The Secret Fate of Mary Watson (18 page)

‘If so,’ I say, and feel my jaw tense again, ‘he’ll be in a better mood tomorrow, I’m sure.’

8TH JUNE 1880

‘Think ye can make it?’

Bob’s sitting on a stump, pulling on his boots in the sunlight. The new day’s skipping saucily across his eyes. High, arrowing clouds chase each other across the blue slate above us. He smiles and the reins of his scar pull tight. One eye compresses as though to wink, the other doesn’t. He
is
in a better mood. As he should be, considering he’s taken advantage of every night since Carrie’s been in her own bed behind the curtain.

‘You asked me a similar thing, remember? Before we climbed Grassy Hill.’

I’m standing with the washing basket, about to head to the two ‘Y’s of timber strung with rope that make up the clothesline, about ten yards away. I’ve not yet had a formal washing day with the copper and mangle. Just scrubbed a few things of Bob’s, Carrie’s and mine with soap and water and wrung them out by
hand. There’s a whistle across the plain, carrying the faint sting of sand.

‘Aye, but Grassy Hill’s only five hundred feet. A wee dribble to Cook’s Look at eleven hundred. Ye may not make it to the top, considering ye swatted and puffed like an adder on the lesser climb.’

He’s counting on friction to spark my competitiveness. But he doesn’t need to bother. I have, after all, a particular interest in learning how to pace myself up Cook’s Look.

‘I was hot,’ I correct him. ‘And had a blister on my heel.’

The thin hair over his ears flaps with the wind. He didn’t wear his hat when he was unloading the boat a few days ago. Even though it’s winter, there’s a pinkish tinge to his face and a reddish scarf painted around his neck. He puts both hands on his knees and stands, adjusts his trousers at the waist and, using one hand as a shade, stares out to sea at the white caps. ‘Some kelpies out there, all right.’

‘Kelpies?’

‘Ghosts that look like horses. They promise a bonny ride. Then, when a daft man climbs on their back, they dive, drowning his poor lost soul.’

And I thought the Cornish were superstitious.

‘Just let me peg the clothes out,’ I say. ‘They’ll dry in no time with this wind.’

‘Where’s Carrie?’ he asks.

I look over to where she’s sheltering in a break of trees. They sway and bend around her, but she’s calm in the centre of them, sitting on a stool with her sketchbook and pencils.

He follows the line of my eyes. ‘Keep her close to the house,’ he says. ‘I’ve seen the smoke of a blacks’ camp over near South
Island.’ He points to his left, somewhere beyond the swamp and the farm.

‘Surely they’re no threat to us unless they land on the Lizard?’ I reply. ‘You told me there were no canoes here.’

‘The islands are a short paddle from each other. Just precaution. No danger.’

I remember old Riley Robinson’s words about the Lizard. How the blacks are drawn to it like a fingernail to a scab. I shift the basket a little under my arm.

‘Tomorrow or the day after, we go down to the beach.’ Bob’s pointing to his right. ‘I’ll teach ye how to shoot.’

The grass smells of sun and insects, sprinkled with sea. I wonder how that eagle we spied the first morning on the island would view our progress: Bob and me moving upwards, into the vault of a cobalt sky. Grey granite rocks everywhere. When I use them as handholds, they graze my palms.

There’s a cairn of rock and a signal flag at the summit, just as I knew there would be. Bob points out a waterproof box anchored to the rock with a metal pin.

‘While I’m out fishing, ye can run up a flag if there is need. I’ll teach ye their meanings before we go back to sea.’

The view is dizzying. At altitude, the wind reminds me of two charwomen either side of a vast bed, whipcracking a brand new sheet over us. The climb is forgotten: the balding patches of dry ground, the mangy hummocks of grass, hordes of vicious meat ants beneath them.

Bob points east to where sunlight glasses the water, tells me the story of Captain Cook climbing this very summit to try to plan a safe passage through the reef. His words are too harsh for
the moment’s solemnity. I just want the whistle of the wind to pass through me. His breath is hot and unpleasant in my ear.

