The Secret Fate of Mary Watson (27 page)

Bob helps himself and looks across the table at Percy. ‘Fuller, didn’t ye say ye’d booked passage on the
Egmont
on the eleventh?’

Percy nods curtly, his face a mask. ‘Family in Melbourne I have to catch up with. Before they return home to London. It’s almost cyclone season anyway, Watson. I’ll take any catch we accumulate between now and then to Cooktown when I go.’

He sounds defensive and I wonder why. He must be lying about his reasons for leaving. He’ll probably take the opportunity to tell Captain Roberts that I’m pregnant and no longer able to do my job here on the island. How lucky, as he said, that Ah Leung is healing. Well, Ah Leung may yet have a fight on his hands. I need the money from this next drop if I’m to bring a baby up on my own.

For a few seconds, the world stops spinning. I realise what a monumental decision I’ve just made in the blink of an eye. Whatever else happens, I will not get rid of my child.

Bob taps his front teeth with his fork. ‘We’ll all go over before
the fourth. Mary, to see Carrie off; me, to sell the slugs. We could come back to the Lizard — Porter, Mary and me — on the eleventh, or a wee while earlier. We could all do with a break.’

He bends to his food again, shovels another mouthful in. It’s obvious what’s behind his sudden desire for us all to have a holiday in Cooktown. He doesn’t want Percy taking the slugs. Or, more specifically, dealing with Will Hartley, the slug agent.

‘Sounds fine to me,’ I say briskly. I pick up a plate and help myself to some stew.

Percy’s worried — I can tell by the small line the size of a matchstick between his eyes. He must know that I suspect he’ll run to Roberts with my news. And, quite rightly, he’s concerned I’ll say something, do something, to compromise him in response. But he gives himself too much credit. There’s a hard kernel of survival in me now. What plant might grow out of it will be anybody’s guess. But I’m not about to throw away my only chance of a future because of some spite I might feel towards Percy. I’ve no intention of sabotaging the operation.

In bed, later, Bob turns me over roughly, but I’m having none of it.

‘If you want me to lose this child I’m carrying, then go right ahead.’

I hear a sharp in-breath. He flops on his back. After a few stunned minutes, I hear the slow click of his medicinal balls.

‘I’ve filled yer womb?’

By his tone, no man in history has ever performed such a feat. I don’t comment, just keep my back turned, my eyes wide open in the dark.

‘A wee bairn. Well now, that changes everything.’

6TH NOVEMBER 1880

Percy’s been talking to Ah Leung. The Chinaman has had a decided spring in his lopsided step these last few days. The damaged foot still drags slightly behind the other, but he’s agile enough to climb Cook’s Look. He knows it, and so do I.

All I have to rely on now are my wits.

Ah Leung eyes me speculatively as I walk towards the washing line. The salt-butter smell of an early island summer is everywhere. He’s been clearing the overgrown grass around the homestead with his cane knife. At this time of year, venomous snakes lurk in any vegetation allowed to grow beyond ankle height. The stunted bushes behind him clatter with cicadas. The heat is soporific, but I can’t give in to its seductive ennui.

‘Lovely day, isn’t it?’ I call.

The sun glints off the cane knife’s steel as he stabs it in the dirt. He looks to see if anyone else is around. No time to waste on preliminaries, it seems.

‘You leave here soon if you know what’s good for you.’

His voice gloats from the shadows under the pandanus. Moving patches of light and darkness stripe his face.

‘And why is that, Ah Leung?’

The enamel of my careful politeness has worn thin. I pick two wooden pegs from the canvas bag that hangs on the clothesline. Dust off a film of dirt. Pinch one peg to the collar of my blouse while I haul a pair of Bob’s long johns to the line with the other hand. The task would have had me wincing a week ago. But Porter’s given me some whale oil in a tiny bottle. Rubbing it on my inflamed palms has brought some relief. I notice Ah Leung staring at my stomach. Bile rises in my throat.

‘You know, it’s a mistake to accept gossip as truth. Didn’t your mother ever tell you that?’

‘I kill you now, maybe.’

His voice is so matter-of-fact that I wonder for a few seconds if I haven’t misheard. Above the trotting pulse in my ears, I rehearse his own tone and offer it back to him.

‘Oh, no, I don’t think so. To do that would almost certainly guarantee you’d be drawn and quartered. You forget one important fact. That I’ve told others what you’ve done.’

It’s all bluff, of course. I’ve told no one in Cooktown about him. I should have. I plan to rectify that oversight as soon as I set foot on the mainland. I might start with Charley Boule. What better way to set the bullock team of gossip in motion?

