The Lieutenant Part 3

For an instant he felt it: just how far he was from home.

He was weary at the thought of the officers' mess on Sirius and yet another evening meal there. All those faces were known too well, and the voices that could only utter words he had heard ten dozen times before. In the congestion of the ship he had perfected the art of creating a bubble of mathematics that no one quite dared to burst. Until there were enough tents and huts he would have to continue to live on board. But an astronomer was obliged to be close to his instruments at all hours of the night, so as soon as he could he would remove to the promontory.

From the end of the point the view was worth the climb. To the east the bright waters of the harbour went out towards the sea, serrated by so many headlands, so many inlets, a few islands. To the west were more headlands, more inlets, more islands.

Just before the end of the ridge dropped away to the water there was a level place about the size of Major Wyatt's parade ground, backed by a low cliff. No trees obscured the sky. The Royal Observatory at Greenwich must once have been just such a high open hilltop.

As a crow might fly, the settlement was less than a mile distant, but this spot felt remote. Rooke could not see the encampment, only hear the distant clunk of axes and the occasional shout. The person he was among those people-Second Lieutenant Rooke, good with numbers although inclined to be awkward with people-was someone he inhabited like a stiff suit of clothes. To stand here, where the solitude without matched the solitude within, was to be unburdened.

A man on this promontory would be part of the settlement, but not in it. Present, but forgotten. Astronomy would make a convenient screen for a self that he did not choose to share with any of the other souls marooned along with him.

The wind had fallen away. The western horizon was sliding up to meet the sun, making the port a sheet of soft gold patched with the shapes of headlands and islands.

Rooke was turning to go back to the settlement when he realised that he was being watched. Two native men were standing a short distance away, as still as the rocks, men whose dark skin made them part of the landscape. They were not looking at him but out at the water.

He remembered the men he had greeted on the first day, and the way they had reacted to Surgeon Weymark's pistol. Rooke thought its power might have been more eloquent than Weymark intended.

This seemed another chance.

'Good afternoon! Good afternoon!'

He took a few steps towards them.

'I am pleased to meet you!'

That was absurd, but at least it was words.

One man shifted the spear in his hand fractionally. Neither of the natives acknowledged by the slightest flicker of expression that a man was calling out that he was pleased to meet them.

When they began to move towards him, he thought that they were responding at last. They were not. They walked past, an arm's length away, for all the world as if he were invisible.

Hoy, he thought of saying. Hoy, I am here, you know! He even opened his mouth to speak, rehearsing the tone he would try for: amused, light, cheerful. But something about the dignified way they walked kept him silent.

Where the rocks dropped away to the water, the two men stepped down. Rooke could see that they had no sense of deliberating how to descend, thinking this way or that way? Their path was as familiar to them as Rooke's had been beside the Round Tower.

He went to the edge and looked down. One of the men was lying on a rock with his face almost in the water, spear over his shoulder. The other had waded in knee-deep and, as Rooke watched, he darted his spear with a movement too quick to see and held it up with a shining fish flapping on the p.r.o.ngs. He flipped it off, broke its spine in his hands and tucked it into the cord around his hips. Rooke was ready to give a congratulatory wave. But the man only bent back towards the water.

Why had he not spoken up when they pa.s.sed so close? A different sort of fellow-Gardiner for instance, or Silk-would not have let himself be ignored. Silk would be down there with them on the rocks, trying his hand with a spear, probably, and taking notes.

When they came back up he would not be shy. He would stand in their way until they stopped and would offer them something, his handkerchief perhaps. Good afternoon, he would say again, right into their faces. They would not be able to pretend no one was there. Good afternoon, he would say, and hold out the handkerchief. Would you care to accept this?

But as he continued to watch the men, they moved around the point towards the next bay and out of sight without once glancing up.

Rooke was taken aback when the governor resisted the idea of him establishing an observatory.

'The stars will have to wait, Mr Rooke,' he snapped. 'Dr Vickery will understand that we have more urgent matters to attend to here.'

Rooke watched his brows drawing together, creating two deep grooves. He had not prepared for this. On Sirius, he had been an astronomer, alongside the governor in the cabin with Mr Kendall's timekeeper, but on land he had to recognise that things were different.

'Hear me on this, Lieutenant: I have more than a thousand souls for whom I am responsible, and so far nothing but a few tents to offer them by way of shelter.'

