The Secret Fate of Mary Watson (24 page)

26TH JULY 1880

The morning sky is wrapped in a straitjacket the colour of tobacco. Ah Sam hands me my breakfast tea. I wince as the heat hits my burned fingers. There’s a different smell about him today. Mixed with the usual oriental miasma is the splintery-yellow sandalwood of the candles in front of Ah Leung’s joss.

‘I want you to clean out the fowl pen later,’ I tell him.

‘All right.’

He doesn’t look up. Goes back to the groats he’s been stirring with a flat spoon. The heat from the fire blisters then bursts the mixture on the surface, as if in sympathy with my injury. A not unpleasant smell of wallpaper paste wafts up from the pot.

Carrie steps, yawning, into the doorway. ‘I slept like the dead last night.’

‘Must be the sea air.’ I don’t meet her eyes in case she reads the guilt in mine.

Ah Sam spoons groats into two bowls on the bench. He has a cut on the back of his wrist, like a thin, reddish worm. And his arm seems stiff as he moves it. Was it something that happened as he climbed the hill last night?

I pick up the bowl with its wooden spoon, blow on the contents. Carrie takes hers outside.

‘Are you hurt?’ I ask him.

Sweat runs down his creased neck from the warmth of the fire. He looks at me again, tit-for-withholding-tat in his eyes. ‘Men come back soon,’ is all he says.

‘Is Ah Leung ready to help you heat the tank water?’

‘Ah Leung sick today.’

The Chinese are barely ever sick.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ I look down at his hand again. ‘Did you two have a scrap this morning?’

He shrugs.

‘Is he too sick to help with the slugs?’

He nods.

‘Well, it’s just you and me then.’

He wraps his palm in a rag to lift the pot from the fire and sets it on the ground outside the door to cool. Later, he’ll tip the dregs into the chicken pen before scrubbing the bottom clean with sand.

I take my bowl out into the overcast day. The sun breaks through for a moment, shining on half of Ah Sam’s face as he turns to pick up his conical hat. I lower my voice so that Carrie can’t hear.

‘Ah Sam, you won’t tell Bob, will you?’

He stares at me, expressionless. I wait for a minuscule nod, or even a shake of his head. But nothing. Just that flat stare.

I’ve suddenly lost my appetite for breakfast. So this is what it comes down to.

I wonder how I would be feeling now if I could have brought myself to pull that trigger last night when I had the chance.

A southeast chop on the water. The sea full of needles. I abandon my hat when it keeps blowing off. Pin it in place on the sand with a large rock. The brim flaps like a tethered bird.

Like a couple of convalescents — me with my burned fingers, Ah Sam with his sore arm — we’ve stacked wood next to the boiling tank. We’ve ferried splashing bucketfuls of sea water across the beach until the tank’s filled twelve inches from the brim. My back, legs and shoulders ache, partially from last night’s exertions and partially from today’s. To pile insult on top of injury, the blister on one finger has burst.

I leave Ah Sam to keep a lookout for the luggers while I go to feed the poultry and collect eggs.

I’m in the pen, flinging handfuls of vegetable scraps to the sea of pecking around me, when I hear the creak and groan of boat timbers, the bird-screech of a sail coming down.

Ah Sam is at the crumbling border where sand meets earth. ‘Hold this.’ I pass him the battered dish and head down towards the water.

Something’s wrong. I can tell by the way Bob wades in long, angry strides towards the shore. I hold my breath. What if something went awry with the signalling? What if Bob saw the light? But he’s not looking at me as he stalks in wet pants towards the house. I exhale in one long stream of relief.

‘What’s the matter?’ I have to almost trot to keep up with him.

His expression is grim. Closed down. The two sides of his face under lock and key.

‘We lost a Kanaka, and a day’s fishing.’

‘Lost? How? Bob!’

‘Shark,’ he barks over his shoulder.

Porter’s level with me now, his trousers rolled up but still wet at the cuffs. The stubbled shadow of his face turns away. A whiff of unwashed male.

‘What happened?’ I ask him. ‘Bob said a shark.’

The battered hat he wears night and day is missing. He looks naked without it. A two-toned forehead: pink above and brown below. He brings the hand that’s missing two fingers up to his forehead, rakes back his brown hair. Stares at Bob’s retreating back, blinks twice, but still doesn’t look at me.

‘He came at Bob with a tomahawk. So Bob threw him overboard. Just leave him alone for a while.’ He looks down to the water’s edge where Ah Sam is supervising the remaining Kanakas as they heft the hessian bags of slugs ashore. ‘Where’s the other Chow?’

‘Sick, apparently.’

‘I’ll go and check. If he’s on the verge of death, I’ll let him off the hook. Otherwise, he helps.’

Carrie wanders down to where I’m standing. ‘Not more revolting slugs.’

‘Go and get an apron,’ I tell her. ‘I need your help.’

‘No, thank you.’

‘It wasn’t a request. It’s about time you pulled your weight around here.’

