Dear Anne, she did not despair as I did, was not ready to give up on the child. Came upon me more than once, limp in the armchair with Edward crying on my lap while I sat and leaked endless tired tears. Led me to the bed, pulled the covers up gently as if she were the mother and I the child, and took Edward away until, waking from a dense sleep, I was ready again to put my shoulder to the wheel of this business of being a mother.
He lived a week, a month, two months, and I thanked the God I did not believe in that this child was not, as I had dearly wanted a year earlier, dead.
He was not yet three months old when Mr Macarthur came upon me nursing him in the big armchair by the fire. Edward and I were joined as if the one creature, my body relaxed against the cushions and his warm weight folded tightly in against me, his starfish fingers caressing the source of bliss and his little feet twining together in ecstasy.
When Mr Macarthur filled the doorway I did not have time to rearrange the tableau. A mother can hardly feel guilt for nursing her own infant, yet it was with a sense of being caught out that I had the impulse to cover myself. Edward on the instant felt the change in my mood, the smooth rhythm of his sucking faltered, he spluttered, choked, let out his thin bird-call of distress.
I saw Mr Macarthur’s expression change as he stared at something he had never seen before: his wife lost in the delight of a loving embrace. What was that naked look? Shock, surprise: they were part of it. But something else too: loss, longing, loneliness, grief.
– A thousand pardons, Mrs Macarthur, he said, and the moment hardened into the courteous apology of a gentleman disturbing his lady wife. Forgive my intrusion, if you please.
Then he was turning and quietly closing the door.
Seeing that grief, no matter how quickly hidden, I understood that Mr Macarthur was a bully, a boaster, a charmer—a tweaker of every human string—not because he was simply made in a bad mould. Like me, he knew himself to be alone in the great spinning universe, a speck of nothing girded around by all the robust cleverness he took comfort behind. But where I had met that speck and greeted it as a companion, he only knew himself prey, as we all were, to doubt. Uncertain of his welcome, as we all were. He was, in short, a fellow soul, but too fearful to recognise another, or to trust her.
THE MATHEMATICS OF IT
Edward was half a year old when my husband came to me with the familiar light in his eyes that meant he had a scheme in mind.
– Dearest, he said, and I was immediately wary. Dearest, you have been patient beyond what any husband could ask for.
I smiled, thinking only, what is it now?
– When we decided to bind our two fates together, he said, I made a promise that I would cherish and keep you. I now have the happiness, dearest, to be able to tell you news that will fill your heart with gladness and gratitude—
– For God’s sake, I cried. Out with it, sir!
– That I have this morning applied to join a new regiment, which has offered me promotion. Lieutenant Macarthur of the New South Wales Corps! Does that not have a splendid ring, my dear wife? We are to relieve the marines already out there, and will sail in December.
I thought he was joking, but my laughter was quickly snuffed out by the familiar tightening of the muscles around his mouth. He had expected joy, and joy was not what he saw.
– New South Wales! I exclaimed. The New South Wales Corps!
I was backing and filling like a ship in trouble, waiting for a wind to show me where to go. I knew nothing of New South Wales except that it was on the far underbelly of the globe, the latest oubliette devised by His Majesty as a repository for prisoners of the worst description.
– Ah, and why New South Wales, Mr Macarthur?
His words tumbled over themselves in their eagerness to lay out the glorious prospect that was the New South Wales Corps. Promotion was only the start of it.
– It will offer all manner of opportunities, he said. The commander of the Corps is Nicholas Nepean, his brother was a school chum of my dear brother’s. Moreover, the governor there has it in his power to grant away land, large tracts of it, and will be persuaded to do so by a man putting his case well.
– But the place is a prison, I exclaimed. Of less than two years’ establishment—it cannot be more than a clearing in the wilderness!
Oh, he had an answer to that, a sheaf of papers with the latest reports of the colony.