The governor was turning away.

'But, sir, you will remember that the Astronomer Royal has provided instruments. On the basis that they will be used in the furtherance of science. In particular the comet which Dr Vickery has predicted later this year. Which he considers of the highest degree of importance.'

The governor seemed as surprised as Rooke at this fluent speech and looked at him dourly.

'I would not wish to take issue with the Astronomer Royal. That is certainly true. But why so far, Lieutenant? My wish is that the settlement remain compact, for the security of all its members. Until we can establish an intercourse with the natives we have no way of knowing their intentions.'

He was turning away again, but Rooke could not yield. He must have that lonely headland. Desperation gave his mind wings, his mouth words.

'With the greatest respect, sir.' That was a useful phrase he had heard Silk use with the governor to good effect. 'An observatory must be in a position of perfect darkness. For its best operation. As you would know.'

This was two kinds of lie, the first being as you would know. The governor, an adequately competent navy man, knew enough of the night sky to get a ship from one place to another, but nothing whatever of the needs of an astronomer. And the business of perfect darkness: well, that was at best a half-truth. The fires and flickering lamps of the settlement would hardly interfere with anyone's view of the stars.

Rooke watched the governor's narrow face: peevish but thoughtful. He was about to use his authority and simply forbid.

'In addition, sir,' Rooke said quickly, hoping that some further argument would come to him as he spoke. 'In addition, sir, the calculations are difficult. Particularly regarding a comet. For someone of my abilities. Limited abilities.'

Rooke could hear how his words laboured. He sometimes thought that he arrived at a sentence the way other people did multiplication: the hard way, by adding. He felt himself colouring but floundered on. 'Distraction, sir, distraction will tax my powers. To the limit. Solitude and quiet will be essential.'

That was no half-truth but a simple lie. He knew it, and the governor knew it too. The Great Cabin on Sirius had never offered solitude or quiet. At one end of the chart table, Rooke would be calculating the ship's longitude with the aid of Dr Vickery's Almanac and the Requisite Tables. At the other end, the midshipmen would be doing their navigation lessons. By the window the commodore would be at his own desk with his papers and charts. In the corner there might be an animated discussion between a couple of officers about, for instance, the respective merits from a culinary point of view of the various fish that the sailors were catching off the side. Rooke could be called on for his opinion and give it without missing a beat in his calculations.

The governor, isolated both by his position and, Rooke thought, his temperament, might have understood a man who enjoyed his own company best of all. But to allow him that enjoyment could look like an indulgence, and indulgence to one officer would open him to trouble from others.

The governor put his thumb under his chin and caressed his lip with a forefinger. Rooke could feel him performing a brief but complex calculation, one in which the need to demonstrate his authority against this mulish junior lieutenant was set against the future usefulness of a cooperative one. Rooke felt a flush of panic. Gilbert was nothing more than a naval captain of unremarkable talents, older but less gifted than himself. How was it that he could stand between a man and his proper life?

'Very well, Lieutenant Rooke. Have your headland. Let the Astronomer Royal get his comet. But, let me warn you, at the first sign of trouble you will be recalled. We are not so lavishly supplied with men. There may be a time when every musket is needed. And Lieutenant'-he lowered his voice- 'speaking of that, I wish you to ensure that your weapon is loaded at all times.'

Then a private came bustling up and that was the end of the interview.

Out of sight of the governor Rooke stopped and laid a hand on his cheek, hot with the bitter flame of what he had so nearly lost.

Squeaked through, that was his thought. A narrow squeak. What squeaking? Why squeaking? It was a relief to wonder about the silly phrase rather than what would have happened if the governor had said I regret, Lieutenant, but my decision is final, kindly do not ask again.

He must remember how fragile his position was. There might be a destiny awaiting him here, but the governor was not interested in it. If he knew what was in his lieutenant's mind he would remind him that he was not a man of science, an astronomer of the fairest promise, but just another of the governor's subjects.

Unlike Greenwich, an antipodean observatory could not boast a majestic building with every convenience for an astronomer. The best approximation Rooke could devise was a small room surmounted by a cone of wood and canvas, something like an Indian teepee. The cone would have a long slit to accommodate the telescope, and its vertex would be a little off-centre to allow observations at the zenith.

