【荆棘鸟】第二章 01

When the Clearys went to church on Sundays, Meggie had to stay home with one of the older boys, longing 1 for the day when she, too, would be old enough to go. Padraic Cleary held that small children had no place in any house save their own, and his rule held even for a house of worship. When Meggie commenced school and could be trusted to sit still, she could come to church. Not before. So every Sunday morning she stood by the gorse bush at the front gate, desolate 2, while the family piled into the old shandrydan and the brother delegated to mind her tried to pretend it was a great treat escaping Mass. The only Cleary who relished 3 separation from the rest was Frank. Paddy's religion was an intrinsic part of his life. When he had married Fee it had been with grudging 4 Catholic approval, for Fee was a member of the Church of England; though she abandoned her faith for Paddy, she refused to adopt his in its stead. Difficult to say why, except that the Armstrongs were old pioneering stock of impeccable Church of England extraction, where Paddy was a penniless immigrant from the wrong side of the Pale. There had been Armstrongs in New Zealand long before the first "official" settlers arrived, and that was a passport to colonial aristocracy. From the Armstrong point of view, Fee could only be said to have contracted a shocking mesalliance.
  Roderick Armstrong had founded the New Zealand clan 5, in a very curious way. It had begun with an event which was to have many unforeseen repercussions 6 on eighteenth-century England: the American War of Independence. Until 1776 over a thousand British petty felons 7 were shipped each year to Virginia and the Carolinas, sold into an indentured 8 servitude no better than slavery. British justice of the time was grim and unflinching; murder, arson 9, the mysterious crime of "impersonating Egyptians" and larceny 10 to the tune 11 of more than a shilling were punished on the gallows 12. Petty crime meant transportation to the Americas for the term of the felon's natural life. But when in 1776 the Americas were closed, England found herself with a rapidly increasing convict population and nowhere to put it. The prisons filled to overflowing 13, and the surplus was jammed into rotting hulks moored 14 in the river estuaries 15. Something had to be done, so something was. With a great deal of reluctance 16 because it meant the expenditure 17 of a few thousand pounds, Captain Arthur Phillip was ordered to set sail for the Great South Land. 
 

星期天，当克利里一家到教堂去的时候，梅吉不得不和比她稍大的一个小哥哥留在家里。盼着自己长大，也能去教堂的那一天。帕德里克·克利里认为，年幼的孩子除了在自己的屋里呆着以外，不宜到任何别的地方去，按着他的这个规矩甚至连礼拜堂也包括在内。等到梅吉上了学，让人相信她能老老实实地坐在那里的时候，才准她去教堂。
    在这以前是不行的。因此，每个星期天的早晨，她都凄凄然地站在大门边上的金雀花丛旁，眼巴巴地看着全家人挤上那辆破旧的两轮轻便马车，那个被指定照看她的哥哥则竭力装出能逃脱作弥撒是一大幸事的样子。克利里一家人中，真正乐于不与家里其他人同行的只有弗兰克。
    帕迪的宗教信仰是他生命的不可分割的一部分。他和菲结婚的时候，天主教会是在很勉强的情况下同意的，因为菲是英国教会的信徒。尽管她为帕迪放弃了自己的宗教信仰，可是她拒绝改信天主教。阿姆斯特朗家是纯正的英国教会出身的老世家，而帕迪是个来自爱尔兰的、身无分文的移民，除此以外，很难说清楚这其中的原委了。在第一批“官方”的称民到达新西兰之前，阿姆斯特朗家族就早已定居在这里了，这是殖民贵族的证明。从阿姆斯特朗的观点来看，只能说菲奥娜缔结了一个门第极不相称的婚姻。
    罗德里克·阿姆斯特朗以一种非常奇特的方式创立了新西兰家族。
    这个发现是以一个事件开头的，这个事件在18世纪的英国引起了未曾料到的反响，那就是美国的独立战争。在1776年以前，每年都有一千多名英国的轻罪犯被运到弗吉尼亚和南北卡罗莱纳，被卖去做比奴隶强不了多少的契约苦役。当时的英国法律是冷酷无情、毫不手软的：杀人犯、纵火犯、令人难以理解的“冒充埃及人犯”和偷窃超过一先令的盗窃犯均被处以绞刑。轻微的犯罪则意味着要被终身发配美洲。
    可是，美洲这条出路在1776年被堵死了，英国发觉国内的犯罪人数在迅速增加，而且没有地方可安置。监狱已经塞得超员，其余的被塞进了泊在河口的朽坏的废船上。
    有什么需要，就有什么行动。阿瑟·菲利浦舰长受命启航前往南半球的大陆了，此举是十分勉强的，因为它意味着要花费数千英镑。