The Secret Fate of Mary Watson (20 page)

19TH JUNE 1880

It’s a prank. It must be. I hold my nose with one hand, use the slug-stirring paddle with the other to rotate the dirty clothes through the putrid water left after boiling the catch. The flies are in plague proportions today, as if word passed around after yesterday’s gorging. Remembering how I’d swallowed one on Grassy Hill a lifetime ago, I keep my mouth shut and breathe through my nose. Unfortunately, that makes the smell worse.

Percy came back with
Petrel
at eleven. Another fifty pounds worth of slugs to boil. Another steaming extraction of bodies. Another series of longitudinal disembowellings with a fishing knife.

‘Don’t tip it out,’ Percy told me when I was about to call for Ah Sam to empty the tank slops into the sand.

‘Makes good soup, does it?’

‘It’s the best stain remover there is.’ He squinted into a
winter sun made of shimmering gauze. ‘Soak the dirty clothes in it, you’ll see what I mean. It’s also good for polishing brass and copper, though I don’t think the idea will catch on in cultured society.’

So here I am, red-eyed and straw-haired, stirring up the laundry.

Percy walks past on his way to the smokehouse. ‘Eye of newt and hair of Bob,’ he chuckles.

I glance at him. ‘Tell the truth. This is a joke at my expense, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist. I’m afraid the clothes are ruined. There’s a kind of acid in the water. It’ll weaken all the fabric until it falls apart. Maybe if you rinse them fast in sea water, the acid won’t have a chance to do so much damage.’ He wanders away, whistling.

I yell curses at his back, which he ignores.

‘Ah Sam!’ My voice is edged with hysteria. ‘Come and help me!’

I drag one of Bob’s shirts out of the water with the paddle, dump it on the sand, then a pair of trousers. Frantic, I drop stinking garments onto the beach until every piece of my folly is removed. I’m covered in sweat and my arms quiver with the effort.

It takes a few seconds of blinking down at the clothes to realise that the fabric is as solid as it ever was. And that all of the stains are gone.

Six days later, I’m taking in the washing in the cool dusk when I see the two empty buckets parked outside the Chinamen’s sleeping hut. Ah Leung was supposed to fill them with fresh water before dark and bring them to the house. He moves quicker and with less
of a crooked gait than when I first came to the island. He has no excuse to not do his chores.

I’ve never seen inside his and Ah Sam’s inner sanctum and have no intention of stickybeaking now. I’ll just call at the door. Make sure we have fresh water for dinner, and for tea in the morning.

The cloying incense of sandalwood knots in my throat as I draw close. I can hear a low voice chanting something incomprehensible over and over. The door is open a crack. And, of course, the curious heroine with her washing basket under one arm peers through. How else could the story go?

There are two cots, one pushed against the wall on my left, one on the right. In the centre of the small room, equidistant between them, a dozen candles burn around a small altar. In the centre of it sits the ugliest red clay figure I’ve ever seen. It’s squat, with a toad’s face, a bulging stomach. Oversized feet. Large hands. It has a pound note stuck in its mouth, and a piece of green ribbon — from my sewing box, if I’m not mistaken — tied around its neck.

Ah Leung’s back is to the door as he kneels in front of the joss. He leans forward and lights another candle with a smouldering taper. Then he stretches out fully on the floor so that I see the cracked and dirty soles of his feet. He’s taken the bandage off his damaged foot. It’s the big and second toes that are missing, replaced by the closed-oyster-shell texture of scar tissue. The remaining three digits seem as small and pale as newborn mice.

I back away, afraid to keep watching, afraid the fumes of incense will make me cough. Already my throat tickles.

I sneak just one more glance before I go. Ah Leung’s head turns sideways for a moment. Through the fog of smoke, his face
is waxen, deadly serious. The birthmark glows deep claret, swelling like a blood blister in the strange light-play of the room.

I keep retreating until I feel I can safely turn and walk towards the house.

Ah Sam is inside the cookhouse. A few moths waltz back and forth in the shine of the doorway. I look out and over the water. Dusk tonight is like a confectioner’s kitchen. The red-apple sun dips into a crackled-candy horizon.

‘Ah Leung didn’t get the water for tomorrow,’ I say. ‘You’d better see to it.’

He casts a quick, apprehensive look towards the swamp, where it’s as good as midnight already.

