A Room Made of Leaves

by Kate Grenville

  Hunger and desperation, anger and fear, loss and yearning for home, brought out all that was worst in everyone. It was a place of sniping and slanders and barbed rumours, everyone watching each other for weakness and concealing their own. The narrow steep-sided valley where we all lived was like a crack in a wall where the roaches scrabbled over each other.

  At first I dreamed confused shadowy tumults of fists and whirlwind. It shocked me when I realised that the horrors committed by the convicts, and inflicted on them, were no longer giving me nightmares.

  PRESIDING GOD

  The presiding god of this unhappy place was a narrow lopsided captain of the navy, Arthur Phillip, who had led that first fleet of ships into this harbour two years earlier. As a naval captain he was used to being God and king combined, but little in his experience could have prepared him for what the governor of New South Wales had to contend with: to be in charge of a thousand felons desperate for escape or rebellion, and a restless body of reluctant guards. Alone, with no one who could share his dilemmas, a year’s sailing time from any advice, his was the loneliest of situations.

  Still, the authorities had chosen their man well. In a place where goodwill was hardly to be found, he was a person of goodwill and generosity, and hoped that his own honourable ways would set an example. When the food stores had begun to run low some time before our arrival, he had decreed that every person in this hungry place was to be served exactly the same ration, so that the meanest convict’s fare was the same as the governor’s. He had gone so far as put his own private supply of flour into the common store for all to share.

  It seemed, though, that the people were not interested in his selfless example. In spite of guards and floggings, every carrot and turnip was stolen as soon as it grew as big as a finger. There was no honour among those thieves. Shortly after we arrived, a prisoner in desperation had exchanged his only pot for a handful of rice, but no one would lend him a pot to cook the rice in, and he died of having wolfed it down raw. As for the marines, and the new arrivals of the New South Wales Corps, behind the governor’s back they seethed with resentment at being as hungry as the prisoners.

  The governor knew how doomed his task was, and managed it with more grace than most would have found possible. Still, he was only human, in a circumstance that demanded something more than human. It was common knowledge that he suffered a nagging pain in his side that all the surgeon’s efforts could not relieve, which left him easily exhausted, easily harassed. Under the splendid gold buttons and despite the sword that hung by his side, he could be seen to be a man not far from collapse.

  THE GOVERNOR’S GEM

  The card inviting Lieutenant and Mrs Macarthur to their first dinner at Government House made it clear that—owing to the shortage of supplies—every guest was expected to bring his own bread, so when we arrived we had with us our rolls from the regiment’s oven wrapped in a napkin.

  – My dear lady, the governor exclaimed, pressing my hand in his. This was an oversight. I intended to make you an exception to the general rule. I assure you, there will always be a roll at my table for Mrs Macarthur!

  By chance we were the last guests to arrive. Captain Nepean gave Mr Macarthur and myself only the coolest of bows before turning away to Captain Hill. Captain Collins the deputy judge advocate was deep in conversation with the surgeon Mr White, and I exchanged a smile with Mr Worgan, the naval surgeon, who had been generous in lending me his books. A few of the officers of the marines stood in a group by the fire, including the always-smiling Captain Tench. He had introduced himself to Mr Macarthur within an hour of landing and had made himself useful to him in many small ways. It was evident to me that Captain Tench, like everyone else in Sydney Cove, had a fair idea of what kind of man Mr Macarthur was, and had made the wise decision to keep on the right side of him.

  – If you see Captain Tench paying especially close attention, Mrs Macarthur, the governor said, it is because he has contracted to write a book about our little antipodean society.

  Tench bowed and smiled. He was a small man when you saw him beside someone tall, but his sparkle and animation let him seem to take up more space than he did.

  – Indeed, madam, he said, I could not resist the opportunity of writing the first account of this place—the novelty is such as to guarantee a readership, I fancy, no matter my sad limitations as an author. I am like the ant in the fable: I waste nothing, and store away everything that comes to me.

  He might have said more, but the governor had moved on and introduced me to Lieutenant Dawes of the marines. He was a tall, awkwardly-put-together man who bowed but did not meet my eye.

