Hester Waring's Marriage (20 page)

‘What I'd committed were capital crimes—and to cap it all, I'd even bought the law. An old man in a nightgown with a black cap on his head sentenced me to death. I suppose that it's the criminal bastard's usual end. I couldn't believe it. Clever Tom Dilhorne was to swing. My lack of years didn't save me. The old man said when he sentenced me that I was a dreadful example of youthful vice and he'd do the world a favour by sending me out of it. I can't help wondering how he would have fared if he'd been turned out, quite alone, on the London streets at thirteen.

‘I remember now that I lay in Newgate in a stupor. I couldn't believe that I was going to escape this time. I remember vowing that if by some chance I didn't hang, I would be more wary. I'd never trust anyone again—my best friend had informed on me—and I'd never put myself in a position where I could be betrayed by anyone.

‘The day before I was due to swing the turnkey came to my cell. I was lying in the straw in a daze.

“‘Get up, boy,” he shouted.

‘I thought that he'd come for me a day early, or that I'd miscounted the days. I'd lost all track of time. He let me think that it was Tyburn Tree I was bound for. They took me outside and chained me to another three poor devils and drove us in a cart to the hulks. The talk was that our
sentences had been commuted to transportation—and so it proved.'

He gave a great sigh before he started to speak again. Hester realised that in some way he was purging himself—that he must tell her the whole sad story.

‘I met Alan on the transport. He was just coming out of his stupor. His case was worse than mine for he was a gentleman and was as green as grass among the hardened felons who surrounded him—myself included.

‘He had been a surgeon on a naval ship of the line, sentenced for treason, for unwisely expressing sympathy for the ideals of the French Revolution, something which his captain chose to regard as mutiny. He had been lucky not to be hanged on the spot but to be transported instead.

‘I felt sorry for someone who was as green as he was. I don't know why. No one had ever felt sorry for me. I think now that I needed someone to care for, perhaps to make up for what I couldn't do for my poor mother. I befriended him, protected him, saved him from assault—and worse. It was the best thing I ever did.

‘He was educated, clever and a natural teacher. And I wanted to learn. How I wanted to learn! I thought that if I had known more I might not have been caught so easily, might not have descended to be a thief. I wanted to dig myself out of the pit I was in. So when he said that he wanted to repay me for saving him I asked him to teach me all that he knew. In the long days and nights on the transport and then on Norfolk Island when we reached New South Wales he educated me.

‘I could read a little and I could scrawl something which passed for writing and I was naturally clever with figures, but I spoke like the scum I was. He taught me to read properly and to write an elegant hand, the hand which
surprises so many when they see it. I imagine that it surprised you…'

Hester nodded and he laughed drily.

‘He taught me to speak like a gentleman. I'd always been a good mimic and I learned quickly. I mastered Latin, too, it helped us to pass the long time on the voyage and to keep us sane. That was why I knew perfectly well what I was doing when I teased you about teaching the little ones Latin. I knew perfectly well what
amo
meant, but I wanted to see your face when you answered me.

‘We were off the Cape of Good Hope when he began teaching me a little Greek—which was all that he knew. Alan said that I had the best memory of anyone he had ever met. I never forget anything which I have read, written, heard of, or experienced—which is why it puzzles me that I forgot my early life so completely.

‘Why should I remember so much but forget that? Unless, of course, I had willed myself to forget it. I remembered dimly that my mother had been brave and loving, but that was all. And then for it all to come back so suddenly when you spoke just now. That is a mystery, too.

‘Alan also taught me medicine and made me his assistant on the transport. He said that I would have made a good doctor or an even better dominie. There's a thought for you! Wild Tom Dilhorne a scholar! So when I interviewed you for that post I probably knew more than the rest of the Board put together, because I've read widely since. An old clerk, transported for theft, taught me bookkeeping and other business skills in return for me helping him as I helped Alan. Between the two of them they educated me so that I was saved from being another ex-thief who didn't know how to earn an honest living.

‘I never revealed what I had learned when we reached Sydney and Alan and I parted to go our own ways. Let
them think Tom Dilhorne a wild man and an ignoramus. That helped me to grow rich, I can tell you. Many is the time when my rivals or the Exclusives talked in front of me in their superior way, never knowing that I knew exactly what they were saying. Quoting their bits of dog Latin and speaking French—Alan taught me that, too—in front of the stupid felon.

‘I've not told you all, my love, not all I've done. It's not fit for you to hear. Even Alan doesn't know the whole truth, but the poor lost bastard survived—if at a price.'

He had finished.

Hester sat up and pulled his head against her breast as though he were her child and rocked him.

