The Gentleman's Garden

  She could endure it no longer. It was full of people whom she wished to avoid, most particularly her husband. Charles, she was aware, would be in a most unappealing condition that morning, and she was frightened to confront him. She did not want to turn from him in disgust. She was already disgusted—disgusted and angry—and she knew that if, upon their next meeting, his words or appearance did not reassure her in some way, there was a danger that they might become seriously estranged from each other. She had no desire for such a separation of interests. To live in a disunited state would be insupportable. It did not bear thinking of.

  Feeling almost stifled, therefore, she rushed out into the street and headed north. It was bitterly cold. The lowering sky was grey, and the wind had an icy edge to it. Dorothea might almost have been in England, save that no English prospect would have offered so little completion—so insubstantial and makeshift a character. Everything was raw. The land appeared to be newly cleared (except for the roads, which were perilously well used). To her left, the churned mud and rickety dwellings fell away to Soldier’s Point and Cockle Bay. To her right, the freestone wall of the barracks loomed as straight as a sentinel. Against it a small child was leaning, his two hands meeting above his head, his feet placed apart. Dorothea did not instantly comprehend that he was mimicking the attitude of a convict on the triangle.

  When one of his companions brought a reed down onto his back, however, the child’s melodramatic shriek quickly enlightened her.

  She staggered, and turned away.

  I cannot endure this, she thought. I should not be here. For a moment she contemplated the possibility of seeking out Mrs Molle, but decided against it. At this early hour, questions were bound to be asked, even if the Colonel had not witnessed Captain Brande’s disgraceful retreat from his mess the previous night. And Mrs Vale’s house, of course, was an equally impossible destination. Mrs Cowper’s residence? Perhaps. Mrs Cowper was not of the Regiment, and would probably remain uninformed regarding Captain Brande’s disgraceful behaviour.

  But as she approached St Philip’s, Dorothea suddenly changed her mind. She entered the church instead. All at once she could not bear the thought of making civil conversation with Mrs Cowper—and to walk any further was out of the question. To walk any further was to cross Charlotte Place, and plunge into the Rocks. It was to risk encountering Gallows Hill. So Dorothea sought the safety of her parish church, hoping that the Reverend Cowper was not, at that moment, attending to his pastoral duties within it. She knew that Mrs Cowper would not be in evidence. At such an early hour, Mrs Cowper was more likely to be feeding her brood than arranging flowers on the altar. Her husband, however, might be inspecting his domain, or reflecting upon the Godhead in the tranquillity of an empty chancel. To Dorothea, he had always presented the appearance of a man much given to solitary musings.

  Therefore she was greatly relieved to find the church uninhabited, save for one lone young man, of obviously diminished intellect, plying a broom. He did not look up as Dorothea sat down. Her shoes and stockings were too thin; her feet were already frozen. Surreptitiously, she blew on her hands—and her breath emerged as a puff of white vapour. The church was a cold and cavernous barn. It offered no comfort. God was not lurking among the rough-hewn pews. If He was anywhere, He was back in her father’s former church, at Aschcombe. She felt sometimes that God had turned away from her, because she had followed her baser desires (all firmly directed at Charles’s classical profile and silky eyelashes) to the very lowest portion of the earth, a place of moral inversion—or perversion—where criminals arrested criminals, and rode about in carriages clad in silk and pearls.

  She wondered what her sin had been to deserve such punishment. Did it lie in marrying for love? She was so terribly tired of this place. She was afraid that it would destroy her love for her husband.

  Briefly, she whispered a prayer of entreaty. She could not stay longer, for the cold was eating into her joints. She knew that she would have to return to her husband’s house, although she was reluctant; she knew that she could not flee because there was nowhere else to go. Consequently she rose with an effort and shuffled back into the churchyard. In the sullen light, it looked bleaker than ever. The clock on the tower indicated that the time was a quarter after eight.

  With her head bowed, and her shoulders hunched against the wind, she made her way slowly down Clarence Street. By now she was thinking of little except her desire for a hot cup of tea. Picking her way between the gorge-like ruts, blinkered by her enfolding bonnet, she did not see Daniel until he was almost upon her. When he spoke, she started. She looked up with a pounding heart.

  ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Daniel.’ His nose and cheeks were bright pink. ‘Have you been searching for me?’

  ‘I was sent to find ye,’ he admitted.

  ‘Well, here I am.’

  ‘Aye.’

  She stared at him dully. He watched her. His eyes looked as heavy as his frame. His melancholy face was even longer than usual.

  ‘I was sent to find ye at the Colonel’s house,’ he added after a pause, and Dorothea straightened.

  ‘You have not been to Mrs Molle’s?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Oh—oh—’ She could have stamped her foot in despair. ‘Oh bother it all!’

  ‘He sent me. Captain Brande.’

  She brushed past him rudely. She knew that he was not to blame, but she nevertheless resented him because he had alerted Mrs Molle to her predicament. As she neared her husband’s house, however, she regretted her display of ill humour, much as she regretted the necessity of having to advance up the front steps. She slowed, and stopped when she reached the gate. She turned back to address Daniel, who was following several paces behind her.

  ‘Of course you had to obey Captain Brande,’ she said. ‘I understand that.’

  He gazed at her mutely.

  ‘Thank you, Daniel,’ she added. ‘As you see, I am perfectly all right.’

  He seemed unconvinced. Nevertheless, he did not follow her through the front door. She entered it alone, with a heavy heart, and immediately smelled ginger. Charles was sitting in the drawing room, nursing a spicy tisane. He was wrapped in a gown, but his hair was oiled and combed. There was a rueful look on his face, which was pale, but not particularly ravaged. Illness or debauchery never seemed to deprive Charles of his beauty. They simply lent it a frangible air.

  Dorothea entered the room, shutting the door behind her. Charles sighed.

  Their eyes met.

  ‘How could you expose me in such a way?’ she said at last.

  ‘It was unforgiveable,’ he muttered. ‘I drank too much. I undertake not to do it again.’

  ‘The servants …’

  ‘Jack will not take advantage of his position,’ Charles declared, his eyes narrowing. All at once there was more vigour in his tone. ‘I shall see to that.’

  ‘But Charles …’ his wife began, before trailing off helplessly. It was clear to her that he did not understand. The shame of their situation—the dismally sordid nature of it—could he not comprehend how mortifying it was? ‘Do you understand what you did? Do you understand what Daniel had to do?’

  ‘Daniel knows his place, I hope. If not, I shall have a word with him.’

  Dorothea put her hand to her brow. Charles set down his cup, and reached for her with his good arm.

  ‘Come and sit on my knee,’ he implored her. ‘I feel like the very devil, you know.’

  ‘How can you—?’ She stopped.

  ‘How can I what? Out with it.’ His countenance took on a sulky aspect. ‘I suppose you must read me a sermon, and I would rather have it all at once. So we can be comfortable after.’

  The injustice of this reproach caused Dorothea’s lip to tremble. She cast her gaze to the ceiling, so as to prevent her tears from spilling over.

  ‘I want to go home,’ she whimpered.

  ‘Eh? What’s that?’

  ‘I want to go home. I canno
t stay here. I cannot.’ Her voice cracked on a sob. ‘I want to go home to Margaret!’

  Abandoning herself to misery, she was not at first conscious of Charles’s arm around her. He had risen, and was patting her awkwardly. ‘There, there,’ he said. ‘There, there.’ A fire crackled with inappropriate liveliness in the hearth.

  ‘Everything here is wrong,’ she gasped.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Please …’ She turned a pair of wet, pleading eyes on him. ‘Send me back.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have to go back! I cannot stay here!’

  ‘What you need is a hartshorn,’ he said, with decision. ‘A hartshorn and a good, long rest.’

  ‘I need to go home!’

  ‘My dear Thea, I do sympathise. But that is out of the question. Go back to England? On your own? Impossible.’

  His face, hovering before her, dissolved in the blur of her tears.

  ‘Come now,’ he continued kindly. ‘Do you know what such an undertaking would cost us? All of thirty pounds, in addition to the provisions—one hundred and twenty gallons of water, the flour, the raisins, the tea—’

  ‘I want to go!’

  ‘And so you shall—within two years. The Regiment will not remain here forever.’

  ‘I want to go now!’