‘Well then, go and fetch Ah Leung to do it,’ I say. ‘Maybe if he gets a fright, he’ll be more inclined to do his chores in daylight.’

I’m scraping green mould off the pickled pork with a knife, Ah Sam’s favourite proverb in my ears: Eye no see, heart no grieve. I reach for the tin of curry powder. It’s a trick he’s taught me to cover up the taint of the crypt. Still, I won’t let him cook anything other than breakfast, having seen him stone the raisins for the bread with his teeth. Spit in the bowl if the mix is too dry. Take the yeasted dough to bed, tucked under his smelly armpit, to make it rise.

Porter has promised me fresh goat soon, but until then we must make do. Ah Sam bustles around in the kitchen with a handful of beans. These, too, I’ve seen him top and tail with his incisors.

I reach out my hand. ‘Give me those. You go and boil water for the potatoes.’

‘One day you trust me, missy.’

‘I do trust you, Ah Sam.’ It’s not altogether true, but it sets the tone for my next words. ‘It’s Ah Leung I wouldn’t turn my back on.’

It’s a punt I don’t expect to pay off; the Chinese are almost always loyal to their own kind. But, surprisingly, he responds.

‘Ah Leung stupid man. Very bad temper. I know him from Cooktown when he run that salon.’

There are three kinds of Chinese salons in Cooktown: gambling parlours, opium dens and brothels.

‘Did Ah Leung have a betting shop?’

He shakes his head.

‘An opium den?’

No, again. ‘Fuckee shop,’ he says mildly. ‘Down on waterfront.’

I think of the surly cripple with a cabbage in one hand, a hoe in the other and bile instead of blood in his veins. I’ve never seen a more unlikely pimp.

‘I had no idea.’ I go back to peeling the potatoes.

‘His girl go with white man, no come back. He very angry with white man now.’

‘He’s angry with white women, too,’ I say, turning to him. ‘I saw the joss in your hut, Ah Sam. It has one of my ribbons around its neck. Is he putting a hoodoo on me? Do you pray in front of it?’

‘You should not look at that, missy.’ He’s genuinely shocked. His thin shoulders lift and fall under the pyjama coat. ‘Joss for good fortune. Ah Leung use it so he not be found out —’ He realises suddenly that he’s said too much.

‘About the shopkeeper? You know about that, do you? Is that why the money is in the joss’s mouth?’

He nods once, reluctantly.

I carry the pan of peeled potatoes over to him. He takes it, but doesn’t set it on the fire.

‘But what about the ribbon? If it’s not to put a hex on me …’

‘I don’t know, missy.’ He won’t meet my eyes.

I attempt to think it through. Ah Leung is making propitiation to the gods so that he won’t suffer punishment for his murder of the shopkeeper … The next thought makes my eyes widen. Should I have believed that Percy found Ah Leung on the goldfields? It seemed serendipitous at the time.

‘Did Ah Leung kill those prostitutes in Cooktown, hoping to put French Charley’s out of business?’

The pan jiggles in Ah Sam’s hands. He shakes his head rapidly, his queue bouncing from side to side. ‘I don’t know. You say nothing, missy.’

His voice is all I need to convince me. Another hornets’ nest of possibilities is given a good shake in my head. Percy, probably acting for Roberts, must have wanted the Chinese shopkeeper to disappear. So he called on his factotum, Ah Leung, to do the deed. But what about Charley’s girls? What would Percy — or Roberts, for that matter — have to gain by their murders? It doesn’t make sense. Ah Leung must have acted on his own, fired by revenge for his failing waterfront brothel. The next question must logically be: does Percy know just how volatile, and therefore dangerous, Ah Leung really is? He clearly thinks he has the Chinaman under control. But does he?

I wish I’d never seen the joss. The night seems suddenly much larger; the mainland that much further away.

2ND JULY 1880

Five o’clock, and balmy for July. We’re sitting outside on upturned fruit crates. Bob with his pipe, me with my cross-stitch. From here I can see the birds landing on the piece of wood I’ve nailed to a branch as a feeder. Terns and doves, black noddies with their white caps like wimples, all arguing over the damper I’ve soaked in honey then placed up there on the end of a stick. Only now is the breeze creeping in: shivering off the overbite of the reef. Down at the shoreline, wavelets pick over shellgrit, as though looking for something valuable. I stitch a little bit more into the darkening sky.

