The Secret Fate of Mary Watson (13 page)

‘I might just do that.’ But he’s looking at me when he says it.

Gloria wanders away. Percy pushes off the railing with one hand. He winks at me and I feel small pulses of blood at my temples.

‘Merry Christmas, Mary. I hope we both get what we want.’

And then he’s gone, leaving only the smell of tobacco, and the rack of my own discipline tightening behind my forehead.

Bob uses the stick to half-sway, half-hobble to the Sea Wah. It’s only a hundred yards from the pharmacy, but it takes us a good ten minutes. As we arrive, the first fat dollops of rain break open on the ground. Inside is stuffy and dark. Mrs Sea Wah, the Chinese owner’s wife, is waiting in the foyer. She hands Bob the key in a dainty swish of brocade gown and oriental perfume.

‘You need peace and quiet, Mista Watson?’

‘Peace and quiet would be lovely, Mrs Sea Wah,’ I answer for him. ‘Have you given Mr Watson a room a bit out of the way?’

A butterfly pin in her coiffed hair almost takes flight as she nods. ‘Number fourteen.’ Each stair’s a frayed mountain to climb. Bob won’t let me help him.

On the landing, I step ahead of him and open the door. The room’s spartan. Single bed. Chest of drawers. A window, closed now against the unpredictable weather. The air inside is stale and
wet. Mould spots the walls. Dead flies are scattered on the floor under the sill. The snuff of dust motes makes me sneeze.

‘This is a vast improvement on the dispensary,’ I say, but his mood hasn’t lifted.

I’m just about to leave him to soak in it when he hobbles to the bed, collapses onto it and pulls something from his shirt pocket. It’s a wad of cash held together with a clip.

‘I’ve just been paid for the slugs. I’ll give ye some money to go back to yer family in Rockhampton. Get away from Cooktown for a while. Tell them about me. If ye come back, well and good. If ye don’t, I won’t blame ye.’

I ignore his outstretched hand. Neither side of his face seems even remotely approachable.

‘If you want to be rid of me, Bob, you need only say so.’

‘It’s not that.’

‘Well, what is it then? You’re injured. You need me.’

‘I don’t need ye.’ And then, more gently, ‘A man must look after himself.’

I stare for a few seconds at his bandaged leg. ‘I’ll go and find Percy then, shall I? He can come and minister to you.’

‘I don’t need anyone!’ he says, louder, and pushes the notes towards me.

‘My family will try to talk me out of marriage with you.’

‘Aye.’ He nods, apparently having thought about it and become resigned to the possibility.

‘I don’t need Papa’s permission, Bob. I’m of age.’

‘Still, ye must do it.’ That stubborn, unyielding glare.

I try to process this new development. If I refuse to go, it will look like I’m hiding something. But what could be the reason Bob wants to send me away? He’s found out something
about me and/or the operation and he wants to know more? He thinks it will be easier to find out my real intentions if I’m not in Cooktown? Who could give me away? Charley, perhaps? Heccy? Not Percy now, surely? It’s apparent his Chinaman is not up to the task of signalling, and time is pressing on all of us …

Bob’s still holding his hand out with the money in it. There’s no excuse I could come up with that would seem reasonable. And the trip could have its own rewards. The last person I want to see is Papa. But Townsville is a port of call on the way to Rockhampton; the steamer would load coal there. And I definitely need to see Captain Roberts. It’s a risk, but if I could locate him in that few hours’ stopover, if I could talk to him frankly … I’d know whether or not to marry Bob.

The pound notes in his fist are starting to bend from the force with which he’s squeezing them.

‘Why are ye just standing there? I’ve not asked ye to dig yer way to China with a soup spoon.’

I reach for the money. ‘All right,’ I say, ‘I’ll go. But not until we’ve spent Christmas and New Year together. Think of it. A whole decade turning over its new leaf. What a wonderful omen for our … for the future.’

He adjusts his wounded leg, then leans back against the pillow with a grunt. I take the cash without looking down at it to ascertain the amount. The last thing I need him to think is that I’m money hungry. He gazes at me intently now, unsmiling. I tell myself it’s just the way light sways through the window that suggests suspicion in his gaze. His next words sound more like a business proposal than a heartfelt entreaty.