‘See green out there? That is middling deep. Light green, shallow. Yellow-green, more shallow still. Straw is sandbanks. Jet-black patches, reefs.’

‘So he puzzled it out by colour?’

He steers me by my shoulders to where he wants me to look. ‘Aye. He followed that dark blue line.’

And there it is. A royal snake twisting through the ocean; a velvet-deep passageway to safety. Beyond it, something white leaps into the sky.

Bob notices where my gaze is hooked. ‘Foam and spray. From rollers striking the reef. At night, if ye listen, ye’ll hear God grinding his teeth under the sea. Or maybe the Devil.’

I take a deep breath of that sapphire air.

‘There’s the house, look.’ He’s twisted me around to face the west again.

I give a perfunctory glance to my new home, snug as a key in the palm of the lowland. There, a moving speck that might be Carrie heading for the door. From up here, it’s clear just how dry and bristly the Lizard is. Patches of grey. Bald earth. The creek, a urine trickle heading for the sea. But the magnificent restlessness of the ocean is something else again. All the land’s mediocrity is forgiven.

‘What do ye think, then?’ Bob asks. There’s a proprietary pride in his voice that annoys me.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I say. ‘Stupendous even.’ A white cloud, like the steam from a kettle, pauses above our heads before drifting on.

My next words don’t really seem my own.

‘Who could blame the blacks for wanting it back?’

10TH JUNE 1880

A sharp in-breath as I wake, bile on my tongue. It’s the same dream I’ve had every night since we arrived.

Somehow, I’m in Bob’s head as he lands
Isabella
on the sandy tongue of the Lizard. It’s been a long time since he’s lived here. Under a full moon with its cataract of cloud, his boots chew dark gravel to the house. There’s that island noise he finds so reassuring: the corkscrew screek of pandanus leaves opening the ocean’s bottle of wine.

The heavy door to the house breathes open and he slumps with relief, seeing how a fire has been lit and is making those satisfying cleaver-meets-marrowbone cracks. Nothing wrong. Nothing wrong … except his pipe has been moved from where it usually sits on the mantel. Dark streaks of blood stain the wall, and a woman (is it me?) and her child look up from the light, their skulls aglow …

Dawn light seeps through cracks in the limestone wall. A seabird’s call in the distance. As always, that high-tide backwash of waves. Bob is asleep next to me; a series of whale breaches as he snorts through his nose, then dives again into the comparative silence of a mucousy gurgle, ready for the next surge.

Nothing wrong, I tell myself. Nobody’s died. It’s just a dream. But if I am the woman, then who is the child? And why is there nothing left of either of us but skulls?

When my heart slows, I grab my robe in the half-dark, stumble out to the door, opening it on the new day’s shivery air.

Ah Sam is boiling water for tea in the cookhouse. He looks up with a nod and a smile. Dry crinkles of heat rise from the pan he’s heating for pancakes. A crisp, biscuit smell. I pull the robe tighter around me. It’s a bit too early in the morning for philosophical conversation, but I still haven’t quite shaken off the small hand of sleep.

‘Missy?’

‘Ah Sam. Do you believe that dreams can predict the future? I had a dream, set on this island at night. I think I was dead. There was a baby.’

He pales. ‘You don’t say that.’

Clearly time to change the subject. ‘You think the men will go fishing today?’

He relaxes a little. ‘Maybe. But maybe squall coming.’

I look over the flat-as-a-postage-stamp sea. The sunrise is only just reaching this side of the island. The water’s still plush dark, though shot through with cracks of simmering grey. The horizon’s
a newly lit wick — its flames gain confidence, spread sideways over the ocean.

‘It doesn’t look like bad weather,’ I say.

Ah Sam shifts his bare feet on the earthen floor. Picks up a rag to lift the kettle from the fire. His face is flushed with heat.

‘Small cloud in sou-east, light wind from west.’

He hands me a pannikin full of tea and I blow on its surface to cool it. The brew smells of woodheaps and tannin. ‘Well, you’d know more than I would.’

