The Secret Fate of Mary Watson (5 page)

11TH NOVEMBER 1879

Seven o’clock and I’m yawning already, playing another tedious Mozart set, when Charley approaches me.

‘What is it?’ I ask. ‘I’ve barely skipped a beat all night.’

‘Why do you assume,
ma chérie
, that I wish only to admonish you? I am most grateful to you for telling me about Nicole and her client in the street.’

I’d also told him about the dead man near the bushes, but he was, predictably, more interested in possible damage to his salon’s reputation.

‘Did you talk to her?’ I ask. ‘Perhaps it’s a case of species confusion and she thinks she’s a dog. They fornicate in the middle of the road all the time.’

The moustache turns: a worm tickled by a feather. ‘I have talked with her, yes. And she will behave. Unlike your tongue.’ He
looks down at me from his not-so-lofty height, more in sorrow than anger it seems. ‘When I find that whetstone you sharpen it on, I intend to throw it into the sea.’

‘Is that what you came over to tell me?’

‘
Non
.’ He straightens his cravat. ‘There is a man I think you will like to meet. He has just arrived, and as it is almost time for your break …’

So Charley is playing cupid. Why?

‘You mean, a potential suitor? Exactly what kind of a man would I meet in a place like this? And who appointed you village matchmaker anyway? Or perhaps you have changed my duties without telling me and I must now entertain male clients?’

Charley drags up a sigh from some well of long suffering. ‘I do not change your duties. I do not think you are suited to being a hostess.’

‘True,’ I say, thinking of Nicole. ‘My tongue may be honed, but my baser instincts are clearly not up to the task.’ A frown pulls at the skin between my eyes. ‘What mischief are you hatching?’

He holds a hand to his heart. ‘I am distressed you think so little of Charley Boule.’

‘I’m nineteen,’ I say. ‘I can look after myself. I don’t need you to drag men out of the gutter on my behalf. If you want to help me, increase my wages.’

Never mind the extra money from my second job neatly stashed in a tin hidden behind my dresser. One useful thing I learned from Papa: it doesn’t do to let the truth get in the way of a good argument.

His eyes are glinting as he rests his arm on the piano top. I feel sorry for the material of his shirt when I see the sweat in his armpit. ‘All the more reason to find yourself a
beau
— improve your financial security.’

Something near the door to the street attracts his attention. ‘Turn your head,’ he says. ‘
Je vous présente:
Captain Bob Watson, a sea-slug fisherman from Lizard Island.’

I sit a little straighter on the stool. Watson is Percy’s partner in his ‘legitimate’ business. I’ve seen him in here a few times, drinking quietly by himself. He strikes me as awkward in company, unsociable, a closed book. And he never disappears upstairs with any of the girls. If he doesn’t want a woman for the night, why does he come here? And why would he want to meet me?

Of course, there is that other critical question. How might it serve me to meet him?

Charley answers at least one of my queries. ‘He observes you playing. He thinks you to be a nice girl.’ His tone suggests the poor man’s in for a rude shock. ‘He asks Charley Boule to make an introduction. He has taken a little shine to you.’

It seems unlikely. But not impossible, I suppose. I’m probably the only virgin for a hundred miles in any direction.

I turn to glance at Captain Watson. He is paused just inside the doorway, hat in hand, like a cartoon of a destitute farmer. Gilt dust from the porchlight fizzes around him. He surveys the room. Its mirrors and velvets. Charley’s girls flitting from table to table in their unlaced corsets. His head is suddenly still. So is Laura’s, over in the corner. He looks away. She skips to a noisy table and plops herself extravagantly onto a surprised prospector’s lap.

‘He’s short,’ I tell Charley. ‘And old. I’m not interested.’

It isn’t strictly true. I have nothing against older men. They are far more intriguing than silly boys my own age. Take nineteen-year-old Heccy Landers, for instance — one of Charley’s barmen, who makes no secret of his admiration for me. Hopeless, gangly,
innocent Heccy with his painful stammer. Percy is forty, after all; and Bob Watson seems only five years his senior, if that.

Think, Mary. Think.

Watson runs the sea-slug business with Percy on Lizard Island. What could I learn about Percy and his doings by talking to him? I haven’t time to ponder the possible repercussions. But what harm could come of a conversation or two? I won’t lead him on, exactly. Just be friendly. Get him talking.

