Needless to say, she was not at all pleased by this improvised entertainment.
Nor did the behaviour of her guests do much to improve her spirits. The men demolished her dinner without ceremony, practically ignoring her. Their conversation concerned itself entirely with preparations for the coming festivities. The Battery would fire a seven-gun salute. The regimental band would play ‘God Save the King’. The Lodge would be constituted in a glade near Captain Piper’s house, and would then march in solemn procession to the scene of foundation laying, where corn would be scattered, wine poured, oil dispensed.
‘And the Governor,’ Captain Sanderson concluded, ‘will not be present.’
‘He is a brother,’ Lieutenant Cox demurred. ‘Bombay Lodge number one.’
‘If he was a founding member of London Lodge number one, he would not be welcome,’ Captain Sanderson retorted. ‘I refuse to associate with that fellow, or his low-born minions. I will no longer set foot in his house.’ Then, having gobbled up more than his share of the dinner, Captain Sanderson demanded that he and his companions retire to the mess, where they might partake of a particularly good port lately acquired, and acquaint brothers Grant and Miller with their decisions regarding the ceremony.
No one but Dorothea had any fault to find with this plan. As a result, she was left to drink her coffee alone; she was already abed, and long asleep, when Charles finally returned. The next morning, she remonstrated with him. It had been neither kind nor thoughtful, she said, to impose on her in such a fashion. This was not an eating-house—she required time to prepare even for small gatherings. But Charles replied that she had only her want of enthusiasm to blame. Their formal dinner, three nights before, had been preceded by so much sighing and fretting and moaning that it had been a punishment to set foot in the door. Consequently, he had decided to test her resources—and assure his own peace of mind—by shocking her into a demonstration of hospitality.
‘And I was right, you see,’ he said. ‘The dinner last night was admirable. There was no cause for complaint. You are far more capable than you give yourself credit for, Mrs Brande—with a little prompting, you could run a house as social as Mrs Molle’s.’
‘Mrs Molle has a staff!’ Dorothea replied. ‘Mrs Molle has money! I used a week’s worth of eggs last night in that wretched omelette!’
‘If you were not constantly allowing the servants to consume our leftovers, we would be better placed.’
‘But—’
‘It will not be a weekly event, Mrs Brande. But we must take our proper place in the society of New South Wales. And this can only be done with a little more effort on our part.’
Dorothea was left to seethe over this declaration, for Charles—as always—withdrew to the barracks before any difficulties could properly be discussed. A little more effort? On our part? Dorothea racked her brain for any contribution that Charles might have made to their recent soirées. Impossible man! He had no appreciation of her careful budgets, her painstakingly planned bills of fare, her ceaseless monitoring of fuel consumption, her struggles with inferior colonial ingredients. With mounting anger, she considered her position. Would she have to feed Captain Sanderson once a fortnight until they left the colony? Would she have to torture herself regularly with the task of serving different dishes to the same guests, while at the same time bowing to her husband’s selective dietary requirements?
She had little choice, of course. She was an officer’s wife, after all, and it was a requirement of her position that she should throw open her house to his regiment. But she resented the necessity. She resented it so much, in light of the degree of enjoyment that she expected to derive from it, that she felt almost compelled to withdraw her cooperation in other matters. She borrowed some gothic novels from Mrs Bent. She decided that, henceforth, Charles would simply have to endure whatever she served up to him, indigestible or not. And she refused to attend the ceremony that was scheduled to take place, with masonic flourishes, on the site of Captain Piper’s proposed villa.
‘I cannot,’ she declared, on the very morning of the celebration.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Her husband turned on her, astonished.
‘I cannot,’ she repeated. ‘I have a headache.’
There was a brief silence. Then, ‘Nonsense,’ said Charles.
‘Excuse me, but I am quite in earnest.’
‘As am I. You will kindly attend me, Mrs Brande.’
‘I cannot.’
‘You can and you will.’
