The Soldier's Curse (4 page)

‘So, will you accompany Mrs Shelborne?'

‘Of course. I can't refuse. I'm to report to her any changes in my health in the days after, so she can see how well the cursed box works.'

‘I'm sure it won't be as bad as you fear,' said Monsarrat.

‘It will probably be worse. You know how to reach my son, should you need to inform him of my drowning.'

Mrs Mulrooney quite enjoyed the experience in the end, bobbing up and down in a linen shift with a woman for whom she had a great deal of affection. She exhorted the other servants to try it, and reported on her health in detail to Mrs Shelborne.

The settlement's few female convicts had come as rather a surprise to one of the major's predecessors, who had expected to be ruling over a collection of male felons. The women, unlike their male counterparts, did not partake in the regular Sunday bathing ritual for the sake of modesty. Mrs Shelborne had intended to ask her husband to build more boxes, so the female convicts might enjoy the experience without worsening their already degraded condition by bathing in plain sight.

Mrs Shelborne and the doctor had also collaborated on another project.

A Female Factory had been constructed earlier that year at Port Macquarie, intended as a place of both confinement and industry for the convict women. The major had informed the Colonial Secretary that he was now able to accommodate around
fifty women, and asked for wool and carding supplies so that they might make themselves useful. The supplies had not been forthcoming, and neither had the women in any great number. So the inmates had been set to picking oakum – extracting fibres from hemp rope – and making nails for the settlement's building projects from nail rod sent from England.

But the settlement's lack of women meant that there was demand for females in positions of domestic service – officers' wives and the like would prefer to have somebody to help them with the daily necessities. So at Honora's urging, the major had allowed some of the better-behaved women to take up posts in the homes of their free sisters.

Those that remained, however, had to contend with the twin enemies of incarceration and boredom. They proved inept at extracting the oakum from the rope, and there were only so many nails a woman could make.

Honora begged her husband's permission to visit the women in the factory, and he allowed it as he allowed most things she asked, realising that she would get her way eventually so time might as well be saved through immediate acquiescence.

Honora told the major after the visit that she was distressed to see these women sitting and doing nothing, without enough outdoor time or exercise, wasting away. One woman, she said, was looking deathly ill, and Gonville, who had visited with her, confirmed to the major that the confinement was doing the women no favours.

Honora had timed her plea well – of those convicts who had managed to escape into the bush, a few had returned, reincarnated as bushrangers who had harried the settlement's outposts, creeping in to steal food late at night, whereupon they had been recaptured. The Female Factory, she argued to her husband, might be better put to use as a place of incarceration for these men, who far outnumbered the handful of women who currently lived there at large expense.

Wedged between Honora's pleadings on behalf of her bonded counterparts, and Dr Gonville's professional view as to the medical repercussions of such confinement, the major agreed to close the
factory, the remaining women to be found situations of employment with families of good character.

Shortly afterwards, Monsarrat himself was called on to help Mrs Shelborne with another experiment.

She came into the kitchen early one morning, dressed for hunting. Mrs Mulrooney, who had been preparing breakfast, jumped back from the stove. Monsarrat, on his accustomed morning visit, stood and bowed and moved into a corner.

‘Good morning, Mrs Mulrooney,' Mrs Shelborne said, smiling at the housekeeper. ‘I thought I would take breakfast in here this morning, as it's on my way.'

Mrs Mulrooney began efficiently assembling a table setting to go with the breakfast, inspecting each item more closely than usual in case it had decided to become blunt, dull or cracked overnight.

Mrs Shelborne sat in the chair Monsarrat had just vacated. ‘Mr Monsarrat,' she said. ‘Please, sit down.'

Monsarrat was paralysed, both by the sound of the ‘Mr' attached to his name, usually used by itself when uttered by the upper echelons, and by the offer to sit.

‘Please,' she said. ‘I have an enterprise in which I require your assistance, and I would rather not strain my neck looking up while we discuss it.'

The kindness wasn't lost on Monsarrat, who recovered some of his composure. He took the seat opposite her, remaining stiffly straight. ‘I will certainly assist you in whatever way I can, madam,' he said.

‘I am pleased you are willing. Tell me, Mr Monsarrat, what do you think of the prospects for rehabilitation for the convicts under our care?'

‘I imagine it depends on the character of the individual,' he said.

