A Fringe of Leaves (48 page)

Then she realized that an uproar had broken out around her; the bush kindled, crackled and spat beneath the shower of oaths, ribaldry, laughter, and gusts of frustrated desire to which it was being subjected.

One fellow shouted, ‘I jobbed it inter better than ’er at ‘Ounslow, an’ got the pox for it.’

‘Ay, you can never tell where the pox lies.’

‘It could lie with me, I don’t mind tellin’ yer, Billy, if there was any chance uv runnin’ the colours up the bloody flagstaff.’

One of the guards had taken his musket-stock to the prisoners.

‘This is no place, ma’am, for a lady,’ the corporal-in-charge advised her in a wavering voice. ‘Better go down to the settlemen’.’

Mrs Roxburgh regretted having forgotten her veil. She hardly knew what she murmured in reply to the corporal. Whatever her feeble remark, it was drowned in the torrents of abuse, warnings, simulated farts, and above all, the sound of blows. She started walking as quickly and smoothly as her skirt and the sticks littering her path allowed, but had not escaped the length of the linked prison file when one of those she was passing, turned and spat. She felt his spittle trickling down her cheek.

The increased hullabaloo might have humiliated her worse had it not been partly her intent to submit herself to humiliation as punishment for her omissions and shortcomings. She was punished and humiliated none the less. As she dragged her skirt over the stones and tufts of uncharitable grass, it saddened her to think she might never become acceptable to either of the two incompatible worlds even as they might never accept to merge.

She went on, wiping the man’s spittle from her face, and after negotiating a sluggish creek, regained what the inhabitants doubtless regarded as the streets of their township. By now she should have felt liberated from her own morbid thoughts and intentions, free to return to the Commandant’s hospitable house, its citrus groves and pretty children, had she not sensed the approach of a second trial, as unavoidable as the first in that it was of her heart’s choosing.

What she presently perceived could only be the party of women prisoners marching from the female factory towards the hospital where they worked by day. Their progress was less regimented than that of the male felons. The soldiers accompanying them were but token guards. In one instance she suspected the man’s compliance to be the return for services rendered. The fellow strolled rather than marched, chatting to the girl beside him with the familiarity and lack of further expectation which informs many a marriage. There was no immediate evidence of the rampant hatred and despair which distinguished the male prisoners from human beings, but as the women drew closer, in their dust-toned, ill-fitting uniforms, their appearance grew more slovenly, their pace ragged and out-of-step. Their laughter was doubtless directed at the stranger; an individual giggle, rising shrill above the general mirth, made it more pointed.

Mrs Roxburgh bowed her head. Her meeting with the women could prove more disturbing than her brush with the men, since women, particularly those who have been persecuted, are more resentful of another woman’s intercepting their thoughts and mingling with their fantasies. The women would no doubt dread that she, a stranger and a
lady
, should visualize their more obscene dreams, their substitutes for frustrated love, the tenderness shared with a husband in his absence, or their ploys to attract a current lover.

The distance separating her from the women was so diminished that neither side could avoid appraisal. For her part, she could see that some of the faces had died, while the life which remained in others showed every sign of hopelessness, brazen defiance, or passive depravity. The women stared back at their accuser (she could only be that) from eyes bolstered on pouches of skin, in bloated cheeks, their mouths hinged on incredulity and bitterness. Any remnant of sweetness or beauty looked as though it depended on hypocrisy for its continued existence.

One young woman of noticeably Irish countenance, black, frowzy ringlets, and lashes so thick they could have been beaded with flies, greeted the stranger jauntily. ‘Mornun, mum. The freedom of a walk is somethun I reckon we all of us can share and enjoy, on such a day.’

The others, with the exception of those who had died, hooted in appreciation of their companion’s audacity. The guards laughed with them. Though her words had the sting of irony, she spoke with such immense good humour no one could accuse her of insolence.

Mrs Roxburgh hesitated at the side of the road. She would have liked to speak to the questionably cheerful Irishwoman, to have taken her hands and held them in hers, and after some fashion conveyed to her, how they had both aspired and lost; when the loose ranks were jostled forward, and the woman’s last glance, bereft, yet curiously consolatory, suggested that they might have understood each other.

