September, 1835.
"The worst and the strangest part of your life," England says, "is now. You must get used to explaining yourself."
As the guests file into the dining room, Australia begins to understand what he means.
Out of the whole group to join them, a combination of military officers and prison authorities, a very small proportion have ever seen Australia in person. To them, he is an enigma; certainly, those which have never seen him before have a hard time believing a personification can look so young.
It doesn't help his case, Australia supposes, that he has since rejected the name 'New South Wales' now that Van Diemen's Land has come into the picture, and the grander, more definitive title – adopted from Flinders – makes him sound more imposing than he looks.
For some, there is little variation in their expressions as they enter, just a handful of bewildered looks tossed in England's direction. Others pause in the doorway before they move on, but make no fuss. England's good at having that kind of effect on people – he doesn't even have to try and people will accept anything he does without a second thought, oblivious as to why.
Finally, breaking out of the daze cast over the room, a guest speaks his mind: "What's the boy doing here?"
The atmosphere grows heavy in an instant. The unwelcome speaker rightfully receives the scrutiny of the other guests; England above all. "This boy," England starts, with an edge to his voice, "is—"
"Australia." The nation announces himself, stretching out his hand. It remains untouched, and unclasped.
The room goes excruciatingly quiet; quieter than before. Australia feels the intensity of a dozen pairs of eyes upon him, and is tempted to wilt under it. After what could well be an eternity everyone, at last, takes their seat, following the women. The man who asked after Australia's title now refuses to look him in the eye, slinking over to his place. Was curiosity such a blunder? Despite what is evidently appalling behaviour, England almost seems to be taking it harder; perhaps an apology should be extended to them both. A woman very near to Australia – Anne, reads the slip of paper pinned to her napkin – smiles in his direction.
He is an amusement, he realises anew. A child playing dress-up.
"I did what you told me to," Australia says to England, breaking eye-contact with Anne.
"Yes," replies England, slowly, "but you understand, it is embarrassing for them. It is embarrassing to be corrected by a child."
"I can hold my own."
"Good for you. Wait for the toast."
The stretch of time before the meat is brought out is tortuous (really, Australia decides, the whole night is one extended experiment in masochism), worse still as everyone looks on with bated breath while the commandant carves. He does well enough, Australia thinks to himself, working at it with methodical strokes, knife glowing gold as it reflects the generous candlelight. There's no privacy at such a small table, granting no opportunity to question England without rousing the attention of the other guests, but Australia sees the bones in England's hands moving under the skin, fingers restless. He probably thinks he can do better.
"Can I give it a go?" he asks out loud, before he can stop himself.
England freezes.
The commandant looks at him blankly, knife half-buried in the slab of beef. "I beg your pardon?"
"He is overexcited," England interjects, a desperate remedy. "He has not been here long. He scarcely knows how to behave."
Not been here long. He knows every person, every name in Van Diemen's Land, every grain of sand west of New South Wales, out toward Western Australia. He knows everything about his people before he looks them in the eye.
England has seen the interior of the commandant's dining room.
"But he knows how to carve?" the commandant asks, eliciting a few breathy laughs from the guests.
"Of course not," England replies. "It is only that he likes to pretend. I apologise on his behalf."
"No harm done," says the other, a little awkwardly; Australia flushes. He cannot figure why England seems so fixed on humiliating him.
"What are you doing?" England demands, once the idle chatter has picked up around them, loud commentaries on the good climate and commendable order of the settlement.
"I know what to do. I'm older than he is."
"In case you've forgotten, you are still young in our terms. You have the appearance, and all the graces, of a twelve-year-old," England says, crisply. "With that in mind, you ought to understand you should withdraw. These people do not know who you are and I do not want a spectacle here tonight."
"Not a spectacle if everyone keeps their mouths shut."
"You should know better," England answers, low, letting his voice be swallowed up and absorbed by the conversations on either side.