  – You are fortunate to meet Mr Dawes, the governor said, smiling to fill the pause in which Mr Dawes seemed not to realise that the niceties required a Delighted, Mrs Macarthur, or a How d’you do, Mrs Macarthur.

  – Our Mr Dawes is by way of being our resident astronomer, the governor went on. So he is seldom able to join us after sunset.

  Mr Dawes bowed again, but the moment for Delighted, Mrs Macarthur had passed, and there was a sense that all of us wanted to put him out of the obvious misery he felt at being the centre of attention.

  – Now, Mrs Macarthur, the governor said, let us take our places. We must not keep the feast waiting!

  At this there was a rustle of polite amusement, which Mr Macarthur and I had been in Sydney Cove long enough to join. Every man and woman and child in this place could look forward tonight to the same feast—a mean portion of salt meat, pease pudding, and bread. Captain Tench had told me, though, that the governor’s gamekeeper bagged a wild duck or a kangaroo now and then, and I was prepared to hope.

  The plates were put before us: salt meat and pease pudding, with a leaf or two of the plant they called Botany Bay parsley. A silence fell as the hope of duck or kangaroo was extinguished in each breast. Across the table I saw Tench’s mouth twitch up in anticipation of what he was about to say.

  – Ah, the daily diabolical morsel, he exclaimed, and the company laughed, even the governor.

  – Thank you, Captain Tench, he said. That is a jest that will not grow old until the supply ships arrive.

  Clearly he had heard it before, perhaps once too often. As if recognising the hint of asperity in his tone, he smiled and turned to me.

  – Captain Tench is by way of being our Sydney Cove humourist, he said. In a place that cannot be said to lend itself to comedy.

  He leaned down the table towards Tench.

  – I can assure you, my dear sir, that I for one am grateful for your efforts.

  Oh, those dinners! The grand gold-rimmed plates were splendid, but they dwarfed the small serving, and the salt meat was unpleasantly rank. Still, the motions of splendour were gone through. Wine in crystal glasses, though no more than a few mouthfuls. A dazzle of silverware, as if seven courses were waiting to be served. Damask napkins, silver candlesticks, a wordy grace boomed out by Reverend Johnson.

  From the other side of the table I watched Mr Macarthur lay himself out to charm the governor, as only a man could for whom charm was another form of strategy. The governor’s furrow-browed decency and his mild manner had stimulated Mr Macarthur’s deepest scorn from the first, and in private he referred to him—a captain in the despised navy, rather than the army—as our favourite auld salt in his best mocking brogue. But now, with something of relief and something of contempt, I saw my husband smiling and nodding.

  The governor would already have taken stock of who he had to deal with in Mr Macarthur. Would have heard from Captain Nepean of the events on board the Neptune. To my eye he was accepting Mr Macarthur’s charm in the spirit in which it was given, and showed no particular warmth to him.

  As befitted God and king combined, the governor was attended by a good number of servants: three or four convicts doing duty as footmen, buttoned into some version of livery, and a couple of convict maids. The housekeeper, a quiet woman in a neat grey dress, watched the prisoners’ every move, visibly counti
ng the silverware.

  She did not allow the convicts near the governor, but served him herself. From my position beside him, I could see that something about the angle of her head suggested more than the courtesy of a servant, and something about his murmur of thanks suggested more than formal gratitude. The governor saw me watching.

  – Mrs Brooks is a gem, he told me, smiling at the housekeeper. Has been with me for many years, on ships great and small, leaky and sound, is that not right, Mrs Brooks?

  – Indeed I have, sir, she said, and a fortunate woman to be in your employ.

  – Mrs Brooks is the wife of the boatswain of the Sirius, the governor explained. And is good enough to see to my wants on land as well as sea.

  At the words see to my wants Mrs Brooks gave a slightly startled smile, and a tremor passed between the two of them, nothing more than a glance as fleeting as the brush of the least fleck of a feather.

