Hester could hear it squawking as she neared home. Her father had rented the top floor from Mrs Cooke, an army widow who preferred to remain in New South Wales rather than return home to England.
After his death, Hester, burdened with her father’s debts, had asked to keep only one room and to feed herself. She had a little ready money, most of which she had realised from selling the last of the few bits of her mother’s jewellery which had escaped Fred Waring’s greedy fingers. He had parted with everything he possessed in order to continue drinking and gambling in the vain hope that he might recoup his lost fortune.
Hester was thinking of her father when she mounted the steps to the veranda and stopped to pet the bird which seemed to be as rapacious as most of the parrots in Sydney. At least, she thought, handing the noisy creature a large nut, parrots were properly fed.
She pushed the front door open to find that the house was full of the pleasant smells of a good dinner. She tried not to let her mouth water, only to find her thoughts wandering again. If she were a parrot, she presumably would not want stew, but would prefer nuts. Did nuts smell sweet to parrots?
‘Oh, there you are, Miss Waring,’ said Mrs Cooke, coming out of her small kitchen. ‘I thought as how I heard you. Was there many at church today?’
‘Yes,’ replied Hester, removing her bonnet. ‘Mrs Wright was there. She said that her baby was well.’ She made for the stairs, hoping that Mrs Cooke would not offer her any stew. In her present famished state she did not think that she could refuse it, but she would not take charity from Mrs Cooke, no, never!
With a sigh Mrs Cooke, who had already decided to offer Hester some stew, watched her whisk away to her room. Miss Waring looked right poorly these days, which was no surprise seeing that she was not getting enough to eat. Pity that all her fine friends never thought to offer her dinner, or even a little something.
Sitting on her bed in her room, Hester was wondering what she would have said to Lucy if she had asked her to dinner. She thought that for one moment Lucy had been on the verge of doing so, but Frank had soon put paid to that.
Well, she hadn’t, and Hester had learned not to waste time thinking about remote possibilities, particularly those which were never going to happen. Her dinner would be the heel of a loaf of bread scraped with some rancid butter which the grocer at Tom’s Emporium had let her buy cheap, and a withered apple which had just managed to survive to spring. Her drink would be water.
She had just finished buttering the bread when Mrs Cooke put her head around the door.
‘I’ve made some stew today, Miss Waring. I was a-wondering if you might like to help me out by eating it up for me.’
‘Oh, dear…’ Hester was as pleasant as she could be, hiding the bread and the apple under an old towel ‘…I’m afraid I’ve already eaten, but it was kind of you to think of me. Another time, perhaps.’
Mrs Cooke walked downstairs, thinking glumly that there was nothing you could do to please some people. She had been sure, knowing perfectly well how meagre Hester’s dinner was likely to be, that she would not be able to refuse such a tempting offer.
Hester, however, felt that she had no alternative. More than her pride was at stake. Once she had accepted Mrs Cooke’s charity, where would it end? There had been others who had offered charity to the Warings, but their patience had always run out in the face of her parents’ ingratitude—Mrs Waring had been as proud and thankless as her husband. Hester had no wish to find herself bitterly resented, perhaps ultimately turned away, by Mrs Cooke.
If she did both Mrs Cooke and herself an injustice by thinking this, she was not to know and preferred not to find out.
Her meal over, she lay on her bed and—tired to the bone—tried to sleep. Instead she remembered her past; usually she tried to forget it, preferring not to remember why and how the Warings had been exiled from England so that she had ended up, alone and penniless, lost on the frontier of Britain’s newest empire.
Her father had ruined himself by drinking, gambling and making unwise investments. Everything had gone: his estate and the house which the Waring family had owned for over three hundred years.
His only comment to his wife and daughter—his son Rowland had died in the Peninsular War—on the new life his relatives had arranged for him, as a remittance man in a penal colony so far away from all he had known, was typical of him in its feckless optimism: ‘A new start, my dears, in a new country. We shall make our fortune yet!’
