Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

“In one way, yes. In another way, I want to father children of you. I am not God-Stephen spoke in jest, not in blasphemy. He was simply trying, as Stephen must, to put me under a title in his mental library.”

“You have a wife,” she said. “I cannot be your wife.”

“Lizzie Lock is entered in the Reverend Johnson’s register as my wife, but she has never been my wife. In England, I could have the marriage annulled, but the far ends of the earth do not run to bishops and ecclesiastical courts. You are my wife, Kitty, and I do not believe for one moment that God does not understand. God gave you to me, I knew it when I looked into your eyes. I will introduce you to people as my wife, and call you my wife. My other self.”

A silence fell, neither moved for what seemed an eternity. Her gaze was fixed in his, all the consent and communion necessary.

“What happens now?” she asked, a little breathlessly.

“Nothing until after curfew,” he said, preparing to depart. “I do not intend to be disturbed by visitors, wife. Dig in your garden, but bearing in mind that a lot of seedlings will end in being transplanted elsewhere. I am going up the stream to seek its sources. Ye may have been next door to a skeleton, but nine months of Norfolk Island sun and air and food have made a new woman of you. One I do not want gardening alone so close to Sydney Town.”

The pressureof work had left no time to explore farther up the stream than his bath, nor had curiosity prompted him until the truth about Kitty had dazzled him. How long might he have been prepared to wait if Stephen had not lost his temper? Loving her had been an idea; his gift from God was too precious to defile by behaving as most men would, by cozening and coaxing her into something she knew the wrong things about. Gloucester Gaol had shown him what the London Newgate must have been like, copulating couples everywhere. He did not believe for a moment that she had been the victim of any man’s lust, but lust she must have seen through every day and night she spent there. Luckily not long, yet quite long enough. Her attraction to Stephen had blasted his hopes apart without actually destroying them; he knew too well that Stephen was impossible. What he had decided upon was another long wait, patiently standing to one side caring for her while she came to terms with the fact that the object of her affections was incapable of returning them.

He did not think she loved him, but that he had never hoped for anyway. Close to twenty-three years lay between them, and youth called to youth. Yet when she had stared across the table at him this morning he felt his body stir and unveiled his very core to her. She had fled to Stephen, but not unmoved and not in fright. That revelation of himself had kindled emotions in her that were entirely new and entirely his. The fact that he had such power had filled him with elation. Never a man to spend his leisure looking into the depths of his own being, he had not understood until he worked that power upon Kitty why he was what he was: God the Father, as Stephen had put it. All men and women needed to see and touch someone of their own kind who yet appeared to be more than they were. A king, a prime minister, a head man. He had taken on the care of others reluctantly, as a last resort because he witnessed their floundering and could not bear to have them sink. And slowly this skin of calm strength and purpose had infiltrated him to the marrow; what had once been done with an internal sigh of resignation had become an automatic assumption of authority. The germ must always have lain there in his spirit, but had he lived out his life in Bristol, it would never have awakened. We are born owning many qualities; some we may never know we possess. It all depends what kind of run God gives us.

After twenty minutes of walking barelegged up the muddy-bottomed brook he came to its first tributary, which led down from heights to the northeast. An amphitheatrical dell stuffed with tree ferns and plantains tempted him, but it was still too close to Arthur’s Vale, so he continued up the main course, which bent and wove its way through more tree ferns, palms and plantains until it branched again at the base of a flat expanse he thought the ages had deposited there during heavy rains. The western fork, which he followed first, was too short. The southwestern branch was clearly the principal source of the water in Arthur’s Vale, running deep and strong from somewhere up a fairly steep cleft. Wading on, he climbed higher and higher until, almost at the top of a crest, he found the spring gushing out between mossy, lichen-covered rocks smothered in ferns of more kinds than he had known existed-frilly, feathered, fluffed, fishtailed.

Squinting at the sun, sliding down the sky, he gained his perspective and entered the pine forest of the crest, which he soon discovered was quite flat and broad. To his amazement, he emerged not long afterward on the Queensborough road not very far from the track which led off its opposite side down to the distillery. Ah, that was interesting! Richard was visited with an idea. He went back to the spring and stood looking down the cleft. Not far below the spring on the western slope was a shelf wide enough and deep enough to hold a good big house and a few fruit trees; the ground beneath would serve as a vegetable garden.

His next stop was Stephen Donovan, who had frittered away the hours since he had left Kitty by playing chess against himself.

“Why,” he asked when Richard came through the door, “does my right hand win every game?”

“Because ye’re right-handed?” Richard asked, subsiding into a chair with a deep sigh.

“Ye look more like a man who has been trying to walk on water than one making love.”

“I have not been making love, I have been trying to walk on water. And I have an idea.”

“Pray enlighten me.”

“We both know that Joe McCaldren wants land on the way to Queensborough, yet not that far out. And we both know that what Joe McCaldren really wants is to sell his land the moment it is surveyed and deeded to him. Not so?”

“Absolutely so. Have a glass of port and continue.”

“Would ye do me a very great favor by surveying McCaldren’s land next? I know the ideal piece to give him,” said Richard, accepting the wine.

“Ye want to get Kitty away before the next convicts come, of course. But have ye the money to buy sixty acres, Richard? Joe McCaldren will ask ten shillings the acre,” said Stephen, frowning.

“I have at least thirty pounds in notes of hand, but he will want coin of the realm. Besides, I do not need or want sixty acres, which are too many for one man to farm. Is it true, what ye told me, that every sixty-acre lot will make contact with a stream of water?”

“Aye, so I have suggested to the Major, who agrees.”

“Does the Major object to a sixty-acre portion’s being split up after it is deeded?”

“Once the sixty acres are handed over, Richard, the Major would not care if they flew away with the Mt. Pitt birds. But he also intends to give ten- and twelve-acre grants to those convicts like yourself who have been pardoned or emancipated. Why not save your money and get your land for nothing?”

“Two reasons. The first is that the free settlers have to be served first. That is going to take a year, a year in which we all expect to see well over a thousand people here. Some of the new convicts will be men His Excellency deems too depraved to be safely held in Port Jackson. The second is that when our grants do come to pass, they will be side by side. The nature of the streams here will dictate that each block be long and narrow, and all the houses must be built close to the water-in a row. Yes, separated by many yards, yet still in a row. I do not want to live like that, Stephen. So I want my twelve acres to be surrounded by sixty-acre blocks and I want my house on a run of water no one else will be close to.”