The Secret Fate of Mary Watson (25 page)

10TH SEPTEMBER 1880

The men went fishing again this morning. Both luggers expected back by dark. But, come seven o’clock, when the reddish sun’s already going down in the bishop’s-purple sky, there’s no sign of the boats. No flag when I scan the water with the looking glass.

There’s some comfort in habit. Particularly on a night that stretches endlessly ahead. We’ve eaten our dinner of fresh-caught reef fish and boiled potatoes. I’m emptying the dirty inch of washing-up water on the ground outside the door.

Ah Sam comes up beside me. He doesn’t speak, but shifts his weight from one foot to the other, as uneasy as I am.

‘They said they’d be back. Why would they stay out? Could something have happened?’

He shakes his head. ‘No flag.’

We both look across the ocean again. No flag. No emergency. Just a good patch of slugs both boats are unwilling to relinquish.
Nice to know how little my and Carrie’s safety counts for. Only Porter would be pacing the deck, trying to cajole Bob into hastening home.

Ah Sam walks towards his hut. I turn to the house. Carrie’s sorting through a jar of old buttons for a match to one she’s lost off a blouse. I pick up my mending and sit in the rocking chair Bob usually claims as his own, with a lamp at my elbow.

At nine o’clock, I step back outside. The ocean’s wrapped in the cobweb of the moon. Stars wink like light shone through pinpricks in a dark cloth. But there’s no whip crack of pale sail tacking towards the island.

I hear the commonplace bark of one of the two remaining dogs. The usual feathery jostle of the chickens.

‘Mary, where are the corn plasters? I won’t be able to get my boot on tomorrow if I don’t do something.’ Carrie stands barefoot in the doorway, wearing her nightdress.

‘In the first-aid box, on the shelf.’

I turn to go back into the yellow light, glancing sideways into the washhouse as I pass. The fire under the cooking pot has burned down to embers. I can hear their bony clicks and pops.

‘I can’t find them.’ She’s rummaging around where the pans are.

‘Wrong shelf. Oh, for heaven’s sake, let me look before you make a mess.’

I sit up suddenly in the dark, not sure what’s woken me. There’s an extra thickness in the air around the bed to my right. A solid shape blocks the stripy dawn light through the coral blocks. A small snap, like a branch splitting. The sound of heavy breathing. Movement. A glint of tooth.

‘Who’s there?’

No answer.

‘How did you get in?’

I drag air into the closed squeezebox of my lungs. I can see the whites of eyes now, with a stale-yellow tinge. I fumble to light the lamp.

It’s Darby, swaying on the balls of his feet. The shadows cast under his cheekbones are gouged holes in a cliff face. His forehead has a snake-skin shine. He shakes his head suddenly and shivers. The last corner of some blanket pulls away from his eyes. Sleepwalking.

With the distraction of Carrie and her plaster, I must have forgotten to barricade the door.

A few bird sounds from outside. The thumping of my heart. I wonder if he’s woken Carrie.

‘You’ve been walking in your sleep, Darby.’

I swing my feet over the side of the bed, pick up my boots to check in each for spiders, and, without making any sudden movements, slip my feet into them.

‘Debil, debil, missis.’

‘What does that mean?’ I keep my voice even and reach for my robe.

‘Debil, debil.’ He’s shivering more violently now. ‘You leave this place, too right.’

I feel a creeping on the skin of my arms. ‘I’ll leave soon enough, Darby.’

He shakes his head violently. ‘You leave plenty soon.’

And then he’s gone, the breeze creaking at the open door.

Later that afternoon, Bob attempts to calm me.

‘So ye had a fright? Darby’s not a wild black. Ye said yerself ye left the door open.’

‘So it’s my fault, is it?’

The men came back at ten this morning. Eight bags of slugs have been boiled and staked on the sand to dry.

I can smell the dark sugars of burned bread. I pick up a cloth and go out to the cookhouse. With a long-handled paddle, I scoop the loaf from the open oven, carry it back to the house and dump it with more force than necessary onto the table. Hot yeast, steam and the flaky pitch of charcoal wafts through the room. The sides are black and the bottom is worse.

‘Just as well a man’s already ate!’ Bob’s looking at the charred offering with amazement.

I wipe my forehead with my apron. ‘Why didn’t you run up a flag yesterday afternoon? To let me know you were staying out.’

‘Ye would not have seen it. We were the other side of South Direction. Ye’ve not struck me before as a nervous woman.’

I throw the paddle down on the table to join the bread. ‘Two dogs dead. Natives hell-bent on scaring us off the island. I think I’ve a right to be upset when I wake with one of them standing right next to the bed! Luckily Carrie slept through the whole thing. She’d be out of her head by now, otherwise.’

‘I told ye, he’s not a wild black.’ He utters each word with infuriating slowness, as though I were a simpleton.

