3 Great Historical Novels

by Fay Weldon

  I saw Mr Wardell was patrolling the lower deck last night. Perhaps it was he who passed by your cabin?

  Affectionately,

  Laurence

  30 April 1841

  You would not know from Mr Reeve’s drawings that Matricaria recutita and Chicorium intybus are strains of camomile and chicory. I am starting to think that I should offer to do the drawings myself. Would he be insulted? Do I care? He has been uncharacteristically quiet lately, and I feel him watching me more and more. He is becoming brazen and will occasionally ask me something that is not related to our work, something of Dublin or the trade. Any lingering courtesy or respect for me is long gone but I, too, take more liberties with politeness now. I asked him something about a Jamaican tobacco leaf and I could hardly believe it when his reply was that my uncle’s death must have been unnerving. How much does he know about me? I put the Jamaican tobacco leaf away slowly, taking as much time over it as I could. I kept my attention on the patterns in the leaf, trying to gather my wits. I thought Nicotiana tabacum is a more melodic name than tobacco. Mr Reeve is hoping that he might discover wild tobacco, you see, or a relative to it, in Australia. If the weed were suitable to the soil and climate of the colony, it would be a significant discovery. It would also be lucrative. He is equally enthusiastic about the mercenary and the botanical. It is not entirely what I would expect from a naturalist, but Mr Reeve is also a social climber. I can tell by the way he boasts about the important people he knows in London. It means nothing to me, I have not heard of any of them. He is foolish and impressionable. As for the commercial merits of the tobacco plant, I remember that you used the solution of tobacco leaves soaked in water as an insect repellent one wet summer, when the mosquitoes were insatiable. According to the stories circulating below, there are insects in Australia that are larger and more poisonous than those in the jungles of the South Americas. The place sounds more lethal with every new thing I learn.

  I had to answer Mr Reeve so I told him that, yes, my uncle’s death was unnerving. I felt like saying that the rosehip he’d drawn was almost unrecognisable. Such a simple thing to render, yet he manages to make it ugly and clumsy.

  He said that it must be painful to speak of it, and that he had lost a family member himself recently, and that it was an unexpected death, like my uncle’s. I couldn’t keep pretending. I asked how he knew about Ryan. ‘I am not at liberty to say,’ he said airily, but he still looked at me as if I might divulge some confidence. He wants me to trust him and like him, yet he has no idea how to be likeable.

  I decided that I was under no obligation to answer his questions and told him that the leaves of the rosehip were wrong. He sighed heavily, as though he was disappointed in me, and put his spectacles back on, saying he was at my disposal, should I need to talk! He is the last person in whom I would confide. He is becoming bold and nosy. However, I enjoy the cataloguing work. It is interesting, and it is the only contact I have with any form of artistry. It is like a long draught of cool water when I am parched with thirst.

  I have not unfolded the chintz again, nor picked up the precious pencil that Mr Dillon gave me after my trial. I don’t have the heart to draw and my ink is running low.

  Now there is daylight beneath my door. Another day.

  Gabardine

  Albert was waiting in the cranny ’tween decks, looking at the main deck through the scuttle. It was his lookout post. ‘Mornin’ Mahoney. I’ve a message from your fancy man. Says he’s got a plan to get you away from the weed tomorrow.’ That was Albert’s nickname for the botanist. ‘Think one of them will wed you?’

  Rhia rolled her eyes. ‘I’m not the type men wed. I wasn’t before, so it’s even less likely that I would be now, wouldn’t you think?’

  ‘Wouldn’t be so sure. Quickest way to freedom in Sydney. You’ll see,’ said Albert. ‘Besides, you’re not half bad-looking.’

  Rhia laughed and ruffled his hair, which surprised them both.

  Below, Margaret was sitting on the edge of her hammock, her feet dangling. She looked awful, but she smiled when Rhia appeared. She had made it as far as this twice in the past week, but as soon as she put her feet on the floor and stood up, it all went bad. Everyone was watching. The mess united in few things, but everyone wanted Margaret back on her feet. She kept the peace and was relentlessly cheerful.

