Land, though irresistible when it could be got for nothing, was secondary to Mr Macarthur’s real passions. It was not sheep or corn that interested him, and certainly not his unexpectedly onerous military obligations. What was uppermost in his mind was trade: the Britannia had been only the first of many charters. It was not only the gigantic profit to be made from liquor. It was that his nature made him crave to be at the heart of a complicated tangle of other men’s greed, fear, sloth and malice, directing them by plotting, scheming, luring, threatening, coaxing. More than the money, more even than the power to shape events, was the pleasure he took in his own ingenious schemes.
We had not been at Parramatta more than a few months when he came to me full of endearments.
– It is regrettable, my dearest wife, he said. Nay, it is lamentable. But it is essential that I spend some time in Sydney. I must ensure that the DD’s favour continues to run in my direction.
It was what I had hardly dared to hope for, but I pouted, for form’s sake, and to tease. I watched him cast about for another argument.
– Those rogues in the Corps, he said. If I am not on the spot, some other man will be convinced he can do as good a job of the new charter. I must be there.
– Oh, I said, and may I not accompany you, and enjoy the novelty of society?
– Oh well, he said.
I let him flounder before I rescued him.
– On second thoughts, I would not feel easy in my mind to leave the children in the care of the servants.
His frown cleared, and there it was: two people pretending a thing was lamentable when in their hearts they both rejoiced.
That first morning as he rode off to Sydney I stood with Elizabeth’s hand in mine, watching the horse grow small in the distance. When I turned back into the house I walked with her from room to room. The air in every corner seemed more still. The light gleamed along the boards in a more serene way.
I had come to hate the marital bed, and even the room it was in. Can a person fear a marble mantelpiece, the particular shape of the cracks in the ceiling? I flung open the French doors—he liked a closed-up bedroom where I loved a flow of air—and let in the outside world. There was the garden, and beyond that the yellow-green of the bush, pale trunks like Chinese writing in among the blur of leaves as the sun shifted calmly through its day.
How quickly a person could reclaim a space! How little it took!
That night I lay savouring a joy no more complicated than the certainty of being alone. I could not sleep for the novel pleasure of it, and another novelty occurred to me. I slipped down from the bed and stood on the verandah, barefoot on the flagstones, letting the dewy darkness of the night enter me. My body felt alive along every morsel of skin, my feet on the cool paving were aware of every grain of the stone.
A dog barked, far off, a hollow sound, the dog unhurried, unworried, its barking as if for the sake of hearing its own voice. Chained somewhere, its sound carried miles, not filling the silence but making it bigger. That hollow distant sound told you how vast the night was, like a speck on a white sheet that showed you how white it was. The dog was doing what I was doing, simply being in the darkness, greeting the hidden world.
Beyond the flower garden a light gleamed between the cracks in the hut where Hannaford lived with the shepherd lad. I was seized with an impulse to walk out across the grass, slip up to the wall of the hut, and place my eye to one of those cracks.
Why did I want to peer through that tempting chink? It was nothing about Hannaford, or the shepherd lad. It was a curiosity that was the other side of ignorance. Having come to myself, and in the freedom of being alone, I wanted to watch another life, to watch other people when they thought no one was looking. I had seen surfaces only, all my life. I had presented only surfaces to others. Now I was consumed with wanting to see beyond surface. Who are other people when they think themselves unobserved? What is it like, to be a person?
I crept up to the hut, trying in a confused way to prepare what I could say if I were discovered. Could I convince someone that I was sleepwalking, staring and muttering like Lady Macbeth? But Lady Macbeth would not stand on tiptoe to peer through a crack, no matter how fast asleep she might be. Nor would she have had the idea of pulling on her blue wrapper to hide the white of her nightdress. I had no story, no pretext however mad, as I approached my eye to the crack.
In the flicker of the fire I could see nothing clear at first. Then something moved and someone murmured. There was a sound like a contented sigh. I squeezed myself sideways to the chink and saw that the movement was a bare leg, and that the leg belonged to Mrs Brown, and that it was entwined with an arm that belonged to William Hannaford.
I stepped away quickly. More than I bargained for, I thought. Oh, more than I bargained for! I was laughing, although what was so amusing? I was doubled over around the mirth, or whatever it was, as I went silently back across the grass to the house. Of course I knew that Hannaford and Mrs Brown had found each other. And of course they would arrange a way to be together. Easy enough, when they wanted time to themselves, to tell the shepherd lad to make his bed in with the other men. But somehow I had not followed the knowledge further. Had not considered what I might see, had only wanted the freedom to look.
Back in the house I slid into bed and lay coiled up, my heartbeats slowly calming. There was a pang, no question, a wryness that twisted around in me like a small unhappy animal. I had once been where those two people were now, in the tenderness of two bodies and two spirits coming together. But it was gone, gone, gone. I did not think it would come again.
At the same time, the thought of that leg, that arm, made me smile. That joy would always be part of who I was. What I had shared with Mr Dawes was a flame that passed from person to person. For a time it had alighted on William Dawes and Elizabeth Macarthur. Now it had come to rest with Agnes Brown and William Hannaford. It was a gift we might have a share in, but it was for passing on, not for owning.
I lay curled around myself in a confusion of smiling and wryness too mixed to be separated. Lady Macbeth had crept to that crack in search of something, and perhaps she had found it: that when life offered delight it should be enjoyed. Here I was, alone, and what a delight that was. How much better to have your own true self for company than to be lost in the solitude of an unhappy marriage.
I never knew how many nights I would be alone in the bed, for Mr Macarthur returned unpredictably.
You may imagine, I wrote to Bridie one day when he had just arrived, how great was my joy on the return of Mr Macarthur. Oh, how I loved to find a two-faced form of words. That private pleasure never staled.
It is possible that Mr Macarthur treated himself to some pretty young doxy in Sydney. But I did not want to know then, do not want to know now.