A Fringe of Leaves (51 page)

Dissolving in the emotions of the moment the two women were carried away to the extent of embracing. ‘I expect we shall make our blunders,’ Miss Scrimshaw predicted, ‘but would you not say that life is a series of blunders rather than any clear design, from which we may come out whole if we are lucky?’

Then she laughed, and detached herself, and adjusted her fichu, and sternly resorted to practical matters. ‘If we are to be ready, we must start at once to
systematize
. The children alone! Poor Mrs Lovell is too distracted, and then, you may not know, she is expecting.’

With some diffidence Mrs Roxburgh offered Miss Scrimshaw her services.

But the spinster remembered she had not included in her recitative a detail not at first sight related to the practical. ‘We shall have with us on board a passenger not of our party, a Mr Jevons from London, who has taken advantage of the cutter’s mission to Moreton Bay to look up his connections, the young Cunninghams.’

Miss Scrimshaw glanced at her friend, it could have been to see whether the latter might accuse her of irrelevance, but finding no indication of this, she gladly forged on. ‘Mr Jevons, I gather, is a merchant of substantial means, but let us not condemn him for that.’ Miss Scrimshaw was so indulgent this morning. ‘A widower,’ she added, to allow the man a modicum of virtue. ‘I happened to be passing the Cunninghams’ cottage, and in this way made their connection’s acquaintance. I dare say we shall find him agreeable and helpful company.’ With this prediction, Miss Scrimshaw left to compose a list of ‘material necessities’.

Mrs Roxburgh’s own possessions and needs were so immaterial and few that she soon followed, and under Miss Scrimshaw’s command, set to work collecting spencers, booties, blankets, shawls, button-boots for pairs of feet descending in the scale from small to smallest, ‘Kate’s old bonnet with the primroses; she looks so pretty in it’, pencils, primers, cutlery, bedding.

‘And potted meat!’ the quartermaster almost shouted. ‘And six—at least—four-pound loaves!’

‘My dear Miss Scrimshaw,’ Mrs Lovell sighed from the sofa where she was prudently resting, ‘we are not embarking on the voyage home, and at Sydney shall be staying with the Huxtables.’

‘It’s as well to be prepared’, Miss Scrimshaw advised, ‘for any and every eventuality.’

When at dinner-time the Commandant appeared he made an immediate point of congratulating Mrs Roxburgh on her speedy departure for civilization. Captain Lovell had benefited by his magnanimity towards his wife and family; he had never looked (nor in all probability felt) handsomer, as he sat at table after saying grace, hands folded on his tunic, the wedding-ring exposed, or chucked Kate under her chin, and complimented Miss Scrimshaw on her downright military efficiency. The world was for the moment, if not always, Captain Lovell’s.

During dinner his wife, stirring the barley broth Mr Cunningham had prescribed for her, inquired as a matter of course, ‘Are they leaving you in peace, my love?’

‘Fairly so. I cannot complain,’ Captain Lovell answered. ‘There is always the tobacco question. And Bragg has made his third attempt, this time with a kitchen fork.’ The children’s presence did not allow him to elaborate.

All attacked their dinner, and some complained that the mutton was tough, not to say black and nasty. Little Totty was sent from the room. But Mrs Roxburgh had to presume that the Commandant was what the world holds to be just.

When they rose from table she approached him and said, ‘I must remind you of my petition, sir.’

‘Your petition, Mrs Roxburgh?’ His eyebrows started up, while his smile appeared the more brilliant for a slight dash of mutton fat.

‘For the convict,’ she said, ‘the man Chance—to whom I owe my survival.’

‘And why must I be reminded? My purpose at Moreton Bay is to see that justice is done.’

Endowed with official integrity and domestic virtues, this imposing gentleman should have convinced her more easily.

‘Do you not trust me?’ he asked.

‘I should,’ she mumbled, ‘but no longer know,’ and broke off.

He tapped her on the wrist. ‘You should have more confidence in yourself.’

After which, she left him, and allowed herself to be burdened with all that Miss Scrimshaw considered necessary for the voyage.