In the least, things thaw. The wines are poured out; their quality and taste is declared remarkable. England makes good use of the decanter nearest to their end, obligingly filling the women's glasses. Australia receives only the barest dose, hardly even medicinal, but swallows it nevertheless.
"I heard your convicts baked this bread," says England, and the people around him go quiet. "It's a marvel."
"And cheaper than in Hobart-town," says the commandant. "This is not even all of it. They keep vegetable gardens here now. Education is reform - the highest sort."
Australia stabs at the meat in front of him with a silver fork, discarding the fat at the edge of his plate. He knows Port Puer; he has been there more than once. The boys there look younger than him, and do not even have the benefit of a half-century of experience.
(At least, he believes it is a half-century – he has been told so on multiple occasions, but he still doesn't think he really understands. Why else does he hold vague memories of a time before the shacks and prisons, now haphazardly strewn around Van Diemen's Land and Port Jackson? Why else is his skin darker than theirs? Why else do they perceive him as so incredibly out of place in this loose society?)
(Perhaps, if they might permit him to venture out on his own, he could grope his way to the truth. Only one thing is for sure: he was born here, and they were not.)
"It's of course appropriate to isolate the secondary offenders, and there are natural advantages over Macquarie Harbour here. Food, for one. Proximity to the mainland. The railway will be completed by next year."
"Trams? Like in Wales?" England probes.
"Pushed by the convicts themselves, to Norfolk Bay, and no more sea journeys," says the commandant.
There's another toast, harder to understand than the first. The thoughtful and somewhat admiring look on England's face makes Australia's blood boil. Didn't he hear about Pearce, at Macquarie Harbour? England has spoken countless times of his first-hand experience as a spectator at Whitehall and at Tyburn. It is almost nonsensical for him to have come out at the other side and to see it all in the same, unsympathetic way.
"Some people call this place 'the Modern Gomorrah'," Australia speaks up, in spite of his caretaker, intentionally projecting his voice further than the guests at his end of the table, "and they're right. They're right. It's wrong." He does not want to believe that he must somehow prove himself to these people; he owes them nothing; he is greater than them. Countries have servants, as England says. Kings are servants. Courtiers are servants. The people filling the dining room do not seem to see things like he does, or maybe they are merely ignorant.
"Is that what you think?" the commandant answers. The condescending lilt sets Australia's teeth on edge. To them he must seem little more than a teenager purporting to have the greater moral compass, and the greater capacity for compassion. "But, you must know things are changing. We don't treat floggings as the only solution. There are better ways to make men docile, to settle their spirit." Australia's counterargument dies in his throat.
"Solitary confinement is a vast improvement on our old ways. I cannot see why we should have any delay in its implementation in our colony."
Australia has previously taken the liberty of observing the inmates entering Port Arthur. The more he cycles the names through his head, knowing for certain that not all are deserving of the same degree of condemnation, it grows harder and harder to listen to the commandant talk. And as for the worst of them, the twisted ones, the truly malevolent – they can only generate greater harms against the people who are already living on these shores, who have done no wrong.
Eventually, the guests wind up drinking his health: to the young nation who has distantly brought a measure of peace to the British Isles, and spared the convicts from the hulk. After the plates are cleared and dessert is brought out he eats scarcely anything, preferring to ignore the tide of conversation and pluck at the seams of his coat, too tight around his forearms. England is peeling an orange and cutting it into thin slices with a pretty knife, introducing a sharp tang to the air. His movements are mesmerising.
In hindsight, this is how Australia recalls the evening: in momentary bursts, where the strongest features are the low light and the reek of citrus, and the delirium of his discomfort and his frustration. It is not the first evening like it, and it will not be the last.
On the horizon, the Isle of the Dead figures as a lonely clump of rock, coated with greenery and battered by the sea. Australia squints. There are not many men buried there; two years of operation has not been enough to fill the soil. Yet nonetheless, he can feel the presence of the dead within their unmarked graves.
"You're a morbid child," says England, coming up beside him. He blows his nose, looking at Australia from the corners of his eyes. "There are much better things here to look at and to tend to. You should be spending your time with the officers."
