Captive Wife, The (10 page)

A carriage draws up in the driveway. The two Roddick children are being delivered home after their outing.

‘You must leave now,' Adie says to Betty. ‘At once.'

But Betty has had a moment to register the children, bustling Mathilde and little Austen, both clutching wilted bunches of flowers, as they climb down, assisted by the driver of the carriage. Betty cries out then covers her mouth again with her shawl. ‘The little boy,' she says. ‘He is like my brother. He reminds me of David.' She turns and flees without speaking again.

Lieutenant Roddick unexpectedly dines at home. The children are excited but their father says they must not stay up late. Although Mathilde winds her arms around her father's neck, he is adamant that their tea will be served in the nursery. He has had cook make up their plates already. And he will thank Miss Malcolm to see that they eat what is put in front of them and that they go to bed on time. They need early beds, he pronounces, for tomorrow he expects them to resume lessons in the afternoon. I've heard you've been playing truant, naughty things, he chides.

As she supervises the children's meal, Adie Malcolm realises that Hettie, at least, had known the lieutenant would be home, for she has made several dishes. Adie eats modestly when she is alone; her digestion is not what it was. Today, when she calls at the kitchen for the children's supper, she sees that, as well as the oyster pie, there is roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and vegetables, and a pudding followed by a syllabub. Adie wonders aloud if there will be a number of guests, but Hettie says curtly that if there are, she hasn't heard about them. She is serving dinner for two.

Adie finds herself in a fresh state of agitation, wondering about the second person at dinner. She is unsure whether the lieutenant expects her to join him, or whether it is a friend, or perhaps another lady altogether.

Not for the first time, the unwelcome thought crosses Adie's mind that one day the lieutenant might remarry. Gerald Roddick does not suffer widowhood well. Thinking of this sends a shiver of despair through her. If he were to look for someone else, where would he begin? There is not a woman in the world who could match Emmeline. For the sake of the children, Adie tells herself, she must be alert to the kind of person who might seek to fill her friend's shoes. Her lips press themselves into a determined line.

‘We'll dine at eight,' says the lieutenant, catching her in the passage as she returns the children's plates to the kitchen. So that is one worry off her mind. And now her heart flutters with anticipation.

When they are seated at the dining room table, the lit candles flickering over the silver, Gerald clears his throat. ‘A little wine, Miss Malcolm?'

‘Just a tiny drop then,' she says, not wanting him to drink alone. He pours a glass of clear white wine to accompany the oyster pie that Hettie has left on the dresser for their entrée. The hot food sits on platters, under gleaming silver covers.

‘Perhaps you would be good enough to lift us each a slice,' he says. ‘I have asked that we dine without interruption.'

Miss Malcolm touches her fingers to her lips. A thought, so improbable that she can only blush, has just occurred to her. But surely she is too old? And as soon as she thinks this, as quickly she asks herself, too old for what? But straight away the answers present themselves. Perhaps not, after all. And, that. Not too old for that. She knows that the idea has been lurking there all along.

‘There's something I need to talk to you about.' His voice is a caress, as she serves up the pie. When she is seated, her fork
trembles on the rim of her plate. She takes a slow mouthful of pie, waiting for him to speak.

‘I understand you are seeing something of Mrs Guard,' he begins, his tone still soft.

Adie's heart falls like a cold stone. She had almost persuaded herself that nothing untoward had been taking place in her life that would be noticed by others. She can hardly credit that news has travelled so fast, for it has only been twice, and only this afternoon that Mrs Guard has come in any planned fashion. After a pause, she says, ‘That is so.'

‘I've heard that woman is not as good as she might be.'

‘I do beg your pardon? Mrs Guard has been through a terrible ordeal.'

‘She has spoken to you about it?'

‘Well, no. Not really.' She realises as she speaks that Betty Guard has talked to her a great deal and told her very little of consequence, so far as her rescue is concerned. ‘She speaks of her family. I think she feels alone in the world. Not that she has said so. But I sense something quite tragic about her.'

‘I wonder, from what's been said, if her captivity was as harsh as it sounded. She hasn't mentioned the native chief?'

Adie puts the cymbal of her noisy fork down. Her rapid breathing seems to fill the room. ‘I know nothing of this. Mr Barrett Marshall's gossip, I presume.'

‘The surgeon? He's left the colony.'

‘He was determined to make mischief,' Adie replies.

