The Far Horizon (14 page)

Chapter Sixteen

The house for emancipated females and the new wool factory was completed. The first proper road from Sydney to Parramatta had been built.

The entire area of Parramatta was reshaped and reformed, new streets and avenues were mapped out and given names. Every district, the Governor insisted, must have a main thoroughfare and a grass common.

Meanwhile, other convicts were occupied with completion of the road from Sydney to Windsor; and the Sydney to Liverpool turnpike road was in full progress. In the town of Sydney itself, the foundations for a new hospital were being laid.

In the harbour, a convict ship had arrived pouring five hundred more convicts into the settlement, while others who had completed their sentence were freed.

None of the new emancipists had the money to pay their passage home – transportation to the antipodes was always supplied with nothing more than a one-way ticket, no matter how short or long the sentence. So they applied to the Governor for a licence to set up in business as tradesmen, blacksmiths, carpenters, bakers and butchers, in accordance with their former occupations, while the rest applied to the Governor for a land grant in order to become farmers.

No licence or land was ever granted by Lachlan Macquarie without a lecture – informing the applicant that he expected good industry and good conduct – otherwise he would take the licence or the land back.

And with each land grant he released, Lachlan saw the land being cleared and the colony extending in size. The emancipists settlers were industriously making this land their own, and it filled his heart with satisfaction just to watch them.

In his private life, too, Lachlan was finding happiness in New South Wales. Elizabeth had proved to be his greatest source of strength, his loyal c0nfidante, his most ardent supporter.

In the drawing room at Government House he found Elizabeth sitting in the evening sunlight by one of the long windows, absorbed in a book. He had been away for two days examining the area around George's River. As always her face brightened into a smile when she looked round and saw him.

‘Elizabeth,' he said good-humouredly, then a figure in the garden caught his eye and his expression lost all jest. He moved to the window and gazed out.

‘Oh, George …’ he said quietly. ‘I sometimes think he feels as out of place here as he did in England and Scotland.’

Elizabeth leaned forward and saw George Jarvis sitting alone on a bench in the garden.

‘I would not have said he feels out of place,’ she said honestly. ‘He seems quite content in his day-to-day life. He is always busy and goes almost everywhere with you.’

‘Yes, but that is his work. What of his private life?’

‘I believe he could have his pick of the maids.’

Elizabeth had learned this from Mrs Ovens, who had confided that a number of the maids found George very attractive and one had even written a love-letter to him.

‘And George?’ Elizabeth had asked. ‘How does he respond to the maids?’

‘Oh such airs! Such graces!’ Mrs Ovens had rolled her eyes and laughed. ‘He's always nice and polite to me, of course, and, well, I like the young man myself, but if you ask me he’s too good-looking by far. And although it's not my place to say it, George Jarvis is far too aloof for his own good!’

The maids – you mean the convict girls?’ Lachlan asked with a frown. ‘No, don’t answer that, I don’t want to know anything more.’

Lachlan returned his gaze to the garden and George Jarvis who, in turn, was gazing at the world as he always did, with unruffled interest.

Over the years George had changed from the boy he had been in India into a reserved young man. It was as if his education in Britain had changed his entire perspective on life and opened him up to a world of serious thought.

But his innate sense of humour remained.

Even now, dressed in his tailored suits with only a trace of white silk at the neck and cuffs, and always looking neat and perfect, he would still pass visitors in the wide hall of Government House and respond to their questioning look with a quiet smile as he joined his hands in an exaggerated salaam, as if to say, Yes, I am a brown-skinned Arab, from India, and allowed to stroll through Government House as if I lived here!
Curious
, isn't it?

Ever polite, he was never humble.

George Jarvis now seemed to view the world and its pretensions with a look of silent amusement, and apparently felt no attachment to anyone, except Lachlan. But even with Lachlan, he could be reserved and remote.

Lachlan sighed. ‘In his young days, in India, George was always so full of laughter, so full of mischief and fun. The tricks he would pull on Bappoo and drive the poor man mad … yet Bappoo adored him, wept his eyes out when George left with me for England … maybe that was my mistake, taking George from the East to the West.’

