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Authors: Meg Keneally
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quantities of milk. The major (or Monsarrat in his stead) then briefly summarised the details of the reports of the surgeon, the storekeeper and the superintendent.
And then Monsarrat came to the section of the report which he felt did not deserve his penmanship.
The unreturned absconder Kiernan has been of some service through the intelligence he has on occasion sent us. He has reported a considerable river beyond the mountains to the north of our settlement. This could be the river that debouches into the sea near Smoky Cape. I am about to depart with an appropriate party to look for this river with the intention of following it both some distance into the hills and downriver to the sea.
We have asked Kiernan to meet on June the sixteenth. He may not have a Christian calendar, so we have also given him the number of moonrises between the date of our dispatch and the proposed meeting.
Making allowances for such a person! thought Monsarrat. Kiernan is playing you for a fool, my dear major, and you are conspiring in it. I would bet one of my pearl waistcoats that the river does not exist.
The report continued, âShould we find the river, and the pastures which Kiernan says surround it, I propose Kiernan be given a conditional pardon for his services in guiding us there.â
So, absconding was not the sin. Doing it unsuccessfully got you bread and water, not to mention a back with thirty-times-nine scars. But if you eschewed society and managed to survive in the forest like a wild animal, and insisted on evading capture in a most embarrassing way, freedom would be yours for the price of a fictional river.
And what if you possessed one of the finest hands to crossthe seas between England and the colony? What if you could transcribe, order and organise faster than any other man on this outcrop? Then you must work for a man who sees your freedom as his sentence to a substandard clerk, a man who depends on your continued imprisonment. Then the days stretch out before you without even the courtesy of having a number, uncountable as they slither past the horizon, until they deposit an older version of you on an unknown shore.
Usefulness, as Monsarrat saw it, was a curse. He was incapable of allowing himself to do work which he viewed as below standard. But that very work kept him bound to a life he did not want. And it had, he felt, been responsible for his first crime.
As a young man, skilled in penmanship and Latin but with no particular aptitude or enthusiasm for any specific trade, he had got a job clerking for a group of young and middle-aged barristers at Lincolnâs Inn. He had been terrified on his first day, seeing lawyers as enhanced specimens of humanity, with wit, intelligence and drive which had been denied him. Pleased to be of service to such greater beings, he had applied himself to taking dictation, transcribing, and organising the lawyersâ affairs in a manner which earned him high regard from his gentlemen, if not a rise in salary to go with it.
Knowing he would function better if he understood the lawyersâ affairs, Monsarrat took to reading any document he could. By the time he was able to identify which lawyer was about to enter by the sound his heels made on the stones outside, Monsarrat felt he had a working understanding of the legal system. And by the time he was able to identify the calibre of an approaching client by their footfall (the wealthier the person, the better the shoe leather), he had a working understanding of his employers.
But as his understanding grew, his respect diminished. The senior lawyer in the group, by dint of years lived, was industrious enough, if unimaginative and lacking in drive. The younger ones, however, in Monsarratâs opinion, knew nothing of the law or scholarship. They had merely attended the necessary number of dinners at their Inn of Court and had been able to afford to buy a £500 legal library.
His regard for the profession and
And then Monsarrat came to the section of the report which he felt did not deserve his penmanship.
The unreturned absconder Kiernan has been of some service through the intelligence he has on occasion sent us. He has reported a considerable river beyond the mountains to the north of our settlement. This could be the river that debouches into the sea near Smoky Cape. I am about to depart with an appropriate party to look for this river with the intention of following it both some distance into the hills and downriver to the sea.
We have asked Kiernan to meet on June the sixteenth. He may not have a Christian calendar, so we have also given him the number of moonrises between the date of our dispatch and the proposed meeting.
Making allowances for such a person! thought Monsarrat. Kiernan is playing you for a fool, my dear major, and you are conspiring in it. I would bet one of my pearl waistcoats that the river does not exist.
The report continued, âShould we find the river, and the pastures which Kiernan says surround it, I propose Kiernan be given a conditional pardon for his services in guiding us there.â
So, absconding was not the sin. Doing it unsuccessfully got you bread and water, not to mention a back with thirty-times-nine scars. But if you eschewed society and managed to survive in the forest like a wild animal, and insisted on evading capture in a most embarrassing way, freedom would be yours for the price of a fictional river.
And what if you possessed one of the finest hands to crossthe seas between England and the colony? What if you could transcribe, order and organise faster than any other man on this outcrop? Then you must work for a man who sees your freedom as his sentence to a substandard clerk, a man who depends on your continued imprisonment. Then the days stretch out before you without even the courtesy of having a number, uncountable as they slither past the horizon, until they deposit an older version of you on an unknown shore.
Usefulness, as Monsarrat saw it, was a curse. He was incapable of allowing himself to do work which he viewed as below standard. But that very work kept him bound to a life he did not want. And it had, he felt, been responsible for his first crime.
As a young man, skilled in penmanship and Latin but with no particular aptitude or enthusiasm for any specific trade, he had got a job clerking for a group of young and middle-aged barristers at Lincolnâs Inn. He had been terrified on his first day, seeing lawyers as enhanced specimens of humanity, with wit, intelligence and drive which had been denied him. Pleased to be of service to such greater beings, he had applied himself to taking dictation, transcribing, and organising the lawyersâ affairs in a manner which earned him high regard from his gentlemen, if not a rise in salary to go with it.
Knowing he would function better if he understood the lawyersâ affairs, Monsarrat took to reading any document he could. By the time he was able to identify which lawyer was about to enter by the sound his heels made on the stones outside, Monsarrat felt he had a working understanding of the legal system. And by the time he was able to identify the calibre of an approaching client by their footfall (the wealthier the person, the better the shoe leather), he had a working understanding of his employers.
But as his understanding grew, his respect diminished. The senior lawyer in the group, by dint of years lived, was industrious enough, if unimaginative and lacking in drive. The younger ones, however, in Monsarratâs opinion, knew nothing of the law or scholarship. They had merely attended the necessary number of dinners at their Inn of Court and had been able to afford to buy a £500 legal library.
His regard for the profession and
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