The Convict's Daughter Read online

  And so, on 19 May 1848, in the middle of a particularly wet and unpleasant evening, Kinchela appeared again beneath the third-floor window of Gill’s Family Hotel and whistled until Mary Ann appeared. Since she and Kinchela had spoken the young girl had wrestled with what she was about to do. Her father had come to her the evening after his street conversation with Kinchela and stepped up to her, too close for it to be anything but untoward, holding her chin with one thumb so she had to look up at him. He had hissed through clenched teeth, ‘If what I hear is true, my girl, there will be trouble.’ Mary Ann had made a shocked sound and stepped back. ‘There is no truth to any of it, sir,’ she had lied with wide eyes. Then Martin Gill had showed his daughter the two pistols he had crammed down the front of his belt for the occasion. ‘There is no error in this,’ he warned with his finger pointed, ‘I’ll not have it.’

  Mary Ann knew then that she was riding a knife’s edge. The whole thing could go either way and when it did, whatever happened, there would be consequences. But when that night she saw Kinchela standing in the arc of gaslight with a long double-breasted coat fitted and his top-boots well polished, if a little worn, her fear slipped away. They agreed upon a plan with quite precise instructions. She was to pack a bag of clothes and send these out to the Adelphi. On the night in question she was to make her way to Somerville, the cab driver in Kinchela’s employ, and then they would head out to Parramatta separately. Kinchela would organise for someone to perform the ceremony by special licence. And then it would be done. They would be husband and wife. On the day in question all Mary Ann needed to do was send a note to James confirming everything and then they would proceed as planned.

  When, however, the day finally arrived James was almost done with it all. He had expended such attention on the various parts of the forthcoming episode that he was, in truth, already a little tired of it. He imagined heading back to the Tamar still docked in the harbour, slipping away and leaving this moment of folly behind. But her note came in the late morning. Mary Ann sent with it a humble-looking carpetbag comprising some garments as well as several combs and two dresses that she thought would last until James fitted her in the standard appropriate for the wife of a gentleman settler.

  That night Mary Ann and her mother took tea in the parlour near the nursery, a custom they had maintained since moving into the hotel. As the pot brewed, Mary Ann tried to imagine herself through her mother’s eyes. She must give nothing away. She encouraged her mother to talk of future plans and how Mary Ann might now be ready to do as another girl from her writing school had recently done and find suitable employment. Margaret mentioned an old widow who lived out towards her grandmother’s way. ‘You could visit their farm more often,’ Margaret suggested, and Mary Ann smiled and nodded, trying to imagine what her grandparents would think of their Mary Ann married to an Irish gentleman.

  Thomas McCormick and Mary Riley had certainly encouraged Mary Ann over the years. It was also true to say that they were rather restrained in their praise of Martin Gill, particularly after the incident when he had come in pursuit of the girl armed with pistols and talking to his father-in-law in a fury. ‘It’s a father’s job to keep his daughter straight,’ he fumed at the old man, ‘and what would you know when you trained your own one to steal. Keep away,’ he finished up short with a snarl, ‘and don’t put yourself as the head of my family.’

  The old woman had warned Mary Ann that she was courting trouble when she told her grandmother about the gentleman at the hotel. ‘These sort of matches don’t work,’ she started before recounting a well-known story from back home about ‘a girl named Ellen Hanley, who had married up, to a rich man who knew about the land and such. But, only four days after the wedding,’ her grandmother continued, ‘the girl’s new husband learnt that his well-to-do family would never accept his new bride. Next day,’ she said, nodding to herself as much as to Mary Ann, ‘he paid a servant to shoot his pretty wife full of lead then dump her body in the Shannon. Six weeks after that the dead girl’s corpse was found, stripped naked and floating in a sea pool near Moneypoint, a huge rock still tied to her legs. She was your age.’ The old woman stopped and peered out to where a crop of beans was beginning to push through the earth. ‘This is what happens when you go beyond your lot. It never works.’

