The Secret Fate of Mary Watson (6 page)

‘Which are you now? Nervous, bored or flighty?’

‘Nervous. I want ye to like me.’

I tell him baldly, ‘I’m not one of Charley’s girls. I won’t go upstairs with you for a handful of gold dust.’

‘Why would a man bother with the preliminaries if that’s all he wanted? Truth is, Mary, I’m a peaceable, solitary fellow.’

I glance at the evidence to the contrary — at least, to the ‘peaceable’ claim. The scar. The sinewy muscles just under the skin.
Click, click,
go the balls.

‘Aren’t you going to say it?’ I ask. ‘What’s a nice lass like you doing working in a place like French Charley’s?’

‘A man ought to mind his own business. I just have one question for ye.’

‘Yes?’

‘What’s a nice lass like ye doing in a place like French Charley’s?’

I laugh at his weak attempt at humour, and watch him relax. It isn’t pretty, his smile, but better than the alternative. The lack of symmetry in his face is exhausting if taken at a single gulp, but I gaze at it front on, albeit briefly. Lightning from behind my shoulder opens a scar across both his eyes. I think of Mary Shelley’s monster. I slap at a mosquito on my forehead. Inspect the blood smear and wings on my fingers. In the dark it’s just a smudge.

‘There’s always the odd one that develops a taste for the very thing that’s supposed to repel it, isn’t there?’ I muse.

‘Ye strike me as an odd one yerself, Mary Oxnam. Are ye attracted to things that should repel ye?’

I think of Percy. ‘Yes,’ I confess. ‘Often.’

I glance down the street briefly; see the line of bawdy houses, gambling dens and assorted pits of iniquity, known in generous circles as the vibrant heart of the far north.

‘You can stop fiddling with your medicinal balls, Bob. I do rather like you. And one day I’ll be bold enough to ask how you got that scar. But right now, there’s a storm coming and I must get back to work.’

21ST NOVEMBER 1879

It’s been ten days since I first met Bob. We’ve been for a few more strolls in that time, and now he’s gone, sailed back to his island. I’ve learned nothing more about Percy’s new venture. Heard little of interest between Bob’s alternate bouts of self-pity and self-aggrandisement. But last night, as I lay awake, tossing and turning in the heat, the puzzle pieces came together. Bob Watson. Charley Boule. Lizard Island. Of course! It’s time to interrogate Monsieur Boule.

French Charley’s. Ten minutes before opening time. A stale urine smell in the air mixed with hops, barrel sherry and a splash of sweet-pea water. I’m standing in the doorway and feel the slide of silks and satins as half-a-dozen girls flounce past me. I open my mouth to stop Laura; I want to ask her how she knows Bob Watson. Their shared look, just after I first saw Bob standing in
the doorway at Charley’s the night we met, implies a history. But she’s gone before I manage the words. In any case, I have other, more pressing matters to attend to.

‘I need to talk to you, Charley.’

My boss is at his makeshift bar, his back to me. He’s mixing his seasonal cocktail: Yuletide Mule. Never mind that Christmas is a month off. He’ll decant it into jugs and put one in the middle of each table. With its Scrooge’s nip of brandy, slurp of industrial alcohol and tingling sprinkle of gunpowder, it has a kick that keeps on kicking. For a fee.

Heccy Landers, my not-so-secret admirer, bends his ungainly bones over three-dozen bottles standing in the stone trough, spilling more than he’s filling. This evening, it’s beer and moselle mixed together. The bottles will be recorked and passed off as champagne. Heccy must have heard about Bob and me walking out together. He looks extravagantly miserable, from his red hair down to his boots, every time he glances over his shoulder. Typically, Charley’s more concerned with the splash of profits down the drain than the slow leak in Heccy’s heart.

‘
Mon Dieu
. Wake up, stupid boy!’

Nicole jostles past me. Her make-up is thick enough to mortar bricks. She’s riding high on a wave of heat and resentment. Her mouth opens and the log of lipstick breaks into splinters. Here it comes: a gem from the almanac of whores’ wisdom.

‘That Watson fella, ya watch ’im. I know yer up yerself, my girl, but some men’ll pull the life outa ya regardless, like a tapeworm.’

‘You’ve missed your calling, Nicole. An image like that, you should’ve been a poet.’

‘Insultin’ me ain’t gunna help. Just this, Miss Prissy-Britches. I seen his type before. Lookin’ po-faced, like they’d rather go to
church than have a poke in the bushes, then turnin’ into animals when ya get ’em alone.’

‘Well, you’d know all about animals.’ I look her up and down.

This provokes a smirk; the red smear forming an exaggerated bow as she returns the favour. Her eyes run over my cream blouse and long beige skirt, her contempt glittering. ‘Yer jealous of me face and figger. Can’t blame yer for that. But men aren’t too fussy, and I’m tellin’ ya somethin’ for nothin’. Blokes like Watson leave serious bruises.’

