Ember Island (35 page)

“I . . .” Her heart thudded in her throat. “We’ve been working in the garden together.”

“He said he saw you talking more than working.”

“Is that a crime?”

He frowned. “I’d advise against it.”

She spoke quickly. “Yes, I admit Hettie and I talked. A lot. Perhaps more than we should have. So I may as well tell you that I
don’t understand why she has such a long sentence when it’s clear she acted in self-defense and—”

Sterling was half out of his seat, waving his hands in a “stop” gesture. “Tilly, Tilly, no. No. Do not say another word.”

Embarrassment suffused her cheeks.

Sterling paced. “I blame myself. Perhaps I did not warn you sufficiently. We give the prisoners numbers for a reason, so that we can interact with them impartially. You ought not have befriended this woman to such a degree that you are calling her by name and speaking to her about her crime.”

“But she says—”

“She is a murderer, Tilly,” he said, whirling around to face her. “After I spoke to Mr. Donaghy, I checked her records. She killed her husband, the man she stood beside, in the eyes of the Lord, and promised to love and honor. She got him drunk on potent homemade whiskey and then held two pillows over his face until he stopped breathing.”

Tilly paused a moment as the image sunk in. Hettie’s hard, raw hands around a pillow, a slack-limbed man beneath it, growing more and more still. “Yes, but he was beating her,” she said in a quiet voice.

“Is this what she has told you?”

“Yes.”

“Because the court records something quite different. He had been working up in the gold fields for six months. She had taken up with another man. On her husband’s return, she murdered him so that she could be with this other man. Her lover helped her dispose of the body and is currently serving a sentence for it back on the mainland.”

Shock and embarrassment fought for precedence in Tilly’s body. She felt cold and warm all at once. Why had the court
recorded such a different version of events? Was Hettie lying? Or was the court biased against Hettie? Tilly could imagine that so easily: women were rarely afforded fair treatment in any other aspect of public life.

He must believe what he believes about us, even if it’s only half true.
Tilly had seen too many times how men’s opinions of women were formed out of what they heard from other men, not what they had observed from the behavior of actual women.

“I can see I will have to take 135 off garden duties,” he muttered, returning to his seat.

“No! Don’t do that. That’s unfair to her.”

“She should know better than—”

“No. I’m to blame. I was too friendly. I asked her about it. If anyone should be forbidden from being in the garden, it should be me.”

Sterling looked at her. Pity again. Sadness. Regret. Nothing good, nothing promising. “Very well, Tilly. Stay out of the garden. It’s nearly autumn anyway. I can send one of the prisoners up to rake up leaves and pull weeds. Perhaps, in spring, we’ll review the situation. But I want you nowhere near that prisoner.”

Tilly nodded, feeling like a naughty schoolchild.

Sterling seemed about to say something else, but then he stopped himself.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I will need to speak to you at length tonight. About . . . other things. About us. About Nell.”

Tilly’s heart sank. “Your tone frightens me.”

“There is nothing to be frightened of, Tilly, my dear,” he said, in a gentler voice. “I am not frightened.”

Still, he wasn’t smiling. And Tilly feared the worst.

•

Tilly could barely concentrate on her teaching that afternoon, so she was a good match for Nell who could barely concentrate on her lessons. In the end they decided that, as the tide was low, they would walk down to the small strip of sandy beach and look for shells to draw the next day. They tied on their bonnets and took a basket and honey sandwiches for afternoon tea.

“I have so missed the sound of the sea,” Nell said, sitting on a rock and removing her shoes and stockings. She jammed her toes into the sand and wriggled them energetically. “The city is very noisy. Trams rattling and horses running about.”

Tilly removed her own shoes and stockings and walked down the sand to the water. She lifted her skirts and stepped in. The sea was warm, but the breeze coming off it was cool and fresh.

“I think we should give this beach a name,” Nell said. “Something like Seven Yard Beach.”

Tilly turned. Nell’s face was in the sun. Something about her fine, pale skin made Tilly ache with affection. “Prisoners’ Cove,” she said.

“Shark Beach,” Nell said, grinning mischievously. “Don’t go out too far, now, Tilly.”