Mrs Shelborne clapped her hands. ‘Exactly so! I knew you would understand. And how, do you think, we can improve that character?'

Monsarrat, who had long abandoned the task of improving his own character, because it brought so little reward, had no concern for anyone else's, and no answer for her. Nor was one needed, it
turned out. Mrs Shelborne had decided on her beneficial project and presumed everyone else would see its merits.

‘I propose,' continued Mrs Shelborne, ‘that character may be improved through education. The more one knows of the world, and one's place within it, the more one appreciates the necessity to uphold order. And education can raise a person's eyes, don't you think? Let them know there is more than crime and degradation. Do you agree?'

‘Absolutely,' said Monsarrat, who had never thought about it in those terms. He had met many men with educations who lacked the wit to dress themselves.

‘I'm so glad. So, I wish to give a series of lectures, for the convicts and anyone else who cares to come. We will start with the classics. The Greeks and Romans have given us so much, after all, including the very system of order these wretches have run foul of. I have a notion that some of our audience may need to be eased into learning, so I thought mythology might be a good place to start. All the lessons of a homily, and interesting besides. It will expose them to a system of morality without the need for preaching, which they wouldn't listen to.'

‘It sounds a noble enterprise,' said Monsarrat.

Mrs Shelborne laughed. ‘Nobility doesn't enter into it. You mustn't think me some sort of paragon. No, I have a personal interest. My children, when God blesses me with them, will grow up amongst free people who may be the children of these very convicts, or others like them. I wish for them a society where survival or the accumulation of wealth are not the only concerns, where people take the time to think deeply and well. It strikes me that I might play a part in creating such a society, if only in a modest way. And I would like you to help me do it.'

‘I am at your disposal, Mrs Shelborne, assuming of course that the major can spare me.'

‘Oh, I've spoken to him and he is very much in favour. He says you may dedicate one hour a day to the project. He tells me you can accomplish more in one hour than others do in a day. Apparently you are the best clerk he has had, and he dreads your freedom as much as you no doubt yearn for it.'

‘How kind,' said Monsarrat. ‘And how would you like me to assist you, in this one hour a day?'

‘You, Mr Monsarrat, are going to write the lectures. Now, do you think we should start with Sisyphus, or no? They may listen more keenly as they probably feel they have their own endless burdens, or it might make them melancholy. What do you think?'

Monsarrat had not, of course, seen Honora Shelborne since she took to her bed. He found it difficult to reconcile the frail, ill and sad woman Mrs Mulrooney described, with the girl who had seemingly entranced the settlement with her inaugural lecture.

All convicts were compelled to attend, with the Buffs keeping an eye on proceedings, at the major's order rather than Honora's, since he foresaw the risk that she might be ridiculed by the lags.

She and Monsarrat had decided, in the end, to start with Hercules, in the hope that his labours and their successful conclusion might provide a model of perseverance and industry to the audience.

The lecture, as Monsarrat had written it, was somewhat dry, as befitting a clerk enumerating a collection of facts. Indeed, he knew there were punishments attached to being flamboyant.

In Honora's deft hands, it was transformed into a story with the immediacy of events which had happened yesterday, as she leaned in and related tales of Nemean lions and Erymanthian boars as though she were gossiping over a fence. She did, it must be said, avoid mention of Hercules' murder of Augeas, after the demigod had cleaned the king's infamously filthy stables and then been bilked on the promise of one-tenth of the livestock. Promoting murder as a solution to a contractual squabble was not one of her objectives.

When she summoned him to discuss their second lecture (on the cautionary tales embodied by Icarus and Prometheus), he told her the convict who cleaned the stables was now referred to as Hercules, due to the stables' frequently Augean nature. He was rewarded with an unrestrained and abandoned laugh of the kind he had only ever heard in alehouses, and only from men.

But she had not given that lecture, being overtaken by her illness soon after. Mrs Mulrooney had brought her tea on the broad verandah of Government House one sunny winter afternoon, so she could read and look out through the passionfruit vines over the sparkling water.

On occasions such as this, she enjoyed having Mrs Mulrooney sit with her for company. Sometimes they chatted, and sometimes Honora seemed to prefer to read her book, so Mrs Mulrooney brought some sewing so she could sit with her employer and not feel like a ‘pimple on a pumpkin', as she put it to Monsarrat.

