Wild Island (55 page)

‘Wyvenhoe', and every time he stepped outside, Montagu would glimpse his old home, lost to him now, bought by the Mad Judge.

If Jane Franklin had been in the island when the Montagus returned, Booth thought, she would surely have invited them into Government House again and flattered the Colonial Secretary into a better humour, but she was still in New Zealand, where she had sprained her ankle badly in a fall. The Governor and Miss Cracroft, if they had thought of asking the Montagus to stay, must have decided against it. Poor Jane. Her accident sounded painful but typical. She had wandered out of her quarters one night to admire the moon or the view, or something, and forgetting the lodge was on a raised platform about three feet high, had walked straight off the edge.

Another unpleasant surprise for Montagu would have been Ross and Crozier's intimacy with the Franklins, not to mention the shipload of Franklin's relatives and friends come to increase the Government House ‘coterie', as the
True Colonist
called it. Ross had friends in high places in England. And there had been defections from the Arthurites, too. The Turnbulls, father and son, had been Arthurites but were now at least equally Franklinites. Boyes and Dr Bedford, the Mad Judge and James Calder, if not wholly converted, were certainly Janeites.

Booth waited twenty minutes outside the Governor's office and was being ushered in by Henslowe, Sir John's new secretary, when George Boyes's tall, thin figure emerged from another door and came past him.

‘Booth,' he nodded a greeting, lifting his eyebrows, adding quietly as he passed, ‘Giving away the cabbage crop again? Transgressing with other vegetables?'

He continued on his way with the sardonic smile he cultivated, but ten minutes later it was clear to Booth that this was no laughing matter.

There was no sign of Forster, only Franklin and Henslowe, Montagu and a senior man, Asquith, from the Attorney General's Department, and his clerk. It was Montagu who read aloud the item for investigation: the sale of a vessel built at Port Arthur, ordered by Mr Charles Swanston of the Derwent Bank and Derwent Steamship
Company, finished and delivered to him last year. There appeared to be grave objections to the transaction, which might be construed as a deliberate attempt to defraud Her Majesty's Government.

The ship had been sold to Swanston's company for three hundred and fifty-two pounds, ten shillings and tenpence, a price calculated using the convict rate for labour. If it had been calculated using the commercial rate, the cost would have been two thousand five hundred pounds. The question was, had the low price been by error—or design? Mr Swanston had immediately fitted engines and sold it to a friend for seven thousand pounds. Had there been an arrangement by which Captain Booth was paid the difference?

‘I strongly object, Your Excellency.' Booth was on his feet.

‘Nevertheless,' said Montagu calmly. ‘We must ask, Captain, why you used the convict labour rate in calculating the sale price?'

‘Mr Forster instructed me to do so.'

‘You have a record of this?'

‘No. Mr Forster spoke of it while we were conversing, and I subsequently wrote a letter to him confirming that I would make the calculation on that basis, as he had advised. My letter should be in the files.' But it would not be, of course. ‘I most vehemently deny receiving any advantage from the sale.'

But somebody had. Booth's heart jumped erratically for a queasy minute, during which he wondered whether he was about to have a fit, then it resumed a heavy fast throb. Forster? Who else? Forster had given Swanston the cheap sale in exchange for cancellation of some debt, and he, Booth, had been played for the gullible fool he was. Montagu had no doubt returned from England knowing nothing of it, had found it among the records, and seeing how fishy it would appear to Whitehall, decided to kill two birds with one stone. Stab Booth in the vitals and save his ugly brother-in-law's neck. No use threatening to resign this time: it would only seem like guilt.

‘You have recently bought land at York Plains, Captain?'

Montagu, having laid his red herring at their feet, was purring quietly behind the desk. ‘And yet until a few months ago your financial
state was—straitened, shall I say? You owed a debt to your agent which you have also recently paid?'

‘I sold my commission. That alone is the source of my expenditure. Sir. The sale of the ship to Swanston took place last year.'

‘Hmm. You might have delayed spending, of course, to defer suspicion.'

‘A bad business,' muttered Franklin. ‘Henslowe, will you note . . .'

Captain Booth
—they were still calling him that—
you are required to submit a full account of
your version
of the sale in an affidavit sworn before a magistrate. It will be forwarded to Lord Stanley in England with other papers in the case.

Booth walked across the wharves and up into the Battery, blind with more fury than he had ever felt in his life. Forster had turned to him casually after they'd talked about the sale. ‘You'll use the convict rate of labour in calculating the price, of course.' And he hadn't given it an instant's thought: assumed Swanston had ordered the ship from Port Arthur for that very reason—because it was cheaper than a commercial boat-builder. He walked swiftly down the hill to Sandy Bay where he would be unlikely to see anyone he knew, and strode along the shore for nearly an hour before he turned back. Talk to Bergman, he decided, coming back through Battery Point.

Mr and Mrs Bergman were not at home, Durrell said. They had gone to visit Mr Duterrau, the painter, who was to give a lecture tonight at the Mechanics Institute. They would dine with him and go to the lecture afterwards. Durrell produced a hand-bill advertising Duterrau's paper on ‘The School of Athens as it Assimilates with the Mechanics Institution'. He and Billy Knox would go too, after a bite. Had the Captain eaten? Booth, finding himself suddenly ravenous at the aroma of stew, and recalling that he had not eaten for hours, shared their meal and grog. There was distraction in talking to Durrell and carrot-haired, blushing Billy Knox, a former Point Puer boy Booth had recommended for the apprenticeship with Bergman.

