The Hanging of Mary Ann. Angela Badger
another step forward and leant over the captain whose eyes rolled with fear. “No more will be spoken of this. Will it?” I repeated and he just shook his head. He was so scared he couldn’t even speak.
“So that night when the governor arrived at the post he found his captain and everything as it should be.” Grand-père sat back and closed his eyes for a moment.
“How could that change your life, Grand-père? You haven’t explained that.”
“As I’ve said before, the pay of a private in the New South Wales Corps was fourteen pounds a year but grants were often made for services rendered. You could be rewarded by money or land. The very next day the good Major made it clear that my lips must be sealed and I’d not go unrewarded. Well, I was wise enough to have understood that. He was as good as his word. A grant of land came my way, my first piece of property, those acres out beyond Liverpool, we still have them in the family. And now so much besides sir. The Guise lands stretch for thousands of acres, Up to the mountains and down to the lake. The holdings around Sydney are well known, too.”
“And it all happened because of that night at the inn and your going round to the kitchen because of the stink of the bugs!”
“Well, that was the beginning: a piece of land, cattle, some good years when you sell at a good price, bad years when drought stifles you… good… bad. “The old man’s head nodded upon his chest.
“Your grandfather’s very tired.”
“I’ll ask them to find Job to help him to his room.”
“Let me do that, Miss Mary Ann.”
“We have our servant with us Sir.”
“Perhaps for one moment I can be your servant?”
Mary Ann busied herself winding up her wool and putting her work away in her tapestry bag. She did not look up. So much that was new had happened in the last twenty-four hours, not least the uneasy sensation of treading upon completely unknown territory when she caught Frank’s glance.
CHAPTER 4
Mary Ann stepped from the carriage and looked up and down the street.
Catching her breath she gazed at the sandstone facades, all uniformly handsome and imposing. The city at last! An elegant street in an elegant city just as imagined. What a relief to be finally free of that lurching coach. To be able to stand upright once more! Taking a deep breath she hurried up the path to her sister’s front door.
Everything became better and better. In those few moments she moved from everyday life into a dream, and when dreams become the new reality then anyone’s life is transformed.
Greeted by the scent of pot-pourri and beeswax, hugged and kissed and hugged yet again, Mary Ann immediately felt at home. Her height, her hair, her complexion, in fact everything about her person became the subject of amazement and admiration for the elder sister. And soon it was her own turn to wonder and exclaim as Hannah finally led the way up the hall. The delicate plasterwork in the cornices, the archway above their heads and the soft carpet under their feet! The floorboards and planks of Bywong were a whole world away.
Briefly Mary Ann felt like a wild creature which had strayed out of the forest into one of the paddocks, one of the brumbies from the mountain slopes rubbing shoulders with the thoroughbreds. Silly, she shook herself, a home is just a home, after all. Certainly her grandfather did not appear to be overawed.
Grand-père, supported by Job, hobbled behind them.
“Dear Grand-père, I’ll take you to your room at once. The girl can bring you some tea and…”
“Tea! Haven’t you anything stronger than that?”
“Dear Grand-père, I forget your country ways,” Hannah inclined her head and pursed her lips. “Oh, the doormat’s back there,” she pointedly frowned at his boots. “Well it doesn’t really matter, not raining today…yes, of course you can have anything you want. I’ll speak to them in the kitchen. Let us settle you down and make you comfortable after that great journey. First things first.”
First things first. She lived by popular maxim. A stitch in time saves nine, do unto others etc. Life was easiest when lived according to convention in Hannah’s view. Her shrewd grey eyes saw what they wanted, nothing else existed in her world. The first of the Guise girls to marry, she had long forgotten the easy life of Bywong and happily embraced the formality of city living. Standards must be maintained, obligations met and time needed to be spent ensuring daily routines were correctly observed. Neat ringlets framed a face which was beginning to owe just a little more to artifice than nature. Time marched on and Hannah intended to remain at the forefront. Brisk, kindly, without a trace of any disturbing fancy in her head, Hannah welcomed her visitors…but she did not expect her life to suffer too many disruptions.
“We can’t have the place turned upside down,” she’d shared her opinions with her husband earlier that day. “I hope he’s not going to expect everyone to wait hand and foot on him. And Mary Ann will need to change her ways too. None of that racing off doing her own thing all the time, life is different here. She’ll have to mind her manners. There’s so much I’ll need to show her.” Hannah allowed herself a heartfelt sigh. “But I hope I know my duty, I’ve always known my duty.” And her husband nodded, dutifully.
“It’s most gratifying to have my family under our roof, but I hope they haven’t brought their country ways with them. We don’t want any nonsense. No nonsense, I say.” He had nodded again.
Settling Grand-père took up to the best part of an hour. Hannah made it clear to her young sister that looking after all his needs remained firmly within Mary Ann’s domain. “He’s such a demanding old man, isn’t he? Seems to think he is the centre of the universe.”
By the time his face and hands were sponged, a pillow propping up his back, another under his knee and a glass of wine in his hand Mary Ann had learnt the layout of the bedrooms and the kitchen and the washhouse.
“Let me show you the parlour.” Taking her arm, Hannah led her sister down the hall. The rich colours of a Kidderminster carpet glowed on the polished wooden floor whilst on each side pictures covered the walls and a French clock ticked the hours away upon a mahogany card table.
“Oh, so elegant,” exclaimed Mary Ann as she rested her hand on the Turkey-style sofa which had no ends or pillows. “I’ve never seen a sofa like this… and how beautifully those crystals reflect the sunshine.” On a small table between two red morocco armchairs a large candlestick with lustre drops caught the last rays of the afternoon sun.
“Newly arrived in the Colony my dear, the latest in fact.”
The dining room proved no less stylish but as Hannah ran her finger along the back of one of the eight rosewood chairs she frowned. “These servants, no better than Gundaroo, I’ll be bound, you’d think they could at least manage the dusting. Oh, mind that vase!” She frowned as Mary Ann brushed against the sideboard. “Wedgwood, of course, not that ordinary blue stuff, black jasper it’s called.”
Wedgewood, Hepplewhite, soirées, tête a têtes as quickly as the words tripped from Hannah’s lips Mary Ann squirreled them away, an exclusive vocabulary of delicacy and pleasure.
Harvesting, haymaking, footrot and the myriad ills of livestock and crop had always dominated the conversation at home, now the arrival of the latest ship, the date of the next ball at Government House or the beginning of the Races were on everyone’s lips.
Over the next weeks, as Grand-père underwent his operation and began the slow business of recovery, Mary Ann’s head echoed with words she had never heard before. Chinoiserie, deshabillée, boudoir, pot pourri and of course the necessity