Behind the Sun (33 page)

‘’Cos she’s recruitin’ already.’

‘Really?’ Harrie was shocked. ‘But she’ll be sent on assignment like the rest of us. Won’t she?’

Nancy Crouch snorted and laughed at the same time, blowing out a ribbon of snot that landed on Harrie and Rachel’s blanket. She rubbed it in with the heel of her hand. ‘Got a lot to learn, haven’t yous?’

Friday said sharply, ‘Yes, that’s why we just paid you a shilling. So, when you’re ready.’

‘Well, what do yous want to know?’

‘Everything.’

Nancy puffed out her cheeks. ‘Well, rations are doled out daily and the cooks are lags like us but they’re paid a bob a day. It’s a privilege to have a job as a cook, or a midwife or a turnkey or a washerwoman or the like, but you have to get in Matron’s good books for that.’

‘How do you do that?’ Sarah asked.

‘Behave and keep your gob shut, for a start. Or you buy your way in.’

‘Garnish?’

‘That’ll work with the turnkeys all right. They say higher up bribery’ll get you a long way. Haven’t tried it meself.’

‘Already seen it,’ Friday remarked.

Nancy pointed towards the ceiling, eyebrows raised.

Friday nodded.

‘Thought so,’ Nancy said. ‘She looks like she could afford it.’

‘Is the food nice?’ Rachel asked.

Nancy stared at her. ‘Is the
food
nice? You’re a gawney one, aren’t you?’

Irritation flashed across Rachel’s face. ‘I’m not gawney. Don’t call me that.’

Harrie silently cheered, buoyed to see a return of the old Rachel spirit, but Nancy only laughed, and not very pleasantly. ‘Well, what a stupid question.’

But no one laughed with her and, though the expressions on the faces looking back at her barely altered, she sensed a sudden element of frostiness radiating from the newcomers and shuffled back slightly off the mattress and onto the bare wooden floor.

‘It’s all right, when there’s enough,’ she said, her voice brazen to disguise her uneasiness. ‘Breakfast is wheaten bread, and tea with sugar and a drop of milk. Dinner is soup made with meat, greens and potatoes, and bread. And supper is more bread and tea.’

No one said anything — they’d all existed on more meagre rations in Newgate, and at home if it came to that, except perhaps for Rachel.

Sarah asked, ‘And this “industrious employment” the matron was talking about? What’s that?’

‘We all have to work here, except for the properly sick ones. First class spin the flax and wool and make slops for the Factory and for the lads at Hyde Park —’

‘That’s where the male convicts go, isn’t it, Hyde Park Barracks?’ Harrie interrupted, changing position on the mean mattress; her bum was going numb.

‘’Tis, some of them. Second and third class do the weaving. Parramatta cloth it’s called, ’cos it’s made here. We sell some, too.
Second and third class pick oakum as well. We don’t do that. It’s a rotten bloody job. We get paid if we make more than our daily quota, but you don’t get it all ’til you leave.’

‘I heard third class has to break rocks,’ Friday said, giving Nancy a sceptical look.

‘Depends what you’re in for, what
crime
yous have done. In second class you get paid for going over quota as well, but third gets nothing. In summer we start work at six and go for ten hours with two breaks, and in winter we start at eight and go for eight hours with one break, ’cos it gets dark earlier. In our “leisure hours” there’s a school for reading what’s run by the Ladies’ Committee, and straw-plaitin’ lessons.’

Friday and Sarah looked at each other and sniggered.

Nancy shrugged. ‘Not my idea. What else? Mornin’ and evenin’ prayers in the dining rooms every day, Papists on one side and Proddies on the other, Sunday services, weekly bath, mornin’ inspections for nits and the like.’

Sarah scratched her head reflexively. ‘And the flash mob? Who’s the boss woman?’

Raising her eyebrows slyly, Nancy said, ‘Yous are in luck at the moment. There isn’t one.’

‘Really?’ Friday wasn’t sure whether to believe this. ‘Why not?’