The boy was taller than Booth now, narrow as a plank, and as stiff and speechless until Durrell drew him into talk about the Huon settlement. They walked together to the hall afterwards, separating at the door when Booth, seeing no sign of Bergman and Harriet, joined St John Wallace and Louisa, from whom he learned that Duterrau was ill. The Reverend Ewing had stepped in at short notice to speak on ‘The Migrating Caterpillar', and would stay the night afterwards with the Wallaces. He didn't want to ride three miles back to the Orphan School very late, only to return early next morning for the enquiry into his handling of the school, due to begin the following day.

When the lecture was over Booth could not have said a word about caterpillars. He was not the only one: there had been loud snoring. The audience began to leave, and Booth would have gone quickly too, but St John and Louisa, forced to wait for Ewing, began speaking to him. In the end they were the last to leave, except for a clerk waiting to lock up and extinguish the lamps lighting the few stone steps outside the door.

Booth stepped aside to let Louisa and St John go first down to the road. Ewing was behind him. As he stepped down onto the street Booth saw two men approaching: John Price and Stringer Wynn. As they came past, Wynn veered out of his path to collide with St John, shoving with such brutal intent that St John staggered and fell against the building. Wynn grasped St John's arm in a tight grip and cried loudly, ‘Oh dear, sorry, sir. What 'ave I done? 'Ere, let me get you steady.'

‘Let me go. What on earth do you think you're doing?' said St John.

Wynn took no notice. He turned to Ewing, and leering into his face, said, ‘Well, if it ain't
Mister
Ewing as well.
Mister
Wallace and
Mister
Ewing. Two
men of God
. Black and white like the soul of a sinner or a pair o' magpies. Heckle and Peckle both. Ewing takes the little girls and you 'as the boys? Is that how it goes, eh, Wallace?' Booth was speechless with astonishment: he saw Lizzie's shocked face and put out a hand to steady her as she backed towards the railing by the steps.

St John spoke to John Price, ‘Will you tolerate this?'

‘Sorry, Wallace, wasn't listening,' said Price. He fixed his monocle in his eye and added, ‘What say, Stringer?'

‘Quotin' the Bible, sir. Sayin' as 'ow you can't touch pitch an' not be defiled. Ain't that so, gen'lemen?'

Ewing was bent over, gasping strangely. Booth moved towards Wynn, who stepped easily back, grinning, and took up a pugilist's stance with his fists up. He danced away from Booth, lithe, young, in peak condition, saying, ‘Keep aht of it, Cap'n. Ain't you in enough trouble? Or so I hear.'

Laughing still, he danced towards St John and away again, working his fists, taunting, and then came close, suddenly thrusting his right fist to within an inch of Wallace's chin. Louisa screamed. Wynn stepped back and held up his hands.

‘Never touched 'im, ma'am. Jus' my liddle joke, see? No 'arm done, sir? Leastways, not this time. Not but what there might come a night when it'll be a different story. A bit o' sport between us one dark night, eh, gen'lemen?'

‘Will you stand there and do nothing, Price?' said Booth. Three years ago he would have leapt at this man. He was furious now to recognise in himself neither the will nor the capacity.

Price pulled at a chain across his waistcoat until a watch emerged, consulted it and said languidly, ‘Must be off. Come along, Wynn.'

St John seemed about to rush at them as they walked away. Booth restrained him.

‘Go to your wife,' he said. Louisa had sunk onto the steps.

Booth went in search of a cab, and when they reached the cottage, Mrs Fludde took Louisa to bed. Ewing gulped down two brandies, chattering with shock and outrage, and then staggered off to sleep. When they were alone, Booth said to St John, ‘You will report this, of course.'

‘Report it to whom? The Chief Police Magistrate—Forster? His assistant—John Price?' St John gave a distorted smile. ‘They would call it a misunderstanding. Their word against ours.'

Wynn had threatened before to horsewhip him in public, he added. And he had received two anonymous letters, destroyed now, because their filthy contents did not bear showing. At any rate, he and Louisa would sail for home in a month, early July. He believed these brutes would not dare anything more in the meantime.

I heard Booth's story when he came to see Gus early the following morning, before he returned to the peninsula. I went immediately to see whether there was anything I could do for Louisa, expecting to find her prostrated. It was almost winter, but sunny. She was sitting in a basket chair outside the French windows under a leafless tree, knitting, which I had never seen her do before, wrestling the needles and worsted in the awkward manner of beginners. She held her head slightly to one side in concentration, her thick golden hair carefully looped back, her blue eyes untroubled when she stopped and looked up at me. Little Thea, nearly three, copper curls tied with blue ribbons in two bunches, played on a rug with the cat. She put her face up to me for a kiss and hug. Jane Fludde went out to fetch tea.

‘Of course they dislike St John,' said Louisa calmly, reaching the end of a row and holding the work up to gaze at it with satisfaction. ‘What does he expect? He has let them know he has something against them. Something they would rather conceal. He has hinted it to McLeod, who tells me. St John tells me nothing. McLeod says John Price hates Dido Thomas. He hates all convicts, thinks they get away with too much.'

Fludde came in with the tea things and Louisa added, ‘Perhaps Edward Rochester was right to be afraid of coming here. This is not England, however much it tries to be. You begin to wonder why we thought some things so important.'