The Trespass (53 page)

In the darkness Benjamin shook his head. ‘So the other women you have known and expended so much energy not to mention money upon are not, now, worthy of any man? If they were worthy when you met them, worthy enough even for you to set up an establishment with one of them, is it not you that has therefore ruined them?’

‘Don’t play with words, Ben. There are no words to discuss Miss Cooper now, now that we know this – this unspeakable thing. What you are talking of is different. Entirely different.’

‘I wonder if it is. I believe that if women are
good
and intelligent, and care about the world and its many inhabitants as we all must learn to do, then, I think, they are more likely to bring out the best in us. Miss Mary Cooper, the beloved elder sister, died because she was visiting the poor in Seven Dials during the cholera epidemic.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I know, that is all. Miss Harriet Cooper loved her sister and must have known what she was doing. It is clear from even the short acquaintance we have had with Harriet that she is an intelligent woman.’

‘None of this matters. An impure woman could never be the mother of my children, no matter how intelligent. And impure in such a – no, I cannot think on it – such a terrible way. It is out of the question. The Kingdom bloodline is too important.’

‘If she has had the courage to run away from the vile actions of her father, to cross the world alone, then it seems to me she must be a good woman and a very brave woman, as was her sister. Do you not think these would be qualities worth passing on in our family?’

In his mind Ralph could see Benjamin’s grey, wise eyes: the eyes of their father. Voices called, small boats nudged against the
Seagull
beside the rope ladder at the other end of the deck. Somewhere a sailor laughed. For a long time the brothers were silent.

At last Ralph said, in a low voice, ‘What fools have you been meeting with, to speak to me in this way?’

‘Not fools, Ralph. Educated men. And women. There are many people who think as I do.’

‘Mother would not agree with you.’

‘Mother comes from another time, another world almost.’ Benjamin’s voice was very quiet: both of them saw their mother sitting so uncompromisingly in the cold rooms of their world. ‘A few women of her generation were lucky enough, or brave enough, to obtain the freedom of thought that can come with true education. Mother was not one of them, as well you know.’ They had never spoken in this way of their mother in their lives, it seemed almost inappropriate to do so, even now. ‘Yet I cannot but think that her life could have been – happier, if she had been able to think about some things differently.’

Ralph sounded impatient. ‘Happiness has nothing whatever to do with it. Mother has always done her duty.’ It was true that their mother had always done her duty, never once had her sons seen her less than immaculately prepared for their infrequent visits; never once had she complained of the long, empty days in the cold, high-ceilinged manor where she lived out her life. ‘She has always done her duty,’ Ralph repeated. ‘As women must.’

Benjamin did not answer.

The wind ruffled their hair and their clothes and caught again at the rigging and at the sea below them. The
Seagull
moved and swayed at its anchor.

And then Ralph whispered on to the wind:
Harriet – with her father: it disgusts me.

‘I shall go ashore myself then,’ said Benjamin shortly and he quickly went below. Ralph caught the sudden disdain in his younger brother’s voice.

*   *   *

Below deck Benjamin knocked quietly at the door of the cabin Lucy shared with George. Lucy answered.

‘Is he asleep?’

‘No.’

George was reading. Perhaps he was reading. He sat with his back to them holding a book but there was something tense and unnatural about his shoulders.

‘I am going ashore.’ Lucy wished passionately that she also could go ashore now, tonight, touch the new land at last: was glad that she would have freedom soon to catch at the dreams that would change her life. ‘I will arrange accommodation for our embarkation in the morning.’ He wanted to say something to Lucy of Harriet, of his brother. But what?

Suddenly George ran and flung himself at Benjamin.

‘Take me, take me, I want to come with you because now the storm will come!’ The boy was screaming with fright. ‘Take me! Take me!’

Benjamin looked distressed, tried to hold the small flailing body still, puzzled. But Lucy understood at once.

‘There ain’t going to be a storm here, George, I’ve told you. Don’t be such a ninny.’ And she took him firmly by both arms, shook him to make him look at her. ‘Look at me, George,’ she said loudly, and he looked at her. ‘This is the peaceful side of the world, like I’ve told you and told you. Sir Benjamin is going ashore in a rowing boat to make it nice for tomorrow.’