‘It were a terrible thing,’ Nancy replied without a shred of regret. ‘Edie Dansey, her name were. God, she were a hard woman. Take the pennies off a dead man’s eyes. Been in second class forever. Had a shockin’ accident in the baths and drowned. Only a few weeks ago, it were.’

Friday looked thoughtful. ‘And there’s no one taken her place?’

‘There’s a few of her crew staking a claim, but they’re not up to it. Don’t have the balls. So no, no one’s taken her place. At least not until you lot arrived. Her upstairs, I mean.’

Friday glared at Nancy.

Nancy stared back. ‘Or you. It’s between her and you, isn’t it?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Well, if you want Edie’s crew you’d better get in quick or her upstairs’ll grab them.’

Friday said nothing; she had no intention of poaching dead Edie Dansey’s girls, but she certainly wasn’t discussing anything of that nature with someone like Nancy Crouch.

‘Doesn’t matter anyway,’ Nancy said. ‘You don’t need a crew, this whole place runs on a series of rackets. You’ll find out.’ She scratched her armpit vigorously, then her groin. ‘Any more questions?’

Thinking of Rachel, Harrie asked, ‘What’s the hospital like?’

‘Crowded, not enough beds, but the doctor comes every day. Useless bugger. And I hope none of yous is knapped, ’cos the midwife isn’t a proper paid one.’

Nancy caught the quick, shared glance among the four girls and pounced. ‘Which one of yous is it? On the ship, eh? Well, at least someone made a bit of pocket money.’

Very frostily, Harrie asked, ‘The babies, the ones that come from England and those born here, they stay in the Factory with their mothers?’

‘’Til they turn four, then they’re sent to the orphan school.’

Harrie immediately thought of Evie Challis’s daughter, already five, and her heart sank. And all the other children over the age of three who had travelled on the
Isla
with their mothers. What had been the point?

‘Where is it? The orphan school?’ Rachel asked, her voice uneasy.

‘Down river. Not far.’

‘But who the hell stays here for four years?’ Friday said.

‘Mothers with kids under four do. But if they really want to get out, their kid might die.’ Nancy winced slightly. ‘There’s a lot of that.’

Horrified, Harrie gaped at her. She swallowed. ‘But the children who do go to the orphan school, the mother gets them back?’

‘Usually not ’til she gets her ticket of leave. Most employers won’t have a servant with kids hanging off her apron strings.’

‘So what happens to them?’ Rachel asked. ‘The little children?’

‘They stay in the orphan school,’ Nancy replied.

Sarah demanded, ‘Do they ever see their mothers?’

‘Sometimes. I suppose so. I dunno. I haven’t got any kids, have I? Yous’ll have to ask someone who has. Look, I got to be somewhere else now.’

‘Just a minute, please,’ Harrie said. ‘Can we send letters out?’

Nancy nodded.

‘Visitors?’

‘On Sundays, approved by Mrs G.’

Friday’s final question was predictable. ‘Drink and tobacco?’

‘If yous can pay, there’s ways.’ Nancy couldn’t resist a question of her own. ‘So come on, tell me, which one of yous is expectin’?’

The response was a stony silence.

Rachel, wide awake now that it was night and she should be asleep, got up from the mattress and crossed the floor to stand by a window. The September night was cool, but not cold. The air was different here, much clearer than it had been in London, and the stars were so very beautiful, the sort of thing a princess who lived in the sky might wear in her crown.

She had glimpsed something earlier in the evening, just after dusk, something even more beautiful than the stars, a dark shape that had glided on the silky air only a few feet from the window. She had run to see and minutes later more and more had sailed past, just a few at first then dozens and dozens, coming from the direction of the river, silent and graceful, the sharp black curves of their arms silhouetted against the bruised sky, their little sweet faces lifted to the rising moon.

She’d come back to the window often just in case there were more, even though Sarah said they were probably the same as in
England and only came out at dusk. But Rachel wasn’t convinced she was right. And she couldn’t sleep anyway.

She heard a noise behind her, and knew it was Harrie.

