The Far Horizon (10 page)

PART THREE

Chapter Twelve

As First Lady of the Colony, Elizabeth took her duties very seriously. As the Governor’s wife she was expected to accompany him to all official functions and social events.

For two years in a row she had hosted the customary celebrations for the King and Queen’s birthdays when more than 120 guests had filled the Government House ballroom for dinner and dancing. Most of the guests considered her to be ‘vivacious and charming’ although some of the ladies of the devout Exclusive community considered her manner with them to be ‘a little stiff’; but generally, she was liked by all.

She had also shown herself to be as energetic and full of ideas for improvement as her husband was, and had started by turning the vegetable patch in front of Government House, which had been there since Governor Phillips time, into a beautiful landscaped garden.

Elizabeth’s special concern though, was the orphaned female children of the seaport’s prostitutes who had been left to wander the streets in neglect and hunger.

A home was opened on the corner of George Street to protect and care for the girls so they could be housed and educated and brought up in respectability in order to prevent them from being forced into prostitution as soon as they were old enough.

She viewed many of the young convict population with compassion and genuine sympathy, seeing them as poor wretches who had not only been transported to the other side of the world for some minor crime – that was not the worst of their punishment, as she saw it – the worst was that they had been cut off from their families and all reassurances that they were still loved, that they were still human beings of value to someone.

That’s when she began to understand and appreciate the value of people like Mrs Kelly and other emancipists who stayed when their time was served. And those male emancipists who were able to obtain government land grants and assigned convicts to help work their farms and holdings – these emancipists were more likely to treat their assigned convict servants with more kindness than many of the free settlers who refused to believe that any transported felon deserved to be regarded as anything more than the lowest form of human being.

It was a concern Elizabeth finally raised with Lachlan.

‘This system of justice and retribution is not only badly thought out by the know-alls in Whitehall, it is very wrong,’ she told him. ‘When a young girl is sentenced to seven years in Botany Bay, she should be given a
return
ticket so that she can return home as soon as her sentence here is served and over. But no, all are shipped out here on a one-way ticket without any care from the government of how they will ever get back. Consequently, when their sentence is served, so many girls desperate to return home to their families have no other choice but to resort to prostitution in order to earn the money to pay for their passage back home. Is that fair, Lachlan? Is that just?’

No, it was not fair or just, yet Lachlan could not see any way to remedy the situation. Whitehall, he knew, would claim they presently had enough expense funding the war against France, so the return trip of transported thieves and villains was the least of their concerns. But he assured Elizabeth, ‘I will give it some thought.’

*

A few weeks later, Elizabeth was sitting in the garden, in her favourite chair, gazing over the ocean at the far horizon above the sea, wondering when she herself would cross that horizon and see her home in Scotland again.

They had made so many plans for their Jarvisfield estate, the house, the lovely pathway up to the door, the apple and plum orchards and landscaped gardens, the improvements to so many of the tenants’ houses, all now having to wait until they returned.

Before his posting to Sydney, Lachlan had been consumed with ideas for Jarvisfield, drawing up plan after plan for here and there with his architect, but now he seemed to be putting all that energy and all those ideas for improvements into the town of Sydney instead.

Still, she had no right complain; she had willingly chosen to marry a soldier who had given good and long service to his King and country in Canada, America and India, had served as deputy adjutant general in Egypt, all resulting in him reaching the highest military and social strata in London as a staff officer to Lord Harrington and other upper-crust moguls of the British Empire in the War Office.

And they had rewarded him by sending him out to rule New South Wales – an outdoor jail filled with convicts of every age and from every part of Britain and Ireland, as well as a small community of free settlers who acted as if they owned the place.

And so much for a posting that would only last for two years, she thought. Those two years had come and gone, yet Whitehall had made no mention or move to replace Lachlan with another Governor, nor had Lachlan troubled the Colonial Office with the subject of a replacement either.

In fact, the thought of leaving New South Wales now was simply an irritating distraction to him. He had so much work still to do, so many improvements needed to make Sydney a better and more civilised place for everyone.

Elizabeth had read the dispatch he had written in reply to Lord Bathhurst who had requested a report on the state of the Colony upon his arrival in New South Wales.

I found the Colony barely emerging from infantile imbecility and suffering the most severe deprivations and disabilities; agriculture was languishing; commerce in its early dawn and revenue unknown. The population was threatened with starvation; the public buildings in a state of dilapidation and the few roads that were formerly built were almost impassable. People in general appeared to be depressed by poverty and neglect.

And in the past two years Elizabeth knew her husband had succeeded in changing so much of that. He had made sure the people were supplied with enough food from the Government store, and all the architectural changes he had made had resulted in Sydney beginning to look more like a respectable town instead of a hotchpotch of a convict settlement.

Even the people seemed to have changed for the better, seemed happier, more polite and agreeable. She had overheard some of the servants saying that life in Botany might be worth living after all. And the sight of fights and the sound of curses had certainly decreased, and no one appeared to feel so depressed or bad-tempered anymore.

As Governor, Lachlan had also closed down seventy per cent of the licensed grog shops, which still left a lot open, but with fewer places for the sailors and prostitutes to hang out, the unrivalled lewdness and drunkenness of Sydney's seaport had been greatly reduced.

Elizabeth continued to gaze out over the ocean in the direction of Scotland, her face moody, her eyes hazy, due to her own private sadness. A week earlier she had suffered her third miscarriage in the two years she had been in New South Wales, and each time the loss made her think of the baby daughter she had buried in Scotland … her sweet little Jane …

‘Missus Macquarie, milady ma’am … begging your pardon…’

Elizabeth looked away from the blue waters of the ocean to see the Head Gardener standing with his hat in his hands and an apologetic look on his face. He was an ex-convict who had served his time but now he had been placed in charge of fifty convicts, mostly Irish, who had shown a natural aptitude for gardening and so were employed at Government House.

