Love, Lies And Legacies

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Book excerpt

Hobart Town, 1823

Even though it made her happy watching the girls play, Catherine Blay could feel the tension in her shoulders. It tightened up behind her neck, moved up to the right side of her head, and settled there, throbbing like the drums at a funeral. She kept working the dough, matching the kneading actions with the thump in her head. Bread making reminded her of Teddy. He had loved the smell of freshly baked bread. She placed the dough in a pan, covered it with a cloth and set it aside to rise.

Catherine had given her beloved first husband, James Tedder, the pet name Teddy when they fell in love, because there were many men called James on her parents’ farm and she’d wanted to set her James aside from everyone else.

Her eldest daughter Margaret, five, had memories of her father, but Sarah, called Sadie for convenience, forgot him as soon as Catherine’s new husband, James Blay Jr, asked to be called “Papa”.

She screwed up her face at the memory of brushing aside the warnings. Her mother-in-law, Sarah Blay and her own mother, Elizabeth, cautioned her not to accept James Blay Jr’s marriage proposal. They didn’t see the side of him she had before they married. He’d been gentle, caring, sweet to the girls, and supportive when Teddy died, even writing to Teddy’s family on her behalf, explaining the tragedy of his sudden death in his flour mill.

Catherine missed her first husband. She missed his touch, the look he gave her when he came home from work and wanted the children to go to bed, the way he told her she was beautiful, even if she didn’t agree. She’d hoped marrying James Blay Jr would fill gaps left in her life.

The pounding in her head marched on.

James Jr changed not long after they married, and his personality twists brought on the pains in her shoulders, neck, and head. She couldn’t deny his affection for the girls, but he was no longer good to her. Speaking to her as if she were a convict who had to put up with his every whim, he often disappeared for days at a time with no explanation. He provided no money for the upkeep of the house or provisions, and without the rents from the flour mill James Tedder had left her in his will, she and the girls would struggle.

Catherine remembered her husband as the petulant child who arrived on her parents’ farm in 1814. He came with his mother Sarah, and two younger brothers, William and John. Sarah Blay had followed her husband, James Blay Sr to Van Diemen’s Land from London where he’d been convicted for stealing three pairs of boots. His sentence - transportation for life. Sarah had run her husband’s shoemaking business and saved the money to pay for their passage to Hobart Town. James Jr hadn’t wanted to leave London, and when they arrived in Van Diemen’s Land, he tried stowing away on a ship moored in the Derwent, to go back to England. He came to the farm with his parents, rage pulsing from his purple cheeks, and his hands tied behind his back.

Catherine knew why she was warned against marrying him. She had seen him grow up, witnessed his disrespectful behaviour, and was privy to his selfish, self-centred ways. But he had shown her a different side to his character. She took the risk.

Turning her attention to the vegetable garden and orchard surrounding the house in Murray Street, Catherine led the girls outside. She’d planted the garden when Teddy bought the house and tended to it while he set himself up in the flour mill. She was teaching the girls how to differentiate between weeds and food plants, and to know when fruit and vegetables were ready to pick. Watching the children picking peas from the vines for supper, Catherine admired the way Margaret pinched each pod causing no damage to the vine itself. Margaret gave each handful of pods to Sadie for her to put in a bucket.

‘How many peas will we pick, Mama?’ Margaret asked, ‘Will Papa be home for supper?’

A small fragment of Catherine’s heart chipped off each time the girls call James Jr “Papa”.

‘I don’t know if he will be home for supper. We will prepare, just in case. Pick enough peas to include him.’ Catherine couldn’t bring herself to say “Papa” when referring to James Jr.

‘When you’ve picked the peas, girls, get another bucket and dig up enough potatoes for supper.’

Watching with pride as Margaret supervised Sadie, showing her which plants would yield potatoes ready to take from the ground, Catherine realised her eldest daughter should soon start school. She didn’t want the girls struggling to read and write the way she did.

Back inside, Margaret set herself up at the kitchen table with the bucket of peas. With expert precision, she relieved the little green balls from the constraints of their outer covering, feeding the occasional one to Sadie.

Closing her hand into a tight fist, Catherine used the part of her hand below the thumb and above the wrist, to massage her right temple for a few minutes’ relief. She peeled and sliced potatoes, layered them in a big baking pan, covered them with herbs from the garden and put pork fat in the corners.

Margaret didn’t have to be asked, she handed the bucket of freshly shelled peas to her mother and watched them become a blanket for the sliced potatoes.

‘Margaret, get the dried pork from the pantry, please,’

The five-year-old produced the pork and watched again as her mother sliced it thinly and layered it over the peas. ‘The pork fat will cook the potatoes, and the salted pork will soften the peas.’ Catherine explained

The pan of delights was balanced on the fire’s coals, and another pan placed on top as a lid. Mouths watered.

‘Papa is home,’ squealed Sadie as James Jr opened the door and stepped into the cottage. Holding out his arms to her, she ran, jumped into them, and wrapped her arms around his neck.

‘I missed you, Papa, where have you been all this time?’ she asked.

‘It’s only been two days, little one,’ he whispered, ‘Papa’s been busy working.’

The child clambered down from James’ arms, grasped his hand with hers, and led him to the fire. ‘We’ve made supper. Margaret and I picked the peas and the potatoes, and I helped Margaret shell the peas, and we made supper.’ She looked up at him grinning, waiting for approval.

‘Well done, Sadie, that’s wonderful. How are you today, Margaret?’ he asked the older girl.

She beamed ‘I am well, Papa. We’ve been busy. Mama wants me to go to school.’

Glaring at Catherine with the contempt a man saves for an adversary, he spoke to the child ‘That will depend on how much money we have. We’ll talk about it another day.’