‘I told you, I have a headache.’
‘I do not believe you.’
Dorothea rose from the breakfast table. ‘That is your misfortune,’ she said coolly, and moved towards the door. Charles caught her wrist, however, as she passed him.
‘Do not turn your back on me!’ he gasped. ‘How dare you speak in this way?’
‘How dare I speak in this way?’ Dorothea exclaimed shrilly. ‘You call me a liar, and you accuse me of misconduct! A proper husband would have shown concern for my plight!’
‘I call you a liar because you are a liar! You no more have a headache than I do!’
‘Let go!’
‘You are determined to defy me! You mope and sulk and glare, and expect me to endure it!’
‘Because you come home at all hours, and expect me to endure it!’
‘Why should I come home to face your sullen fits, may I ask? By God, I’ll have no more of this! Come here.’ He began to drag her out of the room, and up the hallway. ‘Come on, damn you!’
‘What—what are you—? Unhand me!’
‘You are going to get dressed, you are going to arrange your hair, and you are going to accompany Mrs Molle to Eliza Point.’
‘I will not!’
‘Oh, but you will. By my oath, you will!’ Hauling at her wrist, clutching her arm in a painful grip, he pulled her slowly towards the bedroom—while she fought him with every ounce of weight at her disposal.
Then suddenly a slight noise, or perhaps a shift in the light, informed them that they were not alone. Charles stiffened, and grimaced. Dorothea looked around.
Daniel loomed, large and shadowy, at the end of the passage. Dorothea was reminded of how forbidding his appearance actually was. Not that he had adopted a menacing stance or expression. But he was so big. So big and so still.
With such dark, unreadable eyes.
‘What is it?’ Charles said sharply—imperiously. Then he seemed to come to his senses. Aware, perhaps, that he was cutting a very undignified figure in front of a common Irish manservant, he released his wife. Breathing heavily, he surveyed her for a moment, before his gaze returned to Daniel.
‘Well?’ he blazed. ‘What do you think you’re doing?! Get out of here! Go on!’
Daniel looked at Dorothea, who was nursing her wrist.
‘Get out before I run you through, you Irish pig!’ Charles roared, enraged to such a degree by Daniel’s defiance that he actually put his hand to his sword—before remembering he did not have it on him. Dorothea, seeing this, was alarmed.
‘Th-thank you, Daniel,’ she stammered. ‘That will be all.’
The convict swallowed. He retreated a step, with obvious reluctance. He seemed suddenly uncertain.
Charles muttered something, and stormed into the bedroom. Fearing the worst, Dorothea ordered Daniel to go.
‘Go!’ she yelped. ‘Get out!’
But Charles, when he emerged from the bedroom with his sword, did not attempt to pursue Daniel. Without affording his wife so much as a glance, he left the house—by way of the front door. Dorothea saw him march through the gate and set off in the direction of the barracks, not once looking back. He did not even summon Jack, who (as far as Dorothea knew) was still in the kitchen. No doubt he, too, had heard the shameful sounds of marital discord. How could any of the servants have missed them? Shutting the front door, Dorothea turned around. Daniel was no longer present. He had withdrawn from her sight. Nevertheless, conscious of his undoubted
propinquity, Dorothea took care to bury herself under her bedcovers before her mute shock finally gave way to noisy despair.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
DURING THE WEEKS THAT followed, Dorothea often had cause to remember one of her sister’s comments regarding marriage. This remark had been made not long before Dorothea’s own wedding, when Margaret had taken her aside and raised certain matters that she had felt duty bound to address, in light of the coming nuptials. ‘As the only surviving member of your immediate family,’ she had said, ‘I feel that I must speak to you of matrimony, its duties and pleasures, in the absence of our parents—who would more properly have assayed the subject, had they not been deceased.’
