Dorothea’s jangled nerves were always calmed when she surveyed this beautifully ordered growth. She was proud of having achieved it, and grateful to Daniel for his contribution. Pottering about, pulling up weeds, she gradually began to talk to him again, without embarrassment, as she had before the incident of the scriptural reading. They talked of manure, and lime, and caterpillars. They talked of irrigation and garden tools. The spring weather was quite invigorating, as was the breeze off the harbour. The flies were not overly persistent. Dorothea discovered that she enjoyed picking aphids off the rosebuds far more than she enjoyed mixing up a saline wash for her husband’s mouth.
She realised that the house, with Charles in it, was a source of gloom to her, whereas the garden offered relief. And she had the grace to feel guilty.
Nevertheless, she avoided the house wherever possible, until Charles began to complain about the freckles on her nose. He grumbled about her absences. He accused her of neglecting him. When she replied, caustically, that he had been urging her to get out of the house for months, he narrowed his eyes and snapped at her. A wife’s duty, he said, was at her husband’s side. She pointed out that when she had been expecting, and unable to exert herself, he had been quite happy to neglect her, and there followed a very loud and abrupt exchange. It concluded with Charles hurling his cup of mutton broth onto the floor—whereupon Dorothea withdrew, once again, into the garden.
She was so weary of his moods. Only by recalling those halcyon days at Bideham, when she had walked with him under the golden elms, could she contemplate him with any love or sympathy. I must remember that he is ill, she told herself, over and over again. I must remember that this colony has a poisonous effect on all who come here, and that he is unable to escape the company of rowdy men. I must have patience. I must be calm.
Nevertheless, she was so keen to escape Charles that she took to attending the Sunday service without him, accompanying the Molles instead. Charles was made almost frantic by this decision. He insisted that her place was at his side. He railed at her, as if fearful that she was about to challenge his authority. But she reminded him that he had seen nothing wrong in leaving her at home on a Sunday morning, and that if he felt in need of scriptural solace he was perfectly capable of reading the Bible. Unlike Daniel, he did not need Dorothea to read it to him.
She did not suggest that he follow her example, and acquaint Daniel with further portions of the Holy Scripture. She knew that such ill-conceived kindness would have been a punishment to them both. Indeed, she rarely ever raised the subject of Daniel in Charles’s hearing. Daniel was a source of unending irritation to Charles, for no discernible reason; whenever the convict hove into sight, Charles would abuse him for his clumsiness, his noisiness, his stupidity (‘Must you be so wasteful? Do you mean to pauper me, using all that kindling simply to start a fire?’). Dorothea wondered if the sight of Daniel, so large and fit and strong, aroused in her ailing husband a rancorous envy. Whatever the cause of his unpleasantness, however, it was best avoided. And Daniel strove to avoid it by keeping out of Charles’s way.
As for Dorothea, she went to great lengths to ensure that she now made all the decisions that affected Daniel’s wellbeing. When he needed a new pair of shoes, she quietly abstracted the price of them from her housekeeping money. When he fell ill with a bad cold, she gave him extra milk and meat without seeking her husband’s permission. And when he asked her, one day, if he might visit a friend on a Sunday morning, she never thought of consulting Charles.
‘A friend?’ she exclaimed, in astonishment. ‘What friend?’
Daniel poked at the ground with his shovel. They were standing outside, near the gate. They had been lamenting the damage done to one of her roses.
‘A friend from the General Hewitt,’ Daniel responded quietly. ‘When ye sent me to buy milk, once, I came upon him. Sure, and he was good to me.’ Daniel paused. Prod, prod went the shovel. ‘He saved my life,’ the convict murmured.
‘Oh,’ said Dorothea. She was at a loss. ‘Well, I—would he not be at church on a Sunday morning?’
‘No, Ma’am.’
‘Why not? Is he like yourself? A Catholic?’
‘No, Ma’am.’ Prod, prod. Daniel’s eyes were downcast. His face was expressionless.
Dorothea frowned. ‘He does not seem to be a very worthy friend, Daniel,’ she said. ‘Are you sure that you should be keeping company with him?’
