alice stayed with him while he explained his state to the housekeeper.

  ‘Fell out of a tree?’ Mrs Hickmot said. ‘At your age? Whatever next?’

  ‘He was ever so brave,’ Alice said.

  Mrs Hickmot sniffed. ‘Play the fool like that, he needs to be brave. Lucky your uncle’s away from home.’

  ‘Where’s he gone?

  ‘To Melbourne. Along with about a million others, from what I hear.’

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’

  ‘Haven’t you heard? They’ve opened up another goldfield at a place called Ballarat.’

  At six o’clock that dark evening, cold with the breath of coming frost, Alice McIntyre met Richard Dark along the lane bordering the Tregellas estate.

  She had been undecided about meeting him at all; she felt bad about having gone into the woods with William, worse about how her feelings had jumped about when he’d first touched her. She thought how things might have worked out badly had Richard not turned up in time. Now she was scared he might ask what she’d been doing in the woods with William Tregellas.

  She decided to go anyway – avoiding him would only matters trickier still later on – and it turned out he did not want to talk about that at all.

  He dismounted and she watched him, all arms and legs and his tongue in knots as she waited for him to say what he had brought her here to say. Eventually he managed it.

  ‘I reckon we should get married. If you’re willing.’

  Her heart leapt over the mountain. ‘Why’s that, then?’

  She did not say it to tease him or because she had any doubts but because he had not said what had to be said.

  ‘Please…’

  By his expression she might have knifed him but she persisted. ‘Why do you want to marry me?’

  Richard found the words at last.

  ‘Because I love you. I’ve loved you since we were kids and I want us to be together always. I want you to be my wife. If you’re willing.’

  Alice felt the tears flowing in her heart and beginning to prick behind her eyes. ‘Of course I’ll marry you. I’d marry you this minute if I could.’

  ‘You don’t think your parents…?’

  Her smile engulfed the world. ‘You think I’d let them stop me?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘With the banns and all that… Say two months?’

  ‘Two months it is.’ He made a long face. ‘Seems like forever.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said and laughed joyously. ‘Aren’t you going to kiss me, then?’

  A kiss, she thought. And all the rest of it. It was funny to think about that and wonder how it would feel. I’ll find out soon enough, she thought.

  She felt so tender towards him. He had said nothing about the business with William. She wondered whether that was why he had proposed but she too said nothing. William had never really been the present and was certainly not the future. It was easy now to consign him to the past.

  They said goodbye and she went back to the house, breaking into a skip and hop every few yards as excitement took possession of her.

  Two months… The days would soon pass.

  Charles Mason was sixty-nine years old. He lived in a large and strongly built house that stood on the high ground above Salamanca Place. It had unparalleled views of the Derwent River and was one of the grandest houses in Hobart Town. In this it suited its owner admirably because Charles Mason was by way of being grand too, being a banker with substantial interests in land and property across the whole of Van Diemen’s Land.

  Charles and his ineffectual wife had one child, born in their middle years long after they had given up hope of having any children at all. Cynthia was nineteen years old and recently widowed after Archie Styles, her reckless husband, had overturned the carriage in which they had been racing along an icy road. The accident had left Archie dead and the five months pregnant Cynthia with a miscarriage. Nor was that all.

  Dr Campion had attended Cynthia after the accident. Later he and Cynthia’s father had held a session behind closed doors and it was not a pleasant experience.

  ‘Surely something can be done? A physician of your standing…’

  Dr Campion had treated the highest and mightiest on the island and needed no one to remind him of his standing.

  ‘There is nothing I or anyone can do. The injuries your daughter suffered mean she will be unable to have children. I am aware this is unwelcome news. If I could give you reason to hope I would. The simple fact is I cannot.’

  And dusted his fingers; facts were facts.

  Charles Mason frowned. This was serious news. He felt for his daughter, of course, but there were financial implications too, because the daughter of a wealthy banker had a commercial value. Cynthia’s inability to have children, if it became known, would reduce that value considerably. In the worst case he might not be able to marry her off at all, leaving him with the unedifying prospect of maintaining her for the rest of his life.

  As a banker Charles Mason was a confident man. He prided himself on giving sound advice to his customers. It gave him a sense of self-importance that he relished but now, ironically, he found himself in something of a predicament himself. The making of certain investments had coincided with the discovery that his late son-in-law had left significant debts. While he had no legal obligation to settle these debts the simple fact was that a banker rose or fell by his good name and to renege on the sums owing by the dissolute wretch who had unhappily married his daughter would do him no good at all. The result of this coincidence was that Charles Mason found himself stretched, a situation as unfamiliar as it was unwelcome.

  Therefore when on the first Monday in August his clerk announced the arrival of an unexpected visitor, Charles Mason was more than usually interested.

