by Fay Weldon
She dozed fitfully, being woken time and again by a raging desire to scratch her itchy skin, or by Nora’s growling snore. In the small hours it seemed that everyone in the cell was awake, and that morale had reached its lowest. Jane was weeping again and each time she sniffed, Nora kicked her, which only made her sobs louder. There were bugs in the straw, so small they couldn’t be seen, and they left itching welts on the warmest, softest areas of flesh.
At sunrise, Agnes passed around some hard arrowroot biscuits, broken into pieces, which she’d smuggled from the ship in her apron. They were stale and tasteless, but the gesture was one of solidarity. They had come this far together, and they had survived.
‘How about a story, Agnes?’ said someone.
‘Not a hope. I’ve none in me.’ She sighed. ‘It’s this place, it’s so uncanny quiet.’ It was. But it wasn’t the prison that weighted the air; it was a quiet that rose up from the earth like a silent requiem.
When a thin stream of daylight slid through a small high window they were roused by the turnkey, who was sleepy and cantankerous and herded them outside to a line of covered wagons. Rhia’s wagon was full even before she stepped up, and three more women were shoved in after her before the canvas was fastened with rope and buckles. It jolted off on a rumbling, shaking ride. Nothing to look at but the others’ miserable faces. She supposed she looked much the same, with dark rings under her eyes and straw in her hair and the blades of her shoulders visible through the dirty material of her gown.
The journey was short, and before long they were unloaded onto a grassy bank. Even the grass was foreign. It was thick and springy and a little sharp beneath their feet. And then there was the river, like nothing Rhia had ever seen. It dwarfed the distant rows of pale stone and painted timber. It flowed into the harbour from the west, cutting through the landscape as though it was hurrying somewhere important. The waiting barge, tethered to a rickety pier, was like a flat-bottomed freight boat with one large sail. Freight, livestock, it was all the same. At its helm was a withered seaman wearing an over-large military coat with a dirty kerchief tied around his head.
No one spoke. The landscape seemed hallowed, somehow; more than a church – the immensity of the sky above, the smooth dark water with mist smoking above it, and the jungle of silver eucalypts on either bank. From these, periodically, rose flocks of brilliantly coloured parakeets and enormous white birds with yellow crests.
Birds of jewel colour.
Rhia was numb with cold but even so she felt a low, visceral fear of the green-brown water and its flanking forest. It couldn’t be real. She had, finally, reached the Otherworld.
The July sun was strong and sharp and eventually warmed them a little. Rhia judged that at least one hundred of the Rajah women were in the barge, sitting on the long side-benches or on the floor, dumbstruck by the mazarine sky. She saw her own uneasiness reflected wherever she looked. Were there beasts in the forest, or in the water? What were those noises they kept hearing, the same as last night – the thumping through the trees and that high-pitched cry that sounded so uncannily like human laughter? ‘Natives,’ said Nelly between clenched teeth and Hail Marys. She was certain she’d end up in a pot before they reached Parramatta. Her soldier was on the barge, though.
The sun rose and they were issued with more of the unleavened bread to stop the gripe of hunger. Another hour passed, or more, before someone screamed. It was so shrill a sound that a great mantle of birds rose from the trees, shrieking in chorus. There was a man on the shore, standing between two white tree trunks, but he was not white. He was as black as polished leather. Dressed in a cloak of patchwork fur and, it appeared, little else, he didn’t move a whisker. He watched with solemn disinterest as they passed. His rod-straight pose and the stoic rills of his face made Rhia wonder, fleetingly, if he might actually be a statue. His face was the mask of time itself, yet there was something hauntingly familiar about him. Perhaps it was the presence of this man’s people that she had felt the moment she stepped onto their land. The barge passed by slowly but he didn’t move or follow them with his eyes.
When the sun was high above, they chugged over to a cleared part of the shore where there was an inn of sorts. It was an unpainted bungalow with a dangerously leaning verandah. It proved to be little more than a rum shop, and the only fare to be had, besides rum, was something the lubricated innkeeper called kangaroo pie. This was a stew served inside a wedge of the same tasteless bread they had been eating since they arrived. The innkeeper called it ‘damper’, even though it was as dry as the ashes it was baked in. They sat around the dugout fire on logs, eating their kangaroo pie. The meat was, apparently, ‘wild and to be found hereabouts’. The innkeeper might be described in the same way.
