Colleen McCullough: Morgan’s Run

Careful not to squash the bundle, Richard leaned forward to kiss her reverently upon the lips. His eyes worshiping her, he brushed the tears from his face and smiled shakily. “Very, very clever, wife. Ye did it as if ye’d done it twenty times.”

“I have no scales so I cannot weigh her, but she seems to be a good size-quite long too. She looks a Morgan, not a Clark.”

He squinted at Kate’s face and tried to verify this, but could not. “She is very beautiful, wife, that is all I can see.” After that he looked more closely at Kitty. She seemed a little tired, but glowed so radiantly that he could not believe she stood in any danger. “Ye’re well? Honestly?”

“Truly. Just weary. She slipped out so easily that I am not even uncomfortable. Olivia recommended that I squat. That is the natural way, she says.” Kitty took Kate back to look at her again. “Richard!” she exclaimed, her tone reproachful. “She is your image-how can you not see it?”

“Are ye happy to call her Catherine, like yourself?”

“Yes. Two Catherines-one Kitty, one Kate. We will call our next girl Mary.”

He could not help it; he wept until Kitty put the baby down and took him into her arms.

“I love you, Kitty. I love you more than life itself.”

Again her lips parted to say something offering him herself. Then Kate yelled lustily. So instead she asked, “Will you listen to that? I think Stephen is right, we have a shrew to rear. And that settles it. I am going to give her suck.”

She slid both arms out of the shift and let it drop to her waist, unwrapped the little creature and held her naked against her own skin with a sensuous pleasure that devastated Richard. The O of mouth fastened around the nipple offered it; Kitty emitted a huge sigh of utter pleasure. “Oh, Kate, this makes you truly mine!”

It hadnever occurred to Kitty to doubt one fact: that Richard would be a wonderful father. What surprised her was his complete surrender to fatherhood. So many of her women friends and acquaintances complained that their men were wary of being seen as unmanning themselves if they had too much to do with the children or domestic chores. To carry a tired child was permissible, to kiss and cuddle a small one was permissible, but nothing to what they deemed excess. Whereas Richard simply did not care what any of his men friends thought of him. If one was visiting, he would cheerfully change Kate’s dirty clouts, did not even care if he was discovered washing them or hanging them out to dry. And apparently his masculine image did not suffer in their eyes. Or if it did, he never noticed. Or if he noticed, he did not consider such opinions worth valuing. In one respect he was lucky: he did not look like a milksop. Had he, things might have been different for him.

He worked too hard because he tried to fit more into less time, always eager to be off home to see Kitty and Kate. When Kitty timidly suggested that perhaps he could do less sawing and more farming, he looked horrified-no, no! His job as supervisor of sawyers was well paid, and every note of hand he accumulated on the Government books was an insurance against the future of his children. He would manage to saw and farm, he was not dead yet.

Kate wassix months old at the moment when Tommy Crowder came to the second sawpit looking for Richard, enquiring when Richard intended putting baby Kate on the Government Stores list.

“I can keep my wife and child off the Stores,” said Richard with dignity.

“Commander King insists that they be on the Stores. Come to my office and we will do it now.” Off trotted Crowder, not pausing to see if Richard followed.

“I do not see why my wife and child should be on the Stores,” said Richard stubbornly in Crowder’s tiny office. “I am the head of the family.”

“That is just it, Richard. Ye’re not the head of a family. Kitty is a convict woman and a spinster. That is why she is still on the Stores list and her baby must go on it too. I simply need ye here as a witness,” Crowder explained.

Richard’s eyes had gone completely grey and dark. “Kitty is my wife. Kate is my daughter.”

“Catherine Clark, spinster… Yes, here she is,” Crowder burbled on, finding the right line on the right page in his big register. He picked up a quill, dipped it in his inkwell and added, speaking aloud as he wrote, “Catherine Clark, child.” He looked up brightly. “There! That is done and ye’ve seen me do it. Thank you, Richard.” He put the quill down.

“The child’s name is Catherine Morgan. I acknowledge her.”

“No, ’tis Clark.”

“Morgan.”

Tommy Crowder was not a very perceptive man; he spent too much of himself upon becoming invaluable to people who could help him get ahead. But suddenly, looking up into eyes as stormy as Sydney Bay during a squall, he felt the blood leave his face. “Do not blame me, Richard,” he stammered. “I am not your judge, I am merely a servant of the Norfolk Island Government. Commander King wants everything”-he simpered-“shipshape and Bristol fashion. As a Bristolian, ye should be pleased.” He was babbling now, could not stop babbling. “I have to put the baby on my lists, and I have to ask ye to witness the fact that I have. Her name is Clark.”

“It is not fair!” Richard said to Stephen later, fists clenched. “That trained monkey in Government service wrote my daughter’s name in his fucken register as Catherine Clark. And rubbed my nose in it by making me watch.”

Stephen eyed the muscles tensing under the skin of Richard’s arms and shivered involuntarily. “For God’s sake, Richard, hold your temper! It is not Crowder’s fault, nor is it King’s fault. I agree that it is not fair, but there is nothing ye can do about it. Kitty is not your wife. Kitty cannot be your wife. She still has some years of her sentence left to serve, which means that the Government is entitled to do what it wills with her. And Kate’s surname officially is Clark.”

“There is one thing I can do,” said Richard through his teeth. “I can murder Lizzie Lock.”

“Ye’re not capable of that, so stop talking as if ye are.”

“While Lizzie lives, my daughter is a bastard. So will the other children I sire on Kitty be bastards.”

“Look at it this way,” Stephen coaxed, “Lizzie Lock is well settled with Tom Sculley, but Tom Sculley is learning fast that he is not a farmer, hence his move from grain to poultry. Sooner or later he will sell out and quit the island. From what the marine free settler gossip tells me, he says he wants to visit Cathay and Bengal before he is too old. D’ye think for one moment that he will sail for the Orient without Lizzie Lock on his arm?”

Closing his eyes, Richard slumped despondently. “I am trying to look at it your way. Ye mean that if Lizzie departs for the Orient, I can wait a while and then pretend I am a single man.”

“Exactly. If necessary, I will pay some furtive forger in a London alley to use some Wampoa merchant’s address and write a touching letter to the Gentlemen Sheriffs of Gloucester explaining that Mrs. Richard Morgan, née Elizabeth Lock, has passed away in Macao, and does Gloucester know of any relatives? That will prove that she is dead, after which ye can marry Kitty.”

“Sometimes, Stephen, ye’re the bitter end.” But the ploy worked; Richard opened his eyes and managed a laugh. “Does this fine consoling speech containing references to London alleys mean that ye’re leaving us soon?”

“I have had no word beyond the lieutenancy, but ’twill happen.”

“I will miss ye something terrible.”

“And I you.” Stephen threw his arm about Richard’s shoulders and propelled him gently in the direction of home. Good, his rage had cooled. Superficially at least. God rot the Reverend Johnson!