‘My poor love, oh, my poor love.'

The story of the lonely boy and his betrayed mother had moved her beyond words. And I thought that I had suffered, she said to herself. I hardly know what suffering is.

Tom's lack of self-pity, the matter-of-fact way in which he had spoken, shocked her the most. He had told her his story in a level voice, almost as though he had been speaking of someone else. Whatever she had thought his past might have been, she could never have imagined what he had told her.

For his part Tom lay quiescent against her as she kissed and stroked him gently, bringing him to climax by her own actions. For once he was passive, the loved one, the acceptor of delight, and not the fierce and tender lover who initiated their pleasure.

He had put his past behind him. He had become Tom Dilhorne, rich and powerful, who ruled and controlled his world absolutely. To remember was to become the helpless boy again, to be controlled, not to control. He had conquered his world, but at a dreadful price.

Telling Hester was, they both knew, in some odd way
the greatest gift he could make her. He had surrendered his deepest self to another, although after Newgate he had vowed never to do so again.

Chastened, purged, he slept at last. Hester, holding him against her heart, lay awake until the new day arrived to bring them back to the demanding present. She was no longer Tom's toy, she was truly his partner, as her Mentor had promised. In the future his associates would discover that if they accepted him, they had to accept her.

What he had told her explained what drove him so frantically towards success in everything that he touched and, above all, the energy which had allowed him to find her, to understand her, to change her whole existence, while at the same time not diminishing any part of his busy life. No one, watching him, could have guessed from the man that he showed the world what he had been and how much he had suffered—nor would she ever tell anyone his secrets.

T
om was sitting at his desk in his counting-house on the morning of the day on which he had asked Jack Cameron to visit him. His concentration was broken by the sound of a struggle outside his room.

He had barely had time to rise to his feet when the door flew open. Jack Cameron stood outside, Tom's letter in one hand, a scarlet-faced Joseph Smith's ear in the other.

‘I mean to teach your insolent lackey a lesson, Dilhorne.'

‘I merely asked him to wait until I found out whether you were free to see him, Master Dilhorne.'

‘Ex-felons are always free to see me when I need to see them,' sneered Jack.

‘You mistake,' Tom returned mildly. ‘It is I who need to see you.'

He was perfectly cool with Cameron now that Hester was not involved. ‘If you don't release Mr Smith at once, I fear that it is I who will teach you manners, since you seem to have forgotten the last lesson I gave you.'

Jack pitched Smith from him. ‘Oh, very well, Dilhorne. I'll let your miserable serf start pushing his quill again.'

‘I think,' remarked Tom, as smooth as silk, ‘that you
have just added two per cent to the interest I shall require from you in payment of your debts. It shall go to Mr Smith to compensate him for being manhandled by a poor apology for a gentleman.'

‘Two per cent, is it?' sneered Jack, watching Smith leave. ‘What the devil does that mean? And what's this ordure you've written to me? I must say that I'm astounded that you can write at all.'

He tossed Tom's letter on to his desk.

‘We have some business dealings to conclude,' said Tom, ignoring Jack's insolence, but having taken sardonic note that Jack was carefully avoiding coming to physical terms with him.

‘I wasn't aware that I had any business dealings with you, Dilhorne. I'm always careful to avoid contact with felons whenever possible.'

‘Ex-felon is the correct term,' was Tom's only answer, ‘and if you imagine that you have no business dealings with me, you are as mistaken as when you chose to misname my wife.'

Jack's anger at this was tempered by his wariness in dealing with the vulgar ruffian before him.

‘Captain Cameron to scum like you, Dilhorne.'

‘Certainly, Captain Cameron,' agreed Tom in his most exasperating drawl. ‘Captain Cameron. Well, Captain Cameron, I take leave to tell Captain Cameron that I have bought up all his debts. They lie on the desk before you, Captain Cameron. And I shall require Captain Cameron to agree to three conditions if Captain Cameron will be good enough to listen to them.'

‘Damn you, stop repeating my name, you filth!' roared Jack.

‘I was under the impression that you ordered me to use your name, Captain Cameron, but as you have asked me
so politely not to, then I shall be only too happy to oblige you and cease.'

‘What conditions, Dilhorne? How dare you talk to me of conditions, you damned convict?'

‘I shall add another one per cent for vulgar abuse,' said Tom equably, ‘and you will talk to me of conditions because, if you don't, I shall set the bailiffs on to you for debt and inform Colonel O'Connell into the bargain.'

Jack was on the verge of gibbering. ‘Come to the point,' he finally achieved in a hoarse whisper.