‘I can hear them, Harrie,’ she whispered. ‘I can hear them crying.’

Harrie rubbed her eyes. ‘Who, sweetie?’

It was her turn this time — Friday had got up an hour ago. They were terrified Rachel would have one of her fits; without any laudanum, there would be nothing to stop it escalating into a full-blown episode that would see her in the hospital, if not the penitentiary.

‘The girls.’

‘What girls?’

‘The girls who’ve died here.’

James Downey sat in the dining room of the King Hotel and sniffed the milk that had arrived in a small jug with his pot of tea; it smelt off so he pushed it aside. He preferred milk in his tea but was so accustomed at sea to going without that drinking it black was no hardship. He poured himself a cup, added sugar and stirred while contemplating the correspondence lying beside the remains of his breakfast. One letter he knew was from his wife Emily, but the handwriting on the second he didn’t recognise at all. And what an odd letter it was: instead of the usual pages folded and sealed with wax, this was a packet fashioned from what appeared to be a checked cotton handkerchief. On one side was attached, presumably sewn but with stitches so tiny he couldn’t detect them, a square of white fabric, and it was on this that his address had been written in ink, in a very tidy hand.

He put it aside and opened the letter from Emily, the third he’d received from her since he’d departed England. The first two had been carried on a clipper whose voyage to Sydney had evidently been faster than the
Isla
’s, and had, to his delight, been waiting for him when he’d arrived. This letter, dated the 29th of May, had arrived on another yesterday evening. Knowing Emily, he would receive many more before he set sail for home in a month or so.

He sipped as he read, turning the pages sideways to follow her handwriting where she had written down the paper as well as across. She thought she was saving money by doing this, but really all she was doing was hastening the arrival of the day when he would be forced to wear spectacles.

She was keeping busy, she said, preparing the garden for summer and helping her sister Beatrice with her four children. Beatrice’s children, all under the age of six, were quite a little troupe of tearaways, James privately thought, but he and Emily hadn’t managed to have any of their own yet and Emily absolutely adored children, even Beatrice’s, so she might as well get in some practice before theirs came along. He did wish she wouldn’t potter about in the garden, though — they had a man who came in to do that. Picking flowers for the parlour and the bedrooms was fine, but Emily insisted on actually digging holes with her trowel and planting things. Her mother was well, the weather was still a little unpredictable but improving, and there was a suspicion that Tara, Emily’s foxhound, had gone on one of her illicit evening jaunts and come home ‘in a certain condition’ again. She loved him and missed him very much. Emily, that was, not Tara.

James sighed and refilled his cup. After Tara’s previous litter Emily had cried for a week when he’d given them away. He’d had to. He owned a very nice house on the city side of Kensington, left to him by his mother and father along with a modest inheritance, but it was quite small, too small anyway to accommodate seven scampering puppies skidding on carpets, chewing furniture and piddling everywhere.

He felt a twinge of disappointment and loneliness at the knowledge that Emily wouldn’t yet have received any of his letters, as he’d only posted them three days earlier — his first opportunity. Perhaps he should have passed them to one of the
Flying Dutchman
’s doomed phantoms.

Folding Emily’s letter, he slipped it into the inside pocket of his coat, picked up the cotton packet and turned it over several
times. Obviously, the sender had not wanted anyone else to read the message contained within. He carefully slit one side with his penknife and removed a sheet of paper, looking immediately for the signature. Harriet Clarke. Well.

Her handwriting was as tidy as she was. James imagined poor Harrie must have died a thousand deaths plucking up the courage to actually write the letter. He was delighted to hear from her, but shocked to learn that legitimate medications had been confiscated from a Female Factory inmate. He wondered who currently held the position of Factory surgeon and fervently hoped it wasn’t still the man who had presided in 1826 when a convict by the name of Mary Ann Hamilton had died from starvation. This after being handcuffed and tied to the floor as punishment for mashing and eating the bones in her ration and picking and eating weeds. The surgeon at the time had attended the Factory so infrequently he hadn’t even known of the woman’s death until the coroner’s inquest. But that was prior to Governor Darling instigating his reforms and James had heard that things had improved somewhat since then.

