Wild Island (50 page)

‘What did he say?'

‘Told me he wouldn't accept excuses for my incompetence. Said he'd write an adverse report of me to London—and if I continued to add insolence to my other failings, he'd dismiss me. Stared goggle-eyed at me through that blasted eye-glass and walked away. Probably intends to let Montagu deal with the problem when he comes back. If he comes back. Two days later I received notice to appear at another tribunal—to answer why I've given extra rations to the labouring men. Twelve hours a day working their guts out to build at the speed we need! And my judges were to be—you won't believe this—the Medical Officer here and the Supervisor at the Mines. Men under my command!'

Bergman grimaced again.

‘I wrote back,' Booth continued, ‘not to Forster, to the Governor—saying that conditions here are nearly impossible. If I cannot even issue extra rations without an Enquiry in which men under my command are appointed to judge my orders, my position is untenable. Regretfully therefore . . . and etcetera . . .'

‘But you don't really want to leave . . . ?'

‘Not without another position to go to. But you should have heard Forster, Gus. Threatening me, and enjoying it. When the truth is he needs me here—to get the Stations built and serve as his scapegoat. It wouldn't be easy to replace me just now.'

At least he hoped not. If his resignation were accepted, he must rejoin his Regiment—in India now—and Booth was appalled to find how profoundly the thought dismayed him. They turned away towards the lagoon again and entered a grove of she-oaks. Bergman said
suddenly, ‘Why not come up to town for a few days? Have a private word with the Governor? Forster's caused him trouble too. They've let things slide while Montagu's been away. And now the Magnetic Expedition is here, Sir John is even less inclined to stick to his desk. But Montagu is coming back in March. Four months—which will put the wind up a few people, Forster among them.'

Birds were massed ahead of them on the water, squabbling and calling. It was good advice, Booth knew, but money was tight again, and if the worst came to the worst they'd need every penny. A trip to town would do Lizzie good, though. Poor girl, she needed a change. She'd had a miscarriage in the winter, and had been despondent since, missing her mother. There'd be the expense of staying in Hobart for three or four nights, but after that Lizzie could go to her sister at Richmond, and he could stay a few days in barracks . . .

‘Use my cottage if you like,' Bergman said. ‘It's small . . . but if Lizzie doesn't mind . . . If I have to go away Durrell will look after you. He sleeps in the kitchen at the back. And if I am there, I'll use the loft over the stable.'

They spoke of possible arrangements and Booth asked, ‘Any news of Rochester?'

Bergman hesitated. ‘Nothing since I went with Harriet Adair to see the Carmichaels—and we . . . fell out over how to proceed.'

‘You and she . . . Lizzie and I thought . . .'

‘So did I—but I was wrong, apparently. I sent a note of apology but I've heard nothing since. St John Wallace tells me she has booked a passage for England, leaving in December.'

A raw nerve, evidently. Booth did not like to probe beyond asking, ‘What will you do?'

Bergman sounded weary. ‘Wash my hands of the whole business.' Later that day Booth applied for leave, but he did not tell Lizzie until three days later when, with a swiftness that surprised him, the request was approved. She flung her arms around his neck, ‘Oh, you are a dear man, so you are.'

They went up in the first week of November, Booth's request for a meeting with the Governor having been granted with, again, unusual alacrity.

‘Sounds to me as though they're looking for a way out,' said Bergman, who was in residence at his cottage that week.

It was so. The Governor made a muted apology; Forster did not appear. Franklin had been shocked, he said, by Booth's taking the matter so personally. No slur was intended against the Commandant's exemplary record. It was Forster's duty to see regulations obeyed—a little over-zealous in this case, perhaps. Forster not well. Everybody under strain. All these confounded changes. Everybody's interests best served if Booth would withdraw his resignation and bring Mrs Booth to dine at Government House this evening. Meet Ross and Crozier. And the Observatory tomorrow? Heard about the Observatory? Magnetic Expedition?

Booth had not known how tightly he was braced for disaster. His shoulders relaxed and the albatross weight slipped off his heart again. Dinner that night with the Franklins was informal and easy, and he'd won another battle, if not the war. He could have returned to the peninsula with equanimity, if it had not been for an incident the following night.