  I thought, ah, Mrs Brooks may be housekeeper, and wife to the boatswain, but if I am not mistaken she is something more as well.

  COURTESIES

  To me the governor was always kindness itself. After that first dinner he took the trouble to ease my life in whatever ways he could: by the occasional gift of fruit from his garden, eggs from his fowls, once or twice a wild duck. As soon as it was within his power, he made sure that the Macarthurs were given one of the better houses being built, so within a few months of arriving we removed into a brick house, with a sawn-wood floor and a shingle roof. Two decent-sized rooms, the larger with a fireplace, and more commodious services behind.

  No doubt he calculated that it would be wise to keep on Mr Macarthur’s good side by pleasing his wife. But his courtesies had real warmth about them. I believed then, and like to believe now, that they were not solely strategic.

  WALKS

  Anne had to be persuaded to venture beyond our house. Some mischievous person had assured her that he had—personally, with his own eyes—seen a pack of lions eat a man limb by limb in the next cove, and I could not convince her that he had been telling her a tale. In any case, I supposed it was possible. My assurances that there were no lions in New South Wales were accompanied by a silent proviso of as far as we know. On our walks she was full of alarms. Every stick was to her eyes a snake, every leaf hid a spider.

  But I had to get out of the house—superior to our first, but still dark and damp—whenever I could find a reason. Edward provided a most welcome one, because in this place of privation he began to thrive. When we landed he was a few months beyond his first birthday but hardly bigger than a child half his age, a wan silent creature with eyes too big for his pinched face. Within a few weeks of landing he was walking strongly by the hand, prattling away, with cheeks that, if not quite rosy, were no longer the colour of candlewax.

  On Mr Macarthur’s instructions, our walks never extended beyond the last hut on either side of the cove.

  – You must remember, my dear, this is not Devon, he told me, as if I could not see for myself.

  We never walked without Private Ennis and his gun. Ennis, a cheerful lad, was there to protect us against the surly prisoners. Against the natives, too, who had begun to come and go in the township, protected by the governor’s decree that they were to be treated with amity and kindness.

  Mr Macarthur had no patience with the governor’s sentimental views. He told me the natives were the lowest kind of savages. He had been told they had no words in their language for please or thank you, no notion of husbands and wives, only male and female as with animals. He assured me that he had it on good authority that they were known to kill and eat their babies. He called them our sable brethren, and that never failed to amuse him, because for him our sable brethren were not in the least brethren. Those wild forest-dwelling people were about as much brethren, as far as he was concerned, as a parrot. But it was a way of denying fear, to wrap it up in an elaborate covering of irony.

  The men were a little frightening, tall well-made naked warriors carrying themselves with assurance and authority, their spears held casually in their hands. The women did not frighten me, exactly, but their frank confident nakedness was alarming.

  Our walks—each a slow procession, to keep pace with Edward—were always the same short round through the cluster of hovels among the trees, past sardonic prisoners watching Lieutenant Macarthur’s wife and her entourage taking the air. Each day I would gravely ask Anne, would she prefer to walk from west to east today, or east to west? She would join the game, putting on a pantomime of solemn decision-making, and we would set off. Private Ennis had promised her, on his word, that there were no lions, and if one should be seen he would shoot it!

  From the last hut on either side of the valley, we could stand and survey what was beyond the settlement. It looked to be a place that would repel a person on foot: rocky, lumpy, with outlandish trees, and bushes with leaves like needles, and grass with blades that—I knew from experience—cut your hand. It would be prickly and difficult, probably dangerous and certainly uncomfortable.

  Every oak was similar to every other oak, but here every tree was a different shape from every other, telling perhaps how the seed had fallen on the stony ground and wound its way up. Some were ramrod-straight. Others sprawled. Some grew upright but with trunks twisted like rope. Mr Macarthur was like one of those. The seed had caught in some awkward thwarted way that shaped the man ever afterwards.

  I played with Edward, fed him the dull food that was available, sent Anne away so I could enjoy the humble entertainment of giving him his bath. I sat by the aperture in the wall that did service as a window and attended to our mending. I read, and re-read, the few books we had.

