The Soldier's Curse (3 page)

The port's inhabitants had become accustomed to strangeness.

When they first arrived in New South Wales to face their antipodean punishment, many had been told stories of their new land by more experienced convicts. Stories of kangaroos, which seemed as good a name as any, as there was nothing in the new arrivals' lexicon which would have sufficed. They were said to be capable of disembowelling a man with one downward stroke from their powerful hind legs. Such stories were largely dismissed by those who heard them. Their lives contained enough brutality at the hands of their own species for them to give any credence to tales of mythical beasts with violent tendencies.

There were other oddities to be described too. The body of an otter and the bill of a duck, joined together by some unknown power. Large clumps of grey fur which clung to the trees and ate their leaves. And then cautionary tales about snakes whose venom was, as venom goes, fast as any poison vouchsafed by the devil to the tribe of serpents.

Some of those recently off the boat were more credulous than others. But some things couldn't be dismissed by even the most sceptical. The birds were different, for a start, as anyone who had been woken by their deranged cackling knew. And the seasons,
which mocked the calendar months of the civilised parts of the earth by being their opposites.

When their feet struck this land for the first time, most convicts had well and truly lost track of the passage of time. They might have been voyaging for a month or a year. So a warm breeze or a chilly drizzle didn't immediately seem out of place. Until Christmas Day brought ferocious heat, or work crews stepped out into a damp June pre-dawn.

For some, this amalgamation of oddness stood like an unbridgeable barrier between them and the lands of their birth. Any distance which could give rise to such abnormality was distance indeed.

To the miles they had travelled to the colony, some convicts who had racked up a colonial conviction could add the 230 or so between Sydney and Port Macquarie, a sea journey which took between three days and two weeks, depending what mood the winds were in. By that time, the gentle rains, mild summers and familiar livestock of their former homes felt more like myths than the dreary routine which marked their life in the colony.

Still, in Monsarrat's view, one would not have expected the mundanity of a young woman stepping off a cutter to excite such interest, curiosity and speculation.

Honora had married Angus Shelborne two years previously, in a chapel near her family's estate, just before he left to take up his commission. They had met several times during his period in Ireland, as many families considered a well-turned-out officer an essential accessory to any social event. At dances, they made lively conversation. But at hunts, they began chastely to map each other's true boundaries, seeing if these went beyond the official charts, those drawn up for the daughter of a baron and a promising captain (as the major was then). Both were delighted with what they found, their personal geographies sharing many borders.

The major's family had made a tidy amount trading in wheat. People always needed wheat, Angus's father was fond of saying, no matter what other crazes or appetites might come and go. Young Angus's aptitude for all things martial, his instinctive integrity and his ability to lead assisted his advancement, but he
had another advantage which was equally important – a family who could afford a commission.

Despite assumptions by those of lower castes that a title and a castle came with a guaranteed fortune, a commission could not have been afforded for Honora had she been born male. A few generations of poor stewardship and her father's ruinous gambling had seen to that. And while the family was in possession of a castle, their capacity to maintain it had been undermined by the collapse of markets after the fall of Napoleon. So while the common Shelbornes were delighted to secure an Irish peer's daughter for their son, the peer was equally delighted by their discreet payment of certain debts.

It was decided that the major (newly minted in advance of his next posting) would precede his wife to the colony, to ensure all was adequate for a highborn bride. A minor lung infection, followed by some temporary financial difficulty caused by Honora's father and his injudicious application of funds to racehorses, had delayed her passage.

Six months previously, when the cutter
Sally
finally sailed past Lady Nelson Beach, traversed the bar without incident and deposited Honora on the dock, Major Shelborne had smiled. It was an awkward smile, rusty from lack of use, too tentative to sit comfortably on the face of a professional soldier and the ruler of this small collection of humanity.

Honora's smile, by contrast, was broad and strong and lacking in self-consciousness, with none of her class of women's tendency to try to hide her teeth with tight lips. They, in any case, required no concealment as all were present and white, the teeth of a woman who had grown up in dairy country. Monsarrat had the opportunity to examine the smile at close quarters when he was presented to the young woman. He, together with the rest of the household staff and a few senior officers, had lined the dock awaiting her inspection. She shook hands with all, even the felons, clearly not sharing the view of some that moral bankruptcy was as contagious as a plague and could pass from one person to another through physical contact.

She spent more time greeting her husband's officers, and Monsarrat noticed that the young captain Michael Diamond, with a broad-shouldered frame which seemed too large for his short legs to carry, bowed particularly low and said he was delighted to see her again. Monsarrat idly wondered where they could have met before.

The major's smile became more assured with use over the next few months, as he discovered he had (as hoped and suspected) married a kindred spirit, a woman at home in the saddle and at ease with a firearm. Honora could expertly and instantly don the mask of a gentlewoman at need. But she was happiest when dragging the major (without much need for force) out for early morning rides in the direction of the new settlement at Rolland's Plains which often turned into races. She also added to the settlement's food stores, proving the equal of any of the men at shooting, felling ducks, and at one point a kangaroo, before handing the gun down to the ancient Quilty, a former convict who had spent his youth reloading guns for aristocrats until he was caught shoplifting silverware on a journey to some English town.

In another place, Honora's spirit would have been viewed as an unladylike amalgam. Here, at the world's edge, she set the boundaries of appropriate behaviour based on her own inclinations and wishes. It was her right as the settlement's ranking female.

The response of the settlement's few other women ranged from admiration to envy. Amongst the convicts, some had seen their youth leak away during the course of their sentence, taking with it any claims they might once have had to an unsoured beauty which the major's wife wore so effortlessly. They felt they could have held onto these assets for far longer had they had the same resources as the young woman, who would never know the need to steal for survival.

