Wild Island (23 page)

To me the whole scene resembled a stage set, like the inn. ‘An English Wharf', with colours falsely bright because the sun was so strong. Not really England, nobody fooled for a minute, everyone accepting the counterfeit as they do in the theatre. Behind us, at the back of the town, Mount Wellington loomed like painted scenery from a different play altogether, some Gothic drama.

Mrs Chesney's returning party became visible while still some way off. She had acquired a new basket and several brown-paper parcels; a mop; a bucket; and two gentlemen. One of these, a portly figure pacing beside her in clerical black, proved to be Mr Aislabie, the vicar at Richmond, also waiting for the ferry. The other, a shabbier, laughing man, carried Natty on his shoulders, bending to talk to shy Liddy. He was forty perhaps, sturdy and muscular-looking in a brown jacket, the pockets sagging because they evidently carried many odds and ends. His black hair was too long, hanging in loose waves and curls that lifted in the breeze because Natty had seized his hat. He wore several days' growth of beard.

‘This is Mr Bergman,' said Bess Chesney, ‘the surveyor we spoke of on the ship. I have been asking him whether he has heard of Mr Rowland Rochester but he thinks not.'

‘I am not in a fit state for introductions,' said Bergman with a brown grin. He swung Natty to the ground, retrieved his hat and passed his hand across the dark stubble on his chin. ‘I come from two weeks of camping at the Huon River, surveying Lady Franklin's new settlement. I have hardly been an hour off the cutter.'

‘He has come out of his way to help,' Bess Chesney explained. ‘I'm much obliged, Mr Bergman.'

He said a few sympathetic words about the loss of the
Adastra
before bowing and striding away. His pleasant face might be Jewish, I thought—or not, but it was gypsyish, clever-looking.

Anna and I parted from the Chesneys with embraces and tears, promising to visit them at ‘Kenton' before we quitted the island, as they demanded a hundred times.

The Derwent Bank was as English as the inn; mahogany and brass, the smell of beeswax polish and money. While I waited with St John Wallace in the reverent hush—Anna chose to stay at the inn, Louisa was still recovering at the Archdeacon's—I became aware of just how shabby I was. An elderly clerk took our draft away to some
sanctum sanctorum
and returned to say the Bank would cash it at a discount of fifty percent. Faced with my astonishment, he acknowledged kindly that it was a high rate, but the signatory, Mr Edward Rochester, was in failing health. (This was my first example of the swift rumour mill of Van Diemen's Land.) If Mr Rochester should not reach England alive—which Heaven forbid, of course—the bank might incur ‘prolonged expense in securing its equity'.

‘Is fifty percent legal?' I protested. ‘In England the rate is set at four percent to prevent usury. This colony follows the laws of England, does it not?'

The clerk was happy to explain, with a broad condescending smile. ‘The Usury Laws are one of the few exceptions here to the law of England. In a new colony it is important to encourage investors by affording them the opportunity of making higher gains.' I retrieved the draft, not quite snatching. I would spend my own money and ask for reimbursement from Jane and Rochester when we reached England again. It did cross my mind that Rochester might be dead and Jane in straitened circumstances, but being angry at the bank's rapacity, I brushed the thought aside.

St John looked at me questioningly but did not interfere. When we emerged from the bank he asked how we would manage and seemed satisfied when I explained. I returned to the inn, and when Anna was ready we walked slowly to a dressmaker's in Elizabeth Street—again chosen only because it was close. Luck was with us. The pretty young assistant was tiny, neat, dark, French, and aghast at our sad sartorial state. She fetched the proprietress, Madame Delage, a Scotchwoman married to a Frenchman who had escaped to Edinburgh in the Terror. We heard the story during the next several hours of choosing and fitting. Monsieur Delage owned the draper's and haberdasher's shop adjoining his wife's premises; the young assistant was his niece; ‘a wee marvel,' said Madame. While Anna was being fitted I crossed the road to a stationer's for the other necessities of life: pen and ink, pencils, writing paper and sketchbook.

It makes me smile to recall the gowns we chose that day, ridiculous now, but at the time I thought Anna looked like Spanish royalty in her ruby satinette. A lavender-and-yellow Madras wanted letting out; two more walking-costumes would be made up from pattern books. Anna refused to wear white because her mother had always worn it, and black because Christophine thought it unlucky. I chose three skirts for myself: dove-grey, blue-grey and black, with four matching bodices. And so to stays, petticoats, small linen, nightgowns, gloves, stockings, combs, hairbrushes, handkerchiefs, silk flowers, ribbons, fans . . .

With an eye on the mounting cost I tried gently to curb Anna's childlike desire for everything she saw, but still the total came to one hundred and eighty-six pounds eight shillings and threepence halfpenny. Shoes and boots we bought afterwards at a nearby cobbler's; another forty-three guineas. I kept reminding myself that our return passages would be paid by the insurance, and that we would spend nothing once we were aboard ship, bound for Home again. In the meantime we must look our parts: a well-to-do invalid widow and her meek dove-grey companion.

