The Secret Fate of Mary Watson (23 page)

23RD JULY 1880

Two days before the drop. Somehow, Bob has to be off the island on the night of the twenty-fifth. Percy told me to leave it with him. But there’s constant acid in my stomach.

After dinner, I sit in the corner, sewing up a pair of Bob’s long johns. He, Percy and Porter are playing poker. The bad side of Bob’s face, with the lamplight shining on it, reminds me of a mine collapse. Porter’s his usual calm self: deep cheeks, watchful eyes. And Percy, when he turns so I can see his features, is cool. Too cool. The flame in the middle of the table flaps side to side like a bright fish, beached and dying. Porter adjusts the wick and it settles into a single, glowing pear. They’re talking weather. My needle dips in and out, pulling the fraying threads together as best I can.

‘Mackerel sky at sunset,’ Bob says. ‘I won’t go out tomorrow.’

Percy puts three cards on the table, face down. Bob, as dealer, unfurls three more to replace them.

‘We’ll have to fish the day after that, unless you want to go native: eat grubs and goannas,’ Percy says.

‘No point fishing in bad weather. Ding
Petrel
and you’ll pay to fix it.’

‘Come on, man. When did you get so scared of a few clouds? It’s not cyclone season.’

‘Don’t call me a coward, or I’ll spoil yer face.’

Percy is hardly moved to trembling by the threat. The tip of his tongue probes the top row of his teeth for an errant shred of meat. He inspects his cards, then rearranges them in his hand.

‘We should stay overnight and pick the bones clean: clear the patches around the Lizard before we have to move on, find another station. Unless you’d rather leave them to grow fat for the next fisherman who tries his luck on your old patch.’

‘What makes ye think I’d want to keep a lazy bastard as a partner next time?’

The lamplight deepens the furrows on Bob’s forehead. His scar’s a dark fissure. His left hand finds his pocket and he grunts. The medicinal balls are more articulate, beyond his bluff and bluster. He’s thinking over Percy’s suggestion.

Porter intervenes, ever the voice of reason. ‘What about the blacks? If we go out overnight, they’ll know Mary and Carrie are here on their own.’

‘Ah Sam and Ah Leung will be with me,’ I say. ‘And I know how to shoot.’

Percy’s lopsided smile twists like a finch gliding on one wing. ‘True. I’ve seen Mary hit a shilling halfway down the beach from the sandhills.’

Bob’s impatient. ‘It’s yet to be proved the blacks are even around.’

Porter’s still frowning.

‘You mustn’t worry,’ I tell him. ‘I’m used to looking after myself.’

‘Ah, so a man’s not good enough to look after ye?’

Belligerence has crept back into Bob’s voice. But I won’t antagonise him, no matter how much he might desire it.

‘Not at all,’ I say evenly. ‘I’m just not helpless.’

I put down the material and walk over to the basin. It still holds a few inches of liver-coloured water. I’ve no particular passion for washing up, and I could leave the dinner dishes for Ah Sam in the morning, but it’s an opportunity to legitimately turn my back on Bob and stare at the much more interesting view of the closed shutters.

A few seconds’ silence in which the wind could change in half a dozen different ways, few of them good. The three go back to talking business. I’ll have to leave it to Percy. Nothing I say to Bob makes any difference.

I look down to the basin. In the half-light, my hands seem luminous. Attached to them ten white baitworms dive beneath the surface, then come up again for air. I slowly wash the plates with a piece of rag, thinking … sink or swim. With the extra ballast of my wedding ring, it could go either way.

One of the dogs growls in the distance. The pigs start up their clotted snorting. I look over my shoulder. Porter looks at Bob. Bob looks back down to his cards. Carrie’s having a nightmare behind the curtain, a series of small yelps.

‘I’ll just go out and check,’ Porter says. He picks up a spare lantern and a rifle from the corner behind the door.

‘There’s no fecking blacks on the island, I tell ye.’

I wait for one of the others to offer to go with him. When they don’t, I wipe my hands on a dry cloth. ‘Be careful, Porter,’ I say.

He’s back in half an hour. With a shrug, he rests the rifle in its usual spot, places the lantern on the bench, and then comes to sit at the table so the game can resume.

‘Nothing, so far as I can see,’ he says.