‘Be clear, I’ve asked ye to be my wife. I expect an answer when ye get back.’

Summer, 1880

5TH FEBRUARY 1880

The sky’s same moody stare. The same abrasive sun, rubbing a hole in the clouds. But the wharves at Townsville are different to Cooktown’s. Less mud and more activity. A termites’ nest of Chinese scurrying to load or unload cargo and passengers. Out on Ross Creek, a penny ferry pulls a seam tight in the water behind it. A wide flat-bottomed lighter loaded with wool bales is steered by four men with long oars — two slides forward, one slip back — out towards Cleveland Bay.

I’ve been locked in a waltz with a swaying deck for days. It takes a few minutes to adjust to the stillness of the dock. There’s a smell in the air I’m familiar with: the grisly mix of hot tallow, bone and blood. Smoke from a chimney well south of the docks confirms a boiling-down works.

‘Are you going into town too, Miss Oxnam, while they take on coal? Would you like to take a stroll along Flinders Street? There’s
a marvellous milliner here, they tell me. And my word, I do need a new hat.’

A boorish woman built like a bank-front gestures ruefully at what resembles a small marsupial curled up on her head and tied under her neck by its tail. She’s battered my ears with her drivel for two days.

‘A sunhat might be more appropriate here in the tropics,’ I venture.

‘Oh yes, but not on a shopping outing, dear. Only for on board.’ Her tone suggests I’m lucky she’s around to correct me before I make a serious
faux pas
in public. ‘I’ve seen a darling one I’d just die for. And I mean
die
. Just like the ladies are wearing to the races in London. Black crinoline it is, with a band of natty red velvet and a cluster of cerise roses.’ She clasps her hands together in an attitude of prayer to the deity of artificial flowers. ‘Twenty-seven and six, which is scandalous really, but these days you do have to pay for quality. As I was saying to —’

The entire three-hour stopover could be taken up with her finishing her sentence. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you to shop on your own, Mrs Buxton. I must meet someone.’

I’m saved when she gets a whiff of the boiling-down works. ‘Oh! What a stench!’

While she digs around in her bag for a handkerchief to hold over her nose, I make my escape.

After questioning a few sweaty dockhands, I learn that Samuel Roberts is in his favourite spot on the upstairs balcony of the Exchange Hotel.

He sees me cross Flinders Street and lifts his hat a fraction of an inch. How did he know I was here? One of his spies must
have seen me aboard the steamer, or else disembarking. I did ask his whereabouts on the dock. Had he already gleaned that I was headed south? Was I naïve to imagine, even for a second, that my life is my own any more?

I wave back and, in the process, neglect to see a buggy turn the corner at speed. Just in time, I overbalance backwards in the dirt. I see a rolling horse’s eye. A spoked wheel finishes inches from my face as the driver pulls violently on the reins. After some ‘sorries’ and ‘totally my faults’ and an admonishing ‘you should look where you’re going’, I’m pulled roughly to my feet by the captain himself. I wonder, dazedly, how he got himself down the stairs of the hotel so fast.

‘Are you hurt?’ he asks.

‘Only my pride.’

I dust off my brown skirt. His bearded figure looms over me, blocking out the sun. In my peripheral vision I see the buggy turn the next corner with considerably less horsepower.

‘You have me at a disadvantage now,’ I say. Then, even more inanely, ‘And doubly, because I’ve told you so.’

His eyes are charcoal, but the gap in his beard where I guess his mouth to be seems to lift, implying amusement. As if there has ever been a time when I have not been at a disadvantage in conversation with him.

‘I’m sorry. I’m babbling. I think I’ve just had my wits knocked out of me.’

‘I doubt it. You’re here to talk business, I assume?’

When I nod and straighten the waist of my skirt, he offers his arm to lead me the rest of the way across the road. The muscle beneath the long black sleeve, like the rest of him, is as unyielding as a rifle barrel.

Still babbling: ‘You don’t seem surprised to see me.’

