The Convict's Daughter Read online

  But that was up north and things were different down in the south, particularly about town. These days Sydney was one of the few places where you didn’t have to keep your wits about you because now things were more or less settled. Sure there were a few stragglers about—and a good many knew the ropes and could be useful, as well as those who camped behind the barracks where the Kinchela boys had regimental friends among the 39th brigade. But Sydney was not like Moreton Bay or the far north country in the Darling Downs, where things were particularly grim. There had been quite a few days over the past couple of years when Kinchela considered himself lucky to have woken up alive. He had heard of men found dead in their beds, although most of them were asking for it, he reckoned, or at least that was what some of the ex-convicts who lived among the blacks said.

  These days few city folk cared to know that there was a war going on out there beyond their fancy coffee rooms. They were pleased for the sugar and meat on their tables and didn’t care much about how it got there. In fact, many preferred not to know. They were two very different worlds. And right now, for the first time in a while, Kinchela was in town. He began to splash his family name about the better establishments to secure a little credit. He was a Kinchela, after all, and the name counted for something. Within a week he had chummed up with Jim Davidson, a magistrate mate of his brother who had a taste for rum and fun, and by April James was actually beginning to enjoy himself for the first time in a while.

  And there was the girl to play with. He had a feeling he might be making a little mischief, but he thought he could string it out a bit longer for, surely, there was not much harm to it. The way she looked at him, though, and the considered nature of her questions, made him wonder otherwise sometimes. He had never had that sort of careful but direct attention from a woman before. On the whole, women were a rather awkward proposition for James Butler Kinchela and, in general, he couldn’t understand their simpering games. Women made him nervous—the way they could snap just like that. For the most part, and like many a good Irishman from country parts, Kinchela preferred horses. You could ride them fast and feel the wind rushing past you as you thundered along, lifted by the horse’s generous gait and that exhilarating sense of freedom. The young Gill girl was not like the women in his family circle and he found himself looking forward to his chance encounters with her, like the one they had on the first night just before the dining room opened.

  By the second week they were both seeking each other out around the time of the first dinner sitting—and each time they were together they committed some new observation of one another to memory. He had black hair, like her da’s, Mary Ann thought, only his had a little more curl. He was taller than her father, but not by much. He was, however, much stouter around the chest and where her father’s eyes were mostly hazel, his were a deeper brown. Most of all Mary Ann sensed in the gentleman settler an expanse of life that made her feel that he must know about the places she wanted to learn about. Places like the fine rooms where her father visited, but only to oversee the evening supper for a rout or a ball. When she went with her father she was always watching but never watched. These were some of the places where Mary Ann sensed that Kinchela was probably at home and where she wanted to go. With him. But there were other places, too, wild places where you would start riding on your horses but end up having to push forward on foot. She had heard about such places but had never spoken with anyone who had actually been to them. Each day the gentleman guest would offer up more details and she would muse over these throughout the day, trying to make them last as long as one of her father’s boiled sweets, until she saw him again, that evening, standing by the staircase just outside the dining room, waiting for an evening meal and ready to recount more of his adventures.

  Kinchela saw the girl’s appetite. Initially he found it flattering and then a little daunting, but after a few more weeks he came to see that this inquisitiveness was intrinsic to who she was. This was a girl who could hardly contain her questions, as if curiosity possessed her very being. He could see that much from the light that brimmed in her hazel eyes and the way she leant forward and grew still as she listened to him. And yet, somehow despite her thirst for knowledge, the girl managed to maintain an appropriate level of decorum and composure. Not too much, not too little. The hotelier’s daughter had ambitions, he picked up that much, and yet in contrast to some of the grasping girls he had come across in good society, her questions did not repel him. She was gauche, that was true, and had few of the manners and accomplishments so prized among his sisters and their friends, but she was never vulgar. Once or twice he had been confronted by her forthright disposition. Like many of the native-born girls he had met in his travels, she had no qualms about being direct and it gave him a curious sense of lightness. If they had been at home, particularly in Kilkenny, she would have known her place and been incapable of thinking beyond it, but this one, he thought, had her own head. He liked that in horses, and, it seemed, James Butler Kinchela also liked it in this girl.

  Nonetheless, her questions were revealing. ‘How does it feel to ride out and not know where you will stop for the night?’ Mary Ann asked towards the end of the second week of his stay, when they had, without actually conferring on the matter, contrived to meet at the dining room stairwell before serving. These stairwell encounters were no more than five minutes, if that, but the intensity lingered. Her questions became something that James mulled over the following day. ‘Do you think it right to whip a man?’ was another question she had asked, which left him wondering. But it was this one: ‘Did your father beat his daughters?’, which stopped him dead.

