Wild Island (44 page)

At the reception for the
Lady Milford
that spring, a little aboriginal girl appeared suddenly in a red dress with short, gathered sleeves, and began to twirl and dance among the guests. Her black hair was shorn close to her head. Her eyes were dark, liquid, enormous. She began to do imitations: Jane Franklin peering shortsightedly at this, at that. Sir John, ambling along with hands behind his back, looking up at the sky, easing his short neck in its high collar. Boyes as a kangaroo, paws held up in front, chin raised, alert, hopping away. There was laughter. Those who could not see crowded in to look. A woman behind me said quietly to someone beside her, ‘. . . addition to the Government House menagerie.'

A vivid, affectionate child, Mathinna would come confidingly close to some unsuspecting guest, put her cheek against theirs, examine with astonishment their pale hands, face, hair, and peer into their pale eyes; prise open their lips to look into their strange pale mouths. This had to be discouraged. Mrs White did not like to have the fascinating wart on her cheek examined. Mrs Heseltine screamed and flung the child away from her French lace. Mathinna adored Eleanor's little dog—but not the cat, which she was inclined to treat with casual cruelty. At any chastisement she would fall to the floor and curl up into the picture of despair and misuse, or run gleefully away and hide for hours. She had a pet oppossum, a matter of constant complaint from the servants.

A maid was deputed to help the child wash and dress and say her prayers each morning, and the assistant housekeeper was to teach her letters, but these women were not equal to their charge. Mathinna would disappear and turn up a day or two later in the stables, or kitchen. She did not like Dr Lhotski, a new guest who appeared at about this time; a scientist, he claimed. He was fat and hugely
pompous. Her imitation of him was so obscene she was whipped for it—and the antipathy was mutual. I saw him kick out at her once. But when Count Strzelecki arrived she would follow him like a shadow. A tall, gaunt, eagle-faced man, aristocratic in looks and manner, he had come to measure the heights of the principal mountains in Van Diemen's Land. While Jane was in Sydney she had persuaded him to come to the island after New South Wales. It was odd to see the mismatched pair standing together in the garden or before the fire; the pale thin Count and the small red-and-black girl.

In early November St John Wallace sent a note asking to see me. He and Louisa had been nearly twelve months in their cottage and he had just renewed the lease for another year. I expected to find them at war over this, but although they bickered as usual, there was an unwonted calm in the household, imposed by the new maid, a woman called Jane Fludde, a widow transported for stealing a horse while dressed as a boy.

Their last wretched servant, after many minor offences, had obtained a bottle of gin and drunk herself into hysterics. They had called a constable, but she threatened him with a broken bottle, shouting abuse. Eventually the officer coaxed her into the garden and pushed her backwards into a wheelbarrow. Being too drunk to extricate herself, she screamed like a banshee as he wheeled her away.

When Jane Fludde carried little Thea in, I thought the woman looked too small and slim to steal a horse, but when I knew her better I decided that if she wanted to steal an elephant she would manage somehow. She was Louisa's age, as homely looking as Louisa was beautiful. Her lean face might have been a young man's in its scrubbed, sharp-featured look. She had an air of authority, and treated Louisa and St John like clever children, to be humoured but reproved when necessary.

Thea, set down on the rug, crawled rapidly towards St John, and when he lifted her high and talked nonsense to her, she crowed with
delight and grasped his nose. Louisa went across to them, and Jane Fludde and I stood regarding the trio. A perfect family. No. A Virgin on the Rocks with archangel: except that the infant was a girl instead of a boy, with gingery wisps escaping from the tiny frilled cap. Very Scottish-looking wisps, to my eye.

We walked into the garden and St John told me of his attempts to see Walker and his crew.

‘They were captured in June and it's now November and still no date is set for the trial. It's against all precedent. When I speak to John Price—who doesn't trouble to disguise his contempt for me—he fobs me off with a threadbare story about the case taking time to prepare! Five months? Where there is no question of their guilt, and no lack of witnesses? Sir John tells me he cannot interfere with Price and Spode. Spode says it's Price's task to bring the matter to trial.'

‘They will not be tried in a magistrate's court for such crimes?'

‘No. They must appear before both judges, Pedder and Mr Algy Montagu, the Mad Judge. I assume it's because no civilian jury is allowed here.'

