The Secret Fate of Mary Watson (14 page)

Autumn, 1880

2ND MARCH 1880

Twelve-year-old Carrie and I stroll the waterfront towards Monroe’s bookshop. It’s the first time I’ve felt able to breathe since my arrival. The atmosphere in the family home is, to put it charitably, poisonous.

I’d sent a telegram from Cooktown to let Mama and Papa know I was coming. I’d phrased it as though I’d thought to see them before marrying. I’d tried, unsuccessfully perhaps, to make it read as a kind of peace offering. Of course, I had no way to know if it worked. I didn’t expect a telegram in response, and couldn’t wait for one in any case. So, when the ship docked in Rockhampton, my stomach churned. A sick headache pounded behind my eyes. The rash on my hands flared and I found myself compulsively running my palms up and down the sides of my dress to relieve the burning itch.

But there was no getting out of it.

I scanned the crowd for their faces: saw Mama’s, careworn, under her blue bonnet. And, standing next to her, Papa. His waistcoat askew. His face with a glazed, fixed stare I knew only too well. It took all my courage not to run.

Up close, the stink of rum. He couldn’t have shaved for the occasion, no. He lunged for me. Planted a wet, sadistic kiss on my cheek while his hands held my arms in a vice. I swallowed, every inch of me cringing.

‘Well, well. It’s my darling daughter. She just couldn’t keep away …’

I wrenched back with a shudder and turned to Mama. I knew what she must see in my eyes: that stupid, weak child pleading for protection. But some things never change. Her mouth, as always, was a painted rim, edging the dish where she washed her hands of everything.

‘Hello, Mary. Lovely to see you, dear. Good trip?’

But I’ve managed for nearly three weeks. Only a few more days, then the steamer will head north again, with me on it. Only a few more days to keep holding my new-found independence up in front of me like a shield.

What can he do to me in just a few days?

Out on the water, a slow-moving cutter makes its way sedately up the river. The heat is calmer, drier, here in Rockhampton. When I ran my brush through the requisite hundred times this morning, hair clung to the bristles. Ground and air seem to have a different relationship. In Cooktown, the pressure always pushes down from above. Here, the sky is only lightly tethered to the ground.

If only my heart were so buoyant.

Carrie’s chattering away. My ears have only been half-listening. I realise why when I give her my full attention. She’s luminously
pretty in her white dress with the pink sash, and transparently boring as she shares the mechanics of creating the kiss curls that hang over each of her ears. Apparently, sugar-paste works better than gum at keeping them in place, but there’s the issue of attracting bees and hornets while outdoors. This last comment intrigues me. It gives a whole new meaning to a head abuzz with thought.

A boy in short pants rides past on his penny farthing. He almost overbalances in his attempt to get a better look at Carrie; the penny wheel totters like loose change, the much smaller farthing wheel at the back skitters to one side.

He veers around the corner, and I turn to her. ‘Another admirer?’

‘Oh, that’s just Thomas Rielond. He’s such a child. Only sixteen.’

‘If he’s a child, what does that make you?’

She gives me a condescending look. ‘I’m a woman now, Mary. It happened when you first went to Brisbane.’

‘Physical changes don’t make a woman.’ A bitter tablet’s dissolving in my throat. This isn’t news I wanted to hear. My next words are weighted. ‘How are things at home?’

‘Awful.’ She wrings her hands. ‘Poor Papa started drinking again, and it’s all the bank manager’s fault for refusing to extend his line of credit. If only someone would give him a chance!’

I realise then how busy he’s been, working on her mind since I’ve been gone. I’m starting to feel nauseous again.

‘He’s had chances all his life, Carrie. And he’s bungled them.’

My voice sounds faint to my ears, as if I already know she won’t listen to me. And why should she? I’ll be leaving again soon, and she can’t let me dismantle her ways of coping. Once the blinkers are removed, her life will become intolerable. As mine did.

A barge passes us, ironing the water flat. I lift my face a little to a sudden gust of breeze. But Papa opens his puppet’s mouth again.