  But he was becoming impatient with her. She could deduce it from the tone of his voice. Speaking more firmly, he reminded her that she was an officer’s wife, that like her husband she must do her duty. She was constantly running to Mrs Molle for comfort—why not imitate Mrs Molle’s energy, devotion and cheerful hardiness?

  ‘You think so highly of Mrs Molle’s advice,’ he went on, with a not entirely appreciative smile, ‘that I am astonished you do not model your conduct on hers. She is, after all, a most superior officer’s wife.’

  Dorothea gazed at him in despair. Did he really think that she had rushed off to discuss her troubles with Mrs Molle? Was he really so insensible to the delicacy of her feelings? Had he no appreciation of her dutiful regard?

  ‘Of course you must stay here,’ he concluded. ‘You are my wife, Mrs Brande. What sort of a figure would I cut, if you were to sail off to England without me? I would not be able to show my face in the mess, if that were so!’

  He laughed, then, and winced—his head was still troubling him.

  Defeated, Dorothea went to make him a cold compress.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE WINTER DRAGGED ON. Slowly Charles’s wrist healed; his splint was removed late in July. Mr Ellis Bent continued very ill. Dorothea herself contracted a cold, which she treated with an excellent remedy that was rendered less excellent by the impossibility of acquiring aniseed in New South Wales. Mrs Molle and her children went to visit Mrs Macarthur (and Mrs Macquarie) in Parramatta, returning with a gift of bulbs for Dorothea, each carefully wrapped in a rough hempen cloth.

  Dorothea penned a note of thanks to Mrs Macarthur for her thoughtfulness.

  Her interest in the garden had flagged somewhat. Although the vegetables continued to flourish in Daniel’s attentive care, Dorothea’s twelve tiny rose cuttings remained leafless in their winter hibernation. Gazing out of a window at the four naked twigs that flanked her gate, Dorothea felt sorry for them. They seemed to cower beneath a foreign sky. They were suspended, as she was. Frozen, as she was. They waited to bloom like the roses on her receiving cloth, which she had abandoned, unfinished, some time ago. Why tempt fate? Though she knew it to be a superstitious notion, she felt that completing the cloth would by some means ensure that she would never produce the infant for whom it had been designed. As if God were a vengeful God, or at least one who delighted in dashing hopes and foiling expectations.

  Standing at the drawing-room window, Dorothea studied her pitiful roses. They were well nourished, well watered and well placed in full sunlight, yet still they did not flourish—not yet. She suddenly recalled a discussion in Bideham Park on the subject of roses. How beautifully, how elegantly, they had spoken! Lady Shortland had recited a portion of Ben Johnson’s song to Celia: ‘I sent thee late a rosy wreath/Not so much honouring thee/As giving it a hope that there/It could not withered be.’ Mr Henry Brande had made many learned observations on the use of roses in classical times; he had pointed out that they were sacred to Venus, that the Graces had worn them, and that Cupid was fabled to have conferred the first rose on Harpocrates, the God of Silence. Even Miss Louisa Shortland had made a delicate contribution, observing that in certain parts of Surrey it was customary to plant rose bushes on the graves of unmarried men and women.

  ‘Ah, but what a sad association,’ Mr Mainwaring had protested. ‘I prefer to reflect on the festival of St Medard, wherein the rose crown of Salency was presented to the maiden who, by general acclaim, was considered to be the most modest, good-tempered and obedient.’ He had added, in a low voice, ‘How sad it is that the season prevents me from cutting roses!’ and Miss Louisa had blushed—like a rose.

  Naturally, Miss Louisa Shortland had soon after married Mr Robert Mainwaring. She had worn a wreath of roses on her wedding day. Dorothea remembered with pain the poetry of this gesture, and of the courtship that had preceded it. She remembered, with a kind of dismayed astonishment, the richness of many other discussions at Bideham Park. Little wonder that she felt deprived, in this land of banal conversation. Social intercourse here was like a desert in which one circled, as if lost, the same unwholesome ground over and over again. Convicts. Servants. Emancipists. Illness. The weather. The harvest. The natives. Governor Macquarie—and back to convicts again.

  There was a knock on the door.

  ‘Yes?’ she said, after returning quickly to the sofa (and her workbasket). ‘Come in.’