  ‘Mr Barnsley Tregellas, you say? Show him in, Mr Murtle, show him in at once. If you please.’

  At sixty-two Barnsley Tregellas had become a pe
rsonage in the town, as feared as he was well known. He dressed up to his reputation: a black woollen topcoat over clothing of a London cut and a snow-white stock. His hair was grey but plentiful. His sturdy body was hard as was his expression but Barnsley’s expression was always hard, his eyes chips of glass in a granite face. Charles Mason knew that in different circumstances this man might have made a formidable rival but fortunately the banking world of Hobart Town was big enough to accommodate them both without friction.

  ‘Mr Tregellas, an unexpected pleasure. I had heard you were away.’

  ‘But am now back,’ Barnsley said.

  ‘Such excitement in Victoria… They say the gold will be the making of the colony.’

  ‘I have come about your daughter,’ Barnsley said.

  ‘What of her?’

  ‘A sad business. I trust she is recovered?’

  ‘Thank you, yes. She is very well.’

  ‘Although no doubt mourning the loss of the child.’

  News of the miscarriage had been well guarded but Barnsley Tregellas had a way of worming out everybody’s secrets; Charles wished his own spy system were as efficient.

  ‘It is to be expected,’ he said. ‘But she is young. She will get over it.’

  The cold eyes inspected the room before refocusing on Charles Mason. ‘You say she is young. How young, precisely?’

  Charles had to think. ‘She is nineteen,’ he said.

  ‘And already a widow. But young enough to remarry.’

  ‘In time. And to the right man. One hopes so.’

  Behind the granite features Barnsley’s mind absorbed the information. ‘I have a business proposition to put to you,’ he said.

  Barnsley sat pensively in his carriage as he was driven back to his house.

  His informants had told him Charles Mason was stretched financially: no doubt only a temporary setback, but embarrassing to someone of Mason’s status in the community. The thought pleased Barnsley; anything that disadvantaged a rival – and who in the commercial world of Hobart Town was not? – was to be treasured and used when the opportunity arose. As he believed it now had.

  Yet he was uneasy. His discussion with Charles Mason had gone smoothly; he had pointed out that a marriage between Mason’s daughter and his nephew William would offer advantages to both families. In the normal way of things he would have expected a period of haggling, with talk of trusts and guarantees and each man trying to squeeze what benefit he could from the other, but there had been nothing of that; Mason had gulped down his suggestion with an eagerness that had set warning bells ringing in Barnsley’s head. In the business world they inhabited it wasn’t how things were done.

  Something wasn’t right.

  As soon as he got home he made enquiries and found what he had expected, that Charles Mason’s shortage of funds was temporary only and would have no long-term significance. So it wasn’t lack of cash that was the problem.

  He sent a messenger to fetch Dr Campion, who arrived shortly afterwards with a speed that was gratifying but not unexpected.

  ‘I have a question to put to you,’ Barnsley said after he had got the doctor settled in an easy chair, a glass of sack in his hand.

  Campion inclined his head. ‘I am at your service. As always, Mr Tregellas.’

  ‘Just so. The question concerns Mrs Cynthia Styles, formerly Miss Cynthia Mason. I believe Mrs Styles is a patient of yours?’

  ‘That is correct. I have acted for the Mason family –’

  ‘You attended her after her accident?’

  ‘That is so.’ The good doctor was a picture of complacency. ‘I believe I may claim to have been instrumental in restoring her to her present excellent health. I have found that judicious bleeding of the patient –’

  ‘Excellent health, you say. In every respect?’

  Dr Campion pricked up his ears. Much of his local information came from gossip but it was a fact that Barnsley Tregellas had an unmarried nephew and a man would have to be a fool not to appreciate the significance of such a question.

  ‘She may be a little troubled in her mind but that is a purely temporary condition, natural in someone bereaved at so young an age.’

  ‘But physically?’

  Campion was a man who believed in sticking to his guns. ‘Undoubtedly.’

  ‘You are certain of that?’

  Campion was not a man given to self-doubt but was uneasy at the direction of the conversation. ‘Mr Tregellas, you will not object if I speak plainly?’

  ‘Speak.’

  ‘Then permit me to remind you that as physician to the Mason family in general and Mrs Styles in particular I am bound by the ethics of my profession to the confidence inherent in those duties.’

  Public opinion might have called his manner of speech pompous. The doctor cared little for public opinion but wealthy patients of standing in the community, and even more potential wealthy patients, needed a different approach.

  ‘I trust you will excuse my bluntness,’ he said.

  Barnsley inspected his fingertips before replying. ‘You are saying

  Cynthia Styles has something wrong with her?’ he said.