‘And now he is in neither the East or the West but in the South,’ Elizabeth said. ‘His loyalty to you has brought him a long way.’

‘To a convict colony …’ Lachlan sighed again, the old worry back in his heart. ‘It would distress me if I thought George was unhappy, but at times it's hard to know what he is even thinking, let alone feeling. I wonder what does he think? About his life? His future? At times, he is like a sadhu.’

‘What is that?’

‘A holy man, in India, who spends long hours in silent reflection.’

Oh, yes, I agree with you there.’ Elizabeth murmured, having decided long ago that George Jarvis, for all his agreeable good nature, was as deep as a well.

Chapter Seventeen

For the third year running there had been no winter rain.

July and August came in with occasional dews, but no rain. The harvest looked destined to fail again.

Through the
Gazette
, Lachlan issued numerous General Orders instructing the people to conserve all their grain. Heads of household were advised to ration their families to only so much bread per week as could be made from a gallon of wheat and a gallon of corn. This way the small farming settlers could survive if the harvest failed totally.

The bushels of wheat in the Government stores, which he had been delighted to reduce from ten shilling a bushel to eight, now rose to nine shillings.

By Christmas, all the rivers were drying up. The grass was parched and the hungry cattle were unable to pasture. By the end of December 1814 large numbers of sheep and cattle had perished. The colony was facing the worst famine it had ever known. And all looked to Governor Macquarie to save them from starvation.

There was not enough time to seek help from the Mother Country: a consignment of grain and food supplies would take too long to reach them. So once more Lachlan looked towards India.

He wrote to the Governor of Bengal requesting that two hundred and fifty tons of wheat be shipped to New South Wales with the greatest speed.

Through the
Gazette
he pleaded with the large landowners and settlers who had their own hidden hoards of grain to bring them to the King's Stores for sale to the Government.

His plea fell on deaf ears.

The supplies in the King's Stores were getting lower and lower. The price of wheat rose to fifteen shillings a bushel.

Governor Macquarie's pleas to those hoarding hidden supplies of grains turned into threats.

He warned that unless they offered their supplies to the Government, he would resort in future to buying all grain needed for the King's stores from India at half the price, and when the drought was over they would find no market in New South Wales for their expensive local grain.

He issued a proclamation that was not only published in the
Gazette
, but also ordered to be read out in all squares and districts, no matter how far from the metropolis.

Settlers – especially those who are in opulent circumstances, principally owing to the assistance they have received from the bounty of the Government in originally granting them lands, stock, provisions and convicts to help them cultivate their grounds, ought to have been the first to come forward at such a time to supply Government with such grain as they could conveniently spare, and at a reasonable and moderate price.

All to no avail. The Exclusives were waiting until the price rose even higher.

*

A ship was spotted turning round the South Head of the harbour. It was the grain from Bengal! Eagerly everyone ran down to the harbour to cheer it in. Amongst them was the Governor who stood waiting with a smile of relief.

But the ship's cargo was not the tons of Indian grain. It was another shipment from England of five hundred more convicts, all in dire need of being fed.

And with the convicts came another batch of adventuring ‘emigrant’ settlers – come to take advantage of the land grants and free labour that New South Wales offered to those who wanted to make a quick fortune to take back to Britain. Very few of them had any worthwhile skills to offer the colony, all depending on the convicts to do the work for them.

Lachlan fumed.

‘These people are useless to the colony,’ he wrote home to the Colonial Office, ‘completely
useless
!’

Chapter Eighteen

‘
These people are human beings too
,’ the girl cried indignantly,
‘and probably a lot more honest than you are!’

The girl’s voice made John Campbell turn away from the captain and look at the row of female convicts lined up on the ship’s deck. All were unwashed and unkempt … but there was something about the girl’s voice, and the way she held her head high … and that splendid hair …. unkempt of course, hanging down around her shoulders, but still managing to shine golden here and there under the sun’s rays.

‘Quiet, you whore,’ a sailor snapped.

‘Don’t you
dare
call me a whore!’ the girl retorted, tears now glistening in her eyes. ‘Oh, the humiliation of this!’ she cried, ‘Being made to stand for inspection like cattle at a fair!’