‘What he says can't be dismissed. He was a witness to what took place. Besides, there are others around who knew her in the Bay of Islands. People were shocked by her behaviour there.'

‘What did they say about her?'

‘I fear that I cannot repeat what I heard. Not to a lady. Let's just say that some things took place between her and a native man for which she appears to have no regret. And that her husband behaved abominably. There is a view that the woman is possessed.'

‘Possessed?'

‘As if by the devil. For how else could one account for a white woman having no shame about her dealings with the native tribes?'

‘Perhaps she does.'

‘Well, perhaps you could enlighten me. You know a public appeal was got up for the family?'

‘Yes, indeed, by the Kentishes, whom I understand were rendered the greatest of assistance by Mrs Guard and her establishment in New Zealand, when they were shipwrecked in that country.'

‘People are anxious about the Guards. They don't want to be taken for fools.'

Miss Malcolm thinks that Betty was right, that the oysters are a little off. The pastry is sticking to the roof of her dry mouth. She takes a gulp of wine. A bubble of wind rises in her stomach and she wonders why, whenever she is close to a man, her body lets her down in this remorseless way. ‘Are you asking me to make enquiries?'

‘Oh, it's neither here nor there to me,' Roddick says. ‘Have you had enough of that? We should try the roast beef.'

‘I don't think I could.' She doesn't know which she is refusing, the business of Betty Guard, or the meat that is to follow. ‘The Governor has been a great support to the Guards.'

‘He would be, of course — he has stood up for Guard. It is very political, and not everyone supports the Governor's views.'

‘Like the Bowmans?' she says, with a touch of bitterness.

‘I think it more than simple prejudice against the emancipists. Or the woman's reputation. The word is that Guard did not act well to the natives in Taranaki, and there could be a court of inquiry.'

‘And none of this was the fault of the military? I thought they were there to keep order.'

The lieutenant wipes perspiration from his brow. ‘More wine, Miss Malcolm? You must at least try the beef? Oh, nothing
to do with the soldiers. Guard and his men simply went berserk on their own account.'

‘Mrs Guard has told me nothing of her rescue. She seems easily distraught.'

‘Well, of course some unpleasant things happened. I would not like to see cannibals at their feast. Nobody should see that, let alone a woman,' says Roddick, wiping his moustache with his napkin. ‘Perhaps these things altered the state of her mind. All the same, it seems to me that Mrs Guard is not the kind of visitor we should encourage. There are the children to consider.'

She sees how black his moustache is against the white linen of the napkin, how crisp and manly he is. She cannot think of other words for it. Her throat clenches round the rising bubble of gas as she excuses herself from the table. What else to say, but another headache.

At the same time, she feels a stubbornness overtaking her. It was something her mother warned her about, and Percy had been all too keen to remind her of, in the past. But what difference has it made, when it has came to her brother, whether she was meek and mild, as opposed to wilful?

Then the lieutenant does something surprising. He catches her free hand and presses his lips to the back of it, before turning it over, and repeating the gesture in the palm of her hand. She sees it as a sign of his forgiveness, and something more. They have been aroused, she feels, by the open nature of their discussion. She is flooded with longing, to be touched more, and everywhere.

She feels his eyes follow her up the stairs.

When first light breaks Adie Malcolm gets up and brushes her hair before the mirror. Although it is deeply flecked with grey, it is still silky fine. She holds it in her hand, twisting it like a rope before releasing it again over her plump shoulders and is surprised by the effect. She does not entirely recognise the woman looking back at her — still plain, in need of better teeth
and with too many folds under her chin, but someone with brighter eyes and a better complexion than the last time she looked at herself. She dabs lavender water at the base of her throat and in the crooks of her elbows.

Adie goes to the window and pulls back the curtain. A tree in the garden is covered with what appear to be dense white magnolias, though she hasn't known magnolias to bloom in this part of the world. Surely she must be imagining those huge petals, about to unfold. In a moment, perhaps hearing the sound of the window latch, or because it is time for them to wake, the petals move and stretch, begin to flutter. A cloud of white cockatoos rises in unison with a whirr of wings and the tree is left bare. She lies down on the bed and sinks into a brief sleep.

10 January 1835
    

Dear Sir

I thank you for your esteemed correspondence and the concern you express for the welfare of my sister. As you say, she is a woman in middle life and has had her share of disappointments, for which I have to confess some responsibility. Perhaps I should have allowed her to remain back home, in the old country, for she does not seem to have settled well in the Colony. I had hoped that her longing for a family of her own might be tamed and subdued by her work amongst the poor when she arrived here, but that did not happen.