She had gone on to point out that two persons should marry only when of an age sufficient to be stable, not stubborn; when their circumstances are easy, and have a reasonable hope of increase; when they meet with one whose tastes, religion, morals and habits of thinking are to be admired; when their love is firm and ardent, but at the same time reasonable; when they themselves are capable of making many little sacrifices, in return for much comfort and enjoyment; and lastly, when they are perfectly sure that their love is built upon reason, not upon caprice. ‘A face, for example,’ Margaret had said obliquely (the only doubt she came close to expressing with regard to the haste of her sister’s decision), ‘is too slight a foundation for happiness. Beauty fades, as you know, and is only skin deep. Sound principles and an amiable temper are far more productive of domestic felicity.’
Upon being assured that Dorothea was convinced of the correctness of her choice, Margaret had gone on to speak in more general terms about the state of matrimony. She had referred, rather vaguely, to the more trying ‘intimacies’ involved. She had touched on children, and how the arrival of the first heralds the end of one marriage, and the beginning of another. She had quoted Boswell’s epigram, which concludes with the words:
But now my kitten’s grown a cat,
And cross like other wives.
Alas, alas, my honest Mat,
I fear she has nine lives.
‘It should not be forgotten,’ she had concluded, with reference to this verse, ‘that when you do marry, you should not expect more from life than life will afford. Married bliss is only as constant as the human heart. You may often find yourself out of humour, and wondering at your situation, but recall, in these circumstances, the wisdom of Ecclesiastes: To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven … My dearest Thea, marriage has its seasons, like everything else. Only remember that, and you will be blessed.’
Dorothea remembered it. She remembered it as the days passed, and her communication with her husband dwindled to a series of sharp exchanges—usually on the subject of burned meat, social invitations or evenings with Captain Sanderson. Though somewhat liverish, Charles was often away from home at this time, for he seemed determined that no one should doubt his commitment to his fellow officers. Every second or third night he would arrive back very late, somewhat the worse for liquor, and expose Dorothea to the kind of indignities that will always be the fate of a wife who would prefer not to grant her husband his conjugal rights. They never spoke of these nocturnal skirmishes. Dorothea was under the impression that Charles might not have any recollection of them. But they added to her discomfort, and drove her from the house more often than had been her custom up to this point.
For Charles’s presence seemed to linger within the house even when he himself was absent—and Dorothea was alarmed at her own response to that presence. Even thinking about him, in certain contexts, was enough to ignite within her a sudden, flaring anger that left her shaken, dazed and sick. She could not understand it. She was concerned lest she might, indeed, be succumbing to hysterical symptoms. Surely such a response was unjustified? Surely a husband who was admittedly boorish, insensitive and perhaps a trifle prejudiced did not merit the kind of fury that should more properly have been bestowed on a wife-beating, moral bankrupt? After all, Charles was sickly. To a good wife, her husband’s poor health should always merit a sympathetic response.
Dorothea sought comfort in the Scriptures. She strove to do her duty, attending to each meal and garment and dusty corner with meticulous efficiency. She avoided Daniel, whose role as a witness she found particularly hard to deal with; she could no longer meet his eye, and was certainly unable to speak to him in anything but the most stilted and awkward of tones.
She also took to frequenting Mrs Molle’s house, where she hoped to discover some hint of the means by which Mrs Molle conducted her marital affairs. To Dorothea, the Molles had always presented an admirably united appearance, despite Mrs Molle’s autocratic tendencies and the Colonel’s ponderous, somewhat sly demeanour. How had they effected such a perfect understanding, and a bond so durable that it had survived the stresses of Egypt and New South Wales? How was an officer’s wife expected to conduct herself, within the confines of her marriage? Dorothea attempted to elicit advice from Mrs Molle on several occasions, always phrasing her queries in a vague and general manner. The answers that she received led her to conclude that the responsibility for wedded happiness lay almost entirely at the wife’s door. Her self-sufficiency, her good health and her enthusiasm for the Regiment seemed to be at the core of Mrs Molle’s harmonious marital relations.