Bob grunts and picks up the deck even though he dealt the last hand. He starts to distribute the cards with supercilious flourishes of his wrist. Porter opens his mouth, probably to call him on his error, then closes it again.

‘Next time, ye might listen to what a man says.’

Porter doesn’t reply.

I, for one, have had enough of listening to Bob. I stand and head for the bedroom.

‘Goodnight all.’

‘Goodnight, Mary,’ Porter’s smile is gentle. The other two don’t even look up.

The next morning Bob’s sitting on a stump outside the house, hammering the soles back onto a pair of reef boots. The thin strands of what’s left of his hair wave slightly in the breeze. The rest of his balding head is pink in the sun. Lizard-mating weather: that’s what he calls these days when a dry storm shines pale and watery as an old man’s eye on the horizon and the wind shuffles down the iron slab of the sky.

Just be pleasant to him a bit longer, I tell myself, as I pick up the egg basket. Carrie’s collecting shells. Ah Sam’s clearing around a stand of palms near the privy. Ah Leung’s at the farm. The black boys are chopping wood.

I feel his eyes on me as I pass. And pass I must. There’s no other way to get to the poultry pen. Instead of meeting his gaze,
my glance flits over his fishing pants with the hole at the knee. Then his faded shirt. ‘Playing cobbler, are we?’

I turn away, as though the churned-up ocean’s suddenly caught my attention. It’s foaming in spots, like soap’s been added to the usual mix of water and weed. This morning, when I took an early stroll, jellyfish like peg bags full of Reckitt’s Blue strings dotted the waterline.

‘Aye, if we’re going out overnight, we’ll want the gear first class.’

‘Yes, of course.’

I move away, thinking I’ve got off lightly. But he catches my skirt with his hand.

‘How about a wee kiss?’

I bend down and kiss him on the cheek.

‘That’s a grudging peck ye might give an old aunty.’

Just keep the peace. I kiss him, full on the mouth this time, tasting tobacco.

‘Need some mending done?’ He winks with his good eye.

I think of the lizards I’ve seen mating over near the pandanus patch. The flattened female under a wrinkly monster jabbing and jabbing. His rotten-meat breath in her ear. Filthy claws digging into her sides.

‘Maybe,’ I say, my heart heavy. ‘If you clean your teeth and scrub that muck from under your fingernails.’

‘I’ll catch up with ye later then, when there’s no one else around.’

My fate impending I smile thinly and indicate, by lifting the egg basket, that there’s work to do before he has his fun.

The tone of my day is sealed when I find what’s left of two dead ducks in the fowl pen: a trail of blood and feathers and all the eggs
gone. There’s a hole torn in the wire above my improvised barrier of logs. I stalk back towards the house, the hot sting of tears in my eyes, something on fire in my head. By the time I reach the flat ground near the homestead, my blood lust has cooled a little, but my frustration hasn’t.

Bob and Darby stand behind the house underneath the outstretched wing of a sail draped over a makeshift wooden frame. They’re looking for small tears in the material by inspecting places where the sun shines through. I put down the scraps dish and egg basket, and look up at another eagle flying overhead. Against a brilliant sky, it’s just a moving patch of shade with serrated edges. I’ve decided there must be an eyrie in one of the rock overhangs on the far side of Cook’s Look.

Bob apparently sees what he’s looking for in the canvas. ‘Get me the sail needle and thread. Quick fella.’

‘Yes, boss.’

Darby scurries out from under the sail and runs towards the house. Bob slips out and into the sun, his palm still under the offending tear. He concertinas the sail against his chest while he waits.

‘We’ve lost two more ducks to goannas,’ I tell him, trying to control myself. ‘I don’t know how to keep them out of the pens.’

‘I have enough to worry about without yer blasted poultry. Daft idea using my good mangrove logs. I could have told ye it would never work.’

My hands clench into fists.

Darby’s back, panting. He hands the needle and thread to Bob, who pulls the patch over his knee. Darby bends double to get his breath back. From above, his hair is a forest of curls.

I pick up the scraps. ‘Thanks for the help. I’ll just figure it out for myself, shall I?’

Bob looks up coldly, all trace of his earlier amorous mood gone. ‘I thought ye were clever enough to work anything out. Ye certainly knew how to manoeuvre a man into marriage.’

My heart stops for a few beats. He can’t know, surely. It’s just his self-regard talking.