I pull a damp apron out of the basket, fetch another pair of pegs from the bag.

‘You think you work it all … out.’

The taunt in his voice makes the hairs on the back of my neck prickle to attention.

‘What haven’t I worked out, Ah Leung? I’m sure you’ll be happy to tell me.’

He scratches his cheek with one of those long, dirty claws, just below the birthmark. ‘I tell you one thing you don’t know.’

‘That’s magnanimous of you. What is it?’

‘You don’t leave here soon, you die. And all because you trust the wrong people.’ He shakes his head slowly in mock sympathy.

‘You’re a fine one to talk about trust. You’re a murderer and a thief.’

His sudden laugh is full of phlegmy bullets. What’s amused him? My naïvety? My intuition tells me that he’s not sophisticated enough to bluff.

But what is it that I haven’t taken into account? Who have I trusted that I shouldn’t have?

What have I left untended that might jump out and bite me?

Summer, 1880

4TH DECEMBER 1880

Back to a muddy street with shops nudging each other along its mournful length. Back to sagging verandahs and stray dogs. Back to a heavy waterbag of air hanging under a sky as bristly as a horse’s underbelly.

‘Mary …’ Carrie bites her bottom lip. There’s nothing more to say.

Her trunk is already on board. All of the money Percy gave me for the last drop is in a pouch stashed in her deepest pocket. She’s about to walk the small gangway from shore to steamer. Nothing to do but stare at her for a long few seconds, then wrap my arms around her.

‘I’ll miss you,’ I say. ‘Be careful. Remember what I told you about Brisbane. Merry Christmas, Carrie.’

I watch her walk onto the gently swaying boat. She turns to stand at the railing.

‘Write to me,’ she yells. ‘Let me know about the baby. Remember what you said. I love you, Mary.’

‘Be careful, Carrie.’ I say again, then mouth an ‘I love you’ back at her. I wave my handkerchief until my arm aches and the steamer is a tiny, puffing speck in the distance. Her smell still hangs on my blouse, mixed with my own sweat.

I make it halfway back up Charlotte Street, then, suddenly, outside the National Bank, I stop and take a deep breath. Something’s clogging my throat.

‘Mary?’ It’s Porter. He’s been shopping in Walsh’s Emporium and has tobacco and a new pipe clasped in the money clip of his three-fingered hand.

I fumble in my sleeve for my handkerchief. Wipe my face. ‘Carrie’s gone.’

He lifts his arm — to console me, perhaps — then decides I haven’t invited his sympathy and lowers it again. He’s looking clean and polished after a trip to the barber for a haircut and shave. And he’s bought himself a pair of new Blucher boots from Madden’s down near the wharf. There’s also a bright red-checked kerchief around his throat.

‘Are you off courting, then?’ I look him up and down, smiling now, and he blushes in a slow tide from the neck upwards.

‘No, not really. Who’d want an old sea dog like me?’

There’s a flash of lightning over the water. It scatters a noisy flock of white cockatoos from the paperbarks. The sky’s turning the dull colour and texture of cob cottages back in Cornwall: straw, bound with glutinous grey clay. For a second, I fancy I can smell the seaweed and waste pilchards used to fertilise the turnip fields. And almost see, in the distance of my mind’s eye, the ever-
shrinking patches of fertility separated by swathes of balding land, poisoned by arsenic from the silver mine.

Porter counts the seconds until the copper full of rocks tilts its thunderous load into the sky above us. ‘Four miles off. I reckon it’ll be a pelterer.’

The wind’s picked up and I hold my fluttering hat down on my head. ‘We’d better get inside. Where’s Bob?’

‘Nursing a tot in the Sea Wah.’ His tone suggests it’s more likely a pot than a tot. ‘How are your hands now?’

‘Healing. Thanks to you.’

I hold my free palm out to show him. He runs a finger lightly across its scarred surface, as though preparing to read my fortune. He looks up and into my face. His bottom lip twitches with something important to say. But when he breaks eye contact, it’s clear he’s thought better of it.

‘Where are you off to?’ he asks.

Another flash. The air vibrates. I pull my hand back, a little disturbed by his gentle touch.

‘I thought I might make a call on my old friend Charley Boule.’

Charley ushers me into his stuffy office. I’m reminded of the last time I was in this room, just after Nicole’s death. Porter’s ‘pelterer’ arrives in an instant, carried by a huge wind flapping the wing of the awning outside. Horizontal rain peppers the window.

Charley sinks into his noisy leather chair and lights a cigar. ‘How is the Lizard,
chérie
?’ It’s hard to hear him over the rain.

‘Scaly and cold-blooded,’ I reply, thinking of Bob, Percy and Ah Leung. ‘I’m having a child.’