‘Why are you so hard on him, Mary? Is it because he didn’t marry Mama before you were born? Or the late christening?’

‘First illegitimate, and then left to the Devil, that’s me,’ I say with a flippancy I don’t feel. ‘Do you know, the old biddies back in Cornwall think Hades is in the north? The day Papa finally got around to the baptism, they moved the font to the north door. That way I could toddle out and straight into Satan’s arms. After eighteen months, I was already damned, you see. No sprinkle of holy water was going to make a difference.’

A single slate-grey cloud hangs above us. Otherwise, the day is clear and, unlike life, defined with a sure pencil around its edges.

Carrie’s face pales. ‘Oh dear.’

‘Silly girl. Don’t believe any of that nonsense. If God would blame a child for something that wasn’t her fault, then I’d rather cosy up to the other side anyway.’

The cloud pulls its dirty pillow slip over the sun. Carrie looks up, her voice a whisper. ‘Look. He heard you. You shouldn’t be so blasphemous.’

I shrug. ‘He’s never listened before. Why would He start now?’

The breeze coming off the water smells … not stagnant, exactly, but lifeless. With mossy undertones, as though the river’s been breathed in and out through eroded banks too many times. My palms itch again. Damn John Adam and his useless, expensive cream.

‘Try not to be alone with him,’ I say.

‘Why?’

Her voice is almost convincingly perplexed. It’s as though she’s trained herself to move carefully around an unthinkable idea without running into its sharp edges.

I stop her with a hand on her arm. ‘Listen, Carrie. I mean it. Whatever he says to you, however he tries to justify his actions …’

The flesh beneath the white leg-o-mutton sleeve goes taut. Her mouth trembles at the corners.

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. You deserted the family. You have no right to an opinion.’

She looks away before I can see her expression. I have to guess what I might see when she turns back. Divided loyalty? Fear? Uncertainty?

‘Papa’s right about you,’ she says finally, and shakes me off. Angrily, now. Her head flicks to the front, her features as blank and regimented as a soldier on parade. ‘There’s no worse punishment for a parent than an ungrateful child.’

I open my mouth to defend myself but my emotions are jumping over each other, paralysing speech. The unuttered words have only one direction to go — inside and down, past the lump in my throat, past the pain in my chest, to settle in a deep uneasy hollow where they release their toxin.

The distraction inside the shop is a relief. That safe story smell of silverfish and ink. Ideas trapped between thin pages, where they can do no harm.

A middle-aged man appears. I assume it’s Mr Monroe. Whoever he is, he looks like my mental picture of Augustus Snodgrass, the friendly poet from
The Pickwick Papers
.

Carrie whispers, as though she’s in church, that she’ll wait outside. A brief splash of sunlight falls on the floor as she leaves. The door tinkles in reverse, a duller sound than on entering, the bell’s tongue clucking with disappointment at another lost customer.

‘May I help you?’ I expect him to hook two thumbs into the small pockets of his waistcoat, but he doesn’t. ‘Your young companion, she’s not well?’

A ruffle-wristed hand points in Carrie’s direction. She’s sitting on the courtesy bench outside, cooling herself with a white paper fan.

‘My sister doesn’t enjoy books as I do. Unless they are about what the fashionable ladies on the Continent are wearing.’

He nods conspiratorially. ‘I have observed that the more decorative a woman, the less her interest in serious reading.’

If he realises he’s just insulted me, there’s no sign of it. I let my eyes wander over the shelves, hoping he takes the hint.

‘Is there anything in particular? Or are you just browsing?’

‘The latter,’ I say.

As I wander the aisles, I can just hear Carrie humming a tune. Slightly off-key, like a disoriented bee in the background. Past Shakespeare, past Trollope. I don’t mind the cobwebs, or the layer of dust over everything. It has been so long since I’ve had a decent book to read. Bob’s given me a generous amount of money. More than I need for my return trip. I’m sure, given the isolation of the Lizard, he wouldn’t begrudge me some hours whiled away in words.