  Daniel entered. He smelled of earth, though he had clearly made an effort to wash. Still, however, the dirt clung to his clothes and remained beneath his fingernails.

  ‘Yeer pardon, Ma’am …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Would ye help me with the beans, by a mercy?’

  Daniel had been planting broadbeans. These had come to Dorothea courtesy of the regimental garden, via Mrs Molle, who had instructed Dorothea to sow the beans in late August, in some warm corner of the garden where the soil was ‘light and mellow’.

  Dorothea had forgotten about them completely, until Daniel had brought them to her attention.

  ‘Help?’ she said vaguely. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m not well acquainted with the beans, Ma’am,’ he replied. ‘Can ye tell me the distance that must fall between each, and how deep they must lie in the earth?’

  Dorothea blinked. She had received from Mrs Molle no advice of so detailed a nature.

  ‘Indeed, I—I am not sure,’ she replied.

  ‘Can the book tell us?’

  ‘The book?’

  ‘Yeer book about gardens.’

  Dorothea had not consulted The Gentleman’s Garden for some time. But it lay quite near, on the draped stool that served her as a table; it was sitting on top of the Holy Scriptures, and beneath Mrs Bent’s latest offering—another Gothic tale from Mrs Eleanor Sleath. Dorothea reached for it.

  ‘I think it unlikely that such topics will be addressed in this particular volume,’ she warned Daniel, as she bent her gaze to the table of contents. She was mistaken, however. Attached to the chapter entitled The Kitchen Garden; its purpose, situation, exposure, aspect, extent, soil, walls, irrigation, form &c was an appendix dealing with vegetables and their propagation. Mr Wells’s advice concerning the broadbean followed hard upon his study of the asparagus plant.

  ‘Plant all the early kinds,’ Dorothea read, ‘both for early and late crops, in rows two feet and a half apart, three or four inches distant from each other in the rows, and two inches deep.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Daniel, nodding.

  With a rake fill in the holes, leaving the ground smooth and even; and thus proceed until the whole of the space is completed. As soon as the beans are up about three, fo
ur or five inches, they should be earthed up on each side of the row, and all weeds removed. The hoeing must be repeated as often as necessary. If the ground between the rows were stirred with a fork, after the hoeing is finished, it would be of considerable advantage to their growth.

  Daniel nodded again. ‘Aye,’ he said reverently, ‘ ’tis a fine, full book. Would it be speakin’ of any other produce?’

  ‘Red beet,’ Dorothea replied, her eye running down the page. ‘White beet. Cabbage and kale. Carrots. Cauliflower. Coleworts. Celery. Cucumber—’

  ‘Cucumber!’ Daniel exclaimed. ‘What is that?’

  ‘A vegetable.’ Dorothea turned the page. ‘Fruits are discussed here, also. Flowers …’

  ‘Roses?’

  ‘Exhaustively.’ Mr Wells even proffered suggestions for a ‘dry bank or border’, pointing out that cornflowers, red valerian and wormwoods were not thirsty plants. Dorothea related this fact to Daniel with mounting enthusiasm, mindful of Sydney Cove’s parched summers. They discussed the possibility of planting violets, pansies and forget-me-nots. Daniel requested that Dorothea read aloud the paragraphs dealing with orchards. ‘Espaliered fruit trees provide a useful ornament to warm walls,’ she murmured. ‘Our northern wall is very warm. Could we fashion a peach tree against it?’

  ‘A peach is a royal fruit, so ’tis,’ said Daniel. ‘I ate a peach once, and ’twas gold in the flesh, with a blood-red heart. Like a prince of the ancient fables.’

  ‘Of course, if we were to plant a peach tree, I might not be here to see it fruit,’ Dorothea observed. ‘The Regiment will move on, and I shall move on with it.’ For the first time, this knowledge caused her a small—a very small—pang of regret. It would have been pleasant to see her garden come of age. ‘Two years will hardly suffice,’ she continued, idly flicking through page after page of instruction. ‘Oh look—hyacinths and daffodils. Tulips.’

  The silence that followed these remarks suddenly alerted Dorothea to the irregularity of her situation. Once again, she had been speaking carelessly, not to a gentleman gardener, but to a convict. Looking up, she saw that he was watching her gravely.