He lights the lamp on his desk. It accentuates the shine on his forehead and nose. ‘
Incroyable!
’ An amused grin. A flash of white teeth.

‘I can assure you, even a plain woman’s reproductive capacities can be quite serviceable.’

‘You misunderstand me. It is not that …’

He doesn’t elaborate and, not particularly caring for his opinion on my pregnancy, I don’t pursue it.

‘How much do you know about that Chinese servant on the Lizard, Ah Leung?’ I ask instead.

A small jerk of surprise? It’s hard to tell with the lamp’s flickering. But his smile has definitely gone. He leans back. The chair emits a slippery squeak. He blows a mouthful of smoke towards the ceiling.

‘He once had a salon on the waterfront,
non
?’ He picks up an onyx paperweight and rolls it in his palm, his thumb stroking its surface.

‘I suspect it was he who strangled your girls,’ I say.

‘I think not.’

‘How so? The murders stopped after he left, didn’t they?’

‘And also after you, Watson, Green and Fuller left. Not to mention that stupid boy Heccy Landers, who went back to Brisbane at the same time.’

‘Ah Leung robbed and killed a Chinese shopkeeper. Did you know?’

‘I did not,’ he says smoothly. ‘But what matter? The sooner they all kill each other, the sooner business in town will revert to the Europeans.’

I feel my frustration rising. ‘I didn’t suspect you would be
interested in justice for the girls themselves, but I had imagined the idea of revenge would heat your French blood somewhat.’

‘
Touché.
I am ready to combust at any moment. But where is your proof?’

I tell him about Ah Leung’s joss with the ribbon around its neck.

‘Pah. That is all you have?’

I pull in a quick breath. I felt so sure he would show an interest. Now I’m flummoxed as to where to take the conversation.

Charley saves me the trouble of responding. ‘I am tired of this salon, anyway,’ he says. ‘Charley Boule is not much longer for this town.’

If in doubt, fall back on sarcasm.

‘Perhaps you should return to Paris, Charley. A man of your ambition and patriotism needs a large canvas to work on.’

He looks up. ‘
Sans importance.
A true Frenchman, he carries his country with him.’

I look out the window. The rain is still torrential, but vertical now. The wind’s died. Charlotte Street is a muddy series of runnels that won’t dry out completely for months. Someone’s once white glove floats by in a mini river.

‘Why did Heccy leave?’ I ask.

‘A family crisis I believe.’

‘I saw Laura scrubbing floors at the Federal Hotel. Isn’t she working here any more?’

‘
Non.
’

His curt response brooks no further questioning. Which doesn’t stop me.

‘Why?’

He gives me a long look that I can’t decipher. Then he shrugs. His eyes flit away.

Something occurs to me. Some way I might pierce his armour of indifference. I think of the afternoon I heard him arguing with Percy.

‘How well do you know Percy Fuller, Charley?’

He doesn’t miss a beat. ‘About as well as you think
you
do,
chérie
.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

But he’s giving me that blank look that tells me our grand reunion is over.

‘If you will kindly excuse me. I am a busy man. Give my regards to the blacks on the Lizard.’

11TH DECEMBER 1880

Bob has spent the week since Carrie left soaking up alcohol and the mercurial charms of the gambling table. As for me? I’ve kept to myself, lonely, but unwilling to seek out the kind of company that Cooktown keeps. At least on the Lizard, isolation is left to its own devices. Not crammed to bursting with false bonhomie.

Ten thirty at night. I’ve kicked my boots off, and sit on the lumpy bed with my back against the headboard. To rest, but not to sleep. Our tiny room at the Sea Wah Hotel is suitable for slumber only during the day, when the drunks and gamblers are recovering from the previous night’s binge. Bob’s down there somewhere, spending up big at the bar. He got a good price from Will Hartley for his slugs, enough that he doesn’t seem worried about donating a substantial portion of his earnings to his new best mates, all better poker players than he is. Shouts, curses and the sound of breaking glass rise through the floor.

I bend my knee, bring one foot closer to my chest. It’s swollen, either with the heat or pregnancy. The five toes poke out like little piggies on their way to market. I push deeply on the instep. All day I’ve been on my feet, trying to catch up with Percy. He disappeared soon after Carrie left, as soon as Bob handed him his share of the profits. No sign of him all week. I spent the whole morning on the dock while the packet steamer for Melbourne took on supplies and passengers. Either Percy was already aboard and in no mood to talk to me, or he left Cooktown earlier in the week, having lied about his plans. Regardless, Captain Roberts will soon know I’m pregnant — if he doesn’t already.