‘No.’

‘Is there any time since I’ve been in Cooktown that you haven’t known exactly where I was and what I was doing?’

He thinks about this, searching his mind for the odd lost moment. ‘No.’

He gestures up the stairs to the verandah. The view from up there is pleasant, the light breeze refreshing, but he steers me by the elbow to a door. ‘Come inside. I have a drawing room out the back.’

He leads me into a dark room with a lamp blazing on a desk in the corner. Deep-red velvet curtains cover the windows. Black leather smoking chairs circle like wagons around a small occasional table. He walks over to a makeshift bar in the corner.

‘This is very plush,’ I observe, unsure whether to sit or stand.

‘I rent it for two shillings a week. It’s private. And no one disturbs me. Would you like a drink?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Sure? It might put some colour back into your cheeks.’

‘All right, then.’

I watch him pour whisky into two glasses and add lumps of ice from a bucket. He looks up and catches me examining my hand.

‘Only a graze,’ I say, and hold my hand out, palm up, to prove it.

He glances at the injury, hands me my drink, and gives his prognosis. ‘You’ll live. A bit of salve and a pair of tweezers for the tiny stones. What’s the underlying rash?’

‘I can’t seem to get rid of it. Perhaps it’s a Cornish prognostication. They’ve a superstition to fit every ailment.’

‘Perhaps it means the owner of the hand is about to pick up more than she can carry,’ he ventures dryly.

I take a sip of my drink. I’ve never been so close to him before. His clean skin has a particular smell, undisguised by cologne. Not unpleasant, just unsettling. Something restless under the surface, pacing the perimeters of self-imposed bars.

‘Sit down.’ He indicates a chair facing him, and I perch on the edge of it. ‘I don’t flatter myself you came all this way just to see me.’

The ice makes small cracking sounds as it surrenders to the potent liquid. I take another tentative sip. It’s strong, like swallowing bull ants in liquid form.

I tell him I’m on my way to Rockhampton to see my family.

He guesses the reason immediately, or maybe he already knows why. ‘So Watson’s asked you to marry him? Congratulations.’ He lifts his glass in a mock toast.

‘I won’t give him my answer until I know if I can have the signalling job on the Lizard.’

‘Haven’t you spoken to Fuller?’ He clearly can’t be bothered with the trivial detail of hiring and firing.

Another sip. The alcohol stiffens my tongue. ‘It’s not just a job to me, Captain. It’s my life on the line.’

‘Indeed it is.’

‘And, as it is my life, I’m not about to beat around the bush. Is that Chinaman of Percy’s on the Lizard to pounce on me if things don’t go to plan?’

‘It’s a little late to get cold feet.’

‘Cold feet I can cope with. It’s the rest of me I have a sentimental attachment to keeping warm.’

A flicker in those black eyes. ‘A healthy survival instinct is good. It will keep you on your toes. What news of Boule?’

Oh, just for once to get a straight answer, and not be left dangling over a pool of crocodiles!

I tell him quickly how, to the best of my knowledge, Charley’s not heading north to New Guinea anytime soon. I reach into my bag for copies of two notes the Frenchman gave me. ‘They seem to be grids of letters. I can’t make sense of them.’

Roberts takes them and walks to the light on the desk. He holds the notes under it, first one then the other. His face and arms throw long shadows on the wood.

‘Mmm. Playfair cyphers, at a guess. Just one step up from a substitution scheme. Pairs of letters are encrypted instead of singles. It will take me a while, but it won’t be too hard to crack.’ He straightens up. ‘Who are these intended for?’

‘I’ve delivered the first to Bill Smith at the Steam Packet Hotel in Cooktown. The second is for a bookshop owner, Monroe, in Rockhampton. Charley gave it to me when I told him I was sailing south.’

‘So Boule knows you are going to Rockhampton and exactly how long you’ll be gone?’

‘I had to tell him I wouldn’t be available to play piano. Why? Should I have been more vague?’

‘It’s not critical what you did or didn’t tell him. It just means, without you in Cooktown for a specified period of time, a situation there will need an even closer eye kept on it.’