  As usual, Jane and Georgina weren’t talking. From their hissing exchange at breakfast, it was now clear that they had both been bedding the sailor they’d had the disagreement about. Roughly half the women were now with seamen. Danger and disobedience broke the monotony and it was what they were used to anyway. Mr Wardell, in his signature brown gabardine, couldn’t be everywhere at once, so the odds for getting away with it weren’t bad.

  Margaret put one foot on the floor and groaned. No one breathed a word. ‘For pity’s sake stop gawping, I’m not a sideshow! Mahoney, help me out of this wretched thing.’

  Margaret made it to the table to a round of applause. She wasn’t alone in refusing the gruel. It was thinner every morning, just like the pea soup had ever fewer peas floating in salty broth. The floor tilted suddenly, and everyone put their hands on their bowl. Only one was upended, but Jane jumped out of the way just in time. They were getting better at the swift reflex. No one had worn the contents of a bowl for days. Margaret laughed. ‘Look at us all, sitting round holding onto our measly supper. What a sight! Heaven must be a place where the land is as still as a preacher’s prick.’

  Jane tut-tutted.

  Nora picked up her bowl with her beefy hands and put it to her lips. She took a loud slurp and then wiped her mouth with her hand. ‘Heaven is full of mutton with dumplings,’ she said.

  Agnes added, ‘Suet pudding with rabbit in gravy.’

  ‘And fat strawberries with yellow cream,’ Sarah said with a hungry look, ‘and cider made from red apples.’

  ‘Manchester apples,’ added Margaret, then looked like she was going to throw up. ‘I’d sooner be in any other prison than on this wretched ship – Bridewell included.’

  ‘Is Bridewell worse than Newgate?’ Rhia asked, tentatively.

  Margaret opened her mouth to reply, but Jane was shaking her head emphatically. ‘Coventry’s the worst,’ she said. ‘I was there a year, the first time. Bigger rodents than the river rats at Millbank.’ She was looking at Rhia strangely. ‘I’ve been in a few prisons, and I’ve met plenty who say they didn’t do the crime. But I can see that you’re no thief, Mahoney.’

  There was a stunned silence for a minute. Rhia could only think of the matches and taper she’d stolen. Finally Nora snorted. ‘Bollocks. Oxford Street’s swarming with ladies who thieve. Mahoney’s just as guilty as anyone here.’

  ‘Pull your horns in, Nora,’ snapped Margaret.

  A few spooned in their soup silently and others left the table to lie in their hammocks or sew. Nora cursed under her breath at Margaret but let the matter lie. Rhia pushed her bowl away and caught Margaret’s eye. It felt like a small victory.

  The temperature seemed to rise more each day. The awning on the quarterdeck barely made a difference, it could not protect them from the motionless air. Even lifting a copper needle took effort, and languor irritated everyone. Their clothes were stifling. Tempers frayed. No one wore boots now. It was too hot, and besides, the feel of the timbers beneath your feet made it easier to stay upright when the sea was rough.

  The women in Rhia’s mess were hemming their second quilt for the Rio market. They would be there any day. It made Rhia ache to think of land. There would be buds on the hawthorn and sweet william at Greystones, and the dusky smell of tea rose would be clinging to the arbour in the kitchen garden. Her mother might be bent over her little bushes of thyme or sage, her skirts catching on the spiked rosemary branches. If Mamo were there she would be with her precious sheefp. Could sheep see the dead?

  Margaret interrupted this pastoral vision, ‘What a fine turn the ladies in grey have done us. Most of these,’ she jerke
d her head at the circle of needlewomen, ‘have never earned an honest penny, and here we are labouring together peaceably.’

  ‘More or less peaceably,’ Rhia agreed, since Jane and Georgina were scowling at each other from opposite ends of the awning. No one was particularly cheerful this morning, which could be the heat or the curse with its knack for re-arranging itself so that everyone was waspish at the same time.

  There was no point in trying to have a quiet word with Margaret until the gossip started, or a half-naked sailor came into sight. Rhia looked back to her own sewing. The geometric black and red she was stitching must be from a theatrical costumer. It had a boldness that she’d not seen before. On either side of it were patterns that looked so familiar they might have been old Mahoney prints. She had once spent hours watching the rotary printer at the Dublin factory tattooing a length of virgin linen with new mineral dyes. Colourfast dyes had been in use for years now but, back then, the gleaming machines had thrilled Rhia. She had been just as caught up as everyone in the great excitement of the modern. Now it was hard not to blame the modern for the fate of these women.