There was no tarrying after they had eaten. They returned to the barge, just as the thumping noise started up again, sounding closer than ever. Then something that looked nothing like a bear jumped out in front of their trudging queue. It was gone in a bouncing grey blur that raised a shriek from several women and, again, from a canopy full of birds. When the creature and its noise disappeared, the slightly crazed laughter of the innkeeper could still be heard.
‘That there’s a kangaroo,’ he called, between splutters.
‘Well,’ spat Nora, with a toss of her head. ‘It’s nought but a monstrous-large hare with the tail of an overgrown rat.’
Rhia laughed from relief and nerves and because the creature was either the largest rat or the strangest-looking hare she’d ever seen. She could tell Nora had been as shaken as any of them, but she still had her mettle. This, too, was a relief. Rhia didn’t know what she’d do if Nora lost her spite. While there was still one amongst them who couldn’t be broken, they could survive anything. The laughter spread quickly and by the time they reached the barge they were all as merry as if they’d been at the rum.
The wind was behind them all afternoon and they knew that they had reached their destination when a high stone wall rose up in place of the tree line. It seemed to run for ever along the riverbank. The wall was grey and foreboding and almost made Rhia wish she could remember a prayer.
It could only be a prison.
Disembodied voices floated across the water, presumably from the unseen township of Parramatta. They pulled into a pier near some towering, blacked iron gates and Rhia caught Nora’s eye. To her astonishment, Nora winked and leaned towards her. ‘It won’t be for ever,’ she said. ‘And whatever you do, Mahoney, don’t let ’em see you’re afraid.’
26 July 1841
I’m losing count of the weeks, but shall never forget the first night. We were gathered together on the spiky lawn at twilight, surrounded by the silhouettes of eucalypts. That’s what the strange trees here are called. They are like sentinels at the edge of the world. That night, the superintendent told us that there are three classes of women here at the House of Female Correction, otherwise known as the female factory. The classes are Crime, General and Merit. The Rajah women are firmly ‘Crime’, and we’ve had our heads shorn again as a mark of this. It was not as bad as that first time at Millbank, but I had only just started to feel less like a hedgehog. I can’t fathom how men put up with prickles on their chins, it is like sleeping on a pincushion.
As to the class system, General class inmates are girls who’ve returned pregnant after being assigned to service. There are a significant number of them. Merit class have managed six months of good behaviour and can leave the grounds, though they must be back by nightfall. If you are Crime, you work all hours. We are the machines in the factory and we are the servants of the ruling class of turnkeys and wardens.
The superintendent is a heavy-jawed harpy, much like her counterparts in Newgate and Millbank. I realise now how lucky we were to have Miss Hayter on the Rajah (and by the way, Albert told me that she and Captain Ferguson are engaged to be married!). I suppose the superintendent has a name and a mother, but it is hard to imagine it. She presides over a number of outbuildings including
stores for wool and flax and places for bleaching cloth.
It took me some time to notice it, but the female factory is not unattractive to look at, for a place so miserable. It is three-storeys of sandstone with a clock tower and cupola and an oak-shingled roof. The upper windows are lead glazed and those below are barred, of course, but still lead-lights. There’s a kitchen and bake house, a spinning room and dungeon-like privies. It is in the privies that all manner of illicit activity takes place, from rum smuggling to trysts with soldiers and, I hear, between women, too.
Inside the main building, the entire ground level is a refectory lined with long, narrow tables and benches, and the floor is paved with slabs of a pale timber called stringy bark. The sleeping quarters, where I am now, are nothing new. By the light of the tallow (the first one I’ve managed to steal) you can just see that the floor is covered with bodies. We sleep on bedrolls that we fold up in the morning, and are so close to each other that if you venture an incautious leg out in the night you can easily start a scuffle. Some of the women have collected scraps of fleece and piled them together to sleep on, but it’s dirty and flea-ridden and I prefer the hard floor and blankets, though they are made from the roughest wool you can imagine. It is spun here at the factory, and it is a coarse tweed that is, not surprisingly, called Parramatta cloth. I’ve heard that it is being exported to England, but I cannot see it making much of an impact – it makes your spun wool seem as soft as silk by comparison, Mamo.