The harsh realities of life in New South Wales and Sydney, which he found when he reached there, drove him immediately back to the bottle which became his constant companion, even in death. Hester had found him at the bottom of Mrs Cooke’s stairs one morning, stiff and cold, an empty brandy bottle clutched in his hand.
Mrs Waring had died shortly after settling in Sydney and, once she was gone, no one was ever to know of Hester’s suffering during the last years of Fred’s life while he declined slowly to the grave.
The worst of it, as Hester painfully remembered, was that Fred had still kept his pride of birth despite the loss of everything which went with it. He, the poor clerk, dismissed for incompetence from the government post his relatives had found for him, but who had once been a country gentleman, had particularly resented the rich and successful Emancipists who flaunted the wealth which he felt was rightfully his.
He had hated Tom Dilhorne most of all because he was the most successful. Going one day to the committee meeting of a small club to which he belonged, he was surprised to find Tom coolly sitting there among his betters. This was before Tom had reformed his dress and he was garbed in what Fred Waring called his felon’s rags.
‘What is that convict doing here?’ he demanded.
The chairman, Godfrey Burrell, a fellow Exclusive of Fred’s who was a grazier and entrepreneur of some wealth—and a desire to become even wealthier—closed his eyes at the sight of Fred’s red, belligerent face. He was, as usual, barely sober. Tom settled back in his chair and looked Fred straight in the eye with what Fred could only deem was confounded insolence.
‘Mr Dilhorne is here at the committee’s invitation,’ Burrell said, stiffly. ‘He is a man of substance, a friend of Governor Macquarie and, as such, we have invited him to join the club.’
He might more truthfully have added that in this club, where no women were ever admitted, and would therefore not be offended by having to associate with an ex-felon, they were prepared to tolerate Dilhorne in the hope that they might share in his rapidly growing wealth. A pity to cut one’s self off from profit, after all.
Fred was unwise. ‘You have invited this…felon…to join the club! Pray, why was my opinion not asked?’ There was an unpleasant silence since no one cared to answer him. Fred was tolerated these days, not liked. He flushed angrily.
‘I don’t care to sit down with transported scum who arrived here in chains,’ he said at last, ‘however rich he might be, and however much some of you may wish to make money out of him. I tell you, either he goes, or I go.’
Tom leaned even farther back in his chair. He was always impervious to insult. He looked at Burrell, then at Fred, and murmured, ‘I have no intention of leaving.’
Burrell’s response was to stare coldly at poor Fred. ‘And I have no intention of asking Mr Dilhorne to leave, and I believe the committee is of the same opinion. He is here at our invitation. I ask you to change your mind, Waring, and be civil to him. Otherwise, it is you who must leave.’
Fred’s pallor was extreme. He had put himself into a position from which there was no retreat. In his early days in the colony he had been a great friend of Burrell’s and several other members of the club. But his drinking, his losses at cards, his inability to pay what he had lost, coupled with his own descent into a barely clean raffishness, and his open sexual looseness, had lost him most of the friends whom he had once possessed.
He rose unsteadily to his feet. ‘I told you I’d not sit down with Dilhorne,’ he replied, ‘and I me
ant it.’
He staggered from the room, ending up at Madame Phoebe’s gaming hell and night house, and was later deposited, dead drunk, on Mrs Cooke’s doorstep for Hester to haul him painfully upstairs, to clean him up as best she could, and somehow get him into bed.
Later he told her, in detail, of how Dilhorne had done for him at the club, as in business. He had lost his clerkship because of his inattention to his duties, but chose to blame Tom rather than his own carelessness. He never entered the club again: it was his last link with respectability and his own folly had severed it.
Then there were his gambling debts. He borrowed from a friend who sold his IOUs to Tom. Another friend’s debts went the same way. Fred found himself owing money to the man he detested most in the world.
Even before his quarrel with the committee over Tom, he had pointed him out to Hester as the author of his misfortunes in language so lurid that Hester had shuddered at it, as well as at her father’s persecutor. His subsequent descent into ruin he firmly and unjustly blamed on the man he saw as its author, and he taught Hester to hate and fear him.
