Captive Wife, The (11 page)

David had begun to help as well. He was more confident now, and less tormented, though at night he had bad dreams.
Often I took him into my bed and held him beside me. In the night, I would wake to find his hands knotted through my hair, and his face wet with crying which must have been what woke him. I did not tell Granny about these things that happened at night, for she would have said it was not right, a boy of his age having to climb into bed with his sister and weep. I did not mind though and I think part of me thought of him as if I was his mother. It went through my head that my hair was our father's hair that he still held fast in his hand.

Then there was a lull, and Granny seemed more herself. I don't know if she talked to my mother about what was to become of all of us. If she did, my mother must have refused us, or whether she simply could not bring herself to see how old Granny was. One morning Granny got up, looking older and sadder than I had ever seen. At breakfast, she said, Well David and Sophia, today is a great day for you. You will have a new life and many more friends than you have ever had before. We will pack your bags and take you to a new home.

In this way I learnt that David and Sophia would go to live in orphanages. David was being sent to the male orphan school and Sophia to the one for girls. At that time David was seven and a half and Sophia was five.

When I heard this I begged Granny. Do not send him away I said, meaning David. I did not want Sophia to go away either, but already she seemed better able to look after herself than David. She has always been more like my mother as a person.

It will be all right child, Granny said. You will stay here with me. But it was not for myself that I was so unhappy. Nobody would know at orphan school that David was a hero and I was afraid he would be hurt all over again.

Hoping to console me, she said that she was preparing a special meal that we would eat at lunchtime. We would pick fresh peas and she would cook them with a roast of mutton and potatoes, and perhaps there would be some griddle scones and apricot jam.

The four of us sat on the back step that faced the garden and shelled the peas into a pot, as if nothing bad was going to happen. Granny held up a large fat pea to the light before opening it with a cry of satisfaction. You must remember girls, she said, though Sophia wasn't listening, being too busy stuffing her mouth with raw peas, a pod that holds five peas or nine is lucky. If you place it above the door the next dark man who comes through will be the one you marry. Come Betsy, she said. She had taken to calling me this name my father had bestowed, that last day before he met his maker, perhaps out of respect for him. Here is a pod with nine, let's see what lad comes passing by.

To please her, because I knew she was hiding sorrow, I took the pea and climbed on a chair so that I could reach to put it on top of the door. I had hardly pushed the chair back under the table when a shadow fell across the path, and around the back of the house came Jacky Guard.

Jacky is not a tall man but he has shoulders like an ox. His black hair reminds me of a crow's wing, though these days it is streaked with gray, and so is his beard. He is a fair-skinned man, which shows up this darkness. His eyes are not exactly brown, but lighter with flashes of green in their depths. The colour changes when he is angry, the green glowing almost with a yellow light that is hard to describe. I was scared stiff. And then I started to laugh. My grandmother gave a reluctant chuckle when she saw what I was thinking, but he was not in a mood to be amused, and her smile faded.

Charlotte has told me of your plans for these children, said Jacky. I must ask you to reconsider. If it is a matter of money, I would be glad to help out.

It has been decided, it is done, Granny said. I have had a letter written to the Colonial Secretary, and the children have been accepted. There is no turning back. I am too old for it.

I see, he said. He did not like what he heard.

I think it will be the best chance for them, she went on. They will learn some reading and writing which is useful in this colony.
Their mother was taught a little but she has never made use of it, and now she only has time for Deaves's brats. Looking over her shoulder at David and Sophia, she said, They'll have food and shelter and someone to watch over them.

He shrugged, taking her point. My own house is already crowded out, he said.

I know all of that, Granny told him. Charlotte's hands are full too.

She sighed and turned away from him, not wanting to talk about it any more. It has been decided, she said again.

And what of you, Granny Pugh?

The girl will look after me, my grandmother said, her gaze falling on me.

Betsy is just a child said Jacky, glancing at me. He stood with his thumbs hooked through his braces. He was wearing a straw hat with a flat brim and a blue cotton shirt, and didn't look as threatening as I had first thought.