‘May I speak to you, milady?’ he asked nervously, seeing her moody expression. The free settlers of the Colony may have judged the Governor’s wife as being vivacious and charming, but to the convict gardeners who worked in the grounds of Government House, her manner was always a mixture of nice but no-nonsense.

‘Well?’ she asked.

‘Well, milady, the Governor is away at Parramatta so I can’t apply to him …’ said the gardener, glancing back at the small group of the other gardeners who were watching and egging him on.

‘Apply to him for what?’

‘Some time off, milady. You see, tomorrow is March the seventeenth, the feast of Saint Patrick, and some of us Irish were wondering if you would agree to give us the morning off … so we could spend some time in holy prayer … honouring the patron saint of our homeland.’

Elizabeth gave the gardener a small cynical smile. She doubted that time for prayer was the real reason they wanted the morning off. Most of them probably wanted to have the opportunity to spend the morning lying in bed sleeping long and late, before setting off for a tipple at one of the grog shops.

‘All the other governors gave us the morning off on Saint Patrick’s Day, milady,’ the gardener added, and Elizabeth doubted that very much too.

‘Even Governor Bligh?’ she asked.

The gardener took a startled step back, knowing she had caught him out in his lie. The entire settlement knew how much Governor Bligh had hated the Irish, the Scots, the Welsh, and just about anybody else who wasn’t English. And lying to the Governor’s wife could get him a few whips of the lash, if not worse.

‘Very well,’ Elizabeth said suddenly, rising to her feet. ‘The Irish convicts may have tomorrow morning off from all work, but mind – ’ she warned sternly, ‘every single one of you must be back at work in the rear garden of Government House by three o’clock, is that understood?’

‘Oh, aye, milady, oh, yes indeed, three o’clock and not a minute after …’ The gardener couldn’t believe his luck, his face rapturous with surprise and delight as he bowed his thanks to Elizabeth at least ten times before turning and rushing back to his pals to tell them the good news.

As she strolled back to the house Elizabeth watched the group of men almost dancing with delight and laughing as the gardener gave them the news – laughing like excited children at Christmas – and the sight warmed her out of her earlier melancholy.

It was time to stop moping and regain her optimism, her belief in life. She would get pregnant again and she would have her baby, one day, alive and well; but now it was time to help the Irish convicts in her service to celebrate their precious St Patrick’s Day.

*

At five minutes to three o’clock the following afternoon, refreshed from sleeping late in bed and buoyed up by their tipple in the grog shop, the Irish gardeners, true to their word, returned to the rear garden of Government House and were shocked into a stunned silence of disbelief.

Rows of long tables had been laid out laden with plates of steaming Irish stew, loaves of Irish-style soda bread, and joining at them at the tables were all the Irish maids and lads employed there.

‘It’s a celebration we’re to have!’ Mrs Kelly cried jubilantly. ‘On the instructions of the mistress! Oh, didn’t I tell yiz Government House would be a better place now its being run by a woman!’

The helpings of stew were huge, the warm freshly baked soda bread delicious, followed by an oatmeal pudding covered in warm sweet molasses.

‘Oh, by God …’ the Head Gardener was almost in tears. ‘Who would have thought … what a lady …’

The feast over, tankards of beer were served and all raised their drink in a toast to the Governor’s wife.

‘Three cheers for Mrs Macquarie! Three cheers for the Governor’s lady!’

They all drank the toast, followed by expressions of disappointment. ‘Bejabus,’ one said, ‘she’s watered down the grog!’

‘That’s because she doesn’t want yiz to get drunk,’ Mrs Kelly said, knocking back the rest of her own beer. ‘She don’t agree with drunkenness, m’lady don’t, and neither do I!’

The kitchen maids all stared at Mrs Kelly who often got drunk in the evenings, but none dared remind her of that.

More beer was brought out and Mrs Kelly continued her instructions.

‘Now, we are to have one more hour or so enjoying ourselves out here, but soon as the sun drops we are all to go back inside and the gardeners to their billets. So Paddy Mahoney – how about a good old song now?’

Paddy started the singing and another convict brought out a small mouth-organ and the clapping and dancing began.

Elizabeth stood with George Jarvis by one of the open, upper rear windows of the house, both smiling as they watched the fun.

‘What about the English and Scots and Welsh?’ George asked. ‘Are you going to let them celebrate their own saint too?’

‘Yes,’ Elizabeth said good-naturedly.’ Let them all have their special day in honour of St Andrew, St George and St David. It’s a small kindness, just one day off, and I have already informed Mrs Ovens and others of that fact.’

‘Ah,’ George murmured, comprehending. ‘Now I understand why there has been so signs of jealousy from the others, even from the English girls serving at the tables. The Irish and their Saint Patrick have won a special day off for them all.’

Elizabeth sighed. ‘They need
some
kind of reassurance, George, even if it’s only the reassurance that they share the same nationality as many others who ended up here.’

‘
Ello darlin!
’

Elizabeth almost jumped out of her skin as she turned round. ‘Who on earth…?’

‘It’s Bappoo …’ George had rushed to the door. ‘He must have escaped from my room.’

‘Bappoo? Is he an Aboriginal? And if so what is he doing in your room?’

George returned moments later with a white parrot perched on his outstretched arm. When they reached Elizabeth the parrot looked at her curiously for a moment, and then chirped again, ‘
Ello darlin!
’