‘Why are you trying to push me towards him?’ I ask Charley. I have no intention of letting him off the hook too easily. ‘Where would you find another piano player if I decide to run off with a man? I’m not so bad with Mozart and Strauss. Why are you so keen to get rid of me?’

‘Some nights, only so-so,’ he mutters. ‘Some nights your rancour sizzles on the end of your fingertips like a match held too long. Unattractive for any woman. But for you …’

His voice trails off and he consults the book of hopeless cases in his head for a possible precedent. His mouth puckers. The moustache looks suddenly less like a worm and more like a curled-up dead possum.

I wish I’d been the one to shoot it.

Ten minutes later, I’m on my break. I dry my palms on the front of my long skirt as Charley makes the introductions.

‘Captain Watson, please be acquainted with Miss Mary Oxnam. She plays piano, sometimes
passablement
, here in my salon.’

Watson responds with an awkward greeting. He’s a Scot. There’s no mistaking the snare-drum vowels vibrating off his tongue. My father hates all Scots. Even more so if they’re
Catholic. I find myself wishing that Bob Watson is a Pope-lover, just on general principles.

The kerosene lamps on the wall toss a small star into each of Watson’s eyes, and, at the same time, turn his face cadaverous. He steps forward into the more flattering aura of a dozen smoky cigar-ends. I notice his receding hairline: the tide pulled back on his skull, exposing the pebbles-and-shell mulch of discoloured skin. A few sandy hairs cling bravely to the shoreline.

‘Captain Watson,’ I say.

He reaches out a hand riddled with jaundice-yellow corrugations. His fingers are sharp with calluses of horny skin from salt water and weather. There’s a sudden fluttering fume of feathers in my nostrils. Cold, wet paddles on the back of my neck. A goose walking over my grave.

He asks, do I feel chill?

I shake my head. I don’t know why I’m reacting this way. My intuition doesn’t usually let me down. Why is it warning me off?

It could be just that he appears slightly sinister. There’s something persistently askew about his face, even when the light plays fair with the shadows. A rough scar runs from his right cheekbone to his lip. Skin puckers at its top edge, as if, having braced itself for the initial blow of knife or axe, it never relaxed again. It makes the eye above it appear intent, like an eagle’s. The left eye, held in a loose pouch of skin, seems less aware and more approachable.

I look into his left eye and smile.

Charley slips discreetly away.

Watson’s fingers move like caterpillar legs around the brim of his hat. ‘I’m going back to the Lizard in a week. Could I see ye again beforehand? Have a drink, or take a stroll?’

An inelegant man. Absurdly direct, obviously unskilled in social niceties. Reticent, I’d guess, to a fault, and beyond. But an industrious hitch tightens under my ribs. Like the future picking up the stitch of the present. I don’t know what to make of it, but at least the goose is gone.

‘I can see no harm in it,’ I tell the ravaged side of his face. I explain that I have half an hour’s break now. We can go for a short walk down by the river if he likes. Although the mosquitos are voracious. And I’ve heard there’s been trouble with the Myalls. I ask him if he thinks they’ll come into town, then look briefly beyond the open door, where night’s fallen like tar.

‘Aye. Maybe under the cover of darkness.’ He wonders, with a raised eyebrow, if I have some lavender oil.

‘Is that the frontier’s new defence against the natives? I’d better tell Inspector Fitzgerald. He’s still using rifles.’

His laugh has something gritty in it.

I fetch the small bottle from under the bar. We rub oil into our arms, our throats and faces. I accidentally smear a little into my eye — a sensation as though it’s been doused in carbolic acid. I blink and blink until the sting is washed away. The other eye waters in sympathy.

‘Just the oil,’ I sniff, and pull my handkerchief from my sleeve.

We wend our way outside. The lamplighter, Albert Ross, is almost to the far end of Charlotte Street. Where we’re standing is already aflame. A whiff of gas. The spit and fizzle of small insects drawn in. Beyond Dooley’s Sailmakers, the night is a solid wall of darkness: like the hood of a camera. Easy to conjure a set of all-seeing eyes inside it.

‘The blacks won’t come into the lit street,’ Watson tells me, as if I’ve spoken.

‘Have you had trouble with the Myalls too, Captain Watson? On your Lizard Island?’

‘Call me Bob, lass. I’ll feel like yer father otherwise. As I should, no doubt — I daresay I’m almost the same age.’

He waits for a compliment, but I don’t supply it.