In the afternoon they went to the Observatory with the Franklins, but Lizzie was disappointed by it. She murmured to Booth that she had been to Greenwich seven years ago when she was twelve, and sure she knew this one could not be like that! But, honest to goodness, will you look at it! Three little cabins with a flagpole! Why, he had more books and pretty brass instruments himself at home! He was still laughing when Sophy Cracroft came up to suggest a walk in the Government Gardens nearby. She took Lizzie by the arm and went ahead while Booth followed with Lady Franklin, who said, ‘This Magnetic visit has quite restored my husband. You notice it, Captain? He's back to his old self, merry as a cricket.'

Booth bowed and smiled. It struck him as an odd remark. Jane was so clever; she had been telling him about the Troughton telescope
and ‘the black drop effect'—and yet this comment seemed to miss the point entirely. Sir John's high spirits since the arrival of Ross and Crozier were surely an indication of how unhappy he had been before? And the cause was plain as a pikestaff, as Lizzie would say; the role of Governor did not suit him.

But Jane did not see him in all-male company, of course. After dinner last night when the ladies withdrew, the talk had turned to Desolation Island, one of Ross and Crozier's ports of call on the way here: the strange cloud formations, the giant Kerguelen cabbages. Franklin's plump face had lit up like that of a ragamuffin gazing in a sweetshop window. Booth had almost laughed. But he recognised the look that followed, too; that of a man planning escape. Franklin was desperate to return to his beloved shipboard life.

And yet here was Lady Franklin beaming on his arm not twenty-four hours later, and explaining that when her husband's first term of six years as Governor was over, they would accept another the same length, as Governor Arthur had done.

‘Staying on will not mean cutting ourselves off from northern friends,' she said, ‘or scientific pursuits. The Captains' arrival proves that. And Henry Kay is here, and young Joseph Hooker, though we see little of him. He is not fond of society. He is ship's surgeon on this voyage but his real passion is the same as that of his father, Mr William Hooker—Head of Kew Gardens, you know. Both are botanists to the marrow. You see, Captain, Van Diemen's Land is now truly part of a world-wide community of scientific men.'

Horatio Tennyson had arrived too, she continued. Had Booth met Horry? He was the young brother of Alfred, the poet. The Tennysons were related to the Franklins by marriage, since Alfred had married one of the Sellwood girls, poor Emily. Horry had so far proved to be as dreadfully reckless, idle, and eccentric as the rest of the Tennysons, but he might improve. Allowances must be made for his upbringing. When he was young he had seen the ghost of a severed head walking along the shrubbery path. In that benighted rectory anything was possible. Jane gave a faint shudder before rushing on.

‘And Sir John Barrow's son Peter is to become catechist at Port Arthur, as you know—and the Goulds intend to return. Even Dr Arnold of Rugby—this will astonish you—has written that he would love to take charge of the new College himself, when all factions are satisfied and it can begin at last.'

And think of Dr Lhotski—well, not Lhotski perhaps—like Horry Tennyson, he was of dubious value. Think of Captain Laplace and all the charming French naval men whose ships seemed to abound in these latitudes! Think of the dear Count, Strzelecki, whose company Sir John so greatly enjoyed. They had wrangled like brothers over the Wollaston boiling point method of determining the heights of mountains . . .think of all the other wonderful men here—why, her husband might wish to continue in Tasmania even
after
twelve years as Governor! A scientific retirement here would be the very thing! This was the place for discoveries. The northern hemisphere was all known and stale. The only thing left
there
was the exploration of the Northwest Passage, and Sir John was far too old for that now.

‘You had better not let him hear you say it, my lady.' Booth uneasily took a jocular line, but Jane Franklin repeated firmly, ‘Fifty-five next April. Far too old for an Arctic winter. The Admiralty would not allow it.'

Again Booth was silent. Last night the question of a new voyage in search of the Northwest Passage had also arisen among the gentlemen, and it was clear that Franklin had discussed it before with Ross and Crozier. Who among the old Arctic Lions at the Admiralty could be counted on to back the venture? Who would oppose? Why should Sir John not take the
Erebus
and
Terror
when the Magnetic Expedition was over? The bombs had performed superbly so far, and their strengths and weaknesses would be even better known by the time they returned to Hobart next autumn after another summer in the southern ice. Their return to London in two years would coincide roughly with the end of the Governor's first term here . . .