He slid Harrie’s letter behind Emily’s and sat staring into his empty tea cup, thinking. He was at fault; he should have provided Rachel — or better still, Harrie — a letter explaining that the laudanum was essential to his patient’s wellbeing. Ex-patient now, however.

The first-class yard had trapped the noonday heat and the women, in particular the newcomers unaccustomed to the occasional sweltering days that accompanied an Australian spring, were crowded into any sliver of shade they could find.

Harrie and Sarah watched as Friday walked towards them, her wild copper hair ablaze in the sun. Rachel sat with her back pressed against the wall, hands shading her eyes.

Friday sat down. ‘I’ve been in the bog talking to a girl called Katie about this assignment business. She said it’s almost all domestic service.’

Fanning her face with the brim of her Factory bonnet, Sarah said, ‘Did you ask her how it works?’

‘Apparently if someone wants a servant they apply to old Tuckwell. The application gets matched with Gordon’s list of eligible inmates — that’s us from first class. The employer has to pay a bond, but if he or she doesn’t collect us within fourteen days they miss out and we come available again.’

‘What happens to the bond?’ Harrie asked.

‘Dunno. Goes in someone’s pocket, I suppose.’

Sarah said, ‘And what if you don’t like your assignment?’

‘Well, this Katie says there’s things you can do, but it’s more usual the assignees don’t like us.’

‘Why wouldn’t they?’ Harrie demanded, offended on principle.

‘Oh, because we get drunk, we’re shiftless, we’re idle, we won’t do as we’re told, and we’re rude and immoral.’

Harrie said, ‘Speak for yourself.’

‘I’m just saying what she said.’

‘So what can you do if you don’t like it?’ Sarah asked.

‘Plenty of things,’ Friday replied. ‘Be annoying or useless, or misbehave, but without doing anything criminal or you could end up in the penitentiary. Shagging the master is a popular one, apparently.’

Sarah frowned. ‘But what’s the point?’

‘The point is your master or mistress will be so fed up they’ll send you back here. And then you can get reassigned somewhere else. Or stay here for years if you play your cards right.’

‘Christ,’ Sarah said. ‘Why would you want to stay here?’

‘Because it would be better than wherever you were before.’

They all considered the high stone walls and dirt yards and hollow-eyed, shoeless women for a moment. Better?

‘And playing up to get sent back really works?’ Sarah swatted at a fly buzzing around her face.

‘So Katie says. As long as the authorities don’t catch on.’

Harrie looked doubtful. ‘Isn’t there a punishment for being returned? Girls would be doing it all the time, otherwise.’

Friday frowned. ‘I didn’t ask about that.’

‘Well, next time you’re on the throne for hours chatting away,’ Sarah suggested sarcastically, ‘perhaps you should.’

Rachel burst out, ‘I don’t want to have to sleep with my master!’

It occurred to Harrie that Rachel might not have realised she possibly wouldn’t be assigned at all. She took her hand. ‘Sweetie, try not to worry about it, please.’

‘I’ll kill myself before I do that.’

‘You won’t have to, love, really, you won’t.’

‘What’s that noise? I don’t like it,’ Rachel complained. ‘It’s hurting my head.’

The noise, whatever it was,
was
extremely irritating — a sort of high-pitched trilling.

Sarah said, ‘What do we actually get when we’re assigned? Did you ask that?’

‘Food, board and clothing. Katie’s already been assigned once. She’s a whore by trade. She’s hoping her next assignment will give her a bit of time off at night. She says she’s sick of having no money.’

Harrie looked confused, rather than shocked. ‘Convict girls can’t do that, can they?’

‘Well,
I’ll
have to,’ Friday said bluntly. ‘I don’t do any other sort of work. I’ll run out of dosh if I don’t.’

‘Is it against the law here?’ Sarah asked.

Friday shook her head. ‘Only operating a brothel. But Katie says convict girls caught whoring go straight to the penitentiary.’