Daniel looked up. For a moment he studied Dorothea, his gaze dark and melancholy. Then he said: ‘I thought not, once. He saved my life, but I was afeared when I saw him again. I was afeared to talk. I was afeared o’ the burden we shared.’ His voice softened. ‘Then ye read to me, Ma’am, and ye gave me courage.’ Another pause. ‘I cannot hide any longer.’
Dorothea flushed. She blinked, and looked away. She said: ‘I see.’
‘I’d not be goin’,’ Daniel continued, hesitantly, ‘until the master is well. No, and not if ye rule against me. I’d not defy ye, Ma’am, not ever.’
‘I know,’ she said.
‘But I was short with my friend, and it rankles with me. He saved my life.’
‘How?’ Dorothea asked abruptly, her gaze fixed resolutely on a clump of violets. ‘How did he do that?’
‘Ah. Well …’ Daniel shifted. ‘Ye’ll not want to know’t.’
‘I do want to know it.’
‘Ma’am, ’tis not a pleasant tale.’
‘You might as well tell me,’ said Dorothea, ‘or you will not have my permission to leave these grounds.’
So Daniel told her. He told her that, while the General Hewitt was anchored in Rio, he had succumbed to the fever then prevalent among its passengers. That the reduced water ration, of three pints per man per day, had been inadequate to his needs. That his friend Tom had … had …
‘He shared his crib with a man called Clyde, who perished from the fever,’ Daniel explained hoarsely. ‘But Tom told no one for a day and a half that Clyde was dead. He lay beside the corpse, and took Clyde’s ration. He gave the ration to me.’ Daniel’s brow was suddenly damp. ‘I’d not have survived, else,’ he concluded.
Dorothea stared at him. She remembered Rio. She remembered the heat. The smells. She remembered the white-wrapped corpses being carried ashore.
She dropped her gaze, shaken by a sudden pang of pity and horror.
‘Very well,’ she gasped. ‘You may go.’
‘Ma’am?’
‘You may go to your friend. You may visit him. Where is he?’
‘He—he lives in the Rocks.’
‘How unfortunate.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Well … you may go, but you must not linger. The Rocks is an unwholesome place. And I do not approve of Sunday travelling, as a rule.’
‘Aye, Ma’am.’
Dorothea hesitated. ‘I need hardly add,’ she said at last, slowly, ‘that you must take care to return before we do—before the master and I do. From church.’
‘Aye.’ Their gazes met, for one brief and expressive moment, before they looked away from each other. ‘Aye,’ Daniel repeated. ‘Have no fear o’ that.’
‘If you should disappoint me in this particular, Daniel, I shall be—I shall be very displeased.’
‘Aye, Ma’am. Ye’ve naught to fear.’
‘Good. Well … I should go inside.’ Though she had no wish to rejoin Charles, she felt uncomfortable in her present position. She could think of nothing else to say.
As she walked up the front path, however, something occurred to her.
‘Daniel,’ she said, turning back to face him, ‘have you a gift to take with you?’
‘Ma’am?’
‘For your friend. As a token.’ Seeing him stare in perplexity, she added: ‘Surely your life must be worth a twist of tobacco, or a little tea?’
He blinked. Then one side of his mouth lifted. In a flat voice, he said: ‘Some might not think so.’
Dorothea stared. Daniel flushed. ‘Aye,’ he amended. ‘ ’Twould be a gift
of friendship.’
‘You must do as you wish. But it is customary, when paying such a call.’
Dorothea withdrew. Before entering the house, however, she did glance back.
Daniel was still gazing after her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE ELIZABETH ARRIVED IN Sydney on October the fifth. Among her passengers were the new Judge Advocate Mr John Wylde and his family. When Mr Wylde was sworn in, the Acting Judge Advocate, Mr Garling, was able to resume his practice as a solicitor. Consequently, it was widely assumed that, with two respectable attornies now available to him, Mr Jeffery Bent would be able to open the Supreme Court of Civil Judicature once again.
He was never to be given that opportunity, however. For the Elizabeth had also brought a dispatch from Lord Bathurst, which declared that Mr Jeffery Bent had been recalled. His successor had been chosen, but had not yet arrived. Governor Macquarie therefore decided to suspend Mr Bent’s salary; if Mr Bent chose to preside over the Supreme Court, now that circumstances permitted him to do so in good conscience, he would have to perform his duties without receiving a penny of recompense.
