Even after he took up residence in the observatory, Rooke joined the other officers for the Sunday dinner. He thought of it as a tithe of gratitude for not having to dine there on the other days.
One evening in the settlement’s first winter, he arrived at the barracks—a long dark hut with an incongruously splendid mahogany table almost filling the space—to see the governor there at its head alongside Major Wyatt. It was an honour His Excellency paid now and again to his officers rather than dine alone in his own residence. Major Wyatt always thanked him fulsomely. As far as the rest of them were concerned, the governor’s presence made for careful conversation.
Rooke installed himself between Silk and young Lieutenant Timpson and, he hoped, out of the line of sight of Major Wyatt and the governor. Timpson was tedious, inveighing against the women prisoners—all damned whores in his view—and forever bringing out the miniature of his sweetheart, expecting wonderment and admiration from other men. He was too young and artless to know that another man’s sweetheart in an oval frame was of limited interest.
Silk’s opinion of young Lieutenant Timpson was that he protested too much. Mark my words, Rooke, Silk had said. We will be seeing him with us at Mrs Butcher’s before the end of the year and will hear no more of this Betsy. Rooke was inclined to agree. Mrs Butcher had kept an establishment in Devizes, apparently, and knew how to run a good house. Sometimes with Silk and sometimes alone, Rooke had visited her hut and found her to be both hospitable and discreet, offering the choice of several pleasant convict girls and the privacy of a canvas curtain.
Timpson’s innocent prudery was tedious, but Rooke was happy to admire Betsy for the hundredth time, and agree what a sweet and dear face she had, if it allowed him to take his place in the furthest and most dimly lit corner of the room.
At the head of the table, the governor and Wyatt sat glumly as the boy set their plates of food in front of them. Silk broke the silence.
‘Ah, the daily diabolical morsel!’
It was a risk, Rooke thought, to draw attention to what was on each plate, but the governor went so far as to laugh. Wyatt followed, and the whole table joined in. Only Silk could have got away with it, but he had judged well: men confronted with yet another insufficient meal of elderly salt beef and a spoonful of pease porridge were glad of any distraction.
His Majesty’s victualler had assumed that New South Wales would produce at least some of the food its colonists needed, but this had proved to be optimistic. The heart of the mop-like tree was called cabbage, although Rooke thought it as fibrous and probably as tasty as oakum. Various sparse greens grew by the stream, and the leaves of a sprawling vine had been found to make a faintly sweet tea which he had come to savour. That was the extent of the vegetable production of the place.
Gardens had been planted, but what with the grubs, soil that was no better than sand, and theft by prisoners, no turnip or potato had ever grown bigger than a marble.
Now and then the governor’s shooter brought back game from the woods. His Excellency was generous in sharing it with his officers, and Rooke, like the others, had relished the various unrecognisable joints of tough but tasty meat. No part of the creatures was wasted, since Surgeon Weymark paid the shooter for the heads. Rooke had seen Weymark’s watercolours, the stump where the kangaroo or opossum neck had been hacked off with the hatchet cunningly hidden in the picture by a spray of foliage.
But the fact remained: supplies were running short.
The mess cook spread the food out as he served it, to make it look more substantial. To Rooke, the stratagem suggested an interesting calculation: how large a circle could be made with a given quantity of pease and salt beef?
But whether thin or thick, whatever diameter its circle, and no matter how interesting the problem involving pi, the food was insufficient, because the supply ships were nowhere to be seen.
‘Those buggers have forgotten us,’ Timpson said sotto voce to Rooke, running a finger around his plate and sucking at it. ‘Spat us out and said good riddance. Or else the ships are all wrecked. I wish to God I had not volunteered.’
It was Timpson’s first appointment and he had not yet learned to hide his homesickness. As he ate he was inclined to dream aloud of his favourite meals, especially his mother’s hotpot with braised leeks. Rooke too had caught himself daydreaming about a dish of new potatoes with butter and parsley and salt, and a nice fresh mutton chop to go with it.
Around the table, on which every plate soon gleamed, Rooke thought there was not a single man who believed that His Majesty’s newest settlement would last. It was only a matter of whether they all starved first.
At the end of the meal the governor rose in his place, looking so spindly and angular that Rooke was put in mind of Newton’s Mathematical Bridge.
‘Good evening, gentlemen, and my thanks for your hospitality.’
He glanced down at his plate and hesitated as if regretting the ironic possibilities of the remark.
‘It is my intention to take a party of men into the hinterland. I hope to locate whatever it might offer that could be turned to account.’
Turned to account. They all knew the fact behind that fine turn of phrase: Nothing will grow at Sydney Cove and our store is running out.
‘I am confident also that we will fall in with natives more prepared to parley with us than those we have encountered here.’
Rooke thought of those two men who had walked past him as if he were a rock or a bush. Every day his first act was to go outside and see if they had returned.
The governor stretched his face into his approximation of a smile.
‘I wonder whether any of you gentlemen would care to be of the party.’
Rooke did not stop to think, jumped to his feet.
‘Lieutenant Rooke sir, I will go.’
Birds—mammals—ants and their habitations. This was his chance to see more of New South Wales than the speck of it he was so far familiar with. And if there should be an opportunity to parley, who better to do it than a man who knew five languages?
Silk was only a little behind.
‘Captain Silk also, sir, at your service,’ he called out.
At your service, that was a better form of words. Rooke tucked it away. Less like a schoolboy than I will go! He felt himself blushing, but no one was watching.
‘Thank you, gentlemen, I am obliged to you.’
After the meal Silk hung back.
‘My word, Rooke, I thought myself the quickest jack-in-the-box in the regiment, but I see I must not be complacent!’
Rooke tried to frame a reply, but Silk did not wait.
‘Prickles, sunburn, mosquitoes, and, I doubt not, snakes. Perhaps unfriendly natives too. However, the worse it is to experience, the better it will read on the page. The natives are what I need. Their shyness is disappointing. This expedition may provide an opportunity to chat to the elusive fellows. And whatever other outcomes, we will have brought a little favourable attention on ourselves.’
He winked.
‘The long view, my friend, never lose sight of the long view of our time in New South Wales.’