  With both hands gripped around the drainpipe that travelled down the back of her father’s hotel, and well out of sight of the main thoroughfare, Mary Ann stopped and cast another glance back at her bedroom window. She was contemplating climbing back inside and staying there. Actually, she wanted to step inside and find herself back in her York Street bedroom at the Donnybrook, the one she had shared with William and Isabella when she was still a child. Just days ago, the smell of her younger siblings had annoyed her, but now the sound of William’s uneven breathing and Isabella’s soft inhale made her long for her childhood.

  But instead Mary Ann fossicked about in the dark with her boot and when she found a small niche in the brickwork for her boot to grip onto she eased herself off the ledge and then put her whole weight onto the drainpipe. She made a horrible job of edging herself down it and halfway through she caught her calf on a bit of nail that was jutting out. A few clumsy minutes later it was done. A tear of blood trickled towards her boot. She knelt and dabbed at it with the inside of her petticoat and, for a second, an image of the Hanley girl flashed to her mind, legs bound and floating in the pool of seawater.

  It was about nine o’clock on a Saturday night and the street around the hotel was unsettled from the windy mess of the day before. It was growing darker. She would need to walk quickly if she was to get to Somerville in time. Her father had friends all along Pitt Street and up on George Street, but she and Kinchela had agreed that she would stop for a few minutes in the front parlour at Mrs Kelly’s, off Castlereagh Street, so a note could be passed on to James at the Adelphi. Then she would head behind the police station, of all places, to the coach yard where Somerville would be waiting.

  Down this end of town, Pitt Street was so wide that her only hope of not being seen by the shop owners and hotel men who knew her father was to hide herself within a crowd. But for some reason—other than a few stray dogs—the street felt curiously empty. Mary Ann pushed on until she arrived at the Vic Theatre where a cluster of Cabbagers were mingling about the front gates, clearly intent upon mischief. She knew well enough to keep her head down. One boy called out, but before the group could get organised she was off, too fast for them to bother. After another wretched ten minutes or so she knocked on the appointed door and a buxom woman, older than her mother, appeared, her hair piled high above a face that was both tough and flabby. ‘Miss Gill,’ she nodded, offering the girl’s name as a statement rather than a question before ushering her inside.

  Mrs Kelly’s place was not pleasant. Mary Ann could see that, even from the front room. She had no business in a place like this and if her father ever found out she had been there he would be right to belt her. Some sort of smoke hung low and heavy in the corridor. She shuddered as she sat down. The plush and lush of it. It was like nothing she had ever seen before. Low and dark with muffled laughter elsewhere—but inside the room—heavy quiet.

  After what seemed an eon, a girl, younger than Mary Ann, with loose plaits and a stiff walk, came in and asked for the note. Mary Ann had not thought to write anything in advance so she requested some paper and ink. This elicited an expression of irritation from the girl, which Mary Ann assumed had its origins in Mrs Kelly. But eventually the paper was presented, the note written and sent on to the Adelphi. Then she waited, trying not to look at, to even be in, this place. Why had James sent her here? What was he thinking? Surely this was not fit for a gentleman’s wife, she thought as something began to stir inside Mary Ann’s stomach. Already this was not the sort of adventure she and her school friends would have recounted to one another from the stories they read in books.

  It was a relief when she finally left Mrs Kelly’s, even if it did mean
heading back out into the night. Another downpour had made the street wet and it was also much darker than when she had arrived at the house, but Mary Ann was glad to be free. Mrs Kelly’s girl had given her a drink. Something brown and sweet in an etched glass that was meant to keep her warm and steady her. After a few sips Mary Ann felt lighter in her step and somehow also dazzled. To keep herself steady she trailed her fingertips along the rough brickwork of a low wall that ran along part of George Street, before turning into Bathurst Street. She had to walk a strip that was known to be particularly rough. There was a broken cart parked on one corner where someone could be hiding so she made sure to take the other side of the street. Mary Ann knew her way around town from running errands, but everything looked different in the dark, especially when she was stepping beyond her father like this. She turned her head to look into one of the tumbledown shops and was startled by a brace of rabbit carcasses hanging from a window hook. Again she imagined the Hanley girl. The same age on the day of her wedding as Mary Ann and then a week later, dead.

