The Far Horizon (21 page)

Chapter Thirty-Three

No sunset as always, just a sudden change from daylight to night and the bright rising of the moon.

Mary was almost at the garden. She turned round and saw George walking towards her, not rushing to catch up with her, just walking towards her in his usual calm and steady way.

‘What is it?’ she asked quietly. ‘Why do you want to talk to me?’

He looked at her with an anxious look. Always in the past she had been full of vitality and lightness, but this evening she drooped listlessly. Only her beautiful pale hair, which hung loose down her back, retained its shine as if in defiance of her mood.

‘I need to know what has changed. Why you seem to have so much silent anger inside you. Why you lower your eyes or turn your back whenever you see me. Why? Have you been told something bad about me?’

‘Oh George,’ she smiled faintly. ‘Everyone knows there is nothing bad about you.’

‘Even Mrs Kelly?’

‘Even Mrs Kelly … she just pretends to dislike you because you are handsome and polite and make her think of her unfaithful Irish lover.’

‘Then what has caused it, this change in you? What have I done wrong?’

‘Oh, George, you’ve done nothing wrong, and I’ve done nothing wrong … all I did was borrow a small mirror from my mistress’s bedroom, just for a few minutes … ’ Tears were coming into her eyes, she turned away and began to walk slowly along the garden path.

‘You and I, George, it’s all so pointless. All the meetings on the landings and the walks in this garden … all so pointless.’

‘Why is it pointless?’

‘Because you are such an important man here in Government House, and so important to Governor Macquarie that he rarely goes anywhere without you. Even the officers treat you with so much respect. But me … I’m just a convict, a low felon convict … I could never be good enough for you.’

‘Never be good enough for me? Mary, you know nothing about me.’

‘I know you have never been a convict on a transport ship with rusty irons on your ankles.’

‘No, but I have been a
slave,
bought and sold many times, with a tight rope around my waist.’

Mary turned to him, her eyes wide with shock. ‘But Mrs Macquarie told me that when you were young … you were the son of a prince.’

‘Yes, the son of a prince, but also the child of a captured slave-girl sold to that prince, before she was sold again.’

Mary was so stunned she had to lean back against a tree. ‘And Governor Macquarie …’

‘Rescued me, when I was about seven or eight years old. He was a young soldier then, but he has been my true father ever since.’

‘But … your name is not Macquarie … it’s Jarvis.’

George closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘This is not the time …’

And again, as he so often had done in the past, when he needed a moment alone to think to himself, he slowly walked away from her, further down the path, and then stopped and stood looking up at the sky and the moon as if trying to make a decision.

She watched him, her chest choking with emotion and annoyance at her own stupidity, her own self-pity about being a convict, which had made him tell her things about himself which he had probably never told to any other person in the world outside the Macquarie family … yet now he had told her … why? And was he already regretting it, and that’s why he had walked away from her?

Trembling with fear, she took a step away from the tree and whispered, ‘George?’

He turned his head and looked at her, and then began slowly to walk back towards her, saying softly, ‘The only thing we really know is the truth … I love you, Mary … and in the past months I have felt as far away from you as the earth is from heaven.’

She moved to him in the warm moonlight and put her arms around his neck and hugged him so lovingly all further speech was unnecessary.

*

Mrs Kelly and Mrs Ovens were still in the kitchen, slumped opposite each other at the table, nursing the last few drops of the jug of rum.

‘Well, if we’re going to find out what he wanted to talk to her about, she’ll have to hurry up and get back quick,’ Mrs Kelly said tiredly. ‘It’s long past my bedtime so it is.’

Mrs Ovens nodded. ‘Maybe she went back in through the side door so as not to tell us. Or maybe it was all nothing worth talking about. Maybe I was mistook.’

Mrs Kelly blinked blearily at her empty glass, and then stretched her hand out vaguely towards the empty rum jug.

‘The only one who was mistook was him – warning us not to ask Mary any questions about it. What kind of women does he think we are – dead?’

*

Two candles were still burning in George’s bedroom, the warm night air coming through the open window causing their lights to flicker over her body, the slender beautiful body she had given to him so willingly, her words like unintelligible whispered prayers as he loved her, lost himself in her splendour, and then loved her again.

Now she lay very still, her eyes closed, her breathing calm, and when he eventually laid his hand softly on her shoulder, she opened her blue eyes and came awake as if from a dream.

Her voice just a faint whisper, she asked, ‘How long have we been here?’

He didn’t know. ‘An hour, maybe two.’

Her eyes closed again as she whispered, ‘An hour, maybe two … in heaven.’

Chapter Thirty-Four

The letters of complaints from Exclusives in New South Wales had been endlessly pouring into the Colonial Office in London, and one letter, in particular, had infuriated Lord Bathurst.

The writer of the letter had withheld his or her signature and address, remaining anonymous, but the gross charge against Governor Macquarie in that letter, had also been hinted at in other letters from New South Wales.

Too angry to detail the contents of the letter himself, Lord Bathurst simply enclosed the anonymous letter in a dispatch to Governor Macquarie, demanding an explanation and an answer to this grotesque charge against him.

And now that dispatch from the Colonial Office had arrived at its destination and was being read by the King’s Viceroy in Sydney.

As Lachlan read through the anonymous letter that Bathurst had enclosed, his eyes opened wider and wider, unable to believe it – every word it contained was the exact opposite to the truth.