"I don't know what that means."
"You're too introspective for a child your age," England says, emphatically, and his brow furrows. "You should be happy, Australia. We are conducting our tour today so I can take the news back myself."
"I don't want to go," says Australia. He turns his face away, trying to force his heart to disconnect from the sensations flowing out from the Isle of the Dead, the anger and resignation seeping from the bodies. "It'd be better to be burned than stuck on that island."
"They were doomed from the first. They might have perished somewhere better, but, they made their choice."
"It's not my fault. You keep killing my people and sending the rest to rot," Australia answers, firm, still angry with himself in the wake of last night's meal. He cannot help but feel he's somehow doing himself a disservice – that he's responsible for the way the guests looked at him, that he's an obstacle on the commandant's path toward forging respectability. Thankfully, these thoughts, imposed by the unkindest part of his mind, are almost too easily countered by his inherent confidence in his own righteousness, and his inability to condone the way England thinks. I don't care, he forces himself to assert. I'm not the one in the wrong.
At Australia's side, England stiffens, and he closes himself off, immediately killing any attempt he was making at amiability. "Whatever hardships you may have faced, I caution you against trying to hold me personally responsible." His tone turns cutting, colder than the wet winds that sweep over Port Arthur in the depths of winter, like the crack of a whip. After a painful moment, England takes the silence as his own, trying and failing to grip the child's wrist.
"Like I said," he continues, "I'm here to see the shipyard."
Australia doesn't know when he agreed to join the sad party now taking its turn around the colony, or at what point the penal settlements became so immersed in his identity that England seems unable to separate the two. By this point, however, he's practically along for the ride. It is hiscountry, and yet—
His head is aching. He wonders if other colonies have ever had to deal with this, the constant tug-of-war inevitable when England is attempting to at once both grant and deny him autonomy. As much as people seem to believe otherwise, all he can do is try to think of himself as a nation. Better that than to accept the disarming concept that he is merely a motley collection of different colonies, tied together by a single concept: subjugation.
As far as England seems to be concerned, he is a wayward child, a mascot of colonial triumph. And the thought of that, no matter how much it has been dressed up, is repulsive.
Australia derives no joy from tagging along with England's chosen group, largely comprised of the same dinner guests from the night before, as it winds around the outskirts of the settlement and reels in awe. They come eventually to the edges of the forest, where groups of convicts, fifty or more, are setting in motion the first steps of the ship-building process. The convicts' presence is announced first by smell, and by sound: clouds of sawdust carried on a cool wind, unwashed bodies and fresh dirt, overturned; the groans of tree and man, the monotonous songs of the saws on ancient wood.
Australia studies the motions of the saws. He is reminded, almost bizarrely, of the way the commandant cut up last night's beef. The same deliberate movements – the same intense determination, worlds apart.
He is the first to go anywhere near the sawpit, and England grapples for his shoulder, fingers digging in. "Don't," he says, but Australia is transfixed. One man is atop the log, and another below, dragging the saw back and forth. Their clothing is soaked through. The one below the log is hacking up his lungs.
"Stay back," England repeats, and this time he is successful; Australia stumbles slightly, and the convicts in and around the pit look at him strangely, with a recognition that neither they nor Australia fully understand. The man atop the log has deep brown eyes; he looks Australia straight in the face and in a flash the young country knows all that there is to know, past, present, and future. The man is Irish, twenty-nine, unmarried; he is the only one in the gang of convicts with any significant carpentry experience. He became abstinent at twenty-one. He broke in through a window and stole three shirts one Thursday night. At Macquarie Harbour, he refused to work, and cursed out the overseer.
"If they're all secondary offenders," says Australia abruptly, turning to England, "that means the first crime was probably worse than the second. Swearing at an officer, or getting drunk shouldn't be enough." He'll never get used to the feeling of seeing so much in an instant; it's disarming.
"Don't sound so ignorant. They're not as innocent as you think."