The settlement's fascination with Mrs Shelborne was returned, and at her husband's indulgence she was allowed to implement certain measures which she felt would improve the lives of those who lived near her, be they free or felon. She behaved like a normal landlady of some well-run village.

She was equally solicitous to the wives of officers and to the free wives of convicts who had been shipped here to share their spouses' period of sentence and lived with their husbands in huts. It was she whose will prevailed on her husband to allow extra rations for those expecting babies, and she noted the birthdays of all the settlement's children, who attended lessons at the small schoolhouse, given by a man called Wilkins. Occasionally, she would go to the schoolhouse herself and tell the children stories of dragons and princesses, creatures as far removed from their own experience as the kangaroos and platypus had been from that of their parents.

Her first experiment came to Monsarrat's attention during one of his early morning visits to Mrs Mulrooney.

The major had engaged Mrs Mulrooney in Sydney, before departing for Port Macquarie. She had been housekeeper to a family in Camden, who had decided that their antipodean adventure was all very well but it was time to return to the real world on the other side of a long voyage. The major had met the family's father at a dinner at Sydney's Government House (a far grander building than its Port Macquarie counterpart), and on his urging had interviewed the Irishwoman. He had been impressed by her former employer's praise for her efficiency, and even more so by her pleasant but forthright manner.

The housekeeper was quite taken with her new mistress. She had spent the past eighteen months looking after Government House and its sole, male resident, and longed for a little more colour and chaos in the household. This, she felt, was provided amply by Mrs Shelborne.

‘She asks after my health every morning when I bring in the breakfast,' Mrs Mulrooney had told Monsarrat in wonder. ‘And what's more, she seems interested in the answer.'

It was Mrs Mulrooney's health, in fact, which was the focus of Mrs Shelborne's first venture.

‘She asked me to sit, if you can believe it, at the very table where she takes her breakfast. Well, never mind sitting, I nearly fell over, but of course I did as I was bade.'

Monsarrat watched Mrs Mulrooney as she spoke. Her hands, usually so efficient and assured, seemed unable to settle to anything that morning, starting a task and leaving it aside before it was finished.

‘What can she have wanted?' he asked.

‘Well, she said she wanted my help. In an experiment, to do with the healing powers of the ocean. She's a dote – you know I think very well of her, but at that minute I feared she might have become a little unhinged. And I must confess, I was frightened of anything involving sea water. You know the ocean is only good for drowning in, I've often said it.'

‘So you have. But I'm sure Mrs Shelborne is far more trustworthy, and she certainly wouldn't put you in harm's way. What is she proposing?'

‘Has Gonville spoken to you about his … what's the word? Anyway, he said it meant water medicine.'

Gonville, or more fully Doctor Richard Gonville, laboured under the title of surgeon. He was responsible for keeping the settlement's residents alive, as far as possible. He had traded a chance at the oak panelling of Harley Street, to hear him tell it, for an office behind a partition at the end of a long, narrow room which housed the beds of the sick and infirm. He also had a dispensary, and reasonable lodgings near what would be the church. Denied many of the trimmings of a London doctor's life, he had decided to take a creative and experimental approach to maintaining the health of his charges. And he had found a willing ear in Honora.

Monsarrat had been in the major's outer office when Gonville had been summoned, and had heard that conversation as he heard all others, the door to the inner office having been inexpertly fitted to the frame.

‘Yes, she's mentioned it,' said the major. ‘What d'you say it's called?'

‘Hydrotherapy or hydropathy, sir,' said the surgeon. ‘It's not fully understood, even by me, but it entails improving one's health through immersion in sea water. My own hypothesis is that sea
water contains beneficial minerals which are absorbed through the skin. I also believe the exposure to cold – just briefly, mind – improves the circulation. Makes it work harder, you see, renders it more vigorous.'

‘Yes. Well, she is certainly enthusiastic about it. Just for a brief period, as you say, I suppose that can't do harm. There's the issue, though, of decorum. Of modesty. Bathing in the sea, where anyone could walk past.'

‘I was intending to ask you for some assistance on that point, actually.'

Monsarrat heard the shuffling of papers, and assumed that Gonville was laying before the major the plans which had entered the inner office under his arm.

‘Interesting,' he heard the major say. ‘But how will you place it in the ocean?'

‘It could be backed in by draught horse, and moved as the tides dictate. Of course it is only for use on the calmer days, but better than nothing.'

‘And you want a work crew to build it? Very well. Cowley was a carpenter. You can have him and two others for a week.'

Monsarrat, whose job was to make this promise an administrative reality, found that the project in question was a square wooden framework, covered in canvas and open at the bottom, with wheels which would enable it to be manoeuvred into the sea. And now, it seemed, the structure was complete.

‘She wants me to get in the box and go in the ocean with her,' said Mrs Mulrooney, as though trying to convince herself that this was indeed what was being requested.

‘I'm sure it would be more enjoyable in there with company,' said Monsarrat.

Each Sunday, before muster and prayers in a building which also served as the schoolhouse for officers' children, Monsarrat was required with the rest of the male convict population of the settlement to take sea baths, and the colonial authorities cared not a whit for his modesty as he did so. He had come to enjoy the practice on warmer days, and had also learned to be vigilant about
where he put his feet. Carpet sharks, referred to near Sydney as wobbegongs, didn't appreciate being stepped on, and weren't shy about showing their displeasure.

He decided not to mention the sharks to Mrs Mulrooney, reasoning that the wheels of the contraption would scare them off should any be lurking near the shore. ‘Dr Gonville,' he said instead, ‘seems to believe immersion in salt water is a powerful tonic.'

‘I don't see him doing it,' Mrs Mulrooney muttered.

In fact, Dr Gonville regularly went into the ocean, bare-chested and in breeches, even in the cooler months. Mrs Mulrooney either didn't know or chose not to.