Honora tended to keep several books by her on the small round table on the verandah. Some were books designed for educated ladies, fit for her station. But she had a secret passion for rollicking adventures, which she could hide amongst the more sedate volumes from Shakespeare, Goldsmith (Fielding was considered a little too racy for the genteel) and Wordsworth. On the day her illness made its presence felt, she was engrossed in the adventures of Sir Walter Scott's
Ivanhoe
.

After a time, when most of the tea she had been absently sipping at was gone, she looked up towards the river. ‘Do you know, Mrs Mulrooney, when I was little I would squint at the water and see thousands and thousands of diamonds. I wanted to get a fishing net and scoop them all up.'

Mrs Mulrooney looked up from her stitching and smiled at Honora, who returned the smile. Then her expression changed – to confusion, then alarm. She stood, dashed into the house and to her bedroom. Mrs Mulrooney ran after her, and found her hunched over her chamber pot, vomiting violently and slick with sweat.

She looked up apologetically and gave a weak smile. ‘I might rest now,' she said.

Mrs Mulrooney fetched some water and gently cleaned her – a process she would need to repeat, as the vomiting was soon joined by more noxious emissions – and helped her into her night-clothes and into bed, before running to fetch Dr Gonville.

This was where Honora would stay, with Mrs Mulrooney bringing her endless quantities of tea, and food which went largely
uneaten. For the first few days, though exhausted and racked by fits of coughing, she was conscious and alert. Then, as her breathing became more laboured, the convulsions started, and brought with them a delirium which had her begging her father not to commit some unknown atrocity, and asking an unknown spectre why it had followed her here. The outbursts were punctuated with increasing periods of unconsciousness.

Dr Gonville could determine whether a wound was infected by smelling it. He was far more experienced with dysentery than he had any wish to be. And he had made the regular acquaintance of smallpox, consumption and cholera, amongst a great many others. Mrs Shelborne's symptoms, however, left him perplexed. He had considered cholera but her emissions lacked the characteristic rice-water texture (knowledge of which could not be forgotten, once acquired), and there were no other cases in the settlement.

While he worried at the problem, he prescribed the only treatment he could – boiled and cooled water, as much food as Mrs Shelborne could take, and rest.

Monsarrat feared that Mrs Shelborne might never leave her bedroom, with the settlement poorer for having glimpsed a world beyond everyday survival, only to have it snatched away. With her incapacity, the settlement's small diet of grace had vanished.

‘Those keening banshees are driving me out of my wits!'

Slattery's outburst was accompanied by the sound of the door hitting the wall with enough force to make Monsarrat worry about the structural integrity of the hinges.

‘What wits you haven't already lost to poteen,' he said, hoping to restore a sense of normalcy through reversion to their accustomed banter, and aware that the potato-based spirit, pronounced ‘pocheen', was a feature of the card games Slattery attended. He was rewarded with a glare from the young man, who threw himself into a seat as though he was trying to punish it.

Monsarrat had to sympathise – the sound was beautiful, to his ears. But, entering its second hour, it was beginning to interfere with his ability to concentrate.

Mrs Mulrooney seemed likewise affected. The indulgent tutting with which she would normally have greeted Slattery's petulance was not in evidence today. ‘Stop hurling yourself about – you'll have the timbers down around our ears,' she said, swatting him on the head with her cleaning cloth. ‘And while the strong young soldier sits there squalling like a babe, at least the old woman and the convict are doing something.'

‘Drinking tea until they grow old and die?' said Slattery. But his genial nature, which sometimes ran away like a young child trying to make a point, usually returned just as quickly. ‘At least your tea, Mother Mulrooney, is a suitable drink, along with some others I could name, to eke out the course of a lifetime.'

Mrs Mulrooney succumbed to his twinkling, giving him a distracted smile and pouring him a cup of wonderfully bitter black liquid. She was right, though. So far, she was the only person making the vaguest attempt to take the situation in hand.

Mrs Mulrooney had fetched Monsarrat that morning. He was using the grey time before the sun was fully aloft to scrub his teeth with a eucalyptus twig, ensure his cravat was properly tied and his waistcoat unmarked. Monsarrat had always been particular about his personal appearance. Now it had risen to the level of obsession. His dress was as important as any soldier's uniform, distinguishing him as it did from his fellow prisoners in their slop clothing. His presentation was also one of the very few things over which he had any control.