Ah Leung hobbles around the corner like a misty troll, barefoot apart from a filthy bandage, hoe in hand. Percy’s right: I’ll have to interact with him to a certain extent. But the exchanges won’t work unless I let him know who’s boss.

‘Ah Leung. I’d like a cabbage for dinner. And are there any melons?’

He looks up briskly, his face a plaster cast. I know he’s capable of relaxing. When I go to empty the vegetable peelings into the chicken coop after dinner, I hear him laughing as he talks to Ah Sam in their hut.

‘Melon not very good.’ He turns. ‘Pineapple only.’

‘Well, pineapple, then. I want onions too,’ I tell his retreating back.

His shoulders lift then fall in resignation. I shuffle back to the house nursing my tea.

Bob comes, yawning, out of the open door. He lurches past me without looking up. I hear him exchange a few words with Ah Sam in the cookhouse. He emerges with tea. What’s left of his hair sticks up, as though he’s had a cartoonish fright. The light on the water has a reddish core, with orange corrugations. Sure
enough, now the darkness has lifted somewhat, small clouds are visible in the southeast, just as Ah Sam predicted.

‘Ah Sam says there might be a squall today. Will you go fishing?’

‘Hmm.’ He rubs his eyes, looks out over the ocean, then up to the sky: consulting the runes. ‘Hard to say.’ Sips his tea. ‘Want to be rid of me, do ye?’

‘No,’ I say evenly. ‘But surely you must go out fishing soon.’

He doesn’t answer. Just scratches himself, then hawks a gob of spit onto the ground.

Carrie’s awake. I can hear her moving around inside.

‘What’s for breakfast?’ she calls out to no one in particular. ‘I’m starving.’

‘Get dressed,’ Bob says to me. ‘After we eat, I’ll give ye that shooting lesson.’

There’s nothing soft about beach sand when it’s blowing in your face. I’m prone in the hard grass on the lowland, facing the sea. The bristles itch all along my torso. Bob stands next to me, giving instructions.

‘Hold the butt up against yer shoulder. Firm, mind.’

‘Won’t it hurt when I fire?’

‘It might, if ye hold the stock away from yer shoulder and the recoil slams it back to bone …’ He leaves the sentence unfinished.

I pull the rifle more tightly against my shoulder.

‘Now rest yer cheek on the butt. Drop yer head down a wee bit so ye can line up the target through the backsight. Now what did I say? As distance increases, ye move yer right hand up the barrel. Just a whisper, mind. Or else lower yer shoulder. And when the target’s beyond twenty paces away, aim above the point ye want to hit. All right?’

Sun streams off the water, a blinding foil of light striking the already-holed billy lid he’s propped up on a broken crate on the beach. I line it up in the backsight. Fire. A sizeable pony kicks me in the shoulder. A puff of sand erupts in front of the target.

I wince and lay the gun down. ‘I thought you said this would lessen the recoil!’

‘If ye don’t believe it’s worse the other way, try it.’

He’s irritated. Again. I can hear his medicinal balls clinking away in his pocket.

‘Well, what did I do wrong then? Why didn’t I hit it?’

‘Ye didn’t aim above the target. It’s more than twenty paces away.’

He’s not right, I’m sure of it. Ten paces, fifteen at the outside. I grit my teeth and end up chewing sand.

‘Well, I’ll load another cartridge. Try again.’

‘Yer sure yer poor wee shoulder can take it?’

‘Quite sure,’ I say with caustic calm.

I close my eyes against the flying sand. Then open them again. I talk myself slowly through the process, unwilling to ask him for help. I shut down the flap of the backsight. Grip the breechblock firmly. Draw it back as far as possible with a jerk, raise the muzzle of the rifle while I’m doing so. It takes me a good minute to get the old cartridge case out and put the new one in. Bob delights in pointing out how slow I am. How the blacks could have speared me a dozen times and held a corroboree by the time I’m done.

I put the butt up to my sore shoulder. Line up the sight, move the barrel half an inch higher, and fire. I hear a satisfying tink and the billy lid skitters across the sand. It almost makes the extra pain worthwhile.