It looked peculiar on his sketch, and he thought it would be peculiar when built. But there was a sharp pleasure in re-inventing the idea of an observatory from first principles.

Major Wyatt took the view that he could not be expected to pander to every whim-he did not spell out whether the whim was the lieutenant's or the governor's-but eventually he let Rooke have some men. They panted and scrambled up the ridge with the canvas and the poles for the tent that was to be Rooke's temporary home, with the bed and the table and the boxes of instruments.

Explaining his sketch to the carpenter, Rooke referred to the teepee as the dome. Perhaps dome was a little grand. He tried to explain why the cone had to be off-centre, went into detail about the need for the instruments to point straight up. He tried to use commonplace words, but he caught an astonished look in the man's eyes.

To speed the business along, Rooke laboured beside the others. A pick was awkward, he discovered, and his hand blistered from its rough wood. But, unlike the prisoners, he enjoyed his experience of heavy labour. Concentrating on striking the rock at just the right spot, and with just the right force, at just the right angle, he worked himself into a pleasantly mindless state.

The observation room was constructed on the top of the low cliff because of the solid base of rock it offered for the instruments. The hut for his own living quarters was below, connected to it by steps cut into the rock. Those steps-so simple to sketch-took the men twice as long as everything else put together. That was the difference between Euclid's world and the actual one.

What with rain, and the men being called away for other duties, it took months to get the thing finished. The awkward angles of timber and the puckered whitewashed canvas nailed to the dome gave the place an improvised look. The carpenter's pride was offended by the way the off-centre peak of the teepee looked as if he had made a mistake. The slit where the telescope would travel up and down showed its rough edges and the shutter that covered it was a crude thing of battens and canvas. He went away grumbling.

Rooke set his folding table on the floor of his living quarters and pushed his two chairs up to it. He arranged on the one and only shelf his razor, his pen and ink and his few books. He set up his stretcher in the corner, spread the blanket out, put on the pillow the Montaigne that had been Anne's farewell gift, and wedged the candle-holder into a crack in the wall for bedtime reading. In the dark corner behind the door he leaned his musket, the powder and shot hanging in their bags from a peg above it.

The carpenter had given him a window, or at least left a hole in the wall with a wooden shutter. Sitting at his table, Rooke looked out over the area of rock and tufts of gra.s.s that was now his front yard. Beyond that the land dropped away to the water, ruffled with the afternoon wind. A gull shot past with one powerful beat of its wings, down and up. Over on the opposite sh.o.r.e a wavering smudge of smoke rose above the trees.

The planks of the hut let in a cool winter wind, the shingles of the roof were already splitting. The fireplace stones were insufficiently stuck together with poor mortar and the floor bulged with elbows and knees of bedrock in spite of all Rooke's work with the pick. But nowhere on the world's surface had ever meant as much to him. It was his own, as no place had ever been other than the attic in Church Street, and it was private. If he wanted to converse with himself, he could. He had forgotten the pleasure of thinking aloud. There was no one here to judge, no one to remind him that being ordinary was hard work.

He felt as if he had been compressed, like a limb squeezed with a tourniquet, for all those years of school and shipboard life. Now, at last, he could expand to fill whatever s.p.a.ce was proper to him. Out here, with his thoughts his only company, he could become nothing more or less than the person he was.

Himself. It was as unexplored a land as this one.

Dr Vickery had predicted that his comet would return in the latter part of 1788, which was still some months distant. The comet would justify the existence of the astronomer, but in the meantime it was important to be seen as a conscientious man of science.

From their boxes Rooke got out the meteorological instruments that the Royal Observatory had provided: the thermometers from the Royal Society, the barometer, the anemometer, the specially constructed funnel and bottle for measuring rainfall. He was glad Dr Vickery could not see the instruments in their new setting. The Astronomer Royal would never need to know that the barometer and thermometer, the most advanced objects of their kind in Europe, hung from rope under the eaves of a hut as rough as a pig shed. He would never see the rain gauge sitting on the stump of a tree sawn off as level as could be managed, let alone know that the same stump performed the office of dressing table. It was a pleasure that Rooke would have to enjoy alone, that his life and his work were so little separate that, if he wished, he could conduct his researches whilst shaving.