"Didn't say they were innocent."
"Either way, you have no business pitying them."
England makes the entire party stand by, shivering, until the colossal beam of wood has been hauled from the pit and onto the shoulders of fifty men, their overseers observing from some distance back.
"Like a centipede," says someone within earshot, and Australia silently agrees, thinking of the various beetles and other insects he's accidentally unearthed from their damp hiding places when in pursuit of an occupation, and out of the sight of disapproval.
And then they're tracing the convicts back toward the shipyard, meandering through patches of damp grass. Covered in dust and dirt, the convicts are largely indistinguishable, but Australia can't look away from the one whose past is merging with his own. There is blood trickling down the side of his face.
The shipyard is altogether a very different story to the sawing pits; here, men and boys are working side by side, rushing back and forth around the skeleton of a ship's hull, like hagfish around the carcass of a whale, lying silent at the bottom of the sea. One can only long for silence; the ditches and tracks are filled with the clamour of yelling, of hammering, of brief exchanges from convict to convict.
"What was the name of that ship—?"
"Eliza," Australia sighs as way of reply to England, and the other nation relates the information to a man at his left.
Ignoring all attempts to drag him into an unwanted conversation, Australia elects to watch the men at their work, at close range as well as further out to shore, where convicts cluster around an existing ship, conducting repairs while nearly submerged themselves. He quickly grows bored. There's only so many hours he can invest just in taking notes on the colony's progress, feigning pleasure, hating every moment.
He turns his head, and meets the eyes of the convict from before. Suddenly it is as if both exist only inside a vacuum, insensible and resistant to the demands of the outside world.
"You," says the convict, accusatory. "You're it."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Australia answers him. "What've I done?"
"This place."
"Port Arthur?" Australia looks around; hasn't England seen?
"Not only that. Everything else."
Australia's age and nationhood mean nothing to him as the man towers above him.
"This is you. It's all you. You're responsible."
"I am? How-?"
He isn't supposed to tell anyone his true identity; that much has been reiterated over and over again. Nor, as England says, will anyone be able to tell, unless someone else has said as much, or they have happened to see him before, years apart. To find someone who purports to understand him intuitively – what hasn't England said?
The interrogation continues; Australia holds his breath, but stands his ground.
"You're the one in charge? Van Diemen's Land?"
"Australia."
The convict's eyes narrow.
Before Australia can react, he lunges.
After what seems like an eternity, an overseer pries them apart, and the convict is swearing off his head, bested only by England. Australia takes half a minute to realise England is clutching him against his breast, one hand flush to the back of his head. Wrapped in England's fingers, hot with blood, is a nail, identical to the ones Australia's watched being driven into the hull behind them. Tentatively, on the verge of a faint, Australia brushes a hand against the side of his neck, to the place where his skin is burning.
The edge of his thumb dips into a hole perhaps two centimetres deep; not bad enough to be fatal, not shallow enough to be brushed off lightly, yet even as he stands there he can feel the skin moving around it, preparing to mend itself. He finds that he's heaving, the strain of it wracking his entire body, and wipes his hands on his coat, thoroughly ruining it. Blood pools around and inside his collar.
Plastering one hand over the wound, Australia wrenches himself away, in disbelief more than anything else. His confusion almost overrides his pain. The convict is still staring him down; he spits at Australia's feet, and an officer hits him hard across the face.
"What do we do?"
Australia turns around, trying to work out his thoughts to the point where he can offer a coherent response, but then he realises: it wasn't meant for him.
England's anger radiates from him when he speaks. "I—well, I would—never mind. Protocol?" he says, directing his question to an overseer.
"At least two hundred lashes. More, if you like."
"He's a child. It was clearly an attempt on his life," says the commandant, red in the face, trembling.
"A hanging?" England looks to Australia from the corner of his eyes; something clicks over. "It would—"
"No," says Australia, forcing himself into England's line of sight. "I don't want that."
"Why not?"
