Cullen - Bartlett Dynasty Collection

Chapter 18

I keep waiting for the axe to fall, for Mr Cullen’s good humour to pass and him to start getting nasty with me. I’ve never worked for a man who thinks about how I’m doing. He asks every morning if I slept well, and tells me what a wonderful dinner or supper I cooked for him and Ed. Something’s got to happen. I don’t want to let my guard down and not be ready, so I nod and smile and thank him, but watch for the signs of him being about to grab or hit me. But Ed is the one who has that look in his eyes, and I think Mr Cullen is making sure he leaves me alone.

It’s getting harder to get down on my hands and knees to pick the grubs off the vegetables. The hens don’t eat the grubs that do the most damage, and if I don’t keep on top of it, we won’t have any fresh vegetables to eat, except corn. I imagine we’ll get sick of that pretty quickly. This morning after breakfast while the dew was still damp on the ground and on the cabbage and peas and beans, I got down on my hands and knees to crawl along and pick off caterpillars. I didn’t hear him come up behind me, but I could hear him breathing really fast. Turning to look at who I thought was Mr Cullen, I saw Ed force a smile onto his face that showed his brown, broken teeth. I hadn’t noticed his teeth before.

Let me help you up,’ he said.

I told him I was fine on the ground, I had lots of work to do, and asked what he wanted. He knelt down next to me and said ‘You, I want you. Now get up or I’ll drag you up.’

I just looked up at him. I’d been eyeing off Mr Cullen waiting for him to attack, and it was always Ed I needed to fear. I told him I wasn’t getting up, that I was busy. I turned back to the caterpillars. He pulled my hair until I found my way to my feet. Screaming for help wasn’t any good, Mr Cullen was right down the other end of the farm setting up scarecrows to keep the parrots away from the crops. He must’ve sent Ed back to get something.

‘Get into the stable. Hurry up. I haven’t got all day.’

He pushed me in the middle of the back all the way from the vegetable garden to his space in the stable. Shoving me onto some bales of hay, he undid his trousers and stood over me. ‘Lift up your dress you w***e,’ he yelled.

The baby due any week, I don’t know how he thought he was going to get anywhere near me to have his way. I didn’t move. He slapped my face and put his hand over my mouth. Must’ve thought Mr Cullen might hear. Frightened for the infant, I didn’t know what to do. In Ireland I would’ve kicked him in the groin and run off while he was struggling for breath and doubled over in pain. He pulled up my dress and yelled at me to open my legs. I took too long, he hit me on the side of my head with his fist. Pushing my legs apart, he thrust himself into me over and over. Apart from Stephen on the Marquis Cornwallis coming to New South Wales, every man I’d come across in my life treated me like this. I still thought Mr Cullen would too. Ed put his whole weight on my belly to get a better position to finish what he’d started. I screamed in pain; the infant struggled against the pressure. It didn’t take him long to be done.

Marquis Cornwallis‘Don’t say anything to Cullen, or I’ll slit your belly in the middle of the night and kill both of you.’

He pulled up his pants and turned to leave. Mr Cullen stood in the door of the stable.

‘I wondered why you were taking so long to get the mallet,’ he said disgust spreading all over his face. His eyes turned from grey to black when he looked down at me.

‘You forget I’m the Constable for this district, Ed. After you’ve been flogged, you’ll be sent back to New South Wales. Looks like it’ll be a long time before you get your freedom.’

Mr Cullen grabbed a pitchfork from near the door and pointed it at Ed, forcing him to back away against the wall. ‘I’ll help you in a minute, Miss Bartlett,’ he said. He shoved Ed and told him to put his hands behind his back. He tied Ed’s wrists with so many knots I didn’t think anyone would ever get them undone. Forcing Ed to his knees, Mr Cullen came to help me up. While I was slapping my clothes to get the hay off, I noticed blood on the floor. Mr Cullen noticed too.

