Beyond The Blue Mountains

The women were lined up on one portion of the deck. Some way off were the men. Carolan looked for Marcus; she could not see him. Esther stood beside her, terrified. Looking along the lines of faces whose skin had acquired that peculiar quality of bad cheese, Carolan thought what a contrast they made to the sparkling sea and the colourful land. So beautiful, so straight, those trees; so ugly, so distorted, so stunted, this pitiful collection of human beings.

Flash Jane told the company that she had heard through a friend that there was a very comfortable brothel in Sydney, whose proprietress always came to look over cargoes in search of “servants”.

“He! He!” laughed Flash Jane in anticipation.

“If you play your cards right, they say the convict life ain’t so bad … for a woman.”

The little girl whose brother had been burned to death clutched at Carolan’s fingers.

“Do they have chimleys there? Do they have chimleys?”

“You have grown too big,” said Carolan.

“If they have chimneys they would not think of using you to clean them.”

The child’s smile appalled Carolan; it was like the smile of an idiot.

“I have growed. I have growed!” she said, and stood on tiptoe.

A Marine came walking past them.

“Quiet! In line there!” He dropped the butt end of his musket on a woman’s foot. She screamed. He passed on, laughing.

Indignation rose in Carolan. The humiliation of this! Lined up on show, like cattle. She could have wept with the indignity of it, but she dared not weep. She held her head high, and Esther came nearer; their fingers touched. She could feel Esther’s terror through her fingers. She knew Esther was praying silently all the time.

Boats had been rowing out to the ship ever since they had stood here, and that was quite an hour, Carolan thought. Her eyes ached with the unaccustomed brightness; she would have liked to have fallen down on the deck and slept. She looked at Esther’s face. It had that queer look which they all had that of cheese which is going bad, a little green and yellowish-white; the bones of Esther’s face were very prominent; but starvation and confinement had not been able to dull the splendour of her hair. It was unkempt; it was dirty; but the sun’s rays touched it and made it shine like a field of ripe English corn. People would notice that hair. She thought of Flash Jane’s words and her evil grin. A proprietress looking for servants … Oh, not that for Esther! Not that!

A man with an eyeglass and a very elegant coat had come aboard. He stood near them, exchanging a word with one of the Marines. He stuck his eyeglass into his eye, quizzed the rows of female convicts, said something to the Marine and they laughed coarsely.

“By gad!” His voice drifted over to Carolan.

“A lovely crew! What beauties, eh?”

He approached.

“By gad!” he drawled.

“By gad…”

Flash Jane tittered. One of the women began to sing in order to call attention to herself.

“Silence, you old whore!” cried the Marine.

Carolan watched the eyeglass turn on one woman, then on another. It was getting nearer to her and to Esther. She gripped Esther’s hand; Esther cowered close. The indignity of it! The humiliation! Hot colour flamed into Carolan’s face; the eyeglass was approaching her; instinctively she knew that when it reached her it would pause.

Another man had appeared. He was very fair and very large, with big, irregular features. The captain was with him, and from the respectful attention the captain was giving him it appeared that he was a person of some importance. His mouth was a straight line; he looked as if he could be excessively cruel, coldly cruel. Carolan was alert now. Neither she nor Esther must fall into the hands of the man with the eyeglass.In her panic, Carolan told herself that anything would be preferable to that. She began to bargain, which was the only way of prayer she knew: “Please let the other one see us. Do not let that eyeglass find us. If You will only not let that happen, I will… I will… try to believe in You: I will try…”

This way, Mr. Masterman,” the captain was saying. This way, sir. They freshen up, sir. Soap and water will work wonders, sir. A cargo always looks very frowsy on arrival; it’s the conditions aboard.”

“Frowsy is a very mild way of expressing it,” said the man who had been addressed as Mr. Masterman. His tone was cold; his words clipped. The eyeglass was very neat now.

“Hello, ladies.”

The little girl began to scream suddenly.

“I won’t go up a chimley! I won’t! I won’t! I’ll jump in the sea. I won’t be burned to death!”

Mr. Masterman and the captain had paused. They stared at the child who had thrown herself down on the deck and was sobbing wildly.

The Marine kicked her.

“Get up, you baggage! You ugly imp, get up!”

She did not move and he kicked her again.

“Get up, I say! Get up!”

“What is it that the child says?” inquired Mr. Masterman.

“It is giving themselves airs, sir, to call attention to themselves. A taste of the lash will do her good.”

The man with the eyeglass stared down at the child.

“Ugly little devil. Cripple, ain’t she?”

Carolan stepped forward unthinkingly.

“She has been badly frightened. She was nearly burned to death.”

They were all looking at Carolan now. The man with the eyeglass quizzed her with insolent interest.The captain’s face was scarlet; so was that of the Marine.

“Get back into your place. Speak when you are spoken to.” He turned to Masterman. These convicts have no shame, sir. They push themselves forward to get attention.”

“Bless me!” said the man with the eyeglass. He rocked backwards and forwards on his heels.

“I believe it is a redhead. And Dammed, I do declare a little soap and water would make a beauty of the gal!”

Carolan was limp with terror. Impulsively, foolishly, she had done that which she had most longed to avoid; she had called attention to herself. She remembered some of the stories she had heard of prisoners who were taken into households; she guessed the fate of anyone taken into the household of a man such as this one.

It was one of the important moments of her life, and she knew it. She was aware of everything about her, the rocking ship, the changing sea and sky, the bright plumage of birds, the green lush land before her. Perhaps she forgot her cynicism and prayed then, humbly: she did not know; all she was aware of afterwards was that some instinct made her turn her head towards Mr. Masterman, to hold him with her burning eyes, to beg, to plead.

“Save me!” said her eyes. And then as though from a long way off she heard his voice.

“My wife wants a couple to work in the kitchen. She looks a strong girl, that one.”

Carolan thought she was going to faint. The smell of filthy bodies in that fresh air enveloped her. Desperately she fought her faintness. She took an almost imperceptible step forward, and she was dragging Esther with her.

Those queer grey eyes withdrew their gaze. It seemed like minutes before he spoke, but actually it was only a second or two. He said: “Those two look all right. Those are the two I will take.”

The man with the eyeglass dropped it. Carolan heard his exclamation “Gad, sir! I saw the girl first. By gad, Mr. Masterman …” But there was defeat in his voice, which told her that Mr. Masterman was an important person in the new land for which they were bound.

When Carolan and Esther went to Sydney it was little more than a settlement, for several years were to elapse before Lachlan Macquarie with the help of a transported architect, was to replace its wood, wattle and daub with stone and brick, and straighten out in some measure the confused crookedness of its streets. The house into which Carolan and Esther were taken was one of the grandest in Sydney, standing on the corner of an up-hill road that branched out of Sergeant-Major’s Row, now George Street, and which was little more than a track which drivers of carts had followed among the low hills. From the upper part of the house it was possible to get a perfect view of what has been called the most beautiful harbour in the world, with its sand and gravel beaches, and its many indentations fringed with green foliage. When Carolan had first seen it, having been sent to clean the attics, she was lost in admiration for so much that was beautiful; and then in one of the narrow, winding, up-hill roads she saw the bent backs and manacled limbs of a chain gang returning from work, and went quickly from the window, wondering if it were possible that one of those scarcely human creatures was Marcus. She had been lucky, she and Esther. So much that was horrible might have happened to them, but they had had the good fortune to be taken into Gu