Authors: Keneally Thomas
Through the small gaps in the slab timber of Long’s hut, a more sullen light showed. It looked to me like the light fit for a man who had finished his labour and drowsily renounced the day. Trailed by me, Bernard rapped on the door and it was opened a little by Long, who said, with his same old dolefulness, ‘Come in, Miss Bernard my love.’ I would have traded my own and Charlie Batchelor’s flocks and herds to acquire somehow the right to make such a welcoming noise.
Seeing this much, I was not quite crazed enough to take my spying further. I returned to my homestead and my noble young partner. But my task of observation and pursuit became a regular nightly exercise.
One night, in my half hour of tracking Bernard’s short progress from the kitchen to my overseer’s, as I stood behind a damp tree trunk whose moisture was fast turning to hoarfrost, I was rewarded by the noise of a quarrel.
‘You should not think that you have some claim on me, Sean,’ I was delighted to hear her tell him. ‘If kindness is a claim, then what is its value?’ On the one hand, I found it hard to believe that anyone could quarrel seriously with Long. On the other I knew an uncontained joy
that it seemed improbably to be happening. I heard him murmuring a little in baleful apology, or even, if she had driven him that far, in self-justification. A careless caress, I assumed, and if he were chastised for it, that might mean it was a rare gesture.
The next day I went to the kitchen and quizzed her on Aldread. She is a good woman, said Bernard, claiming to have known her since the ship that transported them both and taken such care of her as was possible. She was a woman removed from the Factory to work on light duties at the Parramatta Gaol hospital after the scandalous case of the Pallmires, the former matron and steward of the place. ‘She is in trouble only when she lives in disorderly places. She will be very good here.’ As I questioned her I saw the little curtained alcove of slab-timber and bark where, unless she slept by George’s cradle, she spent her nights. After of course first visiting Sean Long.
On the off-chance that she would thereby be pleased, I wrote the following:
27th June 1842
To: the Rt. Hon. The Colonial Secretary
Macquarie Street
Sydney
Dear Sir,
I have the honour to address you in the matter of one Alice Aldread, per
Whisper
who is serving a life sentence for the manslaughter of her reportedly tyrannous and aged husband. My information is that the behaviour of said Aldread has been in the colonies unexceptionable, and that her illness, and time spent in the Female Factory hospital, and the hospital of the Parramatta prison, have between them effectually chastened her.
It is believed that this prisoner’s health is not good, and I am thus pleased to report that my wife and I have the honour to reside in one of the colony’s more tonic reaches, which would no doubt be beneficial to the well-being of this misguided but repentant soul.
Etc, etc
In the same season I received a letter from my brother Simon beyond the alps. He had lost some 1400 sheep from catarrh, and it was a very daunting prospect for him and his young wife, Elizabeth. He proposed that I might kindly consider bringing a flock, some of which he would
purchase over two years, some he would pasture according to the normal arrangement, and some to be sold in Melbourne, where the market had revived. This journey would need to be done before the shearing season, but after the worst of the mountain snows. It struck me abstractly as not unwise to have investments on either side of the mountains.
The letter also contained a sentiment, and offered a challenge, at which my heart sank: ‘The other great benefit to you would be that you could see Father, who has joined me here for a time.’
So I had pressing duties, one financial, the other familial. Yet even when my motives were reputable, my feelings had become so duplicitous that all I planned seemed uncertain and dishonest to me. Should I take Long on what might be a challenging crossing of the Port Phillip Pass to the south-west? It would be unremarkable if I did so, I decided. O’Dallow could stay with his sweetheart and soon-to-be wife Tume and manage Nugan Ganway with utter competence. For it was an unspoken arrangement that O’Dallow would become the permanent overseer in the coming time when Long would receive his conditional pardon for time served, ask for his share of the stock, and disappear.
So Long and other stockmen, including the enthusiastic Felix, ever the student of bush horsemanship as well as of the Punic Wars, accompanied me through fine, clear September air. We rose up a long valley, accompanied to the west by mounded peaks with the snow streaks of the past winter’s storms adhering only to their more shadowy contours. We contended with steep, wooded hills, but the weather held and the ascent to the Port Phillip Pass itself was gradual on this eastern side, and according to report the western slopes were gentler and well-grassed even in dry seasons. Felix proved yet again what an admirably reserved and hardy boy he was, and in every evening camp, while the quart pot was boiled by Presscart, he would fetch one of the Latin texts I had bought him from his saddlebag and read it to me and translate it by last light. He had begun to study a Greek primer too, since though I had but a minor grasp of Greek, he would need it for his ultimate education. He would honour his race at Oxford or Cambridge, and make a way for my son, George. They would become used to robust Australian intellects in these distant academies.