‘He went in a rowing boat last time,’ said George, and now he was sobbing, burying his head in Lucy’s apron, and Benjamin understood at once: in George’s experience if a ship dropped anchor it was shipwrecked.

‘Here, George,’ he said, ‘look at this!’ and he unclipped his pocket watch from his jacket. George looked up but still the tears ran down his face. ‘I wouldn’t be leaving you with this, would I? if you were going to be shipwrecked again!’

George took the watch and said no more, but his body shuddered still, from weeping, and his eyes held more pain and fear and memory than a small boy’s should.

Benjamin came up on deck and whistled for a boat, the way he saw the sailors do.

‘I am going ashore,’ he said to Ralph. ‘Will you not come with me? We must, at the very least, be assured that she is safe. And we may ascertain also whether Sir Charles Cooper is here.’

His brother’s face still held the look of rage and disgust and disappointment and if Benjamin had not known such a thing was totally out of the question he would have sworn his brother had been weeping. ‘I could not see him,’ said Ralph. ‘I would kill him if I saw him. I
cannot
see her. Surely you understand.’

‘Very well, Ralph, I will go alone. I will find out what I can.’ Again Ralph heard something in his brother’s voice, something harder, less respectful. Benjamin whistled again and the sailors threw down a rope ladder and a small boat, bobbing on the choppy water in the wind, was rowed off by two men towards the shore, a lantern at the bow to guide them in.

Ralph Kingdom, illustrious Englishman, man-about-town, heir to an untold fortune, watched the boat getting smaller, saw the dark shapes of his brother and the sailors. He strained to see Ben’s little boat land in the darkness, saw lights moving up the sand. Ben was a good man, but he knew nothing about women.

Terrible visions again filled his mind, disturbed his body.
I cannot tell you,
she had said and now he knew; he shook his head from side to side to try to cast out the pictures that came to him: terrible, unthinkable,
exciting
pictures of the woman he had loved.

And then quite unexpectedly Ralph heard himself say:
I will have her.
For just a moment he seemed startled by his own words, and then extraordinarily pleased by them. He suddenly leant over the deck rail and whistled out for one of the small boats. Swiftly he went below to his cabin, moved quietly. In a moment he was back on deck. As he was rowed towards the lights on the shore words went round and round in his head.
I will have her. I love her. I will have her.
And just as the boat touched the shingle on the shore:
I will forgive her.

But his mind was not able to say:
I will marry her.

*   *   *

The meeting of the settlers was to be held not far from where Benjamin had been deposited on the shore by the boatman, near one of the wooden jetties. He walked up the beach on to the harbourside, and saw at once hundreds of lanterns, heard the voices. Some were angry, some were excited, some sounded as though they had been drinking. Women stood in bonnets, children played in the crowd, running between people, running down to the water, pulled back every now and then by their mothers. There was to be a meeting soon, people informed him, and rumours flew around him:
any moment,
they said;
in an hour,
they said;
a Member of Parliament from Great Britain,
they said. And someone had the name:
Sir Charles Cooper,
they said,
from England.
So he was here. Benjamin walked quickly along the quay; saw, without seeing, Wellington: the stores and the sheds, the neat houses and the notices advertising wigs and the immortality of the soul. Where then was Harriet? His mind was filled with his brother, with Harriet Cooper, and his heart was weighed down with the pain of understanding at last. But now he must find her:
I know about your father. Are you all right? Are you safe?
Suddenly there was a stir, a commotion further down the quay. Soldiers were already escorting the speakers to the meeting. Benjamin quickly turned back to follow Sir Charles, and so find Harriet.

*   *   *

Harriet had been safely returned to Barratt’s Hotel through the throng of people, the settlers and the traders and the sailors; just for a moment Sir Charles had entered her dark room and closed the door. Outside the escorting soldiers and the Lieutenant-Governor waited.