Later in the afternoon her commanding officer reported on returning from a personal reconnaissance of the immediate approaches, ‘I do believe we have callers, and that it is Mrs Cunningham, the surgeon’s wife—with her relative—Mr Jevons—from London.’

For one of her rank and experience Miss Scrimshaw appeared flustered. ‘I should tell you, Mrs Roxburgh, that he wears a ring with a diamond in it. But of course a diamond, though not to my taste—on a man—need not make him morally reprehensible.’

To reassure her friend Mrs Roxburgh said, ‘Mr Roxburgh—my husband—wore a signet ring.’

‘Ah,’ Miss Scrimshaw approved, ‘that is what one expects, surely, of a gentleman?’

There was no time for more, since Mrs Cunningham and her suspect cousin were already mounting the veranda steps.

The surgeon’s wife was a heavily built, swarthy young woman who would have appeared plain beside her spouse had he been present. Perhaps she had brought from the Jevons side some of its ‘substantial means’.

As for Mr Jevons, he too was large and dark, well-fleshed, but solid in his fleshiness. Mrs Roxburgh was fatally drawn to look for the ring with the diamond in it, and in doing so noticed the wedding band on the next finger but one. Whereas this same token seemed to stimulate the self-satisfaction inherent in the Commandant, it made Mr Jevon’s hand look curiously vulnerable. She hastened to dismiss her thought as a foolish fancy, probably conceived as a result of her own unfortunate experience.

Both Mrs Cunningham and her cousin avoided reference to the events which had brought Mrs Roxburgh to Moreton Bay, except that Mr Jevons remarked in a general way, ‘You can’t be sorry, after your ordeal, to be quit of the Colony, and start the long voyage home.’

‘What else?’ she replied evenly enough. ‘Though I cannot say there is anything which takes me there.’

There the matter rested, while Mr Jevons expressed appropriate sentiments on the future of New South Wales, and went so far as to hint that he was preparing to drive in a stake of his own and profit from the development of Sydney.

He was the proprietor, it seemed, of a hardware business in Oxford Street, London, to which he drove himself every weekday from his little place at Camberwell.

‘Little place? Why, Cousin George! I’m sure, Miss Scrimshaw, if you was to see it, you’d find it a positive mansion.’

Miss Scrimshaw composed a smile which could only be described as forgiving, and apologized when the cousins had left.

‘Mrs Cunningham is an inexperienced and somewhat tasteless young woman. But Mr Jevons is in no way boastful. How did he strike you?’

‘I’d say he is kind. His hands look kind.’

‘What a curious observation! I never thought to look at his hands, except to notice the diamond ring, and that I prefer not to see.’

Mrs Roxburgh felt that Miss Scrimshaw would dispose of the diamond ring as soon as she was in a position to do so.

For her part, Mrs Roxburgh was glad of such diversions during the hours left to her at Moreton Bay, when she dreaded hearing the renewed screams of the prisoner at the triangle, and almost dared not sleep lest Jack Chance the convict appear in a dream and offer her his love. Her briefest snatches of sleep became dreamless nightmares perhaps by strength of will.

If Captain Lovell on the other hand did not sleep, it was not from thought of separation from his wife and children, but the report for His Excellency, which he was still composing the night before the cutter sailed. To give the Commandant his due, he was scrupulously just within the limits history had imposed on him.

So he scratched away by candlelight, rounding out his periods:

… a woman of some intelligence, but given to concealment, or confused I shld rather say, by the ordeal she has recently undergone. It is difficult to arrive at the truth either in the account offered by Mrs Roxburgh, or that of Pilcher the unfortunate second mate. It may suit both, while still too close to the events, to cultivate delusion as a shield or comfort.

Pilcher for the moment shows no inclination to better his lot but seems prepared to end his days as a clerk at the Commissariat. When off duty he devotes himself to the chapel to which I have already referred, doubtless built in expiation of whatever sins he may have committed.