‘Exactly why would I do that, Bob? Why would my life’s ambition be to live on a God forsaken island with a cranky Scot who is never grateful for anything I do?’

He shrugs. ‘Maybe ye saw a chance to better yerself. Sea-slugs might not be to yer taste, but I’m sure ye don’t mind the money they bring in.’

I feel something taut inside me let go. He doesn’t know.

‘Since we’ve been married you haven’t tossed me so much as a single pound.’

He reaches into his pocket with his free hand, extracts a couple of notes and throws them on the ground at my feet. Darby’s eyes are as big as saucers, looking from one to the other of us and then at the money that the breeze is already flirting with and will soon blow away.

I turn my back on Bob and his insult and walk. I see Ah Leung near the bird-feeder and I want to talk to him. After that I’ll consult Ah Sam about the hole in the coop.

‘Darby, you’d better pick up the boss’s precious cash and give it back to him,’ I call over my shoulder. ‘We all know how much it means to him.’

Bob swears and I hear him spit on the ground, but he has nothing more to say.

Already, yellow-bellied sunbirds, brown honeyeaters and skipping banded finches with their dark-trimmed hoods are watching
me from the trees. Waiting for their honey bread. Because of Ah Leung’s limp, water splashes over the sides of the water buckets he’s carrying. His pyjamas are wet and cling to his legs at the thigh. I’ve never realised how knobbly his ankles are beneath the hem of his pants. Almost as ugly as his hands.

‘Stay, Ah Leung. I want to talk to you.’

I reach up with the nailed pole to place the bread on the plank of wood in the branch. I wonder if I imagine the tingle of a red-hot curse between my shoulderblades. When I turn, his face is as bland as ever. He puts down his buckets and stands imperiously still.

‘If you strangled my pup then you’re not as smart as I think you are.’

I watch his face carefully. There’s a small hiss of air as he breathes out. A slight lift of his lips.

‘I no touch your dog.’

‘Well, then,’ I say, ‘that must mean it was the mainland blacks. In which case, you’d be more than a little concerned right now about your own skin. Is it true what Bob tells me? That they’re particularly partial to oriental flesh?’

I see his lips straighten. I have his attention.

‘I hear that you had an interesting job on the waterfront in Cooktown, Ah Leung. A salon, in fact. You must have been concerned about competition from French Charley’s. I heard that some of your girls deserted you altogether, preferring European clients …’

A few beads of perspiration appear above his eyebrows.

‘Who knows what lengths a man might go to if his livelihood is seriously challenged.’

‘What you want?’ The words have no inflection.

‘I told you. I want you to let me get on with my business without interference.’

‘I do nothing to that dog.’

We stare at each other for a few long seconds.

‘I need vegetables for dinner,’ I say.

‘You want corn?’ Each word is like a tooth being pulled.

‘Whatever you think is ready,’ I say. ‘I trust you to make sensible decisions.’

He nods once. Picks up the buckets and moves away. I watch his awkward gait head for the farm.

My palms itch, letting me know — as if I didn’t already — that the conversation hasn’t tied up the loose threads of worry the way I’d hoped it would. If Ah Leung didn’t strangle the pup, that leaves only the mainland blacks as possible culprits. These same blacks Bob insists are not on the island. And Percy, Porter and Charley Sandwich think are here. But why would they do it? Not for food, as they didn’t take the corpse. It could only be to try to scare us. What do they want?

I look out to sea, barely processing the swells and valleys of shifting blue water. I suppose now there’s certainty where there had been doubt. The natives are here and, for whatever reason, trying to impose themselves on us. Tomorrow night, I have to climb Cook’s Look. It’s not only Ah Leung I’ll need to watch out for.

The crunch of twigs behind me makes me spin around. But it’s only a goanna, glaring at me with its black, egg-eating eyes.

24TH JULY 1880

One more night before I brave the darkness with my signal light.

The men are playing cards around the table again. Percy’s not doing very well, but he’s playing two games. He raises the stakes with his final chips.

‘There’s a good patch over near Eagle Island,’ he says. ‘We could take the luggers out tomorrow and stay overnight. I’ll work the south side, you the east.’ He’s counting on Bob’s cantankerous nature to surface and he’s not disappointed.

‘I take the south,’ Bob says. He puts his cards on the table face up. ‘Three tens. My trick.’