‘Nicole, I am jealous, dear. I’ve always wanted a career like yours. Remind me how the promotions go? First a salon. Then a pub. Then down among the Chinamen. Then the hospital. Then an unmarked grave.’

‘Stop fighting or I’ll put you both in a hessian bag and throw you in the river, like the squawling cats you are,’ Charley says, without turning.

‘I’d rather have my own bag,’ I say coolly. ‘I might catch something, otherwise.’

Nicole sticks her tongue out of the side of her mouth. She looks remarkably like a cud-chewing cow. I tell her so.

Charley intervenes again. ‘Nicole, go and open the front door. Mary, start playing the piano. It is what I pay you for.’

Nicole flounces away, buoyed by the many petticoats she’ll take off later in the night for some drunken prospector at the rate of one handful of gold dust apiece.

‘I said I want to talk to you,’ I remind Charley.

‘And I say go to work. Come to see me on your break.’

‘Louise. Out of the way!’ Charley holds both hands palm up in exasperation. Louise, the resident carpet snake, is unruffled. Leisurely she flows, like a patterned river, between his legs, then
curls into a fat Cumberland sausage in her favourite spot just under the trough’s drainhole where the slow drips of alcohol ping off her skin.

‘I know why you introduced me to Bob Watson,’ I say.

This works. Heccy looks up, startled. Charley exhales noisily through his nose.

‘Come to my office.’ He takes off his apron and folds it neatly.

He closes the door behind us. There’s a rich, mahogany silence, at odds with the chaos outside. The phantoms of fine cigars and snifters of cognac have made soft, expensive connections with the rosewood table. He opens his polished case and pulls out a cigar. He takes the key from around his neck, bends over and unlocks the drawer that holds his float of bribery money, paid to customs officers on duty when one of Charley’s special deliveries turns up on the dock. He extracts a gadget that looks like a walnut crusher. Nips the end of his cigar and reaches for his matches. He neglects to lock the drawer again, and I infer he’s distracted.

‘This could wait,’ he says.

‘I don’t think it
can
wait, Charley.’

The sky’s bucket upturns on the roof and I have to bide my time for a few seconds until the first deafening gush becomes an ordinary deluge.

‘I’ve heard you, when I clean up the tables at night, talking with your cronies in here. Knight, that underling of the customs sub-collector; Douglas from the telegraph office. And Müller, butcher and under-the-counter trader
par excellence
. It’s not the price of sausages you’re discussing.’

‘What exactly have you heard,
chérie
?’

‘Nothing specific.’

His eyes relax back in their hammocks of fat.

‘It’s difficult to make out every word through the symphony of moans and bedsprings coming from upstairs. Tell me, do the girls get paid more for melodrama?’

He taps his nose. ‘Every man likes to feel he is a stallion.’

‘More ass than stallion if you ask me.’

‘But no one does ask you. You are, how you say, left on the shelf?’

‘Spare me your sparrow pecks.’

‘Stop wasting my time. Say what you must.’

‘I’ve heard you speculate about the prices of gold and opium. Passing steamers. Drops in the ocean in kerosene tins in the middle of the night. Knight’s an important man to consult on matters of avoiding import and export duty, isn’t he? And what does Douglas bring to the party? Did I hear something about telegraphic codes? A Playfair cipher? I imagine you think you have it all covered: sea, air and ground?’

‘You have no shame,’ he tells me. ‘Listening at keyholes. You insult not only Charley Boule, but the protector of our lawful oceans and the guardian of our vital communication channels.’

‘What’s Müller?’ I ask. ‘The feeder of our hungry bellies? Overacting, Charley.’ I tap my own nose. ‘There’s no one eavesdropping on this conversation.’

He lowers his outrage a couple of notches, but keeps a firm hold on his paranoia. ‘How can you be sure? That stupid boy Heccy lurks around corners, ears like little mice with pieces of cheese: nibble, nibble. Perhaps you two are in collusion.’ He twists his ring around so that its showy face is to the front. The action seems to calm him. ‘I speculate about many things. Why would I not discuss customs matters with Knight when it is his gainful
employment? He has many interesting stories: the crate of eggs not full of yolks and whites, but liquid opium, discovered when the sub-collector decided to have a cooked breakfast one morning. Gold nuggets hidden in ginger jars full of human bones.’

‘I’m not interested in your stories of greedy Chinamen.’

‘As for Douglas and Müller, I complain about the cost of postage to the first, and with the other I discuss the quality of meat supplied to my restaurant.’ He lifts an ornate brass letter opener off his polished desk and runs his finger along the blunt blade, then tilts it this way and that. A single ray of late-afternoon sunshine throws off a spark of fire as it hits its surface. ‘None of this is your concern.’

‘When were you going to approach me?’ I ask.

The rain has tapered off to the odd pin-drop: a pine tree shedding its needles on the metal roof. The humidity still simmers like rank stew.

‘About what,
exactement
?’ His face twitches, but minutely.