Tilly laughed and kicked water at her. “I think Seaweed Beach or Jellyfish Beach would be more descriptive. There are plenty of both around.”

“I like Seven Yard Beach. It sounds poetic, but I think it is only seven yards or so across. I think I might draw a map of the island this afternoon and name all the places. What about the escarpment?”

“Sterling Cliff,” Tilly said, immediately.

“Ooh, yes. Sterling Cliff sounds very foreboding. With
Starwater House directly on top, looking out to Seven Yard Beach and Stockade Flats.” She stood up and came down to join Tilly in the water, circling her waist with her arms. “I’ll draw sea monsters all around the island.”

Tilly put her arms around Nell in return. They stood like that for a few minutes, the shallow waves lapping at their feet, and Tilly closed her eyes and felt the sun in her hair and the sweet breath of contentment in her lungs. Nell loved her, and she loved Nell. Sterling’s cautionary tone would melt under such a truth.

Then they stepped apart.

“Honey sandwiches?” Tilly asked.

“Let’s.”

They sat together on flat rocks by the sand, eating and chatting, as the afternoon shadows grew long and the tide began to turn.

•

Sterling was too busy to join them for dinner. It was nearly nine o’clock in the evening when he knocked lightly on Tilly’s door.

She opened it, heart thudding. “I thought I’d never see you.”

“I’m sorry. The reason I do not like to take leave is because it makes so much more work when I get back.”

“Come in,” she said, opening her door wide. She wore only her nightdress and dressing gown.

“No. No, I . . . Can you please get dressed and come to the parlor? I’ll pour us sherry.”

Tilly nodded and he closed the door.

She quickly found a housedress and changed into it, but didn’t bother to pin her hair and put stockings on. She went barefoot to the parlor, where Sterling waited, gazing out the window. Two sherries sat on the low table.

Tilly cleared her throat.

He turned. His dark eyes looked sad, and the sadness instantly transferred to her. She wanted to turn and run and not hear what he had to say to her.

“Sherry?”

She wordlessly picked up her glass.

He took her free hand in his, stroked her fingers gently. “It’s too soon for Nell.”

“Nell loves me.”

“It’s too soon for me.”

She had no response.

“It’s too soon for everything. The circumstances of our . . . consummation were so unusual. There was wildness in the night, in the air. We did the wrong thing.”

“I love you, Sterling.”

“We mustn’t talk of love. We must talk of care and responsibility. We are not wild animals, Tilly. I am more fond of you than I can say, but Nell’s well-being is my first concern. I can’t have her running off again and—”

“That was nothing to do with overhearing us talking of love, Sterling. That was her fear of being sent to boarding school. You know that.”

“I do not know what else she has heard or intuited. I just know that she veers between sweetness and aggression, she is fearful and unsettled. She dreamed nearly every night of her mother while we were away. It is too soon.”

Tilly fought tears. “Then what’s to become of me? Am I to lose my job?”

“No, of course not. We will continue as friends for now. We will proceed slowly. Please do not interpret my words as a
rejection of your affections, Tilly. You are dear to me. But now is not the time for us.”

“Then when?”

“We will know when the time is right.”

“When you say ‘we,’ I think you mean ‘you.’ I am not part of this decision.” Her temper had been ignited. She hung on grimly to the last bough of calm in her heart.

“I hope you will see things my way as my view is very sensible.”

Single-minded. Stubborn. Holier than thou
. “And my way isn’t sensible? Or is it simply not worth listening to?”

Still, not a spark of anger or passion in his voice, almost as though the more flammable the situation became, the slower and more reasonable his tone became. This infuriated Tilly, who was fast being positioned as the hysterical party in this exchange. “You are very young, Tilly. It is perhaps my major misgiving about our . . . relationship, especially after seeing your ill judgment with regards to prisoner 135. You are nowhere near old enough to be Nell’s mother and, yes, she loves you, but not as a mother. You and Nell and I: we are not a family.”

Tilly felt the ground fall away from beneath her. Not a family. But that was precisely how she’d been imagining the three of them. Now Sterling was pushing her away, with vague reassurances of “fondness” and a time in the future when there might be a chance for them to be together. Well, she was having none of it.