Percy shakes his head slowly. ‘
Isabella
’s not as stout as
Petrel
. There’s less chance of broken gear if I take her south. Or don’t you remember what the undercurrents are like over there?’

‘I forgot more than ye’ll ever know.
Isabella
won’t break up. She’s got a good captain.’ There’s a thimbleful of goading in each of Bob’s eyes.

Percy taps his finger impatiently on the table. ‘Well, take your bloody south, then. It’s not worth fighting over.’

‘Oh aye, I will.’ Bob’s smug hand sweeps all the pennies in the middle of the table towards him.

From where I’m sitting, I can see Percy’s cards. He lays his three aces on the table, face down.

I return to my needlework, listening to the night outside. The ocean’s particularly noisy, as though it has a sore throat and is gargling cod-liver oil. What else? Pandanus leaves rustle outside the shutters. A loose piece of tin on the smokehouse roof. Every now and then, the wind opens its creaky tweezers under it, then closes them again.

But the dogs aren’t barking. At least, not yet. No sound of stealthy claws on gravel. No screech and scatter of feathers from the fowlhouse. No low-pitched singing to snake into my brain.

I could almost feel safe.

The signalling date has finally arrived. The men left at first light. I waved them off with only a slight quickening in my chest.

As the day wore on, my nerves wound tighter. By dusk, they were ready to snap and sting.

Now, at ten thirty at night, the wind’s dropped. A calm fatalism has descended on me. The reef’s thunder is reduced to a grumble. Pickpocket fingers of white foam advance and retreat on the swell, creep back and forth over the shining sand. There’s a smell of some dead thing wafting up on the breeze.

Above my head, there are small fishing nets full of stars. Under my arm, the rifle.

The moon’s so low its light is a web strung between the dark trees.

Carrie’s so used to Ah Sam’s bitter tea, she didn’t notice the sleeping powder I slipped into it. I checked on her before I left. In the faint lantern light, the shadows of her pale eyelashes fell like soft palm fronds on her cheek. Her breathing shallow but even. The catalogue of dresses she’d been looking through on her chest, still bookmarked with two slender fingers.

The door of Percy’s hut grates open when I push it gently. Ah Sam hasn’t got around to cleaning the glass on the lantern I’m holding. It’s dirty with soot, but there’s still light enough to see. A bedroll. A small wooden box on the ground next to it. Dirty clothes piled in the corner. And, under the clothes, the signalling lamp in its dark case. I pick it up and am about to leave, but can’t resist a quick look around first.

I hold up the house lantern to a small shelf nailed to the wall. On it is a spare pipe, a comb, a revolver and a box of bullets. Next to those, a bottle of Rangoon oil for lubricating his rifle, which he must have taken with him on
Petrel
. A brown-paper package of rifle cartridges. A few folded newspapers dating from the last trip to Cooktown. A single book: Rouvière’s
Les Saints
in a deep blue leather binding. I open it to a random page and hold the sooty lantern closer. Not a translation but the original French. Odd. Perhaps it came from the captain on the man-o’-war? Why, though? Percy could hardly entertain himself reading it. Perhaps he thinks Charley Boule might be willing to pay a few shillings for it when next he goes to Cooktown?

I give up my half-hearted detective work. It’s time to leave. I snuff the lantern flame and set it just inside the doorway. I close the door and place the outside hook in its eye. Bob won’t miss the lantern. Percy often takes one then returns it a few days later.

This time, this climb, I’ve thought to bring gloves. They’re protection against the abrasive granite rocks, but also to avoid being burned when I handle the signal lamp.

I feel safe enough in the clearing. I have the gun and a 360-degree view, aided by thin streaks of moonlight. But when I start climbing, I realise that I can’t watch my back and concentrate on the terrain at the same time. The higher I go, the lower the moon hangs in its sling, the cooler and fresher the air, the stronger the sense I’m being watched.

It’s not so much the sight of the blacks I fear, but their calls. I’ve read and heard enough to know that the screech of the black cockatoo — that haunting, extended whoop — is often the last thing Europeans know before they feel the heat of the spear.

Everything twitches around me, as though impatient in the night’s light breeze. Shrubs and stunted trees rustle gently. Behind me, looking west, the ocean’s hair’s being combed: a white flash of swirl here and there, marking submerged rocks near shore.

