Читать книгу Bloody Colonials - Stafford Sanders - Страница 6

The longboat, having with a small lurch negotiated the task of bumping its bow up against the jetty (and I having negotiated the suppression of further retching at this movement), settled unsteadily into place against the rough timber posts.

I may have been the last to have been cajoled aboard the boat, but I was hell-bent upon being the first to depart from it. One final taste of the damned sea awaited me, however, as I attempted to scramble from the boat onto the rudimentary wharf. Again in my haste to be ashore, my foot caught the gunwale and I was propelled with an exasperated cry, sprawling headlong over the side, cannoning off the mooring post and sliding once again down into the briny.

Fortunately I maintained my grasp upon the post and managed to haul myself (this time without assistance) up onto the rickety structure, where I lay amid fresh howls of mirth, spitting mouthfuls of salt water. I scrambled to my feet and stood dripping upon the timbers as my trunk was dumped alongside me. I mumbled a word of thanks to the sailors as they and the other passengers scampered nimbly past me and off along the jetty, still chortling at my clumsiness. Then I drew a deep breath of humid, salty air, narrowly suppressed one last retch, and turned towards the beach, squinting into the bright sunlight. A few lurching steps along the creaking jetty and onto the golden sand, and there I was – upon dry land at long, long last.

I looked up – and at once a most extraordinary sight confronted me.

A grand piano stood in full glory upon the sand, glistening with salt spray. Fearing that delirium from the gruelling voyage might have addled my brains, I shook my head and blinked – but there it was still, standing grandly on its three carved legs upon this remote Antipodean beach. From somewhere in the back of my mind I fancied I could hear a Scottish waltz playing dimly. That, however, was definitely my imagination, I determined – while the piano itself was assuredly not so, remaining in place even after I had shaken my head with what vigour I could manage without renewing the nausea.

I must have stared at this vision for some moments before a brace of hefty fellows rushed up past me and surrounded the instrument, attaching ropes to it with a flutter of argued cross-instructions to each other. Slowly they hauled upon the cords and, staggering under the piano’s weight, bore it slowly off up the beach.

I watched them depart over the dunes into the strange and tangled vegetation. Then I looked about me once more.

Leaning against a painted post some distance away was a solitary, scruffy-looking, rather pot-bellied fellow wearing a dirty and tattered arrowhead-patterned shirt, baggy britches and a large and very ragged straw hat slung low across his brow, obscuring much of his face.

I moved up the dune towards him and hailed him. He looked slowly up, jowled and stubbled face half hidden beneath the hat, and I could not help imagining myself being rather smartly sized up as there came a gravelly but lilting Irish brogue:

“What can I be doin’ for you, sir?”

“Ah, could you direct me to … er, Government House, if you please?” I enquired.

He turned and waved one finger lazily up the beach towards the dunes. “That’d be straight over the dune, sir. Just follow the track. Yer can’t miss it.”

I followed the vaguely indicating digit up the sloping sand and saw behind it a steepish, wooded rise. Then I looked back uncertainly at my heavy trunk, still sitting upon the jetty, and ventured to inquire: “Er … would my trunk be safe here, for the time being?”

The fellow glanced quickly at the trunk. Then he turned to me with a reassuring though still only partially visible smile under the shreds of hat. “As houses, sir,” he said. “As houses.”

“You’ll … see to it?”

“In person, sir,” he reassured. “Just you leave it to me.”

Something in the tone of his voice encouraged me to follow this course. I nodded in acknowledgment to him, and the ragged hat nodded back, the face remaining mostly hidden. Then he turned slowly back toward the bay and remained propped against the post, looking out to sea, as I drew in my breath and headed past him.

Slowly I trudged to the top of the dune, stumbling upon the heavy sand - as what the sailors had referred to laughingly as my sea-legs sought to adjust to the now unfamiliar lack of any lurching motion beneath.

As I concentrated upon this simple but challenging task, I was startled by a sudden noise nearby and I turned suddenly at the sound of a loud lisping bellow from somewhere above: “Look out there, stand aside!”

I leapt out of the way barely in time to avoid being trampled upon by what I at first thought to be a horse. Certainly it was a hooved creature, sandy brown in colour. I soon realised, however, that it was not the right shape for a horse - being larger and distinctly humped in the back, with an extraordinarily long neck and strange visage featuring large lazy eyes and a set of bulbous pouting lips. This, I knew from a previous voyage to the East, was a camel.

Perched atop this beast was a wild, bearded figure in a very dusty khaki uniform and a pith helmet. He cast a fierce and manic glance down at me, waving me aside with brute imperiousness as he swatted the flies away with a gold-rimmed fan. Behind him, draped over the camel’s hump, was an assortment of baggage, with various spears and an array of carved and shaped wooden implements jutting out in all directions.