The warden who is assigned to the spinning room is not unfriendly and is finally answering my questions, now that she sees that I can still spin as fast while she’s talking quietly to me. I’ve learnt that the only market for Parramatta cloth in Australia is for prison clothing. I suppose much of the population of Sydney is clothed in it, then. It is heavy, brown and dowdy, of course, but it is warm. It is winter in Australia while it is summer in Ireland, which still confounds me. I am always cold.
We were set to work the day after we arrived spinning the fleece that comes from the sheep stations north of Sydney. The settlers are paid in cloth, and around four pounds of fleece yields a yard of cloth, so there’s not much in it for them once they’ve paid the surplus of one pound to the government for the cost of manufacture. The Crown is making money from our labour! And this is called free trade.
There are other officers who aren’t as friendly as the spinning-room warden. Nora has now been sent three times to do hard labour in the grounds, for no more than a sideways stare and a grumble. There is no satisfaction in grumbling when you are made to break stones and dig the hard earth as penance. We are denied tea and sugar for minor offences, and I’ve gone without for my blessed interestedness, otherwise known as asking questions of the wrong warden.
The spinning room is dim and airless with a smoky fire at one end. There are several women I know working there – Jane and Nelly and Agnes, and Nora when she isn’t being punished. Pearl is always close by Nelly in a willow cradle that someone gave her, and the baby is growing fat and sweet in spite of the misery around her. Nelly’s soldier has applied to make her his wife. I hope she can leave before Pearl grows out of her cradle.
The women who cannot spin pick the bracken and dagsfrom the fleece, or card the spun wool. The yarn is woven somewhere else in Parramatta, by male convicts on manual looms. Weaving is considered to be men’s work, even here, as though the simple mechanism of a loom is beyond female comprehension.
There are no mills to provide the power for mechanised looms here. It seems that there are precious few in the entire colony. I occasionally think of what Ryan said to me the night he died, when he came to my room. I thought then that it was a dream. He said it was up to me to send a shipload of Australian wool to my mother. Well, here am I spinning the stuff, but I’m damned if I can see how this gets me any closer to shipping it. The oily feel of the fleece and the action of twirling the yarn between my fingertips onto the spindle is such a familiar action that I cannot keep my thoughts from Greystones. I’ve given up on trying to banish thoughts of home because it is only in imagination and memory that I feel alive. My body is always either cold or tired or hungry. I can conjure all sorts of things now. A meal of porter, coddle and soda bread with Annie Kelly’s yellow butter and blackberries with thick cream. Sometimes I can almost feel the cloth that I once wore and, very rarely, I catch a glimmer of a pattern in my mind’s eye, as though it were dancing just out of reach.
One last thing and then I must sleep, because the bell rings at daybreak and we have only minutes to be ready and at breakfast in the refectory. It is too miserable to be sent to the spinning room hungry as well as cold. The female factory has other functions, besides the spinning of coarse wool. It is a wife market, too, because free men can select a wife from amongst the convict women. None are obliged to leave with their suitors, thank Christ, but I hear that most do, just to be rid of the place.
Agnes has discovered a roaring trade in buttock and twang and, since she means to run her own place when she’s free, she is keen to have some experience of an Australian brothel. Prostitution is the only means to afford a life outside of the factory, if you have no other skill, and the reason for the number of inmates who return pregnant. Many of the women who are allowed outside the grounds use their leisure time earning a bit extra at their second job. I hear there were several established brothels in Parramatta. I have considered the possibility myself, but am too unskilled.
28 July 1841
I have met a real Australian now, though I wouldn’t tell anyone but you. I’m certain that it was the same gentleman we saw from the Parramatta River the day we arrived, and now I know why he seemed familiar. I’ve seen him before. I saw him first in the photogenic drawing at Cloak Lane. He was the figure amongst the trees. I swear that it was he. I would say this to none but you.