Almost noon, and we’ve just finished boiling Bob’s slugs when
Petrel
appears, heading for the shallow water near the beach.
Waves fan out under its bow, grinding the already wind-broken glass of the water. Small dark figures move across the deck, preparing to drop anchor. The sky has cleared, as clean and fresh now as it was murky this morning.

My eyes are stinging from boiling-pot smoke. Carrie lasted ten minutes before declaring she was going to vomit from the stench. Now she’s sitting, a small sulking figure in a dirty pink dress, under a pandanus palm.

Bob’s up near the dunes, pegging the larger slugs open with wooden pins to dry. He stands up, shields his eyes to look out to
Petrel
. Impossible to tell what he’s thinking from this distance.

The wind’s changed direction, and gains vigour as the new catch is carried ashore. Ah Sam’s thin whistle and a few words of Mandarin blow up from the shoreline. A pale Ah Leung is stacking wood for the new fire under the tank. He has a bruise the size of a duck egg on his forehead and seems to be favouring his left side, as though his ribs are tender. Ah Sam has emptied the putrid slug water onto the sand and has Bob’s Kanakas filling the tank with fresh bucketfuls from the ocean. The two Chinamen glare at each other every time their gazes cross. I’m sure they’ve been fighting. But over what?

Percy walks calmly up through the clear blue material of the day, as though a hole has been hacked out for him to pass through. The water’s whipped into eggwhite peaks now. His hat tears off his head and cartwheels down the beach. Even his retrieval of it is measured. No hurry. No anxiety. His mood seems the antithesis of Bob’s. He closes the space between us in slow strides. He’s whistling to himself.

My hair has come loose and whips into my mouth. The sand grinds down the skin on my face.

‘Profitable trip, Percy?’

‘Very.’

I close my eyes, briefly.

‘You did a good job,’ he adds.

‘What job would that be now?’ Bob’s voice. Because of the wind, we hadn’t heard his medicinal balls approaching.

Percy points to the drying
bêches-de-mer.
‘Boiling the slugs. She’s a natural.’

‘A well-trained monkey could do it.’

I shrug tightly and my shoulders ache anew. ‘You’d have to pay it more bananas than you pay me.’

Percy, at least, sees the tiredness in my face. ‘I’ll boil this lot. Go and have a lie-down. You’ve earned it. I’m sure you wouldn’t begrudge your wife a rest, Watson?’

At first I think Bob will argue, but it seems the day’s taken its toll on him as well. He grunts and walks away.

‘Is it really all right?’ I ask, when he’s gone. A salt crust has gathered on my lips. But I know better than to lick them. It will just make them sting even more.

The lines on Percy’s face have deepened with exposure to the weather, but his cat’s eyes are clear, sailing through calm waters.

‘Yes,’ Percy says and smiles. ‘Couldn’t have been better. Roberts will have some cash for us both. He’ll leave it with his agent. I’ll pick it up when I’m next in Cooktown.’

‘How did you explain the light signals to your crew?’

He winks. ‘They were asleep by nine, completely buggered. But even if they weren’t, none of the Kanakas or black boys have a particular interest in anything other than their wages. If one of them did see, I’d slip him a bribe to keep him happy.’ He rubs his chin. He needs a shave. ‘Now Porter would be a different prospect.
He sees far too much. I never take him out on
Petrel
.’ He thinks of something else. ‘Oh, and by the way …’

‘Yes?’

‘A schooner captain out of Townsville passed on a note while we were out fishing. There is no firm date for the next drop. Some delay at the far end of the operation. We’ll have to put up with each other for a bit longer yet, it seems.’ He lifts a hand and absently touches my hair. ‘I never thought I’d say it, Mrs Watson, but you and I don’t make a half-bad team.’

23RD AUGUST 1880

Nearly a month has passed since the drop. And the latest update from the fowlyard reads like an itinerary of the dead. Three chickens. Five chicks. Two Muscovy ducks found over near the smokehouse. The clouds build like suds in the west. Carrie’s stomping on the sea grapes that line the shore, while a coal wagon of dry thunder in the distance heads north.

Ah Leung is digging two new privies: one for us; one for himself and Ah Sam. He’ll fill in the old holes, but not before pilfering some of the contents to fertilise the farm. He’ll then just place the flimsy walls and roof of the old structures over the new holes.

Ah Sam and I are washing the clothes. Scrubbing off the muck, then lowering them on a pole into the big copper full of boiling water and a bag of Reckitt’s Blue. When they’ve been boiled, we’ll pass them, with strenuous turns, through the
cumbersome wooden box mangle. I wipe my brow with my apron. In the closeness of the tiny washhouse I can smell the vague aroma that clings to his clothes: dried sweat, joss stick, fish.

He looks up from the copper. His face is serious, the colour of clarified butter. So drawn that the skull is almost visible under the skin.

‘Thank you,’ I start cautiously, ‘for not telling Bob.’

