Free The Soldier's Curse by Meg Keneally Page B

back.’
    â€˜Mind, he stressed it was for the major only.’
    â€˜Of course. The seal will be intact when I put it in the major’s hands.’
    By the way the light was slanting onto his desk through the windows, Monsarrat thought it must be nearly time for the after noon meal. ‘Are you returning to the hospital, Donald, or going to eat?’
    â€˜To eat. The bell has gone – did you not hear it?’
    â€˜No, I didn’t. May I walk with you?’
    Donald made a guttural sound which could have meant anything. Monsarrat decided to interpret it as ‘if you must’.
    He was grateful for Donald’s silence on the way to the mess. He knew that once he entered, it would be impossible to avoid overhearing convict constables’ talk of drink and women. They would be lucky to get a whiff of either, but their imaginary conquests would have been enough to fill a few lifetimes, and no one called them out on the fallacy of their tales, chiefly because those who would do so wanted to be next at spinning a yarn.
    Monsarrat ate near the coxswain, Farrier, a former wool smuggler from Essex. They’d been smuggling wool out of the country to avoid excise for centuries, and when he was caught Farrier had cracked an exciseman’s skull. He and Mr Neave, the harbourmaster, shared a passion for things Monsarrat failed to understand, talk of lee shores and gunwales far more impenetrable to him than ancient Greek. They could tie bowlines or splice rope without looking, their practised hands remembering the moves, in a process which was the closest thing Monsarrat had seen to a dark art.
    Farrier did not talk about the years when he took wool to the Low Countries or to Dieppe. One didn’t. After a time the prisoner realised there was no profit in reimagining the life that had brought him to transportation and all its indignities. In this mess, and in the other eating places around the settlement, conversation was so much about the here and now that it was as if the there and then simply didn’t exist.
    â€˜Did you see the whale went north this morning?’ Farrier asked Monsarrat.
    â€˜No,’ said Monsarrat, ‘I didn’t.’ He wanted to say, I’d only be interested if I could travel on its back.
    â€˜Yes, there was a whale went past this morning. Blowing. Out maybe a mile. A big one. You know what you can find, Mr Monsarrat? Off Point Plomer, there be still lots of the Spanish mackerel. Never known them late as this in the season. It’s very late for the Spanish and spotted mackerel. They’re generally gone by June. Lots of nice bream though. I love bream for eating. What is your estimation of the bream, Mr Monsarrat?’
    â€˜Oh,’ said Monsarrat, ‘oh, it’s … it’s very succulent.’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Coxswain Farrier laboriously. ‘That’s the word there I would have used. Succulent is what they are. This be a good time of year here. We took one of the cutters right in behind the breakers and took a netful of mullet and bream. And I had the other boat fishing at the same time in the river at the Lemon Tree Hole, hauling in blackfish. This is a wonderful time of year for blackfish. I always says we are fortunate to be in a place where there are not so many human beings but armies of fish, in numbers greater than the heathen. Yes, this is a good season.’
    â€˜When is the low tide this evening?’ asked Monsarrat, an idea forming.
    â€˜Now, a good question,’ said Farrier. ‘You get down there to that beach about four in the afternoon, and if you don’t have whiting and flathead by half past four then I’d be most surprised, most surprised indeed. In fact, I would stake my soul upon it. You’ll have bream out of the waves and flathead off the bottom within half an hour. Just with the handline. Whiting. And flathead. You complain to me later if it ain’t so.’
    The