‘I fear you mistake again. There are
three
points for you to consider. Firstly, I have purchased all your debts and now hold all those which you have run up in Sydney. Secondly, I shall charge you a percentage on them to be paid each quarter day at an interest which I shall determine, and of which Smith will inform you in advance—and you will not assault him again, or I shall send all your papers straight to O'Connell. Thirdly, any form of default on your part, or interference with me and mine, and again, I shall send in the bailiffs.

‘Is that all perfectly clear to you,
Captain Cameron…sir.
'

The ‘sir' came out with such studied insolence that it was an insult, not a respectful salutation.

Jack sank into an armchair opposite Tom's desk and stared mutely into the bland, smiling face of the man opposite to him. Then, his voice thick with rage, he snarled, ‘By God, you damned felon, I'll call you out, see if I don't.'

‘Do so, by all means. Here and now, if you like. Shall I choose fisticuffs, on the spot or later? For be sure I shall never call you out, however tempted I might be to kill you, and thus, by your own ridiculous rules, the choice is mine, always mine.'

‘By God, Dilhorne,' cried Jack despairingly, ‘I never thought that I'd find myself ruined in a hell-hole like Sydney by a ruffian such as you!'

‘Did you not? Then you should have ordered your affairs better. But you have not answered me.'

‘What answer can I give you other than yes? You have me by the throat. But I'll do for you yet, Dilhorne, see if I don't.'

Tom leaned back. The smile on his face was deadly. Hester would scarcely have known him.

‘I find you a dead bore, Cameron,' he said at last. ‘Your vocabulary is limited. You have all the charm of a fifty-year-old whore and your reserves of courage disgrace the army which you profess to serve. You haven't the stomach to call me out, however much I insult you. If it weren't that I can make a useful profit from your inability to manage your affairs, I wouldn't care to know you.'

‘By God, Dilhorne, I'll make you pay for this.'

‘You mistake. It is you who will pay me. Now take yourself away, I have work to do.'

He sat down, picked up his quill and began to write in the ledger before him.

Jack stared at him, his face alternately white and red, his mouth working. He started to his feet and stamped out, closing the door behind him with a shattering bang.

‘Now I wonder if I overdid that,' mused Tom. ‘But the fool is such an easy mark.' He shrugged and rang for Smith.

 

Several nights later Tom and Hester engaged in what they did not know at the time was their last night of unalloyed bliss.

As usual it centred around a picnic. It had lately become unsafe to go far afield. A group of banditti—as Sydney
had recently dubbed escaped convicts—had been preying on anyone who strayed near the bush at night.

Tom naturally thought of a variation of their usual excursions. He decided that the shrubbery in his own grounds was safe enough and he and Hester went down there with food and drink, rugs and pillows—and pistols.

Hester was wearing the boy's clothing in which she went riding: a white silk open-necked shirt, black trousers and a black jockey cap. Tom was similarly dressed without the jockey cap. After they had eaten enough food to satisfy them they blazed away at targets in a competition which Tom had invented. The winner had to take two drinks and the loser one at the end of each round.

Tom had suggested that this might be a better way to indulge themselves rather than by simply drinking the wine with their food. He did not have to relax much in order to allow Hester to win a few rounds. Her marksmanship was now almost as good as his.

Their laughter rang out in the moonlit night and their aim became more and more erratic as the game went on, until Tom pointed out that to continue it might become more actively dangerous to them than to the target.

‘Besides, I doubt whether I want to make love to a boy,' announced Tom, staring at Hester's breeches when he pulled her on to the rug beneath the trees.

‘No, Mr Dilhorne, I can see that that might trouble you. Suppose I removed them, would that help?'

‘Do not strain yourself, Mrs Dilhorne, allow me.'

‘In that case I insist that I remove yours.'

They fell asleep in one another's arms surrounded by the remains of the picnic whilst, unknown to Hester, Tom's employees patrolled the far perimeter of the Villa Dilhorne to allow its master and mistress to take their pleasure in safety.

A wiser precaution perhaps than either of them knew, for Tom had acquired an enemy whose hatred was implacable. Jack Cameron's detestation of Hester Dilhorne's husband had become so bitter that it seemed like bile in the mouth.

He had been both publicly and privately humiliated by him, and had been brutally assaulted after a fashion which had caused laughter all over Sydney. The last humiliation of all was that he had been nicknamed Guinea Jack because of the coin which Tom had flung at him in Madame Phoebe's—and the name had stuck.

Complaining to Pat Ramsey about this, that cool customer, who disliked Jack intensely because he thought that he demeaned the honour of the regiment, had stared at him, saying briefly, ‘You should be pleased that you're not called worse.'

