Wild Island (12 page)

‘“
Monstrare”',
Maconochie said, with his rolling Scottish ‘rrr's'. ‘To demonstrate, to show. The tyrants and murrrderers of Shakespeare and Marrrlowe are mooral mornsters. Their evil rebounds upon their own pairrsons and upon the state itself.'

He was talking about Mrs Shelley's
Frankenstein
and the criminal mind, his thin body leaning forward to make the point, his wire spectacles slipping down his nose. Booth had heard Maconochie's opinions about the treatment of convicts before, and thought them half practical good sense and half idealistic madness. Maconochie had been in prison himself, probably the only officer in the colony who had been. During the war he had been a lieutenant on the
Grasshopper
when it was wrecked on the Dutch coast. The crew had been captured by the French; force marched from Holland to Verdun in midwinter and kept for two years in a French prison—which would no doubt colour one's views. But he had been a prisoner-of-war, not a convict. There was a difference.

Maconochie argued that the length of convict sentences should be less fixed, so that men might earn early release by a points system. Merit points would be awarded for good behaviour or special services. Well, that was sensible. Booth could think of at least thirty men at Port Arthur who could be released now, which would help the
overcrowding and add labourers to the shortage in the colony. But he couldn't say so, of course: he'd be thought mad as Maconochie.

George Boyes, the Colonial Auditor, was listening with his customary sardonic smile. He was called ‘Alphabetical' by his clerks on account of his large number of Christian names, George William Alfred Blamey Boyes, and because he liked everything precisely ordered. His long, thin arms were crossed, as usual, and he was leaning back as though distancing himself from Maconochie's fervour. Montagu came in. He had breakfasted at home with his wife and would take only coffee. He sat next to Boyes, choosing his seat with casual care, Booth thought. Dr Bedford looked in to tell Sir John he had seen Miss Eleanor Franklin. There was no measle in the case, simply a winter dose of the grippe, nothing to alarm.

Henry Elliot went out, came back to say that Dr Lillie, the new Presbyterian minister, was seeking an interview urgently. Forster came and sat beside Booth with a laden plate and asked him to dine at ‘Wyvenhoe' the following evening. Forster's house was just below the barracks in Hampden Road. Amid all this Sir John looked beleaguered, Booth thought. He was trying to tell anyone who would listen about the
Griper
Arctic expedition in the year '24.

‘She was a small ship but very comfortable, you know, very comfortable. Means for conveying hot air all around her. Harrumph. The Arctic clothing was made of two pieces of cloth glued together with liquid India rubber, making it air and watertight. And—um, aah—Captain Lyon's fur bag for sleeping was covered with this linen, too. His stockings were two glued together.'

Sir John chuckled. ‘And the pillow. India rubber too. Ingenious. Kept flat, in general, for packing into the smallest space. But furnished with a cork at the corner. By blowing through this, the pillow was distended with air and formed a comfortable rest for the head. Only one disadvantage—the nauseous smell of the rubber. Very bad.'

Franklin would clearly have liked to continue talking. There were several more recent inventions of useful Arctic equipment . . . but at ten minutes to nine Montagu rose and Boyes followed. Henry Elliot
ushered Sir John and Maconochie, still talking, into the office, where Booth's affairs were briskly considered, Sir John nodding benignly throughout. Booth would apply to stay as Military Commandant when his Regiment departed, and to be considered for his Majority. Letters from Sir John and Montagu would be sent in support.

At Forster's house that night there was no nonsense about moving away from the debris of a meal. The men sat, after the ladies had retired, over a soiled cloth and an ugly clutter of ravaged food, dishes, glasses, bottles, worthy of a Mess night. Broken bread, walnut shells, claret stains. Bloody meat congealing on a platter. A convict housemaid tried to remove this, but Forster stopped her. Although he had already eaten well, he kept picking at it with his fingers, wiping them on a napkin that had once been white linen but was acquiring a gruesome appearance.

Montagu would not have approved, Booth thought. Here were none of the niceties practised in his own house. But Montagu was not here—and this was gentlemen only: Booth and Forster, Captain Swanston, John Price. Price was a recent arrival in the colony. He had obtained land at the Huon River but was dissatisfied with it. He spoke little, looked arrogant and a trifle bored, a young man of aristocratic connections condescending to colonial society.

As Forster tore off another piece of meat and brought it dripping red juices to his mouth, Booth wondered what Montagu found to eat when he dined here. At ‘Stowell' there had been a delicate soup followed by half crawfishes in pink sauce, and then, in the new Russian style, everything on the table together; ragoo of vegetables, a potato dish, roast fowl, savoury pie with a crust of melting perfection. Pears in marsala had followed, with
crème anglaise
. Mrs Montagu had corrected Booth pleasantly enough when he complimented the ‘custard'.

At the Forster
ménage
there were no ‘made' dishes. Brown Windsor soup, a plate piled with slabs of oily fish, the bloody beef, pot-greens. Cold mutton at the side, jugs of floury gravy, boiled potatoes and turnips. Honest barrack-room fare.

Charles Swanston was a man Booth found less easy to read than the others. He was older than most of the Arthur faction, nearly fifty now, and still called Captain by many—although as with Montagu and Forster, the title was now honorary. Like them, he had sold out of the Army years ago. Swanston was Director of the Derwent Bank and a prominent figure in Hobart. He had famously, in the year '14, ridden from Scutari to Baghdad carrying vital despatches. One thousand five hundred miles in forty-eight days. An average of thirty-one miles a day in unbearable heat. How could you survive that? Pity the poor horses. Those bad-tempered tough little Indian hill-ponies, probably.

