A Fringe of Leaves (29 page)

A sigh or two, a click of the tongue, and he had done his duty. ‘You are the one I’m sorry for, Ellen. The boy was so devoted to you.’

‘I loved him,’ she said simply, but again so dull of voice that Austin Roxburgh need not experience the slightest twinge, either of remorse or jealousy.

In any event, the distance which the recalcitrant pinnace had already put between herself and the long-boat increased the unreality of most human relationships. Faith in integrity persisted while the rope held, but with the severing of the hawser and gradual disappearance of the master boat, the horizon had become clouded with doubts.

Mr Roxburgh wished he was still in possession of his journal, to discuss his mood in rational terms, and thus restore a moral balance.

Now it was sea and wind holding the balance, or maliciously maintaining a lack of it as they were buffeted day and night, in which direction Mr Courtney, if questioned, professed to know.

‘I’d say—by my calculations—we’re a hundred and fifty mile to the east of Percy Island’ or ‘At this rate we’re headed back for the Cumberlands’ or again, ‘With any luck, we might make landfall tomorrow evening at Bustard Bay.’

His clear but rather stupid eyes had never looked farther and seen less; his jaws beneath their doggy whiskers were cracking with responsibility.

While Captain Purdew, an old child huddled near his guardian’s ankles, laughed low. ‘Yarmouth, or Barnstaple, it’s all the same—as God knows.’

It made sense to everyone: geography was anybody’s guess; the chart might have been torn up and instruments tossed into the surf before they embarked on this erratic voyage.

Which in the days, or weeks, or months that followed, concerned Ellen Roxburgh more than anyone. On her the waters in the doomed boat reached higher, almost to her waist it seemed, clambering, lapping, sipping the blood out of her flaccid body.

That was the least part of her. Herself sank. The fringe of her green shawl trailed through depths in which it was often indistinguishable from beaded weed or the veils and streamers of fish drifting and catching on coral hummocks then dissolving free for the simple reason that the whole universe was watered down.

Somebody, a man, was holding a stinking vessel to her lips, ‘Here Mrs Roxburgh is a drop of rum only a nip the dregs but will put new life into ’ee.’

She allowed it to happen, more than anything to pacify whoever it was that prescribed the cure, not because she feared life might be leaving her; everyone else, but not herself, she was so convinced, or egotistical.

And again was lowered into twilit depths where only a brown throbbing distinguished what she was experiencing now from anything she had experienced before. Grave schooners were sailing beside her brushing her ribs eyeing her through isinglass portholes. It must have been the rum causing the red-brown throbbing of her thoughts. As for the creature which had begun to persecute her its increasingly remonstrative form undulating out of time with her own somewhere in the folds of her petticoats bunting nibbling at her numb legs this slippery fish was pushing in the direction of a freedom to which she had never yet attained.

Whether forced to it by mental anguish or physical stress, Mrs Roxburgh raised herself from the position in which her husband had been supporting her in the waterlogged boat.

‘Ohhh!’ she moaned, or lowed rather, through thick lips, her face offered flat to the sky. ‘Aw, my Gore!’

It was a still evening, comparatively benign. In the circumstances, the sounds he had just heard uttered struck Mr Roxburgh as positively bestial. His sensibility would have shut them out had it been at all possible.

As it was not, he voiced the precept taught in youth, ‘We must keep our heads, Ellen,’ while going through the motions of soothing a delirious wife.

Who cried, ‘There’s no question—it’s lost—however I tried—nobody can blame me, Austin—can they?’

Although startled by her unwonted use of his Christian name, he tried to assure her, ‘Nobody intends to add to your sufferings by accusations,’ and drew his fingers along the wet, blubbery cheek of one by whom he thought he had done his duty in every sense.

But she began clutching at his hand, whimpering and muttering childishly, in an attempt to draw him down to her level.

‘Then what is it?’ he hissed, as desperate as he was irritated.

On grasping the full enormity of the situation there was nothing he could do but accept. ‘It is unfortunate, but neither of us will die of it,’ he predicted.

All his life he might have been on equal terms with reality.

After delivering his wife of their stillborn child, and somebody had produced what must have been Oswald’s glory-bag, he emptied the bag of its contents, the buttons, twine, a pencil-stub, a keepsake or two, a martyred prayerbook. In the absence of a conventional shroud the bag provided a substitute to accommodate this other, more portentous object.

Again Mr Roxburgh was satisfied he had done his duty; his hands only fumbled as he tightened the draw-string at the canvas neck, and out of his throat came a hideous sound as of tearing.