‘No real trouble,’ he goes on, talking about the blacks. ‘Just aggravation. I don’t know that they’re Myalls. Could be any local tribe, really. They land on the far side of the island, light their fires and howl round them at night. Why the Lizard, I don’t know — the only pickings are leathery goannas they could get anywhere on the mainland.’

A lightning leash flashes above us. A minute later, the thunder-dog on the end of it growls.

‘Perhaps they’re after the iron around your slug station,’ I say. ‘Don’t they make their spears with it?’

‘Aye. The tips, at least. They’ve not figured out how to heat and forge it, but they’re canny wee buggers, banging and grinding away on wet sandstone till they get a passable shape.’

We’re almost to Chinatown. The sultry breeze reeks of gunpowder, soy sauce, ginger and, faintly, the thick syrup of opium. A firecracker puts in its tuppence-worth down near the waterfront. A yelp of surprise, then the splash of waves.

The approaching storm ups the ante. A brilliant zigzag. Then a stack of wood falls on the floor of the sky. Like most loners, Bob doesn’t know how to start a conversation. Or how to sustain one — once he’s started talking, he can’t stop. He regales me for nearly the length of Charlotte Street with tales of woe and worry from Lizard Island: gory accidents to his crew, encounters with pirates, the rough justice he’s dealt out to would-be swindlers, troubles with the blacks. He rabbits on as if I’m
not really there. Only a sudden burst of fat, lukewarm raindrops saves me.

‘We’d better go,’ he says at last. ‘Before the downpour.’

We turn back for French Charley’s. Fortunately, the rain holds off, though thunder continues to grumble overhead and occasional flashes set the busy street in stark relief. Aside from reinforcing my poor opinion of the sea-slug trade, I’ve learned nothing of use and my break is almost over. At the first sign of a gap in his monologue, I interrupt.

‘It just sounds so worrying for you, Bob. But you’re not alone on the island, are you? You have back-up against the natives? You have a partner, surely?’ My voice sounds suitably breathless.

‘Oh aye, Fuller. Percy Fuller,’ he says in a flat tone.

‘Does Mr Fuller go out fishing with you every time?’

I hope I’ve struck the right tone:
I’m so interested in you. I want to know every trivial detail.

‘No. He owns his own lugger,
Petrel
, and keeps his own crew. Kanakas and tame black boys. My lugger’s
Isabella
. Another fisherman, Porter Green, is on contract and works on
Isabella
with me. Fuller and I split the catch, but I’m thinking of changing that, seeing as he spends so much time gallavanting around instead of fishing.’

‘Oh, dear.’

I leave a substantial gap for further disgruntlement and he fills it.

‘Aye. I told him straight: I’ll buy ye out, but ye’ll not be my partner if ye don’t pull yer weight.’

My mind ticks over. Peculiar that Percy’s decided on slug fishing as a cover for his real business. This upcoming project of his and Roberts’s must somehow be accommodated by the trade.
Or perhaps the fishing is irrelevant and it’s Lizard Island he has an interest in.

French Charley’s and my piano are only minutes away, so I decide to risk a few more questions.

‘You must get a lot of sea traffic past your island, Bob?’

‘Oh aye.’ He nods in the dark. ‘Seems there’s always a steamer or schooner passing, north and south. We have a signal hill with flags to send messages to passing ships should there be the need.’

‘Really? How very interesting.’

Something’s tingling on the tip of my perception. Something to do with Charley Boule. When nothing resolves, I have to conclude that my third eye has a cataract from all the smoke in the salon. Never mind. There’s time. I’ll figure it out.

When we reach the front verandah of the bar Bob falls silent. I can tell he’s desperately trying to think of a way to justify a second assignation. In the pause, I hear a mechanical clicking noise coming from somewhere on his person. I mention it, and he looks slightly abashed. He pulls two battered silver balls about the size of human eyes from his right trouser pocket, rolls them around in his palm.

‘Medicinal balls. I bought them from Wang Fe down on the waterfront six months ago. Now I can’t leave them alone.’

‘What are they supposed to do?’

I’ve been inside the herbalist’s lean-to, seen the spiders in bottles, chunks of dried starfish, row on row of curiosities he grinds into powder and then expects his gullible patients to swallow. Metal balls seem fairly tame.

Bob tells me they’re to calm him when he’s nervous, amuse
him when he’s bored, help him think when he can’t concentrate. His eyes dart away.