Unfortunately, she believed when we came here that I would remain at the centre of her life. You understand, for I am speaking very frankly, that she considered her life's work as caring for me, and ironing my shirts and cleaning my shoes while I did business in the new town of Sydney. I should have disillusioned her of these plans, for that was never my intention. Nor, I believe, could she have imagined the place she would find, for her head
has always been in a make-believe world of gods and heroes from the ancient times. I have been troubled, on seeing these preoccupations of hers, that she might lose sight of the very God of very Gods, the great Creator who made us all, and to Whom I have been drawn ever closer since my marriage to my dear Maude and the birth of our two sons, Herbert and Nathaniel. Nathaniel is a very recent arrival, a joy beyond our wildest hopes. Truly, my wife is a miracle.

I hope my sister is not foolish enough to think that you might take the place of a brother to her. I am sure someone as estimable as you will attend to any such aspirations with firmness and gentle courtesy. [Here the letter has been partly scratched out, and started again, as if the writer has considered a number of ways to address the problem he sees.]

As to your children, my dear sir, I am convinced that my sister will bring no harm to them. I believe that if you hold your ground, she will soon see the error of her ways.

If the worst comes to the very worst, I will of course take her in, until such time as a suitable berth can be arranged for her return to England, and I am able to work out a settlement to keep her in comfort. I have had a little cottage built near the river bank, our household staff having now expanded with the arrival of Nathaniel. I might be able to accommodate my sister there. But let us hope that it does not come to that.

Thank you for your patience, may the good Lord succour you in the sorrows you currently endure.

My wife sends you her kind regards.

Yours faithfully

Percy Malcolm

PS Mrs Malcolm says, and I am in agreement with her, that a firm line should be taken. My sister suffers from too good an opinion of herself. I hope you will not see that as unChristian, but it is best to be aware of her true nature. My wife is a practical woman. I feel bound to deliver her opinion along with my own.

I am not sure that Miss Malcolm is giving me her full attention today. There is something different about her, both excited and watchful. I have liked the attention she has given me in all our conversations, for the rest of my life feels bereft. Jacky has stayed so distant towards me I cannot bear it. All the last week he has slept in the big chair in the kitchen. I have been thinking of taking the children to my mother's place, but there is no room for the children and me to be comfortable. Louisa is little better, though I try to tell myself it is not so. Her eyes implore me to give her comfort I do not have. I should be with her, but I will go mad if I do not get away from the Rocks and the glare in my husband's eyes. In this spacious airy house, I can think of myself as some other person not weighted with the burden of the past. I imagine myself in this parlour, receiving visitors with an inclination of my head and a small smile, pouring out tea and offering a scone and a slice of fruitcake. I would, of course, have done something about the upholstery.

What I see in the governess is a kind of happiness which
cannot be explained, and she is not going to tell me. I have brought her a gift of some enamelled buttons. They are quite fragile, painted with tiny blue cornflowers against a white background. I have cut them from an old dress of mine that was stored in the bottom of the wardrobe at the Cambridge Street house. I tell her that they will look nice on the dress she had worn last week, which was nice enough but plain.

Her face had lit with pleasure. You shouldn't bring me these gifts, she'd exclaimed, but I could tell she was pleased. Nothing in this house will belong to her.

As if reading my mind, she said simply: Everything of my mother's that was brought from England is at my brother Percy's place. Percy and Maude's.

After inspecting the buttons and exclaiming some more over them, she assumes again an attitude of listening, as if for someone in the house. This is cook's day off, she says. I'm sure she will have gone to town.

This explains her fidgeting. I ask if we should leave it for another day.

No, not at all, Betty, for I find your story riveting. There is so much I want to ask you.

It is my story, I say, and you must not ask me things.

I am sorry, she says. I did not know there were rules.

Well, of course there are. If you ask things I cannot tell you about, you are no better than my husband and my aunt. Without meaning to, I put my hands around my ears.

Betty, says Miss Malcolm, I am sorry to have upset you. If you would like to leave it for today you have only to say.

So we are going around in circles, she and I.

We sit in silence for a minute or two. The mantel clock ticks very loudly
dud dud dud
.

With an effort, she says, I would like you to call me by my Christian name.