– Look, my dear, he said. See here—rapid progress in building! Crops flourishing in a manner nearly incredible!
He was almost gabbling, it was another of his manias. Would pass, if I was patient, like a squall of rain. Do not argue, I told myself. But I was so aghast at the idea of New South Wales that I could not be cunning.
– Mr Macarthur, these are nothing but marks on paper, I said. The people who are in that misbegotten place want to put it about that it is a success. These reports were written by men with their own fish to fry!
– Nonsense, he said. These are the best and latest reports, he said. Are you suggesting the governor of New South Wales is lying?
As so often, he had drawn me into a knot which any answer would only tighten. Seeking wildly for a way out, I changed direction.
– A place of the worst felons, I said. No matter how splendid the crops. Do you see yourself as prison guard to the dregs of Newgate?
Ah, that hit home. I felt him recoil and followed up my advantage.
– And what of your wife and child, sir? Do you wish your son to grow—if indeed he lives—in the company of thieves and murderers?
– Nonsense, he said again.
I saw I had over-reached myself. Doubt had left him.
– Have no fear, he said. Those accounts are glowing, but are already out of date. By the time our corps arrives, everything will be comfortable for our reception. Do not be blinded, my dear wife, by common and vulgar prejudices!
– Prejudiced I may be, sir, I said. But I will not do it!
Hollow desperate words. He knew as well as I did that I will not do it was hot air. He did not need to ask, then what will you do?
In any case, his thoughts were not about what his wife would or would not do. His eyes were flicking back and forth along the rug watching some other thing altogether.
– There is the matter of a small debt, he said at last. Incurred before my removal into the sixty-eighth. No gentleman could be expected to live on one-and-six a day.
– A small debt, I said.
His tone was casual and so was mine. But I went very still, waiting. A small debt. Twenty pounds? Fifty? Twenty pounds was half an ensign’s yearly pay. Fifty pounds would swallow even a lieutenant’s pay. I started to do the sum in my head, how much would need to be put away each week, for how long, to pay twenty pounds out over how many years.
– A couple of hundred, he said. A couple of hundred or so.
A couple of hundred. They were words I knew, and yet it was as if they were in a foreign language. Twenty pounds was something I could imagine, coins on a table spilling out on the wood. A couple of hundred was some other kind of thing altogether. There was no way to put a junior officer’s pay and a couple of hundred pounds together in the same thought.
He licked his lips, his eyes went sideways.
– Perhaps five hundred.
I thought, he must be teasing. But he was not teasing. His head was down, I saw his stubby eyelashes come down over his eyes. I had never seen Mr Macarthur abashed, but he was very close to abashed now.
Our conversation had all at once floated away from anything I had the power to alter. There was no point to any calculation I might worry away at. My husband’s debt was too big ever to be paid back by a soldier in peacetime, no matter how you might divide it into weekly scrimpings.
I had always assumed his commission had been bought by his father, but now I realised the money must have been borrowed. That, plus the supplementing of his one-and-six a day, could add up to a round five hundred. No wonder his boots were of the b
est leather, and he had been able to bring gifts of bonbons to Mrs Kingdon! Above all, no wonder he had been in such a frenzy to secure a better post than Gibraltar!
And now he was clearing his throat, going to the window and looking out as if there was something of interest there. Watching him staring out with his shoulder between himself and me, I saw he was expecting cries, rage, tears, was putting the barrier of that shoulder up between us. But what would be the point of tears or rage? Rage was indulgence. So were tears. As Mr Kingdon’s finger had traced the twisting course of a river across the landscape of the map, relentlessly, down to the ocean, I was following the words five hundred pounds to where they led.
– Yes, I see, I said.
There was a kind of relief. It was not up to me to find the words to talk him out of the idea of New South Wales. Nothing I could do or say would change the monstrous fact. Five hundred pounds. He was right. New South Wales was the only way forward. Promotion and prospects were essential, and a new regiment the only path to them.