‘What situation?’

But he’s turned his attention back to the notes. ‘If these are dates and times for drops or pick-ups in the passage, I’ll have to make sure they don’t correspond with ours.’

‘I don’t understand why you let Charley get in your way so often,’ I say, thinking of the fate of others foolish enough to try.

Roberts looks up, his dark eyes cold enough to burn. ‘Correct. You don’t understand. It’s not your business.’

I swallow the nervous saliva in my mouth. His next words take me by surprise, even though they are what I came to hear.

‘So. I take it you are prepared to assume the responsibilities of signaller on Lizard Island?’

There’s something I can’t identify in his tone. It couldn’t be satisfaction. Surely not?

‘Yes, Captain. Yes, of course.’

I sink back in the chair. Where’s the relief? The jubilation? The self-applause at my own cleverness? Could it be the cunning little rat feels herself quietly manoeuvred into a trap. With a big black tomcat standing over it.

‘I’ve a shipment of rifles for the Transvaal in July,’ he says.

‘The Transvaal? I thought the Zulus had been defeated.’ My glass is sweating long tears. I take another drink.

He strokes his beard, still studying the cyphers. ‘It’s the Boers. There’s trouble brewing over annexation. And now they’ve discovered gold at Witwatersrand … Fuller will explain the signalling procedure once you’re on the Lizard. There will be four changeovers altogether, but it’s only the swap in the passage that need concern you. My part is over after the drop in the Fijis.’

‘I see.’ Politics is not really my area of expertise. But I can’t afford to be indifferent when it’s politics that will be paying my wages.

‘Why would Britain choose such a convoluted route to move its armaments? I thought the idea of the Suez Canal was to make sea journeys more straightforward.’

He takes another drink and gazes into an empty fireplace. ‘After a while, you’ll lose your curiosity about such things. Thirty years I’ve been at it. I started off back in the fifties working for the
Chinese government in its war against the China Sea pirates. I learned early on not to ask questions.’

There’s silence for a few seconds, broken only by the far-off sounds of the street. I notice the smell of dirt from the back of my skirt, like stale brown yeast. The buckshot of stone in my palm still stings. I notice the painting on the wall for the first time. It’s a copy of Brueghel’s
Two Monkeys
. They’re chained together. One gazes out a round window at the wider world of a harbour. The other looks inwards towards the prison of a room.

Roberts’s next words are in a more contemplative tone. ‘At a guess, I’d say it’s an issue of detection by the French. Disraeli’s bought Ismail’s sharehold in the canal. But until the British can fully occupy Egypt, Grevy’s henchmen will be out with their spyglasses, baguettes and little pots of stinky cheese monitoring every dockside cargo. That’s why Britain will send a decoy ship carrying a few guns through the Suez at the same time.’

‘While the other vessel goes its merry way in the South Pacific with the bulk of the armaments. I take it the French want Africa too?’

A real smile now, and the long beard is made half an inch shorter. ‘Does a frog leap when you poke it with a stick? And they’re not the only ones. Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Spain, Italy. The only ones to miss out on a piece of Africa will be the Africans.’ He downs the last swallow of whisky, then looks at the empty glass as though more might spontaneously appear. ‘I’ll contact you and Fuller with encrypted notes while you’re on the island. It’s not unusual for passing boats to anchor in the harbour and visit the homestead. Neither is it irregular for passing vessels to deliver mail. Fuller visits Cooktown regularly enough if further contact becomes necessary.’

So that’s it then. I’m being dismissed.

I stand. ‘Will I see you again in person?’

‘Not unless there is a compelling reason.’ He meets my eyes, briefly. ‘Good luck.’

I look back at the picture. Which monkey is it worse to be, I wonder. The one that dreams of freedom? Or the one that accepts its fate?

If I survive my time on Lizard Island, I’ll leave with enough money to build a new future.

If.

He has one more thing to say before I leave. ‘Keep fast to your duties, Mary Oxnam. But mistrust everyone but yourself.’

I turn to face him. He’s standing in the shadows. ‘Even you, Captain?’

There’s a long pause. ‘Yes. Even me.’