In these lessons as in all else, the journey was pleasantly predictable. We came down through the great native forests into the clearings of the Broken River, which we followed until we encountered, by seeking out the origin of some smoke we saw, my brother’s first shepherd hut. Here
a bare-footed hut-keeper sat nursing a carbine and looking with surmise at further smoke, that of a native fire on a rock outcrop above.
‘Having trouble, young man?’ I called.
‘Not as much as them’ns, mate,’ called back the convict, nodding towards the native fire. A grenadier guard protecting the person of a monarch could not have sounded as clearly dedicated to his martial task as this fellow did.
The journey had by now become more leisurely, the sheep slowing us down as they luxuriated in these new and richer pastures. It was some time before we met stockmen mustering cattle, and the head man told one of his native assistants to ride to the homestead and warn my brother of our coming. This rider was one of the native horsemen my brother had brought with him from the Port Phillip area, and although, like Felix and Hector, his tribe had never laid eyes on a horse until less than two decades ago, the man rode off with the grace of an ancestral rider – such as we read of amongst the Indian indigenes from the plains of the Americas.
My brother had barely come a mile from his homestead when we encountered him. Simon was a well-made young man, less tall than myself, brown-haired, with a manly, pleasant face.
‘Brother,’ he said, leaning out of his saddle and grasping my right hand with his, and my upper arm with his left hand.
But behind the boyish features lay the barely disguised lineaments of care. They were worried eyes which stared forth at me, with no glint in them to make authentic the smile on his lips. I wondered had my father’s presence anything to do with his worn looks.
‘I’ve brought you prime stock,’ I told him, smiling.
‘You have been splendidly kind,’ he said. ‘The appetite for mutton goes unabated in Port Phillip. They even have their own architects’ office now.’ We smiled at each other, but perhaps each brother could see in the other that the plain, pastoral matters were of solace only if the soul was aright.
Simon turned back with us, and pointed out new-made pens amongst scattered tall trees where my men could turn out our sheep to pasture. ‘They should mount shifts though,’ he counselled with a careworn frown. ‘For the natives are still somewhat active.’
We were at last,
sans
men and livestock, riding side by side down the slope to his homestead near the Broken River, with its sundry outbuildings and stockyards.
‘Does Father live in the house?’ I asked.
‘By his own choice he stayed only one night. Since then he occupies that old overseer’s hut. It’s better. Elizabeth is hard put upon by what she calls anaemia. She complains of lack of strength. As soon as our daughter is two years of age, I propose that they return for a visit to her aunt and uncle in England. I hear that these new ships are more like health spas than the horrors we had on our 400-ton floating Hades coming to join father.’
My memories of all that were confused – uncontainable nausea, dimness, violent movement, the sharp, penetrating stench of overflowing privies and of bile, and beneath it the symphonic and enduring malodour of bilges, the smell which penetrated skin and cloth and dreams.
‘Is she upset to have Father here?’
‘She is very dutiful. She has never uttered a word of complaint. After all, the man is charming company when he sits at our table, and little trouble otherwise.’
‘How does he fill his days?’
‘He reads, he writes and – I confess – drinks rum. He gets his exercise through long rides with a convict, Tyler. Father has what he always wanted. Enough to read, some stationery and a pen, a few books, and a pupil.’
‘Have you asked him about Mother?’
‘He is cheery about Mother. He says he is giving her a rest from his company.’
‘One of us must go down there to Van Diemen’s Land soon.’
‘Oh certainly. I intend on my next visit to Port Phillip to take ship. We must show our love and affection for her … she is the wronged party.’
‘Have you heard from Charlie Batchelor?’ I asked in a lowered voice.
‘I got the rummest letter from him. Full of obscure references to our returning to type. I decided to put it away and neither seek his company for the time being nor judge him too harshly. This life in the bush is a hard affair, and brings out flaws in the character.’