Weak from hunger and from marinating in brine, Captain Purdew dragged himself aft like an attenuated black cormorant. He seized upon Oswald Dignam’s book, and began performing an office to which life at sea had accustomed him.

Mrs Roxburgh closed her eyes. The words she but half-overheard did not impress themselves on her mind; they seemed rather, to break upon her eyelids, to be turned away as a flickering of light.

‘… man that is born …

… forasmuch as it pleases …

… thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts …’

She stirred where she lay and ripples were sent through the water in the boat, to be answered by this faint plash beyond the gunwale.

‘… our vile body …

… His glorious body …

… to subdue all things to Himself.

Amennn
.’

Captain Purdew concluded with a twang, after which there was a re-settling of caps to an accompaniment of barely audible agreement or reservation.

If tears struggled out of the captain’s eyes, it was because, as everybody knew, his wits were leaving him, and though some of the men were shaken by what had occurred, it was also for remembering wives and sweethearts, or even a favourite dog. By comparison the Roxburghs appeared untouched in the halcyon evening prepared for their child’s burial. Beneath a peacock sky her face, reduced by suffering to a drained pudding-colour, wore an expression of assent bordering on tranquillity, while her husband, upright beside her, might have been enjoying congratulations for his performance in a classic role.

When Mrs Roxburgh remembered to ask, ‘Did you perhaps notice a likeness to any of us? Children take after grandparents more often than a father or mother,’ Mr Roxburgh laughed a high laugh, and uncharacteristically squeezed her.

‘I shouldn’t say … No! It was too soon, Ellen—and too brief a glimpse.’ After that, he briefly sighed, for the pity of it, as it could not have been out of contentment. ‘Since you’ve asked, however, I believe I did detect in him a touch of what might have developed into a likeness to myself.’

Then he kissed her on the mouth in full view of those who were watching, more in their dreams than through their eyes.

‘I am so glad,’ she replied, ‘and that it was a boy, as you would have wanted.’ The twitch of a smile, and she settled back into acceptance of wherever the future might float them.

Once in the days, weeks, years which followed, she did rouse herself sufficiently to ask, ‘You are not going to leave me, are you?

‘How could I?’ he answered. ‘Even if I wanted to.’

Such an indisputable reason and barely modified rebuke might have hurt if strength were not returning to her sodden limbs, not through divine forbearance, as some might have seen it, but because, she realized, she was born a Gluyas. The rain had stopped; life is to be lived. She would have got to her feet like any other beast of nature, steadying herself in the mud and trampled grass, had it been a field and not a waterlogged boat.

In present circumstances, on a morning when the weather noticeably favoured them, she threw out the last of the thoughts which had been flickering all this time in her skull like phosphorescent fish. Her hands, she saw, were the same inherited extremities of rude but practical shape. If they had lost their native tan, it was not through a course in ladycraft, but by the action of sea-water. So she was still equipped for bailing, an occupation some of the strongest members of the crew by now tended to renounce.

Her work removed her, if not physically, from her husband Mr Austin Roxburgh, who remained huddled at her side. Although occasionally he gave a hand, it was but an apathetic gesture; he was not of course so hardened by monotony as she. Once on looking at him she surprised an expression, not quite despair and not quite disgust, but which might have been caused by the slow poison of apprehension. At all events she was wounded by it, and set about bridging the distance between them.

‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘An attack is not coming on you again? Or are you grieving?’ She put out her coarsened hand as though to shore him up with her recovered strength.

He appeared at first resentful of her kindness, like some pampered child preparing to take revenge for neglect.

‘You know that my thoughts are always only for you, Mr Roxburgh,’ she added without consideration for the truthfulness of what she was saying.

Thus his servant hoped to reassure him.

But he sank his chin against her shoulder. ‘It is Spurgeon, Ellen. I think he must have died.’

For the moment only the Roxburghs were aware of what had happened; nor had the company noticed the tears shed by Mr Roxburgh for his recently acquired, unsavoury friend. Weakened morally as well as physically, he would not have attempted to conceal those tears, unless from his wife, and Ellen, he trusted, would mistake his grief for a natural process of crystallized moisture dissolving back into its original state of water.

Spurgeon the steward, already stiff, was pitched overboard by his crew-mates without benefit of canvas or lead. In this instance Captain Purdew did not read the burial service, perhaps because he did not realize anything had happened, or else he had mislaid Oswald Dignam’s book. Spurgeon, some of those present suspected, is the corpse the sharks get. But who cares, finally?

