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Being confined to the basement, it was only rarely that Carolan saw the upper part of the house. The servants were kept to the basement as much as possible, for they were convicts, all except Margery the cook, and she was on ticket of leave. Their bedroom a huge room which every one of them shared was in the basement. Its floor was of earth, and one of its walls was the side of the hill against which the house had been built. There was a small grating high in one wall; and this place was considered adequate, even luxurious, accommodation for convicts.
It was at the end of January when they arrived, and in the next weeks the summer weather grew intolerable. The mosquitoes were a plague to torture English skins, and there were no sleeping nets available in the basement. The moist heat was intense and oppressive; there was no respite. It was too hot to work by day; it was too hot to sleep at night.
Esther, who was adaptable, was almost happy, but Carolan rebelled against this new life, and as the memory of Newgate and the convict ship became more and more remote, her dissatisfaction grew greater.
But Margery, the priestess of the kitchen, the ticket of leave woman, was drawn more towards Carolan than towards Esther. Margery had been sentenced to seven years transportation for bigamy, and had served four years of her sentence in Mr. Masterman’s establishment when she had been given a ticket of leave and put in charge of the convict servants. Having just come into freedom she was ostentatiously aware of it. She flaunted that freedom; she boasted of it; and she was witheringly contemptuous of those who had not yet attained it. She wore blue merino, and when she worked in the kitchen, a white apron over it; she smoothed it happily, contrasting it with the yellow garments the others wore. She was not unkind, but lazy and selfish, sensual and mischievous. Her most precious possessions were her memories and the bunch of keys she wore at her waist, these latter the symbols of freedom. She talked incessantly of her past, and Carolan soon learned that she had begun by being the wife of a small tradesman; he was a good man, but he did not satisfy her for long, and she ran away with a travelling actor who deserted her after three months, when she took up with a pedlar. She loved all men; she couldn’t help it, she told them; there was something about men that appealed to her. They were so strong, and yet such babies. She loved them all. from Mr. Masterman to James who did odd jobs about the house. And the pedlar had been a proper man with whom life had had its ups and downs but had managed to be excellent fun. She had travelled everywhere with him; he had said she was a wonderful woman at getting the men and girls to buy their goods, and so she was. She could sell anything … particularly to men. But the pedlar was a jealous man, and once he had seen her trying to sell a book to a farmer behind a water-butt, and he had been so angry, poor, sweet man, that he had walked off and left her. The farmer had a wife, and would have none of her either; so she had wandered on and on until she came to a cottage, and in this cottage lived a curate all alone, and she had stayed with him; and the poor soul had had but one bed which he had wanted to give up to her, but she would not have that; so they shared the bed, and he, poor religious man, had wanted to marry her after that, fearing he might be damned if he did not. She had had to soothe his poor worried mind, and that was how she committed bigamy and came at last to be a ticket of leave woman in Mr. Masterman’s kitchen. She had taken James, the odd-job man, for her friend now. He used to lean on the kitchen-sill and she would feed him with tit-bits. She was proud of her friendship with James, for he was a free man… free enough in this town of convicts, that was on ticket of leave like herself. Mr. Masterman trusted James. He went about the place as he liked; sometimes he rode out to one of Me Masternan’s stations and worked there for a week or two. At midnight he used to knock at the basement bedroom door, and Margery would let him in; they would whisper together, keeping up a pretence that the others did not hear, nor even guess at these midnight visits of James’s.
Margery, who liked to talk of her own life, had a curiosity about the lives of others.
“What brought you here?” she demanded of Carolan and Esther.
Carolan told her.
“H’m!” said Margery.
“I don’t know as I like thieves in me kitchen.”
“We were wrongly accused,” protested Carolan.
“We are not thieves!”
Margery and Jin, the parlourmaid, rocked with laughter.
“All convicts are accused wrong … according to them,” explained Margery.
“I can’t think what Mr. Masterman can be thinking of to bring thieves into me kitchen!”
“Look here!” Carolan said hotly.
“I never stole anything. If you think I did, if you think I’m not good enough to mix with you… I… I… I’ll ask to be moved right away.”
Margery put her hands on fat hips and rolled about in delight.
“Hark to her! Hark to her! Now who do you think you are, my dear? The Queen of England? The Princess of Wales? Just hark at her. She will ask to be moved. And listen to her, Jin; just listen, girl! The way she talks… all haughty, eh?” She turned to Esther.
“And what about you?”
“I know it is of no use to say so,” said Esther, ‘but I am i
Margery seemed overcome with merriment and at length gasped out: “I ain’t laughed so much since my curate put his I spectacles on his nose and said “Well, if you really think I ought to come in with you … I will. Perhaps if we pray for great strength of mind…” No, I ain’t laughed so much since then!”
It was Carolan she liked though. Not Esther. Mealy mouthed, that was Esther. Carolan, she fondly supposed, was something of what she herself had been at that age.
“Thieving was something I never could abide,” she said.
“I
wouldn’t have thought you would have been sent out for thieving; you don’t look the kind. Still, you are here now and I don’t mind telling you you are the dead spit of what I was at your age. I was married then though; we had our little shop. There I was. ladling out the sugar; we used to make love behind the sacks of flour. Fu
She looked with disfavour on Esther. Thin! Lovely hair though. Not one for the men. and the men wouldn’t be for her either, because men were for those who liked them, and she didn’t blame them for that!
Jin, the parlourmaid, was a good-looking girl of the gipsy type. She had flashing black eyes and vital, black, curling hair; in her ears she wore brass earrings, and she had tied a piece of string about the waist of her yellow frock to accentuate the smallness of her waist and the line of the bosom above.
“Now Jin here,” said Margery, and her voice took on a note almost of reverence as she spoke, “Jin was transported for attempted murder. She stabbed her lover. Mind you, I wouldn’t say but what he deserved it; he was carrying on with somebody else right under her very nose, so she stabbed him. Now I was never a one for violence myself and a good deal I had to put up with particularly from my pedlar! He would go take his pack into a house, and, given half a chance, he’d take advantage of the lady of the house in the twinkling of an eye and scarce say thank you. There was a man to take up with, and mad he could make me, but I trust I’m a woman who can control herself. Still. I understand Jin.”
Jin eyed both Carolan and Esther from under lowered brows. She was sullen, not inclined to be friendly.
“Jin’s got a mighty temper, she has!” chuckled Margery.
“Show ‘em what you carries around with you, Jin!”