  Campion bridled. ‘I said nothing of the sort –’

  ‘Earlier, Doctor, you claimed her general health was excellent. If that were so I see no reason why you would now have to rest on the ethics of your profession.’

  ‘Her general physical health is excellent.’

  ‘Then what is the problem?’

  Campion studied the sack swirling in his half-empty glass. ‘This is very difficult for me.’

  ‘Then permit me to assist you. Mr Mason is a colleague, a man I greatly respect. However, the Masons are a dying breed. Charles Mason is several years older than I and has told me himself he is in uncertain health.’ Mason had said no such thing but Barnsley told the lie easily; he had long experience in telling lies. ‘Moreover, he has only one female child who, in the nature of things, is likely to remarry. The Masons will soon be extinct. I, on the other hand, am in excellent health with a young nephew who in years to come will no doubt have descendants of his own. In other words, Dr Campion, we are a dynasty in the making. It is for you, Dr Campion, to decide where you see your future.’

  ‘Mr Mason told you of his health problems?’

  ‘Not two days ago.’ Barnsley drained his glass. He got to his feet and walked to the window, where he stood with his back to the room, the warm room and crackling fire in marked contrast with the wintry scene outside. ‘I am receiving good reports of this new Dr Morgan,’ he said.

  Campion stiffened. ‘A former medical superintendent aboard a transport? No doubt his fees are low.’ He sniggered. ‘I suspect they will have to be if he hopes to attract patients.’

  Barnsley turned and walked back to his chair. ‘Cynthia Styles?’ he said.

  ‘I am not prepared to discuss my patient’s medical history. To do so would be quite wrong.’ Barnsley opened his mouth but Campion beat him to it. ‘However…’

  ‘However?’

  ‘You spoke of creating a dynasty. In your position I would not build my hopes of achieving such an outcome on Mrs Styles.’

  ‘And why should that be?’

  ‘My dear Mr Tregellas, I regret I can say no more. As I mentioned, ethical considerations –’

  ‘But you are sure of the situation?’

  ‘Absolutely sure.’ Dr Campion’s head was down, his eyes staring at his feet, but he had said it. Absolutely sure.

  ‘Let me refresh your glass,’ Barnsley said.

  At ten o’clock the next morning Barnsley Tregellas walked briskly down the hill to Charles Mason’s bank.

  Charles’s eyes lit up when Barnsley was announced but his enthusiasm was soon quenched.

  ‘Tell me about Cynthia’s health,’ Barnsley said as soon as the two men were alone.

  ‘What about it? As I told you she has made a complete recovery from the accident –’

  ‘I am advised differently,’
said Barnsley.

  ‘What nonsense have you been told?’ Mason put on his most ferocious expression but he had been caught out in a lie – by omission, but still a lie – and his anger lacked conviction.

  ‘I have it on reliable authority that in consequence of the injuries she suffered when the carriage overturned your daughter is no longer capable of having children.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Who told me is unimportant. What matters now is a simple answer to a simple question. Is your daughter, Cynthia Styles, able to have children or is she not? Yes or no, Charles? Yes or no?’

  More and more Charles Mason was looking like a rat with its tail in a trap. ‘The doctors are unsure…’

  ‘And you never thought to tell me. When we were talking three days ago. About a possible marriage between your daughter and my nephew.’

  Crack. Crack. Crack. Barnsley broke his sentence into three parts, each as brutal as a musket shot.

  ‘Until I was sure…’

  For the first time Barnsley smiled: genial yet with a hint of teeth. He sat down on the visitor’s side of Charles’s desk and leant forwards, elbows on the polished mahogany surface. ‘Don’t worry, Charles, the game isn’t over. It will mean changing the details a little but the game isn’t over. Not by any means. I believe we’ll be able to come to an amicable agreement despite your attempt at a cover-up. Hmm?’ To a stranger his laugh might have sounded genuine. ‘This is what I propose. For the moment there will be no transfer of assets.’

  Mason blinked; he had not been expecting that. The basic rule in business was if you wanted something you had to give something in return, yet now Barnsley was saying no assets transfer? There had to be a snag.

  There was.

  ‘No transfer now,’ Barnsley said. ‘I like to keep things simple. No asset transfers, no family trusts, no secret agreements. Everything clear and above board.’ He gave a wolf smile, this man who acquaintances said couldn’t lie straight in bed.

  ‘What do you have in mind?’ Charles Mason said.

  ‘A simple agreement. To be entered into the day your daughter marries my nephew.’

  ‘Saying what?’

  ‘That on your death your bank’s assets will merge with the Tregellas Bank. After making suitable provision for your widow – shall we say one hundred thousand pounds? – your other assets will go to your daughter.’