‘My brother James is also on his way, ma'am,' Booth said. Changing the subject. ‘My eldest brother, and his wife and children. He has been
Captain of the
Trinculo
for a decade, but is now to have three years “on the beach” and will spend much of it here.'

As they walked on it came to Booth that he should sell his commission, leave the Army. It would bring in a useful amount. Pay off his debts again, hold a little in reserve against James's arrival—bound to need money then.

He was in excellent spirits that night when he and Lizzie joined a party going to the Theatre Royal. The moving spirit was Augusta Drewitt. Her sister and brother-in-law were in town, and they had persuaded Bergman to escort her. The Franklins were not involved, they did not approve of plays, except Shakespeare perhaps. This was a satire on the Magnetic Expedition. Lizzie would have preferred to see Mr Loon's Menagerie Troupe, but said philosophically that the play might be ludicrous and amusing at any rate.

Ludicrous indeed, thought Booth, laughing in spite of himself. Mr Jarvis was playing the part of Franklin as a grotesque, a Sir John Falstaff, a tub of lard so genuinely reeling drunk he forgot his lines. Wags from the pit threw peanuts and jeered, ‘Make 'im walk the plank'. The snow and icebergs were well done, however, and Mrs Jarvis as ‘Fame' came down on a gilded swing and crowned Ross and Crozier with laurel wreaths. She gave her husband an angry slap, which set the house roaring, and the Misses Adelaide, Emily and Kitty Jarvis, ‘spirits of the North', ended the play with an energetic dance. To keep warm probably, said Bergman.

It was the first time Booth had been in the new theatre, which really was the pretty little gem everyone called it, but as the crowd began to leave at the end, the great defect of its design became clear. An elegant curved staircase descended from the dress circle and boxes into the foyer—but unfortunately the pit also opened into the back of this area. The pit doors were supposed to remain closed until the upstairs audience had gone, but the penny and peanuts crowd were in no mood to wait. They came thrusting out to mix loudly with their two- and five-shilling superiors, turning the foyer into a struggling mass surging towards the outer doors.

Lizzie held tightly to Booth's arm. She was fearless by nature, but small, easily shoved by the crowd. Augusta clung to Bergman. Her sister and brother-in-law were still on the staircase behind. In the midst of it Booth felt someone staring at him. Among the backs of heads four yards in front, a pale face was turned to look back at him. A woman, not young, her expression filled with alarm. She turned quickly away. A two-shilling patron, or even a five, judging by her head and bearing. Booth decided he did not know her and turned away, before recognition came like the flare of a match: Catherine Tyndale, Rowland Rochester's woman. Older, of course. Her hair done differently. He scanned the heads near her for Rowland but there was no one resembling him.

He could not abandon Lizzie and push forward—and in any case, he could hardly seize the woman, demand explanations. While he hesitated, her part of the crowd reached the street, and he saw she was with a tall young man and a dark young woman. They moved briskly towards a line of carriages waiting further along where it was darker. Bergman was pushed closer to Booth at that moment, and he was able to point and say, ‘Rowland Rochester's wife'. The words were half lost in the hubbub, but Bergman looked in that direction.

At this point, the crowd, which had been inching forward, seemed to lose momentum and stop. Looking about him in frustration, Booth saw Mr Tulip Wright, the former District Constable, nonchalant among the jostling mob. The front edges of his black coat were pulled wide apart to reveal his barrel chest; his thumbs were hooked into the armholes of a very splendid purple satin waistcoat. His high collar cradled two or three chins and a verdant swathe of emerald cravat.

‘Evening, gents,' he said, and nodding outwards, ‘An 'oss gorn down in the road.' Booth reflected that men like Tulip Wright always do know what is going on, in spite of having no visible source of information.

‘I thought you were gone to Port Phillip?'

‘The wife's expecting. Come back to 'er mother for the 'appy event.' He jerked his head back towards the stage. ‘Bit of a larf, eh?'