Monsarrat was able to complete his daily preparations in the privacy of his own timber hut – a relative luxury afforded to him along with other trusted convicts, or those with wives and families at the penal station – rather than in the less congenial atmosphere of the convict barracks. He knew barracks living, and hoped never to know it again. In a pack, personal grooming could easily be seen as pretension, an attempt to separate oneself from the group. The responses ranged from derision to violence.

It was possible that the convicts who had built the one-room hut had guessed it was for one of their number who thought himself above them, a toff, as culpable as they, but with access to comforts and privileges they would never know. If they were aware, they had clearly taken their revenge in the shoddiness of the construction – surely it must have required effort and planning to engineer gaps in the woodwork which would admit chilly winds but not gentle summer breezes, and a door that fitted so poorly it would blow open at the merest waft. Like many buildings here, the floor was made of river pebbles, but these had not been packed
so tightly with dirt as they had in other structures, making their surface uneven and prone to damp. And Monsarrat feared that the red earth of this place – so unlike the polite brown English soil – had designs on his waistcoats, and might yet achieve them due to its looseness amongst the pebbles.

Mrs Mulrooney had never knocked on Monsarrat's door, so she wasn't aware of its frailty. When she had knocked this morning, the door had flown open as if hit by a battering ram. It was the first time Monsarrat had ever seen her blush. ‘I'm sorry, Mr Monsarrat, I intended to wait until you answered.'

‘Of course, please don't worry, it's the door's fault. And as you see, I am ready. In fact, I was about to make my way to you.'

‘I couldn't wait for you to get around to the kitchen this morning, Mr Monsarrat. There is a situation on which I need your most urgent advice.'

‘I am in your debt to the tune of gallons of tea. How can I assist?'

‘It's best if I show you. I wouldn't know where to begin to describe it.'

Together they made their way to Government House, Monsarrat struggling to adjust his loping gait to Mrs Mulrooney's small, quick steps as they climbed the hill towards the construction site which would ultimately produce the church, surrounded by the medical holy trinity of hospital, dispensary and surgeon's quarters. From there, Mrs Mulrooney fastidiously lifting her skirts to avoid the kind of mud only a building site can produce, they crossed to Government House.

Mrs Mulrooney led Monsarrat to the front of the house. As he approached, he became aware of a low, thrumming sound, felt in the gut as well as heard by the ears. The sound of human voices – female voices – singing, or at least making the same noises at the same time. Their song had none of the baroque flourish of European music, and was the more fascinating for it. It seemed to rise and fall to match the mountains and the tides of the river, rather than by any human intervention. The closest thing Monsarrat had heard was Gregorian chant, but even that was a poor approximation for the hypnotic music he was listening to now,
and he began to understand why some convicts believed native women could sing spells.

Rounding the corner to the front of Government House, the entrance reserved for the free and important, Monsarrat saw perhaps fifty Birpai women, old and young, their bodies streaked with white and red, sitting on the grass in front of the house and its empty verandah. Somewhere behind the verandah's sloping roof, Monsarrat knew, lay Honora Shelborne, entering the second week of her sickness in an uncertain state of consciousness.

A few of the singers looked distracted, like women in a parish church reciting familiar prayers. They seemed to Monsarrat earnest as a company, their eyes taking in either the house or the sky, seriously concerted in what sounded like prayers. A few of them looked up, half-seeing him before their eyes flicked back to their immediate environs.

‘Now, tell me,' said Mrs Mulrooney, ‘what does this mean? For what purpose are they disturbing the poor woman's rest?'

Monsarrat thought. He could hear or see no meaning. ‘Perhaps we should ask Mr Spring,' he said.

Simon Spring had a Birpai lover, and the Birpai seemed to like him, rather than merely adjust to his presence as they had done with white settlers in general.

‘I must be back to the kitchen in case the bell rings,' Mrs Mulrooney said. ‘Mrs Shelborne may have more need of me this morning, with this disturbance. Can I ask you, Mr Monsarrat, to talk to young Spring? I don't like this, but there is nothing I can do to prevent it. They don't seem to mean harm, so I don't want to get the soldiers. If Spring can tell us their intentions, we can decide what to do, hopefully before Captain Diamond notices.'