  Once more Mary Ann thought of turning back, but then the grey orb of the police station appeared through the night clouds, its weathercock spinning in soft arcs with the wind. She shoved her doubts down and made her way into the coach yard. ‘Well then,’ said a corpulent man when he saw her standing beneath the entrance to the coach yard, ‘there you are.’ The man had been working on his letters while waiting for the girl. He wanted to get Kinchela’s job done so he could get off the wet night road and back to his slate.

  ‘You are Mr Somerville?’ Mary Ann heard herself asking, and when she received confirmation of this she moved further into the yard. ‘And you know where you are to take me?’ she followed. Somerville replied by hauling his great hulk from the chair and pointing out into the dark. ‘I’ll fix up the horses and we can be on our way.’ She refused his offer of a seat and instead stood counting the revolutions of the weathercock while she waited. Once, twice, three times it spun in the wet night air and then to her surprise it was not Somerville who spoke next, but James Butler.

  Mary Ann turned in surprise. They were meant to arrive at Parramatta by different drivers. So why was he here? Wasn’t this bad luck? She could hardly breathe let alone speak, so she found herself nodding in response to whatever he said. ‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘Webb’s Inn, the Sportsman’s Arms, out along the Parramatta road. Yes,’ she agreed again, thinking he must be planning to stop en route before they arrived at their final destination for the ceremony. ‘Ask to speak to a man named Healy and tell him about your father.’ She nodded, blood surging through her head. ‘I’ll be there within the hour,’ Kinchela reassured her as Somerville opened the door and beckoned her into a poorly lit and rather damp carriage. Then Kinchela slapped the coach with the palm of his hand and stepped back. ‘We are just an hour or so behind,’ he said lightly. ‘All will be well.’ With that he closed the door and the vehicle lurched forward on its wheels as Mary Ann began her journey off and up and out along the open street towards the Sportsman’s Arms.

  The truth was Kinchela had been drinking. What had started as a celebratory jug with Davidson had become two or three more jugs, and after Davidson left James found himself considering his options over another bottle of something stronger. He was now steaming with it, sweating around the neck and unsteady on his feet. He hadn’t got round to securing the licence because he had figured it wouldn’t be too hard to get one, and, as Jim had said when Kinchela had asked for his help, there were plenty around who would be prepared to produce the document quickly for a good price. Davidson himself would pitch in but he needed a few days to get something like this sorted, even if he was a magistrate. The delay had put a dint in Kinchela’s plan and made it easier for him to keep putting everything off until the very last minute and then he let a few more minutes slip by. It was getting hopeless, and, to use the sort of racing metaphor Kinchela best understood, the horses were now well and truly out of the gate. Had long bolted in fact.

  Kinchela had asked Somerville to come back after he had dropped the girl at Webb’s, pick him up from the Adelphi and take him out to Webb’s. By then he should have a plan as well as a way of explaining the situation, which would put everything right. So he staggered back down Market Street towards York Street, trying to sharpen his thoughts. He did genuinely like the girl. There was something in her character, but he couldn’t stand the thought of her seeing the truth about him. It was now a case of when to disappoint her. He felt feckless and angry and considered a visit to Mrs Kelly’s to lighten his spirits.

  But, when he got to the Adelphi, instead of entering the hotel he found himself suddenly hailing a coach and heading out along the Parramatta road. He was blowing it. Come to think of it he had been mad to send her to Mrs Kelly’s, but there it was—he really wasn’t much crack at this sort of thing. He had a feeling that he was going to make a mess of it. James sucked his breath in through his teeth and took himself in hand. He was going to get this right, he decided.

  By the time Mary Ann alighted the coach at the Sportsman’s Arms she was trembling. Not only from fear but also sheer frustration. She had followed James’ plans precisely—but now it felt like the earth was opening up beneath her. On and on the coach had driven into the dark taking her, she felt, to her doom. She had smelt the grog on James and had a sickly feeling that everything was going to unravel.