By the time I reach the summit, my breathing’s so heavy in my own ears, I’m afraid it will interfere with other sounds I should be listening for. The climb was hard. My legs are trembling with the effort. But I know that waiting here, on top of the mountain, will be worse. I’m offering a still target to whatever might be lurking in the night. There’s only one route to escape, and that’s the crooked rocky path that any threat will come from.

I sit. The boulder feels cold and hard beneath me. I stare northwest, in the direction I know the signal will appear. Nothing yet. But I’m a little early. I light the lantern with a match, then cover it with the wooden hood. There’s a wide, flat-topped rock two yards away, fairly level, from which I can send my signals when the time comes. Cool, indifferent moonlight falls in patches around me. The sea, from this distance, is a velvet animal turning over in its sleep.

I could have imagined the first crack of a twig behind me, but not the second. Not a lizard, not this high.

I turn. Slowly. Raise the rifle to my shoulder.

‘Don’t shoot.’

A figure materialises against the backdrop of moonlight and shadow. It steps towards me. The small flame inside the lamp the figure’s holding flares wildly in the breeze.

My intestines cramp into something solid again. ‘Ah Sam! Go back.’

‘Why you here? Very dark.’

His face, underlit by the lantern’s weak light, glows at his chin and forehead.

I draw my skirt over the black box that covers the lantern. ‘I felt like a walk.’

He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, grunts with disbelief.

‘Ah Sam, listen to me. You mustn’t tell Bob about me coming up here.’

His eyes narrow to coin slits. ‘Why? You signalling a boat?’

The lantern box is surprisingly hot against my leg. I’ll have to move soon or my calf will burn.

‘When you come down?’ he asks, shaking his head. His queue swings from side to side like a dark snake wriggling on a hook.

Cold fingers of logic count the bones at the back of my neck. I’ll have to shoot him. There’s nothing else for it. I mentally go through it in my mind: lift the barrel, take aim, fire.

‘Please, Ah Sam.’

He knows what I’m thinking. ‘Kill me, then.’ He looks at the gun, my finger already on the trigger.

I catch the glint of metal at his waist. He has a dagger tucked into his pyjamas. He’s followed me all this way, with only a dagger to protect himself. I’m beyond exasperation.

‘You are the most stubborn Chinaman I’ve ever met. Here, take this.’ I turn the rifle around and hold it out towards him, butt first. ‘Keep watch for me.’

He nods. ‘Do what you do, then we go down.’

He turns his back to me, sets the little lantern by his feet and stares down the path into the dark.

At first I think the signal might be a natives’ fire on one of the nearby islands. But it’s from the exact direction Percy told me to expect. I count the seconds between flashes; it’s my contact, without a doubt.

I set the signal lantern on the flat rock. Remove the cover and aim it, using the sight like Percy told me to. The whole apparatus is so hot it’s only bearable with my gloves on. It’s hard to maintain my aim, and it takes longer to adjust the lantern’s feet than it did when I practised down in the house. When finally I have it aligned, I press the shutter and count slowly to ten. The shutter lever is devilishly hot. It’s burning through the glove, but I dare not move my fingers. I feel the sear of blisters forming. There’s
a five-second pause in the first password — not quite enough to relieve the pressure points. The ensuing five-second flash is agony.

Eventually I get it right, though now I’m using my thumb on the shutter. It’s a slow process, but the exchange of passwords is successful. The message is long. My fingers throb as I write it down in pencil. Then the repeat to make sure I’ve got it.

What’s left is to re-align the lamp and exchange passwords, then send the message to Percy. The rough ground has bored holes in my knees. My calves, worn out by the long climb, are cramping. The moon, though low, is thankfully still bright enough for me to read the paper on which I recorded the message. Next time it might not be; I’ll have to be better prepared.

By the time I acknowledge Percy’s signal that the message has been received, I’m exhausted. It must be one o’clock in the morning. My dress is soaked with nervous sweat, even though the air’s cool. Every joint aches. My two burned fingers feel as though they’re soaking in a dish full of molten metal. I put out the lamp and repack everything. It takes several minutes for me to stand, longer before I can turn around and walk a few steps.

Ah Sam is still at attention, the rifle held at present-arms, staring into the gloom. He doesn’t speak, and doesn’t turn to look at me. Calmly, he picks up his kerosene lantern and leads the way home.