"No one should die for that. Not here."
"For Christ's sake," England sighs, then to Australia's amazement, agrees. "Take care of it," he says over his shoulder. The whole dockyard has gone still, frozen in time. The offending convict is pulled away, and Australia can't stomach the hate in his eyes.
"Are you alright?" England begins to ask, but Australia cuts him off, refusing the hand that nears his face, staggering. The world in front of him blurs. Someone else – not England, that much is certain – forces Australia's hand away from where he's clamped it against the wound, fingers slippery with blood. England barks some incoherent order. Blinking, trying to make out the face of the new apparent medic, Australia thinks it must be one of the men who dined with them last night. Further scrutiny reveals it to be one of the convict overseers – a doctor in a past life?
Australia shuts his eyes. He only feels the pressure against his neck. He wonders how it looks to a human – does it look fatal to them? One would almost think England does, judging by his demeanour, the way he digs his fingernails into his palm, the uncertainty behind his eyes.
"You're not going to," he forces out, knowing England's presence by the sound of his breathing and the stink of tobacco.
"He stabbed you in the neck. You think this is the time for clemency? He's fortunate to be alive."
"You don't even know why he did it."
"I don't care," says England, and he loses his loftiness, becomes brutal, the spectre of ages past. "It doesn't matter. It's the act itself."
"You'll kill someone doing that."
"If that's the case then generations of sailors would lie dead at my feet," England retorts. "If he's brave enough to attack you in broad daylight then I'm sure he can handle the cat."
"And what if we just don't understand? Maybe you just don't get it."
"Get what?"
"How much it hurts."
There's an odd change in England's face, impossible to place. "Actions have consequences. That much should be enough for both of us."
They bring him to the flogging; he doesn't get a choice in the matter. Australia has no sense of human pain but, as the ground is flecked with blood, he begins to think he understands. But what he cannot understand – and what unsettles him above all else – is the stoicism with which the punishment is taken. On the occasions he's been brought to see the floggings most have been sheer agony, accompanied by screams and moans and weeping that remain in the back of his mind like leeches, far into the night. Backs which look like lacerated slabs of pork, lying on someone's kitchen bench; the solemn appreciation of onlookers, unquestioning. The variation in how much any one person can tolerate both frightens and startles him; to what extent is he the same?
But how much the victim actually feels his ordeal is irrelevant, as irrelevant as the nature of the act which brought him here. Australia's attention is on England, on his nonchalance. The prison surgeon insisted on properly bandaging Australia's wound but it's already partly healed, and the pain no longer means anything to him, even if he refuses to take his hand away and let England look. The convict's words are ringing in his head; as the cat comes down on the man's flesh, digging deeper every turn (the one inflicting the punishment has to pause at every stroke to pull the gore off the strands, before letting it fly once more), he can't help but wonder if he'll be recognised again. To be understood is one thing. To be blamed is another.
When all is said and done and the offender, dragging his feet, scarcely conscious, has been led away to the hospital, Australia finds his voice again.
"It wasn't your call," he says, and senses the weight of England's hand on his shoulder.
"So whose was it? Yours?" England laughs, but the tone of it, and the words that follow, is acrid. "Never mind. You'll get your turn soon. I'm only playing my part."
"When will I be good enough?" he answers, almost desperate for an answer. There's blood on his shoes, blood in the air.
"When I say."
And although his injury is almost already out of sight, out of mind, and truly ought to have no effect at all on his state of being, Australia is at once too weary to respond. He simply lacks the will.
He has better memories of England than this – almost happy ones. At least, when he sees himself in them, he doesn't have the same animosity that possesses him in the present, driving every action.
He was in Sydney, not long ago; he was in England's makeshift study, swathed in gentle candlelight, conversing in hushed tones, focused on the glinting of the fresh ink on England's papers, the black stains on the underside of his hand. There was a dog at his feet and rain on the windows. There was a familiar note to their talk, something homely – he thinks it must have had something to do with the countryside. Where the recipient of England's letter lived – Cornwall. Australia remembers mulling over the descriptions given, how close they seem to his own reality and world, to Hobart's gardens.