‘Keep that girl quiet!’ the captain called irritably, then turned his attention back to John Campbell who had come on board to find some male convict servants to work in the stables at Government House.

‘We have some strong young men in this batch,’ and some with the appearance of good breeding too,’ said the captain, leading the way to where the male convicts had been grouped. ‘Good breeding turned bad I daresay.’

But John Campbell was not following the captain, he was still standing looking towards the girl with the golden hair. Tears were running down her face now and he could see she was very young, no more than seventeen.

It was unusual to see a female convict so emotionally affected by her circumstances … after the long voyage most were so beaten and weak in mind and body that the only reaction they could manage on finally reaching land was either tired indifference, or an expression of brazen sullenness.

But this girl looked humiliated … utterly humiliated by being made to stand in a line-up.

Boats had been rowing out to the ship as soon as it had anchored, many carrying Exclusives looking for new servants, and once on board they could take their pick.

A middle-aged woman in a black dress and bonnet stepped aboard, looking to all the world like a widow in her weeds or some prim rector’s wife, but John Campbell recognised her for who she was – Mrs Hester, the proprietress of a brothel in Sydney who had been warned many times but still came aboard every ship that docked, looking to procure young girls as ‘servants’ – but not today, John Campbell was determined the evil witch would procure no young girls today.

Unsurprisingly, she had headed straight for the girl with the golden hair and had already asked her a question when John Campbell strode over to them.

‘I’m eighteen,’ the girl was replying.

‘And not for your establishment, Mrs Hester,’ said John Campbell sharply, cutting in. ‘Now how many times have you been warned –
no bloody soliciting of young girls sent into Governor Macquarie’s care!
’

‘I was merely looking for a new housemaid,’ Mrs Hester declared indignantly, ‘ and she
is
over sixteen, Mr Campbell, she has just told me so.’

‘And now
I’m
telling you to bugger off back to your stinking brothel! And the next time I catch you on one of these ships I’ll report you to Governor Macquarie and next time he
will
have you prosecuted – unless of course it’s the ship that’ll be taking you home to the back alleys in Billingsgate.’

Mrs Hester fired a dark look of venomous hatred at John Campbell, before turning away towards the roped chair that would lower her back into her boat.

‘
You and Governor Macquarie can go and sod yourselves
!’ she shouted viciously, seconds before the chair was lowered.

The girl was looking utterly bewildered when John Campbell turned back to her. ‘Surely she was not …’

‘Never mind her. Now, your voice, miss … you sound as if you have had some education,’ Campbell said. ‘Mrs Macquarie would appreciate that, and a new maid is needed at Government House.’

‘You mean …’ the girl’s blue eyes opened wide in disbelief, ‘I would be a maid to the
Governor’s
wife?’

‘Well no, you would have to do your apprenticeship with Mrs Kelly or Mrs Ovens first … until we find out what type of girl you are. Now then, stay here and don’t move, I need to find some suitable stable boys before we go ashore.’

Later that day, John Campbell gave the girl’s papers to Elizabeth. ‘I think she could make a decent housemaid,’ he said.

‘And what makes you think so?’ Elizabeth queried, although she knew John Campbell was always very shrewd in his selection of any convicts who worked in the Governor’s household.

Campbell hesitated. He had personally selected the girl because her voice and golden hair had attracted him, in a fatherly way, and because she appeared the type who might prefer to drown herself overboard than be seduced into prostitution by a guard or a seaman on the voyage out from England – as well as appearing suitably intelligent enough to serve as a maid in Mrs Macquarie's personal employment.

‘She has some dignity in her manner,’ he replied, ‘and she seems bright enough.’

Elizabeth was frowning as she read the girl’s papers. ‘And where is she now?’

‘Getting bathed, m’lady. You know Mrs Kelly won’t allow any convict from a ship into her kitchen until they have had a bath first.’

Elizabeth nodded. ‘Well, as soon as she is clean, tell Mrs Kelly to send the girl up to me.’

And that was how the beautiful young English girl, Mary Neely, walked into Government House and the life of George Jarvis.