Montagu would not have approved of the conversation here; the humour was broad, vulgar, especially from Forster. He told an obscene story about a local widow and an apple. Swanston did not comment, but Booth thought he saw disgust in those cool eyes. Forster was choking with hilarity. He had drunk a great deal, but was one of those men who appear almost unaltered until they keel over, except for a purpling of the face and a tendency to be tediously persistent and increasingly unintelligible on some topic. Forster's was horses. He was trying to persuade them to join him in buying a racehorse called Lady Dancer.

‘I'm not interested, Forster,' said Swanston.

‘Thirds, then,' said Forster. ‘You, Booth. Fifty pounds shall buy you a leg of a Lady Dancer.' He winked, hung his tongue out, mock panting.

‘Too rich for me,' Booth smiled.

‘Gi' me y'r note of hand, tha'll do. Wha' say?'

Booth kept smiling, shook his head.

‘Nonsense,' growled Forster. ‘A bachelor may borrow, I s'pose? Swanston here'll lend it you. Apply Derwen' Bank first thing in mornin'. See good terms for Booth, eh Swanston? A li'l below goin' rate? Nag'll make y'r fortune.'

‘I heard that too often in Ireland,' smiled Booth again. Forster had been in Limerick for fourteen years after the War. He should know how many men had been ruined by trusting in horses. But Forster continued to urge.

‘Leave the man alone, Forster,' said Swanston lazily. ‘You're being a bore. Booth knows his own business best. Perhaps you should take a leaf from his book.'

Forster muttered oaths, drank more, recovered his humour.

At the Mess the following night, Booth lost money at cards. He went to see his agent the next morning, and by the end of their conversation had decided he definitely could not afford to get married—so he might as well buy the pretty little spy-glass, which was not expensive for the beautiful thing it was. It would be useful to have a second one.

Wharton's funeral was at three o'clock on the Wednesday. Afterwards Booth dined with the Pilkingtons, who for the first time left him alone with Lizzie after the meal. He understood; he was now to be treated as a suitor. The Pilkingtons would leave with the Regiment for India in a year. Decisions must be made, a little pressure applied. A year was barely long enough for an engagement. Young ladies and their mamas must have time to fuss. Lizzie's black curls were tied each side with little blue satin bows. She was little herself: small, white and soft, sweet and sharp. Everything was going swimmingly until he mentioned to her that he'd dined with the Forsters. And then, how did the mood change so quickly?

Lizzie said, ‘Poor Mrs Forster, how she must suffer.' Booth did not like this but did not speak quickly enough to stop it. Lizzie rattled on about Forster's fondness for low company, villains and ‘ladies of the pavement' as the newspapers called them. Booth said with a frown that it was not a fit subject—and yet he knew he had laughed over equally dangerous gossip with her before. Lizzie made a face at him and said (her accent so droll, so irresistible he'd let her talk at other times just to hear it) had he not seen the
Courier
?

Forster was known to visit the ‘ladies' house in Harrington Street, which was under the protection of Constable Tulip Wright. Such comical things were written in the newspapers when the constable married the daughter of the licensee of the public house next door.
A ‘he-Tulip and a she-Tulip' the paper called them, they were such dandies. You never saw such costumes. But Mrs Lowe, who ran the cat-house, claimed he had promised to marry her. She took ‘Tulip' to court. Not for breach of promise, but on some trumped up charge—and Forster, a good friend to ‘Tulip', had made sure the Constable was acquitted!

Lizzie laughed and her glossy black ringlets shook. She was playing with her small male lapdog, stroking its belly almost up to its prick, her hand delicate and smooth. Booth felt the stirring of arousal in his body even as his mind became deeply uneasy. He knew she was only doing what young girls do, showing off a pretended worldliness. But he said again, perhaps too severely, that these things were hardly fit to speak of, that newspapers and gossipers should mind their tongues. Lizzie was surprised and angry.

‘But sure everyone knows it's the truth!' she cried. Booth was silent. Lizzie grew angrier still. ‘Forster has given his wife a pox.'

Booth rose and left then, thinking perhaps Lizzie was too Irish for him. All the Irish are wild at heart, even the educated ones. It's the old lawless mad poet-warrior in them. He was glad to be going ‘home' to the peace of the peninsula. A man needed eyes in the back of his head and the diplomacy of a Machiavelli for the intrigues of Hobarton. Well, at least the Rochester matter was buried, that was the chief thing. He did not like to think too much about how that desirable conclusion had been reached, but the relief remained. He could try to forget it again, and with it, all his past sins.

6

THE
ADASTRA
SAILED FROM DEPTFORD THAT NOVEMBER IN A
grey drizzle of rain and we were all aboard, Jane and Rochester, Bertha and I—and unexpectedly, Adèle. Jane kept close to Rochester, her arm in his. He looked like a portrait of Napoleon, maimed hand thrust inside his jacket, a black patch over one eye. Surly, saturnine, damaged enough to wring the heart of any woman. Almost any woman.

Bertha lay motionless on the narrow bunk down in the cabin she was to share with me, still profoundly asleep—as indeed she had been through all the difficult journey from the George Inn. She had been brought aboard strapped to a litter carried by four crewmen; did not wake even when the pallet was tipped almost vertical to allow its descent below decks. The carriers showed a furtive curiosity. One crossed himself. They backed out of the cabin hurriedly as soon as she was in the bunk. She was travelling as Mrs Rowland Rochester, sister-in-law to Mr Edward Rochester. ‘The unfortunate sleeping lady,' Captain Quigley said. It sounded to me like a freak show at a country fair.