3 Great Historical Novels by Fay Weldon

or, like he, as a carpenter on one of the many new public buildings on Macquarie Street. There were many here who would never go home, even in the unlikely event that they could pay for their passage. Once you had a ticket of leave, wages were better than in Ireland or England and a redeemed convict with a trade or even just an able body, was assured a good living.
    Michael had never once considered staying on. Mostly because of Annie. He’d been living like a free man for almost two years, assigned to the governor’s building agent, and it was not a bad life. The harshest sentence had always been being away from his wife and son. Annie’s hair might be grey now, like his own. And Thomas, who was little more than a lad when Michael was arrested, now a man. His son, a man.
    The letters from Thomas came every few weeks with news of Annie, Greystones and the Mahoneys, and were Michael’s most treasured articles. Thomas never wrote plainly of the activities of his men, it was too risky, but he managed to convey whether they were safe and had been successful. Most of theunderground news from Ireland came from the steady stream of new arrivals, and this fed Michael Kelly’s small, secret press in the form of a monthly pamphlet.
    The dark brown bitter that they called porter tasted more like charred malt, but at least at the Harp and Shamrock you could be certain to never encounter a colonist. Here all Irishmen, be they free settlers, prisoners or pardoned, were treated as equals. The bar was lined with the men without a choice; the survivors of ’98, the biggest uprising Ireland had ever known. They were all old men now, and their exile was political and unrepealable. They lived to tell anyone who would listen of the way things had been for them when they arrived. Michael had listened a good many times, at first out of interest and then out of sympathy. Now he just pretended he was listening. He had a good picture of the barren shanty town Sydney had been, once, where the prisoners were always hungry and where people were either killing or being killed by the natives. Michael had heard, more times than he cared to mention, of subterranean isolation cells, and water pits where a prisoner was unable to sleep for fear of drowning; of leg irons and lashes and the godawful loneliness . It was the loneliness, they all agreed, that was the worst.
    Many of the political exiles were educated men and they had put their idle wits to use making life difficult for the governor ’s military and constabulary. It was from their solidarity and rebellion that Michael had the idea for the basement press, and the veterans of the Harp and Shamrock were his most faithful readers.
    Oscar was behind the bar with a jug at the ready for refills. His round face shone with good humour and perspiration. He nodded as Michael approached. ‘A pint is it, Mick?’
    ‘Aye. The black stuff. It’s what I look forward to all day and when it touches my lips I always wonder why.’
    ‘The water,’ said someone.
    ‘Aye. Too much lime,’ someone else chimed.
    ‘Lucky to have the bloody water. We didn’t have fresh water in the early days.’
    ‘Well it’s not as if it’s a good supply even now, is it, Sean? Not with the bore about to run dry and the piping gone to rust.’
    The conversation was always the same. No one really minded that the stout wasn’t as sweet as it was ‘back home’, since it did the same job, but it was necessary to remark upon it. It united them. It also saved thinking of some topic for conversation whilst the drink was being poured. At the end of the long, labouring day, no one really felt like talking. At least not until they’d emptied a pint or two, so it was better that way.
    Michael took his jar to one of the upended barrels that served as tables, and lit his pipe. The Laffertys had struck up a reel and he tapped his boot absently on the straw that covered the wood floor. His never-idle mind moved towards the evening