I start the same treatment on the other foot, relieving the pressure. Bob’s planning to take us back to the Lizard the day after tomorrow, weather permitting. Ah Leung will no doubt be waiting on shore, ugly and painful as a stonefish when he realises I’m on board.

I chew on my bottom lip. For the tenth time, I think: perhaps I should telegraph Roberts. But what would I say to explain myself? I can’t think of anything that would shift his mind if it’s already made up. Truth is, I’m stuck. At an impasse. My thoughts like anxious mice running around a closed wheel in my head.

It’s still too hot to sleep, even if, by some miracle, the noise from downstairs abated. But I feel myself drifting away in a sort of semiconscious dream. I’m back home on the Lizard. In the rocking chair. The ocean growls and the wind is up. Heavy gusts disturb the kerosene lantern’s flame, rattle the barred door. The rattling grows louder. Louder, and more regular. As if someone is tapping with a stick.

I open my eyes, back in the Sea Wah. Someone’s knocking.

I sit up straighter, the pain in my feet forgotten. It can’t
be Bob. It’s far too early, and in any case he’d be thumping and bellowing, not tapping sedately.

‘Who is it?’ I call out.

No answer. But whoever’s outside pushes something white halfway under the door.

I turn up the lamp with an unsteady hand and go to retrieve the paper. As soon as I draw it inside, I hear heavy footsteps walk steadily down the hall to the stairs.

The note is written in strong, cursive strokes. With a fountain pen.
Half an hour. Upstairs, Federal Hotel.

No signature. It doesn’t matter. My pulse races. I know who it is.

Roberts. In Cooktown! And Percy must have known. Must have spoken to him before he left for Melbourne, or wherever else he’s gone. Told him with gleeful malice about my changed circumstances.

I sit down on the bed. My feet protest as I shove them back into my boots. Why didn’t Roberts pass on his decision through Percy? Why would he wait for Percy to leave and then speak to me personally? He doesn’t usually do his own dirty work. I take the kerosene lamp over to the cold fireplace, crumple the note. I hold one corner to the flame, then throw the paper into the ash pit, watching it burn.

Too late to run, and nowhere to hide if I do. I wipe my hair down on both sides, compulsively. And then do the same to the front of my dress. For the first time in weeks, since I took Porter’s whale-oil cure, my palms itch painfully. I open the door.

If I were in any doubt about the nature of the summons, the tall man waiting for me at the end of the alleyway alongside
the Federal Hotel dispels it. I recognise him from that earlier meeting … a year ago now. Six foot tall, with dull ginger hair, coarse features and eyes full of implacable purpose. He turns and walks quietly down the dark, damp passage. I follow, a lamb to the slaughter, counting steps to calm myself. Too soon, the alley opens up into the shabby courtyard near the back entrance. Three empty wooden rum barrels line up against the wall. A rusty birdcage hangs askew from a gum tree’s branch, picking up the moonlight. I hear a possum’s leafy scamper somewhere to my left, an off-key tune sung from the bar inside.

The stairs smell of stale beer and the ground-in dirt of gold-diggers’ boots. By the time we reach the open door on the landing, my palms are wet.

‘Come in.’

Roberts has taken the same cracked leather chair that he had before. As before, the door is left open. I take both as good omens, and caution myself to hold my tongue. Not sink my own ship before I hear the cannon boom. The ginger-haired guard dog stands watch in the hallway. The captain’s face is impassive. Nothing to be learned there. I sit, reciting the words in my head so that I’ll get the tone exactly right.

‘Percy’s been to see you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I assume, then, you know my situation.’ I clasp my damp hands together on my lap so that he won’t see them shake.

He leans back in his chair, puts one ankle over its opposite knee. If anything, his beard is even longer than when I last saw him. Jet black, reaching down to his lap. He strokes it lightly, just below his mouth. Stares at me, unblinking.

‘Yes. I know your situation.’

I’d forgotten just how weighty his absence of small talk can be.

‘I bet he told you I’m incapable of doing the next signalling. That Ah Leung is ready to step into the breach.’

‘No bet. We’re both poker players, remember?’ The left side of his mouth twitches.

The saliva in the back of my throat is thick as I swallow. ‘I’m not incapable, Captain. It’s no easy climb up Cook’s Look, but I can do it.’

He stares at me for a few more seconds. Then glances over to the disused fireplace. There’s a chip in the corner of the surround. He fixes his gaze on it.

‘The drop is now scheduled for September.’

‘Next September! But I’ll have my baby by then. I’ll be more than able —’

He stares at me evenly, hammering my sudden relief back into silence.