I pick up a compendium of novelettes by Charles Dickens, drawn by the titles of the stories: ‘Hunted Down’ and ‘The Detective Police’. I also reach for Edmund Hodgson Yates’s
Running the Gauntlet.

I take them to the counter, then wait while Augustus Snodgrass wraps each book in brown paper and string. Increasing the world’s load of banality, he ventures, ‘You’ll have reading matter for some time.’

‘I’m to live on an island after my marriage,’ I tell him. ‘I expect I’ll get through them quickly and be looking for more.’

‘An island! My word.
Robinson Crusoe
would be just the thing.’

‘Yes, it would. If I hadn’t read it already.’

‘I see a definite trend in the titles you have chosen. A young lady for intrigue and adventure?’

You don’t know the half of it, Augustus!

‘I love taxing my mind with a good mystery. Oh, and speaking of mysteries … Mr Monroe, is it?’

He nods, curious.

‘I have a delivery for you.’

‘For me?’ One hand finds his chest in exaggerated surprise. ‘From whom?’

I reach into the interior band of my hat, remove the note and pass it across the counter. ‘Charley Boule of Cooktown.’

‘Ah, Monsieur Boule, my old companion.’ In a sleight-of-hand motion he scoops the prize off the counter and under it, to where I presume there’s a shelf.

‘How much for the books, Mr Monroe?’

‘For a friend of Charles Boule, two shillings.’

‘And for everyone else, one shilling?’

‘Yes. Quite. How amusing.’ He smiles with forced politeness, but something else stirs in his eyes. ‘You didn’t say which island you were moving to, Miss … uh, I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name.’

‘You’re quite observant. I didn’t say which island. And you didn’t catch my name, as I didn’t pitch it. Good day, Mr Monroe. Calm waters in your pursuits.’

Carrie grumbles non-stop on the walk back. ‘Smelly old books. Why would you bother?’ She stops to remove a small stone lodged in her boot.

‘Dreadful weakness, isn’t it?’ I sigh deeply and look into the far distance. ‘If only I were like you, Carrie dear, and could see stretching the mind for the waste of precious grooming time it is.’

She stands, sticks out her tongue at me and flounces off four steps ahead, the hem of her white dress dragging in the dirt. She looks so small and vulnerable, it makes my heart hurt.

4TH MARCH 1880

Nine in the morning and he’s already drinking. I take the necessary inventory: hollow cheeks, jerky limbs. There’s a twitch near his left eye I’ve not noticed before. His clothes hang loose on his frame. A bad sign if he’s forgoing food in favour of rum.

I glance over my shoulder to check that the back door is open. Half-hearted rain continues outside. The sky’s steel bucket is full of dribbling holes.

He lifts his glass. The ice has long melted. ‘Why’d you come back? To tell me you’re deserting us? Too late. When you went to Brisbane …’ He stands unsteadily at the mantelpiece, talking to the window. A wet thread of droplets tries to pass through an even wetter needle-eye on the pane. When the window doesn’t answer, he turns to face me.

‘With the bilge pump underwater and a ten-degree list, Papa, who could blame me for deserting ship?’

‘Like a rodent? And, like a rodent, you’re back now to scavenge what you can from the wreck?’

I look around the room. ‘Slim pickings, by the look.’

‘You always were an ungrateful bitch.’

The words escape in a spray of spittle. His free hand tenses into a fist. The chair I’d thought an adequate distance away seems suddenly too close.

He makes a movement and I jump. But he’s not headed towards me. He shambles stiffly over to the table for another drink. His body’s all at sea, rocking from side to side, the skin unsteady over its deck of bones.

Mama has cleaned up after him, as usual. Called a stonemason in to repair the mantel where he took to it with a mallet. The curtains have been mended from his tailoring efforts with a broken bottle. Thank God he doesn’t own a gun. But how would I know any more what he does or doesn’t own, could or couldn’t do?

The shabby furniture, too, is marked by his temper, and by its age. The fabric on the tweed armchairs worn as thin as Bob’s hair. The fake French armoire has pigeon-toed feet. And there is a new addition.

