Wild Island (53 page)

‘And silent, no, that is wrong too. Always creaking and cracking as the ice moves and the barky shifts. Then the rush of avalanches thundering down the great bergs into the sea, and the bark or yip of seals and walruses—howling of the dogs—a strange musical whistling of the winds . . .'

Deeply immersed, he came to a stop, found himself at the table and took a handful of cherries.

Just before midnight the party made its way back to the drawing room. Bergman and I loitered behind. We stood looking out at the river and recalling the night Booth was lost, when we had walked through the streets arm in arm. He took my hand, his own warm and alive with all its mysterious vitality, familiar and strange. Flows of desire coursed through me, making me weak, making me laugh. The clock struck midnight and the clamour of bells began. He kissed me, a light New Year's kiss; but then we were in each other's arms and would have stayed there, murmuring, unable to let go of each other, but we knew that if we did not soon rejoin the others, someone would come to find us.

I felt we were shining like a pair of Roman Candles, but no one seemed to notice. The party dispersed in good wishes and farewells and we walked outside and hurried through the streets hand-in-hand, exchanging New Year greetings with a few passers-by. We stopped to kiss again in the shadows of a great tree, and ran on, laughing. At my cottage we shed our clothes, and that night was as ardent and joyful as if we had been sixteen, as tender and easy as though we were long married. We lay rib-to-rib afterwards, skin to warm skin, and the joy I felt then was the beginning of our marriage, although the ceremony itself must wait.

Gus was committed to leaving in four days to go to the west coast again with James Calder. They would be away two months, clearing new growth from the Frenchman's track, setting food caches and making preparations for the Franklins' delayed expedition, now to
begin in early February after Jane and Eleanor returned from Adelaide. Jane and Sir John would ride up to meet Gus, Calder, and the convict party at Marlborough above New Norfolk.

We agreed to say nothing of our affairs until Bergman returned, but in the days before his departure he came to me late every night and left before dawn each morning, cautious of my reputation until our announcement was made.

Gus had been gone a week when I came home one afternoon through Minto Lane, opened the back gate, and saw Mrs Tench, the sailor-woman from the
Adastra
. She was standing in the garden under the apple tree. Only the red-and-white stripes of her skirt made her visible in the mottled shade. She wore a man's shirt with an embroidered dark green waistcoat. Her long grey pigtail hung down her back from under a chip hat, which was tied over the crown and under her chin with a faded blue scarf. Old Mr Coombes was hoeing in the vegetable patch. He raised his hat to me, indicating Mrs Tench with a slight motion of his head. She was feeding a windfall to the tethered goat, smoking a clay pipe, letting the smoke trickle from the corner of her mouth. She saw me and nodded, unhurried. A pounding began in my chest.

‘Anna?' I said. ‘The Captain?'

She took the pipe from her mouth and nodded again. ‘Mrs R is at the Hope and Anchor.'

‘And Captain Quigley?'

She looked at me, said nothing. We went into the kitchen and sat at the table. The Captain was dead, had died in Valparaíso. From the deep pocket of her skirt she brought an oilskin packet. A letter headed ‘Auckland 10th March 1840': ten months ago.

There was a space and then:

The writing broke off and the remaining two small pages were filled with jottings: latitude and longitude, sums of money, disconnected sentences. One of these recorded their arrival in Nelson on the sixteenth of April 1840.

Mrs Tench said a group of angry settlers had boarded the vessel and refused to leave. They demanded Quigley take them to Valparaíso to join an earlier party of disgruntled emigrants. If Quigley did not agree they would take the ship by force, but if he would sail them to Valparaíso he would be paid when they arrived, and the ship would be his again. The Captain was rageful, but at last agreed.

Four days after they reached Valparaíso, it being the fever season, the Captain fell to the ground while walking to the harbour-master's and was carried back to the ship. But Mrs Tench believed he knew he was ailing long before. A week earlier he had given her these papers and some money—all gone now—saying if anything should happen to him, she must take Mrs R back to Van Diemen's Land to
Mrs Adair, ‘who will make certain you do not lose by it'. She looked me squarely in the eye.

After Quigley's death the first mate had taken command of the ship. He would not sail west against the winds, and so it had been the long way back—eastwards round by Cape Town once more. At last they came through Bass Strait to Port Phillip, where she and Anna disembarked. Her brother and sister-in-law stayed with the barky and went on to Sydney. She had brought Anna across to Launceston and then south on the coach to Hobarton.

‘How is Mrs Rochester? How did she take Quigley's death?' I asked.

A shrug, a long look, a puff at the pipe.

When I arrived at the Hope and Anchor, Anna was sitting in the same room we had occupied three years ago. At first glance she seemed little changed. Her face was a trifle heavier, round, brown and as strong featured as ever. But she had gained flesh in the body, too, and was now nearly as large as she had been in the attic. She looked at me so blankly I thought for a moment she did not recognise me, and then, ‘Harriet,' she decided placidly. She smiled and put out her hand, but could not rise unassisted from the chair to greet me.