He recalls it with equal clarity to last night's dinner, yet the accompanying emotions are on almost opposite ends of the same spectrum. He was a child then; he felt like a child.
Reality changes in an instant; time is immaterial. He cannot tolerate having his status negated to that of a subordinate if things persist in the same manner; this is not the kind of life that children live.
England has overstayed his welcome.
October, 1835.
"Did you sleep well?"
It's a friendly enough thing to say, an affable peace offering, except that it has been repeated each morning for a month and long since lost its lustre, just as salt loses its flavour. It only sounds polite, now – an obligation fulfilled. If he is feeding off of Australia's own acidity, it doesn't matter in the slightest.
"No," Australia answers truthfully, unafraid to sound sulky. "I never sleep in this place."
England regards him closely as they sit opposite one another within the small cottage. The grounds beyond the window are bathed in morning dew; cockatoos are feeding. This part of the settlement merely pretends to be as calm and peaceful as it is; the wind carries distant sounds of toil, dragging feet and hammers on wood. Across the distance, Australia feels the same pains in his shoulders. The quiet is more indicative of what has been destroyed than what has been gained.
Australia touches the side of his neck, perfect once more. He finds that he can't sit still and so gets to his feet, kicking at the chair to push it back. There's no part of the country without misery or disease, he thinks, staring at the bookshelf, crammed full of texts presuming to fully categorise people and animals alike - both physical, and metaphorical. Van Diemen's Land quakes under the weight of its own wrongdoing, and he feels it acutely.
"Sit down. I'm not going yet." Australia drags the edge of his finger along the windowsill, collecting dust.
"I don't even remember where you're running off to."
"To Port Phillip," says England. "It's important. There's been some sort of negotiation to sell a parcel of land – actually, no. I'm getting on. I've almost forgotten." He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, almost grey in the face. "You should know better than me. A new settlement to follow Sydney and Swan River. I've well and truly seen everything here."
Unsure exactly how to feel, for the time being insensitive to any kind of proposed settlement in which he will have little to no say, Australia speaks up, groping for a diversion: "How's Aotearoa?"
"Get your hands out of your pockets."
Australia shoves them deeper, and makes eye contact. "How is she?"
"I couldn't tell you," says England, with greater force, "but the last I heard, she is happy where she is. You won't be seeing her anytime soon."
"I'm happy for her. She doesn't deserve this."
"Deserve what?"
"This," repeats Australia, nodding at the convicts' huts and the forests. "I don't want her to know about it."
"It's a part of you," England replies, reciting what is to him the most basic truth.
"It's never been a part of me," he snarls. "You brought it here, and now you're trying to pretend that it is. I didn't ask for the bloody convicts."
"Watch yourself," replies England, and his unruffled state only makes things worse. "You are on display to your people. Don't embarrass yourself."
"I don't care. This place doesn't belong to you. It never has, yet you act like it does."
"It's really not that difficult to understand," England responds. His voice is mellow and reeks of falsehood. "I've taken it upon myself to sort out some business while I've been here. I take your place because you are under my domain and because no one in their right mind will take you seriously."
"Some of the soldiers know what I am. They respect me."
"When has that ever been enough? You'll need a lot more than that to keep this colony afloat, let alone the others."
"It's mine, this place is mine, and I don't want you here. That is my decree."
"So what would you have me do?" England's laughing, now. "Tear down all the stores and dig up the foundations? Drive all the settlers out and knock down the courts? Take away all the gifts I have given you?"
"You never gave me anything. You forced it on me."
"You are a colony—"
"You're standing on my soil."
England has the gall to look irritable, as though he has merely been tolerating Australia's antics and now, the time is passed. "All this because of the prison? If you can't manage this you'll barely stand on your own two feet in a decade."