  Kinchela had stepped back and blinked. Put his hand to the back of his ruddy neck and held it there as he inhaled. He tried to imagine his soft-voiced father turning on anyone. He recalled the trembling hands and slack jaw of the old man after the stroke and tried to remember when he had been a boy and his father the mayor of Kilkenny. Kinchela could remember no such incident. Had he and John ever been cropped? At school, yes and often they had deserved it. But he had no recollection of any beatings at home. Let alone one of the girls. Perhaps he would have benefitted from a few more thrashings, but there it was. He shook his head. No, his father had never beaten anyone. But she had got him wondering and he began watching the hotelier differently, detecting a propensity for something in the man’s sharp features and grandiose gestures. The man wasn’t cruel, Kinchela sensed, but he was unpredictable and perhaps also bloody-minded.

  For a girl not yet sixteen, Mary Ann’s evening interviews with the gentleman settler were an unknown experience of such potency that she could not draw back from them even though she knew she was courting trouble. Certainly, her father had rough handled her a number of times when she was a child, and she had also felt his hand more than twice. And more recently there had been some terrifying displays of authority, particularly after he had seen her talking with the gentleman settler one evening. There had also been that recent visit to her grandparents’ when she had failed to seek permission before leaving. Her father had set off after her in such a panic, and when he arrived at McCormick’s farm he had threatened the entire house with his pistols, shoving both hard under his girl’s nose to let her know who was boss. The situation seemed to be building to a crisis, but even so Mary Ann could not pull back.

  Margaret watched her daughter and wondered what to do. She, herself, had been a work girl and then a felon. After that she had been lucky to be ‘freed’ into marriage. In contrast to her own life, her daughter’s was one of great advantage. People petted the child as a way of finding favour with her husband, who was, after all, a man on the rise. Margaret and Martin had agreed to give their daughter something of an education. There would be better opportunities for a girl who could read and write and it would also assist the business. And so, as the Gills consolidated their position, Mary Ann had reaped many advantages and could, quite reasonably, be described as ‘a respectable female’ who was ‘competent in
every respect’. At least this was how Margaret described Mary Ann in The Herald a few months ago when she had placed an advertisement that informed the public that her daughter was ‘desirous’ of engaging herself as a ‘monthly nurse’ to an ‘invalid lady’. It was time to put her into work, particularly with conditions in the colony looking so uncertain. But the advertisement was not true; Mary Ann did not want to do anything of the sort. Mother and daughter were now in a standoff about this and Mary Ann had somehow managed to undermine every opportunity presented to secure gainful employment.

  It was beyond the range of Martin Gill to imagine a daughter having her own ideas. When you were fossicking for food around the backstreets of North Dublin, you didn’t have ideas, you did what had to be done or you died. But now, there was his child, a daughter even, being obstinate about earning a living for the family. He did clip her round the head, and box her about the ears, too, and he was not ashamed to say that he had also shown her his pistols. But that was the most of it, really. In contrast to other men of his position he had been even-tempered. He knew men, a number of his associates, for example, who put their children to work much earlier and would think nothing of horsewhipping a disobedient daughter. The girl needed to bring in money, both he and Margaret agreed. They were counting on it, in fact, particularly with the drought drying up the land and talk of more trouble to come. They couldn’t rely on the rich pastoralists to feather their nests. He had already seen a few of his associates go under in recent months and was aware that the family needed to play a careful set of cards if they were to come out on top.

  If Martin Gill had struggled with the natural affections of fatherhood when Mary Ann was an infant, his daughter was an even more inscrutable mystery to him now that she was on the brink of womanhood. And the way she was behaving with the well-heeled Irish settler gave him a feeling that she was playing with something that would bring them all down. He would not have it—particularly not with the sort of man he had watched about the Green as a young half-starved boy. The type he had seen lording it over others when he had first come to the colony. But he was still uncertain about how to approach the matter. As a consequence of this, Martin Gill found himself decidedly agitated whenever he thought about his daughter, let alone when he had to be in the same room as her.

  Her husband was one of those men who needed his own head, Margaret knew that much. He had a heavy hand and a simple way of seeing things, but although he was intent upon putting himself on top of every circumstance, he was not particularly driven to make others feel worse. When it came to his daughter, though, Margaret had learnt to leave off or she would wear the cool edge of his contempt. He did have an affectionate side, particularly when things were going well, but under pressure the street rat in Martin Gill came out with plenty of fight and he was not one to be beat.

  Margaret, now a mother of six, with the young one still on her breast, was trying to work out what to do to keep things steady. She had tea with her daughter most afternoons, after she had put the baby down, and watched carefully for an opportunity to say something right, but the phrases didn’t come and her daughter kept up a light banter that seemed to discourage Margaret from finding a way in. Well, no need to make life too complicated, she thought. There is usually another way if you keep a look out for it.