Mrs Roxburgh, while vague about the past, has no definite plans for the future. She is only roused when the fate of Chance, the bolted convict, comes in question. Then she grows most passionate, demanding a pardon for him on his recovery by us, and for which no doubt she will petition Yr Excellency soon after you receive this dispatch. There is no reason to disbelieve her story that the man brought her to a farm on the outskirts of the Settlement, though the lady is unwilling to contribute any but the barest details of their journey, probably out of modesty, for she was discovered by Sergt. and Mrs Oakes without a stitch of clothing after the convict had turned and fled back into the bush, either from delicacy on his part, or fear of retribution.

I propose to send out search parties for this probably deranged wretch, and if, as I hope, we recover him, I wld add my own recommendations for clemency to Mrs Roxburgh’s petitions. Granted the man committed a foul murder in a London slum, and was sentenced for life, but it is my humble opinion that he will have been broken by what he has endured and that he has redeemed himself by delivering the lady into our hands, alive and subsequently restored to health.

I have the honour to be

Sir

your most obedt …’

Captain Lovell was so relieved to have got this deucedly delicate matter down on paper that he could not resist adding an extra flourish to his normally florid signature.

The morning was more limpid, less equivocal, than the emotions the cutter’s departure provoked. The captain had gone on ahead in the skiff with some of his crew and his passenger Mr George Jevons. They had already boarded
Princess Charlotte
when the whale boat with the larger party consisting of the Commandant and his lady, their children either shouting or crying, Miss Scrimshaw, Mrs Roxburgh (it must be she, hidden inside the widow’s veil) their formal luggage, and a great variety of less orthodox bundles, rounded the last bend separating it from the cutter.

More than anybody Mr Jevons was of assistance in the ticklish operation of hauling the ladies and children aboard. Mrs Lovell, who had been rendered quite weak and tearful at thought of the approaching separation, could only hang on her husband’s arm until Miss Scrimshaw produced her smelling-bottle. Miss Scrimshaw herself, breathing deep to inhale the ‘ozone’, declared to anybody interested that she ‘never felt so free as when embarking on an ocean voyage’.

Mrs Roxburgh was silent, but raised her veil for a clearer view of the mangrove banks and the brown river, the latter of which had come out in blue for the occasion.

‘Is it not a picture?’ Miss Scrimshaw remarked approaching her friend.

‘Yes,’ Mrs Roxburgh agreed. ‘A picture.’

For that was what it looked, a canvas painted in turgid oils, as opposed to the iridescent watercolour of Hobart Town, each in its particular way remote from reality as she had experienced it.

Evidently partial to the company of ladies, Mr Jevons the merchant strolled to where the two were standing at the bulwark, ‘I would say that a more valuable picture, to Mrs Roxburgh’s mind, will be the view of London River when she first sets eyes on it.’

Mrs Roxburgh remained so strangely silent that Miss Scrimshaw felt it her duty to take a hand and pat the conversation onward. ‘Ah, don’t be unkind, Mr Jevons, to those who will be left in the Colony! You will have me homesick.’

At the risk of ignoring Miss Scrimshaw Mr Jevons hoped that Mrs Roxburgh would allow him to introduce her to his family circle at Camberwell, over which his sister presided as housekeeper, and foster mother to his three young daughters.

He seemed most anxious to soften what might be the harshness of her arrival, but Mrs Roxburgh was only embarrassed that her friend should be excluded, though inevitably as things stood, from an invitation she must so much desire.

Instead Miss Scrimshaw showed every sign of unaffected approval. ‘There! What a ready-made home-coming!’ It could, of course, have been an excess of ozone making her sound ebullient.

Mrs Roxburgh was somewhat put out by the spinster’s unreluctant acquiescence. She drew away, and at once saw her opportunity for addressing the Commandant in private, a move she had postponed till the last.

‘Captain Lovell,’ she said, ‘I cannot thank you enough for your kindness, and for what I know will be the outcome of your interceding with the Governor.’

Never averse to a bout of moral coquetry, he tapped her on the arm with the sealed dispatch he would shortly deliver into the hands of Captain Barbour. ‘You trust me, then?’

She stood as though still considering. ‘I hope I do.’

The light glancing off the river struck at the scarlet seal, which glittered like blood only recently clotted.