A Fringe of Leaves (49 page)

‘And was brought to the settlement by some bushranger, or bolted convict, I am told.’

‘I was so fortunate.’

‘Who bolted again, just when he might have expected justice.’

‘He became frightened. That—I hope—was his only reason for running away. Though the truth is often many-sided, and difficult to see from every angle. You will appreciate that, Mr Pilcher, having experienced the storm which separated the pinnace from the long-boat.’

She would have expected a wave of malice to rise in the man she remembered aboard
Bristol Maid
, and again, the evening on the cay, but he only murmured, ‘That is true,’ looking old and ravaged.

‘So,’ she said, after she had turned, ‘I hope we can accept each other’s shortcomings, since none of us always dares to speak the truth. Then we might remain friends.’

His eyes, watery from the moment when he entered the room, had started running.

‘Friendship is all I have left since my husband was speared to death on the island. I forget, if I ever knew, whether you have a wife, Mr Pilcher?’

From snivelling, he hardened, as though frozen by a vision of the past. ‘Yes, he said, ‘I had. But did not love her as I undertook. I was ashamed, I suppose, by what I must have thought a weakness. That is how she died, I can see.’

He sat rocking in recollection.

‘Love was weakness. Strength of will
—wholeness
, as I saw it—is what I was determined to cultivate. That is why I admired you, Mrs Roxburgh—the cold lady, the untouchable.’

‘I believed you hated me—and for what I never was.’

‘So I did—your gentleman husband too—and was glad at the time to see you both brought down to the same level as the rest of us. And stole your ring.’

‘I gave it to you.’

‘Look,’ he said, feeling in a waistcoat pocket, ‘I’ve brought it back, the ring I took.’

There it was, glittering in the half-light, the nest of all but black garnets.

‘Keep it,’ she said. ‘I have no use for it.’

‘Nor me neether,’ the man insisted, as though the ring disgusted him.

So she took it from between his tremulous fingers and, going to the window, threw it into the nasturtiums below, where the broad leaves closed over it. ‘A child will find it,’ she said, ‘and value it as a plaything. Or it could be of service to some gardener—after his release.’

She laughed to ease the situation. ‘Thank you, Mr Pilcher, for coming to see me. I hope we shall meet again before I sail from Moreton Bay.’

But she did not believe either of them truly wished it.

In the absence of prisoners, guards, witnesses, and inquisitors, early morning was an extenuating benison, especially when the young Lovells broke in, climbed upon the bed, snuggled against her, and insisted on tales of the black children she had known. Innocence prevailed in the light from the garden, and for the most part in her recollections; black was interchangeable with white. Surely in the company of children she might expect to be healed?

‘Were they good?’ asked a Lovell boy.

‘Well, yes—not always perhaps, but at heart.’ Was it not the truth behind the scratches and pinches they administered in accordance with their parents’ orders? She remembered the eyes of the black children.

Their Lovell counterpart rippled in the bed with what might have been suppressed giggles. ‘We’re not good,’ said Kate.

‘Miss Scrim thinks we’re abominable,’ young Tom confirmed.

‘Praps we are!’ Totty giggled some more on her own.

‘Nobody is good all the time,’ Mrs Roxburgh allowed. ‘I am not. But hope to learn.’

It sounded so curious, they looked at her, and left soon after.

Almost every morning they materialized in her room. She was perhaps mad, but a harmless diversion, and unlike their parents and Miss Scrimshaw, undemanding. They would stroke her arms, her shoulders, her cheeks, the skin of which, although superficially soft, concealed a rough grain. Had their parents known, they might not have appreciated rituals of such a subtle order that the children themselves would have been at a loss to explain; the pleasures they enjoyed early in Mrs Roxburgh’s bed possibly remained a secret.

The morning after Pilcher’s visit they did not appear. She wondered at it no more than casually while yawning her way into her clothes in the correct order, as she did by now instinctively. She was wearing her muslin with the heart’s-ease pattern, the gift of an officer’s wife who constantly attempted to express her admiration of one whose moral courage and powers of endurance had helped her survive what amounted to infernal trials. Mrs Roxburgh, on the other hand, was made to feel light, frivolous, implausible, when dressed in the earnest young woman’s gift.