I said nothing to that in case I gave away something of my own especial flaws.
It got cold early in this trans-alpine world. I sat with Simon and Elizabeth, who did not look well, drinking tea in their parlour, with an Irish woman keeping a watch on my utterly healthy infant niece. I had one eye out for the return of my father and his companion from their ride.
And when he arrived, what would I say? My father had still not appeared when Elizabeth excused herself to rest before dinner. It was hard to tell whether her departure was an attempt to avoid the coming, awkward reunion.
I had gone out to look for him when Father finally appeared from the blind side of the house, galloping hard, in contest with his companion. He looked a wiry figure in his jacket of kangaroo skin. I went over to meet him as he handed the reins to his companion. I had not seen him for eight years. His head was barer and what was left of his hair hung in grey ringlets about his ears, yet the old intelligence shone in his eyes.
‘My handsome and successful son,’ he said, holding his arms wide with a frankness which I thought was new to him. ‘Greet your twice-betraying and twice-betrayed father!’
I did not know what to make of any of this, so I took one of his hands and shook it to prevent the embrace I think he sought. ‘You look so well, Father,’ I said. He was the man I remembered, older and with the light in his eye which I had once trusted and thought the light of talent, but which I could now see was unreliable, or had somehow run that way.
Simon had suggested that Father dine with all of us that night.
‘Does this sit well with Elizabeth?’ Father asked gently. And then, ‘I believe my daughter-in-law fears I may be some plague on legs.’
I realised the time might come when I would need to say, ‘You are, Father, you are.’ But my old reverence for him as mentor and parent and seer kept me filial. Besides, whatever shame he had, I had mine.
Inside, by the fire, Simon and my father and I drank rum and water prior to dinner, and when it was served Elizabeth came in, and her small appetite and weary look, I hoped, had nothing to do with my father’s supposed sins. She excused herself early, the table was cleared and we sat again by the fire, as beyond the wall the tall trees seemed to creak with cold.
‘Have you heard from your mother?’ Father asked me.
‘She is only an intermittent writer,’ I told him. ‘Her most recent letter told me to maintain towards you my affection as a son.’
‘A virtuous woman,’ he said. ‘Of all who have eaten of the tree of knowledge, I believe that we males were most over-toppled by the experience, even if we have conveniently made it seem that Eve should take the blame. Did she tell you she would not have me back?’
I went red at this frankness.
‘Well,’ he continued. ‘I have betrayed her twice, once with politics and
the other time with my affection. I cannot complain if she, who has no treachery in her, does not want to see it happen again!’
‘This is of great grief to us, Father,’ I said with feeling.
‘The conventional advice when I was young,’ said my father, ‘was for a philosopher to have a wife of simple virtue. As an anchor, you see? A woman of unthinking loyalty. I certainly achieved that.’
I noticed that my father was, as the stockmen said, giving the rum a nudge. He drank heartily, his eyes were alight. ‘The problem is that if my mind was too active, your mother’s, I’m sure you’ll see, was too docile. There was no benefit in her forgiving me, and loyally trooping with the infants to Van Diemen’s Land. The uselessness of that proposition has now been proven.’
‘But you should not be apart now,’ I said, lamely. ‘After so much. With old age coming on. With all mistakes acknowledged and set aside!’
‘I shall tell you something, Jonathan,’ he said. Both his eyes and his cheeks were aglow now, and there was a wildness of thought and gesture there which I had never seen. ‘I very nearly convinced myself that my early heresy against the state was wrong. But all the time there was a cool cell in my mind in which the prisoner writes on the wall: “I am right, and I do not recant.” Wealth
is
an evil, though in a vast country like this its blunter wrongs are not obvious! There is no sense at all in invoking Christ’s name unless we adhere to the radical nature of His message: “Sell all you have and give to the poor …” “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle …” Oh, we must appease the law of Christ when it comes to desire and marriage, since that is a good thing for mortgages and inheritance. But when Christ urged community of property, well then, of course he was engaging in parables and hyperbole! He did not mean Mr Huge Coffers, who eyes and begets bastards on his convict maid, but cleaves to his stupid colonial wife and thus is permitted to be called virtuous by the parsons and the Van Diemen’s Land Philistines.’