  But when the walks had been walked, the mending mended and the books read, the hours hung heavy. My hands itched to be doing. I remembered the blisters I had earned as a child at Grandfather’s, chipping away with the hatchet at the wood on the block, or cutting the fleece of a sheep. Remembered the smell of dung, the smell of the farmyard, in this place where there were no farmyards and no dung. The prisoner who did the rough work for us languidly raked the yard at the back, taking an hour over it. I thirsted to snatch the rake from his hands, go at it till I could feel the muscles and bones, the sinews and joints all working away and the blood coursing strongly.

  Life is long, Mrs Macarthur, that rough landlady had told me. Life is long. She had spoken more truly than she could have guessed, for in New South Wales each day was a succession of dull lengths. Yet we were surrounded by an entire new universe: the natives and their language, the plants, the birds, the outlandish animals. The very stars were so unfamiliar that Mr Dawes, as the governor had said, was kept too busy mapping them to appear often in the settlement. The place spilled its gifts out, an overflowing cornucopia of the new and the wonderful, but out of reach to Mrs John Macarthur on her ladylike daily round.

  I could only bide my time, the one commodity I had plenty of, and wait for one of those corners that woman had promised me.

  NEITHER PROFIT NOR PLEASURE

  There were twelve hundred people in Sydney Cove, but, with the Abbotts sent to the secondary settlement at Norfolk Island, there was one woman, and one only, whose company was suitable for the wife of an officer: Mary Johnson, the wife of the parson.

  Lord, but Mary was dull. Ignorant, narrow, and with a habit of bringing the Almighty into every sentence that was utterly wearying. Time spent with Mrs Johnson could offer neither profit nor pleasure.

  Yet she was a good woman, and so was her husband, the two of them ministering to the sick from their own supplies and never despairing—in spite of all evidence to the contrary—of being able to open the hearts of the prisoners to salvation.

  In their company I felt sinful, cold-hearted, selfish. When I mocked them in my mind I was ashamed. I recognised that their faith gave them a comfort I had never known, and that my mockery sprang out of a complicated feeling that I see now was very like envy.

  Mr Macarthur had no time for the windy
parson. Richard Johnson knew no Greek and little Latin, spoke the broad dialect of the Yorkshire farmer he had once been. Not a gentleman, then, and so of no account to my husband.

  – Oh, my dear wife, he said, seeing me set out to pay a call on Mary. This is indeed a high price for our sojourn in New South Wales. Had I known the Reverend and Mrs Johnson were lying in wait, I might have reconsidered the plan!

  He thought this excessively diverting.

  PUTTING GOD ASIDE

  One morning I found Mary pouring water on a pair of struggling rose bushes near her door. They must always have been there, because no ship had arrived that could have brought roses. But we had first come to Sydney Cove in winter, and now it was spring, and the bare stalks were bursting into leaf. Oh, to see a rosebush in this place of dull olive greens, drab greys, the strange hard leaves all around us! They were like old friends, friends promising that I would at last return to the place where roses grew at every door.

  – My word, Mrs Johnson, I told her, your roses make me think of home!

  – They are very fine, she said. But I must correct you. They are not my roses, Mrs Macarthur. These are God’s roses.

  I was rebuked like a child and like a child felt revulsion at the rebuke. Smug Mary stood smiling at me, certain that she would enjoy everlasting bliss in Paradise, while frivolous chatterers like Elizabeth Macarthur would not.

  But it would have been discourteous not to visit Mary Johnson, and discourtesy, in this too-small society, would have had consequences. Besides, I learned at last how to squeeze pleasure from her company. Like her husband, she was from Yorkshire. When I lived in Devon, Yorkshire had seemed a place utterly foreign and remote, but viewed from the other side of the globe, Devon and Yorkshire were the closest of neighbours, and our memories of home were the one thing we could share. We told over the taste of raspberries, the look of mushrooms standing like solemn sentinels in the mist of early morning, the way the bushes in a field would be flecked with tufts of wool where the sheep had brushed up against them.