She had been formed by Nature to play the part of an officer’s wife.
‘Too much altogether is made of the inimitable blessings of home and hearth,’ she advised Dorothea. ‘Too many people equate domestic happiness with a fixed and permanent abode. They deplore the necessity of moving from place to place—they need to call one spot their own. Myself, I agree with Oliver Goldsmith: Still to ourselves in every place consign’d/our own felicity we make or find. With proper strength of purpose, it is possible to create a home in any savage land.’
‘But surely not in this country?’ Dorothea objected. She raised the possibility that New South Wales had a detrimental effect on character, and that the colony itself, therefore, could in part be blamed for the examples of misconduct that abounded among its population. Mrs Molle, however, demurred. She herself found the colony’s climate quite bearable, its society tolerable and its vistas remarkable. What exactly did Mrs Brande mean?
‘Well …’ Dorothea tried to explain herself. ‘The violence,’ she said. ‘The felonry. The unreasonable vindictiveness …’
Mrs Molle smiled.
‘My dear,’ she retorted, ‘if it is violence and felonry that offends you, you must never set foot in Egypt. Every Egyptian is a thief. And the atrocities to which they subject each other do not bear thinking of.’
‘But—’
‘You are a sensitive soul,’ Mrs Molle continued kindly, ‘and it does you credit. But you must not allow the world’s transgressions to destroy your comfort. Domestic felicity is easily achieved, Mrs Brande, if you are not forever pining for England’s glories.’
With this recommendation Dorothea had to be satisfied, for Mrs Molle then turned the conversation to other matters—most particularly the latest gossip regarding Mr Jeffery Bent. Mr Bent was stubbornly determined to retain his seat in the Supreme Court, despite being recalled to England. His intransigence in this particular was such that the Governor had finally taken it upon himself to issue an order declaring Mr Jeffery Bent to be ‘positively and absolutely’ removed from his appointment as Judge of the Supreme Court—and absolving every person in the colony from any regard for, or obedience to, any orders that he might presume to issue.
‘Mr Bent informed me that when the General Order was delivered to him,’ Mrs Molle announced, ‘he returned it unopened. In contempt.’
‘Goodness,’ said Dorothea, faintly.
‘No doubt Mr Bent’s pride has caused him to behave rather unwisely, in the face of Lord Bathurst’s latest dispatch,’ Mrs Molle added, and sighed. ‘But one cannot approve of the Governor’s high-handed ways.’
Dorothea said nothing. Her own opinion of Mr Bent h
ad long ago ceased to be sympathetic. She thought him altogether too volatile, and sometimes worried about the effect that his mettlesome temper might be having on Ellis Henry. But she refrained from expressing her views, and soon left Mrs Molle’s house. She had to return home, to satisfy herself that Rose was dealing sensibly with the beef tongue. It had been boiling for nearly two hours, and Dorothea was anxious that Rose should not forget to add the vegetables.
So she crossed the barracks yard at a brisk pace, not even stopping to admire the progress that had been made on the new mess house. It was a very bright day, and the blanched earth of the yard threw back a terrible glare. Walking with her head bowed, and her eyes screwed up against the headache-inducing brightness, Dorothea was not at first aware of events taking place on the steps of the barracks. It was not her custom to linger on the parade ground, in any case. She lived in fear of encountering Captain Sanderson, or becoming an object of scrutiny to the common soldiers—who were all, to a man, from the very meanest orders of society. On this occasion, however, she was forced to halt, lest she be knocked down by the person who suddenly stumbled across her path.
He was a respectable looking man in a blue coat, and he was bleeding from the nose. With one hand he was attempting to staunch the flow of blood. With the other he sought to shield his head from the blows that were raining down upon his stooped back, as he staggered, and fell, and lurched unsteadily to his feet again. A few incoherent protests escaped his swollen lips, but were effectively drowned by the roars of the officer pursuing him.