Among the ailing were pockets of healthy convicts, the majority of them led by resourceful men with the ability to general their dependents toward good health, a minority led by men of different resource—robbing the weak. There were no regulations to the effect that convicts who encountered patches of wild parsley or the sweet tea vine (samphire was just too far away) must surrender their spoils to those in command. The chief restriction on plant-gathering expeditions was fear of the natives, who were getting bolder and now even came into the camp from time to time. The Governor was hoping to capture and tame a few—introduce them to the English language and English ways—and thus, by returning them, Anglicized, to their tribes, persuade these wretched people to ally themselves with the English effort. Did they, he was convinced, their own standard of living would be immeasurably improved; it never began to occur to him that perhaps they preferred their own way of life—why should they, when it was so draggled and pathetic?
To English eyes the indigenes were ugly, far less prepossessing than African negroes because they stank, daubed themselves with a white clay, mutilated their faces either by knocking out an incisor tooth or perforating the gristle between their nostrils with a small bone. Their unashamed nakedness offended grossly, as did the behavior of their women, who on some occasions would coquette brazenly, on others scream vituperation.
Poles apart, neither group stood a chance of understanding the other, nor did sensitivity rule conduct. Inundated by exhortations from the Governor that the natives were to be handled through kid gloves, the convicts grew to loathe these feckless primitives, especially as they were immune from punishment when they stole fish or vegetables or tools. To make matters worse, the Governor always blamed the convicts for the occasional attacks and murders; even if there were no witnesses, he assumed that the convicts had done something to provoke the natives. Whereas the convicts assumed that this was not so: the Governor would side with Satan if a convict were involved because convicts were an even lower form of life than natives. Those first few months at Sydney Cove cemented attitudes which were to persist far into the future.
The winter was cold, yet not unbearably so; no one would freeze to death. Had the invaders been decently fed, they would probably not have shivered the way they did. Food warmed. A few hut owners piled sandstone into unmortared chimneys and reduced their residences to cinders so frequently that the Governor issued orders—no chimneys were to be put on any save brick or stone houses. The smithy burned down; luckily perishable items like bellows were rescued, as were the rest of the tools, but clearly the smithy would have to go high on the priority list of solid buildings. So too the bakehouses, one communal, the other devoted to baking bread for Sirius and Supply.
Ned Pugh from Gloucester Gaol presented himself to his old comrades. He had been sent to Friendship with his wife, Bess Parker, and their little girl, two years old when they landed in New South Wales. Within three weeks Bess and the child were dead of dysentery. Ned was so inconsolable that Hannah Smith, a convict who had become friendly with Bess between Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town, took him under her wing. She had an eighteen-month-old son, who died at Sydney Cove on the 6th of June. Nine days later she and Ned Pugh married. Aside from lack of food they were prospering; Ned was a carpenter by trade and a good worker. A child was on the way and both prospective parents were determined to keep this one.
Maisie Harding, the cheerful giver of favors in Gloucester Gaol, had not been transported, though she was a fourteen-yearer reprieved from the noose; what had happened to her, no one knew. Whereas Betty Mason had come out on Friendship, pregnant yet again to her Gloucester gaoler. Her baby son died at sea out of Cape Town, and that plus her yearning for Johnny the gaoler had eroded her thought processes; she turned bitter and hard, was one of those who was occasionally lashed for stealing men’s shirts. Though Lizzie Morgan stoutly maintained that another convict woman had it in for her and victimized her.
In Richard’s hut all was well apart from perpetual hunger. Lizzie was so well known to at least half the men that they accepted her as a sister returned to the fold; the only one she could not charm was Taffy Edmunds, whose misogynistic tendencies worsened. He refused to be fussed or clucked over, did his own washing and mending, and came to life only on Sunday evenings, when the group lit a fire outside next to the fallow vegetable garden and he could sing counter to Richard’s baritone.
Richard and Lizzie had their own small room, added onto the basic structure, though they slept apart even through the coldest weather. On some nights when sleep was far away Lizzie would toy with the idea of making overtures, but never did. She was too afraid of rejection, preferred not to test the temperature of his affections and drives. Men were supposed to suffer powerfully from sexual deprivation, but among her ten men there were three who seemed to give the lie to this—Joey Long, Taffy Edmunds and her own Richard. She knew too from congress with the other women at the laundering place and around and about that Joey, Taffy and Richard were not unique; there were certainly some men who liked men, but there were others scattered here and there who elected to be monks, who had shut themselves away from sexual solace of any kind—even, she suspected, tossing off. If Richard tossed off, it was extremely silently and without moving. So she was afraid, too afraid to attempt anything he might dismiss her for.
Not all of life revolved around food and the lack of it, and there were good moments. Despite the two-thirds rations issued to their mothers (convict and marine wife alike) and the half-rations they themselves received, the children who managed to survive played, whooped, got into mischief and rejected the attempts of the Reverend Mr. Johnson to confine them in a school to learn reading, writing and arithmetic. Those he could not capture were the offspring of living parents; orphans had to do as he bade them. Family life did exist among the convicts and enlisted marines, often of a happy nature. Feuds existed too, especially between the women, who could conduct vendettas any Sardinian might have been proud of. As they refused to be bullied and answered back with profane fluency, the women were lashed more frequently than the men. Not for stealing food. They stole men’s shirts.
Of Stephen Donovan, Richard saw absolutely nothing. Since the 30th of March he had absented himself, Richard deduced because he hoped that the marriage would work itself into something both parties to it enjoyed. Oh, he missed Stephen! He missed the easy friendship, the sparkling conversation, the discussions they used to have about a book one had read and the other was reading. Mrs. Richard Morgan was no substitute. He admitted her loyalty, her capacity to work, her simplicity, her cheerfulness. Qualities which inspired him to care for her. But love her as a wife he could not.
The first of the transports and storeships had sailed in May, and Alexander, Friendship, Prince of Wales and Borrowdale were due to sail halfway through July.
So when the convict couple Henry Cable and Susannah Holmes from Norfolk prosecuted Captain Duncan Sinclair for loss of most of their belongings early in July, the convicts who had sailed in Alexander exulted, even if Sinclair was bound to win the case. Cable had fallen in love with Susannah in Yarmouth prison, and Susannah had borne a son. But when she was sent alone to Dunkirk hulk in Plymouth, she was not allowed to take her baby with her. This London callousness provoked an outcry around Yarmouth and resulted in a petition’s being sent to Lord Sydney. When Cable followed Susannah to Dunkirk hulk, he brought their baby with him. Their plight had touched many Yarmouth hearts; a goodly amount of clothing and some books were wrapped in canvas and sewn into a parcel by their well-wishers in Norfolk and sent aboard Alexander, though the Cables had sailed on Friendship. At Sydney Cove all Sinclair gave them were the books; the clothing could not be found.