‘Go to the house, Miss Bartlett. I’m taking this convict straight to the cells in Sydney Town. I’ll get one of the women to hurry along to look in on you.’

I don’t know how long it took. Seemed like hours and hours. The sun had moved in the sky and was thinking about lowering itself onto the horizon when Kitty Morgan let herself into the house. She found me in the parlour on the floor. My pains started after Ed used his fists to push himself off my belly.

Kitty made a gasping sound and put her hand over her mouth. She helped me up and we walked very slowly to my bed. The pains were every few minutes and I felt like my insides were going to explode. Kitty got hot water ready, and clean towels and held my hand and told me everything would be all right.

My son made his way into the world just as the day ended and the night stretched its arms over the grass and trees. Kitty wrapped him up and rubbed his back until he cried. He didn’t look right to me. He was a funny colour. A bit blue. When I asked, Kitty said he was cold and she kept rubbing his back, trying to make him cry more. After a few minutes my son let out an enormous cry and Kitty, seeming satisfied he was doing what he was supposed to, gave him to me to hold. Get him sucking straight away she said as she helped put him to my breast.

I looked down on my new son, he had dark hair like his father and clenched his fists like a fighter. Kitty asked what I was going to call him. ‘William,’ I told her. ‘After his father.’

Mr Cullen sat by my bed on a chair he’d brought from the kitchen. His eyes were puffy and red, and his face was the colour of the ash that settles in the fireplace.

‘I’m so sorry, Miss Bartlett. It is my job to provide your protection and I let you down. All I can offer is that Ed will be punished with a flogging and more time on his sentence.’

This was the first time in my life a man who’d r***d me was going to be punished. I laughed, ‘That was a long time coming.’ Mr Cullen’s eyebrows knitted together and some of the grey from his face slipped away and was replaced with pink. When I told him why I was laughing, Mr Cullen patted my hand, smiled at William and left the room.

Kitty’s husband, Richard Morgan, sent one of his workers to collect his wife and for the first time since I arrived five months earlier, Mr Cullen and I were the only adults on the farm.

In all my days I’d never, ever had someone bring me a cup of tea and something to eat while I was in bed. Before Mammy sent me to work when I was twelve, I cleaned and looked after the little ones. I don’t remember a time when my day didn’t start before the sun rose. Mr Cullen put a cup of tea on the little table by the side of my bed.

‘I put in two sugars, Miss Bartlett,’ he said. ‘Hope that’s all right.’

I nodded that it was. Didn’t’ know what else to do. This was unknown territory. He left the room and came back with sliced bread, cheese and salted beef. Told me he thought I would need my strength to look after little William, then he disappeared again. I was thinking about how I was going to manage eating bread and cheese and drink tea while I was holding a new baby when Mr Cullen came in with a crib he’d made. It was as if the moon had leaped out of the sky and put itself behind Mr Cullen’s head and shone through his face. His eyes sparkled and his mouth was in the biggest smile I’d seen since Mary heard the Dublin accent of her new master.

‘I’ve been working on it for a few weeks. In secret. I wanted to surprise you.’

Surprise me he did. I started blubbering like an eight year old boy being sent to the coal mines for the first time. The tears kept coming; pouring from my eyes faster than I could wipe them off my cheeks.

‘Don’t you like it?’

I squeaked out I loved it, snuffling and sobbing when I saw he’d put a new blanket in the crib. Holding William out to him I nodded, and Mr Cullen took my new baby boy and put him in his new little bed.

It saddened me a bit to think William would never see his son. But there are probably lots of girls like me around the world that men like William have got with child never to recognise them or be part of their lives. Mr Cullen would be a good father, but I think he might be too old. He’s got the strength and body of a young man, but I reckon he’s about fifty.

He was still standing looking at the baby when I finally stopped blubbering.

‘He makes lots of noises. Is he supposed to?’