All Dr Vickery would see were the ledgers in which the readings would be entered. They would represent a miracle of translation. The language of muddle, of wobble, of improvisation, would be transformed into exact.i.tude. It was a shame, Rooke thought, that Dr Vickery could not share his delight in that transformation. Winds, Weather, Barometer, Thermometer, Remarks. Perhaps rashly, Rooke ruled up six observation times for every day, between four in the morning and eight at night. It was like the beginning of a grand enterprise to dip his pen in the ink and write up the first readings. June 24, 1788. Wind: SSW, 4 knots. Weather: heavy cloud & hazy. Barometer: 29. Thermometer: 60. Remarks: About 7 h it began to rain and soon after the barometer rose.

Up the four lopsided steps from his living quarters, there was barely enough s.p.a.ce in the observation room for one slender astronomer, and the canvas of the roof crackled distractingly in the wind. But the rock on which the quadrant stood had never been moved since the foundation of the world. Under his feet he could feel it, unmediated by floorboards or rug: the sphere of rock, spinning through s.p.a.ce and time, taking himself and his instruments with it.

Through the telescope the stars burned with a foreign clarity, explosively brilliant, living things pulsing in the blackness. For now we see through a gla.s.s, darkly; but then face to face. He thought Paul must have been a man who had lain flat on his back on the ground and looked up at just such a sky as this.

Rooke knew the southern constellations now as well as those he had grown up with. All the way down the curve of the globe from Portsmouth to New South Wales he had watched them night by night creeping further up over the southern horizon. But at sea he had never seen them so bright.

The moon was crisp against the black sky, its seas and mountains as clear as if etched, upside down, of course, from the point of view of someone looking out the window of a parlour in misty Portsmouth.

He could have drawn that parlour, every crease in the tablecloth, every stain on the armchair, the place where the fringe of the rug was fraying. He could have told you how, at this moment-noon there, more or less, and summer of course-his father would be drawing his napkin out of his napkin ring and his mother would be slicing the bread and handing it to Anne to b.u.t.ter, and Bessie would be putting it on their plates, all of them suppressing the rumbling of their insides, impatient for the servant-girl to bring in the midday meal.

It was as real as that. He did not have to imagine the hunger, as the governor had them on short rations until the promised supply ships arrived from England. Yet it was also not real at all, a story someone had told him long ago about people in a dream.

From his stretcher he could hear the waters of the port, the restless sound coming in the window hole. The water was never still, always in conversation with itself and with the sh.o.r.e. He could hear it slapping up against the rocks at the foot of the point, knew how it must look, washing foamily into crannies. Nothing prevented a drop of that water from making in reverse the same voyage that he had. That drop could travel along the currents until it arrived at the Motherbank and slide past the Round Tower. It could splash up at last on the Hard, just where the tender from Sirius had pushed off with Daniel Rooke aboard a year before. It would leave a dark hieroglyph on one of the stones, a greeting from the far side of the globe to the world he had left behind.

Even after he took up residence in the observatory, Rooke joined the other officers for the Sunday dinner. He thought of it as a t.i.the of grat.i.tude for not having to dine there on the other days.

One evening in the settlement's first winter, he arrived at the barracks-a long dark hut with an incongruously splendid mahogany table almost filling the s.p.a.ce-to see the governor there at its head alongside Major Wyatt. It was an honour His Excellency paid now and again to his officers rather than dine alone in his own residence. Major Wyatt always thanked him fulsomely. As far as the rest of them were concerned, the governor's presence made for careful conversation.

Rooke installed himself between Silk and young Lieutenant Timpson and, he hoped, out of the line of sight of Major Wyatt and the governor. Timpson was tedious, inveighing against the women prisoners-all d.a.m.ned wh.o.r.es in his view-and forever bringing out the miniature of his sweetheart, expecting wonderment and admiration from other men. He was too young and artless to know that another man's sweetheart in an oval frame was of limited interest.

Silk's opinion of young Lieutenant Timpson was that he protested too much. Mark my words, Rooke, Silk had said. We will be seeing him with us at Mrs Butcher's before the end of the year and will hear no more of this Betsy. Rooke was inclined to agree. Mrs Butcher had kept an establishment in Devizes, apparently, and knew how to run a good house. Sometimes with Silk and sometimes alone, Rooke had visited her hut and found her to be both hospitable and discreet, offering the choice of several pleasant convict girls and the privacy of a canvas curtain.