Naturally, the injustice of His Excellency’s action formed the chief part of Mr Bent’s discourse over the ensuing month. As for Mrs Bent, she spoke of nothing but the Governor’s cruel attempts to evict her from her house—the house that her husband had built, the house in which so many of her children had been born.
‘It was Mr Wylde who made the first approach,’ she revealed, ‘but I know that the Governor is simply using him. Why should Mr Wylde feel the need to live in my house? Why is he not content to live in another, or to demand that his own be constructed? Because the Governor is intent on casting us all into the street, that is why. He has conceived for my family such an insuperable dislike that he has ceased to act rationally when he concerns himself with us. It is enough to make one despair.’
She was holding forth over the Brandes’ dining table. In November, Captain Brande had decided that it behoved him to imitate the hospitality of some of his friends, and invite a small group of them to dine before the weather became too hot. He had therefore decreed that Dorothea arrange and prepare a small dinner party. His intention was that he might ingratiate himself with his commanding officer, while at the same time perform an expected social duty, enjoy the company of his intimates and compel Dorothea to make amends for her recent apathy in the field of convivial exchange. He had recovered, to a great degree, from his illness. He was no longer plagued by a sore throat, and his bowels were functioning efficiently. Only a tendency to flare up at the slightest hindrance betrayed the fact that his general health had been very much affected. Indeed, Dorothea had begun to suspect that his uncertain temper could be almost wholly attributed to his sickly constitution. His nerves, for example, seemed to have been weakened, and he had begun to concern himself more with his health: with his diet, his colour, the regularity of his internal motions, and the appearance of his teeth. He had taken to gargling a concoction that Surgeon Forster brewed for him. He would pause to examine the contents of his chamberpot each morning, and wear socks to bed at night. He had become far more conscious of draughts, and their ill effects.
In fact it soon became apparent to Dorothea that he was concerned—for good reason—that he might be losing his looks. Certainly he was beginning to lose his luxuriant black hair, though not in noticeable quantities. (There was merely a little thinning around the crown.) Dorothea also thought that his complexion might be growing dull, the lines of his jaw blurring, and the intense blue of his eyes fading a little, but she could not be sure. The fact was that she had long ago ceased to regard her husband’s face with the kind of wondering amazement that it had first aroused in her. She had become so accustomed to it that it was now almost as commonplace, in her view, as the drawing-room tongs. Only the approving comments of an envious newcomer—like Mrs Wylde, for instance—could rouse her to contemplate the beauty of Charles’s face as she might have contemplated the beauty of a jewel, or a picture. Then she had to concede that, despite the ravages of illness, he was still an extraordinarily handsome man.
Less so, of course, when his fine features were arranged in a black scowl or sullen pout (as was so often the case these days). And he had lost flesh, too—a circumstance that did not suit him. Not that an overabundance of fat would have improved his appearance. But there could be no doubt that, being rather slight in build, he needed the addition of some weight for a convincingly military effect. And this weight was not easily regained now that he displayed such caution in his choice and consumption of food. Always appreciative of a well-cooked dish, he had become positively fussy, insisting on lean meat, rejecting dry or fat meat, refusing pastry, requiring three or four types of vegetable at every meal, and utterly turning his nose up at any type of fish or crustacean. Should the butter have turned in the heat, his anger was excessive. Should the bread not have been sufficiently freshened, he would accuse Dorothea of trying to poison him.
The planning of their November entertainment was therefore something of a challenge to his wife. It was not a good season for fresh fruit, such as Charles would have preferred for the pudding course. He had taken to avoiding the more buttery and indigestible sweet dishes, choosing instead to eat stewed fruits, sweet rice milk, saffron cakes and other items popularly supposed to aid digestion and stimulate appetite. She finally persuaded him (with the aid of one of Mrs Molle’s receipt books) that suet was generally regarded as a very wholesome and digestible means of obtaining the necessary amount of fat to support life. As a result, he agreed that his guests should conclude their meal with a suet pudding, sliced, toasted and sauced with brandy.