Margaret shrugged her shoulders, took Sadie by the hand, and went outside to look for lizards until supper.

Ignoring the snarl on her husband’s face, Catherine spoke about Margaret’s education. ‘Margaret is almost six years old, James, she should start school to learn to read and write. I don’t want her relying on others all her life as I have had to.’

Blay Jr stopped unfolding the newspaper he was about to read and slammed it on the table. ‘It was all right to rely on me when you wanted to write letters to Tedder’s family. It was all right to rely on me when you wanted to know the lists of Tedder’s assets, but you don’t want Margaret to rely on me.’

‘That’s not what I meant, James. You are often away with business. Margaret will be old enough to wed in ten years, which time will pass soon enough. She will have an advantage if she can read and write. I want no one deceiving her.’ Catherine waited for the inevitable backlash.

He rounded on her. ‘So, I am deceiving you, am I? You think I’m taking your precious Teddy’s land and buildings and keeping them for myself?’

Feeling tired by the vicious exchange Catherine sighed. ‘I don’t know, James. The documents I sign with my mark could say anything, I can’t read them. I don’t want that for Margaret and Sadie.’

James Jr took three long steps from the fireplace and stood over Catherine, his face so close she could feel his breath on her cheek. ‘Margaret will go to school when I say she can. How long will supper be?’

The throbbing in Catherine’s head spread to the other side.

“Lt-Governors Sorell, Arthur and Franklin all encouraged the establishment of primary schools (and Franklin also sponsored unsuccessful attempts at secondary and tertiary levels). The main objective was to instil proper habits in the children of the lower classes, through the mediums of basic literacy and numeracy, religious (or moral) instruction, and for the girls, rudimentary domestic training. By Franklin's time, there were nearly thirty such schools, most privately conducted but under the supervision of the Anglican church (with some Catholic schools from 1822), yet these only catered for about one-quarter of the school-age population, and very few from the remote districts.”

 From: http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/E/Education.htm>

When James finished with her, Catherine turned away, brought her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around them. She drifted off to sleep, but first prayed she would not be with child.

Up before sunrise, she left James asleep in their bed. She washed and dressed. Creeping out of the house, she sat in her chair on the verandah, taking in the sights and smells of Hobart Town as it woke. Autumn was her favourite season in Van Diemen’s Land, the temperature didn’t fluctuate as much as it did in summer and the land was easier to till after more consistent rain. But this was a summer morning. There was no sign of rain; the sky was cloudless, and the sun rose with a vengeance, heating the roads, the trees, the people, the animals, the plants as it worked its way up from the horizon.

With the rising of the sun came the chorus of the Van Diemen’s Land bird life. The cockatoos squawked as they congregated in huge flocks, attacking any fruit trees unprotected by farm dogs. The green rosellas made that annoying, harsh two note sound when the cockatoos bullied them out of the trees. Catherine was seven when she left Norfolk Island and she remembered it with fondness. She remembered the sounds of the seabirds. They were noisy, but a symphony compared with the screeching of the cockatoos and complaints of the green rosellas.

Taking its cue from the rising sun, the wind gathered intensity and picked up the dust from the Hobart Town streets, swirled it in the air and dropped it on the washing Catherine’s neighbour had just hung out to dry. She went inside before the dust settled on her.

‘Hurry and get me something to eat, I have to go out,’ James Jr ordered as Catherine made her way back into the cottage.

She and the children had oatmeal for breakfast, but her husband wouldn’t eat it, he said it reminded him of the voyage from England on the Kangaroo. He ate biscuits soaked in warm goat’s milk, sprinkled with sugar.

‘I wonder where he thinks the money comes from to buy his food.’ she thought, as he dribbled milk on his nightshirt.

James put on his clothes and rubbed his hands through his dishevelled hair. He splashed water from the washing bucket onto his face, pulled his boots on and left the cottage without so much as a goodbye to his wife.

Relieved to have him out of the house, Catherine sat at the kitchen table with a fresh cup of tea. Sadie was the first of the girls to get out of bed. Tiptoeing in her bare feet, she snuggled next to Catherine, put her arms around her and kissed her cheek.

‘Good morning, Mama,’ the three-year-old said smiling. ‘Has Papa gone to work?’

‘Yes, Sadie. Sit up at the table, Mama will get you something to eat.’

‘Me too, please,’ quipped Margaret as she came into the kitchen rubbing her eyes and pushing her hair off her face. ‘Am I going to school today, Mama?’

‘Not today. We have too many things to do at home.’

Accepting her mother’s edict, Margaret pulled out a chair and sat opposite her sister.

Sitting at the table with her daughters, eating oatmeal, Catherine struggled with different scenarios that involved educating Margaret without disobeying her husband.

Keeping busy in the little cottage, the children were learning their responsibilities: Margaret looked after the hens and the vegetable garden, feeding table scraps and wheat to the hens each morning, changing their water, and collecting eggs. Sadie followed her big sister around, copying and learning.

Margaret taught herself to count by lining up the eggs. She needed something physical to move around to grasp the concept, because she had yet to learn to recognise numbers, and couldn’t add them up. ‘Will I learn to count numbers when I go to school, Mama?’

Catherine patted her cheek and nodded. She hadn’t found a solution to the problem of educating her daughters without her husband’s permission.

***

This last excursion from Hobart Town had seen James away for five days and Catherine didn’t know if this should make her happy. She hoped he was in a pleasant frame of mind when he came back.

Returning on the fifth day, he stormed into the cottage owned by his wife and threw a piece of paper on the table. ‘This paper says I am entitled to the rents from the flour mill that Tedder built. Lt Governor Sorell signed it. You won’t be getting any more of the money from the mill. It’s mine.’

His malicious grin reflected in his eyes, Catherine was sure they turned black.