I go to stand near the open door, lift my cheeks to the breeze. Take a deep breath. Chant the word ‘calm’ in my head a few times.

‘What if your tame boys are in league with them?’

He sits on a chair near the table, plants his dirty, booted feet two inches from the bread. Pulls a sheath knife from his belt and starts picking his teeth with it. ‘Ye don’t know how it works. Darby and Charley would be first to go. Then John Pigtail. We’ll be last. Not enough salt in our flesh ye see.’

Percy looms in the doorway, blocking the light. ‘Ah, fresh bread.’ His nose twitches uncertainly. ‘It might be all right in the middle.’

‘Ye always were a greedy bastard,’ Bob says.

‘Better than being a dirty one. Get your feet off the table. Burned or not, I’d rather have syrup than toe jam on my slice.’

Bob jostles his medicinal balls carelessly. After a minute, just long enough for Percy to know he’s not being obeyed, he puts his feet on the ground.

Percy pokes at the bread with a finger. ‘Next thing you know, the goat milk will sour. You need to look after your wife better, Watson.’

Bob reaches for his knife again, but Percy gets there first. ‘Thanks.’ He wipes the blade on his trousers, then carves a rough wedge from the loaf. A rush of yeast steam belches out. ‘See?’ He holds up a slice. ‘The middle’s all right.’

‘Give my fecking knife back.’

Percy shrugs, puts it down on the table. He’s almost out the door when Bob throws it. The blade hits home in the doorframe.

I snap. ‘You’re mad. You’re as mad as your mother.’

He reaches me in three strides. Grabs my hair and pulls my head back. ‘Say that again, I’ll knock ye senseless.’

I turn my head away from the spittle spraying from his mouth.

‘Let her go.’ Percy pulls the knife from the wood and steps back into the room. ‘Only a worm of a man bullies a woman.’ There’s a layer of ice in his eyes.

Bob opens his fingers and I step back, rubbing my head.

‘Want her for yerself, do ye? Ye can have her. Just don’t expect too much, unless ye like hammering a nail in a plank of wood.’

The next few seconds pass in slow motion.

Percy moves towards Bob, knife in hand. Bob lifts a forearm to deflect the blade. Percy hits him so hard in the face with his other fist that Bob crumples to his knees. He doesn’t move for what seems a long time. Then he stands groggily, one hand supporting himself on the table. He gingerly readjusts his jaw, then staggers out of the house.

‘Where’s your sister?’ Percy’s breathing harshly.

‘On the beach.’

‘I’ll go and get her, bring her back here. Then you barricade the door and don’t let him in until he cools down.’

‘What have you done? We can’t go on like this.’

‘Yes, we can. For a while longer, at least. Just one more drop. The operation will be finished then.’

‘He’ll be impossible to live with.’

‘No, he won’t. He’s a bully. Once bullies are bested, they pull their horns in. He’ll go off for a while then come back as though nothing’s happened.’

I’m not convinced.

Bob slinks back at dinnertime. He doesn’t speak. Just heads for a flagon in the corner, and a pannikin. He sits in the rocking chair in the shadows.

I set the table. My body feels like a coiled spring. Even the soft clink of cutlery seems too loud.

Percy must have spoken to Porter. Both men come in for dinner, hats in hand, their movements excruciatingly ordinary. Ah Sam hurries in with the stew. I spoon some food onto Bob’s plate, take it over with a fork. He ignores me. Keeps rocking without looking up. His medicinal balls clatter and clank unsteadily in his pocket. The flagon is already half-empty.

I take the plate back and put it on the table.

Porter watches me push the same piece of potato around with a fork. ‘You’re not hungry, Mary?’

Bob gets up, his centre of gravity unsteady. Bangs into the corner of the door as he wanders outside. I hear a long stream of pissing. A few unintelligible words. I look down at the table, not wanting to meet the other men’s eyes. I sneak a look at Bob as he staggers back towards the rocking chair still buttoning his pants up. There are wet spots on his crotch, down the left leg. Old memories of Papa flood back with a vengeance.

I look over to Carrie. She looks at me. I wonder if we’re both thinking the same thing.

How could I be so stupid as to put us both back where we started from?

Porter breaks the silence first. ‘Are we going out tomorrow, Bob?’

I hear the tinkle of rum splashing into an empty pannikin. The rocker squeaks a few more times. ‘Aye.’ Nothing more.

My head throbs. It’s the child locked in the cupboard behind my forehead, banging her fists on the door to get out.

11TH SEPTEMBER 1880

At eight o’clock, Bob sinks sideways in the chair. By eight thirty, he’s almost slithered to the floor. At nine, Porter and Percy half-carry, half-drag him to bed. I hear him fall with a solid thump onto the mattress.

Porter smiles wanly when they come back. ‘You’re better off with him this way, rather than argumentative.’

‘He might wake up later. I’m not off the hook yet.’