"No, it's not just that. It's everything else. I don't—I don't understand how you don't see. This is how the world knows me and none of it's my fault." He pauses for breath; there's a hollow ache in his neck. "That convict knew who I was. Nobody told him – he just knew. And he blames me."
"It's a good thing, Australia."
"I'm not stupid! I talk to the officers. I know I'm only here because you wanted somewhere to put the people you don't like."
"Don't be absurd."
"Did America feel like this?"
"I don't want to talk about him."
"I can talk how I like."
"You ungrateful child—"
"I don't have to be grateful."
"You thought your life was going to be easy – is that it? The sooner you learn to take the world as it is, the better. These people are here to be reformed. They are in your care. And if this is your country, as you assert, and these are your people, and you do not need my help, I can only assume you intend to take full responsibility for them. That means seeing their sentences through."
"I—"
"It stuns me that you've yet to realise. Haven't I told you? You exist because of your citizens, and your government. Because they swear allegiance to you, in at least some small sense. They ceased to belong to me long ago."
It takes a minute simply to extract something from England's spiel that he can work with; he's incredulous. "So now they're mine? It's convenient to you now?"
"Convenient—?"
"I get no say in anything as long as you're here, but then you want to go again, and it's left to me to clean up the mess left behind? To take responsibility? This is how it—"
"Things will always be this way. It has nothing to do with me," England interrupts, and his voice is incisive, precise and agonising, opening up a wide abyss between them. "It is the same, century after century – there will always be someone who knows more than you, and has more power than you ever will. It doesn't matter in the slightest if you believe it. Even if the people are your subjects, chances are you're going to spend much of your time on the sidelines, praying for a divine intervention to spare you the pain."
And now, Australia sees England's age, but he doesn't have to indulge any of this. Nor will he bother.
He stares at England's back, numb, as he gets up and goes for the door, shrugging his shoulders to encourage his coat to settle more comfortably. It's silly, really – he'll be sweating by the time he's out of Port Arthur, but Australia can't be bothered making a fuss of it in the circumstances. The ship's waiting. The open door welcomes a gust of wind that disturbs the dust around the threshold and allows the entry of a few stray eucalyptus leaves. Australia crushes them under his feet, but they're not brittle enough to break.
"Someone died this week," says Australia. "Named Stevens. After being attacked by another man. And another convict tried to kill an overseer."
"All that does is confirm the situation we're in," England answers, brisk. "There has never been a greater need for prisons like yours."
"It really is worse than death. Like the newspapers say."
"Reading that drivel is an easy way to make yourself miserable."
"These prisons come from you. They aren't an accident. You put them here!"
"Spending part of your life as a prison colony is far from the worst thing you can endure. Why do you think we've given them the chance to learn trades? So that they can get better. And then you will have at least something to work with." Sensing Australia's palpable disbelief, he continues. "Everything has been planned. Everything fits into place. It has all been for your sake."
"It doesn't fix any of this. This isn't the first time a convict's killed someone else just to get out of it. And this isn't your only crime, not by far."
"Human tragedies are beyond us," comes the reply, distant, vaguely wistful.
"He did it because he couldn't stand being alive! He was tired of living. He chose to end it then and there. What does that tell you?"
England smiles to himself, then to Australia, one hand on the doorframe. "Aren't we all? Pity that you and I lack that luxury."
"This lies with you."
"No, it lies with you. I told you, didn't I, that there would come a time I'd deem you ready?"
Australia barely manages a nod. "Last month."
"I'm glad you remember. You'll need time to steel yourself for what lies ahead."
"All I want is you gone," says Australia. The imperial statutes, the English judges, the marks of foreign settlement, the hoisted flags – all of it escapes him in the moment. Later he might think it childish, but in the present, England is an all-encompassing entity. England's absence is the absence of control.
"Soon, I will be. This is too far for me to travel. Someone must take my place." Fleetingly, the back of his hand goes to Australia's face; there's a low thrum in Australia's chest. His gaze is transfixed to the wall.
But England's next words snatch him back.
"Are you ready?"