Adie? I cannot hide my astonishment.

It is how friends address each other.

Thank you, I say. I know what this must have cost her. I'll stay a little while, I say, because something tells me I may not see her for some time. I don't know what it is, a premonition or a warning, my Granny would say.

I cannot stop thinking of David, I tell Adie. She shifts uneasily, and I remember I had alarmed her with likening the little boy Roddick to my brother.

Still, it is true. I think of him more, now that I am living back here at the Rocks, than I did in New Zealand, for I keep expecting to see him when I turn a corner. David. Beloved boy, I might add, but it sounds fancy. Instead, I say, he was like an angel, that boy. I remember first seeing him, even though I was only two when he was born. He was wrapped tightly in a sheet, and very still, which frightened me. I wondered if I'd imagined that for most children can't tell you clearly about their early memories; usually what you think you have seen is what has been described to you by others. But I asked Granny when I was older if I had seen this right. She gave me a sharp look and said yes, this was exactly as it had been, and I must be a child with second sight. I don't think this is so, for if I had been able to look ahead I don't know that I would have followed Jacky Guard the way I did. Perhaps it would have been better if I had known what to expect.

Or perhaps it was simply that when Granny left us for the afterlife, I stopped seeing things so clearly.

My uncles had disappointed their parents by moving away from the farm, so there was nobody to take it over when the family decided to move to Sydney. In my mind, I hold a picture of Granny, on the last day at the farm, walking beneath the trees she had planted, the fruit of which she had gathered and made into sweet jams and preserves, the trees where her children had swung and built houses of their own. Though I was very young at the time, I still hear the melody she was singing, the convicts' song
which she did often sing, only usually more heartily as if it were a bit of a joke. Not that day.

My mother liked all the people around us in Sydney, but Granny said it was the worst day's work she ever did, packing up and leaving the farm.

She looked around her and saw terrible sights at the Rocks and wished her grandchildren elsewhere. It was not just the public hangings and the drinking, it was the way we all lived cheek by jowl with the next person in the narrow cramped alleyways, and having to walk through the streets to the standpipes for water. It was the smell of rotting meat and rubbish we couldn't get rid of, and cesspits in the garden. The smell of your own — well, I beg your pardon — is bad enough but that of a dozen other families on a hot day gets you down. But on the good side of the ledger, when we first left the farm we had money in our pockets, and there were many things to buy. We bought cups and saucers, enough for everyone, and matching china dishes in blue and white, a kettle and a tea caddy, we bought linen and nice clothes, umbrellas for the rain and lamps that cast a pretty glow at night. It is not all bad at the Rocks, whatever people might think, looking in on us from the outside.

But my grandfather who had moaned about the farm now wished he was back there, and in a short while he was dead, and by that time there wasn't much money left at all, though Granny had managed to save a little.

Before long, my mother gave birth to my sister Sophia. At least as far as I know, she was my father's child, for by that time my mother had begun to act differently, singing and dancing around the house and staying out late. My grandmother's face
would grow black with rage. Sophia was born without trouble. She slipped and fell from my mother onto the kitchen floor before Granny had time to catch her, and no damage done.

I don't know what my father thought about all this. Of course it was a man who had brought about this change in my mother. He was a convict, a sawyer by trade, called John Deaves, Deaves being the name you first knew me by. His skills were in demand and he was wealthier than my father. He lived at Lane Cove and before you could say three farthings, my mother had gone there to live, and was in the family way again with the first of my three half-brothers. I don't believe Granny ever saw any of these boys. She told my mother she didn't want to set eyes on them. She was left with all three of us on her hands, David and Sophia and myself, not to mention my father Stephen Parker moping around the house and drinking himself to death.

I became Granny's right hand from the time I was old enough to do my first errand. She was soft on David too. Anyone would have been, he was more like a girl than a boy. He had yellow curls, not like the rest of us who are mostly dark and take after Granny Pugh. His red lips puckered up like a girl's, so that ladies always wanted to kiss him. Some people treated him as if he was odd. That is, until the day he tried to save our father's life.