She threw her sherry glass on the floor. It shattered into bright pieces. “You impossible man,” she shouted. “How dare you play with my heart in such a way?”

And Sterling was shocked: she could see it in the way his pupils dilated, in the way his skin turned pale. He had not seen her angry before. She had managed her temper so well for so long. “Tilly,
I never meant to play with your heart. I admit what I did was immoral—”

“No it wasn’t. It was beautiful and you know it was. Don’t reduce it to a sin, a shameful secret.” Sobs bubbled up now. “What have I done in my life to deserve such raw treatment at the hands of men? Are you all as cruel and thoughtless as each other?”

Sterling fell silent, realizing that anything he said would become fuel on the fire. She glared at him as the broken glass glinted on the rug between them, catching the lamplight. Nothing she could do or say would change his mind; and why should he anyway? It had been doomed from the start. He knew nothing about her shameful past.
He didn’t even know her real name.
Her shoulders drooped.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I will clean up that mess on the floor.”

“Don’t concern yourself,” he said, not meeting her eye. “I’ll get the staff to do it. Go. Find some peace and comfort on your own.”

Palming tears off her face, she ran from the parlor. She should have known nothing would ever come of her feelings for Sterling. Her future would not exist until she had atoned for her past.

•

That night, her sleep was riven with nightmares. She woke again and again from fragmented sleep, in and out of images of fire and broken glass, of ghostly shapes condemning her, of Sterling and Nell on a ship receding further and further into a foggy distance while she sat upon the cold shore frozen with misery.

When dawn finally came, she lay awake, eyes on the canopy of her bed, and sifted through the terrible images. Why would she have such a night of terrible dreams? She wasn’t ill. She hadn’t
drunk too much sherry. There could be only one reason. God was punishing her, showing her that she was not worthy of love or comfort because she had committed a terrible sin. He knew what was in her heart, even if nobody else did.

She feared the future. She feared Judgment.

Tilly knew exactly what she must do.

•

All through the next day, Tilly’s mind flicked on and off her plans. She watched Nell drawing in a sunbeam that fell through the library window and stroked her hair gently, her mind wandering elsewhere. Out in the garden, in the cane fields, in the mangroves, on the bay. Afternoon came. A fresh wind from the southeast. The season was turning. Soon it would be Easter and Nell said the damp clinging heat of the wet summer would be behind them. Tilly could see the trees moving in the wind outside, the palms, green and golden, flapping madly.

“Time to finish up,” Tilly said, right on the dot of four.

Nell sprang from her seat. “See you at dinner.”

The nape of Tilly’s neck prickled with anticipation, as if any moment a firm, hot hand would come down on it, stop her, press her down. She moved out onto the verandah, breathed the sea-salted wind. The garden, that place she was forbidden from entering, waited. She couldn’t see Hettie, but she would be in there. Somewhere.

Tilly took her time, made sure that Sterling wasn’t about to step out of his office, that Nell wasn’t about to burst onto the verandah demanding Tilly come and read with her, that Mr. Donaghy wasn’t about to walk up the stairs. But it was a quiet and empty afternoon, almost as though the world was
retreating in the face of the dry, cool season that was nearly upon them.

One foot in front of the other, into the forbidden garden. Down past the roses, past the Grecian woman, past the shady magnolias, past her own tidy, colorful plot. And there was Hettie, kneeling on the grass, pulling weeds and collecting them in a wooden bucket.

Hettie glanced up and smiled. Tilly skidded to the ground next to her, adopted an urgent voice. “I’m not meant to be here.”

“Why?”

“Sterling thinks we have become too close.”

Hettie’s forehead wrinkled in concern. “Will they take me out of the garden?”

“No, I made him forbid me from coming here instead. Listen. Carefully. I have to tell you something.”

“What is it?” Hettie’s gaze was fully upon her, round eyes, dark strands of hair loose and trailing across her florid cheeks. “Is it something bad?”

“No, it’s something good,” Tilly said. “I’m going to help you escape.”