‘To fight another day?’ He finishes the sentence for me, his voice a monotone.

‘Something like that.’

My words sound faint to my own ears. Something’s wrong. The conversation is so full of holes there’s nowhere to step without falling through. What did he say to Percy? What did Percy say to him? Why hasn’t he said an outright ‘no’ to my request to continue?

‘Ah Leung —’ I start.

‘Will be controlled.’

The words he doesn’t add —
for now
— hang heavy in the air between us.

I’ve always thought of Roberts as being emotionless. But I realise it’s not quite true. In the flicker of the lamp, his dark eyes are full of knives under a deceptively smooth surface. Like the reef
just off the Lizard. And trying to find the safe passage through what he doesn’t say is a challenge equal to Cook finding his dark blue line through all of that peril. A challenge I realise I’m not up to at the moment. I search around for something on the surface to help me set my course.

‘Why so long until the next drop?’

He makes a gesture I remember: steepling his long fingers, as though completing some circuit necessary to contemplation. I imagine his thoughts passing back and forth through his fingertips.

‘It’s complicated. An invasion of Egypt is in the offing. It would be to our advantage if a couple of French spies were compromised in the process. One must always be prepared to act.’ He looks me in the eye. ‘But one must not act until one’s opponent is completely committed, and has reached the point of maximum vulnerability. I now judge we will reach that point in September. The thirtieth, to be exact. Subject to developments, of course. Though I’m confident of my calculations.’

‘I see.’

No use trying to work out his political cloak-and-dagger code. What I do know is that September is a long way from now … a lifetime.

‘The operation requires only one more night of signalling. One more crucial night. Are you sure you’re up to the task?’

‘Yes, I’m sure,’ I say, then wonder if it’s true. ‘But Captain … what then?’

The foot he has rested on his knee wags side to side like a dog’s slow tail.

‘Do you intend to stay with your husband on Lizard Island when this is all over?’

‘No.’

‘Then you would take the child with you, presumably. How will you secure passage without raising suspicion?’

I haven’t thought clearly about anything so far ahead, but dare not say so. Reluctantly, I offer the first practical scenario that comes to mind. ‘I’ll offer Percy money to hide me and the baby on
Petrel
. He could take us south.’ Never mind that Percy and I are barely on speaking terms.

He makes a noise at the back of his throat but doesn’t comment. Then he stands. His guard dog, alert to the faintest signal, moves into the doorway. I stand as well.

‘Wait here ten minutes,’ he says over his shoulder. ‘Then put out the light and go back to your hotel.’

‘Yes, Captain.’

I watch his dark bulk fill the doorway then disappear. I collapse back in the chair and listen to the faraway shrills of a good-time town. They seem even more artificial to me now than they did when I lived here. I’ve grown used to the different noises on the Lizard. The real sounds of the night.

I can’t seem to summon the energy to move, even when the required ten minutes has passed. What pins me to the chair? Nervous tension released? Loss of will? Lethargy? My obstacles are just as real. The outcome just as uncertain. But every now and then, in between anxious moments, I feel calm sneak in. My hands rest on my belly. Over my baby.

In these last weeks, since I realised I’m carrying an extra passenger, I’ve imagined myself as a mother. Imagined my life after the final drop. The baby will be delivered safely, somewhere away from all this strife. I will have the money to care for it. Our future will be secured.

But things have changed and I must change my thoughts with them. I must keep up. Must keep one step ahead. I’ve played my cards well enough so far — well enough to escape Papa’s hopeless, downward spiral, and help Carrie do the same — but now there’s far more at stake than just my own skin. My child will most likely be born here in Cooktown. I will be forced to take a vulnerable infant back to the Lizard. Ah Sam will have to care for it while I climb that dangerous hill again.

Something cold sneaks in. A possible explanation for why Roberts would want me to make this one last climb of Cook’s Look. Perhaps he knows that the blacks have become more volatile. Perhaps he’s decided I’m not as valuable an asset as Ah Leung is and could easily be sacrificed. His only gamble? That I manage to complete the signalling before I’m brought down with a spear.

Does it make sense? I don’t know any more. My emotions seem heightened with pregnancy. What I do know is that fate will force me to ante up my most precious possession. Roberts, Ah Leung, Percy, Bob, the blacks, the signalling job … all risks, an endless string of dangerous wagers. But how will I ever forgive myself if this last bet puts my baby in harm’s way?

I begin to stretch my arms up to yawn, but stop myself. Ridiculous Cornish superstitions about pregnancy twist and turn in my head.
Don’t raise your hands above your shoulders or you’ll strangle the baby. Don’t write in a diary, or the Devil will see the words and come for the child.