Hester rose and looked out the window at the garden below where Kate Smith, the little daughter of Mrs Cooke’s neighbour, was playing.
Her memories of her father were always of what he had become in the colony. She could hardly remember what he had been like before he reached Sydney. Dimly she seemed to recall a big, jolly man who had been idly kind to her, although his true affections were always centred on her brother.
And her mother? Somehow she had never seemed to have had a mother at all, and once they had reached Sydney, Mrs Waring had taken one look at it, and gone straight into a decline which ended in her early death.
To be fair to her mother, the town which they had reached nearly eight years ago after a long and miserable sea journey was very little like the town which Governor Macquarie was now so urgently building. Most of the houses had been wooden shacks; to land here must have seemed to her mother like arriving in a wilderness peopled with convicts, strange animals and savages, particularly after her previous life in their beautiful country house in Kent.
She had written to her uncle, Sir John Saville, telling him of her father and mother’s deaths, but she had heard nothing from him. It was all too painfully evident that Sir John had washed his hands not only of his brother-in-law, but of his brother-in-law’s child. She was obviously settled in Sydney for life—but what sort of life? What would she do when the last of her pathetic store of money ran out if she failed to be appointed to teach at the new school?
The scene before her disappeared. She closed her eyes, and began to shiver at the mere possibility. If she did not gain this poor post, she knew that there was only one destination left for her. It was one that the penniless daughters of the lesser gentry and poor clergymen had often taken before her, and that was the streets, to sell the one thing which she still possessed—her body.
How much would anyone pay her for that? Hester had no illusions about herself or her possible fate. Such a poor creature as she was would command only pennies from private soldiers, grateful for anything so long as it was a woman and available. Unless Madame Phoebe thought that she might make something of her and took her into her brothel.
She must not think of the past. Common sense said think only of the present. It also said that she must sit down and plan what to say to the School Board in order to persuade the gentlemen on it not to listen to Tom Dilhorne so that he might not ruin her as he had ruined her father.
‘Dilhorne! Hey, Dilhorne, come here, damn you!’
Tom Dilhorne sauntering, apparently idly, along under the hot midday sun of a busy weekday—although nothing Tom did was ever genuinely idle—ignored the contemptuous cry behind him and strolled on.
The man who had called after him was Jack Cameron, Hester’s recent tormentor, who was one of a group of officers of the 73rd Highland Regiment, part of the garrison which guarded Sydney and its surrounding districts in New South Wales in 1812. Several of the officers laughed openly at his anger. It was not that they liked Dilhorne, but Jack was far from popular with his fellow officers.
Jack, aware of their barely concealed amusement, swore beneath his breath, started forward, caught Tom by the shoulder and tried to swing him around. This was a little difficult as he was shorter and slighter than Tom, who was one of the largest men in the colony.
‘Damme, Dilhorne. Can’t you answer when a gentleman speaks to you?’
‘A gentleman, is it? So that’s what you are,’ muttered Tom, pulling away from the detaining hand, bending his head to look down at Jack from his greater height.
His barely masked insolence was not lost on Jack, who had missed Tom’s exact words but had caught his intent. His dark face darkened even further. No damned ex-convict was going to speak to him in such a fashion.
‘Goddammit, you felon! If it ain’t bad enough to be sent to the ends of the earth, but we have to endure the insolence of the rogues we’re sent to guard as well!’
His eyes raked Tom’s appearance dismissively. He added, after further looking him up and down as though he were something vile laid out for a gentleman to sneer at, ‘Even if you are tricked out to ape your betters these days, Dilhorne, you still look like the scum you are!’
Tom’s face remained impassive under these insults.
‘You wished to speak to me?’ he drawled. He managed, without trying, to sound vaguely menacing.
Jack exclaimed roughly, ‘They tell me that you have a hoss for sale. How much d’you want for it? And no tricking me, mind.’
‘Shouldn’t dream of it,’ murmured Tom, bright blue eyes hard on Jack’s black ones. ‘If I had one to sell, that is. Only, I ain’t.’ He brushed the dark blue shoulder of his fashionable coat where Jack had held it, almost absent-mindedly, but the hint of danger which always hung about him was in that, as in everything else he did.