Sauntering along beside, the creature’s bridle in hand, was an ebony-skinned man whom I took to be a native of these parts, bare-chested but wearing rough baggy trousers tied with a rope belt. He turned with a desultory shake to his unkempt shock of curly black hair, and gave me a broad and vague grin, the large white teeth in stark contrast with the shiny black face surrounding them.

This eccentric procession moved past me with a slow rumble of hooves and a rattle of implements. I stared open-mouthed at their disappearing forms heading down behind the next dune.

Then, wondering what bewildering vision could possibly await me next, I looked down the landward side of the dune for the opening between the scrubby trees to the rough-hewn track leading up to the settlement.

The Governor, still in his office, is moving objects around within the miniature world of his model. He rubs his chin, pondering the placement of some future ambitious construction. Casts his eye absently about, allowing it to linger for a moment on his own painted image high on the wall.

My predecessor might not have had the stamina to endure here, he thinks – poor chap lasted a mere two years before succumbing to a weak heart fuelled by an excess of liquor. I, however, I am most assuredly made of sterner stuff. I will show them. Subconsciously he draws himself up straighter.

A knock is heard. Sir Henry frowns at this intrusion into one of his increasingly rare quiet moments.

“Enter! Ah, Bascombe.”

Major Geoffrey Bascombe, the Governor’s Adjutant, enters. He wears the red coat, white breeches and crossed sashes of His Majesty’s Army Corps. He carries a sheaf of papers and a set of enormous sideburns. Well, he’s not so much carrying the sideburns – they have, in fact, more of the appearance of carrying him.

He takes a few starched steps forward and salutes stiffly, chin thrust prominently forward as if to provide a base for the sideburns. The Governor returns the salute perfunctorily.

“The ship has come in,” Blythe informs him, “with, I trust, our new surgeon aboard. Make sure his quarters are in readiness at the barracks, would you.”

“Sir.” Bascombe thrusts some papers under the Governor’s nose. Blythe signs them without appearing to look at them. His tone carries a quiet but firm warning, eyes engaging the direct gaze of the Major.

“And Bascombe … try and keep him out of trouble, would you?”

A slight grimace crosses the face of the Major as he retrieves the signed papers. Just what I need, he thinks – more work. As if my list of duties was not already sufficiently onerous, without having the Governor’s babysitting added to them. “I shall do the best I can, sir”, he undertakes with the requisite evasive respectfulness. He salutes again and heads for the door.

“Mmm. Not sure I find that particularly reassuring,” mutters the Governor. He runs a hand over his thinning pate and swivels back to the relative security of his model colony.

Glancing back in the direction of the jetty from the top of the sand dune, I could see the unloading of the ship proceeding languidly, if noisily.

A number of people had emerged onto the jetty and appeared to be taking a proprietorial interest in the various items being unloaded.

Most prominent among these observers, I noticed one very grand-looking couple, of whom the lady, a statuesque woman carrying a parasol - appeared to be exuding a most commanding presence. She was issuing instructions to sailors and labourers as to the transfer of livestock and other goods

with the imperiousness of an army general.

A great many boxes and barrels marked FLOUR and SUGAR – and many more marked RUM - were being hauled ashore; also visible were cages of pigs and goats, together with pots of plants labelled GORSE, LANTANA, PRICKLY PEAR and something called “BITOO BUSH”.

I noticed now what appeared to be a number of large rats which came scurrying out of holes in boxes or bags and darting off into the bush. They were pursued by several domestic cats of various shapes and sizes. These in turn were chased half-heartedly by shouting men making cursory attempts to recapture them among the impossibly dense foliage, before returning with resigned shrugs to their unloading.

I half-slid down the sand and into the gap between the trees marking the base of the rough stony track which wound upwards into the strange coastal forest. Turning to either side I beheld, at close quarters now, the strange forms of the local vegetation.

As sand gave way to rocks and soil, there emerged low clumps of reeds and grasses, among clusters of succulent groundwort, clinging to the rear of the dunes. Further into the forest were scattered an assortment of sprouting palms and ferns, some erupting like bright green volcanoes from stumpy black bulbs. The effect was altogether prehistoric. Exotic birds screeched and squawked overhead. One of these was a ragged greyish one with a large bill. Alighting upon a nearby bough, feathers standing erect upon its head like an American Indian headdress, it gave me a roguish, one-eyed appraisal and proceeded to emit as I passed what I can only describe as the deranged cackle of a fiend from Hell.

As I made my way up the track and further away from the beach, from the greenery on either side of the track rose the trunks of several varieties of tree - some of them quite unlike any that I had ever seen. Smooth of bark but wantonly crooked, apparently shunning a direct climb toward the daunting sunlight which their scrappy foliage failed to shield fully. These ghostly grey-white apparitions instead twisted and turned vaguely upward in a variety of sinister shapes, seeming at times to extend great gnarled claws over my head.