I was puzzled by Madame's pleasure when I paid with sterling, but later discovered it was commonplace in the colony to settle only a fraction of any bill, putting the rest on account. Or to pay with a mixture of the curious local currency: Spanish dollars, Indian rupees, specie from New South Wales, or the four-pound notes issued by the Van Diemen's Land Bank and engraved by a convict artist.

My views of Montagu are coloured by what happened later, of course, and I don't claim to be unprejudiced, but I detected no whiff of sulphur about him that day. I'd expected a bluff military man, all ruddy nose and side-whiskers, but Montagu was as sleek as an otter, urbane and charming. As he murmured about the loss of the
Adastra
, I felt our value being weighed in his private balance, reckoned down to the last jot and tittle. He made me think of a plover, or peewit, one
of those neat grey, black and white birds that look like gentlemen pacing gravely forward with their hands behind their backs. Much later I remembered how fierce plovers can be, how they protect their territory by swooping to attack the heads of their enemies.

‘Unfortunately,' Montagu's smile was regretful, ‘my clerks find no record of a Mr Rowland Rochester in the colony. The Doctor and Mr McLeod will have told you, Mrs Rochester, that we keep very precise records, but there is nothing.'

Anna and I had come to the Colonial Office with St John Wallace, Doctor Seymour and McLeod. St John thought it would be useful to have Seymour and McLeod with us, since they knew Montagu and the colony, and would have a better grasp of any names and places the Colonial Secretary might mention.

Now Montagu gave the shadow of a shrug. ‘Not a few who come to the colonies are—how shall I put it—seeking to begin afresh? Many continue to New South Wales, of course.'

‘We are advised Captain Booth may know something of the matter?' said McLeod.

‘The events you refer to took place many years ago. Which of us can trust our recollections over such a time?' Montagu smiled broadly, secure, I supposed, in his own reputation for an infallible memory.

‘Certainly you could go down to see Captain Booth,' he added, ‘if you consider it worthwhile. A permit could be arranged.' He turned to Anna again. ‘There can be no unauthorised visits to the peninsula, Mrs Rochester, as you will readily understand. Only felons of the worst description and most desperate character are sent to Port Arthur. They are the smallest proportion of convicts arriving—and reoffenders, of course. Nine-tenths of transportees are assigned as domestic servants, or to work on roads and buildings, or in Government offices.'

‘I believe Mrs Rochester is eager to learn whatever Captain Booth can tell us,' said McLeod. ‘We would be obliged to you, sir, for a permit.'

‘Very well. I believe your time will be wasted, frankly, but you must be the judge, of course. It should not take more than a few weeks. How long are you in the island?'

‘A few
weeks
?' McLeod was clearly surprised. He looked at Seymour and was about to speak again when the door was flung open without a knock and two gentlemen came in. The first was what I had expected Montagu to be: big, florid, heavy-breathing. He was startlingly ugly yet dressed like a fashion plate. A toad in a frock coat. His eyes protruded, oyster-like, from a grey pouchy face. His nose was a ‘colonial strawberry', bulbous and purplish.

‘John, I must speak with you,' he said abruptly to Montagu.

‘May I present Mr Matthew Forster, our Chief Police Magistrate,' said Montagu, rising. His tone suggested he disliked the unceremonious intrusion, but Forster took no notice. ‘And Mr John Price, our Assistant Chief Police Magistrate.'

Price was not much beyond thirty, taller and more pleasant in appearance than Forster, but with the same arrogance. He wore a monocle and Forster a lorgnette. The sight of two men staring thus through eyeglasses might have been humorous, but something about these two stifled any impulse to laugh. They quizzed Anna and me with careless insolence. Montagu said he believed he would have the pleasure of seeing us again at Lady Franklin's reception for the
Neptune
. He must have rung a bell, for an aide appeared and we were smiled out before we knew it.

The invitation to the reception was unexpected. I had not imagined joining the social life of the colony. Left to myself I would have sent apologies, but Anna gazed at the pasteboard like a castaway seeing a ship, and Seymour said that to have any chance of finding Rowland we must enter the proper circles.

McLeod left for Richmond to see his friend Dr Ross, intending to return for the reception. James Seymour had affairs of his own, and Quigley, waiting to leave for Sydney, came and went, busy with arrangements for his crew. Anna and I moved from the Hope and Anchor to lodgings in a large stone cottage on Battery Point. Mrs Groundwater, the landlady, was an Orkney woman, her lilting voice
carrying the attractive Scotch-Welsh modulations of her birthplace, with many odd words and phrases. Her husband and son were whalers, away at sea two years at a time. She let by the quarter only, which meant we would lose money if we left early, but we were the sole guests, the house was clean and quiet, and I was content. We had a bedroom each with a small sitting room between us: three guineas a week with breakfast and dinner, washing and coals extra.

Anna had never dealt with money and refused to begin. At ‘Coulibri', when she was a child, everything was simply there: clothes, food, servants—that was how she preferred it. There had been no need for money at the convent, nor while she was with the Rochesters. Even so, I insisted on showing her where I had put the unused bank draft and what remained of my funds. If anything should happen to me she must know where to find it. She was more interested in unpacking the altered costume just delivered. With it came a note from McLeod. His friend Dr Ross being gravely ill, he could not return for the reception.