Ah Leung slinks into view with some onions. His hands are smudged with soil, dirt caked beneath those ugly fingernails. I look directly into his face and tell him to put the vegetables down next to me. He starts to back away. I decide the time has come for a bit of provocation, with Bob around as insurance.

‘Haven’t I seen your face before, Ah Leung? Away from the island, that is? I’m sure I have.’

He pales slightly and tenses. But he has no need to worry just yet. I’m only testing him. ‘I could be wrong, of course. I have a terrible memory at times.’ I look down to my stitches, pull the cotton through.

‘Where did ye work before Fuller took ye on?’ Bob asks the Chinaman, only marginally interested.

‘Cooktown.’

‘Doing what?’

‘This and that.’

‘I’ll come over to the farm tomorrow, Ah Leung, shall I?’ I say. ‘You can show me all of the things you are growing and what you will grow in the future. I daresay crops take some careful planning if one is to harvest anything worthwhile.’

My fingers go professionally about their business. Nothing for a few heartbeats. Only the far-off waves. The squabbling birds.

‘All right,’ he says finally.

I’ve laid the bait. The question is, what do I do with the beast when he takes it?

After he’s gone, Bob stands to go into the house. I tell him I’ll enjoy what’s left of the sun just a little longer, until all that’s left on the horizon is a thin purple ribbon. Just like the ribbons Charley’s girls wear around their necks. Just like the ribbon Ah Leung stole from my sewing basket.

Bob looks down at me. ‘Why would ye think ye’d seen Ah Leung before? How could ye tell one John Pigtail from another.’ He thinks a bit further on the matter. ‘He does have that birthmark, I’ll grant ye.’

A small beetle with an orange stripe down its back crawls out of the pile of onions. I watch its slow progress.

‘Probably I didn’t recognise him,’ I say, sounding suitably vague. ‘Don’t you wonder why Percy chose a crippled coolie to come to the island?’

He shrugs. Looks out to sea. ‘Fuller told me he could work with his gimp … and it’s not as easy as ye might think, getting Chows out here on the Lizard. Lots are frightened to come.’

‘Why? Because of the mainland blacks paddling over?’

‘Aye. They fancy — quite rightly mind — they’ll be first eaten. Wild blacks prefer their flesh, ye see.’

I’ve heard this before and think it nonsense. Though the Chinese might be less dismissive of the rumour.

‘What about Ah Sam? Where did you find him?’

‘He was working at the Sea Wah. He asked could he come to the Lizard having heard our old Chows had been signed off.’

‘He wasn’t worried about the blacks?’

Bob looks sideways at me. ‘Some Johns just want to get away from the mainland. A gambling debt. Or trouble otherwise. So long as they work, I don’t care what skeletons jangle about in their closets.’

The farm’s a quarter of a mile from the house. The next day it’s an easy stroll in the afternoon’s buttermilk sun. At the edge of the cultivated land, cabbage moths flit. A vine climbs on a chicken-wire frame, drooping with its weight of pencil-length beans. A peaceful place: I can feel it straightaway. Rimmed with coconut and banana palms, pawpaw and sugarcane. The spiky heads of pineapples on the left, rockmelons trailing hairy stems over bare soil on the right.

The romance of nature’s burgeoning aside, it doesn’t pay to think too much about the process. I’ve been told that Ah Leung fertilises the vegetables from the nightsoil pits. He’s cleverly dug the garden beds exactly the right width so that he can deposit human waste efficiently: by hobbling between the rows, two holey buckets at either end of a bamboo pole across his shoulders. Another good reason for thoroughly scrubbing everything that comes from here before eating it.

But he’s not fertilising today. His conical hat bobs over near the sweetcorn. The papery husks rustle in the faint breeze like the material they use to make Chinese parasols. He looks up briefly. Blinks coldly.

‘Is any of that corn ready?’

Tight-lipped. ‘How much?’ He stands and rubs his knees. The material’s stained with soil.

Their washing — his and Ah Sam’s — never finds its way to the communal pile. I’ve seen each of them, at different times, down near the sea’s edge with a bucket of fresh water, rubbing the material of their pyjamas with lye soap, hats bobbing in time with the movement. I’ve also noticed the branches near their shack decorated with dripping clothes.