The remainder of the meal consisted of mutton kidneys in wine; a fricandeau of veal with purée of sorrel; breast of beef stewed with onions, turnips and cabbage hearts; broiled fowl with mushroom sauce; boiled haricots with parsley; fried celery and seasoned (not buttered) carrots. Once again, Mrs Molle lent Dorothea extra chairs, and the services of her cook. No additional servants, however, were required to wait at table. The evening went off very well; Rose did not attempt to offer up her opinions while serving, the food met with everyone’s approval, and Captain Brande was roundly complimented on his cellar. Not one item of crockery was smashed, nor drop of gravy spilled. The guests arrived on time, and even Captain Sanderson had the grace to depart before too late an hour.
Only the conversation failed to satisfy—at least, it failed to satisfy Dorothea. By the end of the evening, she was heartily sick of Mrs Bent’s complaints about the Governor and his written undertaking to ‘be accountable for any suitable house or lodgings for her and her family’. The subject of Mr John Wylde was also aired much too thoroughly, everyone at the table (except Dorothea) repeating at least twice his or her opinion of the new Judge Advocate’s appearance, speech, manners, qualifications and wife—whose characteristics were exhaustively reviewed as well. Like her guests, Dorothea had met Mr Wylde at the Molles’ house. She had thought him a remarkably reassuring figure, with his dry, measured voice, shrewd gaze and firm tread. His presence had struck her as weighty—as invested with the kind of authority that need not continually impose itself on others to be effective—and she had not been surprised to learn that he was a brother of Lord Chancellor Truro, and an uncle of Lord Penzance.
In short, she had been impressed. It had occurred to her that Mr Wylde represented quite a different class of person to that customarily found in New South Wales. And this fact was perhaps confirmed by a tendency among her guests to find fault with him on trifling matters. Captain Sanderson pronounced him to be ‘as dry as dust’. Colonel Molle declared him ‘rather too fond of his own voice’. Mr Jeffery Bent—who was stubbornly fending off Mr Wylde’s attempts to occupy the Judge Advocate’s chambers—attacked him savagely for ruling that emancipated ‘agents’ or ‘attornies’ be admitted to his court to complete suits that were already in progress.
Dorothea, for her part, said nothing. When the
talk turned to Captain Piper’s new villa, and how its owner desired its foundation stone to be laid in the masonic tradition, she was equally mute. Indeed, she was given little opportunity to speak, since all of the gentlemen present belonged to moveable Irish Lodge number 227. Even Mrs Molle was forced to listen in silence as the menfolk complained bitterly about the dire shortage of masonic scarves and aprons in the colony, and about Francis Greenway, the Acting Government Architect, who had undertaken to supply them with the requisite articles.
Apparently, he had not done so quickly enough. There had been delays. And Greenway himself, though a mere convict, was also a positive ‘monster of vanity’. Captain Sanderson had been particularly insulted by this ‘impudent felon’; after interminable delays, he had threatened to pass his commission to the artist Mr Lewin, as others had. But Greenway had had the ‘damnable cheek—excuse me, Mrs Brande’ to reprove him. The convict had written to Captain Sanderson, declaring himself very hurt and charging Captain Sanderson with wanting ‘goodness of heart and manliness of conduct’. A convicted forger—a deuced convict—had had the unutterable impudence to address Captain Sanderson in such a way!
‘I shall give him such a thrashing as he will never forget,’ Captain Sanderson growled, his colour much heightened, his eyes ablaze. The veins in his neck stood out in the most alarming fashion. ‘By my faith, I shall teach him a thing or two, that scoundrel.’
‘But did he not present you with some form of apology, Sanderson?’ Charles queried, and his friend snorted.
‘Apology? I’ll give him an apology,’ Sanderson replied, before knocking back half a glass of claret. Dorothea, offended at the tone of this discussion, turned it slightly by making a general inquiry about Mr Lewin’s work. Had he been able to invest the landscape, hereabouts, with any kind of beauty? If so, he must have genius.
The subject of Captain Piper’s villa was not raised again that evening.
But Dorothea had not heard the last of this proposed edifice, nor the pomp that was to accompany its commencement. For within two days, an informal gathering of Lodge brethren took place in the Brandes’ drawing room. Charles invited Worshipful Master Captain Sanderson and Secretary Lieutenant Cox to dine (without consulting Dorothea), in order that they might further discuss the approaching ceremony. Dorothea was consequently forced to rush about transforming a modest veal broth into a lavish ragout soup, and stretching the few kidneys she had on hand by dicing and adding them to a very large omelette, instead of stewing them.