  They were laughing at something Nora said about Miss Hayter’s new hairstyle. It was true that their matron was taking particular care with her appearance lately. Was it possible she had a sailor herself? It seemed a good moment to tell Margaret about Laurence, and about the negative.

  Margaret’s eyes widened. ‘Your gentleman friend can do as he pleases with the thing, so long as I have it back when we arrive in Sydney. Devil sweep me, I don’t know what to be more surprised about!’ Margaret suddenly put her hand to her mouth. She looked as though she had just remembered something unpleasant.

  ‘What, Margaret?’

  ‘I can’t keep the rest of the secret now, can I?’ she said, sotto voce. ‘It’s bound to be more nonsense, of course.’ She looked undecided, then she sighed. ‘Juliette told me why she wanted to send the thing to her mother.’

  Rhia waited, hardly breathing, while Margaret chewed her lip and grappled with her conscience. Finally she shook her head and looked back to her sewing. She had decided against confiding after all.

  After lunch, as Rhia was preparing to leave, Margaret pulled her aside. ‘If I tell you I’ll have broken my oath, and I’m trying to be good. I promised Mrs Blake. But then I’m already a sinner, so what difference does it make? I’ll think on it.’

  Upholstery

  Mr Reeve was in shirtsleeves, half his buttons undone. He had removed his waistcoat and was holding the bridge of his spectacles with a finger to keep them from slipping down the bridge of his nose while he read from a botany journal. His hair was sticking to his forehead. ‘I say, this is interesting, Mahoney!’

  Rhia looked up from puzzling over some drawing at whose identity she could not even hazard a guess. Perspiration trickled beneath her clothes, and her undergarments were damp. She couldn’t bear to have her cap on and had finally ceased to care what state her hair was in. ‘Mm,’ she said, hardly bothering to sound interested.

  ‘It says here that they’ve found phormium tenax in New South Wales! I don’t suppose you know what that is.’

  ‘Flax,’ said Rhia, feeling pleased when he looked disappointed.

  ‘You’re always surprising me, Mahoney. But here is something that might surprise you. The naturalist Henry Watson says here that he has seen many specimens in Sydney.’ Mr Reeve laughed quietly at this. ‘And I quote. “On this occasion, I had an opportunity of seeing a specimen of the best society in the colony, and I looked in vain for any mark by which I could distinguish it from any refined or genteel company in England. The equipages were fashionable, the ladies were in general pretty and elegantly attired, and the gentlemen equally unexceptional in their dress and attire. Here, in a very pleasing garden, I saw the gigantic lily, said to be the chief floral ornament of the Australian wilderness.”’

  Mr Reeve looked pleased, but Rhia couldn’t tell if it was the prospect of ladies who were in general pretty and elegantly attired, or the gigantic lily that excited him so much.

  There was a tap on the door. It was Albert. He handed Mr Reeve a piece of notepaper, winking at Rhia as the botanist frowned and read. Albert stepped out of view of the open door, but Rhia guessed that he was within earshot.

  Mr Reeve looked irritated when he folded the note, creasing it sharply and deliberately.

  ‘Mr Blake has received Mr Wardell’s permission to have your assistance this afternoon, Mahoney. He did mention his intent at breakfast yesterday, but I assumed he’d have the courtesy to inform me before this. Apparently you are the only person on this ship with the necessary skill. I was unaware that you were also versed in photogenic drawing, Mahoney. You are full of surprises.’

  Rhia tried not to show that she too had been unaware of her expertise. ‘Only a little. I – I lodged with someone in London who had a calotype studio.’ Mr Reeve looked perplexed, his pale eyes blinking rapidly. He mopped his face with a handkerchief. He was not sure whether to be suspicious or not.

  ‘Strange that Mr Blake should know of it when I did not,’ he said, almost sulkily. ‘I plan to use photogenic drawing in my own work one day, you know.’ They both knew that photogenic drawing was a wealthy man’s pursuit, which accounted for the botanist’s dejected expression.