That Mr Roxburgh cared, nobody but his wife guessed, and she must steel herself that her husband might survive.

As one who had hungered all his life after friendships which eluded him, Austin Roxburgh did luxuriate on losing a solitary allegiance. It stimulated his actual hunger until now dormant, and he fell to thinking how the steward, had he not been such an unappetizing morsel, might have contributed appreciably to an exhausted larder. At once Mr Roxburgh’s self-disgust knew no bounds. He was glad that night had fallen and that everyone around him was sleeping. Yet his thoughts were only cut to a traditional pattern, as Captain Purdew must have recognized, who now came stepping between the heads of the sleepers, to bend and whisper,
This is the body of Spurgeon which I have reserved for thee, take eat, and give thanks for a boil which was spiritual matter …
Austin Roxburgh was not only ravenous for the living flesh, but found himself anxiously licking the corners of his mouth to prevent any overflow of precious blood.

Upon suddenly waking, Mr Roxburgh discovered his mouth wide open. He would have set about ejecting anything inside it, from his stomach too, had they not been equally empty. Emptiness, however, did not protect him from a fit of sweating shivers, which persisted after he had looked around him and seen that all, including Captain Purdew, were fast asleep.

So much for night and dreams. Glances exchanged by daylight promised worse, until in the course of the morning Mr Courtney stood up in the bows and drew attention to what first appeared a slate-pencil miraculously laid along the edge of the slate. Whether island or mainland, he personally was not prepared to speculate, but wind, sea, and general conditions being in the long-boat’s favour, he ventured to affirm that they would make landfall before many hours.

The Roxburghs avoided looking at each other. Instead she clasped his hand, the rather delicate, attenuated bones and the boss made by his signet ring.

All trace of cloud was gone from the sky as they approached the shore. Faces bleared by rain and suffering offered themselves instead to an onslaught by ceremonial sunlight, which was grinding an already dazzling stretch of sand into an ever-intensifying white. Some of the castaways would not have been surprised had the Almighty ordered His trumpets to sound their arrival on the fringe of paradise itself.

They advanced lumbering through the turquoise-to-nacre of a still sea, which shaded into a ruffle of surf, scarce enough to wet the ankles. The long-boat practically beached herself, in the silence and amazement of those aboard. One or two jumped, but more of them tumbled out, to crawl like maimed crabs through the shallows.

Not unnaturally the passengers were again forgotten. It was Mrs Roxburgh who offered her husband a helping hand to clear the gunwale, as though he had returned to playing the role of dedicated invalid.

‘Is it too much to hope, Ellen,’ he whispered through bleeding lips, ‘that we shall be left in peace awhile, to recover our strength—if not our normal, rational thoughts?’

‘I expect so,’ she murmured to comfort him.

The crew ahead of them were already either lying, elbows in the air, or cheek to the sand, while one soul more suspicious than the rest wandered in a circle, apparently attempting to sight the invisible insect, or malicious spirit, which was bound to start tormenting him.

Whether from extreme debility or devotion to duty, Captain Purdew was the last to leave the boat. Staggering ashore he fell on his knees where the sand still glistened with bubbles left by the retiring wave, and proceeded to give thanks to their Maker in what passed for an official voice, ‘Almighty Lord, I pray that we may prove ourselves worthy of this unexpected blessing … that we may be strengthened for the trials to come from having experienced your loving mercy …’ but went into a more private mumble, ‘and fill our empty bellies, Lord … and slake our unbearable thirst … not with pebbles, nor lead sinkers. My dear, it wasn’t me who would have abandoned
Bristol Maid
, if others hadn’t been in favour …’

At this point overcome by emotion, the old man fell on his face and united his bubbles with those of the receding tide.

As for Austin Roxburgh, he resolved to follow the captain’s example, and give thanks, but privately, to God (more private still to his more convincing
ipse Pater
) at some later date. The present was not auspicious: he felt stunned by a silence of the earth as opposed to the thundering silence of the sea; his ears were left ticking and protesting.

Round them shimmered the light, the sand, and farther back, the darker, proprietary trees. Where the beach rose higher, to encroach on the forest, great mattresses of sand, far removed from the attentions of the tides, were quilted and buttoned down by vines, a variety of convolvulus, its furled trumpets of a pale mauve. Mrs Roxburgh might have thrown herself down on the vine-embroidered sand had it not burnt her so intensely, even through the soles of her dilapidated boots.

