Wild Island (52 page)

‘I had hoped to see you here,' he said.

He recounted the story of seeing Catherine Tyndale at the theatre, but my attention was distracted by his mention of Bergman. He had been in Hobart and not called on me. He had gone to the play with Augusta Drewitt. I was surprised and irritated to learn St John had not trusted me enough to tell me he had discovered Rowland, and curious about the latter's whereabouts. It soon struck me, however, that this only added to my freedom. The Rochester business was now wholly St John's affair, out of my hands.

‘Gus is now gone to the Huon for a fortnight,' added Booth casually. ‘From there he'll join James Calder in the western wilderness for the summer. They'll take a party of convicts to clear the track again for the Governor's expedition in January.'

Over the next days I schooled myself to accept that I had seen Gus for the last time, but towards the end of November I received notice that the
Lady Dorothea
was delayed in Cape Town, and would not now sail from Hobart until February. At the same time, the Franklins decided to postpone their west coast expedition, and it came to me that Gus and Calder might return to Hobart for Christmas.

The reason given for the Franklins' postponement was the Governor's volume of work—which was true, Sophy told me, but it had more to do with the growing attachment between Eleanor and John Gell. Gell was taking leave over Christmas to visit his brother, who was secretary to Colonel Gawler, Governor of the new Wakefield Colony in South Australia, and Jane decided she and Eleanor would go also. The young couple's feelings would be usefully tested under the strains of travel, and it was important to forge links between all Governors in the Antipodes. Besides, Jane was curious to see Adelaide. Sophy was happy to stay in Hobart. Sydney had been too hot last year
and Adelaide would be hotter, and the town was so new there could be nothing worth seeing. She would have Tom and Nuncle to herself for a month, ‘and as your sailing is so fortunately delayed, Harriet,' she added, ‘we can spend your last days here together.'

Sophy was eager for company in those weeks before Christmas. Nuncle was busy and Tom had the
grippe,
which became prolonged and worrying, and as soon as Jane, Eleanor and Gell left, the rains came. We read aloud to Tom, walked when the weather allowed, and when he was convalescing set up skittles in the ballroom and competed until the cavernous, shabby room echoed with his barking laugh, his wheezy cough. And so we came to Christmas, and then 1841.
Annus horribilis
for the Franklins, a decisive year for me. At one time I used to believe that if only Jane Franklin had stayed at home that December, the dramatic events which followed might have been avoided, but now I understand that everything was moving relentlessly to one conclusion by then.

Christmas luncheon at Government House was subdued. The Governor appeared not in spirits, or at least, not in those of a metaphysical kind. He was imbibing a good deal of the other sort, both before and during the meal. More than he would have been allowed if Jane had been there. He sat silent while the young people talked, emitting now and then a huge walrus sigh.

I never felt I understood the Governor as I did Jane Franklin. He could be talkative and companionable, or nearly mute. And the mystery of the silent person is that you cannot be sure whether deep waters, or nothing at all, run below the surface. I'd felt this with Anna, too. On that Christmas Day, however, I could guess some of the demons haunting the Governor's silence.

The Magnetic Expedition had gone and he longed to be with it. Instead he must wrestle with a mountain of neglected paperwork. Montagu was expected back in two months, with a keen eye for the Governor's failings and heaven knows what impossible new edicts
from London. Jane, Eleanor and Gell were away, and the newspapers had launched another savage rebuke against his wife.
Only a woman possessed by a mania for travel could choose to desert her husband at the Yuletide with no other purpose than a whim of novelty.
Jane professed to despise such attacks, but she would grow tremulous and pale and have the headache.

And he was under attack too, most recently by William Gates, a political prisoner, a lively anti-British rebel recently deported to Van Diemen's Land from Upper Canada by Colonel Arthur, who was now Governor there. Gates was writing tirades about the unfinished projects in the island. The Wellington Bridge, the New Norfolk Bridge, the new Government House, the east coast road, the water supply in Hobart—which was in a dire state, and summer now here again with nothing done. A cartoon circulating just then showed the Governor as a bloated grotesque, a pig-governor at trough, with a table napkin the size of a bed sheet tucked under his chins. He was gorging himself on a roasted ox, swilling it down with tankards of rum. Sir John had managed to laugh at the lampoon. An uncomfortable laugh.

If Archdeacon Hutchins had been there, the Governor would have talked to him, but Hutchins had quarrelled with the Franklins over the proposed College. The Governor wanted no discrimination between the sects of Christianity when taking in students or employing masters; Hutchins believed Anglicans should have preference. He also demanded that Sir John refuse an enquiry into the conduct of Reverend Ewing, Head of the Orphan School. No ordained minister should be so shockingly suspected. But I knew from Sophy that the Visiting Surgeon at the School had written a letter of complaint about Ewing's licence with girls in his care; an Enquiry could not be avoided.

Now Sir John's eye fell on the young people: Sophy and Tom, Henry Kay and Arthur Sweet, and again I could imagine some of his thoughts. These children were a comfort, but also another profound source of worry. Tom, allowed down to dinner for the first time in a month, was making his sister laugh, but emitting terrible coughs, and Dr Bedford had spoken bleakly about the lad's chest. Tom was
consumptive. Would Isabella want her son at home? The Franklins had debated the question. Sir John had never had much to do with his older sister, but he thought not. Isabella had made it clear that Sophy must not be returned to her. Sophy must marry. But Sophy had turned down two or three suitors already. Poor Ainsworth had made her an offer last week and was now miserable. Why would Sophy not have him? They had all grown fond of Ainsworth. A sound, cheerful fellow of good family . . . The poor silly girl hadn't a penny to her name; what did she think to live on for the rest of her life?