I’m not allowed to bask in the glory of my achievement. Bob’s already got the revolver out.

‘Now, with the revolver, ye must learn a whole different way for loading and unloading. It’s only accurate when yer target is close — ten paces at most. The rifle’s for when the blacks are halfway over from the swamp. The revolver’s for when they’re knocking on the door. Ye shouldn’t have to kill. Just fire into the air and they’ll run away. Let them know ye mean it.’

In another hour, the billy lid is more holes than metal. I’ve proved to Bob’s satisfaction that I know enough to defend the homestead.

I’ve also reassured myself that if I have to defend myself against Ah Leung — or anyone else who threatens me or Carrie — then I can.

Ah Sam was right about the squall. Three o’clock and a stiff breeze blows that locked-up horse-stall smell of dried seaweed up from the beach. Bob’s mending the wire racks in the smokehouse. Carrie’s peeling potatoes, and I’m stringing beans from the garden for dinner. The wind’s a sou-westerly and getting on our nerves, bashing the washhouse’s spindly door against the frame.

The sound has slapped my ears for half an hour and I can bear it no longer. I plough my face, exposed wrists and ankles through the grinding air outside to hook the latch. I take one quick look at the ocean. Through the blown mist, the water’s a series of galloping white manes. Bob’s sea kelpies. I close the door against the weather, but still those cloven hoofs kick at the roof. Nostrils snort at the shutters. Rubber lips whinny at the shotgun hole in the door, calling me out to play.

Just above the washing-up bench, the shutters on the south
wall shudder. I walk over and adjust the lever on the window frame enough to peek out. The leaves of the pandanus rustle like a nest of vipers. Even the small, horizontal bands of wind I’ve let in play havoc with my bun and I reluctantly close up the gaps again.

I hold bobby pins in my mouth, twist the hair behind me into a snail, then fasten it back in place at the nape of my neck. It’s claustrophobic in the house. A closed box. No light. No fresh air. The conversation is similarly stifling.

Carrie’s been niggling me ever since I came back from shooting practice this morning.

‘Papa says I should take up a position as a governess in Maryborough where I can be nice and close to him and Mama.’ Somehow I have to impress on her that she can’t stay near Papa.

‘Don’t take a job in Maryborough. Apply for Brisbane, or anywhere he can’t easily get his claws into you.’

‘Papa said you’d try to turn me against him.’

I’ve suddenly no time for the gaps in her memory, the blind spots of her allegiance. Her supercilious ignorance. ‘Go on, spit it out.’ I slam the bowl of topped-and-tailed beans on the bench, throw the dishcloth on top of it.

‘All right, I will.’ She tips a bald potato head back into the water bucket. The brown tide splashes onto her dress. ‘Papa said you made up stories to disgrace the family. Hideous, hateful, unforgivable lies.’

‘Why would I do that, Carrie? Exactly what would I have to gain by lying?’

She looks at me coldly. Picks up another potato. Begins her useless, wasteful little chipping away at it. ‘It’s always gain with you, isn’t it? But some things you can’t get. Like beauty. Like love.
You’re not Papa’s favourite any more, it’s as simple as that. What you lack has driven you mad.’

I take off my apron carefully, hang it on a hook on the wall. ‘Maybe I should have just left you there.’

I wrench the door open, afraid my head will explode with all the angry wasps vibrating away inside it.

‘Where are you going? It’s blowing a gale outside!’

I look back at her. Her blue dress disappears into the house’s shadows. Only her teeth and eyes sparkle. Like a Cheshire cat.

‘The mad always walk around in tempests, don’t they?’

‘Why exactly did you marry Bob?’ she calls out after me. ‘You don’t love him. Are you going to break his heart the way you’ve broken Papa’s?’

I don’t have to bang the door shut. The wind does the job for me.

The air swirls like eggwhite in Chinese soup. Gulls beat uselessly with their wings, going nowhere. I move forward, mindless, battered and pushed, until I find myself at the edge of the mangrove swamp.