Timpson's innocent prudery was tedious, but Rooke was happy to admire Betsy for the hundredth time, and agree what a sweet and dear face she had, if it allowed him to take his place in the furthest and most dimly lit corner of the room.

At the head of the table, the governor and Wyatt sat glumly as the boy set their plates of food in front of them. Silk broke the silence.

'Ah, the daily diabolical morsel!'

It was a risk, Rooke thought, to draw attention to what was on each plate, but the governor went so far as to laugh. Wyatt followed, and the whole table joined in. Only Silk could have got away with it, but he had judged well: men confronted with yet another insufficient meal of elderly salt beef and a spoonful of pease porridge were glad of any distraction.

His Majesty's victualler had a.s.sumed that New South Wales would produce at least some of the food its colonists needed, but this had proved to be optimistic. The heart of the mop-like tree was called cabbage, although Rooke thought it as fibrous and probably as tasty as oak.u.m. Various spa.r.s.e greens grew by the stream, and the leaves of a sprawling vine had been found to make a faintly sweet tea which he had come to savour. That was the extent of the vegetable production of the place.

Gardens had been planted, but what with the grubs, soil that was no better than sand, and theft by prisoners, no turnip or potato had ever grown bigger than a marble.

Now and then the governor's shooter brought back game from the woods. His Excellency was generous in sharing it with his officers, and Rooke, like the others, had relished the various unrecognisable joints of tough but tasty meat. No part of the creatures was wasted, since Surgeon Weymark paid the shooter for the heads. Rooke had seen Weymark's watercolours, the stump where the kangaroo or opossum neck had been hacked off with the hatchet cunningly hidden in the picture by a spray of foliage.

But the fact remained: supplies were running short.

The mess cook spread the food out as he served it, to make it look more substantial. To Rooke, the stratagem suggested an interesting calculation: how large a circle could be made with a given quant.i.ty of pease and salt beef?

But whether thin or thick, whatever diameter its circle, and no matter how interesting the problem involving pi, the food was insufficient, because the supply ships were nowhere to be seen.

'Those b.u.g.g.e.rs have forgotten us,' Timpson said sotto voce to Rooke, running a finger around his plate and sucking at it. 'Spat us out and said good riddance. Or else the ships are all wrecked. I wish to G.o.d I had not volunteered.'

It was Timpson's first appointment and he had not yet learned to hide his homesickness. As he ate he was inclined to dream aloud of his favourite meals, especially his mother's hotpot with braised leeks. Rooke too had caught himself daydreaming about a dish of new potatoes with b.u.t.ter and parsley and salt, and a nice fresh mutton chop to go with it.

Around the table, on which every plate soon gleamed, Rooke thought there was not a single man who believed that His Majesty's newest settlement would last. It was only a matter of whether they all starved first.

At the end of the meal the governor rose in his place, looking so spindly and angular that Rooke was put in mind of Newton's Mathematical Bridge.

'Good evening, gentlemen, and my thanks for your hospitality.'

He glanced down at his plate and hesitated as if regretting the ironic possibilities of the remark.

'It is my intention to take a party of men into the hinterland. I hope to locate whatever it might offer that could be turned to account.'

Turned to account. They all knew the fact behind that fine turn of phrase: Nothing will grow at Sydney Cove and our store is running out.

'I am confident also that we will fall in with natives more prepared to parley with us than those we have encountered here.'

Rooke thought of those two men who had walked past him as if he were a rock or a bush. Every day his first act was to go outside and see if they had returned.

The governor stretched his face into his approximation of a smile.

'I wonder whether any of you gentlemen would care to be of the party.'

Rooke did not stop to think, jumped to his feet.

'Lieutenant Rooke sir, I will go.'

Birds-mammals-ants and their habitations. This was his chance to see more of New South Wales than the speck of it he was so far familiar with. And if there should be an opportunity to parley, who better to do it than a man who knew five languages?

Silk was only a little behind.

'Captain Silk also, sir, at your service,' he called out.

At your service, that was a better form of words. Rooke tucked it away. Less like a schoolboy than I will go! He felt himself blushing, but no one was watching.

'Thank you, gentlemen, I am obliged to you.'

After the meal Silk hung back.