As on practically every morning, she took her walk in the garden, the light twirling round her with appropriate frivolity. I am unworthy, it recurred to her, of anybody’s faith, least of all the trust of the children who confide in me.

She looked to see whether somebody might have discovered her secret, and there was the barefoot Kate, her hair and gown transformed by light, walking entranced it appeared, her gaze concentrated on whatever she was holding in her hands.

‘Kate?’ Mrs Roxburgh called, the exquisite child’s purity rousing in her the sense of guilt which was only too ready to plague her.

Kate might have taken fright; in any case her trance was broken.

Upon reaching her Mrs Roxburgh asked, ‘What is it you’re holding?’

‘Nothing!’

The child was carrying the corpse of a fluffy chick, the head lolling at the end of a no longer effectual neck, the extinct eyes reduced to crimson cavities.

‘
Nothing!
’ Kate screamed again, and flung the thing away from her.

And ran.

It seemed to Mrs Roxburgh that this bend in the brown river, with its steamy citrus plantation, garden beds too primly embroidered with marigold and phlox, and beyond a hedge, cucurbits of giant proportions writhing on mattresses of silt, was designed for revelations of evil, as was the low-built, rambling, deceptively hospitable official residence presided over by the fecund Mrs Lovell and her authoritarian spouse.

Or was she attributing to her surroundings emanations for which her own presence was responsible?

Her speculations made her shiver uncontrollably.

Since the children were started on their lessons, Miss Scrimshaw had come out, and could not help but notice.

She began feeling the guest’s hands. ‘How
cold
you are, Mrs Roxburgh!’ She fetched a shawl. ‘Do you not feel well? I imagine you could have contracted a fever, exposed as you were to an intemperate climate, and are not fully recovered.’

‘No,’ Mrs Roxburgh answered, ‘I am well. But oh God, I must escape from here!’

‘So you shall. Though it is not a matter of escape. His Excellency is sending the Government cutter, which should arrive any day to take you to Sydney.’

‘I don’t know why I should be pardoned before others who are more deserving.’

‘I would advise you to forget.’ Miss Scrimshaw spoke scarce above a whisper, as though it were an issue which affected only themselves.

She seated her patient in a cane chair, there on the veranda, before leaving for the kitchen offices to order beef tea with sippets; not that Miss Scrimshaw was simple enough to believe in any kind of panacea, but had a respect for conventions which are believed to console others.

While she was gone, Kate Lovell slipped out of the schoolroom, and she and Mrs Roxburgh clung together for a short space.

‘Yes,’ Mrs Roxburgh whispered, ‘yes. I understand. And so will you.’

Kate had run back and Mrs Roxburgh composed herself by the time Miss Scrimshaw returned tasting the bouillon for temperature and seasoning.

Mrs Roxburgh refused her dinner (three o’clock by the Commandant’s repeater) to the distress of Mrs Lovell, who came out to coax and fuss, and draw the cocoon of shawl closer still about her friend’s shoulders.

Surprising in one so innocent, Mrs Lovell suggested, ‘You must not be so merciless, my dear, towards yourself. Whatever is past, you have so much to look forward to. A woman can look to the future, don’t you see? However unimportant we are, it is only in unimportant ways. They will always depend on us because we are the source of renewal.’

Mrs Lovell’s faded looks were illuminated, her harassed manner dispelled by her moment of inspiration. She was so surprised at herself, as well as pleased, that Mrs Roxburgh might have shared her pleasure had she not observed the Commandant emerging from the dining-room.

Captain Lovell was noticeably suspicious of whatever secret his wife and her confederate were enjoying. Over and above the natural jealousy at work in him, he was made impatient by a shred of mutton stuck between his teeth, and yet another duty to discharge.

He informed Mrs Roxburgh, ‘I’ve asked the chaplain to pay you a visit this afternoon. Nourishing food is not everything, is it? Let no one accuse us of not giving thought to your spiritual welfare! You’ll find, in any event, that Cottle is not a bad fellow.’

‘It’s unnecessary, thank you,’ Mrs Roxburgh replied. ‘I mean, I would hate to waste anybody’s time.’

Mrs Lovell gave her friend’s shoulder a push. ‘Oh, go on, Mrs Roxburgh! Again you’re doing yourself an injustice. And Mr Cottle is not the fate my husband makes him sound. It will be good for you, besides.’