  Nonetheless, before she entered the establishment Mary Ann regained her composure so she could seek out the proprietor, Mrs Webb, and ask for Mr Healy. Mrs Webb pointed through the curtains to a private parlour and then went back to the bar, where she had a good view of the young buck and the girl. As she watched them talk, something about the young girl began to nag at her. And then she got it. She was the daughter of another licensed victualler, that fellow Gill, with the fancy establishment down towards the quay on Pitt Street. ‘Best let Mr Gill know straightaway,’ Lydia Webb told her corpulent husband, who nodded obediently and, despite the late hour, saddled up and headed into town. They could not afford to be caught up in an intrigue, his wife reminded him.

  Healy told Mary Ann to take a room and that Kinchela would be up with her soon enough. With few alternatives, Mary Ann did what she was told. She made sure, however, that there was a girl on hand to help her out of her travel dress and to stay with her while she waited. She was in bed, the lamp down low and the maid in the corner chair, when Kinchela burst in, twenty minutes later. ‘Your father is on his way, Mary,’ he said, sounding strangely animated. ‘You’ll need to get dressed and mind yourself.’ Her father? Something plunged inside Mary Ann. She was done for. Kinchela had said he was to marry her and now she stood a large chance of being murdered by her own father or even worse—left to hang in the wind.

  Kinchela was ashamed of himself. He had to do the job properly or he was no better than his cousin William Thornton, probably worse. He thought of his own sisters. She was not of their class, that was true, but still the girl deserved better. ‘Listen,’ he continued desperately, ‘I’ll have the licence by the morning, so say you will come again.’ He swallowed. ‘Promise me, before dawn, and we will have it done by noon.’ Mary Ann looked at him as a mingling of rage, pity and something more physical stole over her. She had no other option and she knew it. ‘He will be here soon,’ Kinchela continued, imploring her, ‘promise me you will go to Somerville in the first light. He will bring you to me,’ Mary Ann nodded, twice so he could see, and then once again after he had shut the door and was long gone.

  Mary Ann kept the maid in the room after she had dressed so that when her father came into the room he would see that she was in her travelling clothes with another girl nearby. Martin Gill was apoplectic. Even more so when he found her sitting there, primly waiting, as if she was a step ahead of him. He did want to thrash her, then and there, but thought better of it with the servant in sight. Instead he beckoned to his daughter with his finger. Mary Ann followed her father downstairs, out of the hotel and into the coach he
had organised to take them home. Back they travelled over the same potted road. Mary Ann focused on her gloves as she tried to keep herself to herself and control her breathing. Meanwhile Martin Gill muttered insults at her, and promised, with his riding crop clasped tight between both hands, that there would be a world of trouble for her soon enough.

  How Mary Ann got through that night and what exactly happened is hard to say. Did Margaret intervene? She had gone in to check on her daughter, only minutes before Webb arrived at the dining-room door, panting hard and with his hat off and no collar. Margaret was coming down the staircase and was about to tell her husband that their daughter was gone, when Webb broke it to her husband first. Margaret saw the wildness in her husband’s eyes and watched as he went behind the hotel counter to get his pistols. Margaret had stepped into his path and stopped there for a few seconds—all the while keeping her head low. Quietly, Martin Gill put the guns back, but, on his way out, he picked up the thin, black crop he kept by the coach yard door.

  Now the girl was back home and in one piece. It was almost two in the morning. Margaret had stayed awake, looking into the courtyard below their bedroom window. She had seen her husband drag their daughter out of the vehicle and across the yard, into the kitchen. She had heard muffled yelps like a dog under the wheel of a cart and decided it was best to turn in to bed. The girl had brought it upon herself, Margaret thought. She could not be helped now and perhaps this punishment was for the best. Scare her properly once and for all and then it will be done for good. Through the bedroom wall Margaret heard her daughter’s muted sobs and when her husband came to bed an hour or so later, Margaret pretended to be asleep. Her plan had been to go into her daughter’s room first thing in the morning and have a word to put the matter to rest, but when Margaret stepped in there, just after dawn, it was clear that things were going to go from bad to worse. The girl had gone again.