Nobody could sound as crude and awkward as Ellen Gluyas.
‘There was the women’, he said, ‘at the female factory. But who in chains could ever take up with a woman? with the iron eatin’ into ’is legs! An’ the women — they wasn’t chained, but as good as. The poor sluts was never ’ardly let draw breath. They was put to pickin’ oakum, an’ other occupations. They did the laundry for we men, so far as it was done.’
Her interest was to some degree requited; more when he rolled over and submitted her again to the length and weight of his body.
He grunted, and said, ‘I’ll tell yer,’ when ready to resume the topic they had dropped, ‘there was one — an Irishwoman — we’d look at each other. I never got to know ’er bloody name, not even after we was in a position to speak to each other. Some fight shy of askin’ or tellin’ names — like there are those who’ll not tell why they was sentenced or ’ow long they’re in for. Oh, some are only too ready to boast — make it sound bigger than it is — like you’ll find inderviduals in real life. An’ some are all for jemmyin’ a cove’s secrets out of ’im. But speakin’ for meself, I respect delicacy if I reckernize it in others.’
She had never felt more indelicate, but waited, and he continued after moving his hand until it rested in the moist hair between her thighs.
‘This woman I see’d often enough. She was one of a party they used to march down early from the female factory to the ’orspital — as we in our gang was trailing’ out to hoe along the point, or hull maize, or break stones for road-makin’. These women were nurses, see? though I’d lay a bet none of ’em was in any way experienced before they come to the Colony. They was that rough. Whores among ’em. But here it’s a case of a pig in a poke. Anyways, this Irish never missed lookin’ in our direction — in mine I was persuaded of course, though the others were shoutin’ at ’er. She’d those eyelashes you see on some of the Irish, so thick they look like they’re gummed together, or loaded with flies.’
She tried flickering her own lashes in the dark, but could barely persuade herself she still had them; they might have been singed off by the sun, or the rims of her eyelids eroded by privation.
She asked, ‘Well?’ because his silence was a protracted one.
‘That’s the way we pass our lives — a mouthful o’ pumpkin loaf, a quick draw or chew at the crow-minder’s bacca, a try at catchin’ sight of what’s inside the shifts of a gang of Dublin and Cockney molls. In between the ’ard labour. Or ’arder still when they strip us naked and string us up at the triangles — for the good of our moral ’ealth.’
She flinched.
‘I fell down once. I reckon I must of fainted, but I’m still not sure. The surgeon that was standin’ by — this was for our general physical well-bein’—kicked me to see if I wasn’t dead. I oughter been. When they pulled me to me feet I could ’ardly stagger. This was the worstest experience I ever ’ad of a bastin’. I would of said the bones was showin’ through me hide, whether or not. Anyways, the flies got to work on the cuts. I was turned septic. Yairs, I was a brake on the chain-gang, whether at the mill or the stone-bustin’. So this same surgeon — great-’earted, considerin’—ordered me to ’orspital.’
She was clinging to him in horror and disgust: the smell alone, of putrefying flesh (or rotten teeth). But either from abstraction or from conjuring this Irishwoman, he showed no sign of appreciating her sympathy.
‘I was deleerious at first. I would not of knowed nobody. The chaplain prayin’—very thoughtful — was about the first thing I saw. One Sunday, as a special treat, the Commandant visits the ’orspital. By now I can take notice — and hate. I can see ’im lookin’ at me, out of the corner of an eye like. ’E’s brought ’is missus, a pretty little piece with pink roses inside of ’er bonnet. You can see she’s off colour, like the patients from their own stench — some of ’em layin’ on the boards in their shit, that the nurses is none too willin’ ter dispose of. “It’s pitiful! What — oh, what can we do for them?” the lady squeaks from be’ind ’er ’ankercher. I felt downright sorry for ’er. Well, you did! She’s whisked away pretty smart though, soon as ever she give tongue.’
He remained mumbling awhile on the situation.
‘This Irishwoman would wipe my arse. She’d a rough hand. But the eyelashes. “When me strength returns,” I tell ’er, “you’ll help me, wontcher? Sooner if you ’ear ’em talk of dischargin’ me.” She made no promise, but I could tell by ’er stance she was dependable. An’ that is ’ow I bolted for the last and most successful time from Moreton Bay.’
Her throat had grown bitter from thirst. She would have gone outside to quench it, regardless of whether he had finished his story. Were her promises equal in his mind to the Irishwoman’s silence? It tormented her.
‘One evenin’ she distracted the guard afore they was due to be changed. It’d been a hollycaust of a day. They was leanin’ sweaty on their muskets, only thinkin’ to be marched off to the barracks to their grub. I climbed the wall with the ’elp of a barrel I’d ’ad me eye on. Even the spikes was of assistance. Though I’ve a scar or two ter show for it.’
From his tone of voice she thought this must be all, when presently he all but crushed her in what she knew to be gratitude: she was acting as proxy for this Irishwoman of gummed-up lashes; she must not, she did not, feel resentful; she returned his embraces as though she personally deserved them.
It was the woman herself who might have resented, and hearing this Mrs Roxburgh when the fever was abated, ‘Well, now you are free Jack, and will remain so if I have anything to do with it.’
He did not answer, perhaps did not hear for the silence which had built up around them.
It did not prevent her hearing the feet approaching from two directions at once. Converging on her, so it seemed. She was lying stretched on the scrolled couch. The striped cerise silk blazed in a sunlight such as Cheltenham had never seen, the gilding of the scrollwork bronzed and blistered by unnatural heat (the gold leaf was in fact peeling like sunburnt skin). She shaded her eyes and rearranged her neck on the bolster as though expecting an assignation. She had shed, she noticed, the fringe of leaves which was her normal dress, and the hair in her thighs appeared to have been formally curled in the same style as the scrolls of the daybed on which she was waiting, on cushions melting into a dark cerise sea.
All around, dust was proliferating amongst the stones. To one side, where the gutter would have lain had this been a street, an evaporated creek had left behind wrinkles of curdled mud. A pair of heifers in milk too early for their years meandered past her, snuffing at the dust for the odd blade of grass until goaded into a lurching run by the flies stinging their rumps.
All this while the feet, she realized, had been approaching.
It was the contingent of women marching under guard from their quarters to the hospital. Their frocks of a coarse, grey-green cloth fitted them shamefully about the breasts and buttocks; their boots were designed only for plodding.
She lay smoothing her nakedness, it could only have been waiting for her lover, under her neck the bolster in sweating cerise. Soon after, he did approach with an assurance which her promises must have stimulated.
But she thought it as well to remind, ‘I am the one on whom you depend,’ before taking possession of him.
He affirmed, by word as well as physical ardour, that it had not been any but herself, never Mab, and least of all this Irish moll.
As she covered him with her breasts and thighs, lapping him in a passion discovered only in a country of thorns, whips, murderers, thieves, shipwreck, and adulteresses, the gilded day-bed refused to yield, nor yet when one of its legs screamed.