‘Ten cobs,’ I say, and hear a series of squeaks as he tears the corn silks from the husks.

I walk over the rows, careful not to tread on any seedlings, then form my apron into a hammock. He tosses them in.

‘I’ve seen you before, Ah Leung,’ I say. ‘You robbed and murdered a shopkeeper. I saw your “Wanted” poster.’

I’ve decided that boldness is the only approach. If I lay my cards on the table and force his own hand, then the air might clear somewhat between us.

A goanna lumbers between two nearby coconut palms. I’m not frightened of them. Still, with their mottled skin, long muscular necks and flicking tongues, I can’t help but read them as inauspicious omens. I watch its body shift side to side, as though at the centre of an invisible tug-of-war. It’s taking its time in moving away, unbothered by our presence.

‘You should be careful.’ Ah Leung holds his head very still, staring at the lizard. ‘Lots of things that hurt on this island.’

‘You should be careful too, Ah Leung,’ I say calmly. ‘I know that you probably wanted the signalling job, but it’s hardly my fault that you hurt your foot. We are both on the same side, you know. We must work together.’

No response.

I tell him that I’ll also have a cabbage. He picks up a cane knife. It swishes downwards as he severs the head from the plant. He throws it into my apron.

‘I know what happens to criminals over in Shanghai,’ I say. ‘Decapitations in the village square. Your knife just reminded me. Of course, if the Chinese in Cooktown knew where to find you …’

His fist tightens on the handle. The curved blade glints in the sun. Do I just imagine the slight shake in the hand that holds it? He’s waiting for what I’ll say next. I can hear my heart in my ears. Let him think what he will: that I know only about the shopkeeper; that I’ve figured out he killed Charley’s girls. If he’s unsure how much I know, it might work in my favour. So long as he’s aware that, if he gets rid of me, it won’t be the end of his problems. Just the beginning.

‘I’ve told several others in Cooktown what I know about you, Ah Leung. They are under instruction to make your crimes public if anything happens to me.’ I look down at the cane knife, then up
to his throat, smiling slightly. ‘It’s a barbaric practice, but I’m sure there are more than a few people who would line up to dip their money in the blood from your severed neck.’

There’s a sound behind me and I turn. Charley Sandwich strides across the clearing, kicking up the dirt with his bare feet.

I see a silver glint of movement in my peripheral vision, swing back around, but the cane knife hasn’t moved. Gratifyingly, Ah Leung’s face looks paler than usual.

‘What is it, Charley?’ My throat is tight from tension, and my voice sounds too high and squeaky.

‘Boss s’posem you come back.’

Charley stares suspiciously at Ah Leung. Ah Leung drops the cane knife with one last, unreadable look.

‘Which boss?’ I ask.

‘Mister Green boss. He kill goat.’ He holds his arms wide to show me just how big the goat is.

‘Fresh meat at last!’ I say.

Charley licks his lips and nods enthusiastically.

‘How about you help me with the goat, Charley? Maybe you and Darby can have some.’

‘Yes, missis.’ He rubs his stomach. ‘Fill belly up.’

‘Well, I don’t know if we can quite manage that. Pleasant chatting with you, Ah Leung,’ I say casually, over my shoulder.

He hasn’t moved.

Charley and I walk towards the house together. I pull the sling of my apron tighter around the corn and cabbage.

‘Charley, what do you think of Ah Leung?’ I tilt my head backwards towards the farm.

‘Him sour bloke. I like other one more better.’

‘I like Ah Sam better too.’ I think of something else I’ve been meaning to ask our black boys. ‘Are you worried about the mainland natives coming over in their canoes?’

This hits a rawer nerve. ‘They spear Darby and me.’

‘Not just you two, probably. We’ll just have to make sure that they don’t come too close.’

He doesn’t look reassured. We reach the beach, and he points southwest. ‘Wild black that way. Not far.’

It looks like he’s pointing to the southern tip of Lizard Island. Or something beyond it.

‘Now?’

Charley nods.

‘But Bob said there’s no blacks on the island.’

He doesn’t want to contradict the boss, but his mouth is set.

‘What do they want, do you know? Why do they come to the Lizard?’

But he either doesn’t understand me, or won’t say.