Captive Wife, The by Fiona Kidman

Harriet, kept running backwards and forwards over the children as they lay upon the ground — one of which, the youngest still retains the marks of this brutal operation. They afterwards delivered the youngest child to the mother, and took the other one away into the bush, and Mrs Guard did not see it for some months after
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    Account of Betty Guard as reported to the      
Sydney Morning Herald, November 1834 .    
    So, it is another day for scandal on the streets, broad and narrow, of Sydney Town. Three weeks have passed since the story of Betty Guard was first aired in the press. I am the talk of the town. Crowds queue for the newspapers in order to get another instalment of the details, something to mull over dinner parties at Government House and between dances at Mrs Manning’s balls, and cause a stir here at the Rocks, where ticket of leave men and women huddle in their cottages on the brown sandstone that edges the shoreline. When I walk down the street, a way opens up for me to pass through, as if I were not of them any more, but rather, as if my deep and dark past puts me in a class all of my own. Down here among yesterday’s canaries, who have done all manner of things, you would think I was the devil.
    Look, I might say, I am innocent. I am just a woman unclothed by savages. What would you have done? Don’t you understand? I am a heroine. All the newspapers will tell you that.
    I might say, my Granny and Granddad were on the First Fleet and who do you think you are when you’re at home.
    Instead I say nothing. I keep walking, not looking to the left nor to the right.
    Last week a skit was performed at the Theatre Royale, a prelude to the main play, featuring a pale maiden with fair tousled ringlets falling this way and that as she leans back, her head almost touching the stage. A bottle of red ink drips over her snow-white tunic, and an actor smeared head to toe with coal dust and only a loincloth to cover his manly parts, swoons upon her throat. A bearded sailor wrings his hands in anguish in the wings. Cock-a-doodle-do, squawks a dancer clad in a swirling ostrich-feather cloak, flapping his arms as if he were a rooster. He dances on tiptoes across the reclining pair, holding his arms outstretched. ‘Thereby hangs a tail,’ the rooster cackles, and the lights dim to thunderous applause.
    It lasted only a night or so, for there are those who protest my virtue and are incensed on my account; it has been said that even the Governor stepped in to have it stopped. Two nights or three, it was long enough for men from Cambridge Street to take themselves up town for a look and so it is known about, word for word, around this way. My husband Jacky Guard stayed home. But of course he has heard about it. Even if he speaks to no one, my aunt Charlotte Pugh speaks to everyone.
    I do not have fair ringlets anyway. I am tall and dark, handsome some say, though my Aunt Charlotte thinks I have a strong chin for a woman. It is your eyes, she would say, back in the days when she was not displeased with me; they are scorching eyes that men might die for. When I was a girl she would twine my hair round the stems of clay pipes after a wash, so that it came out curly, but now it falls in waves down my back when it is free. People watch me for signs and messages I will not give them.
    All the same, I’ve been in no mood to go out upon the town, for at the Rocks it is possible to bear the curious stares, the hushed voices. These are my own people and soon something else will come up to take their interest. Someone will come along with a circus. Last year there was a Bengal tiger in a cage. Or somebody will drop dead with drink.
    Up in town, though, along George Street where the smartpeople stroll, it will be another matter. They will want to prod and poke, in a manner of speaking, and make excuses to hold a conversation. These are the same people who will spend a shilling to