‘Get ready, my darling girl,’ he said and his words slurred slightly. ‘I will not be long.’ He pulled her towards him as he stood by the door, ran his hand, again, down her body, and she heard the crowds on the street calling and laughing and voices selling meat and flour and nails. ‘I will be back as soon as possible. I will expect you to be ready.’ He caught her head to his chest for just a moment, and spoke into her hair. ‘Do not think of sleeping, Harriet. I have the laudanum, my darling, and you will sleep when I determine.’ And then he kissed her mouth, and then he turned to go but just as he opened the door he turned back.

‘This is the punishment,’ he said. And she saw that his face held a look of triumph at what had, at long last, been won.

She heard him instructing Peters to lock the door of her bedroom and not move from there. And then she heard the heavy lock being turned.

She was poised like an arrow. She had made her plan. She knew she could not go back to the ladies at Government House, or to the Burlington Browns so concerned to keep up standards. She knew she could not: her powerful father would be informed at once, her word against his would be considered so improper, so unbelievable, that they would say she was mad, not him: her flight from England was proof enough of that. Even Edward could not help her now. Somewhere in the hotel someone was playing the piano in a jaunty out-of-tune kind of way, and voices sang of ‘Black-Eyed Susan’.

She quickly crossed to the table and lit the lantern, the apples and the peaches still stood on the table. She held up the lantern and the flame moved in the draught that came in even at the closed window as she looked around her. Every second counted. She pulled her embroidery bag and her cloak from under the bed: she could tell someone had been through her luggage brought from the Gentlewomen’s Hotel but these she had hidden under the bed and out of sight when she arrived from Edward’s land, and these, she saw, had not been touched. She looked quickly as she always did for her money; and then for something she had almost forgotten: the knife – the knife from the kitchen at Bryanston Square. She might have use for it, after all. She checked candles and matches, her Journal. She put two of the apples in her bag. And then she turned the lantern down low and approached the main window, which she opened very carefully and quietly as the wind caught her dress and her hair. Outside the small boats still bobbed at the shoreline, others were being pulled up on the beach in the darkness, lanterns flickered, voices called, carried on the wind. Horses whinnied, tied to fences. Further along the quay, past the small traders who sold hats and honey, she saw a crowd: men shouting, lanterns waving; this would be her father’s meeting. Almost everyone was there, it seemed: the path running along the shore beside the hotel was otherwise almost empty: two drunk fishermen spoke of girls, with their arms about each other’s shoulders, then drifted towards the lights and the noise. She craned out and looked down far to the left of the harbour: no shouting or sound of boots on stones, no lanterns; yet as she stared into the night something more silent, more stealthy seemed to move in the darkness. Harriet suddenly shivered.

But the natives were friendly, people said. She had seen Edward buy a horse from the natives: she would buy a horse too and travel north, there was a fair road from here along the coast. From travelling with Edward she understood just a little about traversing the bush, she would ride as far as she could and then she would hide. Perhaps she would die: if animals or snakes or natives or her father found her then she would find Mary: she had her knife and this was her promise to herself.
She would never, never let herself be trapped again.
Very quietly she closed the front window.

Almost as an afterthought, it seemed, as she moved away from the window, she paused for a moment and then knelt quickly beside the bed and closed her eyes. The dim light from the lamp on the table threw long flickering shadows on to the walls of the room as she bowed her head.

Dear Lord, who knows all things. It was a long and dangerous journey that brought me this far. Please help me to make my journey now. And if it is thy will that this journey is to be my final journey, that it is to end with me finding my dear sister Mary, then I will bow to thy will and be glad. But you cannot mean me to live this way.

And then she added one more short sentence that shocked her as she heard herself say it.

If thou art there Lord?

Amen.

She was not sure, for a moment, if she had said that.

Then she moved quickly to the side window, opened it quietly. Her heart was beating very fast. Into the alley she dropped her embroidery bag and her cloak. She did not dare jump: if she broke a leg now she was doomed. The alley seemed dark and quite empty. But suddenly, even as she prepared to climb down after her precious belongings, she heard the door of her room being unlocked. In an instant she closed the window, whirled back to face the door, her heart pounding, her breathing rapid. Her father must have returned for something.