Jack began to splutter and to threaten so that Pat, before walking away from him, said coldly, ‘I'll neither fight you, nor gamble with you, Jack, and that's my last word.'

It was all that swine Dilhorne's fault and the interview with him over his debts had been almost the last straw. Almost, because the real last straw had been Hester Dilhorne, and the effect which she had had on him at the ball.

Tom had been right to think that he had overdone it a little in his interview with Jack, for the manner in which he had treated him, coupled with his obsession for Hester, had tipped him over into something resembling insanity. It was fortunate for him that Tom remained unaware of the passion for his wife which had suddenly afflicted a man already made unsteady by his other passions.

Before he had seen her at the Governor's ball he had always boasted that all skirts were the same to Jack Cameron. ‘Nothing between them', he had said confidentially to his fellow-officers who thought themselves in love, ei
ther with their wives or other women. ‘They're all the same in the dark—as well one as another!'

He had mocked Frank Wright for doting on Lucy and here he was pining like a great mooncalf for a woman he couldn't have, and to make matters worse that woman was Dilhorne's wife.

Jack could not drive from his mind, try he ever so hard, the memory of her face as she had looked at him over her fan, the grace with which she had turned away from him and put her tiny hand on that hulking felon's arm.

He tracked Tom around Sydney, burning for revenge, but he also tracked Hester, burning for he knew not what, she seemed so out of his reach. The idea of taking her to bed seemed like sacrilege, and the thought of her in the arms of that brute Dilhorne made him feel faint.

These emotions were so new to him that he scarcely knew how to act. Jealousy had always been a joke. Now he felt jealous of anyone who as much as spoke to her because they were doing what he could not. By chance, though, he had cornered her one day as she walked alone to her carriage after visiting friends in Sydney.

Jack had caught his breath at the sight of her. He moved into her path. No gentlemanly compunction could prevent him from accosting her. It might assuage the strange ache which he felt whenever he thought of her—which, to his offended surprise, he so often did.

He bowed low. ‘Mrs Dilhorne, I am at your service—ever and always.'

Hester stared at him. He had no business to speak to her, none at all.

‘Please, Captain Cameron, allow me to pass,' was all that she could manage.

‘Not until I have offered you my most humble apologies.'

‘I believe that I told you once before that you address me at your peril.'

‘But I do so wish to take back all that I have ever said of you in the past. You are a nonpareil, Hester—if I may so call you—there are none like you.'

Was the man mad that he persisted so?

‘I do not ask you for your compliments, sir, and I do not thank you for them.'

Jack was desperate to touch her. He put out a hand. She drew back.

‘You shame yourself, sir, by trying to detain me. Again, pray allow me to pass.'

He would not desist. ‘I wish that I had looked closer at you before you married that felon.'

‘You did, Captain Cameron, but you did not like what you saw. If you do not allow me to pass, I must inform my husband of your ungentlemanly behaviour. You would not care for the consequences if I did.'

Jack's face contorted. ‘Is there no way in which I can convince you of my regrets for my behaviour, and persuade you to speak kindly to me—if only for a moment?'

Hester regarded him steadily. ‘If you will allow me to continue on my way, then I will think more kindly of you than if you pester me with your unwanted attentions. You must be aware that even if I wished to speak to you—which I do not—my husband would not allow it, but would hunt you down to punish you.'

Nothing would do. Jack stood back. ‘I shall not detain you further, but believe me, my admiration for your looks and spirit knows no bounds.'

Hester closed her eyes, preferring not to see him. She could not imagine what Tom would say or do if he learned of this encounter. Jack watched her until she disappeared
around the corner. When he had disposed of Dilhorne she
would
listen to him—he was sure of it.

 

One morning Hester, instead of rising to greet the new day with joy, awoke to find herself feeling ill, and when she finally rose from her bed she was overcome with nausea. At first she thought that this was a passing ailment, occasionally common to Sydney, but the condition persisted, affecting her only in the early morning, until at the end of the first week she found herself vomiting helplessly.

She said nothing to Tom who invariably rose before her, but on the day when she had been violently sick, he looked at her keenly, watched her eat very little, but said nothing. On the following morning, having risen and left her, he returned rapidly upstairs after a few minutes to discover her lying on the bed, her face damp, having suffered the worst bout of sickness yet.

He wetted a cloth, sat beside her and began to wipe her face gently.

‘How long has this been going on?'

‘Every morning for over a week now. It seems to pass off during the day,' said Hester faintly. ‘I kept hoping that it would go away and that you need not know.'