She was, besides, growing conscious of a smell, of more, an obscene stink, and saw that she was squelching her way towards the putrefying carcase of what she took to be a kangaroo.

‘Phoo!’ she cried; then her wits took over. ‘Can it be used, though? There’s plenty game that stinks as high on the best-kept tables.’

Hunger effected it quicker than it might have been. Mr Courtney succeeded in coaxing fire out of some dry twigs and vine with the help of flint and steel he had found in a shammy-leather bag strung round the late Spurgeon’s neck. Roasting somewhat quenched the stink of putrefying flesh, and in those who waited, greed quickened into ecstasy.

There was not one who failed to claim his portion. The meat tasted gamey, as Mrs Roxburgh had foreseen, and was singed-raw rather than cooked. But Mr Roxburgh declared he had never tasted a more palatable dish, ignoring the frizzled maggot or two he scraped off with a burnt finger, and sat there when he was finished, sucking at a piece of hide as though he could not bear to part with it.

One of the men added to their comfort by discovering during a short reconnaissance of the adjacent forest several pools of only slightly brackish water, to which the party trudged, and scooped water by the handful, or lay with their faces in it, sucking up injudicious draughts. Mrs Roxburgh contemplated bathing her face and hands, for the stench of rotten kangaroo had been added to the smell of salt grime accumulated over weeks spent in an open boat, but on glancing round at her companions she suspected that such behaviour might appear ostentatious, and in any case, it could produce only superfical results. Since her return to land she had become aware of whiffs given off by wet clothes and the body inside them.

Seeing that evening was approaching it was decided to camp beside the water-holes, which in normal picnic circumstances would have provided an admirably restful setting, upon an upholstery of moss, inside this vast green marquee, its sides just visibly in motion as a breeze stirred the creepers slung from somewhere high above. The scene lacked only the coachman and a footman to produce the hampers.

Now at any rate Mr Roxburgh would have given thanks, in peace and quiet, after settling himself against a hummock, hand in hand with his dear wife, some little way apart from the others, had it not been for a curious noise, of animal gibbering, or human chatter, slight at first, then sawing louder into the silence.

Every head among them was raised as though functioning on sadly rusted springs, and there on a rise in the middle distance appeared one, three, half-a-dozen savages, not entirely naked, for each wore a kind of primitive cloth draped from a shoulder, across the body, and over his private parts. The natives were armed besides, with spears, and other warlike implements, all probably of wood; only their dark skins had the glint of ominous metal.

The two parties remained watching each other an unconscionable time before the blacks silently melted away among the shadows.

As soon as it was felt that the aboriginals had removed to a safe distance, the voice of speculation raised itself in the white camp: it was wondered what kind of dirty work the ‘customers’ would get up to.

Captain Purdew was of the opinion that ‘Christian advances should meet with Christian results,’ but sighed and added, ‘unless our sins are so heavy they will weigh against us.’ In any event, he sought to impress upon his command to refrain from opening fire on those who were no more than ‘natural innocents’.

Despite the captain’s injunctions, Mr Courtney and one of his men decided on their own account to overhaul the armoury of two muskets and a pistol, all probably unserviceable from exposure in the boat. They went so far as to load the weapons in case of an ambush during the night, and discouraged those who were in favour of kindling a fire to rouse their lowered spirits.

When he had exhausted his surprise at the black intrusion, and disposed of a dubious aesthetic pleasure in their muscular forms and luminous skins, Mr Roxburgh began to find the whole issue a tedious one. Reality had always come and gone in his presence with startling suddenness, and never more capriciously than since the wreck of
Bristol Maid
. So he could take but a fitful interest in the question of defence. His real, sustaining, and sustained life would only begin again on his return to the library at ‘Birdlip House’.

Even Mrs Roxburgh was inclined to look upon the loading of firearms by Mr Courtney and his henchman as an example of the games men-as-boys see it their duty to play. She lowered her eyes at last, and with a blade of grass helped an ant struggle out of a depression in the moss.

Peace and drowsiness began to prevail; an idyll might have been reinstated but for the cold creeping on them through the trees, and if almost every member of the party had not been racked by diarrhoea. There was a continual tramping through the undergrowth and silence, in which a private condition was made distressingly audible.

‘That infernal kangaroo!’ Mr Roxburgh groaned at one stage. ‘Why do you suppose you were spared, Ellen?’

‘Who am I to explain? Unless I swilled less of that water than some of you others.’