The prisoners marched on in the awful abandon of their coarse frocks, wrinkled boots ploughing the dust, while Mrs Roxburgh humbly turned in the direction of the Commandant’s ‘residence’.

Here an immediately recognizable figure was emerging from the gates. True to her nature, Miss Scrimshaw was investigating something or other. In her brown gown, her padded hair, her bobbled shawl, she stood looking out from the lee of a straight hand.

‘Oh,’ she cried on sighting her renegade friend, ‘you should never venture out unaccompanied at Moreton Bay. If you wish to take the air Mrs Lovell will have them harness the horses to the carriage, provided the hour is a reasonable one.’

‘As you must see, Miss Scrimshaw,’ Mrs Roxburgh pointed out, ‘I have come to no harm.’

Appropriating her friend’s arm the spinster may have remained uncertain. Probably no part of Mrs Roxburgh was actually broken, but Miss Scrimshaw herself had sustained many a spiritual bruise in spite of the toughness of seasoned leather.

‘In any case,’ she said, on guiding Mrs Roxburgh into the safety of the grounds, ‘I am glad you have come. I have good news for you. Your acquaintance is bound to be here this evening. Whatever made him postpone his visit the Commandant will see to it that Mr Pilcher pays his respects.’

Then she looked at Mrs Roxburgh, to receive approval, or to see her suspicions justified by the latter’s reactions. But Mrs Roxburgh did not utter, while her expression remained so withdrawn the face might have been sheltering behind the widow’s veil, which, Miss Scrimshaw noticed, her friend had omitted to wear.

After the profuse dinner customary at the residence the Commandant approached their guest, smiling as though for a secret between them, ‘The individual of whom we spoke will be here by half-past five, I’d say,’ he opened his repeater and frowned at it, ‘or six at the latest.’ He closed the watch, and smiled again, gratuitously it seemed to Mrs Roxburgh. ‘He’ll not shirk his duty on this occasion.’

One of the smaller girls inquired, ‘Is Mrs Roxbry goin’ to whip Mr Pilcher?’

‘What a thing to imagine!’ The mother blushed for her child’s supposition.

‘Then why does he have to be forced?’ wondered Totty.

‘But they’re old friends. There’s no question of his being
forced
!’

Mrs Lovell was so embarrassed she lowered her voice to inform Mrs Roxburgh, ‘You shall receive him, my dear, in the
little
parlour.’ Although intended as a kindness, it made the situation darker and stimulated curiosity. ‘There you will be both comfortable and—private. Unless you would care for Miss Scrimshaw to be present.’

Mrs Roxburgh politely implied that she would rather dispense with Miss Scrimshaw’s presence.

She might have wondered how to pass the time before the visit had she not realized the distasteful event must soon take place. So she arranged herself in the little parlour, and hoped that Miss Scrimshaw would not come offering advice beforehand.

The discreet lady had taken her cue, however: when the time came she simply announced, ‘Here is your visitor’ and left them to it.

Mrs Roxburgh had decided not to rise as her caller entered, but did so at once when the moment occurred, for she could hardly condemn an individual whose past was not more dubious than her own.

So here she was, every bit like a gentlewoman afflicted by some nervous disorder, wetting her lips and dabbing at them spasmodically with one of the handkerchiefs provided for her. ‘Won’t you sit down, Mr Pilcher?’ the uneasy gentlewoman invited. ‘I am so glad you have been able to come. This is perhaps the most comfortable chair. Or do you prefer something more upright?’

She winced for the rheumatics in her shoulder, which had not bothered her since her recovery from the inordinate journey, and which no doubt were the result of sleeping naked on damp ground. Of ‘all that’, Mr Pilcher could not have known, although on the other hand he might. There was no knowing what her eyes might have given away.

But the mate did not seem aware of any imposture. His own condition was more important, the inner life he must be living; and then he more than likely saw her as one who would become his accuser.

‘Thank you,’ he said when they were at last painfully seated opposite each other.

Pilcher had aged, to put it kindly. It made her touch her hair, and look for a glass which did not immediately offer itself. He was so thin as to look transparent in places, and even more deeply lined than before. She was not sure, but he might have suffered a seizure.

‘At least one can see’, she said in a tone adopted from some patroness or a mother-in-law, ‘you’re in excellent health, Mr Pilcher. I am so glad—so very glad.’

