“Do you think she is really ill?” asked Carolan.
“Illness is a funny thing. There’s people who thinks they has it, and if they thinks hard enough they’ve got it. That’s illness just as the smallpox or anything else is. Well, that’s the sort of illness she’s got. Why, I remember a year or so back there was an epidemic of fever and people was afraid of its spreading; bless me. if she didn’t take to her bed and was burning hot, and the doctor coming. It wasn’t fever she’d got, but it was something well nigh as bad, and if it hadn’t been for Doctor Martin …” Margery smiled affectionately as she said the doctor’s name’… if it hadn’t been for him, she’d have had fever all right. That’s her for you.”
They sat round the table, Esther, Jin, Polly. Margery, James and Carolan. eating supper of bread and cheese, which they washed down with ale. It was lax in Margery’s kitchen. It might have been a servants’ hall back in England. Where else in Sydney were convict servants treated like this! Margery was responsible of course. She sat at the head of the table with James on her right hand and Carolan on hex left. She was well pleased, for the presence of James meant that she was still attractive enough to bring him round to the basement every night, though he had his own quarters with the other men in some outbuildings near the house. And there was Carolan, with her smouldering eyes and her lovely budding body to remind Margery of what she was a mere twenty years ago.
There was a dinner-party going on above stairs, and Jin wore a white apron over her yellow dress; she looked attractive in the lamplight.
Carolan said: Tell us what the table looked like, Jin.”
“It looked all right,” said Jin.
Margery said: “The table looked beautiful. I done it meself. The linen! And the glasses! I took in the pudding meself, pretending it was to see all was well, but really to have a look at them. Now he was at the head of the table, and a handsome man he is, and mighty pleased with himself he was looking too, and do you wonder! Quite some of the best people in Sydney was at his dinner table. And her… well, there she was at the other end of the table… in blue. Her fair hair’s getting thin, I noticed, and she was too pale. Too much lying a-bed, my lady, I says to meself.”
“Lazy old woman!” said Jin.
“Why should we slave like we do ..:
Margery’s eyes flashed.
“Now that’s enough of that. I’ll tell you why. Because you’re nothing more nor less than a murderess, and she… she’s a lady of the land. Another word from you and I ask James to get down the whip for me … aye, and to lay it about you for me. It’s mutiny, that’s what it is!”
Jin lifted a lazy eyelid and surveyed James. It was the first time she had glanced in his direction. There was something fiery and passionate about the gipsy, stormy and fascinating. James stared at her; Margery flushed a dirty pink; her jowls quivered. She looked very old, thought Carolan.
Esther said: “I saw her; she was coming down the stairs and the kitchen door was open. I saw her pass along the upper floor. Her dress was shimmering blue. She looked…”
“I know.” said Margery curtly, ‘like one of them angels you’re always praying to!”
Esther blushed and cast down her head.
“Here, Poll, you go and get me that bottle out of me cupboard,” said Margery.
“Go on. Don’t gape. Look sharp.”
“Tell us about her dress,” said Carolan to Esther.
“It was blue, and there was some silver about it, and she had silver slippers. She looked like a fairy … she is so small.”
“A sickly fairy!” said Margery, still angry.
“And next to him at the table was that Miss Charters. A big, bold girl, she is, and looking for a husband, if you’ll be asking me. There she was, right next to him, and you could see how he would have been the one she would have chosen if it wasn’t for the fact that he had a wife already.”
“Perhaps they’ll get rid of her,” said Poll, dribbling in sudden excitement.
“Perhaps …”
She came to the table and laid the bottle of gin beside Margery’s plate.
Margery caught her by her ear.
“Look here, girl! Don’t you run away with the idea that because you commit murders, other people do. Decent folk don’t, I tell you. There’s something bad about people as takes life, and I always have said it.”
Poll’s lips began to quiver. Her mind was unhinged by the murder of her baby. Carolan had seen her in her bed, holding a roll of dirty towelling against her breast, crooning over it. She had seen her in the light of morning, holding the towelling against her, asleep, with a smile of content about her face; she was dreaming of course that it was her baby she held; she could not go to sleep at night until she had assured herself that her baby was not dead and that she held it in her arms. Poor Poll, she talked incessantly of murder; during the day she tried to pretend that it was a natural thing … people did it as easily as they laughed or sang. It was the only way she could console herself.
Carolan had deftly worked a piece of flannel into the shape of a doll. She had sewn buttons on it for eyes, and had drawn on it a nose and mouth with a piece of charcoal. It had been touching to see the way the girl seized it. She took it to bed every night. How cruel of Margery to speak in that way to the girl. But Margery was put out because Jin was still regarding James from under those heavy lids of hers.
Carolan longed for the comparative peace of the bedroom, with Jin lying on her back, her hair a black cloud on her pillow, and Poll cuddling her doll and thinking it was her baby; and Esther, having said her prayers of thanksgiving, lying sleeping in her bed, while Margery and James groaned and giggled, and sighed and chuckled together in Margery’s creaking bed.
Now here in the kitchen the atmosphere had become sultry with the rumble of coming storm. Margery’s big brown eyes, usually soft with reminiscence, were hard in her red face; she kept looking at the whip over the chimney-piece and she lifted her head proudly, flaunting her freedom.
“Here!” she said.
“Let’s have a drop of gin. There’s no kick in this grog. Now gin’s the stuff. Why, back home you can get rolling blind for twopence. Bring up your glasses.”
“Not for me,” said Esther.
“Oh, not for you, eh? Too good, are you! But not too good to thieve from the lady you works for. I’ll have to keep my eye on you, me lady. You takes from one, you takes from the other.”
Carolan said: “Give me your glass, Esther.” She took it, flashed a warning glance at Esther, smiled at Margery.
“There!” said Margery.
“Drink that up, you sly little cat! And don’t think you deceive me for a minute with your praying to God.”
Carolan wanted to comfort Margery, poor Margery to whom youth meant a good deal because love went with it.
Esther took the glass with trembling fingers. Her nerve had been broken in Newgate; temporarily she was lulled into a certain security, but she could be jerked out of it in a second. Here in the Masterman kitchen she could do the work allotted to her, the convict garb did not hurt her because she was meek of heart and she was innocent; she took on a good deal of Carolan’s work, and enjoyed doing it, for she felt she owed to Carolan a debt which she would never, never repay as long as she lived. She said her prayers each night, before she slept the sleep of a quiet conscience. But embedded in her mind was the memory of the agony she had endured in Newgate, when those women surrounded her, stripped her of her clothes, and did to her what she preferred to forget and never could as long as she lived. Sometimes she would awake in the night, screaming, because she had dreamed that that ring of hideously cruel faces was closing in on her. Then Carolan, strangely gentle, unlike herself, would lean over to her bed, take her hand, waken her.