Far From Botany Bay

by Rosa Jordan

  “Not . . . yet,” Mary admitted. “Live with the natives if need be. I don’t see their children starving for lack of supplies from England.”

  James smiled, not in humour but in admiration of her will.

  “Have you thought of working?”

  Mary snorted. “What is it you think I do all day long? Why, I’ve not sat for so much as a cup of tea yet today!”

  “Begging your pardon, Mrs. Bryant. I meant working out of the home.”

  Mary shook her head. “I’ve no schooling, Mr. Brown, and what I can do, so can every other woman in the colony.”

  “You were a great help to Dr. White on the ship coming over.”

  “Then he was alone. Now he has the help of doctors from other ships in the fleet.”

  “And all are overburdened for, as you well know, with increasing hunger comes increasing sickness.”

  Mary considered for a moment, then said, “There’s no harm in asking, is there?”

  “No.” James hesitated. “Unless your husband objects.”

  “I shall not tell him it was your idea.” She smiled grimly. “And having brought his family to this, he would do well not to put stones in my path.”

  Mary’s next stop was Colleen and Johnny’s cottage. In size and construction it was as pathetic as all the other convict huts, yet certain details gave it a homey feel. There was a rough wooden bench on either side of the door, and cut-off stumps for sitting and visiting. There was a garden, too, better tended than most. It even had flowers, which Colleen had found in the forest and transplanted here to add a little brightness. For all they were Irish, and political prisoners at that, once the work day ended, their yard was usually full of friends.

  As she approached, Mary could hear Charlotte’s laughter and wondered what Colleen or Johnny might be doing to make her solemn child so happy. She came around the corner and saw Colleen dancing with Charlotte in her arms while Johnny jigged about, pretending to play music on a twig broom. Where under heaven, Mary wondered, did they find the energy—and Johnny with his bad legs at that! She felt a flicker of envy to see her child giggling in Colleen’s embrace, or perhaps it was guilt, for this was the kind of simple pleasure Mary’s mother had so easily created for her. Before anguish at her own limitations fully pierced Mary’s heart, Charlotte saw her, gave a squeal of delight, and held out her sun-browned arms.

  Johnny dropped onto the other bench, and Colleen, breathless, fell into his lap. “Mary!” she gasped, “How’s Will?”

  “Resting,” Mary replied, and to Johnny, “Thank you for all you did.”

  “’Twasn’t much,” he said with a dismissive wave. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”

  “There’s only the roof,” Mary said. “I’ll gather reeds for it, and Will can repair it on Sunday.”

  “Forget the roof and do a garden,” Colleen advised. “It’s food you need, and nothing grows overnight.”

  “I’ll start clearing the weeds this afternoon.”

  “Just a small clearing,” Johnny suggested, “Leave tall bushes all around as a barrier against prying eyes.”

  Colleen leapt from his lap and went around to the shady side of the house. She came back lugging a burlap bag. “Look what Johnny did.”

  Mary peered in. “Why, these are half-grown plants. Surely you didn’t take them from your own—.”

  “Not from our garden, no. I dug them from yours not an hour ago. You’ve worked hard to bring them along this far; no point in losing them now. Some won’t take, of course, but if you work the soil till it’s fine and free of stones, and keep the plants watered, some should tolerate the move.”

  “Oh, Johnny, Colleen! What fine friends you are! However can I repay you?”

  “Easy,” Colleen flipped, “Just make us a present of this wee dancer.” She leaned over and kissed Charlotte, who puckered her own lips and made a smacking sound in the air.

  As soon as Mary got back to the shack she gave Charlotte and Will their thin soup, then went to work in the garden. She cleared a tiny square and got some plants in the ground. By noon the next day the rest of the plants were in. She spent the afternoon carrying water. The distance to the creek was so far that she didn’t know whether to pray for rain to save her carrying bucket after bucketful, or to pray for the rain to hold off until they’d time to re-thatch those gaping holes in the roof.

  It took a good three weeks to get the garden up and growing. By then the rains had come, so she could leave off watering every day. She had also gathered the reeds needed to mend the roof, and helped Will make the repairs—although not before they had been soaked through three times.

  Their food and fish ration was scantier now, as Mary had expected it would be in retaliation for Will’s greed. She managed as best she could, and put off going to Dr. White until three things occurred which reminded her of how desperate life was becoming, not only for her family but for everyone in the slowly starving colony.

  First, an old lady, Dorothy Handland, hanged herself. It might have been confusion, for she was said to be eighty-four years old. Or it might have been that she could bear the hunger no longer; she had, after all, been transported in the first place for stealing a hunk of cheese.

  Then, in early March, seven mariners were hanged for stealing food. Governor Phillip had announced at Will’s flogging that henceforth, no matter one’s standing in the community, any who stole food would hang. Still, there were those who took the chance.

  The third thing that put a fright in Mary happened one day when she was roaming the forest looking for anything she could find—sweet tea, wild spinach, or a nest of birds’ eggs. She came upon a native encampment and saw five aborigine bodies scattered about. They did not have the starved look of the colonists, but they were dead all the same.