Sir John's glance fell on Mary, sitting opposite him, demure as a lamb, expecting another child. He shuddered visibly, took another drink. (Sweet little Mary, poor orphaned Mary—and who knows what horrors . . . ) I knew both he and Jane deeply regretted they had not known enough to stop that marriage. Franklin did not look at John Price but lifted his eyes to the windows, the grey scene outside. It was raining, ropes of water twisting down the glass. Trees lashing and leaning just like the January of their arrival four years ago. He had been four years stranded ashore! And the rain had leaked into another bedroom yesterday. This place was a bottomless pit for expense. But the young never troubled about such things. Ah, to be young again, a pretty young Midshipman.

‘In those days my hair was chestnut, of course,' he said happily, ‘long and waving like Eleanor's . . .'

He had told these stories many times; how he had looked so girlish he was made to act the heroine in skits got up on the ships at New Year.

Henry Kay and Tom now instantly begged to be allowed a small private fancy-dress party on New Year's Eve, and Sophy, who would have faced the devil to give Tom what he wanted, said it was not, after all, like
acting in plays
. ‘Dressing up at New Year is a great naval tradition, is it not, Uncle?'

‘Indeed, my dear. Ross and Crozier will be engaged in just the same way this week on their icy shelf.'

He cleared his throat to disguise the regretful tone.

On New Year's Eve, Sophy was Britannia, draped in a white sheet girdled with gold, and wearing a little gold helmet. She would have preferred to be Justice, she explained to Boyes and Mary, but having to dance blindfold would have been too awkward.

‘And then you must have limped as well,' said Boyes at once, ‘“Since Justice is not only blind but lame amongst us”, as Otway says.'

Boyes looked as he always did: black frock coat, grey waistcoat. At first I thought he intended some joke about impersonating himself, ‘The Colonial Auditor' or ‘the anonymous author', which would be like his humour. But then I saw a small black book lettered DIARY, protruding from a pocket, and some kind of plant or weed hanging from the other pocket, and I guessed he was meant to be John Evelyn, the diarist and gardener.

Mary laughed and nodded, and said, ‘And I am a portion of his shrubbery!' She was in a green dress with paper flowers pinned all across it and a bird's nest attached at her waist. Boyes said, ‘You do better than I, Hatty. Coming in we passed a man personating a Spanish muleteer—or so I thought, but on addressing him in that language I discovered it to be young Arthur Sweet from Sir John's office, who speaks only English—and that imperfectly, like all the young. He claims to be Richard the Third.'

Sophy had given me a blue-sprigged dress from the box, front-laced and with side panniers.

John Price was in black. Black doublet and hose, tight-buttoned jerkin, hat with a red feather in it. The devil himself. He looked pleased with the effect this was having on the rest of the company. His wife, soon to produce her second infant, had stayed at home. Tom was the Artful Dodger. Nuncle, under Sophy's direction, made a Captain Cook somewhat larger than the original. Henry Kay wore Fool's motley, with a long tail of frayed rope and a lion's head from some old performance. He was a Bunyip, he said, the curious creature someone had recently lectured about at the Mechanics Institute.

Bergman was not in fancy dress. He appeared at the door when the dancing had already begun and stood as though he were looking for someone. He saw me, came across and, taking my hand, said, smiling widely, ‘You
are
here! I can't believe it. Boyes told me only today. I thought you had sailed.'

‘I sent you a note . . .'

‘I have only just received it.'

‘I thought you had decided not to answer it.'

‘It has been following me about, missing me.'

‘You have been away a long time.'

‘I'm a fool. I should have come to see you.'

We smiled at each other and could not stop. Henry Kay asked if we would play. He had been unable to hire musicians at such short notice. I kept losing my place, glancing at Bergman and flushing because I felt his eyes on me. He laughed and stopped and said, ‘Hatty, Hatty, why have we wasted a year?'

Nothing had changed since the gloomy Christmas luncheon a week before—and everything had. Later, at supper in the verandah room, Sir John offered a toast to absent friends: Jane, Eleanor and Gell in the heat of Adelaide; Ross and Crozier in the snowy wastes. A servant refilled his glass.

‘At this time of year it will be light all night on the ice,' Franklin said. ‘On festive evenings the Eskimo women would come for the
kooniging
, kissing and welcoming the
kabloona
from the far lands with great affection . . .' He cleared his throat and said hastily that Eskimo words had fascinated him from the beginning.
Kikerktak
for King William Island,
eshemutta
for the ships' captains. The senior Captain was
Toolooark.
Crozier they called
Aglooka
, but he did not know why.

Somebody said the colours of the play-acting on the ships must be strangely vivid against that silent white expanse, and Sir John said, ‘Ah, white. People say white, but . . . You are an artist, Mrs Adair; you know how many shades of white there are, and how it may carry a host of other tints.
Emerald
in the depths of the bergs, with every
blue you can conceive of . . . And the aurora in winter—immense green veils twisting across the skies.