Fortunately, Monsarrat thought, the captain would be busy that morning. Major Shelborne had mandated frequent drilling for the troops – Monsarrat had transcribed the order himself – to prevent boredom. Diamond would be marching his soldiers up and down this morning, with a sense of urgency which would make you think a French invasion was imminent, and no doubt thinking himself very gallant while doing so. Only soldiers with
specific assignments, like Private Slattery and his plastering job, were exempted. The military barracks and its parade ground were close to Government House – too close for Monsarrat's liking. But perhaps the sound of boots striking the ground, muskets being shouldered and unshouldered, and the captain's love of his own voice as it barked commands would allow the song to escape his attention.

‘Come to the kitchen for a cup of tea first.'

So back they went, Monsarrat avoiding the accusing gaze of the blank office window as he passed. It was as he was finishing the fortifying cup that Slattery had made his abrupt entrance.

Now, having heard the plan, Slattery looked into his own nearly empty cup. ‘I'll come with you,' he said. ‘Spring might be more forthcoming to a soldier than a convict.'

‘Ah, you have your own work to do,' said Mrs Mulrooney. ‘Mrs Shelborne will need the solace of a papered sitting room as she recovers.'

And indeed, Slattery's work crew were gently knocking at the outer door, as if to atone for their overseer's roughness. They waited while Mrs Mulrooney let them in, led them through the kitchen and then across the intervening yard to the main house. ‘You'd best be off,' she said to Monsarrat as she left. ‘Parade won't last all day.'

As he made towards the commissariat stores, Monsarrat heard Slattery's voice from the verandah. ‘Off with you, you heathen bitches,' he was yelling. ‘We've a sick woman here who doesn't need your fookin' pagan screeching!'

His words failed to cause a ripple in the ocean of chanting voices.

Simon Spring was a vigorous young man, despite his myopic eyes, for which he wore thick-lensed glasses. He shared Monsarrat's interest in history, and with his wages had built up a small library. It was rumoured he intended to marry his native woman, which offended some (and very possibly the offence was shared by the Birpai, if they were aware of his wish).

Like many a man taken with a native woman, Spring's chief purpose in life was to make a Birpai–English dictionary. His work was routine, and probably always would be, and this dictionary was his chance of intellectual glory.

‘Mr Monsarrat,' he said, not standing. He did not share the common view of convicts as irredeemable, spoiled goods whose humanity had vanished with their offence. Nevertheless, he felt no impulse to rise as Monsarrat entered. ‘I enjoyed our discussion on Celtic barrow graves,' he said, removing his glasses and absently polishing them on his shirt. ‘Made me wonder how many of my own people lie in them.'

‘My ancestors are more likely to be in mass graves,' said Monsarrat. ‘My father's Huguenot forebears courtesy of the French, and my mother's Welsh thanks to the English.'

Monsarrat would never have made this statement to an Englishman. But he knew Spring had a rebellious streak which he kept carefully concealed. The arrangement with his native paramour, and the occasional use of the word ‘sassenach' when drink had been taken, had alerted Monsarrat to its existence. He hoped to awaken it now, in hopes it might incline the man to help.

‘Yes, well,' said Spring. ‘Our graves, yours and mine, will be in a land which has never known our kind. I wonder whether it will revolt as it consumes us? It's not used to consuming people, you know – the Birpai leave their dead in sacred trees in the hinterland.'

‘Well, they may be in a state of mild revolution as we speak,' said Monsarrat.

‘Surely not! Hard to imagine a more peaceable people than the Birpai, when they have been given cause not to be, as well. What can be happening?'

Monsarrat described the scene outside Government House. ‘Mrs Mulrooney is chiefly concerned with Mrs Shelborne's rest,' he said.

‘As well she might be,' said Spring. ‘I understand the dear lady is very ill.'

‘Indeed she is, but there are other concerns. Parade will finish before noon. If Captain Diamond comes upon the scene at Government House, he may act rashly. He's been playing at soldiers all morning, you see, and he might decide he's finished with playing.'

Monsarrat knew Spring had little liking for Diamond with his clipped vowels, moustache and manner. In the major's absence, Diamond had been feeling his way through the command, and had ordered an audit of the stores, offending Spring with both extra work and the implication of thievery.

‘We thought,' he said, ‘if you could help us divine their intention, we might be able to convince them to disperse before any harm is done.'

‘Of course,' said Spring, laying aside his ledger and standing. ‘It sounds like a matter of utmost urgency.'