Mr Roxburgh came to the conclusion that it was minerals dissolved in the water, and not the gamey kangaroo, which had caused their indisposition.

But he seemed to hold it against her that she had not suffered, and during the night when his spirits were at their lowest, confessed, ‘I’ve often thought that I’d willingly die—there is not all that much to live for—but have wondered how you would manage without me.’

Mrs Roxburgh pretended she had fallen asleep.

In the morning the party, most of them considerably weakened, rose without encouragement before the light.

Captain Purdew—or was it Mr Courtney? decided they should return to the beach and there set course for Moreton Bay, which they must reach eventually on foot if indeed they had landed on the mainland and not an island.

Captain Purdew’s wits took a turn for the worse when it came to abandoning the incapacitated long-boat. Like
Bristol Maid
it lodged in his conscience and would probably fester there for as long as he lived.

Whereas Mrs Roxburgh, who glanced back once as they trudged along the beach, resolved to put it out of her mind, together with the sufferings she had endured while confined to its wretched shell. Or had she the power to govern her thoughts? She must cultivate a strength of will to equal that of her sturdy body. The latter mercifully withstood every material imposition; for her clothes were weighing her down, and her husband dragged on the arm she had offered as a support in his debility.

So they struggled on, the men for the most part barefoot, and every one of them a shambles of appearance and behaviour.

‘Halfway to Norwich the horse lay down …’ Captain Purdew was heard to whimper.

The sun rose, to batter them about the head and shoulders. At one point the woman lowered her glance as though unable any longer to face the glare, and the rings she was wearing flashed back an ironic message. For a few steps she closed her eyes. Patterned with salt and sweat, her dark clothes might have been drawing her under, to depths from which she had but dreamt that she was delivered.

As for Mr Roxburgh, he had abandoned his overcoat and jacket (his boots had abandoned him) but was still wearing his waistcoat in the heat of the day to ensure safe carriage of the Elzevir Virgil buttoned inside.

Mrs Roxburgh could have cried for her husband’s long narrow feet: pale and cold according to her memory, they were now ablaze.

From the sun’s position it must have been the middle of the day, when the most torpid mind was compelled to take notice, by a hissing sound followed by a marked thud. A spear had planted itself obliquely in the sand a few feet ahead of Mr Courtney and the seaman who were leading the procession. The spear had scarcely ceased vibrating when a second grazed Captain Purdew’s left shoulder, tearing the shirt and letting a trickle of blood.

Several of the crew started shouting, to assert their courage or disguise their fear, as Mr Courtney and his companion, who were in possession of the firearms, headed in the direction of some dunes to landward where fifteen to sixteen natives were seen to have congregated, their gibberish accompanied by overtly hostile gestures.

Above the pain and shock Captain Purdew must have been suffering from his wound, he was made frantic by the prospect of his subordinates committing violence. ‘
Ned! Frank!
’ He shambled forward, emotion causing him to spit so inordinately that he sprayed Mrs Roxburgh’s face in passing. ‘We’ll do no good by spilling blood!’

‘Nor by palaverin’, neether!’ an anonymous voice rejoined.

The first officer and the promoted seaman were taking aim with a precision which fitted the sudden stillness.

A single report from one of the guns sounded horrendous to those who were listening for it; the second weapon played dead, to the fury of the seaman who had been counting upon his moment of glory.

The savages emitted horrid shrieks as one of their number fell, jerking and convulsed, and disappeared from sight amongst the dunes.

The captain was quite demented. ‘We’ll pay for it, I tell you!’ he shouted.

He was, in fact, the one who did, for the next instant a spear was twangling in his ribs. It went in as though he were scarcely a man, or if he were, nobody they had ever known. As he toppled over he conspired with fate by driving the spear deeper in.

There were howls from the blacks, and the shouting of incensed, helpless sailors.

For the second time Mr Courtney took aim, but his gesture produced no more than silence.

Ellen Gluyas watched the bloodstain widening on the sand. There had not been so much blood since Pa and will slaughtered the calf during their lodger’s interminable stay.

Now she too, was interminable, transfixed by time as painfully and mercilessly as by any spear. She, the practical one, and a woman, should tear herself free and rush back into life—to
do something
.

But it was Mr Roxburgh who ran forward, to do what only God could know. Here he was, bestirring himself at least, in the manner expected of the male sex. Into action! He felt elated, as well as frightened, and full of disbelief in his undertaking. (It was not, however, an uncommon reaction to his own unlikelihood.)