She gave no sign of it having been three years since we met, and showed no desire to speak of her travels. When I asked about them, she considered for a time and then said slowly she had liked Moreton Bay. Quigley had bought her a blue silk there and Mrs Tench let it out. But Quigley was dead and Mrs Tench looked after her now. She liked Sydney, too. Other places she had not liked. Neither then nor later did she ask about Rowland, or show any curiosity as to how I had passed the time in her absence.

Mrs Tench lifted the hem of Anna's gown and showed me her ankles, much swollen. Anna regarded them with mild interest, as though they belonged to someone else. I sent a message to the hospital and James Seymour came next day to examine her, by which time we had removed her to the cottage. Each time he asked her a question she
looked to Mrs Tench to supply the answer. At last he and I returned to the parlour while Mrs Tench dressed Anna.

‘She may have had a small seizure. More than one, perhaps. Her mind is slower than it was? The heart is irregular and there are signs of a dropsy, but I cannot tell how quickly the fluid is gathering.'

‘But she is not ill? She could make the voyage home to England?'

He hesitated. ‘If I observed her for another month I could answer you—judge whether her condition is changing and to what degree. How old is she?'

‘Thirty-eight. My own age.'

‘Medically speaking, she could be twice that. Are you anxious to leave?'

‘No! Quite the opposite!' Reddening, I explained the situation, asking him to say nothing of it elsewhere.

‘Ah, at last! He is a lucky man—and you will be happy, I'm sure.' He told me he had decided to return to England. He loved the island, but felt torn between the two places. I sympathised, wondering silently whether he would attend Anna on the voyage home if she was fit to travel—with Mrs Tench perhaps? Or must I take her to England and then return to Gus? I could not bear the thought. I would not consider it until he returned, by which time Seymour might have better news of Anna's health.

Her old guitar was among her few remaining belongings, but she never played it now. She seemed content to sit and do nothing but watch the comings and goings of the household: Mrs Tench, who washed and dressed and cared for her as if she were a child; or me, or Nellie Jack, or even Aristo, the coloured parrot, which sat on a perch beside Anna, eating apple or carrot. Ada Sweet came in and out, and there was Mrs Tench's dog, Dasher, a grey-brown lurcher; a poacher's dog, silent and absolutely attentive to her command.

It was clear from the beginning that Mrs Tench intended to stay, for which I felt only relief. She said she had slept under kitchen tables before, aye, and atop o' them too, but we moved about until Anna had the large back bedroom, which opened from the kitchen and had
French windows onto the garden. I had the front parlour, unused before, and Mrs Tench was supposed to share the attic with Nellie, but generally slept on a palliasse in the kitchen.

An old wooden bench turned up in the garden one day, placed against the cottage wall under a pear tree, and Anna and Mrs T, as she liked to be called, often sat side by side dozing on it as the summer went on. I thought Anna spoke less and less, but Mrs T reported conversations. Anna said she had a fancy for a beefsteak for her dinner, or a nice piece of fish, or a tin of ginger biscuits, or new gloves and stockings. These requests were always perfectly reasonable, and it soon seemed practical to give Mrs T not only a weekly wage but also a modest allowance to supplement the meals and housekeeping Ada Sweet provided.

My only uneasiness was connected with the daily gin, porter and wine for nurse and patient. Anna was accustomed to her ‘little drops', Mrs Tench said. ‘Could not sleep proper without'—as well I knew. And after all, she kept a check on the amount Anna consumed, and nothing untoward occurred. Most evenings Mrs T went down to The Black Swan, or The Case is Altered, letting herself in long after I'd put Anna to bed and gone to my room, but if I wanted to go out she would stay with Anna.

Jane, Eleanor and Gell returned early in February, Jane full of the energy travel always seemed to give her, eager for the west coast journey. But three days after they arrived, the
Favourite
put in to Hobart, bound for New Zealand under the command of another of Sir John's old friends, Captain Hobson. He dined
en famille
, and spoke of the infant colonies in New Zealand and their mutual friend Captain Owen Stanley of the
Britomart
, who was now Senior Officer at the Akaroa Station. The following day Jane called me in and told me she had accepted Captain Hobson's offer of a passage to New Zealand; would I go as her companion? I explained Anna's situation, saying nothing of Gus. When the
Favourite
sailed a few days later,
Jane and Miss Williamson were aboard and the west coast expedition was postponed once more. The news was sent to Gus and James Calder, and they packed up camp again and were in Hobart by the first week of March.

My lease of the cottage was due for renewal on Lady Day, the twenty-seventh of March, but early in the month Ada came to tell me she could not renew: she must sell. Like so many small businesses, her shop was doing poorly. She would have closed it, but in these hard times there were widows who relied on being able to buy a penn'orth of tea or tobacco from her, a cup of flour or an egg. She was paying mortgages on both cottages and falling behind. The newspapers had lists of foreclosures and insolvencies. Her father wanted to sell this cottage to clear the debt on her own.