His shame had passed, and so had his need to present me with that bulwark of shoulder. He had spun away from the window now, was pacing as eagerly as if to walk all the way to New South Wales.
– Think of it mathematically, my dearest wife, he said. In Gibraltar there is zero chance of doing well. In the unknown of New South Wales, there is some chance—certainly greater than zero—of doing well. And a chance—somewhere between zero and infinity—of doing magnificently!
– Yes, Mr Macarthur, I said. A number has got us into this, so how remarkably fortunate it is that numbers will get us out of it.
He stopped his pacing long enough to look at me.
– My dear, he said. I understand. You are thinking of your dear mother.
– Not my dear mother! Myself, Mr Macarthur! Myself and the child!
But he could only hear the fine words he was preparing.
– Do but consider, my dearest Elizabeth, that if you must be distanced from familiar places—and as a soldier’s wife how can you not be?—then it is much the same, whether you are two hundred or two thousand miles away.
I watched another flourish come to him.
– The same Providence will protect you in New South Wales, and the sun that shines on your mother and grandfather will also afford you the benefit of his cheering rays.
Hearing this flummery, I knew that he was as frightened as I was. A man certain of his ground does not need to construct a sentence like a Turk’s head knot.
– Yes dear, I said. But you are not as sure as you say.
He blinked, prodded out of a sunny daydream. Blinked, and there it was, the fear, the look of a creature cornered.
– Ah, he said. Well.
For a moment there was peace, the peace of surrender. It was shameful of me, but I liked him better when I knew him to be as afraid as I was.
Then I misjudged and took his hand. He flinched, drew it back. For me, being together, fellow souls joined in fear, was some comfort. For him, that was weakness. In taking his hand I was telling him what I had seen, and that was something he could not allow.
I put it to Anne that she could go back to Bridgerule if she wished. She would find some future there, I supposed, a young man to marry, or someone else in need of a maid. I tried to keep out of my tone the bleakness I surprised in myself at the prospect of parting from her.
Her eyes shifted over her possibilities. I watched her making a calculation that would shape the rest of her life.
– Take what time you need, Anne, I said. It is no small decision.
– No madam, she said. I have made up my mind, I will come with you.
– Oh! I exclaimed, the relief plain to be heard.
But I could not take advantage of her ignorance.
– Are you sure, I said. It is half a year on a ship, and then heaven knows what. Rough, it will be rough, and hungry. There will be hardships we cannot imagine.
She gave me a smile, as if knowing I thought her too foolish to have considered any of that.
– Thank you, madam, she said. For not gilding the lily. But there is nothing for me in Bridgerule. I would rather take my chances.
I saw that she had seen this coming—if not New South Wales, then Gibraltar. Had weighed up the choices she had, and did not need to have me doubt on her behalf. She was more clear-eyed than I had ever been, in calculating where her best interests might lie. New South Wales might turn out to be a bad choice, but she was not rushing blindly into her future.
I was doubly glad that she was coming with us, because I feared more trouble was rumbling down on me. I had been told that a woman could not fall while she was nursing, but I was almost sure that I was with child again. If I was right, this child would be born on the last part of the voyage, through the fury and ice of the Southern Ocean. Relative to a convict transport on that sea, a dirty inn at Bath might seem like paradise.
I took her hands, surprised myself with tears in my eyes and an impulse to embrace her.
– Ah, Mr Macarthur said when I shared the news of the second child. You will be the first officer’s wife to bear a child on that new continent!
– An honour I would as soon forgo, I said.
He heard the tartness in my tone and looked at me in surprise.
– It is what lies ahead of us, I said. There is not a great deal of choice in any aspect of the matter. I will set myself to it. But, Mr Macarthur, you cannot ask me to be delighted.
In the nights my heart was heavy at the unimaginable journey ahead of us, my companion this man lying beside me, his hand twitching in sleep as though flicking a crop against a horse’s flank.