After his daily round of the Cat and Fiddle and the Currency Lass when my father came home his face was red, and he stumbled about breaking things. Granny was taking in laundry, and she had had enough of this. The copper was always on the boil and our house smelt like clothing stew. As in Parramatta, she grew a garden too, but it was just a little pocket square of land, not enough to feed five mouths. My mother dropped by from time to time, wearing silks and a shawl with a beaded fringe, and left some coins for Granny. My Aunt Charlotte had taken up with a man called Garside; the two of them were servants for John Guard, my husband as he became. I've heard from my aunt, when she's in a nasty frame of mind, that he fancied her but she fell with her first baby when he was away at sea, and that was
that. But at least she was employed and now and then she would leave a shilling for Granny, not because of us, but because Granny was her mother too.

Granny hid these little takings but my father usually found out where they were, even though she changed the place every time. One day she told him he should go and leave her to bring us children up on her own.

His eyes filled up with tears and there was an embarrassing quaver in his voice when he spoke.

I'll change my ways, he told Granny, I'll go to sea with Jacky Guard.

He won't take you, she said. He's a hard man, you have to work for people like him.

I had met Jacky Guard a time or two when we visited Charlotte and was afraid of him. He hadn't long been at sea since his discharge, but already there were some cruel stories around him.

You don't know, my father said.

I do, because I've already asked him.

Bugger you, you old hag, he yelled at her then. You'd send me away from my children? First their mother deserts them, and whose frog spawn is she? Now you want to send me away. They will have no parents at all.

I understood from the way he spoke that my father had a sore heart over my mother.

At that, Granny sighed. Look Stephen, she said, I don't like what has happened any better than you, but I cannot feed these children and your drinking as well.

My father took his coat then and went out. Perhaps Granny thought that was the last she would see of him, but that night he came home sober, his hands red and raw from hanging on the end of a pick, breaking rocks all day. He gave her five shillings and she was pleased with him. This kept on all week, and on Sunday, my father said he would take David for a ride around the harbour and they would perhaps pull in a fish or two.
David was a wee boy, only six at the time, and you could see him glow with excitement. It was as if his father had seen him for the first time ever, and perhaps that he was in need of a father's attention, for the boys in our street gave him grief, called him names and threw stones if he went near to join in any games. I was the one who taught him how to play hopscotch, and roll his marbles. It was me who taught him how to swim and hold his breath when he dived beneath the surface of the water in the bay.

When my father suggested this treat David swelled up with joy. For a moment I felt the green-eyed monster at my shoulder for I too would have liked to go out in a rowboat. But then I tried to take pleasure in the way David smiled and skipped.

It will be your turn next Betsy, said my father, and this was the first time he had ever called me this name. I've wondered since if this was his rebellion against the way my grandfather and my mother had joined forces to give me a name without consulting him.

The boat had been lent to my father by one of the men he worked alongside. It was a solid-looking craft. The day was perfect, the harbour aglitter in the sun and as settled as cream in a jug. And yet, in Cockle Bay, the boat overturned, perhaps a sudden wave. I've seen it happen more than once in New Zealand, a surge like a spirit that changes the shape of things in a moment. Whatever it was, my father was not strong enough to contain the boat in its larrikin skip and jump, and he and David were both in the water.

A passing boat stopped and picked them out of the drink within a few minutes, but my father had already gone and drowned, and might have dropped straight to the deep had not David been holding onto his hair trying to keep his face out of the water, his little feet dog paddling as fast as they could on the spot.

That is how they found them.
People brought food and money for the funeral. John Deaves gave a sizeable amount. Is it blood money, my grandmother asked, with scorn. She took it anyway. It would be a respectable funeral, she said. Even my mother wore black mourning dress and jet beads.

My father was laid out in his coffin in our parlour, wearing my grandfather's second best suit (of course, grandfather had been buried in his best one) and though it was very short on my father's long body you couldn't see that when the sheets were in place. Afterwards, a carriage was hired to take him to the cemetery.

A year or so passed and people forgot we were poor. There was always someone else who was in need. I saw Granny was finding it hard to breathe some mornings. Her face went a nasty spotty red as she gasped for air. Sometimes she acted strangely and I heard her talking to herself, though what she muttered I couldn't tell. She often sang the old songs. One day I found her sitting in the kitchen with the fire out, and she was singing in a rickety old voice.

This is a song often sung at the Rocks, but never with such pain as I heard in Granny's voice that day.

I look up, and see tears in Adie's eyes. One rolls down her round cheek, and she dabs at it with a handkerchief.

Another time, Granny stood backside out to the street and lifted her skirts at the world for all to see. I pretended I hadn't noticed and chased after Sophia to stop her falling in the well, doing what I could.