His answer was a lie and the man opposite to him knew it was. True, Tom had had a horse for sale, but the moment Jack had enquired about it, Tom had withdrawn it from the market. He knew of Jack’s reputation with dogs, horses and women, and had no intention of allowing his good black to be mistreated by such a creature. Would keep it rather.
Jack’s anger mounted. ‘You know damned well you have a hoss for sale, Dilhorne. Ramsey here told me of it, didn’t you, Ramsey?’
Captain Patrick Ramsey, who didn’t know which of the two men he liked less, Jack or Dilhorne—the one being a cad and the other beneath a gentleman’s consideration—shrugged his shoulders, and offered carelessly, ‘So I thought I heard.’
‘There, you see,’ said Tom equably, ‘A rumour. I’m sorry you were deceived by it, Captain…Cameron…ain’t it?’
‘You know damned well who I am,’ roared the enraged Jack.
‘Seeing that we’ve not been introduced…’ Tom began.
This outrageous statement amused all the officers but Jack. Tom thought that, with luck, he might begin to gibber if he baited him much more. The mere idea of a Highland officer and gentleman being introduced to such as Tom Dilhorne…
‘If that is all, Cameron—’ Tom was now politeness itself ‘—you will allow me to take my leave.’ His manner was so coolly courteous that it added fuel to Jack’s anger.
‘Sir to me, Dilhorne,’ he shrieked, only to find Tom bowing slightly to him and his fellow officers.
‘Good day to you, Captain Cameron, gentlemen.’ And his bow encompassed the other officers before he turned to saunter away.
Jack began to follow him—only to be pulled back by Pat Ramsey.
‘No,’ said Ramsey, sharply. ‘Dammit, Jack, why give him the opportunity to roast you? Whatever else, he has the wit of the devil. You should know that by now.’
‘Take your hands off me, Ramsey,’ Jack snarled. ‘You know damn well that he has a hoss for sale. He’s insulting me by refusing to sell it to me. You know that.’
‘It’s his horse to do as he pleases with,’ said Pa
t reasonably. ‘Why give him the pleasure of taking you down?’
‘Because these…Emancipists…and Dilhorne in particular, are getting too big for their boots since Macquarie became Governor here. Who’d have thought that he, of all people, would be sweet on felons? Push them up to be the equal of gentlemen. He’ll be making magistrates of them yet. Dilhorne and that low creature, Will French—you’ll see.’
‘Doing it too brown, Jack,’ said Pat easily. He was always one of life’s observers. ‘Not even Macquarie would make a magistrate of Dilhorne.’
There were times when Pat felt a grudging admiration for the man. Until recently Dilhorne had worn the clothes of an ex-felon. These clothes, loose black or grey trousers and jacket, battered felt hat and a red-and-white spotted neckerchief, were almost a uniform and it was doubtless their lack which had enraged Jack. He resented the sight of an ex-felon losing his outward and visible brand and pretending to be a gentleman by wearing a gentleman’s clothes. Only trouble was, rumour said that Dilhorne had made himself the richest man in the colony.
Pat shrugged. That was Dilhorne’s business, not his. Stupid of Jack to let the man rile him so, but then, Jack had always been a hot-headed fool unable to control his temper.
To placate Jack he said lightly, ‘How about a drink? Wash away the taste of this place a little. Forget we’re here when we’re in the mess. Imagine we’re back home.’
‘You’re right. At least once we’re there we don’t have to talk to scum such as Dilhorne and his kind. My dream is to see that impudent dog writhing beneath the lash again before we leave Sydney.’
He called back to the others, ‘Come on, let’s go in out of the damned sun and pretend that we’re anywhere but here, being insulted by felons!’
Tom emerged from his livery stable driving his gig. He looked up and down the road and watched the officers disappearing in the direction of the Barracks. Well, at least they were not there to see the direction in which he was travelling. That would merely have served to give Cameron another attack of the dismals so severe it might have caused him an apoplexy.
Hester Waring's Marriage Page 2