  ‘I suppose I must release you.’ He sighed heavily to make it clear how much it would inconvenience him. ‘I thought you were to be my assistant.’ His petulance might have been laughable were it not so irritating.

  ‘I’ve not always been a prisoner, Mr Reeve. Not so long ago, I was a Catholic merchant’s daughter and lived in a large house in Dublin with servants. It would have been scandalous that I be left alone in a cabin with either you or Mr Blake.’ She stood to leave and realised that she wasn’t wearing her cap. She didn’t want Laurence to see her hair. As she bent to pick it up, her mother’s letter fell from her apron pocket to the floor at his feet. Without hesitation, Mr Reeve picked it up and started to unfold it. He had gone too far. Rhia snatched it back from him.

  ‘You have no right!’

  He looked stunned, and then his face reddened. He shrugged and turned away.

  ‘We all carry mementos of those we hold dear,’ he mumbled, bent over his table with his back to her. She hoped he was ashamed. What could have made him behave in such a way? Perhaps he thought it was a love letter, but even so it was none of his business.

  Outside, Albert was smoking. He gave her a curious look. He’d probably heard everything. She followed him along a narrow, low-ceilinged corridor beyond their snug ’tween decks. Albert was singing softly. ‘In Dublin’s fair city, where the girls are so pretty, I first laid my eyes on Rhiannon Mahoney …’

  She felt tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. ‘I am grateful, Albert. I’ll find some means of repaying you.’

  ‘No need. Mr Blake already has.’ He jingled some coins in his pocket and grinned. ‘Pay attention,’ he added, ‘this is the secret way to the passenger deck,’ he chuckled, ‘in case ye ever need to get there secretly.’ He led her down a dark passageway that looked vaguely familiar. She had almost come this way once when she was lost.

  The only part of the narrow, weaving passageway that contained signs of life was an open door, from which issued dim gaslight and the smell of roasting fowl. The galley. It was no meal for the prisoner’s table being prepared. The only meat Rhia had tasted for weeks was stewed beef, ropey and without flavour. She peered into the galley as they passed, and glimpsed the bone-thin back of a man in an enormous dirty apron that almost wrapped around him twice. He wore a Chinaman’s close-fitting cap and his long, stringy plait reached to his waist. Rhia had no time to take in more of the galley than that it was dim and steamy and not particularly clean. The stoop of the cook’s thin back made him look unwell.

  They reached the end of the passageway and climbed a short flight of steps to the passenger deck. Albert delivered her to the door of Laurence’s cabin, smirked cheekily and disappear
ed.

  Laurence opened the door as though he had been standing on the other side waiting. Rhia stepped inside. The cabin felt spacious, though it was not much bigger than Mr Reeve’s. Light funnelled through a narrow window and fell across a writing table. The window was filled with sea and sky. On the table was a lacquered stationery box and something that looked like a small book press, though between its two wooden plates was a piece of glass. Beside it was the wallet that held the negative.

  Rhia looked around. There was a built-in bed with wainscoting and an upholstered armchair. A patterned rug covered the floor, soft beneath her bare feet. The chair looked luxurious; the linen clean. These were things that had once seemed ordinary, that she once might not even have noticed. She no longer belonged in a room like this and felt uncomfortable.

  Laurence didn’t seem to notice. He took a step closer and held both her hands. ‘Rhia.’

  She held her breath.

  ‘To see you like this …’

  She looked away and tried to be flippant. ‘Do I look so awful?’

  ‘No! Well, you’ve looked better,’ he said. Rhia was relieved to see his humour return. She didn’t recognise this sombre Laurence who seemed on the verge of declaring his love at any moment. ‘I’d place my life in Dillon’s hands,’ he continued, ‘but I hope that he is wrong.’

  ‘Wrong?’

  ‘I hope that your being here has nothing to do with Ryan’s death.’

  She had long since given up trying to understand what the connection could possibly be. ‘What do you mean, Laurence?’

  Laurence looked regretful immediately. ‘Dillon said nothing to you?’ She shook her head. He frowned. ‘I shouldn’t have told you. Christ knows you have troubles enough.’