Papa follows the direction of my gaze. A fishhook inside his mouth lifts the right cheek, then lowers it. I wonder if he’s developed some kind of palsy.

‘What do you think?’ he asks.

In the glass cabinet are three wax-and-dye gumtree branches. A stuffed kookaburra, a magpie and a crow each have a perch. The crow’s unblinking eyes gleam like polished onyx in the gaslight.

‘It suits you perfectly, Papa. I think it’s hideous.’

‘Hideous,’ he throws back sarcastically. ‘Come now, I hear you’ve become a collector of sorts yourself. Let’s see. A job, and
now a fiancé. What say you as an expert? Are the new birds as worthy as the old ones?’

There is some sort of mirrored glass at the back of the cabinet, so that his face seems trapped inside. I think of the dozen exotic parrots, bristling with carpet fleas, back in Cornwall. Nailed to their dead branches. They went off to auction like everything else. Carried out the door by the bailiffs.

I turn my attention to the armrest beneath my elbow. Pick at a loose thread. ‘Do your customers at the Red Lion know you’re drunk when you serve them? It can’t be good for business.’

I don’t know why I’m provoking him. The anger rising in me seems determined to shout over the top of the fear.

He moves quicker than I thought he could. Pins me against the chair by grabbing a handful of my hair and wrenching it backwards. His eyes are bloodshot, a maze of red threads. His mouth two inches away from my chin. My stomach turns to water.

‘Does your husband-to-be know the concepts of love, honour and obedience mean nothing to you? If you’ve failed at being a daughter, why do you imagine you’ll succeed at being a wife?’

He lets my head go abruptly. I feel a sting at the root of each strand. He doesn’t move away from the chair. Pins me into it with his arm. But then, a miracle. An avaricious thought flashes a shapely leg at the pugilist in his mind.

‘Does he have any money, this man of yours?’

He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket. Wipes a smear of drool from his chin. I’ve pressed my body so far back in the chair, I can almost feel the wall behind. When I don’t answer, he moves his head even closer. I can see the open pores on his nose. Almost taste his breath.

‘Answer me!’

‘No!’

But I have money, Papa. And I’m soon going to have lots, lots more. And you’re not getting a penny of it. Not one single farthing.

Something in my face pierces his fug. He staggers away towards the bottle glinting in the half-light of the window.

When I can breathe again, I wonder about the reprieve. Oddly, I remember Fitzgerald’s comment that Bob’s sable belle could never return to her tribe because the smell of civilisation was on her. Perhaps the smell of the larger world was on me now, and it gave Papa just enough pause to leave me with the advantage. Too slight to make me feel protected, though. I’ll wedge a chair under the doorknob of my bedroom tonight.

Papa’s still counting Bob’s imaginary coins in his head. ‘He must have
some
means. What does he do for a crust?’

‘He’s a sea-slug fisherman.’

‘Slugs!’ He swings around. ‘You always were a girl with limited charms, but still … sea-slugs!’

I ignore my itching hands. ‘He’s a Catholic and a Scot.’

‘A popish Mac! This gets better and better. You’ll be bowing your head to female idols soon enough.’

‘He’s also your age.’ I can’t seem to stop myself.

He looks me up and down. Insects crawl under my skin wherever his gaze touches.

‘The only man you could get, eh? I suppose a fellow doesn’t stare at the mantelpiece while he’s stoking the fire. And those slug fishermen aren’t too fussy. Naked gins on board to do their bidding every time they turn around.’ Something else occurs to him. ‘Are you in the family way? Is that why he’s marrying you?’

‘Why would a man feel the need to do that? You didn’t bother when Mama was pregnant with me.’

He comes at me again. But I’m ready for him this time. I’m at the doorway before he can change direction. The drink has done its work.

He stops. Shrugs. Laughs. His fingers twitch. He tosses off the last of what’s in his glass. Glances once more at his precious stuffed birds in their cabinet with a slow smile. I barely have time to dread what’s coming.

‘Go to your slug fisherman. I couldn’t care less. I still have Carrie.’