Inside the seed pods of his eye sockets, some swift calculation stirs. ‘One day you trust me, missy.’

He’s said this to me before. It’s as though the words have some special import.

He goes back to his stirring. The ink smell of the blue bag rises to my nose. His thin shoulders lift and fall under the pyjama jacket as he lifts a pole’s worth of clothes from the water. I direct them with another pole over to the mangle. Hot water splashes on the floor and into the fire. A hiss of annoyance. Wood smoke and steam rise up.

Carrie appears in the doorway. ‘Bob says you’d better come.’ Her bottom lip is trembling. ‘One of his dogs is dead.’

‘From what?’ But my pulse already knows.

‘Spear.’ She’s washing her hands with invisible soap, staring straight ahead. ‘It’s the blacks. Bob was so angry he tried to shoot the three he saw, but they got away in their canoes. They’ll be back. And we’ll be next. Do spears hurt, Mary?’

Ah Sam flinches beside me as though the hot water has splashed him.

There’s a porcelain glaze in Carrie’s eyes. I wipe my wet hands on my apron and walk over to her.

‘Listen. They’ve seen what rifles can do. They’ll be too scared to come back.’

Her eyes clear just a little.

‘Ah Sam, leave this and come with me,’ I say. ‘Bring the shovel.’

Neeps, a mixed-breed cur, was already on the island when Carrie and I came. Now he’s lying patiently on his side, in no particular rush to be buried. The wind on his tan hide gives the illusion he’s still breathing. The shadow of palm fronds play over him. He looks peaceful — until the eye is drawn to the fixed stare, the blood drying on his grey muzzle and the ragged hole where Bob dragged the spear out. Flies gather at the wound.

Ah Sam is carving out a plot just up from the beach, where the soil is loose.

Carrie’s pale and quiet. Bob’s pacing up and down, wearing a goat track into the dirt.

‘Black bastards,’ he spits. ‘They’ll not get away with it, I swear.’

‘You didn’t care so much when my pup was killed,’ I say.

I should know better than to stir him when he’s already angry. But I know enough not to taunt him over his mistaken belief that there are no blacks on the island.

‘It’s only to scare us, Bob.’

He shoots me a wild look. ‘Ye think I’m a fool and don’t know that, woman!’

‘Why are they trying to scare us?’ Carrie’s voice is high and thin. ‘What do they want?’

Porter comes up behind us and looks down at the dog. ‘I think they just want us off the island. They want us to go away.’

Bob swings his head around, glaring. ‘They’ll not make me run like a frightened rabbit.’

Porter chews the inside of one cheek. ‘Maybe it’s time to call in some help from the mainland. Jocelyn Brooke. Or Harvey Fitzgerald.’

I feel a flash of disquiet at this. Police, albeit incompetent ones, would call the wrong sort of attention to the Lizard. Roberts would be unhappy. And it would certainly compromise my position.

‘What would we tell them?’ I ask, trying to sound reasonable. ‘That two dogs have been killed and we’ve seen fires over the hill? It sounds like an average night outside the Steam Packet.’

‘Aye,’ Bob says, rubbing his nose roughly. ‘We have to take care of this mess ourselves.’

Porter frowns. The wrinkles running from mouth to chin deepen. ‘You read that last lot of papers from Cooktown. Other fishermen have seen blacks’ fires at South Direction, Eagle and Barrow. What if it’s a concerted effort and not just hit-and-miss scare tactics? Maybe they want to claim all the islands in the area.’

I look up. ‘Can they really organise themselves to that extent?’

Percy’s opinion that the blacks come to the Lizard because of a personal vendetta against Bob is still in the back of my mind.

‘It depends how badly they want something,’ Porter says to me, then turns to Bob. ‘Come on, man. No use wearing a trench in the sand. We’ll think on it. Meanwhile, those cleats on
Isabella
won’t replace themselves.’

I’m left alone with Ah Sam, Carrie and the dead Neeps. Ah Sam has the hole already three-quarters dug, and not in the amateurish fashion that I would have accomplished it. Neat, vertical incisions of the spade. Symmetrical. No movement wasted.

‘You look like you’ve done that job before,’ I comment.

He looks up briefly. ‘I dig many graves, Thursday Island … missy.’

‘You were a gravedigger?’

It occurs to me how little I know about him. About any of the Chinese here in Australia. In some ways, they’re as mysterious as the blacks. Springing from nowhere, and returning to nowhere when their work is done.

‘You must have wished for lots of people to die,’ I say.

A smile plays around his lips. The shovel digs in again, the dirt parts like pumpernickel under a bread knife. He tells me that the Catholics were most stubborn, refusing to keel over and make work for him. But the Anglicans and Chinese made up for it. Sometimes they even obliged by kicking off on a Sunday, which meant an extra bob.

Half an hour later, the job is done. The hole filled in. We walk back through the already sinking afternoon. For no particular reason, I decide that Ah Sam won’t betray me.