She is ten, Granny said, and wiser than you think. I don't want anyone else but her.

After Jacky Guard was gone, I said Granny, he is an old man, I cannot marry him.

He is not that old, she said, thirty or thereabouts.

I looked at her to see if she was serious but she never said another thing. Soon we would eat and then the children would be taken to the orphanage. A woman was coming to collect them. For them, it was like a great adventure, they did not understand that they were leaving us.

But I did. I stood and waved and waved to David, trying to look happy for him, because I did not want to frighten him before he had even left us. Just as they rounded the corner of the lane, he looked back. Betsy, he called, I want to come home.

After that, I did not see my brother and sister for two years. My grandmother never saw them again.

There is not much more to tell of Granny Pugh. I was with her
to the end. Death never comes the same for any two people and I have seen my share, although I am still twenty years of age. One minute, Granny was talking to me, the next she was not. I think she had found some peace in herself, for she talked not of old England, but of the farm at Parramatta where her children grew up. Look, she said, look out there, old Daisy is ready to be milked. Fetch me the bucket, child. And while my eye followed whatever it was she saw, she grew silent.

Shortly after this, I took myself over to my Aunt Charlotte's house and said, Granny has passed on.

When Charlotte had seen for herself, she said, You had better come and stay here for now. I tried to say that I could look after myself in the house, because I had been looking after two of us for more than a year, but I was overruled, and anyway, the house hadn't belonged to Granny; it was rented.

That is how I came to stay for a short time with my Aunt Charlotte and her children, who had various fathers all with the first name of Samuel, which I thought strange.

Later on, I went to live with my mother and her new husband, and after awhile they sent for David and Sophia. We were told that we must take the name of Deaves, which my brother and sister did without complaint, but it did not feel right to me. I wore the name like a hair shirt and every time I was thus addressed I felt a prickle of anger. Nor did I care for living with John Deaves for he was a forceful man and given to rage when there was too much noise, which there often was on account of so many children. He did not mind it so much from his own boys, but the three of us Parker children learnt that we must creep around and not give him bother. My little brother was white as whey from living in the orphanage, and sometimes he was so quiet I thought he had simply melted away in the distance of Sydney Harbour. Our mother did not seem to notice, but then she never had. She sang and shrieked, as if she must entertain Deaves whenever he was around, and sailed down the street with him, dressed from head to toe in her
finery. At night, when we were abed, I would whisper to David in the dark. I would say the old nursery rhymes that Granny taught us, even though he was growing to be a big boy now.

But why, David asked me, why couldn't they put him together again, and I could tell that he was crying in the dark. Would he never get better?

I don't know, I said, perhaps he will some day.

I'll never sit on a hill, he said.

Sometimes we have no choice, I told him. We have to do the hardest thing.

I have done the hardest thing.

When he said that I felt as if my heart was breaking. He seemed much younger in his years than me, or our little sister Sophia, who though she stole quietly about the place when Deaves was in, could cast aside her silence and be as merry as any children in the street.

Tell me the one about the little nut tree, he whispered. And so I said it for him, for it was gentler by far, the one that begins:

So then he said I would like a nut tree, and I could tell by the sigh in his voice that he did not think he would ever have one.

I will look after you David, I said. If I have a real regret in my life so far, it is that I didn't keep David by my side when Jacky came for me. But I don't think I had a choice. Like the children going to the orphanage, some things are decided before you have had much say. My mother thought she had chosen her own way,
because she had broken away from her mother, and had more than one man. But it is hard to tell if it was what she chose, or whether it was just her way of saying that she wouldn't be told by others what to do. My grandmother had chosen constancy, so far as I could tell, or had done after she was married to my grandfather. I have sought to be like Granny, whatever people say of me.

In the springtime, that year that I lived in the Deaves household, blue wrens nested in a bush beneath the window of the room where David and Sophia and I slept. Sophia did not wake until late, but in the mornings, when the sun was rising, David and I would look out the window and watch the mother wren rising and preparing to feed her young. She flitted hither and yon, like a blue dart, her feathers shining in the new morning light.

