Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

She kept hearing about “the grubs,” and on the 18th of October she experienced them at first hand. The wheat on Richard’s acre was in ear and thriving, but the Government wheat in the more open parts of the vale had been hit by high, salty winds and blighted, though by no means all of it was ruined. The year was a dry one, the crops saved only by an occasional night of heavy rain which had vanished by the morning. Perhaps for this reason, the grubs had not come during winter. Then suddenly it seemed as if every growing thing was covered with a heaving green blanket-the caterpillars were bright green, about an inch long, and thin. Again Richard was lucky, for Kitty had no fear of wrigglers, crawlies and bugs. She was able to pick the creatures off without revulsion, though the solution of tobacco and soap was more effective. Every woman on the island save those who danced attendance on the marines and the sawpits was put to picking and sprinkling. Within three weeks they were gone. There would be a harvest, very soon for the Indian corn, early in December for the wheat. Though under Major Ross’s new scheme everything the freed Richard grew was his, he was very scrupulous about sending excess produce to Stores, for which he accumulated more notes of hand. What he kept was either eaten by the humans or Augusta, or saved for seed.

The weather in Norfolk Island, she occasionally thought as she toiled with her hoe or got down on hands and knees to weed, was truly delightful-balmy, warm, never hot out of the sun. And just when things began to wilt from lack of water, one of those nights of solid rain would roll in, disappear at dawn. The soil, blood-red and very friable, grew anything. No, Norfolk Island could not compete with Kent in her affections, yet it did have a magical quality. Rainy nights, sunny days-that was the stuff of fairies.

Some of those she had known on Lady Juliana had fallen to the lot of Richard’s friends. Aaron Davis, the community baker, had taken Mary Walker and her child. George Guest had taken eighteen-year-old Mary Bateman, whom Kitty had known very well, had liked, but yet sensed a strangeness, as of madness yet to come. Edward Risby and Ann Gibson were happily together and planning to marry as soon as a person empowered to marry visited the island. These women and Olivia Lucas visited-how delightful it was to be able to offer them a mug of tea with sugar in it! Mary Bateman and Ann Gibson were both expecting babies; Mary Walker, whose child Sarah Lee was toddling, was also expecting her first by Aaron Davis. The only barren one was Kitty Clark.

Of fish there were none. Sirius’s cutter, which might have ventured well outside the lagoon to fish, was smashed to pieces trying to land six women convicts off Surprize, one with a child. The oarsmen drowned, as did a man swimming to their rescue; one of the three women who survived was the drowned child’s mother. So the very occasional catches of fish the coble managed all went to the officers and marines; neither Sirius’s seamen nor freed convicts received a share. But Justinian had carried plants, including bamboo, and Richard was given one small piece of it from which to grow a clump of potential fishing poles. Hand-lines caught nothing fishing off rocks.

There was a panic at Charlotte Field, where the paddocks were hedged in by a mixture of creeper skeleton and a very thorny bush; one of the fences accidentally caught fire and the flames spread into ripe Indian corn. At first Sydney Town heard that all the corn had been burned to the ground, but Lieutenant Clark, speeding there at a run, reported back to the distraught Major Ross that only two acres had perished thanks to the great exertions of the convicts, who beat the fire out. So grateful was Lieutenant Clark to the damned whores of Charlotte Field that he gave each of them a new pair of shoes from the Government supplies.

D’arcy Wentworth was deputed to move to Charlotte Field with his mistress Catherine Crowley and little William Charles as soon as a house could be built for him; he was to be superintendent of convicts and also Charlotte Field’s surgeon. The duties of this latter position varied from midwifing to deciding when a convict being flogged could bear no more strokes. If the culprit were a woman, Wentworth tended to be lenient, whereas Lieutenant Clark, who despised the women of Charlotte Field, would of choice have had Richardson lay a meaner cat on harder.

Much to Kitty’s pleasure, the variety of food increased. She now had a wonderful cooking area because Richard had fixed an iron shelf across two-thirds of the big fireplace and a rod over the naked flames of the other third. She had covered kettles for braising, open ones for stewing or boiling, pans for frying and a spouted kettle she kept perpetually simmering on a coolish back corner of the shelf so that she could make herself or her visitors a pot of tea, tip a dollop of hot water into her washing-up dish. Richard had even made her what he called a soap-saver: a wire basket attached to a wire handle in which she could put a chunk of soap and swish it through the water without losing the soap.

Richard told John Lawrell firmly that he must give up some of his chickens and ducks, so Kitty added to her living charges and was able on special occasions to put eggs on the menu. Augusta farrowed twelve piglets and only twice rolled over to squash them; she was considerate enough to leave all six females alive as well as two males Richard intended would be roast suckling pig at Christmas. The pig produce was entirely theirs. If any successful breeder wished to sell pork to the Stores, he or she (Ross had made no sexual distinctions) was paid for it; if anyone wished to salt pork down, he or she was given the salt and a barrel to do so. Ross’s objective was, as he had said at the outset, to take as many convicts as possible off Government Stores. Folk like Aaron Davis, Dick Phillimore, Nat Lucas, George Guest, John Mortimer, Ed Risby and Richard Morgan demonstrated that Ross’s scheme could work, given time.

The Major’s chief troubles rested with the marines and Sirius’s sailors, who refused to soil their hands by growing vegetables and other fresh produce, demanding that Stores supply them. When Stores could not, they were prone to steal vegetables, melons and poultry from the convicts, a transgression Ross punished as severely as if the larceny were the other way around. The grumbles and dark looks among these free people increased; they all believed absolutely that no convicted felon ought to be able to keep the fruits of his or her labors, that every morsel the convicts grew belonged to them and must feed them ahead of any and all convicts. Why should they labor in a garden when so many convicts were growing enough to feed them? Convicts were the property of His Majesty the King, they could own nothing, keep nothing. Convicts had no rights, so who exactly did Major Robert Ross think he was? The fact that Major Ross levied two-thirds of the produce of convicts for Stores was conveniently overlooked; only freed men kept everything.

Christmas Day,a Saturday, dawned fine and clear, though the wind was in the south and a huge sea thundered into Sydney Bay. Richard killed his two boar piglets, Nat Lucas two geese, George Guest three fat ducks, Ed Risby four chickens, and Aaron Davis baked full wheaten bread from flour ground out of grain all of them had grown surplus to Government requirements. They picnicked under the shade and shelter of the pines on Point Hunter with Stephen Donovan, Johnny Livingstone and D’arcy Wentworth and his family, the pork and poultry turning on spits D’arcy had commandeered from the smithy. Stephen and Johnny contributed ten bottles of port, enough for both men and women to enjoy half a pint each.

The Major had publicly proclaimed that this was to be a dry Christmas for the convicts apart from small beer, and the marines were ordered to consume their half-pints away from any convict eyes; King had always given the convicts rum on festive occasions, whereas Ross, especially in the aftermath of discovering what Dyer, Francis and company were planning to do with their sugar cane, had no intention of doing the same.