‘Oh, Friday,’ Harrie said anxiously.

‘Oh, Harrie,’ Friday teased. ‘Don’t fret. I’ll be all right. Katie says there’s a place in Sydney Town called the Rocks where everyone goes. A bit rough but plenty of business with tars and the like. I’ll go there.’

‘If you can,’ Sarah said. ‘From what I’m hearing some girls get hardly any time off at all.’

‘Do you know what
I
heard?’ Harrie said suddenly. ‘I heard that men come here, to the Factory, to choose a wife.’

Friday and Sarah stared at her. Even Rachel stopped rubbing the back of her head and raised her eyes.

‘As though they were at Billingsgate or something?’ Sarah said, incredulous.

Harrie nodded. ‘All the women who want a husband line up and the man drops his handkerchief in front of the one he likes the look of and if she picks it up they get married.’

‘Not his trousers?’ Friday said, and hooted with laughter.

‘No, I think just the hanky.’

Sarah snorted in disgust. ‘God, why would you agree to that?’

‘Well, I suppose if you got a nice one you’d have more freedom than if you were assigned,’ Harrie replied. ‘Wouldn’t you? And someone to look after you?’

Friday rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t be daft. More likely some bastard after a free fuck and someone to scrub the shite stains out of his kecks. It’s whoring without the bother of having to stand on the street.’

Letting out a moan of distress, Rachel whimpered, ‘Harrie, can you make that noise stop? It’s
really
hurting.’

Harrie looked around but couldn’t see the source. The sound seemed to be coming from everywhere.

Rachel stood up, stumbled forwards a few steps then squatted, jammed her hands over her ears and squealed, ‘Make it stop, Harrie, make it
stop
!’

‘What the hell is it?’ Sarah rose and turned in a full circle, peering all around the yard.

The sound was extremely high-pitched, a sort of feverish rattling and ringing as though an army of miniature blacksmiths was banging away with a thousand tiny hammers. The
Isla
women were all staring about now, too, confused and startled, children grasping at their skirts. Even Bella, standing in the shade of a workshop wall, looked disconcerted.

Friday waved to attract Nancy Crouch’s attention. Nancy, sitting on the ground smoking a pipe, returned the wave but didn’t get up.

Friday went over. ‘What the hell is that bloody noise?’

‘Cicada,’ Nancy replied. ‘A bit early, though. You’re in my sun.’

Friday stepped aside. ‘A what?’

‘A cicada. Like a grasshopper, only bigger.’

‘Just
one
? God almighty.’ Friday looked up, down and around. ‘Where is it? I’m going to kill it.’

‘Do your best: the buggers are really hard to spot.’

‘Well, it’s sending us bloody barmy.’

‘Well, yous’d better get used to it, ’cos they do it all summer.’ Nancy glanced across at Rachel, crouched on the ground, rocking and moaning. ‘And it’s not as if
she
wasn’t gawney to start with, is it?’

Friday felt a surge of anger, but forced herself to walk away. There was no sense in starting a fight with Nancy Crouch while they might still need her.

‘It’s an insect,’ she said, looking down at Harrie, who’d slipped a comforting arm around Rachel. ‘Like a grasshopper.’

‘For God’s sake,’ Sarah said in disgust. This country was revolting. The weather might be warmer but the light was too sharp and the sun fierce and the seasons were completely the wrong way round, the trees were the most miserable specimens she had ever seen, and the wildlife — such as she’d experienced so far — was hideous. Strange birds shrieked and cackled, frogs from the river kept them awake at night with their throbbing, droning racket, there were enough bats overhead of an evening to blot out the moon, and the insects! The night before last, she had unrolled the mattress she and Friday shared, spread the blanket, sat down, and from underneath had skittered the hugest, most loathsome fat grey spider imaginable. She had almost shat herself, and had quite badly twisted her knee scrabbling out of the way. And now this!

‘Her headache’s getting worse,’ Harrie said. Rachel had woken up with it this morning. ‘This terrible noise isn’t helping.’