  Mary scooped up Charlotte before the child could toddle into the camp. “Sleeping,” she lied, in a shaky voice. She fled back to town and straight to Dr. White’s office.

  White was alone in his surgery, resting after the morning rush with all its decisions as to who was truly ill and who was malingering. Mary set Charlotte down to play in the dirt and went inside. As usual, the doctor had kicked off his boots. Without bothering to say hello, Mary knelt down, lifted one of his feet into her lap, and began to massage.

  White groaned with relief. Then, in his usual cranky tone, demanded, “What do you want this time?”

  “The same as before,” Mary smiled. “Work, here in the surgery.”

  He pulled his foot out of her lap. “And where would I get money to pay you?”

  She picked up the other foot and drew it to her, noting that there was no real resistance from him. “It’s not money I need, Sir.”

  He let her continue massaging for a moment, then planted both feet firmly on the floor. “Rations are harder to come by now than they were on the crossing. And what would you do with Charlotte? I won’t have her here, not with the amount of sickness that’s about.”

  “I’ll ask Colleen to look after her, like before. It needn’t be very long. Just until my new garden is producing.” She hesitated. “I had thought to spend time with the natives, and pay more attention to what they find to feed their children, for most are fit enough. But today I came upon a group of five, all dead.”

  “How close did you get?”

  “Not close enough to touch them.”

  “Stay away from them and any others you come upon,” White ordered. “And yes, there are others. They’re dying in droves and it’s hard to know why. From what I’ve seen, their diseases are no different from ours, measles and the like. But we do not die so readily.”

  He pulled on his boots. “I can’t help you this time, Mary. Why not ask among the officers to see if any need help about the house?”

  Mary shook her head. “They’ve long since found servants th
ey can trust. And besides, those here without their wives and most in need of a woman to cook and clean will be wanting more than that.”

  She reached for the laces to do them up but he pushed her hands away. “Will you stop fussing over me?” Jerking at the laces with what seemed like anger, he snapped, “Don’t you know we’re done for, girl? The breeding livestock has all died or been poached, and garden sprouts are jerked out and eaten before they’re an inch high. Birds that, a year ago, covered the shore with nests have been slaughtered, and shellfish have been stripped from the rocks all around the bay. And where the hell are the ships sent for supplies, which should have returned long ago? Starvation’s in store for all of us.”

  He stood and Mary stood, staring at each other as if they were adversaries. Mary said, in a voice as hard as his own, just what she had said to James: “My daughter shall not starve.”

  When White made no reply she said, “I’ll speak to Colleen this afternoon about looking after Charlotte.”

  Mary worked mornings at the surgery for the next four months. As White had warned, what extra food he found for her was even less than on the ship. However little it was, she took it gratefully and carried it home to Charlotte. Once White chided her, pointing out that if she let herself starve to death, there was little chance of her child surviving, but Mary only gave him a look, and he never spoke of it again.

  In early December, as the summer heat was bearing down, Mary marched into the surgery one morning with an attitude that made White give her a second glance. Her first task was to make tea for them both, to which he usually added a piece of hardtack. Mary had learned back on the ship that the more unobtrusively she performed her tasks the better he liked it, but this morning she seemed not to care. She poured them each a cup of tea, then plopped herself on a stool and glared at him accusingly.

  “Did you not say that Nature knows better than to put starving women in a family way?”

  The tea, half-way to his mouth, sloshed a little. White set it back down and looked her over. “What I said was that starving women don’t conceive as readily as healthy ones. But when one’s been underfed, and then begins to fatten—.”

  “Do I look as if I’ve fattened?” Mary screeched.

  Although White had once thought her pretty, malnutrition had pared her to such thinness that her body retained hardly any womanly curves. Her light brown hair was still streaked with gold from spending so much time out of doors, but under sun-baked skin her complexion was sallow. She was as upset as he had ever seen her.

  “The garden you planted is producing, is it not? And screened as it is by brambles, you said yourself that there has been no thieving from it. Then there’s the fish—you weren’t cut off entirely. And this.” He laid a piece of hardtack between them. “On the whole, I, or rather, Nature, would say you’re better off now.”

  “I am not better off!” Mary shouted, then put her head in her hands and wept.

  White sighed. “How far along are you?”

  “I don’t know. Two months or so.”

  “Cheer up. Maybe it’ll be stillborn. Most are now. Or you might miscarry. Especially if you keep up that bawling.”

  “If I thought all it took was weeping, I’d fill this teacup with tears,” Mary choked, but she made an effort to stifle her sobs.

  White stared into his tea. After awhile he said, “I’ve ridded women of brats before, but I’d not do it for you. There’s a great danger of infection, and I can tell you, it’s a horrible way to die.”

  Mary choked back one last sob. “When I was a girl my mother told me that women have no say in the matter; that men decide when to plant and God decides whether or not there’ll be a harvest. And neither gives a farthing for a woman’s feelings.”

  “I’ve not seen much attention from the Almighty to any manner of human suffering,” the doctor said shortly and, as if he had lost all interest in her plight, he rose and opened the door.