He hung his head, the hair cropped short, like a convict’s, down to a pepper-and-salt stubble.

He admitted formally, ‘I can’t complain,’ his voice without any of the venom she remembered.

‘I would like to offer you something, but am myself no more than a guest of the house.’ Thus absolved, the great lady dangled a wrist over the arm of her chair.

‘There is nothing,’ he assured her, ‘nothing I need.’

Now that both had done their duty by society, and established their bona fides as far as is humanly possible, Mrs Roxburgh looked at her caller and made the decidedly brutal request, ‘You must tell me all that has happened to you since last we met.’

She meant to encourage her visitor, or anyway, in some measure, but on hearing her own voice was reminded of the black swans encountered while living with her adoptive tribe. It was the same hissing as when the birds arched their necks, and extended their bills, spatulate and crimson, making ready to protect themselves against the intruder.

Although Mrs Roxburgh felt, and must have looked, pale in her black, she wondered how Mr Pilcher found her, but could not tell since he had launched into a narrative.

‘You’ll remember after we put out from the cay—after our attempt at caulking—the storm got up and separated our two boats.’

Mrs Roxburgh realized he did not intend her to answer, but she did. ‘Yes,’ she said gravely, ‘I could not easily forget.’

Like a good navigator, Mr Pilcher would not allow himself to be distracted. ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘we was blown south at such a bat I’d not of been surprised had we landed up on a second reef. Particularly with the crew I’d got—all the rawest from
Bristol Maid
.’

Mrs Roxburgh remembered the hairs bristling on the humps of the bosun’s great toes, but decided against resurrecting the bosun. She saw that Mr Pilcher chose to manipulate the details and the persons in his life, at least since the parting from the sluggish long-boat. She rather envied the mate for having become his own guiding spirit. The details of her life had been chosen for her by whoever it is that decides.

‘Without charts and in such a gale, it wasn’t possible to navigate. I can only say’, Mr Pilcher said, ‘we must of been favoured by Providence.’

Becoming conscious of her stare, he lashed his hands round one of his emaciated knees.

‘We were lucky enough to find ourselves, when the storm abated, off a part of the coast where the pinnace could be easily beached. And glad I was to be rid of ’er. The sea, too. Never no more will I go to sea.’

He coughed, and hid the result in a handkerchief. He could not have been sure whether his audience was frowning at his decision to renounce a vocation, or simply disapproving of a dirty habit.

His voice grated and wavered. ‘From then on, we lived off the land so to say, and times was less lean, though often we went short. You get to hate one another when you’re hungry.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed, while thinking that only a man could be so self-absorbed and boring.

But because her mother-in-law had taught her that a lady’s role in life is to listen, she leaned sideways and propped her chin on a receptive hand.

‘Some was for droring lots, to decide which of ’em ’twould be, but I wouldn’t have no part in that.’

‘And what about your companions? Did they favour eating one another?’

Mr Pilcher swallowed. ‘Some of ’em was eaten.’

Mrs Roxburgh might have been thinking the mate had never looked so loathsome.

He told her confidentially. ‘The blacks consider the hands are the greatest delicacy.’

‘Did you try?’ Mrs Roxburgh asked.

Mr Pilcher became so agitated he rose from his chair and began patrolling the room. ‘I ask you,’ he said at last, ‘Mrs Roxburgh—would you?’

‘I don’t know. It would depend, I expect.’

Since she was caught in her own net, and Mr Pilcher had subsided again, she found herself struggling to her feet. Pain in one leg, or the root of an invisible tree, all but tripped her.

Looking up from the vantage of an easy chair the mate ventured to suggest, ‘I bet you had a tough time yourself, Mrs Roxburgh—before the rescue.’

She answered, ‘Yes.’ As though the rescue ever takes place!

‘They say you lived among the blacks.’

‘That is so—and learned a great deal, of which I should otherwise remain ignorant.’

She was standing with her back to him after finding the looking-glass she had known must exist in Mrs Lovell’s lesser parlour. Thus stationed, she could watch Pilcher while hidden from him, seated as he was at a lower level. Yet in the end the disadvantage was hers: she was faced with her own over-watchful reflection.