In amongst these were smaller, darker trees in which nestled the most alarming seed-pods, enormous, bulbous blackish things looking for all the world like deformed heads with bulging eyes and bloated lips, seeming to stare and leer at me from between the fronds of shaggy foliage.

Looking up at these hideous heads amongst the spectral visions stretched out against the baking pale blue sky did nothing to assist the recovery of my internal functions. Nor did it help my still-shaky legs to negotiate the irregularities of the stony path. Feeling now distinctly giddy, I focused my eyes instead upon the rough track before me as it meandered slowly up the rise through the coastal forest, which became more overgrown the further I advanced.

After several minutes the path emerged onto flatter terrain. The trees fell away mercifully to either side and I found myself emerging onto cleared ground.

Before me was an open, crudely mown lawn, before a two-storied building made from rough bricks and blocks of pale stone. Surrounding this were other, smaller brick and timber buildings stretching away across the clearing, some surrounded by small plots and gardens. These were connected by tracks and pathways, leading away towards clusters of rather meaner shacks across a small gully. Some of these ramshackle shelters appeared to be rudely cobbled together from mere leaves and sticks.

I approached the large stone building uncertainly, walked around the pathway until I found a portal beneath a large sign saying “Government House, HM Colony of Port Fortitude”. I rapped cautiously upon what was apparently the front door.

After a moment it was opened by a young servant woman of plainish and rather pinkish appearance.

“Yes?” she inquired brusquely, wiping her hands upon her apron and blowing a strand of sandy hair aside which had loosened itself from her cotton bonnet.

“Oh. I … could I see the Governor, please?”

The girl appeared for a moment unable to answer, mouth half open and eyes wide as she scrutinised uncertainly my still damp and no doubt highly dishevelled form.

Attempting to correct what I admit must have been constituted a fairly poor visual first impression, I cleared my throat and demanded “This is, er, Government House, is it not?”

“It is”, she managed through the still gaping mouth.

At this I repeated, rather more slowly and with what I fancied was a suitable note of authority, “Then I wish to see the Governor, if you please.”

“Oh, that right? An’ who might you be?” she demanded in broad Cockney, with another contemptuous up-and-down scanning. “Look like you’ve been dragged backwards through a mangle, you do.”

“Ah. Yes. Indeed,” I acknowledged, glancing down at my wretched, emaciated form with an embarrassed grin. “Well, you know … got a bit er, you know, getting ashore. From the, er, the ship.” I gestured vaguely back towards the docks.

She waited, still looking suspicious and rather less than co-operative. Clearly, some further reassurance would be needed in order to proceed beyond this obstacle.

“Oh. Ah, I’m Tom,” I blurted. She looked utterly blank at this, and realising that my vague and childish informality would cut no mustard whatsoever with her, I spluttered to correct it: “Er, Thomas … er, Quayle.” I took a deep breath and made another attempt. “Dr Thomas Quayle. The … the new surgeon.”

“Surgeon?” She echoed, and looked me up and down, one corner of her lip curling upward into her dimpled cheek in palpable disbelief. “You’re a doctor?” I grinned sheepishly in confirmation.

“Well,” she pronounced most decidedly, ”you don’t look like one.”

“Well, indeed I am, er, a doctor,” I hastened on, “and not only that, but … er, the.…” But she had already closed the door in my face before I could finish, so that I was forced now to shout through the closed portal: “…the governor’s nephew!”

It was a mere second before the door opened again, just a crack this time, the pink face peering out. “You what?”

“I’m the governor’s …”, I confirmed with a small embarrassed cough, “nephew” (this with a fixed grin).

“Oh.” She appraised me once more, eyes narrowed, considering. Even the slight possibility of such a preposterous claim turning out to be true had clearly changed the state of things; and I must have looked by now as if my patience was wearing rather thin.

Well,” she determined at last, ”you better come in then.”

She opened the door and turned to me. “You wait ’ere.” She marched briskly off down a long hallway. I entered slowly, gazing about at the crude stonework of the small foyer, its clay plastering apparently done in a hodgepodge mixture of rich red-brown and silver-grey, its painting by no means completed.

I stood waiting there for several moments until the maidservant reappeared. “All right,” she said, still with a slight tone of uncertainty, “come wi’ me then.”

She led me along the hall and around a corner, where she stopped and indicated a solid-looking door bearing a large brass plaque carrying the legend “SIR HENRY BLYTHE, Governor”.

“Knock there an’ wait to be called in,” she instructed. And with that, off she marched, pausing to cast one more suspicious look over her shoulder, as if to reassure herself that I was not ducking away to help myself to the best silver.

I drew myself up straight, took a deep breath and knocked, rather more tentatively than I had intended.

“Enter!” came the daunting bark from within.