  The usual line of mariners and convicts had formed outside. He looked at their wasted bodies and said aloud what might have been a plea to God, but more likely was a taking of the Lord’s name in vain. White himself couldn’t have said which it was, so bothered was he by all that awful hope collected in their eyes. Why should they suppose he had the power to ameliorate their pain? For that matter, why should he even bother to try when, day after day, God reinvented their suffering, and every other known to humankind.

  *

  Emanuel was born on the afternoon of April 3, 1790. He was a tiny infant and it was an easy birth. He slid into Cass’s capable hands, and didn’t yowl until she splashed him with cold water to wash away the slime. Will was out on the boat, but Cass allowed Charlotte in right away. Charlotte watched the infant with intense interest, but warily, as if it were an unfamiliar wildlife specimen she had come upon in the bush. It appeared to be gnawing on her mother’s breast, but she didn’t seem to mind, so perhaps it wasn’t as bad as all that.

  Colleen and Florie came in next. Florie, as usual, was a little drunk and, because she was so, Cass pushed her back from the bed. Florie retreated to the corner like a small dog and, from that distance, watched mother and child. Soon she slipped into a doze. Colleen hovered over the birthing bed, her green eyes filled with a longing that almost broke Mary’s heart. She would never give up her newborn, but if she had had the power to grant Colleen this second pregnancy she would gladly have done so, knowing how much she and Johnny craved a child of their own.

  That evening, as Will fussed and chuckled over his son, Mary marvelled at how oblivious he seemed to what might well be the fate of both their children. If he thought of the possibility of starvation, it never showed. He and his crew were again bringing in an abundance of fish. Not all their previous privileges had been restored, but Will had regained some status in the colony. Back was his cheerful confidence with its careless edge. There was just one difference. With increasing frequency, he lapsed into a dark mood. It was usually coupled with his arriving home late, reeking of liquor. On some of those nights he had pawed at her body, heavily pregnant though she’d been. Now that the baby was out, she dreaded what was to come.

  Emanuel had been born near the end of a summer drought. The colony’s food stores were lower than ever and still no ships came. The burning sun had killed or stunted most of what was in the garden. Mary racked her brain for other means of getting enough food to nourish her family and herself for, unless she had milk, the baby was as good as dead. Everyone was in the same situation. Between them—nearly a thousand souls in all—the area around Botany Bay had been scraped clean. She could not leave both the baby and Charlotte with Colleen, so that put an end to her work with Dr. White. All Mary could do was tend her drought-stricken garden and fragile children, protecting both as best she could.

  At last the winter rains arrived and, in June 1790, the long-awaited ship hove into view. Every soul in the colony ran down to the shore, shouting for joy or weeping with relief. It was an English ship, Lady Juliana. But if she had been named for a lady, that lady must have been a witch. Her cargo was not food but two hundred and twenty-two convict women.

  These new arrivals had dressed themselves as well as they could under the circumstances in preparation for landing. Pathetic though that was, they cut a fine sight compared to the women of the colony, whose few garments had long since disintegrated, leaving them dressed, as Mary was, in simple shifts made from burlap bags which had been used to transport tapioca and other supplies on the voyage out.

  The women convicts from Lady Juliana were rowed ashore in weather as unsettled as it had been that day the women of the First Fleet had arrived two-and-a-half years earlier. Blustery winds drove black clouds across the sky, and a cold rain fell intermittently. There was an ominous rumbling. Mary recognised it for what it was: the same male animal growl for sex that had turned the night of her own landing into a living hell. She looke
d across to where Governor Phillip and his officers stood, and felt reassured. Although the mariners gazed upon the newly-arrived women with the same lechery as their convict brethren, she sensed that this time discipline would prevail.

  While mariners and male convicts salivated at the sight of so many women, Phillip’s face held an expression of disbelief. He looked at his officers and they back at him, unable to conceal their dismay. How could the colony possibly feed so many extra mouths when it was already on its knees with hunger? No way could these wasted, sea-weary females support themselves. The only hope was that the Lady Juliana had also brought food.

  Mary had similar thoughts, but was glad to see the women all the same. She felt that the presence of more women in the colony would deflect pressures created by the ten-to-one male-to-female ratio. Also, there would be news from home. The women of the colony ran among the newcomers, plying them with questions. Mary started toward them, too, but a hand gripped her arm and held her back.

  “No,” said Dr. White. “There is all manner of sickness on a ship such as this, not to mention the vermin. Stay away from them for now.”

  So Mary did not mingle with the new arrivals, but watched them from afar. After a while she took her children and returned to their hovel, there to await news, second hand, from her neighbours and from Will.

  Will was late getting in that evening, for he had taken advantage of his position to gossip with members of the Juliana’s crew.

  “They say they have aboard but a little flour, not even enough to feed these wretches they’ve dumped on us, let alone to replenish our stores,” Will reported angrily.

  Mary could scarcely believe it. “Surely there are other ships? The Lady Juliana sailed not alone, did she?”

  “Three ships in this Second Fleet,” Will confirmed. “More than a thousand convicts they set sail with, men coming on the other two and like to arrive any day.”