A Fringe of Leaves (18 page)

At the point where the street, which had become a lane, petered out in a stony path, Mrs Roxburgh was forced to pause, and grope for the support of a tree. Leaning against it, she held her arms around herself to contain what amounted to a nausea. The rough tree-trunk comforted her to some extent until she was fully returned to her senses, though still with traces of a melancholy which had its origins, it seemed to her, in her failed children; more, she was permeated by this sorrow her husband never allowed himself to mention.

Swept onward by the wind, her skirt blown in a tumult before her, she tried to persuade herself that her husband, like the tree which had offered sanctuary, supported a belief in her own free will. Yet she had been blown as passively against the one as against the other. The tree happened to be standing in her path, just as a crude, bewildered girl, alone and bereaved on a moor, could hardly have rejected Mr Roxburgh’s offer.

So that she was dragged back into the forest clearing, the filtered light, the scents of fungus and rotting leaves, to the only instance when her will had asserted itself, and then with bared, ugly teeth.

Mrs Roxburgh opened her mouth in hollow despair, and the wind, tearing down her throat, all but choked and temporarily deafened her.

She stumbled farther, to what end she wondered, when she could have been seated beside the fire with a book, or occupying herself with sewing, in the speckless dolls’ house at present their home.

Until, at a turn in the path, she noticed what might have been a bundle of cast-off clothes lying amongst the crabbed bushes: old, greenish garments, the sight of which suggested a smell of must and the body to which they had belonged. She would have hurried past this repulsive sight, when the bundle sat up, and showed that the clothes, far from being discarded, still helped partially disguise the nakedness of a living being.

Moreover, the man inside them had started directing at her a gap-toothed smile, out of a freckled, pocked complexion; the eyes, pale and lashless, in no way related to the invitation of the yellow smile, burned with cold hate as they inquired into every aspect of her figure; while a hand, its skin cured to a carapace, patted the form his body had moulded in the grass where he had been lying.

That he was addressing her, she saw, but could not distinguish the words as the wind immediately carried them away.

The man realized, and increased his efforts until some of what he was shouting reached her: ‘… where there’s a hare’s nest …’ again the thread was lost, ‘… wouldn’ be natural for puss to lie alone …’ it was blown back.

She might have returned along the path had it not been a rambling one and the man already on his feet. To follow the path in the direction in which it led might have plunged her in a labyrinth of gorse, so she started up the slope of the hill beyond which she could see the roofs of aligned houses, and where she could hope to find the orderly streets she had abandoned.

Behind her she heard her pursuer progressing from his initial courtship, in which hares couched poetically enough, into the more obscene terms of his desperate human predicament, ‘I url show … what you bitches of leddies … lead us on … all that most of us gets is from watchin’ winders at night …’

Mrs Roxburgh ran or sprang. She felt fingers rake her back, a hand seize on one of her wrists. She was whirled round in her flight. Blackened nails were tearing at a brooch on her bosom. She was looking deep into the pocks and pores of a fiery skin as the blast of rum smote her in the face.

Then she had escaped, and was again running, clambering ungainly amongst and over rocks. If his obscenities had horrified her at least they were also memories of the past; the sound of his breathing frightened her worse.

‘Well, then,’ he suddenly shouted out of a silence, ‘will yer be satisfied when you’ve killed a man? That is what it leads to from the moment we is born!’

For her part, she could not conceive what they were doing, the two of them, scrambling up this hill. It would have been more rational to fall and allow herself to be strangled by orange, callused hands, broken fingernails eating into her throat, had she not looked up, and there ahead was the vestige of a road, some kind of vehicle advancing along it, drawn by a pair of horses, their solid briskets and haunches at variance with the alarm betrayed by ears and nostrils.

As she stumbled, herself by now an animal flattening its exhausted body against the turf, somebody, a gentleman, sprang down from the driver’s seat, and charged towards them, whip-in-hand.

In her distress she did not recognize him until they were but a few yards apart.

With the whip-handle he began belting into her assailant, who needed little persuasion to retreat, frieze rags flying, hat lost, as he jumped rocks and tore through bushes.

Garnet Roxburgh recovered his breath, and straightened his coat, of a dark-green cloth with fur collar.

‘You court disaster, Ellen. Remember this is Van Diemen’s Land. An infernal situation won’t be improved by your blowing on the coals.’

She was not yet able to speak, which absolved her from answering her brother-in-law. She followed him up the slope towards the buggy and its pair of disturbed horses.

She patted one of the cobs and let her hand lie briefly on his neck in gratitude.

Garnet Roxburgh explained that he had been to a sale at Bagdad, when it had occurred to him to pay his respects to his brother—and sister-in-law—on the way home.

He flipped at the horses’ necks as he spoke, while she sat humbly, exhausted and related, beside him on the leather seat. The whip, she felt, must have less malice in it than his words, for the horses responded jauntily.

‘Mr Roxburgh’, she slightly shifted her position, ‘will be glad to see you after all this time.’

She noticed that they were re-entering the world of substance and respectability. Gentlemen were driving home, accompanied in some instances by wives. Mr Garnet Roxburgh of ‘Dulcet’ shook his whip once or twice as a salute to familiar faces. The ladies returned blank stares on perceiving his unidentified companion.

‘I cannot thank you,’ she attempted.

He winced, and shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t receive thanks, I only accept offers.’

They drove grating along the street.

‘Most of us on this island are infected.’ (She had heard it before, alas, and from her husband.) ‘You, Ellen, though you are here only by chance, have symptoms of the same disease. I should hate my virtuous brother to know. But would love to educate you further in what you have shown yourself adept at learning—on one occasion at least.’