I wrote to Mother at Stoke Climsland. Do but consider, my dear mother, that if we are to be apart, then it is much the same, whether we are two hundred or two thousand miles distance. The same Providence will protect me, there as in New South Wales. The sun that shines on me will also afford you the benefit of his cheering rays.
ON BOARD THE NEPTUNE
We had got no further in our voyage to New South Wales than Plymouth, where we put in to load supplies, when Anne came to me with the news that Mr Macarthur had issued a challenge to Mr Gilbert, the master of our vessel.
– Oh, my dear, I said, they are pulling your leg!
She said nothing, but gave me a straight look. I realised I would be wise not to scoff, put aside my reluctance and made myself listen. She had heard it from the ship’s cook, who had heard it from Mr Gilbert’s servant: a duel, the following day, behind the Old Gun Wharf.
Mr Gilbert was a vulgar sort of fellow, and it was true that we had hardly left the Thames behind when a disagreement occurred between him and Mr Macarthur—as always, some matter of my husband’s honour—that meant neither would speak to the other. But Mr Gilbert was God in the narrow world of the Neptune, and our destinies for the next half-year were entirely in his hands. Only a madman would pick a fight with someone who held such power. Whatever insult had been perceived, I assured myself that Mr Macarthur would find some way to smooth it over.
But the next evening, Anne came to me in our cabin to say that she had just heard from the sergeant that, an hour earlier, Mr Macarthur and Captain Gilbert had met. Mr Gilbert’s ball had gone wide of its mark, but Mr Macarthur’s had ripped through the sleeve of Captain Gilbert’s coat, missing the man himself by half an inch.
With Edward in my arms, his face creased up in distress as if he understood what his father had done, I followed Anne up onto the deck. Mr Macarthur was below me on the quay, the centre of a cluster of men. I could not hear the words he was saying, but I knew the look of Mr Macarthur in triumph. He tossed his head as if in scorn, stepped back in order to pounce forward on some new sally, held up fingers and ticked them off as he enumerated insults or triumphs. From this distance he seemed to be performing a dance, retreating and advancing, turning to this side, to that, bowing, throwing out a hand in a regal gesture.
Something in me slowed down, as if my blood had thickened.
From a great distance I watched Elizabeth Macarthur watching her husband. My life had slipped away from me since that night behind the hedge, had become something too close to be seen clearly. Now, standing at the rail, I seemed to remove myself from where I was, and in an endless still moment I saw the truth.
My husband was rash, impulsive, changeable, self-deceiving, cold, unreachable, self-regarding. I had learned all that, and thought it was the sum of him. Now I knew I was wrong. There was worse. My husband was someone whose judgment was dangerously unbalanced. There was a wound so deep in his sense of himself that all his cleverness, all his understanding of human nature, could be swept aside in some blind butting frenzy of lunatic compulsion.
My life, and the life of this helpless babe in my arms, was tethered to the hollow vessel of my husband’s honour, and that was more important in his eyes than the humans who depended on him for their survival. Other people were to him no more than objects to be handled—with care, yes, with charm, with flattery, with smiles if smiles offered the best way to achieve what he needed. But other people were no more important than a shoe or a spoon. You could not hurt the feelings of a shoe. You did not have to wonder whether a spoon would suffer from the consequences of your actions.
I felt Anne watching me, felt her pity. I could not meet her eye. She knew me and my situation too well. But what I had seen and now had to find a way to confront was too sharp a pain to share.
– Let us give thanks to the Almighty disposer of events that nothing worse has taken place, I said. And hope that satisfaction has been had.
– Indeed, madam, Anne said, and we shared a glance at last.
When Mr Macarthur came to the cabin later he was like a tightened fiddle-string. He vibrated with glee and self-congratulation. He had winged Gilbert! And Gilbert, that poltroon, had missed entirely! Gilbert was to be stood down, it was said, and another fellow would be sent in his place!
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