St John had been permitted to see Walker only twice. The second time the convict had a black eye, weals and bruises. He claimed the case was being delayed because the Arthur faction feared he would speak out against them at the trial. He thought they would avoid this by endlessly postponing the matter until it was no longer fresh in the public mind, when they could be quietly sentenced and hanged. (St John's voice was almost steady.) Walker had since been placed in solitary confinement and only the Prison Chaplain could see him now. In his agitation St John broke twigs off a lilac bush, snapped them into small pieces. He had protested to Spode, who said he had not authorised this, but it was in accordance with the regulations. Other visitors were ‘discretionary', and Walker was considered at risk of attempting to escape again. ‘Dido' Thomas was also in solitary. Dixon, Woolf, Moss and the others were together.

‘I don't understand why Price involves himself?' I asked. ‘He wasn't a party to whatever happened at New Norfolk. He arrived in the island three months afterwards.'

‘Price and Forster are now allies in everything. Price thinks he's on the winning side with the Arthurites, and looks to his future. You will not repeat this, Harriet, I know; they have the same contempt for Franklin as for me.'

St John had now become eager to visit Copping, in the hope of learning from the former innkeepers, the Carmichaels, some detail to use against the Arthurites. He wanted me to go with him, since we might also discover more about Rowland Rochester. The best time would be at Christmas, while we were all staying at ‘Kenton' with Bess Chesney. It was Bess's first Christmas without George, and Julia Chesney had decided on a reunion of the ‘Adastras' to provide distraction.

‘My acceptance of Bess's invitation is provisional,' I reminded him. ‘If Anna and Quigley arrive we might be on our way to England by then, but if not, I'll gladly go with you.'

McLeod arrived. St John was writing articles against transportation for the
Derwent Jupiter,
McLeod's new paper. Louisa treated McLeod with an angry flirtatiousness painful to watch. He was casually friendly with her, more interested in news just arrived: our Queen had nearly perished last June, when a madman had fired two pistols into her carriage at point-blank range as she and Prince Albert drove past. By a miracle they were not hurt.

‘And we have lived five months in ignorance of this!' I said. ‘England might be at war with France again and we would not know!'

‘Read Plato on the bucket theory of time,' advised McLeod.

‘Women's minds are not formed for philosophy,' said St John. ‘They are all instinct and emotion.' I kept silent, but not without an effort, reflecting that if the word ‘philosophical' is taken to mean, as commonly, ‘a patient, uncomplaining resignation to circumstances one cannot control', then women, perhaps more than men, had need to display the quality very frequently.

At about this time I had a conversation with Jane Franklin that I recorded in my journal with a grim amusement worthy of Boyes:

Jane
: I shall be sorry to lose you, Harriet. If your friends don't come soon I think I shall make a match to keep you in the island. A clergyman? A schoolteacher? Someone musical. Bergman . . . Ah, I have it! McLeod. His newspaper is begun—and heaven knows we need some benign influence in that quarter.

Me
: Thank you, ma'am, but I mean to return to London to work on the bird lithographs with Eliza. Besides, Mr McLeod is interested elsewhere, I believe.

Jane
: If you mean Mrs Ross, he has proposed and she has refused him. How do I know? Susan Ross's sister Charlotte Lempriere came up to town recently, and Mrs Ross of course told her. Charlotte returned to the peninsula and told Lizzie Booth, who sent a note about it to her sister Nan in Richmond. Nan spoke under a vow of secrecy to Julia Chesney, who told Mrs Parsons, who told me.
Et voilà!
'

Jane was amused but shaking her head, deploring it all.

When the Groundwaters sailed I moved into another lodging house. I was boarding by the week now, expecting Anna and Quigley any day. But as time passed and there was no sign of them, I was forced to move frequently, driven out by verminous beds, a mouse plague, a room that filled with smoke whenever the kitchen fire below was alight, and fellow tenants from the too-friendly to the frighteningly sinister. Each time there was the difficulty of finding a new place, and the expense of a boy and a barrow—my possessions having multiplied somehow in spite of another hazard, a larcenous landlady. I said nothing of this to Sophy or Lady Franklin, but as generally happens in Hobart, they heard of it. I made it a joking matter, which did not deflect Jane's interest.

‘You must come to us, of course,' she said at once.

I thanked her, reminded her she had even fewer bedrooms this Christmas than last. The whole rear wing was closed for repairs. The site of the new Government House had been decided, two miles upstream on the Domain.

‘Why do you not buy a cottage, Harriet?' Jane said suddenly. ‘I will lend you the money. It will be an excellent investment. Leave it in the hands of an agent when you go home and it will bring you a steady ten percent. You can pay me two percent when you are ready—which leaves you eight, still twice what you would get in England.'