Because she would have preferred not to understand what she had been told, she sat looking at her meek hands; while the voice continued hammering at her.

‘You and I would enter hell the glorious way if you could overcome your prudery.’

Then she said, ‘I hope to redeem myself through my husband—an honourable man, as even you who love him must admit.’ She paused before adding, ‘I pray he will never have cause to regret our marriage.’

The horses were by now straining uphill towards the narrow house in which she and Austin Roxburgh temporarily lived. To avert the pressure of a contempt she could feel directed at her she inquired after her friend Holly.

‘Holly has been returned to the factory, for reasons’, he said, ‘which I shall not go into.’

Again she thought to hear the cry of that other victim of her brother-in-law’s displeasure, the little mare who, conveniently, had staked herself. Anger and fear conflicted in Ellen Roxburgh, together with relief that herself, the least deserving of the three, was assured of a refuge.

They had reached the door. Garnet Roxburgh handed her down, but made no move to go inside and pay his respects to his brother.

Mrs Roxburgh did not urge him to hold to his original intention; nor did she reveal to her husband, as he carved the lamb, the peculiarly distressing circumstances in which she had recently found herself.

Instead she wrote:

6 April

Walked by myself round the Point. Magnificent views of mountain and river seen by an oppressive light—stormy to say the least. An unpleasant incident on which I do not propose to dwell. Only heartening to know that whatever bad I find in myself is of no account beside the positive evil I discover in others. I do not mean the instinctive brutality of the human beast, but the considered evil of a calculating mind. When I say ‘others’ I mean An Other (and no fiend imagined on the moor at dusk in my inexperienced girlhood).

How fortunate I am in my dear husband who is goodness itself!

At dinner Mr R. was anoyed at the lamb which he found tough. I said it cld be the knife. He agreed I cld be right as indeed I was. The evening we spent together continued uneventful. I was glad of it.

Would call in Dr A. Feel sick and ill. Nothing, alas, for which he would know a medicine.

Later

A
miracle
! As we were about to prepare for bed, dear Dr A. arrived with news that a brig (
Bristol Maid
I think she is called) had berthed that evening—out of England—and wld sail on the return voyage, in ballast as far as Singapore, thence via the Cape—Home! The good doctor is negotiating with the company’s agent to secure us a passage, though their vessel he says, does not cater for passengers as a rule. Mr R. and I have finished our prayers and kissed each other. We cld of danced!

O Lord, my gratitude will know no bounds, nor will I cease to regret my shortcomings …

The day of days was a grey one splashed with blue, like many others experienced by them at Hobart Town. The Roxburghs were early aboard after hearing from the agent that the master was anxious to take advantage of a wind which augured well for their voyage to Sydney. Dr Aspinall, though not his lady, who was indisposed, accompanied them down to the ship.

Mrs Roxburgh was in something of a dither, counting and recounting their trunks, and visibly experiencing despair while that which contained Mr Roxburgh’s books was temporarily lost. The cabin, although narrow, was nothing to complain about, as yet. There were sights and sounds, all the bustle of departure, to delight travellers who had been delayed against their will.

Captain Purdew, a decent, uncomplicated, seafaring man, had scarce introduced himself to those who were to be his passengers, when Mr Roxburgh broke away from their little group with a cry of what sounded like physical anguish.

‘Here we are, my dear fellow! I was afraid we had offended you, and that in spite of my messages, you would not come. Now, thank God, we may depart in peace, our conscience at rest!’

Garnet Roxburgh’s smile, as he reached the end of the gang-board and stepped on deck, suggested that he had little belief in the brand of sententiousness his brother went in for. He came on offering his hand here and there with the authority of one who considers himself a power in the community, but stopped short of his sister-in-law with such a slight, wooden bow that she alone could have recognized the ironical intent.

‘If you must load yourself with conscience,’ he replied half to his brother.

‘Any plans and moves have been dictated entirely by my health. But I was afraid you might think us ungrateful after accepting your hospitality and kindness.’

Garnet sighed. ‘Nothing is broken!’ It was plain to his sister-in-law how much his brother bored him. ‘Excepting a close relationship—and that, I imagine, rarely mends once fate and distance go to work on it.’

He was looking at Mrs Roxburgh, not so much expecting confirmation as to hold her responsible for the break.

For her the situation was becoming unbearable. Although she could scarcely bring herself to look him in the face, she had to; nor were Dr Aspinall, Captain Purdew, or her husband the slightest help, with their interjections, expostulations, and tenders of advice in the form of maxims and platitudes. The scene as it was written could only be played by Garnet Roxburgh and herself.

Such glimpses as she had of him on this morning of echoes and clinging cold showed him at his best and worst. Dressed in the closefitting green coat with fur collar he had been wearing the day he came to her rescue, his figure showed an elegance of line which would have made him conspicuous anywhere in that primitive Colony. An intolerant, even insolent bearing, more pronounced today, made it clear that he was aware of this. As for the face, it glowed from an extra burnishing by the early morning drive. She had seldom allowed herself to examine his face for fear of being endangered by his looks. Now it almost literally stunned her to think that for a few instants those cheeks had rasped her own, and that the sensuality buried inside her had risen to the surface and wrestled with his more overt lust.

Mrs Roxburgh caught at a rope to steady herself under the weight of her immodest thoughts.

‘Are you unwell?’ he asked without evident concern.

‘Thank you. My health was always excellent.’

Then she softened, in accordance with convention and circum-stance. ‘Isn’t it a pretty scene? A watercolour!’ she pronounced. ‘In Van Diemen’s Land, almost every landscape is a watercolour.’

He said that he had not noticed her taking advantage of it.