He was standing behind an enormous old tree when we were sent to collect firewood after supper in the grounds. If he hadn’t moved, then I would have thought him part of the tree, because his limbs and his fur cape blended so well into the bark in the twilight. It was as if he was waiting for me. A foolish notion, I know. I would have made a sound, but he put a finger to his lips. He greeted me in English, of sorts, and asked me my name and the name of my ship. If he was real, rather than a shadow, then I can’t imagine how he got into the grounds, so I suppose he was a spirit of some kind. This place is swarming with them.
Our property is locked up in one of the stores, to be returned to us when we receive either a ticket of leave, or an offer of marriage. It was easier than I expected to get to my trunk. There are no firm rules against inspecting your own property, and I’ve had my eye on the soldier who guards the stores, and I made sure that he also had his eye on me. The stores are large sheds, made of rough, untreated timber with a corrugated iron roof. The guard is no more than a pimply youth who wears his serge tunic with so much pride that I can tell he’s not yet had reason to think ill of his profession. I smiled at him last time I was collecting firewood and then I decided to try something. I walked right up to him and asked him if I could see if my trunk was safe. It was almost that easy. He wanted a kiss, of course. I gave him a good kiss on the lips, but he must have thought he could have more, and his hand wandered until I had to slap it away. He was disappointed but, thankfully, kept his part of the bargain. The building is the size of a barn and is stacked from top to bottom with the sorriest collection of luggage you’ve ever seen. There are cracks between and across the wall timbers and a dusty lattice of sunlight fell like a net of light across walls stacked with the belongings of the displaced.
There is an alphabetical system of sorts in place, so we knew where to search, and narrowed it down to looking for a brown card label with my name on it. My old trunk looked shamefully handsome amongst threadbare sacks and patched-up carpet bags and wicker baskets. The soldier pulled it across the floor towards me, and I felt afraid to open it, as though it were Pandora’s box. It is too much a reminder of the past.
&nb
sp; The boy had the good grace to go and wait by the door while I took the little key from around my neck and fitted it into the padlock. At first it wouldn’t turn in the lock because it was so rusted up from the sea crossing. But with enough fiddling it sprang open. Inside were the chattels of a forgotten life. I hardly dared touch the pretty gowns and shawls, stays, petticoats, hats, boots and stockings. They belong to someone feminine, refined, not to me with my red raw hands and flea-bitten ankles. Who packed my belongings so carefully and lovingly? It could only have been Antonia. I touched my paints and my ink as though they were lost treasure, and then I saw something else I’d forgotten; the purse where I kept the few guineas I had saved. It felt heavier. The guard was smoking and not paying me any attention, so I opened the clasp. I counted at least seventy sovereigns in silver. More than I ever earned.
Parramatta Cloth
Jarrah was standing just out of reach of the light from the lantern on George Street, looking pleased with himself. Michael shook his head. ‘You actually found her?’
Jarrah shrugged and smiled, his teeth as white as lamps. ‘She found me, boss, behind a grandfather tree, then the wombat woman shouted at her.’
‘She got in strife, then?’
Jarrah nodded. ‘That’s a bad place.’
‘Damn right. I don’t know how you got so good at finding people. It’s quite a talent.’
Jarrah shrugged. ‘Too much noise here,’ he jabbed his bony finger at Michael’s head, ‘means you don’t hear this,’ he said, poking his belly. ‘Dangerous. You still got that knife?’
‘Of course,’ Michael said. The knife was in his boot and he didn’t go anywhere without it. Jarrah had made it for him. He’d seen a big shark or two in his time, but he had no idea how Jarrah got hold of the tooth of one. It must have been a beast, by the size of the tooth. Michael used to wonder what it was about white men that interested Jarrah enough to work for the constabulary, but then Calvin told him how they’d met. Jarrah was only a boy when his parents were hunted and shot by some young constables who thought the life of a black man was as worthless as their own souls. When Calvin found out what had happened, he had the killers tried for a different unsolved murder and they were returned to London to rot in Newgate or face the gallows. Rough justice was what most people got here.