‘Lizard Island. It’s got a hill with a lookout and signal flags. Ships passing north and south have nowhere to hide. How handy it would be for you to have an ally on the island. Perhaps even a business partner. With the reefs so treacherous, and with so many other boats about, it would be almost impossible for smugglers to rendezvous without someone
in situ
to guide them. Or warn them.’

Thirty seconds of silence is broken only by the room’s heart beating: Charley’s nautical clock, each tick dragged along by the cocked spring before it.

‘Why would I suggest such a thing to you?’ he asks eventually. ‘To you, so upright, so lawful. You would not consider it for a minute.’ His eyes throw out their sticky strings, waiting for me to fly closer.

‘Not even for a second,’ I reply.

He snorts, then does a complete about-face.

‘I change my mind about Watson. He is not a good match for you.’

‘And why would that be, Charley?’

‘He is not to be trusted. Some men …’ He shakes his head. ‘They are no good with women.’

Nicole’s strident voice comes back to me.
Blokes like Watson leave serious bruises
.

‘You were happy enough to hand me over to him when you thought it might serve your own purposes.’

‘He is too old for you, and he has a history.’

‘What sort of history?’

He stares at me for a few beats. ‘It is … delicate. There is sometimes a little rough-house with the girls … and Watson is more keen than most in this. He had an obsession with Laura. She accepted extra money for his … eccentricity … when the other girls would not.’ He leans back in his chair until the leather squeaks.

That explains the look I saw pass between Bob and Laura in the salon. And as for Charley — I feel unreasonably hurt by his blatant manipulations.

‘You wouldn’t have said a thing about this, would you, if I’d agreed to be your accomplice? You would have had me become a beaten wife. But since I’ve said no, you’ve reached the conclusion that a fair-to-middling piano player is better than none at all.’

He stands abruptly, causing the chair to bounce back, and paces over to the window. The twilight outside is the colour of a three-day-old contusion. I can’t see his face, and he knows it. That alerts me to be suspicious of whatever he comes up with next.

‘Watson has stayed away this last year. I think he has calmed himself, perhaps. Maybe he is ready to settle down.’ He turns back around, fiddles with his watch chain. ‘But I think it is better to be safe than sorry,
non
?’

‘I don’t believe you,’ I say, my mind working rapidly. ‘Why don’t you go to Bob Watson directly with your scheme? Or have you already, and he turned you down? I don’t know why anyone would. You would be the perfect partner in business: loyal, protective, selfless.’

‘Sarcasm does not become you,
chérie
.’

‘And a complete lack of human decency doesn’t become you, Charley. But it seems we must both bear our faults.’

His voice drops several degrees in temperature. ‘My business dealings with Bob Watson are pocket change. He has carried the odd package or two on his lugger for me, that is all.’ Another sigh. ‘His capacity for risk is somewhat … limited. He does not see the more expansive picture, as I do.’ He pauses, examining his fingernails. ‘And perhaps you
aussi
?’

He’s testing the water again. Given Percy’s warning in Brisbane, I know it would be more than my life is worth to go swimming.

‘I’m nothing like you, Charley,’ is all I say. ‘Was Bob ever interested in me, or did you convince him that I was a desirable catch?’

Charley shrugs. His cigar has gone out: further proof of his underlying agitation. He inflames it with another match. ‘Think of it as one of my cocktails coming together. A pinch of influence from one place; a
soupçon
from another. Ask instead why Watson comes to Cooktown fishing for a wife.’

‘Any old wife?’

‘So much the better if young. He has a weakness for girls.’

The last of the élan slides away, and I see his true face. He draws deep on his cigar until its red core bristles, then blows smoke upwards into a small cloud above his head. He carefully extracts a piece of tobacco from the tip of his tongue and studies it.

‘All right. I buy in,’ he says. ‘It is, after all, nearly the time of year for Christmas pudding and parlour games.’ He rubs his cheek in exaggerated contemplation. ‘Why you, as a wife, for Bob Watson?’ He walks over to the window again. Looks out at the sodden street. The wheel ruts in the road are full of thin mud. They’ll stink sullenly when the sun comes out. ‘Men outnumber women four to one in this town. Who else would he marry? A whore?’

I’m almost to the door when his voice hooks me back. ‘A little bit of knowledge is like gunpowder — best kept dry in a locked box,
non
? I know that you have been receiving notes and passing them on to someone. I am not stupid.’

I stand still but don’t turn.

‘Who is to know, or care, what you are up to if you return the favour of a blind eye with a couple of small errands?’ he goes on.

‘Errands?’ I spin slowly to face him.

‘A respectable girl does not draw suspicious attention. Your boss asks you to deliver a missive here and there. You do so, like any dutiful employee.’

‘You have nothing to blackmail me with, Charley.’

‘You are right, of course.’ He shrugs. ‘All I could do is speculate out loud. Expose you before anything comes to fruition.’

I meet his eyes calmly. ‘The difference between you and me is that what I know of your activities is not vague supposition but, shall we say,
fait accompli
. I imagine the harbourmaster would not be above making a retrospective arrest.’