And the fact that Lord Bathurst should not only give credence to such a malicious letter, but also demand that the Governor should be held in question to it, filled Lachlan with a cold fury he could barely contain. He thought long and hard before replying to Lord Bathurst.

I thank your Lordship for sending me the Anonymous letter, in order to give me the opportunity of refuting the false and malicious accusation therein contained.

First – the state of Prostitution in which it is stated that the Female Convicts, during their voyage out to this Country, are permitted to live with the Officers and Seamen of the ships.

I need only reply to your Lordship with the Question – How is it possible that I, dwelling in New South Wales, can prevent or be answerable for the Prostitution of Female Convicts antecedent to their arrival within my Government?

When the female convicts arrive, they are mustered by my Secretary John Campbell on board Ship, and the usual questions are put to them in regard to their good or bad treatment during the voyage; and if they appear healthy, and do not complain of ill usage, they are either assigned to such Married persons as require them for domestic servants, or are sent to work at the Government Female Factory at Parramatta.

I have never for an instant, directly or by connivance, sanctioned or allowed Prostitution by female convicts after their arrival in this Country.

But thoroughly sick now of the bitter and endless class war, and the continuous malicious attacks upon his character, which Bathurst had sought to question, he enclosed with the letter his official Resignation of the Office of Governor-General of New South Wales.

And this time, he made it very clear, he would accept no refusal.

*

Elizabeth was also furious when she read the anonymous letter, drawing in her breath and then referring to ‘
that pack of villains’
as the worst on God’s earth.

But later, when her fury had subsided, she felt very sad about Lachlan’s resignation, considering his future absence to be a great loss to this country of Australia, the land he had loved, the land he had named.

And she, too, loved this country, this sunny country, the sunniest country in the world with all of its boundless opportunities.

In the future, she had no doubt, that men like John McArthur and Reverend Marsden would rule this country and reap great wealth from it – but it would be the
emancipist
population
who would turn out the best.

Of that she was certain.

Even now she could see it. See how it was the
emancipist
parents who kept warning their children
‘not to break the
law
.’ A law they had fallen foul of, and for them it had been a foul law too.

Later that evening, lost in her thoughts, sitting in a chair by the window overlooking the front garden and watching her tame wallabies, she suddenly turned her head and said to Lachlan:

‘That pack of villains … have you noticed how when speaking, and even in their letters, they always still refer to this place as a
colony,
and never a
country,
as we do.’

‘That’s because they are short-sighted and can’t see beyond their own stations,’ Lachlan replied. ‘They think human beings can be herded and made as obedient as sheep, which is impossible. And their interests travel no further than their own bank accounts.’

‘In the bank that
you
had built and opened for them. The Bank of New South Wales.’

Lachlan shrugged. ‘Every city needs a bank, and so does every business.’

He looked at her. ‘But you know, despite my resignation, my own business here must continue. I
must
keep moving forward to complete the projects I’ve started. So much work still needs to be done here. And until my successor arrives, I intend to spend each day doing what I have always done – get on with the bloody job.’

*

Lachlan kept the news of his resignation secret for many months, knowing it could undermine his authority if it was known that he would soon be vacating his high office.

Only Elizabeth knew.

But eventually Lachlan realised that he would have to confide the fact to George Jarvis, because their lives were so inextricably linked.

George was stunned when Lachlan told him, realising its implications for him personally.

‘And you wish me to leave and go back to Britain with you?’

‘The choice is yours, George, what I wish is irrelevant.’

Yet George could see in Lachlan’s eyes that his choice was far from irrelevant to him. They had been together for so long now, since young man and small boy, always together, and in so many foreign countries. Together.

Silenced by a maelstrom of emotions, George thought back to that promise he had made to Lachlan, so long ago, from a passage he had read in their English Bible …

Wherever thou go, I shall go

Thy people, shall be my people

And thy God, my God …

But now George had made promises to someone else, someone he loved even more than he loved Lachlan, his father in all but blood, the man who had raised him.

George also knew that Lachlan’s resignation was due solely to the constant attacks against him by the Exclusives –
they
were responsible,
they
had forced him out – and theirs would be the victory.

So how could George leave his father’s side now? In his defeat? In his fall from grace, even with the Colonial Office who believed all the lies?

No, no, they had travelled and stood together through many wars, in Cochin, in Egypt, and even in China where Lachlan had suffered the worst defeat of all – not only against the British-hating Chinese Mandarins, but also in the loss of Jane.

No, no, too much had been given to him by both Lachlan and Jane, as well as Elizabeth. He could not, and would not leave them now.

But he could not leave Mary either. She was the star of his life, the sun in his sky, the sweet flower that made every day wonderful. No, he could not leave Mary either.

Yet how could he walk in two different directions at the same time?

*

When, in confidence, George told Mary about Governor Macquarie’s resignation, which would lead to his departure from Australia, as well as his own, Mary’s heart nearly burst with the pain of it.

‘No! No! I’ll not stay here without you, George, not in this house or the gardens where I’d keep seeing your ghost all the time.’

Tears began to spill down her face.

‘For you, George, just to be near you, just to know you are close by, I would submit myself to any hardship, any punishment, even going back to scrubbing kitchen floors and wearing convict yellow, but this –’ she put her hands to her eyes and pressed them as if trying to push the tears back.

He drew her hands down and held them tightly in his own saying, ‘You know I love you?’

She nodded, answering through her tears, ‘And I know I love you.’

‘Then trust me … I have no intention of leaving you.’