Inside, it’s quieter. The gusts fade to a wet blanket flapping in the distance. My feet slog through puddles of stinking mud. It’s an old, old smell. A graveyard of dead men’s fingers poke up. The ground pocks and slithers with secretive crabs.

I can hear something under the sea, behind the deep cannon booms on the reef to the east. A low, atonal tune, held, then amplified. That same singing I heard on my first night on the Lizard. Almost certainly a trick of acoustics. But thinking so is one thing; my nerve’s creep, quite another.

It’s a relief to break free of the squelching mud, tread the bank
of the stream, where the roots of the swamp oaks remind me of those whalebone hoops in petticoats, their curved arcs diving into the water.

Something moves on the far bank. A rustle in the tight-packed trees. I should have brought the gun. What’s the use of knowing how to fire it if it’s resting against the wall in the house?

A bird explodes and flaps in a low trajectory along the creek. Something moves in the dark place behind it. I backtrack into the shadows. A sudden injection between my eyes. Pinpricks around the collar of my blouse, on my ankles, my hands. Mosquitos. I’m not even aware that I’m stumbling, one eye still on the far bank, when I back into something solid and my chest seizes.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘I have to get out of here!’ I push past him, maddened, dozens of erratic sewing needles piercing my exposed skin.

I’ve never been so glad to see the blurry, windblown eye of the sun burst through the fast clouds and glint on the grey granite rock. The wind has suddenly dropped to the point where just a few high branches quiver. The air’s ears are still ringing, though. A high, almost-inaudible screech, more felt than heard, now moving out to sea.

I tell Percy what I heard, what I thought I saw.

He’s unimpressed. ‘Probably a goanna. They get pretty big. Or a snake.’

‘I thought maybe the blacks.’

My fear sounds ridiculous now that the sun has returned. Broad daylight. Humid yellow poured over everything.

‘There’s none on the island as far as I know. And if you’re so worried about them, why did you take off on your own, without a gun?’

Why, indeed.

We walk back towards the house. Already, the bites itch intensely. I know if I don’t cover myself in the mix from the bottle on the shelf — lavender oil and citronella — I’ll have infected sores all over me in a few days. Bits of palm leaves and other vegetation — detritus of the squall — crunch under our feet.

‘How did you know I was here?’ I ask.

‘I went to the house. Your sister told me. She watched which way you went from the door.’

As though she cared what might happen to me.

‘I could strangle her sometimes.’ Relief’s loosened my tongue. I look up at his profile. He turns, and counters my stare.

‘Why did you bring her here if she annoys you? It’s no place for a young girl, especially an attractive one like your sister.’

I reach out and stop him with my hand. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

But he has no intention of answering. At least, not yet. His hands dig deep in his pockets. He stares straight ahead.

‘Have you heard from Roberts?’ I ask.

‘No.’ He pulls his pipe out, looks at it. ‘But the shipment’s not until next month. Have you been up to Cook’s Look?’

‘Yes. Bob’s shown me the flag box.’

‘Well, then. It must be time for me to show you the lantern, and how to signal with it. As soon as Watson takes himself off somewhere.’

Something catches my eye down on the waterline. Two young Kanakas, dressed only in loincloths, drag their legs awkwardly through the shallow water. I can’t make out what they’re doing. Dancing? Some slow waltz that requires no partner?

Percy follows my gaze. ‘There’s a piece of fish stuck between their toes,’ he says. ‘When a sandworm sticks its head out, they grab it between two fingers and pull it out of the sand. They use the worms for bait.’

‘Clever.’

‘It’s all about enticement,’ he says. ‘Sandworms to the fish. Fish to the sandworms later on, when they’re dangling on a hook. And, finally, a man’s mouth to the fish.’

I have a feeling this isn’t a nature lesson. ‘What are you trying to say?’

‘Your husband has a weakness, Mrs Watson. A soft spot for pretty young girls. By bringing your sister here, you’re dangling something irresistible between your toes.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

His voice is calm and cold. ‘I don’t care if you believe me or not. It’s no saddle off my horse what happens to her. She’s your sister.’