  And so there was. The opportunity presented itself in the dining room of the Gill’s Family Hotel about a fortnight after the Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations. The gentleman settler was there, as he was most nights except Thursdays. He tended to come in early for dinner, now, and on that particular day she sent two of the staff out into the kitchen to help with the pots and another off to the yard until she was alone with him. He looked up, suddenly aware of it. At first he was a little surprised and then, as she calmly made her way to his table, he began to process the situation. ‘Sir,’ Margaret said, her fingers just touching the linen tablecloth as she tipped her head in a manner that she hoped would secure his attention. Kinchela put down his cutlery and looked up at his host. ‘This situation won’t do,’ she said quietly. He coughed awkwardly and took a swig of his claret before looking away. ‘It can’t be,’ she continued, fixing him with a look that forced him to meet her gaze even though he was unable to find a reply. ‘We need to ask you to leave,’ she finished firmly, ‘and to pay your bill in the morning, if you please, sir.’ Margaret Gill didn’t want a reply and she didn’t wait for one. Instead she bowed her head and walked back to the entrance of the dining room. Kinchela watched her for a moment and then nodded to himself. Then carefully, but perhaps not quite so calmly, he picked up his knife and fork and resumed his meal. So that was it, he thought. He was to leave.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Parramatta Romance

  James Butler Kinchela considered the dalliance between himself and the hotelier’s daughter an amusement. It took several weeks back at Hawkwood before he realised he was thinking about the girl who lived in the hotel on Pitt Street. First he considered that he might be simply concerned for her wellbeing, given her odd question about the beatings. But frankly a bit of rough from a father was not frowned upon, quite the opposite in fact. It was also considered indiscreet to interfere in the private lives of other families. Kinchela tried to imagine what his older brother might do in a similar situation and realised that he had never heard John express concern for any particular woman. So John was no good. He would have to sort out the matter on his own.

  Next thing, a month had passed and Kinchela was back in Sydney again. This time he had come down on the Tamar to get materials for the fences. It was good for his mother too, he reasoned, he could meet up with her and his friend, Jim Davidson and also make some enquiries. Kinchela booked into the Adelphi Hotel on York Street, a solid establishment that had been known as the Donnybrook when Martin and Margaret Gill managed it a few years back. Kinchela had no intention of going anywhere down that end of Pitt Street. And yet, somehow one night in early May, about two o’clock in the morning, he found himself standing beneath a third-floor window that looked out over the night-time swell of the city harbour.

  He began to whistle. Soft and low. And then, suddenly, there she was. Sleep-swollen, perhaps, and definitely more of a young girl than a woman. But she was thrilled to see him, and the funny night bonnet on her head kept bobbing up and down in a way he found endearing. ‘Shhhush,’ James cautioned, staggering back on his heels—clearly more than a little bosky after a night out with Davidson.

  Davidson had been in fine form that night and, after listening to his brother’s friend over a couple of jugs of something pretty strong, made a suggestion that shocked Kinchela with its daring. ‘Marry her, James, and be done with it,’ he had said. ‘If the father doesn’t agree, get a special licence and do it anyway.’ The proposition intrigued Kinchela. She was young enough to learn and seemed to have a taste for something different, although he was fairly sure that Hawkwood would not be what she had in mind. He grimaced a little at the thought of her out there. But some part of the idea was taking hold. A wife.

  After Davidson bade him farewell, Kinchela wandered the wet streets of the darkened town, mulling it over. It wasn’t as if he had a fortune to lose; in fact it was likely that her father had been more careful with his money than had his own. It would get her out of that home and if her father was sensible he would see the advantage of Kinchela’s connections. By now, his own mother might be pleased with any match he made, provided it produced grandchildren, and he could go about it in a way that would avoid embarrassment to John and his sisters. Both girls were safely matched anyway. He would ask Gill first, but before he did so, he wanted to know if she was amenable to the idea herself.

  He was a little taken aback by Mary Ann’s response. Sure she was light and breathy with it but within a few minutes he could see that she was surprisingly measured and composed as if she had thought the whole thing through already. She even made her concerns perfectly clear: ‘If you take me from my father’s house,’ she had
said, swallowing twice before she continued, ‘and don’t marry me, James, my father will murder me. You understand, don’t you?’ Mary Ann asked, holding him with her look. But he wanted no more of that sort of talk for he had a clear sense of how it was all to be. ‘Give me a week, Mary,’ he responded, for he preferred the shorter version of her name, ‘and we will know which way to go.’ And then caught up in the improbable thrill of the moment, he had added, ‘There is no fear to it, you know, you shall be mine.’

  After Kinchela left, Mary Ann slipped back beneath her bed sheets and listened to the fast rhythm of her breathing. This was exactly what she wanted, what she had longed for, in fact, for several months. But now he had finally asked her, the whole thing felt like yarn slipping through her fingers and unravelling beyond her grasp. What would happen? How would her father reply? She had no say in any of it. The whole thing felt like a game where anything could happen.

  It went like this: James Butler Kinchela found Martin Gill three days later as the older man was standing outside the Waterloo Stores supervising a selection of ales and porters for the hotel. The two men nodded curtly at one another and Kinchela advanced. ‘A word, sir, if I may.’ Gill turned away and thought straight out of snubbing the man who had been too friendly with his daughter, but he stopped himself just in time. The long and short of it was a flat ‘no’. Gill was having none of it. He had plans for Mary Ann and they didn’t involve his sort, thank you. ‘It is best you don’t come near the hotel again,’ he finished, before stepping back to where his men were securing a cart piled high with barrels.