She was one of those practical women too distracted by their daily responsibilities to give overmuch thought to religion, but who will recommend a helping of moralistic pudding to any they feel in need of it. Deprived of humour by a sense of duty and his own handsome features, her husband might have disapproved of his wife’s mundane translation of his more sententious advice had he not also been her lover.

As for Mrs Roxburgh, she accepted once more the fate or chains that human beings were imposing on her. It was not altogether weakness on her part: surely her survival alone proved her to be possessed of a certain strength?

None the less, she awaited with foreboding the chaplain’s visit, which was to take place like the second mate’s in Mrs Lovell’s lesser parlour. As the day had been a sultry one the shutters were stood open at evening to admit the faint gasps of a breeze. A coppery light lay to somewhat baleful effect upon the carpet and the furniture. Because of the heat Mrs Roxburgh had not exchanged her muslin for the weeds the chaplain might have expected.

The members of the household were most likely strolling or playing in the shrubberies, or dallying in the kitchen garden, for she was aware of that attentive silence which prevails in houses temporarily abandoned by their occupants. It was not so much the unwanted visit as a sense of rising hostility and emotion which prevented Mrs Roxburgh enjoying what should have been peace and quiet. Through the aching emptiness of martyrized scrub and rutted streets, she became conscious of a thudding from metal being hammered into wood, men’s voices shouting instructions, and at last a deep threnody accompanied by concerted rapping, as of spoons battering on tin plates, but muted by confinement and distance.

If at this point silence seemed to fall in the lesser parlour, it could have been because the chaplain walked out of the garden, across the veranda flags, past the open shutters, and into the room, unannounced. Her attention was necessarily distracted by the presence of Mr Cottle, a small man, bright-lipped, eager-eyed, perhaps not entirely happy in the honorary tunic which had displaced his frock, but which did not disguise an abundant spiritual energy. The nervous cocking of his head and plaiting and unplaiting of fingers failed to suggest that the rebuffs he had received would deter him from continuing to exercise that energy in the rescue and cure of souls.

‘Mrs Roxburgh!’ He smiled, and if his smile too, was nervous, he had fired his first, tricky shot in a siege by enthusiasm. ‘I believe—according to my wife—that you and I come, more or less, from the same part of the Old Country.’ The dimple in a shaven, pointed chin appealed to her out of its blue surrounds.

Poor Mr Cottle, he was so small, his army boots were too large for him, his tunic inadequately patched where the right elbow had worn through (only vaguely could she recollect a small, but eager wife as one of Mrs Lovell’s morning callers).

‘From which part?’ it was Mrs Roxburgh’s duty to inquire.

‘From Somerset—Withycombe, to be precise.’

‘Oh,’ she replied, and with a sad look which doubted his credentials, ‘there’s the river between us. You are from England.’ She laughed, not unkindly, but to dispel any illusions he might have about their consanguinity. ‘I was born to poor country, and perhaps for that reason take more than usual notice of pastures. I admired your fat fields, Mr Cottle, as I drove with Mr Roxburgh, after our marriage, into Gloucestershire.’ Again she smiled amiably enough, and the chaplain grew dewy with relief, if not actual gratitude.

‘I hope you will not be disinclined to listen,’ Mr Cottle was becoming every instant more nervously ardent, ‘if I remind you of the comfort your faith could bring—in a bereavement which the circumstances must have made doubly painful.’

Mrs Roxburgh lowered her eyes.

‘Others have clothed and fed you since what all of us see as your miraculous escape. I would offer you the Gospels,’ Mr Cottle patted his pocket to give his statement shape and substance, ‘and an invitation from your fellow believers to join them in bearing witness this Sunday, and any other on which you find yourself at Moreton Bay.’

‘Oh,’ Mrs Roxburgh moaned, ‘I don’t know what I any longer believe.’

‘I can’t accept that your lapse in faith is more than a temporary backsliding,’ Mr Cottle asserted, and ventured to add, ‘that of a truly Christian soul.’

‘I do not know, Mr Cottle, whether I am true, leave alone Christian,’ Mrs Roxburgh murmured.

The chaplain was halted.

‘If I was given a soul, I think it is possibly lost,’ she said.

Mr Cottle appeared to poise himself on the balls of his feet inside his large-size army boots. ‘If that is the case, I suggest you might be recovered for the faith here in our Moreton Bay communion.’