He goes over to the flagon, picks it up and shakes it. ‘No, he won’t stir this side of sunrise. He’s swallowed enough to put an elephant in a trance.’

‘Poker?’ Percy suggests. He’s already cleared the plates. He shuffles the battered deck, then cuts and flicks them together.

‘Sorry, old boy. I think I’ll call it a night. My teeth are playing up.’ Porter yawns, exposing two rotten molars at the back of his
mouth. I’ve noticed him from time to time rubbing clove oil gingerly on his gums.

‘What about you, Mrs Watson?’ Percy asks. ‘You want to turn in with hubby, or can you spare the time for a quick game?’

I glance at the bedroom doorway. ‘Just one game. Then I think I’ll sleep in the rocking chair.’

Porter waves from the doorway and disappears with a lantern into the inky night.

‘Just let me check on Carrie,’ I say.

Behind the curtain, her back is to me and she’s breathing deeply. The sea is calm tonight, rocking itself to sleep.

Percy looks up and smiles. ‘Out like a snuffed gaslight?’

‘Yes. I’m sending her home as soon as I can. This is no place for her. It’s the kind of atmosphere I was trying to get her away from.’

When I don’t elaborate, he cocks his head towards the corner. ‘Would you like a drink?’

I shudder.

‘Oh, come on. You won’t turn into a boozer with just a few nips. And you need to relax. You’re like fence wire pulled too tight.’

He fetches two pannikins and pours an inch in each. The first swallow stings my throat. The sensation, not the flavour, reminds me of the drink I had in Captain Roberts’s room at the back of the pub in Townsville.

Percy laughs at my expression. ‘Now the area’s numb, try again.’

‘I’ve experimented with that strategy before. It doesn’t work.’

But I take another sip regardless. With hardly any food in my stomach, it’s enough to make my head feel like a kite in an updraught. I flinch at a rough-sawn snore from the bedroom.

‘Why did you bring Carrie here?’ Percy asks. ‘You knew she’d be one more complication.’

I run my tongue along my bottom lip. ‘I told you in Brisbane why I left home. When I went back to Rockhampton just before I married Bob, I learned my father had started drinking again. I was afraid for her.’

‘So you brought her here, to live with another drunk?’

‘I know how it sounds. I didn’t know what he was like. I thought I could handle Bob.’

I push my mug across the table for more rum.

‘Now, now, Mrs Watson, not too much or you might accuse me of taking advantage of the situation. I have my principles. You
are
another man’s wife.’

My mouth twists. ‘In name only.
Are
you going to take advantage of the situation?’

My words come out less crisply and dispassionately than I would have them. I blink slowly as I study Percy’s face in the lamplight. The green of his eyes would be indistinguishable at night but for the sparkling gold flecks.

He pulls out his pipe and a plug. When he lifts a hand to tamp the tobacco, the light picks up the sinews at his wrist. ‘Is that an invitation?’ he asks, looking into my eyes.

The taste of rum is drying to a bitter paste on my tongue.

A sudden gust of wind under the door wobbles the lantern flame for an instant.

Then, somehow, he’s behind me. I feel him against my back. He’s undoing the buttons of my dress one by one. His mouth is on the side of my neck. The dizziness in my head turns into heat that moves down my backbone.

‘Come with me. Back to my hut. Away from him.’

I close my eyes. The room still spins. ‘What about Carrie?’

‘He won’t wake. She won’t wake,’ he murmurs into my neck. ‘I promise.’

‘All right.’

My voice is thick, my nose filled with the sharp aroma of his smouldering pipe, an inch from my face.

Outside, the night rustles its silks. The moon hangs suspended in a gelatinous sac.

His door creaks open. He sits the lantern on the floor. Hastily sweeps away the newspapers on the bed. He seems so much larger in the small space. The lantern paints him in shadow as a hunchbacked monster gliding across the ceiling.

I turn to face him, and he finishes pulling off my dress. The material falls at my feet. I kick it out of the way. The camisole and petticoat are next. Then I sit on the bed while he unlaces my boots.

‘Look at your poor toes.’

I glance down at them. They almost all have hardened calluses. A combination of neglect and the filing-down effect the sand seems to have on everything.

He eases me back on the bed and kneels over me, undoing his trousers. ‘There’s a storm coming, hear it? The wet season will be on us soon.’

As he speaks, I hear a low rumbling in the distance. And then he’s on top of me, whispering something I can make nothing of. His muscular thigh between my legs. I open my mouth on the small, sweaty hollow of his shoulder, where a single cord pulls tight, releases, pulls, releases.

Now the lantern on the floor paints our movements on the wall next to his bed. The hunchback’s gone. He’s a silkworm. One long hitch-and-slide after another, moving forward and back, forward and back, trying to shake off a cocoon.

But my legs wrap tight around him. They’ll have none of his attempts to escape.