But I didn't look after David. I left it too late.

At sea, Sydney to Te Awaiti, 1828
    

The next time I was in Sydney, I asked Charlotte to let Betsy come over for a visit.

Sydney Town is changing all the time. I am just one of many whalers who come and go. Last time I was in port there were 70 sailing ships, half of them whalers. There is talk that money coming in here can be measured in millions not thousands of pounds though who is counting I do not know for I was told when a boy that in order to count to a million a man wd have to count day and night for 5 yrs of his life without stopping to sleep. There is foreigners everywhere, you cannot understand a word they say, they come from France and Spain and Italy not to mention America and men with pigtails from China land. There is a library and a museum and streetlights placed at 50 yds apart that look like old London at night. It is very smart. But then too there are wild dogs roaming the streets not to mention whooping cough and smallpox going the rounds. What with 1 thing and another and the girl growing up so fast, too fast, the
time was on me to make a move. I was in a panic as if I were coming down with a fever of my own.

I think Charlotte knew what was up for when Betsy and I sat down in front of the fire she said well, I will leave you 2 to have a talk and she shoos her boys out too.

I took Betsy on my knee. She did not seem surprised. Close up I saw tiny veins in the lids of her eyes. Those lids are like the shells of tiny birds. I thought about the first time I had placed my hand on her head and though she has grown big and sturdy and has some cheek there is also something about her that I am afraid of breaking.

Soon Betsy I tell her it will be time for you to come away with me. She sat still but again did not appear surprised. We will have a wedding. At this she nodded.

Well then if that is decided I said I must tell you some duties for a wife that perhaps you have not learnt at school. The first is for obedience. That should not be hard for I will not ask more of you than I should. Besides it is a lawful command that wives render obedience to their husband in the Lord. In the good book St Peter says likewise — ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands. The first task I give you is to work hard at arithmetic for I will want you to count my money and keep my ledger books. When I take you with me I expect you to be good at that.

Next a wife must be faithful to the bed. Not that I think you will be tempted. There are rough sailors in New Zealand who have become landlubbers and work on the whaling station. They live with native women as their wives. They drink much rum. I am not a man given to too much drink. I drink a tot at the end of a hard day's work but you will not see me in my cups. Then there are natives who are called Maoris and they wd not be a temptation to a girl.

At that Betsy laughed, which is music to my ears. I wd not lie down with a black fella she said, as if it was a great joke.

The third I said, Betsy, is that you will owe me love. This is wrote big in my book that you will give me this whatever
happens whether in health or sickness, wealth or poverty. You owe me comfort and support. Round this place I see women who are harsh and sullen towards their husbands, as your mother was to your father. They are a burden and a plague but you are not like them. I like your cheerful nature. I saw how you looked after your grandmother when she was alive. I think you are a girl with love. With love will come babies. I thought perhaps I wd not have a son but now I have decided it is not too late. Put your hand here Betsy. That is my red hot poker that I keep for you. I see that you know what I am about. I pull her closer so that she is sitting right on the mountain I am making beneath her. I put my hand carefully on her little box and I feel it all aquiver.

I said Betsy I wd sore like to put this poker where it belongs but we will wait until we have left Charlotte behind us. I will not do this now though it is not easy to wait. It is good that you are not afraid. We will do this thing and make a son between us.

Then I groaned in the pit of her shoulder. I have never wanted any woman like I want this girl who will be my wife. I hold on to her until the heaving stops. It is all right, I said, it is all right, there is nothing wrong with me that a good lie down in a bed together will not fix. It is how a man is when his poker is on fire. I took her hand in mine and put my mouth to each little finger tip.

You old dog she said and laughed and pulled her hand away. I looked at her face and I could not read what was there, something dark and a mystery for me. I am not your Uncle Jacky any more.

She gave a little undecided laugh. Jacky she said.

I will come for you soon I told her then. I cannot wait for you much longer.

Now I go to make all ready for her arrival.