I told him babies make lots of funny sounds. I’d looked after the babes Mammy had since I was five. Two of them died because they were too cold. Mammy didn’t have enough milk to make them fat enough to keep themselves warm. William won’t be cold or hungry, not on Mr Cullen’s farm on Norfolk Island.

James Bryan Cullen finished the edges of the tiny coffin he’d made from one of the felled Norfolk Island pines on his property. He lined the small casket with a blanket from the infant’s crib. Miss Bartlett had called the child William after the marine who fathered him on the voyage from England. Although not uncommon for infants to die soon after birth, Cullen worried that Elizabeth seemed exceptionally distraught. Because he was born on Norfolk Island, she said she hadn’t considered his death a possibility. Infants died in Dublin and London, not Norfolk Island.

Carrying the coffin into the house, he set it down in front of the hearth and stepped quietly toward Miss Bartlett’s room. Running his hands through his hair to flatten it he waited for an answer to his knock on the door.

‘Come in.’

The door squeaked as he pushed it inwards reminding him that he should oil the hinges. Elizabeth sat in the chair next to the fireplace, still cradling her deceased infant. She had been there since the child died twenty-four hours earlier. ‘It’s time to go, Miss Bartlett. We must take William to the cemetery. Our friends and neighbours will be waiting.’

She offered no resistance as he bent forward and took the baby from her arms. His little body, stiff and cold, was wrapped in a blanket she’d made from the one on her own bed. Cullen took the baby to the kitchen and put him in the coffin as gently as if he were still alive. He kissed the tips of his fingers and touched the child’s forehead ‘Rest in peace, little one.’ Tears that had no reason to fall for the last seven years, coursed down his cheeks.

Elizabeth didn’t make a sound on the way to Emily Bay. She sat on the wagon with the tiny coffin tied on the back, occasionally looking over her shoulder as if to reassure herself it wasn’t a dream.

She stood by the hole Cullen had dug the day before and watched while her infant son’s coffin was lowered into the ground. She had nothing to add to the words Cullen offered at her son’s graveside, nor to the comfort provided by Kitty Morgan and her husband, Richard.

Cullen left her standing next to her son’s grave, looking over the stunning view from Emily Bay towards the sapphire blue ocean. He sat on the wagon until she was ready to leave.

‘I’ll make a headstone for his grave,’ he said, looking to her for some reinforcement. Elizabeth nodded without comment.

Cullen didn’t know how long he should allow Elizabeth Bartlett to grieve before expecting her to continue with her duties around the house and the farm. He hadn’t anticipated her return to work the day after the funeral.

‘I’m happy to give your more time, Miss Bartlett, to grieve your son and recover,’ he said as she prepared breakfast the next morning.

‘Thank you, no. What good would that do? It won’t bring William back, and I need to keep my mind busy.’

Cullen nodded and thanked the convict woman assigned to him for being such a great help on the farm. Trudging off to the stable to harness the bullock for ploughing, he contemplated applying for another farm hand. An older man, like him, who wouldn’t risk his freedom for the sake of a few minutes lying with a woman.

James Cullen chose the convict labourer carefully. He knocked back young men for fear they would harass Miss Bartlett, in favour of a man a bit younger than himself who seemed strong of character and body.

‘Miss Bartlett this is Timothy.’ Cullen introduced his new worker to Elizabeth. ‘He’s the new farm hand. Miss Bartlett is the housekeeper,’ he said to Timothy and you will take heed of the things we discussed on the wagon ride from Sydney Town.’

Nodding at Elizabeth hoping she would understand the warning he’d given the new worker, Cullen indicated to Timothy that he should make his way out the door.

Spending some time showing Timothy around the farm, Cullen felt confident he’d made the right choice.

‘When we’ve got the wheat and corn planted, we’ll start an extension on the house. So you don’t have to sleep in the stable for the length of your sentence.’

Timothy shook Cullen’s hand and thanked him for his humanity, adding that it wasn’t something he expected in the circumstances.